Розділ: Політика
As More Women Run for Office, Child Care Remains Hurdle
When Kimberly Dudik ran for her fourth term in the Montana House, state officials told her she could not use campaign money to pay for child care for her four young children.She is now running for attorney general and is trying to visit a big chunk of the sprawling state, spending hours on the road. That means she needs even more help picking up her kids at school and day care when she’s away and her husband has a late night at the office.FILE – Montana Rep. Kimberly Dudik, D-Missoula, introduces a bill in Helena, Mont., Feb. 4, 2015.”It just seems behind the times,” Dudik, whose family is living off her husband’s income and savings from her work as a lawyer. “When it was a man campaigning, the woman was traditionally the one to stay home and take care of the children. There is not someone home just taking care of the kids.”Experts predict a large number of women will again run for office in 2020 like they did in 2018, and child care remains a hurdle for many of them.A congressional candidate in New York successfully petitioned the Federal Election Commission in 2018 to allow campaign money to help cover child care costs. But it applies only to those running for federal office.That leaves women in many states who are running for the Legislature, statewide positions like attorney general or local offices to find another way to pay for child care as they campaign, which often requires night and weekend work.Only six states have laws specifically allowing campaign money to be used for child care. Five states are considering it. In most states, including Montana, the law is silent on the issue and up to interpretation by agencies or boards. Agencies in at least nine states have allowed child care to be a campaign-related expense, but those decisions are not law and could be reversed.Utah lawUtah is among the states that passed a gender-neutral child care expense law, which went into effect last May. Sponsored by Republican state Rep. Craig Hall, it easily passed the GOP-dominated legislature.FILE – Democratic Sen. Luz Escamilla looks on during a special session on the Utah Senate floor in Salt Lake City, Dec. 3, 2018.Luz Escamilla was one of the first candidates to use it as she campaigned to become the first Latina mayor of Salt Lake City. Escamilla had to take time off from her full-time banking job to knock on doors and shake hands as she made her case to voters.Without a paycheck, it was hard to cover the cost of child care for her two youngest daughters. After the law was passed, she used about $1,500 in campaign cash over two months to help pay for it. The extra time she could spend campaigning helped propel her to a spot in the general election, though she lost in November.”Full-time campaigning during the summer with toddlers, it makes it really difficult,” Escamilla said, adding of the law: “It was a great tool in our toolbox.”Other statesLawmakers in Minnesota added child care as an allowable expense in 2018, while Colorado, New York, New Hampshire and California passed laws in 2019.Before Colorado allowed campaign cash to be used for child care, Amber McReynolds, a former chief elections official in Denver, was contemplating a bid for statewide office in 2017. The costs of child care were a considerable concern as a single mother of two young children.FILE – Amber McReynolds, director of elections for the City and County of Denver, talks during a media tour in Denver, Oct. 28, 2016.For that and other reasons, McReynolds decided against running.”When we look at the statistics in terms of representatives in Congress or statewide office and you don’t see single moms in that category, that’s why,” said McReynolds, who’s CEO of a nonprofit. “The circumstances are just that much more difficult when you are in politics.”The policy also can help fathers running for office in families where both parents work.Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said the record number of women who ran for office in 2018 has helped drive the issue. Still, lawmakers in a number of states have resisted the change.In Tennessee, the sponsor of a measure to add child care to the list of approved campaign expenses faced a skeptical audience during a subcommittee hearing last spring.”If they aren’t running for office because they can’t find child care, how are they going to do the job down here?” asked state Rep. John Crawford, a Republican from Kingsport, Tennessee.The sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Jason Powell, said he introduced the proposal after people he tried to recruit to run for City Council in Nashville declined because child care needs kept them from campaigning.”I hate that people in our state feel like they can’t run for office because they may or may not be able to use their campaign funds for a child care expense,” Powell said.The measure failed to advance after a split vote of the all-male subcommittee.Louisiana reversalIn Louisiana, Democratic state House candidate Morgan Lamandre had her request denied by the state ethics board even though it allowed a Republican man to claim campaign-related child care expenses in 2000. Members, who were not on the panel two decades ago and didn’t have to follow the previous decision, said they were concerned it could be abused.After a backlash, the board reversed itself.While she’s used campaign funds to pay for child care a few times, Lamandre said it’s not a panacea for smaller races where candidates might have to choose between paying a baby-sitter or buying basics like lawn signs.”It’s helpful, but it’s not a slam-dunk,” she said.’Time to remove the roadblocks’FILE – Congressional candidate Liuba Grechen-Shirley delivers a concession speech in Garden City, N.Y., Nov. 7, 2018.Liuba Grechen-Shirley, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress on eastern Long Island and whose FEC petition led to child care expenses being allowed for federal candidates, started a group called Vote Mama to help mothers running for public office and hopes one day the expense is allowed in every state.States now considering proposals include New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.Caitlin Clarkson Pereira tried a similar approach to Grechen-Shirley’s, but ended up suing Connecticut after a board denied her request. She was told she couldn’t use campaign money to pay for child care for her young daughter during her state House race in 2018, which she ultimately lost.Connecticut officials cited a program that allows candidates to tap taxpayer money after they raise a certain amount on their own. With public money involved, the state says child care should be considered a personal expense.Pereira argued that it should be considered as necessary as meals or travel.”This is the time to remove the roadblocks that are clearly in the way of parents and families being able to run for office,” she said.Despite an eleventh-hour push last year by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, lawmakers failed to pass the policy.Dudik, the Montana candidate, said the lack of these laws shows the need to have more women in power so policies can be changed.”If we want more women running for office, we need to make allowances to make that a reality and not just give lip service to it,” she said.
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By Polityk | 01/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Lawyer Giuliani Says He Would Testify at President’s Impeachment Trial
Rudy Giuliani, U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and a key figure in pressing Ukraine to launch investigations to benefit Trump politically, says he would testify at the president’s looming impeachment trial and do whatever he can to see him acquitted.”I would testify, I would, um, do demonstrations. I’d give lectures, I’d give summations.” Giuliani said as he arrived Tuesday night at Trump’s black tie New Year’s Eve party at his Atlantic oceanfront estate in Florida.”Or, I’d do what I do best, I’d try the case,” Giuliani said. “I’d love to try the case. Well, I don’t know if anybody would have the courage to give me the case, but, uh, if you give me the case, I will prosecute it as a racketeering case, which I kind of invented anyway.”FILE – Then-President-elect Donald Trump calls out to media as he and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani pose for photographs at the Trump National Golf Club, in Bedminster, New Jersey, Nov. 20, 2016.Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and long-time Trump confidante, is not expected to be one of Trump’s lawyers defending him in an as-yet unscheduled Senate trial, with White House counsel Pat Cipillone likely Trump’s lead attorney. Trump faces two articles of impeachment approved last month by the vast majority of Democratic lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives as a unified Republican caucus opposed impeachment. Trump is accused of abusing the office of the presidency by pressing Kyiv to open an investigation of one of his top 2020 Democratic challengers, former vice president Joe Biden, and obstructing Congress by inhibiting its investigation of his Ukraine-related actions.Giuliani’s testimony, if it ever occurs, could be revealing.Trump, according to testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, ordered key officials to take directions in recent months from Giuliani on Ukraine matters, sidelining U.S. diplomats working for the U.S. State Department. More recently, Giuliani traveled to Ukraine to try to dig up dirt to use against Biden as he seeks the Democratic Party nomination to oppose Trump’s bid for a second term in next November’s national election.FILE – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds the gavel as the House votes on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 18, 2019.Meanwhile, the dates for Trump’s impeachment trial have not been set amid a high-stakes political fight over the parameters of the trial, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who supported Trump’s impeachment, refusing to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she knows how a trial would be conducted and that in her mind it would be conducted fairly.Senator Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican-controlled Senate and a staunch Trump defender against his impeachment, wants a sharply curtailed proceeding and a quick vote to clear Trump without calling any witnesses.The Democratic minority chief, Senator Chuck Schumer, wants to call four key Trump White House aides to find out what directions Trump might have given them to pursue the Ukraine investigation of Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked theory that Ukraine sought to undermine Trump’s 2016 election campaign.FILE – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and U.S. President Donald Trump face reporters during a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.Trump last July asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch the political investigations and has often described the call as “perfect.”The American leader’s request came as he temporarily was blocking release of $391 million in military aid Ukraine wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Trump released the assistance in September without Zelenskiy opening any Biden investigations.That is proof, Republicans say, that Trump had not engaged in any reciprocal quid pro quo deal with Ukraine, the military aid in exchange for the investigations.
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By Polityk | 01/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
In the Iowa Winter, Presidential Campaign Heats Up
Even though the temperature is just above freezing, and it isn’t snowing, it’s still not the most ideal weather to wait outside in a long line to listen to a politician.But as he rubs his hands together to stay warm, stocking cap on his head, Darrel Morf is prepared.”I love caucus season in Iowa. It’s a chance to really listen to a lot of opinions and be thoughtful,” he told VOA while waiting alongside hundreds of others to see South Bend, Indiana, mayor and one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa, Pete Buttigieg, speak at an event at Cornell College.Although there is much focus on the impeachment process targeting U.S. President Donald Trump, Morf admits there are other issues on his mind.”How we are going to maintain security in the world at this point? I’m concerned about everything international,” he says. “I think people worry a lot about climate here in Iowa — that would be another major concern.”Which is why he is braving cold weather and making an effort to attend political rallies and meetings in his state to listen to what the candidates have to offer.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg greets attendees during a campaign event at a high school in Indianola, Iowa, Dec. 22, 2019.”I think Iowans are very intentional. We listen carefully to what candidates are actually saying, we measure it, in terms of how we think they’ll play in terms of actually being president,” says Morf.”We’re in the middle of a fantastic swing through Iowa,” Buttigieg told the Cornell College crowd where Morf, who arrived early, got a front-row seat for the event where Buttigieg acknowledged, “We see more and more caucus-goers ready to make a decision about the future of this country.”It’s a decision Morf hasn’t yet made himself.”I’d probably lean towards Buttigieg right now,” Morf says, “But (former Vice President Joe) Biden is probably someone I’d continue to look at, like (U.S. Senator from Minnesota) Amy Klobuchar.”The Midwest state of Iowa is the first in 2020 to host an election to decide who Democrats want to represent them in the general election against Republican Donald Trump in November.Although the state is not as populous or diverse as many others, success in the Iowa caucuses — a meeting where voters gather to decide their preferred candidate — can make or break a political campaign.”I know we’re a small state and we’re not as diverse,” Morf explains, “but I think it gives us a chance to see candidates up close through new things in a way you can’t do in media campaigns, and we take it seriously, and I don’t think we have the biases people want to expect from us.”However, with weeks, not months left in the campaign in Iowa, the clock is ticking for candidates still left in the race to win the support of undecided voters like Morf.”That’s where you start to see the race, some of the people going up, some of the people going down,” says University of Iowa political science professor Timothy Hagle. “Maybe we’ll see a few people dropping out or at least nor participating in Iowa … so it’s getting interesting.”Hagle says historic trends show that voter turnout in the Iowa caucus should favor Democrats this election cycle over the incumbent party in the White House — the Republicans.”Their turnout is probably going to be way down — higher than it would be in a mid-term for them, but still down for a presidential year,” he explained to VOA from his offices on campus in Iowa City. “Whereas for the Democrats, and especially given we have a fairly competitive race here in Iowa with again the way that we’re seeing this volatility in terms of the polls and who seems to be ahead and all that, that’s going to spur turnout. Particularly to the extent that Democrats can get other people excited about the possibility of unseating Trump.”FILE – Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks during his campaign bus tour event in Oelwein, Iowa, Dec. 7, 2019.William Clayton believes former Vice President Joe Biden is the best person to do that.”I supported Joe Biden from the beginning,” Clayton told VOA. “I see him as the best alternative with the most experience in government.”Clayton traveled from Wisconsin to Dubuque, Iowa, to attend a Biden campaign event on the campus of the local college.Although his state votes several months later, Clayton wants to see the victor in the Iowa caucus be the one best positioned to win his rural Wisconsin district, which Claytons says is divided over Trump’s presidency.”Some of them are right behind him [Trump] no matter what, and there are others who don’t like him at all.”But Iowa decides first, where Morf says he worries progressive contenders — like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren or Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders — may not be electable when the entire nation votes in November.FILE – Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign rally at Fairfield High School in Fairfield, Iowa, Dec. 15, 2019.”In a general election,” says Morf, “there are an awful lot of people who are in the middle, and they’re going to look at this and make their decision on whether candidates are too extreme.”Those are concerns Sanders dismissed during one of his Iowa campaign stops.”And the agenda we are fighting for, despite what some of my critics may say,” Sanders told the audience, “is really not a radical agenda. It’s what the American people want.”It’s a part of the case Sanders and the rest of the field of Democratic candidates continue to make as they visit Iowa’s 99 counties in search of support, in the final stretch of a campaign that reaches the finish line in the state on Feb. 3.
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By Polityk | 01/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Democrat Buttigieg’s Presidential Campaign Raises $24.7 Million in the Fourth Quarter
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg raised $24.7 million in the fourth quarter, his campaign announced on Wednesday, outpacing the $19.1 million he collected in the third quarter.The hefty total is expected to land him among the top fundraisers in the Democratic field, which has 15 contenders seeking to take on U.S. President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders had the largest haul in the previous quarter, raising $25.2 million.Buttigieg, whose term as South Bend, Indiana mayor ended with the start of the new year, raised $76 million in 2019, his campaign said.With only weeks until voting for the Democratic nomination begins in Iowa, candidates would typically turn their attention away from fundraising and toward meeting face-to-face with voters. The shift in attention makes the fourth-quarter fundraising hauls important to allow campaigns to have sufficient resources to be remain focused on voters, not donors.Buttigieg has come under recent criticism for his fundraising. Fellow Democratic rival U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren leveled a series of attacks against Buttigieg on the debate stage in December for fundraisers he has held, including one in a Napa Valley wine cave.Warren, who swore off holding any fundraisers, has accused Buttigieg of being influenced by those who are willing to write big checks, as large as $2,800, to his campaign.Buttigieg has countered that Democrats need to be willing to fundraise from anyone willing to finance their campaigns so the party can remain competitive in the general election against Trump.His campaign touted the number of small donations he received. Over the entire year, 98% of donations were smaller than $200 and the average was $38, his campaign said.His campaign also provided details about how the money is being spent. The campaign staff now exceeds 500 people and he has opened 65 field offices.Buttigieg has 100 field staff in Iowa and 70 in New Hampshire, the state which votes second, according to his campaign.
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By Polityk | 01/01/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Pastor Pledges Safety for Immigrants at Miami Trump Event
The pastor of a Miami megachurch that will host President Donald Trump at a rally this week is guaranteeing that parishioners who entered the U.S. illegally won’t risk deportation by attending.During a Sunday Spanish language service, Pastor Guillermo Maldonado told the audience of hundreds that he’s heard people asking how he could bring Trump to the church if those attending include people who lack immigration papers, given the president’s hard-line immigration policy.”I ask you: Do you think I would do something where I would endanger my people? I’m not that dumb,” Maldonado told parishioners.The Miami Herald reported Maldonado also made an appeal to some of his congregation who feel apprehensive about attending Trump’s Friday visit to the King Jesus International Ministry church because of his administration’s increased immigration raids.”I don’t think the president would do such a thing,” Maldonado said. “Don’t put your race or your nationality over being a Christian. Be mature. … If you want to come, do it for your pastor. That’s a way of supporting me.”The church in West Kendall south of Miami was chosen by Trump to host about 70 Christian pastors during an event billed as an “‘Evangelicals for Trump’ Coalition Launch.”Maldonado asked churchgoers from Venezuela and Cuba to raise their hands, and emphasized his own opposition to communist dictatorships, something Trump has also done at public rallies in South Florida as an appeal to Hispanic voters.The pastor said the church isn’t organizing or financing the event, and that anyone seeking to attend the campaign rally had to pre-register at DonaldJTrump.com.On Sunday, Secret Service agents were examining bags before the services, to prepare for the event. Every other church service during the week, except for a New Year’s Eve mass, is being canceled, Maldonado said.
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By Polityk | 12/31/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
In Pursuit of Florida Latinos, Democrats Fight Socialist Tag
From a tiny studio in the sprawling Miami suburb of Doral, a popular Venezuelan-born radio host recently pressed one of Florida’s best-known Democrats on a touchy topic: socialism.”Older voters associated you with socialists,” host Julio Cesar Camacho told Andrew Gillum, who narrowly lost a bid for governor last year. Gillum blamed Republicans for preying on “sensitivities” of Latinos in Florida, as Camacho translated his complaint into Spanish for listeners.The conversation wasn’t just a rehash of another narrow Democratic loss in the battleground state. Camacho’s weekly show is funded by the Florida Democratic Party — part of a statewide effort to bolster its standing with Florida’s Latinos ahead of the 2020 presidential election.While Latino voters nationally have leaned Democratic, Republicans in Florida continue to find strong backing in the nearly 2 million Floridians of Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan origin — voters whose deep skepticism of socialism has been shaped by Latin American authoritarian leaders. Democrats are trying to shake the label.”We waited a bit too long before we started to push back,” Gillum told The Associated Press, saying the party wasn’t aggressive enough in 2018. “Now we know better. You see more Latino voices in radio and print who are elevating this conversation around socialism.”Republicans are elevating the attacks, too. President Donald Trump and his allies have been hammering Democrats as leftists and anti-capitalists — knowing such labels call up images of corruption and poverty.At a news conference earlier this year, Trump mockingly said there was a “rumor” the Democratic Party was changing its name to the “Socialist Party.” In June, Vice President Mike Pence visited Miami to launch “Latinos for Trump” and warned the Hispanic crowd about Democratic presidential hopefuls.Democrats are trying to take the accusation head-on, calling it misleading and dangerous.”It’s a strategy that we have to expose because they insist on these politics of fear. It’s a return to McCarthyism,” said Leopoldo Martinez, the first Venezuelan-born member of the Democratic National Committee.They’ve also tried to shift the conversation to Trump’s policies that affect the state’s Latinos, such as the rise in deportation of Cubans, and the challenges for Cuban families who have been unable to bring relatives because of Trump’s decision to pull most embassy staff out of the island in 2017.When Democrat Joe Biden campaigned this fall in Little Havana, Cuban exiles’ historic neighborhood, he blasted Trump for opposing a bill to grant protection from deportation to thousands of Venezuelans living in the U.S. Almost 9,500 of the 237,000 Venezuelans who live in Florida are in deportation proceedings, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.Democrats are also trying to convince Latino voters that prominent left-wing figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist running for president, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York don’t represent the views of everyone in the party.To be sure, some of the Democratic presidential candidates advocate sweeping new programs to expand the federal government’s role in health care, and at least two top-tier candidates — Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — have directly put the ultra-rich on notice over wealth taxes to combat income inequality.But none are proposing the socialism of Latin American countries where authoritarian governments have seized banks and nationalized major industries.Biden campaign spokeswoman Isabel Aldunate said Republicans were seeking to “capitalize on the traumatizing past that many South Florida Latinos experienced.”Warren has said her proposals are aimed at saving people money, even though every time she mentions them, “there´s somebody who wants to call me a socialist or a radical.”Opinion columns written by Gillum and other strategists have appeared on The Miami Herald and multiple Spanish newspapers. Advocacy group Alianza for Progress held a seminar recently to talk about how Latinos react to the socialist name-calling and suggest how to change the narrative.”We have to claim our stake in this, and to say unapologetically that we believe in capitalism, except we believe in a more compassionate form of it,” Gillum said.Even small improvements with Latino voters can have a big impact in the swing state.Hispanics make up about 16% percent of the electorate in Florida. According to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of the U.S. electorate, 44% of Florida Latinos voting in the 2018 midterms voted for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, compared to the 32% of Latino voters who supported Republican House candidates nationally. Much of that difference was driven by Cuban voters in Florida, 57% of whom voted for DeSantis.Several political strategists said Democratic candidates took the Latino vote for granted in 2018, failing to mobilize early enough and not using enough Spanish.”You cannot go to a sword fight with a spoon,” said Evelyn Perez-Verdia, a Colombian-American political consultant who worked with Gillum’s campaign.Florida Democrats have trained 150 Spanish-speaking surrogates influential in Hispanic media and created a legislative affairs group of Puerto Ricans focusing on rebuilding the island after Hurricane Maria. But Republicans have outpaced Democrats by adding 23,000 voters affiliated to their party between January and September — more than double what Democrats have added, according to state elections data.Camacho’s show “Democracia al Dia,” or “Democracy Up to Date,” airs on Actualidad Radio every Saturday. He invites guests to discuss topics such as the impeachment proceedings, and rules aimed at denying green cards to low-income immigrants.Camacho says his birthplace doesn’t dictate his politics, and that he has aligned with the Democrats in the U.S. despite opposing leftists in Venezuela.”I can celebrate that they [Republicans] are backing the Venezuelan opposition, but I won’t support other policies that I think are absurd,” Camacho said.
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By Polityk | 12/31/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Doctors: Bernie Sanders Healthy Enough for ‘Rigors of Presidency’
Bernie Sanders suffered “modest heart muscle damage” during his October heart attack but has since been doing well and should be able to continue campaigning for president “without limitation,” according to letters released Monday by his primary care physician and two cardiologists.“He is currently entirely asymptomatic, his heart function is stable and well-preserved, his blood pressure and heart rate are in optimal ranges,” wrote Martin LeWinter, attending cardiologist at University of Vermont Medical Center in Sanders’ home state.LeWinter wrote that the 78-year-old Vermont senator continues to receive “several” medications that patients commonly take after a heart attack and that he sees “no reason” why Sanders can’t campaign as normal and handle the stress of being president, should he win next year’s election.“While he did suffer modest heart muscle damage, he has been doing very well since,” LeWinter wrote.Sanders, the oldest candidate in the 2020 presidential race, had vowed to release detailed medical records by the end of the year, and did so the day before New Year’s Eve.A separate letter from Brian Monahan, the congressional attending physician in Washington, said several medications that Sanders received after his heart attack, including a blood thinner and beta blocker, “were stopped based on your progress.”“Your heart muscle strength has improved. You have never had symptoms of congestive heart failure,” Monahan wrote in a letter to Sanders. “The heart chamber sizes, wall thickness, estimated pressures, and heart valves are normal.”He added that Sanders had a successful graded exercise treadmill examination monitoring heart function, muscular exertion and oxygen consumption that indicated “a maximal level of exertion to 92% of your predicted heart rate without any evidence of reduced blood flow to your heart or symptoms limiting your exercise performance.”“Your overall test performance was rated above average compared to a reference population of the same age. The cardiac exercise physiologist who evaluated your results determined that you are fit to resume vigorous activity without limitation,” Monahan wrote. “You are in good health currently and you have been engaging vigorously in the rigors of your campaign, travel, and other scheduled activities without any limitation.”Sanders suffered a heart attack while campaigning on Oct. 1 in Las Vegas and spent several days recuperating in his Vermont home. He said he had felt symptoms for weeks that he “should have paid more attention to,” including being especially fatigued after long campaign days, having trouble sleeping and sometimes feeling a “little unsteady” at the podium while speaking at events.On the evening of the event in Las Vegas, Sanders said he asked for a chair to be brought onstage “for the first time in my life.” Afterward, he was sweating profusely when pain in his arm prompted him to head to an urgent care medical facility where “the doctor made the diagnosis in about three seconds.”Taken by ambulance to the hospital, Sanders said he underwent surgery to insert stents for a blocked artery.“There was some damage, but … within the next month, we’ll see what happens,” he said during a CNN interview on Oct. 10. “But so far, so very good.”Sanders’ staff initially said stents were inserted for a blocked artery, revealing only two days later that he had suffered a heart attack. Sanders bristled at the notion that his campaign was less than forthcoming about his condition, saying that it released as much information as it could, as fast as possible, and that the full details only came later.Scrutiny on Sanders’ health intensified after his heart attack, but it’s an issue for every Democrat age 70 or older seeking the White House.Former Vice President Joe Biden, 77, says he will release his medical records before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3.Earlier this month, 70-year-old Elizabeth Warren released a note from her doctor saying that she is “in excellent health” and that her only major medical concern is an underactive thyroid gland, which the Massachusetts senator easily treats with medication, the only kind she takes.Michael Bloomberg’s doctor declared the 77-year-old former New York City mayor to be in “outstanding health,” though he is receiving treatment for several medical conditions, including an irregular heartbeat. Bloomberg also takes a beta blocker and medication to control his cholesterol, had “small skin cancers” removed and receives treatment for arthritis and heartburn, “both of which are well controlled.”Additionally, Bloomberg had a stent put in his heart to clear an artery in 2000 and “has had normal cardiac stress testing annually since then.”
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By Polityk | 12/31/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Longtime US Congressman John Lewis Says He Has Cancer
Democratic congressman John Lewis, an icon in the fight for civil rights, announced Sunday he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer.”I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” Lewis said in a statement.”So I’ve decided to do what I know to do and what I have always done: I am going to fight and jeep fighting…we still have many bridges to cross,”Lewis said he is “clear-eyed” about the prognosis and that his doctors tell him he has a fighting chance.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted that “generations of Americans” have Lewis in their thoughts and prayers, saying she knows he will be well.The 79-year-old Lewis has represented the 5th Congressional District in Georgia since 1986 and has been a stalwart for liberal causes and human rights.But Lewis is best known has a tireless fighter for civil rights — he marched with Martin Luther King in the early 1960s, sat down at segregated lunch counters, and was the victim of police nightsticks and billy clubs, suffering from a fractured skull.Lewis was an original Freedom Rider, traveling on busses across the south as part of the battle for integration.
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By Polityk | 12/30/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Spotify to Suspend Political Advertising in 2020
Spotify Technology SA said on Friday it would pause selling political advertisements on its music streaming platform in early 2020.The world’s most popular paid music streaming service, with nearly 141 million users tuning into its ad-supported platform in October, said the pause would extend to Spotify original and exclusive podcasts as well.The move, which was first reported by Ad Age, comes as campaigns for the U.S. presidential election in November 2020 heat up.Online platforms including Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google are under growing pressure to police misinformation on their platforms and stop carrying political ads that contain false or misleading claims.Twitter Inc banned political ads in October and, last month, Google said it would stop giving advertisers the ability to target election ads using data such as public voter records and general political affiliations.”At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content,” a Spotify spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters.”We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities.”Advertisers ‘on the hunt’Spotify, which was only accepting political advertising in the United States, did not answer a Reuters question on how much revenue the company generates from political ads.”Spotify wasn’t a widely used online advertising platform for campaigns before,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist. “But as other online platforms restricted their political ad inventory, advertisers were on the hunt for new options.”The new policy will cover political groups such as candidates for office, elected and appointed officials, political parties, political action committees (PACs) and SuperPACS, as well as content that advocates for or against those entities. Spotify will also not sell ads that advocate for legislative and judicial outcomes.The move only applies to Spotify’s ad sales, not advertisements embedded in third-party content, though those will still be subject to Spotify’s broader content policies.
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By Polityk | 12/28/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Lashes Out Against Democratic Lawmakers over Impeachment
U.S. President Donald Trump continued to lash out at Democratic lawmakers over his impeachment Thursday as a legislative standoff continues over a Senate impeachment trial.”The Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats said they wanted to RUSH everything through to the Senate because ‘President Trump is a threat to National Security’ (they are vicious, will say anything!), but now they don’t want to go fast anymore, they want to go very slowly. Liars!,” Trump write on Twitter.The Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats said they wanted to RUSH everything through to the Senate because “President Trump is a threat to National Security” (they are vicious, will say anything!), but now they don’t want to go fast anymore, they want to go very slowly. Liars!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 19, 2019.On Monday, however, McConnell softened his position, saying Republicans have not ruled out calling witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial.”We haven’t ruled out witnesses,” McConnell told “Fox & Friends.” on Monday. “We’ve said, ‘Let’s handle this case just like we did with President Clinton.’ Fair is fair.”In addition to testimony from key witnesses, Schumer said Monday he also wants relevant emails and other documents that “will shed additional light on the administration’s decision-making regarding the delay in security funding to Ukraine.””It’s hard to imagine a trial not having documents and witnesses,” Schumer said, “If it does’nt have documents and witnesses, it’s going to seem to most of the American people that it is a sham trial. Not to get at the facts.”Trump’s impeachment stems from a July call with Ukraine’s president in which Trump asked for an investigation into Joe Biden, a former vice president and a leading Democratic rival to Trump in the 2020 presidential election.Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong in his push to get Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative work for a Ukrainian natural gas company. Trump had also called for a probe into a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.Trump made the appeal for the Biden investigations at a time when he was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.The U.S. president eventually released the money in September without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations, proof, Republicans have said, that Trump had not engaged in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal, the military aid in exchange for the Biden probe.Trump has on countless occasions described his late July call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” when he asked him to “do us a favor,” to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine’s purported role in the 2016 election. As the impeachment controversy mounted, Trump has subsequently claimed the “us” in his request to Zelenskiy referred not to him personally but to the United States.
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By Polityk | 12/26/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
2020 Presidential Campaign About to Kick Into High Gear
The 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign will kick into high gear in January as the Democratic presidential contenders intensify their efforts ahead of the first votes in the Iowa caucuses on February 3rd. National polls show former vice president Joe Biden leading the Democratic field, but several of his competitors are looking to make a strong showing in early contest states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Jim Malone reports
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By Polityk | 12/26/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
No Longer Enamored, Washington Looks Critically at Silicon Valley
It’s been a rocky year for the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley, and next year could be worse. Lawmakers and regulators in the nation’s capital are scrutinizing technology firms over a host of issues — competition, online privacy, encryption, bias — and they are promising action. Michelle Quinn reports on how the frustrations could lead to new regulations that could have a global impact on how people communicate online.
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By Polityk | 12/26/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Election Officials Learn Military Mindset Ahead of 2020 Vote
Inside a hotel ballroom near the nation’s capital, a U.S. Army officer with battlefield experience told 120 state and local election officials that they may have more in common with the military strategists than they might think.These government officials are on the front lines of a different kind of high-stakes battlefield — one in which they are helping to defend American democracy by ensuring free and fair elections.“Everyone in this room is part of a bigger effort, and it’s only together are we going to get through this,” the officer said.That officer and other past and present national security leaders had a critical message to convey to officials from 24 states gathered for a recent training held by a Harvard-affiliated democracy project: They are the linchpins in efforts to defend U.S. elections from an attack by Russia, China or other foreign threats, and developing a military mindset will help them protect the integrity of the vote.A booklet held by military and national security officials during an exercise for state and local election officials to simulate different scenarios for the 2020 elections, in Springfield, Va., Dec. 16, 2019.Election security worriesThe need for such training reflects how elections security worries have heightened in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when Russian military agents targeted voting systems across the country as part of a multipronged effort to influence the presidential election. Until then, the job of local election officials could had been described as something akin to a wedding planner who keeps track of who will be showing up on Election Day and ensures all the equipment and supplies are in place and ready to go.Now, these officials are on the front lines. The federal government will be on high alert, gathering intelligence and scanning systems for suspicious cyber activity as they look to defend the nation’s elections. Meanwhile, it will be the state and county officials who will be on the ground charged with identifying and dealing with any hostile acts.“It’s another level of war,” said Jesse Salinas, the chief elections official in Yolo County, California, who attended the training. “You only attack things that you feel are a threat to you, and our democracy is a threat to a lot of these nation-states that are getting involved trying to undermine it. We have to fight back, and we have to prepare.”Karen Brenson Bell, from North Carolina, listens during an exercise run by military and national security officials, for state and local election officials to simulate different scenarios for the 2020 elections, Dec. 16, 2019.Defending Digital DemocracySalinas brought four of his employees with him to the training, which was part of the Defending Digital Democracy project based at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The group has been working actively with former and current military, national security, political and communications experts — many of whom dedicate their time after work and on weekends — to develop training and manuals for state and local election officials. Those involved with leading the training asked for anonymity because of their sensitive positions.The project’s latest playbook focuses on bringing military best practices to running Election Day operations, encouraging state and local election officials to adopt a “battle staff” command structure with clear roles and responsibilities and standard operating procedures for dealing with minor issues. The project is also providing officials with a free state-of-the-art incident tracking system.Eric Rosenbach, co-director of the Belfer Center and a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who served as chief of staff to Defense Secretary Ash Carter in the Obama administration, told the group gathered for the training that it “shouldn’t be lost on you that this is a very military-like model.”“Let’s be honest about it,” Rosenbach said. “If democracy is under attack and you guys are the ones at the pointy end of the spear, why shouldn’t we train that way? Why shouldn’t we try to give you the help that comes with that model and try to build you up and do all we can?”Beyond just putting out firesInstructors stressed the need for election officials to be on the lookout for efforts to disrupt the vote and ensure that communications are flowing up from counties to the state, down from states to the counties, as well as up and down to the federal government and across states.Piecing together seemingly disparate actions happening in real-time across geographical locations will allow the nation to defend itself, said Robby Mook, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2016. Mook co-founded the Defending Digital Democracy project with Matt Rhoades, Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager.“Find a way to input data in a consistent, efficient and reliable way to ensure you know what is going on and prevents things from falling through the cracks,” Mook told the election officials. “You got to rise above just putting out fires.”At the training were officials from California, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, West Virginia and other states. In one exercise, election officials were paired up as either a state or county under an Election Day scenario, charged with logging incidents and trying to piece together what turned out to be four different coordinated campaigns to disrupt voting.“One of the big takeaways was just how the lack of one piece of information moving up from the counties to the state or moving from the states to counties, if either of those things don’t happen, it can have a significant impact,” said Stephen Trout, elections director for Oregon.Trout said he would move quickly to acquire, customize and implement the incident tracking system, which would be an upgrade from the paper process currently in use. Dave Tackett, chief information officer for the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office, said he will recommend some structuring changes at his state operations center, including bringing key personnel into the room and incorporating elements of the incident tracking system like mapping and the ability to assign individuals to specific incidents.“Events like today are helping us zero in on how to structure ourselves better, how to really think in a different mindset so that we can carry out all the different tasks that have to be done with elections,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of Elections. “(It’s) the importance of communications, the importance of having standard operating procedures in place so all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed ahead of time and you are prepared for the unknown.”
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By Polityk | 12/26/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Campaign Urges Supporters to Debate With Relatives During Holidays
As American families of all political stripes gather for the holidays, U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is offering ready-made arguments supporters can deploy at the family dinner table.On Christmas Eve, the campaign unveiled a website to help Trump supporters win arguments with any liberal family members who criticize the president or his job performance.Psychologists typically advise avoiding politics to reduce stress over the holidays. By contrast, the president’s campaign suggests supporters should welcome debate on Trump and his policies.Arranged by topics and accompanied by descriptive narrative and video clips, the arguments tout what the campaign sees as the president’s achievements on economic and domestic matters, as well as trade and international affairs.Similar resources also are being offered to Democrats and liberals.A contributing author to The Atlantic magazine recently offered liberals tips for debating with conservatives, urging them to steer clear of personal attacks and focus on facts, asserting, “Truth won’t stop being truth. Trump won’t stop being Trump.”Researchers say political debate has a direct effect on family celebrations.According to a recent study released last year by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, during periods of heightened political discord, Americans tend to avoid or cut short family holiday meals to prevent uncomfortable political confrontations with relatives.For many, avoiding politics at the holiday table is sound advice. But adhering to it may be easier said than done.
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By Polityk | 12/26/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Supreme Court Set to Rule on Cases Involving Trump Financial Records in 2020
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to rule on several cases involving the financial records of President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization, which have been demanded by Democrats investigating corruption and foreign meddling in the U.S. election. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara takes a look back at the cases involving the president’s businesses and how he tries to shield his finances from scrutiny
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By Polityk | 12/25/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Following Trump Impeachment, Congress Breaks for Holidays
Congress is in recess after the House of Representatives voted to approve two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, stemming from a phone call in July with Ukraine’s president in which Trump urged an investigation of a political rival. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leaders in the House must now decide when or whether to send the articles to the Republican-controlled Senate for trial. But some top senators have already said they do not intend to act as impartial jurors. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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By Polityk | 12/23/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
For Congress, 2019 Begins with Shutdown, Ends with Impeachment
2019 began with cheers at the U.S. Capitol as a record number of women as well as ethnic and religious minority members were sworn in as lawmakers. But, as 435 representatives and 100 senators got down to work, polarized politics regularly stalled progress in the politically-divided Congress, which ended the year consumed by the impeachment of President Donald Trump. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti reports, even with impeachment proceedings, Congress ended the year with a sudden flurry of significant legislative action
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By Polityk | 12/22/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
DHS Watchdog Finds no Wrongdoing in Deaths of 2 Migrant Kids
The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog found no wrongdoing or misconduct by immigration officials in the deaths of two migrant children last December.The Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security released two brief statements Friday evening on the deaths of Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, who died Dec. 8, and Felipe Gómez Alonzo, who died Dec. 24.Their deaths ushered in a growing border crisis that caught immigration officials unprepared to manage a crush of Central American families seeking asylum in the U.S. and raised questions on medical care and treatment. Border crossings have since declined in recent months following major crackdowns.“We are still saddened by the tragic loss of these young lives, and we continue to bolster medical screenings and care at DHS facilities on the border,” a spokeswoman for Homeland Security said. “The men and women of Border Patrol are committed to the highest standards of professionalism and care.”Both children made their way over the U.S.-Mexico border with a parent. Jakelin was part of a large group that crossed in an extremely remote location and it took hours for her to be transported to a hospital. Some seven hours later, she was put on a bus to the nearest Border Patrol station but soon began vomiting. By the end of the two-hour drive, she had stopped breathing.Lawmakers and immigrant advocates questioned the care she received and criticized the immigration agency’s then-leader Kevin McAleenan for not alerting lawmakers to the death during his testimony before a Congressional committee. Customs and Border Protection said that the girl initially appeared healthy and that an interview raised no signs of trouble.The watchdog said it had conducted a detailed investigation in coordination with the local medical examiner’s office. The girl died from Streptococcal sepsis.Felipe was taken with his father to a hospital in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where he was diagnosed with a common cold. He was released just before 3 p.m., about 90 minutes after he had been found to have a fever of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 Celsius), CBP said at the time. He was prescribed amoxicillin and ibuprofen and taken with his father to a holding facility at a highway checkpoint.At about 7 p.m., agents helped clean up the boy’s vomit. By about 10 p.m., the boy “appeared lethargic and nauseous again,” the agency said, and agents decided to have him taken to the hospital. The boy died shortly before midnight.Felipe and his father were detained by CBP for about a week and send to various facilities because of overcrowding, an unusually long period in custody at the time but something that later became more common as the agency struggled with a growing number of migrants detained.The inspector general coordinated with the local medical examiner’s office and said the boy died from sepsis caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria.The deaths pushed U.S. Customs and Border protection increase medical checks. But increasingly more family members would cross the border, overwhelming border facilities in the months after their deaths.The inspector general in May criticized the Border Patrol for “dangerous overcrowding” in its El Paso-area detention stations. Several months after Jakelin and Felipe died, the Border Patrol had packed thousands of parents and children into cells unequipped to hold them. According to the report, one cell with a 12-person capacity had 76 people. Another cell meant for 35 people was holding 155. Border Patrol agents claimed then that detained immigrants who weren’t sick were claiming to be so they could be released from their cells, according to the inspector general’s report.Border crossings are declining, in part because of Trump administration policies that send tens of thousands of migrants back over the border to wait out their asylum cases in Mexico, and barring asylum for anyone who crossed through another country en route to the U.S.
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By Polityk | 12/21/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
House Asks for Documents in Epstein Probe From DOJ
House Democrats asked for documents from federal prosecutors and Florida law enforcement officials on Friday as part of a probe into how financier Jeffrey Epstein received a secret plea deal more than a decade ago after he was accused of molesting underage girls.The House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, asking for all emails about the plea deal and how victims should have been notified.Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled Epstein’s victims should have been consulted under federal law about the deal.Epstein reached the deal in 2008 with then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s office to end the federal probe that could have landed him in prison for life. Epstein instead pleaded guilty to lesser state charges, spent 13 months in jail, paid financial settlements to victims and registered as a sex offender.Acosta was appointed Labor Secretary by President Donald Trump, but he resigned in July amid renewed scrutiny of the secret plea deal.The House committee asked for the documents by the first week in January.The House committee also sent a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Richard Swearingen, asking for documents related to its investigation into the deal and Epstein’s work-release arrangement at Palm Beach County’s jail.Two spokeswomen for the FDLE, Florida’s top law enforcement agency, didn’t return emails seeking comment.During his 13-month stay at the jail, Epstein spent most days at his office. His driver would pick him and a guard up in the morning and he would spend the day working and meeting with visitors, before returning to the jail to sleep. Epstein was also able to visit his Palm Beach mansion, despite restrictions on home visits.Epstein, 66, killed himself in his New York City jail cell in August after federal agents arrested him on new sex trafficking charges.
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By Polityk | 12/21/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Newly Impeached Trump to Deliver State of Union on Feb. 4
U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted the invitation from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver his state of the union speech on Feb. 4, the White House said Friday.The invite for the annual presidential speech to Congress comes at a charged political moment, with Trump freshly impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and facing a trial in a US Senate that is almost certain to acquit him.It sets up a potentially explosive encounter between Trump and Pelosi, his chief Democratic nemesis in Congress and the woman who launched the formal impeachment inquiry. Pelosi is now at odds with the Senate’s Republican leadership about the parameters of the impeachment trial.”In the spirit of respecting our Constitution, I invite you to deliver your State of the Union address before a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, February 4, 2020,” Pelosi wrote to the president in a letter.Trump “has accepted the Speaker’s invitation,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said.Pelosi’s three-paragraph letter also highlighted the system of separation of powers that was created by the framers of the US Constitution: “three co-equal branches acting as checks on each other.”The reference is notable, given that Democrats accuse Trump of seeking to block Congress’ powers to oversee the executive branch by refusing to cooperate with the impeachment probe.President Donald Trump before delivering the State of the Union address, with Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 5, 2019.The speech will take place in the US House of Representatives, the very chamber that impeached him on Wednesday.During the 2019 state of the union, the speaker appeared to mock Trump with an exaggerated clap that was quickly interpreted online as sarcasm.She stood up during a round of applause and pointed her outstretched hands directly at the president, pursing her lips and looking right at him as she clapped.Their relationship has soured further since then.On the eve of his impeachment, Trump wrote a furious six-page letter to the speaker, wildly accusing her of “declaring open war on American Democracy.”Pelosi, launching the impeachment debate Wednesday, said Trump posed an “ongoing threat” to the country’s security that left Democrats “no choice” but to impeach him.
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By Polityk | 12/21/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
GOP Lawmakers in Wisconsin Want to Intervene in Voter Lawsuit
Republican Wisconsin lawmakers took steps Friday to spend taxpayer dollars to hire their own attorney and intervene in a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the purge of more than 200,000 voter registrations.
The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed the lawsuit this week against the state Elections Commission. It did so after a state judge ruled against the commission and said it must immediately deactivate more than 200,000 voter registrations of people identified as possibly having moved. That decision, in a case brought by a conservative law firm, is being appealed but the ruling has not been put on hold.
The legal battles are being closely watched because the affected voters come from more heavily Democratic parts of the state. Democrats fear forcing them to re-register would create a burden and could negatively affect turnout in the 2020 presidential election. Republicans argue that removing the voters ensures the rolls are not full of people who shouldn’t be voting. Key state in 2020
President Donald Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016. The state is one of a handful of battlegrounds in the upcoming election.
Republican leaders of the state Senate and Assembly on Friday circulated a ballot to approve the hiring of a private attorney to represent them in the federal lawsuit, rather than Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. Republicans have increasingly turned to hiring their own attorneys, paid for by taxpayers, rather than have Kaul represent them in lawsuits. Republicans don’t trust that Kaul will represent their interests because he is a Democrat.
Kaul’s spokeswoman, Gillian Drummond, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the move.
The League argues in its lawsuit that it would be a violation of constitutional due process rights to deactivate the registrations of the voters without proper notice. The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argues in the other case that state law required the Elections Commission to deactivate the voters flagged as potentially having moved who didn’t respond to an October mailing, but it failed to do so.
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By Polityk | 12/21/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Democratic Presidential Contenders Clash in Latest Debate
The Democratic presidential candidates held their liveliest debate yet Thursday in Los Angeles, California. Seven contenders were on the debate stage and clashed over the economy, health care, climate change, campaign finance reform and who best can defeat President Donald Trump next year. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington
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By Polityk | 12/20/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Pelosi: Power of Gavel Means Trump is ‘Impeached Forever’
Nancy Pelosi promised as speaker she would “show the power of the gavel.”This year, she laid it out for all to see.The past week alone, the Democratic leader delivered a $1.4 trillion government funding package to stop a shutdown, pushed through the bipartisan U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and passed her party’s plan to lower prescription drug costs. In between, she led a congressional delegation to Europe for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.And on Wednesday, she impeached the president.As the first year of Pelosi’s second stint as speaker draws to a close — she is the only woman to hold the office, and the first speaker in 60 years to reclaim the gavel after losing it — the California Democrat took stock of whether she fulfilled her campaign trail promise.“Donald Trump thinks so,“ Pelosi told The Associated Press during an interview Thursday at her office in the Capitol.”He just got impeached. He’ll be impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does. He’s impeached forever because he violated our Constitution,” she said.“If I did nothing else, he saw the power of the gavel there,” Pelosi told the AP. “And it wasn’t me, it was all of our members making their own decision.”Not since an earlier era of leaders — like Sam Rayburn, whose name is on a building at the Capitol, or Newt Gingrich, who defined a political movement — has the House speaker wielded such influence.“She has governed with force and authority,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public policy at Princeton.Zelizer said Pelosi has accomplished with Trump what others have not, which is to build a coalition strong enough to hold the president accountable, through impeachment, while also muscling through big bills. This, on top of what she did during her first term in the office.“She is likely to go down in history as one of the most effective Speakers,” he said.Congress often runs toward a big year-end finish as lawmakers try to rack up accomplishments for the elections ahead. Lame-duck sessions, which this year is not, are often particularly robust as members capitalize on the narrow calendar window after the election but before the new Congress forms.Former Speaker Paul Ryan delivered the GOP’s sweeping tax cuts package in December 2017. Former Speaker John Boehner tried to secure the fiscal cliff deal of taxing and spending at the end of 2012, and it was eventually approved at New Year’s.Pelosi’s earlier term as speaker, from 2007-2011, saw Democrats approve the signature achievement of the Obama era, the Affordable Care Act, during Christmas in 2009, though most of the action by that stage in the legislative process had moved in the Senate.She regained the gavel in January of this year, emerging from a contentious internal party election, after sweeping House Democrats to the majority in the 2018 midterm elections.Pelosi’s ability to steer the agenda is shaped in part by her decades in office. She immodestly calls herself a master legislator, but there’s truth in the brag — she brings more legislative experience to her job than those immediate predecessors. Particularly during the start of Obama’s first term, when her party controlled both chambers, she ushered health care, financial reform and other major items to passage in what historians say was the most productive session of Congress since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society years.Critics contend Pelosi strong-armed bills through the House, resulting in 2010 Democratic midterm election losses that cost the party its majority and her the gavel.Trump said Democrats are on a “suicide march” toward electoral defeat once again with impeachment.“Crazy Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame,” Trump told a rally crowd in battleground Michigan on the night he was being impeached.The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Pelosi’s House isn’t accomplishing much because she is wasting time on impeachment.But she notes that it’s McConnell who calls himself the “grim reaper” in his Senate graveyard of House-passed bills he refuses to bring forward for a vote.“The time is not up,” Pelosi said Thursday, a reminder that all those pieces of legislation carry over to 2020, because Congress runs in two-year cycles and this session doesn’t conclude for another year.“As the election approaches, we would not want these to be election issues, we would like them to be accomplished legislation,” she said. “So they either pass the bills or pay a price for not passing bills.”The impeachment vote will be what history remembers most from this week. But passing the trade bill is a major win for both parties. And approving the government funding — Pelosi was negotiating the package in calls with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during her weekend diplomacy paying tribute to World War II veterans in Europe — counts too. Last year at this time, the government was heading toward what would become the nation’s longest-ever federal shutdown.
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By Polityk | 12/20/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Curtain Rises in Los Angeles for Last Democratic Presidential Debate of 2019
LOS ANGELES — It was touch and go for a while, but the final Democratic presidential debate of the year is on for Thursday night, with seven of the leading contenders thrashing it out on stage at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.A labor dispute between a university contractor and a food services union representing roughly 150 workers threatened to torpedo the Democratic debate after all seven of the presidential candidates vowed not to cross a picket line to take part in the nationally televised Democratic National Committee event. However, the union and company reached agreement Tuesday on a new three-year contract, prompting a sigh of relief from Democratic officials who had feared the sixth debate of the year was in jeopardy.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign stop in Hillsboro, N.H., Nov. 24, 2019.The seven candidates include former vice president Joe Biden, the current front-runner in national polls, Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. The three other lower-tier candidates are entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Senator Amy Klobuchar and billionaire activist Tom Steyer. These seven of 15 Democratic candidates seeking the nomination to challenge President Donald Trump next November survived a Democratic party winnowing process based on their showing in the polls and fundraising.The high-profile debate, hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico, is occurring a day after Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.Ironically, the debate originally was scheduled to be held on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), but had to be moved to Loyola Marymount because of a separate labor dispute. For Loyola Marymount students, that change in venue was a pleasant surprise.”When I found out that it was going to be on campus, my first, my first thought was to change my flight home so I could stay,” said Havana Campo, a Loyola Marymount biochemistry student from Texas.The debate is being held a week after final exams. While most students will not get to see the debate in person, a few lucky ones, such as Emily Sinsky, who is volunteering the day before the debate, has been given a seat in the debate hall.”It’s exciting. I couldn’t believe,” said Sinsky, a Californian who is studying international relations.Super Tuesday factorOne reason the debate is being held in California is because the solidly Democratic state has gained significance due to its primary election date being moved up by three months. With 495 delegates at stake, California will play a bigger role in determining who will represent the Democratic Party in challenging Trump than in past elections.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Charleston, S.C., Dec. 8, 2019.”They [California’s primary elections] will be more relevant than they normally have been, because in most cases we know who the nominee will be by the time he got to California, and we were just ratifying what already had been decided,” said Michael Genovese, president of the Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University. “That got a little old for most Californians. So now, we’re going to be very important and we’ll have a strong say.”Primary voters in California will be going to the polls on Super Tuesday, which is March 3, 2020. Thirteen other states will also hold primaries that day.Money treeCalifornia is also highly attractive to candidates because of its donors with deep pockets.”Los Angeles is a place where candidates do not campaign so much as come for the money, to shake the money tree,” Genovese explained. “The donors come from a rich variety of sources. You’ve got Hollywood. You’ve got a very strong component of the gay community.”There are also tech companies, lawyers and donors in the corporate world from Los Angeles who would be willing to give to their preferred candidate.Candidates and issuesWith the top four contenders being Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg, “what’s unusual is that we have so many older candidates running and at first you thought maybe this is going to be a generational debate,” Genovese said. “The older voters and the older candidates versus the younger generations. It hasn’t quite worked out that way except maybe with Yang and Buttigieg.” Biden, Sanders and Warren are all in their 70s, while Buttigieg is the youngest candidate at 37.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks during the Iowa Farmers Union Presidential Forum in Grinnell, Iowa, Dec. 6, 2019.Some younger voters are looking at their candidates from a broader lens outside of a candidate’s age.”Age is not particularly a concern if the candidate that you’re supporting is more part of a greater movement, and if they select a vice president that really doubles down on their beliefs,” said Luke Hart-Moynihan, a screenwriting graduating student at Loyola Marymount University.One candidate taking the debate stage that should be watched, analysts say, is Yang, who most likely will not make it to the top, but did qualify for the debate just before the deadline.”He’s established himself as a player. So the question is not what will Yang do now, it’s what will he do in the next two, four, six, eight or 10 years,” Genovese said. “You can see him being in a Democratic president’s Cabinet, establishing himself as a person of weight and gravitas, and sort of channeling that to something bigger in the future.”Diverse interestsMany of the Loyola Marymount students who are following the debates are focused on Sanders and Warren. The topics that interest them are as diverse as the students’ backgrounds.FILE – Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event in Nashua, N.H., Dec. 8, 2019.”Three topics in this election that concern me the most would be climate change, health care and immigration reform. I come from a family of immigrants,” said Campo, who is the daughter of a Cuban mother and Colombian father.”One thing that I feel I have not heard enough from the Democratic candidates is talking about both election security and election legitimacy, because over the past several decades, there have been a lot of concerns about gerrymandering of congressional districts, voter disenfranchisement through voter identification laws,” said Peter Martin, a political science student from California.”We’re starting to hear a lot more about student debt. Issues that affect young voters, which is really important,” said Gabriella Jeakle, an English major from Washington state, voicing a concern of many of her schoolmates.Sinsky, the student who plans to attend the debate, said if she had a chance, she would ask the candidates what they would do in their first 100 days in office.”That really shows where their values are,” Sinsky said.
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By Polityk | 12/20/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Facebook to Tackle Efforts to Interfere With 2020 US Census
Facebook says it will clamp down on efforts to use its services to interfere with the 2020 U.S. census, including the posting of misleading information about when and how to participate, who can participate and what happens to people who do.The social media giant said Thursday that it is also prohibiting advertisements that portray taking part in the census as “useless or meaningless” or that encourage people not to participate.Facebook is trying to clamp down on misinformation on its services, especially ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential elections.The census, which happens every 10 years, is crucial to determining how many representatives a state gets in Congress and which states get billions of dollars in federal funding for infrastructure, health care, low-income programs and other projects. The results of the 2020 census also will be used to redraw electoral maps.Facebook said it will begin enforcing the census policy in January using both technology and humans to spot violations. Facebook will try to identify material that violates the policy and remove it before people see it.Facebook and other social media companies have similar policies around voter suppression, banning misleading information about when and where to vote, for instance.Facebook has long tried to steer clear of having to police its content, claiming it is a platform, not a publisher. But after revelations that that Russians bankrolled thousands of fake political ads during the 2016 elections, Facebook and other social networks faced intense pressure to ensure that doesn’t happen again. It tightened political ad requirements including verifying political ad buyers and archiving all political ads for the public. But many have found ways to slip through the cracks of the system.False and inaccurate information is already circulating online about the census. For example, posts in neighborhood chat groups warned that robbers were scamming their way into people’s homes by asking to check residents’ identification for the census. That was a hoax, but it left Census Bureau officials scrambling to get the posts removed from Facebook.Facebook has been under fire for its policy of not fact checking political advertisements on its service, which critics say allows politicians to lie and then pay Facebook to amplify their lies. The company says that all ads on its service are subject to its community standards, which now include the census interference policy. False information doesn’t always violate the community standards, however.Google is also trying to prevent misinformation about the census from spreading. It set up a team to focus on preventing hoaxes and misleading information, and expanded a YouTube policy to make it clear that misinformation about the census is prohibited on the site and will be taken down.
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By Polityk | 12/20/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Senate Impeachment Trial Thrusts Chief Justice Into Limelight
For a man fixated on the image of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts faces a unique challenge in presiding over President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, expected next month.For only the third time in the nation’s history, the Senate will weigh the evidence generated by the House of Representatives and determine whether to oust a sitting president from office.As the head of the high court, Roberts, a Republican appointee, has taken pains in recent years to explain that the court is not a partisan bench, but a body of judicial “umpires” calling balls and strikes. Projecting an air of independenceHowever, as he assumes the gavel in January and guides the impeachment trial to what is almost certain to be an acquittal, Roberts must project an air of independence from the Republican majority defending the president.“He’s undoubtedly going to recognize that any appearance of partiality to one side or the other is going to reflect to some degree on the side’s view of the court of which he’s the head,” said Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri and author of a history of impeachment. “He is going to be particularly interested in preserving the integrity of the court, far more than he is in the outcome of this particular proceeding.”The historic trial comes at a time when many critics are openly questioning the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. These critics say the high court has become a highly politicized body, with its nine justices, appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents, often voting on matters of consequence along predictably ideological lines.Protests grew louder after Kavanaugh appointmentThe protests have grown louder since June 2018, when Justice Anthony Kennedy, a crucial swing vote on the court, retired and Trump picked Brett Kavanaugh, a more conservative jurist, as his replacement. With the Kavanaugh appointment – which came amid accusations of sexual assault – the conservatives cemented their hold on the court, spurring Democratic fears that the justices will overturn consequential legal precedents on abortion and gay rights, and rubber-stamp Trump’s controversial policies on a range of issues.FILE – Supreme Court Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, left, and Brett Kavanaugh watch as President Donald Trump arrives to give his State of the Union address to a joint session on Congress at the Capitol in Washington.Yet Roberts, a moderate conservative with a proclivity for occasionally crossing party lines, has emerged as something of a “median” justice on the bench. While he voted in favor of Trump’s “travel ban” on several Muslim-majority countries last year, the chief justice angered many on the right when he joined the four liberals this year in rejecting a controversial administration plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Roberts rebuked TrumpRoberts typically maintains a low profile. Now, with Trump’s impeachment, Roberts is being thrust into the public eye and the awkward position of presiding over the trial of a president who once disparaged him as “an absolute disaster” and with whom he publicly clashed last year.The quarrel with Trump happened after the president berated a federal judge who had ruled against his asylum policy as an “Obama judge,” referring to former President Barack Obama. That prompted Roberts to issue a rare public rebuke.“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement, referring to Trump, Obama and former Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.Trump fired back That did not sit well with Trump, who fired back on Twitter that the chief was “wrong.” However, the highly unusual statement underscored the length to which the chief justice has been willing to go to defend the court’s institutional integrity and in the process secure his own legacy.“I think it shows that Chief Justice Roberts is taking his responsibility as the presiding officer, the chief executive officer of the machinery of the federal judiciary very, very seriously,” said Neil Richards, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.During the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial, Richards served as a clerk to then-Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is Roberts’ predecessor.Rehnquist role largely ceremonialRichards said Roberts will likely look to Rehnquist’s performance for clues on how to conduct an impeachment trial.FILE – Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist reads the vote tally in the Senate’s impeachment trial of President Clinton, as Clinton’s attorney Charles Ruff (L) listens.Rehnquist’s role was largely ceremonial, restricted by Senate rules that permitted a simple majority of senators to override his rulings. On the rare occasion that he did issue a ruling, such as upholding a senator’s objection when a House manager addressed the senators as “jurors,” it was largely inconsequential.“I think [Roberts] is going to realize, as Chief Justice Rehnquist did before him, that this is a slightly different kind of proceeding from the one that he’s used to presiding over at the court,” Richards said.Senate no ordinary courtThe Constitution gives the Senate the “sole power” to try all impeachments, and designates the chief justice as the presiding judge for presidential impeachment trials.When the likely Trump trial gets underway, the Senate will be transformed into something of an impeachment court, but it will be very different from an ordinary court, with senators doubling as jurors and judges, and wielding the power to override the presiding judge on any procedural point.That will limit the chief justice’s authority, something that Roberts will likely welcome, Bowman said.“Beyond exerting whatever moral suasion he has, he has very little real power,” Bowman said. “And my sense is that he, like Justice Rehnquist, is going to want to keep a low profile.”On the other hand, if the Senate agrees to new rules allowing witnesses and cross-examinations, Roberts is likely to take on a larger role, Richards said.“By definition, there is going to be a more active chief justice just because he’s going to have to deal with objections and reluctant witnesses and claims of executive privilege of the sort that just didn’t come up in the Clinton trial,” Richards said.McConnell says trial is a ‘political process’That scenario is far from certain. Complicating matters for Roberts, Senate Republicans have dispensed with all pretense that this will be a deliberate judicial process.“I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process. There is not anything judicial about it,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.Last week, McConnell, a close Trump ally, said he’ll be coordinating with the White House throughout the trial.While not illegal, the planned coordination “certainly runs contrary to the tradition that the Senate has tried to uphold of at least appearing to represent a thoughtful deliberative, natural decision,” Bowman said.It also puts Roberts on the spot, said Jeffrey Tulis, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who has written about impeachment.Paradoxically, however, the trial may enable the chief justice to burnish his court’s image as an apolitical institution, Tulis said.“It will reconfirm the view that that guy is a justice, he’s not a politician,” he said.
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By Polityk | 12/19/2019 | Повідомлення, Політика
