U.S. Democrats swiftly responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that there is nothing wrong with listening to information about a political opponent, even if it comes from a foreign country. Trump stunned even some fellow Republicans with his statement that he would accept information from a foreign government that could undermine his rival in the 2020 presidential election. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, aired late Wednesday, Trump said if he got such an offer, he would listen. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports critics see his remark as an invitation to foreign governments to further interfere with the U.S. democratic system at a time when lawmakers are trying to prevent a repeat of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

…

A U.S. government watchdog agency on Thursday recommended that Kellyanne Conway, one of President Donald Trump’s closest White House aides, be fired for repeatedly engaging in partisan political attacks while working as a federal employee.

The Office of Special Counsel, unrelated to special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, said that Conway has become a “repeat offender” of the Hatch Act, which strictly limits federal workers from engaging in political activity while on the job.

“Given that Ms. Conway is a repeat offender and has shown disregard for the law, OSC recommends that she be removed from federal service,” the office said in a statement.

The agency’s report said she violated the law by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

White House Disputes Trump Aide Kellyanne Conway Violated Ethics Law

The White House has rejected an independent report that concluded a top presidential adviser, Kellyanne Conway, violated federal law when she expressed her opinions in two televised interviews last year.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said in a report Tuesday Conway advocated during a November interview with Fox News for the defeat of a senate candidate in an Alabama special election and gave an “implied endorsement” for another candidate.

The agency said, “Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law.”

The White House contested the OSC’s conclusions, with counsel Pat Cipollone saying in an 11-page letter the agency made “unfair and unsupported claims against a close adviser to the president” and a “rush to judgment” in accusing her.  It asked the agency to withdraw and retract its report.

During a May 29 interview, Conway dismissed the relevance of the law as it related to her.

“If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work,” she said. “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”

Conway has often given television interviews from the White House grounds supporting Trump and deriding his Democratic opposition.

Government workers found to have violated the Hatch Act can be fired, suspended or demoted, and fined up to $1,000.

Trump has often praised Conway, while at the same attacking her husband, George Conway, a lawyer who has represented Trump in the past, but now often says the president is mentally unstable and should be impeached.

…

A U.S. congressional committee on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation to extend the fund compensating first responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center for the next 70 years, a move that would avoid steep benefit reductions over a lack of money.

The House Judiciary Committee acted one day after television personality and comedian Jon Stewart castigated lawmakers at a hearing for their slow response to helping New York City firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel who rushed to the scene of the attacks that left two of Manhattan’s most well-known skyscrapers in rubble.

The fund also helps construction workers and victims of the attack.

“Your indifference costs these men and women their most valuable commodity – time,” Stewart said to a hearing room packed with lawmakers and first-responders, including those now suffering from cancer, respiratory problems and other serious health issues as a result of inhaling contaminated air nearly 18 years ago.

Before Wednesday’s vote, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, whose constituents live in New York City, said that despite federal officials’ statements that the air was safe in the aftermath of the attack, “more than 95,000 responders and survivors are sick.”

The bill, which next goes to the full House for debate, would extend the victims’ compensation fund to 2090, putting it on the same terms as a health program for World Trade Center victims. It also would reverse any benefit cuts due to insufficient funds.

Also on Wednesday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York pleaded for fast passage in that chamber.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked by a reporter whether he would advance the legislation.

“I hadn’t looked at that lately. I’ll have to. We’ve always dealt with that in a compassionate way and I assume we will again,” McConnell said.

In the past, some lawmakers have complained about the cost of helping 9-11 victims at a time of severe U.S. budget deficits.

“It’s shameful. There’s no other word for it. Shameful, that our brave first responders have had to suffer the indignity of delay after delay after delay,” Schumer said in a speech to the Senate.

…

Democrats are expressing alarm after U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed concerns about accepting information about electoral opponents from foreign powers and said such activity would not amount to interference in the U.S. political system.

“I think you might want to listen.  There’s nothing wrong with listening,” he told ABC News in an interview released Wednesday.  “If somebody called from a country — Norway — ‘We have information on your opponent.’  Oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”

When asked if he wants that kind of interference in the election process, Trump said, “It’s not interference,” and that members of Congress “all do it.”

“They always have, and that’s the way it is,” Trump said.
 
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said those comments put Trump one step away from dictators and autocrats who manipulate elections to stay in power.  
 
“The president’s comments are undemocratic, un-American and disgraceful. The president’s comments suggest he believes winning an election is more important than the integrity of the election,” Schumer said in morning floor remarks.
 
Trump clarified his remarks in a Thursday tweet, writing that he talks to foreign governments every day.

“Should I immediately call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.”

Congress reacts

Rep. Brian Schatz rejected the president’s assertion, calling the prospect of accepting such information “crazy.”

“It is not customary or normal or legal or moral to accept campaign assistance from a foreign government. Nobody does that. Nobody,” he said.

Rep. Jim McGovern said getting information from a foreign adversary is “not normal” and that “most people would call the FBI.”

“Republicans and Democrats should both speak out — loudly and strongly — against this,” Sen. Chris Coons said.  “Foreign interference in our elections is unacceptable. Period.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham did call the president’s comments “wrong and a mistake” Thursday morning. Graham told reporters, “If a public official is approached by a foreign government and offered anything of value, the answer is no — whether it’s money, opposition research.”
 
Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, told VOA, “I don’t give the president public advice (on what to say). Only in private.”

During the 2016 campaign that brought Trump to power, his son Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who offered negative information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.  FBI Director Christopher Wray said that contact should have been reported to the agency.

“The FBI director is wrong,” Trump said when reminded of Wray’s statement.

“The duty of any patriotic American is to call the FBI if they encounter foreign interference in our elections,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard. “Tragically, Donald Trump thinks patriotism is less important than his own power.”

In response to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia operated a campaign to influence the 2016 elections with a preference for damaging Clinton’s chances and for Trump to win, the FBI launched its own campaign to combat foreign influence and encouraged both election officials and campaign staff to report suspicious activity to the agency.

Wray has also warned in recent months that Russia poses what he called a “significant counterintelligence threat” to the United States and is likely to intensify its efforts ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election that will be held in November of next year.

Special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Trump had not colluded with Russia to help him win the election, but reached no decision on whether he, as president, had obstructed justice by trying to thwart Mueller’s probe.

During the campaign, Trump praised WikiLeaks, which released a trove of hacked Democratic National Committee emails.  At a campaign rally, he also urged Russia to find 30,000 emails Clinton had reportedly deleted from a private email server during her time as secretary of state.  Trump later said he was joking, but Mueller wrote in his report that Trump’s comments resulted in Russian military intelligence officers targeting Clinton’s personal office within hours.

Rep. Tom Malinowski released a statement Wednesday saying he was introducing legislation that would require political campaigns to file a report with the Justice Department if they receive an offer of assistance from a foreign power or from a domestic source that involves illegal activity such as hacking.

“If a foreign government offers to help us win an election, we should report that offer, not exploit it,” Malinowski said.
 
 

…

Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, once a close aide to President Donald Trump, has agreed to give a closed-door interview to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on June 19, the panel’s chairman said on Wednesday.

Hicks last week agreed to supply documents from Trump’s 2016 campaign to the committee, despite a White House directive advising her not to provide the panel with material from her
subsequent time at the White House.

“We look forward to her testimony and plan to make the transcript promptly available to the public, committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement.

…

A day after the U.S. House passed a resolution authorizing its committees to take the Trump administration to court and pursue criminal contempt cases to enforce their subpoenas, the House Oversight Committee took the next step. 

The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday voted in favor of holding Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress because of the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with the committee’s subpoena for information about why a U.S. citizenship question was added to the 2020 census. 

Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a vocal supporter of impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump, voted with Democrats. 

Trump claimed executive privilege Wednesday in refusing to hand over documents to Democratic lawmakers investigating the census question. 

“I think it’s ridiculous that we would have a census without asking” about citizenship, Trump told reporters at the White House. 

The House panel’s chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, delayed the contempt vote until later in the day to give the committee’s 42 members time to consider Trump’s executive privilege claim.  

But he questioned why Trump was asserting executive privilege just before the contempt vote when the subpoenas for information were issued two months ago.  

‘Blanket defiance’ 

“This begs the question: What is being hidden?” Cummings said. “This does not appear to be an effort to engage in good-faith negotiations or accommodations. Instead, it appears to be another example of the administration’s blanket defiance of Congress’ constitutionally mandated responsibilities.”  

The Justice Department said it had already turned over thousands of pages of documents related to the citizenship question and was continuing to negotiate about more documents. It called the contempt-of-Congress vote “unnecessary and premature.” 

The dispute is the latest between the White House and the Democratic-controlled House over documents related to investigations into Trump, his finances, the 2016 election and policies he has adopted during his 2½-year presidency.  

The citizenship question would be answered easily by more than 300 million people, easily the U.S. majority. They are Americans by birth or naturalization. 

But for others — perhaps 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. — the question is more problematic. Demographers and Democratic critics of Trump fear that non-U.S. citizens will skip the census if the question is included, leaving the government with an inaccurate count. 

Some migrants have voiced fears that if they answer the citizenship question and they are in the U.S. without proper documentation, immigration agents could use the information to detain and deport them to their homelands. 

In the U.S., the decennial census is used to allocate $800 billion in funding for government programs throughout the 50 states, and also to decide how many representatives each state should have in the House for the next 10 years.  

The Trump administration says the citizenship question, which has been asked during past census-taking, but not since 1950, is necessary to better enforce the country’s Voting Rights Act.    

Court ruling ahead 

Later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the question can be included in the census. 

But in May, after the high court heard legal arguments for and against use of the question, evidence emerged that it was added to the census specifically to give Republicans and non-Hispanic whites an electoral advantage. 

The evidence came from the files of a prominent Republican redistricting strategist, who, before his death last August, had helped lay the groundwork for including the question in the census. 

One of Trump’s White House advisers, Kellyanne Conway, said the administration was not hiding anything related to the motives behind the citizenship question and was awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling.   

…

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Wednesday said she would shield six million undocumented immigrants from deportation, a significant expansion of an Obama-era program protecting “Dreamers” brought to the United States as children.

The California U.S. senator proposed using the powers of the presidency to create a “roadmap to citizenship” for Dreamers while also offering new protections to the parents of American citizens and legal permanent residents as well as other law-abiding immigrants with strong roots in the community.

The proposal, which would rely on the president’s executive authority over the nation’s immigration laws, is a direct rebuke to President Donald Trump’s efforts to clamp down on immigration and build a wall to restrict the flow of immigrants from Central America.

Harris is one of some two dozen Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential election.

“Dreamers cannot afford to sit around and wait for Congress to get its act together,” Harris said in a statement. “These young people are just as American as I am, and they deserve a president who will fight for them from day one.”

Harris released her plan a day before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to discuss whether to take up the Trump administration’s challenge to a 2012 program established by former President Barack Obama that gave Dreamers temporary protections.

The program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, remains in place after lower courts blocked Trump’s attempt to cancel it. The Trump administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers in creating DACA without congressional approval.

Last week, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would end the threat of deportation for Dreamers, but the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate is unlikely to consider the legislation.

Harris would expand the eligibility for Dreamers to gain protection against deportation and apply for work permits. The plan calls for eliminating several legal roadblocks that currently prevent many Dreamers from adjusting their legal status.

In addition, the program would be open to other immigrants who pass background checks, based on factors such as military service, years of residence and family ties to others who have received protections.

Immigration, which was central to Trump’s 2016 campaign, is likely to play a major role in next year’s election.

…

Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan told troops and civilian workers Tuesday to avoid political displays while on the job, a reminder that comes after the White House told the Navy to keep the USS John S. McCain out of sight to avoid offending President Donald Trump during a visit to Japan.
 
In separate memos to civilian and military leaders, Shanahan said their mission to protect and defend the nation should be apolitical.
 
“Those of us privileged to serve our Nation, in and out of uniform, in the DoD must be the epitome of American values and ethics,” Shanahan said.
 
He told military commanders to remind those in uniform that they must avoid actions that imply Pentagon approval of political candidates or causes. In a memo to the civilian workforce he said personnel may take part in limited political activities, but “they may never engage in such activity while on-duty or in a Federal building.”
 
Both Shanahan and Trump have distanced themselves from the ship incident, in which an unknown official in the White House military office directed the Navy to keep the McCain out of sight, presumably to avoid reminding the president of the late Sen. John McCain.

The warship was named for McCain’s father and grandfather and was posthumously rededicated in the name of the senator and former prisoner of war.

 
The president blamed the order on “well-meaning” staff aware of his dislike of McCain.
 
Asked about the memos Tuesday, Shanahan said: “What I wanted to do is, after the McCain situation, remind everyone that we’re not going to politicize the military. So it’s just a good healthy reminder.”
 
Last week, Shanahan ordered his chief of staff deliver a similar message to the White House military office, reaffirming his mandate that the Defense Department must not be politicized.
 
Shanahan has asked his chief of staff to look into the ship incident and find out what happened, but he also said he is not planning to seek an investigation by the Pentagon’s internal watchdog.
 
Shanahan said he was told that, despite the White House request, the Navy did not move the ship and that a barge that was in front of it was moved before Trump arrived. He said a tarp that had been draped over the ship’s name was removed, but it was put there for maintenance, not to obscure its identity.

…

Seeking to rebut President Donald Trump’s attempts to cast him and Democrats as too liberal, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to give a speech Wednesday on democratic socialism, the economic philosophy that has guided his political career.
 
He made similar remarks during his first presidential campaign in 2016, when he faced questions about his decadeslong association with democratic socialists. He’s again confronting criticism from in and out of his party during his second presidential bid, and the speech, which the campaign is billing as a major address, is an attempt to reframe the debate about his views.
 
But he’s doing this in a reshaped political landscape in which he’s no longer the sole progressive taking on an establishment candidate as he was in 2016 when he battled Hillary Clinton. He’s one of nearly two dozen Democratic White House hopefuls, several of whom are also unabashed liberals. And they’re all operating in an environment dominated by Trump.
 
“We now have a president who is attacking me and others because we believe in democratic socialism,” Sanders said in a Tuesday interview with The Associated Press in which he previewed his speech. “This is a president who believes in socialism, but the difference is he believes in socialism for large corporations and the wealthy, not the working people.”
 
“What tomorrow is about,” he added, “is defining what democratic socialism means to me.”
 
Shaping those terms will be crucial if Sanders is to convince voters that his embrace of democratic socialism isn’t a barrier to winning the White House. He’s argued that his populist appeal could help win back the working-class voters across the Midwest who swung from Democrats to Trump in 2016.
 
Sanders is fond of noting that many of his Democratic rivals now back policies, such as “Medicare for All,” that were seen as too costly and too liberal in previous elections. But few of the other Democrats seeking the White House share his support for democratic socialism.
 
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has jumped to the top of the Democratic field in part because of a perception that he’s the most electable candidate in the race, has derided the notion that politicians must be socialists to prove they’re progressive. Other liberal candidates, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, have noted that while they have problems with the economic system, they remain capitalists.
 
Trump and his allies have nonetheless lambasted Sanders and the rest of the Democratic field, warning against what they call the threat of creeping socialism.
 
In this year’s State of the Union address, Trump declared that America “will never be a socialist country.” Weeks later, when Sanders entered the race, a spokeswoman for his campaign said that Sanders had “already won the debate in the Democrat primary because every candidate is embracing his brand of socialism” and that Trump is the only candidate who will keep the country “free, prosperous and safe.”
 
Last month in Louisiana, Trump referred to Sanders as “crazy” and told the crowd the senator had “not good energy.”
 
Sanders last spoke in depth about democratic socialism in November 2015. Also speaking in Washington, he invoked the legacies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., arguing that democratic socialism was reflected in their priorities.
 
While in Tuesday’s interview Sanders promised he would be more explicit this time in describing his belief in democratic socialism, some of the themes he will discuss echo the 2015 remarks, including positioning himself as the heir of the ideals that originated with Roosevelt in 1944.
 
“Over 80 years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped create a government that made huge progress in protecting the needs of working families,” Sanders will say, according to prepared remarks. “Today in the second decade of the 21st century, we must take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion. This is the unfinished business of the Democratic Party and the vision we must accomplish.”
 
As he did in his first presidential run, much of Sanders’ campaign speech is focused on promising a wholesale revolution, including a fundamental rethinking of the political system. Asked Tuesday how he would tangibly change Washington’s centers of political power to make his visions a reality, he said he would do so “by taking politics out of Washington.”
 
“What the political revolution means to me, above and beyond democratic socialism, is getting millions of people who have given up on the political process, working people and young people, to stand up and fight for their rights. So those are the profound changes that we will be bringing about,” he said.

…

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday urged a stop to the “endless war” that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a return to the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord scrapped by Republican President Donald Trump.

Buttigieg, a Navy reservist who was deployed to Afghanistan, repudiated Trump’s go-it-alone, America First approach to the world in the first foreign policy speech of his 2020 White House campaign. He outlined a policy based on “America at our best,” a foil to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

“The need for a new foreign policy vision could not be more urgent today,” Buttigieg said in Bloomington, Indiana. “This administration has embraced and emboldened autocrats, while alienating democracies and allies around the globe.” 

He told an audience at Indiana University that the next American president must set the bar high on the use of force, especially if Washington acts alone, and urged Congress to repeal a law passed days after Sept. 11 that paved the way for campaigns against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

“The world needs an America free from entrapment in endless war and prepared to focus on future threats,” Buttigieg said.

U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, for example, must come to an end, he said.

The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg is one of three military veterans running for president and, at 37, the youngest in a field of more than 20 Democrats. He is polling in a second tier of candidates behind the two front-runners, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

A Harvard University graduate and Rhodes Scholar who sprinkles French, Norwegian, Arabic and Italian in interviews, he is among the few Democratic candidates to issue a foreign policy agenda.

Abdication of responsibility

Buttigieg said the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force helped ensnare the United States in conflicts where the mission was not clearly defined and that Congress has abdicated its responsibility on waging war.

Republicans and Democrats have argued for years that Congress ceded too much authority to the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks. Divisions over how much control they should exert over the Pentagon have stymied efforts to pass a new law.

Buttigieg also vowed to return the United States to the landmark 2015 international Iran nuclear accord on the grounds the agreement was in the U.S. national security interest.

“Whatever its imperfections, this was perhaps as close to the real ‘art of the deal’ as diplomatic achievements get,” Buttigieg said, referring to the title of a Trump book.

Climate change

The United States needs to prioritize climate change as a national security issue and should rejoin the Paris climate accords limiting greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

Buttigieg criticized human rights abuses in China and the torture and execution of dissidents in Saudi Arabia, and took the view that people who support Israel can oppose the policies of its current right-wing government at the same time.

In another dig at Trump, who has generally fostered a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Buttigieg called Moscow “a self-interested, disruptive and adversarial actor.”

…

The U.S. House of Representatives is due to vote Tuesday on a measure authorizing lawsuits against Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn over their refusal to cooperate with congressional subpoenas in connection with the investigation of Russian election interference.

Lawmakers want access to documents from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his probe into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation, and for McGahn to testify about what took place inside the White House.

Authorizing the lawsuits would allow leaders in the Democratic-led House to go forward with those steps if they choose to do so at a later date.

McGahn was a key witness for Mueller, but has declined to testify before congressional committees, complying with the wishes of the White House. Mueller’s team interviewed McGahn for 30 hours, with the lawyer telling prosecutors that Trump pressured him to try to get Mueller ousted from overseeing the investigation, a demand he ignored.

On Monday, the House reached a deal for the Justice Department to turn over crucial documents collected from the Mueller investigation.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the Justice Department would be opening Mueller’s “most important files to us, providing us with key evidence that the special counsel used to assess whether” Trump and others “obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct.”

Nadler said that all members of the Judiciary panel — Democrats and Republicans alike — would be able to see the documents, which he said “will allow us to perform our constitutional duties and decide how to respond to the allegations laid out against the president” by Mueller.

With the agreement, Nadler said he would withdraw a vote set for Tuesday whether to hold Barr in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the House committee’s subpoena for the information.

Nadler said he is giving the Justice Department “time to demonstrate compliance with this agreement. If the department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything we need, then there will be no need to take further steps.” But he said if the agreement collapses, it “will have no choice” but to pursue a court case to try to obtain the underlying documents from the Mueller probe that it is seeking.

Nadler’s committee and others in the House are pursuing several investigations of Trump, along with the obstruction allegations, including about his business affairs, taxes and administration policies during his 29-month presidency. Trump has vowed to fight all Democratic subpoenas, but Nadler’s agreement for information from the Mueller probe signals there also is room for negotiation rather than to let every dispute end in a legal fight in a courtroom.

On Monday, the Judiciary panel heard from former White House counsel John Dean, who was instrumental 46 years ago in the downfall of another U.S. president, Richard Nixon. At the time, Dean testified before Congress about White House corruption that led to Nixon’s resignation as he was about to be impeached.  

Mueller declined to exonerate Trump of obstruction allegations after a 22-month investigation. But he said that in any event Trump could not have been charged because a Justice Department policy prohibits filing criminal charges against sitting presidents. Subsequently, Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said criminal charges against Trump were not warranted.

About a quarter of the 235 Democrats in the 435-member House, along with one Republican, have called for Trump’s impeachment or the start of an impeachment inquiry. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted such calls, saying she prefers continued investigations by several House committees.

Last week, the political news site Politico reported that she told Democratic colleagues that she does not want Trump impeached, but “in prison,” after facing criminal charges once he leaves office.

Trump retorted, “She’s a nasty, vindictive, horrible person.”

…

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives reached a deal Monday for the Justice Department to turn over crucial documents collected by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart his probe of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
 
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the Justice Department would be opening Mueller’s “most important files to us, providing us with key evidence that the special counsel used to assess whether” Trump and others “obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct.”

Nadler said that all members of the Judiciary panel — Democrats and Republicans alike — would be able to see the documents, which he said “will allow us to perform our constitutional duties and decide how to respond to the allegations laid out against the president” by Mueller.

With the agreement, Nadler said he would withdraw a vote set for Tuesday whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the House committee’s subpoena for the information.

Nadler said he is giving the Justice Department “time to demonstrate compliance with this agreement. If the department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything we need, then there will be no need to take further steps.” But he said if the agreement collapses, it “will have no choice” but to pursue a court case to try to obtain the underlying documents from the Mueller probe that it is seeking.

White House counsel testimony

The agreement did not address the committee’s request for testimony from former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who was a key witness for Mueller, but has declined to testify, complying with the wishes of the White House. Mueller’s team interviewed McGahn for 30 hours, with the lawyer telling prosecutors that Trump pressured him to try to get Mueller ousted from overseeing the investigation, a demand he ignored.

The full House is voting Tuesday whether to go to court under civil, not criminal law to enforce subpoenas against both Barr and McGahn.

Nadler’s committee and others in the House are pursuing several investigations of Trump, along with the obstruction allegations, including about his business affairs, taxes and administration policies during his 29-month presidency. Trump has vowed to fight all Democratic subpoenas, but Nadler’s agreement for information from the Mueller probe signals there also is room for negotiation rather than to let every dispute end in a legal fight in a courtroom.  

Report did not exonerate Trump

Mueller declined to exonerate Trump of obstruction allegations after a 22-month investigation. But he said that in any event Trump could not have been charged because a Justice Department policy prohibits filing criminal charges against sitting presidents. Subsequently, Barr and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said criminal charges against Trump were not warranted.

About a quarter of the 235 Democrats in the 435-member House, along with one Republican, have called for Trump’s impeachment or the start of an impeachment inquiry. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted such calls, saying she prefers continued investigations by several House committees.

Last week, the political news site Politico reported that she told Democratic colleagues that she does not want Trump impeached, but “in prison,” after facing criminal charges once he leaves office.

Trump retorted, “She’s a nasty, vindictive, horrible person.”

…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday claimed Sunday that Mexico “for many years” has not been cooperative to curb the surge of migrants traveling through it to reach the United States, but believes a new agreement will alleviate the problem.

The U.S. leader warned, however, that “if for some unknown reason” Mexico does not stanch the flow of Central American migrants heading north to the U.S., “we can always go back to our previous, very profitable” imposition of tariffs on Mexican exports sent to the United States. “But I don’t believe that will be necessary,” he added.

A deal announced Friday calls for Mexico to dispatch 6,000 troops to its border with Guatemala to halt the flow of migrants, while the U.S. gained new authority to force asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their legal cases in the U.S. are pending. Trump said there is one particular provision of the pact that has yet to be disclosed but will be announced “at the appropriate time.”

“There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades,” he said on Twitter.

“Now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done,” Trump said.

He dismissed an account in The New York Times as “another false report” that key parts of the deal had been reached in December. He contended that the “failing” newspaper and the “ratings challenged” CNN television network “will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!”

Trump’s acting Homeland Security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, told Fox News Sunday “There’s a mechanism to make sure that [Mexico does] what they promised to do, that there’s an actual result, that we see a vast reduction in those [migration] numbers.”

He said the arriving migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras largely amounted to “an economic migration that we need to stop with enforcement. We need to be able to repatriate people successfully.”

McAleenan said that “people can disagree with the tactics” — Trump’s threat to impose a 5% tariff on Mexican imports starting Monday  but that “Mexico came to the table with real proposals. We have an agreement that, if they implement, will be effective.”

But he said Congress still needs to enact other immigration reforms, including the right to detain migrant families beyond 20 days and change the provisions of asylum requests to more closely align with the likelihood of whether migrants ultimately will be successful in their bids to stay permanently in the United States.

 
…

The new voter protection director for Florida Democrats told party activists on Saturday that they should assume there will be a recount during next year’s presidential election.

“We are going to be prepared,” Brandon Peters told a packed room of Democratic activists at the state party’s Leadership Blue 2019 meeting at Walt Disney World in Orlando. 

Peters, who was hired by the state party last month, said there will be teams of volunteers trained in how to monitor county canvassing boards for recount problems around the state, should one take place in the 2020 presidential election.

Florida became famous for recounts after the 2000 presidential election, and last year there were recounts in three statewide races. The Florida Democratic Party is the second state Democratic party in the nation to hire a voter protection director, behind the Georgia Democratic Party.

Peters said by July 2020 he hopes to have 15,000 lawyers and volunteers in place around the state to address any voter problems.

Those problems include making it difficult for ex-convicts to register after Florida voters last year passed a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to as many as 1.4 million felons and creating earlier deadlines for mail-in ballots, Peters said.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has pledged to sign a bill requiring repayment of financial obligations before felons’ voting rights are restored.

Other nonelectoral changes in Florida could have consequences for voters, such as the rollout this month of new driver’s licenses with magnetic strips removed, Peters said. 

Voters often check in at polls where information on the strip is run against a database for ID verification. Without that, poll workers may have to resort to manually checking the ID against paper rolls, creating long lines, Peters said.

The state party is coordinating with the Democratic National Party to set up a tool to track election problems in real time. There also will be a hotline for volunteers to call in problems, Peters said.

If you see something, say something,'' Peters said.Once we are aware of the problem, we will do something about it.”

Even though President Trump is announcing his re-election campaign in Orlando in less than two weeks, and Florida promises to be crucial for any path to the White House, none of the major Democratic presidential candidates were at the Florida conference since most of them were attending a competing event hosted by Iowa Democrats this weekend. 

Some candidates sent video messages that were played at a dinner for the Florida Democrats, and two candidates, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend Mayor Peter Buttigieg, made plans to send their spouses. But Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, was a no-show after running into a transportation snafu.

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez encouraged the Florida Democrats “to date” all the presidential candidates.

Fall in love with multiple people at one time. Date as many people as you want,'' Perez said.And then when we have our nominee, fall in line together as Democrats. Our unity is our greatest strength and it’s Donald Trump’s biggest fear.”
…

As Washington and Mexico City both took victory laps Saturday over a deal that headed off threatened tariffs on Mexican imports, it remained to be seen how effective it may be, and migration experts raised concerns about what it could mean for people fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.  

Other than a vague reiteration of a joint commitment to promote development, security and growth in Central America, the agreement focuses almost exclusively on enforcement and says little about the root causes driving the surge in migrants seen in recent months.  

My sense is overall the Mexican government got out of this better than they thought. The agreement though leaves a lot of big question marks,'' said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.It’s good that the two sides reached an agreement which allows both of them to save face, but it’s not clear how easy it is to implement.” 

Guard deployment

The deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops appears to be the key commitment in what was described as “unprecedented steps” by Mexico to ramp up enforcement, though Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero said that had already been planned and was not a result of external pressure.  

I have said before, migration into Mexico also has to be regulated ... orderly, legal and safe,'' Sanchez Cordero told The Associated Press.So the National Guard that we were going to deploy anyway, we’re going to deploy. It’s not because they tell us to, but rather because we’re going to do it anyway.”  

​Mexican measures

Mexico was already increasing enforcement with detentions, deportations and checkpoints. In recent weeks it broke up the latest migrant caravan, snuffing out most of the appetite for traveling in large, visible groups.  

If Mexico does more as promised, it’s likely to be seen in intensification of those same efforts, experts said — raids on hotels where migrants stay or on bus companies transporting them north to the U.S. border. The two countries also agreed to share information on and disrupt people-smuggling networks, a new focus seen earlier this week when Mexico arrested two migration activists and froze accounts of over two dozen people alleged to have organized caravans.  

A concern is that even more aggressive enforcement could put migrants with legitimate asylum claims at risk of being deported from Mexico to the dangers they fled in the first place. Also, Mexican security forces are known for often being corrupt and shaking migrants down for bribes. A renewed crackdown is seen as making migration through Mexico more difficult and more dangerous, but doing little to discourage Central Americans desperate to escape poverty, hunger and violence.  

People are fleeing their homes regardless of what the journey might mean and regardless of what chance they may have for seeking protections in Mexico or in the United States,'' said Maureen Meyer, an immigration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America,simply because they need to leave.” 

Human element missing

It seems like in all these discussions [about tariffs and immigration], the human reality of these people and why they're leaving Central America was lost,'' she continued.It was ‘what can we do to stop them,’ and not ‘what can we really do to create the conditions in their home countries so that people don’t have to leave.’ ”  

Another key element of the deal is that the United States will expand a program known as the Migrant Protection Protocol, or MPP. According to Mexican immigration authorities, since January there have been 10,393 returns by migrants to Mexico while their cases wend their way through U.S. courts.  

MPP has been plagued by glitches and so far has been introduced only in California and El Paso, Texas, and Selee said there are logistical hurdles to further expansion. Right now the MPP figure of 10,000 or so represents “a drop in the bucket” compared with overall migration, he added.    

Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, who led the negotiations, said the agreement does not include any quotas.  

If MPP does roll out on a mass scale along the United States’ entire southern border, it could overwhelm Mexican border cities. Mexico promised to offer jobs, health care and education for returnees, but has little infrastructure to do so. Currently most shelters and support programs are run by the likes of NGOs and the Roman Catholic Church.  

And if the program were to include places like Tamaulipas, the Gulf coast state where cartels and gangs control large swaths of territory, migrants could be at even greater risk.  

Dangerous area

This is an area that the U.S. government considers that it's not safe for any American citizen,'' Meyer said, referring to the State Department's highest-level warning against all travel to Tamaulipas  because of crime and kidnappings.And yet it’s OK for us to send people back there?”  

Still, the deal was hailed by many in Mexican industry and politics.  

Arturo Rocha, a Foreign Relations Department spokesman, tweeted late Friday that it was an unquestionable triumph for Mexico.'' Avoiding tariffs sends a calming message to ratings agencies worried about a possible trade war, he said, adding that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's government had won U.S. recommitment to Central American development and resistedsafe third country” designation, a concession sought by Washington that would have required asylum seekers to apply first in Mexico.  

However, Abdel Camargo, an anthropologist at the Frontera Sur College in southern Mexico, said that by accepting MPP returnees, “Mexico does not become a safe third country but de facto is going to act as one.”  

Some such as ex-President Felipe Calderon of the conservative opposition National Action Party questioned whether Mexico was truly master of its own migratory policy. But Jose Antonio Meade, a five-time Cabinet minister who lost last year’s election to Lopez Obrador, praised Ebrard for avoiding damaging tariffs “in the face of very complex conditions.”  

In San Jose del Cabo for a summit of North American mayors, Juan Manuel Gastelum of Tijuana, across from San Diego, said he’s fine with more migrants being returned to his city as long as the federal government invests in caring for them. He added that the threat of tariffs may have been necessary to force his country’s hand.  

“How else was Mexico going to understand that it is not right to leave migration uncontrolled?” said Gastelum, who is also a member of National Action.  

​Tijuana rally

Meanwhile, a rally later Saturday in Tijuana that Lopez Obrador called to defend Mexican pride and dignity was expected to take on more of a festive atmosphere.  

It was [originally supposed to be] a meeting to show support for the incoming governor ... that turned into a demand for peace and respect on the tariffs issue,'' local restaurateur and businessman Francisco Villegas said.But since the tariffs issue was sorted out by having Marcelo Ebrard and his team up there, it is now turning into a celebration.” 
…

To save babies from brain-damaging birth defects, University of Pittsburgh scientist Carolyn Coyne studies placentas from fetuses that otherwise would be discarded — and she’s worried this kind of research is headed for the chopping block.

The Trump administration is cracking down on fetal tissue research , with new hurdles for government-funded scientists around the country who call the special cells vital for fighting a range of health threats. Already, the administration has shut down one university’s work using fetal tissue to test HIV treatments, and is ending other fetal tissue research at the National Institutes of Health.<

“I knew this was something that’s going to trickle down to the rest of us,” said Coyne. She uses the placenta, which people may not think of as fetal tissue but technically is classified as such because the fetus produced it, to study how viruses such as Zika get past that protective barrier early in pregnancy.

“It seems to me what we’re moving toward is a ban,” she added. If so, when it comes to unraveling what happens in pregnancy and fetal development, “we’re going to stay ignorant to a lot of things.”

Different types of tissue left over from elective abortions have been used in scientific research for decades, and the work has been credited with leading to lifesaving vaccines and other advances. Under orders from President Donald Trump, the Health and Human Services Department abruptly announced on Wednesday the new restrictions on taxpayer-funded research, but not privately funded work.

Aside from the cancellation of an HIV-related project at the University of California, San Francisco, university-led projects that are funded by the NIH — estimated to be fewer than 200 — aren’t affected right away.

But as researchers seek to renew their funding or propose new studies, HHS said it will have to pass an extra layer of review, beyond today’s strict scientific scrutiny. Each project will have a federal ethics board appointed to recommend whether NIH should grant the money.

HHS hasn’t offered details but under the law authorizing the review process, that board must include not just biomedical experts but a theologian, and the nation’s health secretary can overrule its advice.

“I predict over time we will see a slow and steady elimination of federal funding for research that uses fetal tissue, regardless of how necessary it is,” said University of Wisconsin law professor Alta Charo, a nationally recognized bioethics expert.

Necessity is the crux of a fierce debate between abortion foes and scientists about whether there are alternatives to fetal tissue for research.

Zika offers a glimpse at the difficulty. Somehow, the Zika virus can sneak from the mother’s bloodstream across the placenta, which protects and nourishes the fetus, and target the fetus’ brain. It’s something researchers hope to learn to block.

Studying the placentas of small animals or even monkeys isn’t a substitute because they differ from the human organ, said Emory University researcher Mehul Suthar. For example, the specific type of placental cell where Zika can lurk in humans isn’t thought to be present in mouse placentas.

And because the placenta continually changes as the fetus that created it grows, first-trimester tissue may show a very different vulnerability than a placenta that’s expelled during full-term birth, when it’s no longer defined as fetal tissue but as medical waste.

Suthar recently submitted a new grant application to study first- and second-trimester placental tissue, and is worried about its fate under the still uncertain ethics provision.

It “sounds a bit murky as to what the impact could be,” he said. It could be small, “or it could be an outright ban on what we’re doing.”

Anti-abortion groups argue there are alternatives, such as stem cells, growing organ-like clumps of cells in lab dishes, or using tissue taken from newborns as they have heart surgery.

Indeed, NIH is funding a $20 million program to research alternatives to fetal tissue and to prove whether they work as well.

“Taxpayer funding ought to go to promote alternatives that are already being used in the production of treatments, vaccines and medicines, and to expand approaches that do not depend on the destruction of unborn children,” said Mallory Quigley of the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect anti-abortion candidates to public office.

But dozens of medical and science organizations have told HHS there is no substitute for fetal tissue in studying certain — not all — health disorders, such as HIV, Zika, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injury, and a variety of eye diseases.

To Pittsburgh’s Coyne, part of the political debate is a “completely unsubstantiated belief that not allowing research and science is going to prevent or stop abortions, which is not the case.”

Medical research using fetal tissue won’t stop but will move to other countries, said Charo, who advised the Obama administration. The United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and China are among the countries using fetal tissue to seek breakthroughs.

“Other countries work with this in a regulated fashion and they will continue to outstrip us,” she said. “We have allowed patients’ interests to become collateral damage in the abortion wars.”

…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren electrified California Democrats on Saturday with a pledge for bold action, matching if not outshining enthusiasm for the state’s own Sen. Kamala Harris to kick off a day when more than a dozen presidential candidates planned to make their cases to thousands of activists in the nation’s largest liberal stronghold. 

Some say if we all just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses,'' Warren said in bringing the crowd to its feet with a thinly veiled shot at former Vice President Joe Biden, who has expressed hope the GOP will havean epiphany” after President Donald Trump is gone. “But our country is in a crisis. The time for small ideas is over.” 

Biden was the only major candidate not attending the three-day gathering in San Francisco, opting instead to campaign in Ohio. 

California has shifted its 2020 primary earlier on the calendar, to March 3, part of the Super Tuesday collection of contests, in hopes of giving the state more sway in choosing the party’s nominee. California will offer the largest delegate haul, but it is a notoriously difficult state to campaign in, given its massive size and expensive media markets. 

Harris, with a built-in advantage, looked to make a show of force in Saturday’s prime speaking slot to kick off addresses from presidential hopefuls, the day’s main event. She played up her deep connection to California voters, having won statewide office three times, once to the U.S. Senate and twice as the state’s attorney general, and also having been elected as San Francisco’s district attorney. 

Harris, too, sparked a standing ovation when she declared, “We need to begin impeachment proceedings and we need a new commander in chief!” 

Earlier, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also a Californian, avoided mentioning impeachment in her remarks but said the House would hold Trump accountable.  

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke addressed the morning session of the convention, slipping seamlessly between Spanish and English, a key move in a state with a large Hispanic population. He praised California Democrats for their massive turnout in the 2018 midterms, when the party flipped seven U.S. House seats held for years by Republicans, and noted that his unsuccessful Senate bid drew record Democratic turnout as well.  

You, California Democrats, have offered the rest of the country an example,'' he said.And in Texas we were right there with you.”  

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is expecting to build heavily on the California organization he built in the last presidential campaign. He wasn’t scheduled to address the full crowd until Sunday, but he greeted union workers at a Saturday morning breakfast and received an enthusiastic reception Friday night at a meeting of the Chicano-Latino caucus, which endorsed him during the close 2016 contest with Hillary Clinton. 

“This time we are going to win California,” he declared.  

Other candidates attending the gathering: New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; California Rep. Eric Swalwell; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Washington Gov. Jay Inslee; former Obama housing chief Julian Castro; and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.
…

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg knows firsthand the burden of six-figure student loan debt. He and his husband, Chasten, are far from alone, though, and their personal college indebtedness is helping to keep the issue on the national stage. 

With loans totaling more than $130,000, they are among the 43 million people in the United States who owe federal student loan debt. 

The debtors are so numerous and the total debt so high — more than $1.447 trillion, according to federal statistics — that several of the Democratic candidates have made major policy proposals to address the crisis. Their ideas include wiping away debt, lowering interest rates, expanding programs that tie repayment terms to income, and making college free or debt-free. 

Student loan debt is often discussed as an issue that mostly affects millennials, but it cuts across age groups. Federal statistics show that about 7.8 million people age 50 and older owe a combined $291.9 billion in student loans. People age 35 to 49, a group that covers older millennials such as Buttigieg as well as Generation X, owe $548.4 billion. That group includes more than 14 million people.  

One of the most detailed plans to help solve the problem has come from Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who says she would entirely erase student debt for 75% of borrowers while making public colleges and universities free. Her plan would be paid for by a tax on “ultramillionaires,” those households with a net worth of $50 million or more. Warren wants to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for each borrower with a household income under $100,000 and would cancel smaller amounts for those who earn more.  

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has outlined a plan to make public universities tuition-free and says he wants to lower student loan rates and “substantially lower student debt.”  

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas stops short of advocating for programs to cancel all debt, like Warren wants to do. Instead, he has suggested wiping away debt for people who go into jobs where there’s a manpower shortage, such as doctors in rural areas, but it’s not clear which professions would qualify. 

He also has said he wants to give Americans two years of free tuition at community colleges, make four-year state universities debt-free for those with low and modest incomes and allow borrowers to refinance student loans at lower interest rates.  

Julian Castro, housing secretary in the Obama administration, says he wants to eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities. He has issued a plan that would not require loan repayment until borrowers earn more than 250% of the federal poverty level, currently $25,750 for a family of four. It would cap monthly payments at 10% of their income after that.   

Sen. Kamala Harris of California has publicly called for debt-free college, wants to allow people to refinance their loans at a lower interest rate, base repayment on income and simplify financial aid applications to make it easier for needy students to apply.  

If elected, Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., would likely be the first president with student loan debt. Barack and Michelle Obama said they paid off their student loans a few years before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006.  

Buttigieg often speaks about the experience that he and his husband have had with student loan debt. Buttigieg graduated from Harvard in 2004, then won a Rhodes scholarship and graduated from Oxford in 2007. The mayor previously told Vice that he got through school without much debt, but that Chasten racked up loans while getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees to become a teacher.  

In his financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics in mid-May, Buttigieg reported that he and his husband have between $110,000 and $265,000 in student loan debt. The report requires a range rather than a specific dollar amount. Chris Meagher, a campaign spokesman, said the exact amount is $131,296.  

Americans with student loans owe on average $33,000, so the Buttigiegs’ debt is on the high end. They are among the 2.8 million Americans who owe more than $100,000 in federal student loan debt. 

Meagher did not answer questions about whether the loans belonged to Buttigieg or his husband, or both. 

The disclosure statement shows that the couple has 20 loans outstanding, with interest rates ranging from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, on loans that were opened between 2009 and 2017. Fifteen of those accounts, more than $100,000 of the balance, were reported to be on an income-based repayment plan. 

Buttigieg has spoken about making it easier to refinance student loan debt. During a town hall hosted by Fox News, he discussed expanding the federal Pell Grant program and making it easier to pay off debt through public service. On his website, he called for middle- and low-income families to pay zero tuition'' at public colleges, or to attend themdebt free.”  

Buttigieg has also called for more support for students who enter public service, such as teaching. 

Seven 2020 presidential contenders have proposed legislation in the Senate to do that. The bill would simplify and expand a program that forgives federal loans for public service workers who make 120 monthly loan payments while working for a government agency or qualified nonprofit. Only about 1% of borrowers who applied to the program were approved. The candidates backing the legislation are Warren, Sanders, Harris, and Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado.  

Former Vice President Joe Biden made a call for a similar simplification and expansion Tuesday in a speech in Houston before one of the nation’s largest teachers unions. 
…