A Republican congressman from Michigan on Saturday became the first member of President Donald Trump’s party on Capitol Hill to accuse him of engaging in “impeachable conduct” as detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s lengthy investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

But Rep. Justin Amash stopped short of calling on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, which many Democrats have been agitating for.

Often a lone GOP voice in Congress, Amash sent a series of tweets Saturday faulting both Trump and Attorney General William Barr over Mueller’s report. Mueller wrapped up the investigation and submitted his report to Barr in late March. Barr then released a summary of Mueller’s “principal conclusions” and released a redacted version of the report in April.

​Mueller’s findings

Mueller found the evidence was insufficient to establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia, but he left open the question of  whether Trump acted in ways that were meant to obstruct the investigation. Barr later said there was insufficient evidence to bring obstruction charges against Trump.

Trump, who has compared the investigation to a “witch hunt,” claimed complete exoneration from Mueller’s report.

Amash said he reached four conclusions after carefully reading the redacted version of Mueller’s report, including that “President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.”

Contrary to Barr's portrayal, Mueller's report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,'' the congressman tweeted. He said the reportidentifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.”

The Justice Department, which Barr leads, operates under guidelines that discourage the indictment of a sitting president.

A representative for Amash did not immediately respond to an email request to speak with the congressman.

‘Case closed’

Trump and Republican lawmakers generally view the matter as “case closed,” as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recently declared on the floor of the Senate.

On the other hand, Democrats who control the House are locked in a bitter standoff with the White House as it ignores lawmakers’ requests for the more complete version of Mueller’s report, the underlying evidence and witness testimony. Some Democrats want the House to open impeachment hearings, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has resisted, saying impeachment must be bipartisan.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., a freshman who opened her term by profanely calling for Trump to be impeached, applauded Amash.

“You are putting country first, and that is to be commended,” Tlaib tweeted.

Tlaib is seeking support for a resolution she’s circulating calling on the House to start impeachment proceedings.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has asked for files to be prepared on pardoning several U.S. military members accused of or convicted of war crimes, including one slated to stand trial on charges of shooting unarmed civilians while in Iraq, The New York Times reported Saturday. 

Trump requested the immediate preparation of paperwork needed, indicating he is considering pardons for the men around Memorial Day on May 27, the report said, citing two unnamed U.S. officials.

Assembling pardon files normally takes months, but the Justice Department has pressed for the work to be completed before that holiday weekend, one of the officials said. 

One request is for Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, scheduled to stand trial in coming weeks on charges of shooting unarmed civilians and killing an enemy captive with a knife while deployed in Iraq. 

Also believed to be included is the case of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret accused of killing an unarmed Afghan in 2010, the Times said.

Reuters could not immediately identify a way to contact Gallagher or Golsteyn. 

The newspaper reported that the cases of other men are believed to be included in the paperwork, without naming them. 

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the report, while the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Legal experts cited in the report said that pardoning several alleged or convicted war criminals, including some who have not yet gone to trial, has not been done in recent history, and some worried such pardons could erode the legitimacy of military law. 
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Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Saturday released his plan for reforming public education, including halting federal funding of new charter schools and banning those that are operated for profit.  

Saying charter schools are exacerbating educational segregation,'' Sanders proposes more transparency and accountability for them, as well as limits on the pay of their chief executives. According to the campaign, the 10-point plan focuses onreversing racial and economic segregation that is plaguing elementary and secondary schools.” 

DeVos’ position

The current education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is an advocate for charter schools, which receive public funding but operate independently.  

Sanders unveiled the plan Saturday ahead of a speech in South Carolina. The campaign said the release of Sanders’ Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education and Educators was timed to the 65th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.  

As head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Marshall served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs, more than a decade before becoming the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice.

To combat disparities in education funding, the senator from Vermont is proposing large new investments in programs that serve high-poverty communities, support special needs students and augment local efforts to integrate school districts.'' That also includes a minimum on per-pupil spending in all school districts across the country, as well as a universal school meal plan and a goal of closingthe gap in school infrastructure funding to renovate, modernize and green the nation’s schools.” 

Sanders’ plan also proposes investment to raise starting teacher salaries to at least $60,000 a year, as well as grants and tax credits to help teachers defray the cost of school supplies. 

This is Sanders’ first major plan of this campaign for K-12 education reforms. Dating back to his 2016 run for president, Sanders has repeatedly addressed reforms in higher education, including making four-year college free. 

Other candidates’ plans

Some of the other nearly two dozen candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination have come out with their own plans for elementary and higher education. Earlier this year, Sen. Kamala Harris of California made her first campaign policy rollout a federal investment in teacher pay . 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has proposed alleviating almost all college debt for 42 million Americans, proposing an ultra-millionaire'' tax to fund the $640 billion cost. Earlier this week, Warren said her secretary of educationwill be a former public school teacher who is committed to public education.” 
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Democratic lawmakers say the Trump administration’s refusal to provide additional information and testimony relating to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report has plunged the U.S. into a constitutional crisis. The fight over just how much oversight the U.S. Congress should have over the White House has triggered a debate about the balance of power in the U.S. government. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports from Capitol Hill.
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Government auditors say Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson violated the law when his department spent more than $40,000 to purchase a dining set and a dishwasher for his office’s executive dining room

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson violated the law when his department spent more than $40,000 to purchase a dining set and a dishwasher for his office’s executive dining room, government auditors concluded.

In a report released Thursday, the Government Accountability Office said HUD failed to notify Congress before exceeding a $5,000 limit set by Congress to furnish or make improvements to the office of a presidential appointee. The dining set cost more than $31,000 and the dishwasher cost nearly $9,000.

Carson told lawmakers last year that he was unaware of the purchase and canceled it as soon as he learned about it in news reports. He also told a House Appropriations subcommittee that he left furniture purchasing decisions to his wife. But emails released by watchdog group American Oversight suggested that Carson and his wife, Candy Carson, both played a role in choosing the furniture.

The GAO said HUD did not break the law when it paid more than $4,000 for new blinds for Carson’s office suite.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees HUD, said that while the amount of money may be small, it’s a “willful disregard for the appropriate use” of taxpayer dollars.

“There needs to be more accountability at HUD and stronger oversight of the Trump Administration or else this pattern of unlawful behavior will continue, and I worry it won’t just be a small amount of money the next time,” Reed said in a statement.

HUD Chief Financial Officer Irv Dennis said the department has been working to improve its financial controls.

“Our job is to make sure systems are in place to protect every taxpayer dollar we spend and to restore sound financial management and stability to the way we do business,” Dennis said in a statement.
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Democrats in the House approved sweeping anti-discrimination legislation Friday that would extend civil rights protections to LGBT people by prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The protections would extend to employment, housing, loan applications, education, public accommodations and other areas. 

Called the Equality Act, the bill is a top priority of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said it would bring the nation “closer to equal liberty and justice for all.” 

Sexual orientation and gender identity “deserve full civil rights protections — in the workplace and in every place, education, housing, credit, jury service, public accommodations,” Pelosi said.  

The vote was 236-173, with every Democrat voting in favor, along with eight Republicans. Cheers and applause broke out on the House floor as the bill crossed the threshold for passage.  

The legislation’s chief sponsor, Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., said it affirmed fairness and equality as core American values and ensured that  “members of the LGBTQ community can live their lives free from the fear of legal discrimination of any kind.” 

Cicilline, who is gay, called equal treatment under the law a founding principle of the United States, adding, “It’s absurd that, in 2019, members of the LGBTQ community can be fired from their jobs, denied service in a restaurant or get thrown out of their apartment because of their sexual orientation or gender identify.” 

GOP opposition

Most Republicans oppose the bill and call it another example of government overreach. Several GOP lawmakers spoke against it Friday on the House floor. President Donald Trump is widely expected to veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. 

At a news conference Thursday, the Republicans said the bill would jeopardize religious freedom by requiring acceptance of a particular ideology about sexuality and sexual identity.  

Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., called the legislation grossly misnamed'' and said it wasanything but equalizing.” 

The bill hijacks'' the 1964 Civil Rights Act to createa brave new world of ‘discrimination’ based on undefined terms of sexual orientation and gender identity,” Hartzler said. The legislation threatens women’s sports, shelters and schools, and could silence female athletes, domestic abuse survivors and other women, she said. 

A similar bill in the Senate has been co-sponsored by all but one Senate Democrat, but faces long odds in the Republican-controlled chamber. 

‘Poison pills’ 

A Trump administration official who asked not be identified, because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the president’s intentions, said the White House “opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all. However, this bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.” 

Some critics also said the bill could jeopardize Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Former tennis star Martina Navratilova co-wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post urging lawmakers not to “make the unnecessary and ironic mistake of sacrificing the enormously valuable social good that is female sports in their effort to secure the rights of transgender women and girls.”  

Ahead of the vote, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., called the House bill “horrifying” and said it could cause Catholic schools to lose federal grants for school lunches or require faith-based adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples. 

Neena Chaudhry, a lawyer for the National Women’s Law Center, said the bill does not undermine Title IX, because courts have already found that Title IX protects against gender-identity discrimination. 

It is way past time to fully open the doors of opportunity for every American,'' said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., one of the Senate bill's lead sponsors.Let’s pass the Equality Act, and let us rejoice in the bells of freedom ringing for every American.” 

In the Senate, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine also supports the bill, while Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is the sole Democrat who is not a co-sponsor. 

The eight House Republicans who voted for the bill Friday were Reps. Susan Brooks of Indiana, Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Will Hurd of Texas, Greg Walden of Oregon and New York lawmakers John Katko, Tom Reed and Elise Stefanik.
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Bogged down in a sprawling trade dispute with U.S. rival China, President Donald Trump took steps Friday to ease tensions with America’s allies: lifting import taxes on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum and delaying auto tariffs that would have hurt Japan and Europe. 

By removing the metals tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump cleared a key roadblock to a North American trade pact his team negotiated last year. As part of Friday’s arrangement, the Canadians and Mexicans agreed to scrap retaliatory tariffs they had imposed on U.S. goods, according to four sources in the U.S. and Canada who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement. 

In a joint statement, the U.S. and Canada said they would work to prevent cheap imports of steel and aluminum from entering North America. China has long been accused of flooding world markets with subsidized metal, driving down world prices and hurting U.S. producers. 

Earlier Friday, the White House said Trump was delaying for six months any decision to slap tariffs on foreign cars, a move that would have hit Japan and the Europe especially hard.

Trump still is hoping to use the threat of auto tariffs to pressure Japan and the European Union into making concessions in trade talks. “If agreements are not reached within 180 days, the president will determine whether and what further action needs to be taken,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. 

Trade weapon

In imposing the metals tariffs and threatening the ones on autos, the president was relying on a rarely used weapon in the U.S. trade war arsenal — Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — which lets the president impose tariffs on imports if the Commerce Department deems them a threat to national security. 

But the steel and aluminum tariffs were also designed to coerce Canada and Mexico into agreeing to a rewrite of North American free trade pact. In fact, the Canadians and Mexicans did go along last year with a revamped regional trade deal that was to Trump’s liking. But the administration had refused to lift the taxes on their metals to the United States until Friday. 

The new trade deal — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — needs approval the legislatures in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Several key U.S. lawmakers were threatening to reject the pact unless the tariffs were removed. And Canada had suggested it wouldn’t ratify any deal while the tariffs were still in place. 
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Elizabeth Warren is calling for a series of targeted measures designed to safeguard abortion rights following a flurry of new state laws that dramatically restrict women’s ability to terminate pregnancies, moves Democrats have decried as a planned effort to chip away at the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Warren’s abortion rights platform, released Friday by her Democratic presidential campaign, centers on the establishment of “affirmative, statutory rights” that would “block states from interfering in the ability of a health care provider to provide medical care, including abortion services,” and sets similar restrictions on states’ power to block patients from getting medical care, including abortions.

Her proposals come as Missouri joins Alabama, Georgia and other states in advancing laws that limit abortion access — with Alabama’s law drawing skepticism from some anti-abortion Republicans as too draconian, given its lack of an exception for cases of rape or incest.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire to return to the world before Roe v. Wade,” Warren said in an online post announcing her ideas. “And so the time to act is now.”

The senator from Massachusetts also urged passage of legislation that would stop states from passing constraints on abortion providers that are built to avoid violating the 1973 Roe decision, in which the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to an abortion. Backers of the Alabama law have described it as a conscious attempt to get the Supreme Court to revisit and potentially overturn Roe.

Another element of Warren’s abortion-rights proposal urges passage of legislation that would prevent the government from imposing abortion-related restrictions on private health insurers. The presidential hopeful also joined several of her Democratic primary rivals in urging the rollback of a 1976 restriction on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, except for cases of rape, incest or pregnancies that imperil the life of a mother.

Warren also pushed for the rejection of limitations on abortion access proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration, including a rule that would block certain federally funded clinics from providing counsel regarding abortions as part of the family planning process.

She’s not the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for the codification of Roe’s ruling on abortion rights into law, an idea that would face significant resistance from congressional Republicans. Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also have endorsed the codification of abortion rights, while Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said Thursday that such a move “deserves to be taken seriously.”
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One of the crown jewels of U.S. President Donald Trump’s real estate empire generated millions of dollars in revenue last year, reinforcing questions about the president’s businesses profiting from foreign and state government officials.

The luxury Trump International Hotel Washington, housed in the historic Old Post Office Pavilion building, brought in nearly $41 in million last year, a tad higher than the previous year, according to Trump’s latest financial disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics and released Thursday.

The disclosure, required of all senior government officials, offers a snapshot of Trump’s debts, assets and income in broad ranges across hundreds of businesses he owns. In all, Trump reported income of at least $434 million for 2018, a decline from at least $450 million reported for 2017.

Not all Trump properties saw their revenue go up last year, however. Income at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s “Winter White House” in Palm Beach, Fla., fell $2.5 million to $22.7 million, according to the disclosure.

​Conflicts of interest

Since taking office, the real estate mogul-turned-president has faced persistent criticism over his refusal to divest his assets, a decision critics say has created conflicts between his business and political interests.

Opened in late 2016, Trump’s Washington hotel, just blocks from the White House, is one of the most high-profile in his portfolio of hospitality properties and frequently attracts diplomats, corporate executives and other deep-pocketed guests. It has become a lightning rod for those critics who have accused the president of illegally profiting from foreign diplomats and state government officials who frequent the property.

To ameliorate those concerns, Trump pledged before entering the White House to donate all foreign government profits at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury. In 2017, the Trump Organization voluntarily turned over more than $150,000 in profits from foreign governments to the Treasury, the company said last year. The company hasn’t said how much if any it donated last year.

Still, questions remain about whether Trump remains in violation of a clause of the U.S. Constitution that prohibits officials from accepting gifts or “emoluments” from foreign and state government officials without congressional approval.

In 2017, more than 200 Democratic members of Congress as well as the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland filed lawsuits against Trump, accusing him of violating the Constitution’s foreign and domestic emoluments clauses.

The president’s legal team has rejected the argument and sought to get the lawsuits dismissed.

Last month, a federal judge in the case brought by congressional members ruled they could move ahead with their lawsuit.

Just how much of the revenue at Trump’s Washington hotel comes from foreign and state government officials remains unclear. Several foreign embassies have reportedly hosted functions there at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.

‘Potential violation’

Scott Amey, the general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based ethics watchdog, said those suing Trump can cite the revenue at the Old Post Office to argue that “there is a potential violation here.”

Ultimately, though, the U.S. Supreme Court may have to intervene in the case and decide what an emolument is, Amey said.

“There are some legal arguments being made by Trump’s team that hotel revenues and income aren’t considered an emolument,” he said.

The controversy over emoluments is one of several questions surrounding Trump’s business interests.

​The New York Times reported earlier this month that Trump’s businesses lost more than $1 billion between 1985 and 1994, allowing him to avoid paying taxes for eight of those 10 years.

Trump called the report “a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job,” tweeting that real estate developers in the 1980s and 1990s were entitled to “massive write-offs and depreciation.”

Trump, breaking with a recent presidential tradition, refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service.

Democrats in the House of Representatives have subpoenaed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig to turn over Trump’s personal tax filings for the past six years to the House Ways and Means Committee by Friday. Mnuchin has signaled he won’t comply with the subpoena.

In his financial disclosure form last year, Trump disclosed that he had reimbursed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, between $100,000 and $250,000 for unspecified “expenses” incurred in 2016, an apparent reference to the $130,000 in hush money Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the campaign.

Cohen told members of Congress in March that in the end he received $420,000 from Trump, more than triple the amount he had paid Daniels. Trump’s latest financial disclosure doesn’t account for the discrepancy.
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Thursday that his panel would vote on “enforcement action” against Attorney General William Barr or the Justice Department next week, another escalation in the standoff between Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration over documents and testimony. 

Schiff is scheduling the vote after the Justice Department missed a Wednesday deadline to hand over an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The department also declined to hand over what Schiff described as “a dozen narrow sets of documents” that were referred to in the report. 

He said he requested those documents in order to gauge whether the department was acting in good faith. 

“The deadline came and went without the production of a single document, raising profound questions about whether the department has any intention to honor its legal obligations,” Schiff said. 

He would not say whether “enforcement action” meant a vote to hold Barr in contempt, as the House Judiciary Committee did last week, or some sort of civil action. Democrats have also been suggesting they might impose fines through what’s called inherent contempt of Congress. 

Schiff, D-Calif., said he encouraged the Justice Department to cooperate before the vote occurs. “If they don’t demonstrate some good faith we will be forced to compel them to honor their legal commitments,” he said.  

Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “nothing is off the table” in pushing the White House to comply with subpoenas for information, including fines. 

Pelosi, D-Calif., said she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But she called the White House counsel’s Wednesday letter to the Judiciary Committee resisting all requests for information “a joke” and “beneath the dignity of the president of the United States.” 

White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent a 12-page letter to the committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., labeling congressional investigations as efforts to “harass” Trump in the wake of Mueller’s probe. The letter said that current and former administration officials would not be permitted to testify and that the administration would fight subpoenas as Democrats moved to investigate Trump’s presidency and finances. 

Cipollone also argued in the letter that Congress was a legislature, not a law enforcement body, and did not have a right to pursue most investigations. 

Nadler responded to Cipollone with his own letter Thursday evening, saying the White House’s refusal to comply was “astounding and dangerous.” 

He said a Justice Department opinion that says a president can’t be indicted holds the president above the law, so Congress “is therefore the only branch of government able to hold the president to account.”  

The Judiciary Committee “urgently requires the subpoenaed material to determine whether and how to proceed with its constitutional duty to provide checks and balances on the president and executive branch,” Nadler said, adding that the panel needed to better understand Russia’s efforts to try to influence the 2016 election. 

Pelosi also noted that one of the constitutional purposes of congressional investigations was impeachment. “It doesn’t mean you’re going on an impeachment path,” Pelosi said. “It means if you had the information, you might.” 

She said House Democrats aimed to “subpoena friendly,” then “subpoena otherwise.” 
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