Her first shot landed short and her teammate’s bounced away. But Kirsten Gillibrand’s second ping pong ball splashed home and she threw both arms skyward while her opponents chugged, celebrating a beer pong victory in the most presidential way possible.

 

The scene on a rainy Friday night in a bar in Nashua, New Hampshire’s second-largest city, follows a pattern for the 52-year-old New York senator. She’s trailed better-known rivals in the packed Democratic 2020 presidential field in polling and fundraising, but she’s making a case for being the coolest candidate in the race.

 

Driving between New Hampshire events in February, she stopped to go sledding. She’s played foosball and baked cookies, arm wrestled and hung out with drag queens at an Iowa bar some call “Gay Cheers.”

 

Other candidates have also sought humanizing moments. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker played Pac Man at a New Hampshire video arcade, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren danced her way through the 2017 gay pride parade in Boston and, while visiting South Carolina in February, Sen. Kamala Harris of California was goaded into trying on, and eventually buying, a multicolored, sequined jacket.

 

“I’m aware it probably comes across as a gimmick, but in real life it came across as genuine,” said Shaye Weldon, Gillibrand’s beer pong teammate.

 

As state director of engagement for the New Hampshire Young Democrats, Weldon meets a lot of presidential candidates — but had never played beer pong with any.

 

“It’s a moment when I see she’s a real person,” she said of Gillibrand, who sipped most of the night from a glass of a craft, imperial ale called Imp IPA.

Such scenes can feature that most-valued political commodity: authenticity — at least to a point.

 

Gillibrand’s campaign turned the beer pong game into an online ad, freeze framing the candidate mid-toss and seeking donations:”If Kirsten makes this shot” before letting the scene roll to reveal that she does. And an Associated Press analysis of financial disclosures each candidate filed through March showed that Gillibrand spent nearly $840,000 on “communications consulting” services — more than any other Democratic 2020 presidential candidate who listed similar expenditures.

 

Spokesman Evan Lukaske said doing things presidential candidates don’t typically do comes naturally to Gillibrand — not as a result of paid advice. He noted that many of the non-traditional campaign moments came with little or no press around and got noticed organically via social media.

 

That’s been the case for other candidates as well. Beto O’Rourke first solidified his national standing in Democratic circles last summer, after a video of him defending NFL players’ national anthem protests was viewed by millions. But he also spent hundreds of previous hours livestreaming more mundane moments to minuscule audiences, which watched him getting his haircut, doing laundry and driving seemingly endless hours to campaign events as he ran unsuccessfully for Senate in Texas.

O’Rourke has shunned political consultants, but also had unscripted-moment missteps, like when he was mocked for posting part of his teeth cleaning online.

 

With 20-plus Democrats vying for the White House, getting noticed is difficult. Still, Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said trying to catch fire doing non-presidential-candidate things isn’t as important as building support in the first two states that vote in the primary, Iowa and New Hampshire, because most voters elsewhere won’t really begin noticing until those races are over.

 

“There’s no point trying to run a media campaign now,” Murray said. “One, no one’s paying attention. And, two, if you bomb in Iowa and New Hampshire, everything you spent trying to build up a national image is worthless.”

 

As valuable as appearing effortlessly authentic can be, trying too hard to achieve it can backfire.

 

A rap song backing Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential bid tried rhyming his last name with “awesome,” Hillary Clinton’s 2015 Saturday Night Live appearance as Val the bartender fizzled and President Gerald Ford, while visiting San Antonio in 1976, took a bite out of a tamale without knowing to remove the corn husk first.

 

More recently, Warren faced criticism for attempting to seem overly down-homey when she declared on Instagram from her kitchen on New Years Eve, “I’m gonna get me a beer” before grabbing a Michelob Ultra.

 

“There’s always a risk … that the effort to show the candidate acting like a real person shows them not to be a real person because they’ve spent their entire life in politics,” said Adam Sheingate, author of “Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy.”

 

Sheingate, chairman of the political science department at Johns Hopkins University, said that U.S. elections are now heavily tied to candidate personality and “a lot of voters kind of know this, and so, as a result, these kinds of efforts that are overly crafted images can fall flat because it’s like, ‘Whatever. We know why they’re doing this.'”

 

“But candidates will do it anyway,” he added, “because they have to get their name out there.”
…

Twenty of his rivals have lined up to run for president, believing the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination was wide open. But one week after launching his campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden is threatening to prove them wrong.

 

His liabilities may be glaring, but the 76-year-old lifelong politician has quickly emerged as the front-runner in the crowded contest by dominating the debate that matters most to many voters: electability.

 

Biden’s chief opponents privately concede that, for now at least, he has successfully cast himself as the candidate who can take down President Donald Trump. He may be out of step with the heart of the party on key issues, but Biden opens the race backed by a broad coalition of voters attracted to his personality, his governing experience and his working-class background — all elements that help convince voters he is better positioned than any other Democrat to deny Trump a second term.

One after another, voters who filled a community center in South Carolina’s capital to see Biden this weekend described him as a safe, comforting and competent counterpoint to the turbulent Trump presidency.

 

“With him you feel whole, and the country would be whole again,” said 62-year-old Barbara Pearson, who is African American and has long worked for county government. “I think he meets this moment.”

 

“I like Biden,” said 21-year-old University of South Carolina senior Justin Walker, who is white. “We know him. We know where he’s been. We don’t know that about the others.”

 

Biden’s strong start, evidenced by strong fundraising and polling, has caught the attention of his opponents. Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have already begun to turn on Biden, at least subtly, highlighting his reliance on rich donors and his record on trade, foreign policy and health care that is out of step with the party’s more liberal wing.

 

“Obviously the vice president has had a very good first week,” Sanders’ chief strategist Jeff Weaver said. “This is an incredibly long campaign. And I think as voters see the contrasts between the candidates on both a policy level and an electability level, you’re going to see wild swings in these numbers.”

 

In the midst of his inaugural national tour as a 2020 presidential contender, Biden is largely ignoring his Democratic opponents and focusing on Trump.

 

“Another four years of Trump,” Biden told South Carolina voters, would “fundamentally change the character of this nation.”

 

“Above all else, we must defeat Donald Trump,” he declared.

 

So far, at least, the message appears to be resonating.

John Anzalone, a veteran Democratic pollster who has advised Biden, highlighted the breadth of his early support, which touches on virtually every key Democratic voting bloc.

 

“People don’t understand the foundation of his support,” he said. “He leads with every demographic.”

 

Polls by CNN and Quinnipiac University over the last week show Biden with significant advantages among whites and nonwhites, those over and under 50 years old, non-college graduates and college graduates, those who make more and those who make less than $50,000 each year, and both moderate and liberal Democrats.

 

Biden’s fast start comes amid vocal concerns from energized liberal activists, who believe he’s not aligned with the Democratic base.

 

He has refused to endorse “Medicare for All,” a national program that would guarantee health insurance for every American, preferring to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s health care law, and allow people to select a “public option” featuring Medicare-style coverage. He has also refused to back away from his support for trade deals, none more significant than the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has become unpopular among liberals and conservatives alike.

 

Rival campaigns suggest Biden’s record on trade could undermine his popularity with working-class voters in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Should his perceived strength in the Midwest fade, his electability argument could fade as well.

 

Biden’s skeptics in both parties believe that above all, his performance while campaigning will determine whether he maintains his early strength. Few have confidence it will last.

 

Biden has a well-known propensity for verbal gaffes. And being closer to 80 than 70, he shows his age at times. He rambled through parts of his Saturday address, losing his train of thought and the audience more than once.

 

In just the last week, he has been mocked for downplaying the threat from China. He also muddled his initial effort to apologize to Anita Hill, whom he forced through aggressive questioning from an all-male Senate panel after she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment nearly three decades ago.

 

“I think he’s the front-runner, but it would be a mistake to think that is going to last,” said Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a South Carolina Democratic state representative and president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.

 

For one thing, she said, the African American vote will be fractured in 2020 given the presence of several candidates of color. At the Columbia rally on Saturday, many voters cited California Sen. Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, as a top choice behind Biden.

 

While skeptical of his staying power, Cobb-Hunter acknowledged Biden’s early advantage on the electability argument.

 

“What he does have going for him is a real solid belief he can take out Trump,” she said. “Biden so far has that aura.”

 

A big part of the aura comes from stronger-than-expected fundraising.

 

In the weeks before his announcement, Biden’s team aggressively fretted about his ability to raise money. So when he bested his rivals by raising $6.3 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate, the political class was impressed.

 

Supporters say it was a textbook example of managing expectations, belied by the fact that aides were building a professional campaign with a deep fundraising network drawing on his connection to Obama.

 

“The way he launched his campaign was exactly the way you would have historically launched: Managing expectations and then blowing them out of the water,” said Rufus Gifford, Obama’s former finance director.

 

Yet his supporters, like his rivals, are acutely aware that the campaign has barely begun.

 

“Joe Biden is currently the front-runner. Obviously, if you are in that position you become more of a target,” said Biden donor Jon Cooper of New York. “We all realize that the hard work is ahead of us.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said Special Counsel Robert Mueller should not testify in Congress about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump said on Twitter that Democrats in Congress were seeking a “redo” of Mueller’s report, which declined to conclude whether the president’s efforts to impede the investigation constituted obstruction of justice.

“Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!” Trump tweeted.

The Mueller report chronicled Russian efforts to help Trump win election in 2016 but found that Trump and his campaign did not engage in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

The Republican president has derided the investigation as a costly “witch hunt” and sought to characterize the report’s findings as a victory.

The Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee appears closest to arranging for Mueller to testify, possibly as soon as May 15.

Attorney General William Barr, under fire from Democrats for his handling of the report’s release, has said he has no problem

with Mueller testifying.

Barr is headed for another showdown with Congress on Monday if he fails to meet a morning deadline to hand over the full, unredacted Mueller report requested by Democrats.
…

President Donald Trump’s latest choice to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a former border patrol chief under the Obama administration who has publicly backed the president’s border wall.

 

Trump tweeted on Sunday that Mark Morgan “will be joining the Trump Administration as the head of our hard working men and women of ICE.” He added: “Mark is a true believer and American Patriot. He will do a great job!”

 

The announcement follows a shake-up at the Department of Homeland Security triggered by the president’s frustration with the increasing number of migrants at the border. The shake-up started last month, when Trump withdrew Ron Vitiello’s nomination to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement midway through the confirmation process. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen then resigned, along with Undersecretary for Management Claire Grady, who was in line to be her successor.

 

Morgan, who was named the head of the U.S. Border Patrol in 2016, was ousted early in Trump’s presidency. It was not immediately clear if he had been formally nominated for the new role, which will require Senate confirmation.

 

The acting Homeland Security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, said in a statement that Morgan’s “record of service is needed to address the crisis at the border and support the men and women of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

 

A former FBI agent, Morgan was the first and so far the only outsider to lead the Border Patrol. He clashed with its union, which has a strong relationship with Trump. Since he left, he has defended Trump’s immigration policies on Fox News and publicly declared earlier this year his support for Trump’s efforts to build a wall along the southern border.

 

In April, Trump made his appreciation known, tweeting: “Mark Morgan, President Obama’s Border Patrol Chief, gave the following message to me: ‘President Trump, stay the course.’ I agree, and believe it or not, we are making great progress with a system that has been broken for many years!”

 

ICE is the agency tasked with enforcing immigration law in the interior of the U.S. Part of ICE’s mission is to arrest immigrants in the U.S. illegally, which has made it a symbol of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
…

Witches were still being burned at the stake when Sir Matthew Hale came up with his legal theory that rape could not happen within marriage. The 17th century English jurist declared it legally impossible because wedding vows implied a wife’s ongoing consent to sex.

Three and a half centuries later, vestiges of the so-called “marital rape exemption” or “spousal defense” still exist in most states, remnants of the English common law that helped inform American legal traditions. Legislative attempts to end or modify those exemptions have a mixed record but have received renewed attention in the #MeToo era.

Minnesota acts

The most recent efforts to roll back protections for spouses focus on rapes that happen when a partner is drugged, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. Minnesota is the latest to take action. Its Legislature this week voted to eliminate the exemption, which had prevented prosecutions in those cases.

“No longer will this antiquated and shameful law be on our books,” Gov. Tim Walz said as he signed the bill into law Thursday. “The concept of a pre-existing relationship defense should have never been part of our criminal statutes.”

​A fight in Ohio

In Ohio, determined opponents plan to re-introduce a marital rape bill this month, after two earlier attempts failed.

Former lawmaker and prosecutor Greta Johnson was the first to introduce the Ohio legislation in 2015. She said having to address whether a woman was married to her attacker as part of sexual assault prosecutions struck her as “appalling and archaic.”

“Certainly, there was a marital exemption lifted years ago, but it was just for what in the prosecutorial world we call the force element — by force or threat of force,” she said. “You could still drug your spouse and have sex with them, and it’s not rape. You could commit sexual imposition against your spouse, and it’s not a crime. It was really troubling.”

All 50 states had laws making marital rape a crime by 1993, whether as a result of the two preceding decades of activism by women’s rights groups or because of a pivotal court ruling. Nearly 9% of women and 0.8% of men have been raped by an intimate partner, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National surveys have placed the percentage of women raped within marriage between 10% and 14%.

Still, many states’ marital rape laws have loopholes, not only involving the victim’s capacity to consent, but related to age, relationship, use of force or the nature of the penetration. Some impose short timeframes for victims to report spousal rape.

Skeptical in Maryland

A recent Maryland bill sought to erase the marital exemption for all sex crimes.

During discussion of the bill, one skeptical male lawmaker wondered whether a spouse might be charged with sexual assault for “smacking the other’s behind” during an argument. Maryland Del. Frank Conaway Jr., a Baltimore Democrat, raised religious concerns.

“If your religion believes if you’re married, two are as one body, then what happens? Can you get a religious exemption?” he asked.

“No, I would actually say that the First Amendment would prevent the state from getting entangled in that sort of judgment,” replied Lisae Jordan, executive director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “So you would have to rely on your faith and your commitment to that to not bring those charges. But that’s no place for the General Assembly.”

The bill died in March.

Common rationales

Professor D. Kelly Weisberg of the University of California Hastings College of the Law said the Maryland debate touched on some of the common rationales for the marital rape exemption over the centuries.

One is Hale’s premise from the 1670s that marriage implies irrevocable consent and even property rights by the husband over his wife and her body. Those ideas have never truly disappeared, said Weisberg, author of a new reference book on domestic violence law.

She said other arguments for such laws are that marital privacy is a constitutional right, as when spouses can’t be forced to testify against one another in court, that marital rape isn’t serious enough to criminalize and that it would be difficult to prove.

For those and other reasons, Weisberg said marital rape laws have not kept pace with other domestic violence laws. That means in some cases an unmarried domestic partner has more legal protections against attack than a spouse.

One woman’s story

Changing attitudes — and laws — about marital rape is what drove Jenny Teeson to go public this year with her story.

The 39-year-old from Andover, Minnesota, was going through a divorce in 2017 when she discovered a flash drive with videos taken by her husband. They showed him penetrating her with an object while she lay drugged and unconscious. In one, their 4-year-old lay next to her on the bed.

Teeson turned the videos over to the police. After an investigation, her husband was charged with third-degree criminal sexual assault against an incapacitated victim. Charges were brought in the morning, but dropped by afternoon because of the state’s marital rape exemption.

“I was beside myself,” she told The Associated Press.

Her ex-husband ultimately pleaded guilty to a gross misdemeanor charge of invading her privacy and served 30 days in the county jail. Still shocked that he could not be charged with a felony because of the state law, Teeson decided to take action.

“I thought if I can’t have the law be in place to keep myself, my kids and my community safe, I could wallow in it, or I could do something about it,” she said.

The AP does not normally identify victims of sexual assault, but Teeson has shared her story publicly, including during testimony before legislative committees. Democratic state Sen. Karla Bigham credited Teeson’s advocacy for persuading lawmakers to pass the bill.

“She had to relive the trauma every time she shared her story,” Bigham told her colleagues during a debate in the Senate chamber this past week. “Her voice speaks loudly to those women who deserve justice. Let’s do the right thing. Let’s right this wrong.”

17 states

AEquitas, a resource for prosecutors, reported last month that 17 states still maintain some form of the exemption for spouses who rape partners when they are drugged or otherwise incapacitated: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Washington and Wyoming.

In Ohio, state Rep. Kristin Boggs, a Democrat, said she’s not optimistic the upcoming version of the marital rape bill will be any more successful in the Republican-controlled Legislature than it has been in the past.

But at least one past opponent — the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association — has evolved on the issue. Executive Director Lou Tobin said he expects the group will support a bill that seeks to eliminate the exemption.

“In the past, I know that there’s been some concern that these cases are difficult to prove; they can be a lot of he-said, she-said back and forth,” Tobin said. “But sorting through those things is what prosecutors are for.”

Boggs’ bill would again call for removing references to the marital exemption throughout Ohio’s criminal code. Her argument in favor of it is straightforward.

“Our rationale for introducing this legislation is simply that your legal relationship to another human being shouldn’t give you permission to rape them,” she said.
…

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Saturday that he’d reached an agreement with key lawmakers on a plan to legalize recreational marijuana in the state starting next year. 

 

The legislation would allow adults 21 and older to legally buy cannabis for recreational use from licensed dispensaries. Illinois residents could possess up to about an ounce (30 grams) of marijuana, while nonresidents could possess about half an ounce (15 grams).

The measure also would automatically expunge some marijuana convictions. 

 

If it passes, Illinois would join 10 other states, including neighboring Michigan, in legalizing recreational marijuana. While the Illinois law would take effect Jan. 1, the first licenses for Illinois growers, processors and dispensaries wouldn’t be issued until May and July 2020, the governor’s office said.

Pritzker was joined by fellow Democratic lawmakers in Chicago to announce the deal, which comes after years of discussion among state legislators. They said the measure would be introduced Monday, kicking off debate at the Legislature, where Democrats hold a majority in both chambers.

The proposal “starts righting some historic wrongs” against minority communities that have suffered from discriminatory drug policies and enforcement, the new governor said.

“This bill advances equity by providing resources and second chances to people and communities that have been harmed by policies such as the failed ‘war on drugs,’ ” said Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is black.

The measure includes a $20 million low-interest loan program to help defray the costs of starting a licensed cannabis business for social equity applicants.'' Those applicants would include people who have lived in adisproportionately impacted area” — or communities with high rates of poverty and high rates of arrest and incarceration for marijuana offenses — or been arrested or convicted of offenses eligible for expungement.

Critics of legalization, including law enforcement and the Illinois NAACP, have said it would lead to more addiction and mental health issues and would harm rather than help black communities. 

 

The consequences of this bill are far-reaching and will have devastating impacts on citizens, communities and youth,'' said Kevin Samet, founder and president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.Illinois lawmakers must take a smart, commonsense approach, and not welcome in another addiction-for-profit industry into the state.” 

 

Medical cannabis is already legal in Illinois. Pritzker campaigned on the issue of legalizing recreational marijuana and is counting on $170 million from licensing fees in his proposed state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. He’s said future revenue from legal marijuana will help Illinois address some of its deep financial problems.

The governor’s office said 35% of revenue from legal cannabis would go to the state’s general operating fund, while an additional 25% would go into a new Restoring Our Communities fund. That money would be distributed as grants to communities that “have suffered the most because of discriminatory drug policies.”

Illinois would use 10% of revenue to pay a backlog of unpaid bills. The rest of the money would support mental health and substance abuse treatment, law enforcement grants, and public education and awareness. 
…

Nearly three months into his second tenure at the helm of the U.S Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr finds himself in a hornet’s nest he once sought to avoid. 

In June 2017, just as special counsel Robert Mueller was widening his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, Barr, then a lawyer in private practice in Washington, was ushered into the Oval Office. 

President Donald Trump was beefing up his legal defense team amid allegations that his campaign had colluded with Russia. Trump wanted to know whether the semiretired Barr was “envisioning some role here,” but Barr said he wasn’t. 

 “I didn’t want to stick my head into that meat grinder,” Barr recalled during his confirmation hearing in January.

The Republican attorney general faces a barrage of criticism and a possible contempt vote by House Democrats over his characterizations of Mueller’s final report, including charges that he’s acted more like Trump’s personal lawyer than an independent broker.

Trump had a famously fraught relationship with his first attorney general, former Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whom he publicly belittled for allowing the Justice Department to investigate him. 

Critics say that in Barr, who first served as attorney general in the administration of former President George H. W. Bush, Trump has finally found a partisan willing to stick up for him. 

“We have a chief law enforcement officer who is definitely the defense lawyer for the president,” Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, one of Trump’s staunchest critics in Congress, said during an acrimonious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mueller report on Wednesday.

Hirono and some other Democrats have been calling on the attorney general to resign for failing to divulge, in earlier congressional appearances, that Mueller had complained that Barr had not fully conveyed the findings of his report critical of Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Barr had lied to Congress and called it a “crime.”

Justice Department officials have called the allegations scurrilous and say the attorney general has no intention of stepping down.

The controversy gripping Washington started after Mueller submitted a 448-page report on his investigation to Barr on March 22.  The report concluded that there was insufficient evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to support charges, but it left unanswered the question of whether Trump had obstructed justice despite citing 11 instances of potential obstruction.

Barr said he was puzzled by Mueller’s indecision, so he and his No. 2, Rod Rosenstein, examined the evidence and concluded there weren’t sufficient grounds to charge Trump with obstruction of justice.

Barr’s legal determination, first outlined in a March 24 summary letter to Congress, outraged Democrats.  Many worried that it enabled Trump to claim “total vindication” before the full report was released.  

The attacks on the attorney general’s actions reached a crescendo this week after it emerged that Mueller had complained in a letter to Barr that his summary to Congress “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance” of his conclusions.

Barr’s defenders say the attorney general followed Justice Department regulations and had no choice but to make a legal determination about a question Mueller had left unanswered. 

“He and he alone as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States was left with the burden and the responsibility to do something after he got that report,” said Charles Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.  “I don’t think Attorney General Barr was necessarily saying, ‘I approve of the president’s conduct here.’ ”

The attorney general, Stimson said, had made good on a pledge he made at his January confirmation that he would not interfere with the Mueller investigation and that he’d release as much information as possible to Congress and the public.

“I think what’s really undergirding all of the angst and anger on the side of the Democrats is that the Mueller report did not find collusion,” Stimson said.

Tim Flanigan, a former assistant attorney general under Barr in the early 1990s, rejected the Democrats’ depiction of Barr as Trump’s defense lawyer.

“I can understand why they’re making that characterization for political purposes, but it has no basis in fact,” said Flanigan, who is now the chief legal officer for Cancer Treatment Centers of America.  “I’m very familiar with the way the independent counsel regulations function, and it seems to me that Bill has, in every step of the way, performed exactly the duties that he was required to do.”
…

Democratic presidential hopeful Jay Inslee, as part of his pledge to make combating climate change the top national priority, is calling for the nation’s entire electrical grid and all new vehicles and buildings to be carbon pollution free by 2030. 

 

It’s the first major policy proposal from the Washington governor as he tries to gain a foothold in a field of more than 20 candidates. 

 

The plan, the first piece of a series of climate action proposals from Inslee, would represent a national shift from coal-powered plants and traditional fuel engines in vehicles, while requiring an overhaul in the way most buildings are heated and cooled. Inslee’s outline would require legislation and executive action, some of it similar to what Inslee has pushed during his six-plus years as governor, but on a scale not seen at the federal level. 

 

Inslee, who announced his campaign in March, has not yet attached a public or private cost estimate for a wide-ranging approach that would involve some direct federal spending, tax subsidies, and outlays by utilities and the private sector. He argues that doing nothing would cost more and that investments in clean energy will create millions of jobs to spur the economy, with that developing market and targeted government programs ensuring a stable transition for existing coal workers. 

​Worthy of “can-do nation”

 

This is the approach that is worthy of the ambitions of a can-do nation and answers the absolute necessity of action that is defined by science,'' Inslee told The Associated Press, adding that President Donald Trump's denial of climate change willdoom us” to a stagnant or declining economy repeatedly hammered with natural disasters. 

 

“We are already paying through the nose” through increased insurance rates and federal disaster declarations, he said. ”And there’s a heckuva lot more jobs defeating climate change than there are in denying it.” 

 

Trump has called climate change a Chinese hoax,'' and he used a cold snap that hit much of the nation in January to again cast doubts, tweeting,People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming (sic)? Please come back fast, we need you!” But the Pentagon and the Republican president’s intelligence team have mentioned climate change as a national security threat. 

 

Inslee pitched his proposal Friday in Los Angeles at the city’s new clean-energy bus depot. 

 

He emphasizes that many U.S. cities and states already have set ambitious timelines for carbon emissions reductions but that there must be national action. Washington state this spring passed a law requiring that all power produced in the state be zero-emission by 2045; California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Puerto Rico have adopted similar requirements. 

 

Inslee’s appearance with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who considered a presidential bid, came days after former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who’s also running for president, went to Yosemite National Park to announce his own climate action plan that he says would require $5 trillion of public and private spending to put the economy on track to be carbon neutral by 2050. 

​Longtime advocate

 

Climate change has garnered more attention in the early months of the 2020 nominating fight than it did four years ago, but Inslee noted that he’s still the lone major candidate making climate action the centerpiece of a campaign, and he touted his decades of climate advocacy as a member of Congress and as governor. 

 

Inslee, 68, said climate action “has been a lifetime passion for me.” 

 

Some highlights of Inslee’s proposal: 

 

— Utilities would be required to achieve 100% carbon neutral electricity production by 2030 and reach zero-emission production by 2035. Inslee proposes refundable tax credits to help spur the development, and his plan calls for “guaranteeing support” for existing energy sector workers who lose jobs or otherwise are negatively affected in a transition to clean energy. 

 

— All light-duty passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks and buses would be required to be zero-emission by 2030. Vehicles already in service would be exempted, though a “Clean Cars for Clunkers” program would provide rebates when consumers trade old vehicles for new, zero-emission models. The plan would expand business and individual tax credits to encourage production and purchase of zero-emission vehicles. 

 

— A national Zero-Carbon Building Standard would be created by 2023, helping states and cities redevelop their own building codes for residential and commercial construction. Tax incentives for builders and buyers would be used to encourage energy-efficient heating and cooling systems in construction. 

 

— All federal agencies would be brought under the 2030 timeline. That includes everything from making the government’s vehicle fleet zero-emission to using federal lands and property, including offshore waters, to capture and distribute more wind and solar power.
…

The House Judiciary Committee is threatening to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress if he does not comply with a new Monday deadline for providing special counsel Robert Mueller’s full, unredacted report on his Russia probe and some underlying materials.

 

The new offer from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler comes after the Justice Department missed the committee’s earlier deadline for the information. Nadler slightly narrowed his offer in a new letter to Barr on Friday, saying the committee would limit its request for underlying materials to those directly cited in the report.

 

He also asked for the department to work with Congress to seek a court order for secret grand jury materials, a request Barr has previously denied.

 

“The Committee is prepared to make every realistic effort to reach an accommodation with the department,” Nadler wrote to Barr. “But if the department persists in its baseless refusal to comply with a validly issued subpoena, the committee will move to contempt proceedings and seek further legal recourse.”

No show

The contempt threat comes a day after Barr skipped a Judiciary panel hearing on Mueller’s report amid a dispute over how Barr would be questioned. Nadler said after that hearing that he would give the Justice Department one more chance to send the full report and then he would move forward with holding Barr in contempt. Nadler set a 9 a.m. Monday deadline for the Justice Department to respond to the latest offer.

 

Democrats have assailed Barr’s handling of the Mueller report and questioned the truthfulness of his statements to Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she believed Barr had lied about his communications with Mueller in testimony last month, and that was a “crime.” Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec called Pelosi’s accusation “reckless, irresponsible and false.”

 

In the letter, Nadler wrote to Barr that “Congress’s constitutional, oversight and legislative interest in investigating misconduct by the President and his associates cannot be disputed.”

 

In terms of the underlying materials, Nadler said the committee wants to see witness interviews and “items such as contemporaneous notes” that are cited in the report. He also asked that all members of Congress be allowed to review an unredacted version of the report. The Justice Department has made a less redacted version available for House and Senate leaders and some committee heads, but the Democrats have said that is not enough and have so far declined to read it.

 

The Justice Department declined to comment on the new letter. But White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that she believes “at no point will it ever be enough” for Democrats.

 

“It is astonishing to me that not a single Democrat has yet to go read the less redacted version of the report, yet they keep asking for more,” Sanders said.

 

 

 
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Democrats are threatening to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for canceling his appearance Thursday, further escalating legal and power struggles between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats. The latest development signals rising tensions in a growing and potentially historic conflict over the balance of powers between America’s executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
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The U.S. State Department allowed seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York’s Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, in what some experts say could be a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause.

The 90-story Manhattan building, part of the real estate empire of Donald Trump, had housed diplomats and foreign officials before the property developer became president. But now that he is in the White House, such transactions must be approved by federal lawmakers, some legal experts say. The emoluments clause bans U.S. officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments without congressional consent.

The rental transactions, dating from the early months of Trump’s presidency and first disclosed by Reuters, could add to mounting scrutiny of his business dealings with foreign governments, which are now the subject of multiple lawsuits.

Committee ‘stonewalled’​

Congressional staffers confirmed to Reuters that the Trump World Tower lease requests were never submitted to Congress.

Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said his committee has been “stonewalled” in its efforts to obtain detailed information about foreign government payments to Trump’s businesses.

“This new information raises serious questions about the president and his businesses’ potential receipt of payments from foreign governments,” Cummings said in a statement to Reuters. “The American public deserves full transparency.”

A State Department spokesperson referred Reuters to the Justice Department because the subject involved “matters related to ongoing litigation.” The Justice Department declined to comment. The White House referred a request for comment to the State Department and the Trump Organization, which declined to comment before publication.

​Units owned by others

Following publication of this article, Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten sent an email to Reuters describing the story as “inaccurate” and “misleading.” He said Trump World Tower is owned by its third-party condominium owners and therefore Trump would not receive proceeds from the lease of such units.

Six legal experts said that regardless of who owns those units, the fact that Trump was collecting fees for managing the building while foreign governments were paying to live there represents a potential breach of the emoluments clause.

The 1982 Foreign Missions Act requires foreign governments to get State Department clearance for any purchase, lease, sale or other use of a property in the United States. Through the Freedom of Information Act, Reuters obtained diplomatic notes sent to the agency under this requirement from early 2015 until late 2017.

The records show that in the eight months following Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration, foreign governments sent 13 notes to the State Department seeking permission to rent or renew leases in Trump World Tower. That is more solicitations from foreign governments for new or renewed leases in that building than in the previous two years combined.

Which governments are renting?

The governments of Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Thailand and the European Union got the green light to rent a combined eight units in Trump World Tower and followed through with leases, according to other documents viewed by Reuters and people familiar with the leases. Five of those governments, Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and the European Union, had also sought to rent units there in 2015 and 2016, State Department records showed.

Reuters could not confirm whether the State Department signed off on two other lease requests from Algeria and South Korea and three additional requests from Kuwait.

“Letting this go without Congress knowing about it condones the creation of a second, opaque track of foreign policy,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor at Yale Law School and former legal adviser at the State Department. “What it might lead to is a group of countries enriching the people in power on the mistaken belief that it’s going to improve their access.”

​Trump World Tower vs. Trump Tower

The 18-year-old luxury skyscraper is next to the United Nations headquarters near the East River, and is not to be confused with Trump Tower, the Fifth Avenue landmark where Trump maintains a residence.

Although Garten, the attorney, contended the emoluments question is moot because Trump World Tower units are owned by third parties, Trump does earn income through the Trump Corporation, a Trump-owned company that manages Trump World Tower and draws its income from fees paid by unit owners, according to the building’s financial records.

$15 million in fees

In 2017, the president earned more than $15 million in management and related fees through the properties managed by the Trump Corporation, according to the president’s financial disclosure. The document did not reveal how much of that sum came from Trump World Tower.

In at least eight instances in 2017, third-party owners in Trump World Tower leased their units to foreign governments. When privately owned units are leased, their owners typically use that rental income to cover management fees and other common charges, according to two unit owners in Trump World Tower and four real estate experts interviewed by Reuters.

Reuters was unable to determine exactly how the owners who leased the units to the foreign governments paid their fees.

But even if the condominium owners did not use their rental income to pay their common charges, it still could be considered an emolument because the foreign governments helped those owners defray their costs, with the benefit flowing to Trump, according to Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University School of Law who has studied the history of Justice Department interpretations on the subject.

In other words, Clark said, payments passing through a chain of intermediaries to a U.S. official could still constitute emoluments because they could ultimately enrich and influence the behavior of the official.

In legal opinions issued under previous administrations, Clark said, “the Justice Department has expressed concern that foreign governments would use companies as conduits for foreign emoluments.”

Trump exposed to emoluments issues

While U.S. presidents have rarely needed to seek approval of payments from foreign governments in the past, Trump’s continued ownership of his vast network of businesses has left him exposed to more potential emoluments issues than any previous U.S. president, according to legal and ethics experts.

The revenue Trump draws from foreign government business at his properties, such as the recently opened Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., has sparked lawsuits by U.S. lawmakers and the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia, alleging this income violates the emoluments clause. Defining exactly what constitutes an emolument is at the heart of those cases.

Trump’s attorneys have argued in court that the Constitution only requires him to seek congressional approval for foreign emoluments offered in connection with his role as president.

Trump has retained ownership of his global business interests while president, but handed off day-to-day control to his oldest sons and a longtime company executive.

A lawsuit goes forward

On Tuesday, a U.S. federal judge denied Trump’s motion to dismiss one of the emoluments lawsuits against him, saying Trump’s narrow definition of emoluments was “unpersuasive and inconsistent.” Courts may ultimately decide whether some of Trump’s business dealings violate the Constitution.

Issuing such judgments is not the job of the State Department office in charge of reviewing foreign government property requests, according to Patrick Kennedy, who from 2007 to 2017 was the top State Department official in charge of the internal administration of the agency. He said that office’s mandate is to screen for national security and diplomatic concerns, not for potential emolument violations.

If the State Department began obstructing requests from foreign governments to lease units in Trump-affiliated properties, he said, it could prompt them to retaliate against U.S. diplomats seeking housing in their territories.

“The State Department’s interest in saying ‘no’ is probably zero if there’s no security threat and we have good reciprocal relations with the countries,” Kennedy told Reuters.

Location convenient, comfortable

Mohammad Alkadi, a spokesman for the Saudi Mission to the United Nations, said Trump World Tower’s prime location near U.N. headquarters was the kingdom’s motivation to lease there.

“The governments pay for these units in the building not to get favors from Trump or anything, but just because it’s very convenient and comfortable for us,” Alkadi said. He said he moved into his own unit in Trump World Tower at the end of 2017.

Slovakia, another Trump World Tower renter, said in a statement that its lease was “fully in line with U.S. legislation and our internal guidelines.” Slovakia’s prime minister is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on May 3 to discuss security cooperation and other issues.

The Malaysian mission to the United Nations said it was not currently renting a unit in Trump World Tower when reached by phone in April. It declined to comment on the unit it rented in 2017. That lease was confirmed to Reuters by a person familiar with the transaction.

All the other governments that sought to rent units after Trump’s inauguration declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
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