Capping a week in which her testy exchange with Attorney General William Barr went viral, Sen. Kamala Harris on Sunday told a crowd of thousands gathered at a dinner hosted by the country’s oldest NAACP chapter that Barr “lied to Congress” and ” clearly more interested in representing the president than the American people.”

 

The Democratic presidential candidate was the keynote speaker Sunday at the Detroit NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund dinner, attended by a mostly black audience of nearly 10,000.

 

As of Sunday, 4.8 million people had watched the C-SPAN video circulating on Twitter of Harris questioning Barr, catapulting her into the spotlight amid the crowded field of more than 20 Democrats and hammering a campaign theme that she is the candidate to “prosecute the case against Trump.”

During her remarks, Harris also said her approach to the 2020 race is about challenging notions of electability and who can speak to Midwesterners.

 

“They usually put the Midwest in a simplistic box and a narrow narrative,” Harris said. “The conversation too often suggests certain voters will only vote for certain candidates regardless of whether their ideas will lift up all of our families. It’s short sighted. It’s wrong. And voters deserve better.”

 

Harris’s appearance in Detroit highlights an underappreciated variable in Democrats’ 2016 losses across the Great Lakes region: declining support from black voters.

 

Michigan gave President Donald Trump his closest winning margin of any state, with the Republican finishing 10,704 votes ahead of Hillary Clinton. Much of the narrative focused on Clinton losing ground from Barack Obama’s 2012 marks in many small-town and rural counties dominated by middle-class whites.

 

Biden has been leading the polls, with a majority saying he has the best chance to defeat Trump. A Quinnipiac poll from last week showed Biden leading among Democratic candidates with 38 percent, while Harris was fourth with eight percent.

Yet it was heavily African American Wayne County, home to Detroit, where Clinton saw her single largest and most consequential dropoff. She got 78,004 fewer votes in the county — the anchor of Democrats’ statewide coalition — than Obama received in 2012, meaning that her Wayne County deficit from Obama was more than seven times the statewide gap separating her from Trump and Michigan’s 16 electoral votes.

 

Harris told the largely African-American audience that as president, she plans to double the Justice Department’s civil rights division, hold accountable social media platforms disseminating misinformation and cyberwarfare and address economic inequality for families and teachers.

Called “the largest sit-down dinner in the country,” boasting 10,000 attendees, this year’s dinner comes amid an already busy primary season, as Democrats are eyeing the battleground state of Michigan. Fellow 2020 Democratic contender Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey was last year’s keynote.

 

The Detroit NAACP chapter is the civil rights organization’s largest, and the city will host their national convention in July, where most 2020 Democrats are expected to appear. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, Detroit chapter president, said Sunday that “our very lives, our freedom” are riding on the 2020 election.

 

“This is about the soul of America,” Anthony said. “There’s some people that want to take us back 50 years. We ain’t going. They win when we don’t show up.”

 

Anthony said that while Harris’ appearance was not an endorsement, the energy at the dinner was “a signal to the nation that we are concerned about what’s happening in the country” and warned that “the stakes are too great for anybody to sit this out.”
…

Capping a week in which her testy exchange with Attorney General William Barr went viral, Sen. Kamala Harris on Sunday told a crowd of thousands gathered at a dinner hosted by the country’s oldest NAACP chapter that Barr “lied to Congress” and ” clearly more interested in representing the president than the American people.”

 

The Democratic presidential candidate was the keynote speaker Sunday at the Detroit NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund dinner, attended by a mostly black audience of nearly 10,000.

 

As of Sunday, 4.8 million people had watched the C-SPAN video circulating on Twitter of Harris questioning Barr, catapulting her into the spotlight amid the crowded field of more than 20 Democrats and hammering a campaign theme that she is the candidate to “prosecute the case against Trump.”

During her remarks, Harris also said her approach to the 2020 race is about challenging notions of electability and who can speak to Midwesterners.

 

“They usually put the Midwest in a simplistic box and a narrow narrative,” Harris said. “The conversation too often suggests certain voters will only vote for certain candidates regardless of whether their ideas will lift up all of our families. It’s short sighted. It’s wrong. And voters deserve better.”

 

Harris’s appearance in Detroit highlights an underappreciated variable in Democrats’ 2016 losses across the Great Lakes region: declining support from black voters.

 

Michigan gave President Donald Trump his closest winning margin of any state, with the Republican finishing 10,704 votes ahead of Hillary Clinton. Much of the narrative focused on Clinton losing ground from Barack Obama’s 2012 marks in many small-town and rural counties dominated by middle-class whites.

 

Biden has been leading the polls, with a majority saying he has the best chance to defeat Trump. A Quinnipiac poll from last week showed Biden leading among Democratic candidates with 38 percent, while Harris was fourth with eight percent.

Yet it was heavily African American Wayne County, home to Detroit, where Clinton saw her single largest and most consequential dropoff. She got 78,004 fewer votes in the county — the anchor of Democrats’ statewide coalition — than Obama received in 2012, meaning that her Wayne County deficit from Obama was more than seven times the statewide gap separating her from Trump and Michigan’s 16 electoral votes.

 

Harris told the largely African-American audience that as president, she plans to double the Justice Department’s civil rights division, hold accountable social media platforms disseminating misinformation and cyberwarfare and address economic inequality for families and teachers.

Called “the largest sit-down dinner in the country,” boasting 10,000 attendees, this year’s dinner comes amid an already busy primary season, as Democrats are eyeing the battleground state of Michigan. Fellow 2020 Democratic contender Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey was last year’s keynote.

 

The Detroit NAACP chapter is the civil rights organization’s largest, and the city will host their national convention in July, where most 2020 Democrats are expected to appear. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, Detroit chapter president, said Sunday that “our very lives, our freedom” are riding on the 2020 election.

 

“This is about the soul of America,” Anthony said. “There’s some people that want to take us back 50 years. We ain’t going. They win when we don’t show up.”

 

Anthony said that while Harris’ appearance was not an endorsement, the energy at the dinner was “a signal to the nation that we are concerned about what’s happening in the country” and warned that “the stakes are too great for anybody to sit this out.”
…

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.”
…

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.
…

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.
…

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.
…

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.”
…

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.”
…