Thunder rolling above Brown Chapel AME Church, Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker warned Sunday of a looming threat to American democracy and called for protecting the legacy of the civil rights movement with love and action.

“It’s time for us to defend the dream,” Booker said in a keynote speech at Brown Chapel, which two generations ago was the starting point of a peaceful demonstration in support of voting rights that ended in beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The infamous “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965, galvanized support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act that year.

“It’s time that we dare to dream again in America. That is what it takes to make America great. It is up to us to do the work that makes the dream real,” said Booker, a New Jersey senator and one of three White House hopefuls who participated in events commemorating the march.

Saying America faces challenges, Booker said: “People want to make it just about the people in the highest offices of the land.

People who traffic in hatred, people in office that defend Nazis or white supremacists, people that point fingers and forget the lessons of King. What we must repent for are not just the vitriolic words and actions of bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of good people.”

Also visiting Selma on Sunday were Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Joining them was Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016. Booker and Brown, along with Clinton and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, marched with dozens of others Sunday afternoon to Edmund Pettus Bridge. Sanders had left for a campaign event in Chicago.

The throng of marchers had set out from the church and sang freedom songs under a stormy sky as they headed to that sacred spot over the Alabama River to commemorate the peaceful protesters who were met with tear gas and clubs wielded by state troopers.

This year’s commemoration came in the early days of a Democratic presidential primary campaign that has focused heavily on issues of race. Several candidates have called President Donald Trump a racist, while others have voiced support for the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved black Americans.

Booker and Sanders have already announced their campaigns. Brown is still considering a White House bid. The three gathered for a unity breakfast in Selma to pay homage to its civil rights legacy and highlight how the movement shaped their personal narratives.

For the New Jersey senator, much of the day felt personal. In Brown Chapel he sat next to Jackson, for whom he cast his first ballot as an 18-year-old during Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign. He later marched to the bridge alongside Jackson, their arms locked together.

In his speech, Booker linked the 1965 Selma demonstration to the lawyer who volunteered to help his family buy a home in a white neighborhood after they were discriminated against and repeatedly denied.

“I would not be here if it wasn’t for marchers on a bridge who inspired a man a thousand miles away in New Jersey,” he said. “The dream is under attack. You honor history by emulating it, by us recommitting ourselves to it.”

Brown, currently on a “Dignity of Work” tour inspired by King, returned to Selma for the fifth time. He frequently draws connections between civil rights and worker’s rights. A former secretary of state in Ohio, Brown also has a reputation as a leader on expanding voter participation.

“We need to understand what happened here and we need to talk about it so we keep fighting on these issues,” Brown told reporters at the breakfast. “It’s clear we make progress and then we fall back because of Republican attacks on voting rights.”

Claiming that the Georgia governor election was stolen from Democrat Stacey Abrams, Brown said: “It’s not just a Southern issue, of course. In the north we see all kinds of changes in voting laws. We see suppression of the vote in 2016, purging of voters in my state in a big way. This fight continues. It’s become personal in many ways because voting rights are so important to our country.”

Sanders attended the 1963 March on Washington, which featured the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

Sanders has highlighted his civil rights and activist background as a young man at the University of Chicago. He is working to strengthn his relationship with black voters, with whom he struggled to connect in the 2016 Democratic primary that Clinton won.

Clinton told those at Brown Chapel that the absence of crucial parts of the Voting Rights Act contributed to her 2016 loss to Trump.

The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down a part of the law that required the Justice Department to scrutinize states with a history of racial discrimination in voting.  

Clinton said “it makes a really big difference” and warned of the need for continued vigilance about voter suppression heading into the 2020 election.

The backdrop of Selma provides a spotlight on voting rights. Advocates say the gains achieved as a result of “Bloody Sunday” have been threatened in recent years, particularly by the 2013 Supreme Court decision.

Voter suppression emerged as a key issue in the 2018 midterm elections in states such as Georgia and North Carolina, where a Republican congressional candidate was accused of rigging the contest there through absentee ballots. House Democrats signaled they plan to make ballot access a priority in the new Congress, introducing legislation aimed at protecting voting rights in 2020 and beyond. 
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U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has become the fourth Republican to vow to oppose President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration to build a wall along the southern U.S. border, likely giving the Senate enough votes to pass a resolution blocking it.

“I can’t vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress,” Paul told guests at a GOP dinner at Western Kentucky University, according to the Bowling Green Daily News.

Paul joins Republicans senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina in his opposition. If all 47 Senate Democrats vote as expected, the Senate has enough votes to pass a resolution with 51 votes.

Thirteen Republicans in the House joined Democrats last week to pass a resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration. If it passes the Senate, the resolution will go to the president, who has promised to veto it.

Neither chamber has enough votes to overturn a veto by Trump — two-thirds of each chamber is needed to overturn a veto.

Trump made the declaration in February after Congress approved just $1.375 billion for border security, far short of the $5.7 billion he had sought.

He plans to divert about $6.2 billion to build his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He is seeking to use $3.6 billion from military construction, $2.5 billion from a Defense Department drug interdiction program, and $600 million from a Treasury Department drug forfeiture program, in addition to the money from Congress.

“We’re being invaded by drugs, by people, by criminals, and we have to stop it,”Trump has said in justifying the action.

While some Republicans support the action, others have rejected it.

“What we see happening along the border – the amount of drugs, the amount of deaths in America, the human trafficking that’s coming across, the overwhelming problem there. So the president has the authority to do it,” Republican Congressman  Kevin McCarthy said.

But Senator Collins calls the president’s move “ill-advised precisely because it attempts to shortcut the process of checks and balances by usurping Congress’ authority.”

VOA’s Michael Bowman contributed to this report.
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Top Democratic lawmakers vowed Sunday to step up their investigations of U.S. President Donald Trump and his connections to Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told ABC News that on Monday his panel would be issuing requests for documents to 60 people, “to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.”

He said the requests would be sent to officials at the White House and Justice Department, along with Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, the president’s global business empire.

Nadler said he believes the president has obstructed justice during his two years in office. He said that Trump’s former long-time personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in his lengthy public testimony to Congress last week, “directly implicated the president in — in various crimes, both while seeking the office of president and while in the White House.”

“We don’t have the facts yet,” Nadler said. “But we’re going to initiate proper investigations.”

Cohen, who called Trump “a racist, a con man, a cheat,” showed a House panel two $35,000 checks — one signed by the president and one signed by the younger Trump and Weisselberg — to Cohen to partly reimburse him for $130,000 he paid shortly before the 2016 election to adult film star Stormy Daniels as hush money, to keep her quiet about an alleged affair she claims to have had with then real estate mogul Trump more than a decade ago.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN that after hearing Cohen’s testimony, “We’ve got to dig deeper” about the extent to which Trump pursued construction of a skyscraper in Moscow during the 2016 campaign even as he told voters he was not involved in any Russian business deals.

Cohen has been sentenced to prison for three years after pleading guilty to financial crimes and to lying to Congress that Trump’s Russian business overtures ended in January 2016 at the outset of the presidential campaign. Now, Cohen says Trump’s Russian business involvement extended for months after that.

Warner said he will reach his decision on whether Trump colluded with Russia to help him win the election after more investigation. But he said, “The claim that there is no evidence is factually wrong.”

Nadler’s committee would be first to initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump, but he said that no decisions have been reached on that. His Judiciary committee and other panels in Congress are awaiting release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his 22-month investigation of Trump campaign links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation.

Mueller’s report could be turned over to Attorney General William Barr in the coming days, but how much of it will be made public is uncertain. Democratic lawmakers have called for its full release, but Barr has said he would only do so to the extent that Justice Department regulations allow him to.

Nadler said, “The Republicans spent two years shielding the president from any proper accountability.” He said Republican lawmakers “threatened to impeach people in Justice Department, they threatened the — the Mueller investigation. It’s our job to protect the rule of law. That’s our core function.”

Trump, since returning from his collapsed summit in Hanoi last week with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has resumed his attacks on Mueller’s investigation and the growing number of inquiries in Congress.

“After more than two years of Presidential Harassment, the only things that have been proven is that Democrats and other [sic] broke the law,” Trump said on Twitter Sunday.

“The hostile Cohen testimony, given by a liar to reduce his prison time, proved no Collusion!” Trump said. “His just written book manuscript showed what he said was a total lie. but the Fake Media won’t show it. I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start – And only because I won the Election! Despite this, great success!”

 
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With Britain deadlocked on negotiating its divorce from the European Union, an unexpected side-front is emerging, the U.S. Congress.

Conservatives who pushed the June 2016 referendum that ended in the shock decision to leave the 28-member bloc dangled the prospect of a free trade agreement with the United States as proof that Britain would not be isolated.

But while nationalist-minded President Donald Trump has welcomed Brexit, the main hitch to Britain’s exit has raised alarm among key U.S. lawmakers — the prospect of the return of a physical border that divides Ireland.

The elimination of the border between the Republic of Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland was a key component of the Good Friday agreement of 1998, brokered with the United States and made possible through the fruition of the integrated EU, which largely ended three decades of conflict that killed around 3,500 people.

Unified Ireland

Representative Peter King, long one of the highest-profile supporters in Congress of a unified Ireland, warned at a recent event in Washington that the direction of Brexit would be critical to any future U.S. trade deal.

“It’s important for we, as Irish Americans, to make clear when we deal with the British that this is very, very important to us,” he said.

“And if the British want to consider any type of trade agreement with the United States, it’s important that a soft border be maintained.”

While King is a Republican, his stance has appeared to gain steam since the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in November because of the party’s historic Irish base and its generally more skeptical take on free trade.

Representative Richard Neal, a co-chairman of the Friends of Ireland Caucus who has voiced unease about Brexit’s effects, has taken charge of the powerful tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, which will review any trade deal.

Eleven lawmakers led by a Democrat recently introduced a resolution that would state the House of Representatives’ opposition to a hard border in Ireland.

Worries politely rebuffed

Daniel Dalton, a British Conservative member of the European parliament who visited Washington for talks with U.S. lawmakers, voiced concern that the Irish question could hold up a U.S.-Britain trade agreement.

He rebuffed, ever politely, U.S lawmakers’ worries on Ireland, saying that nobody was out to end the Good Friday agreement.

“I think the worry is a little bit that there might be an assumption from people here and that they jump into a discussion on what is a hugely complex issue when there is no will from London or from Dublin to have a hard border,” Dalton told AFP.

“That is a point that we have to make time and time again,” he said.

“The issue is how do we ensure that the Good Friday agreement isn’t accidentally breached, which is a very different position to start off from,” he added.

Brexit day March 29

Britain is set to leave the European Union on March 29, with Prime Minister Theresa May scrambling to seek changes after the House of Commons overwhelmingly rejected her divorce deal negotiated with the EU.

May has given MPs the option to delay Brexit and the opposition Labour Party has supported a fresh referendum.

Dalton said that the possibility of a U.S.-Britain trade agreement played “a very big psychological role” for Brexit voters, seeing as Washington has not been able to seal a deal with the EU as a whole.

A major issue, Dalton said, will be seeing whether post-Brexit Britain gravitates toward U.S. or EU standards on agriculture and manufacturing, crucial in sealing a trade pact.

For Dalton himself, the results of Brexit will not be abstract: He will be out of a job.

And the European lawmaker may not find comfort in going back to Britain as his wife is German.

“We, like many people, aren’t sure where actually we can live together and how all these things are going to play out,” he said. “And there are many couples across that particularly divide.”
…

An anti-Muslim poster outside the West Virginia House of Delegates chamber falsely connecting a freshman congresswoman to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has drawn strong rebukes from local and national lawmakers, while causing the resignation of a Capitol staffer and the reported injury of another.

The sign, which loomed over a table loaded with other Islamophobic flyers on a “WV GOP Day” at the legislature Friday, bore an image of the burning World Trade Center juxtaposed with a picture of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and one of the first Muslim congresswomen ever elected. “‘Never forget’ — You said,” was written over the Twin Towers. On Omar’s picture, a caption read, “I am the proof you have forgotten.”

​On Saturday, the West Virginia’s Republican Party condemned the appearance of the anti-Muslim flyers and posters.

“Our party supports freedom of speech, but we do not endorse speech that advances intolerant and hateful views,” West Virginia Republican Party Chairwoman Melody Potter wrote in a statement, which added that they did not approve of the sign and had asked the exhibitor to remove it. No one acknowledged permitting the display.

Designated hate group

The group responsible for the display, ACT for America, has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Onlookers outside the House chambers Friday snapped photos of the poster and the additional literature.

“Readin’, Writin’, And Jihadin,’ The Islamization of American Public Schools,” read one of the pamphlets. Another flyer warned of “The Four Stages of Islamic Conquest.”

A phone number listed for the organization went straight to a voicemail box that was full and could not accept messages. The answering machine message described the group as “the nation’s largest nonprofit grassroots organization devoted to promoting national security and defeating terrorism.”

‘Beyond shameful’

Many House delegates denounced the group just as the body convened. One lawmaker admitted to getting so mad that he kicked a House door open, which resulted in a doorkeeper being physically injured, according to the speaker of the House. Another delegate grew furious, saying he had heard a staffer make an anti-Muslim remark.

“The sergeant of arms of this body, that represents the people of the state of West Virginia, said, ‘All Muslims are terrorists.’ That’s beyond shameful,” said Del. Michael Angelucci, a Democrat, his voice rising to a shout. “And that’s not freedom of speech. That’s hate speech, and it has no place in this house.”

The sergeant of arms, Anne Lieberman, resigned later Friday. She has declined to comment after being reached by phone by The Associated Press.

Republican House Speaker Roger Hanshaw questioned how things had gone so wrong.

“We owe it to ourselves; we owe it our constituents; we owe it to the men and women and children and families that we represent to do better than we are,” Hanshaw told lawmakers.

“We have allowed national level politics to become a cancer on our state, to become a cancer on our legislature, to invade our chamber in a way that frankly makes me ashamed,” Hanshaw said.
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Bernie Sanders, the independent U.S. senator who represented third-party interests in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, on Saturday stepped back into the spotlight with a rally for his 2020 run at the presidency. 

The rally at Brooklyn College, which he attended, was meant to showcase a more personal aspect of the candidate not emphasized during his 2016 run. His working-class background — he grew up living in a small, rent-controlled Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment — served to contrast with that of sitting President Donald Trump, who grew up wealthy in nearby Queens. 

“I know what it’s like to be in a family that lives paycheck to paycheck,” he said, describing his immigrant father’s struggle to establish himself in the United States. While Sanders made little of his Jewish ancestry in the 2016 race, on Saturday he said his father’s family was “wiped out” in Nazi-occupied Poland. 

Sanders also called Trump “the most dangerous president in modern American history,” and promised to fight for “economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.”  

He also said, “The underlying principles of our government will not be greed, hatred and lies. It will not be racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and religious bigotry. That is going to end.” 

Seeking to broaden his appeal to minorities, Sanders will appear in Selma, Ala., on Sunday to participate in events commemorating the Selma civil rights march, which took place in 1965. 

While Sanders is one of the best-known candidates of the already crowded race for the 2020 Democratic nomination, he is noted for his grass-roots following, which made him a surprisingly strong challenger to Democratic favorite Hillary Clinton in 2016. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would soon sign an executive order requiring American universities and colleges to maintain “free speech” on campuses and threatened that schools not complying could lose 

federal research funds. 

Trump made his remarks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference after bringing to the stage Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who was punched at the University of California-Berkeley last month while recruiting students for a conservative group. 

“Today, I am proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research funds,” Trump said.

‘Very costly’

If universities do not comply, “it will be very costly,” he said. The U.S. government awards universities more than $30 billion annually in research funds. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on details of the order. 

Freedom of speech is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

It is not the first time that Trump, who has repeatedly lashed out at the media with cries of “fake news” and has called current defamation laws “a sham and a disgrace,” has threatened retaliatory action related to free speech. Last September, he suggested in a tweet that the license of television networks 

could be at risk, though he offered no specifics in his tweet, which singled out NBC. 

Broadcast networks do not receive general licenses, but they do hold licenses from the Federal Communications Commission for individual local stations they own. 

In 2017, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency does not have the authority to revoke broadcast licenses over editorial decisions. 

“I believe in the First Amendment,” said Pai, whom Trump appointed as the FCC chair. 

Trump on Saturday suggested that Williams sue the man who punched him and also “sue the college, the university. And maybe sue the state.” He suggested that Williams was going to be “a very wealthy young man.” 

If universities “want our dollars — and we give to them by the billions — they have to allow people like Hayden and many other great young people and old people to speak — free speech,” Trump said. 

Anti-conservative bias seen

Trump administration officials have suggested that the rights of speakers on college campuses have been trampled by student protesters who find their views offensive and suggested conservatives have been unfairly targeted. 

The U.S. Justice Department filed a statement of interest in 2018 in a free-speech lawsuit filed against UC-Berkeley, accusing the school of discriminating against speakers with conservative views. 

In a settlement announced in December, the university will modify its procedures for handling “major events,” which typically draw hundreds of people, and agreed not to charge “security” fees for a variety of activities, including lectures and speeches. It will also pay $70,000 to cover legal costs of the Berkeley College Republicans and the Tennessee-based Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization.
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It barely registered with lawmakers during disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen’s dramatic congressional testimony Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s alleged misdeeds throughout the 2016 presidential campaign and his first year in office.

But in what could spell a major legal headache for Trump, House Democrats are investigating whether the president hid from government ethics officials hundreds of thousands of dollars he paid Cohen as part of a scheme to silence porn star Stormy Daniels about her allegations that she and Trump had an affair years before.

The investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is part of a wide-ranging probe by newly empowered House Democrats that is gaining momentum two months after Democrats regained control of the chamber. At least three other House panels, the Intelligence, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees, are mounting related investigations of Trump and his associates. 

Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, said Trump could potentially face civil or criminal charges of submitting false or fraudulent government financial disclosure forms to hide his involvement in paying hush money during the campaign. 

‘Low-hanging fruit’

“That could be a major problem and it could be some low-hanging fruit for the Committee on Oversight and Reform to take up in going after Trump if they so choose,” Amey said. 

While the potential ethics violation has received little attention until now, some experts say it may rank in seriousness along with higher profile problems, such as allegations Trump violated campaign finance laws and colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election.

The president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has acknowledged the hush money payment but has said it did not violate campaign finance laws because it came from Trump’s personal funds rather than his campaign.

Cohen, the star witness for House and Senate investigative committees this week, pleaded guilty last year to violating federal election law by arranging hush money payments to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal that far exceeded legal limits to campaign contributions.

Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 and arranged for a payment of $150,000 to McDougal after both women threatened to go public with their stories of sexual relations with Trump just as the Republican candidate was close to locking down his party’s nomination. Trump has denied their allegations.

Reimbursement for payments

Cohen detailed how he received $420,000 from Trump for his efforts to buy the silence of Daniels. The reimbursement included $130,000 for the hush money payment; $50,000 for “tech services” both of which were doubled for tax purposes, as well as a $60,000 bonus. The payment was spread out over 11 months to make it appear Cohen was receiving monthly payments for ongoing legal services. 

Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison for financial crimes as well as for lying to Congress and violating campaign laws in connection with the hush money payments to the two Trump accusers.

After Cohen’s testimony Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers said the former Trump lawyer may have implicated the president in committing a crime while in office. In a report released this week, the ethics watchdog Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Trump could potentially face eight criminal charges in connection with the hush money payments. 

In a flurry of tweets Friday, Trump blasted his former attorney as “totally discredited” and wrote that Cohen had made “fraudulent and dishonest statements” during his testimony.

In recent weeks, House Oversight Committee investigators have zeroed in on Trump’s failure to fully disclose the Cohen payments in his annual financial disclosure forms. Investigators are demanding documents from the White House and the Trump Organization, and asking the president’s lawyers to answer their questions. 

Financial disclosure requirements

All senior government officials — including the president — are required to file with the Office of Government Ethics annual financial disclosure forms, listing their assets and liabilities. OGE regulations require that each disclosure form describe liabilities in excess of $10,000 and identify the creditor. 

In his 2017 financial disclosure form, Trump left out all that information. In his 2018 form, he noted cryptically that he’d “fully reimbursed” Cohen for unspecified expenses in the amount of $100,000 to $250,000, far less than what Cohen had actually received. 

The June 2018 filing came as the hush money scandal broke and government ethics officials contacted Trump’s lawyers for an explanation, demanding the president revise his report if he owed Cohen any money in 2016. 

Notes of conversations between OGE officials and Trump lawyers in April and May 2018, and obtained by the House Oversight Committee, show the president’s attorneys struggling to offer a consistent answer. The president’s tax lawyer, Sheri Dillon, initially maintained that she did not believe that Trump owed Cohen any money in 2016. 

Later, White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino offered a different explanation: Cohen was allowed to charge additional expenses for providing “legal services” under a “retainer agreement.”

But Cohen has told prosecutors that there was no retainer agreement in place and that he arranged for his own reimbursement through “fraudulent invoices for nonexistent legal services … under a nonexistent retainer agreement.”

Other committee action

Now, House investigators want to talk to Passantino and Dillon. In letters sent to Dillon and Passantino just hours before Cohen’s testimony, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings expressed concern that the two lawyers may have provided “false information” to government ethics officials reviewing Trump’s financial disclosure records. 

Passantino and Dillon did not respond to requests for comment.

Filing a false financial disclosure could result in a civil penalty, such as a fine or prosecution by the Department of Justice, although the Justice Department, as a rule, would not prosecute a sitting president. But illegally withholding information from ethics officers regarding illegal campaign finance transactions could become grounds for impeachment, if House Democratic leaders eventually decide to pursue that course of action.

“There is a likelihood President Trump violated that law when he submitted these financial disclosure forms that were either missing liabilities or misrepresenting them,” said Amey, of the Project on Government Oversight. “All of that taken as a whole could put the president in some hot water for filing a fraudulent or misleading financial disclosure statement.”
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On the political spectrum, Hawaii is among the bluest of states. Democrats control all the levers of power at the state and federal levels, and voters back Democratic presidential candidates over Republicans by some of the widest margins in the U.S.   

The state has committed to the Paris climate agreement that President Donald Trump rejected and was the first state to require people to be 21 to buy cigarettes. The tourist haven even banned certain types of sunscreen because they can harm coral reefs.   

But when it comes to legalizing recreational marijuana for adult use, the islands are out of step with liberal stalwarts such as California and Vermont that have already done so, and other left-leaning states such as New York and New Jersey that are racing toward joining them. On Friday, a legalization bill that made it farther in the legislative process than previous efforts died when lawmakers failed to consider it in time for a deadline.  

Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English has introduced marijuana legalization bills for the past 15 years — but Hawaii has a track record of moving slowly on social issues. For example, other states moved far more quickly to sanction gay marriage and medically assisted suicide.  

Half the Democrats in the state Senate co-sponsored English’s measure, helping spur speculation this would be the year legalization became a reality.  

Consideration of federal law

But the effort fizzled as other leaders worried about contradicting federal law, which continues to classify marijuana as an illegal drug, and jeopardizing Hawaii’s existing medical marijuana program. 

To move forward, the bill had to pass the Senate Health Committee and Senate Ways and Means Committee by a Friday deadline so it could be considered by the full Senate. But the Health Committee did not schedule a meeting on Friday to consider any bills, effectively killing the marijuana legalization measure.   

Rep. Della Au Belatti, the House majority leader, said before the bill died that she believes Hawaii will legalize adult use marijuana at some point. But she said lawmakers will vet the issue carefully. 

“I also think that we have enough folks who are sitting around the table who are saying ‘Let’s do it right. Let’s not just rush into things and let’s do it right,’ ” she said.   

Belatti said lawmakers must closely study the experiences of states that have legalized marijuana. She also wants to have abuse prevention, treatment and education programs set up before legalization. Hawaii also will have to make sure legalized marijuana doesn’t lead to more impaired driving, she said.  

For now, Belatti said she’s just inclined toward decriminalizing marijuana, or reducing fines and criminal penalties for possession. 

Twelve states and the District of Columbia have recreational marijuana laws. All except Vermont did it by ballot initiative, an option not available in Hawaii. 

Sen. Karl Rhoads, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Hawaii residents are becoming more accepting of legalization now because it has happened elsewhere and “the world hasn’t come to an end.” There’s also recognition that the status quo isn’t working, he said, noting that juniors at a high school near his district tell him they can get pot whenever they want. 

“It’s like Prohibition,” he said. “We’ve been trying to squish it out, squeeze it out, by making it illegal. And it’s just failed miserably.”  

Hurdle cleared

Rhoads’ committee passed an amended version of English’s bill last month, the first time a legalization measure has made it out of any committee.  

Health Committee Chairwoman Roz Baker said she did not want to do anything that would threaten Hawaii’s nascent medical cannabis dispensary system. Dispensary sales began just two years ago.  

Baker believes the federal government will leave medical marijuana alone but might take a more active approach to enforcing federal drug laws if Hawaii takes the next step. Democratic Gov. David Ige expressed similar concerns.  

Rep. Joy San Buenaventura said it did not make sense to push the measure through without Ige’s support. San Buenaventura represents Puna, a mostly rural area on the Big Island long known for pot growing.   

Brian Goldstein, the founder and CEO of the medical marijuana dispensary Noa Botanicals, said it is inevitable Hawaii will eventually allow adult use. He acknowledged it may take a while.  

Hawaii’s Legislature approved medical marijuana in 2000 — four years after California became the first state with such a law — but it took island lawmakers another 15 years to set up a dispensary system.  

Carl Bergquist, the executive director of the pro-legalization Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, said progress is being made even though the idea failed again this year.  

“It’s a huge step … just to have that conversation started,” he said.
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Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s former campaign chief Paul Manafort urged a judge Friday to impose a sentence “substantially below” the potential 19 to 24 years in prison he is facing for tax crimes and bank fraud.

Manafort, 69, is to be sentenced March 7 by Judge T.S. Ellis of the Eastern District of Virginia after being convicted of five counts of filing false income tax returns, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to report a foreign bank account.

Manafort’s attorneys, in a filing with the judge, said the sentencing guidelines, which call for a prison term of 235 to 293 months, are “clearly disproportionate to the offense conduct for which Mr. Manafort was convicted.”

“Mr. Manafort acknowledges that he received a fair trial before this Court, he accepts the jury’s verdict, and is truly remorseful for his conduct,” they said.

A ‘bold criminal’

His attorneys suggested a “sentence substantially below the range,” arguing that Manafort is a first-time offender and is in poor health after spending the past nine months in prison.

Manafort is one of seven former Trump associates and senior aides who have been charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Mueller’s office said in their own sentencing memo that Manafort was a “bold” criminal who “repeatedly and brazenly” broke the law but did not recommend a specific sentence.

Mueller’s office said that Manafort violated the law for years and his sentence “must take into account the gravity of this conduct,” to deter both Manafort and anyone else who would commit similar crimes.

“His criminal actions were bold,” Mueller’s office said, and included attempting to tamper with witnesses and lying to the FBI, government agencies and even his own lawyers.

Ukraine campaign work

Manafort’s attorneys took issue with that characterization.

“The Special Counsel’s attempt to vilify Mr. Manafort as a lifelong and irredeemable felon is beyond the pale and grossly overstates the facts before this Court,” they said.

“The cases that Special Counsel have brought against Mr. Manafort have devastated him personally, professionally and financially,” they said.

The charges against Manafort were not connected to his role in the Trump campaign but were for work he did for Russian-backed political parties in Ukraine between 2004 and 2014.

Manafort was also charged in Washington with money laundering, witness tampering and other offenses and faces separate sentencing in that case.

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Moscow and denounced the probe by Mueller, a former FBI director, as a “political witch hunt.”
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Casino magnate and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson has cancer and has not been at his company’s offices in Las Vegas since around Christmas Day.

Adelson’s poor health was revealed earlier this week by one of his company’s attorneys during a court hearing in a years-old case brought by a Hong Kong businessman. The founder and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp. did not participate in the casino operator’s conference call with analysts and investors following its earnings report in January.

Attorney James Jimmerson told the court Monday that he learned last month “of the dire nature of Mr. Adelson’s condition, health.” The comment from the attorney came when discussing whether Adelson could sit for a deposition in the case and was first reported by The Nevada Independent.

Cancer treatment

Las Vegas Sands Corp. Thursday told The Associated Press that Adelson has cancer.

“Mr. Adelson is still dealing with certain side effects from medication he is taking for the treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” company spokesman Ron Reese said in an emailed statement Thursday night. “These side effects have restricted his availability to travel or keep regular office hours.”

The effects haven’t prevented Adelson, 85, from fulfilling his duties as chairman and CEO, Reese said. The company expects he’ll return after he completes treatment.

Adelson also suffers from peripheral neuropathy, a condition that affects the nervous system.

The billionaire and his wife, Miriam, gave President Donald Trump’s campaign $30 million in 2016. They followed that by contributing $100 million to the Republican Party for the 2018 midterm elections.

Court case

Adelson is Las Vegas Sands’ largest shareholder and regularly participates in the company’s earnings calls, but was absent when it reported results Jan. 23. Sands President Robert Goldstein said at the time that Adelson was “a little bit under the weather.”

“We met with him yesterday,” Goldstein said of Adelson during the January call. “He’s taking some medications making him a bit drowsy, so he decided this morning to take a rain check on this one.”

Adelson was expected to testify in the case brought by Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen and his company, Round Square Co. He testified in 2013 and 2008 in the case’s two previous trials.

Suen has been seeking compensation because he said he helped Sands secure business in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau. Sands has argued Suen didn’t help get crucial approval to build casinos in Macau and deserves nothing.
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President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday to speak behind closed doors with a congressional panel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election, capping a week of testimony in which he leveled new allegations of wrongdoing at his former boss.

Cohen did not respond to questions as he arrived for his third and final session in Congress this week. His private testimony before the House Intelligence Committee was expected to last into the evening. The panel has been probing Russian election meddling and any collusion with the Trump campaign.

In dramatic public testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, the one-time “fixer” for Trump accused the president of breaking the law while in office and said for the first time that Trump knew in advance about a WikiLeaks dump of stolen emails that hurt his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton.

Committee chairman Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, said his panel would further investigate issues raised by Cohen’s testimony and may try to get the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his former accountant, Allen Weisselberg, to testify.

“I think there are still a number of other shoes to drop,” Cummings told reporters after the hearing.

Other Democrats said they would try to verify whether Trump manipulated financial statements to reduce taxes and secure bank loans, as Cohen alleged.

Two top Republicans on the committee, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, asked the Justice Department to investigate Cohen for perjury, saying he lied during his appearance on Wednesday about his efforts to land a White House job and his work for two foreign companies, among other topics.

Cohen has already pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. In 2017, he submitted a statement saying efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow had ceased by January 2016, when those talks in fact continued until June of that year, after Trump had clinched the Republican presidential nomination.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for that lie and other crimes.

Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said in a tweet that on Thursday he planned to dig into the Trump Moscow project, the revelations about WikiLeaks and any White House role in Cohen’s prior false statements.

“Today Cohen provided the American public with a first-hand account of serious misconduct by Trump & those around him,” Schiff said. “Tomorrow we’ll examine in depth many of those topics.”

At Wednesday’s hearing, Cohen said Trump never explicitly told him to lie to Congress about the Moscow skyscraper negotiations. But Cohen said he believed he was following implicit directions to minimize their efforts on the tower.

Cohen said he had no direct evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded with Moscow during the election campaign, but that he had suspicions that something untoward had occurred.

Cohen also testified privately before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.

Possible collusion is a key theme of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, which has dogged the president during his first two years in office. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegation, as has the Kremlin.
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