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.”
…

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

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

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

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

​Worthy of “can-do nation”

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Longtime advocate

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

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

Some highlights of Inslee’s proposal: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No show

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

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

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

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

Committee ‘stonewalled’​

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

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

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

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

​Units owned by others

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

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

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

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

Which governments are renting?

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

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

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

​Trump World Tower vs. Trump Tower

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

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

$15 million in fees

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump exposed to emoluments issues

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

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

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

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

A lawsuit goes forward

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

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

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

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

Location convenient, comfortable

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

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

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

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

All the other governments that sought to rent units after Trump’s inauguration declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
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The U.S. Senate on Thursday failed to override President Donald Trump’s veto of a bill demanding the U.S. stop supporting the Saudi coalition fighting in Yemen.

The vote was 53 to 45 in favor, but it fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass in the 100-member Senate.

Both the House and Senate passed the bill earlier this year despite Trump’s promise to veto.

The bill marked the first time in history that Congress invoked the 1973 War Powers Act, which says a president cannot involve U.S. forces in a foreign conflict without lawmakers’ consent.

The U.S. supplies intelligence and other support to the Saudi-led coalition trying to push Iranian-backed Houthi rebels out of Yemen.

Opponents of the bill said the act did not apply because the U.S. forces were not involved in combat in Yemen.

But its Senate supporters — including sponsors Republican Mike Lee of Utah and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont — said the U.S. has been helping a foreign power bomb innocent civilians.

Saudi airstrikes targeting the Houthis have hit civilian neighborhoods in Yemen, killing thousands. A U.S.-supplied missile fired by the Saudis struck a school bus near Sanaa last year, killing 40 children. 

Along with the bloodshed in Yemen, many lawmakers are upset at Trump’s tepid reaction to the killing of U.S.-based  Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

He was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October, allegedly at the behest of the Saudi crown prince because of his criticism of the royal family. Khashoggi’s body has not been found.

The Trump administration has pointed out that Saudi Arabia is a valuable and essential U.S. ally in the Middle East and an enemy of Iran.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday conservative economic commentator Stephen Moore has withdrawn from consideration as a member of the Federal Reserve board.

Trump announced Moore’s decision Thursday on Twitter after weeks of controversy about Moore’s writings about women. Moore also drew criticism for failing to pay more than $300,000 in child support and alimony payments and for a more than $75,000 tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.

Moore decided to withdraw after a number of Republican senators said he probably would not be able to win enough confirmation votes. 

Moore’s withdrawal is another setback for Trump’s efforts to install political supporters to the nation’s central bank. Another candidate, businessman and one-time presidential hopeful Herman Cain, also withdrew from consideration recently following past accusations of sexual harassment and infidelity. Trump had declared both men his preferred choices for seats on the Fed board, even before the FBI and the White House had completed background checks.

In 2002, Moore wrote a column criticizing the National Collegiate Athletic Association for permitting a woman to referee a men’s college basketball game. “Is there no area in life where men can take a vacation from women?” he wrote. Moore also wrote in 2014 that women who earned more money than men could be “disruptive to family stability.” Moore has said he regrets the writings and said they were meant to be humorous.

With Moore’s and Cain’s withdrawals, two staunch Trump supporters are no longer under consideration. Moore was an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign and helped shape the Trump administration’s tax law that took effect in 2018. Moore also regularly defended Trump’s policies in writings and on television, while Cain formed a super Political Action Committee last year to advance Trump’s agenda.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday conservative economic commentator Stephen Moore has withdrawn from consideration as a member of the Federal Reserve board.

Trump announced Moore’s decision Thursday on Twitter after weeks of controversy about Moore’s writings about women. Moore also drew criticism for failing to pay more than $300,000 in child support and alimony payments and for a more than $75,000 tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.

Moore decided to withdraw after a number of Republican senators said he probably would not be able to win enough confirmation votes. 

Moore’s withdrawal is another setback for Trump’s efforts to install political supporters to the nation’s central bank. Another candidate, businessman and one-time presidential hopeful Herman Cain, also withdrew from consideration recently following past accusations of sexual harassment and infidelity. Trump had declared both men his preferred choices for seats on the Fed board, even before the FBI and the White House had completed background checks.

In 2002, Moore wrote a column criticizing the National Collegiate Athletic Association for permitting a woman to referee a men’s college basketball game. “Is there no area in life where men can take a vacation from women?” he wrote. Moore also wrote in 2014 that women who earned more money than men could be “disruptive to family stability.” Moore has said he regrets the writings and said they were meant to be humorous.

With Moore’s and Cain’s withdrawals, two staunch Trump supporters are no longer under consideration. Moore was an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign and helped shape the Trump administration’s tax law that took effect in 2018. Moore also regularly defended Trump’s policies in writings and on television, while Cain formed a super Political Action Committee last year to advance Trump’s agenda.
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The No. 2 House Republican leader is suggesting that Congress won’t agree to the full $2 trillion price tag that the White House and congressional leaders have discussed for a compromise infrastructure deal.

Rep. Steve Scalise told reporters Thursday that the price tag will be “a lot lower” than the $2 trillion Democrats say President Donald Trump supports. He said raising taxes to pay for public works improvements is “a non-starter” for Republicans. 

He says he’s not seen any mutually agreeable suggestions for financing the work “that would come anywhere close to $2 trillion,” which he called “a lofty goal.” 

Both sides reported progress at a Tuesday meeting at which Trump discussed infrastructure with congressional leaders. They plan to meet again in three weeks to discuss financing. 

 
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Congress has agreed to postpone a deadline for two banks to respond to subpoenas for Donald Trump’s financial records after the president filed a lawsuit this week seeking to block them from responding.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos on Wednesday set a hearing on Trump’s lawsuit for May 22 in New York City. In the meantime, lawyers for Congressional Democrats agreed to allow the banks to delay their response to the subpoena until after Ramos rules.

Trump wants Deutsche Bank and Capital One barred from responding to subpoenas issued last month by two House committees that are demanding records as part of investigations into the Republican’s private business dealings.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said at the time that the subpoenas were part of an investigation “into allegations of potential foreign influence on the U.S. political process.”

He has said he wants to know whether Russians used laundered money for transactions with the Trump Organization. Trump’s businesses have benefited from Russian investment over the years.

In their lawsuit, Trump, his family and his company contend that the subpoenas are unlawful and unenforceable.

Deutsche Bank has lent Trump’s real estate company millions of dollars over the years.

The bank has said it remains “committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations.”
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Attorney General William Barr will not testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, a Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday evening.

Barr testified for hours before a Senate committee Wednesday about his no-obstruction decision and his oversight of the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

But hours later, the Justice Department said Barr would not appear before the House panel to answer questions about his handling of the release of Mueller’s report. In the days before his planned testimony, Barr had balked at who would be questioning him Thursday during the Judiciary Committee hearing.

Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York had planned to give the 41 committee members five minutes each to ask Barr questions and then another 30 minutes for both Democratic and Republican lawyers for the committee to make more inquiries of Barr.

Barr agreed to be questioned by the House lawmakers, but rejected further questioning by the lawyers.

‘Very clear’

Nadler said Barr has no choice.

“We’ve been very clear. Barr has to come. He has to testify. It’s none of the business of a witness to try to dictate to a congressional committee what the procedures for questioning him are,” Nadler said Monday.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement Wednesday that Nadler’s plan to have committee staff question Barr was “inappropriate,” adding that the attorney general remained “happy to engage directly with members on their questions” about the Mueller report.

Nadler said the committee would take “whatever action we have to take” if Barr skipped the hearing.

“He is terrified at having to face a skilled attorney,” Nadler said Wednesday, according to the French news agency AFP. He said Barr had also failed to provide to the committee a copy of the unredacted report.

Mueller cited 11 instances of possible obstruction of the investigation by President Donald Trump, saying that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

With Mueller not reaching a decision on the obstruction question, Barr said he concluded no criminal charges against Trump were warranted.

Democrats said they wanted to question Barr about how he reached his no-obstruction decision.
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Congressional budget experts said Wednesday that moving to a government-run health care system like “Medicare for All” could be complicated and potentially disruptive for Americans. 

The report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was a high-level look at the pros and cons of changing the current mix of public and private health care financing to a system paid for entirely by the government. It did not include cost estimates of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation or its House counterpart, but listed dozens of trade-offs lawmakers would confront. 

The transition toward a single-payer system could be complicated, challenging and potentially disruptive,'' the report said.Policymakers would need to consider how quickly people with private insurance would switch their coverage to a new public plan, what would happen to workers in the health insurance industry if private insurance was banned or its role was limited, and how quickly provider payment rates under the single-payer system would be phased in from current levels.” 

Longer waits, less access

One unintended consequence could be increased wait times and reduced access to care if there are not enough medical providers to meet an expected increased demand for services as 29 million currently uninsured people get coverage and as deductibles and copayments are reduced or eliminated for everyone else.  

“An expansion of insurance coverage under a single-payer system would increase the demand for care and put pressure on the available supply of care,” the report said. 

Employers now cover more than 160 million people, roughly half the U.S. population. Medicare covers seniors and disabled people. Medicaid covers low-income people and many nursing home residents. Other government programs serve children or military veterans.

Wasteful, costly

Proponents of Medicare for All say the complexity of the U.S. system wastes billions in administrative costs and enables hospitals and drugmakers to charge much higher prices than providers get in other economically advanced countries. Critics acknowledge the U.S. has a serious cost problem, but they point out that patients don’t usually have to wait for treatment and that new drugs are generally available much more rapidly than in other countries. 

While a government-run system could improve the overall health profile of the U.S., pressure on providers to curb costs could reduce the quality of care by “by causing providers to supply less care to patients covered by the public plan.”  

Private payments from employers and individuals currently cover close to half of the nation’s annual $3.5 trillion health care bill. A government-run system would entail new taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes or consumption taxes. Or lawmakers could borrow, adding to the overhang of national debt. 

Single-payer health care doesn’t have a path to advance in Congress for now.

It has zero chances in the Republican-led Senate. In the Democratic-controlled House, key committees that would put such legislation together have not scheduled hearings. They’re instead crafting bills to lower prescription drug costs and stabilize and expand coverage under the Affordable Care Act. 

The CBO report was prepared for the House Budget Committee, which is expected to hold hearings but does not write health care legislation. 

Coalition in opposition

Within the health care industry, groups including hospitals, insurers, drugmakers and doctors have formed a coalition to battle a government-run system. Major employers are likely allies. 

Polls show that Americans are open to single-payer, but it’s far from a clamor. Support is concentrated mostly among Democrats, with many of them indicating similarly high levels of approval for less ambitious changes such as allowing people to buy into a public insurance plan modeled on Medicare. 

A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 42% of Americans support a single-payer plan, while 31% were opposed and one-quarter said they were neither in favor nor opposed. 

By a comparison, a buy-in option got support from 53%, including more than 4 in 10 Republicans. Overall, 17% opposed a Medicare buy-in while 29% were neutral.
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The former head of White House security clearances spoke with U.S. congressional investigators on Wednesday, after a dispute about his appearance on an issue that sources have said involves President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law. 

After days of conflict over whether he would appear, Carl Kline talked with investigators from the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, chaired by Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Details of the discussion were not immediately known. 

The committee is looking into the issuance of high-level security clearances to some staffers in the Trump White House, despite recommendations from career officials that those officials should not receive them. Two congressional sources familiar with the matter said Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were among the two dozen or so staffers who got those clearances. 

Kline was in charge of White House clearances at the time. He has since left the White House and is now a Defense Department employee. 

‘Fighting all the subpoenas’

The committee voted on April 2 to subpoena Kline for testimony on the matter. The Trump administration initially told Kline to ignore the subpoena. Last week, Trump told reporters, “We’re fighting all the subpoenas.” 

After Republican committee member Jim Jordan of Ohio intervened, Cummings three days ago said he was putting off holding Kline in contempt of Congress after an agreement was reached permitting him to meet with investigators. 

The clearances investigation was triggered earlier this year by a whistle-blower. It is one of multiple probes being pursued by House Democrats into Trump, his presidency and his businesses. Some of the inquiries are expected to run into the 2020 presidential election season. 

Before the Wednesday meeting, in a letter to Cummings, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said Kline had agreed to appear for a closed-door committee interview, despite the subpoena. 

Cipollone indicated in the letter that Kline would most likely decline to answer questions from the Democratic-controlled House panel about clearances issued to specific individuals. 

“No employee of the executive branch is or has been authorized to disclose to the committee information about individual security clearance files or background investigations,” Cipollone said in the letter. 

Cummings sought testimony from Kline after Tricia Newbold, a career White House security official, alleged that clearances initially were denied to at least two dozen Trump administration officials over concerns about possible foreign influence, conflicts of interest, questionable or criminal conduct, 

financial problems or drug abuse. 

In a letter to the White House last month, Cummings referred to three unnamed “senior White House officials” whose clearance histories were addressed in some detail by Newbold. Information obtained by the committee said two of those three senior officials were Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. 

The White House has declined to comment on issues related to the couple’s clearances. 

Different views

Cipollone said there are no legitimate grounds or precedents for sharing individual security clearance records with Congress. 

“It has long been recognized on both sides of the political aisle that there is no legitimate need for access to such sensitive information about individuals,” he told Cummings. 

Cummings condemned the White House’s stance, saying Cipollone’s letter “ignores past precedent when the committee obtained security clearance documents, it disregards previous testimony … from White House officials in the past, and it makes the startling and false claim that Congress has no right to obtain information from whistle-blowers.” 
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Media mogul Oprah Winfrey, whose opinions can get millions of fans to try a new diet or turn a book into an international best-seller, is figuring out which Democratic candidate she will endorse in the crowded 2020 U.S. presidential race.

Winfrey, who has ruled out running for the White House, told the Hollywood Reporter in an extensive interview released on Tuesday that she was “quietly figuring out where I’m going to use my voice in support.”

“I’m sitting back, waiting to see. It’ll be very clear who I’m supporting,” she said of the 2020 election campaign.

Winfrey campaigned heavily for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but adopted a lower profile in her support of Hillary Clinton, who lost in 2016 to current Republican President Donald Trump.

Some 20 Democrats are running for president in 2020.

Winfrey said among the Democrats she is researching are South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke and California Senator Kamala Harris.

She said she already knows New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.

Winfrey, a billionaire movie producer, television network owner, magazine publisher and philanthropist, was urged by her supporters to run for the White House herself after delivering a rousing speech at the 2018 Golden Globe awards ceremony. She has repeatedly ruled out the idea.

Winfrey is also an actress who was Oscar-nominated for her supporting role in the 1985 film “The Color Purple.” She also had a major role in the 2018 film “A Wrinkle in Time,” and appeared in “Selma” and “The Butler” as well as the series “Greenleaf” on OWN TV, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

But with a series of documentaries and interview shows lined up for the upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service, Winfrey said she was no longer interested in acting.

“I think to be really, really good at it, you’ve got to do it a lot. You’ve got to work at it. And it’s got to be something that you have true passion about. I don’t think it’s something you can dabble in,” she said. “It doesn’t feed my soul anymore.”
…

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey, whose opinions can get millions of fans to try a new diet or turn a book into an international best-seller, is figuring out which Democratic candidate she will endorse in the crowded 2020 U.S. presidential race.

Winfrey, who has ruled out running for the White House, told the Hollywood Reporter in an extensive interview released on Tuesday that she was “quietly figuring out where I’m going to use my voice in support.”

“I’m sitting back, waiting to see. It’ll be very clear who I’m supporting,” she said of the 2020 election campaign.

Winfrey campaigned heavily for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but adopted a lower profile in her support of Hillary Clinton, who lost in 2016 to current Republican President Donald Trump.

Some 20 Democrats are running for president in 2020.

Winfrey said among the Democrats she is researching are South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke and California Senator Kamala Harris.

She said she already knows New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.

Winfrey, a billionaire movie producer, television network owner, magazine publisher and philanthropist, was urged by her supporters to run for the White House herself after delivering a rousing speech at the 2018 Golden Globe awards ceremony. She has repeatedly ruled out the idea.

Winfrey is also an actress who was Oscar-nominated for her supporting role in the 1985 film “The Color Purple.” She also had a major role in the 2018 film “A Wrinkle in Time,” and appeared in “Selma” and “The Butler” as well as the series “Greenleaf” on OWN TV, the Oprah Winfrey Network.

But with a series of documentaries and interview shows lined up for the upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service, Winfrey said she was no longer interested in acting.

“I think to be really, really good at it, you’ve got to do it a lot. You’ve got to work at it. And it’s got to be something that you have true passion about. I don’t think it’s something you can dabble in,” she said. “It doesn’t feed my soul anymore.”
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