The body of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush returns to Texas for burial Wednesday after the funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral. Thousands of visitors paid their respect to the 41st U.S. president while his body was lying in state at the U.S. Capitol from Monday evening until Wednesday afternoon. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports dignitaries and the general public mingled in the Capitol’s Rotunda as they parted with the former leader.
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Incoming members of the Democratic Party’s new U.S. House majority say they’re ready to turn the energy of their campaigns into real power on Capitol Hill.

Rep.-elects Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and a handful of other liberal-leaning incoming Democrats used an orientation event for freshman lawmakers Tuesday sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics to stake out some of their top issues – from gun violence to health care to climate change.

They say they’re ready to leverage their victories at the ballot box into victories in Congress — an institution that prizes seniority.

Pressley said power is about more than just how many terms a lawmaker has served.

“It’s a confluence of things. It’s about the committees that we’ll be appointed to. It’s about the values- and issues-based caucuses that we’ll serve on. And it’s about us simply leveraging the platform that we have available to us as well as our social media networks,” Pressley said.

Pressley won election to the House by beating a fellow Democrat – longtime U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano – in a September primary.

Ocasio-Cortez said like-minded incoming Democratic members of the House have the numbers needed to press their case for change.

“We have a magic number in the House … and it’s 218,” she said. “Two hundred and eighteen is the magic number to get things done and how many member Democratic freshmen do we have? Sixty Three. Sixty-three of that 218 is brand new and 35 of that 63 have rejected corporate PAC money, 35 of that 63 is not funded by opioid companies, not funded by the NRA, not funded by for-profit health care, not funded by fossil fuels. Thirty-five are independent of the interests of corporate influence.”

Like Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez also won election by defeating another veteran Democratic incumbent – Joe Crowley – in New York’s June primary.

​Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats have to fight back against an opposition she said “is predicated on us being turned against each other, of us accepting the idea of zero-sum thinking that one community’s gain must be another community’s loss.”

“We know that all of our issues are tied and are the same,” she added. “There is no health care justice without gun violence reform.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley have both pledged to support Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker after Democrats take control of the House in January.

Other new and incoming Democratic House members who spoke at Tuesday’s event include Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania and Andy Levin of Michigan.

Pressley said the timing of Tuesday’s press conference wasn’t meant as a rejection of the Harvard orientation event.

On its website the school says the sessions are designed to help incoming House members “forge bipartisan relationships and learn practical skills of lawmaking just one month prior to taking the oath of office.” Since 1972, the program has hosted nearly 700 current and new member of Congress. 

“There is nothing adversarial,” Pressley said. “This is about us lifting up the voices, the stories, the struggles, the innovation and the ideas of the people that we represent. So I think it’s a good thing.”
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Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in Iowa on Tuesday that he would do everything he can to make climate change the defining issue of the 2020 Democratic presidential nominating campaign, despite resistance in regions of the country that his party would likely need to recapture the White House. 

More than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Charleston, S.C., fellow billionaire Tom Steyer — who, like Bloomberg, is weighing a 2020 Democratic presidential bid — held a roundtable discussion focused on voting rights in the nation’s first Southern primary state. 

The two deep-pocketed Democrats have been noncommittal about whether they will run for president in 2020, but on Tuesday they joined the growing list of visitors to early primary and caucus states.  

In an interview, Bloomberg didn’t provide a timeline for when he’d decide whether to seek the presidency. 

“I am obviously thinking about what the right thing to do is, but I think honestly I know that there’s a time by which I have to do something,” he said. “I also think that there are going to be a lot of events over the next few weeks or very small number of months that are going to be important.” 

Steyer said he is closely watching the decisions made by other Democrats, joking, “I assume there are going to be more Democrats running than there are going to be voters.” 

Skepticism in Trump states

While both men have put the climate atop their agendas, and spent millions promoting awareness and solutions, they could face skepticism in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where President Donald Trump won in 2016 by promising to protect the coal industry. 

“I will do everything for sure to try to make it the issue,” Bloomberg told reporters after visiting a solar-electric panel installation company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Every place I have gone, people always want to talk about the climate. They always want to bring up the fact that I’ve been very active in closing coal-fired power plants.” 

Steyer on Tuesday turned his focus to voting rights — one of the “five rights” in the platform he released last month — calling South Carolina the “perfect place” to begin that conversation.  

“If you look historically, South Carolina has a long history of trying to make sure that people don’t have equal votes,” Steyer said at the start of the town hall. He called South Carolina a state that, “whether people here enjoy it or appreciate it or are sorry about it,” plays an outsized part in the national conversation about the future of the country. 

Both men have been sharply critical of Trump and agree that he is not fit for the presidency. Steyer, who has amassed a 6 million-person email list from his “Need to Impeach” campaign against Trump, has repeatedly said Trump is a danger to the country and must be ousted. 

Speaking on Tuesday, Steyer described Trump as “the most corrupt president in American history who is a basic threat to our system and our safety and to the Constitution itself.” He said that many politicians, from both parties, “don’t think it’s good for their careers to talk about that.” 

Bloomberg, however, said, “It would be a mistake to say anything about that before you see what comes out of the investigation” being conducted by former FBI Director Robert Mueller into Russian election meddling. 

Backers of Democratic candidates

Bloomberg and Steyer spent millions during the 2018 midterm campaigns on behalf of Democratic candidates. Their travel gave them new opportunities to test their message and, perhaps most important, gauge the interest of Democratic primary voters and activists in the potential candidacies. 

In the Des Moines area, Bloomberg was visiting a community college’s wind-energy program and was scheduled to meet with mothers organized to curb gun violence before attending a screening of his climate change film, “Paris to Pittsburgh.” 

Bloomberg contributed $250,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party this year, giving him some claim to gains such as capturing two Republican-held House seats last month. He also has plans to meet with key Democratic operatives. But other potential candidates, including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, have been more aggressive in their efforts. 
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Allegations of flagrant absentee ballot fraud in a North Carolina district have thrown the Election Day results of one of the nation’s last unresolved midterm congressional races into question.

Unofficial ballot totals showed Republican Mark Harris ahead of Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the 9th Congressional District. But the state elections board refused to certify the results last week in view of “claims of numerous irregularities and concerted fraudulent activities” involving mail-in ballots in the district.

The elections board has subpoenaed documents from the Harris campaign, a campaign attorney confirmed Tuesday. Investigators seem to be concentrating on activities linked to a longtime political operative from Bladen County, where allegations about mail-in absentee ballots also surfaced two years ago during a tight election for governor. 

In affidavits offered by the state Democratic Party, voters described a woman coming to their homes to collect their absentee ballots, whether or not they had been completed properly. State law bars this kind of “harvesting” of absentee ballots, which must be submitted by mail or in person by the voter or a close family member. 

If the allegations are accurate, “this is the biggest absentee fraud in a generation or two in North Carolina,” said Gerry Cohen, an election law expert and former longtime legislative staff attorney. “North Carolina has a long history of this kind of thing, particularly in rural areas.” 

Concerns about voter harvesting worried state election officials so much that they sent a letter to every Bladen County address where a voter requested a mail-in ballot asking the voter to call them if someone else tried take the ballot or fill it out.

“Elections officials will never come to your house to pick up your absentee ballot or tell you how to vote,” the letter warned.

The portion of Bladen County in the 9th District was the only place in the district’s eight counties where Harris won a majority of the mail-in ballots, according to unofficial election data. Bladen and Robeson County — where officials also have requested information — had the highest percentages of unreturned mail-in absentee ballots in the state, according to Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer. The total number of unreturned ballots for Bladen and Robeson in the 9th exceeded the current margin.

The district attorney in Raleigh announced this week that she’s been investigating potential Bladen County “voting irregularities” since last January. The investigation that began with claims from 2016 has now spread to this year’s primary and general elections, Wake County DA Lorrin Freeman said in an interview. 

Freeman said she was investigating in part because of comments made by McCrae Dowless of Bladen County during a State Board of Elections hearing in December 2016. Dowless worked as a contractor for Harris’ chief strategist in the campaign, Harris campaign lawyer John Branch confirmed Tuesday. 

Dowless, who served prison time in 1995 for felony fraud and was convicted of felony perjury in 1992, has worked on get-out-the-vote efforts for various local and legislative candidates through the years. Dowless put his name on an elections protest, backed at the time by the campaign of then-GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, that alleged a massive scheme'' by a local political group to run anabsentee ballot mill” to improperly submit votes for a write-in candidate for a position Dowless was seeking.

But the board peppered Dowless with questions about his own absentee ballot activities. Dowless acknowledged he hired people in 2016 to urge voters to turn in absentee ballot request forms, which is legal. In sworn testimony, Dowless said he never handled or filled out the actual ballots. The board dismissed Dowless’ protest but sent all of its evidence to local and federal prosecutors.

Visited by a reporter Tuesday at his Bladenboro home, Dowless declined to comment. He said the voice on the speaker phone in his hand was that of an attorney advising he decline to describe his election activities.

Documents released late Tuesday by the elections board as part of its investigation show Dowless appears to have been the top collector of Bladen County absentee ballot requests this fall. A copy of the Bladen election board’s log book shows Dowless turned in well over 500 applications.  

The elections board has said it will hold a hearing on the allegations on or before Dec. 21. Board members can call for a new election if they find enough problems that could have altered the outcome or cast doubts on the election’s fairness. An election would take place well after the new session of Congress convenes Jan. 3, likely creating a temporary vacancy.

Republican leaders say Harris, a Southern Baptist minister, should be certified the winner, saying no evidence has been made public that show he didn’t get the most lawful votes. 

“The campaign was not aware of any illegal conduct in connection with the 9th District race,” Branch said in a statement. 

Although Democrats won enough House seats nationally to take back the chamber come January, the 9th is gaining attention in part because a Republican has held the seat continuously since 1963. Democrats had hoped McCready, an Iraq War veteran, would end the streak, especially after Harris edged U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger in the May GOP primary.  

Incoming Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Tuesday that a “very substantial question” about fraud exists and hopes state officials “get to the bottom” of the controversy. Hoyer said Harris is “not eligible for being sworn into the House” at this point.

 
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Special counsel Robert Mueller is set to give the first public insight into how much information President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser has shared with prosecutors in the Russia investigation.

The special counsel faces a Tuesday deadline in Michael Flynn’s case to file a memorandum recommending a sentence and providing a federal judge with a description of how valuable the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general has been to the probe. The deadline comes ahead of Flynn’s Dec. 18 sentencing and more than a year after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to Russian government officials on Trump’s behalf.

Federal sentencing guidelines recommend between zero and six months in prison for Flynn, leaving open the possibility of probation.

The detailing of at least some of Flynn’s cooperation also comes as Trump has increasingly vented his anger at the probe — and at one of his former confidantes who cooperated with it.

This week, Trump lashed out at his former legal fixer, Michael Cohen, saying he is making up “stories” to get a reduced prison sentence after his latest guilty plea to lying to Congress detailed conversations he had with the then-Republican presidential candidate. In the same morning, Trump praised longtime confidante Roger Stone for saying he would “never testify against Trump,” adding in his tweet: “Nice to know some people still have ‘guts!”’

It’s unclear if Trump will now turn his fury on Flynn, who Trump grew close to during the 2016 campaign and has drawn the president’s sympathy since he came under investigation.

According to memos written by former FBI Director James Comey, Trump tried to protect Flynn by asking Comey to let the investigation into his false statements go. Trump has denied asking Comey to drop the investigation but that episode is among those under scrutiny by Mueller as he probes whether Trump attempted to obstruct the Russia investigation.

Flynn’s case has been a contrast to those of other Trump associates, who have criticized the Russia probe. Most notably, Trump former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, aggressively fought the investigation and is now facing the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence after his cooperation agreement recently fell apart over allegations that he had lied to investigators. Stone has also waged a public campaign against Mueller.

But Flynn has largely remained out of the public eye, appearing only a handful of times in media interviews or campaign events, and he has strictly avoided criticizing the Mueller probe despite widespread encouragement from his supporters to go on the offensive. He has instead spent considerable time with his family and worked to position himself for a post-conviction career.

Flynn’s false statements stemmed from a Jan. 24, 2017, interview with the FBI about his interactions with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s then-ambassador to the U.S., as the Obama administration was levying sanctions on the Kremlin in response to election interference. In court papers filed along with his plea deal, Flynn said that members of Trump’s inner circle, including the president’s son-in-law and White House aide, Jared Kushner, were involved in, and at times directing, his actions in the weeks before Trump took office.

Flynn was forced to resign his post on Feb. 13, 2017, after news reports revealed that Obama administration officials had warned the Trump White House about Flynn’s false statements. The White House has said that Flynn misled officials — including Vice President Mike Pence — about the content of his conversations.

Flynn also admitted to making false statements about unregistered foreign agent work he performed for the benefit of the Turkish government. Flynn was under investigation by the Justice Department for the work when he became national security adviser.
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The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), an organization that helps organize Republican campaigns for the U.S. House, said Tuesday that it had been hacked by an unknown entity over the past year.  

Politico, which broke the story early Tuesday, said that the email accounts of four “senior aides” had been surveilled for several months. The NRCC became aware of the issue in April, Politico said. CNN, citing anonymous sources, reported the hackers had stolen passwords and could have signed into the surveilled accounts. 

NRCC spokesman Ian Prior confirmed that the organization had been hacked and was in the process of conducting an internal investigation.

Prior also said that the FBI had been notified and would be conducting its own probe. 
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The University of California at Berkeley on Monday settled a free speech lawsuit accusing the school of discriminating against speakers with conservative views. 

Under the settlement filed with the federal court in San Francisco, 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, which filed the lawsuit in April 2017.

The settlement followed an April 27 decision by U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney letting the plaintiffs challenge what they called the university’s “secret” or unfairly restrictive policies toward conservative speakers.

She also let the plaintiffs pursue an equal protection claim over a security fee charged to host conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that was well above a fee for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, part of the court’s liberal wing.

In a statement, the university said its new fee schedule is consistent with its treatment of other student groups, and called changes to its major events policy “non-substantive.”

“It has been that very policy that has enabled the campus to work effectively with the Berkeley College Republicans as they hosted numerous events featuring prominent conservative speakers without incident or interruption,” spokesman Dan Mogulof said.

Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the settlement addressed university policies that were “flatly unconstitutional” under the First Amendment.

“It is no longer able to tax speech on campus when it finds the speech to be disfavored or unpopular,” she said in an interview. “The university has taken a very important liberty-enhancing step to cover these fees.”

Dhillon added: “We wanted a settlement that doesn’t benefit just conservative students, but all students.”

The U.S. Department of Justice in January filed a “statement of interest” in the case, accusing the university of applying a “double standard” by imposing tougher rules on the Berkeley College Republicans.

Justice Department official Jesse Panuccio applauded the settlement in a statement on Monday, calling it a “win for protecting free speech on public college campuses.”

The case is Young America’s Foundation et al v Napolitano et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 17-02255.
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Speaking to a packed auditorium of enthusiastic young people Nov. 27, Bernie Sanders already seemed to be campaigning for the White House again. But the Vermont senator was appearing at George Washington University as an author — not a presidential candidate.

Sanders’ new book, “Where We Go From Here,” went on sale that day, giving him a fresh opportunity to promote his ideas without going through the formality — yet — of launching another presidential campaign.

“What I believe from the bottom of my heart is that it is absolutely imperative that Donald Trump not be elected president of the United States of America. And I’m going to do everything that I can to make certain that that does not happen,” Sanders said.

He later added that if he concludes he is the strongest candidate to take on Trump, he’ll jump into the race.

Regardless of whether Sanders runs, he and virtually every other prominent Democrat considering a 2020 presidential bid are already participating in the book primary.

Julian Castro, the former Housing and Urban Development secretary, has promoted his book, “An Unlikely Journey: Waking up from My American Dream.” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has been on the road touting her children’s book, “Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote.” And in January, California Sen. Kamala Harris will release her memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” with a picture book memoir to debut around the same time.

And, of course, there’s Michelle Obama. The former first lady has repeatedly said she has no plans to run for office, but she’s filled arenas and influenced the political conversation as she’s promoted her memoir, “Becoming.”

Ahead of a 2020 primary that could pit as many as two dozen Democrats against one another, the books offer potential presidential candidates an early opportunity to introduce themselves to voters in a favorable light.

“Every campaign book has to figure out a way in the predictable tsunami of campaign books that will be coming for the 2020 election to distinguish their book and their product and to extend their brand,” said Steve Ross, who formerly led Random House’s Crown division and worked with authors including former President Barack Obama.

It’s a strategy that has served presidential hopefuls from Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump, who wrote or authorized books that served as platforms for ideas and shaping their image.

John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” came out in 1955, when he was in his late 30s, and its sketches of political figures who made unpopular decisions presented him as a serious thinker who, like his subjects, would risk his career for the right cause.

Sen. John McCain’s career was influenced, in part, by his acclaimed memoir “Faith of My Fathers,” which came out in 1999, around the time of his first presidential run. It marked the first time he wrote at length about his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, which helped define his public identity.

The deeply personal exploration of race in Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” propelled him onto the national scene when it was republished during his 2004 Senate campaign. His follow-up, “The Audacity of Hope,” mixed policy ideas and personal reflections to become a vital part of his successful 2008 presidential campaign.

Ross, who is now the president of the Steve Ross Agency LLC, said the quality of the writing is key to a campaign book’s success. If a book is well-written, he said, “it’s like selling out a theater with a two-hour biopic about your life that’s directed by you and starring you, the politician.”

“There are a lot of advantages for both the publisher and for the candidate to have a book as a narrative product,” he added. “They can’t control what The Washington Post and The New York Times and Fox News is going to say about them, but they can control what’s between the covers.”

With book authorship comes the opportunity for would-be candidates to travel to promote not only their book but also their strategy for the country, said Michael Steel, who was an adviser to former House Speaker John Boehner and to Jeb Bush’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign.

“Particularly for the higher-profile potential candidates, it’s an opportunity to get out there and talk about your vision and your record — and it’s particularly good because in addition to political news outlets, you can talk to softer-edged media outlets,” Steel said. “You can go on ‘The View,’ you can go on the ‘Today’ show, you can go on radio stations across the country and talk about the book.”

Gillibrand appeared on “The View” in November to promote her book, which contains stories of women who fought for the right to vote. In the interview, she said the book was for “little boys and little girls to understand what leadership looks like.”

As expected, she was asked about her own aspirations.

Calling it a “very important moral question,” Gillibrand told the hosts that she believed she’d been called to fight “as hard as I possibly can” to restore decency and integrity to the country and that she was considering a run.

Steel drew a distinction between the flurry of books that are being released as candidates consider launching campaigns and the books that are released before a presidential run is officially in the works.

“The books that are written before a candidate decides to run are often far more revealing about their actual character and personality and background,” Steel said. “Those are also the ones that can occasionally reveal things that the person probably wouldn’t have revealed if they were planning to run for president.”
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White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday the Trump administration wants to end subsidies for electric cars and other items, including renewable energy sources.

Asked about plans after General Motors announced U.S. plant closings and layoffs last week, Kudlow pointed to the $2,500-to-$7,500 tax credit for consumers who buy plug-in electric vehicles, including those made by GM, under federal law.

“As a matter of our policy, we want to end all of those subsidies,” Kudlow said. “And by the way, other subsidies that were imposed during the Obama administration, we are ending, whether it’s for renewables and so forth.”

Asked about a timeline, he said: “It’s just all going to end in the near future. I don’t know whether it will end in 2020 or 2021.”

The tax credits are capped by Congress at 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer, after which the subsidy phases out. GM has said it expects to hit the threshold by the end of 2018, which means under the current law, its tax credit scheme would end in 2020. Tesla said in July it had hit the threshold.

Other automakers may not hit the cap for several years.

Experts say the White House cannot change the cap unilaterally. U.S. President Donald Trump last week threatened to eliminate subsidies for GM in retaliation for the company’s decision.

Kudlow made clear any changes in subsidies would not just affect GM.

“I think legally you just can’t,” he said.

Democrats will take control of the U.S. House in January and are unlikely to agree to end subsidies for electric cars and many have been pushing for additional incentives.

Tesla and GM have lobbied Congress for months to lift the cap on electric vehicles or make other changes, but face an uphill battle make changes before the current Congress expires.

In October, Senator Dean Heller proposed lifting the current cap on electric vehicles eligible for tax credits but phase out the credit for the entire industry in 2022. Two other senators in September proposed lifting the per manufacturer credit and extending the benefit for 10 years.

Also in October, Senator John Barrasso a Republican who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, proposed legislation to end the EV tax credit entirely.
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Former FBI director James Comey has reached a deal to testify privately to the House Judiciary Committee, backing off his legal fight for an open hearing, his attorney said Sunday.

Comey, whose lawyers went to court to challenge a congressional subpoena, said in a tweet that it was “hard to protect my rights without being in contempt.”

As part of a deal with legislators, Comey has been told that he is free to speak about the questioning afterward and that a transcript would be released 24 hours after he testifies, his attorney, David Kelley, said.

Comey’s lawyers told a federal judge on Friday that the interview should be done in a public setting because they fear that statements from a closed-door interview would be selectively leaked. A lawyer for Congress, however, argued that committees can conduct investigations however they please and Comey had no right to refuse a subpoena or demand a public hearing.

Comey is expected to be questioned about decisions made by the FBI in 2016, including a call not to recommend criminal charges against Democrat Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server and the FBI’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and Republican Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump fired Comey in May 2017.

The interview is scheduled for Friday and Comey will be “free to make any or all of that transcript public as he is free to share with the public any of the questions asked and testimony given during the interview,” Kelley said.

Because of the deal, Comey has agreed to withdraw his challenge to the subpoena. A judge had been set to rule on the matter on Monday.

The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, decried Comey’s use of “baseless litigation” and called it an “attempt to run out the clock on this Congress,” a reference to the few weeks left before Democrats take control.

A transcript of the interview will be released “as soon as possible after the interview, in the name of our combined desire for transparency,” Goodlatte said.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he will give formal notice to the U.S. Congress soon to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), giving six months for lawmakers to approve a new trade deal signed Friday.

“I will be formally terminating NAFTA shortly,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way home from Argentina.

“Just so you understand, when I do that, if for any reason we’re unable to make a deal because of Congress then Congress will have a choice” of the new deal or returning to trade rules from before 1994 when NAFTA took effect, he said.

Trump told reporters the trade rules before NAFTA “work very well.” NAFTA allows any country to formally withdraw with six months notice.

Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto signed a new trade agreement Friday known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

Democrats skeptical

Trump’s decision to set in motion a possible end to largely free trade in North America comes amid some skepticism from Democrats about the new trade deal.

The U.S. landscape will shift significantly in January when Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, after winning midterm elections in November.

Presumptive incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi described the deal as a “work in progress” that lacks worker and environment protections.

“This is not something where we have a piece of paper we can say yes or no to,” she said at a news conference Friday, noting that Mexico had yet to pass a law on wages and working conditions.

Other Democrats, backed by unions that oppose the pact, have called for stronger enforcement provisions for new labor and environmental standards, arguing that USMCA’s state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism is too weak.

Can president act without Congress?

A 2016 congressional research report said there is a debate over whether a president can withdraw from a trade deal without the consent of Congress, and there is no historical precedent for the unilateral withdrawal from a free trade deal by a president that had been approved by Congress.

The issue could ultimately be decided by the U.S. courts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said last year that exiting NAFTA without a new deal could devastate American agriculture, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and “be an economic, political and national-security disaster.”

The leaders of the three countries agreed on a deal in principle to replace NAFTA, which governs more than $1.2 trillion of mutual trade, after acrimonious negotiations concluded Sept. 30.

Target of campaign

Trump had vowed to revamp NAFTA during his 2016 presidential election campaign. He threatened to tear it up and withdraw the United States completely at times during the negotiation, which would have left trade between the three neighbors in disarray.

The three were still bickering over the finer points of the deal just hours before officials were to sit down and sign it.

Legislators in Canada and Mexico must still approve the pact.

Trump had forced Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the 24-year-old agreement because he said it encouraged U.S. companies to move jobs to low-wage Mexico.

U.S. objections to Canada’s protected internal market for dairy products was a major challenge facing negotiators during the talks, and Trump repeatedly demanded concessions and accused Canada of hurting U.S. farmers.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday he is likely to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in January or February and that three sites for their second meeting are under consideration.

“We’re getting along very well. We have a good relationship,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from a G-20 summit in Argentina.

Trump added that at some point he will invite Kim to the United States.

The two sides have been engaged in talks on the leaders’ second meeting after the first, unprecedented one in Singapore in June, Reuters reported in October, citing a senior official.

The White House said in a statement Saturday after Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that they and Kim will strive “to see a nuclear free Korean Peninsula.”

The statement said Xi and Trump “agreed that great progress has been made with respect to North Korea.”

Concrete plan

Last month, Vice President Mike Pence said Trump would push for a concrete plan outlining Pyongyang’s moves to end its arms programs.

Pence told NBC News last month the United States would not require Pyongyang to provide a complete list of nuclear weapons and locations before the second summit, but that the meeting must produce a concrete plan.

“I think it will be absolutely imperative in this next summit that we come away with a plan for identifying all of the weapons in question, identifying all the development sites, allowing for inspections of the sites and the plan for dismantling nuclear weapons,” Pence said.

Pence said last month it was essential that international sanctions pressure be maintained on North Korea until its complete denuclearization was achieved.

North Korea had been angered by Washington’s refusal to ease sanctions and has warned it could resume development of its nuclear program if the United States did not drop its campaign.

North Korean missile bases

A U.S. think tank said last month it had identified at least 13 of an estimated 20 active, undeclared missile bases inside North Korea, underscoring the challenge for American negotiators hoping to persuade Kim to give up his weapons programs.

North Korea had entered into agreements with regional powers in 1994 and in 2005 to dismantle its nuclear program in return for economic benefits and diplomatic rewards, but those deals broke down after Pyongyang clandestinely continued to pursue building weapons of mass destruction.
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U.S. President Donald Trump says he is willing to agree to a two-week extension of government funding to avoid conflicts with the ceremonies honoring the late President George H.W. Bush.

Speaking on board Air force One on his way home from the G-20 summit in Argentina, Trump said congressional leaders have asked for the extension because of Bush’s funeral on Wednesday and other events this week honoring the country’s 41st president.  Trump said he “would absolutely consider it and probably give it.”

Funding for some government operations is currently set to run out on Friday, although much of the U.S. government has already been funded through next September.

Trump and lawmakers have sparred in recent days over his demand for $5 billion in funding for a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico to thwart illegal migration of Central Americans trying to enter the United States.

The U.S. leader has threatened a partial government shutdown if the new wall funding is not included in the spending measures lawmakers are now debating.  But so far lawmakers have only agreed to spend $1.6 billion more for border security.

 
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Condolences and praise began to pour in from former presidents and political figures around the world for former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who died Friday:

“George H.W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for,” former President George W. Bush said in a statement following the announcement of his father’s death.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, praised the 41st president’s ability to inspire “generations of his fellow Americans to public service – to be, in his words, ‘a thousand points of light’ illuminating the greatness, hope and opportunity of America to the world.”

The Trumps added, “Along with his full life of service to country, we will remember former President Bush for his devotion to family – especially the love of his life, Barbara.”

Former President Jimmy Carter said he and his wife, Rosalynn, “are deeply saddened by the death of former President George H.W. Bush. His administration was marked by grace, civility, and social conscience. Through his Points of Light initiative and other projects, he espoused a uniquely American volunteer spirit, fostering bipartisan support for citizen service and inspiring millions to embrace community volunteerism as a cherished responsibility.”

Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, released a joint statement, saying, “Bush’s life is a testament to the notion that public service is a noble, joyous calling.”

The Obamas recalled that Bush once said he got more of a kick out of being one of the founders of the YMCA in Midland, Texas, in 1952 than almost anything he had ever done. “What a testament to the qualities that make this country great,” the Obamas said.

“Few Americans have been – or will ever be – able to match President Bush’s record of service to the United States and the joy he took every day from it,” said Bill and Hillary Clinton, the former president and secretary of state, respectively.  They noted Bush’s “military service in World War II, to his work in Congress, the United Nations, China, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Vice Presidency and the Presidency, where he worked to move the post-Cold War world toward greater unity, peace, and freedom.”

​James Baker, Bush’s former secretary of state, said that in each position Bush held, he “led with strength, integrity, compassion and humility – characteristics that define a truly great man and effective leader.”

John Sununu, who was Bush’s chief of staff, wrote in The Washington Post on Saturday, “Although he (Bush) would never be comfortable taking credit for the success of his life, most historians now agree that Bush was a great president who accomplished great things. He helped make America safer and the world more stable and more prosperous than ever before in history.”

Kuwait’s ruling emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, said Bush tried to “create a new international order based on justice and equality among nations” and never “forgot the Kuwaiti people and will remain in their memory.”

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Bush worked together to end the Cold War in the late 1980s to early 1990s through such things as U.S.-Russia arms control agreements, including the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. He sent condolences to the Bush family, saying they “deeply appreciated the attention, kindness and simplicity typical of George and Barbara Bush, as well as the rest of their large, friendly family.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, via the Kremlin website, said Saturday, “A distinguished man has passed away. One who served his country for his entire life, with a weapon in his hands during wartime and in high office during peacetime.”
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U.S. lawmakers are urging President Donald Trump to raise the issue of China’s mass internment of Muslim ethnic minorities when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Argentina. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Washington.
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Significant dates in the life of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

1924 — George H.W. Bush is born June 12 in Milton, Massachusetts, to Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush

1941 — A few weeks after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, Bush meets Barbara Pierce at a Christmas dance.

1942 — Enlists in the U.S. Navy on the day he turns 18 years old.

1943 — Becomes the youngest commissioned pilot in the naval air service.

1945 — Marries Barbara Pierce in January while on leave. Bush is honorably discharged from the Navy in September.

1948 — Graduates from Yale and accepts a job in the oil industry and moves his family to Texas.

1952 — Co-founds Zapata Petroleum. Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, is elected to the U.S. Senate from Connecticut.

1962 — Becomes chairman of the Harris County Republican Committee. His father retires from the Senate.

1964 — Is unsuccessful in his run for seat in the U.S. Senate.

1966 — Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Becomes the first freshman in 63 years to be offered a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

1970 — Gives up his congressional seat to again run for the Senate, but is defeated by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen.

1971 — Appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations by President Richard Nixon.

1974 — Appointed to be chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in China by President Gerald Ford.

1976 — Is named Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

1979 — Declares his candidacy for the presidency of the United States.

1980 — Fails to win the nomination of the Republican Party but is picked as Ronald Reagan’s vice president. Reagan-Bush beat Carter-Mondale in a landslide.

1981 — Is sworn in as the 43rd vice president.

1987 — Announces he will run for president.

​1989 — Is sworn in as the 41st president of the United States. On Dec. 20, the United States invades Panama, captures dictator Manuel Noriega and brings him to the U.S. to stand trial for drug-trafficking.

1991 — The United States and its allies launch a military operation to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm begins with aerial and naval bombardment, followed by a ground assault five weeks later. A cease-fire is declared 100 hours after the start of the ground assault.

1992 — Bush announces his candidacy for re-election. In November, he is defeated by Bill Clinton.

2001 — Attends the inauguration of his son, George W. Bush, as the 43rd president of the United States. It is the first time, since John and John Quincy Adams almost 200 years earlier, that a father and son have been elected president.

2011 — Is awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor, the highest civilian honor in the United States, by President Barack Obama.

2014 — Fulfills a long-standing promise to skydive on his 90th birthday. It is the eighth time the former president has made a parachute jump, including on his 80th and 85th birthdays.

2018 — Dies Nov. 30, age 94
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George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, a man born of patrician pedigree, but with a sense of honor, duty and service to his country that played out over the last 60 years of the 20th century, died Friday at age 94.

In a life on the world stage and at the highest levels of the American political scene, Bush lost and won elections before becoming the American leader in 1989, and then, with a declining U.S. economy and unemployment rising, was turned out of office after four years in the White House, losing his re-election bid in 1992.

He marked the start of his presidency with a sweeping inaugural declaration that “a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.”

His pronouncement soon proved prophetic, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union occurring early in his presidency. Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, their Malta talks viewed as an important stepping stone toward the two leaders signing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

During his four years in the White House, Bush ordered a military operation in Panama to overthrow its drug-trafficking leader, Manuel Noriega. Later, he sent troops to the Mideast to repel Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his attempted takeover of oil-rich Kuwait. It was perhaps the high point of Bush’s presidency, his approval rating among U.S. voters reaching a record 89 percent, with a fireworks display lighting the night-time sky over Washington to salute the successful mission.

Upon later reflection, Bush’s foray into Kuwait was considered as something less than a total victory in that many Iraqi troops were pushed back into their homeland, rather than captured or killed, and Hussein remained in power, only overthrown years later in the 2003 U.S. invasion ordered by Bush’s son, President George W. Bush.

The elder Bush said he rejected an overthrow of the Iraqi government because it would have “incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.”

Early commitment to country

Bush’s commitment to his country came early in life. He was a naval fighter pilot in World War II, attacking Japanese targets at the age of 18, victorious in one of the war’s largest air battles, the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Later, he completed one mission after his plane was hit by flak, leaving his engine on fire. He bailed out of the aircraft and was rescued in the waters off the Bonin Islands.

In his rise to the presidency, Bush held a variety of key positions over the years, often deemed by Republican presidents as the most qualified man in U.S. public life. He served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the early 1970s, chairman of the Republican National Committee a short time later, then as chief U.S. envoy to China in the mid-1970s. Later, he was director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

He was not always a successful politician, losing a 1964 election for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas, where he later founded an oil company. He won an election for a seat in the House of Representatives before losing another bid for a Senate seat. That loss set him on a path to the string of high-level appointments in the 1970s.

​Reagan’s running mate

Bush sought the 1980 Republican presidential nomination but lost it to then-California governor, Ronald Reagan, who tapped Bush as his vice presidential running mate in two successful national campaigns, in 1980 and again four years later.

With Reagan barred by the U.S. Constitution from serving more than two terms, Bush plotted a presidential run for 1988, ultimately defeating the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.

The campaign was marked by an infamous political television ad produced by a group supporting Bush that depicted Dukakis as weak on crime because as governor he had released on weekend furlough a convicted killer, a black man named Willie Horton, who then raped a white woman and assaulted her white fiance. Some critics viewed the ad as racist and an attempt to play on white voters’ fears of crimes committed by menacing black men.

Four years later, however, Bush lost the presidency to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, although the two later became friends, occasionally dispatched by subsequent U.S. presidents to oversee assistance efforts after natural disasters.

​Elder statesman

In his retirement years, Bush watched as one of his sons, George W. Bush, twice won the presidency, only the second time in U.S. history that a father and son both became the U.S. leaders. Bush oversaw the opening of his presidential library in College Station, Texas, and was widely honored as an elder statesman. But on several occasions, as he was confined to a wheelchair while he battled a form of Parkinson’s disease, he had to apologize for inappropriately touching women who were standing next to him after telling a sexually suggestive joke.

Bush was married for 73 years to the former Barbara Pierce, a woman he met in his teenage years. It was the longest marriage among any U.S. presidential couples. She died at 92 in April 2018.
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They haven’t spoken in days, not since President Donald Trump called to congratulate Nancy Pelosi on Democrats’ election night win.

But they don’t really need to. Trump and Pelosi go way back, from the time she first showed up at Trump Tower fundraising for the Democrats long before he would become president or she the House speaker. Two big-name heirs to big-city honchos — Trump and Pelosi each had fathers who were political power players in their home towns — they’ve rubbed elbows on the Manhattan social scene for years.

And despite daily barbs in Washington, he’s always “Mr. President” to her, and she’s one prominent politician he has not labeled with a derisive nickname.

Not quite friends, nor enemies, theirs is perhaps the most important relationship in Washington. If anything is to come of the new era of divided government, with a Republican president and Democratic control of the House, it will happen in the deal-making space between two of the country’s most polarizing politicians.

The day after their election night phone call, Trump and Pelosi did speak again, indirectly, across Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I really respected what Nancy said last night about bipartisanship and getting together and uniting,” Trump said in a press conference at the White House. “That’s what we should be doing.”

Pressed after his unusual public lobbying for Pelosi to become House speaker, Trump insisted he was sincere.

“A lot of people thought I was being sarcastic or I was kidding. I wasn’t. I think she deserves it,” he said. “I also believe that Nancy Pelosi and I could work together and get a lot of things done.”

Pelosi sent word back a few minutes later from her own press conference at the Capitol, which she delayed for nearly an hour as the president conducted his.

“Last night, I had a conversation with President Trump about how we could work together,” Pelosi said, noting that “building infrastructure” was one of the items they discussed.

“He talked about it during his campaign and really didn’t come through with it in his first two years in office,” she nudged. “I hope that we can do that because we want to create jobs from sea to shining sea.”

Despite all the campaign trail trash talk, both Trump and Pelosi have incentive to make some deals.

The president could use a domestic policy win heading into his own re-election in 2020, alongside his regular railing against illegal immigration, the “witch hunt” of the Russia investigation or other issues that emerge from his tweets.

Democrats, too, need to show Americans they can do more than resist the Trump White House. It’s no surprise that two of the top Democratic priorities in the new Congress, infrastructure investment and lowering health care costs, dovetail with promises Trump made to voters, but has not yet fulfilled.

“I do think there’s opportunities to pass legislation,” said former White House legislative director Marc Short.

Trump has long viewed Pelosi as both a foil and a possible partner, and she sees in him the one who can sign legislation into law.

The president has told confidants that he respects Pelosi’s deal-making prowess and her ability to hang on to power in the face of a series of challenges from the left wing of the party, according to four White House officials and Republicans close to the White House. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and requested anonymity.

He told one ally this month that he respected Pelosi “as a fighter” and that he viewed her as someone with whom he could negotiate.

“The president respects her,” said Short.

Short described the interaction between Pelosi and Trump during a 2017 meeting with other congressional leaders at the White House to prevent a government shutdown. “They were throwing pros and cons back at each other,” he said.

“The question I can’t answer is to what extent will Democrats give Pelosi political bandwidth” to strike deals, Short said. He pointed to potential areas of agreement like infrastructure, drug prices and prison reform.

But part of Trump’s push for Pelosi to return to power was more nakedly political. Pelosi has long been a popular Republican target, spurring countless fundraising efforts and attack ads. And Trump has told advisers that, if needed, he would make her the face of the opposition in Democratic party until the 2020 presidential field sorts itself out.

Pelosi’s name draws some of the biggest jeers at his rallies and he believes that “she could be Hillary” in terms of a Clinton-like figure to rally Republicans against, according to one of the advisers familiar with the president’s private conversations.

At the same time, Trump has not publicly branded Pelosi with a mocking nickname. She’s no “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer, as he calls the top Senate Democrat, or “Little” Adam Schiff at the Intelligence Committee or “Low IQ” Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who will chair the Financial Services Committee.

On whether Trump likes Pelosi as ally or adversary, Short said, “I don’t think those are mutually exclusive.”

Pelosi, perhaps more than her Republican counterparts — outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — became an early observer, and adapter, to the Trump style of governing.

When Trump and Democrats were trying to broker an immigration deal in September 2017, she suggested he could tweet his assurances to the young Dreamers. And he did.

Around the same time when Trump and congressional leaders convened at the White House to avoid a federal government shutdown, Republicans and Trump’s own Cabinet team pressed for their preferred solution. But Pelosi kept asking a simple question: How many Republican votes could they bring to the table? When it was clear they could not bring enough for passage, Trump intervened and agreed with Democrats “Chuck and Nancy,” as he came to call them.

Votes, Pelosi explained later, were the “currency of the realm.” Trump, as a businessman, she said, got it.

Pelosi is poised to become House speaker again if she wins her election in January. Asked this week how Trump might react to having a woman in power, Pelosi recalled the first time she held the office, when George W. Bush was president, in 2007.

Bush would call her “No. 3,” she said, a reference to the speaker’s spot in the presidential succession line, after the president and the vice president.

“He treated me and the office I hold with great respect,” she said. “I would expect nothing less than that from this President of the United States.”
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The investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election took a potentially significant turn Thursday when President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, entered a guilty plea at a federal court in New York. Cohen admitted that he lied to Congress about Trump’s interest in a real estate project in Russia while he was running for president. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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Reporters traveling with President Donald Trump to the G-20 Summit in Argentina say he is in a bad mood and distracted after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted lying to Congress about a Trump real estate deal in Russia.

Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in New York Thursday, admitting he misled lawmakers about the timing of talks with Russia for building a Trump tower in Moscow.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling, brought the charges against Cohen. Cohen is already facing prison time for bank fraud and activities related to his taxicab business.

WATCH: Cohen Guilty Plea Signals New Turn in Russia Probe

What Cohen said to Congress

Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that negotiations between the Trump organization and Russia to build the tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. The talks actually continued as late as June of that year, after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination.

Cohen also admitted to lying to Congress about other details of the Moscow project, including his own contacts with Russian officials and that he never asked Trump to fly to Moscow himself.

According to the charging documents, Cohen’s close friend and onetime Trump employee Felix Sater talked about giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in the Trump tower as a ploy to get Russian oligarchs to pay top dollar to also live there.

Cohen told the judge he lied to Congress because he wanted to be consistent with Trump’s “political messaging” and out of his desire “to be loyal” to Trump.

​Trump tower in Moscow

Trump’s plans to build a hotel-retail-apartment complex in Moscow go back more than 20 years.

The president insisted throughout the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia and had no connections to the Kremlin.

But earlier Thursday, while standing outside the White House, Trump told reporters he had been “thinking about building a building.”

“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business and why should I lose lots of opportunities?” he asked reporters.

Trump landed in Buenos Aires late Thursday for the Group of 20, a meeting of leaders from industrial and emerging-market nations.

Cohen had once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump.

The president now blasts him as a “weak person” who lied to Mueller to get a lighter prison sentence for his financial crimes.

Trump also stressed that his Moscow deal was never a secret and that he abandoned the idea because he wanted to focus on running for president.

The talks between Russia and Cohen for a Trump tower appear to be unrelated to the question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.

But the negotiations over the deal were going on at the same time Russia was interfering in the election by hacking Democratic party e-mails.

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, said Cohen’s plea is another example of Trump allies being untruthful about Russia, asking reporters, “What are they covering up for?”

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee next year, said Cohen’s guilty plea clearly demonstrates “the president’s own denials during the campaign were false or misleading.”

Trump has tried to distance himself from Cohen, despite their long relationship. Cohen testified in August that Trump ordered him to illegally arrange payments before the 2016 election to buy the silence of two women who claim they had affairs with Trump, something Trump has denied.
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Several Democratic women, including Senators Kamala Harris (California), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York) and possibly even 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, are potential presidential contenders in 2020, but it could be more of an uphill battle for them than for their male counterparts.

That’s because just over half of Americans are totally comfortable with the idea of a woman president, according to a new report by the consulting firm Kantar Public. 

The report finds that while 63 percent of Americans are perfectly fine with the idea of a woman heading a major corporation, just 52 percent are as comfortable with a scenario featuring a female president.

Men are more inclined to judge a person’s leadership suitability based on gender, while women are more likely to think men and women are equally suited to leadership, according to the report, which finds that 60 percent of women would be OK with one of their own as commander-in-chief, compared to just 45 percent of men.

Ten thousand people in seven developed countries – members of the G7 – were surveyed for the study. In addition to the United States, members of the G7 include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. England and Germany currently have a woman leading their governments.
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A bolstered Republican Senate majority will facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to remake the federal judiciary even as Congress as a whole returns to political gridlock beginning next year, observers say.

While Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections earlier this month, Republicans boosted their Senate majority from 51 to 54 seats in the 100-member chamber, with only one contest, in Republican-leaning Mississippi, yet to be decided.

Beginning in January, Democrats will be able to use their House majority to block any legislation to which they object. But in one critical area, judicial nominees, Republicans will have a stronger hand to confirm Trump’s picks for lifetime appointments to the federal bench and make the judiciary far more ideologically conservative for years, perhaps decades, to come.

“While most things the Senate does need to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, nominations only need 51 votes,” Molly Reynolds, a governance studies fellow at Washington‘s Brookings Institution, said. “When you have 53 votes (Republicans have just gained another Senate seat in a Mississippi runoff election), that gives you more of a margin for error.”

‘Judge factory’

“The Senate has become a judge factory,” American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein said. “[Republican Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell is bringing up a substantial number of judges. With 53 [Republican senators], you can withstand one, two, or even three defections (Republican ‘no’ votes), and still get it done. So for McConnell, this is a substantial amount of breathing room.”

Lawmakers have signaled they are coming to terms with a Congress that will be politically divided and require bipartisan cooperation to send legislation to the president’s desk.

“Marshaling resources against the opioid crisis, reforming Dodd Frank [financial regulations], funding our armed forces, taking care of our veterans…are some of the things we have done in this Congress on a bipartisan basis,” McConnell, who represents Kentucky, recently tweeted.

In an opinion piece for Fox News, the majority leader wrote, “Looking ahead to the coming year, there will be no shortage of opportunities to continue this impressive record of cooperation across the aisle and across the Capitol.”

‘Check on Donald Trump’

For their part, Democrats are not dismissing bipartisanship, but are making clear they intend to flex their newfound political muscle.

“There is now a check on Donald Trump, and that is great news for America,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said at a post-election news conference.

On Twitter, Schumer wrote, “We have tremendous unity in our caucus…Democrats are going to be relentlessly focused on the issues that matter most to the American people.”

“Divided control of the two houses of Congress is not a recipe for [producing] major legislation over the next two years,” Reynolds said. “There will be some things they work together on, perhaps infrastructure, perhaps prescription drug prices. But by and large, I expect the two chambers to be operating on different playing fields.”

The year 2010 saw the mirror image of the 2018 midterm election results. In 2010, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and used it as a check on then-president Barack Obama, a Democrat, as well as what was then a Democratically-led Senate. Legislative gridlock and a series of partial U.S. government shutdowns ensued beginning in 2011.

“Just as in 2011 and 2012, we’re going to see almost no progress on the major issues facing the country, with one possible exception, [improving U.S.] infrastructure, where the interests of House Democrats and the president may come together,” Ornstein said.

Investigations expected

But differences between 2019 and 2011 are likely, given Democrats’ stated intention to investigate the Trump administration.

“I expect Democrats to spend most of their time on oversight and engaging in a wide range of investigations, some of which will target President Trump personally as well as the conduct of the executive branch over the last two years,” Reynolds said.

“This time around, Democrats in the House are not going to instigate a [government] shutdown. We may get a shutdown in the coming months but it will come from Donald Trump insisting on full funding for his [border] wall,” Ornstein said, adding. “[Congressional] investigations are going to bring a great deal of tension.”

Trump remains combative on the ongoing Russia probe and is warning of consequences if House Democrats open the investigative floodgates, recently tweeting, “The prospect of Presidential Harassment by the Dems is causing the Stock Market big headaches!”

Changes in party control of one or both houses of Congress occurred in 2007, 2011, 2015, and will occur again in 2019. Throughout it all, Congress has suffered low approval ratings from the American people, a situation that is unlikely to improve anytime soon.

“We’re going to have sharper partisan edges in the body, a lot of partisan and ideological combat, tribal combat, in the coming years,” Ornstein said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that Americans are going to feel better about things.”

“Gridlock is likely to keep most Americans not terribly happy with how Washington works,” Reynolds said.

 
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President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty Thursday to a new charge of lying to Congress about a Russian real estate venture Trump sought to develop during his presidential campaign.

The charge was filed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Cohen, who previously pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws, directed efforts to construct a Trump-branded complex in Moscow.

He admitted to a federal judge in New York he lied about the timing of negotiations and other information in order to be consistent with Trump’s “political message” and “to be loyal to Individual One,” a reference to Trump during the court session.

Among the lies Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017 was that discussions of the project ended by January 2016 when they actually continued until June of that year.

Cohen said he also lied about his communications with Russian officials, when he said he did not agree to a project-related trip to Russia, and when he said he never thought about asking Trump to travel to support the project.  

Trump strongly denounced his former attorney, accusing him of succumbing to pressure from prosecutors.

“He’s a weak person and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “So he’s lying about a project that everybody knew about. I mean we were very open with it. We were thinking about building a building,” Trump added.

“I decided ultimately not to do it. There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it. If I did do it, there would have been nothing wrong,” Trump said.

In the nine page filing by prosecutors, Cohen said Trump was among the people he updated about the project, doing so on at least on three occasions. Cohen also said Trump signed a letter of intent. Trump has repeatedly denied he had business dealings in Russia.

Cohen also said he reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman by email as part of the potential deal.

The former Trump attorney said he collaborated on the deal with Russian-born developer Felix Sater, who Cohen said claimed to have deep connections in Moscow.

Discussions about the real estate proposal began after Trump announced his candidacy. Cohen said the talks ended when it became clear the project was not feasible.

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, said Cohen’s plea is another example of Trump allies being untruthful about Russia, asking reporters, “What are they covering up for?”

Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said, “It’s no surprise that Cohen lied to Congress.” Giuliani called Cohen a “proven liar” who is trying to avoid a long prison term for “serious crimes … that had nothing to do with the Trump Organization.”

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee next year, said Cohen’s guilty plea clearly demonstrates “the president’s own denials during the campaign were false or misleading.”

Schiff said the guilty plea also highlights the belief of Democratic committee members that “other witnesses were also untruthful” during testimony before the panel in August and in October of 2017.

Trump has tried to distance himself from Cohen despite their long relationship. Cohen testified in August that Trump ordered him to illegally arrange payments to buy the silence of two women before the 2016 election, who said they had affairs with Trump. The president has denied their claims.

The developments come as Trump continues almost daily attacks on Mueller’s investigation of Trump campaign links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice in an effort to thwart the probe.

Trump last week provided written answers to about two dozen questions posed by Mueller about his own actions and recollections of the campaign.

It is not known, however, whether Mueller will seek to follow up with more questions for Trump, now nearly halfway through his first term in the White House.
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Nancy Pelosi was nominated by fellow House Democrats to be speaker on Wednesday, but she still faces a showdown vote when the full House convenes in January. 

Pelosi entered the closed-door caucus election in an unusual position — running unopposed despite the clamor by some Democrats for new leadership. Votes were still being counted, but she was assured of victory. 

“Are there dissenters? Yes,” the California Democrat told reporters as voting was underway. “But I expect to have a powerful vote going forward.”

Pelosi was nominated as her party’s choice for speaker by Rep. Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts, with no fewer than eight colleagues set to second the choice, including Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights leader, and three newly elected lawmakers.

As House Democrats met in private in the Capitol, they faced a simple “yes” or “no” choice on the ballots. 

A sign of the party’s mood emerged early as the House Democrats elected Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York as caucus chairman, elevating the charismatic 48-year-old from the Congressional Black Caucus as a new generation of leaders pushes to the forefront. 

His slim victory in that race, 123-113, over veteran Rep. Barbara Lee of California, another influential member of the Black Caucus, offered a window into the shifting landscape. Flanked by top progressive leaders, Lee made her pitch during the closed session, drawing on the record number of women, including minority women, who ran for office and are entering the new Congress.

The majority, though, went to Jeffries who used his speech to remind Democrats of their core accomplishments — from passage of the Civil Rights Act to the Affordable Care Act — before pivoting to his vision for the future. 

“I’m focused on standing up for everyone — white, black, Latino, Asian, Native American — every single American deserves us, here in the United States Congress to work, Democrats and Republicans, on their behalf to make their life better,” he said afterward.

Democrats regrouped for an afternoon session, and voting that includes various caucus positions could stretch on for hours. 

In a letter to colleagues ahead of voting, Pelosi gave a nod to those clamoring for change.

“We all agree that history is in a hurry, and we need to accelerate the pace of change in Congress,” she wrote, noting the “historic” class of new first-term lawmakers, the largest since Watergate, who led Democrats to the majority in the midterm election.

“My responsibility is to recognize the myriad of talent and tools at our disposal to take us in to the future by showcasing the idealism, intellect and imagination of our caucus,” she wrote.

Pelosi’s opponents had pledged to usher in a new era for Democrats. But one by one, the powerful California congresswoman picked off the would-be challengers and smoothed skeptics. In the end, there was no one willing, or able, to mount a serious campaign against her bid to reclaim the speaker’s job, which she held from 2007 to 2011, before the GOP took back the majority.

Pelosi still lacks the vote tally she’ll need in January, when the new Congress convenes, to ascend to the post.

“You can’t beat someone with no one,” said Rep.-elect Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., who explained in a statement that she came to Washington eager to hear from colleagues and “hopeful that many candidates would step up to the plate.”

But “the only person that declared their intentions, spoke to me about their vision and asked me for my vote is Nancy Pelosi.”

Democrats were poised to return their entire top leadership team, including Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland in the No. 2 spot as majority leader and Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina in the No. 3 spot as whip. They were running unopposed.

Plenty of newcomers were set to fill the down-ballot slots

Those trying to oust Pelosi say they always knew the internal caucus election would fall in her favor. She only needed a simple majority of Democrats, who have a 233-seat majority, with several races still undecided, to win the nomination.

But she’ll need 218 votes in January, half the full 435-seat House, which is harder, if all Republicans vote against her, as is likely — though she could win with fewer votes if some lawmakers are absent or vote present.

Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., played down the significance of Wednesday’s caucus vote and said the true fight for House speaker will occur in January.

“We’re not going to make a big play of it,” he said. “It’s Jan. 3.”

Several factions within the Democratic caucus in the House worked against Pelosi, but they failed to gain ground in recent days. Still, there seem to be more than enough votes to stop Pelosi in January. Some say only with a floor fight in view will new leaders emerge. They say there are plenty of Democrats on the bench who could step up to the job.

But Pelosi’s ability to stand unopposed Wednesday, despite the threats from within and reams of attack ads against her, showed the staying power of her brand of machine politics.

“The reality is there is no alternative,” said Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., who had signed on to the letter opposing her but reversed course after Pelosi tapped him to lead his effort to expand Medicare options to those age 50 to 65.

She was the female speaker and hopes to return to a role few men have had twice — most recently, legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn a half-century ago.

Between now and January, Pelosi will work the levers of power by doling out the many committee seat assignments, subcommittee chairmanships and other perks she is able to offer, or withhold, as incentives to win over supporters.
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