White House chief of staff John Kelly is denying a report from NBC News that he called U.S. President Donald Trump an “idiot.”

“I spend more time with the president than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship,” Kelly said Monday in a statement issued by the White House.

“He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS,” he said. “I am committed to the president, his agenda and our country.”

NBC reported Monday that Kelly has on multiple occasions criticized Trump’s knowledge on issues such as immigration and has cast himself as protecting the country from Trump’s impulses. The report added that Trump was growing tired of Kelly’s attitude.

NBC quoted unnamed sources as saying Kelly was known to “make fun” more generally at what the chief of staff saw as the president’s “lack of knowledge about policy and government.”

The chief of staff, who oversaw immigration enforcement as Homeland Security secretary, believed that Trump was prepared to make too many concessions to Democrats because he did not understand the issue.

“He doesn’t even understand what DACA is. He’s an idiot,” Kelly said in one meeting, two officials who said they were present told NBC News. “We’ve got to save him from himself.”

The report, despite Kelly’s denial, is likely to renew questions about Kelly’s future in the White House. The retired Marine Corps general, who was brought on board last summer to instill order and discipline in the West Wing, has been losing clout as Trump has tired of his style.

David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron in Ohio appeared to give credence to the concerns over Kelly’s future in the White House.

 “The knives are out for Kelly — many of them. #POTUS soured on Kelly several weeks ago. He won’t survive in job much longer. Probably days, maybe weeks. Kelly is dead man walking,” Cohen tweeted Monday.
…

Sen. Marco Rubio says big businesses aren’t investing much of their windfall from President Donald Trump’s tax cuts into their workers despite GOP promises during last year’s debate.

“There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” Rubio, R-Fla., told The Economist in a story release Monday. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

Rubio’s comments run counter to the cheerleading seen from other Republicans — and Democrats quickly jumped on the remarks.

“We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves,” said Matt House, a spokesman for top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York.

The GOP tax cut reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and also lower rates on individuals. Democrats say too much of the cuts went to the wealthy and businesses while hastening the arrival of $1 trillion-plus annual budget deficits.

GOP leaders are making the tax cuts the centerpiece of the fall midterm campaign and credit the tax cuts for boosting the economy. But the tax cuts have been underperforming in opinion polls, such as a Gallup survey earlier this month that found 39 percent of respondents approved of the GOP tax measure, with 52 percent disapproving.

Rubio, a rival contender to Trump for the GOP nomination in 2016, voted for the tax cuts in December after unsuccessfully pressing to make the $2,000 per-child tax credit fully refundable for lower-income workers.

“Sen. Rubio pushed for a better balance in the tax law between tax cuts for big businesses and families, as he’s done for years,” said Rubio spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas, adding that Rubio still believes that “cutting the corporate tax rate will make America a more competitive place to do business.”
…

Fired FBI Director James Comey is dismissing a Republican-led House committee report clearing the Trump campaign of collusion with the Russians as a “political document.”

“This is not my understanding of what the facts were before I left the FBI and I think the most important piece of work is the one the special counsel’s doing now,” Comey said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.

Comey called the investigation by the House Intelligence Committee “a wreck” that damaged relations with the intelligence community and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States.

While the committee report acknowledged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, it says investigators found no evidence the Trump campaign worked with the Russians.

Democrats on the committee say the Republicans on the panel did not interview enough witnesses or find enough evidence to back the report’s findings.

Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff called its conclusions “superficial.”

President Donald Trump has consistently denied his campaign colluded with the Russians. He has called himself the subject of a “witch hunt” and calls Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe a “hoax.”

Comey told Meet the Press Sunday something he wrote in his just-published best seller about his career – that he has serious doubts about Trump’s credibility, even if Mueller were to interview the president under oath.

“Sometimes people who have serious credibility problems can tell the truth when they realize that the consequences of not telling the truth in an interview or in the grand jury would be dire. But you’d have to go in with a healthy sense that he might lie to you.”

Comey said like all good prosecutors, Mueller wants to finish his probe as quickly as he can.

 
…

If President Donald Trump isn’t comfortable being the target of jokes, comedian Michelle Wolf gave him and others plenty of reasons to squirm Saturday night.

“It’s 2018 and I’m a woman, so you cannot shut me up,” Wolf cracked, “unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”

No, Trump’s personal attorney wasn’t there. And, for the second year, Trump himself skipped the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, preferring to criticize journalists and others during a campaign-style rally near Detroit.

Wolf, the after-dinner entertainment for the White House press corps and their guests, was surprisingly racy for the venue and seemed more at home on HBO than C-SPAN. After one crass joke drew groans in the Washington Hilton ballroom, she laughed and said, “Yeah, shoulda done more research before you got me to do this.”

​Trump in Michigan

As he did last year, Trump flew to a Republican-friendly district to rally supporters on the same night as the dinner. In Washington Township, Michigan, the president assured his audience he’d rather be there than in that other city by that name.

“Is this better than that phony Washington White House Correspondents’ Dinner? Is this more fun?” Trump asked, sparking cheers.

“I could be up there tonight, smiling, like I love where they’re hitting you, shot after shot. These people, they hate your guts … and you’ve got to smile. If you don’t smile, they say, ‘He was terrible, he couldn’t take it.’ And if you do smile, they’ll say, “What was he smiling about?’”

Wolf’s act had some in the audience laughing and left others in stony silence. A blistering critique of press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was seated just feet away, mocked everything from her truthfulness to her appearance and Southern roots.

Among Wolf’s less offensive one-liners:

“Just a reminder to everyone, I’m here to make jokes, I have no agenda, I’m not trying to get anything accomplished, so everyone that’s here from Congress you should feel right at home.”
“It is kinda crazy that the Trump campaign was in contact with Russia when the Hillary campaign wasn’t even in contact with Michigan.”
“He wants to give teachers guns, and I support that because then they can sell them for things they need like supplies.”

Dimmed star power

The dinner once attracted Oscar winners and other notable performers in film and television as well as celebrities in sports and other high-profile professions. The star power dimmed appreciably last year when the famously thin-skinned Trump, who routinely slammed reporters as dishonest and their work as “fake news,” announced he wasn’t attending. He was the first president to skip the event since Ronald Reagan bowed out in 1981 as he recovered from an assassination attempt.

Unlike last year, when Trump aides also declined to attend, the Trump White House had its contingent, including counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Former administration officials were on hand, such as onetime press secretary Sean Spicer, ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and political aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman.

At least one Trump antagonist attended — porn star Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti, who tweeted that he and Conway had a “spirited discussion.” And there was comedian Kathy Griffin, who last year posted controversial video of herself holding what appeared to be Trump’s bloody head; she later apologized.
…

If President Donald Trump isn’t comfortable being the target of jokes, comedian Michelle Wolf gave him and others plenty of reasons to squirm Saturday night.

“It’s 2018 and I’m a woman, so you cannot shut me up,” Wolf cracked, “unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”

No, Trump’s personal attorney wasn’t there. And, for the second year, Trump himself skipped the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, preferring to criticize journalists and others during a campaign-style rally near Detroit.

Wolf, the after-dinner entertainment for the White House press corps and their guests, was surprisingly racy for the venue and seemed more at home on HBO than C-SPAN. After one crass joke drew groans in the Washington Hilton ballroom, she laughed and said, “Yeah, shoulda done more research before you got me to do this.”

​Trump in Michigan

As he did last year, Trump flew to a Republican-friendly district to rally supporters on the same night as the dinner. In Washington Township, Michigan, the president assured his audience he’d rather be there than in that other city by that name.

“Is this better than that phony Washington White House Correspondents’ Dinner? Is this more fun?” Trump asked, sparking cheers.

“I could be up there tonight, smiling, like I love where they’re hitting you, shot after shot. These people, they hate your guts … and you’ve got to smile. If you don’t smile, they say, ‘He was terrible, he couldn’t take it.’ And if you do smile, they’ll say, “What was he smiling about?’”

Wolf’s act had some in the audience laughing and left others in stony silence. A blistering critique of press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was seated just feet away, mocked everything from her truthfulness to her appearance and Southern roots.

Among Wolf’s less offensive one-liners:

“Just a reminder to everyone, I’m here to make jokes, I have no agenda, I’m not trying to get anything accomplished, so everyone that’s here from Congress you should feel right at home.”
“It is kinda crazy that the Trump campaign was in contact with Russia when the Hillary campaign wasn’t even in contact with Michigan.”
“He wants to give teachers guns, and I support that because then they can sell them for things they need like supplies.”

Dimmed star power

The dinner once attracted Oscar winners and other notable performers in film and television as well as celebrities in sports and other high-profile professions. The star power dimmed appreciably last year when the famously thin-skinned Trump, who routinely slammed reporters as dishonest and their work as “fake news,” announced he wasn’t attending. He was the first president to skip the event since Ronald Reagan bowed out in 1981 as he recovered from an assassination attempt.

Unlike last year, when Trump aides also declined to attend, the Trump White House had its contingent, including counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Former administration officials were on hand, such as onetime press secretary Sean Spicer, ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and political aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman.

At least one Trump antagonist attended — porn star Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti, who tweeted that he and Conway had a “spirited discussion.” And there was comedian Kathy Griffin, who last year posted controversial video of herself holding what appeared to be Trump’s bloody head; she later apologized.
…

President Donald Trump took aim at familiar political targets and added a few fresh ones during a campaign-style rally Saturday night in an Upper Midwest state that gave him a surprising victory in the 2016 election.

Trump has been urging voters to support Republicans for Congress as a way of advancing his agenda. In his rally in Washington Township, he repeatedly pointed to Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan as one of the Democrats who needed to be voted out.

After saying Stabenow was standing in the way of protecting U.S. borders and had voted against tax cuts, Trump said: “And you people just keep putting her back again and again and again. It’s your fault.”

​‘I know things about Tester’

Earlier Saturday, Trump tweeted criticism of Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana over his role in the failed nomination of White House doctor Ronny Jackson to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, calling for Tester to resign or at least not be re-elected this fall.

In his rally remarks, Trump railed against the allegations Tester aired against Jackson and suggested that he could take a similar tack against the senator.

“I know things about Tester that I could say, too. And if I said ’em, he’d never be elected again,” Trump said without elaborating.

As he has at similar events, Trump promoted top agenda items that energize grass-roots conservatives: appointing conservative judges, building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, ending “sanctuary cities” and protecting tax cuts approved by the Republican-led Congress. He also took credit for the warming relations between North and South Korea, telling his audience “we’ll see how it goes.”

Wall funding or a shutdown

Trump also threatened to shut down the federal government in September if Congress did not provide more funding to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

“That wall has started, we have 1.6 billion (dollars),” Trump said. “We come up again on September 28th and if we don’t get border security we will have no choice, we will close down the country because we need border security.”

Trump made a similar threat in March to push for changes in immigration law that he says would prevent criminals from entering the country. The government briefly shut down in January over immigration.

A $1.3 trillion spending bill, which Trump signed last month, will keep the government funded through the end of September. A government shutdown ahead of the November mid-elections is unlikely to be supported by his fellow Republicans who are keen to keep control of the U.S. Congress.

Friendly territory

Trump chose a friendly venue for his rally, which not coincidentally came the same night as the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He skipped the dinner last year, too, and attending a rally in which he took time to attack the news media and assure his audience, as he did in Washington Township, about 40 miles north of Detroit, that he’d rather be with them.

Ahead of the rally Trump said in a fundraising pitch that he had come up with something better than being stuck in a room “with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me.” He said he would rather spend the evening “with my favorite deplorables.”

During the 2016 campaign, Clinton drew laughs when she told supporters at a private fundraiser that half of Trump supporters could be lumped into a “basket of deplorables,” denouncing them as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”

Clinton later did a partial rollback, said she had been “grossly generalistic” and regretted saying the label fit “half” of Trump’s supporters. But she didn’t back down from the general sentiment.

Trump soon had the video running in his campaign ads, and his supporters wore the “deplorable” label as a badge of honor.

White, blue-collar voters

Macomb County, the site of Trump’s rally, is among the predominantly white counties known as a base for “Reagan Democrats,” blue-collar voters who abandoned the Democratic Party for Ronald Reagan, but who can be intriguingly movable.

Democrat Barack Obama won the county twice in his White House runs, then Trump carried it by more than 11 percentage points.

Reuters contributed to this report.
…

Facing a rising death toll from drug overdoses, state lawmakers across the United States are testing a strategy to boost treatment for opioid addicts: Force drug manufacturers and their distributors to pay for it.

Bills introduced in at least 15 states would impose taxes or fees on prescription painkillers. Several of the measures have bipartisan support and would funnel millions of dollars toward treatment and prevention programs.

In Montana, state Senator Roger Webb, a Republican, sees the approach as a way to hold drugmakers accountable for an overdose epidemic that in 2016 claimed 42,000 lives in the U.S., a record.

“You’re creating the problem,” he said of drugmakers. “You’re going to fix it.”

Opioids include prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin as well as illegal drugs such as heroin and illicit versions of fentanyl. Public health experts say the crisis started because of overprescribing and aggressive marketing of the drugs that began in the 1990s. The death toll has continued to rise even as prescribing has started to drop.

Pennsylvania bill

A Pennsylvania opioid tax bill was introduced in 2015 and a federal version was introduced a year later, but most of the proposals arose during the past year. The majority of them have yet to get very far, with lawmakers facing intense pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to scuttle or soften the legislation.

Drugmakers and distributors argue that it would be wrong to tax prescription drugs, that the cost increases would eventually be absorbed by patients or taxpayers, and that there are other ways to pay for addiction treatment and prevention.

“We have been engaged with states to help move forward comprehensive solutions to this complex public health crisis and in many cases have seen successes,” Priscilla VanderVeer, a spokeswoman for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. “However, we do not believe levying a tax on prescribed medicines that meet legitimate medical needs is an appropriate funding mechanism for a state’s budget.”

Two drug companies that deployed lobbyists — Purdue Pharma and Pfizer — responded to questions with similar statements.

A spokesman for the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, which represents drug distributors, said a tax would mean that cancer patients and those in end-of-life care might not be able to get the prescriptions they need.

The pharmaceutical industry has emphasized that the name-brand drug companies that make up its members already give rebates to states for drugs funded by Medicaid. Those rebates amount to billions of dollars nationwide that states could use to address opioid addiction, the trade group says.

State legislation to tax opioids comes as manufacturers and distributors are defending themselves in hundreds of lawsuits filed by state and local governments seeking damages for the toll the overdose epidemic has taken on communities.

​Delaware effort

David Humes, whose son died from a heroin overdose in 2012, has been pushing for an opioid tax in Delaware, which did not increase funding for addiction treatment last year as it struggles to balance its budget.

“When you think about the fact that each year more people are dying, if you leave the money the same, you’re not keeping up with this public health crisis,” he said.

Humes, a board member of the advocacy group atTAcK Addiction, supports legislation that would dedicate opioid tax revenue for addiction services.

The lead sponsor of an opioids tax bill, state Senator Stephanie Hansen, said drug companies told her they already were contributing $500,000 to anti-addiction measures in Delaware, where there were 282 fatal overdoses from all drugs in 2016, a 40 percent increase from the year before.

“My response is, ‘That’s wonderful, but we’re not stopping there,’ ” said Hansen, a Democrat.

She said if her tax measure had been in place last year, it would have raised more than $9 million.

The drug industry’s current spending on anti-addiction programs has been a point of contention in the Minnesota Legislature. There, the overdose rate is lower than it is in most other states, but opioids still claimed 395 lives in 2016, an increase of 18 percent over the year before.

State Representative Dave Baker, a Republican whose son died of a heroin overdose after getting started on prescription painkillers, said opioid manufacturers and distributors should pay for drug programs separately. He said the rebate — about $250 million in 2016 in Minnesota — is intended to make up for overcharging for drugs in the first place.

Drugmakers not ‘part of the solution’

Another Republican lawmaker, state Senator Julie Rosen, said she walked out of a meeting this month with drug industry representatives, saying they were wasting her time.

“They know that they’re spending way too much money on defending their position instead of being part of the solution,” she said.

Representatives of the pharmaceutical industry say they have met with Rosen multiple times and are “committed to continue working with her.”

Drug companies have a history of digging in to defeat measures that are intended to combat the opioid crisis. A 2016 investigation by The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity found makers of opioids and their allies spent $880 million on politics and lobbying from 2006 through 2015.

The industry so far has succeeded in stalling the Minnesota legislation, which would charge opioid manufacturers by the dosage. With the bill facing resistance, Rosen and a Democratic co-sponsor, state Senator Chris Eaton, said they were considering changing tactics and amending it.

That could include raising the $235 annual licensing fee on opioid manufacturers or requiring drugmakers and distributors to pay $20 million a year based on the proportion of opioids they sell in the state. That approach is based on one adopted earlier this spring as part of the budget in New York — the only state to implement an opioid tax so far.

Eaton, whose daughter died from a heroin overdose in 2007, said her goal is to find a way to create and fund a structure that will ensure addiction treatment is “as routine as treating diabetes or cardiac arrest.”
…

Facing a rising death toll from drug overdoses, state lawmakers across the United States are testing a strategy to boost treatment for opioid addicts: Force drug manufacturers and their distributors to pay for it.

Bills introduced in at least 15 states would impose taxes or fees on prescription painkillers. Several of the measures have bipartisan support and would funnel millions of dollars toward treatment and prevention programs.

In Montana, state Senator Roger Webb, a Republican, sees the approach as a way to hold drugmakers accountable for an overdose epidemic that in 2016 claimed 42,000 lives in the U.S., a record.

“You’re creating the problem,” he said of drugmakers. “You’re going to fix it.”

Opioids include prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin as well as illegal drugs such as heroin and illicit versions of fentanyl. Public health experts say the crisis started because of overprescribing and aggressive marketing of the drugs that began in the 1990s. The death toll has continued to rise even as prescribing has started to drop.

Pennsylvania bill

A Pennsylvania opioid tax bill was introduced in 2015 and a federal version was introduced a year later, but most of the proposals arose during the past year. The majority of them have yet to get very far, with lawmakers facing intense pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to scuttle or soften the legislation.

Drugmakers and distributors argue that it would be wrong to tax prescription drugs, that the cost increases would eventually be absorbed by patients or taxpayers, and that there are other ways to pay for addiction treatment and prevention.

“We have been engaged with states to help move forward comprehensive solutions to this complex public health crisis and in many cases have seen successes,” Priscilla VanderVeer, a spokeswoman for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said in a statement. “However, we do not believe levying a tax on prescribed medicines that meet legitimate medical needs is an appropriate funding mechanism for a state’s budget.”

Two drug companies that deployed lobbyists — Purdue Pharma and Pfizer — responded to questions with similar statements.

A spokesman for the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, which represents drug distributors, said a tax would mean that cancer patients and those in end-of-life care might not be able to get the prescriptions they need.

The pharmaceutical industry has emphasized that the name-brand drug companies that make up its members already give rebates to states for drugs funded by Medicaid. Those rebates amount to billions of dollars nationwide that states could use to address opioid addiction, the trade group says.

State legislation to tax opioids comes as manufacturers and distributors are defending themselves in hundreds of lawsuits filed by state and local governments seeking damages for the toll the overdose epidemic has taken on communities.

​Delaware effort

David Humes, whose son died from a heroin overdose in 2012, has been pushing for an opioid tax in Delaware, which did not increase funding for addiction treatment last year as it struggles to balance its budget.

“When you think about the fact that each year more people are dying, if you leave the money the same, you’re not keeping up with this public health crisis,” he said.

Humes, a board member of the advocacy group atTAcK Addiction, supports legislation that would dedicate opioid tax revenue for addiction services.

The lead sponsor of an opioids tax bill, state Senator Stephanie Hansen, said drug companies told her they already were contributing $500,000 to anti-addiction measures in Delaware, where there were 282 fatal overdoses from all drugs in 2016, a 40 percent increase from the year before.

“My response is, ‘That’s wonderful, but we’re not stopping there,’ ” said Hansen, a Democrat.

She said if her tax measure had been in place last year, it would have raised more than $9 million.

The drug industry’s current spending on anti-addiction programs has been a point of contention in the Minnesota Legislature. There, the overdose rate is lower than it is in most other states, but opioids still claimed 395 lives in 2016, an increase of 18 percent over the year before.

State Representative Dave Baker, a Republican whose son died of a heroin overdose after getting started on prescription painkillers, said opioid manufacturers and distributors should pay for drug programs separately. He said the rebate — about $250 million in 2016 in Minnesota — is intended to make up for overcharging for drugs in the first place.

Drugmakers not ‘part of the solution’

Another Republican lawmaker, state Senator Julie Rosen, said she walked out of a meeting this month with drug industry representatives, saying they were wasting her time.

“They know that they’re spending way too much money on defending their position instead of being part of the solution,” she said.

Representatives of the pharmaceutical industry say they have met with Rosen multiple times and are “committed to continue working with her.”

Drug companies have a history of digging in to defeat measures that are intended to combat the opioid crisis. A 2016 investigation by The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity found makers of opioids and their allies spent $880 million on politics and lobbying from 2006 through 2015.

The industry so far has succeeded in stalling the Minnesota legislation, which would charge opioid manufacturers by the dosage. With the bill facing resistance, Rosen and a Democratic co-sponsor, state Senator Chris Eaton, said they were considering changing tactics and amending it.

That could include raising the $235 annual licensing fee on opioid manufacturers or requiring drugmakers and distributors to pay $20 million a year based on the proportion of opioids they sell in the state. That approach is based on one adopted earlier this spring as part of the budget in New York — the only state to implement an opioid tax so far.

Eaton, whose daughter died from a heroin overdose in 2007, said her goal is to find a way to create and fund a structure that will ensure addiction treatment is “as routine as treating diabetes or cardiac arrest.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump called for the resignation Saturday of Democratic Senator Jon Tester for raising concerns about Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, Ronny Jackson, who withdrew his name from consideration on Thursday.

Jackson, who is the White House physician and a Navy Rear Admiral, dropped his bid Thursday to head the country’s second-largest federal agency as lawmakers probed allegations of professional misconduct and excessive drinking.

In a pair of tweets, Trump wrote the allegations “are proving false” and that Tester, who represents the western state of Montana, should step down.

Trump blamed Tester for the demise of Jackson’s nomination after Tester said Wednesday that 20 current and former members of the military familiar with Jackson’s office had told lawmakers that he drank on the job. They also said Jackson oversaw a toxic work environment and handed out drug prescriptions with little consideration of a patient’s medical background.

Jackson said if the allegations “had any merit, I would not have been selected, promoted and entrusted to serve in such a sensitive and important role as physician to three presidents over the past 12 years. Going into this process, I expected tough questions about how to best care for our veterans, but I did not expect to have to dignify baseless and anonymous attacks on my character and integrity.”

The White House presented documents to reporters from an administration official who claims they exonerate Jackson from the accusations of inappropriately dispensing medication and crashing a government vehicle after a Secret Service going away party.

Jackson was fast losing support in Congress.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers indefinitely postponed Jackson’s scheduled Wednesday confirmation hearing as they investigated the allegations.

Several news outlets reported that Jackson was known as the “candy man” for over-prescribing drug prescriptions, while CNN said that in one 2015 incident Jackson drunkenly banged on the hotel room door of a female employee in the middle of the night on an overseas trip. The U.S. Secret Service intervened to stop Jackson, according to the report, so then-President Barack Obama, sleeping in another hotel room, would not be awakened.

Jackson gained a degree of fame unusual for White House physicians earlier this year when he took questions from the White House press corps on national television, describing at length about Trump’s health after conducting the president’s physical exam.

Trump, the oldest first-term president in American history, was plagued at the time by questions about his physical health, weight and mental stability. But Jackson gave the president a top rating. “The president’s overall health is excellent,” Jackson declared at the time.

Trump unexpectedly picked Jackson to replace a holdover from the administration of former president Obama, David Shulkin, whom Trump fired. Several lawmakers have complained that the White House did not properly vet Jackson’s background before Trump announced Jackson’s appointment.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump called for the resignation Saturday of Democratic Senator Jon Tester for raising concerns about Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, Ronny Jackson, who withdrew his name from consideration on Thursday.

Jackson, who is the White House physician and a Navy Rear Admiral, dropped his bid Thursday to head the country’s second-largest federal agency as lawmakers probed allegations of professional misconduct and excessive drinking.

In a pair of tweets, Trump wrote the allegations “are proving false” and that Tester, who represents the western state of Montana, should step down.

Trump blamed Tester for the demise of Jackson’s nomination after Tester said Wednesday that 20 current and former members of the military familiar with Jackson’s office had told lawmakers that he drank on the job. They also said Jackson oversaw a toxic work environment and handed out drug prescriptions with little consideration of a patient’s medical background.

Jackson said if the allegations “had any merit, I would not have been selected, promoted and entrusted to serve in such a sensitive and important role as physician to three presidents over the past 12 years. Going into this process, I expected tough questions about how to best care for our veterans, but I did not expect to have to dignify baseless and anonymous attacks on my character and integrity.”

The White House presented documents to reporters from an administration official who claims they exonerate Jackson from the accusations of inappropriately dispensing medication and crashing a government vehicle after a Secret Service going away party.

Jackson was fast losing support in Congress.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers indefinitely postponed Jackson’s scheduled Wednesday confirmation hearing as they investigated the allegations.

Several news outlets reported that Jackson was known as the “candy man” for over-prescribing drug prescriptions, while CNN said that in one 2015 incident Jackson drunkenly banged on the hotel room door of a female employee in the middle of the night on an overseas trip. The U.S. Secret Service intervened to stop Jackson, according to the report, so then-President Barack Obama, sleeping in another hotel room, would not be awakened.

Jackson gained a degree of fame unusual for White House physicians earlier this year when he took questions from the White House press corps on national television, describing at length about Trump’s health after conducting the president’s physical exam.

Trump, the oldest first-term president in American history, was plagued at the time by questions about his physical health, weight and mental stability. But Jackson gave the president a top rating. “The president’s overall health is excellent,” Jackson declared at the time.

Trump unexpectedly picked Jackson to replace a holdover from the administration of former president Obama, David Shulkin, whom Trump fired. Several lawmakers have complained that the White House did not properly vet Jackson’s background before Trump announced Jackson’s appointment.
…

President Donald Trump was betting on a big crowd and a friendly reception at a Saturday evening rally in Michigan – one of the states in the Upper Midwest that Hillary Clinton counted on in 2016 but saw slip away.

In fact, Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to capture Michigan since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

“Look forward to being in the Great State of Michigan tonight,” Trump said in a tweet hours before the event in Washington Township, Michigan, which is about 40 miles north of Detroit.

He also tweeted: “Major business expansion and jobs pouring into your State. Auto companies expanding at record pace. Big crowd tonight, will be live on T.V.”

Also scheduled to air on cable television Saturday night was a Washington tradition that Trump says he’s happy to skip: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Trump said in a fundraising pitch from campaign that he had come up with something better than being stuck in a room “with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me.”

He said he would rather spend the evening “with my favorite deplorables.”

During the 2016 campaign, Clinton drew laughs when she told supporters at a private fundraiser that half of Trump supporters could be lumped into a “basket of deplorables” – denouncing them as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”

Clinton later did a partial rollback, said she had been “grossly generalistic” and regretted saying the label fit “half” of Trump’s supporters. But she didn’t back down from the general sentiment.

Trump soon had the video running in his campaign ads, and his supporters wore the “deplorable” label as a badge of honor.

Macomb County, the site of Trump’s rally, is among the predominantly white counties known as a base for “Reagan Democrats” – blue-collar voters who abandoned the Democratic Party for Ronald Reagan, but who can be intriguingly movable.

Democrat Barack Obama won the county twice in his White House runs, then Trump carried it by more than 11 percentage points.
…

President Donald Trump was betting on a big crowd and a friendly reception at a Saturday evening rally in Michigan – one of the states in the Upper Midwest that Hillary Clinton counted on in 2016 but saw slip away.

In fact, Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to capture Michigan since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

“Look forward to being in the Great State of Michigan tonight,” Trump said in a tweet hours before the event in Washington Township, Michigan, which is about 40 miles north of Detroit.

He also tweeted: “Major business expansion and jobs pouring into your State. Auto companies expanding at record pace. Big crowd tonight, will be live on T.V.”

Also scheduled to air on cable television Saturday night was a Washington tradition that Trump says he’s happy to skip: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Trump said in a fundraising pitch from campaign that he had come up with something better than being stuck in a room “with a bunch of fake news liberals who hate me.”

He said he would rather spend the evening “with my favorite deplorables.”

During the 2016 campaign, Clinton drew laughs when she told supporters at a private fundraiser that half of Trump supporters could be lumped into a “basket of deplorables” – denouncing them as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”

Clinton later did a partial rollback, said she had been “grossly generalistic” and regretted saying the label fit “half” of Trump’s supporters. But she didn’t back down from the general sentiment.

Trump soon had the video running in his campaign ads, and his supporters wore the “deplorable” label as a badge of honor.

Macomb County, the site of Trump’s rally, is among the predominantly white counties known as a base for “Reagan Democrats” – blue-collar voters who abandoned the Democratic Party for Ronald Reagan, but who can be intriguingly movable.

Democrat Barack Obama won the county twice in his White House runs, then Trump carried it by more than 11 percentage points.
…

Republican Don Blankenship doesn’t care if his party and his president don’t think he can beat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin this fall.

This former coal mining executive, an ex-convict released from prison less than a year ago, is willing to risk his personal fortune and the GOP’s golden opportunity in West Virginia for the chance to prove them all wrong.

“I’ll get elected on my own merits,” Blankenship says.

There aren’t a lot of things that can sink Republicans’ hopes in the ruby red state that Donald Trump won by 42 percentage points in 2016, but Blankenship could well be one.

His candidacy is sending shudders down the spines of Republicans who are furiously working to ensure he is not their choice to take on Manchin in November. While Blankenship’s bid is a long shot, he’s testing whether a party led by an anti-establishment outsider can rein in its anti-establishment impulses.

“The establishment, no matter who you define it as, has not been creating jobs in West Virginia,” Blankenship said at a primary debate this past week.

Even before Blankenship emerged as a legitimate Republican candidate, West Virginia was a worry for some Republicans.

Former Gov. Manchin has held elected office in West Virginia for the better part of the past three decades, and he’s worked hard to cozy up to Trump and nurture a bipartisan brand.

He has voted with the Republican president more than he has opposed him, his office says, noting that the senator and Trump have collaborated on trade, environmental rules, gun violence and court nominations.

The alignment with Trump was so effective that former White House adviser Steve Bannon worried privately to colleagues that Trump might actually endorse the Democrat. An outright endorsement now is unlikely, but a Blankenship primary victory on May 8 could push Trump to help Manchin, at least indirectly, by ignoring West Virginia this fall.

The state has long been considered a prime pickup opportunity for Republicans, who hold a two-seat Senate majority that suddenly feels less secure given signs of Democratic momentum in Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee and elsewhere. If Democrats can win West Virginia, which gave Trump his largest margin of victory in the nation, they may have a slim chance at seizing the Senate majority.

Some of Trump’s most prominent conservative supporters, particularly those in Bannon’s network, have rallied behind state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a former Capitol Hill aide who was raised in New Jersey but has served as West Virginia’s top lawyer since 2013.

Rep. Evan Jenkins, a former Democrat, has highlighted his West Virginia roots and deep allegiance to Trump. Jenkins noted that Manchin missed a big chance to align himself with Trump on key issues such as taxes and health care.

“The president gave Joe Manchin every opportunity in the early weeks and months of his administration to vote the right way,” Jenkins said in an interview. “He voted wrong.”

But in interviews this past week, Morrisey and Jenkins declined to attack Blankenship for his role in the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster, the deadliest U.S. mine disaster in four decades, killing 29 men. Blankenship led the company that owned the mine and was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiring to break safety laws, a misdemeanor.

Raising that dark history has been left to the national GOP forces believed to be behind the Mountain Families PAC, an organization created last month that has invested more than $700,000 attacking Blankenship on television. A spokesman for the Senate GOP’s most powerful super PAC declined to confirm or deny a connection to the group.

Trump has done his part to hurt Blankenship’s chances as well.

The president excluded Blankenship from a recent West Virginia stop, where Trump appeared with Jenkins on one side and Morrisey on the other. And Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who leads the Senate GOP’s national campaign efforts, had this to say to reporters when asked about Blankenship last week: “Do they let ankle bracelets get out of the house?”

For voters, Blankenship remains a deeply polarizing figure.

Blankenship calls himself a West Virginian but had his supervised release transferred last August to federal officials in Nevada, where he has a six-bedroom home with his fiancee 20 miles from Las Vegas, in Henderson.

“It’s a friendly place and I like it,” said Blankenship, whose supervised release ends May 9, the day after the primary.

Blankenship recently drew attention for comments on a radio show about the father of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Blankenship said he believed McConnell has a conflict of interest in foreign relations matters, in particular those dealing with China. Chao’s father was born in China and started an international shipping company in New York.

According to media reports, Blankenship’s fiancee also was born in China.

“I don’t have any problem with Chinese people, Chinese girlfriend, Chinese anything,” Blankenship told the radio station. “But I have an issue when the father-in-law is a wealthy Chinaperson and has a lot of connections with some of the brass, if you will, in China.”

Stanley Stewart, a retired miner who was inside the Upper Big Branch mine when it blew up in 2010, calls Blankenship ‘ruthless, cold-blooded, cold-hearted, self-centered.”

“I feel that if anybody voted for Don Blankenship, they may as well stick a knife in their back and twist it, because that’s exactly what he’ll do,” Stewart said in an interview.

But there is skepticism that Blankenship was treated fairly by the courts. Blankenship has cast himself as a victim of an overbearing Obama administration, an argument that resonates with many white working-class voters on the ground here. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court last October left in place his conviction when the justices declined to take up his case.

“What they’ve said he’s actually done (in the criminal case), I don’t believe none of that,” 21-year-old coal mechanic Zack Ball said while grabbing a bite to eat in the Boone County coal community of Danville. “Don Blankenship all the way.”

Inside a Whitesville pizza shop a few miles north of the shuttered Upper Big Branch mine, retiree Debbie Pauley said Blankenship “was railroaded” at his trial.

“I think that Blankenship does have integrity,” she said. “I don’t think he’d put up with any crap.”
…

Republican Don Blankenship doesn’t care if his party and his president don’t think he can beat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin this fall.

This former coal mining executive, an ex-convict released from prison less than a year ago, is willing to risk his personal fortune and the GOP’s golden opportunity in West Virginia for the chance to prove them all wrong.

“I’ll get elected on my own merits,” Blankenship says.

There aren’t a lot of things that can sink Republicans’ hopes in the ruby red state that Donald Trump won by 42 percentage points in 2016, but Blankenship could well be one.

His candidacy is sending shudders down the spines of Republicans who are furiously working to ensure he is not their choice to take on Manchin in November. While Blankenship’s bid is a long shot, he’s testing whether a party led by an anti-establishment outsider can rein in its anti-establishment impulses.

“The establishment, no matter who you define it as, has not been creating jobs in West Virginia,” Blankenship said at a primary debate this past week.

Even before Blankenship emerged as a legitimate Republican candidate, West Virginia was a worry for some Republicans.

Former Gov. Manchin has held elected office in West Virginia for the better part of the past three decades, and he’s worked hard to cozy up to Trump and nurture a bipartisan brand.

He has voted with the Republican president more than he has opposed him, his office says, noting that the senator and Trump have collaborated on trade, environmental rules, gun violence and court nominations.

The alignment with Trump was so effective that former White House adviser Steve Bannon worried privately to colleagues that Trump might actually endorse the Democrat. An outright endorsement now is unlikely, but a Blankenship primary victory on May 8 could push Trump to help Manchin, at least indirectly, by ignoring West Virginia this fall.

The state has long been considered a prime pickup opportunity for Republicans, who hold a two-seat Senate majority that suddenly feels less secure given signs of Democratic momentum in Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee and elsewhere. If Democrats can win West Virginia, which gave Trump his largest margin of victory in the nation, they may have a slim chance at seizing the Senate majority.

Some of Trump’s most prominent conservative supporters, particularly those in Bannon’s network, have rallied behind state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a former Capitol Hill aide who was raised in New Jersey but has served as West Virginia’s top lawyer since 2013.

Rep. Evan Jenkins, a former Democrat, has highlighted his West Virginia roots and deep allegiance to Trump. Jenkins noted that Manchin missed a big chance to align himself with Trump on key issues such as taxes and health care.

“The president gave Joe Manchin every opportunity in the early weeks and months of his administration to vote the right way,” Jenkins said in an interview. “He voted wrong.”

But in interviews this past week, Morrisey and Jenkins declined to attack Blankenship for his role in the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster, the deadliest U.S. mine disaster in four decades, killing 29 men. Blankenship led the company that owned the mine and was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiring to break safety laws, a misdemeanor.

Raising that dark history has been left to the national GOP forces believed to be behind the Mountain Families PAC, an organization created last month that has invested more than $700,000 attacking Blankenship on television. A spokesman for the Senate GOP’s most powerful super PAC declined to confirm or deny a connection to the group.

Trump has done his part to hurt Blankenship’s chances as well.

The president excluded Blankenship from a recent West Virginia stop, where Trump appeared with Jenkins on one side and Morrisey on the other. And Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who leads the Senate GOP’s national campaign efforts, had this to say to reporters when asked about Blankenship last week: “Do they let ankle bracelets get out of the house?”

For voters, Blankenship remains a deeply polarizing figure.

Blankenship calls himself a West Virginian but had his supervised release transferred last August to federal officials in Nevada, where he has a six-bedroom home with his fiancee 20 miles from Las Vegas, in Henderson.

“It’s a friendly place and I like it,” said Blankenship, whose supervised release ends May 9, the day after the primary.

Blankenship recently drew attention for comments on a radio show about the father of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Blankenship said he believed McConnell has a conflict of interest in foreign relations matters, in particular those dealing with China. Chao’s father was born in China and started an international shipping company in New York.

According to media reports, Blankenship’s fiancee also was born in China.

“I don’t have any problem with Chinese people, Chinese girlfriend, Chinese anything,” Blankenship told the radio station. “But I have an issue when the father-in-law is a wealthy Chinaperson and has a lot of connections with some of the brass, if you will, in China.”

Stanley Stewart, a retired miner who was inside the Upper Big Branch mine when it blew up in 2010, calls Blankenship ‘ruthless, cold-blooded, cold-hearted, self-centered.”

“I feel that if anybody voted for Don Blankenship, they may as well stick a knife in their back and twist it, because that’s exactly what he’ll do,” Stewart said in an interview.

But there is skepticism that Blankenship was treated fairly by the courts. Blankenship has cast himself as a victim of an overbearing Obama administration, an argument that resonates with many white working-class voters on the ground here. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court last October left in place his conviction when the justices declined to take up his case.

“What they’ve said he’s actually done (in the criminal case), I don’t believe none of that,” 21-year-old coal mechanic Zack Ball said while grabbing a bite to eat in the Boone County coal community of Danville. “Don Blankenship all the way.”

Inside a Whitesville pizza shop a few miles north of the shuttered Upper Big Branch mine, retiree Debbie Pauley said Blankenship “was railroaded” at his trial.

“I think that Blankenship does have integrity,” she said. “I don’t think he’d put up with any crap.”
…

Navajo Nation leaders say a Utah county is trying to keep a Native candidate off the ballot during the first election since a federal judge ruled voting districts were drawn based on race.

Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez said in statement the threat of possible criminal charges is an “example of the county’s bad-faith attempt to undermine Navajo candidates and disenfranchise voters.”

San Juan County, though, maintained Friday that the investigation into whether a county commission candidate, Democrat Willie Grayeyes, lives on the Utah side of the nearby Arizona border is aimed at ensuring fair elections and isn’t related to politics or race.

Court-ordered voting districts

The dust-up comes as the largely Republican-led county fights back in court against new voting districts that they say unfairly carve up San Juan County’s largest city of Blanding, about 300 miles (482 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City.

A federal judge ordered the districts be redrawn after finding they minimized the voices of Navajo residents who make up half the county’s voters. They tend to lean Democratic, and the newly drawn districts could give local candidates like Grayeyes a better shot at winning races during the upcoming election that will be the first under the new boundaries.

The voting-rights lawsuit came amid similar legal clashes over early voting access in Nevada, Native language assistance in Alaska and voter ID laws in North Dakota. Advocates hope greater access to the ballot box could ultimately improve conditions in populations with huge disparities in health, education and economics.

County investigators looking into Grayeyes’ candidacy in Utah want to see proof of residency like a utility bill, said San Juan County spokeswoman Natalie Callahan. 

“They’re really looking for anything that would qualify where he lived,” she said.

Candidate provides proof

His lawyers counter that they’ve provided multiple documents, including satellite images of the remote Utah home where he’s lived for 20 years while holding local leadership positions and an affidavit saying he’s been registered to vote in San Juan County since he was 18. Many homes in the rural area don’t have utility hookups and the lack of a local post office means many residents collect their mail from nearby Arizona.

Grayeyes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He lives on the Navajo Nation, which overlaps with San Juan County and stretches into Arizona and New Mexico. The county says it opened the investigation after a citizen complaint questioned whether Grayeyes lives in Utah. Callahan said they’ve also found other evidence supporting the claim, though she didn’t specify, citing the ongoing investigation.

Grayeyes also serves on the board of Utah Diné Bikéyah, a group that supported the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument to protect land that tribes consider sacred and is home to ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.

The land protections were fiercely opposed by largely Republican leaders in San Juan County and statewide. President Donald Trump ordered the monument downsized last year.
…

Navajo Nation leaders say a Utah county is trying to keep a Native candidate off the ballot during the first election since a federal judge ruled voting districts were drawn based on race.

Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez said in statement the threat of possible criminal charges is an “example of the county’s bad-faith attempt to undermine Navajo candidates and disenfranchise voters.”

San Juan County, though, maintained Friday that the investigation into whether a county commission candidate, Democrat Willie Grayeyes, lives on the Utah side of the nearby Arizona border is aimed at ensuring fair elections and isn’t related to politics or race.

Court-ordered voting districts

The dust-up comes as the largely Republican-led county fights back in court against new voting districts that they say unfairly carve up San Juan County’s largest city of Blanding, about 300 miles (482 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City.

A federal judge ordered the districts be redrawn after finding they minimized the voices of Navajo residents who make up half the county’s voters. They tend to lean Democratic, and the newly drawn districts could give local candidates like Grayeyes a better shot at winning races during the upcoming election that will be the first under the new boundaries.

The voting-rights lawsuit came amid similar legal clashes over early voting access in Nevada, Native language assistance in Alaska and voter ID laws in North Dakota. Advocates hope greater access to the ballot box could ultimately improve conditions in populations with huge disparities in health, education and economics.

County investigators looking into Grayeyes’ candidacy in Utah want to see proof of residency like a utility bill, said San Juan County spokeswoman Natalie Callahan. 

“They’re really looking for anything that would qualify where he lived,” she said.

Candidate provides proof

His lawyers counter that they’ve provided multiple documents, including satellite images of the remote Utah home where he’s lived for 20 years while holding local leadership positions and an affidavit saying he’s been registered to vote in San Juan County since he was 18. Many homes in the rural area don’t have utility hookups and the lack of a local post office means many residents collect their mail from nearby Arizona.

Grayeyes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He lives on the Navajo Nation, which overlaps with San Juan County and stretches into Arizona and New Mexico. The county says it opened the investigation after a citizen complaint questioned whether Grayeyes lives in Utah. Callahan said they’ve also found other evidence supporting the claim, though she didn’t specify, citing the ongoing investigation.

Grayeyes also serves on the board of Utah Diné Bikéyah, a group that supported the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument to protect land that tribes consider sacred and is home to ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.

The land protections were fiercely opposed by largely Republican leaders in San Juan County and statewide. President Donald Trump ordered the monument downsized last year.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has commended the release of a report by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, saying it proves there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. 

Questioned about it during a joint news conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump said, “We were honored. It was a great report. No collusion, which I knew anyway.”

He called the investigation “a witch hunt,” echoing a phrase he had tweeted earlier that morning, and added: “If we can get along with Russia, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. But there has been nobody tougher on Russia than me.” 

Trump was questioned about the 243-page report released Friday by the House Intelligence Committee. The report contained a large number of redactions and a conclusion that while the meddling by Russia was real, collusion with the Trump campaign was not. 

It called contacts between Russian officials and campaign aides “ill-advised” and said at least one person might have given answers in legal testimony that were “incomplete.”

The Republicans on the committee said their report was based on interviews with 73 people and a review of more than 300,000 documents.

But the committee’s ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, told reporters that the report exemplified “the [Republican] majority’s fundamentally flawed approach to the investigation and the superficial and political nature of its conclusions.”

The report criticized intelligence officials, saying they leaked information before and after the election that installed Trump as president. It pointed out reports published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC and CNN as examples of dangerous leaks. 

Much of the information in the section on leaks was redacted, a fact that gave rise to criticism of the report itself. 

Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican who is chairman of the committee, told reporters that he hoped a more transparent version of the report could be released later. He indicated the redactions were not the doing of the committee, but instead of federal agencies vetting the report. He said the committee “will convey our objections to the appropriate agencies and looks forward to publishing a less redacted version in the near future.”

A Democratic rebuttal of the report called its conclusions “misleading and unsupported by the facts and the investigative record.” It also faulted the congressional investigators for failing to interview key witnesses and issue subpoenas to get crucial information. Schiff accused the Republicans on the committee of “adopting the role of defense counsel for key investigation witnesses.”

The report included the caveat that other investigations, including that of special counsel Robert Mueller, might have access to facts that the committee could not obtain. In addition to the House Intelligence Committee and Mueller’s probe, the Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating the matter.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has commended the release of a report by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, saying it proves there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. 

Questioned about it during a joint news conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump said, “We were honored. It was a great report. No collusion, which I knew anyway.”

He called the investigation “a witch hunt,” echoing a phrase he had tweeted earlier that morning, and added: “If we can get along with Russia, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. But there has been nobody tougher on Russia than me.” 

Trump was questioned about the 243-page report released Friday by the House Intelligence Committee. The report contained a large number of redactions and a conclusion that while the meddling by Russia was real, collusion with the Trump campaign was not. 

It called contacts between Russian officials and campaign aides “ill-advised” and said at least one person might have given answers in legal testimony that were “incomplete.”

The Republicans on the committee said their report was based on interviews with 73 people and a review of more than 300,000 documents.

But the committee’s ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff of California, told reporters that the report exemplified “the [Republican] majority’s fundamentally flawed approach to the investigation and the superficial and political nature of its conclusions.”

The report criticized intelligence officials, saying they leaked information before and after the election that installed Trump as president. It pointed out reports published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC and CNN as examples of dangerous leaks. 

Much of the information in the section on leaks was redacted, a fact that gave rise to criticism of the report itself. 

Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican who is chairman of the committee, told reporters that he hoped a more transparent version of the report could be released later. He indicated the redactions were not the doing of the committee, but instead of federal agencies vetting the report. He said the committee “will convey our objections to the appropriate agencies and looks forward to publishing a less redacted version in the near future.”

A Democratic rebuttal of the report called its conclusions “misleading and unsupported by the facts and the investigative record.” It also faulted the congressional investigators for failing to interview key witnesses and issue subpoenas to get crucial information. Schiff accused the Republicans on the committee of “adopting the role of defense counsel for key investigation witnesses.”

The report included the caveat that other investigations, including that of special counsel Robert Mueller, might have access to facts that the committee could not obtain. In addition to the House Intelligence Committee and Mueller’s probe, the Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating the matter.
…

Former Democratic Gov. Philip Hoff, who’s credited with starting Vermont’s transition from one of the most Republican-entrenched states in the country to one of the most liberal, has died. He was 93.

Hoff, who became the first Democrat elected governor of Vermont in more than 100 years in 1962, died on Thursday, according to The Residence at Shelburne Bay, where he had been living.

“Phil Hoff forever changed the state of Vermont,” said Steve Terry, a former journalist who helped write a biography titled “Philip Hoff: How Red Turned Blue in the Green Mountain State.” ”His influence in the 1960s has molded and created the Vermont many of us know today.”

During his six years in office, Hoff helped start a process that evolved into the state’s environmental movement. He focused on reducing pollution and cleaning up the state’s rivers and streams.

He also emphasized education reform and helped revamp the state’s judicial system.

Hoff’s policies helped refocus state government on meeting the needs of residents, a philosophy embraced by his Republican successor, Deane C. Davis.

The office has alternated between Democratic and Republican governors since Hoff was elected.

At the mid-point of the 20th century, Vermont remained one of the most Republican states in the country. The state was dominated by a couple of political families, but Hoff shook up the staid Vermont political structure.

He became governor when the state was under a federal court mandate to reapportion the state House, where each of the state’s 241 cities and towns were represented by a single person, no matter the community’s population.

“The people of Vermont have clearly said that they don’t want to continue with the old ways, and if we fail to respond to forces at work in our society, we face a bleak future,” Hoff said at his 1963 inaugural address.

“I loved it any time he came into the office because there was a sense of vibrancy and life,” said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who joined Hoff’s Burlington law firm after graduating from law school in 1964. Two years later, Hoff appointed Leahy as Chittenden County state’s attorney, a post he held for eight years, until his 1974 election to the U.S. Senate.

“I’d see the governor all the time,” Leahy said. “I was the star-struck young lawyer in his office. I’d see people staying in the halls, just waiting to say hi to him. We’d have meetings with him. It was exciting.”

Philip Henderson Hoff was born on June 29, 1924, in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. He took time off from Williams College to serve in the Navy during World War II and returned to Williams after the war. He graduated and went on to law school at Cornell University before moving to Burlington in 1951.

Hoff first ran for office in 1958 for a seat on the Burlington Board of Aldermen. He was defeated.

Two years later, he was elected to the Vermont House after running what Terry called “a minimalist campaign.” He had no campaign literature of his own and instead handed out brochures promoting the presidential candidacy of U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

After one term in the Legislature, Hoff won the race for governor in 1962 after he campaigned on the need for change and to end 100 years of one-party rule.

Hoff was briefly considered as a vice presidential candidate in 1968 but withdrew his name when it became clear his friend, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, was being considered. Hoff ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970, but lost to the incumbent GOP Sen. Winston Prouty.

Hoff returned to the Legislature in 1982 after being elected to the state Senate. He served three, two-year terms.
…

Newly sworn in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is already on his first trip as the chief U.S. diplomat, headed first to a NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, and then to the Middle East. He boarded a plane just a couple of hours after his confirmation vote in the Senate. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.
…

The Department of Health and Human Services lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children it placed with sponsors in the United States, an agency official told a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

The children were taken into government care after they showed up alone at the Southwest border. Most of the children are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and were fleeing drug cartels, gang violence and domestic abuse.

The agency learned the 1,475 children could not be found after making follow-up calls to check on their safety, the committee was told. 

The news has raised concern that the children could fall into the hands of human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives. 

“You are the worst foster parents in the world. You don’t even know where they are,” said Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. “We are failing. I don’t think there is any doubt about it. And when we fail kids, that makes me angry.”

Since the dramatic surge of border crossings in 2013, the federal government has placed more than 180,000 unaccompanied minors with parents or other adult sponsors who are expected to care for the children and help them attend school while they seek legal status in immigration court. 

An AP investigation in 2016 found that more than two dozen of those children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay. Since then, the Department Health and Human Services has boosted outreach to at-risk children deemed to need extra protection, and last year offered post-placement services to about one-third of unaccompanied minors. 

But advocates say it is hard to know how many minors may be in dangerous conditions, in part because some disappear before social workers can follow up with them, and they never show up in court. 

Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio gave HHS and the Department of Homeland Security until Monday to deliver a time frame for improving monitoring.

“These kids, regardless of their immigration status, deserve to be treated properly, not abused or trafficked,” said Portman, who chairs the subcommittee. “This is all about accountability.”
…

A long-anticipated visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to the United Kingdom has been set for July 13. It will be a “working visit,” however, and not a more formal state occasion during which the president would have met Queen Elizabeth.

The announcement was made Thursday, separately by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and 10 Downing Street, the office of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

“It’s been a tortuous and very difficult process” to arrange a Trump trip to Britain, according to Andrew Marshall, the Atlantic Council’s vice president of communications. “This visit was born under a bad sign,” amid unhappiness over comments made by the president on social media, including criticism of London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

A planned visit to Britain by Trump was canceled earlier this year, during which he was to open the new U.S. embassy in London, a $1 billion cube-shaped building surrounded by sunken trenches and raised terraces that the president criticized as too expensive.

U.K. conservative groups, which support Trump, previously urged the president to avoid going to London because of a risk of “major protests, crime and disorder.” The organizations, in a letter, suggested instead that Trump visit his “ancestral home” of Scotland and if there were to be an official state visit, he should meet the queen at her castle in Balmoral.

The president’s mother was born in the Outer Hebrides archipelago on the Isle of Lewis. Trump, as a private businessman, visited Scotland frequently.

No location for the visit has yet been announced and speculation is widespread that it will occur outside London, perhaps at the prime minister’s country estate at Chequers, 65 kilometers from the capital.

Trade will be a major topic on the working visit’s agenda, with the British prime minister eager to move toward a new economic pact with the United States, one of its main trading partners.

It’s politically and economically important for May “in terms of what she’s staked her future on, which is a good, safe and prosperous future for the U.K. outside the European Union,” Marshall told VOA.

The U.S.-U.K. alliance is usually among the closest between any two nations, and U.S. leaders traditionally make visits to England early in their presidencies.

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic will be looking to resolidify that relationship with the Trump visit.

“At the moment, the U.K. is maybe standing a little aside from that role. We’ve just seen President [Emmanuel] Macron of France come here and absolutely wow Washington. Many noses will be out of joint in Downing Street and elsewhere about that. There’s a friendly rivalry with the French,” Marshall, a former foreign editor of The Independent newspaper in London, told VOA.

So far, though, with Trump and May “that chemistry is not there,” according to Marshall, who contrasts the president’s “forthright, direct and outspoken” personality with the prime minister — “a contained figure who looks sometimes like she’s walked out of a Jane Austen novel.”
…

President Donald Trump often likes to point out how different he is from his White House predecessors in terms of style and substance. But it is unlikely any past president would envy the legal challenges facing Trump, from the Russia investigation to Stormy Daniels to the scrutiny law enforcement is giving his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

On Tuesday it was a night of pomp and glamor at the White House as President Donald Trump and Mrs. Trump welcomed French President Macron and his wife for a state dinner.

The two presidents got along famously during their White House meetings.

The only damper on the day came when both men were in the Oval Office and a reporter asked Trump about the legal difficulties facing his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

“Mr. President, what about Michael Cohen? Are you considering a pardon for Michael Cohen?” asked ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl.

After a pause, the president responded. “Stupid question,” he said dismissively.

Presidential frustration

Cohen is under scrutiny for a payment to an adult film star. Stormy Daniels says it was hush money to keep her quiet about a brief affair she had with Trump in 2006, a claim the president has denied.

Trump has frequently complained about the recent FBI raids on Cohen’s home and office and the ongoing Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Earlier this month Trump spoke up during a meeting with military officials at the White House.

“Here we are talking about Syria, we are talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever, and I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now.”

Cohen’s secrets

Several legal analysts have said the increased scrutiny of Trump’s long relationship with Cohen could become a serious problem for the president.

“There has been no suggestions that Cohen has nothing that he could say, which suggests that they know that Cohen actually does possess information that could be damaging to Trump or the Trump organization more generally as a legal matter,” said George Washington University Law Professor Paul Schiff Berman.

Cohen likely faces great pressure to cooperate with prosecutors, noted defense attorney Alan Dershowitz. “This is an epic battle for the soul and the cooperation of Michael Cohen, and prosecutors have enormous weapons at their disposal,” Dershowitz told ABC’s This Week.

But White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insists the president is not worried. “The president has been clear that he has not done anything wrong. I think we have stated that about a thousand times.”

A federal judge in New York is considering who will have the job of reviewing the materials seized from Cohen. Judge Kimba Wood is expected to announce next month whether a special team of Justice Department lawyers will look at the material or whether a so-called special master should be appointed to carry out the task, as Cohen’s attorneys have requested.

Mueller’s fate

Members of Congress seem more concerned with protecting the Russia probe and continue to warn the president against firing special counsel Mueller.

“There is nothing more important right now than protecting our democracy and protecting the rule of law, which is what America stands for,” said Tennessee House Democrat Steve Cohen.

Huckabee Sanders said the fear is misplaced. “As we have said many times before, we have no intention of firing the special counsel. We have been beyond cooperative with them. We are continuing to cooperate with them.”

The Mueller probe has already led to several indictments and guilty pleas from two Trump associates for lying to federal investigators about their contacts with Russia. The investigation could go on for another year, according to Paul Schiff Berman.

“So the question of whether the president can literally be indicted or not, I think, is less important than the fundamental question of whether our institutions of government and our law enforcement authorities are allowed to do their business without fear and without influence from the president,” he said.

The president recently added former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to his legal team, hoping to add fresh star power after some high profile departures.
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President Donald Trump often likes to point out how different he is from his White House predecessors in terms of style and substance. But it is unlikely any past president would envy the legal challenges facing Trump, from the Russia investigation to Stormy Daniels to the scrutiny law enforcement is giving his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

On Tuesday it was a night of pomp and glamor at the White House as President Donald Trump and Mrs. Trump welcomed French President Macron and his wife for a state dinner.

The two presidents got along famously during their White House meetings.

The only damper on the day came when both men were in the Oval Office and a reporter asked Trump about the legal difficulties facing his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

“Mr. President, what about Michael Cohen? Are you considering a pardon for Michael Cohen?” asked ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl.

After a pause, the president responded. “Stupid question,” he said dismissively.

Presidential frustration

Cohen is under scrutiny for a payment to an adult film star. Stormy Daniels says it was hush money to keep her quiet about a brief affair she had with Trump in 2006, a claim the president has denied.

Trump has frequently complained about the recent FBI raids on Cohen’s home and office and the ongoing Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Earlier this month Trump spoke up during a meeting with military officials at the White House.

“Here we are talking about Syria, we are talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever, and I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now.”

Cohen’s secrets

Several legal analysts have said the increased scrutiny of Trump’s long relationship with Cohen could become a serious problem for the president.

“There has been no suggestions that Cohen has nothing that he could say, which suggests that they know that Cohen actually does possess information that could be damaging to Trump or the Trump organization more generally as a legal matter,” said George Washington University Law Professor Paul Schiff Berman.

Cohen likely faces great pressure to cooperate with prosecutors, noted defense attorney Alan Dershowitz. “This is an epic battle for the soul and the cooperation of Michael Cohen, and prosecutors have enormous weapons at their disposal,” Dershowitz told ABC’s This Week.

But White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insists the president is not worried. “The president has been clear that he has not done anything wrong. I think we have stated that about a thousand times.”

A federal judge in New York is considering who will have the job of reviewing the materials seized from Cohen. Judge Kimba Wood is expected to announce next month whether a special team of Justice Department lawyers will look at the material or whether a so-called special master should be appointed to carry out the task, as Cohen’s attorneys have requested.

Mueller’s fate

Members of Congress seem more concerned with protecting the Russia probe and continue to warn the president against firing special counsel Mueller.

“There is nothing more important right now than protecting our democracy and protecting the rule of law, which is what America stands for,” said Tennessee House Democrat Steve Cohen.

Huckabee Sanders said the fear is misplaced. “As we have said many times before, we have no intention of firing the special counsel. We have been beyond cooperative with them. We are continuing to cooperate with them.”

The Mueller probe has already led to several indictments and guilty pleas from two Trump associates for lying to federal investigators about their contacts with Russia. The investigation could go on for another year, according to Paul Schiff Berman.

“So the question of whether the president can literally be indicted or not, I think, is less important than the fundamental question of whether our institutions of government and our law enforcement authorities are allowed to do their business without fear and without influence from the president,” he said.

The president recently added former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to his legal team, hoping to add fresh star power after some high profile departures.
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