RIYADMEDIA

Voter turnout in Florida jumped to more than 52% in last year’s midterm elections from almost 45% in the 2014 midterm races, buoyed by increased ballot-casting by young voters and Hispanics, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.

 

But even though the swing state had high-profile races for a U.S. Senate seat and for control of the governor’s office — as well as a prominent youth voter-registration drive — turnout actually was actually slightly lower than the national average.

 

Nationwide, more than 53% of voting-age citizens cast ballots, the highest rate in four decades, according to the bureau’s Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration Supplement. The lowest turnout was in 2014.

 

Turnout by voting-age citizens between ages 18 and 24 in Florida went from 17.6% in 2014 to almost 30% in the 2018 midterms, the biggest jump of any age group, although all age groups saw increases, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

 

After a gunman killed 17 people at their high school in February 2018, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and others led a statewide voter-registration drive among Florida’s youngest voters. Despite those efforts, Florida’s youth turnout lagged behind the national youth turnout average of 32.4%.

 

Hispanic turnout in Florida jumped from 36% in 2014 to more than 44% in 2018, going from 892,000 voters to almost 1.4 million voters in pure numbers in four years. Florida had an influx of Puerto Rican residents after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September 2017, but the Census figures don’t break down how many of them voted in the 2018 midterm races.

In Florida, women voted in larger numbers than men, and seniors voted in a higher concentration than any other age group in the midterm elections last year.

 

The bureau’s figures showed that 54% of the female-citizen voting-age population cast ballots in 2018, compared to 51% of men. Both sexes had significant increases over 2014 when only 46% of eligible women and more than 43% of eligible men voted.

 

Almost two-thirds of eligible senior citizens in Florida voted in 2018, compared to 60% in 2014.

 

Non-Hispanic whites in Florida had the highest participation rate at 57% in 2018, followed by blacks with 47%. Asians had a rate of around 40%, a decrease from 43% in 2014.

 

In 2014, the participation rate for non-Hispanic whites was 47.5%, and it was 44% for blacks.

 

In November, Democrats flipped two U.S. congressional seats in South Florida, but Republican Rick Scott defeated Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson for a U.S. Senate seat.
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Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden plans to announce he is seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination for the 2020 election on Thursday, NBC news reported.

Biden, who will join a crowded field seeking to win the White House back from Republican President Donald Trump, will then travel to Pittsburgh on Monday, followed by trips to all four early voting states in coming weeks, an NBC news reporter said on MSNBC, citing unnamed sources involved in the planning.
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Ugandan musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi, better known by his stage name Bobi Wine, has called for peaceful demonstrations after police on Tuesday refused to allow him to leave his home.  

On a Facebook post Tuesday, Kyagulanyi wrote that his home in Wakiso district, near the capital of Kampala, “is under siege. [Police] have surrounded my fence and installed barricades on all roads leading to my home.”

Kyagulanyi said that he had been headed to police headquarters to give notice of a “planned peaceful demonstration against police brutality, injustice and misuse of authority” but that he and his laywers “were blocked from delivering the letter and were ordered to leave or face arrest.” In response, his post urged defiance: “We shall go ahead and demonstrate peacefully as guaranteed by the constitution. This is our country.”

His post did not specify a time or location for any demonstration.

Kyagulanyi’s movement curbed

On Tuesday, police were heavily deployed on roads around Kyagulanyi’s house and all vehicles leaving his compound were thoroughly checked. 

Police had detained Kyagulanyi on Monday at a beach resort near Kampala, where he addressed supporters and was to hold a concert. Police used teargas and water cannons to disperse his supporters and then took the opposition politician to his home. 

Kyagulanyi had told VOA earlier Tuesday that he was not informed of his house arrest. When he walked to his gate to go to police headquarters, he was stopped by the district police commander.    

This led to an exchange between Kyagulanyi’s lawyer, Benjamin Katana, and police officer Jaffer Magyezi.

“My orders are: Either you go back to your house or you will be under arrest,” the officer said.  

“Is he under arrest now?” Katana asked about his client. “Because for someone’s movement to be restricted, he must be under arrest or quarantined. So is he under quarantine or he’s under house arrest?”

The officer responded to the musician: “Yesterday, you incited violence, of which you know you were charged.”

Kyagulanyi told supporters Monday that he had written to police three months in advance for permission to hold Sunday’s concert. He said Ugandan police have blocked 124 of his concerts since October 2017, acting on orders of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, “because he does not like what I sing. He wanted me to be like some other artists to be singing his praises.”

A show of strength?

Political analyst Muwanga Kivumbi says putting Kyagulanyi under house arrest sends Museveni’s message to Uganda that he controls the state. 

“ ‘I have the guns, am in control of police and prisons and all these things.  I’ll use them to leverage my position,’” Kivumbi said, imagining the president’s thinking. “The people of Uganda are saying, ‘Wait, you made the law.’  Actually, we are being so fair to the president that we are only telling him, be obedient to the law you attested to.”

The U.S. Embassy issued a statement on social media Tuesday questioning why Uganda’s government “has recently blocked musical concerts and radio talk shows, disrupted peaceful demonstrations and rallies, and deployed heavy-handed security forces against peaceful citizens.”

The embassy noted that Uganda’s constitution guarantees freedom of assembly and expression.

Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo responded in a Facebook post that his government “respects rule of law and constitutionalism which guarantees freedom of assembly, expression and movement.” He said the government “expects all leaders to abide by these standards. …”

Alluding to Kyagulanyi, Opondo continued: “Save for one artiste [sic], all artistes in Uganda enjoy freedom of performance. …”

VOA English to Africa Service’s James Butty contributed to this report.
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The conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court appeared sympathetic Tuesday to Trump administration arguments calling for the addition of a citizenship question in the country’s 2020 census, despite objections from big states and cities that the query would inhibit immigrants from taking part in the once-a-decade population count.

The five-member bloc of conservative justices holds sway on the nine-person court and seemed dismissive during an 80-minute hearing of contentions that the citizenship question could lead to 6.5 million people — many of them Hispanic immigrants — refusing to take part in next April’s survey.

The court’s newest member, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, suggested that Congress could change the law to block the citizenship question if it felt that the query would affect the accuracy of the census. Chief Justice John Roberts said that citizenship information is critical in enforcing the country’s voting rights law, the contention offered by the Trump administration as the reason to add the question to the census form for the first time since 1950.

Reaching as accurate a total as possible in the census is important in the United States because it determines how many lawmakers each of the 50 states has in the 435-member House of Representatives for the next 10 years and each state’s share of more than $675 billion in federal funding for an array of government programs.

Three lower federal courts have blocked Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the census, from adding the citizenship question, finding that millions of non-citizens, often Hispanics, might avoid the census-takers for fear of running afoul of immigration authorities. Trump critics contend the citizenship question is an attempt to try to diminish the number of Democratic lawmakers in the House, where Democrats took control in January.

The case against the citizenship question was brought by New York state and other jurisdictions where large numbers of immigrants live.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said after the hearing that the citizenship question “will undermine the count. We must get the census right.”

For the majority of the people filling out the once-a-decade census, the answer to such a question would be easy: They are Americans by birth or naturalized citizens after arriving from other countries.

But Trump, who has embraced a tough stance against illegal immigration and pushed for construction of a wall on the southern border with Mexico to thwart the surge of migrants, also wants to include the citizenship question in an attempt to count the number of undocumented migrants in the country.

The precise figure is not known, but demographers say it could total about 11 million of the 328 million people in the United States.

Despite Ross’s decision to add the question to the survey, Census Bureau experts concluded that excluding the citizenship question would produce a more accurate figure for the U.S. population because undocumented immigrants might be reluctant to admit they are not U.S. citizens and refuse to answer the questions.

The Census Bureau estimated that 6.5 million people would avoid answering the questions if the citizenship query were to be included.

The Trump administration says it has wide discretion in designing the questionnaire and notes that the citizenship question has been asked on smaller annual population surveys. It says the question is needed to aid in the enforcement of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Some of the largest states and cities and rights groups are arguing against inclusion of the question, fearing an undercount in the census would hurt their interests, either in by cutting their congressional representation in as many as six states through the 2020’s or in federal funding.

The Nielsen television ratings company said Monday it also opposes inclusion of the citizenship question, saying an undercount of the U.S. population would adversely affect the U.S. media industry and other businesses that depend on accurate readings of consumer sentiment. Nielsen said its measurements of business trends could be inaccurate for a decade with the question added to the census.

After Tuesday’s hearing, the Supreme Court is expected to reach a decision by the end of June, giving the government enough time to print the census questionnaire before the April 2020 count.

 
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The largest Democratic field in the modern U.S. political era is lining up to seek the party’s 2020 presidential nomination – and it is expected to keep growing.

The diverse group vying to challenge President Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, includes six U.S. senators. A record six women are running, as well as black, Hispanic and openly gay candidates who would make history if one of them becomes the party’s nominee.

Here are the Democrats who have launched campaigns or are expected to pursue a presidential bid, listed in order of their RealClearPolitics national polling average for those who register in opinion surveys.

JOE BIDEN

The leader in polls of Democratic presidential contenders is not even a candidate yet. But Biden, who served eight years as vice president under President Barack Obama and 36 years in the U.S. Senate, looks poised to join the 2020 race. At 76, he would be the second oldest candidate in the Democratic nominating contests, after Senator Bernie Sanders. Biden would be a key figure in the Democratic debate over whether a liberal political newcomer or a centrist veteran is needed to win back the White House. Liberal activists criticize his Senate record, including his authorship of the 1994 crime act that led to increased incarceration rates, and his ties to the financial industry, which is prominent in his home state of Delaware. Biden, who relishes his “Middle-Class Joe” nickname and touts his working-class roots, made unsuccessful bids for the nomination in 1988 and 2008. Biden, recently the subject of allegations of unwanted physical contact with women, in a video pledged to be “more mindful” of respecting “personal space,” an attempt to tamp down the controversy.

BERNIE SANDERS

The senator from Vermont lost the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton but has jumped in for a second try. In the 2020 race, Sanders, 77, will have to fight to stand out in a packed field of progressives touting issues he brought into the Democratic Party mainstream four years ago. His proposals include free tuition at public colleges, a $15 minimum wage and universal healthcare. He benefits from strong name recognition and a robust network of small-dollar donors, helping him to raise $5.9 million during his first day in the contest. Sanders, whose father was a Jewish immigrant from Poland, has shown a more personal side in this campaign, highlighting his struggles while growing up in a working-class family. He also has tried to reach out to black and Hispanic leaders after having trouble winning over minority voters in 2016.

BETO O’ROURKE

The former three-term Texas congressman jumped into the race on March 14 – and has been jumping on to store countertops ever since to deliver his optimistic message to voters in early primary states. O’Rourke, 46, gained fame last year for his record fundraising and ability to draw crowds ahead of his unexpectedly narrow loss in the U.S. Senate race against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. O’Rourke announced a $6.1 million fundraising haul for the first 24 hours of his campaign, besting his Democratic opponents. But with progressive policies and diversity at the forefront of the party’s nominating battle, O’Rourke will face a challenge as a wealthy white man who is more moderate on several key issues than many of his competitors.

KAMALA HARRIS

The first-term senator from California would make history as the first black woman to gain the nomination. Harris, 54, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, announced her candidacy on the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She has made a quick impact in a Democratic race that will be heavily influenced by women and minority voters. She raised $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her campaign and drew record ratings on a CNN televised town hall. She supports a middle-class tax credit, Medicare for All healthcare funding reform, the Green New Deal and the legalization of marijuana. Her track record as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general has drawn scrutiny in a Democratic Party that has shifted in recent years on criminal justice issues.

PETE BUTTIGIEG

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is emerging from underdog status as he begins to build momentum with young voters. A Harvard University graduate and Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, he speaks seven languages and served in Afghanistan with the U.S. Navy Reserve. He touts himself as representing a new generation of leadership needed to combat Trump. Buttigieg would be the first openly gay presidential nominee of a major American political party.

ELIZABETH WARREN

The 69-year-old senator from Massachusetts is a leader of the party’s liberals and a fierce Wall Street critic who was instrumental in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She has focused her presidential campaign on her populist economic message, promising to fight what she calls a rigged economic system that favors the wealthy. She also has proposed eliminating the Electoral College, vowed to break up Amazon, Google and Facebook if elected, and sworn off political fundraising events to collect cash for her bid. Warren apologized earlier this year to the Cherokee Nation for taking a DNA test to prove her claims to Native American ancestry, an assertion that has prompted Trump to mockingly refer to her as “Pocahontas.”

CORY BOOKER

Booker, 49, a senator from New Jersey and former mayor of Newark, gained national prominence in the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Booker, who is black, has made U.S. race relations and racial disparities a focus of his campaign, noting the impact of discrimination on his family. He embraces progressive positions on Medicare coverage for every American, the Green New Deal and other key issues, and touts his style of positivity over attacks. Booker eats a vegan diet and recently confirmed rumors he is dating actress Rosario Dawson.

AMY KLOBUCHAR

The third-term senator from Minnesota was the first moderate in the Democratic field vying to challenge Trump. Klobuchar, 58, gained national attention in 2018 when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during Senate hearings for his Supreme Court nomination. On the campaign trail, the former prosecutor and corporate attorney supports an alternative to traditional Medicare healthcare funding and is taking a hard stance against rising prescription drug prices. Klobuchar’s campaign reported raising more than $1 million in its first 48 hours. Her campaign announcement came amid news reports that staff in her Senate office were asked to do menial tasks, making it difficult to hire high-level campaign strategists.

JULIAN CASTRO

The secretary of housing and urban development under President Barack Obama would be the first Hispanic to win a major U.S. party’s presidential nomination. Castro, 44, whose grandmother was immigrated to Texas from Mexico, has used his family’s personal story to criticize Trump’s border policies. Castro advocates for a universal pre-kindergarten program, supports Medicare for All and cites his experience to push for affordable housing. He announced his bid in his hometown of San Antonio, where he once served as mayor and a city councilman. His twin brother, Joaquin Castro, is a Democratic congressman from Texas.

ANDREW YANG

The entrepreneur and former tech executive is focusing his campaign on an ambitious universal income plan. Yang, 44, wants to guarantee all American citizens between the ages of 18 and 64 a $1,000 check every month. The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang also is pushing for Medicare for All and proposing a new form of capitalism that is “human-centered.” He lives in New York.

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND

Gillibrand, known as a moderate when she served as a congresswoman from upstate New York, has refashioned herself into a staunch progressive, calling for strict gun laws and supporting the Green New Deal. The senator for New York, who is 52, has led efforts to address sexual assault in the military and on college campuses, and she pushed for Congress to improve its own handling of sexual misconduct allegations. On the campaign trail, she has made fiery denunciations of Trump. She released her tax returns for the years 2007 through 2018, offering the most comprehensive look to date at the finances of a 2020 White House candidate, and has called on her rivals to do the same.

JOHN HICKENLOOPER

The 67-year-old former Colorado governor has positioned himself as a centrist and an experienced officeholder with business experience. He is the only Democratic presidential candidate so far to oppose the Green New Deal plan to tackle climate change, saying it would give the government too much power in investment decisions. During his two terms in office, Colorado’s economy soared and the Western state expanded healthcare, passed a gun control law and legalized marijuana. The former geologist and brew pub owner is among the many candidates who have refused to take corporate money. He previously served as mayor of Denver.

JAY INSLEE

The Washington state governor has made fighting climate change the central issue of his campaign. As governor, Inslee, 68, has moved to put a moratorium on capital punishment and fully implement the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, and accompanying expansion of Medicaid health coverage for the poor. He has not settled on a position on Medicare for All but does support the Green New Deal backed by progressives. Inslee spent 15 years in Congress before being elected governor in 2012.

JOHN DELANEY

The former U.S. representative from Maryland became the first Democrat to enter the 2020 race, declaring his candidacy in July 2017. Delaney, 55, plans to focus on advancing only bipartisan bills during the first 100 days of his presidency if elected. He’s also pushing for a universal healthcare system, raising the federal minimum wage and passing gun safety legislation.

TULSI GABBARD

The Samoan-American congresswoman from Hawaii and Iraq war veteran is the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. After working for her father’s anti-gay advocacy group and drafting relevant legislation, she was forced to apologize for her past views on same-sex marriage. Gabbard, 37, has been against U.S. intervention in Syria and slammed Trump for standing by Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. She endorsed Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign.

TIM RYAN

The moderate nine-term congressman from a working-class district in the battleground state of Ohio has touted his appeal to the blue-collar voters who fled to Trump in 2016. He says Trump has turned his back on those voters and failed to live up his promise to revitalize the manufacturing industry. Ryan, 45, pledges to create jobs in new technologies and to focus on public education and access to affordable healthcare. He first gained national attention when he unsuccessfully tried to unseat Nancy Pelosi as the House Democratic leader in 2016, arguing it was time for new leadership. A former college football player, he also has written books on meditation and healthy eating.

SETH MOULTON

An Iraq War veteran and member of Congress, Seth Moulton, 40, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014 when he defeated a fellow Democrat in the primary election. Moulton served in the Marines from 2001 to 2008. He became a vocal critic of the Iraq War in which he served, saying no more troops should be deployed to the country. He has advocated stricter gun laws, saying military-style weapons should not be owned by civilians. Moulton supports the legalization of marijuana and told Boston public radio station WGBH in 2016 that he had smoked pot while in college. After Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2018, Moulton helped organize opposition to Representative Nancy Pelosi’s bid to again become speaker.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

The 66-year-old New York Times best-selling author, motivational speaker and Texas native believes her spirituality-focused campaign can heal America. A 1992 interview on Oprah Winfrey’s show propelled Williamson to make a name for herself as a “spiritual guide” for Hollywood and a self-help expert. She is calling for $100 billion in reparations for slavery over 10 years, gun control, education reform and equal rights for lesbian and gay communities. In 2014, she made an unsuccessful bid for a House seat in California as an independent.

WAYNE MESSAM

Messam, 44, defeated a 16-year incumbent in 2015 to become the first black mayor of in the Miami suburb of Miramar. He was re-elected in March. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he played on Florida State University’s 1993 national championship football team, and then started a construction business with his wife. He has pledged to focus on reducing gun violence, mitigating climate change and reducing student loan debt and the cost of healthcare.
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There are no policy positions on his website. He has virtually no paid presence in the states that matter most. And his campaign manager is a high school friend with no experience in presidential politics.

This is the upstart campaign of Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old Indiana mayor who has suddenly become one of the hottest names in the Democrats’ presidential primary season. Yet there is an increasing urgency, inside and outside the campaign, that his moment may pass if he doesn’t take swift action to build a national organization capable of harnessing the energy he’ll need to sustain his surge in the nine months or so before the first votes are cast.

“I get more inquiries on how to reach him or his campaign than anyone else,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said, adding that he’s aware of just one part-time Buttigieg staffer in the state to help coordinate the requests.

“This is what it’s like when you’re having your moment,” Buckley said. “Whether he can capitalize — that’s his challenge.”

Indeed, it’s far from certain that Buttigieg, a gay former military officer, will continue to stand out in a contest that features political heavyweights like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden, who is expected to launch his candidacy later this week. Aware of the daunting road ahead, Buttigieg’s team is plowing forward with an ambitious push to expand his operation, attract new campaign cash and pound the airwaves with virtually every media opportunity available.

In an interview, Buttigieg conceded that his supporters across the country have essentially had to “organize themselves” so far.

“We need to make sure we have the organizational strengths to sustain this wave of support that we’ve been getting for the last almost month and a half now,” he said. “It’s created some challenges to rise this far this fast, but I would put those in the category of a good problem to have.”

Growing staff

Federal filings suggest the campaign had little more than a dozen paid staffers at the end of last month. Buttigieg’s paid presence now exceeds 30, according to campaign manager Mike Schmuhl, who said it’ll be closer to 50 by the end of the month.

Most of the team is based in South Bend, Indiana, while a handful of staffers work from shared “We Work” office space in Chicago and a few others are based in Iowa and New Hampshire. Buttigieg plans to expand his presence in Iowa and New Hampshire and hire paid staff in South Carolina, Nevada and California in the coming weeks.

Still, don’t expect the Democratic mayor of South Bend to create a giant campaign apparatus in line with Warren, Sanders or even New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Buttigieg has the money to build a large organization after raising more than $7 million last quarter, but the core of the near-term campaign strategy hinges on an aggressive fundraising schedule and a say-yes-to-almost-everything media strategy backed by strong debate performances.

Schmuhl said the campaign doesn’t have national political consultants on the payroll, and it’s unclear if it ever will.

“We want to build a campaign that’s a little disruptive, kind of entrepreneurial. Right now, it feels like a startup,” said Schmuhl, who first met Buttigieg in high school and later ran former Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly’s 2010 congressional campaign before reconnecting with Buttigieg.

There are clearly organizational challenges as the campaign ramps up, Schmuhl continued, but there is also “tremendous opportunity.”

“We’re in the game,” he said.

Opportunities, challenges

As was the case in former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s early campaign appearances, the lack of formal organization has allowed for a certain level of authenticity on the campaign trail as Buttigieg introduces himself to voters. It’s also created challenges.

He’s drawing big crowds in Iowa and New Hampshire, but there were few, if any, campaign staff on hand to take down information from enthusiastic supporters who want to be part of the campaign. While Buckley said he’s aware of only one part-time staffer in New Hampshire, a Buttigieg spokesman said the aide was full time.

And voters eager to learn more about the mayor’s policy positions have been left wanting. Buttigieg has called for ending the Electoral College and expanding the Supreme Court. But in sharp contrast to some of his higher-profile competitors, he has yet to hire a policy director or release any written policies.

New Hampshire Democrat Lauren O’Sullivan, a 35-year-old who attended a house party for Buttigieg over the weekend, said she was initially unsure about the Midwestern mayor after going on his website. She felt she “didn’t know where he stood on any positions.”

She was somewhat reassured after he talked about specific policies at the Saturday house party.

“It was good to see that there is some platform,” O’Sullivan said.

For now, Buttigieg’s team wants to get him in front of as many people as possible.

Raising money

That’ll include travel to meet voters in the early states on the presidential primary calendar, but after a week on the road in Iowa and New Hampshire, he’ll spend the coming days focused on raising as much money as possible.

This week he’ll launch a California fundraising swing featuring 11 stops across three days. 

 

A handful of key fundraisers for former President Barack Obama are also hosting a finance event for Buttigieg in Chicago on May 16. Hollywood has taken an early liking to the Indiana mayor. 

 

Actors including Ryan Reynolds have already written small checks. Others in the entertainment industry are expected to attend events on the California tour, though the campaign declined to name them.

It’s critically important for Buttigieg to focus on fundraising while he’s surging, said Democratic strategist Symone Sanders, who predicted that Buttigieg’s moment is unlikely to last.

“Three weeks ago it was Beto. Now it’s Mayor Pete. Three weeks from now it’ll be somebody else,” she said. “It’s important to have a viable campaign to capitalize on this moment.”

Buttigieg acknowledged his organizational challenges on the campaign trail in recent days.

“Every time I fool myself into thinking I’m a household name, I get a humbling reminder somewhere that not everybody is following the blow by blow,” he said at the New Hampshire house party. He asked voters to join his effort, which he said is now “racing to build an organization to catch up with ourselves.”

Afterward, as some in the crowd eagerly lined up for pictures with the young mayor, 65-year-old retired doctor Wayne Goldner stood in the kitchen and praised Buttigieg’s performance.

The mayor’s getting “very popular,” he said, and rightfully so.

“He’s going to get too big for house parties,” Goldner said. “I think in New Hampshire he’s big enough for the bigger venues already.”
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U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election, wants to cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt and make college cheaper for students going forward.

Warren, in a post on the website Medium, proposed canceling $50,000 in student loan debt for anyone with annual household income under $100,000, which her campaign said would amount to 42 million Americans. It would also cancel some debt for those with household incomes between $100,000 and $250,000.

Warren, who has long advocated in Congress for providing debt relief to students, called student loan debt a “crisis.”

She said canceling debt for millions of people would help close the nation’s racial and wealth gap, and also proposed making all two-year and four-year public colleges free.

“The first step in addressing this crisis is to deal head-on with the outstanding debt that is weighing down millions of families and should never have been required in the first place,” Warren wrote.

Warren is competing in a crowded field of more than 20 Democrats vying for their party’s 2020 nomination and has sought to distinguish herself by offering numerous, expansive policy proposals.

Anticipating Republican criticism that her proposal would be too expensive, Warren said her debt cancellation plan and universal free college could be paid for through an “Ultra-Millionaire Tax,” which would impose a 2 percent annual tax on families with $50 million or more in wealth.

Education has been a topic on the campaign trail for some of Warren’s rivals as well.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, another contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, released a plan last month that would use $315 billion in federal money over 10 years to give the average teacher a $13,500 raise, or about a 23 percent salary increase.
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Justice Elena Kagan’s father was 3 years old when the census taker came to the family’s apartment on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, New York, on April 10, 1930.

Robert Kagan was initially wrongly listed as an “alien,” though he was a native-born New Yorker. The entry about his citizenship status appears to have been crossed out on the census form.

Vast changes in America and technology have dramatically altered the way the census is conducted. But the accuracy of the once-a-decade population count is at the heart of the Supreme Court case over the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The justices are hearing arguments in the case on Tuesday, with a decision due by late June that will allow for printing forms in time for the count in April 2020.

The fight over the census question is the latest over immigration-related issues between Democratic-led states and advocates for immigrants, on one side, and the administration, on the other. The Supreme Court last year upheld President Donald Trump’s ban on visitors to the U.S. from several mostly Muslim countries. The court also has temporarily blocked administration plans to make it harder for people to claim asylum and is considering an administration appeal that would allow Trump to end protections for immigrants who were brought to this country as children.

The citizenship question has not been asked on the census form sent to every American household since 1950, and the administration’s desire to add it is now rife with political implications and partisan division.

Federal judges in California , Maryland and New York have blocked the administration from going forward with a citizenship question after crediting the analysis of Census Bureau experts who found that a question would damage the overall accuracy of the census and cause millions of Hispanics and immigrants to go uncounted. That in turn would cost several states seats in the U.S. House and billions of dollars in federal dollars that are determined by census results.

The three judges have rejected the administration’s arguments that asking about citizenship won’t harm accuracy and that the information is needed to help enforce provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The Census Bureau’s consistent view since the 1960 census has been that asking everyone about citizenship “would produce a less accurate population count,” five former agency directors who served in Democratic and Republic administrations wrote in a Supreme Court brief.

No population count is perfect, and census designers strive to create a questionnaire that is clear and easy to answer.

In older censuses, a government worker known as an enumerator would visit households and record information. In modern times, people fill in their own forms on paper or electronically.

But the potential for errant answers is ever-present, said Debbie Soren, the treasurer of the Illinois chapter of the Jewish Genealogical Society.

“Sometimes people didn’t always want to be forthcoming, including in their ages, for whatever reason. Sometimes there might be a language barrier. Or the person reporting the information might not be the best one to report it,” Soren said.

It seems likely that the census taker himself was responsible for the confusion in Robert Kagan’s citizenship status. Dozens of families who lived near the Kagans have similar crossed-out entries in the citizenship column.

While Kagan’s father was born in the United States, her grandfather, Irving Kagan, was a Russian immigrant who had submitted his paperwork to become an American citizen, the 1930 census shows. By 1940, Irving Kagan was a citizen. The old census forms, through 1940, can be searched on ancestry.com. The 1950 census will become public in 2022.

If past census reports leave a wide berth for error, they still hold a wealth of information, said Sharon DeBartolo Carmack of Salt Lake City, the author of “You Can Write Your Family History.”

Before 1960, the census often asked where people were born and, if abroad, whether they were U.S. citizens. “It’s wonderful to us as researchers, even though we don’t like the politics, don’t like the motivation,” Carmack said.

Kagan is among seven of the nine justices whose ancestors told census takers they were immigrants who had become American citizens. They came from England, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Russia, like so many others seeking a better life.

The fathers of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel Alito were immigrants from Russia and Italy, respectively.

In the 1910 census, Patrick Kavanaugh, the great-grandfather of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was living in New Haven, Connecticut, an iron worker who had become a citizen after leaving Ireland in the 1870s.

By 1900, the English-born great-grandmother of Chief Justice John Roberts and the German-born great-grandfather of Justice Stephen Breyer also were U.S. citizens.

Two of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s great-great grandfathers, Alex Tiehen and Hugh O’Grady, lived in Nebraska, according to the 1900 census. Tiehen came from Germany in 1845 and O’Grady emigrated from Ireland two years later. By the turn of the last century, both reported they were U.S. citizens.

There are two justices with very different paths to American citizenship. Justice Clarence Thomas is the descendant of slaves and Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Puerto Rican ancestors became American citizens under a 1917 federal law. Spain ceded the territory to the United States after the Spanish-American War.

The case is Department of Commerce v. New York, 18-966.
…

Two months before special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed in the spring of 2017, President Donald Trump picked up the phone and called the head of the largest U.S. intelligence agency. Trump told Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, that news stories alleging that Trump’s 2016 White House campaign had ties to Russia were false and the president asked whether Rogers could do anything to counter them.

Rogers and his deputy Richard Ledgett, who was present for the call, were taken aback.

Afterward, Ledgett wrote a memo about the conversation and Trump’s request. He and Rogers signed it and stashed it in a safe. Ledgett said it was the “most unusual thing he had experienced in 40 years of government service.”

Trump’s outreach to Rogers, who retired last year, and other top intelligence officials stands in sharp contrast to his public, combative stance toward his intelligence agencies. At the time of the call, Trump was just some 60 days into his presidency, but he already had managed to alienate large parts of the intelligence apparatus with comments denigrating the profession.

Since then, Trump only has dug in. He said at a news conference in Helsinki after his 2017 summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin that he gave weight to Putin’s denial that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, despite the firm conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that it had. “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, Trump said. And earlier this year, Trump called national security assessments “naive,” tweeting “perhaps intelligence should go back to school.”

Yet in moments of concern as Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election got underway, Trump turned to his spy chiefs for help.

The phone call to Rogers on March 26, 2017, came only weeks after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had angered Trump by stepping aside from the investigation. James Comey, the FBI director who would be fired that May, had just told Congress that the FBI was not only investigating Russian meddling in the election, but also possible links or coordination between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

The call to Rogers and others like it were uncovered by Mueller as he investigated possible obstruction. In his 448-page report released Thursday, Mueller concluded that while Trump attempted to seize control of the Russia investigation and bring it to a halt, the president was ultimately thwarted by those around him.

The special counsel said the evidence did not establish that Trump asked or directed intelligence officials to “stop or interfere with the FBI’s Russia investigation.” The requests to those officials, Mueller said, “were not interpreted by the officials who received them as directives to improperly interfere with the investigation.”

During the call to Rogers, the president “expressed frustration with the Russia investigation, saying that it made relations with the Russians difficult,” according to the report.

Trump said news stories linking him with Russia were not true and he asked Rogers “if he could do anything to refute the stories.” Even though Rogers signed the memo about the conversation and put it in a safe, he told investigators he did not think Trump was giving him an order.

Trump made a number of similar requests of other top intelligence officials.

On March 22, 2017, Trump asked then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats to stay behind after a meeting at the White House to ask if the men could “say publicly that no link existed between him and Russia,” the report said.

In two other instances, the president began meetings to discuss sensitive intelligence matters by stating he hoped a media statement could be issued saying there was no collusion with Russia.

After Trump repeatedly brought up the Russia investigation with his national intelligence director, “Coats said he finally told the President that Coats’s job was to provide intelligence and not get involved in investigations,” the report said.

Pompeo recalled that Trump regularly urged officials to get the word out that he had not done anything wrong related to Russia. But Pompeo, now secretary of state, said he had no recollection of being asked to stay behind after the March 22 meeting, according to the report.

Coats told Mueller’s investigators that Trump never asked him to speak with Comey about the FBI investigation. But other employees within Coats’ office had different recollections of how Coats described the meeting immediately after it occurred.

According to the report, senior staffer Michael Dempsey “said that Coats described the president’s comments as falling ‘somewhere between musing about hating the investigation’ and wanting Coats to ‘do something to stop it.’ Dempsey said Coats made it clear that he would not get involved with an ongoing FBI investigation.”
…

Washington remains focused on steps Congress may take after a redacted report from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe was released last week. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Democrats in the House of Representatives are determined to obtain a complete, un-redacted version of the document, which found no collusion between President Donald Trump’s inner circle and Russia, but neither established nor ruled out that the president obstructed justice.
…

President Donald Trump is lashing out at current and former aides who cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, insisting the deeply unflattering picture they painted of him and the White House was “total bullshit.”

In a series of angry tweets from Palm Beach, Florida, Trump laced into those who, under oath, had shared with Mueller their accounts of how Trump tried numerous times to squash or influence the investigation and portrayed the White House as infected by a culture of lies, deceit and deception.

 

“Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,” Trump wrote Friday, adding that some were “total bullshit & only given to make the other person look good [or me to look bad].”

The attacks were a dramatic departure from the upbeat public face the White House had put on it just 24 hours earlier, when Trump celebrated the report’s findings as full exoneration and his counselor Kellyanne Conway called it “the best day” for Trump’s team since his election. While the president, according to people close to him, did feel vindicated by the report, he also felt betrayed by those who had painted him in an unflattering light — even though they were speaking under oath and had been directed by the White House to cooperate fully with Mueller’s team.

The reaction was not entirely surprising and had been something staffers feared in the days ahead of the report’s release as they wondered how Mueller might portray their testimony and whether the report might damage their relationships with Trump.

 

While Mueller found no criminal evidence that Trump or his campaign aides colluded in Russian election meddling and did not recommend obstruction charges against the president, the 448-page report released Thursday nonetheless paints a damaging picture of the president, describing numerous cases where he discouraged witnesses from cooperating with prosecutors and prodded aides to mislead the public on his behalf to hamper the Russia probe he feared would cripple his presidency.

The accounts prompted Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who has sometimes clashed with Trump, to release a statement saying he was “sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President.”

 

“Reading the report is a sobering revelation of how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles of the founders,” he said.

 

The report concluded that one reason Trump managed to stay out of trouble was that his “efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful… largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

 

That didn’t spare those who defied Trump’s wishes from his wrath.

 

Trump appeared to be especially angry with former White House counsel Don McGahn, who sat with Mueller for about 30 hours of interviews, and is referenced numerous times in the report.

 

In one particularly vivid passage, Mueller recounts how Trump called McGahn twice at home and directed him to set in motion Mueller’s firing. McGahn recoiled, packed up his office and threatened to resign, fearing the move would trigger a potential crisis akin to the Saturday Night Massacre of firings during the Watergate era.

 

In another section, Mueller details how Trump questioned McGahn’s note-taking, telling the White House counsel that, “Lawyers don `t take notes” and that he’d “never had a lawyer who took notes.”

 

“Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” Trump said in one of his tweets Friday. Others whose contemporaneous notes were referenced in the report include former staff secretary Rob Porter and Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief of staff.

 

Trump ended his tweet with the word, “a…” suggesting more was coming. More than eight hours later, he finally completed his thought, calling the probe a “big, fat, waste of time, energy and money” and threatening investigators by saying, “It is now finally time to turn the tables and bring justice to some very sick and dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even Spying or Treason.” There is no evidence of either.

 

Trump, who is in Florida for the Easter weekend, headed to his West Palm Beach golf club Friday after some early morning rain had cleared. There he played golf with conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh “and a couple friends,” according to the White House.

 

He’ll spend the rest of the weekend with family, friends and paying members of his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.

 

As Trump hopped off the steps from Air Force One on Thursday evening, he was greeted by a throng of supporters, who clamored for autographs and selfies. He repeatedly told the crowd “thank you everybody” as they yelled encouragement.

 

Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary to former President George W. Bush, said in an appearance on Fox News that he didn’t understand why Trump decided to send his tweets lashing out at former aides.

 

“I think it’s over,” he said. “If I were the president, I would have basically declared victory with the Mueller report and everything that came out and move beyond it.”

 

Still, he said he hoped the White House had learned some lessons.

 

“The president and his entire team needs to realize how close they came to being charged with obstruction,” Fleischer said. “Asking your staff to lie and engaging in some of the activities that the Mueller report stated the president engaged in is too close to obstruction. And that’s a lesson I hope everybody at the White House takes with them going forward.”

 

 
…

North Korea has criticized U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton’s “nonsense” call for Pyongyang to show that it’s serious about giving up its nuclear weapons, the second time it has criticized a leading U.S. official in less than a week.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he is open to a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but Bolton told Bloomberg News on Wednesday there first needed to be “a real indication from North Korea that they’ve made the strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons.”

“Bolton, national security adviser of the White House, in an interview with Bloomberg, showed above himself by saying such a nonsense,” North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui told reporters when asked about his recent comments, the Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

“Bolton’s remarks make me wonder whether they sprang out of incomprehension of the intentions of the top leaders of the DPRK and the U.S. or whether he was just trying to talk with a certain sense of humor for his part, with its own deviation,” she said, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name. “All things considered, his word has no charm in it and he looks dim-sighted to me.”

The North Korean vice minister also warned that there would be no good if the United States continued “to throw away such remarks devoid of discretion and reason.”

North Korea said Thursday it no longer wanted to deal with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and that he should be replaced in talks by someone more mature, hours after it announced its first weapons test since nuclear talks broke down.
…

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed a statement from a senior North Korean foreign ministry official saying they no longer want him involved if talks with the U.S. resume. Pompeo said he is still in charge of the U.S. negotiating team and that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised to denuclearize “half a dozen times.” The exchange comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet with Kim Jong Un. VOA’s Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from the State Department.
…

President Donald Trump lashed out Friday at current and former aides who cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, insisting the deeply unflattering picture they painted of him and the White House was “total bullsh**.” 

 

In a series of angry tweets from rainy Palm Beach, Fla., Trump laced into those who, under oath, had shared with Mueller their accounts of how Trump tried numerous times to squash or influence the investigation and portrayed the White House as infected by a culture of lies, deceit and deception.

Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,'' Trump wrote, adding that some weretotal bullsh** & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad).” 

The attacks were a dramatic departure from the upbeat public face the White House had shown just 24 hours earlier, when Trump celebrated the report’s findings as full exoneration and counselor Kellyanne Conway called it “the best day” for Trump’s team since his election.

While the president, according to people close to him, did feel vindicated by the report, he also felt betrayed by those who had painted him in an unflattering light — even though they were speaking under oath and had been directed by the White House to cooperate fully with Mueller’s team. 

 

The reaction was not entirely surprising and had been something staffers feared in the days ahead of the report’s release as they wondered how Mueller might portray their testimony and whether the report might damage their relationships with Trump. 

 

While Mueller found no criminal evidence that Trump or his campaign aides colluded in Russian election meddling, nor did the special counsel recommend obstruction charges against the president, the 448-page report released Thursday nonetheless paints a damaging picture of the president, describing numerous cases where he discouraged witnesses from cooperating with prosecutors and prodded aides to mislead the public on his behalf to hamper the Russia probe he feared would cripple his presidency. 

 

The accounts prompted Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has sometimes clashed with Trump, to release a statement saying he was “sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the president.” 

 

“Reading the report is a sobering revelation of how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles of the founders,” he said. 

 

The report concluded that one reason Trump managed to stay out of trouble was that his “efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful … largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” 

 

That didn’t spare those who defied Trump’s wishes from his wrath.  

Trump appeared to be especially angry with former White House counsel Don McGahn, who sat with Mueller for about 30 hours of interviews, and is referenced numerous times in the report. 

 

In one particularly vivid passage, Mueller recounts how Trump called McGahn twice at home and directed him to set in motion Mueller’s firing. McGahn recoiled, packed up his office and threatened to resign, fearing the move would trigger a potential crisis akin to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of firings during the Watergate era. 

 

In another section, Mueller details how Trump questioned McGahn’s note-taking, telling the White House counsel that lawyers don't take notes'' and that he'dnever had a lawyer who took notes.”

“Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” Trump said in one of his tweets Friday. Others whose contemporaneous notes were referenced in the report include former staff secretary Rob Porter and Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief of staff. 

 

Trump ended his tweet with a ... ,'' suggesting more was coming. More than eight hours later, he finally completed his thought, calling the probe abig, fat, waste of time, energy and money” and threatening investigators by saying, “It is now finally time to turn the tables and bring justice to some very sick and dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even Spying or Treason.” There is no evidence of either.  

Trump, who is in Florida for the Easter weekend, headed to his West Palm Beach golf club Friday after some early-morning rain had cleared. There he played golf with conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh “and a couple friends,” according to the White House. 

 

He’ll spend the rest of the weekend with family, friends and paying members of his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach. 

 

As Trump hopped off the steps from Air Force One on Thursday evening, he was greeted by a throng of supporters, who clamored for autographs and selfies. He repeatedly told the crowd “thank you, everybody” as they yelled encouragement. 

 

Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary to former President George W. Bush, said in an appearance on Fox News that he didn’t understand why Trump decided to send his tweets lashing out at former aides. 

 

I think it's over,'' he said.If I were the president, I would have basically declared victory with the Mueller report and everything that came out and move beyond it.” 

 

Still, he said he hoped the White House had learned some lessons. 

 

The president and his entire team needs to realize how close they came to being charged with obstruction,'' Fleischer said.Asking your staff to lie and engaging in some of the activities that the Mueller report stated the president engaged in is too close to obstruction. And that’s a lesson I hope everybody at the White House takes with them going forward.” 
…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday became the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to make a full-throated call for the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report. 

 

Mueller, who investigated whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 election and whether the president tried to interfere with the inquiry, found no evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and offered no verdict on obstruction of justice. Mueller did find, however, that Trump made numerous attempts to interfere with the investigation but was largely foiled by those around him. 

 

In a series of tweets, Warren said it would be damaging to “ignore a president’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior” and would give license to future presidents to act in the same way. 

‘Constitutional duty’

“The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States,” Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, tweeted. 

 

Other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, while supportive of the idea of impeachment, were more circumspect in their responses.  

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said Friday on CNN that it would be “perfectly reasonable for Congress to open up those proceedings.” 

 

Both Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington and Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said the question of impeachment should not be taken off the table.  Other Democratic candidates, including Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, indicated it was too soon to initiate impeachment proceedings. 

 

“We don’t have an unredacted version of the report. We don’t have the underlying materials that that report was written upon. We haven’t had yet an opportunity to have hearings where we interview Mueller,” Booker said during a campaign stop in Reno, Nevada. 

 

Harris was asked Thursday night on MSNBC to comment on House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s remarks that impeachment hearings against Trump would not be “worthwhile” because the 2020 election is coming up and voters can decide if they want to keep Trump in office.    

I think that's there definitely a conversation to be had on that subject,'' Harris said, referring to impeachment,but first I want to hear from Bob Mueller and really understand what exactly is the evidence that supports the summary that we’ve been given.” 

 

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., said the best recourse for Trump’s actions as president would be to vote him out.  

  

“If we really want to send Trumpism into the history books, the best thing we can do is defeat it decisively at the ballot box in 2020,” Buttigieg said on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers.
…

Russian officials Friday continued to deny that Moscow tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election, brushing aside hundreds of pages of evidence released in special counsel Robert Muller’s report by saying it contained no proof.

“We still do not accept accusations of that sort,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in a conference call.  He said Russia has insisted from the very beginning of the two-year probe that “whatever investigators did, they would find no [Russian] meddling, because there was no meddling.” 

 

In the United States, there is consensus among the nation’s intelligence community, and details published in the Mueller report, on how Moscow used a variety of tactics and people to try to influence Americans’ political opinions, hurt political enemies and help Donald Trump’s campaign. U.S. prosecutors announced indictments against 25 Russian nationals, mostly military officers and “internet trolls,” as well as three Russian entities for their roles in the meddling. 

 

Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that [Mueller’s conclusions] “actually confirm the absence of any argument that Russia supposedly meddled in the American elections.”  

Last month, Russian officials reacted in a similar fashion after U.S. Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller’s investigation. In their euphoric reactions, however, they commented only on the news that the U.S. probe had found no evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow, ignoring the fact that Mueller’s team had also backed the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia in fact meddled in the 2016 election campaign.

Observers believe there is little hope that Russia will change its position on the conclusions of Mueller’s investigation. 

 

“I don’t think there will be new statements made on the matter [by Russian officials], unless new facts are presented against Russia,” said Leonid Gusev of the Moscow-based Institute of International Research. 

Consistent stance

 

Pavel Sharikov, a senior fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, agreed with his countryman, saying that “Russia’s position on the matter has been consistent” throughout the course of Mueller’s investigation and that at this point nothing will change it. 

 

Experts are also doubtful about the ability of Washington and Moscow to build a constructive relationship in the near future. For that to happen, they say, a new administration will have to come to the White House.  

Even though the special counsel and his team could not find evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 campaign, some analysts say the cloud of collusion will linger over Trump’s presidency. 

 

“There is no action that Russia can take that would change this [negative] narrative both in U.S. domestic politics and U.S. policies towards Russia,” Sharikov said. 
…

After 22 months of investigation, the public and Congress Thursday got to see the report of special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The report found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but Mueller and his team could not make a judgment on whether the president had sought to obstruct justice. Opposition Democrats are pushing for further investigation in Congress. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
…

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders Thursday announced endorsements from seven black lawmakers in the critical early voting state of South Carolina, a show of force in the first place where African American voters feature prominently in next year’s primary elections.

Sanders’ 2020 campaign made the announcement just ahead of a Spartanburg town hall meeting with members of the state’s Legislative Black Caucus. The backing represents the biggest number of black lawmakers to back a 2020 hopeful to date in this state, which holds the first primary in the South.

The support is part of Sanders’ attempt to turn things around in South Carolina, where his 47-point loss to Hillary Clinton in 2016 blunted the momentum generated in opening primary contests and exposed his weakness with black voters. Sensing the coming defeat, Sanders left South Carolina in the days leading up to the state’s 2016 vote, campaigning instead in Midwestern states where he hoped to perform better.

​Different approach

Sanders, a senator from Vermont, has taken a different approach this time, working to deepen ties with the black voters who comprise most of the Democratic primary electorate in the state and pledging to visit South Carolina much more frequently. Our Revolution, the organizing offshoot of Sanders’ 2016 campaign, has an active branch in the state, holding regular meetings and conferences throughout the state. Sanders addressed the group last year.

The campaign recently hired a state director and, according to adviser Jeff Weaver, is putting together a “much stronger team on the ground, much earlier in the process.”

Last month, Sanders made his first official 2020 campaign stop in this state, holding a rally at a black church in North Charleston. Attracting a mostly white crowd of more than 1,500 that night, Sanders recounted many of the efforts of his previous presidential campaign, noting that some of his ideas had since been adopted by the Democratic Party and supported by other candidates vying for the party’s nomination.

Diverse crowd

On Thursday, the pews of Mount Moriah Baptist Church were filled with a diverse crowd of several hundred as Sanders took to a lectern and addressed his ideas for criminal justice reform, issues that he said disproportionately affect the African American community.

“We understand that we are just denting the surface,” Sanders said, going on to discuss racial discrepancies in arrests for traffic violations and marijuana possession. “I think a new day is coming.”

Applauding Sanders’ attention to the needs of the black community, Spartanburg Councilman Michael Brown reminded the crowd of Sanders’ participation in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and encouraged him to stay the course in terms of his efforts to reach out to the black voters here.

“Thank you, sir. Keep the conversation going,” Brown said. “Remain unapologetic in what you have to say because your message is resonating in our community and throughout this land.”

The South Carolina lawmakers endorsing Sanders are state Reps. Wendell Gilliard, Cezar McKnight, Krystle Simmons, Ivory Thigpen and Shedron Williams. He’s also being backed by state Reps. Terry Alexander and Justin Bamberg, both of whom backed Sanders in 2016 and served as national surrogates for his campaign.
…

The National Enquirer is being sold to the former head of the airport newsstand company Hudson News following a rocky year in which the tabloid was accused of burying stories that could have hurt Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 

 

Tabloid owner American Media said Thursday that it plans to sell the supermarket weekly to James Cohen. Financial terms were not immediately disclosed for the deal, which included two other American Media tabloids, the Globe and National Examiner.  

  

American Media said last week that it wanted to get out of the tabloid business to focus on its other operations, which includes its teen brand and broadcast platforms.

Non-prosecution agreement

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan agreed last year not to prosecute American Media in exchange for the company’s cooperation in a campaign finance investigation. That probe eventually led to a three-year prison term for Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for campaign violations among other charges.

American Media admitted it had paid $150,000 to keep former Playboy model Karen McDougal quiet about an alleged affair with Trump to help his campaign. Trump has denied an affair.  

The sale would end a longtime relationship between the Enquirer and Trump. Under the aegis of American Media CEO David Pecker, the tabloid has for years buried potentially embarrassing stories about Trump and other favored celebrities by buying the rights to them and never publishing in a practice called “catch and kill.” 

 

The Associated Press reported last year that Pecker kept a safe in the Enquirer’s office that held documents on buried stories, including those involving Trump. 

Whether James Cohen has any allegiances to Trump is not clear. While he was a registered Republican as late as 2017, according to Nexis records, he has given to both Republicans and Democrats. That included $17,300 in 2016 to an arm of the Democratic National Committee and $2,500 to the Republican National Committee in 2012.

News of the sale comes two months after Amazon chief Jeff Bezos publicly accused the Enquirer of trying to blackmail him by threatening to publish explicit photos of him. 

An American Media attorney denied the charge, but it threatened potentially big legal costs by upending American Media’s non-prosecution agreement in the hush money case. The AP reported that federal prosecutors were looking into whether the publisher violated terms of the deal, which included a promise not to break any laws in the future.

Heavy debt load

The Bezos accusation comes at a difficult time for American Media. It has financed several recent acquisitions with borrowed money and has been struggling under a heavy debt load. American Media said the Cohen deal would help reduce the amount it needs to pay back, leaving it with $355 million in debt. 

 

The Washington Post, which earlier reported the sale, said Cohen will pay $100 million in the deal.

Cohen’s family had run a magazine and newspaper distributor for decades before his father branched into newsstand stores in 1980s, starting with a single one at LaGuardia Airport. Before he died in 2012, the father had opened more than 600 stores. 

 

After the death, James Cohen’s niece alleged her uncle had cheated her out of her inheritance. She lost the case. 

 

The family sold a majority stake in the chain about a decade ago. The business is now owned by Dufry, an operator of duty-free stores in which James Cohen is a major shareholder. 

 

Cohen still owns a magazine and newspaper distributor called Hudson News Distributors. In addition, he runs a real estate developer and a publishing company, which owns Gallerie, an art and design magazine. 

 

Cohen has reportedly been involved in American Media deals before. The New York Times reports that, in 2011, Cohen invested in the company’s American edition of OK!, a British tabloid. 
…

Several key figures associated with President Donald Trump have pleaded guilty or were convicted of a range of offenses as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe:

Paul Manafort: Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman is in the early stages of a 7 1/2-year prison term after being convicted and pleading guilty in two cases linked to financial corruption from his years of lobbying for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine.

Michael Flynn: Trump’s first national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with Russia’s then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, just before Trump assumed power, and is awaiting sentencing.

George Papadopoulos: The  low-level foreign affairs adviser was jailed for 12 days after he pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his Russia contacts.

Rick Gates:  A business associate of Manafort’s and his deputy on the Trump campaign, Gates was a key witness against Manafort at his trial, after pleading guilty to conspiring with him in financial wrongdoing from their years as lobbyists for Ukraine. He is awaiting sentencing.

Michael Cohen: Trump’s one-time personal attorney pleaded guilty to helping Trump make $280,000 in hush money payments to two women, an adult film actress and a Playboy model, to keep them quiet before the 2016 election about alleged decade-old sexual encounters they claimed to have had with Trump. Cohen, headed soon to prison for a three-year term, also admitted lying to Congress about the extent of Trump’s efforts during the 2016 campaign to build a Trump skyscraper in Moscow, a time when candidate Trump was telling voters he had ended his Russian business ventures.

Roger Stone: The long-time Trump adviser and friend is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to Congress about his contacts with the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in conjunction with the release of emails hacked by Russian operatives from the computers of Democratic officials that were damaging to Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.

 
…

A large group of Democratic presidential contenders is off to an early and intensive start in 2019, even though the first caucus and primary votes will not come until next February.

But some experts are already predicting that the race for the party nomination could be one of the longest and nastiest in years. Nearly 20 Democrats have jumped into the 2020 election battle so far, and many face the daunting task of trying to boost their name recognition and raise money.

Among the latest Democrats to officially announce a presidential bid was South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

“The forces changing our country today are tectonic, forces that helped to explain what made this current presidency even possible,” Buttigieg told supporters at his kickoff event this week in South Bend. “That is why this time it is not just about winning an election. It is about winning an era.”

Buttigieg has risen from relative obscurity to being a contender in recent polls in the early contest states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Biden leads the pack

The latest Morning Consult survey has former Vice President Joe Biden leading the Democratic pack at 31 percent support, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 23 percent, California Sen. Kamala Harris at 9 percent and Buttigieg tied at 7 percent with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Biden has yet to officially announce and is expected to do so in the coming weeks.

Like many of the Democratic contenders already in the race, Harris has focused much of her attention on President Donald Trump.

“We cannot afford to have a president of the United States who stokes the hate and the division. We can’t,” Harris told supporters this month at a rally in Iowa.

​Struggling to get noticed

Among those working to gain visibility in the crowded Democratic field are New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who officially launched his campaign with a rally in his home state in early April.

“I am running for president to first and foremost try to bring this country back together!” Ryan told supporters.

In addition to Biden, others who may enter the race soon include Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton. Eventually, the number of Democratic contenders could go to 20 or beyond.

Even though Democratic voters have lots of choices, they seem most eager to find someone who can beat Trump, according to pollster John Zogby.

“Whom do they do it with? Do they do it with a progressive candidate or a mainstream candidate? That is one question. Do they do it with an older traditional candidate or a young face?” he asked.

One dynamic expected to play out in the race ahead is the ideological divide within the Democratic Party. A Gallup survey in January found that most Democrats see themselves as liberal. Fifty-one percent in that Gallup Poll chose the liberal label, while 34 percent called themselves moderate and 13 percent said they were conservative.

 

WATCH: Long, Ugly Battle Likely Ahead for Democratic Candidates

​It could get rough

Some experts predict that a large field lacking a clear front-runner is a recipe for a long and potentially nasty campaign.

“I think it will be one of the most negative campaigns we have ever seen in a Democratic primary. We are already seeing this,” said Jim Kessler of Third Way, a center-left public policy group. “Because you have got 15 or 16 candidates out there who feel like, ‘Unless two or three of them [other contenders] are really dragged down, I have absolutely no chance.’ ”

In order to set themselves apart, some of the Democratic contenders are less focused on Trump and more interested in bringing lasting change to the country. It’s a theme often sounded by Booker, Warren and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, among others.

“I think Democrats are going to run on inequality and economic growth, and that is what they should be running on because those are the issues really facing the country that have not been dealt with,” said Brookings Institution expert Elaine Kamarck.

The familiar and the new

For the moment, the Democratic primary battle seems to be between some familiar and experienced contenders like Biden and Sanders and a group of younger, dynamic candidates that includes Harris, Buttigieg, O’Rourke and Booker.

Sanders appears to be having some success building on his failed White House bid in 2016, when he lost out to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after a long and difficult campaign.

Sanders led the Democratic pack in fundraising for the first quarter of 2019, drawing $18 million. Harris was in second place, raising $12 million, followed by O’Rourke, $9.3 million; Buttigieg, $7 million; and Warren, $6 million.

Fundraising numbers are often seen by strategists and analysts as an important indication of a candidate’s strength, especially in a crowded field like the one shaping up for Democrats in 2020.

View from Trump world

Trump’s re-election campaign has also been busy collecting donations, raising $30 million in the first quarter, a notably large sum for an incumbent president this early in an election cycle.

Trump and his Republican allies have already signaled they will try to brand the Democrats as “socialists” and will focus on sweeping plans to expand government health care and tackle climate change that some Democratic candidates have endorsed. 

Trump does face a Republican primary challenge from former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld.

Weld told CNN on Wednesday that he has a strategy “to win, not just to weaken anybody.” Weld, who has a long record as a moderate in a party that now leans solidly to the right, said his focus will be to defeat Trump in New Hampshire, the state that will hold the first primary next February. Trump won the New Hampshire primary in 2016, a significant moment in his march to the nomination.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Trump predicted that he would likely face either Biden or Sanders as the Democratic nominee in 2020:

“It will be Crazy Bernie Sanders vs. Sleepy Joe Biden as the two finalists to run against maybe the best Economy in the history of our Country (and MANY other great things)!”
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A large group of Democratic presidential contenders is off to an early and intensive start in 2019, and some experts are predicting that the race for the party’s nomination could be one of the longest and nastiest in years. Nearly 20 Democrats have jumped into the 2020 election battle so far, and many face the daunting task of trying to boost their name recognition and raise money. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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Many Americans aren’t ready to clear President Donald Trump in the Russia investigation, with a new poll showing slightly more want Congress to keep investigating than to set aside its probes after a special counsel’s report left open the question of whether he broke the law.

About 6 in 10 continue to believe the president obstructed justice.

 

The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds greater GOP confidence in the investigation after Attorney General William Barr in late March released his letter saying special counsel Robert Mueller found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but didn’t make a judgment on the obstruction question.

 

At the same time, the poll indicates that Americans are mostly unhappy with the amount of information that has been released so far. They’ll get more Thursday, when Barr is expected to release a redacted version of the nearly 400-page report.

 

Trump has repeatedly claimed “total exoneration,” after Barr asserted in his memo that there was insufficient evidence for an obstruction prosecution.

 

“It’s a total phony,” Trump said of all allegations to Minneapolis TV station KSTP this week. “Any aspect of that report, I hope it does come out because there was no collusion, whatsoever, no collusion. There was no obstruction, because that was ruled by the attorney general.”

 

Overall, 39 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, roughly unchanged from mid-March, before Mueller completed his two-year investigation.

 

But many Americans still have questions.

 

“It’s kind of hard to believe what the president says as far as exoneration,” said James Brown, 77, of Philadelphia, who doesn’t affiliate with either party but says his political views lean conservative. “And in my mind the attorney general is a Trump person, so he’s not going to do anything against Trump.”

 

The poll shows 35 percent of Americans think that Trump did something illegal related to Russia — largely unchanged since the earlier poll. An additional 34 percent think he’s done something unethical.

 

Brown says he remains extremely concerned about possible inappropriate contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, citing Trump’s past interest in building a Trump Tower in Moscow, and believes the president committed crimes of obstruction to cover up financial interests. “He’s not going to jeopardize his pocketbook for anything,” he said.

 

Still, the poll suggests Barr’s summary helped allay some lingering doubts within the GOP. Among Republicans, more now say Trump did nothing wrong at all (65 percent vs. 55 percent a month ago) and fewer say he did something unethical (27 percent, down from 37 percent).

 

Glen Sebring, 56, of Chico, California, says he thinks the nation should put the Russia investigations to rest after reading Barr’s four-page summary of the Mueller report. The moderate Republican credits Trump with helping to “double the money” he’s now earning due to an improving economy and says Congress should spend more time on issues such as lowering health care costs.

 

“It’s like beating a dead horse,” Sebring said. “We’ve got a lot more important things to worry about.”

 

Even as Trump blasts the Mueller probe as a Democratic witch hunt, poll respondents expressed more confidence that the investigation was impartial. The growing confidence since March was driven by Republicans: Three-quarters now say they are at least moderately confident in the probe, and 38 percent are very or extremely confident, up from 46 percent and 18 percent, respectively, in March. Among Democrats, about 70 percent are at least moderately confident, down slightly from a month ago, and 45 percent are very or extremely confident.

 

Still, majorities of Americans say they believe the Justice Department has shared too few details so far with both the public (61 percent) and Congress (55 percent). About a third think the department has shared too little with the White House, which has argued that portions of the report should be kept confidential if they involve private conversations of the president subject to executive privilege.

 

Democrats have been calling for Mueller himself to testify before Congress and have expressed concern that Barr will order unnecessary censoring of the report to protect Trump. The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, is poised to try to compel Barr to turn over an unredacted copy as well as the report’s underlying investigative files.

 

The poll shows that even with the Mueller probe complete, 53 percent say Congress should continue to investigate Trump’s ties with Russia, while 45 percent say Congress should not. A similar percentage, 53 percent, say Congress should take steps to impeach Trump if he is found to have obstructed justice, even if he did not have inappropriate contacts with Russia.

 

“We don’t even know what we found yet in the probe. Until we do, Congress should definitely continue to push this issue,” said Tina Perales, a 35-year-old small business owner in Norton, Ohio, who describes herself as Republican. “That little letter Barr sent out summarizing the report I think was completely BS. This Mueller thing is hundreds of pages, and he just sums it up like this? These things just don’t add up.”

 

Deep partisan divisions remain.

 

Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to believe Trump had done something improper and to support continued investigations that could lead to his removal from office. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has downplayed the likelihood of impeachment proceedings but isn’t closing the door entirely if there are significant findings of Trump misconduct.

 

On investigations, 84 percent of Democrats believe lawmakers shouldn’t let up in scrutinizing Trump’s ties to Russia, but the same share of Republicans disagrees. Similarly, 83 percent of Democrats say Congress should take steps to impeach Trump if he is found to have obstructed justice, even if he did not have inappropriate contacts with Russia, while 82 percent of Republicans say Congress should not.

 

The AP-NORC poll of 1,108 adults was conducted April 11-14 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.

 

 

 

 
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Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg says President Donald Trump is “kind of like a Chinese finger trap — you know, the harder you pull, the more you get stuck” and warns that Democrats shouldn’t get bogged down in trying to “knock him flat with some zinger.” 

 

In Iowa for the first time since officially launching his campaign, Buttigieg discussed how to defeat Trump after drawing an audience of more than 1,600 people at a Des Moines rally Tuesday night.

“We’ve got to acknowledge — without giving an inch on the racism or xenophobia that played a role in that campaign — we’ve got to also pay attention to the things that make people susceptible to that message and make sure we’re addressing them,” said the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

The rally was one of the biggest campaign events yet for a 2020 contender in the Des Moines area, a particularly notable feat for a candidate who just over a month ago was barely registering in the polls. Buttigieg’s main task now is turning grass-roots energy into a real, sustainable movement.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Buttigieg said Iowa — its caucuses produce the first votes of the presidential nominating season — “will be really central to our strategy.”

“There’s a political style here that rhymes a lot with my home territory in Indiana,” he said. “I think that the mechanics of a caucus really favor a style that involves a lot of engagement, which is how I like to practice politics … of course there’s a simple logistical advantage of it being the one early state that’s within driving distance of my home.”

Asked whether Trump leaned on racial animus to win the White House, Buttigieg called the president out for playing “white guy identity politics.”

“By far the political movement that is most based on identity politics is Trumpism. It’s based on white guy identity politics. It uses race to divide the working and middle class,” he told the AP. “There are a lot of strategies to blame problems on people who look different or are of a different faith or even of a different sexuality or gender identity. … It’s a cynical political strategy that works in the short term but winds up weakening the whole country in the long term.”

White privilege

Buttigieg has argued that he’s uniquely positioned to take on Trump because he can appeal to the white working-class voters who left the Democratic Party for the Republican. But in recent days, he’s acknowledged he needs to address the lack of racial diversity among supporters at his events.

In the AP interview, Buttigieg said he plans to make sure that “our organization and our substance reflect our commitment to diversity.” He said he’ll do that by hiring a diverse staff and by addressing a range of policies that affect minorities, including but not limited to criminal justice reform, education, homeownership and entrepreneurship.

“I think any white candidate needs to show a level of consciousness around issues like white privilege,” he said. But when asked whether he had experienced white privilege, he said that “part of privilege is not being very conscious of it, right?” 

 

He added: “You’re much more conscious when you’re at a disadvantage than … when you are on the beneficial side of a bias. But there’s no question that that’s a factor that has impacted people in many different ways. And we need to be as alive to it as possible.”

Buttigieg said that to be able to create a diverse coalition without alienating white working-class voters, issues of racial justice need to be discussed in a unifying way. 

 

“I mean being pro-racial justice should not be skin off the back of any white voter,” he said. “I think there’s certainly an environment where sometimes these ideas are pitted against each other, where it’s suggested, for example, that connecting with white working-class voters somehow means that you have to walk away somehow from our commitment to racial justice — but our commitment to racial justice is part of the bedrock of the moral authority of the Democratic Party.”

Marriage equality

The South Bend mayor has surged from a relatively unknown candidate in the field to a media darling who’s gained support in nationwide polling and posted a stronger-than-expected fundraising number in the first quarter. He’s drawn attention for his plainspoken style, and the historic nature of his candidacy, as the first openly gay contender in a same-sex marriage.

During the Des Moines rally, an audience member asked what he should tell his friends who say America isn’t ready for a gay president. Buttigieg replied, “Tell your friends I said ‘hi.”‘

The impact of his personal life on the campaign was on striking display at both of his Iowa events Tuesday. During a town hall meeting in Fort Dodge, after Buttigieg spoke about the need for marriage equality, a protester stood up and shouted, “You betray your baptism!” He was escorted out.

Buttigieg joked to the crowd, “Coffee after church gets a little rowdy sometimes,” then added: “We’re so dug-in, in such passionate ways, and I respect that, too. That gentleman believes that what he is doing is in line with the will of the creator. I’d do it differently. We ought to be able to do it differently.”

In Des Moines, another protester shouted “Sodom and Gomorrah!” The crowd drowned him out with chants of “Pete! Pete! Pete!”

Asked by the AP how he would win over a protester like the one in Fort Dodge if he could sit down with him, Buttigieg said, “I’m not sure he would want to sit down with me,” but that he hoped others who have concerns about his candidacy would come to his events and ask a question, “so we could have a respectful exchange.”

“There are a lot of positions, there’s a wide range, with fringes, in our politics. That’s part of how politics works, and you shouldn’t be in this if you aren’t prepared to deal with that,” he said.

The turnout at the Des Moines event was unexpected, according to Polk County Democratic Party Chair Sean Bagniewski, who said Buttigieg’s team had predicted at most 200 people would show up. The campaign didn’t have any volunteers to take down information for enthusiastic supporters who wanted to be a part of the campaign.

“It’s a very narrow window to capture momentum and energy and attention, and if you miss the opportunity to match your staff and energy with the moment, you can miss your chance,” Bagniewski said.
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