Tag: GOP congress

Trump’s Attack on Immigrants Is Breaking the Backbone of America’s Child Care System

The following article by Leila Schochet was posted on the Center for American Progress website February 5, 2018:

Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez,  Getty/Los Angeles Times

“If Congress pulls the Dream Act, I would lose seven staff members. It’s huge.”

—Nancy*

Nancy is the director of a rural Midwestern Head Start center. Like many people across the country, she is concerned about the fate of nearly 800,000 young immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. Nancy’s Head Start program employs seven teachers who are protected by DACA. She worries about how her program will continue to operate if she loses those teachers. Continue reading “Trump’s Attack on Immigrants Is Breaking the Backbone of America’s Child Care System”

2018 Republican Agenda Not What Lawmakers Envisioned

The following article by Lindsey McPherson was posted on the Roll Call website February 5, 2018:

Plan for the year ahead coming out of GOP retreat is leaner than Republicans had hoped

Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., right, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., arrive for a news conference at the media center during the House and Senate Republican retreat at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., on Thursday. Credit:Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

The 2018 Republican legislative agenda is on a diet.

As House and Senate GOP lawmakers huddled at a West Virginia resortWednesday through Friday for their annual retreat, they discussed a handful of legislative items they would like to tackle this year, including defense, infrastructure, workforce development and the budget process.

It was a whittled-down version of what many Republicans had originally envisioned, reflecting the pressures of a midterm election year and its typically unfavorable climate for major legislative achievements.

The 2018 legislative calendar is tight, given that floor time in the coming weeks, and possibly months, will be eaten up by must-pass government spending and immigration bills, as well as scheduled recesses, including a long October break for campaigning. Continue reading “2018 Republican Agenda Not What Lawmakers Envisioned”

Republican lawmakers distance themselves from Trump on memo

The following article by Elise Viebeck and Shane Harris was posted on the Washington Post website February 4, 2018:

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on Feb. 4 that the Republicans’ controversial Nunes memo won’t have an effect on the Russia investigation. (Reuters)

A fierce partisan battle over the Justice Department and its role in the Russia investigation moves into its second week Monday as Democrats try to persuade the House Intelligence Committee to release a 10-page rebuttal to a controversial Republican memo alleging surveillance abuse.

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), is expected to offer a motion to release his party’s response to the Republican document during a committee meeting scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday. It was not immediately clear whether Republicans would join Democrats in voting for the document’s release, as some members of the GOP have expressed concerns about its contents. Continue reading “Republican lawmakers distance themselves from Trump on memo”

Gowdy: ‘I don’t’ think Rosenstein should be fired

The following article by Rebecca Morin was posted on the Politico website February 4, 2018:

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said: “I think it is fair to ask the deputy attorney general, ‘What did you know at the time you signed one of the applications?'” Credit: AP Photo

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Sunday he doesn’t think Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should be fired.

Rosenstein oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on whether Russia colluded with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Gowdy, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that it concerns him that Trump’s confidence in Rosenstein is faltering. He added: “The president has not sought my counsel on this.” Continue reading “Gowdy: ‘I don’t’ think Rosenstein should be fired”

Congress Left Health Care For Millions Of Poor People In The Lurch

The following article by Jonathan Cohn was posted on the Huffington Post website February 4, 2018:

This time the issue is funding for community clinics — which, in theory, everybody supports.

LOS ANGELES ― Jim Mangia, CEO of the St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, spent much of the last year wondering how many of his facilities he would have to shutter. St. John’s is a network of health clinics serving roughly 100,000 of the poorest people in Los Angeles. If Republicans had succeeded in repealing the Affordable Care Act, St. John’s revenue would have dropped as more of its patients became uninsured, making layoffs and closings all but inevitable.

The threat of repeal seems to have subsided, at least for the moment. But these days Mangia has a new worry. A federal program called the Community Health Center Fund, which subsidizes federal clinics through direct grants, officially expired in the fall. Congress has since made a pair of short-term appropriations, in order to keep the grant money flowing, and leaders in both parties talked about coming together on a deal that would finance the clinics for a longer period of time. Continue reading “Congress Left Health Care For Millions Of Poor People In The Lurch”

Trump seized on what memo could mean even before reading it

The following article by Jonathan LeMire and Zeke Miller was posed on the Associated Press website February 3, 2018:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even before he’d read the memo, President Donald Trump seized on what it could mean.

The president first learned of the House Intelligence Committee document last month from some Republican allies in Congress and he watched it take hold in the conservative media, including on some of his favorite Fox News programs, according to seven White House officials and outside advisers. Continue reading “Trump seized on what memo could mean even before reading it”

#YoMemoJokes trends nationwide, adding to Trump’s humiliation over memo failure

The following article by Caroline Orr was posted on the ShareBlue website January 3, 2018:

Twitter users mocking the failed memo pushed the hashtag to the top of the national trends list overnight.

Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

As Donald Trump took to Twitter to try to convince Americans that the GOP’s overhyped memo was not as much of a failure as it appeared to be, Twitter users were busy elsewhere — tweeting jokes about the memo under the hashtag #YoMemoJokes.

The hashtag, a clever play on words, was pushed to the top trending hashtag nationwide overnight. As of 10:30 Saturday morning, it was still trending in the #2 spot nationwide. Continue reading “#YoMemoJokes trends nationwide, adding to Trump’s humiliation over memo failure”

Paul Ryan celebrated the tax cut with a tweet about a secretary saving $1.50 a week

The following article by Avi Selk was posted on the Washington Post website February 4, 2018:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) touted the new GOP tax reform law and outlined his party’s agenda ahead of the new year. (Reuters)

Never mind all the Democrats who call the GOP’s tax bill a deficit-busting giveaway to the rich; House Speaker Paul D. Ryan has been enthusiastically promoting it as a middle-class tax windfall.

He’s been coaching other Republican lawmakers to sell the $1.5 trillion tax cut to voters, and telling people on Twitter to check their paychecks for wage hikes. The bill — which was deeply unpopular when it passed along party lines in December — is now breaking even in a new opinion poll. Continue reading “Paul Ryan celebrated the tax cut with a tweet about a secretary saving $1.50 a week”

Inside the FBI: Anger, worry, work — and fears of lasting damage

The following article by Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky was posted on the Washington Post website February 3, 2018:

On Friday, FBI Director Wray sent a video message to those he leads, urging them to “keep calm and tackle hard.” (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

In the 109 years of the FBI’s existence, it has repeatedly come under fire for abuses of power, privacy or civil rights. From Red Scares to recording and threatening to expose the private conduct of Martin Luther King Jr. to benefiting from bulk surveillance in the digital age, the FBI is accustomed to intense criticism.

What is so unusual about the current moment, say current and former law enforcement officials, is the source of the attacks.

The bureau is under fire not from those on the left but rather conservatives who have long been the agency’s biggest supporters, as well as the president who handpicked the FBI’s leader. Continue reading “Inside the FBI: Anger, worry, work — and fears of lasting damage”

This is the week that the GOP truly became the party of Trump

The following article by Dan Balz was posted on the Washington Post website February 3, 2018:

President Trump appears to have won over the Republican establishment, as shown in its blessing of the release of a House Intelligence Committee memo alleging wrongdoing by the FBI and the Justice Dpt. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

This was the week when the Republican Party finally went all in with President Trump. What once seemed unlikely is now reality. The Republican establishment — there are a few dissenting voices, of course — has succumbed to the power of the presidency, and this president in particular.

This coming together has taken place gradually. The path has been rocky at times. But the embrace of the president by elected Republicans could not have been warmer or fuller than shown in the past week. Continue reading “This is the week that the GOP truly became the party of Trump”