The Senate on Wednesday rejected a Democratic effort to roll back a Trump administration rule that allows states to ignore parts of ObamaCare.
Senators voted 43-52 on the resolution, falling short of the simple majority needed to pass the chamber.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote for the resolution.
View the complete October 30 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.
Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House will finally hold a formal vote dictating the rules for the impeachment inquiry, six weeks after it was launched by a whistleblower’s complaint mysteriously withheld from Congress. And on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman backed up both the initial whistleblower and U.S. diplomat Bill Taylor by testifying that he too was concerned about the Trump administration’s push to use congressionally-allocated military aid to Ukraine to coerce an investigation into Joe Biden.
Congressional Republicans have long since stopped defending Trump on the merits since shortly after the White House released a transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, they’ve sought refuge in increasingly meaningless process arguments. So of course Pelosi agreeing to a formal vote on the rules of impeachment hasn’t stopped Republican complaints about the process. The goalposts will shift once again. No matter what the Democrats agree to, Republicans will complain about procedural unfairness and also refuse to concede the inquiry is legitimate. But how much of Republicans’ unwillingness to hold Trump accountable for his self-dealing is because they’re in on it?
On Monday the Washington Post published an interview with a Ukrainian diplomat who claimed to have met with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., this summer to discuss the baseless conspiracy theory promoted by President Trump that Ukrainian officials had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
View the complete October 30 article by Sophia Tesfaye from Salon on the AlterNet website here.
Senate Republicans, with 22 seats up for reelection and their majority up for grabs in 2020, are in a bind over how to defend President Trump from the House impeachment push.
They realize their political fortunes and policy goals are tied to the president, but they also know their best shot at keeping control of the Senate hinges on senators preserving their independent brands.
That means they have to be careful in defending conduct they see as improper; several Senate Republicans say it would be wrong to hold up military aid to Ukraine to gain political leverage, the issue at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.
View the complete October 30 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.
The House’s impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s alleged plot to withhold critical security aid to Ukraine in order to force them into investigating his political adversaries is now entering its second month — yet Senate Republicans are still struggling with how to handle it.
And, according to the Washington Post, Republicans are reluctant to defend Trump’s behavior both because there is no good defense, and because there’s worry they’ll have egg on their face if and when more troubling Trump conduct surfaces.
“It feels like a horror movie,” an unnamed “veteran” Republican senator told the Washington Post.
View the complete October 28 article by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here.
Impeachment is raising the likelihood that the Senate will be a real battleground next year, and that Democrats could regain the majority.
Much will need to go right for Democrats to take back control. They would need to net three seats and the White House, and that’s with many in the party expecting to lose Sen. Doug Jones’s (D) seat in Alabama.
Yet Democratic hopes are rising given the steady series of negative headlines surrounding President Trump, which have put Republicans on the back foot.
View the complete October 29 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.
Republican senators are lost and adrift as the impeachment inquiry enters its second month, navigating the grave threat to President Trump largely in the dark, frustrated by the absence of a credible case to defend his conduct and anxious about the historic reckoning that probably awaits them.
Recent days have delivered the most damaging testimony yet about Trump and his advisers commandeering Ukraine policy for the president’s personal political goals, which his allies on Capitol Hill sought to undermine by storming the deposition room and condemning the inquiry as secretive and corrupt.
Those theatrics belie the deepening unease many Republicans now say they feel — particularly those in the Senate who are dreading having to weigh their conscience against their political calculations in deciding whether to convict or acquit Trump should the Democratic-controlled House impeach the president.
NOTE: Lawyers have a saying that if you have no facts to support your case, you attack process. We’re seeing that now with the GOP Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is urging Republicans to focus on Democrats and their tactics in seeking to mount an effective defense of President Trump on impeachment.
One GOP lawmaker, summing up McConnell’s message to Republicans at a private lunch meeting Tuesday, quoted the GOP leader as saying, “This is going to be about process.”
McConnell recognizes that some members of his conference are uncomfortable defending Trump on charges his administration linked aid to Ukraine to that country’s government running politically motivated investigations meant to help the White House.
View the complete October 23 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.
Another unqualified Donald Trump judicial pick, Justin Walker, is making his way through the Senate.
Given the makeup of the Senate and the GOP’s unyielding commitment to agreeing to any of Trump’s nominees, no matter how unfit, there’s every reason to believe he’ll be confirmed. His nomination just cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimous support from the GOP in spite of his lack of qualifications.
Walker, who Trump nominated to the federal bench for the Western District of Kentucky, is only 37 years old, which means he could be on the federal bench for 40 years or more. He doesn’t bring any real experience to the court, but he does bring modern conservative credentials: He was instrumental in discrediting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during the confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. During those hearings, Walker did over 70 media hits to defend Kavanaugh and attack Ford.
View the complete October 19 article by Lisa Needham on the National Memo website here.
President Trump likes to use his Twitter account to promote news articles, cable-news segments and opinion pieces that bolster his political rhetoric. Trump uses Twitter the way college students use telephone poles: a forum for quickly assembled, often questionably useful messages.
Sometimes, though, Twitter isn’t enough for Trump. It wasn’t on Friday, when Trump came across a column by the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel that he deemed so urgent that he had his staff send it to every senator on Capitol Hill.
It’s not surprising that Trump would embrace a column by Strassel, an opinion columnist whose views of investigations into the president overlap with Trump’s so neatly that it’s as though they came from the same mold. Trump has tweeted about Strassel or retweeted her more than 20 times, usually because she’s raising an eyebrow at new reporting about Trump’s behavior. After the report by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III came out in April, Trump suggested that Strassel get the Pulitzer Prize.
View the complete October 11 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is keeping a low profile amid the growing impeachment battle surrounding the White House over President Trump’s political dealings with foreign governments.
McConnell made news in the first days of the two-week congressional recess, when he said he would have “no choice” but to move impeachment if the House sends over articles.
Since then, however, he’s largely gone quiet, turning his attention to issues like opioid funding, getting money for Fort Campbell and judicial nominations.
View the complete October 12 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.
