Tag: Mike Pence

Prepare to be ‘shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible’

Vice President Pence had a message for Liberty University’s graduating class of 2019: “Be ready.”

But as Pence looked out over the sea of people dressed in navy graduation caps and matching gowns on the breezy, overcast Saturday, the focus of his commencement address wasn’t on preparing graduates for the difficulties they may face landing jobs or paying off student loans.

Those with degrees from the private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Va., may likely face a unique obstacle in their post-grad lives, Pence said — being “shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible.”

View the complete May 13 article by Allyson Chiu on The Washington Post website here.

In visit to Minnesota, Pence touts Trump trade policy

Vice President Mike Pence spent part of Thursday in Minnesota, promoting the Trump administration’s trade policies and trying to build support for the president’s replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Pence first visited a farm near Glyndon in the northwestern part of the state, and then stopped at Gerdau, a St. Paul company that mills recycled steel.

The locations highlighted the difficulty of the administration’s trade stance, including tariffs, which are hurting farmers while they boost the steel industry.

View the complete May 9 article by Mark Zdechlik on the MPR News website here.

How the Trump-Pence administration’s ‘pro-life’ agenda is killing thousands in the US and globally

A second federal judge has blocked a gag rule that would have stripped federal funding known as Title X for Planned Parenthood and other clinics that refer patients for abortions or even mention abortion as an option. The judge’s ruling halts the rule, which was announced by President Trump in February and was scheduled to go into effect on May 3. Washington state Federal Judge Stanley Bastian ruled against the changes to Title X funding Thursday, saying they would require clinics “to face a Hobson’s choice that harms patients as well as the providers.” This came two days after an Oregon judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the gag order from going into effect, calling the rule a “ham-fisted approach to public health policy.” Title X covers non-abortion services like STD prevention, cancer screenings and contraception, and provides over $280 million in funding for 4 million mostly low-income women every year. We speak with the president of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen. She says the gag rule would force doctors “to compromise the oath that we took to serve our patients.” Continue reading “How the Trump-Pence administration’s ‘pro-life’ agenda is killing thousands in the US and globally”

Pence, GOP senators discuss offer to kill Trump emergency disapproval resolution

Vice President Pence is discussing an offer with Republican senators that could lead to the defeat of a Democratic resolution overturning President Trump’s emergency declaration to build a wall on the Mexican border, according to GOP sources briefed on the matter.

Under the deal discussed between Pence and GOP senators, Trump would sign legislation reining in his power to declare future national emergencies if they defeat the resolution of disapproval.

Killing the resolution on the Republican-controlled Senate floor would spare the president a major embarrassment and avoid him having to issue the first veto of his presidency.

View the complete March 12 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Cheney grills Pence on Trump’s foreign policy

In a private session, the former vice president told the current one that Trump’s policy looks too much like Barack Obama’s.

Dick Cheney lit into Vice President Mike Pence behind closed doors over the direction of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, flouting a set of agreed-upon subjects and forcing Pence on the defensive over President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

The former vice president interviewed Pence at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum in Sea Island, Ga., an off-the-record confab attended by approximately 200 top-dollar Republican donors, lawmakers and business leaders who flock to the private island every spring.

Cheney pressed Pence about Trump’s proclivity for making major policy announcements on Twitter and his off-and-on commitment to NATO, according to four meeting attendees and a source briefed on their remarks. The former vice president, who has kept a low public profile in recent years, questioned whether Trump places enough value on the findings of the intelligence community, which he has repeatedly and publicly dismissed. He suggested that Trump foreign policy has at times looked more like President Barack Obama’s — which Cheney has repeatedly lambasted — than that of a Republican standard-bearer.

View the complete March 11 article by Eliana Johnson on the Politico website here.

Two speeches, two audiences, same Pence pitch to blue-collar voters

Gallup: With big base turnout, approval below 50 percent in key states ‘may be enough’

Vice President Mike Pence hit many of the same notes Tuesday and Wednesday, though his speeches were calibrated for different audiences: manufacturing bigwigs one day and Latino business honchos the next. Both days he had a message for a voting bloc key to deciding if he and President Donald Trump win a second term.

Pence spoke Wednesday to the Latino Coalition’s annual legislative summit at the Park Hyatt hotel in Washington, driving home the need for “a legal immigration system that works, that’s built on opportunity for all and on merit — and that all begins with border security.” He also spoke about the administration’s contention that Latino unemployment rates are at an all-time low, while calling Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro “a dictator with no legitimate claim to power.”

“Nicolas Maduro must go,” Pence said to applause in his signature staccato cadence, in which each word is emphasized.

View the complete March 6 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Pence continues White House, GOP push to paint Dems as socialists

Vice President Pence speaks at CPAC 2019 in National Harbor, MD. Credit: Mark Wilson, Getty

Vice President Mike Pence warned a conservative audience Friday that allowing Democrats to gain more power would mean allowing them to enact “tired” policies that amount to socialism.

“Over the next 20 months, we have a decision to make, will we re-elect a president who is making America great again?” Pence asked. “Or will we let America take a hard left turn?”

The crowd roared boos.

View the complete March 1 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Trump’s ‘election integrity’ experts ignore actual election fraud in North Carolina

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence Credit: Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call)

The Pence-led group found no proof of widespread voter fraud, but seems unconcerned by actual Republican election fraud.

The bipartisan North Carolina Board of Elections unanimously ordered a new election on Thursday in the unsettled North Carolina 9th congressional district midterm race, after finding widespread election fraud by the campaign of Republican nominee and anti-LGBTQ pastor Mark Harris.

But Republican voter suppression activists who President Donald Trump gathered early in his term to ensure “election integrity” have apparently nothing much to say about the first “do over” of a congressional election since 1975.

Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was appointed in May 2017 in an attempt to prove the president’s unfounded allegations that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election and that every single one of those voters had supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over him.

View the complete February 22 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Rift Between Trump and Europe Is Now Open and Angry

MUNICH — European leaders have long been alarmed that President Trump’s words and Twitter messages could undo a trans-Atlantic alliance that had grown stronger over seven decades. They had clung to the hope that those ties would bear up under the strain.

But in the last few days of a prestigious annual security conference in Munich, the rift between Europe and the Trump administration became open, angry and concrete, diplomats and analysts say.

A senior German official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on such matters, shrugged his shoulders and said: “No one any longer believes that Trump cares about the views or interests of the allies. It’s broken.”

View the complete February 17 article by Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold on The New York times website here.

Pompeo stresses importance of U.S. friends, a day after Pence blasted key allies

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, on Feb. 15 in Brussels. (Reuters)

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday talked up the importance of friends and allies as he visited two European capitals one day after Vice President Pence harshly criticized allies he said are helping Iran evade sanctions.

“No more will we take our friends, our true allies, our partners for granted,” he told reporters after noting he was the first secretary of state to visit in a decade and saying Iceland, like the Eastern European countries he visited on this trip, had done exactly that. “We simply can’t afford to neglect them.”

Pompeo stopped in Iceland while returning home from Warsaw, where the United States co-hosted a Middle East peace and security conference that was focused largely on what the administration considers the malign influence of Iran.

View the complete February 15 article by Carol Morello on The Washington Post website here.