Tag: Republicans

Supreme Court throws out challenge to Michigan electoral map

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court, in another defeat for gerrymandering reformers, overturned a lower court’s ruling that Michigan’s electoral districts are overly partisan and need to be redrawn.

Monday’s order follows a June decision from the nation’s top court that found that questions related to partisan gerrymandering are not under the jurisdiction of federal courts.

The new order returns the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. A three-judge panel in that court had ruled that 34 state legislative and congressional districts needed to be redrawn because they were designed to favor Republicans.

View the complete October 21 article by Harper Neidig on The Hill website here.

Growing number of Republicans struggle to defend Trump on G-7 choice, Ukraine and Syria

Washington Post logoA growing number of congressional Republicans expressed exasperation Friday over what they view as President Trump’s indefensible behavior, a sign that the president’s stranglehold on his party is starting to weaken as Congress hurtles toward a historic impeachment vote.

In interviews with more than 20 GOP lawmakers and congressional aides in the past 48 hours, many said they were repulsed by Trump’s decision to host an international summit at his own resort and incensed by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s admission — later withdrawn — that U.S. aid to Ukraine was withheld for political reasons. Others expressed anger over the president’s abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria.

One Republican, Rep. Francis Rooney (Fla.) — whose district Trump carried by 22 percentage points — did not rule out voting to impeach the president and compared the situation to the Watergate scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency.

View the complete October 18 article by Rachael Bade, Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Visits Texas, Where the Fallout From a Secret Tape Awaits Him

New York Times logoThe Republican speaker of the Texas House was recorded saying President Trump is “killing us” in suburban districts. On Thursday, the president came to Dallas for a rally.

AUSTIN, Texas — With President Trump arriving in red-state Texas for a campaign rally in Dallas on Thursday, the Republican Party in the state faces a host of troubles.

The Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives is engulfed in scandal. Six of the state’s 23 Republican members of the United States House of Representatives say they will not run for re-election, opening new opportunities for Democrats. And one of the state’s three top Republican leaders believes that the president has become a political liability among a crucial bloc of voters.

“With all due respect to Trump — who I love, by the way — he’s killing us in urban-suburban districts,” Dennis Bonnen, the speaker of the state House and the central figure in the legislative scandal, said in a 64-minute tape recording released on Tuesday.

View the complete October 17 article by Dave Montgomery on The New York Times website here.

‘Are you really not capable of answering a question?’ CNN’s Tapper hammers GOP senator ranting about Mueller and Biden when asked about Trump’s Ukraine scandal

AlterNet logoCNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday hammered Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) over whether it’s appropriate for President Donald Trump to ask Ukraine and China to investigate his political rival, Democratic candidate Joe Biden, as the Republican senator repeatedly tried to deflect questions about the president’s alleged impropriety.

“As a hypothetical, just because I think there are a lot of people concerned about the precedent this is setting, would you have found it acceptable if ahead of the 2012 election then President Obama had asked a foreign leader to investigate one of Mitt Romney’s sons? Would that be okay with you?” Tapper asked Cramer.

Cramer bizarrely referenced special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election, insisting “the corruption involves a former vice president” and “rooting out corruption in other countries was something that Democrats thought they were doing with the Mueller investigation.”

View the complete October 13 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.

Republicans wrestle with impeachment strategy

The Hill logoSenate Republicans realize they need to push back more aggressively on the fast-moving impeachment inquiry in the House, but they have yet to display a unified strategy.

The disunity comes as public opinion polls show growing support for impeachment proceedings, giving more momentum to congressional Democrats almost three weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the inquiry.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is spearheading the GOP counteroffensive and plans to call President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, before his panel to testify about former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian corruption.

View the complete October 13 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

The Memo: Bad polls for Trump shake GOP

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s troubles are deepening, according to several recent opinion polls that show rising public support for impeachment.

Those polls include one released Wednesday from Fox News that sent shock waves through Washington. It indicated 51 percent of voters support impeaching Trump and removing him from office.

Trump pushed back at that poll vigorously on Thursday, as did his campaign. But the broader fear among Trump loyalists is that Republican elected officials will begin to follow the trends in public opinion — and peel away from the president.

View the complete October 11 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.

Trump defenders’ misleading claims about the House impeachment inquiry

Washington Post logo“As you know, you have designed and implemented your [impeachment] inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process. For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans.”

— White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in a letter to House Democratic leaders, Oct. 8, 2019

“Even Salem witch trials didn’t use anonymous testimony. The accused had to be confronted by a witness willing to put their name and reputation behind the charges and then had to be available for cross examination. Ah, the Soviet Union had trials with anonymous, unnamed witnesses. Welcome to McCarthy II.”

— Rudolph W. Giuliani, personal attorney to President Trump, in a pair of tweets, Oct. 8, 2019 Continue reading “Trump defenders’ misleading claims about the House impeachment inquiry”

Why are Republicans who voted to impeach Clinton so unmoved by Trump’s actions?

Washington Post logoClarification: An earlier version of this column said that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) failed “to deal with the Ukraine conduct” of President Trump. Rubio staff note that he has called allegations that Trump improperly pressured Ukraine’s president “very serious” and said of Trump’s request for a Ukrainian probe into former vice president Joe Biden and his son: “I don’t think he should have done that.” This version has been updated.

This is a column about two impeachments and the boundless human capacity for rationalization and self-delusion.

The first time I wrote about the prospect of a president being impeached was on Jan. 21, 1998. The Monica Lewinsky story had broken that morning, and, as a reporter on the national staff of The Post, I was asked to write an analysis of the potential legal risks to President Bill Clinton. My editors were reluctant to have a reference to impeachment in the lead of the article. They thought it sounded far-fetched. Continue reading “Why are Republicans who voted to impeach Clinton so unmoved by Trump’s actions?”

The famously secluded Amish are the target of a Republican campaign to drum up Pennsylvania votes for Trump

Washington Post logoMANHEIM, Pa. — In 2016, when more than 6 million Pennsylvanians voted in the presidential election, the state’s 20 pivotal electoral votes were decided by a margin of less than 45,000 voters.

Pennsylvania is home to more than 75,000 Amish people, and most who are eligible don’t vote.

For two Republican operatives, those two numbers together add up to one major opportunity — to convince the traditionally reluctant Amish to come out to the polls, where their votes might be tremendously influential. Their project, which started in 2016 with billboards and newspaper ads urging Amish people to vote for Donald Trump, goes by the name Amish PAC.

View the complete October 9 article by Julie Zauzmer on The Washington Post website here.

Fallout from Kavanaugh confirmation felt in Washington one year later

The Hill logoIt’s been a full year since Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court but the fallout from that day — and the acrimonious weeks preceding the vote — looms large over Washington.

Senators who voted for him are finding themselves in some of the toughest reelection campaigns of their careers. Activists, seeing a raft of anti-abortion laws weaving their way through the courts, worry how Kavanaugh’s presence will swing the Supreme Court’s view of Roe v. Wade.

Democrats, perhaps even more than before, fear losing a progressive justice on the bench before regaining control of the White House.

View the complete October 6 article by Rebecca Klar on The Hill website here.