Tag: Republicans

Trump’s week of tumult shakes many in GOP

One of the most tumultuous weeks in President Trump’s turbulent two years in office has turned up the spotlight on divisions between the White House and Republicans — particularly on foreign policy.

Trump in the last week has announced the removal of all U.S. troops from Syria and a reduction in the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, two decisions that represented a reversal from more than a decade of GOP strategy in the war against terrorism. The top U.S. envoy in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) resigned.

The decisions on Syria and Afghanistan contributed to Defense Secretary James Mattis’s resignation — a move that rattled lawmakers in both parties who had long seen the respected general as a calming or even stabilizing influence on an administration viewed at times as erratic.

View the complete December 24 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Anger, confusion greet Trump’s surprise decision on Syria

Senate Republicans uncharacteristically lashed out at President Trump on Wednesday for announcing a sudden and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, a decision that came without consulting Congress and seemed to catch the Pentagon off guard.

Several lawmakers said Congress received no advance notice of Trump’s announcement, leaving them fuming and scratching their heads.

“I don’t know what they’ve done, but this is chaos,” Sen. Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.), a staunch Trump ally and Armed Services Committee member, told reporters, adding that he planned to discuss the matter with Defense Secretary James Mattis.

‘Crisis level’: Republican women sound warning after election losses

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) speaks ahead of President Trump’s signing of a $716 billion defense policy bill named for John McCain at Fort Drum, N.Y., on Aug. 13. (Hans Pennink/AP)

Republicans lost the House in November as droves of female voters spurned the party, a reflection of the gaping gender gap. The election devastated the GOP’s already meager group of congresswomen. Almost none of the political survivors will hold positions of power in Congress next year.

Republican women recognize this is a serious problem. It’s unclear whether GOP men agree.

“It’s very painful,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), who championed female candidates for a decade as the only woman in Republican leadership. “We need to make sure that we are growing our ranks.”

View the complete December 16 article by Elise Viebeck and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

Admitted Russian spy bragged about connecting Trump campaign to Putin

Maria Butina, Credit: Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, PA-EFE, Shutterstock

Maria Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as a foreign agent years after she openly bragged about it.

Admitted agent of the Russian government Maria Butina previously bragged about connecting Trump’s presidential campaign to Russia.

Butina pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to act as a foreign agent on behalf of the Russian government.

In her plea the Russian admitted she was part of a conspiracy against the United States.

View the complete December 13 article by Oliver Willis on the ShareBlue.com website here.

Alleged Russian agent Butina pleads guilty to engaging in conspiracy against US

Maria Butina, the 30-year-old Russian woman arrested and charged earlier this year with acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian government in the U.S., pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court after previously entering a plea of not guilty.

Butina admitted in the District Court for the District of Columbia that she and an American, known in court documents as “U.S. Person 1,” conspired with and acted under the direction of a Russian government official to establish unofficial lines of communications with people able to influence U.S. politics leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson said Butina sought to use those unofficial lines of communication for the benefit of the Russian Federation.

View the complete December 13 article by Lydia Wheeler on The Hill website here.

The Memo: Allies worry as Trump’s woes mount

Republicans, including some allies of President Trump, are worried that the White House is ill-prepared for the sea of troubles it is facing.

Those concerns were made more acute by two dramatic developments on Tuesday and Wednesday: the president’s stormy meeting with Democratic congressional leaders at which he said he would be “proud” to shut down the government, and his former lawyer Michael Cohen being sentenced to three years in prison.

One GOP operative told The Hill the White House had “zero plan or interest” in developing an approach to deal with a radically changed landscape on Capitol Hill.

View the complete December 13 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.

The Rule of Law Or the Shadow of Tyranny

Those old enough to recall the presidential politics of the 1990s may still hear a certain righteous sentence ringing in their ears: “We must uphold the rule of law.”

With irrefutable simplicity, those words were uttered in numbing repetition by the Republicans who pursued Bill and Hillary Clinton for years, at a cost of millions, over “scandals” too baroque and too minor to explain.

To honor the American rule of law, they simply had to investigate Whitewater, an obscure land deal that had lost the Clintons $45,000 in the remotest Ozarks, several years before he entered the White House. To honor the rule of law, they had no choice but to impeach Clinton, a sinner the same as many of them, for lying about his trysts with Monica Lewinsky.

View the complete December 12 article by Joe Conason on the Creators.com website here.

Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina poised to plead guilty in case involving suspected Kremlin attempts to influence NRA

Maria Butina, 30, is accused of working to push the Kremlin’s agenda in the United States. Credit: Civic Chamber of the Russian Federationm, EPA-EFE, Shutterstock

Maria Butina, a Russian gun rights activist, is poised to plead guilty in a case involving accusations that she was working as an agent for the Kremlin in the United States, according to a new court filing.

Federal prosecutors and attorneys for Butina jointly requested in court documents Monday that U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan set a time for Butina to withdraw her previous plea of not guilty.

“The parties have resolved this matter,” Butina’s attorneys and D.C.-based prosecutors wrote in their joint filing.

View the complete December 10 article by Rosalind S. Helderman and Spencer S. Hsu on The Washington Post website here.

‘Siege warfare’: Republican anxiety spikes as Trump faces growing legal and political perils

Federal prosecutors filed new court papers on Dec. 7 that revealed a previously unreported contact from a Russian to Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. (Melissa Macaya , Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

A growing number of Republicans fear that a battery of new revelations in the far-reaching Russia investigation has dramatically heightened the legal and political danger to Donald Trump’s presidency — and threatens to consume the rest of the party, as well.

President Trump added to the tumult Saturday by announcing the abrupt exit of his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, whom he sees as lacking the political judgment and finesse to steer the White House through the treacherous months to come.

Trump remains headstrong in his belief that he can outsmart adversaries and weather any threats, according to advisers. In the Russia probe, he continues to roar denials, dubiously proclaiming that the latest allegations of wrongdoing by his former associates “totally clear” him.

View the complete December 8 article by Robert Costa and Philip Rucker on The Washington Post website here.

‘Wake up, dudes’ — gender gap confounds GOP women

Republican men and women are deeply divided over how to confront the results of a brutal midterm election that decimated the ranks of female GOP lawmakers in the House.

Most House Republicans have so far shown little appetite for performing an autopsy on the 2018 election cycle and publicly identifying the root of their tough losses, which were stark among female voters, particularly in the suburbs.

But a vocal chorus of Republican women has been sounding the alarm to address what they view as a crisis, calling on party leaders to be more aggressive in devising a strategy to reverse the trend by the next election cycle.

View the complete December 6 article by Melanie Zanona on The Hill website here.