Tag: Republicans

Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina ordered to remain in custody after prosecutors argue she has ties to Russian intelligence

The following article by Tom Jackman and Rosalind S. Helderman was posted on the Washington Post website July 18, 2018:

The Russian woman arrested this week on charges of being a foreign agent has ties to Russian intelligence operatives and was in contact with them while in the United States, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Maria Butina, 29, also cultivated a “personal relationship” with an American Republican consultant as part of her cover and offered sex to at least one other person “in exchange for a position within a special interest organization,” according to a court filing.

After a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson denied Butina’s request to be released on bail, finding that no combination of conditions would ensure her return to court.

View the complete article on the Washington Post website here.

Opinion: The Grand Old Patsies

The following commentary by Stuart Rothenberg was posted on the Roll Call website July 17, 2018:

Commenting after President Donald Trump’s performance in Helsinki, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell observed, “I have said a number of times, I’ll say it again: The Russians are not our friends. And I entirely believe the assessment of our intelligence community.”

Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander said in a release, “There is no doubt that Russia interfered in our 2016 presidential election.”

Neither lawmaker directly criticized Trump, and neither senator castigated the president of the United States for believing Vladimir Putin over the assessment of his own intelligence agencies and experts.

View the complete commentary on the Roll Call website here.

The Trump administration has a new argument for dismantling the social safety net: It worked.

The following article by Jeff Stein and Tracy Jan was posted on the Washington Post website July 14, 2018:

Protesters display signs and listen to speakers during the Poor People’s Campaign, a rally speaking out against social injustice and poverty, on the Mall in Washington last month. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, AFP, Getty Images

Correction: An earlier version of this story misattributed a statement to Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, that no more than 250,000 Americans are in “extreme poverty.” The statement was made by the Permanent Mission of the United States to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva

Republicans for years have proclaimed the federal government’s decades-old War on Poverty a failure.

“Americans are no better off today than they were before the War on Poverty began in 1964,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) wrote in his 2016 plan to dramatically scale back the federal safety net.

Now the Trump administration is pitching a new message on anti-poverty programs, saying efforts that Republicans had long condemned as ineffective have already worked.

View the complete article on the Washington Post website here.

Getting Restless Under the Rule of the Republican Minority

The following article by Gene Lyons was posted on the National Memo website July 3, 2018:

Assuming that the White House errs on the side of sanity, Democrats may be unable to prevent President Trump’s Supreme Court pick from being confirmed. But if they play their cards right, they may be able to highlight the single most important issue now confronting American democracy: increasingly unrepresentative minority rule.

On issue after issue, majority views are stifled. Regarding the Supreme Court, Republicans have become precisely what they have long pretended to abhor: a party relying upon unelected, “elitist” judges to win political disputes in the courts that they can’t win at the ballot box.

As New York‘s Jonathan Chait trenchantly points out, Democrats have received more votes than Republican nominees in six out of the last seven presidential elections—starting with Bill Clinton in 1992.

View the full article at the National Memo website here.

Republicans Are Becoming Less Educated

The following article by Kali Holloway was posted on the AlterNet website March 31, 2018:

Nerds to the left.

There are several key attributes that define the Republican Party in its modern incarnation: its overwhelming whiteness; its self-reported religiosity; its slavish devotion to a man who boasts he could shoot someone and not lose a single vote, thus proving his point. Moving forward, that list should probably also include as a distinguishing factor the fact that the party is less educated than its Democratic political rivals, and growing increasingly more so.

That’s according to a study released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center. The polling organization now finds “the widest educational gap in partisan identification and leaning seen at any point in more than two decades” between Republicans and Democrats. In 1994, the majority of U.S. residents with four-year college degrees leaned or identified as Republican, at 54 percent; just 39 percent of college graduates leaned or identified as Democrats. As of 2017, those numbers have switched exactly, with the majority of college degree holders now leaning Dem-ward. Continue reading “Republicans Are Becoming Less Educated”

Trump keeps giving Republicans reasons to bang their heads against the wall

The following article by Amber Phillips was posted on the Washington Post website February 7, 2018:

President Trump on Feb. 6 said he would “love to see a shutdown” if Congress fails to reach a legislative deal that strengthens immigration enforcement. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The timing couldn’t have been more imperfect for Republicans in Congress: Just as Senate leaders were telling reporters that they may have a deal on a long-term spending bill, one that has eluded them for months, Trump made a stunning admission.

“I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of” — “this stuff” meaning immigration. Continue reading “Trump keeps giving Republicans reasons to bang their heads against the wall”

Republicans redefine morality as whatever Trump does

The following commentary by Dana Milbanks was posted on the Washington Post website January 26, 2018:

President Trump leaves the stage Friday after addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Laurent Gillieron/Associated Press)

Someday, likely three years from now, perhaps sooner, perhaps — gulp — later, President Trump will depart the stage.

But what will be left of us?

New evidence suggests that the damage he is doing to the culture is bigger than the man. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found that two-thirds of Americans say Trump is not a good role model for children. Every component of society feels that way — men and women, old and young, black and white, highly educated or not — except for one: Republicans. By 72 to 22 percent, they say Trump is a good role model. Continue reading “Republicans redefine morality as whatever Trump does”

More Americans blame Republicans than Democrats for potential government shutdown, Post-ABC poll finds

The following article by Scott Clement was posted on the Washington Post website January 19,2018:

Lawmakers have been busy pointing fingers at who’s to blame for the impasse. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

By a 20-point margin, more Americans blame President Trump and Republicans rather than Democrats for a potential government shutdown, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

A 48 percent plurality says Trump and congressional Republicans are mainly responsible for the situation resulting from disagreements over immigration laws and border security, while 28 percent fault Democrats. A sizable 18 percent volunteer that both parties are equally responsible. Political independents drive the lopsided margin of blame, saying by 46 to 25 percent margin that Republicans and Trump are responsible for the situation. Continue reading “More Americans blame Republicans than Democrats for potential government shutdown, Post-ABC poll finds”

The GOP Just Can’t Quit the Clintons

The following article by Susan Milligan was posted on the U.S. News and World Report December 29, 2017:

Democrats have broken up with the Clintons, but Republicans won’t let go.

Credit: Molly Riley/AFP/Getty Images

For Democrats, the breakup was a long time coming, a political romance with the Clintons that started with a heady, upstart 1992 campaign, was tested during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and finally ended when the couple’s home state senator said the former president should have resigned over sexual misconduct allegations.

But President Donald Trump and the GOP just can’t seem to quit the out-of-power Clintons. Trump tweets frequently (and accusingly) about the woman he beat out for the White House in 2016, while Capitol Hill Republicans are mounting their own Clinton investigations and demanding that the Department of Justice do the same. In October, House and Senate Republicans announced formal inquiries into two matters involving the former first couple: an Obama-era uranium deal involving Russia that accusers charge was tied to support for the Clinton Foundation, and a separate investigation of how the FBI handled then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s private email server. Continue reading “The GOP Just Can’t Quit the Clintons”

5 lessons from a Republican year of governing dangerously

The following article by Sarah Bender and Mark Spindel was posted on the Washington Post website December 28, 2017:

Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Republican Congress ended its first year on a partisan high note by overhauling the tax code and undercutting the Affordable Care Act, setting up a trillion increase in the deficit in the process. Before the finale, the 115th Congress was buoyed by a strong economy, yet gridlocked by slim majorities, internal division and an erratic president. Over the course of the year, Republicans narrowed their agenda, abandoned fiscal orthodoxy, bent the rules, and kicked tough problems to next year and beyond.

Here are five takeaways from year one of all-Republican rule: Continue reading “5 lessons from a Republican year of governing dangerously”