Category: Uncategorized

The Senate confirmed a controversial judicial nominee Wednesday over objections from civil rights groups and Democrats who criticized President Trump’s pick as being hostile to the LGBTQ community.

Just one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), joined every voting Democrat to oppose Matthew Kacsmaryk’s lifetime appointment to the federal bench in the Northern District of Texas. He was confirmed, 52 to 46.

“Mr. Kacsmaryk has demonstrated a hostility to the LGBTQ bordering on paranoia,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said before the vote. “It’s unbelievable that this man has been nominated, and he’s not alone. The parade of narrow-minded, often bigoted people who we’re putting on the bench. . . . One Republican senator rightfully voiced concerns about this man’s fitness. Where are the others?”

View the complete June 19 article by Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

The Trump administration on Wednesday scrapped plans to kill a U.S. Forest Service program that trains disadvantaged young people for rural jobs after a bipartisan outcry from Congress.

The decision came after weeks of heavy pressure from lawmakers from Montana to Kentucky, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The Forest Service had planned to begin layoffs of 1,110 employees by September, believed to be the largest number of cuts to the federal workforce in a decade.

The offices of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, whose agencies oversee the 25 Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers and dozens of others in urban areas, said in a joint statement that the administration is committed to making the program “better and stronger.”

View the complete June 19 article by Lisa Rein on The Washington Post website here.

Trump has been ramping up his “Deep State” rhetoric again. He’s back to blaming a cabal of bureaucrats, FBI and CIA agents, Democrats, and “enemies of the people” in the mainstream media, for conspiring to remove him from office in order to allow the denizens of foreign shi*tholes to overrun America.

But with each passing day it’s becoming clearer that the real threat to America isn’t Trump’s Deep State. It’s Trump’s Corrupt State.

Not since Warren G. Harding’s sordid administration have as many grifters, crooks and cronies occupied high positions in Washington.

View the complete June 19 post by Robert Reich on his blog site here.

Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub released a statement Thursday making clear that candidates for public office may not receive help from a foreign government, in what appeared to be a warning to President Trump, who said he would consider taking information about an opponent from another country.

Tweeting her statement, Weintraub wrote, “I would not have thought that I needed to say this.”

The head of the agency responsible for campaign finance laws clarified that any campaign that accepts help from a foreign government “risks being on the wrong end of a federal investigation.”

View the complete June 13 article by Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

President Trump is prepared to declare a new national emergency in order to implement sweeping tariffs on Mexico over the flow of Central American migrants to the U.S., according to a draft document of the declaration reviewed by The Hill.

According to the document, the new emergency is necessary due to “the failure of the Government of Mexico to take effective action to reduce the mass migration of aliens illegally crossing into the United States through Mexico,” a situation that constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the U.S.

“I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat,” the document reads.

View the complete June 6 article by Rafael Bernal and Jordan Fabian on The Hill website.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a sobering assessment of the prospects of the Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan in a closed-door meeting with Jewish leaders, saying “one might argue” that the plan is “unexecutable” and it might not “gain traction.” He expressed his hope that the deal isn’t simply dismissed out of hand.

“It may be rejected. Could be in the end, folks will say, ‘It’s not particularly original, it doesn’t particularly work for me,’ that is, ‘It’s got two good things and nine bad things, I’m out,’ ” Pompeo said in an audio recording of the private meeting obtained by The Washington Post.

“The big question is can we get enough space that we can have a real conversation about how to build this out,” he said.

View the complete June 2 article by John Hudson and Loveday Morris on The Washington Post website here.

President Trump’s company had high hopes for a Uruguayan condominium development. But the long-delayed project has become a microcosm of the Trump Organization’s deep problems.

PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay — President Trump’s son Eric traveled in January to Punta del Este, a Uruguayan beach town on a spit of land jutting into the South Atlantic Ocean.

He was en route to one of the Trump family company’s most ambitious ongoing development projects — a 25-story, 156-condominium waterfront tower, complete with an indoor tennis court, multiple swimming pools and a rooftop helipad. “It’s incredible,” Eric Trump said to reporters on the trip. “We have the best building anywhere in Punta del Este, anywhere in South America.”

Instead, the cylindrical high-rise is turning into the latest debacle in the Trump Organization’s far-flung property portfolio — featuring a little-known Argentine real estate firm in a gaudy, hard-partying town that has been a destination for money launderers and tax evaders.

View the complete June 2 article by Jesse Drucker and Manuela Andreoni on The New York Times website here.

It’s a warm spring morning in Washington, and once again the blacktop at the White House is starting to heat up. People lugging cameras, microphones and notepads are scrambling to get into place. There is milling, so much milling.

Sarah Sanders is about to speak.

As usual, President Trump’s press secretary is brief — just a few comments dismissing pro-impeachment Republican Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.) — but it’s the setting, not what’s said, that may be more significant: Sanders makes her comments to a group of journalists assembled on the White House’s north driveway, a stretch of asphalt that runs from Pennsylvania Avenue to the president’s home and office — about the length of a fast-food drive-through lane.

View the complete June 2 article by Paul Fahi on The Washington Post website here.

Housley falsely claimed Smith “could have called his doctor” to get insulin

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Late last week, in audio obtained by the DFL, GOP State Senator Karin Housley appears to have blamed Alec Smith, who passed away in 2017 due to insulin rationing, for not having access to insulin, saying “he didn’t need to die, this Alec Smith.” Housley went on to incorrectly claim Smith could have obtained insulin under a program he didn’t qualify for.

Housley’s ignorant and callous remarks came shortly after she cast the deciding vote (34-33)against the Alec Smith Emergency Insulin Act.

“We already have a program in place, a fee per purchase, a fee for provider at the…at your pharmacy,” said Housley at a St. Paul Chamber of Commerce Legislative Session Debrief on May 30th. “So, and Doc Jensen always says too, the most important thing is you want these people to have a relationship with their doctor and you already can. He didn’t need to die, this Alec Smith. He could have called his doctor and if there was a program in place, then he could have gotten the insulin for free.” Continue reading “GOP Senator Who Sunk Alec Smith Insulin Act Says Alec”