Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) said he wasn’t “going to comment on that at the moment,” though, with some prodding, he said, “from an accounting standard, not directly, but indirectly, there’s a lot of transactions between our two countries.”
(Reuters) – A 13-year-old girl’s escape from a rural home, where she was held captive for three months by a 21-year-old Wisconsin man charged with murdering her parents, helped break the case and she should be treated as a hero, the local sheriff said on Friday.
Thousands of volunteers and hundreds of law enforcement officers had searched around the clock around the small town of Barron after Jayme Closs’ parents were found shot dead in their home, the front door open and the girl gone.
Relying on what Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald called “the will of a kid to survive,” a disheveled Closs escaped a house in the tiny town of Gordon where she had been held captive, about 60 miles north of Barron. She was found by a woman walking her dog on Thursday afternoon.
“Jayme is the hero in this case. She’s the one who helped us break this case,” Fitzgerald told reporters on Friday.
Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald holds up the booking photo of Jake Thomas Patterson, who allegedly kidnapped Jayme Closs, during a news conference, Friday, Jan. 11, 2018, in Barron, Wis. Closs, a 13-year-old northwestern Wisconsin girl who went missing in October after her parents were killed, was found alive in the rural town of Gordon, Wis., about about 60 miles north of her home in Barron. Investigators believe Patterson, who was taken into custody shortly after Closs was found, killed her parents because he wanted to abduct her. (Jean Pieri/Pioneer Press via AP)
Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald speaks during a news conference, Friday, Jan. 11, 2018, in Barron, Wis., regarding the arrest of Jake Thomas Patterson, who allegedly kidnapped Jayme Closs, Closs, a 13-year-old northwestern Wisconsin girl who went missing in October after her parents were killed, was found alive in the rural town of Gordon, Wis., about about 60 miles north of her home in Barron. Investigators believe Patterson, who was taken into custody shortly after Closs was found, killed her parents because he wanted to abduct her. (Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune via AP)
Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald speaks during a news conference, Friday, Jan. 11, 2018, in Barron, Wis., regarding the arrest of Jake Thomas Patterson, who allegedly kidnapped Jayme Closs, Closs, a 13-year-old northwestern Wisconsin girl who went missing in October after her parents were killed, was found alive in the rural town of Gordon, Wis., about about 60 miles north of her home in Barron. Investigators believe Patterson, who was taken into custody shortly after Closs was found, killed her parents because he wanted to abduct her. (Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune via AP)
Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald holds up the booking photo of Jake Thomas Patterson, who allegedly kidnapped Jayme Closs, during a news conference, Friday, Jan. 11, 2018, in Barron, Wis. Closs, a 13-year-old northwestern Wisconsin girl who went missing in October after her parents were killed, was found alive in the rural town of Gordon, Wis., about about 60 miles north of her home in Barron. Investigators believe Patterson, who was taken into custody shortly after Closs was found, killed her parents because he wanted to abduct her. (Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune via AP)
Community members listened as representatives from various Wisconsin law enforcement agencies speak during a news conference, Friday, Jan. 11, 2018, in Barron, Wis., regarding the arrest of Jake Thomas Patterson, who allegedly kidnapped Jayme Closs. Closs, a 13-year-old northwestern Wisconsin girl who went missing in October after her parents were killed, was found alive in the rural town of Gordon, Wis., about about 60 miles north of her home in Barron. Investigators believe Patterson, who was taken into custody shortly after Closs was found, killed her parents because he wanted to abduct her. (Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune via AP)
Kristin Kasinskas, who lives on S. Eau Claire Acres Circle with her husband, Peter, speak with the media Friday, Jan. 11, 2019, in Gordon, Wis. Kristin Kasinskas called 911 on Thursday, to report that Jayme Closs, 13, had been found after another neighbor out walking her dog encountered her and brought her to Kasinskas’ house. Closs went missing in October after her parents were killed. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP)
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Both the woman and the neighbor recognized the teen immediately on Thursday due to the enormous public campaign following her disappearance, Fitzgerald said.
Less than 15 minutes later, Jake Patterson, 21, was in custody after police pulled over his vehicle, based on Closs’ description.
“The suspect was out looking for her when law enforcement made contact with him,” Fitzgerald told a news conference, adding police were not seeking any other suspects in the case at this time.
TARGETED JAYME
Patterson, an unemployed resident of Gordon, was charged on Friday with kidnapping and with murdering James and Denise Closs with a shotgun. Their bodies were discovered on Oct. 15.
“The suspect had specific intentions to kidnap Jayme and went to great lengths to prepare to take her,” said Fitzgerald.
Patterson was being held in the Barron County jail, and it was not yet clear whether he had a lawyer. He faces an initial court hearing on Monday.
More than 200 law enforcement officials were on the ground day and night following Closs’ disappearance, sifting through thousands of tips but finding little to go on.
(Jake Patterson via Reuters)
The search stretched across cornfields and wooded areas and drew 1,500 volunteers — nearly half as many people as the entire 3,400-person population of Barron, which sits about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Minneapolis.
Hundreds of locals had attended a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony at Riverview Middle School, which Closs attended, in her honour last month. The “tree of hope” was decorated with messages and lighted in blue, Closs’ favourite colour, and green to symbolize missing child awareness, the Star Tribune reported.
Closs was speaking to investigators on Friday after spending a night in the hospital for evaluation. Authorities did not offer any details about the conditions of her captivity or how she had managed to escape.
She was due to be reunited with her extended family later on Friday.
“I just cried … lots of happy tears,” Jen Smith, the girl’s aunt, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” programme.
FEW DETAILS
Authorities have released few details about Patterson, who has no previous criminal record in Wisconsin, saying they were unsure whether he had known Closs.
Attempts to reach Patterson’s relatives and neighbours on Friday were unsuccessful.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, citing neighbours, reported that Patterson had been raised in Gordon. Police said Patterson had ties to Barron but did not elaborate.
The president of the Jennie-O Turkey store in Barron, where James and Denise Closs had worked for decades, said Patterson had been an employee for a single day three years ago. He quit the next day, saying he was moving, Steve Lykken said.
“We are still mourning the loss of longtime Jennie-O family members Jim and Denise, but our entire team is celebrating with the community, and the world, that Jayme has been found,” Lykken said.
The superintendent of the local school district, Jean Serum, said Patterson was a nice kid who was a member of his high school’s quiz bowl team. He graduated in 2015.
About 350 people under the age of 21 are kidnapped by strangers in the United States each year, according to FBI data.
Closs is not the first kidnapping victim to survive months in captivity.
Elizabeth Smart, who was held captive for nine months as a teenager after her 2002 abduction in Utah, posted a photo of Closs on Instagram, praising the “miracle” that she had been found.
“No matter what may unfold in her story let’s all try to remember that this young woman has SURVIVED and whatever other details may surface the most important will still remain that she is alive,” Smart wrote.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Gabriella Borter in New York; Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Sandra Maler)
As the U.S. government’s partial shutdown stretched into its 21st day Friday, federal workers who’ve been furloughed or forced to work without pay are scrambling to avoid getting dinged by lenders and credit-reporting agencies for skipping loan payments that could damage their credit scores. Missing just one payment on a credit card can knock up to 100 points off a consumer’s credit score, and it can take several years to recover, according to experts.
Some lenders, including banks and auto-leasing companies, say they are working to accommodate government employees who are not receiving paychecks, but their concessions vary, and some government workers tell CBS MoneyWatch they are struggling to negotiate deals with their creditors.
“The general flavor of what we have heard is creditors are waiving late fees, offering the opportunity to skip a payment, or offering short-term interest-free loans to federal workers that come with a grace period on repayment,” said Bruce McClary, spokesman for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. “Unfortunately, the landscape of concessions is widely varied.”
Just ask Jeffery Davis, 35, who has worked since 2009 as an air traffic controller in Malden, Massachusetts. The married father of three leases two cars, an Infiniti and BMW. He said BMW has allowed him to defer payment on his car lease for two months, but he reports his second lessor is less flexible.
Davis said he tried “to see if they’re willing to delay payments or even take the lease back early — they could write off how little I have to pay off — but they said there’s nothing they can do right now.”
Good Samaritans help federal workers struggling during shutdown
President Donald Trump, who insists funding be secured to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall before the government reopens, has said the closure could last months or even a year. With no end in sight, federal employees like Davis are anxious.
“With things the way they are, tensions as high as they are right now, it kind of worries me. Things that Trump has said, this could go on for a year,” Davis said.
And while many lenders say they’re committed to helping customers who have missed payments, some federal workers say that has not been the case for them.
Justin Williams, an army veteran who works as a contractor for the Internal Revenue Service, said he took out a personal loan with Mariner Finance when he moved to Washington, D.C., for work a year ago, but that the company has been “not so understanding” as he seeks to defer payment while he’s furloughed. Meanwhile, his credit card issuer, Bank of America, said that if he misses a payment he’ll owe twice the minimum payment on his balance next month.
Bank of America did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Mariner Finance spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch: “We have long had policies in place to address hardship deferments and those policies do indeed apply to customers impacted by the federal government shutdown. That policy has been reiterated by all our senior managers to our team members throughout the company. We know that the government closure is creating difficulty for some of our customers, and we are actively working with our customers to meet their needs with dignity and respect.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday called on commercial banks to offer furloughed workers interest-free loans that allow them to pay their bills on time. She cited past shutdowns that concluded with workers receiving back pay after the government reopened. “Since there is a guarantee that they will be getting paid, I would hope that the commercial banks, the banks in our country, would follow the lead of some of the credit unions by giving interest-free loans right now to these families so that they can pay their bills on time,” Pelosi said.
Coast Guard families feeling the financial strain as shutdown drags on
The existing credit-reporting system puts the onus on lenders to approve repayment plansthat help consumers avoid taking hits on their credit reports, according to Eric Ellman, senior vice president for public policy and legal affairs of the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA), which represents consumer reporting agencies.
The CDIA issued a notice to lenders reminding them of a code they can use when reporting consumers in forbearance to the three leading credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Under a forbearance agreement, a lender temporarily suspends owed loan payments. “It will hopefully give consumers a break who are affected by the shutdown,” Ellman said.
TransUnion said it is helping guide lenders to use the forbearance code “that will help give people a break on their credit during this difficult time.”
FICO — the best-known company assessing whether people are creditworthy — depends on credit-reporting agencies’ consumer borrowing and payment histories in calculating individuals’ credit scores. But experts say it wouldn’t be easy for FICO to overhaul its model for evaluating credit risks in response to the shutdown.
“It’s kind of immaterial what FICO is doing — their [scoring] model has long been built, and it’s not systemically possible for them to just ‘do something,’ ” said credit-scoring expert John Ulzheimer, formerly of FICO and Equifax.
A call for comment from FICO owner Fair Isaac Corp. was not returned.
TSA officials worried about “tipping point” with unpaid airport screeners
Florence Weston, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and who has been furloughed since Dec. 22,said she is relying on savings to make her monthly car payment and handle other bills. Still, she worries that the ripple effects of the shutdown — and possibly numerous weeks of no paychecks — will deplete her funds.
“I had to tap into my savings account to pay my mortgage, but I also have my car notes and my mortgage next month. Everything is only two to three weeks away and right now we are not being paid.”
Other government workers say their lenders are working with them. Brandon Miller, a Federal Aviation Administration controller in Potomac, Maryland, said the United Services Automobile Association, where he banks, “has been completely open to what I have needed,” including allowing him to delay payment on his credit card for a full month.
And SkyOne Federal Credit Union, which represents air transportation employees, is offering $5,000 loans that are interest-free if they are repaid within 90 days.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday he would not declare a national emergency “right now” to end a standoff over border security that has idled large swaths of the U.S. government, all but guaranteeing that he will preside over the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The dispute has disrupted everything from air travel to tax collection and suspended pay for 800,000 government workers.
Trump has repeatedly described the situation at the U.S.- Mexico border as a “humanitarian crisis” as speculation has increased this week that he would circumvent Congress to begin building his signature wall – a move that would be sure to draw a court challenge from Democrats who say the barrier would be barbaric and ineffective.
Instead, the president urged lawmakers to provide him the $5.7 billion he is seeking for border security.
IRS worker Christine Helquist joins a federal workers protest rally outside the Federal Building, Thursday, Jan., 10, 2019, in Ogden, Utah. Payday will come Friday without any checks for about 800,000 federal employees affected by the government shutdown, forcing workers to scale back spending, cancel trips, apply for unemployment benefits and take out loans to stay afloat. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
IRS worker Angela Gran, center, and others participate in a federal workers protest rally outside the Federal Building, Thursday, Jan., 10, 2019, in Ogden, Utah. Payday will come Friday without any checks for about 800,000 federal employees affected by the government shutdown, forcing workers to scale back spending, cancel trips, apply for unemployment benefits and take out loans to stay afloat. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Furloughed National Park Service ranger Kathryn Gilson, center, listens as fellow furloughed ranger Sean Ghazala, left, speaks to the media, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2019, during a press conference and rally at Staten Island’s La Colmena Center in New York. Ghazala is based at Manhattan’s African Burial Ground, and Gilson works at Gateway National Recreation Area, a national park encompassing wetlands surrounding New York city and parts of New Jersey’s coastline. Gilson says she is home “bouncing off the walls” and worrying about paying her bills and student loan. Staten Island is a largely Republican borough of New York city, but Democrat Max Rose recently defeated his Republican opponent in the 2018 congressional elections. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
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“The easy solution is for me to call a national emergency. I could do that very quickly,” Trump said during a White House event on border security. “I have the absolute right to do it. But I’m not going to do it so fast. Because this is something Congress should do.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mocked the president as she told reporters it was up to Trump to make the next move.
“Let’s give him time to think it through. Think? Did I say think?” she said.
Trump spoke after lawmakers had adjourned for the weekend, precluding any possible action until next week. On Saturday, the shutdown will become the longest in U.S. history.
Earlier on Friday, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted 240-179 to restore funding for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, two of the agencies that have been shuttered since Dec. 22.
But Republicans who control the Senate have so far stood with Trump and insisted that any spending bills include money for his wall. The chamber wrapped up business for the week without taking up the House-passed bill.
A national emergency would allow Trump to divert money from other projects to pay for the wall, which was a central promise of his 2016 campaign. That, in turn, could prompt him to sign bills that restore funding to agencies that have been affected by the shutdown.
Diverting money to the wall could shortchange flood-control efforts in California and reconstruction programs in Puerto Rico, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017, according to Democratic Representative John Garamendi, who represents a district in California that would potentially be affected.
Trump already has threatened to withhold disaster-recovery approved in the wake of California wildfires.
“He has done everything he can to harm California,” Garamendi told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans are warning against a disaster declaration, saying it would undercut Congress’s power under the U.S. Constitution to control government spending – and make it easier for a future Democratic president to bypass Capitol Hill.
“It’s a bad precedent,” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said on CNBC.
SHUTDOWN IMPACT
Meanwhile, the impact of the shutdown began to mount.
Miami International Airport said it will close one of its terminals early over the next several days due to a possible shortage of security screeners, who have been calling in sick at twice the normal rate.
A union that represents thousands of air traffic controllers sued the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday, saying it had violated federal wage law by failing to pay workers. It is at least the third lawsuit filed by unions on behalf of unpaid workers.
Roughly 800,000 federal workers did not receive paychecks that would have gone out on Friday. Some have resorted to selling their possessions or posting appeals on online fundraising sites to help pay their bills.
“Most of them are living from paycheck to paycheck and now they approach this day on Friday having moved from paycheck to no check,” Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings said in debate on the House floor.
The head of the U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting Trump, warned employees that financial stress can lead to depression and anxiety. “Keep an eye out for warning signs of trouble,” Director R.D. “Tex” Alles wrote in a memo seen by Reuters.
Vice President Mike Pence said Trump will sign legislation passed in Congress that will provide back pay to federal workers once the government reopens.
“Your families will get your paychecks,” he told U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the agency’s Washington headquarters.
Separately, Senator Rob Portman and eight other Republican senators introduced legislation that would permanently outlaw the closing of government operations during budget fights, underscoring the growing frustration in Washington.
During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged that Mexico would pay for the wall, which he says is needed to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs. But the Mexican government has refused and Trump is now demanding that Congress provide funding.
“They can name it ‘peaches.’ I don’t care what they name it. But we need money for that barrier,” Trump said.
(Additional reporting by David Shepardson, David Alexander, Dan Wiessner, Susan Heavey, Andy Sullivan and Makini Brice; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Peter Cooney, Bill Trott and Daniel Wallis)
Security officers at airports around the country were already expressing increasing anxiety about their financial plight.
“It is getting harder to come every day and know that you’re not getting paid, but it’s my job, and I knew when I started this job that this was potentially going to happen,” said a 37-year-old woman who is a screener at Los Angeles International Airport. “So I’m going to come in, but if there is any other reason that I have to call out, I’m not going to hesitate to do it.”
Like many other screeners interviewed for this article, she declined to be identified because she said she had been warned against talking to journalists.
“It’s difficult to budget things like food, or knowing which bills to pay, when you simply don’t know when you’ll have money again,” said a 29-year-old man who works for the T.S.A. at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
He said that he had contacted his banks, mortgage company and other creditors but none of them had a program to help in his situation. The Department of Homeland Security distributed letters for its employees to show to landlords, explaining that they “are unlikely to be able to pay for their housing for the foreseeable future,” but they have been of little assistance, he said.
So he was resigned to having to run up the balances on his credit cards and pay interest on the debt, he said, adding that in the meantime, he was looking around the house for things that he could sell quickly on eBay.
At O’Hare, he said, “Our policies and screening procedures aren’t being done any less thorough, but it’s likely they may take longer the more officers we become short.”
President Trump floated a “potential path to citizenship” for H1-B visa holders in an early Friday morning tweet, as the partial government shutdown is set to become the longest shutdown on record.
It’s unclear what Mr. Trump meant exactly, as simplifying a path to citizenship for such visa holders would almost certainly require approval from Congress, and the White House has made no such suggestion in its latest border security funding proposal, or any other public offer.
“H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.”
The H-1B visa, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, lets U.S. employers temporarily employ foreign workers with at least a bachelor’s degree for speciality occupations. H-1B visa holders can apply for a green card to obtain permanent residency — but even a green card does not equate to citizenship.
Mr. Trump has expressed openness to a broader immigration overhaul, but has insisted that he first wants funding for a concrete or steel wall or barrier, along with funding for technology and personnel to handle the situation at the border. It’s unclear what prompted Mr. Trump’s tweet.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump proposed increasing the prevailing wage paid to H-1B visa holders in an effort to force companies to give entry-level jobs to an existing pool of unemployed workers in the U.S., instead of bringing in cheaper workers from overseas.
“This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program,” the Trump campaign wrote in an August 2015 immigration platform.
Meanwhile, the president continues to put his immigration agenda front and center. The president has threatened to call a national emergency if Congress doesn’t reach an agreement to fund his border wall.
“If this doesn’t work out, I probably will do it, I would almost say definitely,” Mr. Trump told reporters Thursday on his way to the southern border, adding later, “If we don’t make a deal, I would say 100 percent but I don’t want to say 100 percent.”
In an earlier post, I examined the significant risks for conservatives if President Trump invokes emergency powers to build a border wall. But it’s also worth taking a moment to examine why the move may not be such a no-brainer for Trump, either.
At first blush, it seems like invoking emergency powers would be a win-win for Trump when viewing things through the prism of his unorthodox political style. Right now, he’s boxed in a corner. The government has been partially shut down for three weeks, and there’s no conceivable way that the Democratic House is going to cave and agree to fund his border wall. Giving in to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and abandoning the central promise of his 2016 campaign would be a colossal embarrassment. So the declaration of emergency powers has an obvious appeal. He can declare the state of emergency, agree to reopen the government, and fight it out in court. He will have demonstrated to his base that he’s willing to do anything in his power to deliver. Either he’d win in court and start constructing a wall or he’d lose and get to blame judges.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The border wall emergency powers declaration will ultimately get decided by the Supreme Court. What if one or both of his appointees rule against him?
This is not a particularly wild scenario. While Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s writings on executive power got attention during his confirmation hearings, he hasn’t been on the court long enough to get a sense of how he’ll rule on such issues. Gorsuch, however, at both the appellate level and so far at Supreme Court, has taken a relatively narrow view of administrative power — as he did when he sided with the court’s liberal wing against the administration in an immigration case.
An adverse ruling joined by Gorsuch (and perhaps Kavanaugh), a totally plausible scenario, would blunt any Trump “blame the courts” strategy to explain his failure to deliver on the border wall.
It’s easy to blame judges appointed by former President Barack Obama for losses in court. But how does Trump attack his own prized appointees?
He could, of course, but doing so would undermine the greatest argument he can make to Trump-skeptical conservatives: that he appointed great judges.
If a high-profile decision comes down during the 2020 campaign, how would he on one hand run on his judicial appointment record and, on the other hand, attack the crown jewels of that record as weak?
I suppose he could argue that Gorsuch and/or Kavanaugh were recommended to him by Federalist Society types and turned out to be frauds. But that would only make it seem like he was easily snookered, which is contrary to his image as a street-smart businessman who can spot a scam from a mile away.
The bottom line is that the emergency powers option shouldn’t be viewed as an obvious no-lose exit strategy for Trump.
Federal workers woke up to a harsh reality on Friday when they did not receive their expected paychecks for the first time as the partial government shutdown entered its 21st day.
An estimated 800,000 federal employees have been furloughed or are working without pay, throwing everything from airport security to environmental protection to federal resources for low-income housing into jeopardy.
The last government shutdown to have lasted this long was the impasse that stretched from December 1995 to January 1996, when President Bill Clinton and the GOP-controlled Congress were at loggerheads. As of Friday afternoon, with the shutdown poised to become the longest in U.S. history, President Donald Trump and Congress appeared no closer to a deal to reopen the government.
Trump on Friday continued to lambaste Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for standing firm in their refusal to fund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Humanitarian Crisis at our Southern Border. I just got back and it is a far worse situation than almost anyone would understand, an invasion! I have been there numerous times – The Democrats, Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy don’t know how bad and dangerous it is for our ENTIRE COUNTRY….
“The Steel Barrier, or Wall, should have been built by previous administrations long ago. They never got it done – I will. Without it, our Country cannot be safe. Criminals, Gangs, Human Traffickers, Drugs & so much other big trouble can easily pour in. It can be stopped cold!”
With negotiations at a standstill, Trump has threatened to keep key agencies shuttered for months or even a year if Democrats don’t agree to allocate billions for his border wall. The president has even signaled that he would declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and siphon billions from the federal government to build the wall.
On Friday, the Democrat-controlled House passed two bills to provide relief to workers and reopen some essential federal agencies. One bill to reopen the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and other related agencies passed 240 to 179, with 10 Republicans voting with Democrats. The other bill, which guarantees back pay to federal workers, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, 411 to 7. Seven Republicans voted against that measure.
Currently, some government agencies are relying on temporary funds to keep some operations going, but experts have warned that the situation could get grimmer if it drags on.
For many workers going without pay, it’s already dire.
William Villegas and Michelle Seeley, a couple that works as contract employees for the Kennedy Space Center and members of the Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, told NBC News on Friday that the uncertainty has caused considerable worry in their household, especially since they have two children.
“I’m severely disappointed in the government, all of them, and I vote in every election,” Seeley said. “And as a member of the union, I’ve taken part in rallying other people to vote because I think it’s an important part of the democratic process, so the whole thing is disappointing to me because I feel like nothing is working the way it’s supposed to work in the government.”
Since both are contract employees, they are not guaranteed back pay if the government reopens. The couple said they have savings that they haven’t dipped into yet, but health care expenses are a concern.
“Well, we have two small children, so the medical issue is constant,” Seeley said. “You never know when they’re gonna get sick, or need something.”
Villegas said the shutdown “didn’t have to happen” and pinned some of the blame on Trump, alluding to separate instances in which either the House or the Senate passed bills that would have created a path to ending the stalemate.
U.S. Internal Revenue Services employees rally in front of the Federal Building against the ongoing U.S. federal government shutdown, in Ogden, Utah on Jan. 10, 2019.George Frey / Reuters
LeRoy and Judy Smith also had harsh words for Washington. LeRoy, also a member of the the Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, is an electrician at the space center. The couple said they live paycheck to paycheck, and that Judy has a condition that causes seizures, requiring her to rely on expensive prescription medication.
“He doesn’t like having to say that he can’t do a thing, especially when it’s for me,” Judy said. “He doesn’t like to say he can’t get my medicine for me.”
Since the shutdown, LeRoy said he has been considering temporary work to keep “his head above water.”
“It’s childish to shut down the government just because you can’t come to an agreement,” LeRoy said.
“It’s like we’re being held hostage,” Judy added.
The Associated Press reported on Friday that the government shutdown has suspended federal cleanups at Superfund sites around the nation and forced the cancellation of public hearings. As a result, a mostly African-American community in Alabama, for instance, has been forced to cope with high levels of arsenic, lead and other contaminants in the soil around homes.
Low-income senior citizens in Jacksonville, Florida, have also been left to fend for themselves because the shutdown froze funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development used for low-income housing.
And more grim scenarios could happen if the shutdown continues to drag on, including 38 million low-income Americans losing access to food stamps, 2 million losing access to rental assistance and facing possible eviction and the federal court system almost screeching to a halt.
Dartunorro Clark
Dartunorro Clark is a political reporter for NBC News.
LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo. — The winter storm forming across Missouri and Illinois will bring the heaviest snowfall to the Lake of the Ozarks area and eastward into Illinois, with the National Weather Service predicting between 5-10 inches over the next two days.
A Winter Storm Warning is in effect until midnight on Saturday for Benton, Morgan, Miller, Maries, Hickory, Camden, Pulaski, Phelps, Dallas, Laclede, Texas, Dent, Webster, Wright, and Shannon counties.
The slow-moving storm system had already brought a mixture of precipitation to the Lake area beginning early Friday, and the NWS says it will turn to snow on Friday afternoon, lasting through Saturday night. A total accumulation of 5-10 inches of snow is expected with the possibility of a light glaze of ice. The Lake of the Ozarks area and the eastern Ozarks can expect mostly heavy snow, while a wintry mix is forecasted for surrounding areas.
Travel conditions across central Missouri and the eastern Ozarks are expected to begin deteriorating late Friday afternoon and decline as the evening progresses. Travel is expected to be impacted throughout the rest of the Missouri Ozarks.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol issued a warning to drivers on Friday, asking drivers to, “make smart decisions about traveling Missouri’s roadways this weekend.”
“Consulting Missouri’s Road Condition Report (1-888-275-6636) or MoDOT’s Road Condition Map at traveler.modot.org/map can provide the most current road condition information available. Avoiding travel may be the safest decision.
It is next to impossible to stop quickly on snow-covered or icy roads. Drivers should compensate for these slippery conditions by increasing their following distance when driving. Decrease your vehicle’s speed when driving in snow or on ice. During inclement weather, driving the speed limit is not ‘exercising the highest degree of care.’ Missouri law (Section 304.012 RSMo.) states the responsibility of exercising the highest degree of care while driving rests on the driver’s shoulders.”
Winter Storm Warnings indicate that significant amounts of snow, sleet, and ice are expected to make travel very hazardous or impossible. Call 511 for updates on road conditions.
(CNN)The House passed two spending bills Thursday to reopen shuttered parts of the government that address public health, agriculture, food stamps and housing, though the bills have an improbable fate in the Senate and the threat of a presidential veto.
The Russia-collusion story manages to be at once frenetic and humdrum. Apparent bombshell revelations arise but without advancing the public’s knowledge beyond a couple of truths we all knew back in 2016: First, when it comes to President Trump, the media can’t control itself. Second, Paul Manafort is no friend.
In perhaps the 1,000th “ bombshell” report on the Russia investigation, the New York Times reported earlier this week that Manafort, as Trump’s campaign chairman, had sent internal polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is “close to the Kremlin.”
This revelation perturbed us. Seeing how close Manafort and Michael Flynn were to both Russia and Trump, we have kept an open mind about the investigation into collusion. We don’t know all the facts, and so we try to process all new information on its merits.
Yet while many media outlets — see Esquire, Talking Points Memo, and others — took the Times report as conclusive proof of collusion, we held our fire. Why? Because while we have tried to keep cool about this investigation, the largest media outlets have not. We recall ABC reporting that Flynn met with the Kremlin during the campaign. That was a “bombshell” of the first order. Except that it turned out to be false.
And so it was with the latest Times report. Manafort was sending the polling data to Ukranians, it turns out, not to Russians, as the Times claimed.
This incident confirmed both of our general operating assumptions on the Russia investigation: Don’t fall for the media “bombshells,” and never count Manafort as a friend.
Manafort went to work for the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016. Trump wasn’t paying Manafort, which should have been a clear warning sign. Manafort was free to Trump for the same reason Facebook is free to you: You are not the customer; you’re the product. Manafort was working for Ukrainian oligarchs and other shady foreign clients, and part of the value he was delivering was proximity to the Republican presidential nominee and the information, such as internal polling, that proximity allowed him.
We have repeatedly warned Trump about this. “ Manafort is not your friend,” we wrote in an editorial addressed to the president. “Manafort is a shady foreign agent who tried to exploit you. And if he had never been involved in the Trump campaign, there may not be a Russia investigation at all.”
There’s some worry that Trump has considered pardoning Manafort. At the very least, we’ve seen Trump praise Manafort. This praise is unwarranted.
Trump should turn his back on this double-dealer who has caused him so much trouble. And we all should show more skepticism of the media “bombshells” that have caused commentators and other reporters so much trouble.
Merced Corona, left, pinned his daughter Natalie Corona’s badge on her uniform during a swearing-in ceremony, Aug. 2, in Davis, Calif. Natalie Corona was shot and killed during a routine call Thursday.
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DAVIS, Calif. >> A 22-year-old police officer on the job only a few weeks was shot and killed by a suspect who opened fire as she was investigating a three-car crash, authorities in Northern California said.
The suspect, who has not been identified, was later found dead inside a home with a self-inflicted gunshot wound following a short standoff with officers, the Davis Police Department said.
Police said Officer Natalie Corona was shot after responding alone to a traffic accident shortly before 7 p.m. Thursday in the city west of Sacramento. Corona was taken to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where she later died.
Police have not determined what prompted the attack.
Following the shooting, police issued a citywide shelter in place order as officers from throughout the region searched for the suspect. Officers then spent hours trying to coax the suspect out of a home about a block from the shooting scene, using floodlights and commands on loudspeakers for him to emerge with his hands up. At one point they sent in a robot and ignited flash bang grenades, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Officials announced early today he had been found dead inside.
Corona, whose father spent 26 years as a Colusa County Sheriff’s deputy, graduated from the Sacramento Police Department’s training academy in July and completed her field training just before Christmas, officials said.
A photograph published by the Pioneer Review shows her father, Merced Corona, pinning her badge at her swearing-in ceremony in August.
She was the first Davis officer killed in the line of duty in 60 years.
“She was a rising star in the department,” Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel said. “She just worked like you can’t believe.”
Before she entered the academy, the Davis Police Department ran out of funding for the paid position she had been in. She didn’t care; she showed up to work as a volunteer, Pytel said.
Corona is the second officer killed in California in the past two and a half weeks.
Cpl. Ronil Singh, 33, of the Newman Police Department was shot to death Dec. 26 after he stopped a suspected drunk driver.
Gustavo Arriaga Perez, also 33, was charged with the murder. Authorities said Perez Arriaga was in the country illegally and was preparing to flee to Mexico when he was arrested. That killing rekindled a debate over California’s sanctuary law that limits cooperation by local officials with federal immigration authorities.
President Trump used his first Oval Office address to make an impassioned plea for border security and funding for the border wall. So let’s take a quick look at a few points Trump made that he got right and wrong.
1) The crisis at the border
“Tonight, I’m speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border,” Trump said to open his address.
There certainly is a serious problem at the southern border. It may not qualify as a national emergency, but it’s unfortunate that Democrats and members of the media have tried to downplay it.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is one of many who tried to quell the idea that there’s a problem at the southern border, saying, “President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage and stop manufacturing a crisis, and must reopen the government.”
But the issue isn’t as simple as being black and white. The Washington Post reported, “Record numbers of migrant families are streaming into the United States overwhelming border agents and leaving holding cells dangerously overcrowded with children, many of whom are falling sick.”
In the month of December, two migrant children died from the harsh conditions in the southern U.S. desert after crossing the border between ports of entry. It was widely believed there was a humanitarian crisis up until Trump considered building the wall under emergency authority.
2) Drugs
“Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl,” Trump said. “Every week, 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90 percent of which floods across from our southern border.”
The 90 percent figure is somewhat misleading. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, “only a small percentage” of heroin, as well as other drugs, is seized by U.S. authorities from border crossings between ports of entry.
The DEA said in a 2018 report that the most common drug trafficking method by transnational criminal organizations is smuggling drugs in passenger vehicles and tractor trailers through U.S. ports of entry, which are subject to inspection. Additionally, many of these drug cartels use buses, cargo trains, and even tunnels.
So yes, there are certainly many drugs pouring into the U.S. But building a border wall might not actually lead to a reduction in drug trafficking.
3) Violence
Trump described the brutal killings committed by undocumented immigrants, saying in his address, “America’s heart broke the day after Christmas when a young police officer in California was savagely murdered in cold blood by an illegal alien, just came across the border. In California, an air force veteran was raped, murdered, and beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien with a long criminal history. In Georgia, an illegal alien was recently charged with murder for killing, beheading, and dismembering his neighbor.”
Trump described these particular crimes accurately. There’s no denying that. The question that needs to be asked is would these crimes be prevented with Trump’s proposed solution of a border wall?
In the case of Ronil Singh, the California police officer who was gunned down by an undocumented immigrant, Sheriff Adam Christianson said in a news conference that the suspect illegally crossed the border into Arizona.
It’s possible that a border wall would have prevented Singh’s murder as only parts of the border Arizona shares with Mexico contain any physical barrier.
In the case of Air Force veteran Marilyn Pharis, who was raped and murdered, two men were convicted of her killing: one was an undocumented immigrant, while the other was a U.S. citizen.
It’s difficult to say that Pharis’ murder could have been prevented with the construction of a border wall, since authorities could not confirm how the perpetrator entered the country.
It could be that a border wall would have prevented many of these crimes, but we also have to acknowledge that many of these perpetrators were arrested in the U.S. prior to these heinous acts. Trump’s approach to enforcing immigration law cannot be boiled down to only what happens at the southern border. If he’s serious about solving the problem, he’ll have to push for ending sanctuary cities.
The office said on Facebook that it didn’t have any other details it could release “at this time as this is a very fluid and active investigation. We will not be answering any questions or taking calls on this tonight.” A news conference was scheduled for Friday morning.
CBS Minnesota spoke to Jayme’s aunt Sue Thursday evening. She said her niece was in a hospital.
“There was rumors earlier today, and I prayed and prayed and they come to not be true,” Sue said. “And I just shut myself totally down. I thought today was going to be the day, and then I find out two hours later that she’s found and I just cannot believe this.”
CBS Minnesota also reached a woman over the phone who confirmed she was the one who first encountered Jayme.
She said she was walking her dog and nearing her cabin when she saw the 13-year-old walking down the road. Closs approached her and told her that she needed help.
“I was at the right place at the right time,” she told CBS Minnesota. The woman did not want to be identified by name.
The Associated Press quotes Barron Mayor as saying Thursday night he was overjoyed that Jamie is alive.
“There was a lot of discouragement because this took quite a while to play out,” Fladten said. “A lot of people have been praying daily, as I have. It’s just a great result we got tonight. It’s unbelievable. It’s like taking a big black cloud in the sky and getting rid of it and the sun comes out again.”
“I hope that she’s in good shape,” the mayor continued. “She’s no doubt been through just a terrible ordeal. I think everybody wishes her a good recovery and a happy life going into the future.”
Closs, 13, disappeared Oct. 15, 2018, the same day her parents — James and Denise Closs — were found shot to death inside their Barron home.
CBS Minnesota reports that up until Thursday, Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald said, investigators hadn’t received any credible leads in this case, despite thousands of tips.
A 911 call with garbled audio was made from Denise Closs’ cellphone at about 1 a.m. on Oct. 15. Police arrived four minutes later and found the bodies of James and Denise. There was no sign of Jayme inside the home.
News that Closs had been found came hours after Fitzgerald debunked a report she had been found alive near Walworth County — which is hundreds of miles away from Douglas County where Closs was found.
Sheriff searching for missing Wisconsin teen believes she’s still alive
The U.S. military began the process of withdrawing its troops from Syria following a drawdown ordered by President Donald Trump, a military official said Friday.
Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S.-coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, declined to discuss specific operational details of the pullout such as timings and troop movements, but said in an email the withdrawal was underway.
The development comes as White House national security adviser John Bolton appeared to contradict Trump’s order when he said the withdrawal would not be immediate, it would not happen before ISIS is fully defeated and it would be contingent on a pledge by Turkey not to attack the U.S.’s Kurdish military allies in Syria.
None of Bolton’s conditions have been met.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to meet with Bolton during his visit to Turkey this week and described his conditions for the U.S. troop drawdown as a “grave mistake.” Turkey considers some members of a Syrian-Kurdish Arab coalition fighting ISIS alongside U.S. troops to be terrorists and has applauded Trump’s decision.
Turkey has amassed thousands of troops along its border with Syria and has long threatened to unilaterally attack Kurdish militias who it claims has ties to separatist groups who have carried out assassinations and bombings against the Turkish government for decades. The U.S. withdrawal from the area could embolden Ankara.
“I have some concerns, my greatest concern…probably is the Kurds and… just how defenseless we are going to leave them,” newly elected Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D, told Stars and Stripes, an American military newspaper.
Trump announced the withdrawal about three weeks ago on Dec. 19. A day later, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis released a resignation letter in which he indicated that he no longer agreed with the president’s thinking on military operations.
According to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ISIS is far from obliterated. The Washington-based think tank estimates 20,000 to 30,000 Islamic State militants may still be in Syria and Iraq.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the Syria conflict via a network of activists on the ground, said the U.S. withdrawal began Thursday night. It said a convoy of about 10 armored vehicles, in addition to some trucks, pulled out from a military base in Syria’s northeastern town of Rmelan into Iraq.
The U.S.-led coalition has been fighting ISIS in the Middle East since 2014 and Mattis said before leaving his job that declaring victory and leaving Syria would be a mistake.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been defending Trump’s order this week while on a tour of the Middle East where he has been rebuking former President Barack Obama’s policies for the region. In a speech in Cairo, he said Trump “made the right decision to bring our troops home from Syria” and the U.S. is “committed to the complete dismantling of the ISIS threat and the ongoing fight against radical Islamism.”
But Pompeo also caused confusion about Washington’s Syria policy. He said in his speech in Cairo that Obama was wrong to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
“When America retreats, chaos follows. When we neglect our friends, resentment builds. And when we partner with enemies, they advance,” Pompeo said.
Less than 24 hours later, U.S. troops started pulling out of Syria.
In an unannounced trip to Iraq on Wednesday, President Donald Trump defended his decision to withdraw troops from Syria despite criticism from military officials and allies who don’t think the job fighting Islamic State militants there is over. (Dec. 26) AP
Hundreds of furloughed federal employees took their frustrations and anger to the White House on Thursday, demanding an end to the three-week partial government shutdown.
Fired up on a cold, blustery day, they rallied in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters on 16th Street NW across Lafayette Square. The crowd was large enough for the police to close the block as Democratic members of Congress and union leaders praised feds and denounced President Trump. After the rally, the protesters marched through the square to within shouting distance from Trump’s front door.
He couldn’t hear the chants of “pay the workers, furlough Trump” because he was on a public-relations campaign to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas in support of his border wall. His demand for more than $5 billion for the wall he promised Mexico would fund is behind the shutdown that has 800,000 feds furloughed or forced to work with no guarantee of when they will be paid.
Negotiations with Democratic leaders quickly collapsed Wednesday when Trump walked out of a White House meeting after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) again refused to provide tax dollars for the wall.
The shutdown situation is bleak. All taxpayers should be outraged that much of the government is out of order.
Maria Middleton is.
Demonstrators in Washington, including American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox Sr. (left), call for an end to the partial government shutdown on Thursday, the standoff’s 20th day. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)
She attended the rally to tell members of Congress “while they are tweedlydeeing and tweedlyduming about some damn wall — excuse my French — that lives are being affected.” Middleton, a Treasury Department employee and National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) shop steward, emphasized she was speaking for herself during an interview.
As much as she wants to return to work, like others at the rally Middleton doesn’t want the Democrats to bow to Trump’s demands on wall funding. “Let the Trump family pay for it,” she said. Noting the seizure of 110 pounds of the opioid fentanyl in Philadelphia last year, she asked “are we going to extend the wall around Philadelphia? … We don’t need to cave in.”
American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox Sr. told the protesters Trump’s “effort at extortion is more of a lockout than a shutdown. But maybe an even more accurate description of this is that it’s a shakedown.”
The Mexico promise was a sham, as is so much from a president who lies as though it is his favorite recreational activity. But the lack of paychecks is real. Friday is the first day checks will not be issued. Many are hurting.
Listen to Talten Hall, a 54-year-old Silver Spring, Md., resident who delights in his work as a gardener in the parks surrounding the White House. “I love my job. I love planting flowers and pulling weeds and making it all look good,” the NTEU member and National Park Service employee told the crowd.
He hates being furloughed.
“I’m hurting financially. I count on each and every paycheck to pay my bills,” he said. “I should be back at work and I should be getting paid for my time.” In an interview later, he mentioned postponing hernia surgery. “I had to put that on the back burner, because of the co-pay,” he said. “That’s $20 that can go somewhere else … as long as I’m not in pain.”
The rally in the District was one of several around the country, including Kentucky, Colorado, Massachusetts, California, Minnesota, West Virginia and Florida. “These rallies today illustrate not only how high the anxiety level has risen,” said NTEU President Tony Reardon, “but also how committed these employees are to serving their country.”
Upon leaving the White House a couple of hours before the rally, Trump made his case for the wall in his customary fearmongering, deceitful fashion. “This is a crisis,” he proclaimed. “You have human trafficking. You have drugs. You have criminals coming in. You have gangs, MS-13. … The Democrats don’t care about the border, and they don’t care about crime.”
Yet the shutdown this law-and-order president was once proud to claim is hurting law enforcement officers. Border Patrol agents are among the federal employees required to work without pay. Nonetheless, the leadership of their union, the National Border Patrol Council, strongly supports Trump and his wall, while the American Federation of Government Employees and AFL-CIO, the council’s parent organizations, emphatically do not.
The FBI Agents Association, however, urged Congress and the White House to quickly resolve the budget dispute before its members’ “financial insecurity compromises national security.” In a petition to the government’s elected leaders, the association said “missing payments on debts could create delays in securing or renewing security clearances.” In addition to undermining “the FBI’s ability to recruit and retain high-caliber professionals,” the shutdown and the “ongoing financial insecurity caused by the failure to fund the FBI could lead some FBI Agents to consider career options that provide more stability for their families.”
Meanwhile, the AFGE and NTEU are suing the federal government, arguing it is against the law to require employees to work without pay. “If employees are working, they must be paid — and if there is not money to pay them, then they should not be working,” Reardon said Wednesday.
Congress has approved legislation that would provide back pay to federal employees, when — or should that be if? — they get back to work. The Senate also is considering a House-approved 1.9 percent pay raise this year that would nullify Trump’s plan for a federal civilian pay freeze.
Federal employees have received back pay after previous shutdowns. However, many federal contractors, some of them low-wage workers, did not. Thirty-four Democratic senators, led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) also are urging the administration to ensure back pay for federal contractors who are losing money during the shutdown.
“It is in the federal government’s best interest to provide funding to the extent necessary to ensure that contractors deliver back pay to their workers,” said the senators’ letter to the Office of Management and Budget. “Contractor employees cannot afford the chaos and uncertainty of government shutdowns, and some of these workers may seek other jobs if back pay is not provided to compensate for shutdown-related losses.”
Washington (CNN)Informants at risk of losing awards. A growing backlog of evidence untested. Assistance in an international kidnapping case turned down.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday he is planning changes including a possible pathway to U.S. citizenship to foreigners holding H-1B visas, issued temporarily to highly educated immigrants who work in specialty occupations such as technology or medicine.
“H1-B [sic] holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship,” Trump said in a Twitter post.
The Republican president has often said he wanted an immigration system that favored educated or highly skilled people. The White House did not immediately comment on what kind of changes Trump was considering.
Trump and Democrats in the U.S. Congress are at an impasse over spending legislation to fund the federal government. Trump has refused to sign on to a bill unless it includes $5.6 billion to build a wall along the country’s southern border to prevent illegal immigration by migrants.
Democrats say the wall project, which carries a total price tag of more than $20 billion, is expensive, ineffective and immoral. The dispute has led to a partial shutdown of the U.S. government that is now in its 21st day.
While Trump typically depicts undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers attempting to enter the country through Mexico as criminals and terrorists, he frequently praises those applying for H-1B visas, which require a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Competition is tough for the temporary visas. In 2018, the United States hit the limit on the number of H-1Bs it could issue, 65,000, by the first week of April, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump campaigned for president on a promise to crack down on immigrants, who he said took jobs away from U.S. citizens. In April 2017, he signed an executive order for a review of the H-1B program.
U.S. companies often use H-1B visas to hire graduate-level workers in several specialized fields, including information technology, medicine, engineering and mathematics. The visas are heavily used in the tech sector.
Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Doina Chiacu and David Gregorio
WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl.
The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements. And in weighing petitions for spouses or fiancees, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives.
But the data raises questions about whether the immigration system may be enabling forced marriage and about how U.S. laws may be compounding the problem despite efforts to limit child and forced marriage. Marriage between adults and minors is not uncommon in the United States, and most states allow children to marry with some restrictions.
There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, according to the data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report.
Some victims of forced marriage say the lure of a U.S. passport combined with lax U.S. marriage laws are partly fueling the petitions.
“My passport ruined my life,” said Naila Amin, a dual citizen from Pakistan who grew up in New York City.
She was forcibly married at 13 in Pakistan and applied for papers for her 26-year-old husband to come to the country.
“People die to come to America,” she said. “I was a passport to him. They all wanted him here, and that was the way to do it.”
Amin, now 29, said she was betrothed to her first cousin Tariq when she was just 8 and he was 21. The petition was eventually terminated after she ran away. She said the ordeal cost her a childhood. She was in and out of foster care and group homes, and it took a while to get her life on track.
“I was a child. I want to know: Why weren’t any red flags raised? Whoever was processing this application, they don’t look at it? They don’t think?” Amin asked.
There is a two-step process for obtaining U.S. immigration visas and green cards. Petitions are first considered by USCIS. If granted, they must be approved by the State Department. Overall, there were 3.5 million petitions received from budget years 2007 through 2017.
Over that period, there were 5,556 approvals for those seeking to bring minor spouses or fiancees, and 2,926 approvals by minors seeking to bring in older spouses, according to the data. Additionally, there were 204 for minors by minors. Petitions can be filed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
“It indicates a problem. It indicates a loophole that we need to close,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told the AP.
In nearly all the cases, the girls were the younger person in the relationship. In 149 instances, the adult was older than 40, and in 28 cases the adult was over 50, the committee found. Among the examples: In 2011, immigration officials approved a 14-year-old’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica. A petition from a 71-year-old man was approved in 2013 for his 17-year-old wife in Guatemala.
There are no nationwide statistics on child marriage, but data from a few states suggests it is far from rare. State laws generally set 18 as the minimum age for marriage, yet every state allows exceptions. Most states let 16- and 17-year-olds marry if they have parental consent, and several states — including New York, Virginia and Maryland — allow children under 16 to marry with court permission.
Fraidy Reiss, who campaigns against coerced marriage as head of a group called Unchained at Last, researched data from her home state of New Jersey. She determined that nearly 4,000 minors, mostly girls, were married in the state from 1995 to 2012, including 178 who were under 15.
“This is a problem both domestically and in terms of immigration,” she said.
Reiss — who says she was forced into an abusive marriage by her Orthodox Jewish family when she was 19 — said that often cases of child marriage via parental consent involve coercion, with a girl forced to marry against her will.
“They are subjected to a lifetime of domestic servitude and rape,” she said. “And the government is not only complicit; they’re stamping this and saying: Go ahead.”
The data was requested in 2017 by Johnson and then-Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the committee’s top Democrat. Johnson said it took a year to get the information, showing there needs to be a better system to track and vet the petitions.
“Our immigration system may unintentionally shield the abuse of women and children,” the senators said in the letter.
USCIS didn’t know how many of the approvals were granted by the State Department, but overall only about 2.6 percent of spousal or fiancee claims are rejected.
Separately, the data show some 4,749 minor spouses or fiancees received green cards to live in the U.S. over that same 10-year period.
The head of USCIS, L. Francis Cissna, said in a letter to the committee that its request had raised questions and discussion within the agency on what it can do to prevent forced minor marriages. The agency noticed some issues in how the data was collected and has resolved them. Officials also created a flagging system that requires verification of the birthdate whenever a minor is detected.
The country where most requests came from was Mexico, followed by Pakistan, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and Yemen. Middle Eastern nationals had the highest percentage of overall approved petitions.
It’s been barely a week since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, and already the I-word is flying around Washington. “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker,” Rashida Tlaib declared jubilantly mere hours after being sworn in. Longtime members Brad Sherman and Al Green filed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on the first day of the new session. And the president, for his part, is clearly spoiling for the fight, declaring in a Rose Garden news conference, “Well, you can’t impeach somebody that’s doing a great job.”
Now what?
Story Continued Below
The Democrats could pass articles of impeachment tomorrow on a party line vote. As you may have noticed, they haven’t. The Sherman-Green impeachment measure was always seen as dead on arrival, and for political and practical reasons, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has no plans to change that anytime soon. But, with a boisterous and empowered Democratic majority now stalking the halls of Congress—one half of it, anyway—the impeachment question is now suddenly real in a way it hasn’t been since Trump was elected.
The progressive left, a key part of the Democrats’ base, isn’t likely to stop agitating. New York Times editorial writer David Leonhardt published a detailed, count-by-count bill of charges against Trump last Sunday that mentioned the I-word no less than 12 times. Billionaire activist Tom Steyer this week traveled to Iowa where he announced he would sink more money into his campaign to impeach Trump instead of mounting his own White House bid. Since the midterms, the question has gone from anti-Trumpist fantasy to practical gamesmanship—something being discussed in Capital Hill offices and hallways, at law firms and among party strategists and leaders.
In one sense, Trump is as vulnerable as he’s always been. In another, the risk is huge. The collision of anti-Trump forces with his powerfully loyal base—to say nothing of the president’s own thirst for conflict—would guarantee the most explosive political disruption in generations. If the effort misses, the blowback could easily propel Trump back into office in 2020, with a reinvigorated base bent on revenge.
“If they’re dumb enough to impeach him, they’re going to lose the House and he’s going to be reelected and there won’t be a Senate trial,” said Joseph diGenova, an informal Trump adviser and frequent Fox News pundit. “That’s what’s going to happen, and I hope they do it.”
So, what would an impeachment really take in the Washington of 2019, and how would it all go down? To answer these questions, POLITICO interviewed more than two dozen sources, including sitting Republican and Democratic senators and members of Congress, current and former Capitol Hill aides, political operatives, historians and legal experts. The story that follows is the most detailed accounting, anywhere, of what dominoes need to fall if House impeachment articles were really to move forward, how a Trump trial in the Senate would go down and what—if anything—might break the Senate GOP majority apart enough to vote to remove their own president from office.
The picture won’t be consoling to anti-Trumpers who hope it will be easy, but neither will it reassure loyalists who see any attack on the president as off-limits.
Impeachment is rare, and every generation comes with its own set of complications, but with Trump there are parts you really can game out, from how the known details of his misbehavior might play to the bigger economic and political factors that would serve as impeachment’s backdrop. It’s also possible to work through the Senate Republican Conference vote by vote, with a likely breakdown of just where, and when, the necessary splits might start to occur. There are also wildly unpredictable elements, starting with just what special counsel Robert Mueller turns up in his investigation—and ending with a Senate proceeding that has many of the features of a courtroom trial, but that is also much looser, and could require far more, or far less, than a courtroom for conviction.
As you read this, remember: No president has ever actually been removed from office by impeachment. The House impeached Andrew Johnson on 11 different counts in 1868, angry about how Abraham Lincoln’s successor was handling reconstruction after the Civil War, but he ultimately avoided Senate conviction by one vote. More than a century later, Richard Nixon resigned from office rather than face impeachment; in late 1998, in a highly partisan vote, the House impeached Bill Clinton on two counts, but he didn’t come close to being removed by the Senate—a lesson in overreach not lost on today’s Congress. “If and when the time comes for impeachment—it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way,” Pelosi, the decisive player in any potential move by Democrats to impeach Trump, told CBS in an interview that aired Sunday.
If Trump were really to be the first, here’s what to watch for as the dominoes fall. Welcome to the Only Impeachment Guide You’ll Ever Need.
I. The Mueller Factor
Nothing is hanging over Trump’s head like the investigation into whether his 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to win the White House. Mueller, legendary as one of the most ambitious, aggressive and methodical directors ever to lead the FBI, is perhaps the most widely respected investigator in America. And since he’s a lifelong Republican, only the most die-hard wing of the Trump base can dismiss his work as the kind of partisan-driven overreach that discredited the investigation into Bill Clinton.
Mueller was appointed under a different set of rules than Clinton investigator Kenneth Starr, and this time there is no requirement that he deliver a detailed report to Congress. (Starr’s report in 1998 nearlybroke the earliest iterations of the internet, with some 20 million Americans logging on to read his graphic account of the president’s sexual trysts with a White House intern.)Mueller needs to send his findings only to his Justice Department supervisor, although the expectations are high that Congress will ultimately get its hand on some version of that document, and that its details will make their way to the public.
So far, Mueller has cut a wide swath through Trumpworld, securing guilty pleas from Trump’s former national security adviser; his longtime personal lawyer; and the chairman who helped run his 2016 presidential campaign, along with his deputy. Federal prosecutors working with Mueller have also implicated Trump in a set of campaign finance crimes, and the president has posted tweets and made public statements that many legal experts say could be used to charge him with obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
Any of those scandals, on their own, might have brought down a president in the past. With Trump, none has moved Congress any closer to impeachment. And despite the party handover in the House, they’re still not that close. So when Mueller does complete his work, his findings would need to include something genuinely big, and genuinely new—at least one or more pieces of irrefutable evidence that Trump has committed “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” the loosely defined grounds for impeachment spelled out in the Constitution.
In the case of Trump, the experts I spoke with said that for the Senate to actually move toward conviction—meaning at least 20 Republican senators voting to remove a Republican president—Trump would likely need to be incriminated for betraying the nation itself, not just for campaign violations, or improper behavior like paying hush money to porn stars.
What could rise to that level? Bear in mind that Trump has already faced accusations similar to those that brought Nixon down—he admitted on national television tofiring FBI Director James Comey to end the Russia investigation; and there’s plenty of evidence that he has tried to intimidate witnesses who could deliver incriminating evidence against him and lied to the public about his actions as part of a wider cover-up. Several sitting senators and members of the House, along with other close observers of Congress, told me Trump would need to face charges bigger and darker, and with the smoking-gun clarity of Nixon admitting to his schemes on tape.
For instance: actual documents showing that Trump himself knew his 2016 campaign was working in concert with Russia to win the White House, and signed off on the arrangement. Or a money-laundering scheme run through the Trump Organization on behalf of foreign governments or oligarchs, rendering the president susceptible to blackmail and extortion. If there’s hard evidence that those foreign powers shaped his policies while president, that could seal the deal even for some Republicans.
Whether Mueller’s investigation will uncover anything like this remains the most addictive guessing game in Washington. The special counsel has been on the job for nearly 20 months, and has so far shown himself to be a by-the-book operator, which cuts two ways: He won’t be scared off a scent, but it’s unclear how far he’ll stray from the original mission. Remember that the investigation that led to Clinton’s impeachment started with a 15-year-old real estate deal, but the impeachment charges themselves came from a long side investigation into whether the president obstructed justice and lied under oath about his affair with the White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
Mueller has yet to reveal any public threads of a conspiracy directly connecting Russia and Trump’s campaign, though attorneys for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort earlier this week disclosed an intriguing detail that raises new questions about collusion: Their client shared polling data during Trump’s 2016 race with a Ukrainian associate who has ties to Russian intelligence.
Even the Republicans I spoke with acknowledged that serious revelations about the president that aren’t yet in the public domain would be hard for their party to defend. “I think a lot of people would shift if the president clearly illegally evaded taxes the way his father did, or that he is beholden to a foreign government,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican operative who has worked for Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz, and has been an outspoken advocate of the Never-Trump camp even as his former bosses contorted themselves into presidential allies.
If the president is actually indicted for a crime, that obviously changes everything.”
John Cornyn of Texas, a senior member of the Senate GOP leadership whose job until January involved whipping votes in the upper chamber, said the Senate was far from likely to support removing a sitting president and called the act of impeachment “basically a futile gesture.”
But pressed on whether the special counsel’s investigators could uncover anything that would alter those Senate dynamics, Cornyn replied, “If the president is actually indicted for a crime, that obviously changes everything. But right now all I see is speculation and people who have no knowledge of what Director Mueller actually has speculating on what could happen. I don’t think that’s particularly productive. It may be interesting, but it’s not based on facts.”
Mueller may not be only important source of fresh evidence. There are the federal prosecutors in New York who convicted Michael Cohen, the former Trump attorney, and with whom Cohen continues to cooperate. There’s the newly elected Democratic attorney general in New York, who campaigned on a pledge to investigate Trump’s finances, businesses and charitable foundation. And there are the House Democrats, whose newly won congressional subpoena power could be a game-changer. They plan to launch a slew of investigations in 2019, including a re-examination of Trump campaign ties to Russia; allegations of money laundering between the Trump Organization and foreign interests; and whether Trump as president has personally enriched himself in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. House Democrats also are planning a careful push to make the president’s personal tax returns public.
Trump could dig himself in deeper, as well. Though he’s restrained himself from ending the Mueller probe, I spoke to one senior Republican official in touch with the White House who predicted Trump’s reaction could cause the president problems if the Russia investigation turned personal and Trump’s closest family members—his son Donald Trump Jr., daughter Ivanka Trump or her husband, Jared Kushner—faced criminal charges. “Everyone knows he surrounds himself with dirtbags and weak people and psychopaths,” said the official. “But the family is the family and that’s a lot closer to Trump than anything else.” That’s the situation where Trump might overreact, issuing blanket pardons or ordering up a Nixon-like Saturday Night Massacre, firing Mueller and the senior ranks of his own Justice Department.
“To me, that’s the red line,” said the official. “If that gets crossed, then everything changes in both parties.”
II. The Big Picture
Though Americans tend to think about impeachment as a legal proceeding, it’s far more a political matter than a legal one: The Constitution’s vague language leaves it up to congressional interpretation by design. Political scholars and D.C. insiders agree that impeachment simply won’t happen unless a sitting president looks politically vulnerable. A sudden downward turn in a couple of important barometers will go a long way toward determining whether Trump’s core supporters across the country—and their elected representatives—would actually abandon him.
This means, first and foremost, the economy. A president sitting on a booming economy is likely to be reelected, and a president likely to be reelected sits in a political castle that his own party would never storm. But a shaky economy—or, worse, a serious downturn—makes even a celebrity president with a die-hard base look vulnerable.
Nixon’s resignation came on the heels of not just a spiraling scandal, but a crash in the global stock market, an international oil crisis and a recession on the domestic home front that would have cast a pall on his administration even without Watergate. Clinton, president during a years-long growth spurt, survived an impeachment attempt easily.
Trump, over the past two years, has governed through an economic roller coaster, with about 4 million new jobs created and rising wages but fears of a recession and global economic decline never far from the surface. In just the past month, stock prices have taken record turns in both directions, while a government shutdown reaches historic lengths with no end in sight.
Politically, ousting Trump would require the same kind of seismic wave he successfully surfed during his 2016 campaign—nothing less, in fact, than another shakeup and realignment of the Republican Party. A pair of data points will help tell the story here. First, there’s Trump’s overall public approval ratings, which have been at historic lows throughout his presidency. The Real Clear Politics’ average currently has Trump at around 42 percent. His floor to date: 37 percent, in mid-December 2017. “Nothing’s going to change until he hits 30,” said Jim Manley, a former Senate operative who worked for former Democratic Leader Harry Reid.
But perhaps an even more important indicator on the impeachment front is Trump’s standing among likely GOP primary voters. The latest Gallup tracker shows the president holding an 89 percent approval among Republicans, the very same number he enjoyed right after he was sworn into office in January 2017. As long as figures like that don’t slide dramatically—and Republicans haven’t budged in their support despite nearly two years of White House turmoil—Trump is probably safe from seeing his own party toss him under the bus.
For Trump to be meaningfully vulnerable, Republicans in a handful of states would need to start seeing polling data that show their support for him could sink their own political futures, including in key purple state battlegrounds like Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina. In Trump’s case, there’s another, unique indicator: if he starts to lose Fox hosts like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.
III. The House
Impeachment starts in the House, where any member can introduce a resolution seeking to remove the president. Though it’s not technically a bill, it would work much the same way—with majority votes required in committee and on the floor.
But nothing will move, officially, until it gets a green light from Democratic leadership—which means the real power for determining what happens on the impeachment front rests with Pelosi. No stranger to hardball politics, Pelosi sees impeachment as a nuclear bomb that she’d rather not have to detonate unless and until the time is right. In the meantime, she’d like to get some potential policy wins under her belt, and so the California Democrat has spent the better part of the past year pleading with her party to remain patient in any bid to remove Trump until a more complete picture has emerged spelling out the evidence of any presidential illegalities.
While Pelosi has the authority to create a special committee to consider impeachment, she’s signaled that the Judiciary Committee led by Rep. Jerry Nadler will serve as the primary venue for any hearings on the topic, and will handle any resolutions that are likely to move forward.
The institutional Democrats’ hesitation is rooted, in part, in the recent history from the Clinton era. If they fail, the damage could be enormous, both to the country and to their own party. Just as Clinton did, Trump could come out on the other side of an unsuccessful impeachment attempt with greater public sympathy and an improved prospect of winning reelection in 2020.
And House Democrats will need allies across the aisle, which also requires a cautious approach. The experts I spoke with said that without some Republican votes, it would look far too much like a belated effort to overturn the 2016 election results—and would fail to provide the bipartisan cover that Senate Republicans would need to actually vote to convict the president later.
What’s the magic number? Elaine Kamarck, a longtime Democratic operative who worked in the Clinton White House and later on Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, estimates that Pelosi would need impeachment votes from about 20 Republicans, giving a total House vote of 255-179, assuming the Democrats hold together and vote as a bloc (with one seat still vacant in North Carolina). Donald Ritchie, the retired Senate historian who helped the chamber navigate Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, said the target should actually be higher—much, much higher.
“If there’s any chance of getting two-thirds [of Senators] removing the president, you’d have to have two-thirds of the House of Representatives voting to impeach,” or closer to 100 House Republicans, with a vote of 335-99, he said. “Anything less than that, and I don’t think it would fly in the Senate.”
IV: The Senate
This is where the impeachment fight gets real. Like both Andrew Johnson and Clinton before him, Trump would still be president even if the House voted to impeach him. Trump’s fate actually rests with what happens in the Senate, where, pending a trial, a two-thirds majority vote is needed to remove a president from office.
That’s a threshold that’s never been met in the 229 years since George Washington took the first oath of office. And it’s the reason Clinton’s impeachment was more of a partisan backfire than a politically destabilizing event: Nobody believed the Senate would actually vote to convict him.Republicans held a 55-45 majority over the Democrats in 1999, andthe anti-Clinton forces needed to capture a dozen votes from the president’s own party. Not only did they net zero, they didn’t even hold onto all the Republican votes. Clinton emerged from his impeachment battle with the best public approval ratings of his presidency, and his final Gallup numbers were the highest for any outgoing president measured since the end of World War II.
As in the House, Trump’s presidency would hinge on what happens with Republicans. The math is simple: If the Democrats can secure all 47 votes in their caucus, they’d need 20 Republicans to secure a conviction. To feel comfortable moving forward with impeachment proceedings at all, they’d need to get signals from maybe half that number.
Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian from Rice University, said that even a Senate trial fueled by serious charges against Trump won’t be seen as a real threat to his presidency unless a sizable number of Republicans step forward early. “It’s got to hit the 10 mark to be eye-opening,” he said. “Then, you are 10 away.”
Long before the case hits the Senate floor, there will be plenty of time for the Republicans to consider the evidence and send those signals. “Remember, you’re going to have a lot of time while the House actually figures out what the articles of impeachment are supposed to be,” Kamarck said. “During that time I think you’ll see the Senate reacting or holding their cards tight. You’ll know pretty early who the ringleaders are in the Senate, if there are any.”
In Washington, the parlor game has begun: As the Mueller probe keeps drilling closer to the president, the 53 Republicans’ records and statements are being scrutinized for any signs of who potentially would ever break with Trump.
The first group of possible defectors is fairly obvious. You might call them “establishment figureheads”—lions of the pre-Trump GOP who have been uneasy with the president’s character, disagree with him on policy, and might be looking for a way to decisively detach their distinguished careers from his name.
This group starts with Mitt Romney, the freshman from Utah who marked his arrival in the Senate with a blistering op-ed attacking the president as unfit for office. It also includes Pat Roberts of Kansas and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, two senior Republicans who have announced they won’t be running for reelection in 2020, freeing them to think more about history than their political futures. There’s also Richard Burr of North Carolina, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has led his chamber’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and seen much of the still-classified evidence firsthand.
Other Republican senators who could be in the first group to peel off are Ben Sasse, the first-term Nebraskan who refused to vote for Trump in 2016 and even compared his party’s nominee to the white supremacist David Duke; and Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska senator who has already defied Trump by not voting to confirm his most recent Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
If those senators were to abandon Trump—and there’s no guarantee that even with their significant personal and policy differences they will—that gives a tentative count of six Republican defectors, and 47 still in Trump’s camp.
To get to the 10 required for a realistic Senate trial, another group would need to come into play—the “vulnerable 2020 class.” These are the handful of incumbents from swing states who are up for reelection in less than two years, and who could easily lose their seats if enough of their home-state Republican voters turned against the president.
This group consists of five: Susan Collins of Maine, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. They’re genuinely caught in a political vise: A vote against Trump could kill their chances if it comes before they’ve faced their own primary voters, but a vote to save the president could torpedo them in the general election. For these senators, Trump’s approval among the primary electorate is a key indicator, as is the exact timing for when they’d be forced to take any vote for conviction.
The next category would be the Republican senators who won’t face voters again until 2022 or ’24—let’s call them “anxious incumbents.” Not all of the GOP senators in those election cycles are likely to peel away from Trump, but some could: Mike Braun of Indiana, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Mike Lee of Utah, Rob Portman of Ohio, Rick Scott of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and John Thune of South Dakota.
That now makes 23 senators who could be considered in play based on home-state politics, Trump’s popularity and staying power and a variety of other factors. If even half started to signal they’d consider impeachment charges, the debate would take on far more significance and likely trigger a last-stand defensive campaign from the president.
Scott Mulhauser, a former aide to Vice President Joe Biden, said he expects GOP senators would look for guidance to the likes of Vice President Mike Pence and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on what would likely be the most historic vote of their careers.
“To have this land in a real way, not only will the work of Mueller and his team of course have to be ironclad. But it will also have to be damning to the point where these guys have no choice,” he said. They also should anticipate a full-throated fight from Trump: “If it’s his future, the wrath is coming.”
V. The proceedings
Once any impeachment charges are before the Senate, there’s no guarantee here but one: It will be a hell of a show.
Republicans could disregard anything the House does and simply table the matter, which Trump allies say would be a viable position for GOP leaders to take. “If I’m McConnell, I say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to have an election in 2020. It will be the trial,” said diGenova, a former federal prosecutor who nearly joined the president’s legal team last year.
But public pressure leading into the next election cycle could also be hard to ignore. “If the House acted, I don’t think the Senate could not act,” said Ritchie, the historian emeritus of the Senate.
If there is a trial, all 100 senators would be serving as Trump’s jury, meeting in a solemn courtroom-like atmosphere where they’d be asked to sift through reams of evidence and, potentially, live witnesses. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would preside, while House Democrats would serve as the president’s prosecutors, and Trump’s attorneys as his defense counsel. Rudy Giuliani vs. Jerry Nadler, anyone?
To convict, the Senate needs to get to 67 votes. Depending on the signals we’ve seen from that first group of senators, that means about a dozen or more additional Republicans would have to brave Trump’s rhetoric, which will no doubt be escalating as he digs in, and also flipping on the leader of their own party.
Who else could Trump lose? Once truly damning evidence started coming out, the president would need to watch his back for another group, aptly dubbed “his former political foes”: Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham and even McConnell. All have accommodated themselves to the president in the interest of power. But none are likely to have forgotten Trump’s mean tweets, nasty nicknames and otherpersonal, out-of-the-norm attacks on their appearance, family, and more. Any or all of these could see a vote for his conviction as the ultimate payback. They might even take a special relish in watching the whip count nudge up to 66 and then casting the decisive vote.
“The question is: Do any of these people feel they owe Donald Trump anything?” said Kamarck. “I think it will get very personal. It will devolve on a personal level. What you have to ask yourself is, who has Donald Trump gone out of his way to be a total, utter asshole to?”
I think it will get very personal. It will devolve on a personal level. What you have to ask yourself is, who has Donald Trump gone out of his way to be a total, utter asshole to?”
Beyond golfing with a couple of Republicans, Trump has built few of the personal relationships that might help save him in the Senate. “You should hear the way these guys talk about him behind his back,” Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democratic senator who lost her reelection bid in 2018, told The New Yorker Radio Hour when asked whether Republicans were really loyal to Trump.
Roger Stone, the longtime Trump political adviser, told me that this—the president’s lack of Senate friends—rather than the substance of the impeachment articles, could be a problem if impeachment proceedings did actually kick into gear.
“I don’t see a real charge that’s problematic,” Stone said. “On the other hand, most of the Senate Republicans are establishment Republican, country club, neocon types. I don’t think Donald Trump is terribly popular with them to begin with.”
Interviewed on the record, Republican senators right now have one consistent message on impeachment: We know nothing. “I think we’ve got to let this process continue and we’ve got to allow the facts go to where they will and not have any political interference,” Rob Portman said; John Thune, the new Republican Senate whip in 2019, also demurred: “I think we just don’t have the full picture yet.” Ron Johnson said of an impeachment: “If that were to occur, you’re acting as a juror in a trial, and you need to take a look at all the evidence. That’s how I’d approach it.”
As for Senate Democrats, they plan to work their own individual relationships across the aisle to size up what’s possible. “I think all of us will be having conversations just as we’ve been discussing the investigation and protecting it,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal told me. They’d be reporting what they hear from Republicans up the chain to party leaders Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’d be in charge of counting votes. “Park yourselves on the sidelines,” explained Illinois’ Dick Durbin, who as the Senate Democratic whip would also have a big role to play ahead of a conviction trial, told ABC’s “This Week” in December when asked about the president’s legal and political liabilities.
***
To be sure, many observers still don’t see any way that 20 Senate Republicans and a corresponding number of House Republicans would ever risk their own political futures abandoning Trump absent something jarring—something that to date Mueller or other investigators have yet to produce.
“They’re going to have to really have a smoking fucking gun to show this is a bipartisan exercise,” said Sam Geduldig, a former House GOP leadership aide. “There are not a lot of Republicans who’d want on their tombstone: ‘Impeached President Trump.’”
“Renaming a post office is one thing. To have them do substantive work on a controversial issue and have 67 agree is virtually unheard of,” explained Mulhauser, who also has worked for several Senate Democrats.
There are of course many other possible scenarios for Trump beyond impeachment. Neal Katyal, the former acting Obama solicitor general, suggested last month that the president already faces enough legal jeopardy once he’s out of office that his attorneys may want to consider negotiating a deal with prosecutors to resign rather than face jail time when his term is up.
Democrats have other political calculations to keep in mind, too, including their chances of winning back the White House in 2020. If they succeed in impeaching Trump in the House and somehow convicting him in the Senate, they’d need to draw up an entirely new general election playbook for going up against a different Republican, presumably a President Mike Pence.
“You don’t want the Republican Party reinventing itself post-Trump” if you’re the Democrats, said Brinkley, the presidential historian. “The longer Trump is in legal limbo, the more of this sort of drip-drip about Russian collusion and the financial dealings, the longer it goes on, the better for the Democrats.”
But if an impeachment process starts and fails, Trump could effectively use the fight to his electoral advantage. Democrats would also need to consider their own election prospects in the House and Senate in 2020 if Trump is still at the top of the ticket, only more popular because he’s withstood his opponents’ assault. It may be that impeachment—as much as it excites some of the Democratic base—is in nobody’s immediate political interest at all.
“That’s the problem with an impeachment strategy,” Brinkley added. “The Democratic Party is better off running against a deeply damaged President Trump that seems to have a lot of terrible legal woes and ethical damage. It’s better off to run against a wounded Trump than to drive Trump out of office.”
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