Someone in the White House reportedly leaked documents to House Democrats dealing with security clearances for members of President Trump’s family.

A Democratic aide responsible for handling to documents said that they provide information on the timeline of how President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump obtained security clearances.

They also explain how the final decision was made to grant those clearances, Axios reported.

Two staffers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told the top Democratic aide that they “appreciate having [the documents] upfront” because they are “part of the puzzle that we would be asking for” from the White House.

One of the documents details why Kushner’s clearance was changed to “interim” in Sept. 2017.

“Per conversation with WH counsel the clearance was changed to interim Top Secret until we can confirm that the DOJ or someone else actually granted a final clearance,” the document said. “This action was taken out of an abundance of caution because the background investigation has not been completed.”

This week, the panel requested documents regarding the Trump administration’s granting of security clearances to staffers, but the White House rejected the request.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/democrats-get-leaked-documents-on-jared-kushner-ivanka-trumps-security-clearances-report

New York state goes to extraordinary lengths to catch wealthy residents who try to flee its burdensome taxes, leaving a gaping hole in the state’s treasury.

The aggressive approach by state tax collectors comes as the Empire State faces a $2.3 billion budget deficit that even Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo called “as serious as a heart attack.”

Cuomo, a vocal critic of President Trump, blamed congressional Republicans for passing tax reforms that reduced the state and local tax deduction Americans can take on their annual income tax forms — meaning residents of high-tax blue states like New York have been feeling the pinch, sparking their exodus.

“This is the flip side. Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich,” Cuomo said last month. “We did. Now, God forbid, the rich leave.”

“Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. We did. Now, God forbid, the rich leave.”

— Gov. Andrew Cuomo

CUOMO BLAMES FEDERAL TAX LAW FOR $2.3 BILLION NEW YORK BUDGET DEFICIT

But New York state auditors are doing their best to ensure that those fleeing the state’s high taxes will face difficulties, including being subjected to an audit — likely to be followed by a massive tax bill.

New York conducted 3,000 “nonresidency” audits between 2010 and 2017, recouping around $1 billion from the practice, CNBC reported.

Between 2015 and 2017, the auditors on average collected $144,270 per audit, with more than half of those who were audited losing their cases.

New York’s success rate on audits can be attributed not only to the traditional methods of investigation like going through an individual’s credit card bills, but also to new high-tech tools that include tracking phone records, social media, and even veterinary and dentist records, according to the outlet.

Data show that between July 2017 and July 2018, the high-tax and Democrat-controlled states of New York and Illinois lost the most residents, with New York losing more than 48,000 residents, while Illinois’ population declined by more than 45,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

It remains unclear how many top-tax-paying residents were part of the people who fled the states, but the data show that low-tax red states like Florida and Texas gained new residents.

“If you’re a high earner in New York and you move to Florida, your chances of a residency audit are 100 percent,” Barry Horowitz, a partner at the WithumSmith+Brown accounting firm, told CNBC. “New York has always been aggressive. But it’s getting worse.”

OCASIO-CORTEZ’S MOM LEFT NEW YORK CITY OVER PROPERTY TAXES: REPORT

New York is also working extensively to catch those high-worth individuals who fake their move to Florida in a bid to avoid paying steep taxes in New York.

Unlike in New York, where punitive tax rates apply to fund its burgeoning public sector and welfare state, Florida’s residents aren’t subjected to any income or estate tax.

Even Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, mother of pro-tax Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, touted Florida’s low-tax system after fleeing the Big Apple.

“I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north. I’m paying $600 a year in Florida. It’s stress-free down here.”

— Blanca Ocasio-Cortez

“I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north. I’m paying $600 a year in Florida. It’s stress-free down here,” she told the Daily Mail from her home in Eustis.

Yet New York’s get-tough approach toward its former residents may pose some dangers in the long-term. While recouping unpaid money works for the state’s treasury in the short-term, such practices create a hostile environment for the wealthy that threatens to accelerate their exodus.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

And with the top 1 percent paying nearly half of the income taxes in the state, New York can’t afford any more departures.

“Even if a small number of taxpayers leave, it has a dramatic effect on this tax space,” Cuomo said last month.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-york-goes-after-residents-fleeing-overtaxed-blue-state-for-low-tax-states-with-intrusive-audits

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said Judge Ellis’s sentence seemed strangely light, especially given that the judge denied every objection raised by Mr. Manafort’s lawyers to the sentencing guidelines. “He refuted all of the arguments of the defense, yet ultimately ruled very much in favor of their client,” Mr. Tobias said.

He was also struck, he said, by the judge’s praise of Mr. Manafort’s character. “He’s lived an otherwise blameless life,” Judge Ellis said of a man who acknowledged orchestrating a sophisticated financial fraud scheme that lasted a decade. “And he’s also earned the admiration of a number of people.”

To the very end, Judge Ellis showed his distaste for special counsels. He said the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had the authority to prosecute Mr. Manafort, but “that doesn’t mean that I decided the wisdom or appropriateness of delegating to special prosecutors broad powers.” Judge Ellis cut off a prosecutor as he tried to explain the special counsel’s position on the appropriate fine for Mr. Manafort, admonishing: “That’s the government’s position. I don’t want to hear special counsel.”

The defense has played on the judge’s sentiments, insisting that Mr. Manafort has been relentlessly pursued for garden-variety crimes only because of his importance to the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian interference in 2016 presidential election. On Thursday, Kevin Downing, Mr. Manafort’s lead lawyer, took up that refrain again, repeatedly saying that a local United States attorney’s office would have handled the case differently.

In federal court in Washington, where Judge Amy Berman Jackson will sentence Mr. Manafort next week on two conspiracy charges, that strategy has been noticeably less effective.

Some legal experts suggested that Mr. Mueller’s team might respond to Judge Ellis’s decision by asking Judge Jackson for a specific sentence on the two conspiracy charges, which each carry a maximum penalty of five years.

But few expect her to be influenced by the Virginia judge’s decision. “It’s not her job to use her sentence as a moment to correct what she thinks went wrong in this case,” Ms. Barkow said.

One of the biggest issues remaining for Mr. Manafort is whether he will be allowed to serve out his two sentences simultaneously. Prosecutors have taken no stand on that so far, but indicated in a sentencing memorandum that they might do so after Judge Ellis’s decision.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/manafort-sentencing-ellis.html

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(CNN)Potentially thousands more parents and children the US government split up at the southern border will now be included in a lawsuit over family separations, a judge ruled Friday.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/politics/family-separation-order/index.html

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    Commercial satellite imagery of a facility near Pyongyang suggests that North Korea is preparing to launch a missile or space rocket in the near future.

    The images are of a site known as Sanumdong — a facility where North Korea has assembled some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellite-launching rockets. The images, taken Feb. 22 by DigitalGlobe and shared exclusively with NPR, show cars and trucks parked near the facility. Rail cars sit in a nearby rail yard, where two cranes are also erected.

    “When you put all that together, that’s really what it looks like when the North Koreans are in the process of building a rocket,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., who has studied the images.

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    News of the activity comes just days after other satellite imagery showed that North Korea has rapidly rebuilt a satellite launch facility on the country’s west coast. Known as the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, the site has been used for several attempted space launches over the years, most recently in 2016.

    The Sohae facility, sometimes called Dongchang-ri and Tongchang-ri, was partially dismantled after President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held their first summit in June 2018. Imagery taken Wednesday suggests it may be operational again.

    Lewis cautions it’s impossible to know whether the North Koreans are preparing a military missile or a rocket that could carry a civilian satellite into space. It’s also impossible to know when any launch might happen.

    Additional images of the Sanumdong site taken Friday by another company, San Francisco-based Planet, show that vehicle activity has died down and that one of the cranes has disappeared. That could mean that workers have paused work on an ICBM or rocket, perhaps while awaiting further parts.

    Or it could mean a missile or rocket has already left the facility.

    “According to Planet imagery, I can definitely say the train has left the station,” says Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert with the One Earth Future Foundation. “But I can’t unfortunately use X-ray vision to see what’s on the train and tell whether it’s a civilian space launch vehicle or a military ICBM.”

    One possible destination would be the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Lewis says there’s no easy way to tell whether a train has carried missile or rocket parts to Sohae because the rail yard there has a roof over it to prevent satellite snooping.

    Lewis says he believes it’s most likely that the North Koreans are preparing to launch a satellite into orbit. Prior to the 2018 thaw between Kim and Trump, North Korean officials had been saying they planned to launch two satellites, Lewis says. And he says Kim reportedly visited the Sanumdong site at the end of 2017 in order to prepare.

    “We know that a space launch was a thing that the North Koreans were talking about doing,” he says.

    Lewis also says such a launch should not necessarily be regarded as an aggressive move. Rockets used to launch satellites are usually unsuitable for use as long-range missiles, he notes. “They would really make quite a poor ICBM,” he says. “I think U.S. foreign policy has been far too obsessed with North Korean space launches.”

    But speaking at a briefing on Thursday, a senior State Department official said that the U.S. would regard any launch, including a space launch, as a violation of the goodwill between Trump and Kim. “Let me just say, in our judgment, launch of a space launch vehicle from [Sohae] in our view would be inconsistent with the commitments that the North Koreans have made,” the official told reporters.

    “It seems like the two parties are moving farther apart rather than closer,” Hanham says. “I hope that there isn’t an overreaction by the United States to a space launch.”

    Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/03/08/701630382/activity-at-2nd-north-korean-missile-site-indicates-possible-launch-preparations

    President Trump on Monday will propose major spending cuts across a range of domestic government programs while seeking a large increase for the Pentagon, a budget plan that’s already encountering withering opposition from Democrats who control the House, as well as some Republicans.

    The budget has little chance of becoming law because of bipartisan resistance to many of its elements, but it sets forth the White House’s vision ahead of what is expected to be a fierce battle over government spending later this year.

    Even with deep spending cuts, the president’s plan would not balance the budget until the mid-2030s, two people briefed on the plan said, falling short of the 10-year time frame that Republicans have sought for years. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plan ahead of its public release.

    Instead, Trump’s advisers say the budget would balance after 15 years because they presume that economic growth will continue at high levels and bring in more revenue, a prediction that many economists have said is not possible.

    Still, the White House’s new 15-year deficit target illustrates the fiscal constraints of an agenda that prioritizes tax cuts and increased defense spending while simultaneously protecting big-ticket items like Medicare from any major changes.

    The proposal is Trump’s first comprehensive budget blueprint since Democrats took control of the House in January.

    Unlike in the past two years, White House officials say they plan to forcefully fight for the proposed cuts, hoping to draw a sharp contrast with Democrats on Capitol Hill.

    And the White House plans to expand its effort to cut anti-poverty programs. It will propose strict new work requirements for “able-bodied” Americans across a range of welfare programs, including health care, housing and nutrition assistance.

    Many Republicans have said these programs are bloated with waste and discourage people from returning to work. But Democrats have fiercely opposed such requirements in the past, saying they penalize the poor and strip benefits from those in need.

    Democrats — and even some Republicans — are already girding for battle with the Trump administration over many of the other proposed reductions, which they say are draconian and would severely restrict a range of government programs, from food assistance to foreign aid.

    “Clearly it’s a nonstarter in the House,” said Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), adding that Democrats have no plans to include the domestic spending cuts. “Obviously we’re going to disregard it.”

    Complicating matters for the White House, key Republicans this week signaled that parts of the budget plan would be met with a visceral reaction from both parties once it is formally presented.

    “It’s hard to maintain a straight face with that kind of proposal,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

    Presidential budgets are routinely rebuffed by Capitol Hill, and Trump’s previous efforts have been no exception. The White House has proposed cuts previously, but officials have backed down and agreed to bipartisan deals to increase spending.

    Administration officials are hoping to pivot to targeting spending this time around, particularly as the 2020 election nears and they try to draw Democrats into a debate about the size of government.

    “Time and again, Congress has ignored presidential cost-saving recommendations and plowed ahead with irresponsible budgets that increase both spending and the size of government. This needs to stop,” acting White House budget director Russell T. Vought wrote in a recent opinion piece. “It is time for Congress to join the president in his commitment to cutting spending.”

    Lawmakers have funded the government through the end of September, but if the White House and Congress don’t reach a new spending deal by that point, they could face another shutdown. Both parties are expected to spend the next few months detailing their proposals, and the White House will take the first step Monday.

    In his budget plan, Trump will propose major cuts to domestic and international programs that provide foreign aid, environmental protection and transportation, among other initiatives.

    Overall, the White House will seek a 5 percent reduction in spending for these programs compared with caps that were set to go into place next year. Spending for these programs must be approved by Congress each year, and many lawmakers see the proposed cuts as unlikely to get traction.

    “Cutting 5 percent of all the other programs? It’d be hard. Plus you got the House, too,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “I think that’d be a difficult task.”

    The White House says cuts to these programs will help restrain overall spending levels, even though these programs represent a relatively small portion of the broader budget.

    Lawmakers eight years ago put in place budget caps on certain programs, but Congress has routinely raised those caps to prevent big cuts from going into effect. Trump will propose keeping the caps in place for the first time in his presidency, though he will also propose shifting close to $175 billion in defense and emergency money into another fund that does not face the same restrictions. A large portion would go into a fund known as Overseas Contingency Operations. The Obama administration also used this account for defense money, drawing complaints from lawmakers of both parties that the White House was relying on a budget gimmick, a point Cole repeated Friday.

    Yarmuth said moving such large sums into the overseas account was “just insane.” He said he’d warned Mulvaney against the approach, telling him, “We’re going to kick your butt over this.”

    Recent spending deals have involved Democrats accepting big Pentagon funding increases pushed by Republicans, in exchange for GOP support for comparable domestic investments. Lawmakers expect that they will ultimately reach an agreement along similar lines this time, too, which would amount to a bipartisan repudiation of the president’s budget blueprint — although Democrats intend to push for even higher levels of nondefense domestic spending now that they control the House.

    White House officials plan to describe the president’s upcoming budget as having three main elements.

    The first will be Trump’s continued focus on border security and immigration enforcement, and he is expected to propose billions of dollars in additional spending on these initiatives, including more money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Before Congress and the White House reached a spending deal in January, Trump led a 35-day government shutdown because Congress would not appropriate $5.7 billion for the construction of a wall.

    Eventually, he relented. And last month, Congress agreed to spend $1.375 billion to erect 55 miles of barriers along the Mexican border.

    Trump still aims to build a much more extensive series of barriers, and last month he took steps to redirect close to $7 billion in additional funding from other programs. The president reapportioned some of that money by declaring a “national emergency” at the southern border, a move that infuriated many lawmakers in both parties. The House has passed a resolution that would overturn that declaration, and the Senate is set to take similar action, though Trump has the power to veto the measure and his critics lack the votes to override him.

    By signaling that border security will remain a major focus in the upcoming budget, White House officials show no sign of retreating from their clash with Congress over how this money should be used.

    Another element of the budget that White House officials plan to tout is reforms that they say are necessary to make the government more efficient and less duplicative. It could not be immediately learned what these changes would be.

    Finally, the plan is expected to lay out a new “fiscal path” for the country, a direction White House officials believe has been prompted by economic growth caused by the 2017 tax cut law and the elimination of numerous regulations. The plan will project that the economy will grow by roughly 3 percent a year, slightly higher than the level achieved in 2018 but much higher in the coming years than a range of economists have said is feasible. The Federal Reserve forecasts 2.3 percent growth for 2019.

    The White House budget will predict that faster economic growth will boost tax revenue past current projections, helping to reduce the deficit somewhat.

    White House officials say the deficit would be eliminated over 15 years if all of Trump’s proposals were enacted.

    Trump’s advisers said his first budget proposal, offered in 2017, would have eliminated the deficit within 10 years, but it was slammed by critics who decried its controversial accounting assumptions and rosy economic forecasts. The budget plan last year, like the new plan, also did not eliminate the deficit over 10 years, something that had long been a stated goal of conservatives in Congress.

    The federal government spends more than $4 trillion each year on a range of programs, and it will bring in slightly more than $3 trillion this year through taxes and other revenue. The gap between the two figures is called the deficit, which the government pays for with borrowed money by issuing debt.

    The government now has more than $22 trillion in debt, and the deficit is projected to run between $900 billion and $1 trillion in the coming years.

    To tackle the deficit, Republicans in the past have proposed cutting spending on large programs, like Medicare, a health-care program for older Americans; food stamp benefits for the poor; and Medicaid, a health-care program for low-income people and those with disabilities.

    “Until you get serious about entitlement spending, there’s just no way to balance,” Cole said.

    Trump, however, has told aides that they cannot cut Medicare or Social Security spending in his budget because they are very popular with older Americans. That makes it much harder for his budget to constrain spending.

    Some Democrats have proposed reducing the deficit by raising taxes, both by reversing some tax cuts that were approved in 2017 and by adding taxes on upper-income households to finance new spending on health care, education and environmental programs.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-budget-to-propose-slashing-domestic-spending-boosting-defense/2019/03/08/1758b6e0-41c2-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html

    House Democrats voted Friday to defend localities that allow illegal immigrants to vote in their elections, turning back a GOP attempt to discourage the practice.

    The vote marks a stunning reversal from just six months ago, when the chamber — then under GOP control — voted to decry illegal immigrant voting.

    “We are prepared to open up the political process and let all of the people come in,” Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and hero of the civil rights movement, told colleagues as he led opposition to the GOP measure.

    The 228-197 vote came as part of a broader debate on Democrats’ major legislative priority this year, HR 1, the “For the People Act,” which includes historic expansions of voter registration and access, as well as a major rewrite of campaign finance laws.

    The measure would have had no practical effect even if it had passed. Illegal immigrants — and indeed noncitizens as a whole — are not legally able to participate in federal elections.

    But Republicans had hoped to send a message to localities such as San Francisco, where noncitizens are now allowed to vote in school board elections.


    QUIZ: US Citizenship Test (Part II) — could you pass?


    “It sounds like I’m making it up. What kind of government would cancel the vote of its own citizens, and replace it with noncitizens?” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas Republican.

    He pointed to last year’s vote, when 49 Democrats joined the GOP to decry noncitizen voting.

    On Friday just six Democrats voted in favor.

    A 1996 federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but there is no prohibition on localities, and indeed a number of jurisdictions allow it, to some extent.

    Famously liberal Takoma Park, a small jurisdiction in Maryland, has for several decades allowed noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote in local elections.

    Experts say as many as 40 states or territories allowed noncitizen voting dating back to the nation’s founding.

    San Francisco in July began allowing noncitizens to vote in school board elections — though they must be parents or legal guardians of students.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/8/house-votes-favor-illegal-immigrant-voting/

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    (CNN)On Friday, the White House announced that communications adviser Bill Shine was leaving — shuttled off to Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign for an amorphous job that sources familiar with the move acknowledged was not part of any sort of broader, planned strategy related to the President’s reelection bid.

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      Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/politics/bill-shine-donald-trump-2020/index.html

      President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump paid their respects to the 23 victims of deadly tornadoes that ripped through eastern Alabama this week, holding hands as they viewed the white crosses that had been erected in their memory.

      “We saw things you wouldn’t believe,” Trump said after viewing some of the damage and meeting some residents who’d lost loved ones and their homes.

      “What they went through is incredible. One woman lost 10 people in her family,” Trump said.

      Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/president-trump-first-lady-tour-alabama-tornado-damage-n981266

      Illegitimate occupier of the Venezuelan presidency Nicolas Maduro likes to tweet almost as much as President Trump. But on Friday, Maduro’s Twitter feed went peak Maduro — which is to say, one tweet short of a full mental breakdown.

      Maduro’s particular gripe was the breakdown of his nation’s electricity network. The immediate cause of the collapse is a mechanical failure at a major hydroelectric plant which supplies Caracas. The ultimate cause of the power failure is the fact that, like any good socialist, Maduro’s idiotic government has spent the past 10 years blowing its oil wealth on corruption and Cuban intelligence officers, rather than investing in basic utilities. Now, Maduro is reaping the whirlwind.

      Of course, Maduro can’t admit that. To do so would be to prove his failing to the population in a way that might provoke a final uprising against him. Instead, Maduro has been declaring his brave resistance to the latest act of Yankee aggression: an “electric war.” First up, the mad Venezuelan leader declared that:

      Then came the call for continued loyalty in face of failure.

      It’s quite pathetic.

      Still, the real takeaway here is the binding of physical failure to psychological fear. In the darkness born of his misgovernance, Maduro knows the ides of March are beckoning. Aside from the usual suspects of Cuba, China, and Russia, and an appeasing Germany, Maduro is isolated and under escalating pressure.

      This darkness thus has two deeper meanings.

      For Venezuela’s people, it’s the old adage, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” For Maduro, it’s the motto of the 160th Nighstalkers: ” Death waits in the darkness.”

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/maduro-nearly-has-a-mental-breakdown-on-twitter

      While Judge TS Ellis read the sentence, there was no visible reaction from Paul Manafort or his wife, Kathleen, who was watching in the gallery.

      After the hearing ended, Manafort was wheeled out of the room. He looked directly at his wife. 

      Manafort’s eyes appeared bloodshot. 

      After the hearing ended, Manafort’s wife stayed in her seat for several minutes. Her friends huddled around her, with one man kneeling down beside her.

      She was the last person in the room to stand up out of her seat — including court staff, reporters, prosecutors, and members of the public. 

      Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/paul-manafort-sentencing/index.html

      CLOSE

      President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, visited Beauregard, Alabama Friday to survey the damage left after a powerful tornado roared through the town last Sunday. While there, they visited a row of 23 crosses, one for each person killed. (March 8)
      AP

      BEAUREGARD, Ala. – President Donald Trump toured tornado-ravaged Alabama on Friday nearly a week after storms ripped through a small town there, killing 23 people.

      The president touched down Friday in Lee County near where a massive tornado spun winds as high as 170 mph on Sunday. Trump had signed a major disaster declaration for the county earlier this week, freeing federal assistance to the region. 

      “The people of Alabama, they got hit very hard by the tornadoes,” Trump said Friday.

      Trump and first lady Melania Trump viewed the damage caused by the storm as they flew aboard Marine One. The president was expected to meet victims in Opelika, Alabama, and receive a briefing from the Lee County Emergency Management Agency.

      As his motorcade wound through the county, Trump passed through entire neighborhoods that were destroyed, passing by empty lots with broken pieces of metal, wood and what appeared to be scattered clothing. 

      “I saw this. And it’s hard to believe,” Trump said. “You saw things that you wouldn’t believe.”

      Trump visited with the family of Sheila Creech and Marshall Lynn Grimes, who were killed in the storm. Trump hugged their survivors, and one member of the family showed him Grimes’s motorcycle vest and Bible.

      Earlier, Conner Moulton, 7, carefully crafted each marker stroke as he signed a short message and on a banner thanking the president for coming to Beauregard. 

      “I wrote the ‘Beauregard Strong’ and thank you for your help,” the second-grader said. “Then I put my first name and my last name. He’s helping the people who got affected and lost their homes in the tornado.”

      Lana Ledbetter, a Beauregard resident who did not have any home damage but knew several people who did, came to the high school to put her mark upon the banner. 

      “It’s just amazing that he’s showing his support for our little tiny community. We’re just very thankful for the funding and just for him taking his time to come and show that support for us.” 

      Trump was accompanied on his Air Force One flight to Georgia by members of the state’s congressional delegation, including Sen. Richard Shelby and Rep. Mike Rogers, both Republicans.

      Trump has made several trips to visit with the victims of natural disasters in recent months, including to California after last year’s wildfires and to the Carolinas following Hurricane Florence.

      Trump tweeted about the storms on Monday, vowing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would provide “A plus treatment” to the state.

      Contributing: The Montgomery Advertiser

      More: As Trump visits tornado victims in Alabama, is he playing politics with disaster relief?

      More: Alabama tornado victims revealed; area braces for weekend storms – and possible severe weather

      More: 6-year-old boy is youngest victim of Alabama tornado that left 23 dead

       

       

       

       

      Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/08/alabama-tornado-president-trump-surveys-damage-deadly-storm/3081656002/

      That Michael Cohen is proudly declaring he doesn’t want a pardon from federal prison time doesn’t make him the hero he thinks it does.

      The only reason anyone would say that, as Cohen did during his embarrassing testimony in front of Congress last week, is that he knew a pardon from President Trump was never in the cards. And that’s what the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

      Cohen’s current attorney, Lanny Davis, confirmed to the Journal that after Cohen’s New York office was raided by the FBI last spring, he directed his then-lawyer Stephen Ryan to consult Trump’s attorneys about a possible pardon, should he face charges.

      The report contradicts Cohen’s congressional testimony, wherein he boasted that he “never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from Mr. Trump.”

      It’s was a dramatic moment in American history only paralleled by George Washington as a child vowing that he could not tell a lie.

      Cohen could have stopped at the “I never asked for” and it would have been sufficient, if not truthful. But he had to go the extra mile and express his dedication to imprisonment.

      The Journal’s report says that lawyers for Trump all rebuffed Cohen’s initial overture for a pardon, though one of the lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, didn’t completely shut the door on the possibility of it in the future.

      Cohen wanted a pardon and when it wasn’t offered, he decided he’d say on national television that he didn’t want it anyway. Davis, his lawyer, said as far back as mid-December in an interview on CBS that Cohen “wouldn’t take a pardon from Donald Trump if it was handed to him.” Here are other things Cohen will under no circumstance accept from Donald Trump: $1 billion dollars, a chest of diamonds, and a hug.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/michael-cohen-cant-wait-for-prison-so-hes-rejecting-pardons-he-was-never-offered

      International Women’s Day has celebrated the economic, cultural, political and social achievements of women for more than 100 years. From Greta Thunberg becoming an international sensation with her campaign for climate change last year to Chloe Kim snowboarding loops around Olympic records at the PyeongChang Games in 2018, women across the globe have been challenging stereotypes and the status quo.

      The day isn’t simply a celebration — it’s a call to action for everyone to continue to push for complete gender equality.

      1. What is its history?

      The early 20th century was a time when women were becoming more active in their protests against oppression and gender inequality, leading marches and campaigns to demand equal rights. According to the official International Women’s Day website, during the International Conference of Working Women in 1910, Clara Zetkin of Germany’s Social Democratic Party proposed that a day be set aside every year across the world to celebrate women and reinforce their demands. The proposal was ultimately accepted and put into practice, starting in Germany and Europe and spreading across the globe over the years.

      42 years, 7 months and 16 days

      … the length of time between when a constitutional amendment granting a woman’s right to vote was introduced in the U.S. Congress (Jan. 10, 1878) and when it was finally ratified (Aug. 26, 1920).

      Feminist activist Gloria Steinem joins marchers before the International Women’s Day March in New York in 1975.Bettmann Archive via Getty Images file

      2. When is it observed?

      The first International Women’s Day was observed March 8, 1914. Even though International Women’s Day was decided upon in 1910, the tradition of celebrating it on March 8 took a few more years to decide upon.

      In 1975, the United Nations announced that International Women’s Day would be an official day of observance for all of its member countries. Years later, the world body also instituted annual themes to promote the celebration of the day, such as “Celebrating the Past, Planning for the Future” and “World Free of Violence Against Women.”

      47%

      … of the U.S. workforce is made up of women.

      3. What is the 2019 theme?

      This year’s theme is #BalanceforBetter, meant to promote a future in which both men and women are equal in professional status, media perception, the positions they hold in government and more. Whether it’s men supporting their female coworkers or women pushing into the STEM field, everyone has a part in promoting #BalanceforBetter. STEM programs stress education in science, technology, engineering and math.

      1/6

      … the ratio of active duty female U.S. military service members to their male counterparts.

      4. What about a color?

      Purple is the internationally recognized color to symbolize women while the combination of the colors green, purple and white is meant to represent women’s equality, according to the IWD website. Purple, or the combination of those colors, may be displayed to celebrate International Women’s Day.

      9.7%

      … of U.S. couples in which the wife earned at least $30,000 more than her husband.

      A demonstrator chants during a march for International Women’s Day in Madrid on March 8, 2018.Pablo Cuadra / Getty Images file

      5. How is it celebrated?

      Every country has its own special tradition for celebrating International Women’s Day. In Italy, for example, the day is celebrated by giving women a mimosa blossom. You can celebrate the day on social media by posting pictures of yourself with your hand out like a set of scales and using the hashtags #BalanceforBetter and #IWD2019. People also share posts of themselves celebrating the women in their lives and showing how they are actively working to support women.

      70%

      … women with children younger than 18 who participate in the U.S. labor force

      6. Why is it still observed?

      Women have come a long way since that conference in 1910, and many people believe that most of the battles have already been won for women. But according to the IWD website, women are still not getting equal pay, there are lower proportions of women to men in government positions, and women’s education is still being withheld across the world. Battles have been won, but the battles aren’t over yet.

      Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/international-women-s-day-2019-history-theme-importance-n980626

      I have written many times about the normalization of anti-Semitism on the Left and specifically about the recent anti-Semitic statements from Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and the disgusting excuses for her being pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and leading Democratic presidential candidates. This post is not intended to relitigate those issues but to reach out to Jewish Democrats who agree that Omar’s statements were anti-Semitic and who have been frustrated and hurt by the response of party leaders.

      I want you to know that it’s ultimately up to you to take a stand against the festering anti-Semitism in your own ranks. I can write, and likely will write, plenty of articles about the growing anti-Semitism problem within the Democratic Party. But I recognize that, given that I’m a conservative, much of what I write will be dismissed as coming in bad faith. Any change that’s going to happen is going to have to happen from within.

      I say this as somebody who is no stranger from feeling alienated from a political party. In 2016, faced with the rise of Donald Trump, I publicly de-registered from the Republican Party, and not just in vague terms. I actually went on Fox News during prime time and specifically said, “The Republican Party has chosen to embrace Donald Trump. That’s their prerogative. But this is where I get off the boat. … I think that he’s exploited and inflamed bigotry and sexism. That’s not the type of conservative message I abide by, which is about limited government, returning power to the states, and focusing on the Constitution.”

      I took a lot of heat for doing that and still do it to this day. And obviously I was unsuccessful in preventing the Trumpist takeover of the party. But I bring this up to demonstrate that I’m not expecting any Democrats to take any actions that I myself was not prepared to take.

      To be clear, I’m not even arguing that Jewish Democrats suddenly vote for Trump in 2020. I get that you’re in a tough spot. It isn’t as if the Trump GOP has been offering welcoming language to minority groups, however pro-Israel its stances have been. And given that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be entering her 90s in any theoretical Trump second term, the idea of flipping parties is unfathomable. (I could never bring myself to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and ended up writing in “none of the above.”)

      All I’m arguing for is that you be more assertive in driving out anti-Semitism from your party. Speak up. Protest. Take a stand. Actually exercise some of the influence that the Jew haters are always claiming you have. Don’t let Democrats take your support for granted. Get over your fear that speaking out will give a cudgel to Trump Republicans, who you view as bigoted. Anti-Semitism needs to be driven out of polite society wherever it comes from. No side should be given a free pass.

      So far, unfortunately, the reaction from Jewish Democrats has been mostly disappointing. Though there was criticism of Omar coming from Jewish Democrats, they ultimately bailed out leadership. The Jewish Democratic Council of America said it was ” proud” of Democrats, attacked Trump, and claimed Democrats were “quick to rebuke” Omar. This is an appalling act of revisionist history.

      Pelosi could not get a resolution passed specifically addressing anti-Semitism and Omar’s comments, and instead was forced to issue a broad generic condemnation of all hate that minimized the specific issue of anti-Semitism. As Pelosi said, “We should be addressing these forms of hatred and not mention her name, because it’s not about her. It’s about these forms of hatred.” Okay, so if it wasn’t about her, then let’s not pretend the issue has been dealt with, let alone with any sort of haste.

      Jewish Democrat Josh Block of the Israel Project, who served in the Clinton administration and also as an AIPAC spokesman, provides a much better model for how Jewish Democrats can speak up. It starts with stating the truth of what happened.

      “I think it is deeply alarming to see that there’s been such difficult waters for the leadership to tread getting passed what is a very simple condemnation of very clear statements that are anti-Semitic,” Block said on i24 News. “The responses from some [Democratic] presidential candidates … are incredibly disingenuous, lying about the context in which these things took place, suggesting there was some policy content to Ilhan Omar’s remarks suggesting Jews are buying influence of America, that they’re warping the debate, that they’re demanding loyalty and fealty to other countries, that Jews in America are not loyal Americans. These aren’t about policy debates. They’re directly assaults on American Jews designed to make us feel less welcome, less participatory, and less safe, in our political spaces — whether it’s the Democratic Party or society at large. And the top Democratic leaders in America have a responsibility to take action — forceful action — to confront anti-Semitism now, or they risk breaking, by the way, on 60 years of relationships and trust that American Jews hold in our leaders that they’ll protect us unequivocally.”

      Block also made a similar case on PBS. More Jewish Democrats should follow his lead.

      Over in Britain, where the growing anti-Semitism on the Left was allowed to fester, the Labour Party is being torn apart. Recently, a Labour Party official ruled that this image of an alien stamped with a Jewish star covering the face of the Statue of Liberty that was posted by a party activist was merely an effort to criticize Israel.

      The Democratic Party isn’t quite there yet, but it’s naive to believe that it cannot end up there if current trends continue. No reading of history should lead one to conclude that the Democratic Party is immune to the oldest form of prejudice.

      It is not inevitable that the Democratic Party will get taken over by anti-Semitism, but the only way to prevent it from happening is for Jewish Democrats to take a firm stand. Now. The future of the Jewish community in America may depend on it.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/dear-jewish-democrats-its-up-to-you-to-fight-anti-semitism-within-your-party

      Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is right about one thing: Former President Obama is a fraud.

      His promise of “hope and change” was just cleverly packaged pablum, the progressive congresswoman said in an interview with Politico.

      I agree! Obama certainly wasn’t the progressive savior he claimed to be when he first ran for president in 2008. Indeed, between his commitment to America’s “forever wars,” his cozy relationship with Big Tech, and his easily made peace with money in politics, Obama was as establishment as any other president in American history.

      But to hear a Democratic freshman congresswoman say it in slightly different terms is really something else.

      Politico reports:

      As the Somali population in her city continued to swell, so did the young activist’s discontent. By the time she ran for office in 2016, knocking off a 22-term incumbent to win a seat in the Minnesota statehouse, Omar was fed up—not so much with Trumpism, or with politics in general, as with the Democratic Party.

      As she saw it, the party ostensibly committed to progressive values had become complicit in perpetuating the status quo. Omar says the “hope and change” offered by Barack Obama was a mirage. Recalling the “caging of kids” at the U.S.-Mexico border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor.

      “We can’t be only upset with Trump. … His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar says. “And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”

      As it turns out, a protracted, legally dubious drone war in Somalia might not sit well with a Somali immigrant to the U.S. Who knew?

      Omar also raises a good point about federal immigration policy during the Obama years. Namely, that there isn’t a lot of difference between what we have now and what we had then. Honestly, the most interesting thing about the congresswoman highlighting this point on immigration is the number of people who decry current policy without realizing many of the same practices they oppose are also holdovers from previous administrations.

      I always thought there would come a moment when Obama’s gutting of the Democratic Party during his two terms in office would eventually generate friendly fire. I also thought there would come a time when his record as an establishment president would come under serious left-wing scrutiny. I just didn’t think it would happen so soon after he left office.

      What’s interesting here is that the congresswoman’s remarks to Politico stand in stark contrast to her pre-election praise for Obama. I guess it’s easier to speak one’s mind after winning office. Omar is likely feeling even more empowered following the political victory she scored this week against her party leaders, having avoided any consequences for her open expressions of anti-Semitism. She’s on a roll because Democratic leaders are scared to death of her and her progressive fanbase.

      Keep an eye now on how Omar’s Democratic colleagues react to Politico interview. I suspect she is not alone in being disenchanted with Obama, even to the point of anger. I suspect there are more like her in the Democratic Party, and I suspect they will make themselves heard as they grow in numbers, confidence, and influence.

      This day was coming for the Obama wing of the Democratic Party. It was only a matter of time.

      If you promise your followers the moon and the stars, they’re going to be a little miffed when you fail to deliver. Worse yet, if you tell them you’re the messiah, they’re going to be awfully angry when they figure out you aren’t.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/rep-ilhan-omar-on-obama-hope-and-change-was-a-fraud

      Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was jailed on Friday after refusing to answer questions from a federal grand jury in Virginia looking into the release of documents to WikiLeaks.

      U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton told Manning that she would remain in federal custody “until she purges or the end of the life of the grand jury” a statement from her representatives said.

      Earlier in the day, Manning told reporters that she was prepared to go to jail following the closed contempt hearing for her resistance to provide testimony because she doesn’t believe in the grand jury process.

      On Wednesday, Manning appeared before the same grand jury, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, but refused to answer any questions.

      “I responded to each question with the following statement: ‘I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights,” Manning said in a statement.

      “All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010 — answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013,” the statement said.

      Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking a trove of military intelligence records to the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks. Her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017 after seven years behind bars.

      A day earlier, a judge in the Eastern District of Virginia denied a motion filed by Manning’s attorneys challenging a subpoena calling her to testify, according to her lawyers.

      Manning told The Associated Press Tuesday that she didn’t know what case she was being called to testify about.

      “I just know there were an awful lot of government lawyers there,” she said after the hearing in which her motion was denied.

      “Grand juries are terrible, to say the least,” Manning, 31, added.

      Manning’s support committee, Chelsea Resists!, called the grand jury system “dangerous and undemocratic.”

      “Grand juries operate in secret, allowing the government to retaliate against activists and dissidents behind closed doors,” said a statement from the committee released by Manning’s lawyers.

      “Donald Trump and his administration have publicly declared their disdain for Chelsea, and for President Obama’s decision to commute her sentence,” the Chelsea Resists! statement said. “Chelsea has stood by the testimony from her 2013 court-martial, and this subpoena serves no legitimate purpose. It is a punitive effort to reverse Obama’s legacy, exposing Chelsea to legal hardship and possible imprisonment.”

      Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-jailed-refusing-testify-grand-jury-virginia-n980016

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      Washington (CNN)White House deputy chief of staff and de facto communications director Bill Shine has stepped down to join the Trump campaign, press secretary Sarah Sanders announced in a statement Friday.

      Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/politics/bill-shine-white-house-communications/index.html

      With the release of the “Mueller Report” reportedly just around the corner, the sentencing Thursday of one-time Trump presidential campaign manager Paul Manafort to 47 months in prison offers a timely reminder that the whole Russia collusion narrative was never more than a fantasy of the Democrats and the mainstream media.

      As numerous investigations and witness testimonies have already demonstrated, there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to elect Donald Trump as president. The entire justification for the Mueller probe was a farce, invented by former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign manager Robby Mook and the rest of the Clinton brain trust to justify their humiliating defeat in the 2016 presidential election.

      Even U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III acknowledged that Manafort’s convictions were completely unrelated to the Russia collusion, about which the judge had previously expressed skepticism in open court.

      PAUL MANAFORT SENTENCED TO 47 MONTHS IN PRISON ON BANK AND TAX FRAUD CHARGES

      “He is not before the court for anything having to do with colluding with the Russian government,” Ellis said in court.

      It’s near-universally assumed by now that Mueller’s final report, however much of it the public eventually sees, will fail to show any evidence of collusion. So the same talking heads who’ve spent nearly two years whipping half the country into a frenzy about Russian collusion have to cling to what they do have: Manafort.

      Manafort, plain and simple, is going to prison for things completely outside the original scope of Mueller’s investigation. All of his convictions stem from the shady lobbying businesses he ran with his associate Rick Gates long before joining the Trump campaign in 2016.

      The problem for them is that Manafort’s convictions illustrate just how empty Mueller’s net has come up after more than 21 months in this putrid fishing hole.

      Paul Manafort was found guilty of tax fraud, bank fraud, and failure to report a foreign bank account. In addition to the 47-month prison sentence that Ellis gave him Thursday, Manafort will serve even longer because the judge in his other criminal trial threw out his guilty plea after determining he lied to Mueller’s investigators.

      This is all very serious — and all very irrelevant to Russian election interference.

      Manafort, plain and simple, is going to prison for things completely outside the original scope of Mueller’s investigation. All of his convictions stem from the shady lobbying businesses he ran with his associate Rick Gates long before joining the Trump campaign in 2016.

      The same could be said about any of the myriad other indictments Mueller has brought against Americans who were unfortunate enough to have ties to the Trump campaign. The only illegal conduct Mueller uncovered either predates the Trump campaign or involves “process crimes” directly linked to Mueller’s investigation, such as those of George Papadopoulos, the former Trump aide who got a whopping 14 days in jail after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

      The fact is that after nearly two years of work, we still have no indication that the Mueller probe found so much as a single instance of actual Trump-Russia collusion. Cases such as Manafort’s are typically relegated to no more than a moment’s mention on the nightly news, but not this time.

      The fake collusion narrative is simply too important to the media. They’ve invested too much of their capital and credibility, so they have no choice but to present Manafort’s crimes as evidence not only of Donald Trump’s supposed culpability but of Mueller’s efficacy.

      For their part, the president’s detractors on Capitol Hill, particularly Democratic committee chairmen Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, need the artificial stench of the Manafort sentencing to hang in the air as long as possible so that they can prepare to launch the second wave of their vile, politically motivated attack.

      CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

      With the Mueller probe’s long reign as “The Resistance’s” best hope for overturning the 2016 presidential election quickly coming to a close, the Democrats hope to simply transition to their own witch hunts.

      As Manafort’s sentencing on charges unrelated to the 2016 election reminds us, the coming congressional investigations will fare no better than Mueller did in the hunt for evidence of the collusion that never was.

      CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY MIKE HUCKABEE

      Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mike-huckabee-manafort-sentencing-has-zero-zilch-nada-nothing-to-do-with-russian-collusion

      U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was apparently unmoved Thursday by Meghan McCain’s tearful remarks about her on “The View.”

      McCain had become emotional during the ABC talk show, discussing Omar’s recent criticisms of Israel and its supporters. She said Omar’s remarks were hurtful to many of her Jewish friends.

      “It is very dangerous, very dangerous,” McCain added, “and I think we collectively as Americans on both sides, what Ilhan Omar is saying is very scary to me. It’s very scary to a lot of people and I don’t think you have to be Jewish to recognize that.”

      OMAR, ANTI-SEMITISM DEBATE IN THE HOUSE ENDS WITH A LAUNDRY LIST RESOLUTION — WHAT A SHAME

      But instead of responding directly to McCain, Omar retweeted a post that criticized McCain for “faux outrage” and referred to past statements attributed to McCain’s late father, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who died last August at age 81.

      “Meghan’s late father literally sang ‘bomb bomb bomb Iran’ and insisted on referring to his Vietnamese captors as ‘g–ks’,” read the post by Medhi Hasan, an “Intercept” columnist and Al Jazeera host. “He also, lest we forget, gave the world Sarah Palin. So a little less faux outrage over a former-refugee-turned-freshman-representative pls.”

      GET THE FOX NEWS APP

      Omar’s retweet was praised by many of her followers as a sign that the freshman congresswoman was “standing up to the establishment.” But the retweet also attracted more negative attention to the Somali-born lawmaker, just hours after the U.S. House voted in favor of an anti-hate resolution that was initially inspired by the Minnesota Democrat.

      Omar has resisted calls for her to apologize for blasting those who pledge “allegiance to a foreign country,” referring to Israel, in what has been decried as an anti-Semitic trope.

      The Associated Press contributed to this report 

      Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/omar-retweets-post-critical-of-late-senator-john-mccain-in-an-apparent-response-to-his-daughter