Saladino announced in a press release that he had filed suit in the Southern District of New York, while Hikind told Fox News that he had filed his claim in the state’s Eastern District.
“I have officially filed my lawsuit against AOC for blocking me on twitter,” Saladino tweeted. “Trump is not allowed to block people, will the standards apply equally? Stay tuned to find out!”
I have officially filed my lawsuit against AOC for blocking me on twitter. Trump is not allowed to block people, will the standards apply equally? Stay tuned to find out! pic.twitter.com/0RmHI7x9Qc
— Saladino for Congress (@JoeySalads) July 9, 2019
“If we can’t talk to one another, the whole system breaks down,” Saladino added in his press release. “Look what is happening in my district when entrenched NeverTrumpers are confronted by America First ideas. Like it or not we live in the same city and we need to be professional.”
“Just today the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling that elected officials cannot block individuals from their Twitter accounts, thereby setting a precedent that Ocasio-Cortez must follow,” Hikind told the network. “Twitter is a public space, and all should have access to the government officials on it.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not immediately return a request from The Hill for a comment on the pending lawsuits.
Republicans learned this the hard way in 2016, when Americans propelled Donald Trump to the GOP nomination in an attempt to oust the out-of-touch establishment. Now, it’s the Democrats’ turn to learn from an upheaval within their own party.
The Democratic Party was reanimated in 2018 when a wave of younger candidates, who lean much further left than their predecessors, entered the House. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took social media by storm, becoming an overnight phenomenon that gave new energy to socialist policies once considered taboo. Rather than try to fight it, establishment Democrats endorsed her Green New Deal (much to their regret later) because they felt if they didn’t, they would lose the moral high ground on environmental policy.
Some career Democrats even defended freshman Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib when they came under fire for fervent anti-Israel rhetoric. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of them. But now Pelosi is being forced to face what these new faces and ideas mean for the Democratic Party she’s known and led for decades.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said, after being asked why Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley opposed the bipartisan border funding bill. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Ocasio-Cortez quickly responded: “That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment,” she wrote on Twitter. “And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.”
Ocasio-Cortez will refuse to admit it, but Pelosi is right. AOC ran for Congress in a district Democrats can’t lose. And she won her primary in part because New York’s 14th District experienced a record-low voter turnout, and her opponent was shockingly tone-deaf and arrogant. Joe Crowley took his re-nomination for granted. But Ocasio-Cortez’s win was not a fluke, either. She won on the votes of the white gentrifiers who are taking over the Democratic nominating process all over America, moving in from a position far to the Left of the Democrats’ traditional poorer, nonwhite, and working-class voter bases.
Congress, however, is no Democratic primary. Pelosi, the wily veteran who knows how to make things actually happen, spends her waking nights thinking about how to preserve her majority so that it’s still there to legislate when the next Democratic president is elected. That takes more than a large Twitter presence: It takes political prowess. Sometimes that means compromise with the other side of the aisle. Sometimes it means pushing policies that the majority of the Democratic Party can get behind and act on. A majority of congressional Democrats might have voiced their support for Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, but when it came time to act, not a single Democrat voted for it in the Senate.
There’s a reason Pelosi is one of the most successful congressional Democrats in recent history. But the future of the Democratic Party doesn’t look like Pelosi, it looks like Ocasio-Cortez, and “Medicare for All,” decriminalized illegal immigration, and student loan debt forgiveness. It is a future of impractical ideological fanaticism. These are the policies the new Democrats reintroduced, and they’re the same ones prominent politicians on the presidential primary debate stage have endorsed.
Pelosi, once viewed as a fixture of her party’s Left wing, has suddenly become the out-of-touch establishment. She is now the bogeyman who stands in the way of impeachment while the majority of Democratic presidential candidates openly call for it; the backroom-dealing old-timer still willing to meet with Trump and even deal with him. Just a few years ago she was considered a far-left foe. But now, she comes across as a stabling force holding the Democratic Party in somewhat of a central position. This can’t last for long. And it won’t. Just like Republicans did in 2016, Democrats will face a reckoning.
In its race to the Left, Pelosi’s party is moving on without her. Of course, Pelosi will occupy a position of power among Democrats as long as she wants to. There’s a reason former Vice President Joe Biden is still leading in the polls among the other Democratic candidates, and why career Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., continue to get reelected. But they’re no longer the ones leading the ideological charge. Ocasio-Cortez is.
A federal judge late Tuesday refused to let Justice Department lawyers withdraw from a dispute over the citizenship question on the 2020 census form, in a case that continues after the Supreme Court’s ruling in late June.
Eleven lawyers from the DOJ asked Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. district court for the Southern District of New York on Monday for permission to step down from representing the government in the dispute. Attorney General William Barr has said that given the department’s decision to press ahead on the issue, “I can understand if they’re not interested in participating in this phase.”
DOJ officials said privately that Barr acted before the lawyers could officially object to further work on the matter.
But Furman said that before lawyers can get off a case, court rules require them to explain why they wish to withdraw and that the DOJ request was “patently deficient.” That’s especially true, he said, given that legal briefs are due in a few days on whether the judge should issue an order preventing any action by the government to put the question on the form.
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The case has been litigated on the premise, at the government’s insistence, that a speedy resolution “is a matter of great private and public importance,” Furman said.
His order allowed the government lawyers to resubmit their request to withdraw, provided that they offer satisfactory reasons and agree to make themselves available if needed at any future hearings.
The judge allowed two of the 11 lawyers to withdraw. One has left the DOJ, the other is no longer in the Civil Division, which handles lawsuits of this type.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been fighting to keep the question off the form, praised the judge’s order. “The Justice Department owes the public and the courts an explanation for its unprecedented substitution of the entire legal team that has been working on this case. The Trump administration is acting like it has something to hide, and we won’t rest until we know the truth,” Dale Ho, director of the group’s Voting Rights Project, said.
The Trump administration continues to print the census forms without the citizenship question. But both President Donald Trump and Barr have said that an announcement is coming in the next few days of how the administration intends to try a new approach to have the question be part of the census process.
Tuesday night, the president addressed the judge’s decision on Twitter, writing: “So now the Obama appointed judge on the Census case (Are you a Citizen of the United States?) won’t let the Justice Department use the lawyers that it wants to use. Could this be a first?”
Reports that British Ambassador Kim Darroch privately dissed the president’s team as “dysfunctional” and “inept” in leaked cables back to the British foreign ministry have set off a diplomatic spat. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
Kim Darroch is known as a garrulous and popular figure who rarely lets his diplomatic mask slip in public at his famously lavish parties.
When British Ambassador Kim Darroch went to the White House days after Donald Trump was inaugurated, the new U.S. president greeted him warmly, noting that he’d watched Darroch being interviewed on Fox News.
“You’re going to be a TV star!” Trump told Darroch.
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It was a jovial moment, according to two people Darroch told about the encounter, and it was one reason that the British envoy — in public and private — has described Trump as “charming.”
But new reports that Darroch privately dissed Trump’s team as “dysfunctional” and “inept” in leaked cables back to the British foreign ministry have set off a diplomatic spat and soured Trump on the diplomat. The president has spent two days obsessively tweeting about Darroch, claiming he doesn’t even know him, that the Brit is a “very stupid guy” and a “pompous fool” and — most astoundingly — insisting the U.S. will no longer deal with Darroch.
Yet in Washington, Darroch is widely liked and well-connected in U.S. government circles, having cultivated close ties to some of the president’s top aides, whom he regularly has seen in business and social settings. The ambassador to the U.S. since early 2016, he is a garrulous figure who rarely lets his diplomatic mask slip in public. He also throws famously lavish parties in his stately residence next to the massive British Embassy and always has a fun toast to make.
Trump aides and confidants who have attended his soirees include White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Darroch and his embassy even hosted a September 2017 engagement party for Katie Walsh, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, and her beau Mike Shields, which several Trump aides, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, attended. Matthew Whitaker celebrated the new year during his brief stint as acting attorney general at the British Embassy, where Darroch oversaw the festivities.
Now, almost overnight, the ambassador risks going from bipartisan Washington convener to ostracized foreigner at Trump’s direction. The fallout reflects how quickly Trump can turn on a top ally’s envoy — and insist that Washington turn with him. It’s also another example of Trump’s willingness to shatter diplomatic norms with the United Kingdom, which claims a “special relationship” with the United States.
“It drags one of the most important U.S. relationships internationally through the mud at the very highest levels,” said Jeff Rathke, a former Foreign Service officer and Europe analyst who has served in multiple administrations. “Even if it is temporarily satisfying for President Trump in some way, it is bad for the relationship because it undermines confidence and trust.”
The irony, said one person close to the Trump administration who’s been to Darroch’s parties, is that “a lot of folks from the White House actually say the exact same things” about the internal dynamics there. “They were probably saying those things to him.”
The fracas started Sunday, when the Daily Mail published a story detailing the contents of secret cables that Darroch had sent to London offering his analysis and views on the Trump administration starting in 2017. According to the British news outlet, Darroch described internal divisions in the White House as “knife fights,” warned Trump could lead the U.S. to war with Iran and described the administration overall as “chaotic,” predicting it would not become “less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.”
Darroch wrote that Trump “radiates insecurity” and has “no filter.” But he also warned officials in London: “Do not write him off.”
On Monday, Trump lashed out: “I do not know the Ambassador, but he is not liked or well thought of within the U.S. We will no longer deal with him.” By Tuesday, Trump seemed even more angry, tweeting: “The wacky Ambassador that the U.K. foisted upon the United States is not someone we are thrilled with, a very stupid guy…. I don’t know the Ambassador but have been told he is a pompous fool.”
On both occasions, Trump also used his tweets to attack outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May, who he said had failed to take his advice on how to negotiate Brexit with the EU. “She went her own foolish way-was unable to get it done,” Trump wrote.
So far, the British government has stood up for Darroch, noting that it’s his duty as a diplomat to offer “honest, unvarnished” analysis to his superiors back home. “Sir Kim Darroch continues to have the Prime Minister’s full support,” a U.K. spokesman said.
And the State Department has said it will still work with Darroch — for now.
“We will continue to deal with all accredited individuals until we get any further guidance from the White House or the president, which we will, of course, abide by the president’s direction,” spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said during a news conference, describing the U.S.-U.K. relationship as “bigger than any individual” and “bigger than any government.”
For his part, Darroch worked as usual on Tuesday from his embassy office on Massachusetts Avenue,. He also went to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.). However, he did not join a meeting between Liam Fox, a top British trade official, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s adviser and daughter. Fox had said he would apologize for the leak during the meeting.
Darroch, who did not respond to a request for comment, has spent decades as a diplomat, holding top positions such as national security adviser to former British Prime Minister David Cameron before coming to Washington. He’s done tours in Tokyo and Rome, and dealt with Middle Eastern and Adriatic issues, according to his embassy biography.
His appointment to the ambassador post in Washington is something of a career capstone — the position is considered the most prestigious ambassadorship in the U.K. foreign service and often goes to senior diplomats in the final years of their career.
The 65-year-old was born in Northern England and attended Durham University. He studied zoology but joined the U.K.’s diplomatic ranks in 1977. He is referred to as “Sir Kim” because of his appointment as a “Knight Commander” in 2008.
Some former officials and analysts believe what made Darroch a target for whoever leaked his critical memos is the ambassador’s extensive experience with European Union issues. He spent many years dealing with U.K.-EU relations, including having served as Britain’s representative to the regional bloc in Brussels. During a party in Washington months after the British voted to leave the EU, Darroch remarked wryly that his EU experience was “obviously time well spent.”
The belief in some corners is that the leaks of the cables were orchestrated by supporters of Brexit who want to make sure that the next British ambassador in the United States is on their side. Others suspect Russia may be behind the leaks similar to the way Moscow is accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails.
Sally Quinn, a journalist who’s attended parties at the British Embassy, said what Darroch wrote in the cables reflects what most foreign ambassadors in Washington also privately think.
“What Kim Darroch said is what all the ambassadors or most of them think, even the ones who particularly cozy up to the Trump people” like ambassadors from Middle Eastern countries, Quinn said. “They’re just lucky that their reports have not been hacked.”
Darroch has always been respectful to Trump administration officials in private, according to people who know him. At parties he has hosted, he would note how honored he was to have senior officials from the Trump administration attending, and they would return the bonhomie.
“Oh, we love the British — go Brexit!” one senior Trump administration official told Darroch at a small private dinner last year, prompting the British ambassador to laugh.
Darroch’s dilemma has now become an issue in the British Conservative Party’s internal race to replace May as prime minister. That contest is down to front-runner Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and a Brexit advocate, and Jeremy Hunt, the current foreign secretary who supported remaining in the EU during the 2016 referendum.
Hunt on Tuesday tweeted support for Darroch, whom he said was simply doing his job by sending honest analysis to London.
“Allies need to treat each other with respect as @theresa_may has always done with you,” he wrote, addressing Trump. “Ambassadors are appointed by the UK government and if I become PM our Ambassador stays.”
Johnson has stressed that he has a “good relationship” with the White House, avoiding addressing Trump’s comments directly. But Nigel Farage, a fellow Brexiteer whom Trump has suggested should be the British ambassador in Washington, bulldozed into the controversy. “Kim Darroch is totally unsuitable for the job and the sooner he is gone the better,” Farage tweeted.
Despite Darroch’s positive reputation in the foreign policy establishment, some observers pointed out that the insights he offered in his memos weren’t all that original.
“You could have pulled it from pages of The New York Times,” said a senior Conservative British lawmaker, who asked not to be named. In fact, Trump’s “overreaction” arguably proved correct Darroch’s assessment about the volatility of his administration, the lawmaker added.
Robin Niblett, director of the London-based Chatham House think tank, said Trump’s assault may be an opportunistic attempt to gain “leverage” over the next British prime minister.
“In essence, it’s, ‘You will need to buy back my love,’” Niblett said. “There’s plenty of issues on which the U.S. wants to influence U.K. foreign policy going forward: Iran sanctions, [the Chinese tech firm] Huawei and a U.S.-U.K. trade deal.”
Darroch was expected to leave his post, and possibly retire, in January 2020. The fortuitous timing could give the next prime minister a chance to possibly sit tight and quietly move him on without appearing to have caved to Trump.
If Johnson wins the prime minister’s slot, he might recall the envoy. But if for whatever reason Darroch is allowed to stay and Trump follows through on his threat to bar U.S. officials from dealing with him, Darroch could find his final days as a diplomat rather lonely.
The dust up is already affecting his ability to socialize. On Tuesday, a person familiar with the matter confirmed the White House had disinvited Darroch from a dinner on Monday night in honor of the visiting emir of Qatar.
Charlie Cooper contributed to this report from London.
The threat from Steyer is simple: His wealth means he can run a well-funded campaign for almost as long as he likes. A Steyer spokesman told The New York Times that he was willing to spend “at least $100 million” on his presidential bid.
“Anybody with $100 million to spend will have an impact,” said Jonathan Tasini, a well-known progressive writer and activist in New York. “I just think it is a massive case of ego run amok. There is absolutely nothing that Steyer is saying that other candidates, especially Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are not saying.”
“He typifies the kind of candidate that Democrats hate the most, which is somebody who thinks they can buy the primary or buy support,” said a party strategist who is unaligned with any current presidential candidate and requested anonymity to speak candidly blasted the Democratic mega-donor.
Still, the criticisms of Steyer bump up against the fact that he has espoused causes that are popular with the liberal grass roots.
After making his fortune, he first came to political prominence as a vigorous advocate for action on climate change.
Some progressives acknowledge Steyer’s commitment to their causes even as they are skeptical of his 2020 chances.
Charles Chamberlain, chairman of progressive group Democracy for America, emphasized Steyer’s record on climate change as one potential upside to his candidacy.
On that topic, he said, “What is exciting about Tom getting into the race is, with the kind of money he has, he may be able to drive forward solutions in a way that could be positive for America.”
Even so, Chamberlain noted that overall, “It’s a little difficult to see what Tom Steyer has to offer, other than bringing a billionaire’s finances into it.”
In an emailed statement, Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has endorsed Warren, said of Steyer’s choice to enter the race this late: “Especially for a rich white male, this decision should be gut checked in a major way.”
But Green also noted that “Steyer will likely add attention to two issues he and Warren have led on: impeachment and addressing the climate crisis. Those issues deserve attention.”
Sanders and Warren seem less than thrilled to have Steyer in the race.
Sanders and Warren already face a challenge in trying to get progressive voters to coalesce behind one or the other.
That will be an even steeper climb now that a candidate with a presumptive $100 million in his campaign coffers has joined the race.
In the second quarter of this year, Warren and Sanders raised $19.1 million and $18 million respectively.
On Tuesday, Warren tweeted, “The Democratic primary should not be decided by billionaires, whether they’re funding Super PACs or funding themselves” — a clear shot at Steyer.
Sanders, in an MSNBC interview, said he was personally fond of Steyer but was “a bit tired of seeing billionaires trying to buy political power.”
Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist and admaker in Steyer’s home state of California, told The Hill that Sanders and Warren have cause to be concerned: “The candidates who are running to the more progressive, left side — they just got another candidate doing that as well, and one with unlimited resources. That may complicate things for those candidates.”
Carrick noted that Steyer’s pro-impeachment ads have boosted his name recognition among the public and that his access to the email addresses of the people who signed up to that effort could help him enormously.
Elsewhere in the progressive world, however, there is carping that Steyer — if genuinely concerned about the issues rather than self-promotion — could have put his wealth to use in more effective ways.
Jamelle Bouie, a liberal columnist with The New York Times, tweeted, “if i were a liberal billionaire with a $100 millions to burn i’d spend it on a nationwide voter registration drive instead of a vanity presidential campaign.”
Tasini, the progressive activist in New York, argued Steyer could have made more of a substantive difference if he had been prepared to use his money to buttress Democratic hopes of taking back control of the Senate next November.
Tasini poured cold water on the suggestion that Steyer would have a real impact in terms of taking votes away from the top progressive candidates.
“That’s unlikely because I think his status as a white man billionaire does not chip in to the base of either Warren or Sanders,” Tasini said. “Would he win five of their votes? Maybe. But not 5 percent of them.”
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency.
When Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, publicly supported President Trump in 2016, no one seemed to care.
In “Why I Stand With Donald Trump,” published by RealClearPolitics, he wrote that the Republican nominee was the only chance to win the White House.
Marcus listed reasons many Republicans had for voting for Trump: blocking Hillary Clinton, seeking balanced Supreme Court appointees, and curbing government regulation. “As a GOP donor who stood steadfastly behind Jeb Bush — and who has contributed to candidates for a generation — I urge all Republicans to stand up and be counted in support for Donald Trump,” he wrote.
In 2015, before Trump won the nomination, Marcus donated not to Trump, but to Bush and Scott Walker. Again, none of this is news. But people who didn’t care about all of this before have suddenly decided it matters.
#HomeDepotBoycott is suddenly trending on Twitter. The world now remembers that Marcus is a Trump supporter after features in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Washington Post revealed that the billionaire plans to give most of his money away to charity.
He signed The Giving Pledge, whose goal is to encourage wealthy philanthropists to donate at least half of their net worth. He’s donated to Autism Speaks and the Georgia Aquarium, and he emphasized to the Atlanta Journal Constitution that his philanthropic giving is much greater than his political giving.
But for 2020, Marcus is still on the Trump train. He told the AJC that while Trump “sucks” at communication, he’s succeeded with jobs and trade with China. He has pretty standard right-wing reasons for supporting the president. And let’s not forget, he’s been talking about those reasons for years.
Now, the lynch mob on social media has suddenly changed its mind about the nation’s most popular home improvement store.
My local HomeDepot was 2nd on my list of most visited stores behind Target. Third was IKEA (still suffering flashbacks from that)
I’ve refurbished several homes (fixer-uppers)&have spent ridiculous amounts in HD. I regret it now. Lowe’s, here I come.#BoycottHomeDepot
By the way, good luck finding a better hardware store. In 2017, Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison, who was running J.C. Penney at the time, joined other retail leaders to meet with Trump in the White House.
A boycott of Home Depot will do Marcus no harm. The 90-year-old has been retired since 2002. So not only is the #HomeDepotBoycott based on information that’s been public for years, it’s also a useless and outdated form of virtue signaling that, if it has any effect, will only harm Home Depot employees. Pity there’s no good way to punish everyone with incorrect beliefs, eh?
The two were photographed together there in the 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Trump always in a tie, Mr. Epstein always without. And in Manhattan, they attended many of the same dinner parties, like the one that Mr. Epstein hosted for Prince Andrew, where the guest list also included Ron Perelman and Mort Zuckerman, among others.
But longtime Trump associates played down their closeness, saying that was simply how Mr. Trump treated any guest at his club — checking on their steaks, bragging about his meatloaf, scanning the room for a better table so guests felt like they were getting special treatment.
Since Mr. Trump’s decision to enter the presidential race in 2015, his aides and allies have been eager to minimize any connection to Mr. Epstein, knowing that Mr. Epstein’s relationship with Mr. Clinton would be investigated at a time Hillary Clinton was likely to be his opponent.
Roger J. Stone Jr., the former Trump adviser, wrote in his book “The Clintons’ War on Women,” which was published during the campaign, that Mr. Trump “turned down many invitations to Epstein’s hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home.” Once when Mr. Trump visited Mr. Epstein at his Palm Beach home, Mr. Stone wrote, he later seemed to joke about the scene of underage girls he witnessed there.
“The swimming pool was filled with beautiful young girls,” Mr. Trump later told a Mar-a-Lago member, according to Mr. Stone. “‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’”
Sam Nunberg, a former campaign aide to Mr. Trump, said he raised concerns about the candidate’s involvement with Mr. Epstein before Mr. Trump officially began his presidential campaign. But Mr. Trump assured Mr. Nunberg that he had barred Mr. Epstein from entering his clubs after Mr. Epstein had tried to recruit a woman who worked at Mar-a-Lago.
“Trump said, ‘I kicked him out of the clubs when this stuff became public, and I made sure NBC knew,’” Mr. Nunberg recalled.
A federal judge in New York denied the Justice Department’s intention to put a new legal team to work on the attempt to get a citizenship question on next year’s census.
U.S. District Court Judge Jesse Furman, an Obama appointee, said government lawyers’ motion for the change was “patently deficient” except in the case of two lawyers who have already left the department or the civil division which is handling the case.
“Defendants provide no reasons, let alone ‘satisfactory reasons,’ for the substitution of counsel,” Furman wrote.
The Justice Department sought to switch out its legal team Monday after some of its attorneys seemed to be giving up on the legal fight. Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press that he had learned from a top DOJ civil attorney leading the litigation effort that multiple people on the team preferred not to continue.
Trump reacted to the ruling hours after it was issued.
“So now the Obama appointed judge on the Census case (Are you a Citizen of the United States?) won’t let the Justice Department use the lawyers that it wants to use. Could this be a first?” he tweeted.
The American Civil Liberties Union praised Furman’s ruling in a Tuesday statement.
“The Justice Department owes the public and the courts an explanation for its unprecedented substitution of the entire legal team that has been working on this case,” said Dale Ho, ACLU voting rights project director. “The Trump administration is acting like it has something to hide, and we won’t rest until we know the truth.”
Trump has vowed to continue his effort to include the question, even after the U.S. Supreme Court last month temporarily blocked him from introducing it. The president has indicated he would use his executive order power to add the question to the census.
Furman also questioned how the Justice Department would meet deadlines in the case if a batch of new attorneys came on board, noting that government lawyers have three days to submit written arguments in the case.
“As this court observed many months ago, this case has been litigated on the premise — based ‘in no small part’ on Defendants’ own ‘insist[ence]’ — that the speedy resolution of Plaintiffs’ claims is a matter of great private and public importance,” he wrote. “If anything, that urgency — and the need for efficient judicial proceedings — has only grown since that time.”
The judge ordered that any DOJ lawyer who wished to withdraw from the case submit a signed sworn affidavit with a sufficient reason.
On Tuesday, the president blasted the Supreme Court on Twitter over the citizenship question decision and its 2012 ruling that held the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — which he has tried to repeal — in place.
“I have long heard that the appointment of Supreme Court Justices is a President’s most important decision. SO TRUE!” he posted.
Saladino announced in a press release that he had filed suit in the Southern District of New York, while Hikind told Fox News that he had filed his claim in the state’s Eastern District.
“I have officially filed my lawsuit against AOC for blocking me on twitter,” Saladino tweeted. “Trump is not allowed to block people, will the standards apply equally? Stay tuned to find out!”
I have officially filed my lawsuit against AOC for blocking me on twitter. Trump is not allowed to block people, will the standards apply equally? Stay tuned to find out! pic.twitter.com/0RmHI7x9Qc
— Saladino for Congress (@JoeySalads) July 9, 2019
“If we can’t talk to one another, the whole system breaks down,” Saladino added in his press release. “Look what is happening in my district when entrenched NeverTrumpers are confronted by America First ideas. Like it or not we live in the same city and we need to be professional.”
“Just today the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling that elected officials cannot block individuals from their Twitter accounts, thereby setting a precedent that Ocasio-Cortez must follow,” Hikind told the network. “Twitter is a public space, and all should have access to the government officials on it.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not immediately return a request from The Hill for a comment on the pending lawsuits.
Former Vice President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that he and his wife, Jill, had made $15 million since he left office in 2017. That’s far more income than the other major Democratic candidates, and it came mostly from the release of his book Promise Me, Dad.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that he and his wife, Jill, had made $15 million since he left office in 2017. That’s far more income than the other major Democratic candidates, and it came mostly from the release of his book Promise Me, Dad.
Joshua Lott/Getty Images
Former Vice President Joe Biden has referred to himself as “middle class Joe” throughout his political career, and used to regularly joke about being the “poorest person on Congress.”
Those terms no longer apply.
Biden and his wife, Jill, have together earned more than $15 million since Biden left office. That’s according to tax returns and other financial disclosure forms released by Biden’s campaign on Tuesday. The bulk of the Bidens’ earnings come from book sales and paid speaking engagements – two routine sources of income for former high-ranking public officials.
The documents show Biden has earned far more than the rest of the 2020 presidential field, with the likely exception of billionaire Tom Steyer, who entered the race Tuesday.
The Bidens’ adjusted gross income for 2018 was $4.5 million. It was even higher — $11 million – in 2017. They have paid a federal tax rate of just over 33% each year.
By comparison, Vermont. Sen Bernie Sanders earned $561,293 last year, California Sen. Kamala Harris reported $1,884,319. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took in $846,394, and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg reported $152,643.
Presidential candidates typically don’t release their tax returns until they’ve become their party’s nominee. President Trump broke tradition and refused to make his tax returns public. As Democrats have continued to make that a political issue, the majority of the 2020 field have made their own financial information public. Biden’s campaign points out that he’s now disclosed the last 21 years of tax returns, including disclosures during his 2008 run and time as vice president.
Biden’s itemized financial disclosure shows that his income came mostly from his book Promise Me, Dad about his late son Beau Biden and the book tour that accompanied its release. He also made over $2 million from other paid speaking engagements, an average of over $127,000 per event. Event companies, universities, and community groups were among those who provided for Biden’s paid speeches, but not major corporations or industry groups.
The Bidens gave $275,896 to charity last year. The rate – about six percent of their overall income – was higher than any other candidate except Warren, who also donated about the same percentage of her income.
Here is the latest tax information from Biden and several of the other Democratic candidates who have reported it.
President Trump sat across from British Ambassador Kim Darroch during the annual St. Patrick’s Day lunch on Capitol Hill in March, inquiring about Brexit and bragging of his strong political standing, according to people familiar with their exchange.
It wasn’t the first time they met. Trump interacted with Darroch on a number of occasions in London and Washington, and most of the president’s senior aides have attended parties at the luxurious, chandelier-draped embassy in Northwest Washington and met with the ambassador at the White House.
But after leaked cables showed Darroch criticizing Trump’s administration as “inept” and the president as “insecure,” the president seemed to have a memory lapse.
“I don’t know the Ambassador but have been told he is a pompous fool,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Twitter.
The rejoinder fit a familiar pattern for Trump, who is quick to minimize ties with people who criticize him or who find themselves facing an onslaught of negative attention that reflects poorly on the president.
Among those who have gotten the “I barely know the guy” treatment: Former acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker, conservative commentator Ann Coulter, former lawyer Michael Cohen, fired FBI director James B. Comey, former senior White House aide Stephen K. Bannon, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former State Department official Brett McGurk, longtime adviser Roger Stone, former White House aide Cliff Sims, former campaign aide George Papadopoulos and even the rapper Lil Jon, who starred on Trump’s reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice.”
The people change, but the comments are eerily similar — and are something of a joke among some Trump advisers.
“I hardly even knew this guy,” Trump said of Comey, whom he met with several times in the Oval Office before firing him in May 2017. “I don’t know Whitaker,” Trump said in November about the man he just picked to be attorney general but who was suddenly facing sharp scrutiny. “I barely know him,” Trump said of George T. Conway, the husband of top aide Kellyanne Conway whom he met on a number of occasions, after he lambasted the president on Twitter. At one point, he said Manafort, the former campaign chairman, had “nothing to do with our campaign.”
“I don’t know who Lil Jon is,” Trump said of the rapper who appeared in two seasons of “The Apprentice” and later said that the president called him “Uncle Tom.” “I don’t. I really don’t.”
He has downplayed the role of a number of former administration officials, including White House counsel Donald McGahn and defense secretary Jim Mattis, after they criticized him.
“Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books,” Trump said of Bannon, his former chief White House strategist and campaign chairman, after the president felt Bannon depicted him negatively in a book by Michael Wolff.
People who know Trump well say he has a sharp memory for remembering people, and the president himself has boasted of having “one of the great memories of all time.” His aim in proclaiming to barely know someone is to minimize the importance of their critical comments or detract from the praise he believes they are unjustly receiving.
On the flip side, people who have barely met Trump can quickly turn into exceptional figures if they lavish the president with praise. He has bragged about dozens of books — and their authors — on Twitter that depict him positively. Aides say he has not read most of the books he has praised.
People who agree with or support him, particularly on Fox News, are often lauded by Trump or become “very respected.” When Trump was in need of a foreign policy team early in his candidacy and Papadopoulos was willing to sit by him, the president deemed him an “excellent guy.”
“The motivating factor on whether he has met someone or he hasn’t is whether the meeting is advantageous to the story he is telling,” said Tim O’Brien, a biographer and author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” “Trump constantly creates his own reality when he tells stories about who he has spoken to, who he hasn’t spoken to, or what he has experienced to win the point he is trying to make. It’s not in order to tell the truth.”
The degree to which Trump has a relationship with someone he claims not to know varies. In the case of Darroch, Trump does not know him particularly well, by all accounts, and the president has never been to the British Embassy. He has not met with the ambassador extensively one on one, U.S. and British officials say, but Darroch has been in every meeting between British Prime Minister Theresa May and Trump, officials say. Darroch said in leaked cables he had met Trump seven or eight times, according to people familiar with the cables’ contents.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about his interactions with Darroch.
Some people who know Trump have produced records to document their relationship after the president says none exists.
Trump called George Conway — who has become a fervent critic of the president — a “stone cold LOSER,” a “whack job” and a “husband from hell.”
“I barely know him,” Trump said.
But Conway kept a letter from Trump praising his legal abilities after a dispute years ago in which Conway helped the then-real estate magnate, as well as other communications between the two in 2016 and 2017.
“It didn’t surprise me because it is one of his regular go-to lies,” Conway said, chuckling as he recalled Trump’s dismissal of him in an interview. Trump called Sims a “low level gofer” after his book was released earlier this year, which was critical of people in the White House but not the president directly. The former campaign and White House aide declined to comment Tuesday but responded at the time with pictures of the two men. White House aides said the pair regularly saw each other. Sims titled the last chapter in his book “Disposable.”
The president’s interactions with Comey were extensively documented in former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report and in contemporaneous memos written by the fired FBI director.
Asked Tuesday about Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who now faces new charges, Trump said that he was “not a fan” of his and that they had a falling-out years ago, which the president didn’t elaborate on while taking questions from reporters.
“I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years,” Trump said.
In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine before Epstein was in trouble, Trump sang a different tune.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said.
President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Obamacare, a day after his administration asked a federal court to strike down the entire law. Speaking in the Oval Office, he said Republicans “will be the party of great health care.” (March 27) AP
A federal appeals court questioned Democratic lawyers Tuesday about whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare, violated the Constitution.
The judicial scrutiny is the next phase in a case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit where the appeals court must decide if it will uphold a lower court’s ruling that struck down the landmark health care law.
Attorneys from a coalition of 16 Democratic states and the House of Representatives, and lawyers from the Department of Justice and a group of 18 Republican states, presented their cases to the appeals court in New Orleans.
According to reports from CNN and Reuters, two judges appointed by Republican presidents — one nominated by former President George W. Bush and the other by President Donald Trump — on the three-judge appellate panel grilled Democratic lawyers on whether the law was still constitutional after Congress in 2017 eliminated a tax provision in the law tied to Obamacare’s individual coverage mandate. The other judge, who was appointed by a Democratic president, did not ask any questions, according to CNN.
If the decision eventually goes to the full appeals court, that too is dominated by judges picked by Republican presidents.
Tuesday’s oral argument in New Orleans was part of the latest legal challenge threatening the law’s key features – and possibly the entire 974-page statute.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is leading the coalition of Democratic states arguing in favor of Obamacare’s continuing constitutionality, said in a statement that the Trump administration was “pressed to explain” why American lives “should be put at risk.”
“If they have their way, millions of Americans could be forced to delay, skip or forego potentially life-saving healthcare,” he said. “Our state coalition made it clear: on top of risking lives, gutting the law would sow chaos in our entire healthcare system.
“We will fight the Trump Administration tooth and nail,” Becerra concluded.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday that Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration are “demanding that the court strike down every last provision of the ACA.”
“The ACA is a pillar of health and economic security, standing alongside Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security,” Pelosi said during a press conference ahead of the hearing. “But the GOP is showing that they want to destroy the Affordable Care Act for America’s families.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in an op-ed published on FoxNews.com Tuesday morning that it was time for Obamacare to be struck down so that the states could continue to innovate when it comes to health care policy.
“ObamaCare may be the best thing that Washington bureaucrats could ever hope for, but the truth is we think even bigger in Texas,” Paxton wrote. “It’s time the courts returned control over health care to the laboratories of democracy the founders established so that we can see all that they can accomplish.”
But in December, federal District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that by repealing the tax on people who refuse to buy insurance, Congress in 2017 rendered the individual mandate unconstitutional and, by extension, the law itself. The repeal was included in the $1.5 trillion tax cut pushed through the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump.
That ruling has not been implemented – pending the appeal in New Orleans – but the implications are huge. If the law is wiped out, so too would be insurance for 20 million people, protection for people with preexisting conditions, subsidies for low-income people, Medicaid expansions in many states, coverage for young adults up to age 26 and more.
On one side are the Trump administration and 18 states, led by Texas, that agree with O’Connor’s decision and want the law dismantled. On the other side are the U.S. House of Representatives and 16 states, led by California, seeking to have that ruling reversed. A threshold question is whether the House, and possibly the liberal states, have the required legal authority to defend a law the federal government is not defending.
During Tuesday’s hearing, appellate judges Jennifer Elrod and Kurt Engelhardt quickly cut into the opening statement from Samuel Siegel, the attorney representing the Democratic coalition of states defending Obamacare.
Siegel argued that Congress intended for the health care law to survive despite eliminating the tax provision associated with the individual mandate.
“All the court has to do is look at the text,” he said.
Judge Elrod suggested, however, that maybe lawmakers deliberately ended the mandate because they knew it would upend the rest of the health care law.
“Aha, this is the silver bullet that’s going to undo Obamacare,” Elrod said of lawmakers.
“If you no longer have a tax, why isn’t it unconstitutional?” Elrod also asked.
In addition, Engelhardt seemingly pointed to Congress rather than the courts to resolve the ultimate question of the fate of the ACA. In 2017, Congress — which, at the time, had a Republican-controlled House and Senate — failed to repeal Obamacare in its entirety.
“There is a political solution here,” Engelhardt said.
The betting line among most legal experts is that a decision reversing the trial judge and allowing the health care law to survive would not be heard by the Supreme Court, which already has spoken on the law’s constitutionality. But if the appeals court agrees that the law should be struck down, the high court is virtually certain to hear an appeal – possibly next year.
The battle lines were three-sided before the December district court ruling. While the two sets of states argued for the Affordable Care Act’s survival or demise, the Trump administration wanted only the individual mandate and associated insurance changes quashed, including protections and cost controls for people with preexisting conditions.
In his decision, O’Connor said the intentions of both the 2010 and 2017 Congresses had to be considered. “The former enacted the ACA,” he said. “The latter sawed off the last leg it stood on.”
Since then, the administration has joined the conservative states in calling for the entire law to be dismantled. Assembling something to take its place would be left to Congress and individual states.
“The other Democratic candidates for President have many great ideas that will absolutely move our country forward, but we won’t be able to get any of those done until we end the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy,” Steyer said in a statement, released alongside his announcement video.
“As an outsider, I’ve led grassroots efforts that have taken on big corporations and won results for people. That’s not something you see a lot of from Washington these days. That’s why I’m running for President,” he continued.
Steyer, who has poured millions of his own money into electing Democrats throughout the years, said in January that he would not seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, instead saying he would redouble his efforts to impeach President Donald Trump.
“I will be dedicating 100 percent of my time, effort and resources to one cause: working for Mr. Trump’s impeachment and removal from office,” he said in January.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Hedge fund billionaire and Democratic fund-raiser Tom Steyer speaks during a town hall event, Jan. 29, 2018, in New York.
In a tweet on Tuesday, he conceded that his efforts to “hold the president accountable” are “not enough.”
But now Steyer is shifting is focus to beating Trump at the ballot box, and in a four-minute video released Tuesday, he unveiled his platform for his presidential bid, focused on curbing the influence of corporations in politics and combating climate change.
“I think what people believe is that the system has left them,” he said in the video. “I think that people that corporations have bought the democracy, that the politicians don’t care about or respect them, don’t put them first, are not working for them, but are actually working for the people who have rigged the system. Really what we’re doing is make democracy work by pushing power down to the people.”
Steyer seems to be angling to cast himself as an outsider with a populist message to appeal to the broad spectrum of ideologies in the Democratic Party, amid the massive Democratic field, which now still stands at 24 candidates after California Rep. Eric Swalwell’s exit Monday.
“Americans are deeply disappointed and hurt by the way they’re treated by what they think is the power elite in Washington, D.C., and that goes across party lines and it goes across geography,” he asserted. “We’ve got to take the corporate control out of our politics … We care about improving the world and handing it on to the next generation in a way so that they can lead better lives than we’ve had.”
“And that’s exactly what I’m doing,” he added.
In 2018, through his two political organizations, Need to Impeach and NextGen America, Steyer spent $120 million in the midterm elections with the goal of electing progressive candidates across the country, turning out young voters and garnering support for Trump’s impeachment.
Despite his multi-million dollar push to impeach the president, which began in 2017 with the launch of the grassroots organization he heads dedicated to removing Trump, the word “impeachment” is never mentioned throughout his announcement video. But the video does briefly feature the president, his son, Donald Trump Jr., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and other controversial figures including, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shrkeli, and disgraced financier Bernie Madoff.
Steyer has been one of most generous Democratic donors in the past few election cycles, pouring at least $236 million in federal elections since 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ analysis of campaign finance data.
Steyer quickly rose to the single biggest political contributor in 2014 when he funneled nearly $74 million into federal elections through a super PAC he launched that year, NextGen Climate Action.
He has since remained as one of the top donors, spending more than $91 million during 2016 election cycle and another $74 million in the last cycle.
The California billionaire also dropped $12 million into Need to Impeach in its first year. Steyer’s Need to Impeach campaign is also one of the biggest online ad spenders. According to political ad spending data from Facebook and Google, the group has spent at least $8 million on online ads since May 2018, when the platforms started disclosing ad spending data.
So far this election cycle, Steyer has already given multiple seven figure checks totaling $14 million to his NextGen Climate Action Committee, according to campaign finance reports filed to the Federal Election Commission.
To seek the Democratic nomination, he has stepped down from his leadership roles at both NextGen America and Need to Impeach, but he “has committed over $50 million through 2020 to ensure both organizations fulfill their missions,” according to the release. Steyer’s outside groups position him to begin his presidential ambitions with a robust grassroots network, despite his late entry into the race.
The former hedge fund investor joins the crowded field with only one week before the qualifying deadline for the second Democratic debates in Detroit at the end of this month. To land on a debate stage, he will need to cross the 65,000 donor mark or garner 1 percent in at least three polls, but both appear unlikely in such a short time frame.
Even if he accumulates 65,000 donors, Steyer would be the 21st candidate to qualify and likely be edged out by the 20 other candidates who have secured a spot through polling, according to the Democratic National Committee’s tiebreaker rules.
ABC News’ John Verhovek contributed to this report.
Labor Secretary Alex Acosta is under intense scrutiny for his role in cutting a lenient plea deal more than a decade ago for Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy financier charged this week with federal sex trafficking crimes.
But among some human trafficking lawyers and victims advocates, concern has been building for months about the embattled Cabinet secretary, who as the U.S. attorney in Florida secured the federal non-prosecution agreement against Epstein in 2008.
In interviews Tuesday, experts said the Acosta-era Labor Department — one of the federal agencies tasked with preventing human trafficking — has been far too slow to certify special visas for trafficking victims, potentially weakening protections for an already vulnerable population.
“I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the new procedures will slow down the process exponentially,” said Martina Vandenberg, the president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center in Washington, D.C.
For the last 19 years, victims of what the government calls a “severe form of human trafficking” have been eligible to apply for what are known as T-visas, a temporary immigration benefit that allows them to remain in the United States for up to four years if they assist with a trafficking investigation or prosecution.
The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, or WHD, is one of the agencies that can certify whether a T-visa applicant is actually a trafficking victim. Under the Obama administration, the WHD usually completed this crucial step within weeks or a few months, said Julie Ann Dahlstrom, a professor at Boston University School of Law who represents trafficking victims.
But under the Trump administration, the process has effectively ground to a halt, experts said. The processing time for T-visa applications across the federal government lasts anywhere from 16 months to almost three years, according to data on the website of the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that decides on applications.
“It’s very much a departure from past procedures, and it creates additional barriers for fearful people, especially immigrant workers, who need to be incentivized to report a crime,” said Dahlstrom, who said she has three T-visa cases pending — including one that has been effectively stalled since April 2018.
For victims of human trafficking, including undocumented laborers who are worried about deportation or being reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the consequences of the apparent federal slowdown are serious, Vandenberg said.
“We have to remember that time is of the essence for trafficking victims. They’re terrified to come forward in this environment, and then to learn that one of the agencies that has authority to certify T-visas is not being responsive — that’s extremely troubling,” she said.
“But it’s part and parcel of the way this administration has dismantled two decades’ worth of protections for trafficking victims,” she added.
President Donald Trump, for his part, has claimed his administration is committed to tackling what he described in February as the “scourge” of trafficking, saying in remarks in the White House Cabinet Room: “My administration has made the fight against human trafficking one of our highest priorities.”
But lawyers and advocates are frustrated by an administration — particularly the Labor Department under Acosta, who is facing growing calls for his resignation over his role in the Epstein case — that they believe has been needlessly sluggish on this issue.
In early May, Cheryl Stanton, the current head of the department’s Wage and Hour Division, imposed a seven-week moratorium on certifications for all new T-visas and U-visas, a separate special category. The development was first reported by Bloomberg Law.
In a statement to NBC News, a Labor Department spokesperson said in part: “As part of Administrator Cheryl Stanton’s due diligence as the head of a large government agency, she thought it was prudent to understand the authorities delegated from the administrator to others in the agency,” including T- and U-visa certifications.
The moratorium has been reversed, and last Monday the Labor Department released new guidelines that advocates believe have added unnecessary bureaucratic red tape, including a policy that says department investigators cannot certify a T-visa until an outside law enforcement agency does its own probe.
“It’s unnecessary because the [Labor Department] has the ability to investigate these things,” said Erika Gonzalez, a senior attorney at the Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, or CAST. “Under this administration, we apparently no longer give survivors the benefit of the doubt.”
If approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a T-visa recipient can apply for permanent residency after three years, according to the USCIS website.
McGrath released a three-minute campaign video, titled “The Letter,” that depicts her and other Kentuckians writing letters to their senator with concerns about health care, jobs and affordable college that were ignored.
I’m running to replace Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate. Everything that’s wrong with Washington had to start somewhere—it started with him. With your help, we can defeat Mitch and defend democracy. Join us: https://t.co/c4b0WAp4jipic.twitter.com/DNLjFkHGua
“Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start some place. How did it come to this?” McGrath said in the video. “That even within our own families, we can’t talk to each other about the leaders of our country anymore without anger and blame.”
She said McConnell “was elected a lifetime ago” and has “bit by bit, year by year — turned Washington into something we all despise.”
McGrath also claimed that “budgets and health care and the Supreme Court are held hostage” in a Congress led by the Republican leader who has been in the Senate since 1985.
“A place where ideals go to die,” she added.
“The challenge of today is inside each of us. How do we reconcile our belief in basic human decency with our anger at those who block progress at all costs?” McGrath asked in the campaign video. “There is a path to resetting our country’s moral compass, where each of us is heard and we can become, once again, the moral and economic leader of a world in disarray.”
Jesse Hunt, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, mocked McGrath’s entry into the race.
“Amy McGrath blew a suburban KY House race in 2018 despite spending huge amounts of money. Statewide in 2020 against @Team_Mitch will be infinitely more difficult,” Hunt wrote. “Why? She’s still the same person who called herself ‘the most progressive person in Kentucky.’”
Amy McGrath blew a suburban KY House race in 2018 despite spending huge amounts of money. Statewide in 2020 against @Team_Mitch will be infinitely more difficult.
Why? She’s still the same person who called herself “the most progressive person in Kentucky” https://t.co/b7c9oq8Rrb
Mr. Gore’s assertion that “we cut down on illegal immigration,” as Nafta created better jobs in Mexico, sits uneasily alongside the fact that by the end of the Clinton administration in 2000 there were 4.5 million unauthorized immigrants from Mexico living in the United States, up from two million a decade earlier.
The prediction from Clinton administration officials that Nafta could vault Mexico into the select group of developed economies — an aspiration shared on the other side of the border too — never really came to pass.
Perhaps the most resonant of Mr. Perot’s observations, however, had to do with the broader impact of trade on American workers. “If we keep shifting our manufacturing jobs across the border and around the world and deindustrializing our country, we will not be able to defend this great country, and that is a risk we will never take,” he said.
Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist who as chief economist for the Labor Department helped prepare Mr. Gore for the debate, said Mr. Perot’s case was overstated. Not that many workers were displaced by trade at the time, the economy was creating other middle-income jobs, and those displaced had opportunities to bounce back.
What Mr. Perot said might not have been true then, but it is now, Mr. Katz said: “On substance, he was well ahead of his time.”
The “sucking sound” from Mexico was never really heard, but there certainly was one from China after it entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 — a move supported by the Clinton and Bush administrations. And the jobs the labor market is creating tend to be in the service sectors toward the bottom of the pay scale.
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — A panel of two Republicans and one Democrat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case asking them to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. The Democrat did not speak, although she remains overwhelmingly likely to reject this attack on Obamacare.
The Republicans, by contrast, came to court today wearing their partisan hats. When Samuel Siegel, the first of two lawyers defending the law, was at the podium for his portion of the arguments, Judges Jennifer Elrod and Kurt Englehardt peppered him with questions, many of them delivered in a mocking tone. At one point, Englehardt even accused Siegel of making an argument that betrays the American Revolutionary War.
Meanwhile, the three lawyers opposing the law did receive some critical questions from the two Republican judges, but those questions were not especially animated and they soon trailed off. Kyle Hawkins, the lawyer who delivered the bulk of the anti-Obamacare arguments, spent much of his time speaking before a silent panel, punctuated mainly by listless questions from Elrod that seemed designed primarily to give him something to talk about.
The most ominous sign of all is that the Republicans spent a considerable amount of time discussing what would be the appropriate scope of a court order striking the Affordable Care Act — a matter that obviously is only relevant if they intend to strike the law.
There were a few hints that either Elrod or Englehardt may be too embarrassed by the weak arguments raised by the plaintiffs to ultimately grant them the relief they seek. And both Republicans at one point floated a possible middle ground that would strip protections from Americans with pre-existing conditions while still leaving some of the law intact.
But the smart money would not bet on the rule of law winning out after Tuesday’s argument. Texas v. United States appears likely to end in the triumph of partisanship over law, at least in the Fifth Circuit.
The premise of Texas is that the 2017 tax law, which zeroed out a provision of the Affordable Care Act that previously required most people without health insurance to pay higher taxes, actually repealed the entirety of Obamacare.
The argument goes something like this: that provision, known as the “individual mandate” is actually drafted as two separate provisions. The first provides that most Americans “shall” carry health insurance. The second imposes a tax on people who fail to do so. After 2017, the amount of that tax is zero dollars.
In NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court famously upheld the individual mandate as an exercise of Congress’ power to tax. But wait! Because that tax is now zero, that means it’s no longer a tax, so it must be unconstitutional. Worse, because the word “shall” still appears in the law, that means that the post-2017 version of Obamacare must now be read as a command to buy health insurance — and an unconstitutional one at that.
There are numerous problems with this argument, but the biggest one is that the Supreme Court explicitly rejected it in NFIB. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in that case.
Neither the Act nor any other law attaches negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS. The Government agrees with that reading, confirming that if someone chooses to pay rather than obtain health insurance, they have fully complied with the law.
Before 2017, in other words, the law gave people a choice between paying a tax or buying health insurance. After 2017, they fully comply with the law by either carrying insurance or paying zero dollars.
Nevertheless, both Elrod and Englehardt repeatedly characterized the zeroed out mandate as a “command” to purchase insurance. That’s simply not true under NFIB.
Should the court ultimately strike down the mandate, that in and of itself doesn’t mean much. The mandate now does nothing, so a decision eliminating it should also do nothing, but that’s where the plaintiffs’ arguments take a weird turn.
When a court strikes down part of a law, it often must ask whether other parts of that statute must fall as well — an inquiry known as “severability.” Severability is a speculative inquiry. It asks which hypothetical law Congress would have enacted if it had known that one provision was invalid.
But such speculation is unnecessary in Texas. Congress already answered this question. It spent much of 2017 debating how much of the Affordable Care Act to repeal. In the end, they only had the votes to repeal one provision, the individual mandate.
Thus, even if you assume that the neutered mandate is unconstitutional, we already know that Congress would have preferred for the rest of the law to stand. That’s because Congress effectively repealed the individual mandate while allowing the rest of the law to stand.
The Supreme Court, moreover, held in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association that judges should be very reluctant to strike down constitutional provisions of a law after they find that a provision of that law is unconstitutional. “In order for other . . . provisions to fall,” Murphy held, “it must be ‘evident that [Congress] would not have enacted those provisions which are within its power, independently of [those] which [are] not.’”
And yet, both Elrod and Engelhardt appeared allergic to the idea that they are required to follow Murphy. Judge Engelhardt even suggested, at one point, that Murphy should be turned on its head, and that the burden should fall on the lawyers defending the law to prove why the whole thing shouldn’t be struck down.
When Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the U.S. House of Representatives, was at the podium, Engelhardt launched into an angry rant, demanding to know why the House couldn’t fix the problem by amending the Affordable Care Act to take this case off the table. When Letter eventually gave the obvious answer, that the Senate would have to pass the law and President Donald Trump would have to sign it, Engelhardt acted like Letter had stepped into a trap.
Why should judges become “taxidermists?” Engelhardt asked in one of the oddest moments of the argument. If part of a law is unconstitutional, why shouldn’t the political process resolve how much of the law should remain? And until it does, Engelhardt appeared to suggest, the proper remedy is just to remove the entire law.
The answer, of course, is that Engelhardt’s approach is the exact opposite of what the Supreme Court said should be done in Murphy.
In fairness, there were a few moments when Elrod and Engelhardt appeared embarrassed by the gravity of what they appear likely to do. When Letter first stepped to the podium, for example, he read to them the language from NFIB holding that the plaintiffs’ reading of the individual mandate is dead wrong, and both Republicans sat for a few moments in silence before they appeared to regain their footing and go back on the attack.
Similarly, both Republicans, at some points, appeared bothered by the idea that Obamacare provisions completely unrelated to the individual mandate might have to fall — a provision requiring restaurants to display caloric information came up a few times, for example. Elrod and Engelhardt both, at times, seemed to float the possibility of striking down the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions and other insurance regulations, while maybe keeping other parts intact.
But the argument overall was a disaster for Obamacare and, given the staggering weakness of the plaintiffs’ arguments, the rule of law. Texas also could amount to one of the most significant mass killings in American history.
Again, about 24,000 people will die every year. Year after year. If Obamacare is struck down. That’s tens of thousands of fathers who will never kiss their daughters again, and tens of thousands of wives who will never hold their husbands again.
If an invading army committed such an act — If it killed 24,000 innocent people, year after year — we would name that act an “atrocity.” Resolutions would be debated in the United Nations Security Council. Peacekeepers would be sent to intervene.
But in this case, one of the greatest acts of mass killing to occur on American soil since the Civil War will not be committed by an army. It may, however, be committed by Jennifer Elrod and Kurt Engelhardt.
If the law permitted such a result, then perhaps it could be justified. But there is no law supporting such an outcome. It’s just pure, cruel ideology all the way down.
Health insurance for 20 million people and protections for pre-existing conditions are on the line.
NEW ORLEANS — A panel of federal appeals judges aggressively questioned whether Obamacare can survive during Tuesday afternoon oral arguments in a case that could upend the 2010 health care law.
Two Republican appointees on the three-judge panel frequently interrupted attorneys to question whether the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is unconstitutional and if not whether the entire law could stand without it. The ACA’s future appeared murky after two hours of oral arguments at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but it’s not clear if the judges were ready to uphold a federal judge’s earlier decision invalidating the law.
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The lawsuit, which is supported by the Trump administration, puts at risk coverage for 20 million people covered by the ACA, as well as the law’s popular protections for insurance protections. The closely watched case is expected to eventually move to the Supreme Court, which has saved the law twice already, and could ultimately decide Obamacare’s fate next year in the height of the 2020 campaign.
This latest legal threat to Obamacare was filed by a group of red states in February 2018, months after Republican-led efforts to repeal the law collapsed in Congress. They argue that Congress’ decision to scrap the individual mandate penalty in its 2017 tax cut rendered the law unconstitutional because the Supreme Court previously upheld the mandate as a valid exercise of taxing power. Congress lowered the penalty for not purchasing health coverage to $0, but the mandate remains on the books.
In December, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor sided with the Republican-led states, shocking legal experts. The lawsuit was once seen as a long-shot, but it’s received serious consideration by Republican-appointed judges.
Appellate Judge Jennifer Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee, on Tuesday posited that lawmakers — who failed to agree on an Obamacare replacement plan two years ago — deliberately eliminated the mandate penalty because they knew the rest of the law would have to fall. She said perhaps lawmakers thought, “Aha, this is the silver bullet that’s going to undo Obamacare.”
Attorneys for the 20 Democratic-led states that are defending the law, as well as the Democratic-controlled House, countered that Congress clearly intended for the rest of the law to survive when it eliminated the mandate penalty.
“All the court has to do is look at the text,” said Samuel Siegel, the attorney representing the Democratic-led states.
The three-judge appellate panel is expected to rule in the coming months. They could back the lower court ruling invalidating all of Obamacare or overturn it entirely. The judges mayalso determine that the elimination of the individual mandate penalty only renders certain parts of the ACA unconstitutional, such as its protections for individuals with preexisting medical conditions. That was the Trump administration’s original stance on the lawsuit before recentlyembracing the lower court ruling against the entire ACA.
Judge Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee, pointed out that Congress could settle the dispute over the health law’s future by immediately stripping out the individual mandate entirely, eliminating the basis for the lawsuit. He also questioned why the Republican-controlled Senate hasn’t weighed in on the lawsuit.
“They’re sort of the 800-pound gorilla who’s not in the room,” Engelhardt said.
But in Washington, Senate Republicans were not eager to talk about the case, and several are betting privately that the ACA will survive. Someexpressed concern a court decision throwing out the entire law could create chaos in the health care system if it took effect immediately.
“If the appellate court upholds the lower court’s decision, then I hope they’re able to provide a transition,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “If the court decides it’s not [constitutional], then we have our work cut out for us.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said Congress would act “quickly, on a bipartisan basis” to restore preexisting condition protections if the courts struck them, but there’s no guarantee that they would. Republicans have supported less robust protections than those provided by the ACA, and Democrats aren’t likely to accept anything less.
Democrats, who saw their promises to defend coverage and pre-existing conditions as winning campaign messages in 2018, are eager to again press that case in 2020.
“The stakes cannot be higher,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Millions of Americans will suffer if Republicans succeed. Shame on them.”
Still, what happens next in the courts isn’t clear. During the Tuesday hearing, theRepublican-appointed judges raised numerous questions about whether any party had any legal standing to challenge the ACA’s constitutionality in the first place or toappeal the federal judge’s earlier ruling against the ACA.
The standing issue emerged as a recent wild card in the legal proceedings — the appeals panel two weeks ago first raised questions about whether anyone could challenge the decision after the Trump administration in March shifted its legal strategy to fully side with the Republican-led states.
The judges could toss the entire lawsuit if they determined the red states who brought the case haven’t suffered any harm from the removal of the individual mandate penalty. Attorneys for those states argued that even without a tax penalty, the mandate causes harm by forcing them to spend money on government health care coverage for more people.
“The ACA causes classic pocketbook injury to the states,” said Kyle Hawkins, the attorney representing the Republican-led states.
Meanwhile, the judges seemed confused by the Trump administration’s legal position. The Department of Justice supports the lower court ruling against the entire ACA, but at the same time it has argued that some provisions of the law — which the DOJ hasn’t specified — should remain.
DOJ attorney August Flentje argued that it’s too soon to determine exactly which provisions can remain even if it’s struck down.
“A lot of this stuff will need to be sorted out,” Flentje said. “It’s complicated.”
The lone Democratic appointee on the three-judge panel was silent throughout the hearing. The judges gave no indication on when they might rule on the case.
The ACA has remained in effect since a federal judge found it unconstitutional last December, and the Trump administration has said it will enforce the law while the legal battle continues.
Alice Miranda Ollstein and Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
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