Diario de Noticias

May 25 at 5:06 PM

To many Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scored a political victory over President Trump last week this week, making him so incensed that he hurled insults at her and blew up negotiations on the one issue that held the promise of a rare bipartisan deal — infrastructure.

To the president’s allies, a weakened Pelosi (D-Calif.) needed to mollify her fractious Democratic caucus, with a growing number demanding that she launch an impeachment inquiry, a move that would give the president a fresh argument that he was a victim of overzealous Democrats incapable of legislating and only interested in investigations.

Taking stock of the feud, each side insisted they got the upper hand in a fight that shows no sign of waning 18 months before the 2020 elections, with implications for the economy as the budget and federal borrowing limit remain unresolved while the dispute regarding oversight between the White House and Congress rages.

Pelosi’s allies said she showed up the president and reinforced an image of a chief executive behaving so badly and childishly that he is unfit for office — a clear message to voters next year. But to Trump’s backers, the president succeeded in highlighting that an already unpopular politician is struggling not only with the far-left liberals in the Democratic ranks, but even some on her leadership team.

“She has very challenging dynamics in her conference, and she’s trying to appease her conference,” said Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Pence. “She has a very difficult job.”

Some White House aides also said it was better for Trump to be fighting with Pelosi than former vice president Joe Biden or other 2020 candidates, as the president has done recently, elevating their status.

[Trump and allies take aim at Biden — and his family — as their top Democratic target]

For Trump and Pelosi, the series of salvos was a break from past practices. Trump has derided other politicians with nicknames, but refrained from mocking Pelosi, the most powerful woman in Democratic politics. During the 2018 midterm election, the speaker had instructed Democratic candidates to focus on health care, education and other issues rather than on Trump, who was not on the ballot. The strategy, which she also adopted, paid off as the party reclaimed the House majority.

Pelosi’s allies said her taunting of Trump now is intentional, designed to get under his skin and elicit an angry reaction, according to officials close to her who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. She contended that his resistance to investigations was to goad her members to back impeachment, which would undermine her party.

Emerging from a special closed-door caucus meeting on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Pelosi took the unusual step of speaking to reporters and in front of television cameras, accusing Trump of “engaging in a coverup” in response to congressional subpoenas.

At the White House a short time later, Trump angrily walked out of a meeting with Pelosi and other Democrats on infrastructure after three minutes. The president told reporters in remarks in the Rose Garden that he could not work with Democrats until they “get these phony investigations over with” and argued that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s nearly two-year investigation had cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Back on Capitol Hill, Pelosi and the Democrats kept up their criticism, with the speaker suggesting Trump’s possible “lack of confidence” prevented him from reaching a deal on infrastructure and saying she prayed for the president.

Pelosi wrote of Trump’s “temper tantrum” in a letter to colleagues Wednesday afternoon, and the next day was relentless in her attacks, suggesting his White House aides and family “should stage an intervention for the good of the country.”

Hours later, Trump called her “crazy Nancy” at a White House event on aid to farmers, impugned her mental clarity and intelligence and pressed aides to attest to his calmness during the meeting the previous day. He later tweeted a spliced video that made her appear confused.

White House aides say Trump was more frustrated by the “coverup” comment than her Thursday commentary likening him to a toddler. He flew into a rage Wednesday morning after she made those remarks — and then stewed as she continued to taunt him from Capitol Hill. The aides spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

[Trump, Pelosi trade insults in power struggle between two party leaders]

Pelosi’s allies insist the events left Trump as the one to blame for the failure to reach a deal on infrastructure, as he had taken responsibility in advance for the government shutdown in an Oval Office meeting with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in December.

When the shutdown — the longest in history — ended earlier this year after 35 days, Pelosi was seen as the winner in the standoff.

“The speaker knows how to use power,” said longtime Pelosi ally Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.). “She knows who. She knows how. She’s a master negotiator. … I think the president is really befuddled by her.”

Her allies argued that his angry reaction feeds the narrative of an erratic president.

“The more unhinged he looks, the better it is for us,” said one senior House Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. “We want to govern and he’s the crazy man.”

Trump’s proponents pushed back.

“She talks about him like he’s incompetent. It’s totally ridiculous,” said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer. “You may not like him, you may despise him, but there’s no question he is mentally and physically capable to do the job.”

As for Pelosi, Giuliani said she is “not exactly the most articulate person in the world. The last couple of weeks, she’s been talking funny. I’ve noticed it, and a lot of other people have noticed it.”

Until recently , Trump was telling advisers that he wanted to reach a deal on infrastructure and had even talked to the trucking industry about a gas tax to help finance upgrades to the nation’s roads, bridges and tunnels. He also telephoned Pelosi to tell her how good her television coverage was after the two of them huddled to discuss infrastructure three weeks ago.

Trump, who has long admired Pelosi and showered her with compliments for her grip on her caucus, also recently told West Wing aides how tough she is — and how she keeps her party in line with an iron fist. “She has some real crazies,” he said recently to an adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

While Pelosi has employed a strategy of trying to make Trump appear childish, she actually has told colleagues she thinks he’s unworthy of such a comparison. When a Democrat compared Trump to a fifth-grader, Pelosi responded that such a remark was an insult to fifth-graders, according to an individual who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the conversation.

“Don’t say that. Children are wonderful!” said the mother of five and grandmother of nine.

Privately, Pelosi repeatedly has said Trump is not worth impeaching. She has managed to tamp down the clamor for impeachment from an increasing number of Democrats, arguing that Trump would welcome the move and an acquittal vote in the Republican-led Senate.

For now, the talk of impeachment has quieted, even as Pelosi accused Trump of a “coverup.”

Trump allies predicted she was trying to appease her frustrated caucus and base.

“She was trying to throw a little red meat to her caucus right before they headed home to the long recess,” said David Urban, a Trump ally who worked on the 2016 campaign and the GOP convention. “And Pelosi, who is usually a masterful politician, misjudged the president’s reaction. She made a statement that overplayed her hand. Now we’re going to be at some place of an impasse we haven’t seen before.”

Fights loom in coming months between the White House and Congress on legislation to keep the government running and raising the nation’s borrowing authority. Against that backdrop, the two sides are bitterly divided over investigations.

FILE – In this Friday April 5, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks as he visits a new section of the border wall with Mexico in Calexico, Calif. A federal judge in California has blocked Trump from building sections of his long-sought border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. on Friday, May 24, 2019, immediately halted the administration’s efforts to redirect military-designated funds to build sections of wall on the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump from building key sections of his border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency, delivering what may prove a temporary setback on one of his highest priorities.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr.’s order prevents work from beginning on two of the highest-priority, Pentagon-funded wall projects — one spanning 46 miles (74 kilometers) in New Mexico and another covering 5 miles (8 kilometers) in Yuma, Arizona.

While the order applied only to those first-in-line projects, the judge made clear that he felt the challengers were likely to prevail at trial on their argument that the president was wrongly ignoring Congress’ wishes by diverting Defense Department money.

“Congress’s ‘absolute’ control over federal expenditures_even when that control may frustrate the desires of the Executive Branch regarding initiatives it views as important_is not a bug in our constitutional system. It is a feature of that system, and an essential one,” he wrote in his 56-page opinion.

It wasn’t a total defeat for the administration. Gilliam, an Oakland-based appointee of President Barack Obama, rejected a request by California and 19 other states to prevent the diversion of hundreds of millions of dollars in Treasury asset forfeiture funds to wall construction, in part because he felt they were unlikely to prevail on arguments that the administration skirted environmental impact reviews.

The delay may be temporary. The question for Gilliam was whether to allow construction with Defense and Treasury funds while the lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the state attorneys general were being considered. The cases still must be heard on their merits.

“This order is a win for our system of checks and balances, the rule of law, and border communities,” said Dror Ladin, an attorney for the ACLU, which represented the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday.

The administration faces several lawsuits over the emergency declaration but only one other seeks to block construction during the legal challenge. A judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday heard arguments on a challenge brought by the U.S. House of Representatives that says the money shifting violates the constitution. The judge was weighing whether the lawmakers even had the ability to sue the president instead of working through political routes to resolve the bitter dispute.

At stake is billions of dollars that would allow Trump to make progress in a signature campaign promise heading into his campaign for a second term.

Trump declared a national emergency in February after losing a fight with the Democratic-led House that led to a 35-day government shutdown. As a compromise on border and immigration enforcement, Congress set aside $1.375 billion to extend or replace existing barriers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.

Trump grudgingly accepted the money, but then declared the national emergency to siphon money from other government accounts, identifying up to $8.1 billion for wall construction. The funds include $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counterdrug activities and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund.

The Defense Department has already transferred the counterdrug money. Patrick Shanahan, the acting defense secretary, is expected to decide any day whether to transfer the military construction funds.

The president’s adversaries say the emergency declaration was an illegal attempt to ignore Congress, which authorized far less wall spending than Trump wanted. The administration said Trump was protecting national security as unprecedented numbers of Central American asylum-seeking families arrive at the U.S. border.

The administration has awarded 11 wall contracts for a combined $2.76 billion — including three in the last two months that draw on Defense Department counterdrug money — and is preparing for a flurry of construction that the president is already celebrating at campaign-style rallies.

The Army Corps of Engineers recently announced several large contacts with Pentagon funding. Last month, SLSCO Ltd. of Galveston, Texas, won a $789 million award to replace 46 miles (74 kilometers) of barrier in New Mexico — the one that Gilliam blocked on Friday.

Last week, Southwest Valley Constructors of Albuquerque, New Mexico, won a $646 million award to replace 63 miles (101 kilometers) in the Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona, sector, which Gilliam did not stop. Barnard Construction Co. of Bozeman, Montana, won a $141.8 million contract to replace 5 miles (8 kilometers) in Yuma that Gilliam blocked and 15 miles (24 kilometers) in El Centro, California, which he did not address.

Gilliam’s ruling gives a green light — at least for now — for the administration to tap the Treasury funds, which it has said it plans to use to extend barriers in Rio Grande Valley.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and frequent Trump adversary, didn’t comment directly on his defeat but congratulated the ACLU and its clients “in securing this critical victory for our states and communities.”

Trump inherited barriers covering 654 miles (1,046 kilometers), or about one-third of the border with Mexico. Of the 244 miles (390 kilometers) in awarded contracts, more than half is with Pentagon money. All but 14 miles (22 kilometers) awarded so far are to replace existing barriers, not extend coverage.

___

Spagat reported from San Diego.

últimas notícias

Ultimas Noticias

Recently Added Videos

MUST WATCH

Why Justin Amash’s Anti-Trump Solo Act Is Doomed

Democrats Don’t Want to Nominate a Candidate Who Looks Like Bernie or Joe

‘Lives are on the line’

‘The inquiry has been pre-cooked’

Sharing sensitive information with Barr ‘is tantamount to sharing it with Trump, which is tantamount to sharing it with our adversaries’