Politics Election category, Page 353
Trump rolls back safety rules meant to prevent another Deepwater Horizon spill
The Trump administration has weakened offshore drilling safeguards put in place after a 2010 explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform killed 11 workers and triggered the largest ocean spill in U.S. history. Administration officials said the revised Well Control Rule announced Thursday in Louisiana, not far from the...
Pittsburgh woman claims arrest came for not supporting Trump
A North Side woman said a Pittsburgh police officer charged her with burglary and other crimes in 2017 because she she didn’t support Donald Trump. Darian Balcom, 47, of Perry North, sued the city in federal court Tuesday, contending Officer Gabe Figueroa violated her First Amendment Rights. “The essence of...
Lawmakers to see empty chair, not AG Barr, at House hearing
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr plans to skip a House Judiciary hearing Thursday on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report , escalating an already acrimonious battle between Democrats and the Justice Department. Barr’s decision — he cites a disagreement over the questioning — came the day the department missed a...
GOP senator says Trump’s choice of Stephen Moore for Fed ‘is in trouble’Video
WASHINGTON — Stephen Moore’s prospects of getting confirmed to the Federal Reserve board grew dimmer Wednesday as Trump administration officials began to acknowledge privately that he does not have the votes and as Republican senators indicated that the ensuing drama over Moore’s pending nomination would end soon. Moore, whose name...
House Democrats consider holding Barr in contempt of Congress
WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are discussing holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, according to several lawmakers and officials familiar with the plan. During a pair of closed-door meetings Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the committee decided that it would likely make a push...
Attorney General William Barr grilled over his differences with MuellerVideo
WASHINGTON — Private tensions between Justice Department leaders and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team broke into public view in extraordinary fashion Wednesday as Attorney General William Barr pushed back at the special counsel’s “snitty” complaints over his handling of the Trump-Russia investigation report. Testifying for the first time since releasing...
Trump retweets people taking issue with firefighters union’s endorsement of Biden
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump took to Twitter early Wednesday morning to retweet dozens of posts from purported firefighters and friends and relatives of firefighters who had taken issue with an endorsement this week of Democrat Joe Biden by a major firefighters union. Trump began a spate of Twitter activity...
Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context’ of Trump probeVideo
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy...
College student says Trump backers recruited him for Pete Buttigieg smear
A Michigan college student says pro-Trump agitators recruited him to falsely claim he was raped by Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, then published the smear without his permission. Hunter Kelly, a 21-year-old gay Trump supporter, said conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman sought to use him for the “despicable...
Schiff says House will make a criminal referral of Trump ally Erik Prince for possible perjuryVideo
WASHINGTON — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump. “The evidence is so weighty...
Trump, Pelosi claim progress after infrastructure meetingVideo
WASHINGTON — There were no TV cameras this time, no accusations of bad faith, or anyone tossing binders or storming out. Instead, unlike their December and January clashes in the Oval Office, President Trump met Tuesday for 90 minutes with the Democratic leaders he’s dubbed “Chuck and Nancy” in what...
Joe Biden: Congress has ‘no alternative’ but to impeach if Trump blocks probe
Former vice president Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that Congress would have “no alternative” but to impeach President Donald Trump if his administration seeks to block its investigations of issues raised in the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference. Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Biden...
Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams will not run for Senate in 2020
Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat who garnered national attention after narrowly losing her bid for governor last year, announced Tuesday that she will not run for Senate, despite a fierce lobbying effort by party leaders. Abrams, 45, who in recent months has said she also was considering a presidential bid,...
Trump sues banks to block House subpoenas for records
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, his family and the Trump Organization filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and Capital One in an attempt to block congressional subpoenas seeking their banking and financial records. The lawsuit by Trump, sons Donald Jr. and Eric and daughter Ivanka was filed Monday in federal...
Trump wants to charge asylum-seekers to apply
WASHINGTON — President Trump is proposing charging asylum-seekers a fee to process their applications as he continues to try to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants trying to cross into the United States. In a presidential memorandum signed Monday, Trump directed his attorney general and acting homeland...
Rod Rosenstein submits letter of resignation to Trump
WASHINGTON — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein submitted his resignation Monday, ending a nearly two-year run defined by his appointment of a special counsel to investigate connections between President Trump’s campaign and Russia. His last day will be May 11. Rosenstein’s departure had been expected since the confirmation of William...
William Barr’s testimony to House on Mueller report in doubt
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has informed the House Judiciary Committee that Attorney General William Barr may not attend a Thursday hearing to review special counsel Robert Mueller’s report due to objections over the panel’s format, according to a Democratic senior committee aide. The department has balked at the panel’s...
Beto O’Rourke’s new climate plan: carbon emissions to net zero in 30 years
Former congressman Beto O’Rourke, Texas, in the first major policy plan of his presidential candidacy, proposed Monday slicing carbon emissions to net zero in 30 years, spending $5 trillion to make the country’s infrastructure more climate-friendly and having the United States rejoin the Paris climate agreement. O’Rourke, part of a...
Trump did ‘nothing wrong’ to warrant impeachment, Sen. Lindsey Graham contendsVideo
WASHINGTON — The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday that President Trump did “nothing wrong” to warrant impeachment and removal from office, pushing back at Democrats who want the House to consider proceedings. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a stalwart Trump defender, had strongly advocated for...
Stephen Moore, Trump’s Fed nominee, apologizes for past comments about womenVideo
Stephen Moore, President Trump’s likely nominee for an opening on the Federal Reserve Board, apologized Sunday for his past controversial comments about women that caused a firestorm last week. Moore, a longtime conservative commentator, has come under scrutiny for columns he wrote in the National Review in the early 2000s...
Trump says ending family separation was ‘disaster’ that led to surge in border crossingsVideo
WASHINGTON — President Trump said in a television interview Sunday that ending the practice of separating children from their families at border crossings has been “a disaster” that has resulted in a surge of people coming into the country illegally, though he overstated the increase as measured by the government....
William Barr may withdraw from Mueller report hearing over terms of testimony, House Democrats sayVideo
WASHINGTON — Democrats and the Justice Department are in a standoff over the terms of Attorney General William Barr’s planned testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this week, raising the prospect that the hearing might not go forward at all. A senior Democratic committee aide said Sunday that Barr risks...
Trump not expected to attend White House ceremony for National Teacher of the Year
In May, President Trump welcomed the state Teachers of the Year to the White House and gave an award to the National Teacher of the Year, Mandy Manning of Washington state. During the ceremony, Manning made no secret of her opposition to some of Trump’s policies. This year, Trump is...
Trump’s executive privilege strategy could mean messy fight
WASHINGTON — Since George Washington’s time, presidents have used executive privilege to resist congressional inquiries in the name of protecting the confidentiality of their decision-making. President Donald Trump threatened this past week to broadly assert executive privilege to block a number of current and former aides from testifying, including some...
State laws highlight war over drug pricing
WASHINGTON — Recent laws in several states that protect drugmakers’ contributions toward patients’ prescription copays are highlighting an escalating battle in the larger war on drug pricing. In the past month, Arizona, Virginia and West Virginia became the first states to enact laws restricting insurance companies from excluding most drug...
