Politics Election category, Page 367
Trump handicaps 2020 Democratic contenders
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Kamala Harris had the best campaign roll-out. Amy Klobuchar’s snowy debut showed grit. Elizabeth Warren’s opening campaign video was a bit odd. Take it from an unlikely armchair pundit sizing up the 2020 Democratic field: President Donald Trump. In tweets, public remarks and private conversations,...
Border wall a complex issue for 2020 prospect Beto O’Rourke
EL PASO, Texas — When President Donald Trump visited Beto O’Rourke’s hometown to argue that walling off the southern border would make the U.S. safer, the former Democratic congressman and possible 2020 presidential hopeful was ready. As the president filled an El Paso arena with supporters, O’Rourke helped lead thousands...
Senate panel to probe claim that Rod Rosenstein raised possibility of Trump ouster
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday that his panel will investigate former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe’s assertion that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein raised the possibility of ousting President Trump through the 25th Amendment, calling the statement “beyond stunning.” Graham was responding to comments made by...
Trump says he found ‘real Collusion’ — on ‘Saturday Night Live’
President Donald Trump has gotten ahead of special counsel Robert Mueller III’s investigation, making one thing clear: There was collusion. Well, on “Saturday Night Live,” at least. In a Sunday morning tweetstorm, Trump blasted the previous night’s episode of “SNL,” which opened with Alec Baldwin portraying the commander-in-chief declaring a...
Tradition of nonpartisan selection of judges may end in Iowa
DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa was in the forefront of a national effort to reduce partisanship in the courts nearly 50 years ago when it decided to stop electing judges and instead rely on nominations by a panel of citizens and lawyers. In all, about three dozen states adopted similar...
Elizabeth Warren returns to Nevada, heart of 2008 economic crisis
LAS VEGAS — Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who made her name as a consumer advocate following the 2008 financial crisis, will make her first appearance Sunday as a presidential candidate in Las Vegas, the boom-and-bust town that made Nevada the epicenter of the country’s foreclosure crisis. The Massachusetts senator is trying...
AP Explains: Can Trump declare emergency to build his wall?
WASHINGTON — The White House says President Trump will declare a national emergency and take other executive action to allow construction of the president’s long-promised southern border wall, after bipartisan congressional negotiations provided less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion Trump wanted to start building more than 200 miles...
Trump to sign border deal, but will declare emergency
WASHINGTON — Congress lopsidedly approved a border security compromise that would avert a second painful government shutdown. But a new confrontation has been ignited — this time over President Donald Trump’s plan to bypass lawmakers and declare a national emergency to siphon billions of dollars from other federal coffers for...
Meet the Hill staffers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hired to upend Washington
WASHINGTON — One is the daughter of an immigrant from Nigeria who wanted to understand the causes of her mom’s plight, starting a search that would lead her to Spelman, Oxford, Harvard, Georgetown, the State Department and, eventually, the halls of Congress. The other was raised by a single mother...
House committee weighs mandatory background checks for gun sales
WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee spent hours debating a measure Wednesday that would require background checks for all gun sales and most gun transfers within the United States, the most significant gun-control legislation to be brought before Congress in years. The committee spent more than eight hours debating the...
Judge finds Paul Manafort lied to investigators in Russia probe
WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort intentionally lied to investigators and a federal grand jury in the special counsel in the Russia probe, a judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was another loss for the former Trump campaign chairman, who faces years in prison in two...
In House’s Yemen vote, Congress reasserts war-making powers
WASHINGTON — Asserting congressional authority over war-making powers, the House passed a resolution Wednesday that would force the administration to withdraw U.S. troops from involvement in Yemen, in a rebuke of President Trump’s alliance with the Saudi-led coalition behind the military intervention. Lawmakers in both parties are increasingly uneasy over...
Trump’s coal pledge could be tested by TVA vote this week
FRANKFORT, Ky. — President Trump’s support for the coal industry — and for a particular power plant — will face a test this week when a utility board he appoints considers whether to close a coal-fired Kentucky plant whose suppliers include a mine owned by one of his campaign donors....
Rep. Ilhan Omar rejects calls for resignation, fires back at Trump
WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar rejected President Donald Trump’s call for her resignation by accusing him of having “trafficked in hate your whole life” while she privately has tried to make amends with her Jewish colleagues for her anti-Semitic comments. The Minnesota Democrat, who fired back at Trump in a...
National debt hits new milestone, topping $22 trillion
WASHINGTON — The national debt has passed a new milestone, topping $22 trillion for the first time. The Treasury Department’s daily statement showed Tuesay that total outstanding public debt stands at $22.01 trillion. It stood at $19.95 trillion when President Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017. The debt figure...
White House press group condemns attack on cameraman at Trump rally
WASHINGTON — The White House Correspondents’ Association condemned on Tuesday an attack the night before of a television cameraman working at President Trump’s rally in El Paso, Texas. The association’s president, Olivier Knox, said Tuesday the group is relieved that “this time, no one was seriously hurt.” Knox said the...
Biden: Longtime Rep. John Dingell treated all with ‘dignity’
DEARBORN, Mich. — Longtime Rep. John Dingell knew that jobs were about more than collecting a paycheck, and that health care meant more than just good health. Both were about dignity, former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday while eulogizing the longest serving member of Congress in U.S. history. Biden...
Mark Kelly announces run for McCain Senate seat in Arizona
PHOENIX — Retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who rocketed to the national spotlight when his congresswoman wife Gabrielle Giffords was shot in a failed assassination attempt, announced Tuesday he’s running to finish John McCain’s last term in the U.S. Senate. Kelly, 54, is a top Democratic recruit to take on Republican...
Trump and Beto O’Rourke hold dueling rallies on immigration in El Paso
EL PASO, Texas — Undaunted by his past failures, President Trump on Monday again headed south to the border with Mexico to make his case to spend billions of federal dollars for a wall there, hoping to put Democrats in Washington on the defensive as another partial government shutdown looms....
W.Va. GOP chief rebukes delegate’s remarks on gay community
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The head of the West Virginia Republican Party has denounced comments from a GOP member of the House of Delegates about the gay community. State GOP chairwoman Melody Potter says in a statement Mercer County Delegate Eric Porterfield’s comments were “hateful, hurtful, and do not reflect the...
Rep. Ilhan Omar apologizes for tweets on AIPAC’s influence
WASHINGTON — Freshman Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar “unequivocally” apologized on Monday for tweets about the influence in Congress of an American organization that supports Israel, which drew bipartisan criticism and a rebuke from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Minnesota Democrat said she had no intention offending anyone, including Jewish Americans,...
‘Everyone deserves to be heard,’ Va. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax says; Dems explore impeachment
RICHMOND, Va. — Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax said he will not step down and will preside over the Senate on Monday regardless of any attempts to remove him from office amid allegations that he sexually assaulted two women. In a telephone interview with The Washington Post Sunday night, as fellow...
Trump tries to turn border debate his way with El Paso rally
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is trying to turn the debate over a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border back to his political advantage as his signature pledge to American voters threatens to become a model of unfulfilled promises. Trump will hold his first campaign rally since November’s midterm elections in...
Senior lawmakers say they’ve agreed on border bill
WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators announced an agreement late Monday to prevent a government shutdown and finance construction of new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, overcoming a late-stage hang-up over immigration enforcement issues that had threatened to scuttle the talks. Republicans were desperate to avoid another bruising shutdown. They tentatively agreed...
Former White House aide Cliff Sims sues Trump after attack over tell-all book
WASHINGTON — A former White House aide who penned an insider account about President Trump is now suing the president after Trump’s lawyers filed an arbitration claim saying the book violated a non-disclosure agreement. The former communications aide, Cliff Sims, filed the suit in District of Columbia court Monday after...
