Politics Election category, Page 371
Senate votes down two bills to end shutdown; House Dems to offer new plan
WASHINGTON — The Senate blocked two competing bills Thursday to reopen the federal government, demonstrating that neither President Trump nor the Democrats has produced a plan so far that can end the nation’s longest government shutdown. The twin failures came on the shutdown’s 34th day, and were the first Senate...
Trump’s shutdown gift to Pelosi: a unified Democratic caucus
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has done something remarkable in the government shutdown: He’s unified the diverse new House Democratic majority firmly behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It’s not even about the wall at this point. Democrats are sticking together with an unusual amount of unity as a way to strengthen...
Trump, GOP embrace amid political fallout from shutdown
SANTA ANA PUEBLO, N.M. — As President Donald Trump’s approval rating falls, the Republican Party is grasping him ever tighter. Gathering in New Mexico, the Republican National Committee’s governing body will take the unusual step Friday of voting to declare the party’s “undivided support” for Trump and his “effective presidency.”...
Commerce chief asks why furloughed workers using food banks
NEW YORK (AP) — Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, one of the richest people in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, questioned Thursday why furloughed federal workers were using food banks instead of taking out loans to get through the monthlong partial government shutdown. Ross was asked on CNBC to comment on reports...
Trump postpones State of Union address until after shutdown
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he is postponing his State of the Union address until the partial government shutdown ends, yielding after a weeklong showdown with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Following a high-stakes game of dare and double-dare, Trump conceded Wednesday night that “no venue that can compete with...
Ken Starr urges trust in system for investigating presidents
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who spearheaded the 1990s investigation into President Bill Clinton, urged public trust in the checks and balances established for holding presidential administrations accountable, saying Wednesday that the system remains widely underappreciated. Starr’s comments came ahead of a public lecture he delivered at...
Under fire, House Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee to step down from leadership roles
WASHINGTON — A senior Democratic congresswoman is stepping down as chair of a House subcommittee and the nonprofit arm of the Congressional Black Caucus amid claims that she fired an aide who planned to sue the nonprofit after she reported a sexual assault, lawmakers said Wednesday. The move, by Rep....
White House seeks list of programs that would be hurt if shutdown lasts into March
WASHINGTON — White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has pressed agency leaders to provide him with a list of the highest-impact programs that will be jeopardized if the shutdown continues into March and April, people familiar with the directive said. Mulvaney wants the list no later than Friday,...
Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen delaying testimony to Congress
WASHINGTON— President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, will not testify before a House committee next month as scheduled, his adviser said Wednesday, depriving Democrats for now of a prime opportunity to scrutinize Trump, his links to Russia and payments to buy the silence of a porn star. Cohen indefinitely delayed...
Court picks Virginia redistricting plan that helps Democrats
RICHMOND, Va. — A panel of federal judges has chosen a redistricting map for Virginia’s House of Delegates that could shift some districts toward Democrats and help the party regain control in this year’s election. The judges ordered a new map after ruling that lawmakers had racially gerrymandered 11 House...
South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg joins 2020 presidential race
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Democrat Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is forming an exploratory committee for a 2020 presidential bid, according to a video and email announcement obtained by The Associated Press. “The reality is there’s no going back, and there’s no such thing as ‘again’...
Poll: Support for ‘Medicare-for-all’ fluctuates with details
WASHINGTON — “Medicare-for-all” makes a good first impression, but support plunges when people are asked if they’d pay higher taxes or put up with treatment delays to get it. The survey, released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, comes as Democratic presidential hopefuls embrace the idea of a government-run...
Mueller looking into Trump campaign ties to NRA as part of Russia probe
Special counsel Robert Mueller is probing the Trump campaign’s “dealings” with the National Rifle Association as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday. Mueller’s investigators asked former Trump aide Sam Nunberg about the campaign’s relationship with the NRA...
Rudy Giuliani compounds Trump’s Russia woes in conflicting interviews
WASHINGTON — A lawyer’s job is to make a client look innocent, if not to prove it — something President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been struggling with in recent days. In a string of interviews, Giuliani has walked back a series of potentially damaging statements where he implied there...
Senate set to vote on 2 competing plans to end shutdown
WASHINGTON — Senate leaders reached an agreement on Tuesday to vote this week on two competing proposals to end the government shutdown, including President Trump’s plan to have Congress pay for the long-stalled wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that’s likely to fail. The other measure, from Democrats, also seems unlikely...
Pelosi works her health care strategy from the ground up
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is laying out her strategy on health care and first up is improvements to “Obamacare” and legislation to lower prescription drug costs. “Medicare for all” will get hearings. Pelosi and President Donald Trump have been sounding similar themes about the need to address the...
Democrats lurch left on top policies as 2020 primary begins
NEW YORK — Democratic presidential contender Julian Castro launched his campaign by pledging support for “Medicare for All,” free universal preschool, a large public investment in renewable energy and two years of free college for all Americans. That wasn’t enough for some of his party’s most liberal members. Critics on...
Trump tells Sarah Sanders ‘not to bother’ and stop holding press briefings
Because he claims the media covers the press secretary ” so rudely & inaccurately,” President Trump has told Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday to stop holding press briefings. On Twitter, the president added, “I told her not to bother, the word gets out anyway! Most will never cover us fairly...
Part of Trump’s base is faulting him for the shutdown
MACOMB COUNTY, Mich. — Two years ago, Jeff Daudert was fed up with politics. He wanted to shake up the status quo. He didn’t mind sending a message to the establishment — and, frankly, he liked the idea of a disruptive president. But the 49-year-old retired Navy reservist has had...
Trump’s shutdown solution hangs in limbo
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s proposal to break through the budget deadlock appeared to be gaining little traction Monday, as another missed paycheck loomed for hundreds of thousands of workers and the partial federal shutdown stretched into its fifth week. Despite the fanfare of the president’s announcement, voting in Congress was...
Trump ‘never spoke’ with Michael Cohen about false testimony, Rudy Giuliani says
President Trump did not speak with Michael Cohen before he testified falsely before Congress about plans to develop a skyscraper in Moscow during the 2016 campaign, Rudy Giuliani said Monday, backing off previous assertions that such talks may have taken place. The former New York mayor, who serves as Trump’s...
Kamala Harris jumps into presidential race
WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris, a first-term senator and former California attorney general known for her rigorous questioning of President Donald Trump’s nominees, entered the Democratic presidential race on Monday. Vowing to “bring our voices together,” Harris would be the first woman to hold the presidency and the second African-American if...
Bolton’s test: Massaging Trump tweets into foreign policy
WASHINGTON — In President Donald Trump’s Washington, matters of war and peace are decided in 280-character bursts. It’s up to John Bolton to massage them into a foreign policy. The mustachioed national security adviser developed a reputation as a bureaucratic bulldozer through more than three decades in and out of...
Dear Mr. President, that’s not how global warming works
Sunday morning began with a stern, concerned warning from President Trump to thousands of Northeasterners expected to be affected by a massive weather system: “Be careful and try staying in your house,” the president tweeted. “Large parts of the Country are suffering from tremendous amounts of snow and near record...
Giuliani: ‘So what’ if Trump and Cohen discussed testimony
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani left open Sunday the possibility that Trump and former personal attorney Michael Cohen might have discussed Cohen’s congressional testimony. But, he added, “so what” if he did? Giuliani appeared Sunday on CNN, where he said he did not know if Trump had...
