Tag Archives: congress

“You’ll Be Hanging From A Tree.”

by frantalocuridemunca Posted on May 20, 2017

Mother Jones

Before Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) began his town hall Saturday morning, he instructed his aides to play a tape. It was, he explained, a voicemail he had received earlier in the week, shortly after he had delivered a speech on the House floor to become the first member of Congress to call for President Donald Trump to be impeached.

“Hey, Al Green, I’ve got an impeachment for ya—it’s gonna be yours,” said a man’s voice. “Actually we’re gonna give you a short trial before we hang your nigger ass.”

A murmur went up in the audience of 80 or so Houston-area constituents who had packed into a church hall in the city’s southwest corner. Green played another voicemail, which warned, “try it, and we’ll rinse out you fucking niggers, you’ll be hanging from a tree.”

When it was over, Green got to his point. “Friends, I want to assure you that no amounts of threats or intimidation will stop what I have started, I promise you—we are going to continue with this,” he said. “We are gonna move forward, we will not turn around.”

Green, a seven-term congressman and member of the Congressional Black Caucus, made his call for impeachment after Trump tweeted warning former FBI director James Comey not to leak details of their conversations with the press. Green told the audience he believes that Trump’s actions amounted to an admission of obstruction of justice, and the tweet constituted intimidation. It is imperative, he said, that the House move to indict Trump; nothing less than the rule of law is at stake.

Those who asked questions largely agreed with Green’s argument, but constituents seemed uncertain about the future. One man wondered if it was worth going through the impeachment process if the result was President Mike Pence. Another asked about impeaching Pence, too. A woman in the back wanted to know if there was any possibility of the president’s cabinet declaring him unfit. Unsurprisingly, given the president’s low approval in the district (just 18 percent of voters in the district voted for Green’s Republican opponent last fall), only one questioner voiced any real opposition to what Green had done, asking why he had said nothing about “the lawlessness of the Obama administration.”

Green himself suggested the process might plod along from here. He hadn’t introduced an official impeachment resolution yet and was planning more town halls on the subject. “I haven’t asked leadership for a response,” he told me, insisting that impeachment needed to come “from the bottom up, not the top down.” By the same token, no one in in the leadership had told him to pipe down, he said, although he allowed that there were “surely members who were thinking it.”

When a nine-year-old girl asked “why does it take so long to impeach Trump?” Green said that it “may never happen”—but it was worth giving the system time to function as it should. He has done a flurry of interviews over the last few days (there were NBC News cameras in the back of the room while he spoke) but is treading lightly when it comes to his fellow colleagues. Green told me he was not planning to lobby fellow members to get behind an impeachment measure—”people have to be guided by their conscience.” (He did hope, though, that they would listen to public opinion—at the event he asked residents to go to ImpeachTrumpNow.com to register their support.)

For now the road to impeachment is lonely, and perhaps very long. “I am a voice in the wilderness,” he said, “but history will vindicate me.”

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“You’ll Be Hanging From A Tree.”

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The Genius Who Helped Unlock the Human Genome Is Taking On the Opioid Crisis

by KarinJoske6 Posted on May 20, 2017

Mother Jones

Francis Collins, the gregarious 67-year-old who directs the National Institutes of Health, doesn’t shy away from a challenge. Collins made a name for himself in the early 2000s when, as director of the Human Genome Project, he oversaw the completion of sequencing 3 billion genes. Now, as the head of the nation’s foremost biomedical research engine, Collins faces a new task: finding solutions to the opioid epidemic, which killed more than 33,000 Americans in 2015.

At the Prescription Drug Abuse and Heroin Conference last month, Collins announced a public-private partnership, in which the NIH will collaborate with biomedical and pharmaceutical companies to develop solutions to the crisis. President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price “strongly supported” the idea, he said. This isn’t Collins’ first such partnership: During his tenure as director—Barack Obama appointed him in 2009—Collins has developed ongoing collaborations with pharmaceutical companies such as Lilly, Merck, and GlaxoSmithKline for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis. For each partnership, the NIH and the companies pool tens of millions of dollars, with the agreement that the resulting data will be public and the companies will not immediately patent treatments. The jury’s still out on results—the partnerships are about halfway through their five-year timelines. But Collins, a self-described optimist, remains hopeful. “Traditionally it takes many years to go from an idea about a drug target to an approved drug,” said Collins at the conference. “Yet I believe…a vigorous public private partnership could cut that time maybe even in half.”

I talked to Collins about the partnership, potential treatments in the pipeline, and the NIH’s role in confronting the ongoing epidemic.

Mother Jones: Why is a public-private partnership needed?

Francis Collins: While NIH can do a lot of the good science, and we can accelerate it if we have resources, we aren’t going to be the ones making pills. Many of the large-scale clinical trials are not done generally by us but by the drug companies. A successful outcome here—in terms of ultimately getting rid of opioids and the deaths that they cause—would not happen without full engagement by the private sector.

MJ: Which companies will be involved?

FC: It will be a significant proportion of the largest companies. I can’t tell you the total list—as I said, the 15 largest were there. Certainly the groups that already have some drugs that are somewhere in the pipeline will be particularly interested in ways to speed that up.

MJ: What do you hope will come out of it in the short term?

FC: I think that we could increase the number of effective options to help people get over addiction, and the treatments for overdose, particularly when fentanyl is becoming such a prominent part of this dangerous situation. The current overdose treatments are not necessarily as strong as they need to be. We could make progress there pretty quickly, I think—in a matter of even a year or two—by coming up with formulations of drugs that we know work but in a fashion that would have new kinds of capabilities. The drugs would be stronger, as in the overdose situation, or have the potential of longer-acting effects, as in treating addiction. It’s not necessarily a different drug, but a different formulation of the drug. And drug companies are pretty good at that.

MJ: And in the long term?

FC: The goal really needs to be to find nonaddictive but highly potent pain medicines that can replace the use of opioids given the terrible consequences that surround their use. This will be particularly important for people who have chronic pain, where we really don’t have effective treatments now. The good news is that there’s a lot of really interesting science pointing us to new alternatives, like the idea of coming up with something that interacts with that opioid receptor but only activates the pathway that results in pain relief—not the somewhat different pathway that results in addiction. That’s a pretty new discovery that could actually be workable, and a lot of effort ought to be put into that.

I’d like all of us, the academics, the government, and the private sector, to think about this the way we thought about HIV/AIDs in the early 1990s, where people were dying all around us in tens of thousands. Well, that’s what’s happening now with opioids. This ought to be all hands on deck—what could we do to accelerate what otherwise might take a lot longer? It’s interesting talking to the drug companies, who have really gotten quite motivated and seem to be determined to make a real contribution here. There are quite a number of new drugs that are in the pipeline somewhere, and they haven’t been moving very quickly, because companies haven’t been convinced there was enough of a market—opioids are relatively cheap. And also they’ve been worried that it would be hard to get new pain medicines approved if they had any side effects at all. Now that we’ve seen opioids have the most terrible side effect of all—namely, death—it would seem that as new analgesics come along, that the ability to approve some that might give you a stomachache now and then would probably be better.

MJ: There’s a lot of wariness of big pharmaceutical companies right now, given Big Pharma’s role in creating this problem to begin with. How do you make sure that whatever treatments are developed are affordable?

FC: That’s a very big concern for everybody right now. It’s front and center in these discussions about development of new drugs and pricing of existing drugs. And I don’t know the full answer to that. This is just part of a larger discussion about drug pricing which applies across the board, whether we’re talking about drugs for cardiovascular disease or cancer or, in this case, alternatives for opioids. But we need them. As much as people might want to say, “Oh, pharmaceutical companies, they’re all just out to make money,” they also have the scientific capabilities and they spend about twice what the government does on research and development. If they weren’t there, we’d be completely hopeless as far as new treatment.

MJ: Trump’s latest budget proposes a 20 percent cut to the NIH for 2018. Are you worried about having enough funding?

FC: Of course I am. And not just for this, but for all the other things that NIH is called upon to do as part of our mission. I’m an optimist, and what I have seen in my 24 years at NIH is that opportunity in medical research is not a partisan issue—it’s not something that’s caught up in politics most of the time. And having seen the enthusiasm represented by the Congress in their passage of the 21st Century Cures Act just four months ago with incredible positive bipartisan margins, I think when the dust all settles, people will look at these kinds of investments and see them as a high priority for our nation. But of course, that’s my optimistic view.

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The Genius Who Helped Unlock the Human Genome Is Taking On the Opioid Crisis

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There’s No Way Republicans Will Truly Confront Trump on His Scandals. It Would Destroy Their Party.

by BillyTomczak Posted on May 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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Following the explosive report that President Donald Trump leaned on then-FBI director James Comey to go easy on former national security adviser Michael Flynn—and the explosive report that Trump’s transition team knew Flynn was under FBI investigation when Trump tapped him to be his top national security aide—an increasing number of congressional Republicans have begun to accept the need for full-scale investigations along with the appointment of Robert Mueller as the new special counsel to examine the Trump-Russia affair. But party leaders have not reached the point where they are willing to truly confront the scandal-plagued president. The GOP establishment can’t and won’t thoroughly challenge Trump over the assorted controversies brewing within his chaotic administration. To do so would risk a nuclear civil war that could blow their party to smithereens.

Ever since Trump moved into the White House, liberals (and others) have plaintively asked, why aren’t Republicans fiercely investigating Trump and his crew and seeking to hold them accountable for various instances of improbity? There’s been plenty to choose from: the Trump-Russia scandal, the smorgasbord of financial conflicts of interests involving Trump and his family members in and out of government, other possible ethics violations (including nepotistic hiring), the ever-widening Michael Flynn affair, and so on. In the wake of Trump’s firing of Comey, the guy in charge of a FBI investigation that could land on Trump’s doorstep, and the subsequent report (denied by the White House) that Trump pressured Comey on Flynn, some GOPers on Capitol Hill have gently called for probes into these matters. But by and large, Republican leaders have not dared to take on Trump vigorously. “The last thing I’m going to do is pre-judge anything,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Wednesday.

One reason Republicans have been reticent to criticize Trump is obvious: they care more about working with—that is, using—Trump to attain their most beloved policy desires: generous tax breaks for the wealthy, draconian budget cuts for government programs (including those that assist low- and middle-income Americans), and the repeal-and-replace-or-whatever of Obamacare. But there’s a related reason: if congressional Republicans were to challenge Trump in forceful fashion, it could destroy the GOP.

Pop quiz: who’s the most vengeful politician on the scene today? Yes, it’s Trump. As I reported before Election Day, Trump is completely obsessed with revenge. For years, Trump often said in paid speeches that a key to success is that you have to be a merciless SOB when dealing with foes. Here’s how he spelled it out: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.” Another time, he elaborated:

One of the things you should do in terms of success: If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ’em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even. Get even. And the reason, the reason you do, is so important…The reason you do, you have to do it, because if they do that to you, you have to leave a telltale sign that they just can’t take advantage of you. It’s not so much for the person, which does make you feel good, to be honest with you, I’ve done it many times. But other people watch and you know they say, “Well, let’s leave Trump alone,” or “Let’s leave this one,” or “Doris, let’s leave her alone. They fight too hard.” I say it, and it’s so important. You have to, you have to hit back. You have to hit back.

With the president showing signs of narcissism and paranoia—on Tuesday, he declared, “No politician in history…has been treated worse or more unfairly” than he has been—Republican politicians who dare to confront Trump can expect to be targeted and mowed down by Trump.

Prior to the recent Comey and Flynn controversies, many GOPers were scared of Trump. A House Democrat a few weeks ago told me of a conversation he had with a Republican colleague whom he was close to persuading to sponsor a piece of legislation that would likely be popular in the GOPer’s district but not fancied by the Trump White House. “I just can’t do it,” the Republican finally admitted to the Democrat. “He’ll come after me on Twitter.” The wrath of Trump was something this Republican feared deeply—just over a policy disagreement.

Imagine if Republicans squared off against Trump regarding a matter involving his integrity—or one that could pose an existential threat to his presidency. (Examining the Comey issues as possible acts of obstruction of justice could well lead to the question of impeachment.) Trump certainly would not consider such action kindly. And if he were going to screw them back 10 times as hard, what would that mean for congressional Republicans?

It would be quite improbable that a raging and revenge-seeking Trump would be able to collaborate with Republicans on legislative priorities. What would be more important for Trump: working with Republicans to achieve tax reform or extracting payback?

If the going gets tougher, Trump will insist on fealty from his fellow Republicans. Yet if some opt to join the forces of investigation, a dividing line would be created within the party: you’re with Trump, or you’re not. Of course, Trump and his minions would be keeping score. During the the first and chaotic effort of House Republicans to gut Obamacare, the Trump White House considered compiling an enemies list of those GOPers who opposed the Trump-backed bill. Republicans who threatened his presidency could expect much worse than being placed on a roster of unfriendlies.

This is far more than an inside-Washington affair. Trump’s base is the party’s base. Despite all the screw-ups, false assertions, broken promises, and flip-flops of Trump’s still young (but exhausting) presidency, he remains hugely popular among Republicans—84 percent of Republicans still approve of Trump in the latest Gallup poll—who presumably buy his “fake news” attacks on media reports that cast him as an autocratic, truth-challenged, and bumbling president. If Republicans on Capitol Hill turn against Trump they could well encounter the fury of their most dependable voters. In the fight for the soul of the party, could GOP leaders (Washington insiders!) best the demagogic Trump? Sen. Mitch McConnell or Rep. Paul Ryan would be no match for him. The idea of a President Pence would likely be little consolation for the base during a clash between Republicans and Trump.

The Republican establishment has already demonstrated that political calculations, not principles, are its driving force. And one calculation is easy to process: if the GOP breaks rank with Trump on any of these scandals, there will be no turning back. An irate (and irrational?) Trump would demand retribution. A base already suspicious of GOP insiders could become furious. Tax cuts and the like would be at risk. The party itself would be endangered. Of course, as is so often noted, if the Republicans start to feel Trump-related electoral pain—say, they lose one of the upcoming special House elections in GOP-leaning districts—they might reevaluate their situational loyalty to Trump. But the smart ones know the costs of such a course—even if necessary for survival—could be exceedingly high.

There is no good answer for congressional Republicans facing the dilemma of what to do about Trump. They long ago decided to lash themselves to a man with a decades-long record of dishonesty, arrogance, bullying, sleazy deal-making, and score-settling. There are no easy escape routes. No convenient off-ramps. No lifeboats on this ship. He made the bed, and they leaped into it. (Oh, Donald!) Now they’re screwed. The old cliché is that you don’t go after the king unless you can kill the king. But for Republicans, the situation is worse that that: it may not be possible for them to battle their king without razing their kingdom.

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There’s No Way Republicans Will Truly Confront Trump on His Scandals. It Would Destroy Their Party.

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An Open Note to Robert Mueller

by LatashiMaskell Posted on May 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Justice Department finally caved in and appointed a special counsel to investigate the Flynn/Manafort/Trump/Comey/Russia/etc. affair. Their choice is Robert Mueller, the FBI director before James Comey. Mueller, like Comey, is one of the heroes of the great Ashcroft hospital bed confrontation, so he’s widely viewed as an upright guy. Before he gets too deep into the weeds, however, I’d like to lay out one piece of the case:

February: President Trump meets with James Comey about his future. In notes written right after the meeting, Comey says that Trump explicitly asked him to please drop the whole Russia investigation.

March: Comey declines to drop the investigation. In fact, he makes it clear to Congress and the public that the investigation exists and is serious.

April: Trump admits on national TV that his growing frustration with the Russia investigation led to his decision to fire Comey.

This is what happened. It’s pretty simple. Trump asked the FBI director to kill an investigation into his friends, and then fired him when he refused. All the added detail in the world will never change this.

POSTSCRIPT: Just as an aside, one of the bizarre aspects of this case is that I suspect Trump never really thought he was doing anything wrong. Comey worked for him and he was making trouble for his friends, so of course he had to go. What’s wrong with that? Trump probably doesn’t even know what obstruction of justice is, and if he does he probably figures it doesn’t apply to the president.

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An Open Note to Robert Mueller

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If Trump’s White House Has Secret Recordings, Destroying Them May Be a Crime

by FerneWechsler Posted on May 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Friday morning, Donald Trump tweeted, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.” Not only was this a loosely veiled threat directed at the former FBI director, whom Trump unceremoniously fired on Tuesday, but it also suggested that Trump possessed recordings of their conversations—perhaps even a tape of their January 27 dinner, where the president claims Comey told him he was not under investigation as part of the bureau’s probe of the Trump campaign’s Russia ties.

During a press briefing on Friday afternoon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer declined to answer questions about whether Trump had a secret White House recording system. The good news for historians is that if such tapes do exist, the Trump administration is required by law to preserve these presidential records and turn them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

A spokesman for NARA forwarded requests for comment on the preservation of Trump’s tapes, if they exist, to the White House, which did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones. But Lisa Rosenberg, executive director of Open the Government, a coalition of good-government and watchdog groups, says the the rules are clear: Under the Presidential Records Act, recordings between the president and a senior government official that occur in the White House are not private recordings; they are presidential records that will eventually be released to the public. (An administration can delay the public release of materials for up to 12 years after the president leaves office.)

“We’re not just talking about who he’s having dinner with, we’re talking about information that impacts decision-making that impacts public policy, and in this case it might impact national security and integrity of the elections,” she says. “Even though we might not know what will be said for 12 years, we can still learn from that. We’re still learning from past administrations about any number of issues that continue to resonate to this day. We need to be able to learn from our mistakes, and our successes, so it’s in the public interest. That’s why the Presidential Records Act exists.”

Unfortunately, Rosenberg says, there is no real mechanism to ensure the White House is preserving the tapes as records for future release. She notes that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t have an enforcement mechanism, but there are other legal reasons the records might have to be preserved.

For example, they could be subpoenaed by congressional or FBI investigators probing the Russia scandal or other matters. (President Richard Nixon, who famously recorded his Oval Office meetings and calls, refused to respond to a subpoena for secret recordings of his Oval Office meetings—a refusal that eventually led to one of the articles of impeachment that were drawn up against him.) On Friday, Reps. John Conyers and Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, respectively, sent the White House a letter demanding it turn over any tapes relating to Comey.

Norm Eisen, a former ethics lawyer for the Barack Obama administration, says the existence of recordings means they can be targeted by Congress and that White House officials should be aware of the need to save any that have been made.

“Given the current circumstances, the destruction of such tapes would raise serious obstruction of justice issues,” Eisen says.

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If Trump’s White House Has Secret Recordings, Destroying Them May Be a Crime

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Republicans Who Backed Trumpcare Aren’t Holding Town Halls. So Democrats Are Going in Their Place.

by JadaMcBride3335 Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

On Monday evening, about 500 residents of New York’s 19th Congressional District gathered at a wedding venue near the Hudson River to ask a local congressman about the American Health Care Act. But the congressman holding the town hall wasn’t the area’s newly elected representative, Republican John Faso, who had voted for the bill. Instead, they heard from Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney, who represents a neighboring district.

Members of Congress don’t often invade each other’s turf without an invitation—and Faso had most certainly not invited his colleague—but Maloney told the attendees he hoped to start a trend. “Let’s just imagine for a minute if in every district in this country where a member of Congress voted for this terrible health care bill and they won’t hold a town hall meeting, what if somebody else adopted that district?” he said. “Might be a Democrat! And then went in and did what we’re doing doing tonight. What do you think? We can adopt a district anywhere.”

It was a gloves-off affair from there. “He may be upset that I’m in his district, but I will just point out that he is not,” Maloney joked, noting that Faso was at a fundraiser in Albany. “I mean, they say nature abhors a vacuum, right?” Before Maloney began taking questions, he asked attendees to take out their phones and send a mass of tweets to Faso about the town hall. Maloney even brought an empty chair—just in case, he said, Faso decided to show up after all.

“This guy should not be on some milk carton—he’s your congressman,” Maloney said. “He should be here.”

Maloney’s stunt may indeed mark the beginning of a trend. On Tuesday evening, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) followed suit, appearing at a Tucson high school for a “Rally to Stop Trumpcare” in a district represented by one of its supporters, Republican Martha McSally. Unlike Maloney’s event, which he attended as part of his official duties, Gallego’s town hall was sponsored by the Arizona Democratic Party and more closely resembled a campaign function. McSally, who was not seriously opposed in 2016, is one of 14 Republican “yes” votes in districts won by Hillary Clinton.

Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan has planned a town hall in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s district. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat and a rising star in the party who was (briefly) floated as a 2020 presidential candidate, has also expressed interest in adopting a district, although he would have to travel a bit further to find one; there are no Republican congressional districts in southern New England. A group in Yolo County, California, has launched a campaign to get local Democratic Rep. John Garamendi to hold a town hall in a neighboring district represented by Republican Tom McClintock, a supporter of the bill. Organizers even included a sample call script to help constituents lobby Garamendi.

The adopt-a-district campaign is a new form of trolling for the Trump age. But it also marks an evolution for the Democratic grassroots, which since January have seized on town halls to put their representatives on the spot, express their anger, and produce viral moments. That was part of the idea behind the Indivisible Guide, a user’s manual for bugging the hell out of Congress, drafted by a group of ex-congressional staffers in December. Indivisible quickly went from a Google Doc to a movement with thousands of registered groups, in every congressional district in the country. It offered a blueprint for badgering congressional offices ahead of key votes and showing up to hassle officials in their own districts.

The problem: Most Republicans aren’t holding town halls, and many of the town halls that are being held require constituents to enter a lottery or present a driver’s license to get in. As Maloney noted, of the 217 Republicans who voted for the House health care bill last week, just 14 have scheduled town halls to talk about it. So the tactics of raising hell had to evolve, too. Indivisible groups have turned the town-hall schedule into a guerilla marketing campaign. They’ve put images of their representatives on milk cartons and cardboard cutouts and put up “missing” posters on telephone poles. In February, the national Indivisible group put out a “Missing Member Toolkit” to encourage local groups to set up their own “citizen” town halls. One of the suggested ideas for giving the events some zest (and legitimacy) if the local representative turned down their invitation was to invite another elected official to the event instead.

What’s happening in Faso’s district neatly illustrates the role these new (and some old) progressive grassroots groups have played in the Democratic Party’s attempts to block President Donald Trump. New York’s 19th District is a sprawling, largely rural swing area that veered hard toward Trump in 2016 after twice voting for Barack Obama. In early February, Indivisible CD-19 held its first big rally, a demonstration and concert outside Faso’s office in Kinderhook followed by a march to the congressman’s home nearby. Faso was not home at the time, but when he arrived 40 minutes later, he came out to speak to the protesters. Among them was a local woman named Andrea Mitchell, who has a brain tumor. She asked Faso if he would protect the Affordable Care Act’s ban on denying insurance on the basis of pre-existing conditions, and when Faso said yes, the two hugged.

But Faso voted for AHCA, and Mitchell—and NY-19 Indivisible—want answers. “I honestly believed after the first vote he wouldn’t repeal it,” Mitchell said in an interview with Rachel Maddow last week. “A lot of my friends and constituents thought that that was very naive of me.” It was Mitchell’s interview with Maddow that first got Maloney thinking about adopting a district, and when he saw that the group’s invitation to Faso to attend the Monday event had gone unanswered, he accepted on Twitter. If Mitchell couldn’t get a straight answer from her congressman, Maloney concluded, he could at least offer one.

Helen Kalla, a spokesperson for the national Indivisible group, said the group is hoping the Maloney and Gallego events are the start of something bigger. “This is going to be a major push over the next several weeks across the country, with what we hope is a huge turnout during the Memorial Day recess in a few weeks,” she said. On Wednesday, the group unveiled a new “toolkit” on how to promote adopt-a-district town halls. Four months after the inauguration, with national Democrats bickering over a big-picture strategy, the cart is still dragging the donkey. And for now, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

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Republicans Who Backed Trumpcare Aren’t Holding Town Halls. So Democrats Are Going in Their Place.

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More Than 100 Lawmakers Respond to Comey Firing by Calling for Independent Russia Probe

by RosettaPilcher Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

More than 100 members of Congress—including a few Republicans—have responded to President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey by calling for an independent investigation or a special prosecutor to look into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and possible collusion with Trump campaign associates. Comey was in charge of the Russia investigation, and now Trump will have the opportunity to choose his replacement—a situation that presents an obvious conflict of interest.

Among those calling for an independent probe are at least three Republicans—Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, and Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida—as well as nearly every senior Democrat in the House and Senate, including Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, and Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont, the second-ranking Democrat on the judiciary committee.

Here are some of the notable reactions to Comey’s firing:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.):

“I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The president’s decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.”

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.):

“Today’s extraordinary decision raises many questions all of which must be answered. Congress and the American people need a transparent explanation as to how this decision was reached and why it was executed at this time. It is critical that the FBI can continue all of its pending work with independence and integrity – especially the investigation into the Russian government’s efforts to influence our last election and undermine American democracy. Today I reiterate the need for Congress to establish a Select Committee with full investigatory powers to thoroughly examine this matter.”

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.):

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY):

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee:

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House select intelligence committee:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.):

Rep. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii):

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY):

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas):

Meanwhile, a number of other congressional Republicans downplayed the news of Comey’s firing:

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine):

Some took shots at their Democratic colleagues:

Or ignored the news altogether:

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More Than 100 Lawmakers Respond to Comey Firing by Calling for Independent Russia Probe

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Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House

by TabathaRing Posted on May 8, 2017

Mother Jones

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The much-anticipated Senate hearing on Monday afternoon with former acting attorney general Sally Yates and former director of national intelligence James Clapper confirmed an important point: the Russia story still poses tremendous trouble for President Donald Trump and his crew.

Yates recounted a disturbing tale. She recalled that on January 26, she requested and received a meeting with Don McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel. At the time, Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials were saying that ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, had not spoken the month before with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, about the sanctions then-President Barack Obama had imposed on the Russians as punishment for Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Yates’ Justice Department had evidence—presumably intercepts of Flynn’s communications with Kislyak—that showed this assertion was flat-out false.

At that meeting, Yates shared two pressing concerns with McGahn: that Flynn had lied to the vice president and that Flynn could now be blackmailed by the Russians because they knew he had lied about his conversations with Kislyak. As Yates told the members of the Senate subcommittee on crime and terrorism, “To state the obvious: you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians.” She and McGahn also discussed whether Flynn had violated any laws.

The next day, McGahn asked Yates to return to the White House, and they had another discussion. According to Yates, McGahn asked whether it would interfere with the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Flynn if the White House took action regarding this matter. No, Yates said she told him. The FBI had already interviewed Flynn. And Yates explained to the senators that she had assumed that the White House would not sit on the information she presented McGahn and do nothing.

But that’s what the White House did. McGahn in that second meeting did ask if the White House could review the evidence the Justice Department had. She agreed to make it available. (Yates testified that she did not know whether this material was ever reviewed by the White House. She was fired at that point because she would not support Trump’s Muslim travel ban.) Whether McGahn examined that evidence about Flynn, the White House did not take action against him. It stood by Flynn. He remained in the job, hiring staff for the National Security Council and participating in key policy decision-making.

On February 9, the Washington Post revealed that Flynn had indeed spoken with Kislyak about the sanctions. And still the Trump White House backed him up. Four days later, Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump White House official, declared that Trump still had “full confidence” in Flynn. The next day—as a media firestorm continued—Trump fired him. Still, the day after he canned Flynn, Trump declared, “Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.” Trump displayed no concern about Flynn’s misconduct.

The conclusion from Yates’ testimony was clear: Trump didn’t dump Flynn until the Kislyak matter became a public scandal and embarrassment. The Justice Department warning—hey, your national security adviser could be compromised by the foreign government that just intervened in the American presidential campaign—appeared to have had no impact on Trump’s actions regarding Flynn. Imagine what Republicans would say if a President Hillary Clinton retained as national security adviser a person who could be blackmailed by Moscow.

The subcommittee’s hearing was also inconvenient for Trump and his supporters on another key topic: it destroyed one of their favorite talking points.

On March 5, Clapper was interviewed by NBC News’ Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and asked if there was any evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. “Not to my knowledge,” Clapper replied. Since then, Trump and his champions have cited Clapper to say there is no there there with the Russia story. Trump on March 20 tweeted, “James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. The story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!” White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly deployed this Clapper statement to insist there was no collusion.

At Monday’s hearing, Clapper pulled this rug out from under the White House and its comrades. He noted that it was standard policy for the FBI not to share with him details about ongoing counterintelligence investigations. And he said he had not been aware of the FBI’s investigation of contacts between Trump associates and Russia that FBI director James Comey revealed weeks ago at a House intelligence committee hearing. Consequently, when Clapper told Todd that he was not familiar with any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, he was speaking accurately. But he essentially told the Senate subcommittee that he was not in a position to know for certain. This piece of spin should now be buried. Trump can no longer hide behind this one Clapper statement.

Clapper also dropped another piece of information disquieting for the Trump camp. Last month, the Guardian reported that British intelligence in late 2015 collected intelligence on suspicious interactions between Trump associates and known or suspected Russian agents and passed this information to to the United States “as part of a routine exchange of information.” Asked about this report, Clapper said it was “accurate.” He added, “The specifics are quite sensitive.” This may well have been the first public confirmation from an intelligence community leader that US intelligence agencies have possessed secret information about ties between Trump’s circle and Moscow. (Comey testified that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of links between Trump associates and Russian began in late July 2016.)

So this hearing indicated that the Trump White House protected a national security adviser who lied and who could be compromised by Moscow, that Trump can no longer cite Clapper to claim there was no collusion, and that US intelligence had sensitive information on interactions between Trump associates and possible Russian agents as early as late 2015. Still, most of the Republicans on the panel focused on leaks and “unmasking”—not the main issues at hand. They collectively pounded more on Yates for her action regarding the Muslim travel ban than on Moscow for its covert operation to subvert the 2016 election to help Trump.

This Senate subcommittee, which is chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is not mounting a full investigation comparable to the inquiry being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee (and presumably the hobbled House intelligence committee). It has far less staff, and its jurisdiction is limited. But this hearing demonstrated that serious inquiry can expand the public knowledge of the Trump-Russia scandal—and that there remains much more to examine and unearth.

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Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House

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Trump: Everyone Has a Better Health Care System Than Us

by Aliza69Hlovhvip Posted on May 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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Here is Donald Trump defending his offhand statement that Australia has better health care than America:

Needless to say, Trump doesn’t have a clue about what kind of health care Australia provides or whether it’s better than ours. He’s just whistling in the wind, like he always does.

The interesting thing about this is that shows yet again how little Trump knows about conservative ideology—and how little he cares about it. For years, conservatives have insisted that America has the best health care in the world. Just look at all those Canadians crossing the border for hip replacements! And the reason for our superiority is that we rely on the free market far more than most countries.

Trump just casually batted that away. Australia has a fairly common system cobbled together over the years, with taxes paying for basic universal health care and private insurance companies picking up the slack (sort of like Medigap insurance in the US for Medicare patients). It’s not especially generous, but it’s also about half the cost of American health care.

And Trump just said it’s better than the health care we get. Ditto for Britain’s fully socialized health care. Ditto for the Scandinavian countries. Ditto for France and Germany and Japan. Everyone with a government-funded universal health care system is better than us.

Normally, a statement like this would produce a huge blowback among conservatives. But not this time. That’s because conservatives all know that Trump has no idea what he’s saying, and no plans to let it guide policy. He’s certainly not planning to adopt the Australian model. Just the opposite: it’s little more than random babbling while he happily allows Congress to kill off the most Australian-ish aspects of American health care.

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Trump: Everyone Has a Better Health Care System Than Us

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The Senate Has a Working Group to Repeal Obamacare. It Apparently Includes Zero Women.

by ChristiRobbins Posted on May 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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Now that Republicans in the House of Representatives have passed a bill to repeal Obamacare, the work is shifting to the Senate. Senate Republicans will need to cobble together a deal without losing more than two of their own members (Vice President Mike Pence could cast the tie-breaking vote if it’s tied 50-50). Because the legislation is what’s known as a reconciliation bill, it can’t be filibustered.

The House bill is unlikely to pass the Senate without significant changes, as a number of GOP senators have voiced displeasure with various aspects of it. Senate Republicans have formed a working group made of up various ideological factions—ranging from Republicans in swing states wary of Medicaid cuts to hardcore conservatives, such as Ted Cruz—to try to find a compromise.

On Friday, Bloomberg published the list of senators who are part of that working group so far, and one group is notably absent: women. All 13 of the GOP senators reportedly involved in crafting the new bill are men; none of the Senate’s five Republican women are members of the group. (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) press office didn’t immediately respond to a request to confirm or comment on the membership of the working group.)

The House plan to repeal Obamacare would cut all federal funding to Planned Parenthood and would allow states to end Obamacare’s prohibition on discrimination against patients with preexisting conditions—allowing insurance companies to charge women more strictly because they are women. And yet apparently, none of the lawmakers involved in crafting the Senate’s initial legislation will be women.

This is particularly surprising since several female Republican senators have voiced skepticism about the House bill, and at least some of them will need to be brought onboard in order for the Senate to pass a health care bill. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) cosigned a letter earlier this year objecting to the House’s proposal to end Medicaid expansion, which has helped lower the uninsured rate for adults in her home state from 22 percent in 2011 to 8.7 percent in 2015. Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) have both objected to the bill’s provision defunding Planned Parenthood. Collins’ absence from the working group is particularly surprising, since the Maine senator has taken a leading role in crafting one of the few fully fleshed-out alternative proposals to the House’s bill.

Leaving women out of key spots is becoming a trend when it comes to health care decisions during the Trump administration. When Trump invited House members to the Rose Garden after Thursday’s vote, it was a sea of mostly men standing behind him. When the White House released images of Trump meeting with the conservative Freedom Caucus in March, Kellyanne Conway was the only woman in sight.

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The Senate Has a Working Group to Repeal Obamacare. It Apparently Includes Zero Women.

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