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April 04, 2017 ,

In this March 31, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with the National Association of Manufacturers in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Slim majorities of Americans favor independent investigations into Trump’s relationship with the Russian government and possible attempts by Russia to influence last year’s election according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks about the American Health Care Act during a visit to the Harshaw-Trane Parts and Distribution Center in Louisville
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks about the American Health Care Act during a visit to the Harshaw-Trane Parts and Distribution Center in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., March 11, 2017. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top White House officials met moderate and conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday in an effort to revive a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Key members of the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, invited a group of moderate Republicans known as the "Tuesday Group" to the White House. Pence then went to Capitol Hill to meet the Freedom Caucus, a group of House conservatives who last month derailed a healthcare bill backed by President Donald Trump.

The White House would like to see a revised bill come up for a vote as early as week's end, before the House breaks for a spring recess, and the text of the new proposal could be ready some time on Tuesday, lawmakers said.

"It was clear the president would be very happy come Friday to have this passed," said U.S. Representative Chris Collins, a member of the Tuesday Group and a Trump ally.

"This could move fairly quickly," he said.

Just 10 days ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to cancel a vote on a bill to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, when it was clear he could not deliver the votes needed for it to pass.

The defeat was a big political setback for Trump and fellow Republicans in Congress who were elected on pledges to repeal and replace former Democratic President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.

Freedom Caucus members said the Republican bill was too similar to Obamacare, while moderate Republicans balked at some of the changes conservatives sought.

Trump attacked Freedom Caucus members on Twitter late last week for their opposition to the bill and threatened to work to defeat them in the 2018 congressional elections.

At the weekend, he struck a more conciliatory tone, tweeting early on Sunday: "Talks on Repealing and Replacing Obamacare are, and have been, going on, and will continue until such time as a deal is hopefully struck."

After golfing with the president on Sunday, Republican Senator Rand Paul, a sharp critic of the Republicans' previous healthcare bill, also expressed renewed hope the healthcare bill could be revised in a way that picked up support from the conservative and moderate factions of the Republican Party.

Paul told reporters he was "very optimistic that we are getting closer and closer to an agreement repealing Obamacare."

KEY PROVISIONS

Pence and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus laid out the administration's revised healthcare plan during a 40-minute meeting with Freedom Caucus members, said Congressman Mark Meadows, the leader of the conservative group.

Meadows said he was "intrigued" by the new plan, which would allow states to opt out of some of Obamacare's mandates, possibly by obtaining waivers.

"We're encouraged ... but would certainly need a whole lot more information before we can take any action either in support or in opposition," Meadows told reporters. He expected to see a detailed draft of the proposal within 24 hours, he said.

In the earlier meeting with the moderate Tuesday Group, White House officials said the new plan would preserve Obamacare's essential health benefits clause, or services and care that insurers must cover, but states could apply for a waiver if they could show it would improve coverage and reduce costs, according to Collins.

Trump aides also discussed directing funds from the $115 billion stability fund for states into high-risk pools for people with pre-existing health conditions to better ensure insurance premiums come down in cost, Collins said.

"It's an acknowledgement that they were chasing votes with the Freedom Caucus and the Far Right and then ended up losing votes with those of us who are typically the most reliable votes," Collins said of the proposal provisions discussed at the meeting.
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April 04, 2017 ,

The White House announced Monday that President Trump would be donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of the Interior, which stands to lose $1.6 billion under his budget proposal.

Press secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump would be donating $78,333 to the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior. Trump had said during his campaign that he would donate his presidential salary to charity, saying “That’s no big deal for me” on the trail in 2015.


Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was on hand to accept a check, stating that the money would go to “infrastructure on our nation’s battlefields,” which he said were $229 million behind in deferred maintenance.

However, under the White House budget proposal — a wish list from the executive branch to Congress for 2018 government spending — Zinke’s department would receive a 12 percent cut, or about $1.6 billion. It would take 20,426 donations of $78,333 to cover that funding reduction.

“I looked at the budget. I’m not happy, but we’re going to fight about it, and I think I’m going to win at the end of the day,” said Zinke following his confirmation.

Spicer laid out the White House’s thinking about the donation to a government entity versus a private nonprofit.

“He believed,” said Spicer, “that as Secretary Zinke pointed out, that there was some great work being done there especially needed to restore our federal battlegrounds and wanted to do his part.”

Of the remaining $11.6 billion budgeted to Zinke’s department, a larger amount would go to speed up mining and drilling on public lands and offshore. From the White House’s budget proposal:

Strengthens the Nation’s energy security by increasing funding for DOI programs that support environmentally responsible development of energy on public lands and offshore waters. Combined with administrative reforms already in progress, this would allow DOI to streamline permitting processes and provide industry with access to the energy resources America needs, while ensuring taxpayers receive a fair return from the development of these public resources.

The budget proposal would also eliminate funding to National Heritage Sites, which are — per the National Park Service — “designated by Congress as places where natural, cultural, and historic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally important landscape.”
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April 03, 2017 ,
The Senate Judiciary Committee met to consider the nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch on Monday in Washington


WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Monday appeared to secure the votes necessary to filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, sending the body hurtling toward a bitter partisan confrontation later this week.

With an announcement from Senator Christopher Coons, Democrat of Delaware, during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing to vote on Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, Democrats had found their 41st vote in support of a filibuster.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was poised to approve the nomination later on Monday in a likely party-line vote to move President Trump’s selection to the Senate floor.

The committee vote is the first step in what will be a long, rutted road for Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation this week. Under current rules, Democrats can block Judge Gorsuch unless he receives support from eight non-Republicans to break a filibuster. 

If the filibuster holds, Republicans have hinted strongly that they will pursue the so-called nuclear option, changing longstanding practices to elevate Judge Gorsuch on a simple majority vote.

The nomination fight has been shadowed, in large measure, by the treatment last year of Judge Merrick B. Garland, whom President Barack Obama nominated last March after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Republicans refused to even consider Judge Garland during a presidential election year.

But Democrats insist their opposition to Judge Gorsuch stems from more than a thirst for payback. They have cited Judge Gorsuch’s record on workers’ rights and his degree of independence from Mr. Trump and conservative groups like the Federalist Society, among other concerns.

During the committee vote, senators took turns lamenting the state of the institution they serve, even as most seemed resigned to the upheaval that awaits the chamber.

Perhaps no member sounded as aggrieved as Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the Senate’s longest-serving member.

He first suggested that treatment of Judge Garland by Republicans last year had convinced Judge Gorsuch that “this committee is nothing more than a partisan rubber stamp,” allowing the nominee to evade straightforward questions during his hearings.

He said that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, had pledged to seat Judge Gorsuch by any means required, “even if that means forever damaging the United States Senate.”

And he wondered aloud how the Senate had become so unrecognizable to him.

“I cannot vote solely to protect an institution when the rights of hard-working Americans are at risk,” Mr. Leahy said. “Because I fear that the Senate I would be defending no longer exists.” 
Almost immediately, partisan sniping predominated at the committee meeting.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the committee’s chairman, accused Democrats of searching in vain for credible reasons to vote against Judge Gorsuch.
“This nominee that we’re voting on today is a judge’s judge,” he said. “He’s a picture of the kind of justice we should have on the Supreme Court.”

Mr. Grassley suggested that some attacks in recent weeks from Democrats, which have included criticisms of the spending push from outside groups supporting Judge Gorsuch, defied the country’s values.

“This is America,” he said, “where people can spend their money where they want to spend it.”
Taking her turn next, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s top Democrat, criticized Judge Gorsuch’s record on workers’ rights and his reticence to answer questions.
She also reminded the public about the treatment last year of Judge Garland.

“In my view, this is not a routine nomination,” she said as she began her remarks.
In his comments, Mr. Grassley expressed no regrets. “I believe then and I believe now that we took the right course for the Senate and for the court,” he said.
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April 03, 2017 ,

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders during a Democratic debate in Flint, Mich., in 2016. (Jim Young/Reuters)


President Trump is pushing back against the ongoing investigations into his team’s possible ties to Russia by rehashing the 2016 campaign. All of it.

“Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate?” Trump tweeted on Monday morning. “Just asking!”

The president’s question refers to emails that showed former acting Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile had provided questions to the Hillary Clinton campaign in advance of a town hall and debate hosted by CNN during the Democratic primary.




The emails, obtained in a Russian hack of the DNC’s servers and published by WikiLeaks in October, revealed that Brazile shared with the Clinton campaign a question that would be posed to Clinton before the CNN Democratic Debate in Flint, Mich., in March, and another before a CNN town hall in Columbus, Ohio, a week later. Brazile, a longtime CNN contributor, was later fired by the network, which vehemently denied giving her access to debate questions in advance.

“This is exactly what the Russians intended to do,” Brazile tweeted following the publication of those emails. “And they’re doing it.”

It’s not the first time Trump has tried to deflect attention by tweeting about Clinton and her former campaign chairman, John Podesta.

“Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech money to Bill, the Hillary Russian ‘reset,’ praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company,” the president tweeted. “Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!”

The president complained that the “fake news” media had been focused on his campaign’s possible connections to Russia rather than Clinton’s supposed ties.

Earlier Monday, Trump praised “Fox & Friends” for “such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us.”
 

“‘Spied on before nomination,'” Trump tweeted. “The real story.”

The president then floated — without evidence — a conspiracy theory about Podesta’s brother.

“Was the brother of John Podesta paid big money to get the sanctions on Russia lifted?” Trump tweeted. “Did Hillary know?”

The president then cited a Fox News report that there was electronic surveillance of Trump and people close to him — tagging the FBI in his tweet.
 

 
Over the weekend, Trump also tried to steer the media’s attention back to the “real story”: his evidence-free claim that former President Barack Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower before the election.

“When will Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd and @NBCNews start talking about the Obama SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL and stop with the Fake Trump/Russia story?” Trump tweeted on Saturday. (That tweet was the subject of an extended discussion among the panelists on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday about whether Chuck Todd really does have sleepy eyes.)

On Sunday’s “Meet The Press,” Todd asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell whether he had seen any indication that the Obama administration asked for surveillance of the Trump campaign.

“No,” McConnell said.

A few minutes later, Trump tweeted again.

“The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING!” the president declared. “Find the leakers.”



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April 03, 2017
   Erdogan says:  Turks in Europe should defy 'grandchildren of Nazism'



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Turkish President Erdogan addresses his supporters during a rally for the upcoming referendum in the Black Sea city of Rize


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A supporter of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan waves a "Yes" campaign flag during a rally for the upcoming referendum in the Black Sea city of Rize.



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Supporters of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan wait for his arrival during a rally for the upcoming referendum in the Black Sea city of Rize.


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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan greets his supporters during a rally for the upcoming referendum in the Black Sea city of Rize.




ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday called on Turkish voters in Europe to defy the "grandchildren of Nazism" and back a referendum this month on changing the constitution, comments likely to cause further ire in Europe.

Erdogan has repeatedly lashed out at European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, in campaigning for the referendum, accusing them of "Nazi-like" tactics for banning his ministers from speaking to rallies of Turkish voters abroad.

Both the Germans and Dutch have been incensed by the comparisons to Nazism and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the references must stop.

"With this determination, we will never allow three or four European fascists ... from harming this country's honor and pride," Erdogan told a packed crowd of flag-waving supporters in the Black Sea city of Rize, where his family comes from.

"I call on my brothers and sisters voting in Europe...give the appropriate answer to those imposing this fascist oppression and the grandchildren of Nazism."

Erdogan is counting on the support of expatriates in Europe, including the 1.4 million Turks eligible to vote in Germany, to pass constitutional changes that would give him sweeping presidential powers.

But ties with Europe have deteriorated in the run-up to the campaign. Erdogan last month said Turkey would reevaluate its relationship with the bloc, and may even hold a second referendum on whether to continue accession talks.

On Monday, he said he could take the issue of whether Turkey should restore the death penalty to referendum if necessary.

"The European Union will not like this. But I don't care what Hans, George or Helga say, I care what Hasan, Ahmet, Mehmet, Ayse and Fatma say. I care what God says... If necessary, we will take this issue to another referendum as well," he told the rally.

Turkey abandoned capital punishment more than a decade ago as part of its bid to join the European Union, but Erdogan has repeatedly told crowds calling for it following the July 15 failed coup that he would approve its restoration if parliament passed it.

Restoring capital punishment would all but end Turkey's bid to join the EU, officials from the bloc have said. 
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April 02, 2017 ,

WASHINGTON — When President Trump welcomes President Xi Jinping of China to his palm-fringed Florida club for two days of meetings on Thursday, the studied informality of the gathering will bear the handiwork of two people: China’s ambassador to Washington and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The Chinese ambassador, Cui Tiankai, has established a busy back channel to Mr. Kushner, according to several officials briefed on the relationship. The two men agreed on the club, Mar-a-Lago, as the site for the meeting, and the ambassador even sent Mr. Kushner drafts of a joint statement that China and the United States could issue afterward.

Mr. Kushner’s central role reflects not only the peculiar nature of this first meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi, but also of the broader relationship between the United States and China in the early days of the Trump administration. It is at once highly personal and bluntly transactional — a strategy that carries significant risks, experts said, given the economic and security issues that already divide the countries.

While Chinese officials have found Mr. Trump a bewildering figure with a penchant for inflammatory statements, they have come to at least one clear judgment: In Mr. Trump’s Washington, his son-in-law is the man to know.

Mr. Kushner first made his influence felt in early February when he and Mr. Cui orchestrated a fence-mending phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi. During that exchange, Mr. Trump pledged to abide by the four-decade-old “One China” policy on Taiwan, despite his earlier suggestion that it was up for negotiation.

Now Mr. Trump wants something in return: He plans to press Mr. Xi to intensify economic sanctions against North Korea to pressure the country to shut down its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. He has also vowed to protest the chronic trade imbalance between the United States and China, which he railed against during his presidential campaign.

China’s courtship of Mr. Kushner, which has coincided with the marginalization of the State Department in the Trump administration, reflects a Chinese comfort with dynastic links. Mr. Xi is himself a “princeling”: His father was Xi Zhongxun, a major figure in the Communist revolution who was later purged by Mao Zedong.

Not only is Mr. Kushner married to the president’s daughter Ivanka, but he is also one of his most influential advisers — a 36-year-old with no previous government experience but an exceptionally broad portfolio under his father-in-law.

“Since Kissinger, the Chinese have been infatuated with gaining and maintaining access to the White House,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a senior director for Asia in the Obama administration. “Having access to the president’s family and somebody they see as a princeling is even better.”

Former American officials and China experts warned that the Chinese had prepared more carefully for this visit than the White House, which is still debating how harshly to confront Beijing, and which has yet to fill many important posts in the State Department. Several said that if Mr. Trump presented China with an ultimatum on North Korea, it could backfire.

“China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with The Financial Times that was published on Sunday. “And if they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.”

The president said that he had “great respect” for the Chinese leader, but that he would warn him that “we cannot continue to trade if we are going to have an unfair deal like we have right now.”

Shortly after winning the election, Mr. Trump said he might use the “One China” policy, under which the United States recognizes a single Chinese government in Beijing and has severed its diplomatic ties with Taiwan, as a bargaining chip for greater Chinese cooperation on trade or North Korea.

Mr. Trump had thrown that policy into doubt after taking a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan. That caused consternation in Beijing, and Mr. Xi refused to get on the phone with Mr. Trump until he reaffirmed the policy.

After the two leaders finally spoke, the White House said in a statement that the men had “discussed numerous topics, and President Trump agreed, at the request of President Xi, to honor our One China policy.” Mr. Trump insisted on that wording, according to a person briefed on the process, because he wanted to make clear that he had made a concession to Mr. Xi.


Since that call, Mr. Cui has continued to cultivate the Kushner family. Later in February, he invited Ivanka and the couple’s daughter, Arabella, to a reception at the Chinese Embassy to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Inside the White House, the most visible sign of Mr. Kushner’s influence on China policy came in March at the beginning of a meeting of the National Security Council’s “principals committee” to discuss North Korea.

He was seated at the table in the Situation Room when Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, walked in. Seeing no chairs open, General Dunford headed for the backbenches, according to two people who were there. Mr. Kushner, they said, quickly offered his chair to General Dunford and took a seat along the wall.

While administration officials confirm that Mr. Kushner is deeply involved in China relations, they insist that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has taken the lead on policy and made many of the decisions on the choreography and agenda of the meeting at Mar-a-Lago.

In March, Mr. Tillerson made his first trip to Beijing as secretary of state, during which he and Mr. Xi discussed the planning in a 30-minute meeting. He was criticized afterward for repeating the phrases “mutual respect” and “win-win solutions,” which are drawn from the Chinese diplomatic lexicon and have been interpreted to assert a Chinese sphere of influence over the South China Sea and other disputed areas.

A senior American official said that Mr. Tillerson applied his own meaning to those phrases — “win-win,” he said, was originally an American expression — and was not accepting China’s definition. He said the secretary had adopted a significantly tougher tone in private, particularly about China’s role in curbing North Korea’s provocations.

Mr. Kushner has passed on proposals he got from Mr. Cui to Mr. Tillerson, who in turn has circulated them among his staff in the State Department, officials said. But the department’s influence has been reduced as many positions remain unfilled, including that of assistant secretary for East Asian affairs. Though Mr. Tillerson has kept a low profile, officials said he was trying to develop his own relationship with Mr. Trump at regular lunches and dinners.

Mr. Kushner’s involvement in China policy prompted questions after reports that his company was negotiating with a politically connected Chinese firm to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in his family’s flagship property, 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

On Wednesday, amid the glare of negative publicity, Mr. Kushner’s company ended negotiations with the firm, the Anbang Insurance Group.

Another question hanging over the meeting is whether the hard-liners in the White House will wield their influence. Mr. Trump ran for the presidency on a stridently anti-China platform, accusing the Chinese, wrongly, of continuing to depress the value of their currency, and threatening to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports.

The architects of that policy — Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist, and Peter Navarro, the director of the National Trade Council — have said little publicly about China since entering the White House. But on Thursday, Mr. Trump predicted that the meeting would be “very difficult” because, as he said on Twitter, the United States would no longer tolerate “massive trade deficits.”

By inviting Mr. Xi to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s “Southern White House,” the president is conferring on him the same status as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who spent two days in Florida, playing golf with the president and responding to a crisis after North Korea tested a ballistic missile. Such a gesture is particularly valuable, experts said, given that China is not an ally like Japan.

Mr. Xi does not play golf — as part of his anti-corruption campaign, he cracked down on Communist Party officials’ playing the sport — so he and Mr. Trump will have to find other ways to fill the 25 hours that the Chinese president will be at the club. On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, will host Mr. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, for dinner.

There are obvious parallels between the Mar-a-Lago meeting and the 2013 summit meeting at Sunnylands in California, Walter Annenberg’s 200-acre estate, where President Barack Obama and Mr. Xi got acquainted over long walks in the desert landscape and a dinner of grilled porterhouse steaks and cherry pie. But there are important differences, too.

By the time Mr. Obama met with Mr. Xi in California, they had already met once before, when Mr. Xi was vice president. Mr. Xi held extensive meetings with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., traveling with him around the United States. Some former officials said the Mar-a-Lago meeting might reveal the disparity in experience between the two leaders and their teams.

“Sunnylands was difficult because Xi was new, while Obama had his sea legs,” said Mr. Medeiros, the former Obama administration official. “What’s interesting is that the polarity here is reversed. Xi has his sea legs; Trump does not.”


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March 30, 2017


WASHINGTON (AP) — A top aide to President Donald Trump said she is leaving his administration to join a pro-Trump outside group, America First Policies.

Deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh said Thursday she decided to make the move after the Trump-backed health care bill failed last week to amass enough support to clear the House. White House officials said lawmakers were being pressured by outside groups that opposed the bill, through voter phone calls and television advertisements, with no pushback from several existing Trump organizations.

"It was abundantly clear that we didn't have air cover when it came to calls coming into lawmakers," said White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. "No one can fix this problem better than Katie."
Walsh, who served under Priebus at the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign and the White House, will be a senior adviser to America First Policies. The group is run by Trump's former data and digital director Brad Parscale.
Priebus and other White House officials stressed that Walsh was the one who decided to leave the administration.

"She's the vital link that pulls things together," said Trump's senior strategist Steve Bannon. Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner added: "I'm very supportive of Katie and the sacrifices she's making" by leaving the White House.

Despite her low profile, Walsh has become a key player in the administration's inner circle and has grown close to the president in recent months.

America First Policies has been off to a slow start since its founding and has been focused mostly on raising money and assembling a leadership team alongside Trump's 2016 digital and data director, Brad Parscale. The group has also been roiled by organizational challenges. One of its co-founders, Rick Gates, left last week amid renewed reports about his firm's past work on behalf of Russian clients.

Before serving as chief of staff at the RNC, Walsh worked on a number of political campaigns, including Sen. John McCain's presidential bid in 2008. A St. Louis native, she started working in politics as a student.
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March 30, 2017 1 ,





The state of health care talks may be uncertain, but one thing is not: The knives are out for the House Freedom Caucus.

The White House and congressional leadership clearly want to put the right-wing group of 30 or so House lawmakers on the defensive by blaming it for last week’s climactic demise of a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

That may be a way for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to make another attempt at passing a health care bill through the House, or simply to try to change a dynamic that could make it harder for President Trump to accomplish anything significant.

At the moment, there is plenty of talk about salvaging the repeal effort, with some reports suggesting that Ryan might make a second attempt in a few days.

“They want to run the bill next week,” one Republican source outside Congress — but well connected to leadership — told Yahoo News. A spokesman for a lawmaker involved in discussions with the White House confirmed that there are hopes for a second attempt next week, contingent on whether an agreement can be reached.

Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said there was “no schedule update at this point.”

“The speaker has encouraged members to continue talking so we can get to a place of yes and fulfill our promise to repeal and replace Obamacare,” she said.




But even if there is no second vote on Obamacare repeal, the White House and congressional leadership are now laying groundwork for future action by putting pressure on the Freedom Caucus.

Both Trump and Ryan had embraced the health care legislation, only to see moderate and conservative Republicans break party ranks and refuse to back it. After Ryan abruptly canceled a planned vote last Friday, Trump said he was moving on to other matters, and White House officials said over the weekend that they would look to work with Democrats moving forward.

Trump himself set the blame on the Freedom Caucus in a Sunday tweet.
Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!

A senior Republican source told Yahoo News that the White House sees the Freedom Caucus as irrelevant and will work with Democrats in the future before it does anything with them, though it’s unclear if that’s a negotiating tactic with the hardline conservative group. A senior White House official tempered that assessment somewhat, and did not rule out working with caucus in the future.

The GOP leadership’s public and private messaging has been intended to make Freedom Caucus members think very hard about whether they want to be held responsible for the failure to repeal Obamacare, even as Trump adviser Steve Bannon and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus are talking with members of Congress this week to probe for ways forward.

“Trump is doing a good job of dangling a new process in front of [the House Freedom Caucus], but also scaring them by saying he’s going to walk away,” said a source close to both the White House and to House leadership. “I think the president saying he is going to walk away from this is very intended to spook them.”




And certainly, Freedom Caucus lawmakers have reacted to the repeal failure last week by clamoring for a second try, as if trying to call back a train leaving the station.

“Quit blaming everyone,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Freedom Caucus leader, told CNN on Wednesday morning. “Let’s just get back to work, do the responsible thing, and put together a piece of legislation that we can all be proud of.”

Trump himself signaled shortly after Friday’s scrapped vote that he was ready to move onto tax reform. And on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer downplayed the state of health care negotiations.

“I don’t know how detailed you want it,” Spicer said, according to the White House transcript. “Have we had some discussions and listened to ideas? Yes. Are we actively planning an immediate strategy? Not at this time.”


Even if a health care bill can’t be resurrected at the moment, Congress must fund the government before April 29, when the current temporary budget agreement expires. If Ryan cannot pass a continuing resolution through the House in time, it would shut down the government. That would be a terrible follow up to the health care debacle.

Then there is tax reform, an issue just as thorny as health care and one that already appears to be imperiled.




And so the plan is to bring the Freedom Caucus to heel. Some don’t think this will really happen until some of the group’s members lose their seats next year in primary fights.

“Unless they feel some pain they will never change,” said one aide to a senior Republican senator. “Those guys are not honest brokers in these types of dealings. I’ve seen it too many times. You give them something and then they move the goal posts.”

This is certainly House leadership’s view. But the Freedom Caucus and its outside allies insist that they were not consulted before the repeal legislation was unveiled, and that they did not “move the goal posts.” Rather, they say they focused their negotiation demands on one item: removal of what is known as Title 1 regulations in Obamacare that conservatives believe constrain insurance companies from offering coverage at lower costs.

Ryan said that he did not think Senate rules would allow those measures to be included in the narrow process — known as reconciliation — through which the Senate can pass one piece of legislation each budget year that requires only a simple majority. Republicans have 52 seats, not enough to overcome a Democrat filibuster.

But Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said the Senate parliamentarian had told him that changing Obamacare regulations might be OK under the reconciliation process.

“The ask was always the same: repeal the regs,” said the Senate Republican aide.


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January 08, 2017 ,

Perhaps in the least shocking news since Weiner's sexting scandal we now are presented with a whole new buffet of already predicted information.

Trump, the man who spent his campaign demeaning, belittling, insulting and objectifying women has come to appoint one of the most misogynist cabinets in the modern history of the USA.

Tax credits for child care and the prospect of paid maternity leave, new restrictions on abortion and less access to contraception, limits on health care that disproportionately affect women and minorities and curbs on funding for domestic violence, as well as slowing the momentum toward raising the minimum wage are just some of the news issues women will now have to deal under a Trump administration.

Let's take a look at Trump's selections for attorney general, Health and Human Services Secretary and CIA director: Jeff Sessions, Tom Price and Mike Pompeo respectively.

All three voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, which funds shelters and services for victims of domestic violence, due to amendments that extended protections to L.G.B.T. victims. 

The act is up for reauthorization next year.

Elaine Chao, Mr. Trump’s choice for transportation secretary, opposed raising the minimum wage during her tenure as secretary of labor in the George W. Bush administration.

Donald Trump opposed raising the federal minimum wage during the campaign, although at times he contradicted himself. 

President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Eleanor Smeal, points out that two-thirds of minimum-wage earners are women, who dominate fields with low-paying service jobs.

The President-elect, who supported abortion as recently as 1999, opposed it during his campaign. 

So it comes as no surprise that so do almost all of his cabinet picks.

Senator Sessions and Representatives Price and Pompeo have repeatedly voted for abortion restrictions in Congress, including a ban on abortions after 20 weeks and opposed funding for Planned Parenthood and Title X, because abortion is included in these family planning services.

Nikki Haley, his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, Betsy DeVos, education secretary and Ms. Chao also have a record of opposing the right to terminate one's pregnancy, with Mrs. Haley, while Governor of South Carolina signing into law a bill banning abortions from 20 weeks, despite a medically established viability standard of 24 to 26 weeks.

Ben Carson, his nominee for Housing and Urban Development, has opposed abortion (among other important issues) for a long time now.

When it comes to contraception things don't get better, with Mr. Sessions, Mr. Price and Mr. Pompeo all voting against requiring employers to provide health care plans that included contraception, citing religious liberty.

In an exchange that went viral in 2012, Mr. Price ridiculed the notion that there are women who can not afford contraception as part of his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which requires contraceptive coverage without co-payments as well as a range of other preventive services for women. “Bring me one woman who has been left behind,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “Bring me one. There’s not one.”

This despite the fact that numerous women’s advocacy groups have demonstrated, high co-payments for birth control have been a significant deterrent for countless women.

In the end there is a small ray of bright hope in this dark future, proposals championed by Ivanka Trump (who the president listens to carefully) that would require paid maternity leave and offer expanded tax credits for child care. 
The law as it is now provides only for unpaid leave. 
However many people working on this issue would prefer paid family leave, so that men could play a larger role in the child's development. 

The child care credits have also been criticized as too small and geared towards higher-income families. 

As Ms. Smeal said however “Getting something is better than nothing right now.”

With this new administration American women can expect one step forward, and at least a thousand steps back from what we can gather.

All they have left now is to advocate as much as they can for a concentrated effort to block any of Trump's new initiatives.
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January 08, 2017 ,



No matter what you might think of Donald Trump's incitement to misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia and outright disregard for basic decency on one policy of his we can all agree... Keeping jobs in America.

Nine months ago an Indiana plant belonging to the Carrier Corporation had planned to move 2,000 jobs to Mexico, now after negotiations with President elect Trump they have announced that 1,000 jobs will be kept in Indiana.

However did Trump make a good move?

He used this company's moving plans as a rallying cry during much of his campaign, a way of showing how America had bad trade deals that were hurting hard working Americans.

None of us however know what deal has been reached to keep the company in Indiana, and Trump himself is not yet president so there's not much he can do in terms of legislation for the time being.

This move will for the most part however be a symbolic PR stunt.

Indiana has lost over 235,000 jobs since 1969, 1,000 jobs is nothing compared to what keeps flowing out of Indiana and the rest of the Midwest.

Also one has to wonder just what the deal consisted of. 
If promising funding or special tax cuts to companies that stay was Trump's answer than I am afraid America will be doomed as any CEO can now threaten to exit the country as a way to get economic privileges.

One doesn't need a degree in finance to know that doesn't bode well for any nation's economy.

For now this populist move will keep many people happy, it will embolden Trump's supporters to seeing their elected leader as a saviour of the American working class and it certainly will make the families of 1,000 workers feel much safer financially, but one needs to think long term, and until the details of this deal are revealed one cannot truly know if this deal was a success or the first step to economic ruin.
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January 08, 2017 ,


As the election results are being contested (for one thing Clinton won the popular vote and is only poised to lose due to the electoral college) and many people raise concerns about anomalies in the counting of the votes in certain key states it was only a matter of time until someone decided to begin an effort to investigate.

Dr. Jill Stein, the USA's Green Party candidate, has cited statistical anomalies in her pursuit to begin a recount in the states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. 

Clinton's campaign has already announced it shall participate in the Wisconsin recount as they claim to hold an obligation to the over 64 million Americans who voted for Hillary.

Trump on his part has claimed that Dr. Stein's efforts are nothing but a scam and accuses Hillary Clinton of hypocrisy by sharing past quotes where she called on people to respect the election's outcomes (conveniently ignoring the fact this was done due to Trump saying he would not accept the outcome of the elections if he were to lose).

It seems Americans are not ready to face reality, a dark grim reality that Trump is in fact their new president, the reality that soon the country will be run by an egomaniac incompetent lunatic and that this election has divided Americans more than ever.

It will be quite interesting to see what this recount could reveal, either way the results seem final, fate seems to be ready to run its course and Americans to collide with each others. 

Desperation under these circumstances is perfectly normal, but a more rational mind should now focus on how to revive the Democratic Party and reach out to voters rather than participating in petty attempts to discredit an election.

As for Trump, he should prepare to be discredited, he was elected by an undemocratic process called the Electoral College, he did not receive the backing of most Americans and probably never will, he does not hold the peoples' hearts, and if he risks to be during the Presidency what he was during the campaign he might be in for a bumpy ride for the next 4 years.

With a President as emotionally unstable as Trump anything could happen, we should be ready for any shocking comment, reaction or order, best to brace ourselves now for the worst and be prepared, instead of delaying the inevitable.
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January 08, 2017 ,

So, it seems that one day does not go by without the world being reminded of how President-elect Trump and his VP Mike Pence are loathed by the people of the United States of America.

Pence, the notoriously conservative and homophobic Vice-President of the USA, for some strange reason decided to go to the heart of Broadway to watch a play many of you might have heard of that goes by the name of Hamilton.


For those who may not know, Hamilton's cast is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and immensely progressive, the composer of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, being himself a Latino who champions liberal causes such as LGBT rights.


Pence, who has advocated for strict laws that take away a woman's control of her own body, not to mention to take away whatever little protection gay people had of course was not quite welcomed by the people of Broadway who booed him on sight (though some considered him "brave" for showing up and cheered his presence).
As the play came to its end actor Brandon Victor Dixon could not let go of this opportunity to reach out and so he had a very special message for the VP, “We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”

While this might sound like a touching, calm expression of one's desire for a better society this is sadly not how Trump nor his followers saw it (Pence himself exited the auditorium before letting Dixon finish his message, although he stood in the hallway to listen to the rest).


Trump himself has come to Twitter calling this event "harassment" while his fans have called for a boycott of Hamilton (an interesting decision since Hamilton's tickets have already been sold out until August 2017).


It is interesting to see how easily Trump and his fans demand respect for a president who got elected despite not having the majority of voters by his side, especially when taking into account the many smears, accusations, insults and hate campaigns Trump and many of his followers have led against President Obama.
If anything can be learned from this is the strong position of double standards on the American Right.
You can spend years insulting, smearing and disrespecting a president you dislike but whine when someone decides to deliver a polite message to the one you wanted.


We are not certain for how long Trump and Pence will really hold it in office, but one thing is for sure, once they leave a trail of hatred and division will stay behind. 

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