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Pundits on all sides warn of new civil war

Washington Post – At a moment when the country has never seemed angrier, two political commentators from opposite sides of the divide concurred last week on one point, nearly unthinkable until recently: The country is on the verge of “civil war.”

First came former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, a Fox News regular and ally of President Trump. “We are in a civil war,” he said. “The suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future is over. … It’s going to be total war.”

The next day, Nicolle Wallace, a former Republican operative turned MSNBC commentator and Trump critic, played a clip of diGenova’s commentary on her show and agreed with him — although she placed the blame squarely on the president.

Trump, she said, “greenlit a war in this country around race. And if you think about the most dangerous thing he’s done, that might be it.”

With the report by special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly nearly complete, impeachment talk in the air and the 2020 presidential election ramping up, fears that once existed only in fiction or the fevered dreams of conspiracy theorists have become a regular part of the political debate. These days, there’s talk of violence, mayhem and, increasingly, civil war.

A tumultuous couple of weeks in American politics seem to have raised the rhetorical flourishes to a new level and also brought a troubling question to the surface: At what point does all the alarmist talk of civil war actually increase the prospect of violence, riots or domestic terrorism?

Speaking to conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, diGenova summed up his best advice to friends: “I vote, and I buy guns. And that’s what you should do.”

He was a bit more measured a few days later in an interview with the Washington Post, saying that the United States is in a “civil war of discourse … a civil war of conduct,” triggered mostly by liberals and the media’s coverage of the Trump presidency. The former U.S. attorney said he owns guns mostly to make a statement and not because he fears political insurrection at the hands of his fellow Americans.

The rampant talk of civil war may be hyperbolic, but it does have origins in a real crumbling confidence in the country’s democratic institutions and its paralyzed federal government. With Congress largely deadlocked, governance on the most controversial issues has been left to the Supreme Court or has come through executive or emergency actions, such as Trump’s border wall effort.

Then there’s the persistent worry about the 202o elections. “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power,” Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and personal lawyer, told a congressional committee Wednesday.

On that score, Cohen’s not the only one who is concerned. As far back as 2016, Trump declined to say whether he would concede if he lost to Hillary Clinton, prompting former president Barack Obama to warn that Trump was undermining American democracy. “That is dangerous,” Obama said.

The moment was at the front of the mind of Joshua Geltzer, a former senior Obama administration Justice Department official, when he wrote a recent editorial for CNN urging the country to prepare for the possibility that Trump might not “leave the Oval Office peacefully” if he loses in 2020.

“If he even hints at contesting the election result in 2020 … he’d be doing so not as an outsider but as a leader with the vast resources of the U.S. government potentially at his disposal,” Geltzer, now a professor at Georgetown Law School, wrote in his piece in late February.

Geltzer urged both major parties to require their electoral college voters to pledge to respect the outcome of the election, and suggested that it might be necessary to ask the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reaffirm their loyalty to the Constitution over Trump.

“These are dire thoughts,” Geltzer wrote, “but we live in uncertain and worrying times.”

His speculation drew immediate reaction from the right. Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin tweeted a link to an article that called Geltzer’s warnings “rampant crazy.” News Punch, a far-right site that traffics in conspiracy theories, blared: “Obama Official Urges Civil War Against Trump Administration.”

Said Geltzer: “I don’t think I was being paranoid, but, boy, did I inspire paranoia on the other side.”

The concerns about a civil war, though, extend beyond the pundit class to a sizable segment of the population. An October 2017 poll from the company that makes the game Cards Against Humanity found that 31 percent of Americans believed a civil war was “likely” in the next decade.

More than 40 percent of Democrats described such a conflict as “likely,” compared with about 25 percent of Republicans. The company partnered with Survey Sampling International to conduct the nationally representative poll.

Some historians have sounded a similar alarm. “How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?” Victor Davis Hanson, a historian with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, asked last summer in an essay in National Review. Hanson prophesied that the United States “was nearing a point comparable to 1860,” about a year before the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, S.C.

Around the same time Hanson was writing, Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor who is now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, imagined his own new American civil war, in which demands for Trump’s impeachment lead to calls from Fox News commentators for “every honest patriot to take to the streets.”

“The way Mr. Trump and his defenders are behaving, it’s not absurd to imagine serious social unrest,” Reich wrote in the Baltimore Sun. “That’s how low he’s taken us.”

Reich got some unlikely support last week from Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist. “I think that 2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since the Civil War, and I include Vietnam in that,” Bannon said in an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation.

All the doom, gloom and divisiveness have caught the attention of experts who evaluate the strength of governments around the world. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, a measure widely cited by political scientists, demoted the United States from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy” in January 2017, citing a big drop in Americans’ trust for their political institutions.

Similarly, Freedom House, which monitors freedom and democracy around the world, warned in 2018 that the past year has “brought further, faster erosion of American’s own democratic standards than at any other time in memory.”

Those warnings about the state of America’s democratic institutions concern political scientists who study civil wars, which usually take root in countries with high levels of corruption, low trust in institutions and poor governance.

Barbara Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, said her first instinct was to dismiss any talk of civil war in the United States. “But the U.S. is starting to show that it is moving in that direction,” she said. “Countries with bad governance are the ones that experience these wars.”

James Fearon, who researches political violence at Stanford University, called the pundits’ warnings “basically absurd.” But he noted that political polarization and the possibility of a potentially serious constitutional crisis in the near future does “marginally increase the still very low odds” of a stalemate that might require “some kind of action by the military leadership.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he added, “but I guess it’s not entirely out of the question.”

Less clear in the near term is what kind of effect the inflammatory civil war rhetoric has on a democracy that’s already on edge. There’s some evidence that such heated words could cause people to become more moderate. A 2014 study found that when hard-line Israeli Jews were shown extreme videos promoting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as essential to Israeli pride, a strong army or national unity, they took a more dovish position.

“Extreme rhetoric can lead some people to pull back from the brink,” said Boaz Hameiri, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of the study. But that only happens when people already believe a “more moderate version of the extreme views” and find the more extreme message shocking, he said.

In such cases, people recognize the absurdity of their position, worry it reflects badly on them and reconsider it, he said.

If the extreme messages become a normal part of the political debate, the moderating effect goes away, the study found.

Violence is most likely to occur, Hameiri added, when political leaders use “dehumanizing language” to describe their opponents.

Most experts worried that the talk of conflict here, armed or otherwise, was serving to raise the prospects of unrest and diminish trust in America’s already beleaguered institutions.

The latest warnings of civil war from diGenova drew an exasperated response from VoteVets, a liberal veterans advocacy group whose members have fought in actual civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Amazing we have to say this but: 1. We are NOT in civil war. 2. Do NOT buy guns (or any weapons) to use against your fellow Americans,” Jon Soltz, the group’s chairman, tweeted in response to diGenova. “Trust us, we have seen war.”

Source: US Government Class

Circus arts education bill clears first hoop

Santa Fe New Mexican – Even more than most mornings, the New Mexico statehouse had a circus atmosphere on Friday.

Sen. Craig Brandt arrived with a stuffed elephant memorializing the defunct Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Brandt, R-Rio Rancho, made it clear that he was ready to debate a bill titled “Circus Arts Education.”

The sponsor of the proposal, Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, eyed Brandt’s elephant and said it was off the mark.

“The bill has nothing to do with elephants or animals,” Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, said without a trace of defensiveness.

She told Brandt and other members of the Senate Education Committee that her Senate Bill 412 is all about helping kids develop physically and emotionally. Providing them with a taste of the circus arts is a worthy program that opens up new avenues of learning, Rodriguez said.

Her bill would allocate $100,000 to the Public Education Department for a roving instructional program on activities such as “trapeze, aerial fabrics, unicycling, juggling, clowning, stilt-walking, giant puppetry and partner acrobatics.” Companies might bid for the work.

Rodriguez said Wise Fool New Mexico asked her to carry the bill. The organization specializes in the arts of circus, theater and puppetry.

Amy Christian, artistic director of Santa Fe-based Wise Fool, served as Rodriguez’s expert witness. She said her organization has more requests for appearances in schools than it can handle.

Ellen Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, testified in favor of the bill, saying it would help kids.

“All physical activity is healthy,” Bernstein said.

Sen. Candace Gould, R-Albuquerque, voted for the bill. This program would open young minds and fuel imaginations, Gould said.

Sen. Bill O’Neill, D-Albuquerque, agreed.

“It’s a legitimate way of learning, but it invites ridicule,” he said.

Brandt’s initial skepticism lessened as he listened to the testimony. The bill had sounded like something to train students for work in circuses, he said.

“There’s not a whole lot of jobs left,” he said, alluding to the collapse of once-mighty Ringling Bros. and other circuses.

Brandt still voted against the bill. So did Sen. Gregg Fulfer, R-Jal. But the proposal carried 7-2. Gould joined six Democrats in moving it ahead to the Senate Finance Committee.

Rodriguez, though, said she doubted that the bill can make it all the way through the Legislature in the last two weeks of the session.

It means the circus bill might make an encore appearance next year.

Source: US Government Class

Trump, Kim meet for start of second denuclearization summit

Washington Times – HANOI, Vietnam — President Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un Wednesday at the start of their second denuclearization summit, proclaiming that their “great relationship” will lead to fruitful negotiations.

“I think it’ll be very successful,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “The biggest progress is our relationship is really a good one.”

He told Mr. Kim that North Korea has “tremendous economic potential” from eased economic sanctions if he agrees to abandon its weapons program.

Mr. Kim thanked the president for his “courageous decision” to negotiate with him personally, and said there have been “some misunderstandings” in the 261 days since their last meeting.

“There have been all these eyes from the world who are misunderstanding the situation,” Mr. Kim said, referring to “hostility” lingering from the Korean War. “However, we have been able to overcome all the obstacles, and here we are today after 261 days.”

Amid high intrigue, the two leaders arrived at dusk at the Metropole hotel in Hanoi in separate motorcades, and shook hands in front of a bank of U.S. and North Korean flags. They chatted briefly and smiled for news cameras.

“I thought the first summit was a great success, and I think this one hopefully will be equal or greater than the first,” Mr. Trump told his counterpart, whom he called a “great leader.”

Mr. Kim replied, “We have been able to overcome all the obstacles, and here we are today.”

Then, with no aides and only interpreters present, they huddled in a conference room in their first face-to-face meeting since their breakthrough summit in Singapore eight months ago.

They later ate dinner together, joined by two key advisers from each side. Outside the hotel, hundreds of spectators and journalists thronged the security perimeter to get glimpses of the leaders and their entourages.

Mr. Kim said that since their initial meeting last summer, he had been through a time in which “I agonized… and have more patience than at any time.”
“I am confident that such a great outcome will come out this time which can be welcomed by everyone, and I will do my best to this end,” he said.

The White House billed the meeting as mainly a casual event; the tougher talks will come on Thursday. Mr. Trump earlier in the day called Mr. Kim “my friend” on Twitter, after having taunted him as “Little Rocket Man” in 2017 when the North Korean was launching test missiles and threatening to attack the U.S.

Even as Mr. Trump was negotiating over one of the world’s most urgent security threats, the president also was paying attention to developments back in Washington, where former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was testifying to a House committee that he committed crimes at the behest of Mr. Trump. He called the president a “con man” and a “cheater.”

The president fired back on Twitter hours before his meeting with Mr. Kim, calling Cohen a liar.

“Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately),” Mr. Trump tweeted. “He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time.”

As the president and Mr. Kim headed into the crucial part of the summit, Democrats in Washington expressed fears that Mr. Trump will ease sanctions or give other concessions to Mr. Kim without getting anything concrete in return.

“The fact that Trump wants a deal so bad and is such a terrible negotiator should scare us all heading into the summit with Kim,” tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The president said ahead of the meeting that his critics and the media were in the dark, criticizing “false reporting (guessing) on my intentions.”

“Kim Jong Un and I will try very hard to work something out on Denuclearization & then making North Korea an Economic Powerhouse,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “I believe that China, Russia, Japan & South Korea will be very helpful!”

Sources close to the negotiations have told The Washington Times that a success would come if any joint statement from the summit includes an indication that North Korea will allow international inspectors into the country to examine nuclear sites.

If the joint statement does not include that wording, the next best thing would be for Mr. Kim to say “inspectors” during a likely post-summit press conference on Thursday, they believe.

Some U.S. reporters covering the event as part of Mr. Trump’s media pool were excluded from the meeting with Mr. Kim, apparently over annoyance with reporters’ shouted questions. Only one newspaper reporter was allowed to cover the leaders’ final comments of the evening, while TV, radio and wire-service reporters were barred.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cited the “sensitive nature of the meetings.”

“We are continuing to negotiate aspects of this historic summit and will always work to make sure the U.S. media has as much access as possible,” she said.

Outside the meeting site, there was an atmosphere of fascination and excitement among the crowd who had waited for the two leaders.

“The two most-talked-about men in the world are coming,” said Davin Reid, a 29-year-old Canadian who was among thousands packing around an intersection near the hotel’s entrance.

“I want to see Kim Jong-un,” said Mr. Reid’s girlfriend, Kailyn Leckie, 23. “He’s just a fascinating human.”

“We’re not fans,” Mr. Reid added quickly. “It’s just a morbid curiosity. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Source: US Government Class

Federal judge rules male-only draft is unconstitutional

Washington (CNN)US District Court Judge Gray Miller ruled late Friday that the Military Selective Service Act’s male-only registration is unconstitutional.

The challenge was brought by a group known as National Coalition for Men and two men subject to the registration requirements.

The Selective Service System had argued that the case was controlled by a 1981 Supreme Court ruling, Rostker v. Goldberg, that said women could be excluded from the draft because they were not “similarly situated” with men for draft
purposes. That decision highlighted the fact that women could not serve in combat.

“In the nearly four decades since Rostker, however, women’s opportunities in the military have expanded dramatically. In 2013, the Department of Defense officially lifted the ban on women in combat,” Miller, of the Southern District of Texas, wrote.

“In short,” he concluded, “while historical restrictions on women in the military may have justified past discrimination, men and women are now similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft. If there ever was a time to discuss the place of women in the Armed Services, that time has based. Defendants have not carried the burden of showing that the male-only registration requirement continues to be substantially related to Congress’s objective of raising and supporting armies.”
Miller did not issue an injunction against the federal policy.

A National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service has been studying issue.
All men ages 18-25 are required by law to provide basic personal information to the Selective Service System.

Source: US Government Class

Quay County gun-rights ‘sanctuary’ status catches like fire in New Mexico

Santa Fe New Mexican – TUCUMCARI — Back when this Eastern New Mexico town was founded as a tent city in 1901, it was unofficially known as “Ragtown.” Another nickname — “Six Shooter Siding” — later emerged, reportedly because of the large number of gunfights that took place there.

Source: US Government Class

High court limits power of states, localities to impose fines, seize property

Santa Fe New Mexican – WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that the Constitution’s prohibition on excessive fines applies to state and local governments, limiting their abilities to impose financial penalties and seize property.

The decision delighted critics of civil asset forfeiture, who welcomed it as a new weapon in their war against what’s been labeled “policing for profit” — the practice of seizing cash, cars and other property from those convicted, or even suspected, of committing a crime.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on her second day back on the bench after undergoing cancer surgery in December, announced the court’s decision, saying the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause protects against government retribution at all levels.

“For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,” Ginsburg wrote. “Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies. … Even absent a political motive, fines may be employed in a measure out of accord with the penal goals of retribution and deterrence.”

Groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned the Supreme Court of abuses, with the chamber touting a national study that found “60 percent of the 1,400 municipal and county agencies surveyed across the country relied on forfeiture profits as a ‘necessary’ part of their budget.’ “

The case at the court involved Tyson Timbs of Marion, Ind., who had his $42,000 Land Rover SUV seized after his arrest for selling a couple hundred dollars’ worth of heroin. Timbs has sued to get it back, and while Wednesday’s decision did not dictate that outcome, it gave him a new day in court.

“Increasingly, our justice system has come to rely on fines, fees and forfeitures to fund law enforcement agencies rather than having to answer to elected officials for their budgets,” said Scott Bullock, the president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice, which represented Timbs. “This is not just an ominous trend; it is a dangerous one.”

The ACLU’s brief said that in 2017, 10 million people owed more than $50 billion in criminal fines, fees and forfeitures. It described how a $100 ticket for a red-light violation in California carried an additional $390 in fees, and how New Jersey’s fine of $100 for marijuana possession could lead to a more than $1,000 penalty for a poor person represented by a public defender.

Some justices, too, had become worried about the state and local efforts.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a recent opinion that civil forfeitures have “become widespread and highly profitable.”

“This system — where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use — has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses,” Thomas wrote, referring to reporting that chronicled how aggressive policing tactics resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars collected from motorists not charged with crimes.

The issue has been divisive at the federal level as well. Democratic Attorney General Eric Holder restricted the Department of Justice’s reliance on civil asset forfeitures, but Republican Jeff Sessions championed the program. A bipartisan group of senators objected to the Sessions initiative.

But those issues were largely missing in Ginsburg’s crisp nine-page opinion. The issue, Institute of Justice Lawyer Wesley Hottot said at oral argument in the case, was a simple matter of “constitutional housekeeping.”

The Constitution’s Bill of Rights protects against actions of the federal government. But the Supreme Court over time has applied it to state and local governments under the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment. In 2010, for instance, the court held that the Second Amendment applied to state and local government laws on gun control.

The Eighth Amendment states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Two of those commands — regarding bail and cruel and unusual punishments — have been deemed to apply to state and local governments. But until now, the ban on excessive fines had not.

The Indiana Supreme Court was among a handful of state high courts that had said that part of the Eighth Amendment did not apply to state actions.

Timbs provided the test case. The factory worker said in an interview before the Supreme Court hearing that he became reliant on painkillers after a foot injury. He moved from Ohio to Marion, Ind., to live with his aunt and to try to make a fresh start.

With money he received from a life insurance policy after his father’s death, Timbs bought the Land Rover. “The rest of the money I spent on drugs,” he said. When that ran out, he undertook the small-time heroin dealing.

After he pleaded guilty to selling to an undercover agent, Timbs was sentenced to home detention, probation and a court-supervised treatment program for addiction.

Indiana then hired a private law firm to file a lawsuit forcing Timbs to forfeit the car, under a state law that allows seizure of vehicles used “to facilitate violation of a criminal statute.”

Timbs sued to get the car back, and a judge agreed, citing the Excessive Fines Clause and saying “forfeiture of the Land Rover … was grossly disproportionate to the gravity” of the crime. He noted the maximum monetary penalty for Timbs’s crime was $10,000.

But the Indiana Supreme Court held that the Excessive Fines Clause did not apply to the states. Citing Indiana’s status as “a sovereign state within our federal system,” the court said it would not “impose federal obligations on the state that the federal government itself has not mandated.”

Three other states — Michigan, Mississippi and Montana — also take that position.

The Supreme Court’s opinion Wednesday does not take a position on whether Indiana’s seizure of the Land Rover was excessive. It holds only that the Indiana Supreme Court was wrong to say that the Eighth Amendment did not apply.

But Ginsburg noted the lower court’s finding that the value of Timbs’ vehicle was “more than four times the maximum $10,000 monetary fine assessable against him for his drug conviction.”

Ginsburg’s opinion said that the Excessive Fine Clause is incorporated to apply to state and local government under the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, the traditional way the court makes such decisions. Justices Thomas and Neil Gorsuch agreed with the outcome, but said they would have relied on a different part of the 14th Amendment.

The case is Timbs v. Indiana.

Source: US Government Class

McCabe confirms talks held at Justice Dept. about removing Trump

Washington (CNN)Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is confirming for the first time publicly that there were high-level discussions at the Justice Department about recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office in the aftermath of former FBI Director James Comey’s firing.

The discussions also included speculation about which Cabinet members could be on board with the idea, McCabe said in an interview with CBS’s Scott Pelley. According to Pelley on “CBS This Morning” Thursday, McCabe confirmed the discussion among Justice Department officials. This segment of the interview, which was taped for “60 Minutes,” was not aired Thursday morning.
McCabe, who was fired from the FBI last March, also said he ordered an investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice as a way to preserve ongoing inquiries into Russian election meddling in case there was an effort to terminate them.
In September, citing sources familiar with memos authored by McCabe, CNN reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed wearing a “wire” to record conversations with Trump and recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Also in September, an anonymous “senior official in the Trump administration” claimed in a New York Times op-ed that there had been “early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment.”

It was not mentioned in the segment that aired Thursday if McCabe or anyone else approached Cabinet members directly to discuss the idea.

“These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the President,” Pelley said, adding that people involved were “counting noses” and speculating which Cabinet officials may be on board with the idea.
In a statement on Thursday, a Justice Department spokesperson said Rosenstein — who repeatedly disputed the “wire” revelation back in September — again denied discussing the use of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
“As the Deputy Attorney General previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment,” the statement read.
McCabe ordered obstruction probe to protect Russia inquiries

In December, CNN reported that following the firing of Comey, McCabe took the extraordinary step of opening an obstruction of justice investigation into Trump before special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017. In the interview that aired Thursday, McCabe told Pelley he “wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that without creating a record of why they made that decision.”

McCabe said that the day after Comey’s firing and after meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, “I met with the team investigating the Russia cases and I asked the team to go back and conduct an assessment to determine where are we with these efforts and what steps do we need to take going forward.”

“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that, were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace,” said McCabe, who is promoting his forthcoming book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.”
In a statement to CBS, the White House called McCabe’s investigation “completely baseless.” Trump, who has frequently criticized McCabe, called him a “disgrace” on Twitter Thursday and accused him of being politically biased during his time at the FBI.

McCabe was fired by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in March following an inspector general report that concluded he misled investigators about his role in directing other officials at the FBI to speak to The Wall Street Journal about his involvement in a public corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department’s watchdog has referred his findings on McCabe to the US Attorney’s office in Washington for possible criminal charges. The case remains under investigation.

Source: US Government Class

McConnell predicts Senate passage of border-security bill, hopes Trump signs it

New York Times – Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted Senate passage Thursday of a sweeping spending bill and border security compromise that would avert a government shutdown Friday night. McConnell said he hopes President Trump will sign the bill.

“Sure, yeah,” McConnell told reporters Thursday morning when asked if he has the votes to pass the legislation later in the day.

Asked if he’s received definitive assurances from the White House, McConnell said: “They’re reviewing it, as they should. . . . I’m hopeful he’ll sign it.”

The Senate is preparing to vote on the 1,159-page bill Thursday afternoon, and the House will follow. The legislation would fund nine Cabinet departments and dozens of other agencies through Sept. 30, removing — for now — the threat of another government shutdown and political brinkmanship over Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The compromise provides $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new fences along the border in Texas, far short of the $5.7 billion Trump had sought for 234 miles of steel walls. The final number for border barriers is also less than deals that were on the table last year before Trump pushed the government into a record-long 35-day shutdown in an unsuccessful attempt to get all the wall money he wants.

Although few were enthused about the concessions both sides made in search of a compromise, lawmakers of both parties were eager to see the package pass so they can move on from months of wrangling over shutdown politics and Trump’s wall.

In some cases, they were even praying for that outcome.

In a remarkable incident as the Senate came into session Thursday morning, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) — who was presiding — amended the chaplain’s opening prayer to offer his own plea.

“Let’s all pray that the president will have wisdom to sign the bill so government doesn’t shut down,” Grassley said from the chair, a rare breach of Senate decorum that reflected the depth of lawmakers’ angst over the events of recent months.

Republicans’ expectation is that Trump will sign the bill, but since he has changed his mind at the last minute before, some were waiting for a solid assurance before they would agree to vote for the bill.

“I’m still reviewing and awaiting the president’s response,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said Thursday. “I need to see enthusiastic support.”

The legislation was released just before midnight Wednesday, giving lawmakers and the White House very little time to review it before it’s put to a vote. Lawmakers defended the rushed timeline because of the impending deadline they face Friday night at midnight, when funding will expire for the Homeland Security Department and other agencies comprising about a quarter of the federal government — unless Congress and Trump act first.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters Thursday that the president was reviewing the bill.

“He’s looking at it. I think it came in very late last night,” Kudlow said. “He’s taking a look at that, you’ll hear more about it when he’s ready.”

John Wagner contributed to this report

Source: US Government Class

Amazon pulls out of plan to build New York City headquarters

FoxNews – Amazon announced Thursday it was turning back on its plans to build its second headquarters in New York City, a company spokesman said in a statement. The move comes after pressure from lawmakers, notably Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who bemoaned the project.

“After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens,” the Seattle-based Amazon said in the release.

“For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City,” the statement reads.

OCASIO-CORTEZ CHEERS AS AMAZON REPORTEDLY RECONSIDERS NY HQ AFTER FIERCE OPPOSITION

The company added that it is “disappointed to have reached this conclusion.”

“We are deeply grateful to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and their staffs, who so enthusiastically and graciously invited us to build in New York City and supported us during the process,” the company continued in the statement.

Amazon said it would proceed as planned with the second part of its HQ2, which will be built in Northern Virginia, as well as its distribution center that it said it would open in Nashville. It will also continue to “hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had previously touted the deal’s benefits, which include a pledge from Amazon to create 25,000 jobs, paying an average of $150,000 per year in exchange for a slew of city and state tax breaks and subsidies worth up to $3 billion.

Source: US Government Class