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Rashida Tlaib calls Trump 'the biggest bully' she's ever dealt with – live
House kills resolution to impeach Donald Trump – live
(about 6 hours later)
White House officials and congressional leaders are drawing closer to a two-year budget agreement that would raise the debt ceiling, although both sides caution that some serious obstacles remain to a deal, Politico reports.
In an interview with PBS, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt revealed that Trump’s Middle East plan “does not contemplate one state.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer emerged from a 45-minute meeting on Wednesday sharing optimism that they might reach an agreement this week. If Congress does nothing, the government will run out of money sometime in early September, potentially prompting another shutdown.
When asked by Judy Woodruff what rights Palestinians deserve to have, he responded: “Rights is a big word. I mean, I think our hope is to give Palestinians as great a life as the Israelis have, with everybody in the region being as secure as possible.”
From Politico:
More on this q: "I think that one of the challenges of this file is people speak about the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, as being occupied. I would argue that the land is disputed."
Pelosi and Schumer spoke on the phone with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during the session. Mnuchin, who is leading the budget talks for the White House, is attending a G7 finance ministerial meeting in France.
Watch here:
“If we’re going to act by next Thursday, which is what we’d like to do to honor regular order, we have to get something soon so we can post with enough time,” Pelosi told reporters. The House is scheduled to adjourn next week for the August recess.
Another bit of news from the House of Representatives (which has had a busy, busy day): Lawmakers voted today to repeal a so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health insurance plans.
President Trump has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
The tax was a key feature of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, as the AP explains:
President Trump orders U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. pic.twitter.com/HpMNgjqGjC
House Democrats and Republicans joined in a rare show of unity Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly to repeal an unpopular tax on generous health insurance that’s a symbol of former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
In the aftermath of Trump urging four Democratic congresswomen to “go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came,” the mayor of the German town where Trump’s grandfather was born has a message for the president.
The so-called “Cadillac tax” never went into effect, since lawmakers kept delaying it. Wednesday’s 419-6 vote increases chances that the Senate will follow the House, going for full repeal.
“Seeing the not-so-imposing homes of his ancestors might bring him back to earth,” said Thomas Jaworek, the conservative mayor of Kallstadt, where Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, was born and then left as a teenager.
Beginning in 2022, the tax would slap a 40% levy on the value of health insurance plans above $11,200 for single coverage and $30,100 for family policies. The idea was to help control costs by putting a brake on the value of health insurance plans. To avoid the tax, insurers and employers might have to shift more costs to policyholders.
The comments were reported by the Washington Post, who spoke with other local residents. Many had similar remarks to share:
Based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, repeal would add $193 billion to the federal deficit from 2022-2029, by scratching projected revenues off the government’s books. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation expects that about 1 in 5 employers offering health insurance would have at least one insurance plan subject to the tax in 2022, and the share would grow quickly over time.
“Everyone has his or her roots somewhere — and to demand of others to simply leave the country is paradoxical for him,” said Beatrix Riede, 61, who heads an association for women in the town.
Here’s some analysis of Bernie Sanders’ healthcare proposal, from the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino in Washington:
“I can only wish Americans that they will elect someone who turns on his mind before saying something,” Riede added.
Bernie Sanders offered a robust defense of his Medicare for All proposal, vowing to end the “international embarrassment” of the US being the only major, wealthy country in the world without a universal healthcare system as the issue takes center stage in the race to capture the Democratic nomination.
Former Kansas Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach was asked a simple question on CNN and his non-answer was fairly revealing.
The Vermont senator’s speech escalated an ongoing war of words with the former vice-president Joe Biden, who has embraced a plan that would establish a “public option” and would not eliminate private health insurance. “The current debate over Medicare for All has nothing to do with healthcare,” Sanders told a friendly crowd at George Washington University in Washington. “We are not in a debate about which healthcare system is working well or which is better. What the debate that we are currently having in this campaign and all over this country has nothing to do with healthcare, but it has everything to do with the greed and profits of the healthcare industry.”In the speech, Sanders also pledged to reject all campaign donations from lobbyists, executives and political action committees of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies and challenged his rivals to follow suit.“If we are going to break the stranglehold of corporate interests over the healthcare needs of the American people, we have got to confront a Washington culture that is corrupt, that puts profits before people,” Sanders said, adding: “Candidates who are not willing to take that pledge should explain to the American people why those corporate interests believe their campaigns are a good investment. Sanders’s Medicare for All proposal would transform the current healthcare system into one operated by the government that covers “every man, woman and child in this country”. Under his plan, no one would pay deductibles, premiums and copays and there would be no private insurance. He proposes a four-year transition period by gradually reducing the eligibility rate of the Medicare program. Several candidates in the primary have signed onto Sanders legislation, but in his speech the senator sought to remind voters who popularized the issue. But he’s facing increasing pushback from Biden and other more moderate candidates who prefer to build on the Affordable Care Act, which was passed by nine years ago under the Obama administration. At an event in Iowa, Biden said Medicare for All was “risky” while lower-tier candidates like Senator Michael Bennet and former congressman John Delaney warned that the party would lose to Trump if the nominee embraces his ideas. “Let me make a prediction,” Sanders said. “In order to defeat the Medicare for All movement, powerful special interests will be spending millions on 30-second television ads, full-page magazine ads and corporate-sponsored ‘studies’ to frighten the American people about Medicare for All – which is exactly what happened before the passage of Medicare in the 1960s. They failed then and they’re going to fail now.”
Chris Cuomo: "What would you do if the President said, 'I am a racist'?"Kris Kobach: "Then I would not defend him b/c there's no excuse for racism in America."Cuomo: "Would you still support him as President?"Kobach: "Um, I don't know. That'd be a really tough question." pic.twitter.com/wcZSj2s8iY
Meanwhile, in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump is about to speak at a rally.
Here is the full text of the impeachment articles against Donald Trump for “high misdemeanors” expected to receive a vote later Wednesday:
I have arrived at the Trump rally in #Greenville, NC and the first thing I see is a MAGA teen band playing a song called “CNN sucks” pic.twitter.com/EHBeRhuWig
Mr. GREEN of Texas: Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intention to raise a question of the privileges of the House.
And a statement from the Department of Justice echoes the White House’s line:
The form of the resolution is as follows: Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, of high misdemeanors. Resolved, that Donald John Trump, President of the United States, is unfit to be President, unfit to represent the American values of decency and morality, respectability and civility, honesty and propriety, reputability and integrity, is unfit to defend the ideals that have made America great, unfit to defend liberty and justice for all as extolled in the Pledge of Allegiance, is unfit to defend the American ideal of all persons being created equal as exalted in the Declaration of Independence, is unfit to ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare and to ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity as lauded in the preamble to the United States Constitution, is unfit to protect the government of the people, by the people, for the people as elucidated in the Gettysburg Address, and is impeached for high misdemeanors that the following Article of Impeachment be exhibited to the Senate:
Here's DOJ spox Kerri Kupec on today's contempt vote: "Holding the Attorney General in contempt for working in good-faith with Congress marks a new low for Speaker Pelosi’s House of Representatives. This vote is nothing more than a political stunt." pic.twitter.com/Vifa0u4Z1F
Article of Impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States, in the name of itself, of the people of the United States, against Donald John Trump, President of the United States, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high misdemeanors committed as President constituting harm to American society to the manifest injury of the people of the United States:
A statement from the press secretary called the vote “another lawless attempt to harass the President and his Administration”
Article I.
Statement by @PressSec on House vote to hold Barr and Ross in contempt pic.twitter.com/gqdoHzZs4B
The House of Representatives on July 16, 2019, strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should “go back’’ to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as “invaders,’’ and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants, or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants, do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America. In all of this, the aforementioned Donald John Trump has, by his statements, brought the high office of the President of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace, and disrepute, has sown seeds of discord among the people of the United States, has demonstrated that he is unfit to be President, and has betrayed his trust as President of the United States to the manifest injury of the people of the United States, and has committed a high misdemeanor in office. Therefore, Donald John Trump by causing such harm to the society of the United States is unfit to be President and warrants impeachment, trial, and removal from office. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under rule IX, a resolution offered from the floor by a Member other than the majority leader or the minority leader as a question of the privileges of the House has immediate precedence only at a time designated by the Chair within 2 legislative days after the resolution is properly noticed.
Lawmakers voted 230-198 to hold the attorney general and the commerce secretary in criminal contempt for obstructing a probe into Trump’s failed efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Pending that designation, the form of the resolution noticed by the gentleman from Texas will appear in the Record at this point. The Chair will not at this point determine whether the resolution constitutes a question of privilege. That determination will be made at the time designated for consideration of the resolution.
All Republicans and four Democrats voted ‘no.’
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s new rule that effectively bans asylum protections for most people crossing the southern border. The new rule prohibits anyone from applying for asylum if they have passed through another country and didn’t seek asylum there first.
The AP explains:
In a statement, the ACLU said: “the Trump administration is trying to unilaterally reverse our country’s legal and moral commitment to protect those fleeing danger.”
The vote is largely symbolic because the Justice Department is unlikely to prosecute them.
The statement continued:
The action marks an escalation of Democratic efforts to use their House majority to aggressively investigate the inner workings of the Trump administration.
It’s patently unlawful under U.S. law as well as international human rights law – and it’s an unacceptable assault on our country’s values. Our team has been working around the clock to file this suit and stop the new rule in its tracks.
President Donald Trump last week abandoned his bid to inject a citizenship question into the census, after the Supreme Court said the administration’s justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.” Trump directed agencies to try to compile the information using existing databases.
The Trump administration has been tearing apart families and stoking fear and racism across the country for over two years now. Last weekend, the president reminded us of what fuels his anti-immigrant agenda when he told Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – four women of color and new members of Congress – to “go back” to where they came from. This is racism, plain and simple.
In other news from the House, they’ve voted to block certain arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Bernie Sanders is weighing in on the Department of Justice decision Tuesday not to bring charges against the officer who killed Eric Garner with an illegal chokehold in 2014.
The Washington Post reports:
Eric Garner was killed 5 years ago. The officer who killed him is still on the force. That is unacceptable.
The House voted Wednesday to undo President Trump’s attempt to sidestep Congress and complete several arms sales benefiting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, sending the measures to the Oval Office where they are expected to be met with a veto.
Former Trump officials believe the president would like to strike a nuclear deal with Iran that “essentially mirrors” the one Barack Obama and John Kerry negotiated in 2015, according to a new report from Politico.
The Trump administration announced in May that they would invoke emergency authority to push through 22 arms sales worth over $8 billion, including missiles, munitions and surveillance aircraft for Saudi Arabia. A bipartisan majority — but not a veto-proof majority — of both the Senate and the House objected to the move, which would replenish part of the Saudi arsenal that lawmakers believe have been used against civilians in Yemen’s long-running war.
“Trump got rid of the Iran nuclear deal because it was Barack Obama’s agreement,” Jarrett Blanc, a former State Department official who helped oversee the 2015 deal’s implementation, told Politico. “If you were to present to Trump the same deal and call it Trump’s deal, he’d be thrilled.”
Lawmakers in both parties also object to the idea of seemingly rewarding Saudi leaders with hefty arms deals, at a time when most members want to punish them for their alleged role in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump quit the nuclear deal in May 2018, reimposing sanctions the U.S. had lifted on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
CNN has announced the list of Democratic candidates who will be participating in the upcoming debate on 30 and 31 July.
This comes as Rand Paul is apparently offering his services to Trump, as an emissary to the Islamic republic.
They are:
Also from Politico:
1) Colorado senator Michael Bennet
Over a round of golf this past weekend, Sen. Rand Paul asked President Donald Trump’s blessing for a sensitive diplomatic mission.
2) Former vice-president Joe Biden
Paul proposed sitting down with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to extend a fresh olive branch on the president’s behalf, according to four U.S. officials. The aim: to reduce tensions between the two countries. Trump signed off on the idea.
3) New Jersey senator Cory Booker
Donald Trump’s approval rating with Republicans rose in a USA Today/Ipsos poll conducted entirely after his racist tweets on Sunday attacking four Democratic congresswomen of color.
4) Montana governor Steve Bullock
Trump’s net approval with Republicans in the new poll rose 5 percentage points, to 72%, from a similar poll conducted last week.
5) South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg
The Washington Post is reporting that the Trump campaign is planning to roll out a new mobile application in the coming weeks “aimed at engaging its most loyal supporters. Known internally as the ‘Trump app’ and set to be released as early as within the next month, the app is part of an effort by campaign manager Brad Parscale to juice enthusiasm among Trump supporters and capitalize on the energy at Trump’s rallies.”
6) Former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro
The Post continues:
7) New York mayor Bill de Blasio
Trump loyalists who download the app will be able to use it to get registered to vote, recruit additional supporters and stay up to date on what Trump is doing, said one campaign official familiar with the development who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. It will include incentives for supporters who actively volunteer to help the campaign, and facilitate neighborhood watch parties and other volunteer work, the official said. For instance, supporters waiting in line to attend a rally who get a dozen friends to download the app might earn VIP seats once inside.
8) Former Maryland representative John Delaney
9) Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard
10) New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand
11) California senator Kamala Harris
12) Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper
13) Washington governor Jay Inslee
14) Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar
15) Former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke
16) Ohio representative Tim Ryan
17) Vermont senator Bernie Sanders
18) Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren
19) Author Marianne Williamson
20) Businessman Andrew Yang
The House voted 332 to 95 in favor of tabling the impeachment resolution. 137 Democrats voted with Republicans to kill the resolution, whereas 95 Democrats voted to consider the issue of impeachment.
Note: in the House of Representatives, to table a resolution something means to kill it without a debate or a vote.
