Sunday, March 12, 2017

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House panel wants any evidence Trump's phones were tapped

'Gang of Eight' briefed on President Trump's wiretap claim
The House intelligence committee asked the executive branch to provide by Monday any evidence to support President Donald Trump's claim that his phones were tapped at Trump Tower during the election, a senior congressional aide said Saturday.
The request was made in a letter sent by committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and the panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., according to the aide, who wasn't authorized to discuss the request by name and requested anonymity.
In a tweet last weekend, Trump accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of ordering the tap. Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has said that nothing matching Trump's claims had taken place, but that has not quelled speculation that Trump's communications were monitored by the Obama administration. Trump has not provided evidence to support his claim and has asked Congress to investigate.
Early this week, Schiff said the committee would answer the president's call to investigate the claim. He also said that he would ask FBI Director James Comey directly when he appears later this month before the full committee, which is investigating Russian activities during the election.
"We should be able to determine in fairly short order whether this allegation is true or false," Schiff told reporters Tuesday evening at the Capitol.
Nunes has said that so far he has not seen any evidence to back up Trump's claim and has suggested the news media were taking the president's weekend tweets too literally.
"The president is a neophyte to politics — he's been doing this a little over a year," Nunes told reporters earlier this week.
Other lawmakers have asked for similar evidence.
Declaring that Congress "must get to the bottom" of Trump's claim, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked Comey and Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente to produce the paper trail created when the Justice Department's criminal division secures warrants for wiretaps.

Federal judges find Texas gerrymandered maps on racial lines


Federal judges found more problems in Texas' voting rights laws, ruling that Republicans racially gerrymandered some congressional districts to weaken the growing electoral power of minorities, who former President Barack Obama set out to protect at the ballot box before leaving office.
The ruling late Friday by a three-judge panel in San Antonio gave Democrats hope of new, more favorably drawn maps that could turn over more seats in Congress in 2018. But the judges in their 2-1 decision didn't propose an immediate fix, and Texas could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Republicans hold two of three congressional districts ruled newly invalid and were found to have been partly drawn with discriminatory intent. The GOP-controlled Texas Legislature approved the maps in 2011, the same year then-Gov. Rick Perry signed a voter ID law that ranks among the toughest in the U.S. Courts have since weakened that law, too.
Judges noted the "strong racial tension and heated debate about Latinos, Spanish-speaking people, undocumented immigrants and sanctuary cities" that served as the backdrop in the Legislature to Texas adopting the maps and the voter ID law. Those tensions are flaring again over President Donald Trump's executive orders on immigration, and Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is also demanding tough crackdowns on so-called sanctuary cities.
"The record indicates not just a hostility toward Democrat districts, but a hostility to minority districts, and a willingness to use race for partisan advantage," U.S. District Judges Xavier Rodriguez and Orlando Garcia wrote in their opinion.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately remark on the ruling.
An attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund welcomed Friday's ruling.
"The court's decision exposes the Texas Legislature's illegal effort to dilute the vote of Texas Latinos," said Nina Perales, the group's vice president of litigation and lead counsel in the case. "Moving forward, the ruling will help protect Latinos from manipulation of district lines in order to reduce their political clout."
Hispanics were found to have fueled Texas' dramatic growth in the 2010 census, the year before the maps were drawn, accounting for two out of every three new residents in the state. The findings of racially motivated mapmaking satisfied Democrats and minority rights groups, who are now pushing a separate federal court in Texas to determine that the voter ID law was also crafted with discriminatory intent.
Texas was forced ahead of the November election to weaken its voter ID law, which allows concealed handgun licenses but not college student IDs, after a federal appeals court found that the requirements particularly hampered minorities and the poor.
The Obama administration had brought the muscle of the U.S. Justice Department into Texas to help challenge both the maps and voter ID law. But barely a month after Trump took office, the federal government reversed course and announced it would no longer argue that Texas purposefully discriminated against minorities with its voter ID law.
It was not yet clear whether the Trump administration will also drop opposition to Texas' maps. But U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, in a blistering dissent, had strong words for Obama administration attorneys after they joined the case.
"It was obvious, from the start, that the DoJ attorneys viewed state officials and the legislative majority and their staffs as a bunch of backwoods hayseed bigots who bemoan the abolition of the poll tax and pine for the days of literacy tests and lynchings," Smith wrote. "And the DoJ lawyers saw themselves as an expeditionary landing party arriving here, just in time, to rescue the state from oppression, obviously presuming that plaintiffs' counsel were not up to the task."
The stakes in finding discriminatory intent are higher because it provides a window for opponents to argue that Texas should be forced to resume having changes to voting laws "pre-cleared" by the Justice Department or a federal court. A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling did away with preclearance by striking down a key provision in the federal Voting Rights Act.
The congressional districts voided by the panel belong to Democrat Lloyd Doggett and Republicans Will Hurd and Blake Farenthold. Hurd's district, which runs from San Antonio to El Paso, has been a rare competitive swing district in Texas in recent years.

AG Sessions asks remaining 46 US attorneys to resign


Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked the remaining 46 U.S. attorneys who served under the Obama administration to resign, the Justice Department announced Friday, describing the move as part of an effort to ensure a "uniform transition."
The department said some U.S. attorneys, as in prior transitions, already had left the department. Now, "the Attorney General has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. Attorneys to tender their resignations," a spokeswoman said.
“Until the new U.S. Attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutors in our U.S. Attorney’s Offices will continue the great work of the Department in investigating, prosecuting, and deterring the most violent offenders,” the statement added.
Department of Justice spokesperson Peter Carr told Fox News late Friday night: “The President called Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein tonight to inform them that he has declined to accept their resignation, and they will remain in their current positions.”
However, no additional guidance was given on U.S. Attorney General for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, who was appointed by then-President Barack Obama and assumed the role of Manhattan U.S. Attorney in 2009. Bharara met with Trump in November and said after the meeting that he had agreed to stay on.
It is customary, though not automatic, for the country's 93 U.S. attorneys to leave their positions once a new president is in office. Incoming administrations over the past several decades typically have replaced most U.S. attorneys during the first year or two.
The Obama administration allowed political appointees of President George W. Bush to serve until their replacement had been nominated and confirmed. One U.S. attorney appointed by Bush, Rod Rosenstein of Maryland, remained on the job for the entire Obama administration and is the current nominee for deputy attorney general.
But Sessions' actions are being closely scrutinized by Democrats after a rocky start to the AG's time at the DOJ.
Weeks after his tight confirmation vote on Feb. 8, it emerged that Sessions had met twice with the Russian ambassador last year -- despite testifying during his confirmation hearing he had no communications with the Russians. Sessions later clarified his testimony, while recusing himself from any investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 campaign.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement late Friday saying: “I’m surprised to hear that President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have abruptly fired all 46 remaining U.S. attorneys.  "
“In January, I met with Vice President Pence and White House Counsel Donald McGahn and asked specifically whether all U.S. attorneys would be fired at once. Mr. McGahn told me that the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity. Clearly this is not the case. I’m very concerned about the effect of this sudden and unexpected decision on federal law enforcement," she said.
U.S. attorneys are responsible for prosecuting federal crimes in the territories they oversee. They report to Justice Department leadership in Washington, and their priorities are expected to be in line with those of the attorney general. The federal prosecutors are nominated by the president, generally upon the recommendation of a home-state senator.

Trump, Pence follow ObamaCare replacement rollout with weekend offensive


The White House is trying this weekend to rally support for the ObamaCare replacement plan -- with Vice President Pence in Kentucky and President Trump using the bully pulpit and old-reliable Twitter.
"The ObamaCare nightmare is about to end,” Pence said at a business routable in Kentucky, with protesters outside the venue and as the GOP replacement bill moves through the House and heads toward the Senate. “Here are the heartbreaking facts: Today, Americans are paying $3,000 more a year on average for health insurance since the day ObamaCare was signed into law.”
Kentucky has emerged as a battleground in the early efforts by Trump and GOP House leadership to pass the American Health Care Act, with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul helping lead conservative opposition to the bill, introduced Monday.
“Kentucky is a textbook example of ObamaCare’s failures,” said Pence, citing premium increases in the state as high as 27 percent and Louisville-based Humana Inc. planning to exit Kentucky's ObamaCare exchange next year.
Trump and practically every elected Washington Republican campaigned on a promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
Former President Obama’s signature health care law has insured roughly 11 million Americans since its 2010 inception but some Americans have since struggled with rising premium costs and dwindling policy options.
“We are making great progress with healthcare,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.
He also used the presidential weekly address this weekend to make his case.
"Seven years ago this month, ObamaCare was signed into law over the profound objections of the American people,” said Trump, who plans to rally support next week at a stop in Nashville, Tennessee. “House Republicans have put forward a plan that gets rid of this terrible law and replaces it with reforms that empower states and consumers."
To be sure, Trump, known for his real estate and international deal-making before becoming president, realizes that getting the replacement bill to his desk for signature will require backing on several fronts -- including support from the most conservative members of his party.
Since the bill was released earlier this week, Trump has hosted key GOP committee leaders at the White House and had dinner Wednesday with conservative firebrand Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Trump has also invited members of the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative wing of the Republican House, to the White House for bowling and pizza.
While House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., should get the minimum 218 House votes to move the bill to the Senate, Trump and fellow Republican leaders in Congress have essential no chance of garnering any Democratic support.
“Tonight, Republicans revealed a Make America Sick Again bill,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said after the GOP House leaders released their replacement bill.
Opposition by elected Democrats has been outmatch only perhaps by voters, who have pounded congressional Republicans at recent town hall events over concerns about losing health insurance as a result of repeal and replace efforts.
After releasing their long-sought bill, House Republicans this week swiftly pushed it through two key committees.
They hope to pass the legislation in the full House during the week of March 20, then send it to the Senate where it would need the support of 51 of 52 Senate Republicans to reach Trump’s desk for signature.
Meanwhile, Democrats are accusing Republicans of trying to rush the bill through Congress before the public can figure out what it does. And they say the GOP should at least wait until the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office releases its report, which could come by Monday.
The GOP legislation would eliminate the current mandate that nearly all people in the United States carry insurance or face fines.
And it would use tax credits to allow consumers to buy health coverage, expand health savings accounts, phase out an expansion of Medicaid and cap that program for the future, end some requirements for health plans under Obama's law and scrap a number of taxes.
Conservatives argue that the legislation doesn't do enough to uproot ObamaCare. And some Republicans accuse Ryan and fellow House GOP leaders of moving too quickly.
Democrats paid a price for their lengthy process in passing the bill. As the months dragged on, public opposition grew. Over Congress' August recess in 2009, that rage overflowed at similar town halls, which helped spawn the Tea Party movement that gave the GOP control of the House the next year.

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