Republican-led Senate takes first step to repeal Obamacare

Trump: You're going to be proud of plan to replace ObamaCare

The Senate early Thursday passed a measure to take the first step forward on dismantling President Barack Obama's health care law, responding to pressure to move quickly even as Republicans and President-elect Trump grapple with what the replace it with.
The nearly party-line 51-48 vote came on a nonbinding Republican-backed procedural budget vote. Committee action to write repeal legislation could come to a vote next month. A full replacement would follow sometime after that, presuming Republicans can come up with one, the Associated Press reported.
"We must act quickly to bring relief to the American people," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The House is slated to vote on the measure on Friday, though some Republicans there have misgivings about setting the repeal effort in motion without a better idea of the replacement plan.
Trump said at a news conference on Tuesday that his incoming administration would soon reveal a plan to both repeal so-called Obamacare and replace it with legislation to "get health care taken care of in this country."

Tillerson, during confirmation hearing, says Russia poses 'danger' but refuses to call Putin 'war criminal'

Rubio grills Tillerson on if Putin is a war criminal

Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson and Sen. Marco Rubio clashed during a pair of contentious exchanges Wednesday, with an incredulous Rubio pressing the prospective diplomat to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin a "war criminal" and Tillerson coolly blunting Rubio's broadsides by explaining his more deliberative vision.

During the tense back-and-forths at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing, Rubio, R-Fla., cross-examined Tillerson on policy regarding Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. At the end of Rubio's second questioning period, Tillerson sought to allay any concerns the aggressive Rubio may have had.

"There seems to be some misunderstanding that I see the world through a different lens, and I do not," Tillerson said. "...But I'm also clear-eyed and realistic about dealing with cultures."
Tillerson's statement followed a heated initial session during which the ExxonMobil CEO refused to specifically call Putin a "war criminal."
"I find it discouraging your ability to cite that, which I think is globally accepted," Rubio said.
That exchange mirrored later questions by Rubio, who tried getting Tillerson to categorize Saudi Arabia as a "human rights violator" and denounce the practices of controversial Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.
Tillerson also wouldn't bite when Rubio, a former opponent of President-elect Donald Trump during the Republican presidential primary, tried to get Tillerson to say Putin murdered political foes.
Still, Tillerson took a noticeably harder line toward Putin and Russia than Trump has done during the transition period and prior to it.

Booker breaks with precedent to testify against Sessions – and earns Republican rebuke

Another Snowflake.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker cast aside long-standing precedent Wednesday and testified against a sitting Senate colleague, as he urged the chamber not to confirm Jeff Sessions for attorney general – a move that earned him a rebuke from Republicans.
Critics charged the New Jersey senator was merely burnishing his credentials for a presidential run, with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., writing on Facebook he was “disappointed” Booker “has chosen to start his 2020 presidential campaign by testifying against Senator Sessions.”
According to the Senate historian, no sitting senator has ever testified against a colleague at a Cabinet nomination hearing. Cotton said Booker “knows better” than to use the hearing as a “platform for his presidential aspirations.”
The first-term senator countered in his testimony that Senate traditions were not the priority here.
"I believe, like perhaps all of my colleagues, that in the choice between standing with Senate norms or standing up for what my conscience tells me is best for our country, I will always choose conscience and country," Booker told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Testifying during the second day of Sessions’ confirmation hearing, Booker charged that his colleague is incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities of the office of attorney general.
“Senator Sessions has not demonstrated a commitment to a central requisite of the job [of attorney general] -- to aggressively pursue the congressional mandate of civil rights, equal rights and justice for all of our citizens,” Booker said.
The senator asserted that at times during his career Sessions has “demonstrated a hostility toward these convictions.”
Ever since President-elect Donald Trump nominated him to the AG post, Sessions has been battling efforts to revive allegations of past racist comments which helped derail his failed 1986 nomination for a federal judgeship.
Wednesday’s testimony coincided with other civil-rights figures testifying against Sessions including NAACP head Cornell Brooks and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights icon who marched with Martin Luther King Jr.
Sessions, however, adamantly denied claims of harboring racial animus during the opening day of the hearing Tuesday. He decried the “false charges” and said critics were painting a “caricature” of him.
Jeff Giertz, Booker’s communications director, confirmed to FoxNews.com that the senator “attended parts of yesterday’s Judiciary hearing in-person and watched the hearing throughout the day when he wasn’t able to be in the room.”
Though Booker, a former Newark mayor, came out against a Senate colleague just three-plus years into his term, Democrats came to Booker’s defense -- suggesting his break with tradition pales in comparison to Republican tactics.
“He is taking a stand and is doing so fully recognizing that a lot of his Republican colleagues will be upset. Republicans did not think much of discretion and deference when they refused to give [Obama Supreme Court nominee] Merrick Garland a hearing,” Jim Manley, a former spokesman for ex-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, told FoxNews.com.
Cotton answered Booker’s testimony on Twitter Wednesday afternoon, by joking that his “attacks on Jeff Sessions are so far-fetched I half-expected his make-believe friend T-Bone to be next witness.”
T-Bone is a reference to an individual Booker frequently claimed over the years had threatened his life when he was mayor of Newark. It came to light during his campaign for the Senate that T-Bone was not an actual person.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, the only other black member of the Senate, gently chided Booker for his appearance Wednesday.
“I have always respected Senator Booker as a colleague. This is not a decision I would have made,” he said in a statement to FoxNews.com.
Booker’s comments Wednesday stand in contrast to remarks he made less than a year ago.
“I feel blessed and honored to have partnered with Senator Sessions in being the Senate sponsors of this important award,” Booker said of his collaboration with Sessions on a bill honoring participants of the Selma civil rights marches with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Mexican Border Wall Cartoons

Bret Baier: Obama used final speech to fire up his party

President Obama, in his farewell address Tuesday night, focused his speech on gains made during his two-term presidency and used the platform to urge his pary to rally after November's election.
“He’s trying to fire up his party,” Bret Baier, the anchor of “Special Report” said. He continued, “It is a party in the wilderness when it comes to the politics of where it goes.”
Obama issued a rallying cry to his supporters, saying: “If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life.”
“If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing. If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself,” he said. “Show up. Dive in. Stay at it. Sometimes you’ll win. Sometimes you’ll lose,” he said.
WATCH ENTIRE SPEECH: PART 1 | PART 2
He bid farewell to the country in his hometown of Chicago in front of 18,000 inside McCormick Place. His speech was forceful at times, especially when defending his major initiatives.
“If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history," he said, before listing off a series of other achievements, "...you might have said our sights were set a little too high," he said.
READ THE SPEECH
When he made a reference to the next president, Donald Trump, the crowd booed.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. One of the nation’s great strengths is the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next.”
Baier, who was interviewed after the speech by Tucker Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” pointed out that Obama got emotional when he talked about his family.
“No matter what your ideology is, you have to—at this moment—respect the sacrifice that a family goes through, when not only running for president, but being in that office for eight years. It comes with a lot of perks, but it comes with a lot of sacrifice as well.”

Kelly faces tough questions from Senate on border, heroin, cybersecurity in bid to lead Homeland Security

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly was pressed Tuesday at a Capitol Hill hearing for answers about how he would address the country’s most pressing security concerns, including heroin trafficking and border protection, in his quest to become the next Homeland Security secretary.
Kelly -- who remains the corps’ longest-serving, active-duty general -- fielded the questions during his Senate confirmation hearing as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the agency.
The 66-year-old Kelly said that heroin pouring in from Mexico and other problems along the U.S.-Mexico border begin “1,500 miles south,” in Central America, and that resolving them requires improving relationships with other countries.
“Physical barriers alone won’t do it,” he testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. “We have to get after drug transporters. We need better partnerships.”
His call for forging and maintaining relations was a theme throughout the hearing, with Kelly and his supporters citing instances in his career in which he has relied on consensus building to succeed.
“I have led platoons and divisions,” Kelly said in his opening remarks. “I have held senior command positions in Iraq, served as the combatant commander of the U.S. Southern Command and … with our allies, across agencies and the private sector.
“These assignments … shared the common characteristics of working within and leading large, complex and diverse mission-focused organizations, while under great pressure to produce results.”
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain, a fellow Naval Academy graduate, who introduced Kelly, each called him “supremely qualified” and adept at managing multiple agencies.
“I’m confident that he would do as well, as secretary of state,” Gates said.
Kelly, having testified numerous times on Capitol Hill, is widely respected among members of Congress and is largely expected to be confirmed by the GOP-led Senate as the Cabinet-level agency’s seventh secretary in its roughly 13-year existence.
However, he faced several tough questions Tuesday that he appeared to struggle to answer, including a request by Ohio GOP Sen. Robert Portman to name his top-three ideas to improve agency morale.
The agency, which has roughly 240,000 employees and 20 major offices, notoriously has low morale and problems recruiting and retaining top employees.
Lawmakers repeatedly asked Kelly about domestic terrorism and cybersecurity, which he acknowledged to be a complex and inter-connected problem that needs to be stopped in large part by “cracking the nut” on people getting self-radicalized on the Internet.
Perhaps the toughest questions were posed by newly-elected California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, who pressed Kelly on the Obama administration's immigration policy known as DACA, which allows deferred deportation for some illegal immigrants who entered the country as minors.
“I don’t know what the incoming administration is doing with that,” Kelly responded. “But I promise you, I will be involved in the process.”
However, he made clear his position about how he would deal with so-called sanctuary cities that don’t enforce U.S. immigration laws.
“The law is the law,” he said.

Ex-US diplomats urge Trump to rescind US-Cuba intelligence sharing

A Florida congresswoman has joined five former U.S. diplomats in publicly urging President-elect Donald Trump to rescind President Obama’s recent directive that U.S. intelligence agencies share information with Cuba’s government.
Opponents, meantime, are defending the October 2016 directive.
The provisions on intelligence sharing were part of a 12-page directive Obama issued in October on trade and travel to Cuba. It instructs the U.S. director of national intelligence, the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to cooperate and share information with counterparts in Cuba on drug trafficking, immigration and counterterrorism.
Last week, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., sent a letter to Trump asking him to rescind the intelligence-sharing directives, according to the Miami Herald.
Ros-Lehtinen, who sits on the House Foreign Relations Committee, told FoxNews.com that such action was urgent.
"Any intelligence sharing with the Castro regime should cease as soon as the new administration takes power,” she said. “Sharing information with an avowed enemy of U.S. harms our national security interests because the Cuban regime has an advanced espionage apparatus that sells our intelligence to our adversaries across the world.”
The Cuban “dictatorship cannot be trusted with any kind of information,” she said, “and instead has developed strong ties with countries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran who want to use Cuba as a launching pad for their spying capabilities against our nation.”
Ros-Lehtinen’s letter follows a Dec. 22 letter to Trump from five former U.S. diplomats – Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, James Cason, Everett Briggs and Jose Sorzano – that said the Cuban regime, which the U.S. long had included on a list of countries that sponsor terrorism, cannot be trusted and intelligence should not be shared with Havana.
Meanwhile, supporters of Obama’s directive say it is a practical step that merely extends an existing policy on ways to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.
William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University and co-author of “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana,” told FoxNews.com that U.S.-Cuba intelligence sharing is not new and has existed for decades in areas such as immigration and fighting drug trafficking.

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Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. (AP)

“For many years, it was a relatively low level of cooperation, on a case-by-case basis,” LeoGrande said. “If the U.S. Coast Guard spotted a trafficker with a plane or boat, going into Cuban airspace or waters, they’d contact the Cuban Coast Guard and cooperate with them in interdicting, and vice versa.”
Critics of expanded cooperation between the two countries, LeoGrande said, have a broader agenda of dismantling the renewed diplomatic ties.
“They’re overblowing it because they’re opposed to every aspect of normalizing relations,” he said. “There’s really no downside to this [sharing]. One has to trust the intelligence community to decide what things are too sensitive to share, and what things are not.”

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President Barack Obama talks with Cuban President Raul Castro before a bilateral meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, at the United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Ethics official takes heat for knocking Trump Cabinet hearings, giving Clinton a 'pass'

The director of the Office of Government Ethics fueled Democrats’ concerns about Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks over the weekend by accusing Republicans of rushing their hearings. But one conservative group says Walter Shaub was just showing his partisan stripes – and claims his office even “covered for” Hillary Clinton when Congress sought records on her speech income more than a year ago.
America Rising PAC claims Shaub’s office displayed “utter incompetence” when it came to documenting then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s income -- which Shaub, in a House Oversight Committee hearing in December 2015, said the office did not have to disclose.
“Walter Shaub gave Hillary Clinton a complete free pass on her unethical activity, especially her lucrative paid speeches,” Scott Sloofman, the PAC’s rapid response director, told FoxNews.com. “His outburst over the weekend reeks of partisan politics from an embittered Democrat still reeling from November’s election result.”
At the time of the Clinton questions, Republicans complained Clinton had not disclosed compensation for at least five speeches that was then sent to the Clinton Foundation between 2014 and 2015. They pressed the OGE for answers, but Shaub told the House oversight committee the funds were not required to be disclosed.
The Washington Examiner first reported on the PAC’s concerns.
The Office of Government Ethics had no comment on America Rising PAC’s claims, referring FoxNews.com to the original letter Shaub sent to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raising concerns about the Trump nominees' hearings.
“For as long as I remain Director, OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials will not succumb to pressure to cut corners and ignore conflicts of interest,” Shaub wrote in the letter.
Shaub’s letter outlined concerns regarding the speed of the Senate confirmation hearings schedule, and that several nominees had not completed the ethics review process. Shaub wrote that the announcement of nominees prior to consulting OGE for an evaluation of ethics issues also complicated this “normally intensive process.”
Schumer responded saying the OGE letter made “crystal clear” the transition team’s “collusion” with Senate Republicans was unprecedented.
“The Senate and American people deserve to know that these cabinet nominees have a plan to avoid any conflicts of interest, that they’re working on behalf of the American people and not their own bottom line, and that they plan to fully comply with the law,” Schumer said in a statement. “Senate Republicans should heed the advice of this independent office and stop trying to jam through unvetted nominees.”
Some hearings have since been delayed, a development cheered by Schumer.
Meanwhile, former White House ethics counsel officials are coming to Shaub’s defense, calling the claims against him unfair.
“I worked with Walter when he was at OGE and I was at the Bush White House,” Richard Painter, former White House Ethics Counsel under President George W. Bush, told FoxNews.com in an email. “He bent over backwards to get things done – he was a strong supporter of our ethics program.”
Painter told Foxnews.com that the attacks on the OGE are “disturbing” and that the motives seem “quite transparent.”
Ambassador Norm Eisen, former White House Ethics Counsel under President Obama, told FoxNews.com this was an “unfair attack.”
“Director Shaub has served presidents of both parties with distinction – sometimes we agreed and sometimes we disagreed, but he always tries to do the right thing – I say to those smearing him, have they no shame?” Eisen said.

Sanctuary City Cartoons

Assange blasts 'embarrassing' US intel report, insists Russia not his source

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fired back Monday at the U.S. intelligence community for its report stating the anti-secrecy website was used by the Russian government to distribute hacked information from Democratic figures during the run-up to the presidential election.
Assange, speaking during an audio-only Periscope Q&A session, said the source of his information was not a member “of any government” or “state parties” and did not “come from the Russian government.” The WikiLeaks editor-in-chief blasted Friday’s declassified intelligence report on “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” as being inadequate and misleading.
“It was not an intelligence report,” Assange said. “It does not have the structure of an intelligence report. It does not have the structure of a Presidential Daily Brief. It was frankly quite embarrassing.”
He added: “It was clearly designed for political effect.”
WIKILEAKS OFFERS REWARD FOR ALLEGED OBAMA MISDEEDS
Asked Monday whether it's possible that WikiLeaks' source was a go-between affiliated with the Russian government, Assange said he didn't want to "play twenty questions with our sources."
The intelligence report, prepared at the direction of President Obama, laid the blame for the breach of top Democratic officials’ emails directly at the feet of the Russians, whom the report said launched cyber operations as part of a Vladimir Putin-ordered “influence campaign.”
“We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence … relayed material to WikiLeaks,” the report said, adding this included material from the DNC and senior Democratic officials.
WikiLeaks famously published emails from top DNC officials before the 2016 Democratic convention, and later published thousands of emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta -- but Assange has steadfastly insisted, including in a recent interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, that Moscow was not the source.
Asked Monday if he believed the intelligence community’s finding had been “fabricated,” Assange stopped just short, saying: “Most of this so-called intelligence report is not even fabricated. That is, it does not even make assertions for the most part to rise to the level of fabrications … it uses speculative terms and admits its own speculation.”
The report itself, perhaps in anticipation of such challenges, noted that the declassified version “does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.”
But Assange later indicated he didn’t think it mattered who supplied the information to his group.
“Even if you believed that hackers of some kind illicitly obtained the Podesta emails and the DNC emails we published … what are we talking about in terms of impact?” Assange said. “...What was discussed are the words of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and her team revealing unethical practices, corruption, hypocrisy, etcetera.”
He asked: “Should the American people have been denied that true information?”
During the chat, which took place inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Assange has been holed up to avoid deportation on a rape accusation he denies since June 2012, the WikiLeaks boss leveled a new accusation at the Obama administration.
“Past administrations of both Republican and Democrat flavors have engaged in mass destruction of records as they’ve left office. We are told that destruction of records is occurring now in different parts of the Obama administration,” Assange said.
He urged anyone within those agencies to “get hold of that history and protect it; because that’s something that belongs to humanity and does not belong to a political party.”
Assange’s assertion of mass document destruction may be the reason for a Tuesday tweet from WikiLeaks offering $20,000 as a “reward for information leading to the arrest or exposure of any Obama admin agent destroying significant records.”
He also challenged the claim that WikiLeaks was in league with President-elect Donald Trump and wanted him to win the election.
“We knew we were creating substantial conflict between us and the person we expected to be the next president,” said Assange, noting he believed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would be the likely victor based on pre-election polling. “So we understood that we were putting ourselves in a more persecuted condition by relentlessly exposing this material, increasing the risk for us. Not decreasing at all.”
Trump, meanwhile, has not outright challenged the findings in Friday's report despite having voiced skepticism before about Russia's involvement.
Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, told "Fox News Sunday" he thinks the president-elect “accepts the findings” and is “not denying entities in Russia are behind these particular hackings.”