LAS
VEGAS (AP) — Like many, Mario Wolthers was lured to Las Vegas a decade
ago from California by cheaper housing costs. But when his apartment
managers tried to raise his rent last spring, he moved in with a
roommate.
“I’m a responsible taxpaying
citizen,” said Wolthers, a 38-year-old elementary school teacher and
Democrat. “I help a lot of kids out. I should at least be able to rent
an apartment on my own or even afford a home.”
As
the Democratic presidential candidates hustle for votes in Nevada, the
third state on the 2020 voting calendar, they have been trying to answer
Wolthers’ complaint. The contenders are cranking out housing plans,
meeting with advocates and pledging to help bring down prices.
Their
proposals have not dominated the campaign in the way that health care
or immigration has. Still, they represent the seeds of a political
debate likely to grow as high rents and home prices spread from
expensive cities such as Los Angeles and New York to once-affordable
pockets like Las Vegas and Reno.
“It’s
affecting the overwhelming majority of the population here,” said Aria
Overli of the housing-focused activist group Actionn, in Reno. Overli
said she has lost track of the number of presidential campaigns she’s
talked with about real estate costs.
It’s not just Nevada.
Houses
cost more than five times the typical household income — meaning
they’re probably out of reach of most families — in one-seventh of the
metro areas in the United States, according to Harvard’s Joint Center
for Housing Studies. Rents are rising at twice the rate of inflation
nationally.
On the West Coast, soaring rents
and home prices have helped trigger a new wave of homelessness and a
debate over solutions. President Donald Trump has used the crisis to
criticize Democratic leadership in California. He’s suggested it may
require federal intervention.
Democratic candidates have their own ideas.
Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders recently came out with a plan in Las Vegas to spend
$2.5 trillion over the next decade to improve public housing, combat
homelessness and establish national rent control. Mayor Pete Buttigieg
of South Bend, Indiana, who has proposed letting families “homestead” on
abandoned land in cities, toured Reno with Actionn on Saturday to
discuss housing.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of
Massachusetts released a plan in March to spend $500 billion over 10
years to build housing units. California Sen. Kamala Harris is proposing
a tax credit for families spending more than 30 percent on rent. New
Jersey Sen. Cory Booker also backs a renters’ tax credit.
Julian
Castro, housing secretary in the Obama administration, and Minnesota
Sen. Amy Klobuchar are among those proposing more money for federal
housing vouchers. Several candidates want to push local governments to
streamline restrictive zoning laws that prevent the construction of
units. Former Vice President Joe Biden has not released a plan.
The factors driving higher prices are varied.
In
northern Nevada, Reno is a growing technology hub and a refuge for
Californians fleeing that state’s high cost of living. Rents have
increased by 35% in the past two years. A recent study ranked Reno’s
county as the 66th least affordable in the nation, closing in on the
tier that features notoriously expensive places such as San Francisco
and Brooklyn, New York.
Las Vegas, once
known as a place where people priced out of the American dream elsewhere
could afford a house, is statistically more affordable than Reno. But
it is seeing a spike in real estate prices as new residents have moved
in. Home prices rose more than twice as quickly as wages in the past
year, sharper than the national increase.
The
city has among the highest rate of renters in the country, on par with
New York City and San Francisco. That’s a sign that people cannot afford
a first home, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at the jobs site
Indeed.
“Las Vegas had always been seen as a
transient city but as we’ve grown and we’ve become more established, we
have families staying here,” said Lalo Montoya of the activist group
Make the Road Nevada.
Montoya moved to Las
Vegas in 2016 from Denver, fleeing another once-affordable city that had
become too expensive. He just found a new apartment after hunting
around climbing rents and high move-in fees. “We’re all just one
emergency away, a lot of us,” he said. “If it’s hard for me and that I
have a stable job, then I can’t imagine how it must be for other
hardworking folks.”
Nevada Democrats, who
won control of the Legislature in November, passed laws to restrict late
fees and offer tax credits for builders of low-income housing.
Housing
proposals may play well in a Democratic primary. The party’s base of
younger people, minorities and urban dwellers cares about housing and
bears the brunt of the problem.
Analysts
note that significant swaths of the country don’t have widespread
housing pinches — including politically pivotal Rust Belt states.
Highly
technical solutions for housing also rarely fire up voters, said Jenny
Schuetz of the Brookings Institute in Washington. “I don’t imagine
anyone’s going to get up in the middle of a national debate and say we
need to double HUD’s budget for vouchers,” she said.
But
the signs of a political shift are there. Housing is no longer just a
headache for the poor or big-city dweller, communities that rarely get
attention in presidential campaigns.
“The
problem of housing affordability has been moving up the income scale,”
said Chris Herbert of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It’s a
problem of the working class who can’t afford housing. It’s taking on a
different political tenor.”
___
Riccardi reported from Denver. AP Economics Writer Joshua Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The president’s lawyer
insists the real story is a debunked conspiracy theory. A senior White
House adviser blames the “deep state.” And a Republican congressman is
pointing at Joe Biden’s son.
As the
Democrats drive an impeachment inquiry toward a potential vote by the
end of the year, President Donald Trump’s allies are struggling over how
he should manage the starkest threat to his presidency. The jockeying
broke into the open Sunday on the talk-show circuit, with a parade of
Republicans erupting into a surge of second-guessing.
At
the top of the list: Rudy Giuliani’s false charge that it was Ukraine
that meddled in the 2016 elections. The former New York mayor has been
encouraging Ukraine to investigate both Biden and Hillary Clinton
“I
am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing and
repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind
when he hears it over and over again,” said Tom Bossert, Trump’s former
homeland security adviser. “That conspiracy theory has got to go, they
have to stop with that, it cannot continue to be repeated.”
Not only did Giuliani repeat it Sunday, he brandished pieces of paper he said were affidavits supporting his story.
“Tom Bossert doesn’t know what’s he’s talking about,” Guiliani said. He added that Trump was framed by the Democrats.
Senior
White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, meanwhile, noted that he’s
worked in the federal government “for nearly three years.
“I
know the difference between whistleblower and a deep-state operative,”
Miller said. “This is a deep state operative, pure and simple.”
Meanwhile,
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, heatedly said Trump was merely asking
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to root out corruption. That,
Jordan said, includes Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of a
Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama
administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. There has been no
evidence of wrongdoing by either of the Bidens.
Mixed
messaging reflects the difficulty Republicans are having defending the
president against documents released by the White House that feature
Trump’s own words and actions. A partial transcript and a whistleblower
report form the heart of the House impeachment inquiry and describe
Trump pressuring a foreign president to investigate Biden’s family.
In
a series of tweets Sunday night, Trump said he deserved to meet “my
accuser” as well as whoever provided the whistleblower with what the
president called “largely incorrect” information. He also accused
Democrats of “doing great harm to our Country” in an effort to
destabilize the nation and the 2020 election.
Trump has insisted the call was “perfect” and pushed to release both documents.
“He
didn’t even know that it was wrong,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
describing a phone call from Trump in which the president suggested the
documents would exonerate him.
But Democrats
seized on them as evidence that Trump committed “high crimes and
misdemeanors” by asking for a foreign leader’s help undermining a
political rival, Democrat Joe Biden. Pelosi launched an impeachment
inquiry and on Sunday told other Democrats that public sentiment had
swung behind the probe.
By all accounts, the
Democratic impeachment effort was speeding ahead with a fair amount of
coordination between Pelosi, Democratic messaging experts and its
political operation.
House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that he expects the
whistleblower to testify “very soon,” though details were still being
worked out and no date had been set. Hearings and depositions were
starting this week. Many Democrats are pushing for a vote on articles of
impeachment before the end of the year, mindful of the looming 2020
elections.
Schiff said in one interview that
his committee intends to subpoena Giuliani for documents and may
eventually want to hear from Giuliani directly. In a separate TV
appearance, Giuliani said he would not cooperate with Schiff, but then
acknowledged he would do what Trump tells him. The White House did not
provide an official response on whether the president would allow
Giuliani to cooperate.
Lawyers for the
whistleblower expressed concern about that individual’s safety, noting
that some have offered a $50,000 “bounty” for the whistleblower’s
identity. They said they expect the situation to become even more
dangerous for their client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress
seeks to investigate this matter.
On a
conference call Sunday, Pelosi, traveling in Texas, urged Democrats to
proceed “not with negative attitudes towards him, but a positive
attitude towards our responsibility,” according to an aide on the call
who shared the exchange on condition of anonymity. Polling, Pelosi said,
had changed “drastically” in the Democrats’ favor.
A
one-day NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Sept. 25 found that
about half of Americans — 49% — approve of the House formally starting
an impeachment inquiry into Trump.
There
remains a stark partisan divide on the issue, with 88% of Democrats
approving and 93% of Republicans disapproving of the inquiry. But the
findings suggest some movement in opinions on the issue. Earlier polls
conducted throughout Trump’s presidency have consistently found a
majority saying he should not be impeached and removed from office.
House
Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York urged the caucus
to talk about impeachment by repeating the words “betrayal, abuse of
power, national security.” The Democrats’ campaign arm swung behind
lawmakers to support the impeachment drive as they run for reelection,
according to another call participant to spoke on condition of
anonymity.
The contrast with the Republicans’ selection of responses was striking.
A
combative House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said that nothing in
Trump’s phone call rose to the level of an impeachable offense.
“Why
would we move forward on impeachment?” the California Republican said.
“There’s not something that you have to defend here.”
Bossert,
an alumnus of Republican George W. Bush’s administration, offered a
theory and some advice to Trump: Move past the fury over the 2016 Russia
investigation, in which special counsel Robert Mueller found no
evidence of conspiracy but plenty of examples of Trump’s obstruction.
“I
honestly believe this president has not gotten his pound of flesh yet
from past grievances on the 2016 investigation,” Bossert said. “If he
continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”
Two
advisers to the Biden campaign sent a letter Sunday urging major news
networks to stop booking Giuliani on their shows, accusing Trump’s
personal attorney of spreading “false, debunked conspiracy theories” on
behalf of the president. The letter to management and anchors of shows
at ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News added: “By
giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly
unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”
___
Giuliani
appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and CBS’ “Face the Nation,” while Schiff
was interviewed on ABC and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Bossert spoke on ABC
and Miller on “Fox News Sunday.” Jordan appeared on CNN’s “State of the
Union.” Pelosi and McCarthy appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
___
Associated
Press writers Kevin Freking, Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick in
Washington; writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta; and AP Polling Director Emily
Swanson contributed to this report.
Joe Biden's presidential campaign requested in a letter on Sunday that major news networks not invite President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani anymore,
after Giuliani spent the morning on a series of talk shows aggressively
highlighting what he called Biden's apparently corrupt dealings in
Ukraine and China.
The Biden campaign wrote to NBC News, CBS News,
Fox News and CNN to voice "grave concern that you continue to book Rudy
Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on
behalf of Donald Trump," according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the existence of the letter.
The
memo, drafted by Biden aides Kate Bedingfield and Anita Dunn,
continued: "While you often fact check his statements in real time
during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your
air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged,
unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation."
Should
a network choose to book Giuliani, the Biden campaign called for "an
equivalent amount of time" to be provided "to a surrogate for the Biden
campaign." The letter noted Giuliani was not a public official, but
Trump's lawyer and personal advisor.
Responding to the request, Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted: "Can we request the removal of Democrats on TV that push hoaxes? Wait, but then who would do the interviews?"
Hours earlier, Giuliani made the rounds on several Sunday shows, including "Fox News Sunday," to argue that evidence of Biden's possible corruption has been hiding in plain sight for months.
Biden has acknowledged on camera that,
when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire
that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the natural gas
firm Burisma Holdings — where son Hunter Biden had a highly lucrative role on
the board paying him tens of thousands of dollars per month, despite
limited relevant expertise. The vice president threatened to withhold $1
billion in critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.
"Well, son of a b---h, he got fired," Biden joked at a panel two years after leaving office.
Shokin himself had been widely accused of corruption, while critics charged that
Hunter Biden essentially might have been selling access to his father,
who had pushed Ukraine to increase its natural gas production. Giuliani,
on Sunday, suggested Shokin was the target of an international smear
campaign to discredit his work.
In a combative interview on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday,
Giuliani presented what he said was an affidavit signed by Shokin that
confirmed Hunter Biden was being investigated when Shokin was fired.
"The Washington press will not accept the fact that Joe Biden might have done something like this." — Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani
"I
have an affidavit here that's been online for six months that nobody
bothered to read from the gentleman who was fired, Viktor Shokin, the
so-called corrupt prosecutor," Giuliani said. "The Biden people say that
he wasn't investigating Hunter Biden at the time. He says under oath
that he was." The Shokin affidavit purportedly said the U.S.
had pressured him into resigning because he was unwilling to drop the
case.
Later, Giuliani added: "I have another affidavit, this time
from another Ukrainian prosecutor who says that the day after Biden
strong-armed the president to remove Shokin, they show up in the
prosecutor’s office -- lawyers for Hunter Biden show up in the
prosecutor’s office and they give an apology for dissemination of false
information."
After anchor George Stephanopoulos expressed
skepticism, Giuliani fired back: "How about if I -- how about if I tell
you over the next week four more of these will come out from four other
prosecutors? ... No, no, no, George, they won’t be [investigated],
because they’ve been online for six months, and the Washington press
will not accept the fact that Joe Biden might have done something like
this."
When Stephanopoulos called it "not true" that Hunter Biden
had taken more than $1 billion from China while the U.S. was negotiating
with the country, Giuliani again said the former Clinton administration
official was being too dismissive.
"There's evidence that they
got $1 billion directly from China, specific date, 12 days after they
returned from a trip to China," Giuliani asserted. "There's evidence
that another $500 million went in, and there are three partners."
Giuliani
went on: "Can I -- can I make a contrast? Can I just make a slight
contrast with the so-called whistleblower? The whistleblower says I
don’t have any direct knowledge, I just heard things. Up until two weeks
before he did that, that wouldn't even [have] been a complaint, would
have been dismissed."
That was a reference to an explosive report in The Federalist
showing that the intelligence community recently changed its form for
reporting improper conduct. Earlier this year, the intelligence
community's form for whistleblowers explicitly stated that complaints
based on secondhand information were not actionable.
But,
that admonition was removed sometime afterward -- around the time that
an unnamed whistleblower filed a complaint, based on secondhand
information, alleging misconduct in the White House. Although there has
been no strict legal requirement for whistleblower complaints to contain
only firsthand information, the previous intelligence community form
made it clear that such secondhand complaints would not be investigated
as a matter of procedure.
Twitter user Stephen McIntyre originally spotted the change in the whistleblower form.
Trump
and top Republicans called for answers over the weekend as to when and
why the form was changed -- and whether the change was made specifically
to allow the whistleblower's complaint to proceed.
Before
Giuliani's interview, former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Thomas
Bossert criticized Trump's communications with Ukraine, but said he did not see any evidence of an impeachable offense.
Giuliani said Bossert was wrong to imply that Giuliani had ever alleged
Ukraine directly participated in the hacking of Democrats' servers in
2016.
Speaking separately to Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Giuliani brought up the affidavits and called the situation Clintonesque.
“The
pattern is a pattern of pay for play. It includes something very
similar to what happened to the Clinton Foundation," Giuliani said,
"which goes to the very core of, what did Obama know and when did he
know it?"
Giuliani referred to a December 2015 New York Times article
about Hunter Biden, Burisma and a Ukrainian oligarch, and how the
younger Biden's involvement with the Ukrainian company could undermine
then-Vice President Biden's anti-corruption message.
"The question
is," Giuliani asked, "when Biden and Obama saw that article, about how
the son was pulling down money from the most crooked oligarch in Russia,
did Obama call Biden in and say 'Joe, how could you be doing this?'"
Giuliani was not the only attorney trying to get damaging information on Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials,
and President Trump’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine this summer
was made in spite of several federal agencies supporting the aid, Fox
News’ Chris Wallace reported on "Fox News Sunday."
In
addition to Giuliani, Washington, D.C., lawyers Joe DiGenova and his
wife, Victoria Toensing, worked alongside the former New York City
mayor. According to a top U.S. official, the three attorneys were
working "off the books" -- not within the Trump administration -- and
only the president knows the details of their work.
In a tweet Sunday, Toensing called the report "false" and embarrassing." Wallace, in a statement, responded, "We stand by our reporting."
For
his part, Giuliani insisted he "didn't work with anybody to get dirt on
Joe Biden," again saying that the information "was handed to me by the
Ukrainians."
Giuliani stated that so far House Democrats have not
subpoenaed him to testify about his work with Ukraine, but if they did
he would have to run it by Trump first.
"I'm his attorney, there's
something called attorney-client privilege," he said. "That has to be
considered even if they don't think he should have attorney-client
privilege."
Democrats have focused on the whistleblower's complaint,
released last week, which cited information from White House officials
who alleged there'd been efforts to secure Trump's July phone call with
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, among other conversations. The
Trump administration reportedly began
placing transcripts of Trump's calls with several foreign leaders in a
highly classified repository only after anonymous leakers publicly
divulged the contents of Trump's private calls with the leaders of
Mexico and Australia in 2017.
Trump suggested during a phone call
with Zelensky that Ukraine look into Biden's boast about firing Shokin,
after Zelensky first mentioned Ukraine's corruption issues, and
after Trump separately requested as a "favor" that Ukraine help investigate foreign interference in the 2016 elections, including the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server involving CrowdStrike.
The
call came not long after Trump had frozen millions of dollars in
military aid to Ukraine. However, the U.S. later released the aid to
Ukraine, and the Ukrainians were unaware the money was frozen in the first place until more than a month after Trump's call with Zelensky, The New York Times reported.
Zelensky has said he felt no pressure from Trump during the phone call to do anything.
The whistleblower complaint contained several apparent factual inaccuracies,
prompting some Republicans to call for an inquiry into the
whistleblowers' sources -- and why they didn't make the complaint
themselves. Fox News' Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
President Trump
on Sunday said he wants to meet the whistleblower who filed a complaint
about his July phone call with the Ukrainian president and to have
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., questioned for “fraud and treason.”
“Like
every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this
accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect
conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and
fraudulent way,” Trump tweeted. “Then Schiff made up what I actually
said by lying to Congress.”
He
continued: “His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister
manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible
things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United
States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud &
Treason.”
Trump last week released a transcript of the call with
President Volodymyr Zelensky, which along with the complaint, detailed
how he urged his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Democratic
presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The incident has set off a formal impeachment inquiry.
But
Schiff opened Thursday’s hearing on Capitol Hill with Acting Director
of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire with an exaggerated reading of
the phone call, which he later walked back as a “parody.”
Trump on Friday blasted Schiff for the fictional summary and demanded his immediate resignation.
In
the series of tweets on Sunday, Trump not only doubled down on meeting
his accusers, both the whistleblower and the person who supplied the
information, but also questioned whether he was being spied on.
“In
addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND
& THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave
this information, which was largely incorrect, to the ‘Whistleblower,’”
Trump tweeted. “Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big
Consequences!”
We are watching a public execution.
Fueled with prejudice and injustice it should disgust all who still hold onto the faint belief that truth and the rule of law still count for something.
Pushed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi
and her political vigilantes, the move to impeach a sitting president
this week for things that never happened – a “quid” without a “pro quo” –
insults our Constitution and subjects America to well-deserved ridicule
from the rest of the planet.
The
assault by a Democratic speaker on a president she abhors was so
transparent she indicted him before seeing any evidence, smeared him
before hearing any proof, then executed him in the press without any
concern for due process.
It all reminds one of Alice in
Wonderland, where the Queen corrected the King’s sense of jurisprudence
when she insisted “no, no…sentence first – verdict afterword.”
More from Opinion
Then,
with a straight face, Nancy Pelosi had the gall to look us square in
the eye and say this has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with
her disdain for President Donald Trump, nothing to do with her
inability to control Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her
liberal arsonists who are out to torch the system (and the
speaker's leadership).
Seriously?
And just when we thought we had seen the final episode of “House of Cards.”
Here’s what we know.
Our
president called Ukraine’s president to congratulate him on his party’s
parliamentary victory. That’s what leaders do when other leaders have a
good day.
There was no quid pro quo, no trading of
promised military aid for political help, no pressure or demand that
Ukraine act – or else!
During that call, confirmed by
release of the transcript of that conversation, the president briefly
referenced the dropped investigation of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son,
over allegations the vice president may have unfairly influenced an
investigation there, and further asked for help in learning more about
how corruption from abroad threatened America’s electoral system.
There
was no quid pro quo, no trading of promised military aid for political
help, no pressure or demand that Ukraine act – or else!
The
Democrats, even before knowing any of this, said Donald Trump is clearly
guilty of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard for impeachment
contained in Article 1, Section 2, of the United States Constitution.
The president’s crime?
He won the 2016 election.
His
offense? He’s doing what he promised, by taking on a system that
threatens the middle class, domestic tranquility and national security.
His sin?
Donald Trump has led America to its best economic report card in decades.
At
the same time, the president took on China for abusing trade, Venezuela
for abusing its people, and “terrorist-central” Iran for bombing Saudi
Arabia.
Pelosi and her henchmen didn’t want to hear any of that.
Instead,
they promoted a political lynching they were denied when the 674-day
Mueller investigation proved no wrongdoing and the Kavanaugh
nomination was approved. Choreographed for effect, they went ballistic
over an allegation without waiting to see it, read it or vet it, as if
facts and evidence were some inconvenience, some technical points to be
addressed later.
Here’s the worst part.
If
the Democrats’ assault on the president goes unchallenged, there will
be more investigations, more political witch hunts, and more
impeachments. If you don’t like something, investigate. If you don’t
agree with someone, accuse. If all that fails, call for impeachment.
This
is rich, coming from a Congress whose approval ratings are at historic
lows, from partisans whose electoral futures are in doubt, and from a
House speaker so uncertain about her standing among Democrats she’s
willing to gamble, risk it all, to take out a president before the
people of America weigh in next year wielding their most powerful
weapon: the right to vote.
Nancy Pelosi wants to impeach our president.
More than ever, the American people want to impeach everyone responsible for putting their survival over ours.
The U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement of interest Friday in support of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis over a decision that led to the firing of a Catholic teacher in a same-sex marriage, according to a report.
The
Justice Department's statement says the First Amendment gives the
diocese the right to apply Catholic doctrine in employment decisions,
The Indianapolis Star reported.
“The United States has no reason
on this record to doubt that Plaintiff was an excellent teacher,” the
Justice Department’s statement says, adding the government can “cast no
judgment on whether the Archdiocese’s decision is right and proper as a
matter of Catholic doctrine or religious faith.”
Cathedral High School
(Google Maps)
Joshua Payne-Elliott is
suing the archdiocese for wrongful termination, alleging they illegally
interfered in his employment contract at Cathedral High School, which is
part of the archdiocese.Of course he's Suing :-)
Payne-Elliott
worked as a social studies teacher at the school from 2006 until last
June. The school had offered to renew his contract but then said they
were letting him go at the direction of the archdiocese.
Payne-Elliott’s
husband, Layton Payne-Elliott, works at another school that was
temporarily kicked out of the archdiocese for refusing to fire him. The
Vatican this week interceded to temporarily halt the school’s removal,
pending an appeal.
Payne-Elliott’s lawyer, Kathleen DeLaney, says the issued is about an employment dispute, not religious liberty.
"Josh
Payne-Elliot was employed by Cathedral High School," she said,
according to The Star. "Cathedral High School fired my client because
the archdiocese told them to and threatened to take various actions
against Cathedral if they refused to fire my client."
"That is
textbook intentional interference in an employment relationship," she
added. "He was not employed by the archdiocese but the archdiocese had
him fired."
Payne-Elliott said he hoped the case would "put a stop to the targeting of LGBTQ employees and their families." The
school said it sees its teachers as "ministers" who are required to
uphold Catholic teachings, which prohibit same-sex marriage.
Two
guidance counselors were also fired from another high school in the
archdiocese this year for being in sex-sex marriages. One of the
counselors has filed a lawsuit and the other is expected to soon.
The archdiocese began requiring Catholic high school teachers to sign a morality clause, but Payne-Elliott says he never did.
The Justice Department's statement of interest has no official bearing on the case, The Star reported.
The Democratic National Committee has a money problem. And that could hurt its nominee’s chances of beating President Donald Trump in 2020. In
the first four months of 2019, the party spent more than it raised and
added $3 million in new debt. In the same period, its Republican
counterpart was stockpiling cash.
Democratic donors overall have
been generous, pouring three times as much into their party’s
presidential and congressional campaigns in the first quarter of the
year than Republicans gave to their national office-seekers. But the DNC
isn’t benefiting from the same donor enthusiasm, putting at risk its
ability to help the nominee take on Trump, donors said.
Whoever wins the party’s nomination will rely heavily on the
DNC in the general election for organizing, identifying voters and
getting them to the polls. That will ultimately cost hundreds of
millions of dollars by election day, but the party needs to spend early
to prepare, which is why it’s been borrowing money. It’s also sending
out fundraising appeals under the presidential candidates’ names,
something it’s never done before.
"It’s trouble, it’s going to affect us," said Allan Berliant,
a Cincinnati-based Democratic bundler, who says the party needs to open
offices and get boots on the ground around the country. "All of that
starts with fundraising," he said.
Party officials and fundraisers
blamed the deficiency on several factors, and chief among them is
competition from the 23 Democrats who are running for president and
vacuuming up contributors’ cash. Giving to the party isn’t as compelling
as supporting the presidential hopefuls, said John Morgan, an
Orlando-based trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser.
“Do you want to fix up the barn or do you want to bet on the horses?” he said.
But
major donors also pointed to the perception of some contributors that
the national party is disorganized -- a hangover from the 2016 election.
The growing schism between the old-guard establishment and the younger,
activist wing could be discouraging donors, too, they said.
Fundraising Compared
By the end of April, the DNC had collected
contributions of more than $24.4 million, but had spent $28.4 million,
according to the latest disclosures. It had $7.6 million cash on hand,
$1 million less than in January. It posted $6.2 million in debt,
including bank loans and unpaid invoices to vendors, Federal Election
Commission records show.
That compared with the Republican National Committee, which thanks in part to Trump’s non-stop fundraising since winning the White House had $34.7 million in the bank and no debt. It raised nearly $62 million so far this year, two-and-a-half times the DNC’s haul.
‘Fundraising Machine’
Democratic
rainmakers said contributions should pick up as the crowded field of
presidential hopefuls thins. "We will have the largest and most
enthusiastic fundraising machine that the Democrats have ever seen,"
said Chris Korge, a longtime Democratic bundler who took over the
party’s fundraising operation in May. The Miami-based attorney and
investor said he’s educating donors on how the party is investing its
funds, and said money won’t be a problem, even if Republicans outraise
it.
Democratic donors elsewhere have been generous. From January
through March, 16 presidential candidates collectively raised $77
million, or $3 million more than Trump’s committees and the Republican
National Committee combined. That follows the 2018 midterms in which
Democratic committees of every type spent $525 million more than
Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The national party has been overshadowed by other Democratic
organizations on a number of fronts. The Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, which supports House candidates, says it has to
protect the House majority that Democrats won in 2018. Its Senate
counterpart, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is aiming to
end Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s tenure.
Messages Resonate
Both messages resonate with donors, bundlers say. The DCCC has raised more than $40 million this year, besting the DNC’s totals each month. The DSCC has raised $18 million.
The
DNC is also competing with super PACs, which can accept unlimited
amounts from companies, unions and individuals but can’t coordinate with
candidates. Priorities USA, the main super PAC for supporting the
party’s presidential nominees, counts among its donors some of the
biggest Democratic givers, including billionaire investor George Soros
and hedge-fund operators S. Donald Sussman and James H. Simons.
"There’s a lot of competition for dollars right now," said
Jamie Ansorge, a member of the DNC’s finance committee who focuses on
young professionals in the New York City area.
Splitting Contributions
For
the first time, the party is sending fundraising pitches from its
presidential candidates to its vast donor list -- and splitting the
contributions evenly. Campaigns get another set of donors to pitch to,
and the party gets to cash in on the crowded field. For example, the
party has emailed solicitations for former Texas congressman Beto
O’Rourke, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete
Buttigieg and California Senator Kamala Harris.
“The Democratic
nominee for president will need a strong Democratic Party,” O’Rourke’s
email said. Booker cited the financial advantage Trump and the GOP have
in the early going, and the need to keep up.
The DNC isn’t sharing
in the money bonanza in part because of the perception that it hasn’t
recovered from 2016’s self-inflicted blows, fundraisers said. Emails
hacked by the Russians and published by WikiLeaks showed
that it was working to help Hillary Clinton defeat Bernie Sanders for
the nomination even though it was publicly pledging neutrality. That led
to the resignation of DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on the eve of the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia.
“Debbie
Wasserman Schultz really destroyed a lot of confidence in the DNC for a
lot of people and for a lot of different reasons,” said Morgan, the
Orlando-based fundraiser. Her favoring of Clinton and mismanagement of
the party continues to give donors pause, he said.
When she stepped down, Wasserman Schultz cited the successes
of her tenure, including aiding Obama’s reelection in 2012,
strengthening partnerships with state parties and conducting the 2016
primary in a statement. Wasserman Schultz didn’t respond to a request
for comment.
Some potential contributors would rather not support a
party they perceive as dominated by establishment figures and their
more moderate approach to issues, said one bundler who who has held
fundraisers for the party, but asked not to be named because he’s not
authorized to speak publicly on its behalf.
To compete in 2020,
the DNC has acquired 100 million cellphone numbers during the midterms,
allowing the party to make contact with voters via text message. This
summer, it will train about 1,000 college juniors who will be ready to
hit the ground running next year and is stressing those tactics with
donors.
Tom Perez, who took over as chairman in 2017, in a recent
email solicitation highlighted the effort to train college students and
warned it might be scaled back if its fundraising goal wasn’t met.
In the few days since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, Republicans have capitalized on conservative outrage, pulling in millions of dollars in donations.
As of Friday, Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign received $15 million in small donations, including 50,000 from new donors, according to a tweet from Eric Trump.
“Unbelievable numbers!!” he tweeted. “Keep it going — you and the dems are handing @realDonaldTrump the win in 2020!”
Pelosi
announced on Tuesday the House would launch a formal impeachment
inquiry against the president, accusing him of betraying the oath of
office by pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation into former Vice
President Joe Biden, a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential
nomination, and his son.
Trump has maintained that he acted appropriately.
Twenty-four
hours later, Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National
Committee raked in a combined $5 million, according to Trump’s campaign
manager, Brad Parscale.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, meanwhile, said its online fundraising was up 608 percent Friday.
State-level
Republican groups are also fundraising off of Democrats’ efforts to
impeach Trump, with the Nevada Republican Party selling a shirt that
says “Impeach This,” over an image of the 2016 election map.
Of
course, Democrats are also turning impeachment into a chance to raise
money: ActBlue, the company that processes a majority of Democratic
online donations, said it brought in $4.6 million in donations on
Tuesday -- one of its largest fundraising days not tied to a Democratic debate or monthly deadline.
CNN’s Scott Jennings once again took liberals to the cleaners on the Abrego Garcia case, the ‘Maryland man...
