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Oklahoma governor vetoes gun carry bill in defeat for NRA

File-This Feb. 25, 2018, file photo shows Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin speaking during the panel Caring for our Veterans at the National Governor Association 2018 winter meeting in Washington. Fallin vetoed a bill late Friday, May 11, 2018, that would have authorized adults to carry firearms without a permit or training, dealing a rare defeat to the National Rifle Association in a conservative state. The veto comes after opposition from the business community and law enforcement authorities, including top officials with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation who have said it could erode public safety.(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

OKLAHOMA CITY –  Oklahoma's Republican Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed a bill late Friday that would have authorized adults to carry firearms without a permit or training, dealing a rare defeat to the National Rifle Association in a conservative state.
The veto comes after opposition from the business community and law enforcement authorities, including top officials with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation who have said it could erode public safety.
The NRA had supported the bill's passage and had urged Fallin to sign it.
In a statement announcing her veto, Fallin stressed her support for the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms and noted she had signed concealed and open carry measures in the past.
"I believe the firearms laws we currently have in place are effective, appropriate and minimal," she said. But she added that the bill would have eliminated the requirement for a training course and reduced the level of background checks to carry a gun.
The bill is similar to so-called "constitutional carry" legislation adopted in a dozen other states. It would have authorized people 21 and older and military personnel who are at least 18 to legally carry a handgun, either openly or concealed, without a state-issued license or permit.
The state currently requires a license to carry a handgun openly or concealed.
The bureau of investigation, which issues handgun licenses, had said the bill would cost the agency about $4.7 million annually and result in the loss of about 60 full-time positions.
"The impact on public safety is unquantifiable," bureau Director Bob Ricks said in a statement.
Many business leaders, including local chambers of commerce, also opposed the bill, giving the governor — who cannot run for re-election under term limits — plenty of political cover to veto it.
The Legislature already has adjourned its session so lawmakers will not be able to revisit the issue until next year after the election of a new governor.
The hot-button issue of gun rights energizes Republican voters, particularly those in Republican primaries, said Trebor Worthen, a Republican political strategist.
Several Republican candidates to succeed Fallin as governor urged her this week to sign it.
"Republican voters believe in the Second Amendment and they believe they should be able to exercise that right with as little interference from the government as possible," Worthen said. "Especially in more rural areas."
Fallin has vetoed gun bills before. In 2014, she vetoed a bill requiring state authorities to sign off on applications for federally-regulated items such as silencers, short-barreled rifles and automatic weapons within 15 days. But the Legislature overrode her veto and the bill became law anyway. In 2015, she vetoed legislation that restricted businesses from banning guns at parks, fairgrounds and recreational areas, a veto that remained in place.

Giuliani says Trump 'had no knowledge' of Cohen's corporate clients: report

Critics claim Rudy Giuliani's comments are creating more problems for the president, while supporters say the new member of Trump's legal team is changing the media narrative; Fox News contributors Judy Miller and Tammy Bruce join the debate.
Michael Cohen, the longtime personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, never discussed with the president the consulting fees he received from corporate clients, Rudy Giuliani said Friday.
“The president had no knowledge of it,” Giuliani said, in an interview with the Huffington Post.
Cohen reportedly received $600,000 from AT&T, $1.2 million from Swiss drugmaker Novartis, $150,000 from South Korean aviation firm Korea Aerospace Industries and $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm linked to a Russian oligarch.
One of that firm’s biggest clients is a company helmed by billionaire Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg, Fox News reported.
Giuliani told the Associated Press that it did not appear Cohen took any steps to advance the interests of the companies that paid him and did not speak to the president on their behalf.
Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City who recently joined Trump's personal legal team, said he represents Trump, not Cohen, but nevertheless believes Cohen did nothing wrong, HuffPost reported.
“They’re buying his advice. It can turn out to be good or bad,” Giuliani said. “There’s a lot of people in Washington who are paid for their advice.”
However, Giuliani said he believes Cohen does not deserve the criticism he is taking from some in the media and in political circles.
“The guy is under severe emotional pressure,” Giuliani said. “The guy is really collateral damage.”

“The guy is under severe emotional pressure. The guy is really collateral damage.”

Giuliani is also a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is the office currently investigating Cohen's business dealings.
Giuliani joined Trump’s outside legal team in April to represent Trump in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties to Russia.
Meanwhile, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said Friday that the company's chief Washington lobbyist, Bob Quinn, would be leaving the company after overseeing the hiring of Cohen as a political consultant, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“There is no other way to say it – AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake,” Stephenson's memo to employees said.
“To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate,” Stephenson wrote. “But the fact is our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment.”
Stephenson said Quinn plans to retire, but people familiar with the matter told the Journal that the policy chief was forced to leave.
Quinn, a lawyer who joined the company in 1993 and took over its Washington office in October 2016, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The telecommunications company said it was contacted by investigators with Mueller and provided "all information requested in November and December of 2017."

Trump lawyer heard allegations against Schneiderman years ago, attorney says

A New York attorney reportedly told President Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, years ago that former New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was allegedly abusing women.
Schneiderman, a frequent legal nemesis of Trump, resigned this week after the New Yorker magazine published the accounts of four women who claimed they were slapped and choked by him. Schneiderman has denied the charges.
Attorney Peter Gleason said in a letter filed with a federal judge Friday that he was contacted "some years ago" by two women who accused Schneiderman of sexual misconduct. But Gleason denied that the women were among the four who were quoted in the New Yorker article, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Gleason said he discussed the matter with retired New York Post columnist Stephen Dunleavy and advised the women not to speak with prosecutors.
According to Gleason, Dunleavy offered to talk about the issue with Trump prior to his presidency.
Gleason said he then got a call from Cohen, Trump's lawyer, and "shared with him certain details" of Schneiderman's alleged "vile attacks" on the women.
In his letter, Gleason asked U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood to issue a protective order sealing "any and all correspondence that Mr. Cohen may have memorialized regarding our communications."
In a brief phone interview Friday, Gleason said Cohen told him during their 2013 conversation that if Trump ran for governor, he would make the allegations about Schneiderman public.
Schneiderman's lawyer, Isabelle Kirshner, declined to comment. Lawyers for Cohen and Trump didn't return email messages.
Wood ordered Gleason on Friday afternoon either to file a memorandum supporting his request for a protective order by May 18, or withdraw the request.

'People Are Pissed Off': House Candidate Sees 'Red Wave' Coming in California

A California Republican candidate said she believes a "red wave" is coming in the state because people are "pissed off" about the current leadership by far-left politicians.
Morgan Murtaugh, who is running in the 53rd congressional district near San Diego, said there is growing opposition to the state's sanctuary law toward illegal immigrants and high taxes.
She agreed with President Trump's contention at a rally in Indiana that Democrats will have a tough time in November selling Americans on higher taxes and opposition to the Trump agenda.

"Our new slogan for 2020, you know what it is? 'KEEP AMERICA GREAT!'" —President @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/QD8WjHRxPJ

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 10, 2018

"Everyone keeps saying there's a blue wave coming, but in California people are really pissed off. Sorry for saying that, but they are. ... People are upset with the state of affairs. I really feel a red wave coming out here in California," she said.
Murtaugh, who is the youngest person running for Congress this year, said citizens are realizing that liberal policies are to blame. She said her grandparents came to the U.S. legally from Mexico in the 1968, so she understand the need to have "good, hardworking immigrants" come to the U.S. the right way.
But she said securing the border is a "national security issue," explaining that she has toured the border with Border Patrol officers. The district has been represented since 2003 by Democrat Susan Davis.

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Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson cuts $30M check to GOP amid Dems' 'blue wave' fears

Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has committed to a $30 million cash infusion for a House Republican group, a move that will boost GOP chances of fighting off energized Democrats in the midterm elections.
The donation to the House GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund was sealed last week when Speaker Paul Ryan and his entourage met with the mogul at his hotel, where he explained the importance of his money in maintaining the Republicans' House control, Politico reported.
Due to laws guiding political contributions, Ryan, like any other federally elected official, couldn't solicit a donation as big as $30 million. Instead, Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator who chairs the Republican Jewish Coalition, was tasked with asking for the donation while Ryan left the room, the report said.
Republicans have long courted Adelson to make a donation in this election cycle. In February, multiple House Republicans paid Adelson their respects and attended an annual retreat hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition, which Adelson also supports.
The massive cash infusion comes six months before the midterm elections, in which Republicans are facing tough and well-funded Democratic challengers with a mobilized voting base in the wake of President Donald Trump's presidency.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said earlier this month that she's optimistic her party will regain control of the House.
According to an average of generic ballot polls, Democrats have a 7-point advantage over the GOP, though the lead has been significantly cut in recent months, with fears on the Democratic side as well that the so-called "blue wave" won't materialize on Election Day.
Adelson's donation is also three times bigger compared to his 2016 donation and came a lot earlier than in the previous election cycles, according to Politico.

HHS Secretary, FDA Commissioner, CMS Administrator: Help is on the way for Americans facing high drug prices

We live in a golden era of American prosperity and medical innovation, with amazing new medicines and technologies improving and extending our lives. Yet Americans all across our country face, or will face at some point, the burden of paying high prices for prescription medications.
This burden has become a threat to the financial security of far too many of our seniors, neighbors and communities. For someone in desperate need of a cure, there is little difference between one that has not been discovered and one that cannot be afforded.
Americans should be able to reap the rewards of living in the country that has brought the world more new drugs than any other. President Trump recognizes that the current situation is unacceptable, and has made fixing high drug prices a top priority for his administration.
We at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are taking on this challenge, focused on four major problems in drug markets.
First, drug manufacturers have rapidly increased the list prices of drugs over the last couple of decades, sometimes even doubling or tripling prices.
Second, government programs and private payers do not always have all the tools they need to negotiate more reasonable prices.
Third, many Americans, especially our seniors, face high out-of-pocket costs for the drugs they need, because out-of-pocket costs are typically calculated based on drugs’ sky-high list prices.
As just one example, while Medicare Part D provides affordable drug coverage for our seniors, more than 1 million beneficiaries are in a phase of the program where their out-of-pocket spending averages $3,000 a year – a huge sum for many.
Finally, foreign countries and their government-run health-care systems bully our drug manufacturers into unrealistically low prices, allowing other countries to freeload off of American innovation.
On top of all this, a new generation of high-cost drugs is now coming onto the market. They offer new advances for our health, but prices are reaching into the six figures. Government insurance programs have often been unable to secure discounts from manufacturers, meaning huge out-of-pocket costs for some seniors.
These burdens are real and pressing, and we at HHS have already been taking action to address them.
HHS is home to two agencies that have a significant role to play in bringing down the high cost of prescription drugs:
· The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which rigorously ensures the safety and efficacy of America’s prescription drugs.
· The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which provides health insurance and drug coverage for more than 130 million Americans.
The FDA recently unveiled a Drug Competition Action Plan that makes the approval process for generic drugs more efficient, encouraging lower prices through robust competition. Under President Trump, in 2017 the FDA approved more than 1,000 new generic drugs – a record number and 200 more than had ever before been approved in a single year.
Generic drug approvals save American consumers billions of dollars each year. The FDA will continue to work to ensure that safe and effective generic drugs are approved expeditiously and not hamstrung by unfair practices that brand-name drug manufacturers sometimes use to thwart competition.
Last year, CMS made a change to improve Medicare that will save seniors an estimated $320 million on out-of-pocket drug spending in 2018 alone. CMS also updated a policy to expedite the substitution of generic drugs in Medicare Part D plans, giving seniors low-cost options more quickly than before.
President Trump’s 2019 budget proposed a five-part plan to modernize Medicare Part D and lower costs for seniors. This plan includes free generic drugs for low-income seniors and a cap on seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses for the first time.
But with American patients in need and the status quo unsustainable, President Trump has told us to go much, much further.
In response, HHS has been formulating the most ambitious reform of drug pricing in the history of our country. Our blueprint for reform, which will be unveiled in the coming weeks, will use four major strategies to address the problems we face.
First, HHS aims to increase competition in drug markets.
Second, we are going to give Medicare Part D plans better tools to negotiate discounts on behalf of our seniors – tools that private-sector health plans often already use.
Third, we will develop new incentives for drug manufacturers to lower list prices.
Fourth, we develop options to lower patients’ out-of-pocket spending.
We are living through the most innovative era in the history of medicine. Our free-market system has produced cures and treatments that seemed impossible a short while ago.
But securing the benefits of 21^st century medicine demands major changes to how our country pays for prescription drugs. President Trump has seen to it that we are not just going to talk about this problem – we are going to fix it, and soon.
So the president and his administration have one message for Americans burdened by our current system: Help is on the way.
Scott Gottlieb is commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and Seema Verma is administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 
Alex M. Azar II was sworn in as the Secretary of Health and Human Services on Jan. 29, 2018. Azar has spent his career working in both the public and private sectors, as an attorney and in senior leadership roles focused on advancing healthcare reform, research and innovation.