Pelosi and Mnuchin have been chatting on the phone, possible indicator that there’s a debt-limit issue

The Speaker of the House doesn’t talk to the Treasury Secretary on a Saturday night, then send him a letter, and, then blast out a press release, unless it’s urgent.
But that’s what happened Saturday night.
This is all about Washington’s second favorite, semi-annual acrobatic regimen: a fight over increasing the debt ceiling. Washington’s favorite exploit is a battle over funding the government. The latter will come in less than two months. But the former is here now – a little sooner than everyone thought.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have become phone friends of late. They’ve burned up the lines more than teenyboppers singing “Telephone Hour” in Bye Bye Birdie.
Pelosi appears to prefer to work with Mnuchin on this issue – and do it telephonically.
The House Speaker has little use for acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Multiple Congressional sources tell Fox that Mulvaney infuriated Democrats during the last set of bicameral, bipartisan meetings on the debt ceiling on Capitol Hill. Three weeks ago, a clearly agitated Pelosi told reporters she refused to “waste time” on Mulvaney’s characterization of her remarks in the session. She also said that Mulvaney “has no credibility” on the debt ceiling “whatsoever.”
That said, Mulvaney appears to be the administration official most in tune with the id of President Trump. So, lawmakers ignore Mulvaney - and Mr. Trump’s impulses - at their peril.
Still, Pelosi apparently prefers to use the phone to engage Mnuchin. And perhaps, the same is the case for Mnuchin when it comes to discourse with Pelosi. There’s a reason why Ambrose Bierce described the telephone as “an invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable keep his distance.”
To wit, regarding communications between Pelosi and Mnuchin:
The duo spoke last Wednesday night about an urgent need to raise the debt limit.
Pelosi and Mnuchin talked twice last Thursday. They spoke midday on Friday. Then the duo chatted for 12 minutes Saturday night.
Mnuchin sent Pelosi a letter underscoring the need hike the debt ceiling in the next couple of weeks. The Speaker responded with her own missive to the Treasury Secretary Saturday night.
The nation’s top political leaders don’t chat this often and volley communiques between one another - especially on a Saturday night – unless there’s a problem.
The problem is that a vote to increase the debt limit is one of the most onerous ballots lawmakers can cast. The problem is that no one wants to vote to authorize more debt. But the problem is that Congress must lift the debt threshold soon or risk a downgrade in the nation’s credit rating, rattle the stock market or send a shock through the bond market.
The problem is that Mnuchin is imploring Congress to raise the debt ceiling right away – before lawmakers abandon Washington for most of August and the traditional summer recess. That’s because few in Washington paid close attention to this issue until a few days ago. That’s when Mnuchin suggested the government could “run out of cash in early September, before Congress reconvenes.” Government reserves will soon dwindle to about $250 billion. The accelerated timetable is partly due to diminished revenues, attributable to the new tax law.
One could spot a signal that government coffers are going dry the other day: the yield of short-term Treasury bill yields. The return on a Treasury bill maturing in mid-September is now higher than those ripening in mid-August. People are also not investing in shorter-term government securities - another sign of possible trouble.
If Congress and the Trump Administration don’t act soon, federal cash reserves could wane and the government could scuffle to meet liquidity needs.
By sending out a letter on a Saturday night, Pelosi is trying to sound an alarm, emphasizing to lawmakers the need to expeditiously raise the debt ceiling.
Official Washington has long known about the need to raise the debt ceiling. The sides were talking months ago about marshaling a two-year agreement on the spending caps and mixing it with the debt limit. Back in May, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested they were so close that an accord could just be hours away.
But then talks melted.
In her Saturday night epistle to Mnuchin, Pelosi insisted the sides cut a deal on “spending priorities.” This is a reference to stalled efforts to lift mandatory spending caps Congress imposed in a 2011 package to boost the debt ceiling. In Washington, the caps are commonly referred to as “sequestration.” Sequestration hits defense especially hard because the Pentagon commands the largest chunk of money doled out by Congress each year. President Trump wants more for defense. Democrats are willing to bend a little. But that’s why Pelosi is pushing for “parity.” In other words, Pelosi is requesting a parallel increase in funding for all non-defense programs, too.
Just a few days ago, a senior Congressional source told Fox that it looked like the sides may have to agree to a short-term extension of the debt limit. Technically, the spending cap issue doesn’t need to be resolved until mid-January. But Pelosi is coupling these issues now.
Meantime, many Congressional Republicans don’t want to just increase the debt limit unless it’s attached to something . Even if failing to address the debt ceiling issue threatens the market or the ability of the federal government to borrow. That’s why some on the GOP side have hoped for an imminent caps deal. A failure to latch the debt ceiling increase to a caps agreement could be an issue for some Senate Republicans.
This prompted some chatter about hooking the debt ceiling increase to the bill to fund the health coverage of sick 9/11 first responders. The House approved the plan 402-12 on Friday. McConnell promised to tackle the issue in the next couple of weeks. As he left the Capitol Friday afternoon, 9/11 first responder advocate Jon Stewart specifically spoke against Scotch taping the 9/11 bill to another measure or vice versa. But, when it comes to legislating, you don’t get style points.
And so, everyone in Washington has a problem without a lot of time to solve it. It’s possible Congress could nuke part of the August recess if something doesn’t come together quickly.
Expect more phone calls between Pelosi and Mnuchin.
Raising the debt ceiling is a monumental Congressional task. And while policymakers may negotiate this over the phone, hiking the debt ceiling is a subject so significant that you can’t just phone it in.

Illegals Cartoons & Shepard Smith

Calif. sheriff supports ICE deportations

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 4:25 PM PT – Sat. July 13, 2019

One California sheriff said she supports ICE, as they prepare for mass deportations.
In an interview Friday, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims noted that ICE is doing their job, and complying with law to remove illegal immigrants who have evaded deportation.
She reiterates that these immigrants received due process and went through the court system, but chose to ignore the law and stay in the country illegally.



Several California mayors and the state’s governor have reached-out to illegal immigrants, informing them they don’t have to comply with ice officers if they come knocking on their doors.
Meanwhile, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement slams a Virginia Democrat, following a heated exchange on Capitol Hill.
In an interview Friday, Thomas Homan recapped his testimony before Congress on detention centers at the border, calling out Congressman Gerry Connolly.
Homan said the congressman threw out dirt and wouldn’t let him respond, calling it political theater, and calling Connolly a coward.
Connolly and Homan shared some heated exchanges during the hearing, one in which the Democrat lawmaker yelled at the former border agent.
Homan said the Democrat’s actions are about resisting the president and support for open borders, and not about the truth.

Pastor John Hagee: Secularizing of America will lead to 'heartache and chaos'

Figures in government and media are trying to secularize American culture, which will lead the country away from its founding Judeo-Christian principles, according to Pastor John Hagee.
When the Pilgrims landed in today's New England, they made a promise to God that what became the United States would be a righteous nation based on morality, Hagee said in an interview airing Sunday on "Life, Liberty and Levin."
The relative lack of focus on Evangelicals by the media is, "indicative of the fact that America is slipping from its moral foundations of faith and Bible principles into secularism," the pastor said. "The further into secularism you go, the further away from the Word of God you go."
"And when you're away from the Word of God, you are away from God," Hagee went on. "So, they're out there swimming in an ocean of their own ego -- their opinions, their secular humanist concepts."
Hagee, founder and senior pastor at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, claimed that what he sees as the shift from righteous leadership toward secularism will destroy the vision of the Founding Fathers.
"It will produce nothing but heartache and chaos because the real principles of society -- the real principles of this nation -- are still in the Word of God," he said.
"It's rarely taught, I guess, in our government public schools these days: When our Pilgrims landed, they made a covenant with God that this nation would be a nation that served the Lord.
"And our Founding Fathers, when they put the Constitution together, remembered the principles of the Word of God."
Hagee claimed the United States has strayed from that form and must return to a righteous path in order to continue to prosper.
"Our nation today is getting away from anything that looks like righteousness," he said. "... Our country is going the other direction full-speed and it is paying an awesome price -- and that price has just begun."

LA push to develop Skid Row prompts new clashes in California's homeless crisis

The intersection of 6th St. and San Pedro St. in Los Angeles is the center of Skid Row. (Andrew O'Reilly/Fox News)

City officials, developers and restaurateurs in Los Angeles are touting the renaissance of the city’s once-blighted downtown thanks to an explosion of trendy eateries, chic hotels and luxury apartments that have attracted thousands of new – and generally financially well-off – residents to the neighborhood in recent years.
But just a few blocks south of the area where a set-course sushi meal costs around $200 per person – wine or sake not included – is perhaps the country's most notorious tent city and a neighborhood that has been labeled the epicenter of homelessness in America: Skid Row.
The area -- which has been plagued by vagrancy, high crime rates and unsanitary conditions almost since its development in the 1880s -- is an unorganized collection of warehouses, wholesale storefronts and decaying low-rent hotels. Its trash-strewn streets are lined with the blue tarps and fraying tents of those residents unable to afford a solid roof over their heads.
But as development in Downtown Los Angeles steams forward unimpeded, city officials and developers are eyeing Skid Row as possibly the next “up-and-coming” neighborhood – a move causing tensions with advocates and community outreach workers who wonder what this means for the thousands of homeless and itinerant people who currently call the rundown area home.

Advocates and community outreach workers worry what housing development will mean for the thousands of homeless and itinerant people who currently call the rundown neighborhood home. (Andrew O'Reilly/Fox News)

“Most of Skid Row is already being carved up,” Jerry Jones, the director of public policy at the Inner City Law Center in Los Angeles, told Fox News. “We need to help those who live on Skid Row right now.”
The population of Downtown Los Angeles, which encompasses Skid Row and a number of other smaller neighborhoods, has seen its population skyrocket from just 18,000 people two decades ago to currently 76,000. There are also development plans bouncing around city hall that could bring 176,000 new residents to downtown by 2040.
Activists were enraged last June by a city proposal to rezone an industrial section of Skid Row to residential and open it up for market-rate development – a plan that supporters said would continue to the growth of downtown and create much-needed mixed office and living spaces in a city dealing with a major housing shortage.
While the proposal did call for putting social service agencies and permanent supportive housing in other parts of Skid Row, advocates for the neighborhood worried that it would drive up rents and displace some 4,000 people who currently live in the area’s single-room occupancy hotels and other modest lodgings.
In a concession to activists, a new rezoning plan released earlier this month calls for the conversion of parts of Skid Row into housing for residents earning between $10,000 and $58,000 annually. The plan also calls for any new development in bordering neighborhoods like the Arts District and Little Tokyo to include units for low-income residents.
Craig Weber, principal planner for the city of Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times that the new rezoning initiative is meant to create "housing opportunities for all."
“The plan seeks to expand the opportunity for affordable housing through policies, zoning and the community benefits program," he said.
Unlike cities like New York and nearby Santa Monica, Los Angeles currently does not have any laws on the books that require developers to mark off a certain percentage of new units for affordable housing.
Skid Row advocates like Jones say that the new rezoning plan is a start, but it doesn’t address the area’s homeless crisis and will most likely still displace the itinerant population of Skid Row into adjoining neighborhoods like Boyle Heights and University Park.
“It’s a huge opportunity that has been lost,” he said. “Any proposal to build in the area should benefit the current residents of Skid Row first.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and other city lawmakers appear fully aware that Skid Row has become the epicenter of a homeless crisis flaring across major California cities – specifically prioritizing the neighborhood in the mayor’s plan to tackle homelessness and allocating $7 million from the $124 million the state recently approved for improving the health and safety of city residents. This comes after the city already spent $20 million last year to expand hygiene infrastructure and street cleanups in the community.

Some 4,000 people currently live in Skid Row's single-room occupancy hotels and other modest lodgings, with many more living in tent encampments . (Andrew O'Reilly/Fox News)

“We all know the epicenter of this crisis is Skid Row,” Garcetti said during a press conference on Monday. “It’s where the extreme poverty cuts the deepest, it’s where the racialized elements of this homelessness crisis are most seen.”
He added: “The days of writing off this community are over.”
Besides the hygiene initiative, the city also has plans to build a bin facility for Skid Row residents to store their belongings, start a cleaning initiative that would hire residents to clean the streets and construct crisis beds for women in Skid Row at Downtown Women’s Center.
Activists say that the city’s initiatives are a good start, but to really remedy the dire situation that many on Skid Row find themselves in, a real roof over their heads is the most important thing.
ICLC’s Jones argues that different types of housing are needed to address the complexities of the homeless crisis in Los Angeles – from permanent supportive housing with on-site health professionals to deal with issues like mental illness and drug addiction to transitional housing for homeless youth and families trying to get back on their feet.
“Different people need different housing, but one thing they all need is a house,” he said.

The tent encampment on San Pedro St. in Skid Row borders a parking lot that is slated to become a supportive housing complex with 298 residential units. (Andrew O'Reilly/Fox News)

Most housing development that has been constructed on Skid Row over the last decade has been supportive housing, and a nonprofit organization, the Weingart Center, recently proposed building a 19-story affordable housing tower in the neighborhood on what is currently a parking lot.
The apartment complex would include 298 residential units – all studio apartments – as well as office space for the Inner City Law Center and Chrysalis, a job training and placement services nonprofit. The Weingart Center also has plans to build an 18-story and a 12-story supportive housing building on Skid Row that would have 382 apartments for homeless individuals.

Blackout gives New York's governor opportunity to blast New York City's absentee mayor

One consequence of New York City's Saturday night blackout: It shined a bright spotlight on the tensions between two prominent Democrats, the city's mayor and the state's governor.
As more than 70,000 customers -- plus countless tourists and other visitors -- dealt with the loss of electricity attributed to a transformer fire, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was in Iowa campaigning for president when the massive blackout hit Manhattan.
“I can count the number of times I leave the state basically on my fingers,” Cuomo told CNN, responding to a question about the importance of the mayor being in New York during an emergency.
"Mayors are important. And situations like this come up, you know. And you have to be on-site,” he said. "I think it’s important to be in a place where you can always respond. But look, everybody makes their own political judgment and I’m not going to second-guess anyone either. I do my job the way I think I should do my job and I leave it to others to do the same."

"Mayors are important. And situations like this come up, you know. And you have to be on-site."
— New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

Although both are Democrats, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, left and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have had a strained relationship. 

De Blasio was at a campaign stop in Waterloo, Iowa, when an equipment failure at a transformer substation shut off power for tens of thousands of people in his city.
The mayor first told CNN he was mulling whether to return to New York, but later decided he would, according to the Washington Examiner. He plans to fly back to the city Sunday morning, a spokesperson said.
Late Saturday, the mayor issued several Twitter messages, indicating he was monitoring the situation back home.
"With the power back on, I’ve directed City agencies to investigate this evening’s blackout," he wrote. "They’ll work with ConEd to get to the bottom of what happened tonight and prevent another widespread outage like this."
Meanwhile, the governor was in New York City, speaking to reporters just before midnight. He confirmed that power had been restored to all affected customers.
“This could have been much worse,” Cuomo added, commending emergency responders. “When things are at their worst New Yorkers are at their best.”
The governor said he would be working with utility company Con Edison to make sure a blackout of Saturday’s magnitude doesn’t happen again.

Anti-American Illegal Alien Cartoons

Democrat pictured on the Left :-)

Labor Secretary Acosta announces resignation amid Epstein plea deal controversy

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:57 AM PT – Friday, July 12, 2019

President Trump announced Labor Secretary Alex Acosta will be stepping down, following the heat he received this week over the decades old Jeffrey Epstein plea deal.
Acosta joined the president as he spoke to reporters outside the White House Friday. President Trump offered praise for the embattled official, and said the Labor Department’s number two official — Patrick Pizzella — will take over as acting secretary.
Acosta also blasted the media over its coverage connecting Epstein to the Labor Department before saying he would step aside for the greater good of the administration.

Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, right, accompanied President Donald Trump, left, speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 12, 2019, before Trump boards Marine One for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md. and then on to Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

“I do not think it is right and fair for this administration’s Labor Department to have Epstein as the focus rather than the incredible economy that we have today and, so I called the president this morning and I told him that I thought the right thing was to step aside,” he stated. “You know, cabinet positions are temporary trusts — it would be selfish for me to stay in this position and continue talking about a case that’s 12 years old rather than about the amazing economy we have right now.”
This comes after Acosta defended his 2008 non-prosecution agreement with Epstein lawyers when he was a U.S. attorney in Southern Florida. The agreement kept alleged sex-trafficking victims in the dark about the so-called “sweetheart deal.”

….Alex was a great Secretary of Labor and his service is truly appreciated. He will be replaced on an acting basis by Pat Pizzella, the current Deputy Secretary.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019