GOP governors grapple with whether to accept refugees or not

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — An executive order by President Donald Trump giving states the right to refuse to take refugees is putting Republican governors in an uncomfortable position.

They’re caught between immigration hardliners who want to shut the door and some Christian evangelicals who believe helping refugees is a moral obligation. Others say refugees are vital to fill jobs and keep rural communities afloat.

More than 30 governors have agreed to accept refugees, but about a dozen Republican governors have stayed silent as they face a decision that must be made by Jan. 21 so resettlement agencies can secure federal funding in time to plan where to place refugees.

Trump’s executive order requires governors to publicly say they will accept refugees. They cannot automatically come to their states, even if cities and counties welcome them. So far, no one has opted to shut out refugees.

A North Dakota county voted this month to accept no more than 25 refugees next year, after initially signaling it would be the first to ban them.

Trump issued the order in September after slashing the number of refugees allowed into the United States in 2020 to a historic low of 18,000. The reduction is part of the administration’s efforts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration.

With his order, Trump again thrust states and local governments into immigration policy, willingly or not. It has caused heated debates and raucous meetings in several states, including North Dakota to Wisconsin.

Trump says his administration acted to respect communities that believe they do not have enough jobs to support refugees. Refugees can move anywhere in the U.S. after their initial resettlement at their own expense.

Republican governors in Nebraska, West Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Arizona, Iowa and Oklahoma have consented to accepting refugees in 2020. Vermont’s Republican governor said he intends to accepts refugees.

Others have not taken a public stance. They include the Republican governors of Georgia and Missouri, along with Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, the state that took in the largest number of refugees this year.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, the nation’s most populous state that resettles many refugees, also has not consented yet, but his office said he plans to do so.

In 2015, governors from 31 states — nearly all with Republican governors, including Abbott — tried to shut out Syrians, citing terrorism fears. But they didn’t have the legal authority at the time.

Now that they do, some governors have struggled with the decision.

Faith-based groups have led an aggressive campaign urging them to keep accepting refugees, while immigration hardliners have criticized Republicans who have not used their new authority to put the brakes on refugees coming into their states.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, who tried to turn away Syrians in 2015, spent weeks reviewing his options.

He gave his consent Thursday in an open letter to Trump co-signed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, praising the president for strengthening the vetting process.

“Thanks to your leadership, Americans can be confident once again in the screening process for refugees entering the United States,” the governors said in the letter.

Hatim Ido, a former U.S. Army translator and member of the persecuted Yazidi community who fled Iraq, was relieved to know Nebraska’s doors are still open. Ido hopes his two sisters in Iraq will be able to join him someday in Lincoln.

“I’m really concerned about them,” said Ido, a graduate student who became a U.S. citizen last year. “I understand (government officials) need to be very careful. I just wish there was a process in place so we could bring them here.”

Administration officials say refugee applicants are subject to the strictest, most comprehensive background checks for any group seeking to come to the U.S.

Fraud detection and national security officers now come overseas with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services teams who are processing refugees.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb made the distinction that opening the door to refugees does not mean he’s going soft on illegal immigration.

A federal judge last year permanently blocked Indiana from trying to turn away Syrians under an order that Vice President Mike Pence championed as governor.

“These are NOT illegal or unlawful immigrants but individuals who have gone through all the proper channels,” Holcomb wrote in his consent letter.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced his consent the same day this month that 300 evangelicals signed a letter urging him to keep letting refugees resettle “as an exercise of our Christian faith.”

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said faith leaders reached out to him, too.

“I appreciate Oklahoma churches who have assisted these individuals,” he wrote in his consent letter.

Tennessee’s consent did not sit well with legislative leaders who sued the federal government over the resettlement program.

“Our personal preference would have been to exercise the option to hit the pause button on accepting additional refugees in our state,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a joint statement.

Gov. Bill Lee, who talks often about his Christian faith, said he had to follow his heart.

“My commitment to these ideals is based on my faith, personally visiting refugee camps on multiple continents, and my years of experience ministering to refugees here in Tennessee,” he wrote in his consent letter.

More than 80 local governments have written letters welcoming refugees. Many are rural towns in conservative states that have come to rely on young refugees to revitalize their economies.

“We need workers, big time,” said Nebraska Sen. John McCollister, a Republican who is sometimes at odds with his party. Refugees “bring a lot of enthusiasm, and they’re some of our best entrepreneurs. They add a lot to the economy of Nebraska.”

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert asked for more refugees in a letter to Trump last month. The Republican said Utah has the resources and space and that welcoming refugees is part of the culture in a state where members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found refuge generations ago.

“It’s been striking to see the breadth of bipartisan support for refugee resettlement in the states, with a number of governors writing very strong letters of support,” said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and a former official in the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which includes refugee resettlement. He left in 2017.

Holly Johnson, who coordinates the Tennessee Office for Refugees within the Catholic Charities, is not surprised. Employers are “chasing down resettlement agencies because they know refugees work hard,” she said.

Three resettlement groups have sued to block Trump’s order.

Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon does not plan to weigh in for now, his spokesman Michael Pearlman said, noting the state has not had a refugee resettlement program for decades.

GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Arkansas is determining which communities may be interested in accepting refugees, looking at financial costs and verifying security checks but that no final decision has been made.

“I am committed to ensure that refugees brought to Arkansas have a real chance to settle and become self-sufficient,” he said.

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Watson reported from San Diego. Anita Snow in Phoenix; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming; Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City; David Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Ben Nadler in Atlanta; Anthony Izaguirre in Charleston, West Virginia; Paul Weber in Austin, Texas; and Don Thompson in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.

Evangelical tussling over anti-Trump editorial escalates

FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump listens to a question during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington. As the political clamor caused by a top Christian magazine’s call to remove Trump from office continues to reverberate, more than 100 conservative evangelicals closed ranks further around Trump on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2019. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File))

As the political clamor caused by a top Christian magazine’s call to remove President Donald Trump from office continues to reverberate, more than 100 conservative evangelicals closed ranks further around Trump on Sunday.

In a letter to the president of Christianity Today magazine, the group of evangelicals chided Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli for penning an anti-Trump editorial, published Thursday, that they portrayed as a dig at their characters as well as the president’s.

“Your editorial offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations,” the evangelicals wrote to the magazine’s president, Timothy Dalrymple.

The new offensive from the group of prominent evangelicals, including multiple members of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, signals a lingering awareness by the president’s backers that any meaningful crack in his longtime support from that segment of the Christian community could prove perilous for his reelection hopes. Though no groundswell of new anti-Trump sentiment emerged among evangelicals in the wake of Christianity Today’s editorial, the president fired off scathing tweets Friday accusing the establishment magazine – founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham in 1956 -- of becoming a captive of the left.

The letter to the magazine’s president sent on Sunday also included a veiled warning that Christianity Today could lose readership or advertising revenue as a result of the editorial, which cites Trump’s impeachment last week.

Citing Galli’s past characterization of himself as an “elite” evangelical, the letter’s authors told Dalrymple that “it’s up to your publication to decide whether or not your magazine intends to be a voice of evangelicals like those represented by the signatories below, and it is up to us and those Evangelicals like us to decide if we should subscribe to, advertise in and read your publication online and in print, but historically, we have been your readers.”

Among the signatories of the letter are George Wood, chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship; Rev. Tim Hill of the Church of God; former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee; and former Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Galli told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he views the chances of Trump leaving office, either through a reelection loss or post-impeachment conviction by the Senate, as “probably fairly slim at this point.” The editor-in-chief defended his editorial as less of a “political judgment” than a call for fellow evangelicals to examine their tolerance of Trump’s “moral character” in exchange for his embrace of conservative policies high on their agenda.

“We’re not looking for saints. We do have private sins, ongoing patterns of behavior that reveal themselves in our private life that we’re all trying to work on,” Galli said Sunday. “But a president has certain responsibilities as a public figure to display a certain level of public character and public morality.”

Galli referred comment on Sunday’s evangelical letter to Dalrymple, who on Sunday published his own strongly worded defense of the magazine’s anti-Trump commentary.

Countering Trump’s suggestion that the magazine had shifted to favor liberals, Dalrymple wrote that the publication is in fact “theologically conservative” and “does not endorse candidates.”

“Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness,” Dalrymple wrote.

Asked about the editorial’s indictment of Trump by “Fox News Sunday,” Marc Short – chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, himself a prominent evangelical Christian – cited some of the policy positions that have helped endear the president to many in that voting bloc.

“For a lot of us who are celebrating the birth of our Savior this week, the way that we look at it is that this president has helped to save thousands of similar unplanned pregnancies,” Short said Sunday, adding that “no president has been a greater ally to Israel than this president.”

Roughly 8 in 10 white evangelical Protestants say they approve of the way Trump is handling his job, according to a December poll from The AP-NORC Center.

The Trump campaign is planning a Jan. 3 event in Miami called “Evangelicals for Trump.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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This story has been corrected by deleting a reference to Samuel Rodriguez as among those who signed a letter Sunday, which he was not.

Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity Today editorial on Trump

Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity Today's editorial calling for the removal of President Trump, which “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations," they wrote to the magazine's president.
Christianity Today, one of the nation's top Christian magazine publications called for the removal of Trump on Thursday, one day after the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against him.
The letter to Timothy Dalrymple, the president of the magazine, also condemned the editorial for dismissing evangelicals who oppose its views as "far-right," the Christian Post reported.
“We are, in fact, not ‘far-right’ evangelicals as characterized by the author," the letter said. "Rather, we are Bible-believing Christians and patriotic Americans who are simply grateful that our president has sought our advice as his administration has advanced policies that protect the unborn, promote religious freedom, reform our criminal justice system, contribute to strong working families through paid family leave, protect the freedom of conscience, prioritize parental rights, and ensure that our foreign policy aligns with our values while making our world safer, including through our support of the State of Israel.”
The letter continued: "We are not theocrats and we recognize that our imperfect political system is a reflection of the fallen world within which we live, reliant upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is freely given to sinner and saint, alike. We are proud to be numbered among those in history who, like Jesus, have been pretentiously accused of having too much grace for tax collectors and sinners, and we take deeply our personal responsibility to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's — our public service."
The editorial has faced severe rebuke from many Trump supporters.
Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser for the Trump 2020 campaign, slammed the magazine in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner as being run by "pious 'Never Trumpers' who feel morally justified...in a self-serving desire to be proven right..."
The editorial was widely celebrated by the left and crashed its website.
"We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum, and reminds everyone that politics is not the end and purpose of our being," Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli wrote in the editorial titled "Trump Should Be Removed From Office."  "That said, we do feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear—always, as Graham encouraged us, doing so with both conviction and love. We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle."
Galli defended the scathing editorial on Sunday.
He said in an interview with CBS’ “Face The Nation” that Trump’s support of causes important to the evangelical community can no longer excuse his actions in other areas and said the president is “morally unfit” to occupy the Oval Office.
“I am making a moral judgment that he is morally unfit or, even more precisely, it's his public morality that makes him unfit," Galli said.

Pete Buttigieg Cartoons

Trump adviser: Expect more aggressive poll watching in 2020

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — One of President Donald Trump’s top reelection advisers told influential Republicans in swing state Wisconsin that the party has “traditionally” relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states, according to an audio recording of a private event obtained by The Associated Press. The adviser said later that his remarks referred to frequent and false accusations that Republicans employ such tactics.

Justin Clark, a senior political adviser and senior counsel to Trump’s reelection campaign, made the remarks on Nov. 21 as part of a wide-ranging discussion about strategies in the 2020 campaign, including more aggressive use of Election Day monitoring of polling places.

“Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places,” Clark said at the event. “Let’s start protecting our voters. We know where they are. ... Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”

Asked about the remarks by AP, Clark said he was referring to false accusations that the GOP engages in voter suppression.

“As should be clear from the context of my remarks, my point was that Republicans historically have been falsely accused of voter suppression and that it is time we stood up to defend our own voters,” Clark said. “Neither I nor anyone I know or work with would condone anyone’s vote being threatened or diluted and our efforts will be focused on preventing just that.”

Clark made the comments Nov. 21 in a meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association’s Wisconsin chapter. Attendees included the state Senate’s top Republican, Scott Fitzgerald, along with the executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Audio of the event at a country club in Madison obtained by the liberal group American Bridge was provided to AP by One Wisconsin Now, a Madison-based liberal advocacy group.

The roughly 20-minute audio offers an insider’s glimpse of Trump’s reelection strategy, showing the campaign focusing on voting locations in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which form the the so-called “blue wall” of traditional Democratic strength that Trump broke through to win in 2016. Both parties are pouring millions of dollars into the states, anticipating they’ll be just as critical in the 2020 presidential contest.

Republican officials publicly signaled plans to step up their Election Day monitoring after a judge in 2018 lifted a consent decree in place since 1982 that barred the Republican National Committee from voter verification and other “ballot security” efforts. Critics have argued the tactics amount to voter intimidation.

The consent decree was put in place after the Democratic National Committee sued its Republican counterpart, alleging the RNC helped intimidate black voters in New Jersey’s election for governor. The federal lawsuit claimed the RNC and the state GOP had off-duty police stand at polling places in urban areas wearing armbands that read “National Ballot Security Task Force,” with guns visible on some.

Without acknowledging any wrongdoing, the RNC agreed to the consent decree, which restricted its ability to engage in activities related to ballot security. Lifting of the consent decree allows the RNC to “play by the same rules” as Democrats, said RNC communications director Michael Ahrens.

“Now the RNC can work more closely with state parties and campaigns to do what we do best, ensure that more people vote through our unmatched field program,” Ahrens said.

Although the consent decree forced the Trump campaign to conduct its own poll monitoring in 2016, the new rules will allow the RNC to use its multi-million dollar budget to handle those tasks and coordinate with other Republican groups on Election Day, Clark said.State directors of election day operations will be in place in Wisconsin and every battleground state by early 2020, he said.

In 2016, Wisconsin had 62 paid Trump staff working to get out the vote; in 2020, it will increase to around 100, Clark said.

Trump supports the effort, he said in the audio recording.

“We’ve all seen the tweets about voter fraud, blah, blah, blah,” Clark said. “Every time we’re in with him, he asks what are we doing about voter fraud? What are we doing about voter fraud?’ The point is he’s committed to this, he believes in it and he will do whatever it takes to make sure it’s successful.”

Clark said Trump’s campaign plans to focus on rural areas around mid-size cities like Eau Claire and Green Bay, areas he says where Democrats “cheat.” He did not explain what he meant by cheating and did not provide any examples.

“Cheating doesn’t just happen when you lose a county,” Clark said. “Cheating happens at the margin overall. What we’re going to be able to do, if we can recruit the bodies to do it, is focus on these places. That’s where our voters are.”

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Wisconsin.

“If there’s bad behavior on the part of one side or the other to prevent people from voting, this is bad for our democracy,” Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said in reaction to Clark’s comments. “And frankly, I think will whoever does that, it will work to their disadvantage. It will make them look, frankly, stupid.”

Wisconsin’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Kaul, represented the Democratic National Committee in a 2016 New Jersey lawsuit that argued the GOP was coordinating with Trump to intimidate voters. Kaul argued then that Trump’s campaign “repeatedly encouraged his supporters to engage in vigilante efforts” in the guise of ferreting out potential voter fraud. The Republican Party disputed any coordination.

“It is vital that Wisconsinites have free and fair access to the polls, and that we protect the security and integrity of our elections,” Kaul said in a statement in reaction to Clark’s comments. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice has been and will continue working with other agencies to protect our democratic process.”

Mike Browne, deputy director of One Wisconsin Now, said Clark’s comments suggest the Trump campaign plans to engage in “underhanded tactics” to win the election.

“The strategy to rig the rules in elections and give themselves an unfair partisan advantage goes to Donald Trump, the highest levels of his campaign and the top Republican leadership,” Browne said. “It’s clear there’s no law Donald Trump and his right-wing machine won’t bend, break or ignore to try to win the presidency.”

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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbauerAP

Space Force will start small but let Trump claim a big win

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday celebrated the launch of Space Force, the first new military service in more than 70 years.

In signing the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that includes Space Force, Trump claimed a victory for one of his top national security priorities just two days after being impeached by the House.

It is part of a $1.4 trillion government spending package — including the Pentagon’s budget — that provides a steady stream of financing for Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border fence and reverses unpopular and unworkable automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs.

“Space is the world’s new war-fighting domain,” Trump said Friday during a signing ceremony at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington. “Among grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we’re leading, but we’re not leading by enough, and very shortly we’ll be leading by a lot.”

Later Friday, as he flew to his Florida resort aboard Air Force One, Trump signed legislation that will keep the entire government funded through Sept. 30.

Space Force has been a reliable applause line at Trump’s political rallies, but for the military it’s seen more soberly as an affirmation of the need to more effectively organize for the defense of U.S. interests in space — especially satellites used for navigation and communication. Space Force is not designed or intended to put combat troops in space.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Friday, “Our reliance on space-based capabilities has grown dramatically, and today outer space has evolved into a warfighting domain of its own.” Maintaining dominance in space, he said, will now be Space Force’s mission.

Space has become increasingly important to the U.S. economy and to everyday life. The Global Positioning System, for example, provides navigation services to the military as well as civilians. Its constellation of about two dozen orbiting satellites is operated by the 50th Space Wing from an operations center at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado.

In a report last February, the Pentagon asserted that China and Russia have embarked on major efforts to develop technologies that could allow them to disrupt or destroy American and allied satellites in a crisis or conflict.

“The United States faces serious and growing challenges to its freedom to operate in space,” the report said.

When he publicly directed the Pentagon in June 2018 to begin working toward a Space Force, Trump spoke of the military space mission as part of a broader vision of achieving American dominance in space.

Trump got his Space Force, which many Democrats opposed. But it is not in the “separate but equal” design he wanted.

Instead of being its own military department, like the Navy, Army and Air Force, the Space Force will be administered by the Secretary of the Air Force. The law requires that the four-star general who will lead Space Force, with the title of Chief of Space Operations, will be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but not in Space Force’s first year. Trump said its leader will be Air Force Gen. John W. Raymond, the commander of U.S. Space Command.

Space Force is the first new military service since the Air Force was spun off from the Army in 1947. Space Force will be the provider of forces to U.S. Space Command, a separate organization established earlier this year as the overseer of the military’s space operations.

The division of responsibilities and assets between Space Force and Space Command has not been fully worked out.

Space Force will be tiny, compared to its sister services. It will initially have about 200 people and a first-year budget of $40 million. The military’s largest service, the Army, has about 480,000 active-duty soldiers and a budget of about $181 billion. The Pentagon spends about $14 billion a year on space operations, most of which is in the Air Force budget.

Kaitlyn Johnson, a space policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sees the creation of Space Force as an important move but doubts it will prove as momentous as Trump administration officials suggest. Vice President Mike Pence has touted Space Force as “the next great chapter in the history of our armed forces.” And Esper earlier this week called this an “epic moment” in recent American military history.

Johnson says Democrats’ opposition to making Space Force a separate branch of the military means it could be curtailed or even dissolved if a Democrat wins the White House next November.

“I think that’s a legitimate concern” for Space Force advocates, she said. “Just because it’s written into law doesn’t mean it can’t be unwritten,” she said, adding, “Because of the politics that have started to surround the Space Force, I worry that that could damage its impact before it even has time to sort itself out” within the wider military bureaucracy.

Some in Congress had been advocating for a Space Force before Trump entered the White House, but his push for legislation gave the proposal greater momentum.

Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, was initially cool to the idea, arguing against adding new layers of potentially expensive bureaucracy. Mattis’ successor, Esper, has been supportive of Space Force. In September he said it will “allow us to develop a cadre of warriors who are appropriately organized, trained and equipped to deter aggression and, if necessary, to fight and win in space.” He added, “The next big fight may very well start in space, and the United States military must be ready.”

Plans for impeachment trial get foggy before holiday break

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is in sunny Florida after his historic impeachment, while plans for his speedy trial back in Washington remained clouded. Senate leaders jockeying for leverage have failed to agree on procedures for the trial.

Trump is still expected to be acquitted of both charges in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority, in what will be only the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history. Proceedings are expected to begin in January.

But the impasse between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer over whether there will be new witnesses and testimony — along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal so far to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate — have left the situation unresolved.

“Nancy Pelosi is looking for a Quid Pro Quo with the Senate. Why aren’t we Impeaching her?” Trump tweeted, mocking one of the accusations against him before heading out for a two-week stay at his Mar-a-Lago resort for the holidays.

McConnell, Trump’s most powerful GOP ally in the Senate, welcomed the president’s emerging defense team Friday for a walk-through of the Senate chamber. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and legislative affairs director Eric Ueland came to Capitol Hill to assess logistics.

A six-term veteran of the Senate, McConnell is acting very much though he has the votes to ensure a trial uncluttered by witnesses — despite the protests of top Democrats Pelosi and Schumer.

“We have this fascinating situation where, following House Democrats’ rush to impeachment, following weeks of pronouncements about the urgency of this situation, the prosecutors have now developed cold feet,” McConnell, R-Ky., said late Thursday as senators left town for the year.

“We’ll continue to see how this develops, and whether the House Democrats ever work up the courage to take their accusations to trial.”

McConnell has all but promised an easy acquittal of the president. He appears to have united Republicans behind an approach that would begin the trial with presentations and arguments, lasting perhaps two weeks, before he tries drawing the proceedings to a close. The Senate will reconvene Jan. 3.

That has sparked a fight with Pelosi and Schumer, who are demanding trial witnesses who refused to appear during House committee hearings, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.

“They should have witnesses and documentation,” Pelosi told The Associated Press. “This could be something very beneficial to the country, if the facts are there.”

Schumer’s leverage is limited, though his party can force votes on witnesses once a trial begins. He appears to be counting on public opinion, and political pressure on vulnerable Republican incumbents like Susan Collins of Maine, to give Democrats the 51 votes they need.

“You wouldn’t get them to say, ‘I’m going to vote to kick President Trump out of office,’” Schumer said in an interview. “But you might get them to vote for witnesses, you might get them to vote for documents, and we’ll see where it falls from there.”

McConnell isn’t budging. After a 20-minute meeting with Schumer on Thursday, he declared the talks at an impasse and instructed senators to return on Jan. 6 ready to vote.

McConnell appears ready to impose a framework drawn from the 1999 trial of Bill Clinton, who was acquitted of two articles of impeachment. That trial featured a 100-0 vote on arrangements that established two weeks of presentations and argument before a partisan tally in which Republicans called a limited number of witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky for a videotaped deposition.

McConnell said Thursday: “I continue to believe that the unanimous bipartisan precedent that was good enough for President Clinton ought to be good enough for this president, too. Fair is fair.”

There’s a risk that Schumer’s protests — which started Sunday with a letter to McConnell requesting four witnesses — could cement GOP unity. Endangered Republican senators including Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona need strong turnout by the GOP base to win, and will be hard-pressed to take Schumer’s side.

Trump, meanwhile, has been hoping the trial will serve as an opportunity for vindication. He continues to talk about parading his own witnesses to the chamber, including former Vice President and 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the fact-finding phase of the impeachment investigation.

Ex-FBI analyst sentenced for accessing activist’s emails to 'protect Mueller'

A former FBI analyst was sentenced to seven days in jail Friday after admitting he illegally accessed an email address belonging to a right-wing Washington lobbyist as part of his efforts to expose an alleged smear campaign against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The former FBI analyst -- Mark Tolson, 60, -- pleaded guilty in a federal court in Alexandria, Va., in September to a misdemeanor charge of computer fraud and abuse, according to Politico.
Tolson said, with help from his wife Sarah Gilbert Fox, he accessed an email account belonging to GOP lobbyist Jack Burkman, photographed “emails of interest,” and tried to hand them over both to the FBI and the press, The Washington Post reported. Fox had worked for Burkman from October 2017 to summer 2018 and had his email password, authorities said. She was not charged.
Tolson reportedly told a federal judge that he accessed the emails without permission in October 2018 after Burkman announced a press conference where he was going to accuse Mueller of sexual assault. The special counsel was investigating Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign associates during the 2016 presidential election at the time.
Tolson said he accessed Burkman’s email in an attempt to prove he paid women to fabricate the allegations, reports said. The press conference was never held. Also in October 2018, the special counsel's office notified the FBI of an alleged scheme accusing Burkman of offering women money to make false allegations against Mueller. Burkman-- identified in court papers as J.B.-- denied giving anyone money for testimony, the Post reported.
Tolson was also ordered to pay a $500 fine and serve 50 hours of community service. The judge said he could begin his week-long jail sentence after the holidays, Politico reported.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Alex Pappas contributed to this report.