Monday, December 23, 2019
White House predicts Pelosi will yield on impeachment delay
WASHINGTON
(AP) — The White House is projecting confidence that it will prevail in
a constitutional spat with Democrats over the nature of the Senate’s
impeachment trial, which threatens to deprive President Donald Trump of
the swift acquittal he seeks.
The
House voted Wednesday to impeach Trump, who became only the third
president in U.S. history to be formally charged with “high crimes and
misdemeanors.” But Speaker Nancy Pelosi has delayed sending the articles
of impeachment to the Senate until Republicans provide details on
witnesses and testimony in hopes of shaping the upcoming trial.
Democratic and Republican leaders in the chamber remain at an impasse
over the question of whether witnesses will be called, but the White
House believes Pelosi won’t be able to hold out much longer.
“She
will yield. There’s no way she can hold this position,” Marc Short, the
chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said Sunday. “We think her
case is going nowhere.’’
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have been at an impasse over the issue of new
testimony, leaving open the possibility of a protracted delay until the
articles are delivered. Trump complained Saturday that the holdup was
“unfair” and claimed that Democrats were violating the Constitution, as
the delay threatened to prolong the pain of impeachment and cast
uncertainty on the timing of the vote Trump is set to claim as
vindication.
Schumer
told reporters in New York that “the Senate is yearning to give
President Trump due process, which means that documents and witnesses
should come forward. What is a trial with no witnesses and no documents.
It’s a sham trial.”
Short
called Pelosi’s delay unacceptable, saying she’s “trampling” Trump’s
rights to “rush this through, and now we’re going to hold it up to
demand a longer process in the Senate with more witnesses.”
“If her case is so air-tight ... why does she need more witnesses to make her case?’’ Short said.
White
House officials have highlighted Democrats’ arguments that removing
Trump was an “urgent” matter before the House impeachment vote, as they
seek to put pressure on Pelosi to send the articles of impeachment to
the Senate.
McConnell
has all but promised an easy acquittal of the president, and he appears
to have secured Republican support for his plans to impose a framework
drawn from the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. That
trial featured a 100-0 vote on arrangements that established two weeks
of presentations and argument before a partisan tally in which
then-minority Republicans called a limited number of witnesses.
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.
A
close Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Pelosi would fail
in her quest “to get Mitch McConnell to bend to her will to shape the
trial.’’ Graham is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a
House manager, comparable to a prosecutor, during the Senate’s
impeachment trial of Clinton.
“She’ll
eventually send the articles because public opinion will crush the
Democrats,″ said Graham. Asked whether he expected witnesses in the
Senate, he replied: : “No, I don’t.”
At
one point, Trump had demanded the testimony of witnesses of his own,
like Democrats Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and the intelligence
community whistleblower whose summer complaint sparked the impeachment
probe. But he has since relented after concerted lobbying by McConnell
and other Senate Republicans who pushed him to accept the swift
acquittal from the Senate and not to risk injecting uncertainty into the
process by calling witnesses.
The
Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said his
party is looking for a signal from McConnell that he hasn’t ruled out
new witnesses and documents. But Durbin acknowledged that Democrats may
not have much leverage in pushing a deal.
He
criticized both Republican and Democratic senators who have already
announced how they will vote in the trial, saying the Constitution
requires senators to act as impartial jurors. Republicans hold a 53-vote
majority in the Senate.
“The
leverage is our hope that four Republican senators will stand up, as 20
years ago, we saw in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and say, this is
much bigger than our current political squabbles,” Durbin said.
The
Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict in
an impeachment trial — and Republicans have expressed confidence that
they have more than enough votes to keep Trump in office.
Short
spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” Durbin appeared on CNN’s “State of the
Union,” and Graham was on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
__
AP Radio Correspondent Julie Walker in New York contributed to this report.
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.
___
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
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.”
___
Associated
Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment
through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for
this content.
__
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.
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.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
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.”
___
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.”
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