Graham makes nine: Time, money running out as more Republicans enter 2016 race

The Republican presidential field swelled Monday to nine candidates as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham officially entered the 2016 race, making campaign fundraising even more challenging for those still on the sidelines. 
The list of potential candidates who have not yet announced includes: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Each of the hopefuls has a unique set of challenges, to be sure. But for those at the bottom of the polls, the ability to raise money likely becomes more difficult as more candidates enter the race.
On Sunday, Kasich and Jindal each responded to questions about whether they had waited too long to enter, with Kasich alluding to the money factor.
“If I think I can't win, I wouldn't do it because I don't want to burden my family and my friends,” Kasich told NBC's "Meet the Press." “I raised money the old fashioned way. I go out and tell people what I think. … I'm optimistic where we are. I'm optimistic on the resources. I'm becoming more and more optimistic on the organization.”
Jindal, who is polling near the bottom in the list of roughly 14 GOP candidates and hopefuls and plans to announce his intentions at the end of the month, said the race will “ultimately be up to the voters.”

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• Sen. Graham: 'I want to be president to protect our nation'

“I think every politician says this is the most important election of our lifetime,” he told ABC's "This Week." “This really is.”
Graham enters the race also running well behind in early polls but is running on a tough national security message and could use his home state's status as holder of the first-in-the-South primary to his advantage.
But arguably bigger fish have yet to jump in the 2016 pool -- namely, heavyweights like Bush and Walker. Right now, they still enjoy solid numbers in the polls and have already lined up a fundraising network.
David Payne, a Republicans strategist and partner at the Washington, D.C.-based firm Vox Global, voiced confidence in their ability to keep raising money, even on the sidelines.
“There’s still time for serious contenders to ‘ante up,’” he said. “Our current campaign finance laws are making this one of the most interesting primary campaigns ever for Republicans, but also confusing. Two of our top-three contenders are running without officially declaring their candidacy as of yet: Bush and Walker.”
Political analysts have predicted Bush’s Rise to Rise super PAC will collect $100 million to $500 million by the July 15 federal filing deadline. It reportedly has done so well that Bush has asked donors to limit contributions to $1 million.
Walker certainly cannot match Bush’s extensive donor list, built with help from his father George H.W. Bush and brother George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns.
However, Walker has reportedly amassed a sizeable amount of cash through his political group, Our American Revival, pulling from small-dollar contributors and such mega-donors as casino magnate Sheldon Anderson and millionaire investor Foster Friess. The super PAC Unintimidated PAC is also raising money to help Walker.
The field of nine declared candidates is Graham, Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, ex-Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina, former New York Gov. George Pataki, retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
Still, fundraisers and analysts predict as much as $5 billion could be spent on the entire 2016 White House race, twice as much as in 2012, with Democratic frontrunner and fundraising juggernaut Hillary Clinton able to collect and spend as much as $1.5 billion.
“If … Christie or Kasich decide to get in the race, they would instantly command more attention and more money than most of the individuals who have already filed their official paperwork,” Payne said. “Late summer 2015 will clear up all this confusion about who’s actually running and who our top candidates are in the early primary states. ...
"If you’re a candidate who’s still playing it coy in August, it will be too late for you.”

School's 'racist' statue of priest praying over Indians moved indoors after complaints

St. Louis University

A statue that stood for years on the St. Louis University campus has been moved from its prominent place outside a key building after complaints it evoked "Christian and white supremacy."
The metal statue, which depicts Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet praying over two American Indians dressed in traditional clothing, stood for years outside the university’s Fusz Hall in the center of the private Catholic school. But it was moved to the university’s art museum after a student-written editorial in the school paper declared it offensive, according to The College Fix.

“The statue of De Smet depicts a history of colonialism, imperialism, racism and of Christian and white supremacy.”
- Ryan McKinley, St. Louis University student

“The statue of De Smet depicts a history of colonialism, imperialism, racism and of Christian and white supremacy,” Ryan McKinley wrote in an editorial in the school paper, The University News. “This statue of De Smet is the clearest message that this university sends regarding American Indians, past and present. This message to American Indians is simple: “You do not belong here if you do not submit to our culture and our religion.”
Although it was not the first time students or faculty complained about the statue, the school's first-year president, Fred Pestello, told students in March he was taking the complaints seriously. SLU spokesman Clayton Berry said the school is not getting rid of the statue, but simply putting it in a location where it can be lent historical context.
“It will be housed in the “Collection of the Western Jesuit Missions,” Berry told FoxNews.com. “This permanent display, which takes up an entire floor of the museum, focuses on the Jesuit missionaries of the 1800s.”
English professor Steven Casmier told The College Fix he understood the objections, but was unsure if taking down the statue was the right move.
“I am not one for pulling down statues or effacing the evidence of history – even if that history is one we would like to forget," he said. "But it’s good that it’s not entirely effacing the past, and perhaps [the museum is] as good a place as any for it.”
McKinley said his editorial played a part in a larger process.
“This effort has been a years-long process by many different parties through students and staff,” SLU student, Ryan McKinley, told Fox News
As for De Smet, he might not have been such a bad guy.
A link on SLU’s website said De Smet, “known simply and affectionately as ‘Blackrobe’ by the Indians, ... traveled more that 180,000 miles during his lifetime, bringing Catholic Christianity to literally thousands of Native Americans while at the same time learning a great deal from the spirituality of the Indians.” That description has since been removed, although Berry told FoxNews.com that decision was made independent of the statue complaints.
“It’s purely coincidence,” Berry said. “The new timeline is more streamlined and focuses on the University history.”

Health insurers seek big premium hikes for ObamaCare plans in 2016

Dozens of health insurers selling plans under ObamaCare have requested hefty premium increases for 2016, according to preliminary information published Monday by the White House. 
The insurers have cited higher-than-expected care costs from customers they gained under the ObamaCare's coverage expansion and the rising cost of prescription drugs and other expenses as reasons for proposing the increases, many of which are in the double-digit percentages.
Among the market leaders, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is seeking a roughly 26 percent premium increase, while plans in Illinois and Florida, among other states, are asking for hikes of 20 percent or more. In Pennsylvania, Highmark Health Insurance Co. is asking for a 30 percent increase.
The preliminary requests were announced as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the validity of ObamaCare’s tax credits to offset the cost of premiums for lower-income consumers in most states in the country.
Individual health insurance policies are a relatively small slice of the overall market. Many more people are insured through an employer. And it is not clear whether any of these preliminary rate hikes will stick.
Regulators in many states have the power to reject price increases, and many who don't are expected to at least pressure insurers to soften their plans. Health insurance price hikes have been the subject of growing scrutiny for years.
Health insurance experts say it's tough to draw broad conclusions about prices from the requests released Monday. The health care law only requires insurers to report proposed hikes of 10 percent or more. That's only a partial picture of the market that tilts toward a worst-case scenario.
"It's hard to generalize, but that said, I think all signs are pointing to bigger premium increases than in 2015," Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation told the Associated Press.
Levitt said part of the reason is that insurers will be basing their 2016 premiums on a full year's worth of cost or claims data. That's the first time that has happened for plans sold on the overhaul's public insurance exchanges, which started enrolling customers in the fall of 2013.
Rates for 2015, for instance, were set based on only a few months of data collected last spring. Insurers normally want to see a couple years of claims from a patient population before they set rates.
Higher-than-expected costs were the main reason behind the hike sought by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, which was allowed to impose a 13.5 percent increase for this year. The insurer cited the costs of emergency room use, heart and cancer treatments and the cost of specialty drugs treating hepatitis C in its rate justification filed with federal regulators.
Some insurers may be seeking what seems like a sizeable rate increase because they charged much less than the competition for this year, said Catherine Murphy-Barron, vice president of health with the American Academy of Actuaries.
"The increase is not the right thing to be looking at, it's the general level of the premiums of everyone in that market at that tier," she said.
Insurers will spend the next several weeks talking to regulators about their premiums before rates are finalized later this summer. The companies will have better data to back up their request for hikes, but that might mean little if they are negotiating with a regulator determined to hold down prices, said Dave Axene of the Society of Actuaries.
"Even if you have all the evidence in the world, it's not a friendly environment at times," said Axene, an actuary who helped insurers in several states set prices for 2016.
Consumers should start learning how rates may change for their specific plan by early October.
That will give them several weeks to shop for the best deal before Nov. 15, which is when people can start signing up for coverage.

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Full slate of Democratic and GOP presidential hopefuls roar above the din Sunday

Nearly a dozen GOP and Democratic presidential candidates and hopefuls took to the national stage on Sunday, trying to distinguish themselves on such key issues as education, Wall Street, the future of NSA surveillance programs and stopping the Islamic State.
Nine candidates, in fact, spoke on five different Sunday morning political shows, including former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, who continues to argue that her lack of political experience doesn’t disqualify her from being president.
“Politics is different than business,” she told "Fox News Sunday.” “But it's not accurate to say that I don't know anything about politics. I have served as an adviser to many politicians. I run my own political campaign in California. … I chaired the advisory board at the CIA for (then-Director Michael Hayden). … I advised two secretaries of defense, a secretary of state, a secretary of homeland security.”
Fiorina, one of more than a dozen 2016 GOP hopefuls, also held fast on her criticism of Common Core, saying that the “Washington bureaucracy” has unfortunately turned the state-based, educational-standards program into “a nationally driven set of bureaucratic standards.”
Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC’s “This Week” that “ISIS is evil” and that the United States “needs to do everything we can to hunt down (radical Islamic terrorists) and kill them.”
Jindal, who is expected to announce next month whether he’ll seek the 2016 nomination, is polling near the bottom in the GOP field of roughly 14.

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• Martin O'Malley announces bid for president

He also took a swipe at 2016 GOP candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul for what he perceives as a soft foreign policy stance.
“We're not going to defeat evil through weakness,” Jindal said. “Unfortunately, Sen. Paul doesn't seem to understand that."
The No. 2 and No. 3 Democratic candidates on also weighed in Sunday on the talks shows.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who on Saturday declared his candidacy for the party nomination, continued to stake out his position as a Wall Street reform, while competing with Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders for the progressive wing of the party, which each hopes to take in the race against frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
“What we need is new leadership … to actually reign in excesses on Wall Street,” O’Malley told ABC. “I am not beholden to Wall Street interests. There are not Wall Street CEOs banging down my door and trying to participate or help my campaign.”
The 52-year-old O’Malley, who has about 1 percent of the primary vote according to most polls, also answered questions about his chances of a longshot victory.
“I've been there before,” he said.
The 73-year-old Sanders told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he voted against the original, post-9/11 Patriot Act legislation that the Senate will reconsider on Sunday afternoon and that has already voted against reauthorizing it.
“We have to be vigorous in fighting terrorism and protecting the American people but we have to do it in a way that protects the constitutional rights of the American people,” Sanders said. “And I'm very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we are seeing, not only from the (National Security Agency) and the government, but from corporate America, as well. We are losing our privacy rights.  It's a huge issue.”

Obama's trade agenda faces tougher odds heading into House

WASHINGTON –  After several near death experiences in the Senate, the trade agenda that President Barack Obama is pushing as a second term capstone faces its biggest hurdle yet in the more polarized House.
Anti-trade forces have struggled to ignite public outrage over Obama's bid to enact new free-trade agreements, but Democratic opposition in Congress remains widespread.
The outcome may turn on Republicans' willingness to hand the president a major win in his final years in office. Underscoring the difficulties, House leaders are looking at the second or third week of June to schedule a vote, even though House members return from recess on Monday.
"The business of bill passing is a messy, sausage-making process. It was in the Senate, and it certainly will be in the House," White House communications director Jen Psaki said in an interview. "There will be many moments where there will be difficult issues. We have our eyes wide open with that."
At issue is legislation that would give Obama parameters for the trade deals he negotiates but also speed up congressional review of the final agreements by giving lawmakers the right to approve or reject deals, but not change them.
Obama is seeking this "fast track" authority to complete a 12-nation Trans-Pacific trade deal that spans the Pacific rim from Chile to Vietnam. He and trade backers say it will open huge markets to U.S. goods by lowering tariffs and other trade barriers. Critics, labor and environmental groups in particular, argue that new trade agreements will cost jobs and that past agreements have not lived up to labor and environmental standards.
Supporters and opponents of fast track count about 20 House Democrats in favor with fewer than a dozen still on the fence. Proponents of the bill say they need at least 25 Democrats and preferably closer to 30 to counter the 40 to 50 Republicans who are expected to vote against it in the GOP-controlled House.
The fast-track legislation squeezed through the Senate, coupled with a package of federal assistance for workers displaced by free trade agreements that helped secure Democratic votes. That aid measure, called Trade Adjustment Assistance, has emerged as a particularly tricky component because it's a priority for Democrats, but many Republicans oppose it and insist on publicly voting against it.
One House leadership option is to "divide the question" on the Senate-passed bill. That would allow separate votes on fast-track and TAA.
Presumably an overwhelming number of Republicans, and just enough Democrats, would vote for fast-track. And TAA would pass with heavy Democratic support and enough help from Republicans. That would ultimately leave the Senate bill intact and clear the way for Obama's signature.
Some Democrats, however, have raised the possibility of voting heavily against TAA to sabotage their main target, fast track. And many are unhappy that the assistance package would be partly funded by cuts in Medicare's growth.
"There's a lot of unease in the Democratic caucus -- and explicit opposition -- to Congress paying for trade adjustment assistance with Medicare savings," Bill Samuel, the legislative director for the AFL-CIO, said in an interview. "If Republicans are counting on Democrats to put it over the top, they may not be right about that."
If the trade assistance measure survives, the fast-track measure would still be in jeopardy.
"There's overwhelming opposition in the Democratic caucus," Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a leading opponent of Obama's trade bill, said in an interview. GOP leaders "are in a bind," she said. "If they had the votes, they'd be moving."
DeLauro said "dividing the question" is only one of several options House leaders are considering. "Every option leads to more problems," she said, "because this is a bad bill."
At the White House, officials say Obama might rely less on the public speeches and high-profile interviews that characterized the drive toward the Senate vote and focus more on targeted lobbying to retain Democratic supporters and win over any remaining fence sitters.
The White House has been especially impressed by the efforts of House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who has worked to persuade conservatives who are reluctant to give a Democratic president fast track authority. Ryan has written opinion pieces with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a darling of the conservative movement, in support of trade and has courted other conservative leaders to back fast track.
On the Democratic side, labor has made opposition to trade a priority, and the AFL-CIO has frozen its political action committee contributions to lawmakers until after the trade votes. During the Memorial Day congressional recess, a coalition of fast track opponents aired ads in 17 Democratic congressional districts criticizing the legislation and calling for its defeat.
But those efforts are running up against a more muddled public view of trade. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 58 percent of those surveyed, including a majority of Democrats, say free trade agreements have been good for the U.S. Moreover, when Pew asked Americans to list their top priorities for the president and Congress this year, global trade ranked 23rd.
"The people who don't normally pay attention to campaigns probably aren't going to be showing up to vote on this," Jason Stanford of the Coalition to Stop Fast Track conceded. "But what is important for these members to note is that the same people who were knocking on doors for them last time are opposing this now. They are turning that important base of support into a really dedicated opposition. And that's not how anyone wants to run for re-election."

Indicted ex-FIFA executive cites Onion article in rant slamming US

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad –  Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner renewed his criticism of the United States, where he faces corruption charges, on Sunday by releasing a pair of videotaped comments — one of them based on a story by satirical website The Onion.
"This past week has been a most trying one for me, a most difficult one," Warner said.
Even Sunday wasn't easy, when Warner needed two attempts to get his message across by telling followers that the latest accusations against him stem largely from the U.S. being upset that it did not win the rights to host the 2022 World Cup — which went to Qatar.
In an eight-minute Facebook video, which was quickly deleted after numerous news reports picked up on the gaffe, Warner held up a printout of a fictitious story from The Onion bearing the headline: "FIFA Frantically Announces 2015 Summer World Cup In United States."
The fake story was published on Wednesday, hours after Warner was indicted in the U.S. and arrested and briefly jailed in Trinidad. Warner asked why the story was "two days before the FIFA election" when Sepp Blatter was re-elected as president.
Warner asked "if FIFA is so bad why is it the U.S. wants ... the World Cup?" Additionally, Warner said that FIFA is "the very same organization they (the U.S.) are accusing of being corrupt. That has to be double standards."
Later, in the second video, Warner thanked supporters. He said a number have reached out in recent days since the latest scandal broke.
"I could understand the U.S. embarrassment that a small country as Qatar ... could have been able to overcome them this way," Warner said. "I could understand but no one gives them the right to do what they are doing."
Warner has remained in the spotlight in Trinidad for the past several days, making several appearances and continuing in his role as a member of Parliament. He has more public appearances scheduled for this week in Trinidad.
"Do not be too worried about me because at the end of the day all the allegations against me shall be proven to be unfounded," Warner said in the second video. "I have no cause to worry. ... At the end of the day my strength is based on the collective effort and support of all of you."
Warner left FIFA in 2011 after being implicated in a bribery scandal.

NSA bulk phone data collection program expires after Senate fails to make deal

The National Security Agency's ability to collect the phone records of millions of Americans in bulk expired late Sunday after the Senate failed to strike a deal before the midnight deadline.
However, that program, as well as several other post-9/11 counterterrorism measures, were likely to be revived in some form in the coming days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. reluctantly embraced a House-passed bill that would extend the anti-terror provisions, while also remaking the bulk phone collections program.
Members of the GOP-controlled chamber had returned to Capitol Hill for a rare Sunday afternoon session in a last-ditch effort to extend the NSA’s authority to search for terror connections and to authorize two other programs under the Patriot Act, which took effect in the weeks after the 2001 attacks.
The Senate attempted to either pass the House bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, or simply extend the bulk collection program.
The 100-member chamber passed the first of two procedural hurdles, known as cloture, to proceed with the House bill, known as the USA Freedom Act. The vote was 77 to 17.
The Majority Leader had preferred to extend the current law. But with most senators opposed to extending the current law unchanged, even for a short time, McConnell said the House bill was the only option left other than letting the NSA program die off entirely.
"It's not ideal but, along with votes on some modest amendments that attempt to ensure the program can actually work as promised, it's now the only realistic way forward," McConnell said.
"We shouldn't be disarming unilaterally as our enemies grow more sophisticated and aggressive, and we certainly should not be doing so based on a campaign of demagoguery and disinformation launched in the wake of the unlawful actions of Edward Snowden," McConnell said, referring to the former NSA contractor who revealed the agency's bulk data collection program in June 2013.
But no final action was taken before the deadline after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., served notice that he would assert his prerogatives under Senate rules to delay a final vote for several days.
“The people who argue that the world will come to an end and we will be overrun by jihadists (by not passing the bill) are using fear,” Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate, said on the Senate floor.
Paul's moves infuriated fellow Republicans and they exited the chamber en masse when he stood up to speak after the Senate's vote on the House bill.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. complained to reporters that Paul places "a higher priority on his fundraising and his ambitions than on the security of the nation."
Paul led a similar, filibuster-like effort before Congress left for Memorial Day recess to block votes on the House bill, USA Freedom Act, or extend the current laws. On Sunday, he asserted that ""People here in town think I'm making a huge mistake. Some of them I think secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me."
Paul had openly contemplated changing his mind on the issue before departing for the Memorial Day recess. But on Saturday he released a statement saying: "I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program. Sometimes, when the problem is big enough, you just have to start over."
In addition to the bulk phone collections, the two lesser-known Patriot Act provisions that also lapsed at midnight were one, so far unused, to help track "lone wolf" terrorism suspects unconnected to a foreign power. The second allows the government to eavesdrop on suspects who continually discard their cellphones.
The USA Freedom Act, backed by the White House, extends those two provisions unchanged, while remaking the bulk collection program over six months by giving phone companies the job of hanging onto records the government could search with a warrant.
Late Sunday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest issued a statement saying "The Senate took an important -- if late -- step forward tonight. We call on the Senate to ensure this irresponsible lapse in authorities is as short-lived as possible. On a matter as critical as our national security, individual senators must put aside their partisan motivations and act swiftly."
Even if the Senate had agreed on Sunday just to extend the current law, the House was not in session and could not approve it and send it in time to the president.
To ensure the NSA program has ceased by the time authority for it expires at midnight, the agency began shutting down the servers that carry it out at 3:59 p.m. ET Sunday.
That step would have been reversible for four hours. After that, completely rebooting the servers would take about a day.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also is critical of the program and joined Paul in his first filibuster-like efforts.
"The American people deserve better than this, especially when it comes to a program that is an integral part of protecting our national security," Lee, a Senate Armed Services Committee member, said on CNN's "State of the Union."
However, he still predicted the House plan would pass by Wednesday.
CIA Director John Brennan said earlier Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that terrorists "are looking for the seams to operate within" and that ending the programs is “something that we can't afford to do right now."
He also said “too much political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes … have skewed the debate on this issue," a likely reference to last weekend’s filibuster-like efforts by the Libertarian-minded Paul and other Senate Republicans.
Presidential candidate and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he didn’t vote for the original Patriot Act, nor its reauthorization and that he considers companies holding the records “the best of a bad situation.”
Civil libertarians have argued that the surveillance programs have never been shown to produce major results.
"The sky is not going to fall," the American Civil Liberties Union executive director, Anthony Romero, told reporters.
Paul's presidential campaign is aggressively raising money on the issue.
A super PAC supporting him produced a video casting the dispute as a professional wrestling-style "Brawl for Liberty" between Paul and Obama -- though Paul's main opponent on the issue is McConnell.