Politics – Page 604

Liz Cheney positioned as linchpin for credibility of January 6 findings

July 22, 2021 by WDNY Radio

The TAKE with Rick Klein

The talk after Wednesday’s flurry of activity around Jan. 6 investigations was about separate partisan inquiries covering the same subject — a subject leaders of the two parties don’t see, or don’t claim to see, the same way at all.

Then there’s Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. She could perhaps be the only person standing in the way of final Jan. 6 takeaways devolving into wearying and meaningless “both sides-ism.”

Cheney’s decision to stay on the House select committee, and even back Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rejection of two Republican members who were tapped to serve on it, is about more than a single vote, even a vote that belongs to a former member of GOP leadership.

She is also calling out her own party leader — the man favored to become the next House speaker if Republicans recapture the majority — as offering “disingenuous” rhetoric that should disqualify him from taking over any such job.

“There must be an investigation that is nonpartisan, that is sober, that is serious, that gets to the facts wherever they may lead,” Cheney told reporters.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy outlined questions about security shortcomings at the Capitol that made clear Republicans were looking for an escape that has them aiming at Pelosi in whatever separate probe they launch.

McCarthy and his allies also say the House-approved committee is designed to embarrass former President Donald Trump and his supporters. Trump, who months ago committed to booting Cheney out of office next year, would readily agree.

But when the select committee holds its first hearing on Tuesday, Cheney will be there. As she explores ways to make sure her presence is felt, that fact alone will give an extra dose of credibility — even bipartisanship — to the endeavor.

The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper

The White House is changing its tune on COVID-19 procedures.

The White House will now announce any official who tests positive for COVID-19 if they have had close contact with the the president, vice president, first lady or the second gentleman.

“An email from our COVID-19 operations protocol team has been sent to White House staff informing them of the official policy — that if you are in close contact with a principal, and test positive for COVID 19, your case will be disclosed to press along with any other relevant details,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. “We will share the name of the staffer if that individual agrees to do so; of course, we respect their privacy.”

Previously, White House officials said they would only announce cases of “commissioned officers,” or senior staff with “assistant to the President” in their title.

The marked difference came after Psaki confirmed a breakthrough case of the coronavirus in the White House.

Officials have not announced any changes to COVID-19 measures like testing or reinstating masking, but new cases at the White House make the “independence” from COVID-19 that Biden hoped would arrive by July 4 feel even more elusive.

The TIP with Alisa Wiersema

The outlook on what will happen with the national push for federal voting rights legislation is still unclear, but the issue of voter ID requirements remains a fixture in debates across state legislatures.

In a memo circulated Wednesday, Pennsylvania state Rep. Seth Grove — who also serves as the chairman of the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee — said he plans to reintroduce his state’s voting bill, H.B. 1300, which Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed earlier this month. Grove pegs his move on a Philadelphia Inquirer report that quotes Wolf indicating support for voter ID rules, despite previously citing such measures as nonstarters for advancing H.B. 1300.

The Pennsylvania Governor is the latest of several high-profile Democrats to lean into more nuanced positions on voter ID laws. Sen. Joe Manchin included voter ID requirements in his voting legislation compromise last month and was promptly backed by voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams.

Wolf previously voiced support for a handful of other provisions originally outlined in H.B. 1300, but it remains to be seen whether he will be open to renegotiating the bill after already vetoing it.

States, cities that expected to go bankrupt from pandemic now seeing cash surplus

July 21, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — When the pandemic hit Alexandria, Virginia, the economic outlook was bleak.

In April 2020, the city projected a budget shortfall of up to $100 million as businesses shut down and workers lost their jobs, eliminating key revenue from sales, tourism and income taxes.

“Early on it was catastrophic for us,” Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson told ABC News. “Every week, unfortunately, I was getting a notification from hotels, large restaurants, telling us that they were shedding workers.”

But a year later, those dire budget projections still haven’t become a reality. In fact, the city just passed its spending plan for the first tranche of $30 million in aid it had received from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The proposal includes investments in infrastructure, food assistance and a guaranteed basic income pilot program giving out $500 to about 150 families.

“We’re working on a variety of different ways to try to help our residents: food insecurity, housing insecurity [and] other efforts to ensure that they get back on their feet in the aftermath of this,” Wilson said.

It’s a story playing out from coast to coast. Thanks to generous federal relief funds, a rebound in consumer spending and stock market gains, state and local governments that had predicted economic calamity are now finding themselves flush with cash.

“So far, we are seeing that a lot of states [that] talked about how they were going to have to raise all sorts of taxes and cut all sorts of spending, and it didn’t happen,” Richard Auxier, a senior policy associate at the Tax Policy Center, told ABC News.

Auxier said that while it’s too soon to say that states are out of the woods, federal support has helped keep them afloat during the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan Act passed in March included $350 billion in direct aid to state, local and tribal governments. A Treasury Department spokesperson told ABC News about $200 billion of that funding has already been paid out.

Unlike the previous two COVID-19 relief laws, there are fewer restrictions on how states can use the money, which must be obligated by 2024 and spent by 2026.

“By the time the third major piece of legislation came around in 2021, there was a big desire to give them that freedom, to have some slack on how they want to spend it,” Auxier said.

President Joe Biden is now urging some cities to use some of the funds toward fighting crime — for example, by paying overtime to police officers.

The Cherokee Nation is receiving $1.8 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act as well. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told ABC News the funding is going toward $2,000 stimulus checks for every resident, as well as investments in mental health, broadband internet and a new hospital.

“The number one plan was to get relief directly to our citizens,” Hoskin told ABC News.

In the meantime, 13 Republican state attorneys general are suing the Biden administration because they want to use the federal aid to fund tax cuts, which is one of the few restrictions under the current law.

“It’s not a matter for the federal government to decide Arkansas’s own tax structure,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge told ABC News. “That’s where the federal government’s overreaching.”

In Maryland, Comptroller Peter Franchot established a working group to determine where the federal money has been going. He said the funding has been a “game-changer” that it helped the state avoid bankruptcy. But he added that it’s clear some of the money isn’t going to the hardest-hit communities that need it the most.

“Some of it will be well spent, [but] a lot of it probably won’t be,” Franchot told ABC News. “That’s the nature of having a fire hydrant of cash come into the state suddenly.”

Alabama council member who used racist slur faces calls to resign

July 21, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(TARRANT, Al.) — An Alabama city council member is facing calls to resign after he used a racist slur while pointing toward a Black colleague during a meeting Monday night.

John “Tommy” Bryant stood up and pointed at Black council member Veronica Freeman and said, “Do we have a house N-word in here? Would she please stand up?” during the council meeting.

Video of the meeting was shared on the Tarrant, Alabama, Facebook page. The clip shows audience members at the council meeting audibly gasping in response to his use of the slur.

Freeman was later seen sobbing with her head in her hands before stepping out.

Bryant said that his use of the slur was to reflect something Tarrant Mayor Wayman Newton, who is Black, allegedly said during an earlier private meeting.

“He doesn’t need to use that term in front of everybody, and I thought the city ought to know the kind of terminology the mayor uses, and I didn’t want him to get away with it. So that’s the reason I made that comment,” Bryant said in a Tuesday interview with local news station WVTM-TV.

“He said it in a derogatory manner, I said it so people would know what the mayor said,” Bryant added. “The mayor was being derogatory toward Veronica Freeman when he said that.”

When asked if he was racist, Bryant said, “It’s according to what your definition of the word racist is. What a lot of the public’s definition is, I might be a racist. But according to what the true definition of a racist is, absolutely not.”

Bryant and Freeman did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

Newton, who was sworn in as mayor in November, did not respond to ABC News’ request but told Alabama Local News on Tuesday, “The video speaks for itself.”

Newton denied ever using the racial slur in reference to Freeman on Wednesday, telling ALN, “They are trying to expose me for saying something I did not say. All of that was a political stunt that they did not do very well.”

Alabama Democrats demanded Bryant resign after the outburst, saying in a statement, “He is racist and unfit to serve.”

“Alabama still has a long way to go when it comes to race, but cozying up to the KKK and using the N-word should make you unfit to serve. These racists belong in the history books with Bull Connor and George Wallace, not on the taxpayer’s payroll,” the statement added.

Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl said Bryant’s behavior “is completely unacceptable in any setting,” but didn’t mention if he believed he should resign.

“The Alabama Republican Party is deeply troubled by the racially charged outburst and disrespect shown by Councilman Tommy Bryant. Such language is completely unacceptable in any setting, and even more concerning coming from an elected official,” Wahl said to ALN.

Senate Democrats lose vote to advance bipartisan infrastructure deal Biden wants

July 21, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats on Wednesday lost a key test vote to allow a bipartisan infrastructure deal to advance — after Republicans involved in the talks say they needed more time to finalize details before helping Democrats meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to start debate on the bill.

While Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s effort failed — handing him and President Joe Biden at least a temporary political loss on a top priority — the White House earlier Wednesday the president was “extremely supportive” of Schumer’s strategy aimed at jump starting negotiations on the measure that would spend $1.2 trillion on “traditional infrastructure.”

The partisan defeat, by a vote of 49 to 51, belied the comity behind the scenes as a bipartisan group of 11 senators works feverishly behind the scenes to finalize the terms of their package to fund major public works projects, from bridges and highways to public transit and broadband.

“This vote is not a deadline to have every final detail worked out. It is not an attempt to jam anyone,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning.

“According to the negotiators, spurred on by this vote this afternoon –- they are close to finalizing their product,” he argued. “Even Republicans have agreed that the deadline has moved them forward more quickly. We all want the same thing here – to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill. But in order to finish the bill, we first need to start.”

Key Republican negotiators in the bipartisan group of senators who have been trying to work out the deal say they believe they can finalize it by Monday.

“We are making tremendous progress, and I hope that the majority leader will reconsider and just delay the vote until Monday. That’s not a big ask of him,” GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters Monday morning.

The group huddled over Mexican food and wine behind closed doors for over two hours late Tuesday night, but left without squaring all of their differences on how to pay for package.

Schumer, the Republicans say, is well-aware of their position that waiting until next week to hold a vote would heighten the chances of success.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told reporters Wednesday afternoon that 10 Republicans have signed a letter to Schumer indicating that they are prepared to support taking up the bill on Monday.

He said it was his understanding that “Leader Schumer wanted to understand if there were ten Republicans in favor of getting on the bill, and we’ve indicated, Yeah, there are ten. Probably more.”

Negotiators said Tuesday that there are about six remaining issues with the bipartisan bill, the thorniest of which is how to structure spending on public transit systems.

At the same time, the senior lawmaker expects the legislation to be finalized by Monday, and that includes the nonpartisan analyses by various agencies breaking down all of the financing options, how much revenue would be produced, and a final price tag.

Republicans, in particular, will be looking to show that the $579 billion in new spending is fully paid for.

If the vote seems certain to fail, Schumer could switch his vote to the losing side at the last minute, enabling him as majority leader, under Senate rules, to call up the vote again for reconsideration.

The Wednesday vote is to start debate on a shell bill because there is no final bill from the negotiators. It would serve as a placeholder should negotiators strike a final deal.

The measure is separate from a much larger bill Biden and Democrats are pushing that would spend $3.5 trillion on so-called “human infrastructure” such as child care.

Democrats plan to push that through the Senate with no Republican votes, using a budget tool called “reconciliation.”

Top general responds to reports he feared Trump would use military after losing election

July 21, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — America’s top general on Wednesday spoke publicly for the first time about whether he feared then-President Donald Trump would try to involve the military in the aftermath of the 2020 election, as reported in a newly-released book.

While Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, at a rare Pentagon news conference, declined to comment on specific claims made in the book, he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Wednesday were emphatic that the military is and ought to remain a strictly “apolitical” institution.

“I, the other members of the Joint Chiefs, and all of us in uniform, we take an oath, an oath to a document, an oath to the Constitution of the United States, and not one time do we violate that,” Milley told reporters asking about the book excerpts. “The entire time, from time of commissioning to today, I can say with certainty that every one of us maintained our oath of allegiance to that document, the Constitution, everything that’s contained within it,” he said, referring to the Joint Chiefs.

“I want you to know, and I want everyone to know, I want America to know, that the United States military is an apolitical institution — we were then, we are now — and our oath is to the Constitution, not to any individual at all,” he said. “And the military did not and will not and should not ever get involved in domestic politics. We don’t arbitrate elections. That’s the job of the judiciary and the legislature and the American people. It is not the job of the U.S. military. We stayed out of politics, we’re an apolitical institution.”

Austin went out of his way to defend Milley.

“We fought together, we served a couple of times in the same units,” Austin said. “I’m not guessing at his character — he doesn’t have political bone in his body.”

Before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Milley saw ominous parallels between the political turmoil in the United States and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, according to “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Final Catastrophic Year,” by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.

“He had earlier described to aides that he kept having a stomach-churning feeling that some of the worrisome early stages of 20th-century fascism in Germany were replaying in 21st-century America. He saw parallels between Trump’s rhetoric about election fraud and Adolf Hitler’s insistence to his followers at the Nuremberg rallies that he was both a victim and their savior. ‘This is a Reichstag moment,’ Milley told aides. ‘The gospel of the Führer,'” Rucker and Leonnig wrote.

The authors say that Milley believed Trump was stoking unrest after the election, and decried what he called “brownshirts in the streets,” although an official told ABC News the comment was in reference to the radical members of the Oath Keepers and so-called “boogaloo boys,” not Trump supporters in general.

An early sign of unease between Trump and Milley came last July amid Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., when Milley apologized for taking part in Trump’s controversial walk from the White House to St. John’s Church, though he peeled off before the president’s notorious photo opportunity.

“I should not have been there,” Milley said in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

In August 2020, Milley told Congress there is no role for the U.S. military in elections.

Then in January 2021, after the Capitol riot, Milley and the seven other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed an internal memo to service members saying “the violent riot in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Capitol building, and our Constitutional process,” warning them that any act to disrupt the constitutional process is against the law.

Milley said Wednesday that he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs always gave the “best military professional advice” to Trump and any other president they’ve served under.

“We always adhered to providing best professional military advice, bar none. It was candid, honest, in every single occasion. We do that all the time every time,” he said.

Trump inauguration head charged with being foreign agent

July 21, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Tom Barrack, a longtime friend of Donald Trump’s who chaired the committee that raised more than $100 million for his inauguration, has been charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government and obstruction of justice.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Tuesday that in 2016, Barrack illegally sought to use his influence with the new president on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

In May 2016, according to the indictment, Barrack “took steps to establish himself as the key communications channel for the United Arab Emirates” to the Trump campaign and, that same month, gave a co-defendant a draft copy of an energy speech then-candidate Trump was preparing to deliver. The co-defendant then sent it to a UAE official and solicited feedback.

“Congrats on the great job today,” court records quoted the Emirati official saying in an email to Barrack after Trump delivered the speech. “Everybody here are happy with the results.”

A spokesman for Barrack, 74, told ABC News that “Mr. Barrack has made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset. He is not guilty and will be pleading not guilty.”

At a court appearance in California, where he was arrested Tuesday morning, Barrack was ordered detained after prosecutors described him as “an extremely wealthy and powerful individual with substantial ties to Lebanon, the UAE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” who “poses a serious flight risk.”

Between May 2016 and October 2017, Barrack “repeatedly promoted the United Arab Emirates and its foreign policy interests during media appearances” after soliciting direction from his co-defendant and UAE officials, the indictment said.

“The defendant promoted UAE-favored policy positions in the Campaign, in the Administration, and through the media, at times using specific language provided by UAE leadership,” assistant U.S. Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis wrote in the court filing. “The defendant never registered as an agent of the UAE, as public disclosure of his agreement to act at the direction of senior UAE officials would have diminished, if not eliminated, the access and influence that the UAE sought and valued.”

The allegations involving Barrack came to light as part of a House Oversight Committee investigation, ABC News reported in July 2019.

Biden backs Schumer holding key vote on infrastructure deal that’s likely to fail

July 21, 2021 by WDNY Radio

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday he would hold a key test vote on a bipartisan infrastructure deal — even though the Republicans involved in the talks say they won’t give Democrats the votes they need to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to start debate on the bill.

While Schumer’s effort appeared doomed to fail — handing him and President Joe Biden at least a temporary political loss on a top priority — the White House said Wednesday the president was “extremely supportive” of Schumer’s strategy aimed at jump starting negotiations on the measure that would spend $1.2 trillion on “traditional infrastructure.”