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Javier E

Opinion | The Deborah Birx dilemma is a lesson for the ages - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Birx doesn’t deserve our pardon, but it’s worth trying to understand the essential choice she made. In fact, “Birx’s Dilemma” ought to be taught in public policy schools until the end of time.
  • Birx isn’t one of the political hacks who did Trump’s bidding until it was time to save her reputation by making an empty show of principle.
  • No, Birx is a retired Army colonel and respected doctor who made a tangible difference in the global fight against AIDS. As Trump’s White House coordinator for the pandemic response, she worked tirelessly to get the coronavirus under control — no one disputes that.
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  • She was put in an impossible predicament, something Birx has been vocal about since she left the White House, most recently in a much-hyped CNN interview with Sanjay Gupta that aired this past weekend.
  • unlike Fauci, who stumbled more than once but managed to stay truthful enough to get himself ostracized by Team Trump, Birx practiced some impressive moral yoga in her defense of the president’s response.
  • Birx operated on the same premise that many others in senior roles, including career soldiers such as former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly and onetime national security adviser H.R. McMaster, accepted as well.
  • She apparently woke up every morning believing it was nobler to try to manage an ignorant, mercurial president than it was to speak out publicly and risk losing all influence.
  • She no doubt told herself she had an obligation, as a policy expert, to do whatever she could to protect Americans from the administration’s abject incompetence. And if that meant she had to echo untruths and offer up a bunch of silly praise, so be it.
  • This was Birx’s dilemma: to work within the system and maybe mitigate the tragedy, or to say what she knew and resign herself to powerlessness.
  • What we do know is that, by tempering her remarks, Birx enabled and amplified Trump’s lies — that the virus was a media creation, that reopening the economy wasn’t dangerous, that the government had things under control.
  • the larger lesson here — as though we should have to learn it again — is that appeasement never works.
  • It doesn’t work for nations facing down aggressors. It doesn’t work for a political party that’s been taken over by a nativist bully. And it doesn’t work when you’re serving a president who demands unyielding loyalty and a willful disregard for the truth.
cartergramiak

Cuomo Investigation: Governor Attacked Over His 'Independent Review' of Sex Harassment ... - 0 views

  • ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday sought to stem the growing political fallout over fresh allegations of sexual harassment, acknowledging that he may have made inappropriate remarks that could “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation” to a young female aide during private meetings last spring.
  • Mr. Cuomo, 63, said his comments — including those which emerged in an account from the aide, Charlotte Bennett — were an extension of life spent at work, where he sometimes “teased people about their personal lives and relationships.”
  • In a series of interviews with The New York Times last week, Ms. Bennett said Mr. Cuomo had asked her about elements of her sex life, including whether she practiced monogamy and had ever slept with older men. She also recounted that Mr. Cuomo told her that he was open to dating women in their 20s and spoke to her in discomfiting ways about her own experience with sexual assault.
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  • “I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.”
  • “I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me, and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared,” Ms. Bennett, 25, said. “And was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.”
  • The governor’s attempts to control the narrative and the course of the investigations quickly ran aground, as he was forced to retreat from a plan to have Ms. Bennett’s claims investigated by Barbara S. Jones, a former federal judge who has close ties to Mr. Cuomo’s former top aide.
  • State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a frequent critic of the governor, called on him to resign. “You are a monster, and it is time for you to go,” she wrote on Twitter. “Now.”
  • A more likely scenario would involve lawmakers using this recent spate of scandals to reclaim the unilateral emergency powers they had granted the governor at the start of the pandemic. Those efforts had been seemingly slowed last week, as the State Assembly could not reach a consensus on a plan by the State Senate to strip Mr. Cuomo of those powers. Now, however, such a move could be more likely.
  • “It’s not two separate sets of allegations,” she said. “It is two examples of longstanding abuse, harassment, retaliation and the culture of a hostile work environment.”
anonymous

In Biden, Labor Leaders See a President Who 'Is Not Playing' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • He has put organized labor at the heart of his plan to rebuild the economy, signaling a break with previous administrations of both parties.
  • Many times you go into meetings like that and you have to start with the basics about why collective bargaining is important, and then you get to the end, and they still really don’t get it,” Trumka, whose organization represents the largest federation of labor unions in the United States, said in a phone interview today. “None of that was necessary with him. He already had that going in. So we talked about solutions.”
  • But observers say that it’s clear Biden intends to expand access to union organizing, including in sectors that have historically been prevented from collectively bargaining. Henry, whose union represents health care workers, said that the president had put labor rights at the center of his proposal to support home care and other health care workers who have been written out of federal labor protections going back to the New Deal era.
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  • The change of tone has taken hold throughout the makeup of the Biden administration, Reich said, including in the Treasury Department. “Wall Street really did have, in both the Obama and also Clinton administrations, its own ambassador in the Treasury secretary, or in other high-level economic advisers,” he said. “That’s not the case this time around.”
  • We received a lot of emails about Cuomo when we wrote about him over the weekend — clearly he hit a nerve with some of you! We want to know more: Has your opinion on Cuomo changed in recent days? And do you think he should resign and, if not, should he run for a fourth term?Drop us a line at onpolitics@nytimes.com. We’d love to hear from those who actually might vote on Cuomo’s future — New York State readers — so please include your full name and location.
delgadool

A Governor in Isolation: How Andrew Cuomo Lost His Grip on New York - The New York Times - 0 views

  • When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo came under fire just a few weeks ago over his handling of nursing home deaths in the pandemic,
  • Then came a crisis that Mr. Cuomo’s signature blend of threats, flattery and browbeating could not mitigate. And he seemed to know it.
  • Other lawmakers on Friday escalated their calls to reprimand the governor, demanding investigations, impeachment proceedings and even resignations, after The New York Times reported that his administration had rewritten a report to obscure the full extent of nursing home deaths.
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  • As three women stepped forward with claims of sexual harassment and other unwanted advances by Mr. Cuomo, the most visible governor in America effectively went dark.
  • Now he is at the whims of often-fickle public opinion, fuming legislators and investigations.
  • As the allegations unfolded, Mr. Cuomo’s team denied wrongdoing and issued statements, but a number of leading lawmakers in Albany and Washington did not hear from the governor on the matter.
  • Indeed, the public outcry and the dearth of vocal defenders illustrate both the complexities of the problems Mr. Cuomo faces and how little he has invested in building mutually respectful relationships in politics. As with other New York politicians in times of extreme crisis, it is a dynamic that is haunting him now.
  • “When the investigation concludes, Democrats, I believe, will coalesce around doing the right thing,” Mr. Jacobs said. “We have to let the chips fall where they may, but I don’t see the value in a rush to judgment. I only see the potential cost.”
delgadool

Cuomo: Remorse, but No Resignation - The New York Times - 0 views

  • After allegations of sexual harassment and unwanted kissing, some of his fellow Democrats had called for him to step down.
  • Two were former state workers who accused the governor of sexual harassment, and a third woman accused him of unwanted touching and kissing at a wedding.
  • Days later, another former aide, the 25-year-old Charlotte Bennett, said the governor had asked her a series of sexually charged questions, including if she had slept with older men. Mr. Cuomo, 63, told The Times he never intended “to act in any way that was inappropriate.”
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  • The volunteer effort can sometimes feel like a full-time job, even though Ms. Phillips is already a high school teacher. “There are many moments where we’re like, ‘You know we’re just regular people, right?’” Ms. Phillips said.
katherineharron

Matt Gaetz is denied a meeting with Donald Trump - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Rep. Matt Gaetz, who's facing a federal investigation into sex trafficking allegations, was recently denied a meeting with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate as the ex-President and his allies continue to distance themselves from the Florida congressman.
  • Gaetz tried to schedule a visit with Trump after it was first revealed that he was being investigated, but the request was rejected by aides close to the former President,
  • a spokesman for Gaetz, said the congressman did not request a meeting with Trump this week.
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  • Rep. Gaetz was welcomed to Trump Doral this week and has not sought to meet with President Trump himself,"
  • The interference by Trump's aides signals that Gaetz finds himself increasingly isolated as he weathers a potentially career-ending scandal just months after he offered to leave his plum job in Congress to join the 45th President's impeachment defense team.
  • Trump denied ever receiving a blanket pardon request from the 38-year-old congressman and noted Gaetz's denial of the allegations against him.
  • Trump spokesman Jason Miller wrote in a tweet on Sunday evening that Gaetz did not request a meeting "and therefore, it could never have been denied."Read More
  • Federal investigators are examining allegations that Gaetz had sex with an underage girl who was 17 at the time and with other women who were provided drugs and money in violation of sex trafficking and prostitution laws.
  • Gaetz has continued to deny all allegations against him and has not been charged with any crimes.
  • Trump omitted Gaetz as he name-checked many of his top Republican defenders -- from South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, according to two people familiar with his remarks.
  • Trump's failure to mention Gaetz was viewed as conspicuous to some in the crowd, given the congressman's outsized loyalty to the former President and the litany of other Republicans Trump called out during his speech.
  • Gaetz's appearance on Friday at a conference for pro-Trump women raised eyebrows inside the former President's orbit
  • Gaetz, who was announced as a "special guest" only days before the summit began, used his time on stage to denounce "wild conspiracy theories" about his personal life, and to reaffirm his plans to remain on Capitol Hill.
  • Gaetz has already faced calls from one Republican colleague, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, to resign his congressional seat and has received virtually no support from within Trump's orbit
rerobinson03

Opinion | August Vollmer 'Abolished' the Police - in 1905 - The New York Times - 0 views

  • August Vollmer has been hailed by many in law enforcement as the father of modern American policing. He has also been criticized for pioneering the militarization of the police and espousing the racist theories of eugenics. What’s rarely talked about, however, is that he began his tenure as the head of the police department of Berkeley, Calif., in 1905 by forcing all of his deputies to resign — arguably a kind of early experiment in abolishing the police. He eventually replaced them with college-educated people, hoping they would usher in a new, progressive era in policing.
  • Today, as governments and citizens contemplate the future of local law enforcement, it’s worth remembering that reshaping American policing is not some shocking new idea from the radical left.
  • Meanwhile, Mr. Vollmer systemized the practices of policing and built in accountability. He mandated that his officers create written records of their work (the first that the city ever kept) to measure their progress in reducing crime. He popularized the idea of crime labs, where officers could study evidence using science — an idea that rapidly spread to other departments, along with his record-keeping methods. And his department partnered with social organizations for at-risk youth, such as the scouts and Boys’ Club
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  • Mr. Vollmer’s 1936 textbook makes a similar suggestion, though more as an approach to reducing crime than Ms. Kaba’s goal of creating a cooperative society in which police are obsolete. Mr. Vollmer asserted that school, welfare, health, and recreation were more likely to prevent crime than jails.
  • To this point, Mr. Vollmer would perhaps respond that reforming the police doesn’t come cheap — and that public funds could be used to educate would-be officers. When he forced out his deputies, he rebuilt the department with extra money from the city for education, raises and lab equipment. The proposals of Ms. Kaba and other police abolitionists would put public funds toward educating a wide range of people in community support jobs: mental health experts, conflict de-escalation teams, addiction specialists and advocates who can help the unhoused find shelter.
martinelligi

Lebanon: 'mafias' and 'militias' run the country, activists and journalist say - CNN - 0 views

  • Lebanon is facing economic collapse. Since late 2019, the country's currency has lost over 90% of its value, and people's life savings are locked up in banks that have imposed discretionary capital controls. The financial meltdown has pushed half of Lebanon's population below the poverty line, according to the
  • Political turmoil has exacerbated the crisis. The government resigned after hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate -- neglected and mismanaged for years by Beirut port officials -- exploded, leaving more than 200 people dead and thousands more injured. The heart of the city still stands disfigured with countless buildings damaged and destroyed.
  • The latest political dispute is between Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun. Hariri has promised, once he finally has a government in place, to stop Lebanon's collapse and restart negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a desperately needed bailout.
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  • According to Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, Lebanon ranks 149 out of 180 countries, indicating high corruption levels. And the World Bank has blamed the economic depression on a "deliberate lack of effective policy action by authorities," according to its fall 2020 report.
hannahcarter11

Marjorie Taylor Greene may be politically safe, but her conservative Georgia constituen... - 0 views

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene has turned herself into one of the most visible Republicans in the country -- stoking an endless stream of controversies that has caused headaches for a defeated party trying to find its footing while she rakes in campaign cash without fear of consequences.
  • Greene's political security in the district -- where 75% of voters supported former President Donald Trump last November -- doesn't mean that all of her constituents are relishing her role as the GOP's flamethrower or that they approve of the recent anti-Semitic comments that she has used to rally her supporters.
  • Some questioned the motives behind Greene's attention-seeking maneuvers and said they were open to supporting a different Republican for her seat -- though no formidable challenger has emerged yet.
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  • She's already been stripped of her committee assignments by a vote in the House, rendering her an essentially ineffective legislator, but she's largely gone undisciplined by party leadership in Washington, DC, as congressional Republicans bow to Trump.
  • Unbowed by reprimands from her GOP colleagues, she made a fresh comparison between Democrats and Nazis, claimed that the cartels "love" President Joe Biden during a discourse on immigration, and then did a racist impression in what she described as her "really bad Mexican accent."
  • nside the Oakwood Cafe that morning, 78-year-old Phil Neff, who supported Trump, paid for his breakfast amid the morning bustle. Afterward, he told CNN he believes that Greene "has more interest in herself than serving the community," but added with a note of resignation: "That's what the people chose."
  • "I don't think anybody should be comparing anything for the Nazis and the Holocaust. It's different worlds," White said during an interview in Rome, Georgia, hours before Greene's rally. "She has been ineffective, and she'll continue to be ineffective as long as she is as controversial as she is. She doesn't garner support of other Republicans."
  • But Greene also has plenty of defenders within the Republican base -- despite her past embrace of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, racist and Islamophobic rhetoric, and past Facebook comments and videos unearthed by CNN's KFile in which she indicated support for executing prominent Democrats.
  • In the few short months she's been in Congress, Greene has created major headaches for her party, not just by lobbing her inflammatory criticisms at Democrats, but also by undermining Republican leaders in the GOP conference.
  • But just as Republican voters often excused Trump's outlandish statements as proof of his authenticity, some voters in this conservative Georgia district praise Greene for her candor.
  • "I don't necessarily agree with that statement," Deal said in an interview in Rome with CNN's Martin Savidge when asked about Greene's comparisons between mask requirements and the Holocaust. "But I do agree with her right to say it."
  • "It does feel like people are getting some of the rights taken away that they're used to," Shults said.Sandra Campbell, another Georgia voter, said she believes Greene and Trump are representative of the "real America."
rerobinson03

A Veteran Tried to Credit Black Americans on Memorial Day. His Mic Got Muted. - The New... - 0 views

  • A little more than four minutes into Barnard Kemter’s speech at a Memorial Day service organized by the American Legion post in Hudson, Ohio, an unusual thing happened: His microphone was silenced.
  • The two organizers who have been called upon to resign, Cindy Suchan-Rothgery and James Garrison, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
  • But in an interview this week with The Akron Beacon Journal, Ms. Suchan-Rothgery acknowledged that she or Mr. Garrison — she did not specify — had turned off Mr. Kemter’s microphone for two minutes. She told the newspaper that Mr. Kemter’s narrative “was not relevant to our program for the day” and that the “theme of the day was honoring Hudson veterans.”
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  • “We regret any actions taken that detracts from this important message,” Mr. Oxford said. “Regardless of the investigation’s outcome, the national headquarters is very clear that The American Legion deplores racism and reveres the Constitution.”
  • “It’s sad that it had to develop like that,” he said. “My whole intent on the speech was to be informative, educational and to pay tribute to African American contributions to the Memorial Day service and traditions.”
katherineharron

Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene team up to battle political opposition - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida have a lot in common
  • They've now formed a joint fundraising committee and are making plans to travel the country together on what they are calling an "America First" tour.
  • "There are millions of Americans who need to know they still have advocates in Washington D.C., and the America First movement is consistently growing and fighting," Gaetz said in a statement announcing the tour.
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  • Earlier this month, when Greene flirted with the idea of forming an "America First" caucus, a leaked flier promoting the caucus received sharp criticism for using inflammatory rhetoric. While many Republicans -- even some from the far-right Freedom Caucus -- were quick to distance themselves from the document and the caucus itself, Gaetz proudly proclaimed he was ready to sign up.
  • Greene has returned the favor. When news broke of a federal investigation into Gaetz, which includes allegations of sex trafficking and prostitution, many Democrats and even fellow GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois called for him to resign. But Greene defended her Florida colleague.
  • "I have proudly defended Matt Gaetz from the beginning because I know he has done nothing wrong and I recognized this playbook right from the start,"
  • Now the two are solidifying that alliance through the joint fundraising committee -- which generally allows politicians to secure a single, larger check from a donor and then split the money among several committees -- and their "America First" tour, which is set to kick off next Friday with an event at the Villages, a retirement community that is in neither of their congressional districts.
  • As the pressure on each grows, they have formed an unsurprising bond, often seen talking to each other on the floor of the House of Representatives, and they back each other up when others in the GOP aren't rushing to their defense.
  • "I think these people get too much attention. I don't really want to elevate or amplify their voices. They're not the Republican Party that I am excited to be a leader within," one Republican lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely, told CNN. "For me, it'd be better if these guys just go away."
  • "This is part of the Republican Party's internal struggle about, you know, is this the party of Trump or is this the party of conservative values? And you know, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are many things, but you know, conservative Republicans they are not," the lawmaker said.
  • Greene has also become a fundraising force, despite being kicked off her congressional committees. The Democratic-controlled House voted to remove her in February in the wake of recently unearthed incendiary and violent past statements from the congresswoman that triggered widespread backlash. But the freshman raised an unprecedented $3.2 million in the first quarter of 2021, which largely came from an online spigot of small-dollar donations from people across the country.
  • Some Democrats have called on Gaetz to be removed from his committees as well because of his legal troubles.
  • Some Republicans fear that the more the pair are under attack, the stronger their base of support becomes. A separate GOP member of Congress argued that removing Greene from her committees left her only one option: waging a public relations war."I tell the Democrats, who ask me what we are going to do about MTG, that this situation is one of their own creation," the Republican lawmaker told CNN.
  • "It's obviously a bad look for the party. This is not who we are. This is not how we get the majority back. It's a distraction that's only going to hurt our efforts to talk about our agenda and talk about policy," said a GOP congressional aide.
kaylynfreeman

Opinion | Monarchy, Meet Anarchy - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Bret Stephens: Well, Gail, President Biden just signed the biggest stimulus bill in history, Andrew Cuomo is facing mounting pressures to resign and the only thing people seem really interested in is … Harry and Meghan versus the House of Windsor.
  • Bret: I prefer to credit the people at Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and other pharmaceutical companies. Three cheers for private enterprise! But I thought Biden was very canny in choosing July 4 as reopening day. A new birth of freedom.
  • Bret: I’m rooting for Prince Philip to make it to his 100th birthday in June. Otherwise I’m in the plague on all their Houses camp. Meghan Markle as a victim of evil royal intrigues? Count me as skeptical, given how deeply invested the Windsors seemed to be in her success as a 21st century fairy-tale American princess. Harry as Prince Rescue Chicken? The poor guy looked to me on TV like he was quietly praying to be rescued by the Special Air Service. Queen Elizabeth as the long-enduring monarch? Her son Charles is 72 and she still won’t give him a proper job. (Not that he’s such great shakes, either — although consider his brother.)
edencottone

'Clear and present danger': Republicans fret about Greitens' comeback - POLITICO - 0 views

  • isgraced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is moving closer to a 2022 Senate bid, alarming top Republicans who worry he will jeopardize the party’s grip on the seat and imperil their prospects of seizing the majority.
  • The maneuvering, which follows Republican Sen. Roy Blunt’s surprise retirement announcement last week, is giving Republicans nightmarish flashbacks to 2012, when they nominated a problematic Missouri Senate candidate, Todd Akin, who went on to lose the election.
  • ranging from members of the Missouri congressional delegation to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s political operation — have been united in their worry about the former governor and spent the week having conversations about the situation, according to people familiar with the discussions.
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  • Missouri Republicans, meanwhile, have begun to contemplate how to prevent a splintered field of candidates from developing that could give Greitens a path. Top Republicans say they’ve yet to devise a plan for dealing with the former governor given that the primary isn’t until August 2022 but stress they’re keeping an eye on him.
  • Senate GOP leaders have confronted similar battles against potentially problematic primary candidates. In the 2017 Alabama special election, they failed to stop accused child molester Roy Moore, who won the GOP nomination before losing to a Democrat. They fared better in 2020, when they thwarted controversial Kansas Republican Kris Kobach in the primary, paving the way for a general election win.
  • Greitens is also benefiting from what is expected to be a wide-open field of Republican candidates, leading to concerns they will divvy up the vote and give the ex-governor a plurality. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft — the son of John Ashcroft, the former governor, senator and Bush-era attorney general — was regarded as someone who could have consolidated the party behind him but has opted against running.
  • “In official Washington, there’s a lot of concern because this was originally a seat that would be in Republican hands to stop the left,” said Gregg Keller, a longtime Missouri-based Republican strategist. “The easiest way to give this seat to a Biden acolyte is to have a divisive Republican primary, followed by someone incredibly damaged like Eric Greitens being the candidate in the general election.”
  • Greitens has also lost some of his biggest contributors, including wealthy business executive David Humphreys, who gave more than $2 million to his 2016 campaign. Humphreys said there was “not a chance” he’d back a Greitens Senate bid, adding that he stood by his 2018 statement calling on the former governor to resign.
  • It was a stunning downfall for an up-and-coming politician who was once regarded as a potential future White House contender. But Greitens, a 46-year old, Oxford-educated Rhodes Scholar and Navy SEAL veteran, is now attempting a comeback.
  • Those who’ve spoken to Greitens say it’s apparent that Greitens is seeking redemption and is convinced he can win.
  • Greitens has an even bigger impediment to winning Trump’s support: Republican Sen. Josh Hawley. As state attorney general, Hawley was among the prominent Republicans who called on Greitens to step down, and the former governor was widely known to have despised Hawley for investigating him.
  • “We’re talking about a man in Eric Greitens who we have every reason to believe is a woman-beater running for Senate in Missouri,” said Keller, a charge Greitens has denied. “It’s very concerning.”
anonymous

Can Biden Stay on the Sidelines of the Andrew Cuomo Saga? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • President Biden has made only a passing comment on the crises that have engulfed Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, and he seems to be hoping to avoid getting pulled in any further.
  • Mr. Biden is one of the very few people in the nation with the potential to prevent a protracted standoff between an increasingly isolated Mr. Cuomo and the rest of the Democratic Party.
  • The governor and his allies have urged people to wait for the results of the investigations to buy time, in the hope of stabilizing Mr. Cuomo’s support.
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  • But a prolonged period of intraparty sparring over Mr. Cuomo’s future could be problematic for Mr. Biden. It threatens to distract from his early initiatives, including mass vaccination efforts and his party’s imperative to sell the public on the nearly $2 trillion stimulus package Mr. Biden signed into law last week.
  • On Tuesday, the White House will hold its weekly call on the coronavirus with the National Governors Association, which Mr. Cuomo typically leads as chairman of the group. Ms. Psaki said she expected Mr. Cuomo would join the call, adding, “We’ll leave that up to him.”
  • During the presidential campaign, Mr. Biden successfully avoided getting dragged into controversies that didn’t directly relate to him. But the bullying behavior Mr. Cuomo is accused of is contrary to the standard Mr. Biden has set for his own White House.
  • Still, the governor has flatly refused to contemplate resignation while questioning the motives of the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, invoking “cancel culture,”
  • When Mr. Biden in 2020 was accused of sexual assault by a woman who had worked in his Senate office decades earlier, he denied her allegation but did not impugn her motives. Mr. Cuomo has questioned the motivations of some of his accusers.
  • Still, support for Mr. Cuomo has eroded significantly from the highs of his coronavirus press briefings in the spring of 2020 — when he hit 71 percent approval — and even from February, when his approval among all voters was 56 percent in a Siena College poll.
  • “The state is about to be flush with Covid cash,” Mr. Sellers said. “Better days ahead for constituents. Hang on until you become everyone’s favorite bank.”
  • Some members of Congress and their aides were put off by a statement that the former senior member of the delegation, Representative Nita Lowey, of Westchester, had made in defense of Mr. Cuomo, according to a person familiar with the matter. The members had the sense that Ms. Lowey was inappropriately “instrumentalized” as a shield for Mr. Cuomo, the person said, adding that while it wasn’t the precipitating event for other members to speak out last Friday, it had left an impression.
  • Mr. Biden’s fondness for Mr. Cuomo does not necessarily extend to the staff level. The governor’s sharp-elbowed political operation has jabbed at many people in his path over the years.
kaylynfreeman

Opinion | If It's Still Trump's Party, Many Republicans Like Me Will Leave - The New Yo... - 0 views

  • I need to believe that if I stick with the G.O.P., I will have a fighting chance at changing its direction.
  • The remaining days in the presidency of Donald Trump now number in the single digits. That should also be the number of days until the Republican Party begins the post-Trump era, and Trump-disdaining Republicans like me can fully re-engage with it.
  • If he remains, we will be left with no choice but to leave the party, even though right now might otherwise be the exact time to double down, not ditch, and reassert conservative principles. The costs of people like me leaving could be grave, not just for the party but for American politics.
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  • But it isn’t. Instead, we face a situation in which Mr. Trump clearly lost the 2020 election — and yet the pressure for us to ditch the party is even more intense than it was before Nov. 3.
  • Sure, they were all generally less tax-happy than their Democratic rivals and favored more conservative judges. But they — and their respective power bases — also didn’t agree on everything, and sometimes disagreed on a lot.
  • I don’t want to leave the Republican Party. But I need to believe that if people like me stay, we will have a fighting chance at changing the direction of the party.
  • So elected Republicans need to force Mr. Trump out of office, one way or another, to avoid further attrition in the ranks and the risk that the party devolves into something even worse than what we have seen over the last week.
  • The remaining days in the presidency of Donald Trump now number in the single digits. That should also be the number of days until the Republican Party begins the post-Trump era, and Trump-disdaining Republicans like me can fully re-engage with it.
  • Despite his role in the sacking of the Capitol, he has (also not surprisingly) refused to resign from office — but what is shocking is that so many Republicans in Congress have expressed downright hostility against forcing him out
  • Many former Republicans who deeply dislike Mr. Trump have already done so. Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, announced last year that he was becoming a Democrat.
  • hird party (perhaps the Libertarian Party)
  • That may be where many of us — those of us who were explicitly NeverTrump, and even those who were willing to cut the president a lot more slack — wind up.
zoegainer

Barr Is Said to Be Weighing Whether to Leave Before Trump's Term Ends - The New York Times - 0 views

  • It was not clear whether the attorney general’s deliberations were influenced by Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede his election loss or his fury over Mr. Bar
  • r’s acknowledgment last week that the Justice Department uncovered no widespread voting fraud. In the ensuing days, the president refused to say whether he still had confidence in his attorney general.
  • By leaving early, Mr. Barr could avoid a confrontation with the president over his refusal to advance Mr. Trump’s efforts to rewrite the election results.
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  • Mr. Barr, 70, is the strongest proponent of presidential power to hold the office of attorney general since Watergate.
  • He managed to heal fissures between the White House and the Justice Department that broke open when the president learned that his campaign was under investigation related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
  • But weeks after taking office, Mr. Barr released a summary of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that a judge later called distorted and misleading
  • And after the election, Mr. Barr opened the door to politically charged election fraud investigations, authorizing federal prosecutors to investigate “specific allegations” of voter fraud before results were certified.
  • In October, he secretly appointed Mr. Durham a special counsel assigned to seek out any wrongdoing in the course of the Russia investigation.
  • Pairing the Durham announcement with that revelation was widely seen as an effort to placate Mr. Trump, who was said to be enraged that Mr. Barr had publicly contradicted him.
  • Throughout the presidential campaign, Mr. Barr was among the loudest voices warning that mail-in ballots would result in mass election fraud. He routinely claimed in speeches and interviews that the potential for widespread voter fraud was high and posed a grave danger. Mr. Barr’s claims were sometimes false or exaggerated and were widely refuted.
  • “I don’t have empirical evidence other than the fact that we’ve always had voting fraud. And there always will be people who attempt to do that,” Mr. Barr said in September. He called his conclusions “common sense.”
  • Mr. Barr soon asked John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to open an investigation into the Russia inquiry itself to seek out any wrongdoing under the Obama administration
  • Mr. Barr broke his silence a few days later, telling The Associated Press that he had not seen evidence of election fraud on a scale that would have changed the fact that Mr. Biden won.
  • “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he said.
anonymous

Cash, Breakfasts and Firings: An All-Out Push to Vaccinate Wary Medical Workers - The N... - 0 views

  • Anxious about taking a new vaccine and scarred by a history of being mistreated, many frontline workers at hospitals and nursing homes are balking at getting inoculated against Covid-19.
  • Those opposing forces have spawned an unusual situation: In addition to educating their workers about the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccines, a growing number of employers are dangling incentives like cash, extra time off and even Waffle House gift cards for those who get inoculated, while in at least a few cases saying they will fire those who refuse.
  • “For us, this was not a tough decision,” said Lynne Katzmann, Juniper’s chief executive. “Our goal is to do everything possible to protect our residents and our team members and their families.”
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  • “This is a population of people who have been historically ignored, abused and mistreated,” said Dr. Mike Wasserman, a geriatrician and former president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine. “It is laziness on the part of anyone to force these folks to take a vaccine. I believe that we need to be putting all of our energy into respecting, honoring and valuing the work they do and educating them on the benefits to them and the folks they take care of in getting vaccinated.”
  • At Jackson Health System in Miami, a survey of about 5,900 employees found that only half wanted to get a vaccine immediately, a hospital spokeswoman said.
  • Henry Ford Health System, which runs six hospitals in Michigan, said that as of Wednesday morning, about 22 percent of its 33,000 employees had declined to be vaccinated.
  • At Houston Methodist, a hospital system in Texas with 26,000 employees, workers who take the vaccine will be eligible for a $500 bonus. “Vaccination is not mandatory for our employees yet (but will be eventually),” Dr. Marc Boom, the hospital’s chief executive, wrote in an email to employees last month.
  • Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said last month that roughly 60 percent of nursing home staff members offered the vaccine in his state had declined it.
  • Underlying the hesitancy is a lack of trust in authorities — the federal government, politicians, even their employers — that have failed for the past year to get the virus under control.
  • “We are left behind in the dust — no one sticks up for us,”
  • Another concern about forcing workers to get vaccinated is that it could prompt hesitant employees to resign. That’s a particular worry in long-term care, where the pandemic has exacerbated a shortage of certified nursing assistants.
  • Both have been found to be safe and highly effective. So why are so many hospital and long-term care workers reluctant to get inoculated?
  • At Norton Healthcare, a health system in Louisville, Ky., workers who refuse the vaccine and then catch Covid-19 will generally no longer be able to take advantage of the paid medical leave that Norton has been offering to infected employees since early in the pandemic.
  • At Juniper — which has 20 senior living communities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado — officials have tried to educate workers about the safety and benefits of Covid-19 vaccines, including hosting a webinar with a registered nurse who was enrolled in a clinical trial of the Moderna vaccine. Officials told staff last month that vaccines would be mandatory.
katherineharron

What is impeachment? Here's what you need to know - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • The overall impeachment process laid out in the Constitution is relatively simple: President commits "high Crime or Misdemeanor," House votes to impeach, Senate conducts a trial.
  • The one President Donald Trump faces now, after inciting a riotous mob to attack the Capitol, is unprecedented in all sorts of ways, which means the process will feel entirely new and different from the one we saw in late 2019 around the Ukraine investigation.
  • Specifically, this House impeachment vote is likely to be done Wednesday,
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  • this second impeachment of Trump, in which a US President is accused for the first time of inciting violence against another branch of government.
  • In that first effort, the details of Trump's pressure on Ukraine leaked out over the course of weeks and built into Democratic support to launch and conduct an investigation and, ultimately, to impeach him.With Trump's time in office set to expire at noon on January 20, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also gave Trump and Vice President Mike Pence the option of avoiding impeachment if either Trump resigned or Pence mobilized the Cabinet to use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.When those two offramps were ignored, Democrats in the House moved quickly toward impeachment and the first post-presidential impeachment trial in US history.
  • The Article argues that Trump incited his supporters by repeatedly denying the election results in the lead-up to the counting of the electoral votes, that he pressured Georgia's secretary of state to "find" additional votes for him, and in doing so he "gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government," "threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government."
  • Getting from Trump's misdeed to impeachment proceedings in the House took 86 days in 2019. It's going to take just a week in 2021.
  • This time, while there's an argument he committed treason, Democrats in the House have alleged Trump "engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States."
  • It took 48 days to get from Trump's December 19, 2019 impeachment to his February 5, 2020 acquittal. That process was slowed by a break over the holidays. The trial actually began January 16.
  • This time it could be slowed by the fact that Trump won't be in office any more by the time the trial starts and new President Joe Biden will be asking the Senate to vote on his Cabinet nominees and act on legislation to address the Covid pandemic as well as relief for Americans hurt by the troubled economy.
  • This time, incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is hoping to pursue a half-day schedule to conduct the trial part of the day and business the rest of the day.
  • When both of the new Democratic senators from Georgia are seated, it will take 17 Republicans voting with Democrats to reach a two-thirds majority and convict Trump.
  • The most unconventional aspect of this second impeachment effort is that Trump will be a former President by the time it concludes. There is precedent for former officials facing impeachment both in US history and in England, from whence the Founders imported the idea of impeachment. Read here about what's technically called a "late impeachment" from the scholars Frank Bowman and Brian Kalt.
  • Beyond the stain of being a President who a majority of Congress feels it's worth impeaching for a second time, conviction could mean he can't run for office again in 2024. Barring him from further office would require a second vote by senators, although it probably would not require two-thirds agreement. It could also cost him his more-than $200,000 per year pension if the Senate wants to take that way.
  • Trump is widely thought to be considering the never-before-attempted self-pardon, to inoculate himself from future legal jeopardy related to his time in office and running for office. What's not clear is whether a late impeachment would have any bearing on his power to pardon himself. As the impeachment scholars Kalt and Bowman point out, the text of the Constitution doesn't mention pardons in terms of impeachment. It certainly seems like a successful impeachment would come up if and when a potential self pardon is challenged in court.
anonymous

Trump Takes Trip To Border Wall As Congress Considers Impeachment : NPR - 0 views

  • President Trump is heading to Texas on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to show off one of his signature election promises — the border wall — as Democratic lawmakers appear ready to move forward with impeaching him for a second time.
  • angry lawmakers are calling on him to resign after a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol last Wednesday as a joint session of Congress met inside to certify the results of the election.
  • This will be the first public appearance for Trump — beyond video statements — since Wednesday morning, when he urged his supporters to head to the Capitol as Congress formalized President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
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  • Political analysts say it's an obvious attempt to try to rehabilitate his image when his legacy is at stake.
  • Trump campaigned on a promise to crack down on immigration. The clearest example of that was his promise to build a "big, beautiful wall" along the U.S.-Mexico border — a core issue for his base.
  • Most mainstream Republicans would prefer if Trump just faded away quietly,
  • But Walsh said this trip makes clear that Trump does not plan to do that. And Walsh is concerned that Trump could actually make things worse by picking such a hot button issue
  • the political backlash from the Capitol riot is likely too great for Trump to overcome. He said the president's refusal to concede the election and willingness to stoke conspiracy theories all but ensured that he will be remembered for the bitter end to his time in office instead of his policy accomplishments, such as tax cuts and naming three Supreme Court judges.
  • "I think until Donald Trump properly concedes the election and recognizes Joe Biden as the president-elect, he's not going to be able to talk about anything else,"
hannahcarter11

Third bank cuts ties with Trump after Capitol riot | TheHill - 0 views

  • A third bank declared its plans to cut ties with President TrumpDonald TrumpGrowing number of GOP lawmakers say they support impeachment YouTube temporarily bars uploading of new content on Trump's channel House passes measure calling on Pence to remove Trump MORE and the Trump Organization on Tuesday in the aftermath of the raid on the Capitol last week.
  • Florida-based Professional Bank, which once provided Trump with an $11 million mortgage, announced that it won’t conduct future business with the president or his organization.
  • The Florida bank represents the third bank to end its relationship with Trump and the Trump Organization after a pro-Trump mob breached and vandalized the Capitol building last week in an attempt to disrupt Congress’s certification of President-elect Joe BidenJoe BidenGrowing number of GOP lawmakers say they support impeachment House passes measure calling on Pence to remove Trump Disney, Walmart say they will block donations to lawmakers who objected to Electoral College results MORE’s Electoral College win.
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  • The New York-based Signature Bank announced that it would close down Trump’s personal accounts that have about $5.3 million due to the “displeasure and shock” management experienced following the Capitol riots. 
  • Earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported that Deutsche Bank would not conduct future business with Trump or his company besides monitoring the payment of existing loans amounting to more than $300 million. 
  • The deadly riots resulted in at least five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman shot by a plain clothes Capitol Police officer.
  • The New York bank also called on the president to resign and said it would not make future agreements with lawmakers who contested the Electoral College results after the riots.
  • “We witnessed the President of the United States encouraging the rioters and refraining from calling in the National Guard to protect the Congress in its performance of duty,” the statement continued.
  • Eric TrumpEric TrumpLet's make Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 the day Trumpism died Ivanka Trump urges 'patriots' storming Capitol to 'stop immediately' in now-deleted tweet Eric Trump warns of primary challenges for Republicans who don't object to election results MORE, one of the president’s sons put in charge of day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization, told The Associated Press that banks and other companies ending their relationship with the business after the riots exemplifies a liberal “cancel culture.”
  • “If you disagree with them, if they don’t like you, they try and cancel you.”
  • Several companies, in addition to the banks, have distanced themselves from the president after last week’s events, including Shopify, which took down trumpstore.com, and PGA of America, which moved a 2022 championship away from Trump property.
  • New York City declared on Wednesday that it would end contracts with the Trump Organization to run attractions in the city’s park, with Mayor Bill de BlasioBill de BlasioRepublican Staten Island candidate apologizes for Hitler reference New York City considering ending business contracts with Trump Columnist Ross Barkan discusses the slow vaccination process in the state of New York MORE (D) saying, “New York City doesn’t do business with insurrectionists.”
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