Tag: U.S. Congress

Trump tried to make the GOP border emergency fight about him. He lost anyway.

President Trump tried to marshal his most potent weapon — himself — to stave off what eventually became an embarrassing rejection from his own party over his declared national emergency on the border.

In numerous calls with Republican senators in recent days, the president spoke of the battle almost exclusively in personal terms — telling them they would be voting against him while brushing aside constitutional concerns over his attempt to reroute billions of federal dollars for a border wall. He argued that a vote against the emergency would be seen by GOP supporters as being against border security and the wall and would hurt their own political fortunes, according to a person with direct knowledge of some of the calls.

The president, along with his aides, continued to hammer that message leading up to Thursday’s Senate vote on the issue. Trump tweeted the day before that Republican senators were “overthinking” it, stressing that it was only about supporting border security. And White House aides made it clear to undecided Republicans that Trump was noticing those who chose to oppose him — particularly if they were up for reelection in 2020.

View the complete March 14 article by Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

How Congress Can Fix Student Loan Repayment

Introduction and summary

Students borrowed approximately $91 billion in federal loans in 2018, bringing the total outstanding loan balance to nearly $1.5 trillion.1 For many, college would not have been possible without such readily available financing, but the burden of debt has become too much. More than 1 million borrowers default every year,2 and millions more are stuck in what feels like an endless cycle of interest payments3 and benefits applications.4 Borrowers of color, in particular, are struggling to repay their debt, exacerbating long-term inequities and causing higher education to be more of a gamble than was promised.5

All of these woes are part of the college affordability crisis, but they are also part of a more arcane problem: The United States’ federal student loan repayment system is broken. This year, however, Congress has a chance to fix it. Continue reading “How Congress Can Fix Student Loan Repayment”

Congress Just Got A Lot Closer To Rejecting Trump’s National Emergency To Build A Wall

Credit: Susan Walsh, AP Photo

Congress may now have the votes needed to formally reject Trump’s plan. The White House has suggested the president will issue his first veto if it passes.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lamar Alexander has come out against Trump’s state of emergency on the southern border, possibly becoming the crucial fourth Republican needed for Congress to formally rebuke the president.

Trump declared the state of emergency in order to divert billions of dollars toward building a border wall. If Alexander joins Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Thom Tillis, there will be enough votes, including Democrats, to pass a resolution to end the state of emergency.

Alexander argued Thursday that the founders of the country rejected the concept of a king who can set taxes and spending on his own and said these powers must remain with Congress.

View the complete February 28 article by Paul McLeod and Lissandra Villa on the BuzzFeed website here.

Congress could block big chunk of Trump’s emergency wall money

Full funds likely to be unavailable from the sources president has identified

More than one-third of the money President Donald Trump wants to redirect from other federal programs to build a border barrier is likely to be unavailable from the sources he has identified.

As a result, it may be difficult for the president to circumvent Congress, even if a resolution disapproving of his “emergency” moves is never enacted.

Trump announced Feb. 15 that, using emergency powers, he wants to divert as much as $6.7 billion from other programs to finance the construction of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. That includes $3.6 billion from unspent military construction money, $2.5 billion in unspent Pentagon counterdrug funds and $600 million from a Treasury Department asset forfeiture account.

View the complete February 21 article by John M. Donnelly on The Roll Call website here.

Dems face challenges to beating Trump in court

The Democratic states fighting President Trump’s emergency declaration face a rough road as they try to convince the courts that his order was unlawful.

But experts say the lawsuit won’t be a slam dunk for the president either.

“This is a hard case,” said Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. “It’s going to be a hard case for California to win and a hard case for Trump to defend.”

California is leading the coalition of 16 states suing Trump over an emergency declaration they argue was manufactured by a president who didn’t get what he wanted from Congress.

View the complete February 21 article by Lydia Wheeler on The Hill website here.

Former top military advisers urge Congress to pass gun background checks bill

Retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is among the former military advisers and leaders urging congressional leaders to pass a universal backgrounds check bill. Credit: John Medina, Getty Images file photo

Ex-leaders are part of veterans coalition organized by Giffords’ group

More than a dozen retired top military commanders, leaders and advisers, whose careers spanned both Republican and Democratic administrations, are throwing their weight behind a bill in the House and Senate that would require universal background checks for all U.S. gun sales.

In a letter Thursday, 13 former top military advisers and combat leaders urged congressional leaders in both parties to pass the bill, known in the House as HR 8, which targets private gun sales that don’t require background checks under current federal law.

“A prohibited person with dangerous intent can easily buy a gun over the internet or in a parking lot with no questions asked,” the military advisers wrote to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer.“For those of us with extensive firearms training, who have seen the damage inflicted by a powerful weapon in the wrong hands, this is simply unfathomable,” they wrote.

View the complete February 21 article by Griffin Connolly on The Roll Call website here.

Congress closer to forcing Trump’s hand on Saudi support

Supporters of a measure to cut off U.S. support to Saudi Arabia in Yemen are projecting victory in the coming weeks when the Senate takes up a House-passed resolution.

The Trump administration is expected to ramp up its lobbying against the Yemen war powers resolution as the vote nears in hopes of flipping some of the Republicans who back the measure.

But opponents have few tools at their disposal to stop the resolution, which only needs a simple majority for a procedural vote and subsequent final passage.

View the complete February 18 article by Rebecca Kheel on The Hill website here.

‘What happens in a totalitarian regime’: Capitol Police slammed for ‘disturbing’ physical attacks on reporters

Press freedom advocates and journalists described a Friday report of Capitol Police manhandling and shoving reporters in the Russell Senate Office Building as “bizarre” and “disturbing,” with some calling the altercation an incident far more likely to take place in a totalitarian regime than in a democracy.

As Roll Call reported Friday, Capitol Police pushed and “slammed into” reporters on Thursday afternoon around the time that senators were voting on the spending bill. The police attempted to prevent reporters from speaking to lawmakers—a practice that is common in the Senate basement, where the incident took place.

rjbrennan

✔@rjbrennan

It’s what happens in totalitarian regime.

Capitol Police crackdown on press escalates to physical altercation https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/capitol-police-crackdown-press-escalates-physical-altercation … via @RollCall

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Capitol Police crackdown on press escalates to physical altercation

A Capitol Police crackdown turned physical Thursday afternoon, when officers clashed with reporters attempting to speak with senators in a location known as key territory for lawmakers and media to…

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Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, called Roll Call’s report a “disturbing account,” while the National Press Club said in a statement that Capitol Police’s actions “contravened the chamber’s long-standing bipartisan practice of supporting journalists’ access to lawmakers.”

View the complete February 17 article by Julia Conley on the AlterNet website here.

Trump raged at White House staff over wall funding before announcing emergency: WSJ

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal posted a behind-the-scenes deep dive into President Trump’s signature issue, a wall along the United States’ southern border. In the story, written by Michael Bender, Trump emerges as an angry and unprepared figure, often yelling at staffers who failed, in the President’s estimation.

“Who the f— put that in my request?” Mr. Trump shouted in one testy 2017 exchange related to funding for the wall, according to Bender’s story.

The angry comment was directed at Marc Short, then Trump’s legislative affairs director, while John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, was silent in the room, per Bender. The long read further pointed out that the various failures in getting the wall started the past few years may be the fault of Trump himself, who failed to appoint a dedicated point person on the wall, despite the barrier being as his signature policy initiative.

View the complete February 16 article from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump declares national emergency at border

President Trump on Friday declared a national emergency to bypass Congress and spend roughly $8 billion on barriers along the southern border, a big step toward building his long-promised wall that also comes with significant political and legal risk.

Trump’s move, announced in a rambling, improvised address from the Rose Garden shortly after signing the declaration, will launch a fierce constitutional battle in the courts with lawmakers and outside groups who say the president overstepped his authority.

“I am going to be signing a national emergency,” Trump said after a long introduction that touched on trade, China, Syria and the caravans of immigrants that Trump made a political issue of ahead of last fall’s midterm elections.

View the complete February 15 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.