Category: Trump Administration

Despite Trump attacks, both parties vow orderly election

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses drew swift blowback Thursday from both parties in Congress, and lawmakers turned to unprecedented steps to ensure he can’t ignore the vote of the people. Amid the uproar, Trump said anew he’s not sure the election will be “honest.”

Congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rejected Trump’s assertion that he’ll “see what happens” before agreeing to any election outcome.

Many other lawmakers — including from Trump’s own Republican Party — vowed to make sure voters’ wishes are followed ahead of Inauguration Day in January. And some Democrats were taking action, including formally asking Trump’s defense secretary, homeland security adviser and attorney general to declare they’ll support the Nov. 3 results, whoever wins. Continue reading.

Trump can’t even keep his coup secret

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Donald Trump is escalating. Wednesday afternoon, under questioning by Brian Karem of Playboy, Trump offered what the mainstream news outlets are calling a “failure to commit” to a “peaceful transfer of power.” One might also call it “threatening a coup”.

The first time Karem asked Trump whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election, Trump pulled his usual move, pretending that the fate of our democracy is like a reality-show cliffhanger: “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens.”

But Karem was dogged and asked him again: “Do you commit to making sure that there’s a peaceful transferral of power?” Continue reading.

Republicans try to ‘both sides’ Trump’s comments on peaceful transfer of power

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The president of the United States on Wednesday evening declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the 2020 election — ratcheting up previous rhetoric baselessly casting doubt on the legitimacy of what polls suggest is a likely defeat.

In response, congressional Republicans have assured there will be a transfer of power, but they have mostly refused to rebuke Trump personally. And increasingly, they’ve suggested this is a “both sides” issue.

In a series of tweets Thursday morning, Republicans from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) to the third-ranking House Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), promised a peaceful transfer of power and emphasized its importance in our constitutional republic. But in each of their statements, Trump was basically Voldemort. There was no suggestion that they were responding directly to Trump or that he actually said something wrong. Continue reading.

Democrats say the GOP’s attempt to smear Biden accidentally exposed a Trump official’s ‘corrupt scheme’

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The Republican report aimed at raising questions about the dealings of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine appears to have accidentally implicated former Energy Secretary Rick Perry in an energy scheme in the foreign nation, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

Republicans led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., released their much-hyped report on Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma on Wednesday. However, it found no evidence of actual wrongdoing and relied largely on debunked claims, old statements and narratives pushed as part of a Russian disinformation campaign.


But the report did find new evidence related to Perry’s actions in Ukraine while he served in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Continue reading.

Parsing Trump’s ‘there won’t be a transfer’ comments

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As the 2016 election approached, then-candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric escalated. He would lose only if there was fraud committed against him, he said at multiple points, and he regularly derided the process as “rigged.” During the third presidential debate, Trump was asked whether he would recognize the results of the election.

“I will look at it at the time,” Trump replied. “I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time. What I’ve seen, what I’ve seen, is so bad.” He went on to disparage the media and elevate false claims about the risk posed by outdated voter rolls.

When he won the election anyway, this idea that he had somehow been cheated persisted. After all, he had lost the popular vote, so he has repeatedly as president asserted that somehow millions of illegal votes were cast without being detected, enough to suggest that it was he, not Hillary Clinton, who was actually the choice of the overall electorate four years ago. Continue reading.

Internal USPS documents link changes behind mail slowdowns to top executives

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Newly obtained records appear in conflict with months of Postal Service assertions that blamed lower-level managers for strategies tied to delivery delays

A senior executive at the U.S. Postal Service delivered a PowerPoint presentation in July that pressed officials across the organization to make the operational changes that led to mail backups across the country, seemingly counter to months of official statements about the origin of the plans, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.

David E. Williams, the agency’s chief of logistics and processing operations, listed the elimination of late and extra mail trips by postal workers as a primary agency goal during the July 10 teleconference. He also told the group that he wanted daily counts on such trips, which had become common practice to ensure the timely delivery of mail. Several top-tier executives — including Robert Cintron, vice president of logistics; Angela Curtis, vice president of retail and post office operations; and vice presidents from the agency’s seven geographic areas — sat in.

The presentation stands in contrast with agency accounts that lower-tier leaders outside USPS headquarters were mainly responsible for the controversial protocols, which tightened dispatch schedules on transport trucks and forced postal workers to leave mail behind. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told a House panel last month that he pressed his team to meet dispatch and mail-handling schedules but did not issue a blanket ban on such trips. Continue reading.

If the Supreme Court Ends Obamacare, Here’s What It Would Mean

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The Affordable Care Act touches the lives of most Americans, and its abolition could have a significant effect on many millions more people than those who get their health coverage through it.

What would happen if the Supreme Court struck down the Affordable Care Act?

The fate of the sprawling, decade-old health law known as Obamacare was already in question, with the high court expected to hear arguments a week after the presidential election in the latest case seeking to overturn it. But now, the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg increases the possibility that the court could abolish it, even as millions of people are losing job-based health coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.

A federal judge in Texas invalidated the entire law in 2018. The Trump administration, which had initially supported eliminating only some parts of the law, then changed its position and agreed with the judge’s ruling. Earlier this year the Supreme Court agreed to take the case. Continue reading.

Trump and Nixon were pen pals in the ‘80s. Here are their letters.

The letters between once and future presidents show the two men engaged in something of an exercise in mutual affirmation. 

They were two men in Manhattan who craved the same thing: validation. One was a brash, young real estate developer looking to put his stamp on New York, the other a disgraced elder statesman bent on repairing his reputation.

That’s how a thirty-something Donald Trump and a seventy-ish Richard Nixon struck up a decade-long, fulsome correspondence in the 1980s that meandered from football and real estate to Vietnam and media strategy.

The letters between once and future presidents, revealed for the first time in an exhibit that opens Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum, show the two men engaged in something of an exercise in mutual affirmation. The museum shared the letters exclusively with The Associated Press ahead of the exhibit’s opening. Continue reading.

McConnell pushes back on Trump: ‘There will be an orderly transition’

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Thursday that there would be an “orderly” transition of power in 2021, after President Trumprefused to commit to a peaceful handoff of power if he loses in November. 

“The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th. There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792,” McConnell said in a tweet.  

Trump set off a political firestorm on Wednesday when he told reporters at the White House, when asked if he would commit to ensuring a peaceful transition of power if he loses in November, that he would have to “see what happens” and tried once again to sow doubt about the security of mail-in ballots.  Continue reading.

Trump Says He Will ‘Always’ Protect Those With Pre-Existing Conditions. He Hasn’t.

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The president’s promises on health care stand in stark contrast with his legislative, regulatory and legal record.

In speeches, in tweets, in media interviews, President Trump keeps promising that he will preserve protections for Americans with pre-existing health conditions. It’s a crowd-pleaser of a policy, but one entirely at odds with his administration’s legislative, regulatory and legal record to date.

In the final weeks of the election season, expect to see the words “pre-existing conditions” again and again. Mr. Trump makes the promise so consistently that it is likely to appear in television ads, the presidential debates and possibly in an oft-teased, ever forthcoming executive order on the subject. Vice President Pencesaid Tuesday that the president would “take action” in the days ahead.

But rather than enshrine the ability of Americans with health problems to buy insurance, the Trump administration has, at every turn, pursued policies that have tended to do the opposite.

Some of the efforts to weaken protections have been successful — like an expansion of cheap, lightly regulated health plans that insurers are not required to offer when customers are sick. Others, like multiple attempts to “repeal and replace Obamacare” in 2017, failed to attract enough Republican votes in Congress to pass. The Justice Department’s quest to overturn the Affordable Care Act, while no replacement is being offered, is still underway, with oral arguments scheduled at the Supreme Court in November. Continue reading.