April 16, 2018

GOP lawmaker: Trump firing Mueller would set off 'political crisis'

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/985847767661719552

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/383329-gop-lawmaker-trump-firing-mueller-would-set-off-political-crisis

April 16, 2018

Trump hits China for currency devaluation, countering Treasury report

Source: The Hill



BY SYLVAN LANE - 04/16/18 09:26 AM EDT

President Trump on Monday criticized China for devaluing its currency days after the Treasury Department said Beijing was not manipulating the value of its money.

Trump said on Twitter that both China and Russia “are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. "Not acceptable!," the president tweeted.

Trump’s comments came three days after the Treasury Department declined to label China a currency manipulator despite the president’s repeated campaign promises to do so.

Treasury’s twice-yearly report on foreign currency exchange, released Friday, rebuked China for not doing enough to balance its trade surplus with the U.S. But Treasury did not find that China was devaluing its currency, called the renminbi.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/383326-trump-hits-china-for-currency-devaluation-countering-treasury-report

April 16, 2018

Republicans Struggle to Make Tax Cuts a Winning Election Issue

By Sahil Kapur
April 16, 2018, 4:00 AM EDT

Some surveys show majority of voters don’t approve of law

Democrats have framed tax overhaul as giveway to the wealthy

Moments after the Republican tax overhaul passed in the Senate in mid-December, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that if he and his party members couldn’t sell the cuts to the American people, they should find “another line of work.”

Four months later, some GOP lawmakers who hoped the law would save them from defeat may have to start dusting off their resumes.

Some recent polls show that the majority of Americans still don’t support the tax law, despite an uptick in sentiment since the end of 2017. And a special House election in a conservative district of Pennsylvania in March delivered an upset victory to the Democratic candidate, who’d framed the tax cuts as a giveaway to the wealthy.

“If they can’t run on tax cuts in a district Trump won by 20 [points] and win, where can they run on tax cuts and win?” said David Wasserman, House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

After most individual taxpayers finish up their returns this week, all eyes will turn to what the tax code revamp means for next year’s filings and beyond. Part of the Republican party’s problem in selling the tax cuts is that the answer is murky for many. Variables like dependents and itemized deductions can complicate the picture, even though most -- 65 percent -- will see a tax cut in 2018. And even for voters who do see a cut, whether it’s enough to sway their decisions at the ballot box is far from clear.

more
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-16/republicans-struggle-to-make-tax-cuts-a-winning-election-issue

April 16, 2018

'Spare me': Tillis draws GOP fire with pro-Mueller push

The Republican senator is eager to shield the special counsel from Trump — regardless of potential blowback from conservatives or the president.

By BURGESS EVERETT 04/16/2018 05:02 AM EDT

Thom Tillis isn’t the kind of Republican who typically challenges Donald Trump.

The North Carolina senator backs the president’s agenda and holds his tongue when it comes to the tweets. As others abandoned Trump after the “Access Hollywood” tape emerged, Tillis maintained his endorsement. But now he’s a lead sponsor of a bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from interference by Trump — enraging conservatives and potentially risking the president's ire. It’s the biggest gamble Tillis has taken as a Republican senator, but one he believes is philosophically consistent with how the GOP would be treating a Democratic president.

Tillis doesn't think Trump will ultimately fire Mueller even as the president rages over the expanding Russia probe. But he has an impassioned response for his conservative critics nonetheless: "Spare me."

“Courage is when you know you’re going to do something that’s going to anger your base,” Tillis said in an interview in his Senate office.

“The same people who would criticize me for filing this bill would be absolutely angry if I wasn’t pounding the table for this bill if we were dealing with Hillary Clinton,” he argued. “So spare me your righteous indignation.”

more
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/16/thom-tillis-special-counsel-mueller-trump-522088

April 16, 2018

Dislike Comey, Despise Trump - By Charles M. Blow

April 15, 2018

We are now in the midst of an epic clash between Donald Trump and fired F.B.I. Director James Comey, neither of whom I hold in high esteem, both men with raging egos and questionable motives.

The depth of my contempt differs between the two, but there is contempt for both.

Comey is now making the rounds promoting his new book, which will no doubt be a monster best seller. Good for him. But Comey for me is a complicated character, a man of honorable service and flashes of horrendous judgment. His inexplicable handling of the investigations into Clinton’s emails is unforgivable.

He made reckless and harmful disclosures and proclamations about the Clinton investigation while not whispering a word about the concurrent investigation into the Trump campaign.

He says that the letter he released about a new phase of the Clinton email investigation just days before the election may have been colored by polling suggesting that Clinton was going to win, but that too is problematic.

As Nate Silver tweeted Friday: “If Comey’s decision to release the letter on Oct. 28 was influenced by his interpretation of the polls, that really ought to cut against his image as an honorable, principled decision-maker. Instead, he was just being expedient and trying to save his own hide.”

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/opinion/dislike-comey-despise-trump.html

April 16, 2018

Trump's reelection committee has spent more than $1 out of every $5 on legal fees this year

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Anu Narayanswamy April 15 at 6:55 PM

President Trump’s reelection campaign spent more than $1 out of every $5 on attorney fees this year as the president contended with the ongoing special counsel investigation and a new legal challenge from an adult-film star.

Of the $3.9 million that Trump’s committee spent in the first quarter of 2018, more than $834,000 went to eight law firms and the Trump Corp. for legal fees, according to new Federal Election Commission records filed Sunday.

The latest figures bring the Trump campaign’s total spending on legal fees to nearly $4 million since the president took office, records show. In the last quarter of 2017, Trump’s campaign committee spent $1.1 million in legal fees.

The biggest share of legal payments in the first quarter of this year — about $348,000 — went to Jones Day, a law firm representing the campaign in the investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and several congressional committees into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-reelection-committee-has-spent-more-than-1-out-of-every-5-on-legal-fees-this-year/2018/04/15/2a9248e8-40f1-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html

April 16, 2018

Have you noticed how poor people are bankrupting the government? Neither have we. - WaPo Editorial

By Editorial Board April 15 at 7:52 PM

HAVE YOU noticed how spending on welfare and other benefits for the poor is bankrupting the federal government? Neither have we. On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office forecast a vast increase in the federal debt over the next decade, due in large part to the GOP’s recent $1.5 trillion tax cut, most of which goes to businesses and wealthy households. On the domestic spending side, the biggies remain middle-class programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Yet President Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress are on an election-year campaign to “reform” means-tested safety-net programs. The day after the CBO released its figures, in fact, Mr. Trump ordered federal agencies to review all such programs — with an eye toward toughening work requirements for their recipients. On Thursday, the House Agriculture Committee unveiled a proposed 2018 farm bill that would make it harder for non-working adults to get food-buying aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The U.S. welfare state, such as it is, has always linked benefits to work more than its European counterparts. In many cases, that is necessary and appropriate, both as a way to prevent waste and as a way to incentivize productive behavior. The GOP says its current focus is in this tradition: It’s more about fighting “dependency” than balancing the budget. Maybe so, but it puts a lot of needy people’s benefits at risk for what’s likely to be very few dollars saved and very little behavior modified.

Work requirements make the least sense with regard to Medicaid, the largest means-tested program by far, at $565.5 billion in spending in 2016. Sixty percent of recipients already work, and 79 percent already live with a worker, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many other recipients have caregiving responsibilities; these would be either abandoned or accepted by states as the equivalent of work, after much bureaucratic hassle. In any case, losing Medicaid would not stop people from getting sick; they’d just go to emergency rooms for treatment, ultimately at public expense.

As for SNAP, spending is already down — from $79.8 billion in 2013 to about $70 billion in 2017 — thanks to a robust economy. The total cost of the most recent five-year farm bill, SNAP’s authorizing legislation, is now expected to come in $31 billion below initial projections, mostly because of lower- than-expected SNAP spending. The House Republican farm bill is aimed at able-bodied, childless, working-age adults, who account for a very small portion of the overall SNAP caseload and many of whom already work. About 1.9 million childless, working-age adults got SNAP without working in 2017. Referring to people such as these, the Agriculture Committee press materials on the new bill say it “does not take away eligibility, but provides individuals options. Individuals may choose not to participate, but they will no longer be eligible for SNAP.” Sounds great, except that many non-working adults who rely on SNAP aren’t refusing to work but face multiple and stubborn logistical and educational barriers to employment. In the likely event those barriers continue, it will be SNAP administrators who face “options”: find a way to keep them on the rolls, or let them go hungry.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/have-you-noticed-how-poor-people-are-bankrupting-the-government-neither-have-we/2018/04/15/bbde4ba8-3e85-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html

April 16, 2018

'Kellyanne, I have to stop you there': Conway gets busted on live TV making bogus claims about Comey

https://twitter.com/GMA/status/985840098963943424

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/kellyanne-stop-conway-gets-busted-live-tv-making-bogus-claims-comey-firing/

April 16, 2018

Report: Pentagon Persuaded Trump to Tone Down Syria Strikes

Source: The Daily Beast



The Pentagon managed to persuade President Trump to tone down airstrikes on Syria after he initially favored a much more robust attack than the one that took place last week, The Wall Street Journal reports. Defense Secretary James Mattis is said to have presented the White House with three options for the attack: one aimed at Syria’s chemical-weapons capabilities, another including a wider range of military targets, and a third alternative that could have included strikes on Russian air defenses in Syria and was designed to cripple President Bashar al-Assad’s military capabilities. Trump reportedly urged the defense team to consider strikes on Russian and Iranian targets in Syria, but Mattis successfully pushed back, warning a more robust attack risked a dangerous backlash from Moscow and Tehran. The strike ended up being aimed at three targets, designed to hamper the Syrian regime’s ability to use chemical weapons and deter Assad from using them again.

READ IT AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-pentagon-persuaded-trump-to-tone-down-syria-strikes

April 16, 2018

Russia may have tampered with chemical attack site, U.S. envoy says

Source: Reuters



APRIL 16, 2018 / 5:03 AM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Anthony Deutsch

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Russia may have tampered with the site of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria’s Douma, the U.S. envoy to the global watchdog said on Monday, urging the body to condemn the continuing use of banned chemical weapons.

The comments came during a closed-door meeting at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, convened after an April 7 attack in the town of Douma, outside the Syrian capital, in which dozens of people were allegedly killed with poison gas.

“It is long overdue that this council condemns the Syrian government for its reign of chemical terror and demands international accountability for those responsible for these heinous acts,” U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward said in comments obtained by Reuters.

“It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site. It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission to conduct an effective investigation.”

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Read more: Link to source