Boehner: 'There is no Republican Party,' only a 'Trump Party'
By Veronica Stracqualursi
Former Republican House Speaker John Boehner lamented Thursday that the GOP he knew is no more, and in its place is the "Trump Party."
"There is no Republican Party. There's a Trump Party," Boehner said during an appearance at a policy conference on Mackinac Island, Michigan, Thursday while sipping on Bloody Marys.
"The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere," he quipped, according to a livestream of the Mackinac Policy Conference posted by its host, the Detroit Regional Chamber.
The former Ohio congressman said the President's style is "not quite my style" and that Trump is "clearly the most unusual person we've elected as President."
"But if you can peel away the noise, and the tweets and all that, which is virtually impossible to do, but if you peel all this away, from a Republican standpoint, the things that he's doing by and large are really good things," Boehner said, pointing to the Trump administration's deregulation and progress on negotiations with North Korea.
The former GOP House leader, who left Washington in 2015 in the middle of his term, also shared that he was surprised by Trump.
"Donald Trump, who I know well, was one of my supporters. When I was speaker and I was having a rough week, Trump would call me, pat me on the back, cheer me up. We played a lot of golf together," Boehner said.
"But President? Really? I never quite saw this," Boehner said to some laughs from the audience. "But the guy ran, the guy won."
Boehner had made similar comments before about Trump. In a profile piece of him Politico published last year, Boehner said of the President, "Donald Trump's not a Republican. He's not a Democrat. He's a populist. He doesn't have an ideological bone in his body."
May 31, 2018
Make America 1929 Again
Congressional Republicans lining up against Trump on trade
By Lauren Fox, Phil Mattingly and Ted Barrett
Republicans on Capitol Hill were fuming after the White House abruptly announced it would begin imposing steel and aluminum tariffs Friday on US allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
The move Thursday came after Republicans tried to convince the administration for months to target China with tariffs rather than US trading partners, and it could trigger Republicans on Capitol Hill to consider taking action against their own President on trade.
One Republican senator, who asked not to be identified, complained Thursday about President Donald Trump's decision to impose the tariffs, 25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminum imports.
"I don't like trade wars. There are no winners in trade wars. And this scares me," the senator said.
House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady released a statement that said the tariffs "are hitting the wrong target."
"When it comes to unfairly traded steel and aluminum, Mexico, Canada, and Europe are not the problem—China is. This action puts American workers and families at risk, whose jobs depend on fairly traded products from these important trading partners. And it hurts our efforts to create good-paying US jobs by selling more 'Made in America' products to customers in these countries," the Texas Republican's statement said.
The news Thursday reinvigorated discussions about whether Congress would intervene, a point that had been put to rest months ago when the Trump administration announced it would impose new steel and aluminum tariffs across the board only to turn around and issue a wide list of exemptions to allies -- which Republicans applauded -- while it negotiated.
Still, congressional options are limited. Over the last several decades, Congress has outsourced key trading decisions to the executive branch, and taking back that power would require a serious, united front from GOP leaders in a midterm election year.
"I call on the administration to continue the exemptions and negotiations with these important national security partners to find a solution and address the damage caused to American exporters. And the administration will need to come to Capitol Hill to provide answers about the indiscriminate harm these tariffs are causing our local businesses," Brady said.
Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, put it simply: "This is a big mistake."
"These tariffs will raise prices and destroy manufacturing jobs, especially auto jobs, which are one-third of all Tennessee manufacturing jobs. I have urged President Trump to focus on reciprocity -- do for our country what our country does for you -- instead of imposing tariffs, which are basically higher taxes on American consumers," the Tennessee Republican said.
Twit: Senator Pat Toomey
"Bad news that @POTUS has decided to impose taxes on American consumers buying steel and aluminum from our closest allies--Canada, the EU, and Mexico (with whom we run a trade surplus on steel). In addition to higher prices, these tariffs invite retaliation."
Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, released a statement that said the move was "dumb."
"This is dumb. Europe, Canada, and Mexico are not China, and you don't treat allies the same way you treat opponents. We've been down this road before -- blanket protectionism is a big part of why America had a Great Depression. 'Make America Great Again' shouldn't mean 'Make America 1929 Again,'" Sasse said in the statement.
"Bad news that @POTUS has decided to impose taxes on American consumers buying steel and aluminum from our closest allies--Canada, the EU, and Mexico (with whom we run a trade surplus on steel). In addition to higher prices, these tariffs invite retaliation," tweeted Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican.
By Lauren Fox, Phil Mattingly and Ted Barrett
Republicans on Capitol Hill were fuming after the White House abruptly announced it would begin imposing steel and aluminum tariffs Friday on US allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
The move Thursday came after Republicans tried to convince the administration for months to target China with tariffs rather than US trading partners, and it could trigger Republicans on Capitol Hill to consider taking action against their own President on trade.
One Republican senator, who asked not to be identified, complained Thursday about President Donald Trump's decision to impose the tariffs, 25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminum imports.
"I don't like trade wars. There are no winners in trade wars. And this scares me," the senator said.
House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady released a statement that said the tariffs "are hitting the wrong target."
"When it comes to unfairly traded steel and aluminum, Mexico, Canada, and Europe are not the problem—China is. This action puts American workers and families at risk, whose jobs depend on fairly traded products from these important trading partners. And it hurts our efforts to create good-paying US jobs by selling more 'Made in America' products to customers in these countries," the Texas Republican's statement said.
The news Thursday reinvigorated discussions about whether Congress would intervene, a point that had been put to rest months ago when the Trump administration announced it would impose new steel and aluminum tariffs across the board only to turn around and issue a wide list of exemptions to allies -- which Republicans applauded -- while it negotiated.
Still, congressional options are limited. Over the last several decades, Congress has outsourced key trading decisions to the executive branch, and taking back that power would require a serious, united front from GOP leaders in a midterm election year.
"I call on the administration to continue the exemptions and negotiations with these important national security partners to find a solution and address the damage caused to American exporters. And the administration will need to come to Capitol Hill to provide answers about the indiscriminate harm these tariffs are causing our local businesses," Brady said.
Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, put it simply: "This is a big mistake."
"These tariffs will raise prices and destroy manufacturing jobs, especially auto jobs, which are one-third of all Tennessee manufacturing jobs. I have urged President Trump to focus on reciprocity -- do for our country what our country does for you -- instead of imposing tariffs, which are basically higher taxes on American consumers," the Tennessee Republican said.
Twit: Senator Pat Toomey
"Bad news that @POTUS has decided to impose taxes on American consumers buying steel and aluminum from our closest allies--Canada, the EU, and Mexico (with whom we run a trade surplus on steel). In addition to higher prices, these tariffs invite retaliation."
Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, released a statement that said the move was "dumb."
"This is dumb. Europe, Canada, and Mexico are not China, and you don't treat allies the same way you treat opponents. We've been down this road before -- blanket protectionism is a big part of why America had a Great Depression. 'Make America Great Again' shouldn't mean 'Make America 1929 Again,'" Sasse said in the statement.
"Bad news that @POTUS has decided to impose taxes on American consumers buying steel and aluminum from our closest allies--Canada, the EU, and Mexico (with whom we run a trade surplus on steel). In addition to higher prices, these tariffs invite retaliation," tweeted Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican.
Feckless cunt
Comedian Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump a 'feckless cunt'
By Maegan Vazquez
Comedian Samantha Bee called White House senior adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt" on her TBS show "Full Frontal" for failing to take action to stop the separation of undocumented families.
The comment comes in the wake of a national debate about incendiary language in the political arena. Earlier this week, Roseanne Barr's hit television show was abruptly canceled after she made a racist reference on Twitter to former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett.
"Tearing children away from their parents is so evil, it's the inciting incident in almost every movie we've ever cared about," Bee said during her monologue, presenting Obama-era photos of undocumented children sleeping in cages.
After Ivanka Trump posted a photo of her and her child amid resurfaced reports that undocumented children are being separated from their families when they are apprehended by immigration authorities, Bee referenced Barr's recent tweet.
"Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to post the second most oblivious tweet we've seen this week," Bee said. "You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless cunt!"
"He listens to you," she added. "Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to fuckiing stop it. Tell him it was an Obama thing and see how it goes, OK?"
Both CNN and TBS, which hosts Bee's show, are owned by Turner, a subsidiary of Time Warner.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Bee's language was "vile and vicious."
"The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling. Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network," Sanders said.
Messages left with representatives for TBS were not immediately returned.
Sanders' response is notably stronger than her public reaction to Barr's comments. Asked about the former ABC star's remarks at Wednesday's White House briefing, Sanders said neither Trump nor the White House were defending them, which she called "inappropriate," but she also insisted the administration was owed an apology from the network for airing derogatory comments about the White House.
"The President is pointing to the hypocrisy in the media saying the most horrible things about this President and nobody addresses it," Sanders told reporters at Wednesday's press briefing.
Bee frequently uses foul language while performing. She used the obscene word to describe President Woodrow Wilson during her "Not the White House Correspondents Dinner" TBS special last year.
By Maegan Vazquez
Comedian Samantha Bee called White House senior adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt" on her TBS show "Full Frontal" for failing to take action to stop the separation of undocumented families.
The comment comes in the wake of a national debate about incendiary language in the political arena. Earlier this week, Roseanne Barr's hit television show was abruptly canceled after she made a racist reference on Twitter to former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett.
"Tearing children away from their parents is so evil, it's the inciting incident in almost every movie we've ever cared about," Bee said during her monologue, presenting Obama-era photos of undocumented children sleeping in cages.
After Ivanka Trump posted a photo of her and her child amid resurfaced reports that undocumented children are being separated from their families when they are apprehended by immigration authorities, Bee referenced Barr's recent tweet.
"Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to post the second most oblivious tweet we've seen this week," Bee said. "You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless cunt!"
"He listens to you," she added. "Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to fuckiing stop it. Tell him it was an Obama thing and see how it goes, OK?"
Both CNN and TBS, which hosts Bee's show, are owned by Turner, a subsidiary of Time Warner.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Bee's language was "vile and vicious."
"The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling. Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network," Sanders said.
Messages left with representatives for TBS were not immediately returned.
Sanders' response is notably stronger than her public reaction to Barr's comments. Asked about the former ABC star's remarks at Wednesday's White House briefing, Sanders said neither Trump nor the White House were defending them, which she called "inappropriate," but she also insisted the administration was owed an apology from the network for airing derogatory comments about the White House.
"The President is pointing to the hypocrisy in the media saying the most horrible things about this President and nobody addresses it," Sanders told reporters at Wednesday's press briefing.
Bee frequently uses foul language while performing. She used the obscene word to describe President Woodrow Wilson during her "Not the White House Correspondents Dinner" TBS special last year.
Metal tariffs...
Trump hits allies with metal tariffs; Mexico and EU vow to retaliate
by Jeremy Diamond and Julia Horowitz
President Trump is imposing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum from three of America's biggest trading partners — Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
The trade penalties, 25% on imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum, take effect at midnight, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters Thursday.
Mexico and the EU immediately announced plans to retaliate with their own tariffs against American products.
Trump announced worldwide steel and aluminum tariffs in March but granted exemptions to some major trading partners.
Canada, Mexico and the EU were among the countries granted relief while the United States pursued negotiations to address the administration's concerns about the state of domestic steel and aluminum production. Those negotiations had a Friday deadline.
Trump's decision could raise prices for Americans on a range of everyday products. It could also place the United States in a trade dispute on more than one front. The administration is separately moving ahead with tariffs on Chinese goods.
Trump imposed the steel and aluminum penalties under a 1962 law that gives the president broad power to increase or reduce tariffs on goods deemed critical to national security.
"We take the view that without a strong economy, you cannot have strong national security," Ross told reporters.
Trump's announcement lifted American steel and aluminum stocks because those companies stand to benefit from penalties against their foreign competitors. U.S. Steel climbed 3%. But the broader market sank because of trade war fears. The Dow fell about 200 points.
Mexico quickly said the US action was not justified, and vowed to retaliate with comparable penalties on American lamps, pork, fruit, cheese and flat steel.
Europe also said it would start the process for enacting retaliatory tariffs. It did not announce details, but the bloc has previously threatened 25% tariffs on US products such as motorcycles, denim, cigarettes, cranberry juice and peanut butter.
"Today is a bad day for world trade," EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said in a statement. "We did everything to avoid this outcome."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau planned a press conference later in the day. Canada previously threatened to "take responsive measures to defend its trade interests and workers."
Getting rid of the exemptions for Canada and Mexico could also complicate ongoing negotiations on NAFTA.
The NAFTA talks were one factor in the administration's decision to grant exemptions to Canada and Mexico from the steel and aluminum tariffs. But Ross said Thursday that those talks "are taking longer than we hoped."
Canada was the largest exporter of steel to the United States by value last year, according to data from Wood Mackenzie. Mexico was the third largest, behind South Korea.
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it is moving forward with tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods as punishment for intellectual property theft.
The Chinese government said the announcement was "obviously in violation of the consensus reached in Washington recently by both China and the United States." Both parties had previously said that tariffs would be put on hold as talks continued.
Ross is scheduled to go to China this weekend for a third round of negotiations.
The United States is also exploring the possibility of putting new tariffs on cars. Last week, The Trump administration announced an investigation into whether automobile imports are hurting US national security, laying the groundwork for another trade fight.
by Jeremy Diamond and Julia Horowitz
President Trump is imposing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum from three of America's biggest trading partners — Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
The trade penalties, 25% on imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum, take effect at midnight, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters Thursday.
Mexico and the EU immediately announced plans to retaliate with their own tariffs against American products.
Trump announced worldwide steel and aluminum tariffs in March but granted exemptions to some major trading partners.
Canada, Mexico and the EU were among the countries granted relief while the United States pursued negotiations to address the administration's concerns about the state of domestic steel and aluminum production. Those negotiations had a Friday deadline.
Trump's decision could raise prices for Americans on a range of everyday products. It could also place the United States in a trade dispute on more than one front. The administration is separately moving ahead with tariffs on Chinese goods.
Trump imposed the steel and aluminum penalties under a 1962 law that gives the president broad power to increase or reduce tariffs on goods deemed critical to national security.
"We take the view that without a strong economy, you cannot have strong national security," Ross told reporters.
Trump's announcement lifted American steel and aluminum stocks because those companies stand to benefit from penalties against their foreign competitors. U.S. Steel climbed 3%. But the broader market sank because of trade war fears. The Dow fell about 200 points.
Mexico quickly said the US action was not justified, and vowed to retaliate with comparable penalties on American lamps, pork, fruit, cheese and flat steel.
Europe also said it would start the process for enacting retaliatory tariffs. It did not announce details, but the bloc has previously threatened 25% tariffs on US products such as motorcycles, denim, cigarettes, cranberry juice and peanut butter.
"Today is a bad day for world trade," EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said in a statement. "We did everything to avoid this outcome."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau planned a press conference later in the day. Canada previously threatened to "take responsive measures to defend its trade interests and workers."
Getting rid of the exemptions for Canada and Mexico could also complicate ongoing negotiations on NAFTA.
The NAFTA talks were one factor in the administration's decision to grant exemptions to Canada and Mexico from the steel and aluminum tariffs. But Ross said Thursday that those talks "are taking longer than we hoped."
Canada was the largest exporter of steel to the United States by value last year, according to data from Wood Mackenzie. Mexico was the third largest, behind South Korea.
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it is moving forward with tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods as punishment for intellectual property theft.
The Chinese government said the announcement was "obviously in violation of the consensus reached in Washington recently by both China and the United States." Both parties had previously said that tariffs would be put on hold as talks continued.
Ross is scheduled to go to China this weekend for a third round of negotiations.
The United States is also exploring the possibility of putting new tariffs on cars. Last week, The Trump administration announced an investigation into whether automobile imports are hurting US national security, laying the groundwork for another trade fight.
Sketchy casino industry now dominates....
Trump Aides Go Where Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay Went Before
Sweatshops no longer rule the Northern Mariana Islands. Now, a sketchy casino industry dominates.
NOAH LANARD
When the Best Sunshine Live casino opened in the Northern Mariana Islands in late 2015, the local press described it as a temporary training facility for a forthcoming permanent casino. It was nestled in a drab duty-free mall on Saipan—a US island nearly 4,000 miles west of Hawaii—and lacked the usual trappings of a casino, such as a hotel. A year later, Bloomberg reported that it might be “the most successful casino of all time.” Best Sunshine’s VIP tables were each bringing in nearly eight times as much money per table as those at the biggest casinos in Macau, the most lucrative gambling haven in the world. Macau gambling promoters told Bloomberg that Imperial Pacific, the casino’s Hong Kong-based owner, was either inflating its numbers or facilitating money laundering. Eight casino executives and analysts later said there was no way to generate such high betting volumes legitimately.
Local critics have alleged that Imperial Pacific, with the backing of the islands’ government, has evaded regulation as it puts workers in danger and enables a sketchy scheme for Chinese gamblers to convert money into foreign currencies. But as the company and the government make their latest push in Washington, seeking permission from Congress to hire foreign workers for the casino and other businesses, they have powerful allies on their side: two former Donald Trump campaign aides and their Washington lobbying firm with ties to onetime Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Their work is part of a now-familiar pattern of former Trump advisers signing up lobbying clients with ties to foreign officials or companies battling allegations of misconduct. The efforts to trade on connections to Trump often aren’t subtle. Turnberry Solutions, the firm founded by the Trump campaign aides lobbying for the Northern Mariana Islands, shares a name with the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.
A few months after Trump became president, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) hired former Trump campaign adviser Jason Osborne to be its man in Washington. (Osborne had previously advised the former CNMI governor.) A business card obtained by Mother Jones lists Osborne as the director of the Washington office of the CNMI government. And in September 2017, the CNMI hired Turnberry Solutions, founded by Osborne and fellow Trump campaign veteran Mike Rubino, to secure the extension of a foreign work visa program that drives the local economy, including the casino. The Northern Marianas Business Alliance, a newly formed group of local business interests that includes Imperial Pacific, hired Turnberry one week later.
Politico reported in November that Lewandowski was working and sleeping in Turnberry’s Capitol Hill office when he was in Washington and that he had once been on a conference call with Turnberry and one of its clients. His friend John Fredericks told Politico the building could be considered the “Turnberry Embassy” before adding, “Nobody knows what Turnberry is, so I would call it the Lewandowski Embassy.” But Lewandowski has denied any involvement with Turnberry. Osborne told Mother Jones this month that Lewandowski “has nothing to do with the CNMI or the firm.” Fox News reported soon afterward that Lewandowski is joining Vice President Mike Pence’s political action committee to work on the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Osborne says he was asked to serve as the Washington “eyes and ears” of the CNMI’s Republican governor, Ralph Torres. His lobbying focuses on extending the CW-1 visa, a temporary guest worker program for the CNMI that has broad support in the local business community. Osborne says he is not lobbying to protect Imperial Pacific from potential money-laundering violations. The Government Accountability Office estimated last year that the CNMI’s GDP would have been 26 to 62 percent smaller in 2015 without CW-1 workers, who come mainly from the Philippines. A bill introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to extend the visas through 2029 passed the Senate unopposed last month, and Osborne said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the bill will become law.
Imperial Pacific’s casino relies heavily on foreign labor. In addition to CW-1 visas, Imperial Pacific received permission from the federal government earlier this year to hire roughly 1,500 workers through the H-2B guest worker program. Its contractors have also used unauthorized laborers from overseas. Last March, an undocumented Chinese worker fell to his death at an Imperial Pacific construction site, and colleagues brought him to the hospital in his underwear to obscure his identity and told hospital workers that he fell off a balcony. A week later, the FBI searched the office of an Imperial Pacific contractor who had employed the dead worker through a subsidiary and found spreadsheets listing more than 150 workers as “hei gong,” the Chinese term for undocumented worker. The federal government used the information to charge employees of Imperial Pacific contractors with violating a human smuggling statute. Most of the undocumented workers were sent home after the charges were filed, according to Bloomberg.
In May 2017, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed fines against Imperial Pacific contractors after finding that the construction site lacked safe scaffolding and adequate fall protection. A Department of Labor inspector said in a court declaration that a worker who arrived at the emergency room with a broken back was “promptly transported” to China, even though a doctor recommended immediate hospitalization.
In March, four Chinese contractors working on Imperial Pacific’s permanent casino agreed to pay nearly $14 million in back wages and damages to more than 2,400 employees as part of a settlement with the Department of Labor. Chinese workers did not receive minimum wage or overtime, the Department of Labor found, and they took on debts of more than $6,000 to work at the construction site, which they then had to pay back through their labor. Osborne says Torres has “done a great job of stepping up enforcement and working with the entire business community to try and make sure that everybody is on the same page, particularly as it relates to workers.” He adds, “They know that the federal programs they rely on aren’t going to be there long-term if they don’t get their act together.”
The Northern Mariana Islands were administered by the United States following World War II, and the CNMI officially joined the United States as a territory in 1976. Not subject to US minimum wage and immigration laws until 2009, the CNMI came to depend economically on garment factories that could stamp clothes as “Made in the USA” despite sweatshop conditions. As Mother Jones reported last year, US Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella played a key role in a campaign, led by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and championed in Congress by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, to defend working conditions at the foreign-owned factories. (Abramoff received a four-year prison sentence in 2008 for charges including corrupting public officials and tax evasion, while DeLay’s 2010 conviction on conspiracy and money laundering charges was overturned in 2013.)
Now that the garment factories have shut down, Chinese-owned casinos are moving in as the next big politically-connected industry. Casinos outside of mainland China—in Macau, which is economically autonomous, and now Saipan—are attractive to wealthy Chinese nationals trying to convert their yuan to foreign currencies in order to prevent possible seizure by their government. Gamblers evading Chinese currency controls often play baccarat, a game where the house’s advantage is relatively small, with chips provided on credit. They can then cash out in dollars before paying back the debt in China with yuan.
The Internal Revenue Service sent a “Letter of Examination” to Imperial Pacific in March 2017 and conducted an on-site inspection of its financial reporting process in July, according to written responses Torres sent to a Senate committee after a February hearing. In 2016, a former vice president at the Best Sunshine Live casino sued Imperial Pacific for wrongful termination, alleging that the company had fired him after he told superiors that it was instructing gamblers on how to avoid US anti-money-laundering regulations. Imperial Pacific denied the allegations before reaching a settlement last March. (Mark Brown, a former top executive at Trump’s now-defunct casino company, served as Imperial Pacific’s chairman until December.)
Bloomberg reported in February that Imperial Pacific has paid millions of dollars to lease land from Torres’ relatives. In 2015, the governor’s sister-in-law bought a piece of land for $180,000 and leased it about five months later to what appeared to be an Imperial Pacific shell company for $667,000. The lease was signed by a member of Imperial Pacific’s board and the governor’s older brother. Torres wrote on his Facebook page that “any allegations” in the Bloomberg article are “blatantly false” and reflect the perspective of “an off-island writer from London.” Torres’ office sent Mother Jones an earlier statement that called the allegations about the land deals in the article “improper” and said the article “lacks an understanding of the size” of the CNMI and the governor’s family, which includes 70 first cousins. Imperial Pacific also provided a earlier statement that said the company “repudiates all allegations of wrongdoing” in the article and would “take legal action where warranted.”
Juan Babauta, a former CNMI governor who is trying to unseat Torres in this year’s election, told Mother Jones, “It is common knowledge that the governor of the CNMI is in the pocket of the casino industry.” Babauta later clarified that he was not personally accusing Torres of corruption but rather characterizing a common sentiment on the islands.
In March, Bloomberg reported that federal agents raided an Imperial Pacific office in Saipan. It was not clear what they may have been looking for. The FBI said in a written statement that it “does not regularly comment on criminal investigations,” but it added that “public corruption is the FBI’s top criminal investigative priority.” Imperial Pacific denied that the raid took place and said it would “take legal actions immediately” in response to the Bloomberg story.
If Imperial Pacific is investigated for financial wrongdoing, it would not be the first CNMI casino operator to attract federal scrutiny. In 2015, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network fined the now-shuttered Tinian Dynasty casino $75 million for “egregious anti-money laundering violations.” Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s director at the time, said the casino’s “management willfully facilitated suspicious transactions and even provided helpful hints for skirting and avoiding the laws in the US and overseas.” Torres told senators last year that the casino was not aware that it was subject to the federal anti-money-laundering measures, but casino operators in the CNMI now “have full understanding of the application of federal regulations” and are “expected to conform to them.”
Along with his lobbying, Osborne serves as the executive director of the CNMI Republican Party and advised the Trump campaign on territorial policy. Trump took 73 percent of the vote at the commonwealth’s Republican caucus after Torres endorsed him. Last April, Torres met with Trump in the Oval Office. “This is the first governor to endorse me,” Trump boasted. “He is a longtime friend.”
Osborne says he first got involved in the CNMI more than a decade ago, when a friend introduced him to then-Gov. Benigno Fitial. After working on Fitial’s successful reelection campaign, Osborne was called in by an investment bank to defend a controversial energy deal that helped take the governor down. In August 2012, Fitial approved a $190 million no-bid power plant deal soon after issuing a disaster declaration that allowed him to award sole-source contracts. The deal called for building a diesel plant even though Fitial had argued that a “renewable energy crisis” was one of the reasons he needed emergency powers. (The power company was promoted on Saipan by a mainlander who had served 18 months in prison in the 1980s for theft and fraud related to a phony oil deal.)
Fitial was later impeached for a wide range of misconduct, including approving the power deal. He also pleaded guilty to charges related to temporarily releasing his masseuse from prison so that he could receive a late-night massage at home and directing local police to physically block a summons from getting to his attorney general—a move that led to a dramatic showdown at the airport, captured by local TV station KSPN.
Sweatshops no longer rule the Northern Mariana Islands. Now, a sketchy casino industry dominates.
NOAH LANARD
When the Best Sunshine Live casino opened in the Northern Mariana Islands in late 2015, the local press described it as a temporary training facility for a forthcoming permanent casino. It was nestled in a drab duty-free mall on Saipan—a US island nearly 4,000 miles west of Hawaii—and lacked the usual trappings of a casino, such as a hotel. A year later, Bloomberg reported that it might be “the most successful casino of all time.” Best Sunshine’s VIP tables were each bringing in nearly eight times as much money per table as those at the biggest casinos in Macau, the most lucrative gambling haven in the world. Macau gambling promoters told Bloomberg that Imperial Pacific, the casino’s Hong Kong-based owner, was either inflating its numbers or facilitating money laundering. Eight casino executives and analysts later said there was no way to generate such high betting volumes legitimately.
Local critics have alleged that Imperial Pacific, with the backing of the islands’ government, has evaded regulation as it puts workers in danger and enables a sketchy scheme for Chinese gamblers to convert money into foreign currencies. But as the company and the government make their latest push in Washington, seeking permission from Congress to hire foreign workers for the casino and other businesses, they have powerful allies on their side: two former Donald Trump campaign aides and their Washington lobbying firm with ties to onetime Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
Their work is part of a now-familiar pattern of former Trump advisers signing up lobbying clients with ties to foreign officials or companies battling allegations of misconduct. The efforts to trade on connections to Trump often aren’t subtle. Turnberry Solutions, the firm founded by the Trump campaign aides lobbying for the Northern Mariana Islands, shares a name with the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.
A few months after Trump became president, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) hired former Trump campaign adviser Jason Osborne to be its man in Washington. (Osborne had previously advised the former CNMI governor.) A business card obtained by Mother Jones lists Osborne as the director of the Washington office of the CNMI government. And in September 2017, the CNMI hired Turnberry Solutions, founded by Osborne and fellow Trump campaign veteran Mike Rubino, to secure the extension of a foreign work visa program that drives the local economy, including the casino. The Northern Marianas Business Alliance, a newly formed group of local business interests that includes Imperial Pacific, hired Turnberry one week later.
Politico reported in November that Lewandowski was working and sleeping in Turnberry’s Capitol Hill office when he was in Washington and that he had once been on a conference call with Turnberry and one of its clients. His friend John Fredericks told Politico the building could be considered the “Turnberry Embassy” before adding, “Nobody knows what Turnberry is, so I would call it the Lewandowski Embassy.” But Lewandowski has denied any involvement with Turnberry. Osborne told Mother Jones this month that Lewandowski “has nothing to do with the CNMI or the firm.” Fox News reported soon afterward that Lewandowski is joining Vice President Mike Pence’s political action committee to work on the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Osborne says he was asked to serve as the Washington “eyes and ears” of the CNMI’s Republican governor, Ralph Torres. His lobbying focuses on extending the CW-1 visa, a temporary guest worker program for the CNMI that has broad support in the local business community. Osborne says he is not lobbying to protect Imperial Pacific from potential money-laundering violations. The Government Accountability Office estimated last year that the CNMI’s GDP would have been 26 to 62 percent smaller in 2015 without CW-1 workers, who come mainly from the Philippines. A bill introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to extend the visas through 2029 passed the Senate unopposed last month, and Osborne said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the bill will become law.
Imperial Pacific’s casino relies heavily on foreign labor. In addition to CW-1 visas, Imperial Pacific received permission from the federal government earlier this year to hire roughly 1,500 workers through the H-2B guest worker program. Its contractors have also used unauthorized laborers from overseas. Last March, an undocumented Chinese worker fell to his death at an Imperial Pacific construction site, and colleagues brought him to the hospital in his underwear to obscure his identity and told hospital workers that he fell off a balcony. A week later, the FBI searched the office of an Imperial Pacific contractor who had employed the dead worker through a subsidiary and found spreadsheets listing more than 150 workers as “hei gong,” the Chinese term for undocumented worker. The federal government used the information to charge employees of Imperial Pacific contractors with violating a human smuggling statute. Most of the undocumented workers were sent home after the charges were filed, according to Bloomberg.
In May 2017, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed fines against Imperial Pacific contractors after finding that the construction site lacked safe scaffolding and adequate fall protection. A Department of Labor inspector said in a court declaration that a worker who arrived at the emergency room with a broken back was “promptly transported” to China, even though a doctor recommended immediate hospitalization.
In March, four Chinese contractors working on Imperial Pacific’s permanent casino agreed to pay nearly $14 million in back wages and damages to more than 2,400 employees as part of a settlement with the Department of Labor. Chinese workers did not receive minimum wage or overtime, the Department of Labor found, and they took on debts of more than $6,000 to work at the construction site, which they then had to pay back through their labor. Osborne says Torres has “done a great job of stepping up enforcement and working with the entire business community to try and make sure that everybody is on the same page, particularly as it relates to workers.” He adds, “They know that the federal programs they rely on aren’t going to be there long-term if they don’t get their act together.”
The Northern Mariana Islands were administered by the United States following World War II, and the CNMI officially joined the United States as a territory in 1976. Not subject to US minimum wage and immigration laws until 2009, the CNMI came to depend economically on garment factories that could stamp clothes as “Made in the USA” despite sweatshop conditions. As Mother Jones reported last year, US Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella played a key role in a campaign, led by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and championed in Congress by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, to defend working conditions at the foreign-owned factories. (Abramoff received a four-year prison sentence in 2008 for charges including corrupting public officials and tax evasion, while DeLay’s 2010 conviction on conspiracy and money laundering charges was overturned in 2013.)
Now that the garment factories have shut down, Chinese-owned casinos are moving in as the next big politically-connected industry. Casinos outside of mainland China—in Macau, which is economically autonomous, and now Saipan—are attractive to wealthy Chinese nationals trying to convert their yuan to foreign currencies in order to prevent possible seizure by their government. Gamblers evading Chinese currency controls often play baccarat, a game where the house’s advantage is relatively small, with chips provided on credit. They can then cash out in dollars before paying back the debt in China with yuan.
The Internal Revenue Service sent a “Letter of Examination” to Imperial Pacific in March 2017 and conducted an on-site inspection of its financial reporting process in July, according to written responses Torres sent to a Senate committee after a February hearing. In 2016, a former vice president at the Best Sunshine Live casino sued Imperial Pacific for wrongful termination, alleging that the company had fired him after he told superiors that it was instructing gamblers on how to avoid US anti-money-laundering regulations. Imperial Pacific denied the allegations before reaching a settlement last March. (Mark Brown, a former top executive at Trump’s now-defunct casino company, served as Imperial Pacific’s chairman until December.)
Bloomberg reported in February that Imperial Pacific has paid millions of dollars to lease land from Torres’ relatives. In 2015, the governor’s sister-in-law bought a piece of land for $180,000 and leased it about five months later to what appeared to be an Imperial Pacific shell company for $667,000. The lease was signed by a member of Imperial Pacific’s board and the governor’s older brother. Torres wrote on his Facebook page that “any allegations” in the Bloomberg article are “blatantly false” and reflect the perspective of “an off-island writer from London.” Torres’ office sent Mother Jones an earlier statement that called the allegations about the land deals in the article “improper” and said the article “lacks an understanding of the size” of the CNMI and the governor’s family, which includes 70 first cousins. Imperial Pacific also provided a earlier statement that said the company “repudiates all allegations of wrongdoing” in the article and would “take legal action where warranted.”
Juan Babauta, a former CNMI governor who is trying to unseat Torres in this year’s election, told Mother Jones, “It is common knowledge that the governor of the CNMI is in the pocket of the casino industry.” Babauta later clarified that he was not personally accusing Torres of corruption but rather characterizing a common sentiment on the islands.
In March, Bloomberg reported that federal agents raided an Imperial Pacific office in Saipan. It was not clear what they may have been looking for. The FBI said in a written statement that it “does not regularly comment on criminal investigations,” but it added that “public corruption is the FBI’s top criminal investigative priority.” Imperial Pacific denied that the raid took place and said it would “take legal actions immediately” in response to the Bloomberg story.
If Imperial Pacific is investigated for financial wrongdoing, it would not be the first CNMI casino operator to attract federal scrutiny. In 2015, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network fined the now-shuttered Tinian Dynasty casino $75 million for “egregious anti-money laundering violations.” Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s director at the time, said the casino’s “management willfully facilitated suspicious transactions and even provided helpful hints for skirting and avoiding the laws in the US and overseas.” Torres told senators last year that the casino was not aware that it was subject to the federal anti-money-laundering measures, but casino operators in the CNMI now “have full understanding of the application of federal regulations” and are “expected to conform to them.”
Along with his lobbying, Osborne serves as the executive director of the CNMI Republican Party and advised the Trump campaign on territorial policy. Trump took 73 percent of the vote at the commonwealth’s Republican caucus after Torres endorsed him. Last April, Torres met with Trump in the Oval Office. “This is the first governor to endorse me,” Trump boasted. “He is a longtime friend.”
Osborne says he first got involved in the CNMI more than a decade ago, when a friend introduced him to then-Gov. Benigno Fitial. After working on Fitial’s successful reelection campaign, Osborne was called in by an investment bank to defend a controversial energy deal that helped take the governor down. In August 2012, Fitial approved a $190 million no-bid power plant deal soon after issuing a disaster declaration that allowed him to award sole-source contracts. The deal called for building a diesel plant even though Fitial had argued that a “renewable energy crisis” was one of the reasons he needed emergency powers. (The power company was promoted on Saipan by a mainlander who had served 18 months in prison in the 1980s for theft and fraud related to a phony oil deal.)
Fitial was later impeached for a wide range of misconduct, including approving the power deal. He also pleaded guilty to charges related to temporarily releasing his masseuse from prison so that he could receive a late-night massage at home and directing local police to physically block a summons from getting to his attorney general—a move that led to a dramatic showdown at the airport, captured by local TV station KSPN.
Mock Dana Rohrabacher
California Democrat Enlists Former “Seinfeld” Star to Mock Dana Rohrabacher
A new ad features Jason Alexander, dad jokes, and dinosaur farts
BRYAN SCHATZ
Former Seinfeld star Jason Alexander has a new role. In a new campaign ad, he plays the moderator of a mock debate between Democratic congressional hopeful Harley Rouda and his Southern California district’s 15-term Republican incumbent, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.
The three-minute clip features an increasingly baffled-looking Alexander lobbing questions at a monitor showing news clips of Rohrabacher. On the other side of the stage, Rouda dishes out dad-joke takedowns in a noticeably stiff attempt at thespianism.
In response to a question about his position on climate change, a soundbite of Rohrabacher at a 2007 hearing plays: “Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud… We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence or who knows.” Rouda responds, “The only dinosaurs around Orange County are in theme parks. Ninety-seven percent of scientists know climate change is being driven by our overuse of fossil fuels.”
Michael McLaughlin, Rouda’s campaign manager, says that Alexander is friends with a Rouda supporter and agreed to participate in the spot for free. The “lighthearted” skit, he says, presents Rouda as the “right choice to go up against Dana Rohrabacher.”
The ad was launched online with less than two weeks before the June 5 primary election, in which Rouda will face a crowded field of 12 candidates, including Rohrabacher.
The response to the spot, McLaughlin says, has been positive. Yet not everyone is in love with it. “My god,” wrote one commenter on YouTube, “This was one of the cringiest things I’ve ever seen. Whoever convinced you to spend even a dollar on making this should quit campaigns, and it obviously cost way more than a dollar.”
The ad cost eight grand to produce, according to McLaughlin. “We’ve been sitting on this script for months and waiting to find the right person to execute it,” he says. When asked about its unusual length, he says, “I think the Jason Alexander part is a good enough of hook to get someone committed to watch it through.”
A new ad features Jason Alexander, dad jokes, and dinosaur farts
BRYAN SCHATZ
Former Seinfeld star Jason Alexander has a new role. In a new campaign ad, he plays the moderator of a mock debate between Democratic congressional hopeful Harley Rouda and his Southern California district’s 15-term Republican incumbent, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.
The three-minute clip features an increasingly baffled-looking Alexander lobbing questions at a monitor showing news clips of Rohrabacher. On the other side of the stage, Rouda dishes out dad-joke takedowns in a noticeably stiff attempt at thespianism.
In response to a question about his position on climate change, a soundbite of Rohrabacher at a 2007 hearing plays: “Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud… We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence or who knows.” Rouda responds, “The only dinosaurs around Orange County are in theme parks. Ninety-seven percent of scientists know climate change is being driven by our overuse of fossil fuels.”
Michael McLaughlin, Rouda’s campaign manager, says that Alexander is friends with a Rouda supporter and agreed to participate in the spot for free. The “lighthearted” skit, he says, presents Rouda as the “right choice to go up against Dana Rohrabacher.”
The ad was launched online with less than two weeks before the June 5 primary election, in which Rouda will face a crowded field of 12 candidates, including Rohrabacher.
The response to the spot, McLaughlin says, has been positive. Yet not everyone is in love with it. “My god,” wrote one commenter on YouTube, “This was one of the cringiest things I’ve ever seen. Whoever convinced you to spend even a dollar on making this should quit campaigns, and it obviously cost way more than a dollar.”
The ad cost eight grand to produce, according to McLaughlin. “We’ve been sitting on this script for months and waiting to find the right person to execute it,” he says. When asked about its unusual length, he says, “I think the Jason Alexander part is a good enough of hook to get someone committed to watch it through.”
Tweeted as Thousands of Puerto Ricans Died
“We Have Done a Great Job”: What Trump Tweeted as Thousands of Puerto Ricans Died
The president no longer says much about Hurricane Maria.
TIM MURPHY
On Tuesday, researchers at Harvard published a new study showing that the death toll from Hurricane Maria was 75 times higher than what the government had previously reported. By that calculation, it was 290 times higher than the 16 fatalities President Donald Trump himself announced during a visit to the island last year, during a bizarre appearance in which he contrasted the devastation in front of him with “a real catastrophe, like Katrina.” (We now know that Maria was more than twice as deadly as Katrina.) With the exception of the 1900 hurricane that wiped out Galveston, Texas, Maria killed more Americans than any other disaster on record, including the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake. It killed more people than the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Trump has not commented publicly on the study. In fact, he hasn’t tweeted about Puerto Rico in seven months. But his statements about the island in the immediate aftermath of the storm are worth revisiting in light of the new numbers.
His tweets generally fell into two categories: absolving himself of responsibility for rebuilding, and demanding credit for the response. In the former, Trump frequently referred to the island’s pre-existing economic problems, implying that any complications with the recovery effort wouldn’t be his fault.
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"...The fact is that Puerto Rico has been destroyed by two hurricanes. Big decisions will have to be made as to the cost of its rebuilding!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"The wonderful people of Puerto Rico, with their unmatched spirit, know how bad things were before the H's. I will always be with them!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
""Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making." says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of....."
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble.."
“Big decisions will have to made” isn’t exactly subtle, and a subsequent investigation by Politico puts these tweets in a clearer context: In the aftermath of last summer’s storms, the administration treated Texas—which was hammered by Hurricane Harvey—far more favorably than it did Puerto Rico.
But Trump also heaped praise on his own disaster response, even as the death toll in Puerto Rico mounted:
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello just stated: "The Administration and the President, every time we've spoken, they've delivered......"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico. Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates,..."
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"The Fake News Networks are working overtime in Puerto Rico doing their best to take the spirit away from our soldiers and first R's. Shame!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"FEMA & First Responders are doing a GREAT job in Puerto Rico. Massive food & water delivered. Docks & electric grid dead. Locals trying...."
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Puerto Rico is devastated. Phone system, electric grid many roads, gone. FEMA and First Responders are amazing. Governor said "great job!""
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Despite the Fake News Media in conjunction with the Dems, an amazing job is being done in Puerto Rico. Great people!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"To the people of Puerto Rico:
Do not believe the #FakeNews!#PRStrong"
And lastly:
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Nobody could have done what I’ve done for #PuertoRico with so little appreciation. So much work!"
Thirteen years ago, Hurricane Katrina turned “heckuva job”—a stray comment from President George W. Bush about his FEMA director, Michael Brown—into a generation-defining gaffe. Trump said the same thing about himself, and we’ve hardly talked about it since.
The president no longer says much about Hurricane Maria.
TIM MURPHY
On Tuesday, researchers at Harvard published a new study showing that the death toll from Hurricane Maria was 75 times higher than what the government had previously reported. By that calculation, it was 290 times higher than the 16 fatalities President Donald Trump himself announced during a visit to the island last year, during a bizarre appearance in which he contrasted the devastation in front of him with “a real catastrophe, like Katrina.” (We now know that Maria was more than twice as deadly as Katrina.) With the exception of the 1900 hurricane that wiped out Galveston, Texas, Maria killed more Americans than any other disaster on record, including the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake. It killed more people than the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Trump has not commented publicly on the study. In fact, he hasn’t tweeted about Puerto Rico in seven months. But his statements about the island in the immediate aftermath of the storm are worth revisiting in light of the new numbers.
His tweets generally fell into two categories: absolving himself of responsibility for rebuilding, and demanding credit for the response. In the former, Trump frequently referred to the island’s pre-existing economic problems, implying that any complications with the recovery effort wouldn’t be his fault.
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"...The fact is that Puerto Rico has been destroyed by two hurricanes. Big decisions will have to be made as to the cost of its rebuilding!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"The wonderful people of Puerto Rico, with their unmatched spirit, know how bad things were before the H's. I will always be with them!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
""Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making." says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of....."
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble.."
“Big decisions will have to made” isn’t exactly subtle, and a subsequent investigation by Politico puts these tweets in a clearer context: In the aftermath of last summer’s storms, the administration treated Texas—which was hammered by Hurricane Harvey—far more favorably than it did Puerto Rico.
But Trump also heaped praise on his own disaster response, even as the death toll in Puerto Rico mounted:
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello just stated: "The Administration and the President, every time we've spoken, they've delivered......"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico. Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates,..."
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"The Fake News Networks are working overtime in Puerto Rico doing their best to take the spirit away from our soldiers and first R's. Shame!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"FEMA & First Responders are doing a GREAT job in Puerto Rico. Massive food & water delivered. Docks & electric grid dead. Locals trying...."
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Puerto Rico is devastated. Phone system, electric grid many roads, gone. FEMA and First Responders are amazing. Governor said "great job!""
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Despite the Fake News Media in conjunction with the Dems, an amazing job is being done in Puerto Rico. Great people!"
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"To the people of Puerto Rico:
Do not believe the #FakeNews!#PRStrong"
And lastly:
Twit: Donald J. Trump
"Nobody could have done what I’ve done for #PuertoRico with so little appreciation. So much work!"
Thirteen years ago, Hurricane Katrina turned “heckuva job”—a stray comment from President George W. Bush about his FEMA director, Michael Brown—into a generation-defining gaffe. Trump said the same thing about himself, and we’ve hardly talked about it since.
NGC 6744 Close Up
Black hole bounty
Astronomers have discovered evidence for thousands of black holes located near the center of our Milky Way galaxy using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.This black hole bounty consists of stellar-mass black holes, which typically weigh between five to 30 times the mass of our Sun. These newly identified black holes were found within three light years — a relatively short distance on cosmic scales — of the supermassive black hole at our Galaxy's center known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
Theoretical studies of the dynamics of stars in galaxies have indicated that a large population of stellar mass black holes — as many as 20,000 — could drift inward over the eons and collect around Sgr A*. This recent analysis using Chandra data is the first observational evidence for such a black hole bounty.
A black hole by itself is invisible. However, a black hole — or neutron star — locked in close orbit with a star will pull gas from its companion (astronomers call these systems "X-ray binaries"). This material falls into a disk and heats up to millions of degrees and produces X-rays before disappearing into the black hole. Some of these X-ray binaries appear as point-like sources in the Chandra image.
So..? He pleads guilty to crimes, but you pardon him because he was convicted??
Trump says he's giving full pardon to Dinesh D'Souza
Darlene Superville
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will pardon conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud.
As he left Washington for a trip to Texas, Trump tweeted: "Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D'Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!"
D'Souza, a conservative filmmaker, author and speaker was sentenced in September 2014 in federal court in New York to five years of probation after he admitted making illegal contributions to a U.S. Senate candidate in New York.
D'Souza acknowledged that he had two close associates each contribute $10,000 to the Senate campaign of Wendy Long with the understanding that he would reimburse them. Long ended up losing the 2012 race to incumbent Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
D'Souza, who made the documentary "2016: Obama's America," entered the plea a week after the federal judge overseeing his case rejected his claim that he was selectively prosecuted. The judge said D'Souza had shown the court no evidence that he was targeted.
The government said in court papers that D'Souza faced overwhelming evidence of guilt and "now seizes upon the fact that he is an outspoken critic of the Obama administration as an excuse to avoid the consequences of his actions."
D'Souza is a former policy analyst under President Ronald Reagan and a prolific author well known for works critical of former President Barack Obama. He retweeted Trump's tweet about the forthcoming pardon, but did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment sent to his media company, D'Souza Media.
Trump's announcement that he will pardon D'Souza follows the president's granting last week of a rare posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson, boxing's first black heavyweight champion. The pardon cleared Johnson's name more than 100 years after what many viewed as his racially charged conviction in 1913 for traveling with his white girlfriend.
Darlene Superville
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will pardon conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud.
As he left Washington for a trip to Texas, Trump tweeted: "Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D'Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!"
D'Souza, a conservative filmmaker, author and speaker was sentenced in September 2014 in federal court in New York to five years of probation after he admitted making illegal contributions to a U.S. Senate candidate in New York.
D'Souza acknowledged that he had two close associates each contribute $10,000 to the Senate campaign of Wendy Long with the understanding that he would reimburse them. Long ended up losing the 2012 race to incumbent Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
D'Souza, who made the documentary "2016: Obama's America," entered the plea a week after the federal judge overseeing his case rejected his claim that he was selectively prosecuted. The judge said D'Souza had shown the court no evidence that he was targeted.
The government said in court papers that D'Souza faced overwhelming evidence of guilt and "now seizes upon the fact that he is an outspoken critic of the Obama administration as an excuse to avoid the consequences of his actions."
D'Souza is a former policy analyst under President Ronald Reagan and a prolific author well known for works critical of former President Barack Obama. He retweeted Trump's tweet about the forthcoming pardon, but did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment sent to his media company, D'Souza Media.
Trump's announcement that he will pardon D'Souza follows the president's granting last week of a rare posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson, boxing's first black heavyweight champion. The pardon cleared Johnson's name more than 100 years after what many viewed as his racially charged conviction in 1913 for traveling with his white girlfriend.
Killing whales is whaling, no sugar coating that Japan.... Stop the FUCKING whaling!
Murder season
This mightily pisses us off. How and why in the fuck is this still happening?
From Sailing Anarchy
Humane Society International has expressed outrage that 122 pregnant female whales were killed this year in the Southern Ocean as part of Japan’s whaling program NEWREP-A. The information was contained in newly published meeting papers from the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee meeting held in Slovenia in May.
The results show that of the 333 Antarctic minke whales killed this year, 181 were females. 122 or 67 percent of these females were pregnant and 53 or 29 percent were immature animals.
“The killing of 122 pregnant whales is a shocking statistic and sad indictment on the cruelty of Japan’s whale hunt. It is further demonstration, if needed, of the truly gruesome and unnecessary nature of whaling operations, especially when non-lethal surveys have been shown to be sufficient for scientific needs,” said Alexia Wellbelove, Senior Program Manager at Humane Society International.
Despite condemnation by the international community and the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 2014 that Japan’s JARPA II Antarctic whaling program was illegal and must stop, Japan re-badged its whaling program and sent its whaling fleet to the Southern Ocean for its annual whale hunt again in 2015. Japan withdrew its recognition of the International Court of Justice as an arbiter of disputes over whales.
This mightily pisses us off. How and why in the fuck is this still happening?
From Sailing Anarchy
Humane Society International has expressed outrage that 122 pregnant female whales were killed this year in the Southern Ocean as part of Japan’s whaling program NEWREP-A. The information was contained in newly published meeting papers from the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee meeting held in Slovenia in May.
The results show that of the 333 Antarctic minke whales killed this year, 181 were females. 122 or 67 percent of these females were pregnant and 53 or 29 percent were immature animals.
“The killing of 122 pregnant whales is a shocking statistic and sad indictment on the cruelty of Japan’s whale hunt. It is further demonstration, if needed, of the truly gruesome and unnecessary nature of whaling operations, especially when non-lethal surveys have been shown to be sufficient for scientific needs,” said Alexia Wellbelove, Senior Program Manager at Humane Society International.
Despite condemnation by the international community and the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 2014 that Japan’s JARPA II Antarctic whaling program was illegal and must stop, Japan re-badged its whaling program and sent its whaling fleet to the Southern Ocean for its annual whale hunt again in 2015. Japan withdrew its recognition of the International Court of Justice as an arbiter of disputes over whales.
Blows up G7 agenda
Trump blows up G7 agenda
US president’s ‘America First’ stance, not for first time, disrupts international diplomatic norms.
By TOM MCTAGUE, DAVID M. HERSZENHORN AND ANDREW RESTUCCIA
With days to go before leaders of the world’s seven largest advanced economies meet in Canada, organizers have a problem — Donald Trump is making it hard to agree on anything.
The annual gathering of the so-called G7 countries is scheduled for June 8 in Quebec, but there remains unprecedented division over the agenda and what joint statements might be issued out of the summit, according to senior officials in Europe and the United States.
And the disruptive force is Trump. From trade rules to climate change, to defense spending and the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. president has torn up the global consensus that existed under his predecessor, Barack Obama, leaving diplomats scrambling to paper over the cracks in the Western alliance and find any common ground on which to build the event. Failure to come together would break with years of tradition at the G7 summit, which has historically served as an annual affirmation that the biggest Western powers are largely aligned.
“The Canadians have no idea what to do,” one adviser to a G7 leader said on condition of anonymity. A second aide — a diplomat for a different G7 leader who has been working on the agenda for months — said they have never been this close to a summit without having general agreement on what leaders would say coming out of it.
A third official working for another administration involved in the summit said the talks have been “disconnected and unfocused.”
“At the moment there’s nothing. It’s just about being nice to women, which is fine, but is that it?” — A senior aide
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had initially wanted to use the June summit to promote issues central to his administration’s agenda, such as climate change, women’s empowerment, peace, economic growth for all and jobs for the future. The liberal leader said the G7 leaders had “a responsibility to ensure that all citizens benefit from our global economy.”
However, these goals, backed with various degrees of enthusiasm by the other leaders, clashed with Trump’s protectionist “America First” agenda, rupturing the usually consensual build-up to such events, according to senior officials across the G7.
By April 26, Trudeau had narrowed his focus to gender equality as the “top priority” of Canada’s G7 presidency.
“Women’s empowerment is a key driver of economic growth that works for everyone,” he said. “All of us benefit when women can participate freely, fully, and equally in our economies and society, and supporting and empowering women and girls must be at the heart of the decisions we make.”
It’s a goal the White House has gone to great lengths to say it supports. But critics accuse the Trump administration of pursuing policies that harm women — pointing to its actions on reproductive health and equal pay. And the president himself has faced a series of allegations from numerous women of unwanted sexual contact. Trump has strongly denied the accusations.
As of last week, there was no agreement on whether there would even be a final communiqué signed by all leaders — as is tradition — or whether Trudeau would simply issue a statement at the end of the summit instead, one official for a G7 country said. A draft communiqué was dropped because it included elements that weren’t signed off by diplomats.
“At the moment there’s nothing,” one senior aide familiar with the discussions of the agenda said. “It’s just about being nice to women, which is fine, but is that it?”
A spokeswoman for Trudeau said that despite any differences, the G7 still shared a central common goal and the summit would focus on it.
“The seven most advanced economies are facing the same challenge: How do we create growth that benefits everyone, including the middle class and people working hard to join it,” spokeswoman Chantal Gagnon said. “The G7 leaders have all been elected, one way or another, on a commitment to make the economy work for everyone, not just for the few, not just for the wealthy.”
Europe gets Trumped again
While diplomats have been working on the agenda for months, real pessimism began to sink in after a meeting of officials in Quebec in April, according to one senior European official.
Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal earlier this month and his announcement last week that the White House is considering punitive new tariffs on the imports of foreign-made cars, angered many in Europe and further strained discussions about the G7 agenda.
In Berlin, officials are worried Trump will use the G7 to publicly take Germany to task over its military spending. The U.S. president raised the issue when Angela Merkel visited the White House last month. While Germany has agreed to spend more, its plans still fall well short of the 2 percent of GDP threshold Trump is demanding.
U.S. officials privately admit the G7 is far apart on a lot of issues going into the summit and there’s considerable uncertainty about what the meetings could produce.
Despite the divisions, aides in two leading G7 countries said it is “way too early” to rule out an agreement on a final joint statement.
There remains hope that leaders can find common ground, particularly on national security issues, one official for a major G7 state said.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro shows the document issued by the National Electoral Council (CNE) that proclaims him as reelected president for the term 2019-2025 | Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images
Notably, U.S. officials have begun using the phrase “environmental resilience” in place of “climate change,” which could provide cover for a joint statement agreed by all.
The division on display in Canada echoes the trouble diplomats faced in the run-up to last year’s G7 in Italy, when officials only just salvaged the summit in Taormina, Sicily.
While a final communiqué was agreed, it could not hide the divisions around the table, particularly over climate change. At the time, Trump was considering whether to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, a global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and offset worldwide temperature rises.
Although the White House delayed its final decision to withdraw from the Paris accord until after the summit, the final G7 statement laid out the division in black and white.
“The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” the statement read.
Trump also agreed to a version of the G7’s traditional anti-protectionist language on trade, but only with major caveats criticizing “unfair trade practices” in the world, which means free trade is not working for everyone.
One issue the G7 countries have found common ground on this year is Venezuela. Last week the G7 released a statement “rejecting the electoral process” leading to the reelection of President Nicolás Maduro.
“By failing to meet accepted international standards and not securing the basic guarantees for an inclusive, fair and democratic process, this election and its outcome lack legitimacy and credibility,” the statement said. “We therefore denounce the Venezuelan presidential election, and its result, as it is not representative of the democratic will of the citizens of Venezuela.”
But it is unclear whether this could form part of a final statement after the summit.
US president’s ‘America First’ stance, not for first time, disrupts international diplomatic norms.
By TOM MCTAGUE, DAVID M. HERSZENHORN AND ANDREW RESTUCCIA
With days to go before leaders of the world’s seven largest advanced economies meet in Canada, organizers have a problem — Donald Trump is making it hard to agree on anything.
The annual gathering of the so-called G7 countries is scheduled for June 8 in Quebec, but there remains unprecedented division over the agenda and what joint statements might be issued out of the summit, according to senior officials in Europe and the United States.
And the disruptive force is Trump. From trade rules to climate change, to defense spending and the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. president has torn up the global consensus that existed under his predecessor, Barack Obama, leaving diplomats scrambling to paper over the cracks in the Western alliance and find any common ground on which to build the event. Failure to come together would break with years of tradition at the G7 summit, which has historically served as an annual affirmation that the biggest Western powers are largely aligned.
“The Canadians have no idea what to do,” one adviser to a G7 leader said on condition of anonymity. A second aide — a diplomat for a different G7 leader who has been working on the agenda for months — said they have never been this close to a summit without having general agreement on what leaders would say coming out of it.
A third official working for another administration involved in the summit said the talks have been “disconnected and unfocused.”
“At the moment there’s nothing. It’s just about being nice to women, which is fine, but is that it?” — A senior aide
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had initially wanted to use the June summit to promote issues central to his administration’s agenda, such as climate change, women’s empowerment, peace, economic growth for all and jobs for the future. The liberal leader said the G7 leaders had “a responsibility to ensure that all citizens benefit from our global economy.”
However, these goals, backed with various degrees of enthusiasm by the other leaders, clashed with Trump’s protectionist “America First” agenda, rupturing the usually consensual build-up to such events, according to senior officials across the G7.
By April 26, Trudeau had narrowed his focus to gender equality as the “top priority” of Canada’s G7 presidency.
“Women’s empowerment is a key driver of economic growth that works for everyone,” he said. “All of us benefit when women can participate freely, fully, and equally in our economies and society, and supporting and empowering women and girls must be at the heart of the decisions we make.”
It’s a goal the White House has gone to great lengths to say it supports. But critics accuse the Trump administration of pursuing policies that harm women — pointing to its actions on reproductive health and equal pay. And the president himself has faced a series of allegations from numerous women of unwanted sexual contact. Trump has strongly denied the accusations.
As of last week, there was no agreement on whether there would even be a final communiqué signed by all leaders — as is tradition — or whether Trudeau would simply issue a statement at the end of the summit instead, one official for a G7 country said. A draft communiqué was dropped because it included elements that weren’t signed off by diplomats.
“At the moment there’s nothing,” one senior aide familiar with the discussions of the agenda said. “It’s just about being nice to women, which is fine, but is that it?”
A spokeswoman for Trudeau said that despite any differences, the G7 still shared a central common goal and the summit would focus on it.
“The seven most advanced economies are facing the same challenge: How do we create growth that benefits everyone, including the middle class and people working hard to join it,” spokeswoman Chantal Gagnon said. “The G7 leaders have all been elected, one way or another, on a commitment to make the economy work for everyone, not just for the few, not just for the wealthy.”
Europe gets Trumped again
While diplomats have been working on the agenda for months, real pessimism began to sink in after a meeting of officials in Quebec in April, according to one senior European official.
Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal earlier this month and his announcement last week that the White House is considering punitive new tariffs on the imports of foreign-made cars, angered many in Europe and further strained discussions about the G7 agenda.
In Berlin, officials are worried Trump will use the G7 to publicly take Germany to task over its military spending. The U.S. president raised the issue when Angela Merkel visited the White House last month. While Germany has agreed to spend more, its plans still fall well short of the 2 percent of GDP threshold Trump is demanding.
U.S. officials privately admit the G7 is far apart on a lot of issues going into the summit and there’s considerable uncertainty about what the meetings could produce.
Despite the divisions, aides in two leading G7 countries said it is “way too early” to rule out an agreement on a final joint statement.
There remains hope that leaders can find common ground, particularly on national security issues, one official for a major G7 state said.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro shows the document issued by the National Electoral Council (CNE) that proclaims him as reelected president for the term 2019-2025 | Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images
Notably, U.S. officials have begun using the phrase “environmental resilience” in place of “climate change,” which could provide cover for a joint statement agreed by all.
The division on display in Canada echoes the trouble diplomats faced in the run-up to last year’s G7 in Italy, when officials only just salvaged the summit in Taormina, Sicily.
While a final communiqué was agreed, it could not hide the divisions around the table, particularly over climate change. At the time, Trump was considering whether to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, a global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and offset worldwide temperature rises.
Although the White House delayed its final decision to withdraw from the Paris accord until after the summit, the final G7 statement laid out the division in black and white.
“The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” the statement read.
Trump also agreed to a version of the G7’s traditional anti-protectionist language on trade, but only with major caveats criticizing “unfair trade practices” in the world, which means free trade is not working for everyone.
One issue the G7 countries have found common ground on this year is Venezuela. Last week the G7 released a statement “rejecting the electoral process” leading to the reelection of President Nicolás Maduro.
“By failing to meet accepted international standards and not securing the basic guarantees for an inclusive, fair and democratic process, this election and its outcome lack legitimacy and credibility,” the statement said. “We therefore denounce the Venezuelan presidential election, and its result, as it is not representative of the democratic will of the citizens of Venezuela.”
But it is unclear whether this could form part of a final statement after the summit.
Moves another case toward sentencing
Mueller team moves another case toward sentencing
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors indicated Tuesday that they're ready to move toward sentencing of another defendant who pleaded guilty in the ongoing probe of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors asked a federal judge to order a pre-sentencing report for Richard Pinedo, a Santa Paula, California, man who admitted in February to a felony identity fraud charge relating to the sale of bank account numbers that apparently helped Russian internet trolls pay for social media ads related to the U.S. presidential race.
Mueller's team and Pinedo's attorneys have said he did not know who he was dealing with when he sold the bank account numbers. A statement of facts Pinedo accepted as part of his plea said that he knew many of his customers were abroad and that he “willfully and intentionally avoided learning” about the stolen identities.
The joint request for the probation-office report on Pinedo's background and his crime suggests that his case could move to sentencing in the next two or three months.
Prosecutors filed a similar request last week in the higher-profile case of George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who appears to have triggered the Trump-Russia probe in May 2016 by telling an Australian diplomat that Russia planned to release hacked emails relating to Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his interactions with advocates for Russia.
A judge ordered that the pre-sentence report on Papadopoulos be prepared by August 1.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors indicated Tuesday that they're ready to move toward sentencing of another defendant who pleaded guilty in the ongoing probe of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.
Prosecutors asked a federal judge to order a pre-sentencing report for Richard Pinedo, a Santa Paula, California, man who admitted in February to a felony identity fraud charge relating to the sale of bank account numbers that apparently helped Russian internet trolls pay for social media ads related to the U.S. presidential race.
Mueller's team and Pinedo's attorneys have said he did not know who he was dealing with when he sold the bank account numbers. A statement of facts Pinedo accepted as part of his plea said that he knew many of his customers were abroad and that he “willfully and intentionally avoided learning” about the stolen identities.
The joint request for the probation-office report on Pinedo's background and his crime suggests that his case could move to sentencing in the next two or three months.
Prosecutors filed a similar request last week in the higher-profile case of George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who appears to have triggered the Trump-Russia probe in May 2016 by telling an Australian diplomat that Russia planned to release hacked emails relating to Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his interactions with advocates for Russia.
A judge ordered that the pre-sentence report on Papadopoulos be prepared by August 1.
Touche..
Drugmaker to Roseanne Barr: 'Racism is not a known side effect' of Ambien
By CRISTIANO LIMA
Roseanne Barr blamed sleeping pills for the racist tweet that got her ABC show canned. But after the drugmaker fired back with a snarky reply Wednesday, the comic may soon be looking to treat a burn.
A day after the network pulled the plug on the hit “Roseanne” reboot in response to her tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a longtime adviser and close friend of former President Barack Obama, the comedian tweeted Wednesday that her initial remark was “unforgivable” and “egregious.” Barr said it was the result of “ambien tweeting,” a reference to the common sleep-aid medication.
Sanofi, the company that makes Ambien, rebutted the assertion Wednesday on Twitter.
“People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world,” the drugmaker’s social media account tweeted. “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”
Barr had sparked outrage on Tuesday by suggested that Jarrett, who was born in Iran and is African-American, was the product of the "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes" having "a baby."
The remarks prompted immediate calls for boycotts of the show. On Tuesday afternoon, ABC announced the cancellation of the program.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC Entertainment’s president, Channing Dungey, said in a statement.
Barr faced repeated backlash in recent months for stoking conspiracy theories online. But her show drew praise from President Donald Trump, who attributed its popularity in part to his supporters. Both Barr and her TV character, Roseanne Conner, voiced support for Trump.
By CRISTIANO LIMA
Roseanne Barr blamed sleeping pills for the racist tweet that got her ABC show canned. But after the drugmaker fired back with a snarky reply Wednesday, the comic may soon be looking to treat a burn.
A day after the network pulled the plug on the hit “Roseanne” reboot in response to her tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a longtime adviser and close friend of former President Barack Obama, the comedian tweeted Wednesday that her initial remark was “unforgivable” and “egregious.” Barr said it was the result of “ambien tweeting,” a reference to the common sleep-aid medication.
Sanofi, the company that makes Ambien, rebutted the assertion Wednesday on Twitter.
“People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world,” the drugmaker’s social media account tweeted. “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”
Barr had sparked outrage on Tuesday by suggested that Jarrett, who was born in Iran and is African-American, was the product of the "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes" having "a baby."
The remarks prompted immediate calls for boycotts of the show. On Tuesday afternoon, ABC announced the cancellation of the program.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC Entertainment’s president, Channing Dungey, said in a statement.
Barr faced repeated backlash in recent months for stoking conspiracy theories online. But her show drew praise from President Donald Trump, who attributed its popularity in part to his supporters. Both Barr and her TV character, Roseanne Conner, voiced support for Trump.
Profited from high-risk insurance plans
New Mexico governor candidate profited from high-risk insurance plans
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from the firm managing a health program that critics say should have been closed after Obamacare.
By RACHANA PRADHAN
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the leading Democratic candidate for governor in New Mexico, profited from the state’s use of a high-priced health-insurance program for seriously ill patients, even after Obamacare made such programs virtually obsolete.
As most states were shuttering their subsidized health-insurance programs for people with pre-existing conditions because they could get coverage through Obamacare, a firm co-founded by Lujan Grisham and a close political ally received millions of dollars to run New Mexico’s program, even as she served in Congress.
The state’s high risk pool is still open even though its premiums are higher on average than Obamacare — 10 percent higher this year — and while all but nine of the 35 states that once had such programs either shut them down or cut off new enrollment. It also continued despite efforts by New Mexico Republicans to curtail the program.
Lujan Grisham, who is facing two rivals for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in next Tuesday’s primary, founded the Delta Consulting Group along with Debbie Armstrong, a longtime political ally and the treasurer of her gubernatorial campaign, in 2008, as both were leaving Cabinet positions under former Gov. Bill Richardson.
In 2009, the firm received the state contract to run the high-risk pool under a competitive-bid process. Between 2014, when Obamacare took effect, and 2017, Delta Consulting Group was paid more than $2 million to run the program, according to contracts POLITICO obtained through a public records request. Its annual payments increased to more than $600,000, even as enrollment dropped.
The 58-year-old Lujan Grisham — scion of one of the state’s leading political families, which includes her uncle, former Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan, and her cousin, Rep. Ben Ray Luján — sold her 50 percent stake in the company last June, six months after she announced she would run to succeed outgoing Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. Her congressional financial disclosure forms show she earned a total of between $165,000 and $350,000 in dividends from Delta from 2013 to 2016.
Lujan Grisham and Armstrong each deny that they have ever exerted pressure on state officials to keep the program open because of their financial interests, although good government experts suggest that influence would be difficult to detect, in part because of New Mexico’s porous conflict of interest rules.
“Absolutely not,” Lujan Grisham, who was elected to Congress in 2012, told POLITICO. “Those are decisions that have to be made by the [high-risk pool] board, based on who they’re serving.”
Armstrong, who was elected to the New Mexico Legislature in 2014 and briefly worked on Lujan Grisham’s congressional staff, is also the high-risk pool’s executive director. Last year, she was named chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee of the New Mexico House, where a Martinez administration-backed bill that would have limited high-risk pool enrollment and saved the state budget up to $43 million a year stalled, after the committee voted to table it.
Armstrong said she didn’t participate in the vote or discussions about the bill, though she did not formally recuse herself. In New Mexico, recusal rules say House members are required to vote on all legislation unless excused by a majority vote. But lax enforcement and vague wording mean the rules are open to broad interpretation, and formal recusals are rarely taken, according to legislators in the two major parties and ethics experts.
Nonetheless, critics say they are puzzled over why the Legislature continues to maintain a costly high-risk pool that was designed to address a problem — the inability of people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance — that Obamacare solved. The pool is costly to New Mexico taxpayers because, while it is funded through a tax on private insurers, those same companies then get a credit on their state taxes. Obamacare, by contrast, is federally subsidized.
Dan Foley, a Republican and former minority whip of the New Mexico House, said extending the high-risk pool is, among other problems, unfair to those patients — a “travesty,” he said — because it charges them more than Obamacare for essentially the same coverage.
“I would consider that fraud,” Foley said. “The high-risk pool was set up to cover people back in the day when we could disqualify someone for health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. That’s the only reason why it was there.”
***
Democrats nationally maintain that Obamacare provided better, cheaper options for seriously ill patients than high-risk pools, which most states created long before the 2010 law was enacted to provide a lifeline to people who couldn’t get coverage anywhere else.
After 2014, when Obamacare took effect, 23 states closed their high-risk pools entirely, with many Democrats touting the change as one of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Paradoxically, New Mexico’s Democrats have been some of the staunchest defenders of maintaining their state’s high-risk pool. Lujan Grisham and Armstrong are among them. They argue that the high-risk pool gives some patients with diseases like advanced cancer more options, including making it easier to keep their own doctor.
“If you have cancer and you are looking for an immediate access or continuity of care with your current oncologist and the market shifts and they’re out of network, what would you do? And if it was your child and your pediatric oncologist who is in Denver and is out of network, would you want the pool or would you give that up?” Lujan Grisham said. “Those are tough issues and the [high-risk pool] board sets those policies.”
Lujan Grisham has deep roots in health care, having led New Mexico’s Agency on Aging and later serving as secretary of the Department of Health under Richardson. Health care struggles have also had a deeply personal impact on the New Mexico Democrat. Her sister died of a brain tumor at age 21 after exhausting the lifetime caps on her insurance. Her parents spent decades trying to pay off the ensuing medical debt, she said in a 2013 POLITICO profile.
Her defense of the high-risk pool, however, runs counter to the experiences of many other states. New Mexico is one of just nine states still taking new customers into its high-risk pool. It has no enrollment caps and people eligible for Obamacare can still sign up. That’s not the case in every state that still runs a high risk pool; for example, Nebraska, Washington and Wyoming have modified their pools so that they are open only to certain categories of people who qualify for Medicare but need additional coverage. California, with its population of nearly 40 million people, capped enrollment in its pool at 7,500 people.
In New Mexico, which has 2.1 million people, enrollment in the high-risk pool has fallen considerably from its peak of about 8,500 in 2013 — just before the Obamacare market opened — to around 2,400 today, according to John Franchini, the top insurance regulator in New Mexico and the pool’s board chairman.
Still, that number almost certainly includes many people who would otherwise qualify for coverage through New Mexico’s Obamacare insurance exchange, according to Armstrong and multiple people familiar with its operations. Some of the other recipients — about 1,000, Armstrong estimates — may not have other options, because they are either undocumented or on Medicare, for instance.
Proponents of the reform measure that got bottled up in Armstrong’s committee last year say the high-risk pool should exist, if at all, only for those who have no other options. Their bill would have prevented anyone who qualified for Obamacare from going into the high-risk pool, thereby saving the state and the customer money.
“There’s people in there that shouldn’t be in there,” said Steven Neville, a Republican state senator who sponsored that bill last year.
Even as enrollment declined after Obamacare, Delta’s compensation for managing the high-risk pool went up. In 2014, when Obamacare made other coverage options available, the firm was paid more than $425,000 in base fees to run the pool before accounting for additional incentives; the amount increased to $455,950 the following year and to $557,828 in 2016. In 2017, the company received roughly $674,000, based on its monthly fee rate.
Armstrong said the increases ly arose largely from specific managerial challenges, most of which were unaffected by the declining enrollment; there are fixed costs even with fewer customers, she said. On occasion, fees were increased mid-year when Delta took on additional duties.
Running the high-risk pool is a major part of Delta’s work; its other consulting clients include Emerge New Mexico, a nonprofit that trains Democratic women to run for office; the New Mexico Association of Nurse Anesthetists; and the New Mexico Association for Home & Hospice Care.
Armstrong said that the high-risk pool keeps its rates 10 percent higher than average premiums on New Mexico’s Obamacare exchange so as not to create an incentive for people to maintain their coverage when there are other coverage options available.
Armstrong also argued that keeping some of the sickest people out of Obamacare actually helped stabilize the new markets created by the federal health law. At one point officials were aggressively trying to shift people onto Obamacare coverage if they qualified, she said, but that push has stopped out of fear that it could “crater” the state’s health insurance exchange by loading too many high-cost patients into the state’s relatively small individual insurance market.
“We were really focused on protecting the people that we were serving and in the process not destroying the market for everyone else,” she said.
Roughly 49,800 people selected Obamacare plans this year on the exchange in New Mexico, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Colin Baillio of Health Action New Mexico, an advocacy organization, agreed that forcing too many high-risk enrollees into the market could destabilize it – particularly as the repeal of the individual mandate penalty and other policies pushed by the Trump administration could further weaken the Obamacare market.
“That could really throw the market into chaos,” he said.
***
To Lujan Grisham’s opponents in the Democratic primary for governor, the key question isn’t whether the high-risk pool should exist, but whether her political clout played a role in keeping it going and thereby prevented customers from obtaining less expensive coverage.
“I think they [Lujan Grisham and Armstrong] have a very invested interest in keeping the high risk pool open,” said businessman Jeff Apodaca, one of two Democrats challenging Lujan Grisham for the gubernatorial nomination. “They’re making millions of dollars off of it — why wouldn’t they want to keep it open?”
Apodaca, a former media executive and son of a former governor, said he feels there’s no question that Delta has maintained contracts to operate the high-risk pool because of the pair’s outsized political power in New Mexico.
“It just seems pretty inappropriate and a smoking gun to me,” he said. “They’re all in cahoots together.”
The Martinez administration’s attempt to push changes last year, including barring individuals who qualified for Obamacare, would have saved the state money — up to $43 million each year in 2018 and 2019, state estimates show.
The bills stalled in committee — including at the New Mexico House Health and Human Services Committee, of which Armstrong became chair last year. Legislators voted to table it, and it has not been taken up since.
Armstrong, who maintains that she has “tried to go overboard” in disclosing her business relationship with the program and does not lobby for the pool in the state Legislature, says she intentionally did not listen to the discussion or participate in the vote. But bill supporters argue that political influence undoubtedly has played a role.
“It didn’t go anywhere because the chairman of the health committee in the House is the one that runs the pool,” said Rep. Paul Bandy, a Republican who sponsored the bill. “A lot of things like that in New Mexico happen — what could be perceived as kind of an inside deal.”
Much of the enforcement of New Mexico’s conflict of interest and vote recusal rules revolves around voluntary compliance and having other legislators police one another, said Viki Harrison with Common Cause New Mexico, which advocates stricter ethics laws. New Mexico legislators are not paid a salary and serve only part-time.
“When you police yourselves, there’s always going to be questions around transparency and cronyism,” she said.
The state has a ballot initiative this year to establish an independent ethics commission, which many states already have.
Lujan Grisham, for her part, said she cleared her co-ownership of Delta with the House Ethics Committee during her first year in Congress.
As a strong supporter of expanded health coverage, she said, her support for maintaining New Mexico’s high-risk pool isn’t at odds with one of the underlying goals of Obamacare — insuring the healthy and the sick through a larger program so that costs are spread out among a broader group of people.
“Each state, given the health status of their individuals ... has to set their own policy about how that works,” she said.
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from the firm managing a health program that critics say should have been closed after Obamacare.
By RACHANA PRADHAN
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the leading Democratic candidate for governor in New Mexico, profited from the state’s use of a high-priced health-insurance program for seriously ill patients, even after Obamacare made such programs virtually obsolete.
As most states were shuttering their subsidized health-insurance programs for people with pre-existing conditions because they could get coverage through Obamacare, a firm co-founded by Lujan Grisham and a close political ally received millions of dollars to run New Mexico’s program, even as she served in Congress.
The state’s high risk pool is still open even though its premiums are higher on average than Obamacare — 10 percent higher this year — and while all but nine of the 35 states that once had such programs either shut them down or cut off new enrollment. It also continued despite efforts by New Mexico Republicans to curtail the program.
Lujan Grisham, who is facing two rivals for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in next Tuesday’s primary, founded the Delta Consulting Group along with Debbie Armstrong, a longtime political ally and the treasurer of her gubernatorial campaign, in 2008, as both were leaving Cabinet positions under former Gov. Bill Richardson.
In 2009, the firm received the state contract to run the high-risk pool under a competitive-bid process. Between 2014, when Obamacare took effect, and 2017, Delta Consulting Group was paid more than $2 million to run the program, according to contracts POLITICO obtained through a public records request. Its annual payments increased to more than $600,000, even as enrollment dropped.
The 58-year-old Lujan Grisham — scion of one of the state’s leading political families, which includes her uncle, former Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan, and her cousin, Rep. Ben Ray Luján — sold her 50 percent stake in the company last June, six months after she announced she would run to succeed outgoing Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. Her congressional financial disclosure forms show she earned a total of between $165,000 and $350,000 in dividends from Delta from 2013 to 2016.
Lujan Grisham and Armstrong each deny that they have ever exerted pressure on state officials to keep the program open because of their financial interests, although good government experts suggest that influence would be difficult to detect, in part because of New Mexico’s porous conflict of interest rules.
“Absolutely not,” Lujan Grisham, who was elected to Congress in 2012, told POLITICO. “Those are decisions that have to be made by the [high-risk pool] board, based on who they’re serving.”
Armstrong, who was elected to the New Mexico Legislature in 2014 and briefly worked on Lujan Grisham’s congressional staff, is also the high-risk pool’s executive director. Last year, she was named chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee of the New Mexico House, where a Martinez administration-backed bill that would have limited high-risk pool enrollment and saved the state budget up to $43 million a year stalled, after the committee voted to table it.
Armstrong said she didn’t participate in the vote or discussions about the bill, though she did not formally recuse herself. In New Mexico, recusal rules say House members are required to vote on all legislation unless excused by a majority vote. But lax enforcement and vague wording mean the rules are open to broad interpretation, and formal recusals are rarely taken, according to legislators in the two major parties and ethics experts.
Nonetheless, critics say they are puzzled over why the Legislature continues to maintain a costly high-risk pool that was designed to address a problem — the inability of people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance — that Obamacare solved. The pool is costly to New Mexico taxpayers because, while it is funded through a tax on private insurers, those same companies then get a credit on their state taxes. Obamacare, by contrast, is federally subsidized.
Dan Foley, a Republican and former minority whip of the New Mexico House, said extending the high-risk pool is, among other problems, unfair to those patients — a “travesty,” he said — because it charges them more than Obamacare for essentially the same coverage.
“I would consider that fraud,” Foley said. “The high-risk pool was set up to cover people back in the day when we could disqualify someone for health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. That’s the only reason why it was there.”
***
Democrats nationally maintain that Obamacare provided better, cheaper options for seriously ill patients than high-risk pools, which most states created long before the 2010 law was enacted to provide a lifeline to people who couldn’t get coverage anywhere else.
After 2014, when Obamacare took effect, 23 states closed their high-risk pools entirely, with many Democrats touting the change as one of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Paradoxically, New Mexico’s Democrats have been some of the staunchest defenders of maintaining their state’s high-risk pool. Lujan Grisham and Armstrong are among them. They argue that the high-risk pool gives some patients with diseases like advanced cancer more options, including making it easier to keep their own doctor.
“If you have cancer and you are looking for an immediate access or continuity of care with your current oncologist and the market shifts and they’re out of network, what would you do? And if it was your child and your pediatric oncologist who is in Denver and is out of network, would you want the pool or would you give that up?” Lujan Grisham said. “Those are tough issues and the [high-risk pool] board sets those policies.”
Lujan Grisham has deep roots in health care, having led New Mexico’s Agency on Aging and later serving as secretary of the Department of Health under Richardson. Health care struggles have also had a deeply personal impact on the New Mexico Democrat. Her sister died of a brain tumor at age 21 after exhausting the lifetime caps on her insurance. Her parents spent decades trying to pay off the ensuing medical debt, she said in a 2013 POLITICO profile.
Her defense of the high-risk pool, however, runs counter to the experiences of many other states. New Mexico is one of just nine states still taking new customers into its high-risk pool. It has no enrollment caps and people eligible for Obamacare can still sign up. That’s not the case in every state that still runs a high risk pool; for example, Nebraska, Washington and Wyoming have modified their pools so that they are open only to certain categories of people who qualify for Medicare but need additional coverage. California, with its population of nearly 40 million people, capped enrollment in its pool at 7,500 people.
In New Mexico, which has 2.1 million people, enrollment in the high-risk pool has fallen considerably from its peak of about 8,500 in 2013 — just before the Obamacare market opened — to around 2,400 today, according to John Franchini, the top insurance regulator in New Mexico and the pool’s board chairman.
Still, that number almost certainly includes many people who would otherwise qualify for coverage through New Mexico’s Obamacare insurance exchange, according to Armstrong and multiple people familiar with its operations. Some of the other recipients — about 1,000, Armstrong estimates — may not have other options, because they are either undocumented or on Medicare, for instance.
Proponents of the reform measure that got bottled up in Armstrong’s committee last year say the high-risk pool should exist, if at all, only for those who have no other options. Their bill would have prevented anyone who qualified for Obamacare from going into the high-risk pool, thereby saving the state and the customer money.
“There’s people in there that shouldn’t be in there,” said Steven Neville, a Republican state senator who sponsored that bill last year.
Even as enrollment declined after Obamacare, Delta’s compensation for managing the high-risk pool went up. In 2014, when Obamacare made other coverage options available, the firm was paid more than $425,000 in base fees to run the pool before accounting for additional incentives; the amount increased to $455,950 the following year and to $557,828 in 2016. In 2017, the company received roughly $674,000, based on its monthly fee rate.
Armstrong said the increases ly arose largely from specific managerial challenges, most of which were unaffected by the declining enrollment; there are fixed costs even with fewer customers, she said. On occasion, fees were increased mid-year when Delta took on additional duties.
Running the high-risk pool is a major part of Delta’s work; its other consulting clients include Emerge New Mexico, a nonprofit that trains Democratic women to run for office; the New Mexico Association of Nurse Anesthetists; and the New Mexico Association for Home & Hospice Care.
Armstrong said that the high-risk pool keeps its rates 10 percent higher than average premiums on New Mexico’s Obamacare exchange so as not to create an incentive for people to maintain their coverage when there are other coverage options available.
Armstrong also argued that keeping some of the sickest people out of Obamacare actually helped stabilize the new markets created by the federal health law. At one point officials were aggressively trying to shift people onto Obamacare coverage if they qualified, she said, but that push has stopped out of fear that it could “crater” the state’s health insurance exchange by loading too many high-cost patients into the state’s relatively small individual insurance market.
“We were really focused on protecting the people that we were serving and in the process not destroying the market for everyone else,” she said.
Roughly 49,800 people selected Obamacare plans this year on the exchange in New Mexico, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Colin Baillio of Health Action New Mexico, an advocacy organization, agreed that forcing too many high-risk enrollees into the market could destabilize it – particularly as the repeal of the individual mandate penalty and other policies pushed by the Trump administration could further weaken the Obamacare market.
“That could really throw the market into chaos,” he said.
***
To Lujan Grisham’s opponents in the Democratic primary for governor, the key question isn’t whether the high-risk pool should exist, but whether her political clout played a role in keeping it going and thereby prevented customers from obtaining less expensive coverage.
“I think they [Lujan Grisham and Armstrong] have a very invested interest in keeping the high risk pool open,” said businessman Jeff Apodaca, one of two Democrats challenging Lujan Grisham for the gubernatorial nomination. “They’re making millions of dollars off of it — why wouldn’t they want to keep it open?”
Apodaca, a former media executive and son of a former governor, said he feels there’s no question that Delta has maintained contracts to operate the high-risk pool because of the pair’s outsized political power in New Mexico.
“It just seems pretty inappropriate and a smoking gun to me,” he said. “They’re all in cahoots together.”
The Martinez administration’s attempt to push changes last year, including barring individuals who qualified for Obamacare, would have saved the state money — up to $43 million each year in 2018 and 2019, state estimates show.
The bills stalled in committee — including at the New Mexico House Health and Human Services Committee, of which Armstrong became chair last year. Legislators voted to table it, and it has not been taken up since.
Armstrong, who maintains that she has “tried to go overboard” in disclosing her business relationship with the program and does not lobby for the pool in the state Legislature, says she intentionally did not listen to the discussion or participate in the vote. But bill supporters argue that political influence undoubtedly has played a role.
“It didn’t go anywhere because the chairman of the health committee in the House is the one that runs the pool,” said Rep. Paul Bandy, a Republican who sponsored the bill. “A lot of things like that in New Mexico happen — what could be perceived as kind of an inside deal.”
Much of the enforcement of New Mexico’s conflict of interest and vote recusal rules revolves around voluntary compliance and having other legislators police one another, said Viki Harrison with Common Cause New Mexico, which advocates stricter ethics laws. New Mexico legislators are not paid a salary and serve only part-time.
“When you police yourselves, there’s always going to be questions around transparency and cronyism,” she said.
The state has a ballot initiative this year to establish an independent ethics commission, which many states already have.
Lujan Grisham, for her part, said she cleared her co-ownership of Delta with the House Ethics Committee during her first year in Congress.
As a strong supporter of expanded health coverage, she said, her support for maintaining New Mexico’s high-risk pool isn’t at odds with one of the underlying goals of Obamacare — insuring the healthy and the sick through a larger program so that costs are spread out among a broader group of people.
“Each state, given the health status of their individuals ... has to set their own policy about how that works,” she said.
Twitter flameout....
Roseanne Barr Tells Us Nothing About America
It was inevitable that her spectacular Twitter flameout would be interpreted as a portentous statement on Trump’s America.
By RICH LOWRY
Valerie Jarrett says that the Roseanne Barr train wreck should be a “teaching moment,” and so it should—about the poisonous kookery of Roseanne Barr.
Given the political freight piled atop the hit revival of her TV program, it was inevitable that Barr’s spectacular Twitter flameout would be interpreted as a portentous statement on President Donald Trump’s America.
Chris Hayes of MSNBC says that her “problem turned out to be that she far too authentically represented the actual worldview of a significant chunk of the Trump base.” Roxane Gay of the New York Times wrote a piece headlined, “‘Roseanne’ Is Gone, but the Culture That Gave Her a Show Isn’t.”
Activist Michaela Angela Davis said on CNN that Trump had enabled Barr—a common theme on the left—and then went all the way: Asked point blank if all Trump voters are racist, she said, “Yes.”
Nothing so perfectly encapsulates the dynamic of the Trump era than a TV show that was supposed to be a sympathetic portrayal of Trump supporters by liberal America leading—once again—to the ritualistic denunciation of Trump supporters by liberal America.
Barr is not a typical Trump voter just because she played one on TV. She shares much more in common with a celebrity culture that never lacks for its share of nuts and toxic personalities, especially among comedians, than with, say, Youngstown, Ohio.
Her wild ramblings don’t tell us anything about what Trump voters think, about the state of race relations in America, or working-class culture. Her crackpot views are all her own.
She was a kook long before President Trump showed up. She maintained that September 11 was “an inside Bush job,” perpetrated to destroy the records of George W. Bush’s Enron and Arthur Andersen friends, prior to destroying the entire economy.
She’s not a conservative. She supported Occupy Wall Street and competed with Jill Stein for the 2012 Green Party nomination. When she lost, she ran instead on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was her running mate, prior to their—surprise—falling out.
Her worldview, such as it is, is prone to wild swings. She used to call Israel a “Nazi state” and denounce “warmongering American rabbis,” before turning around and calling Hillary Clinton “anti-Semitic” and Huma Abedin “a filthy Nazi whore.”
Her subsequent explanations for her heinous Valerie Jarrett tweet should make it clear—she thought Jarrett was a Saudi, or a maybe a Jewish Persian—that this is fundamentally a story about an unhinged person advertising that fact on social media.
Of course, Trump gave his critics reason to associate him with Barr by calling her and eagerly trumpeting the success of her show. Trump’s boosterism was characteristic of him—it’s all about the ratings—but also partook of a long-standing weakness of the right.
Conservatives disdain celebrities, but dangle a C-list celebrity in front of us with a few rightward leanings and he’s immediately awarded a speaking slot at the next Republican convention. We have low regard for pop culture, but crave its validation. If it must come via a program that is a 1990s-throwback reliant on a ticking time bomb of a star, so be it.
The genesis of the “Roseanne” revival was innocent and laudable enough. The president of Disney-ABC Television Group explained the show’s inception after the 2016 election: “We looked at each other and said, ‘There’s a lot about the country we need to learn a lot more about, here on the coasts.”
He was right. The appetite for the show, which reflected none of the toxicity of Roseanne’s real-life personality, speaks of the hunger for more programming about red America. Surely, there must be other vehicles for it—assuming Hollywood doesn’t internalize the critique of Roseanne Barr as an all-too-typical Trump voter.
It was inevitable that her spectacular Twitter flameout would be interpreted as a portentous statement on Trump’s America.
By RICH LOWRY
Valerie Jarrett says that the Roseanne Barr train wreck should be a “teaching moment,” and so it should—about the poisonous kookery of Roseanne Barr.
Given the political freight piled atop the hit revival of her TV program, it was inevitable that Barr’s spectacular Twitter flameout would be interpreted as a portentous statement on President Donald Trump’s America.
Chris Hayes of MSNBC says that her “problem turned out to be that she far too authentically represented the actual worldview of a significant chunk of the Trump base.” Roxane Gay of the New York Times wrote a piece headlined, “‘Roseanne’ Is Gone, but the Culture That Gave Her a Show Isn’t.”
Activist Michaela Angela Davis said on CNN that Trump had enabled Barr—a common theme on the left—and then went all the way: Asked point blank if all Trump voters are racist, she said, “Yes.”
Nothing so perfectly encapsulates the dynamic of the Trump era than a TV show that was supposed to be a sympathetic portrayal of Trump supporters by liberal America leading—once again—to the ritualistic denunciation of Trump supporters by liberal America.
Barr is not a typical Trump voter just because she played one on TV. She shares much more in common with a celebrity culture that never lacks for its share of nuts and toxic personalities, especially among comedians, than with, say, Youngstown, Ohio.
Her wild ramblings don’t tell us anything about what Trump voters think, about the state of race relations in America, or working-class culture. Her crackpot views are all her own.
She was a kook long before President Trump showed up. She maintained that September 11 was “an inside Bush job,” perpetrated to destroy the records of George W. Bush’s Enron and Arthur Andersen friends, prior to destroying the entire economy.
She’s not a conservative. She supported Occupy Wall Street and competed with Jill Stein for the 2012 Green Party nomination. When she lost, she ran instead on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was her running mate, prior to their—surprise—falling out.
Her worldview, such as it is, is prone to wild swings. She used to call Israel a “Nazi state” and denounce “warmongering American rabbis,” before turning around and calling Hillary Clinton “anti-Semitic” and Huma Abedin “a filthy Nazi whore.”
Her subsequent explanations for her heinous Valerie Jarrett tweet should make it clear—she thought Jarrett was a Saudi, or a maybe a Jewish Persian—that this is fundamentally a story about an unhinged person advertising that fact on social media.
Of course, Trump gave his critics reason to associate him with Barr by calling her and eagerly trumpeting the success of her show. Trump’s boosterism was characteristic of him—it’s all about the ratings—but also partook of a long-standing weakness of the right.
Conservatives disdain celebrities, but dangle a C-list celebrity in front of us with a few rightward leanings and he’s immediately awarded a speaking slot at the next Republican convention. We have low regard for pop culture, but crave its validation. If it must come via a program that is a 1990s-throwback reliant on a ticking time bomb of a star, so be it.
The genesis of the “Roseanne” revival was innocent and laudable enough. The president of Disney-ABC Television Group explained the show’s inception after the 2016 election: “We looked at each other and said, ‘There’s a lot about the country we need to learn a lot more about, here on the coasts.”
He was right. The appetite for the show, which reflected none of the toxicity of Roseanne’s real-life personality, speaks of the hunger for more programming about red America. Surely, there must be other vehicles for it—assuming Hollywood doesn’t internalize the critique of Roseanne Barr as an all-too-typical Trump voter.
Second state to enact individual health insurance
New Jersey will become second state to enact individual health insurance mandate
By KATIE JENNINGS
Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday signed into law a bill that will require all New Jersey residents to have health coverage or pay a penalty, making the state the second in the country to enact an individual health insurance mandate.
Democratic lawmakers drafted the bill, NJ A3380 (18R), in response to Congress’ decision to repeal the federal mandate established under the Affordable Care Act. The repeal, the New Jersey lawmakers feared, would drive healthier people out of the state’s Obamacare market and cause premiums to spike.
"The individual market would descend into a death spiral if not for this legislation," said state Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex), the prime sponsor. "This helps to keep people insured and keeps that market healthier."
New Jersey’s mandate is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2019, which gives state officials seven months to get the word out to residents about the new requirement.
Massachusetts was the first state to enact a mandate, which took effect in 2006 and served as a model for the federal provision included in the Affordable Care Act. With more than 97 percent of its residents insured in 2016, Massachusetts had the lowest percentage of people without health insurance in the country.
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, signed a bill on May 28 that would establish an individual mandate, but the details, including the financial penalty and enforcement mechanisms, will be determined during the 2019 legislative session. The Vermont mandate won’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020.
In New Jersey, 92 percent of residents were insured in 2016, according to the U.S. Census.
Former Republican Gov. Chris Christie opted to go with a federally facilitated Obamacare exchange. Around 275,000 New Jersey residents signed up for Obamacare plans this year, and more than a half-million residents gained health insurance coverage through Medicaid expansion.
New Jersey’s mandate, which mirrors the former federal requirement, includes an annual penalty of 2.5 percent of a household‘s income or a per-person charge — whichever is higher. The maximum penalty based on household income will be the average yearly premium of a bronze plan. If it’s based on a per-person charge, the maximum household penalty will be $2,085. A “hardship exception” for individuals who cannot afford coverage would be determined by state Treasurer Elizabeth Muoio.
The state expects to collect between $90 million and $100 million in penalties. That money would fund a reinsurance program, which Murphy also signed into law on Wednesday. The cost estimate is based on $93.9 million the Internal Revenue Service collected from the more than 188,500 New Jersey residents who paid the penalty under the federal mandate.
The reinsurance legislation, NJ S1878 (18R), will establish a program to help insurers cover the cost of the most expensive Obamacare patients.
Three insurers offered Obamacare plans in New Jersey this year: Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, AmeriHealth New Jersey and Oscar Health.
The state is counting on the federal government to cover around half the cost of the program, which Vitale estimates could cost $275 million.
States can apply for what's known as a 1332 waiver to reallocate federal funds that otherwise would have gone toward Obamacare subsidies. Reinsurance efforts are underway in several states, including Minnesota, Alaska and Oregon, whose 1332 waivers were approved by the Trump administration last year.
The reinsurance program is supposed to reduce the average premium increase by 10 percent to 20 percent.
"The goal is that we mitigate any substantial increase in premiums over the next several years. This will make insurance much more affordable for those who find it difficult, particularly in the individual market," Vitale said.
State Department of Banking and Insurance spokeswoman Trish Graber confirmed the agency awarded a contract for actuarial services to help establish the parameters of the reinsurance program and assist with the 1332 waiver application to secure federal funding. She was not immediately able to provide specifics about the contract.
Even as the Murphy administration and state lawmakers move forward with these Obamacare stabilization efforts, New Jersey’s market has been relatively stable compared with many other states.
“New Jersey’s individual market has great structural bones — a long history of a responsible regulation, strong carrier participation, and a competitive provider market,” said Kathy Hempstead, a senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
New Jersey was one of just two markets in the country to gain a new Obamacare insurer in 2018 and had lower-than-average premium increases compared with other federally facilitated marketplaces, according to an analysis by Hempstead.
“With these new protections, it’s hard to imagine a state that will be better prepared to weather the significant obstacles that this market will face nationally in 2019," she said.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
By KATIE JENNINGS
Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday signed into law a bill that will require all New Jersey residents to have health coverage or pay a penalty, making the state the second in the country to enact an individual health insurance mandate.
Democratic lawmakers drafted the bill, NJ A3380 (18R), in response to Congress’ decision to repeal the federal mandate established under the Affordable Care Act. The repeal, the New Jersey lawmakers feared, would drive healthier people out of the state’s Obamacare market and cause premiums to spike.
"The individual market would descend into a death spiral if not for this legislation," said state Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex), the prime sponsor. "This helps to keep people insured and keeps that market healthier."
New Jersey’s mandate is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2019, which gives state officials seven months to get the word out to residents about the new requirement.
Massachusetts was the first state to enact a mandate, which took effect in 2006 and served as a model for the federal provision included in the Affordable Care Act. With more than 97 percent of its residents insured in 2016, Massachusetts had the lowest percentage of people without health insurance in the country.
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, signed a bill on May 28 that would establish an individual mandate, but the details, including the financial penalty and enforcement mechanisms, will be determined during the 2019 legislative session. The Vermont mandate won’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020.
In New Jersey, 92 percent of residents were insured in 2016, according to the U.S. Census.
Former Republican Gov. Chris Christie opted to go with a federally facilitated Obamacare exchange. Around 275,000 New Jersey residents signed up for Obamacare plans this year, and more than a half-million residents gained health insurance coverage through Medicaid expansion.
New Jersey’s mandate, which mirrors the former federal requirement, includes an annual penalty of 2.5 percent of a household‘s income or a per-person charge — whichever is higher. The maximum penalty based on household income will be the average yearly premium of a bronze plan. If it’s based on a per-person charge, the maximum household penalty will be $2,085. A “hardship exception” for individuals who cannot afford coverage would be determined by state Treasurer Elizabeth Muoio.
The state expects to collect between $90 million and $100 million in penalties. That money would fund a reinsurance program, which Murphy also signed into law on Wednesday. The cost estimate is based on $93.9 million the Internal Revenue Service collected from the more than 188,500 New Jersey residents who paid the penalty under the federal mandate.
The reinsurance legislation, NJ S1878 (18R), will establish a program to help insurers cover the cost of the most expensive Obamacare patients.
Three insurers offered Obamacare plans in New Jersey this year: Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, AmeriHealth New Jersey and Oscar Health.
The state is counting on the federal government to cover around half the cost of the program, which Vitale estimates could cost $275 million.
States can apply for what's known as a 1332 waiver to reallocate federal funds that otherwise would have gone toward Obamacare subsidies. Reinsurance efforts are underway in several states, including Minnesota, Alaska and Oregon, whose 1332 waivers were approved by the Trump administration last year.
The reinsurance program is supposed to reduce the average premium increase by 10 percent to 20 percent.
"The goal is that we mitigate any substantial increase in premiums over the next several years. This will make insurance much more affordable for those who find it difficult, particularly in the individual market," Vitale said.
State Department of Banking and Insurance spokeswoman Trish Graber confirmed the agency awarded a contract for actuarial services to help establish the parameters of the reinsurance program and assist with the 1332 waiver application to secure federal funding. She was not immediately able to provide specifics about the contract.
Even as the Murphy administration and state lawmakers move forward with these Obamacare stabilization efforts, New Jersey’s market has been relatively stable compared with many other states.
“New Jersey’s individual market has great structural bones — a long history of a responsible regulation, strong carrier participation, and a competitive provider market,” said Kathy Hempstead, a senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
New Jersey was one of just two markets in the country to gain a new Obamacare insurer in 2018 and had lower-than-average premium increases compared with other federally facilitated marketplaces, according to an analysis by Hempstead.
“With these new protections, it’s hard to imagine a state that will be better prepared to weather the significant obstacles that this market will face nationally in 2019," she said.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Offensive loses steam
Trump ‘spygate’ offensive loses steam
Legal experts and Trump critics say the defections have exposed cracks in the president’s narrative.
By KYLE CHENEY
President Donald Trump’s claim that the FBI embedded a spy in his campaign for political purposes began to crumble Wednesday after a prominent Republican, as well as defenders of the president, said he might have the story wrong.
In less than 24 hours, Trump’s allegations were publicly refuted by House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), one of just nine lawmakers briefed on highly classified details of the FBI’s operation; Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, a Trump favorite; and prominent legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, a vocal Trump ally who has advised the president on legal strategy.
Legal experts and Trump critics say the defections have exposed cracks in the president’s narrative and undermine his attempts to discredit the FBI investigation into Russian contacts with his campaign as a partisan, “deep state” attack on his presidential bid.
And notably, a slew of Trump's congressional allies who have been active purveyors of what the president dubbed “spygate” — including Reps. Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Lee Zeldin — were silent Wednesday. POLITICO reached out to a handful of these lawmakers and did not hear back. Only Rep. Mark Meadows had weighed in by late afternoon, suggesting the Justice Department couldn’t be trusted to explain away the controversy.
“My concerns remain unchanged,” he told POLITICO. “There is a substantial amount of information to suggest that the FBI did not follow protocol protecting civil liberties, and to this point, the DOJ has still failed to turn over the relevant documents we’ve requested to prove their case.”
The White House declined to directly rebut Gowdy on Wednesday, but made clear the president hasn’t backed off his concern. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “clearly, there’s still cause for concern” about the president’s “spy allegations.”
“We’re going to continue to follow the issue,” she added.
The blowback began Tuesday night when Gowdy, pressed during a Fox News interview, insisted that the FBI acted appropriately when it deployed an informant to collect information during the 2016 presidential election from Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Both men had been suspected of having questionable Russian contacts and the FBI’s attempt to follow the lead was appropriate and necessary, Gowdy said.
“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got,” said Gowdy, one of just five Republicans in a classified DOJ briefing last week for congressional leaders about the issue.
Wednesday morning, Gowdy doubled down on CBS.
“When the FBI comes into contact with information about what a foreign government may be doing in our election cycle, I think they have an obligation to run it out,” he said.
The lawmaker’s comments were echoed by Napolitano, who said Trump’s “spy” claim seemed to be “baseless” and that the use of an informant on the periphery of the campaign is “standard operating procedure” in the FBI’s counterintelligence operations.
“If they were there for some nefarious reason … to gather data from the campaign and pass it to the West Wing and pass it to Mrs. Clinton, I’d want to see evidence of that before I made an allegation that outrageous,” Napolitano said.
Dershowitz joined in Wednesday morning by conceding that he was “on the way to being persuaded” that the FBI’s use of an informant was proper.
The confluence of conservative defenses of the FBI undercuts Trump’s aggressive PR strategy to undercut special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian election meddling and whether there was any coordination with the Trump campaign. That investigation has edged deeper inside Trump’s inner circle and spurred Trump to lash out against the “witch hunt” against him.
Until recently, Trump’s spygate claim had served as a rallying cry for his supporters. During a Wednesday night campaign rally in Nashville, Trump sarcastically urged attendees to raise their hands if they were secretly FBI informants.
But on Wednesday, many of Trump's top Capitol Hill allies remained silent on the issue.
Zeldin — the New York Republican who filed a resolution last week laying out a litany of allegations of misconduct by the FBI, including a claim that top officials “appear to have planted at least one person into Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign to infiltrate and surveil the campaign” — did not respond to a request for comment on Gowdy’s assertions.
Jordan, of Ohio, and Gaetz, of Florida, who have also vocally excoriated the FBI and the ustice Department, were also not immediately available to comment.
The other Republicans who attended last Thursday’s briefing — House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes — have also declined to publicly comment on how the meeting affected their opinion of the issue.
Still, Meadows stood firm on Wednesday, insisting DOJ officials “need to give us the documents” about the informant.
“I am anxious to see what documents Chairman Gowdy has reviewed that would lead him to believe that the FBI did everything above board,” he wrote via email. “Certainly their document production to date has not met that standard. The only documents I am aware of indicated confidential human sources were used before and after the FBI officially opened their investigation.”
“To my knowledge,” he added, “there have been no documents reviewed by Democrats or Republicans that would answer the questions surrounding the use of confidential human sources.”
And many of Trump’s allies in conservative media were quick to turn on Gowdy, accusing him of swallowing Justice Department spin.
“Someone should ask Trey Gowdy why the FBI hid their investigative witch hunt into the Trump team from congressional oversight for eight months while leaking to the press if, as Gowdy said, the FBI ‘was doing what we would want them to do,’” said Dan Bongino, a Fox News personality Trump has cited. “Don’t be fooled,folks.”
Late Wednesday, Fox News host Sean Hannity hosted a lengthy segment on the matter featuring appearances by two Trump campaign aides who allegedlycame into contact with the informant — Carter Page and Sam Clovis. But despite Hannity’s protestations, neither affirmatively said a spy had infiltrated the campaign.
“Were you spied upon. Did a spy approach you?” Hannity asked Page.
“I’m not sure, Sean,” Page replied.
Clovis, who oversaw the campaign’s foreign policy team, told Hannity that the informant contacted him, but didn’t pump him for information.
“He wants information from you, fair statement?” Hannity asked.
“No, he didn’t try to get any information,” Clovis said.
Rather, Clovis said, the informant “used” him to contact George Papadopoulos, a Trump foreign policy adviser. Clovis did say he believed, however, that the informant wanted to “create a scandal” by connecting Papadopoulos to Russia’s efforts to hack and disseminate internal emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
According to a New York Times report, the FBI grew suspicious of Papadopoulos after hearing that he had told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Moscow was sitting on a cache of messages that would embarrass Clinton.
Still, Clovis said his meeting with the informant, on Sept. 1, 2016, was “totally innocuous.”
“It was so innocuous that I didn’t report it up the chain of command at all,and I didn’t think anything of it,” he said.
Still, it doesn’t appear the White House is ready to back down.
“The president still has concerns about whether or not the FBI acted inappropriately having people in his campaign,” Sanders told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “And certainly, the president has concerns about the overall conduct of the FBI when it comes to this process.”
Legal experts and Trump critics say the defections have exposed cracks in the president’s narrative.
By KYLE CHENEY
President Donald Trump’s claim that the FBI embedded a spy in his campaign for political purposes began to crumble Wednesday after a prominent Republican, as well as defenders of the president, said he might have the story wrong.
In less than 24 hours, Trump’s allegations were publicly refuted by House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), one of just nine lawmakers briefed on highly classified details of the FBI’s operation; Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, a Trump favorite; and prominent legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, a vocal Trump ally who has advised the president on legal strategy.
Legal experts and Trump critics say the defections have exposed cracks in the president’s narrative and undermine his attempts to discredit the FBI investigation into Russian contacts with his campaign as a partisan, “deep state” attack on his presidential bid.
And notably, a slew of Trump's congressional allies who have been active purveyors of what the president dubbed “spygate” — including Reps. Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Lee Zeldin — were silent Wednesday. POLITICO reached out to a handful of these lawmakers and did not hear back. Only Rep. Mark Meadows had weighed in by late afternoon, suggesting the Justice Department couldn’t be trusted to explain away the controversy.
“My concerns remain unchanged,” he told POLITICO. “There is a substantial amount of information to suggest that the FBI did not follow protocol protecting civil liberties, and to this point, the DOJ has still failed to turn over the relevant documents we’ve requested to prove their case.”
The White House declined to directly rebut Gowdy on Wednesday, but made clear the president hasn’t backed off his concern. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “clearly, there’s still cause for concern” about the president’s “spy allegations.”
“We’re going to continue to follow the issue,” she added.
The blowback began Tuesday night when Gowdy, pressed during a Fox News interview, insisted that the FBI acted appropriately when it deployed an informant to collect information during the 2016 presidential election from Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Both men had been suspected of having questionable Russian contacts and the FBI’s attempt to follow the lead was appropriate and necessary, Gowdy said.
“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got,” said Gowdy, one of just five Republicans in a classified DOJ briefing last week for congressional leaders about the issue.
Wednesday morning, Gowdy doubled down on CBS.
“When the FBI comes into contact with information about what a foreign government may be doing in our election cycle, I think they have an obligation to run it out,” he said.
The lawmaker’s comments were echoed by Napolitano, who said Trump’s “spy” claim seemed to be “baseless” and that the use of an informant on the periphery of the campaign is “standard operating procedure” in the FBI’s counterintelligence operations.
“If they were there for some nefarious reason … to gather data from the campaign and pass it to the West Wing and pass it to Mrs. Clinton, I’d want to see evidence of that before I made an allegation that outrageous,” Napolitano said.
Dershowitz joined in Wednesday morning by conceding that he was “on the way to being persuaded” that the FBI’s use of an informant was proper.
The confluence of conservative defenses of the FBI undercuts Trump’s aggressive PR strategy to undercut special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian election meddling and whether there was any coordination with the Trump campaign. That investigation has edged deeper inside Trump’s inner circle and spurred Trump to lash out against the “witch hunt” against him.
Until recently, Trump’s spygate claim had served as a rallying cry for his supporters. During a Wednesday night campaign rally in Nashville, Trump sarcastically urged attendees to raise their hands if they were secretly FBI informants.
But on Wednesday, many of Trump's top Capitol Hill allies remained silent on the issue.
Zeldin — the New York Republican who filed a resolution last week laying out a litany of allegations of misconduct by the FBI, including a claim that top officials “appear to have planted at least one person into Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign to infiltrate and surveil the campaign” — did not respond to a request for comment on Gowdy’s assertions.
Jordan, of Ohio, and Gaetz, of Florida, who have also vocally excoriated the FBI and the ustice Department, were also not immediately available to comment.
The other Republicans who attended last Thursday’s briefing — House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes — have also declined to publicly comment on how the meeting affected their opinion of the issue.
Still, Meadows stood firm on Wednesday, insisting DOJ officials “need to give us the documents” about the informant.
“I am anxious to see what documents Chairman Gowdy has reviewed that would lead him to believe that the FBI did everything above board,” he wrote via email. “Certainly their document production to date has not met that standard. The only documents I am aware of indicated confidential human sources were used before and after the FBI officially opened their investigation.”
“To my knowledge,” he added, “there have been no documents reviewed by Democrats or Republicans that would answer the questions surrounding the use of confidential human sources.”
And many of Trump’s allies in conservative media were quick to turn on Gowdy, accusing him of swallowing Justice Department spin.
“Someone should ask Trey Gowdy why the FBI hid their investigative witch hunt into the Trump team from congressional oversight for eight months while leaking to the press if, as Gowdy said, the FBI ‘was doing what we would want them to do,’” said Dan Bongino, a Fox News personality Trump has cited. “Don’t be fooled,folks.”
Late Wednesday, Fox News host Sean Hannity hosted a lengthy segment on the matter featuring appearances by two Trump campaign aides who allegedlycame into contact with the informant — Carter Page and Sam Clovis. But despite Hannity’s protestations, neither affirmatively said a spy had infiltrated the campaign.
“Were you spied upon. Did a spy approach you?” Hannity asked Page.
“I’m not sure, Sean,” Page replied.
Clovis, who oversaw the campaign’s foreign policy team, told Hannity that the informant contacted him, but didn’t pump him for information.
“He wants information from you, fair statement?” Hannity asked.
“No, he didn’t try to get any information,” Clovis said.
Rather, Clovis said, the informant “used” him to contact George Papadopoulos, a Trump foreign policy adviser. Clovis did say he believed, however, that the informant wanted to “create a scandal” by connecting Papadopoulos to Russia’s efforts to hack and disseminate internal emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
According to a New York Times report, the FBI grew suspicious of Papadopoulos after hearing that he had told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Moscow was sitting on a cache of messages that would embarrass Clinton.
Still, Clovis said his meeting with the informant, on Sept. 1, 2016, was “totally innocuous.”
“It was so innocuous that I didn’t report it up the chain of command at all,and I didn’t think anything of it,” he said.
Still, it doesn’t appear the White House is ready to back down.
“The president still has concerns about whether or not the FBI acted inappropriately having people in his campaign,” Sanders told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “And certainly, the president has concerns about the overall conduct of the FBI when it comes to this process.”
Republicans hit rock bottom
California Republicans hit rock bottom
New figures show the once-proud state GOP has been relegated to third-party status.
By CARLA MARINUCCI
The state that spawned the "Reagan Revolution’’ and Richard M. Nixon just experienced a watershed moment — the California Republican Party was officially relegated to third-party status.
In the culmination of the withered state GOP’s long slide toward near-political irrelevance here, new voter registration data released this week show the once-robust party trails behind both Democrats and “no party preference” in the nation's most populous state. The California Republican Party is now outnumbered by independent voters by 73,000, according to Political Data Inc., which tabulates voter file data from county registrars.
The new figures come as the state looms large in the national battle for the House, with a handful of Republican-held seats poised to play a pivotal role in November.
Among California’s 19 million registered voters, the latest statistics — as of 15 days before the June 5 primary — show that Democrats now make up 8.4 million or 44.6 percent of the electorate.
That compares with 4,844,803 no-party-preference voters, or 25.5 percent of the state’s voters and 4,771,984 Republicans, who both make up about 25.1 percent. The California Secretary of State’s office is expected to release its own official count later this week.
A decade after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — the last elected GOP statewide official — was lambasted for warning his fellow Republicans that their party was “dying at the box office," the new numbers underscore the collapse of the GOP in California. The ranks of Republican voters have disintegrated by 10 percentage points since 1998, when they made up 35 percent of the voter rolls.
Democratic numbers have also declined, though not nearly as dramatically — the party made up 46.8 percent of the voter rolls a decade ago. By contrast, the percentage of “no party preference” voters in the state has more than doubled in the past two decades, the latest data showed.
Political analyst Carson Bruno, now a dean at Pepperdine University, cautioned on Twitter that it’s still unclear “how much of the NPP gain is due to the implementation of automatic voter registration,’’ which auto-registers new voters as NPP and requires them to select a party later.
And Matt Fleming, spokesman for the California Republican Party, downplayed the development.
“This isn’t surprising. Voters have been becoming more and more independent for years,” he said in an email statement. “But no party preference doesn't mean voters are becoming Democrats, and we will continue to reach out to all voters. The rise in NPP suggests that voters are fed up with the status quo in California, which, by any objective measure, is Democrat control of Sacramento.”
Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen, an adviser to former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, says GOP’s new third-party status can no longer be blamed on the passage of Prop. 187, the 1994 anti-illegal immigration ballot measure which had Wilson’s support and has long been tagged as a catalyst in the GOP free fall in California.
“You can only blame 187 for so long,’’ he said, adding that legions of new voters have since registered NPP as the viability of the GOP brand has collapsed in the state.
“Times change and states change. There was the time when Texas was the home of Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn,’’ Whalen noted.
Democrats including Eric Bauman, chair of the California Democratic Party, crowed about the new development, tweeting that “Republicans finally succumb to independents in California — they now trail by 76,000 — Democrats hold steady, with slight increase in registration. #BigBlueWave.”
Former California first lady Maria Shriver — married to Schwarzenegger — tweeted a variation of the old adage, “As California goes, so goes the nation.” But Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family who announced her move to become an independent voter years ago, added: "This rise (of independent voters) in our state should concern both parties — not just Republicans."
Republicans still stand to play an outsized role in next week’s primary despite the registration erosion. GOP voters typically vote at higher rates in nonpresidential year primary elections than Democrats.
Because Republicans vote at higher rates, GOP turnout is expected to reach about 30 percent to 32 percent of the electorate next week, with Republicans and independents who lean Republican making up about 38 percent or 39 percent of the vote, said PDI’s Paul Mitchell.
“[The state GOP’s decline in registration numbers] means a lot to people who are naval gazing about the future of political parties in California. But it doesn’t mean as much in terms of actual elections,” Mitchell said.
In addition, many of the people registering as independents are younger, nonwhite voters — not voters who would have registered Republican, anyway.
“It’s not as if the independents are picking the pockets of the Republican Party,” Mitchell said. “It’s really a loss for both parties in terms of their raw numbers.”
Already, there are signs the disintegration of the Republican Party could fuel the rise of high-profile independent candidates. For the first time, the GOP failed to field a single candidate for a major statewide race — the office of insurance commissioner.
Steve Poizner, the GOP’s 2010 gubernatorial nominee and a former state insurance commissioner, declared himself a candidate in the race — but as an independent. The tech magnate — who served as a finance chair for the presidential campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich in 2016 — now has a commanding lead over the rest of the field, which includes two major Democrats, state Sen. Ricardo Lara and Southern California doctor Asif Mahmood.
Poizner, in making the move to become a “no party preference” voter and to abandon the GOP, said he believes voters are weary of partisan infighting and simply want candidates who can tackle their concerns.
Poizner’s bid will be closely watched come November — and it may eventually influence the strategy of others like San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who’s viewed as one of the only viable potential statewide candidates who identifies as Republican.
Whalen points to Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox, who appears poised in recent polls to end up as one of the “top two” finalists — along with Democrat Gavin Newsom — in next Tuesday’s primary, as another candidate to watch.
As long as he has an "R" after his name on the ballot, Cox’s victory may be “the classic short-term gain, long-term pain,’’ said Whalen. “Cox will be running in November — and his running mate is Donald Trump."
"He will be joined to the hip by Democrats with someone who has a 30 percent approval rating in California,'' he said. "We’ve seen this movie before.”
New figures show the once-proud state GOP has been relegated to third-party status.
By CARLA MARINUCCI
The state that spawned the "Reagan Revolution’’ and Richard M. Nixon just experienced a watershed moment — the California Republican Party was officially relegated to third-party status.
In the culmination of the withered state GOP’s long slide toward near-political irrelevance here, new voter registration data released this week show the once-robust party trails behind both Democrats and “no party preference” in the nation's most populous state. The California Republican Party is now outnumbered by independent voters by 73,000, according to Political Data Inc., which tabulates voter file data from county registrars.
The new figures come as the state looms large in the national battle for the House, with a handful of Republican-held seats poised to play a pivotal role in November.
Among California’s 19 million registered voters, the latest statistics — as of 15 days before the June 5 primary — show that Democrats now make up 8.4 million or 44.6 percent of the electorate.
That compares with 4,844,803 no-party-preference voters, or 25.5 percent of the state’s voters and 4,771,984 Republicans, who both make up about 25.1 percent. The California Secretary of State’s office is expected to release its own official count later this week.
A decade after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — the last elected GOP statewide official — was lambasted for warning his fellow Republicans that their party was “dying at the box office," the new numbers underscore the collapse of the GOP in California. The ranks of Republican voters have disintegrated by 10 percentage points since 1998, when they made up 35 percent of the voter rolls.
Democratic numbers have also declined, though not nearly as dramatically — the party made up 46.8 percent of the voter rolls a decade ago. By contrast, the percentage of “no party preference” voters in the state has more than doubled in the past two decades, the latest data showed.
Political analyst Carson Bruno, now a dean at Pepperdine University, cautioned on Twitter that it’s still unclear “how much of the NPP gain is due to the implementation of automatic voter registration,’’ which auto-registers new voters as NPP and requires them to select a party later.
And Matt Fleming, spokesman for the California Republican Party, downplayed the development.
“This isn’t surprising. Voters have been becoming more and more independent for years,” he said in an email statement. “But no party preference doesn't mean voters are becoming Democrats, and we will continue to reach out to all voters. The rise in NPP suggests that voters are fed up with the status quo in California, which, by any objective measure, is Democrat control of Sacramento.”
Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen, an adviser to former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, says GOP’s new third-party status can no longer be blamed on the passage of Prop. 187, the 1994 anti-illegal immigration ballot measure which had Wilson’s support and has long been tagged as a catalyst in the GOP free fall in California.
“You can only blame 187 for so long,’’ he said, adding that legions of new voters have since registered NPP as the viability of the GOP brand has collapsed in the state.
“Times change and states change. There was the time when Texas was the home of Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn,’’ Whalen noted.
Democrats including Eric Bauman, chair of the California Democratic Party, crowed about the new development, tweeting that “Republicans finally succumb to independents in California — they now trail by 76,000 — Democrats hold steady, with slight increase in registration. #BigBlueWave.”
Former California first lady Maria Shriver — married to Schwarzenegger — tweeted a variation of the old adage, “As California goes, so goes the nation.” But Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family who announced her move to become an independent voter years ago, added: "This rise (of independent voters) in our state should concern both parties — not just Republicans."
Republicans still stand to play an outsized role in next week’s primary despite the registration erosion. GOP voters typically vote at higher rates in nonpresidential year primary elections than Democrats.
Because Republicans vote at higher rates, GOP turnout is expected to reach about 30 percent to 32 percent of the electorate next week, with Republicans and independents who lean Republican making up about 38 percent or 39 percent of the vote, said PDI’s Paul Mitchell.
“[The state GOP’s decline in registration numbers] means a lot to people who are naval gazing about the future of political parties in California. But it doesn’t mean as much in terms of actual elections,” Mitchell said.
In addition, many of the people registering as independents are younger, nonwhite voters — not voters who would have registered Republican, anyway.
“It’s not as if the independents are picking the pockets of the Republican Party,” Mitchell said. “It’s really a loss for both parties in terms of their raw numbers.”
Already, there are signs the disintegration of the Republican Party could fuel the rise of high-profile independent candidates. For the first time, the GOP failed to field a single candidate for a major statewide race — the office of insurance commissioner.
Steve Poizner, the GOP’s 2010 gubernatorial nominee and a former state insurance commissioner, declared himself a candidate in the race — but as an independent. The tech magnate — who served as a finance chair for the presidential campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich in 2016 — now has a commanding lead over the rest of the field, which includes two major Democrats, state Sen. Ricardo Lara and Southern California doctor Asif Mahmood.
Poizner, in making the move to become a “no party preference” voter and to abandon the GOP, said he believes voters are weary of partisan infighting and simply want candidates who can tackle their concerns.
Poizner’s bid will be closely watched come November — and it may eventually influence the strategy of others like San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who’s viewed as one of the only viable potential statewide candidates who identifies as Republican.
Whalen points to Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox, who appears poised in recent polls to end up as one of the “top two” finalists — along with Democrat Gavin Newsom — in next Tuesday’s primary, as another candidate to watch.
As long as he has an "R" after his name on the ballot, Cox’s victory may be “the classic short-term gain, long-term pain,’’ said Whalen. “Cox will be running in November — and his running mate is Donald Trump."
"He will be joined to the hip by Democrats with someone who has a 30 percent approval rating in California,'' he said. "We’ve seen this movie before.”
Regulatory fraud...
‘It borders on a regulatory fraud’
Sinclair makes side deals that could place Republican-leaning programming on stations it won’t own.
By MARGARET HARDING MCGILL
Sinclair Broadcast Group is selling off nearly two dozen television stations to comply with federal ownership rules — but that may not stop the company from reaching millions of viewers in those cities with its conservative programming.
Four of the sales include provisions that would leave the giant broadcaster with a role in the stations’ programming, finances and operations, even when it no longer owns them. Those strings could allow Sinclair to ensure that its content supporting President Donald Trump and other Republican causes continues to make it onto the air — despite regulations meant to ensure that no one company wields outsize influence in local media markets.
Sinclair, the nation’s largest TV broadcaster, has made these kinds of arrangements before as it has sold off some of its outlets. But the conditions attached to the station sales are attracting new scrutiny as the company pursues a $3.9 billion merger with Tribune Media that would expand Sinclair’s access to households across the country.
“This is a technique that was developed by slick lawyers for the purpose of getting around the rules,” former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, said in an interview. “It requires the suspension of regulatory disbelief. … It borders on a regulatory fraud.”
One buyer of Sinclair’s stations, conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, defended the deals as a way to ease the transition to new ownership. He also rejected the notion that Sinclair would control the stations he’s purchasing in Seattle, Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City.
“I get to reject something that I don’t want to run,” said Williams, a longtime Sinclair ally who is paying $4.95 million for the three stations.
Sinclair representatives declined to comment.
In the arrangement with Williams, Sinclair will handle advertising sales and offer news programming to the stations, maintain the studios and stations' websites, and pocket up to 30 percent of the monthly net sales revenue from each station. Sinclair also plans to sell Tribune's WGN station in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest television market, to a business associate of Sinclair Executive Chairman David Smith while keeping a similar stake in operations and programming.
The four markets collectively have 6.8 million TV-owning households, or about 6 percent of the U.S. total, according to Nielsen. Those stations are among 23 that Sinclair has said it will divest as it seeks regulators' blessing for the Tribune merger. Sinclair already owns more than 190 stations, and Tribune owns 42.
Regulators have sometimes objected to deals that leave another broadcaster entangled in a station's operations, commonly known as “sidecars,” although the FCC has previously approved Sinclair’s use of them.
Wheeler and other critics say such arrangements are designed to allow Sinclair to push its programming into more households than federal law permits while dominating local advertising markets, despite FCC rules aimed at ensuring diversity in local programming.
"This is about subverting the rules that have existed forever, and engaging in a charade that somehow Sinclair does not control what happens on these stations," Wheeler said.
"The idea that these are some kind of independent stations is a farce,” said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, an advocacy group that opposes the Sinclair-Tribune merger.
The sidecar deals also present a major test for Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who faces intense scrutiny over agency actions that critics say have benefited Sinclair.
The FCC requires stations to publicly file sidecar agreements — also known as shared services and joint sales agreements — and can step in if the structure of a deal amounts to de facto ownership. When a company uses them in connection with a station sale, which is subject to FCC review, the agency has a chance to weigh in before any sidecars are struck. The FCC looks at policies on station programming, personnel and finances to determine who ultimately controls the station in question.
The agreements Sinclair has proposed in its latest acquisition are similar to those the FCC has previously allowed in connection with the company's earlier mergers and other broadcast transactions. In 2010, the agency permitted a joint sales agreement between TV stations in Corpus Christi, Texas, despite the objections of a competing station because the agency concluded that the agreement did not give improper control.
Williams, who now owns seven TV stations, bought his first two from Sinclair with joint sales agreements in place. The latest deal will give him three more.
He said the two stations he owns that have agreements with Sinclair supplement the operating costs of his other five stations, which are independently owned. Williams argued it would be “foolish” to pass up the sidecar deals.
“In the beginning, while you’re getting these stations online, you need that kind of support so you don’t lose the stability and consistency of the station and the programming,” Williams said. “Once we get a grip of understanding the market, as we’ve done with other stations, things change and we gradually seize more and more control where we bring in our own people, we bring in our own programming. But you have to get there.”
And, Williams said, regulators have declined to rubber-stamp either his arrangement with Sinclair or the underlying Sinclair-Tribune merger. “Everybody thinks we’ve got this red carpet. … But I’ve got to tell you something, it doesn’t translate over at the Department of Justice and the FCC,” Williams said. “If that were the case, our deal would have been closed long ago.”
It’s unclear if the latest revision to the Sinclair-Tribune deal will pass regulatory muster. In reviewing a merger between Nexstar Broadcasting Group and Media General, the Justice Department under the Obama administration prohibited the companies from striking up side deals with divested stations.
More recently, the FCC looked askance at an earlier attempt by Sinclair to sell big stations to Smith associates with strings attached, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Sinclair dropped a plan to sell a valuable New York station to a company controlled by the estate of Smith’s mother. But it kept in place the WGN deal in Chicago, which The Journal said the FCC also found problematic.
Sinclair has said it would sell Tribune’s WGN in Chicago for $60 million to Steven Fader, a Maryland business associate of Smith’s who oversees car dealerships. But the deal would see Sinclair handle advertising sales and deliver programming to WGN, while also maintaining the station’s technical equipment, providing back-office support like payroll and even operating its website through joint sales and shared services agreements.
WGN would pay Sinclair $5.4 million a month, on top of $500,000 in monthly rent, while Sinclair would also have the right to collect 30 percent of monthly sales revenue. The deal would also give Sinclair the option to buy back the station after eight years.
Sinclair also plans to divest stations to Fox, Meredith Corp. and Standard Media Group, an affiliate of investment firm Standard General. Two stations would be sold to Cunningham Broadcasting Corp., a company with close ties to Sinclair. None of those divestitures would include joint sales or shared services agreements.
Cunningham's voting stock was owned until January by the estate of Carolyn Smith, David Smith's mother. The nonvoting stock of the company is owned by trusts that benefit Carolyn Smith's grandchildren.
However the FCC ultimately comes down on the mega-merger and affiliated spinoffs, it undeniably created the conditions that cleared a path for Sinclair to pursue the deals in the first place.
National ownership requirements limit a broadcast company’s reach to 39 percent of the country, but Pai reinstated a loophole that allows owners to count only half of some stations’ reach when calculating adherence to the limit. Sinclair's bid for Tribune would have been impossible without the loophole's restoration.
Pai, who has generally supported sidecar arrangements because he says they allow small TV stations to pool resources, also undid a Wheeler rule change that had gutted broadcasters’ latitude to strike them up.
The FCC under Wheeler tightened agency scrutiny of the arrangements, and warned broadcasters that it would count the sidecar stations when calculating a company’s reach in ownership limits.
In Pai's change of the rules, the FCC still cautioned stations that "they must retain ultimate control over their programming and core operations so as to avoid the potential for an unauthorized transfer of control" in pursuing the relationships.
Sinclair’s critics, including Free Press’ Aaron, worry that warning could prove toothless in the face of arrangements like that proposed with Williams.
“They’ve done it in a way that they can convince an ever-friendly FCC that this is somehow in line with ownership regulations, but the entire arrangements are clearly designed to evade ownership limits, and Sinclair has been doing this for years,” Aaron said.
But Williams said he — not Sinclair — would be in charge of the stations he’s buying.
"They will offer programming and commentary for our stations. Sometimes I will reject it,” he said. “It’s not that we reject it because we don’t want it, it’s because the time slot and the consistency that they want it does not fit with what we’re already populating our stations with.”
Sinclair makes side deals that could place Republican-leaning programming on stations it won’t own.
By MARGARET HARDING MCGILL
Sinclair Broadcast Group is selling off nearly two dozen television stations to comply with federal ownership rules — but that may not stop the company from reaching millions of viewers in those cities with its conservative programming.
Four of the sales include provisions that would leave the giant broadcaster with a role in the stations’ programming, finances and operations, even when it no longer owns them. Those strings could allow Sinclair to ensure that its content supporting President Donald Trump and other Republican causes continues to make it onto the air — despite regulations meant to ensure that no one company wields outsize influence in local media markets.
Sinclair, the nation’s largest TV broadcaster, has made these kinds of arrangements before as it has sold off some of its outlets. But the conditions attached to the station sales are attracting new scrutiny as the company pursues a $3.9 billion merger with Tribune Media that would expand Sinclair’s access to households across the country.
“This is a technique that was developed by slick lawyers for the purpose of getting around the rules,” former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, said in an interview. “It requires the suspension of regulatory disbelief. … It borders on a regulatory fraud.”
One buyer of Sinclair’s stations, conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, defended the deals as a way to ease the transition to new ownership. He also rejected the notion that Sinclair would control the stations he’s purchasing in Seattle, Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City.
“I get to reject something that I don’t want to run,” said Williams, a longtime Sinclair ally who is paying $4.95 million for the three stations.
Sinclair representatives declined to comment.
In the arrangement with Williams, Sinclair will handle advertising sales and offer news programming to the stations, maintain the studios and stations' websites, and pocket up to 30 percent of the monthly net sales revenue from each station. Sinclair also plans to sell Tribune's WGN station in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest television market, to a business associate of Sinclair Executive Chairman David Smith while keeping a similar stake in operations and programming.
The four markets collectively have 6.8 million TV-owning households, or about 6 percent of the U.S. total, according to Nielsen. Those stations are among 23 that Sinclair has said it will divest as it seeks regulators' blessing for the Tribune merger. Sinclair already owns more than 190 stations, and Tribune owns 42.
Regulators have sometimes objected to deals that leave another broadcaster entangled in a station's operations, commonly known as “sidecars,” although the FCC has previously approved Sinclair’s use of them.
Wheeler and other critics say such arrangements are designed to allow Sinclair to push its programming into more households than federal law permits while dominating local advertising markets, despite FCC rules aimed at ensuring diversity in local programming.
"This is about subverting the rules that have existed forever, and engaging in a charade that somehow Sinclair does not control what happens on these stations," Wheeler said.
"The idea that these are some kind of independent stations is a farce,” said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, an advocacy group that opposes the Sinclair-Tribune merger.
The sidecar deals also present a major test for Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who faces intense scrutiny over agency actions that critics say have benefited Sinclair.
The FCC requires stations to publicly file sidecar agreements — also known as shared services and joint sales agreements — and can step in if the structure of a deal amounts to de facto ownership. When a company uses them in connection with a station sale, which is subject to FCC review, the agency has a chance to weigh in before any sidecars are struck. The FCC looks at policies on station programming, personnel and finances to determine who ultimately controls the station in question.
The agreements Sinclair has proposed in its latest acquisition are similar to those the FCC has previously allowed in connection with the company's earlier mergers and other broadcast transactions. In 2010, the agency permitted a joint sales agreement between TV stations in Corpus Christi, Texas, despite the objections of a competing station because the agency concluded that the agreement did not give improper control.
Williams, who now owns seven TV stations, bought his first two from Sinclair with joint sales agreements in place. The latest deal will give him three more.
He said the two stations he owns that have agreements with Sinclair supplement the operating costs of his other five stations, which are independently owned. Williams argued it would be “foolish” to pass up the sidecar deals.
“In the beginning, while you’re getting these stations online, you need that kind of support so you don’t lose the stability and consistency of the station and the programming,” Williams said. “Once we get a grip of understanding the market, as we’ve done with other stations, things change and we gradually seize more and more control where we bring in our own people, we bring in our own programming. But you have to get there.”
And, Williams said, regulators have declined to rubber-stamp either his arrangement with Sinclair or the underlying Sinclair-Tribune merger. “Everybody thinks we’ve got this red carpet. … But I’ve got to tell you something, it doesn’t translate over at the Department of Justice and the FCC,” Williams said. “If that were the case, our deal would have been closed long ago.”
It’s unclear if the latest revision to the Sinclair-Tribune deal will pass regulatory muster. In reviewing a merger between Nexstar Broadcasting Group and Media General, the Justice Department under the Obama administration prohibited the companies from striking up side deals with divested stations.
More recently, the FCC looked askance at an earlier attempt by Sinclair to sell big stations to Smith associates with strings attached, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Sinclair dropped a plan to sell a valuable New York station to a company controlled by the estate of Smith’s mother. But it kept in place the WGN deal in Chicago, which The Journal said the FCC also found problematic.
Sinclair has said it would sell Tribune’s WGN in Chicago for $60 million to Steven Fader, a Maryland business associate of Smith’s who oversees car dealerships. But the deal would see Sinclair handle advertising sales and deliver programming to WGN, while also maintaining the station’s technical equipment, providing back-office support like payroll and even operating its website through joint sales and shared services agreements.
WGN would pay Sinclair $5.4 million a month, on top of $500,000 in monthly rent, while Sinclair would also have the right to collect 30 percent of monthly sales revenue. The deal would also give Sinclair the option to buy back the station after eight years.
Sinclair also plans to divest stations to Fox, Meredith Corp. and Standard Media Group, an affiliate of investment firm Standard General. Two stations would be sold to Cunningham Broadcasting Corp., a company with close ties to Sinclair. None of those divestitures would include joint sales or shared services agreements.
Cunningham's voting stock was owned until January by the estate of Carolyn Smith, David Smith's mother. The nonvoting stock of the company is owned by trusts that benefit Carolyn Smith's grandchildren.
However the FCC ultimately comes down on the mega-merger and affiliated spinoffs, it undeniably created the conditions that cleared a path for Sinclair to pursue the deals in the first place.
National ownership requirements limit a broadcast company’s reach to 39 percent of the country, but Pai reinstated a loophole that allows owners to count only half of some stations’ reach when calculating adherence to the limit. Sinclair's bid for Tribune would have been impossible without the loophole's restoration.
Pai, who has generally supported sidecar arrangements because he says they allow small TV stations to pool resources, also undid a Wheeler rule change that had gutted broadcasters’ latitude to strike them up.
The FCC under Wheeler tightened agency scrutiny of the arrangements, and warned broadcasters that it would count the sidecar stations when calculating a company’s reach in ownership limits.
In Pai's change of the rules, the FCC still cautioned stations that "they must retain ultimate control over their programming and core operations so as to avoid the potential for an unauthorized transfer of control" in pursuing the relationships.
Sinclair’s critics, including Free Press’ Aaron, worry that warning could prove toothless in the face of arrangements like that proposed with Williams.
“They’ve done it in a way that they can convince an ever-friendly FCC that this is somehow in line with ownership regulations, but the entire arrangements are clearly designed to evade ownership limits, and Sinclair has been doing this for years,” Aaron said.
But Williams said he — not Sinclair — would be in charge of the stations he’s buying.
"They will offer programming and commentary for our stations. Sometimes I will reject it,” he said. “It’s not that we reject it because we don’t want it, it’s because the time slot and the consistency that they want it does not fit with what we’re already populating our stations with.”
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