Republicans echo Trump's Brexit applause
By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL
Republicans largely met the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union on Friday with varying degrees of approval, none brighter than Donald Trump, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, who declared it a moment for Americans to follow in their ally’s footsteps and “re-declare their independence” this November.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sounded a more cautious note, saying he respects the choice of the United Kingdom’s electorate but maintained Friday that its exit will have no impact on America’s “special relationship” with the country.
“I respect the decision made by the people of the United Kingdom,” Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement. “The U.K. is an indispensable ally of the United States, and that special relationship is unaffected by this vote.”
The Wisconsin Republican reiterated during a news conference that the U.K. is an “indispensable ally” and that the “very special relationship” between the U.K. and U.S. “is going to continue no matter what. Period. End of story.” He also said America values “the principle of sovereignty, self-determination, government by consent and limited government.”
“These are very important principles and these principles are being expressed here at home and around the world so we clearly understand the thinking behind these principles,” Ryan told reporters.
In a 52 percent to 48 percent vote that concluded early Friday morning, the U.K. chose to leave the EU, prompting British Prime Minister David Cameron to announce his resignation.
“Basically, they took back their country. That’s a great thing,” Trump told reporters at his Turnberry, Scotland, golf course, noting that he saw a “great parallel” between the Brexit vote and his candidacy in the U.S.
“People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense,” Trump said. “You see it with Europe, all over Europe. You’re going to have more than just what happened last night, you’re going to have, I think, many other cases where they want to take their borders back, they want to take their monetary back, they want to take a lot of things back. They want to be able to have a country again. So I think you’re going to have this happen more and more, I really believe that. I think it’s happening in the United States.”
Like Ryan, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte said she respects the U.K.’s decision, declining to paint with a broader brush.
“I think that each country, including our own, we should be able to decide our own destiny. So it was for the people of Great Britain to decide if they wanted to be part of the European Union,” she told NH1. “I respect their decision just like I hope that every country would respect our decision, our sovereignty, to make our own decisions on how we govern our country.”
But other Republicans appeared to align more with Trump’s celebratory tone than Ryan’s diplomatic approach. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin congratulated the “smart Brits” who knew it was time to leave the European Union, adding that now is America’s time.
“Good on you for ignoring all the fear mongering from special interest globalists who tend to aim for that apocalyptic One World Government that dissolves a nation's self-determination and sovereignty... the EU being a One World Government mini-me,” the Trump surrogate wrote in a Facebook post. “America can learn an encouraging lesson from this. It is time to dissolve political bands that connect us to agendas not in our best interest. May UN shackles be next on the chopping block.”
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to endorse the real estate mogul, applauded the “wake-up call” and signaled that it was America’s turn.
“In negotiations and relationships, national leaders should first ensure they have protected the safety and legitimate interests of their own people. This principle has been eroded and Brexit is a warning for America,” Sessions said. “Our British friends have sent the message loud and clear.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also called the referendum “a wake-up call” and insisted that America should take notes.
“The results of the ‘Brexit’ referendum should serve as a wake-up call for internationalist bureaucrats from Brussels to Washington, D.C. that some free nations still wish to preserve their national sovereignty,” Cruz said in a statement. “The United States can learn from the referendum and attend to the issues of security, immigration and economic autonomy that drove this historic vote.”
The U.S. not only respects the British people’s decision to exercise “sovereign right of self-government,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said, but also celebrates their democracy.
“Meanwhile, the result of this referendum should remind leaders in Washington, London, Brussels, and across Europe that our citizens are dissatisfied with stagnant economies, declining wages, uncontrolled migration, rising crime, and terror attacks at home. It's time to abandon the failed policies of the past and solve the real problems of the present,” said Cotton, who called on the Obama administration to begin talks on a free-trade agreement with the U.K. “Now is the time to preserve and strengthen our special relationship with the United Kingdom.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee suggested Brexit is a harbinger for what will occur come November.
“Those who lead the political and financial institutions will push strongly that we ‘go along’ our path and elect ‘Hellary’ Clinton. There will be a large number (I believe a majority) who in spite of the uncertainty of specific policies, will vote to kick the political and financial institutions in their wide and arrogant rear-ends,” Huckabee wrote in a post on his website.
The former Republican presidential candidate summarized the Brexit vote as a “big shock in the UK” and “a big lesson and something to watch for in the United States.”
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson tweeted that like Americans, “the people of Great Britain have decided that they want to take their destiny into their own hands.”
Just hours before the final votes were recorded, polls suggested that the U.K. would vote to remain part of the EU. Brexit, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, is just “another in a long line of recent embarrassments for pollsters.”
June 24, 2016
Trump High spam rate
High spam rate hampers first Trump fundraising email
By LOUIS NELSON
Donald Trump’s campaign has bragged that the candidate’s first ever fundraising email was a record-setter in terms of money raised. But Trump’s email reached less than half of its intended recipients, and even fewer bothered to read the billionaire’s missive.
Data from email tracking firm Return Path shows 60 percent of Trump’s fundraising emails were kicked into recipients’ spam folders, according to a report from Ad Age. Only 12 percent of recipients opened the email and six percent deleted it without even opening it.
By comparison, Return Path’s data showed other emails from the Trump campaign are sent to spam folders at an eight percent rate, considered high relative to other email marketing.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told Ad Age that the email generated $3.3 million in donations on Tuesday and an additional $3.4 million on Wednesday. In a separate email to supporters on Wednesday, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said his father’s request had spurred a $2 million flood of donations in just 12 hours. Hicks did not immediately return POLITICO’s request for comment.
Return Path Senior Director of Research Tom Sather told Ad Age that the Trump fundraising email’s poor performance was likely a result of a change in domain. While previous emails had been sent from @DonaldTrump.com email addresses, the candidate’s fundraising push came from an @DonaldJTrump.com account. It’s that change in domain that likely sent the majority of the emails into spam folders, an easily-avoided mistake.
"These are things that professional email marketers prepare for," he said.
By LOUIS NELSON
Donald Trump’s campaign has bragged that the candidate’s first ever fundraising email was a record-setter in terms of money raised. But Trump’s email reached less than half of its intended recipients, and even fewer bothered to read the billionaire’s missive.
Data from email tracking firm Return Path shows 60 percent of Trump’s fundraising emails were kicked into recipients’ spam folders, according to a report from Ad Age. Only 12 percent of recipients opened the email and six percent deleted it without even opening it.
By comparison, Return Path’s data showed other emails from the Trump campaign are sent to spam folders at an eight percent rate, considered high relative to other email marketing.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told Ad Age that the email generated $3.3 million in donations on Tuesday and an additional $3.4 million on Wednesday. In a separate email to supporters on Wednesday, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said his father’s request had spurred a $2 million flood of donations in just 12 hours. Hicks did not immediately return POLITICO’s request for comment.
Return Path Senior Director of Research Tom Sather told Ad Age that the Trump fundraising email’s poor performance was likely a result of a change in domain. While previous emails had been sent from @DonaldTrump.com email addresses, the candidate’s fundraising push came from an @DonaldJTrump.com account. It’s that change in domain that likely sent the majority of the emails into spam folders, an easily-avoided mistake.
"These are things that professional email marketers prepare for," he said.
Kelly rips
Megyn Kelly rips Lewandowski CNN hire
By NICK GASS
Megyn Kelly laced into CNN on her show Thursday night, ripping her competitor for hiring Donald Trump's fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a paid contributor.
During a segment with media critic Howard Kurtz, Kelly noted that Lewandowski has "threatened more than one journalist in the course of this campaign," including with CNN's Noah Gray last November, when he warned the campaign embed "get back in the pen or he's f------ blacklisted."
Lewandowski, Kelly continued before asking Kurtz for his opinion, "has had some very ugly language attributed to him when it comes to women and now he will be getting paid by Donald Trump one day and by CNN the next."
"Well, this is no knock on Corey who I thought handled his firing with class. But for CNN to hire him 12 minutes after he was fired is to use, one of Trump's famous words, sad," Kurtz said. "It's really sad."
Lewandowski's segments with CNN this week, the first immediately after his firing Monday with Dana Bash and the second Thursday night with Erin Burnett, "made clear" that the Trump delegate "doesn't intend to utter a negative syllable of Donald Trump."
"And even if he wanted to, he signed a confidentiality agreement with Trump that he wouldn't and watching Corey tonight, it almost seemed like he was still on Trump's payroll because he was defending him at every possible turn," Kurtz remarked.
"So it's not honest analysis," Kelly said. "Think about the CNN reporter, the one who he threatened. I hope they don't bump into each other in the green room. That's going to be awkward. It's really remarkable."
By NICK GASS
Megyn Kelly laced into CNN on her show Thursday night, ripping her competitor for hiring Donald Trump's fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a paid contributor.
During a segment with media critic Howard Kurtz, Kelly noted that Lewandowski has "threatened more than one journalist in the course of this campaign," including with CNN's Noah Gray last November, when he warned the campaign embed "get back in the pen or he's f------ blacklisted."
Lewandowski, Kelly continued before asking Kurtz for his opinion, "has had some very ugly language attributed to him when it comes to women and now he will be getting paid by Donald Trump one day and by CNN the next."
"Well, this is no knock on Corey who I thought handled his firing with class. But for CNN to hire him 12 minutes after he was fired is to use, one of Trump's famous words, sad," Kurtz said. "It's really sad."
Lewandowski's segments with CNN this week, the first immediately after his firing Monday with Dana Bash and the second Thursday night with Erin Burnett, "made clear" that the Trump delegate "doesn't intend to utter a negative syllable of Donald Trump."
"And even if he wanted to, he signed a confidentiality agreement with Trump that he wouldn't and watching Corey tonight, it almost seemed like he was still on Trump's payroll because he was defending him at every possible turn," Kurtz remarked.
"So it's not honest analysis," Kelly said. "Think about the CNN reporter, the one who he threatened. I hope they don't bump into each other in the green room. That's going to be awkward. It's really remarkable."
Friday afternoon...
With Briton having a bad day, the stock market having a bad day, and many other people having a bad day, I give you this to take your mind off of things...
Scotland independence???
New Scotland independence referendum 'highly likely': Sturgeon
By Elisabeth O'Leary
A second Scottish independence referendum is "highly likely", First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Friday, raising the prospect that the United Kingdom could tear itself apart after voting to leave the European Union.
Scotland, a nation of five million people, voted decisively to stay in the EU by 62 to 38 percent in a referendum on Thursday, putting it at odds with the United Kingdom as a whole, which voted 52-48 in favor of an exit from the EU, or Brexit.
"As things stand, Scotland faces the prospect of being taken out of the EU against her will. I regard that as democratically unacceptable," Sturgeon told a news conference in Edinburgh.
"I think an independence referendum is now highly likely."
A vote for independence would end the 300-year-old union between Scotland and England, its far bigger southern neighbor, dealing a body blow to the United Kingdom at a time when it is likely to still be dealing with the complex fallout from Brexit.
It would also transform the political landscape in the rump of the United Kingdom by making it much harder for Labour, the main opposition to the ruling Conservatives, to win power in London, as the party has relied on Scottish votes in the past.
Scots rejected independence by 55 to 45 percent in a 2014 referendum, but since then Sturgeon's pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) has become much more powerful.
EU membership was one of the key issues in 2014, with those campaigning for Scotland to stick with the United Kingdom arguing that an independent Scotland would not be able to remain a member of the bloc.
Sturgeon said many Scots who had voted against independence for that reason were now re-assessing their decision.
"I intend to take all possible steps and explore all options to give effect to how people in Scotland voted (on Thursday), in other words to secure our continuing place in the EU and in the single market," she said.
Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who are the main opposition force in Edinburgh politics, said she did not believe a second independence referendum would help Scotland achieve stability or be in the best interests of its people.
"The 1.6 million votes cast in this (EU) referendum in favor of 'remain' do not wipe away the 2 million votes that we cast less than two years ago (to stay in the UK)," she said.
INDEPENDENCE BEFORE BREXIT?
The SNP holds massive sway, however. It won all but three of Scotland's 59 seats in the national parliament in London in a general election last year, and holds 63 seats in the devolved parliament in Edinburgh to 31 for Davidson's Conservatives.
Nevertheless, calling a new independence vote would not be straightforward and the SNP, tempered by caution since Sturgeon took over as leader from firebrand Alex Salmond, would want to first be sure that it would win.
Where the last independence campaign fell down is widely considered to be the economic argument. An independent Scotland would, it was projected at the time, stick with its old currency, Britain's pound, with national finances underpinned by an oil price then over $100 but now roughly half that level.
Sturgeon would have to build a robust economic independence strategy to convince those who in 2014 were emotionally inclined to leave the UK but voted to stay in because of the economics.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the EU referendum and campaigned for a "Remain" vote, announced after the result on Friday that he would resign by the autumn.
He said he would leave it to his successor to decide when to trigger article 50, the mechanism by which an EU member can leave the bloc. There would then be a two-year window for Britain to negotiate the terms of its exit and execute it.
Sturgeon said Scotland "must have the option" to hold an independence referendum within that timescale -- much sooner than anyone had thought possible before the vote for Brexit.
As well as bringing further turmoil to the rest of the United Kingdom, Scottish independence would also be likely to cause political headaches for the 27 remaining EU members.
Some European politicians were quick to suggest that an independent Scotland should be welcomed into the fold.
"Europe is open to new member states. That is totally clear," said Manfred Weber, leader of the largest bloc of lawmakers in the European parliament.
Geert Bourgeois, separatist president of the Belgian region of Flanders, said Scotland should be admitted as a full member without delay.
"It would be quite Kafkaesque, if there were a part of the country that wanted to stay in the EU, if the EU turned around and made them join the back of the queue," he said.
But the government in Madrid, for one, is unlikely to take such a benign view given that it faces a strong separatist movement in Catalonia, which like Scotland is pro-EU.
By Elisabeth O'Leary
A second Scottish independence referendum is "highly likely", First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Friday, raising the prospect that the United Kingdom could tear itself apart after voting to leave the European Union.
Scotland, a nation of five million people, voted decisively to stay in the EU by 62 to 38 percent in a referendum on Thursday, putting it at odds with the United Kingdom as a whole, which voted 52-48 in favor of an exit from the EU, or Brexit.
"As things stand, Scotland faces the prospect of being taken out of the EU against her will. I regard that as democratically unacceptable," Sturgeon told a news conference in Edinburgh.
"I think an independence referendum is now highly likely."
A vote for independence would end the 300-year-old union between Scotland and England, its far bigger southern neighbor, dealing a body blow to the United Kingdom at a time when it is likely to still be dealing with the complex fallout from Brexit.
It would also transform the political landscape in the rump of the United Kingdom by making it much harder for Labour, the main opposition to the ruling Conservatives, to win power in London, as the party has relied on Scottish votes in the past.
Scots rejected independence by 55 to 45 percent in a 2014 referendum, but since then Sturgeon's pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) has become much more powerful.
EU membership was one of the key issues in 2014, with those campaigning for Scotland to stick with the United Kingdom arguing that an independent Scotland would not be able to remain a member of the bloc.
Sturgeon said many Scots who had voted against independence for that reason were now re-assessing their decision.
"I intend to take all possible steps and explore all options to give effect to how people in Scotland voted (on Thursday), in other words to secure our continuing place in the EU and in the single market," she said.
Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who are the main opposition force in Edinburgh politics, said she did not believe a second independence referendum would help Scotland achieve stability or be in the best interests of its people.
"The 1.6 million votes cast in this (EU) referendum in favor of 'remain' do not wipe away the 2 million votes that we cast less than two years ago (to stay in the UK)," she said.
INDEPENDENCE BEFORE BREXIT?
The SNP holds massive sway, however. It won all but three of Scotland's 59 seats in the national parliament in London in a general election last year, and holds 63 seats in the devolved parliament in Edinburgh to 31 for Davidson's Conservatives.
Nevertheless, calling a new independence vote would not be straightforward and the SNP, tempered by caution since Sturgeon took over as leader from firebrand Alex Salmond, would want to first be sure that it would win.
Where the last independence campaign fell down is widely considered to be the economic argument. An independent Scotland would, it was projected at the time, stick with its old currency, Britain's pound, with national finances underpinned by an oil price then over $100 but now roughly half that level.
Sturgeon would have to build a robust economic independence strategy to convince those who in 2014 were emotionally inclined to leave the UK but voted to stay in because of the economics.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the EU referendum and campaigned for a "Remain" vote, announced after the result on Friday that he would resign by the autumn.
He said he would leave it to his successor to decide when to trigger article 50, the mechanism by which an EU member can leave the bloc. There would then be a two-year window for Britain to negotiate the terms of its exit and execute it.
Sturgeon said Scotland "must have the option" to hold an independence referendum within that timescale -- much sooner than anyone had thought possible before the vote for Brexit.
As well as bringing further turmoil to the rest of the United Kingdom, Scottish independence would also be likely to cause political headaches for the 27 remaining EU members.
Some European politicians were quick to suggest that an independent Scotland should be welcomed into the fold.
"Europe is open to new member states. That is totally clear," said Manfred Weber, leader of the largest bloc of lawmakers in the European parliament.
Geert Bourgeois, separatist president of the Belgian region of Flanders, said Scotland should be admitted as a full member without delay.
"It would be quite Kafkaesque, if there were a part of the country that wanted to stay in the EU, if the EU turned around and made them join the back of the queue," he said.
But the government in Madrid, for one, is unlikely to take such a benign view given that it faces a strong separatist movement in Catalonia, which like Scotland is pro-EU.
Sagittarius Sunflowers
These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 near the bottom of the frame The third, NGC 6559, is right of M8, separated from the larger nebula by dark dust lanes. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. In the composite image, narrowband data records ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms radiating at visible wavelengths. The mapping of colors and range of brightness used to compose this cosmic still life were inspired by Van Gogh's famous Sunflowers. Just right of the Trifid one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, is also included on the telescopic canvas.
Solar-powered plane
Solar-powered plane lands in Spain
By Laura Leon
An experimental solar-powered airplane landed in Spain Thursday, completing an unprecedented three-day flight across the Atlantic in the latest leg of its globe-circling voyage.
The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Seville in southern Spain at 0540 GMT on Thursday, ending a 71-hour, 8-minute flight which began from New York City on Monday. It was the first time a solar-powered plane has made such a journey using zero fuel and zero emissions, organizers said.
Organizers said the aircraft had flown 6,765 kilometers (4,204 miles) at a maximum height of 8,534 meters (28,000 feet) and average speed of 95 kph (59 mph).
It was the 15th leg of a planned around-the-world flight which began in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
The wings of Solar Impulse 2, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night.
The flight was piloted by Swiss men Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg.
"Initially the aviation industry told us it was impossible to build such an airplane, but we believed we could do it thanks to all our partners' technologies," Borschberg said in a statement.
The organizers said the mission will continue onward to Abu Dhabi.
It said the project showed that "exploration and pioneering are no longer about conquering new territories, but about exploring new ways to have a better quality of life on earth."
By Laura Leon
An experimental solar-powered airplane landed in Spain Thursday, completing an unprecedented three-day flight across the Atlantic in the latest leg of its globe-circling voyage.
The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Seville in southern Spain at 0540 GMT on Thursday, ending a 71-hour, 8-minute flight which began from New York City on Monday. It was the first time a solar-powered plane has made such a journey using zero fuel and zero emissions, organizers said.
Organizers said the aircraft had flown 6,765 kilometers (4,204 miles) at a maximum height of 8,534 meters (28,000 feet) and average speed of 95 kph (59 mph).
It was the 15th leg of a planned around-the-world flight which began in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
The wings of Solar Impulse 2, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries. The plane runs on stored energy at night.
The flight was piloted by Swiss men Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg.
"Initially the aviation industry told us it was impossible to build such an airplane, but we believed we could do it thanks to all our partners' technologies," Borschberg said in a statement.
The organizers said the mission will continue onward to Abu Dhabi.
It said the project showed that "exploration and pioneering are no longer about conquering new territories, but about exploring new ways to have a better quality of life on earth."
Pentagon's climate plan
Why the GOP is trying to stop the Pentagon's climate plan
The Defense Department, long in the vanguard in dealing with climate change, may see its latest plan defunded.
By Danny Vinik
In Washington, big agencies rarely get high marks for innovation and foresight. But when it comes to coping with climate change, the largest federal agency—the Pentagon—has taken a spot in the vanguard. As far as back as the George W. Bush administration, the Defense Department was warning that global warming posed a threat to U.S. national security, and that the military needed to be preparing accordingly.
This year it went further, laying out a new game plan that assigns specific top officials the jobs of figuring out how climate change should shape everything from weapons acquisition to personnel training.
Last week, however, House Republicans voted to block it. By a 216-205 vote Thursday, the House passed an amendment prohibiting the department from spending money to put its new plan into effect. Not a single Democrat voted for the amendment, which was attached to the defense spending bill. It’s the second time in just a few weeks that the House GOP has tried to halt the Pentagon’s climate policies; a similar measure attached to the House’s defense authorization bill, which also received no Democratic votes, passed in May.
Supporters of the amendment say it’s necessary to ensure the Department of Defense doesn’t lose focus on the biggest threat facing the U.S. today—the Islamic State. But critics say the provisions, if they became law, would dangerously tie the hands of the Defense Department as it prepares for future threats. (The Senate’s version of the bill doesn’t block the plan; whether the amendment will survive conference is unclear.)
“It’s actually crazy to me, and it should be crazy to anyone in the military, that Congress is telling them not to do this,” said Andrew Holland, the senior fellow for energy and climate at the American Security Project.
“This is what we ask our military and national security people to do, to think long-term, look at emerging threats, figure out ways to protect against these threats,” he said.
DOD officials have been warning for years that climate change could have dire consequences on U.S. national security. Increased refugee flows, which are already straining Europe, are likely to accelerate as the climate heats up and have the potential to destabilize large swaths of the world, including the Middle East and South Pacific. The “oil wars” of the 20th century could give way to “water wars,” with countries competing for scarce natural resources. Higher energy costs may further strain the military’s budget and rising water levels could force the DOD to adjust locations of critical infrastructure facilities like ports.
The Department of Defense’s Directive 4715.21, released in mid-January in accordance with Obama’s 2013 executive order requiring government agencies to prepare for climate change, received little coverage when it was first published. At just 12 pages, it isn’t especially long. But according to military and climate experts, it’s a critical step toward streamlining how different offices prepare for climate change, including designating specific officials to attend to specific tasks. The assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment is named as DOD’s “primary climate change adaption official” and charged with building infrastructure that will accommodate warming temperatures. The assistant secretary of defense for acquisition is responsible for ensuring weapons systems and equipment acquisitions are adapted for changing weather patterns. Another official is charged with drawing up plans for future disasters resulting from climate change, from offering humanitarian assistance to preparing for new conflicts.
“While this thing looks pretty innocuous, it has the potential to be pretty important,” said David Titley, a retired rear admiral who spent 32 years in the military and is the founding director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Penn State University. He compared it to the Department of Defense’s quadrennial security review, which sets out top-level defense policy. The review is “such high level, it's like ‘OK, we like motherhood and apple pie.’ Great, what do I do? The DOD [climate] directive gets pretty specific.”
Republicans say the directive is a distraction from the real threats the Pentagon should be focused on, particularly terrorist groups in the Middle East. “The military, the intelligence community [and] the domestic national security agencies should be focused on ISIS and not on climate change,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who sponsored the amendment to block the funding. “The fact that the president wants to push a radical green energy agenda should not diminish our ability to counter terrorism.” Buck dismissed the idea that the military should focus on climate change as a threat: “The president has talked about an increase in the climate temperature on the planet,” he said. “It is a fraction of a degree every year. How that is a current threat to us is beyond me.”
Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who spent two decades in the Marine Corps, argued that the directive will require additional resources to implement, a costly effort in a time of tight budgets. “You’re just overloading the military with yet more tasks,” he said.
But experts who have spent years working on climate and defense issues say the directive would save money in the long run by ensuring the Defense Department accounts for climate change in its planning process. It also doesn’t require much in the way of new resources, said Sherri Goodman, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security and a fellow at the Wilson Center. “We already have meteorologists in the military,” she said. “We already have biologists. We already have military construction analysts.”
Titley said that it could also put a “chilling effect” on other DOD officials as they implement measures to adapt for climate change. The department is capable of fighting the Islamic State and preparing for climate change at the same time, he added, arguing that Buck’s position represented “almost a cartoonish or stereotype of the military’s job, that it is [only] to kill people or break things. OK. But when you are running an adult organization of $600 plus billion, you have a lot of people and you need to consider a lot of things.”
Larger infrastructure and operational changes that are necessary to address climate change will, of course, have significant costs when they take place. But foregoing such changes now will only cost more money in the future, experts say, and risk leaving the military ill-prepared for future engagements.
The military’s warnings about climate change date back to a 2008 National Intelligence Assessment issued during the Bush Administration which stated that climate change could cause disputes over natural resources as well as mass migrations, both of which could lead to further political instability. More recent DOD reports, including the 2014 quadrennial defense review, reinforced that message and advised that the Pentagon begin preparing for such a future.
While agencies within the Department of Defense have already begun such preparations, the directive is a way to streamline the separate efforts, ensuring that officials have clear responsibilities and that no job duties are ignored. Defense experts say that blocking the DOD from implementing the directive won’t stop the Pentagon’s climate change preparations in their entirety, but will cause fragmentation and wasted resources.
The House GOP’s efforts to block the directive demonstrate the political toxicity around the issue of climate change. At the best of times, government agencies struggle with long-term planning; that the Defense Department is proactively planning for future problems would normally earn praise on Capitol Hill. The Navy, for instance, has modernized its energy program to reduce fuel costs—yet has not referred to it as preparing for climate change and Republicans have not objected. That suggests that terminology matters: GOP lawmakers have become accustomed to objecting to any efforts from the Obama administration related to climate change.
Titley, who formerly led the Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change, said that he was careful how he referred to policies during his time in government. “There’s a program I got through the Department of Defense called our system prediction capability,” he said. “We take forecasts out to 30 years. Some people might call that short-term climate. I didn’t. The word climate is nowhere in that budget document.”
The Senate’s defense spending bill, which passed the Senate Appropriations Committee in late May but has not yet received a vote on the floor, leaves the climate change directive intact. Whether the House amendment will make it into the final bill is “above my grade” Buck said.
But experts worry that if it does find its way into law, the risks are high; such preparations are necessary now, they warn, before it’s too late. “It's like people who drive down the road and all they can do is look 10 feet in front of them on the bumper and they're all going about 75 mph,” said Titley. “That's great until three cars up there are stopped. You don't see it until you're all of a sudden slamming on the brakes.”
The Defense Department, long in the vanguard in dealing with climate change, may see its latest plan defunded.
By Danny Vinik
In Washington, big agencies rarely get high marks for innovation and foresight. But when it comes to coping with climate change, the largest federal agency—the Pentagon—has taken a spot in the vanguard. As far as back as the George W. Bush administration, the Defense Department was warning that global warming posed a threat to U.S. national security, and that the military needed to be preparing accordingly.
This year it went further, laying out a new game plan that assigns specific top officials the jobs of figuring out how climate change should shape everything from weapons acquisition to personnel training.
Last week, however, House Republicans voted to block it. By a 216-205 vote Thursday, the House passed an amendment prohibiting the department from spending money to put its new plan into effect. Not a single Democrat voted for the amendment, which was attached to the defense spending bill. It’s the second time in just a few weeks that the House GOP has tried to halt the Pentagon’s climate policies; a similar measure attached to the House’s defense authorization bill, which also received no Democratic votes, passed in May.
Supporters of the amendment say it’s necessary to ensure the Department of Defense doesn’t lose focus on the biggest threat facing the U.S. today—the Islamic State. But critics say the provisions, if they became law, would dangerously tie the hands of the Defense Department as it prepares for future threats. (The Senate’s version of the bill doesn’t block the plan; whether the amendment will survive conference is unclear.)
“It’s actually crazy to me, and it should be crazy to anyone in the military, that Congress is telling them not to do this,” said Andrew Holland, the senior fellow for energy and climate at the American Security Project.
“This is what we ask our military and national security people to do, to think long-term, look at emerging threats, figure out ways to protect against these threats,” he said.
DOD officials have been warning for years that climate change could have dire consequences on U.S. national security. Increased refugee flows, which are already straining Europe, are likely to accelerate as the climate heats up and have the potential to destabilize large swaths of the world, including the Middle East and South Pacific. The “oil wars” of the 20th century could give way to “water wars,” with countries competing for scarce natural resources. Higher energy costs may further strain the military’s budget and rising water levels could force the DOD to adjust locations of critical infrastructure facilities like ports.
The Department of Defense’s Directive 4715.21, released in mid-January in accordance with Obama’s 2013 executive order requiring government agencies to prepare for climate change, received little coverage when it was first published. At just 12 pages, it isn’t especially long. But according to military and climate experts, it’s a critical step toward streamlining how different offices prepare for climate change, including designating specific officials to attend to specific tasks. The assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment is named as DOD’s “primary climate change adaption official” and charged with building infrastructure that will accommodate warming temperatures. The assistant secretary of defense for acquisition is responsible for ensuring weapons systems and equipment acquisitions are adapted for changing weather patterns. Another official is charged with drawing up plans for future disasters resulting from climate change, from offering humanitarian assistance to preparing for new conflicts.
“While this thing looks pretty innocuous, it has the potential to be pretty important,” said David Titley, a retired rear admiral who spent 32 years in the military and is the founding director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Penn State University. He compared it to the Department of Defense’s quadrennial security review, which sets out top-level defense policy. The review is “such high level, it's like ‘OK, we like motherhood and apple pie.’ Great, what do I do? The DOD [climate] directive gets pretty specific.”
Republicans say the directive is a distraction from the real threats the Pentagon should be focused on, particularly terrorist groups in the Middle East. “The military, the intelligence community [and] the domestic national security agencies should be focused on ISIS and not on climate change,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who sponsored the amendment to block the funding. “The fact that the president wants to push a radical green energy agenda should not diminish our ability to counter terrorism.” Buck dismissed the idea that the military should focus on climate change as a threat: “The president has talked about an increase in the climate temperature on the planet,” he said. “It is a fraction of a degree every year. How that is a current threat to us is beyond me.”
Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who spent two decades in the Marine Corps, argued that the directive will require additional resources to implement, a costly effort in a time of tight budgets. “You’re just overloading the military with yet more tasks,” he said.
But experts who have spent years working on climate and defense issues say the directive would save money in the long run by ensuring the Defense Department accounts for climate change in its planning process. It also doesn’t require much in the way of new resources, said Sherri Goodman, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security and a fellow at the Wilson Center. “We already have meteorologists in the military,” she said. “We already have biologists. We already have military construction analysts.”
Titley said that it could also put a “chilling effect” on other DOD officials as they implement measures to adapt for climate change. The department is capable of fighting the Islamic State and preparing for climate change at the same time, he added, arguing that Buck’s position represented “almost a cartoonish or stereotype of the military’s job, that it is [only] to kill people or break things. OK. But when you are running an adult organization of $600 plus billion, you have a lot of people and you need to consider a lot of things.”
Larger infrastructure and operational changes that are necessary to address climate change will, of course, have significant costs when they take place. But foregoing such changes now will only cost more money in the future, experts say, and risk leaving the military ill-prepared for future engagements.
The military’s warnings about climate change date back to a 2008 National Intelligence Assessment issued during the Bush Administration which stated that climate change could cause disputes over natural resources as well as mass migrations, both of which could lead to further political instability. More recent DOD reports, including the 2014 quadrennial defense review, reinforced that message and advised that the Pentagon begin preparing for such a future.
While agencies within the Department of Defense have already begun such preparations, the directive is a way to streamline the separate efforts, ensuring that officials have clear responsibilities and that no job duties are ignored. Defense experts say that blocking the DOD from implementing the directive won’t stop the Pentagon’s climate change preparations in their entirety, but will cause fragmentation and wasted resources.
The House GOP’s efforts to block the directive demonstrate the political toxicity around the issue of climate change. At the best of times, government agencies struggle with long-term planning; that the Defense Department is proactively planning for future problems would normally earn praise on Capitol Hill. The Navy, for instance, has modernized its energy program to reduce fuel costs—yet has not referred to it as preparing for climate change and Republicans have not objected. That suggests that terminology matters: GOP lawmakers have become accustomed to objecting to any efforts from the Obama administration related to climate change.
Titley, who formerly led the Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change, said that he was careful how he referred to policies during his time in government. “There’s a program I got through the Department of Defense called our system prediction capability,” he said. “We take forecasts out to 30 years. Some people might call that short-term climate. I didn’t. The word climate is nowhere in that budget document.”
The Senate’s defense spending bill, which passed the Senate Appropriations Committee in late May but has not yet received a vote on the floor, leaves the climate change directive intact. Whether the House amendment will make it into the final bill is “above my grade” Buck said.
But experts worry that if it does find its way into law, the risks are high; such preparations are necessary now, they warn, before it’s too late. “It's like people who drive down the road and all they can do is look 10 feet in front of them on the bumper and they're all going about 75 mph,” said Titley. “That's great until three cars up there are stopped. You don't see it until you're all of a sudden slamming on the brakes.”
Guerrilla tactics
Democrats: Guns sit-in just a taste of guerrilla tactics to come
The floor rebellion could mark a turning point for the House — and set a risky precedent for future fights.
By Rachael Bade
House Democrats’ 24-hour gun-control protest marks a turning point in Congress as a major escalation in minority battle tactics, lawmakers in both parties said Thursday — and a move that brings fundamental risks for the institution.
Already rank-and-file Democrats, energized by nationwide publicity and praise they received for occupying the House floor over demands for a gun vote, are saying they’ll likely use the same strategy again.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), for example, thinks a sit-in demonstration could force Republican leadership’s hands on what she called “economic justice issues,” like the minimum wage. And Rep. Maxine Waters of California said at the end of the protest Thursday that she would be ready to seize the House floor again over the gun matter when lawmakers return from their July 4 recess.
“It’s a new day in Washington; it’s a new way to fight,” said Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Joe Crowley on the House floor in the wee hours of Thursday morning. The New York lawmaker elaborated in an interview on the House steps a few hours later: “The American people want and expect the House to do something, and they’re not just going to take silence anymore. We’re going to get in the way until we see action.”
The escalation of confrontation on the House floor is a risky gamble though. Privately, a number of more senior Democrats worry what this might mean for them if and when they seize back the House. They remember what it was like to be in the majority, and they fear Republicans someday could turn the tables and use the shut-down-the-House ploy against them — just as they did to Speaker Paul Ryan Wednesday.
The sit-in was mainly rank-and-file idea — Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her No. 2 Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) didn’t lead the effort or come up with the idea, although they joined the protesters on the floor and praised their colleagues.
Some Democrats are saying their caucus should only use the tactic sparingly so as to not overplay their hand.
“I don’t think it’s something you want to over-utilize,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “I don’t think it’s something that’s going to be used except for in extraordinary circumstances. It will continue to be an important method of continuing to demand a vote on the gun issue, but I’d surprised to see it utilized in all but the most extraordinary circumstances.”
Ryan, whom Democrats booed on the House floor during the sit-in, blasted the new tactic as a political stunt that sets a dangerous precedent for House decorum.
“I do worry about the precedent here,” he told reporters Thursday. “I have an obligation as speaker of the House to protect this institution. We are the oldest democracy in the world. … And so when we see our democracy descend in this way, it is not a good sign.”
Ryan said he was no stranger to being jeered and mocked, noting his appearances at the Iowa State Fair soapbox — the notorious political Q&A spot where Hawkeye State residents grill politicians — and criticism he received during contentious Wisconsin recall elections.
But the same peppering on Capitol Hill crossed a line, he said.
“That I am used to, but on the House floor? No. On the House floor we have rules, order and a system where democracy is supposed to work itself out in a deliberative and respectful way," he said. “We watched a publicity stunt, a fundraising stunt, descend an institution that many of us care a great deal about.”
The new strategy also opens up the risky possibility that smaller groups could also seize the floor and stop all legislative business. Wednesday’s sit-in was supported by virtually all House Democrats, but smaller subsets could try to stage their own protests in the future.
And while many around the nation applauded the left for staging their demonstration on the House floor — particularly because public opinion favors their pitch to expand background checks and block gun purchases for suspected terrorists — a smaller, less popular issue would likely have a different outcome and tone.
Lawmakers who find themselves virtually powerless in the House minority, however, don't have much to lose. Democrats who cheered the strategy didn’t think it would be problematic for them if they someday regain the majority. But others privately admitted it absolutely would be.
Even members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — which drove out ex-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and is known for forcing GOP leadership’s hand on hot topics — thought Democrats stepped out of bounds. Co-founders Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) sat together in the House chamber to watch the protest as it stretched through the night.
Meadows said he didn’t believe his group of fellow conservatives would adopt the Democratic strategy.
“I don’t ever see this type of demonstration ever being used by the House Freedom Caucus,” he told POLITICO. “It’s counter to regular order and rules. Our emphasis has been on preserving the rules to protect the rights of the minority interest, and to suggest that this is appropriate goes against all that we stand for and espouse.”
Some Democrats said Republicans better get used to it.
“There’s a consensus that when we come back, it’s not going to be business as usual — we’re not going to roll over,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a House Rules Committee member who helped the left navigate convoluted floor procedures during the “sit in.” “We’re fed up with being treated so terribly, being locked out of everything and having our views not respected. So whether it’s more ‘sit ins’ or whether it manifests itself in other ways, we’re not going to take it anymore.”
“Absolutely,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) when asked whether Democrats would occupy the floor again. She said the partisanship of this day and age has pretty much forced them to become more aggressive.
“It used to be that you disagreed but you’d compromised and you’d moved forward,” she said. But now the minority is completely frozen out, Maloney said.
“We’re a different party today. We closed them down,” she added, proudly.
Waters said the House would definitely press repeat should Republicans continue to refuse a vote on their bill to bar terror suspects from purchasing guns. DeLauro, meanwhile, said that as a grass-roots cheerleader, there was “nothing like making our voices heard and standing up.”
She rattled off a series of economic issues that she believed were “the single biggest issue people face”: “minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, paid sick days and paid leave.” And asked whether she’d want Democrats to do a sit-in over those, she answered in the affirmative.
“Yeah — why not?” she said. “The minority has to fight back, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”
Others were more measured.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), when asked whether Democrats would turn to the sit-in for other topics, waved away the thought.
“Right now, we own this [gun] issue and we’ll be carrying this forward,” she said.
Democrats, she added, would continue to press Republicans on the matter.
“[T]his is just getting started. I don’t’ know if that [the sit-in] will be the strategy. But you’re going to see a lot of activity with the groups … We’ll be mobilizing our districts and putting pressure on Republicans directly. I’m not sure the shape but I can assure you we won’t quit until we win.”
The floor rebellion could mark a turning point for the House — and set a risky precedent for future fights.
By Rachael Bade
House Democrats’ 24-hour gun-control protest marks a turning point in Congress as a major escalation in minority battle tactics, lawmakers in both parties said Thursday — and a move that brings fundamental risks for the institution.
Already rank-and-file Democrats, energized by nationwide publicity and praise they received for occupying the House floor over demands for a gun vote, are saying they’ll likely use the same strategy again.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), for example, thinks a sit-in demonstration could force Republican leadership’s hands on what she called “economic justice issues,” like the minimum wage. And Rep. Maxine Waters of California said at the end of the protest Thursday that she would be ready to seize the House floor again over the gun matter when lawmakers return from their July 4 recess.
“It’s a new day in Washington; it’s a new way to fight,” said Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Joe Crowley on the House floor in the wee hours of Thursday morning. The New York lawmaker elaborated in an interview on the House steps a few hours later: “The American people want and expect the House to do something, and they’re not just going to take silence anymore. We’re going to get in the way until we see action.”
The escalation of confrontation on the House floor is a risky gamble though. Privately, a number of more senior Democrats worry what this might mean for them if and when they seize back the House. They remember what it was like to be in the majority, and they fear Republicans someday could turn the tables and use the shut-down-the-House ploy against them — just as they did to Speaker Paul Ryan Wednesday.
The sit-in was mainly rank-and-file idea — Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her No. 2 Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) didn’t lead the effort or come up with the idea, although they joined the protesters on the floor and praised their colleagues.
Some Democrats are saying their caucus should only use the tactic sparingly so as to not overplay their hand.
“I don’t think it’s something you want to over-utilize,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “I don’t think it’s something that’s going to be used except for in extraordinary circumstances. It will continue to be an important method of continuing to demand a vote on the gun issue, but I’d surprised to see it utilized in all but the most extraordinary circumstances.”
Ryan, whom Democrats booed on the House floor during the sit-in, blasted the new tactic as a political stunt that sets a dangerous precedent for House decorum.
“I do worry about the precedent here,” he told reporters Thursday. “I have an obligation as speaker of the House to protect this institution. We are the oldest democracy in the world. … And so when we see our democracy descend in this way, it is not a good sign.”
Ryan said he was no stranger to being jeered and mocked, noting his appearances at the Iowa State Fair soapbox — the notorious political Q&A spot where Hawkeye State residents grill politicians — and criticism he received during contentious Wisconsin recall elections.
But the same peppering on Capitol Hill crossed a line, he said.
“That I am used to, but on the House floor? No. On the House floor we have rules, order and a system where democracy is supposed to work itself out in a deliberative and respectful way," he said. “We watched a publicity stunt, a fundraising stunt, descend an institution that many of us care a great deal about.”
The new strategy also opens up the risky possibility that smaller groups could also seize the floor and stop all legislative business. Wednesday’s sit-in was supported by virtually all House Democrats, but smaller subsets could try to stage their own protests in the future.
And while many around the nation applauded the left for staging their demonstration on the House floor — particularly because public opinion favors their pitch to expand background checks and block gun purchases for suspected terrorists — a smaller, less popular issue would likely have a different outcome and tone.
Lawmakers who find themselves virtually powerless in the House minority, however, don't have much to lose. Democrats who cheered the strategy didn’t think it would be problematic for them if they someday regain the majority. But others privately admitted it absolutely would be.
Even members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — which drove out ex-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and is known for forcing GOP leadership’s hand on hot topics — thought Democrats stepped out of bounds. Co-founders Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) sat together in the House chamber to watch the protest as it stretched through the night.
Meadows said he didn’t believe his group of fellow conservatives would adopt the Democratic strategy.
“I don’t ever see this type of demonstration ever being used by the House Freedom Caucus,” he told POLITICO. “It’s counter to regular order and rules. Our emphasis has been on preserving the rules to protect the rights of the minority interest, and to suggest that this is appropriate goes against all that we stand for and espouse.”
Some Democrats said Republicans better get used to it.
“There’s a consensus that when we come back, it’s not going to be business as usual — we’re not going to roll over,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a House Rules Committee member who helped the left navigate convoluted floor procedures during the “sit in.” “We’re fed up with being treated so terribly, being locked out of everything and having our views not respected. So whether it’s more ‘sit ins’ or whether it manifests itself in other ways, we’re not going to take it anymore.”
“Absolutely,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) when asked whether Democrats would occupy the floor again. She said the partisanship of this day and age has pretty much forced them to become more aggressive.
“It used to be that you disagreed but you’d compromised and you’d moved forward,” she said. But now the minority is completely frozen out, Maloney said.
“We’re a different party today. We closed them down,” she added, proudly.
Waters said the House would definitely press repeat should Republicans continue to refuse a vote on their bill to bar terror suspects from purchasing guns. DeLauro, meanwhile, said that as a grass-roots cheerleader, there was “nothing like making our voices heard and standing up.”
She rattled off a series of economic issues that she believed were “the single biggest issue people face”: “minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, paid sick days and paid leave.” And asked whether she’d want Democrats to do a sit-in over those, she answered in the affirmative.
“Yeah — why not?” she said. “The minority has to fight back, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”
Others were more measured.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), when asked whether Democrats would turn to the sit-in for other topics, waved away the thought.
“Right now, we own this [gun] issue and we’ll be carrying this forward,” she said.
Democrats, she added, would continue to press Republicans on the matter.
“[T]his is just getting started. I don’t’ know if that [the sit-in] will be the strategy. But you’re going to see a lot of activity with the groups … We’ll be mobilizing our districts and putting pressure on Republicans directly. I’m not sure the shape but I can assure you we won’t quit until we win.”
See you in November
Obama on immigration: See you in November
Democrats plan to use court's decision to make immigration, court appointments voting issues.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere and Seung Min Kim
Four months into Republicans’ plan to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick because it’s an election year, he finally agreed with them — on one point, at least.
It is indeed an election year, Obama said, and now they’re going to have to spend the four-and-a-half months between Thursday’s Supreme Court decision ending his immigration executive action and the election dealing with what that means.
Obama and Democrats are hoping the answer is new energy behind some of their favorite attacks on Donald Trump and Senate Republicans.
The Supreme Court’s deadlocked decision, which has the effect of upholding a lower court’s ruling against Obama, could help boost turnout among liberal voting blocs in two ways — by energizing supporters of immigration reform and making real the consequences of the Republican vow to let the voters decide on the make-up of the Supreme Court.
“We’ve got a very real choice that America faces right now,” Obama said. “We’ve got a choice about who we’re going to be as a country, what we’re going to teach our kids, and how we want to be represented in Congress and in the White House.”
What he said, was basically the theme of Hillary Clinton’s statement, as well.
"Today’s deadlocked decision from the Supreme Court is unacceptable, and show us all just how high the stakes are in this election,” it read.
And as for all the talk of the blows to his legacy, Obama laughed them off, eager to throw down, goading the court and the Republicans to see how this might work out for them.
“It was a one-word opinion that said, we can’t come up with a decision,” Obama said. “Maybe the next time they can—if we have a full court issuing a full opinion on anything, then we take it seriously.”
At least for Thursday, Republicans felt vindicated. The president is to blame for the immigration negotiations going sour, they say, and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has made a huge issue of rejecting what he says has been immense executive overreach out of this West Wing.
“It’s a win for Congress, and it’s a win in our fight to restore the separation of powers. Presidents don’t write laws—Congress writes laws,” Ryan said Thursday.
But the Democrats have other ideas — and Obama used the decision to reinforce every big political point Democrats had been planning to emphasize against the GOP — congressional inaction, apathy at best toward Latinos and other immigrants and their calculated obstruction on the Supreme Court.
Obama didn’t mention Trump by name, but the presumptive GOP nominee lurked in nearly every sentence, wrapping it all together for the president: offering “fantasy” responses to the problem based on “spasms of politics,” symbolizing “fearmongering” that comes and goes but isn’t what Obama says the country is about, and raising the specter of being the one to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat with a justice who would have turned the 4-4 split decision into a clear loss for the White House and the immigrants hoping to have their legal status cleared up.
Running against Washington is the oldest trick in politics, but Democrats are trying to put a different spin on it this year: it’s not that Republicans are wrong or corrupt or complacent, it’s that they just don’t do anything at all, even in the face of crisis. That’s how they’re trying to pick up on the protest politics that propelled Trump and Bernie Sanders—voters, they’re betting, are hungry for action, not parliamentary procedures that keep votes from hitting the floor.
For that, the reminder of at least four years of waiting on immigration reform (including, Obama reminded people on Thursday, the House refusing to let the bipartisan Senate bill even get to the floor) lines right up with the sit-in House Democrats staged through the night Wednesday to try to get a vote on gun control.
More than just offering to do something, Obama said, Democrats are offering what he says is a real plan. And here, Trump not by name again: “that’s the real amnesty: pretending we can deport 11 million or build a wall without spending tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money is abetting what is really just factually incorrect.”
Most of the Democratic response on the court case, though, is going to be specifically targeted at engaging Latinos, whom Trump may have already riled into being the highest percentage voting bloc come November.
“I’ve often said that the Dreamer movement needed to become a voter mobilization movement,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas. “Obviously, a lot of the dreamers and many of their parents are ineligible to vote, but they have American citizen relatives and friends who can be their voice at the ballot box. And I think this will certainly spark that.”
Then, of course, there’s that empty court seat. The White House had for months been looking ahead to the end of the Supreme Court term for more 4-4 split decisions that they’d use to reanimate the case for filling the empty seat. Thursday’s decision gives a new bite at that, mixed in with the Republicans don’t do anything argument, mixed in with what Obama wants to be the frightening prospect that alternatively, mixed in with the prospect that Trump could be the president who’ll fill the vacancy turn the balance of the court the other way.
“This is what we feared the most by the Republican refusal to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), in remarks on the Senate floor just after the decision came down. “A split court now leaves in place for the timing being an injunction across the United States, literally affects millions of people living across the country. they were unable to reach a decision, split 4-4. That should never have happened. If the Senate Republicans hadn’t taken this unprecedented, unconstitutional approach toward that vacancy, we wouldn’t have been in this position.”
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who’s in the mix to be Clinton’s running mate, said it bluntly in his remarks Thursday afternoon to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials.
Immigration reform is coming, he said.
“It’s not going to be, 'si se puede [yes, we can],'” he said. “El año que viene [by next year], it’s going to be, be logramos [we made it]. I have no doubt about it.”
Democrats plan to use court's decision to make immigration, court appointments voting issues.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere and Seung Min Kim
Four months into Republicans’ plan to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick because it’s an election year, he finally agreed with them — on one point, at least.
It is indeed an election year, Obama said, and now they’re going to have to spend the four-and-a-half months between Thursday’s Supreme Court decision ending his immigration executive action and the election dealing with what that means.
Obama and Democrats are hoping the answer is new energy behind some of their favorite attacks on Donald Trump and Senate Republicans.
The Supreme Court’s deadlocked decision, which has the effect of upholding a lower court’s ruling against Obama, could help boost turnout among liberal voting blocs in two ways — by energizing supporters of immigration reform and making real the consequences of the Republican vow to let the voters decide on the make-up of the Supreme Court.
“We’ve got a very real choice that America faces right now,” Obama said. “We’ve got a choice about who we’re going to be as a country, what we’re going to teach our kids, and how we want to be represented in Congress and in the White House.”
What he said, was basically the theme of Hillary Clinton’s statement, as well.
"Today’s deadlocked decision from the Supreme Court is unacceptable, and show us all just how high the stakes are in this election,” it read.
And as for all the talk of the blows to his legacy, Obama laughed them off, eager to throw down, goading the court and the Republicans to see how this might work out for them.
“It was a one-word opinion that said, we can’t come up with a decision,” Obama said. “Maybe the next time they can—if we have a full court issuing a full opinion on anything, then we take it seriously.”
At least for Thursday, Republicans felt vindicated. The president is to blame for the immigration negotiations going sour, they say, and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has made a huge issue of rejecting what he says has been immense executive overreach out of this West Wing.
“It’s a win for Congress, and it’s a win in our fight to restore the separation of powers. Presidents don’t write laws—Congress writes laws,” Ryan said Thursday.
But the Democrats have other ideas — and Obama used the decision to reinforce every big political point Democrats had been planning to emphasize against the GOP — congressional inaction, apathy at best toward Latinos and other immigrants and their calculated obstruction on the Supreme Court.
Obama didn’t mention Trump by name, but the presumptive GOP nominee lurked in nearly every sentence, wrapping it all together for the president: offering “fantasy” responses to the problem based on “spasms of politics,” symbolizing “fearmongering” that comes and goes but isn’t what Obama says the country is about, and raising the specter of being the one to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat with a justice who would have turned the 4-4 split decision into a clear loss for the White House and the immigrants hoping to have their legal status cleared up.
Running against Washington is the oldest trick in politics, but Democrats are trying to put a different spin on it this year: it’s not that Republicans are wrong or corrupt or complacent, it’s that they just don’t do anything at all, even in the face of crisis. That’s how they’re trying to pick up on the protest politics that propelled Trump and Bernie Sanders—voters, they’re betting, are hungry for action, not parliamentary procedures that keep votes from hitting the floor.
For that, the reminder of at least four years of waiting on immigration reform (including, Obama reminded people on Thursday, the House refusing to let the bipartisan Senate bill even get to the floor) lines right up with the sit-in House Democrats staged through the night Wednesday to try to get a vote on gun control.
More than just offering to do something, Obama said, Democrats are offering what he says is a real plan. And here, Trump not by name again: “that’s the real amnesty: pretending we can deport 11 million or build a wall without spending tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money is abetting what is really just factually incorrect.”
Most of the Democratic response on the court case, though, is going to be specifically targeted at engaging Latinos, whom Trump may have already riled into being the highest percentage voting bloc come November.
“I’ve often said that the Dreamer movement needed to become a voter mobilization movement,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas. “Obviously, a lot of the dreamers and many of their parents are ineligible to vote, but they have American citizen relatives and friends who can be their voice at the ballot box. And I think this will certainly spark that.”
Then, of course, there’s that empty court seat. The White House had for months been looking ahead to the end of the Supreme Court term for more 4-4 split decisions that they’d use to reanimate the case for filling the empty seat. Thursday’s decision gives a new bite at that, mixed in with the Republicans don’t do anything argument, mixed in with what Obama wants to be the frightening prospect that alternatively, mixed in with the prospect that Trump could be the president who’ll fill the vacancy turn the balance of the court the other way.
“This is what we feared the most by the Republican refusal to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), in remarks on the Senate floor just after the decision came down. “A split court now leaves in place for the timing being an injunction across the United States, literally affects millions of people living across the country. they were unable to reach a decision, split 4-4. That should never have happened. If the Senate Republicans hadn’t taken this unprecedented, unconstitutional approach toward that vacancy, we wouldn’t have been in this position.”
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who’s in the mix to be Clinton’s running mate, said it bluntly in his remarks Thursday afternoon to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials.
Immigration reform is coming, he said.
“It’s not going to be, 'si se puede [yes, we can],'” he said. “El año que viene [by next year], it’s going to be, be logramos [we made it]. I have no doubt about it.”
Trump shrugs
Trump shrugs: 'Looks like' EU breakup is on its way
By Louis Nelson
The European Union is likely to break up as result of Britain's vote to leave, Donald Trump said Friday morning in Scotland, casting the stunning overnight referendum results as just the start of a larger movement across the continent and around the world.
“Well, it looks like it’s on its way and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said when asked if he saw Great Britain's vote as a precursor to a European Union breakup. “So I could see it happening. I have no opinion, really, but I could certainly see it happening. I saw this happening. I could read what was happening here and I could see things happening in Germany.
"I hope they straighten out the situation because you know it can really be very nasty. What’s going on can be really really nasty," he said.
“People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense. You see it with Europe, all over Europe,” Trump said. “You’re going to have more than just what happened last night, you’re going to have, I think, many other cases where they want to take their borders back, they want to take their monetary back, they want to take a lot of things back. They want to be able to have a country again. So I think you’re going to have this happen more and more, I really believe that.”
Trump’s visit to Scotland was largely a business trip to his newly renovated Turnberry golf course, though he cast it as an effort to support his family. He spent the bulk of his opening remarks at a press conference on the course’s 9th tee talking up renovations to the property and thanking his family and business associates. He was accompanied on the trip by his adult children.
“I really do see a parallel between what's happening in the United States and what's happening here,” Trump said, connecting his own America first message to Britain’s “leave” vote. “People want to see borders. They don't necessarily want people pouring into their country that they don't know who they are and where they come from.”
By Louis Nelson
The European Union is likely to break up as result of Britain's vote to leave, Donald Trump said Friday morning in Scotland, casting the stunning overnight referendum results as just the start of a larger movement across the continent and around the world.
“Well, it looks like it’s on its way and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said when asked if he saw Great Britain's vote as a precursor to a European Union breakup. “So I could see it happening. I have no opinion, really, but I could certainly see it happening. I saw this happening. I could read what was happening here and I could see things happening in Germany.
"I hope they straighten out the situation because you know it can really be very nasty. What’s going on can be really really nasty," he said.
“People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense. You see it with Europe, all over Europe,” Trump said. “You’re going to have more than just what happened last night, you’re going to have, I think, many other cases where they want to take their borders back, they want to take their monetary back, they want to take a lot of things back. They want to be able to have a country again. So I think you’re going to have this happen more and more, I really believe that.”
Trump’s visit to Scotland was largely a business trip to his newly renovated Turnberry golf course, though he cast it as an effort to support his family. He spent the bulk of his opening remarks at a press conference on the course’s 9th tee talking up renovations to the property and thanking his family and business associates. He was accompanied on the trip by his adult children.
“I really do see a parallel between what's happening in the United States and what's happening here,” Trump said, connecting his own America first message to Britain’s “leave” vote. “People want to see borders. They don't necessarily want people pouring into their country that they don't know who they are and where they come from.”
Brexit ‘nightmare’
Europe wakes up to Brexit ‘nightmare’
The U.K.’s decision to leave prompts shock and soul-searching among EU leaders.
By Maïa de La Baume and Tara Palmeri
European politicians and officials expressed shock, sadness and even defiance Friday over the results of the U.K. referendum on EU membership, after waking up to what one of them called a “nightmare.”
Even as the vote’s outcome was seen as a serious blow to the EU, many politicians also tried to spin it as a “U.K. problem,” and said the Union was ready to move on without the British.
“There is no hiding the fact that we wanted a different outcome,” European Council President Donald Tusk told reporters after the vote results became official. “It’s a historic moment, but for sure, it’s not a moment for hysterical reactions.”
Added Tusk, “I want to reassure everyone that we are prepared also for this negative scenario. As you know, the EU is not only a fair-weather project.”
But other European political leaders were more emotional, even as they strained to put the vote in perspective.
“We are entering in turbulent times,” said Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, adding that he was “very sad” about the result. He said the Parliament would play “an active role” in the next steps, including the legal and procedural moves necessitated by a Brexit.
“I am sad,” Manfred Weber, president of the center-right European People’s Party, the Parliament’s largest political group, told POLITICO. “But I think it is first of all a problem for British people,” noting that the British pound lost 30 percent of its value overnight, while the euro was “stable.”
“The Brits have always benefited from a special treatment, they decided to leave, it’s up to them now,” Weber said.
“I am really in anguish,” said Gianni Pittella, leader of the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. “It is a legitimate decision but it is upsetting because it is not based on real motives, and they will realize this very soon.”
Alex Stubb, a Finnish member of parliament and former prime minister and finance minister, reacted more dramatically in a tweet: “Please tell me I’m still sleeping and this is all just a bad nightmare.”
Finland’s current leader, Juha Sipilä, said in a statement that the “European Union must quickly assess the implications of the referendum result.”
Other European politicians, such as Marc Tarabella, a Belgian socialist MEP, called the result of the vote a “failure” for the EU — a line that echoed the victory proclamation of Nigel Farage, the British MEP from the U.K. Independence Party and one of the leaders of the Brexit movement.
“The European project no longer convinces people,” said Tarabella.
The European Parliament plans to hold an extraordinary plenary session on Tuesday, according to Pittella, who added that MEPs should “relaunch proposals on growth, political integration in the economical and financial field, security, migratory policies.”
European leaders will also hold a pre-scheduled summit Tuesday and Wednesday, which Tusk said should include a “wider reflection” on the future of the EU.
After months spent hashing out a reform settlement aimed at keeping Britain in the bloc by giving it, among other things, the ability to restrict benefits to EU migrants, many European officials expressed disillusionment with the results.
Tomas Prouza, the Czech state secretary for EU affairs, who worked on the U.K. settlement as a spokesperson and advisor representing the Visegrád group of Eastern European countries, blamed xenophobic and nationalist forces for the outcome of the vote.
“I am sad that fearmongering has won over reason and willingness to face the world together,” Prouza said. “However, we need to fully respect the result and have a thorough soul-searching on how to make Europe understandable to the people. Many have lost faith across the EU, preferring nationalists and xenophobes, and we need to work very hard to explain why Europe still makes sense.”
Liberal Group leader Guy Verhofstadt echoed this sentiment, saying the results should be “a wake up call for another and reformed European Union.”
But while some have argued the result means people want less European integration, Verhofstadt said he believes the future of the EU requires more political unity.
“A monetary union without a political union will simply not work,” he said.
Other officials in the European Parliament said they fear the results will cause an “earthquake” that reverberates in other countries where Euroskeptic forces are on the rise.
Several Euroskeptic leaders, including France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherland’s Geert Wilders, immediately called for votes in their countries on EU membership.
“This is major disaster for parliamentary democracy, people don’t believe in it anymore,” said Pedro Lopez de Pablo, spokesperson for the EPP Group. “We have always given the U.K. what they wanted at the rhythm that they wanted. Now we can finally do better.”
European Conservatives and Reformists leader Syed Kamall, a Brexit supporter who like all British MEPs will soon be out of a job, said on Friday morning “we respect this democratic choice.”
Schulz said on German television that he expected British Prime Minister David Cameron to activate Article 50 — the clause in the Lisbon Treaty that maps out the procedure for a country to exit the EU — next week.
According a Parliament official, the European Parliament has prepared a draft asking the U.K. to trigger Article 50 “now.” The document also says that the EU-U.K. deal signed in February is “dead.”
“There will be no negotiation on which relationship the U.K. will have with the EU before it officially leaves,” the official said.
On Friday, Schulz met with the other leaders of the European Parliament’s political groups in Brussels.
Schulz met with Tusk, Commission President Jean Claude Juncker and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Commission later in the morning, and the quartet issued a joint statement promising to “stand strong and uphold the EU’s core values of promoting peace and the well-being of its peoples.”
Officials in national capitals say there will be a lot of work ahead dealing with the split. One senior EU diplomat predicted that the talks will be “very messy.”
Throughout the morning, grim-faced MEPs and their assistants and other aides wandered the corridors of the European Parliament in Brussels in disbelief and surprise. Some, however, sought to make a public show that Europe could move on.
An assistant to German socialist MEP Jo Leinen, rushed alongside his boss carrying a banner which read: “A new start 4 Europe.” Many other assistants carried similar banners giving the impression that they wanted to downplay the consequences of the British vote.
Elsewhere in the Parliament’s building, leaders of all the assembly’s political groups gave press conferences to react to the outcome of the referendum to a predominantly British reporting crowd. Many officials of the European Parliament said they had barely slept during the night, before waking up in horror at the final result.
The question now is how the bloc can move forward. Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told POLITICO it was “Time to make the EU more effective again where it needs to be relevant: digital market, energy union, migration, security.”
De Croo added: “With or without you U.K.”
The U.K.’s decision to leave prompts shock and soul-searching among EU leaders.
By Maïa de La Baume and Tara Palmeri
European politicians and officials expressed shock, sadness and even defiance Friday over the results of the U.K. referendum on EU membership, after waking up to what one of them called a “nightmare.”
Even as the vote’s outcome was seen as a serious blow to the EU, many politicians also tried to spin it as a “U.K. problem,” and said the Union was ready to move on without the British.
“There is no hiding the fact that we wanted a different outcome,” European Council President Donald Tusk told reporters after the vote results became official. “It’s a historic moment, but for sure, it’s not a moment for hysterical reactions.”
Added Tusk, “I want to reassure everyone that we are prepared also for this negative scenario. As you know, the EU is not only a fair-weather project.”
But other European political leaders were more emotional, even as they strained to put the vote in perspective.
“We are entering in turbulent times,” said Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, adding that he was “very sad” about the result. He said the Parliament would play “an active role” in the next steps, including the legal and procedural moves necessitated by a Brexit.
“I am sad,” Manfred Weber, president of the center-right European People’s Party, the Parliament’s largest political group, told POLITICO. “But I think it is first of all a problem for British people,” noting that the British pound lost 30 percent of its value overnight, while the euro was “stable.”
“The Brits have always benefited from a special treatment, they decided to leave, it’s up to them now,” Weber said.
“I am really in anguish,” said Gianni Pittella, leader of the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. “It is a legitimate decision but it is upsetting because it is not based on real motives, and they will realize this very soon.”
Alex Stubb, a Finnish member of parliament and former prime minister and finance minister, reacted more dramatically in a tweet: “Please tell me I’m still sleeping and this is all just a bad nightmare.”
Finland’s current leader, Juha Sipilä, said in a statement that the “European Union must quickly assess the implications of the referendum result.”
Other European politicians, such as Marc Tarabella, a Belgian socialist MEP, called the result of the vote a “failure” for the EU — a line that echoed the victory proclamation of Nigel Farage, the British MEP from the U.K. Independence Party and one of the leaders of the Brexit movement.
“The European project no longer convinces people,” said Tarabella.
The European Parliament plans to hold an extraordinary plenary session on Tuesday, according to Pittella, who added that MEPs should “relaunch proposals on growth, political integration in the economical and financial field, security, migratory policies.”
European leaders will also hold a pre-scheduled summit Tuesday and Wednesday, which Tusk said should include a “wider reflection” on the future of the EU.
After months spent hashing out a reform settlement aimed at keeping Britain in the bloc by giving it, among other things, the ability to restrict benefits to EU migrants, many European officials expressed disillusionment with the results.
Tomas Prouza, the Czech state secretary for EU affairs, who worked on the U.K. settlement as a spokesperson and advisor representing the Visegrád group of Eastern European countries, blamed xenophobic and nationalist forces for the outcome of the vote.
“I am sad that fearmongering has won over reason and willingness to face the world together,” Prouza said. “However, we need to fully respect the result and have a thorough soul-searching on how to make Europe understandable to the people. Many have lost faith across the EU, preferring nationalists and xenophobes, and we need to work very hard to explain why Europe still makes sense.”
Liberal Group leader Guy Verhofstadt echoed this sentiment, saying the results should be “a wake up call for another and reformed European Union.”
But while some have argued the result means people want less European integration, Verhofstadt said he believes the future of the EU requires more political unity.
“A monetary union without a political union will simply not work,” he said.
Other officials in the European Parliament said they fear the results will cause an “earthquake” that reverberates in other countries where Euroskeptic forces are on the rise.
Several Euroskeptic leaders, including France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherland’s Geert Wilders, immediately called for votes in their countries on EU membership.
“This is major disaster for parliamentary democracy, people don’t believe in it anymore,” said Pedro Lopez de Pablo, spokesperson for the EPP Group. “We have always given the U.K. what they wanted at the rhythm that they wanted. Now we can finally do better.”
European Conservatives and Reformists leader Syed Kamall, a Brexit supporter who like all British MEPs will soon be out of a job, said on Friday morning “we respect this democratic choice.”
Schulz said on German television that he expected British Prime Minister David Cameron to activate Article 50 — the clause in the Lisbon Treaty that maps out the procedure for a country to exit the EU — next week.
According a Parliament official, the European Parliament has prepared a draft asking the U.K. to trigger Article 50 “now.” The document also says that the EU-U.K. deal signed in February is “dead.”
“There will be no negotiation on which relationship the U.K. will have with the EU before it officially leaves,” the official said.
On Friday, Schulz met with the other leaders of the European Parliament’s political groups in Brussels.
Schulz met with Tusk, Commission President Jean Claude Juncker and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Commission later in the morning, and the quartet issued a joint statement promising to “stand strong and uphold the EU’s core values of promoting peace and the well-being of its peoples.”
Officials in national capitals say there will be a lot of work ahead dealing with the split. One senior EU diplomat predicted that the talks will be “very messy.”
Throughout the morning, grim-faced MEPs and their assistants and other aides wandered the corridors of the European Parliament in Brussels in disbelief and surprise. Some, however, sought to make a public show that Europe could move on.
An assistant to German socialist MEP Jo Leinen, rushed alongside his boss carrying a banner which read: “A new start 4 Europe.” Many other assistants carried similar banners giving the impression that they wanted to downplay the consequences of the British vote.
Elsewhere in the Parliament’s building, leaders of all the assembly’s political groups gave press conferences to react to the outcome of the referendum to a predominantly British reporting crowd. Many officials of the European Parliament said they had barely slept during the night, before waking up in horror at the final result.
The question now is how the bloc can move forward. Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told POLITICO it was “Time to make the EU more effective again where it needs to be relevant: digital market, energy union, migration, security.”
De Croo added: “With or without you U.K.”
Ignore Trump visits
GOP Senate campaigns ignore Trump visits
Republicans can’t seem to get far enough away from their presumptive nominee.
By Scott Bland
Two weeks into the general election, just one major Senate candidate from a swing state has dared appear onstage with his party’s presumptive nominee: Ted Strickland.
Indeed, when Strickland, the Democrats’ Senate hopeful in Ohio, lavished Hillary Clinton with praise at a rally this week in Columbus (and said it was “wonderful to be here” with one of the most unpopular nominees in modern political history), the moment was remarkable precisely because it was so unique.
As for Republicans, they can’t get far enough away from Donald Trump.
So far, the only notable battleground GOP Senate candidate to attend a local event with Trump is Kelli Ward, Sen. John McCain’s tea-party primary challenger. Since closing out the primary season in California, the brash real estate mogul has given speeches in four states with major Senate races — New Hampshire, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada — without an appearance by a GOP senator or Senate nominee.
Senate Democrats haven’t made it to many of Clinton’s swing-state visits yet either — little-known North Carolina nominee Deborah Ross missed Clinton’s event in Raleigh Wednesday, for example. When Strickland appeared with Clinton, Republicans torched him over Clinton’s recent comments about the coal industry and her unpopularity.
But the Democrats who have missed Clinton’s trips also announced they want to campaign with her soon. For GOP Senate candidates looking to localize their battleground races, appearing onstage with Trump is not even close to a priority right now — a departure from the norm for down-ballot campaigns that are often eager to borrow a crowd.
“If [Trump]’s in a state or a part of a state where he’s going to do well, they might do it. But if not, why would they go?” said a GOP strategist.
Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Richard Burr’s offices said they had to be in Washington when Trump came to their states last week. McCain and Rep. Joe Heck, who just won a GOP Senate primary, had scheduling conflicts when Trump was in Arizona and Nevada over the weekend. As Trump rallied at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, McCain was preparing for the “Swaggies,” a local chamber of commerce awards dinner 20 miles down the road.
“As you can imagine, the senator’s schedule is filled far in advance, especially when he is in Arizona since he is campaigning across the state,” McCain campaign spokeswoman Lorna Romero said.
Several Republican governors, including North Carolina’s Pat McCrory and Arizona’s Doug Ducey, appeared at Trump fundraisers, but not at the public events, when he was in their states.
Multiple campaigns did not answer questions about whether the Senate candidates would appear with Trump during future visits to their states. (Down-ballot Democrats, like North Carolina gubernatorial hopeful Roy Cooper, who missed Clinton, have been quicker to declare that they will appear with her in the future.) The stage is set for future GOP absences: A Heck campaign source noted that his “schedule is very tight and booked well in advance.”
Trump rallies, meanwhile, are often scheduled just days before they happen, and invitations to GOP officials have been spotty.
“To my knowledge, the Trump campaign has not reached out to any individual campaigns about their plans in North Carolina,” said Paul Shumaker, a GOP strategist who works with Burr and several House campaigns in the state.
“I don’t really think anyone’s yearning to step up to the plate and be involved, but I also don’t think they’re really asking anyone in these states to participate, either,” said an Arizona Republican operative.
But Senate Republicans aren’t sweating the split campaigns right now. Trump gave GOP senators his blessing to run separately from him in a meeting with Senate leaders last month, according to a source familiar with the conversation. National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Ward Baker wrote last month that Republican senators want to run for reelection like local sheriffs, not federal legislators — and not appearing with the presidential nominee fits into that framework.
Some recent Senate polling has shown GOP incumbents running ahead of Trump or voters declaring that Trump’s candidacy will not change their Senate vote. (One example: Quinnipiac’s most recent survey of Florida showed Trump trailing Clinton by 8 percentage points while Sen. Marco Rubio, who just announced a reelection bid, ran 7 points ahead of his closest Democratic challenger.)
Meanwhile, Democratic Senate candidates have missed several Clinton events — but their campaigns have pledged to be there in the future. “Deborah won't be in Raleigh ... because she has a long-scheduled community event in the Triad,” Ross spokesman Cole Leiter wrote in an email, adding: “She is sending staff and supporters to this rally and looks forward to being there in the future.”
Pennsylvania Democrat Katie McGinty, who is also trying to build name recognition for a tough race, missed Clinton’s Pittsburgh speech last week to attend a gun-control event in Philadelphia. “Two young women from Philadelphia were shot in the Orlando shootings, and one was killed, so she wanted to be there for the community,” spokesman Sean Coit said.
Republicans say they welcome the opportunity to tie Democratic Senate candidates to Clinton, though. Despite all the attention to Trump’s campaign trouble and unpopularity, more voters still view Clinton unfavorably than favorably, and her polling against Trump worries some down-ticket Democratic campaigners. Democratic candidates around the country have dodged questions about Clinton’s email scandal and support for her in recent weeks.
The NRSC, which has run advertisements attacking Clinton, linked Strickland to her before Tuesday’s event. The committee sees Clinton’s March comments about coal companies going out of business as a major negative in several key Senate races, including Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“What better way to pretend to be a friend of coal than to campaign with Hillary Clinton?” the NRSC wrote in a statement.
But Strickland’s campaign sounds eager to talk about the presidential race.
“The reason Rob Portman is ducking for cover every time Donald Trump even mentions the idea of coming to Ohio is he’s running alongside the most toxic and divisive presidential candidate in history,” Strickland spokesman David Bergstein said.
Republicans can’t seem to get far enough away from their presumptive nominee.
By Scott Bland
Two weeks into the general election, just one major Senate candidate from a swing state has dared appear onstage with his party’s presumptive nominee: Ted Strickland.
Indeed, when Strickland, the Democrats’ Senate hopeful in Ohio, lavished Hillary Clinton with praise at a rally this week in Columbus (and said it was “wonderful to be here” with one of the most unpopular nominees in modern political history), the moment was remarkable precisely because it was so unique.
As for Republicans, they can’t get far enough away from Donald Trump.
So far, the only notable battleground GOP Senate candidate to attend a local event with Trump is Kelli Ward, Sen. John McCain’s tea-party primary challenger. Since closing out the primary season in California, the brash real estate mogul has given speeches in four states with major Senate races — New Hampshire, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada — without an appearance by a GOP senator or Senate nominee.
Senate Democrats haven’t made it to many of Clinton’s swing-state visits yet either — little-known North Carolina nominee Deborah Ross missed Clinton’s event in Raleigh Wednesday, for example. When Strickland appeared with Clinton, Republicans torched him over Clinton’s recent comments about the coal industry and her unpopularity.
But the Democrats who have missed Clinton’s trips also announced they want to campaign with her soon. For GOP Senate candidates looking to localize their battleground races, appearing onstage with Trump is not even close to a priority right now — a departure from the norm for down-ballot campaigns that are often eager to borrow a crowd.
“If [Trump]’s in a state or a part of a state where he’s going to do well, they might do it. But if not, why would they go?” said a GOP strategist.
Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Richard Burr’s offices said they had to be in Washington when Trump came to their states last week. McCain and Rep. Joe Heck, who just won a GOP Senate primary, had scheduling conflicts when Trump was in Arizona and Nevada over the weekend. As Trump rallied at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, McCain was preparing for the “Swaggies,” a local chamber of commerce awards dinner 20 miles down the road.
“As you can imagine, the senator’s schedule is filled far in advance, especially when he is in Arizona since he is campaigning across the state,” McCain campaign spokeswoman Lorna Romero said.
Several Republican governors, including North Carolina’s Pat McCrory and Arizona’s Doug Ducey, appeared at Trump fundraisers, but not at the public events, when he was in their states.
Multiple campaigns did not answer questions about whether the Senate candidates would appear with Trump during future visits to their states. (Down-ballot Democrats, like North Carolina gubernatorial hopeful Roy Cooper, who missed Clinton, have been quicker to declare that they will appear with her in the future.) The stage is set for future GOP absences: A Heck campaign source noted that his “schedule is very tight and booked well in advance.”
Trump rallies, meanwhile, are often scheduled just days before they happen, and invitations to GOP officials have been spotty.
“To my knowledge, the Trump campaign has not reached out to any individual campaigns about their plans in North Carolina,” said Paul Shumaker, a GOP strategist who works with Burr and several House campaigns in the state.
“I don’t really think anyone’s yearning to step up to the plate and be involved, but I also don’t think they’re really asking anyone in these states to participate, either,” said an Arizona Republican operative.
But Senate Republicans aren’t sweating the split campaigns right now. Trump gave GOP senators his blessing to run separately from him in a meeting with Senate leaders last month, according to a source familiar with the conversation. National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Ward Baker wrote last month that Republican senators want to run for reelection like local sheriffs, not federal legislators — and not appearing with the presidential nominee fits into that framework.
Some recent Senate polling has shown GOP incumbents running ahead of Trump or voters declaring that Trump’s candidacy will not change their Senate vote. (One example: Quinnipiac’s most recent survey of Florida showed Trump trailing Clinton by 8 percentage points while Sen. Marco Rubio, who just announced a reelection bid, ran 7 points ahead of his closest Democratic challenger.)
Meanwhile, Democratic Senate candidates have missed several Clinton events — but their campaigns have pledged to be there in the future. “Deborah won't be in Raleigh ... because she has a long-scheduled community event in the Triad,” Ross spokesman Cole Leiter wrote in an email, adding: “She is sending staff and supporters to this rally and looks forward to being there in the future.”
Pennsylvania Democrat Katie McGinty, who is also trying to build name recognition for a tough race, missed Clinton’s Pittsburgh speech last week to attend a gun-control event in Philadelphia. “Two young women from Philadelphia were shot in the Orlando shootings, and one was killed, so she wanted to be there for the community,” spokesman Sean Coit said.
Republicans say they welcome the opportunity to tie Democratic Senate candidates to Clinton, though. Despite all the attention to Trump’s campaign trouble and unpopularity, more voters still view Clinton unfavorably than favorably, and her polling against Trump worries some down-ticket Democratic campaigners. Democratic candidates around the country have dodged questions about Clinton’s email scandal and support for her in recent weeks.
The NRSC, which has run advertisements attacking Clinton, linked Strickland to her before Tuesday’s event. The committee sees Clinton’s March comments about coal companies going out of business as a major negative in several key Senate races, including Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“What better way to pretend to be a friend of coal than to campaign with Hillary Clinton?” the NRSC wrote in a statement.
But Strickland’s campaign sounds eager to talk about the presidential race.
“The reason Rob Portman is ducking for cover every time Donald Trump even mentions the idea of coming to Ohio is he’s running alongside the most toxic and divisive presidential candidate in history,” Strickland spokesman David Bergstein said.
Vote for Clinton
Sanders says he will vote for Clinton
By Nolan D. McCaskill and Nick Gass
Bernie Sanders on Friday said he will cast his vote for Hillary Clinton in November. But he’s not all the way with her — at least, not yet.
“Yes,” the Vermont senator said when asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” if he would vote for the former secretary of state this fall. “I think the issue right here is I’m gonna do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump.”
Sanders told “CBS This Morning” that his campaign and Clinton’s have been communicating and working closely together, but he hasn’t endorsed her “because I haven’t heard her say the things that I think need to be said.”
He suggested Clinton would need to advocate for tuition-free college, a $15 minimum wage and health care for all, among other things, to secure his endorsement.
“I would love her to say that, and I would love her to move forward aggressively to make that happen,” Sanders said, adding that he doesn’t know when or if he’ll endorse the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee but “would hope” it would happen before the convention.
Sanders has yet to formally concede the Democratic primary to Clinton, instead maintaining his pledge to campaign through the Democratic National Convention. But on Friday he offered the clearest sign yet that he will support his primary rival, if only to prevent a Trump administration — though he stressed that he didn’t want to “parse words.”
“I think Trump in so many ways will be a disaster for this country if he were to be elected president,” Sanders told MSNBC. “We do not need a president whose cornerstone of his campaign is bigotry, is insulting Mexicans and Latinos and Muslims and women, who does not believe in the reality of climate change when virtually every scientist who has studied this issue understands that we have a global crisis. This is not somebody who should become president.”
The senator offered more direct language on CNN’s “New Day,” declaring, “Donald Trump is not gonna win,” when asked whether Brexit foreshadows a Trump presidency next year.
“Donald Trump is not gonna win, and he’s not gonna win because the American people will not elect somebody who is a bigot,” Sanders said. “And I would hope that Secretary Clinton begins to understand that she has gotta stand up and take on the big money interests, whose greed is doing so much harm to our country, and make it clear to those low-income people, those working people, that she is on their side.”
Pressed later in the same CNN interview on how confident he is that Clinton can defeat Trump, Sanders remarked, “I think everything being equal, she should be able to beat him because he is a very, very flawed candidate.”
"And I think the American people, again, understand that you can’t elect somebody to be president who does not even believe in the reality of climate change, who bases his campaign on bigotry, who wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top two-tenths of 1 percent, yeah, I think she can beat him,” Sanders told Chris Cuomo.
With the conclusion of primary voting on June 14 with the District of Columbia, Clinton has an insurmountable delegate lead. She has nearly 1,000 more delegates and 3.7 million more votes than Sanders — a point he readily accepted.
“I’m pretty good at arithmetic,” Sanders told CBS, “and what I know is that Hillary Clinton has more pledged delegates than I do, and she has a lot more superdelegates than I do. But what I also know is we’re bringing 1,900 delegates into the convention, that we have received 13 million votes.”
Although Sanders realizes the political reality that he will not be president — or even the Democratic nominee — he isn’t ready to give up just yet.
“Why would I wanna do that when I wanna fight to make sure that we have the best platform that we possibly can, that we win the most delegates that we can and that we transform — the goal of our campaign was to transform this nation,” he said.
“What I am trying to do right now is to make sure that the Democratic Party becomes the party that represents working people, not Wall Street, that is prepared to have an agenda that speaks to the need of creating millions of jobs, raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour, dealing with climate change, dealing with pay equity,” he continued. “Those are the issues that we need to have not only in the platform, but we need Democratic leadership to be implemented.”
Sanders also pushed back on the notion that his refusal to suspend his campaign is harming Clinton’s general election campaign and her ability to unite the party.
“You talk about disunity. I talk about involving the American people in the political process and wanting to have a government and a party that works for all of us,” Sanders said. “What we want is a government that represents all of us and that’s what I intend to fight for.”
The Vermont senator in recent weeks has signaled the end of his campaign. In a lengthy interview with C-SPAN on Wednesday, he recognized, “It doesn't appear that I'm going to be the nominee.”
By Nolan D. McCaskill and Nick Gass
Bernie Sanders on Friday said he will cast his vote for Hillary Clinton in November. But he’s not all the way with her — at least, not yet.
“Yes,” the Vermont senator said when asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” if he would vote for the former secretary of state this fall. “I think the issue right here is I’m gonna do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump.”
Sanders told “CBS This Morning” that his campaign and Clinton’s have been communicating and working closely together, but he hasn’t endorsed her “because I haven’t heard her say the things that I think need to be said.”
He suggested Clinton would need to advocate for tuition-free college, a $15 minimum wage and health care for all, among other things, to secure his endorsement.
“I would love her to say that, and I would love her to move forward aggressively to make that happen,” Sanders said, adding that he doesn’t know when or if he’ll endorse the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee but “would hope” it would happen before the convention.
Sanders has yet to formally concede the Democratic primary to Clinton, instead maintaining his pledge to campaign through the Democratic National Convention. But on Friday he offered the clearest sign yet that he will support his primary rival, if only to prevent a Trump administration — though he stressed that he didn’t want to “parse words.”
“I think Trump in so many ways will be a disaster for this country if he were to be elected president,” Sanders told MSNBC. “We do not need a president whose cornerstone of his campaign is bigotry, is insulting Mexicans and Latinos and Muslims and women, who does not believe in the reality of climate change when virtually every scientist who has studied this issue understands that we have a global crisis. This is not somebody who should become president.”
The senator offered more direct language on CNN’s “New Day,” declaring, “Donald Trump is not gonna win,” when asked whether Brexit foreshadows a Trump presidency next year.
“Donald Trump is not gonna win, and he’s not gonna win because the American people will not elect somebody who is a bigot,” Sanders said. “And I would hope that Secretary Clinton begins to understand that she has gotta stand up and take on the big money interests, whose greed is doing so much harm to our country, and make it clear to those low-income people, those working people, that she is on their side.”
Pressed later in the same CNN interview on how confident he is that Clinton can defeat Trump, Sanders remarked, “I think everything being equal, she should be able to beat him because he is a very, very flawed candidate.”
"And I think the American people, again, understand that you can’t elect somebody to be president who does not even believe in the reality of climate change, who bases his campaign on bigotry, who wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top two-tenths of 1 percent, yeah, I think she can beat him,” Sanders told Chris Cuomo.
With the conclusion of primary voting on June 14 with the District of Columbia, Clinton has an insurmountable delegate lead. She has nearly 1,000 more delegates and 3.7 million more votes than Sanders — a point he readily accepted.
“I’m pretty good at arithmetic,” Sanders told CBS, “and what I know is that Hillary Clinton has more pledged delegates than I do, and she has a lot more superdelegates than I do. But what I also know is we’re bringing 1,900 delegates into the convention, that we have received 13 million votes.”
Although Sanders realizes the political reality that he will not be president — or even the Democratic nominee — he isn’t ready to give up just yet.
“Why would I wanna do that when I wanna fight to make sure that we have the best platform that we possibly can, that we win the most delegates that we can and that we transform — the goal of our campaign was to transform this nation,” he said.
“What I am trying to do right now is to make sure that the Democratic Party becomes the party that represents working people, not Wall Street, that is prepared to have an agenda that speaks to the need of creating millions of jobs, raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour, dealing with climate change, dealing with pay equity,” he continued. “Those are the issues that we need to have not only in the platform, but we need Democratic leadership to be implemented.”
Sanders also pushed back on the notion that his refusal to suspend his campaign is harming Clinton’s general election campaign and her ability to unite the party.
“You talk about disunity. I talk about involving the American people in the political process and wanting to have a government and a party that works for all of us,” Sanders said. “What we want is a government that represents all of us and that’s what I intend to fight for.”
The Vermont senator in recent weeks has signaled the end of his campaign. In a lengthy interview with C-SPAN on Wednesday, he recognized, “It doesn't appear that I'm going to be the nominee.”
6 takeaways
6 takeaways on Britain’s shock vote
David Cameron and George Osborne will pay for defeat, Labour faces turmoil — and UKIP’s Nigel Farage is triumphant.
By Tom McTague
British democracy is brutal.
Barely seven hours after polls closed Thursday night, the result was declared: Britain had voted to leave the European Union.
Warnings of economic catastrophe were ignored. Voters just didn’t believe them, or thought it was a price worth paying. Anger with the government’s failure to control immigration was key, MPs said.
A year after leading the Conservative Party to its “sweetest victory” in the general election, David Cameron announced his resignation.
He will forever be remembered as the prime minister who lost Europe. Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who broke with Cameron to back Brexit, has his “Independence Day.”
But Cameron may also be the man who lost Scotland — and possibly even Northern Ireland.
By 5 a.m. in the U.K., it became clear that every area of Scotland had backed Remain. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, was ominously quick out the blocks. “The vote makes clear the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union,” she said in a statement released before Cameron had emerged from his bunker in Number 10.
Northern Ireland had also backed Remain and Sinn Fein were calling for Irish reunification.
By 5.30 a.m, it was beginning to sink in. The pound was tanking, Nigel Farage was jubilant, Labour in meltdown. But Cameron was nowhere to be seen.
Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom, one of the stars of the Brexit campaign, admitted it was “perfectly likely there would be some volatility” on the markets but insisted the fundamentals of the U.K. economy were sound.
“If we keep calm, take measured decisions, we will fine,” she said. It’s not impossible she could soon be making the decisions as prime minister. Her two Brexit allies, Johnson and U.K. Justice Secretary Michael Gove, were keeping quiet.
Cameron finally appeared at just after 8.15 a.m. and announced his departure by October at the latest.
Here are six early takeaways from a seismic night:
1) England speaks
Northern Ireland had its Troubles. Scotland had its referendum. Now England has had its revolution.
“Little England” goes the cry. But England isn’t little within the United Kingdom — it’s all powerful.
Outside London, ordinary English towns overwhelming rejected Brussels and its rules and regulations, red tape and free movement. Liberal, metropolitan London, in so many ways a different country, had been overwhelmed by the sheer Euroskeptic zeal of ordinary, working-class England.
What does it matter to Great Yarmouth or Grimsby if “the City” gets hit? Why should they care about rich bankers and lawyers in the capital?
In Sunderland, one of the first cities to declare, voters had put two fingers up to Brussels, despite the area’s largest employer, Nissan, calling for a Remain vote.
England is stereotypically conservative and eccentric. On Thursday it was revolutionary, a distinctly European trait.
2) Disunited Kingdom
If England was conclusive, so too was Scotland. Almost 600,000 more Scots voted to Remain than Leave. In Edinburgh, the capital, 74 percent backed European Union membership.
Less than two years ago, Cameron had seen off independence, warning that an independent Scotland would not be allowed into the European Union. Now they are being dragged out by their English cousins across the border.
The Scottish National Party was furious. Sturgeon hinted before the result had been confirmed that another vote on independence was inevitable.
Over in Northern Ireland there were even bigger concerns that the peace process could be in jeopardy. The six counties had voted 56 percent to 44 percent to Remain, but they will now have a border with the Republic.
Gibraltar too will fast become a concern for Downing Street. More than 90 percent of the outpost had backed EU membership.
3) Immigration wins out
As the results started to become clear at about 3:30 a.m., Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds said wearily: “I found the overwhelming strength of feeling on immigration just trumped all other issues.”
People had stopped listening. They had a way to cut immigration and they were going to take it.
Outside the big metropolitan areas, there was real anger over the government’s failure to control the numbers arriving from Europe every year.
David Cameron had twice promised to reduce the net inflow to below 100,000. It had been a “no ifs, no buts,” pledge in 2010 and a rather more limited ambition in 2015. But by May this year — six years into Cameron’s premiership — the number had hit 333,000 a year.
John Mann, one of the few Labour MPs to back Brexit, had called the result early. “I called for Leave after the first result,” he said. “The pollsters and pundits clearly have no systems of real voter intelligence.”
This, in a nutshell, was the problem. Voters kept telling politicians they wanted something done about immigration, but again and again nothing happened. UKIP surged in the polls, Labour lost touch with its base and support for the EU plummeted.
When Cameron won a Conservative majority last year, he had no choice but to honor his pledge to offer the people a referendum. From that point on, he had lost control.
4) Cameron finished
The prime minister pledged to stay on regardless of the result. No one believed him.
Tory MPs launched a pre-emptive bid to shore up the prime minister’s future Thursday night with a letter released at 10 p.m urging him to stay on in Number 10. Some 84 MPs signed it, including Gove and Johnson, but many more hadn’t.
Leadership speculation began immediately. Tory MP Sir Bill Cash suggested Cameron may not be able to stay on to oversee the Brexit talks. “Whoever is in Number 10 needs to be absolutely committed to Brexit,” he told the BBC.
Jacob Rees Mogg, the Euroskeptic Conservative backbencher, said there might need to be another general election to sort out the mess.
“I wouldn’t rule out a new election,” he said. “There will be a lot of policy areas that need to be discussed if we leave the European Union.”
Cameron had been unassailable a year ago. Now, he’s gone.
His chancellor of exchequer, George Osborne, must surely now be finished too.
5) Farage, victorious
Derided, mocked, regularly defeated, Nigel Farage is now triumphant. Whatever people’s view of him — and there are many — Britain would not now be leaving the European Union without him.
After conceding defeat at 10 p.m Thursday, Farage was first to declare victory at just after 5:05 a.m.
Britain had voted for independence from Brussels “without a shot being fired,” he said, sparking fresh controversy.
6) Labour in turmoil
“If we vote Out can we finally get rid of Jeremy?” one exasperated Labour MP said as Brexit surged in the polls before the referendum.
Throughout the campaign there had been outright fury with Corbyn. Polling showed 20 percent of Labour supporters did not know the party’s position.
Now it’s too late.
Labour now faces the very real possibility of fighting a fresh general election with the most left-wing leader it’s ever had. There is widespread panic that they could be wiped out across England, as they were in Scotland last year.
David Cameron and George Osborne will pay for defeat, Labour faces turmoil — and UKIP’s Nigel Farage is triumphant.
By Tom McTague
British democracy is brutal.
Barely seven hours after polls closed Thursday night, the result was declared: Britain had voted to leave the European Union.
Warnings of economic catastrophe were ignored. Voters just didn’t believe them, or thought it was a price worth paying. Anger with the government’s failure to control immigration was key, MPs said.
A year after leading the Conservative Party to its “sweetest victory” in the general election, David Cameron announced his resignation.
He will forever be remembered as the prime minister who lost Europe. Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who broke with Cameron to back Brexit, has his “Independence Day.”
But Cameron may also be the man who lost Scotland — and possibly even Northern Ireland.
By 5 a.m. in the U.K., it became clear that every area of Scotland had backed Remain. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, was ominously quick out the blocks. “The vote makes clear the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union,” she said in a statement released before Cameron had emerged from his bunker in Number 10.
Northern Ireland had also backed Remain and Sinn Fein were calling for Irish reunification.
By 5.30 a.m, it was beginning to sink in. The pound was tanking, Nigel Farage was jubilant, Labour in meltdown. But Cameron was nowhere to be seen.
Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom, one of the stars of the Brexit campaign, admitted it was “perfectly likely there would be some volatility” on the markets but insisted the fundamentals of the U.K. economy were sound.
“If we keep calm, take measured decisions, we will fine,” she said. It’s not impossible she could soon be making the decisions as prime minister. Her two Brexit allies, Johnson and U.K. Justice Secretary Michael Gove, were keeping quiet.
Cameron finally appeared at just after 8.15 a.m. and announced his departure by October at the latest.
Here are six early takeaways from a seismic night:
1) England speaks
Northern Ireland had its Troubles. Scotland had its referendum. Now England has had its revolution.
“Little England” goes the cry. But England isn’t little within the United Kingdom — it’s all powerful.
Outside London, ordinary English towns overwhelming rejected Brussels and its rules and regulations, red tape and free movement. Liberal, metropolitan London, in so many ways a different country, had been overwhelmed by the sheer Euroskeptic zeal of ordinary, working-class England.
What does it matter to Great Yarmouth or Grimsby if “the City” gets hit? Why should they care about rich bankers and lawyers in the capital?
In Sunderland, one of the first cities to declare, voters had put two fingers up to Brussels, despite the area’s largest employer, Nissan, calling for a Remain vote.
England is stereotypically conservative and eccentric. On Thursday it was revolutionary, a distinctly European trait.
2) Disunited Kingdom
If England was conclusive, so too was Scotland. Almost 600,000 more Scots voted to Remain than Leave. In Edinburgh, the capital, 74 percent backed European Union membership.
Less than two years ago, Cameron had seen off independence, warning that an independent Scotland would not be allowed into the European Union. Now they are being dragged out by their English cousins across the border.
The Scottish National Party was furious. Sturgeon hinted before the result had been confirmed that another vote on independence was inevitable.
Over in Northern Ireland there were even bigger concerns that the peace process could be in jeopardy. The six counties had voted 56 percent to 44 percent to Remain, but they will now have a border with the Republic.
Gibraltar too will fast become a concern for Downing Street. More than 90 percent of the outpost had backed EU membership.
3) Immigration wins out
As the results started to become clear at about 3:30 a.m., Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds said wearily: “I found the overwhelming strength of feeling on immigration just trumped all other issues.”
People had stopped listening. They had a way to cut immigration and they were going to take it.
Outside the big metropolitan areas, there was real anger over the government’s failure to control the numbers arriving from Europe every year.
David Cameron had twice promised to reduce the net inflow to below 100,000. It had been a “no ifs, no buts,” pledge in 2010 and a rather more limited ambition in 2015. But by May this year — six years into Cameron’s premiership — the number had hit 333,000 a year.
John Mann, one of the few Labour MPs to back Brexit, had called the result early. “I called for Leave after the first result,” he said. “The pollsters and pundits clearly have no systems of real voter intelligence.”
This, in a nutshell, was the problem. Voters kept telling politicians they wanted something done about immigration, but again and again nothing happened. UKIP surged in the polls, Labour lost touch with its base and support for the EU plummeted.
When Cameron won a Conservative majority last year, he had no choice but to honor his pledge to offer the people a referendum. From that point on, he had lost control.
4) Cameron finished
The prime minister pledged to stay on regardless of the result. No one believed him.
Tory MPs launched a pre-emptive bid to shore up the prime minister’s future Thursday night with a letter released at 10 p.m urging him to stay on in Number 10. Some 84 MPs signed it, including Gove and Johnson, but many more hadn’t.
Leadership speculation began immediately. Tory MP Sir Bill Cash suggested Cameron may not be able to stay on to oversee the Brexit talks. “Whoever is in Number 10 needs to be absolutely committed to Brexit,” he told the BBC.
Jacob Rees Mogg, the Euroskeptic Conservative backbencher, said there might need to be another general election to sort out the mess.
“I wouldn’t rule out a new election,” he said. “There will be a lot of policy areas that need to be discussed if we leave the European Union.”
Cameron had been unassailable a year ago. Now, he’s gone.
His chancellor of exchequer, George Osborne, must surely now be finished too.
5) Farage, victorious
Derided, mocked, regularly defeated, Nigel Farage is now triumphant. Whatever people’s view of him — and there are many — Britain would not now be leaving the European Union without him.
After conceding defeat at 10 p.m Thursday, Farage was first to declare victory at just after 5:05 a.m.
Britain had voted for independence from Brussels “without a shot being fired,” he said, sparking fresh controversy.
6) Labour in turmoil
“If we vote Out can we finally get rid of Jeremy?” one exasperated Labour MP said as Brexit surged in the polls before the referendum.
Throughout the campaign there had been outright fury with Corbyn. Polling showed 20 percent of Labour supporters did not know the party’s position.
Now it’s too late.
Labour now faces the very real possibility of fighting a fresh general election with the most left-wing leader it’s ever had. There is widespread panic that they could be wiped out across England, as they were in Scotland last year.
Brexit is only the beginning says Trump
Trump, touting his golf course, promises Brexit is only the beginning
'This will not be the last,' he says from the front yard of his club in Scotland.
By Ben Schreckinger
Donald Trump arrived in a country swept up by the whirlwind of history, and leaned into it. Then, he talked about his golf course.
Having backed off his endorsement of a British departure from the European Union only two days prior, Trump fully embraced it on Friday morning, hours after the United Kingdom surprised the world by voting in favor it, when he touched down here for his first trip abroad at the presumptive Republican nominee.
“Basically, they took back their country. That’s a great thing,” Trump told reporters shortly after landing by helicopter on the front lawn of his golf resort here, saying he believes Friday’s result is only the beginning of a much broader outpouring of nationalism. “This will not be the last,” he said.
But with world markets tanking and Scotland’s government making preparations to leave the UK, Trump delivered an address about his golf course, reinforcing the image of a nominee torn between his business and his campaign.
“Even people that truly hate me are saying it’s the best they’ve ever seen,” he said, before inviting his three adult children to give remarks.
At the press conference that followed, Trump was asked if he’d been conferring with his foreign policy advisers. “I’ve been in touch with them, but there’s nothing to talk about,” he responded.
Challenged about his decision to take time off from his struggling campaign for a foreign business trip, Trump cut off his questioner, saying, “You know why I’m here? Because I support my children.”
With the value of the British pound falling sharply off the results of the referendum, Trump welcomed the development as a boon to tourism and exports. "If the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry frankly,” he said.
Asked if he would step away from his businesses while he runs for president — the path supported by 69 percent of voters in a new CNN/ORC poll – Trump said, “I don’t think it matters while I’m running.”
Trump used the result of the vote to repeatedly hit Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whose support for Remain he said may have tipped the vote for Leave. “If he had not said it I think your result might’ve been different,” said Trump, calling Obama’s campaigning against Brexit “inappropriate.”
Trump said that Clinton, his presumptive Democratic opponent, opposed Brexit because she takes her cues from the president, and that both of them have repeatedly misread the world.
“For the 219th time, they were wrong,” he said.
Trump also predicted the unraveling of the EU, saying, “It looks like it’s on its way and we’ll see what happens.” Trump said he knows many Germans who are fanatically patriotic — “to a level you wouldn’t believe” — and that, fed up with immigration, he could see them supporting a German exit, a move that would deprive the union of its most important member.
Trump attributed the outcome of Thursday’s referendum to many of the same factors propelling his own presidential run. “They’re angry over borders. They’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over, and nobody even knows who they are. They’re angry about many, many things,” he said.
Trump’s campaign issued a formal statement pledging his administration would, “strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense.” The statement said American in November voters will have a chance to follow suit and “reject today’s rule by the global elite.”
By the time Trump touched down around 9:30 a.m. — flanked by his son, Eric, and daughter, Ivanka — only a handful of locals had gathered across the street to take in his arrival by helicopter. Scotland, which voted against Brexit and may now leave the UK to remain part of the EU, was occupied with other matters. (Despite Brexit’s unpopularity here, Trump tweeted upon arrival, “Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!”)
“We were expecting loads of people,” said Rebecca McKee, of Hampton, Virginia, who has lived in Scotland for 21 years. Hampton and her family were among the first to arrive.
On the grounds of the clubhouse, more than a hundred reporters, guests and employees in red “Made Turnberry Great Again” hats awaited Trump, who, flanked by son Eric and daughter, was greeted with bagpipes.
After Trump’s arrival, a few hundred protesters, including two busloads from Glasgow, lined the road between the clubhouse and the golf course. One demonstrator waved a Mexican and a Scottish flag, affixed together to a single pole.
Because of Trump’s tarnished image here and Thursday’s referendum vote, Scottish leaders steered clear of the event.
"It's absolutely a national disgrace that there's none of the four main parties represented," said Alan Weir, a member of the club, in between voting in favor of Brexit and playing a round of golf on Thursday.
Politics aside, those like Weir who are fortunate enough to play at Turnberry love what Trump’s done with the place, which he bought from a Dubai-government-owned entity in 2014.
At Trump’s first Scottish course, in Aberdeenshire, his popularity soured after he clashed with local residents and opposed a popular wind farm project.
At Turnberry, where the wind turbines are just inland of the golf course and to the South, tucked among pastures of cows, his ownership is less controversial.
An enormous Scottish flag now flies over the course, a sister to the enormous American flag at Mar-a-Lago that brought Trump into conflict with the city of Palm Beach.
Trump used a refurbished lighthouse near the 9th hole as the backdrop for his press conference. The lighthouse has been outfitted with ultra-expensive suites and a snack bar that was manned late Thursday by a Slovenian immigrant, no relation to her boss’s Slovenian wife, Melania.
Weir, a landlord from Lancashire, said the course provides refuge from the turmoil of the world around him. “I just ignore the politics and enjoy the golf.”
'This will not be the last,' he says from the front yard of his club in Scotland.
By Ben Schreckinger
Donald Trump arrived in a country swept up by the whirlwind of history, and leaned into it. Then, he talked about his golf course.
Having backed off his endorsement of a British departure from the European Union only two days prior, Trump fully embraced it on Friday morning, hours after the United Kingdom surprised the world by voting in favor it, when he touched down here for his first trip abroad at the presumptive Republican nominee.
“Basically, they took back their country. That’s a great thing,” Trump told reporters shortly after landing by helicopter on the front lawn of his golf resort here, saying he believes Friday’s result is only the beginning of a much broader outpouring of nationalism. “This will not be the last,” he said.
But with world markets tanking and Scotland’s government making preparations to leave the UK, Trump delivered an address about his golf course, reinforcing the image of a nominee torn between his business and his campaign.
“Even people that truly hate me are saying it’s the best they’ve ever seen,” he said, before inviting his three adult children to give remarks.
At the press conference that followed, Trump was asked if he’d been conferring with his foreign policy advisers. “I’ve been in touch with them, but there’s nothing to talk about,” he responded.
Challenged about his decision to take time off from his struggling campaign for a foreign business trip, Trump cut off his questioner, saying, “You know why I’m here? Because I support my children.”
With the value of the British pound falling sharply off the results of the referendum, Trump welcomed the development as a boon to tourism and exports. "If the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry frankly,” he said.
Asked if he would step away from his businesses while he runs for president — the path supported by 69 percent of voters in a new CNN/ORC poll – Trump said, “I don’t think it matters while I’m running.”
Trump used the result of the vote to repeatedly hit Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whose support for Remain he said may have tipped the vote for Leave. “If he had not said it I think your result might’ve been different,” said Trump, calling Obama’s campaigning against Brexit “inappropriate.”
Trump said that Clinton, his presumptive Democratic opponent, opposed Brexit because she takes her cues from the president, and that both of them have repeatedly misread the world.
“For the 219th time, they were wrong,” he said.
Trump also predicted the unraveling of the EU, saying, “It looks like it’s on its way and we’ll see what happens.” Trump said he knows many Germans who are fanatically patriotic — “to a level you wouldn’t believe” — and that, fed up with immigration, he could see them supporting a German exit, a move that would deprive the union of its most important member.
Trump attributed the outcome of Thursday’s referendum to many of the same factors propelling his own presidential run. “They’re angry over borders. They’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over, and nobody even knows who they are. They’re angry about many, many things,” he said.
Trump’s campaign issued a formal statement pledging his administration would, “strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense.” The statement said American in November voters will have a chance to follow suit and “reject today’s rule by the global elite.”
By the time Trump touched down around 9:30 a.m. — flanked by his son, Eric, and daughter, Ivanka — only a handful of locals had gathered across the street to take in his arrival by helicopter. Scotland, which voted against Brexit and may now leave the UK to remain part of the EU, was occupied with other matters. (Despite Brexit’s unpopularity here, Trump tweeted upon arrival, “Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote. They took their country back, just like we will take America back. No games!”)
“We were expecting loads of people,” said Rebecca McKee, of Hampton, Virginia, who has lived in Scotland for 21 years. Hampton and her family were among the first to arrive.
On the grounds of the clubhouse, more than a hundred reporters, guests and employees in red “Made Turnberry Great Again” hats awaited Trump, who, flanked by son Eric and daughter, was greeted with bagpipes.
After Trump’s arrival, a few hundred protesters, including two busloads from Glasgow, lined the road between the clubhouse and the golf course. One demonstrator waved a Mexican and a Scottish flag, affixed together to a single pole.
Because of Trump’s tarnished image here and Thursday’s referendum vote, Scottish leaders steered clear of the event.
"It's absolutely a national disgrace that there's none of the four main parties represented," said Alan Weir, a member of the club, in between voting in favor of Brexit and playing a round of golf on Thursday.
Politics aside, those like Weir who are fortunate enough to play at Turnberry love what Trump’s done with the place, which he bought from a Dubai-government-owned entity in 2014.
At Trump’s first Scottish course, in Aberdeenshire, his popularity soured after he clashed with local residents and opposed a popular wind farm project.
At Turnberry, where the wind turbines are just inland of the golf course and to the South, tucked among pastures of cows, his ownership is less controversial.
An enormous Scottish flag now flies over the course, a sister to the enormous American flag at Mar-a-Lago that brought Trump into conflict with the city of Palm Beach.
Trump used a refurbished lighthouse near the 9th hole as the backdrop for his press conference. The lighthouse has been outfitted with ultra-expensive suites and a snack bar that was manned late Thursday by a Slovenian immigrant, no relation to her boss’s Slovenian wife, Melania.
Weir, a landlord from Lancashire, said the course provides refuge from the turmoil of the world around him. “I just ignore the politics and enjoy the golf.”
Strongest VP pick
GOP insiders: Kaine is strongest VP pick for Clinton
The Virginia senator is also top choice among Democrats.
By Steven Shepard
There’s good reason Tim Kaine is riding high atop Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential short list: When Republican battleground state insiders were asked to choose the strongest running mate for Clinton, Kaine ranked first.
That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 10 key swing states. Out of a list of seven possible picks as Clinton’s running mate, Kaine was the first choice of just over a third of GOP insiders.
The Virginia senator also rates high among Democratic insiders, with 29 percent saying this week they want Clinton to choose Kaine — twice as many as picked fellow Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the second-place vote-getter.
Democratic insiders touted Kaine’s breadth of experience. Before being elected to the Senate in 2012, Kaine served as governor and mayor of Richmond, the commonwealth’s capital. He also has significant political experience: He was President Barack Obama’s pick to chair the Democratic National Committee. Additionally, insiders said Kaine’s fluency in Spanish — which dates back to his time teaching at a Catholic school in Honduras — could help the Clinton campaign appeal to Latino voters.
“Tim Kaine would be an extraordinary vice president,” said a New Hampshire Democrat, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “A genuinely nice guy, he would bring much to the ticket and the administration. He is fluent in Spanish, trained in the law, he has served as a city mayor, governor and senator. America could not do better than having Kaine as our vice president.”
“He understands how the party operates, knows players nationally, is well respected, and ready to do the job of president if needed,” added a Wisconsin Democrat.
Warren was the second choice among Democratic insiders: 15 percent said Clinton should pick the first-term Massachusetts senator, who has emerged as a champion of progressive economic policy.
Warren, insiders said, would help to bring the energy of Bernie Sanders’ supporters into the fold for the general election.
“Picking Elizabeth Warren would be an adrenaline shot in the arm of an otherwise tepid campaign,” said one Colorado Democrat.
Added an Ohio Democrat: “I think she needs to have someone on the ticket who is more progressive, to entice young people and progressives (i.e. Berniecrats).”
Sanders himself earned little support as a Clinton running mate: Only 2 percent of Democratic insiders said they wanted Clinton to pick Sanders, who has yet to officially concede the nomination.
The third-place finisher among Democratic insiders was Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro (13 percent), the Texan who became a rising star as mayor of San Antonio after speaking at the national party convention four years ago.
Since then, Castro has worked to build a national profile, including accepting a job in Obama’s cabinet.
“Julian Castro spoke at our state Democratic convention a few years ago,” said a Wisconsin Democrat, “and he was an excellent speaker with a great story, and he has that young, fresh, exciting vibe that Barack Obama showed us back in 2008.”
For some Democrats who picked Castro, their reasons were primarily demographic.
“Clinton will need the strong support of the Black and Brown communities to get elected, the same coalition that gave us Barack Obama,” said a Florida Democrat. “Mr. Castro is young, gifted and Brown.”
Kaine, Warren and Castro are reported to be Clinton’s top choices, though others still remain in the mix, with a month to go before the start of the national party convention in Philadelphia.
Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Cory Booker (N.J.), are also rumored to be in contention, though both would have to be replaced in the Senate by their respective states’ Republican governors.
“Ideally, I'd like to see Sherrod Brown join Hillary as her VP pick because he would help shore up Bernie supporters, he has strong union ties, balances the trade issue and would be a good liaison with the House and Senate,” said an Ohio Democrat.
“Realistically, however, it's unlikely that Hillary would jeopardize the Senate by giving up a safe seat,” added the Democrat.
Democrats' next choice isn’t on Clinton’s short list: sitting Vice President Joe Biden (7 percent).
“There is no better way to unite the party and reignite some of the Obama magic than asking the VP to stay on board,” said a Florida Democrat. “[Clinton] won't do it, but she should.”
“Come on, how can you not love Uncle Joe?” asked a Colorado Democrat, rhetorically. “Arguably the strongest VP of the modern era, and he would slice [Donald] Trump to pieces on the campaign trail.”
Also earning nominal support among Democratic insiders were Labor Secretary Tom Perez (4 percent), Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (2 percent), Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (2 percent) and California Rep. Xavier Becerra (2 percent).
Given the choice of Kaine and six others, 34 percent of Republicans and nonpartisans in the swing states said the Virginia senator would be the strongest option for Clinton -- including most GOP insiders in Kaine’s home state.
Kaine “sends a signal to moderates, independents and even some disappointed Republicans that the water is fine, come on in,” said a Virginia Republican. “He isn't necessary to carry Virginia, but he could be a very powerful validator.”
“Why go risky?” asked a North Carolina Republican. “Let the GOP corner the market on risky. Kaine is a safe, thoroughly vetted choice. As someone who worked a campaign against Kaine and lost, I would also note that Kaine's dirty little secret is that behind that ‘safe’ veneer, he's actually a really good retail politician.”
Insiders split on some of Clinton’s alternatives, with Booker (14 percent), Brown (13 percent), Castro (13 percent) viewed by the other side as equally strong.
“Booker would excite African Americans. Trump already excites Latinos,” said a Florida Republican.
“Trump organizes minorities for Hillary,” echoed a New Hampshire Republican who chose Brown. “Go for Ohio, where Trump has nothing going (no visits, no staff, and the antipathy of the Kasich folks) and close off the Electoral College.”
Just 8 percent of Republicans and nonpartisans said Warren, who has emerged as perhaps Trump’s most vocal Democratic critic, would be Clinton’s best bet.
Warren gives Clinton “progressive credibility and allows her to double down on the war on women rhetoric,” said an Ohio Republican.
The Virginia senator is also top choice among Democrats.
By Steven Shepard
There’s good reason Tim Kaine is riding high atop Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential short list: When Republican battleground state insiders were asked to choose the strongest running mate for Clinton, Kaine ranked first.
That’s according to The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 10 key swing states. Out of a list of seven possible picks as Clinton’s running mate, Kaine was the first choice of just over a third of GOP insiders.
The Virginia senator also rates high among Democratic insiders, with 29 percent saying this week they want Clinton to choose Kaine — twice as many as picked fellow Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the second-place vote-getter.
Democratic insiders touted Kaine’s breadth of experience. Before being elected to the Senate in 2012, Kaine served as governor and mayor of Richmond, the commonwealth’s capital. He also has significant political experience: He was President Barack Obama’s pick to chair the Democratic National Committee. Additionally, insiders said Kaine’s fluency in Spanish — which dates back to his time teaching at a Catholic school in Honduras — could help the Clinton campaign appeal to Latino voters.
“Tim Kaine would be an extraordinary vice president,” said a New Hampshire Democrat, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “A genuinely nice guy, he would bring much to the ticket and the administration. He is fluent in Spanish, trained in the law, he has served as a city mayor, governor and senator. America could not do better than having Kaine as our vice president.”
“He understands how the party operates, knows players nationally, is well respected, and ready to do the job of president if needed,” added a Wisconsin Democrat.
Warren was the second choice among Democratic insiders: 15 percent said Clinton should pick the first-term Massachusetts senator, who has emerged as a champion of progressive economic policy.
Warren, insiders said, would help to bring the energy of Bernie Sanders’ supporters into the fold for the general election.
“Picking Elizabeth Warren would be an adrenaline shot in the arm of an otherwise tepid campaign,” said one Colorado Democrat.
Added an Ohio Democrat: “I think she needs to have someone on the ticket who is more progressive, to entice young people and progressives (i.e. Berniecrats).”
Sanders himself earned little support as a Clinton running mate: Only 2 percent of Democratic insiders said they wanted Clinton to pick Sanders, who has yet to officially concede the nomination.
The third-place finisher among Democratic insiders was Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro (13 percent), the Texan who became a rising star as mayor of San Antonio after speaking at the national party convention four years ago.
Since then, Castro has worked to build a national profile, including accepting a job in Obama’s cabinet.
“Julian Castro spoke at our state Democratic convention a few years ago,” said a Wisconsin Democrat, “and he was an excellent speaker with a great story, and he has that young, fresh, exciting vibe that Barack Obama showed us back in 2008.”
For some Democrats who picked Castro, their reasons were primarily demographic.
“Clinton will need the strong support of the Black and Brown communities to get elected, the same coalition that gave us Barack Obama,” said a Florida Democrat. “Mr. Castro is young, gifted and Brown.”
Kaine, Warren and Castro are reported to be Clinton’s top choices, though others still remain in the mix, with a month to go before the start of the national party convention in Philadelphia.
Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Cory Booker (N.J.), are also rumored to be in contention, though both would have to be replaced in the Senate by their respective states’ Republican governors.
“Ideally, I'd like to see Sherrod Brown join Hillary as her VP pick because he would help shore up Bernie supporters, he has strong union ties, balances the trade issue and would be a good liaison with the House and Senate,” said an Ohio Democrat.
“Realistically, however, it's unlikely that Hillary would jeopardize the Senate by giving up a safe seat,” added the Democrat.
Democrats' next choice isn’t on Clinton’s short list: sitting Vice President Joe Biden (7 percent).
“There is no better way to unite the party and reignite some of the Obama magic than asking the VP to stay on board,” said a Florida Democrat. “[Clinton] won't do it, but she should.”
“Come on, how can you not love Uncle Joe?” asked a Colorado Democrat, rhetorically. “Arguably the strongest VP of the modern era, and he would slice [Donald] Trump to pieces on the campaign trail.”
Also earning nominal support among Democratic insiders were Labor Secretary Tom Perez (4 percent), Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (2 percent), Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (2 percent) and California Rep. Xavier Becerra (2 percent).
Given the choice of Kaine and six others, 34 percent of Republicans and nonpartisans in the swing states said the Virginia senator would be the strongest option for Clinton -- including most GOP insiders in Kaine’s home state.
Kaine “sends a signal to moderates, independents and even some disappointed Republicans that the water is fine, come on in,” said a Virginia Republican. “He isn't necessary to carry Virginia, but he could be a very powerful validator.”
“Why go risky?” asked a North Carolina Republican. “Let the GOP corner the market on risky. Kaine is a safe, thoroughly vetted choice. As someone who worked a campaign against Kaine and lost, I would also note that Kaine's dirty little secret is that behind that ‘safe’ veneer, he's actually a really good retail politician.”
Insiders split on some of Clinton’s alternatives, with Booker (14 percent), Brown (13 percent), Castro (13 percent) viewed by the other side as equally strong.
“Booker would excite African Americans. Trump already excites Latinos,” said a Florida Republican.
“Trump organizes minorities for Hillary,” echoed a New Hampshire Republican who chose Brown. “Go for Ohio, where Trump has nothing going (no visits, no staff, and the antipathy of the Kasich folks) and close off the Electoral College.”
Just 8 percent of Republicans and nonpartisans said Warren, who has emerged as perhaps Trump’s most vocal Democratic critic, would be Clinton’s best bet.
Warren gives Clinton “progressive credibility and allows her to double down on the war on women rhetoric,” said an Ohio Republican.
Rust Belt Brains...
Uprising in the Rust Belt
They used to be Democrats. Now they really could hand Donald Trump the White House.
By Keith O’Brien
Donald Trump’s road to the White House begins here: on a four-lane highway, just east of Pittsburgh, past the roadside taverns, burned-out gas stations, and parking lots choked with weeds, up into the dark fingers of the Allegheny Mountains, and then down into the valley that was once home to steelworkers, coal miners and party-line Democrats.
Regis Karlheim once counted himself among that third group. A farmer’s son, Karlheim grew up doing two things: voting Democratic and growing potatoes. “It was a lot of good years in potatoes,” he said. “Everybody and their brother grew potatoes in Cambria County.”
Today Karlheim—blue-eyed, 58, and graying around the temples—spends his days behind the wheel of a giant coal truck, but the declining coal industry has hit Karlheim hard. He’s making $10,000 less than he was just three years ago, he said, and he’s worried about his mortgage. “How do you make those payments?” he asked. This spring, after years of not voting for anyone, in either party, in any presidential election, his anxiety compelled him to cast a vote in the Democratic primary. For Bernie Sanders.
His vote helped the socialist from Vermont beat Hillary Clinton in the county —while Trump won big, claiming more votes than either Democratic candidate. Since then, Clinton has sewn up her party’s nomination, but recent polls show that Cambria’s primary was no fluke: among the crucial battleground states, Pennsylvania is a tossup. Who wins the state’s precious 20 electoral votes in November will depend, in part, on people like Karlheim.
And he has some bad news for the former secretary of state.
While there are some things that worry him about the GOP nominee—“We don’t know his background,” Karlheim said, and “He’s a bit outspoken.”—he likes that Trump is talking about jobs. “That’s what we need,” which is why, Karlheim said, “In the big election ... I’m going for Trump.”
Not that long ago, such a notion would have turned heads in Cambria County. Between 1932 and 2000, voters here backed the Democratic candidate for president every time except twice. They routinely supported liberals who had no chance: Adlai Stevenson in ’52 and Hubert Humphrey in ’68. When most of America joined the Reagan revolution in 1980, Cambria County went for Jimmy Carter. Four years later, Walter Mondale did even better, winning 55 percent of the vote.
This was Clinton country both times in the ‘90s; it was in the pocket of Al Gore in 2000. And while the county narrowly went for the incumbent George W. Bush in 2004, voters were back to supporting Democrats four years later. In the ’08 primary, Hillary Clinton won more votes than all other candidates in both parties combined. Barack Obama won the county that fall. And then something appears to have shifted. In 2012, though he won the state, Obama lost the county in a veritable landslide, despite the fact that it has 50 percent more registered Democrats than Republicans. In recent months, that rightward shift solidified: To date this year, Republicans have gained nearly 1,500 registered voters in Cambria County as Democrats abandoned their party for the other side. That trend is playing out statewide, where switches have boosted GOP rolls by a net of nearly 50,000 voters. And in the primary this spring, Clinton not only lost to Sanders; she lost to herself, taking home 64 percent fewer votes than she did eight years ago. A county once hers now simply wasn’t.
“In the past, people here have turned to the Democrats,” said Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown, Pa., 200 miles to the east. “They were the ones who looked after working-class interests, in their minds. But there is a belief that that isn’t the case anymore—and now they’re shopping around for an alternative.”
Trump, for them, makes a pretty appealing one. Local Republican leaders point out that the GOP nominee talks like a steelworker: brash, simple, to the point. He’s perfect for Pennsylvania, they say, but especially the western part of the state—and, in particular, a place like Cambria County. “When we talk about the white working class in the United States,” Borick said, “this is the place that could be described as the face of that demographic.”
Cambria County is 94 percent white—with low rates of college education and high rates of unemployment, hovering around seven percent. And most importantly for Trump, it’s a county that appears on the map, by different names, again and again across the American Rust Belt: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and beyond. “He’s got to win these places,” Borick said, “and win big.” There is, Borick added, just one important question—for Trump, his campaign, and his quest for the White House.
“Are there enough Cambria Counties out there?”
In these wooded hills—thick and green, almost 70 miles east of Pittsburgh—the talk of making America great again aren’t empty words slapped on a red ball cap, retailing for $25 on Donald Trump’s web site. It’s part of the everyday conversation—among shopkeepers in rural Ebensburg, truck drivers in remote Carrolltown and unemployed steelworkers in the county’s largest city, Johnstown.
“There used to be a good work ethic in this town,” said Dave Pankoke, a 54-year-old Desert Storm veteran who has lived here his whole life. “Anymore, it’s about getting what you can.” Which, for Pankoke, isn’t much. He was laid off from his last steel job three years ago, he said, and now gets by driving heavy equipment. “On and off jobs,” he said. And at a fraction of what he used to make. “Maybe the union seen it coming,” he said. “But we didn’t.”
It’s fair to say, over time, no one saw the changes coming. Between the 1850s and 1870s, Johnstown specifically, and Cambria County at large, became one of greatest industrial centers in the country. “And probably the world,” said Richard Burkert, the president of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. Using natural deposits of iron ore, the Cambria Steel Co. and later Bethlehem Steel built an empire, of sorts, on the banks of the Conemaugh River. The steel jobs—some 18,000 of them by World War I—attracted immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. Coal mining jobs did, too. And the county, once just a few thousand people, exploded. By 1940, the population had peaked at around 213,000 people.
“Steelworkers had left poverty and entered the middle class,” Burkert said, from his office just across the river from where the old steel mill used to stand. “You had vacations and cars. It was a real prosperous town. It was all working for everybody. These are the good times that everybody remembers.”
They also remember what happened next: how cheaper steel, produced by modern mills overseas in the post-World War II years, undercut the U.S. industry; and how Johnstown’s location, in those hills, connected by river and railroad, became less advantageous in the new era of interstate highways. In 1973, Bethlehem Steel announced it would slash its workforce from 11,800 to 7,000. Four years later, a devastating flood—the county’s third in a century—hastened those economic changes. Within six years, local unemployment topped 23 percent. Many people here never recovered, and others just left. Since 1980, the county’s population has declined by a quarter.
For a while, U.S. Rep. John Murtha helped stave off the losses; the Democrat brought government contracts and jobs to the area over the 36 years he served in Congress. “It touched every corner of Pennsylvania. So you can imagine what he did in his own backyard,” said T.J. Rooney, former state chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic party. But Murtha died in 2010, throwing the county into what former Johnstown mayor Don Zucco called “the post-Murtha period.” “And the question is,” Zucco said, “ are we in another bust cycle?”
U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., right, shakes hands with steel workers before taking a tour of a new facility at Latrobe Specialty Steel in Latrobe, Pennsylvia, in November 2008. Murtha helped bring jobs to the area for over 36 years in Congress, but when he died in 2010, many local politicians were uncertain about what would come in the “post-Murtha” period. | AP Photo
U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., right, shakes hands with steel workers before taking a tour of a new facility at Latrobe Specialty Steel in Latrobe, Pennsylvia, in November 2008. Murtha helped bring jobs to the area for over 36 years in Congress, but when he died in 2010, many local politicians were uncertain about what would come in the “post-Murtha” period. | AP Photo
Locals living off the coal industry—or what’s left of them—certainly think so. Union leaders complain about the negative economic impact of new EPA regulations, enacted under Obama’s watch in 2011, restricting toxic air emissions. The following year, the United Mine Workers union declined to endorse Obama in his re-election effort, despite backing him in 2008. The union didn’t endorse either candidate. But workers, union or not, got the message.
“Us guys, it’s all Democrats here,” said Dave Kirsch, who lives in Cambria County and hauls coal for a living. But he sat out the 2012 election, after voting for Obama four years earlier. And he’ll do the same again this fall—unless, he said, he votes for Trump. “Everybody I’m talking to, they’re switching,” Kirsch said. “Trump says he’s for coal, and Hillary hates coal—and that’s a shame. Because, in my opinion, he’s a little nuts. She’s more qualified. But if she wants to take my job—then, no.”
Rooney, the former state chairman of the state’s Democratic party, has heard similar sentiments all across the state.
“There’s a general perception that Democrats—Barack Obama, in particular—have made it so the playing field is no longer level. Forget about the merits of the argument,” Rooney said. “The reality is, that narrative has set in. It has baked into the cake. And that makes the job of running for any office, as a Democrat, more difficult. That’s just the cold hard reality.”
Bill Polacek is a big Steelers fan. So when the president and CEO of JWF Industries, a steel fabrication company in Johnstown, holds quarterly meetings with his 450 employees, he prefers to call them huddles—employee huddles. “This spring,” Polacek said, “I just thought, ‘I’m going to do a random poll.’” Everyone was talking about the upcoming presidential primary in April at the time, and Polacek was curious to learn how his company—and, really, his community—was leaning.
In huddle after huddle, he asked for a show of hands from the employees gathered before him. How many folks were supporting Clinton or Sanders? How about Trump? It was an unofficial poll, with all the obvious flaws: Were people being honest? Or just following along with the others around them? Still, the results shocked Polacek. “Ninety percent of my employees are Democrats,” he said. And by his estimation, about 70 percent of the workers were supporting Trump.
“I think that’s what blew me away,” said Polacek recently from a small conference room near his office. “Engineers, project managers, accountants, welders, machinists—it was all the same. I think you’ve got a group of frustrated voters. They’re working. They’re not getting handouts. They’re proud to be working, proud to be Americans, and they’re seeing this country go in the wrong direction.”
Polacek, 54, is the descendant of Czech immigrants who came to Johnstown a century ago. He built the business, he said, from his dad’s pickup truck and a single welder starting in 1986, and by 2006 grew it into a $125 million company, with contracts to build everything from armored vehicles to large barrels used in the oil and gas industry.
Since then, he and his brother, John, the company’s COO, have weathered hard times like many other executives. They’ve laid off some 250 employees in recent years in order to stay competitive. They’ve survived a 30-percent dip in revenue, they say, and recovered most of it. Today, the Polaceks say, JWF Industries is nearly back to what it was generating before the recession struck.
“The problem is,” Bill Polacek said, “wages aren’t going up.” Costs for the company are high, especially health insurance. At least once in the last two years, they lost a lucrative contract overseas. “They moved it all down to Mexico,” John Polacek said. And so, this November, while the two brothers will be supporting many local Democrats—they’ve hung a giant sign outside their factory for a Democratic state senator—they’ll be voting for Trump.
“There are things he has said that I don’t like,” said Bill Polacek, who switched his registration from Democrat to Republican last year. Polacek, in particular, said he didn’t appreciate Trump calling the federal judge who is handling his Trump University court case “a Mexican.” But like his blue-collar neighbors in Cambria County, Polacek wants to send a message.
“That’s probably what you’re seeing in this election,” he said. “People are fighting back. They’re saying: This is not complicated. You’ve got to do something. They’re tired of talk. And that’s the thing with these candidates: Hillary is talk; Trump is going to do something.”
Other local Republicans who have recently switched over from the Democrats agree—and they have risked both family ties and business connections to make these feelings public. Four years ago, Sherry Stalley-Frear ran for state representative on the Republican ticket in Cambria County. But there was nothing she could say to get her mother-in-law, Maggie Frear, a 74-year-old lifelong Democrat, to change her registration. “Even when I ran for office,” Stalley-Frear said, “she wouldn’t switch parties.” But for Trump, Frear did it. “There are a lot of people changing their minds,” Frear said, “and they’re not afraid to say: ‘Yeah, I like Trump.’”
Joey Del Signore Jr.—better known around Johnstown as simply Joey Del—has run a catering company in the area for three decades. And he has long adhered to his father’s early business advice: Never talk politics or religion around customers. But at 60, Del Signore is tired of being quiet. This spring he not only switched his registration to Republican, but placed a Trump placard outside right beneath the sign for his catering outfit.
“That’s not good business,” he said one recent afternoon, gesturing out the window of his office at the small, blue sign fluttering in the wind. But he doesn’t care.
“We’ve lost people here,” he said, counting the losses all around him. “Why did we lose people? Because we lost the coal, the coal mining jobs. We lost the steel mill jobs. We lost the railroad jobs. Because they went overseas, or somewhere else, and we’ve suffered. It’s a shame. But that’s what has happened. We’re the Rust Belt.”
At the county Republican office—in a tired strip mall between a coffee shop and a gold dealer—local party officials point to these changes to bolster their argument that Trump will win this fall, not just here in Cambria County, but in the left-behind places across the Midwest, and, in doing so, the surprise GOP nominee from New York will claim a historic victory over Hillary Clinton.
“She’s in big trouble in Cambria County. And a lot of other counties in southwest Pennsylvania,” said Rob Gleason, the state chairman of the Republican party, who was born and raised in Johnstown, and still lives in the county today. “She won’t win Washington, Green, or Fayette—these are all Democratic counties. She won’t win Beaver. She won’t win Allegheny”—where Pittsburgh is located. “You can just go down the list.”
But in the details, the threads of this argument begin to fray. For one thing, many voters who switched to the GOP in Pennsylvania this spring were Democrats in name only, having long voted Republican in presidential elections. Neither Polacek, Frear, or Joey Del could remember voting for a Democrat for president in any recent election. When they switched parties, the electoral outcome didn’t exactly change.
Trump’s other problem is the math. “There just aren’t enough rural voters to put him over the top,” said Berwood Yost, director for the Center of Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. Trump may indeed win Cambria County and others nearby. But Mitt Romney did, too, and he still lost the state to Obama, who won just 12 of the Pennsylvania’s 67 counties four years ago, six fewer than he won in 2008. “In this state, a Republican has got to appeal to moderate Republicans and Republican voters in the southeast part of the state, who are mostly educated and mostly affluent,” Yost said. “And I don’t know that we’re seeing that sort of appeal from Trump.”
Still, on the ground in western Pennsylvania, there’s an enthusiasm gap that’s palpable. Since Trump’s nomination became clear, Republicans have added nearly 17,000 more voters statewide than Democrats. The local Republican party office, in that strip mall, has a list of more than 125 people waiting for Trump signs. On a recent afternoon, a volunteer called the folks on that list to tell them they had a single Trump bumper sticker and button waiting for them, as a way to thank them for their patience.
“Can I take two?” one man asked when he came in.
The volunteer told him no. “Unfortunately, I have to ration them.”
Meanwhile, across town, members of the United Steelworkers Local 2632—once a Democratic stronghold—aren’t sure they will be able to bring Sanders supporters into the Clinton fold. “It’s a toss-up,” said John Daloni, a 61-year-old union officer and electrician at Gautier Steel, who drives around town with a Bernie magnet on the back of his blue Pontiac. “I hate to think of Bernie supporters going over to Trump. But I’ve spoken to folks and the story you get is—‘I’m sick of politics, and I don’t want a politician.’”
Terry Havener knows the feeling. A carpenter by trade, Havener served as a union leader for years, rallying votes for Democrats throughout western Pennsylvania and doing his job well enough that he received an invite to Bill Clinton’s White House in the 1990s, for a receiving line, handshakes and a photograph. “To Terry,” the president scrawled on snapshot. “Thanks—Bill Clinton.” And Havener was proud enough of the picture that he had it framed, displaying it in his home and, at times, he says, on Facebook. But it all feels so long ago now, so dated. “Even some of my feelings about that have changed,” Havener says.
In the Pennsylvania primary in April, the bespectacled 62-year-old, with a tuft of gray hair on his chin, voted for Sanders. Even now, with the delegate math against his candidate, Havener—like Sanders himself—refuses to concede the nomination to Clinton. “I don’t think it’s all finished,” he says. And when he finds himself talking with Trump supporters, like he did on a recent night inside a smoky bar in Johnstown, Havener sounds a lot like them, reminiscing about how good life used to be in Cambria County—and the U.S. at large—and how it just isn’t anymore.
“I’m just fed up with—the term I would use is—the grandfathered-in people,” Havener said. “The political royalty.”
“The Clintons,” one Trump supporter sneered.
“The Clintons,” Havener agreed, “are one.”
It’s why part of him wishes Sanders would run as a third-party candidate this fall—and why sometimes Havener catches himself wishing for something else: for Trump to win.
“It would be devastating for the country, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I have no confidence in the man’s ethics. I have no confidence in the man’s diplomacy.” It’s why, in the end, he said, he’ll probably vote for Hillary. Still, the thought is there. Havener—and a lot of other Democrats in Cambria County—are thinking it. “There’s a little piece of me,” he said, “that wants to see Trump win. So I can say, ‘There you go—you got what you want now.’”
They used to be Democrats. Now they really could hand Donald Trump the White House.
By Keith O’Brien
Donald Trump’s road to the White House begins here: on a four-lane highway, just east of Pittsburgh, past the roadside taverns, burned-out gas stations, and parking lots choked with weeds, up into the dark fingers of the Allegheny Mountains, and then down into the valley that was once home to steelworkers, coal miners and party-line Democrats.
Regis Karlheim once counted himself among that third group. A farmer’s son, Karlheim grew up doing two things: voting Democratic and growing potatoes. “It was a lot of good years in potatoes,” he said. “Everybody and their brother grew potatoes in Cambria County.”
Today Karlheim—blue-eyed, 58, and graying around the temples—spends his days behind the wheel of a giant coal truck, but the declining coal industry has hit Karlheim hard. He’s making $10,000 less than he was just three years ago, he said, and he’s worried about his mortgage. “How do you make those payments?” he asked. This spring, after years of not voting for anyone, in either party, in any presidential election, his anxiety compelled him to cast a vote in the Democratic primary. For Bernie Sanders.
His vote helped the socialist from Vermont beat Hillary Clinton in the county —while Trump won big, claiming more votes than either Democratic candidate. Since then, Clinton has sewn up her party’s nomination, but recent polls show that Cambria’s primary was no fluke: among the crucial battleground states, Pennsylvania is a tossup. Who wins the state’s precious 20 electoral votes in November will depend, in part, on people like Karlheim.
And he has some bad news for the former secretary of state.
While there are some things that worry him about the GOP nominee—“We don’t know his background,” Karlheim said, and “He’s a bit outspoken.”—he likes that Trump is talking about jobs. “That’s what we need,” which is why, Karlheim said, “In the big election ... I’m going for Trump.”
Not that long ago, such a notion would have turned heads in Cambria County. Between 1932 and 2000, voters here backed the Democratic candidate for president every time except twice. They routinely supported liberals who had no chance: Adlai Stevenson in ’52 and Hubert Humphrey in ’68. When most of America joined the Reagan revolution in 1980, Cambria County went for Jimmy Carter. Four years later, Walter Mondale did even better, winning 55 percent of the vote.
This was Clinton country both times in the ‘90s; it was in the pocket of Al Gore in 2000. And while the county narrowly went for the incumbent George W. Bush in 2004, voters were back to supporting Democrats four years later. In the ’08 primary, Hillary Clinton won more votes than all other candidates in both parties combined. Barack Obama won the county that fall. And then something appears to have shifted. In 2012, though he won the state, Obama lost the county in a veritable landslide, despite the fact that it has 50 percent more registered Democrats than Republicans. In recent months, that rightward shift solidified: To date this year, Republicans have gained nearly 1,500 registered voters in Cambria County as Democrats abandoned their party for the other side. That trend is playing out statewide, where switches have boosted GOP rolls by a net of nearly 50,000 voters. And in the primary this spring, Clinton not only lost to Sanders; she lost to herself, taking home 64 percent fewer votes than she did eight years ago. A county once hers now simply wasn’t.
“In the past, people here have turned to the Democrats,” said Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown, Pa., 200 miles to the east. “They were the ones who looked after working-class interests, in their minds. But there is a belief that that isn’t the case anymore—and now they’re shopping around for an alternative.”
Trump, for them, makes a pretty appealing one. Local Republican leaders point out that the GOP nominee talks like a steelworker: brash, simple, to the point. He’s perfect for Pennsylvania, they say, but especially the western part of the state—and, in particular, a place like Cambria County. “When we talk about the white working class in the United States,” Borick said, “this is the place that could be described as the face of that demographic.”
Cambria County is 94 percent white—with low rates of college education and high rates of unemployment, hovering around seven percent. And most importantly for Trump, it’s a county that appears on the map, by different names, again and again across the American Rust Belt: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and beyond. “He’s got to win these places,” Borick said, “and win big.” There is, Borick added, just one important question—for Trump, his campaign, and his quest for the White House.
“Are there enough Cambria Counties out there?”
In these wooded hills—thick and green, almost 70 miles east of Pittsburgh—the talk of making America great again aren’t empty words slapped on a red ball cap, retailing for $25 on Donald Trump’s web site. It’s part of the everyday conversation—among shopkeepers in rural Ebensburg, truck drivers in remote Carrolltown and unemployed steelworkers in the county’s largest city, Johnstown.
“There used to be a good work ethic in this town,” said Dave Pankoke, a 54-year-old Desert Storm veteran who has lived here his whole life. “Anymore, it’s about getting what you can.” Which, for Pankoke, isn’t much. He was laid off from his last steel job three years ago, he said, and now gets by driving heavy equipment. “On and off jobs,” he said. And at a fraction of what he used to make. “Maybe the union seen it coming,” he said. “But we didn’t.”
It’s fair to say, over time, no one saw the changes coming. Between the 1850s and 1870s, Johnstown specifically, and Cambria County at large, became one of greatest industrial centers in the country. “And probably the world,” said Richard Burkert, the president of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. Using natural deposits of iron ore, the Cambria Steel Co. and later Bethlehem Steel built an empire, of sorts, on the banks of the Conemaugh River. The steel jobs—some 18,000 of them by World War I—attracted immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. Coal mining jobs did, too. And the county, once just a few thousand people, exploded. By 1940, the population had peaked at around 213,000 people.
“Steelworkers had left poverty and entered the middle class,” Burkert said, from his office just across the river from where the old steel mill used to stand. “You had vacations and cars. It was a real prosperous town. It was all working for everybody. These are the good times that everybody remembers.”
They also remember what happened next: how cheaper steel, produced by modern mills overseas in the post-World War II years, undercut the U.S. industry; and how Johnstown’s location, in those hills, connected by river and railroad, became less advantageous in the new era of interstate highways. In 1973, Bethlehem Steel announced it would slash its workforce from 11,800 to 7,000. Four years later, a devastating flood—the county’s third in a century—hastened those economic changes. Within six years, local unemployment topped 23 percent. Many people here never recovered, and others just left. Since 1980, the county’s population has declined by a quarter.
For a while, U.S. Rep. John Murtha helped stave off the losses; the Democrat brought government contracts and jobs to the area over the 36 years he served in Congress. “It touched every corner of Pennsylvania. So you can imagine what he did in his own backyard,” said T.J. Rooney, former state chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic party. But Murtha died in 2010, throwing the county into what former Johnstown mayor Don Zucco called “the post-Murtha period.” “And the question is,” Zucco said, “ are we in another bust cycle?”
U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., right, shakes hands with steel workers before taking a tour of a new facility at Latrobe Specialty Steel in Latrobe, Pennsylvia, in November 2008. Murtha helped bring jobs to the area for over 36 years in Congress, but when he died in 2010, many local politicians were uncertain about what would come in the “post-Murtha” period. | AP Photo
U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., right, shakes hands with steel workers before taking a tour of a new facility at Latrobe Specialty Steel in Latrobe, Pennsylvia, in November 2008. Murtha helped bring jobs to the area for over 36 years in Congress, but when he died in 2010, many local politicians were uncertain about what would come in the “post-Murtha” period. | AP Photo
Locals living off the coal industry—or what’s left of them—certainly think so. Union leaders complain about the negative economic impact of new EPA regulations, enacted under Obama’s watch in 2011, restricting toxic air emissions. The following year, the United Mine Workers union declined to endorse Obama in his re-election effort, despite backing him in 2008. The union didn’t endorse either candidate. But workers, union or not, got the message.
“Us guys, it’s all Democrats here,” said Dave Kirsch, who lives in Cambria County and hauls coal for a living. But he sat out the 2012 election, after voting for Obama four years earlier. And he’ll do the same again this fall—unless, he said, he votes for Trump. “Everybody I’m talking to, they’re switching,” Kirsch said. “Trump says he’s for coal, and Hillary hates coal—and that’s a shame. Because, in my opinion, he’s a little nuts. She’s more qualified. But if she wants to take my job—then, no.”
Rooney, the former state chairman of the state’s Democratic party, has heard similar sentiments all across the state.
“There’s a general perception that Democrats—Barack Obama, in particular—have made it so the playing field is no longer level. Forget about the merits of the argument,” Rooney said. “The reality is, that narrative has set in. It has baked into the cake. And that makes the job of running for any office, as a Democrat, more difficult. That’s just the cold hard reality.”
Bill Polacek is a big Steelers fan. So when the president and CEO of JWF Industries, a steel fabrication company in Johnstown, holds quarterly meetings with his 450 employees, he prefers to call them huddles—employee huddles. “This spring,” Polacek said, “I just thought, ‘I’m going to do a random poll.’” Everyone was talking about the upcoming presidential primary in April at the time, and Polacek was curious to learn how his company—and, really, his community—was leaning.
In huddle after huddle, he asked for a show of hands from the employees gathered before him. How many folks were supporting Clinton or Sanders? How about Trump? It was an unofficial poll, with all the obvious flaws: Were people being honest? Or just following along with the others around them? Still, the results shocked Polacek. “Ninety percent of my employees are Democrats,” he said. And by his estimation, about 70 percent of the workers were supporting Trump.
“I think that’s what blew me away,” said Polacek recently from a small conference room near his office. “Engineers, project managers, accountants, welders, machinists—it was all the same. I think you’ve got a group of frustrated voters. They’re working. They’re not getting handouts. They’re proud to be working, proud to be Americans, and they’re seeing this country go in the wrong direction.”
Polacek, 54, is the descendant of Czech immigrants who came to Johnstown a century ago. He built the business, he said, from his dad’s pickup truck and a single welder starting in 1986, and by 2006 grew it into a $125 million company, with contracts to build everything from armored vehicles to large barrels used in the oil and gas industry.
Since then, he and his brother, John, the company’s COO, have weathered hard times like many other executives. They’ve laid off some 250 employees in recent years in order to stay competitive. They’ve survived a 30-percent dip in revenue, they say, and recovered most of it. Today, the Polaceks say, JWF Industries is nearly back to what it was generating before the recession struck.
“The problem is,” Bill Polacek said, “wages aren’t going up.” Costs for the company are high, especially health insurance. At least once in the last two years, they lost a lucrative contract overseas. “They moved it all down to Mexico,” John Polacek said. And so, this November, while the two brothers will be supporting many local Democrats—they’ve hung a giant sign outside their factory for a Democratic state senator—they’ll be voting for Trump.
“There are things he has said that I don’t like,” said Bill Polacek, who switched his registration from Democrat to Republican last year. Polacek, in particular, said he didn’t appreciate Trump calling the federal judge who is handling his Trump University court case “a Mexican.” But like his blue-collar neighbors in Cambria County, Polacek wants to send a message.
“That’s probably what you’re seeing in this election,” he said. “People are fighting back. They’re saying: This is not complicated. You’ve got to do something. They’re tired of talk. And that’s the thing with these candidates: Hillary is talk; Trump is going to do something.”
Other local Republicans who have recently switched over from the Democrats agree—and they have risked both family ties and business connections to make these feelings public. Four years ago, Sherry Stalley-Frear ran for state representative on the Republican ticket in Cambria County. But there was nothing she could say to get her mother-in-law, Maggie Frear, a 74-year-old lifelong Democrat, to change her registration. “Even when I ran for office,” Stalley-Frear said, “she wouldn’t switch parties.” But for Trump, Frear did it. “There are a lot of people changing their minds,” Frear said, “and they’re not afraid to say: ‘Yeah, I like Trump.’”
Joey Del Signore Jr.—better known around Johnstown as simply Joey Del—has run a catering company in the area for three decades. And he has long adhered to his father’s early business advice: Never talk politics or religion around customers. But at 60, Del Signore is tired of being quiet. This spring he not only switched his registration to Republican, but placed a Trump placard outside right beneath the sign for his catering outfit.
“That’s not good business,” he said one recent afternoon, gesturing out the window of his office at the small, blue sign fluttering in the wind. But he doesn’t care.
“We’ve lost people here,” he said, counting the losses all around him. “Why did we lose people? Because we lost the coal, the coal mining jobs. We lost the steel mill jobs. We lost the railroad jobs. Because they went overseas, or somewhere else, and we’ve suffered. It’s a shame. But that’s what has happened. We’re the Rust Belt.”
At the county Republican office—in a tired strip mall between a coffee shop and a gold dealer—local party officials point to these changes to bolster their argument that Trump will win this fall, not just here in Cambria County, but in the left-behind places across the Midwest, and, in doing so, the surprise GOP nominee from New York will claim a historic victory over Hillary Clinton.
“She’s in big trouble in Cambria County. And a lot of other counties in southwest Pennsylvania,” said Rob Gleason, the state chairman of the Republican party, who was born and raised in Johnstown, and still lives in the county today. “She won’t win Washington, Green, or Fayette—these are all Democratic counties. She won’t win Beaver. She won’t win Allegheny”—where Pittsburgh is located. “You can just go down the list.”
But in the details, the threads of this argument begin to fray. For one thing, many voters who switched to the GOP in Pennsylvania this spring were Democrats in name only, having long voted Republican in presidential elections. Neither Polacek, Frear, or Joey Del could remember voting for a Democrat for president in any recent election. When they switched parties, the electoral outcome didn’t exactly change.
Trump’s other problem is the math. “There just aren’t enough rural voters to put him over the top,” said Berwood Yost, director for the Center of Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. Trump may indeed win Cambria County and others nearby. But Mitt Romney did, too, and he still lost the state to Obama, who won just 12 of the Pennsylvania’s 67 counties four years ago, six fewer than he won in 2008. “In this state, a Republican has got to appeal to moderate Republicans and Republican voters in the southeast part of the state, who are mostly educated and mostly affluent,” Yost said. “And I don’t know that we’re seeing that sort of appeal from Trump.”
Still, on the ground in western Pennsylvania, there’s an enthusiasm gap that’s palpable. Since Trump’s nomination became clear, Republicans have added nearly 17,000 more voters statewide than Democrats. The local Republican party office, in that strip mall, has a list of more than 125 people waiting for Trump signs. On a recent afternoon, a volunteer called the folks on that list to tell them they had a single Trump bumper sticker and button waiting for them, as a way to thank them for their patience.
“Can I take two?” one man asked when he came in.
The volunteer told him no. “Unfortunately, I have to ration them.”
Meanwhile, across town, members of the United Steelworkers Local 2632—once a Democratic stronghold—aren’t sure they will be able to bring Sanders supporters into the Clinton fold. “It’s a toss-up,” said John Daloni, a 61-year-old union officer and electrician at Gautier Steel, who drives around town with a Bernie magnet on the back of his blue Pontiac. “I hate to think of Bernie supporters going over to Trump. But I’ve spoken to folks and the story you get is—‘I’m sick of politics, and I don’t want a politician.’”
Terry Havener knows the feeling. A carpenter by trade, Havener served as a union leader for years, rallying votes for Democrats throughout western Pennsylvania and doing his job well enough that he received an invite to Bill Clinton’s White House in the 1990s, for a receiving line, handshakes and a photograph. “To Terry,” the president scrawled on snapshot. “Thanks—Bill Clinton.” And Havener was proud enough of the picture that he had it framed, displaying it in his home and, at times, he says, on Facebook. But it all feels so long ago now, so dated. “Even some of my feelings about that have changed,” Havener says.
In the Pennsylvania primary in April, the bespectacled 62-year-old, with a tuft of gray hair on his chin, voted for Sanders. Even now, with the delegate math against his candidate, Havener—like Sanders himself—refuses to concede the nomination to Clinton. “I don’t think it’s all finished,” he says. And when he finds himself talking with Trump supporters, like he did on a recent night inside a smoky bar in Johnstown, Havener sounds a lot like them, reminiscing about how good life used to be in Cambria County—and the U.S. at large—and how it just isn’t anymore.
“I’m just fed up with—the term I would use is—the grandfathered-in people,” Havener said. “The political royalty.”
“The Clintons,” one Trump supporter sneered.
“The Clintons,” Havener agreed, “are one.”
It’s why part of him wishes Sanders would run as a third-party candidate this fall—and why sometimes Havener catches himself wishing for something else: for Trump to win.
“It would be devastating for the country, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I have no confidence in the man’s ethics. I have no confidence in the man’s diplomacy.” It’s why, in the end, he said, he’ll probably vote for Hillary. Still, the thought is there. Havener—and a lot of other Democrats in Cambria County—are thinking it. “There’s a little piece of me,” he said, “that wants to see Trump win. So I can say, ‘There you go—you got what you want now.’”
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