August 31, 2017
South Asia floods
South Asia floods kill 1,200 and shut 1.8 million children out of school
Hundreds dead in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, while millions have been forced from their homes and 18,000 schools shut down across the region
Haroon Siddique
Heavy monsoon rains have brought Mumbai to a halt for a second day as the worst floods to strike south Asia in years continued to exact a deadly toll.
More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal as a result of flooding, with 40 million affected by the devastation. At least six people, including two toddlers, were among the victims in and around India’s financial capital.
The devastating floods have also destroyed or damaged 18,000 schools, meaning that about 1.8 million children cannot go to classes, Save the Children warned on Thursday.
The charity said that hundreds of thousands of children could fall permanently out of the school system if education was not prioritised in relief efforts.
“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great risk. From our experience, the importance of education is often under-valued in humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go backwards,” said Rafay Hussain, Save the Children’s general manager in Bihar state.
“We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”
On Wednesday, police said a 45-year-old woman and a one-year-old child, members of the same family, had died after their home in the north-eastern suburb of Vikhroli crumbled late on Tuesday, and a two-year-old girl had died in a wall collapse.
They said another three people had died after being swept away in the neighbouring city of Thane.
The rains have led to flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in Bangladesh, Nepal and India, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and vast swaths of farmland.
The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says the fourth significant floods this year have affected more than 7.4 million people in Bangladesh, damaging or destroying more than 697,000 houses.
They have killed 514 in India’s eastern state of Bihar, where 17.1 million have been affected, disaster management officials have been quoted as saying. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, about 2.5 million have been affected and the death toll stood at 109 on Tuesday, according to the Straits Times. The IFRC said landslides in Nepal had killed more than 100 people.
The IFRC – working with the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and the Nepal Red Cross – has launched appeals to support almost 200,000 vulnerable people with immediate relief and long-term help with water and sanitation, health and shelter.
Streets in Mumbai have turned into rivers and people waded through waist-deep waters. On Tuesday, the city received about 12.7cm (5ins) of rain, paralysing public transport and leaving thousands of commuters stranded in their offices overnight.
Poor visibility and flooding also forced airport authorities to divert some flights while most were delayed by up to an hour.
The National Disaster Response Force has launched a rescue mission with police to evacuate people from low-lying areas but operations were thwarted by the continuous rain.
“The heavy rains, flooding, are delaying our rescue work. Even we are stranded,” said Amitesh Kumar, the joint police commissioner in Mumbai.
Images and video posted on social media showed the extent of the flooding.
Rainwater swamped the King Edward Memorial hospital in central Mumbai, forcing doctors to vacate the paediatric ward.
“We are worried about infections … the rain water is circulating rubbish that is now entering parts of the emergency ward,” said Ashutosh Desai, a doctor in the 1,800-bed hospital.
Although Mumbai is trying to build itself into a global financial hub, parts of the city struggle to cope during annual monsoon rains.
Floods in 2005 killed more than 500 people in the city. The majority of deaths occurred in shanty town slums, home to more than half of Mumbai’s population.
The meteorological department warned that the rains would continue for the next 24 hours.
Unabated construction on flood plains and coastal areas, as well as storm-water drains and waterways clogged by plastic garbage, have made the city increasingly vulnerable to storms.
Snehal Tagade, a senior official in Mumbai’s disaster management unit, said 150 teams were being deployed to help the population in low-lying residential areas.
Low-lying parts of the city with a population of more than 20 million people experience flooding almost every year but large-scale flooding of this magnitude has not been seen in recent years.
“We are mapping all the flooding zones to launch a project to build emergency shelters to make evacuation easy,” said Tagade.
Many businesses asked employees to leave early in expectation of worsening traffic jams. Rains and a high tide in the western coastal city threaten to overload an ageing drainage system.
Several companies have arranged for food and resting facilities for employees stuck in offices. Temples and other Ganesh pandals have been offering food and water to people stranded on streets.
People on social media have been offering help to strangers who have been stuck at various locations.
The education minister has asked all schools and colleges in the city to remain shut on Wednesday.
The flooding led to some power outages in parts of the city and the municipal corporation warned of more such cuts if water levels continued to rise.
A spokeswoman for Mumbai international airport said flights in and out of the airport, India’s second busiest, were delayed while some had had to be diverted.
Hundreds dead in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, while millions have been forced from their homes and 18,000 schools shut down across the region
Haroon Siddique
Heavy monsoon rains have brought Mumbai to a halt for a second day as the worst floods to strike south Asia in years continued to exact a deadly toll.
More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal as a result of flooding, with 40 million affected by the devastation. At least six people, including two toddlers, were among the victims in and around India’s financial capital.
The devastating floods have also destroyed or damaged 18,000 schools, meaning that about 1.8 million children cannot go to classes, Save the Children warned on Thursday.
The charity said that hundreds of thousands of children could fall permanently out of the school system if education was not prioritised in relief efforts.
“We know that the longer children are out of school following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return. That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so and to safeguard their futures.”
On Wednesday, police said a 45-year-old woman and a one-year-old child, members of the same family, had died after their home in the north-eastern suburb of Vikhroli crumbled late on Tuesday, and a two-year-old girl had died in a wall collapse.
They said another three people had died after being swept away in the neighbouring city of Thane.
The rains have led to flooding in a broad arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills in Bangladesh, Nepal and India, causing landslides, damaging roads and electric towers and washing away tens of thousands of homes and vast swaths of farmland.
The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says the fourth significant floods this year have affected more than 7.4 million people in Bangladesh, damaging or destroying more than 697,000 houses.
They have killed 514 in India’s eastern state of Bihar, where 17.1 million have been affected, disaster management officials have been quoted as saying. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, about 2.5 million have been affected and the death toll stood at 109 on Tuesday, according to the Straits Times. The IFRC said landslides in Nepal had killed more than 100 people.
The IFRC – working with the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and the Nepal Red Cross – has launched appeals to support almost 200,000 vulnerable people with immediate relief and long-term help with water and sanitation, health and shelter.
Streets in Mumbai have turned into rivers and people waded through waist-deep waters. On Tuesday, the city received about 12.7cm (5ins) of rain, paralysing public transport and leaving thousands of commuters stranded in their offices overnight.
Poor visibility and flooding also forced airport authorities to divert some flights while most were delayed by up to an hour.
The National Disaster Response Force has launched a rescue mission with police to evacuate people from low-lying areas but operations were thwarted by the continuous rain.
“The heavy rains, flooding, are delaying our rescue work. Even we are stranded,” said Amitesh Kumar, the joint police commissioner in Mumbai.
Images and video posted on social media showed the extent of the flooding.
Rainwater swamped the King Edward Memorial hospital in central Mumbai, forcing doctors to vacate the paediatric ward.
“We are worried about infections … the rain water is circulating rubbish that is now entering parts of the emergency ward,” said Ashutosh Desai, a doctor in the 1,800-bed hospital.
Although Mumbai is trying to build itself into a global financial hub, parts of the city struggle to cope during annual monsoon rains.
Floods in 2005 killed more than 500 people in the city. The majority of deaths occurred in shanty town slums, home to more than half of Mumbai’s population.
The meteorological department warned that the rains would continue for the next 24 hours.
Unabated construction on flood plains and coastal areas, as well as storm-water drains and waterways clogged by plastic garbage, have made the city increasingly vulnerable to storms.
Snehal Tagade, a senior official in Mumbai’s disaster management unit, said 150 teams were being deployed to help the population in low-lying residential areas.
Low-lying parts of the city with a population of more than 20 million people experience flooding almost every year but large-scale flooding of this magnitude has not been seen in recent years.
“We are mapping all the flooding zones to launch a project to build emergency shelters to make evacuation easy,” said Tagade.
Many businesses asked employees to leave early in expectation of worsening traffic jams. Rains and a high tide in the western coastal city threaten to overload an ageing drainage system.
Several companies have arranged for food and resting facilities for employees stuck in offices. Temples and other Ganesh pandals have been offering food and water to people stranded on streets.
People on social media have been offering help to strangers who have been stuck at various locations.
The education minister has asked all schools and colleges in the city to remain shut on Wednesday.
The flooding led to some power outages in parts of the city and the municipal corporation warned of more such cuts if water levels continued to rise.
A spokeswoman for Mumbai international airport said flights in and out of the airport, India’s second busiest, were delayed while some had had to be diverted.
Chemical Plant in Texas
Two Explosions Have Been Reported at a Flooded Chemical Plant in Texas
The facility lost its ability to keep dangerous organic peroxides at low temperatures.
NATHALIE BAPTISTE
Update, August 31:
Two explosions were reported at Arkema Inc. early Thursday morning. The France-based company released a statement confirming the news, adding that public officials have concluded the “best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out.”
Original:
A chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, is at risk of exploding, thanks to Harvey’s floodwaters.
Arkema Inc., which manufactures organic peroxides that must be stored at low temperatures, released a statement Tuesday evening saying, “The potential for a chemical reaction leading to a fire and/or explosion within the site confines is real.” The facility lost the ability to keep the chemicals at a low temperature when the electricity went out and back-up generators were flooded. If the chemicals are not properly cooled, they will catch fire and explode.
The chemical plant, which is 25 miles northeast of Houston is surrounded by six feet of water. The company evacuated the small number of remaining employees and Harris County officials told residents within a one-and-a-half mile radius to evacuate as well. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 4,000 people live within a three-mile radius of the plant. The Federal Aviation Administration also banned flights over the area.
Many oil refineries and chemical plants shut down production ahead of the storm but there were still reports of an “unbearable chemical smell” in the Houston area. Rowe told reporters on Wednesday to expect an explosion, which could cause serious damage to the facility, in six days.
The facility lost its ability to keep dangerous organic peroxides at low temperatures.
NATHALIE BAPTISTE
Update, August 31:
Two explosions were reported at Arkema Inc. early Thursday morning. The France-based company released a statement confirming the news, adding that public officials have concluded the “best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out.”
Original:
A chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, is at risk of exploding, thanks to Harvey’s floodwaters.
Arkema Inc., which manufactures organic peroxides that must be stored at low temperatures, released a statement Tuesday evening saying, “The potential for a chemical reaction leading to a fire and/or explosion within the site confines is real.” The facility lost the ability to keep the chemicals at a low temperature when the electricity went out and back-up generators were flooded. If the chemicals are not properly cooled, they will catch fire and explode.
The chemical plant, which is 25 miles northeast of Houston is surrounded by six feet of water. The company evacuated the small number of remaining employees and Harris County officials told residents within a one-and-a-half mile radius to evacuate as well. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 4,000 people live within a three-mile radius of the plant. The Federal Aviation Administration also banned flights over the area.
Many oil refineries and chemical plants shut down production ahead of the storm but there were still reports of an “unbearable chemical smell” in the Houston area. Rowe told reporters on Wednesday to expect an explosion, which could cause serious damage to the facility, in six days.
Sanctuary Cities Ban
Judge Temporarily Blocks Texas’ Sanctuary Cities Ban
SB 4 would have gone into effect on Friday.
NOAH LANARD
On Wednesday, a district court judge blocked most of a controversial Texas law that bans sanctuary cities. The law, Senate Bill 4, also known as the “show me your papers law” to critics, was set to go into effect on Friday.
SB 4, which was signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in May, effectively prohibits the existence of sanctuary cities by forcing local police to cooperate with federal immigration officials. SB 4 would also allow local officials to be fined up to $25,500 per day and face jail time if they refused to enforce the law.
A section of the law that gives police the authority to ask people about their immigration status will still be allowed to go into effect, according to the ruling. Civil liberties groups have warned that the provision will lead to undocumented immigrants being detained as part of routine traffic stops.
Orlando Garcia, a federal judge in the Western District of Texas, wrote in his decision that there “is overwhelming evidence by local officials, including local law enforcement, that SB 4 will erode public trust and make many communities and neighborhoods less safe. There is also ample evidence that localities will suffer adverse economic consequences which, in turn, harm the State of Texas.” Garcia also wrote that while the state legislature can ignore the “knowledge and experience” of local officials, it cannot “exercise its authority in a manner that violates the United States Constitution.”
The injunction is only temporary and prevents the law from going into effect on September 1 while a lawsuit from various local governments and organizations moves forward against it.
SB 4 would have gone into effect on Friday.
NOAH LANARD
On Wednesday, a district court judge blocked most of a controversial Texas law that bans sanctuary cities. The law, Senate Bill 4, also known as the “show me your papers law” to critics, was set to go into effect on Friday.
SB 4, which was signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in May, effectively prohibits the existence of sanctuary cities by forcing local police to cooperate with federal immigration officials. SB 4 would also allow local officials to be fined up to $25,500 per day and face jail time if they refused to enforce the law.
A section of the law that gives police the authority to ask people about their immigration status will still be allowed to go into effect, according to the ruling. Civil liberties groups have warned that the provision will lead to undocumented immigrants being detained as part of routine traffic stops.
Orlando Garcia, a federal judge in the Western District of Texas, wrote in his decision that there “is overwhelming evidence by local officials, including local law enforcement, that SB 4 will erode public trust and make many communities and neighborhoods less safe. There is also ample evidence that localities will suffer adverse economic consequences which, in turn, harm the State of Texas.” Garcia also wrote that while the state legislature can ignore the “knowledge and experience” of local officials, it cannot “exercise its authority in a manner that violates the United States Constitution.”
The injunction is only temporary and prevents the law from going into effect on September 1 while a lawsuit from various local governments and organizations moves forward against it.
News Beneath the Recent Chaos
The Flood of Trump-Russia News Beneath the Recent Chaos
The scandal engulfing the White House didn’t pause for Charlottesville or Hurricane Harvey.
BILL BUZENBERG
President Donald Trump is nothing if not a master of distraction. His itchy Twitter finger and his pugnacious ad-lib rallies and news conferences regularly produce news bombshells that dominate the headlines.
As crises both national and international have set in this month, Trump has been on a tear, from his comments blaming “both sides” for the deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, to his brazen pardon of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio as Hurricane Harvey bore down on Texas. Somewhat lost in the fire and fury (literally) has been a series of consequential developments concerning the multiple ongoing investigations into Team Trump’s ties to and possible collusion with Russia.
Perhaps the biggest of the bunch: On August 27, the Washington Post reported that Trump was actively pursuing a deal to build a “massive” Trump Tower in Moscow while campaigning for the presidency. And the New York Times exposed a series of emails between Trump’s business associate Felix Sater and his lawyer Michael Cohen, in which Sater boasted about how the Moscow deal could help Trump win the White House. “Our boy can become president of the USA,” Sater wrote, “and we can engineer it.”
Here are some of the other Russia investigation-related developments you may have missed in recent weeks:
Subpoena for Manafort’s spokesman and former lawyer (August 29): CNN reports that special counsel Robert Mueller has continued to use aggressive tactics in his team’s investigation of ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, subpoenaing Manafort’s former lawyer, Melissa Laurenza, an attorney with the Akin Gump law firm, and his current spokesman, Jason Maloni.
Probing Trump’s knowledge of the June 2016 meeting (August 28): NBC News reports that Mueller’s team is “keenly focused” on what President Trump himself may have known about the infamous June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Russian operatives and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort—and whether the president may have tried to help conceal that meeting’s purpose once it was uncovered by the media.
Congress and the FBI dig deeper into the dossier (August 22): Glenn Simpson, the founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which hired Christopher Steele to compile the Trump-Russia dossier, meets with the Senate Judiciary Committee in a nearly 10-hour closed-door session to answer questions about the financing and sourcing for the dossier. ABC News reports that Steele has already met with FBI investigators and provided them with the names of his sources for the dossier’s allegations.
Deeper Kremlin ties seen in Trump Tower meeting (August 21): The New York Times reports that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant who attended the July 2016 Trump Tower meeting, has much deeper ties to the Russian government and Kremlin-supported oligarchs than was previously known. The Times also reports that Akhmetshin, who is being investigated by Mueller, has worked for Russian oligarchs whose opponents faced sophisticated hacks. Akhmetshin’s sister, father, and godfather worked for Russian intelligence services, but Akhmetshin has denied allegations that he is a Russian spy.
Donald Trump Jr. under investigation (August 18): BuzzFeed reports that Mueller’s office is investigating Donald Trump Jr., with a particular interest in discovering what information Trump Jr. received at the June 2016 meeting with Russian operatives.
Ivanka’s friendship with an oligarch’s wife (August 18): Bloomberg reports on the friendship between Ivanka Trump and Dasha Zhukova, the wife of Russian billionaire and Putin ally Roman Abramovich. Bloomberg notes that Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, has met multiple times with Abramovich, and that Trump and Kushner disclosed their ongoing social relationship with the couple—which included a four-day trip to Russia in 2014 at Zhukova’s initiation—on their security clearance forms.
Russian hacker becomes FBI witness (August 16): The New York Times reports that a Ukrainian hacker known as Profexer—whom American intelligence agencies have identified as the creator of a program used in Russian hacks targeting the US election—has turned himself over to the Ukrainian police and become a witness for the FBI. “It is the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation into the election hacking and the heated debate it has stirred,” notes the Times.
Emails confirm outreach to Russia (August 14): The Washington Post reports on a set of Trump campaign emails showing persistent efforts by campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to coordinate a meeting between Trump and Russian leaders, including Putin. The Post reports the emails were sent between March and September 2016, as the presidential race heated up; they were included in more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Global banks get subpoenaed (August 10): Bloomberg reports that Mueller’s team has sent subpoenas to global banks requesting transaction records and account information tied to Paul Manafort and several of his companies. A source tells Bloomberg that Mueller has reached out to Manafort’s son-in-law and a Ukrainian oligarch, hoping to convince Manafort to be more cooperative.
Trump’s latest bizarre praise for Putin (August 10): Taking a break from a vacation at his New Jersey golf club, Trump tells reporters he is grateful that Putin has expelled hundreds of US diplomats from Russia in response to US sanctions. “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down our payroll and as far as I’m concerned I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll,” Trump says. Following outrage over Trump’s comments, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells the New York Times that the president’s remarks were “sarcastic” and meant to be funny.
The scandal engulfing the White House didn’t pause for Charlottesville or Hurricane Harvey.
BILL BUZENBERG
President Donald Trump is nothing if not a master of distraction. His itchy Twitter finger and his pugnacious ad-lib rallies and news conferences regularly produce news bombshells that dominate the headlines.
As crises both national and international have set in this month, Trump has been on a tear, from his comments blaming “both sides” for the deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, to his brazen pardon of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio as Hurricane Harvey bore down on Texas. Somewhat lost in the fire and fury (literally) has been a series of consequential developments concerning the multiple ongoing investigations into Team Trump’s ties to and possible collusion with Russia.
Perhaps the biggest of the bunch: On August 27, the Washington Post reported that Trump was actively pursuing a deal to build a “massive” Trump Tower in Moscow while campaigning for the presidency. And the New York Times exposed a series of emails between Trump’s business associate Felix Sater and his lawyer Michael Cohen, in which Sater boasted about how the Moscow deal could help Trump win the White House. “Our boy can become president of the USA,” Sater wrote, “and we can engineer it.”
Here are some of the other Russia investigation-related developments you may have missed in recent weeks:
Subpoena for Manafort’s spokesman and former lawyer (August 29): CNN reports that special counsel Robert Mueller has continued to use aggressive tactics in his team’s investigation of ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, subpoenaing Manafort’s former lawyer, Melissa Laurenza, an attorney with the Akin Gump law firm, and his current spokesman, Jason Maloni.
Probing Trump’s knowledge of the June 2016 meeting (August 28): NBC News reports that Mueller’s team is “keenly focused” on what President Trump himself may have known about the infamous June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Russian operatives and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort—and whether the president may have tried to help conceal that meeting’s purpose once it was uncovered by the media.
Congress and the FBI dig deeper into the dossier (August 22): Glenn Simpson, the founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which hired Christopher Steele to compile the Trump-Russia dossier, meets with the Senate Judiciary Committee in a nearly 10-hour closed-door session to answer questions about the financing and sourcing for the dossier. ABC News reports that Steele has already met with FBI investigators and provided them with the names of his sources for the dossier’s allegations.
Deeper Kremlin ties seen in Trump Tower meeting (August 21): The New York Times reports that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant who attended the July 2016 Trump Tower meeting, has much deeper ties to the Russian government and Kremlin-supported oligarchs than was previously known. The Times also reports that Akhmetshin, who is being investigated by Mueller, has worked for Russian oligarchs whose opponents faced sophisticated hacks. Akhmetshin’s sister, father, and godfather worked for Russian intelligence services, but Akhmetshin has denied allegations that he is a Russian spy.
Donald Trump Jr. under investigation (August 18): BuzzFeed reports that Mueller’s office is investigating Donald Trump Jr., with a particular interest in discovering what information Trump Jr. received at the June 2016 meeting with Russian operatives.
Ivanka’s friendship with an oligarch’s wife (August 18): Bloomberg reports on the friendship between Ivanka Trump and Dasha Zhukova, the wife of Russian billionaire and Putin ally Roman Abramovich. Bloomberg notes that Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, has met multiple times with Abramovich, and that Trump and Kushner disclosed their ongoing social relationship with the couple—which included a four-day trip to Russia in 2014 at Zhukova’s initiation—on their security clearance forms.
Russian hacker becomes FBI witness (August 16): The New York Times reports that a Ukrainian hacker known as Profexer—whom American intelligence agencies have identified as the creator of a program used in Russian hacks targeting the US election—has turned himself over to the Ukrainian police and become a witness for the FBI. “It is the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation into the election hacking and the heated debate it has stirred,” notes the Times.
Emails confirm outreach to Russia (August 14): The Washington Post reports on a set of Trump campaign emails showing persistent efforts by campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to coordinate a meeting between Trump and Russian leaders, including Putin. The Post reports the emails were sent between March and September 2016, as the presidential race heated up; they were included in more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Global banks get subpoenaed (August 10): Bloomberg reports that Mueller’s team has sent subpoenas to global banks requesting transaction records and account information tied to Paul Manafort and several of his companies. A source tells Bloomberg that Mueller has reached out to Manafort’s son-in-law and a Ukrainian oligarch, hoping to convince Manafort to be more cooperative.
Trump’s latest bizarre praise for Putin (August 10): Taking a break from a vacation at his New Jersey golf club, Trump tells reporters he is grateful that Putin has expelled hundreds of US diplomats from Russia in response to US sanctions. “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down our payroll and as far as I’m concerned I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll,” Trump says. Following outrage over Trump’s comments, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells the New York Times that the president’s remarks were “sarcastic” and meant to be funny.
Brexit charm offensive...
UK Brexit charm offensive falls flat
EU diplomats briefed by a senior UK official said promise of more clarity on Brexit bill wasn’t kept by London.
By SIMON MARKS AND GIULIA PARAVICINI
It was meant to be a charm offensive directed at national capitals across Europe to help smooth the Brexit negotiations — but the British government’s decision to hold confidential briefing sessions for EU ambassadors in London appears to have fallen flat.
In the last two weeks, the U.K. held two such events in a bid to explain London’s negotiating positions on key issues ahead of the latest round of Brexit talks, which are now underway in Brussels. If the effort was intended to win a sympathetic ear, it flopped.
The meetings have not been officially announced, but according to six senior diplomats POLITICO spoke to who were either present at the meetings or briefed on them, the representatives of the EU27 were not impressed by what they say was a lack of detail from the U.K. And they were dismayed that a promise to provide a detailed position paper on how to calculate the U.K.’s financial obligations to the bloc once it leaves was subsequently withdrawn.
The hour-long briefings — which took place on August 17 and 24 at the U.K. Foreign Office in Whitehall — were given by Alex Ellis, director general of the Brexit department and a senior member of David Davis’ negotiating team. On the invite list for the first meeting were representatives from all EU27 countries. At the second, the invite list was extended to include Iceland and Norway.
“Ellis basically told us that the purpose of the papers was to show to Brussels that London had done its homework this time” — A senior official
The first briefing covered the U.K.’s papers on customs and Northern Ireland. The second session was on five papers that laid out the U.K. position on topics including data protection and European Court of Justice jurisdiction. Ellis also promised more position papers from the government in the coming weeks.
“He told us that we had to treat the papers as simple ‘policy proposals aimed at starting a dialogue’ in response to EU papers and that their main purpose was to ‘to share ideas,'” a senior official who attended both briefings said. “Ellis basically told us that the purpose of the papers was to show to Brussels that London had done its homework this time.”
The Brits were stung by what they saw as unfair criticism that they were unprepared, after the second round of talks in July.
But according to two officials in the room, when two ambassadors and a deputy ambassador pressed Ellis to provide more information on how Britain’s customs plans could be implemented, he was unable or unwilling to provide detailed answers. A second diplomat said the whole presentation came across as “very vague and ambiguous.”
As adversaries in the Brexit negotiations, EU diplomats could have an incentive to present the U.K.’s position in a less than favorable light. But apart from their reaction to what Ellis had to say about the U.K.’s first two papers, another cause of consternation was his alleged promise at the first of the two briefings in London of more clarity on the Brexit bill.
“Ellis had announced at the end of the first meeting [that the UK would provide a position paper] on Britain’s financial obligations,” said a diplomat who attended both meetings. “[At the second meeting] Ellis said that such a paper was actually not going to be published and that with respect to the divorce bill the U.K. had gone as far as it had to by acknowledging in the second round of talks that it owed money to Brussels.”
The prospect of a detailed position paper laying out Britain’s thinking on how to calculate the Brexit bill is significant because the U.K.’s stance on the issue has become a key sticking point in the talks. While Davis has acknowledged that his country has financial obligations to the bloc, he has refused to provide a methodology for how Britain believes they should be calculated — preferring instead to critique proposals on the bill from the other side of the table.
The approach has infuriated Brussels, with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier imploring Davis at the start of the latest round of talks on Monday: “We must start negotiating seriously.”
That the U.K. allegedly dangled the prospect of serious engagement on the Brexit bill as recently as mid-August will raise eyebrows in Brussels and suggests either a diplomatic mistake or a last-minute change of negotiating tactics.
A spokesman for the U.K.’s Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) confirmed that the London meetings happened, but said: “We don’t recognize this account.”
“There have been a series of briefings for EU embassies in London on the contents of the papers we have published in recent weeks, at which officials from across government have responded exhaustively to a wide range of questions on the content of the papers, on customs, Northern Ireland and many other issues,” he said, adding, “We will continue to provide detailed information for our EU partners on our policy thinking.”
After publication of this story, DExEU offered POLITICO a further statement: “It is completely false to suggest we promised a paper on the financial settlement — in fact, officials downplayed any expectation that there would be one. We have already published 11 position and future partnership papers.”
Outside observers say that too much clarity at this early stage in the negotiations may not serve the U.K.’s interests. “Why would you as the U.K. capitulate on everything the EU wants now before receiving any guarantees of your own?” said Pieter Cleppe, who heads the Brussels office of Open Europe, a right-leaning think tank based in London. “It would be political suicide.”
Some EU diplomats say they believe the British ambiguity stems from the disconnect between ministers and technical experts in the civil service on key aspects of the U.K.’s negotiating stance. “There is still a huge split between the technical side and what can actually be said politically,” an EU diplomat briefed on the London meetings said. “Technical officials in Britain know these issues well, but what they can say about them is so constrained by what is happening politically in the country. It’s very difficult for them.”
The London briefings are part of a wider engagement effort by the Brexit department and the Foreign Office, first revealed by POLITICO earlier this month, to better communicate the British government’s position without going through the European Commission negotiating team.
EU diplomats briefed by a senior UK official said promise of more clarity on Brexit bill wasn’t kept by London.
By SIMON MARKS AND GIULIA PARAVICINI
It was meant to be a charm offensive directed at national capitals across Europe to help smooth the Brexit negotiations — but the British government’s decision to hold confidential briefing sessions for EU ambassadors in London appears to have fallen flat.
In the last two weeks, the U.K. held two such events in a bid to explain London’s negotiating positions on key issues ahead of the latest round of Brexit talks, which are now underway in Brussels. If the effort was intended to win a sympathetic ear, it flopped.
The meetings have not been officially announced, but according to six senior diplomats POLITICO spoke to who were either present at the meetings or briefed on them, the representatives of the EU27 were not impressed by what they say was a lack of detail from the U.K. And they were dismayed that a promise to provide a detailed position paper on how to calculate the U.K.’s financial obligations to the bloc once it leaves was subsequently withdrawn.
The hour-long briefings — which took place on August 17 and 24 at the U.K. Foreign Office in Whitehall — were given by Alex Ellis, director general of the Brexit department and a senior member of David Davis’ negotiating team. On the invite list for the first meeting were representatives from all EU27 countries. At the second, the invite list was extended to include Iceland and Norway.
“Ellis basically told us that the purpose of the papers was to show to Brussels that London had done its homework this time” — A senior official
The first briefing covered the U.K.’s papers on customs and Northern Ireland. The second session was on five papers that laid out the U.K. position on topics including data protection and European Court of Justice jurisdiction. Ellis also promised more position papers from the government in the coming weeks.
“He told us that we had to treat the papers as simple ‘policy proposals aimed at starting a dialogue’ in response to EU papers and that their main purpose was to ‘to share ideas,'” a senior official who attended both briefings said. “Ellis basically told us that the purpose of the papers was to show to Brussels that London had done its homework this time.”
The Brits were stung by what they saw as unfair criticism that they were unprepared, after the second round of talks in July.
But according to two officials in the room, when two ambassadors and a deputy ambassador pressed Ellis to provide more information on how Britain’s customs plans could be implemented, he was unable or unwilling to provide detailed answers. A second diplomat said the whole presentation came across as “very vague and ambiguous.”
As adversaries in the Brexit negotiations, EU diplomats could have an incentive to present the U.K.’s position in a less than favorable light. But apart from their reaction to what Ellis had to say about the U.K.’s first two papers, another cause of consternation was his alleged promise at the first of the two briefings in London of more clarity on the Brexit bill.
“Ellis had announced at the end of the first meeting [that the UK would provide a position paper] on Britain’s financial obligations,” said a diplomat who attended both meetings. “[At the second meeting] Ellis said that such a paper was actually not going to be published and that with respect to the divorce bill the U.K. had gone as far as it had to by acknowledging in the second round of talks that it owed money to Brussels.”
The prospect of a detailed position paper laying out Britain’s thinking on how to calculate the Brexit bill is significant because the U.K.’s stance on the issue has become a key sticking point in the talks. While Davis has acknowledged that his country has financial obligations to the bloc, he has refused to provide a methodology for how Britain believes they should be calculated — preferring instead to critique proposals on the bill from the other side of the table.
The approach has infuriated Brussels, with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier imploring Davis at the start of the latest round of talks on Monday: “We must start negotiating seriously.”
That the U.K. allegedly dangled the prospect of serious engagement on the Brexit bill as recently as mid-August will raise eyebrows in Brussels and suggests either a diplomatic mistake or a last-minute change of negotiating tactics.
A spokesman for the U.K.’s Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) confirmed that the London meetings happened, but said: “We don’t recognize this account.”
“There have been a series of briefings for EU embassies in London on the contents of the papers we have published in recent weeks, at which officials from across government have responded exhaustively to a wide range of questions on the content of the papers, on customs, Northern Ireland and many other issues,” he said, adding, “We will continue to provide detailed information for our EU partners on our policy thinking.”
After publication of this story, DExEU offered POLITICO a further statement: “It is completely false to suggest we promised a paper on the financial settlement — in fact, officials downplayed any expectation that there would be one. We have already published 11 position and future partnership papers.”
Outside observers say that too much clarity at this early stage in the negotiations may not serve the U.K.’s interests. “Why would you as the U.K. capitulate on everything the EU wants now before receiving any guarantees of your own?” said Pieter Cleppe, who heads the Brussels office of Open Europe, a right-leaning think tank based in London. “It would be political suicide.”
Some EU diplomats say they believe the British ambiguity stems from the disconnect between ministers and technical experts in the civil service on key aspects of the U.K.’s negotiating stance. “There is still a huge split between the technical side and what can actually be said politically,” an EU diplomat briefed on the London meetings said. “Technical officials in Britain know these issues well, but what they can say about them is so constrained by what is happening politically in the country. It’s very difficult for them.”
The London briefings are part of a wider engagement effort by the Brexit department and the Foreign Office, first revealed by POLITICO earlier this month, to better communicate the British government’s position without going through the European Commission negotiating team.
5 important things going unheard...
5 things Trump did this week while you weren't looking
Behind Trump's speeches, real policy change is happening in Washington.
By DANNY VINIK
Most of the news President Donald Trump generated this week was, as usual, about Donald Trump himself: He induced whiplash by delivering a sober address on Afghanistan Monday night and then, less than 24 hours later, pumping up the crowd at a fiery, off-the-leash campaign rally in Arizona. He also continued to accelerate his war of words with leaders of his own party, attacking Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, as well as Sens. Bob Corker, Jeff Flake and John McCain.
And as usual, there wasn’t much policy behind all that noise: Even the new Afghanistan strategy includes only a modest bump in troops overseas. But in Washington, Trump’s appointees continued to push their own priorities on the government, rolling back Obama-era policies largely out of the public eye. Here’s how Trump’s White House changed policy this week:
1. The State Department turns up the heat on Egypt
When Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi visited the White House in April, Trump lavished the foreign leader with praise, saying he’s doing a “fantastic job in a very difficult situation” and that “we are very much behind President al-Sisi.” Those comments drew a sharp rebuke from human-rights groups that had been sharply critical of Sisi’s human rights record.
So, it came as some surprise this week when the State Department delayed $200 million in aid to Egypt and cut another $100 million in aid altogether. State officials said the move was a result of Egypt’s human rights record, including a new law that restricts the activities of nongovernmental organizations. But experts also suggested another motive: isolating North Korea. Egypt has historically had ties to North Korea, with North Korean pilots training Egyptian pilots in the 1970s. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert did not deny that North Korea was a reason for the cuts in aid, saying, “We have a deep and multifaceted relationship with the country of Egypt. We have a lot of areas of close cooperation.”
The move also created troubles for White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who was scheduled to meet top Egyptian leaders, including Sisi, this week to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. A meeting between Kushner and Egypt’s foreign minister was canceled at the last minute, potentially a rebuke to State’s move, though it otherwise did not appear to significantly disrupt the trip.
2. Interior could shrink national monuments
In his final weeks in office, Barack Obama protected over 1.5 million acres of federal land from development by designating national monuments in the West, a final attempt to solidify his environmental legacy. Republican lawmakers, oil and gas interests and fishing and hunting groups blasted the move and appealed to Trump to review the designations. In April, they got their wish when Trump directed the Interior Department to review all monument designations larger than 100,000 acres all the way back to 1996.
On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke delivered that review to the White House. He didn’t release it publicly, instead publishing a vague two-page fact sheet; in an interview with The Associated Press, Zinke said he was not recommending any monuments be rescinded but was suggesting a “handful” of changes. The New York Times later reported that Zinke recommended shrinking at least four monuments. It’s unclear whether—or when—the White House will accept the recommendations. But given Trump’s commitment to rolling back Obama’s environmental legacy, Zinke’s recommendations will likely find a favorable reception in the Oval Office. And if it does, it would be historic—no national monument has been shrunk by a president since 1963.
3. The White House changes American research priorities
Every year, the government funds billions of dollars in research, from large National Institutes of Health grants to small housing experiments. The sheer magnitude of money gives the government great influence over the direction of research across industries, a hidden lever for a sophisticated administration to guide the country well into the future.
This week, the Trump administration revealed that it intends to use that lever. The Office of Management and Budget, led by Director Mick Mulvaney, published a four-page memo—dated August 27—that lays out the administration’s research and development priorities for fiscal 2019, which includes a focus on military technologies, border security and treatments for drug addiction. In a break from the Obama administration’s efforts to combat climate change, there is almost no mention of environmental research, with the exception of one reference to renewable energy. The memo also directs agencies to focus on early stage research and, in a bolded section, strongly recommends the use of quantitative data to evaluate any R&D investments, terminating those in which “federal involvement is no longer needed or appropriate.”
The real-world effects of such a memo won’t be immediately apparent. Research projects generally operate on a multiyear time frame, so the White House can’t just shift the direction of federal R&D overnight. But these priorities can eventually have big policy implications as researchers focus on certain issues and ignore others. That assumes, of course, that there is actual R&D funding to disburse for research—and if Trump has his way, that may not be the case. The White House has proposed huge cuts to research programs, rolling back federal nondefense R&D by almost 20 percent. Republicans and Democrats alike have rejected those cuts, so they will not become law. While that may be disappointing to a fiscal conservative like Mulvaney, it does help the administration in one sense: More R&D money gives agencies greater influence over the direction of American research.
4. The Amazon-Whole Foods merger sails through
Trump’s disdain for Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, is well known. "Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?" Trump tweeted in July. Last week, he wrote, "Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers."
Despite those attacks, Amazon had no problem receiving approval from regulators to acquire the grocery giant Whole Foods. Although the deal has alarmed some antitrust watchers, who worry that Amazon’s expansion is undermining competition in the long run by driving out competitors through its low prices, it barely hit a speed bump in Washington: The Federal Trade Commission released a short statement saying it had completed its investigation into the $13.7 billion deal, which was announced in June, and isn’t going to challenge it. The quick approval also assuaged concerns that Trump would attempt to interfere in the regulatory review for political reasons. The deal is set to close on Monday.
Amazon promptly announced that it will cut prices on a wide array of Whole Foods products, from avocados to tilapia, on Monday and intends to introduce benefits at Whole Foods stores for its Prime members.
5. Trump ratchets up sanctions
During his first few months in office, Trump attempted to woo Chinese President Xi Jinping, even saying he would relax his trade stance if China applied more pressure to North Korea. But those efforts have fizzled in the past few months, even as North Korea’s nuclear program has continued to advance.
This week, the administration took another unilateral step to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions when the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Chinese and Russian individuals and entities, an effort to reduce North Korea’s exports, which it uses to finance its nuclear program, and to choke off its access to the global financial system. The move is the second time in two months that Trump has sanctioned Chinese entities over North Korea. In addition, on Friday, the White House also announced new sanctions on Venezuela that attempt to cut financing to the country and its state-owned oil company.
Behind Trump's speeches, real policy change is happening in Washington.
By DANNY VINIK
Most of the news President Donald Trump generated this week was, as usual, about Donald Trump himself: He induced whiplash by delivering a sober address on Afghanistan Monday night and then, less than 24 hours later, pumping up the crowd at a fiery, off-the-leash campaign rally in Arizona. He also continued to accelerate his war of words with leaders of his own party, attacking Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, as well as Sens. Bob Corker, Jeff Flake and John McCain.
And as usual, there wasn’t much policy behind all that noise: Even the new Afghanistan strategy includes only a modest bump in troops overseas. But in Washington, Trump’s appointees continued to push their own priorities on the government, rolling back Obama-era policies largely out of the public eye. Here’s how Trump’s White House changed policy this week:
1. The State Department turns up the heat on Egypt
When Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi visited the White House in April, Trump lavished the foreign leader with praise, saying he’s doing a “fantastic job in a very difficult situation” and that “we are very much behind President al-Sisi.” Those comments drew a sharp rebuke from human-rights groups that had been sharply critical of Sisi’s human rights record.
So, it came as some surprise this week when the State Department delayed $200 million in aid to Egypt and cut another $100 million in aid altogether. State officials said the move was a result of Egypt’s human rights record, including a new law that restricts the activities of nongovernmental organizations. But experts also suggested another motive: isolating North Korea. Egypt has historically had ties to North Korea, with North Korean pilots training Egyptian pilots in the 1970s. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert did not deny that North Korea was a reason for the cuts in aid, saying, “We have a deep and multifaceted relationship with the country of Egypt. We have a lot of areas of close cooperation.”
The move also created troubles for White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who was scheduled to meet top Egyptian leaders, including Sisi, this week to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. A meeting between Kushner and Egypt’s foreign minister was canceled at the last minute, potentially a rebuke to State’s move, though it otherwise did not appear to significantly disrupt the trip.
2. Interior could shrink national monuments
In his final weeks in office, Barack Obama protected over 1.5 million acres of federal land from development by designating national monuments in the West, a final attempt to solidify his environmental legacy. Republican lawmakers, oil and gas interests and fishing and hunting groups blasted the move and appealed to Trump to review the designations. In April, they got their wish when Trump directed the Interior Department to review all monument designations larger than 100,000 acres all the way back to 1996.
On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke delivered that review to the White House. He didn’t release it publicly, instead publishing a vague two-page fact sheet; in an interview with The Associated Press, Zinke said he was not recommending any monuments be rescinded but was suggesting a “handful” of changes. The New York Times later reported that Zinke recommended shrinking at least four monuments. It’s unclear whether—or when—the White House will accept the recommendations. But given Trump’s commitment to rolling back Obama’s environmental legacy, Zinke’s recommendations will likely find a favorable reception in the Oval Office. And if it does, it would be historic—no national monument has been shrunk by a president since 1963.
3. The White House changes American research priorities
Every year, the government funds billions of dollars in research, from large National Institutes of Health grants to small housing experiments. The sheer magnitude of money gives the government great influence over the direction of research across industries, a hidden lever for a sophisticated administration to guide the country well into the future.
This week, the Trump administration revealed that it intends to use that lever. The Office of Management and Budget, led by Director Mick Mulvaney, published a four-page memo—dated August 27—that lays out the administration’s research and development priorities for fiscal 2019, which includes a focus on military technologies, border security and treatments for drug addiction. In a break from the Obama administration’s efforts to combat climate change, there is almost no mention of environmental research, with the exception of one reference to renewable energy. The memo also directs agencies to focus on early stage research and, in a bolded section, strongly recommends the use of quantitative data to evaluate any R&D investments, terminating those in which “federal involvement is no longer needed or appropriate.”
The real-world effects of such a memo won’t be immediately apparent. Research projects generally operate on a multiyear time frame, so the White House can’t just shift the direction of federal R&D overnight. But these priorities can eventually have big policy implications as researchers focus on certain issues and ignore others. That assumes, of course, that there is actual R&D funding to disburse for research—and if Trump has his way, that may not be the case. The White House has proposed huge cuts to research programs, rolling back federal nondefense R&D by almost 20 percent. Republicans and Democrats alike have rejected those cuts, so they will not become law. While that may be disappointing to a fiscal conservative like Mulvaney, it does help the administration in one sense: More R&D money gives agencies greater influence over the direction of American research.
4. The Amazon-Whole Foods merger sails through
Trump’s disdain for Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, is well known. "Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?" Trump tweeted in July. Last week, he wrote, "Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers."
Despite those attacks, Amazon had no problem receiving approval from regulators to acquire the grocery giant Whole Foods. Although the deal has alarmed some antitrust watchers, who worry that Amazon’s expansion is undermining competition in the long run by driving out competitors through its low prices, it barely hit a speed bump in Washington: The Federal Trade Commission released a short statement saying it had completed its investigation into the $13.7 billion deal, which was announced in June, and isn’t going to challenge it. The quick approval also assuaged concerns that Trump would attempt to interfere in the regulatory review for political reasons. The deal is set to close on Monday.
Amazon promptly announced that it will cut prices on a wide array of Whole Foods products, from avocados to tilapia, on Monday and intends to introduce benefits at Whole Foods stores for its Prime members.
5. Trump ratchets up sanctions
During his first few months in office, Trump attempted to woo Chinese President Xi Jinping, even saying he would relax his trade stance if China applied more pressure to North Korea. But those efforts have fizzled in the past few months, even as North Korea’s nuclear program has continued to advance.
This week, the administration took another unilateral step to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions when the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Chinese and Russian individuals and entities, an effort to reduce North Korea’s exports, which it uses to finance its nuclear program, and to choke off its access to the global financial system. The move is the second time in two months that Trump has sanctioned Chinese entities over North Korea. In addition, on Friday, the White House also announced new sanctions on Venezuela that attempt to cut financing to the country and its state-owned oil company.
Emergency loans.....
Will emergency loans be the next mess in Texas?
Washington's disaster-lending agency bungled Katrina and Sandy. Now it tries to avoid another bureaucratic failure.
By DANNY VINIK
When President Donald Trump boarded Air Force One Tuesday morning to survey the flood wreckage across southeastern Texas, two of the most crucial figures onboard—and people with the most at stake—were barely noted by press reports: Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon and a career agency employee named James Rivera.
McMahon, the former pro wrestling executive, runs an agency that has become the front line of American disaster lending. Through its Office of Disaster Assistance, run by Rivera, the 28-year veteran, the SBA made over $11 billion in loans after Hurricane Katrina, and more than $2 billion after Superstorm Sandy—most of those to distressed homeowners with no business claims at all. Since its inception in 1953, it has issued more than 2 million loans for more than $54 billion.
It has not gone smoothly. After both Katrina and Sandy, the natural disaster was followed by a bureaucratic one, as an agency whose main job is small-business boosterism suddenly transforms into America’s last-ditch emergency lender. After Katrina, the SBA needed an average of more than 65 days to process disaster loan applications—a delay that led to a congressional backlash and major reforms. When Sandy struck, the agency was again unprepared; it took SBA an average of around 40 days to process loan applications.
Appalled by the Katrina delays, Congress created three new emergency loan programs to get loans to people much faster—but the agency never implemented any of them, a casualty of bureaucratic inertia, miscommunication and poor program design.
Now, after Hurricane Harvey deposited more than 50 inches of rain in some parts of Texas, Rivera and the Office of Disaster Assistance are gearing up to prove they’ve learned their lessons. Earlier this year, under grilling from lawmakers, Rivera assured the House Small Business Committee hearing that his office was “as prepared as we’ve ever been” for a major disaster. But he also offered a warning. “The trend is in the right direction,” he said. “But, I hate to say this, until we are able to process a disaster like Sandy or Katrina, we are going to continue to have these same discussions.”
By all accounts, Harvey will be a multi-billion dollar cleanup on the scale of Sandy and Katrina. The question now is whether SBA is actually prepared for such a disaster—or whether past problems will resurface once again. “This is a real test for all the improvements they’ve worked on,” said Jane Campbell, director of advocacy at the National Development Council and formerly the staff director on the Senate Small Business Committee.
In the days after a disaster, as homeowners and businesses return to their property and assess the damage, rebuilding can appear daunting. Businesses need money to remove debris, replace broken equipment and pay their employees—but their customers may be stranded elsewhere, cutting off their cash flow. Homeowners need money to rebuild their homes and replace their property, but they may have trouble even finding the basic papers they need to apply for loans. This creates big challenges for normal lenders. “You don’t say to someone who is flooded out, Can you give me a deed to your property and mortgage?” said Campbell, who is also the former mayor of Cleveland
That’s where the SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance is supposed to help. It’s not exactly clear why a business agency had ended up responsible for such a broad loan portfolio, but the SBA is broadly tasked with helping communities develop economically after a disaster, and lending is a linchpin. It has a careful playbook for responding for disasters, involving setting up field offices, calling up reserve loan officers and adjusting work schedules to quickly get information to disaster victims. SBA can access information in the public domain, like a mortgage, reducing the burden on homeowners, and open service centers so people without access to a computer or the Internet can fill out online forms. It can also provide loans not just for physical property damage but also for economic injuries, covering business expenses that the business could have otherwise paid. Borrowers must still prove to the SBA that they are likely to repay their loan—these aren’t grants—so a high percentage of applications are rejected. But after a disaster, victims—especially businesses—don’t have many options. Said Jeff Sjostrom, president of the Galveston Economic Development Partnership, “Unfortunately, the reality is there are very few sources of gap financing after a natural disaster.”
This process makes sense, experts agree, but the agency has struggled mightily in the past. After Katrina, the agency faced major technological difficulties and didn’t have the staffing needed to quickly process loan applications, leading to long delays. The money eventually flowed—more than $11 billion in loans in total—but the application process took months and many businesses went bust in the meantime. The agency had similar problems after Sandy when it underestimated the number of loan applications and delayed increasing staffing.
“The real dilemma we had in the previous disasters is getting the decisions in a timely manner,” said Campbell, who also said she had confidence in Rivera.
Congress passed legislation in 2008 with 26 different reforms, including the creation of the three new emergency loan programs designed to get money to disaster victims in as little as 36 hours. Under these programs, SBA wouldn’t lend money directly, but would instead encourage private sector lenders to make the loans, with the government guaranteeing 85 percent of the loan if a borrower defaulted. But, as POLITICO reported, the three programs never made a single loan. In fact, they were never even launched. Lawmakers grew increasingly frustrated with the agency over the slow implementation process, but even after Rivera testified multiple times that private lenders simply wouldn’t participate in the programs on the loan terms, which are set by statute, Congress hasn’t made any changes to the underlying law.
Almost a decade later, the fate of the programs is unclear. Rep. Steve Chabot, chairman of the House Small Business Committee, blamed the Obama administration for failing to implement the legislation. “It’s a new day at the SBA and we hope that this administration takes our recommendations seriously to better help small businesses when disaster strikes,” he said in a statement. But SBA now says the programs aren’t needed at all because the agency now has the capacity to get more money to people far more quickly. Carol Chastang, a spokeswoman at SBA, said in an email that the agency’s recent improvements in disaster response, including the ability to provide unsecured disaster loans up to $25,000, “provide immediate disaster funds on a permanent basis, eliminating the need for the short-term assistance provided by [the three emergency loan programs]. That makes things easier for survivors, who have better things to do with their time than fill out multiple loan applications.”
As of Wednesday, the agency had already received 1,210 applications and was calling up temporary staffers to assist with the expected heavy load of applications. Two loan applications have been approved so far, for $141,600 in total, and SBA has 68 field staffers working on Harvey. As Harvey continues to sweep across the Gulf Coast, migrating from the Houston region to New Orleans, it’s too early to tell how many more will follow. If previous disasters are any indication, it will be in the tens of thousands. “The SBA is prepared—for the long haul—to respond to the recovery needs of residents and business owners rebuilding their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey,” said Chastang
At the April congressional hearing, Rivera expressed confidence to lawmakers that the Office of Disaster Assistance could likely handle a Katrina-style event. After flooding in Baton Rouge last August, he pointed out, average processing time for business disaster loans was just 12 days and home disaster loans was just eight days. But the agency received just 66,000 applications after that flooding, compared to 385,000 after Katrina, and experts believe that Harvey is closer to a Katrina-magnitude disaster. Which means, as Rivera said at the hearing, it’s impossible to know if the SBA is truly prepared for a major disaster. Said Campbell, “This is the road test.”
Washington's disaster-lending agency bungled Katrina and Sandy. Now it tries to avoid another bureaucratic failure.
By DANNY VINIK
When President Donald Trump boarded Air Force One Tuesday morning to survey the flood wreckage across southeastern Texas, two of the most crucial figures onboard—and people with the most at stake—were barely noted by press reports: Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon and a career agency employee named James Rivera.
McMahon, the former pro wrestling executive, runs an agency that has become the front line of American disaster lending. Through its Office of Disaster Assistance, run by Rivera, the 28-year veteran, the SBA made over $11 billion in loans after Hurricane Katrina, and more than $2 billion after Superstorm Sandy—most of those to distressed homeowners with no business claims at all. Since its inception in 1953, it has issued more than 2 million loans for more than $54 billion.
It has not gone smoothly. After both Katrina and Sandy, the natural disaster was followed by a bureaucratic one, as an agency whose main job is small-business boosterism suddenly transforms into America’s last-ditch emergency lender. After Katrina, the SBA needed an average of more than 65 days to process disaster loan applications—a delay that led to a congressional backlash and major reforms. When Sandy struck, the agency was again unprepared; it took SBA an average of around 40 days to process loan applications.
Appalled by the Katrina delays, Congress created three new emergency loan programs to get loans to people much faster—but the agency never implemented any of them, a casualty of bureaucratic inertia, miscommunication and poor program design.
Now, after Hurricane Harvey deposited more than 50 inches of rain in some parts of Texas, Rivera and the Office of Disaster Assistance are gearing up to prove they’ve learned their lessons. Earlier this year, under grilling from lawmakers, Rivera assured the House Small Business Committee hearing that his office was “as prepared as we’ve ever been” for a major disaster. But he also offered a warning. “The trend is in the right direction,” he said. “But, I hate to say this, until we are able to process a disaster like Sandy or Katrina, we are going to continue to have these same discussions.”
By all accounts, Harvey will be a multi-billion dollar cleanup on the scale of Sandy and Katrina. The question now is whether SBA is actually prepared for such a disaster—or whether past problems will resurface once again. “This is a real test for all the improvements they’ve worked on,” said Jane Campbell, director of advocacy at the National Development Council and formerly the staff director on the Senate Small Business Committee.
In the days after a disaster, as homeowners and businesses return to their property and assess the damage, rebuilding can appear daunting. Businesses need money to remove debris, replace broken equipment and pay their employees—but their customers may be stranded elsewhere, cutting off their cash flow. Homeowners need money to rebuild their homes and replace their property, but they may have trouble even finding the basic papers they need to apply for loans. This creates big challenges for normal lenders. “You don’t say to someone who is flooded out, Can you give me a deed to your property and mortgage?” said Campbell, who is also the former mayor of Cleveland
That’s where the SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance is supposed to help. It’s not exactly clear why a business agency had ended up responsible for such a broad loan portfolio, but the SBA is broadly tasked with helping communities develop economically after a disaster, and lending is a linchpin. It has a careful playbook for responding for disasters, involving setting up field offices, calling up reserve loan officers and adjusting work schedules to quickly get information to disaster victims. SBA can access information in the public domain, like a mortgage, reducing the burden on homeowners, and open service centers so people without access to a computer or the Internet can fill out online forms. It can also provide loans not just for physical property damage but also for economic injuries, covering business expenses that the business could have otherwise paid. Borrowers must still prove to the SBA that they are likely to repay their loan—these aren’t grants—so a high percentage of applications are rejected. But after a disaster, victims—especially businesses—don’t have many options. Said Jeff Sjostrom, president of the Galveston Economic Development Partnership, “Unfortunately, the reality is there are very few sources of gap financing after a natural disaster.”
This process makes sense, experts agree, but the agency has struggled mightily in the past. After Katrina, the agency faced major technological difficulties and didn’t have the staffing needed to quickly process loan applications, leading to long delays. The money eventually flowed—more than $11 billion in loans in total—but the application process took months and many businesses went bust in the meantime. The agency had similar problems after Sandy when it underestimated the number of loan applications and delayed increasing staffing.
“The real dilemma we had in the previous disasters is getting the decisions in a timely manner,” said Campbell, who also said she had confidence in Rivera.
Congress passed legislation in 2008 with 26 different reforms, including the creation of the three new emergency loan programs designed to get money to disaster victims in as little as 36 hours. Under these programs, SBA wouldn’t lend money directly, but would instead encourage private sector lenders to make the loans, with the government guaranteeing 85 percent of the loan if a borrower defaulted. But, as POLITICO reported, the three programs never made a single loan. In fact, they were never even launched. Lawmakers grew increasingly frustrated with the agency over the slow implementation process, but even after Rivera testified multiple times that private lenders simply wouldn’t participate in the programs on the loan terms, which are set by statute, Congress hasn’t made any changes to the underlying law.
Almost a decade later, the fate of the programs is unclear. Rep. Steve Chabot, chairman of the House Small Business Committee, blamed the Obama administration for failing to implement the legislation. “It’s a new day at the SBA and we hope that this administration takes our recommendations seriously to better help small businesses when disaster strikes,” he said in a statement. But SBA now says the programs aren’t needed at all because the agency now has the capacity to get more money to people far more quickly. Carol Chastang, a spokeswoman at SBA, said in an email that the agency’s recent improvements in disaster response, including the ability to provide unsecured disaster loans up to $25,000, “provide immediate disaster funds on a permanent basis, eliminating the need for the short-term assistance provided by [the three emergency loan programs]. That makes things easier for survivors, who have better things to do with their time than fill out multiple loan applications.”
As of Wednesday, the agency had already received 1,210 applications and was calling up temporary staffers to assist with the expected heavy load of applications. Two loan applications have been approved so far, for $141,600 in total, and SBA has 68 field staffers working on Harvey. As Harvey continues to sweep across the Gulf Coast, migrating from the Houston region to New Orleans, it’s too early to tell how many more will follow. If previous disasters are any indication, it will be in the tens of thousands. “The SBA is prepared—for the long haul—to respond to the recovery needs of residents and business owners rebuilding their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey,” said Chastang
At the April congressional hearing, Rivera expressed confidence to lawmakers that the Office of Disaster Assistance could likely handle a Katrina-style event. After flooding in Baton Rouge last August, he pointed out, average processing time for business disaster loans was just 12 days and home disaster loans was just eight days. But the agency received just 66,000 applications after that flooding, compared to 385,000 after Katrina, and experts believe that Harvey is closer to a Katrina-magnitude disaster. Which means, as Rivera said at the hearing, it’s impossible to know if the SBA is truly prepared for a major disaster. Said Campbell, “This is the road test.”
Taxes and Corporate rates...
Trump’s populist message on taxes comes with heavy dose of corporate rate cuts
Trump’s speech didn't mask the fact that lawmakers still face a wide range of knotty questions when they return to Washington next week.
By BERNIE BECKER and RACHAEL BADE
President Donald Trump kicked off his efforts to sell a big tax package to voters on Wednesday, calling for a “pro-American” system that would cut tax rates for businesses and offer a boost to the middle class.
Trump maintained that a new tax system was crucial to ushering in a new prosperity in the U.S., in a speech that White House officials acknowledged beforehand would be light on policy details.
The president laid out several principles for tax reform, including cleaning the code of tax breaks and offering tax relief to middle-class families. But in a speech meant to put a populist polish on tax reform, Trump also spoke repeatedly about the need to lower the statutory corporate tax rate — which, at 35 percent, stands among the highest in the industrialized world — and to give companies more opportunity to bring back profits they’ve stashed offshore.
“Instead of exporting our jobs, we will export our goods. Our jobs will both stay here in America and come back to America. We'll have it both ways,” Trump said at a Springfield, Mo., manufacturer, adding that millions of people would move from welfare to work and “will love earning a big fat beautiful paycheck.”
“We believe that ordinary Americans know better than Washington how to spend their own money and we want to help them take home as much of their money as possible and then spend it,” he said. “So they'll keep their money, they'll spend their money, they'll buy our product.”
But Trump’s speech also underscored just how big a challenge he and a Republican Congress will face in pulling off a true overhaul of the tax code. The president only briefly touched on policy details, saying that businesses would “ideally” be taxed at a top rate of 15 percent and that the tax code would contain incentives for child care — a top priority of his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
The president also laid bare some of the tensions that have erupted between the White House and GOP lawmakers following the implosion of their efforts to repeal Obamacare.
“I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done,” Trump said. “And I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?”
Trump’s speech was aimed at showing that Republicans have the message down on tax reform, but lawmakers have yet to confront the monumental task of turning the rhetoric into reality.
Senior White House officials this week repeatedly billed the president’s speech as an address focused on why tax reform needs to happen, not how it will materialize. That’s the sort of big-picture cover on taxes that Trump didn’t offer congressional leaders in their doomed efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
But while congressional leaders undoubtedly welcome the president making the broad case for a tax revamp, Trump’s speech doesn't mask the fact that lawmakers still face a wide range of knotty questions when they return to Washington next week.
Republicans still have to figure out how to pass a budget this fall, a process that will play a big role in deciding how generous a tax plan they can write. They also have to decide whether tax changes should be permanent or temporary, or a mix of the two, and whether their plan should be a net tax cut that would add to the deficit.
And that’s before they will feel the full brunt of a massive lobbying push on what would be the first major tax overhaul in more than 30 years. Already, GOP lawmakers are starting to hear from industries that might be the losers in a tax overhaul, such as big corporations that don’t want a minimum tax on foreign earnings and a retirement sector wary of potential changes to savings plans.
The hurdles won’t be limited to policy, either, after a summer that saw both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue grow increasingly wary of the other as the GOP’s health care efforts imploded. Republicans on Capitol Hill steamed privately in July that Trump’s obsession with White House infighting and the Russia controversy was a major factor in the death of the repeal effort. They’re crossing their fingers that he won’t be so easily distracted on tax reform.
That’s because Hill Republicans will need Trump to use his bully pulpit for tax reform to cross the finish line, and GOP leaders believe Trump is uniquely able to reach the entire electorate in a way Hill leaders never could. As one House GOP leadership aide put it, the speech shows the White House is rowing in the same direction as the Hill, reassuring lawmakers that tax reform is possible.
But the ultimate test will come when the House, which is expected to move first on taxes, drops its bill. There are questions, following the health care debacle, over whether the White House will embrace the legislation as its own — or distance itself from the plan as a House effort once the critics and special interests start getting louder.
GOP leaders on the Hill say the weekly tax reform meetings with administration officials suggest that the White House and Congress will stand firm in their unity behind the jointly laid plan. Meanwhile, top Trump aides and advisers, like Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, have made it clear that lawmakers will take the lead on actually writing the tax bill.
“The administration has been very well represented in this process,” a senior White House official said Tuesday.
That unity will be tested, however, when various interests start picking apart the plan. Plenty of powerful industries could be hurt by a tax overhaul, which will undoubtedly complicate efforts to get lawmakers on board with the effort. The housing sector, for instance, is concerned about chatter that Republicans would consider both capping the mortgage interest deduction and ending the deduction for state and local taxes. The GOP is also looking at curbing the pre-tax benefits for contributing to retirement accounts, raising anxiety among that industry.
All sorts of businesses are also worried that Republicans might end the long-standing deduction for business interest, something the House GOP proposed in its blueprint last year.
The Alliance for Competitive Taxation, a coalition that includes Google, IBM and Pfizer, warned against across-the-board limits on the interest deduction in a new paper this week while also coming out against a minimum tax on offshore earnings that has gained traction since the death of the House GOP’s border adjustment.
“Imposition of a foreign minimum tax on the active business income of U.S. companies would have unintended and adverse consequences,” wrote the group, which also wants Washington to drastically cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent and to generally limit the taxation of offshore income for multinational corporations.
Beyond the policies that have yet to be ironed out, Hill Republicans still have to pass a budget in order to tackle partisan tax reform — a major hurdle in itself.
House Republicans, divided among moderates and conservatives, have been unsuccessfully trying to reach a budget deal for months. But while GOP insiders believe they’ll finally advance their fiscal blueprint in September, they’ll still need to strike a deal with Senate Republicans, whose fiscal blueprint is likely to look entirely different, sending the House back to square one.
Without a budget, Republicans would need Democrats to pass any tax bill — an uphill battle for an increasingly unpopular president, especially considering that 45 Senate Democrats have vowed not to back any measure that includes tax cuts for the wealthy or adds to the deficit.
“The millionaires and the billionaires in this country are doing just fine, God bless them, don't have any problem with that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday in a conference call ahead of Trump’s speech.
Trump’s speech didn't mask the fact that lawmakers still face a wide range of knotty questions when they return to Washington next week.
By BERNIE BECKER and RACHAEL BADE
President Donald Trump kicked off his efforts to sell a big tax package to voters on Wednesday, calling for a “pro-American” system that would cut tax rates for businesses and offer a boost to the middle class.
Trump maintained that a new tax system was crucial to ushering in a new prosperity in the U.S., in a speech that White House officials acknowledged beforehand would be light on policy details.
The president laid out several principles for tax reform, including cleaning the code of tax breaks and offering tax relief to middle-class families. But in a speech meant to put a populist polish on tax reform, Trump also spoke repeatedly about the need to lower the statutory corporate tax rate — which, at 35 percent, stands among the highest in the industrialized world — and to give companies more opportunity to bring back profits they’ve stashed offshore.
“Instead of exporting our jobs, we will export our goods. Our jobs will both stay here in America and come back to America. We'll have it both ways,” Trump said at a Springfield, Mo., manufacturer, adding that millions of people would move from welfare to work and “will love earning a big fat beautiful paycheck.”
“We believe that ordinary Americans know better than Washington how to spend their own money and we want to help them take home as much of their money as possible and then spend it,” he said. “So they'll keep their money, they'll spend their money, they'll buy our product.”
But Trump’s speech also underscored just how big a challenge he and a Republican Congress will face in pulling off a true overhaul of the tax code. The president only briefly touched on policy details, saying that businesses would “ideally” be taxed at a top rate of 15 percent and that the tax code would contain incentives for child care — a top priority of his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
The president also laid bare some of the tensions that have erupted between the White House and GOP lawmakers following the implosion of their efforts to repeal Obamacare.
“I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done,” Trump said. “And I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?”
Trump’s speech was aimed at showing that Republicans have the message down on tax reform, but lawmakers have yet to confront the monumental task of turning the rhetoric into reality.
Senior White House officials this week repeatedly billed the president’s speech as an address focused on why tax reform needs to happen, not how it will materialize. That’s the sort of big-picture cover on taxes that Trump didn’t offer congressional leaders in their doomed efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
But while congressional leaders undoubtedly welcome the president making the broad case for a tax revamp, Trump’s speech doesn't mask the fact that lawmakers still face a wide range of knotty questions when they return to Washington next week.
Republicans still have to figure out how to pass a budget this fall, a process that will play a big role in deciding how generous a tax plan they can write. They also have to decide whether tax changes should be permanent or temporary, or a mix of the two, and whether their plan should be a net tax cut that would add to the deficit.
And that’s before they will feel the full brunt of a massive lobbying push on what would be the first major tax overhaul in more than 30 years. Already, GOP lawmakers are starting to hear from industries that might be the losers in a tax overhaul, such as big corporations that don’t want a minimum tax on foreign earnings and a retirement sector wary of potential changes to savings plans.
The hurdles won’t be limited to policy, either, after a summer that saw both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue grow increasingly wary of the other as the GOP’s health care efforts imploded. Republicans on Capitol Hill steamed privately in July that Trump’s obsession with White House infighting and the Russia controversy was a major factor in the death of the repeal effort. They’re crossing their fingers that he won’t be so easily distracted on tax reform.
That’s because Hill Republicans will need Trump to use his bully pulpit for tax reform to cross the finish line, and GOP leaders believe Trump is uniquely able to reach the entire electorate in a way Hill leaders never could. As one House GOP leadership aide put it, the speech shows the White House is rowing in the same direction as the Hill, reassuring lawmakers that tax reform is possible.
But the ultimate test will come when the House, which is expected to move first on taxes, drops its bill. There are questions, following the health care debacle, over whether the White House will embrace the legislation as its own — or distance itself from the plan as a House effort once the critics and special interests start getting louder.
GOP leaders on the Hill say the weekly tax reform meetings with administration officials suggest that the White House and Congress will stand firm in their unity behind the jointly laid plan. Meanwhile, top Trump aides and advisers, like Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, have made it clear that lawmakers will take the lead on actually writing the tax bill.
“The administration has been very well represented in this process,” a senior White House official said Tuesday.
That unity will be tested, however, when various interests start picking apart the plan. Plenty of powerful industries could be hurt by a tax overhaul, which will undoubtedly complicate efforts to get lawmakers on board with the effort. The housing sector, for instance, is concerned about chatter that Republicans would consider both capping the mortgage interest deduction and ending the deduction for state and local taxes. The GOP is also looking at curbing the pre-tax benefits for contributing to retirement accounts, raising anxiety among that industry.
All sorts of businesses are also worried that Republicans might end the long-standing deduction for business interest, something the House GOP proposed in its blueprint last year.
The Alliance for Competitive Taxation, a coalition that includes Google, IBM and Pfizer, warned against across-the-board limits on the interest deduction in a new paper this week while also coming out against a minimum tax on offshore earnings that has gained traction since the death of the House GOP’s border adjustment.
“Imposition of a foreign minimum tax on the active business income of U.S. companies would have unintended and adverse consequences,” wrote the group, which also wants Washington to drastically cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent and to generally limit the taxation of offshore income for multinational corporations.
Beyond the policies that have yet to be ironed out, Hill Republicans still have to pass a budget in order to tackle partisan tax reform — a major hurdle in itself.
House Republicans, divided among moderates and conservatives, have been unsuccessfully trying to reach a budget deal for months. But while GOP insiders believe they’ll finally advance their fiscal blueprint in September, they’ll still need to strike a deal with Senate Republicans, whose fiscal blueprint is likely to look entirely different, sending the House back to square one.
Without a budget, Republicans would need Democrats to pass any tax bill — an uphill battle for an increasingly unpopular president, especially considering that 45 Senate Democrats have vowed not to back any measure that includes tax cuts for the wealthy or adds to the deficit.
“The millionaires and the billionaires in this country are doing just fine, God bless them, don't have any problem with that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday in a conference call ahead of Trump’s speech.
Insubordination
Trump’s Insubordination Problem
By RICH LOWRY
Donald Trump told us that he’d hire the best people. He didn't mention that he’d be unable to fire them.
The president is experiencing a bout of insubordination from his top officials the likes of which we haven't witnessed in the modern era. It's not unusual to have powerful officials at war among themselves, or in the presidential doghouse. It's downright bizarre to have them publicly undercut the president, without fear of consequence.
The new measure of power in Washington is how far you can go criticizing the president at whose pleasure you serve. The hangers-on and junior players must do it furtively and anonymously. Only a principal like Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson or James Mattis can do it out in the open and get away with it.
First, it was chief economic adviser Cohn saying in an interview that the administration—i.e., Donald J. Trump—must do a better job denouncing hate groups. Then, it was Secretary of State Tillerson suggesting in a stunning interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that the rest of the government speaks for American values, but not necessarily the president. Finally, Secretary of Defense Mattis contradicted without a moment’s hesitation a Trump tweet saying we are done talking with North Korea.
In a more normal time, in a more normal administration, any of these would be a firing offense (although, in Mattis’ defense, he more accurately stated official U.S. policy than the president did). Tillerson, in particular, should have been told before he was off the set of Fox News on Sunday that he was only going to be allowed to return to the seventh floor of the State Department to clean out his desk.
The fact that this hasn't happened is an advertisement of Trump’s precarious standing, broadcast by officials he himself selected for positions of significant power and prestige. A more typical scenario is that a president loses credibility in a foreign crisis when an adversary defies him, or in a domestic political confrontation when the opposition deals him a stinging defeat. Not at the hands of his own team.
This isn't the work of the deep state, career bureaucrats maneuvering or leaking from somewhere deep within the agencies. This is the shallow state, the very top layer of the government, operating in broad daylight, in fact wanting to be seen and heard differentiating themselves from the president of the United States.
Trump, of course, largely brought this on himself. He is reaping the rewards of his foolish public spat with Jeff Sessions and of his woeful Charlottesville remarks.
By publicly humiliating his own attorney general, Trump seemed to want to make him quit. When Sessions stayed put, Trump didn't take the next logical step of firing him because he didn't want to deal with the fallout. In the implicit showdown, Sessions had won. Not only had Trump shown he was all bark and no bite, he had demonstrated his lack of loyalty to those working for him.
So why should those working for him fear him or be loyal to him? With his loss of moral legitimacy post-Charlottesville, the president is more dependent on the people around him than they are on him. Trump’s debilitated state has a late-Nixon feel—when he is only seven months in.
Globalist Gary, as his Trumpist enemies style him, is invested with considerable market power, more than any political official besides the president himself. Tillerson is eminently replaceable, but his immediate sacking would be too destabilizing at a fragile moment. If Mattis were to leave, it would cause a freak-out on Capitol Hill and around the world. Never has a president had so many un-fireable subordinates.
Mattis and Co. obviously consider themselves the president’s minders more than his underlings. But the least they could do is not air this patronizing attitude. They are impressive and accomplished people, but no one elected any of them president of the United States. They don't do the country any favors by highlighting Trump’s weakness and by making it obvious that the American government doesn't speak with one voice.
It should be up to chief of staff John Kelly to make it stop. What these officials are doing is much worse than a White House aide slipping into the Oval Office to leave a printed article from WorldNetDaily on a corner of the Resolute Desk. It's worse than Steve Bannon feverishly trying to undermine H.R. McMaster, which is simply staff-level intramural politics taken to another level.
This isn't “the system working,” the cliché for how various other power centers have thwarted Trump in the early going. It's the system gone haywire and tottering on the brink of a more serious crisis.
Nothing good can come from top officials of the U.S. government making it obvious that they believe, to borrow Tillerson’s phrase, that the president speaks for himself—and no one else.
By RICH LOWRY
Donald Trump told us that he’d hire the best people. He didn't mention that he’d be unable to fire them.
The president is experiencing a bout of insubordination from his top officials the likes of which we haven't witnessed in the modern era. It's not unusual to have powerful officials at war among themselves, or in the presidential doghouse. It's downright bizarre to have them publicly undercut the president, without fear of consequence.
The new measure of power in Washington is how far you can go criticizing the president at whose pleasure you serve. The hangers-on and junior players must do it furtively and anonymously. Only a principal like Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson or James Mattis can do it out in the open and get away with it.
First, it was chief economic adviser Cohn saying in an interview that the administration—i.e., Donald J. Trump—must do a better job denouncing hate groups. Then, it was Secretary of State Tillerson suggesting in a stunning interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that the rest of the government speaks for American values, but not necessarily the president. Finally, Secretary of Defense Mattis contradicted without a moment’s hesitation a Trump tweet saying we are done talking with North Korea.
In a more normal time, in a more normal administration, any of these would be a firing offense (although, in Mattis’ defense, he more accurately stated official U.S. policy than the president did). Tillerson, in particular, should have been told before he was off the set of Fox News on Sunday that he was only going to be allowed to return to the seventh floor of the State Department to clean out his desk.
The fact that this hasn't happened is an advertisement of Trump’s precarious standing, broadcast by officials he himself selected for positions of significant power and prestige. A more typical scenario is that a president loses credibility in a foreign crisis when an adversary defies him, or in a domestic political confrontation when the opposition deals him a stinging defeat. Not at the hands of his own team.
This isn't the work of the deep state, career bureaucrats maneuvering or leaking from somewhere deep within the agencies. This is the shallow state, the very top layer of the government, operating in broad daylight, in fact wanting to be seen and heard differentiating themselves from the president of the United States.
Trump, of course, largely brought this on himself. He is reaping the rewards of his foolish public spat with Jeff Sessions and of his woeful Charlottesville remarks.
By publicly humiliating his own attorney general, Trump seemed to want to make him quit. When Sessions stayed put, Trump didn't take the next logical step of firing him because he didn't want to deal with the fallout. In the implicit showdown, Sessions had won. Not only had Trump shown he was all bark and no bite, he had demonstrated his lack of loyalty to those working for him.
So why should those working for him fear him or be loyal to him? With his loss of moral legitimacy post-Charlottesville, the president is more dependent on the people around him than they are on him. Trump’s debilitated state has a late-Nixon feel—when he is only seven months in.
Globalist Gary, as his Trumpist enemies style him, is invested with considerable market power, more than any political official besides the president himself. Tillerson is eminently replaceable, but his immediate sacking would be too destabilizing at a fragile moment. If Mattis were to leave, it would cause a freak-out on Capitol Hill and around the world. Never has a president had so many un-fireable subordinates.
Mattis and Co. obviously consider themselves the president’s minders more than his underlings. But the least they could do is not air this patronizing attitude. They are impressive and accomplished people, but no one elected any of them president of the United States. They don't do the country any favors by highlighting Trump’s weakness and by making it obvious that the American government doesn't speak with one voice.
It should be up to chief of staff John Kelly to make it stop. What these officials are doing is much worse than a White House aide slipping into the Oval Office to leave a printed article from WorldNetDaily on a corner of the Resolute Desk. It's worse than Steve Bannon feverishly trying to undermine H.R. McMaster, which is simply staff-level intramural politics taken to another level.
This isn't “the system working,” the cliché for how various other power centers have thwarted Trump in the early going. It's the system gone haywire and tottering on the brink of a more serious crisis.
Nothing good can come from top officials of the U.S. government making it obvious that they believe, to borrow Tillerson’s phrase, that the president speaks for himself—and no one else.
56 percent
Poll: 56 percent say Trump 'tearing the country apart'
By CRISTIANO LIMA
Fifty-six percent of voters say they believe President Donald Trump is “tearing the country apart” instead of drawing people together, according to a new Fox News poll released Wednesday.
While the findings are sharply divided along partisan lines — with 15 percent of Republicans describing Trump as “tearing the country apart” but a whopping 93 percent of Democrats saying he is — only 33 percent of voters overall said they believe the president is “drawing the country together.”
The findings underscore a string of increasingly negative perceptions of the Trump White House, which continues to register low ratings on a wide array of issues, including its handling of North Korea, Russia, the environment, health care and race relations, with a majority of voters registering disapproval of each. A majority of voters did not approve of Trump’s handling of any of the major policy areas covered in the poll.
The president’s general approval rating, which has yet to clear the 50 percent threshold in Fox News surveys since he entered office, remained at 41 percent, the same score he received last month, and is 7 percentage points down from the poll’s first post-inaugural findings in February. Trump’s disapproval rating, meanwhile, reached a high of 55 percent this month.
Despite the findings, more than 90 percent of voters still support the ballot they cast in the November 2016 presidential election.
The president’s handling of recent national events drew more mixed results, with a plurality of 44 percent approving of his handling of the Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and a majority of 56 percent disapproving of his response to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month. While Trump’s response to the natural disaster in Texas has been praised by local officials, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, his equivocations when addressing a white supremacist rally in Virginia drew the scorn of political and business leaders across the political spectrum.
According to U.S. voters, fault for the violent clashes in Charlottesville was largely that of the white supremacists in attendance: 52 percent of those surveyed blamed their actions and only 17 percent blamed counterprotesters.
White supremacists, however, only narrowly edged out the news media in the eyes of U.S. voters on who “poses a greater threat to the United States,” by a 47 to 40 percent margin. Seventy-percent of voters agreed, though, that Trump “dislikes” the news media more than he does white supremacists, highlighting the increasingly combative relationship between the president and the press.
Congress continued to register abysmal ratings in the Fox News survey, with only 15 percent approving and an overwhelming majority of 74 percent disapproving of the job they are doing. That ranking was only a slight dip from its prior rating of 17 percent approval in January.
The findings also registered the worst margin for the way people feel about how “things are going in the country today” since October 2013, with only 35 percent saying they are “satisfied” with the state of current affairs, compared with 64 percent who said they are “not satisfied.”
Among the most positive results in the latest Fox poll were those on the economic front: 36 percent said the economy is either in “excellent” or “good” shape, the highest ratings for the survey since August 2004
The Fox News poll randomly sampled 1,006 registered voters via landline and cellphone from Aug. 27 to 29, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
By CRISTIANO LIMA
Fifty-six percent of voters say they believe President Donald Trump is “tearing the country apart” instead of drawing people together, according to a new Fox News poll released Wednesday.
While the findings are sharply divided along partisan lines — with 15 percent of Republicans describing Trump as “tearing the country apart” but a whopping 93 percent of Democrats saying he is — only 33 percent of voters overall said they believe the president is “drawing the country together.”
The findings underscore a string of increasingly negative perceptions of the Trump White House, which continues to register low ratings on a wide array of issues, including its handling of North Korea, Russia, the environment, health care and race relations, with a majority of voters registering disapproval of each. A majority of voters did not approve of Trump’s handling of any of the major policy areas covered in the poll.
The president’s general approval rating, which has yet to clear the 50 percent threshold in Fox News surveys since he entered office, remained at 41 percent, the same score he received last month, and is 7 percentage points down from the poll’s first post-inaugural findings in February. Trump’s disapproval rating, meanwhile, reached a high of 55 percent this month.
Despite the findings, more than 90 percent of voters still support the ballot they cast in the November 2016 presidential election.
The president’s handling of recent national events drew more mixed results, with a plurality of 44 percent approving of his handling of the Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and a majority of 56 percent disapproving of his response to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month. While Trump’s response to the natural disaster in Texas has been praised by local officials, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, his equivocations when addressing a white supremacist rally in Virginia drew the scorn of political and business leaders across the political spectrum.
According to U.S. voters, fault for the violent clashes in Charlottesville was largely that of the white supremacists in attendance: 52 percent of those surveyed blamed their actions and only 17 percent blamed counterprotesters.
White supremacists, however, only narrowly edged out the news media in the eyes of U.S. voters on who “poses a greater threat to the United States,” by a 47 to 40 percent margin. Seventy-percent of voters agreed, though, that Trump “dislikes” the news media more than he does white supremacists, highlighting the increasingly combative relationship between the president and the press.
Congress continued to register abysmal ratings in the Fox News survey, with only 15 percent approving and an overwhelming majority of 74 percent disapproving of the job they are doing. That ranking was only a slight dip from its prior rating of 17 percent approval in January.
The findings also registered the worst margin for the way people feel about how “things are going in the country today” since October 2013, with only 35 percent saying they are “satisfied” with the state of current affairs, compared with 64 percent who said they are “not satisfied.”
Among the most positive results in the latest Fox poll were those on the economic front: 36 percent said the economy is either in “excellent” or “good” shape, the highest ratings for the survey since August 2004
The Fox News poll randomly sampled 1,006 registered voters via landline and cellphone from Aug. 27 to 29, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Blocks Texas immigration law
Federal judge blocks Texas immigration law
By TED HESSON
A federal judge in Texas blocked the bulk of the state’s immigration law targeting sanctuary cities on Wednesday, a victory for civil rights groups and Democratic-led city governments that oppose the measure.
The order came two days before a Sept. 1 deadline to implement the new law, which seeks to ensure local police cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Court Judge Orlando Garcia issued a preliminary injunction against most provisions of the measure, known as SB 4. The law authorizes local police to ask about immigration status during routine stops, and threatens police chiefs with misdemeanor charges and fines if they fail to enforce federal immigration laws.
The decision to put the law on a hold is a blow to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and also to the Trump administration. In June, the Justice Department submitted a legal filing in the case to demonstrate its support.
Five of the six largest cities in Texas — Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso — are part of the suit against the law, a fact the judge noted in his order on Wednesday.
“Their cumulative population exceeds six million people,” he wrote. “This is representative of the public opposition to SB 4 and the overwhelming public concern about its detrimental effect.”
Garcia, appointed by President Bill Clinton, ruled that key provisions of SB 4 conflicted with federal law. At the same time, he noted in the order that Texas law enforcement officers would not be prohibited from inquiring about immigration status during lawful stops, or sharing that information with federal authorities.
Unfazed by the setback, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to continue the legal battle to see the law put into action.
“Texas has the sovereign authority and responsibility to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens,” he said in a written statement. “We’re confident SB 4 will ultimately be upheld as constitutional and lawful.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler, a Democrat, praised the decision in a statement issued Wednesday evening.
He also cited the ongoing hurricane relief efforts in South Texas and concerns that undocumented immigrants may be afraid to seek aid amid an immigration crackdown.
“This week’s crisis with Hurricane Harvey is just the most recent example why people need to feel safe approaching our local police and support groups, no matter what,” Adler wrote.
Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, stressed that the legal challenge to the law would continue to wind its way through the courts.
“This fight isn’t over yet,” she said in a written statement, “so we call upon law enforcement, local officials and supporters who have fought so hard to stop this law not to let up until SB 4 is well and truly dead.”
By TED HESSON
A federal judge in Texas blocked the bulk of the state’s immigration law targeting sanctuary cities on Wednesday, a victory for civil rights groups and Democratic-led city governments that oppose the measure.
The order came two days before a Sept. 1 deadline to implement the new law, which seeks to ensure local police cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Court Judge Orlando Garcia issued a preliminary injunction against most provisions of the measure, known as SB 4. The law authorizes local police to ask about immigration status during routine stops, and threatens police chiefs with misdemeanor charges and fines if they fail to enforce federal immigration laws.
The decision to put the law on a hold is a blow to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and also to the Trump administration. In June, the Justice Department submitted a legal filing in the case to demonstrate its support.
Five of the six largest cities in Texas — Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso — are part of the suit against the law, a fact the judge noted in his order on Wednesday.
“Their cumulative population exceeds six million people,” he wrote. “This is representative of the public opposition to SB 4 and the overwhelming public concern about its detrimental effect.”
Garcia, appointed by President Bill Clinton, ruled that key provisions of SB 4 conflicted with federal law. At the same time, he noted in the order that Texas law enforcement officers would not be prohibited from inquiring about immigration status during lawful stops, or sharing that information with federal authorities.
Unfazed by the setback, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton vowed to continue the legal battle to see the law put into action.
“Texas has the sovereign authority and responsibility to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens,” he said in a written statement. “We’re confident SB 4 will ultimately be upheld as constitutional and lawful.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler, a Democrat, praised the decision in a statement issued Wednesday evening.
He also cited the ongoing hurricane relief efforts in South Texas and concerns that undocumented immigrants may be afraid to seek aid amid an immigration crackdown.
“This week’s crisis with Hurricane Harvey is just the most recent example why people need to feel safe approaching our local police and support groups, no matter what,” Adler wrote.
Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, stressed that the legal challenge to the law would continue to wind its way through the courts.
“This fight isn’t over yet,” she said in a written statement, “so we call upon law enforcement, local officials and supporters who have fought so hard to stop this law not to let up until SB 4 is well and truly dead.”
Afghanistan
Pentagon finally comes clean on Afghanistan troop levels
By WESLEY MORGAN
The Pentagon revealed Wednesday there are some 2,600 more American troops in Afghanistan than it previously acknowledged — approximately 11,000, not the longtime public figure of 8,400.
“The number 11,000 is an approximation. It may be slightly above that, it may be slightly below that, it will certainly vary,” Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, Jr., the director of the Joint Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon.
That figure has been “the reality over the last six months or so,” he added.
The admission comes after mounting scrutiny of the Pentagon's so-called Force Management Level policy, which has downplayed the full size of U.S. military contingents to stay beneath caps in Afghanistan as well as Iraq and Syria, where the full numbers remain classified.
The new Afghanistan figure does not include any of the additional troops President Donald Trump has authorized as part of the revamped strategy he announced last week.
“No troops have started to flow. No deployment orders have been issued,” McKenzie said of the reinforcements, which could reach as many as 3,900. “Should that number change significantly," he said, "we will come back in here to tell you that.”
The gap between the public numbers and reality had been an open secret until Wednesday.
Last week, in a background briefing with reporters, a National Security Council official acknowledged that the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan exceeded 10,000, and other reports have placed the number at 11,000 to 12,000.
The announcement follows a review of troop-counting procedures that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis commissioned earlier this year.
“There’s a very strange accounting procedure I inherited,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him last week, referring to the elaborate accounting system, under which troops deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria for less than 120 days at a time are not counted.
Mattis’ review covered all three countries but the Pentagon only announced the impact in Afghanistan, leaving greater transparency on Iraq and Syria troop levels for an unspecified later date.
"We are reviewing Iraq and Syria and the same guiding principles will govern how we roll out those numbers as well,” Pentagon press secretary Dana White told reporters. The official numbers in Iraq and Syria remain 5,200 and 500, also significantly lower than recent estimates leaked to the media.
The officials declined to provide a rationale for the delay in releasing numbers for Iraq and Syria. But American troop numbers are a politically sensitive issue in Baghdad, where Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is under pressure to show that the U.S. military presence is not permanent.
Part of the Defense secretary’s purpose in providing more accurate numbers for Afghanistan “was to provide more transparency on how we account for troops on the ground," White said, while still maintaining operational security.
But there were also practical considerations: Under the Force Management Level system, military units have often left hundreds of junior personnel behind to stay below the troop caps, which the Obama administration first instituted in 2011.
“We all recognize that whole units are inherently more prepared, more ready, than units that are fragmented in order to meet an arbitrary force level,” McKenzie said.
Even the numbers released on Wednesday are likely incomplete.
White noted that the numbers still exclude “sensitive units and certain temporary missions." And brief upticks that occur as replacement units rotate in will still not be counted in the public figures.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) of the House Armed Services Committee praised the move.
“I am pleased to see that as we prepare to execute a new strategy in Afghanistan, President Trump and Secretary Mattis have chosen to put the facts on the table,” Thornberry said in a statement after the news conference. “The Obama administration did not shoot straight on how many people they sent to Afghanistan, which added cost to the mission and made it harder to succeed. It is important to be upfront about the importance of the mission and what it takes to succeed.”
By WESLEY MORGAN
The Pentagon revealed Wednesday there are some 2,600 more American troops in Afghanistan than it previously acknowledged — approximately 11,000, not the longtime public figure of 8,400.
“The number 11,000 is an approximation. It may be slightly above that, it may be slightly below that, it will certainly vary,” Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, Jr., the director of the Joint Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon.
That figure has been “the reality over the last six months or so,” he added.
The admission comes after mounting scrutiny of the Pentagon's so-called Force Management Level policy, which has downplayed the full size of U.S. military contingents to stay beneath caps in Afghanistan as well as Iraq and Syria, where the full numbers remain classified.
The new Afghanistan figure does not include any of the additional troops President Donald Trump has authorized as part of the revamped strategy he announced last week.
“No troops have started to flow. No deployment orders have been issued,” McKenzie said of the reinforcements, which could reach as many as 3,900. “Should that number change significantly," he said, "we will come back in here to tell you that.”
The gap between the public numbers and reality had been an open secret until Wednesday.
Last week, in a background briefing with reporters, a National Security Council official acknowledged that the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan exceeded 10,000, and other reports have placed the number at 11,000 to 12,000.
The announcement follows a review of troop-counting procedures that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis commissioned earlier this year.
“There’s a very strange accounting procedure I inherited,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him last week, referring to the elaborate accounting system, under which troops deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria for less than 120 days at a time are not counted.
Mattis’ review covered all three countries but the Pentagon only announced the impact in Afghanistan, leaving greater transparency on Iraq and Syria troop levels for an unspecified later date.
"We are reviewing Iraq and Syria and the same guiding principles will govern how we roll out those numbers as well,” Pentagon press secretary Dana White told reporters. The official numbers in Iraq and Syria remain 5,200 and 500, also significantly lower than recent estimates leaked to the media.
The officials declined to provide a rationale for the delay in releasing numbers for Iraq and Syria. But American troop numbers are a politically sensitive issue in Baghdad, where Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is under pressure to show that the U.S. military presence is not permanent.
Part of the Defense secretary’s purpose in providing more accurate numbers for Afghanistan “was to provide more transparency on how we account for troops on the ground," White said, while still maintaining operational security.
But there were also practical considerations: Under the Force Management Level system, military units have often left hundreds of junior personnel behind to stay below the troop caps, which the Obama administration first instituted in 2011.
“We all recognize that whole units are inherently more prepared, more ready, than units that are fragmented in order to meet an arbitrary force level,” McKenzie said.
Even the numbers released on Wednesday are likely incomplete.
White noted that the numbers still exclude “sensitive units and certain temporary missions." And brief upticks that occur as replacement units rotate in will still not be counted in the public figures.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) of the House Armed Services Committee praised the move.
“I am pleased to see that as we prepare to execute a new strategy in Afghanistan, President Trump and Secretary Mattis have chosen to put the facts on the table,” Thornberry said in a statement after the news conference. “The Obama administration did not shoot straight on how many people they sent to Afghanistan, which added cost to the mission and made it harder to succeed. It is important to be upfront about the importance of the mission and what it takes to succeed.”
Single-payer bill
Harris to co-sponsor Sanders' single-payer bill
By CARLA MARINUCCI
California’s junior senator, Kamala Harris, on Wednesday departed from the position held by the state’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, and announced her intention to co-sponsor Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All’’ bill.
To the delight of a hometown crowd at a packed town hall meeting Wednesday in Oakland — where she was raised — Harris announced for the first time that she intended to co-sponsor “Medicare for All,’’ the single-payer health care bill which has the strong support of progressives and groups including National Nurses United, saying it was “the right thing to do.”
But that stated position puts her at odds with Feinstein, who has publicly expressed concerns about the costs and details of single payer, and who this week at the Commonwealth Club of California said she favored a public option for health care instead.
Harris, asked about those differences at a press conference with Feinstein after the town hall, insisted that “it’s about creating an opportunity for a larger number of people” to access good quality health care.
"There’s no question that ... all people should have access to affordable health care, and as we talk about moving toward a single-payer system, I think there is certainly energy and momentum toward that,’’ she told reporters. "Americans are making very clear when they defeated the repeal of ACA ... that they don’t want to play politics with their health care.”
By CARLA MARINUCCI
California’s junior senator, Kamala Harris, on Wednesday departed from the position held by the state’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, and announced her intention to co-sponsor Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All’’ bill.
To the delight of a hometown crowd at a packed town hall meeting Wednesday in Oakland — where she was raised — Harris announced for the first time that she intended to co-sponsor “Medicare for All,’’ the single-payer health care bill which has the strong support of progressives and groups including National Nurses United, saying it was “the right thing to do.”
But that stated position puts her at odds with Feinstein, who has publicly expressed concerns about the costs and details of single payer, and who this week at the Commonwealth Club of California said she favored a public option for health care instead.
Harris, asked about those differences at a press conference with Feinstein after the town hall, insisted that “it’s about creating an opportunity for a larger number of people” to access good quality health care.
"There’s no question that ... all people should have access to affordable health care, and as we talk about moving toward a single-payer system, I think there is certainly energy and momentum toward that,’’ she told reporters. "Americans are making very clear when they defeated the repeal of ACA ... that they don’t want to play politics with their health care.”
Directly attacked the Missouri Democrat
Trump urges voters to oust McCaskill if she doesn't back tax reform
Trump directly attacked the Missouri Democrat in his speech, while Pence appeared alongside Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia.
By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM and ELANA SCHOR
The White House is kicking off its push for tax reform with the intent of winning vulnerable moderate Democrats to the cause — by threatening punishment at the ballot box if they don’t ultimately sign on.
President Donald Trump targeted Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, a top GOP target in 2018, during his first major speech on the tax plan Wednesday in McCaskill’s home state of Missouri.
“She must do this for you, and if she doesn’t do it for you, you have to vote her out of office,” Trump declared to uproarious applause. “We just can’t do this anymore with the obstruction and the obstructionists.”
McCaskill has voiced a willingness to be involved with tax reform. Her office declined to respond to Trump's comments on Wednesday.
Vice President Mike Pence is heading later Wednesday to West Virginia, where he’ll appear alongside Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) at a Chamber of Commerce event. Manchin, too, is up for reelection in 2018, in a state Trump carried by more than 40 points.
“It’s about trying to win their votes,” a senior administration official told POLITICO of the Wednesday visits.
The senators’ vulnerable status in 2018 is also a factor, the official added: “If they don’t help us, it could end up hurting them in the 2018 midterms.”
The White House sees both senators as gettable votes on its tax plan. Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) also are top targets for the White House, which wants to avoid the dismal fate of its effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act — an initiative that never attracted Democratic support, robbing the White House of bipartisan cover and an extra cushion against Republicans who refused to support it.
But Trump's riff on McCaskill could indicate a more hard-edged approach, focusing on 2018 threats rather than finding bipartisan common ground.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said after the speech that Trump's comments about McCaskill weren't meant as intimidation. "It's not a political threat when you ask a member of Congress to do their job," she told reporters traveling on Air Force One.
Manchin, Donnelly and Heitkamp were the only three Democratic senators who didn’t sign a letter circulated by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) this month, outlining principles for Democrats on tax reform.
The White House is especially focused on Manchin, who is the only statewide elected Democrat remaining in West Virginia after Gov. Jim Justice switched parties at a rally with Trump earlier this month.
“Sen. Manchin was open to and helped lead tax reform in West Virginia,” said Steven Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, which is hosting the Wednesday event. “I would think if you’re looking at this from a White House point of view, having the vice president come to West Virginia would make good sense. Manchin may be gettable on tax reform.”
Pence is focusing on the tax reform carrot — rather than the 2018 stick — in his sales pitch to Manchin. “We want tax reform, and we want you to work with us,” is how a senior Pence aide described the message. “The people of West Virginia want tax reform.”
“Sen. Manchin has been discussing tax reform with the administration and will continue to work with them on any proposal that can make the current tax system better,” said Manchin spokesman Jonathan Kott. “Sen. Manchin hopes to have the chance to discuss tax reform and other issues important to West Virginia with the vice president today, and he is happy that he’s in the state.”
A Pence trip to Indiana to up the pressure on Donnelly is also under consideration, the Pence aide said.
Outside groups are also getting into the mix. The Koch-backed group Freedom Partners has spent recent days highlighting Manchin’s past support for a comprehensive tax overhaul, as well as similar remarks by McCaskill, Donnelly and other Senate Democrats facing difficult reelection races.
McCaskill raised some GOP hopes for a bipartisan tax package in a Saturday statement that touted “my support for simplifying the tax code by cleaning out loopholes and goodies for special interests, and lowering the corporate tax rate.”
But McCaskill also joined the Democratic letter declaring opposition to any bill that cuts taxes on the top 1 percent as well as any measure that adds to the deficit — a vow that could put her under serious pressure from the left and right as tax legislation takes shape.
McCaskill also said during her latest round of town halls that she would not lower taxes for those making more than $1 million.
The White House hasn’t limited its tax-reform entreaties to Trump-state Democratic senators. Aides to the president have reached out to a small group of moderate House Democrats, including members of the Blue Dog Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
Democratic leaders and liberal groups are ramping up their campaign to keep the party’s vulnerable lawmakers in the fold on any tax bill that emerges ahead of the 2018 elections.
The Not One Penny campaign, an alliance of progressive activists that has vowed to take on Democrats who back any new tax cuts for the super-rich, is joining with Schumer and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) on Tuesday to publicly slam the GOP tax plan as a gift to the super rich.
Schumer told reporters Tuesday that taxes would be “one of the biggest fights of the next three to four months, and Democrats will be ready.” He advised Republicans to “learn from” the collapse of their one-party attempt to repeal Obamacare “and not repeat the same mistake with tax reform.”
Manchin, however, seems to be shrugging off the pressure he’s facing.
“I just don’t give a shit,” he told the Charleston Gazette-Mail earlier this month. “Don’t care if I get elected, don’t care if I get defeated, how about that. If they think because I’m up for election, that I can be wrangled into voting for shit that I don’t like and can’t explain, they’re all crazy.”
Trump directly attacked the Missouri Democrat in his speech, while Pence appeared alongside Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia.
By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM and ELANA SCHOR
The White House is kicking off its push for tax reform with the intent of winning vulnerable moderate Democrats to the cause — by threatening punishment at the ballot box if they don’t ultimately sign on.
President Donald Trump targeted Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, a top GOP target in 2018, during his first major speech on the tax plan Wednesday in McCaskill’s home state of Missouri.
“She must do this for you, and if she doesn’t do it for you, you have to vote her out of office,” Trump declared to uproarious applause. “We just can’t do this anymore with the obstruction and the obstructionists.”
McCaskill has voiced a willingness to be involved with tax reform. Her office declined to respond to Trump's comments on Wednesday.
Vice President Mike Pence is heading later Wednesday to West Virginia, where he’ll appear alongside Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) at a Chamber of Commerce event. Manchin, too, is up for reelection in 2018, in a state Trump carried by more than 40 points.
“It’s about trying to win their votes,” a senior administration official told POLITICO of the Wednesday visits.
The senators’ vulnerable status in 2018 is also a factor, the official added: “If they don’t help us, it could end up hurting them in the 2018 midterms.”
The White House sees both senators as gettable votes on its tax plan. Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) also are top targets for the White House, which wants to avoid the dismal fate of its effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act — an initiative that never attracted Democratic support, robbing the White House of bipartisan cover and an extra cushion against Republicans who refused to support it.
But Trump's riff on McCaskill could indicate a more hard-edged approach, focusing on 2018 threats rather than finding bipartisan common ground.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said after the speech that Trump's comments about McCaskill weren't meant as intimidation. "It's not a political threat when you ask a member of Congress to do their job," she told reporters traveling on Air Force One.
Manchin, Donnelly and Heitkamp were the only three Democratic senators who didn’t sign a letter circulated by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) this month, outlining principles for Democrats on tax reform.
The White House is especially focused on Manchin, who is the only statewide elected Democrat remaining in West Virginia after Gov. Jim Justice switched parties at a rally with Trump earlier this month.
“Sen. Manchin was open to and helped lead tax reform in West Virginia,” said Steven Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, which is hosting the Wednesday event. “I would think if you’re looking at this from a White House point of view, having the vice president come to West Virginia would make good sense. Manchin may be gettable on tax reform.”
Pence is focusing on the tax reform carrot — rather than the 2018 stick — in his sales pitch to Manchin. “We want tax reform, and we want you to work with us,” is how a senior Pence aide described the message. “The people of West Virginia want tax reform.”
“Sen. Manchin has been discussing tax reform with the administration and will continue to work with them on any proposal that can make the current tax system better,” said Manchin spokesman Jonathan Kott. “Sen. Manchin hopes to have the chance to discuss tax reform and other issues important to West Virginia with the vice president today, and he is happy that he’s in the state.”
A Pence trip to Indiana to up the pressure on Donnelly is also under consideration, the Pence aide said.
Outside groups are also getting into the mix. The Koch-backed group Freedom Partners has spent recent days highlighting Manchin’s past support for a comprehensive tax overhaul, as well as similar remarks by McCaskill, Donnelly and other Senate Democrats facing difficult reelection races.
McCaskill raised some GOP hopes for a bipartisan tax package in a Saturday statement that touted “my support for simplifying the tax code by cleaning out loopholes and goodies for special interests, and lowering the corporate tax rate.”
But McCaskill also joined the Democratic letter declaring opposition to any bill that cuts taxes on the top 1 percent as well as any measure that adds to the deficit — a vow that could put her under serious pressure from the left and right as tax legislation takes shape.
McCaskill also said during her latest round of town halls that she would not lower taxes for those making more than $1 million.
The White House hasn’t limited its tax-reform entreaties to Trump-state Democratic senators. Aides to the president have reached out to a small group of moderate House Democrats, including members of the Blue Dog Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
Democratic leaders and liberal groups are ramping up their campaign to keep the party’s vulnerable lawmakers in the fold on any tax bill that emerges ahead of the 2018 elections.
The Not One Penny campaign, an alliance of progressive activists that has vowed to take on Democrats who back any new tax cuts for the super-rich, is joining with Schumer and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) on Tuesday to publicly slam the GOP tax plan as a gift to the super rich.
Schumer told reporters Tuesday that taxes would be “one of the biggest fights of the next three to four months, and Democrats will be ready.” He advised Republicans to “learn from” the collapse of their one-party attempt to repeal Obamacare “and not repeat the same mistake with tax reform.”
Manchin, however, seems to be shrugging off the pressure he’s facing.
“I just don’t give a shit,” he told the Charleston Gazette-Mail earlier this month. “Don’t care if I get elected, don’t care if I get defeated, how about that. If they think because I’m up for election, that I can be wrangled into voting for shit that I don’t like and can’t explain, they’re all crazy.”
Legal questions
Trump's electoral threat against Sen. Claire McCaskill raises legal questions
By JOSH GERSTEIN
President Donald Trump’s public electoral threat Wednesday against Sen. Claire McCaskill during a speech in Missouri on tax reform triggered another round of questions about the administration’s blurring the line between partisan politics and official business.
Speaking at an industrial-fan factory in Springfield, Trump singled out McCaskill, a Democrat who is up for reelection next year in a state the president won decisively in 2016.
“We must — we have no choice — we must lower our taxes. And your senator, Claire McCaskill, she must do this for you, and if she doesn’t do it for you, you have to vote her out of office,” Trump said to loud applause and whistling from the audience. “She’s got to make that commitment. She’s got to make that commitment. If she doesn’t do it — we just can’t do this anymore with the obstruction and the obstructionists.”
Ethics experts said the main issue raised by the president’s comments is whether he was ad-libbing or whether White House aides planned for him to urge McCaskill’s defeat.
Trump is not covered by the Hatch Act, the federal law prohibiting politicking while on official duty, but White House officials are subject to the measure.
“The Office of Special Counsel should examine very closely if staffers were involved in the preparation of these remarks,” said Nick Schwellenbach, a former OSC official now with the Project on Government Oversight.
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush and now a University of Minnesota law professor, underscored that point.
“The issue to look at is: Was someone charged with writing an official speech writing political lines?” Painter said. “If he ad-libbed it, the president can do that.”
The White House did not respond to a question about who prepared the speech or how the related expenses would be paid for. But press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “It's not a political threat when you ask a member of Congress to do their job."
While political campaigns or national party committees typically reimburse the White House for some of the costs associated with political speeches, one or two offhand political remarks by the president or other officials are not typically enough to require such a payment, officials said.
An Office of Personnel Management regulation on divvying up the costs of government officials’ trips says no reimbursement is required when “a minor, clearly incidental percentage” of an official trip is devoted to political activity. The rule suggests that 3 percent or less should be considered too trivial to trigger a reimbursement.
“If the president goes on this official trip, he may make a political comment to the press every now and then if he’s doing that de minimis and that’s not the purpose of the trip,” Painter said. “I don’t think you need to run for a small reimbursement to the RNC."
However, the former White House lawyer said any involvement by White House officials in preparing Trump’s speech would be more complicated. While certain senior officials are permitted to do some political activities during work hours, they’re not supposed to mix official business and electoral work, he said.
The questions about Trump’s targeting McCaskill come after Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson faced allegations that he violated the Hatch Act by appearing at a reelection campaign rally that Trump held in Phoenix last week. Cabinet members are permitted to speak at such events but are not supposed to discuss their official duties or be identified by their official title.
An offstage announcer introduced Carson as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, but a department spokesperson said Carson was unaware that was going to happen. The episode led to at least two complaints to the Office of Special Counsel: one from former Obama Cabinet secretary Chris Lu and another from the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit organization focused on election law and democracy issues.
OSC officials declined to comment on Trump’s speech Wednesday or on the complaints about Carson’s appearance last week.
The office has occasionally rebuked White House officials and Cabinet members for Hatch Act violations. In June, OSC concluded that White House social media director Dan Scavino ran afoul of the law when he used Twitter to urge a primary defeat for Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.). The office also faulted Carson’s predecessor, Julian Castro and Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, for failing to observe a line between official and political activities.
Obama sometimes peppered his official speeches with seemingly spontaneous political exhortations like, “Don't boo! Vote!” However, he doesn’t appear to have used such a speech to go after a political candidate as specifically as Trump did with McCaskill.
A former deputy chief of staff to Obama, Alyssa Mastromonaco, was among Democrats challenging Trump’s choice of forum to target McCaskill.
“DT hitting McCaskill by name and calling for her to be voted out of office,” Mastromonaco tweeted, “is a decidedly political, not official speech.”
By JOSH GERSTEIN
President Donald Trump’s public electoral threat Wednesday against Sen. Claire McCaskill during a speech in Missouri on tax reform triggered another round of questions about the administration’s blurring the line between partisan politics and official business.
Speaking at an industrial-fan factory in Springfield, Trump singled out McCaskill, a Democrat who is up for reelection next year in a state the president won decisively in 2016.
“We must — we have no choice — we must lower our taxes. And your senator, Claire McCaskill, she must do this for you, and if she doesn’t do it for you, you have to vote her out of office,” Trump said to loud applause and whistling from the audience. “She’s got to make that commitment. She’s got to make that commitment. If she doesn’t do it — we just can’t do this anymore with the obstruction and the obstructionists.”
Ethics experts said the main issue raised by the president’s comments is whether he was ad-libbing or whether White House aides planned for him to urge McCaskill’s defeat.
Trump is not covered by the Hatch Act, the federal law prohibiting politicking while on official duty, but White House officials are subject to the measure.
“The Office of Special Counsel should examine very closely if staffers were involved in the preparation of these remarks,” said Nick Schwellenbach, a former OSC official now with the Project on Government Oversight.
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush and now a University of Minnesota law professor, underscored that point.
“The issue to look at is: Was someone charged with writing an official speech writing political lines?” Painter said. “If he ad-libbed it, the president can do that.”
The White House did not respond to a question about who prepared the speech or how the related expenses would be paid for. But press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “It's not a political threat when you ask a member of Congress to do their job."
While political campaigns or national party committees typically reimburse the White House for some of the costs associated with political speeches, one or two offhand political remarks by the president or other officials are not typically enough to require such a payment, officials said.
An Office of Personnel Management regulation on divvying up the costs of government officials’ trips says no reimbursement is required when “a minor, clearly incidental percentage” of an official trip is devoted to political activity. The rule suggests that 3 percent or less should be considered too trivial to trigger a reimbursement.
“If the president goes on this official trip, he may make a political comment to the press every now and then if he’s doing that de minimis and that’s not the purpose of the trip,” Painter said. “I don’t think you need to run for a small reimbursement to the RNC."
However, the former White House lawyer said any involvement by White House officials in preparing Trump’s speech would be more complicated. While certain senior officials are permitted to do some political activities during work hours, they’re not supposed to mix official business and electoral work, he said.
The questions about Trump’s targeting McCaskill come after Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson faced allegations that he violated the Hatch Act by appearing at a reelection campaign rally that Trump held in Phoenix last week. Cabinet members are permitted to speak at such events but are not supposed to discuss their official duties or be identified by their official title.
An offstage announcer introduced Carson as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, but a department spokesperson said Carson was unaware that was going to happen. The episode led to at least two complaints to the Office of Special Counsel: one from former Obama Cabinet secretary Chris Lu and another from the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit organization focused on election law and democracy issues.
OSC officials declined to comment on Trump’s speech Wednesday or on the complaints about Carson’s appearance last week.
The office has occasionally rebuked White House officials and Cabinet members for Hatch Act violations. In June, OSC concluded that White House social media director Dan Scavino ran afoul of the law when he used Twitter to urge a primary defeat for Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.). The office also faulted Carson’s predecessor, Julian Castro and Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, for failing to observe a line between official and political activities.
Obama sometimes peppered his official speeches with seemingly spontaneous political exhortations like, “Don't boo! Vote!” However, he doesn’t appear to have used such a speech to go after a political candidate as specifically as Trump did with McCaskill.
A former deputy chief of staff to Obama, Alyssa Mastromonaco, was among Democrats challenging Trump’s choice of forum to target McCaskill.
“DT hitting McCaskill by name and calling for her to be voted out of office,” Mastromonaco tweeted, “is a decidedly political, not official speech.”
Change Texas
How Harvey Will Change Texas
The storm’s most lasting legacy might be the end of the Lone Star State’s rugged individualism.
By RICHARD PARKER
Until Monday, Eldridge Park was an emerald subdivision surrounding a 40-acre park, in the upper-middle-class Sugarland suburb of Houston. Then, around 1:40 a.m., the water came. A foot of water became two. One flooded subdivision in Sugarland became 10. A few inundated homes became 3,000. The water will remain, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for weeks.
Hurricane Harvey will set many heart-breaking records in its time hovering over Texas—from biblical rainfall to death tolls to massive economic damage. Yet as the storm trails away, its most lasting legacy might be how it punctures Texas’ famous ethos of self-reliance, embodied by the independence-era symbol on its state flag: the Lone Star.
Texans might pride themselves on their rugged individualism, but this time, they’ll have no choice but to accept years of state and federal help for the recovery. By the time Harvey leaves the city on Wednesday, Greater Houston will have been drenched with 1 trillion gallons of water and an estimated 30,000 people will be living in temporary housing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency expects to receive at least 450,000 claims for damage caused by the storm. And early estimates point to least $150 billion in total economic losses.
Stubborn self-reliance in Texas is as much fact as myth. It was likely born among the original Spanish settlers, who in the early 1700s were often as not ignored, 800 miles from Mexico City. In the 19th century, settlers were on their own against fierce tribes like the Comanche. Even today, Pecos County, in West Texas, boasts just three people per square mile.
But Texas politics hasn’t always been so averse to big government as it is now. Texas Democrats during their decades in power tended to stress ways to bridge Texas’ vast distances with government programs like rural electrification, dams and road-building. Populist agrarian policies meant to prop up farmers during monetary crises were a powerful force, as were the New Deal and its most important son: Lyndon Johnson, congressman, senator, vice president and later, the 36th president. Johnson was architect of the Texas dams and rural schools upon which he modeled the Great Society. Even Republicans like George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Rick Perry all talked the talk of individualism but practiced the politics of community.
All that has changed in Texas over the past several years as the far-right wing of the Republican Party has taken control not only of the state party but also the state government. When Gov. Greg Abbott won election in 2014, he said of his agenda: “We will celebrate the frontier spirit of rugged individualism.” Since then, he and the legislature have sought to limit government power—except their own. They have enabled individuals to more freely carry guns and knives and diverted taxpayer money from public to private schools. Most recently, Abbott led the failed effort to nullify local tree ordinances—regulations limiting tree removal—because these posed, Abbott argued, a threat to individual freedom.
But Harvey has changed all that.
“A Texas-sized storm requires a Texas-sized response, and that is exactly what the state will provide,” Abbott said Monday in Corpus Christi. “While we have suffered a great deal, the resiliency and bravery of Texans’ spirits is something that can never be broken. As communities are coming together in the aftermath of this storm, I will do everything in my power to make sure they have what they need to rebuild.”
This is a man whose signature boast was that he got up every day, went to work and sued the federal government, who has called for a constitutional convention to strip power from Washington and yet, on Monday, said, “To see the swift response from the federal government is pretty much unparalleled.”
He also gave FEMA an “A+” for its efforts. Which only makes sense: The agency has said it will be in Texas for years. Trailing Abbott and reassuring people that the federal government would be there to help was none other than Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who, along with Sen. Ted Cruz and much of the Texas House delegation, voted against storm relief for New York and New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy. “The congressional members in Texas are hypocrites and I said back in 2012 that they’d be proven to be hypocrites,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said, according to the Star-Ledger. “It was just a matter of time.”
The reality is that recovery from a major hurricane—and, in this case, unprecedented flooding—takes many years. The federal government will be setting up camps, delivering food and writing checks for what is likely to be a decade. It took that long for the federal government to finish spending the last $20 billion on recovering from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. By last count, only 60 percent of structures on Galveston Island destroyed by Ike in 2008 have been rebuilt. But Ike damaged a small city that is largely a beach getaway. Harvey swamped one of the largest engines of the U.S. economy; Houston’s gross product was last measured at over $400 billion per year.
People in the area will be needing help from each other and the government long after the boats are gone and the water has receded. Crop and livestock insurance will not cover all the damage left in ruined rice fields and by drowned cattle. In the suburbs as well as the city, most Houston property owners don’t have flood insurance. For many, there will be no workplaces to go to, let alone homes in which to live.
This future won’t haunt just Houston’s Democratic inner core. Despite its sprawling size—about that of Maryland—Houston’s population density of nearly 4,000 people per square mile extends into what are staunchly Republican suburbs, like Sugarland in Fort Bend County. Already, the residents of the leafy subdivisions are encountering a Katrina-like reality. They were flooded out because the Army Corps of Engineers opened the spillways of two nearby dams to avert a catastrophic dam break that would have sent an uncontrolled cascade swamping much of the county.
Suffering in the face of disaster knows no bounds, not even rugged individualism. I know: In 2015, my Texas town of Wimberley was struck in the dark by a 26-foot wall of water that took 11 lives, destroyed 1,000 homes and leveled a cypress forest of thousands of trees dating back to Columbus. Though a small town, Wimberley was not spread over a vast distance but crowded into a narrow valley with a population density twice that of the average in Texas.
When we emerged at daylight, there was little more humbling than a house full of mold, a lifetime of wrecked possessions, feeling dirty, drenched and powerless, literally. It is then that you find each other, like finding God. But you’re not just grateful for that neighbor. You need that Salvation Army food truck, those helicopters buzzing overhead and National Guard troops out front in the pitch dark of night. And you desperately need that FEMA check.
It will be interesting to watch Texas politics square itself with reality. Yes, self-reliance is a virtue. No man or woman, however, is an island—at least not on purpose. Harvey has proved that. So, if ever the era of going it entirely on your own in Texas ever existed, it’s over.
The storm’s most lasting legacy might be the end of the Lone Star State’s rugged individualism.
By RICHARD PARKER
Until Monday, Eldridge Park was an emerald subdivision surrounding a 40-acre park, in the upper-middle-class Sugarland suburb of Houston. Then, around 1:40 a.m., the water came. A foot of water became two. One flooded subdivision in Sugarland became 10. A few inundated homes became 3,000. The water will remain, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for weeks.
Hurricane Harvey will set many heart-breaking records in its time hovering over Texas—from biblical rainfall to death tolls to massive economic damage. Yet as the storm trails away, its most lasting legacy might be how it punctures Texas’ famous ethos of self-reliance, embodied by the independence-era symbol on its state flag: the Lone Star.
Texans might pride themselves on their rugged individualism, but this time, they’ll have no choice but to accept years of state and federal help for the recovery. By the time Harvey leaves the city on Wednesday, Greater Houston will have been drenched with 1 trillion gallons of water and an estimated 30,000 people will be living in temporary housing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency expects to receive at least 450,000 claims for damage caused by the storm. And early estimates point to least $150 billion in total economic losses.
Stubborn self-reliance in Texas is as much fact as myth. It was likely born among the original Spanish settlers, who in the early 1700s were often as not ignored, 800 miles from Mexico City. In the 19th century, settlers were on their own against fierce tribes like the Comanche. Even today, Pecos County, in West Texas, boasts just three people per square mile.
But Texas politics hasn’t always been so averse to big government as it is now. Texas Democrats during their decades in power tended to stress ways to bridge Texas’ vast distances with government programs like rural electrification, dams and road-building. Populist agrarian policies meant to prop up farmers during monetary crises were a powerful force, as were the New Deal and its most important son: Lyndon Johnson, congressman, senator, vice president and later, the 36th president. Johnson was architect of the Texas dams and rural schools upon which he modeled the Great Society. Even Republicans like George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Rick Perry all talked the talk of individualism but practiced the politics of community.
All that has changed in Texas over the past several years as the far-right wing of the Republican Party has taken control not only of the state party but also the state government. When Gov. Greg Abbott won election in 2014, he said of his agenda: “We will celebrate the frontier spirit of rugged individualism.” Since then, he and the legislature have sought to limit government power—except their own. They have enabled individuals to more freely carry guns and knives and diverted taxpayer money from public to private schools. Most recently, Abbott led the failed effort to nullify local tree ordinances—regulations limiting tree removal—because these posed, Abbott argued, a threat to individual freedom.
But Harvey has changed all that.
“A Texas-sized storm requires a Texas-sized response, and that is exactly what the state will provide,” Abbott said Monday in Corpus Christi. “While we have suffered a great deal, the resiliency and bravery of Texans’ spirits is something that can never be broken. As communities are coming together in the aftermath of this storm, I will do everything in my power to make sure they have what they need to rebuild.”
This is a man whose signature boast was that he got up every day, went to work and sued the federal government, who has called for a constitutional convention to strip power from Washington and yet, on Monday, said, “To see the swift response from the federal government is pretty much unparalleled.”
He also gave FEMA an “A+” for its efforts. Which only makes sense: The agency has said it will be in Texas for years. Trailing Abbott and reassuring people that the federal government would be there to help was none other than Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who, along with Sen. Ted Cruz and much of the Texas House delegation, voted against storm relief for New York and New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy. “The congressional members in Texas are hypocrites and I said back in 2012 that they’d be proven to be hypocrites,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said, according to the Star-Ledger. “It was just a matter of time.”
The reality is that recovery from a major hurricane—and, in this case, unprecedented flooding—takes many years. The federal government will be setting up camps, delivering food and writing checks for what is likely to be a decade. It took that long for the federal government to finish spending the last $20 billion on recovering from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. By last count, only 60 percent of structures on Galveston Island destroyed by Ike in 2008 have been rebuilt. But Ike damaged a small city that is largely a beach getaway. Harvey swamped one of the largest engines of the U.S. economy; Houston’s gross product was last measured at over $400 billion per year.
People in the area will be needing help from each other and the government long after the boats are gone and the water has receded. Crop and livestock insurance will not cover all the damage left in ruined rice fields and by drowned cattle. In the suburbs as well as the city, most Houston property owners don’t have flood insurance. For many, there will be no workplaces to go to, let alone homes in which to live.
This future won’t haunt just Houston’s Democratic inner core. Despite its sprawling size—about that of Maryland—Houston’s population density of nearly 4,000 people per square mile extends into what are staunchly Republican suburbs, like Sugarland in Fort Bend County. Already, the residents of the leafy subdivisions are encountering a Katrina-like reality. They were flooded out because the Army Corps of Engineers opened the spillways of two nearby dams to avert a catastrophic dam break that would have sent an uncontrolled cascade swamping much of the county.
Suffering in the face of disaster knows no bounds, not even rugged individualism. I know: In 2015, my Texas town of Wimberley was struck in the dark by a 26-foot wall of water that took 11 lives, destroyed 1,000 homes and leveled a cypress forest of thousands of trees dating back to Columbus. Though a small town, Wimberley was not spread over a vast distance but crowded into a narrow valley with a population density twice that of the average in Texas.
When we emerged at daylight, there was little more humbling than a house full of mold, a lifetime of wrecked possessions, feeling dirty, drenched and powerless, literally. It is then that you find each other, like finding God. But you’re not just grateful for that neighbor. You need that Salvation Army food truck, those helicopters buzzing overhead and National Guard troops out front in the pitch dark of night. And you desperately need that FEMA check.
It will be interesting to watch Texas politics square itself with reality. Yes, self-reliance is a virtue. No man or woman, however, is an island—at least not on purpose. Harvey has proved that. So, if ever the era of going it entirely on your own in Texas ever existed, it’s over.
Tax reform talk
The reality beneath Trump's tax reform talk
While he emphasizes benefits to regular taxpayers, much of the push is about cutting corporate rates.
By BRIAN FALER
President Donald Trump’s tax plans hardly match his populist rhetoric.
Though he sold his plan to rewrite the tax code as a boon to the average American worker in a speech Wednesday, he mostly focused on the taxes paid by America’s largest corporations.
Trump argued that his plans to cut the 35 percent corporate tax rate for the first time in 30 years would benefit regular wage earners by putting more money in corporate coffers, which he said business leaders would then use to hire more people and raise wages.
But most economists say companies’ shareholders would be the primary beneficiaries of a corporate tax rate cut. That’s because it would make companies more profitable, which would boost their stock price while also leaving them with more money to pay out dividends.
The official Joint Committee on Taxation, as well as the Treasury Department and the independent Tax Policy Center, all say shareholders bear roughly three-quarters of the burden of the corporate tax, and therefore would be the main winners were it cut.
The administration rejects those studies, pointing to other analyses showing workers bearing the brunt of the tax.
“Multiple economic studies have shown that over 70 percent of the cost of the corporate tax are actually born by the worker,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in May, contradicting his agency’s analysis.
Trump wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, while House Republicans have proposed a 20 percent rate. But it’s hard to know exactly what Republicans have in mind for the tax code. Trump has repeatedly revised his plans, which have gradually become less specific. His administration is now working behind closed doors with lawmakers on what they hope will be a consensus plan backed by the House, Senate and administration.
There’s long been a mismatch between how Trump described his tax plans and what he’s actually proposed, going back to his days on the campaign trail. But some are likely to end up in any final proposal, especially with congressional Republicans seconding many of his ideas.
Republicans are well aware of polls showing corporate taxation is hardly a top concern for voters, and that historically Congress has only tended to cut business taxes when they’ve been paired with comparable cuts for individuals.
Trump has proposed cutting the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three, and setting the rates at 10, 25 and 35 percent. The top rate is now 39.6 percent. He has also said he wants to double the standard deduction and expand subsidies for child care.
"We will lower taxes for middle-income Americans so they can keep more of their hard-earned paychecks, and they can do lots of things with those paychecks," Trump said in his speech.
But his plan could actually raise taxes for some low-income people, though, because he wants to end the head-of-household filing status that benefits single parents.
Workers would benefit from a corporate tax cut, albeit more gradually, economists say. Companies could invest in new things like, say, building a hotel for which they’d have to hire workers. It could also persuade companies considering moving overseas to remain in the U.S.
But independent analyses of Trump's tax plans have found the wealthy would be the biggest winners, thanks to not just his proposed cuts in business taxes, but also his plans to cut the top marginal income tax rate and eliminate the estate tax.
“It doesn’t fit the model for a populist plan,” said Roberton Williams, a Tax Policy Center economist. “The business cuts really help the rich, and the individual tax cuts somewhat help the rich, and overall the benefits disproportionately go to the top end."
That’s sure to be a political headache for Republicans — one that Democrats immediately seized upon — as GOP lawmakers push to rewrite the code by the end of the year.
“If the president wants to use populist to sell his tax plan, he ought to consider actually putting his money where his mouth is, and putting forward a plan that puts the middle class, not the top 1 percent, first,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
While he emphasizes benefits to regular taxpayers, much of the push is about cutting corporate rates.
By BRIAN FALER
President Donald Trump’s tax plans hardly match his populist rhetoric.
Though he sold his plan to rewrite the tax code as a boon to the average American worker in a speech Wednesday, he mostly focused on the taxes paid by America’s largest corporations.
Trump argued that his plans to cut the 35 percent corporate tax rate for the first time in 30 years would benefit regular wage earners by putting more money in corporate coffers, which he said business leaders would then use to hire more people and raise wages.
But most economists say companies’ shareholders would be the primary beneficiaries of a corporate tax rate cut. That’s because it would make companies more profitable, which would boost their stock price while also leaving them with more money to pay out dividends.
The official Joint Committee on Taxation, as well as the Treasury Department and the independent Tax Policy Center, all say shareholders bear roughly three-quarters of the burden of the corporate tax, and therefore would be the main winners were it cut.
The administration rejects those studies, pointing to other analyses showing workers bearing the brunt of the tax.
“Multiple economic studies have shown that over 70 percent of the cost of the corporate tax are actually born by the worker,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in May, contradicting his agency’s analysis.
Trump wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, while House Republicans have proposed a 20 percent rate. But it’s hard to know exactly what Republicans have in mind for the tax code. Trump has repeatedly revised his plans, which have gradually become less specific. His administration is now working behind closed doors with lawmakers on what they hope will be a consensus plan backed by the House, Senate and administration.
There’s long been a mismatch between how Trump described his tax plans and what he’s actually proposed, going back to his days on the campaign trail. But some are likely to end up in any final proposal, especially with congressional Republicans seconding many of his ideas.
Republicans are well aware of polls showing corporate taxation is hardly a top concern for voters, and that historically Congress has only tended to cut business taxes when they’ve been paired with comparable cuts for individuals.
Trump has proposed cutting the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three, and setting the rates at 10, 25 and 35 percent. The top rate is now 39.6 percent. He has also said he wants to double the standard deduction and expand subsidies for child care.
"We will lower taxes for middle-income Americans so they can keep more of their hard-earned paychecks, and they can do lots of things with those paychecks," Trump said in his speech.
But his plan could actually raise taxes for some low-income people, though, because he wants to end the head-of-household filing status that benefits single parents.
Workers would benefit from a corporate tax cut, albeit more gradually, economists say. Companies could invest in new things like, say, building a hotel for which they’d have to hire workers. It could also persuade companies considering moving overseas to remain in the U.S.
But independent analyses of Trump's tax plans have found the wealthy would be the biggest winners, thanks to not just his proposed cuts in business taxes, but also his plans to cut the top marginal income tax rate and eliminate the estate tax.
“It doesn’t fit the model for a populist plan,” said Roberton Williams, a Tax Policy Center economist. “The business cuts really help the rich, and the individual tax cuts somewhat help the rich, and overall the benefits disproportionately go to the top end."
That’s sure to be a political headache for Republicans — one that Democrats immediately seized upon — as GOP lawmakers push to rewrite the code by the end of the year.
“If the president wants to use populist to sell his tax plan, he ought to consider actually putting his money where his mouth is, and putting forward a plan that puts the middle class, not the top 1 percent, first,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
No Plan....
Republicans promise tax overhaul but still have no plan
By Ashley Killough, Deirdre Walsh, Lauren Fox and Ted Barrett
President Donald Trump took the stage Wednesday in Missouri to sell a tax reform plan that's not yet complete and still lacking in detail.
But from the view of congressional leaders and their aides, that's just fine.
The bill is still in the drafting process, and Republican aides say the President is doing exactly what they need him to be doing at this point -- using the bully pulpit to go out there and ramp up public support for a tax reform push.
"President Trump is taking the case for tax reform straight to Main Street," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement after the speech.
"He explained clearly today why Washington must act now on pro-growth tax reform," said Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the tax reform bill.
"I share the President's goal of wanting this endeavor to be bipartisan," said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
Desperate for a legislative win, Congress and the White House are trying to paint a picture of a more united front on tax reform than they had on health care. They've formed a group dubbed the "Big Six" that includes Trump's chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the two leaders of the House and Senate -- Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- and the two chairmen of the tax-writing committees, Brady and Hatch.
Trump, who's scheduled to meet with all six next week, said he was "fully committed" to work with Congress on the issue, but still took the liberty to poke at lawmakers in his speech and throw more pressure their way.
"I don't want to be disappointed by Congress," he said. "Do you understand me?"
The "Big Six" has held meetings for months, and the two committees in the House and Senate have worked on tax reform policies for years.
But if tax reform is anything, it's not simple. And it's unclear when exactly the House Ways and Means Committee -- which will release the first body of legislative text -- will put out the initial draft for committee markup.
House Republicans laid out a blueprint last year, but the White House put out its own one-page proposal back in April. It's a process that's further complicated by heavy input from lobbyists and outside groups who have a wide variety of interests in a major overhaul of the tax code.
While Republicans are seeking to build a brand of unity on the issue, Democrats are calling them out for not including both parties.
"Work with Democrats, Mr. President? Your office hasn't called ..." Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden tweeted during the speech. Wyden is the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and has expressed frustration that Democrats have been left out of the drafting process.
No clear plan
The challenge remains that despite controlling the White House and Congress, there's no clear plan yet laid out for reform even as Trump hits the road to stump for it.
Republicans have been promising tax reform for years but the last significant tax overhaul was 30 years ago -- an effort that took more than two years to get through Congress.
White House officials said last month they'd like to see a bill in September, but aides in the House and the Senate are being cautious about committing to any sort of timeline.
Tax reform is just one of many major items on the legislative agenda this fall, with a slate of big debates happening in September alone, like passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling. The devastation wrought from Hurricane Harvey -- and the disaster relief funds that will need congressional approval -- further busies out the calendar.
Because of the demanding schedule, some are predicting the tax effort will end up as simply temporary tax cuts, which would be an easier lift than a massive overhaul of the tax code and still a popular selling point on the campaign trail next year. Congressional leaders, however, have been bullish that reform will be the final result.
Perhaps the biggest question that remains is how to offset the cost of tax reform.
To pass the bill in the Senate, Republican leaders plan to use a special procedure called budget reconciliation that would allow them to approve the tax changes with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of the 60 often required in the Senate. But to use reconciliation, the bill needs to meet certain requirements, including an assurance the tax overhaul would not increase the deficit after the first 10 years.
Cohn, in an interview with the Financial Times last week, said it will be paid for through a mix of closing certain loopholes and any economic growth that results from tax reform.
Critics, however, say there's no guarantee that economic growth will be enough, and Democrats are eager to preemptively protect any massive budget cuts to offset any tax cuts.
"Republicans should not use fuzzy math or blatantly partisan estimates to provide the mirage of deficit neutrality," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on a conference call Wednesday with progressive advocates. "It should actually be deficit neutral."
Getting on the same page
Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue also want a lower corporate tax rate. But initially Trump said he wanted to cut it down to 15%, from the current rate of 35%. But lobbyists, members and aides are skeptical the number could get that low because it would significantly increase the deficit.
White House officials have even backed off pushing the 15% number. Asked about the low rate by the Financial Times, Cohn simply said he'd "like to get the tax rate as low as possible so that businesses want to create jobs here."
The powerful House Freedom Caucus, a group of roughly three dozen House conservatives, is emerging as a decisive force on tax reform, and they, too, are calling for a corporate tax rate that drops into the teens.
The group has threatened to hold up a budget blueprint that would be essential to advancing tax reform if they don't see a detailed tax reform plan before the budget is on the floor.
Because Republicans are using reconciliation, House Republicans must pass the budget for the fiscal year before they can advance tax reform. As long as the Freedom Caucus digs in, they can stop the process from moving forward all together, since lawmakers are still debating over how to get that budget passed.
Their threat doesn't come lightly.
The House Freedom Caucus, which remains close to Trump, has already flexed its muscle in the debate. They were essential in getting House leadership to drop its plan to apply a border adjustment tax, which would have helped finance tax reform, but also would have taxed imported consumer goods.
But without a way to pay for the massive overhaul Republicans are grappling with the reality that their goal of getting something on the scope of their initial proposals gets much harder. No one has outlined an alternative that can get both the House, Senate and White House on the same page.
And while Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers of Congress, have little power to stop the legislative process, they'll be active in shaping the optics of the tax debate this fall. They're already mounting a large messaging campaign to protest any tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, said in the same news conference call as Schumer that Trump's tax plan is "going to fall right into the laps of the wealthy."
By Ashley Killough, Deirdre Walsh, Lauren Fox and Ted Barrett
President Donald Trump took the stage Wednesday in Missouri to sell a tax reform plan that's not yet complete and still lacking in detail.
But from the view of congressional leaders and their aides, that's just fine.
The bill is still in the drafting process, and Republican aides say the President is doing exactly what they need him to be doing at this point -- using the bully pulpit to go out there and ramp up public support for a tax reform push.
"President Trump is taking the case for tax reform straight to Main Street," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement after the speech.
"He explained clearly today why Washington must act now on pro-growth tax reform," said Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the tax reform bill.
"I share the President's goal of wanting this endeavor to be bipartisan," said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
Desperate for a legislative win, Congress and the White House are trying to paint a picture of a more united front on tax reform than they had on health care. They've formed a group dubbed the "Big Six" that includes Trump's chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the two leaders of the House and Senate -- Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- and the two chairmen of the tax-writing committees, Brady and Hatch.
Trump, who's scheduled to meet with all six next week, said he was "fully committed" to work with Congress on the issue, but still took the liberty to poke at lawmakers in his speech and throw more pressure their way.
"I don't want to be disappointed by Congress," he said. "Do you understand me?"
The "Big Six" has held meetings for months, and the two committees in the House and Senate have worked on tax reform policies for years.
But if tax reform is anything, it's not simple. And it's unclear when exactly the House Ways and Means Committee -- which will release the first body of legislative text -- will put out the initial draft for committee markup.
House Republicans laid out a blueprint last year, but the White House put out its own one-page proposal back in April. It's a process that's further complicated by heavy input from lobbyists and outside groups who have a wide variety of interests in a major overhaul of the tax code.
While Republicans are seeking to build a brand of unity on the issue, Democrats are calling them out for not including both parties.
"Work with Democrats, Mr. President? Your office hasn't called ..." Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden tweeted during the speech. Wyden is the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and has expressed frustration that Democrats have been left out of the drafting process.
No clear plan
The challenge remains that despite controlling the White House and Congress, there's no clear plan yet laid out for reform even as Trump hits the road to stump for it.
Republicans have been promising tax reform for years but the last significant tax overhaul was 30 years ago -- an effort that took more than two years to get through Congress.
White House officials said last month they'd like to see a bill in September, but aides in the House and the Senate are being cautious about committing to any sort of timeline.
Tax reform is just one of many major items on the legislative agenda this fall, with a slate of big debates happening in September alone, like passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling. The devastation wrought from Hurricane Harvey -- and the disaster relief funds that will need congressional approval -- further busies out the calendar.
Because of the demanding schedule, some are predicting the tax effort will end up as simply temporary tax cuts, which would be an easier lift than a massive overhaul of the tax code and still a popular selling point on the campaign trail next year. Congressional leaders, however, have been bullish that reform will be the final result.
Perhaps the biggest question that remains is how to offset the cost of tax reform.
To pass the bill in the Senate, Republican leaders plan to use a special procedure called budget reconciliation that would allow them to approve the tax changes with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of the 60 often required in the Senate. But to use reconciliation, the bill needs to meet certain requirements, including an assurance the tax overhaul would not increase the deficit after the first 10 years.
Cohn, in an interview with the Financial Times last week, said it will be paid for through a mix of closing certain loopholes and any economic growth that results from tax reform.
Critics, however, say there's no guarantee that economic growth will be enough, and Democrats are eager to preemptively protect any massive budget cuts to offset any tax cuts.
"Republicans should not use fuzzy math or blatantly partisan estimates to provide the mirage of deficit neutrality," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on a conference call Wednesday with progressive advocates. "It should actually be deficit neutral."
Getting on the same page
Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue also want a lower corporate tax rate. But initially Trump said he wanted to cut it down to 15%, from the current rate of 35%. But lobbyists, members and aides are skeptical the number could get that low because it would significantly increase the deficit.
White House officials have even backed off pushing the 15% number. Asked about the low rate by the Financial Times, Cohn simply said he'd "like to get the tax rate as low as possible so that businesses want to create jobs here."
The powerful House Freedom Caucus, a group of roughly three dozen House conservatives, is emerging as a decisive force on tax reform, and they, too, are calling for a corporate tax rate that drops into the teens.
The group has threatened to hold up a budget blueprint that would be essential to advancing tax reform if they don't see a detailed tax reform plan before the budget is on the floor.
Because Republicans are using reconciliation, House Republicans must pass the budget for the fiscal year before they can advance tax reform. As long as the Freedom Caucus digs in, they can stop the process from moving forward all together, since lawmakers are still debating over how to get that budget passed.
Their threat doesn't come lightly.
The House Freedom Caucus, which remains close to Trump, has already flexed its muscle in the debate. They were essential in getting House leadership to drop its plan to apply a border adjustment tax, which would have helped finance tax reform, but also would have taxed imported consumer goods.
But without a way to pay for the massive overhaul Republicans are grappling with the reality that their goal of getting something on the scope of their initial proposals gets much harder. No one has outlined an alternative that can get both the House, Senate and White House on the same page.
And while Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers of Congress, have little power to stop the legislative process, they'll be active in shaping the optics of the tax debate this fall. They're already mounting a large messaging campaign to protest any tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, said in the same news conference call as Schumer that Trump's tax plan is "going to fall right into the laps of the wealthy."
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