The King Trump defense is terrifying
Opinion by John Avlon
There is a crime against the Constitution going on right underneath the chief justice's nose.
Because any self-respecting institutionalist who has devoted his life to the defense of the Constitution and separation of powers should be able to recognize how dangerous and disingenuous lawyer Alan Dershowitz's argument is on behalf of President Trump.
"If a president did something that he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment," Dershowitz said on Wednesday.
With this argument, Dershowitz completely conflates a president's self-interest with the national interest. If a president thinks "'I'm the greatest president there ever was. If I'm not elected the national interest will suffer greatly,'" Dershowitz believes "that cannot be impeachable."
This is not consistent with the vision of the founders. It guts the system of checks and balances and it defies common sense. But we might be waiting a while to hear the cries of outrage from small-government constitutional conservatives like Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee -- despite the fact that this is the most breathtaking argument for an imperial presidency that could possibly be imagined.
That's because hyper-partisanship and polarization have lulled politicians into staying silent when it is politically convenient. As a reality check, just imagine how the Republicans would respond if a Democratic president's legal counsel advanced that argument. They would be outraged. And they'd be right.
There's been a full court press to roll back Dershowitz's comments. Don't buy it. It appears he said what he meant. Trump's legal team seems to recognize he went too far and could scare off swing votes. That's because the ideas he articulated are worth being alarmed about. If the Republican senators roll over for Dershowitz's argument, they won't get a do-over when similar circumstances emerge under a Democratic president. This will set a precedent for virtually unlimited executive power.
Under this logic, President Richard Nixon could have been justified for covering up Watergate because he sincerely felt that his re-election was in the national interest. If that seems like a stretch, former White House Counsel and star Watergate witness John Dean facetiously applied that logic to Nixon and wrote, "All Nixon was doing was obstructing justice and abusing power because he thought he was the best person for the USA to be POTUS.... Seriously, that was his motive!"
Earlier in the week, Dershowitz also argued that "abuse of power" could not be considered an impeachable offense: "It is inconceivable that the framers would have intended so politically loaded and promiscuously deployed a term as abuse of power to be weaponized as a tool of impeachment."
Actually, it is entirely conceivable that that was their clear intent. Because that's what Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 65: "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
So don't be swayed by Dershowitz's Harvard law-professor credentials -- this isn't some novel reading of the Constitution. It is self-serving nonsense. And that's why every single one of the four legal experts who testified during the House impeachment hearing -- including Republicans' favorite Jonathan Turley -- say that impeachment does not require a crime.
The real danger of the President's defense is clear when you consider the Office of Legal Counsel's opinion that a sitting president cannot be charged with a federal crime. This leaves impeachment as the only remedy to hold the President accountable for serious misconduct. The two-thirds threshold to convict and remove a president is already a high bar to meet -- even more so in an age of polarization. Dershowitz's argument would essentially take it off the table, and allow a president to do almost anything to ensure his re-election -- including asking a foreign power to intervene on his behalf.
George Washington would have thought that argument absurd. In his Farewell Address in 1796, he said: "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial."
It's worth remembering that George Washington was obsessed with the virtue of being of "disinterested." It's not a word we use very often anymore, but it means not being driven by self-interest, because self-interest distorts judgment and can't be trusted.
Trump's legal team is advancing exactly the opposite argument, to a sinister extent.
Donald Trump raised eyebrows when he bragged during the 2016 campaign that his followers were so devoted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing support. Nobody thought, then, that it would be the basis of a legal argument advanced by the President. But that's exactly the argument Trump's lawyer William Consovoy made in federal appeals court while trying to block the release of Trump's tax returns in October 2019. He argued that the President could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not be charged until he is out of office.
This absurd argument belongs in the legal hall of shame right alongside that of Nixon lawyer James St. Clair, who sounded a bit embarrassed when he told the US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit: "The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment."
St. Clair's absurd defense at least made an exception for impeachment. Now Trump's legal team is taking it a step further -- by saying that he is effectively immune from a court of impeachment.
This is the King Trump defense. And it is an insult to our Constitution and separation of powers.
Anyone who professes to care about the Constitution should recognize the danger of this argument. And if senators remain silent out of fealty or fear of a president from their party, they should not be allowed to forget it. History is watching and they will be establishing a new precedent that goes against their alleged principles.
But at this moment, it appears that even asking for additional information -- from credible conservatives like former National Security Adviser John Bolton -- is too much to ask. Here we have a direct witness who is willing to testify and who states in the unpublished manuscript of his forthcoming book that the President told him directly that he wanted to continue withholding congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine until they announced an investigation into his most formidable political rival.
Hearing from Bolton would force the Republican senators to confront uncomfortable facts. Instead, they seem eager to accept the word of a President who many acknowledge to be a liar and pretend that the highly relevant new information is not worth further investigation. Dershowitz's argument gives them a whisper of an argument to justify their complicity in a Trump coverup.
This is an insult to the trust put in them by the founding fathers. The Senate -- as articulated by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65 -- was expected to be "a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent...to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality" in an impeachment trial.
It now seems up to Sen. Lamar Alexander to join his fellow Republicans Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, who have hinted they could vote to hear from witnesses -- to uphold that standard. As of Thursday morning, Lamar said he was still undecided. Either way, his legacy will be written by the result of this vote.
The closing questions and debates in this impeachment trial represent much more than a partisan fight over power. They represent a fundamental challenge to the rule of law and the separation of powers. If hyper-partisan polarization is enough to make senators forget their oaths and even their own power as a co-equal branch of government, they will be setting a dangerous precedent that takes aim at the heart of our democracy at a time when autocracies are on the rise around the world.
In its place will be a President of low character who will be unleashed in pursuing his re-election by any means necessary.
This is happening right under the chief justice's nose -- and the question is whether he will let it happen without uttering a word of warning about the massively destabilizing impact it could have on the Constitution he has devoted his life to defending.
January 31, 2020
The hardest part.... Coming...
Britain is leaving the European Union today. The hard part comes next
By Luke McGee
After three-and-a-half years, three prime ministers and seemingly endless votes in Parliament since the 2016 Brexit referendum, Britain finally becomes the first ever country to leave the European Union at 11:01 p.m. GMT on Friday.
Despite this cataclysmic event, almost all of the immediate changes will be invisible to the public. The United Kingdom will enter the transition period that was agreed between the British government and the EU. And the terms of that agreement mean that for the next 11 months, the UK remains an EU member state in all but name.
What actually happens tonight?
The UK formally leaves the EU. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will address the nation in what can be presumed to be an optimistic message. Other Brexiteers will be celebrating in grander style, as parties are being held across the country -- including one opposite the Houses of Parliament, the body that thwarted Brexit so many times in 2019.
Remain voters will be holding similar protest events all over Britain.
The mood in Brussels will be somber. The Union flag will be removed from all EU institutions (one of which will be placed in a museum in Brussels) and senior EU politicians will probably make statements expressing that this is a sad day for Europe and that they want to remain the closest of friends with Europe.
What actually changes tonight?
In theory, quite a lot; in practice, very little. The UK might be leaving the EU, but as of 11:01 p.m., it will continue to obey all EU law and European courts. In the coming months, it will continue to pay into the EU budget and comply with any changes to EU law. That means that the only things that will change are largely symbolic. The UK will cease to have any meaningful representation in EU institutions and will no longer attend any meetings of EU leaders. So it will be obeying EU rules while having no say in EU policy.
What doesn't change?
Most things that actually affect you. Businesses will be able to operate as normal, meaning that you as a customer will not be affected. People traveling to Europe will not be affected during the transition period, and EU citizens will still be able to move freely around the bloc.
What comes next?
The end of phase one marks the start of phase two. And if the past three and a half years have been anything to go by, phase two is going to be far more of a nightmare than phase one.
The Brexit transition period is due to end on December 31 of this year. That means the UK has to negotiate its future relationship with Europe in just 11 months. Failure to reach an agreement would mean the hardest Brexit possible, causing economic damage for both sides and possibly the wider world. This is a scenario that both sides are eager to avoid -- even as they continue to engage in their game of high-stakes brinkmanship.
Formal negotiations will begin on March 3. In the meantime, both sides will outline their priorities and draw their red lines. If history tells us anything, the UK will be more likely to back down than Brussels.
Trade-off on trade
The bulk of these negotiations will focus on the UK and the EU's future trading relationship. Trade deals normally take years, if not decades, to negotiate. The EU's deal with Canada, for example, took seven years to hammer out. And the EU is famously difficult to negotiate with because of its complicated internal politics. The Canada deal, for example, almost fell at the last hurdle when Wallonia, a region of Belgium, refused to ratify the deal. However, it is worth pointing out that the UK-EU deal starts from a place of total alignment, meaning comparisons to other trade deals are not fair.
But that's just trade. There are still many unanswered questions about exactly how much money the UK would pay the EU in exchange for access to its market and what, if any agreement might be reached on intelligence sharing security, aviation and fishing. And the controversial issue of what will happen on the Irish border is likely to feature heavily in any final deal.
Johnson has not formally announced his red lines yet, but it's safe to say that his priority will be sealing a free trade agreement that makes both importing and exporting as straightforward as possible, while freeing the UK from strict EU rules. If this is achievable, it would mean the UK continuing to trade in the EU but being flexible on regulations -- a situation that could come in handy when striking trade deals with other nations like the US and China.
"With the EU, we need a close partnership based on zero tariffs and quotas as well as regulatory recognition, adequacy and equivalence in all areas including services and financial services," says Shanker Singham, a competition and trade lawyer. "We won't be immediately diverging all over the place, but we must reserve the right to do so."
This issue of divergence is alarming many in Brussels. In short, if the UK is willing to diverge from the EU in areas like tax, food standards and financial regulation, it risks undermining the EU's precious single market -- the EU's most valuable asset and top bargaining chip. And if Brussels thinks that Johnson has plans to undercut the EU, it won't hesitate to restrict access to the world's largest economic bloc.
"For the EU, the trade-off is simple: if the UK diverges and no longer meets EU standards, or British businesses gain an unfair competitive advantage over EU business, then it will have less access to the EU market," says Georgina Wright, an EU expert at the Institute for Government think tank.
This concern in Brussels is not unreasonable. When the UK points to trading relationships that the EU has with countries like Canada and Japan, it misses two crucial points. First, agreements reached with external countries were about increasing engagement. As the UK leaves, it is about reducing engagement. Second, the UK shares a common border with the EU. And as one EU diplomat points out, "There is a direct relationship between trade and distance: the further you are away the less trade you do. So when we talk trade with Canada, we know that their undercutting of standards will not have the same effect as the UK."
Notwithstanding this cold reality, it's clear that both sides desperately want to accommodate one another. The question is whether their competing aims are compatible. "Both sides want to maintain reasonably strong relations, but on the EU side this clearly has to be appropriate with existing structures and agreements," says David Henig, the UK director of the European Center For International Political Economy.
"On the UK side it will be about allowing regulatory flexibility while still facilitating trade. Defining that in great detail will be a challenge for both sides, though the EU is concerned that the UK doesn't understand this sufficiently."
Calm before -- and after the storm
The gloves are already off. France's Europe minister, Amelie de Montchalin, said in a news conference on Wednesday that "France is ready to sign a Brexit deal very quickly if the UK commits to full regulatory alignment that could guarantee no dumping."
That lack of understanding is the reason this could all get ugly. Regardless of what both sides might say about reaching a mutually beneficial agreement, in negotiations with the EU, there is always a winner and a loser.
The UK will see winning as having its cake and eating it: near-frictionless trade with the EU while enjoying the freedom to do as it pleases at home. It could use state aid to give British businesses a competitive edge or slash tax rates to attract foreign investment in ways that would flout EU rules on competition.
For the EU, hugging the UK tight and stopping it from drifting toward an economic rival, e.g. the US, would be a victory. Brexiteers have long talked up global trade deals as being the upside of Brexit, and no victory would be sweeter than a wide-ranging deal with the world's only hyperpower.
But for the UK, it will ultimately find that in trade deals with both the EU and the US, it is going to be the smaller partner and to some extent will be expected to sign on the dotted line.
Time is running out. Johnson has said that he has no intention of extending the transition period. If he is to extract concessions from the EU and get a deal that looks like Brexit was worth it, he's going to have to hope that European fears of divergence and the relatively short period to get a deal done will focus minds in Brussels.
For virtually all of 2019, the British establishment was tearing its hair out over whether or not it would avoid a no-deal Brexit. Getting a Brexit deal through Parliament sucked the life out of British politics. When Boris Johnson finally won his majority last December, a certain degree of calm fell as the key obstacle to getting Brexit done had been cleared.
Now, Johnson finds himself facing 11 months of hellish negotiations with another threat of no deal at the end of the tunnel.
He does have other bargaining chips at his disposal: the EU is very keen to reach agreement on areas other than trade, such as fishing rights, data sharing and security. Johnson could concede on these to get a more attractive trade deal.
But ultimately, Brexit is now weeks away from hurtling towards its next critical deadline. And for the UK more than anyone else, to get what it wants could require shutting its eyes and hoping for the best.
By Luke McGee
After three-and-a-half years, three prime ministers and seemingly endless votes in Parliament since the 2016 Brexit referendum, Britain finally becomes the first ever country to leave the European Union at 11:01 p.m. GMT on Friday.
Despite this cataclysmic event, almost all of the immediate changes will be invisible to the public. The United Kingdom will enter the transition period that was agreed between the British government and the EU. And the terms of that agreement mean that for the next 11 months, the UK remains an EU member state in all but name.
What actually happens tonight?
The UK formally leaves the EU. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will address the nation in what can be presumed to be an optimistic message. Other Brexiteers will be celebrating in grander style, as parties are being held across the country -- including one opposite the Houses of Parliament, the body that thwarted Brexit so many times in 2019.
Remain voters will be holding similar protest events all over Britain.
The mood in Brussels will be somber. The Union flag will be removed from all EU institutions (one of which will be placed in a museum in Brussels) and senior EU politicians will probably make statements expressing that this is a sad day for Europe and that they want to remain the closest of friends with Europe.
What actually changes tonight?
In theory, quite a lot; in practice, very little. The UK might be leaving the EU, but as of 11:01 p.m., it will continue to obey all EU law and European courts. In the coming months, it will continue to pay into the EU budget and comply with any changes to EU law. That means that the only things that will change are largely symbolic. The UK will cease to have any meaningful representation in EU institutions and will no longer attend any meetings of EU leaders. So it will be obeying EU rules while having no say in EU policy.
What doesn't change?
Most things that actually affect you. Businesses will be able to operate as normal, meaning that you as a customer will not be affected. People traveling to Europe will not be affected during the transition period, and EU citizens will still be able to move freely around the bloc.
What comes next?
The end of phase one marks the start of phase two. And if the past three and a half years have been anything to go by, phase two is going to be far more of a nightmare than phase one.
The Brexit transition period is due to end on December 31 of this year. That means the UK has to negotiate its future relationship with Europe in just 11 months. Failure to reach an agreement would mean the hardest Brexit possible, causing economic damage for both sides and possibly the wider world. This is a scenario that both sides are eager to avoid -- even as they continue to engage in their game of high-stakes brinkmanship.
Formal negotiations will begin on March 3. In the meantime, both sides will outline their priorities and draw their red lines. If history tells us anything, the UK will be more likely to back down than Brussels.
Trade-off on trade
The bulk of these negotiations will focus on the UK and the EU's future trading relationship. Trade deals normally take years, if not decades, to negotiate. The EU's deal with Canada, for example, took seven years to hammer out. And the EU is famously difficult to negotiate with because of its complicated internal politics. The Canada deal, for example, almost fell at the last hurdle when Wallonia, a region of Belgium, refused to ratify the deal. However, it is worth pointing out that the UK-EU deal starts from a place of total alignment, meaning comparisons to other trade deals are not fair.
But that's just trade. There are still many unanswered questions about exactly how much money the UK would pay the EU in exchange for access to its market and what, if any agreement might be reached on intelligence sharing security, aviation and fishing. And the controversial issue of what will happen on the Irish border is likely to feature heavily in any final deal.
Johnson has not formally announced his red lines yet, but it's safe to say that his priority will be sealing a free trade agreement that makes both importing and exporting as straightforward as possible, while freeing the UK from strict EU rules. If this is achievable, it would mean the UK continuing to trade in the EU but being flexible on regulations -- a situation that could come in handy when striking trade deals with other nations like the US and China.
"With the EU, we need a close partnership based on zero tariffs and quotas as well as regulatory recognition, adequacy and equivalence in all areas including services and financial services," says Shanker Singham, a competition and trade lawyer. "We won't be immediately diverging all over the place, but we must reserve the right to do so."
This issue of divergence is alarming many in Brussels. In short, if the UK is willing to diverge from the EU in areas like tax, food standards and financial regulation, it risks undermining the EU's precious single market -- the EU's most valuable asset and top bargaining chip. And if Brussels thinks that Johnson has plans to undercut the EU, it won't hesitate to restrict access to the world's largest economic bloc.
"For the EU, the trade-off is simple: if the UK diverges and no longer meets EU standards, or British businesses gain an unfair competitive advantage over EU business, then it will have less access to the EU market," says Georgina Wright, an EU expert at the Institute for Government think tank.
This concern in Brussels is not unreasonable. When the UK points to trading relationships that the EU has with countries like Canada and Japan, it misses two crucial points. First, agreements reached with external countries were about increasing engagement. As the UK leaves, it is about reducing engagement. Second, the UK shares a common border with the EU. And as one EU diplomat points out, "There is a direct relationship between trade and distance: the further you are away the less trade you do. So when we talk trade with Canada, we know that their undercutting of standards will not have the same effect as the UK."
Notwithstanding this cold reality, it's clear that both sides desperately want to accommodate one another. The question is whether their competing aims are compatible. "Both sides want to maintain reasonably strong relations, but on the EU side this clearly has to be appropriate with existing structures and agreements," says David Henig, the UK director of the European Center For International Political Economy.
"On the UK side it will be about allowing regulatory flexibility while still facilitating trade. Defining that in great detail will be a challenge for both sides, though the EU is concerned that the UK doesn't understand this sufficiently."
Calm before -- and after the storm
The gloves are already off. France's Europe minister, Amelie de Montchalin, said in a news conference on Wednesday that "France is ready to sign a Brexit deal very quickly if the UK commits to full regulatory alignment that could guarantee no dumping."
That lack of understanding is the reason this could all get ugly. Regardless of what both sides might say about reaching a mutually beneficial agreement, in negotiations with the EU, there is always a winner and a loser.
The UK will see winning as having its cake and eating it: near-frictionless trade with the EU while enjoying the freedom to do as it pleases at home. It could use state aid to give British businesses a competitive edge or slash tax rates to attract foreign investment in ways that would flout EU rules on competition.
For the EU, hugging the UK tight and stopping it from drifting toward an economic rival, e.g. the US, would be a victory. Brexiteers have long talked up global trade deals as being the upside of Brexit, and no victory would be sweeter than a wide-ranging deal with the world's only hyperpower.
But for the UK, it will ultimately find that in trade deals with both the EU and the US, it is going to be the smaller partner and to some extent will be expected to sign on the dotted line.
Time is running out. Johnson has said that he has no intention of extending the transition period. If he is to extract concessions from the EU and get a deal that looks like Brexit was worth it, he's going to have to hope that European fears of divergence and the relatively short period to get a deal done will focus minds in Brussels.
For virtually all of 2019, the British establishment was tearing its hair out over whether or not it would avoid a no-deal Brexit. Getting a Brexit deal through Parliament sucked the life out of British politics. When Boris Johnson finally won his majority last December, a certain degree of calm fell as the key obstacle to getting Brexit done had been cleared.
Now, Johnson finds himself facing 11 months of hellish negotiations with another threat of no deal at the end of the tunnel.
He does have other bargaining chips at his disposal: the EU is very keen to reach agreement on areas other than trade, such as fishing rights, data sharing and security. Johnson could concede on these to get a more attractive trade deal.
But ultimately, Brexit is now weeks away from hurtling towards its next critical deadline. And for the UK more than anyone else, to get what it wants could require shutting its eyes and hoping for the best.
Jews learned a lot from Nazis when it comes to camps....
What Trump's Middle East plan means for Palestinians
Opinion by Mustafa Barghouti
One does not need to be an expert on history to realize that the map released by President Donald Trump as a deal for peace between Israel and Palestine is identical to the Bantustans of the defunct South African apartheid system, with one difference: The Palestinian isolation islets are comparable to ghettos. So much so, "ghettostans" is a more suitable label for them.
The proposed deal is disastrous to Palestinians. It calls for the recognition of an "undivided" Jerusalem as the capital of Israel despite the fact that the annexation of East Jerusalem violates International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The proposal also eliminates the question of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, as per UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirms the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin, and which was marked for discussion at some later period within the Oslo peace negotiations in the 1990s.
By far the most flagrant part of the plan is that it ends any possibility for an independent sovereign Palestinian state, instead dividing the territories into ghettos and Bantustans, besieged, suffocated and isolated.
There are currently numerous such ghettos in the West Bank that are partitioned and divided by the surrounding Israeli settlements deemed illegal and a violation of international law by the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016; there is also the separation wall and hundreds of military roadblocks. Under Trump's deal, these Palestinian areas will remain isolated with nothing interconnecting them but the proposed tunnels and bridges that the Israeli military has the authority to close under any pretext.
What this deal does is subvert the law, international legitimacy and numerous resolutions by the UN Security Council and General Assembly. It also reverses decisions and rulings of the International Court of Justice that state unequivocally that settlements on occupied land are illegal, as is the annexation of land owned by the occupied.
Trump's deal is clearly an attempt to legitimize the illegal measures Israel has already implemented in the Palestinian territories, for the obvious objective of annihilating any possibility for the establishment of a free and independent Palestinian state. It makes those territories ghettos controlled by Israel, with no jurisdiction or authority over borders, security, roads, natural resources or even the very environment where Palestinians live and breathe. It gives the Israeli military absolute domination over economic, social and security matters all throughout the occupied territories.
Releasing the map did nothing but provoke Palestinian ire. The Palestinians believe the Trump administration's actions and the details of the deal are blatant attempts to dispose of their national rights once and for all. They believe this so-called "deal of the century" is an Israeli project mostly written by Netanyahu slipped into an American envelope, and that the Trump administration is not only biased toward Israel, but is colluding with the most extreme racist groups in Israel's political structure to draft policy.
As far as the Palestinians are concerned, the ghetto state this deal proposes is no different than the Israeli prisons where thousands of Palestinians have been incarcerated.
In announcing the proposed deal, President Trump spoke about Israeli security, but he failed to mention even once Palestinian security -- not political security from the Israeli occupation, the longest occupation in modern history, nor social and economic security for the Palestinian people.
The Israeli leaders are angered whenever they are reminded that they are heading toward an apartheid system in the occupied territories, but they fail to describe it any other way. As of 2016, Israel appropriates over 85% of Palestinian water and Palestinians in the West Bank have access to only 73 liters of water a day, while illegal settlers swim in pools and have access to over 300 liters.
Trump's map also shows what is called "segregated roads" in the West Bank, which are exclusive to Israelis and forbidden for Palestinians.
Those roads are already built and very much part of the Israeli apartheid system, which Trump has just sanctioned, controverting international laws and making sure an independent Palestinian state never emerges.
Bantustans, ghettos -- ghettostans -- and apartheid are not the solution. If an independent, democratic and free Palestinian state is never to emerge, then the Palestinian people will have no choice but to struggle for a one-state solution, one where all citizens -- Palestinians and Israelis -- are guaranteed equal rights and freedoms.
President Trump has done much damage with his supposed peace deal, not only to Palestinians, but also to the Israeli people who cannot possibly be proud of having established an apartheid system in the 21st century.
Opinion by Mustafa Barghouti
One does not need to be an expert on history to realize that the map released by President Donald Trump as a deal for peace between Israel and Palestine is identical to the Bantustans of the defunct South African apartheid system, with one difference: The Palestinian isolation islets are comparable to ghettos. So much so, "ghettostans" is a more suitable label for them.
The proposed deal is disastrous to Palestinians. It calls for the recognition of an "undivided" Jerusalem as the capital of Israel despite the fact that the annexation of East Jerusalem violates International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The proposal also eliminates the question of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, as per UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirms the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin, and which was marked for discussion at some later period within the Oslo peace negotiations in the 1990s.
By far the most flagrant part of the plan is that it ends any possibility for an independent sovereign Palestinian state, instead dividing the territories into ghettos and Bantustans, besieged, suffocated and isolated.
There are currently numerous such ghettos in the West Bank that are partitioned and divided by the surrounding Israeli settlements deemed illegal and a violation of international law by the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016; there is also the separation wall and hundreds of military roadblocks. Under Trump's deal, these Palestinian areas will remain isolated with nothing interconnecting them but the proposed tunnels and bridges that the Israeli military has the authority to close under any pretext.
What this deal does is subvert the law, international legitimacy and numerous resolutions by the UN Security Council and General Assembly. It also reverses decisions and rulings of the International Court of Justice that state unequivocally that settlements on occupied land are illegal, as is the annexation of land owned by the occupied.
Trump's deal is clearly an attempt to legitimize the illegal measures Israel has already implemented in the Palestinian territories, for the obvious objective of annihilating any possibility for the establishment of a free and independent Palestinian state. It makes those territories ghettos controlled by Israel, with no jurisdiction or authority over borders, security, roads, natural resources or even the very environment where Palestinians live and breathe. It gives the Israeli military absolute domination over economic, social and security matters all throughout the occupied territories.
Releasing the map did nothing but provoke Palestinian ire. The Palestinians believe the Trump administration's actions and the details of the deal are blatant attempts to dispose of their national rights once and for all. They believe this so-called "deal of the century" is an Israeli project mostly written by Netanyahu slipped into an American envelope, and that the Trump administration is not only biased toward Israel, but is colluding with the most extreme racist groups in Israel's political structure to draft policy.
As far as the Palestinians are concerned, the ghetto state this deal proposes is no different than the Israeli prisons where thousands of Palestinians have been incarcerated.
In announcing the proposed deal, President Trump spoke about Israeli security, but he failed to mention even once Palestinian security -- not political security from the Israeli occupation, the longest occupation in modern history, nor social and economic security for the Palestinian people.
The Israeli leaders are angered whenever they are reminded that they are heading toward an apartheid system in the occupied territories, but they fail to describe it any other way. As of 2016, Israel appropriates over 85% of Palestinian water and Palestinians in the West Bank have access to only 73 liters of water a day, while illegal settlers swim in pools and have access to over 300 liters.
Trump's map also shows what is called "segregated roads" in the West Bank, which are exclusive to Israelis and forbidden for Palestinians.
Those roads are already built and very much part of the Israeli apartheid system, which Trump has just sanctioned, controverting international laws and making sure an independent Palestinian state never emerges.
Bantustans, ghettos -- ghettostans -- and apartheid are not the solution. If an independent, democratic and free Palestinian state is never to emerge, then the Palestinian people will have no choice but to struggle for a one-state solution, one where all citizens -- Palestinians and Israelis -- are guaranteed equal rights and freedoms.
President Trump has done much damage with his supposed peace deal, not only to Palestinians, but also to the Israeli people who cannot possibly be proud of having established an apartheid system in the 21st century.
Complicit in a cover-up.....
The Senate is complicit in a cover-up if it doesn't call witnesses
Opinion by Michael Zeldin
I have spent the last week glued to the impeachment trial on TV, watching and listening carefully to the presentations of the House managers and President Donald Trump's defense lawyers.
Two things struck me as crystal clear: First, although one might disagree with the arguments being made, each side was represented by very capable advocates. Second, each team mostly spoke to their side of the aisle; they seemed to have no real expectation that the other side would consider their views. As Paul Simon sang in "The Boxer," "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." The same is probably true of the American public.
That said, I think that overall, the House managers made the stronger case.
Article One: Abuse of power
As to Article One, the House managers alleged, in essence, that President Trump corruptly asked the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to launch an investigation (or, at least, announce the launching of an investigation) into Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, for the benefit of his reelection.
Although President Zelensky assured President Trump that he would be very serious in looking into the case, when the investigation did not appear to be moving forward, President Trump withheld congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine and a president-to-president White House meeting.
I believe that the House managers effectively made the case that President Trump improperly demanded the Biden investigation for his personal political advantage, and not to further the United States' national security interests. In my view, Trump's initial demand and his subsequent withholding of aid to Ukraine until President Zelensky publicly announced the investigation of the Bidens constituted an abuse of the powers of his office.
As the House managers demonstrated through their dissection of the July 25, 2019, call summary, Trump told Zelensky that he wanted a favor and that he expected an investigation because "the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say it's reciprocal..."
The President's request was confirmed by multiple witnesses, most notably David Holmes, who overheard the President specially ask about the status of the investigation on his call with US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland soon after Sondland met with the Ukrainians in Kiev to discuss the matter.
Instead of fully responding to the impropriety of the initial ask by Trump on the July 25 call, President Trump's lawyers focused primarily on the secondary issue -- whether the President improperly withheld military aid when the announcement of the investigation was not immediately forthcoming (the so-called quid pro quo), and the lack of direct evidence to support the accusation.
Leaving aside the revelation by former national security adviser John Bolton that the President told him personally that there was a direct link between the freezing of military aid to Ukraine and the sought-after investigation of the Bidens, and the testimony of State Department officials, such as Bill Taylor, who called the withholding of military aid "crazy," the Trump lawyers failed to adequately rebut the primary assertion that the "ask" for the Biden investigation was an abuse of power because it was made with the corrupt purpose of aiding Trump's reelection efforts.
Article Two: Obstruction of Congress
Article Two, obstruction of Congress, is predicated on the President's blanket refusal to cooperate in any meaningful way with the House investigations.
Which side made the better case is a close call. I see the equities on both sides. I believe, however, that when viewed in its entirety, the complete record of the President's response through his counsel and in the public domain (Twitter, campaign rallies and press statements) reflects a complete unwillingness to cooperate well beyond the position articulated in the trial by deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin.
The House, exercising its sole power of impeachment, as well as its general investigatory authority, properly issued multiple subpoenas with 71 individualized requests for records in the possession or control of the White House, the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of State, the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy.
It did so pursuant to the rules of the 116th Congress and House Resolution 660 directing three House Committees (Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight) to "continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representative to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach [President] Trump."
In response to the House subpoenas for witnesses and documents, White House counsel Pat Cipollone advised Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an October 8, 2019, letter that, because the House investigation lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it. Executive Branch agencies reaffirmed that it was the position of the President to refuse to comply with subpoenas issued for documents.
The outcome of this directive was that the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of State, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense refused to produce any documents or witness testimony.
Philbin elaborated that the position of the President not to cooperate wholesale with the House investigation was grounded in well-established separation of powers concepts that the Executive Branch enjoyed absolute immunity and that the requested documents potentially could implicate executive privilege. (It is noteworthy that, typically, claims of executive privilege fail if asserted to conceal wrongdoing.)
According to Philbin, if Congress believed that the subpoenas were authorized, the House should have gone to court to enforce them.
But this argument rings hollow, given the President's position that the courts have no jurisdiction to resolve this conflict.
In addition, Trump made repeated public statements that he would fight all subpoenas and that the Constitution allows him to do anything he wants as president.
It also invites the question: If the President believed that the subpoenas were constitutionally defective, why didn't he go to court to quash them, as is typical in litigation throughout the country?
In the end, it became clear that the House could not rely on the President to comply with their requests, given his overly broad interpretation of privilege, his belligerence and White House counsel's unwillingness to cooperate in good faith.
Indeed, the President's obstructive conduct continues to this day with the Trump administration's improper redaction of emails detailing how Department of Defense and the White House Office of Management and Budget officials reacted to President Trump's decision to halt military aid to Ukraine ordered to be released in response to Freedom of Information Act litigation, the President's announcement that he would seek to enjoin publication of certain aspects of John Bolton's forthcoming book, and Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz's outlandish position on the Senate floor that if a President thinks that his reelection is in the national interest, any actions that he takes toward that end cannot, by definition, be impeachable.
Consequently, Trump left the House with no choice but to proceed as it did with the second article of impeachment.
In my view, the House managers were more persuasive in arguing that, if the President is able to declare the circumstances under which he will cooperate with Congress and he can refuse unilaterally to cooperate when his conditions are not met, the House's investigatory powers would be null and void. This is not a tenable outcome.
Is a crime required?
Constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former independent counsel Robert Ray argued that, even if all the facts were accepted as true, the articles of impeachment would be defective because they do not allege a criminal offense.
In their view, abusive conduct and an interbranch dispute over witnesses and documents does not meet the constitutional standard of a high crime and misdemeanor. During the House Judiciary Committee hearing, constitutional law experts Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan and Michael Gerhardt disputed the Dershowitz/Ray position, arguing that impeachable conduct does not have to constitute a crime.
According to the experts, "offenses," which is the word used by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, relates to the misconduct of public officials in violation or abuse of the public trust -- irrespective of whether a crime is committed. This view is consistent with the overwhelming weight of authority and is widely held by constitutional scholars. The Dershowitz/Ray position is a constitutional outlier.
In my view, the late Charles L. Black Jr., Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School, best articulates the appropriate standard for evaluating what meets the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors in the constitutional sense: That is, offenses that are clearly wrong, even if not criminal, and in Black's words, "seriously threaten the order or political society as to make pestilent and dangerous the continuance in power of their perpetrator."
President Trump's alleged conduct -- in soliciting Ukraine to investigate his political rival and, then, in withholding military aid until the investigation is publicly announced-- violates the public trust and renders his continuation in office a danger to the Constitution. His obstruction of Congress compounds the offense.
Witnesses
If the Senate does not call Bolton and the other witnesses who have firsthand knowledge of the President's actions, it would be facilitating a cover-up.
The Senate needs to perform its constitutional duty to hold a full and fair trial in which all relevant witnesses testify under oath and all pertinent documentary evidence is disclosed irrespective of whether the House was unsuccessful in obtaining these witnesses and documentary evidence. To do otherwise is to set the dangerous historical precedent that full and fair Senate impeachment trials are not constitutionally required.
Opinion by Michael Zeldin
I have spent the last week glued to the impeachment trial on TV, watching and listening carefully to the presentations of the House managers and President Donald Trump's defense lawyers.
Two things struck me as crystal clear: First, although one might disagree with the arguments being made, each side was represented by very capable advocates. Second, each team mostly spoke to their side of the aisle; they seemed to have no real expectation that the other side would consider their views. As Paul Simon sang in "The Boxer," "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." The same is probably true of the American public.
That said, I think that overall, the House managers made the stronger case.
Article One: Abuse of power
As to Article One, the House managers alleged, in essence, that President Trump corruptly asked the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to launch an investigation (or, at least, announce the launching of an investigation) into Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, for the benefit of his reelection.
Although President Zelensky assured President Trump that he would be very serious in looking into the case, when the investigation did not appear to be moving forward, President Trump withheld congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine and a president-to-president White House meeting.
I believe that the House managers effectively made the case that President Trump improperly demanded the Biden investigation for his personal political advantage, and not to further the United States' national security interests. In my view, Trump's initial demand and his subsequent withholding of aid to Ukraine until President Zelensky publicly announced the investigation of the Bidens constituted an abuse of the powers of his office.
As the House managers demonstrated through their dissection of the July 25, 2019, call summary, Trump told Zelensky that he wanted a favor and that he expected an investigation because "the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say it's reciprocal..."
The President's request was confirmed by multiple witnesses, most notably David Holmes, who overheard the President specially ask about the status of the investigation on his call with US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland soon after Sondland met with the Ukrainians in Kiev to discuss the matter.
Instead of fully responding to the impropriety of the initial ask by Trump on the July 25 call, President Trump's lawyers focused primarily on the secondary issue -- whether the President improperly withheld military aid when the announcement of the investigation was not immediately forthcoming (the so-called quid pro quo), and the lack of direct evidence to support the accusation.
Leaving aside the revelation by former national security adviser John Bolton that the President told him personally that there was a direct link between the freezing of military aid to Ukraine and the sought-after investigation of the Bidens, and the testimony of State Department officials, such as Bill Taylor, who called the withholding of military aid "crazy," the Trump lawyers failed to adequately rebut the primary assertion that the "ask" for the Biden investigation was an abuse of power because it was made with the corrupt purpose of aiding Trump's reelection efforts.
Article Two: Obstruction of Congress
Article Two, obstruction of Congress, is predicated on the President's blanket refusal to cooperate in any meaningful way with the House investigations.
Which side made the better case is a close call. I see the equities on both sides. I believe, however, that when viewed in its entirety, the complete record of the President's response through his counsel and in the public domain (Twitter, campaign rallies and press statements) reflects a complete unwillingness to cooperate well beyond the position articulated in the trial by deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin.
The House, exercising its sole power of impeachment, as well as its general investigatory authority, properly issued multiple subpoenas with 71 individualized requests for records in the possession or control of the White House, the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of State, the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy.
It did so pursuant to the rules of the 116th Congress and House Resolution 660 directing three House Committees (Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight) to "continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representative to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach [President] Trump."
In response to the House subpoenas for witnesses and documents, White House counsel Pat Cipollone advised Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an October 8, 2019, letter that, because the House investigation lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it. Executive Branch agencies reaffirmed that it was the position of the President to refuse to comply with subpoenas issued for documents.
The outcome of this directive was that the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of State, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense refused to produce any documents or witness testimony.
Philbin elaborated that the position of the President not to cooperate wholesale with the House investigation was grounded in well-established separation of powers concepts that the Executive Branch enjoyed absolute immunity and that the requested documents potentially could implicate executive privilege. (It is noteworthy that, typically, claims of executive privilege fail if asserted to conceal wrongdoing.)
According to Philbin, if Congress believed that the subpoenas were authorized, the House should have gone to court to enforce them.
But this argument rings hollow, given the President's position that the courts have no jurisdiction to resolve this conflict.
In addition, Trump made repeated public statements that he would fight all subpoenas and that the Constitution allows him to do anything he wants as president.
It also invites the question: If the President believed that the subpoenas were constitutionally defective, why didn't he go to court to quash them, as is typical in litigation throughout the country?
In the end, it became clear that the House could not rely on the President to comply with their requests, given his overly broad interpretation of privilege, his belligerence and White House counsel's unwillingness to cooperate in good faith.
Indeed, the President's obstructive conduct continues to this day with the Trump administration's improper redaction of emails detailing how Department of Defense and the White House Office of Management and Budget officials reacted to President Trump's decision to halt military aid to Ukraine ordered to be released in response to Freedom of Information Act litigation, the President's announcement that he would seek to enjoin publication of certain aspects of John Bolton's forthcoming book, and Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz's outlandish position on the Senate floor that if a President thinks that his reelection is in the national interest, any actions that he takes toward that end cannot, by definition, be impeachable.
Consequently, Trump left the House with no choice but to proceed as it did with the second article of impeachment.
In my view, the House managers were more persuasive in arguing that, if the President is able to declare the circumstances under which he will cooperate with Congress and he can refuse unilaterally to cooperate when his conditions are not met, the House's investigatory powers would be null and void. This is not a tenable outcome.
Is a crime required?
Constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former independent counsel Robert Ray argued that, even if all the facts were accepted as true, the articles of impeachment would be defective because they do not allege a criminal offense.
In their view, abusive conduct and an interbranch dispute over witnesses and documents does not meet the constitutional standard of a high crime and misdemeanor. During the House Judiciary Committee hearing, constitutional law experts Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan and Michael Gerhardt disputed the Dershowitz/Ray position, arguing that impeachable conduct does not have to constitute a crime.
According to the experts, "offenses," which is the word used by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, relates to the misconduct of public officials in violation or abuse of the public trust -- irrespective of whether a crime is committed. This view is consistent with the overwhelming weight of authority and is widely held by constitutional scholars. The Dershowitz/Ray position is a constitutional outlier.
In my view, the late Charles L. Black Jr., Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School, best articulates the appropriate standard for evaluating what meets the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors in the constitutional sense: That is, offenses that are clearly wrong, even if not criminal, and in Black's words, "seriously threaten the order or political society as to make pestilent and dangerous the continuance in power of their perpetrator."
President Trump's alleged conduct -- in soliciting Ukraine to investigate his political rival and, then, in withholding military aid until the investigation is publicly announced-- violates the public trust and renders his continuation in office a danger to the Constitution. His obstruction of Congress compounds the offense.
Witnesses
If the Senate does not call Bolton and the other witnesses who have firsthand knowledge of the President's actions, it would be facilitating a cover-up.
The Senate needs to perform its constitutional duty to hold a full and fair trial in which all relevant witnesses testify under oath and all pertinent documentary evidence is disclosed irrespective of whether the House was unsuccessful in obtaining these witnesses and documentary evidence. To do otherwise is to set the dangerous historical precedent that full and fair Senate impeachment trials are not constitutionally required.
Administration's war on the disabled
The next move in Trump administration's war on the disabled
Opinion by Rebecca Cokley
Disability is not a static condition, in most cases. Someone may be able to take their child to the park one day, and the next be unable to get out of bed. Conditions are long-lasting, but may also be sporadic in nature, with flares that vary in their length and severity.
A number of government benefits are means tested, meaning the eligibility for that program may be tied to how much money an individual or a family earns. Some programs, like the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program, provide benefits that are specifically tied, by definition, to an individual's inability to work due to a disability. SSDI is intended to supplement what would be that individual's income.
To an uninformed outsider's perspective, it may seem like people who currently receive benefits like SSDI are lazy or are just not trying hard enough to work. It's ignorant suppositions like this that seem to be informing the Social Security Administration's latest attack on the benefits that many people with disabilities and their families depend on to survive.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced back in November a notice of proposed rulemaking to change the way that disability reviews are conducted for the Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) and the Social Security Disability Insurance program. It targets, among others, those seeking benefits for chronic conditions that flare unpredictably, like Crohn's disease or irritable bowel disease. It would also include children, individuals with mental illnesses and people with eating disorders, leukemia and HIV.
The changes could affect millions of people and households and make it significantly more difficult for those who currently have benefits, over 10 million people, to maintain them. The agency has a comment period that has been extended to January 31.
SSA is proposing creating a new category under its existing Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs) system, which is designed to ensure that people who receive benefits need those benefits due to a disability that affects their ability to work. CDRs are typically handled via a set of forms that need to be mailed in or a full medical review. A review requires significant documentation as well as a physical exam by doctors contracting with SSA to determine if a person's disability has in fact improved.
The frequency with which a beneficiary is reviewed can vary depending on the severity of the person's condition and the likelihood that an individual would be able to work with said diagnosis.
There are three categories that are used: "medical improvement expected" (varies between once every six months and once every 18 months), "medical improvement possible" (once every three years) and "medical improvement not expected" (once every seven years.)
But the proposed rule introduces a new category, which would be called "medical improvement likely," and would be subject to review every two years.
The category will include about 4.4 million who are already in the Social Security system, as outlined in the proposed rule would also include those between 50-65 who live with a combination of different disabilities and chronic illnesses that make it extremely difficult to work, and people with targeted disease diagnoses, such as cancer survivors and transplant recipients.
Each of the conditions listed can vary in terms of their severity. For every story of someone "overcoming" their illness or disability, there are numerous stories of people who must live with lifelong symptoms and side effects of treatments that could make it significantly difficult to maintain consistent employment.
What this proposed change would do is continue to punish the disability community and people in poverty.
The rule would make the CDR process so burdensome with its frequency and layers of bureaucracy that people will either be disqualified, or fall out of the process due to its difficulty.
It is the equivalent of having an IRS audit, on your health, that previously would take place every five to seven years, now on a two-year basis.
For people in this new category who already have significant health impairments that are not likely to improve, and /or that can flare, the fact that the slightest improvement at all, whether a temporary fluke or a legitimate improvement, could trigger a CDR is extremely scary for people.
It requires them to pull all their medical paperwork together, and get it updated to demonstrate that they still need benefits. For many, this requires going to specialists, getting lab work or other tests that are required to demonstrate evidence of diagnosis.
For those on limited incomes, as most people on SSI and SSDI are, it may require increased transportation costs, or costs associated with procuring copies of medical files. Having to do this every two years will be expensive for folks already living at the margins.
What's more, as it is, Social Security does not have the bandwidth to process existing applications, with 10,000 people dying a year waiting for approval. This process is likely to be strung out even more, with an additional 2.6 million reviews to conduct over the next 10 years, as stated in the proposed rule.
The new category review is expected to come in two forms, one as a postcard, and one as a complex 15-page document with essay questions that would require an individual to maintain a robust and extremely detailed set of personal medical records.
It is important to note that this form will be only available in English, as per a previous Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. So those people for whom English is a second language and had previously applied in the existing categories using a form that was available in their native tongue, this would no longer be the case.
Furthermore, individuals who do not have consistent housing or medical care are significantly less likely to have access to the type of paperwork because they are less likely to have a secure, dry place to maintain paper records and are less likely to receive the regular and specialized medical care required to complete this form accurately.
This type of rollback has been tried before, nearly to disastrous effect. The Reagan administration attempted something similar in the 1980s, stripping up to 200,000 people of their disability benefits by altering the review process which disproportionately impacted people with mental illness.
The effect it had on disabled individuals and their families resulted in outrage from governors, and both sides of the aisle coming together for a vote of 410-1 in the House of Representatives to ease reviews and restore benefits. New legislation was passed that established the current criteria.
The new rule being considered was proposed after OMB director Mick Mulvaney said no one would lose the value of their current benefits and after Trump pledged as a candidate to not cutting Social Security benefits -- but they went back on those pledges. The Trump administration has already enacted three rounds of cuts and rollbacks on nutrition programs, and this is a continuation of a targeted strategy whose impact is to shame families on public benefits.
SSA, in defense of the proposed change, claims that families have better income outcomes when a child's benefits are canceled and parents return to work. While this may be true, telling a parent that their time is better spent working than caring for a seriously ill child is just cruel.
In the end, it is disabled people and families who will be hurt. Again.
Opinion by Rebecca Cokley
Disability is not a static condition, in most cases. Someone may be able to take their child to the park one day, and the next be unable to get out of bed. Conditions are long-lasting, but may also be sporadic in nature, with flares that vary in their length and severity.
A number of government benefits are means tested, meaning the eligibility for that program may be tied to how much money an individual or a family earns. Some programs, like the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program, provide benefits that are specifically tied, by definition, to an individual's inability to work due to a disability. SSDI is intended to supplement what would be that individual's income.
To an uninformed outsider's perspective, it may seem like people who currently receive benefits like SSDI are lazy or are just not trying hard enough to work. It's ignorant suppositions like this that seem to be informing the Social Security Administration's latest attack on the benefits that many people with disabilities and their families depend on to survive.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced back in November a notice of proposed rulemaking to change the way that disability reviews are conducted for the Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) and the Social Security Disability Insurance program. It targets, among others, those seeking benefits for chronic conditions that flare unpredictably, like Crohn's disease or irritable bowel disease. It would also include children, individuals with mental illnesses and people with eating disorders, leukemia and HIV.
The changes could affect millions of people and households and make it significantly more difficult for those who currently have benefits, over 10 million people, to maintain them. The agency has a comment period that has been extended to January 31.
SSA is proposing creating a new category under its existing Continuing Disability Reviews (CDRs) system, which is designed to ensure that people who receive benefits need those benefits due to a disability that affects their ability to work. CDRs are typically handled via a set of forms that need to be mailed in or a full medical review. A review requires significant documentation as well as a physical exam by doctors contracting with SSA to determine if a person's disability has in fact improved.
The frequency with which a beneficiary is reviewed can vary depending on the severity of the person's condition and the likelihood that an individual would be able to work with said diagnosis.
There are three categories that are used: "medical improvement expected" (varies between once every six months and once every 18 months), "medical improvement possible" (once every three years) and "medical improvement not expected" (once every seven years.)
But the proposed rule introduces a new category, which would be called "medical improvement likely," and would be subject to review every two years.
The category will include about 4.4 million who are already in the Social Security system, as outlined in the proposed rule would also include those between 50-65 who live with a combination of different disabilities and chronic illnesses that make it extremely difficult to work, and people with targeted disease diagnoses, such as cancer survivors and transplant recipients.
Each of the conditions listed can vary in terms of their severity. For every story of someone "overcoming" their illness or disability, there are numerous stories of people who must live with lifelong symptoms and side effects of treatments that could make it significantly difficult to maintain consistent employment.
What this proposed change would do is continue to punish the disability community and people in poverty.
The rule would make the CDR process so burdensome with its frequency and layers of bureaucracy that people will either be disqualified, or fall out of the process due to its difficulty.
It is the equivalent of having an IRS audit, on your health, that previously would take place every five to seven years, now on a two-year basis.
For people in this new category who already have significant health impairments that are not likely to improve, and /or that can flare, the fact that the slightest improvement at all, whether a temporary fluke or a legitimate improvement, could trigger a CDR is extremely scary for people.
It requires them to pull all their medical paperwork together, and get it updated to demonstrate that they still need benefits. For many, this requires going to specialists, getting lab work or other tests that are required to demonstrate evidence of diagnosis.
For those on limited incomes, as most people on SSI and SSDI are, it may require increased transportation costs, or costs associated with procuring copies of medical files. Having to do this every two years will be expensive for folks already living at the margins.
What's more, as it is, Social Security does not have the bandwidth to process existing applications, with 10,000 people dying a year waiting for approval. This process is likely to be strung out even more, with an additional 2.6 million reviews to conduct over the next 10 years, as stated in the proposed rule.
The new category review is expected to come in two forms, one as a postcard, and one as a complex 15-page document with essay questions that would require an individual to maintain a robust and extremely detailed set of personal medical records.
It is important to note that this form will be only available in English, as per a previous Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. So those people for whom English is a second language and had previously applied in the existing categories using a form that was available in their native tongue, this would no longer be the case.
Furthermore, individuals who do not have consistent housing or medical care are significantly less likely to have access to the type of paperwork because they are less likely to have a secure, dry place to maintain paper records and are less likely to receive the regular and specialized medical care required to complete this form accurately.
This type of rollback has been tried before, nearly to disastrous effect. The Reagan administration attempted something similar in the 1980s, stripping up to 200,000 people of their disability benefits by altering the review process which disproportionately impacted people with mental illness.
The effect it had on disabled individuals and their families resulted in outrage from governors, and both sides of the aisle coming together for a vote of 410-1 in the House of Representatives to ease reviews and restore benefits. New legislation was passed that established the current criteria.
The new rule being considered was proposed after OMB director Mick Mulvaney said no one would lose the value of their current benefits and after Trump pledged as a candidate to not cutting Social Security benefits -- but they went back on those pledges. The Trump administration has already enacted three rounds of cuts and rollbacks on nutrition programs, and this is a continuation of a targeted strategy whose impact is to shame families on public benefits.
SSA, in defense of the proposed change, claims that families have better income outcomes when a child's benefits are canceled and parents return to work. While this may be true, telling a parent that their time is better spent working than caring for a seriously ill child is just cruel.
In the end, it is disabled people and families who will be hurt. Again.
Refuse to defy under any circumstance......
Republicans prove they refuse to defy Trump under almost any circumstance
Analysis by John Harwood
Republican hopes of blocking former national security adviser John Bolton's impeachment testimony highlight the Trump-era GOP's defining characteristic: its refusal to defy the President under almost any circumstances.
President Donald Trump's vituperative attacks, regularly trained on critics through his vast social media following, make every Republican politician wary of crossing him. But that represents the lesser factor in the party's fealty.
More significantly, decades of American political realignment have tightened the bonds holding Republicans together in any high-stakes fight with Democrats. The ongoing diversification of American society further unites an overwhelmingly white GOP around a shared fear of impending doom.
Together, those changes lend weight and rigidity to Republican partisanship that did not exist that last time a GOP chief executive faced impeachment. The modest barrier that once separated Republicans from Democrats has become a dense, multi-layered wall reinforced by ideology, race, education and religion as well as party identification.
That helps explain why so many Republican senators have cast aside consistency, logic and unrebutted evidence to shield their president from impeachment charges. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aims for a Friday Senate vote in which Republicans would refuse even to hear new testimony about Trump's culpability before summarily acquitting him.
American partisanship has not always proven so powerful. Two decades ago, five House Democrats voted to impeach President Bill Clinton on charges stemming from his adulterous affair with a White House intern. Senate Democrats stood united to acquit him -- but only after condemning wrongdoing that Clinton himself acknowledged.
And two decades before that, outright defections by Republicans in both the House and Senate sealed the outcome of the Watergate scandal and forced President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974. That result is virtually unimaginable in 21st century Washington.
Nixon-era voters wore their Republican and Democratic labels far more lightly than voters today. Identification with their parties, both ideologically scrambled under alignments that had persisted since the Civil War, represented only one element of their political identity and behavior.
White Southerners in Congress identified with Nixon's conservatism -- but generally belonged to the opposition party. In 1974, Democrats still held 17 of 26 Senate seats in the 13 states of the old Confederacy.
Many Northern liberals shared the President's GOP affiliation but disdained his politics. In the 11 states of the Northeast, Republicans held 13 of 22 Senate seats.
Republicans such as then-Reps. William Cohen of Maine and Hamilton Fish of New York broke with Nixon to join Democratic leaders in backing impeachment in the House. GOP Sens. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut called for the President's resignation long before Nixon took that step in August 1974.
Partisan allegiances had already begun shifting amid the upheavals of the 1960s. After President Lyndon Johnson signed landmark civil rights legislation -- with support from a Senate Republican leader from Illinois -- white voters drifted toward the GOP while African Americans cemented their alliance with Democrats.
By now, those shifts have increased ideological uniformity and consistency within each party. According to 2016 election exit polls, 8-in-10 liberals and 9-in-10 Democrats backed Hillary Clinton. Comparable proportions of conservatives and Republicans backed Trump. Southern states have aligned their conservatism with GOP partisanship, Northern states the reverse.
Polarization by race reinforces those cleavages. While 9-in-10 African Americans backed Clinton, nearly 6-in-10 whites backed Trump.
The Republican tilt is even more lopsided among white evangelical Christians and those without college degrees. Both feel threatened by demographic and cultural changes that have tripled the size of the non-white electorate, and cut in half the share of Americans who are white Christians, over the last half-century.
Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last presidential elections. Reflecting Republican foreboding, Trump's Attorney General William Barr recently warned that "secularists, and their allies among the 'progressives' " have sustained "an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values" in a campaign of "organized destruction."
That view of the stakes generates immense pressure against defection within the GOP. In the House, with Trump denying any wrongdoing on Ukraine whatsoever, not a single Republican voted to impeach him.
In the Senate, no Republican has called for the President's resignation or signaled intent to vote for his conviction. Democrats need support from four of 53 Republicans just to subpoena Bolton's testimony, which reportedly promises to affirm the Democratic allegations. The combined efforts of McConnell and the White House may block even that.
The decisive vote on Bolton's testimony may lie with retiring Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, once an aide in Nixon's White House. His own political emergence a few years after Nixon resigned lends poignancy to his choice against hearing witnesses, which he announced late Thursday night.
After Alexander won the Tennessee governorship in 1978, the outgoing Democratic governor began accepting payments in exchange for pardoning convicted criminals. Crossing party lines, other top Democratic officials arranged to halt that corruption by swearing the newly elected Republican into office early.
Analysis by John Harwood
Republican hopes of blocking former national security adviser John Bolton's impeachment testimony highlight the Trump-era GOP's defining characteristic: its refusal to defy the President under almost any circumstances.
President Donald Trump's vituperative attacks, regularly trained on critics through his vast social media following, make every Republican politician wary of crossing him. But that represents the lesser factor in the party's fealty.
More significantly, decades of American political realignment have tightened the bonds holding Republicans together in any high-stakes fight with Democrats. The ongoing diversification of American society further unites an overwhelmingly white GOP around a shared fear of impending doom.
Together, those changes lend weight and rigidity to Republican partisanship that did not exist that last time a GOP chief executive faced impeachment. The modest barrier that once separated Republicans from Democrats has become a dense, multi-layered wall reinforced by ideology, race, education and religion as well as party identification.
That helps explain why so many Republican senators have cast aside consistency, logic and unrebutted evidence to shield their president from impeachment charges. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aims for a Friday Senate vote in which Republicans would refuse even to hear new testimony about Trump's culpability before summarily acquitting him.
American partisanship has not always proven so powerful. Two decades ago, five House Democrats voted to impeach President Bill Clinton on charges stemming from his adulterous affair with a White House intern. Senate Democrats stood united to acquit him -- but only after condemning wrongdoing that Clinton himself acknowledged.
And two decades before that, outright defections by Republicans in both the House and Senate sealed the outcome of the Watergate scandal and forced President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974. That result is virtually unimaginable in 21st century Washington.
Nixon-era voters wore their Republican and Democratic labels far more lightly than voters today. Identification with their parties, both ideologically scrambled under alignments that had persisted since the Civil War, represented only one element of their political identity and behavior.
White Southerners in Congress identified with Nixon's conservatism -- but generally belonged to the opposition party. In 1974, Democrats still held 17 of 26 Senate seats in the 13 states of the old Confederacy.
Many Northern liberals shared the President's GOP affiliation but disdained his politics. In the 11 states of the Northeast, Republicans held 13 of 22 Senate seats.
Republicans such as then-Reps. William Cohen of Maine and Hamilton Fish of New York broke with Nixon to join Democratic leaders in backing impeachment in the House. GOP Sens. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut called for the President's resignation long before Nixon took that step in August 1974.
Partisan allegiances had already begun shifting amid the upheavals of the 1960s. After President Lyndon Johnson signed landmark civil rights legislation -- with support from a Senate Republican leader from Illinois -- white voters drifted toward the GOP while African Americans cemented their alliance with Democrats.
By now, those shifts have increased ideological uniformity and consistency within each party. According to 2016 election exit polls, 8-in-10 liberals and 9-in-10 Democrats backed Hillary Clinton. Comparable proportions of conservatives and Republicans backed Trump. Southern states have aligned their conservatism with GOP partisanship, Northern states the reverse.
Polarization by race reinforces those cleavages. While 9-in-10 African Americans backed Clinton, nearly 6-in-10 whites backed Trump.
The Republican tilt is even more lopsided among white evangelical Christians and those without college degrees. Both feel threatened by demographic and cultural changes that have tripled the size of the non-white electorate, and cut in half the share of Americans who are white Christians, over the last half-century.
Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last presidential elections. Reflecting Republican foreboding, Trump's Attorney General William Barr recently warned that "secularists, and their allies among the 'progressives' " have sustained "an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values" in a campaign of "organized destruction."
That view of the stakes generates immense pressure against defection within the GOP. In the House, with Trump denying any wrongdoing on Ukraine whatsoever, not a single Republican voted to impeach him.
In the Senate, no Republican has called for the President's resignation or signaled intent to vote for his conviction. Democrats need support from four of 53 Republicans just to subpoena Bolton's testimony, which reportedly promises to affirm the Democratic allegations. The combined efforts of McConnell and the White House may block even that.
The decisive vote on Bolton's testimony may lie with retiring Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, once an aide in Nixon's White House. His own political emergence a few years after Nixon resigned lends poignancy to his choice against hearing witnesses, which he announced late Thursday night.
After Alexander won the Tennessee governorship in 1978, the outgoing Democratic governor began accepting payments in exchange for pardoning convicted criminals. Crossing party lines, other top Democratic officials arranged to halt that corruption by swearing the newly elected Republican into office early.
Aftershocks will rock America
Impeachment trial to end but its aftershocks will rock America
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
America's latest "national nightmare" will not end when Republicans vote to acquit President Donald Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors, possibly as early as Friday.
A mere four months after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered an impeachment inquiry and six after Trump's now notorious "do us a favor" call with Ukraine's President, Trump will get on with his term as the third US President to be impeached by the House of Representatives and not removed by the Senate.
Given Trump's political temperament, and the impending battle between the parties for control of the White House, it seems unlikely there will be a healing voice to help reconcile a divided country -- such as President Gerald Ford's, when he declared that "our long national nightmare is over" in the wake of Watergate.
The President will skip free despite strong evidence to suggest that he abused a public trust by trying to coerce a foreign power -- with millions of dollars in taxpayer cash -- to play a role in a US presidential election. The many unresolved storylines and loose ends of this divisive episode will ensure that the political significance of his off-the-books diplomatic scheme in Kiev may only become more corrosive with time.
Thanks to the estranged political realities of the age, Trump is likely to interpret his latest escape, in a business and political career that has often flirted with disaster, as an inducement to broaden his crusade to expand his personal power and shake off remaining constitutional guard rails.
Still, the side effects of the showdown will reverberate for years and subsequent political eras. It will claim short-term victims — maybe even including the President or those who pursued him with elections only nine months away. But the dramatic events at the turn of 2019 and 2020 could also change how future generations understand presidential power and the process of purging its abuse by the use of impeachment itself.
Unknown consequences for November
Most immediately, the unsuccessful effort to oust Trump will help shape November's election that may partially be framed around whether Republicans pay a price for saving him or Democrats get a backlash for impeaching him.
Democrats hope that months focusing on apparent abuses of power by Trump will have soured crucial swing-state suburban voters irrevocably against him. But they'll worry they electrified Trump's base.
Republicans may prevent further damage to the President by preventing the calling of witnesses with potentially incriminating evidence such as former national security adviser John Bolton in a closely watched vote Friday. Some GOP members have told their leaders that they just want to get the trial over with -- since even its two weeks on the Senate floor have damaged their reelection prospects, CNN reported.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a retiring Tennessee Republican, all but assured no witnesses would be called during the trial when he announced late Thursday night that he would vote against a motion to call them. Alexander was seen as the most likely potential fourth Republican to vote in favor of hearing witnesses. His decision appears to end Democratic hopes of hearing from Bolton under oath despite a willingness from GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney to hear from witnesses.
With this in mind, it's possible Democrats benefit politically from the chance to lambast what happened in the Senate over the last two weeks as a mockery of a fair trial. Still, they would have loved to have had Bolton on the record to further color a dark picture of Trump's behavior.
Republicans will take a risk by blocking witnesses. They elected to perpetrate what Democrats will find easy to portray as a cover up by suppressing a chance to hear Bolton — a witness with information about the core accusation in the impeachment case — from telling his story.
"You cannot be acquitted if you don't have a trial, and you don't have a trial if you don't have witnesses and documentation," Pelosi said on Thursday, already excavating a seam of post-impeachment politics.
When the former national security adviser's information -- contained in the manuscript of a book first reported by the New York Times -- eventually comes out, GOP lawmakers must hope that it does not leave them badly exposed. As it is, history may remember the 2020 GOP as making a choice between power and political short-termism and shielding the Constitution and accepted codes of presidential behavior.
But in the absence of large numbers of GOP senators willing to fall on their swords in an altruistic rebuke of Trump's behavior, the dynamics of their party in the Trump era left them little choice.
The experience of impeachment will certainly tighten the bond between Trump and supporters who have just watched their champion once again defy the efforts of a Washington establishment to rein him in.
Trump's capacity to browbeat GOP senators into supporting him, even if some harbor doubts about his behavior reflects his greatest political success — the transformation of the Republican Party in his own fact-denying image.
Impeachment saga exposes national divide
The trial is a reminder of the gaping political disconnect down the middle of the nation. While Democrats and members of the Washington media and political establishments express horror at this presidency's slash and burn approach to the Constitution, many Trump supporters don't care.
Only 8% percent of Republican respondents believed Trump should be removed from office in a CNN poll conducted earlier this month, compared to 89% of Democrats.
Such figures are the payoff for Trump's relentless effort to reward his political base on issues like immigration, foreign policy and conservative judges, his clever use of cultural issues like gun control and abortion and his refusal to moderate the outsider, outlandish behavior that got him elected.
It is to those committed Trump voters to whom Republican senators must return every weekend. This is one reason why a senator like Cory Gardner from Colorado — endangered in a state trending away from Trump -- still cannot extricate himself from the President and his fervent base voters sufficiently to vote to hear new witnesses like Bolton.
In this context comments by Republicans that seem to jar with the facts and the weight of evidence in the trial can actually be explained.
"I think for most Americans they want us to move on to something that actually matters for them," one of Trump's top allies in the House, Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, said on Thursday for example, perhaps thinking of the large majority of conservatives in his district.
The hyper-political nature of the aftermath of the impeachment fight shone through the Senate trial on Thursday when one of the President's attorneys took time out to praise the President's three years in office -- seemingly that his approval rating justified any extremes of behavior.
"We, the American people, are happier," said Eric Herschmann -- trying to put some flesh on the bones of a controversial case laid out by his colleague Alan Dershowitz that a President acting in the belief that his reelection in the nation's interest could not by definition carry out an impeachable act.
"And yet the House managers tell you that the President needs to be removed because he's an immediate threat to our country," Herschmann said.
Adopting Trump's campaign trail mantra, Herschmann touted a strong economy, the killing of terrorists and slowed border crossings.
"If all that is solely — solely, in their words — for his personal and political gain and not in the best interests of the American people, then I say, God bless him. Keep doing it," Herschmann said.
Constitutional shockwaves
Longer term, the end of Trump's trial will mark a profound political moment.
The President's defense team — beset by inconvenient facts about Trump's pressure on Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden and other Democrats — resorted to a staggeringly broad concept of presidential power for his actions.
That gave Republican senators a hook to argue that what Democrats charged as abuse of power and obstruction of Congress was in fact perfectly permissible behavior. But it lays down a blueprint for vastly enhanced inferred powers of the presidency for Trump and his successors.
It doesn't follow that all presidents will now seek to force vulnerable overseas powers to come up with political payoffs. But it could convince unscrupulous future occupants of the Oval Office to reason they might get away with it. Foreign adversaries keen to discredit US democracy could have a field day.
The implied expansion of presidential power that will be left in this impeachment saga's wake seems to be turning back the clock to before the time of Richard Nixon's ouster in the Watergate scandal. After that original "long, national nightmare" Congress sought to recover powers from White House that had been abused by the 37th President. But gradually, the presidency has adopted a more imperial mode starting with the Reagan administration through George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But none of those presidents -- who were sometimes criticized for overreaching executive authority on issues like union policy, anti-terrorism measures and immigration -- made the kind of audacious power grabs that have characterized Trump's administration and for which he has now been absolved.
Lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned on Thursday that the constraining of the presidency in the years after Watergate had now been reversed -- to dangerous effect.
"We are right back to where we were a half century ago," Schiff said. "And I would argue we may be in a worse place."
"That argument, if the President says that it can't be illegal, failed," he continued. "And Richard Nixon was forced to resign. But that argument may succeed here now. That means we're not back to where we are, we are worse off than where we are. That is the normalization of lawlessness."
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
America's latest "national nightmare" will not end when Republicans vote to acquit President Donald Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors, possibly as early as Friday.
A mere four months after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered an impeachment inquiry and six after Trump's now notorious "do us a favor" call with Ukraine's President, Trump will get on with his term as the third US President to be impeached by the House of Representatives and not removed by the Senate.
Given Trump's political temperament, and the impending battle between the parties for control of the White House, it seems unlikely there will be a healing voice to help reconcile a divided country -- such as President Gerald Ford's, when he declared that "our long national nightmare is over" in the wake of Watergate.
The President will skip free despite strong evidence to suggest that he abused a public trust by trying to coerce a foreign power -- with millions of dollars in taxpayer cash -- to play a role in a US presidential election. The many unresolved storylines and loose ends of this divisive episode will ensure that the political significance of his off-the-books diplomatic scheme in Kiev may only become more corrosive with time.
Thanks to the estranged political realities of the age, Trump is likely to interpret his latest escape, in a business and political career that has often flirted with disaster, as an inducement to broaden his crusade to expand his personal power and shake off remaining constitutional guard rails.
Still, the side effects of the showdown will reverberate for years and subsequent political eras. It will claim short-term victims — maybe even including the President or those who pursued him with elections only nine months away. But the dramatic events at the turn of 2019 and 2020 could also change how future generations understand presidential power and the process of purging its abuse by the use of impeachment itself.
Unknown consequences for November
Most immediately, the unsuccessful effort to oust Trump will help shape November's election that may partially be framed around whether Republicans pay a price for saving him or Democrats get a backlash for impeaching him.
Democrats hope that months focusing on apparent abuses of power by Trump will have soured crucial swing-state suburban voters irrevocably against him. But they'll worry they electrified Trump's base.
Republicans may prevent further damage to the President by preventing the calling of witnesses with potentially incriminating evidence such as former national security adviser John Bolton in a closely watched vote Friday. Some GOP members have told their leaders that they just want to get the trial over with -- since even its two weeks on the Senate floor have damaged their reelection prospects, CNN reported.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a retiring Tennessee Republican, all but assured no witnesses would be called during the trial when he announced late Thursday night that he would vote against a motion to call them. Alexander was seen as the most likely potential fourth Republican to vote in favor of hearing witnesses. His decision appears to end Democratic hopes of hearing from Bolton under oath despite a willingness from GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney to hear from witnesses.
With this in mind, it's possible Democrats benefit politically from the chance to lambast what happened in the Senate over the last two weeks as a mockery of a fair trial. Still, they would have loved to have had Bolton on the record to further color a dark picture of Trump's behavior.
Republicans will take a risk by blocking witnesses. They elected to perpetrate what Democrats will find easy to portray as a cover up by suppressing a chance to hear Bolton — a witness with information about the core accusation in the impeachment case — from telling his story.
"You cannot be acquitted if you don't have a trial, and you don't have a trial if you don't have witnesses and documentation," Pelosi said on Thursday, already excavating a seam of post-impeachment politics.
When the former national security adviser's information -- contained in the manuscript of a book first reported by the New York Times -- eventually comes out, GOP lawmakers must hope that it does not leave them badly exposed. As it is, history may remember the 2020 GOP as making a choice between power and political short-termism and shielding the Constitution and accepted codes of presidential behavior.
But in the absence of large numbers of GOP senators willing to fall on their swords in an altruistic rebuke of Trump's behavior, the dynamics of their party in the Trump era left them little choice.
The experience of impeachment will certainly tighten the bond between Trump and supporters who have just watched their champion once again defy the efforts of a Washington establishment to rein him in.
Trump's capacity to browbeat GOP senators into supporting him, even if some harbor doubts about his behavior reflects his greatest political success — the transformation of the Republican Party in his own fact-denying image.
Impeachment saga exposes national divide
The trial is a reminder of the gaping political disconnect down the middle of the nation. While Democrats and members of the Washington media and political establishments express horror at this presidency's slash and burn approach to the Constitution, many Trump supporters don't care.
Only 8% percent of Republican respondents believed Trump should be removed from office in a CNN poll conducted earlier this month, compared to 89% of Democrats.
Such figures are the payoff for Trump's relentless effort to reward his political base on issues like immigration, foreign policy and conservative judges, his clever use of cultural issues like gun control and abortion and his refusal to moderate the outsider, outlandish behavior that got him elected.
It is to those committed Trump voters to whom Republican senators must return every weekend. This is one reason why a senator like Cory Gardner from Colorado — endangered in a state trending away from Trump -- still cannot extricate himself from the President and his fervent base voters sufficiently to vote to hear new witnesses like Bolton.
In this context comments by Republicans that seem to jar with the facts and the weight of evidence in the trial can actually be explained.
"I think for most Americans they want us to move on to something that actually matters for them," one of Trump's top allies in the House, Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, said on Thursday for example, perhaps thinking of the large majority of conservatives in his district.
The hyper-political nature of the aftermath of the impeachment fight shone through the Senate trial on Thursday when one of the President's attorneys took time out to praise the President's three years in office -- seemingly that his approval rating justified any extremes of behavior.
"We, the American people, are happier," said Eric Herschmann -- trying to put some flesh on the bones of a controversial case laid out by his colleague Alan Dershowitz that a President acting in the belief that his reelection in the nation's interest could not by definition carry out an impeachable act.
"And yet the House managers tell you that the President needs to be removed because he's an immediate threat to our country," Herschmann said.
Adopting Trump's campaign trail mantra, Herschmann touted a strong economy, the killing of terrorists and slowed border crossings.
"If all that is solely — solely, in their words — for his personal and political gain and not in the best interests of the American people, then I say, God bless him. Keep doing it," Herschmann said.
Constitutional shockwaves
Longer term, the end of Trump's trial will mark a profound political moment.
The President's defense team — beset by inconvenient facts about Trump's pressure on Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden and other Democrats — resorted to a staggeringly broad concept of presidential power for his actions.
That gave Republican senators a hook to argue that what Democrats charged as abuse of power and obstruction of Congress was in fact perfectly permissible behavior. But it lays down a blueprint for vastly enhanced inferred powers of the presidency for Trump and his successors.
It doesn't follow that all presidents will now seek to force vulnerable overseas powers to come up with political payoffs. But it could convince unscrupulous future occupants of the Oval Office to reason they might get away with it. Foreign adversaries keen to discredit US democracy could have a field day.
The implied expansion of presidential power that will be left in this impeachment saga's wake seems to be turning back the clock to before the time of Richard Nixon's ouster in the Watergate scandal. After that original "long, national nightmare" Congress sought to recover powers from White House that had been abused by the 37th President. But gradually, the presidency has adopted a more imperial mode starting with the Reagan administration through George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But none of those presidents -- who were sometimes criticized for overreaching executive authority on issues like union policy, anti-terrorism measures and immigration -- made the kind of audacious power grabs that have characterized Trump's administration and for which he has now been absolved.
Lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned on Thursday that the constraining of the presidency in the years after Watergate had now been reversed -- to dangerous effect.
"We are right back to where we were a half century ago," Schiff said. "And I would argue we may be in a worse place."
"That argument, if the President says that it can't be illegal, failed," he continued. "And Richard Nixon was forced to resign. But that argument may succeed here now. That means we're not back to where we are, we are worse off than where we are. That is the normalization of lawlessness."
Global emergency
UN agency declares global emergency over virus from China
Maria Cheng and Jamey Keaten
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak sparked by a new virus in China that has spread to more than a dozen countries as a global emergency Thursday after the number of cases spiked more than tenfold in a week.
The U.N. health agency defines an international emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.
China first informed WHO about cases of the new virus in late December. To date, China has reported more than 7,800 cases including 170 deaths. Eighteen other countries have since reported cases, as scientists race to understand how exactly the virus is spreading and how severe it is.
Experts say there is significant evidence the virus is spreading among people in China and have noted with concern instances in other countries — including the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea and Vietnam — where there have also been isolated cases of human-to-human transmission.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted the worrisome spread of the virus between people outside China.
“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries," he said. “Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it."
“This declaration is not a vote of non-confidence in China," he said. “On the contrary, WHO continues to have the confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak."
A declaration of a global emergency typically brings greater money and resources, but may also prompt nervous governments to restrict travel and trade to affected countries. The announcement also imposes more disease reporting requirements on countries.
In the wake of numerous airlines cancelling flights to China and businesses including Starbucks and McDonald's temporarily closing hundreds of shops, Tedros said WHO was not recommending limiting travel or trade to China.
“There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade,” he said. He added that Chinese President Xi Jinping had committed to help stop the spread of the virus beyond its borders.
“During my discussion with the president and other officials, they're willing to support countries with weaker health systems with whatever is possible,” Tedros said.
On Thursday, France confirmed that a doctor who was in contact with a patient with the new virus later became infected himself. The doctor is now being treated in an isolated room at a Paris hospital. Outbreak specialists worry that the spread of new viruses from patients to health workers can signal the virus is becoming adapted to human transmission.
China raised the death toll to 170 on Thursday and more countries reported infections, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China's worst-hit region returned home to medical tests and even isolation.
Russia announced it was closing its 2,600-mile border with China, joining Mongolia and North Korea in barring crossings to guard against a new viral outbreak. It had been de facto closed because of the Lunar New Year holiday, but Russian authorities said the closure would be extended until March 1.
Meanwhile, the United States and South Korea confirmed their first cases of person-to-person spread of the virus. The man in the U.S. is married to a 60-year-old Chicago woman who got sick from the virus after she returned from a trip to Wuhan, the Chinese city that is the epicenter of the outbreak.
The case in South Korea was a 56-year-old man who had contact with a patient who was diagnosed with the new virus earlier.
Although scientists expect to see limited transmission of the virus between people with close contact, like within families, the instances of spread to people who may have had less exposure to the virus in Japan and Germany is worrying.
In Japan, a man in his 60s caught the virus after working as a bus driver for two tour groups from Wuhan. In Germany, a man in his 30s was sickened after a Chinese colleague from Shanghai, whose parents had recently visited from Wuhan, came to his office for a business meeting. Four other workers later became infected. The woman had shown no symptoms of the virus until her flight back to China.
“That’s the kind of transmission chain that we don’t want to see,” said Marion Koopmans, an infectious diseases specialist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and a member of WHO’s emergency committee.
Koopmans said more information was needed about how the virus was spread in these instances and whether it meant the virus was more infectious than previously thought or if there was something unusual in those circumstances.
Mark Harris, a professor of virology at Leeds University, said it appears that the spread of the virus among people is probably easier than initially presumed.
“If transmission between humans was difficult, then the numbers would have plateaued,” he said. Harris said the limited amount of virus spread beyond China suggested the outbreak could still be contained, but that if people are spreading the disease before they show symptoms — as some Chinese politicians and researchers have suggested — that could compromise control efforts.
The new virus has now infected more people in China than were sickened there during the 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, a cousin of the new virus. Both are from the coronavirus family, which also includes those that can cause the common cold.
The latest figures for mainland China show an increase of 38 deaths and 1,737 cases for a total of 7,736 confirmed cases. Of the new deaths, 37 were in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, and one was in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Outside China, there are 82 infections in 18 countries, according to WHO.
China extended its Lunar New Year holiday to Sunday to try to keep people home, but the wave of returning travelers could potentially cause the virus to spread further.
China has been largely praised for a swift and effective response to the outbreak, although questions have been raised about the police suppression of what were early on considered mere rumors — a reflection of the one-party Communist state's determination to maintain a monopoly on information in spite of smart phones and social media.
That stands in stark contrast to the initial response to SARS, when medical reports were hidden as state secrets. The delayed response was blamed for allowing the disease to spread worldwide, killing around 800 people.
Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust, welcomed WHO's emergency declaration.
“This virus has spread at unprecedented scale and speed, with cases passing between people in multiple countries across the world,” he said in a statement. “It is also a stark reminder of how vulnerable we are to epidemics of infectious diseases known and unknown.”
Maria Cheng and Jamey Keaten
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak sparked by a new virus in China that has spread to more than a dozen countries as a global emergency Thursday after the number of cases spiked more than tenfold in a week.
The U.N. health agency defines an international emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.
China first informed WHO about cases of the new virus in late December. To date, China has reported more than 7,800 cases including 170 deaths. Eighteen other countries have since reported cases, as scientists race to understand how exactly the virus is spreading and how severe it is.
Experts say there is significant evidence the virus is spreading among people in China and have noted with concern instances in other countries — including the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea and Vietnam — where there have also been isolated cases of human-to-human transmission.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted the worrisome spread of the virus between people outside China.
“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries," he said. “Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it."
“This declaration is not a vote of non-confidence in China," he said. “On the contrary, WHO continues to have the confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak."
A declaration of a global emergency typically brings greater money and resources, but may also prompt nervous governments to restrict travel and trade to affected countries. The announcement also imposes more disease reporting requirements on countries.
In the wake of numerous airlines cancelling flights to China and businesses including Starbucks and McDonald's temporarily closing hundreds of shops, Tedros said WHO was not recommending limiting travel or trade to China.
“There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade,” he said. He added that Chinese President Xi Jinping had committed to help stop the spread of the virus beyond its borders.
“During my discussion with the president and other officials, they're willing to support countries with weaker health systems with whatever is possible,” Tedros said.
On Thursday, France confirmed that a doctor who was in contact with a patient with the new virus later became infected himself. The doctor is now being treated in an isolated room at a Paris hospital. Outbreak specialists worry that the spread of new viruses from patients to health workers can signal the virus is becoming adapted to human transmission.
China raised the death toll to 170 on Thursday and more countries reported infections, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China's worst-hit region returned home to medical tests and even isolation.
Russia announced it was closing its 2,600-mile border with China, joining Mongolia and North Korea in barring crossings to guard against a new viral outbreak. It had been de facto closed because of the Lunar New Year holiday, but Russian authorities said the closure would be extended until March 1.
Meanwhile, the United States and South Korea confirmed their first cases of person-to-person spread of the virus. The man in the U.S. is married to a 60-year-old Chicago woman who got sick from the virus after she returned from a trip to Wuhan, the Chinese city that is the epicenter of the outbreak.
The case in South Korea was a 56-year-old man who had contact with a patient who was diagnosed with the new virus earlier.
Although scientists expect to see limited transmission of the virus between people with close contact, like within families, the instances of spread to people who may have had less exposure to the virus in Japan and Germany is worrying.
In Japan, a man in his 60s caught the virus after working as a bus driver for two tour groups from Wuhan. In Germany, a man in his 30s was sickened after a Chinese colleague from Shanghai, whose parents had recently visited from Wuhan, came to his office for a business meeting. Four other workers later became infected. The woman had shown no symptoms of the virus until her flight back to China.
“That’s the kind of transmission chain that we don’t want to see,” said Marion Koopmans, an infectious diseases specialist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and a member of WHO’s emergency committee.
Koopmans said more information was needed about how the virus was spread in these instances and whether it meant the virus was more infectious than previously thought or if there was something unusual in those circumstances.
Mark Harris, a professor of virology at Leeds University, said it appears that the spread of the virus among people is probably easier than initially presumed.
“If transmission between humans was difficult, then the numbers would have plateaued,” he said. Harris said the limited amount of virus spread beyond China suggested the outbreak could still be contained, but that if people are spreading the disease before they show symptoms — as some Chinese politicians and researchers have suggested — that could compromise control efforts.
The new virus has now infected more people in China than were sickened there during the 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, a cousin of the new virus. Both are from the coronavirus family, which also includes those that can cause the common cold.
The latest figures for mainland China show an increase of 38 deaths and 1,737 cases for a total of 7,736 confirmed cases. Of the new deaths, 37 were in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, and one was in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Outside China, there are 82 infections in 18 countries, according to WHO.
China extended its Lunar New Year holiday to Sunday to try to keep people home, but the wave of returning travelers could potentially cause the virus to spread further.
China has been largely praised for a swift and effective response to the outbreak, although questions have been raised about the police suppression of what were early on considered mere rumors — a reflection of the one-party Communist state's determination to maintain a monopoly on information in spite of smart phones and social media.
That stands in stark contrast to the initial response to SARS, when medical reports were hidden as state secrets. The delayed response was blamed for allowing the disease to spread worldwide, killing around 800 people.
Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust, welcomed WHO's emergency declaration.
“This virus has spread at unprecedented scale and speed, with cases passing between people in multiple countries across the world,” he said in a statement. “It is also a stark reminder of how vulnerable we are to epidemics of infectious diseases known and unknown.”
Rejects effort.
California, mired in a housing crisis, rejects effort to fix it
Conor Dougherty
For years, a determined state senator has pushed a singular vision: a bill challenging California’s devotion to both single-family housing and motor vehicles by stripping away limits on housing density near public transit.
Now the state will have to look for other ways to relieve its relentless housing crisis. On Thursday, one day before the deadline for action on the hotly debated bill, it failed to muster majority support in a Senate vote.
In the end, in a Legislature where consensus can be elusive despite a lopsided Democratic majority, the effort drew opposition from two key constituencies: suburbanites keen on preserving their lifestyle and less affluent city dwellers seeing a Trojan horse of gentrification.
The failure marks the third time since 2018 that state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco and one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for reforming local zoning laws, has tried and failed to push through a major bill meant to stimulate housing production.
“This is about Californians who are hurting right now, and we have an obligation to represent them,” Wiener said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The bill’s demise is the latest turn in a long and acrimonious struggle over how much of the answer to California’s most pressing issue lies in rewriting the state’s rules to encourage building.
Wiener’s measure, Senate Bill 50, would have overridden local zoning rules to allow high-density housing near transit lines, high-performing school districts and other amenity-laden areas. Supporters portrayed it as a big but necessary step toward reducing the state’s housing deficit — and helping to curb carbon emissions from long-distance driving — by fostering development in dense urban corridors. Opponents decried it as state overreach into local land-use rules.
There is broad agreement that the state’s extraordinary cost of living and escalating homeless problem is rooted in a shortage of housing in general and a dearth of lower-cost housing in particular. But many remain skeptical of remedies involving big structural changes.
“The only thing that folks agree on is that we need housing,” said state Sen. Andreas Borgeas, R-Fresno, who voted against the Wiener bill. “How we get there, everyone has a different theory.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who came into office a year ago with bold pronouncements about a “Marshall Plan for Housing,” said he supported Wiener’s efforts to increase density near transit, but never endorsed the bill outright.
Newsom campaigned on a promise to usher in reforms that would lead to the construction of 3.5 million housing units by 2025. That output would be more than quadruple the current rate, and the governor has started referring to it as a “stretch goal.”
California is not only well behind that pace, but the number of housing permits has actually turned downward — hovering around 100,000 units in 2019 — despite a strong economy and a median home value, $556,000, that is more than twice the national figure.
It is hard to overstate the threat posed to the state’s economy and prosperity. Housing costs are the primary reason that California’s poverty rate, 18.2%, is the highest of any state when adjusted for its cost of living, despite a thriving economy that has led to strong income growth and record-low unemployment.
The consequences are in plain sight. Cities are struggling to deliver basic services because teachers and firefighters cannot afford to live near their jobs. A surge of sidewalk tents and homeless camps has prompted city leaders to urge a state of emergency — and led lucrative business conferences to find other locations. Many Californians are moving to cheaper states, and homelessness routinely tops the polls of residents’ biggest concerns.
Liberal and conservative economists agree that the housing squeeze arises in part from an excess of process and local rules. Attempts to reform exclusionary zoning are central to the housing plans of most of the current Democratic presidential candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.
The rub is in how to rectify that — and which level of government should take the lead. The answer produced by S.B. 50 was to transfer power from cities to the state. Surprisingly, perhaps, this was an answer that many city officials, frustrated with their own intransigent development processes, endorsed.
In addition to supporters like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the payments startup Stripe and unions including the United Farm Workers, the bill gained the backing of several counties and dozens of elected officials, including Mayors London Breed of San Francisco and Adrian Fine of Palo Alto — both representing cities where development is notoriously expensive and difficult.
But their opponents were also a diverse coalition. Take, for instance, Livable California, a group that was formed largely to oppose Wiener’s bill and others like it. The organization was founded by homeowners in exclusive suburbs in places like Marin County and the San Francisco Peninsula, but also counts activists from Leimert Park, a middle-class and predominantly African-American neighborhood in South Los Angeles, among its members.
“Nothing in this bill is giving us more say; it’s taking away what little say we have now,” said Isaiah Madison, a 24-year-old graduate student in Leimert Park who recently joined Livable California’s board. “I’m not against development. I am just for communities navigating that development with a developer. We have community plans in South Los Angeles that we’ve been working on for 30 years that included a lot of input from a community that has historically been underrepresented in urban planning, and I think that’s important to protect.”
The road to S.B. 50 began in the previous legislative session, when Wiener introduced a similar measure that prompted a national conversation about exclusionary land use rules that lead to segregation by income and race. It also tested the degree to which even liberal California voters were ready to embrace the higher-density neighborhoods near job centers, an approach that various policymakers and researchers say is crucial to curbing emissions that cause climate change.
That bill was killed in its first committee vote in 2018. Wiener’s office has spent the intervening years modifying it to attract support. Among other things, provisions were added to protect tenants from displacement and to delay implementation for two years to win over cities that said the bill hampered passage of their own housing plans.
Though the governor’s office says it still wants a big housing bill like S.B. 50, Newsom has also declared that zoning reform is useless if cities do not build in line with state housing plans. To that end, he has pushed an initiative to build affordable housing on public land, pressured cities to accommodate more housing and actually issue permits for what it zones, and signed legislation penalizing cities that do not meet their state housing goals.
The governor also authorized a lawsuit against Huntington Beach, a city of 200,000 in Orange County, for failing to comply with state housing laws, and warned other cities that they faced similar action.
While Wiener has been pushing his zoning bills, the legislature has passed several less sweeping but potentially significant measures that could add up over time. One prevents cities from changing their zoning laws to reduce future housing, and another that makes it legal to build three units on single-family lots across the state, regardless of local rules.
Conor Dougherty
For years, a determined state senator has pushed a singular vision: a bill challenging California’s devotion to both single-family housing and motor vehicles by stripping away limits on housing density near public transit.
Now the state will have to look for other ways to relieve its relentless housing crisis. On Thursday, one day before the deadline for action on the hotly debated bill, it failed to muster majority support in a Senate vote.
In the end, in a Legislature where consensus can be elusive despite a lopsided Democratic majority, the effort drew opposition from two key constituencies: suburbanites keen on preserving their lifestyle and less affluent city dwellers seeing a Trojan horse of gentrification.
The failure marks the third time since 2018 that state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco and one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for reforming local zoning laws, has tried and failed to push through a major bill meant to stimulate housing production.
“This is about Californians who are hurting right now, and we have an obligation to represent them,” Wiener said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The bill’s demise is the latest turn in a long and acrimonious struggle over how much of the answer to California’s most pressing issue lies in rewriting the state’s rules to encourage building.
Wiener’s measure, Senate Bill 50, would have overridden local zoning rules to allow high-density housing near transit lines, high-performing school districts and other amenity-laden areas. Supporters portrayed it as a big but necessary step toward reducing the state’s housing deficit — and helping to curb carbon emissions from long-distance driving — by fostering development in dense urban corridors. Opponents decried it as state overreach into local land-use rules.
There is broad agreement that the state’s extraordinary cost of living and escalating homeless problem is rooted in a shortage of housing in general and a dearth of lower-cost housing in particular. But many remain skeptical of remedies involving big structural changes.
“The only thing that folks agree on is that we need housing,” said state Sen. Andreas Borgeas, R-Fresno, who voted against the Wiener bill. “How we get there, everyone has a different theory.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who came into office a year ago with bold pronouncements about a “Marshall Plan for Housing,” said he supported Wiener’s efforts to increase density near transit, but never endorsed the bill outright.
Newsom campaigned on a promise to usher in reforms that would lead to the construction of 3.5 million housing units by 2025. That output would be more than quadruple the current rate, and the governor has started referring to it as a “stretch goal.”
California is not only well behind that pace, but the number of housing permits has actually turned downward — hovering around 100,000 units in 2019 — despite a strong economy and a median home value, $556,000, that is more than twice the national figure.
It is hard to overstate the threat posed to the state’s economy and prosperity. Housing costs are the primary reason that California’s poverty rate, 18.2%, is the highest of any state when adjusted for its cost of living, despite a thriving economy that has led to strong income growth and record-low unemployment.
The consequences are in plain sight. Cities are struggling to deliver basic services because teachers and firefighters cannot afford to live near their jobs. A surge of sidewalk tents and homeless camps has prompted city leaders to urge a state of emergency — and led lucrative business conferences to find other locations. Many Californians are moving to cheaper states, and homelessness routinely tops the polls of residents’ biggest concerns.
Liberal and conservative economists agree that the housing squeeze arises in part from an excess of process and local rules. Attempts to reform exclusionary zoning are central to the housing plans of most of the current Democratic presidential candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.
The rub is in how to rectify that — and which level of government should take the lead. The answer produced by S.B. 50 was to transfer power from cities to the state. Surprisingly, perhaps, this was an answer that many city officials, frustrated with their own intransigent development processes, endorsed.
In addition to supporters like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the payments startup Stripe and unions including the United Farm Workers, the bill gained the backing of several counties and dozens of elected officials, including Mayors London Breed of San Francisco and Adrian Fine of Palo Alto — both representing cities where development is notoriously expensive and difficult.
But their opponents were also a diverse coalition. Take, for instance, Livable California, a group that was formed largely to oppose Wiener’s bill and others like it. The organization was founded by homeowners in exclusive suburbs in places like Marin County and the San Francisco Peninsula, but also counts activists from Leimert Park, a middle-class and predominantly African-American neighborhood in South Los Angeles, among its members.
“Nothing in this bill is giving us more say; it’s taking away what little say we have now,” said Isaiah Madison, a 24-year-old graduate student in Leimert Park who recently joined Livable California’s board. “I’m not against development. I am just for communities navigating that development with a developer. We have community plans in South Los Angeles that we’ve been working on for 30 years that included a lot of input from a community that has historically been underrepresented in urban planning, and I think that’s important to protect.”
The road to S.B. 50 began in the previous legislative session, when Wiener introduced a similar measure that prompted a national conversation about exclusionary land use rules that lead to segregation by income and race. It also tested the degree to which even liberal California voters were ready to embrace the higher-density neighborhoods near job centers, an approach that various policymakers and researchers say is crucial to curbing emissions that cause climate change.
That bill was killed in its first committee vote in 2018. Wiener’s office has spent the intervening years modifying it to attract support. Among other things, provisions were added to protect tenants from displacement and to delay implementation for two years to win over cities that said the bill hampered passage of their own housing plans.
Though the governor’s office says it still wants a big housing bill like S.B. 50, Newsom has also declared that zoning reform is useless if cities do not build in line with state housing plans. To that end, he has pushed an initiative to build affordable housing on public land, pressured cities to accommodate more housing and actually issue permits for what it zones, and signed legislation penalizing cities that do not meet their state housing goals.
The governor also authorized a lawsuit against Huntington Beach, a city of 200,000 in Orange County, for failing to comply with state housing laws, and warned other cities that they faced similar action.
While Wiener has been pushing his zoning bills, the legislature has passed several less sweeping but potentially significant measures that could add up over time. One prevents cities from changing their zoning laws to reduce future housing, and another that makes it legal to build three units on single-family lots across the state, regardless of local rules.
Trying to sabotage health coverage........
Trump pushes forward conservative transformation of Medicaid
A new block grant program, rejected by Congress just three years ago, will face swift resistance from Democrats and expected legal challenges.
By RACHEL ROUBEIN and DAN DIAMOND
The Trump administration took a big step forward Thursday to let states convert a portion of Medicaid funding into block grants, a long-sought conservative overhaul of the safety net health care program that Democrats will wield as a political weapon during the election.
The plan is the administration’s boldest step yet to curb Medicaid spending and shrink the program covering about 1 in 5 low-income Americans. But the move is inciting fierce opposition from Democrats who say it’s the latest evidence President Donald Trump is trying to sabotage health coverage.
CMS Administrator Seema Verma, who’s crafted the politically sensitive and closely guarded plan for over a year, on Thursday encouraged state Medicaid directors to request budgeted federal payments to cover poor adults who enrolled through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in recent years. States who voluntarily cover adult populations outside of the Obamacare expansion could also receive capped funding.
Some conservative states have expressed interest in block grants in recent years, but it's not clear how many will take up the Trump administration's new offer.
Capped Medicaid payments would represent a radical departure in how the 55-year-old program is financed. The federal government has long provided open-ended matching funds to states.
Verma is touting block grants as a way for states to take greater accountability for the health of their residents while better controlling spending on the program, which takes up a chunk of state budgets. Verma also sees the policy as a way to constrain Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to millions of low-income adults — a program that she argues has siphoned away resources for the most vulnerable populations covered by Medicaid.
"Adult Medicaid beneficiaries can hope for better health and all beneficiaries can expect a stronger, more sustainable program for years to come," Verma said Thursday morning.
The rollout of the policy represents a signature achievement for Verma, who pushed through the plan just weeks after a high-profile feud with HHS Secretary Alex Azar jeopardized both of their jobs. The two have tried to repair their working relationship after an intervention from senior White House officials, and Azar appeared at Thursday’s rollout in a show of support for Verma’s policy.
Still, Medicaid advocates are likely to challenge the policy in court. Democratic lawmakers have long cautioned the Trump administration against advancing the policy, contending the health department doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally cap program spending. In a letter to Verma this week, more than 30 House Democrats warned the move “defies Congress” and threatens care for some of the country’s most vulnerable people.
Democrats are portraying the new block grant policy as a cut to Americans’ health care and tied it to Trump’s efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act. During the failed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare in 2017, Congress rejected a similar block grant proposal after analysts found it would result in millions of people losing coverage.
"Even after people across the country spoke out and pressed Congress to reject President Trump’s plan to gut Medicaid with his Trumpcare bill, he’s still charging forward with harmful policies that will hurt the many families who rely on Medicaid," said Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee.
The health care law — and in particular its Medicaid expansion — remains popular after the failed effort to replace it during Trump's first year in office. Nearly three-quarters of states have expanded Medicaid since 2014, and support for the program has boosted Democratic candidates in conservative strongholds.
On Wednesday, one day before the block grant rollout, Verma sought to rebut claims that the administration is undermining Obamacare — even as Trump supports a lawsuit that could kill the entire health care law.
“The tired canard that the Trump Administration is sabotaging the ACA rings hollow,” Verma said. “Rather, we are keeping what works and fixing what’s broken.”
Block grants have been a regular feature in Republican health plans dating back to the 1980s. Republicans say that states can better manage the programs on a defined budget and fewer rules set by Washington. However, Medicaid advocates say a block grant would limit states’ ability to respond to economic downturns and expensive new drugs, forcing them to trim their programs.
The administration said states can pursue block grants under the health department’s authority to waive Medicaid requirements to test new payment and health care delivery ideas. Critics argue, however, that the administration can’t legally cap Medicaid spending without permission from Congress.
Sensitive to the negative connotations surrounding block grants, the Trump administration is branding the policy “Healthy Adult Opportunity.” Officials are emphasizing that states receiving lump-sum payments will face stricter oversight to ensure patients aren’t getting sicker or losing access to health care providers. Traditional populations covered by the program — like children, elderly adults and people with disabilities — would not be eligible for capped payments.
State Medicaid programs would also have new ability to limit health benefits and drugs. They would also be allowed to set premiums and cost-sharing, but patients can't be required to pay more than 5 percent of their household income on out-of-pocket costs.
Some states have been frustrated that Medicaid programs, which must cover every FDA-approved drug, have had limited tools for constraining drug costs. Under the new guidance, state Medicaid programs could establish a list of covered drugs known as a formulary.
States could choose to receive lump-sum funding or receive funding based on the number of enrollees.
Democratic states that expanded Medicaid are unlikely to take up Trump’s offer, but it may draw some interest from conservative states.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, whose state hasn’t expanded Medicaid, appeared alongside Verma to announce he would apply for a new waiver, calling the new policy a "game changer." Stitt for months has been agitating for a block grant as an alternative to a Medicaid expansion referendum expected on the Oklahoma ballot this fall.
Mike Dunleavy, Alaska’s Republican governor, has also expressed interest in a block grant. Tennessee, which hasn't expanded Medicaid, last fall became the first state to formally request a block grant for its program. Verma said that the Tennessee request is broader than the scope of the new guidance.
Litigation could still halt the new policy, potentially leaving another one of Verma’s Medicaid initiatives tied up in courts after a federal judge blocked new work rules. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is weighing the Trump administration’s request to revive the rules requiring some Medicaid enrollees to work, volunteer or attend school as a condition of coverage.
Groups like the National Health Law Program, which sued over work requirements, said they'll closely review the block grant plan. Its legal team will be “carefully assessing the enforcement and litigation options" said Leonardo Cuello, the group's health policy director.
A new block grant program, rejected by Congress just three years ago, will face swift resistance from Democrats and expected legal challenges.
By RACHEL ROUBEIN and DAN DIAMOND
The Trump administration took a big step forward Thursday to let states convert a portion of Medicaid funding into block grants, a long-sought conservative overhaul of the safety net health care program that Democrats will wield as a political weapon during the election.
The plan is the administration’s boldest step yet to curb Medicaid spending and shrink the program covering about 1 in 5 low-income Americans. But the move is inciting fierce opposition from Democrats who say it’s the latest evidence President Donald Trump is trying to sabotage health coverage.
CMS Administrator Seema Verma, who’s crafted the politically sensitive and closely guarded plan for over a year, on Thursday encouraged state Medicaid directors to request budgeted federal payments to cover poor adults who enrolled through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in recent years. States who voluntarily cover adult populations outside of the Obamacare expansion could also receive capped funding.
Some conservative states have expressed interest in block grants in recent years, but it's not clear how many will take up the Trump administration's new offer.
Capped Medicaid payments would represent a radical departure in how the 55-year-old program is financed. The federal government has long provided open-ended matching funds to states.
Verma is touting block grants as a way for states to take greater accountability for the health of their residents while better controlling spending on the program, which takes up a chunk of state budgets. Verma also sees the policy as a way to constrain Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to millions of low-income adults — a program that she argues has siphoned away resources for the most vulnerable populations covered by Medicaid.
"Adult Medicaid beneficiaries can hope for better health and all beneficiaries can expect a stronger, more sustainable program for years to come," Verma said Thursday morning.
The rollout of the policy represents a signature achievement for Verma, who pushed through the plan just weeks after a high-profile feud with HHS Secretary Alex Azar jeopardized both of their jobs. The two have tried to repair their working relationship after an intervention from senior White House officials, and Azar appeared at Thursday’s rollout in a show of support for Verma’s policy.
Still, Medicaid advocates are likely to challenge the policy in court. Democratic lawmakers have long cautioned the Trump administration against advancing the policy, contending the health department doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally cap program spending. In a letter to Verma this week, more than 30 House Democrats warned the move “defies Congress” and threatens care for some of the country’s most vulnerable people.
Democrats are portraying the new block grant policy as a cut to Americans’ health care and tied it to Trump’s efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act. During the failed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare in 2017, Congress rejected a similar block grant proposal after analysts found it would result in millions of people losing coverage.
"Even after people across the country spoke out and pressed Congress to reject President Trump’s plan to gut Medicaid with his Trumpcare bill, he’s still charging forward with harmful policies that will hurt the many families who rely on Medicaid," said Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee.
The health care law — and in particular its Medicaid expansion — remains popular after the failed effort to replace it during Trump's first year in office. Nearly three-quarters of states have expanded Medicaid since 2014, and support for the program has boosted Democratic candidates in conservative strongholds.
On Wednesday, one day before the block grant rollout, Verma sought to rebut claims that the administration is undermining Obamacare — even as Trump supports a lawsuit that could kill the entire health care law.
“The tired canard that the Trump Administration is sabotaging the ACA rings hollow,” Verma said. “Rather, we are keeping what works and fixing what’s broken.”
Block grants have been a regular feature in Republican health plans dating back to the 1980s. Republicans say that states can better manage the programs on a defined budget and fewer rules set by Washington. However, Medicaid advocates say a block grant would limit states’ ability to respond to economic downturns and expensive new drugs, forcing them to trim their programs.
The administration said states can pursue block grants under the health department’s authority to waive Medicaid requirements to test new payment and health care delivery ideas. Critics argue, however, that the administration can’t legally cap Medicaid spending without permission from Congress.
Sensitive to the negative connotations surrounding block grants, the Trump administration is branding the policy “Healthy Adult Opportunity.” Officials are emphasizing that states receiving lump-sum payments will face stricter oversight to ensure patients aren’t getting sicker or losing access to health care providers. Traditional populations covered by the program — like children, elderly adults and people with disabilities — would not be eligible for capped payments.
State Medicaid programs would also have new ability to limit health benefits and drugs. They would also be allowed to set premiums and cost-sharing, but patients can't be required to pay more than 5 percent of their household income on out-of-pocket costs.
Some states have been frustrated that Medicaid programs, which must cover every FDA-approved drug, have had limited tools for constraining drug costs. Under the new guidance, state Medicaid programs could establish a list of covered drugs known as a formulary.
States could choose to receive lump-sum funding or receive funding based on the number of enrollees.
Democratic states that expanded Medicaid are unlikely to take up Trump’s offer, but it may draw some interest from conservative states.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, whose state hasn’t expanded Medicaid, appeared alongside Verma to announce he would apply for a new waiver, calling the new policy a "game changer." Stitt for months has been agitating for a block grant as an alternative to a Medicaid expansion referendum expected on the Oklahoma ballot this fall.
Mike Dunleavy, Alaska’s Republican governor, has also expressed interest in a block grant. Tennessee, which hasn't expanded Medicaid, last fall became the first state to formally request a block grant for its program. Verma said that the Tennessee request is broader than the scope of the new guidance.
Litigation could still halt the new policy, potentially leaving another one of Verma’s Medicaid initiatives tied up in courts after a federal judge blocked new work rules. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is weighing the Trump administration’s request to revive the rules requiring some Medicaid enrollees to work, volunteer or attend school as a condition of coverage.
Groups like the National Health Law Program, which sued over work requirements, said they'll closely review the block grant plan. Its legal team will be “carefully assessing the enforcement and litigation options" said Leonardo Cuello, the group's health policy director.
Gutless stooges.
At-risk Republicans push for swift end to Senate trial
“I have two priorities, one is get the president reelected and keep the majority in the Senate,” said Sen. David Perdue.
By MARIANNE LEVINE
The pressure to end the debate in the president’s impeachment trial is coming from a closely watched contingent: Senate Republicans up for reelection in battleground states.
While Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has said she favors hearing more evidence and witnesses — which would lengthen the trial — the majority of Republican senators up in 2020 are urging the Senate to wrap it up.
“We’ve had 17 witnesses, from the House,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said in an interview. “We do hear from people back home, but they’re like, ‘get this over with.’ That’s what I’m hearing, is that we really need to wrap this up and get the American people's business done.”
“I have two priorities, one is get the president reelected and keep the majority in the Senate,” added Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).
Meanwhile, two GOP senators from purple states, Cory Gardner of Colorado, who is up for reelection, and Martha McSally of Arizona, who was appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey in December 2018 and is running to keep the seat in a special election in November, released statements Wednesday saying it’s time to move on. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) also reiterated this week that he has “no problem, whatsoever, with voting ‘no’ on witnesses.”
The Senate is expected to hold a contentious vote on witnesses Friday.
The senators’ comments illustrate they’re not caving to pressure from Democrats who argue that public opinion polling supports their calls for witnesses. Their resistance to bringing in additional witnesses and documents highlight they'd rather spend their time talking about issues other than the present's impeachment trial. A vote for witnesses is also viewed as a break with Trump and could alienate his base.
Senate Democrats have made a concerted effort to push for witnesses during the impeachment trial, including Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. The New York Times reported Sunday that Bolton revealed in his upcoming book that Trump told him directly that he withheld almost $400 million in aid to Ukraine to pressure the country to help investigate his political rivals. But so far only three Republicans — Collins, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have suggested that they’re open to hearing from Bolton. Only Collins is up for reelection this year.
Romney said Wednesday he’s made his views clear and that his colleagues can make their own decisions.
Most Republicans argue, however, that they should not have to consider evidence that the House did not have when it impeached Trump in December.
“They’re all in a no-win position,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) “Vote against the president on witnesses, they are going to lose a whole bunch of support amongst the base. That’s real. So I think some of them are probably choosing the lesser of two evils. They get hurt politically no matter what they choose.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) declined to speculate at a recent news conference whether a vote against witnesses would hurt Republicans facing reelection in 2020, saying only: “We’re looking at the truth, and we’re gonna let the chips fall where they may.”
Of the Republicans up in 2020, only Collins has indicated since the start of the impeachment trial that she’d likely want to hear from witnesses, as she did during the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial.
“I’ve said from the beginning that I felt that it was likely that we would need to call a couple of witnesses, treating each side fairly in order to clarify some ambiguities, answer some questions,” she said Wednesday. “And that remains my position.”
During a private lunch this week, some Senate Republicans up in 2020 warned that prolonging the trial would only tie them up and keep them from working on other issues, according to an attendee. And Gardner said during another closed-door meeting that Democrats were politicizing the trial, and cautioned “the longer this goes on and [is] used as a political tool, the more it divided the country,” according to his spokesperson.
Democrats, in their push for witnesses, have repeatedly argued the public is on their side. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 75 percent of registered voters want the Senate to allow witnesses in the impeachment trial. That includes half of Republican voters. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, however, points to newly released data from Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina, that found 62 percent of voters want Congress to focus on issues like health care or trade, instead of impeachment.
Senate Republicans are pushing back on the idea that a vote against witnesses would hurt senators up for reelection this year, noting that even if Bolton testified it wouldn’t change the outcome of the trial.
“Now that we’ve seen the case, most of the people running see that the case is shoddy, it’s circumstantial and that it would beg the question why others in the conference are maybe struggling with what to do,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said.
“I have two priorities, one is get the president reelected and keep the majority in the Senate,” said Sen. David Perdue.
By MARIANNE LEVINE
The pressure to end the debate in the president’s impeachment trial is coming from a closely watched contingent: Senate Republicans up for reelection in battleground states.
While Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has said she favors hearing more evidence and witnesses — which would lengthen the trial — the majority of Republican senators up in 2020 are urging the Senate to wrap it up.
“We’ve had 17 witnesses, from the House,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said in an interview. “We do hear from people back home, but they’re like, ‘get this over with.’ That’s what I’m hearing, is that we really need to wrap this up and get the American people's business done.”
“I have two priorities, one is get the president reelected and keep the majority in the Senate,” added Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).
Meanwhile, two GOP senators from purple states, Cory Gardner of Colorado, who is up for reelection, and Martha McSally of Arizona, who was appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey in December 2018 and is running to keep the seat in a special election in November, released statements Wednesday saying it’s time to move on. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) also reiterated this week that he has “no problem, whatsoever, with voting ‘no’ on witnesses.”
The Senate is expected to hold a contentious vote on witnesses Friday.
The senators’ comments illustrate they’re not caving to pressure from Democrats who argue that public opinion polling supports their calls for witnesses. Their resistance to bringing in additional witnesses and documents highlight they'd rather spend their time talking about issues other than the present's impeachment trial. A vote for witnesses is also viewed as a break with Trump and could alienate his base.
Senate Democrats have made a concerted effort to push for witnesses during the impeachment trial, including Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. The New York Times reported Sunday that Bolton revealed in his upcoming book that Trump told him directly that he withheld almost $400 million in aid to Ukraine to pressure the country to help investigate his political rivals. But so far only three Republicans — Collins, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have suggested that they’re open to hearing from Bolton. Only Collins is up for reelection this year.
Romney said Wednesday he’s made his views clear and that his colleagues can make their own decisions.
Most Republicans argue, however, that they should not have to consider evidence that the House did not have when it impeached Trump in December.
“They’re all in a no-win position,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) “Vote against the president on witnesses, they are going to lose a whole bunch of support amongst the base. That’s real. So I think some of them are probably choosing the lesser of two evils. They get hurt politically no matter what they choose.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) declined to speculate at a recent news conference whether a vote against witnesses would hurt Republicans facing reelection in 2020, saying only: “We’re looking at the truth, and we’re gonna let the chips fall where they may.”
Of the Republicans up in 2020, only Collins has indicated since the start of the impeachment trial that she’d likely want to hear from witnesses, as she did during the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial.
“I’ve said from the beginning that I felt that it was likely that we would need to call a couple of witnesses, treating each side fairly in order to clarify some ambiguities, answer some questions,” she said Wednesday. “And that remains my position.”
During a private lunch this week, some Senate Republicans up in 2020 warned that prolonging the trial would only tie them up and keep them from working on other issues, according to an attendee. And Gardner said during another closed-door meeting that Democrats were politicizing the trial, and cautioned “the longer this goes on and [is] used as a political tool, the more it divided the country,” according to his spokesperson.
Democrats, in their push for witnesses, have repeatedly argued the public is on their side. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 75 percent of registered voters want the Senate to allow witnesses in the impeachment trial. That includes half of Republican voters. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, however, points to newly released data from Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina, that found 62 percent of voters want Congress to focus on issues like health care or trade, instead of impeachment.
Senate Republicans are pushing back on the idea that a vote against witnesses would hurt senators up for reelection this year, noting that even if Bolton testified it wouldn’t change the outcome of the trial.
“Now that we’ve seen the case, most of the people running see that the case is shoddy, it’s circumstantial and that it would beg the question why others in the conference are maybe struggling with what to do,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said.
Will not be acquitted?
Democrats seek to undermine Trump acquittal
“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that,” Pelosi says.
By HEATHER CAYGLE and SARAH FERRIS
President Donald Trump hasn’t been acquitted in the Senate trial yet, but Democratic leaders are already testing out their post-impeachment spin.
"He will not be acquitted," Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared to reporters during her weekly press conference on Thursday.
“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) added. “Does the president know right from wrong? I don't think so."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) delivered a similar refrain at his press conference across the Capitol on Thursday.
A trial “without the evidence, without witnesses and documents would render the president’s acquittal meaningless,” Schumer said as the Senate prepares to begin what could be its second-to-last day of proceedings.
The Senate’s vote to acquit Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, he argued, would have a “giant asterisk next to it, because the trial was so rigged in his favor.”
The argument — that Trump cannot be truly exonerated without a fair trial in the Senate — is clearly an attempt to undermine the White House’s victory lap after the president is acquitted, possibly as soon as Friday.
Schumer has been warning for weeks about the consequences of Republicans voting to acquit Trump through a "sham trial" without additional witnesses. But the closer the Senate gets to that possibility, the more Democrats have adopted that message and the sharper it gets.
While Democrats are still fighting to call more witnesses -- an argument a small number of Republicans are open to -- it’s widely expected by both sides that Trump will be acquitted given that 67 senators would have to vote to convict the president.
The forceful comments by Pelosi and Schumer on Thursday represent a clearer, sharper version of what Democrats have been arguing all week.
“Any conclusion that doesn’t allow witnesses and documents is going to make the president’s acquittal — if it should happen — worth very, very little. Zero,” Schumer told a swarm of reporters on Wednesday after the Senate’s first day of its question-and-answer session.
“You can’t convince the American people it was an acquittal if you don’t have witnesses and documents,” he said.
Democrats are already seizing on what they see as an attempt by Republicans to speed through a trial — that includes the increasing likelihood that a vote for acquittal could happen in the dead of night Friday after senators vote on whether to call additional witnesses.
For weeks, Democrats have been demanding Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agree to allow additional witnesses and documents in the trial. The Democrats’ push gained new life earlier this week after claims surfaced from former national security adviser John Bolton that Trump told him he would continue withholding almost $400 million in aid until Ukraine helped investigate the president’s Democratic rivals.
The former national security adviser’s claims, detailed in an unpublished manuscript reported by the New York Times, rocked the Capitol on Monday as Republicans struggled to respond to questions about why Bolton shouldn’t testify.
The news also intensified pressure on the handful of moderate Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who are being closely watched as they debate whether to side with Democrats and support a proposal to allow more witnesses to be called.
But the likelihood of Bolton or other witnesses being summoned to the Capitol appeared to fade over the next four days. By Thursday, GOP leaders signaled confidence they could defeat Democratic procedural motions on witnesses and other evidence.
Asked Thursday morning if he feels confident about the witness vote, McConnell told reporters: “I always do.”
Some of the most closely-watched moderate Republicans — Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — appeared Wednesday dissatisfied, at times, by the answers to their questions on the floor.
“We have people who are very comfortable with their positions, they think they've heard enough and are ready to move forward with a vote,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.).
“But we've still got some folks who are, like I said, assessing it and I think until this process is complete -- the question and answer sessions are through -- are probably going to keep their powder dry and that's fine."
Senators began another marathon round of questioning at 1 p.m. on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Schumer and other top Democrats have stepped up their attacks on White House lawyers for withholding key facts and refusing to fully answer questions about Trump’s conduct and motivations — another aspect of the trial they argue has been unfair to Democrats.
Schumer pointed to one question, in particular, when the White House counsel was asked to name one witness or one document to which House managers have been allowed access.
“And Mr. Philbin filibustered because he had no answer,” Schumer said, referring to deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin.
“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that,” Pelosi says.
By HEATHER CAYGLE and SARAH FERRIS
President Donald Trump hasn’t been acquitted in the Senate trial yet, but Democratic leaders are already testing out their post-impeachment spin.
"He will not be acquitted," Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared to reporters during her weekly press conference on Thursday.
“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) added. “Does the president know right from wrong? I don't think so."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) delivered a similar refrain at his press conference across the Capitol on Thursday.
A trial “without the evidence, without witnesses and documents would render the president’s acquittal meaningless,” Schumer said as the Senate prepares to begin what could be its second-to-last day of proceedings.
The Senate’s vote to acquit Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, he argued, would have a “giant asterisk next to it, because the trial was so rigged in his favor.”
The argument — that Trump cannot be truly exonerated without a fair trial in the Senate — is clearly an attempt to undermine the White House’s victory lap after the president is acquitted, possibly as soon as Friday.
Schumer has been warning for weeks about the consequences of Republicans voting to acquit Trump through a "sham trial" without additional witnesses. But the closer the Senate gets to that possibility, the more Democrats have adopted that message and the sharper it gets.
While Democrats are still fighting to call more witnesses -- an argument a small number of Republicans are open to -- it’s widely expected by both sides that Trump will be acquitted given that 67 senators would have to vote to convict the president.
The forceful comments by Pelosi and Schumer on Thursday represent a clearer, sharper version of what Democrats have been arguing all week.
“Any conclusion that doesn’t allow witnesses and documents is going to make the president’s acquittal — if it should happen — worth very, very little. Zero,” Schumer told a swarm of reporters on Wednesday after the Senate’s first day of its question-and-answer session.
“You can’t convince the American people it was an acquittal if you don’t have witnesses and documents,” he said.
Democrats are already seizing on what they see as an attempt by Republicans to speed through a trial — that includes the increasing likelihood that a vote for acquittal could happen in the dead of night Friday after senators vote on whether to call additional witnesses.
For weeks, Democrats have been demanding Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agree to allow additional witnesses and documents in the trial. The Democrats’ push gained new life earlier this week after claims surfaced from former national security adviser John Bolton that Trump told him he would continue withholding almost $400 million in aid until Ukraine helped investigate the president’s Democratic rivals.
The former national security adviser’s claims, detailed in an unpublished manuscript reported by the New York Times, rocked the Capitol on Monday as Republicans struggled to respond to questions about why Bolton shouldn’t testify.
The news also intensified pressure on the handful of moderate Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who are being closely watched as they debate whether to side with Democrats and support a proposal to allow more witnesses to be called.
But the likelihood of Bolton or other witnesses being summoned to the Capitol appeared to fade over the next four days. By Thursday, GOP leaders signaled confidence they could defeat Democratic procedural motions on witnesses and other evidence.
Asked Thursday morning if he feels confident about the witness vote, McConnell told reporters: “I always do.”
Some of the most closely-watched moderate Republicans — Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — appeared Wednesday dissatisfied, at times, by the answers to their questions on the floor.
“We have people who are very comfortable with their positions, they think they've heard enough and are ready to move forward with a vote,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.).
“But we've still got some folks who are, like I said, assessing it and I think until this process is complete -- the question and answer sessions are through -- are probably going to keep their powder dry and that's fine."
Senators began another marathon round of questioning at 1 p.m. on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Schumer and other top Democrats have stepped up their attacks on White House lawyers for withholding key facts and refusing to fully answer questions about Trump’s conduct and motivations — another aspect of the trial they argue has been unfair to Democrats.
Schumer pointed to one question, in particular, when the White House counsel was asked to name one witness or one document to which House managers have been allowed access.
“And Mr. Philbin filibustered because he had no answer,” Schumer said, referring to deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin.
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