Tag: Kamala Harris

What might these two black senators tell us about the direction of racial politics in the country? Both, in my view, point to a core redefining of the black presence in the Democratic Party. Whereas 41 percent of Americans describe themselves as "born again" or evangelical, 61 of blacks do. Thirty-three percent of Americans say they attend church once per week. But the movement of Democrats farther left, highlighted by the divisiveness of the Kavanaugh hearings, could be a watershed in racial politics. Booker and Harris are rooted more in Democratic Party progressivism than the traditional concerns of black Democrats. It was about carrying out the law based on facts rather than unsubstantiated claims by interested parties. It is this kind of perversion of justice, displacing facts with prejudice and claims, that has historically been used to persecute blacks -- particularly sexual assault claims leveled against black men. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, is exactly what they don't need. And more and more black Americans are beginning to understand this.

The “nightmare” was a Senate Ethics Committee investigation that found Mr Packwood had been sexually harassing subordinates since the 1960s. Republicans remain devoted to President Donald Trump, who has been recorded boasting about sexual assault and whom at least 19 women have accused of sexual misconduct. Since Mr Trump’s election, more than 42,000 have. Half the Democrats’ first-time House candidates this year are women, up from 27% in 2016 (and far higher than the Republican share of less than 20%). The 2016 gender gap of 24 points (women supported Hillary Clinton by 13; men went for Mr Trump by 11) was already the largest on record. Women favour Democrats by 21; men favour Republicans by 3. That is not entirely due to sexual harassment, of course. Mr Trump has loudly defended multiple men accused of sexual misconduct, including Mr Moore; Rob Porter, one of his aides accused of spousal abuse; and Bill O’Reilly, who left Fox News amid sexual-harassment claims. Mr Trump has defended Mr Kavanaugh and cast doubt on his accusers. Withdrawing Mr Kavanaugh would mean admitting that historical accusations of sexual assault can be disqualifying, which leads back to the president.

With the state of our politics right now, you’re probably more likely to think of words like liar, hypocrite or even criminal. Members of Congress on both sides have had major #MeToo reckonings in 2018. Politicians are politicians, and even the ones who seem most reliable will change their positions on any issue depending on where the wind blows. It was a rousing defense of conservative values and a non-endorsement of Trump that angered the Trump campaign and much of Cruz’s base. With Trump in office, the rest of the Republican delegation in Washington seems to have followed Cruz’s lead. But tariffs are—by definition—taxes on Americans. There is one Republican senator, however, who has been setting the example for how to handle Trump and how to be a faithful public servant. “Donald Trump became the first major party nominee in modern American history to not release his tax returns,” Sasse explained. The next bill would prevent members of Congress from trading stocks while in office. “Members of Congress are supposed to do what’s best for their constituents,” Sasse said, “not their 401K.” 5.

Image And now, the politics of age. And in the House, where the top three Democratic leaders are in hailing range of 80, there’s a certain, um, restlessness on the part of the young folks. Back in the day, student protesters yelled “Never trust anybody over 30!” The people who did the yelling are now in their 70s, and I dare say have a more expansive view. The current gap is much more polite. Yet over in the Senate, only one of the six members over 80 is a Democrat. Both are regarded as possible presidential contenders — the Democratic field may look rather advanced in years now, but once we get to 2019 we will have 10,000 candidates of every conceivable age. At the hearing, Booker demonstrated that it was possible to go too far in being fearsome when he made some allegedly confidential Kavanaugh records public and compared himself to Spartacus for his daring. Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader, is 78. She has been the top Democrat in the House for 16 years. Her two deputy leaders are 78 and 79, and the party is captive of a seniority system that would make a 52-year-old like Himes, with a mere nine years in the House, despair.

Bob Woodward’s new book and the anonymous op-ed by a senior official have merely confirmed, albeit in hair-raising new detail, the long obvious: Mr Trump is so blatantly unfit to be president that those who work for him ignore or thwart his orders. His ability to maintain his position could yet depend on the other individual in the spotlight: Brett Kavanaugh. That was by design. What we did learn, despite a process legal scholars have described as unprecedented in its “hurried and defective” nature, came largely thanks to disclosures by the Democratic committee member Cory Booker and a leak to media. It was in essence confirmatory rather than revelatory. It will put conservatives in firm and likely long-term control of the supreme court, endangering both voting and abortion rights, and incidentally putting it out of step with public opinion. And despite disingenuous attempts to blur his position on abortion law, Planned Parenthood said: “We already know how Brett Kavanaugh would rule on Roe v Wade, because the president told us so.” As a candidate, Mr Trump vowed to appoint supreme court justices who would overturn the landmark abortion ruling. And it is critical in maintaining his position now. The real issue is not individuals, but the rottenness of those backing them. We did not need the last week to tell us that Mr Kavanaugh is bad news on the supreme court and that Mr Trump is much more so in the White House.

Executives from Twitter and Facebook have been grilled by members of US Congress on everything from foreign propaganda campaigns to allegations of political bias on their platforms. Just five months after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced questioning by Congress, the company’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, trekked to Capitol Hill for hearings of her own, alongside Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Like Mr Zuckerberg’s hearing before them, Wednesday’s hearings provided little closure, but did reveal the depths of the frustration many politicians feel towards the tech titans. During the Senate sessions, several legislators said they planned to introduce legislation to rein in companies like Facebook and Twitter. Or, as Senator Mark Warner put it: “The era of the Wild West in social media is coming to an end.” The executives, meanwhile, openly admitted to making mistakes in the 2016 election, when the Department of Justice says Russian actors staged a widespread foreign influence campaign that went largely undetected by both Twitter and Facebook. Ms Sandberg said Facebook had been "too slow to spot this and too slow to act," while Mr Dorsey said his work on the issue was "not done – nor will it ever be". The only company that received more criticism than Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday was Google parent company Alphabet, which refused to send CEO Larry Page to the hearing. Senators like Kamala Harris couldn't resist taking pointed jabs at the "invisible witness" in the room. The House hearing was slightly more contentious, with Republican representatives grilling Mr Dorsey over alleged anti-conservative bias on the site. We do not have a responsibility, nor you a right, to amplify your tweets to audiences that don’t follow you."

Democrats disrupted the first hearing after the GOP pushed ahead with an "unprecedented" lack of transparency on the nominee's record. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About: MSNBC is the premier destination for in-depth analysis of daily headlines, insightful political commentary…

Democrats call on Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to adjourn a hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over unreleased documents concerning Kavanaugh's record.

Under heavy criticism, Trump ordered a stop to the family separations and a federal judge has sharply criticized the government's response in reuniting the families. Trump will try to retake the political initiative Monday by hosting the "heroes" of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, which arrests and deports people in the country illegally, and Customs and Border Protection, which is responsible for patrolling on the border. "Tragically, the brave men and women of ICE have recently been subjected to a nationwide campaign of smears, insults, and attacks by politicians shamelessly catering to the extreme elements of our society that desire lawlessness and anarchy," he wrote. Democrats have used Trump's harsh immigration crackdown — and the symbolism surrounding an agency despised by some on the left for workplace raids and widespread reports of sexual and physical abuse in ICE detention facilities — to build enthusiasm among core supporters and activists. The push to abolish ICE gained steam in June when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a Democratic primary in a New York House race over a party leader, making her an instant celebrity in the party's left flank. Since she had campaigned on the issue, the party's liberal base has pushed others to embrace it. Mary Small, policy director for Detention Watch Network, an immigration advocacy group in Washington, called Trump's focus on ICE "propaganda that's really intended to stoke people's fears" because of the public outcry to his immigration crackdown." So the president holding up these ICE agents as heroes -- it's a response to the fact that our stories are breaking through." Schlapp, whose wife, Mercedes, works in the White House communications office and will be moderating a panel at Monday's event, links Trump's embrace of ICE and border patrol agents to his other "law and order" rhetoric, including his criticism of National Football League players who have protested police brutality during the national anthem and Trump's embrace of the "Blue Lives Matter" movement. Trump also hosted a White House event in June with "American victims of illegal immigration."

(CNN)Political strategist Ace Smith said he thinks his client Sen. Kamala Harris would be "both a brilliant candidate" and "an amazing President," but whether or not she intends to run in 2020 is still unknown. Smith, whose firm worked with Harris on her state attorney general and US Senate campaigns, said the California Democrat has a "wonderful ability to connect and communicate with folks." "But she also has a depth of knowledge and experience actually doing things," he told David Axelrod on "The Axe Files," a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, citing her experience as California attorney general. However, the likelihood of her running for president "is known only to her." "I think everyone, just not her, is going to need to make a decision pretty quickly after the midterms," Smith said. Harris is considered a contender for the Democratic ticket in 2020, but has played coy about her plans. Asked outright in April if she would run, Harris dodged, saying she was focused on "pressing issues right now." In August 2017, she joked that she didn't "even know what (she's) having for dinner."