Tag: Nita Lowey

The Story: Last week, Nita Lowey announced she would not run for re-election next year. This puts in play the seat in the US House...

The Story: Nita Lowey (D - NY), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has announced she will not be running for re-election to Congress in...

Suddenly, the term “spying” was declared as categorically exclusive of any intelligence surveillance. He explained that he did not just get the conclusions of Robert Mueller but that the basic findings had been disclosed weeks earlier. It did not matter that Rosenstein described the questioning of the intentions of Barr or the necessity for redactions as “completely bizarre” and that, in his view, Barr has been “as forthcoming as he can.” The narrative has continued unabated, and billionaire Tom Steyer has even funded a national commercial repeating how ridiculous it is that Barr could have determined the conclusions of the special counsel report in just two days. Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked why the attorney general was evidently looking into the basis for the secret investigation into the 2016 campaign. Barr explained that he was concerned about any kind of spying, foreign or domestic, on our political process. Indeed, Democrats and the media have used the terms interchangeably, until another language change was spontaneously declared this week. “Wiretapping” was previously often used as a generality for surveillance. The media discussed whether Trump was guilty of collusion, despite there being no such crime in the federal code. Speech codes are now common and the meaning of terms is based on how language is received rather than intended. In the same way, it does not matter that what Barr meant was reasonable or that he immediately clarified “wiretapping” as “improper surveillance.” It was important to portray as an absurdity any suggestion of the Obama administration spying on a Republican campaign, even though two key officials were targeted during the campaign.

Congressional negotiators revealed Monday evening that they've reached "an agreement in principle" on border security funding that includes more than $1.3 billion for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. When asked if they had an agreement that President Trump would approve, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters: "We think so. We hope so." Sources tell Fox News the $1.3 billion can be used only for new construction that would cover approximately 55 miles of border territory in the Rio Grande Valley. The White House had requested $5.7 billion for the border wall and the administration had dangled the possibility that Trump would declare a national emergency and divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, but that move almost certainly would be challenged in Congress as well as in the courts. Talks nearly collapsed over the weekend after Democrats pushed to reduce funding for detention beds to curb what they've called unnecessarily harsh enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Shelby told reporters Monday night that the bed issue had been worked out, but declined to give details. With that in mind, sources tell Fox News the total number of beds could go as high as 52,000, though there is no technical limit on the amount. At a campaign-style rally Monday night in El Paso, Texas, Trump said he was told lawmakers were making progress in their bid to avert another shutdown. However, the president told his staff that he didn't want to hear about it and that it was important to speak "to my people from Texas" first.