Tag: public

AirTalk’s weekly political roundtable recaps the major headlines you might’ve missed in politics news over the weekend and looks ahead to the week to come. Here are the headlines what we’re following this week: DOJ says Mueller report will be public by mid-April Trump’s response Trump, Schiff war of words Schiff asked to step down as House Intel Chair How media covered Muller report collusion allegations 2020 Democratic candidates Biden accused of inappropriate kiss Beto officially kicks off 2020 campaign Buttigeig says he raised $7 million in first quarter for 2020 bid Trump threatens to close U.S.-Mexico border Trump admin wants ACA repealed in full Latest on unrest in Venezuela, Russian involvement Guests: Lynn Vavreck, professor of political science at UCLA and author of several books, including “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Election & the Battle for the Meaning of America” (Princeton University Press, October 2018) ; she tweets @vavreck Sean T. Walsh, Republican political analyst and partner at Wilson Walsh Consulting in San Francisco; he is a former adviser to California Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and a former White House staffer for Presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush

Jeremy Corbyn will whip Labour MPs to support a Brexit referendum in the indicative votes – but could face a wave of resignations from frontbenchers determined not to back it. One shadow minister warned Labour would face “a very significant rebellion” if it tried to force MPs to back the motion, and another said: “If we whip for it, we won’t have a shadow cabinet by the end of the day.” The motion, tabled by Dame Margaret Beckett, suggests parliament should not ratify any Brexit deal “unless and until” it has been approved in a “confirmatory public vote”. Gardiner also suggested Labour was concerned that the motion could suggest the party would allow Theresa May’s deal to pass if it led to a referendum. “To put that up as the only alternative in a public vote and say we will let it go through looks as though you believe that, at the end of it, remain would be the result. “Our policy is clearly that we would support a public vote to stop no deal or to stop a bad deal, but not that we would allow a bad deal as long as the public had the opportunity to reject Brexit altogether.” He said Labour could not be portrayed as a party that wanted remain at any price. “The Labour party is not a remain party now. Beckett said she had been led to believe Labour would support plans for a confirmatory referendum; and the Guardian understands scores of MPs met in parliament later, to demand that the party whip for it. Read more McDonnell said Gardiner’s comments were “exactly in line with party policy” and that the decision would be made on whether to whip the Beckett motion after the Speaker, John Bercow, has selected the motions for debate. Asked whether he agreed with Gardiner that Labour was not a remain party, he said: “We had to accept in our manifesto respect for the referendum result. On the floor of the House of Commons there could be a coalition around that.” Corbyn’s spokesman later confirmed the party would whip for Beckett’s “confirmatory public vote” option – as well as the one put forward by Gareth Snell and Ken Clarke, calling for a customs union, and the one setting out Labour’s own Brexit policy.

Chris Wattie/Reuters OTTAWA — Canada’s top public servant, who was accused of improperly pressing the former attorney general to settle a corruption case involving a major corporation, resigned on Monday as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to put more than a month of political turmoil behind him. In parliamentary testimony, Jody Wilson-Raybould, who stepped down as justice minister and attorney general, had singled out Michael Wernick, the public servant, for making what she called “veiled threats” to steer her toward using a new law to impose a hefty financial penalty, rather than a criminal conviction, on SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal company accused of bribery in Libya. A criminal conviction would have barred the company from government work for a decade, which led Mr. Trudeau and others to fear the loss of Canadian jobs. Public appearances by the clerk are rare, and past clerks have generally been guarded and careful in their comments, as it is their job to ensure that government workers carry out the laws passed by politicians. “I worry about the rising tide of incitements to violence when people use terms like ‘treason’ and ‘traitor’ in open discourse,” he said, referring to terms used on social media by some critics of Mr. Trudeau’s actions in the SNC-Lavalin affair. “Those are words that lead to assassination. I’m worried that somebody is going to be shot in this country this year during the political campaign.” [Read more about how Justin Trudeau was ensnared by the SNC-Lavalin scandal] Opposition politicians said afterward that Mr. Wernick’s actions involving Ms. Wilson-Raybould and his comments about the political state of the nation were improper for a public servant in any position. One member of the New Democratic Party, Charlie Angus, asked Mr. Trudeau in a letter to demand Mr. Wernick resign. But in his resignation letter to Mr. Trudeau on Monday, he said that “recent events have led me to conclude that I cannot serve as clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to cabinet during the upcoming election campaign,” and “it is now apparent that there is no path for me to have a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the leaders of the opposition parties.” The clerk is a key figure in the transition if the government changes hands during an election. Both Mr. Butts and Mr. Trudeau have insisted that their requests, and those of others, that Ms. Wilson-Raybould look into the possibility of a settlement were neither excessive nor improper.

The public is invited to Pacific University on Thursday, March 7 for a lecture titled "Women's Sport and the Politics of Testosterone." Dr. Jaime Schultz, an associate professor of kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University, will give the talk at 7 p.m. in the Marsh Hall Taylor Auditorium (second floor, 2043 College Way) on the Forest Grove Campus. Admission is free, but seating is limited and early arrival is encouraged. Schultz also holds an affiliate faculty appointment in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State, and is the author or editor of five books and more than 50 articles or book chapters, most of which focus on women in sport, racial politics, and cultural memory. She currently serves as the academic editor of the International Journal of the History of Sport and a co-editor for the University of Illinois' "Sport and Society" book series. Schultz has received several grants and awards for her teaching and research, including the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award. The lecture is part of Pacific's Public Sports Colloquium Speaker Series, which is supported in part by the university's Undergraduate Student Senate, Elise Elliott Fund, Department of Politics and Government and Cheron Mayhall Endowment. For more information, please contact Professor Jules Boykoff.

LAS VEGAS - Should the names of retired public employees be public, along with the amounts of their pension? But in 2013, courts ruled that a separate report containing the names, pension amounts and related information was public, and ordered it released. Flash forward to Friday, when democratic state Senator Julia Ratti of Sparks introduced Senate Bill 224, which would specifically keep names confidential, but release the ID number, pension amount and some other information. Ratti got a similar bill through the 2017 session, but it was vetoed. Ratti and the public employee unions who testified in favor said the bill is needed to prevent identity theft, protect public workers including police officers and to shield vulnerable seniors from unscrupulous scam artists. And Ratti also contended that even though the contributions to PERS come from taxpayer-paid salaries and local government matching funds, they aren't taxpayer money. Privacy. When we are prying into their individual accounts, we are not looking at taxpayer money, we are looking that that individual's earned benefit, no different than if I wanted to know about the contents of each of your personal retirement accounts," said Sen. Ratti. And Rob Fellner of the NPRI said some lawmakers voting on the bill have a conflict, since there are several state and local government employees and retirees serving in Carson City. Ratti's 2017 bill passed the legislature on a party-line vote, so it's probably got a good chance of passing this time around.

An accusation of sexual assault against Lt. Gov. But as mainstream news outlets scrambled to confirm the photograph on Mr. Northam’s medical school yearbook page on Friday, it became clear that Big League Politics — and its mission of promoting the Trump agenda and nationalist causes — had assumed outsized influence in an increasingly Democratic state. A cloud also now hangs over the head of Mr. Fairfax, who would succeed Mr. Northam if he resigns, after Big League Politics published unsubstantiated accusations that he sexually assaulted a woman he met at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Patrick Howley, the editor in chief, said he received the photograph showing a pair of figures in blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes from a “concerned citizen,” declining to add more details. But one of Big League Politics’s owners, Noel Fritsch, described the source of the photograph as “some people who were classmates of Northam,” who brought it to light out of anger at the governor’s remarks early last week defending late-term abortions. In its mission statement, Big League Politics purports to be “not conservative” and “not liberal,” but it has trafficked in conspiracy theories favored by the far right, like the case of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staff member whose murder in Washington was falsely seized on by conservative commentators as linked to WikiLeaks. Last year, Mr. Fritsch was fired as a top aide by Corey Stewart, the Republican senatorial nominee in Virginia, after reports of anti-Muslim comments he had made on social media, as well as saying Senator John McCain “sold all his comrades down the river” as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Provocation is a stock-in-trade for right-wing writers in Washington, but former colleagues said Mr. Howley’s behavior, in public tweets and private emails, went beyond mischief and into darker territory. Later, at Breitbart News, Mr. Howley earned colleagues’ ire when he questioned the credibility of Michelle Fields, a Breitbart reporter who said she was assaulted by Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, at a Florida rally. “The fact The Washington Post did not run that despite in other cases running things about Brett Kavanaugh and other people based on thinner sourcing is, I think, a dereliction of duty,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time the president has dismissed the findings of the U.S. intelligence apparatus — last year he sided with Vladimir Putin in refusing to accept that Russia meddled in the 2016 election — and Republicans are finally starting to grow frustrated with the president’s fidelity to Fox News and foreign autocrats over the FBI and CIA. “There’s an awful lot — there’s so much tradition, and history and complexity to some of these foreign policy issues, you have to rely on people who have been working these issues for decades,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said on Fox News Sunday. These people have the real knowledge and you have to listen to them.” Johnson also criticized the president’s plan to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, a move based on his false belief that ISIS has been defeated, which National Intelligence Director Dan Coats contradicted last week. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) talks to Chris about ISIS and the situation in the Middle East pic.twitter.com/I21GkGn1g4 — FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) February 3, 2019 Over on CNN, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) elaborated on why the president’s politicization of intelligence is so troubling. “These are professional people,” he said. “The president’s briefed every day on it. Most of the time they’re pretty much on point.” “It’s troubling to all of us but I think there’s got to be real good communication between the President and the Director of the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence … Most of the time, they’re pretty much on point,” @SenShelby says of Trump criticizing his intel chiefs pic.twitter.com/OFR5dk3u5P — State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 3, 2019 “It’s troubling to all of us,” said Shelby, “but I think there’s got to be real good communications between the president and the director of the CIA and the director of national intelligence.” But fostering “good communication” between the president and his intelligence chiefs has so far been close to impossible. On Saturday, Time published a terrifying look inside the president’s intelligence briefings, with several officials describing “futile attempts to keep [Trump’s] attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.” The report notes that the president is prone to have outbursts if material presented in the briefings contradicts his delusions, and that intelligence officials are often warned not to present Trump with findings that contradict views he has expressed in public. The Time report features several other glimpses of Trump’s incompetence and, as one official described it, “willful ignorance” regarding intelligence that dates back to when he first took office. Trump routinely cites his relationship with Kim Jong-un as one of the chief accomplishments of his first two years in office, downplaying the idea that North Korea’s nuclear program is still operational.

Former alderman, MPP and Ontario cabinet minister John Smith had a chance to reflect on his overflowing life in a talk with his one-time council colleague Terry Cooke last month. Cooke had no way of knowing it would be the last time they would speak together. Smith started his political career in 1964 when he was elected as an alderman for Ward 7. In 1967, he was elected as the Progressive Conservative MPP for Hamilton Mountain and served until he was defeated in the 1977 election. In 1975, he was appointed Corrections Minister and in 1977 was shifted to Government Services Minister. He came back to city council in 1985 when he was elected an alderman for Ward 6 and left in 1990 to take up a post with the Immigration Refugee Board of Canada. He once served as president of the Canadian Bible Association. Cooke, a former Ward 1 alderman, called Smith principled, but also noted he could "be quite aggressive." Smith was the son of Hector and Mildred Smith. She was later a PC MPP.

Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today. report on Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee. Read the story, plus review how other senators are reacting and who the F.B.I. Read the story. Read the story. Read how the confirmation battle has become central to salvaging the midterms for Republicans. Read the story. Read the story. Read the story. Read the story.

A traditionally Republican district of Ohio that has only elected a Democrat once since the Roosevelt Administration is seen as a tossup in Tuesday’s special election – the latest in a series of once-safe seats the party has been forced to defend ahead of November’s midterms. The race for Ohio’s Twelfth Congressional District, which is a dead heat in public polling, pits Republican Troy Balderson, a state senator from the rural eastern edge of the district, against Democrat Danny O’Connor, who is an elected official in Franklin County, which is the largest county in the state. The event was not advertised to the national media, which was deliberate. In contrast, at an event in a crowded campaign office on Monday afternoon, O’Connor hailed the grassroots volunteers who would be knocking on doors from him. Despite O’Connor’s insistence that he would not support Pelosi, Republicans have long used the unpopular Democratic leader as an attack line. CLF has spent over $2.7m on television advertising alone in the race and has knocked over 500,000 doors in the district In a statement, Courtney Alexander, the group’s press secretary, said: “Danny O’Connor has spent the entire campaign lying about his support for Nancy Pelosi and her extreme, liberal agenda. Ohio families deserve a leader like Troy Balderson who will put Ohio families first, not Nancy Pelosi.” ‘It’s pretty lonely out here’: why John Kasich is willing to criticize Trump Read more While Pelosi has proved a flashpoint in the district, so has President Donald Trump. The statement caused the traditionally conservative Columbus Dispatch to endorse O’Connor and kept Kasich, the popular never-Trump governor, on the sidelines. Republicans are clinging to a 23-seat majority and the fact that they are on the defense in such a traditionally conservative seat is an bad omen, even if Balderson pulls out a victory. As Kasich said in his interview Sunday, the tight race “really doesn’t bode well for the Republican Party because this should be -- shouldn’t even be contested.”