Tag: United States Senate

In a packed committee room on Friday, the House Committee on Government Operations heard testimony about a bill to limit the influence of corporations on Vermont politics. The bill would rewrite Vermont campaign laws to ensure “only an individual, a political committee, or a political party may make a contribution to a candidate or a political party.” Pollina said in an interview on Friday that Vermont’s campaign finance laws need to be updated continually, to ensure that “the voices of citizens are still heard.” “Because Vermont is a small state, people believe big money doesn’t have that much influence,” Pollina said, citing expenditures by the beverage industry to oppose the tax on soft drinks as an example of “big corporate” money’s influence in the state. In its current form, S.120 leaves intact existing limitations on single-source campaign contributions, which are $1,000 for state representatives and local officials, $1,500 for state senators and $4,000 for state officials like the governor and state treasurer. Political action committees that raise or spend $1,000 or more on Vermont politics are required to register with the Vermont secretary of state. Eleanor Spottswood, providing testimony from the Vermont attorney general’s office, said that while the attorney general is legally responsible for prosecuting violations of campaign finance laws, the onus of reporting violations falls on citizens. He pointed out that were a corporation to donate money to a national PAC, which then gave money to a Vermont PAC, Vermonters would have no way of identifying the original corporate source of the money listed in the Vermont PAC’s campaign finance reports. “So if somebody chooses to take money from a political action committee or a party, why shouldn’t they have the requirement to do the digging to find out where that money truly came from?” Winters said public financing of political campaigns is the secretary of state-endorsed answer for reducing the reach of corporate money in campaigns. ” Pollina, the bill’s sponsor, said Vermont may not be ready for extensive campaign public finance reform. He also acknowledged that some may feel the bill doesn’t go far enough. The committee will also take testimony on H.828, a bill sponsored by committee members Gannon and Townsend that would strengthen disclosure rules, requiring candidates, individuals and other organizations who pay for social media ads to identify themselves.

The top Senate Democrat is using marijuana's informal holiday to announce a change of heart about the drug, another sign of the growing political acceptance of pot. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Friday he'll introduce a bill taking marijuana off the federal list of controlled substances — in effect decriminalizing its use. His bill would let states decide how to treat marijuana possession. Schumer's new stance could be a smart move politically. Democrats are trying to do a better job of connecting with young voters, hoping to drive them to the poll in November's mid-term elections. But Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said last week that Trump promised in a conversation with him to support legislation to protect the marijuana industry in states where it is legal. Lawmakers have sought in recent congressional sessions to take marijuana off the list of federal controlled substances, but the measures have gained meager support. The House also has its own "Cannabis Caucus." Four lawmakers started the group last year to keep federal policies from interfering with states as they enact laws allowing for recreational or medical marijuana. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and one of the group's founders, issued what he called the Cannabis State of the Union on Friday.

Last week, it was $200 million. One race. To elect one senator. People who run campaigns say it might cost $3 million a week for a candidate to saturate Florida with TV advertising. The two major parties just spent more than $16 million on a special election for a single House seat in Pennsylvania where the winner, Democrat Conor Lamb, will serve seven months before the district ceases to exist as a court-ordered redistricting goes into effect for November’s regular election. Many voters don’t get engaged in races until close to the finish. But we can limit the time during which candidates can spend, which would limit the spending itself — by bringing the start of the race closer to the finish. Make elections shorter. Make them a Final Four — four regions, four weeks, every state in each region holds its primary the same day. Do it in September, have party conventions the first week of October, then a month of campaigning.

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris highlighted very different worries Tuesday when they had their chance to question Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a televised Senate hearing that ran for nearly five hours. For Feinstein, the “alarming” Russian intrusion into the 2016 presidential campaign was her top concern. She added that she had previously asked Zuckerberg “several critical questions for which you don’t have answers,” including why Facebook hadn’t alerted users that their data had fallen into the hands of the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm when the platform discovered it in 2015. “Knowing what we know now, we should have handled a lot of things here differently,” Zuckerberg said, stating what was the theme of his long afternoon under the TV lights. she asked Zuckerberg. The company didn’t even identify the problem until “around the time of the 2016 election itself,” he said. “They’re going to get better at this, and we have to get better, too.” Harris took a much sharper tone with Zuckerberg, accusing him of avoiding answers to many of the questions senators were asking. Was there a discussion in 2015 “about whether or not the users should be informed?” Harris asked. “And we did that based on false information that we thought that the case was closed and the data had been deleted.” Harris also asked how much money Facebook had made from the fake Russian campaign ads, repeating a question she had asked executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter in November.

Maile Pearl is Duckworth’s second child—she has another daughter named Abigail—and the first-ever child to be birthed by a serving senator. That’s a striking statistic. But only 51 of those senators have been women; no wonder the Senate hasn’t historically been a place for new moms. (Ten women have given birth while serving as House representatives, including Duckworth herself.) By itself, this says plenty about the kinds of barriers that women face when attempting to build a political career. Perhaps even more illuminating is the bind that Duckworth now finds herself in. There’s more: The Senate currently bars children from its floor, which means Duckworth won’t be allowed to breastfeed while sitting in session—an act that politicians elsewhere the world have been doing for a while now. (When it comes to women’s share of representation in parliament, the US ranks 104 out of over 190 countries.) As a new mother in the Senate, Duckworth’s experience is exposing a harsh truth: In 2018, the US political system is still designed without women in mind. And the consequences she may face if she takes time off to spend with her newborn perfectly exemplify the problems that millions of women in the US face because their jobs do not offer fair parental leave policies.

On the Senate front, Democrats are defending 26 seats (including two independents who caucus with Democrats from Maine and Vermont) while the Republicans, even with the addition of a special election in Mississippi, are still only defending nine. McCaskill has appeared to be the most vulnerable Senate Democrat for much of the cycle, but likely Republican nominee Josh Hawley, the state attorney general, has had to deal with the fallout surrounding the indictment of Gov. Many Republicans seem to regard Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) as one of the party’s top Senate targets, more appealing even than Tester or Manchin according to some even though Wisconsin is a 50-50 state politically. Incumbent Gov. Given the developments in the U.S. Senate race in Maine and the gubernatorial election in Pennsylvania, the Crystal Ball is shifting the ratings in each of these contests in the Democrats’ direction, to the benefit of Sen. Angus King (I-ME) — he caucuses with Senate Democrats — and Gov. The Maine Senate race moves from Likely Independent/Democratic to Safe Independent/Democratic and the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race moves from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic. LePage’s top political consultant announced that the governor would not seek the Senate seat. As the temperature of the Republican primary rises, Wolf just announced that he ended the first quarter of 2018 with $14.7 million cash-on-hand, and he has no opponent in the May 15 primary. In light of Wolf’s stronger position, we now rate the Pennsylvania gubernatorial contest as Likely Democratic. Still, Republicans now have another open seat target.

'I love the president': John Dowd quits as Trump lawyer in Mueller investigation Read more The bill, which passed the House 256-167 on Thursday, funds government agencies through September, the end of the fiscal year, and delivers on a key promise by Donald Trump – to increase military funding – while bypassing much of his immigration agenda. The House vote was not divided along party lines: 145 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted yes while 90 Republicans and 77 Democrats voted no. At least two senators have suggested they may delay proceedings, thereby forcing a brief government shutdown as Senator Rand Paul did in February. Ryan said the bill fulfilled the Trump agenda, especially on increasing military spending and funding for barriers along the border, which he called a wall. “This funds the wall, fixes the military, fights opioids, does the things that we said.” Trump rejected a deal with Democrats that would have protected Dreamers in exchange for $25bn for a border wall. Speaking at the White House, Mick Mulvaney, the head of Office of Management and Budget, insisted Trump supported the bill. The answer is yes,” Mulvaney told reporters. He acknowledged that the omnibus was not ideal and contained compromises, saying: “This is what it looks like when you don’t have 60 votes in the Senate and Democrats get to take their pound of flesh.” Trump said on Twitter. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said the gun provisions tucked into the budget bill were “small steps” and did little to answer the demands of the student survivors of the Parkland school shooting in Florida last month. “If the small provisions in the budget are all that [Republicans] are willing to do,” said the Connecticut Democrat in a statement, “that would be a tragic insult to all the kids who are rising up across the country demanding that Congress end the gun violence epidemic.”

(CNN)As Republicans face a potential Democratic wave in this year's midterm elections, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake argued Thursday that his party "might not deserve to lead" given its support for President Donald Trump. "If we are going to cloister ourselves in the alternative truth of an erratic leader, if we are going to refuse to live in a world that everyone else lives in ... then my party might not deserve to lead," the Arizona senator said in a speech at the National Press Club. Flake argued that "as we are discovering ... there is no damage like the damage that a president can do." He's delivered major speeches on the Senate floor targeting Trump and wrote a book blasting his own party for enabling Trump's success. "We have become strangers to ourselves." His biggest complaints against Trump involve the President's attacks on the media, his track record of telling falsehoods and what Flake describes as dysfunctional leadership from the White House. Flake has repeatedly said he's not ruling out the idea of a presidential run, though it's not in his current plans. "I think that could turn and will turn and must turn. It would be a tough challenge for anyone to take, and I just hope someone does it." He told a small group of Republicans he was prepared to spend $10 million on defeating Flake in the primary, and he publicly offered support on Twitter for one of Flake's GOP challengers last year when it appeared Flake would run for re-election.

The present Russian investigation hit its “have you no sense of decency” moment last week when Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians for defrauding America. View Cartoon In 2016, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election. Attorney General Sessions recused himself because people told him he may be a spy and he said, sure, why not. Then, when people got mad at him for that, he appointed a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to investigate the president because the firing suggested that he was a Russian spy. The special counsel statute requires the referral to identify a crime. During the special counsel’s tenure, the House and the Senate uncovered oodles of evidence that foreign nationals were providing Hillary Clinton with opposition research meant to influence the election. The special counsel, though, ignored it and instead indicted the hapless internet trolls. They could point out that foreign nationals try to influence American elections all the time, but they were singled out for exercising their right to free speech, guaranteed even to foreigners by the U.S. Constitution. They could introduce evidence that millions of illegals in American – yes, even the Dreamers –were organizing, marching, and otherwise helping Hillary Clinton in the last election. This indictment confirms that.

Dr. Robert Jeffress had invited Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity to share his testimony and promote a new faith-based movie during Sunday morning services at the megachurch. Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, attacked Jeffress in a series of tweets -- which I've posted below. "By the way, we're talking about Sundays here...(You can be free from politics,)" he tweeted. With all due respect, Sen. Sasse is not a member of the First Baptist Church in Dallas -- so I'm not quite sure why it's any of his business who the church invites to participate in its worship services. Michael Wear, a former Obama White House staffer also criticized First Baptist Dallas, tweeting, "Politics as religion. Well-known conservative columnist Erick Erickson wrote a scathing article titled, "Is Rev. "Jeffress has been worshiping at the altar of Trump lately. And as he gets rewarded mightily with access, one need not take too deep a reading of Psalm 73 to worry for him and which side of salvation he is on," Erickson wrote. "You've got a Republican senator who is criticizing what a pastor and his local church are doing to share the gospel of Jesus Christ," Jeffress said. I know Robert Jeffress and I know Sean Hannity.