Tag: Washington, D.C.

Play Video Play Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Remaining Time -0:00 This is a modal window. Foreground --- White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan --- Opaque Semi-Opaque Background --- White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan --- Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window --- White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan --- Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Default Monospace Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Sans-Serif Casual Script Small Caps Defaults Done AUSTIN — What’s the difference between Congress and the Legislature? The answers to these questions are all keys to creating an informed citizenry. Voters will be picking who will represent them in the Texas Capitol and in Washington, D.C. And in January, state lawmakers will meet in Austin to debate bills that will touch every aspect of your life. Here at Curious Texas, we know an educated readership is an engaged readership. We also know that elections, politics and state policymaking can be confusing, and we want to answer any questions you might have about the 2018 midterm elections, Texas politics and how state legislators make laws in Austin. We started Curious Texas in December and have answered more than 50 reader-submitted questions. What topics should we focus on while covering the Legislature in 2019, and what do you want to know about the North Texas lawmakers you’ve elected to represent you in Austin? Jackie Wang contributed to this report. Tell us: What do you wonder about Texas politics, the Legislature or elections?

Deb Haaland, the former New Mexico state Democratic party chair who is seeking to make history as the first Native American woman elected to Congress, had just one question before running: could she win? “So I decided to run.” Haaland is a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe and one of a record number of Native American women running for office this year. It remains possible Haaland won’t be the only Native American female elected to Congress this year. Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk nation, is running in a competitive Democratic primary in a swing district in Kansas, and Amanda Douglas, a member of the Cherokee nation, advanced to a runoff election in the Democratic primary for a deeply conservative Oklahoma congressional district. Unlike many of the female candidates running for office in the wake of Trump’s election, this is far from Haaland’s first foray into politics. He recalled that New Mexicans elected the Republican Susana Martinez after she reminded voters that she would be “the nation’s first Hispanic female governor”. “People like to make history. But Haaland’s primary success was not a marginal one, Monahan added. In a Democratic district, she is positioned favorably ahead of the general election. “But every now and then I’ll get a sense from someone else and it makes me emotional because I realize that, for some people, they never thought they would see someone like them in Congress.”

In “The Political Education of Silicon Valley,” which appears in the August issue of WIRED, Steven Johnson looks at the changing political worldview of the tech sector, a shift from the libertarianism of the 1990s to a more progressive, pro-government outlook today. Steven Johnson: One of the things that got me interested in this story is hearing so many people on the East Coast and in Europe talking dismissively about “libertarian” Silicon Valley. Ro Khanna: Nothing drives people in Silicon Valley more crazy or gets their blood boiling more than that stereotype. SJ: If you look the political values in Silicon Valley elites as reported in the survey by Greg Ferenstein and David Broockman and Neil Malhotra of Stanford, everybody looks super progressive, except on regulation and unions. Tech elites understand that middle-class, working-class wages have been stagnant for a really long time. RK: I've never understood that opposition [to unions]. A lot of the people who are in the Valley tend to be middle-class, upper-middle-class kids of engineers, teachers, doctors. I don't know how many of them have friends who were in unions. We're going to make sure your kids get a decent education, whether it's a two-year or four-year college. We don't make the economic growth argument.

He served under Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, examining the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel, and drafting parts of the report that led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment. After seven years at Yale, where he went to college and law school, he returned here for a varied career that included stints in the Justice Department, the independent counsel’s office, a private law firm and the White House before joining the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “Whatever the opposite of a Georgetown cocktail party person is, that’s what Judge Kavanaugh is,” said Justin Walker, a law professor at the University of Louisville who worked as a law clerk for both Judge Kavanaugh and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Where Kavanaugh, Trump’s Nominee, Might Fit on the Supreme Court President Trump’s selection, Brett M. Kavanaugh, is a Washington insider who appears unlikely to drift left as other conservative justices have. No Supreme Court justice has had more than one former law clerk join the court. You’ve got to go home.’ But he would never listen to me.” Judge Kavanaugh’s only appearance as a lawyer before the Supreme Court was an attempt to obtain the notes of a lawyer for Mr. Foster. “My chief takeaway from working in the White House for five and a half years — and particularly from my nearly three years of work as staff secretary, when I was fortunate to travel the country and the world with President Bush — is that the job of president is far more difficult than any other civilian position in government,” he wrote. Judge Kavanaugh’s first nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stalled in the Senate, but he was confirmed after Mr. Bush renominated him in 2006. In his opinions, Judge Kavanaugh has often been skeptical of government regulations, notably in the area of environmental law, and he has argued in favor of greater judicial power in reviewing the actions of administrative agencies on major questions. If we do this, we can’t.” He has also been open to using the First Amendment to strike down government regulations.

At the end of the day, on the east coast at least, we are closing this blog. Here’s a summary of the key events in a hot day of protests against Donald Trump and his hardline immigration policy. From New York City and Washington DC to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and in hundreds of cities and towns in between, thousands of Americans protested on Saturday against Trump administration policies that separated more than 2,000 undocumented immigrant children from their families and have left the vast majority of such children still held in federal facilities. Protesters said they were concerned about many issues, but one message – as intended by organizers – rose above all others: Families Belong Together. In some cities, the heat index topped 105F (40C). We’ll be wrapping up our blog soon, so here are Associated Press reports from events thousands of miles away from the big rallies in Washington and New York: Thousands of protesters gathered in downtown Los Angeles were addressed by, among others, singer John Legend, congresswoman Maxine Waters (who called for Trump to be impeached) and Senator Kamala Harris. Another large crowd gathered in San Francisco, where drums beat and horns played as marchers held flags and signs, some saying “Deport Trump” and “I Really Care, Do You?” Barry Hooper said he attended the protest with his wife and two daughters in order to “let the president know that this is not acceptable”. Police in both cities said the rallies appeared peaceful and reported no arrests. Dallas police say five people have been arrested outside a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) building. A police supervisor said five were arrested when they refused police orders to move.

It was a show designed to get Zuckerberg off the hook after only a few hours in Washington DC. Each senator was given less than five minutes for questions. We shouldn’t be begging for Facebook’s endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg’s promises of self-regulation The worst moments of the hearing for us, as citizens, were when senators asked if Zuckerberg would support legislation that would regulate Facebook. Facebook is a known behemoth corporate monopoly. We shouldn’t be begging for Facebook’s endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg’s promises of self-regulation. Some of the hearing seemed designed to figure out whether Zuckerberg is a good or bad man, or whether he has a good or bad – or bizarre – political philosophy. That doesn’t make him that interesting as the CEO of a corporate monopoly; it makes him a run-of-the-mill robber baron. There is so much we don’t know about Facebook. Now that the initial show trial is done, we need the real deal, one where no senator gets cut off after a few minutes. The real hearing would allow for unlimited questions from each of our senators, who represent millions of people.

A federal court has held that Maryland and the District of Columbia have standing to sue President Donald Trump over his personal finances regarding the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., in what amounts to a political attack thinly veiled as a far-fetched constitutional theory. The foreign emoluments clause and presidential compensation clause exist to keep certain federal officials from accepting compensation from states, Congress, or foreign nations, in exchange for favorable official treatment. Neither Washington nor Obama faced an emoluments lawsuit during their two terms in office. The opinion of the District Court for the District of Maryland, written by Senior Judge Peter J. Messitte, only addressed standing: the constitutional requirement that plaintiffs show that they have suffered some concrete injury; that the person whom they are suing caused their injury; that the court can remedy their injury; and that the case belongs in the courts and not with the political branches. Still, Maryland had a back-up sovereign interest theory: that it could sue Trump to defend against losing tax revenues from hospitality businesses that compete with the Trump International Hotel. Unsurprisingly, Maryland could not show “with at least some measure of specificity how much tax revenue it may have lost to the hotel.” And with no facts to support that theory, Messitte rejected it, too. Quasi-Sovereign Interests Next, the plaintiffs turned to so-called “quasi-sovereign interests,” which in Snapp & Son, the Supreme Court ultimately described as twofold: defending the economic and physical well-being of its residents, and ensuring that they, and the state, “are not excluded from the benefits that are to flow from participation in the federal system.” Here, the plaintiffs claimed to be enduring the “intolerable dilemma” of being “forced to choose”: give the Trump Organization “special concessions” in future dealings, or “risk being placed at a disadvantage” to states that already have, “or may in the future,” grant such concessions. Messitte observed that “the District’s tax authorities, according to a report in The Washington Post, in fact granted the hotel a reduction in its 2018 tax bill for a savings of $991,367.00.” But Messitte ignored D.C. tax authorities, who declared that those concessions “were routine and that no favoritism was involved.” Here’s the rub: The plaintiffs, like virtually every other jurisdiction, routinely offer tax incentives to private businesses. Proprietary Interests Ironically, the plaintiffs also argue that they can sue Trump because the Trump International Hotel is eating into their own bottom lines, at the Washington Convention Center and the Bethesda Marriott Conference Center. Daniels correctly ruled that the emoluments controversy presents issues that the political branches must resolve.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Shortly after he declared that he would have run into a Florida high school unarmed to thwart a mass shooting, Donald J. Trump announced that he was planning a parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his hypothetical act of heroism. “Anyone can act with bravery in the moment,” Trump told reporters in the White House. “But it takes a very special kind of hero to tell people about the incredibly brave thing he would have done weeks after the thing happened.” He added that it was one of his greatest regrets that bone spurs prevented him from serving in the Vietnam War, “because the really courageous things I would have done during that war would have been off the charts.” “As soon as the Tet Offensive happened, I would have run unarmed right into that mess,” he said. “We probably would have won the war right after I did that.” Trump said that the parade he was ordering would honor not only him but all of America’s “last responders.” According to a new poll, Trump’s assertion that he would have run into the Florida high school unarmed was believed by his daughter Ivanka.