with Mariana Alfaro
Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who is retiring from Congress at the ripe age of 41, was one of four House Republicans to vote last month for the resolution to condemn Trump’s racist statements about the four liberal women he serves alongside.
There is a realistic chance that none of the four GOP dissidents will remain in Congress come 2021. Another member of the quartet, Susan Brooks of Indiana, previously announced her retirement. There’s speculation that Fred Upton may follow in Michigan. And Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania is one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the country.
Ironically, Brooks also serves as the recruitment chair for the National Republican Congressional Committee. She’s one of only 13 female Republicans in the House. Another, Martha Roby of Alabama, announced her retirement last Friday. GOP officials have struggled to recruit women to run, and when they have succeeded, many female candidates have lost in primaries to more conservative men.
-- Hurd has been trying to sound the alarm, but he’s found GOP leaders unreceptive and afraid of crossing Trump.
“If you’re at the age of 40 in most places across this country, you have to whisper that you’re a Republican,” he lamented in a June speech at a Pride Month event sponsored by the Log Cabin Republicans, according to the Washington Blade. “This is a party that is shrinking. The party is not growing in some of the largest growing parts of our country. Why is that? … It’s real simple. … Don’t be a racist. Don’t be a misogynist. Don’t be a homophobe. These are real basic things that we all should learn when we were in kindergarten. But, unfortunately, there’s too many people that don’t follow those things.”
-- In an interview last night with The Post, Hurd warned that Democrats have a chance of carrying Texas in the 2020 presidential election. That would be the first time since Jimmy Carter did so in 1976. A Democratic victory in the Lone Star State would make it virtually impossible for Trump to get reelected. “When you look at trends, the two-largest growing groups of voters are Latinos and young people,” Hurd told our Robert Moore. “And we know what the broader trends are happening there.”
Speaking to The Post, Hurd reiterated his criticisms of Trump’s tweets that four of his congressional colleagues should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Three of the women are from the United States, and the fourth, Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), is a Somali refugee who became a U.S. citizen as a teenager. “When you imply that because someone doesn’t look like you, in telling them to go back to Africa or wherever, you’re implying that they’re not an American and you’re implying that they have less worth than you,” Hurd explained.
-- In Cincinnati, meanwhile, Trump said Democrats who lead urban centers “deliver poverty for their constituents and privilege for themselves.” In addition to Baltimore, he took aim at Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. “For decades, these communities have been run exclusively by Democrat politicians, and it’s been total one-party control of the inner cities,” the president said. He called federal funding sent to these areas “stolen money and it’s wasted money, and it’s a shame.”
“And he invited members of the crowd to criticize Baltimore, asking them to shout out the names of countries with comparable homicide rates. When one supporter yelled out, ‘Afghanistan,’ Trump repeated him, saying, ‘I believe it’s higher than Afghanistan,’ prompting laughter from some in the crowd,” per Josh Dawsey, Felicia Sonmez and Laura Hughes. “As protesters disrupted his remarks in Cincinnati on Thursday night, Trump sought to blame the city’s Democratic leader, declaring, ‘You must have a Democrat mayor. Come on, law enforcement.’” (Unlike in North Carolina, there were no chants of “Send her back.”)
-- Over 70 percent of Hurd’s constituents are Latino. Hurd is one of only three Republicans left in the House who represents a district that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. Going into the midterms, there were about two dozen such Republicans. (She won there by 3.5 points.)
-- This spring, Hurd was one of 14 House Republicans to vote for the resolution of disapproval to overturn Trump’s national emergency declaration. The president issued an order to divert money appropriated for the military toward a border wall, which Hurd says is a bad idea. Hurd subsequently voted for the unsuccessful effort to override the president’s veto.
-- There have been early warning signs that Hurd would be a short-timer. On key votes so far this year, for example, Hurd has sided with Trump only 51 percent of the time. In the previous two years, Hurd took Trump’s side 95 percent of the time on votes that mattered, according to a tabulation by FiveThirtyEight.
In June, Hurd broke with House Republicans to vote for a bill – doomed in the Senate – that would create a pathway to citizenship for the “dreamers,” those undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children.
In May, Hurd split with his party to vote for a disaster-relief bill that included more aid money for Puerto Rico than Trump wanted to provide for the commonwealth.
In March, he backed the resolution opposing Trump’s ban on openly transgender people serving in the military.
In February, Hurd voted with Democrats to require background checks on all firearms sales and to end U.S. military assistance to Saudi-led forces in the Yemen civil war.
In January, he backed the unsuccessful push to stop Trump from relaxing sanctions on Russian companies linked to an oligarch who is pals with Vladimir Putin. Most Senate Republicans sided with the president, and the sanctions were lifted.
-- A former CIA officer, Hurd has also been urging his party to take the threat of Russian election interference more seriously. He focused on the Kremlin’s efforts to mess with the 2020 presidential election as he questioned former special counsel Bob Mueller last week during the House Intelligence Committee hearing. Last summer, he also spoke out after Trump’s buddy-buddy news conference with Putin in Helsinki.
-- Bigger picture, Hurd’s planned departure puts in stark relief the degree to which the GOP’s diversity problems – a serious challenge for decades – have grown worse since Trump took over the party three summers ago and pushed it in a more nativist, exclusionary direction. Of the 250 Republicans in Congress, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is poised to be the only African American Republican left. Former Republican congresswoman Mia Love, another African American, lost reelection in Utah in the midterms.
Rep. Justin Amash, whose father is Palestinian and whose mother is Syrian, quit the GOP last month after endorsing Trump’s impeachment. The president promised to support a primary challenge to the libertarian-minded congressman.
-- Hurd’s announcement is another blow to the GOP’s hopes of retaking the House in 2020. Nine Republicans have declared that they are retiring. Six of those have come in the past week, including two other Texans. This reflects the widespread expectation among Republicans that their party won’t win back the majority next year and an understandable desire not to toil in the minority of a majoritarian institution.
Last cycle, 34 House Republicans opted not to run for reelection – the most since 1930. At this point in 2017, though, there were fewer announced GOP retirements. “This is almost as big as Paul Ryan retiring announcement last year,” says Paul Kane, one of our congressional reporters. “Hurd wasn’t just any swing-seat Republican. He was supposed to be the 21st century GOP. He is - no, was - the future of GOP.”
History is also against them. If Republicans were to win the House, it would be first time since 1952 that a party flipped control of the chamber during a presidential year. Assuming the GOP prevails in next month’s do-over election in North Carolina, where the results were thrown out because of alleged election fraud by a Republican operative, the party will still need 18 pickups.
-- Democrats said they would have defeated Hurd if he ran again and expressed confidence that they will win his seat. Air Force veteran Gina Ortiz Jones lost to Hurd by only about a thousand votes last year. She’s running again in 2020. “The simple facts are that hypocrite Trump Republican Will Hurd did not stand a chance in the 23rd congressional district,” Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Manny Garcia said in a statement. “Clearly Will Hurd knew his time was up.” National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) called Hurd a “patriot” and pledged that the GOP “will fight tooth and nail” to hold the district.
-- Hurd says he would like to run again for elected office at some point, though he didn’t specify which one. “I think I can help the country in a different way,” the congressman said. “And I think I have an opportunity to help make sure the Republican Party looks like America.”
“He has made or scheduled trips in recent months to New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, with an eye toward the 2024 Republican presidential calendar,” Moore reports. “Hurd also repeated his earlier pledge to vote for Trump if he’s the Republican nominee in 2020. He said Hispanics, African Americans and other groups would be receptive to conservative themes if they weren’t drowned in racially charged rhetoric.”
-- Washington’s new Catholic leader — the country’s lone black archbishop — issued his first public statement since his installation yesterday, accusing Trump of “diminishing our national life” with his “tweets on some members of Congress, deploring Baltimore and related matters.”
“Wilton Gregory, who came to Washington in May, is known through his long, prominent career for being nonconfrontational on hot-button issues in public while working quietly behind the scenes,” religion beat reporter Michelle Boorstein notes. “But on Thursday, Gregory signaled that he wants to use his higher-profile perch in the nation’s capital to challenge the use of identity — by race, national origin or otherwise — as a tool of attack. He said … that he has been meeting privately with major Catholic lay groups, including the massive Knights of Columbus, to press them to ‘promote respect’ and to work to ‘reject racism, disrespect or brutality in speech and action.’"
“I have stressed that I am a pastor and fellow disciple of Jesus, not a political leader,” Gregory says in the statement. “There are, however, sometimes, when a pastor and a disciple of Jesus is called to speak out to defend the dignity of all God’s children.” (Read the whole thing here.)
-- Leaders of Washington National Cathedral — the national cathedral of the Episcopal Church denomination — also issued a stinging critique of the president this week: “As faith leaders who serve at Washington National Cathedral … we feel compelled to ask: After two years of President Trump’s words and actions, when will Americans have enough?” they wrote in an impassioned statement titled “Have We No Decency? A response to President Trump.” (Read it here.)
-- Meanwhile, prominent pastors associated with the religious right are balking at any suggestion that Trump’s recent comments were racist. From the AP: “‘He does not judge people by the color of their skin,’ said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the Southern Baptist megachurch First Baptist Dallas and a frequent guest at the White House. ‘He judges people on whether they support him,’ Jeffress said. ‘If you embrace him, he’ll embrace you. If you attack him, he’ll attack you. That’s the definition of colorblind.’ … [The Rev. Franklin] Graham, the son of renowned evangelist Billy Graham and president of the charity Samaritan’s Purse, said the president’s critics had devalued the word ‘racism.’ ‘The left has weaponized it and uses it against their opponents,’ he said in a telephone interview Thursday. ‘The president is not afraid to go after anyone — their color has nothing to do with it. It’s the person’s ideology and politics.’”
-- Separately, Republicans are reckoning this week with the emergence of a 1971 audiotape in which Ronald Reagan referred to African delegates at the United Nations as “monkeys.” The then-governor of California told then-President Richard Nixon: “Damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Historian Tim Naftali unearthed the tape, record by Nixon, and wrote a piece about it for the Atlantic.
In an op-ed for today’s Post, Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis says that these words are an “aberration” and don’t reflect how she was raised. “There is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped phone conversation,” Davis writes. “I believe, if my father had, years after the fact, heard that tape, he would have asked for forgiveness. He would have said, ‘I deeply regret what I said — that’s not who I am.’ He would have sought to make amends for the pain his words caused. … Forgiveness is always hard — it’s a wrestling match deep in the soul. … In reaching for forgiveness in myself, my hope is that others will forgive my father for words that should never have been uttered in any conversation.”
-- An alarming trend: Political rallies are becoming more dangerous.
A Kentucky man has been charged with assault after punching an anti-Trump protester outside the president’s rally in Cincy. Tim Elfrink reports: “Protesters were waving signs outside Trump’s rally in Cincinnati last night when a red pickup truck pulled up to the crowd. Someone in the passenger seat started yelling, and a few protesters shouted back, according to the local TV affiliate WCPO. Suddenly, the door flew open and a man in a green polo hopped out, fists cocked. As the crowd gasped and screamed, the man, later identified by local media as 29-year-old Dallas Frazier, landed a quick volley of punches to the face of Mike Alter, 61. Within a few seconds, a police officer rushed in to handcuff Frazier. … He’s due in court at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, WXIX reported. As police led Frazier away from the scene, his arms secured behind his back, the crowd of protesters modified a favorite chant from Trump’s rallies. ‘Lock him up!’ they yelled.”
In Arizona a few hours later, a man was arrested at an Elizabeth Warren rally that drew 3,500 people after tussling with pro-Trump protesters. Annie Linskey reports: “The man was handcuffed after he resisted when security at the Marquee Theater asked him to leave. He was forcibly dragged out as reporters filmed. Jennifer Harrison, a member of the AZ Patriots, said the man tried to grab the cell phone of a group member recording the event. She also said he threatened to hit her. … Members of the group wore red ‘Make America Great Again’ hats at the Warren event and unfurled a Trump flag. Harrison said the group came to record Warren’s event and protest ‘the socialism that she’s peddling.’ … Detective Greg Bacon, a spokesman for the Tempe Police Department, confirmed the man would be charged with ‘assault and disorderly conduct.’”
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WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
-- Another terrible tragedy for the Kennedy clan: A granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy died on Thursday afternoon after suffering an apparent overdose at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. The New York Times reports: “The young woman, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, 22, was the daughter of Courtney Kennedy Hill. She was at the compound, where her grandmother, Ethel Kennedy, lives, when emergency responders were called on Thursday afternoon, (two) family friends said. She was taken to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, where she was pronounced dead. ...
“Before enrolling in Boston College, where she was a communication major and vice president of the College Democrats, Ms. Kennedy Hill wrote about her struggles with depression and mental illness for the student newspaper at Deerfield Academy, a private preparatory school in Massachusetts, in 2016. Her depression, she wrote, ‘took root in the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life.’ She described ‘deep bouts of sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest.’”
- “Hill was the daughter of Courtney Kennedy Hill and Paul Hill, an Irishman who was wrongly imprisoned for 15 years after he and three others were coerced into confessing to deadly bombings in England in 1974,” Allyson Chiu notes.
- Saoirse means “freedom” in Gaelic.
- Ethel, RFK’s 91-year-old widow, said in a statement: “The world is a little less beautiful today.”
THE NEW WORLD ORDER:
-- The Trump administration is preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in exchange for concessions from the Taliban, including a cease-fire and a renunciation of al-Qaeda, as part of an initial deal to end the nearly 18-year-old war. “The agreement, which would require the Taliban to begin negotiating a larger peace deal directly with the Afghan government, could cut the number of American troops in the country from roughly 14,000 to between 8,000 and 9,000,” Dan Lamothe, John Hudson and Pamela Constable scoop. “That number would be nearly the same as when Trump took office. The plan has taken shape after months of negotiations between the Taliban and Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-born American diplomat who was appointed by the Trump administration last year to jump-start talks. Officials said an agreement could be finalized ahead of the Afghan presidential election in September, though they cautioned that Taliban leaders could delay and that significant challenges remain. …
“Army Gen. Austin ‘Scott’ Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is open to the proposal, two defense officials said, because he believes it would protect U.S. interests by maintaining a counterterrorism force that can strike the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. … The Taliban has refused to talk with the Afghan government, which it calls a puppet regime, until it reaches a deal with the United States on its troops. …. Afghan government officials … expressed concerns that a partial pullout would embolden the Taliban: “The Americans call this a peace negotiation, but the Taliban definitely perceive it as a withdrawal negotiation,” one Afghan official said.”
-- Trump said he will impose new import tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods starting next month, effectively taxing every product Americans buy from China and ending the brief cease-fire in the trade war. David J. Lynch, Heather Long and Damian Paletta report: “The president said the tariffs — on products such as cellphones, televisions, toilet seats and pillows — would initially be set at 10 percent but could rise to 25 percent or higher. … In a trio of tweets, the president assailed China as dragging its feet and criticized Chinese President Xi Jinping by name — an unusual step for Trump, who is usually effusive about his respect for the Chinese leader. … Thursday’s abrupt tariff announcement caught many business groups and trade analysts by surprise — with some saying it would backfire and make agreement less likely. … Stocks fell sharply, with the Dow Jones industrial average finishing the day down about 280 points.”
...buy agricultural product from the U.S. in large quantities, but did not do so. Additionally, my friend President Xi said that he would stop the sale of Fentanyl to the United States – this never happened, and many Americans continue to die! Trade talks are continuing, and...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2019
-- China is already planning on hitting back with retaliatory measures, calling Trump’s tariffs “not constructive.” Anna Fifield and Lyric Li report: “The Commerce Ministry said China ‘will have to take necessary countermeasures to defend its interests,’ while the Foreign Ministry said it ‘opposes and deplores’ the move. ‘The U.S. moves to escalate trade frictions and hike tariffs are out of line with American and Chinese peoples’ interests and the interests of the world, and risk bringing the world economy into recession,’ a Commerce Ministry spokesman said in a statement Friday. ‘China doesn’t want a trade war but is not afraid, and will have to fight one if necessary. We are hoping that the U.S. will correct its wrongs and return to the right track of problem-solving on the basis of equality and mutual respect,’ it said.”
-- Hiring slowed modestly in July as construction and warehouse companies didn’t add many workers, but employers still say this is a “golden age” to get a job or ask for better pay and benefits. Heather Long reports: “The U.S. economy added 164,000 jobs in July, squarely in line with economists’ forecasts and marking 106 straight months of job gains. The unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent, near a half-century low, according to the Labor Department report released Friday. Hiring has slowed somewhat from last year, but companies continue to bring on new employees at a healthy pace.
“Nearly all the job gains are coming from the service sector, not blue-collar jobs, a notable change from last year that could be a sign Trump’s trade war is starting to bite certain industries. Health care and business are seeing large gains this year while manufacturing employment has been weak as the industry endures tariffs and slowing purchases from abroad. Construction and warehousing had anemic hiring in July, and employment in the primary metals, including steel and aluminum, declined.”
-- Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin wanted to warn China of the new tariffs before Trump announced them on Twitter, but the president resisted. From Bloomberg News: “Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer briefed Trump on their talks in Shanghai this week with their Chinese counterparts. While the White House called the talks ‘constructive’ in a statement issued Wednesday, Trump concluded that the two U.S. officials actually came away with nothing. … Mnuchin and Lighthizer knew the president was considering a new round of tariffs before they left for Shanghai, three of the people said. … Mnuchin recommended that the U.S. notify Beijing before Trump announced the new tariffs, the people said. Trump demurred, but with his permission Lighthizer later attempted to place a call to Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who is the country’s lead trade negotiator. He didn’t answer.”
-- Nine in 10 counties that voted for Trump have received subsidy money to help farmers hurt by the trade war he started. Most of the counties that have received an allocation of the more than $8 billion earmarked for the program are in the Midwest. (Philip Bump)
-- In other trade news, Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA is in limbo now that Congress has adjourned for the summer. Erica Werner and Seung Min Kim report: “Despite the increasingly poisonous relationship between Trump and Democrats on other fronts, the trade deal is a singular issue where a bipartisan agreement seems possible that both sides could claim as a win. If it is going to happen, though, it has to be as soon as possible after lawmakers return to the Capitol in early September, before the 2020 presidential campaign erases all chances for bipartisan policymaking.”
-- The Trump administration and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) want to make it easier to import prescription drugs from Canada. But the Canadians want the U.S. to back off. Amanda Coletta reports: The administration is weighing plans to allow for the legal importation of drugs from Canada to help Americans cope with skyrocketing prices in the U.S. But Canadian “pharmacists, patient groups, doctors and some lawmakers … worry that the large-scale importation of pharmaceuticals could deplete the drug supply for the country’s 37 million residents. … Health Canada, the federal public-health ministry, reports there are 1,846 drug shortages and 65 anticipated shortages in the country. Causes include increased demand, shortages of ingredients and delays in shipping. … Canadian critics of the Trump plan make a distinction between importing prescription drugs for personal use — crossing the border for insulin, for instance — and bulk imports.”
-- Japan escalated its bitter dispute with South Korea over compensation for wartime forced labor by removing the country from a list of trusted trading partners. Simon Denyer reports: “Growing nationalist outrage on both sides of the Korea Strait is trapping both governments in a cycle of tit-for-tat escalation from which there is no easy escape, experts say. South Korean President Moon Jae-in called Japan’s move a reckless, selfish and destructive act that reopened ‘old wounds,’ and vowed to respond. … Friday’s decision, which will take effect Aug. 28, could tie up Japanese exporters of goods with potential military uses to South Korea in additional layers of bureaucracy and official approval, delaying shipments and raising costs. It is also a symbolic blow at the status of a major trading partner. South Korea has threatened to respond by canceling military intelligence-sharing with Japan, a move that experts say would undermine U.S. security interests. … The dispute began with consecutive South Korean Supreme Court rulings last year ordering Japanese companies to pay compensation for victims of forced labor during Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.”
-- North Korea launched another projectile into the Sea of Japan, a U.S. official said. This is the third launch by North Korea in the past two weeks alone, and they all appear to be in protest of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises set to begin later this month. (ABC News)
-- The U.S. will test a new missile in the coming weeks that would’ve been prohibited under a decades-old arms-control treaty with Russia that was ripped up today. From ABC News: “Washington and Moscow walked out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty that President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed in 1987, raising fears of a new arms race. The U.S. blamed Moscow for the death of the treaty. It said that for years Moscow has been developing and fielding weapons that violate the treaty and threaten the United States and its allies, particularly in Europe. … Washington has complained for years that the arms control playing field was unfair. U.S. officials argued that not only was Russia violating the treaty and developing prohibited weapons, but that China also was making similar non-compliant weapons, leaving the U.S. alone in complying with the aging arms control pact. Now, the U.S. is free to develop weapons systems that were previously banned.”
-- The United States will finally impose sanctions on Russia for its use of chemical weapons in the 2018 attack against double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. From Politico: “The Trump administration imposed a round of sanctions last year, as required by a 1991 law. … But the president, who has been loath to antagonize Russian President Vladimir Putin, dragged his feet on imposing the second round of sanctions. … The State Department and the Treasury Department had the sanctions package ready in late March, Reuters reported, but they have been waiting since then for the president’s sign-off.”
-- Earth in the balance: The Greenland ice sheets poured 197 billion tons of water into the North Atlantic in July alone. Andrew Freedman and Jason Samenow report: “July 31 was the biggest melt day since at least 2012, with about 60 percent of the ice sheet seeing at least 1 millimeter of melt at the surface, and more than 10 billion tons of ice lost to the ocean from surface melt … Thursday could be another significant melt day, before temperatures drop to more seasonable levels. … As a result of both surface melting and a lack of snow on the ice sheet this summer, ‘this is the year Greenland is contributing most to sea-level rise,’ said Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University.”
-- International pressure can work if properly applied against the Saudis. Consider these two stories:
The regime in Riyadh has “temporarily” released Walid Fitaihi, a U.S.-Saudi dual citizen, who’s been imprisoned for 21 months in the kingdom. Kareem Fahim reports: “Fitaihi was detained in November 2017 as Saudi authorities arrested hundreds of business executives, government officials and royal family members and imprisoned them at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. He later told a family member that he was tortured in custody. A Saudi official said in an emailed statement that Fitaihi had been ‘temporarily released from detention pending his trial.’ The statement did not disclose the exact charges he was facing.”
Saudi Arabia said it will begin allowing women to travel without the permission of a male relative. Fahim reports: “The easing of the travel restrictions, along with other legal amendments that granted women more rights in family matters, came in royal decrees published in the official gazette. The changes, rumored for weeks, produced an outpouring of joy on social media, as well as praise for the conservative kingdom’s rulers. … The shift comes as Saudi Arabia faces growing international scrutiny for its human-rights record, including its treatment of women. … Some of those advocates, over decades, had pushed for removal of the ban on women driving, as well the repeal of the guardianship system. As the new regulations were announced on Friday, several of the women’s rights advocates remain imprisoned or temporarily released as they face trial, on charges almost solely related to their activism.”
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN:
-- Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.), Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s intelligence community, claims he arrested 300 “illegal immigrants on a single day” when he was a federal prosecutor. He didn’t. Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Shawn Boburg report: “A closer look at the case shows that Ratcliffe’s claims conflict with the court record and the recollections of others who participated in the operation — at a time when he is under fire for embellishing his record. Ratcliffe played a supporting role in the 2008 sweep, which involved U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states and was led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement ... The effort targeted workers at poultry processor Pilgrim’s Pride who were suspected of using stolen Social Security numbers. Only 45 workers were charged by prosecutors in Ratcliffe’s office, court documents show. Six of those cases were dismissed, two of them because the suspects turned out to be American citizens. …
“A spokeswoman for Ratcliffe, Rachel Stephens, did not respond to questions about the operation but said in a statement that it grew out of a prior investigation and arrests in the Eastern District of Texas at the company’s national headquarters. … A.J. Irwin, a former immigration investigator who was involved in the early planning stages before retiring, said in an interview that the operation was a costly failure. … He dismissed Ratcliffe’s claim of having arrested 300 immigrants in the country illegally, in part because ICE agents and U.S. attorneys’ offices in five states were involved. Also, he said, federal prosecutors do not arrest suspects.”
-- Ratcliffe is widely regarded as a disengaged member of the House Intelligence Committee, and he is little known across the intelligence community that Trump wants to put him in charge of, senior congressional and intelligence officials say. Shane Harris and Greg Miller report: “Though Ratcliffe’s membership on the House committee is perhaps his most important credential for the top intelligence job, officials said he has yet to take part in one of its overseas trips to learn more about spy agencies’ work. … It is also unclear whether [he] has spent much time at the headquarters of the CIA, the National Security Agency or other parts of the sprawling U.S. intelligence community that he has been nominated to direct. … [Ratcliffe is] an infrequent visitor to the classified 'reading room' and a member known for brief appearances at the weekly business meetings and hearings that the panel often conducts behind closed doors.”
-- The White House has instructed newly installed Defense Secretary Mark Esper to reexamine the awarding of the military’s massive cloud-computing contract because of concerns that the deal would go to Amazon. Aaron Gregg and Josh Dawsey report: “The 11th-hour Oval Office intervention comes just weeks before the winning bid was expected to be announced and has now left a major military priority up in the air … As recently as Sunday, the Defense Department defended its plans to move ahead with a single company for what is known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, a $10 billion contract that would be one of the government’s most expensive information technology procurements ever. …
“The president’s directive represents a departure from what is usually a scripted bureaucratic process. Trump on several occasions has spoken out against Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos. And he has attacked the Bezos-owned Washington Post for its coverage of him by conflating it with Amazon’s interests. … Esper said in an interview with The Post on Thursday that he had heard ‘a lot from the Hill,’ including members of both political parties and administration officials, on the issue. He pledged to take a ‘hard look’ at it and did not set a timetable for his decision. … Giving the contract to more than one company would be welcomed by Oracle and IBM, whose business is threatened by Amazon. They have unsuccessfully sued to block the award. The Pentagon has said that only Amazon and Microsoft meet the minimum requirements for JEDI. … Oracle has lobbied Trump aggressively on the matter, hoping to appeal to his animosity toward Amazon.”
-- Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, is considering a Senate bid in New Hampshire. John Wagner reports: Lewandowski is looking “very seriously” at launching a bid to try to dislodge Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) next year. “Lewandowski, 45, who advocated a freewheeling style of letting ‘Trump be Trump,’ guided the campaign through some crucial primary wins, including in New Hampshire, a state in which he has lived. Lewandowski was fired by the campaign in 2016, when Paul Manafort ascended to campaign chairman after an internal power struggle, but he still has close ties to Trump. … Lewandowski has previously run for office. In 1994, he sought a seat in the Massachusetts state legislature. In 2012, he sought to become town treasurer of Windham, N.H. Both bids were unsuccessful.”
-- A federal judge rejected longtime Trump associate Roger Stone’s bid to dismiss his indictment. Spencer S. Hsu reports: “U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington granted Stone’s request for more access to unredacted portions of (Bob) Mueller’s 448-page report regarding his case but otherwise rejected his challenges to Mueller’s authorization as special counsel, the legality of the funding for Mueller’s office and his contention he should not have been prosecuted without a referral from Congress seeking that action. … The judge concluded, ‘It is fair to say that Roger Stone has no one but himself to blame for the fact that he was investigated by the Department of Justice.’”
-- Ousted FBI director James Comey shouldn’t be charged in connection with his handling of memos documenting conversations with Trump, senior Justice Department officials have concluded. Devlin Barrett reports: “Deciding not to charge the former FBI director, who has become an outspoken critic of President Trump since Trump fired him in May 2017, was ‘not a close call,’ said a person who was not authorized to discuss the investigation … Comey kept the memos in his home and later told an associate to share some of the contents with a journalist.”
-- The five Columbus, Ohio, police officers who arrested adult-film actress Stormy Daniels last year at a strip club will be disciplined for doing so improperly. Eli Rosenberg reports: “Tom Quinlan, the department’s interim police chief, said all five officers violated the department’s rules of conduct but did not specify which rules they violated, citing the pending civil litigation and a federal criminal investigation of the officers’ conduct. The vice unit of the department, which was disbanded earlier this year, is under investigation by federal authorities. The investigation was sparked in part from Daniels’s arrest, according to the Columbus Dispatch.”
-- A federal judge ordered New York not to release Trump’s state tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee while the court decides whether a lawsuit by the president should be heard by a judge in D.C. or New York. Spencer S. Hsu reports: “The action in Washington came after Trump sued as a private citizen to stop lawmakers from using a recently enacted New York law to obtain his state tax records. … U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, the newest member of the federal district court in Washington, sympathized with the president’s argument in hearings this week and asked all parties to come up with a solution. … Andrew Amer, special litigation counsel for New York Attorney General Letitia James, had proposed that state tax officials not turn over Trump’s records until seven days after Nichols decides whether the Trump lawsuit belonged before him in Washington, or if it should be heard before a federal judge in New York City or another judge in New York.”
-- Three members of the National Rifle Association’s board resigned. Beth Reinhard reports: The three had “raised concerns about reports of reckless spending and mismanagement by the group’s leadership [and] resigned Thursday, another sign of mounting dissent within the nation’s most powerful gun-rights group. The three board members — Esther Schneider of Texas, Sean Maloney of Ohio and Timothy Knight of Tennessee — said they were stripped of their committee assignments after they asked questions about allegations of lavish spending by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and other financial excesses. … In their letter, Schneider, Maloney and Knight said they have sought information from NRA leaders as part of their oversight responsibilities as board members, ‘only to be rebuffed at every turn.’”
DEMOCRATIC DEBATE FALLOUT:
-- After watching both nights of the second Democratic debate, some black voters are frustrated by the scant discussion of issues affecting minorities. Vanessa Williams reports: “Over the two nights, about 150 mostly black residents of Detroit, as well as Flint, Mich., and areas in between, turned out for the parties organized by Black Voters Matter, an Atlanta-based group focused on organizing voters often overlooked by campaigns and traditional political organizations. During the debates, attendees cheered or groaned as the candidates laid out their plans and critiqued others’ records and proposals. But after listening to the candidates spar, many said they hadn’t heard much to excite them, even as they said it was vitally important to defeat President Trump next year.”
Cory Booker got his biggest applause when he talked about voter suppression and his family’s Detroit roots: “But Liberty Bell, a Flint resident who is still using bottled water for drinking and bathing her 2-year-old daughter, was disappointed that he didn’t mention Flint … She also said she was disappointed with (Kamala) Harris’s performance. ‘I was expecting so much from her — I so want to vote for Kamala Harris, but she’s just not saying anything,’ Bell said, adding that she was hoping to hear the senator talk about policies to help working mothers and to reduce mass incarceration. … [Watch-party] organizers conducted instant polls to measure participants’ most pressing concerns and used commercial breaks for quick gut checks on whether the candidates had addressed those issues. Education, health care, climate change and the minimum wage all ranked high on the list. And although the candidates touched on those issues, they often missed the nuances of how those issues play out in low-income areas and communities of color, attendees said.”
-- There was no discussion at all during the Democratic debates about Trump's success at remaking the judiciary in his image, but Senate Republicans have their eye on the ball: They just confirmed 13 more Trump nominees to lifetime appointments before leaving town for a five-week summer recess. Hailey Fuchs reports: “The president often talks about his judicial success; he has appointed 1 out of every 5 judges on the appellate bench. The prospect of reshaping the courts energized GOP voters in 2016, and it stands as a powerful argument with core Republican voters for 2020. Yet the issue of the courts has barely attracted the same attention in the Democratic presidential race. In the two rounds of debate so far, the moderators have focused on health care, immigration and the candidates’ records. The subject of judicial picks has not been broached.”
-- Your daily reminder of why judges matter: A federal judge has blocked a Trump administration decision that would have allowed many political outside groups to conceal the identity of their donors. From the AP: “U.S. District Judge Brian Morris said in Tuesday’s decision that the IRS didn’t give proper public notice last year before it stopped requiring tax-exempt groups such as social-welfare organizations, labor unions and business associations, to identify on tax forms their donors contributing more than $5,000. Last year, the IRS changed the Nixon-era rule meant to prevent fraud and abuse by tax-exempt groups with nonprofit status. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, both Democrats, sued over the change, saying it would harm states’ ability to verify whether tax-exempt groups are following the law and make it easier for anonymous and foreign money to influence U.S. elections.” (I wrote a Big Idea about Bullock's role in this case in June.)
-- Democratic establishmentarians are frustrated that Biden's bid is causing collateral damage to Barack Obama’s legacy. From Politico: “Biden is fair game. Obama is not. Former Obama White House officials and allies responded in force Thursday to stress that message after several Democratic contenders criticized the former president in a debate that featured uncharacteristically tough assessments of his policies. … ‘The GOP didn’t attack Reagan, they built him up for decades,’ tweeted Neera Tanden, CEO and president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and the Obama campaign’s domestic policy director. ‘Dem Candidates who attack Obama are wrong and terrible. Obama wasn’t perfect, but come on people, next to Trump, he kind of is.’”
-- But Obama himself remains unfazed by the attacks, according to CBS News: “A source familiar with his thinking wouldn't say whether the former president watched Tuesday and Wednesday's debates, but said Obama believes ‘his legacy is going to be fine, that there's a staying power to it and the things under attack by this president are high water marks for the country.’ … The former president believes it's appropriate to review and debate his legacy, but believes it should be ‘fact-based,’ especially in regards to his deportation policy.”
-- Biden’s family fortunes have closely tracked with his political career. From Politico: “The day the Bidens took over Paradigm Global Advisors was a memorable one. In the late summer of 2006 Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s younger brother, James, purchased the firm. On their first day on the job, they showed up with Joe’s other son, Beau, and two large men and ordered the hedge fund’s chief of compliance to fire its president, according to a Paradigm executive who was present. … At the time, the senator was just months away from both assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launching his second presidential bid. According to the executive, James Biden made it clear he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account. … At this, the executive recalled, Beau Biden, who was then running for attorney general of Delaware, turned bright red. He told his uncle, ‘This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.’ A spokesman for James and Hunter Biden said no such episode ever occurred. … Biden’s image as a straight-shooting man of the people, however, is clouded by the careers of his son and brother, who have lengthy track records of making, or seeking, deals that cash in on his name. Interviews, court records, government filings and news reports reveal that some members of the Biden family have consistently mixed business and politics over nearly half a century, moving from one business to the next as Joe’s stature in Washington grew.”
-- “The debaters eerily sounded like ‘America First’ Democrats with scant concern about how the United States should protect its interests abroad,” writes columnist David Ignatius: “Rather than questioning Trump’s haste on Afghanistan, Democrats seem to be joining him in a race for the exit. … This disinterest in foreign policy is partly the fault of CNN, which organized this week’s debates. The moderators posed only a few questions that touched on Afghanistan, America’s longest war. Most respondents talked about a quick departure, rather than the national security threats that might require a small residual force. … Most of the 20 participating Democratic candidates seemed to have their eyes fixed on the departure gate in Afghanistan. That’s an understandable feeling for a war-weary country, but it’s not a good stance for a prospective commander in chief.”
-- During the debate, Elizabeth Warren said she doesn’t “understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president … just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.” This prompts The Post’s Editorial Board to wonder: Why go to the trouble of running for president to promote ideas that can’t work? “This got us thinking about some big ideas in U.S history. Like, say, amending the Constitution to outlaw liquor. Or sending half a million troops into Vietnam. Or passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy in a time of massive deficits. Ambition is essential, in other words, but not sufficient. The country faces big challenges, such as economic inequality and climate change, that call for creative solutions. They also call for wisdom, honesty and even a bit of modesty about government’s limitations. Having embraced [Obama’s] ‘no drama’ approach to governing, often defined by the philosophy 'Don’t do stupid s---,’ it would be odd if Democrats suddenly embraced ideological grandiosity as a prerequisite for service in the Oval Office. That means, first, that proposals should meet a baseline degree of factual plausibility — a bar that, for example, the Medicare-for-all plan that Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren favor does not clear.”
-- Six husbands are trying to figure out the best way to campaign for their spouses running for president. Julie Zauzmer reports: “Of the five men whose wives are running for president (only Marianne Williamson, among the six female Democratic candidates, is currently unmarried), all have much lower profiles than their wives — and certainly are much less recognizable than the last would-be First Man, Bill Clinton, who would always be far better known as a former president. Chasten Buttigieg, the male spouse of South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, has carved out the most prominent role of any spouse — male or female — in the field, with the possible exception of former second lady Jill Biden.”
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted photos of herself with Pelosi yesterday in Ghana. Omar is one of more than a dozen Congressional Black Caucus members on the trip, along with the speaker. Coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in America, the trip included a visit to the “Door of No Return,” through which millions of Africans passed before being shipped off and sold into slavery:
They said “send her back” but Speaker @SpeakerPelosi didn’t just make arrangements to send me back, she went back with me ✊🏽
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) August 1, 2019
So grateful for the honor to return to Mother Africa with the @TheBlackCaucus and commemorate The Year of Return! #Doorofreturn #Ghana pic.twitter.com/0yVBLcAEs5
The Baltimore CBS affiliate reports that police are investigating a Saturday morning break-in at the home of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), which by happenstance occurred four hours before Trump tweeted that congressman’s congressional district is a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, held a series of events in the city on Thursday:
I visited a packed house at Stadium Place today to provide the seniors there with a legislative update & to talk about my work in Congress. We talked about what matters to them, & they encouraged me to keep doing my job & continue fighting for them in Washington. pic.twitter.com/UPKxoHGSA3
— Elijah E. Cummings (@RepCummings) August 1, 2019
A Republican strategist noted the irony of Trump supporters fighting a group of pro-immigration protesters at the president's rally:
Everyone at rally taking photos on their iPhones invented by son of Syrian immigrant. https://t.co/qeIbXjU7GM
— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) August 2, 2019
Trump made a far-fetched promise during his rally:
Trump promises to cure childhood cancer “very shortly” https://t.co/SDIU5OjTL1
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 2, 2019
Jason Rezaian, who was imprisoned by the Iranian regime while serving as The Post's Tehran bureau chief, marked the impending seventh anniversary since the disappearance of reporter Austin Tice:
It’s long past time to #FreeAustinTice https://t.co/a0qTFRV9Te
— Jason Rezaian (@jrezaian) August 1, 2019
A conservative writer observeed the evolution of the Republican National Committee elephant:
Is it me, or is the elephant getting angrier and angrier? pic.twitter.com/sTLSRZakVY
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) August 1, 2019
The daughter of one of the victims of the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, S.C., endorsed Kamala Harris:
Four years after I lost my mother at Mother Emanuel, I'm proud to endorse @KamalaHarris for President.
— Rev Sharon Risher (@RisherRev) August 1, 2019
She is the only candidate with a plan to bypass the @NRA-controlled Congress and use executive action to keep our families safe. https://t.co/eLefnmotH9
In light of Biden's attempt at pitching his campaign website during Wednesday's debate, here's a presidential candidate of yore sharing his campaign's 1-800 number despite protests:
12/15/1991 Dem prez debate:
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) August 1, 2019
Jerry Brown pitches his 1-800 number over Tom Brokaw protest.
"Let them join this campaign through the number: 1-800-426-1112...But that is not for a media outlet to censor a presidential debate"
(thanx @POLITICO_Steve for inspiration for this clip) pic.twitter.com/yAj0jacbIn
A Republican congresswoman shared a memory of Rep. Will Hurd (Tex.) soon after he announced his retirement:
I am so lucky to have a friend for life in @HurdOnTheHill. He is one of my best friends in Congress & I know that he will continue to strive to serve our country. The sky is the limit for Will & Americans will hear more from him in years to come. One of my all-time fave photos👇 pic.twitter.com/vMhxQTvRYH
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) August 2, 2019
A FiveThirtyEight analyst thinks it's too soon to start thinking of a blue Texas:
Everyone does remember that Trump won Texas by 9 percentage points, right? NINE. Flipping Arizona, at Trump +3.5 in 2016, I can see. Texas going blue for president? I’m going to need a lot more than some House retirements to see it as in play. https://t.co/gUVNcmbOAn
— Geoffrey Skelley (@geoffreyvs) August 2, 2019
| QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The president — this comes as no surprise — really doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Nancy Pelosi said of Trump’s latest attacks on her hometown of Baltimore, where her father was once mayor. “But maybe you could ask his son-in-law, who is a slumlord there, if he wants to talk about rodent infestations.” (Felicia Sonmez and Mike DeBonis) |
VIDEOS OF THE DAY:
A police camera caught a small plane's emergency landing on a busy Washington state road:
Plane lands on Washington state road pic.twitter.com/Cv1EgLpwfO
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 2, 2019
This is what the massive glacial melt in Greenland looks like:
This is a roaring glacial melt, under the bridge to Kangerlussiauq, Greenland where it's 22C today and Danish officials say 12 billions tons of ice melted in 24 hours, yesterday. pic.twitter.com/Rl2odG4xWj
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) August 1, 2019
Stephen Colbert wants people to remember that the election is still 16 months away:
Trevor Noah gave a look at the day's other news, including the story of a Brooklyn cabdriver who helped a couple deliver their baby:
Noah also interviewed 2020 hopeful Andrew Yang: