Thứ Bảy, 5 tháng 1, 2019

News on Youtube Jan 5 2019

ROBERT COSTA: Hello. I'm Robert Costa. And this is the Washington Week Podcast.

It's the first week of 2019 and the 116th Congress was sworn in, with Nancy Pelosi taking

the helm of the House of Representatives and the Democrats now in the majority.

It's a historic Congress for many reasons.

And joining me to discuss it all, Nancy Cordes, chief congressional correspondent for

CBS News; Andrea Mitchell, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent and anchor of

Andrea Mitchell Reports; Dan Balz, chief correspondent for The Washington Post; and Carl

Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.

This new congressional class is one of firsts: the first two Native American women, the

first Muslim women, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, the first

African-American women from several states, and the first female senators from several states.

There are 127 women now in Congress, a new high, and there are other significant signs of

diversity: the highest number of African-Americans in the House, 53, with 56 in Congress

overall; there are 42 Latino members, a new record; and there are 10 LGTBQ members, the

most ever. Several members of this Congress have also served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How will the variety of backgrounds and experience change legislation coming from Capitol

Hill and the whole scene? Andrea, we were just talking about the images from that

House floor vote for speaker. What stood out to you about this new Congress?

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, the gender issue. I mean, the women.

The fact that Nancy Pelosi was up there, and again, as she had done in 2007 when she took

the gavel, she invited the children - now her grandchildren, her nine grandchildren, are

a good deal older and there are more of them. But the fact that there were so many kids,

it was - it's always family day on the first day of the House.

I used to cover the House and love it. But this was so, so cool.

And, Dan, your newspaper pointed out that it took till, you know, 2011 for there to be a

ladies restroom off the floor of the House, and for the first time there was a line for

the restroom. (Laughter.) So that was another thing.

It just was very different - the color, the ethnicity, the dress, very exciting.

Very emotional for anyone who loves politics and loves Congress.

ROBERT COSTA: You've been keeping an eye on this new class in the House.

What do you make of it, Dan?

DAN BALZ: I think it's a remarkable group. I mean, one, just by the sheer size; it's obviously

the biggest new class of Democrats since the Watergate babies after the 1974 election.

But as we've said a hundred times, the diversity of this group and the diversity of all

types. There's obviously ethnic diversity, racial diversity, but there's also diversity in

experience. I mean, there are people who have no experience in government who are already

forces and there are people who have real experience in government who have come in

with - you know, with an idea of how they want to try to fit in.

And so they have a collective sense that they can do something simply because of kind of

the sheer numbers that they have, that they may have some power to do some things.

I think what they're wrestling with collectively as a group is how do we do that, what do

we actually do, where do we try to make our emphasis as a - as a group.

And in talking to a number of them over the last few days, they're not quite there on

that yet, but they know that they are - they have the potential to be a truly historic

class beyond just the numbers.

ROBERT COSTA: And we talk so much, Dan, about the outsiders in this class, but Haley

Stevens from Michigan, what do you make of her?

DAN BALZ: Well, I got to know her before the - before the swearing-in and spent some

time with her yesterday, on Thursday.

She was a person who in the 2008 campaign prepared the briefing book for Hillary Clinton.

And if you can imagine a more daunting task, I mean, Hillary Clinton actually read her

briefing book. She got her start doing that. She then went into the Obama administration.

She described for me - she said, you know, we're in a chaotic moment here with the

government shutdown, but she said I remember 10 years ago, I was at the Treasury

Department and we were facing an economic crisis and we were facing GM and Chrysler about

to go under, and we had to figure out how they were going to get paid to avoid

liquidation. So she has looked at government up close, worked at it in a deep way.

She wants to be - as she said, we want to be the doers.

She said the class of '74, they were the reformers; we're going to be the doers.

ROBERT COSTA: Nancy, you spent part of Friday covering the new member Rashida Tlaib, the

first, I believe, Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress.

She said the expletive about President Trump in remarks following the swearing-in on

Thursday. What does that story tell us about this new class?

NANCY CORDES: Well, you know, she said on Twitter even after the uproar I'm unapologetically me.

Basically, I'm - you know, I'm not going to say I'm sorry and I'm not going to change.

And, you know, she is not the only new member coming in with an attitude that, you know,

I'm authentic, that's why I was elected, and I - and, you know, and I may have some rough

edges, but deal with it. And the interesting thing - you know, you talked about

harnessing, you know, that talent.

The interesting challenge for Democrats is that if they're going to get anything done, if

they're going to achieve any of their priorities over the next couple of years when they

don't control the Senate and they don't control the White House, they are going to need

to win in the court of public opinion.

They're basically going to have to pass bills in the House and then marshal the public to

their side to pressure the Senate to take up this legislation, already a very - a tall

order. What's the best way to do that?

By having great communicators who are great on social media, and they have some very,

very talented young communicators who, you know, are unpredictable.

(Laughter.) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told 60 Minutes you want to call me a radical, fine,

I'm radical, you know, which is, you know, not a label that a lot of politicians are

usually very comfortable with. So, you know, they are going to provide a challenge

for Democratic leadership, but if they can harness that talent, you know, and

that youth, it could work very well to their advantage.

CARL HULSE: The Instagram class. That's what this class is.

ROBERT COSTA: Is that your new moniker for them, Carl?

CARL HULSE: I just made it up. Just made it up. (Laughter.)

NANCY CORDES: It's good. You know -

ROBERT COSTA: We'll see when that lands in the Times. Then I'll know it's a real thing. (Laughter.)

Carl, what do you make, though, not only of the new members, but the new stars of this

new Congress? The nominating speeches for the speakership, you had Hakeem Jeffries from

New York; and then on the Republican side Liz Cheney of Wyoming, daughter of Dick Cheney,

the former vice president, nominating Kevin McCarthy.

CARL HULSE: Who is going to be - she's showing, you know, that they're going to remain

conservative; here's Dick Cheney's daughter in there.

I think Hakeem Jeffries did a(n) outstanding job according to his colleagues.

They were all very impressed by him and thought that that was really a great introduction

for him to the public. I mean, he's obviously - they're casting about in the House, the

Democrats, for some, you know, new blood, younger people, and he obviously made his mark.

I think the interesting thing to me about the Democrats here is in some ways they've

already won because they have this new class that more reflects society. You know, the House,

politics is slow. The transition is slow. And the Democrats kind of caught up this time.

These are people who, you know, represent all sorts of Americans.

And to your point about policy, I don't think it has to affect policy because these are

people in all sorts of walks of life. They're going to be looking at things like, hey,

I live in the real world; here's how we need this policy to be.

I think there can be a beneficial effect. For the Republicans, it's sort of a problem.

I think they lost 10 women. So they had -

NANCY CORDES: They had half - they have half the women that they had before, and they

didn't have that many.

ROBERT COSTA: And aren't the new Republicans more Trumpy, to use a word?

CARL HULSE: Right, but the - but the - when you look out there now, you look over at the

Democratic side, which we all did side by side, and you go, wow, look at that complexion

of that group. And then the Republicans are more male, more white I presume -

ROBERT COSTA: And conservative. CARL HULSE: And more conservative.

DAN BALZ: Older. CARL HULSE: Yeah, older.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And the other thing, Dan's absolutely right about the generational issue.

One thing that just stood out to me today was Cortez - Ocasio-Cortez was being zapped by

the Republicans for - they found a video of her doing a riff to Breakfast Club, and it's

quite charming, and it's really very funny. She was in college. She had a Boston, you know,

University sweatshirt on. And they made a big deal out of it, that this is terrible; she

was on a roof and she's dancing. And it's a great takeoff on a very popular movie, and

the fact is that they're tone deaf in taking her on about that.

And she went right on Twitter and did another dance in the halls of Congress.

CARL HULSE: Yeah, they backed off pretty quickly.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And they backed off quickly.

NANCY CORDES: We should all be so lucky to have a video like that leaked about us, look

what a great dancer I was in college.

CARL HULSE: Was that Don't You Forget About Me from that movie?

I don't think anyone's going to forget about her.

ROBERT COSTA: And how effective. So she has - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now has, I believe,

more Twitter followers than Speaker Pelosi. What's the mark of effectiveness for her?

Is it going to be actually muscling through a Green New Deal through the House, or is it

just building a national profile, Dan?

DAN BALZ: Well, I think it is - I think it is leveraging a national profile to keep

pushing for as ambitious a progressive agenda as she can get.

I was - when I was up in the House on Thursday, her office is right next to Congresswoman

Stevens, and so there was a big crowd outside and she came out at one point to do a

little scrum with reporters, and somebody asked her about the rules package.

There had been issues in the rules package that the Democrats were presenting that the

progressives didn't like a return to pay as you go.

CARL HULSE: PAYGO.

DAN BALZ: And she was asked about that, and basically what she said was two things.

One is I think the people who did this - who put this together did a very good job;

there's a lot in here. I mean, it was a - it was a - it was - you know, it was a careful answer.

But she also said, but on this particular issue I don't think it behooves Democrats to

have this if they are also pushing for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, a big infrastructure plan.

And she was able to kind of bifurcate with her answer in a way that suggested to me she's

not just going to - you know, just kind of throw stuff up at the wall; she's going to try

to keep the pressure on to push, to push, to push a progressive agenda.

CARL HULSE: I don't remember a House freshman getting this attention ever.

Can you think of anything comparable? I just - it's extremely unusual. I mean, you

know, incoming members of the House do not usually jump to the top of the TV demand.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And it also, when you think about the way the Senate used to work, you

know, when Hillary Clinton came to the Senate and I was covering her, she waited.

She did not give a speech.

NANCY CORDES: You put your head down.

ANDREA MITCHELL: She didn't do any interviews. She let Barbara Mikulski take the lead on

everything, who was the senior senator then among the women - of the Women's Caucus.

And this is more like what Elizabeth Warren did when Warren came to the Senate and

grabbed the attention and was very, you know, strident among her colleagues, in fact, to

the point where Harry Reid at one point called Susan Collins, I was told, and apologized

for the way that Warren had behaved in an interview on ABC, a group interview of all the women.

ROBERT COSTA: Final thoughts, Nancy?

NANCY CORDES: Well, you know, I think it's interesting that Ocasio-Cortez seems to have

become an object of fascination almost more so to Republicans than to Democrats.

You know, they're really watching -

ROBERT COSTA: They probably see her as a future presidential threat.

NANCY CORDES: You know, they must or, you know, there's something about her that

confounds them. When, you know - when all 435 members of the House were voting for

speaker, Republicans were mostly silent as 200 Democrats all voted for Nancy Pelosi.

But when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - who had said she was going to vote for Nancy Pelosi,

so it was not a surprise - voted for her, you know, they booed. And some people said,

oh, they were booing in jest. You know, what was it about this freshman, 29 years

old, voting for the speaker that - you know, that led them to respond that way?

So it's going to be - it's going to be interesting to see how she riles up both parties.

ROBERT COSTA: That's it for this edition of the Washington Week Podcast.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on the Washington Week website.

I'm Robert Costa. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.

For more infomation >> The historic 116th Congress - Duration: 12:41.

-------------------------------------------

Schumer: Trump threatened to keep government shut down for 'months or even years' - Duration: 0:30.

For more infomation >> Schumer: Trump threatened to keep government shut down for 'months or even years' - Duration: 0:30.

-------------------------------------------

Washington kicks off 2019 with a government divided over border security - Duration: 6:36.

For more infomation >> Washington kicks off 2019 with a government divided over border security - Duration: 6:36.

-------------------------------------------

New year, new Congress, same shutdown - Duration: 24:18.

ROBERT COSTA: Speaker Pelosi takes charge and divided government begins.

I'm Robert Costa. Welcome to Washington Week.

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): (From video.) I pledge that this Congress will be

transparent, bipartisan, and unifying.

ROBERT COSTA: The balance of power shifts as the government remains shutdown.

HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): (From video.) We're now entering a period

of divided government. But that is no excuse for gridlock or inaction.

ROBERT COSTA: The first order of business for Speaker Pelosi, reopening the government

but refusing to fund a border wall.

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): (From video.) It has nothing to do with politics.

It has to do with the wall as an immorality.

ROBERT COSTA: And after a White House meeting, a flicker of progress.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: (From video.) Well, we had a productive meeting today with

Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer.

We're all on the same path in terms of wanting to get government open.

ROBERT COSTA: Some Republicans are cracking and calling for compromise.

And another assails the president's character. We cover it all next.

ANNOUNCER: This is Washington Week. Once again, from Washington, moderator Robert Costa.

ROBERT COSTA: Good evening and happy new year.

After two years of Republican dominance in Washington, Democrats have taken control of

the House and Nancy Pelosi is once again speaker.

Pelosi will preside over the most diverse House in history at a tense national moment.

The federal government remains partially shutdown tonight, and the special counsel probe

is ongoing. The markets have been volatile, although new jobs numbers on Friday showed

hiring surged in December, even as the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9 percent.

Joining me tonight to discuss this new era of divided government: Nancy Cordes, chief

congressional correspondent for CBS News; Dan Balz, chief correspondent for The

Washington Post; Andrea Mitchell, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent and anchor

of Andrea Mitchell Reports; and Carl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for The New

York Times. Dan, happy new year.

DAN BALZ: Same to you.

ROBERT COSTA: What a scene there at the White House. The Rose Garden, the president

after a two-hour meeting with Democratic leaders, including the new speaker, Nancy Pelosi,

struck a somewhat upbeat tone in his remarks to reporters.

What does that tell us about this new era of divided government?

DAN BALZ: Well, it came right after the Democratic leaders had talked about a very

contentious meeting. And so he decided, I think, to say, well, we thought it was productive.

And I think he was trying to suggest that he is being reasonable at a time when he knows

that he could be in the long run, and in the short run, blamed for what's going on with

the shutdown. During that long Q&A with reporters, he laid out practically every possible

option. This could go on for months, maybe years. Or, it could be settled in a matter of

days. I could invoke a national emergency and have the wall built. Oh, but I'm not

necessarily going to do that. I mean, he kept every option open that he possibly could.

He seemed a little bit more relaxed about it as he was talking to the reporters.

He obviously, you know, enjoys going on and on. But I don't know that we found anything

that suggests they are any really much closer to a deal than they were before that meeting.

ROBERT COSTA: Andrea, how significant was it when the president talked about sending

troops to the border, declaring a national emergency to build a wall?

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, he's been trying to create the narrative that this is a national

security issue. And having them in the Situation Room twice now, having Kirstjen Nielsen

when she was down at the border calling in on a secure video phone. But they are not having

any of it, because they know that those are not the facts. And you can't create a false

narrative all the time. I mean, he's got the greatest megaphone, of course, from the White House.

But the facts are it isn't a crisis, other than what they've created through a series of

policies that have created backups at different crossing points and the separation of

children, and the rest. But it is self-created to a great extent.

They don't have facts on their side about terrorists.

You don't have 10,000 terrorists or 3,000 terrorists or however many thousands a day.

It's just how many people are on the watch list on airplanes, not even at the border.

So it has to be really carefully factchecked.

And they're not going to be able to win that argument, at least with the Democrats.

Whether they win it with the public is another question.

It does seem that the president, every time he is not near a television, you know,

screen, runs out to find the cameras, because he's clearly watching a lot of publicity

about Nancy Pelosi. And we'll talk about that.

ROBERT COSTA: And today's meeting, Carl, was not broadcast to the American people. What

do you know about what happened inside of the room? The president wants $5 billion for

his border wall. Where is the new speaker, Nancy Pelosi, right now in these negotiations?

CARL HULSE: Yeah. Here's what I hear went on in that room.

The White House is worried about Republicans getting nervous and defecting and joining

the Democrats and pushing for some of these bills that will reopen the government while

they fight over the wall money. So the White House, they want - the president wants to

convey, hey, we're moving along, and things are OK. So the president wanted to set up this

working group over the weekend to give this impression that there was going to be

high-level talks. Nancy Pelosi, not budging here at all, she's feeling her power right

now I think, and she and Chuck Schumer say, well, we'll go along with that.

If you promise to open the government by Tuesday we'll have talks. The White House

doesn't want to do that. So they say: We're not going to engage in these talks. The staff

can keep talking. We don't want to feed the impression that things are moving along OK.

They're hoping - we've seen some breaks already in the Senate, Susan Collins, Cory

Gardner. They're hoping that at the end of the day the solution to this is with

Republicans in Congress who say, boy, my constituents can't take this anymore.

We need to get this fixed. And it really is Congress's job to fund the government.

So they were - Nancy Pelosi wasn't ready to play Donald Trump's game today.

ROBERT COSTA: So the Republicans could buckle, and the Democrats could be waiting for

that Nancy. But if there is going to be a deal at any level, what would it look like?

NANCY CORDES: You know, it's almost harder to say now than it was two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago I probably would have said, oh, you know, they'll put some more funding in

there for border security and they'll call it, you know, wall-adjacent. (Laughter.)

And the president will, you know, and everyone will sort just of say, oh great, you

know, we took care of it, and move on. And it would be sort of a face-saving mechanism.

But the president certainly appears to be more dug in now than he was a couple of weeks

ago, and maybe not willing to go along with that.

In fact, he said in the latest meetings not only was he starting at 5.6 million (dollars)

and willing to negotiate, now he says that's the least amount of money - 5.6 billion

(dollars), rather. Big difference. And so, you know, this is a very unusual shutdown

in the sense that we've seen short shutdowns and we've seen longer shutdowns.

But normally you sort of know what the endgame is. You know where everyone's going to

get to in the end. In this situation, they're more dug in and it's hard to see.

If Nancy Pelosi says she'll do one dollar and Donald Trump says he'll take 5.6 billion

(dollars) at a minimum, you know, where do they meet in the middle?

ANDREA MITCHELL: And the other thing about the meetings over this weekend, they're going

to be led by the vice president and staff from the other sides.

Well, the vice president's already been weakened by having said to Mitch McConnell, oh,

the president will go along with the bill, you know, when they unanimously voice voted

it. And then discovered - they discovered to their shock, and I'm sure his dismay,

that the president wasn't going to go along. And he pulled the rug out from his own

vice president. So for Pence to be leading these talks also indicates that they're

not high-level enough because -

CARL HULSE: Not a lot of confidence in him at this point.

ANDREA MITCHELL: In whether the president will agree to anything they discuss.

DAN BALZ: I think one aspect of this is up to now - and I think we're still in this

stage - each side sees it as a win-lose. I win, you lose. I'm going to dig in and get

what I want. And ultimately there's going to have to be some give on that, whether it's, you

know, papered over in some way or whether there's a real compromise on some money aspects.

CARL HULSE: Yeah. We have all covered a lot of these. And there's usually - the Democrats,

you know, they like government. And they usually are trying to figure out a way to resolve

this. Right now, they think they're in a pretty good spot and they're not about to give.

ROBERT COSTA: Well, what breaks them? Could it be getting the IRS stalled at a staff

level with providing tax refunds for Americans? Could it be problems at the airports?

NANCY CORDES: Sure. It could be any of those things. And also keep in mind, when we talk

about 800,000 federal workers, people think of federal workers as being in D.C., but

a lot of them aren't. They are all - you know, they're in every single state.

And so you already have, as Carl mentioned, two prominent Republican senators saying that

they're not comfortable with these people remaining out of work.

ROBERT COSTA: Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine.

NANCY CORDES: The president's notion that the people should just ask their landlords if

maybe they'll, you know, let them be late on their rent for a few months, maybe a year,

who knows, if the shutdown -

CARL HULSE: Because he would have, as a landlord.

NANCY CORDES: Right? (Laughs.) So -

ANDREA MITCHELL: And both of those senators are up for - up in 2020. So that pressure

will build. Also, you've got these small businesses all across America - a lot in this

area, yes, but all across America - around federal installations who are really hurting.

ROBERT COSTA: Where is Leader McConnell in all this, Carl?

CARL HULSE: Well, he is - he got burnt. He had the Senate before the Christmas break

go along with a clean CR and to move this into February. They left town.

And the president decided to not follow through, the House Republicans.

So Mitch McConnell is not somebody who wants to get burned and embarrassed twice.

He's sitting back going: We need to figure this out. But he will - you know, he'll

stand up for the president. But he's watching this to see which way he needs to go.

NANCY CORDES: And think about how unusual that is.

I mean, we're talking about Mitch McConnell, who really cherishes his image as being

always, you know, three chess moves ahead of everyone else and the ultimate dealmaker.

And he has said point blank this week: I don't have a role to play here. I mean, he's

basically washing his hands of this and saying: This is the president's fight.

You know, Mitch McConnell didn't plan to go to the mat over border wall funding.

The entire Senate unanimously said that they should fund the government without it.

So this is not his fight.

ROBERT COSTA: What I'm trying to understand, Dan, is we have on one side the president

threatening a national emergency and sending troops to the border and have the Army Corps

of Engineers start to dig and build a wall. And then we have a president who says,

well, we could have steel instead of concrete. He said that today as well.

DAN BALZ: See-through steel.

ROBERT COSTA: See-through steel. (Laughter.) So which Trump is the real Trump here?

DAN BALZ: Bob, I don't think we know. I mean, I think one thing that we've seen with

the president in these kinds of situations is he keeps throwing out stuff.

Some of it is factually incorrect. Some of it is just him -

ANDREA MITCHELL: His steel numbers are incorrect. I mean, we'd have to import the steel from

China to build what he wants to build and pay a tariff on it. I mean, that's how crazy this is.

DAN BALZ: Yeah, so -

ROBERT COSTA: You know, we're talking about President Trump, President Trump.

And we've been doing that for the last two years, every Friday night. He dominates the show.

But we have another character in Washington who is - who is rising in a historic way:

Speaker Pelosi. Carl, we were at the Capitol together talking about this.

She's the first two-time speaker since Sam Rayburn, who has a building named after him on

Capitol Hill. Talk about the meaning of Pelosi's ascent to the speakership again.

CARL HULSE: Yeah, it is a - say what you want about her politics - remarkable achievement.

She'll go down in history as one of the great congressional leaders, no doubt about it.

She worked her way up at a time, basically, when it was tough for women in politics, for

sure, as the leader of the California Democratic Party. Comes here, becomes a Democratic

leader, gets elected speaker, has a pretty amazing run with Obama with Affordable Care

Act, the stimulus. Not so amazing with the climate change bill.

But is in the wilderness for eight years and comes back. People just don't do that.

And she came back, got a majority back, and beat back a serious internal challenge.

I mean, it's an incredible political story.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And you did this after being vilified by Donald Trump and the entire

Republican establishment in way on social media that no previous speaker - there were ads

against Tip O'Neill, but nothing in this modern day -

CARL HULSE: Where she was their main target.

ANDREA MITCHELL: She was their main target.

DAN BALZ: Well, one could argue that Newt Gingrich got a lot.

It wasn't the era of social media, but -

ANDREA MITCHELL: But it wasn't the - it was the era. And he actually invited it,

because of his personality and the way he had taken over from Bob Michel, his predecessor.

DAN BALZ: Well, because he had - because he had done it to the Democrats.

NANCY CORDES: And you talk about the art of the deal.

I mean, she basically had to negotiate with her own party to retain her position.

And it was - you know, she had this planned, down to the smallest detail.

The minute the elections were over, you just saw the plan start to unfold.

And day after day this member of Congress got what they needed, and this member of

Congress got what they needed.

And at the same time, she had to sort of give on all these issues without weakening her

leadership to the point that she was going to, you know, enter this speakership with one

hand tied behind her back. So it was a very delicate balance.

ROBERT COSTA: And President Trump isn't her only political headache.

(Laughter.) She saw this week her own new members are causing her problems.

I believe you came here tonight after following that story.

NANCY CORDES: (Laughs.) Rashida - following Rashida Tlaib all around the east front of the Capitol.

ROBERT COSTA: Who said - explain what happened this week. (Laughter.)

NANCY CORDES: Well -

ROBERT COSTA: Don't use the word. Don't use the word. This is PBS.

NANCY CORDES: So Rashida Tlaib got sworn in, and then she swore about the president at a

victory party. (Laughter.) She said: We are going to impeach that bleep. Democrats

were horrified. Partially because, you know, they didn't appreciate the language.

Partially because, you know, Nancy Pelosi and a lot of other Democratic leaders would

rather not use the I-word. They don't want to talk about impeachment, especially

right now. They want the focus to be on their agenda.

ROBERT COSTA: Can she contain them, the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic

Party - the new New York member calling for a Green New Deal? Others calling for impeachment?

DAN BALZ: I don't think she can - she can't control them. She has to manage them.

And one thing we've - you know, we've known about Nancy Pelosi is she knows how to manage

her caucus. This is a different problem than she's had before. These are - this younger

generation are very skillful with social media. They want to move the system from the outside.

There are some people in this new class who will work from the inside, but the Alexandria

Ocasio-Cortez and that contingent will work from the outside.

And they will push her, and push her, and push her.

ANDREA MITCHELL: But she is, so far, so adept, the tone and the way she's handled it.

I believe in freedom of speech. It's generational. I wouldn't use that language.

And she has just, without putting Tlaib down, she - and saying she's got the right to say

what she wants to say, but I wouldn't do it that way, and separating herself, and I think

ignoring. There's going to be a lot of ignoring and, you know, not taking it

too seriously, not making it a cause celebre.

CARL HULSE: I do think she handled it well. But here's the problem for Nancy Pelosi.

The progressives are getting a lot of the attention. This majority was made in swing

districts around the country, in California and Virginia. She has to look out for

these people that are going to have to run again in districts that Trump won. And, you know,

it's a difficult balancing act. But, you know, she has shown that she can pull it off.

ROBERT COSTA: And there are forces at play beyond just the new members in the House.

You have a 2020 presidential race, Nancy, that kicks off this week. Senator Warren from

Massachusetts in Iowa tonight. You have other people pulling the party to the left.

NANCY CORDES: Right, in the House and in the Senate.

And they're all looking to grab the limelight.

Particularly challenging in the Senate when you've got so many senators who are all

thinking about a run, but they're in the minority so they have a very difficult time sort

of, you know, making their mark.

You know, I think the Democrats are getting a taste of what it was like for Republican

leaders the last eight years dealing with the tea party and the Freedom Caucus.

One of the wonderful problems you have when you're in the majority is you've, you know,

got a large tent and you've got people of every political stripe.

And, you know, some of these outsider independent types, who won because of that

characteristic in House races across the country, are not necessarily interested in

following the party line.

And, you know, that's - I think that that just goes along with having a larger party.

ROBERT COSTA: She was tough on President Trump this week in her interview on The Today

Show. She questioned whether the president even knows that Hawaii - Nancy's home state - is

actually a state. At the same time, you wonder, she's tough, the president's tough.

Could they actually work together on prescription drug legislation?

Could they work together on infrastructure? Or is the well poisoned?

ANDREA MITCHELL: I think they can work together. This - certainly this shutdown

controversy, the fight over the wall, is making it much more difficult.

I think there are areas where they could work together. But look where she is on climate.

She is satisfying her own - her own beliefs and her colleagues beliefs with the climate

change. You know, their rules - what they passed is an impressive list of priorities.

And not just on the shutdown, but they went through a whole series of things, including

climate change, to show that this - there is a new sheriff in town. Of course, they can't get

it through the Senate. But on some of these things, there might be some purchase in the Senate.

CARL HULSE: Yeah, definitely on, like, infrastructure.

You know, there's always room to negotiate in Congress.

You can find something - everybody at the end of the day wants to produce something.

So maybe they can do it. But it's going to be pretty tough.

DAN BALZ: But if - I was just going to say quickly - but if we're in the middle of a series

of investigations of the president, as he made clear late last year, that changes the game.

ROBERT COSTA: The Mueller report, it hovers. Whenever it comes, if it comes, that hovers

over everything. But talking about challenges for Speaker Pelosi, President Trump is also

facing new challenges in his own party, and not from the usual suspects in the Senate.

Mitt Romney was sworn in as Utah's junior senator this week, and days before published a

scathing op-ed in The Washington Post that sparked discussion about whether the president

could be vulnerable to a 2020 primary challenger.

Romney wrote that Trump had, quote, "not risen to the mantle of the presidency."

President Trump told reporters that he wishes Romney would be a team player.

And Romney, he had stood by his essay.

SENATOR MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): (From video.) If the president were to say things that were

divisive of a significant nature then I'd call him out on that.

And I have, by the way, with regards to Charlottesville, attacks on the media, the Roy

Moore endorsement, the Khashoggi approach.

ROBERT COSTA: Dan, we've been talking about the Senate Republicans maybe starting to

crack amid the shutdown and pressure on 2020. More broadly, are we seeing a cracking in

the Republican Party? And is Romney the hammer that's trying to make that even wider?

DAN BALZ: I think that's still an open question. I think that former governor, now

Senator Romney, wanted to put down a marker as he came in. But in talking to people who

are close to Romney, they suggested that this is not the beginning of a crusade.

This is a way to say: Here's where I stand. Here are the issues where I'm going to differ

with him. And I'm willing to speak out. But for the short term, he's going to try to

become a senator. But I think it opens up the question of how much cracks will actually

be enlarged as we go through the year and as the president runs into problems.

ROBERT COSTA: But he showed the hawks in the Republican Party don't like the foreign

policy being conducted by this president.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And Lindsey Graham very upset about the pullout from Syria, trying to

slow that down. Upset about what happened to Mattis with the president this week saying,

incorrectly, I fired Mattis, which really offended a lot of people.

Mattis quit over principle. And so there is a growing group - Marco Rubio.

Mitt Romney will agree with the president, I think, more than he will disagree with the

president - although, he did list a long list of disagreements there in that hallway

encounter rather than where they agree. He's a true conservative. But he has the

benefit of extraordinary popularity back home. He's got six years.

He's not going to be primaried in Utah. And with his popularity, he can say

almost anything he wants about Donald Trump, and pick his fights.

ROBERT COSTA: When you think about Senator Flake, just retired from Arizona, Senator

Corker, just retired from Tennessee, they've left the door open to a possible 2020

campaign. How real could it get if President Trump's approval rating ever started to dip?

CARL HULSE: I think there's always somebody who's looking for an opening.

And I thought from the beginning that Mitt Romney coming into the Senate is someone who

could capitalize on this, if there was a collapse of Trump support or an opening.

I think there's still somebody out there.

I do know that the RNC is trying to make that harder and harder for that to happen.

But it's hard for me to imagine that someone as sort of polarizing as Trump, even within

his own party, isn't going to attract some kind of challenge.

NANCY CORDES: But what we still don't know is will Romney be a thorn in the president's

side and criticize him verbally or will he actually use legislative levers to constrain

his power? You know, Flake and Corker criticized the president a lot over the first two years.

But it was really only at the end of those two years that they started to actually try to

send a message to him by refusing to vote on certain things.

They really - you know, to the great frustration of a lot of the president's critics out

there in the country - they weren't willing to vote against him, to truly send him a

message. And so what we still are waiting to see when it comes to Mitt Romney is, you

know, he's clearly willing to take up that mantle of being critical of the president.

But will he make legislative moves as well?

CARL HULSE: And he did say that he would back the Republicans on the wall.

And so that's his first vote.

ROBERT COSTA: That's right. That was revealing, because you have Romney saying, I like

the wall. He just doesn't like the president's character and conduct.

DAN BALZ: But he has a record on immigration that is hawkish.

He can't walk away from the record he compiled as a candidate in 2012.

ANDREA MITCHELL: What could be unifying is Vladimir Putin. Not Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia -

Vladimir Putin. The president's bizarre statements in favor of Russia could unify the

Republicans against him on another vote, like the vote on Syria.

CARL HULSE: And he's going on the Foreign Relations Committee.

So that'll give him a bit of a platform.

ANDREA MITCHELL: The Saudi issue.

DAN BALZ: I think he's playing a longer game.

I think he came in and said: I'm going to make clear where I stand, which is I have real

disagreements with this president, though I may vote for a lot of things that all

Republicans support. But he doesn't know what's going to happen with the Mueller report.

He doesn't know how strong the president's going to be in, you know, a year or 15 months.

I think he's leaving open the possibility, not necessarily that he wants to run, but that

there will be something different come 2020 for the Republicans to choose from.

NANCY CORDES: And, you know, having Romney around serves a purpose for a lot of Senate

Republicans. They may not admit it publicly, but they like the fact that there's someone

there who is, you know, willing to challenge the president publicly, so they don't have to.

They want those points to be made, but for a variety of reasons they don't feel that they

can always make them. And, you know, he's willing to take the heat.

ROBERT COSTA: And what makes him different is that he has political capital, a former

presidential nominee. He's not just a senator like Flake, or Corker, or even

like Ohio Governor John Kasich. He's a former nominee.

ANDREA MITCHELL: He's a former nominee.

And I think because of what happened with Mattis, because of the Saudi issue, and some of

the things the president has been saying on foreign policy, the president has crossed a

line with a lot of people overseas and domestically. And it could be a very different game.

ROBERT COSTA: Thanks, everybody. Four chiefs here at the table, lucky me. (Laughter.) Thanks.

And our conversation will continue on the Washington Week Podcast. You can find it on

your favorite app or watch it on our website. I'm Robert Costa.

Have a great weekend and thank you for joining us.

For more infomation >> New year, new Congress, same shutdown - Duration: 24:18.

-------------------------------------------

Key takeaways from Trump amid the government shutdown - Duration: 1:50.

For more infomation >> Key takeaways from Trump amid the government shutdown - Duration: 1:50.

-------------------------------------------

Trooper Hartman finds her calling in the Washington State Patrol - Duration: 2:10.

For more infomation >> Trooper Hartman finds her calling in the Washington State Patrol - Duration: 2:10.

-------------------------------------------

Trump to Rep. Rashida Tlaib: 'You can't impeach somebody that's doing a great job' - Duration: 1:15.

For more infomation >> Trump to Rep. Rashida Tlaib: 'You can't impeach somebody that's doing a great job' - Duration: 1:15.

-------------------------------------------

'We're gonna impeach the motherf-----': Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Trump - Duration: 1:26.

For more infomation >> 'We're gonna impeach the motherf-----': Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Trump - Duration: 1:26.

-------------------------------------------

Brazils Bolsonaro assumes presidency, promises big changes The Washington Post - Duration: 6:41.

Brazils Bolsonaro assumes presidency, promises big changes The Washington Post

BRASILIA, Brazil — Jair Bolsonaro was sworn in as Brazils president Tuesday, taking the reins of Latin Americas largest and most populous nation with promises to overhaul myriad aspects of daily life and put an end to business as usual governing.

For the far right former army captain, the New Years Day inauguration was the culmination of a journey from a marginalized and even ridiculed congressman to a leader who many Brazilians hope can combat endemic corruption as well as violence that routinely gives the nation the dubious distinction of being world leader in total homicides.

A fan of U.S. President Donald Trump, the 63 year old longtime congressman rose to power on an anti corruption and pro gun agenda that has energized conservatives and hard right supporters after four consecutive presidential election wins by the left leaning Workers Party.

Bolsonaro was the latest of several far right leaders around the globe who have come to power by riding waves of anger at the establishment and promising to ditch the status quo.

Congratulations to President @jairbolsonaro who just made a great inauguration speech, Trump tweeted. The U.S.A. is with you!

Tuesdays festivities in the capital of Brasilia began with a motorcade procession along the main road leading to Congress and other government buildings. Bolsonaro and his wife, Michelle, stood up in an open top Rolls Royce and waved to thousands of onlookers.

They were surrounded by dozens of guards on horses and plain clothes bodyguards who ran beside the car.

Once inside Congress, Bolsonaro and his vice president, retired Gen. Hamilton Mourao, took the oath of office. Bolsonaro then read a short speech that included many of the far right positions he staked out during the campaign.

He promised to combat the ideology of gender teaching in schools, respect our Judeo Christian tradition and prepare children for the job market, not political militancy.

I call on all congressmen to help me rescue Brazil from corruption, criminality and ideological submission, he said.

A short time later, Bolsonaro spoke to thousands of supporters outside, promising to free Brazil from socialism and political correctness.

As he spoke, supporters began to chant Myth! Myth! Myth!— a nickname that began years ago with internet memes of Bolsonaro and became more common during last years campaign. Bolsonaros middle name is Messias, or Messiah in English, and many supporters believe he was chosen by God to lead Brazil, an assertion bolstered after Bolsonaro survived a stabbing during a campaign rally in September.

During Tuesdays speech, Bolsonaro stopped at one point, pulled out a Brazilian flag and wildly waved it, prompting roars from the crowd.

Our flag will never be red, Bolsonaro said, a reference to communism. Our flag will only be red if blood is needed to keep it green and yellow.

Brasilia was under tight security, with 3,000 police patrolling the event. Military tanks, fighter jets and even anti aircraft missiles also were deployed. Journalists were made to arrive at locations seven hours before festivities began, and many complained on Twitter of officials confiscating food they had brought for the wait.

The increased security came at Bolsonaros request. His intestine was pierced when a knife wielding man stabbed and nearly killed him, and today Bolsonaro wears a colostomy bag. His sons, politicians themselves, had insisted their father could be targeted by radicals, but security officials have not spoken of threats.

Bolsonaro did little moderating since being elected in October, with progressives and liberals decrying stances that they say are homophobic, sexist and racist.

The new president, who spent nearly three decades in Congress, has also drawn international criticism for his plans to roll back regulations in the Amazon and his disinterest in social programs in a country that is one of the worlds most unequal in terms of income.

On the economic front, where Bolsonaro will ultimately lead Latin Americas largest economy is unknown, as during the campaign he reversed course from previous statist stances with pledges to lead market friendly reforms. He also promised to overhaul Brazils pension system and privatize several state owned companies, which gave him wide support among financial players.

On Tuesday, Bolsonaro reiterated his commitment to fighting crime in a nation that has long led the world in homicides. More than 63,000 people were killed last year.

He wants to tackle the problems in part by shielding police who kill during an operation from criminal prosecution.

We are counting on Congress to provide the judicial support so police can do their jobs, Bolsonaro said, signaling that he may soon submit legislation that would allow police to be tried outside the criminal system.

Human rights groups fear that defense of police violence could shield officers from investigations of misconduct and lead to more extrajudicial killings.

The most notable foreign leaders who attended were associated with far right movements: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Leftist Presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Miguel Díaz Canel of Cuba, deemed dictators by Bolsonaro, were uninvited by Bolsonaros team after the foreign ministry sent them invitations. Leftist President Evo Morales of Bolivia, however, was invited and warmly embraced Bolsonaro after the ceremony. The United States was represented by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Seven of Bolsonaros 22 Cabinet ministers are former military personnel, more than in any administration during Brazils 1964 1985 dictatorship. That has sparked fears among his adversaries of a return to autocratic rule, but Bolsonaro insists he will respect the countrys constitution.

Riordan Roett, a professor and director emeritus of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University, noted that generals have administration skills that can be useful in government.

The danger is that as a former low ranking military officer, Bolsonaro will be swayed by some of the generals to come down hard on criminality, drug dealers, etc., and that may cause a backlash and many innocent people could be caught in the crossfire, Roett said.

Bolsonaros Liberal and Social Party will have 52 seats in Brazils 513 member lower house, the second largest bloc behind the Workers Party.

Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington based think tank, said a main challenge for Bolsonaro will be curbing spending and entitlements, no easy task given the makeup of Congress and entrenched interests.

Bolsonaro needs some quick successes to get off on the right foot with the public and the political elites, said Hufbauer, adding that a failure to do that would likely reduce Bolsonaros honeymoon period to six months.

Associated Press video journalist Yesica Fisch reported this story in Brasilia, AP writer Mauricio Savarese reported from Sao Paulo and AP writer Peter Prengaman reported from Rio de Janeiro. AP writer Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

For more infomation >> Brazils Bolsonaro assumes presidency, promises big changes The Washington Post - Duration: 6:41.

-------------------------------------------

Its time for Democrats to be the grownups voters want The Washington Post - Duration: 2:17.

Its not the time for Rep. Rashida Tlaib D Mich. , mere hours after being sworn in, to that were gonna impeach the mother .

Its not the time for Rep. Brad Sherman D Calif. , without waiting for the Mueller report, to announce plans toagainst Trump.

Progressives arent solely to blame. Even after a rebellion by moderates got Pelosi to accept leadership term limits, on the floor — including freshman Rep. Jeff Van Drew N.J. .

No, he called out when the clerk asked for whom he was voting.

Because No is not a person. Van Drews vote — dissent for the sake of dissent — was switched to present.

At the fulcrum between Democratic unity and division is Ocasio Cortez, a social media sensation who has endured hysterical attacks from the right most recently a leaked video of her .

A few hours after her vote for Pelosi, Ocasio Cortez swung the other way on the first substantive vote: She opposed a resolution setting out new House rules, painstakingly negotiated by the entire Democratic caucus.

Her objection: a bit of accounting arcana known as paygo. She accused her Democratic colleagues of a designed to hamstring progress on health care and other legislation. The passionate dissent was curious, given that the proposed rule is already current law, was a significant improvement over the Republican rule and, anyway, is routinely disregarded. Only two Democrats joined her

Ocasio Cortez has become known for such stands. She at Pelosis office demanding a select committee on climate change — though Pelosi had said that she favored such a committee.

Later, that Ocasio Cortez was seeking a 2020 primary challenger to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries D N.Y. , a popular African American progressive and House leader. She denied it.

She and other left wing newcomers can have a salutary effect. Their over lobbyists presence at an unofficial orientation at Harvard for new members led to a of the event. Their advocacy for Medicare for all health coverage has nudged Pelosi to .

But now comes decision time. Will Ocasio Cortez and fellow hard liners become the lefts version of the Freedom Caucus? Will they object to H.R. 1, the Democrats ethics and voting rights package, because it doesnt go far enough in banning corporate money? Will they withhold support for bills unless they can force votes on Medicare for all and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Or will the firebrands build support for their causes without forcing vulnerable colleagues to cast suicidal votes on bills that wont become law?

Democratic unity is what gives them the upper hand in the shutdown battle, as some Republicans openly question Trumps strategy. Democratic unity also allows them to appeal to the large majority of Americans disgusted with Trump, as Pelosi did during her acceptance speech, uttering bipartisan seven times, praising George H.W. Bush and approvingly quoting Ronald Reagan on immigration.

There was silence on the Republican side, now a shrunken sea of old white men. You dont applaud for Ronald Reagan? .

A disastrous presidency has given progressives an extraordinary opportunity — if they dont blow it by fighting among themselves.

Read more from , or .

Read more:

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

For more infomation >> Its time for Democrats to be the grownups voters want The Washington Post - Duration: 2:17.

-------------------------------------------

Earthquake rattles southwest Japan, no damage reported The Washington Post - Duration: 2:38.

Earthquake rattles southwest Japan, no damage reported The Washington Post

TOKYO — An earthquake shook southwestern Japan on Thursday, but there were no immediate reports of damage and a tsunami watch was lifted within an hour.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake measured a preliminary magnitude 5.0, rattling the Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Kumamoto areas in the southwest of the main island of Kyushu.

Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said an emergency team was set up to check on any damage. At his second news conference two hours after the quake, he said no deaths or injuries had been reported and no emergency calls for firefighters or other rescue had been made.

The two nuclear plants in the area had been confirmed as operating regularly, and Kumamoto airport, which had been temporarily shut down, was back up two hours later, and bullet train services were halted but being readied to resume, Suga told reporters. After quakes, tracks and runways are checked for safety.

Power, water and mobile phone services were also working, Suga said.

National broadcaster NHK TV warned people to stay calm and watch against dangers such as shaking, mudslides and items falling from shelves, as well as aftershocks.

TV news footage showed that traffic lights and other lights the buildings were working, and pedestrians on city streets were walking about as usual.

Japan is one of the most earthquake and tsunami prone areas in the world.

Kyushu was struck by a series of earthquake in 2016, which smashed homes, warped roads and damaged a castle in the area, leaving nine people dead and more than 800 injured. Thousands of people were evacuated.

In 2011, the northeastern area of Fukushima was hit by a quake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

On Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/yurikageyama/?hl=en

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

For more infomation >> Earthquake rattles southwest Japan, no damage reported The Washington Post - Duration: 2:38.

-------------------------------------------

Eastern Washington enters FCS Championship as heavy underdogs versus powerful North Dakota State - Duration: 1:02.

For more infomation >> Eastern Washington enters FCS Championship as heavy underdogs versus powerful North Dakota State - Duration: 1:02.

-------------------------------------------

Getting Ready for 2019 – Mitt Romney & Ben McAdams Go to Washington | The Hinckley Report - Duration: 26:47.

male announcer: Funding for the Hinckley Report is made

possible in part by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles

Foundation and the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to the Hinckley Report.

I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week we have Michelle Quist,

columnist with the Salt Lake Tribune.

Michael Mower, deputy chief of staff to Governor Gary Herbert,

and Benjamin Wood, political report

with the Salt Lake Tribune.

So, glad to have you all with us today.

Let's jump right in.

Michelle, we're going to start with you, okay?

Mitt Romney, two days before he is officially sworn in,

did something sort of unusual.

He wrote an op-ed to the Washington Post going straight

after President Trump on policy and on character.

Talk for a second about what he said in this op-ed piece.

Michelle Quist: Well, you know, it was actually exactly

what I think Utahans wanted to hear.

He talked about the fact that Trump, his moral code is

kind of off, and that he doesn't necessarily represent Utahans,

and he doesn't necessarily represent, you know,

the average general citizen.

It was bold, it was unique or surprising because it,

you know, came out two days before he was going to be sworn

in, in the national media piece, but I think

Utahans were thrilled to see it.

Jason: Mike, you've been a strategist

for so many candidates.

Explain your thoughts on the timing of this.

Michael Mower: You know, I'll have to leave that to Mitt.

I'll say I'm a big Mitt fan.

Was I surprised when it came out?

Yes, but, you know, as a strategist,

I'm going to have to say he has a good team around him.

I really like the team he's put together.

One of the things I'm most excited about for Utahans from

top to bottom, Adam Gardner for example,

his new state director, and Kelsey Birch back in D.C.

He's got a good Utah team.

Mitt was elected in a landslide.

He can kind of make his own decisions on these things.

Jason: Okay, so, Ben, I want to pull these two things

together because what Michelle said is interesting.

Are Utahans wanting this from him?

Now, this is pretty sharp,

right, he went after the president.

Is this where Utahans are primarily?

Do they feel good about it based on all of your conversations?

Benjamin: Yeah, we see reactions from outside Utah were

more mixed than they were in Utah.

Like Mike said, he won with a landslide vote, with more

share the vote than Donald Trump did in Utah in 2016.

Mitt Romney's a very popular guy.

He tends to do things that Utahans like to see him do.

I didn't see a lot of pushback locally to be honest.

Jason: But as a reporter, I'm now

seeing you covering Mitt Romney.

Also, this is the question I've noticed everyone gets.

It's a question I get when people are interviewing me about

Mitt Romney, is: is he going to be the one

that goes after Trump?

Do you feel like that's what he just set the stage for?

Benjamin: To a certain degree, I mean, he said he wanted

to clarify his position before he takes on this new job, and

there's always been this looming question of how much

and to what degree will he push back on the president?

He reminded the nation that he is willing to do this when he

feels the need and right before he got sworn in,

he made sure he put that shot across the bow.

Jason: So, the nation is interesting.

Michelle, can we talk about that because this was a national

publication he sent this to; what do you make of that?

Michelle: You know, the national,

you know, response was curious.

They weren't, like Ben said, they weren't as positive as,

you know, they were more questionable.

They were like, "Why is this coming out?

And you know, you kind of are going back and forth again,

Mitt, is this, you know, is this what you're doing?"

Jason: But even our own congressman Chaffetz,

former congressman Chaffetz went after Mitt on this one.

Michelle: Well, yes, Chaffetz is very conservative, and you

know, this didn't go along with the conservative script,

at least not the far right.

Jason: So, Ben, because I want to get Mike on some other

things on the Mitt Romney commentary about what he thinks

the country should be doing.

But when Mitt Romney is setting the stage,

is this him helping to position the Republican party?

Is he reclaiming that post, you think?

Because we had some high profile people leave as of late.

Is this him helping the party?

Ben: I would imagine he thinks he's helping the party.

I wouldn't━I don't think he would've done this

if he thinks it hurts the party.

And there's been a lot of speculation about what

this means for his future?

You know, he's been adamant that he does not want to run for

president again, but there's also this idea of what if

someone else runs against Donald Trump?

Will Mitt Romney back a primary challenge?

He is in saying on that point, but it's hard to not read into

this op-ed the potential for him to be offering

support for hypothetical challenger.

Michelle: You know, I thought it was interesting that just a

week before Senator Lee had come out saying,

"I support President Trump."

And so, to me part of, you know, Senator Romney's response here

maybe was differentiating himself,

you know, between the two senators.

I'm sure it's very uncomfortable for him to be the junior

senator, you know, under Mike, but he is,

and I think maybe he wanted to put himself out there and say,

"I'm not really that junior."

Michael: Our focus and concern coming from the

governor's office is getting beyond personalities,

getting beyond kind of the 2020 concerns on both the Democratic

and Republican side and solving the problems that

congress was created to solve.

We don't have a budget.

We have a government shutdown taking place.

That's where our focus is on.

What are we doing to make sure that people are getting━federal

workers are getting paid, that we're getting the

parks reopened, I mean, so it's, you know, it's certainly been

something that's been discussed, but our concern

as a state is, all right, let's get past

the in-fighting in Washington.

Let's do things in the Utah way, bring people together,

solve issues, and move forward for the good of the nation.

Jason: I want to get to the government shut down in just a

moment, but a couple of pieces I felt like we

should address in this op-ed.

One, I want to show you a graphic, and Mike,

maybe you talk about this for just a second.

Let me read it, this is part of the speech in

the op-ed from Senator Romney.

He says, "To a greet degree, a presidency shapes the

public character of the nation.

A president should unite us and inspire us

to follow our 'better angels'...

And it is in this province where the incumbent's

shortfall has been most glaring."

Interesting part going to the character.

What is the role of the president in your mind,

based on this, to shape the character of the nation?

Michael: Well, let me bring it down to the state level where

I'm most familiar, and that is by saying,

you know, Mitt's statement can speak to itself and he can tell

us all what it means, but at the Utah level,

I've been fortunate to work for two governors,

Governor John Huntsman and now Governor Gary Herbert,

both of whom took the mantle of leadership very seriously,

and the mantle of inclusiveness, and the mantle

of setting the tone for the state.

Again, I'm not pointing fingers in any direction outside of our

state; but within our state, we've been very fortunate to

have leaders who try to bring people together,

who try to unite people.

I think Governor Huntsman and Governor Herbert have both

worked very hard that way.

It's difficult to do, but at the Utah level it's working,

and again, we like to think of Utah as

kind of an example to the nation.

We balance our budget every year,

we're collegial to one another.

We try to be friends and try not to

demonize each other in politics.

I think that's an example that Washington cane take from Utah,

kind of the example that our leaders here in the state

have set for several years.

Michelle: Well, and the presidency is one person,

you know, it's a coequal branch of government but the other two

branches are made up of, you know,

made up of a group of people.

The presidency is our focus point.

You know, we've got Washington and Lincoln

and Kennedy and Reagan.

You know, these are people that, men, men,

I hope there's a woman soon, but you know,

these are men that have led with honor and respect,

and you know, something that we can point to

and look up to, and this is what America is,

and Trump has not been that man.

Jason: One of the other points, Ben,

in this op-ed was about American leadership.

He spent a lot of time on this where the administration needs

to provide the leadership in the world,

and the world is looking for that kind of leadership which he

thinks maybe we've lost some of that.

Tell us where Utahans are that you're interviewing

them on that key principle.

Benjamin: I think there's certainly some concern,

I mean, you see in Mitt Romney's op-ed that he's cited the

resignation of top administration officials,

the abrupt decision to withdraw from Syria.

You know, I think locally there are people who,

even despite supporting the president,

supporting the Republican party, are concerned about perhaps the

speed these decisions are made, the amount of

input going into these decisions.

So, I definitely don't think Mitt Romney is alone in

wondering how steady the hands are at the wheel?

Jason: Okay, so, why do we

keep you, Ben, for a second on this.

So, the Trump from━the response from Trump was pretty

quick, all right, what was it?

Benjamin: I mean, from my memory he questioned whether

Trump━Romney would be a new flake and wishes he would be

more of a team player, and then in private comments,

you know, he talked about he had endorsed Romney

and Romney had accepted his endorsement,

and what a shame he's not playing for the team.

Jason: Yeah, Michelle, what do you make of that flake comment?

'Cause that was the question, right?

Is he another flake, I hope not. That's what he said, right?

Michelle: Right, right, you know, he doesn't like people

who speak out against him or that are able to stand up

against him, and you know, I think he needed to put it

out there as kind of a warning, you know,

"Is this going to happen again?

'Cause if you're not going to play my game,

we're going to have some problems."

I think that's what his message is.

Jason: Uh-huh, so, the last part of his tweet called on Mitt

Romney to be a team player.

Is that what━what does that mean, you think?

Michelle: Well, I think to Romney it doesn't mean much,

you know, Romney does what he thinks is right.

He has the character, and the experience to do what's right,

whether it's you know, whether it's popular or not,

and I think that scares Trump.

Jason: Okay, so, let's get back to the point that you

brought up first, Mike, because this is all happening in the

middle of a government shutdown.

Fourteen days as the time of filming, which is,

you know, getting up there in terms of the longest

government shutdown we've had.

Michael: Well, I think it's really disappointing how that,

you know, we've seen it's kind of the politics of brinkmanship,

that time and again,

we're having another government shutdown.

It's interesting, the state got very prepared this year.

Kris Cox and her team, legislative leadership who

oversees finances, and said, "All right, if we have another

shutdown, what steps do we need

to be taking to prepare for it?"

And they took those steps, and for example,

this time we kept the parks open, but it's become kind of an

embarrassment, and we're a state looking at--look when our

legislature convenes, one of the first things they do is adopt a

base budget, so that if everything else falls apart at

the end of the year we have a budget that we're operating on,

and then throughout the session they add to that budget,

and then finally do a final budget.

Why can't congress do some of these things?

You know, why is everything so poisoned politically back there

that it's, you know, the entire operating funds of the nation

are coming down, you know, to one key point?

So, it's disappointing for us as a state because we're the ones

that often have to live with the consequences.

We're okay for the next few weeks here in Utah, but come the

end of the month, we're worried about women,

infant, and children who rely on some federal assistance.

We're worried about, you know, the national parks that we've

kept 'em going for a couple of weeks, but that

probably can't last indefinitely.

So, we have some concerns and we prepared for it.

We just plead with the folks in Washington,

get together and make it work.

Jason: Ben, how impacted are Utahans

feeling with this closure?

Do you Utahans seem to care very much that this has happened?

Benjamin: Well, government shutdown's interesting in that

they start small and then they get bigger as they go.

So, in the early stages, yeah, you have maybe some decreased

services at the parks, maybe the post office.

As time goes on, you get the school lunch program,

you get other, you know, medical services.

So, the longer this goes, Utahans will start to notice the

government shutdown and they'll start to feel it.

Jason: Uh-huh, Mike, let's come back to you for a second.

What did the state do to mitigate some

of the impacts of the parks?

Michael: Well, one of the big ones we had with parks was just

coming up with money to help keep the doors open,

and to help keep the gates.

We had a problem several years ago where we realized we've run

a big ad campaign worldwide to bring people to our parks,

and it's worked extremely well.

Well, there's nothing more disappointing if you're a couple

from China or a family from Belgium that have saved up your

money to visit rural Utah and the national parks,

and you get there and the gates are shut.

And we saw that last time, and so Governor Herbert and

Secretary Jewell came up with a compromise.

We're still waiting to get paid back by the feds for that money

But most importantly, we kept the local industries going.

We kept the tourism industry going, and we let

a lot of people into our parks who otherwise would

have been locked out of our parks.

And so, this year, realizing this might happen again,

we came up with the initial funding not,

you know, hoping that it would have been resolved by now.

But it's kind of a, you know, take it day by day,

park by park, on what we'll be able to do to mitigate the

effects, but Ben highlights it really well.

The bigger effects long-term will be the school lunch program

and other federal programs that Utahans rely on that often they

don't understand are being paid for by the feds.

Another thing is we're really concerned about federal workers

who aren't getting a paycheck.

There aren't a lot of Americans, there aren't a lot of us who

could have a paycheck delayed for two weeks or a month or a

month and a half, and not have it impact you

in a meaningful and negative way.

Michelle: Yeah, you know, a lot of Utahans think the federal

government is too big anyway.

So, a shutdown starts, and they don't feel as nervous about it.

They're like, "Oh, good, you know, our government is, you

know, too big, and if it needs to--if it's shut down now,

and we're not noticing, then maybe we don't need it at all."

You know, that's kind of the initial--and honestly,

this is shock and awe for Trump.

He loves this stuff; I mean, this is his bread and butter.

He'll put his foot down and stay there for, you

know, for months and months, which is nervous.

This isn't--this is a republican failure, you know, and the

people who, like Mike said, depend on federal monies

for paychecks, they budgeted for this, and they relied

on it, and it's not fair just because you think government

is too big to be okay with the fact that

they're not now getting paid.

Jason: How effective is it to you, sort of,

the government shutdown as the bargaining chip?

Michelle: It's not effective at all, I don't think, because

people, you know, again, once two or three weeks starts

to pass, they get uncomfortable with it because

it's affecting them personally.

And yes, they want the wall, and this was great for Trump

at the beginning, but wait.

Now, "I'm not getting paid and I have to go to the doctor," and,

you know, "What am I gonna do?"

Jason: Ben, let's talk about this wall, right?

So, this is where he put his foot down, right?

So, the president is saying he wants the wall.

And the House seems to be coming along with a bill,

but the Senate certainly is not at all, right?

Nancy Pelosi was talking about this this whole week,

"I'm not gonna give with the wall," right?

So where do you see this going based on all your sources

and interviews you're doing?

Benjamin: That's a hard question.

I mean, compounding this is that we just had a change of power in

the House, so what was true a week ago is no longer true.

I mean, it doesn't look like the Democrats in the House or the

Senate, for that matter, are looking to budge

on the wall any time soon.

You know, they now control a chamber of Congress.

They can filibuster a vote in the other chamber.

Their ability to press the president on this issue has

increased dramatically since yesterday.

Michelle: Well, and that's why it was a Republican failure

because when we--when Republicans controlled

government, they couldn't get it done.

And now, a week later, now Democrats control, you know,

one of the houses and, oh, they've already passed

a bill that fixes, you know, that passes a budget or,

you know, passes some of the spending bills.

You have two senators, at least, that are going to side with,

you know, getting over this shutdown because

they're in election years.

You know, two years, they're close enough, and if they fix it

now, which obviously we're going to, the storyline will

be because Democrats came in and saved it in a bipartisan

way, and we, Republicans, couldn't do that.

Jason: Interesting.

Michael: And I--but I think that's part of the challenge,

is it becomes winners and losers.

I mean, the Republicans have a legitimate

issue with border security.

It isn't just a wall, it's too many people who fly in

here and overstay their visas.

So, there's a very legitimate concern on border security;

that needs to be addressed.

But unfortunately, it becomes so toxic, it's, you know,

did this, you know, did Senator Romney win or did

President Trump win in this exchange?

Did the Democrats win? Did the Republicans win?

It becomes--again, it becomes about the horse race rather than

the results for the country.

Michelle: Which Trump loves.

Benjamin: And to Mike's point, I mean, border security is

not going to be solved in a short-term spending plan.

'Cause when they do re-open the government,

it won't be with a full budget.

We'd love to see that, but it's not gonna happen.

It'll be another month, maybe two months,

et cetera, and then we'll just be right back here.

And so, these issues that need to be solved,

if you're using the shutdown as a bargaining chip,

you're not actually getting to the meat of the problem.

Jason: Let's talk about these winners and losers for a second

'cause I had this very interesting graphic from Senator

Mike Lee when he was on national publications this week.

This is what he said about the Democrats and what

their causing to happen here.

He says, "Democrats are being categorically unreasonable.

We already have 650 miles of border fence.

Are they saying there is something inherently evil about

what would be the 651st mile?"

I mean, when you start seeing that, Ben, all right, so, I

mean, is this a position for winners or losers?

Or is this just sort of the Republican failure that Michelle

was kinda talkin' about?

Benjamin: This is politics; I mean, this is the purest

encapsulation politics we've seen in a long time.

I mean, the Senate passed a bill before the Christmas break that

would have re-opened the government, and that they

thought they had in the arrangement and the president

tore that arrangement to pieces, and here we are.

So, it's all politics.

I don't think you can pick any one as the

righteous party in this case.

Michelle: I mean, if you google "Mike Lee" and

"shutdown," you're gonna get articles from January 2018.

And then it's gonna be, "Oh, wait, no--

did they get the year wrong?"

No, they didn't; this was happening last January, 2018.

It's, you know, it's a--it's not a publicity stunt because it's

way more serious than that, but people end up using it as a

place to step up and it's not.

Jason: Okay, so let's take one of the threads

that you mentioned a moment ago.

We do have a brand new Congress.

We have lots of new members; over 100, right?

One-fifth, I think, are all brand new people,

and that's a new makeup.

You wrote--you did some--a great column on this.

Talk to us about the new makeup of our Congress and

talk about what's happened locally too.

Michelle: Yes, there are more women, ever.

It's a record-breaking, and there's more diversity ever.

You know, record-breaking in both areas.

And they're all on the Democratic side.

I mean, Republicans didn't, you know,

improve much in those areas.

But as a whole, Congress now is more diverse,

and it's more female, and I think the excitement across the

nation is, you know, what's gonna happen?

How is it gonna result in what kind of policy changes.

I think it'll be interesting. I'm excited to see it.

Jason: Mike, what do you think about the more--this

more diverse Congress.

Michael: You know, I think it'll be very interesting to see

it play out on the national level.

It's received a lot of attention.

What's interesting though is here in Utah,

we've had a 24% turnover in our legislature.

And we talk about it, one of the, you know, I'm doing

a lot of cheerleading for Utah here and

it's--we're Team Utah and it's wonderful to tout or successes.

We really do have a citizen legislature.

We have a natural turnover.

We don't have term limits, which I think is a good thing because

you need some institutional knowledge,

but we have 24% of our legislature turning over.

We're adding more women, and it's a good thing in Utah.

It's healthy.

Anytime you have a democratically elected body,

you like to have it represent the

demographic that it's leading.

Jason: That's for sure; Ben, 25 women now

in our state legislature: 19 to the House, 6 in the Senate.

As you're looking at legislation coming forward in this next

legislative session, are we seeing more participation

in all parts of the state because we're having

more, broader representation?

Benjamin: It certainly seems to be

kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario.

We had record voter turnout and that produced

a more diverse legislature.

You know, and it's interesting though, in both the Utah

legislature and the national legislature, a lot of these

gains in representation, more women, more people of color,

are largely on the Democratic side.

Here in Utah and nationally, the Republican Party

is still largely white men.

Jason: Okay, let's just spend one more moment

on some of our new members.

Mitt Romney, sworn in as senator.

Ben McAdams, now sworn in as the newest member

of Congress in the House.

Michelle, one of his first votes this week

was against the speaker.

Michelle: Right, he voted against Nancy

Pelosi as a speaker.

I think he kind of had to, you know?

His whole campaign, the campaign against him was

you know, Ben equals Pelosi.

And so, he kind of had to come out of the box

and say, "No, I'm not," you know?

And I don't know how long it'll last, but, you know, and he

knew it was a symbolic vote, and it was interesting to see.

Jason: You think there are any ramifications

for him going forward?

Michelle: No.

Jason: It was just one of those campaign things and

Nancy Pelosi will see it as that.

Michelle: Yeah, I mean, there were some, you know, upset among

the Utah Democrats, but memories are short.

Jason: Okay, that's good.

Mike, let's talk about a law that just went into

effect in the state of Utah.

We now have the strictest DUI law in the country.

Michael: We do, we're now .05.

There were several states last year that were considering it.

Representative Norm Thurston from Provo kinda led the charge

on it, and it came down to a matter of: do we want to be the

safest state in the country when it comes to DUIs?

Hawaii's looking at it. Washington's looking at it.

The interesting thing is this is what's already

done in Australia, in Europe.

And so, what we're telling people is,

"Don't drink and drive."

It's interesting when the debate was heating up,

the pro-.05 folks released a TV commercial that had been

produced by Anheuser-Busch.

What was Anheuser-Busch's message?

Don't drink and drive.

And so, that's kind of the message we're getting out.

We have seen in the state already,

drop in the number of DUI arrests.

And a lot of it came about because this law was

adopted a couple years ago.

People assumed it was kind of already there.

And so, what we found is a lot more people taking Uber,

a lot more people being responsible, we have very few

arrests at the .05 to .08 level, but if anything, we're trying

to show we wanna be safe and we want people who--tourists

here to be safe, our families here to be safe.

If you drink, drink responsibly.

And better yet, if you drink too much,

heaven forbid, don't drive.

Jason: Michelle, people in this state, particularly those

impacted by tourism, are worried that this is going

to have a negative impact on our economy in some way.

Michelle: And there have been a few, you know,

advertisements by national associations,

you know, saying, "Utah is an unfriendly place now," and there

was an article about the ski, you know,

people coming here to ski and, "Oh,

well, I'm not gonna come back."

I don't think that will pan out.

I think, you know, our snow is better than the .05 and worth

it, and I think they'll just come and they'll stay closer to

where they, you know, where they intend to drink,

and I think they'll take ride-sharing and, yeah.

Jason: Okay, Ben, what about the image issue?

Does this further, you know, make people concerned about

drinking laws and the state, or in the end is this kinda what

Michelle was talking about, this is overridden by other aspects?

Benjamin: Short term, I think it does probably play into this

image of Utah as, you know, prudish on alcohol laws.

Long term, we have no idea exactly what will come of this.

But yeah, I mean, we have a history in this state of making

it difficult for people to have a drink with their meal and this

probably does play into that image.

Jason: Okay, very good.

Before we go, let's talk about the speech that Ben McAdams gave

before he left, touting a few of his successes, 'cause I wanna

get into what's going to happen in Salt Lake County.

He talked in his resignation letter about the bond rating,

about his work on homelessness, criminal justice,

more greater local control for counties.

Ben, tell us what these candidates who are vying

for this particular position are saying right now.

How are these campaigns going?

"Campaigns" as such.

Benjamin: These campaigns are interesting because it's

not an open vote; I mean, it'll be the--the party will choose

the replacement for Mayor Ben McAdams.

So, they're angling to a particular base of voters.

They're angling to party people.

So, they are, you know, they're touting their record in some

cases, they're touting their fresh approach in other cases.

But this is really kind of a contained election to a very

particular group of people.

Michelle: I mean, if it were bigger, if it were to the

regular electorate, I mean, Jenny Wilson would be an

obvious, you know, the moderate Democrat who can,

you know, who has experience doing it.

But because it is to, you know, party insiders, I think Arlyn

Bradshaw has, you know, gotten a little momentum because,

you know, he's more liberal.

Jason: Well, Mike, so Jenny Wilson's

coming off a campaign, right?

So, tell us about her machine and how she's going forward on

this, and true, when she starts seeing people

like Arlyn Bradshaw start to--

Michael: Yeah, I really thought, again, this is speculation

'cause we--our office doesn't get too involved in it, but part

of it is I thought Jenny would build up a lot of good

will for taking on Mitt.

That was a tough task, and we'll just have to

see with the Democratic delegates.

Again, central committees are

hugely important parts of the party.

The Democrats have theirs; it skews left.

Ours tends to kind of skew a little right.

You're playing to a different audience.

You're playing to the party activists.

People who are Democrats for a reason.

Or in our case, Republicans for a reason.

And so, I think it does change the dynamic as Ben talked about,

and I, you know, I don't know of any

polling that's going on right now.

So, it'll be a really interesting race to watch to

kind of see how do Democrats want to position themselves with

their candidates moving forward in Utah?

Jason: Michelle, why has Shireen done so well?

Michelle: She did a great campaign against Chris Stewart.

I mean, she was out there knocking doors every single day.

Her--I mean, she had over--I don't know if it was in the high

70s, you know, in Salt Lake County.

She's shown that she's the real deal.

Jason: Okay, can't wait to watch this particular race.

Sorry, that's where we're gonna have to end it today.

Thank you for your comments and your insights.

Well, that's it for "The Hinckley Report."

For more on the issues of the week,

please visit us online at KUED.org/HinckleyReport.

Thank you and good night.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

For more infomation >> Getting Ready for 2019 – Mitt Romney & Ben McAdams Go to Washington | The Hinckley Report - Duration: 26:47.

-------------------------------------------

Todays Germany is the best Germany the world has seen The Washington Post - Duration: 2:02.

Todays Germany is the best Germany the world has seen The Washington Post

In one of contemporary historys intriguing caroms, European politics just now is a story of how one decision by a has made life miserable for a vicars dutiful daughter. Two of the worlds most important conservative parties are involved in an unintended tutorial on a cardinal tenet of conservatism, the law of unintended consequences, which is that the unintended consequences of decisions in complex social situations are often larger than, and contrary to, those intended.

In 2015, Angela Merkel, the Federal Republic of Germanys first chancellor , chose to welcome into Germany — many of them Syrians — fleeing Middle Eastern carnage. As a percentage of Germanys population, this was equivalent to the United States receiving nearly 4 million. This influx stoked European anxieties about immigration threatening social cohesion, anxieties that contributed to the 52 percent to 48 percent directing the government to extricate the United Kingdom from the European Union. In 2019, Theresa May, who was not yet Britains prime minister when the referendum occurred, and who in the E.U., is leading, or trying to lead, a fractious party that cannot govern because there is no majority for any plan to effectuate what in 2016 was, but might not still be, the voters Brexit desire.

For many years, Merkel has been the closest approximation to an answer to the famous question : If I want to talk to Europe, whom do I call? She also has embodied Germanys primal desire for stability, a desire that is the great national constant since as West Germanys first chancellor from 1949 to 1963. In 2000, of Adenauers Christian Democratic Union CDU , which, until last month, had had only three leaders in 45 years. In 2005, she became chancellor, a position she will have held for — Franklin D. Roosevelt was president for — on Jan. 13. She is in her and .

Britain is perhaps, or sort of, exiting the E.U. Frances protesters recently commented on President Emmanuel Macrons policies with a Gallic vigor burning cars, smashing shop windows sufficient to change governance in the predictable direction taxes decreased, entitlements increased . So, stable Germany is even more important to Europe than it was Germany is too large for Europe and too small for the world.

The two greatest leaders of post 1945 Europe, and , opposed the aspiration of an ever deeper political unification of Europe. Germany precipitated the post 1945 recoil against nationalism, which has been interpreted to dictate the dilution of nationalities by submersion of them into a transnational broth. For most Germans, tiptoeing through modern memory, disputing this interpretation still seems transgressive.

No European nation was was by President Barack Obamas studied elegance, and none is more repelled by President Trumps visceral vulgarity. This especially matters at this moment when events are underscoring Germanys necessary dependence for security on the United States: Germany lives in the neighborhood with two nations, Poland and Hungary, that have illiberal populist regimes. And not far over the horizon, Russian President Vladimir Putin is destabilizing and dismembering Europes , Ukraine. Germanys dependence was inadvertently highlighted by Macrons delusional statement that there must be a to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States.

Germany has two of the worlds great parties, the CDU and the , which, during the 19th century, invented social democracy that helped to drain the revolutionary steam from the left. Both are in flux. The CDU is challenged from the right by Alternative for Germany the subject of a subsequent column and the SDP, which withered as the junior partner in Merkels coalition. The Social Democrats are by the Green Party, whose support rivals that of the CDU, and is the among German women. Extremism, however, is quarantined by the civic culture that so values stability that a poll in this decade showed that — the hyperinflation of 95 years ago was the ultimate destabilizer — than fear cancer or other serious illnesses.

will be the 30th anniversary of German reunification. This will be an occasion for the world to acknowledge that, as has been truly said, todays Germany is the best Germany the world has seen since in 1871.

Read more from or follow him .

Read more:

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

For more infomation >> Todays Germany is the best Germany the world has seen The Washington Post - Duration: 2:02.

-------------------------------------------

Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis - Duration: 6:28.

In this Dec. 11, 2018 file photo, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan

) speaks during the signing of an order withdrawing federal protections for countless waterways and wetlands, at EPA headquarters in Washington

(Cliff Owen/AP) Sen. Pat Roberts, the blunt-speaking Kansan who worked closely with Democrats on helping the nation's farmers and protecting food stamps for millions of low-income Americans, announced Friday that he would not seek reelection in 2020

"I am announcing I will serve the remainder of this term as your senator, fighting for Kansas in these troubled times

However, I will not be a candidate in 2020 for a fifth Senate term," said an emotional Roberts, his wife Frankie by his side

Roberts's plans to retire comes just a few weeks after Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, another longtime GOP senator known for bipartisanship, said he would not seek reelection

Roberts recently shepherded an $867 billion farm bill into law, with the measure securing the backing of all Senate Democrats, a remarkable feat in a fractious Congress

The legislation allocates billions of dollars in subsidies to American farmers, legalizes hemp, bolsters farmers markets and rejects stricter limits on food stamps pushed by House Republicans

Conservatives were unhappy with the bill's provisions on food stamps, and the Trump administration had signaled its intention to cut them without approval from Congress

Roberts alluded to his bipartisan work at a news conference in Manhattan, Kan., where he announced his decision

"I have a lot of trust and faith in Sen. (Debbie) Stabenow," Roberts said of the Agriculture Committee's ranking Democrat as he boasted about passing his eighth farm bill

He also called the panel "the least partisan committee in Washington." Roberts, 82, said he spoke to former senator Bob Dole prior to making his announcement, and the 95-year-old Dole joked about seeking the open Senate seat

Republicans will be favored to hold Roberts's Senate seat as Democrats haven't won a seat since 1932

Republicans close to Senate leaders expressed strong interest Friday in the prospect of trying to convince Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to run for the open seat

As a former congressman from Kansas and a staunch ally of President Trump, the Republicans reasoned, Pompeo would have the potential to clear the GOP field and spare the party a potentially messy primary fight

It was unclear, however, whether Pompeo would have any interest. He has shown no public signs of wanting to leave his current post

The Republicans who mentioned Pompeo spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly relay their perspective on the race

Other names that have surfaced as GOP possibilities include Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Trump ally who lost the race for governor last year; Rep

Roger Marshall; and Gov. Jeff Colyer, whom Kobach defeated in the gubernatorial primary

The state, however, has undergone a political change in recent months, electing Democrat Laura Kelly governor over Kobach

Since then, several female Republican state lawmakers have switched parties in frustration with Trump and the GOP

[In conservative Kansas, newly elected gay legislators try to make history] In 2014, Roberts faced his first serious electoral test since arriving in the Senate

Milton Wolf, a doctor and distant relative of Barack Obama who was active in the tea party movement, mounted a Republican primary challenge against Roberts

He criticized Roberts for voting to increase the debt limit while failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and for seeking a fourth term when he had pledged to serve just two

"Our party was supposed to stand up for limited government and lower taxes," Wolf said when announcing his long-shot campaign

"Our party failed." Roberts was slow to build his 2014 campaign, and only defeated Wolf by 7 percentage points – a smaller margin than polls or party strategists expected, after a campaign that revealed that the senator no longer owned a home in Kansas

That emboldened Democrats, whose own candidate for Senate quit the race and endorsed Greg Orman, a businessman running as an independent

National Republicans swooped in to help Roberts, pushing him to a 10-point victory — the smallest winning margin for any Kansas senator in 40 years, but enough to put him back in the Senate

For more infomation >> Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis - Duration: 6:28.

-------------------------------------------

'I want justice - 26 years worth': Son of woman murdered in Washington in early '90s seeks closure a - Duration: 3:55.

For more infomation >> 'I want justice - 26 years worth': Son of woman murdered in Washington in early '90s seeks closure a - Duration: 3:55.

-------------------------------------------

I am Paul Whelans brother. He is not a spy. The Washington Post - Duration: 1:59.

There has been much speculation about why Paul has been victimized by the Russian government. His history has been thoroughly and publicly scoured for clues — some of which came as news to his family. We were surprised to learn that he left the Marines with a bad conduct discharge. But we all have things in our lives that we may not share if they cast us in a bad light.

Other revelations reflected what we already knew: He is a confident, experienced traveler, fond of his Russian friends and the time he has spent in that country. His use of the Russian site VKontakte is no more unusual than Facebook is for Americans. As for his international connections, our family spans continents, and Pauls four passports reflect his birth Canada , parents Britain , grandparents Ireland and choice United States .

Furthermore, Paul has a risk aware professional background, spanning law enforcement, military service and corporate security — factors that should make him an unlikely target of the Russian government.

Now begins the work to bring Paul back to his family.

Our first step has been to help Paul meet his needs as a prisoner of the Russian government. Detainees must pay for toilet paper and basic necessities. Paul couldnt get his eyeglasses back because he didnt know the words in Russian. He now has access to a translator and has a local lawyer to defend against the Russian governments allegations.

But our family knows we need the president and Congress to be successful in freeing my brother.

We are contacting our representatives in Congress to urge them to use diplomacy, sanctions and other pressures to gain Pauls release — such as a joint resolution demanding his freedom. Congress took similar action in 1986 when the Soviet Union American journalist Nicholas Daniloff on false espionage charges. Upon his return, Daniloff that he hoped this outrageous incident would fade into history. Unfortunately, history is repeating itself.

We urge all concerned Americans to contact their senators and House representatives. Let them know that Pauls plight is one you do not want to see repeated for any American. Ask them to help Paul get back to his family.

We urge President Trump to intercede on Pauls behalf. U.S. government action will reinforce that Americans traveling abroad should not do so in fear, and ensure other American families are less likely to have their loved ones go missing. We are confident that if the president and Congress intervene decisively as President Ronald Reagan and the government did for Daniloff, it will lead to Pauls freedom.

Read more:

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Không có nhận xét nào:

Đăng nhận xét