Impeachment: Gordon Sondland, 2 others testify in CongressU.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland will testify publicly Wednesday in the House impeachment investigation as one of three witnesses to President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. ….. Read More.UPI – United States | United States NewsWed, November 20, 201919 hours ago
The Atlantic Politics Daily: Trump’s Top Defender in CongressIt’s Tuesday, November 19. In today’s newsletter: a word on Devin Nunes during the impeachment hearings. Plus, why these 2020 candidates tick the right boxes, yet still aren’t taking off.*« TODAY IN POLITICS »(Shawn Thew / Getty)Trump’s top defender in CongressIf “little pencil neck Adam Schiff” represents the chief villain to the president and his supporters during the ongoing impeachment inquiry, who is Donald Trump’s top defender on Capitol Hill?The yin to Schiff’s yang is another representative from California: Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.On the first day of public hearings this week, Nunes seemed intent on doing the president’s bidding, and on using his allotted question time to get two witnesses to publicly identify the whistle-blower whose complaint accelerated the inquiry.Read my colleague Russell Berman on how Devin Nunes went full-on attack dog today.This is hardly the first…
Congress to consider ad campaign to recruit more transportation workersThree lawmakers have introduced a bill to fund the effort By Mark Huffman of ConsumerAffairs November 20, 2019 Consumers are traveling more than ever, but some lawmakers in Congress are worried there soon wont be enough transportation workers to get people where theyre going. Three members of the House have introduced the Promoting Service in Transportation Act, which would authorize the government to spend up to $30 million on an ad campaign urging people to go into the transportation industry. The bipartisan legislation is backed by Representatives Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), Don Young (R-Alaska), and Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who say there is a need for more airline pilots, air traffic controllers, truck drivers, and railroad workers. One industry group says the need for aviation workers is growing especially fast, with 800,000 pilots, 769,000 technicians, and 20,000 air traffic controllers needed over the…
Republicans Want to Spend Big Bucks on Trump’s Wall. Election Security Is Another Thing.As the Democratic controlled House and the Republican held Senate move forward with contentious negotiations over the next federal budget, a group of Democratic Senators have called on their Republican colleagues in both bodies to approve additional election security funding. According to a Democratic House aide familiar with the negotiations, funding President Donald Trump’s border wall has emerged as a key rival to providing funds to protect voting. “The appropriations process has been hung up over dividing funding among subcommittees, with House Democrats pushing for adequate funding for domestic priorities instead of President Trump’s wasteful border wall,” the aide told Mother Jones, who explained that final amount of election security funding would be negotiated after overall allocations were set. The two sides are working to bridge the gap between the $600 million approved by House Democrats in…
President Trump Has Found His PlumbersLast week’s Republican rallying cry on impeachment was “hearsay!” By this morning, the focus had turned back to the whistleblower who started it all.The consensus GOP retort to the first three public witnesses in the House impeachment inquiry—Ambassadors William Taylor and Marie Yovanovich, and George Kent, a deputy secretary of state—was that none of them had direct, first-hand knowledge of President Donald Trump’s alleged attempt to condition aid to Ukraine on an investigation of his political rival.When they arrived at the Capitol this morning, however, Republicans could no longer make that complaint. The witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee—Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman of the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, a special adviser to Vice President Mike Pence—were both listening in on the July 25 call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do him “a favor” by pursuing an investigation of former…
The Emerging Divide Between Sanders and Warren on Medicare for AllEconomist Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, admits there is no “perfect way to fund” Medicare for All but he remains on a mission to explain why simplicity is key when it comes to building a more efficient, more humane, and less costly alternative to the current for-profit status quo. Despite a detailed economic analysis he and his PERI colleagues put out last year—presented in a 200-page study titled “Economic Analysis of Medicare for All,” which examines the costs and benefits of legislation introduced in Congress by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2017—Pollin remains frustrated by the failure of many to grasp, or be honest about, the clear benefits of a single-payer system. “The biggest thing that Americans will be enjoying will be something that is already being…