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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/tr...ment-closed-months-or-even-years-says-schumer

Trump Threatens To Keep Government Closed For Months Or Years

President Trump threatened to keep the partial government shutdown going for “months or even years,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said at the White House on Friday — comments Trump himself confirmed shortly afterward.

“We told the president we needed the government open. He resisted. In fact, he said he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time — months or even years,” Schumer said as he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) exited a contentious meeting with the president on the shutdown’s 14th day.

Trump confirmed he’d said that.

“I did. Absolutely I said that,” he said when asked about Schumer’s claim in a Rose Garden press conference shortly afterwards.

Trump has refused to back off his demand for more than $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, forcing a government shutdown over his demands. Democrats continue to say that’s a nonstarter.

On Thursday night, the Democratic-controlled House passed bills funding most of the government through September and funding the Department of Homeland Security for a month so the two sides could continue to negotiate — the same bills the GOP-controlled Senate passed unanimously at the end of December. But Trump has said he won’t accept that deal, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has made clear he won’t give the bills another vote in the new Congress.

“We’ll continue discussing, of course, but it’s very hard to see how progress will be made unless they open up the government,” Schumer continued.

Pelosi described the meeting as a “lengthy and sometimes contentious conversation with the president.” She said some progress had been made in the meeting — but only in the sense that the two sides understood each other’s position better and had eliminated options that one side or the other didn’t find acceptable.
 
Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...liminate-electoral-college/ar-BBRNmvZ?ocid=st

New Dem Bill Aims to Eliminate Electoral College

A bill to eliminate the Electoral College was introduced by a member of the Democratic Party on Thursday night.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) put forward the proposal on the first night of the 116th Congress, as his party officially took control of the House.

A number of high-profile Democrats have been highly critical of the Electoral College, which cost Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

Clinton won 65.8 million votes but President Donald Trump won the race for the White House as he bagged 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227, despite losing the popular vote.

"In two presidential elections since 2000, including the most recent one in which Hillary Clinton won 2.8 million more votes than her opponent, the winner of the popular vote did not win the election because of the distorting effect of the outdated Electoral College," Cohen said in his statement, as reported by The Hill.

"Americans expect and deserve the winner of the popular vote to win office.

"More than a century ago, we amended our Constitution to provide for the direct election of U.S. senators. It is past time to directly elect our president and vice president.”

Cohen, who has been a vocal critic of President Trump in the past, also tabled a second constitutional amendment, aimed at preventing the president from pardoning himself or any of his family members.

In June, Trump argued it was within his rights to pardon himself, though he insisted he had no reasons to do so as he had never broken the law.

"As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” he tweeted.

A month later, Cohen told CNN that he believed Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, would both be indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“I think they’re getting closer to knowing that the truth is going to come out that there were activities with the Trump campaign and Russia in releasing those hacks and guiding them to the states and the localities where they came from,” he said.

Cohen, however, did not offer any evidence for his assertion as to why Mueller would be close to indicting Trump and Kushner.

Upon presenting the bill on Thursday, the Democrat insisted presidents should not be allowed to pardon themselves.

“Presidents should not pardon themselves, their families, their administration or campaign staff," he said in a statement. "This constitutional amendment would expressly prohibit this and any future president, from abusing the pardon power.”

Neither bill is likely to pass, as they would have to win support in two-thirds of both houses of Congress, before being ratified by 75 percent of the states.
 
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profil...hid-undocumented-workers-from-secret-service/

Trump Golf Club Reportedly Hid Undocumented Workers from Secret Service

A new report says that not only did a Trump-owned golf club in New Jersey knowingly employ undocumented immigrants, it went out of its way to hide them from the Secret Service to protect them during then-candidate Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign. One former employee, Emma Torres, says she was one such worker when she was on the kitchen staff of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ.

Torres, who is from Ecuador, told The New York Times that when Trump was running for president, she and other club employees were instructed to provide personal information, including social security numbers, for a list of employees to be given to the Secret Service for clearance purposes. Torres said she was concerned because she had used a phony social security number when she applied for her job.

“When I learned this is for the Secret Service to see the records of everyone because they are giving protection to Mr. Trump, I rushed to human resources,” Torres told the Times. “I thought, God, what will I do?”

When she spoke to a woman from human resources about her predicament, the woman told her, “‘It’s O.K. No problem.’ She scratched me off the list.”

Torres said she was asked to provide the names of workers in similar situations, and she did. She told the Times that they continued to be employed at the club.

As it turned out, Torres—who was an assistant to the chef—was tasked with making food for Trump and the Secret Service while they were there.

Torres ended up quitting in 2017. She said that Trump’s campaign remarks about immigrants made her uncomfortable.

“When he won the election, fear took over me,” she said. “I felt I was in the lion’s den. I had to leave.”

The Times noted that there is no evidence that Donald Trump himself was aware of the workers’ immigration statuses at the time, and the club’s management did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment. Following an earlier Times report about the same club knowingly allowing undocumented workers to remain on staff, the Trump Organization said they would fire employees who used fake information. Sources told the Times that some had already been let go from the Bedminster club.
 
*Trump threatens to keep the government shut down for “Years” ... over “National Security Threat” of illegal immigration

*Reports reveal that Trump has literally been employing illegal immigrants in his various business for decades.

Can’t make this shit up
 
Though I'm a Democrat and it would benefit us, I don't know about eliminating the electoral college. Basically all of the voting power will go to the big cities that have very different views from those in rural areas. I want all Americans' votes to count and doing away with the electoral college will silence a lot of them.

Maybe redistribute the number of electoral college votes by state instead.
 
Though I'm a Democrat and it would benefit us, I don't know about eliminating the electoral college. Basically all of the voting power will go to the big cities that have very different views from those in rural areas. I want all Americans' votes to count and doing away with the electoral college will silence a lot of them.

Maybe redistribute the number of electoral college votes by state instead.


if its 100 ppl and 60% of them live in one stated and the other 40% lives in 4 different states so 10% per state
The most votes should win regardless if they all live in one place. That how voting should always be
 
Though I'm a Democrat and it would benefit us, I don't know about eliminating the electoral college. Basically all of the voting power will go to the big cities that have very different views from those in rural areas. I want all Americans' votes to count and doing away with the electoral college will silence a lot of them.

Maybe redistribute the number of electoral college votes by state instead.

Every individual citizen’s vote should count equally. Aren’t we supposed to be “created equal?”

I don't understand any voting system that doesn’t look to accomplish this.
 
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mueller-grand-jury-extended-for-6-months

Reports: Mueller Grand Jury Extended For 6 Months

The federal judge overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury in Washington, D.C., has extended the grand jury’s service by another six months, CNN reported Friday.

The grand jury, which has handed down a number of indictments in Mueller’s investigation, was seated by Judge Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the U.S. district court in D.C., in July 2017 and its 18-month term was set to expire soon.

Six months is a standard length of time for federal grand juries to be extended.
 
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