Former President Obama has recorded a robocall urging Alabama voters to support Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones in Tuesday’s election, CNN reported Monday.
In the call, Obama tells potential voters “This one’s serious. You can’t sit it out.”
“Doug Jones is a fighter for equality, for progress,” Obama said in the call. “Doug will be our champion for justice. So get out and vote, Alabama.”
Jones’s campaign on Sunday night was still considering whether to use the call, as Obama remains unpopular with some of the state’s Republican-leaning white voters who could vote for Jones, The New York Times reported. A poll last month showed Obama with a 52 percent favorability rating in the state overall.
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A Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Jones trails embattled Republican candidate Roy Moore by 2.5 points just one day before election day.
Jones was joined on the campaign trail on Sunday by Sen. Cory BookerCory Anthony BookerRand Paul introduces bill to end no-knock warrants Black lawmakers unveil bill to remove Confederate statues from Capitol Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk MORE (D-N.J.), Rep. Terri SewellTerrycina (Terri) Andrea SewellAlabama Democrats call for state to end holiday commemorating Confederate leader Democratic candidates gear up for a dramatic Super Tuesday Bill banning menthol in cigarettes divides Democrats, with some seeing racial bias MORE (D-Ala.) and others.
President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE has fully backed Moore in the race, and recorded a robocall for the Republican candidate that was sent out on Sunday.
In the call, Trump repeats many of his previous attacks on Jones, calling him weak on crime, bad for the military and a “puppet” for Democratic congressional leadership.
Several women have in recent weeks accused Moore of sexual misconduct, saying he pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.
A coalition of 171 progressive groups on Tuesday sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Senate leaders urging them not to roll back the groundbreaking net neutrality protections enacted in 2015.
“Protecting net neutrality is crucial to ensuring that the internet remains a central driver of economic growth and opportunity, job creation, education, free expression, and civic organizing for everyone,” the groups write. “The continuation of net neutrality is essential to the continued growth of the country and to ensuring access to social, political, and economic empowerment for all.”
The letter was signed by advocacy groups across sectors, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Greenpeace, MoveOn, United We Dream, Color of Change, PEN America, and dozens of community and social justice organizations.
In 2015, under then-chairman Tom Wheeler, the FCC passed a sweeping set of regulations known as the Open Internet Order that redefined the internet as a public utility and required Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all content equally. But after Wheeler’s resignation at the end of President Barack Obama’s term, the FCC came under the control of Republican chairman Ajit Pai, who immediately launched a deregulatory attack on consumer protections and internet access. Pai has also signaled his intent to undo the Open Internet Order.
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Tuesday’s letter is addressed to Pai, as well as Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, who recently launched a push for anti-net neutrality legislation; and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), the ranking member on Thune’s committee.
The groups caution that net neutrality protects competition, innovation, free speech, and equality of access.
On Wednesday, the FCC is scheduled to appear before that Senate panel for the first oversight hearing of the Trump administration—where, as The Hill notes, Democrats are sure to raise the issue of net neutrality. Progressive lawmakers held a press conference last month predicting that any efforts to undo those protections would create a “political firestorm” from proponents of an open internet.
“In order to promote continued economic, social, and political growth and innovation, it is imperative that the internet remain open and accessible to all people in the future,” the letter reads. “We strongly urge you and your colleagues to protect the free and open internet and the benefits it provides to for all people.”
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The White House’s decision to selectively bar certain news outlets from a Friday afternoon off-camera briefing with press secretary Sean Spicer has been decried as “undemocratic and unacceptable;” “chilling;” and “totalitarian.”
Not to mention “stupid.”
CNN called it “an unacceptable development by the Trump White House. Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like. We’ll keep reporting regardless.”
And New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet declared in a statement: “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties. We strongly protest the exclusion of the New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.”
In addition to CNN, the Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico, outlets that were blocked from the so-called “gaggle” reportedly included The Hill, the BBC, the Guardian, and BuzzFeed. Right-wing outlets Breitbart and One American News were allowed in, among others.
The American Civil Liberties Union called the exclusion “yet another disturbing example of the Trump [administration]’s contempt for the vital role a free press plays in our democracy.”
Indeed, the incident played out just hours after Trump called the media an “enemy of the people” at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland.
Other responses poured in online from lawmakers, journalists, and media watchdogs—some warning of the decision’s implications, others cautioning against allowing the news to be a distraction from larger matters:
Just hours after President Donald Trump launched his latest rhetorical (and predictable) attack on the press during a speech to right-wing activists, CNN and other outlets have reportedly been blocked from attending Friday afternoon’s press briefing at the White House.
CNN reports:
The cable news outlet reported that its correspondents who were barred entry were offered “no immediate explanation” from White House staff about why they had been denied.
The move, described as “unprecedented” by reporters and journalism experts, comes a day after CNN reported that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus had attempted to get the FBI to push back against reporting by several outlets, including the Times and CNN, that there had been consistent communications between members of the Trump campaign and transition teams and Russian government officials.
In a statement, the White House Correspondents’ Association decried the move.
“The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House,” said Jeff Mason, the group’s president. “We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not. The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”
During his earlier speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Trump repeatedly attacked the news media and called reporters supplying negative or critical coverage of his administration “the enemy of the people.”
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WWE has announced when this year’s draft will be taking place.
It was revealed during tonight’s Clash of Champions pay-per-view that the 2020 WWE Draft will take place next month. It will be a two-night event that begins on the Friday, October 9 episode of SmackDown and ends on the Monday, October 12 episode of Raw.
Dave Meltzer confirmed last month that this year’s draft was planned for October.
This will be the second year in a row that a WWE Draft has taken place. The 2019 draft was also held over two nights on SmackDown and Raw. It began on October 11, which was the second-ever episode of SmackDown on Fox. WWE had done Superstar Shake-ups in April 2017, 2018, and 2019. Prior to that, WWE held a draft when the brand split was reintroduced in 2016.
The most recent movement between brands was Mandy Rose being traded to the Raw roster earlier this month. In storyline, The Miz had Rose moved to Raw as part of his feud with Otis.
Most young Americans see President Donald Trump as illegitimate, according to a new poll out Friday.
The survey by GenForward, conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 57 percent of adults between 18-30 years old—including three-quarters of black Americans and a large portion of Latinos and Asians—see Trump’s presidency as illegitimate.
A slim majority of white young adults, 53 percent, consider him a legitimate president, but even among that group, 55 percent disapprove of the job he’s doing.
Responses were varied as to what made Trump’s presidency seem illegitimate. Some said it was his nationalist rhetoric and policies; others said they doubted whether he was fairly elected.
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One respondent said he keeps remembering Trump giving a speech in which he referred to Mexicans as criminals and rapists. “You can’t be saying that [if] you’re the president,” said the respondent, 21-year-old Jermaine Anderson, a student from Florida.
“I’m thinking, he’s saying that most of the people in the world who are raping and killing people are the immigrants. That’s not true,” Anderson said.
Megan Desrochers, a 21-year-old student from Michigan, said, “I just think it was kind of a situation where he was voted in based on his celebrity status verses his ethics.”
The poll of 1,833 adults age 18-30 was conducted February 16 through March 6. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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The growing backlash to federal rollback of regulations continued this week, as Minnesota and Illinois both made moves to protect internet privacy after Congress voted to let broadband providers sell user data to third parties without permission.
In what the Pioneer Press called a “surprise move” on Wednesday, the Minnesota Senate voted to bar internet service providers (ISPs) from selling customer data without their written consent.
State Sen. Ron Latz with the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL-St.Louis Park) introduced the legislation as an amendment to the Senate’s economic development budget bill, saying a vote on internet privacy was urgently needed after Congress overturned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule this week that previously blocked ISPs from sharing information with third parties.
After clearing some procedural hurdles with the help of Sen. Warren Limmer (R-Maple Grove), who broke with his party to support the amendment’s introduction on the Senate floor rather than going through committee, the bill passed 58-9.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Democratic lawmakers in Illinois considered implementing their own internet privacy rules in response to the congressional vote.
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An Illinois House committee endorsed two online privacy measures, including one that would allow users to find out what data internet companies like Google and Facebook have on them and which third parties they’ve shared it with.
“People are looking to us now to provide protections for consumers,” state Rep. Arthur Turner (D-Chicago), who proposed the right-to-know bill, said Thursday, the Associated Press reported.
Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois, told the AP that legislation like this was necessary because of the now “razor-thin” line between government and private interests, who can sell data to federal agencies.
President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise not to cut Social Security, is reportedly considering a plan to eliminate much of the payroll tax that funds the critical safety net program.
According to the Associated Press on Monday, the proposal is being floated as the Trump administration goes “back to the drawing board in a search for Republican consensus behind legislation to overhaul the U.S. tax system.”
The AP reported that one option “circulating this past week would change the House Republican plan to eliminate much of the payroll tax and cut corporate tax rates. This would require a new dedicated funding source for Social Security.”
And that, Zaid Jilani wrote at The Intercept, “would require counting on Trump’s economic team to shepherd a solution through Congress—and for Congress to treat Social Security unlike other ‘discretionary’ general-fund programs whose budgets rise and fall with political currents.”
The AP continued:
“Furthermore,” Jilani noted, “the rumored mechanism for making up the lost funding…would hit workers the hardest.”
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A value-added tax “would increase the cost of goods and services,” Jilani explained, citing Paul N. Van de Water, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “arguably canceling out the value of the reduced payroll tax for most lower- and middle-class workers.”
In a column on Monday, Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times described the plan as “an absolutely terrible idea, partially because it smells like a back-door way of cutting Social Security benefits. It needs to be nipped in the bud.”
Indeed, Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, called the scheme “a Trojan horse: It appears to be a gift, in the form of middle class tax relief, but would, if enacted, lead to the destruction of working Americans’ fundamental economic security.”
She wrote on Tuesday:
Of course, it’s probably not Trump himself that’s behind the proposal, but members of his cabinet who have been targeting safety net programs for years.
“Does Trump understand that Social Security is funded through payroll taxes?” wondered Daily Kos senior political writer Joan McCarter. “Does he even care? Nah. That’s the detail stuff that he has people to understand. Those people, however, are undermining his promises. And if they actually try to go through with this? He might become the first president in history to have single-digit approval ratings.”
Meanwhile, a proposal to expand and fortify Social Security was re-introduced in the U.S. House last week—with more co-sponsors than any such legislation has had before.
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President Donald Trump approaches his 100th day in office the most unpopular U.S. leader in modern history for a reason.
Exacerbating his failure to uphold his populist campaign promises, a new report found that Trump spent the majority of his presidency enriching his own business empire while appointing fellow “corporate cronies” at the highest levels of government leading to what Public Citizen describes as “an unprecedented corporate takeover.”
“The corporate capture began at the same moment as the Trump presidency.” —Robert Weissman, Public Citizen
Published on Monday, For-Profit President (pdf), chronicles each day of Trump’s tenure thus far and what actions or appointments were made that either enriched his private business empire, placed the importance of “profits before people,” or highlighted the “corporate takeover” of government—despite candidate Trump’s repeated pledge to “drain the swamp.”
Case in point, on Day 12 of his presidency, Trump met with a group of Big Pharma CEOs. Public Citizen reports:
According to the day-by-day calendar, even Trump’s many weekends spent at the so-called “winter White House” in Palm Beach, Florida do not provide a respite for the American people.
For example, on Saturday, February 18 or Day 30, the president “kick[ed] off his 2020 campaign with a rally near his Mar-a-Lago resort,” according to the report.
The consumer rights group notes that the “wealthy members of Mar-a-Lago have an unprecedented degree of access and influence with the President of the United States. Members include fossil fuel billionaire William Koch, the lesser-known brother of the more politically active Charles and David Koch, electronic trading billionaire Thomas Peterffy, and various corporate executives.”
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Public Citizen filed that day’s event under both “corporate takeover” and “enriching private business.” (Notably, on Day 6 of the presidency, the resort “doubled its initiation fee to $200,000.”)
Exemplifying “profits before people,” on Day 55, Trump ordered a review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s fuel efficiency standards, which was done “in apparent response to direct lobbying by the automobile industry.”
“America has never seen anything like this,” declared Public Citizen president Robert Weissman in a column on Monday. “The corporate capture began at the same moment as the Trump presidency,” Weissman observed, adding that “its been downhill since then.”
Touching upon many of the more egregious actions outlined in the report, Weissman noted that Trump’s pro-corporate capstone appears to be his swift rollback of public health, labor, and environmental regulations. He wrote:
Report author Rick Claypool, who serves as research director for the group’s President’s Office, notes in the introduction that planning for the corporate power grab began long before the inauguration. During Trump’s transition, the so-called “beach head teams” were stacked with “corporate-connected staff” who swiftly transferred power to Trump’s cabinet, who Claypool describes as “a selection of CEOs and corporate-backed Republican officials who constitute and unprecedented corporate cabinet.”
Nonetheless, Claypool adds, “the true depth of the administration’s unswerving commitment to an especially savage version of corporate capitalism is now, as we approach the first 100 days under the Trump administration, utterly clear.”
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Republican Alabama Senate nominee Roy Moore in a new interview denied that he ever dated underaged women.
“But these allegations are completely false. I did not date underaged women. I did not molest anyone. And so these allegations are false,” Moore said during an interview with The Voice of Alabama Politics, a television news show affiliated with the website The Alabama Political Reporter.
Moore in an interview last month after the initial set of accusations admitted he may have dated women in their later teens during that time in his life.
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“Not generally, no. If I did, I’m not going to dispute anything but I don’t remember anything like that,” Moore told Sean Hannity during an interview on his radio show when asked about dating women “as young as 17.”
The age of consent in Alabama, both at the time of Moore’s alleged pursuit of the women and today, is 16.
Moore has specifically denied knowing Leigh Corfman and Beverly Young Nelson. Corfman told The Washington Post that Moore initiated sexual contact with her when she was 14 years old, and Nelson came forward after the initial Post story saying Moore assaulted her when she was 16.
“I do not know them. I had no encounter with them. I never molested anyone. And for them to say that, I don’t know why they’re saying it, but it’s not true,” Moore told The Voice of Alabama Politics.
Moore in the interview with Hannity acknowledged that he remembered two of the women, Debbie Wesson Gibson and Gloria Thacker Deason, who both spoke to The Washington Post for the newspaper’s first story. Gibson told the Post that she was 17 years old when Moore asked her out, while Deason said she went out with Moore when she was 18.
In the latest interview, Moore continued to deny any allegations of molestation.
“I said I did not know any of the women who have charged me with sexual allegation of molestation. And I did not know any of the women,” Moore said. “When I saw these pictures on the advertisements of my opponent, I did not recognize any of those people. I did not know them.”
His campaign has argued the accusations are politically motivated and has questioned the timing of the allegations, the first of which were revealed about one month before the Alabama special election.
Moore, who will face off against Democratic candidate Doug Jones on Tuesday, initially lost the support of multiple Republican lawmakers due to the allegations.
But some members of the GOP have appeared to soften their tone regarding Moore. After President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE offered Moore a full-throated endorsement last week, the Republican National Committee reinstated its fundraising agreement with Moore’s campaign.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote GOP senator to try to reverse requirement that Pentagon remove Confederate names from bases No, ‘blue states’ do not bail out ‘red states’ MORE (R-Ky.), who last month called on Moore to step aside from the race, said last week that the election is in the hands of the Alabama voters.
Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist argued in an interview aired Sunday that the tax overhaul Republicans are rushing to pass this week will help GOP lawmakers going into the 2018 midterm elections.
“The strong economic growth that will flow from the tax cuts, the higher value of stocks and bonds, the savings that people have from lower taxes … will help the Republicans win House and Senate seats” in 2018, Norquist said in an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York.
Democrats have remained unified in opposing the tax plan for each chamber’s vote on their versions of the bill, and have made the “GOP tax scam” a central focus of their 2018 election efforts, in working to win back majorities in both the House and Senate.
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Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform who has long advocated for a simpler and less burdensome tax code, argued that the GOP legislation would help the average taxpayer and put pressure on lawmakers from high-tax states such as New York to lower taxes.
The final bill agreed upon in conference between the House and Senate caps the state and local tax deduction at $10,000, allowing filers to deduct state and local property, income and sales taxes up to that amount.
“In 1,000 different local governments, politicians who were planning to raise your taxes will not,” Norquist said.
“I think we’ll be surprised at how quickly politicians with national ambitions will bring their marginal tax rates down on both income taxes and on property taxes,” he said.
The House is expected to vote on the bill early this week, followed by a final vote in the Senate, sending the bill to President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE’s desk before the Christmas recess.