Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

U.S. House pauses vote on bill to fund government and avoid shutdown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives put on hold an expected Tuesday vote on a bill to fund the government through Dec. 11, while bipartisan congressional leaders discussed whether to include farm aid sought by President Donald Trump, lawmakers and aides said.

The delay “relates to numerous agriculture provisions” in the bill, one Democratic aide said. With government funding lapsing on Sept. 30, House Democrats announced Monday they had filed the stopgap funding legislation, but they angered Republicans by leaving out some farm money that Trump wanted.

The bill generally continues current spending levels, avoiding a government shutdown when funding runs out on Sept. 30. It would give lawmakers more time to work out spending through September 2021, including budgets for military operations, healthcare, national parks, space programs, and airport and border security.

“At some point in the next day or two, we expect that there will be a continuing resolution on the floor that will continue the current spending agreement until December,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, who have the majority. He said he hoped it would be “bipartisan in nature.”

The version that House Democrats filed on Monday did not include $21.1 billion that the White House sought to replenish the Commodity Credit Corporation, a program to stabilize farm incomes, because Democrats considered it a blank check for political favors. Trump had promised more farm aid during a rally in Wisconsin last week.

Republicans protested the omission, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell arguing that farmers need the help.

“The talks continue, and hopefully we’ll reach an agreement,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday.

A House Republican aide said Democrats had earlier walked away from an agreement that included the farm aid.

“Republicans will continue to fight for these provisions to be included,” he said.

Leaders of both parties say they are not interested in a standoff that could lead to a government shutdown, amid a pandemic and just weeks before the Nov. 3 elections.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; additional reporting by Richard Cowan and David Morgan; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Bernadette Baum)

Republican Party courts Hispanic voters with new voter registration website

By Jarrett Renshaw

Philadelphia (Reuters) – The Republican National Committee on Tuesday unveiled its latest effort to attract Hispanic voters: a new Spanish-language website that helps register voters while guiding them through the voting options in their states.

The Republican Party strengthened its efforts to promote mail balloting, even as President Donald Trump continues his near-daily assault on the practice. The president’s attacks have dampened Republican enthusiasm for mail balloting.

Nationally, Hispanics make up the largest minority voting group, at more than 13% of eligible voters. Biden’s support with Latino voters across the country has dropped; they favored him over Trump by 9 percentage points in August, down from 30 points in July, according to Reuters/Ipsos data.

“In the most crucial election of our lifetime, it has never been more important for voters to have the information they need to take an action to vote, whether by Absentee, Early Voting, or voting on Election Day,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.

The site, vote.gop and its new Spanish-language version, gives voters customized choices based on the options in their respective state and also sends them emails tailored to their preferences that reminds them of important deadlines. Democrats have a similar website and have long had a Spanish-language version.

The expanded website is part of the Republican Party’s get-out-the-vote effort.

Since the beginning of the election cycle, 700,000 voters have registered to vote or checked their voter registration on the site, according to the RNC.

The party has also gained over 140,000 new voters from volunteer fieldwork, including 20,000 new Republicans over just the last three weeks, according to the RNC. By comparison, Republicans registered 46,000 voters in 2016 – and has tripled its 2016 volunteer voter registrations this cycle.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Billionaire Bloomberg raises millions to help restore Florida felon voting rights

By Trevor Hunnicutt

(Reuters) – Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has raised over $16 million to help former felons restore their voting rights in the critical battleground state of Florida, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The fundraising tally comes just over a week after Bloomberg aides said the former New York City mayor, who made an unsuccessful 2020 bid for the Democratic nomination, would spend at least $100 million to help Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign against President Donald Trump in Florida.

“The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy and no American should be denied that right,” Bloomberg said in an emailed statement, adding that he is working with a group that has been helping former felons’ pay fines and access the ballot box.

In-state voting by mail starts on Thursday in Florida, which will be the biggest prize among competitive states on Nov. 3’s Election Day, offering 29 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win.

Florida voters in 2018 approved an amendment to the state’s constitution to grant voting rights to felons who served their time and were not convicted of murder or sex crimes.

Republicans later backed a law requiring people with past felony convictions to pay court fines and fees before being able to vote. A federal appeals court upheld that law this month, reversing a lower court ruling that held the measure unconstitutional.

Voting rights advocates and Democrats have accused Republicans in a number of states of passing laws aimed at suppressing the voting ability of groups who tend to support Democratic candidates.

Bloomberg promised to be a political force even after spending $1 billion of his own money to unsuccessfully compete with Biden for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

He sees an opportunity to make a difference in the closing weeks of the race in Florida, a state Trump won by 113,000 votes in 2016, or 1.2 percentage points.

The president has since adopted the state as his residence and visits regularly. Recent polls have shown Biden with a very slim margin there.

At U.N., Trump demands action against China over virus, Xi urges cooperation

By Michelle Nichols and Steve Holland

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump used the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to attack China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the world body “must hold China accountable” for its actions related to the outbreak.

By contrast, China’s President Xi Jinping struck a conciliatory tone in his pre-recorded virtual address to the General Assembly, calling for enhanced cooperation over the pandemic and stressing that China had no intention of fighting “either a Cold War or a hot one” with any other country.

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies laid out their competing visions as relations have plunged to their worst level in decades against the backdrop of the pandemic, with coronavirus tensions aggravating trade and technology disputes.

Trump, facing a November re-election battle with the United States dealing with the world’s highest official number of deaths and infections from the coronavirus, focused his speech on attacking China.

Trump accused Beijing of allowing people to leave China in the early stages of the outbreak to infect the world while shutting down domestic travel.

“We must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world, China,” he said in remarks taped on Monday at the White House and delivered remotely to the General Assembly due to the pandemic.

“The Chinese government, and the World Health Organization – which is virtually controlled by China – falsely declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission,” he said.

“Later, they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease … The United Nations must hold China accountable for their actions.”

The president promised to distribute a vaccine and said: “We will defeat the virus, and we will end the pandemic.”

In introducing Xi’s remarks, China’s U.N. ambassador Zhang Jun said China “resolutely rejects the baseless accusations against China.”

“The world is at a crossroads. At this moment, the world needs more solidarity and cooperation, but not confrontation,” he said.

‘GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER’

In his address, in what appeared to be an implicit rebuke to Trump, Xi called for a global response to the coronavirus and giving a leading role to the World Health Organization, which the U.S. president has announced plans to leave.

“Facing the virus, we should enhance solidarity and get through this together,” he said. “We should follow the guidance of science, give full play to the leading role of the World Health Organization and launch a joint international response to beat this pandemic. Any attempt of politicizing the issue, or stigmatization, must be rejected.”

The death toll from the spread of the coronavirus in the United States surpassed 200,000 on Monday, by far the highest official number of any country.

Trump also attacked China’s record on the environment, but leveled no direct criticism at Beijing over human rights.

The president, a frequent critic of the United Nations, said that if it was to be effective, it must focus on “the real problems of the world” like “terrorism, the oppression of women, forced labor, drug trafficking, human and sex trafficking, religious persecution, and the ethnic cleansing of religious minorities.”

Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world was “moving in a very dangerous direction” with U.S.-China tensions.

“We must do everything to avoid a new Cold War,” he told the assembly. “Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a Great Fracture — each with its own trade and financial rules and internet and artificial intelligence capacities.

“A technological and economic divide risks inevitably turning into a geo-strategic and military divide. We must avoid this at all costs.”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Steve Holland, Arshad Mohammed and David Brunnstrom; Writing by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Mary Milliken and Howard Goller)

Trump to tell U.N. it ‘must hold China accountable for their actions’ on virus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will tell the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday it “must hold China accountable for their actions” related to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Chinese government, and the World Health Organization – which is virtually controlled by China – falsely declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission,” Trump will say, according to excerpts released ahead of delivery.

“Later, they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease … The United Nations must hold China accountable for their actions,” he will say.

Trump taped his speech on Monday at the White House for delivery remotely to the General Assembly, which convened virtually this week.

The president promised to distribute a vaccine and said: “We will defeat the virus, we will defeat the virus, and we will end the pandemic” and enter a new era of prosperity, cooperation and peace.

Trump, a frequent critic of the United Nations, also said in the excerpts that if the UN is to be effective, it must focus on “the real problems of the world” like “terrorism, the oppression of women, forced labor, drug trafficking, human and sex trafficking, religious persecution, and the ethnic cleansing of religious minorities.”

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller)

House Democrats file bill to fund U.S. government but leave out new farm money

By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The

By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress this week will consider legislation funding the federal government through mid-December, with lawmakers hoping to avoid the spectacle of a government shutdown amid a pandemic and just weeks before the Nov. 3 elections.

House Democrats announced Monday they had filed the legislation, which leaves out new money that President Donald Trump wanted for farmers. A Democratic aide said the bill could be on the House floor as soon as Tuesday. The Senate could then act later this week.

The new federal fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

The bill is designed to give lawmakers more time to work out federal spending for the period through September 2021, including budgets for military operations, healthcare, national parks, space programs, and airport and border security.

The spending proposal “will avert a catastrophic shutdown in the middle of the ongoing pandemic, wildfires and hurricanes, and keep government open until December 11, when we plan to have bipartisan legislation to fund the government for this fiscal year,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

But the measure’s December end date will require Congress to return to the government funding question again during its post-election lame-duck session, either during or after what could be a bruising fight to confirm Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And the legislation does not include $21.1 billion the White House sought to replenish the Commodity Credit Corporation, a program to stabilize farm incomes, because Democrats considered this a “blank check” for “political favors,” said a House Democratic aide who asked not to be named. Trump promised more farm aid during a rally in Wisconsin last week.

Republicans were not happy. “House Democrats’ rough draft of a government funding bill shamefully leaves out key relief and support that American farmers need. This is no time to add insult to injury and defund help for farmers and rural America,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote on Twitter. Republicans could seek to amend the document to add in the provision.

The bill proposes spending $14 billion to shore up a trust fund that pays for airport improvements and air traffic control

operations. It also proposes extending surface transportation funding for another year, directing $13.6 billion to maintain current spending levels on highways and mass transit.

Pelosi said the bill would also save America’s older citizens from an increase in Medicare health insurance premiums of up to $50 per month.

Congressional Democrats have had a stormy relationship with the White House over federal funding since Trump took office early in 2017. He has sought deep cuts in domestic spending while ramping up military funds.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell; additional reporting by David Shepardson and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)

this week will consider legislation funding the federal government through mid-December, with lawmakers hoping to avoid the spectacle of a government shutdown amid a pandemic and just weeks before the Nov. 3 elections.

House Democrats announced Monday they had filed the legislation, which leaves out new money that President Donald Trump wanted for farmers. A Democratic aide said the bill could be on the House floor as soon as Tuesday. The Senate could then act later this week.

The new federal fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

The bill is designed to give lawmakers more time to work out federal spending for the period through September 2021, including budgets for military operations, healthcare, national parks, space programs, and airport and border security.

The spending proposal “will avert a catastrophic shutdown in the middle of the ongoing pandemic, wildfires and hurricanes, and keep government open until December 11, when we plan to have bipartisan legislation to fund the government for this fiscal year,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

But the measure’s December end date will require Congress to return to the government funding question again during its post-election lame-duck session, either during or after what could be a bruising fight to confirm Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And the legislation does not include $21.1 billion the White House sought to replenish the Commodity Credit Corporation, a program to stabilize farm incomes, because Democrats considered this a “blank check” for “political favors,” said a House Democratic aide who asked not to be named. Trump promised more farm aid during a rally in Wisconsin last week.

Republicans were not happy. “House Democrats’ rough draft of a government funding bill shamefully leaves out key relief and support that American farmers need. This is no time to add insult to injury and defund help for farmers and rural America,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote on Twitter. Republicans could seek to amend the document to add in the provision.

The bill proposes spending $14 billion to shore up a trust fund that pays for airport improvements and air traffic control

operations. It also proposes extending surface transportation funding for another year, directing $13.6 billion to maintain current spending levels on highways and mass transit.

Pelosi said the bill would also save America’s older citizens from an increase in Medicare health insurance premiums of up to $50 per month.

Congressional Democrats have had a stormy relationship with the White House over federal funding since Trump took office early in 2017. He has sought deep cuts in domestic spending while ramping up military funds.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell; additional reporting by David Shepardson and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)

Potential Trump Supreme Court pick Lagoa is fast-rising Cuban-American judicial star

By Jan Wolfe

(Reuters) – Barbara Lagoa, the Cuban-American federal appellate judge under consideration by President Donald Trump for the U.S. Supreme Court, is a conservative jurist whose resume includes a role in a heated international custody battle and the distinction of being the first Hispanic woman to serve on Florida’s top court.

If picked by Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died of pancreatic cancer at age 87 on Friday, Lagoa, 52, would become only the second Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court, following current Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She would give the court a 6-3 conservative majority.

Lagoa has less than a year of experience as a federal judge, having joined the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last December after being appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in a 80-15 bipartisan vote. The 11th Circuit is one of the regional appeals courts that are one step below the Supreme Court.

While Lagoa has not served long on the 11th Circuit, she took part in a major ruling reversing a judge’s decision striking down a Florida law that requires that people with past serious criminal convictions pay all fines, restitution and legal fees before regaining the right to vote. Critics have compared the Republican-backed law to poll taxes imposed in the past in some states to keep Black people from voting.

Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a close ally of Trump, named Lagoa to the Florida Supreme Court – his first official act in the job – in January 2019, a major career boost for the former federal prosecutor who had served on an intermediate state court since being appointed by Republican former Governor Jeb Bush in 2006.

Lagoa is a member of Florida’s large and politically influential Cuban-American community. Her parents fled Cuba after Fidel Castro’s communist revolution. She grew up in Hialeah outside Miami, graduated from Florida International University and earned her law degree at Columbia University, the same Ivy League school as Ginsburg did.

ELIAN GONZALEZ INCIDENT

In 2000, she played a role in a major international incident between the United States and Cuba involving a 5-year-old boy named Elian Gonzalez who was rescued from the ocean after his mother drowned while fleeing Cuba with him. The boy’s father in Cuba sought his return and a legal battle ensued.

Lagoa provided free legal services to Cuban-American relatives of the boy who had sought to keep him in the United States. Ultimately, he was sent back to Cuba.

Lagoa has said her parents’ flight from Castro’s Cuba shaped her views and career.

“In the country my parents fled, the whim of a single individual could mean the difference between food or hunger, liberty or prison, life or death,” Lagoa said at an event last year. “Unlike the country my parents fled, we are a nation of laws, not of men.”

The liberal activist group Alliance for Justice has said Lagoa’s decisions “raise concerns that she will side with the wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyday Americans as a federal judge.”

It also cited a 2019 ruling in which Lagoa sided with businesses challenging Miami Beach’s minimum wage, as well as a decision she joined that made it harder for homeowners to fight foreclosure proceedings.

That year, Lagoa upheld DeSantis’ suspension of a sheriff for alleged incompetence following a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Trump’s advisers see Lagoa as someone who would be a reliable conservative vote on the Supreme Court, said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias, who studies judicial nominations.

Leonard Leo, who has been a key figure in the Federalist Society conservative legal group and worked closely with Trump on his Supreme Court appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, interviewed and endorsed Lagoa when she was under consideration for Florida’s top court.

“She doesn’t shy away from her Federalist Society credentials and being conservative,” Tobias said.

The Florida Family Policy Council, a group that opposes legalized abortion and LGBT rights, said last year Lagoa “has a conservative judicial philosophy” and “is also deeply committed to her faith.” Lagoa is Roman Catholic and attends a church in Miami.

In her interview for the Florida Supreme Court, Lagoa described herself as a “legal nerd.”

“I am a tough questioner and I ask pointed questions, but I always do so respectfully,” Lagoa said.

Lagoa’s husband, Paul Huck Jr., is a lawyer in the Miami office of Jones Day, a law firm often involved in Republican causes. They have three daughters. Lagoa’s father-in-law, Paul Huck Sr., is a semi-retired federal judge in Miami, appointed by Democratic former President Bill Clinton. She speaks fluent Spanish.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

U.S. judge orders Post Office to expedite November election mail

By David Shepardson and Joseph Ax

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday ordered the U.S. Postal Service to expedite all November election mail and to approve additional overtime for postal workers.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan said the Postal Service must treat to the extent possible all election mail as first-class mail or priority mail express and “shall pre-approve all overtime that has been or will be requested” between Oct. 26 and Nov. 6.

Marrero’s opinion said that in prior elections, including 2018, the Postal Service typically treated election mail as first-class mail, even if it was sent at marketing mail rates.

“Multiple managerial failures have undermined the postal employees’ ability to fulfill their vital mission,” he wrote.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, said he was issuing a nationwide injunction sought by 14 states in a case against President Donald Trump, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, and the U.S. Postal Service over July changes to the service.

The 14 states, led by Washington, had filed a motion for a preliminary injunction asking the court to immediately halt a “leave mail behind” policy that required postal trucks to leave at certain times, regardless of whether mail was loaded.

DeJoy, a Trump supporter, said in August that he would halt many of the cost-cutting changes he put in place until after the presidential election after Democrats accused him of trying to put his thumb on the scales to help Trump, which he has denied. A surge in mail-in ballots is expected because of the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. Postal Service spokesman Dave Partenheimer said last week while the agency was exploring its legal options, it was “ready and committed to handle whatever volume of election mail it receives.”

“Our number one priority is to deliver election mail on time,” Partenheimer said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Trump says he will name Supreme Court pick by Saturday, urges quick vote

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Monday he will announce his U.S. Supreme Court pick by the end of the week, moving quickly to fill the seat of liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg and cement a 6-3 conservative majority ahead of his Nov. 3 re-election bid.

The Republican president said he is looking “very seriously” at five candidates and would put forward his nominee on Friday or Saturday after funeral services for Ginsburg, who died of complications from pancreatic cancer on Friday at age 87.

Trump said the Republican-controlled Senate should hold a vote ahead of the election.

“The final vote should be taken frankly before the election. We have plenty of time for that,” Trump said on Fox News.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has prioritized confirming Trump’s judicial appointments, has said he would usher through a vote. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, but two Republican senators – Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski – over the weekend said the chamber should not move forward with a Trump nominee before the election.

McConnell has time, as a new Congress will not be sworn in until Jan. 3. Democrats are hoping to win control of the Senate in the election.

Ginsburg’s death has upended the campaign season, giving Trump and his party an opportunity to strengthen its grip on a court whose decisions influence many spheres of American life including abortion, healthcare, gun rights, voting access, presidential powers and the death penalty.

Trump already has named two conservative justices to the high court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump has mentioned possible candidates in Amy Coney Barrett of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Barbara Lagoa of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Trump named both of them to their current jobs. Trump on Fox also was asked about Judge Allison Rushing, who Trump appointed to the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

“I’m looking at five, probably four, but I’m looking at five very seriously. I’m going to make a decision on either Friday or Saturday,” Trump said.

‘A TERRIFIC WOMAN’

Asked about Lagoa, a conservative Cuban-American jurist from Florida, Trump said, “She’s Hispanic. She’s a terrific woman from everything I know. I don’t know her. Florida. We love Florida.” Florida is an election battleground state pivotal to Trump’s chances against Biden.

The court vacancy also has given Trump and his fellow Republicans a chance to steer the national discussion away from the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed almost 200,000 Americans and thrown millions of people out of work.

Democrats accused McConnell of hypocrisy for being eager to usher a Trump nominee to a confirmation vote. In 2016, he refused to even consider Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill a vacancy on the court left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, saying it would be inappropriate to do so during an election year.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey and Jan Wolfe, Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

U.S. Justice Dept. weighs stripping federal funds from cities allowing ‘anarchy’

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Monday threatened to revoke federal funding for New York City, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, saying the three liberal cities were allowing anarchy and violence on their streets.

“We cannot allow federal tax dollars to be wasted when the safety of the citizenry hangs in the balance,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement.

Spokespeople for the mayors’ offices in all three cities could not be immediately reached for comment.

Many cities across the United States have experienced unrest since the May death of George Floyd. In some cases the protests have escalated into violence and looting.

The federal government has mounted a campaign to disperse the racial justice protests, including by sending federal agents into Portland and Seattle and encouraging federal prosecutors to bring charges.

Last week, the Justice Department urged federal prosecutors to consider sedition charges against protesters who have burned buildings and engaged in other violent activity.

Monday’s threat to revoke federal funds was the government’s latest escalation in its quest to curb the protests.

It comes after President Donald Trump earlier this month issued a memo laying out criteria to consider when reviewing funding for states and cities that are “permitting anarchy, violence, and destruction in American cities.”

The criteria to make the president’s list include things such as whether a city forbids the police from intervening or if it defunds its police force.

In all three cities, the Justice Department said the leadership has rejected efforts to allow federal law enforcement officials to intervene and restore order, among other things.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)