Pence casts tie-breaking vote to make it more difficult for consumers to sue banks and credit card companies

The Senate has voted to nullify a consumer-oriented rule that would let millions of Americans band together to sue their banks or credit card companies.

Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote Tuesday night to stop the rule from going into effect – the fifth instance he has broken a 50-50 tie since taking office.

Many consumers must go through an arbitrator to resolve financial disputes, but the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule that bans most types of mandatory arbitration clauses.

The rule exposed banks to large class-action lawsuits. Supporters say that possibility would help ensure banks, credit card companies and other lenders treat consumers appropriately.

The vote comes months after House action and reflects the effort of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to undo regulations that the GOP argues harm the free market.

Democrats said before the vote that nullifying the rule would be a victory for Wall Street.

The resolution will now go to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.

[Business Insider]

 

Bob Corker says Trump ‘utterly untruthful president’

Influential Republican Senator Bob Corker has unleashed a blistering attack on US President Donald Trump, calling him “utterly untruthful”.

In a series of television interviews, Mr Corker accused the president of lying, adding that he debased the US and weakened its global standing.

Mr Trump fired back on Twitter, calling the Tennessee senator a “lightweight” who “couldn’t get re-elected”.

The pair met at a Senate lunch on Tuesday to discuss tax reform.

“He is purposely breaking down relationships we have around the world that had been useful to our nation,” Mr Corker said on CNN after the Republican president criticised him on Twitter.

“I think the debasement of our nation is what he’ll be remembered most for,” he said.

The Foreign Relations Committee chairman, who was an early supporter of Mr Trump, added that the president has “great difficulty with truth”.

The good news for Donald Trump is he’s managed to push his feud with a grieving war widow out of the headlines. The bad news is he’s done it by pushing a stake through Republican unity at a time when the party needs to come together to pass big-ticket tax reform through Congress.

The latest blistering exchange between Republican Senator Bob Corker and the president has all the hallmarks of one of Mr Trump’s classic intra-party campaign spats.

There’s the quick Twitter trigger finger, the derogatory nicknames (“liddle” Bob Corker), the over-the-top hyperbole (“he couldn’t get elected dog catcher”).

Republicans – including those who bore the brunt of Mr Trump’s vitriolic attacks – largely shrugged off those earlier rows as primary-season posturing and unified behind their unlikely standard-bearer in the autumn general election.

Mr Corker, on the verge of Senate retirement, isn’t backing down, however. And the president is once again raising the voltage.

The party is learning the hard way that there’s only one Donald Trump – whether he’s a real-estate mogul, a reality TV star, a candidate or a president.

If you question his leadership, his views or his attitude, he’ll unleash the whirlwind, no matter the consequences.

When asked if he regretted supporting Mr Trump during the 2016 election, the senator said: “Let’s just put it this way, I would not do that again.”

His comments came after Mr Trump lashed out at the Republican in a series of tweets.

Last month Mr Corker announced that he would not seek re-election at next year’s mid-term elections.

Mr Corker had voted against the 2015 agreement to curb Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, calling it “flawed”, but later said Mr Trump should not “tear up” the pact.

Mr Trump’s tweets on Tuesday appeared to be in response to Mr Corker’s comments on ABC News’ Good Morning America, in which he suggested the president should stop interfering in the debate on tax legislation.

The president went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday in an attempt to rally Senate Republicans around a White House-backed tax reform plan.

A protester was detained by police after he hurled Russian flags at Mr Trump as he walked through the building with top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell.

“Trump is treason!” shouted the demonstrator, who identified himself as Ryan Clayton from Americans Take Action, a campaign group calling for Mr Trump’s impeachment.

“This president conspired with agents of the Russian government to steal an election!” he cried. “We should be talking about treason in congress, not about tax cuts!”

Mr Corker’s support for the tax plan could be crucial as Republicans seek to pass the legislation in the upper chamber.

The lawmaker also raised concern with the president’s behaviour toward North Korea, saying Mr Trump “continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of state”.

He added that when it comes to diplomacy with Pyongyang, Mr Trump should “leave it to the professionals for a while”.

Following Mr Trump’s attack, Mr Corker fired back on Twitter.

The spat reignites an ongoing feud between the two men, which blew up earlier this month when Mr Corker responded to an attack from Mr Trump saying: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center.

“Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

[BBC News]

Lawmakers want immediate review of travel restriction on Putin critic

The United States government has revoked travel privileges for a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, stirring alarm on Capitol Hill.

Bill Browder, a crusader for the Magnitsky Act designed to punish Russian human rights abusers, found himself blocked from traveling to the United States in recent days.

The situation appears to be triggered by Russia’s decision to place Browder on the Interpol wanted list in pursuit of his arrest.

“The Department of Homeland Security should expedite an immediate review of the decision to revoke Mr. Browder’s visa,” Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said in a statement on Monday.

The senators said it “would be unfortunate if the U.S. decided to bar him based on a decision by those same Russian officials who have been targeted by this important legislation.”

Browder, a British citizen, told The Hill in an interview Monday that he was notified late last week that the Department of Homeland Security had revoked his status as a member of the Global Entry program, which is administered by Customs and Border Protection and allows trusted travelers expedited entry into the country.

When Browder tried to book a flight to the United States, he further discovered that his privileges to enter the U.S. ad a citizen of Great Britain had been revoked. Browder uses the Electronic System for Travel Authorization to gain entry into the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program.

“I discovered that my Global Entry status had been revoked,” Browder said. “We then checked into a flight to Newark and the airline wouldn’t let me check in, wouldn’t let me board because of the visa issue.”

“At that point, I then contact my contacts in law enforcement and it was confirmed to me that Russia had added me using the Interpol diffusion system on the 17th of October,” Browder added.

Browder is a British financier who has been a major driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan law was passed in 2012 to punish human rights abusers in Russia. The law is named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer, who was jailed after discovering a tax fraud scheme and who died under suspicious circumstances. Browder was one of Magnitsky’s clients.

Browder’s support for the law has made him an enemy of Moscow. Russia has on four previous occasions petitioned to get Interpol to secure Browder’s arrest, though the international police organization has rejected the requests, deeming them politically motivated.

In the past, Browder’s visa privileges were revoked as a result of Russia’s actions, but he said the U.S. government previously had resolved the issue within hours.

“I am hopeful that this is just a technical issue driven by Interpol and it will be resolved quickly,” Browder said Monday.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for more information. Browder said he received little information from Homeland Security when he inquired about his Global Entry status in recent days.

[The Hill]

Update

After the firestorm, Browder has been cleared again to enter the US.

EPA cancels appearance of scientists at climate change event

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has canceled the appearance of three scientists at an event on Monday in Rhode Island about a report, which deals in part with climate change.

The New York Times reports EPA spokesman John Konkus confirmed on Sunday that agency scientists would not be speaking at the event in Providence. Konkus did not provide an explanation.

The event is designed to draw attention to the health of Narragansett Bay, which forms New England’s largest estuary.

A spokesman for Democratic U.S. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island says the event will go on as planned and the report that EPA scientists helped work on will be released.

In a statement to The Associated Press Sunday night, Reed said “muzzling EPA scientists won’t do anything to address climate change.”

[CBS News]

Reality

You can read the report here.

Nuclear Bombers Poised to Return to 24-Hour Alert After Trump Recalls Retired Pilots

The U.S. Air Force is preparing for nuclear armed B-52 bombers to be put back on 24-hour alert for the first time in 25 years as tensions rise between North Korea and President Donald Trump.

“I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward,” General David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, told Defense One in an interview Sunday.

While the order to have the bombers on alert hasn’t been given by the heads of U.S. Strategic Command or U.S. Northern Command, Gen. Goldfein—a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—said that in the current political climate the Air Force anticipates that it might come. “This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” he said of the preparations.

The last time the bombers were on 24-hour alert was during the Cold War. About 40 strategic bombers armed with nuclear weapons were ready to take off at a moment’s notice from the president from 11 Strategic Air Command bases around the world. The alert was ended in 1991 by the then President George H.W. Bush after the end of the Cold War.

The prospect of returning to 24-hour alert worried former diplomats. “Very hard to understand what would justify returning to costly practice of keeping B-52s on alert, a practice abandoned by GHW Bush in 1991,” wrote Steven Pifer‏, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and foreign service diplomat in Moscow on Twitter.

“Something’s brewing & it makes me queasy,” wrote Adam Blickstein, a former public affairs strategic planner for the Secretary of Defense, online, noting that last Friday President Trump signed an executive order so the Air Force could bring 1,000 pilots out of retirement.

On Sunday a spokeswoman for the Air Force said there are no plans to “recall retired pilots to address the pilot shortage.”

Over the summer President Trump threatened military action and “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea after a series of tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) by Pyongyang. The regime has also conducted underground nuclear weapons tests.

In early October Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that while the U.S. needed to “ensure we have military options,” that Trump told him and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to pursue diplomatic efforts.

Yet during an interview with the Fox Business Network broadcast Sunday Trump said “you would be shocked to see how totally prepared we are” for military action against Pyongyang. “Would it be nice not to do that? The answer is yes. Will that happen? Who knows, who knows,” he said.

“The world is a dangerous place and we’ve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons,” Goldfein said. “It’s no longer a bipolar world where it’s just us and the Soviet Union. We’ve got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It’s never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.”

[Newsweek]

 

Trump spars with widow of slain soldier about condolence call

Myeshia Johnson, the widow of a soldier killed earlier this month in Niger, said Monday that a condolence call from President Donald Trump “made me cry even worse,” prompting Trump to immediately push back against part of her emotional account via Twitter.

“The president said that he knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways and I was — it made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldn’t remember my husband’s name. The only way he remembered my husband’s name was because he told me he had my husband’s report in front of him and that’s when he actually said ‘La David,’” Johnson told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name and that’s what hurt me the most because if my husband is out here fighting for our country, and he risks his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name? And that’s what made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier.”

An hour after Johnson’s ABC interview aired, Trump responded on Twitter to rebut a portion of her account. “I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!” Trump claimed in his online post.

The interview and Trump’s online response to it drags the controversy surrounding the president’s condolence call to Johnson into its second week, prolonging a news cycle that has resurfaced questions about the president’s treatment of Gold Star families. The issue of Trump’s conversation with Johnson has mushroomed just as the White House has sought to focus attention on the president’s proposed tax cuts and reforms and has brought back memories of Trump’s feud with the Gold Star Khan family, who railed against the president at last summer’s Democratic National Convention.

The phone call between Johnson and the president became a point of contention last week when Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), a family friend who was traveling with the widow when she took Trump’s call on speakerphone, told reporters that the president had struggled to remember Army Sgt. La David Johnson’s name and said the slain soldier knew what he signed up for when he enlisted.

As the week wore on, the White House lashed out at Wilson, accusing the hat-wearing congresswoman of being “all hat, no cattle” and suggesting that she had sought to politicize the soldier’s death. Trump himself, in a post to Twitter, wrote that Wilson had “totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!”

The Trump administration’s most powerful defense came last Thursday from White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, who shared with reporters what happens when a service member dies and recalled details from the death of his own son, a Marine who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. Kelly shared the words of condolence that his friend, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, had offered him on his son’s death — that “he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed” — a similar sentiment to what Trump sought to express on his call with Johnson.

Kelly, in his briefing room remarks, also lashed out at Wilson, referring to her as an “empty barrel” as he recalled the 2015 dedication of an FBI office in Miami, where he said the Florida lawmaker inappropriately boasted that she had been instrumental in securing the funding for the facility. But the chief of staff’s criticism was quickly discredited: Wilson had not yet been elected to Congress when the money for the FBI building was appropriated, and video of her remarks from the ceremony shows her celebrating the bipartisan legislation she spearheaded to name the new FBI building after two agents killed in a 1986 firefight, not to secure funding for the building.

The White House stood behind Kelly’s statement and Sanders told reporters Friday that “If you want to go after Gen. Kelly, that’s up to you. But I think that if you want to get into a debate with the four-star Marine general, I think that’s something highly inappropriate.”

Despite the White House’s insistence that Wilson had mischaracterized and fabricated the tenor of Trump’s call, Myeshia Johnson’s account of the conversation aligned with the lawmaker’s account.

“Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated. What she said was 100 percent correct,” she said, explaining that six people, including Wilson, had heard the call as the family made its way to meet the slain soldier’s remains at Dover Air Force Base. “The phone was on speakerphone. Why would we fabricate something like that?”

The widow said she was left “very, very upset and hurt, very” by the president’s call.

She also said that many of her questions surrounding her husband’s death have not yet been answered by the military and that she has not been allowed to view her husband’s body. She said she has not been told how he was killed or why it took two days from the time La David Johnson’s unit was attacked for the military to recover his body.

“Why couldn’t I see my husband? Every time I asked to see my husband, they wouldn’t let me,” she said. “I need to see him so I will know that that is my husband. I don’t know nothing. They won’t show me a finger, a hand. I know my husband’s body from head to toe, and they won’t let me see anything. I don’t know what’s in that box. It could be empty for all I know, but I need — I need to see my husband.”

[Politico]

Trump Promises ‘No Change to Your 401(k)’ as Congress Considers a Contribution Cap

President Trump said early on Monday that his proposed tax plan would not prompt any changes to Americans’ tax-deferred retirement plans, pushing back against reports that the Republicans are weighing a proposal that would significantly reduce the income workers can save in these popular programs.

Mr. Trump’s shutdown of the proposal is the first of what many Republicans privately fear could be a presidential pattern that disrupts their efforts to pass a sweeping overhaul of the tax code. In it, Mr. Trump appeared to rule out a politically difficult idea, which, if enacted, would have provided some revenue to help pay for the tax plan.

Republicans’ ability to win passage of a tax package hinges on its ability to survive a complex set of legislative restrictions in the Senate. Republicans are attempting to cut business tax rates deeply, and also to cut individual tax rates, using a legislative route that allows them to bypass a Democratic filibuster and pass a bill with a simple Senate majority. To do that, they will need to make some tough political choices, eliminating some popular tax breaks, or employing some budgetary accounting tricks, in order to offset lost revenues from rate cuts.

Mr. Trump’s tweet concerned one of those accounting maneuvers, which would have allowed Republicans to effectively borrow tax revenues from the future to offset some rate cuts today. Reducing 401(k) contribution limits would force retirement savers to pay more in taxes today, as they sock away money, but less in the future, when they began withdrawing retirement funds tax-free.

Republicans had not decided whether to include a reduced cap on contributions in their final version of the tax bill even before Mr. Trump’s tweet.

Details of the Republicans’ tax bill have been closely held, and they would not comment on Friday about possible changes to 401(k) policies. It was not clear from Mr. Trump’s Twitter post on Monday whether he meant that he would not support a bill including alterations to 401(k) limits or that he knew the Republicans’ draft bill did not include such changes. Several sources said last week that such changes were under consideration as House Republicans prepare to release a tax bill in the coming weeks.

Democrats and other critics of Mr. Trump’s tax plan have said it would not help middle-class Americans, despite White House and Republican promises. “Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans should not be paid for by increasing taxes on middle class Americans saving for retirement,” a group of Democratic senators, led by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, wrote to the administration in September.

Any plan to cap 401(k) savings could bolster those arguments.

Republicans are discussing proposals that would potentially cap worker contributions at $2,400 annually for 401(k) retirement accounts, lobbyists and consultants have said. Currently, workers can put away $18,000 a year in tax-deferred plans; workers who are over 50 years old can save up to $24,000.

Advocacy groups have sprung up in Washington to fight any proposed change to those limits. One of those groups, the Save our Savings Coalition, said in a statement on Monday that it was “thrilled to see the President’s statement today, though we will continue to fight to ensure lawmakers do right by the middle class by preserving and expanding our retirement system as tax reform moves through Congress.”

[The New York Times]

Trump repeats Fox News attack on Maddow verbatim

President Donald Trump on Sunday reused talking points from Fox & Friends after the conservative morning show blasted MSNBC host Rachel Maddow over a story about the killing of four U.S. service members in Niger.

The hosts of Fox & Friends began their 7 a.m. ET hour by lambasting Maddow for a theory linking the Trump administration’s travel ban to the lack of support for Sgt La David Johnson and three other troops killed in Niger. Maddow suggested that Chad had pulled a large contingent of forces out of Niger recently in response to Trump’s ban on travel from the nation.

If you lean forward and you use your pen and you pause and you look thoughtful into the camera, then you must be saying something substantive,” co-host Pete Hegseth joked in a jab at Maddow. “Or maybe you’re widely [sic] spinning a conspiracy theory as the leader of the left.”

“This is what’s dangerous,” co-host Abby Huntsman opined. “It’s dangerous when the media starts having conversations about this and putting in their own theories that are completely unrelated to what actually happened. It’s dangerous, not only for us in terms of figuring out what did happen. But it’s dangerous to the families that lost loved ones over there because they’re the ones who should be the focus of this conversation and somehow we go down these roads oftentimes and it’s such a distraction and it’s such a disservice to this country and what our job is in the media.”

“We all have to be vigilant,” she added. “Do your job well, and if there is some connection, then talk about it and help people understand. But these conspiracy theories, that it where it gets completely, completely dangerous.”

“That’s why people tune it out,” Hegseth said. “And President Trump calls it fake news and you saw that poll from Politico where 46 percent think the news just makes up stuff about President Trump, 17 percent unsure.

Huntsman agreed: “I can’t tell you how many of my friends I talk to, it’s like, they have no idea where to go to figure out what’s actually going on. I hear that from my family, my friends, people I just talk to on the streets. The American people are frustrated because it used to be you could just tune in to the media and get at least a bit of a sense of what’s going on and now — this is a perfect example that you can’t.”

Within minutes, Trump tweeted, citing the very same Politico poll quoted by Hegseth and echoing the hosts’ attack on the “fake news” media.

[Raw Story]

Media

 

 

Aides ‘hustled’ after Trump interview to secure list of fallen soldiers: report

White House aides were “hustling” to secure an up-to-date list of soldiers who died this year after President Trump claimed in an interview earlier this week that he had contacted the families of “virtually everybody” in the military who was killed since he took office, Roll Call reported Friday.

An email exchange between the White House and Defense Secretary James Mattis’ office reportedly shows the White House asking the department for information regarding the families of service members killed after the president’s inauguration in January.

The White House asked for the information on surviving family members so Trump could make sure to contact all of them, according to Roll Call.

The report said that the email exchange came hours after the president said in a Fox News Radio interview Tuesday that he had called nearly all of the families of those killed since he took office.

“I have called, I believe, everybody — but certainly I’ll use the word virtually everybody,” he said.

The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said earlier this week that Trump had “made contact with all of the families that have been presented to him through the White House Military Office.”

A White House spokesman echoed that language in an email to Roll Call on Friday night, writing, “The White House ensured that the President had contacted all families of soldiers killed in action that had been presented to him through existing protocols.”

Multiple media organizations began reaching out to Gold Star families this week after Trump claimed during a press conference on Monday that Barack Obama and other past presidents didn’t call the families of fallen soldiers.

The White House was pushed to defend Trump’s handling of such calls after Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) said that Trump told the widow of one of the four U.S. soldiers killed in Niger earlier this month that he “knew what he signed up for.”

The Democratic congresswoman claimed that Trump was insensitive during the call to the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson. The soldier’s mother later said that she felt disrespected by the president.

White House chief of staff John Kelly appeared at the White House briefing on Thursday to defend Trump’s call to the family and others.

[The Hill]

Leaked Pentagon Email Undermines Trump’s Claim He Contacted Nearly All Gold Star Families

During President Donald Trump’s run of conservative talk radio interviews last week, the president claimed at that time that he had been in contact with nearly every family that had lost a military servicemember under his presidency. This statement came on the heels of Trump’s false claim that former President Barack Obama and other previous presidents did not call Gold Star families.

In an exclusive report last night, Roll Call obtained an email exchange involving the Pentagon that showed that the White House was aware that Trump had not contacted all of those families at that time and, in fact, the administration knew that it didn’t even have an updated list of all the soldiers who have lost their life this year.

The exchange between the White House and the Defense secretary’s office occurred about 5 p.m. on Oct. 17. The White House asked the Pentagon for information about surviving family members of all servicemembers killed after Trump’s inauguration so that the president could be sure to contact all of them.Capt. Hallock Mohler, the executive secretary to Defense Secretary James Mattis, provided the White House with information in the 5 p.m. email about how each servicemember had died and the identity of his or her survivors, including phone numbers.The email’s subject line was, “Condolence Letters Since 20 January 2017.”

In his interview earlier that day, the president told Fox News Radio that he believed he had called “everybody” but that he would “use the word virtually everybody” to describe his calls to Gold Star families.

Following Trump’s boast, the Associated Press reached out to 20 families and discovered that half of them had yet to hear from the president. Also, it was unclear of those families that had heard from Trump if those contacts were made this past week after the controversy blew up over the contacting of Gold Star families.

During an appearance at a White House press briefing earlier this week, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly indicated that Trump first asked for his advice on contacting the family members of fallen soldiers a few days ago, after Trump had been confronted on his 12-day silence on the deadly Niger ambush. Meanwhile, at another press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would only state that Trump had contacted families he had been presented information on.

[Mediaite]

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