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The Republican Party wasnt always an organization dominated by the ultra-wealthy. While today most of its federal representatives in Congress are trying to pass a gigantic tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill, it was once a party that liberated American slaves, established the Environmental Protection Agency, and broke up enormous business monopolies.

Thats the GOP that 42-year-old Arkansas pastor Robb Ryerse is trying to revive.Heis the first Republican to be endorsedby Brand New Congress, a grassroots group started by former Bernie Sanders staffers to encourage Democrats and Republicans who have never served inoffice before to run for Congress.

Ryerse is running in the primary to unseat incumbent GOP Rep. Steve Womack, who has served in Congress since 2011. The district is heavily Republican; in 2016 Womack won with 77 percent of the vote. That makes the district essentially a one-party state: All of the serious political competition happens within the Republican Party.

In an interview with The Intercept, Ryerse explained why he is trying to unseat Womack and how the Republican Party needs to change to become relevantto the lives of ordinary Americans.

I grew up as a third-generation pastor and after pastoring in churches up North for about 10 years I went through kind of a spiritual crisis and needed to be part of a church that was welcoming of all people, a church that accepted that people have doubts and questions and thats not a threat to faith. So my wife and I moved our family to northwest Arkansas where we started a church called VintageFellowship, he explained. Im the kind of person who believes in big ideas that are daring enough that they might work and starting a new kind of church was kind of a new kind of idea. The reason Im running for Congress is because Ive had this kind of big daring idea that I cant get out of my head. And thats that weve gotta change the way we do politics in America.

To Ryerse, the current Republican Party isnt living up to the legacy of the historic one. The Republican Party used to be known for who it was for, and now its known for who its against, he lamented.

But he believes that Republicans can get back on the right track if they look to their past. You could look at President Reagan signing immigration reform, you could look at Richard Nixon helping establish needed environmental protections, you could talk about Dwight Eisenhower talking about the military-industrial complex, I think theres lots of examples if you kind of look back at Republicans who really were on the right side of history in anumber of ways.

He described his opponent Congressman Womack as a good man but said he has failed to represent the district adequately. He cited a letterWomack wrote to former Secretary of State John Kerry suggesting Syrian refugees were a threat to the people of Arkansas as one of the things that pushed him to run.

It was one of those fearmongering kind of We dont want those people in our town kind of letters. And that was one of those things that really kind of planted a seed for me, like, Wow, heres someone whos not representing the really just and generous things that are happening in our district,' Ryerse reflected. And I think Arkansans deserve someone who will listen to them and represent them better and who will be an independent voice on their behalf.

Ryerse wants to see a Republican Party that strikes a more accepting tone on immigration. I think the wall is both a terrible waste of money as well as a symbol that just does not reflect what Americas values are. Ronald Reagan talked about our country being a shining city on a hill. The wall doesnt communicate that kind of optimism that kind of welcoming. I think in terms of helping Republicans see that, I think Republican leadership who are really passionate on the immigration issue really need to dial back the fearmongering and the dehumanizing of people, he stated.

In this undated photo provided by Brand New Congress, Rob Reyerse, who is running in the primary to unseat incumbent GOP Rep. Steve Womack, attends his announcement dinner with friends, congregation members, and community members.

Photo: Brand New Congress

On health care, Ryerse thinks that Republicans have faltered by coalescing around a health care bill with approval ratings barely over 20 percent.

It wouldve taken just three more independent Republicans in Congress to stop the bill that passed the House a couple of weeks ago. And I wouldve voted against it. I wouldve been one of those independent Republicans that would have voted against that bill, he explained. In terms of what we need going forward, I think we need a plan that provides health coverage for all people. I think Obamacare was in some ways a step in the right direction but at the same time it kind of offends my Republican sensibilities to have people being forced to buy insurance to be punished in their taxes if they dont. I think its far better to just have a public option that makes affordable health insurance available to all people. Weve got tomake sure that everybody in the country is covered.

While it would be hard to find a single Republican in Congress who endorses a public option, its actually fairly popular among Republican voters,51 percent of whomtold a Kaiser poll last year that they support offering such a plan to Americans. Part of the reason for this gap between public opinion and public policy is the influence of money in the party, which Ryerse wants to tackle.

I think the influx of so much money has helped to really cause the toxic nature of our system and has really worked to corrupt the party establishment, he told us. I am working with Brand New Congress and were not taking special interest money, were not taking big PAC money, corporate money. We are being supported, my campaign is being supported, by average citizens who believe and who donate. I think thats the way it needs to be. I think when weve got politicians who are beholden to big corporations and big donors, is what happens is the very thing we have, whether Republicans or Democrats they put party ahead of people and we end up with the mess weve got now.

With freedomfrom the need to fundraise from the Kochs and the fossil fuel industry, Ryerse also realizes the threat of climate change. My faith tradition teaches that God has given us this world to enjoy and steward, he proclaimed. We need to take action on climate change. We need to make sure we are investing in green energy.

On social issues, Ryerse sounded notes closer to Republican orthodoxy, describing himself as a supporter of the Second Amendment and gun rights, as well as pro-life. But while many pro-life Republicans have sought to criminalize abortion, Ryerse has a different approach.

I dont think that criminalization of abortion has been proven to reduce the number of abortions, he said, offering alternatives to reduce the number of abortions without punishing those who have them. Were actually seeing over the last eight years with an increase in funding for health care and education and fighting poverty were seeing abortion levels at their lowest rate that theyve ever been even before Roe v. Wade so I think thats the path to be on.

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Meet the Pastor Running as a Progressive Republican to Get Big Money Out of Politics - The Intercept

Fired FBI director Jim Comey will testify publicly sometime after Memorial Day, but we wont have to wait that long to hear from his father.

J. Brien Comey is lifelong Republican and a former councilman in Allendale, the quiet Bergen County boroughwhere Comey grew up. And now that his son doesn't have to answer to Trump, he's not holding back his harsh opinion about the president.

I never was crazy about Trump, J. Brien Comey told Bergen Record columnist Mike Kelly. Im convinced that hes nuts. I thought he belonged in an institution. He was crazy before he became president. Now hes really crazy.

The 86-year-old Comey told the Record that despite voting a straight GOP line in last November's election, he did not cast a vote for president.

I just couldnt vote for Trump, he said.

Comeys fathers comments come after a New York Times report on Friday revealed a leaked White House memo where Trump told Russian Officials that the former FBI director was crazy and a real nut job.

I faced great pressure because of Russia," Trump reportedly toldRussian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak."Thats taken off.

The White House has said the firing was unrelated to the FBI's Russia investigation,though officials did not deny the Times report that Trump was critical of Comey to the Russians the day after he fired him. The investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential electionhasreportedly identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest.

Comeys father, who still lives in the family house the FBI director grew up in, told the newspaper that his son didnt even call to let him know Trump had fired him.

He and I have an unwritten secret agreement that I dont talk about his job, J. Brien Comey said. Its just a father-son relationship. We never talk about what he does. I read it in the papers.

Comeys father wasnt the only local resident to speak out in defense of his son.

Theres nobody in Washington that I respect more for his integrity, former Mayor Vincent Barra, a Republican, said of Jim Comey. I think its unfortunate that he got caught in this whirlwind of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Everything is happening so fast or at least that's how it feels trying to follow politics these days. You've seen the headlines about President Trump and his policies but what do they mean for Philadelphia? What does that mean for you? We're launching a newsletter to explore just that. Sign up here.

Published: May 20, 2017 8:34 AM EDT | Updated: May 20, 2017 11:22 AM EDT

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Jim Comey's father, a NJ Republican, speaks out about Trump - Philly.com (blog)

The odds that congressional Republicans can accomplish their once-in-a-generation goal of rewriting the federal tax code this year are growing longer with every passing, scandal-plagued day of the Trump administration.

But they are determined to show everyone that theyre forging ahead anyway.

That appeared to be the rationale of a much-hyped hearing the House Ways and Means Committee held on Thursday to formally kick off the GOPs push to pass a major tax bill in the next few months. Party leaders had touted the hearing as evidence Republicans were forging ahead with their agenda in spite of the daily drama emanating from the White House, which has forced members of Congress to spend as much time investigating the president as they are legislating on his agenda. Sure, drama is not helpful in getting things done, Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday morning. But we are getting things done!

The Looming Clash Between Trump and Republicans on Taxes

Ryan is the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and tax reform would be his biggest prize. It is most definitely far from being done.

On one hand, the hearing itself was a procedural step beyond what Republicans did as they advanced health-care legislation earlier this year without calling a single expert witness to testify. Yet while lawmakers debated the intricacies of tax policy for nearly four hours on Thursday, the testimony hardly illuminated new arguments on a well-trod issue. Leaders of the committee invited a group of four business executives representing companies large and smallalong with one dissenting Democratic investment adviserto tell Republican lawmakers what they already believed to be true: Comprehensive, permanent tax reform, including a steep reduction in the rate paid by corporations, should be an urgent priority of Congress.

Lower the rate, create a cycle of virtuous investment, and do it right away, John Stephens, the chief financial officer of AT&T, testified to the committee in a statement that summed up the nearly four-hour hearing.

Republicans have been talking about doing exactly that for years, but there is a growing concern within the party that their best opportunity to enact tax reform is rapidly slipping away. The GOPs struggle to move a health-care bill through the House initially delayed the effort, and lawmakers in the House and Senate remain divided over key details. The distraction and political damage of investigations involving the White House is only making the task more difficult.

At the center of Thursdays hearing were questions that have long bedeviled Republicans as part of the tax-reform debate: How will cutting the corporate tax rate benefit middle-class Americans (and not just the rich), and how can the party cut taxes without further exploding the federal debt?

To the delight of GOP lawmakers, most of the panelists testified that cutting corporate taxes would make U.S. businesses more competitive with their global rivals, leading to more and better-paying jobs domestically. They pushed not only for lower overall rates, but also for a provision Republicans have already proposed that would allow businesses to write off new capital investments. The more we can invest, the more we can grow, the more we can hire, said Zachary Mottl, an executive at an Illinois tool works company based in the district of Representative Peter Roskam, a top Republican on the committee.

For Democrats, the arguments were the same ones they had been fighting for decades. Ive been listening to theories about trickle down economics ever since Ive been able to read and ever since Ive been able to hear, groused Representative Danny Davis of Illinois. Representative John Lewis of Georgia surveyed the five white men before the committee and found a decided lack of diversity. Where are the women? he asked. Where are the minorities? Where are the low people?

Democrats were allowed to select one out of the five witnesses, and they picked Steven Rattner, himself a wealthy investor who ran former President Barack Obamas task force to rescue the auto industry in 2009. Like many Democrats, Rattner supports the concept of comprehensive tax reform so long as it does not add to the deficit and does not skew in favor of the wealthy. He dutifully poked holes in the Republican argument that the bounty of corporate tax cuts would flow to average, middle-income workers. Theres no real meaningful direct benefit, Rattner said of the GOP proposal. You would have to believe that all of these business tax cuts would have secondary and tertiary effects that would benefit those people.

What is holding back Republicans, however, is not Democrats arguments for equitable tax policy, but their own internal disagreements over policy. Trump and his advisers have prioritized tax cuts over deficit-neutral tax reform, and the one-page plan the White House released would likely add trillions to the budget gap over the long term. Because of the Senates strict rules for budget reconciliation, Republicans would need to make their tax bill temporary if it added to long-term deficits. It will have to be revenue-neutral, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Bloomberg News earlier this week, in his sharpest break with the White House on the issue of taxes. We have a $21 trillion debt.

House Republicans are also pushing for the inclusion of a $1 trillion border-adjustment tax on imports to offset the rate cuts, but that faces opposition from Senate Republicans and skepticism from the White House. McConnell said that provision was unlikely to make it through the Senate, where Republicans would need the support of 50 out of their 52 members.

Those disagreements were on display at Thursdays hearing, as Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee urged their witnesses to make the case for permanent, deficit-neutral tax reform, including the so-called BAT. Democrats sought to exploit the GOPs fiscal quandary throughout the hearing. At one point, Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama read aloud a tweet that Vice President Mike Pence sent during the day, in which he vowed that President Trump would sign the most consequential tax cut in American history.

It cant just be another tax cut, gentlemen. It has to be true comprehensive tax reform, Sewell said.

As much as anything, what the hearing made clear is that Republicans are getting antsy. Several times, they pressed their witnesses to confirm that the years-long delay in enacting tax reform was itself harmful, holding back the economy and depressing jobs and wages. Weve been talking of tax reform for years now on this panel and yet we continue to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, said Representative Pat Tiberi of Ohio.

Mottl, the small-business owner, attributed Wednesdays sharp drop in the stock market to investors worry that amidst an expanding scandal at the White House, Congress would fumble its pro-business agenda. Theyre concerned were not going to get things done here, he said.

Its a fear Republicans on Capitol Hill clearly share, and one that Thursdays initial, modest step forward on tax reform could only begin to ease.

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Scandal-Weary Republicans Return to Their First Love: Tax Reform - The Atlantic

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin has made criminal justice reform a centerpiece of her second term. Timothy Clary / AFP/Getty Images file

On the same day that 65 percent of Oklahoma voters cast ballots for President Trump, nearly as many approved a measure that allowed drug possession offenses to be downgraded to misdemeanors. And in the current legislative session, lawmakers are considering an array of bills supported by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin that would take reforms further.

The bills' prospects remain tenuous, mostly because lawmakers are also trying to close a massive budget shortfall. Reformers say that's no coincidence.

"I think people are generally frustrated with the drug war," said Ryan Gentzler, a policy analyst for the Oklahoma Policy Institute. "They understand it's not helping anybody get off drugs or helping crime rates go down. But a big selling point from the state's perspective is we simply don't have the money to keep building more prisons."

Kris Steele, a former Republican speaker of Oklahoma's House of Representatives, now heads Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform. He insists that criminal justice reform is a conservative issue through and through.

In that sense, Trump and Sessions are out of step, Steele said.

"The notion that we can somehow incarcerate our way out of this issue has proven to be inaccurate," Steele said. "It's a fallacy that is not supported by research. The states that have done their research and based their decisions on data and facts have come to a very different conclusion."

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Republican States Make the Case Against Trump's Drug Policy ... - NBCNews.com

(Photo: AP/Robert Willett/The News & Observer)

People celebrate at Davie Street Presbyterian Church in Raleigh on May 15 after learning that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider reinstating North Carolina's 2013 elections law.

This week, after years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a federal appeals court decision striking down North Carolinas restrictive 2013 voting law. The lower court had ruled that parts of the law illegally target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision.

That outcome is a victory not only for North Carolina voters but also for our democracy. For the political process to function, state and federal lawmakers must respect baseline democratic normsthe laws and traditions that guard the integrity of our democracy against extreme political gamesmanship and threats to minority rights.

When state lawmakers cross those lines, as they did in North Carolina, it is up to the courts to protect core democratic values and the rule of law.But in North Carolina, and in other states around the country, lawmakers are again trying to manipulate the rules of the game to their own advantage, this time putting the state judiciary in their crosshairs.

These attacks on the courts magnify the heightened politicization of the federal bench. President Trumps assault on the legitimacy of a so-called judge, his assertion that the courts would be to blame for a terrorist attack,and his call to break up the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after it ruled against the administration, all contribute to a political environment where state and federal lawmakers may feel less constrained by the conventions that ensure the courts are an independent check on the political branches.

Since North Carolina Democrats won control of the governors mansion last November, along with a majority on the states highest court, the Republican-controlled legislature has proposed, and passed, a slew of bills focused on entrenching partisan interests in the states courts. Its a worrying trend that risks normalizing political interference with the courts. Already this year, the legislature has twice overridden the governors veto on bills that made it through both chambers, and several other problematic bills have passed the House.

One new law, for example, reduces the size of North Carolinas intermediate appellate court by three seatsa seemingly small change with big political ramifications. Several Republican-appointed judges are expected to hit the states mandatory retirement age in the next few years, and the new law effectively prevents the states Democratic governor from filling those slots. Unlike previous court reform efforts, the bill was passed without input from the court of appeals, its judges, or the courts administrative body.

In a dramatic move just days before the legislature overrode the governors veto, Judge Doug McCullougha Republican who was expected to step down later this month when he reached the mandatory retirement ageresigned in protest so that the governor would be able to appoint a new judge to fill the seat before the bill became law. McCullough said, I did not want my legacy to be the elimination of a seat and the impairment of a court that I have served on.

Unfortunately, similar hijinks are cropping up around the country. A Brennan Center analysis found that lawmakers in at least 15 states have introduced 41 bills targeting state courts, often to achieve overtly political goals. These measures range from efforts to manipulate the way judges reach the bench to brazen attempts to unseat sitting judges, to restrictions on courts jurisdiction and power. In Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, and North Carolina, bills have passed; in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Oklahoma, bills have been voted out of a chamber of the legislature.

One particularly troubling new trend is a group of bills that would allow state legislatures toin one way or anotherrefuse to enforce court decisions. This includes a bill that passed the Arizona House of Representative that would give lawmakers the authority to prohibit the use of state resources to implement federal court rulings, and a Washington bill that would empower the legislature to override state court decisions. So far this year, nine such bills have been introduced in seven states.

The potential ramifications of these political power grabs are significant. State courts hear more than 95 percent of all cases nationwide. Judges decisions affect everything from consumer rights to the environment to education fundingand because few state judges enjoy life tenure, and most state constitutions can be changed relatively easily, state benches are more vulnerable to manipulation than their federal counterparts. When the lines between judging and politics start to blur, it risks eroding public trust in our judiciary.

In June 1937, after FDR moved to pack the Supreme Court after it struck down his signature New Deal legislation, his own party rejected the effort as an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country. Its hard to imagine a political leader so strongly defying his or her own party today. But thats what American democracy desperately needs: politicians willing to put a stop to the present metastatic greed for partisan power, especially when the integrity of the judiciary is on the line.

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A Test of American Democracy - The American Prospect - The American Prospect