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Some, such as California Rep. Maxine Waters, have explicitly called for impeaching the President. Others, like Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, have merely mentioned the possibility, with Gabbard saying last month that she was studying the impeachment process.

Impeachment requires the support of a majority of members of the House of Representatives. No Republicans have publicly voiced support for impeaching Trump. CNN's KFile is, however, keeping a running count of Democratic lawmakers who have talked about impeachment. That count, which includes those who discussed impeachment prior to Comey's firing, is currently at 11, 10 members of the House and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

California Rep. Maxine Waters: Waters has been talking about impeachment for months, most recently telling MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Thursday that "The President needs to be impeached." Waters also suggested in the interview that Trump could be charged with "obstruction of justice" for saying that the FBI's Russia investigation was a factor in his decision to fire Comey.

"If the President is found to have done this to circumvent this investigation, to thwart to the efforts to get the bottom of this, I think this is going to be an impeachable offense," Green said. "He's really treading in some very dangerous waters. This is unusual for this kind of thing to happen in the United States of America."

"Impeachment will happen if handful of Republicans in Congress join Dems to put country above party. Or in 2019 after Dems win the House," Huffman tweeted at 1:51 a.m. on Friday morning.

"It may well produce another United States vs. Nixon on a subpoena that went to United States Supreme Court," he said. "It may well produce impeachment proceedings, although we're very far from that possibility."

"On the issue of impeachment, I am doing my homework," Gabbard said at the Hilo, Hawaii, event. "I am studying more about the impeachment process. I will just say I understand the calls for impeachment, but what I am being cautious about and what I give you food for thought about is that if President Trump is impeached, the problems don't go away, because then you have a Vice President Pence who becomes President Pence."

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A running list of Democrats who have discussed impeachment ... - CNN

Candidates, from left, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, Phil Murphy, Jim Johnson and Sen. Ray Lesniak attend a Democratic gubernatorial primary debate, Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Newark.(Photo: Julio Cortez, AP / Pool AP)

Democratic candidates for governor sharpened their attacks on Phil Murphy during the partys second and final primary debate Thursday night, calling his progressive values into question and condemning what one called an obscene amount of spending.

Murphy, the wealthy former banker and ambassador who is leading the contest for the nomination, endured the assault with a broad, toothy smile. Rather than punch back at his opponents, Murphy often dismissed them by responding with all due respect and saying, in some instances, that their charges against him were alt-facts, the term made famous by President Donald Trumps gaffe-prone counselor Kellyanne Conway.

The forum, hosted by NJTV and NJ Spotlight at the television stations studio in Newark, was a departure from the more collegial debate two nights earlier, at Stockton University, when the challengers fired at Murphy but when it came to policy they all found themselves mostly in agreement.

Over the course of Thursdays 90-minute debate, the candidates had light moments teasing each other and backing certain ideas, like $15 minimum wage, but largely clashed with each other.

Assemblyman John Wisniewksi and Jim Johnson particularly went after Murphy hard, especially when given the opportunity during the debate to question other candidates. Wisniewski said that Murphys investment portfolio includes companies that sponsor and run pipelines that he says he opposes and companies that produce the fracking fluid that contaminates water.

How can you really expect the people of New Jersey to believe your environmental credentials when your financial portfolio takes a different position than youve taken publicly here in the campaign? Wisniewski said.

Murphy responded, Theres probably no good answer in terms of those investments, adding, I mean what I say about fracking, I mean what I say about the environment.

Wisniewski also cited speech Murphy made while he was the U.S. ambassador to Germany and said that Murphy extolled the virtues of fracking, the controversial process to extract natural gas. Murphy disagreed and said that he was discussing fracking as a geopolitical step to push back on the Russians.

The candidates also condemned Murphys heavy spending $18.4 million so far, more than three times all other candidates combined -- and New Jerseys system of county party bosses endorsing hopefuls and giving them a significant advantage in the primary. Murphy has the backing of all 21 county party chairs, helping to make him the front-runner for the nomination.

Lesniak, a 40-year lawmaker, said the Union County chairman, Assemblyman Jerry Green, told him not to run because were going to get whatever we want from Phil Murphy.

He tried to convince me to get out of the race. That convinced me to get in the race, Lesniak said.

Murphy said that his campaign knocked on thousands of doors, working the phones, shaking hands and earned the support of workers and volunteers around the state. And the money that Murphy has spent, he said, has been for grassroots organizing and party-building.

And asked whether he would support reforms to strip county party committees of their ability to award preferential ballot placement to the candidate of their choice, Murphy said vaguely that he was open to open democracy."

I am participating in a system that exists, he said in an interview after the debate.I did not create this system.

Johnson, a former U.S. Treasury official, repeatedly went after Murphy for his spending and questioned how he could have progressive values after two decades at Goldman Sachs, the bank often vilified by progressives. And, echoing Christie, Johnson said Murphys candidacy is unrealistic because he has promised to fully fund pensions, schools and legalize marijuana, among many other initiatives.

The list of promises that youve made is breathtaking and its unachievable, Johnson said. He added, Youre in bed with the insiders and youre not challenging what theyre doing.

Staff writer Nicholas Pugliese contributed to this report.

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Beware the unintended consequence. Thats the lesson unfolding in the upstate agriculture industry as farmers deal with the collateral damage of the Trump administrations crackdown on illegal immigration.

Legal immigrants perform critical labor on farms around the country, including upstate and Western New York. They pick apples, plant crops, tend animals. But they are worried even though they are here legally about being questioned, misclassified or harassed by law enforcement. That worries their employers, who value the labor of their workers, and it hurts local merchants when potential patrons fear traveling away from their farms.

Unless Americans want to pay more for their food and does anyone think they do? the problem cannot be allowed to fester. Congress needs to improve the guest worker program that makes farming possible and, more fundamentally, agree to an immigration reform plan that relieves this issue permanently.

The national meltdown over immigration legal and illegal is the root of the problem on upstate farms. Suspicion follows even legal workers laboring here under the authority of the governments H-2A visa program, which authorizes guest workers. Those people typically do hard, physical, low-paid work from which many Americans recoil.

But the backlash against immigrants is complicating life for farmers, who worry they wont be able to keep their help or, worse, wont be able to find it at all, as the national mood drives down the number of people willing to work in fear.

The first solution to this problem is to streamline the H-2A program, making it easier for immigrants to make use of it, ensuring that compliance rules are simple and taking steps to protect visa holders from legal threats. Its not just the right thing to do for workers that we need, but for farmers who hire them and shoppers who consume the goods they plant and pick.

Even more important, though, is for the country to get past its stalemate over illegal immigration. Its a real issue, of course, and needs to be attended to, but its not the most important matter on the national agenda. Whats more, it is one that can be resolved by people of good will in both parties who are willing to focus on facts.

First is that the country simply isnt going to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Americans will not stand by as good people are abused and families are torn apart. We need a better answer, very much like the one that the Senate approved in 2013. Give illegal immigrants a path to legal status or citizenship that requires payment of back taxes, possibly a fine and getting in line behind those who are here legally. Thats not unreasonable.

Some wont hear of that, insisting that all who are here illegally must be sent packing for the sake of a legal purity that is rarely applied in other contexts. At some point, though, reality must intrude. That doesnt mean no one can be deported. Illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes should certainly be ejected, for example. And modern technology sensors, drones and so on can be used to protect the borders, far more effectively than a wall ever could. Acknowledging the fact of illegal immigrants doesnt obviate the need for sensible and effective border security.

Finding a resolution that most Americans can accept is the only way to puncture this boil on our civic life. The extremists need to be politely turned away so that people with common sense and good hearts can attend to a problem that is dragging millions into its unnecessary vortex.

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Editorial: We need a better guest worker program, and immigration reform - Buffalo News

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In an interview with pro-globalist Economist magazine, Trump was asked: Do you want to curb legal immigration? Trump responded by saying he prefers merit-based immigration of skilled people. The interviewer pressed him again on the scale of legal immigration, asking [are you] not looking to reduce the numbers?

No, no, no, no, we want people coming in legally. No, very strongly, Trump replied, as two of his economic advisors sat beside him top economic staffer Gary Cohn, and Steve Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury.

Trump also backed proposals to keep importing temporary contract workers for the agricultural sector, even though the cheap labor will retard farmers emerging interest in buying new machinery,such as robot apple-pickers and robot cow-milkers.Trump told the Economist:

We also want farm workers to be able to come in. You know, were going to have work visas for the farm workers. If you look, you know we have a lot of people coming through the border, theyre great people and they work on the farms and then they go back home. We like those people a lot and we want them to continue to come in.

Immigration reform advocates are not surprised at Trumps back-sliding, but they are confident that Trumpsdependence on his blue-collar base in the 2020 election is pressuring him to stick with his campaign promises, amid constant elite pressure for more legal immigration.

The president was unambiguous in his [2016] campaign one of the things he said was that he would support reductions in immigration, said Ira Mehlman, communications director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. If he is backing off, we will fight to remind him that he did make this commitment during the campaign and we intended to hold him to it, he told Breitbart.

Anyone following Trumps primary campaign could have predicted this he repeatedly justified guestworker visas of various kinds and stressed the big beautiful door that would be built into his wall, wrote Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Both the anti-borders crowd and some starry-eyed immigration hawks mistook Trumps commitment to enforcement (which seems genuine) to mean he was also skeptical of the overall level of immigration, he said, adding that the next generation of populist GOP leaders such as Sen. Tom Cotton understandsthe many harms caused by mass immigration.

But Trumps backsliding isnt a done deal. Former President Barack Obama also backed off many of his promises, even while he was urging his supporters to publiccly protest his actions and to push back the lobbies that were blocking his agenda. Obama also adopted a gradualist stop-and-go political strategy which helped the GOP establishment ignore his gradual progress towards his big-government goals, and he achieved many goals for his supporters via little-noticed court decisions and agency regulations by allied appointees.

With constant pressure by Trumps supporters, Trump will be more willing and better able to ignore or overcome establishment opposition and gradually get his agenda implemented stage-by-stage.

In August 2015, Trump issued his very popular immigration planto raise wages by reducing legal and illegal immigration:

The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, andmakes it difficult for poor and working class Americans including immigrantsthemselves and their children to earn a middle class wage Every year, we voluntarily admitanother [1] million new immigrants, [plus 1 million] guest workers, refugees, and dependents,growing our existing all-time historic record population of 42 millionimmigrants. We need to control the admission of new low-earning workers inorder to: help wages grow, get teenagers back to work, aid minorities rise into themiddle class, help schools and communities falling behind, and to ensure ourimmigrant members of the national family become part of the American dream.

Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many [contract worker] visas, like the H-1B, have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americansoutside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from thedomestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to theunemployment office, not USCIS.

Immigration moderation. Before any new green cards are issued to foreignworkers abroad, there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from thedomestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers. This will helpreverse womens plummeting workplace participation rate, grow wages, and allowrecord immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages.

Trump repeated those commitments in many subsequent speeches. For example, in March 2016,Trump called for a two-year pause in legal immigration, saying I think for a period of a year to two years we have to look back and we have to see, just to answer the second part of your question, where we are, where we stand, whats going on Id say a minimum of one year, maybe two years.

In his January 2017 inauguration speech, he described the theme of his administration as Buy American, Hire American.

Some polls showthat promise is extremely popular. For example, a November 2016 poll by Ipsos showed that only 12 percent of respondents strongly opposed plans to change the legal immigration system to limit legal immigration. Four times as many, or 57 percent, back reductions in legal immigration, while 13 percent did not take a position.

To a large extent, Trump has followed through on those promises. He has revived enforcement of immigration law, slashed the inflow of illegal immigrants, and he is pushing a popular merit-based reform that would likely reduce the inflow of unskilled legal immigrants. Trumps merit-based reform is also backed by some GOP legislators who want to increase Americans productivity, not just the number of American consumers.

But Trump is under constant pressure from business leaders including some of his advisors who have a huge incentive to boost legal immigration, no matter the cost to ordinary Americans.

In strictly economic terms, legal immigration is far more important than over-the-border illegal immigration, because it is far larger and has far greater impact on employees, companies, and investors, wages, housing prices, profits and stock prices. In fact, multiple economists including economists at Goldman Sachs say government should try to boost the size of the economy by importing more consumers and workers.

Federal immigration policy adds roughly 1 millionlegal people, workers, consumers and renters per year to the economy. This annual inflow is further expanded by the immigrants children, which now combine to create a population of roughly 63 millionconsumers and workers not counting roughly 21 million illegals and their U.S. children.

That means roughly one-quarter of the nations consumers have been imported into the 330 million-strong economy via legal or illegal immigration.

This legal inflow includes some very skilled workers and some people who become very successful entrepreneurs, but it also dumps a lot of unskilled workers into the country just as a new generation of technology is expected to eliminate many types of jobs. It also annuallyshifts $500 billion from employees to employers and Wall Street, and it forces state and local government to provide $60 billionin taxes to businesses via routine aid for immigrants, and it pushes millions of marginal U.S. workers out of the labor force andinto poverty, crime andopioid addiction.

High immigration also reduces employers need to recruit disengaged Americans, to build new facilities in high-unemployment areas, or tobuy productivity-boosting machineryor to demand that local schools rebuild high school vocational training departments for the millions of youth who dont gain much from four-year colleges.

The resulting poverty and civic conflicts increase ballot-box support for Democrats, ensuring that more states especially high-immigration California are dominated by the Democratic Partys big-government policies.

Under Obama, the annual inflow of legal immigrants was roughly twice the inflow of illegals. Roughly 550,000 illegals arrived in 2016, but fewer are expected in 2017, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Whenever the inflow of extra immigrant customers is threatened by public opposition, business groups say their companies and investors will be damaged.

For example, in July 2016, a Wall Street firm tried to help Hillary Clinton by declaring that Trumps opposition to illegal immigration would hurt companies and investors by forcing them to pay higher wages, and by reducing the cost of housing.

As the immigrants leave, the already tight labor market will get tighter, pushing up labor costs as employers struggle to fill the open job positions, the report declared. Mr. Trumps immigration policies will thus result in potentially severe labor shortages, and higher labor costs, the critical report promised.The formal unemployment rate would immediately drop by a third, from 5 percent in 2016 to 3.5 percent in 2017, the report predicts. Housing prices would drop by almost 4 percent in 2018 and 2019, says the Moodys report, which did not admit that higher wages and lower housing prices are popular throughout America.

Reduced immigration would result in slower labor force growth and therefore slower growth in potential GDP, or annual economic activity, according to a 2017 report by Goldman Sachs.

Similarly,Jamie Dimon, thechairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently called for an amnesty for illegals and a potentially huge increase in white-collar immigration to help stimulate the economy. I hope eventually we have proper immigration. Good people who have paid their taxes and havent broken the law, get them into citizenship at the back of the line [and] if people get educated here, and theyre foreign nationals, get them a green card, he said.

In the same interview, Dimon portrayed himself as concerned about the economic condition of ordinary Americans, saying:

Middle-class wages havent gone up. One is, lower-class wages havent gone up enough to create a living wage. One is, people losing jobs, more to automation than anything else. Theres some more terrible numbers men, age 25 to 55, the labor-force participation rate is down 10%. Thats unbelievable. There are 35,000 dying of opioids every year. Seventy percent of kids age 17 to 24 cant get into the US military because of health or education. Obesity, diabetes, reading and writing. Is that the society we wanted? No. We should be working on these things, acknowledge the flaws we have, and come up with solutions. Not Democrat. Not Republican. Not knee-jerk.

But the 2016 election showed that Trump and centrist Americans recognize that higher immigration means reduced wages, more unemployment, more drug addition, higher housing prices and longer commutes. That is how Trump won the 2016 election in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and why his on-again, off-again, pro-American immigration policy is at the core of his impending 2020 race.

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com

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Unjust discrimination against individuals who identify as LGBT is a real problem. So is eroding religious freedom but in some cases another First Amendment right may be even more relevant.

Yesterday the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty released a statement announcingthat a Christian business owner finally won a case brought against him by gay plaintiffs alleging a civil rights violation:

A Kentucky court championed free speech today, ruling that the government cannot force t-shirt printer Blaine Adamson to create gay-pride t-shirts in violation of his religious beliefs. The court agreed with Becket, top legal scholars, and LGBT business owners, who all stood up for the rights of artists to choose what messages they would promote, without fear of government punishment. Todaysruling emphasizedthat the service [the printer] offers is the promotion of messages. The conduct [the printer] chose not to promote was pure speech.

Adamson is the owner of Hands On Originals, a small print shop in Lexington, Kentucky. Adamson regularly employs and serves LGBT individuals, and serves everyone regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. He also cares deeply about the messages he promotes. Just as pro-choice printers have declined to print pro-life messages, and LGBT printers have declined to print anti-gay messages, Adamson does not print messages that violate his beliefs. Following common printing industry practice, he only creates messages that align with his views, and has declined to create t-shirts promoting strip clubs, violence, and sexually explicit videos. Thats why LGBT business ownersstood upfor Mr. Adamsons right to choose the messages he promotes.

It doesnt matter what the speech is pro-gay, anti-gay, pro-immigration, anti-immigration the government cant force you to print it, saidLuke Goodrich, deputy general counsel at Becket, a non-profit religious liberty law firm.Thats the beauty of free speech: It protects everyone.

This seems to me an important case that may have implications for the wedding-industry wars.

So far as I know, Christian wedding industry professionals photographers, cake decorators and caterers have always lost in court for declining to provide services to same-sex weddings.

While I dont know a lot about the legal reasoning in those cases, whenever I see Christians discussing such casesthe issue seems to be framed as a question of the First Amendment right of religious freedom. I wonder this isnt a mistake.

As the Hands On Originals T-shirt print shops successful defense illustrates, religious freedom may thewrong First Amendment right at least in the case of photographers and cake decorators. (Caterers are probablyout of luck, at least as regards this line of thought.)

The strongestFirst Amendment defense for wedding photographers and cake decorators, I suspect, is not religious freedom, but freedom of speech.

Wedding photography is a service, but photography is also patently an art form, a form of communication. For the purposes of First Amendment constitutional law, it is a form of speech and speech, in First Amendment constitutional law, with very few exceptions, can be neither suppressed nor compelled.

An important caveat: Freedom of speech does not negate the principles of public accommodation and antidiscrimination law, which I support. I do not take the laissez-faire libertarian view that any business should have the right to refuse to transact with any potential customer or employee for any reason.

For instance, I dont believe that restauranteurs who are racists should have the right to refuse service to patrons of color or to relegate them to a separate counter, for instance. Nor do I support Christian business owners (or Muslims or Jews) with traditional beliefs about sexual morality refusing to serve individuals who identify as LBGT.

In saying this, Im going somewhat beyond federal antidiscrimination law, which prohibits discrimination against protected groups defined by race, color, religion, national origin, and disability, but does not protect individuals singled out for their sex or sexual orientation. (Discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation is prohibited in many areas at the state and local level.)

When it comes to discrimination and bigotry based on sexual orientation, both sides typically claim too much and concede too little. Christians should be willing to recognize and concede that while terms like hate and homophobia are overused to stigmatize all disapproval of homosexual acts, hatred and unjust hostility toward LBGT-identifying individuals is a real and important problem a problem too often found among individuals wrapping themselves in the mantle of traditional morality and traditional marriage.

To adhere to and to profess traditional Christian sexual morality, including the belief that homosexual acts are morally wrong, is not hate or bigotry,but hatred and bigotry are very much alive and well among those who profess to adhere to traditional Christian sexual morality.

The Catholic faith tells us that homosexual attraction and homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, but it also tells us that same-sex attracted persons must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2358).

The Catechism wouldnt bother to say this unless such individuals had often not been accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity and had often been treated with unjust discrimination.

When Christians meet with hostility and anger from LBGT individuals and their defenders, therefore, it behooves us to understand that behind that hostility and anger may often be painful experiences of mistreatment, rejection, stigma, ostracism and more. When this occurs in the Church, and still more when it involves the clergy, it can be even more devastating.

In view of this difficult reality, I believe Christians have a particular duty to oppose homophobia and gay-bashing in their own ranks and to stand up for dignity and respect for all human beings, including and even especially individuals who identify as LBGT.

We should also recognize that it is understandable for the state to take an interest in protecting LBGT individuals from unjust discrimination for holding, for instance, that peoples sexual self-identification or lifestyle, along with their race, color, religion and so on, is not grounds for refusing to serve them a meal at a restaurant, or for denying them other services at public accommodations.

Among other things, this would mean that a store that sells T-shirts cannot (and I would add should not) refuse to sell T-shirts to anyone because of their race or ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identification or lifestyle. A racist cannot refuse to sell to people of color, an atheist or a gay activist cannot refuse to sell to conservative Christians, and a Christian cannot refuse to sell to sell to atheists or gays.

By the same token, a T-shirt printer who printed a particular design or message for one customer should be willing to print the same design or message for a customer whose lifestyle he disapproves of.

In the case reported by the Becket Fund, though, another principle comes into play: free speech.

The Hands On Originals case highlights that not every kind of service in the public square is equivalent to buying a meal at a restaurant. Some types of services involve a form of artistic expression or speech that is protected under the First Amendment and these protections protect us all.

Free speech means a pro-choice graphic designer or commercial artist cannot be forced to print pro-life materials, nor can a pro-life graphic designer or commercial artist be forced to print pro-choice materials. A gay Web developer cannot be forced to create a website for a conservative Christian group, nor can a Christian Web developer be forced to create a website for a gay group.

This is a principle well understood and appreciated by the LGBT business owners cited in the Becket Fund press release, who supported Hands On Originals right to refuse to print pro-gay materials. All sides and all parties to this discussion should recognize the wisdom of Thomas Mores line in A Man For All Seasons about giving even the Devil benefit of law for my own safetys sake. (N.b. Like More, Im merely illustrating a principle, not comparing anyone to the Devil!)

Because photography is patently a form of artistic expression, Im troubled that the courts not so far found that a wedding photographer, or any other wedding industry professional other than clergy,has the right to decline to provide services for a same-sex wedding. Could this be because such cases have generally been predicated on religious freedom rather than free speech? I dont know, but I wonder.

I believe the principle that speech should be neither repressed nor compelled is so important that I would even defend the right of a white supremacist photographer not to photograph an interracial wedding. His views are despicable so despicable that I would want nothing to do with patronizing such a photographer, whether or not he had a problem with me but photography is speech, and speech should not be compelled.

The same considerations seem to me to apply to cake decorators, at least where the cake involves any kind of messaging, even figures of two grooms or two brides on the top. Im not talking about refusing to sell a cake to an LGBT person or couple, but to decorating the cake with a specific message.

I dont believe this principle should be controversial, although it is. In 2015 no less patently liberal and pro-LGBT a celebrity than Patrick Stewart offered a thoughtful defense for a baker who was sued for declining to put pro-gay messaging on a cake. The backlash was intense, obliging Stewart to clarify his remarks though he didnt back down on his opinion.

This line of thought would not, however, exempt caterers from catering the reception for a same-sex wedding. That would fall into the same sphere as a restaurant selling someone a meal, and would be regulated by applicable antidiscrimination laws.

Its no secret that free speech itself is under attack in many quarters of American life, notably in academia. The Hands On Originals case seems to me an important affirmation of a foundational principle that protects us all and is worth defending.

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Gay Rights and the OTHER First Amendment Right - National Catholic Register (blog)