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The Buzz is the Registers weekly political news column.

Ardent opposition to President Donald Trump is motivating veteran and first-time activists in Orange Countys four Republican congressional districts, but unseating the incumbents remains an uphill road.

Three of those GOP members won reelection by more than 10 percentage points last year. And while polls show dissatisfaction with Congress as a whole, historic polling shows constituents view their own representatives far more favorably.

Hillary Clinton won all four districts, but a new report by the Public Policy Institute of California details how Democrats strongest demographic groups are also the least likely to vote in midterm general elections.

The population of eligible voters among Latinos and Asian Americans is growing faster in California and the county than elsewhere in the country while the overall voter registration rate is falling faster. In 2014 the last midterm election the states voter registration rate was about 5 percent less than the nations rate, according to the PPIC. Thats because Latinos and Asian Americans arent registering to vote at the rate of other eligible adults. The lack of registered Latino voters in the county could particularly hurt Democrats next year.

Meanwhile, the strongest age group for county Democrats is those 25 and younger. But those voters low turnout in midterm elections is the biggest reason the state slid from 70 percent turnout in the 1982 midterm general election to 42 percent in 2014, according to PPIC.

Orange County Democrats were watching the June 20 special election in Georgia because it was similar in some ways to the GOP districts in Orange County: Educated voters who usually favored Republicans but were wary of Trump (Trump won the district by just 1 percentage point). But the outcome was bad news for those Democrats, with Republican Karen Handel beating Democrat Jon Ossoff 52 percent to 48 percent.

Thats more than Trumps margin of victory and an indication that distaste of the president wasnt enough to carry the Democrat to victory.

If you know where to look, you can find bits of good polling news that reflect well on Trump.

Approval among Republicans remains strong at 85 percent, according to the most recent Gallup poll. Thats leagues beyond their approval of the GOP-controlled Congress, which is at a lowly 28 percent, according to Gallup.

And Republicans are far more optimistic about the future of the country since Trump took office, with 69 percent saying the country is going in the right direction, according to a just-released Morning Consult poll. Thats rocketed from 11 percent last July. Meanwhile, Democrats optimism for the country has dropped from 37 percent to 19 percent over the same period.

The problem is that less than half the country is Republican, especially when accounting for independents.

Trump took office with a historic low approval rating among all voters, 45 percent. And its been a slow drift downward since, with his latest rating at 39 percent, according to Gallup.

Within the party, theres a significant divide. When asked if the GOP generally cares about people like you, 72 percent of self-described conservatives said yes but just 49 percent of moderates thought so, according to the Morning Consult data.

The weakest demographic among Democrats is those ages 18 to 29, with 73 percent of that group saying the party cares about people like them. All other age groups are at 80 percent or higher. Overall, 80 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans said their party cares about people like them.

Measuring patriotism can be treacherous, but that didnt stop the approaching Independence Day from spurring WalletHub to rank the 50 states. That ranking is based on 13 factors divided into two categories: military engagement (a states number of military enlistees counted for 25 percent of their score) and civic engagement (the share of adults who voted last November accounted for 10 percent).

Virginia ranked first overall, Alaska ranked first in military engagement (and 36th in civic engagement) and Vermont ranked first in civic engagement (and 39th in military engagement).

CaliforniIa ranked 44th overall, 38th in military engagement and 42nd in civic engagement. It had the third lowest veterans per capita, but otherwise didnt crack the top five or bottom five in key categories.

Excerpt from:
Study highlights Democrats' campaign hurdles in 2018 - OCRegister

A government watchdog group and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland urged state election officials on Friday to refuse to comply with a data request made by the Trump administration as part of an investigation into the integrity of elections.

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created by Republican President Donald J. Trump in May, has asked Maryland and every other state to supply voter data including names, addresses, party affiliation, voting history and partial social security numbers.

Damon Effingham, Common Cause Maryland's legal and policy director, said the request raises "significant concerns among voting rights and privacy advocates."

"The request is breathtakingly broad," Effingham said in a statement.

David Rocah, a senior attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, said Friday "the request is improper under Maryland law on multiple levels."

Much of the requested information is public under Maryland law but must be requested by a registered voter of the state and cannot be used for commercial purposes. Many political campaigns, for instance, obtains such information for purposes of advertising and door-knocking.

The request came in a letter from commission vice-chair and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The letter does not ask for private information, but rather public voter-roll information.

"In order for the Commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting, I am requesting that you provide to the Commission the publicly-available voter roll data for Maryland," Kobach wrote in the letter.

Nevertheless, Common Cause argues that state law "forbids granting a request made under these circumstances."

"Secretary of State Kobach is a registered voter in Kansas," Effingham said.

State law also says a Maryland voter must submit to the State Board of Elections a statement signed under oath that the requested voter information will not be used for purposes unrelated to the electoral process.

Linda H. Lamone, Maryland's elections administrator, said she has asked Attorney General Brian E. Frosh for guidance in how to respond.

A spokeswoman for Frosh, a Democrat, said the office would evaluate the request and provide Lamone with guidance.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, emphasized that the State Board of Elections "functions as an independent agency."

State laws vary, but the request was met with pushback in some states. Officials from Kentucky, Virginia and New York, for instance, said they would not comply.

In Maryland, leading Democrats condemned the commission's work.

"President Trump's 'voter fraud investigation' is an attempt to suppress and disenfranchise voters, plain and simple," Democratic Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz tweeted. He went on to say that Maryland must join with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, "and refuse to honor this alarming, politically motivated request."

State Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, called the panel a "voter suppression commission."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday called the outrage over the request "mostly a political stunt."

"This is a commission that's asking for publicly available data," she said.

The commission was created after Trump claimed on Twitter in November that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Trump won the Electoral College vote, but Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes.

The president has never offered evidence to back up his claim. He has been rebuked by both Democratic and Republican officials for undermining confidence in the nation's electoral system.

Frosh said in a letter to Congress this year that voter fraud is not a significant problem in Maryland.

"To date, there are no cases in which it has been determined that an individual who cast a vote in the federal elections held in November 2016 was legally prohibited from doing so...," Frosh wrote. "With only two instances of confirmed voter fraud from the total voter turnout of 2,734,176 in the 2012 Presidential General Election, we can safely say that there is no evidence of coordinated or systematic voter fraud in Maryland."

Baltimore Sun reporter John Fritze contributed to this article.

lbroadwater@baltsun.com

twitter.com/lukebroadwater

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Common Cause, Democrats urge Maryland not to comply with Trump election data request - Baltimore Sun

A new study finds far more Republican Senate offices pay their interns than Democrat offices do.

Nearly 51 percent of Republican Senate offices offer paid internship compared to just 31 percent of Democrat offices, according to a new study from the bipartisan group Pay Our Interns. On the House side, only 8 percent of Republican offices pay their interns compared to just 3.6 percent of Democrat offices.

"Democrats like to say, Well, you know, you're getting paid with knowing that you're making a difference, Republicans have no illusions that people should get paid for their work," Carlos Mark Vera, one of the study's authors told the Washington Examiner.

From 1973 to 1993 it was standard practice to pay interns working in the House of Representatives under the Lyndon Baines Johnson Congressional Intern Program. The program provided a $1,000 two-month internship to students. However, Congress has not appropriated funds for it since the early 1990s.

Much of the reason many internships are unpaid on Capitol Hill can be attributed to hiring caps. Each representative is limited to 18 paid positions and an additional four positions on their staff.

Vera, says the lack of paid internships provided by Congress combined with high cost of living in the District of Columbia is preventing minorities from pursuing internships on Capitol Hill. He notes there is a great disparity between the participation of Caucasians in internship programs compared to Hispanics and African-Americans.

His study finds Hispanic-Americans have the lowest rate of internship participation, at 53.3 percent, compared to Caucasians at 68.2 percent. African-American participation stands at 59.5 percent, while Asian-American participation is 63.2 percent.

Vera argues unpaid internships favor those of higher socio-economic status because only those who can afford to work for free or have parents that can support their child can seek those opportunities. As a first-generation immigrant from Colombia, Vera says the goal of Pay our Interns is to make public service careers more accessible to minorities and those of all socioeconomic backgrounds, not just on racial lines.

"We're also fighting for the sons of coal miners in West Virginia, this is about opportunities for anyone to enter public service," Vera said.

Pay Our Interns collected their data by contacting members of Congress directly, often meeting directly with representatives and surveying their websites.

The report concludes that while unpaid internships often provide valuable learning experiences, a lack of adequate pay adversely affects minorities, producing a less diverse Capitol Hill workforce. It also recommends raising hiring caps and more transparency concerning how much members, if at all, pay their interns.

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More Republicans pay their interns than Democrats: Study - Washington Examiner

Dennis Nixon has a whole lot to say and a lot of people to convince. So, dont be surprised if you find yourself trying to get in a word edgewise with the Laredo businessman, as I did on a couple of recent occasions.

Nixon, you see, is a man on a mission hes passionate about immigration reform and he thinks its time we stop yapping about it and do something. All the obsession with border security, immigration crackdowns, Senate Bill 4, building a wall, deporting 11 million people all of it, he says is just burying our heads in the sand to deny something America needs to come to grips with: our country needs immigrant labor.

Right about now, some of you might be saying Nixon is just another one of those out-of-touch liberals. In fact, Nixon, a Republican at heart though hes supported candidates in both parties over the years is the chief executive of International Bancshares Corp. and International Bank of Commerce in Laredo. He also served as Texas finance chair for the Donald J. Trump for President campaign. Thats right Donald Trump, the chief proponent of immigration crackdowns, a border wall and mass deportations.

COMMENTARY: How the U.S. can achieve fact-based immigration reform.

I thought of Nixon the other day while reading news reports about Texas companies struggling to find workers in construction and other industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor, a large segment of the states workforce that includes many people who are in the country illegally. The Austin-based Workers Defense Project estimates that about half of all construction workers in Texas are in the U.S. illegally.

Business owners tie the shortages to immigrants who are spooked by a new one-two punch: the federal crackdown by the Trump administration, and Senate Bill 4, the new Texas law that bans so-called sanctuary cities. Opponents call it the show me your papers law because it allows police to ask about the immigration status of anyone they stop. Critics warn it will lead to profiling.

Experts agree its too early to quantify the effect of worker shortages, though business are rattled just the same.

Everyones on pins and needles, Craig Regelbrugge, a horticulture industry spokesman, told the AP. The farms that produce the food Americans eat need more workers to harvest the crops, he said.

Frank Fuentes, chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association in Austin, told me that immigrant workers are leaving Texas jobs at construction sites, hotels, restaurants and farms for what they perceive to be friendlier states, such as California. But Fuentes said he fields calls daily from other states, too. They ask me, Hey, whats happening? Were losing our folks?

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Even before the latest reports, Nixon said agriculture and service industries were already hurting from worker shortages. Immigration crackdowns are the wrong remedy, he told me earlier this month.

We should be finding a way to build an immigration stream into our country, not try to impede it, Nixon said. He thinks America needs an immigration policy that addresses a need for about 600,000 to 650,000 low-skilled workers every year to keep the economy growing.

Millennials arent interested in filling low-skill jobs, Nixon said, echoing the business owner who told the AP that the Americans he hires for construction jobs dont last more than half a day. Immigration is an obsession now, Nixon added, but the greater threat to prosperity and security is a declining U.S. birth rate below replacement level. With 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day, we have a demographic crisis he said.

With its emphasis on illegal immigration crackdowns, the current political climate is out of touch with reality along the Rio Grande, where Nixon has lived for nearly half a century. The flow of immigrants who illegally enter the country, for example, has declined dramatically in the last 20 years, from about 1.6 million to about 400,000, he said, citing federal figures.

But thats not the picture Trump painted when he announced his run for the presidency. He described a border overrun by Mexican criminals and rapists and promised a border wall that Mexico would pay for. Theyre not.

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Nixon thinks the wall is an expensive, stupid alternative.

So, how does he square his thoughts on the wall with his support for the president?

Well, lets say he thinks cooler heads will prevail. No serious person, he said, thinks you can build a wall from El Paso to Brownsville with any kind of reasonable expectation it will be successful.

Quick, someone get that message to the president.

Castillo is the Viewpoints editor.

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Castillo: Why talk of immigration reform also has employers on edge - MyStatesman.com

The issue of immigration and border security is more complex than the political debate in Washington and on cable television would lead the public to believe. It is also easier and far less costly to solve than many of the plans introduced by leading politicians and pundits.

The current reality on the Texas-Mexican border as well as much of the border outside of Texas is that the flow of immigrants who illegally enter the United States has declined sharply in recent decades, from 1.6 million to about 400,000.

Today, the border is still faced with an illegal entry problem from individuals mostly from Central America coming to the United States in the hope of participating in the American Dream. These economic migrants are basically law-abiding people who are seeking work because their country of origin has not given them a chance to succeed.

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While immigration is a national obsession, theres a much greater and more real threat to American prosperity and national security: The U.S. birth rate is now 1.9 births per female, well below replacement level. And with 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day, the demographic outlook is bleak.

Future GDP growth above 2 percent on a sustained basis will be an enormous challenge in the face of the demographic winter that will have a huge impact on the world over the next several decades. We need an immigration policy that addresses Americas need for workers about 600,000 to 650,000 low-skilled workers every year to keep our economy growing.

In addition to fact-based immigration reform, there are two things the U.S. Border Patrol seeks along the Texas-Mexico border: visibility of the river and access to the river. Both can be easily achieved simply by cleaning up the riverbank along the Rio Grande. The salt cedar and Carrizo cane are invasive plants that are not native to Texas. Their density becomes a hiding place for immigrants and criminals who illegally enter the United States.

Once these invasive plants have been eradicated, an all-weather river road should be built to provide U.S. Border Patrol Agents access to patrol the riverbank. Coupled with modern technology such as motion detectors and infrared sensors, this enhanced natural buffer zone is a far more effective barrier to entry than a tremendously expensive man-made barrier.

Yes, more can be done to smartly and cost effectively improve border security. However, the reward for enhancing apprehension is only as good as the legal process supporting it; otherwise, the process only becomes a catch-and-release program.

VIEWPOINTS: The Statesmans editorial writers tackle local and national issues.

Today, with the rapid decline in illegal immigration, the problem squarely rests on an inadequate judicial system. Simply said, we need more immigration courts. Through October 2016, more than a half-million cases were awaiting adjudication in U.S. immigration courts. Border Patrol executives put the wait time at 1,000 days. In order to clear the backlog of these half-million cases by 2023, Congress would need to double the number of immigration judges.

To solve the border security problem, we must look to reasonable and commonsense solutions that benefit the United States and Mexico. We must support a border security plan with Mexico our third-largest trading partner that continues to foster economic development and our good neighbor policies that have been in place for generations.

Nixon is CEO and chairman of the board of International Bancshares Corp. and International Bank of Commerce.

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Commentary: How the US can achieve fact-based immigration reform - MyStatesman.com