Archive for the ‘Democrats’ Category

Look! We Found Something Republicans, Democrats And Jared Kushner Actually Agree On! – FiveThirtyEight

Aug. 17, 2017 at 12:05 PM

Brace yourself, because we are about to ask you to read a story about a boring technological problem and its impact on government. Like many dull things, though, its also important a failure so pervasive that it costs taxpayers billions and has the power to bridge partisan divides, uniting Jared Kushner and congressional Republicans with congressional Democrats and Obama-appointed scientific experts. Despite those things, the problem remains so deeply unsexy that Kushner publicly speaking about it resulted mostly in headlines about what his voice sounded like.

Senior advisor Jared Kushner speaks during an event with technology sector CEOs at the White House on June 19, 2017, in Washington, D.C. His data center consolidation initiative is supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images

Data center consolidation the art and science of making sure technological infrastructure is being used in an efficient way does not make for great TV. But experts say it does represent good governance, because fixing it simultaneously saves money and corrects structural problems in the way the federal government is managed. This spring, bipartisan proponents of data center consolidation managed to get a bill through the House that would help get the job done more easily. But its now sitting in senatorial limbo. Even when an issue has cross-party cooperation and the support of the White House, it can still fall victim to the current state of political disarray.

Data centers are physical places housing the computers that archive information for the government records that have to be backed up so a single, failed desktop wont mean theyre lost forever; historical data that cant be consigned to the virtual trash bin but also isnt needed every day; statistics that need to be accessed by multiple people who work in different locations. Some are like warehouses imagine the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with racks of blinking electronics instead of wooden crates. Others are more prosaic, like a closet in someones office with a couple computers sitting screenless and lonely in the dark. As storage becomes less physical and more digital, well only rely on them more.

But, right now, the federal government has more data centers than it needs, which is a problem since excess data centers mean more spent on building rental, electricity demand, maintenance workers and air conditioning bills. Between 2012 and 2016, data center consolidation efforts saved taxpayers a reported $2.3 billion. But experts say theres still a long way to go. They talk in terms of the utilization rate effectively how much of the energy being used by the equipment in a data center actually goes to doing productive work. If the rate is low, that means youre spending money without getting much benefit from it. The average server in a data center owned by the federal government has a utilization rate between 9 and 12 percent, said David Powner, director of information technology management issues for the Government Accountability Office. The goal set by the federal Office of Management and Budget is something like 60 percent.

This problem isnt confined to the government, but the government has run into some unique problems while trying to solve it.

Federal data center consolidation efforts have been ongoing since 2010, but while more than 4,300 federal data centers have been closed out of a total 5,597 scheduled for elimination many were low-hanging fruit: small, closet-size data centers that didnt take much effort to close down but also didnt save much by disappearing, said former Obama Chief Information Officer Tony Scott. Closing larger data centers is more complex and, in many cases, would require technological upgrades that agencies dont have the budgets to implement. Thats because, in government, funding for software, programming, and other technological infrastructure comes when a project is first implemented. As time goes on, the project will get the funds to maintain itself, Scott said, but not the funds to improve. If it was started in the 90s, its running on 90s technology. If it started in the 60s, its running on 60s tech, he said. That can make it difficult to merge the data centers where that software is running.

Meanwhile, Powner said, there have been cases of agencies closing data centers and saving money but not reporting it. There are some weird incentives in government, Powner told me. If you dont spend your budget, theyll take it away. The result is a loss of transparency about how federal dollars are being spent. Document the savings, and you cant use it for other projects, no matter how legitimate. Fail to report the savings and it becomes available to use, but taxpayers now have no real record of how its being spent.

Texas Republican Will Hurd and Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly are trying to solve these problems with their Modernizing Government Technology Act. It would establish a centralized modernization fund that all agencies could use, and, more groundbreakingly, authorize agencies to reallocate the money theyve saved by consolidating data centers and reinvest it as working capital. Both Powner and Scott praised the effort. It passed the House easily in May. If it becomes law, the bill could be both a heartwarming show of a functional Congress working across party lines and a success for the White House. When Kushner made his first public speaking appearance in June, as part of a White House technology summit aimed at bringing ideas from the business world to government, the need for data center consolidation was one of the main issues he championed.

But that only works if the Senate has time to pay attention. We are awaiting action in the Senate, Connolly said. Given the whats the polite word? the current hiccups legislatively, one does not know if it will be a convenient time to bring it up or if they are just in stasis.

For now, the Senate version of the Modernizing Government Technology Act is sitting in committee, where its been since April. And, even if it does make it to a vote, the project of data center consolidation could still be hamstrung by management issues this bill doesnt address, like the overabundance of agency-level chief information officers. There are at least 250 people in the federal government with that title, according to Connolly and Hurd. Theyve counted 14 in the Department of Homeland Security alone. Most private companies just have one, but technology often came to the government piecemeal from the bottom up, rather than all at once from the top down. Today, so many people have the same title that its not always clear who has ultimate authority, making it difficult to know where the buck stops and who can approve consolidation decisions.

Ironically, this problem is currently exacerbated by the lack of a top CIO, the one in the White House. That role is currently unfilled, and Powner, Scott, Connolly and Hurd all said that position was important for coordinating among the different agencies and ensuring that someone has the authority to make the kinds of decisions that allow large, complex data centers to be reconfigured. Its wonderful that Kushners Office of American Innovation is paying attention to data center consolidation, Scott said, but that top CIO role will be crucial to making those goals a reality. Ideas are great, but implementation is what really matters at the end of the day, he said. If you dont have somebody really, really focused on implementation, youre going to come up short.

See more here:
Look! We Found Something Republicans, Democrats And Jared Kushner Actually Agree On! - FiveThirtyEight

Democrats drafting articles of impeachment against Trump – Miami Herald


AOL
Democrats drafting articles of impeachment against Trump
Miami Herald
Democrats are already looking to formally censure Trump or at least force Republicans to debate the measure and Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said Thursday he plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump. The president, he argues, failed ...
Following Charlottesville, Democrats to introduce articles of impeachmentAOL
Trump Impeachment Process Begins as Democrat States President 'Failed Test of Moral Leadership'Newsweek
Democrats renew calls for Trump impeachment after his Charlottesville responseWashington Examiner
BuzzFeed News -Congressman Steve Cohen -Congressman Steve Cohen
all 70 news articles »

Follow this link:
Democrats drafting articles of impeachment against Trump - Miami Herald

Has Trump really united the Democrats? – CNN

The official name of the protest was the Women's March, but it became something bigger, much bigger, and expanded to include many traditional Democratic Party constituencies including environmental groups and unions.

For Democratic operatives and organizers, January 21, 2017, was akin to Christmas and your birthday falling on the same day: the party's political base was frustrated, but not depressed. Political organizers could skip months of therapy sessions designed to excite Democrats and move straight onto crafting plans for the November 2017 elections and the 2018 midterm elections.

Donald Trump had unified the Democratic Party. Or had he?

Perez, a former Secretary of Labor and Justice Department official, is now charged with trying to unite the party's liberal and establishment factions, while restoring credibility to the national party organization, whose email system was hacked by Russia in 2016.

Perez said he sees an opportunity in this age of Trump for Democrats to rally around the party's "values" on issues ranging from health care and income inequality to public education.

"We all succeed when we all succeed, and we are all better when we are united," Perez said in a recent interview on SiriusXM's "Full Stop with Mark Preston."

Except it will not be that easy.

Many liberals are still smarting over the 2016 presidential primary -- a system they argued was rigged against Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, in favor of the establishment favorite, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

More than a year after Clinton won the presidential primary and seven months into Trump's presidency, the phrase "time heals all wounds" does not seem to apply to all Democrats, certainly not at last week's Netroots Nation conference. The annual gathering of liberal activists was part strategy session, part political rally and speakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, urged attendees to demand that party leaders embrace and advocate for liberal policies.

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution -- the organization founded by former Sanders campaign staff and supporters -- wasn't tiptoeing when she accused the DNC of disrespecting the progressive movement. She recounted a standoff outside the DNC headquarters in late July when she was refused access to the building. Turner, a DNC member, and the activists she led were attempting to deliver petitions to party leaders. The group was not allowed to enter the building because of security concerns, which infuriated Turner.

Perez said one of the first strategic acts he put in motion was a program called Resistance Summer.

"Resistance Summer is a down payment on what the new DNC is about," said Perez, who sat for this interview prior to the Netroots Nation conference. "It was an investment that we made, and it's in place in over 40 states, and we are paying organizers out there so that we can talk to people again. One of the things we have to do, our new mantra at the DNC, is that every zip code counts."

"So that's the new DNC," Perez said. "And one more observation, which is 2017 for me is feeling a lot like 2005. In 2005, we had a very unpopular president pursuing a very unpopular far-right agenda in cahoots with a far-right Congress, and what we were able to do in 2005, which we haven't been able to accomplish since, we won the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia. Then the following year we flipped the House, and I'm seeing a similar trend here. But the past is never prologue and what we have to do is build that infrastructure, recruit great candidates, and then organize, organize, organize with our message of a better deal and a brighter future for everybody."

(Worth noting that in the first half of 2017, Democrats went 0-3 in three special Congressional elections).

"He sucks up the oxygen, but it's one thing to suck up the oxygen with affirmative things to help people. He's been sucking up the oxygen in the room by firing all of his people, by ensnarling his administration in scandal," Perez said. "I mean the culture of chaos and corruption in this administration is off the charts, and I don't think the American people want to normalize chaos; they don't want to normalize ethical lapses; they want people fighting for a better future for them -- that's what Democrats are doing."

"Well we're making progress; we have more work to do," said Perez. "When I walked into the DNC, we had to rebuild our systems, and our fundraising department was a very good group of people, but we needed to quadruple their size and we're in the process of doing just that."

Perez said he emphasizes to donors that helping to pay for rebuilding the party infrastructure "ain't sexy," but noted it is critical to success.

"You know when your plumbing goes out in your house or the water pipes in Flint (Michigan) corrode, it has life threatening consequences," Perez said. "And similarly when the political infrastructure corrodes, we lose elections."

As Perez tries to keep the party focused on the November elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the DNC remains ground zero for Russia's hacking in the 2016 election. Perez did not go into detail when asked about the investigation other than to note that "from the onset of this investigation we've cooperated with the FBI. We continue to cooperate with people on Capitol Hill, and we'll do so throughout."

Rebuilding, reforming, uniting and winning elections in 2017 and 2018 are some pretty difficult challenges for a person to shoulder. But that is not the only responsibility Perez is saddled with in his role as DNC chair. The wide open 2020 Democratic presidential primary is just around the corner.

"Well the most important thing we're going to do is to build a fair, level playing field for everybody," Perez said. "I welcome the debate. I think there is going to be a bumper crop of candidates and that the American people are going to see a very robust Democratic Party. What will unite all of them is that they are all fighting for a better deal and a brighter future and better tomorrows for everyone, not just a few at the top. And what we're doing at the DNC is making sure we build the infrastructure, the organizing infrastructure, the technology infrastructure so that whoever ... becomes the nominee that they can walk into a DNC that enables them to sprint across the finish line.

While Perez said he hopes ideas and ideals are what helps to unite his party, it may just be mutual disgust for Trump that will act as the super glue for Democrats.

Below are some of excerpts of my interview with DNC Chairman Tom Perez. This Q&A has been edited for brevity, clarity and flow.

Mark Preston: As you look at the current state of play right now, what is the Democratic plan to address Donald Trump in this off year?

Tom Perez: Step one is that we have to take on Donald Trump in all of these areas that he's trying to take America back, and make America weak, not make America great. Equally important though, we can't simply be against Donald Trump. We've got to articulate what we are for, and we have always been fighting for a fair shake for everyone.

Preston: (W)hen you were running for chairman, ... it was a bit of a contentious fight. There was a lot of criticism from the grassroots about the battle between establishment Democrats and grassroots Democrats. ... What is being done behind the scenes to try to bridge the divide between those two (factions)?

Perez: Every single day we are leading with our values. ... If we want to address income inequality in this country, one of the most important things we can do is support efforts for people to unionize and form a union. When unions succeed, the middle class succeeds. When unions succeed, income inequality goes down, and what we have to do as a party is be out there on the issues that matter the most to people: health care, good jobs, the efforts to cut support for public education, we have to articulate what we stand for."

Preston: Is the focus right now for the DNC, when you're looking at priorities, to get back the House of Representatives?

Perez: Well, that's a very big part of what we're trying to do. We have a more immediate focus, which is 2017 because you know what, you win Virginia, you win New Jersey, you lay the foundation for future success. What we try to do is to make sure we're not only winning elections today but we're building the infrastructure for sustained success.

Read more:
Has Trump really united the Democrats? - CNN

Some House Democrats say it’s time for Pelosi to go

"We need leadership change," New York Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice told CNN outside the House chamber. "It's time for Nancy Pelosi to go, and the entire leadership team."

Rice attended the closed-door House Democratic caucus meeting on Wednesday morning but said she did not raise the issue in the session, and no other members brought up the idea of a leadership change. "I think that people were in shock" after hearing a report from Pelosi and the head of the House campaign arm that Democrats lost, but were doing better in contests in other GOP districts.

Asked about her colleagues urging her to step down, Pelosi waved off the question and said she would address it at her weekly press conference on Thursday. But pressed if she had any plans to go anywhere, she replied "no."

Pelosi didn't directly respond to Rice's call, but stressed that now was the time for Democrats to come together.

"I respect the comments of some in our caucus, but right now we must be unified in order to defeat Trumpcare," the minority leader said in a written statement to CNN.

In a written statement the California Democrat didn't directly respond to the criticism, but stressed that now was the time for Democrats to come together.

A Rice spokesman clarified to CNN that the congresswoman was referring to the top three leadership positions: minority leader, Democratic whip, and assistant Democratic leader. Pelosi, Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina were elected in November to those positions for the current session of Congress.

The moderate New York Democrat said she had talked to a number of House Democrats since last night's defeat and some expressed concerns about keeping the same leadership team. She said she is not interested in running for Pelosi's post or other leadership posts, but said there are discussions among some Democrats about next steps. She didn't call for Pelosi's immediate ouster, but said that she hopes Pelosi will ultimately decide not to run for another term as the top Democratic leader in the next Congress and several others emerge as alternatives to lead the caucus.

"There are about a handful of people who are now seriously considering it," Rice said.

"Look we need to win, everything else is bulls***," Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York told reporters leaving the meeting.

"This is not about me," Rice explained. "This is about being able to take the Democratic party in a direction that is actually going to help us win seats and get back into the majority. We need a vision -- where are we going? And we need a message -- how are we going to get there? We don't have either one of those. We just don't have either one of those in the present leadership."

Ryan told reporters Wednesday "there's a level of depression" among members and said bluntly, "Our brand is toxic."

Several House Democrats believe the GOP playbook of linking Democratic candidates to Pelosi is hurting.

"They tried it once and it worked. It's like the gift that keeps on giving," Rice said.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill brushed aside that argument, saying about the GOP tactic, "the politics of personal destruction has been their hallmark. "When you are effective, you are a target. It goes with the job."

Rice said she hoped that Pelosi would ultimately decide on her own to announce she won't run for re-election following the 2018 midterms to remove that issue and demonstrate there are other Democrats running for the post.

Pelosi told members at the Wednesday morning meeting about Georgia, "unfortunately this is a loss for us, but it's not good news for them," referring to Republicans.

She and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, chair of the House Democrats' campaign arm, stressed that in all of the special elections that took place in solidly red districts Democrats had significantly narrowed the gap. They pointed out that there are 70 more House seats that are more competitive than the one in the Atlanta suburbs that the GOP retained on Tuesday. Lujan distributed a memo to members that declared "the House is in play" and ticked through polling and recent trends.

Continue reading here:
Some House Democrats say it's time for Pelosi to go

Trump Democrats Are Rare But Electorally Important – New York Magazine

The Obama-Trump voter is either the author of our current political crisis or, a marginal, irrelevant freak whos been as overrepresented in political commentary as disaffected male comedians have been in half-hour dramedies.

It all depends on when and whom you ask. On November 9, it looked like a critical mass of white, working-class Obama voters in the Midwest decided to vote for the kind of change Barack couldnt believe in. One month later, some studies argued that this was a geographic illusion: Obama counties did switch to Trump, but only because so many traditionally Democratic voters stayed home.

By spring of 2017, however, a consensus formed in favor of the first hypothesis: In a few razor-tight swing-state races, Obama-Trump voters were decisive. Now, the only question was whether Democrats should care. In the Washington Post last week, Dana Milbank answered in the negative: New data from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group showed that there were fewer Obama-to-Trump voters than popularly believed, and that most of these voters were less Trump Democrats than they were Obama Republicans people who were willing to turn left to express their displeasure with the smoldering ruins of the George W. Bush presidency, but who are otherwise more at home in Red America.

There are swing voters in every election. The fact that the latent conservatism of white Obama voters in the Rust Belt combined with Clintons idiosyncratic weaknesses, mistakes, and improbable misfortunes tipped the last contest to the GOP is of no great consequence, Milbank argues. The Democrats should just focus on improving the turnout rates of the groups that agree with them and avoid nominating the subject of an active FBI investigation in 2020 instead of pandering to a bunch of Trump Democrats who barely exist. As Milbank writes:

These people arent Obama-Trump voters as much as they were Bush-Obama voters. This is important, because it means Democrats dont have to contort themselves to appeal to the mythical Trump Democrats by toughening their position on immigration, or weakening their support for universal health care, or embracing small government and low taxes. What Democrats have to do is be Democrats.

The New York Times Nate Cohn begs to (partially) differ. Cohn accepts that white, working-class Obama-to-Trump voters made up a tiny slice of the national electorate. And he agrees that most of these voters lean Republican, oppose the Affordable Care Act and liberal immigration policies, and were attracted to Trump primarily on the basis of his reactionary racial politics.

But Cohn insists that such voters were, nonetheless, decisive and that a small, but significant subset of the demographic appears to be winnable for Team Blue:

The [Cooperative Congressional Election Study] found that 26 percent of Obama-Trump voters identified as Democrats in their postelection studythats a significant share who continue to identify with the Democratic Party despite voting for Mr. Trump.

Democrats were probably still winning a lot of these voters in 2016. The results speak for themselves to some extent. Jason Kander lost his Senate race in Missouri by just three percentage points, even as Mrs. Clinton lost by 20 points. Even Democrats who didnt run ahead of Mrs. Clinton over all like Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, Russ Feingold in Wisconsin or Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania nonetheless ran far ahead of Mrs. Clinton in traditionally Democratic, white working-class areas.

Mrs. Duckworths performance is probably the most telling. She won Illinoiss 12th Congressional District a downstate, working-class district now held by Republican Mike Bost by nine points. Mr. Trump won it by 12 points.

Cohn further notes that a significant portion of the Republican Obama-to-Trump voters saw little appeal in the GOP before the populist demagogue came onto the scene: A Pew Research Center study found that 18 percent of non-college-educated white votes who leaned Democratic in late December 2015 ended up identifying as Republican-leaning one year later. Which is to say: They switched parties only after the Republican Party nominated an idiosyncratic celebrity who promised to protect entitlements, deliver universal health care, pass a $1 trillion infrastructure stimulus, and restrict the freedom of corporations to move overseas.

In my view, Cohns analysis shows that Milbank is both right and wrong. On the first count: It makes little sense for the national Democratic Party to make winning over the typical Obama-to-Trump voter its guiding ambition. The Democrats are never going to be number one with whites who believe they are oppressed by racial minorities.

But Milbank is wrong to suggest that Democrats can comfortably ignore all Obama-to-Trump voters, and to imply that the only alternative to ignoring them would be to embrace small government conservatism.

Heres the thing about non-college-educated white people in America: Theres a lot of them. And the design of our Constitutional system amplifies their clout not just in the Electoral College, but also in the House and Senate.

The Democratic Party has no major problem at the presidential level. Theyve won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections, and lost the Electoral College in two of those by freakishly tight margins. Team Blues crisis is in the states, and theres no way out of that crisis without winning more working-class white voters than they did during the Obama years. This will continue to be the case, even as America grows more diverse and urban: The structure of the Senate ensures that predominately white, rural states will continue to exert great political influence, no matter how absurdly unrepresentative (of the nation as a whole) their populations become.

To build sturdy Senate majorities and liberate poor and nonwhite Red State residents from reactionary rule Democrats are going to need to win over more non-woke white people. This should be possible, given how unpopular the GOPs fiscal agenda is. In political scientist Lee Drutmans analysis of the Voter Study Group data, most culturally conservative voters in 2016 espoused left-of-center views on economic policy. Just 26.5 percent of the entire electorate expressed broadly conservative positions on pocketbook issues.

If Team Blue is gonna try to add some economically liberal, cultural conservatives to its big tent, the ones who identified as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents before 2016 seem like prime targets.

And, contra Milbank, health care may be a winning issue for Democrats with such voters. Its true that 75 percent of Obama-Trump voters supported repealing the Affordable Care Act, according to CCES data. But Donald Trump and most other Republicans didnt say that they wanted to replace Obamacare with a less generous, market-based program that would leave more people uninsured, because cutting taxes on the rich is more important than guaranteeing Americans affordable health care. Rather, they promised to deliver care that was cheaper, better, more patient-centered, and universally accessible than that which the Affordable Care Act had provided.

A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that only 10 percent of Republicans wanted the GOP to replace Obamacare with a program that does less. And yet, every health-care plan Trump & Co. have pushed over the past six months would have done exactly that. The public is broadly aware of this, which is why Trumpcare has proven to be the least popular piece of major legislation in at least three decades.

Last month, a Vox/Survey Monkey poll found that one in seven Trump supporters feared that the GOP health-care bill would hurt them. These voters were, in the aggregate, poorer and less economically secure than the presidents other supporters. Critically, their fear of Trumpcare appeared to be alienating them from the president more broadly: Compared to other Trump backers, they were less confident in the presidents economic management, and more concerned about the Russia scandal and the administrations alleged ethical violations.

Recent focus groups with Obama-to-Trump voters produced a similar finding: When these voters were informed that Trump was pushing a conventionally conservative Republican agenda, they became more skeptical about the authenticity of their populist champion.

Further, a growing body of evidence suggests that foregrounding the GOPs grotesquely regressive plans for our health-care system would boost Democrats fortunes in a wide variety of 2018 districts. To take just one example: The first publicly released poll of New Jerseys 11th district finds that longtime Republican incumbent Rodney Frelinghuysens support for Trumpcare (a.k.a. the American Health Care Act) has put his seat in jeopardy. As Farleigh Dickinson political scientist Dan Cassino writes:

In the modified voter list sample, Frelinghuysen is down nine points against an unnamed Democratic challenger, 37 to 46. That, in and of itself, is surprising for an incumbent whos won every re-election bid by a wide margin.

Whats more surprising is the effect of his vote on healthcare. Embedded in the survey was an experiment: half of the respondents (412 respondents) were asked about their vote choice in next years election early in the survey, and the other half (398 respondents) were asked only after being asked Frelinghuysens AHCA vote. Respondents disapproved of his vote by a wide margin, 60 to 24, and while Frelinghuysen was down by 9 points among respondents who werent primed with his healthcare vote, the unnamed Democrat was up by 20 points, 50 to 30, among respondents who were asked about healthcare first. To put it simply, his vote on healthcare is costing him 11 points overall in the district, much of that among independents. In the baseline condition, independents favor him over the Democrat by 14; when primed with the AHCA vote, they prefer the Democrat by 15.

Democrats need to win more (non-woke) white people. Upon obtaining federal power, the Republican Party made cutting Medicaid to finance a tax cut for the rich its top legislative priority. The vast majority of Americans did not appreciate this.

Before Team Blue resigns itself to permanent irrelevance in rural America, it should try to make that last fact matter in 2018.

After Trump defended the very fine people at a neo-Nazi rally, the 41st and 43rd presidents joined other Republicans to repudiate bigotry.

Trumps response to Charlottesville led CEOs to distance themselves from the president.

He finished fifth at the GOP district convention and was attacked by out-of-state conservatives as a RINO, but John Curtis prevailed in the primary.

Shell temporarily fill the role vacated by Anthony Scaramucci.

Jerry Drake Varnell would have never tried to blow up a building without the FBIs help, his family says.

Donald Trump didnt just say something outrageous. He contradicted his own correction of an earlier outrageous statement. This is new and disturbing.

Helping an abnormal president appear sane is not a noble task.

And the GOPs heinous health-care bill may allow the Donkey Party to win them back.

Some argued that he was right to attack the left, but many Republican lawmakers reiterated that the violence was caused by white supremacists.

All of Mitch McConnells fundraising and Trumps endorsement only won Luther Strange a second-place finish and a runoff fight with Judge Roy Moore.

Ending cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers would inflict real pain on Americans.

Its a bold idea, and it faces steep hurdles.

The president condemned neo-Nazis and white supremacists but defended the right-wing protesters who simply wanted to preserve their history.

Like all New York mayors, he cant help seeing a future POTUS in the mirror. But theres no reason to think voters will agree.

Lisa Theris, 25, was found naked on a rural Alabama highway.

Many of Trumps closest allies want the Breitbart mastermind gone, while others reportedly worry about the mischief he could make in exile.

In a deep-red House district, the mayor of Provo is the front-runner but is under attack as a RINO.

The ex-Trump staffers confirmed that they had a child together last week, with Delgado coming forward with her side of the story for the first time.

See more here:
Trump Democrats Are Rare But Electorally Important - New York Magazine