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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday denied that he is preparing for a presidential election run in 2020, saying the suggestion is "disgraceful and offensive."

Pence was responding to a New York Times report that some Republicans were moving to form a "shadow campaign" as though President Donald Trump were not involved. It said multiple advisers to Pence "have already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. Trump did not."

The report said Pence had not only kept a full political calendar but also had created his own independent power base, including a political fund-raising group called the "Great America Committee."

But Pence called the article "fake news" and said his entire team was focused on advancing Trump's agenda and seeing him re-elected in 2020.

"The allegations in this article are categorically false and represent just the latest attempt by the media to divide this Administration," Pence said in a statement.

The Times stood by its coverage. "We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting and will let the story speak for itself," New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email.

Pence has good relations with conservative political groups and some of the Republican Party's big donors, including billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

He is also a Trump loyalist, and there is typically little distinction between his public statements and the policies of the president.

But as investigations deepen into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible ties to members of Trump's campaign, Pence has put some distance between himself and the president on the best way to approach Moscow.

On a trip to Eastern Europe last week, Pence condemned Russia's presence in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, with which Moscow fought a brief war in 2008. He also said ties with Russia would not improve until Moscow changed its stance on Ukraine and withdrew support for countries like Iran, Syria and North Korea.

The U.S. Congress recently passed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia with overwhelming bipartisan support, but Trump signed it into law last week with reluctance.

"Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low," Trump wrote on Twitter after signing the bill. "You can thank Congress."

Trump has described probes into his campaign's ties to Russia, including those under way in Congress and a Justice Department investigation headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as a "witch hunt."

The president has also sent mixed messages on whether he agrees with U.S. intelligence agencies' conclusions that Russia tried to intervene in the 2016 election to boost his chances of beating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday also dismissed the idea that Pence was looking at running for president in 2020.

"It is absolutely true that the vice president is getting ready for 2020 - for re-election as vice president," Conway told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

"Vice President Pence is a very loyal, very dutiful, but also incredibly effective vice president, and active vice president," said Conway, adding that she had worked for Pence for a decade as his pollster and senior adviser.

Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Additional reporting by Pete Schroeder; Writing by Amanda Becker; Editing by Kieran Murray and Lisa Von Ahn

Excerpt from:
Pence denies eyeing presidential bid amid distance with Trump over Russia - Reuters

Donald Trump lovesfast food. The 45th president has no problem wolfing down a Quarter Pounder or digging his way through a bucket of KFC. Great stuff, he once called the cheap, greasy fare.

Six months into Trumps presidency, the fast-food industry has plenty of reason to love him back.

The oil and gas sector, coal producers and for-profit colleges are all clear winnersin the Trump teams mission to deconstruct the administrative state. But so far, fast food, retail and other lower-wage industries have benefited as much as anyone from the administrations great regulatory rollback.

Lobbyists for restaurants, hotels and other franchised businesses spent the last several years fighting the Obama administration on one regulation after another. But the new White House occupant has heard their grievances, making industry-friendly changes to employment laws and how theyre enforced. Thats included abandoning Obamas overtime reforms, shying away from a minimum wage raise, and limiting whos considered an employer under the law all of which have a disproportionate effect on lower-wage, labor-intensive fields like fast food.

All told, the new administration has given McDonalds and its friends plenty to cheer about.

The early signs are that it can be more like night and day in terms of approach, said Matt Haller, senior vice president at the International Franchise Association, an industry group representing franchisers, including McDonalds. We just want regulations that are fair and reasonable and very clear.

The previous White House viewed regulation as a means to lift up workers at the bottom of the economic ladder, particularly folks doing low-paid service work like fast food and hospitality. Hence their push for a higher mandated wage floor, expanded overtime protections and aggressive enforcement of wage and hour laws. Like Obama, Trump speaks often of forgotten workers whose pay has stagnated, but so far his prescription for improving their lot mainly involves unfettering their employers.

That shouldnt come as a surprise for a president who made his fortune in hotels and went on to nominate a burger chain executive to be the countrys top workplace watchdog. (Andrew Puzder, the former CEO of Hardees and Carls Jr., ended up withdrawing his controversial nomination.) Still, the degree to which the administration is taking the reins off employers has distressed past officials who took a more aggressive tack.

Its the combination of these policies thats deeply troubling, said David Weil, who led the Labor Departments Wage and Hour Division under Obama. I see very little evidence that they are doing anything to address the needs of working people who have been left behind for a long time.

While he was in office, Weil tried to steer the agencys investigations toward the industries where he saw the most vulnerable workers fast food, sit-down restaurants, hotels and motels, janitorial companies and so forth. A Labor Department spokesman said the agency under Trump still carries out what it calls targeted enforcement programs. But pressed on whether they were targeting the same low-wage fields as before, the spokesman declined to say.

Some of the changes under Trump have little practical impact, but speak volumes about the administrations peculiar form of populism.

Employers in food and hospitality were apoplectic over the Obama administrations view on joint employment: the idea that more than one entity might be responsible when a worker gets injured or shorted on pay. The Obama administration put companies on notice that they, too, could be responsible for abuses against workers who are technically employed by temp firms and contractors. Fast-food brands like McDonalds recoiled at the idea they might be as liable for workplace violations as the franchisees who operate McDonalds restaurants.

After Trumps second pick for labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, assumed office in April, one of the first steps the agency took was to rescind the guidance on joint employment issued under Obama. Speaking to a retail lobby last month, Vice President Mike Pence proudly noted the change, drawing applause.

In another early move, the Labor Department brought back what are known as opinion letters. When employers are sued for allegedly not paying overtime or the minimum wage, they can ask the Labor Department to pen one of these letters in their defense, to be used in court. Weil likens them to a get-out-of-jail-free card for employers, and the Obama administration did not issue them. Trumps Labor Department, however, has trumpeted their return.

Trump also rescinded an executive order from Obama that would have made it harder for firms to secure federal contracts if they have a documented history of wage theft. Obamas order was the result of a campaign by fast-food workers who had been shorted on their pay while working on federal properties. (Two other orders from Obama one raising the minimum wage for federal contractors and another mandating sick leave for them have so far survived this administration.)

Other changes on the employment front are far more significant. The Obama administration tried to reform the nations overtime rules and guarantee more workers time and a half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. The share of salaried employees who are protected by overtime law has dropped off a cliffsince the 1970s. The changes the Obama administration made would have extended overtime rights to 4 million additional workers, according to the previous White House.

Carlo Allegri/Reuters

After business groups sued to stop Obamas plan, the Trump White House declined to defend it. The new administration seems to share the view of business groups that Obamas proposal covered too many workers and was too costly for employers. If Trump takes his own crack at overtime reform, its likely hell make far fewer workers eligible for time and a half pay.

Many of the people Obamas reforms aimed to help work in food and retail jobs, earning relatively low salaries while clocking long days. A group of Chipotle workers recently sued the burrito chainfor backpay, arguing Obamas overtime changes should still apply even though the rule is now in legal limbo. The case hasnt yet been decided.

As with the overtime expansion, this White House has abandoned the push for a higher minimum wage made by Obama. The idea of hiking the minimum wage tends to poll well across party lines; although he flip-flopped on the issueas a candidate, Trump once said he would like to raise it to at least $10. But so far as president, he seems intent to leave such matters to the market. The federal minimum wage, which prevails in any state without a higher one, is currently $7.25 per hour and hasnt been raised in eight years.

Beyond the major policy shifts, Trumps effect on low-wage work will be felt in less obvious ways. He recently made two nominations to the five-member National Labor Relations Board, which interprets collective bargaining law and referees disputes between employers and unions. His conservative choices one is a management-side attorney, the other a former GOP staffer who served on the House labor committee would end the current liberal majority and push the board to the right. (One of them has already been confirmed.)

If history is any indication, the Republican board would likely reverse some union-friendly rulings and draw tighter boundaries around whos eligible to unionize. Celine McNicholas, a labor policy expert at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the board is one way Trump could chip away at what she considered modest gains made for lower-income workers during the Obama years.

These potential setbacks are going to prove to be incredibly damaging, particularly for folks who are low-wage workers, McNicholas said. They are certainly losers under the Trump administration.

One potential beneficiary of the new board is McDonalds. The fast-food giant recently went to trial before an administrative law judge at the labor board to determine whether it counts as a joint employer alongside its franchisees; McDonalds could be held jointly responsible for violating workers rights. In general, a conservative labor board would be more likely to side with employers in such contentious cases.

The boards general counsel, Richard Griffin, who functions as a quasi-prosecutor, brought the case against McDonalds on behalf of workers who claimed theyd been illegally retaliated against for their activism in the Fight for $15 protests. A former union lawyer, Griffin assumed the post in 2013 and has been a thorn in the side of not just McDonalds but also Walmart and other employers hes taken to trial. His aggressive tenure has so infuriated business groups that some Republicans have demanded that he step down.

But at this point, that would no longer be necessary. Griffins four-year term expires in November. It will be up to Trump to choose his replacement.

See the article here:
Donald Trump Is The Fast-Food President - HuffPost

White House special counsel Kellyanne Conway daubed the airwaves with her usual dudgeon Thursday night and Friday morning, protesting in TV interviews that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigationnow issuing subpoenas from a grand juryhas become a "fishing expedition."

For a change, Conway's dudgeon was defensible. Once impaneled, any grand jury can sail the seven seas for months or years trawling for big fish, shellfish, pinnipeds, cetaceanseven kelp, and algae blooms should it be so moved. In the event that space travel proves feasible, nothing will stop grand juries from touring the planets on a quest to serve subpoenas. If a portal into the fifth dimension ever makes itself apparent, grand juries will mount expeditions there, too.

Story Continued Below

The Constitution plus decades of judicial precedent have endowed grand juries with legal superpowers. The Supreme Court has ruled that a grand jury "does not depend on a case or controversy for power to get evidence, but can investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even just because it wants assurance that it is not." [Emphasis added.] In another case, the court held that a grand jury can operate independently of "questions of propriety or forecasts of probable results" and elsewhere that a grand jury investigation isn't complete "until every available clue has been run down and all witnesses examined in every proper way to find if a crime has been committed."

In short, every grand jury is a fishing expedition. Mueller can start with Russia, his original mandate, but he can take his investigation wherever he finds crime. That's right, the bass fisherman could come home with a swordfish. Or even a sword.

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Aside from firing Captain Mueller, there's little Donald Trump can do to shield himself, his family, his political appointees, his business associates and his campaign buddies from the grand jury's scrutiny. And it's not clear that Trump can fire Mueller easily under the current set-up. A pair of bipartisan bills currently introduced this week in the Senate would give the special counsel the right to challenge his firing in court. "Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., told reporters.

Think of a grand jury as an insatiable maw and you begin to understand Muellers task and Trumps terror. Mountains of phone records, business records, emails, and all manner of paperwork are likely to be subpoenaed by Mueller. Already, subpoenas covering the June 2016 meeting in Donald Jr.s Trump Tower office have been issued, and orders for principals to give grand jury testimony will surely follow. While the orders can be challenged or narrowed, Trump's people will find no easy escape from the dragnetwhatever Mueller points his flashlight at will glow with grand-jury illumination. According to the Washington Post, Trump burned with fury when he learned that Mueller would have access to several years of his tax returns.

The Trump protest against the Russia investigation was typical, as he called it "fake" and "demeaning" at West Virginia campaign-style rally this week. Such tirades will earn him no reprieve. Grand juries don't return to port until they've filled the hatches with fresh catch. This wasn't Trump's only act of non-persuasion this week. He also took to Twitter to blame Congress for the United States' poor relationship with Russia after it passed a veto-proof sanctions measure. Would it be reading too much into the president's thinking to conclude from his tweet that he desires to collude in public with Putin but the fact that the damn House and Senate just wont allow it has angered him to the point of tears?

Like Bill Clinton before him, Trump will be compelled to give testimony. He might want to start working on that honesty thing so the special counsel doesn't nail him on that perjury thing, like independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr did Clinton. He could use some practice on telling the truth. This week, the Washington Post proved him a liar not once but twice. Lie No. 1: You may recall that Trump deniedthrough his lawyersany knowledge of the meeting his son, Donald Jr., took in June 2016 with Russians at Trump Tower. But then the Post reported that Trump dictated Junior's original public statement that the meeting was primarily about adoption. Lie No. 2: Remember how Trump tweeted back in February that, contrary to the reporting from the "FAKE NEWS media" (specifically the Washington Post), he had enjoyed a "very civil conversation" on the phone with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull? Another whopper, as this Post published this week transcripts of the Trump-Turnbull conversation that proved the call was just as uncivil as the Post previously reported.

Like a carnival come to town, Mueller's grand jury performance promises high entertainment value over the 12-to-24 months some expect in to run. Expect representatives from Trump White House to storm the cable news studios to heckle, browbeat and insult Mueller with the same vehemence that Clinton's loyalists dealt Starr. Expect four or five journalists to come out of the investigation with big book contracts. Since the jurors and prosecutors are sworn to silence, expect most of the noise about the investigation to come from the witnesses and their lawyers, who bear no legal obligation to keep mum. Expect journalists to case the federal courthouse looking for arriving witnesseskeeping an eye on the back doors for sneak entrancesin hopes of divining Mueller's direction.

And expect Mueller to deliver something big. Very big. This is, after all, his last great hunt.

******

As we continue the search for a name for the no-name scandal, some of the entries are turning silly. Here are this week's "best" contributions, send yours to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. Lenin' on the Edge (Silas York), Wash Reince and spin (John Willoughby), Russian for Cover (Peter Kelly-Detwiler), Lyin' King (Bobbogram), Donald Trump Hocus POTUS (Douglas Hutchison), Trump Tower Sus-PENCE (Douglas Hutchison), Trump's Magnificent Putin Ob-SESSION (Douglas Hutchison), The Art of the Squeal (Lenai Boye), Samovar Dogs (Alex Khachaturian), and "Drag-Nyet (Alex Khachaturian). My email alerts will take the Fifth. My Twitter feed will implicate my email alerts. My RSS feed will leave the country.

Jack Shafer is Politicos senior media writer.

Originally posted here:
Week 11: Gone Fishing for Donald Trump - Politico

The Trump administration began the formal process to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but says its willing to "re-engage" if terms more favorable to the U.S. are met.

The State Department said it notified the United Nations that the U.S. will pull out of the global agreement as soon as it can under the terms of the 2015 accord, but President Donald Trump would agree to remain in the deal was reconfigured to be better for U.S. interests.

As the President indicated in his June 1 announcement and subsequently, he is open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the U.S. can identify terms that are more favorable to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers, the State Department said.

The U.S. will continue to participate in international climate negotiations, including the upcoming UN meeting on climate change "to protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration."

The filing by the State Department kicks off a withdrawal process that will take years to unfold and is largely symbolic. Under terms of the deal, the earliest the U.S. can formally remove itself from the accord is in November 2020 -- just after the next presidential election.

The Secretary General welcomes any effort to reengage in the Paris agreement by the United States, said Stphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres.

Trump announced in June that the U.S. would leave the Paris climate pact, saying it favors other nations at the expense of American workers, but remained open to seeking a better deal. That stance drew umbrage from world leaders, including those from France, Germany and Italy who have called the agreement "irreversible."

"We firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies," they said in a statement then.

Observers said they doubted the administration truly intended to renegotiate the climate deal.

"This reckless move by President Trump demonstrates that he has no real intent to renegotiate the Paris climate agreement, and would rather walk back from our international climate commitments altogether," Oxfam Americas Climate and Energy Director Heather Coleman said in a statement.

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Donald Trump Notifies UN of Paris Exit While Keeping Option to Return - TIME

John Kelly is a former United States Marine Corps general who has had multiple deployments in the battlefields of Iraq. However, he may have just embarked on his toughest assignment yet: controlling the Twitter habits and impulsive decision-making of a 71-year-old man.

Related:President Trump Has the Work Ethic of a Bored, Lazy Child

Formerly the secretary of Homeland Security, last week Kelly was appointed asPresident Donald Trump's new chief of staff, replacing Reince Priebus. But any notion that this might be a comfortable posting for a man more familiar with war zones than war rooms was quickly dispelled, according to Leon Panetta, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a friend of Kellys who has spoken with him this week.

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He knows the problems. He knows how difficult its going to be, Panetta told The Washington Post Friday. Its like being dropped into the middle of a combat zone.

According to the Post, one major problem Kelly has identified as being in need of fixing is the way Trump makes decisions on important issues. Kelly has already assumed control of managing the paperwork and advice that reaches Trumps desk.

resident Donald Trump shakes hands with John Kelly after he was sworn in as White House Chief of Staff in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., July 31, 2017. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The way Trump consumes advice and intelligence is a stark departure from previous incumbents of the Oval Office. Hampered by the presidents notoriously short attention span, National Security Council officials have resorted to tactics such as inserting Trumps name into as many paragraphs as possible because reading his own name is one way to maintain his interest.

Trump is said to favor an Oval Office with open access to the president, which has led to fierce competition from aides to get their desired information to the president. Kelly is not the first to try to control that flow. Priebus was long fighting that battle before he was ousted last month.

And then there is the cable news addiction. Television and particularly Fox News is a major source of Trumps information, often directly seen when he tweets out claims or arguments that only minutes later were raised on his network of choice.

That brings us to perhaps Kellys toughest job yet: controlling Trumps tweets. Trump has long lauded his Twitter use as being key to his outsider victory in last years election and regularly boasts about his number of followers. According to a Politico report Friday, he also marvels at how quickly his tweets appear on television after he hits the send button.

Trump often tweets early in the morning or late at night, with little or no consultation with his advisers beforehand. Such habits have long been discouraged by his legal advisers, among others, regarding an ongoing investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia. Indeed, his Twitter use was cited by multiple law firms as a major reason why they turned down an offer to represent the president.

Another example was his recent announcement of a transgender military ban, which caught the military, among others, off guard. Kelly, reports Politico, sees one of his major tasks as pushing his tweets in the right direction, although he has already given up the idea of preventing him from tweeting.

You can't have a president who gets up at 5 a.m. and tweets policy, Panetta told Politico. The best thing would be if the president stopped tweeting, but thats not going to happen.

But perhaps Kelly can succeed where others have failed. Since the days of his campaign, Trump has shown himself to respect generals above perhaps all others and has continued to surround himself with senior military officers since moving into the White House. If General Kelly cant rein in the president perhaps nobody can.

John is the kind of guy who will look you in the eye and tell you what the hell he is thinking, Panetta told The New York Times. The real question is whether the president will give him the authority he needs to do the job.

Read the original here:
Donald Trump: A 71-Year-Old Man Who Needs a Military General to Manage His Twitter Use - Newsweek