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Perez wins Republican primary in special Miami House election Miami Herald Daniel Perez won a special Republican primary in a GOP-leaning Miami state House district Tuesday meaning the attorney and political newcomer is now the heavy favorite to head to Tallahassee in a few months. Perez defeated brewery owner Jose ... and more »

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Perez wins Republican primary in special Miami House election - Miami Herald

Long an outcast in their own party, Log Cabin Republicans, the nation's leading center-right LGBT advocacy group, is being welcomed by Team Trump, and Republicans as a result.

And with the bulk of bigger, better financed but liberal LGBT groups being held at arm's length because of their attacks on President Trump and Republicans, Log Cabin has suddenly become a main driver of key gay and transgender civil rights in Washington.

"It really does hold Log Cabin to be that choice for the entire LGBT community," said newly installed Chairman Sarah Longwell. "We're the only ones who are going to be making sure that Republicans get better every day on our issues," she added.

In just the past two months, Log Cabin officials have met with White House, Education Department, Pentagon, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission officials to discuss civil rights issues, said Gregory T. Angelo, president of the group that turns 40 this year.

It is celebrating its anniversary with annual bash at the Trump International Hotel in Washington in September. Last year, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a headliner.

Recognizing its new influence, Log Cabin has added several political veterans to its board to expand its reach on Capitol Hill and the administration.

Angelo said the Trump Hotel fundraising dinner and expansion of GOP heavy hitters is "a way to show that we are more relevant than ever."

While liberal LGBT groups have been warning of coming a Trump anti-gay crackdown, Log Cabin has seen the opposite from the president, the first Republican ever to mention gay rights at his national nominating convention.

"At best, Trump is a quiet ally," Angelo said. "He's certainly a do no harm' guy," he added of Trump, the first ever Republican presidential nominee to promote gay rights at his nominating convention.

In his first few months, liberal LGBT advocacy groups gave Trump an 'F,' angered with some of his moves, such as withdrawing legal guidance for transgender students that was already tied up in courts. They also slammed some of his appointments and raised questions about immigration policies.

But the White House pleased some with his decision, urged by Log Cabin, to keep in place an executive order from former President Obama barring federal contractors from workplace discrimination. And new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is an outspoken LGTB and gay marriage advocate.

Angelo described several positive interactions with the administration and key agencies.

For example, Angelo said that the White House has been responsive to his calls and meeting requests. "It's night and day, no meeting has been denied," he said.

His group has also had meetings with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Longwell called the controversial secretary "incredibly open." Angelo has also met with U.S. officials at the United Nations and the Department of Health and Human Services. And even the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reached out to Log Cabin.

The group meanwhile has moved to expand its reach and influence by installing connected Republicans on its board and boosting the number of women executives, including Rachel Hoff, who was the first openly gay delegate to serve on the Republican Platform Committee.

In announcing new members, Angelo said, "Fully 40 years since our founding and Log Cabin Republicans continues its growth and influence advocating for a stronger, more inclusive GOP. Our five newest Board members are no strangers to the fight for LGBT rights, and it is with great honor that our National Board of Directors welcomes them into the fold. We are thrilled to bring their many talents to bear as Log Cabin Republicans looks toward its next 40 years." They include:

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

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Trump welcomes in Republican LGBT advocates - Washington Examiner

Thomson Reuters

Jul 25th 2017 11:31PM

WASHINGTON, July 25 (Reuters) - A plan to repeal and replace Obamacare that Senate Republicans have been working on for months failed to get the 60 votes needed for approval Tuesday night.

The vote was 43 in favor and 57 against. Nine Republicans voted against the measure.

The plan would have made deep cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, and reduced Obamacare subsidies to lower-income people to help them defray the cost of health insurance.

It was the first of many expected votes this week on repealing or replacing elements of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Protests for and against Obamacare

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Tea Party Patriots supporters hold signs protesting the Affordable Care Act in front of the Supreme Court as the court hears arguments on the health care reform bill on Tuesday, March 27, 2012.

(Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Affordable Care Act supporters wave signs outside the Supreme Court after the court upheld court's Obamacare on Thursday, June 25, 2015.

(Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

A man holds signs during a protest on the second day of oral arguments for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building on March 27, 2012 in Washington, DC. Today is the second of three days the high court has set aside to hear six hours of arguments over the constitutionality President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Sister Caroline attends a rally with other supporters of religious freedom to praise the Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby, contraception coverage requirement case on June 30, 2014 in Chicago, Illinois. Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby, which operates a chain of arts-and-craft stores, challenged the provision and the high court ruled 5-4 that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom.

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

An Obamacare supporter counter protests a Tea Party rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in the morning hours of March 27, 2012 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court continued to hear oral arguments on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Affordable Care Act supporters hold up signs outside the Supreme Court as they wait for the court's decision on Obamacare on Thursday, June 25, 2015.

(Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Ron Kirby holds a sign while marching in protest of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on March 26, 2012 in Washington, DC. Today the high court, which has set aside six hours over three days, will hear arguments over the constitutionality President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

A protester waves his bible in the air as he overpowered by cheers from supporters of the Affordable Care Act as they celebrate the opinion for health care outside of the Supreme Court in Washington,Thursday June 25, 2015. The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide tax subsidies under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, in a ruling that preserves health insurance for millions of Americans.

(Photo By Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)

Nuns, who are opposed to the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, and other supporters rally outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Zubik v. Burwell, a consolidated case brought by religious groups challenging a process for opting out of the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate.

(Drew Angerer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Supporters of contraception rally before Zubik v. Burwell, an appeal brought by Christian groups demanding full exemption from the requirement to provide insurance covering contraception under the Affordable Care Act, is heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 23, 2016.

(REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

Protestors hold placards challenging 'Obamacare' outside of the US Supreme Court on March 4, 2015 in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court heard a second challenge to US President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. The US Supreme Court faces a momentous case Wednesday on the sweeping health insurance reform law that President Barack Obama wants to leave as part of his legacy. The question before the court is whether the seven million people or more who subscribed via the government's website can obtain tax subsidies that make the coverage affordable. A ruling is expected in June.

(MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Linda Door (L) protests against President Obama's health care plan in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on March 26, 2012 in Washington, DC. Today the high court, which has set aside six hours over three days, will hear arguments over the constitutionality President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Supporters of the Affordable Care Act celebrate after the Supreme Court up held the law in the 6-3 vote at the Supreme Court in Washington June 25, 2015. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the nationwide availability of tax subsidies that are crucial to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, handing a major victory to the president.

(REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

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Senate Republican plan to repeal, replace Obamacare fails - AOL

President Donald Trump angrily lashed out at unnamed Republican lawmakers on Sunday, saying they should protect him as repayment for his 2016 election coattails.

It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President, Trump tweeted at 4:14 p.m., EDT. That was just over an hour after he arrived back at the White House after spending around four hours at Trump National Golf Club in nearby Sterling, Virginia.

The eyebrow-raising tweet comes amid the ongoing scandal and multiple federal and congressional probes of Russias 2016 election meddling, including whether Trumps campaign and the Kremlin colluded to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Republican lawmakers are increasingly voicing their views that the president should stop tweeting about the matter, especially during theJustice Department investigation being led by former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller.

By launching a public attack on his fellow Republicans, Trump could open the door to an all-out revolt among some members of his own party. Whilesome Democrats talk about possible impeachment proceedings over the Russia allegations, legal and political experts agree that is unlikely as long as the president has the support of Republican leaders and rank-and-file members, who control both the House and Senate.

But if Trump loses his own party mates and Mueller finds damning evidence, experts of all political stripes say the presidentcould find himself in legal and political quicksand.

Some Republicans in recent days and weeks have advised Trump to stop calling the Russia probes a collective "witch hunt." But Trump frequently uses the term, as he did in a tweet he sent minutes before he slammed fellow Republicans.

It was unclear to whom Trump was referring Sunday.

Earlier in the day, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was on CNN and sided with Trumps legal analysis which he tweeted out Saturday morning that any president possesses the power to pardon himself.

I think, in all likelihood, he does, Paul said of Trump. I think that some of this hasnt been adjudicated.

But he advised caution in handing out pardons.

I think in a political sphere, I would caution someone to think about pardoning themselves or family members, or et cetera, Paul said. In a tweet Saturday that instantly lit up the internet and cable news before making the front pages of major Sunday morning newspapers, the president opined that all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon.

It was not immediately clear why Trump chose to openly talk of pardons before any law enforcement official has even mentioned possible charges against his campaign advisers, family members, White House staff, or himself. His incoming new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said Sunday that Trump is not thinking about pardoning anyone his first major public contradiction of his boss since accepting the job on Friday morning.

So far, there is no clear evidence of a Trump campaign-Russia collusion. His eldest son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law and senior White House adviserJared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort did meet in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer, who Trump Jr. was told would deliver Kremlin-supplied dirt on Clinton.

Trumpsvenomous social media post came after he spent several weeks appearing to go out of his way to publicly praise Republican senators as they try to reach consensus among themselves on the details of a measure to repeal and replace President Barack Obamas 2010 health care law.

Doing so was a major Trump campaign pledge, and he has made clear the details matter little to him; he and top aides say he would sign whatever the Senate GOP caucus can agree on.

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Trump Lashes Out at Republicans, Saying They Won't 'Protect' Him - Roll Call

Jul. 24, 2017 at 6:00 AM

Since modern polling began, no president has been as unpopular at this point in his first term as Donald Trump is today. So should Republicans worry that Trump will hurt their prospects of keeping control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections? In a word, yes if Trump remains as unpopular on Election Day 2018 as he is now.

It might seem like Republican congressional candidates should be able to escape Trumps unpopularity. Trump, after all, was the least liked major-party presidential candidate on record. Yet Republicans in 2016 won the national House vote by a percentage point and took 241 out of the chambers 435 seats for a net loss of only six seats. And even though Trump is historically unpopular as a president, he was even more unpopular as a candidate: Trumps current disapproval rating in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate is 56 percent, while 2016 general election exit polls put his unfavorable rating at 60 percent. No wonder some Republican House members might be reluctant to distance themselves from Trump, no matter how unpopular he might appear in polls.

That logic, however, misses a key distinction: Midterm elections are different from those that take place in presidential election years. And midterm elections that take place with an unpopular president in office are very different from presidential election years that have two historically unpopular candidates at the top of the major-party tickets.

Republican congressional candidates in 2016 may not have gotten much help from Trump, but they got a big boost from someone else: Hillary Clinton. Clinton, its easy to forget, was only modestly more popular than Trump. According to Gallup, Clinton had the second-worst unfavorable rating of any major-party presidential candidate in modern history, behind only Trump. In the 2016 exit polls, 55 percent of voters had an unfavorable view of Clinton.

Clintons unpopularity turned out to be a key factor in 2016 congressional races. Unsurprisingly, people who had a favorable view of Clinton primarily voted for Democrats in House races, while people with a favorable view of Trump primarily voted for Republican candidates. But among the 19 percent of voters who had an unfavorable view of both presidential candidates, House Republican candidates won by a margin of 30 percentage points. (Some voters may have cast a ballot for a Republican House candidate in the belief that a House controlled by the GOP would balance Clintons power after what most Americans thought would be a Clinton win.)

Next year, though, Clinton wont be on the ballot (although Trump continues to tweet about her). That could be a big problem for House Republican candidates, especially if Trump remains unpopular. Thats because realistically, the only way for Democrats to take back the House is to run up huge margins among voters who dont like Trump.

In part because of Clintons unpopularity, Democrats in 2016 won among voters who had an unfavorable view of Trump by only 50 percentage points. That may seem like a lot, but Democrats will need to do much better if they want to take back the House. Based on Trumps current approval rating, House Democratic candidates probably need to win Trump disapprovers by something close to a 70- or 75-point margin in 2018.

Two surveys conducted this spring by SurveyMonkey for FiveThirtyEight suggest that Democrats may get the margin they need among Trump disapprovers to take back the House. In these polls, SurveyMonkey asked voters (among other questions) whether they approved of the job Trump was doing as president and whether they planned to vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate for Congress in their district in 2018. On average, the surveys found that Democratic House candidates would win 82 percent to 7 percent (a 75-point margin) among respondents who disapproved of the job that Trump was doing. (The two surveys found very similar results.) Meanwhile, House Republican candidates won by an average of 78 points among respondents who approved of the job Trump was doing. Thats slightly worse than Republicans did among those who had a favorable view of Trump in 2016, according to the exit polls.

Overall, the SurveyMonkey polls gave Democrats a 9-point lead on the congressional ballot. Thats very close to their average 10-point edge in the FiveThirtyEight congressional ballot tracker. Its also much better than the 1-point margin Democrats lost the House by in 2016 and the 1-point lead they had in the final national congressional ballot polls before the election. And although we cant be sure of how exactly the vote share margin will translate to a seat margin in 2018, a 9- or 10-point win for the Democrats in the national House vote would put Democrats in a good position to take back the House.

The Democrats momentum shouldnt come as a big surprise. Midterms are usually more about a referendum on the president than a choice between the two parties. Since exit polls first started asking voters about their opinion of the president in 1982, those who disapprove of the presidents job performance going into a midterm election have overwhelmingly voted for the party that is not in control of the White House.

How those who disapprove of the presidents job performance have voted, by party, in midterm U.S. House elections since 1982

Excludes those who voted for third-party candidates in the midterm elections from 1982 to 2006.

Sources: Fox News, The New York Times

On average, the party out of the White House has won by 67 percentage points among those who disapprove of the presidents job performance. In the past five midterm elections, the opposition party has won that group by an average of 71 points. Thats close to the margin that the average SurveyMonkey poll has the Democrats winning by among those who disapprove of the job that Trump is doing. In other words, the SurveyMonkey poll suggests a 2018 midterm election that is in line with history.

Of course, Trump has well over a year to increase his approval rating before Election Day. And its not as though the Democrats are exactly popular: A May Gallup poll, for example, shows the Democratic Party with just a 40 percent favorable rating and a 53 percent unfavorable rating, both of which are on par with the presidents and the Republican Partys ratings. Then again, the Republican Partys low favorability ratings didnt help the Democrats hold the House in 2010 or win it back in 2014, both years when Republicans were about as unpopular as then-President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

Republicans still might not choose to distance themselves from Trump. The 2016 election taught us that the lessons of history dont always apply to modern politics. Maybe the Democratic Partys unpopularity will be a difference-maker in 2018 like Clintons unpopularity was in 2016. Maybe Democrats wont turn out to vote in 2018. Still, these are risky bets to place with a House majority on the line. Trump is more likely to be a liability than an asset in the 2018 general election. Presidents tend to get more unpopular in the lead-up to midterms, and people who dont like the president tend to vote against the presidents party.

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Bad News For House Republicans: Clinton Won't Be On The Ballot In 2018 - FiveThirtyEight