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GARNER, Iowa When a voter here asked whether Sen. Charles E. Grassley supports a probe of President Trumps tax returns, the Republican gave a qualified yes. In Virginia, asked about Russian interference in the presidential election, Rep. David Brat said an investigator should follow the rule of law wherever it leads. And in Arkansas, Sen. Tom Cotton told 1,400 people sardined into a high school auditorium that the Affordable Care Act has helped Arkansans.

This weeks congressional town halls have repeatedly found Republicans hedging their support for the new presidents agenda and in many cases contradicting their past statements. Hostile questions put them on record criticizing some of the fights Trump has picked or pledging to protect policies such as the more popular elements of Obamacare. And voters got it all on tape, promising to keep hounding their lawmakers if they falter.

Theres more of a consensus among Republicans now that youve got to be more cautious with what youre going to do, Grassley said after an event here, referring to efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. That didnt mean much to me in November and December. But it means a lot now.

No Republican could say that the raucous town halls surprised them. Since December, a growing number of liberal organizations and activists have shared strategies for getting public answers from members of Congress. More than a thousand local groups have been founded to organize around the Indivisible Guide, an organizational how-to manual drafted by former Democratic staffers. Many thousands more have shown up of their own volition at town halls in their districts.

At every town hall, some activists have followed Indivisible advice, spreading themselves around the rooms to avoid looking like a clique, holding up signs with simple messages such as Disagree and synchronizing their chants.

The efficiency of the protests has led some of their targets, including Trump, to question their legitimacy.

The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists, Trump tweeted Tuesday.

[In N.J., record crowd at town hall presses Republican to get tough on Trump]

Fox News, which frequently covered 2009s protests against Democrats and lent several of its hosts to tea party rallies, has largely ignored the town halls. Other coverage in conservative media has focused on the role of veterans of Barack Obamas political campaigns and the Obama-founded Organizing for America in promoting the Indivisible Guide.

Obama told them to get in our faces, Rush Limbaugh told listeners of his radio show on Wednesday. Well, theyre in our faces now, and hows it working out? People are starting to get tired of it.

A number of Republicans have refused to hold town halls and courted ridicule. In California, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, local Indivisible groups held empty chair town halls where activists could meet and note the absence of their legislators.

In Pennsylvania, activists propped up an empty suit to symbolize Rep. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.); in other states, following the guide, they posted dummy Have You Seen Me? ads. In New York, they derided Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for canceling town halls just a week after publishing a report, Millennials & the GOP, urging more members of Congress to hold them.

It is unfortunate and counterproductive that a small number of activists believe the best way to address the very serious issues facing our country is to hijack and ambush community events for the sole purpose of political theater, Stefanik wrote on Facebook.

[Republicans are facing the ire of the anti-Trump movement this week. Will it last?]

Its true that organization has boosted attendance at town halls.

If youve got a personal connection to what this member of Congress is trying to do, youve got a great story to tell and a lot of legitimacy to ask that question, said Indivisible Guide co-author Ezra Levin on a Sunday night conference call, which more than 30,000 activists dialed in to hear. Its really important to be polite, but dont be scared of being firm.

But other Republicans who held public events this week have pushed back against Trumps characterization of protests, and his attack on the media as an enemy of Americans.

No American is another Americans enemy, Cotton said on Wednesday night. He also said: I dont care if anybody here is paid or not. Youre all Arkansans.

They are our fellow Americans with legitimate concerns, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) tweeted on Tuesday, referring to the protesters. We need to stop acting so fragile.

[At a town hall in Trump country, an America thats pleading to be heard]

While the National Republican Congressional Committee warned of possible violence at town halls, this weeks events have been peaceful. The harshest treatment has been loud heckling at answers voters didnt like, for instance when lawmakers struggled to defend the new secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, or to provide details on how the Affordable Care Act could be replaced.

In Iowa, Grassley was booed over his vote for DeVos, and he pointedly defended it only by saying that a president deserved to pick his Cabinet. In Louisiana, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) was laughed at for saying he had not stayed for the entire DeVos hearing.

Cassidy, a medical doctor, is also the author of an ACA replacement bill that Republicans like Grassley have tentatively endorsed. If passed, it would allow states to keep the structure of the ACA, including its Medicaid expansion, even if other states opted out. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, has derided that solution. If you like your Obamacare, you can keep your Obamacare, is how Meadows described it a wry reference to an Obama pledge about individual plans that was belied when the ACA went into effect.

[Dave Brat: I thought it was going to be worse]

The Republicans whove had the neatest escape from town halls had already promised to save major portions of the law. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), one of 23 Republicans whose districts voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump, told an audience Wednesday night that he would go for a replacement plan only if it saved popular parts of the ACA.

I do not favor repeal without there being a replacement in place, he said. Instead, he explained to a patient crowd that he wants to protect coverage for people with preexisting conditions, allow people under 26 to remain on their parents plans and ensure no lifetime caps on coverage. I want to assure the public that the majority in each house of the present Congress, I believe, will make sure these provisions continue.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a staunch Trump supporter from a deep red district, told constituents on Wednesday that preexisting conditions and 26-year-olds were the two Republican provisions that made it into the bill, and would obviously be part of a replacement.

But in 2009, it was Democrats, not Republicans, who introduced those provisions of the ACA. And the replacement framework from Republican leadership promises continuous coverage for people with preexisting conditions and also current health care plans; only the Cassidy plan, co-sponsored by moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and derided by conservatives, goes further.

Republicans have also struggled to answer constituents who took advantage of the ACA provision that allowed states to expand Medicaid to some people over the poverty line. In Cottons state, where a Republican-run government has maintained a version of the expansion called Arkansas Works, more than 300,000 people are estimated to have received coverage since the ACA went into effect.

Those results, and the stakes of repeal, were less clear when Cotton won his seat. The ACA, he said during a town hall meeting in 2014, was nothing but a churn operation designed to grow the power of the federal government. That year, he defeated an incumbent Democrat by 17 points.

Kim Kavin in Branchburg, N.J., contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost

Read more from the original source:
Republicans distance themselves from Trump's agenda at rowdy town halls - Washington Post

Former House Speaker John Boehners comments come as Republican lawmakers across the country are facing angry constituents at town halls worried that Obamacare will be yanked away without a suitable replacement. | AP Photo

He says talk in November about lightning-fast passage of a new health care framework was wildly optimistic.

By Darius Tahir

02/23/17 11:04 AM EST

Updated 02/23/17 11:46 AM EST

Former House Speaker John Boehner predicted on Thursday that a full repeal and replace of Obamacare is not going to happen.

Boehner, who resigned in 2015 amid unrest among conservatives, said at an Orlando health care conference that the idea that a repeal-and-replace plan would blitz through Congress is just happy talk.

Story Continued Below

Instead, he said changes to former President Barack Obamas signature legislative achievement would likely be relatively modest.

[Congressional Republicans are] going to fix Obamacare I shouldnt call it repeal-and-replace, because its not going to happen, he said.

Boehners comments come as Republican lawmakers across the country are facing angry constituents at town halls worried that Obamacare will be yanked away without a suitable replacement.

President Donald Trump has said in recent days that he will release a plan by early to mid-March on how the administration plans to move forward on a repeal-and-replace plan.

On Thursday, Boehner said the talk in November about lightning-fast passage of a new health care framework was wildly optimistic.

I started laughing, he said. Republicans never ever agree on health care.

Most of the framework of the Affordable Care Act thats going to be there, Boehner concluded.

Read the original post:
Boehner: Republicans won't repeal and replace Obamacare - Politico

Key Republicans in the U.S. House told the Federal Reserve not to issue new rules until President Donald Trumps pick to lead regulation of Wall Street at the agency is confirmed.

Should the Fed defy the request, lawmakers may undo their work, according to a Thursday letter to FedChair Janet Yellen from Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and 33 other Republicans on the panel.

We will work with our colleagues to ensure that Congress scrutinizes the Federal Reserves actions -- and, if appropriate, overturns them," according to the letter.

Trump hasnt announced his selections for any of the three vacancies at the seven-member Fed board, including the never-filled role of vice chairman for supervision, which was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. Among the three positions is that of Daniel Tarullo, who has served as the Feds point man on financial regulation, and plans to step down in April.

The Fed has received Republicans letter and has no further comment, said Eric Kollig, a spokesman.

Republicans and the Trump administration say Dodd-Frank and other financial rules have stifled economic growth and harmed consumers. Trump, who has called the law a disaster, signed an executive order earlier this month instructing the Treasury Department to examine financial rules and file a report on its findings.

Earlier, other Republicans -- including Patrick McHenry, from North Carolina, and Senator Pat Toomey, from Pennsylvania -- called for Yellen to hold off on various Fed activities until Trump nominees are in place.

In his letter, Hensarling of Texas referred to possible rules related to stress tests for banks that Yellen mentioned when she testified before the House earlier this month. Hensarling said that the Fed should halt rulemaking "absent an emergency," according to the letter.

Link:
Republicans Call on Fed to Halt Rules Until Trump's Picks Are in Place - Bloomberg

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Evan Mills/WIRED

The Affordable Care Act is far from the only Obama-era policy Republicans want to take down now that they control the government. A set of internet privacy rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission last year has also become a target. Though its received far less attention than healthcare or immigration, the rollback would affect millions of consumers and bring basic changes to how they use the internetthough they might not ever know it.

Companies like Google and Facebook can learn an awful lot about you based on what you search for, what pages you like, and who your friends are. But your wireless company and in-home broadband provider could learn much more. Although Google uses encryption to protect your searches from prying eyes, these companies can potentially see what sites you actually end up visiting and when you visit them. Mobile carriers track your location and could keep tabs on how much time you spend using different apps. And they can sell that information to the highest bidder.

It is unnecessary, confusing and adds yet another innovation-stifling regulation to the internet. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

The current FCC rules ban internet service providers and wireless carriers from selling many types of customer dataincluding web browsing history, location, and health informationunless you explicitly opt in. The rules do allow providers to sell certain types of less sensitive data, such as what type of data plan subscribers have, on an opt-out basis. But these gatekeepers to the internet have long envied internet giants like Google and Facebook. These massively wealthy companies couldnt exist without internet infrastructure to deliver their services. But they face fewer restrictions on data collection.

Now Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona plans to introduce a resolution to overturn the FCC rules, enabling internet providers and wireless companies to sell your data unless you explicitly opt out. The FCCs midnight regulation does nothing to protect consumer privacy, Senator Flake said in a statement to WIRED. It is unnecessary, confusing and adds yet another innovation-stifling regulation to the internet.

Until last year, the broadband providers had to comply with a set of less stringent privacy rules imposed by the Federal Trade Commission, which allowed the companies to sell your browsing data. That changed in September when a federal court decided that because the FCC had reclassified broadband providers as utility-like common carriers in 2015, the FTC no longer had the authority to regulate them. The FCC quickly passed a new set of stricter privacy rules in October. The new rules took effect last month.

The broadband industry, unsurprisingly, never liked the new restrictions. Access providers have watched jealously as companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook used their pipes to reap enormous revenues and become some of the most valuable companies on the planet. Now the broadband industry is working to become a bit more Google-like. Comcast bought NBC Universal. Verizon bought AOL and will soon own Yahoo as well. AT&T is trying to buy Time-Warner. All of these new consumer-facing acquisitions could benefit from the gods-eye view the broadband industry has into their customers browsing habits. Verizon did exactly that with its controversial supercookies in 2012. These trackers collected all unencrypted web traffic on customers devices and used that data to target ads.

Verizon eventually pared back the practice to collecting only data on Verizon-owned sites. But the industry clearly wants to have the option of turning supercookies on by default in the future. Earlier this year several industry groups sent a letter to Congress arguing that the FCCs broadband privacy rules confuse consumers because they only apply to access providers and not the Googles of the world.

Flake appears to be taking the letter to heart. His plan, first reported by Politico, is to use a seldom used law called the Congressional Review Act that allows Congress to overturn federal regulations within 60 days of when they take effect. It would also effectively ban the FCC from passing similar rules in the future, meaning that even if the Democrats retake the Presidency in 2021, the FCC still wouldnt be able to reinstate the privacy restrictions.

Flake describes his plan as the first step towards returning control of broadband privacy rules to the FTC. The catch is that as long as broadband providers are considered common carriers, the FTC has no authority to regulate them. But there are some older FCC privacy protections that will remain in place. If Congress enacts a resolution disapproving of the FCCs broadband privacy rules, no enforcement gap will be created, says former FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz. As long as the FCC has authority, he argues that a rollback wouldnt leave consumers entirely without privacy protections. Thats because federal law allows the agency to fine companies that dont tell customers theyre being tracked.

Even the new GOP-led FCC would presumably work quickly to pass a new set of privacy rules to avoid privacy anarchy. These would probably be more in line with the FTCs less restrictive rules. But courts may interpret similar rules as too close to those that Congress plans to roll back and prevent from being re-implemented says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In that case, the FCC may not be able to implement any new privacy rules at all, and it will be up to Congress to pass privacy protections. The Republicans have all the options, says Tien. The question is what they want. Just as with health care, it becomes incumbent on them to decide.

Either way, the FCC would not be able to re-introduce the stricter rules if Flakes rollback succeeds. Barring a major public backlash, internet providers could soon start selling your browsing data to advertisers without your express permission. With all that data-envy, we have little doubt that they will.

See the original post here:
Republicans Are Trying to Let Internet Providers Sell Your Data - WIRED

When President Trump tweeted that the news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! the outrage on the left was palpable.

Thats how dictators speak, they cried, comparing Trump to everyone from Lenin and Stalin to Mao and Mussolini. Former Obama adviser David Axelrod declared, No other president would have described the media as the enemy of the people.

No, not the media, just his Republican political opponents.

Axelrod seems to have forgotten that, back in 2010, his former boss let slip this telling insight into how he viewed his political adversaries: Were gonna punish our enemies, and were gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.

Few on the left compared Barack Obama to Stalin or Mao when he declared his fellow Americans who disagree with him to be enemies. (Obama later apologized for his choice of words.)

There was also a notable absence of outrage when, during the first Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton was asked Which enemy are you most proud of? and she replied, Well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians? Probably the Republicans.

Clinton didnt compare her Republican opponents to generic enemies, she compared them to an actual enemy. She compared them to the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism, a regime that took scores of US diplomats hostage for 444 days and is responsible for countless terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of Americans.

It was not the first time Clinton did it.

In August 2015, she compared pro-life Republicans to our terrorist enemies: Now, extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups, we expect that from people who dont want to live in the modern world, but its a little hard to take from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States.

She also compared Republicans to the Nazis, declaring that Trump and other GOP contenders wanted to go and literally pull [illegal immigrants] out of their homes and their workplaces ... Round them up, put them, I dont know, in buses, boxcars, in order to take them across our border.

I dont recall widespread revulsion on the left when a Democratic president and a Democratic presidential nominee made these repulsive remarks. Perhaps they didnt care, because the remarks were not targeted at the media, just Republicans.

To be clear, it was an outrage when Obama did it. It was an outrage when Clinton did it. And it is an outrage when Trump does it.

The Islamic State is an enemy. Iran is an enemy. North Korea is an enemy. Russia (yes, Russia, Mr. President) is an enemy. NBC News is not an enemy.

Members of the news media may be biased. They may even be an adversary, in the political sense of the word the opposition party, as Stephen K. Bannon calls them.

But our political opponents are not our enemies. They are our fellow Americans who disagree with us.

Our politics is increasingly filled not simply with anger but also contempt for those we see as our opponents. We saw this contempt in Obamas disdain for bitter Americans who cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who arent like them ... as a way to explain their frustrations.

We see it in Trumps crass comments about women and immigrants. We see it in the venom spewing from the left at anti-Trump rallies from riots on Inauguration Day to Madonna standing up before a cheering crowd on the Mall and declaring I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.

And we see it in some of the press coverage of Trump, which even CBS Face the Nation host John Dickerson has called hysterical. Trump is not wrong when he complains that the press is seething with so much anger and hatred for him.

Trump was wrong to call reporters enemies. And, yes, the demonization of those who disagree with us is a deep problem in American politics. But it didnt start with Trump.

Perhaps its time for Trumps critics including those in the media to take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask themselves how they are contributing to our growing culture of political contempt.

Special To The Washington Post

See the article here:
Funny 'enemies' wasn't so offensive when it meant 'Republicans' - New York Post