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Sen. John McCain called President Trumps proposed defense budget totally inadequate.

President Donald Trumps defense budget request seeks billions in extra funds for the military but falls well short of what some Republican lawmakers have sought.

CNN reports the sought-after funds represent only a roughly 3% increase over what former President Barack Obama said his administration would seek for fiscal year 2018, causing Trumps request to be met with fierce criticism from defense hawks on Capitol Hill. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said the budget was totally inadequate, and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry said it was basically the Obama approach with a little bit more, but not much.

Also read: What Trumps budget would cut and boost

Girding for the CBO report: Republicans in Congress are bracing for a report Wednesday expected to say their Obamacare repeal plan would leave millions of Americans without health insurance, further complicating their efforts to pass legislation quickly. As Politico writes, the Congressional Budget Offices score comes three weeks after House Republicans rushed to vote on the legislation without an update on its cost. The original House bill would have meant that 24 million more Americans would be uninsured over a decade. The new version may not show a much better figure.

Also read: What to watch in the CBOs score of the Republican health-care bill.

Senate pressured on health vote: Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are under increasing pressure to pass an Obamacare repeal-and-replace measure before the congressional recess in August. The Hill writes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is wary of committing to a specific deadline after the House struggled to pass a bill. But the White House wants the upper chamber to hit the gas, the Hill says.

Infrastructure plan criticized: Trumps $1 trillion infrastructure plan isnt getting the immediate bipartisan support he may have been hoping for, Bloomberg writes. Democrats blasted the plan, contained in Trumps budget, to spend $200 billion over 10 years to spur at least $800 billion in state, local and private infrastructure investment. They said the federal spending would be offset by cuts to existing programs already funding transportation projects. The fuzzy math and sleight of hand cant hide the fact that the presidents $200 billion plan is more than wiped out by other cuts to key infrastructure programs, said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

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Defense budget request falls short for some Republicans | Democrats rip Trump infrastructure plan as 'sleight of hand' - MarketWatch

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) questions former CIA Director John Brennan. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

The Republicans still are not serious about investigating the Trump-Russia scandal. That message came through resoundingly when the House Intelligence Committee held a public hearing on Tuesday morning with former CIA chief John Brennan. (Actually, this was not officially a committee hearing. Democrats on the committee were informed earlier that this would be considered a "task force" hearing because the Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, could not appear because he had recused himself from the Russia investigation.)

At the witness table, Brennan told a harrowing tale. As CIA director last summer, he saw what was happening with the hack-and-leak attack on the Democratic National Committee, and he reviewed top-secret intelligence and concluded that Russia was mounting this assault to disrupt the election, hurt Hillary Clinton, and help Donald Trump. He also at the time was aware of intelligence that showed contacts between Trump associates and Russia, and that caused him to conclude a thorough FBI investigation was warranted. He testified, "I saw interaction" that warranted concern.

This was a big deal. In March, then-FBI chief James Comey revealed during testimony to this committee that in July 2016 the bureau launched an investigation of contacts between Trump associates and Russia. Now the CIA head from then was stating that there was clear intelligence that justified that probe. He also revealed that in early August he was so concerned about the Russian operation he spoke to the head of Russia's FSB, the country's intelligence service, and warned him to knock it off. Brennan also revealed that in August and September he briefed a small number of congressional leaders and shared with them top-secret intelligence about Moscow's effort to subvert the election in part to benefit Trump. (This means that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan knew many details about the Russian operation but didn't challenge or correct Trump's continued public assertions that Russia was not necessarily the culprit in the DNC hack.)

Yet once again Republicans did not focus on the main elements of the story. When the Republicans on the committee had the chance to question Brennan, they did not press him for more details on Russia's information warfare against the United States. Instead, they fixated on protecting Trump.

The Republicans zeroed in on the issue of whether Trump and his associates colluded with any Russians involved in the attack on US democracyto push Brennan to say he had not seen concrete evidence of such conspiring. Reps. Tom Rooney (R-Fla) and Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) grilled Brennan repeatedly on this point. They posed the same basic query: Did you see any evidence that Trump or his associates plotted with Russians? "I don't do evidence. I do intelligence," Brennan replied. Still, they kept pressing him. They were obviously hoping he would state that he had not come across any such evidence so Trump and his champions could cite Brennan as a witness for their claim no collusion occurred.

In the face of this questioning, Brennan repeatedly stated that the intelligence he saw regarding contacts between Trump associates and Russia was worrisome and deserved full FBI scrutiny. So the Republicans failed in their mission to provide cover for Trumpand they ended up highlighting the legitimacy of the FBI inquiry begun under Comey.

A similar effort fell flat. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) questioned Brennan about the intelligence community assessment released in early January that concluded the Russian clandestine operation was designed to assist Trump. He several times asked Brennan if there had been evidence contrary to this conclusion that was not included in the report. Brennan explained that the assessment was the result of a thorough interagency process that looked to develop a consensus position. Still, King seemed to suggest that the assessment might be open to question. And Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) asserted he had reviewed raw intelligence, and he insisted the information supporting the assessment that Moscow had preferred Trump was not as solid as the intelligence community maintained. Here were Republicans trying to find wiggle room for Trump.

Rooney took another stab at undermining the dominant narrative of the Trump-Russia scandal. He asked whether the Russians had been rooting for Clinton to fail or for Trump to win. "It was both," Brennan replied. Rooney suggested that the Russians had gathered information damaging for Clinton's campaign that it did not release, and he asked Brennan, what would that mean for the conclusion that Russians were trying to help Trump? It appeared as if Rooney thought this would be an a-ha! moment: If the Russians sat on anti-Clinton material, well, that must be an indicator they hadn't' engaged in cyber-skullduggery to help Trump. Brennan shot this down with a simple reply: Since the Russians, like many others, believed Clinton would win, they might have been holding on to that material to damage her once she became president.

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) also tried to race to Trump's rescue. Complaining that some Democrats on the committee have publicly said they have seen evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, Turner asked Brennan if it would be accurate to characterize the intelligence Brennan saw when he was CIA chief as evidence of collusion. Brennan responded that this would not be an accurate characterization. Turner smiled, as if he had just blown a hole in the Democrats' case. Moments later, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) asked Brennan if he had seen the evidence and material shared by the FBI with the House Intelligence Committee in classified meetings. No, he had not. So Turner had proved nothing.

Perhaps the most absurd act of GOP distraction came when Rep. Ben Wenstrup (R-Ohio) raised an episode from 2012, when President Barack Obama was caught on a hot mic telling Dmitry Medvedev, then the president of Russia, that he would have more flexibility to negotiate with Vladimir Putin after the US presidential election. Calling this moment "pretty disturbing," Wenstrup asked Brennan, "Would you question that interaction?" Brennan didn't take the bait and said he had nothing to say in response. Wenstrup suggested that perhaps this should be investigated. Brennan didn't reply.

Gowdy finished up his questioning by concentrating on leaks and the unmasking within top-secret reports of Americans picked up incidentally by US intelligence surveillance. This has become a favorite topic of Republicans looking to defect from the core features of the Trump-Russia scandal. And Gowdy, a bit defensively, noted he had waited until the end of the hearing to pose these questions so the claim could not be made that Republicans are "hyperfocused" on the matter. Yet compared with previous hearings, Gowdy was restrained in declaiming leaks. This time he did not suggest, as he has before, that journalists should be prosecuted for publishing stories containing classified information.

When the hearing ended, the Republicans departed the room quickly. A few Democratic members lingered. One complained about the slow pace of the committee's investigation. Another pointed out that Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who's leading the committee's Russia investigation in Nunes' absence, had barely participated in the hearing. Conaway had opened the hearings without any reference to the interactions between Trump associates and Russia, but he had presented a prayer that invoked Jesus. As one Democrat noted, Conaway did not ask a single question during the proceedings. "That tells you all you need to know," this member said.

The rest is here:
Republicans Focus on Protecting Trump at Russia Hearing - Mother Jones

President Trump's $110 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia could have an unannounced side benefit of giving the United States leverage to reduce the Muslim monarchy's support for radical clerics, according to Republican lawmakers.

"There's no doubt there are things the Saudis are going to have to do to improve on as well," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told the Washington Examiner.

There are signs Trump is aware that the deal could help him address the problem. Just last year, presidential candidate Donald Trump was accusing Saudi Arabia of funding terrorism. A veto-proof majority of Congress voted last fall to allow the victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi Arabian government, and the Saudis were criticized heavily for financing schools around the world that teach a fundamentalist variant of Islam known as Wahhabism.

"That's the issue, in addition to other human rights concerns and other things," Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., said of the Wahhabist schools. "It's the incendiary, it's the kindling."

In public, Trump framed the arms deal as a means of getting Saudi Arabia, long a critical partner for U.S. security interests in the Middle East despite its ideological moorings, to counteract Iranian aggression and support for terrorism in the region. Those interests alone justify the agreement in the minds of many lawmakers.

"What's our list of high priority issues? Terrorism, pushing back against Iran, stability in the Middle East," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. "When you put that kind of in a list, it makes sense to continue a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia."

But Rubio suggested that it could also be a way to extract reforms in Saudi Arabia. "I imagine if a year from now Saudi Arabia, two years from now, has not improved in its ability to control radicalism, portions of that deal would be on the table in terms of revoking it," he told the Washington Examiner.

Roskam concurred. "I think that there will be a great deal of interest in posing those questions to the Saudis, what are their next steps in terms of the recognition of their exporting of Wahhabism," he said.

U.S. policymakers have struggled to strike a balance between the need for that relationship, which has buttressed the American economy and foreign policy interests in the Middle East for decades, and the danger posed by radical Saudi-backed schools. Saudi Arabian leaders are "both the arsonists and the firefighters" in the struggle against most jihadists, the Brookings Institution's William McCants told the New York Times in August.

"They promote a very toxic form of Islam that draws sharp lines between a small number of true believers and everyone else, Muslim and non-Muslim," he said.

The Saudis might not readily agree with that assessment, according to Roskam. "It's not clear to me that the Saudis recognize to the same extent that we do the concern about exporting Wahhabism," he said.

But that's where the arms deal could be useful. "To Senator Rubio's point, if you have a longer-term deal and delivery is not all at once, then you can stage it," Roskam said.

See the article here:
Trump gets new leverage over radical Saudi clerics, Republicans say - Washington Examiner

When Andrea Flynn, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, started work a year ago on a report about the racial and gender barriers holding back women of color in the United States in conjunction with the Ms. Foundation it was a very different political landscape. Its not just that Donald Trump wasnt yet president, but the notion that identity politics was some sort of toxin destroying liberalism had not yet really taken root.

Trumps narrow electoral victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, however, spawned apopular new theory amongst the chin-scratching white male liberal set: That identity politics which putanti-racism and feminism at the center of progressive ideology have harmed progressivism and need to be abandoned in favor of a more identity-neutral message based only on economics, in order to appeal to white working-class voters.

In a widely shared New York Timespiece published shortly after Trumps election, Mark Lilla scolded Hillary Clinton for calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop, which he suggested made white men feel left out and resentful. He argued thatliberal discourse about race and gender was somehow preventing people from addressing such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good and suggested that a healthy political framework isnot about difference, it is about commonality.

Lillas views took off in the progressive discourse, particularly among white men who will definitely flip out if you suggest they have self-interested reasons for wanting to minimize the attention given to increased diversity, particularly in progressive leadership. Theyre not claiming that racism and sexism dont exist, proponents will say, just that the ur-struggle that will solve all others is the struggle against capitalism. This recent Jacobin tweet is a good example:

Flynn and her team knew the report, titled Justice Doesnt Trickle Down and released Wednesday morning, had to address this controversy.

The focus [of the report] has always been on women of color, she explained on the phone, but we felt particularly in this political moment, it was really important to call out how some individuals are more vulnerable than others.

Yes, fixing current economic policies will move the needle a bit, she continued, but for women of color, social justice will not be an inevitable byproduct of economic progress.

Racism and sexism, like many other forms of discrimination, have been baked into our social and economic systems and will not simply fall away as a fairer economy emerges, the report reads, adding that the recent calls to abandon identity politics in favor of a race- and gender-neutral approach wouldsimply exacerbate race and gender inequities and injustices.

Anglique Roch, the vice presidentof external affairs for the Ms. Foundation, argued over the phone that acknowledging diversity and the different challenges different people face is ultimately the best way to create a stronger progressive movement.

It has always been true that if we help the least of us, it benefits all of us, she said, pointing out thatits hard to take full advantage of better economic opportunities when we are literally setting the start line for women and people of color so far back that theirmere existence is being criminalized.

If we dont look at the different policies and how theyre targeted, how will we ever get to equity, much less equality?Roch asked.

One major example covered in the report is health care.

Improving economic outcomes alone would not sufficiently address the myriad other rules contributing to the gendered and racialized disparities and inequities that have come to characterize the U.S. health system, Flynn writes.

Dr. Krystal Redman, whose work with SPARK Reproductive Justice Now is highlighted in the report, agreed.

Accessibility to coverage is important, Redman explained over the phone, but noted that racial and gendered barriers to care dont solely go away just because someone has coverage.

There are many providers who have their own ideas of how a patient should be treated based on how they present, Dr. Redman said.

As an example, Dr. Redmanargued that a black woman with four children who goes to the gynecologist is more likelyto get pushed into a long-acting form of contraception than a similarly situated white woman, who is more likely to have a chance to engage in dialogue with a doctor about whether or not she wants any more children.

Another huge example of the limits of an economic-only framework is the way that law enforcement treats white people differently than black and brown people.Just this week, Redman said, she had personal experience with that. Her husband,a dark-skinned black man, tall, dreads, everything like that, was pulled over, she said, because the cop said he was following too closely behind another vehicle.

We cant overcome those small heart-flashes of, Oh God, am I going to be safe?' when things like that happen, she said, and thats why we need to center race in the progressive movement.

Flynn agreed, noting that theres an economic angle to the way that people of color tend to be over-policed and funneled into the criminal justice system more than white people.

Even if people of color are able to have higher wages or better economic opportunities, Flynn argued, the fines and fees and experiences associated with the criminal justice system really serve as a wealth-stripping mechanism that is really sucking resources out of those communities.

In 2015, the Department of Justice highlighted this issue in its report on the police in Ferguson, Missouri. Law enforcement in the area clearly sawticketing black citizens for every little thing as a handy source of revenue. Accumulating wealth is hard when a white-run police force is treating your savings like apiggy bank.

ForRoch, the election of Trump and the formation of the resistance against him makes it even more important to put women of color and their experiences at the center of the progressive movement.

We have been fighting for freedom for several centuries now, she said, not without a note of humor.

The recent resurgence of the organized labor movement,Roch added, is one example of how the perspectives and insight gained byemphasizing identity politics and putting women of color in leadership roles can help progressives. Traditionally, labor has been seen as a movement of white men in manufacturing jobs, but these days, the movement is growing because of service workers who are disproportionately women of color. That changes the shape of the labor movement, but also makes it stronger and more forward-looking,Roch suggested.

The fight were fighting now, under the new administration, isnt new for these women, she added. They have been fighting in Mississippi, in Albuquerque and Miami and Tennessee and Kentucky, for years.

Roch believes in people coming together, but argues that simply wont work if they have to leave their identities and unique experiences behind them. Those experiences are what motivates us to be passionate, she said. The things that impact us are what motivate us to fight together.

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Should progressives abandon identity politics? No new report suggests women of color should lead the movement - Salon

Whew! For once, one of my predictions was correct: Donald Trump had a great visit to Saudi Arabia. It was a great visit for him, it was a great visit for the Saudis and the other Arab Gulf states, andlast but not leastit was a great visit for magical, glowing orbs.

I want to spend a little time talking about one of the reasons why the trip went so well. Ill warn you: This is a somewhat taboo subject for progressive foreign-policy types. The subject, friends, is arms sales. Progressives dont like arms sales very much, but they need to pay attention to them, because theyre one big way Republicans are fighting forand winningthe votes of working-class Americans who have traditionally voted for Democrats.

While the president was in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration announced $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabiawith an additional $240 billion committed over a 10-year period. If youve ever worked in government, you know this is what is called a deliverable, the clunky management-consultantese term for a tangible outcome of a visit or meeting. When Donald Trump is asked to justify his trip to Saudi Arabia, hell cite that $110 billion in arms sales.

There are a few interesting things about these sales. The first is that many of these sales were already in the works. The Obama administration spent eight years quietly selling a lot of arms to Saudi Arabia: When President Obama left office, for example, the United States still had $100 billion in the foreign military sales pipeline with Saudi Arabia and, in 2011, had inked what was previously the largest arms sale in U.S. history with the Kingdoma $29 billion deal to sell F-15s to the Saudis.

The 18 Independent Agencies Trump Wants to Eliminate

Obama-era sales to Saudi Arabia were in keeping with sales to other Gulf states: Both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates bought a tremendous amount of U.S. arms between 2009 and 2017. Qatar bought more U.S. arms than any other state in 2014 and, in the waning days of the Obama administration, announced that it would buy nearly $4 billion in Boeing-made F-15s in addition to $19 billion in commercial aircraft, also from Boeing.

Overall, the Arab Gulf states went on a spending spree during the Obama years, and most of the money was spent on American arms.

So why didnt you hear a lot about this from Democratic politicians during the 2016 election season? There are two main reasonsone strategic and one moral.

Strategically, not everyone is convinced that arming the Arab Gulf states to the teeth is a wise idea. Some worry that these arms might someday endanger Israels security, while others worry the Arab Gulf states might be encouraged to use their new toys on disastrous military interventions against Iran or Iranian proxies in, say, Yemen.

The quick and unsatisfying answer to these concerns is the global market. The Arab Gulf states have money, and that money will buy the weapons that are available. If U.S. arms are not for sale, fine: French, Chinese, or Russian arms will be. (And if you dont believe me, look at the way in which Gulf statesfrustrated by U.S. export controls on drone technologyare turning to the Chinese.) Selling U.S. arms to the Gulf states, by contrast, further ties them to U.S. interests by deepening cooperation and interoperability between the U.S. military and its Gulf partners. One of the reasons Qatar wanted to buy U.S. fighters to partially replace its French-made fleet, for example, was because they discovered how difficult it was for their existing fighter aircraft to fly with the U.S. air force as part of coalitions over Libya and Syria.

Arms sales also drive down the cost of our own weapons and thus the amount of money U.S. tax-payers have to spend on defense instead of other priorities like, say, the State Department, school lunches, or housing subsidies. Heres one example: Because the United States is buying fewer F-35s than originally planned and using more of its fourth generation fighters (F-15s, F-16s, etc.) in the skies over Iraq and Syria than previously anticipated, the Department of Defense will likely need to buy more of those fourth generation fighters in the coming years. The recent sales of F-15s to Qatar, F-18s to Kuwait, and F-16s to Bahrain will drive down the cost per plane for the Pentagon. Thats a good thingat least financially.

Morally, though, many progressives just grow ill at the idea of selling weapons abroad. Senator Chris Murphy, for exampleone of the more eloquent and consistent critics of U.S. arms sales in the Senate, even though his own state has a very robust defense industrial basesees nothing admirable about the idea of selling weapons to the Saudis that might be used in Yemen. Other progressives agree: Yes, they argue, we understand the demand of the market will be met by someone, but do we have to be complicit in providing the supply? In other countries, progressives have even taken to the courts in an effort to halt sales.

I have a lot of respect for these progressives and their values. I spent too much time in Sunday School as a kid to not feel a little uneasy about the business of selling weapons. And the angst many progressives feel about U.S. arms sales has been enough to keep many Democrats from talking up their successes in helping U.S. industry abroad. I wonder, though, if there isnt a real political cost to not doing so.

Boeing employs 157,000 peoplealmost all of them in the United States. 14,500 people work in Boeings facilities in Missouri, where the F-15 and F-18 are made, where Senator Claire McCaskill is up for reelection next year, and where Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton 56 to 38 percent in 2016. (Those 14,500 people do not include the many thousands of other Americans who make parts for the F-15 and F-18 elsewhere in America.)

Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, a huge winner in the recent arms deal with Saudi Arabia (despite ace businessman Jared Kushner negotiating the price down on behalf of the Saudis), employs an additional 97,000 workersagain, most of them in the United States. And Raytheon, another big winner last week, employs another 60,000 or so Americans.

Donald Trump obviously has no moral qualms about selling weapons to our partners and allies abroad. And so while Democrats leave points on the board with working-class voters by not talking about how much Democrats do to support U.S. industry, Republicans swoop in to take credit with assembly line workers for even those things that Obama approved and set in motion.

The way in which Trump brags about U.S. arms sales, of course, is in keeping with the strain of economic mercantilism that ran through his populist campaign message. That message worked with voters throughout the Midwest, helping to cost Clinton the election. So while progressives might have moral qualms about companies that sell weapons, the roughly 1.2 million American voters who work in the aerospace and defense sectortogether with the roughly 3.2 million Americans who support the sector indirectlysee little wrong with the sales that help ensure their livelihoods and provide a future for their children.

This might be another area in which progressive eliteswho have the kinds of education and skills that dont require them to seek work on the assembly lineare simply out of touch with the voters they need to win back control of the Congress and state assemblies, never mind the presidency. And politics aside, surely even the moral calculus of arms sales gets more complicated when you think about the millions of American mouths that are fed by mothers and fathers who work in the aerospace and defense sector.

Donald Trump, for his part, is speaking to those voters. And even as progressives fret about U.S. arms sales, they should also fret about what it will mean for the rest of their agenda when Republicans claim credit for protecting some of the last good assembly-line jobs in America.

Read more:
What Progressives Miss About Arms Sales - The Atlantic