Evening summary
Have a good night, everyone.
- President Trump vetoed a bipartisan resolution to end the Saudi-backed war in Yemen, a measure seen largely as a rebuke of his ties with the Saudi government. He called the resolution a “dangerous attempt to weaken my constitutional authorities”.
- Attorney General William Barr decided that asylum seekers at the border are ineligible for release and must be held at detention centers. The American Civil Liberties Union is planning to sue the Justice Department over the decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union responds to the Attorney General William Barr’s decision to strip the rights of asylum seekers who cross the border to be released on bond.
Breaking: ACLU plans to sue the Justice Dept on this decision to hold asylum seekers without bond https://t.co/tsGUlgEAtT
— Julia E. Ainsley (@JuliaEAinsley) April 16, 2019
Trump vetoes resolution to end US aid to Saudi-backed war in Yemen
From the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino:
.@realDonaldTrump vetoes the bipartisan War Powers résolution that would have ended US support for the Saudi-backed war in Yemen pic.twitter.com/REUgMF3oG1
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) April 16, 2019
Senate passed the bipartisan resolution on 13 March in a 54 to 46 vote. The measure was largely seen as a rebuke of President Trump’s alliance with the Saudi-led forces behind the military action.
The Associated Press is reporting that a US district judge believes that the Trump administration could identify potentially thousands of children who were separated from their families at the border in less time than the one to two years it wants.
However, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw expressed reluctance to impose deadlines, asking lawyers for the administration and American Civil Liberties Union to try to reach a mutual agreement.
The ACLU, which estimates thousands of children may have been separated from July 2017 to June 2018, wants the job completed in three months.
Sabraw scheduled a hearing April 24 with a US Department of Health and Human Services official who spearheaded an earlier effort that reunited more than 2,700 children with their families.
AG: Asylum seekers at border ineligible for release on bond
Attorney General William Barr has stripped the right of asylum seekers who cross the border to seek release on bond, requiring instead that they be held in mandatory detention.
NEW: AG Barr decides that asylum seekers at the border who pass "credible fear" interviews and are transferred to a full deportation hearing are INELIGIBLE for release on bond.
— Hamed Aleaziz (@Haleaziz) April 16, 2019
Only DHS may decide to release them. Ruling is effective in 90 days.
Ruling: https://t.co/xesCkgbaps
Read the full ruling here.
Updated
Hey friends, Vivian Ho here on the west coast, taking over for Tom McCarthy. Let’s see where the rest of the day takes us, shall we?
Summary
Here’s a summary of the day’s action so far:
- Fund-raising figures for the 2020 presidential candidates showed Bernie Sanders out in front in terms of small donors, with 84% of his donations being under $200. Senator Elizabeth Warren had the second-largest proportion of small donors with 70%.
- Fox News inadvertently gave the Sanders campaign a boost by inviting the candidate to a televised town hall, where Sanders drew cheers with calls for universal health care and fighting climate change.
- Donald Trump’s reelection campaign led the overall fundraising race with $30m raised, compared with $18m for Sanders and $12m for senator Kamala Harris.
- The Trump campaign is targeting elderly voters on social media with 44% of its Facebook ad budget devoted to voters aged 65 and older, Axios reported.
-
Trump offered the French president his condolences on the Notre Dame fire and said the United States stands with France.
- Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg demonstrated conversational French speaking skills, and he also probably speaks Zombie.
Former House speaker Paul Ryan has taken a teaching gig.
Ryan, whose legacy rests on Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, will teach at the University of Notre Dame next year, instructing students on “the fundamentals of American government” and “the current state of political polarization.”
Ryan will also also teach Catholicism and economics, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Notre Dame is in South Bend, Indiana, whose mayor happens to be running for president.
“As an Irish Catholic from the Midwest, the University of Notre Dame has always held a special place in my heart,” Ryan said in a university statement obtained by the Journal Sentinel.
“It is an honor to be part of a University where Catholic principles, robust debates, academic freedoms and diverse viewpoints are allowed to flourish. As much as I hope to impart as a lecturer, I know that I will learn a tremendous amount from Notre Dame’s remarkable students as we discuss the big challenges before our nation and collaborate on how best to address them.”
Cory Booker – US senator from New Jersey, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate
Bodega Boys – the entertainers Desus and Mero, Bronx-bred pop podcasters turned stars of the late-night Showtime show “Desus and Mero”
Brick City – Newark, NJ, where Booker lives and used to be mayor
Bodega Boys made it over to Brick City. And yeah, it was indeed brick city for much of the night, but my floater wasn't half bad. Catch me on @SHODesusandMero this Thursday (11pm ET/PT) -- don't miss this game. pic.twitter.com/r3iZWYmefd
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) April 16, 2019
Updated
From the comments
Brave political opinions...[John Kerry?!?]
...underwhelmed with the Trump logo...
Trump's logo looks like the Tesco cheap range logo. (Says it all I reckon, except that Trump is a leech on society, and definitely not cheap or value for money) I wonder if Tesco will sue for the misuse of their logo.
...envious of US politics?! Well that’s nice to hear for once...
As a European, I am deeply envious of what is going on in US politics. Yes, there is a powerful right wing side, but there is also a vibrant and powerful emerging left too.
German voters and politicians are so stuck in 90s politics. They are sleep walking. No urgency on the climate or to how an erstwhile social democrat party could have lost its roots so badly. There is nothing going on here. And about the only party that hasn't sold out to neoliberalism, the Linke, are also not supported.
We are 11 years away now from serious climate breakdown and German politicians are half asleep, talking about completely irrelevant lobby friendly issues. It's very depressing.
...and a question for the ages:
Trump: out front in the race for $$$. Noting of course that the Democrats have to divide the pie many ways while Trump mostly has it to himself:
President Trump raised more campaign money in the first three months of 2019 than any of his Democratic challengers: https://t.co/IQdoB9stfJ pic.twitter.com/vlvqVYTWLS
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 16, 2019
Mayor Pete Buttigieg will deliver a keynote address at an annual dinner for the Human Rights Campaign in Las Vegas next month, the group announces:
.@HRC announces Mayor Pete will keynote 2019 dinner in Las Vegas on May 11: "Pete Buttigieg is changing hearts and minds across America in his trailblazing campaign to be the Democratic Party’s first out nominee for President of the United States,” group’s president says.
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) April 16, 2019
Trump targets seniors on Facebook
The Trump 2020 campaign is going after seniors on Facebook in a much more aggressive way than the leading Democratic campaigns, according to data given to Axios exclusively from Bully Pulpit Interactive.
So far this cycle, the Trump camp is spending 44% of its Facebook ad budget to target users 65 years old and older, Axios reports. The top 12 Democrats have allotted 27% of their Facebook ad budgets to those voters.
Older voters helped boost Trump to the White House in 2016, when voters 65+ went for Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 52-45 margin. That’s six points better for Trump than his average (Clinton won the overall popular vote 48-46).
In his ads targeting older voters, Trump’s anti-immigrant message is sounding loud and clear, Axios reports:
Trump is using nativist language around immigrants in 54% of his ads, according to BPI. So far Democrats have not responded in kind on the topic of immigration and are focused on fundraising and other policy issues.
Updated
This analysis by Vox’s Ezra Klein of which Democratic candidates are positioning themselves as “fighters” and which are carrying the “hope” message is interesting. Notably women candidates have broadcast the “fight” message more...
Number of times the candidate used the word “fight” in their announcement speech:
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) April 16, 2019
Buttigieg: 0
Bernie: 2
Beto: 2
Booker: 9
Gillibrand: 21
Harris: 23
Warren: 25
While, as Klein points out, the hopey-changey territory is less crowded:
The “fighter” lane is really crowded in the Democratic primary right now. The “hope” lane is wide open. That’s part of why Buttigieg has caught fire so fast. https://t.co/SXQReSGQdv
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) April 16, 2019
The justice department has announced that Thursday is Mueller time, with attorney general William Barr planning that day to release a redacted version of the special counsel’s nearly 400-page report.
There’s some objection from former prosecutors and others in the know about the manner in which the report is being released, with Barr, a Trump appointee and apparent loyalist, exercising discretion over what Congress gets to see and not see.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance tweets:
Congress, which is Constitutionally mandated to do oversight of the executive branch, will receive the same Barr edition of the Mueller Report the public gets to see. In & if itself, that tells you the executive branch is playing hide the ball, no matter what they say.
And there’s a sense that the report is already ready...
Knowing how attys work, I find it very hard to believe that Barr's redacted report is not ready right now. Given that they entirely control the process, if they were working like mad, uncertain about how long it would take, they would not be promising a Thursday morning delivery.
— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) April 16, 2019
From our preview coverage of the Mueller report’s release:
Opponents of Trump hope the report will answer longstanding questions about his ties to Russia, including what transpired at a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York involving his son, Donald Trump Jr, and a Russian lawyer who promised “dirt” on rival Hillary Clinton.
Mueller is also expected to shed light on whether, once in the White House, Trump sought to obstruct justice, for example by firing James Comey as FBI director in May 2017, when the agency was heading the Russia investigation.
But the extent of Barr’s redactions could prove controversial and leave many dissatisfied.
Read the full piece here:
Updated
Warren bets big on big staff
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has hired the largest campaign staff in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, quickly building a payroll that far exceeds her Democratic rivals, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Elections Commission.
Reuters reports:
Warren spent more than $1 million on payroll in the first quarter of 2019, more than double that of rivals such as U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, the two who raised the most money in the first quarter.
The total does not include other payroll-related expenses. She spent about $566,000 on payroll taxes and $114,000 on health insurance.
Warren has said she intends to build a “grassroots” campaign. She has sworn off expensive fundraisers and is relying almost entirely on online donations to fund her campaign.
Building a large campaign staff can create challenges. If a campaign begins to run short on cash, it is often more difficult to cut back on staff compared to trimming other expenses, such as advertising.
Warren had 161 employees already on her staff by the end of the first quarter, according to the disclosures she filed. About half of the staff, her campaign said, are positioned in early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
By comparison, Sanders’ campaign had 86 people on its payroll by the end of the quarter, during which he spent $417,209 on salaries. Harris spent $477,108 on salaries on the 44 people she had on her payroll in the first quarter
Read the full piece here.
What do you think of the new Trump logo?
Pres. @realDonaldTrump's logo for 2020 is a modified version of his 2016 logo. A rectangle surrounds a sans serif Trump-Pence-MAGA lockup with stars and "45" interrupting the lines; the logo uses traditional red and blue colors, last name emphasis, and a type size spectrum. pic.twitter.com/XUzt17uIfp
— Center for American Politics and Design (@politicsndesign) April 16, 2019
Sanders on Notre Dame: 'Vive la France!'
Here’s a statement from press secretary Sarah Sanders about the Notre Dame fire. She says Trump offered the French president his condolences and says the United States stands with France:
Inbox --> White House statement on #NotreDame pic.twitter.com/ZdKpWbLhAS
— Andrew deGrandpre (@adegrandpre) April 16, 2019
Trump to campaign in Wisconsin
The MAGA train is coming to Wisconsin, with a Trump rally just announced for 27 April in Green Bay. Trump won the state by a knife edge in 2016 and apparently means to hold it.
According to the Trump campaign, it will be the 18th rally Trump has held in the state and his third in Green Bay, home to the Packers, the state’s beloved NFL team.
It’s clear that there is significant overlap among Guardian readers and Sanders supporters.
But how do you all feel about Mayor Pete?
That’s Pete Buttigieg [Boot-Edge-Edge] of course, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a combat veteran and Rhodes scholar who is running as history’s first openly gay major US presidential candidate. He ranks in the top few slots in polls of early voting states and voters who say they follow politics closely seem especially impressed with him.
He also plays Hendrix and the piano and he’s into fonts and speaks French (apparently some Norwegian too).
Here’s our coverage of Buttigieg’s official campaign announcement at the weekend:
And here’s Nathan Robinson writing in comment, not entirely impressed:
Pete is all about Pete: Buttigieg is frequently evasive about his actual substantive agenda, preferring rhetoric about “freedom,” “democracy,” and “security.” His campaign’s branding and graphic design have been hailed as “radical.” As for his actual policies … he’s working on them.
Read further:
Or watch him on TV:
Update:
He apparently also speaks Zombie!
SOMETIME IN 2022
— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) April 16, 2019
REPORTER: President @PeteButtigieg, what is your response to the outbreak of the Zombie Apocalypse?
BUTTIGIEG: To the zombies, I say this: Brains, braaaainnns, brains, braaains! Brains.
REPORTER: Incredib--
*both are eaten by zombies*
Updated
Speaking of fundraising, check out this proportion of small-dollar donors feeing the Sanders campaign so far.
84% of his donations were under $200, according to the FEC. That’s more than half again as much as Trump can boast (55%) and about 20% better than the next-best Democrat for small donors, senator Elizabeth Warren (70%):
From 1st quarter 2019 reports, % of donations that were under $200:
— Michelle Ye Hee Lee (@myhlee) April 16, 2019
Trump 55%
Sanders 84%
Warren 70%
Buttigieg 64%
Yang 64%
Williamson 60%
O’Rourke 59%
Gabbard 55%
Harris 37%
Klobuchar 35%
Inslee 34%
Castro 34%
Messam 27%
Gillibrand 17%
Booker 16%
Hickenlooper 10%
Delaney 0.6%
The Democratic presidential hopefuls are building their donor bases.
— POLITICO (@politico) April 16, 2019
Here's who made the biggest cash haul in the first 3 months of the campaign https://t.co/vNrfRBD8CW pic.twitter.com/2CGd9YX85D
Updated
Andrew Yang, for those of you not thoroughly versed in every single one of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates, is a former tech executive who is running on a platform of opposition to automation in manufacturing and other fields. Yang wants to give every American adult a salary of $1,000 per month paid for by a tax on companies that benefit the most from automation.
To Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, that sounds like a $1,000 idea, according to first-quarter disclosures from the Federal Elections Commission:
Q1 FEC find ---> Weezer singer Rivers Cuomo gave $1,000 to @AndrewYang.
— Elena Schneider (@ec_schneider) April 16, 2019
President Andrew Yang?
From the comments
There’s a lot of love for Sanders in the air, down there:
It’s about time someone spoke for the working class!
Well done Bernie for once again making the elites tremble.
When given a choice, the world is fed up with elite imposed neoliberalism
Was never a Bernie fan until now! He knows how to resonate with people, asks the right questions, is not divisive. Hopefully, the Democratic Party supports him this time if the polls signify he'll win against Trump.
On the question of Democratic party support for Sanders – don’t anyone hold his or her breath. See this piece for example from this morning in the New York Times, “‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum”, which reports in part:
From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts to the cloakrooms of Washington, mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried that their effort to defeat President Trump in 2020 could be complicated by Mr. Sanders, in a political scenario all too reminiscent of how Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016.
Welsh Labour party leader Neil Kinnock tells a New Jersey newspaper that he has no hard feelings about Joe Biden, the likely Democratic presidential frontrunner, borrowing word-for-word in 1987 from a speech Kinnock had delivered months earlier.
Kinnock said that May:
“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what we had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand”
A few months later, in his first run for president, Biden said:
“Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife… is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? …Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It’s because they didn’t have a platform on which to stand.”
InsiderNJ now reports:
While refusing to comment on the possibility of Biden running for president, calling it not his business now, [Kinnock] did address at some length the incident that contributed to Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign demise as the now former vice president appears poised to join the contest for 2020.
“I had no objections to Joe using my speech and, as I discovered later, he usually did it with attribution,” the 77-year old Labor die-hard told InsiderNJ.
Trump, first lady to address opioid crisis
The Associated Press reports:
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will discuss the opioid crisis at an Atlanta summit.
The White House announced the April 24 appearance at the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit on Twitter Tuesday, saying the Trumps will speak “about their fight to end the opioid crisis in America.”
Trump has declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency and is spending billions of dollars to combat it. Opioid abuse claimed nearly 48,000 American lives in 2017.
The first lady focuses on opioids in her national campaign to help children be their best.
In other news, Melania Trump visited Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina yesterday:
Facebook allowed violent posts by man charged with Ilhan Omar death threat
Facebook allowed a man charged with threatening to kill congresswoman Ilhan Omar to post violent and racist content for years, and took no action to remove his posts when he was arrested.
Patrick Carlineo, of upstate New York, posted several entries to his Facebookpage alluding to violence against Muslims and US officials including former president Barack Obama, a Guardian review found.
Carlineo, 55, frequently used the platform to taunt Muslims, attacking them with racist slurs and saying he wished he could confront a group of Muslim politicians with “a bucket of pig blood”. He also shared video clips of alarmist reports about American Muslims by Fox News.
Read the full piece here:
From the comments
The debatable...
Bernie would wipe the floor with Trump in a one-on-one debate. Hope we get to see it!
...the familiar “Bernie would’ve won” idea...
If only Sanders was the candidate last time springs to mind, what a better place the world would be now.
Unfortunately I see the Dems taking the same path, another "moderate" friend of capital will get trounced by Trump. How low can you get.
...and the pithy:
The comments are on! What’s on your mind?
Turns out not everyone liked Sanders’ Fox News appearance (and somebody sounds a little under-impressed with Fox host Bret Baier too):
So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews. Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the “audience” was so smiley and nice. Very strange, and now we have @donnabrazile?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2019
Is this what the president is doing of a Tuesday morning? Watching reruns of a Fox News town hall?
Anyway, it’s kind of hard to make out what Trump really thought about the broadcast. He said it’s “so weird” to watch, but he’s not surprised by it, yet it’s very strange. To summarize, that’s: weird, strange, and not in the least bit surprising.
Note! We’ve invited you to weigh in in the comments. But the comments are not yet open. We’re working on it and will advise. [Update: they’re on.] Thank you for the feedback!
Meanwhile here’s a bit from our politics coverage this morning. The 2020 Democratic field is bigger than ever before, with a record number of candidates throwing their hats in the ring. But is everyone really in it to win it?
The fact is, not all of the people running for president are actually running for president.
“There is almost always at least a few candidates in these kinds of fields that are either there to push an issue agenda, or these are candidates who are interested in building their name recognition, building their stature and status within the party,” said John Sides, professor of political science at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of The Monkey Cage politics analysis site.
“I would assume that most candidates probably overestimate their chances of winning, but that doesn’t mean that they think it’s likely. ”
Read the full piece here:
Updated
Here’s video of Sanders getting
booed out of the auditorium
unexpectedly cheered at every turn by they Fox News town hall audience.
How do you think a Sanders-Trump presidential debate would play out? Getting ahead of ourselves, you say? Maybe so. What other candidate on the Democratic side could similarly rouse a Fox News audience, then? Most or all of them? Have a go in the comments. [NOTE: To amend that invitation, the comments are not open yet, please stay tuned, thank you!] [Update: they’re on now.]
Updated
Hello and welcome to our live blog coverage of the race to 2020. The political world is marveling this morning at how spectacularly Bernie Sanders upended expectations last night that his appearance in a Fox News town hall would somehow be bad for him.
Instead, Sanders took the stage, took questions and demonstrated that on issues such as healthcare there might not be as much daylight between Fox viewers and democratic socialists as some people think:
Raise your hand if you're sick and tired of your private health insurance company. We need Medicare for All. #BernieTownHall pic.twitter.com/3euHRCjqn9
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 15, 2019
Should we raise the minimum wage to a living wage? Yes!
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 16, 2019
Should we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure? Yes!
Should we ensure veterans get health care they earned? Yes!
Should we protect Social Security and Medicare? Yes!
A majority of the American people agree. #BernieTownHall pic.twitter.com/qZmuBuA6MM
Wow!
— Shaun King (@shaunking) April 16, 2019
This backfired spectacularly on Fox News. https://t.co/mlCWKdNoXH
Was Donald Trump watching? It was on past his bedtime. In any case, if he was watching, he wasn’t tweeting.
Read our preview coverage of the town hall here:
In other Sanders news, both he and Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke released a decade’s worth of tax returns on Monday, which for Americans was Tax Day. From our coverage:
According to returns provided by his campaign, Sanders reported he paid $137,573 in federal taxes in 2018 and owed $8,267 in taxes for the year. Sanders and his wife, Jane Sanders, reported paying a 26% effective tax rate on his adjusted gross income. The couple reported donating $18,950 to charity, or 3.2%.
Read further:
Trump last night tweeted a benediction for the people of France as the Notre Dame cathedral smoldered:
God bless the people of France!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2019
2020 Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, went one better and expressed his condolences in French:
.@PeteButtigieg tells the French we share your sadness and also, we thank you for the gift of Notre Dame to civilization https://t.co/qXuOkeLJk5
— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) April 16, 2019
Thanks for joining us and please check in in the comments!
Joe Biden/Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden/John Kerry will be a good ticket.
Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto are completely useless and time wasters.