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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Vivian Ho in San Francisco (now) and Amanda Holpuch in New York and Ben Jacobs in Washington (earlier)

Senate defeats Green New Deal as Democrats unite in protest – as it happened

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand speaks at a press conference on the Green New Deal with senators Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on 26March 2019.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand speaks at a press conference on the Green New Deal with senators Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on 26March 2019. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

Evening summary

Have a good night, everyone.

  • Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to force Senate Democrats to pick a side with the Green New Deal, an ambitious resolution to make the US carbon-neutral by 2030. He called a procedural vote in which 57 senators voted against and 0 in favor, while 43 Democratic senators banded together to vote “present” in protest.” Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, one of the c0-sponsors of the resolution, appeared undeterred, tweeting, “McConnell tried to rush the #GreenNewDeal straight to the floor without a hearing. The real question we should be asking: Why does the Senate GOP refuse to hold any major hearings on climate change?”
  • Representative Rashida Tlaib, one of two Muslim women serving in Congress, appeared to be a victim of “hateful rhetoric and bullying” today.

Trump: Disaster aid to Puerto Rico 'way out of proportion'

President Donald Trump’s opposition to further disaster aid for hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico hardened on Tuesday as he told GOP allies at a Capitol Hill meeting that the US island territory has gotten too much rebuilding money compared with mainland states like Florida and Texas.

Trump’s ardent opposition to additional Puerto Rico funding sets up a showdown with House Democrats, who insist that a $13bn to $14bn disaster aid package that’s a top priority for southern Republicans won’t advance without further aid for the island.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio said Trump told Republicans at a closed-door luncheon on Tuesday that aid for Puerto Rico “is way out of proportion to what Texas and Florida and others have gotten.”

Trump does support $600m to deal with a food stamp shortfall in Puerto Rico that has already meant slashed benefits, Rubio said, but opposes more generous terms for delivery of disaster aid dollars and funding to rebuild antiquated water systems and make them more resilient to future storms.

The disaster aid package cleared a procedural hurdle by a 90-10 vote and is expected to pass the Senate as early as late this week, which would set up talks with the Democratic-controlled House. House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said the House will insist on further aid for Puerto Rico or the disaster aid measure won’t clear Congress.

“Nearly 3,000 American lives were lost in the historic storms that devastated Puerto Rico and destroyed its infrastructure, and the island is still struggling to recover,” Lowey said in a joint statement with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The measure has wide support from both Democrats and Republicans and is ardently backed by Trump loyalists such as David Perdue, R-Ga., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., whose states were slammed by hurricanes last fall. The measure has been expanded so that Midwestern states such as Iowa and Nebraska that are currently suffering from flooding are eligible for disaster help.

“Just at the time when harvesting was starting, Hurricane Michael hit and crops were completely destroyed across most of our state,” Perdue said.

The House passed a companion $14.2bn version of the legislation in January, but it got tangled up in the politics of the partial government shutdown and Trump’s demands for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The measure is especially sought by lawmakers from Southern states like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, which were hit by hurricanes Michael and Florence last year. There’s money to respond to an earthquake in Alaska, wildfires in California and floods in South Carolina and for the ongoing recovery effort in Puerto Rico, which was devastated by back-to-back hurricanes in 2017.

The Trump administration has been slow to deliver the aid to Puerto Rico that Congress has already approved for the island.

“The lack of leadership and coordination, combined with delays in meeting the basic needs of the island, more than eighteen months after receiving a presidential disaster declaration, has left far too many children and elderly citizens in unhealthy and unsafe conditions, families in severely damaged homes, and communities without adequate infrastructure to sustain a decent quality of life,” Leahy and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a letter to the White House on Tuesday.

Representative Rashida Tlaib, one of two Muslim women currently serving in Congress, has experienced her share of Islamaphobia - and Tuesday was no different.

She tweeted a note she found on her door, addressed to Representative Ilhan Omar, who has drawn ire for comments that some have categorized as antisemitic. Like Tlaib, Omar is often the target of Islamaphobia. Earlier this month, Judge Jeanine Pirro singled out Omar’s hijab, and questioned if “her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States constitution?”

AOC: I encouraged them to vote 'present'

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not appear perturbed over the fate of the Senate procedural vote on the Green New Deal, the ambitious resolution that she co-sponsored to make the US carbon-neutral by 2030. The vote failed today with 0 in favor, 57 against, and 43 voting “present”.

The vote was largely seen as a Republican tactic to create friction within the Democratic caucus and force Democrats to go on the record about their support - or opposition - for the proposal.

President Trump announced Tuesday that he intends to appoint Jon Voight and Mike Huckabee to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Senate procedural vote on Green New Deal fails

In what was largely seen as an effort to divide the Democratic caucus, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell held a procedural vote on Tuesday on the Green New Deal that failed on the floor but united most of the Senate Democrats in protest.

The vote on the resolution, which aims to make the US carbon-neutral by 2030, was meant to get Democrats on the record about their support - or opposition - for the proposal. In protest, a number of Senate Democrats planned to merely vote “present” rather than cast a yea or nay vote.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, told Vox that the Senate vote “is a perfect example of that kind of superficial approach to government”.

“What McConnell’s doing is that he’s trying to rush this bill to the floor without a hearing, without any markups, without working through committee — because he doesn’t want to save our planet,” she said. “Because he thinks we can drink oil in 30 years when all our water is poisoned.”

The Green New Deal vote in the Senate is underway.

Hey all, Vivian Ho taking over for Amanda Holpuch. Hope you’re all having a lovely Tuesday.

George Papadopoulos, the first Trump campaign aide charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, told Reuters his attorneys have applied for a presidential pardon. Papadopoulos also told Reuters he is considering a withdrawal of his guilty plea.

“My lawyers have applied for a pardon from the president for me,” Papadopoulos told Reuters, adding that the request was made a few days ago. “If I’m offered one I would love to accept it, of course.”

Papadopoulos’s contacts with Russian intermediaries set in motion the investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US is expanding its ban on funding for groups that conduct abortions or advocate abortion rights, known as the global gag rule. The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, said the expansion also impacts groups that fund or support groups which provide or discuss abortion:

Critics of the policy, also known as the Mexico City rule, say it has led to deep cuts in funding for family planning, women’s and reproductive health programmes. Studies have shown that it has increased the number of abortions where the policy has been strictly enforced, by decreasing access to contraceptives and other family planning support. And by forcing women to seek backstreet abortions, the critics say it leads to more deaths of mothers and babies.

Aid groups have said that the reduction of funding for primary health clinics has affected treatment for other widespread diseases like TB, malaria and HIV.

Peter “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg spoke to the influential Power 105.1’s Breakfast Club radio show this morning about his political career so far and his ambitions heading toward the 2020 election.

Some highlights from the interview are collected below.

On the 2016 presidential election:

Our [the Democrats] whole message was don’t vote for him [Trump] because he’s terrible. And even though he is, that’s not a message ... if that’s all there is to it then the people at home are saying ‘okay you keep talking about him, but whose talking about me? Who is going to make my life better?’

On being gay in politics:

If you’re a sitting mayor, and you’re not out, you’re going to get spotted. And I didn’t want to live a life that was kind of in hiding either, so I just didn’t have much of a personal life. I’m in my thirties, I’m a veteran, I’m a sitting mayor and I have no idea what it’s like to be in love ...

I came out ... and what wound up happening was I got re-elected with 80% of the vote. So what it showed me was most people in my city were supportive or they didn’t care.

On Chick-fil-A, the fast food chain that opposed same-sex marriage:

I do not approve of their politics but I kind of approve of their chicken. If nothing else, maybe I can build that bridge.

On reparations:

Some of the people in this country used to own some of the other people in this country. You can’t just say the moment you release that, that everything is going to work itself out. Intention went into getting things the way are and so it’s going to have to go into fixing it. I think the idea of reparations is the idea: when something is wrong, we fix it.

... Now it’s time for a third reconstruction, as Reverend Barber puts it, that lifts up politically and economically and socially all people and recognizes that all people are not in the same boat right now.

Peter Buttigieg speaks to the Breakfast Club

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, wrote the resolution to terminate the president’s emergency declaration, which just failed to secure the two-thirds majority vote needed.

In a statement, Pelosi and Castro said:

Both chambers of Congress—a Democratic House and a Republican Senate—resoundingly rejected the President’s sham emergency declaration by passing H.J.Res.46. This will provide significant evidence for the courts as they review lawsuits. The President’s lawless emergency declaration clearly violates the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, and Congress will work through the appropriations and defense authorization processes to terminate this dangerous action and restore our constitutional system of balance of powers.

In six months, the Congress will have another opportunity to put a stop to this President’s wrongdoing. We will continue to review all options to protect our Constitution and our Democracy from the President’s assault.

Effort to block border emergency declaration fails

The House voted today to uphold the president’s veto of a Congressional bill to block his declaration of a national emergency at the border.

This vote was always a long-shot because a two-thirds majority vote is needed to override a presidential veto. Ultimately, the House voted 248-181 in favor of overriding the veto – that is 38 votes short of what was needed.

To get to this point, there were many complicated procedural moves. So, here is a simplified timeline:

Updated

Summary

Donald Trump has taken questions at the Capitol about the Mueller report, which has not been made public.

The Mueller Report was great. It could not have been better. It said, ‘no obstruction, no collusion.’ It could not have been better.

Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, has cheering words for those not sure whether they have the skills needed to achieve their career goals.

Ocasio-Cortez said if Republican senator Mike Lee, who today brought a picture of Ronald Reagan firing a machine gun while riding a dinosaur to Congress, can be a Senator, you can do anything.

There are no shortage of responses from the Democrats to Trump’s claim that the Republican party will be “the party of healthcare.”

Trump is at the Capitol having lunch with Senate Republicans.

The same day the Trump adminstration asked the courts to end the Affordable Care Act, the president has declared the Republican party “the party of healthcare.”

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Republican Mike Lee has brought in a picture of Ronald Reagan firing a machine gun while riding a dinosaur.

“And then the stirring, unmistakable patriotism of the velociraptor holding up a tattered American flag - a symbol of all it means to be American,” Lee said.

There is more ...

Report: FAA head to tell Congress agency needs to evolve

The acting head of the US Federal Aviation Administration will tell a congressional panel on Wednesday that the agency’s oversight approach must “evolve” after two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes since October, according to written testimony viewed by Reuters:

Acting FAA administrator Dan Elwell will tell a Senate Commerce subcommittee that the airplane will return to service “only when the FAA’s analysis of the facts and technical data indicate that it is appropriate.”

Elwell’s testimony discloses that Boeing first submitted its proposed anti-stall software upgrade to the FAA for certification on Jan 21 of this year and that the FAA has tested “this enhancement to the 737 MAX flight control system in both the simulator and the aircraft.”

Elwell will tell the panel that the FAA: “will go wherever the facts lead us, in the interest of safety.” He defended the FAA’s aircraft certification system, but acknowledged it faces challenges.

“As the aerospace system and its components become increasingly more complex, we know that our oversight approach needs to evolve to ensure that the FAA remains the global leader in achieving aviation safety,” Elwell’s testimony will say.

Updated

The Trump administration now believes that the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down, a major shift in the federal government’s position and one that could endanger health coverage for millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions, writes Erin Durkin for the Guardian:

Until this week, the government’s position was that only part of the law – like its rules prohibiting insurance companies from denying health insurance or charging more to people with pre-existing conditions – should be struck down.

The supreme court ruled in 2012 that the landmark healthcare law is constitutional.

But Texas and other states sued, arguing that Congress’s decision to end a tax penalty for people who don’t have health insurance as part of the 2017 tax overhaul made all of Obamacare invalid. The judge agreed.

A group of 21 Democratic states are appealing, since Trump’s justice department would not defend the law.

In response to all the buzz around Peter Buttigieg, the gay mayor who is considering running for president, a Washington Post data analyst says Americans are ready for a gay president.

The analyst, David Byler, examined decades of polling on LGBT issues to see where exactly the US stands as Mayor Pete fever builds:

Unsurprisingly, Americans have simultaneously become more comfortable with LGBT people holding positions of power. In 2015, Gallup found that 74% of Americans would vote for a well-qualified gay or lesbian presidential candidate from their party. Only 24 % said they wouldn’t. That’s a big shift from some similar 20th-century numbers — only 26% said they’d vote for a gay or lesbian candidate in 1978, and 59% said they would in 1999. A 2019 NBC-Wall Street Journal poll also showed that 68% would be “enthusiastic about” or “comfortable with” a gay or lesbian presidential candidate. In 2006, that number was 43%.

Byler’s whole piece is worth reading, as is this fantastic profile of Buttigieg by the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino:

Democrats Patty Murray, of Washington, and Diane Feinstein, of California, have written to US health secretary Alex Azar with a demand for more information about the agency’s tracking of pregnant teenagers in its custody.

The health department oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which cares for children who arrive at the border on their own until they can be placed with a foster family or relative.

This month, it was reported that ORR kept a spreadsheet to track pregnancies of these young women that included the age, menstrual cycle dates, whether the pregnancy was through consensual sex and whether an abortion had been sought.

Murray and Feinstein wrote on Monday:

It is absolutely critical that ORR prioritize the health and wellbeing of minors in its custody first and foremost, including their right to safe, legal abortion. However, there is no indication that the information collected in the released spreadsheet is being used to ensure access to reproductive health care and counseling that may be necessary, particularly for those who report sexual abuse.

More from Nancy Pelosi’s closed-door meeting with House Democrats this morning, where she reportedly told people to “be calm.”

“Be calm. Take a deep breath. Don’t become like them. We have to handle this professionally, officially, patriotically, strategically,” Pelosi said, according to Politico.

“Let’s just get the goods,” she said of Mueller’s report.

“The president was not exonerated,” Pelosi said.

Updated

House Democrat Rashida Tlaib, from Michigan, is reportedly searching for support on a resolution to have Trump and his businesses investigated to determine whether he has committed impeachable acts as president.

Democratic House leadership has not made impeachment a priority.

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hakeem Jeffries, who both represent New York, have made cautious statements about Tlaib’s push.

Updated

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign continues to send out fundraising emails on the back of the Mueller report, whose key findings have so far been summarized by the attorney general, William Barr, in a four page report.

In the fundraising email, Trump says this was “the biggest Witch Hunt in the history of politics.” More from the email:

Democrats worked with the Fake News Media for 2 years orchestrating this Nasty Witch Hunt to use our government as a weapon to take away the votes of 63 MILLION Americans.

After they lied to the American people, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leadership, and all of the 2020 Democratic candidates raised MILLIONS of dollars off of their phony Witch Hunt!

Democrats and the Fake News media have proven that there is no line they won’t cross, so we need to fight back BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER BEFORE.

Updated

Supreme court allows bump stock ban to begin

Today, the Trump adminstration’s ban on bump stock devices, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire like machine guns, took effect.

Gun rights groups asked the supreme court to block the ban so bump stock sales to continue.

So far, supreme court justices have declined to stop the ban.

Chief justice John Roberts declined a request for the court to get involved Tuesday, according to the AP. A second request is pending in front of justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Trump sought to ban bump stocks after they were used in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that left 58 people dead.

Updated

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told Democrats to not take attorney general William Barr’s words about the Mueller report at face value, says CNN political reporter, Manu Raju.

Last night, Pelosi celebrated her 79th birthday with Barack Obama at an event for freshman Democrats.

Updated

Writing from Washington, Guardian political reporter Sabrina Siddiqui reports that while Democrats suffered a political blow from Barr’s letter about the Mueller report, they have also signaled the legal and political battle lines were far from settled:

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has on multiple occasions thrown cold water on what several Democrats refer to as “the I-word”, leaving it to voters at the 2020 ballot box to determine Trump’s fate.

Some strategists said the initial read of the Mueller report may have lifted the burden of impeachment from Democrats’ shoulders, enabling them to focus instead on drawing a policy contrast to Trump as he seeks re-election next year.

“I think Democrats need to allow the investigations to continue while focusing on the rest of their legislative agenda,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist who served as an aide to the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

“It’s pretty clear impeachment is not in the cards, at least not right now.”

To impeach Trump, Democrats would need not just a majority in the House but also a two-thirds vote in the Republican-led Senate to convict – an outcome as unlikely as ever before given the widespread support Trump enjoys from members of his own party.

A caveat to Barr’s summary is that Muller was authorized to probe links to Russia and not just coordination. Barr did not address the former issue in his summary Sunday

Updated

Donald Trump renewed his Twitter attacks on the media today, this time calling the entire mainstream media the “enemy of the people” and not just the “fake news.”

Updated

Jim Clyburn, the number three Democrat in the House, indicated that Democrats are far more focused on fighting about Obamacare than Russia after the Barr summary and Trump administration’s decision to back a court decision that invalidated the ACA last night.

Updated

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tells Axios that he offered Trump reassurance this weekend after Barr’s summary was released. Graham told Trump:

You’re stronger today than any time since you’ve been elected. It legitimizes your election in the eyes of those who doubted. This is sort of the first day of a new presidency. What are you going to do with it? How do you use this capital?

Updated

Top House Democrats agreed Monday night that “the caucus needs to stop talking about collusion with Russia because it was distracting from their legislative agenda.”

The Washington Post reports that in a meeting of leadership, the consensus was reached that Democrats need to focus on economic issues that their candidates focused in the 2018 midterms. However, Democrats will seek to bring William Barr to Capitol Hill and question him about his decision not to pursue obstruction of justice charges against Trump.

Updated

Even in the aftermath of William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, a lot of #resistance Internet personalities remain undeterred.

The Daily Beast reports that some are still insisting that are sealed indictments showing Russian collusion that went unmentioned. Others, including the author of a children’s book that ends with “a buff shirtless Mueller holding Trump accountable” are just holding out hope for the release of the full report.

Updated

Opening summary

Good morning.

The Trump administration announced last night that it formally supported a lower court judge’s ruling that would throw out the entire Affordable Care Act, the supreme court will hear a case on whether partisan gerrymanders are unconstitutional and the House will vote in attempt to overturn Trump’s veto of the legislation that blocked his national emergency.

It’s Tuesday in American politics.

Updated

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