Thursday, February 2, 2017

Nancy Pelosi uses every anti-Republican trope in the book to describe Gorsuch during CNN town hall

Nancy Pelosi uses every anti-Republican trope in the book to describe Gorsuch during CNN town hall

 
Nancy Pelosi uses every anti-Republican trope in the book to describe Gorsuch during CNN town hall
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 12: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), flanked by House Democrats, speaks about the Affordable Care Act on Capitol Hill January 12, 2017 in Washington, DC. Leader Pelosi discussed issues surrounding the repeal of the ACA. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)
Earlier this evening, President Donald Trump announced his pick for the Supreme Court nominee that would replace the late Justice Anton Scalia, Judge Neil Gorsuch. Needless to say, the left instantly sprang into action, and attempted to paint the freshly announced appointee with as much negativity as possible.
No one laid it on quite as thickly as Nancy Pelosi, who during her town hall on CNN with Jake Tapper, was pulling out all the tropes one would expect to hear from the far left when speaking about a Republican who attained a high position.
For one, Pelosi made the claim that Gorsuch has come down on the side of corporate America, and that he has come out against “clean air, clean water, food safety, safety in medicine, and the rest,” and finished by saying he would be harmful for your children.
She even made it a point to tell everyone that he “comes down on the side of felons over gun safety,” then said he has a “hostility” towards children with autism.
However, the reaction from the left wasn’t all bad. In the midst of the expected backlash from the left, one person in particular is seemingly happy with Trump’s decision, and he comes straight out of the Obama administration.
Former President Barack Obama’s Solicitor General Neal Katyal released a statement that spoke quite highly of Gorsuch and his appointment.
“Judge Gorsuch is one of the most thoughtful and brilliant judges to have served our nation over the last century. As a judge, he has always put aside his personal views to serve the rule of law. To boot, as those of us who have worked with him can attest, he is a wonderfully decent and humane person. I strongly support his nomination to the Supreme Court.”

Two GOP senators to vote no on Betsy DeVos

Two GOP senators to vote no on Betsy DeVos

   
Two GOP senators to vote 'no' on Betsy DeVos
TheHill.com
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Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in dramatic back-to-back speeches Wednesday said they would oppose confirming Betsy DeVos as Education secretary. 
The two became the first Republican senators to break with any of President Trump’s Cabinet picks.
The defections set up a potential 51-50 vote in the Senate to confirm DeVos, with Vice President Pence breaking the tie.
It would be the first time a vice president has been the deciding vote on a nomination, and the first time a vice president has had to break a Senate tie since March 2008, when Vice President Dick Cheney cast a deciding vote on a package of tax cuts.
DeVos’s nomination will move before Sen. Jeff Sessions’s nod as attorney general to ensure that the Alabama Republican can cast a vote for Trump’s Education pick. 
The Senate could take a final vote on DeVos as soon as Friday, though Democrats are expected to use the Senate’s procedural roadblocks to drag the fight over DeVos into the weekend or early next week.
Republicans expressed confidence that there will be no more defections. They can’t afford any, as no Democrats are set to back DeVos.
“I expect her to be confirmed,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “You can take that to the bank.”
The White House also said it has “zero” concern over DeVos’s nomination being in jeopardy.
“I have 100 percent confidence she will be the next secretary of Education,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing with reporters.
He added, “The games being played with Betsy DeVos are sad.”
DeVos, a GOP mega-donor long active on education issues, has been the subject of fierce opposition from teachers unions and other liberal groups opposed to her support for charter schools and tuition vouchers using public funds. Senators in both parties have also criticized her lack of experience with public and rural education.
Liberals made DeVos a top target and sought to jam Republican phone lines with protests over her nomination. Credo Action’s vice president and political director, Murshed Zaheed, told The Hill that its members made 18,000 calls to members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, including specifically targeting Collins, Murkowski and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Murkowski noted that her office had been flooded with calls urging her to oppose DeVos.
“I have heard from thousands, truly thousands, of Alaskans who shared their concerns,” she said from the Senate floor.
Both Collins and Murkowski stressed that they did not make their decision lightly and vouched for DeVos’s personal character, but stressed they ultimately could not support her.
“I come to the floor to announce a very difficult decision that I have made, and that is to vote against the confirmation of Betsy DeVos to be our nation’s next secretary of Education,” Collins said.
Murkowski followed Collins to the floor, stating, “I have serious concerns about a nominee to be secretary of Education ... who has been so immersed in the discussion of vouchers.”
Progressive groups quickly claimed momentum in the fight.
“Betsy DeVos is an enemy of public schools who would let corporations control our children’s education: that’s why there’s a growing bipartisan opposition to her confirmation,” American Bridge, a liberal super PAC, said in a statement.
Every Voice President David Donnelly and End Citizens United Executive Director Tiffany Muller added in a joint statement that Murkowski and Collins’s opposition was a “victory for the grassroots power of the American people.”
DeVos’s troubles come as tensions boil over the pace of confirmations.
Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday changed the rules requiring at least one member of each party to be present so that they could advance Steven Mnuchin to head the Treasury Department and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) as secretary of Health and Human Services.
The Senate managed to confirm Rex Tillerson to be Trump’s secretary of State, but only after Democrats used the Senate’s procedural hurdle to drag out debate over his nomination for days.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blasted Democrats over their tactics this week, telling reporters, “It is time to get over the fact that they lost the election.”
DeVos came under fire from Democrats this week over a Washington Post report that several lines and phrases in her committee-submitted questionnaire appeared to be lifted without attribution from other sources, including a news release from a Justice Department official during the Obama administration.
She also endured a rocky confirmation hearing in which she at one point appeared to advocate for guns in school because of the possibility of a grizzly bear attack, at least in Wyoming.
Collins pointed specifically to DeVos’s lack of knowledge about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in explaining her decision.
“While it is unrealistic and unfair to expect a nominee to know the details of all the programs under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education, I am troubled and surprised by Mrs. ­DeVos’ apparent lack of familiarity with the landmark 1975 law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA,” she said.
DeVos came under fire on the law during her hearing, when she faced sharp questions from Sen. Maggie Hassan, whose son is disabled.
When DeVos told the New Hampshire Democrat that she was “sensitive to the needs of special needs students,” Hassan fired back: “With all due respect, it’s not about sensitivity, although that helps.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a vulnerable red-state Democrat up for reelection in 2018, announced he would not support DeVos on Wednesday, saying her “lack of exposure to public education is very concerning for me.”
Another GOP defection appears unlikely, however, as Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a top Democratic target in 2018, announced he would vote to confirm her.
“Due to her commitment to improve our nation’s school system for all students and her focus on increasing parental engagement, I am supporting Betsy DeVos as our nation’s next Secretary of Education,” Heller said in a statement.
Updated at 8:18 p.m.

Senate Republicans change rules, unanimously approve Trump nominees without Democrats

Senate Republicans change rules, unanimously approve Trump nominees without Democrats

 
Senate Republicans change rules, unanimously approve Trump nominees without Democrats
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
It looks like the Democrats’ decision to boycott the Senate Finance Committee’s confirmation hearings for two of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointees has backfired.
Republican senators on the Finance Committee — the panel that oversees the nominations of former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) for secretary of health and human services — convened for the second day without any Democrats present.
Traditionally, committee rules require at least one Democrat be present to establish a quorum. But, in what Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) described as “extraordinary circumstances,” the Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to suspend the committee’s rules.
On Tuesday, Democrats stalled proceedings by choosing not to show up, bringing Price and Mnuchin’s nominations to a halt. So on Wednesday, with suspended rules, the committee’s 14 Republicans voted successfully to move both Trump nominees to the full Senate without any of the panel’s 12 Democrats present.
“[Democrats], on their own accord, refused to participate in the exercise,” Hatch said,according to CNN. “They have nobody to blame but themselves.”
Hatch said the decision was approved by the Senate Parliamentarian and told reporters that the move was “just utilization” of the rules, adding that he “wouldn’t have done it” had the Parliamentarian not expressed approval.
The committee chairman said he had not spoken to ranking Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), about the decision. “I don’t feel a bit sorry for them,” he said.
Though Democrats argued they had unanswered questions for both Mnuchin and Price, it is unlikely Republicans will cooperate now that both nominees have gone on to the full Senate. In fact, Hatch said Wednesday morning, “I don’t care what they want at this point,” CNN reported.
Despite Wednesday’s headline-making decision, Democrats are sticking with the boycotting tactic. CNN’s Phil Mattingly reported that Senate Democrats are boycotting the vote on Scott Pruitt, Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
However, multiple Trump nominations still coming down the pike, the Finance Committee’s bold move could set a new precedent for how Republicans deal with Democratic obstructionism. As the rules exist currently, Trump’s Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch, the highest-profile nomination so far, requires 60 Senate votes to be confirmed.

Woman whose son was killed by an illegal alien confronts Nancy Pelosi about ‘sanctuary cities’

Woman whose son was killed by an illegal alien confronts Nancy Pelosi about ‘sanctuary cities’

 
Woman whose son was killed by an illegal alien confronts Nancy Pelosi about ‘sanctuary cities’
Image source: YouTube.
A woman whose son was tortured and murdered by an illegal alien confronted former House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during a CNN town hall Tuesday. Her reaction to the question about “sanctuary cities” is eliciting a lot of attention.
Pelosi represents a district in San Francisco, one of the many cities which have adopted “sanctuary city” policies that protect illegal aliens from federal law enforcement requesting help from local authorities.
The question came from Laura Wilkerson, who tearfully recounted what happened to her son.
“In 2010 one of the illegals slaughtered my son,” she began. “He tortured him, he beat him, he tied him up like an animal. And he set him on fire. And I am not a one-story mother. This happens every day because there are no laws enforced at the border.”
“How do you reconcile in your head about letting people disavow the law?” Wilkerson continued. “The second part of my question is this: If you need to go home tonight and line up your babies as you say, and your grandbabies, which one of them could you look in their eyes today and tell them that they’re expendable for another foreign person to have a nicer life? Which one would you like to say ‘You, my child, are expendable for someone else to come over here and not follow the law, and have a nicer life’?”
“I commend you for sharing your story,” Pelosi answered. “I can’t even imagine the pain. There’s nothing, I’m sure, that can compare to the grief that you have, so I pray for you.”
I pray for you, again, we all pray that none of us has to experience what you’ve experienced. So thank you for channeling your energy to help prevent something like that from happening, but I do want to say to you, that in our sanctuary cities, our people are not disobeying the law.
These are law-abiding citizens. It enables them to there without being reported to ICE in case of another crime that they might bare witness to.
“The point is that you do not turn law enforcement officers into immigration officers,” Pelosi concluded.  “That is really what the point is in a sanctuary city. So it’s not a question of giving sanctuary to someone who is guilty of a crime — they should be deported.”
Sanctuary city policies have come under fire after Donald Trump made defeating them a cornerstone of his presidential campaign. In July 2015, an illegal alien shot and killed a young woman named Kate Steinle in San Francisco, and Trump took up her cause as an example of crimes committed by illegals that could be prevented by dismantling sanctuary city policies.
Upon arriving at the Oval Office, Trump issued an executive order that would cut federal grant spending on municipalities with “sanctuary city” policies. One Florida city has already changed their policies in response to his threat, while Democrats are doubling down and promising to keep “sanctuary city” policies intact.

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