Top GOP leader bemoans Dems are ‘holding government funding hostage’
A high-ranking Republican is blaming Democrats over a looming government shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post on Monday, claiming that leaders must avert a spending crisis with a bipartisan appropriations process and claiming "Democrats are holding government funding hostage to a long list of partisan demands, totaling more than $1 trillion. And they’re ready to shut down the government if Republicans don’t comply."
Thune was among a group of leaders slated to meet Monday with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, which includes House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
This closed-door meeting is just hours before the Oct. 1 deadline. A White House official described this as a make-or-break moment. It's also the first time Trump will meet with the Democratic leaders since he took office eight months ago.
Thune argues that "Republicans are open to discussion and negotiation on a number of issues."
"But there’s a difference between careful discussion and negotiation during the appropriations process and taking government funding hostage to jam more than $1 trillion in big-government spending in a funding bill designed to last mere weeks," Thune writes. "Major decisions should not be made in haste. And they certainly shouldn’t be made because one party is threatening to shut down the government if it doesn’t get its way."
As Republicans urge Democrats to accept the bill, Democratic leaders have pushed back against cuts to healthcare.
Affordable Care Act subsidies are set to expire this year. And without an extension, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that more than 4 million people will lose healthcare over the next 10 years.
Thune claims that "Democrats have decided to abandon the process."
Trump mocked as ‘historic’ Gaza peace plan missing ‘vital’ piece
President Donald Trump stood with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced a new ceasefire proposal and peace plan, but critics couldn't help but notice it's missing some critical pieces — namely, that a key party is missing.
Steve Herman, executive director at the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation, quoted Trump's comment, "Everyone else has accepted it."
"Except Hamas, according to President Trump, explaining his plan calls for a 'Board of Peace' to be headed by himself," said Herman.
It prompted national security lawyer Bradly P. Moss to remark, "So, you know, a peace plan missing a vital party."
"The new official Trump plan for Gaza. Quite a few things to parse out, including accountability mechanisms, who actually makes up the stabilisation force, and what mandate they would have," said Dr. H.A. Hellyer, a geopolitics and security expert on the Middle East and Europe at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.
Even senior Washington Examiner writer David Harsanyi had questions: "This plan has been tried more than once. Palestinians have never been able to meet #1."
Bloomberg's Washington Correspondent Josh Wingrove couldn't help but notice that the plan, "previously described as a '21-point plan,'" now "includes 20 points and an image of proposed withdrawals."
"The points include a call for Gaza's governance to be supervised by a 'Board of Peace' - chaired by Trump himself," added Wingrove.
White House columnist Niall Stanage, at "The Hill," also questioned, "It runs to 20 points but how will point 1 — upon which all else may hinge — be defined or verified and by whom?"
"If Trump is to be the head of the newly established transitional administration in Gaza, it means Gaza is becoming a mandate of the USA. Blair is the Mandate Governor," observed Tuğçe Varol, an academic working on Russian and Turkish foreign policy.
Trump’s blunders ‘raise the risk of global conflict’ as enemies ‘gang up’: analyst
After a series of diplomatic blunders, President Donald Trump and America's reputation loss could "raise the risk of global conflict" and come at a major cost, including "mischief or worse" from enemies.
In an opinion piece published Monday, Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth describes how a good reputation can be difficult to obtain or maintain, and Trump "has squandered whatever credibility America had left in foreign and security policy."
Following his rambling speech last week in front of the United Nations and his struggle to see the difference between "personal chemistry" with President Vladimir Putin and diplomatic action, Trump has effectively put both adversaries and allies on edge, wrote Kluth.
"Inklings of danger are everywhere," Kluth writes. "America’s partners are becoming more anxious and making alternative arrangements for their security: Saudi Arabia just signed a defensive pact with Pakistan after watching an Israeli strike against its Gulf neighbor Qatar, which is allied to, but got no help from, the United States. America’s adversaries keep testing the resolve of Trump and the West, as Putin is doing in eastern Europe. Or, like Xi Jinping in Beijing and Kim in Pyongyang, they’re recalculating bellicose scenarios in secret. Other countries, like India, are wary of committing to America and keeping all options open, even clutching hands with Moscow and Beijing."
And although Trump is not the first president to struggle with navigating U.S. reputation among foreign nations, it puts America at an unfortunate future disadvantage.
"Against this backdrop, anybody watching US policy for the past decade, from friendly Europe to adversarial China, already had reason to doubt US credibility. What Trump has done in his second term is to remove the doubts and confirm the loss. Allies now know they can’t trust America, while adversaries are ganging up and recalculating their plans for mischief or worse.
It's unclear what will happen in the future; a damaged reputation jeopardizes diplomacy.
"These responses to America’s loss of credibility will raise the risk of global conflict," Kluth writes. "The danger will go up even more if the US, under this or a future president, panics and decides to overcompensate in reestablishing its reputation, with a demonstratively hawkish turn that could tip into war. If America and the whole world are becoming less safe, it’s because Donald Trump’s foreign policy is, literally, in-credible."
‘It’s so unbelievable’: Lawyer floored as Trump DOJ seeks to revive case without evidence
A lawyer who stood up to the Department of Justice and won in a high-profile case expressed shock when talking about it being revived.
During an appearance on CNN on Tuesday night, lawyer Norm Eisen spoke about the possibility of President Donald Trump's DOJ bringing back the case against Olympic canoer David Hearn, who was accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. The case was dismissed last week, as the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, led by Jeanine Pirro, said that the damage happened during installation.
CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins asked Eisen about the possibility of the Trump DOJ bringing the case back, despite Pirro saying that the evidence pointed to a botched installation by the Interior Department, not Hearn, who constantly denied allegations that he ripped up the pool's liner.
"If there are charges brought against him again, I mean, would you use Jeanine Pirro's filing to fight those charges?" Collins asked. "Wouldn't that be the word of the DOJ versus the DOJ?"
Eisen laughed, agreeing with the absurdity. "It's so unbelievable," Eisen said. "They said in that filing that there was no evidence beyond a reasonable doubt because the damage was caused by a botched and rushed installation."
If the DOJ follows through, "The very first thing that the judge, if charges are brought again, is the words of the U.S. attorney's office blaming the Department of the Interior," Eisen said.
Eisen brought up that he used to work as President Barack Obama's special counsel and recalled a memo that said, "The president could not interfere with or intervene in enforcement cases precisely to avoid this kind of thing."
He continued, "So the outrageousness of it, it won't stand in a court of law if it comes back, and I assume the reason we read about it today in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere is because people in the DOJ are as horrified as I am."
