podesta_email_01198.txt

podesta-emails 77,803 words email

P17 D6 V11 P23 P20

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News Clips* *June 24, 2015* *LAST NIGHT’S EVENING NEWS* ABC and CBS did not report on 2016 issues. CBS had a segment stating that Lindsey Graham claimed he has shifted his stance on the Confederate flag and that it should be removed from the South Carolina state house. *LAST NIGHT’S EVENING NEWS........................................................................ **1* *TODAY’S KEY STORIES..................................................................................... **5* Hillary Clinton, near Ferguson, calls for confronting ‘hard truths’ about race // Politico // Annie Karni – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................. 5 Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag Debate Is Just the Beginning // Bloomberg // Jennifer Epstein – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................. 7 The Republican Party needs to catch up with Hillary Clinton on race // WaPo // Jonathan Capehart – June 23, 2015...................................................................................................................................... 8 *SOCIAL MEDIA................................................................................................ **10* Dan Merica (6/23/15, 5:02 PM) – Clinton gets big applause in MO when she says, “We need to come together for common sense gun reforms that keep our communities safe.”............................................ 10 Ronald Brownstein (6/23/15, 8:48 PM) – In ’12 O lost whites by 20 pts. In @NBC @WSJ poll, @HillaryClinton trails w/whites by 7 vs @JebBush, 6 vs @marcorubio, even w/@ScottWalker.......................... 10 Rick Klein (6/23/15, 10:37 AM) – Rand Paul today on Confederate flag: ‘Now it’s a symbol of murder – it’s time to put it in a museum.” Via @JTSantucci............................................................................... 10 Heather Haddon (6/23/15, 6:37 PM) – @GovChristie commends Gov. Haley on taking down confederate flag; says it’s time to “condemn the symbols of hate”..................................................................... 10 Alex Moe (6/23/15, 3:04 PM) – Rep. Hoyer says the #CharlestonShooting was a “horrific act” and plans to attend funeral on Friday in SC............................................................................................... 10 Ed O’Keefe (6/23/15, 5:52 PM) – INBOX: @SpeakerBoehner to lead bipartisan congressional delegation to #Charleston on Friday.......................................................................................................... 10 Ed Schultz (6/23/15, 5:00 PM) – 1 hour to #edshow with @BernieSanders on #FeelTheBern at 5pET/4pCT/3pMT/2pPT on @msnbc! #TeamEdShow............................................................ 10 Jennifer Jacobs (6/23/15, 8:13 PM) – NEW: Jeb Bush returns to Iowa July 13-14. Will speak in Ames, Sioux City and Councils Bluffs. #IAcaucus....................................................................................... 10 Zeke Miller (6/23/15, 11:43 AM) – Right to Rise USA @r2rusa super PAC is out with a video explainer: “our goal is to show you Jeb’s heart”..................................................................................................... 11 *HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE............................................................................ **11* Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag ‘Shouldn’t Fly Anywhere’ // NYT // Amy Chozick – June 23, 2015 11 Fast-Track Trade Bill Clears Key Hurdle in Senate // WSJ // Siobhan Hughes – June 23, 2015. 12 Hillary Clinton: Charleston shooting ‘an act of racist terrorism’ // WaPo // Jose A. DelReal – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 15 What primary? 92 percent of Democrats are comfortable voting for Hillary. // WaPo // Chris Cillizza – June 23, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 17 Schumer: Carbon tax has a chance if Clinton wins // Politico // Elana Schor – June 23, 2015.... 18 More changes rock pro-Clinton super PAC // Politico // Glenn Thrush – June 23, 2015............. 19 Holy %$#@! Rahm’s Clinton White House files due out // Politico // Josh Gerstein – June 23, 2015 20 Clinton says Confederate flag has no place in US // AP // Ken Thomas – June 23, 2015............ 21 Clinton Campaigns at Christ the King United Church of Christ // KMOX CBS // Carol Daniel - June 24, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 22 Hillary Clinton engages in conversation on race at Christ The King // STL American // Rebecca Rivas - June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................... 25 Clinton in Florissant calls Confederate flag, Charleston murders "racist" // St. Louis Public Radio // Jo Mannies – June 23, 2015....................................................................................................... 26 After S.C. tragedy, Nevada draws praise for lawmakers’ restraint on guns // Las Vegas Sun // Kyle Roerink - June 24, 2015....................................................................................................................... 29 Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag removal to a 'Stalinist purge' // Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June 23, 2015................................................................. 31 Hillary Clinton’s on aggressive fundraising push // CNN // Jeff Zeleny and Dan Merica – June 24, 2015 32 Clinton commends effort to remove Confederate flag? // CNN // Dan Merica – June 23, 2015... 35 Clinton to say removing the Confederate flag is important, but not the solution // CNN // Dan Merica – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................... 37 ’92 Confederate buttons weren’t ours: Former Clinton aide // CBS // Hannah Fraser-Chanpong – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 39 Hillary Clinton: Country’s Struggle With Race ‘Far From Over’ // NBC // Andrew Rafferty – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 39 More retailers should remove Confederate flag products, Hillary Clinton says // LA Times // Kathleen Hennessey – June 23, 2015................................................................................................... 40 Hillary Clinton on course to win 2016 presidential election: Poll // Economic Times – June 24, 2015 42 Does Hillary Really Believe in the Hillary Doctrine? // New Republic // Jordan Michael Smith – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 43 Hillary’s Bernie Sanders problem: She wants to embrace populism and Wall Street at the same time // Salon // Adam Green – June 23, 2015............................................................................................. 45 How Much Will Demographics Help Hillary Clinton? // NY Mag // Jonathan Chait – June 23, 2015 47 If You Buy a Onesie From the Hillary Clinton Campaign Store, You Are Basically Selling Your Soul // NY Post // Jaime Fuller – June 23, 2015................................................................................................. 47 Pataki: Hillary Clinton likely broke law // Boston Herald // Chris Cassidy – June 23, 2015....... 48 Hillary Clinton on course to win presidential election, poll says // Guardian // Jessica Glenza – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 49 Clinton on Flying Confederate Flag: Not in South Carolina, Not Anywhere // National Journal // Emily Schultheis – June 23, 2015.................................................................................................... 50 Hillary Clinton Has an Idea Conservatives Should Get Behind // National Review // Reihan Salam – June 23, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 51 Beghazi panel chairman: State Dept. didn’t hand over requested emails // The Hill // Martin Matishak – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................... 54 The Clintons, immune to scandal // The Hill // Richard Benedetto – June 23, 2015................. 55 Back to the 1990s: Fact-checking Whitewater // Politifact // Christian Belanger Linda Qiu – June 24, 2015............................................................................................................................................ 57 Did Hillary Clinton have her name on only three laws in eight years as Jeb Bush says? // PolitiFact // Amy Sherman – June 23, 2015...................................................................................................... 57 No media coverage of Hillary Clinton’s ‘exoneration’ in Whitewater, says Bill Clinton // PolitiFact // Christian Belanger and Linda Qiu – June 23, 2015................................................................................ 59 Clinton campaign video highlights ‘equal’ marriage rights // The Blade // Chris Johnson – June 24, 2015 62 Clinton Aide Worked on UAE Project While at State Department // Free Beacon // Alana Goodman - June 24, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 63 For-Profit Schools Target Vulnerable Vets, Give to Clinton Foundation // Washington Free Beacon // Brent Scher – June 23, 2015........................................................................................................... 65 MSNBC Guest: Clinton Reminiscient of Nixon With Suspicion and ‘Nipping’ Scandals // Washington Free Beacon // Andrew Kugle – June 23, 2015............................................................................... 67 Hillary Clinton tells Americans to face their racism // Washington Times // S.A. Miller – June 23, 2015 68 Hillary Clinton a ‘LINO’ – Liberal in Name Only? // Fox // Elizabeth MacDonald – June 23, 2015 69 Hillary arrives by private jet for Ferguson-area speech on race relations and Charleston ‘terrorism’ – but friend of Michael Brown hammers her: ‘Where you been, Hillary? It’s been ten months, girl!’ // Daily Mail // David Martosko – June 23, 2015..................................................................................................... 70 Hillary Clinton camp won’t say if Confederate flag button was official part of the ’92 presidential campaign // Daily Mail // Kate Pickles and Evan Bleier – June 23, 2015..................................................... 71 Former Clinton Advisor: Hillary ‘Absolutely’ Has to Answer for Arkansas’ Confederate Flag // Mediaite // Alex Griswold – June 23, 2015...................................................................................................... 73 *OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE.................................................. **73* *DECLARED.................................................................................................. **73* *O’MALLEY............................................................................................... **73* Martin O’Malley, the Confederacy, and the Maryland state song // CBS // Jake Miller – June 23, 2015 73 O’Malley returning to Iowa on Sunday // Des Moines Register // Grant Rodgers – June 23, 2015 75 *SANDERS................................................................................................. **75* Meet the Hilarious Comedian Now Impersonating Bernie Sanders // Bloomberg // David Weigel – June 23, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 76 Will Sanders stun Hillary in 2016 like Obama did in 2008? // Market Watch // Darrell Delmaide – June 24, 2015.................................................................................................................................... 78 Sanders crowds show Iowa Democrats’ passion // Quad-City Times // James Q. Lynch – June 23, 2015 80 Bernie Sanders plans 6 stops this weekend // Union Leader // June 23, 2015.......................... 81 *CHAFEE.................................................................................................. **82* Verbatim: Lincoln Chafee on His High School Years With Jeb Bush // NYT // June 23, 2015.... 82 *WEBB...................................................................................................... **82* Jim Webb Is the Only Presidential Hopeful Who Won’t Comment on the Confederate Flag Controversy // Mother Jones // Max J. Rosenthal and Tim Murphy – June 23, 2015...................................... 82 *OTHER.................................................................................................... **83* Haley’s stock rises amid flag furor // The Hill // Niall Stanage – June 24, 2015........................ 84 Clay endorses Hillary Clinton for president // St. Louis Post-Dispatch // Chuck Raasch – June 23, 2015 86 How Obama Can Heal the Democrats’ Split on Trade // The Daily Beast // Jonathan Alter – June 24, 2015........................................................................................................................................... 86 Democrats work to blunt GOP attacks on global affairs in 2016 // Politico // Nahal Toosi – June 23, 2015 90 *GOP................................................................................................................. **92* *DECLARED................................................................................................. **92* *BUSH....................................................................................................... **92* Jeb Bush: I would fire OPM director over hack attack // WaPo // Ed O’Keefe – June 23, 2015... 92 Jeb Bush goes after Hillary Clinton, de Blasio on education // CNN // Ashley Killough – June 23, 2015 93 14 Years Ago, Jeb Bush Removed Confederate Flag In Florida // CBS // June 23, 2015............. 95 #Millennials: Want to #Hang With #JebBush // Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 23, 2015 97 Why Jeb Bush Wants the United States to Be More Like Estonia // Mother Jones // Max J. Rosenthal – June 23, 2015............................................................................................................................... 98 Jeb Bush: Obama Should Fire His ‘Political Hack’ OPM Director // National Journal // Dustin Volz – June 23, 2015..................................................................................................................................... 99 School choice is the best hope for New York’s kids – and America’s // NY Post // Jeb Bush – June 23, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 101 Jeb Bush blasts the White House on cybersecurity // Fortune // Robert Hackett – June 23, 2015 102 Jeb Bush: Obama caused ‘massive’ tax increase on middle class // PolitiFact // Lauren Carroll – June 23, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 105 *RUBIO.................................................................................................... **107* Rubio hasn’t learned running for president is different // Chicago Sun-Times // Mark Shields – June 23, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 107 *PAUL...................................................................................................... **109* Rand Paul: Flag ‘inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery’ // Politico // Adam B. Lerner – June 23, 2015.............................................................................................................................. 109 Rand Paul Says Confederate Flag Belongs in Museum // Bloomberg // Ben Brody – June 23, 2015 109 Rand Paul Super-PAC Slams “Bailout Bu$h” in Bizarre Web Ad // Mother Jones // Patrick Caldwell – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................... 110 Rand Paul weighs in on Confederate flag: It’s a symbol of slavery // MSNBC // Benjy Sarlin – June 23, 2015........................................................................................................................................... 111 *CRUZ...................................................................................................... **112* Cruz reverses support for TPA trade bill, blasts GOP leaders // Politico // Manu Raju – June 23, 2015 112 Why Ted Cruz Can’t Quit the Gay Marriage Fight // Bloomberg // Heidi Przybyla – June 23, 2015 113 Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag removal to a 'Stalinist purge' // Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June 23, 2015............................................................... 116 *PERRY.................................................................................................... **117* Rick Perry Is Still on the Payroll of a Controversial Pipeline Company // Mother Jones // Patrick Caldwell – June 22, 2015...................................................................................................................... 117 *HUCKABEE............................................................................................ **118* Mike Huckabee Backs Nikki Haley on Confederate Flag Removal // Bloomberg // Ali Elkin – June 23, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 118 Mike Huckabee: ‘I salute’ S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley on Confederate flag issue’ // Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 23, 2015................................................................................................... 119 *FIORINA................................................................................................. **121* Carly Fiorina: Cybersecurity ‘Has To Be a Central Part of Any Homeland Security Strategy’ // Bloomberg // Ben Brody – June 23, 2015................................................................................................... 121 *TRUMP................................................................................................... **122* Trump Surges in Popularity in N.H., Taking Second Place in Suffolk Poll // WSJ // Reid J. Epstein – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................... 122 Poll: Trump near top of GOP pack in New Hampshire // CNN // Theodore Schleifer – June 23, 2015 123 Trump’s Running – but the Joke’s on You // Daily Beast // Charles Gasparino – June 22, 2015 124 *UNDECLARED........................................................................................... **126* *WALKER................................................................................................ **126* Scott Walker, Promising ‘Bold Leadership,’ Faces G.O.P. Discord in Wisconsin // NYT // Trip Gabriel – June 23, 2015.............................................................................................................................. 126 Scott Walker Reportedly Requested 20-Week Ban Without Exceptions For Rape, Incest // HuffPo // Laura Bassett – June 23, 2015....................................................................................................... 129 The true payoff from Scott Walker’s war on tenure // NY Post // Naomi Schaefer Riley – June 22, 2015 130 *CHRISTIE............................................................................................... **131* Chris Christie to announce 2016 bid as early as next week // Politico // Alex Isenstadt – June 23, 2015 132 Chris Christie’s approval rating: 30 percent // Politico // Nick Gass – June 23, 2015............... 133 Watch Chris Christie’s Approval Rating Free Fall in One Chart // Bloomberg // Andrew Feather – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................... 134 Christie’s home-state support sinks to new depths // MSNBC // Steve Benen – June 23, 2015 134 Christie Backs Haley on Confederate Flag // Daily Beast // June 23, 2015.............................. 135 *OTHER................................................................................................... **135* Bush leads in N.H. polls. Trump is second. // Politico // Nick Gass – June 23, 2015............... 135 ‘Selzer Score’ gives clarity on Republican field // Politico // Hadas Gold – June 23, 2015........ 136 2016ers embrace flag removal after hedging // CNN // Maeve Reston – June 23, 2015............ 137 What the GOP Lost When It Won the South // Daily Beast // Matt Lewis – June 23, 2015...... 140 GOP candidates seek distance from white supremacist group // Des Moines Register // June 22, 2015 141 *OTHER 2016 NEWS....................................................................................... **144* The Best and Worst of the 2016 Campaign Merch // NY Mag // Véronique Hyland – June 23, 2015 144 Why are so many running for president? // Philadelphia Tribune // Julian Zelizer – June 22, 2015 144 South Carolina Dems Blast DCCC for Using Confederate Flag Issue to Fundraise // The Blaze // Kaitlyn Schallhorn – June 23, 2015.................................................................................................. 146 *TOP NEWS..................................................................................................... **147* *DOMESTIC................................................................................................. **147* Obama Ordering Changes in U.S. Hostage Policies // NYT // Julie Hirschfeld Davis – June 23, 2015 147 Amazon to Remove Confederate Flag Items, Following eBay and Others // WSJ // Greg Bensinger – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................... 150 Dems weigh last-ditch move to sink trade bill // Politico // Lauren French and John Bresnahan – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................... 151 Obamacare repeal still vexes GOP // Politico // Rachel Bade – June 23, 2015........................ 153 Meet the Diehard Right Wingers Who Just Can’t Quit Obamacare // TPM // Gus Garcia-Roberts – June 23, 2015................................................................................................................................... 155 Legislature to tackle removal of Confederate battle flag // Post and Courier // Cynthia Roldan – June 23, 2015.......................................................................................................................................... 163 *INTERNATIONAL...................................................................................... **163* A border village in Haiti struggles with new Dominican rules // WaPo // Joshua Partlow – June 24, 2015 163 Iran’s Supreme Leader Seems to Pull Back on Nuclear Talks // NYT // Thomas Erdbrink And David E. Sanger - June 23, 2015...................................................................................................................... 167 *OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS................................................................... **169* Bill Clinton, the Confederacy, and the Arkansas State Flag // WSJ // Peter Nicholas – June 23, 2015 169 Cyberterror, China, and the Clinton competency deficit // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 23, 2015 170 Hillary, pay your interns // USA Today // Carolyn Osorio – June 23, 2015.............................. 172 ‘Clinton Cash’ author demolishes Hillary’s self-defense // NY Post // Peter Schweizer – June 22, 2015 174 *TODAY’S KEY STORIES* *Hillary Clinton, near Ferguson, calls for confronting ‘hard truths’ about race <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-ferguson-talk-on-race-119346.html#ixzz3dvUUZKlU> // Politico // Annie Karni – June 23, 2015 * For the third time since the Charleston massacre last week, Hillary Clinton addressed head on the “hard truths” about race the country needs to confront. “Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished,” Clinton said at a forum at the Christ the King Church of Christ near Ferguson, Missouri, a city ripped apart by the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in 2014. “We can’t hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name them, own them and change them,” Clinton said. She called Wednesday’s slayings “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God.” The key to change, Clinton said, was the ballot box — “finally persuading the 50 million Americans who do not vote that by not voting they make it possible for people who do not agree with them, do not support their aspirations, to call the shots,” she said. Her comments in Missouri followed an emotional address over the weekend, where she said the problems of racism in America go far beyond a horrific shooting, and that “millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday lives.” Clinton — who called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state Capitol back in 2007 — on Tuesday also commended South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for urging that it finally be removed from the statehouse, calling it “a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our nation’s present or future. It shouldn’t fly there, it shouldn’t fly anywhere.” Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to supporters Saturday, June 13, 2015, on Roosevelt Island in New York, in a speech promoted as her formal presidential campaign debut. Clinton also encouraged all retailers to follow the lead of Wal-mart, Amazon, Ebay and Sears, who have announced that they would stop selling products depicting Confederate flag imagery. Supporters said Clinton’s focus on racial injustice in America is resonating across the country, and that her forceful remarks have helped to buck the perception of Clinton as a cautious politician. “Her comments personally resonate with me as an African American,” said Nevada State Sen. Aaron Ford, who supported Barack Obama in 2008. “This morning at the gym I spoke with a couple people who were appreciative of the stance she has taken on this. Her courage in this instance is shining through.” Longtime Clinton ally Terry Shumaker, a New Hampshire attorney who co-chaired both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, said her comments on race and gun control “blow a hole in the notion that she’s overly cautious, overly scripted, that she has nothing but platitudes to say. With her comments on race, she’s right out there in front.” In the hour-long forum in Missouri, Clinton heard from a local developer trying to create a community, not just buildings; a teacher at an under-funded school discussing the importance of early childhood education; and an educator who sits on President Barack Obama’s task force for policing, assembled after the Ferguson shooting. Toward the end of the forum, Clinton was asked how the country can build more momentum for change. “I don’t want to sound like a civics teacher 101, but this is how I feel,” she said. “If people voted for people who would represent them about these interests, that’s the way we run. … The hardest thing to do in a campaign is to convince people to actually take the time to vote. That’s the clearest way to give the will.” *Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag Debate Is Just the Beginning* <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/hillary-clinton-says-confederate-flag-debate-is-just-the-beginning>* // Bloomberg // Jennifer Epstein – June 23, 2015* Less than a week after a mass shooting at a black church situated in one community with a history of racial tensions, Hillary Clinton on Tuesday visited another black church in another community struggling with racial relations. Speaking at Christ the King Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri, Clinton welcomed the new push to abandon the Confederate flag but said it must be paired with renewed efforts to confront the deeper issues at the core of racial divisions, from policing to jobs to health care. That, she said, is the way to honor memories of the nine people killed last week at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church. The shooting was "an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God," Clinton said from the pulpit here, in a St. Louis suburb that neighbors Ferguson. "Let us be resolved to make sure they did not die in vain. Do not be overcome by evil but let evil be overcome by good." Clinton said she appreciates the calls from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and other politicians to stop flying the Confederate flag on the grounds of the state capitol. "It shouldn't fly there," she said. "It shouldn't fly anywhere." She also commended Walmart, where she was once a board member, Amazon, eBay and Sears for announcing that they will stop selling the products adorned with the flag. In an appearance that her campaign said was aimed at turning "grief, anger and despair into purpose and action," Clinton spoke to a predominantly African American group of ministers and locals, and joined a roundtable discussion that included Jason Purnell, an assistant professor at Washington University, and Tiffany Anderson, superintendent of the once-floundering Jennings School District. The church's leader Rev. Traci Blackmon, a member of the Ferguson Commission, a group working to rebuild the community and tackle some of the issues underlying last year's protests, and Rev. Karen Anderson, who heads neighboring Ward Chapel AME Church, led the discussion. Clinton's response to the Charleston shootings reflects a significant change in strategy and her emphasis on enhanced political nimbleness. Clinton's 2008 campaign was often slow to respond to events but the current team–and the candidate herself–have taken strides to react more quickly. There are still layers of internal debates, but they generally take hours to resolve rather than days. She tweeted her condolences three hours after the Charleston shooting and used her first public appearance the next day to offer extended sympathies and begin talking about race. The Clinton campaign had planned for weeks to have an event that would be open to press in the St. Louis area while the candidate was in town for a fundraiser hosted by an heiress to the Anheuser-Busch fortune. But Charleston's aftermath led Clinton to ask her staff over the weekend to focus the conversation on race and violence, a campaign official said. Since Wednesday's shooting, Clinton has spoken more extensively on race relations and gun violence than any other presidential hopeful (former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has focused his energy solely on arguing for stronger gun control laws, saying that the shooting "pissed" him off). Addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco on Saturday, Clinton called for "common sense" gun control and added that the election of the first black president had not brought “America’s long struggle with race" to an end. “Our problem is not all kooks and Klansmen," she said. "It's also the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It's the offhand comment about not wanting those people in the neighborhood." In preparing for her public remarks, Clinton has talked through her thoughts on race with a range of people, including two top campaign staffers: senior policy adviser Maya Harris and Marlon Marshall, director of state campaigns and political engagement. Harris is a civil rights lawyer who has written about engaging women of color in the political process. Marshall grew up in Richmond Heights, a suburb about 15 miles south of Ferguson, and attended Michael Brown’s funeral on behalf of the White House, where he was deputy director of public engagement until late last year. He joined Clinton in Florissant on Tuesday. As the debate over South Carolina's Confederate flag heated up over the weekend and on Monday, Clinton stayed quiet on the issue as her aides debated how to respond, as her spokespeople pointed reporters to comments she made in a 2007 interview, in which she said the flag should be removed from the grounds of the state capitol. After South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley joined with other prominent Republicans in the state on Monday afternoon to call for the flag to be taken down, Clinton applauded the announcement. Haley “is right to call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC," Clinton wrote on Twitter. "As I’ve said for years, taking down Confederate flag is long overdue.” It took 19 days for Clinton to respond to Brown’s August killing, drawing some criticism from impatient commentators, but when she did weigh in, her response was well-received by black leaders. She spoke about “the inequities that persist in our justice system” – an issue upon which she expanded in an April speech – and urged white Americans to imagine what it would be like if the criminal justice system treated them the same way it treats blacks. *The Republican Party needs to catch up with Hillary Clinton on race* <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/06/23/the-republican-party-needs-to-catch-up-with-hillary-clinton-on-race/>* // WaPo // Jonathan Capehart – June 23, 2015* As the nation tried to make sense of the murder last week of nine African Americans in a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., Hillary Clinton delivered a powerful call to action to the nation on Saturday on race at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in San Francisco. I put it on par with President Obama’s 2008 speech on race because not only did she forthrightly confront some hard truths on America’s “deep fault line,” she also urged us to do something about it. And she will do it again today in St. Louis. Clinton had left Charleston hours before the shooting. In her speech the next day in Las Vegas to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), Clinton said we “have to face hard truths about race, violence, guns and division.” She added, “Let’s unite in partnership, not just to talk, but to act.” When Clinton got to the Conference of Mayors gathering in San Francisco, the Democratic presidential candidate went further. “Once again, racist rhetoric has metastasized into racist violence,” Clinton said. “[D]espite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished. … I know there are truths we don’t like to say out loud or discuss with our children. But we have to. That’s the only way we can possibly move forward together.” And then Clinton spoke with an honesty I have not heard from a white politician since her husband President Clinton tried to lead a national “conversation about race” in the late 1990s. And our problem is not all kooks and Klansman. It’s also in the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It’s in the off-hand comments about not wanting “those people” in the neighborhood. Let’s be honest: For a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear. And news reports about poverty and crime and discrimination evoke sympathy, even empathy, but too rarely do they spur us to action or prompt us to question our own assumptions and privilege. We can’t hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in America. We have to name them and own them and then change them. Clinton’s “kooks and klansman” line echoes the tart observation made by President Obama in his podcast interview with Marc Maron over the weekend. The one where he said that “the measure of whether racism exists” is “not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘n—-r’ in public.” Whereas the president said we must figure out “what more we can do,” the candidate who hopes to succeed him urged all of us to no longer remain silent in the face of overt or insidious forms of racism. Clinton was already slated to be in St. Louis for a fundraiser. But a campaign aide told me that the events of Charleston so moved her that she insisted on doing more. That’s why this afternoon, she will meet with education, community and religious leaders working on issues that impact systemic racism at a black church in Florissant, Mo., near Ferguson, another flashpoint in America’s troubled racial history. I expect Clinton to reiterate her themes from San Francisco and to focus on ideas and solutions that address how the nation moves forward to tackle these issues. Clinton’s willingness to go all-in on race at this point of the presidential campaign stands in stark contrast to the dodging on the Republican side. Questions about race in general and the Confederate battle flag in particular have left the GOP tied up in knots. To be fair, the Democratic Party has had a decades-long head start in grappling with and understanding the myriad issues and nuances involved in talking about race. But after watching heartbreaking videos from Staten Island and Cleveland, McKinney, Tex., and North Charleston, silence is not an option. Anyone who wants to be seriously considered for president of the United States must take race and racism seriously. He must be ready to discuss both with the thoughtfulness they require and be ready to offer solutions that can be implemented. I say “He” because the only viable woman in the race for the White House already has it covered. *SOCIAL MEDIA* *Dan Merica (6/23/15, 5:02 PM)* <https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/status/613436978105745408>* – Clinton gets big applause in MO when she says, “We need to come together for common sense gun reforms that keep our communities safe.”* *Ronald Brownstein (6/23/15, 8:48 PM)* <https://twitter.com/RonBrownstein/status/613493778922385409>* – In ’12 O lost whites by 20 pts. In @NBC @WSJ poll, @HillaryClinton trails w/whites by 7 vs @JebBush, 6 vs @marcorubio, even w/@ScottWalker* *Rick Klein (6/23/15, 10:37 AM)* <https://twitter.com/rickklein/status/613340127671255040>* – Rand Paul today on Confederate flag: ‘Now it’s a symbol of murder – it’s time to put it in a museum.” Via @JTSantucci* *Heather Haddon (6/23/15, 6:37 PM)* <https://twitter.com/heatherhaddon/status/613460906568253444>* – @GovChristie commends Gov. Haley on taking down confederate flag; says it’s time to “condemn the symbols of hate”* *Alex Moe (6/23/15, 3:04 PM)* <https://twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/613407405196447745>* – Rep. Hoyer says the #CharlestonShooting was a “horrific act” and plans to attend funeral on Friday in SC* *Ed O’Keefe (6/23/15, 5:52 PM)* <https://twitter.com/edatpost/status/613449603145297920>* – INBOX: @SpeakerBoehner to lead bipartisan congressional delegation to #Charleston on Friday* *Ed Schultz (6/23/15, 5:00 PM)* <https://twitter.com/edshow/status/613436451640836096>* – 1 hour to #edshow with @BernieSanders on #FeelTheBern at 5pET/4pCT/3pMT/2pPT on @msnbc! #TeamEdShow* *Jennifer Jacobs (6/23/15, 8:13 PM)* <https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/613485014118850561>* – NEW: Jeb Bush returns to Iowa July 13-14. Will speak in Ames, Sioux City and Councils Bluffs. #IAcaucus* *Zeke Miller (6/23/15, 11:43 AM)* <https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/613356776956760064>* – Right to Rise USA @r2rusa super PAC is out with a video explainer: “our goal is to show you Jeb’s heart”* *HRC** NATIONAL COVERAGE* *Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag ‘Shouldn’t Fly Anywhere’* <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/politics/hillary-clinton-says-confederate-flag-shouldnt-fly-anywhere.html>* // NYT // Amy Chozick – June 23, 2015* As lawmakers across the South spoke out against the Confederate battle flag and the nation’s largest retailers pulled items with its image from their shelves, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday called the flag “a symbol of our nation’s racist past.” Speaking at an African-American church just outside Ferguson, Mo., an impoverished black community where protests against a mostly white police force erupted in violence last summer, Mrs. Clinton made a forceful plea to remove the Confederate flag wherever it flew. And she encouraged other retailers to follow Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Sears/Kmart in discontinuing sales of items that display the flag. “It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said of South Carolina, where a white gunman killed nine African-Americans last Wednesday during a Bible study session at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. “That night, word of the killings struck like a blow to the soul,” she said. “How do we make sense of such an evil act — an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God?” Mrs. Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, spoke a day after Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina called for the Confederate flag to be removed from the grounds of the State House in Columbia. Ms. Haley, a Republican, called the flag a “deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past.” The Charleston attack forced the wide field of presidential candidates to wade into issues of racism, injustice, and fierce debates in the South over the meaning and misuses of Confederate symbolism. The suspect in the murders, Dylann Roof, 21, had brandished the flag on social media and posted deeply racist tirades. Until Ms. Haley called for the Confederate flag’s removal, several Republican presidential hopefuls had issued vague statements or said the matter was a state issue that should be left to South Carolina. One Republican candidate, Ben Carson, who is black, faulted his opponents on Monday for not calling “this tragedy an act of racism.” Mrs. Clinton spoke out against the Confederate flag in 2007 when she told The Associated Press while campaigning in South Carolina that she “would like to see it removed” from the State House grounds. But until Tuesday, she had not commented on the current debate. In her discussion Tuesday with community leaders at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo., Mrs. Clinton said the flag’s removal would be “just the beginning of what we have to do” to combat racism. She proceeded to list statistics about the economic disparities between black and white Americans, saying schools are more segregated today than they were in the 1960s, with 23 percent of black students in the South attending majority white schools in 2011, slightly lower than the percentage in 1968, according to her campaign. It was no accident that Mrs. Clinton chose a town near Ferguson to hold the campaign event, one of only a handful of public appearances on her schedule in the coming weeks. The early months of her presidential campaign have been marked by sweeping speeches about race relations and issues like criminal justice reform and voting rights that may particularly resonate with African-American voters. Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis on race has been largely motivated by current events, with her campaign unfolding against the backdrop of riots in Baltimore this spring after the death of a black man who had been in police custody and, more immediately, the slaughter in Charleston. Mrs. Clinton’s approach also distinguishes her from her potential Republican rivals who have mostly only dipped a cautious toe into issues of racism. Candid talks like the one in Florissant could help Mrs. Clinton shore up support among the Democratic Party’s base who overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama during her failed 2008 presidential campaign. Throughout the event, Mrs. Clinton spoke frequently about her own Methodist faith and her regular Bible study classes and churchgoing. The Florissant church’s pastor, the Rev. Traci Blackmon, ended the day’s discussion with a prayer, asking the Lord to make sure Mrs. Clinton listens to the people she hopes to represent. “There are those who are still suffering from injustice,” Ms. Blackmon said. “There are those who we still walk by every day and forget.” *Fast-Track Trade Bill Clears Key Hurdle in Senate <http://www.wsj.com/articles/trade-bill-clears-key-hurdle-in-senate-1435071011> // WSJ // Siobhan Hughes – June 23, 2015 * The Senate on Tuesday gave President Barack Obama’s trade agenda a big push forward, in a pivotal vote that clears the highest remaining procedural hurdle to granting the president expanded trade-negotiating power. The 60-37 vote effectively precludes any filibuster opponents might mount and sets up the fast-track bill to pass the Senate by Wednesday. The House has already passed the measure, a priority for Mr. Obama that would stand as one of the most significant legislative acts of his presidency and a monument to the power of divided government to cut through partisan gridlock. More Republicans support fast-track than Democrats, but GOP supporters had to rely on the votes of 13 business-friendly Democrats to advance the legislation, which would give Mr. Obama the power to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments. Five Republicans and the chamber’s two independents joined 30 Democrats in voting no. The success in getting around the Senate’s last procedural hurdle—with no votes to spare, since 60 were needed—was a victory for the White House, businesses and Republican leaders. It was a crushing blow to labor unions and environmentalists, who helped elect Mr. Obama and view his trade agenda—and the intensity with which he has fought for it—as a betrayal. “This has been a long and rather twisted path to where we are today but it’s a very, very important accomplishment for the country,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the Senate floor after the vote. Some Democrats are concerned because the fast-track bill was separated from one that would extend a program to help workers hurt by international trade. Pro-trade Democrats who supported the bill Tuesday are essentially trusting GOP leaders to follow through on their promise to bring the aid measure to a vote and get it to Mr. Obama, as soon as this week. The bill is seen as essential for Mr. Obama to wrap up negotiations on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal involving countries around the Pacific Ocean. White House press secretary Josh Earnest praised the Senate vote, saying the legislation “will help America write the rules of the road.” Opponents of the fast-track measure were disappointed. “This is a day of celebration in the corporate suites of this country,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) said. “They’ve got another corporate-sponsored trade agreement that will mean more money in some investors’ pockets. It will mean more plant closings in Ohio and Arizona and Delaware and Rhode Island and West Virginia and Maine and all over this country.” Tuesday’s outcome was made possible by last November’s elections, which gave Republicans control of the Senate for the first time in eight years and meant that both chambers of Congress were in Republican hands for the first time in Mr. Obama’s presidency. It also represented a personal victory for Mr. McConnell, who won re-election last year by saying he had the clout to assemble bipartisan majorities. For his part, Mr. Obama put aside his disagreements with Mr. McConnell and instead threw himself into the task of lining up support for the fast-track bill with gusto—so much, in fact, that Mr. McConnell told reporters that after communicating with Mr. Obama and being on the same side of the issue he was practically having an “out-of-body experience.” The outcome of Tuesday’s vote had been in doubt as late as Monday night, hinging on whether enough of the 14 pro-trade Senate Democrats who had voted for a fast-track bill last month would do so again. Only one of them, Ben Cardin of Maryland, switched his vote to no saying that “the Republican leadership put worker protections at great risk” because with the fast-track bill about to pass, there was no guarantee that a program to help workers hurt by trade deals would also pass. A last-minute defection on the Republican side came from Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who complained that negotiations had involved too much backroom dealing. His switch created more uncertainty about the vote and lowered the margin of victory from the last Senate vote on trade. The workers-aid program, called Trade Adjustment Assistance, is expected to be on the Senate floor Wednesday for its own procedural vote, as part of a separate measure to extend trade preference for sub-Saharan African nations. The Senate would then pass that measure on Thursday and the House would get it to the president by the end of the week. A third bill, to step up enforcement of trade laws, must be reconciled with a House version, a process leaders also hope to start by the end of the week before Congress leaves town for its July 4 recess. Mr. Earnest urged Congress to pass trade-enforcement legislation “promptly.” Even if GOP leaders live up to their promises to Democrats and get all three bills to the president, the votes won’t end trade fights in Washington, but instead will open up a new front in the battle. If the Senate passes the fast-track bill by Wednesday, as expected, the White House will then have to turn its attention to wrapping up the Trans-Pacific Partnershipand convincing Congress to ratify it. Because the fast-track bill will expedite passage of trade deals negotiated over the next six years but not guarantee their passage, the next phase of the fight will be even more important than the first round. Some Democrats who voted for fast-track legislation have warned Mr. Obama not to presume that they will also vote for the Pacific deal, the largest in history. The coming battle will shift away from the process for ratifying trade deals and toward the substance of the pacts themselves. Trade negotiators have been working in secret on the trade accord, and lawmakers are able to study the text only by going into a secure room in which they are banned from taking any notes. The fast-track bill will force the text into the public eye, requiring publication of the agreement 60 days before the president signs the accord. The president would then still have to submit implementation legislation to Congress before the deal is ratified. The uncertain potential for Congress to ratify a new trade pact speaks to the open wounds left by the fast-track fight, which was brutal even by contemporary Washington standards. Mr. Obama blasted Democrats for distorting the issues, and said that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a liberal standard-bearer, was “wrong on this.” The liberal wing of the party gave as good as it got, with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka outlining a plan to freeze campaign contributions until after the fast-track vote played out. Other liberal groups chased Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) around his state with a blimp and a recreational vehicle to pressure him to back off the fast-track bill that he helped write. *Hillary Clinton: Charleston shooting ‘an act of racist terrorism’ <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/23/hillary-clinton-takes-her-message-of-racial-reconciliation-to-missouri/> // WaPo // Jose A. DelReal – June 23, 2015 * On the heels of delivering an impassioned speech on race relations last weekend, Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the shooting of nine people at a church in Charleston as "an act of racist terrorism," and called for the removal of the Confederate flag from public spaces nationwide. Clinton — who called for the flag to be removed from South Carolina statehouse grounds eight years ago, during her first presidential bid — praised South Carolina officials for making the same call Monday. “I appreciate the actions begun yesterday by the governor and others in South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse, recognizing it as a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future," she said. "It shouldn’t fly there, it shouldn’t fly anywhere.” She also commended retailers Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay and Sears by name for announcing that they would no longer sell products that feature the flag. The Democratic presidential contender was here to meet with community leaders at a mostly black church located near Ferguson, Mo., where race riots last year sparked a national debate on discrimination and policing. Her emphasis on racial issues follows the tragic shooting at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where a gunman killed nine people last Wednesday as they gathered for a Bible study. The attack will be the focus of Clinton’s “community meeting” Tuesday afternoon at the United Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo. Clinton has confidently waded into conversations on race relations on several occasions in recent months, with a particular emphasis on discussing the need for criminal justice reform in the United States. Her most recent string of speeches and appearances also serves as a clear message to communities of color: I'm with you — and I want your vote. "Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished," Clinton said at the annual Conference of Mayors on Saturday. "I know this is a difficult topic to talk about. I know that so many of us hoped by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we do not like to say out loud or discus with our children. But we have to." Clinton’s visit Tuesday came amid questions over her ability to reassemble the “Obama coalition” during the 2016 election, a coalition she is aggressively courting as she seeks the Democratic nomination. But six years into President Obama's tenure, parts of that coalition of young, female and ethnically diverse voters has become discouraged by the lack of political progress they see in Washington. Clinton's campaign is seeking to cast her as a transformative figure similar to Obama — a “fighter,” in the words of her campaign, and potentially the first female president — in hopes of sparking the same kind of political energy that propelled Obama to the White House in 2008. "This is no longer what has been called a 'Ferguson issue.' It's a community issue. Change is needed," said Cynthia Donaldson, 54, a local resident and a Democratic voter who supports Clinton. "We also want to know her stance on unemployment and other issues. This is personal for me." Donaldson, who says her daughter has struggled to find employment since graduating with a master's degree, says she is interested in hearing Clinton talk about expanding economic opportunity for everyone. "These things are not just happening in the black community." While most of those in attendance live in the community — the group included several local elected officials — several students who attend university in the area also arrived hoping to see the former secretary of state. “I think it’s important to learn how to create diverse and inclusive communities, especially now and especially in St. Louis,” said Kalie Penn, 19, a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, about 20 miles away from Florissant. "She's here to talk about equality in our community, which is such a hot button issue.... It doesn't surprise me at all — she's been an advocate for equality." Already Clinton has shown that reaching out to black and Hispanic voters is a top priority for her campaign team. In her first major policy address after declaring her presidential candidacy in April, Clinton spoke at Columbia University in New York about criminal justice reform, calling for the "end to the era of mass incarceration." "Not only as a mother and grandmother, but as a citizen, as a human being, my heart breaks for these young men and their families," Clinton said then. "We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America." Clinton’s frank and, at times, highly personal statements on issues of gun violence and policy brutality stand in contrast to the responses by her GOP rivals, who last week fumbled questions about the motivation behind the attack in Charleston — the accused shooter has since been associated with white supremacist beliefs — and whether it is appropriate for the Confederate flag to continue flying outside the South Carolina state Capitol. Her comments have also surprised many critics who accuse her of being politically guarded. “It’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to believe that in today’s America bigotry is largely behind us,” Clinton said Saturday. “But despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished.” *What primary? 92 percent of Democrats are comfortable voting for Hillary. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/23/theres-a-new-poll-number-that-shows-just-how-likely-hillary-clinton-is-to-be-the-democratic-nominee/> // WaPo // Chris Cillizza – June 23, 2015 * Ninety-two percent. That's how many Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in a new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll said they could see themselves supporting Hillary Clinton for the party's nomination in 2016, a stark sign of how little genuine resistance there is within the party to the idea of the former secretary of state as the nominee. In fact, support for Clinton on that question has risen since NBC-WSJ last asked it in March, even as Bernie Sanders appears to be picking up momentum in his primary challenge to Clinton. In March, 86 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they could see themselves supporting Clinton, while 13 percent said they could not imagine themselves supporting her. Compare that to where the Republican field stands on that same question. Jeb Bush leads the way with 75 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying they could support him, while 74 percent said the same of Marco Rubio. Mike Huckabee (65 percent could support), Scott Walker (57 percent) and Rick Perry (53 percent) round out the top five for the GOP. The simple fact is that for all the chatter about discontent toward Clinton, it's indisputable that her side is not only very comfortable with the idea of her as the nominee but significantly more so than Republicans are with any of their options. How then to reconcile that 92 percent number with the fact that six in 10 (62 percent) of those same Democrats said they prefer a "challenging primary" over an "easy" one for Clinton? A couple of ways: (1) Human nature makes us like some level of competition. We like the idea that no one gets anything without hard work. (2) There is a desire to see Clinton tested in some way to prove that she is ready for what Republicans are going to throw at her. It's the same sort of mentality that suggests that a boxer who has been out of the game for a while needs to do some sparring before entering a prizefight. The desire for Clinton to have a somewhat serious primary is, almost exclusively, born of a desire to make her stronger and more ready for the general election, not out of a belief that she has something to prove before she can be an acceptable choice for most Democrats. The way that someone who is as big a favorite as Clinton loses a party nomination (or comes close to losing one) is a failure to understand that a significant pocket of discontent — ideological, generally — exists and is in search of a candidate. It doesn't exist in this race, and to the extent it ever did, the trend line on Clinton's numbers suggests that she has effectively shrunk that group to a relatively meaningless number. So yes, Sanders (or maybe Martin O'Malley) will clean up among the 8 percent of Democrats who say they simply can't support Clinton. And it won't worry Clinton or her team in the least. Nor should it. She is, in the minds of almost every Democrat, the party's de facto nominee. And almost no one has a problem with that. *Schumer: Carbon tax has a chance if Clinton wins <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/schumer-carbon-tax-has-a-chance-if-clinton-wins-119352.html?hp=rc2_4> // Politico // Elana Schor – June 23, 2015 * Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlined a path Tuesday for Hillary Clinton to enact a carbon tax if the Democrats prevail in the 2016 elections. Schumer, the Senate Democrats’ leader-in-waiting, said that a Clinton presidency and the return of his party to the Senate majority in 2017 could pave the way for lawmakers to enact a carbon tax to help fund the government. The mere suggestion of a new fee on the emissions blamed for climate change, however, could become a political headache for Clinton and other Democrats, and it’s routinely dismissed by Republicans. The Obama administration disavowed the idea after the 2012 election. “If Hillary wins and we take back the Senate, I believe many of our Republican friends will say we’ve been starving the government for revenues,” Schumer told an environmental event on Capitol Hill, “but many of them will not be for raising rates.” Noting that half a dozen European oil and gas CEOs came out in favor of a price on carbon this month, and that ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has expressed openness to the idea, “you might get a compromise” carbon tax in that event, Schumer added. “I think in 2017 people of both parties might come to that as the best way to fund the government,” he said. Schumer’s comments came at an event hosted by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who recently unveiled a carbon tax proposal at the conservative American Enterprise Institute that would offset the funds raised by cutting corporate taxes and returning rebates to the public. The New York Democrat hinted at the potential controversy of his carbon-tax prediction by first asking if his remarks the event, which was streamed live online, would be “on the record” for the press. Schumer also vowed that Democrats would successfully defend President Barack Obama’s landmark climate change rules for power plants from GOP attacks, saying, “We will hold that — they’ll need 60 votes to change things, and we’re not going to let that happen.” Three Democrats considered swing votes on any Republican bid to unravel Obama’s climate rules, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.), face reelection in 2018. *More changes rock pro-Clinton super PAC <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/priorities-usa-super-pac-hillary-clinton-staff-shakeup-changes-119337.html> // Politico // Glenn Thrush – June 23, 2015 * Guy Cecil, the new head of Priorities USA, has replaced the group’s recently hired finance director and hired two major ad-firms – the latest moves in a major makeover of the underperforming pro-Clinton super PAC. Kim Kauffman, a longtime Cecil associate, will take over as deputy executive director in charge of finance for Justin Brennan, who has been on the job since January; Brennan, according to a Democrat with knowledge of the situation, is leaving to take a senior fundraising role with Ted Strickland’s campaign for Senate in Ohio. Cecil, former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – and a top official with Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign — has also tapped the group’s first-ever digital director, Tara McGowan, reflecting Priorities’ intention to invest significant resources in social media and online advertising. McGowan worked on the Obama campaign’s rapid-response team. Priorities’ current director of research, Patrick McHugh, is being promoted to the title of deputy director. “Priorities is building a top-notch team of the best strategists and tacticians in the country,” Cecil wrote in an email after POLITICO contacted him to confirm the moves. “Along with our new Executive Director Anne Caprara, Patrick, Kim, and Tara bring experience and passion to their work. We are lucky to have them.” Priorities – which produced a series of much-lauded ads on behalf of President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012 – has re-signed Shorr Johnson Magnus, a Philadelphia firm recently known for its controversial “Wheelchair” ad attacking handicapped Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Gregory Abbott in 2014, and added Ralston Lapp, a Washington-based firm run by veteran Democratic adman Jason Ralston. “[Shorr Johnson Magnus] did some of the best advertising in 2012 and I’m looking forward to working with them again, along with the great team at Ralston Lapp,” Cecil said. “We will have an aggressive and creative media strategy backing up all of our work.” The changes, made during a series of closed-door staff meetings over the past week, came after Cecil replaced the group’s former executive director Buffy Wicks, who was closely allied to Obama, with Caprara, who worked closely with Cecil at the DSCC. Cecil’s appointment was intended to bolster the group, which is expected to report anemic fundraising numbers later this month, a stumbling start for a group that hopes to raise as much as $300 million for the 2016 cycle to compete with juggernaut GOP super PACS. Priorities eventually raised and spent about $79 million on behalf of Obama – but got off to a late start because Obama and his staff refused to endorse the concept of a super PAC – on good-government grounds – until January 2012. Hillary Clinton has no such qualms, and has appeared at several meet-and-greets for potential super-PAC donors during a recent campaign trip to California *Holy %$#@! Rahm’s Clinton White House files due out <http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2015/06/holy-rahms-clinton-white-house-files-due-out-209345.html> // Politico // Josh Gerstein – June 23, 2015 * Is Rahm Emanuel as profane on paper as he famously is in real life? The answer to that long-simmering question could be laid bare soon with the Clinton Presidential Library set to release nearly 20,000 pages of files Emanuel accumulated during his almost six years as a top aide in the Clinton White House. The trove of Emanuel files slated to go public "include books, publications, reports, memoranda, speech drafts, press releases, polls, newspaper articles, pamphlets, emails, talking points, and correspondence," according to a notice the National Archives sent Monday to the Obama White House and a representative of former President Bill Clinton. "These materials cover a broad range of topics including education, crime, NAFTA, and health care." After his stint in the Clinton White House, Emanuel was elected to the House of Representatives from Illinois, ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and returned to the White House in 2009 as President Barack Obama's first chief of staff. He now serves as mayor of Chicago, where he was re-elected to a second term in April. Barring a last-minute hitch, Emanuel's files are likely to go public in September. Archives records show the papers were requested in 2008 by then-Washington Post reporter James V. Grimaldi. Records of Emanuel's service in Obama's White House are not likely to emerge until 2022 or later. *Clinton says Confederate flag has no place in US <http://bigstory.ap.org/article/77edff9891a543a18a1524c7e9e8d46d/clinton-meet-church-officials-near-ferguson-unrest> // AP // Ken Thomas – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the Confederate battle flag should not be displayed "anywhere," weighing in as South Carolina lawmakers seek to remove it from the grounds of their statehouse. The Democratic presidential candidate called the deadly shootings of nine black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, "an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God." Clinton called the Confederate flag a "symbol of our nation's racist past that has no place in our present or our future. It shouldn't fly there. It shouldn't fly anywhere." Clinton joined with church members in the St. Louis suburbs, near the violent protests touched off last year in nearby Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed young black man who was shot by a white police officer. Clinton said she appreciated the work of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, and state lawmakers who are working to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. She also commended Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the Arkansas-based company on whose board she once served, for announcing it would remove any product from its stores that features the Confederate flag. She encouraged other companies to follow that example while noting that Amazon, eBay and Sears have done so. Clinton has put America's struggle with race relations at the forefront of her presidential campaign in recent weeks and urged church members here to find ways to turn their grief, anger and despair into purpose and action. The Clinton campaign said she was initially scheduled to discuss economic issues during her stop in Missouri, but after the Charleston shooting, she said she wanted to hold the event in a church and discuss race. Clinton largely avoided giving race relations a prominent place in her 2008 Democratic campaign against Barack Obama, who was vying to become the nation's first black president at the time. Yet she's leaned into a number of issues closely watched by African-Americans this time, discussing the need to change the criminal justice system, improve access to voting and help minority small business owners. Clinton's campaign hopes to mobilize black voters in large numbers in the 2016 election, building upon the coalition of minority, young and liberal voters who powered Obama's two White House campaigns. The message has taken on fresh urgency since last week's church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, which happened shortly after Clinton campaigned in the city. In Florissant, Clinton proposed a package of policies to promote racial equality, including tax breaks for struggling communities, help for minority and female entrepreneurs, early childhood education, "common sense" gun restrictions and universal voter registration. She told congregants that "all lives matter," a variation of the "Black Lives Matter" slogan that arose from the Florida shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin. Clinton cited her background growing up in the Methodist church, recalling: "I grew up in an all-white middle-class suburb. I didn't have a black friend, neighbor or classmate until I went to college and I am so blessed to have so many in my life since." Pointing to the Charleston shooting, she urged attendees, "Do not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good." The former secretary of state was greeted by the Rev. Traci Blackmon, pastor of Christ the King United Church of Christ, which hosted the event. She told the audience that the Charleston shooting shows "we also must take this moment to not just focus who pulled the trigger that day but on the policies, the people and the structures that are pulling the trigger daily." *Clinton Campaigns at Christ the King United Church of Christ <http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2015/06/24/clinton-campaigns-at-christ-the-king-united-church-of-christ/> // KMOX CBS // Carol Daniel - June 24, 2015* ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – A packed church in North St. Louis County, just a few miles from where Michael Brown was killed and protesting and rioting raged for months, became the setting for Former Secretary of State, now Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s first campaign stop in Missouri. Co-hosts Rev. Traci Blackmon of Christ the King United Church of Christ and Rev. Karen Anderson of Ward Chapel AME Clinton planned a listening session for Clinton in just 48 hours. It included a panel of area leaders working in education, healthcare, housing and social justice reform. The listening session included: Jason Purnell; PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Tiffany Anderson; Superintendent of the Jennings School District, Chris Krehmeyer; President/CEO of Beyond Housing and Brittany Packnett; Executive Director of Teach for America-STL and a member of the Ferguson Commission. Clinton spoke before hearing from the panel and said she was in Charleston, South Carolina just before the shootings. She said, “Word of the killings struck like a blow to the soul. How do we make sense of such an act?” She stood at the podium in front of about 500 people in the sanctuary and asked, “How do we turn grief, anger and despair into action?” She went on to say, that those of us who are Christians are to forgive, quoting scripture which says that Jesus called us to forgive 70 times seven, calling it a daunting task. “But when fear, doubt and a desire for revenge might have been expected, what we saw was forgiveness.” She spoke of the need to confront racism after the killings in South Carolina, “Hate cannot win,” says Clinton. “We can’t hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name them, own them and change them.” At one point, Clinton took a page out of the Ferguson protests saying, “All lives matter.” She also applauded efforts to take down Confederate flags after the church massacre. “I appreciate the actions begun Monday by the Governor of South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse,” says Clinton. Clinton called it a symbol of the nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or future. She said, “It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere.” She also commended Walmart for deciding to remove any product that uses the flag and urged all sellers to do the same. Rev. Blackmon introduced Clinton, who became a familiar face and voice during the Ferguson unrest. Prior to the introduction she spoke about the Charleston killings. “We can’t focus on the one who pulled the trigger that day, but on the policies and structures that pull the trigger every day,” says Blackmon (to Clinton). “St. Louis is a tale of two cities. We live in a region that has some of the best education the nation has to offer. Yet in this region we have children attending unaccredited schools. We live in a region with supreme healthcare and yet have failed to expand Medicaid. In this region, you can travel 10 miles and that will determine if you live in a mansion or in misery. We are 19th in region but 43rd in economic mobility and we have division where we should have solidarity. Secretary Clinton can’t answer all these questions today, but we are grateful she came here to listen.” During the panel discussion and listening session, Rev. Blackmon asked activists who sprang up for the Ferguson protests, to stand. Turning to Clinton, she said, “We are intergenerational. We come from various races and ethnicities. We’re in this together and we aren’t going away.” Each panelist told Secretary Clinton of the work they are doing to change the lives of St. Louisans. Dr. Tiffany Anderson got a standing ovation after explaining how the district is achieving. “We pretty much have year-round school.” Anderson described what it means to educate the child. “We have a pediatrician on staff that anyone in Jennings can make use of. We have mental health therapists in every school and we even making washers and dryers available to parents to use in exchange for one hour of volunteer time. “This is why we have packed PTO meetings.” Beyond Housing’s Krehmeyer described the “Viking Advantage” college savings program that has given 800 Normandy students $500 MOST Scholarships and resulted in 85 percent graduating from college. “Community happens at the speed of trust” Krehmeyer says. Clinton responded, “If it works in Jennings and Normandy, we need to make sure it keeps working.” Prior to Clinton’s remarks, those in attendance were asked to write questions on notecards and place them in a basket. After collection, there was only time for three questions and one of those pertained to what Clinton felt about the mass incarceration of African-Americans and what has been termed the “School to Prison Pipeline.” Clinton responded that the vast majority of kids need something besides being thrown out of school or being referred to the juvenile justice system. Listen to her response below: Many KMOX’s Carol Daniel spoke to, felt Ferguson Commission member Brittnay Packnett, was the most pointed in her remarks. “Kids can’t learn if they’re dead. All of the conversations we’re having about education are for naught if they end up like Mike Brown or Tamir Rice.” A portion of her remarks directed at Secretary Clinton are below: Clinton spent at least 15 minutes taking pictures and signing autographs and even a baseball cap after the discussion ended. As her motorcade pulled out of the church parking lot onto Old Halls Ferry Road a man and woman across the street were holding a large sign. The sign had large red block letters that read, “JUSTICE BENGHAZI.” Rev. Starsky Wilson, a member of the Ferguson Commission, said after the discussion, “The key is will we see Secretary Clinton acting on what she’s heard here today and will we hear her echoing and amplifying the voices heard here today.” For those who may question Clinton’s timing or choice of location for the discussion, Rev. Wilson said, “Quite frankly this is home base for a discussion about criminalization of youth of reform in criminal justice system and municipal courts in America. It became home base on Aug 9th.” Monday evening, Clinton attended a private fundraiser at Grant’s Farm the ancestral mansion of the Busch Brewing family and former home of President Ulysses S. Grant. The event was hosted by Trudy Busch Valentine, the daughter of late chairman of the Anheuser-Busch Companies. John Hancock, Chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, released the following statement on Hillary Clinton’s campaign visits in St Louis: “The number of Americans who view Hillary Clinton unfavorably is increasing the longer she campaigns, so we are thrilled she is visiting the Show-Me State. Now Missourians will have an opportunity to see the real Hillary: out-of-touch, untrustworthy, and scandal-plagued. Next November, Missourians will soundly reject the liberal policies of Hillary Clinton—or whoever is the Democratic nominee for president—just as they twice rejected Barack Obama.” *Hillary Clinton engages in conversation on race at Christ The King <http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/article_393dbb2a-1a0c-11e5-a9fc-f7ce0adb6b3e.html> // STL American // Rebecca Rivas - June 23, 2015* Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a roaring applause from the majority black audience at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant when she told them that the Confederate battle flag, “shouldn’t fly anywhere.” Rev. Traci Blackmon, pastor of the church, said Tuesday’s community meeting with Clinton was meant to discuss the impacts of racism, including the recent massacre where Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, allegedly murdered nine men and women at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. To an audience of about 200 church members and elected officials, Clinton commended the response of Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, who Monday called for the flag to be removed from state property. Soon after, large retailers, including Walmart, Sears, eBay and Amazon, announced that they are prohibiting any Confederate flag merchandise from being sold in their stores. Clinton said the flag is, “a symbol of our nation's racist past that has no place in our present or our future.” Clinton also called the shooting “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God.” However, as Blackmon stated at the beginning of the meeting, our nation’s leaders need to recognize the policies that are “pulling the trigger daily.” She thanked Clinton for coming to listen, “so that we might be heard,” she said. Blackmon invited four panelists to speak about the work they have been doing in the community to address racial inequality in various arenas. Jason Purnell, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University, spoke about the health disparities among African Americans in St. Louis, which is the focus of a study he leads called For the Sake of All. In St. Louis, he said there is an 18-year gap in age expectancy within less than 10 miles, and an African-American baby is three times more likely to die in St. Louis city and county. Clinton said his work is important because legislators need evidence-based research to push forward policies that address disparities. Tiffany Anderson, superintendent of the Jennings School District, talked about changes in their schools that have made helped raise the academic performance, including providing free lunch to every student and going to a year-round schedule. Chris Krehmeyer, CEO and president of Beyond Housing, talked on the “24: 1” initiative to holistically address problems in the majority black municipalities that “you’ve probably heard in the news.” He noted that the group has started $500 college saving accounts for kindergarteners in the Normandy schools. Clinton looked Brittany Packnett in the eye and continuously nodded as Packnett spoke about the damning effects of criminalizing African-American children in schools. “We can’t move forward until we are consistently incentivizing culturally-responsible leadership training for all public servants, especially people who have the ability to impact the lives of children,” said Packnett, Teach for America – St. Louis’ executive director and Ferguson Commissioner. She also served on President Obama’s taskforce on police reform. During Clinton’s introductory remarks, she said, “All lives matter” while telling a story about her mother. Immediately, members of the Ferguson movement in the audience took to Twitter condemning Clinton for using a phrase that is often used as a dismissal to “Black lives matter.” She said about her mother: “Her own parents abandoned her. By 14 she was out on her own, working as a housemaid. Years later, when I was old enough to understand, I asked her, ‘What kept you going?’ Her answer was very simple: Kindness along the way from someone who believed she mattered. All lives matter.” John Gaskin III, a member of the NAACP national board and of St. Louis County NAACP, said in the context, he did not feel it was offense. But he did make him pause when he heard it. “She was honest about race today,” he said. “She spoke about what many people in this demographic want to hear, and that is for advancing civil rights, health care and issues that affect our folks disproportionately. As we look at her campaign trail, we haven’t seen any meeting like this in a house of faith.” *Clinton in Florissant calls Confederate flag, Charleston murders "racist" <http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/clinton-florissant-calls-confederate-flag-charleston-murders-racist> // St. Louis Public Radio // Jo Mannies – June 23, 2015* Although her comments about race and racism were national in scope, Hillary Clinton spent much of Tuesday’s visit at a Florissant church listening to the local challenges that many in her audience grapple with daily. The Rev. Traci Blackmon talked of the “tale of two cities,’’ where some St. Louisans easily partake of some of the best education and health care that the nation has to offer. But others only have access to the worst. A stretch of 10 miles, said Blackmon, determines “whether you live in a mansion, or in misery.” Blackmon sits on the Ferguson Commission, set up by Gov. Jay Nixon after the Aug. 9 police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown touched off months of local, national and international outrage. Clinton, now a Democratic candidate for president, listened to Blackmon and others during much of her two-hour stop at the Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant. For the most part, neither the candidate nor the other speakers said much specifically about Ferguson or its local aftermath. Rather, most of their hour-long discussion focused the broader related issues – such as racism, poverty and inequality – that Clinton agrees must be addressed. “I am here to listen, but also to engage in the kind of open and honest discussion that I hope is happening all over America,’’ Clinton said during her opening 20-minute address. Says racism behind Charleston killings, use of Confederate flag To that end, Clinton didn’t shy away from the word “racist.’’ Last week’s murder of nine African-Americans at a Charleston, S.C. church, she said, was “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a House of God.” Clinton recalled that she had been in Charleston just hours before the killings, which “struck like a blow to the soul.” Clinton called for an end to the flying of the Confederate flag, which she called “a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future.” Referring to South Carolina, she added, “It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere.” Clinton also called for the nation, and its leaders, to confront certain realities. “I know it’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident,” she said. “To believe that in today’s America, bigotry is largely behind use. That institutional racism no longer exists.” But lamentably, that’s not the case, Clinton continued. “Despite our best efforts and highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished. “We can’t hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name them and own them and change them.” Zeroing in on the local angles Her audience appeared to welcome such candor. “I think Hillary Clinton did an excellent job of addressing a lot of local issues here that started in Ferguson, that now have become part of the conversation nationwide,’’ said Nicole Gipson of Hazelwood, a substitute teacher and a parent. Gipson particularly welcomed the panel’s discussion of “a lot of disparity of how African-American boys are treated in the classroom, compared to their white peers.” Morton Todd, Democratic Party chairman for St. Charles County observed, “It wasn’t just a rally. It was a conversation.” Todd was among a number of Democratic officials and activists who shared the pews for Tuesday’s visit – exemplifying that there was a political aspect to Clinton’s presence as well. As a Democrat, Clinton will need strong support from the party’s African-American base if she is to win the White House in 2016. She got a local boost shortly before her address when U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay,D-University City and the region’s most prominent African-American official, announced that he was endorsing her for president. “I am now part of Team Hillary,’’ Clay said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he had to remain because of congressional business. In an accompanying statement, the congressman said, “I will be advising her on critical issues including economic empowerment, protecting the right to vote and reforming the criminal justice system…. Missouri is ready for Hillary, and so am I." Although Clinton focused on issues, not politics, during the church visit, Todd was among the attendees who grasped the political stakes. “I think she has a real good chance,” said Todd. “I think she’s going to make Missouri more significant in 2016.” As evidence, Todd pointed to the GOP’s reaction to Clinton visit. He singled out last weekend’s announcement by the campaign of Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. – who is likely to run for re-election in 2016 – that it’s involved in an official “Stop Hillary’’ effort. State Republican Party chairman John Hancock asserted in a statement that Democrats were wasting their time to woo Missouri voters. “The number of Americans who view Hillary Clinton unfavorably is increasing the longer she campaigns, so we are thrilled she is visiting the Show-Me State," he said. "Now Missourians will have an opportunity to see the real Hillary: out-of-touch, untrustworthy, and scandal-plagued….” Clay noted that it was Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, who was the last Democratic presidential nominee to carry Missouri, in 1996. Clay predicted that Hillary Clinton’s status as the first major woman presidential contender will help give her an edge in Missouri 20 years later. The congressman added that the nation also is ready and eager to embrace Hillary Clinton's plain-speaking approach on such issues as race. *After S.C. tragedy, Nevada draws praise for lawmakers’ restraint on guns <http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jun/24/after-sc-tragedy-nevada-draws-praise-lawmakers-res/> // Las Vegas Sun // Kyle Roerink - June 24, 2015* Mourners Cynthia Wright-Murphy, right, hugs her sister Carolyn Wright-Porcher, right, outside the Emanuel AME Church, Saturday, June 20, 2015 in Charleston, S.C. A steady stream of people brought flowers and notes and shared somber thoughts at a growing memorial in front of the church. From its Wild West past to its multitude of modern gun-related attractions, like firing fully automatic machine guns and posing for wedding photos with military-inspired weapons, Nevada isn't often recognized for its restraint on firearms. But that's what has happened with help from Everytown in the wake of a shooting that left nine dead at a historic church in Charleston. Everytown for Gun Safety, the nation’s top gun control advocacy group, has praised Nevada legislators for blocking a measure to allow firearms to be carried in an expanded list of places and approving a bill outlawing gun possession by domestic violence offenders. The gun control group, backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, lists Nevada as one of at least 15 states that defeated controversial, pro-gun measures proposed this year in legislatures across the country. After failed efforts to reform gun laws in Congress, Bloomberg pledged $50 million to launch a state-by-state grassroots campaign to battle the NRA and other pro-gun groups. The push came last year after Congress failed to expand background checks in the aftermath of the 2012 massacre of 20 students at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Erika Soto Lamb, communications director for Everytown, said the 2015 Legislature was supposed to be the “gun session” in Nevada, but parents, students, law enforcement and activists rallied to block NRA-backed proposals. “Nevada, like many other states we work in, is an example of where the gun lobby didn’t have a clear course to impose its will,” she said. In January, gun-control advocates were not optimistic when Nevada Republicans introduced at least 27 pro-gun measures. The state GOP came into the session in control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature, and it expressed an appetite to loosen restrictions while expanding where people could carry firearms. The controversial bills came from Nevada GOP Assembly members who called to allow guns on school grounds and enable concealed carry without a permit. Everytown lobbyists lined up with Democrats to fight back against the measures. By May, the fears were largely eliminated. But it was GOP extremists — not Everytown and Democrats — who influenced the demise of the gun legislation. The Senate’s GOP leaders ignored the controversial proposals from the Assembly’s far-right members. The move kept incendiary bills off Gov. Brian Sandoval’s desk and cleared Republican senators from casting votes that pro-gun groups like the NRA could use against them during campaign season. Of the 27 pro-gun bills tracked by the Nevada Firearms Coalition — the state’s NRA affiliate — 18 didn’t receive a hearing in the Senate, said Don Turner, the group’s president. “It was political maneuvering,” Turner said. But the pro-gun lobby didn’t go away without victories. Lawmakers approved bills to eliminate a Clark County gun registration program and allow car owners to defend themselves with deadly force inside of vehicles. “Like with everything else, you ask Santa for presents and you’re not going to get everything you want,” Turner said. Pro-Second Amendment lawmakers and gun-control advocates compromised on one bill — the one preventing those convicted of domestic abuse from buying guns. GOP Assemblyman Ira Hansen, one of the state’s outspoken pro Second Amendment advocates from Sparks, fought until the last hours of the session to pass a measure that would allow students to carry concealed firearms on college campuses in the state. His efforts fell short. “In all honesty, I predicted the pro Second Amendment agenda would go through with no problem,” he said. Because of the GOP divide on firearms, Turner and Hansen downplayed Everytown’s role in the session. But they didn’t shrug at its influence in the state. Everytown is the driving force of a 2016 ballot initiative that will ask voters to expand background checks on gun purchases. The push stems from Sandoval’s 2013 veto of a bill to require background checks on all gun sales in the state — including those between family members. In Nevada, Everytown collected more signatures than any group in state history to land the measure on the ballot, surpassing the requirement by more than 50,000 names. Their efforts failed in Congress in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings, prompting them to start the grassroots effort now on display in Nevada. With Everytown’s influence, Washington and Oregon recently approved background checks in the past year. Hansen said he was “fearful” that voters would pass the initiative in 2016 — a presidential election where Democrats who support gun reforms would be likely to vote. “I am sure Bloomberg can easily sink a few million into a very aggressive public relations campaign,” Hansen said. The hope among the initiative's proponents is that expanded background checks will keep firearms away from the mentally ill, convicted criminals and people like Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old South Carolina man accused of killing nine people inside the Emanuel African Episcopal Methodist Church on June 17. Currently, 18 states require all gun purchasers to submit background checks to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Speaking in Las Vegas last week, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton signaled that she would tackle gun reform if elected to office. Tuesday on the Senate floor, the Minority Leader Harry Reid, called for action. "The United States is the only advanced country where this type of mass violence occurs," Reid said. "Let's do something. We can expand, for example, background checks. ... We should support not giving guns to people who are mentally ill and felons." Without new legislation, Reid said, “we will be here again. Our hearts will be broken again.” *Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag removal to a 'Stalinist purge' <http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-cruz-campaign-aide-compared-confederate-flag-removal-to-stalinist-purge-2015-6> // Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June 23, 2015* Lee Bright, a local lawmaker who is serving as the South Carolina co-chair for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), compared the calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in his home state to a "Stalinist purge." According to a spokesperson for Cruz, those comments don't conflict with the candidate's position on the issue. "What Senator Cruz has said is that this is an issue for the state of South Carolina and South Carolinians to sort out and I think that's what you're watching happen," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said in a conversation with Business Insider on Tuesday evening. The shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine people dead on June 17 has reignited a nationwide debate over the flag. The alleged shooter, Dylann Roof, has been linked to a website that featured Confederate imagery and a racist manifesto. This prompted South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to call for the flag to be removed from the capitol on Monday. Bright made his comment when he was asked about Haley's move by the Charleston Post and Courier. He elaborated on it in an interview with Politico that was published Tuesday. "It’s not just the flag," Bright said. "They want to take down the Confederate monuments, I’ve gotten emails from people who want to rename streets … anytime you want to basically remove the symbols of history from a state, that’s something that just is very bad … these are honorable men who fought for their homes, their home state, to disgrace them in the name of political correctness is just wrong. They’re not here to defend themselves." Bright told Politico the Cruz campaign had not discussed the issue with him, but he said he hoped presidential candidates would not tell South Carolina how to handle the issue. "I would encourage presidential candidates to let us deal with this," Bright said. "It’s deeply rooted history for a lot of us. I’m not going to stand by and let our ancestors’ memories be besmirched. It’s one thing to just take down the flag. They want us to concede that the soldiers that fell for the Confederacy were a bunch of racists and I’m not going to concede that." Tyler, the Cruz campaign spokesman, said the senator agrees with the notion the issue should be decided by people in South Carolina. "The idea of outsiders coming in to South Carolina and telling them how they should deal with their issue, the senator ... I think correctly, his view is, let South Carolinians work it out amongst themselves and sort it out," Tyler said. "And that's what's happening, there's a disagreement of opinion, but that's part of the process." Bright did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Business Insider. *Hillary Clinton’s on aggressive fundraising push <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/24/politics/hillary-clinton-lady-gaga-fundraising-2016-election/http:/www.cnn.com/2015/06/24/politics/hillary-clinton-lady-gaga-fundraising-2016-election/> // CNN // Jeff Zeleny and Dan Merica – June 24, 2015* St. Louis - Hillary Clinton is racing across red states and blue states at a frenetic pace for a frontrunner, hoping to show that her early dominance in the Democratic presidential race will also translate into a muscular financial advantage as the campaign's first fundraising period ends next week. The first true measure of Clinton's strength will come when she reveals how much money she has collected during the first three months of her candidacy. The specific figure is guarded with high secrecy inside her campaign, but several party fundraisers told CNN they believe she is on track to raise more than $30 million. For a famous candidate who is universally known, Clinton has been working the circuit with unusual fervor to rebuild her base of donors and to inject an element of enthusiasm into the campaign, rather than sitting back and waiting for checks to arrive. Her Rolodex may be golden, but several fundraisers say it's also somewhat outdated, adding a layer of complexity to her early efforts. She has personally attended nearly 50 closed-door fundraising events so far, according to a CNN tally, which vastly outnumbers the introductory sessions she has held with voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond. Based on attendance figures provided by campaign aides, Clinton-headlined events have brought in around $21 million, according to CNN analysis. Her top aides and operatives have headlined dozens more. A concert featuring Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett on Wednesday night in New York is intended to entice donors before her June 30 fundraising deadline. It comes on the heels of a star-studded series of events last weekend in California, where a bearded Leonardo Dicaprio attended a fundraiser at Tobey Maguire's home. But the majority of Clinton's fundraising activity has been far removed from the bright lights of Broadway or Hollywood. This week alone, she's visited Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri, standing before small audiences to collect checks of no more than $2,700, the maximum allowed for the primary campaign. Here in south St. Louis County on Tuesday night, she arrived at Grant's Farm, the 281-acre ancestral home of the Busch family, which is named after former President Ulysses S. Grant. Trudy Busch Valentine, heir to the well-known brewing family, hosted the event. Two campaign volunteers checked people outside the gates, asking attendees to provide photo identification to verify they had paid for the event. A line of cars idled outside, waiting to get in. A campaign aide said 250 people were on hand and gave the maximum amount, which means she raised at least $675,000 for her afternoon in St. Louis. The fundraiser has been on her calendar for weeks. But Clinton added a public event to her schedule at a church in nearby Florissant on Tuesday, where she addressed the South Carolina church shooting, which she called an "act of racist terrorism." The fundraising activity of the Clinton campaign is seldom discussed beyond the closed-door sessions. Only a few hosts contacted by CNN were willing to talk about the events they organized for Clinton's campaign. "It was an amazing event," said Ellen Luger, the former head of the General Mills Foundation who hosted a fundraiser at her Minneapolis, Minnesota, home on Monday. Then, she quickly rang off, saying: "Bye." Cindy Simon Skjodt, who hosted a fundraiser in Carmel, Indiana, said Clinton's remarks during the event were "engaging" and full of policy, but not wonky. "Her remarks are brief," said an equally brief Skjodt, adding that Clinton spent more time taking pictures and shaking hands at the event than speaking. The Clinton campaign has announced its intention to raise at least $100 million before the end of the year. But several fundraisers told CNN the effort has been more laborious than they expected, with some Democrats lacking a sense of excitement or urgency about the need to contribute. With enthusiasm growing among some liberals for the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton has redoubled her efforts to post a strong fundraising figure when the report is filed with the Federal Election Commission by July 15. In her first presidential race, Clinton raised primary and general election money together, a strategy that allowed her to collect twice as much. She raised $26 million during her first fundraising period of 2007, but only some of it could be used during her primary race, with the remainder returned to donors after she lost to Barack Obama. This time, campaign manager Robby Mook announced that Clinton would only raise primary money -- a maximum of $2,700 per check. This approach raised the burden for fundraisers, but also sent the signal that she was intent on fighting for the Democratic nomination. Alan Patricof, the co-host of one of the Clinton's first fundraisers in New York, said the campaign was intently focusing on a robust fundraising report in July to quiet any doubts about the strength of her candidacy. "You do the math of how many fundraisers you have to have to get to $25 million," he told CNN. "You just have to have a lot of people contributing." At one of her first events, Patricof said Clinton made clear the "importance at the early stage, were the donors who were able to contribute or raise more significant amounts." After that, he said, she would focus on smaller donors. Clinton has spent far more time talking to donors than ordinary voters during the opening phase of her campaign. She is asking her top donors, known as Hillstarters, to recruit 10 people to each contribute $2,700. "It is a warm gathering, these are not state of the union speeches," said Robert Zimmerman, a donor who attended one of Clinton's early New York fundraisers and is a member of her Hillstarter fundraising group. She has held fundraising events in at least 17 states, including: Georgia, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Washington. She has also dispatched her top campaign advisers to attend fundraising events across the country. "There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all fundraising strategy," said Josh Schwerin, a campaign spokesman. "We're using a wide array of techniques to cultivate a diverse donor base and putting a premium on growing our list to give as many people as possible the opportunity to play a role in this campaign." *Clinton commends effort to remove Confederate flag? <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/hillary-clinton-confederate-flag-missouri/> // CNN // Dan Merica – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton commended the groundswell in anti-Confederate flag sentiment at an event in Missouri on Tuesday, calling the battle flag "a symbol of our nation's racist past." Clinton's comments about the flag come days after Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, killed nine men and women at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooting, Clinton said, was "an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God," but one where the men and women killed "did not die in vain, did not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." The shooting has sparked a conversation about the Confederate flag that led Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, to call for its removal from state property. "I appreciate the actions begun yesterday by the governor and other leaders of South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House, recognizing it as a symbol of our nation's racist past that has no place in our present or our future," Clinton said. "It shouldn't fly there, it shouldn't fly anywhere." In response to the surge in focus, some of the nation's biggest retailers -- Walmart, Sears, eBay and Amazon -- also announced this week that they are prohibiting any Confederate flag merchandise from being sold in their stores. Clinton commended those companies for their decision and urged "all sellers to do the very same." "We can't hide from hard truths about race and justice, we have to name them, and own them, and change them," she added. But Clinton's statement did not portray removing the flag from statehouses and stores as a cure to race issues in the United States. She said, instead, that it was "just the beginning of what we have to do." Clinton's comments came during a roundtable event at Christ the King Church in Florissant, Missouri, a community just miles from Ferguson, where the shooting of a black male by a police officer in 2014 sparked protests and started an ongoing conversation about race and policing. "Whether you live in Ferguson or West Baltimore, in coal country or Indian country, you should have the same chance as any American anywhere to get ahead and stay ahead," Clinton said. Clinton also used the phrase "All lives matter" during a story about her mother, an interesting remark given how the phrase "Black Lives Matter" rose to national prominence during the Ferguson protests. "All Lives Matter" was a response by some to say no lives matter more than others. In 2007, Hillary Clinton said she believed the Confederate flag should be "removed from the State House grounds" in part because "we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day." On Saturday, as the conversation swirled, Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign's press secretary, said the former presidential candidate's "position is unchanged from 2007." After Haley announced her decision, Clinton tweeted: ".@nikkihaley is right 2 call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC. As I've said for years, taking down Confederate flag is long overdue. --H" Other 2016 Democrats -- like former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders -- have called for the flag to be removed. And a handful of Republicans, including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, supported Haley's decision to call for the flag removal. Tuesday's event was hosted by Reverend Karen Anderson of Ward Chapel AME and Pastor Traci Blackmon of Christ the King, United Church of Christ. Both women have been involved in the post-Ferguson protests and conversation, including ministering to the protesters and preaching about the impact of Michael Brown's shooting in 2014. Clinton's campaign announced last month she would be visiting Missouri, particularly for a fundraiser hosted by Trudy Busch Valentine, the heir to the well-known St. Louis brewing family. But in light of the shooting in Charleston and the unrest in Ferguson, a Clinton aide said the candidate instructed her staff to find a church where she could meet with community leaders and talk about their work on race issues. Clinton has run headfirst into issues of race since announcing her campaign in April, a departure from her failed 2008 bid. On Saturday, Clinton told an audience in San Francisco that "America's long struggle with race is far from finished," despite how "tempting" it might be to isolate the Charleston shooting as a random event. "I know this is a difficult topic to talk about," she said then. "I know that so many of us hoped by electing our first black President we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we don't like to say out loud in discussions with our children, but we have to. That is the only way we can possibly move forward together." Earlier in the week, Clinton called for a "candid national conversation about race and about discrimination, prejudice, hatred" in an interview, and said it was time for the United States to "face hard truths" about race in a speech before a host of Latino elected officials in Las Vegas. *Clinton to say removing the Confederate flag is important, but not the solution <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/hillary-clinton-confederate-flag-missouri/index.html> // CNN // Dan Merica – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton will argue Tuesday at an event near St. Louis that the groundswell of support in favor of removing the Confederate flag from statehouses and stores is an important step for the United States, but not the solution to addressing racial tensions. Clinton will give remarks and participate in a roundtable at Christ the King Church in Florissant, Missouri, a community just miles from Ferguson, where the shooting of a black male by a police officer in 2014 sparked protests and started ongoing conversation about race and policing. Clinton will "urge that in addition to the renewed conversation about the Confederate flag we can have, we must confront deeper, substantive issues around the racial divide that persists in America," an aide said ahead of the event. Clinton's comments about the Confederate flag come days after Dylann Roof, a white supremacist killed nine men and women at a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina last week. The shooting has sparked a conversation about the Confederate flag, particularly the fact that the flag still flies in front of the South Carolina statehouse. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for the flag to be removed from the grounds earlier this week as pressure mounted. In 2007, Hillary Clinton said she believed the Confederate flag should be "removed from the Statehouse grounds" in part because "we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day." On Saturday, as the conversation swirled, Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign's press secretary, said the former presidential candidate's "position is unchanged from 2007." After Haley announced her decision, Clinton tweeted: ".@nikkihaley is right 2 call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC. As I've said for years, taking down Confederate flag is long overdue. -H" Other 2016 Democrats - like former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders - have called for the flag to be removed. And a handful of Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, supported Haley's decision to call for the flag removal. Some of the nation's biggest retailers - Walmart, Sears, and eBay - also announced this week that they are prohibiting any Confederate flag merchandise for being sold in their stores. "We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer," Walmart spokesman Brian Nick said. In addition to addressing the Confederate flag conversation, Clinton will "talk about how we turn grief, anger and despair into purpose and action that will address the persistent problems facing communities like Florissant," the aide said. The event will be hosted by Reverend Karen Anderson of Ward Chapel AME and Pastor Traci Blackmon of Christ the King, United Church of Christ. Both women have been involved involved in the post-Ferguson protests and conversation, including ministering to the protestors and preaching about the impact of Michael Brown's shooting in 2014. Clinton's campaign announced she would be visiting Missouri last month, particularly for a fundraiser hosted by Trudy Busch Valentine, the heir to the well-known St. Louis brewing family. But in light of the shooting in Charleston and the unrest in Ferguson, the Clinton aide said the candidate instructed her staff to find a church where she could meet with community leaders and talk about their work on race issues. Clinton has run head first into issues of race since announcing her campaign in April, a departure from her failed 2008 bid. On Saturday, Clinton told an audience in San Francisco that the United States' struggle with race is not over, arguing that as "tempting" as it is to isolate the Charleston shooting as a random event, "America's long struggle with race is far from finished." "I know this is a difficult topic to talk about," she said. "I know that so many of us hoped by electing our first black President we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we don't like to say out loud in discussions with our children, but we have to. That is the only way we can possibly move forward together." Earlier in the week, Clinton called for a "candid national conversation about race and about discrimination, prejudice, hatred" in an interview, and said it was time for the United states to "face hard truths" about race in a speech before a host of Latino elected officials in Las Vegas. *’92 Confederate buttons weren’t ours: Former Clinton aide <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-clinton-aide-calls-out-confederate-flag-buttons/> // CBS // Hannah Fraser-Chanpong – June 23, 2015 * A campaign button bearing the Confederate flag and emblazoned with the words "Clinton-Gore" sold for $8 on eBay but, according to a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton, the button was not an official campaign item. "I've never seen these buttons," Craig Smith told CBS News. "Don't have them, haven't seen them." Ditch Confederate flag? Many S.C. lawmakers say yes Smith oversaw state operations for Mr. Clinton's campaign in 1992, before moving on to work in the Clinton White House. Among his responsibilities on the trail was allocating staff to states and sending out campaign materials, like house party kits, t-shirts, yard signs and buttons, nationwide. Every item, he said, had to be made in the United States by union workers. "If it didn't have a union bug, we weren't making them," he said, "and we definitely weren't handing them out." The button in question, and others featuring similar designs for sale or sold on eBay, does not show any indication of being union-made. Smith added that individual states were given their own, small budget for "discretionary items" like state-specific merchandise. But those items had to include the state's name and follow the same production guidelines as items made for national distribution. "It would have been in violation of multiple campaign policies," he said of a state producing a button like the ones sold online. "I just don't think they did it." Smith said he thought the buttons were likely made by someone unaffiliated with the campaign looking to make a buck. He said if it had been pitched to him, it wouldn't have gotten past his desk. "Not appropriate then," he said, "and not appropriate now." *Hillary Clinton: Country’s Struggle With Race ‘Far From Over’* <http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/hillary-clinton-countrys-struggle-race-far-over-n380556>* // NBC // Andrew Rafferty – June 23, 2015* Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said racism in America is "far from finished" and called the Confederate flag "a symbol of our nation's racist past" during a discussion at a church near last year's violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The presidential frontrunner has focused her campaign on race relations following last week's deadly shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white gunman is suspected of killing nine African-American church members. Her remarks at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri, marked the third time she has spoken about the hate crime since Thursday. "I know it's tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to believe that in today's America, bigotry is largely behind us, that institutionalized racism no longer exists," Clinton said. "But, despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished." The former secretary of State called the shooting "an act of racist terrorism" and applauded Republican leaders in South Carolina for pushing for the Confederate flag to be removed from the Capitol grounds. She called the flag "a symbol of our nation's racist past that has no place in our present or our future, it shouldn't fly there, it shouldn't fly anywhere." She also called on sellers to follow Wal-Mart's lead and stop selling products that include the Confederate flag. Amazon, eBay and Sears have also stopped selling it. Clinton said the country must give minorities the tools to "overcome the legacy of discrimination." That begins with early childhood education and continues with easier access to vote, including universal registration when Americans turn 18, she said. She also called for "common sense gun reform" and increasing communication between both police and the communities they serve. The church she spoke at Tuesday was just a short drive from last year's violent protests in Ferguson after an 18-year-old unarmed black man was shot and killed by a white police officer. The officer was cleared of any wrongdoing after investigators found he acted in self-defense. *More retailers should remove Confederate flag products, Hillary Clinton says <http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-clinton-flag-20150623-story.html> // LA Times // Kathleen Hennessey – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday praised Wal-Mart and other retailers for refusing to sell products bearing the Confederate flag, as she pushed for a broader conversation about modern-day, institutionalized racism and policies to address it. Speaking at a black church near Ferguson, Mo., Clinton, who once served on the Wal-Mart board, urged “all sellers” to follow the lead set by the Arkansas-based retailer, as well as eBay, Amazon and Sears. Those companies have announced plans to purge their inventories of the Confederate symbol in the wake of the massacre in a Charleston, S.C., church. Clinton also praised South Carolina leaders for steps toward removing the flag from the statehouse grounds. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and other state leaders have recognized the Confederate banner "as a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future,” Clinton said to cheers. “It shouldn’t fly there, it shouldn’t fly anywhere.” The remarks represented Clinton's second extended discussion of racism in America since the shooting in a historically black church left nine black churchgoers dead last week. As the leading Democratic contender for the presidency, Clinton has jumped into the national conversation that has followed the shooting. It has given her an opportunity to burnish her standing among her party’s liberal core, including African American voters, and to strike a strong contrast with Republicans. On Tuesday, she took her campaign to Florissant, Mo., less than four miles from the spot where Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old, was shot last August by a white police officer, fueling the recent national debate over race and inequities in the justice system. "All lives matter," Clinton declared, picking up on the rallying cry -- "black lives matter" -- of the movement that grew out of the protests in Ferguson, Mo. In her brief remarks before a community meeting at Christ the King church in Florissant, Clinton labeled the attack on the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston an act of “racist terrorism.” Many people, particularly in black communities, have suggested that "terrorism" is a word that would have immediately been applied to the shooting had the race of the suspected assailant and the victims been reversed. Authorities have charged Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man who appeared to embrace the Confederate flag as a symbol of his racist ideology, with murder and hate crimes. "How do we make sense of such an evil act, an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God?" Clinton asked in her remarks Tuesday. "How do we turn grief, anger and despair into purpose and action?" The former secretary of State linked the current conversation to her domestic platform. She called for better early childhood education, changes to voting rules and reform of the criminal justice system. "I know it’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to believe that in today’s America, bigotry is behind us, that institutionalized racism no longer exists," she said. "But in spite our best efforts and highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished." *Hillary Clinton on course to win 2016 presidential election: Poll <http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/hillary-clinton-on-course-to-win-2016-presidential-election-poll/articleshow/47799481.cms> // Economic Times – June 24, 2015* WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton is the firm favourite to be chosen as the Democratic Party nominee for 2016 US presidential polls and go on to be elected as the first woman president of America, according to a new poll. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in the days after Clinton held her first public rally earlier this month, showed the former secretary of state garnering broad support for being chosen the Democratic presidential nominee. Three-quarters of Democratic primary voters said Clinton was their top pick to be the nominee, compared with the 15 per cent who selected Bernie Sanders. Clinton, 67, enters the 2016 contest with unusually broad support from fellow Democrats with some 92 per cent of Democratic primary voters saying they could see themselves supporting her and just 8 per cent saying they could not, according to the poll. But it is not that Clinton just emerges as the strongest contender in the primary vote but the poll shows that she is looking set for a successful November 2016 election bid to become the first woman president of America. The poll asked 1,000 likely voters about their opinions on potential presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat. It showed Clinton polling at 48 per cent to 40 per cent against her closest Republican contender, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the brother of former president George W Bush and son of former president George HW Bush. Against the Florida senator Marco Rubio, Clinton polled 50 per cent against 40 per cent. And against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker she polled 51 per cent to 37 per cent. The survey found that Americans are divided on whether they want the next president to be a Republican or a Democrat. But among many key demographic groups, Clinton outpaces the support for her party. "The poll underscores Clinton's strength as a candidate, both among Democrats and key constituencies that could tip the balance in a general election. But the results also show a clear desire among Democratic voters for a rival to emerge and hint at potential cracks in her support," the Wall Street Journal said. Among Republican primary voters, the poll showed Bush ahead with 22 per cent of the vote. Walker was next with 17 per cent and Rubio third with 14 per cent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson had 11 per cent, while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee 9 per cent, libertarian senator Rand Paul 7 per cent, former Texas governor Rick Perry 5 per cent, New Jersey governor Chris Christie 4 per cent and Texas senator Ted Cruz 4 per cent were all in single figures. *Does Hillary Really Believe in the Hillary Doctrine?* <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122132/does-hillary-really-believe-hillary-doctrine>* // New Republic // Jordan Michael Smith – June 23, 2015* In the run-up to her official 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton spoke at the Women in the World Summit in New York City in April. Some interpreted Clinton’s remarks as evidence of her commitment to feminism. “The choice of the location in itself sends a strong signal,” wrote Slate’s Amanda Marcotte; “If there was any doubt that Clinton intends to run a woman-centric campaign, her speech erased it.” Others viewed the speech as just another calculated exercise. “Hillary Unveils Her Plan to Advance Women’s Rights (and Her Own Campaign)” read the headline of an article on New York magazine’s website. Such is the ambiguous nature of Clinton’s image: Even more than most politicians, she inspires contrasting views about her authenticity. Does she really mean what she says? Valerie M. Hudson and Patricia Leidl, the authors of The Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy, have no doubts about the subject. “While perhaps others in the Obama administration might feel that the Hillary Doctrine is some type of rhetorical flourish, it is impossible to believe that is the case for Clinton herself,” they write. The idea of a “Hillary Doctrine” was first propagated in a 2011 Newsweek cover story that defined it as the belief that “the subjugation of women is a direct threat to the security of the United States.” Hillary first espoused this idea in a speech to the United Nations delivered as Secretary of State, and she reinforced it with policies, ordering all components of the State Department to undertake gender analyses of their areas of responsibility, for example. Well, that’s the Hillary Doctrine they discuss. Different "Hillary Doctrines" have been proclaimed by others. David Rohde (or his headline writers) defined it as belief that a bipartisan, long-term commitment to stabilizing far-off nations is essential to American security. Last August, John Cassidy argued that the Hillary Doctrine could be found in the Clinton’s idea of “a sustained global campaign targeting radical Islam (some, doubtless, will call it a ‘crusade’) that encompasses all of the options at the disposal of the United States and its allies: military, diplomatic, economic, political, and rhetorical.” Most recently, James Goldgeier, a State Department official during Bill Clinton’s presidency, outlined the Hillary Doctrine as a worldview that “appreciates the limitations of U.S. power and yet still maintains the resolve to identify opportunities to lead the world.” Clinton certainly highlighted issues facing girls and women as Secretary of State. But did she devote most of the considerable resources of her office toward implementing her rhetoric surrounding this issue? Professors at Texas A&M and Michigan State, respectively, Hudson and Leidl make significant efforts to suggest that she did. After a brief history of the evolution of gender’s place in American foreign-policymaking, they present research demonstrating the relationship between a nation’s stability and its gender equality. Some of this pioneering research was conducted by Hudson herself; she examined 141 nations and found that the best predictor of a state’s internal and external peacefulness was its level of violence against women. The Hillary Doctrine presents Guatemala as a case study in the argument that there is a “link between gendercide and genocide,” and Saudi Arabia as a case for the argument that there is a link between a nation’s attitudes toward its women and the risk that the country poses to the international community. They note “a conspicuous silence” from Clinton about Saudi Arabia’s brutal gender abuses, however, which underlines a wrinkle in their thesis. The Hillary Doctrine generously suggests that “perhaps Clinton believes that issues of women’s status are best left to private conversations are the highest level of diplomacy.” Perhaps. Or perhaps Clinton prioritizes the preservation of good relations with a major oil-producing country in the Gulf favorable to America over issues of human rights, like every other Secretary of State since Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. It would be an overstatement to say that the book is a glowing endorsement of the likely 2016 Democratic nominee. Hudson and Leidl freely admit that “the scorecard for the Hillary Doctrine is mixed.” In areas such as the number of female ambassadors, the increased scrutiny the State Department gave to other nations’ records on gender, and the inclusion of women in peace talks in Sudan and Afghanistan, Clinton’s record shines. But Afghanistan can be seen as something of a failure failure, one where “the rights of women and girls continue to be cynically disregarded even as the [Western] coalition mumbles about the necessity of gender equality.” What The Hillary Doctrine fails to do is to justify the premise behind “The Hillary Doctrine:” that achieving gender equality is essential to the direct security of the United States. Achieving equality for girls and women around the world is a worthy aim, and America should pursue it for that reason alone. But arguing that America cannot be secure unless women are on par with men in every country in the world is an exercise in threat inflation. It also establishes a bar for American security that is both unrealizable and unnecessary. No nation is perfectly secure, but America is as secure as any major power in world history. As Michael Cohen and Micah Zenko put it in a brilliant 2012 Foreign Affairs essay, “The United States faces no plausible existential threats, no great-power rival, and no near-term competition for the role of global hegemon.” And yet, analysts continue to act as though America is beset by dangers. Yes, it is in America’s “national security interests” to operate in a less sexist world. But it is not clear that it is in America’s vital interests to operate in such a world. At least not if one defines “vital interest” as something that is necessary for a country to function with secure territory and sovereignty. The Hillary Doctrine admirably forefronts the idea that the safety of women worldwide is a pressing moral issue. But it would have been more effective if it had better explained why this moral issue merits policymakers’ finite attention and money. Instead, it endorses the idea that the country cannot be safe unless one of the world’s most universal, long-standing, and intractable inequities is rectified. If Hillary Clinton is elected president next year, let’s hope she knows the difference. *Hillary’s Bernie Sanders problem: She wants to embrace populism and Wall Street at the same time <http://www.salon.com/2015/06/23/hillarys_bernie_sanders_problem_shes_wants_to_embrace_populism_and_wall_street_at_the_same_time/> // Salon // Adam Green – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton wants to be known as an economic populist. She also wants to be known as a supporter of the American Dream who celebrates when people move from rags to riches. These two ideals are not mutually exclusive, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren proves consistently when she tells her story of moving up from the ragged edges of the middle class while calling for our economic system to be unrigged so more Americans can enjoy upward mobility. But Clinton appears to be feeling a tension right now, trying to figure out how to present a vision that represents both of these ideals. Two months ago she said, “The deck is stacked in favor of those at the top” and “my job is to reshuffle the cards.” At her kickoff rally this weekend, she said “everybody will have a better time” on her watch – Wall Street bankers and the poor alike. These are vastly different things. One signals she will challenge power, the other does not. One challenges ill-gotten gains, the other does not. Clinton seems more pensive now than in 2008 – attempting to apply a heightened authenticity and level of reflection. But her laudable attempt to find language that meshes populism with an optimistic celebration of success has resulted in unnecessarily parsed words that risk hurting her authenticity and could be read as taking positions that one hopes she does not actually hold. Rhetoric about lifting the fortunes of “all Americans” sounds good until you consider bad actors: Wall Street bankers who break the law and pad their pockets as millions of people lose their jobs and homes. Hedge fund managers who enrich themselves by gambling away people’s pensions. Credit card scammers who profit by miring people in years of spiraling debt. Crony capitalists who invest millions in political donations in order to skew the tax and regulatory codes and get a return on investment of billions. This is the opposite of the American Dream – some Americans actively hurting other Americans, cutting corners to enrich themselves while taking away the dream for others. Clinton’s pronouncement that “I’m not running for some Americans, but for all Americans” papers over the question of whether she will pick a side when powerful interests attack everyday families. Especially after Wall Street banks admitted to fraud, the illegal taking of people’s homes, and other criminal activity that hurt millions of families, Americans need to hear more than a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats message from our next president. To inspire voters, and be a populist champion in this populist moment, Clinton needs to acknowledge that bad actors exist and show that she will fight to take away their power and ill-gotten gains. To be clear, this does not mean vilifying all wealth or success. After all, most Americans don’t lump the Google and Netflix founders in the same class as the Koch brothers, Jamie Dimon or Bernie Madoff. Clinton is right when she said recently in New Hampshire, “I don’t think Americans are against success.” But she limits the potential of a Clinton presidency, and hurts her authenticity and populist bona fides as she seeks that presidency, when she unnecessarily narrows the scope of her argument to saying, “Americans are against people who get on the top of the ladder and start pulling it up.” Greed is one thing. Law breaking that destroys our economy and hurts millions of people’s lives is another. Greed has existed forever. Law breaking by increasingly large Wall Street actors is what led to the financial collapse that took away the American Dream for so many everyday families. There are more than 400,000 chief executives across our nation. If Clinton wants most CEOs to see their own economic fortunes rise by paying employees larger wages and pumping up the demand side of our economy, that’s great. If she wants to make America’s economic pie bigger so everyone has a shot at earning a bigger piece, that’s a great part of the solution. But when we know that some of the most powerful CEOs and hedge fund managers break the law and profit by taking away people’s dreams, and when we know crony capitalists use campaign donations to bend the law and avoid taxes and regulation, it is insufficient to say, “Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers.” Americans need to hear explicitly that Wall Street lawbreakers and crony capitalists would not see their piece of the economic pie grow under a Clinton presidency. Instead, the ill-gotten gains and power of bad actors must be reduced – not because of jealousy, but because they are mutually exclusive with millions of hardworking Americans being able to fully live out their dreams. Therefore, Clinton saying “prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers” is good, but not sufficient. It should not be controversial for Clinton to say what Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have both said – that if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. That’s just obvious. So is the idea that Wall Street bankers who break the law should go to jail – a proposition that Iowa voters agree with by nearly 20-to-1. And Clinton should assure voters that her Treasury secretary, attorney general, SEC commissioners and appointed regulators would crack down on Wall Street bad actors who put our economy at risk. For Clinton to embrace this economic populist moment and inspire primary and general election voters alike, she must show a willingness to challenge power – plus offer big ideas that invest in our economy like debt-free college, massive investment in infrastructure and clean-energy jobs, higher worker wages, and expanding Social Security benefits. That’s the bold economic vision Americans want and need. *How Much Will Demographics Help Hillary Clinton? <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/how-much-will-demographics-help-hillary-clinton.html> // NY Mag // Jonathan Chait – June 23, 2015 * Only a few years ago, the basic premise of the Emerging Democratic Majority — the theory that Democratic-leaning constituencies were growing as a share of the population — was deeply controversial. Analysts like Sean Trende denied before the 2012 election that the nonwhite vote was likely to continue rising at all. Now it is more or less a matter of general agreement, and the dispute has moved on to what it means. David Wasserman crunches some numbers and predicts the level of demographic change that will be brought to bear on the 2016 electorate. The white vote is expected to drop from 72 percent of the electorate to 70 percent. Wasserman calculates that if every cohort votes the same way as in 2012, the Democratic margin will grow from the 3.85 percent margin that separated Barack Obama from Mitt Romney to 5.4 percent. Here is the state-by-state breakdown: Supporters cheer as Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, bottom center, arrives to speak at her first campaign rally at Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York, U.S., on Saturday, June 13, 2015. Like many neutral and even liberal analysts, Wasserman frames this finding in a very cautious way. His headline is “Mapping the 2016 Electorate: Demographics Don’t Guarantee a Democratic White House.” And, of course, nobody thinks demographics guarantee a Democratic White House. Maybe Republicans can do a much better job of mobilizing their base than the Democrats this time, or maybe a big event like a recession will darken the skies for the Democrats. But in a closely divided electorate with relatively few swing voters, one and a half percentage points is a lot. *If You Buy a Onesie From the Hillary Clinton Campaign Store, You Are Basically Selling Your Soul* <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/what-happens-when-you-buy-a-onesie-from-hillary.html>* // NY Post // Jaime Fuller – June 23, 2015* Peak campaign-email season has not arrived just yet. The primaries are still many months away, and although candidates want to make sure that you know they exist, they know they probably have money and resources to pilfer from you yet. Now, in the lazy summer heat, campaigns are content to simply get to know you, and one of the best ways to do that, as the New York Times shows, is by convincing you to buy an incredibly useless bit of merchandise from their online stores. There, candidates aren't only getting you to wear their brand out in broad daylight; they are learning your fears and dreams and whether you are the sort of person who will wear a pantsuit T-shirt in public. Even Rand Paul, patron saint of privacy, is not above using his campaign store to find out if you are a libertarian millennial who likes to party — otherwise known as someone who bought a Rand Paul cornhole set — or a libertarian yuppie who wears turtlenecks and invites friends over to eat cheese — otherwise known as someone who doesn't mind that their wine glasses say Rand Paul on them. This is valuable information. As the campaigns learn more about individual voters they will be able to target them in a way that convinces supporters to give more money or volunteer for the campaign — just like Amazon learns how to read your mind and puts products you desperately want to buy on your homepage. If you buy a pride T-shirt from Bernie Sanders, you will likely get an email from his campaign on how he feels about the upcoming Supreme Court decision on marriage equality. If you buy a "Future Voter" onesie from Hillary Clinton, she is going to start giving you updates on Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky — and tell you about her stance on paid leave. If you buy a Ted Cruz phone case, his campaign might send you an email about signing up for text updates or his social-media accounts. If you buy a Mike Huckabee polo shirt, you will probably get all the emails because you have signaled that you will spend money on anything. This isn't the only way that campaigns are learning about you online, as National Journal points out. Even the emails you get after you buy something are testing what you like and what words are going to be most effective in getting you to part with your money, thanks to A/B testing, a practice now used by basically all organizations that send out emails for profit or fund-raising. "Looking at it cynically," National Journal concludes, "mining Internet users' data for political gain sounds vaguely Orwellian, where voters are turned into unwitting guinea pigs in a giant social experiment. Looking at it pragmatically, it's just smart business." If this freaks you out, you can always wait until Urban Outfitters releases the 2015 version of its "2 Legit 2 Mitt" T-shirts, although no studies have proven that receiving daily "25 percent off" emails from Urban Outfitters is a slower way to make you lose your mind than daily emails from a 2016 candidate — or 20. *Pataki: Hillary Clinton likely broke law <http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/us_politics/2015/06/pataki_hillary_clinton_likely_broke_law> // Boston Herald // Chris Cassidy – June 23, 2015 * Former New York Gov. George Pataki slammed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton yesterday for “probably” breaking the law by erasing emails on a private server that likely left information open to Chinese hackers. “It’s clear to me that having that home server not only violated State Department rules and regulations, deleting those emails was probably a crime because she had good reason to know that Congress wanted to see what was in them,” Pataki said on Boston Herald Radio. “But what is most disturbing to me is that the Chinese in all likelihood know what every one of those 30,000 emails said. The American people don’t. Congress doesn’t. The State Department don’t. That is wrong.” Pataki also criticized New Hampshire television station WMUR for not pressing Clinton harder during a one-on-one last week, when she lamented the vulnerability of the State Department’s servers, but never mentioned her own. “That’s exactly the question that any decent reporter would ask if they were trying to get to really learn something and get some real answers,” said Pataki, who made the comments on Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show. “And I can’t believe they didn’t ask it. Well, actually I can believe they didn’t ask it.” Pataki claimed the entire incident shows that Clinton is more concerned about her own political reputation than protecting the security of sensitive information. “Clearly, Hillary’s basement server isn’t going to have that level of protection,” he added. “It was grossly irresponsible for her to do this. It poses a tremendous security risk to America. But more importantly, it raises questions about her judgment in so many ways. She is so concerned about her political career that she will jeopardize critical American communications.” *Hillary Clinton on course to win presidential election, poll says <http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/23/hillary-clinton-presidential-election-poll> // Guardian // Jessica Glenza – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton is on course to win the Democratic primary and would go on to trounce her Republican opponents, according to a new poll. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that the former secretary of state was the first choice for nominee of 75% of her party, with Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders far behind on 15%. Analysis Clinton v Bush: America is getting the dynastic matchup it said it didn't want Despite rivals’ protestations, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush enjoy the support of their own party’s voters. But the other party’s dynasty candidate? Not a chance Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, was on 2%, while Lincoln Chafee, the former governor of Rhode Island, polled less than 1%. Former Virginia senator Jim Webb, who has not yet formally declared he is running, was on 4%. According to the poll, 92% of likely Democratic voters said they could see themselves supporting Clinton. The poll asked 1,000 likely voters about their opinions on potential presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat. It showed Clinton polling at 48% to 40% against her closest Republican contender, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the brother of former president George W Bush and son of former president George HW Bush. Against the Florida senator Marco Rubio, Clinton polled 50% against 40%. And against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker she polled 51% to 37%. Among Republican primary voters, the poll showed Bush ahead with 22% of the vote. Walker was next with 17% and Rubio third with 14%. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson had 11%, while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (9%), libertarian senator Rand Paul (7%), former Texas governor Rick Perry (5%), New Jersey governor Chris Christie (4%) and Texas senator Ted Cruz (4%) were all in single figures. The poll is likely to encourage the Clinton camp, whose campaign got off to a rough start when questions arose about Clinton’s use of personal email as secretary of state, this spring. But it is possible that early polls may not reflect the true strength of Clinton’s challengers. Republican pollster Bill McInturff told the Wall Street Journal that Clinton had “the strongest and most advantageous” standing among Democrats he had seen in 35 years of campaign polling. “She starts with advantages among very important groups,” he said. McInturff conducted the poll with Democrat Fred Yang. Clinton’s high rankings could be buoyed by increasingly positive support numbers for her 2008 rival Barack Obama, whose approval rating is up by 8 percentage points to 48% since September 2014, when it hit an all-time low of 40% according to the same polls. Among Republican candidates, Bush and Rubio remain neck and neck, with 75% and 74% of respondents saying they could see themselves supporting the candidates in a Republican primary. Bush pulls away slightly in favorability rankings, pulling 5% ahead of Walker with 22%, and 8% ahead of Rubio. Most see Clinton as a moderate candidate (58%) who is trustworthy because of her “experience and background” (59%). Respondents were fairly split over which party the next president should be from, with Republicans scoring 36% and Democrats 39%. Ongoing concerns going into the election could set the mood for the campaign. A “decline in traditional moral values” was rated as the most alarming trend in America of all respondents (25%), seconded by possible terrorist attacks on the US (18%), while corporate and wealthy individuals’ influence over elections was rated as the most disconcerting facet of the upcoming campaign (33%). *Clinton on Flying Confederate Flag: Not in South Carolina, Not Anywhere // <http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/clinton-on-flying-confederate-flag-not-in-south-carolina-not-anywhere-20150623> National Journal // Emily Schultheis – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton Tuesday praised the South Carolina legislature for its decision to take down the Confederate flag—but she that it is only an initial step in "America's long struggle with race." "It shouldn't fly there, it shouldn't fly anywhere," Clinton told a community meeting at Christ the King church in Florissant, Missouri, Tuesday afternoon. Clinton also said she wanted to "commend" Walmart (she once sat on the company's board) for ceasing to sell items that picture the Confederate flag, noting that other companies—Amazon, eBay, and Sears among them—have followed. "I urge all sellers to do the very same," she said. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced Monday that the flag would be taken down from the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia, the week after a white-supremacist gunman killed nine African-Americans in a Charleston church. The killings brought new attention to the flag's history, prompting most of the 2016 field to weigh in on whether or not it should be flown. Clinton's speech was in Florissant, a Missouri town near Ferguson, where questions about race and violence flared last summer after unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer. Clinton told her audience that getting the country to a better place on questions of race and violence will involve dealing with broader issues of inequality, access to education, and economic opportunity. "You know and I know that's just the beginning of what we have to do," she said. "The truth is equality, opportunity, civil rights in America are still far from where they need to be." To that end, Clinton repeated her calls for "common-sense gun reforms" and voting reforms like automatic universal voter registration and early voting for every state. "Whether you live in Ferguson or West Baltimore, coal country or Indian country, you should have the same chance … to get ahead and stay ahead," she said. On Monday, The Huffington Post reported on Confederate symbolism on the Arkansas flag, noting that Clinton's husband—former President Bill Clinton—had not moved to remove the symbols during his time as Arkansas governor. *Hillary Clinton Has an Idea Conservatives Should Get Behind <http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420156/hillary-clinton-apprenticeships-tax-credit-republicans> // National Review // Reihan Salam – June 23, 2015 * Rather surprisingly, Hillary Clinton made a shrewd policy announcement last week. Until recently, Clinton’s main answer to sluggish wage growth has been to cheer on labor activists calling for a higher minimum wage. Yet she has just embraced a far more attractive policy proposal that enjoys considerable bipartisan support. Drawing on legislation backed by Senators Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Clinton is calling for a new tax credit that would encourage employers to create and expand apprenticeship programs. Conservatives would do well to follow her lead, and to go further. To understand the appeal of apprenticeships, consider a central dilemma facing employers and workers alike. Many employers report that they are struggling to find qualified workers to fill vacant jobs, despite high levels of unemployment and underemployment, particularly among young adults. One obvious solution would be for employers to hire on the basis of a worker’s potential to do a job well rather than her ability to do it well right off the bat, and then to provide the worker in question with the necessary training. This is easier said than done, however, as this training process can be costly. And once a worker is fully trained, she may well jump ship to another employer, in which case the employer who provided the training will have wasted a lot of time and money. Workers could endeavor to ready themselves for the labor market by, say, enrolling in a local community college. But even the best vocational curriculum is no substitute for on-the-job learning. As Peter Cappelli, a leading expert on job training at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, has observed, schools are not well-suited to providing work-based skills and experience. “Instead,” he argues, “employers need to be much more involved, not just in telling schools what they want but in providing opportunities for new grads to get work experience and learn the relevant expertise.” Apprenticeships are one way to square this circle. Essentially, apprenticeships allow entry-level workers to gain work-based skills and experience at a wage commensurate with the fact that they have yet to master their new jobs. As a general rule, apprenticeships combine work with classroom instruction, and they culminate in some kind of occupational credential. Employers benefit by expanding the ranks of qualified workers they can hire as full-fledged employees. Workers benefit by gaining skills and experience they couldn’t gain otherwise. Given the potential benefits of apprenticeships, why are they so rare in the U.S.? Why aren’t employers flocking to establish apprenticeship programs, even in the absence of a tax credit? Don’t forget the risk that newly trained workers might decide to go from one employer to another. Employers can mitigate this risk by paying an apprentice a somewhat lower wage while she gains skills and experience, but not necessarily by enough to make an apprenticeship program an attractive proposition. By offering a modest public subsidy, like the tax credit proposed by Scott and Booker (and now Clinton), apprenticeship programs would become a better bet for more employers. Of course, money doesn’t grow on trees. Why should we spend scarce resources on increasing funding for apprenticeships rather than something else entirely? Robert Lerman of the Brookings Institution, an economist who has been advocating the expansion of apprenticeships for years, has cited promising research from Washington State on the long-term impact of apprenticeships: Studies show U.S. apprenticeships are extraordinarily cost-effective. Analyses conducted for Washington State’s Workforce Board show that taxpayers net almost three times their spending on apprenticeships within two and a half years of the program’s completion, and the combined benefits accruing to participants and taxpayers are about five times the costs. By the time former apprentices reach age 65, benefits to taxpayers reach $23 for each dollar spent. These findings should not be treated as definitive, and it is entirely possible that Washington State is an idiosyncratic case and that its experience might not apply elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is mounting evidence that on-the-job learning has benefits that traditional higher education does not, which makes it all the more striking that taxpayers spend so much on higher education while spending so little on helping young people gain meaningful work experience. Lerman has noted that increasing federal and state funding for apprenticeships threefold would mean spending a small fraction (2 percent) of the 2013 increase in funding for college loans. The case for rebalancing federal spending from traditional higher education to other post-secondary alternatives, including apprenticeship programs, is quite strong. Even if we accept that it makes sense for the public sector to invest in apprenticeship programs, why should the federal government play a role? South Carolina, for example, has created a successful statewide apprenticeship program at relatively low cost. While state initiatives can and should continue, the case for a federal role is simply that state governments don’t have a strong incentive to finance the training of workers who might eventually move to other states to take full advantage of their skills. Workers enrolled in apprenticeship programs in South Carolina might eventually make their way to North Dakota, and while that might not be ideal from the perspective of South Carolina, it’s not a bad thing at all for the country as a whole. This isn’t to say that the federal government should micromanage apprenticeship programs — far from it. Ideally, different firms and jurisdictions would pursue different approaches, tailored to different job functions and to different populations of workers. But a modest federal tax credit is a perfectly reasonable first step to take. There is another reason to support the expansion of apprenticeship programs, albeit a more tentative one. Lerman has suggested that on-the-job training can engage many young people who struggle with formal education, and that it can help them become better husbands and fathers. University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox has in a similar vein identified apprenticeships as a key part of a broader strategy to strengthen the economic foundations of marriage. Are they right to suggest that apprenticeships will make much of a difference in promoting family stability? I can’t say. Yet the possibility is intriguing, particularly for those who see the presence of stable male parents in the home as important to the success of young men. Clinton is the first presidential candidate to make apprenticeships a centerpiece of her domestic-policy agenda. But there is no reason she should be the last. Indeed, one could argue that apprenticeships are a better fit for conservatives than for liberals. After all, it’s the left-of-center coalition to which Clinton belongs that is so committed to the care and feeding of the public higher-education institutions that have done such a poor job of preparing young Americans for the workforce. *Beghazi panel chairman: State Dept. didn’t hand over requested emails / <http://thehill.com/policy/defense/245876-benghazi-panel-chairman-state-dept-didnt-hand-over-requested-emails>/ The Hill // Martin Matishak – June 23, 2015 * The leader of the House Select Committee on Benghazi says the State Department has failed to produce any copies it might possess of recently disclosed emails between Hillary Clinton and adviser Sidney Blumenthal. "This is a straightforward question — State Department either has them or they do not," chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement Tuesday. “State should immediately produce to the committee emails that should have been produced months ago or explain why it is not in possession of these emails from Secretary Clinton,” he added. “Either response has ramifications toward a full public record. This should be neither complicated nor time consuming." Gowdy criticized the department the day after his panel released nearly 60 emails Blumenthal turned over to the select committee earlier this month. He challenged the State Department to determine whether or not the agency already possessed them, giving the agency until close of business Monday to respond. The department has asked for an extension, according to Gowdy. The memos between Blumenthal and Clinton are separate from a batch of nearly 300 messages from Clinton’s private email server that the State Department made public last month. That initial cache showed Clinton had received about 25 memos from Blumenthal regarding Libya while she was secretary of State. On Monday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the agency was “working through” its inventory of messages to “determine if there are emails in that batch that we either didn't have or may have not provided.” “Now I will say at least that the more that is asked for in terms of scope, the more resources it will consume here at the State Department, and the more time it will take. There's no doubt about that,” he added. “But ... it's up to them to determine what they want to look at.” Gowdy dismissed that argument. "Every request to State is met with delay, a request for extension and pleading to narrow the scope," he said. "The reality is the State Department under both Secretaries [John] Kerry and Clinton has failed in its obligation to provide transparency for the American people and congressional investigators.” Gowdy added that panel Democrats "could help speed the process if they would stop providing cover and join the majority in demanding State step-up production." "In the end, if President Obama and Secretary Kerry want to fulfill the President's pledge of the most transparent administration in history, they will ensure the Executive Branch complies with the Select Committee's outstanding requests," he added. *The Clintons, immune to scandal <http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/245794-the-clintons-immune-to-scandal> // The Hill // Richard Benedetto – June 23, 2015 * Ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton publicly inoculated themselves on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Super Bowl Sunday in 1992 by admitting to "problems" in their marriage, they have been largely immune from a steady stream of maladies that might have killed most politicians. From Gennifer Flowers to Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky, it helped them survive a series of so-called "bimbo eruptions" — as Betsey Wright, Bill Clinton's deputy campaign chair in 1992, referred to them — that could have blocked or ended Bill's presidency. As a bonus side-effect, the injected serum produced a thick skin and the keen ability to display pluck, defiance, combativeness and a skill for bending the truth that helped weather a long string of '90s scandals and controversies. They included Bill Clinton's past efforts to avoid the military draft during the Vietnam War, the questionable Whitewater land deal, various controversial presidential pardons, playing fast and loose with campaign fundraising rules, mishandling FBI background files on Republicans and "renting" the Lincoln bedroom to contributors. And now, that serum seems still effective against a fusillade of charges focused on Hillary Clinton's secretive handling of her emails while secretary of State, her reaction to the Benghazi attack in Libya, her high-priced speaking fees and the financial sleight of hand between the couple's charitable foundation and foreign donors seeking approvals from the U.S. government while she was in the Obama Cabinet. If any one of the current band of 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls was faced with just one such allegation, chances are they would be shamed and forced out of the race, hounded by a news media and a political opposition that would not let them talk about anything else. But Hillary Clinton skates on in her 2016 Democratic bid for the White House largely immune. Despite the well-publicized controversies, polls show that although ratings of her character and integrity have taken a big hit, she still would beat any one of her many potential GOP rivals in the 2016 election. The serum is still potent. It wasn't long ago that far-smaller transgressions than the Clintons' brought lightning-quick ends to presidential candidacies. Hillary Clinton need look no farther than the current vice president, Joe Biden, who had his 1988 run for the Democratic presidential nomination brought down in flames in 1987 by charges of plagiarism and exaggeration of his academic record. Democratic front-runner Sen. Gary Hart (Colo.) was chased out earlier that same year for having an extramarital affair with model Donna Rice. And the end came quickly. An embarrassed Biden quit the race just two weeks after the plagiarism charges surfaced. A defiant Hart was out in less than a week, only to return six months later in a woeful comeback attempt. Biden, then a U.S. senator, said in his dropout statement that the incessant pressure from the news media hampered his ability to campaign and at the same time chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was then considering President Reagan's controversial nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Some might argue that Biden and Hart flopped in a far different time, and that such behaviors might be more easily tolerated in today's evolving live-and-let-live atmosphere. But then again, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) resigned in 2008 when it was revealed that he hired prostitutes. And New York Rep. Anthony Weiner (D) quit his House seat in 2011 after texting suggestive photos and messages to young women. Ironically, Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, is a top aide in Hillary Clinton's campaign. Which brings us back to the Clintons, and more specifically Hillary and her various ethical and veracity problems, not to mention questions about her competence to serve in the highest office in the land. By far, the most serious allegation against the Clintons is that they extorted millions of dollars in speaking fees and six-figure donations to their charitable foundation in return for State Department favors while Hillary was secretary of State. If that could be proved, such behavior might bring criminal charges and possibly prison terms. But with Hillary Clinton having sole control of her government and personal emails, and having said that she destroyed those emails she deemed personal, legal proof of a quid pro quo would be nearly impossible to secure. The only other way would be if donors were willing to talk under oath in exchange for immunity from prosecution. A recent high-profile case has some parallels. Former Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), a rising GOP star, and his wife, Maureen, were found guilty last year of public corruption after they were charged with providing preferred government treatment to Johnnie Williams Sr., a businessman with a dietary supplement to sell. Federal prosecutors charged that Williams bribed the McDonnells for state favors with golf outings, fancy vacations, expensive gifts such as a Rolex watch and $120,000 in sweetheart loans. Williams, who had immunity, testified against the McDonnells, saying they helped him set up meetings with state officials to pitch his product. The gifts and loans to the McDonnells are chickenfeed compared to the money lavished on the Clintons and their foundation. Yet, the McDonnells, whose convictions are on appeal, are facing prison terms. No federal prosecutors appear eager to look into the Clintons' case, as they were to investigate the McDonnells. Could that be because President Obama is their boss? Talk about immunity. *Back to the 1990s: Fact-checking Whitewater <http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/jun/24/looking-back-whitewater/> // Politifact // Christian Belanger Linda Qiu – June 24, 2015* Former President Bill Clinton said in a recent interview that questions over Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness have been put to rest in the past and will be again. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Clinton compared the media frenzy over leaked emails, speaking fees, and Clinton Foundation donations with a 1995 Whitewater report that he said "completely exonerated" Hillary Clinton. "There had been a lot of discussion in this period about disclosure," he said. "You know, everybody wants disclosure, but I think what's good for the goose is good for the gander here. For example, I remember when Hillary was completely exonerated, when I was in the White House, in all that Whitewater business, when an official federal inquiry said that her billing records, they wished for her sake could have been found earlier, because they completely corroborated everything she'd said. "And the next day, there was nothing in the media about it. There was stunning nondisclosure. So, now we have got social media, and we can have disclosure. And we can all live under the same rules. And it's going to be fine." We delved into the details of Clinton's comments in two fact-checks. As for whether Hillary Clinton was "completely exonerated," we rated that Mostly True. As for whether the media ignored the story the next day, we rated that Half True. Read our fact-checks to take a trip in time back to the '90s. *Did Hillary Clinton have her name on only three laws in eight years as Jeb Bush says? <http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/jun/23/jeb-bush/did-hillary-clinton-have-her-name-only-three-laws-/> // PolitiFact // Amy Sherman – June 23, 2015 * As Jeb Bush reels off his accomplishments as governor cutting taxes and slashing state jobs, he says he’s ready to put his record up against Hillary Clinton’s. A day after his announcement speech at Miami Dade College, Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Bush to comment on the Democrat’s record. Hannity: "Can you name in a serious way one specific Hillary accomplishment, or what would you say that's good about her?" Bush: "She's smart. I think she's smart. I think she loves her country. I don't ascribe bad motives for people that I don't agree with. But as a senator, I think she passed -- she has her name on three laws in eight years." There is some truth to Bush’s claim about laws passed, but it doesn’t tell the full story about her legislative accomplishments as a senator. Laws with Clinton’s name Clinton was first elected as a senator from New York in 2000 and re-elected in 2006. She resigned to become secretary of state, so her Senate tenure was from January 2001 to January 2009. Bush’s spokesman sent us a list of three bills Clinton sponsored hat became law. These laws were uncontroversial matters that passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and voice vote in the House and then were signed by President George W. Bush: S. 1241: A bill to establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site in the State of New York. Bush signed the bill Dec. 3, 2004. S. 3613: A bill to name a post office the "Major George Quamo Post Office Building." Bush signed the bill Oct. 6, 2006. S. 3145: A bill to designate a highway in New York as the Timothy J. Russert highway. Bush signed the bill July 23, 2008. But there are other ways that Senators can influence legislation even if they don’t end up as the sponsor of the final version: Co-sponsored bills: There were 74 bills that became law that Clinton co-sponsored. For example, she was one of 54 cosponsors on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed in January 2009 by President Barack Obama. (The fact that she co-sponsored these bills doesn’t tell us much about her role in their passage, but Bush referred to bills that "she has her name" on, so it’s worth noting those she co-sponsored.) She co-sponsored one version but another version passed: For example, she co-sponsored S.1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in January 2009 while the version that passed was H.R. 1. Sponsored amendments: She put forward amendments that influenced laws sponsored by others. She sponsored three amendments on a bill for security and disaster funding. The amendments passed in 2007 and the bill passed in 2008. Two experts who study Congress -- Norman Ornstein, a scholar at American Enterprise Institute, and Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University and Brookings Institution scholar -- said that the number of sponsored or co-sponsored bills signed into law isn’t a thorough measure of effectiveness or productivity for a member of the Senate. "Offering amendments on the floor, holding hearings, contributing to oversight, helping to negotiate agreements, pushing federal agencies to be responsive to constituents back home -- all of these might contribute to making a senator ‘effective,’ but none of these endeavors of course would show up in a count of bills sponsored or passed or enacted," Binder said. As for Bush’s claim about the number of laws "she has her name on," Binder said that it’s fair game to also look at the number of bills Clinton co-sponsored. "Because ‘have her name on’ is so vague, I don't see the grounds on which to exclude co-sponsored bills," she said. Ornstein said that the names that go on bills of any real significance are the committee chairs -- for example the Dodd-Frank 2010 banking reform bill. Sen. Chris Dodd and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank were the major figures behind the law, but other senators also had roles and don’t have their names on the bill. Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act "does not have Al Franken's name on it, but a really important provision, the medical-loss ratio, was his handiwork," Ornstein said. "Effectiveness can be a behind-the-scenes role, adding a serious amendment, working inside to get the language exactly right. By any reasonable standard, including the private comments of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle when she was in the Senate, she was very effective." Our ruling Bush said that as a senator, Clinton had her name "on three laws in eight years." Bush used vague language here, so it’s fair game to look at the three sponsored bills and the 74 co-sponsored ones that passed. Also, congressional experts warn that legislative influence goes beyond having your name as a sponsor or co-sponsor. Senators weigh in with amendments, debate and negotiations. The statement is partially accurate, but leaves out important details so we rate this claim Half True. *No media coverage of Hillary Clinton’s ‘exoneration’ in Whitewater, says Bill Clinton <http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/23/bill-clinton/no-media-coverage-hillary-clintons-exoneration-whi/> // PolitiFact // Christian Belanger and Linda Qiu – June 23, 2015 * Former President Bill Clinton said in a recent interview that questions over his wife’s trustworthiness have been put to rest in the past and will be again. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Clinton compared the media frenzy over leaked emails, speaking fees, and Clinton Foundation donations with a 1995 Whitewater report that he said "completely exonerated" Hillary Clinton. Back then, the alleged exoneration didn’t get much traction in the news, he said. "The next day, there was nothing in the media about it. There was stunning nondisclosure," he said on June 14. "So, now we have got social media, and we can have disclosure. And we can all live under the same rules. And it's going to be fine." His claim about missing coverage of Whitewater was as surprising to us as it was to the incredulous Clinton, so we decided to delve into the archives and see if we could confirm his claim. In a separate fact-check, we looked at the claim that the report "completely exonerated" her. That earned a rating of Mostly True. Investigating Whitewater The long, long Whitewater saga first came to public attention during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, when the New York Times published an article detailing the Clintons’ involvement in the late 1970s with Whitewater Development, a real estate corporation. Together with a longtime friend, James B. McDougal, the Clintons formed the company in order to buy and sell vacation property in the Ozark Mountains. McDougal, however, was also the president of Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan association. Over the following decade, the company became engaged in a number of risky real estate ventures and lending deals, including a number of political donations to Bill Clinton’s Arkansas gubernatorial campaign. When Madison Guaranty finally collapsed in 1989, McDougal was indicted on federal fraud charges; though he was later acquitted, a separate investigation ensued, one that eventually implicated the Clintons as potential beneficiaries of illegal activity. To further complicate matters, Hillary Clinton’s law firm had also represented Madison Guaranty as it fought unsuccessfully to prevent insolvency. After Clinton won the presidency, a confused mass of probes, committees, hearings, and special investigations ensued, proceedings that dogged Clinton through most of his tenure in the Oval Office. Questions were raised, as Republicans in Congress searched for a smoking gun: The only problem, to stretch a metaphor, was that nobody knew the make, the model, or even the existential status of the alleged firearm. The investigation was rife with leaks of undisclosed documents that dripped out slowly, and as we’ll see, that contributed a good bit to why the media covered the scandal the way they did. The 1995 Pillsbury Report The Pillsbury Report sat squarely in the midst of this bureaucratic tangle. Commissioned in order to investigate the Clintons’ involvement in the Whitewater venture, it concluded that no civil action should be taken against anyone involved in the real estate deals. This is not the first time Clinton has expressed his disapproval over the media’s coverage of the 1995 report in question, which was authored by independent law firm Pillsbury, Madison, & Sutro and commissioned by the Resolution Trust Corporation, a now-defunct federal agency involved in the Whitewater investigation. In his autobiography, My Life, Clinton writes that he "eagerly awaited" the coverage of the New York Times and Washington Post on the report’s findings, but was disappointed by the results: "Immediately after the RTC report was released, the Post mentioned it in passing, in the 11th paragraph of a front-page story...and the New York Times didn’t run a word. The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Times ran an Associated Press story of about four hundred words on the inside pages of their papers." In acknowledging that there was any press coverage at all, Clinton contradicts his recent statement that there was "nothing in the media" the day after the report was released. Nevertheless, his larger point seems to be that the press coverage of the event was severely lacking. So, is Clinton’s claim of "stunning nondisclosure" factual? The answer is slightly murky, since it’s unclear when the report’s findings came to light, and therefore how quickly news organizations responded to it. There exists a preliminary report dated to April 24, 1995, but it does not appear to have been released to the media at the time (more on this below). It seems more likely that Clinton is referring to the Dec. 13, 1995, report to the RTC, which concluded, "It is recommended that no further resources be expended on the Whitewater part of the investigation." The earliest media mention we could find of the December report is from the Dec. 16, 1995, Washington Post story that Clinton mentions in his book. The story focused on the White House easing conditions for the release of certain documents, noting that the report was sent to congressional committees two days earlier. Over the next week, articles about the Pillsbury report trickled out. On Dec. 18, both the Wall Street Journal and the San Jose Mercury News ran short stories, less than 150 words, giving succinct summaries of the report. The next day, ABC’s evening news program Nightline briefly discussed the findings, while the New York Times, like the Washington Post, mentioned the report within a larger story on missing Whitewater files. Later that week, the New York Times’ Sunday edition contained a story focused solely on the Pillsbury report. On Dec. 20, the New York Daily News ran two editorials on the Pillsbury report, one giving a nod and the other exploring the findings at length. So there was some press coverage, even if it wasn’t sufficiently exculpatory for Clinton’s taste. In fact, Howard Kurtz, in an editorial for the Washington Post on Dec. 22 (one praised by Clinton in his autobiography) discussed why there was scant media attention. Kurtz quoted several reporters from major newspapers as saying that the report was old news — a draft had been leaked that June — and beside the point: Attention to the Clintons’ participation in the land venture itself had dissipated, replaced instead by questions surrounding Hillary Clinton’s role as legal adviser to Madison Guaranty, the firm embroiled in the real estate deals surrounding the scandal. That particular issue would not be resolved until the Dec. 28 report on Clinton’s Rose Law Firm was released, which concluded on a similar note to the other report: "It is recommended that no further resources be expended on this investigation." We looked back to see if it was true that the December report’s findings had already been covered in the summer, and discovered that it was: Seven different newspapers wrote about the April 24 Pillsbury report on June 26 or 27, with the Washington Post devoting two separate stories to the issue. Kurtz’s article also supplies another reason why media outlets might have been reluctant to devote too much coverage to the Pillsbury report, even after its findings were made public in December: It wasn’t available to them in its entirety. "As soon as we can get ahold of the report, it's our intention to write an article about it," a New York Times editor told Kurtz, "There's a lot of spin that goes along with these reports. That's why you have to look at them." The New York Daily News, in its article from Dec. 20, gives the reason for this, writing that the report "was shown to the Daily News by congressional Democrats," but "the not-guilty verdict cannot be made public. It contains advice on how to prosecute other Arkansas figures, including their business partner James McDougal, and the government does not want that information to fall into the hands of defense attorneys." Our ruling Bill Clinton said that after a federal inquiry substantially cleared Hillary Clinton on the Whitewater scandal, "The next day, there was nothing in the media about it. There was stunning nondisclosure." While the former president might technically be correct — after the Dec. 13 report was sent to Congress, nothing appeared in the papers the following day — there was some amount of press coverage over the following week and a half, including a discussion of why that press coverage was not more amplified, a discussion that Clinton himself acknowledges in his autobiography. Additionally, there had been substantial press coverage of the findings of a preliminary report once the media managed to obtain information from it. We rate Clinton’s statement Half True. *Clinton campaign video highlights ‘equal’ marriage rights <http://www.washingtonblade.com/2015/06/24/clinton-campaign-video-highlights-equal-marriage-rights/> // The Blade // Chris Johnson – June 24, 2015 * The campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unveiled on Wednesday a new video celebrating same-sex marriage days before an expected decision The two-and-a-half minute video, titled “Equal,” shows various same-sex couples in happy moments, including several who are in the course of exchanging vows for their wedding ceremonies. One the early clips in the video shows the same footage from Clinton’s campaign announcement video of Jared Milrad and Nathan Johnson, a Chicago same-sex couple who support Clinton and are planning to wed this summer. Overheard in the video are recorded audio clips of Clinton’s speech earlier this month in New York City in which formally launched her 2016 presidential campaign and her 2011 speech on international LGBT rights in Geneva, where she articulated the now popular line: “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” As Republican presidential candidate tout their opposition to same-sex marriage, Clinton is running a campaign in support of LGBT rights and right of same-sex couples to marry. In addition to this video, she’s the only presidential candidate to issue a written statement recognizing June as Pride month. Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Y9abmNuRw *Clinton Aide Worked on UAE Project While at State Department <http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-aide-worked-on-uae-project-while-at-state-department/> // Free Beacon // Alana Goodman - June 24, 2015* Hillary Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills held several outside roles, including a board position with a UAE-funded university in Abu Dhabi, while working as chief of staff and counselor at the State Department, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. After joining the State Department in the beginning of 2009, Mills continued to serve as general counsel for New York University for several months. She also sat on the board of the “NYU in Abu Dhabi Corporation,” the fundraising arm for the university’s UAE satellite campus. The school is bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi government and has been criticized by NYU professors and human rights activists for alleged labor abuses. Mills resigned both positions in May 2009, according to a university spokesperson. Although she did not receive a direct salary from the Abu Dhabi board, she collected $198,000 over four months from NYU. While the State Department told the Free Beacon that Mills did not start working as Clinton’s chief of staff until May 24, 2009, internal agency documents indicate she began months earlier. Mills is identified as Clinton’s chief of staff in several U.S. diplomatic cables prior to May 2009. One confidential dispatch published by Wikileaks described a Feb. 5, 2009 meeting in Washington between Haitian President Rene Preval and Secretary Clinton. “On the U.S. side, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson … Special Advisor Vicki Huddleston, and Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills joined the Secretary,” said the cable, which was sent from Hillary Clinton’s office to the U.S. embassy in Port au Prince on Feb. 11, 2009. Mills is also copied on over a dozen internal State Department memos vetting Bill Clinton’s paid speaking engagements between February and May 2009. The documents were released last year under a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch. In the memos, drafted by the State Department’s deputy legal advisor, James Thessin, Mills is identified as “Counselor and Chief of Staff, U.S. Department of State.” On February 17, 2009, Thessin sent a memo to Bill Clinton’s scheduler, recommending “To expedite these [conflict of interest assessment] requests in the future, you may wish to forward the request directly to me, with a copy to Waldo (Chip) Brooks, my Senior Ethics counsel … his deputy, Violanda Botet … and Cheryl Mills.” As the Free Beacon previously reported, Mills was still on the board of the William J. Clinton Foundation during this time. A Clinton Foundation official told the Free Beacon that Mills resigned from its board in March 2009, but did not provide the specific date. The official also said the position was unpaid and “there was no board activity [involving Mills] after December 2008.” While Mills is also listed in some Clinton Foundation records as a director until as late as 2012, the foundation and its filing vendor told the Free Beacon this was due to an inadvertent filing error. Mills’ outside roles could have opened her up to potential criminal conflict of interest violations, according to ethics experts. “A key element of those laws is whether the executive branch employee is making decisions or playing an important role in a particular matter which involves their other interest,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group. “At the minimum the whole thing is fraught with danger.” Mills would have been exempt from some ethics restrictions if she was granted “special government employee” status at the time, which would allow her to work in a part-time consulting role at the agency. Last year, the State Department released a list of all of its SGE employees under Hillary Clinton in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from ProPublica. According to the list, Mills was classified as an SGE in 2013 but she is not listed in 2009. The State Department told the Free Beacon on Friday that it is currently trying to determine whether Mills was a special government employee in 2009. It was not able to produce a response by publication time. Mills did not respond to request for comment. Another Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, was classified as an SGE during her last few months at the State Department. During this time, Abedin also worked as a consultant at the Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a company founded by long-time Clinton associate Doug Band. Ethics experts said even if Mills did have special government employee status, she could not be involved in government matters that would help NYU or the Clinton Foundation financially. “The only rule that applies to both [SGE’s and regular government employees] is that she cannot participate in matters that would financially benefit a current employer, for example NYU,” said Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics counselor under President George W. Bush. “Same for anyone else or any foundation she worked for while working at State.” The Clintons maintained close relationships with NYU and the UAE during and after Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department. The secretary of state gave the NYU commencement address on May 13, 2009. Bill Clinton was paid $175,000 in November 2009 for a speech in Abu Dhabi, according to Peter Schweitzer’s book Clinton Cash. He also reportedly received $600,000 for a UAE government event in 2011. Since then, the former president has given additional paid speeches in the UAE, including a controversial 2013 address at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus. The Clinton Foundation has also received between $1 million and $5 million from the UAE government. “Federal of conflict interest statutes are very strict, and they want to ensure that federal employees, especially very senior special employees like Cheryl Mills, do not have any conflicts of interest in any matter that they have a hand in,” said Boehm. “Given her position, the dual position of counselor and chief of staff, presumably she would have access to almost any decision of importance that came out of the State Department.” Mills currently runs the BlackIvy Group, a consulting firm that focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2013 she rejoined the board of the Clinton Foundation. *For-Profit Schools Target Vulnerable Vets, Give to Clinton Foundation <http://freebeacon.com/politics/for-profit-schools-target-vulnerable-vets-give-to-clinton-foundation/> // Washington Free Beacon // Brent Scher – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton took aim at the for-profit education industry last week saying it lies to military veterans to boost profits, but the industry’s most predatory schools are Clinton Foundation donors. Clinton during an event in Nevada last Thursday accused for-profit schools of exploiting the so-called 90-10 rule in order to “target service members, veterans, and their families with false promises and deceptive marketing”; the rule, established by the amended Higher Education Act of 1965, caps the percentage of total revenue for-profit schools can receive from Title IV federal financial aid. The rule forbids for-profit schools from receiving 90 percent of their revenue from federal financial aid—but the amount of federal money they receive in the form of veterans’ benefits is not restricted—making service members and veterans attractive prey for the revenue hungry industry. The school relying on veterans’ benefits most has been the for-profit University of Phoenix, which took in nearly $1 billion in G.I. Bill funds from 2009 to 2014 according to PBS. The Apollo Group, which is the parent company of the University of Phoenix, has donated up to $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation and at least part of that donation came as recently as 2014. The University of Phoenix is highly effective at recruiting veterans. The school’s San Diego campus, which has a high veteran population, took in $95 million through the G.I. Bill during that five-year span, which is more than any other college in the country. Unfortunately, much of that money is going to waste. A recent study found that only 16 percent of University of Phoenix students graduate within six years. For online students, the graduation rate is just 5 percent. Brown Mackie College, also a 2014 Clinton Foundation donor, is part of the Education Management Corporation (EDMC), which is the country’s second largest for-profit college company. A lawsuit from whistle-blowers against EDMC that became public in 2014 alleged that it was recruiting veterans by overpromising on post-graduate employment prospects, and that EDMC was lowering the reported incomes of its applicants with the goal of receiving more G.I. Bill funds. “[EDMC’s] business is not that of an educational institution. It is a sales company,” argued the attorneys in the suit. “Defendants place virtually no stock in providing students with quality educational services and therefore are not entitled to participate in the federal financial aid program.” An earlier lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice argued many of the same points, stating that EDMC disqualified itself from $11 billion in federal and state funds due its recruitment practices. The DOJ complaint stated that EDMC, which is partially owned by Goldman Sachs, operated a “boiler-room style” sales team. Recruiters were instructed to “exploit applicants’ psychological vulnerabilities,” and targeted applicants “who were unable to write coherently, who appeared to be under the influence of drugs, or who sought to enroll in an online program but had no computer,” according to the suit. Clinton’s criticism of the industry extended beyond its abuse of the 90-10 loophole. “Unfortunately there are some programs that take people’s money and do not produce the results that were promised, and we’ve got to crack down on that and put them out of business,” said Clinton last week during an event at Trident Technical College. The Laureate International Universities, partially owned by the liberal billionaire George Soros, have donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. New York Magazine characterized Bill Clinton as the “face” of Laureate, which enrolls 800,000 students worldwide. Clinton was paid an undisclosed salary for his “honorary chancellor” position with Laureate, but resigned earlier this year. Laureate has been criticized for “turbocharging” enrollment at its schools and lowering admission standards to the point that its schools are now “the place you go when no one else will accept you.” The Clinton Foundation also received money from Kaplan in 2014, which earlier this year made a $1.3 million settlement payment to DOJ for using unqualified instructors to teach students that were paying for their education with federal funds. Kaplan has been criticized for targeting students who would likely drop-out—so it can receive government aid money without providing any service. The main target was “African-American women who were raising two children by themselves,” according to a whistle-blower. Other markers that those in the sales department were looking out for were “low self-esteem, reliance on public assistance, being fired, laid off, incarcerated, or physically or mentally abused.” Kaplan derives 88 percent of its revenues from federal funding. The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment. *MSNBC Guest: Clinton Reminiscient of Nixon With Suspicion and ‘Nipping’ Scandals <http://freebeacon.com/politics/msnbc-guest-clinton-reminiscent-of-nixon-with-her-suspicion-and-nipping-scandals/> // Washington Free Beacon // Andrew Kugle – June 23, 2015 * New York Times bestselling author Evan Thomas said Hillary Clinton has President Richard Nixon’s qualities of suspicion and scandals nipping at her. Thomas wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he compared the similarities between Clinton and Nixon. MSNBC host Abby Huntsman said, “You say like Nixon, Hillary sees enemies everywhere. She’s guarded, she’s secretive, and an awkward campaigner hardly comes across as a politician who loves people, or the media, for that matter.” “Hillary is not Nixon; obviously she is not,” Thomas said. “But she has some of the same qualities of suspicion and these little scandals that kind of nip at her and she risks making them worse by stonewalling, and by fending them off, and manipulating the press. Didn’t work for Nixon. May not work for Mrs. Clinton if she keeps at it.” Clinton has been criticized for her lack of access to members of the press and the number of scandals that she hasn’t addressed. *Hillary Clinton tells Americans to face their racism <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/23/hillary-clinton-tells-americans-face-their-racism/> // Washington Times // S.A. Miller – June 23, 2015 * Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Americans on Tuesday to take action against the persistence of racism in the country, commending political and business leaders who have taken the initiative to remove the Confederate battle flag from public display. The former secretary of state plunged into the race debate following the shooting massacre at a historic black church last week in Charleston, South Carolina. “I know it is tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to believe that in today’s America bigotry is largely behind us, that institutionalized racism no longer exists. But despite out best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished,” Mrs. Clinton said in a speech at church near Ferguson, Missouri, where violent protests erupted last summer following the shooting of a young black man by a white police officer. “We can’t hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name them and own them and change them,” she told the crowd at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Flouissant, Missouri. Mrs. Clinton, who has been aggressively wooing black voters, began focusing on race relations early in the campaign. She called for justice reforms after Baltimore’s race riots in April. She has made several speeches on race since the shooting Wednesday killed nine people at a Bible study meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man with ties to white supremacists, has been charged with nine counts of murder in the attack, which appears to have been motivate by racial hatred. The Justice Department is investigating the killings as a hate crime. In the speech, Mrs. Clinton called the church massacre an “act of racist terrorism.” She commended South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, for announcing her support for removing the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds. “It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said. She also applauded Wal-Mart for taking the lead in announcing it would remove Confederate flag merchandise from its shelves. Several major retailers followed, including Amazon, eBay and Sears. *Hillary Clinton a ‘LINO’ – Liberal in Name Only? <http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2015/06/23/hillary-clinton-lino-liberal-in-name-only/> // Fox // Elizabeth MacDonald – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton has rebooted her campaign as a classic Democrat liberal, with a 45-minute policy speech on New York City’s Roosevelt Island last week, named for President Franklin D. Roosevelt who launched the social welfare state. Income inequality, higher minimum wage, pre-kindergarten education, and tax credits were on tap, and it’s anticipated her campaign will roll out new policies in stages in coming months. The former secretary of state is racing across the country with her policies in hand, with more than 20 fundraisers scheduled through July 3, as Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders threatens to undercut her progressive leanings. But as Hillary Clinton declares war on the billionaire class, her six-figure speeches, deep pocket donors on Wall Street and corporate America from places like Citigroup (C) and Goldman Sachs (GS), already has the presidential hopeful talked about as a “LINO”—a liberal in name only. Clinton really isn’t running for a third term of an Obama presidency, an Administration that, it turns out, relied on what I called back in 2010 on Forbes on Fox “trickle down government” (which GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney quoted two years later). One thing Hillary Clinton is that President Barack Obama was not—a deal maker just like FDR, Ronald Reagan (who both cut and raised taxes), and her husband Bill Clinton. Republicans in control of Congress often depict Clinton as someone who listens and is willing to horse-trade just like her husband, who cut deals on financial deregulation (hotly debated), a balanced budget, welfare reform, and trade. Hillary Clinton’s progressive leanings are there. Clinton now decries President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy in favor of tax cuts for the middle class. Clinton is also taking a page from her husband who campaigned on a middle class tax cut, but instead delivered a child care tax credit (and cut capital gains taxes). Clinton now wants tax credits for things such as student loans, and repeatedly voted against repealing the estate tax on millionaires, which slams small business. Clinton backed Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, fought for a nationalized health insurance system, and comprehensive immigration reform. But Clinton’s business leanings are also there, with speeches talking of the need for a strong private sector that’s necessary to create jobs. Bubbling up, too, is the still serious controversy about her State Dept. email server and the Clinton Foundation, with “pay to play” charges over cash donations from companies and foreign donors. As secretary of state, Clinton worked on behalf of the private sector, for companies like American Airlines (AAL), General Electric (GE), Microsoft (MSFT), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Corning (GLW), FedEx (FDX), and Boeing (BA). Nearly five dozen companies donated more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation also had lobbied the State Department during her tenure, says the Wall Street Journal. Other outlets put the number as at least 181 Clinton Foundation donors that lobbied the U.S. State Department while Hillary Clinton was in charge. *Hillary arrives by private jet for Ferguson-area speech on race relations and Charleston ‘terrorism’ – but friend of Michael Brown hammers her: ‘Where you been, Hillary? It’s been ten months, girl!’ <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3136628/Hillary-arrives-private-jet-Ferguson-area-speech-race-relations-Charleston-terrorism-friend-Michael-Brown-hammers-Hillary-s-ten-months-girl.html> // Daily Mail // David Martosko – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton arrived in a private jet on Tuesday to talk race relations at a church whose rooftops can see Ferguson, Missouri. And she left some in St. Louis's urban black community feeling cold, coming to town for a campaign speech nearly a year after the riot-inducing shooting death of Michael Brown. In the neighborhood where Brown died in August 2014, his longtime friend Robert Nettles told DailyMail.com that Clinton's brief visit to the scarred town is 'just a little late.' 'Where you been, Hillary?' Nettles asked Tuesday afternoon. 'It's been ten months, girl!' Clinton's somber talk at an all-black church just up the road from the Ferguson riots' boarded-up windows was a stark contrast from her high-flying arrival at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, in a private part of the facility most people never see. Exclusive DailyMail.com photos show her descending the steps of a large private jet and getting into a white van for a 10-minute ride to Christ the King United Church of Christ in nearby Florissant. She will hold court Tuesday night at a $2,700-per-person fundraising event in St. Louis's deepest pocket of wealth, hosted by an Anheuser-Busch heiress at an wildlife preserve once owned by President Ulysses S. Grant's family. But in the afternoon her rhetoric was focused at the chronic street-level drama that has pitted black against white, and calmly wrapped itself up in last week's racist mass-murder at a South Carolina church – an event that she called 'an act of racist terror.' 'I know it's tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident,' Clinton told the mostly black audience, 'to believe that in today's America bigotry is largely behind us, that institutionalized racism no longer exists.' 'But despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished. We can't hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name them, own them and change them.' And speaking about this week's swift move in South Carolina toward removing a Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds, Clinton said still more action is needed. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, she said, was right to see the flag 'as a symbol of our nation's racist past that has no place in our nation's present or future.' 'It shouldn't fly there,' Clinton said. 'It shouldn't fly anywhere.' Clinton herself is now facing public doubts about the role of the Confederate 'stars and bars' emblem in her own campaign, along with those of her husband Bill when he was governor of Arkansas. The pair presided over eight years of Confederate Flag Day commemorations. Bill, himself a future president, signed a bill that described the Arkansas state flag as including a singular blue star to commemorate the slaveholding confederacy. Four separate interviews in Ferguson suggest African-Americans at the epicenter of last year's marquee race-politics story aren't ready to have Clinton lead America out of its past and into a more color-blind future. *Hillary Clinton camp won’t say if Confederate flag button was official part of the ’92 presidential campaign <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3135820/Hillary-Clinton-camp-won-t-say-Confederate-flag-button-official-92-presidential-campaign.html> // Daily Mail // Kate Pickles and Evan Bleier – June 23, 2015 * Hillary Clinton is refusing to say whether a Clinton-Gore pin featuring a Confederate flag was part of her husband's official campaign merchandise. Examples of the distinctive red and blue badge, from the 1992 election, are now being sold on Ebay. It comes as politicians, including President Obama, called for the Confederate battle flag to be taken down in the state capitol, a week after a white gunman allegedly shot dead nine black worshipers at a church in South Carolina. Many argue the flag which 21-year-old Dylann Roof, charged in the Charleston church shootings, was pictured with the Confederate, is a symbol of hatred and should be consigned to museums. But the former Arkansas first lady has not responded to questions by The Blaze over whether she knew if the pin was part of the official campaign. She has also failed to respond to requests over whether she is opposed now, or opposed then, to an act signed by her husband honoring the Confederate flag, the website said. Mrs. Clinton weighed in on the South Carolina confederate flag debate back in 2007 and still holds the view that it should be taken down. America's largest retailer Walmart said on Monday that it will be removing all products promoting the Confederate flag from its stores in the wake of controversy following the South Carolina shootings. As South Carolina leaders are pushing to remove the flag that flies at the statehouse in Columbia, officials in Mississippi and Tennessee are grappling with whether to retain Old South symbols. Mississippi voters decided by a 2-to-1 margin in 2001 to keep the state flag that has been used since 1894. It features the Confederate battle emblem in the upper left corner - a blue X with 13 stars, over a red field. Republican Governor Phil Bryant on Monday repeated his long-held position that the state should keep the flag as is. 'A vast majority of Mississippians voted to keep the state's flag, and I don't believe the Mississippi Legislature will act to supersede the will of the people on this issue,' Bryant said in a statement. Democratic Senator Kenny Wayne Jones of Canton, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, said the Confederate emblem is a 'symbol of hatred' often associated with racial violence. Jones said the flag represents the power structure's resistance to change during the 1960s and '70s, when civil rights activists were pushing to dismantle segregation and expand voting rights. 'We should be constantly re-examining these types of stereotypes that label our state for what it used to be a long time ago,' Jones told The Associated Press. Since the 2001 Mississippi election, bills that proposed changing the flag have gained no traction, with legislators saying voters settled the issue. At the Tennessee Capitol in Nashville, a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early Ku Klux Klan leader, has sat in an alcove outside the Senate chamber for decades. Democratic and Republican leaders are calling for the bust to be removed. Craig Fitzhugh, the state House Democratic leader, said it should go to the archives or a museum and be replaced in the Capitol by a statue of Lois DeBerry, an African-American who became the first female speaker pro tempore of the Tennessee House. Women and minorities are underrepresented in government symbols, Fitzhugh wrote. 'We need to revisit what we have displayed in the Capitol so that it better represents a Tennessee for all of us,' he wrote Monday. *Former Clinton Advisor: Hillary ‘Absolutely’ Has to Answer for Arkansas’ Confederate Flag <http://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-clinton-advisor-hillary-absolutely-has-to-answer-for-arkansas-confederate-flag/> // Mediaite // Alex Griswold – June 23, 2015 * Appearing on CNN’s New Day, former Clinton advisor Paul Begala said that Hillary Clinton “absolutely” had to answer for her husband’s embrace of Confederate symbols as Governor of Arkansas. “The Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign comes out and says, as she said back in 2007, ‘I don’t like the Confederate flag, you should take it down,'” host Chris Cuomo noted. “Does she have to answer for her time as first lady in Arkansas with Bill standing by the Arkansas flag proudly when it, too, is said to borrow from the Confederate symbology?” “Well sure, absolutely,” Begala responded. “Times change, circumstances change.” The Confederate image in the Arkansas flag is not as blatant as other states’ (such as Mississippi). But in 1987, Bill Clinton signed a bill designating that a blue star added to the flag was in honor of Arkansas’ Confederate past. *OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE* *DECLARED* *O’MALLEY* *Martin O’Malley, the Confederacy, and the Maryland state song <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2016-martin-omalley-the-confederacy-maryland-state-song/> // CBS // Jake Miller – June 23, 2015 * Martin O'Malley has waded aggressively into the recent debate over the Confederate flag, but he wasn't so vocal about another Confederacy-related dispute that arose in Maryland while he was the state's governor. O'Malley called Sunday for South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol in the wake of a church shooting in Charleston that claimed the lives of nine black parishioners. "What a terribly jarring and callous sight then--in the wake of this racist massacre--to see the American flag at half staff, while above it at full staff over the state Capitol of South Carolina flew a Confederate flag," O'Malley, a long-shot Democratic candidate for president in 2016, told the U.S. Conference of Mayors. "If the families of Charleston can forgive, can let go of their anger, is it really too much to ask the state government officials of South Carolina to retire the Confederate flag to a museum? America must do better." He continued in the same vein with an email to supporters on Monday, calling the flag a "rallying banner for hate" and a "symbol of 150 years of bigotry and racism." But Maryland, too, has its own complicated history with the Confederacy. The state never seceded from the union, but it might have done so absent an intervention by the federal government. Many Marylanders, particularly in the eastern part of the state, were sympathetic to the confederate cause. That complicated history is reflected in the state's official song, "Maryland, My Maryland," which was adopted in 1939 by the state legislature. The song urges Maryland to secede, referring to Abraham Lincoln as a "despot" and the Union itself as "northern scum." "Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain," the sixth verse reads. "Virginia should not call in vain." The song has never erupted into a full-blown controversy like the one currently surrounding the flag in South Carolina. But there have been periodic attempts to change the song's lyrics, most recently in 2009, when then-state Sen. Jennie Forehand, a Democrat, sponsored a bill to do just that. Forehand told the Washington Post that she couldn't recall O'Malley, then the state's governor, speaking out on the issue. The paper reports O'Malley was even "among several state leaders coaxed by a Washington Post reporter that year into singing bits of the song that were posted online." CBS News has reached out to O'Malley's campaign for comment, but no response has yet been received. The shooting in Charleston, allegedly committed by a 23-year-old white man with white supremacist leanings, has breathed new life into a debate that has persisted for generations across much of the American South. Under the terms of a compromise struck in 2000, the Confederate flag was removed from atop South Carolina's capitol dome and relocated to a civil war memorial on the statehouse grounds. But South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, called Monday for the flag to be moved from the capitol premises entirely, saying the controversial banner "does not represent the future of our great state." The move drew support from the Republican Party's roster of presidential canddiates, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, offered similar praise for Haley's decision. She also made sure voters knew she's been pushing to retire the flag for years: .@nikkihaley is right 2 call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC. As I've said for years, taking down Confederate flag is long overdue. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 22, 2015 *O’Malley returning to Iowa on Sunday <http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/06/23/omalley-returns-june-visit/29185449/> // Des Moines Register // Grant Rodgers – June 23, 2015 * Former Democratic Maryland governor and presidential candidate Martin O’Malley will return to Iowa on Sunday for house parties in Sioux City, Carroll and Ames. Sunday’s visit will be O’Malley’s third trip to Iowa since he announced his candidacy May 30 in Baltimore. He attended house parties on June 11 in Marshalltown and Mount Vernon before drawing approximately 150 people to Iowa City pub the Sanctuary for an evening event. The noon event in Sioux City is set for the house of Ben Nesselhuf and Angie Schneiderman. Nesselhuf is a former South Dakota Democratic Party chairman and the former campaign manager for 2014 Iowa Democratic 4th District congressional candidate Jim Mowrer. A 3:30 p.m. event in Carroll will be hosted by Carroll County Democratic Chair Tim Tracy, and a 6:30 p.m. Ames event will be hosted by John and Carolyn Klaus. O’Malley is scheduled to return to the state again July 17 in Cedar Rapids to appear alongside fellow Democratic contenders Lincoln Chafee, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Jim Webb at the Iowa Democratic Party’s “Hall of Fame” dinner. *SANDERS* *Meet the Hilarious Comedian Now Impersonating Bernie Sanders <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/meet-the-hilarious-comedian-now-impersonating-bernie-sanders> // Bloomberg // David Weigel – June 23, 2015 * "Bernie Sanders" fixes his eyes on the camera and shares his pain. His presidential campaign is not getting taken as seriously as it deserves. "Despite the fact that 80 percent of everyone agrees with me on 90 percent of everything," he says, "the corporate-controlled media says that I look like a train conductor with cotton candy hair, and I sound like a bullfrog with the personality of a library card." To prove the media wrong, "Sanders" heads off on a tour of various extreme-fun settings. He skateboards. He moshes at an LMFAO concert (or the concert of a band that's as much LMFAO as he is "Bernie Sanders"). He drops acid. All of this to prove that he's not boring, by rattling off statistics in his brittle Brooklyn accent. The Bernie Sanders in this Funny or Die video is not the Bernie Sanders who's serving his third term in the United States Senate. This Bernie Sanders is the latest interpretation of James Adomian, a 35-year old comedian who previously perfected a dopey version of George W. Bush and a realistically paranoid spin on Jesse Ventura. For a decade, Adomian has done for put-upon white male politicians what Wendy Carlos did for synthesizers. "I’ve always liked Bernie Sanders," says Adomian, who lives in Los Angeles. "I’ve always wanted to do a Bernie Sanders impression, but I didn’t believe people were familiar enough with him to pull it off. And I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of doing impressions that not everybody gets. It's not fun. Sometimes, when you do Christopher Hitchens, the audience says, ‘Who?’ and you want to say, 'Don’t you people read the news?' But I always wanted to do Sanders. When he ran for president, I just pounced on it. Ah-hah! Well, he’s running–everyone has to know who he is." Adomian had tried out the Sanders persona before, briefly, when performing in front of Washington, D.C. audiences that might have recognized it. Over the last month, as Sanders has campaigned for president, Adomian has taken "Bernie Sanders" onto other stages, and onto comedy podcasts. On May 18, "Sanders" walked onto Community creator Dan Harmon's podcast Harmontown, wearing a blazer, slacks, and vest that Adomian had cobbled together because he did not own a suit. "I'm a presidential candidate that everyone agrees with on everything, but no one will vote for me," Adomian-as-Sanders said. "If one third of the two thirds that support my position were to vote for me, that would be one sixth of the population and I still would not win." "So you think it would be tough—you don't think you're going to win?" asked Harmon. "Look, I'm not here to talk about winning and losing," said the "candidate," wearing two white wigs on either side of his dome to simulate the Sanders hairstyle. "That's the problem with American capitalism. We've been too obsessed with the losers. That's how the middle $40 billion in the federal budget goes to the top 1 percent of the top 2 percent of the top, let's say, 17 percent of the country." On the May 29 episode of "Sklarborough Country," Adomian had further refined the character. He was less self-deprecating, more wonkish; he'd spit out numbers and statistics faster than hosts Randy and Jason Sklar could process them. "Let’s talk hard numbers," said Adomian-as-Sanders. "The top 10 percent of the top 12 percent controls over 40 percent out of the top 80 percent of all of the income that’s enjoyed by the bottom 4 percent of the top 9 percent of the bottom 9 percent. That’s the kind of numbers we’re looking at. There was a time in this country, 1950, a family of four could afford a house for only $50,000. Now, for that same amount of money, $50,000, year on year, inflation adjusted–you can only afford a doorknob and turn it halfway." The first version of "Bernie Sanders" was not unlike the lovable, obsessive losers Adomian had inhabited for years—Paul Giamatti, Orson Welles, Jesse Ventura. The former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler, who has spent his post-government years wading further and further into fever swamps, became a regular Adomian character. He would fill his voice with gravel, pace around the stage, and see if anyone was ready to go off the grid with him, or join the presidential campaign he was always five minutes away from starting. "I'd not necessarily take questions, but take everything back to either conspiracies or wrestling," says Adomian. The Sanders impression is something else—something much more sympathetic. "If you look at not just me, but at anybody doing an impression, you can tell when the comedian is drawing blood and when they’re not," says Adomian. "When I’m doing an impression this way, nobody’s going to think I’m Bernie Sanders. They're going to see how I perceive him and how I choose to bring him to life. I like this guy. You’re presumably going to see that. When he’s doing interviews, he doesn’t answer the question the way it’s wanted. He doesn’t get railroaded. He sort of corrects the interviewer. I love that. It’s been a while since I had a character or an impression that was juicy enough to let me improvise like that." Adomian wasn't too fond of the last character that let him improvise. In his mid-twenties, he got his first major national exposure for an immaculate impersonation of George W. Bush. Plenty of Bush mimics imitated the president's occasional word-mangling; Adomian blended that with a doppleganger physical imitation. "From 2004 to the end of his presidency, I’d go around at live shows and take questions from the audience," he recalls. "It was really fun. People loved it. If I didn’t know the answer to something, he certainly wouldn’t either. There was no way I’d be stumped." Adomian brought out "George W. Bush" on TV (Mind of Mencia, MAD TV), at shows, even at the progressive blogger conference that's now called Netroots Nation. In 2008, Adomian provided the voice of Bush for the HBO drama about the 2000 Florida election, Recount. That same year, in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Adomian played Bush as a simple, hard-partying stoner who retreats to his man cave with a bag of "Alabama kush" whenever Dick Cheney nears. Egged on by the titular potheads, Adomian's Bush got high, then called former President George H.W. Bush to declare his independence from the neocons. "Daddy," he said, "I don’t need your friends to tell me what to do anymore!" George W. Bush kicked open doors for Adomian, bringing him national audiences and regular work, establishing him as a peerless mimic. The only problem: George W. Bush was president. Most Bush imitators lost a vocation when Barack Obama became president. Adomian was happy to move on. "It’s fun to be able to celebrate the positive aspects of life, as opposed to what it was like with George W. Bush," he says. "That was more like: Jesus Christ, does it have to be this much of a nightmare? I’d much rather live in a world where I get to make fun of things that are good and awesome. Hopefully, Bernie Sanders will go a long way." Adomian's thinking syncs up perfectly with the thinking at Funny or Die. The eight-year old website tilts strongly and openly to the left. In 2010, it reunited the actors who'd played presidents on Saturday Night Live (with Jim Carrey taking the late Phil Hartman's role) for a video supporting the creation of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Last year, it produced an episode of Zach Galifianakis and Scott Aukerman's nihilistic interview show "Between Two Ferns," where President Obama traded insults and promoted the Affordable Care Act's enrollment period. Funny or Die's bet was that comedy could be earnest, and could side with a politician, without sacrificing laughs. Adomian's "Bernie Sanders" is working in the same space. The portrayal of Sanders as a lovable, numbers-obsessed square is not far from the image that's getting thousands of progressives to turn out for the candidate's speeches. When asked if he'd play "Sanders" to raise money for the campaign, Adomian considered it. "I guess I’d have to research campaign finance laws, which would be a hassle," he said. "I don’t know if Citizens United prevents me from working for a campaign–I’m not a corporation, maybe there are more rules for a real person. But I'm open to it. I am prepared, by the way, to continue doing a Bernie Sanders impression should he win the presidency." *Will Sanders stun Hillary in 2016 like Obama did in 2008? <http://www.marketwatch.com/story/will-sanders-stun-hillary-in-2016-like-obama-did-in-2008-2015-06-24> // Market Watch // Darrell Delmaide – June 24, 2015* WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren has officially missed the boat on running for president, but that doesn’t mean Hillary Clinton has clear sailing to the Democratic nomination. Two leaders of the “Ready for Warren” movement that sought to draft the Massachusetts Democrat have accepted her decision not to run and switched their support to Vermont independent Bernie Sanders as the new standard bearer for progressive policies. Best of the Web Columnist James Taranto on the history of the Confederate flag and federalism. Photo credit: Getty Images. These policies, which are resonating with enthusiastic crowds, include federal investment in infrastructure to create jobs; a higher minimum wage; paid sick leave; higher tax rates for the rich; campaign finance reform; a tougher line on trade accords; subsidies for higher education; and further reforms to guarantee health care for all, among others. “While Warren is the champion who inspired this movement, the draft effort was never just about her — it’s about her message and the values she represents,” Erica Sagrans and Charles Lenchner wrote last week in a blog post on CNN. “Bernie Sanders has caught fire in a way that’s reminiscent of the draft-Warren movement itself — from the Internet to town halls in Iowa, Sanders has captured the imagination and support of people looking for a real progressive challenger in the 2016 Democratic primary.” Indeed, as reports flood in from Iowa, New Hampshire, Las Vegas, Denver, Minneapolis, and elsewhere of standing-room-only crowds, switches to larger venues to accommodate the thousands of people who show up for his rallies, and impassioned testimonials from Democratic voters, Sanders is clearly on his way to realizing the hopes many had pinned on Warren. So “Ready for Warren” has become “Ready to Fight” and endorsed Sanders for president, a move that could bolster his nascent campaign infrastructure and channel grassroots donations to the Vermont senator. While Sagrans and Lenchner don’t completely abandon hope of convincing Warren to run, the success of Sanders on the campaign trail and their support for him make it less likelier than ever that she will enter the race. None of this matters, however, to the Beltway pundits who continue to smirk at the mention of “socialist” Sanders and see him at best as a slightly clownish sparring partner for Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll out this week delivered the latest confirmation of Clinton’s position at the head of the pack — with 75% of Democratic primary voters saying she is their preferred candidate, compared to 15% for Sanders, and registered voters saying she would defeat any of the three leading Republican candidates in the general election. But the perceptions reflected in the polls and inside the Beltway are lagging the reality on the ground, much as they did when Barack Obama built up a groundswell of support against frontrunner Hillary Clinton in 2008. An embarrassingly obtuse Chris Matthews led a “Hardball” panel last week in cheerleading for Clinton because “she’s a Democrat and he’s a socialist.” He dug the hole deeper as he caricatured Sanders’ policies as meaning “take from the rich and use it for school programs and stuff like that.” Needless to say, his panelists — including former Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and former Clinton speechwriter Lissa Muscatine — agreed with Matthews’ glib assessment. “I think Hillary`s fundamental approach reflects the mainstream of the Democratic Party,” Axelrod opined, before continuing dismissively on Sanders’ chances. “I think people will have a fling with Bernie. Bernie’s like a great fun date because you know he`s not going to be around too long.” Cue laughter from the audience. Muscatine continued the charade by pretending like Matthews that Sanders’ desire for a more equitable distribution of wealth excludes growth while Clinton’s lip service to greater equality is based on growing the pie, raising all boats with a rising tide, or whatever cliché you prefer. It is a media bubble like this that explains why MSNBC, which bills itself as a liberal counterweight to the conservative viewpoint of Fox News, is circling the drain in ratings as it misses the point of what’s going on in this country. Sanders has drawn within 10 points of Clinton among Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, site of the first primary, and he has just begun to campaign. Meanwhile, the barrage of news about Clinton’s deleted emails and conflicts of interest inherent in Clinton Foundation donations and speechifying for exorbitant fees by both Bill and Hillary Clinton has eroded support for the former first lady more than the polls indicate. As Clinton’s trustworthiness sinks into negative territory and more people get exposure to Sanders without the filter of a dismissive media establishment, what began as an impossible campaign and is now in the realm of only the improbable may end up surprising the political establishment in the same way Obama’s success did in 2008. *Sanders crowds show Iowa Democrats’ passion <http://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/elections/sanders-crowds-show-iowa-democrats-passion/article_383a7490-bd3f-5d69-933e-cc1ff36d1c1f.html> // Quad-City Times // James Q. Lynch – June 23, 2015 * The crowds Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is drawing at campaign stops are a sign of Iowa Democrats’ passion for the issues he is talking about, but they don’t mean former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 precinct caucus campaign is in trouble. “You can never go wrong being the most liberal candidate” in the Iowa Democratic caucus campaign, longtime Democratic strategist Joe Shanahan said Tuesday. But it’s often the establishment candidates who come out on top at the caucuses, he told news reporters from across the country at a Poynter Institute workshop on covering the caucuses at Drake University. He cited the example of Howard Dean, a Vermont governor who took the 2004 caucus campaign by storm but finished a distant third to John Kerry. Shanahan, whose campaign experience stretches back to early campaigns for former Sen. Tom Harkin, expects many Democrats to vote their consciences on issues such as income inequality, peace and health care. Republican caucus-goers also are likely to vote their consciences at the February caucuses, said Tim Albrecht of Redwave Digital in Des Moines. He cautioned reporters against handicapping the caucus race by who can win, because activists often cast a “conscience-clearing vote” for the candidate who most closely aligns with their beliefs “even if they can’t win.” Albrecht and Chuck Larson Jr., Shanahan’s partner at LS2 Group, predicted that Iowa Republicans will quickly get behind the party’s nominee because the GOP base is so hungry for victory. “We want victory. We want to change the course of the country,” Larson said. “We will see a highly motivated and united GOP.” Democrats’ response to Sanders doesn’t mean Democrats will be divided when they have a nominee, said Brad Anderson, who ran President Barack Obama’s campaigns in Iowa. He’s been “genuinely surprised” by the size of Sanders’ crowds in Iowa — 700 in Des Moines and Davenport and 500 in Iowa City — and attributes that to Sanders addressing Iowa Democrats’ top three issues: “income inequality, income inequality and income inequality.” Anderson doubts Sanders was able to capitalize on those audiences because he didn’t have enough staff to capture names, addresses and phone numbers of the people who attended the rallies. In the end, he predicted that the enthusiasm Sanders is generating will help the party. “Everyone is thankful for the excitement Bernie Sanders brings,” said Anderson, who works for Link Strategies, a Des Moines-based campaign consulting firm. “It will make Clinton a stronger candidate.” *Bernie Sanders plans 6 stops this weekend <http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150623/NEWS0605/150629642> // Union Leader // June 23, 2015 * Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has six campaign stops Saturday and Sunday in New Hampshire. The U.S. senator from Vermont is also secured a campaign office in Concord, starting July 1, the Union Leader has learned. Sanders begins the two-day swing with a 10:30 a.m. town hall-style meeting at Nashua Community College. He is scheduled to speak at a house party at the Bow home of Ron and Meredith Abramson at 2 p.m., then speak at a town hall meeting at New England College in Henniker. Sanders has three town meetings on Sunday: 10:30 a.m. at the Governor’s Inn in Rochester, 1:30 p.m. at Oyster River High School in Durham, and 4 p.m. at Lake Opechee Inn in Laconia. *CHAFEE* *Verbatim: Lincoln Chafee on His High School Years With Jeb Bush <http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/23/verbatim-lincoln-chafee-on-his-high-school-years-with-jeb-bush/> // NYT // June 23, 2015 * One of my dorm mates in 10th grade is running for president also, Jeb Bush. We had some spirited games of Ping-Pong and our paths have not crossed much since high school, but I think we still consider each other friends.” — Former Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, discussing the subject of high school friends in an interview with The Skimm. Mr. Chafee and Mr. Bush went to Phillips Academy (known as Andover), a boarding school in Massachusetts, from 1967 to 1971. *WEBB* *Jim Webb Is the Only Presidential Hopeful Who Won’t Comment on the Confederate Flag Controversy <http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/jim-webb-confederate-flag-south-carolina> // Mother Jones // Max J. Rosenthal and Tim Murphy – June 23, 2015 * By now, every 2016 presidential contender from both parties—those announced, those undeclared—has weighed in on the Confederate flag controversy that erupted after last week's mass shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, except for one: Democrat Jim Webb. A former senator from Virginia, Webb has defended the Confederate Army and the rebel flag in the past. But on Monday, when contacted by the Washington Times, he declined to comment on the ongoing controversy over whether the Confederate banner should continue to fly on the grounds of the state Capitol in South Carolina. On Tuesday, Webb's spokesman, Craig Crawford, told Mother Jones in an email that Webb "just has not been on the habit of commenting on news of the day. He's not an official candidate." Webb has previously said he plans to make an official announcement on running for president by the end of June. The silence makes Webb the only candidate in the field who has not commented on the movement to take down the Confederate battle flag, which Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley publicly backed on Monday afternoon. All the Democratic candidates have supported this proposal, with Hillary Clinton saying the Confederate flag "shouldn't fly anywhere." Almost all the Republican candidates have backed Haley's move as well, with some qualifying their statements to say that removing the flag is an issue for South Carolina's residents to decide. But Webb has been conspicuously mum. Webb, who has two relatives who served in the Confederate Army, has a long history of contrarian stances on the Confederacy, which headquartered its capital in Richmond for the majority of the war. In a 1990 speech at the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, which Webb called a "deeply inspiring memorial," he argued that Confederate soldiers' "enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans." "I am not here to apologize for why they fought," Webb also said in that speech, "although modern historians might contemplate that there truly were different perceptions in the North and South about those reasons, and that most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery." Many historians consider that view a whitewashing of the Civil War's origins. In his 2004 book Born Fighting, a popular history of Scots-Irish immigrants in the United States, Webb complained that present-day attacks on the Confederacy and the Confederate flag were part of "the Nazification of the Confederacy." The book included a lengthy attack on post-Civil War Reconstruction policies, and Webb claimed that the federal government "raped the region" during this period. The passage was repeated in his memoir, published in 2014. "The entire region has been colonized from the outside, impoverishing basic infrastructure such as schools and roads while the banking system and corporate ownership sent revenues from Southern labor to the communities of the north," he wrote in his memoir. The damage done, he contended, "in some measure validated much of the resentment expressed toward the Yankee and his minions." That assessment is based on a 1938 report to President Franklin Roosevelt on the economy of the South. Webb has also referred to this report during his current tour of Iowa, as he decides whether to run for the White House. Webb's longtime strategist, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, is an even more ardent fan and defender of the Confederacy. As the New Yorker reported in 2008, Saunders "sleeps under a Rebel-flag quilt, and when challenged on such matters he has invited his inquisitors to 'kiss my Rebel ass'—his way of making the point that when Democrats are drawn into culture battles by prissy liberal sensitivities they usually lose the larger war." Saunders is currently advising Webb on his potential presidential campaign. *OTHER* *Haley’s stock rises amid flag furor <http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/245931-haleys-stock-rises-amid-flag-furor> // The Hill // Niall Stanage – June 24, 2015* South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is attracting widespread praise for leading the bipartisan effort to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the Statehouse. Haley’s swift response has put her back in the national spotlight, stoking speculation that she could be the vice presidential nominee on the GOP’s 2016 presidential ticket. The 43-year-old governor saved her party from divisive bickering and damaging headlines that could have lingered for months. While other prominent Republicans hemmed and hawed, Haley was clear at her press conference Monday that the flag must come down. Defenders of the flag, meanwhile, largely remained silent. The long-term political impact of Haley’s new stance — which is much different than her position last year — is unclear. But the short-term effect is obvious. “It’s been her finest hour as governor,” said David Woodard, a Clemson University professor who also serves as a Republican consultant in the state. Woodard noted that he had worked for one of Haley’s rivals in the GOP primary when she was first elected in 2010 and has never been particularly enthused about her. “I think she has handled it about as well as could be imagined,” said Will Folks, the South Carolina political blogger who sparked a firestorm in that same 2010 campaign when he claimed he had an affair with the married Haley. (Haley denied his story.) Folks added that he thought she had “done a good job of being a uniter. And I say that as someone who has been critical of the governor on a wide range of issues. I don’t think she’s done a good job as governor.” Republican consultant Ford O’Connell also extolled Haley’s performance and, asked about the broader political implications, suggested that “her VP stock is probably on the rise again at the moment.” Haley, whose national persona is that of a self-controlled politician, let her emotions show in the aftermath of the killing of nine African-Americans at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., last Wednesday evening. When she appeared at a press conference announcing the arrest of the suspected perpetrator of the attack, Dylann Roof, Haley’s voice cracked and she became tearful. “We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” she said. “And so we have some grieving to do, and we’ve got some pain we have to go through.” Haley’s actions in the heat of the moment have not won universal acclaim. A Facebook post she wrote shortly after the atrocity noted that “we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another.” Some critics suggested those words were evasive given the broad understanding even at the earliest stages that the attack was racially motivated. Others have pointed out that, as recently as last year, Haley suggested during a televised debate in her reelection campaign that the Confederate flag did not need to be removed from the Capitol grounds. She said that the flag was “a very sensitive issue” and that perceptions of the Palmetto State were important. But she also said of her efforts to attract new employment to the state, “I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.” That changed abruptly on Monday with Haley’s news conference urging the flag’s removal. Standing by her side were many of the major political figures in the state, including Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, House Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn and GOP Rep. Mark Sanford, who also served as Haley’s predecessor as governor. In February, the Public Policy Polling firm found that 50 percent of those surveyed in South Carolina supported keeping the Confederate flag, while 40 percent were opposed. The shooting appears to have changed that sentiment. “I thought the people she had with her [helped create] a tremendous amount of momentum now to do this thing,” Woodard said. The political agility of Haley’s remarks drew accolades, as she emphasized how private citizens would retain the right to fly the flag if they wished and insisted that Roof had exhibited “a sick and twisted view” of the emblem. However, she added, “for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. … It’s time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds.” During her remarks, Haley mentioned her own election — she is the nation’s second Indian-American governor, after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) — as evidence that South Carolina could transcend the wounds of its past. She had made the same point in the 2014 TV debate that touched on the flag issue, suggesting her election was one of the things that had “fixed” public perceptions of the state. That point also highlights a reason for attractiveness on the national level to a Republican Party that has struggled with crucial demographic groups, including younger women and non-whites. O’Connell said that Haley could potentially help with this problem were she to be added to a presidential ticket. One asset, he suggested, is that “she could stop the bleeding of women to Hillary Clinton.” In 2012, there had been some speculation that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney could choose Haley as his running mate. That didn’t happen, and some have suggested that Haley could struggle with the rigorous vetting that is required of vice presidential nominees. During her first term, a data breach at the state’s Department of Revenue resulted in personal information from almost 4 million people being exposed. In 2013, she was fined $3,500 by the state ethics commission for failing to disclose the addresses of eight campaign donors. Still, Haley won reelection handily in 2014. Earlier this year, Haley took some heat from the right when said she could accept an increase in the gas tax if it was coupled with other tax cuts. That issue is likely to resurface if she were being vetted for the No. 2 slot in 2016. Now in her second term, Haley is scheduled to leave the governor’s mansion at the start of 2019. Many people believe she has national aspirations. “There’s no more room for her to run for office here,” Woodard said. “I think she would look for something at a national political level.” *Clay endorses Hillary Clinton for president // <http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/gateway-to-dc/clay-endorses-hillary-clinton-for-president/article_36c0f541-f99f-5137-a017-efd2c5c8cb34.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed> St. Louis Post-Dispatch // Chuck Raasch – June 23, 2015 * Rep. William Lacy Clay has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. That announcement came today from Clay, D-St. Louis, who said in a statement that Hillary and Bill Clinton "share my lifelong commitment to expanding opportunities for women, minorities and working families who are struggling to achieve economic security and a chance at a better life for their children." Clinton is in the St. Louis area Tuesday for a community meeting at a church in Florissant and a closed fund-raiser Tuesday night at Grant's Farm. Clay called Hillary Clinton a "long-time friend." Clinton leads polls ranking Democratic primary contenders in a field that includes Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., previously endorsed Clinton. *How Obama Can Heal the Democrats’ Split on Trade <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/24/how-obama-can-heal-the-democrats-split-on-trade.html> // The Daily Beast // Jonathan Alter – June 24, 2015* The White House looks to make a big push for infrastructure spending to unite the Party, fix our bridges and roads, and save Obama’s legacy. President Obama won a major bipartisan victory in the Senate Tuesday on trade promotion authority, clearing the way for approval in 2016 of the largest trade agreement in world history. But Obama has a problem: He won with the help of only 13 of the Senate’s 44 Democrats. House Democrats are even more annoyed with their president, who has leaned into trade legislation more aggressively than he has other parts of his economic agenda. Those Democrats badly miscalculated this month. As Democratic Rep. Gerald E. Connolly put it, their tactical vote to kill one of the party’s priorities—trade adjustment assistance (TAA), an important progressive program to help laid-off workers get re-trained at community colleges—was like the sheriff in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles putting a gun to his head and holding himself hostage. Having lost what they mistakenly thought was their leverage, Democrats will now reverse themselves and vote this week for TAA, a program they think doesn’t do nearly enough to protect workers from the harsh winds of global trade but is still better than nothing at all. And to make matters worse, they’ll need the Republican congressional leadership to help them keep it. This week’s bill signing will hardly end the trade debate. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal itself won’t be finalized until this fall and submitted for ratification until early next year—just in time for the first presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton will have to keep bobbing and weaving on trade all the way to the 2016 general election. In the meantime, Obama needs to figure out how to repair the rift in the Democratic Party and show the country that he can deliver something big for working people who don’t see much for themselves in trade deals. White House officials tell me they are working hard to fund a big infrastructure bill, but they are doing so amid a new oppositional liberal climate. The latest trouble began when large numbers of liberal Democrats started acting like the Tea Party Republicans who broke from the leadership of their party to oppose the trade deal. From the anti-establishment base of both parties came an understandable but ultimately irrational cry of defiance, like King Canute raising his arms to stop the global tides from rolling in. That bipartisan resistance to reason—whether genuine or political—is problematic in the 21st Century. Labor on the left and Tea Party isolationists on the right have made trade deals a scapegoat for the often-harsh consequences of globalization. But the global economy is not a threat; it’s a fact. Our challenge isn’t to stand athwart history yelling stop; it’s to nudge it and shape it for the long-term interests of the country as a whole. With the highway trust fund and tax reform both on the table, Obama should devote the rest of 2015 on the domestic side to finding the money for infrastructure. Like Obamacare and any other landmark legislation, TPP has winners and losers, but the winners aren’t just pharmaceutical companies and other big corporations. Sharp reduction or elimination of tariffs and other barriers in Asia will, on balance, help American workers. For instance, removing Vietnam’s 80 percent tariff on U.S. autos will almost certainly mean jobs for Detroit autoworkers over the next decade, and there’s a big boost in TPP for the U.S.’s job-creating heavy equipment manufacturers (John Deere tractors are popular everywhere but often too expensive to buy with all the tariffs). The U.S. has major competitive advantages in services and IT that will be enhanced by the deal. And all of our new mom-and-pop online businesses will get a chance to export more, creating jobs. The Obama Administration made a big mistake in not letting the details circulate more widely. Secrecy breeds suspicion. It didn’t help that the news media and social media are largely bored by global trade, which means that vested interests are often the only voices. And the current deal has shortcomings, especially in the enforcement provisions. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren points out, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process makes it easy for corporations to bring claims against governments, but difficult for unions and environmentalists to do so. This needs to be fixed at the bargaining table over the next couple of months. But whatever the deal’s shortcomings, it is clearly advantageous to the U.S. to set the trade rules for 38 percent of the global economy. The alternative is to let China (not a party to the TPP) cut its own preferential deals with its neighbors, which would be terrible for Asian workers, the environment and U.S. strategic interests. Even with the enforcement problems, the deal is a big win for the international environmental and labor standards that, well, environmentalists and labor leaders have been arguing for since the 1970s. Michael Froman, the U.S. Trade Representative, tells me that on everything from intellectual property to Internet freedom to bans on expropriation, “we’ve taken U.S. law as our starting point in these negotiations.” Froman, a friend of Obama from Harvard Law School days, has received a chilly reception from many congressional Democrats who are mindlessly leery of his background at Citibank. They should listen more to his logic, which suggests that it’s not in our interests to set off a competition for which nations can have the fewest environmental and labor regulations and the lowest wages: “We’re fighting to see a race to the top in the global economy, not a race to the bottom that we can’t win and shouldn’t even try to run.” Of course the debate is not really about a logical assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of TPP. It’s about the financial and emotional body blows inflicted on organized labor and middle-class Americans in recent decades—blows that Obama understands abstractly but has not countered with sustained legislative efforts. His many speeches about jobs and infrastructure—the same thing, since construction jobs can’t be out-sourced—have been necessary but hardly sufficient. So far, Obama hasn’t played good poker on his economic agenda. He should have recognized that the Republicans needed a trade deal to show the country they could get something positive done, then linked TPP to a jobs program. Fortunately there’s still time for the president to put his nose to the grindstone on jobs in the same way he has with trade. With the highway trust fund and tax reform both on the table, Obama should devote the rest of 2015 on the domestic side to finding the money for infrastructure. Unlike immigration reform or gun safety, this is achievable with Republicans. Few Republicans recall that the GOP was founded in the 1850s on what were then known as “internal improvements” as well as opposition to slavery in the territories. But many seem ready for creative policy-making on the issue. Rep. Barbara Comstock and other influential conservatives I’ve spoken with are open to a big transportation bill if a way can be found to pay for it other than an increase in the gas tax. The best solution (after a gas tax hike) lies in repatriated earnings. As Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee explains: If American companies that have fled overseas were taxed at a low rate (well below the capital gains rate) on their repatriated earnings, the receipts would fund as much as $500 billion in infrastructure investment. Matched by the private sector (quite likely, actually), about $1 trillion would be available over ten years for rebuilding the roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, rails and sewage systems of the United States—enough (with the spin-off businesses) to offer jobs to millions of the unemployed and propel a whole generation of older displaced construction workers to retirement with some dignity. With interest rates still at historic lows, we have an historic opportunity to lock in huge projects that will quickly pay for themselves. Republicans have other ideas for funding the transportation bill and establishing an infrastructure bank. Several have offered a deal involving offshore drilling rights. Or maybe it can be part of a Grand Bargain with Rep. Paul Ryan on tax reform. Whatever the solution, it should be sold not as stimulus—a dead-on-arrival argument with the Republican Congress—but as a matter of strength and competitiveness and national greatness. China spends ten times as much on infrastructure as the U.S. as a percentage of its GDP. Do we really want China to have a better infrastructure than ours? Of course “infrastructure” sounds like a snooze. Many Americans don’t even know what it means. So the domestic agenda of the end of the Obama era is better framed as simply: Rebuild America. Thinking big this way is terribly out of fashion in cynical, polarized Washington. But both parties have an interest in using the bipartisanship of the trade agreement as a model for the huge infrastructure investments that can help rebuild this country. Republican members need to show the public that their congressional majority can keep working positively, as well as bring home long-overdue local projects to their constituents. Democratic members, frustrated by their loss on trade, need a big win for working people and for themselves. So does the president. In fact, his legacy depends on it. *Democrats work to blunt GOP attacks on global affairs in 2016 <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/democrats-work-to-blunt-gop-attacks-on-global-affairs-in-2016-119305.html> // Politico // Nahal Toosi – June 23, 2015 * Democrats may nominate a former secretary of state as their presidential nominee, but they’re still worried Republicans could win the 2016 foreign policy debate. On Tuesday, a progressive network of foreign affairs experts plans to release a document aimed in part at influencing the White House race, one of several formal and informal attempts in the works aimed at shaping an already lively back-and-forth on America’s role in the world. The Truman National Security Project’s platform touches on subjects ranging from countering violent extremism to upgrading the U.S. energy grid. At times deeply wonky and somewhat idealistic, the paper calls for ambitious American leadership at a time of “blurring borders” and “contested spaces,” according to an advance copy. The Truman platform comes amid growing recognition that foreign policy and national security, which rarely decide presidential elections, may play an outsized role this time for at least two key reasons: the U.S. economy is less of a concern and the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group in an increasingly tumultuous Middle East. With the election still a year and a half away, Democrats insist they have plenty of confidence and time to prepare. The Democratic front-runner for president is, after all, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who can boast more foreign policy and national security experience than any of the many candidates on the GOP side. Still, there is a lingering worry that Republican allegations that President Barack Obama has diminished America’s stature will overshadow Democratic efforts to promote solutions to a host of global challenges. “It’s incumbent on progressives and on Democrats to put forward a compelling, clear, forward-looking affirmative vision,” said Michael Breen, executive director of the Truman Project. Republicans have traditionally been viewed by voters as stronger on national security, but the turmoil following the U.S. invasion of Iraq briefly helped give Democrats the advantage. In more recent years, however, the Republicans have rebounded: A Gallup poll last September that asked which party would better protect the U.S. against terrorism gave the GOP a 23-point edge. Those numbers weigh on Democrats, some of whom have been engaged in formal and unofficial efforts to change the trajectory. Over the past year, some 40 Democratic foreign policy wonks have been meeting informally every six weeks or so to discuss the challenges facing the party and a future administration. The so-called “Unison group,” named after the Virginia town in which an early meeting was held, doesn’t plan to issue papers or take official positions, and it is not affiliated with a campaign. Participants work both in and out of government but attend meetings in their personal capacity. Still, the sessions give attendees ideas to chew over that they can potentially use to advise campaigns. The group was born out of the recognition that Democrats need to come up with innovative, out-of-the-box ideas even when they are in control of the executive branch — and that they shouldn’t just leave that work to the Obama administration. Vikram Singh, one of the group’s coordinators, said that although Democrats realize they face a challenge on foreign policy and national security in 2016, they don’t feel that Republicans have put forth much in the way of alternatives. He and others said that Republican calls for tougher policies and better leadership, for example, haven’t been accompanied by concrete pledges, say, to send U.S. combat troops to Syria to fight the Islamic State. “When you dig in to what Republicans are saying, they have a really hard time,” said Singh, who also is a vice president at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Foreign policy and national security wonks on the right have long assumed those issues will be a major part of the 2016 election, and they have launched their own initiatives aimed at influencing the race. Perhaps the best known is the John Hay Initiative, which brings together more than 250 experts and former senior officials, has some 23 working groups and has helped staff some of the Republican campaigns. The group was launched by some of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s former advisers in the days after his loss in 2012. “We have tried to be a resource on foreign policy and national security to a number of candidates,” said co-founder Brian Hook, a former assistant secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration. “We work with them in varying ways.” Republicans already are going after Clinton’s foreign policy credentials and trying to tie her to the Obama administration’s perceived weaknesses, even though Clinton has long been considered more of a hawk than the president in whose Cabinet she served. GOP candidates question whether Clinton’s tenure at the State Department was fruitful, pointing out that her attempts to “reset” the relationship with Russia yielded little, and criticizing her response to the attacks on American officials in Benghazi, Libya. Aside from think tank types (some of whom may be angling for a job in a future Democratic administration and thus are careful in their comments), some Democrats currently in public office also are speaking out about the need for a new foreign policy vision. In an essay earlier this month for Foreign Affairs titled “Principles for a Progressive Foreign Policy,” Sens. Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz and Martin Heinrich sketched out a more active role for Congress, saying it can “no longer stand idly by, simply reacting to world events.” The Democratic senators’ eight principles touched on many of the same topics as the Truman Project’s strategic platform, including the potential security threats posed by climate change and the importance of defending human rights and gender equality abroad. Heather Hurlburt, who studies policy and political discourse at the New America think tank, said Democrats or Republicans trying to influence 2016 should try to do so soon, before the various campaigns lock down all their foreign policy advisers, carve out their positions — and expect the wonks to fall in line. “This is the moment that, when people have smart ideas and thoughts, there’s an incentive to get them out there in public,” Hurlburt said. “Now is the time for ideas.” *GOP* *DECLARED* *BUSH* *Jeb Bush: I would fire OPM director over hack attack <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/23/jeb-bush-i-would-fire-opm-director-over-hack-attack/?postshare=9911435071071508> // WaPo // Ed O’Keefe – June 23, 2015 * Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called for the ouster of the federal government's personnel chief for failing to heed a watchdog's warnings of potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The recently disclosed breach of the Office of Personnel Management’s security-clearance computer system took place a year ago and is now believed to have affected the personal data of more than 18 million current, former and potential federal workers. Those disclosures have come as Bush has launched a new focus in recent days on cybersecurity and the ongoing dangers faced by the public and private sector. On Tuesday morning, Bush, appearing on the radio program, "Bill Bennett's Morning in America," strongly criticized the Obama administration's lax management of the situation. "It's outrageous," he said, recounting recent reports that Chinese hackers had access to the personal data for more than a year, and that federal officials now believe the number of people affected is much greater than initially acknowledged. Bush also called on Obama to fire Katherine Archuleta, the head of OPM, who has led the agency since Nov. 2013. Previously, she served as national political director of Obama's 2012 reelection campaign. "You have a political hack -- you have the national political director of the Obama reelection campaign as the head of this," Bush told Bennett. "And just as has been the case across the board when we have this sheer incompetence or scandalous behavior, there's no accountability. No one seems to be fired. If I was president of the United States, that person would be fired. "They did not follow up on inspector general's recommendations to tighten up security to create a stronger firewall," he added. "The net result is that the Chinese, apparently the Chinese have had access to this information for over a year and it's a dangerous threat to our national security." The White House said last week that President Obama remains confident that Archuleta "is the right person for the job." In an op-ed about cybersecurity for the Web site Medium, Bush endorsed House Republican legislation that calls for improved information-sharing between the federal government and the private sector. "Cybersecurity should be considered a critical element of our national defense, economic well-being, and national resilience," he wrote. "We need a President with the experience and trust necessary to mobilize public and private resources to ensure that our critical infrastructure, networks, and communications remain secure. These efforts will help guarantee America remains on top throughout the ongoing technological and communications revolutions that will transform fundamental aspects of our world, economy, and society." *Jeb Bush goes after Hillary Clinton, de Blasio on education <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/jeb-bush-hillary-education/index.html> // CNN // Ashley Killough – June 23, 2015 * A little more than a week into becoming an official presidential candidate, Jeb Bush is sharpening his policy attacks against the left, attempting to underscore his own experience by drawing contrasts with the country's top Democrats. On Tuesday, Bush went after President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio by playing offense on two issues he wants to own: education and national security. Education In an op-ed for the New York Post published Tuesday, Bush lambasted de Blasio over his high-profile fights with charter schools, accusing the mayor of "doing everything in his power" to deprive "low-income kids of the education they need to succeed." He was referring in part to de Blasio's showdown last year with charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run. The public dispute started after the mayor, citing spacing and financial concerns that he said could affect public school students, denied requests from some charter schools to use rent-free, unused public space. But after sharp backlash, he ultimately decided to provide the free space, due in part from pressure by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who sided with the charter schools. In the op-ed, Bush also hit Clinton, saying the Clintons "have an outsize influence in New York politics" and "have largely" defended the mayor. Bush did not state specifically how the Clintons have stood by de Blasio, though Bill Clinton reportedly advised de Blasio at the time on the charter school issue. Although the mayor has longtime ties to Hillary Clinton -- he helped run her 2000 Senate campaign in New York -- he has yet to endorse her presidential run and did not attend her major campaign speech in New York earlier this month, sparking speculation of tension between the two. Representatives for Clinton and de Blasio did not immediately return requests for comment on the op-ed. While a number of Republican presidential candidates are staunch advocates for school choice, Bush is attempting to become the leading voice on the issue and make it a defining hallmark of his campaign. He's making the school voucher program he implemented as governor a key part of his presidential platform and has been a longtime supporter of Success Academy -- the network of charter schools that fought with de Blasio -- and stood by the organization during the battle last year. The former governor frequently mentions in his stump speech the story of Denisha, an African-American woman who went to a private school as part of the Florida voucher system and became the first person in her family to graduate high school, then later college. She was featured in his presidential announcement video, and the campaign released an expanded version of her testimony on Tuesday. But he has also faced public fights of his own over school-choice issues. A major provision of his voucher program, known as Opportunity Scholarship Program, was struck down in 2006 by the Florida Supreme Court, which said the program was using state dollars to fund private schools, some of which were religious. (The program still provides vouchers to students in failing schools who want to attend higher performing public schools, but not private ones.) Bush, however, also ushered in another program as governor that gives businesses tax credits for donating to nonprofit scholarship organizations that help send students to private schools. Still in place, that program is currently facing legal challenges from opponents. As he's pursued a presidential bid, Bush has also faced pushback from the right over his support for Common Core standards. In an interview with conservative radio host Bill Bennett Tuesday morning, Bush acknowledged that the standards have become so controversial that perhaps it's necessary to omit the term "Common Core" from the education conversation altogether, something he's readily done on the trail in recent months. "Obviously that term -- Common Core -- is poisonous because it means different things to different people, which I respect," he said. "But ... I've not met someone that says, 'hey give me lower standards' or 'let's don't have any accountability.' That's the common ground amongst Republicans and frankly amongst a lot of frustrated liberals as well." National security While Bush has gradually begun to take subtle digs at his Republican opponents in the presidential race, his comments on Tuesday showed that he's fully on board with taking aim at Democrats, an approach that signals his strategy of focusing more on the general election than the Republican primary. In the same interview, Bush harpooned the Obama administration on matters of national security, saying the head of the Office of Personnel Management -- the government agency that recently experienced a massive cyberbreach allegedly at the hands of the Chinese government -- should have been fired. "If I was President of the United States, that person would be fired," he said. "They did not follow up on the inspector general's recommendations to tighten up security to create a stronger firewall." And on ISIS, Bush tore into Obama's foreign policy, using strong rhetoric to blame the President and Clinton, the former secretary of state, for the unrest that has developed in Iraq after the U.S. withdrew its remaining combat troops four years ago. "There's no question that the President and Hillary Clinton have created a maddening situation where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives tragically," he said. "But we've created such instability by the lack of involvement after we promised to do so, that we have to stick with it. I don't think it's going to take a generation, but we can't expect this to happen in a week, either." *14 Years Ago, Jeb Bush Removed Confederate Flag In Florida <http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015/06/23/14-years-ago-jeb-bush-removed-confederate-flag-in-florida/> // CBS // June 23, 2015 * More than a decade ago, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush faced a similar decision as South Carolina officials—whether to remove the Confederate flag from state grounds. Bush as Florida’s governor, 14 years ago and with far less fanfare, removed the Confederate flag from the state capitol in Tallahassee. “Regardless of our views about the symbolism of the … flags — and people of goodwill can disagree on the subject — the governor believes that most Floridians would agree that the symbols of Florida’s past should not be displayed in a manner that may divide Floridians today,” a Bush spokeswoman said at the time. On Feb. 2, 2001, Bush quietly retired the flag and placed it in the Museum of Florida History. Though his action drew scant public attention at that moment, Floridians soon responded with a mix of praise and vile for the then-governor’s decision, according to a review of his email correspondence. “It is deeply disturbing to see all of this ethnic cleansing that has suddenly emerged in almost all the Southern states today,” one Republican supporter wrote Bush a month later. “I am very proud of my Confederate ancestors and I feel I have rights too, but I feel my rights are being trampled on and the various government officials are standing by and letting these loud-mouth people ignorant of history, remove all the symbols of the Confederacy and my ancestors.” Another supporter told Bush his decision saddened her. “We should be able to remember ‘all’ of the history from the South which includes this,” she wrote that February. “History is history! It is not discrimination but history and ‘everyone’ should realize that. I think by removing the flag you are bowing to minority pressure vs. taking a stand and leaving up another portion of the Southern heritage. “The Civil War was not fought only for slavery, but for independence. I wish people of all races would realize what the Confederate flag really represents and if they did, they would not resent the flag.” In 2004, three years after the flag was retired, tensions still stirred for some. “I would like to know why we can have a whole month to hear about black history. But every time a southerner raises his heritage the proud CONFEDERATE Flag we are considered a hate group or racist,” another correspondent wrote. “The Confederate flag is Southern Heritage not HATE.” A year later, in December 2005, a writer ended his email plea to Bush in all capital letters. “PLEASE GIVE US BACK OUR HERITAGE, REPLACE THE CONFEDERATE FLAG TO ITS PROPER PLACE, ABOVE THE CAPITAL BUILDING,” he wrote. “YOU WILL SOON BE GONE FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA, BUT THE SCARS YOU LEAVE WILL ALWAYS BE HERE.” In 2001, one writer said Bush “risks the next election by taking the action he took on removing the flag.” Yet Bush won the next election in Florida — and not everyone was as outraged by his decision to move the flag to a history museum. One fellow Republican, from Orange County in the Orlando area, told Bush he disagreed with those in the party who had criticized his move. “I believe that the action to remove the confederate flag was an appropriate and appreciated act of respect to many Floridians — especially African-Americans — for whom it holds a very different, and far less positive meaning,” he wrote in March 2001, a month after the flag came down. “I applaud you for respecting those wishes and sensibilities from communities whose wishes and sensibilities have not always been respected.” Just after the flag came down in 2001, a woman wrote Bush, “You have no right to impose your northern prejudices and misconceptions on the people of Florida and to snub your nose at its history.” The governor replied that the flags would be “respectfully displayed” at the history museum. And he added a P.S.: “I am a Floridian born and raised in Texas.” *#Millennials: Want to #Hang With #JebBush <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/23/millennials-want-to-hang-with-jebbush.html> // Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 23, 2015 * Being a young Jeb Bush donor has some pretty sweet perks. According to documents obtained by The Daily Beast, the campaign is looking to motivate millennial would-be backers with the possibility of joining a reception with “special guests” in Kennebunkport, the picturesque seaside town where generations of Bushes have summered. “Please accept Jeb Bush, Jr.’s challenge to become a member of the Young Professionals 15 in FIFTEEN team in support of Jeb 2016!” read a document circulated among wealthy Republican millennials. Jeb Bush, Jr. is Bush’s youngest son. The first 20 young professionals who raise $15,000 for Jeb Bush before the June 30 deadline will be invited to Kennebunkport for an “Evening Picnic” on July 9. That event will feature said special guest attendees. The Bush campaign didn’t respond to a request for further details on the picnic plans and mysterious guests. All the Emerging Leaders also get “Limited edition YP 15 in FIFTEEN gifts” and the privilege of being on a conference call with Jeb Jr. And, per the document, they’ll be listed on the host committee for a “Young Professionals” launch party in the Hamptons. “YP 15 in FIFTEEN includes direct solicited contributions only,” says the document. Participants get a tracking number so the campaign can follow who’s raised how much money. Elder Kennebunkport aspirants needn’t fear. Members of the over-32 set can be part of the 27-in-FIFTEEN team if they raise $27,000 by the deadline. Documents indicate that there’s no twenty-person cut-off for them; if you crack $27,000, that golden picnic ticket is yours. The first 20 young professionals who raise $15,000 for Jeb Bush before the June 30 deadline will be invited to Kennebunkport for an “Evening Picnic” on July 9. Plus, there are even cooler bonuses for the $27,000-raisers: They get to stick around past the picnic for a “Morning Political and Campaign Briefing with Jeb 2016 Senior Staff.” And they get to be on a conference call with Jeb Sr. Yee-haw. But the youths stuck with just a Jeb Jr. conference call aren’t necessarily getting sold short. The Washington Post reported that the younger Jeb -- nickname: Jebby -- is “a frequent travel companion and active campaign surrogate for his father, with a focus on building support among Hispanic and millennial voters.” The paper also noted that Jeb Jr. has helmed fundraisers for his old man in Miami nightclubs, New York apartments, and Washington D.C. restaurants (presumably at the few that don’t suck). It’s unclear if the Kennebunkport event will be inside the Bush family grounds. If they do, construction is currently underway for a house on that compound that will be designated as Jeb’s. The Boston Globe reported that the home is going up on an acre worth $1.3 million “[A]s he tries to appeal to middle-class Americans in his likely Republican presidential campaign — and distinguish himself as his own man, distinct from the legacies of his father and brother — having a vacation home erected on a spit of land in coastal Maine could be a vivid reminder of the complications facing his campaign,” wrote the paper. The Globe’s warnings may not be packing much punch. Inviting generous millennials out to the family’s ancestral town could indicate that Bush isn’t as concerned about his family’s #brand as the paper suggests he needs to be. *Why Jeb Bush Wants the United States to Be More Like Estonia* <http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/jeb-bush-cybersecurity-estonia>* // Mother Jones // Max J. Rosenthal – June 23, 2015* On Monday, Jeb Bush posted a column on Medium touting the need for ramped-up cybersecurity efforts. "Given the reliance of the United States government and the private sector on the internet, it is disturbing we remain vulnerable to its disruption and misuse," he wrote. The piece was mostly devoid of specific ways to fix those vulnerabilities, but what Bush did propose raises some privacy concerns. The former Florida governor cited Estonia, a tiny Baltic nation that's a world leader in cybersecurity efforts, as a model to emulate. What he didn't say was that Estonia's model is predicated on pervasive government involvement in policing the country's internet infrastructure, with the central government establishing a secure online national ID system for citizens. This is a digital version of what US conservatives have long opposed: a national identity card. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the Estonian president who's perhaps best known for yelling at Paul Krugman on Twitter in 2012, wrote in a New York Times op-ed the following year that people should in fact be more concerned with cybercrime and hacking than government intrusion on privacy. "At a time when the greatest threats to our privacy and the security of our data come from criminal hackers and foreign countries (often working together), we remain fixed on the idea that Big Brother, our own government, is the danger," he noted. In his Medium post, Bush offered one concrete suggestion: backing the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a bill that would give private companies greater legal cover to share information on potential cybersecurity threats with the government. Bush called the failure to pass the bill a "critical impediment to cybersecurity," but privacy advocates and technical experts who spoke to Mother Jones last week disagreed, noting the measure would result in private-sector companies passing information on consumers and citizens to government agencies. "This isn't a cybersecurity bill—it's a surveillance bill," said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "There is absolutely no reason to think that that is going to provide any significant cybersecurity benefits." *Jeb Bush: Obama Should Fire His ‘Political Hack’ OPM Director <http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/jeb-bush-obama-should-fire-his-political-hack-opm-director-20150623> // National Journal // Dustin Volz – June 23, 2015 * Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wants President Obama to fire the head of the Office of Personnel Management amid a cascade of revelations about the size and scope of an enormous hack of federal employee data from the agency. The Republican presidential candidate Tuesday sharply condemned the president's handling of the theft of personal data of millions of former and current government workers, and said OPM Director Katherine Archuleta needs to be removed. "You have a political hack—you have the national political director of the Obama reelection campaign as the head of this," Bush said on Bill Bennett's Morning in America radio program. "And just as has been the case across the board when we have this sheer incompetence or scandalous behavior, there's no accountability. No one ever seems—no one seems to be fired. If I was president of the United States, that person would be fired." Bush's call for Archuleta's ouster is similar to statements made by a handful of lawmakers—both Republicans and Democrats—last week following her testimony before the House Oversight Committee. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the panel's chairman, said that Archuleta, in addition to Donna Seymour, OPM's chief information officer, should be fired for ignoring cybersecurity recommendations made in inspector general reports issued over the past several years. Reps. Ted Lieu and Jim Langevin, both Democrats, also have said Archuleta, who has been at the helm of OPM since late 2013, needs to go. Despite the pressure, the White House press secretary Josh Earnest has said the administration stands firmly behind Archuleta. Bush, in his radio interview, echoed many of the grievances bubbling up on Capitol Hill. "They did not follow up on inspector general's recommendations to tighten up security to create a stronger firewall," Bush said. "The net result is that the Chinese—apparently the Chinese—have had access to this information for over a year and it's a dangerous threat to our national security." Archuleta began a week-long gauntlet of testimony Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee's Financial Services and General Government subcommittee. In response to a series of questions about who should be held accountable for for the two massive breaches disclosed over the past month, Archuleta said: "I don't believe anyone is personally responsible." "If there's anyone to blame, it's the perpetrators," Archuleta said, later adding, "I'm angry as you are that this has happened to OPM." Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican and chair of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee, told reporters after Tuesday's hearing that he was not ready to call for resignations at OPM, though he said that may change as he learns more about the situation. "I don't know exactly the extent of the second breach that's been classified, so we'll do that this afternoon and we'll have her on," Boozman said, referring to a closed-door briefing the Senate was scheduled to receive from administration officials on Tuesday. "I don't think it's fair for me to do that without having all the information." Senior administration officials investigating the breach of employee records and security-clearance information believe China to be the culprit, but the White House has not publicly condemned Beijing. *School choice is the best hope for New York’s kids – and America’s <http://nypost.com/2015/06/23/school-choice-is-the-best-hope-for-new-yorks-kids-and-americas/?utm_content=buffer269d9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer> // NY Post // Jeb Bush – June 23, 2015 * Last year, I met a 14-year-old student who is thriving through his attendance at a Success Academy school, a high-performing charter-school network serving New York City’s poorest communities. He’s an excellent student and debating champion. He also lives in poverty, facing hardships most of us can’t imagine. And yet the school he attends has him believing it’s possible to achieve the American Dream. As a decades-long advocate for school choice, I have met countless parents and their children who have been given a second chance because of charter and private schools. We know school choice works just by looking at New York City’s network of charter schools. According to a study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, “the typical student who remained in a NYC charter school for four years was about two years ahead of his or her traditional public school counterpart on math and four months ahead on reading.” Our experience in Florida provides important lessons for the nation as well. Prior to the adoption of our A+ reforms, graduation rates in Florida had declined for several consecutive years to one of the lowest in the country. During my governorship, we adopted three separate voucher programs and nearly tripled the number of charter schools to spark competition in our public K-12 system. The teachers unions in Tallahassee fought us every step of the way. But we pushed back for students and their parents, and the results speak for themselves. We delivered some of the most dramatic gains in student achievement in the nation, especially among kids in poverty and students with learning disabilities. I am proud that more than 300,000 students in Florida are now benefitting from a school-choice program. I am more heartened that our high-school graduation rates have increased by nearly 50 percent since we made choice a staple of our education system. Sadly, teachers unions and much of the education establishment in America continues to fight against parental control of education. Mayor de Blasio, a protégé of Hillary Rodham Clinton, has taken up their cause, fighting to undercut school choice at every turn. While calling New York a tale of two cities, the mayor appears to be doing everything in his power to keep it that way — depriving low-income kids of the education they need to succeed. The families of New York City charter-school students have not taken this treatment lying down. They’ve rallied by the thousands under the slogan “don’t steal possible,” and at their urging, Gov. Cuomo and the state Legislature passed a law guaranteeing charters rent-free access to unused public-school facilities. Yet these schools continue to face a constant barrage of political attacks and policies that constrain their growth. The Clintons, who have an outsize influence in New York politics, have largely stood by as Mayor de Blasio has attempted to undermine the benefits that the Success Academies and other school-choice programs have provided to low-income children. Will former Secretary Clinton continue to put the interests of the entrenched education establishment above the interests of kids in America? There should be no doubt about my priorities. As president of the United States, I will reduce the power and authority of the federal Department of Education, sending more money and flexibility back to the states so greater school-choice opportunities can be made available to parents and their children. It makes no sense to force students to attend schools where they aren’t learning. And it doesn’t make sense to spend taxpayer dollars on programs that aren’t getting the results families deserve. Few things are more important to the future of our nation than giving our children the opportunity to receive a high-quality education that equips them to compete in the modern economy. *Jeb Bush blasts the White House on cybersecurity* <https://fortune.com/2015/06/23/jeb-bush-cybsersecurity/>* // Fortune // Robert Hackett – June 23, 2015* Politicians are hitching their wagons to the star of cybersecurity. Earlier this year, President Obama called for a cybersecurity summit at Stanford University, using the occasion to push for new legislation and announce new executive orders. Presidential hopeful Rand Paul raised his profile recently by filibustering a key portion of the Patriot Act on the Senate floor. And Jeb Bush has gotten in on the act, calling out what he deems the nation’s digital defense failings in a post on the social blogging platform Medium. Bush’s thousand word proclamation—titled “The President Must Prioritize Cybersecurity”–is mostly rhetoric. In it he praises the economic potential of the Internet and admonishes attackers that have burglarized businesses and the public sector. He lauds Estonian ingenuity and decries the leadership of the Obama administration. He blasts defense budget cuts and defends the oft-vilified snoop work of the U.S. National Security Agency. In word, he plants his flag. And that flag bears the distinct marks of hawkish heraldry. “We have allowed these adversaries to threaten our citizens’ inherent right to a trusted, free and open internet,” he writes, censuring the attackers that have lately targeted retailers, health care companies, federal agencies, and others. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Bush’s statement sets his political platform into motion on the digital front. Using the example of the bleeding edge electronic reforms of the post-Soviet state Estonia, he says, “if you rely on the internet, you need to invest in protecting it.” And he asserts of the Internet and its central role in U.S. commerce: “Something so important must be a priority for the U.S. government, and yet it is not.” He’s not wrong. Government has the poorest record of any industry sector when it comes to fixing software vulnerabilities, according to a recent report by the application security company Veracode. It also scores the lowest in adopting commonly accepted web application security measures. In an interview with Fortune, Veracode CTO and chief information security officer Chris Wysopal said: “The government sector—it shouldn’t be a surprise—is actually the worst over all industry vertical we looked at. Worse than retail.” Still, there’s no denying that cybersecurity has become a top priority for the Obama administration, which has presided over a nation wracked with revelations of NSA leaker Edward Snowden; beset by endless cyberattacks; and left limping after embarrassing breaches of federal data. President Obama unprecedentedly named, shamed, and sanctioned North Korea for its role in hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment at the end of last year. He also passed executive orders boosting federal power to impose economic sanctions against hackers overseas. But Bush points to the recent data breaches at the Office of Personnel Management as “emblematic of the cultural failure of the Obama Administration to take these threats seriously.” Then he uses the opportunity to pile on with a barrage of rhetorical questions: What use is it that President Obama issued an Executive Order or gave a thoughtful speech about cybersecurity if his own Office of Personnel Management — the human resources department of the entire US Government — failed to take basic steps to protect the sensitive personal information of millions of its employees? Where is the accountability? What consequences will there be for political appointees or bureaucrats who failed to heed warnings and adequately protect these key databases? What will happen to Katherine Archuleta who served as the National Political Director For President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign before assuming her role as OPM Director? What message will it send to other managers throughout the government — and private sector — if there isn’t accountability? Bush falls just short of calling for Archuleta’s head. He stands opposed, he says, to the current leadership’s policies. Never mind that Bush supports increased cybersecurity information sharing between the corporate world and government—a position he shares with president Obama, even if the latter disagrees with the Republican-backed bill that’s now wending its away through Capitol Hill. In general, Bush asks a lot of questions but doesn’t answer many. That’s probably because the answers are tough, technical, and to be determined. As far as a plan goes, the only concretely stated one is to increase investment and spending in cybersecurity. But one should keep in mind that it’s not necessarily more money—more defense, military, and intelligence agency spending—that will beget better cybersecurity. After all, the U.S. spends more on defense than any other country by a long shot. It’s just as important to infuse the culture with better processes and practices. Bush also takes a moment to side with the controversial work of the NSA. “The NSA is critical to our defense against foreign cyber-threats, and yet the political class in Washington has been more interested in treating the NSA as an enemy of the state rather than its defender,” he says. “We need to preserve and enhance the capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community and law enforcement to identify, deter, and respond to cyber-attacks.” Overall, Bush’s post sets out to differentiate his position from competitors like Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who, aside from being a former member of the Obama administration, has been skewered for her unsecure email practices. And his stance puts him in direct opposition to contenders such as the libertarian Kentucky senator Paul, who have come down hard on NSA spying and on military spending. Jeb Bush’s record, of course, isn’t blemish-free. Earlier this year he accidentally exposed nearly 13,000 social security numbers when making the contents of his email archive public. (In his defense, the Florida Department of State had reportedly approved the cache for publishing.) But the point is: Poor security is endemic to the Internet. And while it may be convenient to lambast the opposition for an ever escalating spate of hacking catastrophes, cybersecurity should be a nonpartisan issue. No doubt there will be a high hurdle for any politician to convince the public that there’s a simple solution to the nation’s security woes. *Jeb Bush: Obama caused ‘massive’ tax increase on middle class <http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/23/jeb-bush/jeb-bush-obama-caused-massive-tax-increase-middle-/> // PolitiFact // Lauren Carroll – June 23, 2015 * After six years with a Democrat in the White House, middle-class Americans face a bigger tax bill than they did before, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in a speech launching his 2016 presidential campaign. "The party now in the White House is planning a no-suspense primary, for a no-change election," he said in his June 15 remarks in Miami. "They are responsible for the slowest economic recovery ever, the biggest debt increases ever, a massive tax increase on the middle class, the relentless buildup of the regulatory state, and the swift, mindless drawdown of a military that was generations in the making." The claim that President Barack Obama and the Democrats have significantly raised taxes is bound to come up frequently in the 2016 election, so we decided to take a whack at it now. When we asked Bush’s campaign specifically what tax increases he was talking about, they pointed to the Affordable Care Act. It's a claim we heard before, and one that is flawed. Bush is correct that the Affordable Care Act raises taxes. But pinpointing the middle class as the recipient of "a massive tax increase" is misleading. It's the upper-class that is feeling the brunt of the impact. And health care subsidies, in some cases, may be offsetting tax increases. A note: The term "middle class" is hard to define, but for the purposes of this article, we are roughly looking at a generous threshold that comprises households making up to $250,000 a year. Health care taxes Let's get the big number out of the way. The health care law is expected bring in more than $1 trillion in new taxes over 10 years, according to a 2013 Joint Committee on Taxation report. The revenue is coming in through 21 new or increased taxes. Of those 21, 12 could affect households making less than $250,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation. We’ve looked at this list of 12 before. Some primarily target the middle class, others could hit certain people within the middle class, and others are debatable. Bush’s campaign specifically sent us a list of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform’s "top-five" Obamacare middle class tax increases. The five Bush cited are all included in our larger list of 12. A couple of the taxes are obvious, direct taxes on individuals -- such as a tax on indoor tanning services and the penalty for not complying with the individual mandate to have insurance. These only apply to select individuals. Many more are applied to companies, such as the excise tax on certain medical device manufacturers or the so-called "Cadillac tax" on high-cost health insurance plans. Many economists anticipate that companies will pass these taxes along to consumers in the form of higher premiums or more expensive products. In any case, none of these taxes affects every single member of the middle class. It’s possible there are individuals who will incur most of these additional costs, while others face a couple. Whether or not these taxes are -- as Bush put it -- "massive" increases on the middle class depends on individual circumstances, said Kyle Pomerleau, a Tax Foundation economist. "I would say that the tax increase in total was large and that some of it definitely hits the middle class in some way," he said. "The degree to which individuals are impacted depends on their situation." For some perspective, total federal revenues are estimated to be about $40 trillion over 10 years. Tax revenue from the health care law, about $1 trillion, accounts for about 2.5 percent. Looking at the revenue just from the 12 that might affect middle-class taxpayers (as well as those in other income brackets), it’s about 1.25 percent of overall tax revenue. "Almost certainly, yes, taxes have gone up for lower- and middle-income people," said Roberton Williams, a fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "But have they gone up a lot? Probably not." "If I were pulling words out of the air, ‘massive’ is not the word I would pull," Williams said. Many of these taxes tend to affect more people at the upper-end of middle class, because people with lower incomes are less likely to opt for the taxed services -- such as optional medical procedures or flexible savings accounts, Williams said Conversesly, some middle-income households might even see tax benefits of the Affordable Care Act -- namely, insurance premium subsidies -- outweigh any tax increases, he added. Premium tax credits will save taxpayers about $19 billion in 2015, while the five taxes cited by Bush and the Americans for Tax Reform list are worth much less, said Laurel Lucia, health care program manager at University of California Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. In total, those five taxes are worth about $11 billion per year, she said, citing congressional research. "I certainly agree Obamacare has increased taxes on the middle class," said University of California Los Angeles law professor Eric Zold. "But it is not clear that the middle class as a group are not better off by the combination of Obamacare costs and benefits." Other tax policies It's worth noting, of course, that the health care law isn’t the only policy that has impacted taxes in the last few years. Some changes have had a positive impact on the wallets of the middle class. Some changes have had a negative impact. Soon after taking office, Obama signed a bill raising the sales tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products to support the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Less than 20 percent of the population smokes, though polling shows that the percentage of the population that smokes decreases as income increases. In terms of tax cuts, Obama extended the Bush-era tax cuts for people making below $250,000, as well as an array of beneficial measures for small businesses. Additionally, he signed off on several stimulus tax measures to assist with the 2008 economic recovery -- such as a temporarily reduced payroll tax and an increased earned income tax credit. Some are still around, but others have phased out. It's fair to say that under Obama, for the most part, taxes have decreased for lower-income people and increased for upper-income people, Williams said. And it's a mixed bag for the middle class. Our ruling Bush said, "The party in the White House" is responsible for "a massive tax increase on the middle class." Bush pointed to the Affordable Care Act, which certainly does involve tax increases -- some of which affect the middle class, though not exclusively. It’s not accurate to call the tax increases for the middle class "massive." Some individuals might see their tax bill go up, while others see the tax benefits of the health care law outweigh the costs, and some might experience a change so small they don’t notice it. Looking only at the health care law also ignores other pieces of tax policy that have affected the bottom line for the middle class. We rate this claim Mostly False. *RUBIO* *Rubio hasn’t learned running for president is different <http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/7/71/714484/opinon-rubio-hasnt-learned-running-president-different> // Chicago Sun-Times // Mark Shields – June 23, 2015 * Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. – who, according to polls of Republican voters nationally, wins higher favorable and lower unfavorable ratings than any of the potential 2016 presidential candidates — has shown some real nerve and more than a little brass. After The New York Times reported on Rubio’s unorthodox personal finances— including his use, as speaker of the Florida House, of the state GOP’s credit card for personal expenses, cashing in his retirement account, and buying, with effectively no money down, three houses (one of which he was forced to sell after five months of missed mortgage payments) — Rubio did not retreat. Instead, he used a fund-raising mailing to attack the Times for implying that he is not “rich enough to be president,” seeking to turn the story against the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “It’s true, I didn’t make over $11 million last year giving speeches to special interests. And we don’t have a family foundation that has raised $2 billion from Wall Street and foreign interests.” Nice try, senator, but no sale. Running for the White House is totally different from running for governor or senator. In the words of former presidential pollster Peter D. Hart, “when you run for president, you are flying at a much higher altitude than you have ever before experienced.” The scrutiny, the pressure and the demands increase exponentially. The American voter is far likelier to cast her ballot based on issues — education, health care, taxes — in a vote for the House or the Senate, where we have less feeling of actually knowing the nominees. But our vote for the White House is almost always the most “personal” we cast. We are bombarded with information and impressions of the individual candidates. We hear from their high-school classmates, their car pool colleagues, people they worked for (or who worked for them), their siblings, their in-laws and their old neighbors. We have also learned, painfully, that failed American presidents have been failures not of intellect or education or experience but rather of character, values and personality. In fact, Richard M. Nixon, our only chief executive to resign in disgrace, had a first-rate mind. He had graduated from Duke University School of Law, served as a Navy officer, been both a U.S. representative and a U.S. senator from California, and served two terms as vice president before being elected and re-elected president. In our most recent presidential election, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, had been attacked in the primaries by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for his work as a venture capitalist leader of a bunch of “rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company” and by then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry for being a “vulture capitalist” whose Bain Capital laid off workers in acquired companies solely to improve the bottom line. This, reinforced by similar attacks from President Barack Obama’s campaign, helps explain why Romney lost to Obama by an 81-18 percent margin when it came to the quality of “cares about people like me,” which 21 percent of voters told exit pollsters on Election Day is the most important one for presidential candidates. Romney won majorities among voters who identified “vision for the future” (29 percent), “shares my values,” (27 percent) and “strong leader” (18 percent) as their most important presidential quality. But he flunked the empathy test. So it’s totally legitimate for the press and the voters to look at and examine how a would-be president, especially one who makes fiscal austerity a central issue, has made and has managed his or her own money. Because Heraclitus remains as right today as he was 25 centuries ago, when he wrote, “Character is destiny.” *PAUL* *Rand Paul: Flag ‘inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery’ <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/rand-paul-confederate-flag-slavery-119322.html?ml=tl_27_b> // Politico // Adam B. Lerner – June 23, 2015 * Rand Paul waited until Tuesday to take a stand on the debate over the Confederate flag, but he minced few words. In an interview on WRKO radio in Boston, the Kentucky senator said he agrees with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call Monday for the flag to be taken down. “I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery, and particularly when people use it obviously for murder and to justify hated so vicious that you would kill somebody, I think that that symbolism needs to end, and I think South Carolina is doing the right thing,” Paul said. The American flag and Mississippi state flag fly at half staff outside the Forrest County Courthouse in Hattiesburg, Miss., Monday, May 11, 2015, in honor of Hattiesburg police officers Benjamin Deen and Liquori Tate, who were shot to death Saturday night. Four people have been arrested and charged in their deaths and are to make their initial court appearance on Monday afternoon. “Obviously it’s a decision for South Carolina to make, but if I were in South Carolina that’s what I would vote to do and that’s what I would recommend to anybody who asked me my opinion,” he said. Paul’s reaction, which came a day after Haley’s announcement and after the reactions of a number of other prominent 2016 contenders, drew a far firmer connection between the flag and slavery. Others, including Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and John Kasich, praised Haley’s decision without commenting directly on the symbolism of the flag itself. “There have been people who have used it for Southern pride and heritage and all that, but really to every African-American in the country it’s a symbolism of slavery to them and now it’s a symbol of murder to this young man,” Paul said. *Rand Paul Says Confederate Flag Belongs in Museum <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/meet-the-hilarious-comedian-now-impersonating-bernie-sanders> // Bloomberg // Ben Brody – June 23, 2015 * Weighing in on the South Carolina Confederate flag debate for the first time since the shooting of nine African-American church worshippers last week, Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said Tuesday that the “symbolism needs to end.” “I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery,” the Kentucky senator said in an interview with with Florida-based WKRO radio, according to audio posted by BuzzFeed. “Particularly when people use it obviously for murder and to justify hatred so vicious that you would kill somebody, I think that that symbolism needs to end.” Paul, who has made minority outreach a centerpiece of his campaign, said it's up to South Carolina whether it removes the flag from the grounds of the state's capitol, as Governor Nikki Haley urged Monday, prompting support from other presidential candidates. “But if I were in South Carolina, that’s what I would vote to do,” he said. The flag's presence at a war memorial is controlled by the state legislature. Since last week's killings in a Charleston church, for which a white man has been charged, the debate over the flag has also spread to Mississippi and Virginia. “There have been people who have used it for southern pride and heritage and all of that, but really to I think to every African-American in the country, it’s a symbolism of slavery to them," Paul said. “Now it’s a symbol of murder for this young man and so I think it’s time to put it in a museum.” A Paul campaign spokesman, Sergio Gor, said in an e-mail the interview reflected the senator's stance. “You should have his position from that,” Gor said. On Sunday, Paul came under scrutiny for receiving campaign money from a man said to be a white nationalist whose group inspired the accused Charleston shooter. Paul's campaign said he would donate the money to a fund to help the shooting victims' families. *Rand Paul Super-PAC Slams “Bailout Bu$h” in Bizarre Web Ad <http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/rand-paul-super-pac-bailout-bush> // Mother Jones // Patrick Caldwell – June 23, 2015* Here come the crazed attack ads. More than seven months out from the first votes in the 2016 presidential primaries, America's Liberty, a super-PAC backing Sen. Rand Paul's bid for the Republican nomination, has put out an online ad attacking Jeb "Bailout" Bush. It is…strange. The video, which had more than 10,000 views as of Tuesday afternoon, is framed as an infomercial, with an exuberant, wild-bearded speaker named Max Power (perhaps borrowed from Homer Simpson, who took the same name from a hair dryer) serving as the pitchman. The ad offers a Bailout Bu$h action figure—which sadly does not actually seem to be for sale, probably because it appears to be a different action figure with an image of Bush's face pasted on—as Power shouts about how Jeb worked for Lehman Brothers right before the crash and supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program. "This offer guarantees a presidential candidate cannot win a single primary state, let alone the general election," a voice-over says at the end of the ad as Power bathes in a tub of money. Per the Washington Times, America's Liberty is spending in the five figures to run the ad online in early primary states, though it is also clearly running in DC, since I encountered it when it popped up before a music video on YouTube. America's Liberty has close connections to the Paul camp. The super-PAC's founder and president is John Tate, who worked as Ron Paul's presidential campaign manager in 2012 and currently also serves as president of Campaign for Liberty, a longtime Ron Paul organization. *Rand Paul weighs in on Confederate flag: It’s a symbol of slavery <http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rand-paul-weighs-confederate-flag-its-symbol-slavery> // MSNBC // Benjy Sarlin – June 23, 2015 * Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday praised South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call to remove the Confederate flag from state capitol grounds, making him the final major GOP contender to weigh in on the issue. “I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery — and particularly when people use it obviously for murder and to justify hatred so vicious that you would kill somebody — I think that that symbolism needs to end, and I think South Carolina is doing the right thing,” Paul told radio station WKRO. Paul had kept quiet on the topic in the days following the massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic black house of worship, that left nine people dead. A spokesman for the senator told the Washington Post on Monday that he was “out of pocket” and not available for comment. “There have been people who have used [the flag] for Southern pride and heritage and all of that, but really … to every African-American in the country it’s a symbolism of slavery to them,” Paul said on WKRO. “And now it’s a symbol of murder for this young man, and so I think it’s time to put it in a museum.” While the other major candidates weighed in before Paul via statements and interviews, they carefully avoided taking a substantive position on the issue until Haley joined a bipartisan group of top state officials on Monday in calling on the legislature to take down the flag. Haley’s move, which provided political cover for candidates wary of upsetting voters in the early primary state, garnered immediate praise former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Paul’s absence from the debate was especially glaring given his unusual role in the party on matters of race. The senator has called on his party to aggressively court African-American votes and has put in major work on issues like criminal justice reform, which civil rights groups have made a top priority in recent years. There’s also an uncomfortable history for Paul, however: He gained national attention criticizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act during his 2010 Senate run (he later indicated his support for the law), and co-wrote a book with a radio shock jock, Jack Hunter— who dubbed himself the “Southern Avenger” and wore a Confederate flag mask. Paul also notably supported the presidential campaigns of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who has fiercely criticized Abraham Lincoln and published years of racially inflammatory newsletters. *CRUZ* *Cruz reverses support for TPA trade bill, blasts GOP leaders <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/ted-cruz-no-support-tpa-trade-bill-119319.html> // Politico // Manu Raju – June 23, 2015 * Ted Cruz is reversing his position on a major trade bill, calling it a “corrupt” backdoor deal between Republican leaders and the White House. The Texas firebrand and Republican 2016 presidential hopeful had been a vocal supporter of trade legislation, even co-authoring a Wall Street Journal op-ed in April saying that the fast-track bill, known as Trade Promotion Authority, is a “fair deal” for the American worker. In May, he voted to advance the TPA bill, which also included a worker aid package favored by Democrats. But just hours before a decisive Tuesday vote, Cruz is changing his tune. He says he will vote to block the TPA bill, citing a series of deals between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Democrats — namely over an unrelated issue dealing with the Export-Import Bank. He also contends that a separate trade deal being worked out by Obama could change immigration laws and not give Congress a say. In a fiery op-ed on the conservative Breitbart website, Cruz lashes Obama and GOP leaders, saying the American people “do not trust” them. “Enough is enough,” Cruz said. “I cannot vote for TPA unless McConnell and Boehner both commit publicly to allow the Ex-Im Bank to expire—and stay expired.” The announcement is significant because free-trade proponents have no margin for error. They cannot lose more than three Senate votes from last May on the procedural motion to end debate on the TPA bill. If they do, the fast-track bill could die — and with it, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most sweeping trade bill in history. “Why does Republican Leadership always give in to the Democrats? Why does Leadership always disregard the promises made to the conservative grassroots?” he wrote. Cruz, who has long aligned himself with the tea party wing of the party, has taken some flak from the right for backing the trade bill initially — so voting “no” now could insulate himself from some of that criticism. Yet it could further alienate himself from big business and deep-pocketed donors who are staunch proponents of expanded markets. Cruz cites a deal cut on the Senate floor last month between McConnell and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) that would give Congress a vote to extend the charter of the expiring Ex-Im Bank, an entity that Cruz says is riddled with “corporate welfare.” Cruz suggests that McConnell misled him last month on the day of the trade vote. “At lunch that day, I asked Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell what precise deal had been cut to pass TPA,” Cruz wrote. “Visibly irritated, he told me and all my Republican colleagues that there was no deal whatsoever; rather, he simply told them they could use the ordinary rules to offer whatever amendments they wanted on future legislation. “ He added: “Taking McConnell at his word that there was no deal on Ex-Im, I voted yes on TPA because I believe the U.S. generally benefits from free trade, and without TPA historically there have been no free-trade agreements.” The U.S. Trade Representative’s office, meanwhile, disputes Cruz’s assertions in his Breitbart op-ed that the TPA could change federal immigration law. “We have been abundantly clear that we are not proposing and will not agree to anything that changes U.S. immigration law, procedure, or practice,” said U.S. Trade Representative spokesman Matt McAlvanah. *Why Ted Cruz Can’t Quit the Gay Marriage Fight <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/why-ted-cruz-can-t-quit-the-gay-marriage-fight> // Bloomberg // Heidi Przybyla – June 23, 2015 * The Republican Party is hoping that a Supreme Court ruling before month's end will close a chapter in American politics that has caught much of the party between evangelicals who emphatically opposes gay marriage and many voters who are supportive of same-sex couples. Ted Cruz is trying to ensure that the debate is far from over. While Republican leaders hope that the issue will be neutralized either way the high court rules—by affirming social conservatives seeking to protect states that still bar same-sex marriages or by issuing an unambiguous statement in support of gay couples—Cruz has other goals. The Texas senator is making evangelicals a bedrock of his 2016 presidential campaign. He's making it clear that regardless of the case's outcome, he'll keep pressing the issue. 'Religious Liberty' "I believe 2016 will be the religious liberty election," Cruz said at a gathering of faith activists in Washington last week. "Religious liberty has never been more threatened in America than right now today.'" Cruz has legislative, political and fund-raising motivation. In the Senate, he's sponsoring a constitutional amendment shielding states that still bar gay marriage, and he's already attacking his competitors. In his speech last week, he derided Republicans who weren't supportive of religious liberty laws in Indiana and Arkansas that opponents said would allow businesses to discriminate against gay customers. "I'll tell you what was saddest, just how many Republicans ran for the hills," Cruz said, adding that Indiana was "a time for choosing." Cruz's legislative challenge is going nowhere fast, given that it requires a two-thirds majority of both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures to amend the Constitution. But by using his power to sponsor legislation, he can distinguish himself from other conservatives in the crowded 2016 presidential field. That may help him with the party's coveted evangelical base. In the process, Cruz can also create headaches for more centrist (and more front-of-the-pack) candidates such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who need to get through the nominating process without having to take stands that could hurt them in a general election. Underlining the concerns of some party strategists, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, also among the Republican field's top-polling candidates, recently threw his support behind a constitutional amendment to allow states to ban gay marriage. Practically Silent Congressional Republican leaders are using megaphones to blast President Barack Obama's health care law, which also figures in a major case the court will decide by the end of June. By contrast, they've been practically silent on gay marriage. The same goes for Bush and Rubio. It's a reflection of the party's desire to downplay a matter on which polls show they are at odds with the public. A Gallup poll in May found that a record 60 percent of Americans support gay marriage. "The reality is the ground is shifting on this issue because of people getting to know more about the fact that, for the vast majority of people, this is not a choice, this is who they are," Ohio Senator Rob Portman, a Republican whose son is gay and who supports gay marriage, said in an interview. "Most of the candidates are not talking about it, which is different than it would have been eight years ago.'' On the other side of the debate, Gary Bauer, president of American Values and one of the nation's most vocal social conservatives, agrees that "the party establishment and some of the donor base is very uncomfortable with these issues.'' Voter Turnout "What they need to ponder is the very real chance of demoralization among voters that care about these issues that would suppress voter turnout,'' Bauer said. As a senator, Cruz can introduce legislation on gay marriage, but there are other Republican candidates who are competing for the evangelical vote and who are eager to make an issue of gay marriage. In May, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed a religious freedom executive order. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, is promising to fight "judicial tyranny'' and calling on his fellow candidates to join him. "If you lack the backbone to reject judicial tyranny and fight for religious liberty, you have no business serving our nation as President of the United States,'' Huckabee said in a letter last week to more than 100 conservative leaders and organizations. Cruz and the others are backed by activists who say the gay marriage debate is a part of a broader assault on religious liberty that will eventually strip them of their ability to openly practice their beliefs. Religious leaders are concerned the ruling will force Catholic and other religious-based adoption services to give same-sex couples equal preference, Bauer said. "The battle is morphing away from just the question of the definition of marriage,'' he said. `"That's going to be a huge battle that is likely to be very divisive.'' King's Call Iowa Representative Steve King, a Republican who is heavily courted by Republican presidential candidates because he's from the state where the first ballots of the presidential election will be cast, has called for "civil disobedience'' if the court rules in favor of same-sex marriages. The National Organization for Marriage is urging all the Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination to sign a pledge promising to support a constitutional amendment similar to what Cruz has proposed defending marriage as between one man and one woman. And the Southern Baptist Convention says it will reject any ruling affirming gay marriage. Meanwhile, other Republicans are making clear it's a fight they'd rather not have. During last week's Faith & Freedom Coalition meeting in Washington, D.C., Cruz was the only 2016 candidate to aggressively address the gay marriage issue. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican facing a tough reelection battle, said his priorities are addressing the nation's debt and deficit and turning back Obamacare. 'Pretty Definitive' Once the court rules, "I would move on," he said in an interview. "The Supreme Court rulings are pretty definitive. They just are." That won't be easy to do for the 2016 field of Republicans because of voters like Linda Cleaver of Cochranville, Pennsylvania, a member of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. "It will go everywhere and affect everything,'' she said of the ruling. "It's Bill of Rights time,'' she said in rejecting the argument that forcing Bush, Rubio and Walker into an aggressive posture against gay marriage will hurt them if they become the party's nominee. "I don't care what they think,'' she said of Republican strategists who argue the party has a better chance of winning the White House if it avoids divisive social issues. "They have their opinion, but they're out of touch.'' *Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag removal to a 'Stalinist purge' <http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-cruz-campaign-aide-compared-confederate-flag-removal-to-stalinist-purge-2015-6> // Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June 23, 2015* Lee Bright, a local lawmaker who is serving as the South Carolina co-chair for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), compared the calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in his home state to a "Stalinist purge." According to a spokesperson for Cruz, those comments don't conflict with the candidate's position on the issue. "What Senator Cruz has said is that this is an issue for the state of South Carolina and South Carolinians to sort out and I think that's what you're watching happen," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said in a conversation with Business Insider on Tuesday evening. The shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine people dead on June 17 has reignited a nationwide debate over the flag. The alleged shooter, Dylann Roof, has been linked to a website that featured Confederate imagery and a racist manifesto. This prompted South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to call for the flag to be removed from the capitol on Monday. Bright made his comment when he was asked about Haley's move by the Charleston Post and Courier. He elaborated on it in an interview with Politico that was published Tuesday. "It’s not just the flag," Bright said. "They want to take down the Confederate monuments, I’ve gotten emails from people who want to rename streets … anytime you want to basically remove the symbols of history from a state, that’s something that just is very bad … these are honorable men who fought for their homes, their home state, to disgrace them in the name of political correctness is just wrong. They’re not here to defend themselves." Bright told Politico the Cruz campaign had not discussed the issue with him, but he said he hoped presidential candidates would not tell South Carolina how to handle the issue. "I would encourage presidential candidates to let us deal with this," Bright said. "It’s deeply rooted history for a lot of us. I’m not going to stand by and let our ancestors’ memories be besmirched. It’s one thing to just take down the flag. They want us to concede that the soldiers that fell for the Confederacy were a bunch of racists and I’m not going to concede that." Tyler, the Cruz campaign spokesman, said the senator agrees with the notion the issue should be decided by people in South Carolina. "The idea of outsiders coming in to South Carolina and telling them how they should deal with their issue, the senator ... I think correctly, his view is, let South Carolinians work it out amongst themselves and sort it out," Tyler said. "And that's what's happening, there's a disagreement of opinion, but that's part of the process." Bright did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Business Insider. *PERRY* *Rick Perry Is Still on the Payroll of a Controversial Pipeline Company // Mother Jones <http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/rick-perry-energy-transfer-partners-pipeline-board> // Patrick Caldwell – June 22, 2015 * When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this month, he declared his campaign would emphasize energy policy. "Energy is vital to our economy, and to our national security," Perry said during his announcement speech. He vowed to green-light the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Perry's staunch support of the energy industry is nothing new; he was a reliable ally of the energy sector throughout his 14 years as governor. But this year, Perry gained a new incentive for helping energy companies: He started working for one. And two weeks into his presidential campaign, he's still on its payroll. On February 3, two weeks after ending his term as governor, Perry took a position on the corporate board of Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based pipeline company that transports natural gas and crude oil. "The Board selected Mr. Perry to serve as a director because of his vast experience as an executive in the highest office of state government," ETP's website says. "In addition, Mr. Perry has been involved in finance and budget planning processes throughout his career in government as a member of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, the Legislative Budget Board and as Governor." In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, ETP said Perry could "receive cash compensation" as well as "equity compensation." The company declined to disclose how much Perry will be paid for the gig and isn't required to file disclosures revealing that figure until next year, but in the past the post has come with about $50,000 in annual salary. "You can expect compensation to be along the same lines as what was [last] reported," an ETP spokesperson wrote in an email to Mother Jones. Politicians running for higher office typically step down from corporate positions while campaigning in order to avoid a conflict of interest. Jeb Bush, for example, began to leave his spots on corporate boards last year in preparation for his presidential run. The ETP spokesperson confirmed Perry still sits on the board. (He's listed as one of seven members of the board on the company's website.) A spokesperson for Perry's campaign didn't respond to a request for comment. Perhaps not coincidentally, Kelcy Warren, the company's CEO, has been a major backer of Perry's political career. The billionaire contributed more than $250,000 to Perry's super-PAC in 2012 during his first campaign for president. As Mother Jones' Bryan Schatz detailed last month, ETP is embroiled in a controversial natural gas pipeline project that has riled up locals in Texas. The company—working with the Mexico-based Grupo Carso, an industrial conglomerate owned by billionaire Carlos Slim—is getting ready to start construction later this year of a 42-inch-wide, 143-mile-long pipeline that will run outside Big Bend National Park and is scheduled to be finished in 2017. An ETP subsidiary is also seeking permission to construct the 1,100-mile Bakken Pipeline, which would carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois, and from there to refineries in Texas. If regulators in Iowa grant permission to ETP, this 30-inch pipeline could transport up to 570,000 barrels of oil per day—about half the amount that would flow through the Keystone XL pipeline. Just days before joining ETP's board, Perry appeared on Iowa television and endorsed construction of the Bakken Pipeline. "I don't have a problem with that—it's a pipeline, it's underground," Perry said when asked about farmers' land possibly being seized by eminent domain for this pipeline project. He added, "We probably have as safe a pipeline industry in the country as there is in the world." Twenty local groups have formed the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition to fight the project. Even some Republicans have expressed opposition, including Republican state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, who objected to the use of eminent domain. The Iowa Utilities Board isn't planning to hold a public hearing on the proposal until November, when Perry will likely be crisscrossing the state to gain votes before the February Iowa caucuses. Certainly, ETP won't object if Perry, as he stumps, talks about the need to build more pipelines. But as he pitches his drill-drill-drill energy vision, will Perry tell voters he's on the pipeline payroll? *HUCKABEE* *Mike Huckabee Backs Nikki Haley on Confederate Flag Removal <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/mike-huckabee-backs-nikki-haley-on-confederate-flag-removal> // Bloomberg // Ali Elkin – June 23, 2015 * Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Tuesday said he supports South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's call to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds. His comments come after he said Sunday the flag debate, which erupted after the shooting of nine African-American worshippers in a Charleston church last week, was “not an issue for a person running for president.” “Now that Republican governor has spoken out and has said that it is an awful symbol and she wants it to come down. Do you agree with her? Yes or no,” interviewer Ed Henry asked Huckabee on Fox on Tuesday. “Absolutely, because that's where it needed to be settled,” said Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, a former Fox host, and winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses. “She took leadership of her state and that's what governors do. She was accompanied by the congressmen, by the senators, by the leaders of the House and Senate. That's where this issue should be and it is being settled. It shouldn't be settled by the New York Times or a bunch of talking heads from the Washington roundtable. It ought to be decided by the people who live in that state. That's what's happening and I salute Governor Haley and the other people of South Carolina for saying 'Look, if this is a distraction, this is something that inflames people, it's not that important to us.'” He denied that he had punted on the question earlier. He said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that while he didn't personally display the Confederate flag anywhere but stopped short of stating his position on South Carolina's display. “I didn't punt at all,” Huckabee said. “I just simply said that the president of the United States has nothing to do with what flags go on capitol grounds.” He isn't the only 2016 Republican candidate who came to support Haley's move on Monday. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (who hasn't declared his candidacy yet) also did. Huckabee also said faith was a more critical topic for the country to tackle than race in the wake of the shooting. “I keep hearing, Ed, people talk about, 'We need more conversations about race,'” Huckabee said. “Actually, we don't need more conversations, what we need is conversions, because the reconciliation that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it's a spiritual reconciliation. When people are reconciled to God—we saw it in those church members—when I love God, and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as He made me, I don't have a problem with racism. It's solved.” *Mike Huckabee: ‘I salute’ S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley on Confederate flag issue’ <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/23/mike-huckabee-i-salute-sc-gov-nikki-haley-confeder/> // Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 23, 2015 * Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he is saluting South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who called Monday to remove the Confederate flag from the state Capitol grounds. “I salute Governor Haley and the other people of South Carolina for saying look, if this is a distraction, if this is something that inflames people, it’s not that important to us,” Mr. Huckabee, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said on Fox News. “What’s more important is a state where we can create the kind of atmosphere that we saw out of the church members of Charleston.” Ms. Haley and other South Carolina leaders on Monday called for removing the flag from the state Capitol in Columbia, less than a week after a white gunman killed nine black parishioners in a Charleston church. Images have since surfaced online of the suspected gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, holding the Confederate flag and a gun. “And I keep hearing … people talk about, we need more conversations about race,” Mr. Huckabee said. “Actually, we don’t need more conversations. What we need is conversions. Because the reconciliation that changes people is not a racial reconciliation; it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God. We saw it in those church members. When I love God and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as he made me, I don’t have a problem with racism. It’s solved.” On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, Mr. Huckabee had said the issue over the flag is “not an issue for a person running for president” and that if the state government of South Carolina wanted to address the issue, that’s fine. “But … if you can point me to an article and section of the Constitution in which a United States president ought to weigh in on what states use as symbols, then please refresh my memory on that,” he said. “But for those of us running for president, everyone’s being baited with this question as if somehow that has anything to do whatsoever with running for president. And my position is, it most certainly does not.” “As president, you’re focused on the economy, keeping America safe,” Mr. Huckabee continued. “Some really big issues for the nation. I don’t think they want us to weigh in on every little issue in all 50 states that might be an important issue to the people of that state but not on the desk of the president.” Mr. Huckabee said in the Tuesday interview on Fox that he had not been punting on the issue. “I didn’t punt at all — I just simply said that the president of the United States has nothing to do with what flags go on … Capitol grounds,” he said. “Look, I think that we miss the real point of this, and when I’m asked that question as a presidential candidate, what I’m being baited for is, ‘Is South Carolina a racist state?’ “And so what I said was … as a frequent visitor to South Carolina, I look at this objectively,” Mr. Huckabee continued. “You’ve got a female governor who is of Indian descent, you have the only elected African-American U.S. senator in the south from a state of 4.8 million people elected largely by people who are mostly white. That’s not racism. And so the flag is an important issue for South Carolina, but I don’t think the president of the United States needs to be picking the symbols that fly on state Capitol grounds. It wasn’t a punt, I didn’t squirm, I didn’t vacillate on it.” He went on to say that the issue shouldn’t be settled “by The New York Times or a bunch of talking heads from a Washington roundtable — it ought to be decided by the people who live in that state.” *FIORINA* *Carly Fiorina: Cybersecurity ‘Has To Be a Central Part of Any Homeland Security Strategy’ <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/carly-fiorina-cybersecurity-has-to-be-a-central-part-of-any-homeland-security-strategy-> // Bloomberg // Ben Brody – June 23, 2015 * Despite a Republican presidential field that (mostly) says the U.S. needs to get more aggressive on national security, the candidates have been muted on recent revelations that China has pilfered a massive cache of personal information on millions of U.S. government employees. But cybersecurity should be a "huge" part of the general security conversation, and now is the right time to talk about it, according to Carly Fiorina, who is among those seeking the Republican nomination. The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, who has had first-hand experience with cyber-security issues, sent out a statement in reaction to the hack at the government's Office of Personnel Management, which could have exposed data from up to 14 million current and former government employees, including 127-page applications for security clearances. Bloomberg invited her to expand. "This has to be a central part of any homeland security strategy," Fiorina said in the interview. "The Chinese have had a long-term effort to hack into our databases and systems, which suggests that we should have been on guard for a very long time. "I’m outraged about this," she added. "It is yet another example of the complete breakdown of government competence." Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, U.S. officials investigating the intrusions at OPM and a number of government contractors have confirmed that the hacks have been traced to the Chinese intelligence service. As a Republican presidential hopeful, Fiorina has political reasons to cast doubts on the competence of President Barack Obama's Democratic administration. Her background as a technology executive also makes talking about cybersecurity an opportunity for her to distinguish herself in the crowded field. Her experience, however, is indisputable. She served on civilian advisory boards for the CIA and National Security Agency. She was also instrumental in securing a literal truck-load of servers for the NSA in the weeks after 9/11, according to the National Review. So what would be her first concrete policy suggestion for preventing another hack? Centralize the government's cybersecurity operation and put it in the Department of Defense or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "You have to have a consolidated command that has the accountability, the responsibility, for protecting the security of all government systems and databases," she said. "You can’t have this piece-mealed throughout government." On this, she seems to agree with the president, who directed the government to centralize cybersecurity efforts after a 2009 report found that "The Federal government is not organized to address this growing problem effectively now or in the future" and that "Responsibilities for cybersecurity are distributed across a wide array of federal departments and agencies, many with overlapping authorities, and none with sufficient decision authority...." The effort is far from complete, though. Even the deployment of hack detection and prevention is still ongoing and a patchwork of agencies, from the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security to the FBI are taking responsibility for the security of government computers. Fiorina also spoke about streamlining government bureaucracy. "You have to have exceedingly competent people who are there because of their particular expertise, not simply there because they’ve been in government long enough to get there," she said. "Not everybody has the skills to do this work." In addition to a centralizing cybersecurity, Fiorina said the government should work with the private sector to detect and repel attacks, although Congress has hampered this by declining to pass legislation that would protect companies that report breaches to the government from legal action. "Everything in our nation now is dependent in very real ways in network-centric technologies," she said. "While that gives us great capability, it also gives us great vulnerability." *TRUMP* *Trump Surges in Popularity in N.H., Taking Second Place in Suffolk Poll <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/06/23/trump-surges-in-popularity-in-n-h-taking-second-place-in-suffolk-poll/> // WSJ // Reid J. Epstein – June 23, 2015 * He’s dismissed by the political professionals, but there is no denying that the appetite for Donald Trump among Republican primary voters is real. The New York developer and reality television star is second among 2016 presidential candidates in a new Suffolk University poll of New Hampshire Republicans – behind only former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The poll of 500 likely GOP presidential primary voters found 14% back Mr. Bush. Mr. Trump is right behind at 11%. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio come next, with 8% and 7%, respectively. The poll tested 19 GOP candidates – a rare survey that included ultra-longshots like Mark Everson and former Govs. Bob Ehrlich and Jim Gilmore. While Mr. Trump is experiencing a bump in popularity after announcing the launch of his campaign last week (he filed formal Federal Elections Commission paperwork Monday), he remains the most disliked GOP candidate in the field. Suffolk found he is the only GOP candidate with a net unfavorable rating in New Hampshire — 37% of those surveyed had a favorable opinion of Mr. Trump, compared to 49% who had an unfavorable view. The candidate with the largest gap between favorable and unfavorable ratings is Mr. Rubio, at 61% favorable to 14% unfavorable. Mr. Rubio was also chosen as the second choice by 13% of poll respondents. Mr. Bush was the second-choice pick of 14% of those surveyed. The poll of 500 likely New Hampshire Republican presidential primary voters was conducted from June 18, the day after Mr. Trump announced his campaign, through June 22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. *Poll: Trump near top of GOP pack in New Hampshire <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/donald-trump-second-place-new-hampshire-poll/> // CNN // Theodore Schleifer – June 23, 2015 * Donald Trump is outpolling all other Republican candidates in New Hampshire except for Jeb Bush, according to a new survey released Tuesday. In a poll fielded immediately after their presidential announcements last week, Bush earned 14% of the vote in the crowded GOP field, followed by Trump with 11%. Nearly a third of respondents said they were undecided. The results from Suffolk University are the clearest indication yet that Trump, the billionaire with a penchant for bombastic rhetoric and unorthodox claims, is catching on with Republican voters early on in the cycle. Pollsters tend to caution that surveys more than six months before any votes are cast may simply be registering each contender's name recognition -- of which Trump has plenty. Trump also joins a crowded GOP field in which none of the candidates — including Bush — have been able to break out of the pack. In the 2012 cycle, several candidates with a penchant for making headlines with their controversial claims -- such as businessman Herman Cain and former Rep. Michele Bachmann and even Trump himself (though not an official candidate) -- also garnered top spots in early polls only to crash to Earth as the campaign dragged on. Trump, as well, is a deeply polarizing figure in the Granite State -- 49% of respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of him, while only 37% viewed him positively. "Trump's controversial candidacy is being constructed in a way that gives him visibility and exposure in the short term but may also limit his growth in the long run, like a glass ceiling," David Paleologos, who directed the poll, said in a statement. New Hampshire, with its first-in-the-nation primary, is a key battleground for 2016 hopefuls.Trump has made five visits to the Granite State this year, according to p2016, a website that tracks candidate visits to the early states. Trailing Bush and Trump were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 8%, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 7%, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 6% and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 5%. No other candidates earned more than 5% in the Suffolk survey. When asked for their second choice candidate, 14% of likely GOP voters named Bush, 13% selected Rubio, 10% picked Walker, 7% said Trump and 6% said businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Suffolk surveyed 500 likely New Hampshire Republican voters between June 18 and June 22, yielding a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. *Trump’s Running – but the Joke’s on You* <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/how-much-is-trump-is-really-worth.html>* // Daily Beast // Charles Gasparino – June 22, 2015* Donald Trump says he’s really rich—worth nearly $9 billion ($8,737,540,000 to be exact). Forbes estimates that he’s worth less than half that much, around $4 billion. Does it matter? The answer is definitively no, because once the Donald Trump presidential charade is over he’s gonna be worth much more than $8 billion—and worth every penny of it. I have to say up front I’ve known Trump for years and I like him even if much of his presidential announcement speech had my skin crawling. (Describing many Mexican immigrants as “rapists” is at the top of my list.) But I have long appreciated Trump’s resilience both in business and in his personal life; anyone who remembers the early 1990s vintage Trump, when he was both mocked as a business has-been and was by some estimates insolvent, also knows that more recently his name and brand keeps getting bigger and his wives keep getting hotter. All of which leads me to believe that this man—who needs to brag about his wealth and intelligence like most people need to breathe—is looking at this presidential thing like he looks at everything else: how to make a brand that’s big and profitable even more so. For the record, I don’t know how much Donald Trump is worth, and in the past he has been touchy when reporters have challenged his fortune’s size. (He sued one reporter who quoted unnamed sources saying Trump was merely worth hundreds of millions instead of billions for libel. In 2011, a New Jersey appellate judge dismissed the case, saying Trump failed to prove “actual malice.”) Even so, every Wall Street firm I covered wanted Trump’s business as he pulled himself back from his near-death experience in the early 1990s, when some of his Atlantic City properties filed for bankruptcy. Trump himself never filed for bankruptcy, which is probably why, as he began to rebuild himself, his Wall Street broker was none other than the late Alan “Ace” Greenberg, the legendary stock trader who only handled accounts of the megawealthy. Donald Trump isn’t really running for president; he’s running to make more money and enhance a brand that’s bigger than his real-estate holdings and golf courses. To be sure, in his announcement speech Trump offered scant evidence that he’s worth what he says he is; indeed, he has just filed the standard forms with the Federal Election Commission, which will start a more-intensive vetting process over his financial disclosures. Those forms are pretty exhaustive, I might add; just go to the website of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and take a look at what candidates need to disclose and you’ll understand why rich people generally don’t run for president. Candidates are required to disclose, in detail, assets and income, then transactions and gifts and travel reimbursements. Another layer of detail involves disclosing liabilities and something called “agreements or arrangements.” Lastly, presidential candidates must disclose “positions (other than with the U.S. government)” and “sources of income in excess of $5,000.” This is why Karl Rove said on Fox News Sunday that other candidates should “ignore” Trump until he files with the FEC, which he did late Monday afternoon. Trump fired back on Twitter: “@KarlRove still thinks Romney won! He doesn’t have a clue! @FoxNews,” and in another he vowed to make his initial financial disclosures this week: “@KarlRove, who spent $430 million in the last cycle and didn’t win one race, said I’m not a candidate until I file papers. Next week Karl!” Trump’s campaign manager told me that the full disclosure will be completed in 30 days; Trump, he said, won’t seek extensions as Rove and others have predicted. We shall see. In any event, like Rove, I had my doubts that Trump would go through with the whole disclosure process. What I never doubted is that he loves the attention because the debate over the net worth of the new and improved Donald Trump no longer turns on the vagaries of the real-estate market but on the value of his brand. Keep in mind much of the difference between the Forbes net worth estimate and Trump’s own, which he says was compiled by “highly respected” accountants, is the value of the Trump brand, which Forbes says isn’t worth the $3 billion-plus Trump says it is. But how do you really value a brand? Brands are worth what people think they’re worth, and when you’re name is everywhere from hotels and apartments buildings to reality TV, it’s easy to see how the numbers add up and will keep adding up as he does this presidential dance that, quite frankly, is amazing reality television. That’s why I have no doubt that Trump will turn this new “serious” stage of his life into a business winner. The way I see it, Donald Trump isn’t really running for president; he’s running to make more money and enhance a brand that’s bigger than his real-estate holdings and golf courses. And with the people who matter to him the most, it doesn’t get cheapened by occasionally disgusting rhetoric about immigrants or possible exaggerations about his wealth. He’s playing to his fans and there are many millions of them. They like him on television and they like his real estate and golf courses. Another bet: I don’t think Donald will run for president after all, regardless of Monday’s FEC filing, or even if he does make those detailed financial disclosures and somehow gins up enough publicity to get into the first GOP debate in August. In the end, I think he will call it quits because, after awhile, Donald is going to realize he’s squeezed all the marketing juice out of the presidential lemon that is possible, and anything more will end up hurting, not helping, one of the world’s great brands. He knows that, and that’s why he’s so rich. *UNDECLARED* *WALKER* *Scott Walker, Promising ‘Bold Leadership,’ Faces G.O.P. Discord in Wisconsin <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/politics/scott-walker-promising-bold-leadership-faces-gop-discord-in-wisconsin.html?_r=1> // NYT // Trip Gabriel – June 23, 2015 * As Gov. Scott Walker prepares to announce his campaign for president next month, promising to bring what he calls “big bold leadership” to Washington, as he did in Wisconsin, he faces a cloud over that story line: Republicans back home are in revolt. Leaders of Mr. Walker’s party, which controls the Legislature, are balking at his demands for the state’s budget. Critics say the governor’s spending blueprint is aimed more at appealing to conservatives in early-voting states like Iowa than doing what is best for Wisconsin. Lawmakers are stymied over how to pay for road and bridge repairs without raising taxes or fees, which Mr. Walker has ruled out. The governor’s fellow Republicans rejected his proposal to borrow $1.3 billion for the roadwork, arguing that adding to the state’s debt is irresponsible. “The governor rolled out $1.3 billion in bonding,” Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate majority leader, said in an interview. “It’s not been well received, is the best way to put it.” The budget stalemate forced Mr. Walker late last week to move the goal posts on the announcement of his all-but-certain presidential candidacy. For months, he said it would come after he signed a new budget — timing meant to contrast his ability to get things done with Washington dysfunction. But last Thursday, Mr. Walker said he would announce after “the end of the budget year.” That is, any time after June 30, the last day of the fiscal year. With lawmakers saying they might not finish their work before mid-July, he will not wait for a finished budget. A spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, AshLee Strong, said the governor “is optimistic an agreement will be reached in the coming weeks.” It is unclear if Mr. Walker’s family feud with his Legislature will ripple out to voter perceptions beyond Wisconsin. Polls suggest that he is the early front-runner in Iowa and a top-tier candidate nationally, thanks to his reputation with conservatives for defeating public-sector unions and surviving a recall election in his first term. Mr. Walker is making the case that unlike the senators in the Republican race, who include Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, he has a record of hard-won policy achievements. “Some want you to think they fight,” Mr. Walker wrote of his rivals on the conservative website RedState last week. “But speeches aren’t fighting or winning.” In front of partisan audiences around the country, Mr. Walker often portrays himself as more ideologically conservative than he has been in Wisconsin. He takes credit, for example, for signing an anti-union “right to work” law this year, something that actually bubbled up from his Legislature after the governor insisted in his re-election race in 2014 that it was not a priority. “I don’t think he’d be in the position he’s in right now if it wasn’t for the Republican Legislature,” said Mr. Fitzgerald, who sponsored the bill. “We’ve been a big part of that list of reforms.” Mr. Walker has notched other recent successes in the Legislature that are red-meat issues on the campaign trail, such as requiring drug testing for people on public assistance and loosening tenure protection for professors. One issue he played down in 2014 but has seized on in early nominating states, where social conservatives are highly influential, is banning abortions after 20 weeks. Mr. Walker repeatedly refused to say if he favored such a ban during his close re-election last year, when polls showed him unpopular among women. In March, as doubts about his anti-abortion credentials were raised by national conservatives, he pledged to sign a 20-week ban that was “likely to come to my desk.” What he did not explain was that he had asked Wisconsin lawmakers to send him just such a bill, during a meeting in his office with Mr. Fitzgerald and Robin Vos, the speaker of the State Assembly, also a Republican. “Walker weighed in and said the 20-week abortion ban is something he would like to see hit his desk,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “It sent a message to us.” The governor specified that the bill should include no exceptions for rape or incest, according to Mr. Fitzgerald. The dispute with the Legislature is, at root, a debate over what is best for Wisconsin’s economy. Republican lawmakers favor investments in infrastructure and higher education, and the governor is committed to not raising taxes. Mr. Vos has accused Mr. Walker of avoiding an “adult conversation” on infrastructure costs. On the campaign trail, Mr. Walker boasts of lowering taxes by $2 billion and presiding over a drop in unemployment from 7.7 percent in January 2011, when he took office, to 4.6 percent. His fiscal discipline is echoed in his penny-pinching lifestyle (he recently told of buying a $1 sweater at Kohl’s.) What he does not mention is that Wisconsin ranked 35th in job growth in the nation during his first term, and that it trails its neighbors in the upper Midwest. The tax cuts and weakening of public sector unions have not spurred the economy enough to avoid a projected budget deficit over the coming two years. The state’s nonpartisan budget office estimated this year that Wisconsin would save $345 million in its budget over two years by accepting Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Unlike the Republican governors of four nearby states, Mr. Walker refused expansion, a litmus test for conservatives. The governor got the greatest resistance on his budget blueprint, which covers two years, over two proposals: to fill a hole in the transportation fund with the debt financing, and to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system. “The university doesn’t deserve this cut,” said Senator Luther Olsen, a Republican, as lawmakers voted last month to restore $50 million of the governor’s cuts. “We are fools if we go around bashing one of the best things in the State of Wisconsin.” To pay for road and bridge projects, Mr. Vos, the Assembly speaker, and other Republicans favor raising vehicle registration fees. Mr. Walker labeled a fee increase the same as a tax increase, and promised a veto. “He wants to make a political point that ‘I didn’t increase fees or taxes,’ ” said Representative Gordon Hintz, a Democrat on the Joint Finance Committee, which crafts the budget. “The false choice created by the governor’s presidential politics leads to outcomes which negatively impact the people of Wisconsin.” To accommodate the governor, Republicans are wrangling behind closed doors over some combination of borrowing and delaying needed projects. The governor’s press secretary, Laurel Patrick, said Mr. Walker has been consistent in opposing an increase in the gas tax or vehicle fees without a corresponding cut in taxes. “While obviously not our preferred option, if legislators choose to reduce bonding for transportation in the budget, Governor Walker would sign it,” Ms. Patrick said in a statement. Mr. Fitzgerald, the Senate majority leader, said he did not have the votes to pass a budget yet. “We’re trying to figure out how to get out of the box,” he said. *Scott Walker Reportedly Requested 20-Week Ban Without Exceptions For Rape, Incest <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/23/scott-walker-abortion_n_7648740.html?1435093563> // HuffPo // Laura Bassett – June 23, 2015 * After declining to say whether he would support a 20-week abortion ban during the 2014 election, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) specifically requested that state legislators send such a bill to his desk without exceptions for cases of rape and incest, according to a report by The New York Times. Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) told the Times that Walker met with him and Robin Vos, the Republican state Assembly speaker, and told them he wanted to see a 20-week abortion ban on his desk that did not contain exceptions for rape or incest victims. “It sent a message to us," Fitzgerald said of the meeting. A spokesperson for Walker, who is running for president, did not immediately return a request for comment from The Huffington Post. The state Senate passed a 20-week ban without exceptions earlier this month, and Walker told reporters that he would sign it. “I think for most people who are concerned about that, it’s in the initial months when they are most concerned about it,” said the 2016 presidential hopeful. “In this case, it’s an unborn life, it’s an unborn child, that’s why we feel strongly about it. I’m prepared to sign it either way they send it to us.” If Walker signs the bill, it will likely face a court challenge. The Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that states cannot ban abortions before the fetus would be viable outside the womb, which is estimated to occur between 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. A federal appeals court struck down Idaho's 20-week ban earlier this year, ruling it "unconstitutional because it categorically bans some abortions before viability." *The true payoff from Scott Walker’s war on tenure <http://nypost.com/2015/06/22/the-true-payoff-from-scott-walkers-war-on-tenure/> // NY Post // Naomi Schaefer Riley – June 22, 2015 * “For the love of God, tenure does not mean you have a job for life.” So says Rebecca Schuman of Slate, fuming about the vote by the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee that would remove tenure at public universities from the current state law. Instead, Wisconsin’s board of regents, appointed by the governor, would be able to fire faculty “when such an action is deemed necessary due to a budget or program decision requiring program discontinuance, curtailment, modification or redirection.” Schuman, like the faculty at Wisconsin, is outraged by this development and at Gov. Scott Walker for putting it into motion. But she also suggests that tenure does not mean what we think it means. Faculty are fond of saying that tenure is not total job security — professors can be fired for just cause — but they have little evidence for the case. Schuman absurdly writes that “tenured professors get fired all the time.” Like so much else in academia, perhaps the phrase “all the time” doesn’t mean what the rest of us think it means. Indeed, defending one tenured professor who was fired, a blogger for Academe (a publication of the American Association for University Professors) wrote, “Normally, the firing of a tenured professor is such an extraordinary event that it involves acts of breathtaking misconduct or total incompetence.” Which comes much closer to the truth. So what’s the point of getting rid of tenure? Sadly, it will not do much for the bottom line. Eliminating tenure, or at least loosening its grip, will allow the university more flexibility in cutting programs with too few students. Which is a shame, because even if only a few people want to take Russian literature, it would be nice if the university could offer it. But this is a public school, accountable to taxpayers. Moreover, the fact is that more and more of the classes students take are not classes like Russian literature or philosophy. They’re taking vocational classes where the protections of “academic freedom” are simply unnecessary. Professors who teach computer science or engineering, let alone dairy science or agricultural business management, simply don’t need to say controversial things in class. Eliminating tenure would have some real benefits, though. First, it would send a message that the school cares about teaching. Tenure is a system that rewards research. It gives teachers a permanent job for what they’ve already published. But teaching is a dynamic profession, and it needs to be evaluated regularly and thoroughly. It’s rare for a tenured professor (or any professor) to find his or her teaching evaluated by other faculty members or administrators. Yet, as any student could tell you, they should be. Ending tenure would also send the message that the university is looking for a different kind of professor. Right now college teaching attracts some of the least entrepreneurial types. They are people looking for job security, not high salaries. Indeed, tenure is a perk, and just like health insurance or pension plans, it means that colleges can pay people less. Richard Miller, the president of the Olin College of Engineering (which does not offer tenure), told me that having tenure is like being placed in “golden handcuffs.” But “there are more important things than permanent employment.” Sadly, too many professors seem to have forgotten that. The real problem with tenure, though, is that it fails to do what its proponents suggest. Universities are bastions of ideological uniformity. At the Ivy League, for instance, 96 percent of donations in the 2012 presidential election went to Barack Obama. And it’s only been getting worse in recent years. Professors who don’t adhere to the orthodoxy on race, gender and politics in general will find themselves not only ostracized, but investigated by federal authorities. University faculty simply hire clones of themselves year after year, and then give those clones permanent jobs if they can survive seven years of keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. It’s not a process that encourages much disagreement or fresh thinking. Fortunately, the process for becoming governor is a little different. *CHRISTIE* *Chris Christie to announce 2016 bid as early as next week <file:///C:\Users\aphillips\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Outlook\K5560UZE\ry\2015\06\chris-christie-2016-bid-announcement-119354.html> // Politico // Alex Isenstadt – June 23, 2015 * Chris Christie is in the final stages of preparing his 2016 presidential bid, with a formal announcement possible as soon as next week, according to several sources familiar with the discussions. The New Jersey governor’s planning has intensified in recent days. On Monday, his campaign-in-waiting announced that he’d hired two additional staffers in New Hampshire, a state seen as critical to his White House hopes. Earlier this month, Maria Comella, a longtime Christie aide, departed the governor’s official office to take a senior position at his political action committee. A Christie spokeswoman, Samantha Smith, declined to comment. The governor’s aides have previously said that he isn’t likely to launch his presidential campaign until the New Jersey legislature finalizes the state budget — expected to be around the end of June. The announcement will mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous political career. After defeating a Democratic incumbent in 2009, Christie established himself as the GOP’s foremost rising star — a swaggering, tell-it-like-it-is pol who seemed to be the antidote for a party that was struggling to win over voters in blue states. In the years since, however, Christie’s national prospects have been damaged — especially by the revelations that his top aides concocted a plan to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge in an act of political retribution against a local mayor who refused to endorse the governor’s 2013 reelection bid. Christie’s once-stratospheric poll numbers — both nationally and in his home state — have since plummeted. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released on Tuesday showed Christie with just a 30 percent approval rating in New Jersey, while a Suffolk University poll showed him winning the support of only 5 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire. But Christie’s aides insist there’s room for him in the 2016 field. With Jeb Bush struggling to distance himself from the rest of the pack, they say, the lane for an establishment candidate remains open. Aides to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is also contemplating a run, have put forward a similar argument for his potential candidacy. The hope, Christie’s team says, is that his authentic, tell-it-like-it-is political brand will style will shine through, both on the debate stage — Republicans are preparing to hold their first primary debate in August — and in New Hampshire. The state has a history of breaking for moderate, independent-minded Republican candidates, and Christie has been a frequent visitor there. Those familiar with his early planning for a 2016 bid say he’s prepared to make it the cornerstone of his electoral strategy. In anticipation of his announcement, Christie has been hopscotching the country in recent weeks, attending Republican cattle calls in Oklahoma City, Utah and Washington, D.C., where he delivered fiery speeches castigating a Republican rival, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, over national security. “If you want to know how little [senators] know, watch what Rand Paul’s done the last two weeks,” Christie told Republican donors at a conference in Deer Valley, Utah, hosted by Mitt Romney, referring to Paul’s opposition to the Patriot Act. “Because I will tell you, he’s made America weaker and more vulnerable, and he’s done it for his own personal and political gain, and he’s done it to raise money.” Christie has also delivered speeches in early primary states in which he’s detailed his policy proposals on issues like entitlements, taxes, and electronic surveillance. In addition to building a campaign apparatus, Christie has also hired for a super PAC, America Leads, that will be supporting his candidacy. The group recently announced that it had brought on Gene Ulm, a veteran Republican pollster, and Mike Leavitt, a mail consultant. While Christie won’t be nearly as heavily funded as Bush — whose super PAC is believed to have brought in around $100 million so far — the New Jersey governor has a team of donors that includes Home Depot CEO Ken Langone and hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller. Both are expected to write big checks. (“I am going to work my ass off to make sure that Chris Christie never needs money,” Langone told POLITICO in January.) Earlier this month, Christie dropped another hint that he was nearing a run. While campaigning in New Hampshire, the governor said that his family — one of the last major hurdles to his entering the race — was on board. “This is about me now,” he said. *Chris Christie’s approval rating: 30 percent <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/poll-chris-christie-approval-rating-30-percent-119316.html> // Politico // Nick Gass – June 23, 2015 * New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is still not winning any favor with Garden State voters, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind poll released Tuesday. Christie, who is in the midst of planning a presidential run, has an approval rating of 30 percent, below what is usually expected for a White House hopeful in his own state, where 55 percent disapprove of his performance. His numbers are down from the last FDU poll in April, in which 36 percent of voters approved of the job he was doing, compared to 50 percent who did not. “The good news is that none of his potential presidential opponents have emerged with a decisive lead yet. The bad news is that he is the governor in a state where a sizable majority give a thumbs down to his leadership,” said Krista Jenkins, professor of political science and director of PublicMind. Christie’s job approval numbers are similar to those of fellow Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose Louisiana electorate has shown disapproval with that presidential aspirant as well. A plurality of Garden State voters (42 percent) said that they like Christie less than when he first took office. A plurality of Republican voters (38 percent) said the same thing. At the same time, 41 percent said their opinion of him was unchanged, well within the margin of error. Voters also disapproved of the job their state legislature is doing, 24 percent approving to 44 percent disapproving. The poll was conducted June 15-21, surveying 792 registered voters via landline and cellphone, with an overall margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.7 percentage points. *Watch Chris Christie’s Approval Rating Free Fall in One Chart* <http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/watch-chris-christie-s-approval-rating-free-fall-in-one-chart>* // Bloomberg // Andrew Feather – June 23, 2015* Gov. Chris Christie demonstrated his political strength in 2013, winning 60 percent of the vote and maintaining his strength in public opinion polls. That, however, didn't last long. His approval rating soon went into free fall as the "Bridgegate" investigation ramped up, along with other allegations, such as those made by the mayor of Hoboken on Hurricane Sandy funds. Christie's approval rating is now at a record low 30 percent, which is six percent less than the lowest approval rating of his predecessor, Jon Corzine, according to the October 2009 edition of the Farleigh Dickinson University Public Mind Poll. Christie may seem to be in a uniquely difficult position for a presidential run, but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's approval rating fell to just 41 percent in April, according to a Marquette University Law School Poll, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who is announcing his 2016 decision on Wednesday, had an approval rating of 31 percent in April, according to a poll by Southern Media Research Group. *Christie’s home-state support sinks to new depths <http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/christies-home-state-support-sinks-new-depths> // MSNBC // Steve Benen – June 23, 2015 * Every presidential candidate wants to be able to brag about the home-state support he or she enjoys. It makes sense – a policymaker’s constituents had an opportunity to see his or her work up close. The more those voters were impressed, the more a White House hopeful can ride a wave of popularity onto the national stage. But as the 2016 race unfolds, a “home-state haters” problem is kicking in. Louisianans, for example, have soured on Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). Marylanders aren’t at all excited about former Gov. Martin O’Malley’s (D) presidential campaign. And in New Jersey, the bottom has fallen out on Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) support. Last month, a Monmouth University poll put the Republican governor’s approval rating at just 35%. This morning, Politico reports an even lower number. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is still not winning any favor with Garden State voters, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind poll released Tuesday. Christie, who is in the midst of planning a presidential run, has an approval rating of 30 percent, below what is usually expected for a White House hopeful in his own state, where 55 percent disapprove of his performance. His numbers are down from the last FDU poll in April, in which 36 percent of voters approved of the job he was doing, compared to 50 percent who did not. In case it’s not obvious, 30% is a dreadful number. It’s the kind of approval rating a politician will find difficult to explain away when he’s seeking a promotion. In fact, it’s arguably the kind of number that should keep Christie out of the race. The beleaguered governor has prepared all kinds of answers to dismiss his many problems – the scandals, the downgrades, the pension mess, the policy missteps – but there is no talking point that can adequately explain a 30% approval rating. There are only laughable excuses. Last month, Fox’s Megyn Kelly reminded the governor that two-thirds of his own constituents do not believe he’d be a good president. Christie replied, in reference to New Jersey residents, “They want me to stay. A lot of those people that 65 percent want me to stay. I’ve heard that from lots of people at town hall meetings, ‘Don’t leave,’ and ‘Don’t run for president because we want you to stay.’” There’s a point at which the line between arrogance and delusion blurs. As we talked about at the time, the notion that New Jersey voters are so in love with Christie that they can’t bear the thought of him moving to the White House is plainly silly. Garden State voters are being asked if they approve of Christie, not whether they hope to keep him in Trenton. *Christie Backs Haley on Confederate Flag <http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/06/23/christie-finally-talks-confederate-flag.html?via=twitter_page> // Daily Beast // June 23, 2015* Chris Christie finally broke his silence on the Confederate flag in a statement to The Daily Beast on Tuesday. "Governor Haley has demonstrated what it means to be a leader during extremely difficult and tragic times for her state and our country. I commend Governor Haley for her decision to remove the flag from the grounds of the state capitol," Christie, the last presidential candidate to stay mum on the issue, said. "While this is a necessary step towards addressing a divisive symbol of racism in our country, this step will mean little if we do not also honestly confront and discuss the fact that these murders were born out of ugly hate and racism. That is what we must stand up against and fight even more than any symbol; it is long overdue that we not only shine a light on and condemn the symbols of hate, but on the haters themselves as well." *OTHER* *Bush leads in N.H. polls. Trump is second.* <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/poll-new-hampshire-donald-trump-jeb-bush-119324.html?hp=lc2_4>* // Politico // Nick Gass – June 23, 2015* Jeb Bush leads the crowded field of Republican presidential contenders in New Hampshire, according to a Suffolk University poll released Tuesday. Donald Trump is in second. The poll represents more good news for Bush in the Granite State, where he has led by an average of 4.2 percentage points in recent months, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Among likely Republican primary voters, former Florida Gov. Bush picked up 14 percent, while the billionaire real-estate mogul Trump grabbed 11 percent. Most respondents—29 percent—are undecided. No other candidates are in double digits, with 8 percent for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, 7 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 6 percent for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, 5 percent for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and 4 percent each for businesswoman Carly Fiorina, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “Jeb Bush continues to lead, but Donald Trump has emerged as an anti-Jeb Bush alternative in New Hampshire,” said David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University poll. “Many of those who like Trump are voting for him, and although many more dislike him, the unfavorables are split up among many other candidates. It’s the politics of plurality.” At the same time, voters are seemingly more hesitant to allow Trump on the debate stage. Asked whom they would approve if they had the opportunity to approve or deny each candidate, Trump came in 11th place, with 60 percent saying they would allow him. More than eight-in-ten (83 percent) voters said they would approve Bush, the highest percentage of any candidate. Among all likely GOP voters, 49 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, while 37 percent said they see him in a positive light. Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee sit at 2 percent, and six other Republicans are tied at 1 percent, including former New York Gov. George Pataki, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich. The poll was conducted June 18-22 among 500 likely Republican primary voters, carrying an overall margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.4 percentage points. *‘Selzer Score’ gives clarity on Republican field <http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/06/selzer-score-gives-clarity-on-republican-field-209348.html> // Politico // Hadas Gold – June 23, 2015 * Hoping to offer a more accurate read on the crowded, contentious Republican primary race, the legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer has developed an intriguing new method called the "Selzer Score." Selzer, the pollster for The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics, developed the system by giving different weights to varying criteria, including a voter's first choice (double the weight), a voter's second choice (normal weight) and candidates who a voter "could ever consider voting for" (half the weight). The weights are all added together, and that becomes the candidate's "Selzer Score." Using Selzer's method on a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of (a relatively small group of 236) GOP primary voters, National Journal's Charlie Cook found that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (77.5), Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (71) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (62.5) easily make the top three, which more or less mirrors most national polls. Where the Selzer score makes things more interesting is in the rest of the field, where candidates such as Carly Fiorina barely register nationally. "Our problem is, we have a group of people who are huddled at the bottom," Selzer said earlier this month on Bloomberg Politics. "How could we spread the field was my goal." Fiorina's Selzer score is 18.5, fourth from last, putting her 4 points above South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and even further ahead of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former New York Gov. George Pataki. Donald Trump's Selzer score is 20, putting him in the lower tier, though his "could not see supporting" score is the highest of all the candidates, at 66 percent. It's not perfect, but it probably gets closer to the true lay of the land than straightforward horse-race numbers, especially since many voters are likely to shift from their first to second (and even third or fourth) choice over the course of next six or seven months. (Voters who refuse to even consider voting for a certain candidate are certainly far less malleable.) At the very least, it's something journalists can have fun with. *2016ers embrace flag removal after hedging <http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/confederate-flag-2016-republican-candidates/index.html> // CNN // Maeve Reston – June 23, 2015 * All of a sudden, Republican presidential candidates found a position on the Confederate flag Monday. In the days after the racially-motivated massacre of nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, many of the GOP candidates tried to skirt the issue of the Confederate flag -- calling for prayer, a time for grieving, and support for the families of the nine victims. In some cases, they chided reporters for bringing up "politics" at such a sensitive time. But within seconds of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's statement that South Carolina should honor its heritage but remove the flag from state grounds -- and her pledge to use her authority to force the legislature to deal with the issue this summer -- the candidates dispensed with their maneuvering and articulated clearer positions on the flag. Jeb Bush -- who had originally noted that he sent the flag to a museum as governor of Florida, but had only vaguely called for South Carolinians to "do the right thing" -- moved quickly to define what he thought that "right thing" was. Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Scott Walker, had all insisted that the aftermath of the tragedy was a time to grieve, not to engage in a political debate. But on Monday afternoon, Walker tweeted that he was glad Haley was calling for removing the Confederate flag from state grounds: "I support her decision," he tweeted. Kasich, Ohio's governor, similarly said he shared Haley's view that the flag "should come down." Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had staked out the politically safe route of calling for more debate, said Monday that removing the flag was "an act of healing and unity that allows us to find a shared purpose based on the values that unify us." The next day, Rand Paul said in a radio interview with WRKO in Boston that he would vote to take down the flag were he a South Carolina legislator. And Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator, who had called for more debate during an interview with CNN Friday, released a far more forceful statement Monday after appearing with Haley and many other state officials. The Confederate flag, he said, should be taken off the Capitol grounds to deal with the issue "once and for all" after the "horrific, racially motivated shooting." The outlier among the candidates on Monday was Marco Rubio, who stuck by his original position that removal of the Confederate flag was an issue for the "people of South Carolina." "I appreciate and respect (Haley's) statement that 'This is South Carolina's statehouse, it is South Carolina's historic moment, and this will be South Carolina's decision,'" Rubio said in a statement. "I have no doubt that given how the people of South Carolina have dealt with this tragedy so far, they will continue to inspire the nation with their courage, compassion and unity." For the GOP candidates who wrestled with the issue over the past few days, the difficulty of staking out a position boiled down to this: How does a presidential candidate -- aiming to alienate as few voters as possible -- deal with the volatile stew of issues that campaigns are loathe to touch. This case set off simultaneous debates over racism, gun rights, and whether the Confederate flag can legitimately be couched as a "state's rights" issues. "This is an issue that has an exceedingly high number of threads in it. It involves race, it involves culture, it involves crime, it involves justice," said Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for President George W. Bush. "And then you have politicians who are incredibly scared of their own shadow, because they are so afraid they are going to be jumped on by what I would call the 'conserva-gensia', who don't necessarily represent real people -- whether its someone on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh." In a news cycle keyed to rapid response, Dowd added that it's very difficult for politicians "to really be thoughtful about an issue, as opposed to giving a microwaved answer." Still, the killings in Charleston happened during a period when the Republican Party is straining to expand its appeal to minorities. Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who advised George W. Bush and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, said many of the candidates missed a clear chance to show leadership by quickly stating a bold position on an issue that resonates not only with African-Americans, but with voters of all races who were horrified by Wednesday's shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. "A presidential candidate who seeks to be the nominee of the party of [President Abraham] Lincoln should be able to talk contextually and historically about this flag, about these issues, about what it once meant and what it means today," Schmidt said. "This is one of those moments where the right thing to say and do is so obvious --- and you watch, one by one by one by one, how the political calculations and maneuverings take place at the expense of doing the right thing," Schmidt said. He added: "This is something most people would regard as a pretty simple and easy thing to get right." The balance that many candidates were trying to strike, said Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to Bush, was in respecting the rights of South Carolinians to decide what to do with the flag. "There's a higher principle about the role of the federal government that runs into conflict with the raw emotions that play out after a tragedy and it squeezes Republicans," Fleischer said. "They're squeezed because the higher principle is Republican federal candidates place a lot of value in the right of states to decide these matters without federal interference -- whether it's an emotional issue like the flag, or whether it's gun rights, gay marriage" -- even nutrition standards, he said. In a politically important state like South Carolina, which will hold one of the first presidential primaries, many voters see no need for out-of-state politicians to meddle in their affairs -- as Haley obliquely stated during her press conference on Monday. Fleischer said he disagreed with those who have framed the flag issue as a test of character. "The test of character is the ability to see long term, and to know what the role of the federal government is, and should be, while also creating an environment to actually solve the problem," he said. Still, many unaligned political strategists, watching the maneuverings of the last few days were puzzled by why it took so long for candidates to parse their positions. Moments after the presidential candidates flooded Twitter with newly formed opinions about the Confederate flag following Haley's press conference, Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party, tweeted incredulously: "A president can encourage a foreign country to tear down a wall, but a presidential candidate can't encourage a state to take down a flag?" *What the GOP Lost When It Won the South <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/23/what-the-gop-lost-when-it-won-the-south.html> // Daily Beast // Matt Lewis – June 23, 2015 * As the Republican field and corporations like Wal-Mart slowly but surely distance themselves from the Confederate flag, a subplot involves a trend I’ve been documenting for a while now: How the GOP is being forced to engage in some major soul searching. The coalition the GOP assembled in order to win national elections in the latter part of the 20th century has delivered the popular vote in just one of the last six presidential elections, and it’s not realistic to expect they can win many more by relying solely on old, rural, non-college educated white men. Not only have the demographics changed—but so have a lot of attitudes. That’s not to say the way to save conservatism is to embrace liberalism—far from it. But it is to say that conservatives must shed negative stereotypes that, after all, have nothing to do with conservatism to begin with. My forthcoming book, Too Dumb to Fail, is subtitled: “How the GOP Won Elections by Sacrificing Its Ideas (And How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)” largely about how conservatives can adapt to the 21st century. Regardless of his ethnicity, I think a young urbanite who manages his stock portfolio on his smart phone and then orders an Uber should be a conservative. And he might—if when he thinks of “conservative” he pictures someone like AEI president and author Arthur Brooks. Someone who is sophisticated, tolerant, and thoroughly modern. But he won’t if he associates that word with an image of, say, a fat, intolerant redneck. (This is not to suggest many Southerners fit this description. There are many things about the South I love. But this is a stereotype.) The injection of Southerners into the Republican coalition—a coalition they ultimately came to dominate—couldn’t help but change the image of the GOP. There were racial, cultural, political, and even religious implications. Republicans captured the South, yes, but the South also captured the GOP. There were no doubt many salutary benefits to this arrangement—most obviously, an electoral boon that lasted for decades. But it also guaranteed we would eventually see a day of reckoning. First, though, some background. You’ve probably heard of The Southern Strategy, but might not know exactly what it means, or how the Republican Party allegedly employed it. The Southern Strategy, As Mike Allen defined it in the Washington Post, “described Republican efforts to use race as a wedge issue—on matters such as desegregation and busing—to appeal to white southern voters.” “The electorate is rapidly becoming less white, less rural, and better educated. Yet the GOP is still culturally synonymous with, well, white, rural, less-educated southern whites, who remain a major pillar of the party’s support.” Whether or not you accept that this was an intentional strategy, or just how things shook out, this much is true: Around 1964, the once reliably Democratic South started to become a Republican stronghold. We may differ about what this means, and about whether the GOP deserves culpability for stirring up racial animus in order to achieve it. (As Sean Trende notes, the trend actually began in the 1920s, and that long before civil rights became a hot-button political issue, “FDR performed worse in the South in every election following his 1932 election.”) In one of the chapters, Too Dumb to Fail details the many ways the so-called Southern Strategy impacted conservative policy—but the impact it had in terms of cultural signaling is among the most important, if more superficial, effects. (And here I’m not talking about overt racism, which I think we all condemn, but instead subtle cultural customs and signals that may seem out of touch in an America that is increasingly cosmopolitan.) Let’s take George W. Bush, the most successful Republican politician of the post-Southern Strategy, post-Reagan era. After losing a Congressional race, George W. Bush (possibly as a reference to a much worse George Wallace line? ) vowed “never to get out-countried again. ” This was smart politics for Bush, who ultimately went on to become President of the United States, but it helped reinforce the image of a Republicans as someone who, well, looks and talks like George W. Bush. (I realize that Texas is often considered more Western than part of the “Deep South,” but you get my point.) This brings us to today. As we all know, the demographics of the country are changing rapidly. The electorate is rapidly becoming less white, less rural, and better educated. Yet the GOP is still culturally synonymous with, well, white, rural, less-educated southern whites, who remain a major pillar of the party’s support. And so you get to the point where guys like Scott Walker and Rand Paul spend a week ducking questions about whether the Confederate flag should be flown on government property…in 2015. So here’s what the GOP has to figure it out: how do they continue to get the Bubba vote while shedding appeals to the cultural symbolism of the past? How do they sell their conservative ideas about free markets, strong national defense, and conservative family values to 21st century Americans? The seeds of this challenge were partly planted when the GOP became the de facto party of the South—with all the good and bad that that entails. And now the chickens have come to roost. As you watch Republicans scramble to address the changing political landscape—some more nimbly than others—keep in mind this is the backdrop. *GOP candidates seek distance from white supremacist group <http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/06/22/charleston-shootings-donations-presidential-candidates-steve-king/29113999/> // Des Moines Register // June 22, 2015 * Republican presidential candidates moved Monday to quickly distance themselves from the leader of a white supremacist group whose views appear to have influenced Dylann Roof, the suspect in the murders of nine African Americans at a Charleston, S.C., church. Earl Holt, who describes himself as president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates in recent years, including to four current White House contenders: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, according to news accounts and campaign-finance records. By late Monday afternoon, all four said they were donating Holt's contributions to charity. U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst and U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa and other Republican members of Congress also received donations from Holt. In 2014, Ernst received a $1,000 contribution. King has received $2,500 (five $500 contributions) since 2012, according to Federal Election Commission data. Ernst is donating that money to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, set up to aid victims' families, spokeswoman Brook Hougesen told the Register. King will donate the money to both the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund and to the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where the slayings occurred, according to a statement on his campaign website. "Our prayers are with the families and friends of those affected by this tragedy," the statement says. Cruz, who initially planned to refund the campaign contributions, later concluded the funds would be better used to help the victims' families and will contribute the $11,000 to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, his spokesman, Rick Tyler, said in a statement. Paul's leadership PAC has received $2,250 from Holt. In an email Monday, Paul's spokesman, Doug Stafford, said the PAC also is donating the contributions to the victims' fund. Santorum said he also would give away the money. "Rather than put more money back in the pockets of such an individual, my 2012 campaign committee will be donating the amount of his past donations to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund to support the victims of this tragedy," he said in a statement. "I abhor the sentiments Mr. Holt has expressed," he added. "These statements and sentiments are unacceptable. Period. End of sentence. Our campaign is about, and has always been about, uniting America, not dividing her." Walker, who has received $3,500 from Holt since 2011, will give the money to charity, his spokeswoman, AshLee Strong said. The Guardian first disclosed the Holt contributions. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group based in Alabama, has described the Council of Conservative Citizens as a "hate group." The organization's "statement of principles" includes the goal of ensuring that "the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character." The council also opposes "all efforts to mix the races of mankind." In a "manifesto" on a website linked to Roof, the murder suspect said he learned details about black-on-white crime from the Council of Conservative Citizens' website. The council has condemned the killings. In a statement posted Sunday on the council's website, Holt said it "was not surprising" that Roof credited his group for information on black-on-white crime. But he added that his organization is "hardly responsible for the actions of this deranged individual merely because he gleaned accurate information from our website." On Monday, the council's spokesman, Jared Taylor, said Holt was not granting interviews. Taylor said the shedding of donations amounted to "grandstanding" by candidates and said they were infringing on Holt's free-speech rights. "Are they really trying to deny Mr. Holt the ability to donate to campaigns?" Asked about the group's mission, Taylor said: "We don't hate anyone... We take the view that whites as a group have legitimate interests, and it's entirely good and proper that they should get together to discuss them." Holt, whose occupation is sometimes is listed as "slumlord" in federal election records, has donated more than $60,000 to GOP candidates in recent years, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Federal campaign records list Holt as living in Longview, Texas. The council is based in St. Louis, Mo., and in a 2014 article, Holt said he lived in St. Louis between 1983 and 2009. Other recipients of Holt donations include Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and Utah Rep. Mia Love, the first black Republican woman elected to the U.S. House, federal records show. As the news of Holt's ties to the council spread Monday, congressional candidates quickly announced they were dumping the contributions. Portman's aides, for instance, said they already had donated to charity the $250 that the Ohio Republican received from Holt in 2010. *OTHER 2016 NEWS* *The Best and Worst of the 2016 Campaign Merch <http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/06/best-and-worst-of-the-2016-campaign-merch.html> // NY Mag // Véronique Hyland – June 23, 2015 * Forget the 2016 candidates' political platforms — everything you need to know about them can be read in their sartorial offerings. Whether their e-store contains rumpled polos (Ted Cruz) or pantsuit T-shirts (Hillary Clinton), they're clearly very much on message. And while the merch may be as much of an electoral data-gathering mechanism as it is clothing, that doesn't mean it can't have fashion merit. While she doesn't have a full-fledged Seventh Avenue–designed collection like Obama did, Clinton definitely wins in the arena of design, not to mention cheeky copywriting — even the ad copy on a humble iced-coffee tumbler notes, "Please note: Sweet tea is also acceptable." (Way to make a play for the southern vote.) The rest are varying degrees of fashion-backward, from Rand Paul's take on athleisure to Rubio's "Marco Polo" shirt and Bernie Sanders's sub–Word Art–caliber slogan tees; Scott Walker and Rick Santorum haven't yet opened merchandise arms, so the jury is out for now. Click through the slideshow for a partisan assessment of which ones got our vote, and which ones we'd veto. *Why are so many running for president? <http://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/why-are-so-many-running-for-president/article_4454b240-1766-50a7-a1e2-586a59aceec5.html> // Philadelphia Tribune // Julian Zelizer – June 22, 2015 * Why are so many people running for president in 2016? A bunch of candidates who have thrown their hats in the ring -- Donald Trump, George Pataki, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley -- have little chance of winning, so one is left to wonder: What do they hope to achieve? If winning isn't probable, what else can primary candidates intend to accomplish? There are a number of things that candidates can achieve for themselves or their parties without actually becoming the nominee. Selling a message: Often candidates want to make sure that their party colleagues are paying attention to certain issues. They feel that the existing leadership and crop of candidates are ignoring key problems that are central to the health of the nation. There are many people in public life who find this to be enough reason to undertake a serious campaign. This was why Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota entered the Democratic primaries in 1968, with the goal of making sure that Democrats who opposed the Vietnam War had a seat at the table. As a political veteran, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont must realize that the odds of defeating Hillary Clinton are slim. Yet regardless of the outcome, he is bringing to the forefront of the party debate concerns about economic inequality, a broken political process and the rapid deterioration of the environment. Even if Sanders doesn't gain much traction in terms of actual votes, his ability to push Clinton toward dealing more squarely with these problems would be considered a victory. Mobilizing new constituencies: Sometimes losing politicians help to mobilize new constituencies into the party. Ronald Reagan did this with right-wing Southern conservatives in the 1976 Republican primaries when he challenged President Gerald Ford. Ford defeated Reagan, though barely, but Reagan brought into the party and energized conservatives who ordinarily had not voted in primaries like Texas. In 2004, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean used pioneering social media technology to attract younger liberals into the Democratic selection process. Although John Kerry won the nomination, only to lose to George W. Bush in the general election, the groups Dean energized would be central to Barack Obama's 2008 victory. Among the Republicans in 2015, Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz -- both still long shots for the victory against a Jeb Bush or a Marco Rubio -- have the possibility of reaching libertarian and social conservative Republicans who have become disaffected with the GOP over the past decade. Even if they don't win, they can bring into the party new groups of voters who can help the GOP in this and other elections, as well as their own future candidacies. Selling themselves: There are some candidates who get into the primaries these days as a vehicle for their own careers. Donald Trump, the real estate mogul and former reality television star, appears to see the selection contest as a way to advance his own fame and reputation. Running for president has been just another way to keep his name alive in the national media. Others, like Ben Carson, jump into the contest without a clear agenda or connection to broader groups. Their goal seems to be a desire to elevate their own role in the public arena. With such a vibrant world of political media, consulting and think tanks, running for president can enhance a person's stature and offer opportunities. Mike Huckabee earned himself a spot on Fox News after previous runs. With Trump, one lure may be that he has name recognition and can likely get into the first GOP debate (on Fox, limited to 10 candidates) and the first tier of the first CNN debate (the network will have a second debate for those who don't make the first cut). That is priceless national exposure. Another big outcome of a presidential run could be a vice presidential or Cabinet slot, and this must be on the minds of some of the longer shots. The visibility and stature that can come from running could enhance the appeal of a future appointment of someone like Pataki or Chris Christie. Testing the waters: For many other candidates, it is clear that winning in American politics can take several tries. Entering the primaries and caucuses is a learning experience. When Mitt Romney ran in 2008, he believed that he had a good chance for the nomination. But even when he lost, the experience helped him be a stronger candidate in 2012, when he won the nomination. Running is also an effort to solidify the credentials needed to approach campaign contributors and super PACs in future years with the hope of being a credible candidate. There are lower-key candidates, like John Kasich, Scott Walker, and Martin O'Malley, who have high aspirations in the near future but also realize that getting through the competition in 2016 can make them stronger for the next time around. The primaries and caucuses continue to serve as a powerful national forum through which to achieve a large number of goals. Particularly in an age when there is so much politically centered media, constantly covering the endless campaign and giving attention to any candidate who enters, and when super PACs can single-handedly finance campaigns, the temptations to declare for the presidency are stronger than ever. *South Carolina Dems Blast DCCC for Using Confederate Flag Issue to Fundraise <http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/23/south-carolina-dems-blast-dccc-for-using-confederate-flag-issue-to-fundraise/> // The Blaze // Kaitlyn Schallhorn – June 23, 2015 * Prominent South Carolina Democrats are speaking out against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for fundraising off the Confederate flag issue that has engulfed the country less than a week after nine parishioners were shot dead in a church. A DCCC email sent shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday asked people to vote on whether or not the Confederate flag should be removed from the South Carolina Capitol grounds, a divisive issue that was reignited in the Palmetto State after authorities say Dylann Roof, 21, attempted to start a race war by gunning down nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Once recipients of the email submit their vote on the flag, they are taken to a donation page where they’re asked to make a recurring monthly donation or a one-time $3 donation in order to receive a free “Yes, I Voted Obama” sticker in the mail. Another email, sent after 7 p.m. Tuesday, again asked recipients to vote on the flag issue and attempted to take credit for Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R-S.C.) call for the flag’s removal. FIRST: President Obama, Hillary Clinton and leaders nationwide demanded South Carolina take down the Confederate flag. THEN: 41,338 Democrats signed our grassroots petition to DEMAND South Carolina take down the Confederate flag. NOW: The South Carolina Governor has responded to our demands. She just called on South Carolina legislators to act! “I have a great deal of respect for the DCCC, but this is just an inappropriate time to be raising money off of this,” Bakari Sellers, an influential South Carolina Democrat and former state House member, told TheBlaze. “We haven’t even had our first funeral.” Sellers, who does support the removal of the Confederate flag, is an attorney who was first elected to the state House at age 22. In an email to TheBlaze, Antjuan Seawright, political advisor to the South Carolina Senate Democrats, said he has also asked for the DCCC to cease the emails. Seawright said Senator Clementa Pinckney, who died in the shooting, was a friend. One of the emails sent out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee using the Confederate flag issue in South Carolina to solicit donations. One of the emails sent by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee using the Confederate flag issue in South Carolina to solicit donations. State Democrats responded to the email blasts on social media as well. Jamie Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democrats, said in a tweet that he has asked for the DCCC to stop the fundraising campaign. Tyler Jones, political director and spokesman for the South Carolina House Democrats, also spoke out about the DCCC’s email. Despite the DCCC’s claim in the email blast, Hillary Clinton has remained relatively mum on the Confederate flag issue this go around — she spoke out against the flag in 2007 during her first bid for president — except for a single tweet after Haley’s Monday afternoon press conference. In fact, while addressing the Charleston tragedy in San Francisco on Sunday, the 2016 presidential hopeful spoke of the country’s purported problem with gun violence and racism — but made no mention of the flag. Clinton’s campaign also remained silent Monday after images of Clinton-Gore 1992 campaign paraphernalia featuring the Confederate flag cropped up on social media. The DCCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheBlaze. *TOP NEWS* *DOMESTIC* *Obama Ordering Changes in U.S. Hostage Policies <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/world/obama-ordering-changes-in-us-hostage-policies.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0> // NYT // Julie Hirschfeld Davis – June 23, 2015 * President Obama on Wednesday will announce that the government will no longer threaten criminal prosecution of the families of American hostages who are held abroad by groups like the Islamic State if they attempt to pay ransom for the release of their loved ones. The change is one of many that are intended to fix what the administration has acknowledged is a broken policy on United States captives, a senior administration official said. In a presidential directive and an executive order, Mr. Obama also plans to make clear that while he is keeping a longstanding federal prohibition against making concessions to those who take hostages, the government can communicate and negotiate with captors holding Americans or help family members seeking to do so in order to ensure their safe return. American officials negotiated a swap to win the freedom of Bowe Bergdahl from his captors in Afghanistan, trading five Taliban detainees held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But they have told the families of Islamic State and Al Qaeda hostages that the “no-concessions” policy prevented them even from talking about potential terms of release in those cases, and warned that relatives could face criminal charges for offering ransoms themselves. At times, families were given conflicting messages, as in the case of Theo Padnos, who was held by the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda for nearly two years before his release last summer. His mother, Nancy Curtis, has said the State Department threatened her with prosecution should she attempt to pay a ransom, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation offered to help her execute the transaction. The Department of Justice “does not intend to add to the families’ pain in such cases by suggesting they could face criminal prosecution,” a report describing the changes will say, according to the official familiar with it, who would detail it only on the condition of anonymity ahead of Mr. Obama’s public statement. The announcement will be the culmination of a wide-ranging review ordered by Mr. Obama in December on how the government treats hostages captured overseas. The phenomenon has emerged as a particularly wrenching one during his presidency with the rise of the Islamic State, whose kidnappings for ransom and videotaped beheadings of captives have focused public attention on the issue. Family members of American hostages who have been vocal critics of Mr. Obama’s policy, some of whom were interviewed extensively as part of the review, are scheduled to be briefed on the recommendations on Tuesday. The families have complained that the United States policy on their cases was confusing, and they said they felt bullied, neglected and trapped in a bureaucratic vortex of low-level officials with clashing agendas and conflicting information. Some have talked about what they considered the ultimate indignity: being threatened by officials of their own government if they tried to muster ransom in an attempt to free their family member. Among those facing such warnings was Diane Foley, the mother of the American journalist James Foley whose videotaped killing by a militant of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, was widely circulated on the Internet. As the review has drawn to a close, Mr. Obama has increasingly met in person with those most familiar with the issues it is seeking to address. He met briefly with Ms. Foley in April, when she visited Washington to talk with the review team, led by the National Counterterrorism Center. And during a visit to Miami in May, he met with the parents of Steven J. Sotloff, another American journalist held with Mr. Foley, who was also killed. Those deaths dramatized the dilemma inherent in the American “no-concessions” policy toward hostage-takers, which stands in stark contrast to many European countries that routinely pay ransoms for captives. American officials have said doing so would reward and enrich kidnappers, both emboldening them and enabling them to capture more United States citizens. By taking the executive action, the president is acknowledging that the prohibition has created confusion inside and outside the government, sometimes handcuffing officials charged with recovering captives or their families. The overhaul notably does not include a move urged by family members and some lawmakers to create a high-level hostage czar who would report directly to the White House and have primary responsibility, across the federal government, for freeing American captives. Instead, it creates an interagency hostage recovery “fusion cell” to be headquartered at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which would include a senior-level “family engagement coordinator” to support relatives and keep them informed. In addition, Mr. Obama will create a new White House team to oversee hostage policy, and appoint a special envoy at the State Department to lead the government’s contacts with foreign nations on hostage issues. A new “issue manager” in the intelligence community will coordinate hostage-related intelligence, including working “systematically and proactively” to declassify information that could be shared with captives’ family members. The report will say that “whenever possible, families will receive more information, faster, on their loved ones and the efforts to recover them,” an official said. That was one of the principal requests by the relatives of hostages and former hostages, who said they had come to detest the phrase “We’re doing everything we can,” doled out, they said, as government officials kept them in the dark about crucial details of their family members’ situations. Mr. Obama will acknowledge many of those problems and seek to confront them in part by creating a small family engagement team with a coordinator who would serve as a point of contact for relatives to the fusion cell and be a part of the White House hostage policy team. The report will say that officials should “clearly and accurately articulate to families what efforts the United States government is undertaking to locate and recover their loved ones.” Under the new policy, all government officials who interact with hostages’ families must also receive specialized training on the dynamics of hostage-taking, its impact on victims’ relatives and how to support both current and recovered hostages and their families. *Amazon to Remove Confederate Flag Items, Following eBay and Others <http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/23/amazon-to-remove-confederate-flag-items-following-ebay-and-others/> // WSJ // Greg Bensinger – June 23, 2015 * Amazon.com will remove merchandise depicting the Confederate battle flag, according to a person familiar with the matter. The online store joined other national retailers that have banned the symbol following the killings of a nine African-Americans in South Carolina. EBay, Sears and Wal-Mart also have vowed to remove from their stores some merchandise that depicts the flag. Pressure has mounted on retailers to stop the sale of the flag after it was discovered that Dylann Roof, the alleged shooter in South Carolina, had a Confederate vanity license plate on his car and displayed the flag in photographs on social media sites. In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley called for the removal of the flag from the statehouse grounds, though the legislature has not yet agreed to take it down. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said he asked the state attorney general to take steps to halt the sale of license plates featuring the flag. Drawing a line around goods deemed to be offensive can be tricky. Amazon’s policy, which is posted on the site, says it doesn’t allow the sale of “products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.” However, the site has long permitted the sale of Confederate flag merchandise. EBay has a similar policy but allows the sale of some Nazi-related merchandise, noting its historical significance. The retailer said it prohibited the sale of goods that “amount to Nazi propaganda.” Shoppers on the site can find currency, stamps and model kits that feature the swastika symbol. EBay said it would begin today removing some merchandise from its site. “We have decided to prohibit Confederate flags and many items containing this image, because we believe it has become a contemporary symbol of divisiveness and racism,” said an eBay spokeswoman. Reggie VandenBosch, vice president of sales for Valley Forge Flag Co., which sells Confederate flags among other items, said Amazon had not informed him of its decision, but he said the site’s ban would not make a big business impact. “They have the perfect right to do it,” said Mr. VandenBosch. “The market is so very small compared to the American flag, I really don’t even think about the Confederate flag.” *Dems weigh last-ditch move to sink trade bill <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/democrats-last-ditch-move-sink-trade-bill-worker-aid-119348.html> // Politico // Lauren French and John Bresnahan – June 23, 2015 * With the Senate poised to clear a high-profile trade bill sought by President Barack Obama, the onus is shifting back to House Democrats. And the big decision they’re wrestling with is this: whether to vote against a related worker aid program they’ve long supported in a last-ditch bid to derail fast-track. It’s the second time in as many weeks they face that choice, but the stakes are dramatically higher this time. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) have yet to say how they will vote when the House takes up Trade Adjustment Authority legislation, which could happen as early as this week as part of a bill to expand trade with Africa. If House Democrats vote against TAA and it’s defeated a second time, it would put Obama in the awkward position of deciding whether to sign a fast-track bill without government help Democrats say is essential for workers whose jobs move overseas because of free trade. Obama appeared at a fundraiser for House Democrats on Friday in San Francisco, and both the White House and the California Democrat insist their relationship is fine. But Democrats opposed to the president’s trade initiative will be watching Pelosi for signs on how they should vote on the TAA measure, which Obama wants. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) walks with others to a vote on Trade Promotion Authority on Capitol Hill June 12, 2015 in Washington, DC. The House of Representatives voted down a bill that will could effect the fast tracking of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Republican leaders separated the fast-track bill, known as Trade Promotion Authority, from TAA as a way to isolate House Democrats and stop them from using worker aid as a bargaining chip. That strategy appears to be on the brink of succeeding, after the Senate voted Tuesday to advance TPA with an assurance from GOP leaders that they’d take up TAA in subsequent votes. Now House Democrats will have to choose whether to try and block worker aid again, even though the fast-track bill is likely to become law regardless. Critics have said doing so would be tantamount to punishing laid-off workers because Democrats lost the bigger political fight. The uncertainty among House Democratic leaders about how to proceed underscores how divisive trade has become within the party, and how bent labor and progressives are to defeat the fast-track bill. The Senate is expected to approve the aid measure this week and Obama has been courting lawmakers aggressively for their support. Hoyer, who broke with Pelosi and the majority of other Democrats to back TAA earlier this month, said Tuesday he wouldn’t “speculate” on which way he would vote until the Senate sends the House a worker assistance bill. “We haven’t seen the TAA [bill] yet,” Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday. The Senate isn’t expected to have a final vote on TAA until later this week. “I am not going to speculate until we see the bill.” When pressed by reporters — a half-dozen times in total — Hoyer declined to offer any further clue about how he would vote. Pelosi’s office said she’s discussing the issue with fellow Democrats. A Democratic leadership aide said Pelosi, who voted against both TAA and fast-track, wouldn’t decide until after a Democratic Caucus meeting on Wednesday. Senior Democrats are also gathering Tuesday evening for two leadership meetings that will focus on the trade vote. When the trade package hit the House floor two weeks ago, Pelosi refused to say how she planned to vote until right before the voting started, when she announced her opposition. The majority of House Democrats opposed both bills after unions made the trade votes a litmus test. It’s unclear how aggressively unions will target members on a standalone aid bill, but top activists like the AFL-CIO and the Coalition to Stop Fast Track have linked the fast track and TAA votes over the past week, slamming Democrats who back either measure. Pelosi and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke over the weekend about the upcoming TAA vote, according to a Democratic leadership aide. Unions kept pressure up on senators early this week with protests at the district offices of wavering Democrats. The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union had planned events in California, Delaware, Florida and Maryland to ratchet up pressure on Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Bill Nelson and Ben Cardin, among others. The White House hasn’t ruled out signing a fast-track bill without a separate worker assistance measure but Obama has said he strongly prefers that both bills become law. But if House Democrats sink TAA again in order to register their opposition to the larger trade agenda, it could force Obama to decide whether to sign one without the other. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a trade pact supporter, said last week that the president has indicated he will sign TPA before Congress passes TAA, in order to remove any incentive for Democrats to vote against the worker aid program again. The overwhelming majority of House Democrats were opposed to granting Obama “fast track authority” to help hash out the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade package that would include the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations. But Republicans and pro-trade Democrats are hoping that once the Senate passes fast-track, Democrats will blink and allow the aid bill to move forward to protect workers. *Obamacare repeal still vexes GOP <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/obamacare-repeal-gop-issues-119308.html> // Politico // Rachel Bade – June 23, 2015 * Republicans for months have been planning to use a fast-track budget procedure to extend Obamacare subsidies if the Supreme Court strikes them down — all while completely gutting the underlying law. But just days before the court’s ruling, the party is still grappling with the question of how much of the law to repeal, in part because of its exorbitant cost. The plan to use the expedited procedure — called reconciliation — is in flux as lawmakers realize they would have to come up with hundreds of billions in spending cuts to pay for a full repeal of Obamacare. And some Republicans aren’t sure they want to go there. A new cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office underscored the magnitude of the task: The budget scorekeeper last Friday said a full Obamacare repeal would add $353 billion to the deficit over the next decade. That price tag jeopardizes the GOP plan to use the expedited legislative process for a full repeal because any bill that uses the fast-track procedure, such as subsidy extensions followed by a fuller repeal, must reduce — not increase — the deficit. That means Republicans will either have to forgo part of the Obamacare repeal they’ve promised for years — threatening to peel away the conservative support needed to pass their Plan B; or they’ll have to expand their package to include budget cuts to things like education, in order to pay for a fuller repeal. The latter could meet opposition from moderates or vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in 2016. “They could still repeal major elements of the ACA and offset with other provisions to meet the net figure, but for the love of me I don’t know what those offsets would be unless it were tax increases, which obviously would not be considered,” said Bill Hoagland, longtime GOP budget expert who has advised Republicans on how the process works. Republicans, after all, have been unable to agree on the needed $60 billion to patch up crumbling roads and bridges over the next several years. Policy writers in the House and Senate face a conundrum: They’ll have to walk a very tight rope between appeasing conservatives — despite the growing cost of repeal announced last week — and ensuring they don’t alienate moderate Republicans who fear leaving constituents without a viable alternative to help pay for health care. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The nation’s highest court will deliver its verdict any day now, which could constitute the biggest blow to Obamacare yet, stripping 6 million of their Obamacare subsidies and leaving them unable to afford coverage. Republicans in both chambers are coalescing around a plan to continue Obamacare subsides for a time to ensure millions don’t lose the means to pay for coverage. “While Republicans did not create this mess, we are ready, we are willing, and we are able to do our best to protect the American people from any more harm caused by the president’s flawed law,” said No. 2 Senate Republican leader John Cornyn (R-Texas) on the Senate floor Monday, adding that the plan “will empower the states to opt out of Obamacare, allowing them the flexibility to more effectively lower costs and increase choices … [and] promote market-based options without the threat of harmful, onerous, expensive mandates.” But a major unanswered question is what to do after the so-called bridge period ends. Should the reconciliation bill commit to repealing as much as possible under budget rules thereafter? Or will Republicans keep some of the Medicaid expansion, Medicare savings and taxes? The Confederate flag is seen next to the monument of the victims of the Civil War in Columbia, South Carolina on June 20, 2015. The racially divisive Confederate battle flag flew at full-mast despite others flying at half-staff in South Carolina after the killing of nine black people in an historic African-American church in Charleston on June 17. Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white male suspected of carrying out the Emanuel African Episcopal Methodist Church bloodbath, was one of many southern Americans who identified with the 13-star saltire in red, white and blue. A House GOP leadership staffer said they’re interested in repealing as much as possible under reconciliation rules, though a plan discussed last week included only a partial repeal. “Obviously, we wouldn’t be moving an Obamacare replacement without repealing the law too, so that’s a given,” the aide said. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has backed a contingency plan by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that would simply repeal the mandates. Meanwhile, presidential candidates Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are tacking right, pouring cold water on extending subsidies without a full repeal. And as soon as this week, a group of 25 conservative Senate Republicans are preparing to send McConnell a letter urging him to include a full repeal “in any legislation considered pursuant to the reconciliation instructions” in the budget. “This letter is to affirm our shared commitment to repealing the Affordable Care Act, and to use every procedural tool at our disposal to repeal Obamacare at the earliest possible opportunity,” the letter reads, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO. “The American people expect and deserve no less from the new Republican Congress they elected last fall.” But whether that’s even possible is up for debate, especially considering the CBO’s new report. Repealing the individual and employer mandates as well as all the other Obamacare taxes and fees would cost more than $1.1 trillion. Eliminating the Medicare savings also included in ACA would tack on another nearly $879 billion. According to the new score, Republicans can save $822 billion over a decade by repealing subsidies and $824 billion more if they repeal the Medicaid and CHIP expansions — but at least some Senate Republicans have shown they’re a bit squeamish about doing so without providing an alternative. “The political rationale behind the need to do a Burwell response presumably suggests that the GOP would pay a cost if it simply repealed the subsidies or if it also repealed Medicaid expansion,” said one staunch conservative Senate aide who thinks the logic is flawed. Another option being discussed includes finding savings outside of health care to offset the cost of a larger repeal, such as education cuts. But that could be like searching for pennies under couch cushions since lawmakers have already cut to the bone in recent years. *Meet the Diehard Right Wingers Who Just Can’t Quit Obamacare <http://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/conservatives-obamacare-scotus-subsidies-arizona> // TPM // Gus Garcia-Roberts – June 23, 2015 * In the day I meet Steve Pierce, his forehead is raw and glistening from just having been blasted by liquid nitrogen, treatment for the skin cancer which seems to ail virtually every old sun-blasted rancher like him. “Feels like just about the world’s worst ice cream headache,” he complains. We’re driving his giant red GMC Yukon SUV from Prescott, Arizona, the idyllic desert mountain town where Barry Goldwater announced his 1964 run for president, to Pierce’s ranch 30 minutes away, where plump cattle graze on bleached, windblown grass next to the little chapel where his daughter was married. The sprawling property is called Las Vegas Ranch, and it’s been in the Pierce family longer than the gambling town has been around. A Republican lifer in Wranglers and cowboy boots, Pierce is his party’s old school ideal: a self-sufficient small business owner living off the land, growing steaks for people who can afford them. He’s also a prominent Arizona state senator, formerly president of the senate and majority whip. So it’s somewhat surprising that he has invited me to his home district in order to sell me on the benefits of Obamacare. Here in Yavapai County, most everybody you’ll meet is Republican. In 2012, Mitt Romney received nearly two votes here to each of Obama’s. And yet in this rural red county in a very red state, it’s only taken a couple of years for federally-subsidized health care to quietly seep into the hinges of everyday life and governance. The rate of signups for the program in the county has nearly doubled from 2014, when 22 percent of the area’s potential market share signed up for a plan through the federal exchange, to March 2015, when 43 percent did, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The latter figure ranks the county sixth among 54 areas in the state in percentage of the potential market share which has signed up, outranking far more liberal areas in Arizona. This is what Obamacare Country looks like. After a Supreme Court ruling in 2012 that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, the ACA is once again in danger of being undercut in court. In King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit on the legality of federal health care subsidies in Arizona and 33 other states that have not set up their own healthcare exchanges. Before the end of June, 6.4 million Americans could lose subsidies across the country, according to data from Kaiser, including 126,506 in Arizona, where roughly 77 percent of those who have signed up for the ACA receive subsidies. The possibility that the country’s highest court could kneecap the ACA has Republicans strategizing feverishly, and often at odds with each other, about how to lessen the backlash from millions of Americans who would have to pay more or lose health care coverage. In Arizona, Republican Governor Doug Ducey has pre-emptively dug in his heels, signing a law designed to prevent the state from setting up its own exchange in order to keep ACA subsidies coming in. Yavapai County acts as a pop.-200,000 lab slide of a phenomenon occurring in conservative regions around the country, where party politics have been pitted against everyday pragmatism, often resulting in spectacular GOP infighting. In this rural red county, it’s only taken a couple of years for the ACA to seep into the hinges of everyday life. Ducey’s predecessor, Jan Brewer, was once the darling of the right wing, including for her harsh stance on health care. In 2011, she helped close a budget gap by slashing Medicaid eligibility in the state. But she stepped into the conservative maw less than two years later when she began to push for Obamacare-funded Medicaid expansion. “Jesus had Judas,” Maricopa County Republican Committee chairman A.J. LaFaro testified at the time. “Republicans have Governor Brewer.” When Pierce backed up the governor with a vote in the state senate, he became a magnet for the ire of conservatives. The powerful conservative group Americans for Prosperity, backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, listed him in its “Hall of Shame” for his “disgusting” act of “betrayal.” County Republicans voted to censure him, a largely symbolic gesture of scorn. Brewer, whose gubernatorial term expired in January, says she still has “the scars on my back” from clashing with Arizona’s Republican hardliners. “We have some really, really—I don’t even know if they’re right wing Republicans, they’re libertarians,” she tells me in an interview in a downtown Phoenix law office. “They’re anarchists. And they’re mean!” Probably no Republican politician in Arizona has poked the far-right flank of the party with quite as much abandon as State Senator Steve Pierce. Once an invited speaker at Tea Party rallies and the owner of about five dozen guns, Pierce agreed with Arizona’s notorious Senate Bill 1070 that forced aliens to carry registration documents, and he is a climate change skeptic. (“I tend to just believe we’re in a severe drought,” he told me.) Yet despite these conservative bona fides, he lost the senate presidency after clashes with the party and was censured by Republicans for his support of federally-funded health care. Pierce’s bouts with his own party have been legion: He’s voted against a bill which allowed private property owners to build their own gun ranges; last year, he asked then-Gov. Brewer to veto a polemic "religious freedom" bill allowing Arizona business owners to discriminate against gays, after he had initially voted for it; and this March, he helped kill a bill that would’ve allowed Arizonans to carry guns into public buildings, such as courthouses or schools. After one such standoff with fellow Republicans—over his vote with Democrats on an amendment requiring background checks for purchases at gun shows—Pierce says he “told them all to go fuck themselves” and bolted to his ranch, where he was deluged with angry emails from pro-gun activists around the country. Ideologically, Pierce is opposed to federally subsidized health care, which he believes is a government “intrusion” and part of a “huge overreach in federal power” under Obama. But in 2013 when Brewer introduced her plan to expand Medicaid with ACA funds, Pierce seems to have taken a surprising tack: He gauged his constituency. His was an aging district with a retiree town for a county seat—the median age in Prescott is around 54—with a financially failing community hospital and a jail overrun with the mentally ill. He says he decided that voting for Medicaid expansion was “the right thing to do. I don’t represent the people on the far right, or the Republicans. I represent everybody who lives out here.” Steve Pierce on the way to his ranch Pierce didn’t stand alone; 14 out of the state’s 15 sheriffs, nine of whom were Republican, backed the expansion. One of those sheriffs was Yavapai County’s Scott Mascher, whose own conservative bona fides include vowing not to enforce federal gun control laws, but who argued that the Medicaid expansion would help reduce recidivism and length of stays for mentally ill prisoners. (The lone holdout among the sheriffs was Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who that year was busy losing a federal lawsuit that accused him of racial profiling in targeting Latinos during traffic stops.) The expansion of Medicaid, following the Arizona legislature’s deep cuts to who was eligible for the state health care program, was a lifeline for dozens of hospitals and medical centers which were in danger of closing because so many uninsured people could not pay. After Obamacare coverage went into effect in January 1, 2014, hundreds of thousands of residents—including those with new Medicaid cards and people with subsidized private insurance—could suddenly pay their bills. If the Supreme Court rules that federal subsidies are unconstitutional for enrollees in the 34 states without their own exchanges, the loss of health care for up to 126,506 Arizona residents will have a domino effect on health providers in the area. While only subsidies for private insurance are at stake in Burwell, people in Arizona worry that the loss of that revenue will hit clinics hard and threaten some of them with closure, limiting access to health care for everyone, including Medicaid recipients. It’s an issue driven home at, of all places, the bleak Yavapai County Jail. Sheriff’s office captain David Rhodes shows me the mental health unit, home to mentally ill prisoners who have committed minor crimes akin to vagrancy. According to Rhodes, that has included a homeless man who spent a six-month stint here for defecating in a Prescott bush simply because, with the dismal state of available mental health facilities at the time, there was nowhere else to send him. “For us in law enforcement, it really comes down to common sense.” Now that health care coverage is more widespread, Rhodes has implemented a surprisingly progressive program, designed to get mentally ill prisoners back to state-deemed competency and their jail time diverted to private outside mental health care agencies. Rhodes, who is Republican, says his months-old approach relies on an intact Affordable Care Act, and that cutting subsidies would create a chain reaction resulting in private mental health agencies dipping back into the red and in many cases cutting services. “Ideologically, it’s a controversial issue,” Rhodes says of Obamacare. “But for us in law enforcement it really comes down to common sense. What kind of services are available for people who are mentally ill? It wasn’t as if by not allowing them to have coverage those people went away.” Laura Norman of the West Yavapai Guidance Clinic, a 16-bed operation which takes many of Rhodes’s released prisoners, says the local mental health community will be watching the SCOTUS decision closely. “We actually have a very good idea of what will happen, because we’ve seen it before,” says Norman. “People who don’t need to be in jail will be in jail. Psychiatric issues will go unaddressed. People who don’t need to go to the ER will be in the ER. There are many people who are functioning extremely well in our community who will no longer be able to do that.” At the moment, Arizona receives $145 million in active grants through the ACA, part of which goes to funding clinicians in rural areas. The only hospital within 90 miles of Prescott, and the county’s biggest employer, is the not-for-profit Yavapai Regional Medical Center West. Its Republican CEO, John Amos, is a buff former physical therapist who worked his way up the hospital’s ranks to his top position. Like the other hospital chiefs represented by the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, Amos lobbied for the passage of Medicaid expansion. Amos told Pierce, in convincing him of the importance of the expansion, that in the two years after childless adults were disqualified from Arizona’s Medicaid program in July 2011, uncompensated care at the hospital—the all-important rate of bills that aren’t getting paid—had rocketed from 3.5 percent to 8.5 percent. Without enough patients on private health care plans and revenue plummeting, the hospital had to cut more than 100 fulltime positions. Pierce says Amos was concerned that he might have to close the maternity ward and the cardiac unit. Only 13 other Republican lawmakers in Arizona—nine state representatives and four senators—joined Pierce in voting for Brewer’s plan to expand Medicaid. But the numbers have been favorable to Pierce. Amos, the CEO of the local hospital, says that uncompensated care has dipped back to around 3.5 percent, close to what it was in 2011 before the Arizona legislature pushed childless adults off of Medicaid. No longer are there threats of closing medical wards. And then there’s this figure: 98.38 percent, Pierce’s take of the vote in 2014, his most recent bid for re-election, when rival Republicans couldn’t find anybody to run against him. Pierce will be term-limited out of the senate next year, his eighth, and has no plans to continue his political career by jumping to Arizona’s House of Representatives, mostly because he’s weary of battling the right wing fringe: “There’s twice as many crazy people in the House.” Given the political costs, it doesn’t surprise me that Pierce and Brewer are the only Republican politicians in favor of Arizona’s Medicaid expansion—and by proxy, Obamacare—who agree to speak to me, even after I repeatedly email and call every state rep and senator who voted for it. But it is the evasive nature of their constituents, those everyday Republican Arizonans who have signed up for private insurance through the ACA, that really catches me off guard. Simple math suggests there are a good number of them: In 2012, just over 100,000 citizens of Yavapai County voted in the presidential election, with more than 64,000 of those opting for Romney. In the same county, 8,846 people signed up for the ACA at the last open enrollment. I came to Arizona wanting to know: Who were these people, and how did they feel about the prospect of their newly affordable health care wiped away with a Supreme Court decision? But these are not the sort of people who write letters to the editor of their local newspapers. I know because I scoured back issues of Prescott’s The Daily Courier, where letters from the populace included one titled “Obamacare lies are Hitler-esque” but none from self-identifying Republicans expressing their first-hand experiences with the program. And these are not the sort of people who reach out to organizations like Families USA, which is building a story bank of Americans in danger of losing their ACA subsidies. “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” Rhodes tells me when I ask him if he knows of any regular Republican Joes getting their coverage through Obamacare subsidies. “It’s not the sort of thing people want to talk about.” “It sounds like you have your work cut out for you,” writes Barry Denton, president of the Yavapai Republican Men’s Forum. “I personally do not know of any Republican that has signed up for the Affordable Care Act. I truly believe most try to avoid it.” The owner of the best Indian restaurant in Prescott is also no help. I’m failed by the bartender at the town square saloon. The League of Women Voters of Central Yavapai County hangs up on me. The Highway 69 Republican Club, Republican Women of Prescott, Yavapai County Young Republicans, and a host of other such political groups—and non-political ones; I’m looking at you, Italian/American Social Club and Yavapai County Jeep Posse—ignore my overtures. The social stigma inherent in having to rely on any public subsidy and, worse, doing so through the enemy camp of Obamacare is probably why I’m striking out, says Richard Dehnert, vice mayor of Yavapai’s town of Clarksdale and community relations coordinator for a local health clinic. “It’s not the sort of thing people want to talk about,” Dehnert says. He tells me he’ll reach out to a Republican doctor friend of his who, while between jobs, signed up his wife for the ACA so that she could get care for some pre-existing conditions. I never hear from them. Phoenix-based insurance agent Steven Pettit, who bills himself as an “Obamacare expert,” says he doesn’t learn his clients’ political affiliation but that it’s not hard to tell. “Most people tend to be pretty excited to be getting covered,” Pettit says. “But a few seem to be doing it begrudgingly, like they’re almost upset to be signing up, and I’d guess those are the Republicans.” Because of the Sasquatch-like elusiveness of these characters, and their talismanic political value, when a Republican does publicly acknowledge participating in—and even appreciating—Obamacare, it tends to go viral quickly. Butch Matthews of Little Rock got his taste of Internet fame after telling ThinkProgress in 2013 that he was ecstatic with the $13,000 he was saving per year through the Affordable Care Act. Self-proclaimed “Tea Party Patriot” James Webb got heaps of attention when he made the unverifiable claim that he was voting for Hillary Clinton because he loves his Obacamare plan. Then there was the factually-porous ordeal of Luis Lang, a South Carolina Republican who the Charlotte Observer reported had refused to sign up for Obamacare but then repented after he was stricken with an affliction which threatened to make him blind. By then, the sign-up period was over, and he reportedly blamed the president for making the coverage too complicated. When I recently asked Lang about the viral article he said that he never mentioned Obama during an hour-and-a-half interview with the Observer, and is only a registered Republican because “you gotta pick something.” “The last president I did vote for, believe it or not,” he added, “was Clinton.” Ironically, the one Republican I meet in Arizona who admits to even considering signing up for a plan through the federal ACA exchange is the same one who just recently complained of “a dictator in Washington who tells us how to do our health care.” It’s 105 degrees, and Arizona’s special strand of conservative politics has been in full weird desert bloom during my visit in late May. On the second day, gun-toting “free speech” protesters announce a plan to meet at a Denny’s in Phoenix before descending on a local mosque to draw pictures of Muhammad. (The Denny’s, in a plot twist, closes to thwart them.) Across town in a Mexican restaurant, Richard Mack is explaining to me that he just flew in from Houston, where he was stumping for office on behalf of Carl Pittman, a member of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which Mack founded. “Here’s another thing about him,” Mack says of sheriff candidate Pittman. “He’s black. That dispels another rumor about me: that I’m racist.” 'Well, we helped 50 million people’...Does that make it constitutional? Mack, a former sheriff of Graham County and a human bullhorn against Obamacare, commands attention like a stern step-dad. Deeply tanned, he wears his thick head of hair slicked back and is sporting an Arizona State Sun Devils shirt. He totes a large computer bag from which he pulls a seemingly bottomless supply of reading materials, including a booklet detailing his lawsuit which successfully challenged a provision of the Clinton-era gun control Brady Bill before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996. Mack has recently achieved a new fame of the sort that he hasn’t approached since then. That’s because Mack’s son started an online crowdfunding page to raise money for medical bills after his parents both suffered health crises. Liberals lapped up the irony that Mack had blasted the idea of health coverage for those in need and then was left uncovered himself. Conservatives admired his principled refusal to sign up despite grave personal peril to himself and his wife. Since the GoFundMe page first went up six months ago, Mack has received $45,489, some of which he says he has already started to spend. No small amount of that bounty was donated by people who use the page to criticize his decision not to sign up for Obamacare. “We have raised—and this is a guestimate—$15,000 from liberals wanting to tell us to go to hell,” says Mack. The family portrait on Mack's GoFundMe page Richard Ivan Mack’s saga of social enlightenment and financial malaise began with a tenure at the Provo Police Department in Utah, where he spent most of 1982 as an undercover cop driving a taxicab and attempting to worm his way into illegal activities. (A Supreme Court of Utah decision which reversed a drug dealing conviction he secured describes Mack hounding the suspect for psychedelic mushrooms multiple times, even knocking on the suspect’s door during a birthday party for his young son, before the target finally relented and arranged for him to purchase $40 of marijuana.) Mack was a Graham County sheriff from 1989 to 1997, when he lost in an election. The subsequent jobs he tells me about were diverse: customer service for a health systems company, teacher at a juvenile detention center, used car salesman. He declared bankruptcy in 2004. Mack’s luck began to change in 2009 when he self-published a 50-page booklet called The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope, which he claims was a runaway hit. He started getting so many speaking requests —he charged $500 at first; now he bills $3,000—that he quit his job, giving up his health benefits despite having suffered a minor heart attack during his car dealership days, in order to hit the circuit and write books full-time. In January, Mack survived a massive heart attack while working out on a treadmill at the gym. The medical bills from that emergency were compounded by the fact that a month earlier, his wife, who suffered from arthritis, had been in the hospital with a severe MRSA infection. “I’ve always put money away for our hospital bills, but not $130,000,” Mack tells me incredulously. Mack believes that the “founding fathers were against the establishment of a welfare state” and that the Constitution they wrote does not allow Congress to provide national health care to Americans. “‘Well, we helped 50 million people,’” Mack mimics in a do-gooder voice, then rebuts himself: “Does that make it constitutional?” The way Mack tells it, the answer is no, and that is all that matters—until about three-quarters of his way through his bean and cheese tostada. That’s when he tells me that he and his wife considered signing up for the ACA many times after she was hospitalized. “We both have talked about, ‘Yeah, maybe we should just sign up,’” Mack says. “We’re in such hot water here, you know. But this was after we had this [infection], so it wouldn’t have paid for her MRSA hospital stay. Hers was only about $30,000 so I thought, ‘Well, we’ll work it out, pay that one off.’ But then I had a heart attack, and then we couldn’t do it anyway.” The massive emergency room bills seemed to make signing up for future coverage pointless. Perhaps more notable is Mack’s casual admission that he currently has health care coverage. He received it recently as part of his impending employment at the Phoenix-area private school Heritage Academy, where he will be teaching American History starting in August. Mack can sleep better with this arrangement. “Getting insurance through a job is fine with me,” says Mack. “Going to the government website and saying, ‘Yes, I want to do this because it’s such a wonderful program’—I don’t believe that.” *Legislature to tackle removal of Confederate battle flag <http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150623/PC1603/150629765/1484/palmetto-sunrise-legislature-to-tackle-removal-of-confederate-battle-flag&source%3DRSS&newsletter%3Dnews> // Post and Courier // Cynthia Roldan – June 23, 2015 * Members in both chambers of the state’s General Assembly return to the capital today after one of their own and eight churchgoers were killed by a gunman last week. They are expected to tackle how to address the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds, a day after Gov. Nikki Haley called on its removal while flanked by more than two dozen national, state and local lawmakers. How they’re going to remove the flag remained unclear as of Monday afternoon. House Minority Leader Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, said there are multiple ways. But first, two-thirds of each chamber have to vote to amend the resolution that called them back to into special session to have it include the battle flag’s removal as one of the issues they must discuss. After that, a bill can be filed that tackles the issue, Rutherford said. The House would likely vote on a bill the week of July 6, after the bill makes it through committees. “Because we were scheduled to come back tomorrow, it’s something that we cannot ignore,” Rutherford said. “While we respect the victims, the rights of the victims and the families, we can’t just walk away from the legislative calendar. Otherwise we’d miss the opportunity to do anything.” There is a faster way. After the resolution is amended, the House can pull the bill once it’s filled directly to the floor. But every lawmaker in the chamber has to agree with that move, which is unlikely, Rutherford said. *INTERNATIONAL* *A border village in Haiti struggles with new Dominican rules <http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/dominican-immigration-rules-throw-haitian-lives-into-limbo/2015/06/23/7a2fbace-192c-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html> // WaPo // Joshua Partlow – June 24, 2015 * OUANAMINTHE, Haiti — Several mornings a week for the past five years, Smith Laflur has left his one-room cinder-block shack, walked past the stray goats and the sour cherry tree, down the quiet dirt lanes and out into the shouts and motorcycle roar of this clamoring border town. He has stepped around the smoldering trash piles and the clothes drying on the bank of the Massacre River, which separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic, and hopped up onto the border bridge on his way to another day’s work. At the metal gate, he hasn’t showed a passport — or papers of any kind — but mentioned his boss, a customs official who owns several houses, and with that he has crossed into Dajabon. Over the years, Laflur has built a swimming pool, erected concrete walls, fixed toilets and swept the patio at the Drink Bar — the type of hard manual labor that feeds his five children and that is far harder to find in his native Haiti. But his daily routine, and the livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, has been put at risk by new immigration rules that intend to oust Haitians who don’t have documentation to stay in the Dominican Republic, even those who were born there. “Everything we can get is here,” Laflur said at one of the Drink Bar’s wooden tables. “I don’t know how to find work in Haiti.” In the days before the June 17 deadline for undocumented migrants to register for residency permits — if they could prove they lived in the Dominican Republic before 2011 — many predicted police roundups and waves of deportations. So far, what has happened instead is voluntary departure by more than 12,000 Haitians who fear that such a crackdown could turn violent. Ouanaminthe is now the scene of returning Haitian families packed into trucks lashed high with suitcases and burlap sacks. In their rush to leave, they abandoned furniture and appliances; some said immigration agents stole money or threatened harm if they didn’t flee. Smith Blanco, a 23-year-old who worked as a cook in Santo Domingo, stood in a dirt lot with his belongings, not sure where to go next. “I didn’t want to come here, but I was worried,” he said.“Their president wants all the Haitians to leave. So we’re leaving.” The Dominican government has encouraged these departures, with free bus rides to the border. “The government of the Dominican Republic has not expelled one person as of this hour,” Roberto Rodriguez Marchena, the president’s spokesman, said in an interview Monday night. “We didn’t create this; we didn’t invent this to mistreat people or expel people. What we want — and the international community has to understand this — we want to order our country. Please, let us bring order to our country.” The roots of the current immigration policies date to a 2004 law that was challenged in court and not implemented until last year, during the presidency of Danilo Medina. The law calls for registering the estimated 600,000 people — Haitians or people of Haitian descent — living without documents in the country. Rodriguez, the spokesman, said that a quarter of the country’s health budget is consumed by Haitians living in the country illegally and not paying taxes, and more than 40 percent of the births along the border are to Haitian women. The government has described its new program as measured — and with an eye to avoiding disruptions to industries relying on manual labor and to the human rights of Haitians. There are exceptions for retirees and university students. So far, 288,000 people have begun the registration process. The remainder, roughly the same number, are subject to deportations if the government chooses. “These people,” Rodriguez said, “that are in our territory should go to Haiti and look for their documents, and then request to come to our country with a student visa, or a work visa. “What we can do is apply [the law] with humanity, and this is what we’re going to do. In our government, we’re not going to abuse a single person.” ‘Things are too hot’ The country’s far northern border has seen some of the worst moments in the troubled relationship between these island-locked neighbors. When sugar prices fell in the 1930s, the Dominican government sought to drive out Haitian cane cutters. Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered a bloody military campaign that became known as “The Harvest,” with soldiers slaughtering more than 10,000 Haitians along the Massacre River using machetes and shovels. Leonilda Jus moved with her aunt to the Dominican Republic decades after that, in 1974, but the jobs available were the same. She grew up cutting sugar cane, picking tomatoes, digging onions. She gave birth to 12 children there, nine of whom survived, and eventually moved from the outskirts of the capital to the northern city of Santiago. The sugar cane industry has shriveled, but her sons found jobs in construction and on farms. On Saturday, two of them, Thony Dume, 29, and Felix Mondesir, 24, worked on an addition to the rented shack in Ouanaminthe where they had moved four days before, to make room for more relatives returning from the Dominican Republic. “It wasn’t a problem living there before. The police and many others knew me,” Dume said. “But now things are too hot.” On March 2, before deciding to move, Dume stood in line at one of the government’s immigration offices to register himself — Ministry of Interior and Police number DO-29-000345. That gave him 45 days to prove he had the right to live in the Dominican Republic, even though he was born there. During that time, he needed to get written documentation from seven neighbors to vouch for his existence, plus testimony from a corner store where he shopped, and proof of residency from his landlord, in addition to a birth certificate or other government papers, none of which he had. To hire a lawyer to complete the process would cost up to $900, he said, equal to what he could earn in five months at his job milking cows in Santiago. Instead, he got on a bus and headed for Dajabon. Over the years, the Dominican border town has grown into a bustling commercial center, with vendors from around the country selling their wares at the market to Haitian customers. The shoppers crowd the border bridge with goods stacked on their heads, loaded into wheelbarrows and motorcycle carts. "They make our economy dynamic," said Ana Carrasco, 53, who retired from local government to run a restaurant in Dajabon. “People come to buy eggs, chicken, spaghetti. If they don't buy it in this market, they don’t eat. Hunger doesn’t have a flag, nor a border, nor a color, nor politics. It’s hunger. It’s necessity.” Until last week, when they couldn’t cross the border, Carrasco used Haitian laborers to work in her restaurant and clean her home. She said she supported the registration effortbut she worried about the harm the policy might cause to the economy . Dominicans in town have come to rely on the shadow services offered by Haitians. All day at her restaurant, Haitians drop by with their offers and wares: shoeshine boys, girls selling baby clothes, a woman who sells brand-name tampons at half the price offered in the stores. “This issue affects my business, because my employees can’t come to work,” she said. “But we have to resolve this — the country should be able to know who they are. You have to do it, for everyone’s sanity. No matter what the cost, it needs to happen.” Other Dajabon business owners have more to lose. On the 1,700 acres of Hiroshi Rodriguez’s rice farms, the manual labor is done by trucked-in Haitian workers, because, as he said, “Dominicans don’t want to work.” On separate occasions over the past two months, soldiers and immigration officials have come and taken them away. He finds it particularly frustrating because soldiers, he said, take bribes from the farmers to let the day laborers pass the highway checkpoints. “This makes me enraged. They don’t let me work but they're trafficking Haitians.” “The government is going to have to recognize that all the companies need them,” he added. “Pretty soon this is going to explode.” Tired of sneaking around On Saturday morning, Smith Laflur headed for the bridge. It was his son’s third birthday, and if he was going to afford a present, he needed to get to the Drink Bar. He pushed through the crowd to the border gate. He told him who he was, and his boss’s name, but this time the guard shook his head. “Not today,” he said. “Things aren’t good right now.” Laflur argued for a while, then turned away and sat on the railing over the river. In the past, he’d considered trying to get to the United States, but he was afraid of the open ocean. He didn’t have the money to apply for a Haitian passport, and his boss in the Dominican Republic had never helped him with a work permit. He was tired of sneaking around. “I want to arrive in a country with my own papers,” he said. “I want to be able to walk as a free man.” *Iran’s Supreme Leader Seems to Pull Back on Nuclear Talks <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/world/middleeast/irans-supreme-leader-stiffens-his-position-on-nuclear-talks.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news> // NYT // Thomas Erdbrink And David E. Sanger - June 23, 2015* TEHRAN — With exactly a week left before the deadline for a final agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s supreme leader appeared to undercut several of the central agreements his negotiators have already reached with the West. In a speech broadcast live on Iran state television, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, demanded that most sanctions be lifted before Tehran has dismantled part of its nuclear infrastructure and before international inspectors verify that the country is beginning to meet its commitments. He also ruled out any freeze on Iran’s sensitive nuclear enrichment for as long as a decade, as a preliminary understanding announced in April stipulates, and he repeated his refusal to allow inspections of Iranian military sites. American officials said they would not be baited into a public debate with the ayatollah, who has the final word on nuclear matters. But with Western foreign ministers already hinting that the negotiations may go past the June 30 deadline, both American and European officials have said in recent weeks that they are increasingly concerned about the possible effects of the ayatollah’s statements. Even if the remarks were made chiefly to mollify hard-liners and military leaders, they say, they could sharply limit the flexibility of Iran’s chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as he heads into the week when the most difficult concessions are likely on both sides. It is possible, outside experts say, that the ayatollah’s series of statements over the past two months, seemingly stepping back from major commitments made by Mr. Zarif’s team, are carefully choreographed to bolster Iran’s negotiators, who can argue that they cannot deviate from the supreme leader’s strictures. “My best judgment is that this is about leverage,” Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “This is the last time to get the best possible deal. I think what he’s shooting for is the most sanctions relief he can get as soon as he can get it, and the least intrusive inspection regime going forward.” Almost as interesting as what Ayatollah Khamenei said is what he omitted. He said nothing about lifting the United Nations arms embargo on Iran, which the United States is resisting. Nor did he rule out inspections under the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “additional protocol,” a set of inspection standards that more than 100 other nations allow — and that permit some inspections on military sites. But he did object to “unconventional inspections, interrogating certain Iranian individuals and inspecting military sites.” Iran has distrusted the nuclear watchdog agency since five of its nuclear scientists were blown up or shot on the streets of Tehran, a series of assassinations the Iranians accuse the United States and Israel of organizing. By contrast, in the State Department’s “fact sheet” about the preliminary agreements struck in Lausanne, Switzerland, in late March and early April, the United States summarized the agreement on inspections this way: “Iran will be required to grant access to the I.A.E.A. to investigate suspicious sites or allegations of a covert enrichment facility, conversion facility, centrifuge production facility, or yellowcake production facility anywhere in the country.” The ayatollah has repeatedly mixed his unyielding statements with assurances that he supports the negotiations, and tributes to the patriotism of the negotiators. But his remarks on Tuesday were his strongest yet, and came just two or three days before Secretary of State John Kerry and other foreign leaders are supposed to convene in Vienna. One of his statements, for example, suggested that a central premise of the deal — that sanctions would be lifted only in close coordination with Iran’s dismantlement of centrifuges and reduction of its stocks of low-enriched uranium — is not possible. “All economic, financial and banking sanctions, implemented either by the United Nations Security Council, the United States Congress or the administration, must be lifted immediately when the deal is signed,” the ayatollah said, according to his personal website, Khamenei.ir. Only after that has happened will Iran start abiding by its commitments, he said. “The rest of the sanctions must be lifted in rational intervals,” he said. Much may depend on what the ayatollah means by the word “signed.” It is possible that Iran will reach an understanding with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, but not “sign” the agreement for months. That would give Iran time to come into compliance with the terms, allowing President Obama to “lift” oil and financial sanctions on the first day of the accord. But the ayatollah seemed to rule out any linkage between Iran’s actions and the lifting of sanctions. Tehran, he said, does not accept the “strange formula” for removing the sanctions, adding that “removing the sanctions must not be dependent on implementing Iran’s commitments.” The ayatollah also said that verification of Iran’s actions by the International Atomic Energy Agency was out of the question. “We have said from the first place that we want cruel sanctions to be lifted,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “You cannot ask us to fulfill our commitments and wait for the I.A.E.A.’s confirmation for removing the sanctions. We completely disagree with it.” The ayatollah also vowed to maintain an active nuclear program, which he says is for peaceful purposes. “Freezing Iran’s research and development for a long time, like 10 years or 12 years, is not acceptable,” he said. Under the preliminary agreements described in April by the United States, some research work would be permitted, but Iran could not operate new, advanced centrifuges for more than a decade. *OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS* *Bill Clinton, the Confederacy, and the Arkansas State Flag <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/06/23/bill-clinton-signed-law-affirming-arkansas-state-flag-includes-star-for-confederacy/> // WSJ // Peter Nicholas – June 23, 2015 * As a national debate rages over the symbolism of the Confederate flag, some critics of the Clintons have questioned why as governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton approved a state flag design that carried a reference to the Confederacy. In 1987, Mr. Clinton signed Act 116 reaffirming a state flag design that included a star symbolizing the state’s membership in the Confederacy. Hillary Clinton was the state’s first lady at the time. The law passed unanimously — 29-0 in the state Senate, 93-0 in the House. On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton praised South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call for the rebel flag to be taken down from the capitol grounds in that state. “It shouldn’t fly there,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It shouldn’t fly anywhere.” The measure codified a package of resolutions passed by the Arkansas legislature in the early 1920s establishing the basic design of the Arkansas state flag. In 1923, Arkansas lawmakers added to the flag a star representing Arkansas’s participation in the Confederacy, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. The action taken by Mr. Clinton and the legislature appears to have been part of a broader state celebration marking Arkansas’s sesquicentennial. Between 1985 and 1987, the legislature also passed measures establishing the state beverage (milk), musical instrument (the fiddle), and fruit/vegetable (the vine ripe pink tomato). Why did Arkansas lawmakers in 1923 tack on the extra star? In part it was an expression of regret over the demise of the Confederacy, experts say. Michael B. Dougan, a history professor emeritus at Arkansas State University, said the legislature in 1923 “stuck an extra star in there for the Confederacy. “It stands for the affirmation of the constitutionality of the doctrine of secession: While they might take away Arkansas’s freedom to perpetuate slavery forever, at least the star of the Confederacy would shine on the flag.” These days the star – which sits above the word “Arkansas” on the flag – doesn’t seem to stir up much bitterness. Sharon Pruitt, an NAACP official in Arkansas, said in an interview that she sees the star as an unobjectionable part of the state’s heritage. “To me, it shows the progressivism of Arkansas,” Ms. Pruitt said. “We once belonged to this Confederacy, however, today, we have our own state flag and we actually represent the United States of America.” *Cyberterror, China, and the Clinton competency deficit <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/06/23/cyberterror-china-and-the-clinton-competency-deficit/> // WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 23, 2015 * Understandably, much of the focus in the 2016 race and in the media more generally, when it comes to foreign policy, concerns the Middle East, jihadist terrorism and, to some extent, Russia. But it may have taken a “cyber 9/11″ or “cyber Pearl Harbor,” as the recent hack of the Office of Personnel Management is being called, to wake people up to the extraordinary incompetence and dereliction on the Obama administration’s part regarding China. CNN reports: The personal data of an estimated 18 million current, former and prospective federal employees were affected by a cyber breach at the Office of Personnel Management — more than four times the 4.2 million the agency has publicly acknowledged. The number is expected to grow, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. FBI Director James Comey gave the 18 million estimate in a closed-door briefing to Senators in recent weeks, using the OPM’s own internal data, according to U.S. officials briefed on the matter. Those affected could include people who applied for government jobs, but never actually ended up working for the government. . . . U.S. investigators believe the Chinese government is behind the cyber intrusion, which are considered the worst ever against the U.S. government. The Post reports on the extent of the internal malfeasance: The computer upgrade that federal officials tout as having detected — although not prevented — a massive breach of information on federal employees is itself at high risk of failure, according to a new internal audit. The independent inspector general’s office within the Office of Personnel Management is conducting a thorough review of the upgrade but issued a “flash audit alert” to top agency leaders “to bring to your immediate attention serious concerns we have” that require “immediate action.” “There is a high risk that this project will fail to meet the objectives of providing a secure operating environment for OPM systems and applications,” the alert says. This technological failure cannot be separated from yet another foreign policy failure: the inability of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry team to manage the threat from China. You would think, for one thing, that the attack on the government would have required a strong response against China, but nothing of the sort seems to be in the works. That’s par for the course for this administration. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) issued a statement Tuesday, properly laying blame at the feet of the administration: At this week’s U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, our country must forcefully raise concerns about the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly aggressive actions. We must confront China about its persistent cyber attacks against our government and companies, such as the recent hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which resulted in the theft of up to four million federal employee’s personal information. The United States needs to establish an effective deterrent, unambiguously signaling to Chinese rulers that the costs of attacking us substantially outweigh the benefits. President Obama’s inability to defend our networks from these attacks, despite spending $12.7 billion on cybersecurity last year, is yet another example of his and Secretary Clinton’s weakness toward China. In order to safeguard freedom of the seas and human rights, which are in our national interest, we must press China to cease its provocations in the South China Sea and support the rights of its people. By contrast, Hillary Clinton has been mute. This is not surprising. As secretary of state she did everything but offer the Chinese a “reset button.” You might recall that in 2009, right out of the box, she traveled to China to assure its people that she wasn’t going to be hassling them about human rights. (“Successive administrations and Chinese governments have been poised back and forth on these issues, and we have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.”) Predictably, human rights in China have gotten worse and worse over the course of Obama’s tenure. In 2012, Mitt Romney urged that we take a stronger stance against China’s domestic repression and regional aggression, calling for “a strategy that makes the path of regional hegemony for China far more costly than the alternative path of becoming a responsible partner in the international system.” That never happened, nor did the promised “pivot to Asia” that Clinton talked about ever take concrete form. Instead, we left our allies feeling neglected, and the Chinese continuing to assert their sovereignty in the South China Sea, steal U.S. businesses’ intellectual property and engage in cyberterrorism. And we are slashing our navy, demonstrating to friend and foe alike that we do not intend to project U.S. power. China’s ascendancy is one more legacy of Clinton’s tenure at the State Department. And don’t expect anything to change if she gets into office. Bloomberg reports: A Hillary Clinton presidency would be “friendly” toward China despite the perception the architect of the U.S. military rebalance to Asia was a combative secretary of state, according to Chinese billionaire Yan Jiehe. Yan Jiehe said he has met former U.S. President Bill Clinton at least five times since 2010, with Clinton attending the Shanghai wedding celebrations for Yan’s son, and met Hillary in the U.S. A sizable donor to the Clinton Foundation, Yan is the founder of China Pacific Construction Group. If she clinches the Democratic Party nomination and then the presidency in 2016, Hillary Clinton would face a resurgent China that is challenging decades of U.S.-led economic and military order. Her time as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 is already being scrutinized for how she’d confront the prospect of China as a major global power. Maybe Clinton was not influenced by the donations or her husband’s relationship with Chinese moguls. Maybe she was just snookered and entirely clueless as to China’s ambitions, just as she was with Russia. In either case, one has to ask — as with so many other aspects of her record — why in the world would we give someone with such a rotten record, who let so many American foes grow bolder and more aggressive, a promotion to commander in chief? *Hillary, pay your interns <http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/06/23/hillary-clinton-unpaid-intern-millenials-column/28936259/> // USA Today // Carolyn Osorio – June 23, 2015 * As the high school girl who slept in a Hillary for President T-shirt for most of 2007, cried when she conceded to Barack Obama, railed at Congress during the Benghazi hearings and was an early follower of Texts from Hillary, I took heart from the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign had created. When Hillary announced her second run for the White House, I felt my passion for politics reignite. I quickly applied for and was offered a position as a Hillary for America fellow to work on the campaign. I couldn't have been more excited until I was told I'd have to move to Nevada and work full time on my own dime. I couldn't believe my ears. I did not apply as a routine volunteer but as a fellow. Its application process with an elaborate screening and interview process was now revealed to be an ugly lie. If Hillary hopes to inspire young people, to prove she understands our interests she should offer substance to earn our votes. Cheap, cheap The campaign's "cheapness" is being lauded as a successful step away from her failure in 2008. Voters are evidently supposed to feel pleased with Hillary's miserly commercial flights (in first class) and economical Amtrak trips while discounting her unpaid staff's out-of-pocket expenses as simply smart business. I had hoped a trailblazer would be more willing to break the mold of indentured servitude that haunts my generation. Finding out Hillary perpetuates the exploitation known as unpaid internships was like discovering that Santa wasn't real. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Unpaid work is common in campaigns, and as secretary of State, Hillary worked for the Obama administration. At the same time it was cracking down on unpaid internships in the private sector, it continued not paying the 300 annual interns in the White House. Obama's wave of Millennial support in 2008 has emphasized the importance of the youth vote. The Clinton campaign has already started to court young people as evident in her huge social media efforts right out of the gate, even enlisting Beyoncé. But it doesn't bode well that a campaign seeking younger votes would callously overlook my generation's biggest struggle: employment. Nearly 14% of us are unemployed. After two straight years of unemployment, I thought things were looking up with a potential Hillary victory. Internships, once a prestigious foot-in-the-door experience, have increasingly been shown to be an abusive way for employers to gain free labo.." I myself had bad experiences at unpaid internships in both California and New York. I promised myself that when I graduated two years ago to never let anyone do that to me again. Minimum wage For a woman whom I supported to demand this of me felt repulsive. Forget arguments about raising the minimum wage. I can't even get a wage. What exactly are Hillary Clinton's priorities and how do I change them? I'm sure people will read this and think, "Well, that's how it's always been. Who is this 20-something girl to complain?" To that I say: the traditional family used to be the "way it's always been," until we changed it. So, Hillary, I ask you to question your role in this exploitative system. My generation is in trouble. Young people today are put in the impossible position of trading their self-worth just to survive. Our struggles are devalued as the first world problems of ungrateful children. At what point do the expectations that young people ought be grateful go too far? If we aren't getting paid, we should be grateful to have the experience. If we don't get the job, we should be grateful we even got the interview. If we're passed up for a promotion, we should be grateful we have a job; if we lose our job, we should be grateful we have a spouse or parent who can take care of us. At what point is it actually worse? It might make me sound like a Stockholm syndrome victim, but after all of this, Hillary is still the best chance we have. If there is to be a better world for my future children, she's the only hope. Hillary will get my free vote even if she will never have my free help. *‘Clinton Cash’ author demolishes Hillary’s self-defense <http://nypost.com/2015/06/22/clinton-cash-author-demolishes-hillarys-self-defense/> // NY Post // Peter Schweizer – June 22, 2015 * Grave incompetence or brazen dishonesty? Those are the only two conclusions one can reasonably come to after reviewing Hillary Clinton’s stunning Sunday interview on local New Hampshire TV. When WMUR local TV host Josh McElveen asked Clinton why her State Department greenlit the transfer of 20 percent of all US uranium to the Russian government, Clinton claimed she had no involvement in her own State Department’s decision to approve the sale of Uranium One to Russia. “I was not personally involved because that wasn’t something the secretary of state did,” said Clinton. The transfer of 20 percent of US uranium — the stuff used to build nuclear weapons — to Vladimir Putin did not rise to the level of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s time and attention? Beyond being an admission of extreme executive negligence on an issue of utmost national security, Hillary’s statement strains credulity to the breaking point for at least three other reasons. First, nine investors who profited from the uranium deal collectively donated $145 million to Hillary’s family foundation, including Clinton Foundation mega-donor and Canadian mining billionaire Frank Giustra, who pledged $100 million. Since 2005, Giustra and Bill Clinton have frequently globetrotted together, and there’s even a Clinton Foundation initiative named the Clinton-Giustra initiative. But Hillary expects Americans to believe she had no knowledge that a man who made a nine-figure donation to her foundation was deeply involved in the deal? Nor eight other mining executives, all of whom also donated to her foundation? Second, during her Sunday interview, Clinton was asked about the Kremlin-backed bank that paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a single speech delivered in Moscow. Hillary’s response? She dodged the question completely and instead offered this blurry evasion. “The timing doesn’t work,” said Clinton. “It happened in terms of the support for the foundation before I was secretary of state.” Hillary added that such “allegations” are being “made by people who are wielding the partisan ax.” The reason Hillary ignored addressing the $500,000 direct payment from the Kremlin-backed bank to her husband is because that payment occurred, as the Times confirms, “shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One.” And as for her comment that the timing of the uranium investors’ donations “doesn’t work” as a damning revelation: In fact, the timing works perfectly. As “Clinton Cash” revealed and others have confirmed, Uranium One’s then-chief Ian Telfer made donations totaling $2.35 million that Hillary Clinton’s foundation kept hidden. Telfer’s donations occurred as Hillary’s State Department was considering the Uranium One deal. Third, Clinton correctly notes in the interview that “there were nine government agencies who had to sign off on that deal.” What she leaves out, of course, is that her State Department was one of them, and the only agency whose chief received $145 million in donations from shareholders in the deal. Does she honestly expect Americans to believe she was simply unaware that the deal was even under consideration in her own State Department? Moreover, is that really the leadership statement she wants front and center heading into a presidential campaign? That in the critical moment of global leadership, with the Russians poised to seize 20 percent of US uranium, she was simply out to lunch? Perhaps a review of her emails would settle the accuracy of her Sunday claim. But, of course, she erased her emails and wiped clean the secret server housed in her Chappaqua home. To be sure, like those emails, Hillary Clinton wishes questions about her role in the transfer of US uranium to the Russian government would simply vanish. But that’s unlikely. A recent polling memo by the Republican National Committee finds that the uranium transfer issue is “the most persuasive message tested” and one that “severely undercuts her perceived strength of resume.” Hillary’s Sunday comments only served to elevate and amplify the need for serious answers to axial questions. In the absence of such answers, Americans are left to believe only one of two potentialities regarding her involvement in the transfer of 20 percent of US uranium to Vladimir Putin: She was either dangerously incompetent or remains deeply dishonest.