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Trump gets mixed reviews from March for Life antiabortion protesters

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Thousands of activists at the annual March for Life enjoyed a rare display of political firepower Friday, with addresses by the president, vice president and House speaker all celebrating gains the antiabortion movement has made under Donald Trump. But the movement’s elevated status comes at the price of much internal debate.

“Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden, in a speech that was broadcast to the marchers gathered near the Washington Monument.

The march — which typically draws busloads of Catholic school students, a large contingent of evangelical Christians and poster-toting protesters of many persuasions — falls each year around the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a legal right to abortion, and it intends to pressure Congress and the White House to limit legal access to the procedure.

Trump said he was “really proud to be the first president to stand with you here at the White House”; Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush addressed the march by telephone when they were in office.

[‘Badass. Prolife. Feminist.’ How some women are bridging the March for Life and the Women’s March.]

Megan Ensor, who came from Atlanta to attend her first March for Life, expressed her enthusiasm that Trump took the time to speak to the marchers. “When it comes to the greatest moral evil of our time, the question that is most important is that he cares. . . . When he comes today, that’s a good thing. We don’t have to agree with him on everything,” she said.

Anna Rose Riccard, 25, works for antiabortion organizations and called the president’s appearance not a boon but an “unfortunate distraction.” Riccard, of Alexandria, said she doesn’t believe the antiabortion cause is a priority for Trump, and she saw fellow Catholics disagreeing on social media about his appearance.

“I give him credit for appointing a conservative justice,” she said, referring to Neil M. Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.

Trump, however, touted his administration’s antiabortion policies, including new orders on Thursday and Friday establishing an office to support medical professionals who do not want to perform abortions and making it easier for states to direct funding away from Planned Parenthood.

[Trump will address the March for Life. Here’s what abortion opponents want.]

Most leaders of the antiabortion movement don’t blame Trump for what they perceive as a lack of progress; they fault Republicans in Congress for inaction.

“It’s because of the Senate. I put the blame with the Senate,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, said in an interview last week. “I think that some of our members of Congress are afraid to be courageous on these issues.”

Though Trump said Friday that “Americans are more and more pro-life; you see that all the time,” views on abortion have remained quite steady for decades. Since the mid-1990s, about half of citizens, give or take a few percentage points, have said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 40-odd percent have said it should be illegal in all or most cases.

[‘If they come for you, they come for me’: A priest faces deportation — and a divided church]

Last year, the March for Life fell just days after Trump’s inauguration, and the tone was ebullient. Marchers believed they were heralding an administration that would prioritize limiting abortion. Mancini said then that she had four goals for policy in the president’s first year in office: appointing an apparently antiabortion Supreme Court justice, defunding Planned Parenthood, codifying the annual Hyde Amendment that restricts federal money from funding abortions and passing a law banning abortion in many cases after 20 weeks.

A year later, only the first of those four goals has been accomplished.

Bills to make the Hyde Amendment permanent and to ban certain late-term abortions passed in the House but are unlikely to pass the Senate. Both chambers of Congress tried to defund Planned Parenthood in their unsuccessful efforts to pass a health-care bill.

Even abortion rights supporters are surprised that antiabortion policies haven’t made more headway in the past year.

“I think it goes to show how the Republicans just didn’t have a plan, in many ways,” said Heather Boonstra, director of public policy at the Guttmacher Institute.

[Sexual abuse case against the Mormon Church begins in West Virginia]

The White House has advanced several policies through executive orders rather than legislation, starting with an expanded version of the Bush-era Mexico City policy, which bars U.S. funding to public health organizations that promote abortion overseas and which Trump reinstated upon taking office. On Thursday, the day before the march, Trump announced another policy that pleased antiabortion activists — a new office meant to protect the rights of medical professionals who don’t want to participate in abortions because of their religious beliefs.

In his speech Friday, Trump noted those actions, and boasted about the stock market and unemployment rates as well. He called to the podium a mother who became pregnant at 17 and later went on to help establish a facility to support homeless pregnant women.

Trump repeated a claim he made during a presidential debate against Hillary Clinton in 2016 — that a fetus in “a number of states” can be aborted “in the ninth month.”

“It is wrong. It has to change,” he said about those late-term abortions. As the Post’s Fact Checker pointed out in 2016, 89 percent of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks and only 1.2 percent occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute. All but seven states prohibit some abortions after a certain point in pregnancy, making “ninth month” abortions exceptionally rare and largely banned already.

[HHS releases new rule on health workers’ religious, moral objections]

Vice President Pence mentioned the Roe v. Wade anniversary, saying, “Forty-five years ago, the Supreme Court turned its back on the inalienable right to life. But in that moment, our movement began.” He praised Trump as “the most pro-life president in American history” and vowed, “With God’s help, we will restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.”

At the marchers’ noon rally east of the Washington Monument, the White House satellite appearance was part of a slate of speakers, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

The crowd gave him rock star treatment, with whoops and applause. “How grateful are we to have a pro-life president back in the White House!” Ryan said.

“One thing that gets lost is how compassionate the pro-life movement is,” he said. “To help women who have gone through the pain of abortion, to help single mothers, to give them resources through thousands of pregnancy centers: This is the face of the pro-life movement.”

Ahead of the march, antiabortion groups around the region hosted events on Friday morning – huge youth Masses full of screaming teenagers, a meeting on legal strategies to limit abortion and a conference in the basement of a downtown hotel where the emphasis was on expanding the idea of “pro-life.”

Hundreds of people at the Evangelicals for Life conference wandered booths about prison ministries and health care and heard speakers talk about the importance of adoption and serving refugees.

Popular evangelical author and speaker Ann Voskamp talked to a crowd of largely young white listeners about a “robust pro-life ethic. … We are for both humans in utero and humans in crisis. This is us.”

The message echoed a talk on Capitol Hill Thursday, in which the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, one of Trump’s evangelical advisers, stood with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urging Congress to protect undocumented young adults. Noting that the March for Life would be the next day, Rodriguez said the two topics were linked as “life” issues.

Jessica Ponce, 26, marched at the very front of the pack with fellow parishioners from the Archdiocese of Mobile, Ala. She said the experience is poignant because she just learned she is pregnant. A native Mexican who is now a permanent resident in the United States, she said that to her, “pro-life” means taking care of all human beings, including immigrants and refugees.

“It’s not possible to care for people if you are separating families, and parents cannot defend the lives of their children if they are not able to stay together,” she said.

In an effort to make the same point, a group of Franciscan priests stood near the front of the stage during the rally. When Trump appeared on the screen, they raised banners saying: “Keeping families together is pro-life! Keep God’s dream alive!”

“I’m here to stand for the integrity of my faith and of the gospel. I’m not willing to sacrifice that for political expediency,” said the Rev. Jacek Orzechowski, a community organizer with Catholic Charities of Washington. “For someone to say they’re pro-life but display callous policies that tear families apart is reprehensible.”

A Catholic priest from New York City said some in his parish – a heavily Central American congregation that includes many undocumented immigrants – didn’t come to Washington out of fear. The priest, who said he was afraid to use his name, still praised Trump’s talk at the rally. “We put our faith in no man. Our faith is in Jesus.”

About 50 demonstrators staged their own rally outside the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum rather than joining the main rally on the Mall, to protest Trump’s address. They said their belief that life begins at conception comes from scientific research on fetal development, not from faith. They brought “I am a pro-life feminist” signs that they hoped would indicate that the antiabortion movement is not just “a bunch of priests,” as Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa put it.

“Let’s put some secular, pro-life, bad-ass feminists up front,” she said.

Many leaders of the movement, though, publicly embrace Trump to greater or lesser extent. Mancini said she thinks the marchers, most of them young because of the prevalence of school groups in attendance, telegraphed a message of support to the president. “For Trump, hopefully, he feels thanked and strengthened for his perspective,” she said.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey contributed to this report. This post has been updated.

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Government shuts down after Senate bill collapses, negotiations fail

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The federal government shut down for the first time in more than four years Friday after senators rejected a temporary spending patch and bipartisan efforts to find an alternative fell short as a midnight deadline came and went.

Republican and Democratic leaders both said they would continue to talk, raising the possibility of a solution over the weekend. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Friday that the conflict has a “really good chance” of being resolved before government offices open Monday, suggesting that a shutdown’s impacts could be limited.

But the White House drew a hard line immediately after midnight, saying they would not negotiate over a central issue — immigration — until government funding is restored.

“We will not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while Democrats hold our lawful citizens hostage over their reckless demands,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. “This is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators. When Democrats start paying our armed forces and first responders we will reopen negotiations on immigration reform.”

View Graphic Everything you need to know about a government shutdown

Both parties confronted major political risks with 10 months to go until the midterm elections. Republicans resolved not to submit to the minority party’s demands to negotiate, while Democrats largely unified to use the shutdown deadline to force concessions on numerous issues — including protections for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants.

The standoff culminated in a late-night Senate vote that failed to clear a 60-vote hurdle, sending congressional leaders and President Trump back to the starting line after days of political posturing on all sides.

“A government shutdown was 100 percent avoidable. Completely avoidable. Now it is imminent,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor following the vote. “Perhaps across the aisle some of our Democratic colleagues are feeling proud of themselves, but what has their filibuster accomplished? . . . The answer is simple: Their very own government shutdown.”

[More blame Republicans than Democrats for potential government shutdown, Post-ABC poll finds]

The early contours of the blame game appeared to cut against Trump and the Republicans, who control all levers of government but cannot pass major legislation without at least partial support from Senate Democrats. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, Americans said by a 20-point margin that they would blame a shutdown on Trump and the GOP rather than Democrats.

A government shutdown causing employee furloughs has never occurred under unified party control of Congress and the White House. Some furloughs of White House employees began immediately early Saturday.

The midnight drama came after an unusually tranquil day inside the Capitol, where visible tensions remained at a low simmer as various parties undertook quiet talks to discuss ways to avoid the shutdown.

Republicans started the day eager to show a united front: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and McConnell met Friday morning, determined to hold firm to a strategy they had crafted nearly a week prior: Make Democrats an offer they could not refuse by attaching a long-term extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, as well as the delay of some unpopular health-care taxes. And if they did refuse, the leaders believed, the public backlash would be intense — particularly in states where vulnerable Democratic senators are seeking reelection in November.

McConnell delivered a morning salvo on the Senate floor, declaring that Democrats had been led into a “box canyon” by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

But by midday, McConnell’s strategy threatened to be upended by Trump — who phoned Schumer and invited him to the White House for a private meeting with no other congressional leaders.

That immediately raised Republicans’ suspicions on Capitol Hill that Trump might be tempted to cut a deal with his fellow New Yorker — much as he did in the early stages of a September standoff — that would undercut the GOP negotiating strategy and produce a deal that congressional conservatives could not stomach.

White House aides assured top congressional leaders that no deal would emerge from the meeting, that it was merely meant to gauge the posture of Schumer and the Democrats. Republicans exhaled when that turned out to be so.

Trump and Schumer talked over a cheeseburger lunch, according to a person familiar with their conversations, covering a wide range of contentious issues. Later on the Senate floor, Schumer described a meeting where he forged outlines of a potential deal with Trump, only to see it fall apart once he left the room.

“I reluctantly put the border wall on the table for discussion — even that was not enough to entice the president to finish the deal,” he said, adding: “What has transpired since that meeting in the Oval Office is indicative of the entire tumultuous and chaotic process Republicans have engaged in in the negotiations thus far. Even though President Trump seemed to like an outline of a deal in the room, he did not press his party in Congress to accept it.”

[Who is sent home during a shutdown?]

What ensued for the remainder of the afternoon was a silent standoff, as it became increasingly clear that Republicans would not be able to lure enough Democrats to pass their preferred funding patch.

For a few Democratic senators, a vote to spark a shutdown was too tough to swallow — even for Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, who faced his first major political dilemma since winning a December special election in a campaign that emphasized his support for CHIP.

“I have made a strong commitment in my state to 150,000 children who need health insurance,” he said, announcing his decision to reporters late Friday.

He joined Democratic Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), all of whom face tough paths to reelection in states that supported Trump in 2016 and voted to keep the government open.

But Michigan Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, meanwhile, announced they would both vote against the measure, bolstering the margin opposed to the bill. Four Republicans were also opposed: Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.).

Republicans spent much of the day attacking Democrats on several fronts — most frequently by pointing to a litany of critical statements Democratic leaders, including Schumer, had made slamming Republicans ahead of the 2013 shutdown.

In a 2013 ABC News interview, Schumer said, “You know we could do the same thing on immigration . . . We could say, ‘We’re shutting down the government. We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling until you pass immigration reform.’ It would be governmental chaos.”

“I think the longer it goes on, the more the American people see the hypocrisy on the Democratic side,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a veteran of several shutdown dramas.

Democrats, meanwhile, pointed to other parts of the historical record — notably, a Trump tweet from May: “Our country needs a good “shutdown” in September to fix mess!”

Conservatives enthusiastically promoted the notion that Democrats were taking the government to the cusp of a shutdown to benefit undocumented immigrants, even a largely sympathetic subset. Democrats want legal status for “dreamers” — young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who now live here illegally — in return for a spending agreement. That fight was prompted by Trump’s cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is expected to take effect in March barring court challenges.

Numerous Republicans said they were perfectly comfortable waging the shutdown fight on those terms, though Democrats have sought to expand the playing field to other issues such as funding to combat opioid abuse and pension bailouts.

“Are Democrats going to shut the government . . . because we want basic reforms and enforcement measures that are going to prevent further flows of illegal immigrants and unskilled immigrants?” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is pushing for hard-line immigration policies in return for a DACA fix. “Seems to me like a tough position to win in light of the 2016 election.”

Marc Short, Trump’s director of legislative affairs, said that the effort by Democrats to put an immigration fix in the spending bill was unreasonable, given that legislative text has not been drafted and the program doesn’t expire until March.

“There’s no DACA bill to vote on, and there’s no emergency on the timing,” Short said.

The posturing took place mainly in front of reporters. Missing were the furious back-and-forth negotiations that preceded the 16-day shutdown in 2013, when Republican leaders sought to force a rollback of the Affordable Care Act and met several times with President Obama to seek an accommodation.

Shortly after 6 p.m., Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) looked at his watch and vented frustration.

“Government shuts down in what, five hours and 40 minutes? And there’s no solution? I don’t know whether Senator Schumer is just determined to take it down,” he said. “Obviously, we don’t want to shut the government down, either, but they seem to be determined to do so.”

Visibly, only Graham shuttled back and forth between the Republican and Democratic leadership offices, shopping a proposal to replace the four-week funding extension passed by the House with a slightly shorter one.

As the 10 p.m. vote approached, Cornyn declared: “No deal.”

Schumer rejected a proposal that would have extended funding by three weeks, to Feb. 8, instead of four. Schumer floated a 10-day extension, which would have set another deadline just before Trump delivered his State of the Union address on Jan. 30. Shortly after midnight, McConnell closed the vote and declared an impasse.

The Trump administration worked up plans to keep national parks and monuments open despite a shutdown as a way to blunt public anger, and while the military would not cease to operate, troops would not be paid unless Congress specifically authorizes it.

[Trump may put off Mar-a-Lago trip until bill passes]

In a sign of the preparations on Capitol Hill, congressional staffers received formal notice Friday morning that they may be furloughed starting at midnight. Individual lawmakers will have to determine which aides must report for work during the impasse.

Trump postponed a scheduled trip to his Florida resort, where he had scheduled a pricey fundraiser to mark his first anniversary in office. Ryan faced the cancellation of an official trip to Iraq, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other lawmakers revisited plans to travel to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.

The latter trip drove Democratic attacks earlier in the day, especially after McCarthy floated plans in the morning to send House members home for a planned week-long recess.

“They want to spend next week hobnobbing with their elitist friends instead of honoring their responsibilities to the American people,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) said of Republicans.

Earlier in the night, around 150 protesters gathered outside the Capitol to hear Democrats promise not to back any spending deal that did not grant legal status to DACA recipients.

“This is a movement,” said Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.). “We’re going to have some good days, and we’re going to have some bad days. And like every movement that has allowed our country to progress, we are going to have to fight.”

Sean Sullivan and John Wagner contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost

Pope Francis Has Defended a Chilean Bishop Accused of Covering Up Sex Crimes

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(SANTIAGO, Chile) — Pope Francis accused victims of Chile’s most notorious pedophile of slander Thursday, an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic Church its credibility in the country.

Francis said that until he sees proof that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in covering up the sex crimes of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, such accusations against Barros are “all calumny.”

The pope’s remarks drew shock from Chileans and immediate rebuke from victims and their advocates. They noted the accusers were deemed credible enough by the Vatican that it sentenced Karadima to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for his crimes in 2011. A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes wasn’t lacking.

“As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all,” tweeted Barros’ most vocal accuser, Juan Carlos Cruz. “These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty.”

The Karadima scandal dominated Francis’ visit to Chile and the overall issue of sex abuse and church cover-up was likely to factor into his three-day trip to Peru that began late Thursday.

Karadima’s victims reported to church authorities as early as 2002 that he would kiss and fondle them in the swank Santiago parish he ran, but officials refused to believe them. Only when the victims went public with their accusations in 2010 did the Vatican launch an investigation that led to Karadima being removed from ministry.

The emeritus archbishop of Santiago subsequently apologized for having refused to believe the victims from the start.

Francis reopened the wounds of the scandal in 2015 when he named Barros, a protege of Karadima, as bishop of the southern diocese of Osorno. Karadima’s victims say Barros knew of the abuse, having seen it, but did nothing. Barros has denied the allegations.

His appointment outraged Chileans, badly divided the Osorno diocese and further undermined the church’s already shaky credibility in the country.

Francis had sought to heal the wounds by meeting this week with abuse victims and begging forgiveness for the crimes of church pastors. But on Thursday, he struck a defiant tone when asked by a Chilean journalist about Barros.

“The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,” Francis said. “There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”

Francis had defended the appointment before, calling the Osorno controversy “stupid” and the result of a campaign mounted by leftists. But The Associated Press reported last week that the Vatican was so worried about the fallout from the Karadima affair that it was prepared in 2014 to ask Barros and two other Karadima-trained bishops to resign and go on a yearlong sabbatical.

According to a Jan. 31, 2015, letter obtained by AP from Francis to the executive committee of the Chilean bishops’ conference, the plan fell apart and Barros was sent to Osorno.

Juan Carlos Claret, spokesman for a group of Osorno lay Catholics who have mounted a three-year campaign against Barros, questioned why Francis was now accusing the victims of slandering Barros when the Vatican was so convinced of their claims that it planned to remove him in 2014.

“Isn’t the pastoral problem that we’re living (in Osorno) enough to get rid of him?” Claret asked.

The reference was to the fact that — guilty or not — Barros has been unable to do his job because so many Osorno Catholics and priests don’t recognize him as their bishop. They staged an unprecedented protest during his 2015 installation ceremony and have protested his presence ever since.

Anne Barrett Doyle, of the online database BishopAccountability.org, said it was “sad and wrong” for the pope to discredit the victims since “the burden of proof here rests with the church, not the victims — and especially not with victims whose veracity has already been affirmed.”

“He has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis,” she said in a statement. “Who knows how many victims now will decide to stay hidden, for fear they will not be believed?”

Indeed, Catholic officials for years accused victims of slandering and attacking the church with their claims. But up until Francis’ words Thursday, many in the church and Vatican had come to reluctantly acknowledge that victims usually told the truth and that the church for decades had wrongly sought to protect its own.

German Silva, a political scientist at Santiago’s Universidad Mayor, said the pope’s comments were a “tremendous error” that will reverberate in Chile and beyond.

Patricio Navia, political science professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, said Francis had gone much further than Chilean bishops in acknowledging the sexual abuse scandal, which many Chileans appreciated.

“Then right before leaving, Francis turns around and says: ‘By the way, I don’t think Barros is guilty. Show me some proof,’” Navia said, adding that the comment will probably erase any good will the pope had won over the issue.

Navia said the Karadima scandal had radically changed how Chileans view the church.

“In the typical Chilean family, parents (now) think twice before sending their kids to Catholic school because you never know what is going to happen,” Navia said.

Cable crew caught trying to sneak in fake bomb at Newark Airport

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Seven members of a cable TV crew were arrested at Newark Airport on Thursday after trying to film themselves passing a fake explosive device through a security checkpoint and onto a plane, according to reports.

The crew was working for the cable network CNBC, according to nj.com.

The fake explosive device was in a carry-on bag and never made it past security, Transportation Security Administration spokesman Michael McCarthy said.

“They failed, were caught and were arrested on multiple charges,” he said, without elaborating on the charges.

The crew members could also be assessed civil penalties in the tens of thousands of dollars, he said.

A law enforcement source told nj.com that the fake explosive consisted of a piece of PVC pipe with wires sticking out of it.

Another source told the website that the crew was employed by Endemol Shine Group, a Dutch production company that contracts with CNBC; Endemol also produces MasterChef and The Biggest Loser.

“We are looking into the details of what happened as a matter of priority and are in contact with relevant authorities on the ground,” a spokesperson for Endemol Shine North America told nj.com.

“We sincerely apologize for any disruption caused.”

Trump Appointee Carl Higbie Resigns After Racist, Sexist, Anti-Muslim and Anti-LGBT Comments Are Revealed

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Trump appointee Carl Higbie stepped down on Thursday from his position at the Corporation for National and Community Service, which runs AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, after he allegedly made racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments on the radio between 2013 and 2016.

“Effective immediately, Carl Higbie has resigned as Chief of External Affairs at CNCS,” Samantha Jo Warfield, a spokesperson for the corporation, told CNN in a statement.

Read More: Trump’s Full List of ‘Racist’ Comments About Immigrants, Muslims and Others

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In 2016, Higbie served as a surrogate for the Trump campaign, and last year he was appointed to be the public face of the federal department that manages millions of Americans in volunteer services, according to WZVN.

CNN’s investigation team KFile unearthed audio of Higbie spouting incendiary comments.

“Somebody who lives in my condo association that has five kids, and it’s her and her husband with the five kids and the mother, the grandmother of the kids, and they don’t have jobs, they’re there all the time — I bet you can guess what color they are — and they have no job,” Higbie said as host of the radio program Sound of Freedom, according to CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski, who is part of KFile.

Speaking on the same show in 2013, Higbie said black women think “breeding is a form of government employment,” Kaczynski underscored.  

He repeatedly said he didn’t like Muslims, and on Warrior Talk Radio in August 2014 he said he wasn’t an Islamophobe because “I’m not afraid of them. I don’t like them. Big difference,” the reporter added.

Higbie, a former Navy SEAL, said that soldiers with PTSD have “a weak mind,” and that 75 percent of people with PTSD are either lying or “milking something for a little extra money in disability,” according to Kfile.

The KFile review found that Higbie promoted shooting undocumented immigrants crossing into the U.S. and said that Rhode Island “sucked” for legalizing same-sex marriage.

In November 2016, he suggested Japanese internment camps were a “precedent” for a rumored registry of Muslim immigrants, according to a The Hill report at the time. His comments ignited a strong rebuke from Democratic Representative Mark Takano of California, who said that “these comments confirm many Americans’ worst fears about the Trump administration.” 

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House approves bill to keep government open as Senate Democrats take heat for threatening to block it

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The House passed a short-term extension of government funding late Thursday after Republican leaders, with help from President Trump, cobbled together enough GOP votes to overcome an internal revolt.

Still, the possibility of a federal shutdown moved closer to a certainty after Senate Democrats rallied against the GOP proposal, announcing they would not lend their votes to a bill that did not reflect their priorities on immigration, government spending and other issues.

By Thursday evening, nine Senate Democrats who had voted for a prior spending measure in December said they would not support the latest proposed four-week extension, joining 30 other Democrats and at least two Senate Republicans — and leaving the bill short of the 60 votes needed to advance.

As a result, Republican leaders — long on the defensive against claims that they were failing to govern — appeared emboldened as they sought to cast the Democrats as the obstacle to a compromise to keep critical government functions operating.

“My Democratic colleagues’ demands on illegal immigration, at the behest of their far-left base, have crowded out all other important business,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday night. “And now they are threatening to crowd out the needs of veterans, military families, opioid treatment centers and every other American who relies on the federal government — all over illegal immigration.”

Who gets sent home if the government shuts down? View Graphic Who gets sent home if the government shuts down?

Senators of both parties voted to open debate on the House bill late Thursday, but Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats remained opposed to the measure and proposed an spending extension that would last just a few days to allow talks on a broader agreement to continue.

“We have to sit down together and solve this, with the president or without,” he said.

Republican leaders rejected that suggestion. They did not lay out a Plan B to pursue if the House bill is ultimately rejected, except to finger Democrats for a shutdown.

“I ask the American people to understand this: The only people in the way of keeping the government open are Senate Democrats,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday night. “Whether there is a government shutdown or not is entirely up to them.”

Senate GOP leaders prepared to force Democrats into a series of uncomfortable votes, aimed at splitting their ranks by pitting moderates from states that Trump won against party leaders and the handful of outspoken liberals considering a run for the presidency.

For one, Republicans attached a long-term extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and delays to several unpopular health-care taxes. The bill does not include protections for “dreamers,” immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children or who overstayed their visas as children, a top Democratic priority.

That represented an election-year bid by the GOP to cast the spending vote as, in part, a choice between poor children and undocumented immigrants. Ryan, McConnell, and other Republicans also sought to highlight the potential erosion to military readiness that could result from a shutdown.

Emboldened Democratic leaders, meanwhile, rallied lawmakers for a showdown on what they believe is favorable ground, fighting on behalf of popular policies against an unpopular president who has had a brutal week of news coverage. As Thursday wore on, undecided senators steadily stepped forward to say that they would oppose the Republican measure — risking GOP political attacks and angry constituents.

Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrats who represent tens of thousands of federal employees who stand to be furloughed during a shutdown, said they could not vote for a bill that did not include relief for dreamers, disaster funding, opioid treatment funding and more — echoing the demands of Democratic leaders.

“These issues are not going away and need to be addressed immediately,” they said in a joint statement that also criticized Trump: “He has to decide whether he wants to be President and engage in necessary compromise, or continue offering commentary from the sidelines.”

Trump fired back at Democrats during a trip to Coraopolis, Pa., saying that they’re pushing for a shutdown to distract voters from the GOP’s recent tax legislation. “That is not a good subject for them, the tax cuts,” Trump said.

The late-night showdown capped a long, tense day on Capitol Hill that began with a flurry of tweets from Trump that doubled down on his demands for an expensive border wall and accused Democrats of snubbing the military. Another tweet, however, seemed to upend the Republican strategy for avoiding a shutdown and contradict his administration’s stated policy position — suggesting that the children’s health program ought not to be attached to a temporary spending bill.

Republican lawmakers and aides, who were already pressed to secure enough GOP votes to get the bill through the House, scrambled to decipher Trump’s intentions. Much as he had to do a week ago after Trump tweeted about an intelligence bill, Ryan got on the phone with the president to clarify matters, and hours later, the White House confirmed that Trump indeed supported the bill.

The tweets inflamed frustrations in both parties over what they characterized as an all-too-often uncooperative president.

“We don’t have a reliable partner at the White House to negotiate with,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said. “This has turned into an s-show for no good reason.”

Schumer called Trump and his administration “agents of chaos” who have foiled attempts to reach a bipartisan agreement on immigration, which remained the most salient sticking point Thursday.

“The one thing standing in our way is the unrelenting flow of chaos from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Schumer said. “It has reduced the Republicans to shambles. We barely know who to negotiate with.”

Meanwhile, Republican leaders were having trouble smoothing out a wrinkle in their plans to blame a shutdown on Democrats: Hard-line House conservatives demanded concessions in return for their votes, casting doubt on whether the funding patch would even reach the Senate.

All but a few House Democrats said they would not support the bill without an immigration or long-term budget deal.

“If we can’t agree, your party has the majority in the House and the Senate to pass your own funding resolution. But that will be a bill we cannot support,” 171 of 193 House Democrats wrote in a letter to Ryan on Thursday.

While Ryan worked the House floor during an afternoon vote series, trying to lock down votes for the patch, leaders of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus tried to persuade Republicans to withhold their votes.

“I promise you he doesn’t have the votes,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), heading to a closed-door Freedom Caucus meeting, where Trump called in to try to win over restive conservatives.

Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) then went into Ryan’s office, where they hashed out a deal with Republican leaders to secure future votes on measures that would increase defense spending and tighten immigration laws. With that accord in place, the House voted 230 to 197 to pass the legislation. Only six Democrats broke ranks to support it.

Senators strategized through the day on how to turn the clash to their advantage — retreating into party lunches to plan for a showdown that could stretch into the weekend or beyond.

Reflecting the election-year stakes, aides to McConnell told senior staffers that he was intent on muscling the bill through the upper chamber and putting pressure on Democrats to vote for it, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

[Trump pushes back on chief of staff claims that wall pledges “uninformed”]

“Let’s bring the House bill over and have a quick vote and make the Democrats up in 2018 figure out what they want to do,” the person said of the meeting.

Ten Democrats are seeking reelection in states that voted for Trump in 2016, and Republicans believe that they can force them into tough votes that would either force a rift in the Democratic ranks or provide powerful fodder for political attacks later in the year.

Democrats expressed confidence that they would come out on top in the public-opinion battle over who would shoulder the blame for a shutdown — citing broad public sympathy for dreamers, political winds blowing against Republicans and Trump’s approach to bipartisan negotiations.

Last week, he rejected an immigration compromise in an Oval Office meeting where he referred to poor nations as “shithole countries,” driving days of public criticism.

“I think their argument falls apart because of last week in the Oval Office, because of their inability to even get a [temporary funding bill] out of the House in a timely fashion without making concessions to the Freedom Caucus,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

Even as a shutdown grew more likely, some senators hoped to find a path away from it. Some senators discussed the possibility of passing one- or two-day extensions of government funding to avoid a shutdown while lawmakers continue to negotiate.

But Republican leaders did not immediately embrace the idea, and it was unclear how it would work for the House, which is scheduled to be out of session next week.

Top leaders of both parties continued meeting Thursday to seek an immigration compromise, but no agreement appeared to be in sight. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), leaving a meeting with other deputy leaders, rejected the idea that a deal to protect dreamers could be concluded by Friday evening at midnight. “No, no,” he told reporters.

The government shutdown causing employee furloughs has never occurred under unified party control of Congress and the White House.

The Trump administration is drawing up plans to keep national parks and monuments open despite a shutdown as a way to blunt public anger, and while the military would not cease to operate, troops would not be paid unless Congress specifically authorizes it.

The last shutdown, in 2013, lasted for 16 days as Republicans tried unsuccessfully to force changes to the Affordable Care Act. On Jan. 30, Trump is scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address.

Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, Sean Sullivan, John Wagner and Elise Viebeck contributed.

Read more at PowerPost

York County sheriff’s detective dies a day after he and 3 other officers were shot

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A York County, S.C., sheriff’s detective who was critically injured in a shooting died Wednesday night at a hospital, authorities said.

Michael Doty was among four officers shot early Tuesday in connection with a domestic violence call. Doty had been with the sheriff’s office for 12 years.

The wounded also included sheriff’s K-9 Deputy Randy Clinton, sheriff’s Sgt. Buddy Brown and York Police Sgt. Kyle Cummings.

The officers were shot at two locations during a manhunt for suspect Christian Thomas McCall, 47. McCall was shot by law enforcement during the pursuit. His condition has not been released.

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The three other officers who were shot are expected to be OK, Observer news partner WBTV reported.

The shootings happened after deputies responded to a domestic violence call late Monday at a home on Farrier Lane, outside the city of York.

Joe Marusak: 704-358-5067, @jmarusak

Avery Johnson decries expelled student Harley Barber’s ‘vile, abhorrent’ racist video

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Before beating Auburn, Crimson Tide basketball star Braxton Key tweeted a message of support for minority groups on campus. It drew a “good job,” and thumbs up from athletics director Greg Byrne.

Then after the 76-71 rivalry win, Alabama basketball coach Avery Johnson addressed the situation unprompted by reporters at the end of his news conference.

“There was an unfortunate video, are you guys familiar with the vile, abhorrent that was released on yesterday or the day before, whatever. Obviously, I stand with the university. We don’t condone that kind of behavior. It’s very unfortunate. I know the university is going to deal with it.”

The uproar began Tuesday when a video went viral of Barber spewing racist thoughts, using the n-word repeatedly. The university said it was investigating the incidents and Wednesday the student said she had been expelled while apologizing for the hate-filled remarks.

“We have a lot of people in our organization, in our basketball operation and our team that are from a lot of different backgrounds,” Johnson continued Wednesday night. “Everybody doesn’t look like me, but we accept everybody. Wherever they’re from. Whatever their skin color is. We accept everybody.

“This university has taken a strong stand on diversity and inclusion and I stand with Dr. (Stuart) Bell and I stand with Greg Byrne with promoting an atmosphere of inclusion and we have some terrific players on our team from great families, whether it’s single parent or two parents, it doesn’t matter. So, I was really disturbed by that video and I thought you guys needed to know about that.”

In the tweet earlier Wednesday, Key said he was speaking on behalf of the Alabama basketball team.

“We will continue to use our platform to lift others up and be advocates for people who may feel like they don’t have a voice,” he wrote. “Roll Tide!”

Alabama running back Damien Harris and former defensive back Landon Collins were among the other athletes to make statements condemning Barber’s videos.

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande.