“When I was about 9 years old (in the late 1950s), I would spend time with my cousin in Hollywood. We spent all day exploring on Hollywood Boulevard, playing in the Hollywood Bowl (which we had all to ourselves), and hiking in the hills exploring the grounds of all these amazing homes. Our days always ended the same: waiting for Frank Sinatra. My cousin was born in love with Frank Sinatra. She discovered that he owned the Villa Capri restaurant off Highland. We sat on the curb in front of the restaurant for hours waiting to see him. As the dinner guests started arriving, the maitre d’ kept coming out to see if we were still there. Much to his dismay, there we were. We didn’t believe him when he told us Mr. Sinatra was not expected. He would get so upset, he would give us money to go away. We never did get to see Ol’ Blue Eyes, but the anticipation was so much fun.”
President Donald Trump has repeatedly taken aim at Justice Department and FBI officials since entering the West Wing. | Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
The president renewed his attacks on senior law enforcement officials, saying they favor Democrats.
President Donald Trump accused officials at the FBI and the Justice Department on Friday of having “politicized” their investigations, ratcheting up his attacks on law enforcement agencies as he readies the release of an incendiary memo alleging wrongdoing by top bureau officials.
“The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago,” the president tweeted. “Rank File are great people!”
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The White House told reporters that the president is expected to green-light the disclosure of a hotly-contested House intelligence memo as soon as Friday that contains allegations that senior FBI officials overstepped in their probe into Russian operatives and their ties to the Trump campaign.
The pending decision comes amid strong objections from Democrats and intelligence officials, who have pointed to potential issues over the document’s sourcing and accuracy. In a rare public statement released Wednesday, the FBI expressed “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
Republican leaders, spearheaded by House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have pushed back on the assertions, calling for increased transparency at the law enforcement agencies. The partisan feuding intensified Thursday as the top two Democratic officials in Congress — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — called Nunes to resign from his post atop the panel over his handling of the memo.
While the exact contents of the as-of-yet undisclosed document remain a mystery, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) insinuated in a series of tweets Thursday that the memo alleges the FBI used the unverified Fusion GPS dossier as evidence to obtain a surveillance warrant for Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official who is being investigated as a part of the DOJ Russia probe.
The memo’s pending release has raised concerns that Republican officials may seek to use it to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference and potential criminal activity by the Trump campaign.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel and one of the most vocal opponents of the memo’s release, told “CBS This Morning” Friday that the president’s remarks and expected decision to disclose the document were part of a broadside attack law enforcement agencies.
“It’s clear from the president that this is exactly the purpose behind this cherry-picking of information that Nunes wants to release,” Schiff said. “This is designed to impugn the credibility of the FBI, to undermine the investigation.”
The president, whose campaign is being probed by congressional and federal investigators for potential ties to Russian officials, has forcefully denied allegations that his team colluded with foreign operatives, calling their probes a “witch hunt” and “fake news.”
Friday’s remarks are the latest instance of the president taking direct aim at Justice Department and FBI officials since entering the West Wing.
Earlier this week FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe abruptly left his post after facing intense public scrutiny from the president. Trump had questioned McCabe’s impartiality in handling the Russia prove, citing the fact that his wife received a donation from a Hillary Clinton political ally during her failed run for state office in Virginia.
Last week the president called the missing text messages between two FBI employees accused of bias against him “one of the biggest stories in a long time.” The messages, sent between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, have become a rallying cry for some of the right alleging a vast conspiracy to sabotage Trump’s presidency is afoot at law enforcement agencies. Strzok and Page were formerly involved in Mueller’s investigation.
In a November tweet the president alluded to the existence of a “deep state” at the FBI and Justice Department, a reference to the conspiracy that government officials are working to undermine the White House for political reasons.
Despite his forceful Friday missive, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway insisted that Trump held deep respect for FBI employees.
“The president has stated many times that he respects the rank and file the FBI, the 25,000 men and women who do a great job there,” Conway told Fox News.
But some former law enforcement and intelligence officials remained skeptical, expressing alarm at the president’s actions and rhetoric toward the FBI and DOJ.
James Clapper, a former Director of National Intelligence, said Trump’s charge that the FBI and DOJ had “politicized” their investigations was “the pot calling the kettle black,”
“Transparency is a great thing, but let’s be factual and objective about it, and this clearly is a pretty blatant political act,” Clapper added during a Friday morning appearance on CNN, rebuffing Republicans who say the memo’s release will bolster government transparency.
Vice President Pence addresses a dinner Wednesday at the 2018 Republican retreat at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.
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Vice President Pence addresses a dinner Wednesday at the 2018 Republican retreat at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.
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White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. — A tragic train wreck almost put an early end to this year’s GOP policy retreat as lawmakers grappled with whether or not to carry on after an Amtrak train carrying them to the Greenbrier Resort collided with a garbage truck and resulted in at least one fatality.
“Personally I gave it a lot of thought. I was very conflicted. Every ounce of me said: Get home to Texas as fast as you can,” said Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, a physician who helped treat the injured on the accident scene. No one onboard the train suffered any major injuries. The White House ultimately informed lawmakers the president and vice president still planned to attend. “That put it in a little bit of different context for me,” said Burgess.
Republicans are gathered at the storied Greenbrier Resort — home to a Cold War-era bunker once meant to house Congress in the event of a nuclear attack — to plot the party’s legislative agenda for 2018 and strategize for what could be a bruising midterm election.
For Republicans this year, it may be easier to look back than to plan for what’s to come. In a Wednesday night speech, Vice President Mike Pence lauded Republicans for 2017, which he called “the most accomplished year for the conservative agenda in 30 years.” Pence touted the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, confirmation of a record number of conservative lower-court judges in the Trump administration’s first year, regulation rollbacks and a $1 trillion tax cut package.
President Trump’s State of the Union address provided a familiar list of proposals, but lawmakers haven’t rallied around an agenda in the same way Republicans did in 2017 on health care and taxes.
Much of what President Trump outlined Tuesday night — paid family leave, overhauling the criminal justice system’s sentencing laws and reducing the cost of prescription drugs — are proposals loaded with opposition from the conservative wing of the party and are unlikely to find GOP champions on Capitol Hill.
Even Trump’s immigration proposal has received a lukewarm reception from Republicans in Congress because it includes a path to citizenship for an estimated 1.8 million people residing in the U.S. illegally. Infrastructure is a popular proposal with theoretical bipartisan support, but there’s no consensus on the hardest part — how to pay for it.
The president appears to have walked away from the GOP’s failed efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The GOP tax bill zeroed out the tax penalty designed to compel individuals to buy health insurance, and that policy victory seems to have satisfied Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has likewise said he’s ready to move on from the health care fight after the Alabama Senate special election loss narrowed his majority to a razor-thin 51-49 margin.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., voiced hopes of overhauling social welfare programs in 2018, but he’s been given little rhetorical backup from the White House or the Senate. The president made no mention of overhauling entitlement programs in his Tuesday address.
The three-day retreat is designed to help lawmakers figure out what, exactly, they can agree on and when they plan to act on it. The legislative pipeline so far this year has been clogged by the impasses over immigration legislation to determine the fate of those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, and a budget deal necessary for Congress to pass this fiscal year’s spending bills, which are already four months overdue. The Treasury Department threw Congress another curveball this week after it informed lawmakers the deadline has been moved up to vote to raise the debt ceiling —the nation’s borrowing authority — to Feb. 28.
Election-year politics are already at the forefront of lawmakers’ minds here. Another prominent Republican, South Carolina’s Trey Gowdy, announced his decision to retire this year. He is the 34th Republican and ninth committee chairman to retire ahead of the 2018 midterm elections where Republicans are facing historically brutal headwinds with their House majority at stake. Pence assured Republicans that he and the president would hit the campaign trail hard for down-ballot Republicans. He also said the party under Trump has already defied the “conventional wisdom” of elections and forecast that Republicans majorities would hold come November.
Pence also took advantage of the location to launch an attack on West Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who is up for re-election in a state Trump won by more than 40 percentage points.
“When it came to cutting your taxes, Joe voted no,” Pence told employees at an event at a local manufacturing company, adding that Manchin “has voted no time and again on the policies that West Virginia needs.” Pence continued that attack in a series of tweets with the hashtag #JoeVotedNo highlighting Manchin’s opposition to Trump’s priorities, including GOP efforts to cut funds for Planned Parenthood.
Manchin responded in a statement: “The vice president’s comments are exactly why Washington Sucks.”
Congressional Democrats likewise hold annual policy retreats, but House and Senate Democrats meet separately. House Democrats next week will head to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Vice President Joe Biden is expected to give the keynote address.
During Tuesday’s State of the Union, a lone Democrat in the front row leapt up and down to applaud the president during his address to Congress: Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
But by Wednesday afternoon, a war of the words had erupted after the White House seemed to turn on Manchin, criticizing the senator in a fiery speech by vice president Mike Pence. Manchin faces re-election this year.
“I looked [Manchin] in the eye and I told him, Joe, the people of the mountain state are counting on you,” Pence said in a speech touting tax reform in White Sulphur Springs, W.V. “And I said, let’s get this tax cut done together. But Joe voted no. Joe voted no to give working families more of your hard-earned money.”
Pence continued, “Joe voted no on tax cuts for job creators and on expanding the child tax credit giving you your first 24,000 dollars of income tax free … Joe voted no. But it’s not just the tax cut, Senator Joe Manchin has voted no time and again on the policies West Virginia needs. When the time came to repeal and replace the disaster of Obamacare, Joe voted no. When we empowered West Virginia to defund Planned Parenthood, Joe voted no. And when it comes to that wall when we’re gonna build on the southern border, Joe said quote, ‘Well, I’m not voting for the wall either.’ Folks, Joe’s just gonna keep voting against West Virginia. Now that might make Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi pretty happy. But West Virginia needs to let him know you expect better from Joe.”
Pence’s remarks signal that in the upcoming West Virginia Senate race, the White House won’t hold back on attacking Manchin despite his frequent support.
Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesVice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan attend the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives Jan. 30, 2018 in Washington.
In response, Manchin said “The vice president’s comments are exactly why Washington sucks.” The comment was in reference to remarks Manchin made about the frustration he felt during the government shutdown. Manchin noted that just last night, President Donald Trump called for “unity and bipartisanship” during his State of the Union address.
“I am shocked that after the vice president worked for almost a year in a divisive and partisan way to take healthcare away from almost 200,000 West Virginians, bankrupt our hospitals, and push tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and huge corporations that he would come to West Virginia and continue his partisan attacks,” Manchin said in a statement.
“Last week, I worked in a bipartisan way with Senator Collins to end the shutdown, and last night President Trump called for unity and bipartisanship. The vice president’s comments are exactly why Washington sucks. I’m disappointed in his comments but will continue to work to make Washington work so West Virginia and our country work.”
Pence spent the afternoon in West Virginia, delivering a speech at Worldwide Equipment, Inc. on tax reform with Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross before heading to the Greenbrier Resort to address the House and Senate Republican Members Conference.
Manchin, a centrist Democrat from a state that voted for Trump by 42 points, has earned a reputation of working across the aisle and being a Democratic ally with the White House. During the government shut down, it was Manchin, along with new Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala. who was invited to travel down Pennsylvania Avenue to meet with Trump and find common ground on issues tripping up a potential bipartisan deal.
Jonathan Ernst/ReutersPresident Donald Trump hugs Democratic Senator from West Virginia Joe Manchin as he departs after delivering his State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 30, 2018.
Trump has criticized Manchin before. In an interview with the New York Times last December, Trump said he hears “bull—-” from Democrats “like Joe Manchin.”
“Joe’s a nice guy,” said Trump. “But he talks. But he doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t do. ‘Hey, let’s get together, let’s do bipartisan.’ I say, ‘Good, let’s go.’ Then you don’t hear from him again.”
Tennessean reporter Joey Garrison spoke with Barry before she issued a statement about the affair Wednesday and before she held an evening news conference.
► More: Timeline: A look at Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s trips with her staff
Here are some of the key portions of that interview.
Mayor Megan Barry: At 7 o’clock we will be standing up and talking about a private matter that as a public official I have engaged in an extramarital affair with someone who works in Metro, with a consensual relationship. We’re going to talk about that.
Was the individual your head detail person, Sgt. Rob Forrest?
Barry: Yes.
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Who is Robert Forrest, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s former security chief?
Near the beginning of it? Would you say late 2015?
Barry: No, it was past that.
Beginning of 2016?
Barry: It was a little further in to that.
Spring, summer of 2016?
Barry: Around there.
Describe the nature of it.
Barry: I’m not sure what you mean Joey.
Well, he’s somebody who’s around you. I see you there with him all the time as your head security person. I mean, was it, I guess in what way was it inappropriate? Was it a sexual relationship with him?
Barry: I had an affair with him.
Was it appropriate for the mayor of Nashville to have a relationship with somebody who would be considered a subordinate Metro employee to you?
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A look back at Megan Barry’s career. Ayrika Whitney/USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee
Barry: So, this is about the fact that we had an affair and it was wrong. And we shouldn’t have done it. He was head of my security detail, and as part of that responsibility, you know, I should have gone to the chief. And I should have said what was going on, and I didn’t, and that was a mistake.
► More: Nashville reacts to Mayor Megan Barry’s affair, and opinions are mixed
Do you think you violated any Metro guidelines, ethics laws, anything like that by having this relationship?
Barry: No.
From records that I’ve looked at, it appears he went on a lot of trips with yourself and mayor’s office staff, including some where, maybe nine instances in the last 10 months, where it was just you and him. Why, totaling the cost of these there was $21,700 in taxpayer-funded trips for him alone. Why was he on these various trips?
Barry: So those trips were all business-related, and those trips he traveled with me as my detail, which is standard policy with the police department, to have detail with me wherever I am.
Was that the policy of your predecessor, was that a policy that you adopted?
Barry: When I came into office, the chief said that you are always the mayor and you should be secured appropriately.
Did it seem like a necessary thing, to have him on these various trips, wherever they might be?
Barry: It was definitely the recommendation of the police that I should have detail.
With you acknowledging this extramarital affair, some might call these trips with him, particularly the ones where it was just the two of you, inappropriate. Given what you told me a few minutes ago, would you agree with that? What’s your response?
Barry: All of these trips were business-related, and he was there as my security detail.
There have been some rumblings out there today that you might be resigning. Are you resigning?
Barry: No.
You seemed to hesitate there.
Barry: Not hesitating at all, no … this is a bad day. And there’s going to be more bad days. But this is not my worst day. I know the difference between a mistake, which is what I made, which I fully own, and a tragedy. This is not a tragedy. And I want to regain the trust of Nashvillians, and I will continue to serve.
► More: Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s full statement on her extramarital affair
Are you taking any sort of leave of absence or anything like that?
Barry: No.
You’re a very highly respected leader in this city, both politically and from a lot of girls and young ladies out there who see you as the highest-ranking public official, really in the state, who’s a woman. What’s your response to people who might be disappointed, especially women, about this news?
Barry: People that we admire can also be flawed humans, and I’m flawed. And I am incredibly sad and sorry for the disappointment that I will see in those little girl’s faces. But what I hope they also see is that people make mistakes and that you move on from those.
Are you taking any sort of leave of absence? Are you coming in just like any normal day tomorrow?
Barry: I will be in tomorrow to do the work of the city.
So no leave of absence?
Barry: No.
It’s a really important part of your first term right now, with the transit push going on. Are you worried that this news is going to affect your ability, first of all to get that passed, and then to push forward your agenda as mayor here?
Barry: I think the voters of Davidson County were very clear about what they wanted to see in the mayor that they elected, and that was a push on transit and housing and jobs and education and safety. And we have been committed to all of those, and I don’t see that stopping.
Are you planning, I guess how have you discussed this with Bruce, your husband, and are you planning, and I guess what’s the future of your relationship?
Barry: There are some things that are personal. Clearly, Bruce and I would love to have privacy on this. These are things that we are working through, and would ask for that.
No plans on separation?
Barry: No.
And so no plans on divorce?
Barry: No.
When did you tell Bruce?
Barry: I’m happy to answer all kinds of questions, but I think that there are some pieces of this that are between me and Bruce. That’s how I would like to leave that.
Are you going to invite or ask law enforcement officials in this city to investigate any matter of this case, including the use of Metro funds that were, or perhaps the use of Metro funds that were used on these trips?
Barry: All of the records are available for anybody to review.
► More: Nashville council budget chair calls for inquiry after Mayor Barry admits affair
When did you first know Sgt. Forrest? I know that he was around during Dean’s term, I think he was hired during Purcell’s. Was he somebody you’ve known for a long time?
Barry: I knew him casually through the Dean administration, but I didn’t know him until I became the mayor.
What did you tell your staff earlier?
Barry: I had a meeting with my staff earlier to apologize to them, to tell them that I know that the work that they do for the city is so critical and I want them to continue to do that. And that I’m grateful for what they do, and that I’m truly sorry.
Did you sense what the mood was from them, or what their response was?
Barry: You know, I think, as with the people in Nashville, I think that they’re disappointed. When you have somebody that you work with that you respect and they do something like this, that hurts. And I think I’ve hurt them, and I know that this is hurtful not only to Bruce and the people that I love and care about but to the citizens of Davidson County.
Going back to those trips … I guess really it was just you going, those would have been trips that you yourself would have been going on normally?
Barry: Yes.
And then he was just joining there? I mean, what were the nature of some of those?
Barry: We’ll provide you with a list and you can see exactly what the trips were. They were all business-related. They all had to do with being the mayor of this city.
Do you still have a relationship with him?
Barry: Uh, no. I don’t understand what you mean.
Well, I mean, you were having an affair with him. Is it an ongoing communication with him? I understand he’s no longer with Metro. Is he somebody that you are still communicating with, regarding this issue?
Barry: No.
And so no longer seeing him? I understand he had a two-week notice, I think, and then was his last day today?
Barry: I’m not sure.
In terms of telling so many people who voted for you and who support you and, you know, I know you’re a very popular mayor — I think even your critics would acknowledge that — just in terms of trying to tell them, explain the situation, what do you say?
Barry: I say that, that I know that God’s going to forgive me. But the citizens of Nashville don’t have to. My hope is that I can earn their forgiveness, and I can earn back their trust, and we can do the great work for this city that Nashville deserves.
Again, your stance is that those trips were city business trips, all of them?
Barry: All of them. Every single one.
Some people might say that taxpayer money was being used for an extramarital affair, to advance that relationship. Would you reject that? During these trips, were they exclusively city business or was there some stuff that was to the nature of a relationship with him?
Barry: It was all city business, and the police policy for detail and my busy schedule are what you’re seeing reflected in those trips. Which is the fact that I’m busy and that’s part of the process when you become a mayor, you get security.
President Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
To hear President Trump tell it during his State of the Union address, he’s solely responsible for every economic success since even before he took the oath of office.
So here is the truth of five financial facts he made about the economy during his address Tuesday night.
1. Trump said:“African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.”
The unemployment rate for African Americans has been declining since 2010. The rate was 7.7 percent when Trump took the oath of office. It’s now 6.8 percent, as The Washington Post fact checkers reported.
Love this line from The Post fact checkers: “Trump taking credit for this is like a rooster thinking the sun came up because he crowed.”
And, as they wrote, “Hispanic American unemployment had also been trending lower before Trump’s presidency. It hit a low of 4.8 percent in several months in 2017, as well as in one month in 2006.”
2. Trump said:“Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low.”
Except newly released data show that for the week that ended Jan. 20, new jobless claims jumped up.
4. Trump said: “Just as I promised the American people from this podium 11 months ago, we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history.”
“It is false that the tax cut package passed in December is the largest cut ever, as Trump has repeatedly claimed,” according to PolitiFact. “In inflation-adjusted dollars, the recent tax bill is the fourth-largest since 1940. And as a percentage of GDP, it ranks seventh.”
5. Trump said: “The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value. That is great news for Americans’ 401(k), retirement, pension and college savings accounts.”
It’s true the stock market has produced substantial gains for many investors, but there’s a caveat.
“Trump is correct that $8 trillion in wealth has been created since the election — or $6.9 trillion since he took the oath of office, according to the Wilshire 5000 Index of stocks,” The Post fact checkers wrote. “But much of that gain in wealth did not trickle down to most Americans. Only about 50 percent of Americans own stocks directly or through retirement funds, according to a Gallup survey. And most of the value in stocks is held by the top 10 percent.”
“In 2007, nearly two in three American adults (65 percent) reported investing in the stock market. . .” wrote Justin McCarthy for Gallup News. “But this percentage shrank each year from 2008 to 2013 as the effects of the Great Recession and big market losses took their toll on Americans’ sense of job security, confidence in the economy and financial means to invest — as well as their general confidence in stocks as a place to invest their money. Though the Dow Jones industrial average has made great gains since bottoming out in 2009, Americans’ stock ownership has yet to recover to the level reported prior to the recession.”
Color of Money question of the week Were you encouraged about Trump’s enthusiasm for the economy during his State of the Union address? Send your comments to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Please include your name, city and state. All opinions are welcome but please keep your comments civil.
Looking for volunteers To capture the impact of the new tax law, I want to profile people and their tax situation.
So, I’m looking for individuals and couples willing to share your 2017 tax returns and then later have me compare it to your 2018 return, which of course will be filed next year. It will mean sharing some financial information but only what’s necessary. I just want to show with real folks the impact of the recent tax reform.
If you’re interested please email me at colorofmoney@washpost.com
Live chat today Let’s talk about Medicare. Joining me today will be Tricia Neuman, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and director of the foundation’s Program on Medicare Policy. She oversees the foundation’s research and analysis work pertaining to Medicare, and health coverage and care for aging Americans and people with disabilities
Join the discussion live from noon to 1 p.m. Here’s the link.
A new report found 1 in 6 millennials has $100,000 in savings. Some millennials are saving by living at home.
A Bank of America report found that nearly half of millennials in their poll — Americans 23 and 37 — have $15,000 or more saved and one in six has more than $100,000 in savings.
Last week I asked: What do you think of young adults returning home to save money?
Barbara Allen of Warrenton, Va., said her daughter, who will graduate this May is moving in with a friend in an area with better employment opportunities. But she’s prepared for the real world, Allen wrote.
“She knows by sitting down with us what her expenses will entail, and how much she will need to earn to pay those expenses,” she wrote. “We have agreed to help her financially until the end of 2018, with deposits, etc. She has a savings account which she has added to with part-time jobs during school breaks and summers. We put money into an account since she was a born, and were able to pay all but the last semester of college tuition in cash. She will have a student loan debt of $6,000, with payment starting in 2019. We have been paying on that student loan monthly since she received the payout for tuition, bringing the [principal] down while paying off incurring interest. We as a family feel she has the maturity and skills to succeed outside living at home, and encouraged her to do so. It depends on the young person if staying at home to save money will work, some young people have the skills, some don’t, and it depends on the family dynamic.”
“I am a HUGE proponent of living at home to save,” Valerie Boykin of Fort Washington, Md., wrote. “My siblings, spouses and I did it when we graduated in the ’80s, and my daughter who graduated in 2015 did it. My siblings, spouses and I used that springboard to purchase houses and build sound futures. My daughter just bought her first house. This is one key way to build multigenerational wealth especially for those who didn’t come from wealth. It saddens me when parents push children who are trying to build a future out of the house prematurely (emphasis on trying to build a future — if you aren’t trying, I’m not either), or when kids foolishly just can’t live with the parent’s rules for just a little while.”
Here are some tips from C A Dazell from Arizona for parents welcoming adult children back home. — “Make sure the savings is actually going into ‘savings’ and not a new car.” — “Make sure that adult child takes care of himself in your home (cleans, cooks, washes their own cloths, etc.) After all, they will have to do it eventually.” — “Make sure there are agreed to boundaries; my space vs your space, coming/going times, girlfriend/boyfriend sleepovers or (worse) moves in?”
Can I just add. My rule: No unmarried adults living together in my home. My house. My rules. It’s already quite enough helping your own child launch.
Color of Money columns this week Knowledge isn’t power. The right knowledge is power.
Stay informed about your money.
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Have a question about your finances? Michelle Singletary has a weekly live chat every Thursday at noon where she discusses financial dilemmas with readers. You can also write to Michelle directly by sending an email to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Personal responses may not be possible, and comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer’s name, unless otherwise requested. To read more Color of Money columns, go here.
WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish lawmakers approved a bill on Thursday that would impose jail terms for suggesting Poland was complicit in the Holocaust, drawing concern from the United States and outrage from Israel, which denounced “any attempt to challenge historical truth”.
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) says the bill is needed to protect Poland’s reputation and ensure historians recognize that Poles as well as Jews perished under the Nazis. Israeli officials said it criminalizes basic historical facts.
The Senate voted on the bill in the early hours on Thursday and it will now be sent to President Andrzej Duda for signature.
“We, the Poles, were victims, as were the Jews,” Deputy Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, a senior PiS figure and supporter of the law, said on Wednesday before the vote. “It is a duty of every Pole to defend the good name of Poland. Just as the Jews, we were victims.”
Under the proposed legislation, violators would face three years in prison for mentioning the term “Polish death camps”, although the bill says scientific research into World War Two would not be constrained.
Israel “adamantly opposes” the bill’s approval, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
“Israel views with utmost gravity any attempt to challenge historical truth. No law will change the facts,” ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said on Twitter.
Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant, one of several cabinet ministers to denounce the bill, told Israel’s Army Radio that he considered it “de facto Holocaust denial”.
The bill has come at a time when rightwing, anti-immigrant parties like PiS have been in the ascendancy in Europe, especially in the former Communist countries of the east. EU officials have expressed alarm over the PiS administration in Poland, which they say has undermined the rule of law by exerting pressure over the courts and media.
The ruling PiS, a socially conservative, nationalist group, has reignited debate on the Holocaust as part of a campaign to fuel patriotism since sweeping into power in 2015.
The U.S. State Department said the legislation “could undermine free speech and academic discourse”.
“We are also concerned about the repercussions this draft legislation, if enacted, could have on Poland’s strategic interests and relationships,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.
Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, told Reuters it was likely to push Poland further toward nationalism and isolation.
“The president will have to sign it – otherwise it would mean he is giving into international pressure. But the external criticism will, of course, push the government further into the position of a besieged fortress, strengthening both the nationalistic rhetoric…and the nationalistic mood in the country.”
PAINFUL DEBATE
Poland had Europe’s largest Jewish population when it was invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union at the start of World War Two. It became ground zero for the “Final Solution”, Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews.
More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for around half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across Europe were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by the Germans on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.
According to figures from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Germans also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.
Many thousands of Poles risked their lives to protect their Jewish neighbors; Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust center recognizes 6,706 Poles as “righteous among nations” for bravery in resisting the Holocaust, more than any other nationality.
But Poland has also gone through a painful public debate in recent years about guilt and reconciliation over the Holocaust, after the publication of research showing some Poles participated in the Nazi German atrocities. Many Poles have refused to accept such findings, which have challenged a national narrative that the country was solely a victim.
A 2017 survey by the Polish Center for Research on Prejudice showed that more than 55 percent of Poles were “annoyed” by talk of Polish participation in crimes against Jews.
Poland has long sought to discourage use of the term “Polish camps” to refer to Nazi camps on its territory, arguing that the phrase implies complicity.
European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and political foe of the PiS, said the bill had the opposite of its intended effect, tarnishing Poland’s name and encouraging the view of history it aimed to criminalize.
“Anyone who spreads a false statement about ‘Polish camps’ harms the good name and interests of Poland,” Tusk said on his private Twitter account. “The authors of the bill have promoted this vile slander all over the world, effectively as nobody has before.”
Additional reporting by Dan Williams in JERUSALEM, Mohammad Zargham in WASHINGTON, Gabriela Baczynska in BRUSSELS and Marcin Goettig in WARSAW; Writing by Justyna Pawlak and Lidia Kelly; Editing by Peter Graff
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) right, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) at a news conference in Washington on March 2, 2017. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP)
There was a time not too long ago when the Republican chairman and the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee were pals. Even as they set to work last year on the panel’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, they enjoyed a “collegial working relationship” and “something of a bromance,” as the San Jose Mercury News put it.
Since then, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) have transformed into bitter rivals, each accusing the other of letting partisan loyalties cloud his judgment on the most consequential political scandal in a generation.
Months of tension reached new heights late Wednesday night, when Schiff blasted Nunes for changing language in a secret memo alleging law enforcement abuses in the Russia investigation before sending it to the White House for approval of its release to the public.
Colleagues criticize each other on Capitol Hill all the time. But rarely does a member blow the whistle on another lawmaker in such dramatic fashion in full public view. It underscored the high stakes of the struggle over the Russia investigation now consuming Congress, the White House — and two once-cooperative colleagues.
In a letter to Nunes, Schiff said the controversial memo had been “secretly altered” without Democrats’ consent and called on Nunes to withdraw it, as The Washington Post reported. A spokesman for the committee’s Republican majority called the memo’s release “procedurally sound” and said the edits were “minor.” To “suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo,” the spokesman said.
It was the latest and one of the most heated clashes between Schiff and Nunes in the months since Congress and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III opened their probes into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.
The two lawmakers — one a Harvard-educated lawyer, the other a third-generation cattle farmer — have come to personify opposing sides in the matter, representing two vastly different strains in American politics. Schiff, playing the part of both investigator and spokesman, has forcefully defended the probe, saying American democracy itself is at stake. Nunes, an ardent defender of the White House, has set out to protect a duly elected president and his administration from what he views as a politically motivated witch hunt.
Everything in Schiff’s résumé suggests he is well-equipped for this moment, although both he and Nunes have developed reputations as quiet operators in each of their 15-plus years in Congress.
The son of a Democratic father and a Republican mother, Schiff, 57, was born outside Boston but spent most of his youth in California. He attended high school in one of California’s wealthiest cities, Danville, studied political science at Stanford University and got his law degree from Harvard.
Schiff seemed destined for public office early on. “I remember, like every kid growing up in Boston, being awed by John Kennedy,” he told the Glendale News-Press in 2000.
After law school, he took a job with the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. The case that put him on the map was his successful prosecution of Richard W. Miller, said to be the first FBI agent ever to be indicted on a charge of espionage. With Schiff arguing the case, Miller was convicted in 1990 of trading classified documents to the Soviet Union for gold and cash.
Soon after, Schiff turned his sights toward the state legislature. In 1996, after two failed bids for the state assembly, he was elected to the California State Senate, where he chaired the chamber’s judiciary committee. He served a single term, then won an election to the U.S. House of Representatives, unseating a Republican in a district north of Los Angeles in what was then the most expensive House race on record.
In Congress, Schiff was generally known as a mild-mannered centrist who preferred to keep a low profile.
“Schiff is not a bomb-thrower. And he’s not a partisan street brawler,” the Hill wrote of him in 2006. “A fair-faced congressman from southern California, Schiff is a moderate, a compromiser, a man who chose law school over med school because he thought it would give him greater opportunities to serve the public.”
Nearly a dozen years later, little about his demeanor seemed to have changed. A New York Times story from last March opened: “As attack dogs go, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, is more labradoodle than Doberman, his partisanship disguised by a thick fur of intense preparation, modulated locution and gentle accusations.”
National security has been a primary focus for Schiff for most of his tenure. More hawkish than his counterparts on the issue, he formed a Democratic study group on national security concerns in his second term, as the Los Angeles Times reported in 2005. It was an unorthodox move for a Democrat to make at the time, Will Marshall, then-head of the moderate Democratic Leadership Forum, told the newspaper.
“For a long time, particularly in the House, it has been a little lonely to be a Democrat who specializes in security,” Marshall said. “Members too often regarded it as the other party’s issue. Adam sincerely believes the Democratic Party has to reassert its leadership on national security.”
Little in Nunes’s backstory — a rise from farm boy to head of a powerful congressional committee — points to why he has become a pivotal ally of President Trump on Capitol Hill. Born and raised as a third generation Portuguese-American in California’s rural Central Valley, Nunes’s aspirations originally didn’t stretch beyond the cattle yard. “All I wanted to be was a dairy farmer,” he told a group of high school students in 2002.
Nunes grew up working a family farm. “I broke so many tractors, they made me work with the cows,” he told the Hill in 2005. He studied agriculture and agricultural business at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, before returning to the family soil.
His first stab at elective office came in 1996 when he successfully ran for an open seat on the board of the College of the Sequoias, where he had studied in an associates program. He was only 23.
In 1998, Nunes lost a primary campaign for California’s 20th congressional District seat. The campaign, however, brought him national attention, in part because of his youth, and in 2001 he was appointed by President George W. Bush as the California Director of Rural Development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A year later, he tried again for a House seat, this time winning. He was 29.
“Once I got into politics in 1996 I never thought I couldn’t do it,” Nunes told the Hill. “I don’t worry about what other people think. I do what I think is right. I’m not very shy.”
Politically, Nunes’s beliefs run along the standard tracks of GOP conservatism. “Restoring the Republic,” his 2010 book, was a mix of boilerplate free-market advocacy and big government criticism, with Nunes arguing the biggest threats to America lie in the “the convergence of big government, big business, and the radical left in Washington.” The government, Nunes warned, aims to “take power away from individuals and give it to politicians and bureaucrats — people who have no idea what it’s like to live in the real world or what the problems of everyday people are like.”
Nunes laid out in the book a strenuous opposition to the “environmental lobby,” which he defined as the “well-funded interest groups that pursue an anti-capitalist, anti-economic growth, and anti-democratic agenda that aims to bring about a green utopia.”
On Capitol Hill, Nunes jumped to high-profile positions on the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of Washington’s “40 Under 40.” But he also stayed below the radar. “You never did hear too much about Devin over the last seven, eight years,” a constituent told Politico in March, adding the congressman “did a really good job.”
Yet Nunes’s reputation among his congressional colleagues, even fellow Republicans, is not unblemished. During the 2013 brawl within the Republican caucus, Nunes blasted GOP colleagues who were pushing for a government shutdown, memorably calling them “lemmings with suicide vests,” according to the New Yorker.
In March, the New York Times’s Frank Bruni reported he had spoken to a Republican insider who described Nunes as an “overeager goofball” who can’t see “the line between ingratiating and stupid.”
Bruni continued: “The insider said that Nunes crossed that line with John Boehner, the former House speaker, who gave him the committee chairmanship but grew weary of Nunes’s indiscriminate pep and constant bumming of his cigarettes.”
The House’s Russia investigation shot both Nunes and Schiff to a new level of national prominence. Despite their different party affiliations, the two men seemed to share a mutual respect. “I have always been impressed by him,” Schiff said of Nunes in 2014, the Fresno Bee reported. “He works in a very bipartisan way.”
The apparent respect remained as the hearings started. In March, when the intelligence committee held a rare public hearing with then-FBI director James B. Comey, Nunes gave Schiff a generous 15 minutes to make an opening statement — time the Democrat used to argue that a full-throttle probe of links between the Trump campaign and Russia was justified.
Schiff says he didn’t seek out the spotlight, but that he was leading the charge because he felt like American democracy is at stake. “This is the political equivalent of [9/11] in magnitude,” he told The Post in an interview at the time.
“I think my role is to try to help the Democratic Party to make this investigation thorough and to make it nonpartisan,” Schiff said. “Sometimes that’s playing the role of diplomat, and other times that’s using the public spotlight to push the investigation forward. … If we issue a report where Democrats find one thing and Republicans find another, both sides retreat to their respective corners and nothing gets revealed.”
The relationship began to fray at an accelerating pace in March. Both congressmen held a joint news conference on March 15 announcing the committee had found no evidence Trump Tower was wiretapped by the Obama administration — a claim made by Trump in a tweet. “We don’t have any evidence that took place,” Nunes said.
But on March 21, Nunes made a strange late-night visit to the White House, where an anonymous source provided what was later characterized as evidence of surveillance on the transition team. The next day, Nunes was back before reporters — this time without Schiff.
“What I’ve read seems to me to be some level of surveillance activity — perhaps legal, but I don’t know that it’s right,” Nunes said. “I don’t know that the American people would be comfortable with what I’ve read.”
Schiff blasted back from his own news conference hours later. “The chairman will either need to decide if he’s leading an investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House,” he told reporters. “Because he cannot do both.”
Facing ethics complaints and claims that he was now compromised, Nunes eventually stepped away from the investigation.
But the conflict between the two congressmen continued to boil — culminating in this week’s battle over the memo.
The four-page document, which the committee voted on party lines to make public, was produced by Nunes’s office and is said to raise questions about whether the FBI abused surveillance laws when it obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on Carter Page, a former adviser to Trump’s campaign. Schiff and other Democrats say the memo contains inaccuracies and is a thinly veiled attempt to distract from the Russia probe.
“This is a grave cost for short-term political gain,” Schiff said Wednesday in a Washington Post commentary.
The aggressive attack by Schiff, which challenged the motives of a committee colleague, was a serious escalation, a breach of congressional comity even by the standards of a bitterly polarized Congress.
Nunes and Schiff, once an example of collaboration amid an otherwise fractured House, are now locked in a high-stakes struggle. The relationship will be hard if not impossible to repair.
TOKYO — South Korea’s progressive government was already nervous about President Trump’s intentions when it came to North Korea, fearing that he might press ahead with military action without Seoul’s consent.
The sudden withdrawal of the candidate for ambassador to Seoul — apparently because he argued against striking North Korea — coupled with the president’s tough language in the State of the Union has now only exacerbated those fears.
Trump described North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear missiles as “reckless” and said there is a campaign of “maximum pressure” to prevent that from happening. The administration has also put forward the idea of a targeted strike to respond to missile launches to give the regime a “bloody nose” that would — hopefully — not escalate into a wider conflict.
“This puts Moon Jae-in between a rock and a hard place,” said Lee Chung-min, professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, referring to the South Korean president.
Now, the Moon administration will be trying to talk down a Trump administration that is apparently more serious about giving North Korea a “bloody nose” than analysts realized — at the same time as North Korea is preparing for a huge military parade.
The Pyongyang regime suddenly moved its army foundation day, celebrated for the last 30 years on April 25, back to the original date of Feb. 8. This just happens to be the day before the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics being held just over the border in South Korea.
Satellite photos show preparations for a large parade in Pyongyang and South Korean officials have said it is shaping up to be “intimidating” in both size and weaponry — a display that will likely further heighten fears about the regime’s intentions.
Then, once the Olympic Games are over and joint military exercises begin in South Korea, many analysts think North Korea will protest with a provocative action like launching another missile.
All this is taking place without a U.S. ambassador in Seoul.
“The role of an ambassador is not nearly as important as it once was, but we will have been more than a year without an ambassador in one of the United States’ most important alliances and at a very sensitive time in the region,” Lee said.
The Trump administration has abruptly ditched Victor Cha, an academic who served in the George W. Bush administration and is known for his hawkish approach to North Korea, as its candidate for U.S. ambassador to South Korea.
Although his views are sharply divergent from the South Korean government’s engagement-centered approach, Cha, a Korean American who teaches at Georgetown and runs the Korea department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is well known and well connected in Seoul.
Moon’s government had signed off on Cha’s nomination after Washington last month sent formal notice of intent to nominate him as ambassador, a process known as agrément.
Cha was suddenly withdrawn, however, partly because he raised concerns about the “bloody nose” idea of a limited strike to send a message without sparking a wider war.
Political analysts across the spectrum generally think this is an ill-advised strategy that could put at risk the 25 million South Koreans — and tens of thousands of Americans — living within North Korean artillery range.
The South Korean president has repeatedly said that Trump cannot launch a strike on North Korea without his approval — a statement of hope more than of fact, since the United States calls the shots in their military alliance.
South Korean news sites were on Wednesday full of headlines about the “mystery” of Cha’s sudden withdrawal from the position — literally “falling off a horse” in Korean. Media commentary noted how unusual it was for an ambassadorial candidate to be withdrawn after the host government had signed off.
The South Korean government has not been informed of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw Cha as its candidate for ambassador, according to two senior officials.
Having completed the agrément process, Seoul is expecting an explanation from Washington, said one of the officials, asking for anonymity to discuss diplomatic issues.
“It’s not desirable to not have a fully-fledged ambassador at this very sensitive time,” said the other senior official. He questioned whether the administration would be able to find a candidate who was even more hawkish that Cha. “Victor is seen as rather conservative,” he said. “Some people here were wondering if he, as a Korean American, was trying to prove that he was loyal to President Trump.”
Trump doubled down Tuesday with his tough language against North Korea, saying that only heavy-handed measures would work against the regime in Pyongyang.
“Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation. I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this dangerous position,” he said.
Trump’s omission of diplomacy as an option for dealing with North Korea stood out to Duyeon Kim, a fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum in Seoul.
“It almost sounds like he is selling a future war with North Korea much the same way Bush did in his State of the Union on Iraq,” she said. “If he is indeed marching the U.S. and the region into a war, this time it would be with a country that actually has nuclear weapons. So that could quickly get out of hand.”
For its part, North Korea released its own damning condemnation of Trump Wednesday. This is a standard regime tactic to try to divert from its own treatment of its citizens.
In a report on its “White Paper on Human Rights Violations in U.S. in 2017,” North Korea’s state media laid out a litany of complaints against the American president, starting with his choice of billionaires for Cabinet posts and his policies to help the rich.
“In the U.S. the absolute majority of the working masses, deprived of elementary rights to survival, are hovering in the abyss of nightmare,” the report said, citing youth unemployment and homeless numbers, and the “hell” of student loans.
It continued through the lack of paid maternity leave and sexual assault to gun crimes and marijuana use.
“The U.S., ‘guardian of democracy’ and ‘human rights champion,’ is kicking up the human rights racket but it can never camouflage its true identity as the gross violator of human rights,” the report said.
