Monthly Archives: April 2017

Rep. Warren Davidson told constituents at a 90-minute town hall that he supported President Donald Trump's air strike. | AP Photo

TROY, Ohio Facing vocal liberal critics in a district that Donald Trump won by 34 percentage points, Republican Rep. Warren Davidson on Tuesday urged the president to seek congressional approval for further escalation of U.S. military involvement in Syria.

Davidson, a Freedom Caucus member who claimed the seat former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave up last year, told constituents at a 90-minute town hall that he supported Trump's airstrike last week against an airfield controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad. But Davidson questioned Assad's motivations for using chemical weapons against his own citizens, speculating that it "could be a false flag" an unfounded theory put forth by conservative commentators and warned against a military intervention in the Middle East that could mire the U.S. as Iraq did.

Story Continued Below

"One of the big things we have to get back to doing is following our Constitution," Davidson told the crowd. "Article I gives Congress the power to declare war."

About two-thirds of the people in the packed town hall, sponsored by a local conservative group, donned pro-Trump stickers or vocally supported Davidson's conservative voting record. But a sizable contingent of the crowd turned their initially quiet opposition to Davidson and Trump into a full-blown noisy walkout halfway through the event, storming from the room after Davidson claimed that "all of the promises" made for Obamacare "have been false."

Organizers of the town hall did not attempt to restrict attendees from outside Davidson's district, which is heavily GOP-leaning, and a local chapter of the anti-Trump protest group Indivisible asked members to attend.

In supporting Trump's airstrike but calling for a return to congressional authorizations for war, Davidson aligned with Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-S.C.), who made similar comments to local media on Tuesday. He also praised the House and Senate Intelligence committees' investigations into Russia's 2016 election meddling, probes that are poised to include Moscow's ties to the Trump campaign and administration.

"They create fake news articles, they create partially true news articles," Davidson said of Russia. "You cant blindly say 'Trump good, critics bad' there's fact here that says Russia is doing bad things around the world."

The former Army Ranger didn't shy away from controversial comments throughout the town hall, observing at one point that he left the military service out of frustration with competing doctrines: one aligned with Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain ("Surely, we can go to war with someone this week") and the other aligned with former Secretary of State John Kerry ("Air conditioners are a bigger threat than ISIS").

Get breaking news when it happens in your inbox.

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Davidson also faced some flak from the crowd after defending his support for cutting off federal funding for Planned Parenthood and his opposition to federal aid for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. "Thats Flints problem, and if nothing else, its Michigans problem," he said.

"I catch a fair bit of grief from the whip for not voting party line," Davidson told the crowd at one point, adding that if anyone disagrees with his approach, "then theres an election every two years."

Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning in your inbox.

Visit link:

Freedom Caucus member presses Trump on Syria - POLITICO - Politico

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2017.(Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. Rep. Mark Meadows intends to deliver an Obamacare repeal and replacement plan to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Tuesday that would leave in place the existing law's mandates for insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

What Im getting to him is based on conversations that Ive had with (Tuesday Group co-chairman) Tom MacArthur and leadership, but I wouldnt say that its approved at this point, Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told USA TODAY. What were trying to do is work through issues that are important to all of us but make sure that pre-existing conditions are taken care of."

Last month, an earlier version of Republican repeal legislation was pulled from the floor when it became clear that there would not be enough Republicans to support it.Meadows and the three dozen hardline conservatives he leads didnt feel the bill went far enough. As the legislation was tugged further to the right to try to get the Freedom Caucus on board, a handful of moderates announced they could not support it.

Meadows has been in frequent conversation with Ryan, Vice President Penceand Rep. MacArthur over the past few days to come up with a consensus plan that can get enough Republican lawmakers to support the bill. He said the group is in final negotiations. Tuesday morning the vice president called Meadows numeroustimes but the congressman missed him because he was speaking to a high school civics class the two were finally able to connect later in the afternoon.

Speaker Paul Ryan addresses reporters on Capitol Hill on April 6, 2017.(Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo, European Pressphoto Agency)

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday "we are getting closer and closer every day" to a deal on healthcare, and Meadows' ideas "are very helpful." But he said the issue in the end will be "figuring out whether or not those attract additional votes gain additional support and don'tdetract" by scaring off some Republican moderates. "We feel very buoyed by the direction that this is going," Spicer said.

Just before the House broke for recess last week, Republicans came together on the one thing they could agree on a risk-sharing amendment designed to help states reduce premiums by reimbursing health insurance issuers for high-cost individuals.

While Republicans touted that deal as a bright spot in the negotiating process, it wasnt enough to bring the legislationback to the floor. Meadows said his new proposal would be in additionto the risk-sharing pools.

Meadows said that if theres consensus around this legislation which hes optimistic about the House may cut short its recess and go back to Washington tovote.

"Member discussions continue but I have no schedule update to report," Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong told USA TODAY.

Meadows said that he talked to the members of the Freedom Caucus on Monday night and the general consensus was that they could support something that protects pre-existing conditions and allows for the waiver. The group has not given an official endorsement of the plan.

Read more:

Republicans avoid town halls after health care votes

What is the House Freedom Caucus and why is Trump attacking its members?

Mike Pence and House Republicans scramble to resurrect Obamacare repeal

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2oone6A

Read the original here:

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows pursues health care deal with Speaker Ryan - USA TODAY

|

Posted: Apr 12, 2017 12:01 AM

The title plays off of Trump's message when he was seeking black support during the presidential campaign -- "What do you have to lose?"

Trump's point was that after a half-century of government programs that have failed blacks, doesn't it make sense to try something new?

Suppose I said that physical laws, such as the law of gravity, are different for whites and blacks. You would laugh at me.

How about economic laws? Are they different for whites and blacks? Of course not. They are laws that apply to human behavior.

It is clear to me that freedom and capitalism are the principles that made America a rich and powerful nation. And it is not unique to America. Plenty of studies show that for all the nations of the world, those that are free, that allow capitalism to operate in their economies, are the most prosperous.

So when I say, as I have been saying for the last 20-plus years, that lack of freedom and capitalism is what is holding back black Americans, you would think black leaders would want to listen. But they have no interest.

Black politicians want us to believe that the economic laws that work for whites don't apply to blacks. They want us to believe that politics and government will make black lives better instead.

Some $22 trillion dollars have been spent on anti-poverty programs without making a dent in the black poverty rate, and with gaps between black and white median household income and wealth continuing to increase.

Just since 1987, the gap in median household income between blacks and whites increased by more than $10,000.

According to the Pew Research Center, black household net worth, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2011 ($6,446) than in 1984 ($7,150).

When Donald Trump asked blacks, "What do you have to lose?" he was channeling Albert Einstein who defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

After 50 years of black lives dominated by government programs that have not achieved their objectives, isn't it time to try something new? Maybe freedom and capitalism. What do you have to lose? This was Trump's point.

However with more freedom and capitalism, black politiciansdohave something to lose. Power. So despite the benefits that more freedom and capitalism will bring to black Americans, black politicians don't want to hear about it.

The CBC report's introduction totally misses Trump's point that, after years of failure, it's logical to try a new way. Rather, the CBC twists Trump's words to mean, "African Americans are so destitute that we have no reason to fear a Trump administration."

The report then ticks off for some 100-plus pages all the same failed ideas of the last half-century -- government, spending, welfare. Everything that has failed so dismally and helped destroy the most important institution in black life -- the black family.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is hard at work, as he promised, to develop new approaches, helping black Americans with more opportunity of what works for everyone -- more freedom and more capitalism.

My organization, CURE, is involved in providing input on this with ideas such as more freedom in education through parental choice, lower taxes and regulation to encourage more black entrepreneurship and business investment in urban areas, expanded opportunities for personal savings, and, of course, policies to strengthen black families and churches.

It's time to bring freedom and capitalism to black America. The only ones who have something to lose are power-loving black politicians.

GOP Dashes Dems' Upset Hopes in Kansas, Conservative Holds Congressional Seat

Read more:

More Freedom -- Good for Blacks, Bad for Black Politicians - Star ... - Townhall

In many countries around the world, it remains difficult for people of all religions to practice their faith freely. And in others, its getting harder.

A Pew Research Center report released Tuesday shows that the number of countries with high levels of religious restrictions either from the government or from hostile individuals or groups grew overall from 34 percent in 2014 to 40 percent in 2015, the latest year for which data is available.

The uptick in 2015 followed two years of declines in the percentage of countries with high levels of religious restrictions. This is the eighth time the Pew Research Center has measured global religious restrictions.

The survey analyzed 198 countries using reports from various United Nations and European bodies, nongovernmental organizations, and U.S. government agencies.

The researchers looked for two types of restrictions those that came from the government and those that came from society. They defined government restrictions as laws, policies, and actions that restrict religious beliefs and practices.

The analysts searched for a variety of indicators, such as whether the constitution specifically provides for freedom of religion, whether any level of government restricts religious groups from proselytizing, and whether the government limits peoples freedom to convert from one religion to another. Incidents of government harassment measured in the study were not always physical. They also included derogatory statements made by public officials, such as when Hungarys prime minister Viktor Orban wrote that it was important to secure his country from Muslim migrants to keep Europe Christian.

Marko Djurica / Reuters

Social hostilities were defined asacts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society. In these cases, the researchers would search for whether the country experienced violence motivated by religious hatred, whether religious groups tried to prevent other religious groups from being able to operate, and other factors.

The findings showed that the number of countries with high or very high levels of government restrictions increased slightly from 24 percent in 2014 to 25 percent in 2015. The percentage of countries with high or very high levels of social hostilities increased from 23 percent to 27 percent over that same period.

This rise in government restrictions was linked to two indicators in particular government harassment and use of force against religious groups.The researchers found that widespread government harassment of religious groups occurred in 105 countries in 2015 (53 percent), compared to 85(43 percent) in 2014 and 96 (48 percent) in 2013.

Consistent with previous years, the Middle East-North Africa region had the largest percentage of governments that harassed and used force against religious groups (95 percent). European countries came in second, at 89 percent.Europe also experienced the largest increase in government harassment (rising from 17 countries in 2014 to 27 countries in 2015) and use of force against religious groups (going from 15 countries in 2014 to 24 countries in 2015). In particular, Pew pointed to France for cases where individuals were punished for wearing face coverings in public spaces and Russia for prosecuting groups for publicly exercising their religion.

Pacific Press via Getty Images

Katayoun Kishi, the primary researcher on the study, suggested that some of the harassment in Europecan be linked to how European countries are reacting to migrants arriving on their shores. A record 1.3 million migrants applied for asylum in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland in 2015.

Sub-Saharan Africa experienced the biggest rise in both government restrictions and social hostilities. The uptick resulted from a combination of the actions of extremist groups, like Boko Haram, and governments reaction to terror attacks. Officials in countries like Cameroon, Niger, Chad and the Republic of Congo imposed began banning or punishing women wearing Islamic veils and burqas.

Kishi told The Huffington Post that the primary sources used to compile this annual report are usually available in the fall of the year following the reference year. It takes her team about 12 weeks to comb through about 18 sources for each of the 198 countries.

Even though the stats in Tuesdays reports are from 2015, she said those who reading these figures may recognize some policies or relationships that still carry weight in 2017.

While major world events can certainly contribute to country score changes from year to year, a portion of a countrys annual score is also comprised of laws or regulations that typically do not drastically change annually, or long-standing tensions between governments or social groups and certain religious groups that persist from year to year, Kishi told The Huffington Post in an email. So, a countrys score in 2015 may reflect some of the major world events that occurred that year, but it is also shaped by factors that are not as volatile on an annual basis.

That being said, readers should not assume that religious restrictions in these countries in 2017 are necessarily the same as they were in 2015, she added.

Read more:

This Map Of The State Of Religious Freedom Around The World Is Chilling - Huffington Post

Since 2013, the student group Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee has hosted Sex Week at the University of Tennessee as a venue for students to discuss sexuality and relationships. Wochit

A student asks a question at the symposium on intellectual freedom Monday, April 10, 2017, at the University of Tennessee. The symposium comes in the midst of lawmakers proposing an "intellectual diversity" office at the university.(Photo: J. Miles Cary for the USA Today Network --Tennessee)

A panel of University of Tennessee faculty members tackled the issue of intellectual freedom on campus Monday night, including how it has come up in recent debates about freedom of speech on campus and how lawmakers have reacted.

"The purpose of tonight was to try and understand and put into a historical perspective the pressures that are put on intellectual freedom," said Ernest Freeberg, head of the department of history at UT and co-organizer of Monday's discussion at the UT College of Law. "We've seen a lot of that over the last couple of years but if you go back you will find it's a long standing issue between the university, the legislature and even sometimes the larger community."

The discussion featuring six faculty members from UT comes on the heels of the de-funding of UT's Office for Diversity and Inclusion by the state legislature and repeated backlash over the organization of Sex Week on campus. It also comes as lawmakers have proposed a bill preserving free speech on campus and the creation of an intellectual diversity office on campus.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

The conflict that such proposals can create between lawmakers and campus communities happens nationally, but it's also "important for us to understand our own history and put today's controversies into perspective," Freeberg said.

In 1952, for example, backlash erupted over the planned screening of four Charlie Chaplin films on the Knoxville campus because of the actor's role in a film satirizing Adolf Hitler.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon's presence at Neyland Stadium lead to a large anti-war protest and and dozens of arrests, including that of UT Professor Charles Reynolds, who ended up appealing his arrest to the U.S. Supreme Courtclaiming violation of his First Amendment right to free speech.

"What we've seen from history is this is a cyclical thing and at times different issues have arisen," Freebergsaid.

More recently, the organization of UT's Sex Week, offering sexual education and wellness programming often in a non-traditional way, has prompted backlash from the legislature leading to a change in the way student programming fees are used and playing a role in the de-funding of the Office for Diversity and Inclusion.

One of the greatest threats to intellectual freedom on campus is having tenured full-professors who are afraid to speak up because of fear of administrative censorship and that has resulted in UT acquiescence to the Tennessee legislature, said Mary McAlpin, a professor of modern languages and literature and one of Monday's speakers, who encouraged faculty members to be advocates for the issues they believe in.

"Tenure is a privilege and like all privileges it comes with related responsibility," McAlpin said. "It allows us to participate in shared governance with our administrators and to hold them accountable."

Read or Share this story: http://knoxne.ws/2oSpN22

Read the original:

UT panel weighs in on intellectual freedom - Knoxville News Sentinel - Knoxville News Sentinel