Trump threatens to bypass Commission on Presidential Debates
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump made clear Monday that he intends to participate in at least three general election debates, but he is threatening to sidestep the nonprofit group charged with running them.
“I look very much forward to debating whoever the lucky person is who stumbles across the finish line in the little watched Do Nothing Democrat Debates,” Trump tweeted Monday morning after The New York Times reported that he was considering skipping them entirely.
Trump said his record “is so good” that “perhaps I would consider more than 3 debates.” But he also complained, without evidence, that the Commission on Presidential Debates is “stacked with Trump Haters & Never Trumpers” and threatened to bypass them.
“As President, the debates are up…….to me, and there are many options, including doing them directly & avoiding the nasty politics of this very biased Commission,” Trump wrote, adding that he would “make a decision at an appropriate time.”
Trump tussled with the commission as well as Fox News about the debates during the 2016 election cycle.
$1.4T spending package crammed with unrelated provisions
WASHINGTON — House leaders on Monday unveiled a $1.4 trillion government-wide spending package that’s carrying an unusually large load of unrelated provisions catching a ride on the last train out of Congress this year.
A House vote is slated for Tuesday on the sprawling package, some 2,313 pages long, as lawmakers wrap up reams of unfinished work — and vote on impeaching President Donald Trump.
The mammoth measure takes a split-the-differences approach that’s a product of divided power in Washington, offering lawmakers of all stripes plenty to vote for — and against. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was a driving force, along with administration pragmatists such as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who negotiated the summertime budget deal that it implements.
Trump hasn’t said for sure that he’ll sign the measure. He invariably has second thoughts, but he’s not interested in another government shutdown and has always bowed to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., when they’ve teamed up on compromise spending packages.
Retired coal miners and labor union opponents of Obama-era taxes on high-cost health plans came away with big wins in weekend negotiations by top congressional leaders and the Trump White House. The bill would also increase the age nationwide for purchasing tobacco products from 18 to 21, and offers business-friendly provisions on export financing, flood insurance and immigrant workers.
Throughout India, opposition building against citizenship law
NEW DELHI — Thousands of university students flooded the streets of India’s capital, while a southern state government led a march and demonstrators held a silent protest in the northeast on Monday against a new law giving citizenship to non-Muslims who entered India illegally to flee religious persecution in neighboring countries.
The protests in New Delhi followed a night of violent clashes between police and demonstrators at Jamia Millia Islamia University. People who student organizers said were not students set three buses on fire and police stormed the university library, firing tear gas at students crouched under desks.
Members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party said opposition parties were using the students as pawns.
Modi’s government says the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was approved by Parliament last week, will make India a safe haven for Hindus and other religious minorities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But critics say the legislation, which for the first time conditions Indian citizenship on religion, violates the secular constitution of the world’s largest democracy.
At Jamia Millia Islamia University on Monday, thousands stood outside the locked-down campus. Inside, hundreds of students took part in a peaceful sit-in, holding placards denouncing the injuries of dozens of students the night before.
Once affordable, Phoenix rents among fastest rising in US
PHOENIX — Aspen Day-Flynn and her boyfriend, Travis Tolin, were thinking of moving back to her native Washington state this fall when their Phoenix landlord helped give them the push.
The monthly rent on their two-bedroom house jumped from $1,000 to $1,500 because the owner planned to renovate.
“It really pushed us out the door faster,” said Day-Flynn, a 23-year-old hairstylist.
She and Tolin, a 25-year-old tattoo artist, found an apartment that’s similar in size to their 986-square-foot (110-square-yard) Phoenix house for $1,600 in Ballard, outside downtown Seattle. While it’s among the priciest U.S. areas to live, the couple is earning more money there.
Phoenix long has been considered an inexpensive place to live, but that may be changing. Even some middle-class people are struggling to make ends meet as the desert city experiences some of the nation’s fastest-rising rents, jumping as much as 7% over the past year.