***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[aepps20]

Two words, SPACE FORCE, bet the libbies didn't see that coming.

People said the same thing with Regan and the star wars program which was a huge success by the way. Space is the next frontier for international conflict and Trump is getting us prepared

 

[MalcolmNewton]

People said the same thing with Regan and the star wars program which was a huge success by the way. Space is the next frontier for international conflict and Trump is getting us prepared

These are the voyages, of the starship enterprise.

 

[aepps20]

These are the voyages, of the starship enterprise.

Well said comrade, Trump is boldly going were no man has gone before on immigration, tax cuts and job creation.

 

[cubanref]

I'm not hiding or embarrassed . I support trump ain't nothing wrong with that.

 

[EddieDoyers]

aepps20 going all in
Denzel Aepps Washington

 

[blastercombo]

I'm not hiding or embarrassed . I support trump ain't nothing wrong with that.

Sure buddy, that’s why the first thing you do is try to hide it behind your fake 7k a week nursing job and Uber eats delivery service you do when you’re board. “I don’t care about all the other stuff” trying to make sure to side step your racist support. Now here you’re being forced to claim your allegiance and you do because your BS was called out thinking you have a guy backing you up when he’s actually been joking the entire time co-signing the satire seriously.


Lol

 

[blastercombo]

its hilarious how you take aepps20 seriously

What a complete idiot. Co-signing the racist and prejudice stuff too with zero hesitation.

 

[Belgium]

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article214075459.html
Russia investigators likely got access to NRA's tax filings, secret donors

For months, the National Rifle Association has had a stock answer to queries about an investigation into whether Russian money was funneled to the gun rights group to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The NRA, which spent $30 million-plus backing Trump’s bid, has heard nothing from the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam reiterated in an email the other day.

Legal experts, though, say there’s an easy explanation for that. They say it would be routine for Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, who are looking at the NRA’s funding as part of a broader inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, to secretly gain access to the NRA’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service.

On the returns, the group was required to identify its so-called “dark money” donors -- companies and wealthy individuals who financed $21 million of the group’s publicly disclosed pro-Trump spending, as well as its multimillion-dollar efforts to heighten voter turnout. The NRA’s nonprofit status allows it to shield those donors’ names from the public, but not the IRS.

A central question for Mueller’s office is whether any of the confidential donors’ names hold clues that could enable investigators to trace a donation camouflaged to hide its Russian origins – such as a shell company that might be the end point in a chain of offshore transactions.

It is illegal for foreign funds to be spent to influence U.S. elections.

Prosecutors’ requests to federal magistrates or judges for access to tax information are usually made “entirely in the background, with no notice to the subject of the investigation,” said David Axelrod, a Columbus, Ohio lawyer who previously prosecuted cases for the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

The main focus of Mueller’s inquiry, as McClatchy reported in January, has been whether Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of Russia’s central bank and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, arranged for Russian money to flow through the gun rights group to aid Trump, people familiar with the inquiry say.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said in a statement to McClatchy that if investigators haven’t yet obtained a list of the NRA’s secret donors, it’s a vital step for determining if Russians “used shell companies as part of a scheme to influence the 2016 election.”

“Investigators must follow the money wherever it leads to understand the full story of Russia’s attack on our democracy,” said Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee that is examining Russia’s election interference.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Russia’s intervention was aimed at helping Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose outspoken advocacy for stricter gun control laws won the enmity of the NRA even as her criticism of Putin estranged the Kremlin.

The NRA’s general counsel, John Frazer, said in a flurry of letters with Wyden earlier this year that the group’s donations from Russia during the 2016 election cycle totaled $2,500, but did not reveal the extent to which the group traces the true origins of its $350 million in annual funding.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office has declined to comment on the NRA inquiry, which the sources described on condition of anonymity because it is confidential.

Still unclear is just how and why the nation’s leading gun rights lobby became entangled in Mueller’s sweeping investigation that has preoccupied the president and gripped the nation. The question is, did substantial Russian money find its way into the group’s coffers – and if so, to what extent were NRA officials or the group’s allies aware of it?

Steve Hall, a former chief of the CIA’s Russia operations, suspects that NRA board members and current and former officers may have been duped over several years into playing a role in a Kremlin-directed intelligence operation that eventually offered the potential for both a communication line to Trump's team and a way to put money behind his campaign.

He said he suspects that current and former NRA leaders failed to recognize that the Kremlin saw their group as a tool for its “dangerous propaganda machine. … That’s the most innocent explanation: The NRA got snookered.”

Still, said Hall, who retired from the agency in 2015, the NRA-Russian connection bears close examination by Mueller.

“It’s just so insidious, and it sort of ticks all the boxes: connections to the current administration, major backer of then-candidate Trump, the Russians wanting to get in and manipulate our own political system.”

Torshin has drawn scrutiny in part because Spanish prosecutors accused him of money-laundering and also because he cultivated relationships with the NRA that nearly earned him a meeting with Trump.

He befriended then-NRA President David Keene beginning in 2011, became a lifetime member of the group and attended a string of NRA national conventions in the ensuing years. That led to Moscow visits by Keene and other NRA heavyweights in 2013 and 2015 to meet with a Russian gun rights group that Torshin was instrumental in forming and later with a deputy prime minister.

The Spanish prosecutors, who have cooperated with the FBI for years, say Torshin has a dark side. They have accused him of laundering money for the Russian mob, an allegation Torshin has denied.

Last month during a visit to Washington, chief Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda spent several hours meeting with FBI officials, according to two people familiar with his itinerary. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Grinda also met with journalists at the Hudson Institute, where he revealed that a few months ago he provided the FBI with 33 audio recordings of Torshin, including one in which a since-convicted Russian money launderer called him “godfather,” according to Yahoo News.

On April 6, the Treasury Department included Torshin on a list of Russians sanctioned in response to the Kremlin-ordered invasion of Eastern Ukraine, Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 elections and other aggressive actions. In light of all of the revelations about Torshin, the NRA reevaluated its relationship with him. His NRA membership is now “frozen,” spokesman Arulanandam said.

Hall, who worked earlier as the CIA’s Moscow station chief, believes that Torshin’s involvement with the NRA was no accident. Nor were meetings between NRA representatives and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and even Sergei Rudov, manager of a far-right Russian religious foundation, he said.

It looks like the Kremlin was pulling the strings at every turn, in a country where that happens “to a degree that cannot even be dreamed of here,” Hall said. “Everybody knows the consequences of not doing what the Kremlin wants you to do.”

John Aquilino, a former NRA spokesman, also is baffled by the NRA’s outreach to Torshin and Moscow.

"The NRA has fallen into a public relations trap, and the Russians knew damn well what they were doing," Aquilino said in a phone interview. “The NRA was naive and got hoodwinked."

"The NRA and the gun control issue is a perfect example of an issue that would fire up the populace and sow discord,” Aquilino said. He pointed to the fact that a Russian troll farm bought dozens of Facebook ads on gun rights as part of a 2016 social media blitz aimed at dividing Americans and helping Trump.

The NRA, a flashpoint for controversy given its opposition to gun control legislation, has been resolute about protecting the anonymity of most of its donors to its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. However, the institute has trumpeted pledges by some gun makers, such as Sturm, Ruger and Co.'s August 2016 commitment of $2 from each gun sale, with a goal to raise $4 million.

Where potential financial crimes are involved, neither the NRA nor any other group can protect the identities of large dark-money donors from investigators, even if the fortress-like IRS holds the records. Investigators need only show “a reasonable cause to believe” that the information sought is relevant to a federal crime – a lower threshold than that required for a search warrant.

FBI and IRS agents collaborating on follow-the-money investigations commonly use “secret subpoenas, tax orders and other investigative techniques to collect an extraordinary amount of financial information without their target even knowing that the investigation exists,” said one former senior federal prosecutor, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to sensitive relationships with investigators.

Michael Zeldin, a former senior Justice Department official who oversaw money-laundering investigations, said that “it would be basic blocking and tackling for the prosecutors to seek all relevant tax returns."

If the tax filings identified a donor as a shell company, he said, the next step would be to “determine how difficult it will be to trace” the true source of the money.

Torshin’s enthusiastic overtures to the NRA energized a number of the group's leaders to visit Russia. During a

2013 trip, Torshin introduced Keene and conservative operative Paul Erickson to his group, the Right to Bear Arms, and Maria Butina, a protégé who headed the group. Butina soon enrolled a graduate student in the United States, where she was awarded lifetime membership in the NRA and became a fixture at the group's meetings.

In 2015, the Russians lavishly wined and dined a second NRA delegation that included high-dollar NRA fundraiser, Joe Gregory, and Pete Brownell, the head of a major U.S. firearms firm who later became the NRA’s president.

A meeting between the second delegation and Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin, who oversaw Russia’s defense and firearms industries, has drawn sharp criticism from Kremlin analysts because Rogozin had been placed under U.S. sanctions.

Ex-CIA Russia specialist Hall said he cannot fathom what the NRA officials hoped to obtain from Russia; Putin opposes arming his citizenry with more than hunting rifles.

Russia, though, may have had an agenda for its gun makers.

The NRA visit included a tour of the Russian firearms manufacturer Orsis, which also was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2014, perhaps to highlight Moscow’s hopes that victory by the right candidate could bring those curbs to an end.

Mike Carpenter, a National Security Council aide in 2013 and 2014 under President Barack Obama, said the Moscow government had also sought to lift earlier limits on Russian gun imports from companies including the iconic Kalashnikov. But easing the restrictions “obviously wasn't in the interest of U.S. gun manufacturers,” he said.

“So Russia turned to the NRA and other gun enthusiasts to try to promote the issue,” he said. “At the time, Dmitry Rogozin was overseeing this effort.”

The Torshin-led mating dance between Moscow and the NRA culminated at the NRA’s convention in Louisville in late May 2016, when Trump received an early endorsement from the pro-gun goliath.

Torshin tried unsuccessfully that week to arrange a personal meeting with Trump, but he did cadge a short chat with Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter. Trump Jr.’s lawyer told McClatchy it was mostly just “small talk” about guns.

During that same time span, Erickson and Torshin each floated proposals with Trump campaign officials for a pre-election meeting between Putin and Trump, an idea that did not gain traction.

After the election, Torshin came to Washington in February 2017 to attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast, an event where he’d been a regular for more than a half dozen years, Erickson said.

Torshin also was feted at a four-hour Capitol Hill dinner organized by George O’Neill Jr. a Rockefeller heir. Attendees included Erickson and Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, considered by some analysts to be Putin’s best friend in Washington.

Rohrabacher, in a phone interview last year, said that conservative American gun rights groups no longer look at Russia with Cold War angst, but rather “in friendly terms.” He remembered meeting Torshin in Moscow a few years earlier, calling him a “mover and shaker.”

Torshin’s 2017 visit to the U.S. would be his last for awhile. The sanctions bar him from entering the United States.

Some other recent noteable work from Mcclatchy:
June 19
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article210477439.html
Buyers tied to Russia, former Soviet republics paid $109 million cash for Trump properties
Buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Trump-branded properties in South Florida and New York City, according to a new analysis shared with McClatchy. Many of them made purchases using shell companies designed to obscure their identities.

June 26
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/article213846794.html
The winding money trail from Kazakhstan to Trump SoHo
A collaborative investigation has found the specific offshore companies used to route into a Trump-branded property more than $3 million linked to a massive fraud case in Kazakhstan.

 

[IATT]

 

[blastercombo]

NRA is a racist group. They’ve been very open about it

 

[aepps20]

aepps20 going all in
Denzel Aepps Washington

METH

 

[Belgium]

4 more days until our tariffs go into effect. If Trump responds by declaring auto imports a 'national security threat' his supporters aren't gonna like the retaliation.
BMW has also filed an appeal with the US Commerce Department against potential auto tariffs.
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-says-us-risks-294-billion-hit-over-auto-tariffs/a-44485982
EU says US risks $294 billion hit over auto tariffs
The trade conflict between the US and the EU escalates: After Trump's threat to slap higher duties on auto imports from the bloc, the EU warns it could sanction US exports worth billions.

The European Union warned on Monday that up to $294 billion (€252 billion) worth of US exports could become the target of countermeasures if President Donald Trump remained serious about his threat to impose a 20-percent tariff on cars imported from the EU.

In a letter to US authorities, the European Commission, which handles trade policy for the bloc's 28 members, said "up to $294 billion of US exports ... could be subject to countermeasures across sectors of the US economy."

This was the equivalent to 19 percent of US total exports in 2017, it added.

The EU executive underlined that European car companies were important contributors to the US economy and "well established" there. "In 2017, US-based EU companies produced close to 2.9 million automobiles, which accounted for 26 percent of total US production," it said.

Pointing to sites in South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee — southern US states known for their unwavering support for Trump — the EU said its companies supported 120,000 direct and indirect US jobs in plants across the country.

Trump's threat was the latest salvo in an escalating trade spat that saw the European Union slap duties on US-made jeans and Harley Davidson motorcycles in a tit-for-tat response to US tariffs on European steel and aluminium exports. The US president has also singled out the Europeans as a problem as great to the US on trade as China. Auto imports are a particular thorn in his side.

Slovakia to feel most pain

The specter of US tariffs that sent shares in Fiat Chrysler, Daimler and BMW tumbling on European stock exchanges also spooked Slovakia's automotive sector. As the world's largest per capita car producer, Slovakia stands to be hit hardest if US President Donald Trump makes good on his threat, analysts say.

It boasts Germany's Volkswagen — which is Slovakia's biggest private-sector employer — France's PSA and South Korean Kia along with more than 300 automotive supply companies. All told, they generate over 300,000 jobs in the eurozone country of 5.4 million inhabitants.

This makes Slovakia the EU's leading car and car part exporter to the United States in terms of share of GDP — and the most vulnerable to tariffs. According to Slovak Institute for Financial Policy (IFP) calculations, a 25-percent tariff on cars could cost Slovakia approximately 90 million euros.

As the only Slovakia-based carmaker that exports directly to the US, Volkswagen — and its many local suppliers — will suffer the most should US tariffs be slapped on the high-end Touareg, Audi Q7 and Porsche Cayenne models produced at its Bratislava plant.

BMW appeals against car tariffs

In a letter to US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, German car manufacturer BMW has urged the US not to introduce tariffs on foreign cars.

"The domestic manufacture of automobiles has no apparent correlation with US national security," the company wrote in a statement, submitted as part of an US Department of Commerce investigation into whether car imports pose a threat to the country's security.

Ross claimed that Trump had far-reaching, "unilateral" power to impose and adjust tariffs and quotas by invoking a rarely used 1962 law authorizing presidential action against imports that undermine national security.

BMW said it "appears that the purpose of threatening to impose these duties is to achieve certain economic objectives, under the theory that enhancing US economic competitiveness will enhance US national security."

BMW's largest manufacturing base in the world is in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where SUVs from the company's X line are built. With production capacity currently being expanded to 450,000 cars, the Spartanburg factory is responsible for around 36,000 jobs, including subcontractors.

The manufacturer says that in 2017 it exported 272,000 cars from the US and imported around 248,000 cars.

Juncker to 'dedramatize relations'

Last week, the European Commission announced that its president, Jean-Claude Juncker, would travel to Washington at the end of July to discuss EU-US trade tensions with US President Donald Trump.

Speaking after a two-day EU summit, Juncker said "we should dedramatize these relations. We need these relations, the US needs these relations. I'm not sure that we will find an agreement between the US and the EU, but we'll try."

Among other things, the aim of the meeting was to discuss tariffs on the automotive sector, a spokesperson said, with Trump mulling higher tariffs on EU vehicle imports.

The EU Commission has also formally opened a legal case against Poland due to their controversial plan to remove judges and stack the courts in their favor. Poland has a month to respond, however they probably don't need to worry about potential sanctions as Hungary is likely to veto such measures. Poland's ruling party has passed a controversial law that lowered the retirement age for Supreme Court judges. Tomorrow, many of them will be forced into retirement under the new law, allowing the ruling Law And Justice Party (PiS) to stack the courts in their favor. 27 of the 76 Supreme Court judges will be removed, though dozens of judges have vowed they will defy that law and stay in their jobs.
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-opens-legal-case-against-poland/a-44489170

The European Commission launched legal proceedings against the Polish government on Monday, a day before many of the country's Supreme Court judges are being forced into early retirement due to a controversial new law.

Brussels and Warsaw have been at odds over the judicial reforms for two and a half years, with the European Union arguing that Poland is undermining "the principle of judiciary independence."

"Given the lack of progress and the imminent implementation of the new retirement regime for supreme court judges, the Commission decided today to launch the infringement procedure as a matter of urgency," spokesman Margaritis Schinas said.

Poland has argued that the law is a necessary reform to outdated regulations that go back to communist rule, but the EU has consistently maintained that it is an attack on democratic checks and balances.

'The constitution guarantees me this position'

The rule-of-law procedure opened on Monday was part of a broader investigation into the Polish government that could potentially lead to sanctions from Brussels. However, any such sanctions would have to be unanimously agreed upon and Poland's close ally Hungary is likely to veto such a measure.

Poland has a month to respond to the announcement. Dozens of the judges targeted by the new law have also announced their intention to defy the new laws and stay in their jobs after Tuesday, claiming the reforms are unconstitutional.

Chief Supreme Court Judge Malgorzata Gersdorf, 66, told DW that she had no intention to abandon her post. "The constitution guarantees me this venerable post for six years, and I see no reason why I should file a petition with the executive branch about it."

Of the 76 judges currently serving Warsaw’s highest court, 27 are over 65. Their departure would allow PiS to stack the court with government-friendly judges.

The EU's stability is also set to take another blow as the German government crisis heats up.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-government-in-horst-seehofer-limbo-live-updates/a-44485481
German government in Horst Seehofer limbo — live updates
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has threatened to resign over his CSU party's rift over asylum policy with Chancellor Angela Merkel's fellow conservatives, the CDU. DW has the news as it happens.

 

[blastercombo]

Prepare for more “I voted for you but now ________” tweets

 

[Belgium]

The bill would also legalize hemp production by removing it off the federal list of controlled substances. It also does not contain the work requirements for SNAP recipients from the House bill, a controversial measure that has already gotten the approval from president Trump.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-bill-opening-fight-with-house-on-food-stamps
Senate Passes Farm Bill, Setting Up Food-Stamp Fight With House
The Senate passed bipartisan farm legislation that sets up a clash with the House and President Donald Trump over imposing broad new work requirements for food stamp recipients.
The Senate bill, passed 86-11 Thursday, would renew subsidies for farmers and crop-insurance companies, along with food aid for low-income families. The Senate bill doesn’t include the work rules. The House version would make work requirements stricter and would shift some food-stamp benefits to job-training programs -- changes critics say are designed to throw needy Americans off the rolls.

The House and Senate versions of the five-year, $867 billion legislation will need to be reconciled. Trump backs the work rules in the House plan, which was passed 213-211 last week without any Democratic votes. The bill is H.R. 2.




Lawmakers are under pressure to act before current farm programs begin to expire on Sept. 30. The farm legislation is a traditional vehicle for modifying the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps.



Republicans said the work requirements are needed to move food stamp recipients into the labor force at a time of worker shortages. Democrats rejected those provisions because they said they’ll reduce benefits and increase paperwork without effectively moving people into jobs.

The Senate plan boosts funding for pilot programs that study the effectiveness of job training for food-stamp recipients, but doesn’t change work rules nationwide. The House version changes eligibility rules for food stamps.

Work Rules
Senators voted not to take up a proposed amendment that would have created work rules similar to those in the House legislation. The Senate bill’s supporters said they were concerned the provision would doom passage, a priority for vulnerable farm-state lawmakers from both parties.

"It’s not the best possible bill, it’s the best bill possible," given the partisan divide in the Senate, said Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican and chairman of the Agriculture Committee.

The Senate’s farm bill lowers the adjusted gross income threshold at which farmers are no longer eligible for farm subsidies to $700,000 from $900,000. In addition, it would increase funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture trade-promotion initiatives. Funding for trade programs is of heightened concern to farm groups as Trump threatens to impose new tariffs against major U.S. agricultural buyers such as Canada, Mexico and China.

The Senate bill also would boost acreage in the Conservation Reserve Program, the biggest USDA land-idling program, to 25 million acres from 24 million. The House bill raises the cap to 29 million. Under the program, farmers agree to halt production on environmentally sensitive land in exchange for an annual payment.

The proposal would also legalize hemp production by removing the marijuana relative from the federal list of controlled substances. That initiative is a pet project of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whose state would be poised to become a leading grower of legal hemp.

Older but relevant article from May 10 2018:
Excerpt:
A Bloomberg analysis shows that 12.9 percent of residents of states that backed Trump in 2016 used food stamps in February, the most recent month for which data are available, compared with 11.4 percent in states won by Democrat Hillary Clinton. That amounts to 23.8 million people in Trump states compared with 16.2 million in Clinton territory.

Residents of non-metropolitan counties, which gave 66 percent of their votes to Trump in 2016, are 18 percent more likely to participate in the food-stamp program than city-dwellers, according to a study by the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Kentucky, which backs greater funding for anti-poverty programs in rural areas.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...be-hit-hardest-by-gop-s-food-stamp-work-rules
Trump Voters Would Be Hit Hardest by GOP’s Food Stamp Work Rules

A House Republican plan to set stricter work rules for food stamp recipients would disproportionately affect low-income residents in states that supported Donald Trump for president and may imperil passage of farm legislation.



House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican, said after a White House meeting with Trump on Thursday that the president "is keen on work requirements being a part" of the bill and offered to help pass a plan.



"The president wants to deliver a farm bill this year," White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said Thursday. "He also has a strong belief in the work requirements."




The plan so far doesn’t have enough Republican votes to pass the House, according to Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, which wants even stricter work requirements. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the chamber plans to consider the legislation next week.



The GOP is divided about how far the work rules should go as the party campaigns to keep its majorities in the House and Senate in November’s elections. The Senate, which needs to approve its own plan before negotiating with the House on a final package, is less likely to sign off on new work requirements.

The farm bill reauthorizes all U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly called food stamps. The plan sent to the House floor by the Agriculture Committee on a party-line vote last month would shift some money spent on benefits to workforce training.

Worker Shortages
Republicans say the requirements are needed to move food stamp recipients into the labor force at a time of worker shortages. Democrats oppose those provisions because they’ll reduce benefits and increase paperwork requirements.

A Bloomberg analysis shows that 12.9 percent of residents of states that backed Trump in 2016 used food stamps in February, the most recent month for which data are available, compared with 11.4 percent in states won by Democrat Hillary Clinton. That amounts to 23.8 million people in Trump states compared with 16.2 million in Clinton territory.

Residents of non-metropolitan counties, which gave 66 percent of their votes to Trump in 2016, are 18 percent more likely to participate in the food-stamp program than city-dwellers, according to a study by the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Kentucky, which backs greater funding for anti-poverty programs in rural areas.

"One in four rural children lives in poverty," said Dee Davis, the organization’s president. "The president’s response is to withhold food."

The House measure would raise from 49 to 59 the age at which able-bodied adults would be required to work or participate in a training program for 20 hours a week. The plan also adds work requirements for households that include children 6 and older. Recipients between ages 18 and 59 with children above age 6 who don’t comply with the work requirement would lose an annual benefit of about $1,800 on average by 2028, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

About 40 million Americans were using food stamps in February, down 5.3 percent from the previous year and the lowest since March 2010, according to the USDA.

Tightened work rules have support among social and fiscal conservatives. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has said tight work-eligibility rules are necessary to discourage a "lifestyle" of welfare dependence.


Parke Wilde, a professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Boston, said criticizing the SNAP program is a way to signal disapproval of social-welfare initiatives. Even if those recipients are Trump voters, "there’s political mileage in just criticizing SNAP," he said. "There’s concern about people loafing while on government assistance."

Farm bills, which also include agricultural subsidies, traditionally are passed by a coalition of rural Republicans and welfare-supporting Democrats, meaning Trump’s position may make it more difficult for any bill to pass Congress, Wilde said.

"Support for farm programs and nutrition assistance requires a little bit of cross-sector dialogue," he said. "It isn’t well-served by appealing to one group of food-stamp haters."

Trump’s support for work rules could be a "huge help" to gaining passage in the House, especially among lawmakers worried about farm subsidy spending, said Conaway. But it may complicate approval of any farm bill in the Senate, which would need to reconcile its plan with a House version to craft a final law for the president to sign.

Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who attended the White House meeting with Conaway and Perdue, has yet to propose a bill in that chamber. The discussion with Trump was "productive," said his spokeswoman, Meghan Cline.

Roberts has said he’ll seek bipartisan support for the measure, given the greater power of Democrats in the Senate, controlled by the GOP 51-49.

 

[IATT]

Prepare for more “I voted for you but now ________” tweets

 

[nomnom]

Wrong thread

 

[aepps20]

Wrong thread

Lock her up indeed Comrade.

 

[nomnom]

Lock her up indeed Comrade.

I gotcha secretary general!

 

[IATT]

"Two of Washington’s colleagues and at least one witness say Washington, 45, was black":


Think we'll hear from the NRA on this one????

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[blastercombo]

"Two of Washington’s colleagues and at least one witness say Washington, 45, was black":


Think we'll hear from the NRA on this one????

Police need to realize they signed up to be put in harms way. How it became this firing squad at a moments notice is BS.

 

[UnicornHunter]

Sure buddy, that’s why the first thing you do is try to hide it behind your fake 7k a week nursing job and Uber eats delivery service you do when you’re board. “I don’t care about all the other stuff” trying to make sure to side step your racist support. Now here you’re being forced to claim your allegiance and you do because your BS was called out thinking you have a guy backing you up when he’s actually been joking the entire time co-signing the satire seriously.


Lol

Being forced? No lib will ever do that to me Haha like I said before I don't care about all the racism because racism has always been with this country. It wasn't like trump got elected president and everything suddenly became racist.

 

[blastercombo]

Euro step