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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Obama aide: Trump should ‘reach out’ to Democrats boycotting inauguration

Twenty-three House Democrats plan to sit out Trumps swearing-in, including John Lewis, who the president-elect attacked over Russian hacking scandal

The Obama administration has urged incoming US president Donald Trump to reach out to the growing faction of House Democrats who have pledged to boycott the presidential inauguration, as some representatives question Trumps legitimacy, citing the Russian hacking scandal that continues to plague the transition.

Twenty-three House Democrats, including civil rights leader John Lewis and John Conyers, the longest serving congressman currently in office, have said they will not attend Fridays inauguration, marking a significant break from the tradition of witnessing the peaceful transition of power.

Georgia congressman Lewis, who was arrested numerous times in the 1960s civil rights campaigns and was beaten during the historic march over the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965, said on Friday he would not attend the ceremony due to concerns over Russian interference in the 2016 election.

I dont see this president-elect as a legitimate president, Lewis told NBCs Meet the Press, citing a consensus in the US intelligence community that Russian hackers infiltrated the emails of a top Clinton aide and leaked thousands of embarrassing documents to destabilise the election.

I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected, and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

Over the weekend, which marked the start of the Martin Luther King Jr Day public holiday, the president-elect used Twitter to lambast the 76-year-old African American, whom he said should spend more time fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results.

All talk, talk, talk no action or results. Sad!

Despite a slight uptick in 2015, the national crime rate has descended to historic lows under the Obama administration. Lewis congressional district in Atlanta includes several wealthy neighborhoods, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Hartsfield-Jackson airport and a major hub for computer science, the Georgia Institute of Technology.

On Sunday, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough told CNNs State of the Union Lewiss concerns were by no means trivial but argued Obama believed that Trump was the freely elected president.

My hope would be that the president-elect would reach out to somebody as consequential as somebody who is such a leader as John Lewis, McDonough said.

That would be the kind of thing that would not only send a message to the American people that were prepared to work together, but would also send a message to the Russians that we are united. Their efforts to divide us, to weaken us, to advance their own interests at the expense of ours, are going to fail.

Democrat senator Bernie Sanders, who challenged Hillary Clinton for the partys presidential nomination in 2016, stopped short of branding Trumps presidency illegitimate, despite acknowledging his great concerns about Russian interference in the election.

Do I think Russians supported him? Do I think they tried to get him elected? Do I think it worked against Clinton? I do. And that is something that has to be investigated. Sanders told ABC News on Sunday, adding that describing Trump as illegitimate would be just words.

On Friday the senate intelligence committee said it planned to question senior figures in the incoming Trump administration as part of an inquiry into Russian hacking during the election.

Vice-president-elect Mike Pence indicated on Sunday that such an act of reconciliation between Trump and Lewis would be unlikely, telling Fox News he was deeply disappointed by Lewiss comments.

The anger was mirrored by Trumps pick for chief of staff, Reince Priebus, who branded the remarks as incredibly disappointing and irresponsible during an interview with ABC news on Sunday.

Lewis too seemed not to be in conciliatory mood, telling NBC that if Trump were to ask him to work with him, I would say, Mr President, Mr Trump, its going to be hard. Its going to be tough.

Pence also offered the frankest denial yet of any contact between the Trump campaign and Russian authorities during the election, as was described in an explosive but unverified dossier authored by a former MI6 agent and published by BuzzFeed earlier in the week.

Pressed repeatedly, Pence eventually said: Of course not, why would there be any contacts between the campaign?

He added: This is all a distraction, and its all part of a narrative to delegitimize the election. The American people see right through it.

Pence had earlier caveated his response by stating he had only been part of the Trump campaign since July last year.

I joined this campaign in the summer and I can tell you that all the contact by the Trump campaign and associates was with the American people, he said.

The former Indiana governor also denied that phone calls between Trumps incoming national security adviser Mike Flynn and Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak, involved discussions related to President Obamas sanctions against the Russian regime in response its interference in the election.

I talked to General Flynn yesterday, and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new US sanctions against Russia and the expulsion of diplomats, Pence said.

Pence did not address reports suggesting that Trumps first foreign visit as president would be to Iceland for a summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin, who, the intelligence agencies said, approved the hacking operation.

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#Obama aide: Trump should ‘reach out’ to Democrats boycotting inauguration

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newstechreviews · 4 years ago

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Rep. John Lewis, the longtime Georgia Congressman and icon of the Civil Rights movement, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer, the Associated Press reported late Friday. He was 80.

His death represents the end of an era, not only for Congress but for the country as a whole. A survivor of Alabama’s “Bloody Sunday” massacre in 1965 and a protegé of Martin Luther King Jr. who would ultimately inspire Barack Obama to enter public office, Lewis was one of the last living leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. A member of Congress for more than thirty years, he channeled all he had learned from his fight for equality as a young man into empowering youth and minority communities and encouraging activism. After the election of President Donald Trump he became, in his mid 70s, a self-defined active leader of the resistance movement, boycotting the 2017 inauguration and delivering an impassioned speech on the need to impeach the President last October.

“He was known as one of the most dedicated, principled, courageous Civil Rights activists of all,” Clayborne Carson, a historian and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, told TIME. “There were a lot of people who I apply those adjectives to, but I think he exemplified them as well or better than anyone else.”

Lewis’ death came months after he was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in December 2019, which his office said was discovered during a routine medical visit. “I have been in some kind of fight – for freedom, equality, basic human rights – for nearly my entire life,” he said in a statement announcing his diagnosis. “I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now.” Although he soon began treatments in Washington, he did not shirk his duties, both to Congress and the fight for equality. In March 2020 he returned twice to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, where he reiterated the importance of voting—a right for which he had almost been killed fighting for half a century ago. “We must go out and vote like we never, ever voted before,” Lewis told a cheering crowd. “I’m gonna continue to fight. We need your prayers now more than ever before.”

Those sentiments illuminate how, in a sense, Lewis’ life is a microcosm—albeit an extraordinary one—of the evolution and struggles of African Americans in the second half of the twentieth century in the United States. Born in 1940 in Troy, Alabama to the son of sharecroppers, he came of age in the heart of a region where legalized racial inequities deemed him a second-class citizen from birth.

But the treatment he received only imbued him with a sense of determination to change things, an outlook largely shaped by observing the activism of his idol: Martin Luther King Jr. Lewis first met King in 1958 as an eighteen-year-old. Frustrated by his education in segregated schools, he had applied to all-white Troy University but had not heard back. He sought the advice of King in a letter, who promptly booked him a ticket to Montgomery to discuss his plight and whether he should push for admission to Troy University in an attempt to integrate his hometown’s institution. He had been inspired by King’s activism leading the Montgomery bus boycott, which took place less than 60 miles away from Troy, and frequently listened to King’s sermons that were broadcast on the radio for inspiration.

“I had grown up in rural Alabama very, very poor. I saw signs that said White and Colored…And I would ask my mother, my father, my grandparents, “Why? Why is that?” And they’d say, “That’s the way it is. Don’t get in trouble. Don’t get in the way.” But that day, listening to Dr. King, it gave me the sense that things could change,” Lewis wrote in LIFE Martin Luther King Jr.: 50 Years Later, a tribute to King half a century after his 1968 assassination.

Path to Civil Rights

Despite King’s assurances of support if he were to take legal action against the University, Lewis did not move forward because his parents were concerned it would endanger them. Instead, he went to Tennessee for college, graduating from American Baptist Theological Seminary in 1961 and later receiving a bachelor’s from Fisk University in 1967. Both universities were almost entirely African American.

During his time in the seminary Lewis began attending lectures on non-violent protests by James Lawson, a Civil Rights leader who was at the time a graduate student at Vanderbilt University. Inspired by Lawson, he started participating in sit-ins at lunch counters in Nashville, which began shortly after the famed sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was during these sit-ins that Lewis was first arrested.

In 1961, Lewis also joined the group of inaugural freedom riders traveling from the East Coast to the South while challenging interstate segregation. He was arrested in Birmingham and beaten at a bus stop in Montgomery, but neither event deterred his future involvement in the movement. Within two years, he had ascended to the leadership of the Civil Rights movement, chairing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which helmed the movement’s student activism. He went on to become the youngest person to speak at the March on Washington in 1963. “How long can we be patient?” a young Lewis told the throng of thousands gathered in the nation’s capitol. “We want our freedom, and we want it now.”

Speaking to TIME in 2013 for the 50th anniversary of the March, Lewis recalled how he was struck by the significance of the moment at the time. “I stood up and I said to myself, ‘This is it,’ ” he recalled. “I looked straight out and I started speaking.”

In March of 1965, in the midst of his tenure chairing the SNCC, Lewis was beaten by law enforcement while on the front lines of the 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery to push for voting rights, in an infamous episode that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” King had planned to stay in Atlanta because aides feared for his safety, TIME reported in a cover story at the time. So Lewis and Hosea Williams, another civil rights activist, led the hundreds of marchers trying to reach the Edmund Pettus bridge. “We’re not going to jump,” Lewis later remembered telling Williams. “We’re not going back. We’re going to move forward.” And that’s what we did.”

They were quickly greeted by law enforcement officers, some on horseback, others holding clubs, all ordering them to halt. “Turn around and go back to your church!” State Police Major Cloud shouted into a bullhorn. ‘You’ve got two minutes to disperse!”

The marchers stayed put, and the troopers unleashed tear gas and starting beating them. Lewis sustained a fractured skull and was hospitalized. “I thought I was going to die on that bridge. I thought I saw death,” he recalled 50 years after the march, speaking at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, which had sheltered him after the violence. “I don’t recall how we got back across that bridge, back to this church…but I refused to die.”

Despite his injuries, Lewis joined King and the other activists who resumed the march two weeks later to Montgomery. The National Guard accompanied them to ensure their safety. Less than five months later, then-President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, banning racial discrimination from voting practices.

Lewis stepped down as SNCC chair in 1966, but he would go on to help legislate the change he championed. As Director of the Voter Education project from 1971 until 1977, he registered four million minorities to voter rolls until then-President Jimmy Carter appointed him Associate Director of the Federal Volunteer Agency ACTION.

Legendary Lawmaker

His advocacy for equal rights ultimately led him to the political arena, where he spent the final chapter of his life. After running unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for Georgia’s fifth district in 1977, he was elected to serve on the City Council in Atlanta. In 1986, he prevailed in his quest to serve as Congressman, defeating former State Representative—and fellow civil rights activist—Julian Bond in the runoff for the Democratic primary, and subsequently prevailing in the general election. He held this role until his death.

Known as “the conscience of Congress,” Lewis was respected, if not revered, by members on both sides of the aisle, a rare feat in today’s polarized environment. It was not uncommon for freshmen lawmakers of all stripes to be star-struck as they met Lewis for the first time.

The leadership skills Lewis learned at the height of the Civil Rights Movement lent themselves well to his roles in the Capitol. At the time of his death, he was the senior Chief Deputy Whip for the Democratic Party, and a member of the House Ways & Means Committee. In 2016, in the aftermath of a shooting at an Orlando night club that left 49 dead, he led his colleagues in a 25-hour sit-in to force Republicans, who controlled the chamber at the time, to vote on gun control after lawmakers had been dismissed. “The American people are demanding action,” he said at the time. “Do we have the raw courage to make at least a down payment on ending gun violence in America?”

Lewis’ leadership also displayed itself prominently off the floor. For years, he accompanied politicians from both sides of the aisle to Selma to ensure the power of “Bloody Sunday” would remain in the public’s memory. And when Lewis spoke, his colleagues usually listened — even if his views and choices diverged from their own. In 2008, when Barack Obama’s candidacy was still a long shot, Lewis announced he was switching his endorsement and backing the Illinois Senator over Hillary Clinton. The move was seen as crucial to cementing Obama’s support among African American members of Congress, who would be key to his victory over Clinton.

Lewis reflected on the significance of Obama’s presidency in an interview with TIME before the 2009 inauguration. “When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought—I never dreamed—of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected President of the United States,” he said.

In 2010, Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Lewis was married for 44 years to Lillian Miles, who died in 2012. They have one son, John Miles.

Throughout his life and career, Lewis remained steadfast in his dedication to Civil Rights—and wrote eloquently about his worldview in an op-ed for TIME in 2018.

“I heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say on many occasions, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I still believe we will get there,” he wrote in a quote he repeated while speaking out after the death of George Floyd. “We will redeem the soul of America, and in doing so we will inspire people around the world to stand up and speak out.”

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itsfinancethings · 4 years ago

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Rep. John Lewis, the longtime Georgia Congressman and icon of the Civil Rights movement, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer, it was confirmed late Friday. He was 80.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed Lewis’s death in a statement, saying, “Today, America mourns the loss of one of the greatest heroes of American history: Congressman John Lewis, the Conscience of the Congress.

“John Lewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation – from the determination with which he met discrimination at lunch counters and on Freedom Rides, to the courage he showed as a young man facing down violence and death on Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the moral leadership he brought to the Congress for more than 30 years.”

William Lovelace—Express/Getty ImagesJohn Lewis (second from left) joins American civil-rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King in a march from Selma, Ala., to the state capital in Montgomery on March 30, 1965.

Path to Civil Rights

Legendary Lawmaker

In 2010, Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Doug Mills—The New York Times/ReduxBarack Obama, Amelia Boynton, right, Rep. John Lewis and the President’s family lead a march toward the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on March 7, 2015, 50 years after “Bloody Sunday.”

Lewis was married for 44 years to Lillian Miles, who died in 2012. They have one son, John Miles.

Throughout his life and career, Lewis remained steadfast in his dedication to Civil Rights—and wrote eloquently about his worldview in an op-ed for TIME in 2018.

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pscottm · 8 years ago

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The Senate has become embroiled in bitterness and name-calling less than two weeks after Inauguration Day.

The usually genteel chamber of Congress has been anything but recently amid controversial directives from the White House, Democratic opposition to President Trump’s political appointees and protests around the country.

Democrats on Tuesday slowed the pace of confirming Trump’s Cabinet nominees to a crawl, outraging Republicans, who accused them of unprecedented obstruction. The tactical move triggered a leading Republican to label Democrats “idiots.” Meanwhile, a liberal Democrat accused one of Trump’s Cabinet picks of lying to the Senate.

And the Supreme Court battle hasn’t really gotten started yet.

Democrats boycotted a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee, preventing scheduled votes on Trump’s picks to head the Treasury and Health and Human Services departments. They also filibustered a vote on Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), nominated for attorney general, in the Judiciary Committee, forcing Republicans to adjourn the meeting without action.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blasted Democrats for intentionally causing “chaos” and called their behavior “foolish.”

“They’re manufacturing issues on a daily basis to drag this process out and to treat this president’s initial Cabinet appointments differently from the way we’ve treated presidents of the Democratic Party in similar circumstances,” McConnell fumed at an afternoon press conference.

McConnell said Republicans were not enthusiastic about President Obama’s Cabinet picks in 2009 “but we did not prevent him from getting up and functioning.”

“Totally different treatment by the Senate majority at the beginning of Obama from what we’re experiencing here,” he said.

On his first day in office, six of Obama’s Cabinet nominees were confirmed.

As of Tuesday afternoon, senators had confirmed only three Trump Cabinet members: James Mattis as secretary of Defense, John Kelly as secretary of Homeland Security and Elaine Chao as secretary of Transportation.

The Senate has also confirmed Mike Pompeo to serve as CIA director and Nikki Haley to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) appeared furious after Democrats refused to show up to the meeting he scheduled on Steven Mnuchin and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Trump’s selections to lead the Treasury and Health and Human Services departments, respectively.

“I think they ought to stop posturing and acting like idiots,” grumbled Hatch, the Senate’s president pro tempore and normally one of the chamber’s most decorous members.

“I’m very disappointed in this kind of crap,” he said. “Some of this is because they just don’t like the president.”

Democrats, however, argued the guerilla tactics were warranted after The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Price received a special opportunity to buy a biomedical stock at a bargain price, contradicting his congressional testimony.

Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, said Price “misled Congress and he misled the American people.”

They also pointed to the new revelation that Mnuchin, a former CEO of OneWest, wasn’t upfront about whether the bank had auto-signed mortgage documents. Democrats say records show it used the practice in Ohio despite Mnuchin’s assertion to the contrary.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), another member of the Finance panel, said Democrats had “great concern” that Hatch asked them to vote on two nominees “who out and out lied to our committee.”

Democrats say Trump’s Cabinet picks have taken a long time to process because several of them are billionaires and have huge agglomerations of assets that require many hours to review.

They also blame the selections, particularly Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice to head the Department of Education, for not submitting their paperwork for vetting until relatively late in the process.

“Their nominees were not vetted soon enough,” said one Senate Democratic aide who faulted Trump’s transition team for lagging in its duties.

The battle over the Cabinet nominees sets up an even more bitter battle over Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), one of the Senate’s most liberal members, said this week he would filibuster Trump’s nominee no matter who it was because Republicans blocked Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, for nearly a year after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died.

Tempers reached a boiling point Tuesday after a month of wrangling over the confirmation schedule. Democrats cried foul earlier this month when McConnell tried to schedule six confirmation hearings on one day.

McConnell and Republican committee chairmen agreed to delay some of the hearings after Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) dug up a letter McConnell wrote in 2009 demanding that Democrats not move Obama’s nominees until the Office of Government Ethics had enough time to vet them.

The Senate’s slow pace has complicated Trump’s ability to execute his policies. On Monday, the president fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she directed Department of Justice personnel not to enforce his executive order on immigrants and refugees.

Trump may have avoided that imbroglio had Sessions, a fierce advocate for strict limits on immigration, already been confirmed.

The leadership vacuums at the tops of various departments have coincided with what some Republicans see as a breakdown of loyalty and discipline throughout lower-ranking offices.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer warned on Monday that “career bureaucrats” should “either get with the program or they can go” after State Department officials circulated a document questioning Trump’s executive order on refugees.

Four senior State Department officials resigned suddenly last week in what was seen as a protest of Trump’s policies.

The Associated Press reported that career officials across the government were “biting back” at the president by tweeting messages at odds with his agenda from official social media accounts and leaking information to the media.

Meanwhile, a senior Democratic aide said Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of State, is likely to be confirmed Wednesday.

Democrats feel they are riding a wave of momentum since a devastating election. And they are taking evident delight at GOP infighting over Trump’s order on refugees. Seven GOP senators have announced opposition to the order, and 18 have expressed some level of concern over it.

“During the first week and a half of the Trump administration, the White House has been untruthful, incompetent and at times un-American,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday.

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