Can part of the Kennedy Center be renamed for the Trumps? How about all of it?
Who has the power to rename part of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — or all of it?
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2 hours ago
Sen. Cory Booker in angry outburst says 'complicit' Democrats need a 'wake-up call'
WASHINGTON -- In a rare public outburst on the Senate floor Tuesday, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker took his Democratic colleagues to task, declaring his party 'needs a wake-up call!' Angrily screaming at two of his shocked Democratic colleagues, his words all but reverberating off the chamber walls, Booker blocked the passage of several bipartisan bills that would fund police programs, arguing that President Donald Trump's administration has been withholding law enforcement money from Democratic-leaning states. 'This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,' Booker bellowed. 'Is we're willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!' The surprise Senate spat over bills that have broad bipartisan support — mental health resources and other help for police officers — strikes at the heart of the beleaguered Democratic party's dilemma in the second Trump era as they try to find a way back to power, and also their frustration as Republicans have pushed through legislation and nominations that they vehemently disagree with. Do they cooperate where they can, or do they fight everything, and shut down governance in the process? 'A lot of us in this caucus want to f—— fight,' Booker said with an expletive as he left the Senate floor after the exchange. Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, one of the two Democrats on the floor who tried to pass the law enforcement bills that raised Booker's ire, said she had a different view. 'We can do both,' she said afterward. 'Support our communities, keep them safe, and take on Donald Trump and his bad policies.' Booker's tirade began Tuesday afternoon when Cortez Masto tried to pass seven bipartisan bills by unanimous consent. But Booker objected to five of the seven bills, which would have directed resources to law enforcement agencies, arguing that the Trump administration is 'weaponizing' public safety grants by canceling them in many Democratic-leaning states like New Jersey. 'Why would we do something today that's playing into the president's politics and is going to hurt the officers in states like mine?' Booker asked. Things escalated from there, with Cortez Masto and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., saying that Booker should have objected when the bill was passed unanimously out of committee. 'This is not the way to go about it,' Cortez Masto said. Klobuchar said to Booker: 'You can't just do one thing on Police Week and not show up and not object and let these bills go through and then say another a few weeks later on the floor." 'I like to show up at the markups and I like to make my case," Klobuchar said. Booker responded with a booming tirade. 'The Democratic party needs a wake up call!' he yelled, walking away from his desk and out into the aisle. 'I see law firms bending the knee to this president, not caring about the larger principles,' he said, along with 'universities that should be bastions of free speech.' He added: 'You want to come at me that way, you will have to take it on with me because there's too much on the line.' The arguments points to the tensions below the surface of the Democratic caucus as they head into important moments — both this week, as Republicans push to quickly confirm dozens of Trump administration nominees before the August recess, and this fall when Congress will have to pass bipartisan spending bills to avoid a government shutdown. Democrats suffered a swift backlash from their base in the spring when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., helped advance a Republican spending bill that kept the government open instead of forcing a shutdown. Schumer argued that shutting the government down would have been worse, and that they were both 'terrible' options. It is unclear whether Schumer and Democrats will want to force a shutdown in the fall if Republicans don't include some of their priorities in spending legislation. Booker did not have specific advice for his colleagues beyond the need to fight harder. But other senators say they will have to find a balance. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut says he hears both things at home — 'why can't you all get along' and 'thank you for fighting.'
2 hours ago
Senate confirms Trump lawyer Emil Bove for appeals court, pushing past whistleblower claims
WASHINGTON -- The Senate confirmed former Trump lawyer Emil Bove 50-49 for a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge Tuesday as Republicans dismissed whistleblower complaints about his conduct at the Justice Department. A former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Bove was on Trump's legal team during his New York hush money trial and defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases. He will serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Democrats have vehemently opposed Bove's nomination, citing his current position as a top Justice Department official and his role in the dismissal of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. They have also criticized his efforts to investigate department officials who were involved in the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Bove has accused FBI officials of 'insubordination' for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases. Democrats have also cited evidence from whistleblowers, a fired department lawyer who said last month that Bove had suggested the Trump administration may need to ignore judicial commands — a claim that Bove denies — and new evidence from a whistleblower who did not go public. That whistleblower recently provided an audio recording of Bove that runs contrary to some of his testimony at his confirmation hearing last month, according to two people familiar with the recording. The audio is from a private video conference call at the Department of Justice in February in which Bove, a top official at the department, discussed his handling of the dismissed case against Adams, according to transcribed quotes from the audio reviewed by The Associated Press. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the whistleblower has not made the recording public. The whistleblower's claims were first reported by the Washington Post. None of that evidence has so far been enough to sway Senate Republicans — all but two of them voted to confirm Bove as GOP senators have deferred to Trump on virtually all of his picks. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Bove's confirmation is a 'dark day' and that Republicans are only supporting Bove because of his loyalty to the president. 'It's unfathomable that just over four years after the insurrection at the Capitol, when rioters smashed windows, ransacked offices, desecrated this chamber, Senate Republicans are willingly putting someone on the bench who shielded these rioters from facing justice, who said their prosecution was a grave national injustice,' Schumer said. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against Bove's confirmation. 'I don't think that somebody who has counseled other attorneys that you should ignore the law, you should reject the law, I don't think that that individual should be placed in a lifetime seat on the bench,' Murkowski said Tuesday. At his confirmation hearing last month, Bove addressed criticism of his tenure head-on, telling lawmakers he understands some of his decisions 'have generated controversy.' But Bove said he has been inaccurately portrayed as Trump's 'henchman' and 'enforcer' at the department. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee released Tuesday evening just before the vote, Bove said he does not have the whistleblower's recording but is 'undeterred by this smear campaign.' Senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing asked Bove about the February 14 call with lawyers in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, which had received significant public attention because of his unusual directive that the attorneys had an hour to decide among themselves who would agree to file on the department's behalf the motion to dismiss the case against Adams. The call was convened amid significant upheaval in the department as prosecutors in New York who'd handled the matter, as well as some in Washington, resigned rather than agree to dispense with the case. According to the transcript of the February call, Bove remarked near the outset that interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon 'resigned about ten minutes before we were going to put her on leave pending an investigation.' But when asked at the hearing whether he had opened the meeting by emphasizing that Sassoon and another prosecutor had refused to follow orders and that Sassoon was going to be reassigned before she resigned, Bove answered with a simple, 'No.' In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Bove defended his testimony as accurate, noting that the transcript of the call shows he didn't use the word 'reassigned' when talking to the prosecutors. At another moment, Bove said he did not recall saying words that the transcript of the call reflects him as having said — that whoever signed the motion to dismiss the Adams case would emerge as leaders of the section. But in the letter to Grassley, Bove said he did not intend to suggest that anyone would be rewarded for submitting the memo but rather that doing so would reflect a willingness to follow the chain of command, something he said was the 'bare minimum required of mid-level management' of a government agency. Grassley said Tuesday that he believes Bove will be a 'diligent, capable and fair jurist.' He said his staff had tried to investigate the claims but that lawyers for the whistleblowers would not give them all of the materials they had asked for until Tuesday, hours before the vote. The 'vicious rhetoric, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr. Bove' have 'crossed the line,' Grassley said. The first whistleblower complaint against Bove came from a former Justice Department lawyer who was fired in April after conceding in court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had been living in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison. That lawyer, Erez Reuveni, described efforts by top Justice Department officials in the weeks before his firing to stonewall and mislead judges to carry out deportations championed by the White House. Reuveni described a Justice Department meeting in March concerning Trump's plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act over what the president claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Reuveni said Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could happen. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity in saying the department would need to consider telling the courts what to do and 'ignore any such order,' Reuveni's lawyers said in the filing. Bove said he has 'no recollection of saying anything of that kind.'
2 hours ago
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to headline signature South Carolina GOP event
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is set to headline the latest iteration of an event previously billed as the largest annual gathering of Republicans in South Carolina, a state traditionally key to picking the GOP's presidential nominees, and one in which she already has deep relationships. Rep. Sheri Biggs of South Carolina's 3rd District told The Associated Press that Sanders would be the featured speaker at her Salute to Liberty, slated to take place Aug. 18 in Anderson. In an interview last week, Biggs said she felt the governor 'represents what the people in the 3rd District believe in, our morals, just down-to-earth hardworking people that love the Lord and want to live in peace with their families and uphold our conservative values.' Historically a catalyst for Republican White House hopefuls, the South Carolina venue provides Sanders a chance to introduce herself to a large number — typically around 2,000 — of party activists. It's also a crowd with which President Donald Trump — whom she served as press secretary during his first administration — remains popular. Sanders, whose name comes up among potential 2028 presidential contenders, has been making trips to South Carolina since her father, former Arkansas governor and current U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, sought the 2008 GOP nomination. She's recently been in other early-voting states herself, including a speech earlier this month at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, an annual event held by a conservative Christian group. For years, the South Carolina occasion was billed as Rep. Jeff Duncan's Faith & Freedom BBQ, a fundraiser benefiting his reelection campaign. In a conservative-rich area, it became a showcase for future White House contenders, including then-Vice President Mike Pence, Sens. Ted Cruz, Tim Scott and Marco Rubio, and former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. The barbecue was upended just weeks after the 2023 event, when Duncan's wife filed for divorce, saying the congressman left her, was having a sexual relationship with a lobbyist and had been unfaithful before during their 35-year marriage. Last year, Duncan opted not to seek reelection to an eighth term, following the 2023 diminishment of his reputation for conservative family values. In her first political run, Biggs — a nurse practitioner and Air National Guard officer — defeated a Trump-backed primary opponent last year. Mark Burns, a Black pastor who has been by Trump's side for nearly a decade, had unsuccessfully run for Congress twice before. Biggs easily won the general election in the district, which has been in GOP hands since Republican Lindsey Graham, who is now seeking his fifth U.S. Senate term, won it in 1994. Six months into her first term, Biggs said that she knew she wanted a district-unifying event of her own, as well as one that could continue to act as a showcase for potential GOP presidential candidates seeking to get to know its voters. 'I do want people to know that I'm here to serve this district, and that means making myself available and being out front and accessible to our voters, and hearing their needs,' she said. 'I'm here to serve the district, and that doesn't just mean everybody who voted for me.' In some ways, Biggs' event will be familiar. It's being held in the same venue as Duncan's barbecue, a civics center in Anderson, and there will still be $1 tickets for law enforcement officers and first responders. As for the menu, Biggs said she'll be shifting away from the buffet line of barbecue, baked beans and rolls, with a catered, 'more of a sit-down type of dinner.' 'It's not so much that I don't think the barbecue was great, I just want my own identity,' Biggs said. 'I want people to realize that it's a new ballgame, and I want to move forward on my own accord.'
