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The Tap: Tuesday, September 27, 2016

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The Tap covered election news, public policy, and other noteworthy events from February 2016 to February 2022.

Review of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #36 of The Tap, which was published on October 1, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

  • Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said that Trump believes “global warming is naturally occurring” and humans are not the cause. In Monday night’s debate, Hillary Clinton said, “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” Trump responded, “I did not, I do not say that.” In November 2012, Trump tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” In December 2013, he tweeted, “Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!”
  • Trump announced that his campaign had raised $18 million from online donations in the 24 hours following the debate on Monday. “As a result of Donald Trump’s huge debate win last night, we had a massive fundraising day bringing in more than $18 million,” his campaign announced. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s campaign ended August with $50 million on hand. His joint party accounts totalled $47 million while his super PACs had approximately $6 million, giving Trump and his allies a total of $103 million at the end of the month. Twelve million of the $41.7 million that Trump raised in August came from donations of $200 or less. The Clinton campaign ended August with $64.8 million in cash on hand. Combined with the $84 million held by a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic Party and $41.5 million recorded by super PACs backing her campaign, Clinton and her allies closed out August with $194 million. $8.4 million of the $60 million that Clinton raised in August came from donations of $200 or less.
  • The editorial board of The Arizona Republic endorsed Hillary Clinton, marking the first time the newspaper has endorsed a Democrat for president in its 126-year history. "The challenges the United States faces domestically and internationally demand a steady hand, a cool head and the ability to think carefully before acting. Hillary Clinton understands this. Donald Trump does not. Clinton has the temperament and experience to be president. Donald Trump does not," the editors wrote.
  • President Barack Obama nominated Jeffrey DeLaurentis, a career Foreign Service officer, as the first United States ambassador to Cuba in more than a half-century. In a statement, Obama said, “Jeff’s leadership has been vital throughout the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, and the appointment of an ambassador is a common sense step forward toward a more normal and productive relationship between our two countries.”
    • The Senate will have to confirm DeLaurentis before he can begin serving, but Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) argued that the Senate should not move on the nomination. Rubio said, “Just like releasing all terrorists from Guantánamo and sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Iranian regime, rewarding the Castro government with a U.S. ambassador is another last-ditch legacy project for the president that needs to be stopped. This nomination should go nowhere until the Castro regime makes significant and irreversible progress in the areas of human rights and political freedom for the Cuban people, and until longstanding concerns about the Cuban regime’s theft of property and crimes against American citizens are addressed.”
  • The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard arguments about the Clean Power Plan (CPP). The case was handed down to the D.C. court after the U.S. Supreme Court delayed the implementation of the plan in February 2016. The plan is being challenged by a group of 27 states and over 60 utility and energy companies. A total of 18 states and other groups filed "friend of the court" briefings supporting the plan. In an unusual move, the full court reviewed the plan en banc, as opposed to by a panel of three judges. Ten of the 11 judges heard the case; Judge Merrick Garland, a current Supreme Court nominee, recused himself. David Doniger from the Natural Resources Defense Council said after arguments that the "Clean Power Plan had a very good day." On the other side, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who argued against the plan, said, according to Utility Drive, that he thought the court had agreed with him that the EPA did not have the authority to regulate power plants under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which is the basis for the Clean Power Plan. The D.C. court is expected to release its decision before the end of the year.
    • The Clean Power Plan, also known as the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 111(d) rule, is a regulation that would expand the scope of the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by limiting emissions from power plants. The plan was first proposed by the EPA in June 2014, and the final version was announced by President Obama on August 3, 2015.. The plan is considered controversial because of the high cost of compliance for purported benefits, and because the plan did not originate in legislation from Congress, but rather came from the agency's interpretation of the Clean Air Act.
  • The Washington Free Beacon obtained audio of Hillary Clinton discussing the country’s nuclear weapons program during a private fundraiser in February, in which she said she would be “inclined” to cancel an upgrade of the Long Range Stand-Off missile program. “The last thing we need are sophisticated cruise missiles that are nuclear armed,” she said.
  • Key vote: The Senate rejected a continuing resolution (CR), which is a 10-week stopgap bill to fund the government until December 9, 2016, by a vote of 45-55. Sixty votes were needed to move forward with the bill.
  • Key vote: The Senate held a second procedural vote on the CR, but it failed by a vote of 40-59. Sixty votes were needed to move forward with the bill.
  • The House passed HR 954—the CO-OP Consumer Protection Act of 2016—by a vote of 258-165. The legislation proposed temporarily exempting individuals whose coverage was terminated or discontinued by the closure of a qualified nonprofit health insurance issuer that was established through the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan program (known as co-ops) from having to pay a penalty for not having insurance as required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.
    • Veto threat: In a statement, the White House threatened to veto the bill. The statement said that the bill “would be a step in the wrong direction, because it would create a precedent that undermines a key part of the [Obamacare] law and would do nothing to help middle-class families obtain affordable health care. The individual-responsibility provision is a necessary part of a system that prohibits discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions and requires guaranteed issuance. The provision helps prevent people from waiting until they get sick to buy health insurance or dropping health insurance when they believe they do not need it. Weakening the individual responsibility provision would increase health insurance premiums and decrease the number of Americans with coverage.”

State

  • Opponents of education-related Georgia Amendment 1 filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the measure’s ballot title and summary wording. Amendment 1 would authorize the state to form an Opportunity School District (OSD) that would oversee certain schools determined to be “chronically failing.” The lawsuit was filed against Governor Nathan Deal (R), Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle (R), and Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) and claims that the ballot language provided by the state is biased and false. Specifically, plaintiffs objected that Amendment 1 would not “increase community involvement,” as the ballot title states, and that there is no evidence that state involvement would "fix failing schools." Moreover, plaintiffs objected to the amendment's definition of “failing” schools and argued that the biased nature of the ballot language deprives Georgia voters of their right to an effective vote. Georgia PTA president Lisa-Marie Haygood said, “the preamble, and indeed, the entire amendment question, is intentionally misleading and disguises the true intentions of the OSD legislation.” Tom Willis, director of the Amendment 1 support group, Opportunity for All Georgia Students, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “This is a last-minute media stunt engineered by outside special interest groups in order to generate publicity. This frivolous lawsuit demonstrates the depths to which some outside groups will go to defend the status quo.”
  • Federal judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan temporarily blocked an Illinois state law allowing for same-day voter registration at polling places. In 2014, the Illinois General Assembly adopted the law, which requires counties with populations of 100,000 or more that use electronic books for voter registration records to provide for same-day registration at all polling places. For all other counties, election officials were not required to provide for same-day registration at all polling sites, only at centralized locations, such as county clerks' offices. Opponents, including state Republicans, alleged that these provisions unduly favored voters residing in populous areas, such as Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, providing them with registration opportunities unavailable to voters in more rural areas. In his preliminary injunction order, Der-Yeghiayan said, "The application of this legislation favors the urban citizen and dilutes the vote of the rural citizen. Illinois is made up of more than the Chicago metropolitan area and other high population areas. Equality under the law does not end at the city limits." Meanwhile, proponents of the law, including state Democrats, criticized the order, arguing that it would disenfranchise some voters and cause confusion at the polls on Election Day. Trevor Gervais, an organizer for Common Cause Illinois (a self-described "nonpartisan watchdog group"), said, "To suspend election day registration and suppress the vote less than two weeks before the voter registration deadline will hurt communities across Illinois who were counting on being able to register and vote on November 8."
  • Joe Miller, a 2016 Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate representing Alaska, held a signature collection event for his campaign to recall Governor Bill Walker (I). Walker made a series of line-item vetoes to the state budget in June 2016 that included halving the annual disbursement of Permanent Fund dividends to Alaska residents in 2016. In addition to the recall effort, the vetoes are the subject of a lawsuit filed against the state on September 16, 2016, which alleges that Walker did not have the authority to alter Permanent Fund disbursements. The lawsuit was filed in the Third District Court by state Sen. Bill Wielechowski (D) and two former Republican state senate presidents: Clem Tillion and Rick Halford. The case will be heard by Judge Herman Walker Jr. "The Governor cannot veto existing law," said Wielechowski. Walker responded that Wielechowski had "failed to work towards a solution to our fiscal crisis" and implied that the senator was using the lawsuit to aid his 2016 re-election bid.
    • Recall efforts in Alaska rarely succeed due to stringent requirements. Miller must gather 28,585 physical signatures in order to submit an application for recall to the Division of Elections, along with a statement of grounds. If approved, a petition is issued and petitioners would need to gather over 71,000 signatures in order to trigger a recall election. Miller also ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican in 2010 and 2014. Alaska currently has a divided government: Both chambers of the legislature are controlled by Republicans; Walker won election in 2014 as an independent, though he had previously been affiliated with the Republican Party.
  • North Carolina State Senator Fletcher Hartsell (R) was indicted on 14 federal charges for fraud and money laundering. Hartsell was accused of using campaign funds on personal expenses such as personal entertainment and gifts for family members. Allegedly, after spending campaign funds on these personal expenses, Hartsell filed false campaign finance reports. The senator pleaded not guilty on all charges. He had previously been charged at the state level with three counts of filing false reports.

Special elections

  • Three members were appointed to the Nevada Legislature on September 27, 2016. The seats were expected to remain vacant until the November 8 general election, but the Washoe County Commission filled the vacancies because of the upcoming special session for the proposed Oakland Raiders football stadium. The special session is expected to take place sometime between October 7 and October 13.

Local

  • The superintendents of two of Texas’ largest school districts called on the Texas Commissioner of Education to abolish special education enrollment targets. Superintendent Michael Hinojosa of the Dallas ISD and Superintendent Pedro Martinez of the San Antonio ISD said that state-imposed penalties were keeping thousands of students out of special education programs once those programs had reached their planned enrollment figures. This statement came after an investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that the state had a special education enrollment rate of 8.5 percent, nearly half of the national average. In 2013, Texas had 5,077,659 students enrolled in a total of 8,731 schools in 1,254 school districts.
  • In California, Sacramento City Councilman Larry Carr (D) introduced a 12-point proposal to put restrictions on the police use of deadly force. The proposal comes in response to a mentally ill black man being shot fatally by police officers in the city last week. The council will not debate the proposal until October 13, 2016, and Carr plans to incorporate public feedback and council input prior to the debate.
    • Sacramento held primary elections for mayor and four city council seats in June 2016. Because a candidate won a majority of the votes in each race, the general elections scheduled for November 8, 2016, were canceled. Sacramento is the 35th-largest city in the country by population and the sixth-largest in California.
  • The city council in Washington, D.C., held the first of two hearings on a proposed constitution for the district. The proposal is part of a plan by Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) to gain statehood for the district. Any potential constitution would have to be approved by voters in the district and then sent to Congress for approval. At that point, Bowser hopes, lawmakers would approve the constitution and vote on making the district the nation’s 51st state. Most believe statehood for the nation’s capital to be a long shot. Given its overwhelmingly Democratic population, statehood would essentially guarantee two more Democratic senators, something a Republican Congress is unlikely to approve. Washington, D.C., is the 23rd-largest city in the country by population.

Preview of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #35 of The Tap, which was published on September 24, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

  • The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear arguments over the Clean Power Plan. The case was handed down to the D.C. Court after the Supreme Court delayed the implementation of the plan in February 2016. The plan is being challenged by a group of 27 states and over 60 utility and energy companies. A total of 18 states and other groups filed "friend of the court" briefings supporting the plan. In an unusual move, the CPP will be reviewed by the full en banc court, as opposed to a panel of three judges. Ten of the 11 judges will hear the case; Judge Merrick Garland, a current Supreme Court nominee, will recuse himself. Arguments are expected to center around whether the EPA has the authority to regulate emissions from power plants under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act.
    • The Clean Power Plan, also known as the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA’s) 111(d) rule, is a regulation that would expand the scope of the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through limitations on emissions from power plants. The rule is designed to reduce CO2 emissions from the utility power sector by 32 percent by 2030 (from 2005 emission levels) with state-specific goals that reflect the types of power plants in the state and the federally mandated performance rates for those power plants. It is the first time the EPA has regulated CO2 emissions from existing power plants. States are required to obtain approval from the EPA for plans to achieve the emissions goals set by the agency. The plan was first proposed by the EPA in June 2014, and the final version was announced by President Obama on August 3, 2015, as part of his plan to combat climate change. The plan is controversial as many people disagree about the estimated costs and benefits of the plan, including its effects on jobs and the economy, human health, and the environment, the cost and reliability of electricity, and climate change. Supporters called the plan meaningful action to combat climate change. Critics argued that the plan is too costly for the purported benefits to the climate and environment. Other critics said that climate change is not an issue at all, or not an issue that the federal government should be addressing.




The Tap covered election news, public policy, and other noteworthy events from February 2016 to February 2022.
March: 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31
April: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30
May: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31
June: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30
July: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31
August: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31
September: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30
October: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7• 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31
November: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30
December: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 31
January: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31
February: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17
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