The Tap: Wednesday, August 3, 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 #28 of The Tap, which was published on August 6, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

• On Wednesday, August 3, ABC News reported that the Republican National Committee was considering how to replace Donald Trump if he were to drop out of the presidential race. Party strategist Sean Spicer refuted the report, telling The Hill, “Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party full-stop. That’s the reality. The rest is just a media-pundit concoction.” For a technical overview of the story, Ballotpedia has reported on the mechanisms that the party could use to fill a vacancy on the ticket and has compiled a state-by-state list of deadlines for political parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice presidential candidates and electors for placement on the general election ballot.

• U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) announced that he did not see how he could support Donald Trump in November and was considering writing in a candidate. "I'm an American before I'm a Republican. I'm saying for me personally, how can I support that? Because he's crossed so many red lines that a commander in chief or a candidate for commander in chief should never cross,” Kinzinger said.
  • See also: Republicans and their declared positions on Donald Trump

• The Trump campaign announced in a statement that it had raised $80 million in July and has $74 million in cash on hand. According to Reuters, $64 million was funded by donations to the campaign and matching donations from Trump.

• U.S. Sens. Christopher Coons (D-Conn.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) requested in a letter that Ted Cruz, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights, and Federal Courts, launch an investigation into whether Donald Trump broke the law when he asked that Russia find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.

• In a fundraising email, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson said that he had raised $1 million in the past two weeks from more than 20,000 donors.

• President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 214 inmates, most of whom were serving sentences for low-level drug crimes. According to a White House press release, “To date, President Obama has granted 562 commutations: more commutations than the previous nine presidents combined and more commutations than any individual president in nearly a century. Of those, 197 individuals were serving life sentences. And, today’s 214 grants of commutation also represent the most grants in a single day since at least 1900.” The commutations are part of an initiative launched by the Obama administration in 2014 “to prioritize petitions for commutations from individuals convicted of non-violent drug offenses who were serving longer sentences than they would be given today if convicted of the same crime.”

• Hillary Clinton began planning her transition effort in the event that she is elected president in November. According to The Associated Press, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and longtime Clinton advisor Minyon Moore will lead the transition team, which “will be focused on creating lists of potential administration appointees and developing a roadmap for her policy agenda.” Republican candidate Donald Trump began his own transition efforts in early May, naming New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the chair of his transition team.

• Bernie Sanders began fundraising for a new political organization built from his campaign infrastructure. The organization, called “Our Revolution,” is set to launch in late August, but Sanders sent out an email asking for donations, saying, “Our goal will be the same as in our campaign: we must work to transform American society by making our political and economic systems work for all of us, not just the 1 percent.” Sanders announced the plans to launch political and educational organizations in July 2016.
  • For more background, see: What can politicians do with unused campaign funds?

• Billionaire investor and Republican megadonor Seth Klarman announced that he would find more ways to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Klarman initially donated $5,400 to her campaign in June, and in a statement to Reuters, he said of Donald Trump, “His words and actions over the last several days are so shockingly unacceptable in our diverse and democratic society that it is simply unthinkable that Donald Trump could become our president.” Klarman has previously donated to efforts for Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie this cycle. Along with Paul Singer, Klarman is also one the main funders of American Unity PAC, a super PAC in support of Republican candidates who support same-sex marriage.

• The EPA held public hearings on the Clean Energy Incentive Program, an optional program within the Clean Power Plan meant to encourage increased use of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures. The day also marked one year since the EPA formally announced the final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP). In February 2016, the Supreme Court put the CPP on hold while a lower court reviews legal challenges to the CPP. The CPP, or 111(d) rule, is a regulation that would expand the scope of the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through limitations on emissions from power plants. The plan is controversial not only because of the high cost of compliance for purported benefits, but also because the plan did not originate in legislation from Congress but rather came from the agency's interpretation of the law. A total of 27 states have come out against the plan due to the anticipated economic costs and questions over the plan's legality. Meanwhile, 18 states have filed friend of the court briefings supporting the rule as legal and meaningful action on climate change.

• The Obama administration sent $400 million in cash to Iran on an unmarked cargo plane in January 2016. The cash payment “represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The payment coincided with the release of four Americans detained in Tehran and the formal implementation of the nuclear agreement with Iran. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.” The Iranians, however, portrayed the payment as ransom for releasing the American hostages. At the time of the hostage transfer, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi said to state media, “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies.”
  • Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) accused Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages. This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures [of Americans].” The Wall Street Journal reported that “Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans.”
  • On Thursday, Obama said that the $400 million sent to Iran was not a ransom payment. He said, "We do not pay ransom. We didn't here, and we won't in the future. Those families know we have a policy that we don't pay ransom. And the notion that we would somehow start now, in this high-profile way, and announce it to the world, even as we're looking in the faces of other hostage families whose loved ones are being held hostage, and saying to them we don't pay ransom, defies logic." He added that his administration was open about the January 2016 payment, saying, "We announced these payments in January. Many months ago. They were not a secret. It wasn't a secret. We were completely open with everybody about it."

• Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell requested $1.9 billion in emergency supplemental funding to fight the Zika virus in a letter sent to members of Congress. She explained that several agencies studying the virus and working on vaccines and medecines will run out of funding by the end of August or September. She wrote, “Now that the United States is in the height of mosquito season and with the progress in developing a Zika vaccine, the need for additional resources is critical. … our nation's ability to effectively respond to Zika will be impaired [without the funding]."

• Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that the Obama administration “will make the commitment to resettle 10,000 [Syrian] refugees this fiscal year." He said that "over 7,000" Syrian refugees have already arrived in the country and "there are several thousand who have been approved and are just awaiting the physical resettlement." Johnson also addressed security concerns about the vetting process for refugees, saying, "The process is still a very thorough, time-consuming process for each refugee applicant. On average, it has been 18 to 24 months, and we have not shortcut the process. In fact, we have added security checks to the process for refugees from certain countries, which I can't really get into publicly." He added that after refugees are properly screened, "They are resettled in communities that are able to absorb refugees, and want to take in refugees.”

State

• Texas officials and opponents of the state's voter ID requirement reached an agreement on how best to remedy the law in light of a recent federal court ruling. Under this agreement, voters are permitted to use the following forms of identification at the polls, provided their names appear on voter registration rolls:
  • a form of identification specified in the original voter ID law (SB 14), including a Texas driver's license, a Texas identification certificate, a Texas personal identification card, a Texas concealed handgun license, a United States military identification card containing the person’s photograph, a United States citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph, or a United States passport
  • a "valid voter registration certificate, a certified birth certificate, a current utility bill, a bank statement, a government check, a paycheck, or any other government document that displays the voter’s name and an address"

On July 20, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Texas' voter ID law violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, finding that the law had a discriminatory effect on minority voters. Although the court did not strike down the law entirely, it did order election officials to "ensure that any remedy ameliorates [the law's] discriminatory effect, while respecting the [Texas State Legislature's] stated objective to safeguard the integrity of elections by requiring more secure forms of voter identification."

• California became the first state to release its State Implementation Plan to comply with the Clean Power Plan (CPP). Despite the Supreme Court stay on the CPP, states can still opt to submit their implementation plans to the EPA. Under the CPP, each state must submit a State Implementation Plan to the EPA detailing how the state will meet its mandated carbon dioxide emission reduction target by 2030. The draft was released by the California Air Resources Board. California is one of 18 states that filed friend of the court briefings supporting the CPP. Supporters have called the CPP legal and meaningful action on climate change. Meanwhile, 27 states have come out against the plan due the anticipated economic costs and questions over the plan's legality.

Local

• On Wednesday, August 3, New Orleans announced it was adding $500,000 to its mosquito control budget in light of the Zika virus being found in Florida. Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) said that Florida was “just down the road” from New Orleans, while city officials said there have been seven travel-related cases of Zika in the city and an additional two cases in the larger metro area. The first active case of Zika transmission in Florida occurred in July near Miami. New Orleans is the 51st-largest city in the United States by population, and the largest in Louisiana.

Preview of the day

There were no items for this day in issue #27 of The Tap, which was published on July 30, 2016. See the "Review of the day" tab for more information.