Camryn Thompson's AP Gov Blog

1.    this time, Congress failed to pass a new government funding law before the old one expired. 2.    Military and law enforcement activities continue. Social Security checks still go out. Air traffic controllers still go to work. However, activities the government has deemed “nonessential” stop, and employees tasked with those activities are furloughed — they’re told not to come to work, and that they won’t be paid until the shutdown is resolved. 3. these activists argued that Democrats shouldn’t vote for any government funding bill without a DACA deal. 4.  The Democratic worry was that keeping the government shut down on behalf of unauthorized immigrants — even the DREAMers — is a political loser. 5.Th e bill to keep the government open for the next two-and-a-half weeks also includes a six-year extension of CHIP’s budget. (Indeed, Republicans had offered this before the shutdown, and this time it was Democrats who wouldn’t accept it.) This means that sta...

1. Then the vice president would immediately become “Acting President,” and take over all the president’s powers. 2. One vice president and any eight Cabinet officers can, theoretically, decide to knock the president out of power at any time. 3. If the president wants to dispute this move, he can, but then it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. If that threshold isn’t reached, the president would regain his powers. 4. The chaos and instability that followed John F. Kennedy’s assassination finally spurred Congress to move toward solving these problems. For once, it moved quickly, passing what became the 25th Amendment to the Constitution in 1965 and winning its ratification in the states by 1967. 5. How to fill a vice presidential vacancy in the middle of a term (in practice, the answer was interpreted as “you can’t”). 6. The power to sideline the presid...

1. The White House said that “many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry.” So the White House backed off, arguing that it was better than the alternative of “endless legal battles at taxpayer expense.” 2. Trump similarly claimed on Twitter, without any evidence whatsoever, that “millions” of people voting illegally had cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election. 3. Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt studied voter impersonation, the type of fraud that strict voter ID laws (which Trump supports) aim to curtail. Levitt found 35 total credible accusations between 2000 and 2014, constituting a few hundred ballots at most. 4. Another, more recent investigation in North Carolina by the State Board of Elections similarly found just one — out of nearly 4.8 million total votes in 2016 — credible case of in-person voter fraud. That amounts to just 0.00002 percent of ...

1.One part of the bill could cost the conglomerate more than $1 billion in new taxes if it becomes law. 2.GE lobbyists scrambled and won an alternative in the Senate’s version of the tax bill preserving the company’s ability to use those losses when calculating its tax liability 3.Foreign airlines including Emirates Airline of Dubai and Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi are fighting to jettison a provision included in the Senate bill that would require foreign airlines to pay taxes on income earned on U.S. flights in some cases. Delta Air Lines Inc. is lobbying to keep the new tax in the final bill, arguing that it could raise $200 million over a decade. 5. Its centerpiece is a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 20% from 35%. It would also repeal the alternative minimum tax, lower estate taxes and cut some individual rates. It is estimated to cost about $1.4 trillion over the next decade. Republicans say some of the revenue loss would be recouped by higher government receipts fro...

1. (R-AK) Murkowski and Susan Collins (R-ME) 2.  She told Roll Call she would consider voting for the bill if the Senate also passed a bipartisan Obamacare stabilization bill — then walked it back a few hours later. A few days later, she wrote an op-ed for a local newspaper declaring she supported repealing the individual mandate. But then her office said the same day that did not necessarily mean she would support the tax overhaul. 3.a provision that could allow oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Natural Refuge. 4. It has been a long-held dream of Alaska politicians for the revenue it would bring to the state. 5.Alaska, one of the states that did expand Medicaid under Obamacare, has seen its uninsured rate fall from 18.9 percent to 11.7 percent under the health care law. While Murkowski is still a Republican, and therefore still has problems with the law, she didn’t want to see those gains reversed. The Republican plans were projected to hit her state, which already has the h...

1. 14 2. 3 3. It is historically normal, but not this early in the race. 4. The discrepancy in retirements between the two parties suggests that many Republicans fear a backlash against their party due to President Donald Trump’s poor approval rating. And that fear will only be exacerbated by sweeping Democratic victories in Virginia’s recent elections. 5. They're facing danger because of the negative outlook on Trump's presidency, and all sins point to democratic wave. 6.“incumbency advantage" They’re more likely to win, and open seats are more likely to flip to the other party than are seats where an incumbent is running again are. 7.It’s likely to help Democratic recruiting too, as potentially strong candidates are often more willing to run in an open-seat contest than to take on an incumbent. 8.In more-or-less neutral congressional years without a big wave for one party or the other, FairVote finds the incumbency advantage has recently been somewhere between 3 p...

1. Outlets with a right-leaning audience cited fewer types of sources in their reporting, offered more positive and fewer negative evaluations of President Donald Trump and his administration, and had reporters who were less likely to challenge something the president said than outlets whose audience leans to the left or those with a more evenly distributed audience. 2. left-leaning audience and 62% from those with a more mixed audience included at least two of nine types of sources evaluated, such as a member of the administration, a member of Congress, or an outside expert. That was true, however, of less than half the stories (44%) from outlets with a right-leaning audience.outlets whose audience leans right of center were less likely to include Trump and his administration, outside experts or interest groups as sources. They were also about half as likely to include voices from both Democratic and Republican members of Congress 3.They were also at least three times less likel...