The Washington Post - 19.09.2019

A10 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 , 2019

with 50 votes, on Oct. 6. That c lash helped galvanize conservative voters, who helped Republicans flip Senate seats in the red-leaning states of Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, adding to the GOP majority during a midterm election that was otherwise miserable for Trump’s p arty. Now, D emocrats fear that this is deja vu, all over again. The New York Times posted an article Saturday night by two reporters summarizing findings of their new book, which appeared to back up a claim of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh while at Yale University. Such verification would raise the possibility that the justice lied to the Senate in his hearing last September, a potentially impeachable offense. Harris and Warren called for impeachment hearings. But the Times article included another allegation of similar behavior that drew most of the attention, until editors posted an update Sunday that included the alleged victim’s f ailure to recall the incident. Like Graham a year ago, Republicans jumped on this journalistic mishap to try to destroy the overall content of the book. “I’m distressed by the declining journalistic principles, so much on display,” McConnell said Tuesday. While Democrats tried to turn the focus back to gun legislation, the GOP leader signaled that he was happy to keep talking about the Supreme Court. In a fundraising appeal for McConnell’s r eelection, his campaign on Wednesday offered bumper stickers with the words, “I Stand with Kavanaugh.” “Make no mistake about it,” McConnell said Tuesday, “Justice Kavanaugh is going to be on the Supreme Court as long as he chooses to serve.” [email protected]

Coming on the heels of the #MeToo movement, the claim knocked Republicans back on their heels. They a greed to hold a hearing with Ford and then Kavanaugh to address the issues, but Republicans were afraid to be seen even asking Ford or the nominee about the allegations, so they hired a female Arizona prosecutor to ask the questions. As t he hearing approached, more allegations surfaced against Kavanaugh, most prominently from high-profile attorney Michael Avenatti’s client talking about gang rape parties. When the hearing unfolded, Ford’s t estimony was poised and, to most senators, credible. Midway through questioning of Kavanaugh, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) started asking his own questions, latching on to the most fantastic allegations and asking the then-federal judge whether he had committed those crimes. It c onflated the stories and made the entire process look bad, which created a conservative rallying cry on behalf of Kavanaugh. He w on confirmation,

inquiry into Trump’s 2 016 campaign has the potential to turn into its own impeachment process. “We are concentrating our resources on determining whether to impeach the president,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D- N.Y.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told a New York radio station Monday. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), asked whether the House needed to look into the new allegation against Kavanaugh, said no. As a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin had a front-row seat for last September’s e pic clash over Kavanaugh. It p layed out in similar fashion, albeit in a longer, slower process than that of these past few days. On Sept. 16, 2018, The Post s tory landed, with Christine Blasey Ford, a professor in Palo Alto who grew up in the Maryland suburbs at t he same time as Kavanaugh, accusing him of pinning her to a bed during a high school party a nd trying to take her clothes off. Kavanaugh denied the allegation.

and criticizing those Democrats who were calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment over the issue, including two senators running for the 2020 presidential nomination, Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) a nd Elizabeth Warren (Mass.). Durbin lamented that so many jump to impeachment, whether of Trump or other administration officials. It i s virtually impossible to get to a two-thirds majority for a conviction in the Senate — which means any impeachment would divert the Democratic-led House’s energy from kitchen-table issues. “You know, it’s b ecome a knee- jerk reaction among many Democrats that if you’re unhappy with President Trump or some of his appointments, impeachment is a recourse. It’s rare in American history,” t he Democratic whip said. “I just don’t b elieve that this is what we should be doing at t his point. I mean, I voted against the man; I don’t b elieve he should be on the Supreme Court,” he added. Senior House Democrats have also tried to sidestep the Kavanaugh matter, although their

funding deadline of Sept. 30, potential gun-control legislation, a federal regulatory review of Chinese telecom firms, election security legislation, climate rules and a presidential nomination. No K avanaugh. Since the first allegations emerged a year ago Monday, i n a Washington Post a rticle, the Kavanaugh saga has evolved in a familiar refrain. Seemingly credible accusations get made; Democrats pounce and demand investigations. Republicans grow quiet, until some other allegation emerges that appears to go t oo far. Then Republicans go i nto full umbrage mode, pushing Democrats back until the nominee is confirmed (or, in this week’s case, until Democrats change the subject). Some Democrats acknowledged that the ground had completely shifted, telling reporters Republicans were enjoying this story. “Well, they are,” s aid Sen. Richard J. D urbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat i n leadership. At that moment on Tuesday, a GOP senator was holding the floor

In a head-spinning
few days,
Republicans have
moved into a full
offensive posture
over the latest allegations against
Supreme Court Justice Brett M.
Kavanaugh, leaving congressional
Democrats in a defensive crouch
as they try to change the subject.
Tuesday’s dueling news
conferences, led by Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) and Minority Leader
Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.),
perfectly captured the new
dynamic.
After their respective policy
lunches, McConnell devoted his
entire opening remarks, more
than three minutes, to the
Kavanaugh issue, highlighting a
clarification the New York Times
added to an article about how an
alleged victim did not recall an
alleged incident of sexual
misconduct during the justice’s
college days.
“I think it is truly outrageous.
We h ad this investigation a year
ago; we had this vote a year ago,”
McConnell told reporters.
That c ame after McConnell,
opening the Senate floor Monday,
devoted his entire remarks, more
than five minutes, to the
Kavanaugh issue with just as
much indignation.
Schumer never mentioned the
latest Kavanaugh imbroglio in
Tuesday’s opening comments and
appeared exhausted when the
topic came up as the very first
question.
“Look, I’ve said this before, very
simply. I never thought
Kavanaugh should be on the
bench, and I still don’t t oday,” h e
told reporters.
In S enate floor speeches
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,
Schumer covered the waterfront
of pending issues: President
Trump’s o ngoing demands for
more money to build a barrier at
the border, the overall government

In whiplash moment, Democrats back away from Kavanaugh allegations

@PKCapitol

PAUL KANE

PHOTOS BY J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS After a new allegation against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh surfaced, the Tuesday news conferences of Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), left, and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) were telling. McConnell devoted his opening remarks to the issue, and Schumer avoided it until asked.

BY DANIELLE DOUGLAS-GABRIEL

Following a House vote Tuesday
to extend $255 million in spending
for minority-serving colleges and
universities, advocacy groups are
urging the Senate to take action
before the funding expires
Sept. 30.
“We’ve had over a dozen in-
person S enate meetings, and there
is some momentum on the Senate
side,” s aid Lodriguez Murray, vice
president for public policy and
government affairs at the United
Negro College Fund. “But it’s up to
their leadership to make sure [ his-
torically black colleges] and other
[minority-serving institutions]
don’t f all off this fiscal cliff.”
Harry L. Williams, president of
the Thurgood Marshall College
Fund, which supports public his-
torically black colleges, called on
the Senate “to follow the House’s
lead and take swift action to pre-
vent this critical funding from

elapsing. We can’t allow these life- changing institutions of higher le arning to go u nfunded.” The funding, established in 2008, is dedicated for schools that primarily educate minority students: tribal colleges, Hispanic- serving institutions, and histori- cally black colleges and universities. Many s chools use t he money for STEM programs — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — and for scholar- ships and to improve facilities. Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) introduced legislation, dubbed the FUTURE Act, that would pay for a two-year, $255 million extension of the f und- ing by eliminating a subsidy for guaranty agencies. Those nonprof- it and state agencies insure stu- dent loans under the old bank- based federal lending program, known as the Federal Family Edu- cation Loan Program, and are p aid by the federal government to

maintain remaining accounts and collect on defaulted debt. The legislation would put an end to those account maintenance fees, redi- recting the money to the schools over the next two years. Industry lobbyists have panned the legislation for eliminating account maintenance fees they say guaranty agencies need so they can fund programs that help with loan rehabilitation and college ac- cess. The National Council of Higher Education Resources, a trade group that represents private lenders, loan servicers, debt collectors and loan guaranty agencies, wrote the House Education Committee this week opposing the bill. Council president James P. Bergeron wrote: “If [the account maintenance fee] is eliminated ... guaranty agencies will be unable to perform critical functions that assist borrowers in avoiding de- fault and protect federal taxpayers

as the federal legacy program con- tinues to wind down its opera- tions.” Groups advocating for the minority-serving schools argue that providing money to colleges and universities with minimal resources is f ar more important than propping up a vestige of a defunct federal program. “The optics of trying to defend an administrative payment to ves- tigial parts of a dead loan system at the expense of the most under- resourced colleges in this country is a bad look,” said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for Ameri- can Progress, a liberal think tank. On Tuesday evening, the House approved the chamber’s v ersion of the bipartisan bill, sponsored by Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) and Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), on a voice vote. It is up to the Senate to move on the legislation, but GOP leadership so far i s unwilling.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has not taken a position on the legislation. Senate Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R- Te nn.) has no plans to hold a vote on the bill. He prefers a long-term solution to be created through reauthorization of the Higher Edu- cation Act, the federal law govern- ing the sector, according to his spokesman, Ta ylor Haulsee. Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act has endured fits and starts in a divided Congress, and there is no certainty Senate Republicans and Democrats can come t o an a greement before Alex- ander is expected to retire in 2021. Advocates say the schools cannot afford to wait or to offset the funding if it dries up. “The bottom line i s they have n o safety net,” Jones said in a speech on the Senate floor last week. “If they have no safety net, neither do the students t hat they serve.”

An estimated 20,000 letters and phone calls have been sent or made this m onth to spur Congress into action, through a joint campaign of the United Negro College Fund and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Williams, of the Marshall Fund, has urged Presi- dent Trump to leverage his influ- ence with Congress to pass the two-year e xtension bill. Trump made no mention of the looming deadline in his speech at the HBCU Week Conference in Washington last week, much t o the disappointment of some histori- cally black college advocates. A White House spokesman said Tuesday the president “prioritizes supporting HBCUs, and we don’t want funding for them to be inter- rupted at a ll.” The question is whether those sentiments will translate into leg- islative action in the Republican- controlled Senate. [email protected]

Funding for minority-serving colleges in limbo in GOP-controlled Senate

BY RACHAEL BADE, MIKE DEBONIS AND JOSH DAWSEY

House Democrats eager to im-
peach President Trump are strug-
gling to galvanize public opinion,
a major challenge that has d elight-
ed the White House and flum-
moxed Capitol Hill investigators
who say they’re running short on
time.
The House Judiciary Commit-
tee b rought in f ormer Trump c am-
paign manager Corey Lewan-
dowski on Tuesday for the first in a
series of fall hearings aimed at
convincing voters of the need to
impeach the president. But while
the acrimonious testimony drew
headlines and attention, even
some impeachment proponents
said it wouldn’t s way the public.
“If you’re looking to draw out
information and begin shaping a
narrative f or the A merican people,
that wasn’t the witness to do it,”
said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-
Calif.), a longtime impeachment
backer.
The skepticism underscores a
problem Democrats face as they
weigh whether to draft articles of
impeachment this fall: Voters
overwhelmingly o ppose a move to
oust the president — and some
polls even show sentiment mov-
ing in the opposite d irection.
The public, some Democrats
fear, is becoming desensitized to
Trump-related scandals, making
the committee’s job convincing
voters e ven m ore difficult. Former
special counsel Robert S. Mueller
III’s report detailed 10 episodes of

possible obstruction of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. But if the report wasn’t enough to move t he p olling on impeachment, Democrats wonder if hearings with people such as Lewandowski w ill. “There is a numbness that is occurring month by month,” s aid Rep. Daniel Kildee (D-Mich.). “He gets more and more outrageous, far more bold.... But there’s this immunity that he seems to be de- veloping.” “A ny other president, had they done one of those things [Trump has] — the public would be screaming,” s aid Rep. L ois Frankel (D-Fla.). “The public has become numb, a nd he g ets away w ith it.” Trump and White House officials, meanwhile, are reveling in Democrats’ d ifficulties. In f act, the president — who watched Lewan- dowski’s testimony f rom Air Force One on Tuesday — was laughing and joking about the hearing, arguing that Democrats have no idea what they’re doing and that no one cared about the Mueller report anymore, according to one person w ho spoke with h im. The individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe w hat transpired. Two White House officials sug- gested that the administration could defy congressional requests because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has made it clear she is reluctant about impeachment. They also have calculated that there won’t be a public price to pay for stonewalling Congress, in part because the clock is run-

ning out. “When I’m looking at the legis- lative c alendar, y ou’re seeing there is not much left there. How much can they really do between now and w hen e veryone i s trying t o run for their seats?” asked a senior White House official, who also spoke on t he c ondition of a nonym- ity to describe private discussions. The gap between Democrats’ desire to impeach Trump and the public’s position means the party could find itself in a political bind this fall: Do they follow their base and vote to impeach him, or do nothing and risk history’s judg- ment for standing pat as well as liberal wrath heading into the 2020 elections. House Judiciary Committee Democrats argue that it doesn’t have to be either-or. Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) of- ten notes that only 19 percent of Americans supported removing President Richard M. Nixon before lawmakers began their impeachment i nquiry in 1973; b ut b y

the summer of 1974, a majority backed his ouster, suggesting the panel can build a case against Trump. “I see the w hole c ountry a nd the whole Congress as in an educa- tional phase right now,” s aid Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a Judiciary Committee member. “I know ev- erybody wants to jump to the end of the process. But we really are in the a ctive i nvestigative mode.” On Capitol Hill, however, there’s a sense that time left to move sentiment is running out. Lawmakers say they need to de- cide on impeachment by the end of the year, leaving the Judiciary Committee only a couple of months to make its public case. That pressure has caused occa- sional tension in the pro- impeachment caucus, with some questioning the Judiciary strategy and wondering why they’re not doing more hearings. Disagreements were also evi- dent Wednesday in t he w ake of t he Lewandowski hearing, with some

Democrats dismissing the exer- cise as unhelpful. Huffman said the hearing amounted to “a food fight,” although he blamed the combative former Trump campaign official, not his colleagues, for the result. He, along with other Democrats, wondered whether the panel would be better served to have its staff do more of the questioning: After hours of partisan bickering, Judiciary staff lawyer Barry Berke had some success pinning Lewan- dowski down at the end of the hearing Tuesday. “I mean, I wouldn’t presume to tell Chairman Nadler how to do i t, but i f you want t o get the g oods up front, t hat seems like a good way to do it,” Huffman said. “Clearly, it was m ore productive.” Judiciary panel member J. Luis Correa (D-Calif.), however, dis- missed the idea that lawmakers would yield to unelected lawyers. “Members are pretty jealous and protective of their five minutes,” he said, referring to the allotted time Democrats have for questioning witnesses. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) said the hearing e ssential- ly made t he Democrats look w eak, exposing Congress’s inability to overcome presidential stonewalling. Lewandowski talked over lawmakers, dodged q uestions and even used the hearing to promote a potential U. S. Senate bid in New Hampshire. “The founders never believed that this kind of thing would hap- pen, so there’s no way to deal with it,” he said. “I think the American people looked at t hat and thought, ‘What’s going on?’ We understand it, b ut they look at t his like: What? Screaming at members of Con- gress?” Democrats on the Judiciary Committee defended their strat-

egy Wednesday, arguing that Le- wandowski gave them fodder to say Trump has trampled the Con- stitution and is not respecting the powers of Congress. “Even though it was a rocky hearing yesterday, in retrospect, as people think about it, they will come to the conclusions that Corey Lewandowski was lying, and he was covering up for the president, and he was protecting the president — and they want to know why,” said Rep. Hank John- son ( D-Ga.). “So it will increase the curiosity and the suspiciousness of the American people.” Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) also said it was unrealistic for one hearing to move public sentiment. “This is a process in which we’re building a case,” he said. “This notion that, like, ‘Oh, is this going to turn the tide today?’ No.” Congressional Republicans have goaded the party over the apparent insistence on moving forward with impeachment. On Wednesday, Rep. Guy Reschen- thaler (R-Pa.) insisted that the Democratic rank and file are “ra- bid” over the idea of impeaching Trump and d ubbed them t he “ Par- ty o f Impeachment.” Democrats have blamed the White House for making their job difficult. The Trump administration has blocked progress on more than 20 Hill investigations, keep- ing ex-aides from testifying and documents from being handed over. That’s why Judiciary Demo- crats are also l ooking to the courts to help them m ake their case to the public. A circuit court is expected to rule in late October on whether former White House counsel Don- ald McGahn must testify. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

House struggles to move

public on impeachment

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES Lawyer Barry Berke questions ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.  For video, go to wapo.st/impeachmentdems.

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The Washington Post - 19.09.2019

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