Month: July 2019

In a new book, Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.), the libertarian-leaning former Republican lawmaker who left the party earlier this month, says the contemporary Republican Party is full of liars.

In interviews conducted a year ago but not published until now, Amash says President Donald Trump’s ability to shamelessly lie to the American people is his “superpower,” and accuses his former congressional allies of “lying through their teeth” to protect the president.

“They believe in a cosmic battle between the right and the left, good and evil, and they think any criticism of Trump is helping the other side,” Amash told Politico reporter Tim Alberta in a previously unreported interview that appears in Alberta’s new book: American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump.

The book is a wide-ranging and comprehensive look at the evolution of the GOP during the past decade, as a grassroots-versus-establishment fight morphed into a populist takeover that elevated a reality TV star to the White House. It unfolds chronologically over the course of that decade, with each chapter taking place within a single month somewhere between February 2008 (when John McCain overtook Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential primary) and December 2018 (when Trump shut down the government in a fit of anger over his unfunded border wall). Trump’s election, Alberta concludes, is not the cause of the current chaos within the GOP, but rather “its most manifest consequence.”

Amash was one of the few Republican members of Congress who managed to avoid being caught up in Trump hysteria—until it effectively forced him to resign from the party. His colleagues, Amash tells Alberta, are “willing to do whatever” to placate the president.

“If that means going on Fox News and lying through their teeth about Trump, so be it,” he says. “I think they’re hurting themselves and they’re hurting the country when they do this stuff.”

Amash also unloads on Trump, saying that the president has a “one of a kind” ability to shamelessly lie in public.

“The president feels comfortable saying two things that are completely contradictory in one sentence; or going to a rally and saying one thing and then holding a press conference and saying another,” Amash tells Alberta. “Most people aren’t comfortable doing that. But because he is, it gives him this superpower that other people don’t have.”

Taken together, Amash’s comments in the new book cement the idea that he was “the loneliest man in Congress” during much of the past year. Amash’s feud with Trump—and with the Republican Party now controlled and dominated by Trump—did not fully spill into the open until a few months ago, but the details reported by Alberta make clear that Amash was already on the outs with many of his fellow Republicans more than a year ago.

Much of Amash’s angst was centered on the fading viability of the House Freedom Caucus, the libertarian-ish voting bloc in Congress that Amash co-founded in 2015. Originally, Freedom Caucus members pledged to “support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety, and prosperity of all Americans.” While it never grew larger than about 30 members, the voting bloc played an instrumental role in ousting House Speaker John Boehner in 2015, complicated the passage of a mass surveillance reauthorization package the following year, and forced some changes to the doomed “repeal and replace” of Obamacare in 2017.

But by the summer of 2018, the Freedom Caucus had morphed into being what Alberta describes as “the most reflexively partisan Republicans on Capitol Hill.” The group did virtually nothing to oppose the passage of the 2017 tax bill that was projected to add roughly $1 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, and it was similarly impotent to stop a massive spending bill passed in early 2018 that effectively locked-in trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future. After the bill passed, members of the House Freedom Caucus did lobby Trump to veto the $1.3 trillion spending plan—and Trump threatened to do so. But he ended up signing the bill anyway, and afterwards, the House Freedom Caucus seemed to lose its ability to influence the White House.

Instead of focusing on fiscal restraint and restoring proper legislative procedure—which was the real reason for the caucus’ formation in the first place—members of the House Freedom Caucus became perpetually engaged in the Trump-Russia fight and culture war issues.

Corie Whalen, Amash’s former communications director who has also stepped away from Republican politics since leaving the congressman’s staff last year, recalls that the House Freedom Caucus seemed to lose its way in the aftermath of the 2018 budget vote. From her perspective, it seemed like the group became increasingly fixated on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“They weren’t talking about appropriations; they weren’t talking about procedure. They were just out there shilling for the White House,” Whalen tells Reason. “That was when they really threw away their leverage.”

Publicly, the breaking point between Amash and Trump—or between Amash and the Freedom Caucus, if there is a meaningful difference anymore—came in May of this year, when Amash outlined on Twitter his belief that Trump had engaged in “impeachable conduct” by trying to disrupt Mueller’s investigation.

Since then, Amash has been attacked by the president on Twitter and a Trump supporter has announced plans to run against the five-term congressman in 2020 (it’s not clear whether Amash plans to run for re-election to the House as an independent).

In one of the most brazen indicators of how the Republican Party is now the House of Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) went on Fox News to claim that Amash “votes more with Nancy Pelosi than he ever votes with me.” That’s a lie, and an easily proven one. Amash has one of the most conservative voting records in Congress, and holds a nearly perfect lifetime rating from the Club For Growth, a free market group that tracks lawmakers’ votes on a wide range of issues. FreedomWorks, another small-government group that similarly scores lawmakers’ votes, gives Amash a 100 percent rating.

More lies in the service of Trump.

Behind the scenes, Alberta suggests that the final straw for Amash might have been the Freedom Caucus’ unwillingness to stand up to Trump when he attacked a different member of the group. Rep. Mark Sanford (R–S.C.) lost a June 2018 primary election to a Trump-backed challenger, and afterwards, Trump mocked Sanford during a meeting with House Republicans. In a follow-up tweet, Trump embellished the story by claiming House GOPers had “laughed and applauded,” Alberta writes, even though none of that was true. In reality, Amash and other Freedom Caucus members spoke up in defense of their colleague—but the group’s leaders, including chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R–N.C.), who has now become a key Trump ally in Congress, offered no public rebuke of the president. Shortly after that, Amash stopped going to the group’s meetings.

“These guys have all convinced themselves that to be successful and keep their jobs, they need to stand by Trump,” Amash tells Alberta in American Carnage. “But Trump won’t stand with them as soon as he doesn’t need them. He’s not loyal. They’re very loyal to Trump, but the second he thinks it’s to his advantage to throw someone under the bus, he’ll be happy to do it.”

“It could be Mark Sanford today and Mark Meadows tomorrow,” Amash warns in the book.

As it turns out, it was Justin Amash tomorrow. But in a political party where an individual’s value is now determined by how far they are willing to go to protect the president, it’s pretty likely Amash won’t be the last Republican tossed under the bus.

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In Washington state, obesity is now officially considered a disability—and protected under state anti-discrimination law. This means that “it is illegal for employers in Washington to refuse to hire qualified potential employees because the employer perceives them to be obese,” as the Washington Supreme Court put it in a 7-2 ruling issued last week.

According to a 2018 survey, 27.7 percent of adults in Washington are considered obese and now covered by this broader definition of disability. 

This massive increase in the number of people who are part of a protected class is likely to result in significant new government intrusions in hiring, firing, and other H.R. decisions, as well as large new potential claims on government benefits. What’s more, there’s a serious risk of unintended consequences: Such categorizations can end up harming the very people they are meant to help. Employers may hire people for jobs they will be unable to perform or discriminate against them in stealthier ways.

The Washington case came after former U.S. Marine Casey Taylor failed a medical exam because his body mass index (BMI) was, at 41.3, too high. A BMI of 40 or higher typically puts a person in the morbidly obese category.

Back in 2007, Taylor had applied to work as an electronics technician with BNSF Railway Company and got a conditional job offer saying that he would be given the position if he could pass a medical screening. After the screening, Taylor was told by the company that, due to his BMI, the “significant health and safety risks associated with extreme obesity,” and potential issues with Taylor’s knees and back, he might not be medically qualified for the job.

The company asked Taylor to either provide them with the results of a range of tests that prove his physical fitness or to lose 10 percent of his body weight. He brought a lawsuit against BNSF Railway instead. The suit alleges that the company discriminated against Taylor and “perceived Mr. Taylor as disabled due to morbid obesity,” knee and back problems, and his status as a veteran.

The case was dismissed in 2016, after winding up in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The federal court found that “evidence presented [did] not support the conclusion” that BNSF had perceived Taylor as disabled, and therefore could not be guilty of discrimination on the basis of disability.

Taylor brought his suit under the Washington Law Against Discrimination, which prohibits employers from discrimination based on several factors, including disability.

Taylor appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which sent the case back to the Washington Supreme Court with instructions to answer “under what circumstances, if any, does obesity qualify as an ‘impairment’ under Washington law?”

In its July 11 decision, the state Supreme Court answered “obesity always qualifies as an impairment under the plain language of [the state’s anti-discrimination law] because it is recognized by the medical community as a ‘physiological disorder, or condition.'”

Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote for the majority that “if an employer refuses to hire someone because the employer perceives the applicant to have obesity, and the applicant is able to properly perform the job in question, the employer violates” Washington law.

The two judges who disagreed with their colleagues on this case noted concern that the state’s obesity definition was too broad and might create circumstances where people who are not obese are able to receive disability benefits or protections.

“Because the diagnostic line between ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ is a function of an individual’s weight in relationship to their height, I do not agree that obesity always qualifies as an impairment under the plain language of the [Revised Code Of Washington],” Justice Mary Yu wrote in her dissent.

Michigan is the only state that explicitly lists obesity as protected from employment discrimination, but Massachusetts could soon join the list of states to explicitly list obesity as a protected class under the law.

Walter Olson, a legal analyst at the Cato Institute, points out that many obese people don’t consider themselves disabled at all. “Many people that are obese do not like calling themselves disabled and they don’t want it to be medicalized as a condition that requires therapy or care,” says Olson. “The body image movement brought forward the idea that it is not necessarily in some sense abnormal and it should be automatically medicalized.”

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President Donald Trump’s feud with “the squad” of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) has now sparked a fresh attempt to impeach the president. On Tuesday night, Rep. Al Green (D–Texas) filed articles of impeachment against Trump for his remarks aimed at the four hard-left representatives.

Moments before Green introduced his impeachment resolution, the House had voted to condemn the president’s verbal attacks on the congresswomen, in which he called them “anti-Israel, anti-USA, pro-terrorist” and urging them to “go back” to their home countries. (All but Omar were born in America.)

That resolution did not go far enough for Green, who said that Trump’s remarks amounted to a high misdemeanor worthy of impeachment. Trump “by causing such harm to the society of the United States is unfit to be president, and warrants impeachment, trial, and removal from office,” said Green in a floor speech.

This is the Texas representative’s third time trying to impeach Trump, having forced unsuccessful impeachment votes in 2017 and 2018. However, this is Green’s first try at impeaching the president with a majority-Democrat House.

This puts Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.), an impeachment critic, in the tough position of having to decide whether or not to squash Green’s resolution.

Under House rules, Pelosi has two days to decide whether to table Green’s impeachment resolution (effectively killing it), send it to the House Judiciary Committee where it could linger indefinitely, or bring it up for a vote on the House floor. So far, she isn’t indicating which option she’ll pick.

“That will be up to our leadership team to decide,” Pelosi told CNN Tuesday. “We haven’t really discussed how to dispose of it,” said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D–Md.) to reporters. “I’m not gonna try to discourage [Green], you know, he has to do what he thinks is right.”

Any actual vote would likely fail, as only 86 House members have said they’d support impeaching Trump. What a vote on Green’s resolution would do is force a lot of Democrats to go on the record about their support or opposition to impeachment—something many have been reluctant to do.

Even if an impeachment vote were to succeed in the House, it would be dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate.

There are some good reasons one might have for impeaching Trump. That he’s made nasty remarks about a few congresswomen doesn’t seem to be one of them.

FREE MINDS

Dr. Leana Wen, Planned Parenthood’s president and CEO, announced that she would be resigning her position with the organization, citing philosophical differences with the group’s board of directors. “I believe that the best way to protect abortion care is to be clear that it is not a political issue but a health care one,” said Wen in a Tuesday evening statement. “We can expand support for reproductive rights by finding common ground with the vast majority of Americans who understand reproductive health care as the fundamental health care that it is.”

My statement stepping down as President/CEO of @PPFA and President of @PPAct. pic.twitter.com/WJ3EBgJIAy

— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) July 16, 2019

The New York Times reports that there had been a lot of staff turnover at the upper levels of Planned Parenthood during Wen’s eight-month tenure, suggesting organizational disarray as a reason for her ouster.

I obviously have no particular insight into the case of Dr. Wen, but my general observation of covering other organizations is that firing a chief executive after 9 months is often a symptom of much deeper organizational dysfunction.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) July 16, 2019

According to Buzzfeed, Wen’s refusal to move the group in a more political direction, and use “trans-inclusive” language earned her enemies.

UPDATE: Two sources told us that Wen also refused to use “trans-inclusive” language, for example saying “people” instead of “women,” telling staff that she believed talking about transgender issues would “isolate people in the Midwest.” https://t.co/Db2ooboz4o

— Ema O'Connor (@o_ema) July 16, 2019

FREE MARKETS

The Trump administration is planning on draining the swamp just a little bit by relocating federal employees from Washington to real America. On Tuesday, the White House informed Congress that it would be relocating 84 percent of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) headquarters staff—260 people—out of D.C.

The BLM is responsible for managing federally owned lands, most of which are located out west. The bulk of BLM bureaucrats would be sent to Grand Junction, Colorado. The rest would be spread across other western states, including Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah.

Nearly half of the BLM’s leadership is located in D.C. “despite the fact that their functions and operations are overwhelmingly carried out in the West,” said Interior Department official Joseph Balash in a letter to Congress explaining the decision.

The planned move, which is slated to be completed by 2020, would allow BLM to provide better customer service while saving money on travel and leasing office space, Balash wrote. The White House estimates the move will save $50 million over 20 years.

Last year, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced plans to move 550 Department of Agriculture employees to Kansas City.

Instead of moving them west, a more libertarian solution would probably be to fire more BLM workers. But if we can’t get a smaller federal government, a cheaper, more spread out one is still preferable.

QUICK HITS

• Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, author of the infamous Kelo v. City of New London decision on eminent domain, has died.
• Whistleblower Chelsea Manning, currently jailed for contempt of court after refusing to testify before a federal grand jury about her contacts with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, will see her daily fines double from $500 to $1,000.
• The White House is projecting a $1 trillion budget deficit for 2019.
• Roughly four people on Twitter were pissed off that Parks and Recreation actor Chris Pratt was wearing a Gadsden Flag t-shirt. Yahoo News has the scoop.
• Congress is ordering the Pentagon to come clean about possibly weaponized ticks that it may or may not have released into the wild.
• Customs and Border Protection is even more of a mess than you might imagine.

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