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California bill: President Trump won’t appear on ballot unless he releases tax returns
ASSOCIATED PRESS | USA TODAY | 4 hours ago
President Donald Trump says he “would not be inclined” to provide his tax returns in response to a request from a House committee chairman. (April 3)
AP, AP
The California Legislature is attempting to force presidential candidates to publicly disclose their tax returns — a move that could bar President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s primary ballot if he does not make the documents public.
The state Senate voted 27-10 on Thursday to require anyone appearing on the state’s presidential primary ballot to publicly release five years’ worth of income tax returns. The proposal is in response to Trump, who bucked 40 years of tradition by refusing to release his tax returns prior to his election in 2016.
California’s presidential primary is scheduled for March 3. If the bill becomes law, Trump could not appear on the state’s primary ballot without filing his tax returns with the California secretary of state.
“We believe that President Trump, if he truly doesn’t have anything to hide, should step up and release his tax returns,” said Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat from Healdsburg and the co-author of the bill along with Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat.
Congress fights for returns: Treasury misses second deadline to release Trump’s tax returns, will make decision by May 6
Opinion: It’s April 15. Do you know where President Trump’s tax returns are?
Sarah Sanders: This Congress not ‘smart enough’ to understand Trump’s tax returns
The Legislature passed a nearly identical bill in 2017, only to have it vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, telling lawmakers he was concerned the law was unconstitutional. Brown, a Democrat, refused to release his tax returns while in office.
He left office in January and was replaced by Gavin Newsom, who has released his tax returns and embraced his role as a national “resistance” leader to Trump and his policies.
Newsom’s office didn’t say whether he’d sign it. If the bill reaches his desk, “it would be evaluated on its own merits,” spokesman Brian Ferguson said.
McGuire said he has had “initial discussions” with the Newsom administration about the proposal.
“I never want to put words into his mouth, but here’s what I’ll say: Gov. Newsom has led by example,” by releasing his own tax returns, McGuire said.
The bill would also apply to the more than a dozen candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. But many of them have already released their tax returns. They include California Sen. Kamala Harris and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who released his tax returns last month after refusing to do so in 2016.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has a strong message for the Democrats about President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
BUZZ60, BUZZ60
Candidates would have to submit tax returns to the secretary of state’s office, which would work with the candidates to redact some information before posting the returns online.
The bill echoes similar legislation being considered in Illinois, Washington and New Jersey.
In New York, Democrats have examined multiple approaches in hopes of helping release Trump’s tax returns, including bills requiring officials to release tax returns to appear on the ballot. State lawmakers last month introduced a bill that would allow the state to release Trump’s state tax returns if any of three congressional committees — the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation — ask for the documents.
Trump is a resident of New York and does much of his business in the state.
‘I’m not gonna do it’: Donald Trump says he won’t give his tax returns to Congress
All of the bills come as Democrats in Washington continue to fight for access to Trump’s returns.
Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal officially requested six years of the president’s tax returns last month from the IRS but it hasn’t been easy. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who also oversees the IRS, has missed two deadlines, imposed by Neal, to hand over the documents and instead said he would wait for the Justice Department to weigh in on the legality before making a decision.
In his latest letter last month to Neal, Mnuchin detailed both the constitutional concerns and his department’s worries with releasing the president’s financial information. He also accused Democrats of attempting to skirt the law in order to obtain the documents, something they have been after since even before Trump was elected.
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POLITICO
Nadler delivers ultimatum to Barr before holding AG in contempt
By ANDREW DESIDERIO and KYLE CHENEY
Jerrold Nadler
As part of his new offer, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler is asking the Justice Department to allow more members of Congress to immediately view a less redacted version of Robert Mueller’s report. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler is making what he calls a final “counter offer” to Attorney General William Barr’s refusal to grant immediate access to the underlying evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
In a new letter to Barr on Friday, Nadler (D-N.Y.) gave the Justice Department until 9 a.m. Monday to comply with his adjusted request before moving forward with an effort to hold Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a committee subpoena demanding Mueller’s full unredacted report and underlying documents by May 1.
“The committee is prepared to make every realistic effort to reach an accommodation with the department,” Nadler wrote. “But if the department persists in its baseless refusal to comply with a validly issued subpoena, the committee will move to contempt proceedings and seek further legal recourse.”
Democrats have said they’re trying to show that they’re engaging in good-faith negotiations with Barr before rushing to take punitive actions — like holding him in contempt or fighting Barr in court.
Nadler’s new offer comes as the Justice Department said earlier this week it would not comply with Nadler’s subpoena for the unredacted Mueller report and all of the underlying evidence and grand jury information. In a letter to Nadler, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said Congress is not entitled to the information, adding that the request is “not legitimate oversight.”
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As part of his new offer, Nadler is asking the Justice Department to allow more members of Congress to immediately view a less-redacted version of Mueller’s report. The chairman is not backing off his demand that Barr join Congress to seek a court order granting lawmakers access to grand-jury material that Barr has already blocked from public view, citing statutes prohibiting him from disclosing such information.
Nadler also said he’s willing to prioritize Mueller’s underlying evidence in order to streamline its production to Congress, with a focus on materials that were specifically mentioned in the redacted version of the report.
“[T]he department has offered no reason whatsoever for failing to produce the evidence underlying the report, except for a complaint that there is too much of it and a vague assertion about the sensitivity of law enforcement files,” Nadler wrote.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday said Nadler’s Monday deadline makes Democrats “look ridiculous and silly.” Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Nadler was placing “absurd demands” on the Justice Department.
“His accusations do not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this situation,” Collins said, borrowing Mueller’s exact words from a letter the special counsel wrote to Barr last month expressing concerns about the attorney general’s handling of the probe.
“Democrats continue to deliver inaccurate statements and abusive politics, while demanding the attorney general either break the law or face contempt charges,” Collins said. “Their chief complaint against the attorney general is his upholding the rule of law when they wish him to disregard it.”
The committee is conducting its own obstruction of justice investigation into President Donald Trump, and Democrats have demanded that they have access to all of Mueller’s evidence so they could use it for their own probe. Mueller outlined evidence in his report that Trump obstructed justice, but he ultimately decided not to charge the president with a crime, citing in part a long-standing Justice Department stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
“As the Mueller report makes clear, this need is amplified where, as here, department policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president and instead relies upon Congress to evaluate whether constitutional remedies are appropriate,” Nadler wrote, likely referencing impeachment.
CONGRESS
House Dems threaten to hold Barr in contempt
By ANDREW DESIDERIO
The Justice Department has already offered for a select number of lawmakers and staffers to view a less redacted version of Mueller’s report in a secure setting. Nadler has objected to those restrictions, and Democrats have yet to view the less redacted version.
Nadler’s new offer also comes amid escalating tensions between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats over House committees’ various investigations targeting the president and his administration.
On Thursday, the Judiciary Committee held an empty-chair hearing on Barr’s handling of the Mueller report after the attorney general backed out of the testimony amid a disagreement with the panel over its insistence that committee lawyers be allowed to question Barr. Nadler has threatened to issue a subpoena to compel Barr’s attendance at a future hearing.
Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and challenged many of Mueller’s legal theories. Democrats said Barr was trying to spin the contents of the report in the most favorable light possible for the president.
This story tagged under:
House Judiciary Committee DOJ Jerry Nadler Jerrold Nadler Mueller Investigation William Barr The Mueller
© Sat May 04 00:29:06 EDT 2019 POLITICO LLC
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This is not the '60s and Donald Trump is not Richard Nixon
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN
Updated 1:12 AM EDT, Sat May 04, 2019
(CNN) The last time the unemployment rate was this low, the Beatles were still together. Woodstock was right around the corner. There was a new President named Richard Nixon and Donald Trump was just a recent college grad.
That’s how long it’s been.
The unemployment rate was at or under 4%, as it is now, from December of 1965 until January of 1970, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was a pivotal time in US history – but now it is not remembered for the unemployment rate.
US economy has added jobs for 103 straight months. Unemployment rate falls to 3.6%
US economy has added jobs for 103 straight months. Unemployment rate falls to 3.6%
They were not quiet years. Those were the years in which Medicare was passed into law and the Civil Rights movement was in full swing. They also saw most of the US casualties in Vietnam. Things were so bad that Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to run for reelection in 1968, which ultimately led to violence at the Democratic convention that year and gave Nixon an opening to return from his political wilderness.
So what’s the lesson?
“A good economy is not the be-all and end-all to elections,” said Princeton political historian Julian Zelizer, asked about the 1960s vs. today. “That was a period when the economy was still doing very well – even better than today in many ways.”
Today there is no war like Vietnam, although Trump does his best to make things seem uncertain with his trade wars and his tweets and his complaints about the Russia investigation. But there is vigorous debate about social change and progress, particularly for minorities and women.
Americans have time to focus on those efforts, perhaps, because they’re not looking for work.
“A good economy can create expectations for social movement politics,” said Zelizer. “In the 1960s, the strong economy gave support to civil rights movement, with demands that African Americans be included in the growing middle class; it produced more educated young people who were the heart of movement politics with the war; and it gave support to ideas like fighting poverty, since the country could afford to do so.”
Fast forward 50 years and a lot of the change that started in the '60s feels unfinished, particularly to Democrats talking about economic inequality even as, according to the data over which economists obsess, everyone who wants a job has one and that the economy continues to grow.
The unemployment rate was 3.6% in April and annualized GDP growth was over 4% for the first quarter of the year.
Trump’s argument is things are going really well
Trump should be the beneficiary of all this good economic news. But he has seen his approval ratings on the economy pop up even if his general approval ratings hang below 50%.
His chief of staff this week said it doesn’t really matter how voters feel about Trump, they’ll give him another four years in the White House if it means sitting pretty like they are now.
“You hate to sound like a cliche, but are you better off than you were four years ago? It’s pretty simple, right? ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ I think that’s easy,” Mick Mulvaney told an audience at the Milken Conference in Los Angeles. “People will vote for somebody they don’t like if they think it’s good for them.”
And by some pretty objective standards that won’t make your eyes glaze over, people are sitting pretty.
Trump is struggling despite a strong economy. Here's why.
Trump is struggling despite a strong economy. Here’s why.
Most people in the country just got a tax cut, even if some people in mostly blue states didn’t realize it at the time because their tax refunds were lower.
Contentedness with the economy extends nationwide if you drill down into the most recent CNN data. Seventy-three percent of Americans generally in the South said the economy was good or somewhat good. That matched 71% of Northeasterners and only a slightly lower percentage (69%) of Westerners and Midwesterners, which includes several of the key Rust Belt states.
If the economy is to carry Trump to a second term, it will be in spite of the divisions he has spread in the country, said Timothy Naftali, a professor at NYU and former director of the Nixon presidential library.
“Certainly there have been times where the economy is strong, but the country is stressed because of a foreign policy challenge, as in the case of Vietnam,” Naftali said. “In this case, we’re not stressed by a foreign policy problem; I would argue it’s the nature of the President himself, who is creating stresses. If Donald Trump were a unifier, I would think the public would be much more behind him given the strength of the economy.”
A time for transformation?
It is not at all clear there is enough pressure to create change today. Democrats have seized on the issue of inequality and some, particularly Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, progressives running for the Democratic presidential nomination, have argued the fact of the good economy is exactly the reason to transform US society.
“I’ve spent my career getting to the bottom of why America’s promise works for some families, but others who work just as hard slip through the cracks into disaster,” Warren said in her campaign announcement video.
She and Sanders have proposed sweeping reforms to remake the health care and education systems and create a stronger safety net with the country’s wealth. Trump and Republicans are already painting these ideas as socialism.
Dems' town hall was socialism on parade
Dems’ town hall was socialism on parade
Arguing the government should do more is certainly in stark contrast to Republicans, who will point to their permanent tax cuts for corporations as evidence that giving more to business can help the economy.
But that may not even ultimately be a debate Americans have in 2020. Only 13% in the most recent monthly Gallup survey said the economy is the most important issue, down from more than 80% at points during the financial crisis. To the extent the economy affects voters, it may be a lack of economic urgency.
Joe Biden, the former vice president and current Democratic front-runner, entered the race last month without mentioning the economy in his kickoff video. He wanted to focus entirely on Trump’s rhetoric and white nationalists and argue Trump is changing the moral fabric of the country.
Plus, Trump has shown an innate ability to distract Americans from the news that benefits him, such as his preoccupation with the Russia investigation, his divisive insistence that a wall be built on the southern border or that the Affordable Care Act be repealed.
These issues may ultimately be more important to voters.
“The point is the good economic news does help an incumbent, but other problems, policies and challenges can undercut that advantage,” Zelizer said. “Whereas in 1968 it was a war in Southeast Asia, today it is a political war over the meaning of this presidency.”
And sometimes there’s nothing to explain what happens. By November 1972, the unemployment rate was over 5% and had been for more than two years. The country already knew a lot about Watergate. It didn’t matter. Nixon, promising to end the war he’d prolonged, won in a landslide.
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The New York Times
James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr
Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive this president.
By James Comey
Mr. Comey is the former F.B.I. director.
May 1, 2019
People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?
How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?
How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?
How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work?
And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations”?
What happened to these people?
I don’t know for sure. People are complicated, so the answer is most likely complicated. But I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others.
Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.
But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.
It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.
Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it — this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room.
I must have agreed that he had the largest inauguration crowd in history because I didn’t challenge that. Everyone must agree that he has been treated very unfairly. The web building never stops.
From the private circle of assent, it moves to public displays of personal fealty at places like cabinet meetings. While the entire world is watching, you do what everyone else around the table does — you talk about how amazing the leader is and what an honor it is to be associated with him.
Sure, you notice that Mr. Mattis never actually praises the president, always speaking instead of the honor of representing the men and women of our military. But he’s a special case, right? Former Marine general and all. No way the rest of us could get away with that. So you praise, while the world watches, and the web gets tighter.
Next comes Mr. Trump attacking institutions and values you hold dear — things you have always said must be protected and which you criticized past leaders for not supporting strongly enough. Yet you are silent. Because, after all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.
You feel this happening. It bothers you, at least to some extent. But his outrageous conduct convinces you that you simply must stay, to preserve and protect the people and institutions and values you hold dear. Along with Republican members of Congress, you tell yourself you are too important for this nation to lose, especially now.
You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.
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Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.
And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.
James Comey is the former F.B.I. director and author of “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”
© 2019 New York Times Company
Another deadline approaching Monday:
(CNN)A showdown between the White House and House Democrats over the release of President Donald Trump’s personal tax returns comes down to one man: Charles Rettig, head of the Internal Revenue Service.
Rettig, 62, a veteran California tax attorney, spent more than 35 years representing taxpayers in disputes with federal and state tax agencies until he was sworn in as IRS commissioner last October.
That makes him the only person in Washington with the authority to turn over the President’s personal tax returns under an obscure tax law-- though Rettig has argued in hearings that the decision to comply with Democratic requests nonetheless rests with his boss, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Trump has refused to release his returns, first as a candidate and now as president, breaking precedent going back to Watergate. And he has held fast to that argument even after House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts formally asked Rettig to release six years of Trump’s personal tax returns.
Read: House Committee letter to the IRS demanding Trump’s tax returns
The latest deadline is Monday, after Mnuchin asked for more time to consult with Department of Justice lawyers.
Treasury and IRS spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rettig was not a traditional choice by Trump to run an underfunded bureaucracy with nearly 80,000 employees.
Previous commissioners from the past two decades were picked for their deep business management experience. Rettig’s predecessor, John Koskinen, who left the job in November 2017, spent two decades as an executive of management consulting firm Palmieri Co. His predecessor, Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee, came to the agency after serving as vice chairman of the Finra, the finance industry self-regulator.
Instead, Rettig, a Beverly Hills lawyer, who earned his economics degree from UCLA and went to Pepperdine University for law school, spent more three decades of his career representing wealthy taxpayers and businesses in complex disputes with the government.
Democrats blasted him during his June confirmation hearing for failing to disclose that he had a stake in two rental units in Hawaii at a Trump-branded hotel. Those ties were resurfaced last week by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, after disclosure documents showed Rettig earned as much as $1 million in rental income from his Trump-related branded properties while under political pressure to release the President’s tax returns.
Rettig previously noted the existence of those properties on his disclosure form but did not specify that they were located at a Trump-branded hotel. Instead, he described them at the time as a “Honolulu, Hawai’i residential rental property,” according to a memo from committee staff obtained by CNN.
At the same June hearing, Democratic senators also pressed Rettig on whether he would resist political pressure from the White House given the prospect Democrats were likely to demand the President’s tax returns if either chamber seized control after the 2018 midterm elections.
Rettig pledged he would remain independent from the Trump White House during his five-year term, which expires in November 2022, and would serve in an “impartial, unbiased” manner. He renewed his pledge not to cave to political pressure to senators before the same committee last month.
Today, Rettig’s role following Neal’s request for Trump’s tax returns has been blurred by Mnuchin’s intervention in the process, arguing that as Rettig’s boss, the responsibility falls to him to oversee the decision. Mnuchin has also separately asked the Justice Department to review the matter.
Democrats argue that the authority lies solely with Rettig. They claim that Treasury long ago delegated the responsibility to comply with congressional demands by the heads of the respective tax-writing committee to the IRS commissioner. They also argue that any change would require notification to Congress, which hasn’t happened.
“It’s your job and your job alone to respond to Chairman Neal’s request,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told Rettig at a hearing in April.
Rettig replied, “We are a bureau of the Treasury. We are supervised by Treasury.”
So far, Mnuchin has interceded twice in responding to Democratic congressional demands to release Trump’s tax returns despite directing their request to Rettig.
In his response, Mnuchin has argued the “unprecedented” request raises “serious constitutional issues” that could have dire consequences for taxpayers’ privacy, and has made the case for his oversight of the matter.
“This is a decision that has enormous precedence in potentially weaponizing the IRS,” Mnuchin told reporters in April on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Washington.
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Trump on collision course with Supreme Court; justices may avoid interference in 2020 election
RICHARD WOLF | USA TODAY | 41 minutes ago
   

The Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to look at some legacy cases before the lower courts have finished with them.
HANNAH GABER SALETAN, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – President Trump is on a collision course with the Supreme Court, a trajectory that threatens to put the justices in the middle of the 2020 election.
Disputes over congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony, as well as legal battles over administration policies and Trump’s businesses, finances and personal affairs, are moving inexorably toward a court Trump has sought to shape in his image.
In one box are myriad disputes over immigration, as well as health care and transgender troops in the military. In another are lawsuits seeking to pry open – or keep secret – Trump’s business dealings, financial records and tax returns. Even his Twitter account is a target.
Most recently, the president’s vow to fight all subpoenas from House Democrats and Attorney General William Barr’s refusal to testifybefore a House panel have threatened to add another layer to the looming high court showdown.
Some battles already have reached the justices. They ruled narrowly last year in favor of the president’s travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries. They seemed inclined last month to allow the Commerce Department to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, again by the slimmest of margins.
The question now is how many hot-button squabbles the high court will settle or sidestep in the 18 months remaining before Election Day.
Several factors may delay or derail many of the confrontations. The wheels of justice turn slowly. The Supreme Court turns down 99 of every 100 cases that come its way.
And the justices likely want to stay “three ZIP codes away” from political controversy, as their newest colleague, Brett Kavanaugh, put it during his confirmation hearing last year.
“All these cases are long shots for multiple, independent reasons,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who follows the high court closely. “If this is a one-term presidency, the clock will run out while these cases are still percolating.”
The likelihood that the Supreme Court will face a flurry of Trump-related cases increases exponentially if he wins re-election, however. Second terms tend to be litigious; think Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and Bill Clinton’s Whitewater investigation. If Democrats retain control of the House or win the Senate in 2020, the collisions could come in bunches.
Special interest groups challenging Trump up and down the federal court system hope they don’t have to wait that long.
“I think it could be next year that we get the beginnings of the Trump rule-of-law docket,” said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. “You don’t want the court to essentially sit on these issues simply to avoid grappling with the tough questions.”
Mixing politics and law
President Donald Trump shakes hands with federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, in the East Room of the White House last July.