“Congressman, are you googling during this debate?”
This isn't the first time Rangel, who is facing a difficult primary fight, has used a prop during a debate. He staged a fake phone call to begin a May debate. The Democratic primary takes place on June 24.
Via 7online.com
“Rob4NY” is fundraising Friday in support of Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino, in a campaign called “D-Day Money Bomb.” The group is not affiliated with the campaign.
The website says it has already raised over $14,000 since the campaign began Friday morning.
Via rob4ny.com
“We try to keep the unions from having a hobby,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says.
Mercedes-BenzMCT
Frustrated workers at a Mercedes plant in Alabama have said they want the United Auto Workers to leave so another union can try to organize the plant.
But according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, that's unlikely to happen.
"We try to keep the unions from having a hobby," Trumka said in an interview with BuzzFeed. "When you have a hobby you don't represent the people anywhere near as much as when it's your main goal."
If another union tried to organize the Tuscaloosa plant, he argued, it wouldn't have the industry experience of the UAW to do it right.
"Theoretically another union could come in," Trumka said. "Will it happen? I doubt it. Because UAW understands the industry better than the industry understands the industry."
The AFL-CIO is an umbrella organization made up of dozens of unions, including the UAW. UAW currently has exclusivity over the Alabama plant, meaning no other union is allowed to try and organize the workers.
Trumka then recalled the time he was the president of the United Mine Workers, when a catfish rendering plant, also in Alabama, wanted to join his union.
When he visited the plant, the first thing he saw was a fence separating the black workers from the white workers. He immediately said the fence needed to be torn down, Trumka said.
But not knowing "jack shit" about catfish, he ultimately asked the United Food and Commercial Workers to handle the case.
"I transferred the unit across because if I'd taken that unit I wouldn't have spent the money to learn that industry," he said.
Alabama plant workers have said the UAW is taking too long to call for a union vote, and even if they did the union would only have the support of 30% of the plant at most.
According to Reuters, UAW will launch a new plan to organize the Mercedes workers as soon as next week.
"They want to have an election right away," said UAW's new president Dennis Williams. "We perceive it that we have more building to do there."
“I want to prove I can write about right-wingers without insulting anybody,” Weiner told BuzzFeed.
The art that's slated to run with Weiner's pieces.
Mike Nudelman / Via Business Insider
Former New York congressman and New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner will now try his hand at writing a hockey column, BuzzFeed has learned. Weiner will be blogging about the Stanley Cup finals at Business Insider, where he currently contributes a monthly politics column, called "Weiner!"
"I want to prove I can write about right-wingers without insulting anybody," Weiner told BuzzFeed.
His first column is scheduled to run tomorrow and there will be several updates to follow, a source said. Weiner will be in Los Angeles for tomorrow night's game between the New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings and he is currently looking for any available tickets.
Reached for comment, Business Insider politics editor Hunter Walker said, "What can I say? We wanted more Weiner."
In the lead-up to the announcement to his mayoral run in 2013, reporters showed up to one of his games and a photo of Weiner in goalie pads ended up on the cover of the New York Daily News.
Weiner is a bit of a sports nut. A 2009 profile from the New York Times notes that while Weiner was in Congress, he played as a goalie in a night league, skiied, lifted weights, and was also a member of a congressional baseball team and football team.
The judge held off on issuing an injunction stopping enforcement of the ban until at least June 16. [ Update: Some counties, however, are marrying couples immediately. ]
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Wisconsin Friday struck down the state's ban on same-sex couples marrying, joining federal judges across the nation to have reached a similar decision in the past six months that such bans are unconstitutional.
"I conclude that the Wisconsin laws prohibiting marriage between same-sex couples interfere with plaintiffs' right to marry, in violation of the due process clause, and discriminate against plaintiffs on the basis of sexual orientation, in violation of the equal protection clause," U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb wrote.
She held off on issuing an injunction stopping enforcement of the ban, as Crabb — appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 — asked for additional materials by June 16 relating to the injunction sought by the plaintiffs in the case.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen already has asked Crabb to stop the decision from going into effect, and Crabb told the state it can supplement that motion through June 16 if they wish to do so in light of the Supreme Court's action earlier this week denying a stay of the order striking down Oregon's marriage ban.
Social media can be fun!
Via cia.gov
This week, the CIA expanded its social media presence with the launch of official social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter @CIA and on Facebook for the latest CIA updates, #tbt (Throwback Thursday) photos, reflections on intelligence history, and fun facts from the CIA World Factbook. You'll also receive updates on CIA career postings and get the latest glimpse into CIA's Museum—the best museum most people never get to see. Our social media expansion will put CIA.gov content right at your fingertips.
The launch expands CIA's online presence, which already includes the Agency's public website, CIA.gov and CIA.gov mobile, and official Flickr and YouTube accounts. In the coming weeks, look out for other CIA.gov enhancements, including live streaming capabilities via Ustream.
The Louisiana governor excoriates Obama over Bergdahl case.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
Mike Theiler / Reuters
COLUMBIA, S.C. — In a fiery and well-received speech to Republicans here Friday evening, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal sharply criticized the Obama administration's handling of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's release, and accused the president of cavalierly ignoring U.S. law.
Headlining the South Carolina GOP's annual Silver Elephant Dinner, Jindal recited a litany of critiques of the White House, energizing the crowd with attacks on President Obama's education policy, and his approach to religious freedom issues.
But Jindal, a prospective 2016 presidential candidate, said he was particularly troubled by the administration's foreign policy.
"Apparently, our president has adopted a catch-and-release policy toward terrorists," Jindal said, referencing the decision to trade five Taliban prisoners in exchange for Bergdahl's freedom.
"I just want to make sure we're on the same page. I've got three simple questions for you," Jindal told the crowd, before entering into a call-and-response portion of his speech.
"Do you think it makes sense for the president of the United States to be negotiating with terrorists?"
"No!" the audience of well-dressed Republicans responded in unison.
"Do you think it makes sense for the president of the United States to have the unilateral right to simply break and ignore American law whenever he chooses?"
"No!"
"Do you think it makes sense for the president of the United States to release five Taliban members who may make it their lives' mission to attack not only Americans, but our way of life, our values, what we believe in — does it make sense for the president of the United States to let these terrorists go?"
"No!"
The energetic reception to Jindal's criticism Friday evening illustrates just how potent an issue the Bergdahl release has become on the right in a few short days. Since the details of the prisoner exchange came to light, it has received wall-to-wall coverage in conservative media and drawn criticism from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who say the administration failed to adequately consult with Congress.
Jindal, whose political record is built largely on conservative domestic issues like school choice, has been working to expand his policy repertoire with a series of op-eds over the past year. He outlined his opposition to Obama's handling of the Bergdahl case in an article on FoxNews.com earlier this week.
“I do not think we should subject ourselves.”
Miss Louisiana apparently disagrees with the Obama administration's trading of five Taliban prisoners for American prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl. At the Miss USA pageant Sunday night, Brittany Guidry slammed the Obama administration for the deal.
"I am glad that we got our guy back," Guidry said. "However, I do not feel it is right that we subject ourselves to these acts of terrorism. I do agree with our guy being back, but, however, I do not think we should subject ourselves. Thank you."
Another contestant was asked what set her apart from the other contestants.
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen asks 7th Circuit to “enter an order immediately staying” part of Friday’s marriage ruling. [ Update: Trial judge denies emergency stay request, but also says that clerks are not issuing licenses under her authority. ]
Via doj.state.wi.us
WASHINGTON — As same-sex couples continue to marry in some Wisconsin counties, the state's attorney general has gone to a federal appeals court asking the court to put an immediate stop to the marriages.
After the Friday decision from U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb striking down the state's ban on same-sex couples' marriages, officials in Dane and Milwaukee counties began allowing such couples to marry. This despite the fact the Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said that even after the ruling "current law remains in force" as Crabb had not yet issued an injunction stopping enforcement of the ban.
After marriages were conducted Friday and Saturday with no action from Crabb on the state's emergency motion for a temporary stay, Crabb on Monday morning called for a 1 p.m. Central Time hearing on the motion.
Despite the hearing notice, Van Hollen then filed a notice of appeal in the trial court and then filed an "emergency motion for a temporary immediate stay from the relief granted" by Crabb's opinion and order on Friday.
As of 1 p.m. Central Time, 16 counties were issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Truly,” the husband of Iowa state Senator Joni Ernst noted.
WASHINGTON — Last year, the husband of Iowa Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst, her party's nominee for Senate made his opinion known about Hillary Clinton on Facebook.
"Truly more of a hag now than when she was 1st Lady!" Gail Ernst wrote, sharing a Benghazi-related image.
Gail Ernst mostly uses his Facebook page — which is public — to rally supporters to his wife's Senate bid. Gail Ernst is a prominent surrogate for his wife, making official campaign appearances touted on Joni Ernst's official campaign Facebook page. He often comments on posts on his wife's campaign Facebook page from his own.
Currently, Ernst's campaign is attacking the Democratic nominee, Rep. Bruce Braley, for a TV ad, which features a baby chicken and attacks Ernst for "never making a peep" about government spending while in the state senate. After Republicans complained about the imagery and accused Democrats of hypocrisy, the spot generated a lot of negative media attention for Braley.
An Ernst spokesperson accused Braley of using imagery that said "degrades and insults Iowa women" and national Republicans condemned as "tone deaf, elitist, and offensive" to women.
“It belongs to us. It is absolutely unambiguous.”
Samantha Sais / Reuters
Simon & Schuster said Monday that Hillary Clinton would "unequivocally" not have access to personal data the publishing house is collecting through the promotional website for her upcoming memoir, Hard Choices.
The website, hillaryclintonmemoir.com, asks visitors to submit email addresses or "sign in" to the site through Twitter or Facebook. Simon & Schuster, Clinton's publisher, set up the website earlier this year through a third-party provider, NationBuilder. The company occasionally builds sites for artists and authors, but specializes in political movements and campaigns.
Politico suggested on Monday that the book and book tour would provide Clinton with the opportunity to collect "priceless retail consumer data" ahead of a presidential bid, though it was not specified what kind of data.
The information collected through the site will not be shared with Clinton or her office, according to Cary Goldstein, Simon & Schuster's executive director of publicity. "It belongs to us," he said. "It is absolutely unambiguous."
"The guidelines are printed clearly on our website. This information is collected by the publisher so that the readers of Simon & Schuster books who are interested in subjects like foreign policy and politics can be put on our mailing list."
In the lead-up to publication, Simon & Schuster used the website as the main portal for the book. Last month, the site offered readers a chance to access an exclusive excerpt — the Author's Note — if they provided an email address.
The names will "unequivocally not be shared with the author," Goldstein said.
Clinton's memoir, her second, is scheduled for publication on Tuesday.
Her publisher said late last month that retailers have already ordered through the book's first printing — a total of 1 million copies. Clinton will jump from city to city this summer to promote the book, a retrospective of her four years as secretary of state. Her last memoir, Living History, sold approximately 4 million copies, according to a new editor's note by Jon Karp, Simon & Schuster president.
Her extensive publicity tour, which will include national television interviews, begins on Tuesday morning with a book signing at Barnes & Noble in Manhattan.
But American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten says the emphasis on testing is damaging Common Core’s reputation elsewhere.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
Rebecca Cook / Reuters
WASHINGTON — Conservatives won't ever support Common Core on ideological grounds, but hearts and minds are still winnable when it comes to the education standards.
At least that's what Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in an interview with BuzzFeed.
The Common Core education standards, meant to teach students critical thinking skills and move away from the memorization-focus of George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind, have faced a sharp backlash this year. The standards have put the teachers union in a unique position: Although they support Common Core, the AFT broadly opposes immediate testing-based implementation when it comes to federal education standards.
Weingarten said the backlash against Common Core is part ideological and part based on poor implementation and organizations that put too much emphasis on testing.
"The right's vitriol is ideological. The losing of parents and teachers is a matter of incompetence," Weingarten said. She attributed the program's poor reception to groups like the Gates Foundation "wanting to measure more than wanting to teach."
The last few weeks have been tough for Common Core and its proponents. Near the end of May, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley banned Common Core after the next school year. In Oklahoma, Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill banning the standards, effective immediately.
Opposing Common Core has become a rallying cry for conservatives, who sometimes dub the standards as "Obamacore." Even governors who initially supported the program, like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, are now walking back their previous stances.
"All these conservative governors left to their own devices initially supported the standards," she said. "What changed? The Koch brothers decided not to support the standards, ALEC didn't support the standards, others who fund right-wing causes don't support the standards."
But Weingarten wasn't as concerned about losing conservative states like South Carolina or Indiana, where she said those in charge will do anything to "undermine public schooling in America." She emphasized that no matter what she does, the right will be against her, framing it in personal terms.
"There's not anything I stand for that [people on the right] like," Weingarten said. "From the fact that I'm a gay leader of a teachers union, to the fact that I'm Jewish and actually religious about that, but not in the orthodox kind of way. My partner's the rabbi of a gay temple...and I'm the head of a labor union and I'm a public schoolteacher. So there's just nothing about me that the Tea Party will ever like."
The union's strategy, instead, will be to work to make Common Core successful with left-leaning states more receptive to the concepts behind federal education standards.
"I'm much more vitriolic about the people who say that the teaching is so important, the learning is so important, the outcomes for children are so important, yet don't spend a minute trying to help create the supportive systems...and just want to test, test, test," Weingarten said.
States like New York where she said parents are turning against the standards are especially key. The state's focus on testing, she said, is one of the key things John King, New York state's education commissioner, got wrong.
"The testing got conflated with the standards," she said.
An early round of Common Core testing in New York, from late 2013, showed 31 percent of the state's third through eighth graders "met or exceeded the proficiency standard in language arts," down from 55 percent in 2012.
Federal government cuts deal with Facebook to get agencies the coveted blue Verified checkmark.
U.S. Government / Via digitalgov.gov
WASHINGTON — On Friday, the Central Intelligence Agency scored a PR coup when the agency's first-ever tweet was retweeted nearly 270,000 times. For a government entity not often on the right side of feel-good stories, the cheeky leveraging of social media was a total victory.
Behind the scenes, the federal government was preparing to launch a less flashy social media program officials say will have wide-ranging implications when it comes to the way the U.S. government connects with the citizens it serves.
In terms of social media, the federal government has had a problem common to the celebrities: Users who wanted to connect with federal agencies were confronted with a raft of poseurs pretending to be someone they weren't.
Fixing the problem on Facebook used to be a real headache for the government. The company would only verify government accounts through a cumbersome process that left many government agencies without the coveted blue "verified" check mark and many agency leaders worried users were following fakes. Many agencies kept Facebook and its hundreds of millions of American users at a distance because of it.
"Using Facebook was viewed by some as extremely risky and not worth it," a defense official told BuzzFeed. "But verification by Facebook means we're able to better address security concerns in engaging with the public."
On Friday, Facebook and the government cut a deal that gave the feds a special pathway around the company's normal verification system.
"Fake accounts, misinformation and phishing scams can create barriers between citizens and public services on the internet, especially when popularity can factor more into verification than the potential impact of unverified public services," reads a federal government announcement trumpeting the Federal Social Media Registry, the central repository of government social media accounts. Facebook has agreed to verify accounts listed in the registry, officials say, and over the weekend the process began with more than 1,000 accounts.
The program will continue verifying more government accounts in the coming days. For social media managers at agencies outside the public spotlight — or those so famous that people have made fake versions of them — the deal with Facebook makes it far easier to convince senior officials that Facebook is safe.
"Telling our leadership that we're verified 'just like the White House and NASA' is a major win," the defense official said.
Other social media networks still have a verification problem, however. While the main account of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is verified on Twitter, for example, regional branches of FEMA's regional accounts — which contain locality-specific information that could be valuable in a disaster — still lack the blue checkmark.
(By the Democrats.)
"We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," Clinton told ABC's Diane Sawyer. "We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education. You know, it was not easy."
Via abcnews.go.com
media.giphy.com / Via giphy.com
Documents obtained by BuzzFeed contain allegations that immigration officials physically mistreated or threatened some unaccompanied minors caught crossing the border. The reports do not say if the allegations were substantiated.
A section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence near Naco, Ariz.
Will Seberger / MCT
As federal officials scramble to care for the thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children who have surged across the border in recent months, records obtained by BuzzFeed show that some minors have claimed that immigration officials physically abused them.
One girl from El Salvador said she was run over by a U.S. government vehicle while being taken into custody in June 2011. The girl was turned over to a shelter overseen by a different federal agency and then was taken to the hospital, which diagnosed a "crush injury" in her right leg. She told a clinician that she was "trying to run away from immigration when she fell down and her right leg was run over by one of the tires on the vehicle," according to an incident report.
She also said she believed that immigration officials "were not attending to her needs and did not believe that the injury had been caused by being run over."
A boy from Guatemala claimed that a border patrol agent kicked him in the stomach while he was inside a detention cell in July 2011.
Other minors reported being punched, denied medical treatment, or abused verbally.
It is impossible to tell from the reports whether the complaints about mistreatment were investigated, let alone substantiated. The names of the minors have been redacted from the reports, and ages are either not given or blacked out. However, the government determined all of them to be minors.
Officials with Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the shelters, said via email that his agency passes such reports to the civil rights unit of the Department of Homeland Security.
The allegations — involving more than two dozen minors, spanning a period roughly from March 2011 to March 2013 — were contained in a series of "Significant Incident Reports" made by staff at shelters run or overseen by the HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement. That agency typically receives unaccompanied immigrant children within 72 hours after they have been apprehended at the border. BuzzFeed obtained the reports through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The allegations, written by officials who spoke with the minors or their caregivers, are sometimes detailed, even graphic.
One girl from Guatemala said that when she was in a detention facility in September 2012, she was confronted by an immigration officer who accused her of using someone else's birth certificate to pass as a minor. The girl claimed that "the immigration officer then slapped her across her right cheek with an open hand one time, grabbed her hair, and threw her onto her bed before leaving her room."
The charges of mistreatment are intermingled with dozens of other reports detailing fights between teenagers, concerns about their mental or physical health, and reports of abuse or violence that the children experienced in their home countries.
Customs and Border Protection has been sharply criticized for inadequately investigating allegations of abuse and use of force by Border Patrol agents.
On Monday afternoon, the head of internal affairs for CPB was removed.
Last month, the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, released a report that examined 809 abuse allegations lodged against the Border Patrol between 2009 and 2012. In 97 percent of the cases, the report said, officials took no action.
Last week, the White House declared the huge increase in children flooding the border an "urgent humanitarian situation." So many children have been apprehended in recent weeks that officials have opened up military facilities in San Antonio, Texas; Ventura, Calif., and Lawton, Okla., to house them temporarily.
Federal officials predict more than 60,000 children will cross the border this year, up from less than 10,000 annually a few years ago.
Officials have also said that they are seeing more young children than in years past, and more girls.
Nikki Haley was once seen as the GOP’s brightest rising star — then she got sucked into her home state’s notorious political cesspool. Can she escape before 2016?
Chris Ritter
DILLON, S.C. — On a Saturday afternoon in late March, Nikki Haley, wearing jeans, Converse sneakers, and a black zip-up sweatshirt, scanned the sea of constituents and posterboard and display tables at the McLeod Health Fair, while an aide whispered instructions into her ear. She listened carefully, nodded twice, and then detached herself and began methodically working her way through the gymnasium, calibrating her vocal intonations and facial expressions to greet each attendee.
For a bubbly teenager, she cheerfully signed a basketball and flashed a smile.
"Thank you so much for comin' out today!"
For the man in the Clemson T-shirt, she furrowed her brow in sports-fan solidarity:
"I hear ya, but don't worry, this season'll be better."
For the elderly gentleman manning the Veteran Affairs booth, she soberly shook her head as he complained about how long it took to get his benefits checks.
"It just shows what D.C. is: It's so slow. Everything is just so slow."
When she reached the end of the gym, she started down the hallways around the perimeter, where impassioned volunteers stood by homemade tri-fold display boards adorned with clip art advertising Domestic Violence Awareness Month, or providing information about the Early Autism Project, or reminding women to get screened for breast cancer. The makeshift informational booths functioned as shrines to the concerns of scores of one-issue voters, and the governor of South Carolina made time to stop and genuflect at every last one.
Haley's attendance at the fair, part of a series of similar events her nonprofit has sponsored in rural communities across the state, was just the sort of unglamorous gubernatorial grunt work that gets local politicians re-elected, while eliciting yawns from the national press. But such has been Haley's lot lately. After emerging victorious from a circus-like primary fight in 2010, pundits moved quickly to hype her as a rising Republican star, with one Newsweek cover anointing her "The Face of the New South" months before she was even elected. And yet, four years later, as she glides through an uncontested primary on Tuesday and stands poised for re-election, Haley has all but vanished from the national stage.
She hasn't been at the center of a major scandal; she didn't close a bridge. But she has been sucked back into the cesspool of South Carolina's notoriously toxic politics — forced to spend much of her first term fighting through controversies, real and manufactured, that dragged down her approval ratings and gave the fickle D.C. opinion-makers an excuse to move on. Now, as she enjoys a political comeback in her state, her national standing in the party to which she was once appointed heiress apparent is less certain than ever.
Officially, Haley's team says she is focused on her re-election bid and undistracted by 2016 jockeying — even as they are quick to spin her as an appealing national candidate.
"If Nikki gets re-elected in November, she's a two-term governor, she will have a record of fairly significant success legislatively and economically. Whether that makes her a good national candidate or not, I don't know. She has certainly been vetted and come out looking good on the other side," said Tim Pearson, Haley's campaign manager.
Privately, people in the governor's camp are more blunt about her prospects. Two Haley advisers said she would likely forego a presidential run and position herself, instead, as a top-tier vice presidential contender for the 2016 ticket. "I think she'll be on everybody's short list," said one aide.
Other Republicans aren't so sure. In conversations with BuzzFeed, political advisers to prospective 2016 candidates said Haley would make a risky pick for running mate. The operatives widely acknowledged that her political talent and natural charisma outshine much of the GOP's bench, and that as an Indian-American woman she would bring much-desired diversity to a ticket. But many also questioned whether she would hold up under the bright hot lights of a presidential campaign.
"I don't think she'd survive a vet for vice president," said one Republican consultant who is close to a likely 2016 candidate. "I would absolutely put her on my list for political reasons, but I am telling you right now that I would stay away from her like the plague."
There is a certain absurdity to engaging in veepstakes speculation more than two years before a party's convention, and much could change between now and 2016. But even influential Republicans unfamiliar with the details of Haley's rocky time in office are vaguely aware that her stock has fallen.
"I don't know why the buzz around her has cooled down so much, but it sure has cooled," said Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House press secretary and leader of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "Nobody's talking about her at the presidential level for 2016… I don't know why, because I don't follow South Carolina politics close enough."
Haley's supporters believe she has a compelling case to make, particularly on the economic front, where the governor has championed anti-labor policies and tax breaks that have led Boeing, BMW, and Amazon to bring thousands of jobs to South Carolina. In April, the state's unemployment rate fell to a 13-year low of 5.3%.
But Republicans best-versed in Palmetto State politics also point to a series of bad moments in Haley's first term. In one damaging episode, Haley bungled the response to a cyber-attack on the state's tax collection agency in 2012 that exposed the personal financial data of nearly 4 million people and 700,000 businesses. That same year, state lawmakers launched an ethics probe into Haley's lobbying practices that consumed the attention of local political press. (She was eventually cleared of wrongdoing.) More recently, her foes have seized on high-profile reports of abuse, neglect, and fatalities among children under the care of the state's Department of Social Services.
While all these controversies took their toll on Haley at home, they are not as explosive as the investigations that have touched other high-profile Republicans, like Chris Christie and Scott Walker. The real threat to Haley's 2016 prospects may be the noxious political culture of her home state, where insiders continue to spread wild rumors about her taxes and marital infidelity. That gossip, combined with the more legitimate controversies of her first term, has left behind a sort of mucky residue that — fairly or not — has tainted Haley's once glittering reputation among the national GOP elite.
Much of her trouble is rooted in the 2010 gubernatorial primary, when Will Folks, a South Carolina political blogger and former aide to Haley, claimed two weeks before voters went to the polls that he had engaged in an "inappropriate physical relationship" with the married candidate years earlier. Soon, Larry Marchant, a Republican lobbyist with ties to Haley's primary opponent, came forward to claim that he had also had an affair with her. The developments came during an almost surreally ugly primary, during which one Republican called Haley a "raghead," and opponents were suspected of spreading a vicious whisper campaign aimed at her Sikh heritage.
Haley heatedly denied the charges of infidelity and turned the personal attacks into a political advantage by casting them as a desperate last-ditch effort by the state's good old boys to keep a reformer out of office. Boosted by an endorsement from Sarah Palin, she won her race handily and appeared to beat the rap: A pre-election poll found that only 13% of South Carolina primary voters believed the affair allegations.
But those rumors persist among the gossipy politicos in Columbia — and despite ample reason to be dubious of Haley's accusers, the chatter has migrated northward toward the Beltway. In dismissing her as a viable contender for a national ticket, one Republican operative who has worked for two potential 2016 candidates cited the divorce lawsuit brought by Marchant's wife, in which she reportedly cites the alleged affair with Haley as a reason for their marriage ending.
It would not be the first time the national political class fell for questionably sourced rumors coming out of South Carolina. In March 2012, Twitter exploded with speculation after a local blogger reported that Haley was about to be indicted for tax fraud. The story was widely retweeted, and made it to the front pages of The Daily Beast, The Daily Caller, and the Drudge Report. It turned out to be bunk: The "two well-placed legal experts" cited as sources in the report were actually a television reporter and another blogger. Haley was never indicted, and the blogger apologized for his "honest mistake."
Such is the plight of the ambitious political figure who launches her career from South Carolina. Ever since the rise of Lee Atwater, the mischief-making GOP strategist who helped mastermind the Reagan and Bush campaigns, the state has been defined by its ruthless political culture — complete with its own apocrypha of electoral trickery and dirty campaigning. In one of the most infamous episodes, George W. Bush's campaign was accused of spreading rumors during the state's 2000 presidential primary that John McCain had secretly fathered a black child out of wedlock. The mythology surrounding the state's politics has a self-sustaining nature to it: Candidates and operatives here view themselves as gladiators in the country's fiercest arena, and actively perpetuate that perception — a strategy that has attracted a steady stream of political tourists over the years.
Mallory Factor, a wealthy GOP fundraiser and co-founder of a monthly gathering of Manhattan's conservative elite, moved from New York to Charleston in 2006, and he relishes his association with the state's infamous politics. "It's a swamp full of alligators," Factor said one afternoon in April, in an office that overlooked a palm-lined street. "It's rougher, tougher, and nastier than any other place I have ever seen. Absolutely, positively including New York."
Matt Moore, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, traces the state's brutal politics all the way back to its founding. "If you look at our history, this kind of thing goes back 300 years," he said. "There's an inherent distrust of power in Columbia. It stems from our history, when a lot of plantation landowners did not like centralized power in the state … I don't think human nature has changed at all. In a state like South Carolina, that's always had a fighting mentality, it's just the tactics that have changed."
Whatever its genesis, the political landscape all but requires a certain hand-to-hand combat to survive, making it very difficult to emerge from the state without some unseemly scars.
If there's one individual who best personifies South Carolina-style politics, it may be Folks, the combative political blogger who proudly declares himself "the ringleader of this three-ring circus." In another state, an ex-aide who gleefully hurled unsubstantiated (and sometimes graphic) claims about sexual liaisons with the governor might have been excommunicated from the professional political class. Here, Folks is at the center of it, running an irreverent insider politics site that everybody in the state capital reads, even if nobody is willing to admit it. His continued political relevance is a constant source of frustration for Haley and her allies, and he could cause more headaches for her going forward. When Vincent Sheheen was mulling a Democratic bid for the governorship last year, Folks met privately with him, prompting some who learned of the meeting to speculate that the two might join forces to publicly relitigate the infidelity rumors if the race tightens. (Folks, a self-described libertarian, told BuzzFeed he did offer political advice to Sheheen, but that the subject of the alleged affair never came up in their conversation. Sheheen has said he will focus on Haley's record, not her personal life.)
And if Haley is re-elected, as most observers expect her to be, Folks could prove to be an obstacle in her path to the 2016 ticket. While he claims he has no axe to grind with Haley, he also says he will cooperate with any vice presidential vetters who might come knocking.
"People don't need to know how many times and what positions," Folks said. "But I'll give them the affidavit that contains my statement about what happened, and I'll point them to the phone logs and text messages and other stuff that was released … I don't see this as the primary problem for her going to the next level, but she will never survive a national vet."
Pearson, who has worked with Haley since her first gubernatorial bid, said the onslaught of false accusations in 2010 and since has only strengthened her. "That campaign was, I think, uniquely personal and nasty and awful," he said. The upside was that it taught Haley not to waste time pointlessly engaging her haters. "She's always been tough and very focused, and I think uniquely talented in her ability to focus on what needs to be done, and kind of ignore the rest."
At the start of last year, with Haley's approval ratings sagging and her re-election looking far from certain, she put that talent to use. She began traveling out of state less frequently, and focused on promoting job growth at home. She smiled for photo ops at ribbon-cuttings and auto shows, and meticulously cultivated her brand as the "Jobs Governor" (or, just as often, #jobsgovernor). The effort appears to have worked: A recent Winthrop poll shoed her approval rating climbing to 50%, up from 38% in December 2012.
Today, her aides brag about how many times they have turned down Meet the Press — a boast meant to simulcast down-home authenticity and national relevance — and claim she doesn't sweat the mudslingers. They also tout Haley's success in unifying the state party after years of fractious intraparty battles.
But many Republicans here have also experienced a different side of Haley: a tough, often merciless infighter who has executed her political comeback in the state by inspiring fear in those who dare to cross her. One local GOP strategist who does not work for Haley declined to comment on the record for this story because he worried the governor and her allies would seek retribution if he went off-script. "Unless I start every sentence with 'liberal, corrupt trial lawyer Vincent Sheheen,' it's not worth it for me," he said.
Back at the McLeod Health Fair, Haley rewarded the small cluster of reporters who made the 100-mile drive from Columbia on a Saturday morning by taking a few questions. Asked if she thought the 2014 race would sink to the levels of the last campaign, she showed off some of the grit her aides love to talk up. "You know, we expect anything," she said. "After that race, you don't sit there and imply that it's gonna be anything better. But you know, we did this before and we'll do it again."
She then quickly pivoted to an on-message riff about the vibrancy of South Carolina's economy, and strode away before she could field a 2016 question.
For her last task of the day, she met with the volunteers in charge of the event and posed for photos with University of South Carolina's mascot, Cocky the Gamecock. As she waited for the photographers to get in position, the giant maroon rooster wrapped his beak around the governor's head, and the room exploded with laughter. She smiled gamely, and rolled her eyes. "All right, take your pictures already."
Minority Whip Steny Hoyer argued it wasn’t a violation of the law to not tell Congress the Bergdahl prisoner swap was in the works, but it would have been a good idea to do so.
Steny Hoyer
Alex Wong / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A top House Democratic leader said President Obama's decision to trade five Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl without first notifying Congress was legal, but it would have been wise of the administration to give the leadership and relevant committees a heads up.
Minority Whip Steny Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday argued that the administration was "correct" in believing they had the authority to make such a decision, given the circumstances, without telling Congress 30 days in advance. But none of the congressional leadership or even the chairs of relevant committees were informed of the swap in advance.
"I am an institutionalist but on this issue I think the administration is correct in terms of its authority. I think the 30-day notice that was in the law was inconsistent with the Constitution," Hoyer said. "Having said that, my advice to the president would have been, notify them. Pick up the phone and say this is what's happening. I think that would have had a number of good effects. Number one, it would have put people in the immediate position of saying, 'No, don't bring a U.S soldier home.' I think they would have been more reluctant to do that than they are after the fact when the solider has been released."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is among the growing bipartisan chorus that has been frustrated with the administration over the fact that she was not told of the Bergdahl plan in advance.
"When we found out it had already happened, that was the shock, of not being notified," she told reporters last week.
Hoyer asserted that even "notification not consultation" would have gone a long way on Capitol Hill.
"I think it would have been a wise policy to do but was not a violation of law by not doing it," he said.
House members were briefed by administration officials on Monday night, where they were told that some 80 to 90 members of the administration knew about the deal in advance causing more members to feel that they shouldn't have been left in the dark.
Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra argued that most relevant members of Congress had been briefed in the past on the effort to get Bergdahl back, but the administration needed to act quickly.
"One thing that was clarified at this briefing is that there can be no one at the highest levels of congress who can claim they did not have a sense about this effort to get Sgt. Bergdahl back home. What was not know was the timing, when it would happen," he said. "Sgt. Bergdahl's life may have hung in the balance in being able to do this quietly and quickly when the window opened."
“Especially those that go over to the other side and share information.”
Speaking on his radio program Tuesday, president of the Family Research Council Tony Perkins suggested execution is a reasonable punishment for desertion while talking about the case of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
"As Gen. Boykins said last week, you know, in wartime, deserters are shot," the president of the conservative Christian think-tank said. "Especially those that go over to the other side and share information. As has been reported with Bergdahl."
Perkins referenced retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, who said in an interview with CNN that he believes Bergdahl was a deserter, a crime "punishable by death." When host Candy Crowley appeared to ask Boykin if he thought that should be the punishment if Bergdahl is found by investigators to have deserted, Boykin replied, "No, that's not my point. My point is that we have traded for a guy that is guilty of a crime that is actually punishable by death, we traded him for five of the worst Taliban leaders in Guantanamo."
Perkins said the discussion over Bergdahl came up after meeting a group of veterans from a senior Sunday school class.
Perkins is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.
In response to remarks made by House Speaker John Boehner today, Representative Jackie Speier challenged the label he placed on the Taliban. “To say they are terrorists, at this point, is not necessarily accurate,” Speier said during a segment on Newsnation with Tamron Hall.
Via youtube.com
Veterans Affairs Committee chair Jeff Miller missed the first vote.
Keith Lane / MCT
The first vote was then vacated by a unanimous consent request.
