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By Matt Spetalnick | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON A group of Republican lawmakers sent a letter to President Donald Trump on Friday urging him not to reverse former President Barack Obamas opening to Cuba even as White House aides moved closer to completing a plan that could tighten rules on trade and travel to the island.

With the Cuba policy review approaching its final stages, both sides of the issue have stepped up lobbying to sway Trumps decision on how far to go in rolling back measures that Obama implemented after a 2015 breakthrough with Americas former Cold War foe.

In the letter, seven of Trumps fellow Republicans expressed deep concern that he is considering rescinding Obamas policies and said that such a move would incentivize Cuba to once again become dependent on countries like Russia and China.

The warning reflected growing unease on Capitol Hill over returning to a more contentious approach to communist-ruled Cuba, even within a Republican party that has traditionally hewed to a harder line against Havana.

Senior officials at the National Security Council were meeting on Friday to craft recommendations that will be sent to the principals committee - Trumps top foreign policy advisers - and then to the president, people familiar with the matter said.

Though divisions remain within the administration, Trump could make an announcement within weeks, possibly as early as mid- to late June in a speech in Miami, U.S. officials have said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Trump's changes are expected to stop short of breaking diplomatic relations restored two years ago after more than five decades of hostility, administration officials say.

Among the options under consideration are banning U.S. companies from doing business with Cuban enterprises tied to the military and tightening rules on Americans traveling there, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A White House official, asked about the latest meeting, said the Cuba review is still under way and not final.

The U.S. airline and travel industries have made clear they do not want to see reinstatement of Cuba restrictions.

But Trump has come under heavy pressure from Cuban-American lawmakers, including Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, to roll back Obamas rapprochement.

My hope is that when the administration is done with their review, they dont let one or two voices overwhelm what is in the interest of the United States, Representative Tom Emmer, a signatory to the letter, told Reuters.

One of four pro-engagement Republicans who met with White House officials on Thursday, Emmer said they urged the administration not to go too far in rolling back Obamas measures.

Trump threatened shortly after his election in November to terminate Obamas approach unless Cuba made concessions, something it is unlikely to do.

Obama implemented his normalization measures through executive actions, and Trump has the power to undo much of it.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Leslie Adler)

In September 2014, Gilberto Velasquez, a 38-year-old house painter from El Salvador, received life-changing news: The U.S. government had decided to shelve its deportation action against him.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump's social media director Dan Scavino broke the law in April in calling for Trump supporters to defeat a Republican congressman at the polls, according to a letter from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

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Some Republican lawmakers urge Trump not to reverse Cuba opening - Reuters

New York Times

Greg Gianforte, Montana Republican Charged With Assaulting Reporter, Apologizes New York Times Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican charged with assaulting a reporter the night before he won a seat in the House of Representatives last month, formally apologized to the reporter on Wednesday and said he would donate $50,000 to a journalism ... Mont. Republican Greg Gianforte apologizes for assaulting Guardian reporterUSA TODAY Republican congressman-elect Greg Gianforte writes apology to reporter he punched and bodyslammedBoing Boing Montana Republican seeks to delay court appearance for assault chargeThe Hill Shareblue Media -Slate Magazine (blog) -The Guardian -Fox News all 132 news articles »

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Greg Gianforte, Montana Republican Charged With Assaulting Reporter, Apologizes - New York Times

The nations most aggressive experiment in conservative economic policy is dead.

Republican majorities in the Kansas legislature on Tuesday night voted to reverse the deep tax cuts engineered by Governor Sam Brownback five years ago, blaming them for blowing a hole in the states budget that threatened the viability of its schools and infrastructure. Brownback, a conservative first elected in 2010 on a platform of phasing out Kansass income tax entirely, stood by his vision even in spite of an electoral backlash last year. But a coalition of Democrats and newly-elected Republicans overrode his veto of legislation to raise $1.2 billion in revenue by hiking personal income taxes and repealing a widely-criticized exemption for small-business owners. Tax rates will now go up to levels near where they were before Brownback took office.

The stark shift in policy was months, if not years, in the making. Lawmakers in the GOP-controlled House and Senate came within a few votes of undoing the tax cuts in February as lawmakers searched for revenue to plug a nearly $900 million two-year budget gap and meet a court order demanding more funding for education.

Kansas Republicans Sour on Their Tax-Cut Experiment

For Brownback, a former senator and one-time presidential hopeful, the vote was nothing less than a humiliation. He had hailed his tax cuts as a real live experiment in conservative governance and offered them up as a model for other states and the Trump administration. Instead, they left him as the most unpopular governor in the country, who was reportedly casting about for a federal posting that would allow him to escape Topeka before the legislature could eviscerate his legacy. The Brownback experiment didnt work. We saw that loud and clear, said Heidi Holliday, executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth.

The move will reverberate in Washington, where the Trump administration is asking Republicans in Congress to enact a tax plan with the same basic structure as the one Brownback put in place in Kansas: sharp reductions in income tax rates as well as a large drop in the rate paid by small business owners that file their taxes individually, known as pass-through entities. Its a great day in Kansas and a blow to the myth of trickle-down taxation, said Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist who served as a top adviser in the Obama White House. Whether D.C. Republicans will learn from the Kansas legislature is very much another question.

Indeed, conservatives took a very different lesson from the Brownback experience. The goal of conservative economic philosophy is to reduce the size of governmentto shrink it down so small that you could drown it in a bathtub, in Grover Norquists famous description. Kansas only followed one half of the plan. Dont cut taxes and increase spending, said Dave Trabert, president of the right-leaning Kansas Policy Institute. Thats what Kansas did. Thats a bad plan, and its the root of all of Kansass problems.

Yet where advocates on both the right and the left agreed is that Kansas, despite its decades-long tradition of Republican governance, simply did not want to go as far to the right economically as Brownback tried to push the state. While job growth did increase following enactment of the tax cuts, bipartisan coalitions rebelled against cuts to the schools. Education actually matters to people in Kansas, Bernstein said. The lesson is that when it comes to things government provides, people value that more than conservative ideology admits.

Trabert reached a similar conclusion. There simply was not the political will to reduce the cost of government, he told me. After moderate Republicans ousted conservatives in 2016 primary campaigns, legislators came to believe they would face punishment from voters if they cut spending too deeply. Its not about citizens. Its not about students, Trabert said. Its about getting elected and reelected.

While Congress often looks to states for ideasand warningsabout policy, theres a limit to how much influence the Kansas example will have with Republicans on Capitol Hill. The biggest difference between the federal and state governments is that Washington can borrow money and run deficits, while states must balance their budgets. And the GOP has repeatedly prioritized the potential for economic growth it sees in tax cuts over the potential ramifications for the deficit. While Trump officials have wavered on whether a tax bill must be paid for, the administrations one-page outline would add trillions to the debt without corresponding revenue increases that it didnt propose.

In an interview on Wednesday, Norquist was unbowed by the result of Brownbacks experiment. This is nothing new, he told me. You had a legislature unwilling to do the spending restraint necessary.

Norquist said that although voters elected Brownback as a Reagan Republican in 2010, the state had always had an inverted Republican Party that was more vulnerable to the influence of teachers unions and other interest groups dependent on government spending. Kansas is an outlier, he said, pointing to Republican-led states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona as better examples of places where conservative leaders had cut both taxes and spending. If youre a Republican looking for a model, Kansas is not the model, Norquist said.

On the morning after his signature policies met their demise, Brownback was not so sanguine. Things sometime dont go as well as they should, he said of the legislative rebuke. He warned that the tax increases lawmakers approved over his veto would stunt business expansion and cause companies to flee to other states. Its a bad way to go, Brownback told reporters at the state capitol. Were going to have longterm negative consequences for the economy of this state and for the people of Kansas going this route. I regret that.

He had stood by the tax cuts to the end, insisting that they had indeed unleashed a new wave of growth and job creation but that external economic forceslow wheat and oil prices, a downturn in aircraft saleshad held the state back. It was an argument the conservative governor had made many times before, to decreasing avail.

Despite his pleas for patience, the states legislatorsincluding many in his own partywanted to move on. And when they cast their final votes on Tuesday, they turned Brownbacks grand experiment from national model into a cautionary tale.

Read more:
The Death of Kansas's Conservative Experiment - The Atlantic

Think a little vacation would get your mind off politics for awhile? (AP Photo/Alex Menendez)

The Trump International Hotel in Washington may have raked in the profits during the inauguration festivities and ever since, come to think of it. But for most in the lodging and tourism industry, high season is just gearing up.

Its a set of interests that was exceptionally involved in politics during the past two years, investing more in political candidates, parties and outside spending groups during the 2016 election cycle than ever before. The industry broke spending records with its contributions of nearly $24 million. Its lobbying outlays, too, topped previous levels in 2016 at about $12.4 million.

Not only that, but these hotels, resorts and travel companies shifted to the left in the last cycle: 62 percent of the funds it gave to politicians and parties went to Democrats. The last time the industry was this partisan was in 2002 when it gave 64 percent of its candidate and party donations to Republicans. Most of the contributions were from individuals, rather than company or trade group PACs.

A couple of new donors emerged to become top contributors. The Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau gave the most with about $4.8 million all of which went to the Democratic Party, which held its presidential nominating convention in that city last year. And American Pacific International Capital, an international holding company that owns boutique hotels in the U.S. and large luxury hotels in China, came in third with $1.3 million; it had never before made the industrys top 20.

Others in the 2016 top five Diamond Resorts, which specializes in timeshares ($2.1 million), theAmerican Hotel & Lodging Association ($965,000) and TRT Holdings, which owns Omni Hotels ($890,000) were more familiar contributors from the industry. While Diamond Resorts kept with the groups overall liberal leanings, AHLAand TRT Holdings both favored Republicans.

Vanessa Sinders, senior vice president for government affairs at the AHLA, said the organization has become more proactive in telling the tourism industrys narrative by communicating with politicians and advocating on the issues it cares about.

We have been and continue to be a very bipartisan organization, Sinders said. We work with both sides of the aisle to get things done.

Marriott International, one of the lodging and tourism industrys top five contributors for the past two decades, was pushed down to No. 6 on the list with $811,000. Historically, Marriott has been among the industrys biggest GOP supporters, but in 2016 both its PAC and its employees favored Democrats, following the industry-wide trend.

Marriott also sat in the industrys No. 6 spot in spending to lobby the government last year, with outlays of $670,000. Ahead of it in the rankings was the Dorchester Group, an offshoot of a company owned by the government of Brunei, which spent $1.1 million. Dorchester Group is relatively new to the lobbying scene and reported record expenditures for this activity in 2016.

The other top lobbying clients for the lodging and tourism industry in 2016 were the AHLA($2.4million), the U.S. Travel Association ($2.3 million), the International Association of Amusement Parks & Attractions ($1.2 million) and Blackstone Group , which has big investments in Hilton Hotels, La Quinta Inns & Suites, Motel 6 and Wyndham.

What do hotels and similar companies care about in D.C.? Many issues, it turns out. A few from last year included:

For issues like online booking scams, Sinders said the tourism industry has seen an drastic increase in the number of people concerned about them. In 2015, about 6 percent of hotel-goers were were worried about online booking scams. But, Sinders said, this number jumped up to 22 percent in 2016, which is partly why AHLA has more actively lobbied on the subject.

We are working with Congress and the Federal Trade Commission on ways to fix this issue, Sinders said. She added that legislation with bipartisan support has been introduced to Congress that would require third-party websites to explicitly state they are not affiliated with a hotel.

Other ways to get out of town

Much like the lodging and tourism industry, the cruise industry also topped its personal best in contributions to candidates, parties and outside spending groups in the 2016 election. Its nearly $2 million in contributions almost doubled its previous record of about $1 million.

Cruise lines tend to have a more conservative bend than hotel companies, though: The industry gave 57 percent of its donations to candidates and party committees to Republicans. Its top contributors were Carnival Corp. and Norwegian Cruise Line with $940,000 and $320,000, respectively.

The 2016 lobbying total for cruise ships and lines was consistent with the past few years, although not the highest in its history. Last year the industry spent about $3.2 million on lobbying, with fully half of that coming from the Cruise Lines International Association with $1.6 million. Its top issues were taxes and a measure having to do with payments to stewards on the industrys ships.

Airlines that increasingly unpopular element of tourism pumped big money into the 2016 election: $7.5 million in contributions, its largest sum since 1990. About 52 percent of the funds these companies gave to candidates and party committees went to Democrats this time around, up from their average of 45 percent. The airlines industrys turn to the left parallels that of the lodging and tourism industry, although the switch is not as sharp.

The top contributors in the industry were American Airlines Group with $2.4 million; Delta Air Lines with $1.8 million; and United Continental Holdings (which owns United Airlines) with about $1 million. American Airlines Group and Delta Air Lines both favored Democrats with their contributions, while United gave slightly more to Republicans.

All three top contributors were big in the lobbying arena as well. American Airlines Group topped the list with $7.9 million spent, edging out No. 2 Airlines for Americas $6.4 million and more than double the $3.5 million spent by United Continental Holdings, which came in at No. 3. Delta Air Lines followed, spending $2.5 million. Issues? You name it, but the long laundry list includes such things as transportation security, passengers rights and aircraft noise and emissions.

And to circle back to Donald Trumps hotels: Astonishingly, the Trump Organization contributed only $51,463 in the 2016 cycle less than it has given in any election cycle since 1992. Not as surprisingly, more than 95 percent of that went to Republicans.

The sum doesnt include donations Trump made to his own presidential campaign, though, totaling almost $66 million, or close to 20 percent of the funds he raised.

And you thought a nice vacation would be a break from nasty partisan politics

Excerpt from:
Your summer vacation: Democratic or Republican? - Center for Responsive Politics

President Trump is thinking about dispatching more troops to Afghanistan. Given his past insistence on withdrawing American forces, one might have expected this switcheroo to raise eyebrows in Washington and the media. Yet it hasn't.

It's viewed instead as another instance of Trump's deference to the generals in his administration. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster are backing the request for 3,000 to 5,000 more troops by the top American commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson.

It's a tiny increase by the standard of 2011, when more than 100,000 American soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan. Currently, there are only 8,500 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

But Trump's contemplation of sending troops overseas is significant despite the small numbers. It's an example of his habit of reversing himself and taking a Republican position he had earlier attacked. Mere consideration of a buildup of any size, even if he nixes it, is a change.

Trump's populist and isolationist riffs have fueled fears he would shrink America's role as the world's superpower and defender of freedom, human rights, open sea lanes, and free markets. His kind words about Russian president Vladimir Putin added to the anxiety.

The opposite has happened. He's reversed President Obama's embrace of Iran and instead backs a Middle East alliance in opposition to the Iranians and their Russian allies. He ordered the bombing of Syria for using chemical weapons. He supports NATO after calling it "obsolete" in last year's campaign, though he made Europeans nervous when he didn't explicitly endorse the obligation of NATO countries to defend any member under attack.

"This is starting to look like a more conventional Republican foreign policy than campaign rhetoric suggested," columnist Michael Barone writes. Yes, it is.

There's more. We learn from Josh Rogin of the Washington Post that Trump told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in March that he wouldn't get involved in the Ukraine crisis. Two months later, his administration, led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, is seeking to negotiate an agreement ending Russian interference in Ukraine.

On trade, killing the North American Free Trade Agreement was a staple of Trump's stump speech. But now that he has an opportunity to do so, he's balked. This came after he reversed himself on currency manipulation by China, claiming the Chinese have stopped their tinkering.

Back here, Trump was always close to Republican on taxes and spending. But he's grown closer. He and Republican congressional leaders are putting together a single plan for tax reform. They also agree on deep cuts in the budget for 2018.

While the president endorsed repealing and replacing ObamaCare in the campaign, he didn't have a plan for carrying it out. So he's attached himself to House Speaker Paul Ryan's proposal.

The list goes on. Anyone who expected Trump to insist on mass roundups and deportation of illegal immigrant must be disappointed. Trump has allowed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to establish sensible rules, with deportations at roughly the rate as occurred under President Obama.

Just this week, Trump received praise for his latest round of well-regarded judicial nominations.

How did all this happen? The Atlantic's Ron Brownstein has a good explanation. Trump, once elected, found himself "with few potential appointees steeped in his agenda and few other party power centers committed to its most distinctive elements, like the reconsideration of free trade and international alliance," Brownstein wrote. Trump, "as if through magnetic force, is finding himself pulled by this power imbalance toward the agenda that dominated his party before he arrived."

I have a simpler explanation. Trump didn't have anywhere else to go for an agenda. It had to be traditional Republican policies. There was no alternative.

***

The rallies and protests against congressional Republicans attract large crowds. And while thousands show up at town halls to ask about health care, they seem more interested in harassment. But the real focus of their anger is Trump. They're still mad at candidate Trump, less so President Trump.

So here's a question: Does the left-wing uproar mean the likelihood of a wave election is growing and will doom Republicans in the next year's midterm election? It's quite possible, but I have my doubts.

We've seen bands of furious voters before. The anti-Vietnam war demonstrations looked like world-changing events at the time. Nixon won the presidency in 1968 and 1972 anyway. The Tea Party uprising on the right didn't seem to be as big a deal in 2009 and 2010. Thus it was a surprise when Republican won 63 seats and captured the House in 2010.

Will linking Republican candidates to Trump next year be sufficient? In 2016, Republicans could choose how to deal with Trumpembrace him, ignore him, or split from him. All three postures worked. It won't be that easy in 2018.

***

In his new book Understanding Trump, Newt Gingrich writes about the "antelope and chipmunk" theory of political leadership. He says it explains Ronald Reagan's approach to governing. "It's one I have shared with President Trump and his team," Gingrich writes. It goes like this:

The president must be a lion. Lions cannot hunt chipmunks, because even if they catch them the lions will starve to death. President Reagan was a lion. He was focused on three things: defeating the Soviet Union, growing the American economy, and reviving the American spirit. Those were his antelopes, and he refused to get bogged down in chipmunks.

Every time a chipmunk ran into his office, President Reagan would listen patiently, and then say, 'Have you met my chief of staff?' That's how Jim Baker amassed the largest chipmunk collection in the world.

I have been encouraged to see that President Trump, as commander in chief, is focused on the antelope and is not getting drowned by the chipmunks. One of his first actions as president was to give more authority to military commanders to conduct strikes against terrorist targetsHe doesn't need to add an extra layer of decision making.

Meanwhile, when President Trump uses his voice to discuss national security, he has mostly kept the focus on the big picturedefeating radical Islamic terrorism, as well as standing for American values.

This is a pretty good explanation of how Trump operates. Except for one thing: It doesn't account for his daily bombardment of tweets. They hunt chipmunks.

***

Recommended reading. How Bob Dylan learned to write great songs. He read great books.

Good advice for those who obsess on Trump.

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Trump Is Behaving More Like a Republican - The Weekly Standard