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WASHINGTON Employers who cheat their workers or endanger their lives now have one less thing to worry about, courtesy of the GOP Congress.

Senate Republicans voted Monday to kill an executive order issued by former President Barack Obama known as the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule. The 49-48 vote, with all Democrats opposed, eliminates a regulation issued late in Obamas presidency that would have made it harder for companies to secure federal contracts if they have a documented history of wage theft or workplace hazards.

Following in the footsteps of House Republicans, GOP senators used whats known as a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act. The obscure procedural maneuver requires only a simply majority, meaning Senate Democrats had no hope of stopping it through a filibuster. In passing the resolution, Republicans not only killed the rule, but also made sure the Labor Department never puts forward a similar rule again, unless Congress tells it to.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign off on the resolution, peeling back yet another regulation on employers.

Its insane, said Debbie Berkowitz, a workplace safety expert at the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for low-wage workers. This is really a vote against working families. Theres been a big misinformation campaign by big business.

Obamas rule would have required companies seeking federal contracts to disclose violations of labor law including minimum wage, overtime, and health and safety statutes over the previous three years. Federal agencies would have been able to consider those violations when doling out contracts.

Backers of the rule, which included Democrats and worker groups, said it would have helped assure that the nations most unscrupulous employers arent rewarded with taxpayer dollars. Republicans and business groups claimed it would have unfairly punished companies without giving them due process. They dubbed it the blacklisting rule.

But even a record of violations wouldnt have precluded a company from receiving contracts. Under the rule, firms bidding for contracts would have had the opportunity to explain mitigating circumstances and steps they took to address the problem. The Obama White House said the goal of the rule was to get companies in compliance with the law.

Studies have shown that many federal contractors routinely break workplace laws, and many continue to receive contracts regardless of violations.

The Labor Department estimated that the rule would have applied toroughly 14,000 contractorseach year. Only a small share of these companies is expected to have reportable violations, and even fewer are expected to have serious, repeated, willful, or pervasive violations to report, the department noted.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a report ahead of Mondays vote that found 66 of the governments 100 largest contractors have broken labor laws.

As Republicans and the Trump White House race to kill regulations, the Labor Department has become a top target. Last week, House Republicans used the Congressional Review Act in an effort to undo a different labor rule, one that would require employers to keep better record of workplace injuries. The Senate has not yet voted on that measure.

Passed in 1996, the Congressional Review Act enablesCongressto dismantle a regulation within 60 days of it being finalized, while also forbidding agencies from rolling out a similar regulation in the future. In general, it could only be used successfully when one party holds both chambers of Congress and takes control of the White House.

Any regulations that Obama did not finalize early enough before he left office could now be wiped out through the Congressional Review Act.Republicans have successfully used the act to repeal more than a dozen regulations in the first few weeks of Trumps tenure. Until this year, the act had only been used successfully once, in 2001, when Republicans blocked a workplace safety rule put forth at the end of the Clinton administration.

The most interesting and troubling thing about this is that it may very well be the ultimate block on modernizing workplace standards, Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, recentlytold The Huffington Post.

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Republicans Just Made It Easier For Companies To Exploit Workers ... - Huffington Post

President Donald Trump's weekend allegations of a "Nixon/Watergate" plot to wiretap his 2016 campaign confused intelligence analysts, befuddled members of Congress and created fresh work for fact-checkers. Within 24 hours of his allegations, made on Twitter, the administration conceded that the president was basing his claim not on closely held information, but on a Breitbart News story quoting the conservative radio host and author Mark Levin.

But in conservative media, where the claim originated, Trump has gotten credit for cracking open a plot by a "deep state" of critics and conspirators to bring down his presidency. And the perpetrator is former president Barack Obama.

"It would [seem] that the 'Russia hacking' story was concocted not just to explain away an embarrassing election defeat, but to cover up the real scandal," wrote Breitbart's senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak.

"Trump confounds these people because he's always a step or two ahead," Rush Limbaugh told his listeners on Monday. "It's a direct line to the Democrat Party and Obama and members of the Obama administration that Trump is signaling, 'You don't face the usual feckless bunch of opponents who never fight you back.'"

Trump's wiretap allegations completed a feedback loop that started during the presidential campaign and has gotten sturdier since. The president's media diet includes cable television news shows, like "Fox and Friends," where guests and hosts regularly defend him. On Twitter, he frequently elevates stories that grew in conservative talk radio, or on sites like Breitbart News and InfoWars, out of view of a startled mainstream media. Monday's news cycle demonstrated just how strong the loop was, as Levin himself appeared on Fox News for 12 barely interrupted minutes to share his theory that the alleged wiretapping was a political hit job.

"Donald Trump is the victim. His campaign is the victim," said Levin, as a Fox News "alert" scrolled over the screen. "These are police state tactics. If this had been done to Barack Obama, all hell would break loose. And it should."

A spokesman for the former president denied that Obama or a White House official requested surveillance of a U.S. citizen. And FBI Director James Comey asked the Justice Department to issue a statement refuting President Trump's charge (it has not thus far).

Republicans in Congress tend to give the president the benefit of their doubt. In interviews and comments since Saturday, they have suggested that Trump overstated what was known - conflating, for example, media reports on wiretapping with a growing theory that the Obama administration seeded operatives throughout the government to undo his presidency. But they have paired that critique with promises to study what he's alleged.

"The president has at his fingertips tens of billions of dollars in intelligence apparatus," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in a Monday interview with CBS News. "I think he might have something there, but if not, we're going to find out."

"The good news is there's a paper trail, there's a warrant, there's an application, there's judicial review," said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a Monday interview with radio host Laura Ingraham, a die-hard Trump supporter. "And right now the Justice Department is not controlled by President Obama. It's controlled by Jeff Sessions."

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, in a tweet to the president, went even further, saying that Trump "needs to purge Leftists from executive branch before disloyal, illegal and treasonist (sic) acts sink us."

That story line was building long before Trump embraced it. Its origins were relatively banal. One week after the 2016 election, Obama told members of his campaign group, Organizing for America, that the Trump years would be boom times for activism.

"Now is the time for some organizing," Obama said, according to a transcript published by the White House at the time. "An election just finished, so it's not going to be straight political organizing, but it is going to be raising awareness; it's going to be the work you're doing in nonprofits and advocacy and community-building. And over time, what's going to happen is, is that you will reinvigorate and inform our politics in ways that we can't anticipate."

Since then, OFA, which has spent years as a punching bag for Democrats who thought it diverted resources from the party, has earned surprising new status as a boogeyman. The rebuilt group has helped promote and organize protests and raucous town hall meetings to pressure Republican members of Congress. On Feb. 18, New York Post columnist Paul Sperry tied together what was publicly known to pin the protests on Obama and OFA.

"It's a radical [Saul] Alinsky group," Sperry told Fox News's Sean Hannity after the story ran. "It's got a lot of money. And they're training an army of agitators to sabotage Trump and his policies, while at the same time protecting Obama's legacy, like 'Obamacare' and the DREAMers. And here is OFA listed prominently on Obama's new Web site, OFA Organizing for Action."

In the days after that broadcast, as OFA watched, its Facebook page started to receive angry comments and threats.

"If they ever come to my town I'll be eagerly awaiting with my 12 gauge loaded with ball and buck," wrote one commentator, Gary Whitson.

"This site is an American Terrorist site degrading our intelligence with misinformation," wrote a critic named Don Whitehall. "No shadow government in America"

"OFA is a nonprofit group dedicated to grassroots organizing, which is exactly what we've been doing since 2013," said communications director Jesse Lehrich. "We have volunteer-led chapters around the country who are working to engage their friends and neighbors to enact positive change in their communities. These conspiracy theories swirling through the conservative media-verse aren't just perplexing, they're dangerous."

The former president has given his blessing to the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a project created to help his party undo Republican-drawn legislative maps. He made calls to help his former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez become chair of the Democratic National Committee, and congratulated him when he won. And he recorded a video for his post-presidential foundation, telling supporters "true democracy is a project that's bigger than any one of us."

Apart from that, Obama has maintained a low profile in the post-election world, with allies acknowledging that he's been absent as protests have built against his successor. At a Tuesday media briefing, former Attorney General Eric Holder said that the former president was ready to become a "more visible" supporter of the project.

"It's coming. He's coming," said. "And he's ready to roll."

That comment caused a minor frenzy with the online right. InfoWars, the conspiracy news site run by Alex Jones, republished a story about the comment, and followed it with rumors about the new activity. "Obama's goal to 'oust' Trump from presidency via impeachment or resignation," wrote InfoWars commentator Paul Joseph Watson on Thursday. On Friday, the site blew up a report about banks settling with nonprofit groups after fraud lawsuits to tell readers that Obama had "funneled billions to liberal activist groups."

More mainstream sites have also stoked theories that Obama was pulling strings. Last Wednesday, the Daily Mail published an interview with an unnamed "close family friend," who claimed that former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett had moved into Obama's D.C. home to help "mastermind the insurgency" against Trump.

"The Daily Mail story is completely false," said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president.

But the Jarrett story went viral on the right; on a Fox Business segment over the weekend, the radio host Tammy Bruce cited as an "under-covered" revelation that demonstrated the forces arrayed against Trump. In her Monday interview with Gowdy, Ingraham argued that a Watergate-level scandal was building - but at one point, she suggested, hopefully, that the president was not simply basing his rhetoric on what was in conservative media.

"He must know something beyond what's on Breitbart," Ingraham said.

"I would hope," said Gowdy, "given the fact that he's the leader of the free world."

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Trump and Republicans see a 'deep state' foe: Barack Obama - Chicago Tribune

As Trump throws wild, flimsy shots at American institutions, who other than Ben Sasse will stand up to him?

The day Donald Trump took office, I wrote a column arguing that what was new and frightening here was that he had no reverence for the civic and governmental institutions of this country. This had never been true of a president before, at least in the modern era. George W. Bushs administration twisted facts to get their war in Iraq. But even Dick Cheney understood that it had to appear as if everything was above board, as if the intelligence agencies were arriving at their conclusions independently.

Trump and the people advising him just dont care. He is interested in our institutions only insofar as they can be used to help Trump. And the flip side was on display this weekend in his reckless Saturday morning tweets about Barack Obama. Hell say anything about anyone without giving the slightest thought to how those words might damage these institutions and demoralize the people within them.

Because not only did he accuse Obama of something terrible and illegal, with no evidence to support the charge, but he also accused the law-enforcement and intelligence communities of colluding with the outgoing president to do something obviously illegal. Only a person with no respect for any of those institutions could make such a charge.

But its time now to focus not only on Trump and his psyche (although just quickly, before I turn away from that topic, I have to note that the most plausible theory I heard all weekend about why Trump did what he did was the hypothesis that he was miffed that the Obamas got that joint $65 million book advance; thats just so Trump in every way).

But lets talk about the Republicans.

When will they stand up to this guy? With one lone exception that I saw, most Republicans responses over the weekend were pathetically weak. Lets start with this especially lame one, from Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. After saying he knew of no evidence to support Trumps claim, it must have struck him that someone in the White House might get mad at him, because he added: It doesnt mean that none of these things have happened, just means I havent seen them yet. Ah. Thanks for that, Tom.

Others sounded less pliant but substantively were little better. Lindsey Graham has built up a lot of cred in this department, and understandably so, because hes been a pretty tough Trump critic at times. But this, at a town hall over the weekend, where he obviously didnt want to face a chorus of catcalls, was from weaseltown: Im very worried that our president is suggesting the former president has done something illegal. Id be very worried if in fact the Obama administration was able to obtain a warrant lawfully about Trump campaign activity with foreign governments. Its my job as United States senator to get to the bottom of this.

No, its your job to say that unless he has evidence that he is ready adduce yesterday, a president of the United States has no business saying anything like this.

And heres erstwhile stand-up comic Marco Rubio: Ive never heard that before. And I have no evidence or no ones ever presented anything to me that indicates anything like that But again, the president put that out there, and now the White House will have to answer as to exactly what he was referring to.

The lamest of all was House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, who vowed to look into Trumps claims. Yes, this is the same Devin Nunes who said recently that his committee will not look into any claims that Trump may have spoken with former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn about the latters contacts with Russia. Likewise, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said that while hed seen no evidence to support Trumps claim (thats the part of his comments that was more widely picked up), he also added that his committee would take a hard look at Trumps allegations.

The only statement by a Republican that was even somewhat informed by principle was the one issued by Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. He used far sharper rhetoric than any of his colleagues to put the onus on Trump to deliver some proof: The president today made some very serious allegations, and the informed citizens that a republic requires deserve more attention. He demanded that if there was a court order authorizing a wiretap of Trump, the president obtain and copy of it and show it to the public or at least to the Senate.

Sasse is getting plaudits for saying what he said, and yes, comparatively speaking, he was a veritable Cincinnatus here. But its pretty pathetic that his statement stood out. What Trump did here was unbelievable. What will he say next about somebody, on the basis of no evidence? Obama is a former president who has millions of people who adore him and will have his back. But what will happen when Trumpthe president of the United States, the most powerful man in the worldsays something unsubstantiated about a judge, or a civil-liberties or immigration lawyer, or a journalist, or who knows, any citizen who gets on his bad side?

This is what despots do. In the olden days, when a despot said X committed a crime, poor X was usually led away to the stockade. That cant happen here today. We think. Or can it? If Republicans dont take a standnot in defense of Obama, but in defense of our civic institutions and normswe may yet find out.

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Republicans Just Watch as Donald Trump Goes Wild - Daily Beast

The Associated Presssrecent poll on Americas identity reveals a serious and disturbing trend among Republicans. The poll tells us:

A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds Republicans are far more likely to cite a culture grounded in Christian beliefs and the traditions of early European immigrants as essential to U.S. identity.

Democrats are more apt to point to the countrys history of mixing of people from around the globe and a tradition of offering refuge to the persecuted.

While theres disagreement on what makes up the American identity, 7 in 10 people regardless of party say the country is losing that identity.

Take that in for a while. Despite the central ethos dating to the countrys founding and real expression after a bloody civil war and the postwar constitutional amendments, Republicans seem to reject the premise that no religion should have primacy over another and no race or ethnicity should have a preferred position. They have become convinced that an essential part of being American is being white and Christian.

[The Trump experiment may come to an early tipping point]

Dress it up however you like, but this is racialism, if not all-out racism. When race and religion are inherent in your definition of American identity, by definition you reject a colorblind society. Republicans used to say that America is not based on who you are, what class or what race, but on the idea that all men are equal before God and endowed with those inalienable rights. Republicans, at least a majority of them, dont embrace that fully.

Republicans seem not to realize that their racialized and sectarian view of America is at odds with some of their other core beliefs. There are some points of resounding agreement among Democrats, Republicans and independents about what makes up the countrys identity. Among them: a fair judicial system and rule of law, the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, and the ability to get good jobs and achieve the American dream. Well, of course, implicit in all that is a rejection of racial and religious favoritism. There is some extreme cognitive dissonance going on here.

Members of one of our major parties reject the immigrant experience that has proved essential to American vitality, dynamism and economic growth:

About 65 percent of Democrats said a mix of global cultures was extremely or very important to American identity, compared with 35 percent of Republicans. Twenty-nine percent of Democrats saw Christianity as that important, compared with 57 percent of Republicans.

Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say that the ability of people to come to escape violence and persecution is very important, 74 percent to 55 percent. Also, 25 percent of Democrats said the culture of the countrys early European immigrants very important, versus 46 percent of Republicans.

[Why its so hard for the GOP to come up with an Obamacare replacement]

Forget a shining city on the hill; this is the fear of being swamped, overrun and marginalized by people who look and worship differently.

Here's what President Trump said about immigration reform in his joint speech to Congress, Feb. 28. (The Washington Post)

For years opponents of immigration reform have argued they were only against illegal immigration. In the Trump administration and among immigration exclusionists who see the attorney general as their standard bearer, we see clearly that restricting legal immigration has been the goal as well. They are in fact anti-immigrant insofar as they think immigrants mar their idealized version of America. (Republicans overwhelmingly viewed immigrants who arrived in the past decade as having retained their own cultures and values rather than adopting American ones.)They reject the centuries-old adage that anyone can become an American. As the poll finds:

Among the areas seen as the greatest threats to the American way of life, Democrats coalesce around a fear of the countrys political leaders, political polarization and economic inequality. Most Republicans point instead to illegal immigration as a top concern. . . . Democrats appear to be reinforcing their belief that the countrys range of races, religions and backgrounds make the country stronger. About 80 percent made that assessment in the new poll, compared with 68 percent eight months earlier.

There are several troubling takeaways from this.

First, whether Trump heightened the white Christian of cultural and economic primacy or merely saw an opportunity is open to question. The support for Trump (voters on average were wealthier than Clinton voters) and the views reflected in the poll do, however, suggest that more than economic complaints about jobs and wages, Trumps base fears that white Christians are no longer running the show. (This is precisely the premise of The End of White Christian America, a must-read in the era of Trump.)

Second, America already is a racially and religiously diverse society. (The U.S. immigrant population stood at more than 42.4 million, or 13.3 percent, of the total U.S. population of 318.9 million in 2014, according to ACS data. Between 2013 and 2014, the foreign-born population increased by 1 million, or 2.5 percent.Immigrants in the United States and their U.S.-born children now number approximately 81 million people, or 26 percent of the overall U.S. population.) The effort to recreate a whiter, more Christian America is fruitless we are the multicultural nightmare theyve feared.

Third, we dont know if this mind-set is permanent or an attempt to adapt to and defend the mind-set of a president of their own party. If, for example, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) or Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) had been the nominee, the Republican responses might have been quite different.

And finally, the inherent conflict in the Republicans belief system defense of white Christian America and reverence for the Constitution isnt sustainable over the long haul. You either see America in racialist terms or you see it as the embodiment of an idea. You either see every immigrant (legal or not) as taking us farther away from the ideal America or you see every immigrant as a vote of confidence in the United States and an affirmation of the American idea.

Americans who hold a pluralistic vision of America and those who dont can, of course, oppose illegal immigration and want lower levels of legal immigration for reasons having nothing to do with national identity. But certainly some Americans the majority of one political party are out to defend threats to white Christian America. As we said, the poll is deeply disturbing.

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Republicans reveal how badly they misunderstand America - Washington Post (blog)

It would have been impossible to imagine a year ago that the Republican Partys leaders would be effectively serving as enablers of Russian interference in this countrys political system. Yet, astonishingly, that is the role the Republican Party is playing.

U.S. intelligence services have stated that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the intention of swinging it to one side. Knowing how cautious the intelligence community is in making such judgments, and given the significance of this particular finding, the evidence must be compelling. At the very least, any reasonable person would have to conclude that there is enough evidence to warrant a serious, wide-ranging and open investigation. Polls suggest that a majority of Americans would like to see such an investigation carried out.

Its important at this time of intense political conflict to remain focused on the most critical issue. Whether certain individuals met with Russian officials, and whether those meetings were significant, is secondary and can eventually be sorted out. The most important question concerns Russias ability to manipulate U.S. elections. That is not a political issue. It is a national security issue. If the Russian government did interfere in the United States electoral processes last year, then it has the capacity to do so in every election going forward. This is a powerful and dangerous weapon, more than warships or tanks or bombers. Neither Russia nor any potential adversary has the power to damage the U.S. political system with weapons of war. But by creating doubts about the validity, integrity and reliability of U.S. elections, it can shake that system to its foundations.

The United States has not been the only victim. The argument by at least one former Obama administration official and others that last years interference was understandable payback for past American policies is undermined by the fact that Russia is also interfering in the coming elections in France and Germany, and it has already interfered in Italys recent referendum and in numerous other elections across Europe. Russia is deploying this weapon against as many democracies as it can to sap public confidence in democratic institutions.

The democracies are going to have to figure out how to respond. With U.S. congressional elections just 20 months away, it is essential to get a full picture of what the Russians did do and can do here, and soon. The longer the American people remain in the dark about Russian manipulations, the longer they will remain vulnerable to them. The longer Congress fails to inform itself, the longer it will be before it can take steps to meet the threat. Unfortunately, the present administration cannot be counted on to do so on its own.

Theres no need to ask what Republicans would be doing if the shoe were on the other foot if the Russians had intervened to help elect the Democratic nominee. They would be demanding a bipartisan select committee of Congress, or a congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel of experts and senior statesmen with full subpoena powers to look into the matter. They would be insisting that, for reasons of national security alone, it was essential to determine what happened: what the Russians did, how they did it and how they could be prevented from doing it again. If that investigation found that certain American individuals had somehow participated in or facilitated the Russian operation, they would insist that such information be made public and that appropriate legal proceedings begin. And if the Democrats tried to slow-roll the investigations, to block the creation of select committees or outside panels, or to insist that investigations be confined to the intelligence committees whose inquiries and findings could be kept from the public, Republicans would accuse them of a coverup and of exposing the nation to further attacks. And they would be right.

But it is the Republicans who are covering up. The partys current leader, the president, questions the intelligence communitys findings, motives and integrity. Republican leaders in Congress have opposed the creation of any special investigating committee, either inside or outside Congress. They have insisted that inquiries be conducted by the two intelligence committees. Yet the Republican chairman of the committee in the House has indicated that he sees no great urgency to the investigation and has even questioned the seriousness and validity of the accusations. The Republican chairman of the committee in the Senate has approached the task grudgingly. The result is that the investigations seem destined to move slowly, produce little information and provide even less to the public. It is hard not to conclude that this is precisely the intent of the Republican Partys leadership, both in the White House and Congress.

This approach is not only damaging to U.S. national security but also puts the Republican Party in an untenable position. When Republicans stand in the way of thorough, open and immediate investigations, they become Russias accomplice after the fact. This is undoubtedly not their intent. No one in the party wants to help Russia harm the United States and its democratic institutions. But Republicans need to face the fact that by slowing down, limiting or otherwise hampering the fullest possible investigation into what happened, that is what they are doing.

Its time for the party to put national security above partisan interest. Republican leaders need to name a bipartisan select committee or create an outside panel, and they need to do so immediately. They must give that committee the mission and all the necessary means for getting to the bottom of what happened last year. And then they must begin to find ways to defend the nation against this new weapon that threatens to weaken American democracy. The stakes are far too high for politics as usual.

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Republicans are becoming Russia's accomplices - Washington Post