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Montana Republicans are demanding the state spend $750,000 it didnt budget to avoid what the GOP sees as a potential political catastrophe: high voter turnout in an upcoming special election.

The state didnt plan for spending on federal elections in 2017, and for good reason. Neither senator is running until 2018, and its lone House member, Ryan Zinke, seemed entrenched unless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell taps him to challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

President Donald Trump, however, named Zinke interior secretary, setting the stage for a May 25 special election to fill the House seat. The race has received national attention, particularly from Democrats, who hope anti-Trump sentiment and increased Democratic Party activism since Novembers election will boost their candidate Rob Quist to a surprise victory.

State lawmakers concluded that the special election would cost an unbudgeted $750,000, so they set about figuring a way to do it more cheaply.

A Republican lawmaker proposed a one-time mail ballot system. At the time, nobody in their right mind thought the election would be seriously contested Democrats havent won a House seat in Montana since 1994, after all and the state Senate approved the cost-saving measure.

But then something strange happened: The election got real. And Republicans who often boast of fiscal conservatism had a change of heart.

The GOP-controlled state House effectively killed the mail-in ballot bill on March 31, after the state GOP chair, state Rep. Jeff Essmann, wrote a letter to party members warning that a mail system would favor Democrats and hurt the GOPs chances of holding onto the seat.

Unless we have protections for ballot security in mail ballots, I think people should have the option to vote the way they want to, Essmann told The Associated Press last month.

Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock revived debate over the matter on Friday, after he used his veto power to amend an unrelated piece of legislation to allow counties to conduct mail-in voting. Republicans, however, are seeking to delay those changes from being debated to prevent the bill from being brought to the floor, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Bullocks last-minute move to force a vote on mail-in balloting in the legislature may be too late, however. Election officials face a Monday deadline to present their plans to the secretary of states office, and some counties are already planning to print ballots and arrange polling sites.

Quist will face Republican Greg Gianforte in the May 25 special election.

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Montana Republicans Spending Taxpayer Money To Avoid A Defeat - Huffington Post

Axios caught up with Lampkin for some frank talk on her findings and the state of diversity in Silicon Valley.

There's this perception that all tech companies are equally bad at actual results on diversity but your scores show a wide range. Is it a misperception?

Yes, definite misperception. Unfortunately, I think the media has played a role in creating this reality because once we pull back the layers, with companies like Slack for example, we're surprised to find how homogenous their leadership team still remains. What I'm hoping to do is show the real differentiation because many companies are just hiring a chief diversity officer, giving money to non-profits, but still aren't putting underrepresented people in positions of real power/influence.

Who is doing more than talking about diversity?

I'd say that top 35 companies on the BlendScore list are doing a pretty good job, but there is definitely still room for improvement. I've created the algorithm such that attaining a score of 100 doesn't take extreme measures (much like the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index). Most of these companies have zero underrepresented minorities on their board or executive teams.diversity for them is often White, occasionally Asian, cis-gender straight women which is why I put photos up there too.

What is actually working?

CXO's and Board Members that genuinely give a f**k! Hiring and rewarding talented people equally is more important than driverless cars, AI, and virtual reality and it has to be regarded as suchwhy? Because there are talented people who can solve these problems that aren't even able to get in the game or get there and aren't treated well. Investment in education/STEM pipeline and human resource management that is comparable to R&D will work.

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Trumpcare ads to whack Republicans on recess - Axios

How does one describe President Donald Trump? If youre a left-leaning journalist or a member of the media, you look for stories that highlight the faults in our President. You do not outright call our President names, but instead criticize his policies and decisions. You describe a situation and allow audiences to place their own labels on our President.

Overall public opinion of President Trump has taken a negative turn, evident from his approval rating reaching new lows. As our new government kicks into gear, it has created a gold mine for programs like The Late Show and Saturday Night Live.

Political satire is not new in our culture, but has steadily increased during the 20th and 21st centuries. While the majority of our population enjoyably digests this, our UW College Republicans find that the media has overstepped its boundaries.

At their last meeting, the majority of members expressed concern and disgust with todays political satire. It was surprising to discover that members have reached a point where they stop consuming political satire because of how upsetting it is.

To them, the mockery of our President feels as though they are being mocked. One said, When President Trump is called stupid, I feel stupid. Others maintained that a line needs to be defined between berating Trump and berating supporters.

These students seem to feel that they are personally responsible for getting Trump elected and are now being punished for it. This is slightly ironic since now all of America knows how the Electoral College works because of the popular vote fiasco.

Despite that, I can sympathize with this: People want others to support the politicians they voted for. We want others to like what we like. Its a fundamental concept that can be applied from our choices in music to our choices in politicians. Its easy to feel personally attacked when those politicians are constantly made fun of.

Why is it that these College Republicans are so concerned with immediate political satire? Many individuals expressed that if President Trump is being mocked, they want other politicians to be mocked as well.

Much of the media does criticize our President, but is it because the media has a vendetta toward Trump? Trump is not the first president to be targeted, nor will he be the last. Presidents like George W. Bush and Barack Obama received a wide variety of criticisms, with topics ranging from actual crises to Obamas birthplace.

The College Republicans maintained that previous mockery was funny, but it has now progressed to coming off as rude and harsh. However, political satire has not evolved in its type of content from these past two presidential administrations, and there have largely been the same jokes and same type of mockery with Trump as there was with Obama.

The only variable that has changed is the amount of political satire we are exposed to. There are more late night shows and more political skits than ever. It seems that the College Republicans are okay with previous mockery because they didnt personally vote for those presidents being mocked.

So whats wrong with todays media according to the College Republicans? Its far too left-winged. But if were going to criticize the medias political orientation, we should take into account the viewers and the current majority political party.

Newspapers today are struggling to remain relevant. To stay afloat, they try to reel in readers with the most controversial and interesting news. In the 2014 film Nightcrawler, the news station focuses primarily on stories of urban violence in affluent communities in order to increase viewership. Current media is guilty of the same thing; they know viewers would rather hear about Trumps latest verbal mishap than an international crisis in Germany.

To say the media is left-winged doesnt really capture the big picture. Media only seems to be liberal now because it is negatively approaching a current Republican administration. A few years ago, the media appeared conservative because it took the same negative approach toward the Obama administration.

There may never be complete peace between our government and our media, but that may not be so terrible. The critical lens that the media takes demands the most of politicians and allows President Trump to know where he stands with the majority of the American population.

Reach columnist Christine McManigal at opinion@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @clmcman

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Redefining Republicans: Has today's political satire gone too far? - Dailyuw

When Majority Leader Mitch McConnell deployed the nuclear option on Supreme Court nominees Thursday morning, his rhetoric may have sounded a little familiar.

Republicans changed Senate rules to break a Democratic filibuster and confirm Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court, and blamed Democrats for necessitating the change along the way.

Democrats, as you might imagine, saw it differently.

In a post-mortem on the Senate showdown, Fox News Sundays Chris Wallace asked Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., whether the Democrats made a strategic mistake deciding to filibuster Gorsuchs nomination. Cardin said both parties are to blame, noting that Republicans engaged in the same type of action during President Barack Obamas first term, when Republicans held up Obamas judicial nominees.

"Weve seen more filibusters on judicial nominees by the Republicans under President Obama than we saw in the whole history of the United States Senate," Cardin said April 9. "Both sides have blame here."

We heard a similar claim on ABCs This Week. Former DNC pollster Cornell Belcher said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "who blocked more of President Obama's nominees than have been blocked in history."

Is that so?

Defining, counting filibusters

Cardin used the term "filibuster," but measuring filibusters is troublesome, experts say, because it has an overly broad meaning. Senators tend to consider any type of obstruction to scheduling a nomination or measure as a filibuster, said Steven Smith, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis.

"The whole use of the term filibuster is problematic, given its evolution over the years," added University of Kansas political scientist Burdett Loomis. "It ends up being a regular event, used all the more frequently in more partisan Congresses."

As a result, experts say a way to approximate but not entirely count filibusters is to count the number of times the Senate attempts to break a filibuster by forcing an up-or-down vote through a process called cloture.

In recent years, a cloture motion required the approval of 60 senators. But in 2013, Democrats changed the rules so that a simple majority could invoke cloture for presidential appointments and lower court nominees. The 60-vote threshold stood for legislation and the Supreme Court.

To confirm Gorsuch, Republicans eliminated the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees. It remains in place for legislation.

What the research shows

Cardins claim stems from a 2013 report by the Congressional Research Service, the independent research arm of Congress. The document, along with a subsequent memorandum on the report, lists every instance in which a presidential nominee was blocked and cloture was filed through Nov. 20, 2013, when Democrats changed Senate rules.

According to the Congressional Research Service, senators sought attempted cloture action on judicial nominations approximately86 times between 1967 and the end of 2013. (Pre-1967, the Congressional Research Service lists no cloture attempts -- so "history" as Cardin put it, is relatively short.)

Of those, 50 were made before President Barack Obama took office in 2009, and 36 were made between 2009 and when the Senate changed its rules in 2013.Miguel A. Estrada, a judge nominated in 2001 to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, saw seven cloture attempts to break a logjam by Senate Democrats before withdrawing his nomination in 2003.

So through that prism, Cardin is off.

Cardin is closer if you look at individual judicial nominees who were subject to a cloture filing (because nominees like Estrada were subject to a cloture filing multiple times). Pre-Obama, 36 judicial nominees were subject to a cloture filing, we found. From 2009-2013, it was the same -- 36 judicial nominees.

To put that in perspective, and to see Cardin's point, look at it this way: Less than one nominee per year was subject to a cloture filing inthe 40 years before Obama took office. From 2009-13, the number of nominees subject to a cloture filing jumped to over seven per year.

In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was much closer to being correct when he said, "In the history of the United States, 168 presidential nominees have been filibustered, 82 blocked under President Obama, 86 blocked under all the other presidents." His figure included non-judicial nominees.

As part of that fact-check we noted that "By our calculation, there were actually 68 individual nominees blocked prior to Obama taking office and 79 (so far) during Obamas term, for a total of 147."

Senate Democratsmade that same point in a tweet April 6. (Cardin's team said Sen. Chuck Schumer's inquiry on the Senate floor was the basis of Cardin's claim.)

Our ruling

Cardin said, "Weve seen more filibusters on judicial nominees by the Republicans under President Obama than we saw in the whole history of the United States Senate."

Cardin used an imprecise term, "filibuster," to describe a precise Senate parliamentary procedure, "cloture." Asfar as cloture data kept by the Congressional Research Service,Cardin would be on safer ground if he avoided focusing on "judicial" nominees. By our count, cloture was filed on 36 judicial nominations during the first five years of Obama's presidency, the same totalas the previous 40 years combined.

On balance, we rate this claim Half True.

Share the Facts

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Half True

"Weve seen more filibusters on judicial nominees by the Republicans under President Obama than we saw in the whole history of the United States Senate."

in comments on "Fox News Sunday"

Sunday, April 9, 2017

04/09/2017

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Did Senate Republicans filibuster Obama court nominees more than all others combined? - PolitiFact

Republicans control Washington but have no real legislative victories to show folks back home during their two-week Easter recess. They miss former President Barack Obama, whom they blamed in the past for not getting anything accomplished.

Clearly, President Obama gave us a common focus. Now that hes gone, we have to govern, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) told Politico.

GOP Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho told Politico and the partys constituents will be angry and could try to boot them from office. He added that the burden of controlling government is that you cant blame anyone else.

According to the outlet, Speaker Paul Ryan thought he had it all figured out after President Donald Trumps surprising victory in November.

Ryans agenda included passing an Obamacare replacement, funding the government (including finding money for the U.S.-Mexico wall), and passing tax reform by the recess.

They accomplished none of that, even though the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the executive branch.

Sharp divisions among House Republicans surfaced in the absence of the ex-president to unite them. Trump and Ryan have so far been unable to control the far-right wing of their party.

In a feeble effort, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) tried to convince Politico that Republicans are unified, pointing to several congressional resolutions that Trump signed.

However, a truly unified party that knows how to govern would have accomplished more.

SOURCE: Politico

SEE ALSO:

Trump Threats Continue As Demand Issued To Vote On Repealing Obamacare

Trump Pulls Ailing Health Care Bill To Save Face

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Divided Republicans With Failed Agenda Miss Obama - News One