Page 7 - Florida Sentinel 5-26-17

White House And Political News
The President Meets The Pope
Poll: Voters Support Russia Special Prosecutor; But Not Impeachment
According to POLITICO, voters are applauding the ap- pointment of a special prose- cutor to investigate Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elec- tion and any connections to Donald Trump’s cam- paign.
But, according to a new
POLITICO/Morning Consult
poll, voters aren’t ready to begin the constitutional process of impeaching the president and removing him from office.
Nearly two-thirds of vot- ers, 63 percent, either “strongly” or “somewhat” agree with the Justice De- partment’s decision to ap- point former FBI Director Robert Mueller to oversee the Russia probe, the poll shows. Only 21 percent of
PRESIDENT TRUMP
voters disagree with the deci- sion to appoint a special counsel.
The vast majority of Dem- ocratic voters, 80 percent, support the decision to ap- point an outside prosecutor — but so do half of Republi-
cans and 58 percent of inde- pendents.
On impeachment, 38 per- cent of voters want Congress to begin the process of re- moving Trump from office. A plurality, 46 percent, do not want impeachment pro- ceedings against Trump. Sixteen percent of voters don’t know or have no opin- ion.
Most Democratic lawmak- ers have discounted the pos- sibility that Congress will work actively to remove Trump, at least given the current state of the investiga- tion. But Democratic voters are more eager to move for- ward, the poll shows: More than two-thirds, 68 percent, want Congress to begin im- peachment proceedings now.
Trump Undermines Republican Senators Trying To Save Medicaid
A group of Republican sen- ators is fighting desperately to preserve health coverage for millions of low-income constituents who have bene- fited from Obamacare. And the president of their own party seriously undercut their negotiating position with his budget Tuesday.
By proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts in combination with the House-passed health care bill’s more than $800 billion in Medicaid spending reduc- tions, President Donald Trump is effectively throw- ing in with fiscal conserva- tives looking to constrain the program’s growth and wind down its coverage as quickly as possible. And that could be
perilous for more than a dozen GOP senators who have been meeting for months over how to preserve the law's benefits.
“Anytime you’re cutting Medicaid, you’re obviously
endangering a lot of people in my state,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Vir- ginia, a state that’s benefited dramatically from the Medi- caid expansion under Oba- macare.
Pope Francis welcomed President Trump to the Vatican on Wednesday, shak- ing his hand before ushering him into his study for the first face-to-face meeting of the two leaders, who symbolize starkly different views of the world.Smiles and pleas- antries aside, the atmospher- ics of this meeting were fraught. Pope Francis and Mr. Trump have diametri- cally opposed views on issues as varied as immigration, cli- mate change and arms sales. Although both men seemed determined not to let politics intrude on their encounter, the underlying tensions were clear.
On Tuesday night, Cardi-
nal Peter Turkson, a top Vatican official with close ties to Francis, acknowledged the differences in a post on Twitter: “Pope Francis & Pres. Trump reach out to Islam-world to exorcise it of rel. Violence. One offers peace of dialogue, the other security of arms,” he wrote, in an apparent reference to the $110 billion weapons sale that Mr. Trump concluded with Saudi Arabia.
The pope and the president were both elected as outsiders promising to carry the far-off voices of the forgotten to the centers of global power. But that is more or less where the similarities end.
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