Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 12-18-18

White House And Political News
Federal Judge In Texas Strikes Down Obamacare As Unconstitutional
Top House Democrats Raise Prospect Of Impeachment And Jail For Trump
Top Democrats are coming for President Trump.
A federal judge in Texas has issued a ruling declaring that Obamacare is unconsti- tutional, creating an not only uncertainty about health care coverage for millions of Americans, but also a likely battle in the U. S. Supreme Court.
Friday’s decision by U. S. District Judge Reed O’Connor on what’s known as the Affordable Care Act came a day before the dead- line to sign up for health care coverage in 2019 is the latest in a battle between Democ- rats trying to keep the law in place and Republicans seek- ing to get rid of it.
The ruling comes after a
The HealthCare.gov 2019 web site home page as seen in Oct. 2018.
lawsuit contesting the ACA set forth by former Presi- dent Barack Obama by 19 Republican attorneys general and a governor shepherded by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. In his 55-page opinion, the judge said the debate over Obamacare’s provisions “is like watching a slow game of Jenga, each
party poking at a different provision to see if the ACA fails.”
White House press secre- tary Sarah Sanders praised the judge’s decision and said the ruling will be put on hold as she expects an appeals process to likely make it’s way up to the Supreme Court. “The judge’s decision vindi- cates President Trump’s position that Obamacare is unconstitutional. Once again, the President calls on Con- gress to replace Obamacare and act to protect people with preexisting conditions and provide Americans with qual- ity affordable healthcare,” she said.
Undecided Election In Embattled North Carolina District Gets Even More Complicated
WASHINGTON — Top House Democrats have raised the prospect of impeachment or the real possibility of prison time for President Donald Trump if it’s proved that he directed illegal hush-money payments to women, adding to the legal pressure on the president over the Russia investigation and other scandals.
“There’s a very real pros- pect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Jus- tice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chair- man of the House intelligence committee. “The bigger par- don question may come down the road as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, described the details in pros- ecutors’ filings Friday in the case of Trump’s former per- sonal lawyer, Michael Cohen, as evidence that Trump was “at the center of a massive fraud.”
“They would be impeach- able offenses,” Nadler said.
In the filings, prosecutors
in New York for the first time link Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office also laid out previously undisclosed con- tacts between Trump asso- ciates and Russian interme- diaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to in- fluence Trump and his Re- publican campaign by playing to both his political and personal business inter- ests.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and has com- pared the investigations to a “witch hunt.”
Nadler, D-N.Y., said it was too early to say whether Congress would pursue im- peachment proceedings based on the illegal payments alone because lawmakers would need to weigh the gravity of the offense to jus- tify “overturning” the 2016 election. Nadler and other lawmakers said Sunday they would await additional de- tails from Mueller’s investi- gation into Russian election interference and possible co- ordination with the Trump campaign to determine the extent of Trump’s miscon- duct.
According to a new affi- davit obtained by NBC News, McCrae Dowless, the Republican whose “get- out-the-vote” activities are the center of the fraud inves- tigation, told a local political campaign volunteer that he was holding onto 800 absen- tee ballots.
The state election board has been investigating allega- tions of irregularities and fraudulent activities related to absentee by-mail voting and potentially other matters in that race, and has not cer- tified the initially reported election results. The recent developments have led a top state Republican Party offi- cial to “likely” support a new election.
In the signed statement,
The election fraud investigation of the still undecided North Carolina 9th Congressional District got another potential bomb- shell.
Kenneth Simmons said that he met Dowless at a local Republican Party meet- ing in Dublin, N. C., which is located in Bladen County, the epicenter of the investigation which focuses on absentee ballots.
Simmons said in the af- fidavit that he “asked him why he had not turned them
in” and that Dowless re- sponded: “you don’t do that until the last day because the opposition would know how many votes they had to make up.”
“My concern,” Simmons says in the affidavit signed on Tuesday, “was that these bal- lots were not going to be turned in.”
First Black Elected Mayor Of Little Rock, Arkansas
Frank Scott, Jr., a 35- year-old banking executive and former state highway commissioner, won a runoff election on December 4th for mayor of Little Rock, making him the Arkansas capitol's first-ever elected Black mayor. (Two previous black mayors were appointed by city directors, not voters.)
Scott defeated Baker Kurrus, a 64-year-old lawyer who served as Little Rock superintendent of schools after the state took control of the district three years ago. Outgoing Mayor Mark Stodola chose not to seek re-election.
Scott said he hoped his victory in the nonpartisan election would help ease
Frank Scott, Jr., is Little Rock’s new mayor.
racial tensions in Little Rock, which has struggled with de- segregation since nine black students had to be escorted into Little Rock Central High School by police in 1957.
"If you believe it's time to
unify this city, let's do it," Scott said at his victory party. Little Rock's Pulaski County also elected its first Black sheriff and county clerk this year, and several other Arkansas cities just elected their first Black mayors, too, The Associated Press re- ports.
Scott defeated Republi- can Kurrus in a runoff elec- tion, winning about 58 percent of the vote, according to the Arkansas Democrat- Gazette. Scott and Kurrus had each advanced to the runoff election from the gen- eral election.
Scott is currently an ex- ecutive at First Security Bank, a bank based in Arkansas.
PAGE 6 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2018