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CiCi shows she’s ready to
hang with the top players

Thursday
February 23, 2017
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Page 17

Mending

Fences

Trump Sends Top Aides to Mexico Amid Strains With US

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, is welcomed by U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson, right, and Mauricio Ibarra Ponce de Leon, North America
director with Mexico’s foreign ministry, as he arrives at the airport in Mexico City, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. President Donald Trump has sent Tillerson and Homeland
Security Secretary John Kelly to Mexico on a fence-mending mission made all the more challenging by the actual fence he wants to build on the southern border.
(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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Republicans Who Embraced Rowdy Town Halls Now Avoiding Them

KRISTEN WYATT publican Sen. Cory Gardner — denouncing agricultural forum in Denver by protesters yell-
Associated Press him as inaccessible and beaming a picture ing “We want a town hall!”
DENVER (AP) — Republicans who benefited of him fashioned into a “Missing” poster to a He dodged questions from reporters about
from rowdy town halls six years ago and har- wall of the Denver Art Museum while protest- why he did not plan any, saying that he sup-
nessed a wave of discontent with Democrats ing Trump’s plans to boost energy production ports “people who are expressing differing
to win seats in Congress are learning a hard on public lands. Gardner “is supposed to rep- points of views” and that his staff meets with
lesson this week as they return home: The left is resent us, but where is he?” said Emma Spett, protesters.
happy to return the favor. a 22-year-old environmental activist from Den- Experts say that avoiding town halls is a tactic
Across the U.S., Democrats and their allies are ver who says she’s “terrified” of environmental used by incumbents to dodge being berated
spending this short congressional recess pro- policy changes backed by Trump. in widely publicized local events.
testing elected Republican politicians who are Gardner defeated a Democrat in 2010, and “If you’re there at a town hall meeting and
avoiding the events that often turn into shout- used impromptu town hall meetings heavily at- there’s hundreds of people there yelling at
ing matches. tended by tea party members in his campaign you, it’s going to be a media event,” said Seth
Just like the tea party sympathizers who vent- to rail against Obama’s Affordable Care Act Masket, a political scientist at the University
ed against Democrats and President Barack and incumbent congressional representatives of Denver “They’re calculating that the bad
Obama, the new left and left-leaning protest- he labeled as out of touch with voters. press they’re going to get from not having a
ers are taking out their ire on Republicans and Now an incumbent who doesn’t face re- town hall is not going to be as bad as that.”
their links to President Donald Trump. election until 2020, Gardner has no town halls
In Denver this week, the activists targeted Re- scheduled and was met Wednesday at an Continued on page 5