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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2020 19:41:01 GMT
With nine days until Election Day, the White House again faces the coronavirus in its ranks. Two top advisers to Vice President Pence have tested positive for the virus in recent days, as Pence — who tested negative on Saturday and Sunday — crisscrosses the country for rallies in swing states as he and President Trump fight to win reelection. Marc Short, Pence's chief of staff, tested positive for the coronavirus on Saturday. Marty Obst, a Pence political adviser, has also tested positive for the virus, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity on Sunday to discuss Obst's health. The White House says Pence will continue to campaign. He is expected to travel to North Carolina for a rally on Sunday. His wife, Karen, who also tested negative for the coronavirus on Sunday, is slated to travel to the state for a campaign event on Monday. Short did not travel with Pence on Saturday to rallies in Lakeland and Tallahassee, Fla. Spokesman Devin O'Malley said Short "began quarantine" on Saturday and was "assisting in the contact tracing process." Aides deemed to have had close contact with Short were pulled from the trip before departure, White House reporters who traveled with Pence were later told.
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Post by Admin on Oct 30, 2020 0:14:29 GMT
Vice President Mike Pence will deliver remarks at a 'Make America Great Again Victory Rally' in Reno, NV.
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Post by Admin on Dec 17, 2020 20:51:38 GMT
On Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence will oversee final confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Then he’ll likely skip town. As vice president, Pence has the awkward but unavoidable duty of presiding over the session of Congress that will formalize Biden’s Electoral College victory — a development that is likely to expose him and other Republicans to the wrath of GOP voters who believe President Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him. But Pence could dodge their ire by leaving Washington immediately for the Middle East and Europe. According to three U.S. officials familiar with the planning, the vice president is eyeing a foreign trip that would take him overseas for nearly a week, starting on Jan. 6. Though Pence aides declined to confirm details of the trip, which remains tentative, a U.S. government document seen by POLITICO shows the vice president is due to travel to Bahrain, Israel and Poland, with the possibility of more stops being added. A pre-advance team of Pence aides and other U.S. officials left earlier this week to visit the planned stops in preparation for the multicountry tour, which would be Pence’s first trip abroad since last January, when he traveled to Rome and Jerusalem on a whirlwind two-day sojourn. On the surface, the trip is part of a push to underscore the Trump administration’s role in brokering a series of diplomatic agreements to normalize relations between Israel and a handful of Arab countries, including Bahrain. But for Pence, visiting these countries is also a way to bolster already-strong credentials with the Christian right, which strongly supports Israel. And it allows Pence — once again — to put distance between himself and Trump’s complaints about the election outcome that are likely to intensify after Congress affirms Biden’s win. It’s a tactic Pence has used to navigate the final days of Trump’s presidency: stay out of the spotlight and insulate himself from his boss’s baseless election-fraud crusade, all while still finding ways to burnish his own credentials and technically toe the party line. Pence has promoted Trump in his work as head of the government’s coronavirus task force and while boosting two GOP Senate candidates facing runoff races in Georgia. But he’s declined to publicize his minimal involvement in the president’s election-fraud strategy. And while he has privately assisted the Trump campaign when asked — joining donor calls and lending his signature to fundraising pleas — his public comments since the election have almost all centered on other topics, including hosting an event focused on the Trump administration's anti-abortion policy at the White House on Wednesday. “I suspect the timing is anything but coincidental,” one Pence ally said of his tentative travel plans. A senior administration official said the trip has not been confirmed and was proposed for early January because it was the first available date following the holidays and other obligations that Pence has committed to.
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Post by Admin on Dec 24, 2020 18:16:58 GMT
In what are supposed to be the final days of his presidency, Donald Trump has been discussing invoking martial law to overturn the results of the 2020 election and seizing supposedly fraudulent voting machines that — according to a wild conspiracy theory being pushed by people Trump invited to the Oval Office to discuss the matter — were used to rob him of a second term.
This is merely the most extreme example, so far, of Trump’s post-election behavior, which grows more erratic and dangerous to our democracy by the day. There is a way to stop him, though.
More than 50 years ago, the framers of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution foresaw the possibility of a president’s behavior becoming so unstable that it would prove necessary to have some constitutional mechanism to remove him immediately from office. Section Four of that amendment provides a process for doing so: If the vice-president and the majority of the Cabinet decide that, for whatever reason, the president has become unfit to carry out the powers and duties of the office and they transmit a letter to Congress to that effect, then the vice-president becomes the acting president and remains so unless and until Congress refuses to allow that transfer of power to stand.
Legal scholars who have studied the drafting and adoption of the 25th Amendment recognize that its framers intentionally drafted it to allow Section Four to be used to address a wide range of potential situations — very much including the sorts of circumstances in which the nation finds itself today. While it is true that the amendment was created to deal with non-controversial instances of presidential unfitness, such as a president falling into a coma or being kidnapped, Section Four was made part of the amendment to deal with controversial cases as well: specifically with instances where the president’s unfitness to hold office was contested by the president himself.
Those who drafted and ratified the amendment made clear at the time that they were quite consciously employing general and open-ended language in the amendment’s text, rather than trying to define what circumstances would warrant the use of Section Four, because they concluded wisely that it would be vain to try to anticipate in advance all the circumstances that would require removing a president.
Members of the administration reportedly discussed the possibility of invoking the amendment in the early days of Trump’s presidency, but that possibility has been dismissed as purely theoretical, especially given one obvious problem: To do so, two-thirds of each house of Congress would have to vote to allow the vice-president to continue in the position of acting president. But as we reach the final days of the Trump presidency, this obstacle is about to be removed. The mechanics of the amendment allow the vice-president to remain in the position of acting president for a minimum of 25 days, as long as a simple majority of at least one chamber of Congress is willing to cooperate.
It may seem extremely unlikely that Mike Pence, who up to this point has been one of Trump’s most craven enablers, would even consider taking advantage of this constitutional power. But it’s always possible that, between now and January 20 when Trump’s term expires, the situation may become so extreme that he and eight other Cabinet members may find the modicum of personal courage and moral decency necessary to do the right thing.
Trump would put up a fight, but it wouldn’t matter this late in his presidency. Once Pence has transmitted the letter to Congress that makes him acting president, Trump may contest the vice-president’s actions via a letter of his own. Section Four, however, would give Pence four days to respond to this letter. After Pence did so, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives could — by simple majority vote — decline to act on the substantive dispute for the remaining 21 days. (Meanwhile, Democrats could filibuster any action in the Senate.) Were it not the end of his term, Trump would return to office after 21 days if Congress failed to act.
This, in effect, means that Pence could become acting president on Sunday, December 27, and would remain in the position for the rest of the current administration’s term in office, as long as House Democrats acceded to the new status quo. For the good of the nation, he should do so this weekend.
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Post by Admin on Dec 1, 2021 13:50:09 GMT
Former Vice-President Mike Pence has called on the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade case that legalised abortion in the US.
Mr Pence said the ruling was "a misguided decision" that harmed millions of unborn babies.
If Roe v Wade is quashed, millions of women would lose access to abortions.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks. The ban includes abortions on pregnancies caused by rape or incest.
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