Pelosi says Trump’s labor secretary should resign over Epstein: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Monday tweeted that the Trump administration’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, should resign because of how he handled sex-abuse charges years ago against financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Acosta, then the Miami U.S. attorney, oversaw a 2008 nonprosecution deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to lesser state charges.The U.S. government is currently taking another run at putting Epstein behind bars.
“He engaged in an unconscionable agreement w/ Jeffrey Epstein kept secret from courageous, young victims preventing them from seeking justice,” Pelosi, the California Democrat, said in her tweet. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, also was expected on Tuesday to call for Acosta to step down.
Meanwhile, several Senate Republicans have brushed off the new criticism being aimed at Acosta, noting that the 2008 deal was vetted as part of a 2017 nomination hearing, says a Hill report.
“We found that the plea agreement that Secretary Acosta agreed to when he was U.S. attorney was approved by the Bush Justice Department, it was defended by the Obama Justice Department, and then by the Trump Justice Department,” said Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander.
Republican senators back Fed’s Powell: While President Donald Trump has relentlessly criticized Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell, Republican and Democratic senators have mostly commended the job he is doing, says a Wall Street Journal report.
The lawmakers have declined to endorse Trump’s call for the Fed to cut interest rates and said they would oppose efforts by the president to remove Powell from office. Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey said ousting Powell “would be a very bad idea,” adding that the Fed chairman “has done an outstanding job.”
Related: Fed Chairman Powell’s job is ‘safe,’ White House’s Kudlow says
Columnist says Democrats’ 2020 goals should include admitting two new states: The Democratic Party should not just aim to win back the presidency next year, but also focus on taking control of the Senate, says CNBC founder Tom Rogers in an op-ed for Morning Consult.
Then, with control of two branches of government, the party in 2020 could move toward admitting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as two new U.S. states, he writes. That would result in the Senate getting four likely Democratic senators and a rebalancing of the chamber, which has been tilted way out of step with the majority of Americans, argues Rogers, who is also the former CEO of TiVo Corp. TIVO, +0.14% .
How Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is different: Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren’s approach to the 2020 race is a rebuke to the consultant-heavy model of campaigns — an often lucrative arrangement in which the people advising campaigns invariably tell candidates that the best political strategy is to buy what they sell, namely TV ads and polling. So says a Politico article.
If carried out for the duration, the moves would create the most robust in-house media production and buying team in recent presidential politics, the article adds. Warren pledged in February not to hold any events open only to big donors during her primary campaign, but her unconventional fundraising is far from the only way the Massachusetts senator is defying the traditional playbook.
Related: Biden, Harris, Sanders and Warren reveal Q2 fundraising figures that trail Buttigieg’s