Emily Cochrane

King, who is currently serving his 14th term in the House, said in a statement that his decision was primarily motivated by the desire to end the weekly commute to Washington after nearly three decades and have “more flexibility” to spend time with his children and grandchildren.

But in an interview, King conceded that the toxic political environment in Washington and the uncertainties of a coming impeachment proceeding against President Donald Trump had underscored his sense that it was time to leave.

“Something was building for a while,” King said. The difficulties of coordinating his Thanksgiving and Christmas travel plans with family amid the unknowns of the impeachment battle, he said, “somehow became like a metaphor” fueling his decision.

The exit of King, 75, comes as a growing number of Republicans have decided to retire rather than seek reelection as they eye the grim political realities for their party, including an uphill slog to win back the House in next year’s election and the prospect of sharing a ticket with an unpopular president. The dilemma is particularly acute for Republicans in suburban districts, where voters have been alienated by Trump’s rhetoric and his positions. King is the 20th House Republican to depart Congress at the end of 2020 because of retirement or seeking another elected office.

King, who represents parts of Nassau and Suffolk counties as part of New York’s 2nd Congressional District, said none of those concerns influenced his decision, pointing to his favorable polling numbers and a sizable war chest. More persuasive, he said, was his daughter’s recent move to North Carolina and a desire to give New York Republicans plenty of time to find a replacement candidate before the primary in April.

“I think it’s gotten too toxic,” King, a boxer, acknowledged, “but once I’m in the arena, I enjoy the battle.”

He said he called Trump on Sunday to inform him of his plans, assuring the president that he would use his final months in office to vote against articles of impeachment and support Trump’s reelection bid, as Republicans seek to prevent any defections in the coming weeks. The president asked him to reconsider retirement, King said, but ultimately accepted his decision.

“We can’t allow impeachment to become a political issue, like a tax bill or a highway bill,” King said, recalling his vote against impeachment articles against President Bill Clinton. “My concern right now is that it’s become part of the political landscape now.

“When the word ‘impeachment’ was used, there was a quiver, a hesitation — just using the word just shook people up,” he added. “And now there’s none of that.”

King is also the latest in a series of seasoned moderate lawmakers to decide to depart the House, a trend that will leave the next Congress with less expertise and experience, and with fewer members who can remember a time when they reached across party lines to enact bipartisan legislation. He singled out other members of the New York delegation — Reps. Elise Stefanik and John Katko, both Republicans, and Tom Suozzi, a Democrat — as members he would hope would carry on that bipartisan work. (Suozzi said “Pete King is a friend” who “can always be relied on to say exactly what he thinks.”)

King built a reputation as one of the more moderate members of the Republican conference but frequently took a hard line on immigration issues. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King oversaw congressional hearings on homegrown Islamic terrorism, which critics condemned as a forum for attacking American Muslims after the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Monday, some Muslim groups, including Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights organization, greeted the news of King’s departure with relief.

“Good riddance,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, wrote on Twitter.

“Peter King is an Islamophobe who held McCarthyite hearings targeting American Muslims, said ‘there are too many mosques in this country,’ and blamed Eric Garner for his own death at the hands of police,” she wrote, referring to an unarmed black man killed in New York City in a confrontation with police officers.

King himself was once an ardent backer of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army, previously telling The New York Times that he had no regret for his statements of support. He has celebrated his past with novels that feature an Irish American congressman with IRA ties — a striking resemblance to King himself.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, praised King effusively Monday upon the news of his retirement, saying that the congressman “stood head &amp; shoulders above everyone else.”

“He’s been principled &amp; never let others push him away from his principles,” Schumer wrote on Twitter, quickly drawing public rebukes from Democrats. “He’s fiercely loved America, Long Island, and his Irish heritage and left a lasting mark on all 3.”

King is the third New York lawmaker to announce his departure at the end of the 116th Congress, following two veteran Democrats: Rep. José E. Serrano, the nation’s longest-tenured Hispanic congressman, and Rep. Nita M. Lowey, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. (Rep. Chris Collins, the fourth-term Republican who pleaded guilty to federal securities fraud charges, already departed the chamber earlier this year.)

Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois, who heads the House Democratic campaign arm, said that King’s district “has been a pickup target of ours from day one of this cycle, and we will compete to win it in 2020.”

“Republicans know their toxic health care repeal agenda and wholesale embrace of President Trump’s recklessness will guarantee they remain in the minority for years to come,” she said in a statement. Liuba Grechen Shirley, who lost to King last year by 6 points, said Monday she was “seriously considering another run” for the seat.

Chris Pack, a spokesman for the Republican counterpart, countered in a statement thanking King for his service, saying that the district “will remain a Republican seat, thanks in no small part to the insane socialist agenda of Democrats in both Washington and Albany.”

In his statement announcing his departure, King promoted his work after the Sept. 11 attacks, his efforts to lead the storm recovery after Hurricane Sandy and his work with Clinton to negotiate the Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland. Just this year, King also noted, Congress finally approved legislation that would care permanently for those who have grown deathly ill from the toxins of the rubble at the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

King, who also reflected on his childhood in Sunnyside and his work as a college student at Manhattan’s West Side Railway Terminal, vowed to remain politically active after his retirement — just not in the halls of Congress.

“I’m sure the next time something really dramatic happens, I’m going to wait for reporters to call and to go down to Washington,” King said. “But nobody will call, and I will have nowhere to go.

“That’s what I’m going to miss,” he added, “being in the arena and being able to get things done, instead of just talking about it.”

This article originally appeared in

Peter King, Veteran New York Republican in House, Announces He Will Retire

WASHINGTON — Rep. Peter T. King, the longest-serving Republican in New York’s congressional delegation, said Monday that he would retire, joining a growing exodus of Republicans from Congress before the 2020 elections.

Hurd, who is also the only Republican to represent a district along the southwestern border, is the sixth House Republican and the third Texan in the past 10 days to announce retirement. After the 2020 election, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., will be the only black Republican incumbent in Congress.

“Two centuries ago, I would have been counted as three-fifths of a person, and today, I can say I’ve had the honor of serving three terms in Congress,” Hurd said Thursday in a statement. “I will keep fighting to remind people why I love America: that we are neither Republican nor Democrat nor independent.”

He did not say what he planned to do next. Before serving in Congress, Hurd, 41, was an undercover CIA officer.

His announcement Thursday made clear that the Republicans’ path to reclaiming the majority in the House and diversifying their party’s membership was becoming increasingly difficult. Two of 13 female incumbents — Reps. Martha Roby of Alabama and Susan Brooks of Indiana, who is a leader in candidate recruitment — and a handful of moderates are not planning to run again.

In the past few days, Reps. K. Michael Conaway of Texas, Rob Bishop of Utah and Paul Mitchell of Michigan also announced their plans to retire, while Rep. Rob Woodall of Georgia made his decision known in February.

As of Thursday morning, a FiveThirtyEight analysis predicted that Republicans had a 40 percent chance of winning control of Congress next year.

Within hours of Hurd’s announcement, David Wasserman, the House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said the report’s prediction for Hurd’s district had been moved to “leaning Democrat” from “toss-up.” The Texas district represented by Pete Olson, another Republican who recently announced his retirement, is also now rated as “toss-up.”

Hurd’s district sprawls from San Antonio to El Paso and is larger than some states. In 2018, he defeated his opponent, Gina Ortiz Jones, by a little over 1,100 votes. He has overcome the geographical and electoral perils of Texas’ 23rd District by building a reputation as a dedicated legislator willing to work across the aisle.

“It’s a huge loss for the district — it almost can’t be overstated,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican consultant, adding, “He’s been running a marathon like a sprint for seven years.”

Hurd was one of only a handful of Republicans to join Democrats last month in condemning President Donald Trump’s attacks on four freshman Democratic congresswomen of color. And he had also been growing more vocal about his frustration with the direction of the party.

“The party is not growing in some of the largest parts of our country,” he said in a June speech to the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBT group. “Why is that? I’ll tell you.”

“Don’t be a racist,” Hurd went on to say, according to the Washington Blade. “Don’t be a misogynist, right? Don’t be a homophobe. These are real basic things that we all should learn when we were in kindergarten.”

Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the head of the House Republican campaign arm, on Thursday hailed Hurd’s “lifetime of service to our country” and vowed to “fight tooth and nail to ensure it remains in Republican hands in 2020.”

But Emmer’s Democratic counterparts, who have already singled out Texas as a 2020 target, voiced the same confidence. Avery Jaffe, a spokesman for the House Democratic campaign organization, said in a statement that “if Will Hurd doesn’t believe he can keep his job in a changing Texas, his colleagues must be having second thoughts, too.”

Ortiz Jones, who lost to Hurd in 2018 and has declared her intention to run in 2020, said in a statement that she respected Hurd’s “decision to serve in a new capacity.”

Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, whose district in El Paso borders Hurd’s, said in a brief interview in El Paso that she hoped “now that he is no longer running for office, that he’s liberated and can speak truthfully about the danger of this lawless president.”

News of Hurd’s retirement resonated, with Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., calling him “a friend for life” and promising that “Americans will hear more from him in years to come.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that it marked “the departure of a member of Congress who was reasonable, thoughtful” and “there for the right reasons.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/us/politics/will-hurd-retires.html" id="af434da6-54bc-3fb1-a184-08667d806cb3">The New York Times</a>.

House Republicans Set to Lose Lone Black Member

EL PASO, Texas — Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, the only black Republican in the House, announced Thursday that he would not seek reelection next year, adding to a wave of departures that has unsettled party leaders as they hope to reclaim the majority in 2020.

He and his brother would not have purchased an excavator and a bulldozer, expensive equipment they most likely will not need again to harvest pecans. Instead of laboring for six months on their own to clear away the thousands of trees knocked over by hurricane winds, they would have hired contractors to do it in three weeks.

But with billions of dollars in relief for homes, farms and businesses stalled in Congress — and little movement over the past two weeks of spring recess — Cohen, 45, is three months behind in planting and wondering if help will ever arrive. Debris from Hurricane Michael — the remains of trees older than Cohen — still smoldered in his fields this past week as he burned away a generation of pecan groves felled by the storm this fall.

“The American farmer is just being used as a pawn,” Cohen said, sitting in the pickup truck he calls an office. He and his brother sold one of their farms after the storm, a painful decision he said was made with the longevity of the overall enterprise in mind. “We’re not being taken seriously. It’s a struggle.”

“My little pecans aren’t going to be missed at all,” Cohen said, noting that it would be about 10 years before any new pecan trees began producing. “And that, that kind of opens your eyes.”

Congress last passed a broad disaster relief package in February 2018, when lawmakers slipped nearly $90 billion into a wide-ranging spending agreement. In the year since, record-breaking natural disasters have ravaged the country: wildfires in California, hurricanes in Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas, and floods across Iowa, Nebraska and much of the rest of the Midwest.

But efforts to wrangle a relief package through Congress — typically a seamless feat of bipartisanship — have repeatedly failed, not because senators do not want to help people like Cohen, some of whom cannot yet reach their land, but because President Donald Trump does not want to give more money to Puerto Rico.

Democrats are not giving up their effort to increase aid to the island, a U.S. territory devastated by hurricanes in 2017, as Democratic senators push to match what their House counterparts have approved. But Senate Republicans, wary of challenging Trump, say they have acquiesced enough — and unlike the states covered in the package, Puerto Rico has received some financial aid.

And even with some discussions among staff members over the recess, Congress’ return on Monday is unlikely to yield a quick resolution, leaving hundreds of farmers who have been battered by Trump’s trade war and low commodity prices stranded during prime planting season.

“In a time of crisis, you’re supposed to let that kind of stuff go so you can run toward the fire with water and help,” said John K. Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “We still have folks fighting over whether you should use a bucket.”

In interviews this past week, several farmers across the country said the debate hundreds of miles away in Washington had left them in limbo, wary of moving forward without the promise of federal aid. Outside their state governments, which have allocated money, and their delegations, the farmers said, few politicians understand the scope of the damage for their families and their communities.

And some worry that the less tangible consequences — their ability to provide food to the country, support their communities and maintain the legacy of agriculture for their children — will go unnoticed.

“There’s heritage in this stuff,” Jeff Jorgenson, 43, a third-generation farmer, said as he stood in front of one of the submerged corn fields he oversees in Fremont County, Iowa. “We have to take care of what came before us.”

“I hope I can have the next generation do this,” he said.

Even when aid packages reach the president’s desk, it often takes months for the money to make it to farmers. Some in Georgia who lost crops in the 2017 hurricane season did not start receiving money allocated in the February 2018 package until the end of that summer, before Hurricane Michael — making landfall as a Category 5 storm — swept away what many deemed to be a perfect crop of cotton and downed pecan trees days away from harvest.

“To say they’re dissatisfied is to say it very lightly,” said Gary W. Black, Georgia’s commissioner of agriculture. “I think it’s grossly unfair to them.”

But few of the farmers here, eager for any update on the status of negotiations in Washington, were willing to single out a culprit beyond the forces of nature and the specter of a federal government seemingly disconnected from its citizens. And few objected to the prospect of Puerto Rico receiving more aid — as long as their money was allocated, too.

“It’s our turn, but we’re not getting our turn,” said Bart Davis, a cotton farmer who met with Trump when he visited after the storm. “They’re not doing their jobs up there.”

In Iowa and Nebraska, where the wind can create white-peaked waves in fields of amber grain more than a month after floodwaters swept through, a delay in federal aid means that farmers have little direction when it comes to recovering flooded land and planting again.

“Everywhere you turn, it’s just not there anymore,” Richard Hoppe, 61, said, choking up as he surveyed his family’s property in Richland, Nebraska, where beach sand, deposited by the floodwaters, clogs the stream where he fished for carp as a child and the fields where he grew corn and soybeans. Now, when he drives the couple miles to his farm, he knows he will wake up that night, “mind churning, worried.”

But, he added, “If you sell a farm, you’re not a farmer anymore.”

Several farmers have heard stories and rumors of neighbors selling their lands, weary of the emotional and financial toll it takes to maintain them. Michelle Soll, a farmer who helps answer phone calls for a rural hotline in Nebraska, said queries in the last six months have focused on addressing financial distress.

“It creates a lot of stress, a lot of unknown and a lot of tension,” said Soll, who has also been working to clear her own land with her husband. (Debris in the area can include an intact shed from a neighbor’s land, tires and refrigerators.)

But the familial ties to the land, coupled with the pride in their work, are enough for the majority of farmers to vow that somehow, they will figure it out.

“If I quit now, I could still have a pretty comfortable life,” said Michael Stenzel, 45, a fourth-generation farmer in Hamburg, Iowa. Waist-high water still fills his fields, and it is unclear how he will discard the towering mounds of corn and soybeans, spilling out from split steel grain bins, that are now rotting away.

But, Stenzel added, “This is an awesome life.”

“I help feed the world,” he said. “The more farmers that quit and walk away, the more people that don’t get fed.”

Ultimately, as Washington wrestles with the disaster package, some of the farmers said they would look to Mother Nature, which wreaked the initial havoc, for stability moving forward: delayed rains, absorbent soil and most important, no more storms and floods.

As Cohen drove his pickup truck through what was left of his pecan grove, he occasionally stopped to look for signs of harvest, pulling down branches to see if there were flowers. The first tree, under duress and in the face of cold weather, had none. But farther down the row, he reached out to examine a small cluster of red buds.

“Hey, we’ll count that as a win today,” Cohen said jubilantly. “We’ve got five.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/us/politics/disaster-relief-farmers-trump.html" id="6889454d-f806-3c2a-a025-8d798afa4730">The New York Times</a>.

Partisan Fight Over Aid to Puerto Rico Strands Mainland Farmers

BAINBRIDGE, Ga. — If Rob Cohen knew that aid was on its way from Washington, circumstances would be different on his devastated pecan farms, which once spanned five counties and 1,400 acres.

He and his brother would not have purchased an excavator and a bulldozer, expensive equipment they cannot afford and likely will not need again to harvest pecans. Instead of laboring for six months on their own to clear away the thousands of trees knocked over by hurricane winds, they would have hired contractors to do it in three weeks.

The president offered no indication of when the partial government shutdown might end, insisting that the thousands of federal workers still on the job through the Christmas holidays without pay were content making the sacrifice if it guaranteed funding for a wall at the border with Mexico.

“Many of those workers have said to me — communicated — stay out until you get the funding for the wall,” Trump said, speaking to reporters after a teleconference to offer holiday greetings to U.S. military personnel. “These federal workers want the wall.”

Trump and lawmakers have remained at odds as funding lapsed for nine departments and numerous federal agencies, with each side refusing to budge from their strongly held positions on border security and wall funding. Some lawmakers are becoming resigned to the prospect of the government remaining closed until the new year, when the majority shifts to Democrats in the House.

The president, who canceled his 16-day vacation to his Florida estate and instead remained in Washington, continued to offer contradicting assertions about the fate of his signature campaign promise.

“I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall, a fence, whatever they’d like to call it,” Trump told reporters, a nod to the “artistic slats” he has started advocating instead of the concrete wall he once promised. “I’ll call it whatever they want. But it’s all the same thing. It’s a barrier from people pouring into our country.”

Trump insisted, without evidence, that the wall was being built and could be “either renovated or brand-new by Election Day” and reiterated his demand that Congress allocate billions of dollars for a wall.

During the question-and-answer session Tuesday, Trump again said that he was pushing ahead with a stretch of wall construction in Texas. But he declined to give any additional details.

Officials with the White House and Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comments on specifics about the contract.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/us/politics/trump-border-wall-shutdown.html" id="e2db6212-336a-3612-a8cf-235fbd81a350">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump marked Christmas by again lobbying for a wall at the southern border, underscoring his unwillingness to acquiesce to Democrats over money to pay for border security.

On Christmas, Trump Again Lobbies for Border Wall

“There may be the case of an Olympic champion who can get over the wall, but for the most part you are not able to do it,” the president said, describing a wall as high as 30 feet, the equivalent of a three-story building.

In the same discussion with reporters, Trump both insisted, without evidence, that the wall was being built and could be “either renovated or brand-new by Election Day” and reiterated his demand that Congress allocate billions of dollars for a wall.

During the question-and-answer session with reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump again said that he was pushing ahead with a stretch of wall construction in Texas. But he declined to give any additional details.

“Yesterday I gave out 115 miles worth of wall — 115 miles in Texas,” the president said. “And it’s going to be built hopefully rapidly. I’m going there at the end of January for the start of construction.”

Describing that section of the wall as “a big stretch,” Trump added that “we gave it out at a great price. So we’re going to have great wall there, and we have other sections to give out.”

Asked who had received the contract, Trump did not offer any specifics. “Different people, different people,” he responded. “Highly bid.”

No legislative action to resolve the shutdown is expected before Thursday, when both chambers reconvene. Members of Congress have noted the increased possibility that the impasse will last until Jan. 3, when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is expected to reclaim the speakership.

Lacking a majority in both chambers, lawmakers said, likely will force Trump to realize how much more difficult it will be for him to enforce his own agenda.

On Twitter, the president has continued to stew over criticism and his perceived enemies. In one message, he lamented his loneliness during the holidays — a trend that continued on Christmas Day, as the president veered into an unprompted attack on James B. Comey, the former FBI director he fired more than a year ago.

The president complained over the outrage, particularly from Democrats, that still percolates over his decision to oust Comey, adding that “it’s a disgrace what’s happening in this country.”

“But, other than that,” Trump concluded, “I wish everybody a Merry Christmas.”

Trump and lawmakers have remained at loggerheads as funding lapsed for nine departments and numerous federal agencies, with each side refusing to budge from their strongly held positions on border security and wall funding. Some lawmakers are becoming resigned to the prospect of the government remaining closed until the new year, when the majority shifts to Democrats in the House.

In the same discussion with reporters, Trump both insisted, without evidence, that the wall was being built and could be “either renovated or brand-new by Election Day” — but reiterated his demand that Congress allocate billions of dollars for a wall.

On Twitter, he has continued to stew over criticism and his perceived enemies. In one message, he lamented his loneliness during the holidays — a trend that continued on Christmas Day, as the president veered into an unprompted attack on James B. Comey, the former FBI director he fired more than a year ago.

In the same discussion with reporters, Trump both insisted, without evidence, that the wall was being built and could be “either renovated or brand new by Election Day” — but reiterated his demand that Congress allocate billions of dollars for a wall.

And they walked past more than 100 American flags with 51 stars — the one extra star representing their aspirations for voting rights — that had been placed along Pennsylvania Avenue by Mayor Muriel Bowser to mark the day.

For the first time in more than two decades, the House on Thursday gave the long-suffering movement for D.C. statehood a hearing, plunging back into the constitutional and political debate over whether the nation’s capital should become the 51st state.

It is unlikely that statehood legislation, championed by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting House delegate, will prevail in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, called it “full-bore socialism.”

But inside the Rayburn House Office Building, where multiple residents could recall when their parents could not vote for president, the hearing was another step in the decades-long fight to disentangle Washington from the federal government’s grip and give its 702,000 residents voting representation.

“This was certainly the time to have it,” Norton said in an interview after overseeing the hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “Nobody in the House says, ‘Well, unless the Senate is about to pass a bill — it looks like it’s right for the bill — maybe we should sit here and do nothing.’”

Statehood activists and local government officials have been galvanized by the new Democratic House majority in the 116th Congress, where more than 200 Democrats have signed on to the legislation. Democratic leaders, including for the first time Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, have offered their support, and lawmakers expect it to pass the House if given a vote.

“One of the greatest blots on our democracy is having 700,000 of our citizens unable to be represented in the Congress of the United States,” Hoyer said at the hearing. “The only way to remove that blot is D.C. statehood.”

Washington residents earned three electoral votes and the right to vote for president in 1961 with the passage of the 23rd Amendment, before securing the right to elect a nonvoting delegate a decade later. Since then, a brief agreement struck with Republicans that would have given that delegate the right to vote fell apart, and the statehood legislation has never survived a floor vote.

The legislation put forward by Norton would establish the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, and allow for it to have two senators and a voting representative. It would shrink the federal district to the National Mall, the White House, Capitol Hill and some other federal property, and leave the rest of the land for the new state.

Those proposed borders drew scrutiny from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who questioned the motivation for putting the Trump International Hotel, which leases federal property on Pennsylvania Avenue, inside the state.

The debate Thursday broke down along party lines, and it featured many of the same arguments that advocates and District of Columbia officials have grown to anticipate. Opponents argued that granting the overwhelmingly liberal city representation would unfairly guarantee the party votes in the two chambers. They pointed to the District’s history of financial turmoil as evidence that it could not handle being a state. And they said the entire premise of statehood goes against the Constitution.

“This is not what the Founding Fathers intended,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the committee. “They understood, and they carefully crafted the Constitution, so that the seat of the federal government would purposefully and specifically not be within a state.”

Advocates for statehood disputed them all, arguing that the real reasons Republicans opposed granting voting representation to Washington, where black residents outnumber white ones and the vast majority of voters are Democrats, were their race and political preferences.

“It is true that we are more brown and more liberal than some of you, but denying statehood would be unfair, no matter who was affected,” Bowser said. “This is America, and Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law, and that’s why we are demanding statehood.”

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., said of Republicans: “When they say it’s not about race and partisanship, you can be sure it’s about race and partisanship.” (White Southern Democrats, who objected to the District increasing the chamber’s black ranks, helped lead the initial resistance to D.C. statehood.)

Roger Pilon, a constitutional scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute and witness for the Republicans, asked Connolly to withdraw his words, because, he said, “this is not about race.”

“Never,” Connolly shot back, to raucous applause from the mostly pro-statehood audience.

The hearing also offered a reminder of just how much of Washington’s existence is controlled by Congress. While the city has secured nominal control over its local affairs, Congress has final say over its budget, and can override laws passed by the D.C. Council.

Jordan also pushed to hear testimony from Jack Evans, a D.C. Council member accused of ethical and legal violations, arguing that he would be a state legislator if the District became a state.

Democrats denied the request, saying it was not relevant to the statehood debate.

For D.C. Statehood Advocates, a Hearing Marks Another Step Forward

WASHINGTON — Washington residents lined the Capitol Hill hallways, waving the red and white District of Columbia flag. They stood outside the Metro handing out buttons that declared, “I AM a citizen,” and stickers that said, “I showed up 4 D.C. statehood.”

His retirement sets the stage for two potentially competitive Senate races in Georgia, a state that Democrats have increasingly targeted, during a presidential election year. Isakson’s colleague, Sen. David Perdue, is also a Republican and up for reelection.

Isakson cited the toll from a number of health complications, including the progression of his Parkinson’s disease, a fall last month and surgery this week to remove a growth on his kidney, for “leaving a job I love” before the end of his term.

“It goes against every fiber of my being to leave in the middle of my Senate term,” Isakson said in a statement Wednesday, adding that his “health challenges are taking their toll on me, my family and my staff.”

“But I know it’s the right thing to do on behalf of my state,” Isakson added.

Isakson, who won his third term in 2016, said he had already informed Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, of his decision to resign Dec. 31. He missed the last few votes before the August recess after falling in his Washington apartment and fracturing four ribs. Kemp is expected to appoint Isakson’s replacement.

Isakson said he intends to return to the Senate in September and continue advocating for Georgia and those working toward finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease. He announced in 2015 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease two years earlier, after visiting a neurologist about stiffness in his left arm.

Isakson is widely respected for his bipartisanship and work ethic over decades of work in Georgia and national politics. He currently chairs both the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Isakson, who touts being the only Georgian to have represented both the House and Senate in both the state and national legislatures, is also seen as a central figure in the Republican Party’s political might in the state.

“No one is more respected by other members of the Senate than Johnny Isakson is,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., in a statement. “I will miss his leadership and advice when he leaves the Senate.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said that “one of the many fine adjectives to describe Johnny Isakson is a word not used enough in the halls of Congress these days: kind.”

“Not only is Johnny a diligent and successful legislator, he is one of the kindest, most thoughtful senators,” he said in a statement. “Independent of any party or politics, everyone will miss Johnny.”

Isakson first entered politics in 1974, after two decades as a businessman in Georgia. Having served in the Georgia Air National Guard, he has advocated for veterans legislation, including a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the veterans health care system. Isakson was a dominant voice in efforts to resolve the partisan tussle over allocating disaster funding toward several natural disasters in 2018.

Isakson is the fifth senator to announce retirement ahead of the 2020 elections. Three other Republicans, Sens. Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, Pat Roberts of Kansas and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and one Democrat, Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, have all previously announced their intentions to step down.

A party official said that the person appointed to Isakson’s seat will have to compete in a primary ahead of a special election in 2020, meaning that both Georgia Senate seats will be on the same ballot.

A spokesman for Stacey Abrams quickly tamped down speculation that the failed gubernatorial candidate and rising Democratic star, who previously passed on challenging Perdue, would run for the seat. “While she will not be a candidate herself, she is committed to helping Democratic candidates win both Senate races next year,” Seth Bringman, her spokesman, said.

In a Twitter statement, the Georgia Democratic Party said that with Isakson’s retirement, “it has never been clearer: the path to victory runs through Georgia.”

Among the potential Republican contenders for Isakson’s seat are the state attorney general, Chris Carr, and lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, as well as members of Georgia’s delegation in the House. Reps. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Tom Graves, a member of the Appropriations Committee, are both seen as possible successors to the seat.

Isakson to Resign From Senate, Citing Health Reasons

WASHINGTON — Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., announced Wednesday that he will resign from his seat at the end of the year, citing health reasons for the decision.

His retirement sets the stage for two potentially competitive Senate races in Georgia, a state that Democrats have increasingly targeted, during a presidential election year. Isakson’s colleague, Sen. David Perdue, is also a Republican and up for reelection. Republicans have held both of Georgia’s Senate seats since Isakson took office in 2005.

“Johnny’s deep and abiding love for Georgia and this nation have animated his years of service, making him not only a first-rate legislator, but also a man of the highest integrity,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. “His humor, humility and enduring faith have made him a role model to all of us who have had the pleasure to work with him.”

Isakson is widely respected for his bipartisanship and work ethic over decades of work in Georgia and national politics. He currently chairs both the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Multiple lawmakers lamented the loss of his bipartisan barbecues where, as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., put it, “our differences disappeared slathered in sauce.”

Isakson, who touts being the only Georgian to have represented both the House and Senate in both the state and national legislatures, is also seen as a central figure in the Republican Party’s political might in the state.

“When Johnny Isakson speaks, people listen,” Perdue said in a statement. “He is a true statesman, and it shows every day. It is my high honor to serve as Johnny’s partner in the United States Senate. Like so many Georgians, I was surprised and saddened to learn that he will not finish the rest of his term. Together, we are able to get real results for Georgia.”

Their emotional, and graphic, descriptions came on a day when ProPublica reported the existence of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents. Posts on the group’s page included jokes about migrants’ deaths, obscene GIFs and doctored images of Hispanic lawmakers, the report said. Some of the most offensive posts were directed at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Monday’s visit to the border by more than a dozen members of Congress — including Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas — was a specific focus of some of the abuse on Facebook, ProPublica reported. One post used vulgar language to encourage agents to “hurl a ‘burrito’ ” at the two women.

Ocasio-Cortez fired back at the group Monday night in a series of tweets describing the visit. “These officers felt brazen in there,” she said, pointing out that members of the congressional delegation were asked to surrender their phones before the visit. “While mgmt was telling us it was a ‘secure facility’ where *members of Congress* had to check their phones, we caught officers trying to sneak photos, laughing.”

She added, referring to the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection: “CBP’s ‘good’ behavior was toxic. Imagine how they treat the women trapped inside.”

The head of the Border Patrol, Carla Provost, said the posts on Facebook were “completely inappropriate,” adding that “any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.” On Monday night, Customs and Border Protection said it was opening an investigation into the Facebook group.

The ProPublica report further escalated the tense atmosphere the group of Democratic lawmakers found on their scheduled tour of facilities in Clint and El Paso.

“It feels like a jail,” said Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III of Massachusetts, “and they’re treating them like they’re in jail.”

“This entire system is broken,” he said. “They deserve better than this, and our country deserves better than this.”

Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet that Customs and Border Protection “did a lot of ‘cleaning up’ before we arrived.” She said women told her they had gone 15 days without a shower and were allowed to start bathing only four days ago, after the congressional visit was announced.

Some women, she said, told her they were forced to drink out of the toilet when the faucet in their cell broke. A Customs and Border Protection official declined to comment on the accusation.

At a news conference Monday afternoon, the lawmakers’ emotional descriptions were almost completely drowned out by vulgar and racist heckling from a handful of protesters, some carrying Trump 2020 banners and posters calling for tougher border security, deportation and the construction of a wall at the southwestern border.

“Bunch of knuckleheads,” one man yelled as the lawmakers tried to describe what they had seen at a Border Patrol station in El Paso and a migrant facility in Clint. “Break out the onions,” a woman cried, mocking how some of the Democrats grew visibly emotional in front of the microphones.

“We don’t want Muslims here,” another yelled, minutes before Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, vowed to “outlove your hate.”

“You can all scream at me,” she said. “I will never stop speaking truth to power.”

Immigration activists added to the tumult as they tried to combat the insults and heckles with support for the lawmakers.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus had organized the day trip to the Texas border after reports of children being held in squalor in the Clint facility, accusations Trump administration officials have vigorously denied. The group also visited a facility affiliated with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

But lawmakers emerged from the Border Patrol facilities describing living conditions unfit to hold adults or children, with Cuban, Honduran and Guatemalan women — including grandmothers and a young pregnant woman — sharing cells, some sobbing from fear of retribution from the guards for sharing their stories.

Rep. Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania said that she was initially scolded by an official for miming an air hug to a migrant child. Lawmakers said they had been told not to speak to the migrants.

But ultimately, the group spoke with a number of migrants at the facilities. In images and videos taken by Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, head of the Hispanic caucus, on a device smuggled into the facility, a group of women, some with tear-stained cheeks, can be seen huddling in blue sleeping bags. They told lawmakers they did not have access to medication. Officials denied those accusations.

When she asked one woman what brought her to the facility, Dean recalled, “The woman said: ‘I crossed that damn river. I wanted to come to America. That’s my offense.’ ”

Most of the Democratic lawmakers on the trip to Texas voted against a $4.6 billion humanitarian aid package last month, citing concerns about sending more federal money to the border without strict oversight provisions. The visit appeared to harden their resolve.

“After I forced myself into a cell w/ women&amp;began; speaking to them, one of them described their treatment at the hands of officers as ‘psychological warfare,’” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday. “Tell me what about that is due to a ‘lack of funding?’”

President Donald Trump, shortly after the lawmakers wrapped up their news conference, signed the aid package into law.

“I don’t know what they’re saying about the members of Congress,” Trump told reporters Monday. “I know that the Border Patrol is not happy with the Democrats in Congress.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/us/politics/texas-migrant-centers.html" id="f611837a-e1cf-34a3-a981-223a1b287e09">The New York Times</a>.

Lawmakers Criticize Migrant Holding Sites in Texas as 'Toxic' and 'Broken'

CLINT, Texas — Women held in rooms without running water, sleeping bags set up on concrete and children left apart from their families: That was what Democratic lawmakers said they heard about Monday as they toured two Texas border facilities.

Lawmakers criticize migrant holding sites in Texas as 'toxic' and 'broken'

“How can you become a Democrat when we voted you in as a Republican?” asked Luke, a 57-year-old from Grand Rapids, as boos, hisses and heckles rumbled through the crowd on Tuesday at his first town hall-style meeting since publicly declaring that President Donald Trump’s behavior had reached the “threshold of impeachment.”

Amash rebuked the accusation to the cheers of the crowd that packed the auditorium. “I haven’t changed,” he said. “I’m who I said I was.”

Since he first outlined his belief that the special counsel’s report showed that Trump “engaged in impeachable conduct,” Republicans nationally have lined up in opposition to Amash, a five-term Republican with a reputation for saying “no.” From his earliest days in Washington, Amash has been a marginal figure, consistently voting against both political parties, publishing explanations of his latest “no” on a Facebook page where he proclaims, “I defend liberty and explain every vote here.”

Principled, yes, even critics will concede. A thought leader in the Republican Party? No.

But in Trump’s Republican Party, no figure is too marginal to be ignored — and even the faintest spark of opposition must be snuffed out, doused, crushed and buried.

Since Amash concluded that the president “engaged in impeachable conduct,” the billionaire DeVos family, whose money has helped bankroll the Republican Party here for decades, said through a spokesman that it would not financially support the congressman. Two Republicans have announced they will run against him in next year’s Republican primary race. And the president called him “a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there.”

“He’s isolated and marginalized himself in D.C.,” said Jim Lower, a state representative who rushed to put forward his primary challenge after Amash’s initial flurry of tweets about the president’s actions.

But in Grand Rapids, his political stronghold, Amash’s boldness was still applauded — wildly. Political strategists and voters say this congressional district in southwestern Michigan may not only tolerate an unabashed and frequent Republican critic of the president. It might also demand it. Amash’s event on Tuesday served to underscore the voter dynamics that will ultimately dictate his political future representing Michigan’s 3rd District.

There were voters angry over a perceived lack of loyalty to the party and those appreciative of a politician consistent in his views and votes. Attendees came in “It’s Mueller Time” shirts, a liberal cry of support for the special counsel, and red “Make America Great Again” apparel.

For a little over two hours, Amash fielded question after question about his analysis of the report and his legislative record, jousting with former supporters who lamented his refusal to toe the party line and calling for a respectful dialogue as audience members heckled at long-winded or controversial remarks.

One attendee fretted that Amash would lose re-election and the district would “miss out on a principled representative.” (Amash said that he was not concerned.)

In a reminder of Amash’s wavering political standing, hundreds crammed into the orchestra and mezzanine levels of the DeVos Center for Arts and Worship at Grand Rapids Christian High School, from which all four of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ children graduated. Auditorium employees estimated at least 800 people attended.

“He reminds me a lot of Barry Goldwater,” said Lon Johnson, a former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party. “He’s consistent in his principles. You may not like those principles, but consistency is a principle lacking in our Congress right now.”

Despite the wrath from his Republican colleagues, Amash has doubled and tripled down on his argument, repeatedly using Twitter to rebuff his critics with long strings of messages expanding on his thinking.

He prefaced his meeting with another series of Twitter posts Tuesday, accusing Attorney General William Barr of misrepresenting aspects of the special counsel’s investigation to protect Trump.

Several of those in attendance peppered Amash with questions about infrastructure, the immigration system, health care and legal marijuana. But others applauded Amash’s courage — and pressed him on his reasoning.

“I was disappointed and bewildered,” said Eric Richards, 57, a lawyer from Cascade Township in suburban Grand Rapids, of his initial reaction to Amash’s tweets. He brought an annotated copy of the Mueller report (“Well, the congressman complained that his colleagues didn’t read it”) and a list of questions for Amash.

“I think the congressman marches to a different drummer,” he said, “and that tension is becoming untenable.”

Since his election as part of the 2010 wave of Tea Party Republicans, Amash has frequently and successfully framed his opponents as figures of the establishment. His margin of victory has remained comfortable, though it dropped in 2018: He won by 11 percentage points, compared with the 22-point margin he enjoyed in 2016.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — At the edge of the crowd, Diane Luke, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, stood up and informed Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., that she did not have the words to express her disappointment in him.

Emily Cochrane

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