Pence appeals for complete GOP support for health overhaul ADVERTISING Pence appeals for complete GOP support for health overhaul LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence appealed for total GOP congressional support for a White House-backed health overhaul during
Pence appeals for complete GOP support for health overhaul
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence appealed for total GOP congressional support for a White House-backed health overhaul during a brief visit Saturday to Kentucky, where the Republican governor and junior senator are among the plan’s skeptics.
“This is going to be a battle in Washington, D.C. And for us to seize this opportunity to repeal and replace Obamacare once and for all, we need every Republican in Congress, and we’re counting on Kentucky,” Pence said at an energy company where business leaders had gathered.
He said President Donald Trump would lean on House Republicans — including two Kentucky lawmakers in the audience, Reps. Andy Barr and Brett Guthrie — to vote to replace former President Barack Obama’s law.
Pence’s trip was part of an effort to reassure conservatives who have raised objections to the House plan. In a sign of the high stakes, Pence’s motorcade passed a long line of demonstrators who chanted, “Save our care.”
Almost at the time Pence landed in Louisville, Trump tweeted: “We are making great progress with health care. ObamaCare is imploding and will only get worse. Republicans coming together to get job done!”
Gorsuch has ruled for police, and suspects, in crime cases
WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge Neil Gorsuch wasn’t convinced that a teenager who made burping sounds in a classroom should be arrested, handcuffed and taken to juvenile detention in a police car.
Gorsuch said the 13-year-old student from Albuquerque, New Mexico, should have been able to sue the arresting officer for excessive force. His powerful dissent in the case last year offers a glimpse of how Gorsuch — a favorite among conservatives — might be hard to pigeonhole on criminal justice issues if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court.
“Arresting a now compliant class clown for burping was going a step too far,” Gorsuch wrote, saying there is a difference “between childish pranks and more seriously disruptive behaviors.”
During a decade on the federal appeals court in Denver, Gorsuch has raised concerns about intrusive government searches and seizures that he found to violate constitutional rights. He generally has ruled against defendants appealing their convictions and those who claim they received unfair trials. But he also has warned in writings and speeches about the danger of having too many criminal laws on the books.
“What happens to individual freedom and equality when the criminal law comes to cover so many facets of daily life that prosecutors can almost choose their targets with impunity?” he said in a 2013 speech.
Trump praises arrest of ‘troubled person’ at White House
POTOMAC FALLS, Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday that the U.S. Secret Service did a “fantastic job” apprehending a “troubled person” who got onto the White House grounds after climbing a fence on the east side of the property while Trump was inside the executive mansion.
It was the first known security breach at the White House since Trump took office nearly two months ago.
Washington, D.C., police identified the intruder as 26-year-old Jonathan Tran of Milpitas, California.
When approached by a Secret Service officer on the south grounds about 11:38 p.m. Friday and asked whether he had a pass authorizing him to be in the restricted area, Tran replied, “No, I am a friend of the president. I have an appointment,” the police report said. Asked how he got there, he said he “jumped the fence.”
The Secret Service said in a statement that the intruder, whom it did not identify, had climbed an outer perimeter fence near the Treasury Department and East Executive Avenue. He was arrested without further incident and no hazardous materials were found in his backpack, the agency said.
