President Donald Trump expressed optimism Friday that his border wall is going forward and will be built despite Congress not providing funds.
After calling border wall negotiations with Democrats a "waste of time," the president went on to say he’s figuring out how to build border barriers without Congress’s cooperation.
He claimed to have money "on hand" to work on barriers, but recently he has still been fighting with Democrats on getting the wall funded. He said he’s looking at declaring a national emergency because he doesn’t think "anything is going to happen" with funding it.
"We’re building a lot of wall right now as we speak, and we’re renovating a lot of wall, and we’re getting ready to give out some very big contracts with money that we have on hand and money that comes in. But we will be looking at a national emergency, because I don’t think anything is going to happen," Trump said.
With only some barriers being rebuilt or repaired, Trump’s comments fly in the face of critics’ claims that he’s failed to deliver on his promised wall. However, he came back to the argument that his administration was doing some work to build the wall now, pointing to the maintenance the administration has done on barriers while seeming to take credit for completing them.
"I would say we will have 115 miles of wall, maybe a little more than that, very shortly. It’s being built, some of it’s already been completed, in San Diego, if you look, it’s been completed," Trump said. "It’s getting built one way or another."
Trump also argued one of the strengths of his new wall is how physically attractive it is.
"We’re building it with funds that are on hand. We’re negotiating very tough prices. We’ve designed a much better-looking wall that is also actually a better wall, which is an interesting combination," he said. "It’s far more beautiful, and it’s better. It’s much more protective, but it looks better because the walls they used to build were not very attractive."
Democrats unveiled their proposal for addressing the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border this week, and it includes funding for a new polar icebreaker for the U.S. Coast Guard.
The proposal, unveiled Wednesday at the first meeting of the conference committee to negotiate a bipartisan solution, was presented by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), and is the Democratic Party’s official position.
Roybal-Allard told the House-Senate Conference Committee on Homeland Security (emphasis added; video from C-SPAN below):
The proposal I’ve presented will be the basis for the House majority position for this conference. Based on a holistic analysis of the country’s most acute vulnerabilities, the proposal is balanced across the mission areas of the Department [of Homeland Security]. It advances a smart and strong border security posture while staying true to our core values as Americans.
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Between the ports of entry, it provides significant investments in cutting-edge border security technology to improve situational awareness and operational control.
Technology investments are also made at mail processing facilities to interdict fentanyl and other opioids shipped through the international mail.
Significant new investments are also made in the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] and Coast Guard fleets of aircraft and vessels. This includes the procurement of the first Coast Guard heavy icebreaker since the 1970s.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the cost of a new icebreaker is about $1 billion, or $700 million if three ships are acquired for a total of $2.1 billion.
Notably, Democrats are not proposing any funding for a physical barrier on the border — just the “cutting-edge border security technology” described by Roybal-Allard.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi vowed Thursday that “[t]here is not going to be any wall money in the legislation” that emerges from the committee.
Other Democratic leaders have suggested that they might be open to accepting fencing on the border, though it is not clear whether they meant existing fencing or new construction.
President Donald Trump unveiled his proporals for border security in an address from the Oval Office last month:
Our plan includes the following: $800 million in urgent humanitarian assistance; $805 million for drug detection technology to help secure our ports of entry; an additional 2,750 border agents and law enforcement professionals; 75 new immigration judge teams to reduce the court backlog of, believe it or not, almost 900,000 cases. However, the whole concept of having lengthy trials for anyone who sets one foot in our country unlawfully must be changed by Congress. It is unsustainable. It is ridiculous. Few places in the world would even consider such an impossible nightmare.
Our plan includes critical measures to protect migrant children from exploitation and abuse. This includes a new system to allow Central American minors to apply for asylum in their home countries, and reform to promote family reunification for unaccompanied children, thousands of whom wind up on our border doorstep.
To physically secure our border, the plan includes $5.7 billion for a strategic deployment of physical barriers, or a wall. This is not a 2,000-mile concrete structure from sea to sea. These are steel barriers in high-priority locations. Much of the border is already protected by natural barriers such as mountains and water. We already have many miles of barrier, including 115 miles that we are currently building or under contract. It will be done quickly. Our request will add another 230 miles this year in the areas our border agents most urgently need. It will have an unbelievable impact.
The president also proposed relief for illegal aliens and immigrants with temporary protected status, but Democrats have ruled out discussions on immigration in the border security negotiation.
The conference committee is working against a February 15 deadline, when the federal government will run out of money again. President Trump has said that if talks fail, he will use his legal authority to issue an emergency declaration to direct that a border wall be built.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
A cartel that prioritizes fuel theft over drug trafficking used plastic explosives to threaten Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). Gunmen left the devices outside an oil refinery in the central state of Guanajuato.
Mexico’s federal government confirmed the discovery of a banner and truck with the explosives near one of the entrances to the Ingeniero Antonio M. Amor Refinery in Salamanca. The devices were inside an older model red pickup and placed near two narco-banners. Military experts disabled the hardware.
The banners were signed by Jose Antonio “El Marro” Yepez Ortiz, the leader of Cartel Santa Rosa de Lima. The organization is waging a fierce territorial war with one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal groups, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG).
The banner left by El Marro was addressed to AMLO. The cartel leader demanded the president pull military and federal police forces out of Guanajuato or he would begin targeting innocent people. El Marro claims he left the explosives, calling them “a little gift” as a sign of things to come if AMLO failed to comply. He added that he wanted some of his associates released from custody.
Soon after the discovery, various social media messages allegedly from Cartel Santa Rosa de Lima claimed they were not involved in any way.
A security expert in Mexico revealed to Breitbart News that Mexican Marines recently seized 12 tractor trailers, tankers and 23 other trucks belonging to El Marro’s organization. The move could have led to a violent response by Cartel Santa Rosa Lima, or it could have been used by CJNG to place the banners and draw heat on their rivals.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with the Breitbart Border and Cartel Chronicles projects. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of the Breitbart Border and Cartel Chronicles projects. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Tony Aranda and Jose Luis Lara from the Cartel Chronicles project contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump asserted Friday he has already started building the border wall, urging supporters not to lose faith.
“The chant should be now, ‘Finish the wall’ because we’re building a lot of wall,” he said to reporters during an event at the White House on Friday.
White House aides claim that Trump has 115 miles of wall that will either be finished or under construction by the end of 2019.
The president said he was still seriously considering declaring a state of emergency at the border, which would allow him to redirect funding to secure the border without Congress.
“I’m certainly thinking about it. I think there’s a good chance we’ll have to do that,” he said. “At the same time, regardless, we’re building the wall. And we’re building a lot of wall.”
Although Trump expressed skepticism that the bipartisan compromise congressional committee can draft a serious border security proposal before February 15, he has said he will wait until the deadline before acting on his own.
“We’re not going to get anywhere with them. It’s going to be part of their campaign, but I don’t think it’s good politically,” Trump said about the Democrats on the committee. “And I think Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed of herself because she’s hurting a lot of people.”
On Thursday, Trump bristled at the idea that he was not already building the wall.
“I’ve accomplished so much. So now they say, ‘Oh, if he doesn’t get the wall…’ They make that the only issue, but it’s not going to work because I’m building the wall,” he said to reporters at the White House. “The wall is happening right now, okay?”
The president is referring to the carefully allotted $1.6 billion from Congress in the 2018 omnibus bill allowing him to replace or repair existing border structures on the southern border — but not build new structures.
During an interview with the New York Times published on Friday, Trump spoke about his progress on the border.
“We’re renovating large sections of wall. We’re building new sections of wall. We’re building the wall,” he said. “The wall is going up as we speak.”
In December 2016, Snopes signed onto become a fact-checker for Facebook — an initiative the technology launch in a bid to crack down on fake news circulating on its platform during the 2016 presidential election. Facebook paid Snopes $100,000 to become a fact-checking partner — an agreement that allegedly had not been fully upheld when the contract between the two parties ended at the end of December.
Since then, the fact-checking project has been renegotiating the contract to try and make it easier for fact-checkers to flag falsities on the platform.
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Disagreements over the arrangement were contributing factors in the departure of both Brooke Binkowski, Snopes’ former managing editor, and Kim LaCapria, a former fact-checker — both of whom now write for TruthorFiction.com. Both spoke to The Guardianabout the program, saying that it didn’t seem like the company cared about its fact-checking partners.
Doreen Marchionni, Snopes’ recently hired managing editor, said current fact-checkers have aired their concerns about the Facebook partnership in two recent all-hands conference calls. They also expressed their discontent through a newsroom survey.
“It doesn’t seem like we’re striving to make third-party fact checking more practical for publishers — it seems like we’re striving to make it easier for Facebook. At some point, we need to put our foot down and say, ‘No. You need to build an API,’” said Snopes’ chief executive. “The work that fact-checkers are doing doesn’t need to be just for Facebook — we can build things for fact-checkers that benefit the whole web, and that can also help Facebook.”
“I can tell you that the staff has raised quite a few questions in conference calls, in our internal Slack channels,” Marchionni told Poynter earlier in the month. “There’s so much information coming from the staff about the partnership that we set up a newsroom survey where we could collect all these formally in once place.”
Snopes suffered a series of embarrassing mishaps during its partnership with Facebook. Notably, in March 2018, it labeled a story by Christian satire site Babylon Bee “false” after publishing an Onion-style article about CNN buying washing machines to “spin the news.”
“A page you admin (The Babylon Bee) recently posted the link (CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News Before Publication) that contains info disputed by (Snopes.com), an independent fact checker,” Facebook wrote to the site, before threatening to penalize the site. “Repeat offenders will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertised removed.”
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) told hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak during an interview on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Tonight on Thursday that President Donald Trump should use presidential emergency powers to “build the wall,” describing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as “not even pretending to be negotiating in good faith.”
Pollak invited McClintock’s comment on the “state of play” on Capitol Hill regarding ongoing political strife related to border security.
Democrats oppose measures to block illegal immigration, said McClintock.
LISTEN:
“It’s very clear to me the Democrats have never been serious about border security,” McClintock stated. “They say they are, but you can’t point to a single border security measure that they have actually supported recently. You can’t say that you are opposed to illegal immigration while you are advocating providing a huge range of services for illegal immigrants, ranging from health care and legal counseling to education and housing, all at taxpayer expense.”
McClintock continued, “You can’t say you want to discourage illegal immigration while you’re busy rewarding those who illegally immigrate. So I think we’re going to see the same kind of obstructionism over these next three weeks that we saw during the shutdown, and at the end of that time, my strong advice to the president is to take the legal authority that he has to reprogram unobligated military construction funds and put them to use securing our borders. I can’t think of anything more important to national defense than the defense of our southern border.”
Mansour asked, “You think that he should, in fact, use his authority to declare this a national emergency? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes,” replied McClintock. “In fact, there are currently 31 declared national emergencies under the provisions of that act. So this would be number 32. It’s hardly unprecedented, and unlike so many of the other declared emergencies, this one directly affects the integrity of our own borders, not the borders of Iraq or some other country, but our own country.”
Mansour asked if presidential power would be dangerously expanded via precedent in the event Trump used executive presidential emergency powers towards building a southern border wall.
McClintock answered, “Let me ask you this question: when have leftists ever relied on precedent to expand their power? They make it up as they go along. Barack Obama wrote DACA clearly out of thin air with no statutory authority. This is an authority that the president has had since 1976, granted to him by the Congress to reprogram already-appropriated military construction funds if he believes there is a higher national security interest.”
McClintock went on. “I don’t worry about activists saying this is some precedent for the future. The fact is they would claim any pretext as pretext for expanding their power. That’s what they do. It’s in their nature.”
McClintock added, “The other thing you’re hearing all the time is, ‘Oh, well, if he went this route, they’d just block it in the courts.’ Well, anything he tries to do to secure our borders, they’re going to try to block in the courts. The good news on that front is we have a Supreme Court that stands by the law, and the law is very clear on this subject.”
McClintock remarked, “[Donald Trump] is also talking about a law that Congress passed that is on the books that gives him the authority as commander-in-chief to reprogram non-obligated military construction funds for the defense of our country.”
The status quo of illegal immigration amounts to a legitimate national security emergency, determined McClintock.
“Look at what’s going on on our southern border today,” advised McClintock. “We’ve got between 16 and 29 million people who are already living illegally in the United States. It’s costing American taxpayers well over $100,000,000 a year to support this population. We have 60,000 more illegally crossing our border every month. We now have three caravans. One is numbering over 12,000 individuals who are heading toward our border with the declared and avowed intention of violating the integrity of our borders.”
McClintock reflected on Americans victimized by illegal aliens.
“Go back to 2017, which is the last year we have full figures for. Illegal aliens murdered 1,800 Americans,” McClintock said. “They violently assaulted 48,000 more. Not one of those crimes should have occurred because not one of those criminals should be in our country to begin with. Now, if that is not a national security crisis, I don’t know what is, and that’s before we begin touching on any of the sex trafficking or drug trafficking going on across our borders.”
Mansour asked about California’s “Motor Voter” registration program, a state-run operation that automatically registers driver’s licensees on voter rolls to “make it easier for more people to vote.”
McClintock replied, “Understand what that system is. California now gives driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. When you get your driver’s license in California, you’re automatically registered to vote. They even changed the rules so that you cannot prosecute someone who has voted illegally unless you can prove that they knew that it was illegal to vote.”
McClintock added, “I’m convinced that this is quite deliberate, and nobody knows how many illegal immigrants actually voted in this election, but it’s a lot more, I think, than [what] they’re claiming.”
McClintock went on, “Don’t forget that every illegal vote that is cast cancels out the legal vote of an American citizen, and the Democrats don’t care. … These claims that they care about border security are simply bogus. Long ago, they stopped calling illegal immigration what it is — illegal.”
McClintock said, “You can hear a lot of them advocating abolishing the agencies that defend our border, like ICE. They’ve enacted sanctuary laws in states like California that protect dangerous criminal aliens from deportation, and they’ve opposed everything from mandatory employment verification to hold employers accountable for hiring illegals to their opposition to visa trafficking of foreign nationals entering our country.”
The “radical left” opposes American sovereignty, assessed McClintock.
“I am convinced that the radical left, as part of their agenda, is to simply tear down our borders,” McClintock determined. “When we stop enforcing our immigration laws, our borders become meaningless, and we cease to be a country. We just become this vast international territory between Canada and Mexico, both of which, by the way, have immigration laws and borders that they actually enforce.”
Mansour asked if Pelosi is negotiating with Trump and Republicans “in good faith.”
“She’s not even pretending to be negotiating in good faith,” responded McClintock. “Remember, during the shutdown, the president made one offer after another. He reduced his overall funding request. He agreed to redesign the wall to meet some of the objections that they were making. He agreed to nearly $1,000,000 of humanitarian aid on top of all of this, and the Democrats wouldn’t even consider his concessions. They would not give him a proposal of their own.”
McClintock continued, “When he asked Nancy Pelosi, ‘If I open up the government tomorrow, can we then negotiate for border walls?’ and, as I recall, she offered one dollar for the security of our southern border.”
McClintock recalled, “He invited the Democratic freshmen to come to the White House to sit down and talk about resolving the issue, and they wouldn’t even go to the White House to talk to him. Now, they had plenty of time to go off to Puerto Rico and party with a hundred lobbyists during the shutdown, but they couldn’t take an hour out of their otherwise busy schedules to go to the White House at the president’s invitation and request to resolve this impasse. That tells you where they are.”
Pollak asked about possible partisan compromises to resolve ongoing political gridlock.
“I can’t predict the future, but I’ll tell you, I would be very, very surprised,” speculated McClintock.
McClintock advised Trump to use an ultimatum in pressuring Democrats to negotiate on border wall funding and broader border security issues.
“I think what the president needs to do is make it very clear: ‘Give me three weeks. If you’re serious about it, we will sit down and negotiate a compromise. You want DACA. We want our border secured. Once our borders are secured, we’ll agree to legalize the DACA recipients. But if we can’t come to an agreement in three weeks, I’m going to build the wall under the authority I already have. There will be no compromises. I’ll do it exactly the way it needs to be done. And if you want to talk about DACA or any other concessions, you’re the ones now that are going to have to make compromises.’ I think that puts him in a very strong position. But I am not the least bit optimistic that the Democrats are going to budge on this.”
McClintock concluded, “I think, at this juncture, his only responsible course is to use his authority and build the wall.”
A 2017-published list of 28 active national emergencies included the following, in chronological order:
1. Blocking Iranian Government Property (Nov. 14, 1979)
2. Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Nov. 14, 1994)
3. Prohibiting Transactions with Terrorists Who Threaten to Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process (Jan. 23, 1995)
4. Prohibiting Certain Transactions with Respect to the Development of Iranian Petroleum Resources (Mar. 15, 1995)
5. Blocking Assets and Prohibiting Transactions with Significant Narcotics Traffickers (Oct. 21, 1995)
6. Regulations of the Anchorage and Movement of Vessels with Respect to Cuba (Mar. 1, 1996)
7. Blocking Sudanese Government Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Sudan (Nov. 3, 1997)
8. Blocking Property of Persons Who Threaten International Stabilization Efforts in the Western Balkans (Jun. 26, 2001)
9. Continuation of Export Control Regulations (Aug. 17, 2001)
10. Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks (Sept. 14, 2001)
11. Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Persons who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism (Sept. 23, 2001)
12. Blocking Property of Persons Undermining Democratic Processes or Institutions in Zimbabwe (Mar. 6, 2003)
13. Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq has an Interest (May 22, 2003)
14. Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting the Export of Certain Goods to Syria (May 11, 2004)
15. Blocking Property of Certain Persons Undermining Democratic Processes or Institutions in Belarus (Jun. 16, 2006)
16. Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Oct. 27, 2006)
17. Blocking Property of Persons Undermining the Sovereignty of Lebanon or Its Democratic Processes and Institutions (Aug. 1, 2007)
18. Continuing Certain Restrictions with Respect to North Korea and North Korean Nationals (Jun. 26, 2008)
19. Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in Somalia (Apr. 12, 2010)
20. Blocking Property and Prohibiting Certain Transactions Related to Libya (Feb. 25, 2011)
21. Blocking Property of Transnational Criminal Organizations (Jul. 25, 2011)
22. Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen (May 16, 2012)
23. Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine (Mar. 6, 2014)
24. Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to South Sudan (Apr. 3, 2014)
25. Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in the Central African Republic (May 12, 2014)
26. Blocking Property and Suspending Entry of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela (Mar. 9, 2015)
27. Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities (Apr. 1, 2015)
28. Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Burundi (Nov. 23, 2015)
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific).
Following recent revelations that Facebook used an app to spy on teenage users for “market research” purposes, the social media giant has refused to apologize for the situation.
Mashable reports that Facebook shows no remorse for their latest scandal in which they were caught possibly spying on teenagers via an app for the purpose of “market research.” Facebook’s VP of Production, Engineering, and Security Pedro Canahuati, attempted to explain the app and Apple’s decision to remove it from their app store in a recent memo published by Business Insider.
Canahuati explained in his memo to employees that Apple had revoked Facbeook’s Enterprise Certificate which allowed the company to distribute apps internally outside of its App Store; Apple restored Facebook’s Enterprise Certificate on Thursday, but the company now has to rebuild “a few dozen” apps that employees rely on. Later in the memo, Canahuat defended Facebook’s research methods and attacked the media for its portrayal of the app.
“This is a market research program that helps us understand consumer behavior and trends to build better mobile products,” Canahuati stated. “TechCrunch implied we hid the fact that this is by Facebook — we don’t. People participated in this program with full knowledge that Facebook was sponsoring this research, and were paid for it. They could opt-out at any time.”
Canahuati did, however, fail to mention that Facebook’s research app was strikingly similar to its Onavo VPN app launched last year which was found to be tracking users’ data and was also pulled from Apple’s app store. Regarding Apple’s revoking of Facebook’s Enterprise Certificate, Canahuati believes that this was simply just a misunderstanding and that the company’s relationship with Apple is “really important.”
“Apple’s view is that we violated their terms by sideloading this app,” Canahuati stated. “And they decide the rules for their platform. Our relationship with Apple is really important — many of us use Apple products at work every day, and we rely on iOS for many of our employee apps, so we wouldn’t put that relationship at any risk intentionally.”
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also defended the app recently in an interview with CNBC stating: “The important thing is that the people involved in that research project knew they were involved and consented.”
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
Senate Republicans are once again attempting to reform housing finance and the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Republican Senator Mike Crapo, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, released the outline of a reform plan Friday that proposed breaking-up and privatizing Fannie and Freddie. The two mortgage guarantors have been under government control since they were seized during the financial crisis in 2008.
The proposal might deliver a windfall to the hedge funds and other investors who have been pressing Capitol Hill and the White House to release the companies from conservatorship. But because the outline is vague on many points, that is far from clear. Shares of Fannie and Freddie initially rose more than 5 percent after Crapo released his proposal but then retreated to about half that gain.
The proposal envisions Fannie and Freddie as private guarantors but suggests that they would compete against other guarantors. The market shares of each guarantor would be capped at a percentage Crapo’s outline did not specify. Currently, Fannie and Freddie back more than half of the country’s mortgages. Crapo’s proposal appears to require that to shrink over a period of years, allowing for more competition. While lawmakers are concerned about disrupting the mortgage market by displacing Fannie and Freddie, they are also wary of any plan that would preserve their “Too Big to Fail” status.
“We must expeditiously fix our flawed housing finance system,” Crapo said in a statement. “My priorities are to establish stronger levels of taxpayer protection, preserve the 30-year fixed rate mortgage, increase competition among mortgage guarantors, and promote access to affordable housing.”
The proposal would impose a leverage requirement on Fannie, Freddie, and other mortgage guarantors, a much stricter restriction on their capitalization than existed before the financial crisis. It would also require both companies to sell-off their multi-family businesses.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie and has served as their conservator for a decade, would be reformed. Its single-director structure, which has faced constitutional challenges in court, would be changed to a bipartisan board similar to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Many of the rules imposed and powers exercised during the conservatorship, including the right to require guarantors to transfer risk to secondary markets, would be codified into law.
In addition, the prices of the guarantees offered by Fannie and Freddie–and their theoretical competitors–would have to be approved by the FHFA.
Many of the details are not worked out in Crapo’s plan. It’s not clear, for example, what the leverage limits or market share caps would be. Nor is it clear to what would happen to the U.S. Treasury’s large equity stake in Fannie and Freddie.
The proposal from Crapo comes after weeks of speculation that the Trump administration might act unilaterally to reform Fannie and Freddie. This week, however, a spokeswoman for the White Hosue shot down that idea, saying the administration would work with Congress rather than act on its own.
There have been a number of attempts to reform Fannie, Freddie, and housing finance over the last decade, none of which have mustered enough support to become law. The most recent attempt was a 2017-2018 effort by then-Senator Bob Corker and Senator Mark Warner that would have preserved Fannie and Freddie instead of eliminating them, as earlier legislation had proposed. Those efforts, like those undertaken in 2013 and 2014, never gained steam and quickly fizzled.
Some on Capitol Hill are hopeful Crapo’s latest effort could bear fruit because of the threat that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and acting FHFA head Joseph Otting might move on their own to implement reforms.
“The legislature may have to act to prevent Mnuchin’s Wall Street gang from doing something reckless to enrich their hedge fund buddies,” one veteran of past reform attempts said.
Crapo’s proposal has initially won praise from some veterans of past reform efforts.
“This is a needed step in the right direction and the Chairman should be applauded for his initiative here today,” said David Stevens, the former commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration and former president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO and self-made billionaire, got an icy reception in his hometown of Seattle on Thursday after announcing his possible bid as an Independent candidate in the 2020 presidential election.
“Grande ego” and ‘Venti mistake’ were protesters’ clever play on words outside of a downtown Seattle theater where Schultz was set to appear to promote his new book, “From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America,” which tells his rags to riches story.
Several dozen protesters gathered outside a downtown theater before Schultz appeared to promote his new book. They included Democrats who fret his candidacy would hand President Donald Trump another term, and green-and-gold-bedecked basketball fans who haven’t forgiven him for selling the Seattle SuperSonics to a group that moved the team to Oklahoma City more than a decade ago.
“The way he dealt with the Sonics shows a huge fault in his character,” protester Farheen Siddiqui said. “He acted like a child who was not getting his way.”
Schultz, 65, has not decided whether or not to throw his hat in the ring “but the reaction from prominent Democrats has been swift,” AP reported.
“The party chairwoman in Washington state, top advisers to former President Barack Obama and the most powerful political action committee in Democratic politics, are among those who have criticized him, saying an independent bid would likely split the opposition to Trump and make his re-election more likely,” AP reported.
AP noted that 92 percent of voters opposed Trump in 2016. One of them, Chris Petzold, a Democratic activist, organized the anti-Schultz protest.
“Now is not the time to risk getting another four years with Donald Trump as president,” Petzold said. “If you want to fix it, why not fix it from within the system, instead of being your arrogant billionaire self? He’s just buying his way into this.”
AP reported:
In an opinion piece published Wednesday in The Seattle Times, Schultz acknowledged that he has a “complicated” relationship with Seattle, a city he first fell in love with during a visit to Pike Place Market in 1981. It’s the city where he grew a small coffee-roasting company into an inescapable global chain, where he and his wife raised their two children, and where the couple still lives.
Along the way he made Starbucks one of the first U.S. companies to offer stock options and health insurance even to part-time employees; more recently, it partnered with Arizona State University to cover tuition for workers who want to earn their bachelor’s degrees online.
In the commentary Schultz apologized for selling the Sonics, calling it “the biggest regret of my professional life. … I do not expect my actions to be forgiven or forgotten.”
Democrats also are critical of Schultz for opposing the now-in-place $15 minimum wage in Seattle and being against arbitrarily taxing the rich — an increasingly popular talking point for the left, including already declared presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
The company said in a filing last year that the proposal would not “enhance Alphabet’s existing commitment to corporate sustainability,” noting that Alphabet chief executive officer Larry Page collected a salary of only $1. Alphabet Chairman John Hennessy said at that shareholder meeting that the company would consider diverse candidates for its board, and Google’s human resources head, Eileen Naughton, said the company aimed to increase its share of black, Latino and female workers by 2020.
