Lawyers for the Trump administration decided on Monday that the Internal Revenue Service will be able to issue tax refunds, despite the government shutdown.
During earlier shutdowns, including one last year, the IRS said it would not send out any refunds. A senior official with the Office of Management and Budget told The Washington Post that it was decided processing tax refunds is similar to paying Social Security benefits, which is allowed during a government shutdown.
Several Democrats say this not only goes against precedent but also the Antideficiency Act, which states that federal agencies cannot spend money that has not been authorized by Congress. "What we're seeing now is an effort by the administration to ignore legal views, to basically put aside the law and limit the political impact of what's going on," Sam Berger, who worked in the general counsel's office at the OMB during the Obama administration, told the Post.
Since the shutdown started on Dec. 22, 90 percent of IRS staffers have had to stay home without pay. Roughly 800,000 federal workers will miss out on their first paycheck this week. Catherine Garcia
As the relationship between the United States and China deteriorates, Beijing is looking to tone down its rhetoric and salvage something, The New York Times reports.
Recently, top Chinese diplomats, academics, and state-run media outlets have — publicly, at least — taken a more moderate stance and backed efforts to find a way to co-exist peacefully with the United States. "There's a reflection that we should not let nationalism or hotheadedness somehow kidnap our foreign policy," Xu Quinduo, a commentator for state-run broadcaster China Radio International, told the Times. "Tough rhetoric should not replace rational diplomacy."
There have been both fewer calls for China to challenge the U.S. military and direct attacks on President Trump, and the strategy seems to be backed up by actions, as well. Earlier this week, for instance, The South China Morning Post reported that Chinese troops were given orders not to escalate the situation in the disputed South China Sea, where both the U.S. and Chinese have upped their military operations. "China won't fire the first shot," Jin Canrong, an international studies professor at Renmin University, told the Times.
It's not all about the U.S., however. China has also strained its relations with neighboring India, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia of late. "Beijing's rhetoric appears aimed at defusing the global backlash its brash diplomacy and harsh policies have provoked," said Jessica Chen Weiss, an associate professor of government at Cornell University. Read more at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee, may already be playing a key role in shifting the crucial swing state of Florida toward her running mate and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.
The choice of Harris, who is of both Jamaican and Indian descent, for the ticket has excited the oft-ignored Caribbean-American voting bloc, especially among the Black West Indian diaspora, Politico reports. "It's the pick that energizes us. It's the pick that's getting us motivated," said Karen Andre, one of Biden's top Florida advisers. Andre, who is of Haitian-American descent, said the campaign is preparing a "full 360 degree effort" to engage Caribbean-American voters with paid radio ads in Creole and English, as well as possibly having local radio hosts interview the potential vice president.
Andre told Politico her phone was "burning" with calls from Jamaican-Americans after the Harris announcement, but she added she's also "heard from Haiti, Trinidad, Barbados, Bahamas."
Like all voting groups, Caribbean-Americans are not a monolith, and not every voter of Jamaican or Haitian descent, for instance, will vote for the Biden-Harris ticket. But Hans Mardy, a Haitian-American Republican activist in Miami who is struggling to support Trump after he vulgarly insulted Haiti earlier in his tenure, said people of Haitian and Jamaican descent in South Florida "have a very tight connection," indicating the apparent excitement about the presumptive Democratic ticket could indeed be infectious within the community. Read more at Politico. Tim O'Donnell
As the controversy over the state of the United States Postal Service grows, the agency on Friday night said it will stop removing letter collection boxes in at least several states after facing backlash from lawmakers.
Photos of the removal of collection boxes began circulating online Friday, prompting critics of the Trump administration to add the action to their list of examples, which include potential mailing delays and reduced post office operating hours, of why they believe the president may be trying to manipulate the 2020 election by making mail-in voting more difficult. Kim Frum, a spokeswoman for USPS, said the removals were routine and that the agency was moving "low-use boxes to high traffic areas."
Nevertheless, USPS spokesman Rod Spurgeon told CNN in a statement that the service would stop removing the boxes in 16 states — mostly in the West and Midwest — and in parts of two others until after the election. It wasn't clear if the moratorium would go into effect nationally, per CNN, although Spurgeon did tell NBC News that "we are not going to be removing any boxes." Read more at CNN. Tim O'Donnell