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WASHINGTON ― When the 2008 financial crisis hit, the Democratic Party was forced to reckon with a dormant struggle between two internal factions that had ― until recently ― been feuding for centuries. One tradition, beginning with Thomas Jefferson and running through Franklin Delano Roosevelt, presented Democrats as defenders of the common man against the predations of elite financiers. Another, epitomized by 19th century Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland and his 20th century disciple Bill Clinton, viewed big business as an engine of progress and prosperity. There are other traditions in the party’s history, some shameful (see: segregation) and others obsolete (Prohibition). But the Democratic Party has spent most of its earthly tenure defining itself through its economic agenda.  By the time of the George W. Bush presidency, Democrats had evolved into the party of Economic Whatevz. If an economic program worked ― cool. If it didn’t ― well, that could be worked out. Voting ri...

He’s in deep shirt now. A Pennsylvania man arrested on suspicion of DUI was wearing a shirt that can be described, at best, as ironic. When Elwood R. Gutshall was arrested around 12:15 a.m. on March 19, the 44-year-old was wearing a green shirt reading “Drunk Lives Matter.”  Officers say they observed Gutshall committing multiple traffic violations in a green Ford pickup. “After subsequent investigation it was determined the driver was under the influence of alcohol beyond what he could safely operate a motor vehicle,” according to the department’s Facebook post. After Gutshall was t aken into custody, he was given a blood alcohol test that registered at 0.217 percent ― nearly triple the legal limit. Gutshall was charged with  “DUI Highest Rate,” a classification for offenders caught with a BAC of 0.16 and higher, according to the Washington Times. He was also charged with  driving under suspension and other traffic violations, according to PennLive.c...

Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone said Tuesday he’ll close the “tent city” jail in Phoenix, erasing one of the most controversial symbols of his conservative predecessor. Penzone said at a news conference Tuesday that he’d carried out a “methodical review” of the facility and concluded it was unnecessary. Shuttering it will save the county some $4.5 million , he said. “This facility is not a crime deterrent, it is not cost-efficient and it is not tough on criminals,” Penzone told reporters. “That may have been in the intent when it was first opened and there was a need. But this facility became more of a circus atmosphere for the general public. Starting today, that circus ends and these tents come down.” The change marked another in Penzone’s efforts to roll back the policies of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio , an immigration hard-liner who targeted undocumented immigrants in the Phoenix area using tactics that repeatedly landed him in federal court for racial profiling....

WASHINGTON ― A provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning gender-based discrimination also protects gay and lesbian employees, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled Tuesday. It marked the first time a full federal appeals court had reached that conclusion. The ruling stated that Title VII, which protects against discrimination based on gender, also applied to discrimination based on sexual orientation. Eight of the 11 appeals court judges who considered the case were appointed by Republican presidents, according to the Associated Press. The opinion stated that it was “neither here nor there that the Congress that enacted the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and chose to include sex as a prohibited basis for employment discrimination (no matter why it did so) may not have realized or understood the full scope of the words it chose.” The majority opinion added that members of the 88th Congress of 1964 may have been “surprised” by decisions in later years that found t...

WASHINGTON ― A theoretical deal between House Republicans and the White House to bring back their stalled health care bill is already running into the same old problem: reality. Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus looked ready to accept a proposal from the Trump administration that would allow states to opt out of key requirements in the Affordable Care Act ― namely, the essential health benefits and community rating provisions. The latter, in particular, ensures that sick people are not charged more than the healthy  ― which is a key component of the Obamacare guarantee of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions that Republicans promised to retain. But GOP leadership spent a good part of Tuesday hearing from moderates who said they could not accept such changes. While those rank-and-file moderates were publicly telling reporters they’d be willing to look at the legislative text of the proposal, some of them told The Huffington Post privately that the communi...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has filed a motion to end debate on Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, setting up a vote in the Senate over whether to “go nuclear” and change the Senate’s rules for nominations to the high court. Due to an unprecedented filibuster threat, I just filed cloture on the Judge #Gorsuch nomination. #SCOTUS — Leader McConnell (@SenateMajLdr) April 4, 2017 McConnell set a cloture vote for Thursday, at which point Democrats can block ending debate on the nomination. (Democrats have enough votes to do this, and are expected to do so.) McConnell can then move to change the rules for confirming Supreme Court nominees to require a simple majority, rather than 60 votes to end a filibuster, in what’s known as the “nuclear option.”   McConnell has vowed to confirm Gorsuch by the end of this week and has said he has the votes to change the rules.  While some of his GOP colleagues have raised concerns about wh...

WASHINGTON ― Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told Latino members of Congress that his immigration agents aren’t going rogue or blurring the line when it comes to enforcement at schools, churches and other sensitive locations, lawmakers said after meeting with him on Tuesday. But the members “vehemently disagree,” as Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, told reporters.  And they plan to keep collecting photos and other evidence to illustrate what they say is a marked change in immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump , who’s promised to unleash agents who felt constrained under the last administration. Kelly told lawmakers he would look into their reports of misconduct on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents, CHC members said. But overall, the secretary seemed defensive about the idea that even a small number of his agents might be violating policy, a...

Republicans are trying to pick up the pieces of their plan to repeal Obamacare, nearly two weeks after their last effort failed. But now they face a new problem: The law has become more popular than ever. Americans’ views of the current health care law are more positive than they’ve been since the bill was signed in 2010. On average, nearly half of the public now favors Obamacare, according to HuffPost Pollster’s aggregate, with only about 42 percent opposed. According to a new Gallup survey , Obamacare approval has jumped 13 percentage points in the last five months, thanks to increased backing from both Democrats and Republicans, as well as a notable 17-point swing among political independents. Fifty-five percent of the public now approves, the first time Gallup polling has found majority support for the law. ” If that majority holds, it would be a significant development,” Gallup’s Jim Norman wrote. “Politically, it creates a major obstacle to Trump and Congres...

At the beginning of their relationship , couple Nikki-Lee Flowerree and Tommy Redding spent many a date night at one of their favorite restaurants: The Cheesecake Factory .  “I’m 99 percent sure it’s where we had our first date,” Nikki-Lee told The Huffington Post. So when it came time to take their engagement photos on March 19 they headed over to their local Cheesecake Factory in San Diego’s Seaport District for a shoot with photog Jessica McGehee of Reflecting Grace Photography .  The Cheesecake Factory is known for its extensive menu offerings, but Nikki-Lee said she and Tommy usually end up ordering the same things.  “The buffalo blasts are amazing! For the main dish, I usually get stuffed chicken tortillas,” she told HuffPost. “I try to get something new each time, but always end up with that. Tommy usually gets fettuccine Alfredo or a burger.” And for dessert, they are all about the Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake, which even made an appearance in their...

North Korea on Tuesday launched a projectile that may be a ballistic missile, days before U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Florida. South Korean military officials said the unidentified projectile was fired from the North’s Sinpo region into the East Sea, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News. North Korea’s nuclear program is likely to be a top agenda item when Trump and Xi meet at Trump’s resort in Florida this week. Measures to deal with the hermit nation are likely to cause tension between the two leaders. “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all that I am telling you,” Trump told The Financial Times in an interview published Sunday. This is a developing story, check back for updates. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday held up the swift construction of the Empire State Building as a model builders should emulate as they take advantage of his forthcoming proposal to slash regulations and invest more than $1 trillion in infrastructure projects. “We will build in the spirit of one of the great projects in our nation’s history, an enduring symbol of American strength,” Trump said at a North America’s Building Trades Unions conference, referring to the New York City landmark completed in 1931. Trump went on to offer a romantic portrayal of the more than 3,000 laborers who erected the Empire State Building in just 13 months. But he made no mention of the consequences many of these people suffered in a workplace that offered few, if any, protections. “We’ve all seen the pictures: rugged workers perched dozens and dozens of stories up in the air,” Trump said at the Washington, D.C., conference. “Workers like these moved almost 60,000 tons of steel, installed 20...

A new environmental group was launched Tuesday with the goal of recruiting and electing staunch progressives to run for local government. Lead Locally , founded by veteran climate organizer Whit Jones, aims to counter President Donald Trump ’s fossil fuel-friendly agenda by helping hard-core clean-energy advocates win in city halls and county commissions across the country. The organization will hold a training session for potential candidates on April 30 in Washington, the day after the capital hosts a massive climate march. “Traditionally, the environmental movement has not engaged deeply in local elections,” said Jones, a former campaign director at the advocacy group Energy Action Coalition. “We need to channel the energy that the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign has created and inject it into local elections.”  Lead Locally is not just any liberal-leaning nonprofit. It is firmly in the ideological mold of Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) and the staunchly progressive bra...

SAN FRANCISCO ― Fewer hit-and-run accidents plagued California after the state began issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants two years ago, according to a new study . Stanford University researchers found an estimated 4,000 fewer hit-and-runs in 2015, the first year the licensing program went into effect. That’s a 7 percent drop, even though some 600,000 immigrant drivers obtained licenses under the AB60 law that year. Overall, the number of auto accidents and fatalities in California remained stable from 2014 to 2015, the Stanford report said. The study was published Monday in PNAS, the National Academy of Sciences journal.  The results may reassure some critics of the AB60 law, who had feared the number of crashes would rise with hundreds of thousands of newly licensed drivers. It was widely thought that many of those undocumented immigrants already drove without a license. “We’re seeing attacks on immigrants at the federal level, but here in...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor knows that equality is not a one-size-fits-all concept. In a conversation with the Aspen Institute Latinos and Society Program  published Monday, Sotomayor broke down why it’s wrong to believe that everyone in the United States is functioning on a level playing field. “There’s a continuing tension in America between the image of the person who pulls themselves up by the bootstraps, and the person who believes that you need a lift to get up sometimes,” Sotomayor told the program’s executive director, Abigail Golden-Vazquez. “Those people who believe that everyone must pull themselves up ― they don’t believe that people are entitled to help.” “For those of us who understand that sometimes no matter how tall the heel on your boot is, the barrier is so high that you need a small lift to help you get over it ― they will understand that the inequalities in society build that barrier so high,” she continued. “Unless you do something to ...

You know how teachers in well-intentioned, but unavoidably cringey ‘90s movies starring some nice white lady  tried to appeal to the youth by having her rap Shakespeare? Well, a new Pepsi ad featuring  Kendall Jenner is kind of like that, but somehow even more terrible. This two-and-a-half-minute disaster co-opts imagery of the various protests that have taken place before and after  Donald Trump ’s election, as well as the anger felt by many people, especially millennials, for the brand’s benefit.  The ad follows the reality TV star as she joins a crowd of young people marching by her totally casual street-side photoshoot. Whipping off her blond wig and smearing her lipstick, young Jenner picks up a Pepsi as her contemporaries of all races and orientations smile at her and fist bump along.  Seriously.  Someone actually fist bumps her.  That’s when the supermodel approaches a line of policemen monitoring the protest and hands a particularly att...

Fox News is embroiled in so many scandals these days that it’s hard to keep up. At least nine advertisers have pulled their ads from “The O’Reilly Factor” this week after  a New York Times investigation found  that five women have received payouts totaling $13 million as a result of sexual harassment allegations against host Bill O’Reilly.  Fox News’ toxic culture appears to extend beyond even that. A  minimum of 30 women have accused O’Reilly, former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes or other Fox News employees of sexual harassment and discrimination, attorney Lisa Bloom said Monday at a press conference. And yet O’Reilly and Fox News hold more power over American democracy and Republican voters than ever before.  Fox News has been the most-watched cable news network since 2002, when it overtook CNN   in the ratings. But in 2016, the network went one step further, beating out ESPN to become the most-watched network in all of cable . In fact, only ...

President Donald Trump reportedly considered giving Fox News the exclusive television rights to his inauguration, even though it doesn’t appear he’d be able to grant a single network such access to the ceremony’s public portions. And Fox News on Tuesday dismissed the idea that it could have gained exclusive access.  “There is no possibility of this ever happening given FOX News is part of the White House pool and the entire Inauguration is always divided up between the members of the pool ― NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and FOX News ― and each network takes on different responsibilities,” a Fox News spokesperson said in an email.  Trump’s affection for Fox News is well-known, evident in his promotional tweets  for sympathetic morning show “Fox & Friends” and the fact that he gave the conservative-leaning network more interviews as president than any other. Still, the notion Trump would consider only Fox News to broadcast the peaceful transfer of power in the United State...

Four days after Spain’s national court became the first foreign court to admit a criminal case against Syrian officials, a public prosecutor has filed an appeal to reverse the decision and halt the investigation into alleged crimes of state terrorism. BARCELONA , SPAIN – A Spanish public prosecutor has appealed a judge’s decision to admit a criminal case against nine officials from Bashar al-Assad’s government accused of state terrorism and allow an investigation into the matter, Syria Deeply has learned. In a potentially explosive ruling on Monday, the Spanish National Court became the first foreign court to admit a criminal case against the Syrian government and open such an investigation into whether state terrorism was committed. However, the prosecutor, Teresa Sandoval, has appealed the judge’s decision to accept the case and is seeking to have it overturned by a higher court. The prosecution had five days to appeal judge Eloy Velasco’s decision and submitted it to the Nat...

A Washington state man was charged with suspicion of second-degree murder after police said he fatally shot an intruder he caught showering inside his business. Bruce Fanning, 59, of Belfair, is accused of killing 31-year-old elementary school teacher Nathanial Rosa, of Bothell, on Saturday. Fanning owns an internet-based business located next to his home, according to the Mason County Sheriff’s Office. He entered his business on Saturday morning to find that a break-in had occurred and that the intruder was in the bathroom taking a shower, the sheriff’s office said. “Fanning first told the intruder to leave and the intruder aggressively responded with non-understandable verbal threats,” reads the probable cause affidavit . “Fanning thought the intruder was drunk. Fanning said he was afraid.” It was what happened next that landed Fanning in hot water, police said. “Fanning left his building and went to his other building on the property and retrieved his firea...