Latest news with #Congr
Indian Express
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Kejriwal, Sisodia ‘missing', disquiet grows in Delhi AAP: ‘Abandoned by leadership'
THE defection of the 13 rebel Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), who announced the formation of their breakaway outfit Saturday, has brought the growing fissures within the Delhi AAP to light. With this exodus, the AAP's strength in the 250-member MCD, a key body that oversees civic projects in Delhi, has plunged to 100. In contrast, the BJP's tally now stands at 117. In the MCD polls held in December 2022, the AAP had clinched a majority, securing 134 seats as against the BJP's 104. The Congress had won nine seats, while the remaining ones were picked by the Independents. With the anti-defection law not applicable to the MCD, the defection of the councillors cannot be challenged, thereby spelling further trouble for the AAP which lost power in Delhi in the February 2025 Assembly polls after a decade-long rule. The 13 AAP councillors' revolt came ahead of the MCD's zonal ward committee elections for the posts of the Chairpersons and Deputy Chairpersons. This is a crucial process that includes voting to fill two seats on the MCD Standing Committee, an 18-member body that holds significant financial power as it oversees all civic projects exceeding Rs 5 crore. Due to a tug of war between the AAP and the BJP, the Standing Committee has remained non-functional since the MCD elections in December 2022, leaving many crucial aspects of civic governance in limbo. Several AAP councillors told The Indian Express on the condition of anonymity that party supremo and ex-Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's 'limited public appearances and interaction with AAP rank and file' in the wake of the party's Assembly poll defeat at the hands of the BJP has left the AAP workers 'demoralised'. Kejriwal has since spoken to the AAP workers only twice: on Shahidi Diwas and Dr BR Ambedkar's birth anniversary. An AAP councillor said the defection of his colleagues was not a 'surprise'. 'We saw this coming… There has not been a single post-election dialogue held by the party leadership with the Delhi councillors for months… We are fighting daily battles at the municipal level without any direction from the top,' the councillor said. Senior AAP leaders, including Kejriwal, former Deputy CM Manish Sisodia and ex-minister Satyendar Jain, have been currently focusing on Punjab, the lone state where the party now rules, frequently camping there. While Sisodia is the AAP in-charge of Punjab, Jain is his deputy in the state. This leaves a leadership vacuum in Delhi, where the party's morale and control have seen a steady erosion. Several AAP activists admitted to feeling 'abandoned' by the leadership. Led by Moralband councillor Hemanchand Goyal, the rebel group submitted a signed statement to the MCD Saturday, citing 'disillusionment with the AAP's leadership and the breakdown of internal coordination' as primary reasons for their move. The most notable defection is that of Mukesh Goel, the AAP's former leader of the MCD. A former Congress leader who joined the AAP ahead of the 2022 MCD polls, Goel was seen as one of the party's key faces in the municipal body. 'We were elected on the AAP's ticket in 2022, but since then, the top leadership failed to maintain any coordination with us. The promises made to the public remained unfulfilled. We felt we were being used only for optics,' said the joint letter submitted by the councillors. The defectors, who have now formed a new outfit, called the Indraprastha Vikas Party (IVP), include councillors from Bankner, Vasant Vihar, Sadar Bazar, Vikas Puri and Mayur Vihar, among others. They say the IVP will operate as an independent front and will be restricted at the MCD level, positioning itself as a 'strong and constructive opposition.' The AAP has accused the BJP of allegedly engineering defections through financial inducements. 'Each councillor was offered Rs 5 crore,' the AAP alleged, adding that the BJP was trying to gain 'backdoor control' of the MCD ahead of the crucial Standing Committee and ward committee elections. The BJP's MCD Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh, however, dismissed these allegations. 'AAP's internal chaos, not BJP, is the reason behind this breakaway. They failed to even maintain basic sanitation during their tenure. This is a result of their own misgovernance,' he said. Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav also took a swipe at the AAP, calling the defection 'a reflection of the party's decaying leadership structure under Kejriwal'.
Los Angeles Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The inescapable answer to America's problems? Fix Congress
Pretty much on a daily basis now, I find myself muttering or shouting, 'If only Congress wasn't broken,' or something to that effect. I'm happy to acknowledge that our problems have many causes. Still, here's my answer to the question 'What is one thing you would do to solve — or just improve — American politics and America's mounting list of crises?': Fix Congress. Sort of like Balzac's famous line, 'Show me a great fortune, and I'll show you a great crime,' if you show me a big problem, I can make the case that Congress' dysfunction either created the problem or made it worse. This is not a partisan point because the problem has been worsening for decades. But we might as deal with the problem right now. And right now Congress is controlled by Republicans and they are controlled by the president. Whatever you think of Donald Trump's various executive orders — I think it's been a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly — the simple fact is that presidents aren't supposed to govern or legislate by diktat. Love Trump's Bernie-Sanders-style executive order to lower the price of drugs? Fine, you should know that it probably won't pass muster in the courts. But even if it does, what is done by executive order can be undone by executive order. If you want price controls or any of his executive fatwas to become the law of the land, they need to be made laws. And only Congress can do that. Except Congress can't, or won't. Which is mostly fine with Trump because he'd often rather have the fight over the issue, and the appearance of royal authority, than do the hard work of getting legislation in and out of Congress. You may have noticed that the president likes to generate controversy and have people believe him when he says stuff like, 'I run the country and the world.' Issuing legally dubious, evanescent, executive orders serves both purposes. Reporters run around covering the orders like Trump has actually done the thing he's said he's done, giving him the headline he craves and fomenting panic among his foes. If and when judges block him, he gets a fresh issue: 'Rogue' judges are standing in his way. For his fans, the issue becomes judges exceeding their authority, not judges preventing Trump from exceeding his. And for fans and foes alike, judges are cast as partisan actors, eroding trust in the judiciary. Broadly speaking, judges aren't supposed to be a check on the executive on most issues. That, too, is Congress' job via the power of the purse. It's also the only branch that can fire a president. But it's proved incapable of that too. Which simply invites presidents to test or ignore the limits on their authority and gripe about 'unelected judges' when stymied. The proliferation of nationwide judicial injunctions against the executive is a problem. It's been getting worse for decades. But why? Because presidents increasingly try to legislate via executive order — because Congress lets them. Pick almost any issue. Trade? The Constitution gives Congress sole authority to regulate trade. But over the last century, Congress has more or less transferred that authority to the executive branch. Immigration? Making hay with the complexities of the issue helps both parties politically and solving it through reform of the immigration laws is hard and painful. Better to do nothing. The national debt? Congress has successfully followed its own budget process only four times in the last half a century, the last instance was in 1997. And only once — in 1977 — did it manage that on time. Congress instead relies on a slew of ugly stopgaps, continuing resolutions and omnibus bills that put spending on autopilot. This isn't just a wonky point about sausage-making. Congress is where politics is supposed to happen. When it fails to absorb political and partisan passions, those passions spill out into institutions not designed to absorb them. The House and the Senate were designed to force consensus across a vast nation with diverse interests. When Congress is working properly, that's an ugly and difficult process (hence the cliche about sausage-making). It involves fact-finding through adversarial hearings, horse-trading and compromise. But the process and the end product have democratic legitimacy. The result earns buy-in from stakeholders and voters because the political fights are public and lengthy, requiring representatives and senators to explain and defend their positions. The bills they pass — laws! — cannot be overturned by presidents or, for the most part, by the courts. Though we're seeing that rule tested nearly daily. The abdication of Congress' role as the arena where political fights happen has turned the House and the Senate into a stew of de facto pundits and lobbyists of the executive branch, which steadily aggrandizes to itself authority not found in the Constitution. In short, when in doubt, blame Congress. @JonahDispatch
The Herald Scotland
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
A look at Pope Francis' meetings with Obama, Trump and Biden
By the time Francis took over as leader of the Catholic Church in 2013, meetings between the president and the pontiff had become commonplace. During the dozen years that he served as the pontiff, Francis, who died April 21, met each of the three men who served as the U.S. president during his papacy. The pope's confabs with the American leaders took place at the Vatican and in Washington and included presidents from both political parties. Obama 'extremely moved' by Francis' insights on world problems Francis had been pope just a little over a year when he met with Obama for the first time in Rome in March 2014. The two leaders didn't see eye to eye on some issues. The church opposed same-sex marriage, which Obama supported. And the Vatican objected to the Affordable Care Act's mandate that Catholic hospitals and institutions provide health plans that cover contraceptive drugs and abortion-inducing medications, such as morning-after pills, which the church opposed on moral grounds. But Obama said those issues didn't come up during his meeting with Francis that came about midway through his second term in the White House. Champion of religious solidarity: Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist leaders mourn Pope Francis death They talked instead about international conflict, human rights and religious freedom and "the responsibilities that we all share to care for the least of these, the poor, the excluded," Obama said. "I was extremely moved by his insights about the importance of us all having a moral perspective on world problems and not simply thinking in terms of our own narrow self-interests," Obama added. Obama invited the pope to visit the United States. The next year, he did. On Sept. 22, 2015, Pope Francis' gleaming white Alitalia plane - colloquially known as "Shepherd One" - touched down at Joint Base Andrews just outside of Washington as the pontiff began a historic six-day, three-city visit. It was the first time Francis had set foot on American soil. The Spanish-speaking pope arrived in the United States via Cuba, where he had met with Fidel Castro in what the Vatican described as an "informal and friendly" encounter. When did Pope Francis die: A brief timeline from hospitalization to final appearance and death In Washington, Francis waved to cheering crowds, embraced children and basked in the pageantry of an official arrival ceremony on the White House South Lawn. Standing alongside Obama before a crowd of politicians, luminaries and ordinary citizens, Francis endorsed Obama's efforts to cut air pollution and combat climate change. "When it comes to the care of our 'common home,' we are living at a critical moment of history," he said. How did Pope Francis die? Catholic leader had been hospitalized with double pneumonia Obama said Francis reminded the world that "we have a sacred obligation to protect our planet - God's magnificent gift to us." The next day, Francis made history when he became the first pope to address a joint session of Congress. Outside the U.S. Capitol, a crowd estimated at 50,000 watched the pope's speech live on Jumbotrons. The masses cheered when he invoked Martin Luther King Jr.'s Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery and urged lawmakers to embrace "the stranger in our midst." A few minutes after wrapping up his speech, Pope Francis appeared on a Capitol balcony with a group of dignitaries that included two prominent Catholics, Biden and House Speaker John Boehner. The pontiff blessed the masses below and asked them to pray for him. Trump battles with 'pretty good guy' Pope Francis Trump feuded with Pope Francis long before he ever met him. A few days after Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected in 2013 to be the next pope of the Catholic Church, Trump, then a businessman and TV reality star, questioned the frugality of the man who would become known as Pope Francis. "I don't like seeing the Pope standing at the checkout counter (front desk) of a hotel in order to pay his bill," Trump tweeted. "It's not Pope-like!" By the time Trump declared his candidacy and emerged as the GOP frontrunner two years later in 2015, he declared that the pope "seems like a pretty good guy" but complained that he was too political. Asked during an interview on CNN how he'd respond if the pope told him capitalism was too toxic, he replied, "I'd say, 'ISIS wants to get you.'" A few months later, Trump said the pope doesn't understand the problems the United States faces, particularly the open border with Mexico. The pope suggested Trump "is not a Christian" amid the Republican's calls for deporting immigrants and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. 'Loving pastor, challenging teacher': Catholics across the US mourn Pope Francis' death "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian," he told journalists. "This is not the gospel." Trump responded that the pontiff's remarks were "disgraceful." Four months after Trump became president, he met with Francis as part of his first trip abroad as leader of the free world. The private meeting took place on May 24, 2017, at Vatican City. Photos before their meeting showed Trump smiling broadly, while the pope appeared stern. However, the pontiff emerged from their talk with a more upbeat look. The pope gave Trump a signed-and-bound copy of his remarks from World Peace Day and a set of English-language translations of his papal writings, including his 2015 encyclical on climate change. "I'll be reading them," said Trump, a climate change skeptic. "We can use peace," he added. Timeline: As President Trump meets Pope Francis at the Vatican, a timeline of their history Trump later tweeted: "Honor of a lifetime to meet His Holiness Pope Francis. I leave the Vatican more determined than ever to pursue PEACE in our world." The Vatican, in a statement, expressed hope that the encounter would be the start of a "serene collaboration" with the Trump administration. Biden to Pope Francis: 'God love ya!' Biden had already met Pope Francis three times before becoming president. In 2013, when Biden was vice president, he led the U.S. delegation to Francis' formal installation as pope. The two men met again when the pontiff visited the United States in 2015 and when Biden visited the Vatican in 2016 to speak about cancer prevention at a conference on regenerative medicine By 2021, Biden was president. A devout Catholic who attends Mass regularly and carried rosary beads that belonged to his deceased son Beau, Biden faced serious concerns among some U.S. Catholic bishops over his support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Some conservative bishops questioned whether Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be allowed to receive Communion. 'May God rest his soul': How the world is reacting to the death of Pope Francis Nine months after Biden took office, he met with Francis at the Vatican on Oct. 30, 2021, while he was in Rome for the Group of 20 summit of world leaders. The meeting with the pope was closed to the press, but Biden said abortion never came up during their conversation and that Francis told him he should continue to receive Communion. "We just talked about the fact he was happy that I was a good Catholic, and I should keep receiving Communion," Biden said. Biden said the pope blessed his rosary and that he said a prayer with the pontiff. "And he said one for me," he said. Biden also joked about their ages. At the time, he was 78 and Francis was 84, but Biden suggested they both felt a lot younger. "God love ya!" Biden told the pope, using one of his familiar expressions that took on greater significant at the Vatican. A 'son of immigrants': Pope Francis leaves lasting legacy The meeting lasted for nearly an hour and half, longer than Francis' meetings with Obama and Trump. Biden had planned to meet with Francis again the weekend before his presidential term ended in January. But he canceled the trip so he could remain in the United States and focus on wildfires in Los Angeles. Contributing: David Jackson Follow Michael Collins on X @mcollinsNEWS.
