Endorsing President Trump in 2020?

Republicans Come Up With Every Excuse to Avoid Saying Whether They Will Endorse Trump in 2020

Clio Chang

Donald Trump has announced that he is running for re-election in 2020. He has hired staff to run his campaign. He has filed his paperwork and has been raising money all year. That’s not to mention the fact that Trump’s personality and presence is the physical embodiment of “he’s running” meme. But apparently, it’s too early to ask Republicans whether they will back Trump’s bid because they have not thought about it at all, not even one bit.

On Thursday, CNN published an article that asked a number of GOP lawmakers whether or not they would endorse the sitting president of their own political party. The answers are—how can I put it—so 2016.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn: “I don’t know what the world is going to look like. But let’s say it’s not something I’ve given any thought to.”

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, several days later: “I haven’t even thought about that election. I’m worried about the midterm election.”

Senator Lamar Alexander: “Look, I’m focused on opioids. And I was just reelected myself three years ago. So, I’m focused on that.”

Representative Bill Huizenga: “That’s a little loaded. One: we need to make sure that he’s actually moving forward and wants to go after this — so when he makes a declaration, then I think that would be a time to determine whether there are others [who] run or not.”

Senator Susan Collins: “I did not endorse the President for the Republican nomination in 2016. I supported first Jeb Bush and then John Kasich. So, again, I think it is far too early to make a judgment of that type.”

Representative Mark Sanford: “I’m worried about my own race right now.”

[Outgoing] Representative Charlie Dent: “Wait until the midterms. If we get wiped out, the question is going to be: ‘Should we do that again?’”

Senator John Kennedy: “I’ve supported the President in the past and support him now but three years from now? I think the midterms are a long ways away in terms of politics; I don’t get involved that far ahead.”

Senator John Thune: “Well that’s a long ways off. I want to get through 2018 first.”

Representative Mario Diaz-Balart: “I’m focused on working and doing what I do and so to talk about what might happen in that time I think is premature. We have one President, he’s President until the next election, and I will continue to work with him like I work with everybody else to get things done.”

Representative Adam Kinzinger: “That’s 2020 — pretty far away.”

So far away! Ha ha, funny you should ask if I’ll endorse Trump, I have not even thought one bit about it? Because I’m too focused on, uh, [checks notes], opioids. I mean, what will the world even look like?

Bad! The world will look bad, as it does right now you gremlins. But of course, these lawmakers have mostly stuck by this racist administration as Trump regularly flaunts any form of justice. They might be hedging now for political reasons, but there’s no doubt that after a year or so of “soul searching,” the GOP will end up in Trump’s lap, right where it started.

Above is from:  https://splinternews.com/republicans-come-up-with-every-excuse-to-avoid-saying-w-1825382680

Joe Raedle/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Ever since he became the president of the United States, people have wondered whether Republican Donald Trump will win a 2020 reelection. As the 2018 midterms approach, it's a question that's weighing more heavily than ever on political analysts. Some say yes to the possibility of a second victory for Trump while others remain skeptical. Either way, it's a loaded subject.

In February, Trump shared his intentions of running for a second presidential race, but a CNN report on Thursday noted that a "wide array" of House and Senate Republicans have yet to declare their support for him. The news network described the lack of definitive say on backing Trump as "deep uncertainty on Capitol Hill" and shared quotes from Republican lawmakers about whether they'd align with Trump in his second bid.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of the Republican Party told CNN, "I don't know what the world is going to look like. But let's say it's not something I've given any thought to." When he was asked the same question again after a few days, Cornyn persisted, "I haven't even thought about that election." He added, "I'm worried about the midterm election."

CNN reported that Cornyn wasn't the only one to shy away from giving a categorical thumbs-up to Trump. Republicans like Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander said that there were other issues to focus on. "Look, I'm focused on opioids," Alexander told CNN and added, "And I was just re-elected myself three years ago. So, I'm focused on that." Though some Republican lawmakers have pledged their support in 2020, the number that hasn't could be telling.

Beyond those who won't openly say yay or nay to Trump, there are a few Republicans who are doubtful of Trump committing to the idea of running one more time. Although Trump has already picked Brad Parscale to be his campaign manager in 2020, some GOP members don't think the president will actually go through running for office again.

When CNN asked Michigan Rep. Bill Huizenga whether he'd back Trump in a second bid for presidency, he said that it's a "little loaded." He explained, "One: we need to make sure that he's actually moving forward and wants to go after this ― so when he makes a declaration, then I think that would be a time to determine whether there are others [who] run or not."

Other Republicans, like South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, have their focus elsewhere. Sanford told CNN that he was "more worried about my own race right now." Additionally, Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois expressed to CNN that 2020 was "pretty far away" to mull over so soon.

Above is from:  https://www.bustle.com/p/will-trump-win-in-2020-republicans-loyalty-to-the-president-could-be-seriously-dwindling-8848323

State money on the way to county fair

State’s message to Boone County Fair Association: The check is in the mail.

BELVIDERE — That sigh of relief you’re hearing is coming from Belvidere.

State funding is on its way to help cover the Boone County Fair’s 2018 operating expenses. That’s good news, considering Illinois’ bill backlog is projected to be $7.7 billion when the 2018 fiscal year ends June 30. The funds are coming from the Illinois Department of Agriculture, which provides financial support to county fair associations across the state for their operating expenses.

Jamey Dunn, a spokesman for the Illinois Comptroller’s Office, said the Agriculture Department on Thursday sent the Comptroller’s Office a priority list of payments to be distributed, including $64,715.12 for the Boone County Fair Association. Dunn said the total amount paid to county fairs on Thursday was just under $2.9 million.

Boone County Fair Vice President Jack Ratcliffe says it’s been a long wait. “We were told we were going to get the money in December,” Ratcliffe said.

Ratcliffe said he expects an additional $20,000 from the Agriculture Department this summer.

The Boone County Fair is a not-for-profit organization and it will be held Aug. 7-12 this year as planned.

Last year’s fair drew a record 211,000 people, Ratcliffe said.

The Comptroller’s Office says a $43,974.12 payment was made Thursday to the Stephenson County Fair Association.

Stephenson County Fair Executive Director Amy Maggio said she and her board had not received the payment as of Friday afternoon.

“We’ve been calling every other week,” she said. “That money helps us put on the fair. We’re a premium fair. We also won’t be able to do any building improvement or upkeep of the grounds.”

State Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, said that he voted against passage of a budget last year that was “over $1 billion unbalanced.”

“At the time we warned that painful cuts would have to be made in non-mandated areas to balance the budget,” he said. “When you can’t cut education, Medicaid, pensions, and court-ordered programs, it leaves very few areas that can be cut.”

State Sen. Steve Stadelman, D-Rockford, said money for county fairs was appropriated by the General Assembly, and he criticized Gov. Bruce Rauner for making cuts at the expense of rural communities.

“It sends the wrong signal to agriculture,” he said. “We are an agricultural state.”

Stadelman and county fair officials also pointed out a University of Illinois 2014 study that showed the state’s county fairs annually inject about $170 million into the state’s economy.

While most of the state’s county fairs are funded from the Agricultural Department’s Premium and Rehabilitation Fund, some are funded out of the Agricultural Department’s Exposition Fund.

The Winnebago County Fair is one of Illinois’ 11 exposition-funded fairs, all of which have received funding, said James Walsh, Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs president.

Winnebago County Fair President Richard Bean could not be reached for comment. According to the Department of Agriculture’s Recapitulation Report of 2017, Illinois County Fairs, the Winnebago County Fair was eligible to receive nearly $72,000.

Ken DeCoster: 815-987-1391; kdecoster@rrstar.com @DeCosterKen

Chris Green: 815-987-1241; cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180420/states-message-to-boone-county-fair-association-check-is-in-mail

Will Boone County miss the solar farm boom?

Above is from:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-solar-farms-chicago-area-projects-20180412-story.html

Belvidere “alley” issue fails because of Mayor’s veto

Local News

Belvidere city council members argue over neighborhood alley improvement

By: Gregory Cormier

Updated: Apr 16, 2018 11:00 PM CDT

BELVIDERE - "It's a safety issue being that there's going to be a paved alley with people driving 25 miles an hour, 8 feet from my house," said Belvidere resident Scott Cregreen. He worries about what will happen if the city improves an alley in his neighborhood.

The alley between East 8th and 9th Streets has been a topic of controversy recently. City council members have tried more than once over the last few years to approve paving it.

"Something like this to me is just pretty ludicrous, we don't have the money," said Belvidere Mayor Mike Chamberlain. "It's been discussed multiple times, I have a problem with the ethics of who brought it and who voted," he added.

Chamberlain vetoed the council's vote to pave the alley earlier this month. He says one alderman would personally benefit from the improvement. City council members could not get enough votes to override the veto.

"It passed with a super majority when we voted on it, it passed with a majority in 2012, moving forward I don't know what the next course of action will be," said Belvidere Alderman Marcia Freeman. Freeman lives near the alley and argues having it paved would have made it easier for homeowners to get to their backyards and help police and fire respond.

"My neighbors and the people I represent want their access back," said Freeman. "It's not that they are asking for an alley that doesn't exist, they're asking for their access back," she added. Chamberlain argues spending the 12,000 dollars for the project would take away from future investment in roads everyone in the city uses.

"We need to spend as much money as we can put in our budget every year in improving the streets that are used all day everyday," he said.

Above is from:  http://www.mystateline.com/news/local-news/belvidere-city-council-members-argue-over-neighborhood-alley-improvement/1126612358

Boone County Fair receives state money

Posted: Apr 19, 2018 6:46 PM CDT

BOONE COUNTY (WREX) -

After waiting for nearly $85,000 in state funding since November 2017, Illinois Comptroller's office told 13 News that they have been approved to release all fair funding immediately.

The Boone County Fair says through the Department of Agriculture, they had applied for funding. However, after speaking to the Comptroller's office, they said the Department of Agriculture applied for over $11 Million in voucher requests, but they only have $4.4 Million to allocate. The fair funding made the priority list and was just granted the funds it applied for.

Boone County board member, Jack Ratcliffe says if these funds didn't come soon, they would not have been able to make the necessary improvements they had planned on making for this years fair.

"All of our maintenance we need to do.. needs to be done by July, so we need the operating capital as soon as possible," Ratcliffe said.

Ratcliffe says they were able to avoid possible setbacks, like having to increase gate prices, or even cutting prize premiums thanks to the recent news of their funding going through.

Illinois State Senator, Dave Syverson says this funding is extremely important to the community, and to all the fairs around the state as well.

"It is a strong economic engine and has a rich history. The people who run the Boone County Fair have consistently been at the top in the state when it comes to managing great family fun," Syverson said.

The Boone County fair will take place at the Boone County Fair grounds from August 7 through 12.

Above is from:  http://www.wrex.com/story/37999660/2018/04/Thursday/boone-county-fair-receives-long-awaited-state-funding

Political killings shake Mexico election

April 18, 2018 / 12:07 AM / Updated 9 hours ago

'We are watching you': Political killings shake Mexico election

Lizbeth Diaz

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Magda Rubio had just launched her campaign for mayor of a small city in northern Mexico, when a chilling voice came through her cell phone. “Drop out,” the caller warned, “or be killed.”

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Policemen guard a crime scene where mayoral candidate Santana Cruz Bahena was gunned down at his home in the municipality of Hidalgotitlan, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico November 20, 2017. REUTERS/Angel Hernandez

It was the first of four death threats Rubio said she has received since January from the same well-spoken, anonymous man. She has stayed in the race in Guachochi, located in a mountainous region of Chihuahua state that is a key route for heroin trafficking. But two armed body guards now follow her round the clock.

“At 2 a.m., you start to get scared, and you say, ‘something bad is going on here’,” she said.

An explosion of political assassinations in Mexico has cast a pall over nationwide elections slated for July 1, when voters will choose their next president and fill a slew of down-ballot posts.

At least 82 candidates and office holders have been killed since the electoral season kicked off in September, making this the bloodiest presidential race in recent history, according to a tally by Etellekt, a security consultancy based in Mexico City, and Reuters research.

Four were slain in the past week alone. They include Juan Carlos Andrade Magana, who was running for re-election as mayor of the hamlet of Jilotlan de los Dolores, located in Mexico’s western Jalisco state. His bullet-ridden body was discovered Sunday morning inside his Toyota Prius on the edge of town; Andrade had just attended a funeral. State prosecutors are investigating, but have made no arrests.

The victims hail from a variety of political parties, large and small, and most were running for local offices far removed from the national spotlight. The vast majority were shot. Most cases remain unsolved, the killers’ motives unclear.

But security experts suspect drug gangs are driving much of the bloodshed. With a record of about 3,400 mostly local offices up for grabs in July, Mexico’s warring cartels appear to be jostling for influence in city halls nationwide, according to Vicente Sanchez, a professor of public administration at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana.

He said crime bosses are looking to install friendly lawmakers, eliminate those of rivals and scare off would-be reformers who might be bad for business. Local governments are a lucrative source of contracts and kickbacks, while their police forces can be pressed into service of the cartels.

“Criminal gangs want to be sure that in the next government, they can maintain their power networks, which is why they are increasing attacks,” Sanchez said.

Electoral authorities have warned that the bloodshed could affect voter turnout in some areas. The killing spree has stunned even veteran observers who see it as an assault on Mexico’s democracy and the rule of law.

“State and local authorities are outgunned and outmaneuvered and the federal forces cannot be everywhere,” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “There is an urgent need...to provide greater protection and insulation against organized crime.”

Policemen and soldiers guard a crime scene where mayoral candidate Santana Cruz Bahena was gunned down at his home in the municipality of Hidalgotitlan, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico November 20, 2017. REUTERS/Angel Hernandez

Mexico’s leaders are now scrambling to mount a response. Federal and state governments are providing candidates with bodyguards and, in some cases, bullet-proof vehicles. But the measures have proved largely ineffective as the death toll continue to rise.

FRAGILE TRUCES

Seeds of the current mayhem were planted more than a decade ago when the Mexican government, backed by the United States, set out to topple the heads of Mexico’s leading drug cartels.

The strategy succeeded in taking down kingpins such as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the longtime boss of the notorious Sinaloa Cartel, who now sits in a New York prison awaiting trial.

But the crackdown splintered established crime syndicates into dozens of competing gangs. Newcomers ratcheted up the savagery to intimidate rivals as well as police and public servants who might stand in their way.

A gang member from the state of Jalisco, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, explained how his cartel makes sure local officials tip them off to law enforcement actions.

    “If they don’t, there will be friction” he said, a polite euphemism for a bullet.

Pre-election violence has hit particularly hard in the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero, where at least eight candidates for local office have been slain in the past six months. Cartels with names like Los Ardillos (The Squirrels) and Los Tequileros (The Tequila Drinkers) are fighting there over extortion rackets and control of heroin and cocaine smuggling.

Catholic Bishop Salvador Rangel visited the city of Chilapa in early April to forge an election-season truce between warring factions to stop the killing.

It did not last. Within days, Chilapa’s police chief, Abdon Castrejon Legideno, was shot dead while on patrol. A Guerrero state spokesman said in a statement that authorities arrested a suspect found carrying a 9mm firearm near the scene.

The rising body count has been a millstone for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its deeply unpopular standard bearer, President Enrique Pena Nieto. Mexico’s leader has said little publicly about the spate of political killings.

The party is expected to fare poorly in the July vote. Pena Nieto is barred from a second term by Mexico’s constitution. The PRI’s candidate to replace him as president, Jose Antonio Meade, is polling well behind the front-runners.

Security ranks among voters’ biggest worries. Mexico posted a record of nearly 29,000 homicides last year, attributed mainly to organized crime and fallout from the drug war.

‘COYOTE LOOKING AFTER THE CHICKEN’

Some political candidates contacted by Reuters declined to comment or be identified out of fear of reprisals.

But in Chihuahua state, mayoral hopeful Rubio is speaking out about the death threats against her, hoping publicity will spur law enforcement to crack her case and deter any would-be attackers.

Rubio, 42, traveled to meet Reuters in the state’s biggest city, Ciudad Juarez, across the U.S. border from El Paso. Her husband and their four children accompanied her, but she requested that no information about them be revealed out of concern for their safety.

A lawyer and human rights activist, Rubio says she is running as an independent to prod government to do more for the region’s impoverished Raramuri indigenous people. She suspects whoever threatened her is not interested in change.

Her small town of Guachochi sits in the heart of the so-called Golden Triangle crisscrossing the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango, a region flush with leafy marijuana farms and fields dotted with pink and red opium poppies.

Rubio said she has suffered panic attacks since the anonymous caller began his warnings.

“They said, ‘we are watching you. It’s time for you to go’,” Rubio said.

Two local cops now shadow her, but Rubio said she is not resting easy. Cartels have a knack for infiltrating security details like a “coyote looking after the chicken,” she said.

Despite the risks, she said she wants to show her children and other women that Mexico’s institutions can work.

“I cannot quit,” Rubio said. “I’m here because I want a change in my country.”

(Refiles to amend number of posts up for election with latest information from national electoral institute, paragraph 8.)

Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Ciudad Juarez; Additional reporting by Uriel Sanchez in Acapulco; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Marla Dickerson

Above is from:  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-violence/we-are-watching-you-political-killings-shake-mexico-election-idUSKBN1HP0HV

Poplar Grove officials vote themselves an increase in pay

Above is from:  http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180418/poplar-grove-elected-officials-will-receive-more-pay-in-2021