Trump’s Crypto Summit Shows That the Industry Is in Charge

“This is a very important day in your lives,” President Donald Trump told crypto executives at the White House on March 7. Trump was presiding over the first ever Crypto Summit, in which he and other cabinet officials gathered some of the biggest names in crypto to reemphasize the President’s support for the industry and to hear out the executives’ ideas for regulation and legislation. Participants largely came away from the meeting empowered—and believing that a new crypto era has dawned in Washington. 

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“The government representatives expressed that there has been a negative regime towards the crypto industry, and that regime is now coming to an end,” says Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, who attended the summit. “There’s a significant shift and huge amounts of support.” 

“Very open and receptive”

For the last few years, the crypto industry chafed at the enforcement actions brought against them by President Joe Biden’s Administration. Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led by Gary Gensler, sought to crack down on crypto companies he deemed were violating securities laws, and protect investors from the massive scams and frauds that are pervasive in the crypto world, like Terra-Luna and FTX. This resulted in lawsuits against companies big and small, including Coinbase. 

After Trump was elected, he appointed several cabinet members with close ties to the industry, such as  AI & crypto czar David Sacks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Many enforcement actions, including the case against Coinbase, have since been dropped. And the most pro-crypto commissioners of the SEC, most prominently Hester Peirce, were elevated: She now leads the SEC’s Crypto Task Force. 

All of those officials were present at the Summit, as well as Tom Emmer, the House Majority Whip. “I did not expect people that were so senior to be at the summit,” Nazarov says. “Everyone that came from the industry side was able to speak and provide their views. And all the senior government people, I think, were very open and receptive.” 

Trump himself led both a public press conference of the summit as well as a private conference with the executives. In his public remarks, he mocked Biden for his anti-crypto stance, asked Congress to pass bills on stablecoins and a digital asset framework before the August recess, and, for some reason, allowed FIFA president Gianni Infantino to show off the soccer World Cup Trophy and pitch the idea of creating a FIFA meme coin. “That coin may be worth more than FIFA in the end,” Trump said in response. (Trump’s own meme coin TRUMP initially raked in millions of dollars in trading fees alone, although it has since fallen all the way from its $75 peak to $12.)

Industry participants at the summit included Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, the Winklevoss twins, and Zach Witkoff, co-founder of Trump’s own crypto company, World Liberty Financial. Combined, the participants have given more than $11 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, according to the Intercept, and critics have raised many questions around conflict of interest. “When crypto companies spent over a hundred million dollars in the 2024 elections, they created a new playbook for the purchase of large-scale political power in America,” Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, wrote in an email statement to TIME. 

“The people that should be in front of him are in front of him, but there are also people who shouldn’t be in front of him who are in front of him,” says Avik Roy, co-founder and chairman of the think tank Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. “One of the challenges in public policy always is: How does someone in the President’s position distinguish between the people who are merely lobbying and the people who are public-spirited?”

After the summit, Trump’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued guidance allowing banks to hold cryptocurrency, and asking them to do their own diligence around risk. This served as yet another signal that Trump’s Administration will not regulate the industry very closely. “This industry was kind of unfairly suppressed from reaching its potential in the U.S. system,” Nazarov says. “They want to go completely the other way.”

Read More: Inside the Chess Match That Led the Feds to $3.6 Billion in Stolen Bitcoin

Trump’s crypto reserve

The summit came a day after Trump issued an Executive Order announcing the creation of a federal Bitcoin reserve. When Trump floated the idea earlier in the week, many people expressed concerns: that Trump would levy taxes in order to buy crypto, and that he was creating risks by including much smaller and volatile coins like Cardano and XRP in the proposal. 

But the Executive Order pulled back those plans quite a bit. It announced that the U.S. would not buy any new Bitcoin, but simply hold onto the cryptocurrencies that they had seized in seizures. Andrew O’Neill, the digital assets managing director of S&P Global Ratings, called the order “mainly symbolic” in a statement to TIME. 

Industry insiders cheered the decision to mainly focus on a separate Bitcoin reserve, effectively demoting the importance of the other crypto projects—whose founders have been lobbying Trump for support. “It would have been a pretty clearly a cronyist outcome where well-connected people were able to get the government to buy their tokens without really any obvious strategic rationale for doing so,” Roy says. “Bitcoin is a special case; it has no CEO.”

The Executive Order also calls for a full audit of the U.S.’ crypto holdings, which is estimated to include around 200,000 Bitcoin (worth about $17 billion). Yesha Yadav, a law professor at Vanderbilt who specializes in crypto and securities regulation, says that the audit will be important to determine how much of that Bitcoin is usable, and how much might need to be returned to fraud victims. A good portion of that Bitcoin stash likely comes from the Bitfinex hack, which the U.S. government seized in 2022. “Whether or not they’re motivated to trace every single victim in that case, whether victims have come forward, and whose claims have not been dealt with—that is something that’s going to have to be looked at,” Yadav says.

Crypto prices have been turbulent over the last month, in part due to uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs. But crypto industry insiders believe that ultimately, Trump’s laissez-faire approach will help them grow. “FTX is in the past now,” says Nazarov. “The big failures are in the past.”

Andrew R. Chow’s book about crypto and Sam Bankman-Fried, Cryptomania, was published in August.

source https://time.com/7265992/trump-crypto-summit-shows-industry-in-charge/

Russian Strikes on Ukraine Kill 20 as U.S. Cuts Intelligence Sharing With Kyiv

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian strikes on Ukraine have killed at least 20 people, officials said Saturday, as heavy aerial attacks continued into the second night following a U.S. decision to stop sharing satellite images with Ukraine.

The decision to withhold intelligence and military aid came on the heels of a tempestuous White House visit last week by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Without U.S. satellite imagery, Ukraine’s ability to strike inside Russia and defend itself from bombardment is significantly diminished.

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At least 11 people were killed in multiple strikes on a town in Ukraine’s embattled Donetsk region late Friday, regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin said. The attack damaged eight apartment blocks in the town of Dobropillya, which is close to the front where Russian troops have been making steady advances. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said a Russian drone damaged a Ukrainian fire truck while rescuers fought to extinguish the burning buildings.

Read More: Inside the Fallout from Trump’s Ukraine Intel Pause

Another six people were killed in the front-line towns of Pokrovsk, Kostyantynivka, Myrnograd and Ivanopillya, Filashkin said, while emergency services reported that three others died when a Russian drone hit a civilian workshop in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Filashkin declared Saturday a day of mourning in the region and warned that more victims could still be found in the rubble.

Zelensky said at least five children were among the injured in Dobropillya. “Last night, the Russian army fired two ballistic missiles at the center of Dobropillya,” he said. “After emergency services arrived at the scene, they launched another strike, deliberately targeting rescuers. It is a vile and inhumane intimidation tactic to which the Russians often resort.”

The wave of attacks took place just 24 hours after Russia hit Ukrainian energy facilities with dozens of missiles and drones, hobbling its ability to deliver heat and light to its citizens and to power weapons factories vital to its defenses.

U.S. freeze of intelligence sharing ups pressure on Zelensky

The barrage came after the U.S. suspended military aid and intelligence to Ukraine to pressure it into accepting a peace deal being pushed by the Trump administration.

When asked Friday by a reporter during an Oval Office exchange if Russian President Vladimir Putin was taking advantage of the U.S. pause on intelligence-sharing to attack Ukraine, President Donald Trump responded: “I think he’s doing what anybody else would.”

Zelensky did not reference the intelligence-sharing deal, but did seem to appeal to other statements Trump made Friday related to financial sanctions against Moscow. Writing on social media, the U.S. president proposed imposing large-scale banking sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a cease-fire and final peace settlement was reached.

Zelensky welcomed the prospect of additional sanctions on Moscow, saying, “Everything that helps Putin finance the war must be broken.”

Ukraine’s air force reported Saturday that Russian troops launched three Iskander missiles and 145 drones over the country overnight. The bombardment contained a mix of attack and decoy drones intended to confuse air defenses. One missile and 79 drones were shot down, while 54 more drones were lost without causing damage, the Ukrainian air force said.

Meanwhile, Russian troops shot down 31 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 26 over the country’s Krasnodar region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.

Falling debris from one drone sparked a blaze at the KINEF oil refinery in Russia’s northern Leningrad region, local Gov. Aleksandr Drozdenko said in a statement. No casualties were reported.

source https://time.com/7266080/russian-strikes-on-ukraine-fatalities-us-cuts-intelligence-sharing-kyiv/

Why Female Doctors Don’t Live as Long as Male Doctors

Everybody knows that women live longer than men—in the U.S., nearly 5.4 years longer. In our new study, however, we and our colleagues found that doctors might be an exception.

Using newly available data linking death records of anonymous Americans to their occupations, we studied mortality rates within our own profession: medicine. While in the general population and in high-income occupations, women have significantly lower mortality than men, we were surprised to find that among doctors, that wasn’t the case. In medicine—by this morbid measure, at least—women and men are on an even playing field.

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In the overall population, men’s higher mortality rates are driven by a few key conditions: unintentional injuries, diabetes, suicide, homicide, heart disease, and more recently, COVID-19. Women, meanwhile, are more likely to die from cancer and Alzheimer’s disease—conditions associated with the increased age that women are more likely to reach.

But our analysis found that in medicine, women are missing out on this benefit.

For example, among all workers with high incomes in the U.S., we found that women were 40% less likely to die in a given year than men. But for physicians, there was a statistically insignificant difference between the sexes.

What could explain this mortality puzzle?

Mortality rates are influenced by many different factors, and the data don’t point us to a specific cause. Normally, income and education are frequent culprits and good starting points when trying to explain mortality differences between groups. But education and income are largely similar between men and women doctors and therefore can’t explain our findings. In addition, in high-education, high-income professions like law and engineering, women did have lower mortality than men.

Read More: Why Do Taxi Drivers Have a Lower Risk of Alzheimer’s?

There are other possibilities, however. Mortality has been linked to stress at work and in life. For example, a study including more than 68,000 adults in England found that people who reported higher levels of psychological stress tended to die sooner than their peers.

Medicine’s stressful work environment could have unique health impacts on women. A study by one of us (Jena) and two University of Kansas economists, Lilly Springer and David Slusky, showed that after restrictions on the number of hours resident physicians could work were implemented in 2011, women resident physicians in Texas had better birth outcomes—a finding that was driven by women surgeons, who often have particularly unforgiving schedules and stressful work lives.

Then there are issues of bias—subconscious or overt—in the workplace. Although women now make up 38% of practicing physicians and more than half of U.S. medical students, studies show that they are promoted more slowly and paid less than men for similar work. Women doctors are also viewed as less career-oriented and report high rates of burnout and workplace sexual harassment from colleagues and patients alike. Women in physician practices comprised of predominantly men also earn less than their female peers in practices with more balanced numbers of men and women doctors. Despite these issues, studies suggest women achieve similar or better outcomes for their patients.

But many other occupations are more stressful for women than men—yet women in those fields still live longer than the men. What else could be going on?

People’s health, of course, is also affected by what happens outside of the workplace. Practicing medicine can be demanding on physicians’ time, energy, and wellbeing. The worst of this is during residency, where 80-plus hour work weeks, 24-plus hour shifts, and difficult on-call schedules are the norm. Although these hours improve after training, some version of this grueling calendar persists over the course of doctors’ careers.

Read More: Why We Can’t Rely on Science Alone to Make Public Health Decisions

At the end of those long days, physicians come home to the same household responsibilities as anyone else— responsibilities that only increase when physicians start a family.

Studies have repeatedly shown that women doctors tend to be the ones managing the majority of household responsibilities like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and childcare – coming home to the so-called “second shift” of work. This is true even in households where both spouses work as physicians. In one study, 31% of women physicians were married to a physician compared with 17% of men physicians, which may place unique household pressures on women physicians since their spouses are more likely to have similarly demanding occupations.

But again, the “second shift” isn’t unique to women in medicine. It’s true for women in every profession. There’s another possible explanation for our findings—that has nothing to do with women, but instead has to do with men. Both men and women doctors generally have significantly lower mortality rates than other high-income occupations. Perhaps men who are doctors take particularly good care of themselves compared to men in other high-income, high-education occupations.

A different data point in our study suggests, however, that physicians’ medical knowledge and access to care may not be enough. We found that physicians who were black women had higher mortality rates than white women in the general population – suggesting that the medical knowledge and better access to care that physicians enjoy does not wipe away differences in mortality rates among black women in particular.

Not one of these explanations alone fully explains why women in medicine don’t experience the mortality benefit they do in the rest of society, leaving us to presume the explanation lies in some combination of these factors—or others we haven’t mentioned or considered. The contributors to mortality are numerous, spanning far beyond gender, occupation, income, education, or race, and the interplay between these factors is complex.

But if the professionals dedicated to helping people live longer, healthier lives are defying broad mortality patterns across the country, we must ask why—even if there’s no easy or obvious answer to the question.

source https://time.com/7261514/female-doctors-longevity-gap/

No Sympathy from Family for Some Axed Federal Workers

NEW YORK — Scrambling to replace their health insurance and to find new work, some laid-off federal workers are running into another unexpected unpleasantry: Relatives cheering their firing.

The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of the government’s cost-cutting measures. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste.

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“I’ve been treated as a public enemy by the government and now it’s bleeding into my own family,” says 24-year-old Luke Tobin, who was fired last month from his job as a technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest.

Read More: How Close Are We to a Government Shutdown?

Tobin’s job loss sent him scurrying to fill prescriptions before he lost his health insurance and filling out dozens of applications to find whatever work he can, even if it’s at a fast-food restaurant. But some relatives reacting to his firing as “what has to happen to make the government great again” has been one of the worst parts of the entire ordeal.

“They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones,” says Tobin.

Kristin Jenn got a similar response from members of her family after she learned the National Park Service ranger job she was due to start had been put on hold by the billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency hiring freeze. She thinks it’s likely the job will be eliminated altogether.

As she has expressed her disappointment over potentially losing her dream job, some members of her mostly conservative family have unfriended her on social media. Others are giving her the silent treatment. Nearly all favor such cuts even if she’s a victim of them.

“My life is disintegrating because I can’t work in my chosen field,” says Jenn, 47, from Austin, Texas. “Lump on top of that no support from family – it hits you very hard.”

Read More: Veterans Fired From Federal Government Jobs Feel ‘Betrayed’ by Trump

The strife has extended to Jenn’s mother, a former federal employee herself. When she has criticized the administration’s actions, her mother simply says she supports the president.

“She has somehow been convinced that public servants are a parasite and unproductive even though she was a public servant,” says Jenn.

The federal job cuts are the work of DOGE, which has been tearing through agencies looking for suspected waste. No official tally of firings has been released, but the list stretches into the thousands and to nearly every part of the country.

More layoffs are expected as DOGE continues its work.

Eric Anderson, 48, of Chicago, was still absorbing the shock of being fired from his National Parks Service job as a biological science technician when he came across his aunt’s social media post celebrating the DOGE cuts. The gist, Anderson said, was, “Man, it sure is great seeing all this waste being knocked off.”

He grows angry thinking about it.

“Do you think I’m a waste?” he says, his voice rising as he recalls the post. “There are a lot of people out there that are hurting right now that are not a waste.”

Read More: DOGE Fires Hundreds of Weather Forecasters

Erica Stubbs, who was working as a forestry technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Boulder, Colorado, is avoiding social media after seeing hate for federal workers.

Though most people in her life have been supportive since she was fired, some have made passing comments about the necessity of eliminating jobs like hers.

“What they tell me is it’s just cutting out the waste, the excess spending — that your job’s not that important,” says 27-year-old Stubbs. “I’m not saying it’s the most important job in the world but it’s my job. It’s important to me.”

Social media is teeming with posts reveling the layoffs and urging DOGE: “Fire more!” In a fiercely divided country, many saw the cutbacks through their own political lens.

One man’s devastation, it turns out, can be another man’s delight.

Riley Rackliffe, who was working as an aquatic ecologist at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada, was buoyed that his firing led so many friends and relatives to reach out, offering to pass his resume along, call their congressman or even help with his mortgage.

Mixed with that, though, has been the vitriol.

Read More: Federal Tech Staffers Resign Rather Than Help Musk and DOGE

When his firing made the local news, a Facebook posting of the story led to a storm of comments deriding him and championing the layoffs. One person called Riley, who is 36 and holds a Ph.D., a “glorified pool boy” whose job nearly anyone could do.

Even some of Rackliffe’s friends paired their expressions of consolation for Rackliffe with support for cutting jobs they contended were unnecessary government bloat.

“Hey, I’m sorry you lost your job but I think we really need to cut out some of this waste in the government,” Rackliffe said one friend texted him, saying he supported DOGE’s aims. “He basically said, ’We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to rip off the Band-Aid.”

What stings most, Rackliffe says, is the contention that people like him were lazy and worthless, collecting big paychecks for meaningless work.

“It’s really hurtful for the president to insinuate that you don’t exist or that your job consisted of sitting at home doing nothing and cashing the paycheck,” he says. “I’d like to see him sifting through spiny naiad in 120-degree weather looking for parasitic snails. He’s the one that goes golfing on the government dime. I don’t even know how to golf.”

source https://time.com/7265645/fired-federal-workers-no-sympathy/

An Adult in New Mexico Has Died with Measles

An adult who was infected with measles has died in New Mexico, state health officials announced Thursday, though the virus has not been confirmed as the cause.

The person who died was unvaccinated and did not seek medical care, a state health department spokesperson said in a statement. The person’s exact age and other details were not immediately released.

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The person was from Lea County, just across the state line from the West Texas region where 159 measles cases have been identified and a school-age child died last week. New Mexico health officials have not linked the outbreak there to the Texas cases.

The person is the 10th in Lea County to have a confirmed measles infection. Seven were unvaccinated. The vaccination status of the other three is unknown. Six of the cases are in adults and the rest are in children younger than 17.

Read More: What to Know About the Measles Vaccine

On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that they were sending a team to Texas to help local public health officials respond to the outbreak, which began in late January.

Measles is a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours. Up to 9 out of 10 people who are susceptible will get the virus if exposed, according to the CDC.

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases. The first shot is recommended for children ages 12 to 15 months, and the second for ages 4 to 6 years.

“We don’t want to see New Mexicans getting sick or dying from measles,” said Dr. Chad Smelser, the deputy state epidemiologist. “The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is the best protection against this serious disease.”

source https://time.com/7265638/new-mexico-adult-measles-death/

Trump Says He Sent a Letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Over Country’s Advancing Nuclear Program

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — U.S. President Donald Trump said he sent a letter to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a development that was not immediately confirmed by the supreme leader but that focused the spotlight on Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

Trump made the comments in an interview aired on Friday by Fox Business News, saying he wrote to Iranian leaders. The interview will air in full on Sunday.

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The acknowledgment comes as both Israel and the United States have warned they’ll never let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, leading to fears of a military confrontation as Tehran enriches uranium at near weapons-grade levels — a purity done only by atomic-armed nations.

“I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing,’” Trump said. He later added that he had sent the letter “yesterday” in the interview, which was filmed on Thursday.

The White House confirmed Trump’s comments, saying that he sent a letter to Iran’s leaders seeking to negotiate a nuclear deal.

“I would rather negotiate a deal. I’m not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily,” Trump added. “But the time is happening now. The time is coming up. Something’s going to happen one way or the other.”

“I hope you’re going to negotiate because it’s going to be a lot better for Iran and I think they want to get that letter,” Trump said. “The other alternative is we have to do something because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

Iran long has maintained its program is for peaceful purposes, even as its officials increasingly threaten to pursue the bomb as tensions are high with the U.S. over its sanctions and with Israel as a shaky ceasefire holds in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported on Trump’s comments, citing the broadcast. However, there was no immediate word from the office of the 85-year-old Khamenei, who has final say over all matters of state.

Since Trump returned to the White House, his administration has consistently said that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. A report last month, however, by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Iran has accelerated its production of near weapons-grade uranium.

Trump’s first term in office was marked by a particularly troubled period in relations with Tehran. In 2018, he unilaterally withdrew the United States from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, leading to sanctions hobbling the economy, and ordered the killing of the country’s top general.

Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% purity and maintain a stockpile of uranium of 300 kilograms.

Iran’s accelerated production of near weapons-grade uranium puts more pressure on Trump as he’s repeatedly said he’s open to negotiations with the Islamic Republic while also increasingly targeting Iran’s oil sales with sanctions as part of his reimposed “maximum pressure” policy.

Khamenei in a speech last August opened the door to talks with the U.S., saying there is “no harm” in engaging with the “enemy.”

However, more recently he tempered that, saying that negotiations with America “are not intelligent, wise or honorable” after Trump floated nuclear talks with Tehran.

—Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7265625/trump-letter-iran-supreme-leader-advancing-nuclear-program/

House Censures Democratic Rep. Al Green for Heckling Trump’s Speech

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday voted to censure an unrepentant Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for disrupting President Donald Trump’s address to Congress.

Read More: Read the Transcript of Trump’s 2025 Speech to Congress Here

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had Green removed from the chamber during the early moments of Trump’s speech Tuesday night. Green stood and shouted at Trump after the Republican president said the Nov. 5 election had delivered a governing mandate not seen for many decades.

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“You have no mandate,” the Houston lawmaker said, shaking a cane and refusing an order from Johnson to “take your seat, sir!”

Republicans acted quickly to rebuke Green with a censure resolution that officially registers the House’s deep disapproval of a member’s conduct. Once such a resolution is approved by majority vote, the member is asked to stand in the well of the House while the speaker or presiding officer reads the resolution.

The resolution against Green was approved in a mostly party-line vote of 224-198.

Rep. Dan Newhouse, the resolution’s sponsor, said it was a “necessary, but difficult step.”

Read More: The Biggest Moments From Trump’s Address to Congress

“This resolution is offered in all seriousness, something that I believe we must do in order to get us to the next level of conduct in this hallowed chamber,” said Newhouse, R-Wash.

It’s the latest fallout of the boisterous behavior that has occurred during more recent presidential addresses to Congress. Outbursts from lawmakers have happened on both sides of the political aisle.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., noted that Republicans were silent when members of their conference interrupted Democratic President Joe Biden’s speech last year.

Some yelled “say her name” in reference to nursing student Laken Riley, as Biden spoke about immigration legislation that some lawmakers were working on. Riley was killed while running on the University of Georgia campus by a Venezuelan citizen who illegally entered the United States in 2022 and had been allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.

“Nobody apologized for interrupting Joe Biden time and again,” McGovern said. “You talk about lack of decorum. Go back and look at the tapes, and there was silence from the other side.”

Read More: Troller in Chief: How Trump Used His Speech to Demean Democrats

The censure resolution says Green’s actions were a “breach of proper conduct” during a joint address and that his removal “after numerous disruptions.” Democrats tried to table it Wednesday, but that effort failed on a party-line vote.

Johnson tweeted before Thursday’s vote that Green “disgraced the institution of Congress and the constituents he serves.”

“He deliberately violated House rules, and an expeditious vote of censure is an appropriate remedy,” Johnson said. “Any Democrat who is concerned about regaining the trust and respect of the American people should join House Republicans in this effort.”

Green, now serving his 11th term, offered no regrets Wednesday when he explained his actions. Before speaking in his own defense from the House floor, he walked up to the Republican side of the chamber and shook Newhouse’s hand. Green said he did not blame Johnson or those who had escorted him out after his outburst.

“Friends, I would do it again,” Green said.

He explained his actions by saying Trump had indicated he had won a mandate from voters. But Green said Trump does not have a mandate to cut Medicaid, a program that many of his constituents rely on.

“This is a matter of principle. This is a matter of conscience,” Green said. “There are people suffering in this country because they don’t have health care.”

He concluded his remarks by saying, “on some issues that are matters of conscience, it is better to stand alone than not stand at all.”

Trump said last week about the state-federal health care program: “We’re not going to touch it.”

Some Democratic lawmakers skipped Trump’s address. Others walked out during it. With tensions clearly on the rise, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York had told colleagues beforehand that “it is important to have a strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.”

“I think Al Green was telling the truth,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif. He was among the dozens of Democrats who held up signs that said “False” and displayed other protest slogans throughout Trump’s speech.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was speaker during Trump’s first term, recalled her own memorable moment during a Trump address when she ripped his speech up after he handed it to her following his address.

“Everybody has to make their expression of how they see things. I think we should keep our focus on the president’s speech,” Pelosi said.

Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Lisa Mascaro and Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7265232/house-censures-al-green-trump-speech/