The General US Politics Thread

Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.

Then she offered a confession. She lives in Acworth, miles outside the 6th Congressional District. She can’t vote for Ossoff on June 20 in the runoff against Karen Handel. But the surprisingly tight race for a seat once considered a GOP stronghold has motivated her to volunteer.

“I’m determined to not just flip the 6th District, but the state of Georgia. In my lifetime, if possible,” Landsman said, with a hint of a smile. “I really think we can do this. I mean, if we win this, we can do anything.”

This is what Republicans are already calling the “Ossoff effect,” and Democrats are hoping to bottle the 30-year-old’s formula for other races.

John Kennedy, one of the top Republicans in the state Senate, sounded an alarm this month in a memo to his GOP colleagues about the surprising special election surge of a little-known Democratic state Senate candidate who hitched her campaign to Ossoff.

“While many think that this is a dark red Republican territory, the data from the election is disturbing considering the number of Democrats that came out and voted, partly because of the [Jon] Ossoff effect,” he wrote.

Democrats have long preached that Georgia’s changing demographics would shift the winds toward their backs after nearly two decades in the political wilderness. The past few election cycles proved they still had a long ways to go. Each began with lofty hopes from Democrats. And each ended in GOP victories.

Republicans control every statewide office, three-quarters of the state’s congressional seats and about two-thirds of state legislative districts. And the battle lines in many of these districts are drawn to the GOP’s advantage, giving them a formidable edge.

“They thought they could flip a Senate seat in Georgia too in ‘14,” said U.S. Sen. David Perdue, referring to the election that sent him to Washington. “That didn’t work out so well, did it?”

Nor did it last week in a race for an open state Senate seat that spans parts of east Cobb and Sandy Springs — some of the most conservative territory in the district. Republican Kay Kirkpatrick easily defeated Democrat Christine Triebsch in the contest, thanks to hefty margins in Cobb that propelled her to a 14-point victory.

But Democrats saw a silver lining in the defeat: Clinton took about 40 percent of the vote in the Senate district in November. Triebsch upped that by 3 points. If Ossoff outdoes Clinton in the 6th District by the same margin, he’ll be on his way to Washington.



The next potential battleground could be Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, which slices through much of Gwinnett County.

Washington analysts still consider the seat safely Republican, in part because it’s been held by the GOP for more than 20 years. Seismic demographic forces, though, are transforming the region.

Once one of the richest sources of Republican votes in the state, Gwinnett for the first time in 2016 no longer had a majority-white voting population. Hillary Clinton swept the county in November, flipping it blue for the first time in decades.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report now estimates the 7th District is the top Democratic-trending areas in the nation. That’s given the party hopes it can recruit a strong challenger to take on Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall next year and other GOP incumbents in once-sleepy races.

“Before in Georgia, we were always looking for Democratic candidates to challenge Republicans,” said Stefan Turkheimer, a Democratic strategist. “Now we’ll have primaries to challenge Republicans. It’s kind of an amazing thing.”

Woodall, a low-profile policy geek who is known for his winding oratory — and accompanying poster boards — on the federal budget on the House floor, said the talk doesn’t worry him.

His district dodges the more diverse southern reaches of the county and also encompasses much of deeply conservative Forsyth County. He’s quick to acknowledge that the district’s design has helped insulate him from more electoral pressure.

“It’s gerrymandering that makes these things noncompetitive, right?” Woodall said in an interview. “Gwinnett County, if it was one district, it would be an incredibly competitive district.”



Ossoff has long tried to play down the notion that he’s a symbol of the anti-Trump resistance, even as he reaps the fundraising benefits of being a Democratic darling.

“It doesn’t have much to do with me personally,” he said in an interview. “It has to do with the times we’re living in and the community we’re living in. This is not a community of partisans — it’s a community of decent, kind people who want effective representation at all levels of government.”

His fellow Democrats haven’t gotten the memo. Sheila Levy, a Dunwoody property manager, sees Ossoff as her “light at the end of the tunnel.”

She had never canvassed, never worked a phone bank and certainly never marched before. She recalled sitting on the couch after Trump’s victory and complaining — no, yelling — at her TV. So, starting in March she canvassed 16 days in a row for Ossoff.

“I’ve jumped in with both feet,” Levy said. “I know the nation is watching this race. We came so close to flipping it in April. And if we start reaching out more, we can do this. I didn’t understand the term ‘grass roots’ before this campaign, but now I do. And we’re talking to everyone about why this matters.”

Republicans say they’re just as galvanized at the threat of a Democratic takeover in what once was a GOP fortress.

Gayle Calhoun is working to fortify her territory most every weekend. A recent Saturday brought her to the Taste of East Cobb, where she handed out fliers pushing Republican campaigns in a sprawling church parking lot.

“It’s a concern for all of us,” said Calhoun, a Cobb County real estate agent. “Look, everyone is watching the long-term impact of Ossoff. We just need to be patient. We just need to hang together and be very strong, and we’ll hold out.”

The department estimates the move will save about $130 million in the next five years. "Savings are expected to increase significantly over the life of the contract,” Secretary of Education Betsy De Vos said in a statement. “Borrowers can expect to see a more user-friendly loan servicing interface, shorter email and call response times and an improved payment application method.”

Of about $1.4 trillion of student debt now owed by 44 million Americans, a vast majority of the total — more than $1 trillion — is issued by the Education Department. The government currently outsources the work of handling payment, collection, payment deferment and general customer service to nine private companies.

By granting the business to one company, the government will create "a trillion dollar bank," said Natalia Abrams, executive director of Student Debt Crisis, an advocacy group. "The too-big-to-fail is what we saw with the banks in 2008," she said. "I see this already as an industry out of control, with high profit. And in creating one company...there would be no competition."

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The government has experience dealing with an exclusive private-sector partner in student loan servicing. From 2003 to 2013, ACS Education Services handled servicing of direct student loans under a Department of Education Contract worth an estimated $2 billion. Acquired by Xerox in 2010, it's now known as Xerox Education Services.

During ACS’ tenure, many borrowers complained that they were overcharged, or faced difficulties getting into income-driven repayment plans that would lower their monthly payments. In Nov. 2016, ACS agreed to a $2.4 million settlement with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office over allegations of those problems and others.

ACS cooperated with the investigation and agreed to make improvements to its student loan servicing practices, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in an announcement of the settlement.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and two state attorneys general sued Navient in January. The lawsuits alleged that the Delaware-based company, the nation’s largest student loan servicer, processed borrowers’ payments incorrectly, provided inaccurate payment information and failed to act when borrows complained. Additionally, the company allegedly provided incentives to employees who recommended that struggling borrowers postpone payments under an option in which interest continues to pile up, instead of switching to an income-driven payment plan that avoids extra fees.