Two Republican senators blast Trump as party feud deepens
MADRID - One of the priorities for Spain’s government is restoring “normality and legality” in the wealthy northeastern region of Catalonia, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told parliament yesterday. Catalonia is facing direct rule from Madrid from Friday, due to an independence bid which Spanish courts have ruled contravenes the country’s 1978 constitution.
Meanwhile, with the Spanish government ready to take over the running of Catalonia tomorrow, the loyalty of the local police to Madrid or to the Catalan cause will be tested if they are ordered to drag their former political masters from
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Spanish police provoked international outcry by using batons and rubber bullets when they stepped in to try to stop an illegal independence referendum on October 1 after the local Catalan force refused to prevent voting in what has become the worst constitutional crisis in modern Spanish history.
Catalonia’s secessionist government is intent on resisting Spain’s plan to remove it from power, and there are doubts over how a divided and demoralised Mossos d‘Esquadra, as the Catalan police are called, would respond if ordered to evict President Carles Puigdemont and his autonomous government by force.
National police could once again be on the front line. The local police force is riven by distrust between those for and against Catalan independence and is estranged from Spain’s national police forces, according to interviews with < !
The Civil Guard gave evidence against the Mossos chief in a sedition inquiry after his force stood back and allowed voting to take place, court documents show.
* < + / said they believed the 17,000-strong force was split among those who wanted independence and those who opposed it, with three of those saying they would not use force to remove ministers and lawmakers from power.
“I‘m not going to use force and beat people with my baton if they are passive,” said a 15-year Mossos veteran and secessionist, who declined to be named.
WASHINGTON Tensions among Republicans about President Donald Trump boiled over on Tuesday as two senators accused Trump of debasing U.S. politics and the country’s standing abroad, a rebellion that could portend trouble for his legislative agenda.
The extraordinary public criticism of the president from Jeff Flake and Bob Corker further strained what had already been a fraught relationship between Trump and fellow Republicans as they try to enact tax reform and other policy items.
In an emotional speech on the
* + & targeted Trump’s style of governing, saying American politics had become “inured” to ”reckless, outrageous and
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White House.
“The instinct to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people,” said the Arizona lawmaker, who announced he would not run for re-election next year.
“I will not be complicit or silent,” Flake said.
Trump, via Twitter, has been unrelenting in his criticism of Corker and Flake, accusing them of supporting Democratic priorities, and using sometimes slashing language, such as his dismissal of Corker as “liddle Bob Corker.”
Corker, who has also said he is not running for re-election in Tennessee, accused Trump of telling falsehoods that could be easily proven wrong and willfully damaging the country’s standing in the world, eviscerating the president with comments that stirred deepening divisions in the Republican Party.
“You would think he would aspire to be the president of the United States and act like a president of the United States, but that’s not going to be the case apparently,” Corker told reporters. “I’ve seen no evolution in an upward way. In fact, I would say, he’s almost devolved.”