Senate more partisan today than when Clinton faced trial

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Senate more partisan today than when Clinton faced trial

2019-11-05 13:16 Last Updated At：13:20

The Senate has long been a place of false gentility, where "my good friend" can be a euphemism for the opposite.

Now, as the Senate prepares to consider an impeachment trial, the acidic tribal politics in the era of Donald Trump is stripping away the veneer of comity from a chamber that's endured a lengthy slide already.

The partisanship that was rank during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton seems almost quaint 21 years later in a time of declining civility and limited cooperation, with few legislative accomplishments to show for the Senate's three-and-a-half-day workweeks.

"I think impeachment inevitably makes things worse on both sides — and in the country," said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. "I mean it's a very divisive time in our country, as you know, and this makes it worse. I go home and people — it's like shirts and skins."

It falls to Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate's majority leader, and Democrat Chuck Schumer, the minority leader - two men who show little mutual admiration - to try to strike a deal that governs the proceedings and somehow doesn't diminish the institution.

Otherwise there would be no framework for the length of the trial, rules regarding witnesses, or moves like an early motion to dismiss the charges. If Clinton's trial is a roadmap, a six-day workweek, with no cell phones allowed in the chamber, could become an enforcement mechanism to keep the proceedings moving.

But with the Senate largely reduced to a conveyer belt for Trump's judicial and agency nominees, impeachment offers an opportunity for the Senate's institutionalists to appeal to a higher purpose. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical.

"It's going to be a challenge, to be sure," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

The House is investigating Trump's push for Ukraine to investigate Democrats, which involved back-channel diplomacy by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Public hearings are set to begin this month, with a vote on articles of impeachment possible by the end of the year.

If the House voted to impeach Trump, it would fall to the Senate to hold a trial, where support from two-thirds of senators would be necessary to convict the president and remove him from office.

During the Clinton trial, the chamber still had many older, accomplished legislators that wielded considerable power and had sway with more junior colleagues. By the time the trial reached the Senate in January 1999, a sense of exhaustion over the Monica Lewinsky scandal permeated the upper body, along with a communal desire to protect the reputation of the chamber.

There was an initial spate of bickering, though it gave way to an agreement governing the allocation of time for the House impeachment managers and Clinton's defense team. But that deal only came together after a closed-door caucus of the entire Senate, held in the historic Old Senate Chamber.

The Senate's top leaders in 1999, Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Tom Daschle, D-S.D., had a better relationship than McConnell and Schumer. And respected, powerful Senate veterans like Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Phil Gramm, R-Texas., had outsized influence.

"We both understood how vitally important it was to rise above those differences in order to conduct a trial that would inspire the confidence of the public and withstand the unsparing scrutiny of history," Daschle and Lott wrote recently in a Washington Post essay.

Some longtime observers say the Senate can rise to the occasion again, when senators take on the weighty responsibility of impeachment jurors.

"I'm not saying everybody parks their partisanship at the door, because they don't, but there is a different feel to how the Senate acts at a time like that." said David Hoppe, who was Lott's chief of staff during the Clinton trial. "This is going to be a very powerful moment."

Should a trial happen, there will inevitably be pressure from the Senate's institutionalists like Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Chris Coons, D-Del., to keep it from veering off track. And for Democrats, there is the added pressure of a cluster of Democratic senators running for president who will want to get back to campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.

"We're going to have a trial and we all know we're going to do it promptly. I'm not despairing of them coming up with a good process," said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. "I'm not assuming it won't be a good process."

Still, there is a lot of bad blood that is difficult to ignore. The sting of Brett Kavanaugh's riotous confirmation to the Supreme Court, two partisan rounds of rules changes, and an unending drumbeat of controversies involving Trump have taken a toll.

"There's such a wariness and bruised feelings over some of the things that have occurred in the last several years that we're lacking a level on empathy and communication," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who was in his first term during the Clinton trial.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., one of 15 senators remaining from the Clinton trial, said it's impossible to predict how the Senate will handle Trump's impeachment.

"Until you have it in front of your face it's hard to judge," Murray said.

"I hope everybody recognizes that this is about history and the future and precedents," she said. "I think it's about the case, if and when it's brought to us."

Venice tests a 5-euro entry fee for day-trippers as the Italian city grapples with overtourism

2024-04-26 00:14 Last Updated At：00:20

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Under the gaze of the world’s media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launched a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro ($5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Visitors arriving at Venice's main train station were greeted with large signs listing the 29 dates through July of the plan's test phase that also designated separate entrances for tourists, and residents, students and workers.

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ said Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism, insisting that only a resurgence in the population will restore balance to a city where narrow alleyways and water buses are often clogged with tourists.

Hundreds of Venetians protested against the program, marching festively though the city's main bus terminal behind banners reading “No to Tickets, Yes to Services and Housing.” Protesters scuffled briefly with police with riot gear who blocked them from entering the city, before changing course and entering over another bridge escorted by plainclothes police officers. The demonstration wrapped up peacefully in a piazza.

Tourists arriving at the main station encountered almost as many journalists as stewards on hand to politely guide anyone unaware of the new requirements through the process of downloading the QR code to pay the fee.

Arianna Cecilia, a tourist from Rome visiting Venice for the first time, said she thought it was “strange” to have to pay to enter a city in her native country, and be funneled through separate entrance ways for tourists. She and her boyfriend were staying in nearby Treviso, and so downloaded the QR code as required. But she was still caught off-guard while soaking in her first view ever of Venice's canals by the sight of the entrance signs and her boyfriend telling her to get out the ticket.

On the other side of the entrance ways, workers in yellow vests carried out random checks at the train station. Transgressors face fines of 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320), but officials said “common sense” was being applied for the launch.

The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free and unchecked.

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of overtourism, and officials hope that the pilot project can help provide more exact figures to better manage the phenomenon.

The city can track the number of hotel visitors, which last year numbered 4.6 million and is down 16% from pre-pandemic highs. But the number of day visitors, which make up the majority of the crowds in Venice, could only be estimated until recently.

A Smart Control Room set up during the pandemic has been tracking arrivals from cellphone data, roughly confirming pre-pandemic estimates of 25 million to 30 million arrivals a year, said Michele Zuin, the city’s top economic official. That includes both day-trippers and overnight guests.

But Zuin said the data is incomplete.

“It’s clear we will get more reliable data from the contribution” being paid by day-trippers, he said.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. On peak days, local police set up one-way traffic for pedestrians to keep the crowds moving.

Residents opposing the day-tripper tax insist that the solution to Venice's woes are to boost the resident population and the services they need, limiting short-term rentals to make available more housing and attract families back from the mainland.

Last year, Venice passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

“Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,’’ said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

“You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park. You don’t pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice,” he said.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared the launch day, coinciding with an Italian holiday, a success, registering 15,700 paying visitors, 50% more than anticipated.

More than 97,000 others had downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. Hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, provided a QR code for visitors to attest to their stay, which includes a hotel tax — accounting for 40,000 of those.

Venturini, the tourist official, said that interest in Venice’s pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities, and municipalities abroad such as Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam.

But Marina Rodino, who has lived in Venice for 30 years, doesn't see the fee as the cure-all. Neighboring apartments in her residential building near the famed Rialto Bridge once inhabited by families are now short-term apartment rentals.

The corner butcher shop closed. Yet she noted that the new entrance fee requirement will still allow young people to flood the city in the evening for the traditional aperitivo, which can grow rowdy.

She was passing out mock European Union passports for “Venice, Open City,” underlining the irony of the new system, and challenging its legal standing with citations from the Italian Constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to “move or reside freely in any part of the national territory."

“This is not a natural oasis. This is not a museum. It is not Pompeii. It is a city, where we need to fight so the houses are inhabited by families, and stores reopen. That is what would counter this wild tourism,’’ Rodino said.