As soon as President Trump learned he was facing an impeachment investigation on Tuesday, he upended his meetings with world leaders near the United Nations and rushed to his soaring skyscraper a few blocks away in midtown Manhattan.
Then, back in his penthouse at Trump Tower, he sought solace at his favorite place — in front of a TV with his Twitter account in hand.
After some initial hesitation on how to defend Donald Trump from allegations of trying to collude with the Ukraine government to influence the 2020 campaign, when Trump himself had admitted to doing exactly that, Fox News and most of the right-wing echo chamber have rallied around White House talking points. Robotically defending Trump and pitching the unfolding impeachment proceedings as another so-called witch hunt, Fox News is leading the Trump media charge. (It’s a “coup“!)
But will the caterwauling be enough this time?
It’s pretty goddamn clear that the motherfuckin’ quid has a motherfuckin’ pro quo in the weird pseudo-transcript of the July 25 phone call between Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. And a great deal of it all comes down to the word “though.”
Zelensky says, “I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Saturday that public opinion is now on the side of an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump following the release of new information about his conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Pelosi this week announced her support for an investigation after the surfacing of a whistleblower complaint that said Trump appeared to solicit a political favor from Ukraine’s president aimed at helping him be re-elected next year.
Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
President Trump met in the Oval Office on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and discussed prospective gun legislation and whether the N.R.A. could provide support for the president as he faces impeachment and a more difficult re-election campaign, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
It was not clear whether Mr. Trump asked Mr. LaPierre for his support, or if the idea was pitched by the N.R.A. During the meeting, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting said.
White House efforts to limit access to President Donald Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders extended to phone calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the matter.
Another stunning report dropped tonight, this one concerning President Donald Trump’s infamous 2017 conversation with Russian officials in the Oval Office.
Per the Washington Post, Trump said he was “unconcerned” about Russian election interference because “the United States did the same in other countries”
Three top Democratic House chairmen on Friday subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to turn over documents related to the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The three chairmen — Reps. Eliot Engel of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee; and Elijah Cummings of the Oversight Committee — wrote a letter demanding that Pompeo turn over documents related to Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by Oct. 4.
WASHINGTON – Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-43) issued the following statement on the formal impeachment inquiry of Donald J. Trump:
“I am supportive of the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has united the Democratic Caucus and has formalized an impeachment inquiry of the current President of the United States. Donald Trump has admitted to abusing the power of the presidency by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into his political opponent in order to get dirt that the Trump campaign could exploit in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. This action within itself — where the president is seeking the cooperation and assistance of a foreign government in uncovering dirt on his opponent — is unlawful, unconstitutional, and unpatriotic. I am elated that the Congress of the United States will move forward in an expedited manner to investigate and impeach this president.
“When you couple this latest action with all that we know about the president, his history, and the way in which he has conducted himself while in office, there is more than enough evidence for the Congress of the United States to launch an impeachment inquiry into this president. Despite the fact that U.S. intelligence community unequivocally concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, this president has shown a brazen support and deference for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin and has continued to undermine and outright deny the validity of the U.S. intelligence community’s findings. Special Counsel Robert Mueller identified at least 10 instances of obstruction of justice by the president of the United States during the 2016 presidential campaign and through the course of the Russia investigation, and he furthered the scope of what we know about collusion and coordination between the Trump campaign, Trump’s allies, and the Kremlin in their efforts to undermine our election systems on Trump’s behalf. This president orchestrated hush money payments in order to silence his mistresses with the aid of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who pled guilty and is serving jail time for these acts, which are potential felony violations of campaign finance laws. He and his children have sought out opportunities to enrich themselves during his tenure as president. He is under investigation for accepting payments from foreign governments and officials that have stayed at his hotels and golf properties in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits elected officials from personally profiting from payments from foreign governments and officials that have stayed at his hotels and golf properties. This president has been documented by the Washington Post for having lied more than 12,000 times since taking office. Unlike any other president in modern history, Trump has refused to release his tax returns to the American people. These, and a host of other actions, are further evidence of his disgraceful and contemptible actions as the president of the United States.
“I’m beyond pleased that a strong majority of my Democratic colleagues have joined us in the effort to hold accountable and impeach the most unlawful and unpatriotic man to ever occupy the White House. As I have stated time and time again, Donald Trump is a dangerous and dishonorable man. He has no respect for our democracy, our Constitution, or the rule of law. It is past time that Congress fulfills its Constitutional duty to impeach him. I am elated that it appears that day is upon us.”
In a detailed, nine-page complaint, a whistleblower said “senior White House officials” worked to “lock down” all records of a presidential phone call this summer, out of fear that “they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain.” In that call, President Trump repeatedly urged Ukraine’s new president to investigate Joe Biden and his son.
The whistleblower said White House officials were “deeply disturbed” and were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove a transcript of the call from the regular computer system and place it instead in a separate system normally reserved for classified, sensitive information.
White House officials were scrambling Thursday to figure out how to counter the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, with one source familiar with the situation describing a sense of “total panic” over the past week at the lack of a plan to address the new reality.
There appears to be rising “anxiety, unease, and concern” — as one person close to the White House described the mood in the West Wing — that the whistleblower’s allegations could seriously wound the president and some of those around him. “There’s not a lot of confidence that there’s no there there,” this person said.
The first polling on the question of whether or not President Donald Trump should be impeached since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she’s supporting an impeachment inquiry shows a major swing — one which leaves the public split right down the middle.
According to the Morning Consult, there has been a 13 point swing in favor of impeachment in just a matter of days. The new poll, taken from Sept. 24-26, shows the public in a 43-43 deadlock on the question of whether Congress should begin impeachment proceedings to remove Trump from office. The same poll, conducted from Sept. 20-22, shows 36 in favor of beginning impeachment proceedings, with 49 percent opposed — a massive swing in such a short period of time.
President Donald Trump ratcheted up his defenses on Thursday, likening those who provided information to the whistleblower to spies, according to reports, and tweeting that “our country is at stake” on the day the complaint against the president was made public.
“THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO DESTROY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ALL THAT IT STANDS FOR,” Trump tweeted in all caps. “STICK TOGETHER, PLAY THEIR GAME, AND FIGHT HARD REPUBLICANS. OUR COUNTRY IS AT STAKE!”
A whistleblower’s complaint about President Donald Trump, made public on Thursday, says White House officials were so concerned about what the president said in a July call with Ukraine’s new leader that they intervened to “lock down” the transcript of the conversation.
The whistleblower, whose name and gender has not been released, lodged the formal complaint out of a belief that Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 election.
A longtime GOP insider is claiming that if a majority of Republican senators could cast their ballot in secret, they would vote President Donald Trump out of office.
Appearing on Andrea Mitchell Reports Wednesday, Mike Murphy — a former senior adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and John McCain — claimed that the politics of the Ukraine controversy scare the GOP. Murphy contended that an impeachment proceeding in which moderate senators would be forced to back the president would put a number of seats at risk.
In what sounds like a scene straight out of “Veep,” the White House on Wednesday accidentally emailed all of its talking points on President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president to House and Senate Democrats ― and then followed up with a “recall” email hoping lawmakers would ignore what just happened.The White House even sent those GOP talking points to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), her office confirmed ― a day after she announced a formal impeachment inquiry spurred by Trump’s Ukraine call.
In a rambling press conference Wednesday in which he asserted he had done nothing wrong and tried to pivot the focus to Hillary Clinton’s emails, President Donald Trump defended asking the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.“You know there was no pressure,” Trump told reporters of his July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky, who joined him for the Wednesday press conference. A summary of the leaders’ call released earlier in the day revealed Trump asked Zelensky to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential contender Biden. Trump made the request while discussing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
During normal times, Donald Trump’s attempted extortion of the Ukrainian government, aimed at forcing an investigation against one of his chief political opponents would almost immediately become the purview of the attorney general, who would — again, during normal times — appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations. After all, the president attempted to use taxpayer money and the weight of the federal government to force Ukraine’s newly elected president to help Trump’s re-election campaign: This was a flagrant abuse of power, a flagrant attempt at bribery and extortion, and absolutely an indictment- or impeachment-worthy trespass.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday “we’re going to find out what happened” about a whistleblower’s complaint regarding President Donald Trump and said he expects the Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct a “responsible, rather apolitical, at least bipartisan” probe of the matter.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff announced Tuesday that the whistleblower who filed a mysterious complaint, which includes allegations about President Donald Trump’s conduct, would like to speak to the committee.
President Donald Trump cycled through a range of conflicting reactions Tuesday as Democrats moved swiftly toward concrete congressional action on impeachment.
The president moved from dismissing the renewed push by Democrats for impeachment proceedings early in the day to bemoaning the effort’s impact while holding meetings with world leaders at the United Nations just a few hours later, to expressing social media outrage over “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” as evening fell.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who for months resisted efforts to launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, announced a formal inquiry on Tuesday, saying that the president’s growing Ukraine scandal marked a “breach of his Constitutional responsibilities.”
“This week the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” Pelosi said.
As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warns that continued efforts by the Trump administration to block Congress from learning more about a national security whistleblower complaint would take Congress “into a whole new stage of investigation,” congressional Democrats are facing renewed pressure to supporting impeaching President Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump will address the United Nations General Assembly today.
The president’s speech comes amid ongoing tension with Iran and allegations that the president pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
As Trump met with world leaders Monday, he hinted Iran will be part of his address. The Middle Eastern Country is being blamed for an attack on two Saudi oil facilities 10 days ago.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office want a judge to throw out President Donald Trump’s bid to block them from looking at his personal and corporate tax returns.
The office of Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance subpoenaed Trump’s accountants for the returns late last month as part of a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization over hush money payments made to two women who had alleged affairs with the president. Trump has denied the affairs.
Teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg delivered an emotional and scathing speech at the United Nations on Monday, accusing world leaders of stealing her dreams and her childhood with their inaction on climate change.
“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back at school on the other side of the ocean,” the 16-year-old from Sweden told the United Nations Climate Action Summit. “Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
Well, Bill Weld, former governor of the Commonwealth (God save it!), really shot the moon to begin the week. Appearing on MSNBC, Weld made it plain. From the Washington Post:
“Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election,” Weld said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“It couldn’t be clearer, and that’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It’s treason, pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death. That’s the only penalty…The penalty under the Constitution is removal from office, and that might look like a pretty good alternative to the president if he could work out a plea deal.””
Well, all right, then.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday assailed the Trump administration’s efforts to block a whistleblower complaint involving President Donald Trump’s apparent effort to have Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.
In a letter to colleagues Sunday, Pelosi said the administration “will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation” if acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire fails to provide the complaint when he testifies in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The complaint reportedly centers around Trump’s July conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during which Trump is accused of pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son Hunter’s role at a Ukrainian energy company.
HBO’s fantasy epic “Game of Thrones” and Amazon’s dark comedy “Fleabag” won top honors at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, capping off a host-free night that moved briskly and largely shied away from political barbs.
President Donald Trump on Sunday acknowledged that he discussed former Vice President Joe Biden during a July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but denied accusations that he is using the power of his office to hurt a major political rival.
“No quid pro quo, there was nothing,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn. “It was a perfect conversation.”
We’re witnessing a political revolution in this country, and the press is missing this monumental shift. It’s not that journalists can’t spot the game-changing story; it’s that they’re too afraid to document it. They’re too bullied to address it forcefully.
In the Donald Trump era, lying has become an unequivocal hallmark of the Republican Party and its political strategy. It now defines the GOP, whose top officials, including the United States attorney general, lie early and often about hugely important issues. The press continues to let them get away with it because the media continues to grapple—in slow motion—with how to deal with a major political party that lies about everything. None of this is normal. But the Beltway press is doing its best to make it so.
Every fucking day they went after President Obama. Every fucking day they looked for the merest hint, some seemingly insignificant spark that they could fan into a full conflagration, some misstep that would give his evil game away. Every fucking day the syphilitic cocks of the right tried to prove that Barack Obama, who was clearly guilty of being president while black, was a Muslim, anti-American traitor out to destroy the good (white) American way of life.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is demanding that Attorney General William Barr release a whistleblower report that reportedly sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s requests for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s help in securing the 2020 election.
“If media reports are correct that President Trump delayed military aid appropriated by Congress in order to get Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, it’s difficult not to see that as an abuse of presidential authority, plain and simple,” Feinstein ― the lead Democrat on the Judiciary Committee ― said in a statement Saturday.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has overtaken former Vice President Joe Biden in Iowa, according to a new Des Moines Register/CNN poll of the crucial state.
The poll out Saturday night found Warren was the top choice for the Democratic nomination with 22 percent support among likely caucus-goers, while Biden had the support of 20 percent of respondents. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders fell to third with 11 percent.
The Department of Homeland Security is sounding the alarm on the growing danger of white supremacy across the country, warning of the internet’s ability to serve as a meeting space and a breeding ground for nationalist extremism.
In a 37-page report called the Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence released Friday, the department emphasized the ease at which potential domestic terrorists can network, drawing a parallel to foreign threats.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped out of the 2020 presidential race Friday, ending a long shot bid for the Democratic nomination that never went anywhere.
“I feel like I have contributed all I can to this primary election. It’s clearly not my time, so I’m going to end my presidential campaign,” de Blasio said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The Pentagon is fighting against proposals by White House officials to drastically cut the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., and has called for reserving visas for Iraqis who risked their lives working for U..S. troops, according to five people familiar with the plan.
In internal discussions, the Defense Department has expressed opposition to any further reductions to the current annual ceiling of 30,000 for refugee admissions, which already is at a historic low for the 40-year-old U.S. refugee program, the sources told NBC News.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Thursday that he believed it was likely that President Donald Trump or his aides were working to keep the details of an urgent complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower from Congress.
“I believe that there is an effort to prevent this information getting to Congress, and if the assertion is accurate that the Department of Justice has made and the DNI has affirmed that this involves a potentially privileged communication, then at one level or another, it likely involves either the president or people around him,” Schiff told reporters following a closed-door briefing with the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, and the Intelligence Committee’s members that lasted several hours.
Ukraine is at the center of a complaint made by a whistleblowing intelligence officer who filed the report after learning of a promise President Donald Trump made to a foreign leader, The Washington Post reported Thursday evening.
The newspaper cited two people familiar with the matter whom it did not name. The Trump administration has withheld the details of the report from Congress; though it was known that the complaint involved a foreign leader, the Post was the first to report the country involved.
Rudy Giuliani, attorney to President Donald Trump, got into it with CNN’s Chris Cuomo during a raucous interview on Thursday night.
The former New York City mayor shouted at Cuomo, repeatedly contradicted himself, declared Cuomo to be “the enemy” and at one point, placed his head on his hand and closed his eyes, showing off a New York Yankees World Series ring.
We’re witnessing a political revolution in this country, and the press is missing this monumental shift. It’s not that journalists can’t spot the game-changing story; it’s that they’re too afraid to document it. They’re too bullied to address it forcefully.
In the Donald Trump era, lying has become an unequivocal hallmark of the Republican Party and its political strategy. It now defines the GOP, whose top officials, including the United States attorney general, lie early and often about hugely important issues. The press continues to let them get away with it because the media continues to grapple—in slow motion—with how to deal with a major political party that lies about everything. None of this is normal. But the Beltway press is doing its best to make it so.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday accused Iran of perpetrating an “act of war” after weekend strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, saying the attack had the “fingerprints of the Ayatollah.”
“This was an Iranian attack,” Pompeo told reporters after a flight to the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah. “We were blessed there were no Americans killed in this attack, but anytime you have an act of war of this nature, there’s always a risk that could happen.”
New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly said that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed to let them interview him for their upcoming book ― as long as they would publicly lie about it.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, Kelly and Pogrebin said that Kavanaugh said he would talk to the reporters to provide them with background information as long as they falsely noted in the book that he declined to be interviewed.
The secret whistleblower complaint that the acting director of national intelligence has refused to hand over to Congress involves President Donald Trump’s “communications with a foreign leader,” The Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing two former U.S. officials familiar with the complaint.
The officials said Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader, whose identity was not disclosed, included a “promise” made by the president that was regarded as concerning by the intelligence official who filed a formal whistleblower complaint with the intelligence community inspector general.
John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s fired national security adviser, harshly criticized Trump’s foreign policy on Wednesday at a private lunch, saying that inviting the Taliban to Camp David sent a “terrible signal” and that it was “disrespectful” to the victims of 9/11 because the Taliban had harbored al Qaeda.
Bolton also said that any negotiations with North Korea and Iran were “doomed to failure,” according to two attendees.
Robert Mueller’s report, even in redacted form, reveals how Donald Trump and his inner circle colluded with a foreign power to undermine American democracy. It also shows a president and his allies who were and are willing to obstruct and otherwise interfere with justice in order to remain in power. The Trump regime’s assault on the rule of law and democracy are not means and goals unto themselves. As with other authoritarian regimes, the ultimate goal is to amass more power and money at the expense of the public. Corruption and a lack of ethics are not exceptions in such types of governments. They are the rule.
Among many outcomes and observations following last week’s ABC News/Univision presidential debate, there were only two candidates who were willing to attack Donald Trump and the trolls who surround him: Sen. Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke. That’s not to say the others didn’t mention President Trump at all. It’s just that Harris and O’Rourke stood out in terms of their unflinching and aggressive attacks against Trump (Harris) and the Republican Party’s destructive fealty to the gun lobby (O’Rourke).
President Donald Trump fired back at Sen. Lindsey Graham after the latter suggested the president showed “weakness” toward Iran for not responding more forcefully when Iran shot down a US surveillance drone in June.
Graham made his comment on Twitter after receiving a briefing from Vice President Mike Pence on the recent, devastating attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facility, which the administration is claiming was carried out by Iran. The South Carolina Republican, a notorious war hawk and advocate for regime change in Iran, was clearly implying that Iran had been emboldened by Trump’s inaction three months ago.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is heading to Saudi Arabia Tuesday to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman amid the fallout from a drone and missile attack on a major Saudi oil facility over the weekend.
Pompeo has blamed Iran for the attack, although President Trump has been hesitant to do so until a full review has been completed. Mr. Trump said Monday the Iranians were likely behind the attack, but wouldn’t definitively state that was the case.
The Justice Department has filed suit against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, seeking to seize any proceeds he makes from his new book, “Permanent Record.”
The suit would not block the publication of Snowden’s book, which came out Tuesday, but rather seeks to prevent him from profiting from it. The suit names the book’s publishers as defendants, which DOJ said was intended only to ensure that no funds were transferred to Snowden while the lawsuit plays out.
President Donald Trump’s administration is expected to announce Wednesday that it will revoke California’s legal authority to set its own auto emissions standards, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The state has been in an ongoing legal fight with the Trump administration for the last year over its right to that waiver, which has major influence on the manufacturing of all cars sold in the U.S.
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski refused to answer basic questions at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Democrats on the committee asked Lewandowski simple questions about his interactions with President Donald Trump as part of their probe into the possible impeachment of the president.
With new questions arising about the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Monday defended his committee’s investigation of allegations against the then-nominee, calling it an “incredibly thorough review” into Kavanaugh’s personal and professional life.
Grassley, who oversaw the confirmation process as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall, made the remarks after new allegations arose over the weekend, calling into question the scope and extent of the committee’s work and the FBI’s investigation of Kavanaugh.
President Donald Trump on Monday offered markedly more restrained language about possible retaliation for a weekend attack on a Saudi oil facility — compared to his Sunday tweets that the U.S. was “locked and loaded depending on verification” if and when the U.S. publicly announces Iran’s culpability.
A senior administration official told ABC News that there was an unclassified statement that was cleared and ready to be released, showing no doubt Iran carried out the strikes from its own soil. But the president was restrained in his comments.
President Donald Trump, looking to put New Mexico in play in 2020, sought to win over Hispanic voters at a rally here Monday.
The president’s pitch to Hispanic voters seemed to silo them off from the rest of the electorate, including the rally crowd (“We love our Hispanics.”) It featured an assertion that they had a greater understanding of the source of the drug problem than other Americans. And it included a section in which Trump wondered how CNN contributor Steve Cortes could be Hispanic even though, the president said, he appeared to be of Northern European descent.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a speech that drew thousands of supporters to a historic site in Lower Manhattan, on Monday made one of her most explicit appeals to female voters since announcing her bid for the White House.
In Washington Square Park, an area etched with the history of women-led political action against corruption and big business, she sought to cast her own campaign as the next iteration of that movement.
Senator Professor Warren continues to play error-free baseball in this here presidential campaign. Not only does she schedule a certified Big Speech in Washington Square Park in New York on Monday night to talk about the contributions of women to the labor movement not far from the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, but also, in the afternoon, she scoops an important endorsement across town. From The New York Times:
The party endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the last presidential cycle, at which time he described Working Families as “the closest thing” to “my vision of democratic socialism.” The group’s endorsement of Ms. Warren on Monday, one of the few by a prominent progressive organization this early in the primary, is sure to turn heads among left-leaning Democrats who are desperate to defeat the current front-runner, Mr. Biden, in a primary election where their party’s ideological future is at stake.
It started in depressing fashion, but the 2020 election season may have officially begun when a right-wing group aired a vicious attack ad last week against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The spot, which aired on a couple of major-market ABC stations the night of a prime-time Democratic debate, featured Ocasio-Cortez’s image being consumed by fire, followed by a black-and-white image of human skeletons in an apparent reference to Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s.
Saudi Arabia is once again a radioactive political football in the U.S., and President Donald Trump can’t resist grabbing it.
In a series of tweets this weekend, Trump indicated that Iran is behind the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities and that the United States will respond after hearing from the Saudi government “under what terms we would proceed.”
Days before Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh‘s confirmation, a Democratic senator urged the FBI to reach out to a witness who had key information about alleged misconduct by the nominee while at Yale, according to a letter obtained by CNN.
State prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump’s accounting firm to demand eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
The subpoena opens a new front in a wide-ranging effort to obtain copies of the president’s tax returns, which Mr. Trump initially said he would make public during the 2016 campaign but has since refused to disclose.
On Dec. 29, 2016, the Obama administration announced that it was giving nearly three dozen Russian diplomats just 72 hours to leave the United States and was seizing two rural East Coast estates owned by the Russian government. As the Russians burned papers and scrambled to pack their bags, the Kremlin protested the treatment of its diplomats, and denied that those compounds — sometimes known as the “dachas” — were anything more than vacation spots for their personnel.
Sometimes it feels like the press has just completely surrendered to Donald Trump’s relentless lies, and that reporters have essentially thrown up their hands, signaling that Trump has complete permission to fabricate whatever wild fantasies he wants and journalists won’t really do much. Perhaps it’s one part laziness, one part exhaustion? But watching what unfolded on Sept. 11, last week really highlighted just how detached from reality Trump is, and how little the press seems to care.
You don’t really need to know why model and TV host Chrissy Teigen called President Donald Trump a “pussy ass bitch.” I mean, you can probably think of a dozen reasons right off the top of your head and nod, saying, “Yeah, that makes sense.” Because, obviously, Donald Trump is a pussy ass bitch. He’s always been a pussy ass bitch. He’ll always be a pussy ass bitch with his pussy ass bitch sons and his pussy ass bitch business.
A weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies and halved the kingdom’s oil production threatened Sunday to fuel a regional crisis, as the U.S. released new evidence to back up its allegation that Iran was responsible for the assault amid heightened tensions over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal.
Tens of thousands of auto workers across the country went on strike Sunday night after negotiations faltered between their union and General Motors.
The strike began at 11:59 p.m. ET., with as many as 50,000 United Auto Workers at dozens of facilities from Michigan to Texas expected to participate.
Ric Ocasek, a co-founder and lead singer of the new wave band The Cars, was found dead in New York City on Sunday, authorities said. Ocasek was 75.
The New York Police Department said his body was found in a Manhattan townhouse on Sunday afternoon. Ocasek, who was unconscious and unresponsive, was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
Ocasek’s cause of death wasn’t immediately clear, but police said no criminality was suspected.
A slew of prominent Democrats called on Congress to impeach Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after allegations of sexual misconduct that had once threatened to torpedo his nomination to the bench resurfaced, even as President Donald Trump continued to defend him.
“I sat through those hearings,” Sen. Kamala Harris, a member of the Senate Judiciary Commitee and a Democratic presidential candidate, tweeted on Sunday. “Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people. He was put on the Court through a sham process and his place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice. He must be impeached.”
Felicity Huffman was sentenced to 14 days in jail on Friday for her role in the college admissions cheating scandal. The popular television actress has admitted to paying $15,000 in an effort to boost her eldest daughter’s SAT score.
Huffman, 56, also received one year of probation, 250 hours of community service and a $30,000 fine. Huffman said in a statement that she accepts the “court’s decision without reservation.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday criticized a television ad from a new Republican-aligned political action committee that calls her “ignorant” and sets fire to her picture.
Briscoe Cain, a Republican serving in the Texas House of Representatives, is facing a possible FBI investigation over a threatening message he sent to Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke.
“My AR is ready for you Robert Francis,” Cain wrote on Twitter in response to O’Rourke’s proposed assault weapons ban.
The 2020 Democratic presidential primary is in the middle of a slog, and Thursday night’s debate reflected that. The campaign is mature enough that multiple candidates have dropped out of the race but still young enough for the top-polling candidates to bring risk-averse approaches to the debate, limiting the possibilities for fireworks. It was late enough in the cycle for most of the arguments to be familiar to a highly informed voter but perhaps not late enough to qualify as must-see television for the less-engaged.
The Justice Department has rejected an appeal from former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of a recommendation to indict him made by the US attorney in Washington, DC, sources familiar with the situation say.
The House Judiciary Committee took a big step Thursday morning in its ongoing investigation into whether to recommend the filing of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, passing a resolution that set procedures and rules for future impeachment investigation hearings.
The resolution passed along party lines, 24-17.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) lashed out at Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in a tweet on Thursday accusing her fellow Republican of supporting terrorists and referring to him as a “big loser.”
“Hi @RandPaul I know the 2016 race was painful for you since you were such a big loser (then & now) with a dismal 4.5% in Iowa,” tweeted Cheney — who, as House GOP conference chair, holds a top Republican leadership position — in a reference to Paul’s failed 2016 presidential campaign.
Donald Trump is, and has always been, a threat to our democracy. The long rap sheet of crimes perpetrated by this president is getting longer every day; it only starts with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
And now Congress has returned from recess to a country that’s reeling from a president who clearly lacks both the competence and temperament for the office he holds. After years of stalling, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on Thursday to expand the existing lines of inquiry into the potential impeachment of Trump.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the US Food and Drug Administration would be putting out “some very strong recommendations” regarding the use of flavored e-cigarettes in “a couple of weeks.”
The winnowing presidential primary field is five months out from the first ballots being cast – but Democrats all vying for the top of the ticket are still carving out their own paths to defeat President Donald Trump.
Those differing routes are never more apparent than when standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a debate stage.
“You know, we have a president, as everybody has acknowledged here, every day is ripping at the social fabric of this country, but no one man has the capacity to rip that apart,” former Vice President Joe Biden said in his opening pitch at the second Democratic debate. “It’s too strong. We’re too good … Mr. President, this is America. And we are stronger and great because of this diversity, Mr. President, not in spite of it.”
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed China’s decision to exempt some U.S. anti-cancer drugs and other goods from its tariffs and announced a delay to scheduled tariff hikes on billions worth of Chinese goods.
Beijing’s exemptions and Washington’s delay came days ahead of a planned meeting aimed at defusing a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday gave the Trump administration permission to enforce its toughest restriction yet on asylum seekers at the southern border, even though a lawsuit to stop the new policy is still working its way through the lower courts.
As a result, the government can now refuse to consider a request for asylum from anyone who failed to apply for it in another country after leaving home but before coming here. The order means, for instance, that migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador cannot seek asylum in the U.S. if they didn’t first ask for it in Mexico.
In the moments before President Donald Trump was set to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, his mind was decidedly elsewhere.
Joe Biden leads the Democratic presidential primary but a tight race for second place has formed behind him as Sen. Elizabeth Warren leads Sen. Bernie Sanders by one point, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi completely lost it on a reporter for asking whether she regretted not calling the House back from recess to work on gun reform, saying she was “getting very angry about the silliness of these questions” and blaming Mitch McConnell for continued deaths from gun violence.
On Tuesday, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tal Kopan approached Pelosi on Capitol Hill and asked “Do you have any regrets about not bringing the House back in August to keep the flame lit on gun violence?”
The 10 leading Democratic presidential candidates will take the stage at the party’s third 2020 presidential primary debate in Texas on Thursday.
Unlike the prior debates, the event in Houston will feature all the highest-polling candidates — including Former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — on stage at the same time. In previous debates, the field was split into two groups of 10 and included California Rep. Eric Swalwell, Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who have since dropped out.
Republican Rep.-elect Dan Bishop’s narrow victory in a North Carolina special election had drawn a half-dozen excited tweets from President Donald Trump by early Wednesday morning.
“Dan Bishop was down 17 points 3 weeks ago. He then asked me for help, we changed his strategy together, and he ran a great race,” Trump tweeted. “Big Rally last night.”
Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
As President Donald Trump began losing confidence in national security adviser John Bolton, whom he fired on Tuesday, he reached out to the man he had fired to give Bolton the job: retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
In phone calls to McMaster — the first of which took place last fall — Trump told his second national security adviser that he missed him, according to two people familiar with the conversations. It’s a sentiment the president has also expressed to White House aides, they said. Trump has solicited McMaster’s advice on various national security challenges, even asking McMaster whom he should nominate to lead the Pentagon, they said.
North Carolina state Sen. Dan Bishop will defeat Democrat Dan McCready in the North Carolina 9th District’s special congressional election, CNN projects, giving Republicans a narrow victory in the GOP-leaning district where President Donald Trump won by 12 points in 2016.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been publicly critical of John Bolton on numerous occasions, so it’s no surprise that he opened his show tonight declaring that his leaving the White House is “great news for America.”
“Especially for the large number of young people who would have been killed in pointless wars if Bolton had stayed on the job,” he said. “They may not be celebrating tonight, but they should be.”
Maya. Joyce. Jill. If you are an avid watcher of MSNBC, you know these women by their first names. They are legal analysts, but I think of them as the Avengers—only talking is their superpower, and right now, for them and their fans, the Zombie Apocalypse is in D.C.
Once relatively obscure, toiling in the trenches of our criminal justice system, these women have become celebrities in their own right, showing up at moments of crisis to help the average Joe and Josephine understand the law. They educate, they entertain, and, in particularly stressful times, they can calm many viewers down. (Just as Fox analysts calm other people down. People who are not me.)
Read the rest of this look at Jill Wine-Banks and Maya Wiley here.
As Donald Trump grows noticeably more desperate, he’s blundering his way into more unforced errors, metaphorically stepping on a series of rakes scattered on the White House lawn. With each careless step onto another rake, he keeps clobbering himself in the face again and again. In particular, Trump appears to be setting a trap for Joe Biden, should the former vice president win the Democratic nomination next year. But it’s a plot that’s already backfiring. After all, my rule remains: Trump always makes things worse for Trump.
Before we dig into the latest harrowing developments on this front, let’s review. Back in May, I wrote about a story originally reported by the New York Times involving Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Ukraine.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed bill to lower prescription drug prices has won qualified praise from some of the progressives who have been most critical of her handling of the issue.
“This is an ambitious plan, as any meaningful response to outrageous prescription drug prices and nationwide treatment rationing must be,” Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, there are important limits on this plan’s capacity to make medicine affordable.”
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. alleged that there is a “criminal conspiracy” against him by former board members at the school, telling Hill.TV that he’s sharing information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His comments come after current and former Liberty University officials accused Falwell of alarming conduct in a Politico magazine story, including revealing inappropriate details about his sex life, partying in night clubs, funneling university into real-estate deals, and awarding school contracts to friends.
Six in 10 Americans say President Donald Trump does not deserve to be reelected, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, and more now say he’s doing a poor job than a good one of keeping important campaign promises.
President Donald Trump ousted national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday, saying he and the hawkish aide had “disagreed strongly” on many issues and suggesting that Bolton had collided with other Trump advisers, too.
The decision came after widespread reports that Bolton tried to stop Trump from inviting leaders of the Afghan Taliban to Camp David for peace talks. Trump ultimately scrapped the idea, but multiple people familiar with the issue said the news reports about Bolton’s dissent — believed to have been planted by Bolton aides — infuriated Trump.
President Trump took the stage in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District on Monday ahead of a special election to throw his support behind Republican candidates Dan Bishop and Greg Murphy, who’s running in the state’s 3rd District.
Bishop will face Democrat Dan McCready on Tuesday in the high-profile special election, which was ordered after widespread absentee ballot fraud was discovered in the 2018 election. The race has become a test case for national Democratic and Republican observers looking for clues to guide their messaging in 2020 campaigns.
The U.S. Air Force has ordered a world-wide review of how it chooses overnight accommodations on long flights following revelations that air crews had occasionally stayed at President Donald Trump’s Scotland resort while refueling at a small commercial airport nearby.
The review comes as additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties have been uncovered. The C-17 crew’s overnight stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland earlier this year, first reported by POLITICO on Friday, was not an isolated incident.
There was a rank obscenity posted on the electric Twitter machine Sunday night. It was posted by a very sharp reporter named Brian Entin from WSVN in Miami. Entin was on a ferry that was supposed to take Bahamians fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Dorian to Florida. Hundreds of Bahamians have been allowed to come to this country without going through much of the usual folderol at immigration—and without going through much of the the heartless, soulless folderol that has infected the process since the gang at Camp Runamuck took over.
The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.
That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.
President Donald Trump’s attorneys would be permitted to review some of Congress’s impeachment-related evidence under a set of procedures unveiled Monday by the House Judiciary Committee, part of a plan to spell out the panel’s authorities as it intensifies its consideration of articles of impeachment.
The measure, obtained by POLITICO, would also allow smaller groups of lawmakers on the Judiciary panel’s subcommittees to consider evidence — a step that could streamline and hasten its review. It would also allow committee staffers for both the Democratic and Republican sides of the panel to question witnesses for an extra hour, part of an effort to elicit more useful information.
The empire begins with a brothel. It stands, sturdy and square, at the heart of a gold-rush boomtown in northwest British Columbia, a monument to careful branding. The windows of the Arctic Restaurant have no signs offering access to prostitutes—even in a lawless Yukon outpost in 1899, decorum rules out such truth in advertising—but Friedrich Trump knows his clientele.
Curtained-off “private boxes” line the wall opposite the bar, inside of which are beds, and women, and scales to weigh gold powder, the preferred method of payment for services rendered. Word of the restaurant’s off-menu accommodations spreads fast. “Respectable women” are advised by The Yukon Sun to avoid the place, as they are “liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings.” But among lonely prospectors, the Arctic is a hit. Before long, Friedrich is boasting, with a hereditary penchant for hyperbole, that his establishment serves more than 3,000 meals a day.
Todd Palin appears to have filed for divorce from former Alaska governor and one-time vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, his wife of 31 years. In a document filed Friday in Anchorage Superior Court, Todd Palin, 55, asked to dissolve the marriage, citing an “incompatibility of temperament between the parties such that they find it impossible to live together as husband and wife.”
On the Friday before Labor Day, President Trump gathered top advisers in the Situation Room to consider what could be among the profound decisions of his presidency — a peace plan with the Taliban after 18 years of grinding, bloody war in Afghanistan.
The meeting brought to a head a bristling conflict dividing his foreign policy team for months, pitting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo against John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, in a battle for the competing instincts of a president who relishes tough talk but promised to wind down America’s endless wars.
A top official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned staffers last week not to contradict President Donald Trump’s false claims about Hurricane Dorian’s path, according to The Washington Post.
The email obtained by the Post was sent last Sunday, just hours after Trump tweeted that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Hurricane Dorian, even though projections at that time showed no such thing.
The U.S. Air Force has ordered a world-wide review of how it chooses overnight accommodations on long flights following revelations that air crews had occasionally stayed at President Donald Trump’s Scotland resort while refueling at a small commercial airport nearby.
The review comes as additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties have been uncovered. The C-17 crew’s overnight stay at Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland earlier this year, first reported by POLITICO on Friday, was not an isolated incident.
That’s one way to try halt public debate in this country: by threatening mass violence and a bloody people’s revolt in the streets. That’s what conservative media voices, including those on Fox News, have done in recent days. Specifically, the reckless rhetoric has revolved around proposed new gun laws in the wake of America’s latest string of mass shootings. Those are laws that would likely only be enacted if Democrats won the Senate and the White House in 2020.
In a series of tweets Saturday night, President Trump wrote that he called off a secret meeting at Camp David with the Taliban and canceled peace talks. The president wrote that the Taliban “admitted” to an attack in Kabul that “killed one of our great great soldiers” and 11 others.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that the Trump administration has “made a lot of progress in convincing the Taliban to make some commitments that, frankly, we’ve been trying to get out of them for almost two decades now.”
Former Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., said on Sunday that he will run for president, giving President Donald Trump another longshot primary challenger. “I plan to announce that back home this week.,” Sanford told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, adding, “But I am here to tell you now that I am going to get in.”
In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.
What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.
Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would defend funding for a new middle school in his home state of Kentucky after it was selected as one of the military projects the Trump administration will delay in order to fund border wall construction.
The House Judiciary Committee is prepared to vote next week on a resolution laying out the procedures for its investigation now that it is actively considering moving to impeach President Donald Trump, a major step toward formalizing its sweeping probe, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort.
The head of the union that represents federal weather workers said Friday that his members are “shocked, stunned and irate” that the federal agency whose workers they represent put out a statement siding with President Trump in the increasingly bizarre dispute over whether Hurricane Dorian was on track to hit Alabama.
Two congressional committees have opened investigations into Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg, Ireland, as well as President Trump’s promotion of the Trump National Doral Miami as a U.S. venue to host the G-7 summit. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the House Committee on the Judiciary on Friday announced they have requested documents from the president, vice president, and other Trump administration officials over whether the two incidents were possible violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. Pence stayed in Doonbeg this week during a trip to Dublin—some 180 miles away in County Clare.
Fox News senior White House correspondent John Roberts had just finished his 3 p.m. live shot on Thursday when President Donald Trump beckoned him into the Oval Office.
A weakened Hurricane Dorian was still packing a powerful punch as it skimmed North Carolina’s coast Friday morning, bringing fierce winds and a dangerous storm surge, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Residents were told to shelter in place Thursday while more than a quarter-of-a-million homes and businesses were left without power on the South Carolina coast in the storm’s wake.
Four states are poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.
Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.
President Donald Trump was the person who doctored a NOAA projection map of Hurricane Dorian to include parts of Alabama, according to an anonymous White House official: “It was Trump.”
According to a new Washington Post report, “Sharpiegate,” as it’s now known, was the direct result of Trump using a marker to draw in an extra bump on a poster of an early NOAA projection of Dorian’s path through the Atlantic Ocean. Trump displayed the altered poster in a Wednesday Oval Office briefing, where he once again tried to defend his inaccurate statements from the previous weekend that warned Alabama would be impacted by the hurricane.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg predicted a coming “reckoning” for Republican leaders who promote policies he believes contradict core Christian values.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor said that, for a party that claims to defend religious values, the GOP’s policies appear to contradict major religions’ teachings about caring for others.
How fucking pathetic is this: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his mass murder-enablers in the GOP caucus are refusing to do anything to tighten gun laws, including things that are supported by between 60 and 90% of Americans. McConnell is taking the bitch way out by saying that he won’t bring to the floor anything that Donald Trump won’t sign. But the NRA keeps fisting McConnell with a clenched hand filled with cash, so as long as they hit that prostate just right, the saggy-faced motherfucker won’t budge.
A top Senate Democrat wants to investigate whether Vice President Mike Pence’s taxpayer-funded stay at a golf club in Ireland owned by President Donald Trump was another “apparent conflict of interest” involving Trump, his administration and his business properties. “Citing security and logistical concerns, you and your Chief of Staff have made the claim that staying at President Trump’s resort in Doonbeg was necessary. I find it hard to believe that your office was unable to identify lodgings that could accommodate the security and logistical needs of your trip in the capital of Ireland, which houses among other locations the United States Embassy – where President Reagan stayed during his 1984 visit,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, wrote in a letter to Pence Thursday.
In the interest of big-picturing the past week or so, we learned from the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee that Russian hackers successfully infiltrated election systems in all 50 states during the 2016 election cycle. We also learned that the accused felon who was installed as commander in chief as a likely consequence of that cyber-attack spent all weekend blurting racist gibberish on Twitter while cable-news talking heads wonder how it will play among the Midwestern diner crowd. Meanwhile, the Republican Senate majority leader refuses to pass any legislation safeguarding future elections. Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.
Dude. Just take the L.
That sums up much of the reaction to President Donald Trump’s latest tweets — in which he, astonishingly, continues to defend his tweet from last Sunday claiming Alabama would be hit by Hurricane Dorian.
“Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit,” Trump wrote on Thursday afternoon. “The Fake News denies it!”
The Pentagon’s announcement that it will divert $3.6 billion in military construction funds to help fund President Donald Trump’s border wall has sparked bipartisan anger from lawmakers who learned Wednesday that their states will be impacted by the decision. Domestically, just under $1.8 billion is being shifted away from projects in 23 states and three US territories. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
At CNN’s seven-hour marathon climate crisis town hall Wednesday, the top 10 candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination united on calls to recommit to the Paris climate accord, end subsidies to oil, gas and coal companies, and halt fossil fuel leasing on public lands. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
As with many stories about President Donald Trump, this one may toss you into a familiar cycle: first you laugh, then you cry, and then you fantasize about November 2020. The president’s latest round of nonsense began on Sunday when he announced on Twitter that, among other southern states, Alabama “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Hurrican Dorian, which was making its way toward the East Coast. Read the rest of the story at Raw Story.
Migrant children who were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border last year suffered post-traumatic stress and other serious mental health problems, according to a government watchdog report Wednesday. The chaotic reunification process only added to their ordeal. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report in advance of the official release. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
While warning of Hurricane Dorian, President Donald Trump today displayed a NOAA map that appeared to be doctored to line up with his proclamation that Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Conservative operative Jacob Wohl is wanted on a felony arrest warrant in California, a development that could hamper his spree of bizarre, blundering political schemes. Wohl and former business partner Matthew Johnson were both charged with the unlawful sale of securities in a Riverside Superior Court criminal complaint filed on Aug. 19. Wohl has not been arrested yet on the charge, according to the court docket. Prosecutors recommended $5,000 bonds for both Wohl and Johnson. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
CNN reports that in one of Kelly’s last meetings with Trump before leaving the administration, the president asked him if he intends to write a book someday. Sources say that Kelly told Trump he did plan on writing a memoir, but would wait until Trump was no long president before he publishes. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro slammed her employers and complained about the network suspending her during a Tuesday appearance on former White House aide Seb Gorka’s show. While talking over a commercial break that was broadcasted on Gorka’s YouTube livestream, Pirro told the host that she may not be able to appear on his Salem Radio program in-person due to Fox News barring her from a number of conservative outlets, saying, “Fox reviews everything. They’re unbelievable.” Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Britain may have to wait to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost a key vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday after lawmakers used an obscure procedural motion to wrest control of the parliamentary agenda from the government in an extraordinary bid to stop a “no deal” Brexit. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ripped Senator Ted Cruz and “coward Republicans” after he cited the city as an example for why “gun control doesn’t work.” On Monday, Cruz linked to a story from the far-right website Breitbart News about fatal gun violence in “Democrat-controlled Chicago” over Labor Day Weekend. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper agreed on Tuesday to free up $3.6 billion from the Pentagon budget for President Trump’s border wall by effectively defunding 127 military construction projects using emergency authorities. Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
Walmart said Tuesday that it would discontinue the sale of ammunition used in high-capacity magazines and military-style weapons and also asked its customers not to openly carry firearms in stores even in states where it is permitted. The news follows mass shootings across the country, including 22 people who were killed last month in a Walmart and the surrounding area in El Paso, Texas. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Trump’s political allies are trying to raise at least $2 million to investigate reporters and editors of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets, according to a three-page fundraising pitch reviewed by Axios. Read the rest of the story at Axios.
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has declined numerous opportunities to criticize President Donald Trump’s policies since leaving his Cabinet post, said Tuesday he may not stay silent forever. In a conversation with Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, Mattis said that “when the time’s right to speak out about policy or strategy, I’ll speak out.” Mattis stepped down in December. His letter of resignation cited his disagreements on policy grounds with the president, explaining his “core belief” that “our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.” Read the rest of the story at CNBC.
Congressional Democrats plan to open an inquiry into claims that President Donald Trump was involved in hush money payments to two women during the 2016 election, according to a report Monday evening in The Washington Post. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Thirty-three people had signed up to spend what promised to be a glorious Labor Day weekend aboard the Conception, a 75-foot boat that offered a scuba diver’s dream: unlimited diving among giant fish and colorful underwater sea life, with gourmet meals served between dives. The destination was San Miquel, in California’s Channel Islands, where huge halibut and other fish abound, and September is the perfect time to visit, because of swells and strong winds at other times of the year, trip organizers said in their promotion of the $665 weekend. But on the last part of the trip, the ship caught fire off of Santa Cruz Island, and it was fully ablaze by 3:30 a.m. Monday, said Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Hurricane Dorian has been downgraded to a Category 3 storm after stalling over the Bahamas, where officials say it is responsible for the deaths of at least five people. The National Hurricane Center says the storm is expected to remain over the Bahamas for much of Tuesday before moving “dangerously close” to the Florida coast through Wednesday night, where it is not expected to make landfall. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
A west Texas man, on a “downward spiral,” made “rambling” calls to police and the FBI before embarking on a shooting spree that took the lives of seven innocent bystanders, authorities said Monday. The killer, 36-year-old Seth Ator, had been fired by his employer, Journey Oil Field Services, on Saturday before he went on his bloody rampage in the neighboring cities of Odessa and Midland, Texas. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
The Beltway press has spent years normalizing many things about Donald Trump’s radical presidency. Now it seems to be normalizing Trump’s disastrous polling numbers on the eve of his re-election run. Any other incumbent in his lowly polling position would likely be getting hammered by the pundit class as it dubbed his presidency a failure. But not Trump. Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at Daily Kos.
At my college, the semester just started. And in my classes, as usual, I have an array of students from other countries, including Syria and Lebanon. I have said on other occasions that my Middle Eastern students are almost always some of the best, hardest-working, least-complaining ones. It’s just an anecdotal observation based on years of experience, but make of that what you will. Read the rest of The Rude Pundit’s piece at his blog.
The Odessa mass shooter threatened his neighbor with a rifle last month, but the police never responded after she reported the incident to them, according to breaking news via CNN. According to the CNN report, the 36-year-old perpetrator, who shot and killed seven people and wounded 22 more on Saturday afternoon, was reported to law enforcement after he threatened his neighbor with a rifle when she left her trash in a nearby dumpster. The neighbor also told CNN that the man would occasionally shoot and kill animals at night on his property from a structure on top of his house and then retrieve the dead animals. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
The mayor of Odessa, Texas, on Sunday blamed the mass shooting in his town that claimed seven lives on “evil people” and “violent video games.” When MSNBC news host Kendis Gibson asked Mayor David Turner how he was going to comfort the people of his town, Turner responded: “You comfort your city with prayer. We’re having a prayer vigil tonight … we will handle this one day at a time.” Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Saturday she’s “alive” and on her way to being “very well” following radiation treatment for cancer. Ginsburg, 86, made the comments at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington. The event came a little over a week after Ginsburg disclosed that she had completed three weeks of outpatient radiation therapy for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas and is now disease-free. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
It just became 15% more expensive for U.S. companies to import everything from milk to diapers and sports equipment from China. Tariffs on $112 billion of Chinese goods went into effect Sunday. While some duties have been delayed and some items have been removed from the original list of $300 billion Chinese imports, many everyday grocery items and household staples will still be targeted beginning Sunday, according to an official list that spans 122 pages. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Hurricane Dorian strengthened to a “catastrophic” Category 5 storm early Sunday as it closed in on the Bahamas, the National Hurricane Center said. It’s expected to bring devastating 160 mph winds, heavy rainfall and life-threatening storm surge as it prepares to hit the Abaco Islands in the northern Bahamas. It will then hit Grand Bahama Island later on Sunday. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Seven people were killed and scores more were wounded—including three police officers and a 17-month-old child shot in the face—when a man armed with a rifle carried out a terrifying rampage in west Texas on Saturday afternoon. After opening fire on state troopers during a traffic stop on Interstate 20 between Odessa and Midland, the suspect went on to randomly shoot other victims and hijack a postal van before being gunned down by police near a movie theater. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
Recently, I have become intrigued by President Benjamin Harrison. I am, as has been said by editors and friends, very easily intrigued. I fell into this most recent interest when, while backgrounding myself on tariffs, I learned that President Harrison had as pets two possums. One was named Mr. Reciprocity and the other was named Mr. Protection. This seems a lot of effort to make sure you get your message out but, what the hell, both of them probably understood tariffs better than the current occupant of Harrison’s old job. Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire.
President Donald Trump on Thursday welcomed parts of a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general that concluded former FBI Director James Comey had violated FBI policies in his handling of certain memos regarding his interactions with the president. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
President Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president’s gatekeeper since Day 1 of his administration, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said. Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.
A federal judge on Thursday rejected House Democrats’ bid for quick consideration of their lawsuit seeking President Donald Trump’s tax returns. D.C. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden denied their request to both expedite consideration of the case and to decide on its merits without holding a trial. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
Hurricane Dorian is days away from crashing ashore in Florida, and forecasters are warning it’s getting stronger and could grow into a monster storm by landfall. Dorian was moving over the Atlantic as a Category 2 storm early Friday with sustained winds of 105 mph. By evening, it is forecast to strengthen to a Category 3 storm before heading to the Bahamas on Sunday. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign made some news this week when it evicted Breitbart News’ Joel Pollack from a private event. The right-wing site with white nationalist loyalties hyped the kerfuffle as an attack on the free press, claiming Pollack is a news reporter. And lots of Beltway journalists rushed to the defense of the GOP propaganda outlet, insisting that the Democrat had crossed a dangerous line. Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at DailyKos.
In his first interview since resigning from office, former Defense Secretary Mattis appeared reluctant to directly criticize the president, but when he was asked about Trump’s tweets about North Korea he said: “Any Marine general or any other senior servant of the people of the United States would find that, to use a mild euphemism, counterproductive and beneath the dignity of the presidency.” Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
Deutsche Bank revealed to a federal court this week that it may have copies of President Donald Trump’s tax returns that it could hand over to congressional Democrats in response to their subpoena. Whether the bank obeys the subpoena will be up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and possibly the Supreme Court. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, dropped out of the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday afternoon. Read the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump sent Fox News a message Wednesday that he would not tolerate watching hosts on his favorite TV network go easy on Democrats. The president threw a tantrum on Twitter after Fox News anchor Sandra Smith hosted Democratic National Committee communications director Xochitl Hinojosa to discuss ― amicably ― the 2020 Democratic presidential debates. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Only 10 candidates qualified by the Aug. 28 deadline, which means ― unless ABC News suddenly reverses itself ― the candidates who will participate in the Sept. 12 event are:
Former Vice President Joe Biden
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.)
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas)
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang
Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro
Those who failed to qualify include:
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.)
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D)
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D)
Former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.)
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)
Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam (D)
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio)
Former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.)
Hedge fund manager Tom Steyer (D)
Author Marianne Williamson
Queen Elizabethas approved Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to suspend Parliament days after members of the body return to work. After a meeting of the privy council at the queen’s holiday home at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the monarch backed Johnson’s request for Parliament to be “prorogued” between Sept. 9 and Oct. 14. The government has said suspending Parliament will make way for Johnson’s new administration to hold a Queen’s Speech ― laying out the government’s future plans ― on Oct. 14. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Last night on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell shared a report that Russian oligarchs co-signed loans President Donald Trump obtained. It was very thinly sourced and even as he broke the report O’Donnell himself placed an “if true” on it. O’Donnell and MSNBC have since been roundly criticized on how this made it to air in the first place when NBC News did not verify the reporting, and Trump’s attorney sent NBCUniversal a letter threatening legal action. This afternoon O’Donnell took to Twitter to admit “I was wrong to discuss it on the air” when it “didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process” He calls it an “error in judgment” and will be addressing it on his MSNBC program tonight. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell reported news Tuesday night that, if it proves to be true, could have a significant impact on current presidency of Donald Trump and Congressional investigations into Trump’s finances and his possibly compromised relationship with Russia. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Back in the middle 1990s, HBO premiered one of the great sketch shows of our time. “Mr. Show with Bob and David” was hosted by Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, and one of the most memorable sketches was one in which President Guy “Whitey” Corngood decides to literally blow up the Moon. “And we’ll be doing it during a full moon so we make sure we get it all,” Odenkirk’s NASA character added.
Today, reality — or Donald Trump’s twisted, bastardized version of reality — has exceeded any previous efforts at satirizing the ludicrousness of American politics. We could literally sit here for hours listing the thousands of Trump things, but the perfect illustration of this phenomenon dropped in our laps late Sunday. Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.
With Puerto Rico under a hurricane watch on Tuesday, President Trump complained about “yet another big storm” heading toward the U.S. territory and lamented how much aid Congress had previously allocated for recovery efforts there, using an inflated figure. “Wow! Yet another big storm heading to Puerto Rico. Will it ever end?” the president wrote on Twitter. “Congress approved 92 Billion Dollars for Puerto Rico last year, an all time record of its kind for ‘anywhere.’” Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
President Donald Trump is obsessed with completing 500 miles of border wall before the 2020 election and has embarked on a frantic push to build it, which includes directives to simply “take the land” and promises of “don’t worry, I’ll pardon you” if his aides overstep the law. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Attorney General William Barr is planning a holiday bash at his boss’ hotel in downtown Washington. The party at the Trump International Hotel, Washington, DC, could wind up costing more than $30,000, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the party and its details. A Justice Department official told CNN that the party is not an official Justice Department event and will be paid out of Barr’s pocket. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Deutsche Bank said Tuesday that it possesses tax returns tied to President Donald Trump — the latest development in the effort by House Democrats to obtain the president’s financial information. In a court filing related to subpoenas from two House committees, Deutsche Bank said it possessed tax returns — which may be related to Trump, his immediate family or their company, the Trump Organization — that it would have to hand over if it complied with the subpoenas. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
There’s a new feelgood summer movie just released: Cotton Comes To Denmark.
Over at Talking Points Memo, Summer Concepcion points us to this account from talkbusiness.net
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who’s gone from fierce Trump supporter to perhaps equally fierce Trump critic, is running for president. Walsh announced on ABC this morning, “I’m gonna run for president… We’ve got a guy in the White House who is unfit, completely unfit to be president and it stuns me that nobody stepped up.” Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
President Donald Trump said Monday that he is “possibly” looking at hosting the next G7 summit at his Trump National Doral Miami Golf Resort. The US is next up to host the G7 in 2020. Trump said while he hasn’t made a final decision on where to host the summit, officials “haven’t found anything that’s even close to competing with it.” Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump has floated multiple times the idea of thwarting hurricanes headed for the US by bombing them, including by dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes to disrupt their course, Axios reported Sunday, citing conversations with sources who heard Trump’s comments and were briefed on a National Security Council memo that recorded the comments. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Chinese officials are prepared to return to the negotiating table, signaling there may be a path to a potential détente in his tit-for-tat trade war with Beijing. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
The Amazon rainforest is on fire. The Arctic, along with parts of Alaska, Siberia, and British Columbia, have burned this summer or are continuing to burn. The conflagrations destroying the forests of the northernmost parts of the world are a result of the effects of climate change. While climate change has made fires more likely, the Amazon blazes are directly caused by the fuckery of humans, allowed by the savage, shitty president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. Read the rest of The Rude Pundit’s piece at his blog.
Folding like a cheap suit, Donald Trump once again signaled that he’s going to stand in the way of any kind of gun reform legislation in the wake of two more massacres that left 31 people dead and dozens more injured. Trump lying about gun laws and brazenly walking back his public pledges for action was completely predictable. You can set your clocks to this stuff. Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at DailyKos.
Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will join Fox News as a contributor, the company disclosed on Thursday. She’ll make her first appearance on the Sept. 6 airing of “Fox & Friends,” a show that President Donald Trump favors and to whom he has given a rare interview from time to time. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Hours after stepping down as the chief executive of online retail giant Overstock.com over his tryst with Russian spy Maria Butina and what he described as his role in a “deep state” government plot, Patrick Byrne appeared on Fox Business Network on Thursday to ostensibly make sense of both his baffling claims and his resignation. He made sense of neither. Read the rest of the story and see the video at The Daily Beast.
An email sent from the Justice Department to all immigration court employees this week included a link to an article posted on a white nationalist website that “directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs,” according to a letter sent by an immigration judges union and obtained by BuzzFeed News. Read the rest of the story at BuzzFeed News.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took power this year promising to open the Amazon rainforest to industry, roll back environmental and indigenous protections and stack his Cabinet with ideologues who dismiss climate change as a Marxist hoax.
But the record wildfires now raging in the Amazon offer a terrifying rebuke and serve as a stark reminder of what’s at stake as Bolsonaro’s policies allow ranchers, loggers and miners to destroy the world’s largest forest and repository of carbon dioxide at an unprecedented pace. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
There’s been a change in President Donald Trump. He used to say he had accomplished more than any other President, a debatable claim. But now he’s using messianic language about himself. “I’m the chosen one,” he said Wednesday about what he claims is a singular, and still only hoped-for, trade deal with China. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday adopted a religious theme in describing his role in picking a trade fight with China, saying: “I am the chosen one.” The president turned to look at the sky as he made the claim, using language that some Christians might consider offensive, because in Christian theology Jesus Christ is the “chosen one” and the savior. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is dropping out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race, he announced Wednesday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Inslee plans to send an email to supporters on Thursday announcing that he will run for a third term as governor, two sources close to Inslee told NBC News on condition of anonymity. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that he doesn’t want another tax cut, a day after the White House signaled that the economy could use a little help. “I am not looking at a tax cut now,” the president told reporters in a reversal. “We don’t need it because we have a strong economy.” Trump and his administration signaled through news reports earlier this week that they might favor a payroll tax cut as a way of strengthening the economy. Some economists think a recession could be around the corner. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
President Donald Trump says he is looking “very seriously” at altering a constitutional right to citizenship at birth. The president made his remarks during a press gaggle during which he also called himself “the chosen one” as he looked up at the sky. Those remarks came just hours after he tweeted praise calling him “the second coming of God” and “the King of Israel.” “We’re looking at birthright citizenship very seriously,” Trump told reporters. Birthright citizenship is mandated by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Also known as Jus soli, it dates back to English common law. Read the rest of the story at Raw Story.
A brand new Fox News poll shows Donald Trump well behind the top four Democratic candidates for president, with Joe Biden topping the list at 12 points ahead of Trump. Don’t get happy, though, or else we “tempt the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing,” to quote “The West Wing.” We’re still a long way from the 2020 election and roughly a gazillion things could dramatically alter the landscape of the campaign. Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.
President Donald Trump reportedly privately reassured National Rifle Association boss Wayne LaPierre that he would not pursue increased background check measures for firearms amid rising mass shooting concerns. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was weighing a payroll tax cut — an idea his advisers had insisted was not under consideration, given its potential to signal administration concern about a weakening economy. “It is something that I’m thinking about,” he told reporters at the White House. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Donald Trump is calling off an upcoming trip to Denmark after its prime minister rebuffed his interest in buying Greenland, a Danish territory, the White House announced on Tuesday. “Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time,” Trump tweeted. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters that “any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat” are either uninformed or show “great disloyalty.” Trump made the comments after he was asked about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s suggestion that the U.S. might want to reconsider how much it pays Israel in aid after she and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., were barred from entering the country last week. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Jeffrey Epstein signed a will two days before he apparently hanged himself in a federal jail in New York City. The will, filed in the U.S. Virgin Islands and obtained by CBS News, showed that Epstein was worth more than $577 million. Read the rest of the story at CBS News.
Hillary Clinton swatted back at President Donald Trump’s attempts to spread another conspiracy related to her popular-vote victory in the 2016 presidential election, this time claiming it was due to a search engine manipulation. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
If the economy goes south, as a lot of people are warning us it will, then it’s comforting to know that the president* already is only a baby step away from blaming the Gnomes Of Zurich. From The New York Times:
He has insisted that his own handpicked Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, is intentionally acting against him. He has said other countries, including allies, are working to hurt American economic interests. And he has accused the news media of trying to create a recession. “The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election,” Mr. Trump tweeted last week. “The problem they have is that the economy is way too strong and we will soon be winning big on Trade, and everyone knows that, including China!”
Despite repeated assurances from Trump administration officials that U.S. consumers are not bearing the brunt of its tariffs on China, a new JPMorgan analysis predicts that the average American family will shoulder $1,000 per year. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are lamenting President Donald Trump’s apparent about-face on enhanced backgrounds for firearm sales, with Schumer calling the move “not only disappointing but also heartbreaking.” Trump told reporters this weekend he will look “very strongly” at ideas from both Democrats and Republicans but said to remember that “we already have a lot of background checks.” Those remarks followed Trump’s Aug. 7 claim that “we can bring up background checks like we’ve never had before.” Read the rest of the story at Politico.
The New York City Police Department announced Monday that it is firing Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold in 2014. The announcement comes more than two weeks after the judge presiding over Pantaleo’s disciplinary trial made a nonbinding recommendation for his dismissal. The choice ultimately fell to NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill, who said he made his decision in the last few days. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
A few hundred fascists once again invaded Portland for a much-anticipated rally Saturday, but this time were mostly deprived of the violent spectacle they crave, as a much larger group of anti-fascists made them know they weren’t welcome in this city. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
hite House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow said there is cause for optimism about the state of the U.S. economy despite growing fears of a recession in the coming months. In an interview with Fox News’ Dana Perino, Kudlow, who serves as the head of the National Economic Council, claimed the economy is “in pretty good shape.” Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Authorities this weekend announced they had foiled three potential mass shootings after arresting three men in different states who expressed interest in or threatened to carry them out. All three cases were brought to authorities’ attention thanks to tips from the public. Here’s what we know about them. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump is not waiting for the economy to go south amid growing fears of a recession to wage what could be the defining fight of the 2020 election. Trump is becoming increasingly nervous that the end of an 11-year expansion could scupper his hopes of a second term and is going on the attack as ill omens and recent stock market slumps haunt the global economy. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Donald Trump’s new White House press secretary hasn’t given a single press briefing since she was appointed in June, and the odds are she never will. No briefing has been held there in more than 150 days, as Trump moves to drastically cut off the fourth estate’s access. It’s just another example of how reporters are being denied a chance to keep watch over Trump and his team. And one of the desired effects, as Trump moves to eliminate transparency, is that reporters increasingly seem to have very little idea of what’s happening inside the White House. Permanently stuck in reactive mode as they respond to Trump’s catalog of bizarre and untrue pronouncements, journalists have largely become spectators. Just as importantly, they refuse to concede that a titanic shift has occurred at the White House. Instead, they cling to the illusion that they’re plugged in and have the pulse of the Oval Office. Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at DailyKos.
A memo of talking points for House Republicans makes plain that the GOP has no intention of doing a goddamn thing about guns. The document, obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, is one of those repellent but totally expected things that clearly define exactly how low these motherfuckers are. It reads, in part, “White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form…We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.” Now, the “El Paso shooter” reference is wrong, according to a flak for some evil fuck of a congressman. They meant “Dayton shooter,” although, generally, leftists don’t keep a list of women they want to rape and people they want to kill. Read the rest of The Rude Pundit’s piece at his blog.
Greenland has said it’s not for sale, but that didn’t stop top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow from adding fuel to the idea that the Trump administration wants to purchase the world’s largest island from Denmark. Speaking with “Fox News Sunday,” Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, said the administration is “looking at” purchasing Greenland. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Democratic 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg has determined that people are making an approximate decision on racism when they decide to support President Donald Trump. During a broad-range interview with Jake Tapper, Buttigieg was asked about how he previous told the CNN hot that he considers the president a “white nationalist.” To that point, Tapper asked the South Bend mayor “Do you think that it’s a racist act to cast a vote for President Trump in 2020?” “Well at best, it means looking the other way on racism,” Buttigieg said. Read the rest of the story and see the video at Mediaite.
The 90-year-old grandmother of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has a message for Donald Trump on Saturday: “may God ruin him.” Muftia Tlaib made the pronouncement in response to the president Friday tweet, where he said that the senior Tlaib is the “real winner” because she doesn’t have to see her granddaughter. “Trump tells me I should be happy Rashida is not coming,” she said in an interview with Reuters. “May God ruin him.” Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
Police arrested at least 13 people and seized metal poles, bear spray and other weapons Saturday as hundreds of far-right protesters and anti-fascist counter-demonstrators swarmed downtown Portland, Oregon. Authorities closed bridges and streets to try to keep the rival groups apart. The city’s mayor said the situation was “potentially dangerous and volatile,” and President Donald Trump tweeted “Portland is being watched very closely.” Read the rest of the story at Politico.
On Wednesday, an alleged drug dealer named Maurice Hill barricaded himself for nearly eight hours in a Philadelphia rowhouse, blasting away with an AR-15 and wounding six of that city’s police officers. (The gun battle began in the afternoon when officers showed up at the house trying to serve a warrant.) Eventually, after lengthy negotiations and the liberal use of tear gas, Hill surrendered. One of the negotiators was Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner, and that is going to become important later on. Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire.
The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday issued subpoenas to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and a former White House official as it ramps up its investigation to determine whether to impeach President Donald Trump. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has been granted permission to enter Israel to visit her elderly grandmother on the West Bank. Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) had been denied access to enter Israel under pressure from President Donald Trump, who suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would appear “weak” if he allowed the congresswomen to visit. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has leapfrogged Sen. Bernie Sanders for second place nationally in the Democratic presidential primary, according to a new poll out Thursday. The new Fox News poll of registered voters who say they plan to participate in the Democratic primary or caucus in their state shows that although Warren still trails former Vice President Joe Biden, pulling in 20 percentage points to his 31, she posted an 8-point gain over the previous survey conducted last month. Sanders dropped 5 points in the poll, good for third place with 10 percent support. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
President Donald Trump made a rare move Thursday night — holding a rally in a state he didn’t win in 2016, with a stop in New Hampshire. Trump has spent most of his time as president in the key swing states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. But his advisers urged him to make a stop in New Hampshire, which he lost by less than 3,000 votes, despite having just four electoral votes. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Israel will bar two pro-Palestinian Democratic congresswomen from visiting the country, in a move that could strain relations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Democrats in Washington, the deputy foreign minister said Thursday. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
The three highest-ranking Republican leaders in the House took Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, to task after he questioned Wednesday whether humanity would exist if not for the rapes and incest that happened throughout history. “What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest?” he said at a speech in Urbandale, Iowa. “Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars and all the rape and pillage that has taken place? And whatever happened to culture after society, I know that I can’t certify that that I am not a part of the product of that.” He also noted that “it’s not the baby’s fault” if a rape or incest occurred. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
At least one gunman opened fire on police Wednesday as they were serving a drug warrant in Philadelphia, wounding six officers and triggering a standoff that extended into the night, authorities said. Two other officers were trapped inside the house for about five hours after the shooting broke out but were freed by a SWAT team well after darkness fell on the residential neighborhood. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 800 points on Wednesday, as investors suffered their worst day of the year as new concerns arose over data on global economic growth. The tumble followed a series of concerning economic indicators from Germany and China, signaling renewed recession fears in the global economy. Read the rest of the story at ABC News.
An autopsy performed on Jeffrey Epstein showed he “sustained multiple breaks in his neck bones,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday. People familiar with the autopsy report told the newspaper the bones broken in Epstein’s neck included the hyoid bone, which is near the Adam’s apple. This sort of break can happen when a person hangs themselves or dies by strangulation, forensics experts told the Post. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is expected to drop out of the Democratic presidential race on Thursday, a source close to Hickenlooper told NBC News on Wednesday night. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Wall Street was set to open sharply lower on Wednesday, as poor economic data from China and Germany put the focus back on the impact of a bruising Sino-U.S. trade war which is pushing some major economies towards the brink of recession. The outlook for Germany’s export reliant economy was also grim and Chinese industrial output growth cooled to a more than 17-year low, adding to headwinds for U.S. multinationals that rely on global demand. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
The head of the House Foreign Affairs committee is directing the panel’s staffers to warn foreign governments not to patronize President Donald Trump’s businesses. Rep. Eliot Engel — one of about 200 lawmakers who sued Trump in 2017 charging he’s violating the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause by making money from foreign governments while in office — issued the memo to the panel’s Democratic staffers on Monday. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday headed to a Shell petrochemicals plant being built outside Pittsburgh to give what was billed by the White House as a speech on “America’s Energy Dominance and Manufacturing Revival.” But the hourlong address was light on energy policy and heavy on stump speech material and off-script riffs, as Trump touched on everything from his love of trucks to his assessment of his potential 2020 rivals. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
Lawmakers and government officials across Washington, including some of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, are growing increasingly alarmed about the unrest in Hong Kong. One person, however, seems less concerned than most: Trump. As pro-democracy protesters clash with police and as China hints that it may violently quell the demonstrations, the events in Hong Kong have laid bare the tough choices facing the U.S. when it comes to dealing with the communist-led government in Beijing. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
The acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a new interview revised the iconic poem on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal to suggest that only immigrants who can “stand on their own two feet” are welcome in the United States. Ken Cuccinelli tweaked the famous poem from Emma Lazarus — whose words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are long associated with immigration to the US and the nation’s history as a haven — as part of a case for strict new measures pushed Monday by the Trump administration that could dramatically change the legal immigration system. Read the rest of the story and see the video at CNN.
The warden of the federal lockup where accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein apparently took his own life has been temporarily reassigned and two guards tasked with watching the financier have been placed on leave, Department of Justice officials said Tuesday. The move to reassign the warden, Lamine N’Diaye, came three days after Epstein was found unresponsive at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
The New York City Fire Department is investigating to find out if a first responder posted about Jeffrey Epstein’s death on an internet chat board popular with white nationalists and alt-right trolls, according to Buzzfeed News. Around 40 minutes before ABC News first reported Epstein’s death to Twitter, someone posted the news to the 4chan message board. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
President Donald Trump is defending his retweets of baseless conspiracy theories attempting to link Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Speaking with reporters in Morristown, New Jersey, on Tuesday, Trump said he thought it was “fine” to retweet the conspiracy because it came from “a very highly respected conservative pundit.” But the president also appeared to try to downplay his actions, saying, “That was a retweet. That wasn’t from me, that was from him.” Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Americans suffer from frustratingly short attention spans and even shorter memories. Case in point: Following the dark ride of the George W. Bush years, during which there were two wars, apocalyptic terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, torture as national security policy, warrantless eavesdropping and the most catastrophic economic crash since the Great Depression, I was foolish enough to believe Americans would banish the Republican Party to the hinterlands of our politics for a good long while. Read the rest of Bob Cesca’s piece at Salon.
Donald Trump has now made more than 12,000 false and misleading claims and statements since becoming president in January 2017, according to The Washington Post. Trump’s total of untruths hit 12,019 on Aug. 5, the newspaper’s Fact Checker column reported Monday. It means he’s made an average of almost 13 untrue claims on each of the 928 days of his presidency. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
One of Jeffrey Epstein’s guards the night he hanged himself in his federal jail cell wasn’t a regular correctional officer, according to a person familiar with the detention center, which is now under scrutiny for what Attorney General William Barr on Monday called “serious irregularities.” Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
FBI agents on Monday were searching the Virgin Islands residence of Jeffrey Epstein, an accused child sex trafficker, a bureau spokesman told NBC News. The search of Epstein’s private island of Little St. James comes two days after the wealthy financier died from an apparent suicide while in jail in Manhattan. Read the rest of the story at CNBC.
The Trump administration introduced a new rule Monday making it harder for low-income, legal immigrants who receive food stamps or other forms of taxpayer-funded assistance to stay in the country legally. The rule would require immigrants applying for a change in immigration status (like a green card) or those seeking to come here to prove that they are unlikely to ever need public assistance, and can bar immigrants who had received assistance above a certain threshold from being approved. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
For law enforcement officials, the first rule of dealing with victims of crime is to avoid re-victimizing them. In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the Department of Justice failed. Epstein, the wealthy financier who was charged with sex trafficking of underage girls, was found dead in his New York jail cell early Saturday morning in what Attorney General William Barr called “an apparent suicide.” Read the rest of Barbara’s piece at The Daily Beast.
Bernie Sanders dropped by the Iowa State Fair late on Sunday afternoon. He drew a big crowd. Not as big as the one he drew four years ago, and not as big as the one Elizabeth Warren had drawn the day before, but his crowd jammed the small area around the Des Moines Register’s “Soapbox” set and spilled over into the fair’s main drag and spread itself all the way back toward the Iowa pork producer’s booth. Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire.
As bad as it’s been for Texas Republicans lately, some members of the party are warning that 2020 could be even worse. The rash of recent House GOP retirements is just the latest sign of a state party in distress: In last year’s midterms, Democrats flipped a pair of longtime GOP districts, a Democrat came within striking distance of a Senate seat, and more than 50 elected Republican judges lost their jobs. Democrats also gained ground in state legislative races. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
The Department of Homeland Security officially published a change to what’s known as the “public charge” rule on Monday that would make it much harder to apply for a green card or earn a visa. The new policy, which is set to go into effect in mid-October, expands the definition of what would make an applicant likely to become a “public charge,” someone who the government has deemed would be dependent on it, thus rendering them ineligible for legal permanent residency status. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci on Monday accused President Donald Trump of having “gone off the rails,” comparing him to a “demagogue” and insisting the administration’s conservative policy agenda is not worth the damage Trump has inflicted upon America’s democratic institutions. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
Seventeen Democratic presidential candidates joined gun control advocates at a rally in Iowa on Saturday and called for the Senate to vote on a pair of background check bills passed by the House earlier this year. A week after 31 people died in mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, the 2020 hopefuls slammed Republicans for inaction as massacres involving guns become increasingly common. Read the rest of the story at ABC News.
Jail protocols requiring routine checks on the well-being of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appear to have not been followed in the hours before the millionaire was found hanging in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, sources told ABC News on Sunday. Read the rest of the story at ABC News.
The New York City medical examiner’s office said Sunday that it had completed an autopsy of the financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein but that it needed more information before determining the cause of death. Multiple people briefed on the investigation told NBC News that suicide remains the presumed cause of death and that no sign of foul play has emerged in the day and a half since Epstein, 66, was found unresponsive in his federal jail cell in lower Manhattan on Saturday. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Jeffrey Epstein — his perversions, and the perversions of justice swirling around his case — has lived for years on the margins of politics because of his association with two presidents, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, among others in a long roster of people with respectable titles who spent time in his disreputable orbit.
Epstein’s death by what authorities called suicide in a Manhattan jail cell Saturday morning moved his case to the center of American politics. Read the rest of the story at Politico.
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke criticized President Donald Trump on Sunday for sharing unfounded conspiracy theories about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, accusing Trump of misusing the presidency to “attack his political enemies.”
“This is another example of our president using this position of public trust to attack his political enemies with unfounded conspiracy theories,” O’Rourke, who is running for president, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Obstructionist Republicans have been blocking common-sense gun laws for years, even as the laundry list of gun massacres continues to grow. The radical maneuver comes against overwhelming public support for Democrat-backed legislation. If ever there’s been an example of an entire political party in America completely out of step with the country, this is it. So why does the press constantly inform news consumers that “Congress” is to blame for the lack of action, instead of Republicans? Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at DailyKos.
Check out this pair of fucking ghouls, acting like they just stole a baby to drink its sweet, young blood so they can live on for a few precious days before they suck another child dry. What you’re looking at is Donald Trump, a worn-out sack of lies painted orange and shoved into a terrible suit, and Melania Trump, a lamprey in human form, who happen to be the President and First Lady of the United States, smiling as they hold an orphan named Paul. Read the rest of The Rude Pundit’s piece at his website.
A man accused of walking into a Walmart in Missouri equipped with body armor, a handgun and a rifle less than a week after a gunman killed 22 people in a Texas Walmart said it was a “social experiment” and not intended to cause panic, police say.
“I wanted to know if that Walmart honored the Second Amendment,” Dmitriy Andreychenko told investigators, according to a probable cause statement filed by Springfield police. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
The man accused of carrying out last weekend’s deadly mass shooting at a Walmart in the Texas border city of El Paso confessed to officers while he was surrendering and later explained that he had been targeting Mexicans, authorities say. Patrick Crusius, 21, emerged with his hands up from a vehicle that was stopped at an intersection shortly after last Saturday’s attack and told officers, “I’m the shooter,” Detective Adrian Garcia said in an arrest warrant affidavit. Read the rest of the story at HuffPost.
Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, 66, has died inside a Manhattan correctional facility, two senior law enforcement officials have confirmed to The Daily Beast. They said that it appeared he had committed suicide. Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
After months of will-they,won’t-they, House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nalder finally confirmed, to CNN’s Erin Burnett, that the his committee has begun an official impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump and that he has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s political blessing: “This is formal impeachment proceedings.” Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
This has been an objectively awful week. Far from a sleepy end to the summer, the country is reeling from mass shootings that claimed 31 lives in Texas and Ohio, not paying enough attention to an extremely deadly summer of violence in Chicago, having painful and not particularly productive conversations about gun control and about racism, and the government is rounding up undocumented immigrants in a way that leaves their children crying in parking lots on the first day of school. Read the rest of this analysis at CNN.
Some of President Donald Trump’s own aides conceded Thursday that his visits to two cities in mourning did not go as planned, as a new video revealed he bragged about crowd sizes while visiting patients at an El Paso hospital. “That was some, that was some crowd,” Trump said, according to cell phone video from one attendee. “And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot, they said his crowd was wonderful.” Read the rest of the story and see the video at CNN.
The mother of the 21-year-old man accused of killing 22 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart called police weeks before the shooting concerned that her son owned an “AK”-type gun, the family’s attorneys said Wednesday. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman is quite sure the White House thinks President Donald Trump behaved disastrously on Wednesday while he was supposed to be consoling the victims of the El Paso and Dayton shootings. Haberman spoke to CNN’s John Berman on Thursday to discuss how Trump lashed out at his political enemies while traveling to see the shooting victims in both cities. She began by noting how Trump gave a speech this week to call for unity and condemn white supremacy, and yet, neither the president — nor his campaign — is making any changes to their rhetoric. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
Equinox and SoulCycle responded to calls for members to cancel their memberships on Wednesday over their owner’s plans to host a mega-fundraiser for President Donald Trump. Equinox Fitness, which operates its namesake company in addition to SoulCycle and Blink Fitness, issued a statement amid outrage over Stephen Ross’s upcoming fundraiser for Trump, where tickets run as high as $250,000, according to The Washington Post, which first reported news of the event. Read the rest of the story at ABC News.
President Donald Trump is reportedly mulling the commutation of the 14-year sentence of former Illinois Governor — and former Celebrity Apprentice contestant — Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted in 2011 of 17 federal corruption charges after trying to sell off the appointment to the vacated Senate seat of newly-elected President Barack Obama. According to new report in the New York Times, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from visiting with victims of the El Paso mass shooting that Blagojevich’s crimes were minor transgressions and that “many” politicians have done the same thing. Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.
The issue of white extremism is taking on a new and important role in the American political conversation, and it is separate from the problem of guns and the people who will use them to mow down their fellow citizens. The two issues mix together after mass shootings carried out by racially motivated killers. But they are often distinct. Read the rest of the story at CNN.
President Donald Trump emerged from a Dayton hospital on Wednesday grieving — for himself. After visiting with survivors of this weekend’s shooting massacre in the mid-size western Ohio city, Trump took to Twitter to rage at Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley. He was furious about a press conference in which Brown said some of the hospital staff had “showed respect for the office” even after having indicated privately they were “not great admirers” of the president. Read the rest of the story at NBC News.
Following the El Paso shooting and the growing concern about domestic terrorism in the United States, Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked the media concern and called white supremacy a “hoax” being used to divide the country. Carlson mockingly showed how the media wanted Trump to “denounce this supposedly existential threat to our nation” before showing media criticisms of the president’s speech Monday. Read the rest of the story and see the video at Mediaite.
Ivanka Trump has come under fire for a tweet Tuesday in which she appeared to try to redirect “national outrage” over two mass shootings in Ohio and Texas to Chicago’s “inner city” gun violence problem. In a series of tweets, Trump said: “As we grieve over the evil mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, let us not overlook that Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend of the year. With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City—and little national outrage or media coverage—we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day.” Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.
