"I was very actively involved in advocating [for] the aid. I talked to the secretary of Defense, the secretary of State once...I have no idea what precipitated the delay."https://t.co/tfY414rqOr
— Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) September 24, 2019
The rookie Democratic lawmaker caught House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's eye as the two women brushed past each other in a marbled Capitol hallway. Neither slowed her step. But over her shoulder, Pelosi flashed Rep. Elissa Slotkin a thumbs-up and said, "Congratulations.""Thank you!" Slotkin responded.The lightning-quick moment, just before noon, was just what it seemed: a high-five of sorts between Pelosi and one of the vulnerable Democratic freshmen who were, for the first time, getting behind formal impeachment proceedings against the nation's 45th president.Slotkin of Michigan and six other freshman Democrats with national security backgrounds had called for Trump's impeachment from the pages of The Washington Post only the night before, most for the first time, over reports that he had pressured Ukraine to investigate Democrat Joe Biden's son. [...]In reality, what changed is that Pelosi and the national security freshmen got behind formal impeachment proceedings, which were already in progress. But doing so is acutely risky in some closely-fought districts that in 2018 delivered House control to Pelosi's party, and divisions between progressives and moderates had roiled the caucus all year. Now, Pelosi told the caucus at a private meeting Tuesday, Democrats were united on the subject. [...]Many Democrats, including Pelosi, had thought the public didn't understand or care enough about Mueller's findings to get behind divisive impeachment proceedings. Not even Trump's stonewalling was enough.But that all changed late last week when Trump was reported to have asked Ukraine's leader on a call to investigate work done for the country by Biden's son.As Trump continued to not entirely deny the charge over the weekend, freshman Rep. Abigail Spanberger sensed sentiment in her politically mixed Virginia district "pivot" from a "general pit of confusion" over the Mueller report -- to clarity."I saw a shift on the ground in my district," said Spanberger, another author of the op-ed. "On the ground there was a change in the conversation. This is something new. It's a new phase. This is a new type of allegation."
John Bolton and several other Trump administration officials urged Trump to send Ukraine the withheld $400 million https://t.co/ySZDmPS6kG
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 24, 2019
As the Examiner becomes the Weekly Standard.... https://t.co/mgzFKm0gMK
— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) September 24, 2019
To help sort through the story, we have put together a timeline of how allegations of wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine percolated up through right-wing news circles to the president's desk; what the president and his lawyer have said and done about it; what the Ukrainian government has said about the situation; and how Congress has reacted.Before we launch into the events, it's important to understand the backdrop of the political situation in Ukraine over the last few years: the country has long struggled to combat corruption, and anti-graft efforts have scaled up in the wake of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution that toppled then-President Viktor Yanukovych. In 2014, then-Vice President Biden's son Hunter joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a large private Ukrainian gas firm. Also in 2014, the firm's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky (the former Ukraininan ecology minister and a political ally of Yanukovych), came under investigation for corrupt business dealings. In 2015, Viktor Shokin was appointed to the role of prosecutor general and thus assumed control over the investigation into Zlochevsky and his businesses.Following cries from observers about Shokin's own ineptitude and corruption and pressure from Vice President Biden, among others, Shokin was fired in 2016 as prosecutor general. Shokin's firing drew praise from Western observers, including from the European Union's envoy to Ukraine, who noted that the firing of Shokin "creates an opportunity to make a fresh start in the prosecutor general's office" and expressed "hope that the new prosecutor general will ensure that [his] office . . . becomes independent from political influence and pressure and enjoys public trust."Notably, Ukraine's then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko stated in May 2019 that he was aware of no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Hunter Biden. The New York Times reports that "no evidence has surfaced to support" President Trump's allegations that the former vice president sought to dismiss Shokin in order to help his son.
The Senate has *unanimously* agreed to Schumer's resolution calling for the whistleblower complaint to be turned over the intelligence committees immediately.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) September 24, 2019
A New York Times article from the archives explains:Seeking an injunction to halt alleged discriminatory practises, the Government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals "because of race and color." It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.How to view the DOJ's case against the Trumps? An excerpt from a new book by author and lawyer James D. Zirin took stock of some of the evidence against the father-son duo."The Trumps were drowning in evidence of systematic racial discrimination," he notes. "On at least seven occasions, prospective tenants had filed complaints against the Trumps with the human rights commission, alleging racially discriminatory patterns and practices."An extended excerpt from Zirin's book "Plaintiff In Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits" explains how Richard Nixon's investigators got their hands on said evidence:It seemed that in a July 1972 test at the Trumps' Shore Haven properties in Brooklyn, when a black woman sought to rent an apartment, the superintendent turned her away, informing her that nothing was available. Shortly thereafter, when a white woman applied, the same superintendent told her she could "immediately rent either one of two available apartments."The two women were "testers" from the Open Housing Center. One white tester said that a building superintendent admitted that "superiors" had directed him to follow "a racially discriminatory rental policy." As a result, there were only a few black occupants in the buildings.And that's not nearly all of the ways in which Trump and his father treated people of color differently.Additional evidence showed that Trump employees were instructed to code black and Latin applicants with "cryptic designations" which only identified them to other Trump employees in the know about the racial coding system. And, when Trump and his father did rent to African-Americans, they real estate magnates "ghettoized his properties" by "packing minorities" into one series of apartment buildings near downtown Brooklyn.
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has shaken up his reelection campaign weeks ahead of the November vote, a potentially ominous sign for the Republican incumbent. [...]The staff change occurred around Labor Day. Two people familiar with the decision said it was at least partly related to the handling of a late August rally that Donald Trump Jr. held for Bevin.The rally was held on a Thursday afternoon in a large Eastern Kentucky event space, leading to embarrassing images of a near vacant arena.
Oh, great, now some left-wing rag is saying it too https://t.co/ohGRVezhvo
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 24, 2019
In theory, judicial review is a good thing. In theory it is a way of forcing bad bureaucrats to do their job. The Australians, with remarkable prescience, worried judicial review might be used inappropriately, so they constrained it by act of parliament. We didn't. I think we clearly should have done. Because judicial review has been used, incrementally, to erode and alter the constitution of our country - without most of us noticing and without any of us being asked. There was a convention that the common law (judge made law) only changed little bits of the law. As of today that convention is dead.It is because of the incremental changes made by judicial review since the Nineties that the Supreme Court can declare this:'Time and again, in a series of cases since the 17th century, the courts have protected Parliamentary sovereignty from threats posed to it by the use of prerogative powers, and in doing so have demonstrated that prerogative powers are limited by the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty...'What that means is that prorogation can be limited by statute and the courts would enforce that statute. I doubt anyone disputes that. What it does not mean, yet what has happened, is that in the absence of such a statute, the 'Supreme' Court can step in and invent one. So lawyers and judges have, step by step, decided to give themselves more and more power.No one expected them to do what they did today. No one expected it to be unanimous - which perhaps hurts the most. Most of us expected them to say the matter was for Parliament, not for them. As indeed Lady Hale might have noticed from the very scant list of examples she gave in paragraph 44 of her judgment - all examples of constraining prorogation are statutory.It was a point made in open court when Lord Pannick was questioned, just after the embarrassing issue with the bundles. No example of the court controlling prorogation of parliament can be found in this country - or in any common law country. Until today.The 11 justices have taken it upon themselves to assume the power of Parliament and by common law, make a statute. That is a far bigger constitutional outrage than Boris sending parliament on holiday over conference season.
We have been informed by the whistleblower's counsel that their client would like to speak to our committee and has requested guidance from the Acting DNI as to how to do so.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 24, 2019
We're in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower's testimony as soon as this week.
President Donald Trump reportedly ordered officials to freeze $400 million in military aid to Ukraine at least a week before he got on a call asking the Ukrainian president to investigate former vice president Joe Biden's son.The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) relayed the order to the State Department and Department of Defense during an interagency meeting in mid-July, three senior administration officials told The Washington Post.
With more than a dozen moderate House Democrats joining the long list of those demanding an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, pressure mounted Tuesday on Democratic leaders to launch a formal proceeding in the House, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said she would make an announcement by the evening. [...]Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) tweeted Tuesday that the whistleblower had expressed interest in speaking with the House Intelligence Committee, perhaps as soon as this week."We have been informed by the whistleblower's counsel that their client would like to speak to our committee and has requested guidance from the Acting DNI as to how to do so. We're in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower's testimony as soon as this week," Schiff wrote. [...]Six freshmen House Democrats with national security backgrounds warned in a Washington Post op-ed posted late Monday that Trump's actions would be impeachable offenses. It was not a call for impeachment, but the identities of authors -- they all won in Trump districts -- set off a cascade.Since then, at least a dozen other Democrats who had been hold-outs against impeachment -- including Reps. Lizzie Fletcher of Texas, Antonio Delgado of New York -- reversed course and came out with their support for an inquiry. Together, they represent some of the most Trump-leaning districts in the country, suggesting they do not believe there will be a political price to pay for beginning an impeachment inquiry.Several lawmakers who are close allies of the speaker, including Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), indicated that they, too, support the call. More than two-thirds of House Democrats now support impeachment."The time to begin impeachment proceedings against this president has come," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the civil rights leader whose opinion weighs heavily with Democrats and who is often aligned with Pelosi.
[A]t what size do quantum effects no longer apply? How big can something be and still behave like both a particle and a wave? Physicists have struggled to answer that question because the experiments have been nearly impossible to design.Now, Arndt and his team have circumvented those challenges and observed quantum wave-like properties in the largest objects to date--molecules composed of 2,000 atoms, the size of some proteins.
[T]he biggest threat to the rights of the Jewish people comes from homegrown American nativists. These people dislike all manner of groups they view as foreign to this country and our research shows that they are even more vehemently opposed to Muslims than they are to Jews. American Jews and American Muslims thus have a common adversary who are to be found, for the most part, among Mr. Trump's most committed supporters.
Based simply on what President Trump has admitted to, combined with one piece of as-yet-uncontradicted reporting, Trump has committed impeachable offenses in his dealings with Ukraine.To understand why, let's do something that should be second-nature, especially to journalists, but which very few people practice anymore: Let's analyze the situation while removing all names and all partisan and ideological affiliations. Let's also stipulate that the targets of the president's interest (in this case Hunter and Joe Biden) are guilty as sin. (They probably are not guilty of criminal wrongdoing, but let's assume they are.)We know, because (1) the president said so this weekend and (2) an uncontradicted Wall Street Journal report detailed the intensity with which the president did it, that the president of the United States urged a foreign leader to investigate U.S. citizens who are not under U.S. investigation and who are not fugitives from U.S. justice.
Medical images and health data belonging to millions of Americans, including X-rays, MRIs and CT scans, are sitting unprotected on the internet and available to anyone with basic computer expertise.The records cover more than 5 million patients in the U.S. and millions more around the world. In some cases, a snoop could use free software programs -- or just a typical web browser -- to view the images and private data, an investigation by ProPublica and the German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk found.We identified 187 servers -- computers that are used to store and retrieve medical data -- in the U.S. that were unprotected by passwords or basic security precautions. The computer systems, from Florida to California, are used in doctors' offices, medical-imaging centers and mobile X-ray services.The insecure servers we uncovered add to a growing list of medical records systems that have been compromised in recent years. Unlike some of the more infamous recent security breaches, in which hackers circumvented a company's cyber defenses, these records were often stored on servers that lacked the security precautions that long ago became standard for businesses and government agencies."It's not even hacking. It's walking into an open door," said Jackie Singh, a cybersecurity researcher and chief executive of the consulting firm Spyglass Security. Some medical providers started locking down their systems after we told them of what we had found.
Of all the respondents we label Democrats, 56% consider themselves to be "Strong Democrats" (and among them two-thirds say they are liberal) while 24% call themselves "Weak Democrats" and 20% think of themselves as independents who lean toward the Democratic Party ("Democratic-Leaning Independents or "Leaners"). In these latter two groups, approximately 60% are moderates or conservatives, a reminder that the party still contains substantial ideological diversity despite its liberal leanings.
On today's Bulwark Podcast, NBC's Jonathan Allen joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss how President Trump's Ukraine call may have tilted the balance towards a certain impeachment vote.
Hannity: Did our State Department ask you to go on a mission for them?
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 24, 2019
Giuliani: They did. The State Department called me and said would I take a call from Mr. Yermak., who's number two or three to the president elect who is now the president. pic.twitter.com/nXDXsE5W2L
Speaking to The Times of Israel on Tuesday as the two teams met, a senior Blue and White source said the centrist party's lawmakers, including its chairman, did not believe Netanyahu really wanted to form a unity government and was instead planning on forcing a third round of elections.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday he had withheld U.S. aid to Ukraine, an action at the center of a political storm over allegations that he pressured the country's leader to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been discussing with Democratic lawmakers whether now is the time to start impeachment proceedings against President Trump, several congressional aides and House Democrats told The Washington Post on Monday.
At least a week before his July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump told acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to hold back nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine, three senior administration officials told The Washington Post on Monday.
Parties of soil and of blood.A group of American conservatives has caused waves over the past 12 months by explicitly turning against big business. It includes figures such as Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, Fox News host Tucker Carlson (who recently delivered a speech entitled "Why Big Business Hates Your Family", and endorsed Democrat Elizabeth Warren's economic agenda) and a number of Catholic intellectuals such as Sohrab Ahmari and Patrick Deneen.These Trump-friendly Right-wingers are certainly not cheerleaders for Extinction Rebellion or Greta Thunberg; at first glance they seem the polar opposite of hippies, who originally defined themselves against the "military-industrial complex" and its evil end product, the war in Vietnam.But yes, if you can get past the tone of voice, there is something hippie about these new Conservatives, defining themselves against boundary-less financial markets, the over-mighty power of technology and global corporations, and the creep of commercial thinking into all aspects of our lives. In a sense, they are more truly 'counter-cultural' than the climate protestors, who are celebrated as virtuous by almost everybody in power.
Texas has one of the youngest populations in the country. In fact, only Utah, Alaska and the District of Columbia have younger populations - and not by much. It's projected that by 2022, one in three voters in Texas will be under 30."There is a lot of potential there," said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs. "Young folks don't tend to register, don't tend to vote at the same rates that older folks do."A historically bad investmentLow turnout in years past has hampered big investments into young voters until somewhat recently.Texas has one of the worst voter participation rates overall -- and youth voter turnout is particularly dire. In 2014, for example, just 8% of Texas youth turned out to vote. [...]During the last election, turnout among Texas voters under 30 tripled compared to the previous midterm election."2018 reversed the trend that we'd been seeing in terms of decline in voter turnout among youth and among Latinos," DeFrancesco Soto said.That change is also part of the reason the state experienced one of the closest statewide elections in decades, when Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke lost to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz by less than 3 percentage points.Martinez said that close election made it easier to raise money for efforts aimed at getting even more young people and people of color to vote.
US President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has come under pressure in the face of protests back home calling for him to step down."Everybody has demonstrations," Trump said on Monday while meeting el-Sisi on the sidelines of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.