Light News Dump

Biden: Does Trump know Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens?
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/04/biden-trump-puerto-rico-1353540

Republicans cancel English classes, soccer, legal aid for unaccompanied childred in U.S. shelters
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-administration-cancels-english-classes-soccer-legal-aid-for-unaccompanied-child-migrants-in-us-shelters/2019/06/05/df2a0008-8712-11e9-a491-25df61c78dc4_story.html

Republicans ordered Border Patrol to confiscate medicine used on detention prisons holding children
https://news.yahoo.com/border-patrol-is-confiscating-migrant-kids-medicine-us-doctors-say-225354608.html

Trump committing nuclear 'malpractice' with 'absolutely disastrous' technology transfer to Saudi Arabia, senator warns
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-committing-nuclear-malpractice-absolutely-disastrous-technology-transfer-saudi-arabia-1442312

Barr and Ross Must Produce Census Documents by Tomorrow to Avoid Contempt
https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/barr-and-ross-must-produce-census-documents-by-tomorrow-to-avoid-contempt

Trump’s EPA Exempts Factory Farms From Reporting Harmful Emissions
https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trumps-epa-exempts-factory-farms-from-reporting-harmful-emissions-2019-06-04/

Voter Suppression Is the Expressed Policy of Every Republican Officeholder
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27750601/texas-governor-greg-abbott-voter-roll-purge/

The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution. The scientists reported that drinking a lot of bottled water drastically increased the particles consumed.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/people-eat-at-least-50000-plastic-particles-a-year-study-finds

Chile announced Tuesday it would close eight coal-fired power stations over the next five years as part of a plan to switch entirely to renewable energy by 2040
https://www.france24.com/en/20190604-chile-close-eight-coal-fired-power-stations

Foxconn has offshored more than 150 U.S. jobs to Mexico, according to the Labor Department, even as it struggles to meet job-creation targets promised as part of the new factory championed by Trump, Reuters reports.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxconn-usa-exclusive/exclusive-promising-thousands-of-us-jobs-foxconn-offshored-155-to-mexico-idUSKCN1T52ZA

An Ohio doctor was charged with 25 counts of murder. The authorities said he deliberately prescribed fatal overdoses of opioid painkillers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/us/ohio-doctor-murder-fentanyl-overdose.html

Sen. Susan Collins Keeps Voting For Trump’s Anti-Abortion Judges
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/susan-collins-abortion-rights-judges-200503565.html

Duckworth Rips Trump Over Vietnam Comments: ‘No One Believes’ You Couldn’t Serve
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/duckworth-slam-trump-vietnam-war-serve

Charles spent 75 minutes longer than scheduled trying to convince Donald Trump of the dangers of climate change but the president still insisted the US was “clean” and blamed other nations for the crisis.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/05/donald-trump-tells-prince-charles-us-is-clean-on-climate-change

Russian trolls who interfered in 2016 U.S. election also made ad money, report says — Some accounts were set up months in advance. And some trolls used fake accounts to make money, researchers found, with one perhaps generating $1 million.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/russian-trolls-who-interfered-2016-u-s-election-also-made-n1013811

Trump administration approved 2 nuclear deals to Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-approved-nuclear-deals-saudi-arabia-khashoggi/story?id=63492793

One million EU citizens have signed the #EndTheCageAge European Citizens Initiative (ECI) petition, the biggest ever political push for farm animal welfare, which aims to end the use of cages for farm animals across the continent.
https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/one-million-eu-citizens-make-history-for-farm-animals

Catholic Church spent $10 million on lobbyists in fight to stymie priest sex abuse suits - The money was spent in eight northeastern states where bills to aid victims of clerical sex abuse were in the works.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/catholic-church-spent-10-million-lobbyists-fight-stymie-priest-sex-n1013776

Tiffany Trump Child Support Payments Would Have Been Stopped by Donald if She Joined the Military: Prenup
https://www.newsweek.com/tiffany-trump-child-support-payments-would-have-been-stopped-donald-if-she-joined-military-prenup-1442203

How Payday Lenders Spent $1 Million at a Trump Resort and Cashed In
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-payday-lenders-spent-1-million-at-a-trump-resort-and-cashed-in#162933

Costa Rica Doubled Its Forest Cover In Just 30 Years: ‘After decades of deforestation, Costa Rica has reforested to the point that half of the country’s land surface is covered with trees again.’
https://www.intelligentliving.co/costa-rica-forest-cover/

Pramila Jayapal becomes first South Asian American woman to preside over House
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/446898-pramila-jayapal-becomes-first-south-asian-american-woman-to-preside-over-house

Christopher Steele agrees to be questioned by US officials over his relationship with FBI
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/446972-report-christopher-steele-agrees-to-be-questioned-by-us-officials

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke issued an ambitious plan on Wednesday to revamp the U.S. voting system by cracking down on voter suppression and getting an additional 35 million people to the ballot box by the 2024 elections. O’Rourke, 46, said as president he would spearhead a nationwide effort to allow voters in every state to register on election day, and to make registration automatic every time a citizen does business with a government office, such as getting a driver’s license. O’Rourke says that by combining the two measures in all 50 states, at least 50 million more voters would be registered. He also wants to make U.S. voting day a national holiday, making it easier for people to get to the polls, expand voting by mail, extend early voting and place polling stations in easily accessible, “iconic” locations.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-orourke/democrat-orourke-unveils-voting-rights-plan-to-get-35-million-more-to-the-polls-idUSKCN1T61CC

Beto O’Rourke Wants Term Limits For Congress And The Supreme Court
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/beto-orourke-term-limits-voting-rights

House Votes to Give ‘Dreamers’ a Path to Citizenship
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/us/politics/dream-promise-act.html

Global investment is at its worst level for 3 years thanks to Trump's trade wars, World Bank says
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-war-global-investment-lowest-since-2016-world-bank-2019-6

Trump claims he banned trans people from the military because ‘they take massive amounts of drugs’
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-claims-banned-trans-people-from-military-massive-amounts-of-drugs-396f5335af22/

YouTube just banned supremacist content, and thousands of channels are about to be removed
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/5/18652576/youtube-supremacist-content-ban-borderline-extremist-terms-of-service

 Senior U.S. officials warned Congress on Wednesday about the threat to national security from melting ice in the Arctic as Russia and other adversaries take advantage of the increasing possibilities for shipping and other commercial activity that will emerge as a result of a climate change. In a message that was at odds with a broader Trump administration effort to downplay the threat from climate change, officials from the State Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Pentagon sounded alarms over the prospect that an area of strategic importance to the U.S. would be free of ice cover starting in a little more than a decade. Among the effects would be increased opportunities for mining, fishing and shipping that U.S. adversaries, particularly Russia and China, would seek to exploit, said Peter Kiemel, a National Intelligence Council counselor at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "As a result, the Arctic is emerging as a new domain of strategic competition," Kiemel told members of the House Intelligence Committee. "Russia, China and others are dramatically increasing their activities and investments in the region."
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/06/05/us/politics/ap-us-climate-security.html

Stop eating fish. It’s the only way to save the wildlife in our seas.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/seas-stop-eating-fish-fishing-industry-government

Carnival Corporation cruise ships emitted 10 times more cancer-causing gases in Europe than all of the continent’s passenger vehicles combined
https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-giant-emits-10-times-more-air-pollution-all-europe

'Metal thieves' steal 56-tonne, 23-metre rail bridge in Russia - Central span of bridge in Arctic Russia vanished leaving no trace or debris
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-bridge-theft-disappear-arctic-umba-river-rail-a8944971.html

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told administration officials that President Donald Trump should hold off on imposing tariffs on Mexico until he can personally make his argument to Republicans in Congress, according to people briefed on the conversation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-05/mcconnell-seeks-tariff-delay-until-trump-faces-gop-senators

The US government has obtained intelligence that Saudi Arabia has significantly escalated its ballistic missile program with the help of China, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, a development that threatens decades of US efforts to limit missile proliferation in the Middle East.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/05/politics/us-intelligence-saudi-arabia-ballistic-missile-china/index.html

Jay Inslee
@JayInslee
Today, my team received a call from the Democratic National Committee letting us know that they will not host a #ClimateDebate.
https://twitter.com/JayInslee/status/1136383781185572864

Further, they explained that if we participated in anyone else's climate debate, we will not be invited to future debates. This is deeply disappointing.
https://twitter.com/JayInslee/status/1136384080117764096

The DNC is silencing the voices of Democratic activists, many of our progressive partner organizations, and nearly half of the Democratic presidential field, who want to debate the existential crisis of our time.
https://twitter.com/JayInslee/status/1136384081434824705

Democratic voters say that climate change is their top issue; the Democratic National Committee must listen to the grassroots of the party.
https://twitter.com/JayInslee/status/1136384082714120192

We are running out of time. We've kicked the can down the road for too long. The climate crisis merits a full discussion of our plans, not a short exchange of talking points.
https://twitter.com/JayInslee/status/1136384083985018880

The next president must make defeating this crisis the top priority of the nation. And I will continue to do everything I humanly can to ensure the climate crisis is at the top of the national agenda. #ClimateDebate
https://twitter.com/JayInslee/status/1136384084819685376

Jay Inslee Says DNC Denied His Request for a Climate Debate. The Washington governor and 2020 candidate has been pushing the committee to devote one of its debates solely to the issue of climate change.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jay-inslee-says-dnc-denied-his-request-for-a-climate-debate

US ‘prepares to sell over US$2 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan’
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3013290/us-prepares-sell-over-us2-billion-worth-tanks-weapons-taiwan

Veteran Blowback Causes Trump to Step Back From Plan to Pardon War Criminals
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/trump-steps-back-from-plan-to-pardon-war-criminals-report.html

State Department Program Targeting Critics of Trump’s Iran Policy Draws Congressional Scrutiny
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/state-department-attacks-critics-of-trump-iran-policy-house-dems-investigate/

White nationalist attacks should be prosecuted as terrorism
https://news.yahoo.com/house-white-nationalism-hearing-130228990.html

Air pollution kills 100,000 Indian kids every year
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/air-pollution-kills-100-000-indian-kids-every-year-study-finds

Troops charged in Green Beret’s death in Mali planned to record him being sexually assaulted, Marine says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/06/05/troops-charged-green-berets-death-mali-planned-record-him-being-sexually-assaulted-marine-says/?utm_term=.896aaf9c70c7

2 million Somalis could die by end of summer if international aid doesn't come soon
https://www.stltoday.com/news/world/un-million-somalis-could-die-by-end-of-summer-if/article_c83f8715-02d0-5851-b4e8-d5335a5ebf83.html

"Sugar Daddy" Website Founder to Pay For Women in Alabama to Receive Abortions Out of State
https://www.newsweek.com/alabama-abortion-women-sugar-daddy