"The best possible path ... is for this president to resign, allow this country to heal and ensure that we come back together with the greatest, most ambitious agenda we've ever faced, none of it possible while he remains in office," the former El Paso congressman said during a conversation with MSNBC's Garrett Haake at The Paramount Theatre in Austin.
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/28/beto-orourke-calls-donald-trumps-resignation/
Clinton-Era Assault Weapons Ban Did Work, According To New Research
https://www.newsweek.com/assault-weapons-ban-1994-gun-rights-1461951
Joaquin Castro Calls for Investigation Into Whether Jared Kushner Shared Intelligence That Led to Khashoggi Killing
https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-jamal-khashoggi-saudi-arabia-mbs-killing-consulate-donald-trump-1179255
Mark Amodei Is First House Republican to Support Trump Impeachment Inquiry
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/rep-mark-amodei-impeachment.html
It's up two Republicans governors. First, it was Vermont's Phil Scott. Now, it's Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. Baker says he supports an impeachment inquiry of Trump.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1177915862180880384
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/26/two-republican-governors-say-they-support-impeachment-inquiry-trump/
Yesterday the FEC chair tried to publish their weekly journal & was blocked. She says that’s unprecedented It has a draft rule re: foreign election interference So she tweeted the ENTIRE journal.
https://twitter.com/EllenLWeintraub/status/1177720217759297536
https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/mtgdoc_19-41-A.pdf
Greta Thunberg calls out the 'haters'. "Going after me, my looks, my clothes, my behaviour and my differences". Anything, she says, rather than talk about the climate crisis.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49855980
'Mama's Last Hug' Makes Case That Humans Are Not Alone In Experiencing Emotions | Mama, the animal of the book's title, was the matriarch of the chimpanzee colony at Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands. A skilled negotiator who exerted immense influence over the other chimpanzees in her group, Mama was an individual for whom de Waal felt enormous respect and affection: "I had never sensed such wisdom and poise in any species other than my own." (Thirty-seven years ago, Mama was already a memorable figure in de Waal's first book, Chimpanzee Politics.) In 2016, at almost 59 years of age, Mama was near death. An elderly friend whom she had known for four decades but had not recently seen, biology professor Jan van Hooff, visited her to say goodbye. As van Hooff crouches down towards the ailing chimpanzee, Mama reaches for his head. "She gently strokes his hair," de Waal recounts, and pulls him closer. "Her fingers rhythmically pat the back of his head and neck," reassuring her friend that it is okay to be so close. (Given chimpanzees' immense strength and sometimes volatile personalities, ordinarily it's quite dangerous for humans to approach them in this way. This encounter was a rare exception that occurred only owing to Mama's weakened state.) A video of their encounter later went viral.
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/01/698902400/mamas-last-hug-makes-case-that-humans-are-not-alone-in-experiencing-emotions
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/10/24/559837354/watch-the-moment-a-dying-chimpanzee-recognizes-an-old-friend
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo18914351.html
Months before the call that set off an impeachment inquiry, many in the diplomatic community were alarmed by the Trump administration’s abrupt removal of a career diplomat from her post as ambassador to Ukraine. The ambassador’s ouster, and the campaign against her that preceded it, are now emerging as a key sequence of events behind a whistleblower’s complaint alleging that the president pressured a foreign country to investigate his political rival. In a letter Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sen. Robert Menendez demanded answers about the ouster of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. “Why was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine recalled in May 2019?” the Democratic senator wrote in a list of questions about what he called the “perversion of U.S. foreign policy” outlined by the whistleblower. “Did you approve that decision?” | But, in private, many in the diplomatic community in the U.S. and around the world were appalled, believing she had been improperly removed from a sensitive post at a critical moment, as a new president without any previous political experience was taking office in a struggling country in dire need of American economic and military aid in an ongoing fight against Russia-backed separatists. Donald Trump said in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Yovanovitch was “bad news” and that she is “going to go through some things,” according to the memo of the call released this week by the White House. But that characterization of her and her performance was contradicted by five current and former officials who spoke to The Associated Press. The officials described Yovanovitch as a respected and highly skilled diplomat who was carrying out two main missions on behalf of the administration: pressing the Ukrainian government to address long-standing U.S. concerns about public corruption in the East European nation and building support for Ukraine’s effort to fight the separatists. In fact, it was only because elements of the Ukrainian government wanted her to ease up on pressing for investigations into corruption — and expected her to do so because they perceived Trump would care less about the issue — that they began a campaign against her, said the current and former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. That campaign gained steam with the arrival on the scene of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/09/27/us-ambassador-yovanovitch-ukraine-whistleblower-complaint/
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have a lot of new questions for Trump’s judicial nominee Steven Menashi, an already controversial court pick who is also potentially connected to Trump’s Ukraine scandal given his current role as a White House legal adviser. "We write to inquire about your knowledge of or involvement with any of the events related to a telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, 2019, or a whistleblower complaint about that call and efforts to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the upcoming 2020 U.S. election," reads a Friday letter to Menashi, signed by all 10 Democrats on the committee.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steven-menashi-trump-judicial-nominee-ukraine-whistleblower-impeachment_n_5d8e4d8ae4b0019647a8518a
McConnell encouraged Trump to release transcript of Zelensky call
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/463483-mcconnell-encouraged-trump-to-release-transcript-of-zelensky-call-report
Headquartered in a nondescript office building in Washington, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service churns out papers with such scintillating titles as “Cotton and Wool Outlook: September 2019.” The ERS, as it’s often called, is the kind of government bureaucracy few can identify but millions rely on for their livelihoods. With roots dating to President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, the agency provides the informational lifeblood of the nation’s $1 trillion agricultural industry. Its research informs the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, or WASDE, arguably the most important global report of its kind for farmers and investors. Congress uses ERS forecasts to determine how much farm subsidies will cost taxpayers. Yet today, this key organization has been gutted. As of the end of September, three-quarters of its staff of 250 have retired, quit, were terminated, or plan to leave by year-end, according to internal estimates compiled by staff and their union that were viewed by Bloomberg News, and interviews with 12 current and former employees. | But Susan Offutt, former ERS administrator and previously chief economist at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’s watchdog arm, said the move aims to eliminate researchers whose findings contradict Trump policies on tariffs, climate change and social programs. “The ERS research program produces output that is inconvenient” to the administration, she said. Last year, for example, two ERS economists found that, among farmers, the Trump tax cuts primarily benefited the richest operators. Later, after the results were reported in the press, the USDA communications office instructed the researchers not to speak publicly, and the Office of the Chief Economist asked them to craft talking points discrediting their own research, people familiar with the conversations said. The USDA declined to discuss the situation. Those who rely on the data are feeling mounting concern that reports will either be skewed or not produced at all. Richard Oswald farms more than 2,000 acres of corn and soybeans near the northwestern Missouri city of Rock Port, population 1,200. Amid the wettest spring on record, the nearby Missouri River has been flooding as a result of climate change, threatening a business that has sustained his family here for 80 years. Oswald, 69, looks to ERS reports to build a case for improving bridges and river levees. “If you can’t talk about climate change, the reason this is happening, then how can you even talk about changing it?,” said Oswald, a board member of the Missouri Farmers Union. “It’s about policy makers, farmers, people who live in the cities -- this is unbiased work that has been done for years. The effort is to slow it down, and that’s what the move has done -- slowed down reporting on climate and the signs.” Some reports from the ERS, which also focuses on rural America and trade, have already been delayed. These include research on politically sensitive areas such as the causes of the opioid epidemic, market access under tariff rate quotas and U.S. agricultural exports to China. The reason: A group of seven staff who edit the peer-reviewed reports is down to one, causing a backlog. | At the resource and rural economics division, which studies links between agriculture, energy, climate and policies, at least half of its staff of about 65 have already left or will be leaving when the agency moves its headquarters, according to the internal estimates viewed by Bloomberg. The food team retained only half its staff of 55. The group analyzes areas essential to U.S. well-being: school lunch programs, regular reports on the health of women and children, and food safety and prices. Similarly, half of the researchers compiling the U.S. government’s most detailed report on farm and ranch finances are gone. All five people responsible for farm insurance and risk management have left. | “Without the information, you don’t have anything to inform your policy -- and information is changing as you and I are speaking,” said Katherine Wallman, chief statistician of the U.S. under four presidents until 2017. “It’s the worst possible time to cut the availability of that information.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/trump-has-gutted-an-agency-that-s-vital-to-american-farmers
The White House didn't just hide the Trump-Ukraine phone call, CNN reported last night — it also locked down transcripts with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Saudi royal family, including crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
https://www.axios.com/white-house-trump-transcripts-putin-saudi-royals-e40ebfb2-f37f-41c2-b7c8-bf7990ee9704.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/politics/white-house-restricted-trump-calls-putin-saudi/index.html
More than 200 House Democrats support impeachment, but the ones he singles out as “Savages” are two Jews and four women of color.
https://twitter.com/Milbank/status/1177921621740445696
In this week’s episode of Trump, Inc., we’re digging into a part of Giuliani's work that has occurred largely outside of the spotlight: He has often traveled to Russia or other former Soviet states as guests of powerful players there. And since Trump was elected, he appears to have stepped up the frequency of those trips.
Just last week, for example, Giuliani appeared in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, which has close trade ties with Russia. He was invited, according to local press accounts, by Ara Abramyan, an Armenian businessman who lives in Russia. Abramyan once helped reconstruct the Kremlin and also received a medal for “merit to the fatherland” from President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Giuliani said he was in Armenia as a private citizen, but on a local TV news show, Abramyan implied that he expected Giuliani to carry a message for him to Trump. (The conversation was in Armenian, so it’s not clear whether Giuliani understood what Abramyan was saying.) While in Armenia, Giuliani also attended a technology conference (one of his businesses advises on cybersecurity). The conference program listed him as appearing on a panel that also included a Russian currently on the U.S. sanctions list imposed after Russia's invasion of Crimea. There are many things we don't know about Giuliani's trips. We don't know whether he's being paid, and if so by whom. Giuliani declined to answer our questions.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/trumpinc/episodes/trump-inc-rudy-inc
The gap between the richest and the poorest American households is now the largest it's been in the past 50 years — despite the median U.S. income hitting a new record in 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau says.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764654623/u-s-income-inequality-worsens-widening-to-a-new-gap
The administration is cutting the number of refugees the U.S. will take, and that’s attracting criticism from some evangelicals
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/28/administration-is-cutting-number-refugees-us-will-take-thats-attracting-criticism-some-evangelicals/
Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" came out 30 years ago today. 59 people are namechecked in it. Only 5 are still alive: Queen Elizabeth II, Brigitte Bardot, Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, and Bernhard Goetz.
https://twitter.com/ThatEricAlper/status/1177890026736238592
It also raises the question whether one motivation for putting things like the Lavrov meeting memo and the Putin call transcripts in the codeword system was to hide them from Mueller.
https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1177916017781215232
Boris Johnson sparked uproar during angry exchanges in the House of Commons after he was dragged back to Parliament to explain why he broke the law and tried to suspend the legislature in the run-up to Brexit. The defiant premier refused to resign or even apologize. Instead, Johnson came out fighting. He challenged his political opponents to trigger an election through a no-confidence vote, and accused them of cowardice for twice rejecting one. He also declared that the Supreme Court judges who overturned his decision to suspend Parliament were simply “wrong.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-25/u-k-s-johnson-comes-out-fighting-and-demands-a-brexit-election
Feds to open Utah’s national parks to ATVs; advocates fear damage, noise they may bring
https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2019/09/28/feds-open-utahs-national/
Federal Judge Blocks Trump Move To Fast-Track Deportations | A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's effort to expand fast-track deportation regulations for undocumented immigrants without the use of immigration courts. The procedure, known as "expedited removal," has previously been used to deport undocumented immigrants who cross into the U.S. by land without an immigration hearing or access to an attorney if they are arrested within 100 miles of the border within two weeks of their arrival. In July, the administration expanded the rule to include undocumented immigrants who couldn't prove they had been in the U.S. continuously for two years or more, no matter where they were in the country. In a 126-page report issued just before midnight on Friday, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a preliminary injunction on the policy change. She stated that the administration did not follow the correct decision-making procedures, such as the formal notice-and-comment period required for major federal rule changes, and likely violated federal law in failing to do so. She said that "no good cause exists for the agency to have not complied with these mandates in this instance."
https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2019cv2369-40
https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/order-0
Mueller seems not to have known that Trump told Russian officials he was unconcerned by Moscow’s 2016 election interference. It may not have changed Mueller’s criminal analysis—but it radically affects the “no collusion” narrative, @benjaminwittes writes: | Shortly after the story broke, I received a message from a person directly involved with the FBI’s decision to open a counterintelligence and obstruction investigation of Trump in the immediate aftermath of the firing of FBI Director James Comey. To say this person, who had clearly learned about the matter [me: Trump blackmailing Ukraine government] for the first time from the Post, was angered by the story would be to understate the matter. The message read in relevant part: “None of us had any idea. Multiple people had opportunity and patriotic reason to tell us. Instead, silence.” It is a big deal that the FBI did not know when it opened its investigation that the president—in addition to boasting about relieving pressure on himself by firing Comey—had specifically disclaimed concern over Russian electoral interference to senior Russian officials. | Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe—who was serving as the bureau’s acting director during the period when the FBI opened the counterintelligence and obstruction probes into the president—has stated publicly that the Oval Office meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak played a role in his decisionmaking: | It seems obvious, in the context of these concerns, that information that the president informed Russian officials that he did not care about Russian election interference would have been key to this analysis on the FBI’s part—and, later, on the part of Robert Mueller. But it seems preponderantly likely that Mueller never learned of this information. His report includes plenty of material on Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak the day after Comey’s firing, including Trump’s comments that, “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” And it includes detail about Trump’s exchange with an apparently concerned White House Counsel Don McGahn following the meeting. But there is nothing in the report about any comment by Trump informing the Russian delegation that he did not care about election interference. And there are no redactions in this section whatsoever where such information might be hiding.
https://twitter.com/lawfareblog/status/1178017107310776325
https://www.lawfareblog.com/collusion-after-fact
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-mccabe-interview-former-fbi-director-president-trump-investigation-comey-russia-investigation-60-minutes/
A former New Jersey police chief standing trial on charges he slammed a black teenager’s head into a doorjamb reportedly called President Trump “the last hope for white people” before the 2016 election. “I’m telling you, you know what, Donald Trump is the last hope for white people, cause Hillary (Clinton) will give it to all the minorities to get a vote,” said Frank Nucera Jr., former chief of Bordentown Township, according to NJ.com’s reporting of a transcript displayed at trial this week. “That’s the truth! I’m telling you.” Nucera, 62, is charged with a hate crime, deprivation of the suspect’s rights and making false statements to the FBI in connection with the September 2016 arrest of an 18-year-old black man.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/28/chief-accused-slamming-black-teens-head-into-door-trump-is-last-hope-white-people/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/01/n-j-police-chief-said-black-people-are-like-isis-and-hed-like-to-be-on-the-firing-squad-feds-say/
https://www.nj.com/burlington/2019/09/nj-cop-again-testifies-against-his-former-chief-who-said-trump-was-last-hope-for-white-people.html
Simultaneously desperate, pathetic, sinister, and so blazingly hypocritical you wonder how the people doing the work keep straight faces
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1178084285191987200
Republicans: "stop attacking Trump or we'll investigate Hillary Clinton and every single person connected to Hillary Clinton to death! You try to impeach Trump and we'll arrest the entire Democratic Party!": The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said. As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post. State Department investigators began contacting the former officials about 18 months ago, after President Trump’s election, and then seemed to drop the effort before picking it up in August, officials said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/state-dept-intensifies-email-probe-of-hillary-clintons-former-aides/2019/09/28/9f15497e-e1f2-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html
It's the year 2250 and a team of Republican deep sea divers scour the sunken ruins of Los Angeles looking for Hillary emails and DNC servers.....
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