Your Daily Dose of Trump and His Administration News
- Trump has routinely communicated with Rudy Giuliani and other individuals speaking on cell phones vulnerable to monitoring by Russian and other foreign intelligence services. US officials said it’s “guaranteed” that Russia monitored Giuliani calls with Trump/White House; Moscow may know more about Ukraine plot than impeachment investigators.
John Kelly and intelligence officials attempted to get Trump to use secure White House line, but when he realized that this enabled them to compile daily logs of his calls & the identities of those he was speaking to, Trump reverted to using his cellphone.
- The EPA has reauthorized the use of “cyanide bombs” to kill wild animals such as coyotes, foxes and wild dogs after adding restrictions in response to critics who blasted the proposal because “cyanide bombs” temporarily blinded a child in 2017 and killed family pets.
- The U.S. economy gained 266K jobs in November, which was higher than expected. Unemployment had a slight downtick to 3.5%. Most gains in healthcare, technical & professional services. Average hourly wage grew by $.07, 3.1% for past 12 months.
- 520 law professors signed an open letter calling President Trump’s conduct impeachable the day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that committee chairmen should begin drafting articles of impeachment. The professors said in the letter posted to Medium that impeachment does not require a crime, but rather an abuse of the public trust. “There is overwhelming evidence that President Trump betrayed his oath of office by seeking to use presidential power to pressure a foreign government to help him distort an American election, for his personal and political benefit, at the direct expense of national security interests as determined by Congress. His conduct is precisely the type of threat to our democracy that the Founders feared when they included the remedy of impeachment in the Constitution,” the professors wrote.
- After Pres. Trump previously complained that he wasn’t being given a chance to make a defense at the impeachment hearings, the White House has rejected the Judiciary Committee’s invitation to participate in the proceedings, instead demanding that the inquiry be ended,
- The President Tweeted: “All necessary work has been completed to declare Mexican Cartels terrorist organizations. Statutorily we are ready to do so. However, at the request of a man who I like and respect, and has worked so well with us, President Andres Manuel will temporarily hold off this designation and step up our joint efforts to deal decisively with these vicious and ever-growing organizations!
- The Supreme Court on Friday granted President Trump’s emergency request to temporarily block a congressional subpoena for his financial records from Deutsche Bank.
The court’s order came just hours after the president’s legal team asked for a temporary stay of an appellate court decision ordering Deutsche Bank to comply with subpoenas from the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees for a broad range of documents concerning Trump’s finances and his businesses.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who oversees the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, issued an administrative stay of that court’s decision that will be in effect until Friday, Dec. 13, while the court deliberates on whether to grant a longer stay and to give Trump’s lawyers time to prepare a formal appeal.
- The White House and Congress have reportedly reached a tentative agreement to grant 12 weeks of paid parental leave to all federal workers, in what would be a historic deal for the United States which does not currently have a federal parental leave policy.
The Past 24 Hours Or So 