roger stone – The Past 24 Hours Or So

The Past 24 Hours or So

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Trump Administration

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal tweeted: “I can confirm: New Jersey will be suing @USPS. Voting by mail is safe, secure, and reliable. We intend to keep it that way. As AG, I’ve made it my mission to hold accountable those who try to corrupt our political process. Lawsuit coming soon.”

Pennsylvania and Washington state Attorneys General said they plan to launch separate lawsuits seeking to reverse alterations to postal delivery procedures, the removal of mail sorting machines and limits on overtime that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has rolled out in recent weeks.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he doesn’t share President Trump’s “concern” surrounding the U.S. Postal Service and mail-in voting ahead of the November election and said the agency “is going to be just fine.”

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in a statement that he would halt operational changes and cost-cutting to the U.S. Postal Service until after the 2020 election to “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee released its final investigative report on Russia, the 2016 election, the FBI and the Trump campaign.

Some notable highlights in the report:

“The Committee found evidence suggesting …it was the intent of the Campaign participants in the … meeting, particularly Donald Trump Jr., to receive derogatory information… from a source known, at least by Trump Jr., to have connections to the Russian government.”

“The Committee found that certain FBI procedures and actions in response to the Russian threat to the 2016 elections were flawed.”

Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked closely with a Russian intelligence officer who may have been involved in the hack and release of Democratic emails during the election.

“The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. “

“Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks.”

“Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the President’s associates are amplifying those efforts. It is vitally important that the country be ready.”

The report ends “It is our conclusion, based on the Committee’s Report that the Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era.”

Former CIA operations officer, Evan McMullin, tweeted: “This Senate report on Russian interference in 2016 confirms that Trump’s campaign chairman did provide critical targeting data to the Kremlin through his associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intel officer. It’s the greatest betrayal of the country ever.”

Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone unexpectedly dropped the appeal of his seven federal felony convictions for seeking to thwart a House investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Stone had his sentence commuted by the president last month.

The Department of Justice sued Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, accusing the drugmaker of causing the submission of false claims to Medicare by using kickbacks to boost sales of its multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone.

President Trump said that he rejected a proposal from the Pentagon to cut military health care by $2.2 billion during the pandemic.

Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., are suing the Trump administration over a new rule that would allow for the transportation of liquefied natural gas by rail, citing environmental, health and safety risks.

A coalition of 30 trade groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sent a blistering letter to Congress and the White House blasting President Trump’s executive order on payroll taxes, saying it was unworkable without congressional action and warning that it will leave employees with massive tax bills once the deferral is over.

The Trump administration has officially expanded hunting and fishing at nearly 150 national wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries, increasing hunters’ ability to kill big game, migratory birds and other animals – a move that worries environmentalists who say the weakened protections could harm ecosystems and jeopardize protected species by allowing hunters to go after more predators.

Protests/Racial and Social Issues

Thomas Lane, one of the police officers that is charged in connection with the killing of George Floyd, is calling for the charges against him to be dropped, claiming that Floyd died from an overdose of fentanyl, not from former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

A billboard demanding the arrest of the officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor at her home in Louisville, KY, was vandalized, the Louisville Courier Journal reported Tuesday.

The billboard, featuring Taylor’s face with the words, “Demand that the police involved in killing Breonna Taylor be arrested and charged,” was vandalized with red paint.

NBA star LeBron James and members of the Los Angeles Lakers wore caps that built upon President Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” logo to call for justice for Breonna Taylor. The hats struck the words “Great Again” and replaced them with the message: “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.”

A federal judge in Texas ruled in favor of a Black student whose school district prohibited him from wearing his hair in dreadlocks, issuing a preliminary injunction against the district and allowing the 16-year-old to wear locks without fear of punishment.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said that he’s in favor of capping property tax revenue from Texas cities that decide to cut funding from their police departments.

A federal judge temporarily blocked a Trump administration policy that would scrap ObamaCare’s nondiscrimination protections for sex and gender identity, one day before it was set to take effect.

The rule, issued during Pride Month, made clear that the government’s interpretation of sex discrimination would be based on “the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.”

Presidential Campaign

Democrats officially nominated former Vice President Joe Biden to be their presidential nominee, setting up an election battle against President Trump in November.

Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, Independent, NBC News, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign News

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Protests/Race Relations

A man who the authorities say drove into a group of Black people at a Southern California hotel, injuring one person, has been accused of a hate crime, prosecutors said on Monday.

The man, Dennis Wyman, 42, of Redondo Beach, struck an off-duty security guard after he yelled “racial insults” at the group last month, the Torrance Police Department said

Sgt. Janak Amin, a 21-year veteran with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa has been fired and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after aiming his gun inches from a handcuffed black man’s head and threatening to kill him if the man did not give his name, according to the sheriff.

Employees at the Hillsborough County Jail had accidentally released the victim, “inadvertently” transferring him to a treatment facility for those with substance-abuse or mental-health issues, where he was not supposed to be. He then left the facility.

Once the sheriff’s office realized the mistake, they went looking for him. They found him hiding behind a trailer. When officers confronted the man and put him in a “prone position,” the handcuffed man would not give his name.

So Amin knelt down next to him. He drew his firearm and pointed it inches from the man’s head.

Then, he told the man that if he refused to give his name, he would “splatter his brains all over the concrete.” Other officers on site then intervened.

The House Appropriations Committee has approved a $694.6 billion defense spending bill that includes money for the Army to change Confederate base names and that seeks to block President Trump’s use of Pentagon funds for his border wall.

U.S. Forces Japan has joined U.S. Forces Korea in banning the display of the Confederate flag, the latest move by the military aimed at preventing racial division in the ranks.

“The Confederate Battle Flag does not represent the values of U.S. Forces assigned to serve in Japan,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, commander of U.S. Forces Japan, said Monday in announcing the ban.

The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is calling for the immediate removal of a mural containing a depiction of Ku Klux Klan riders from the Baker County Courthouse in Macclenny.

The mural, located prominently inside the courthouse in Macclenny, was painted 19 years ago with the intention of illustrating significant events in the history of the small, rural county north of Jacksonville.

Three KKK riders in white robes and hoods on horseback are depicted in one section of the mural.

President Trump defended a St. Louis couple who went viral after they stood outside their home brandishing weapons as a group of protesters marched past them.

“They were going to be beat up badly if they were lucky, OK, if they were lucky,” Trump asserted in an interview at the White House with the conservative outlet Townhall.

“They were going to be beat up badly, and the house was going to be totally ransacked and probably burned down like they tried to burn down churches,” the president continued.

President Trump falsely asserted that “more” white Americans die at the hands of police than Black Americans and criticized a reporter for asking why African Americans are still dying in law enforcement custody.

“So are white people. So are white people. What a terrible question to ask,” Trump told CBS News’s Catherine Herridge when asked about the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police. “So are white people. More white people, by the way. More white people.”

NOTE: A study published by Harvard University researchers in June that analyzed data from 2013 to 2017 found that Black Americans were more than three times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police.

Trump Administration News

The Trump administration carried out the first federal execution since 2003, following a series of court battles and a Supreme Court order, released shortly after 2 a.m., clearing the way for the lethal injection to take place.

At a penitentiary in Terre Haute, IN, federal officials executed Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, who was convicted in 1999 of killing a family of three. Lee was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m. Tuesday.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer,” Lee said when asked if he wanted to make a final statement, according to the pool report. His final words were: “You’re killing an innocent man.”

President Trump is expected to finalize a rollback to the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws. A move critics say will be particularly harmful to minority communities.

The changes to NEPA, which mandates environmental reviews of major construction projects and pipelines, are being pitched by the Trump administration as a way to cut regulations, expedite energy and infrastructure projects, and give a boost to the economy.

Critics argue that Trump’s erosion of 50-year-old protections will hit minority communities the hardest since polluting industries are disproportionately likely to be located in neighborhoods with large nonwhite populations.

“The Trump administration’s NEPA rollback will further endanger those bearing the greatest burden of legacy environmental injustice and structural racism,” said Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) on a press call.

The Trump administration is resisting calls — even from political allies — to withdraw a proposal to make it more difficult to bring discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act.

President Trump said he signed legislation and an executive order ending Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a punishment against China for what he called its “oppressive” actions against the people of Hong Kong.

President Trump said the immigration executive order his administration was planning would be “merit-based.”

“We’re going to take care of DACA because I’m going to be doing, in the not too distant future, pretty soon, I’m going to be signing a new immigration action – very, very big merit-based immigration action – that based on the DACA decision, I’ll be able to do.”

Trump said California’s two largest school districts were making a “terrible mistake” by making students stay home for the upcoming term in the face of the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to reinstate Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas. Over 18,000 people lost their Medicaid coverage in Arkansas in the five months the requirements were in effect before they were blocked by the court.

The Defense Department has announced that U.S. troops have withdrawn from five military bases and reduced the size of its forces in Afghanistan to the mid-8,000s as part of the agreement reached with Taliban in February.

Presidential Campaign

Roger Stone, who was convicted of charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, said that he plans to start campaigning for President Trump’s reelection now that his prison sentence has been commuted, saying that he is prepared to “do anything necessary to elect my candidate, short of breaking the law.”

Biden told reporters that, although he supported the filibuster in the past and still harbors hopes for bipartisan compromise, the level of defiance from Senate Republicans could influence his thought process.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) said that polls showing President Trump trailing in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania do not accurately reflect the state of the race on the ground.

Speaking with reporters on a conference call, Kelly said the polls are not taking into account Trump’s support from those who turned out to vote for the first time ever in 2016.

Joe Biden released a plan Tuesday aimed at combating climate change and spurring economic growth in part by overhauling America’s energy industry, with a proposal to achieve entirely carbon pollution-free power by 2035.

Biden’s plan differs with the Progressive Green New Deal’s target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by 2030.

In the plan, Biden pledges to spend $2 trillion over four years to promote his energy proposals, a significant acceleration of the $1.7 trillion over 10 years he proposed spending in his climate plan during the primary.

Senior campaign officials who requested anonymity to discuss strategy said it would require a mix of tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and deficit spending aimed at stimulating the economy.

President Trump said he “could go on for days” as he railed against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the “radical left”, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others in a Rose Garden event that, to many, sounded like a campaign rally.

During the nearly hour long presser in 90-degree heat, Trump claimed Biden “never did anything, except make very bad decisions, especially on foreign policy” and declared he was not the underdog and has widespread support in the fall race.

Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, Independent, NBC News, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations and Trump Administration News

Read Time: 3 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

Open Society Foundation, the philanthropic organization founded by billionaire George Soros, is investing $220 million in efforts to promote racial equality, including grants to Black-led organizations working to expand voting rights and advocate for police reform.

Residents in Norman, Oklahoma launched a petition this week to recall the city’s mayor and several members of its city council as they express outrage over its decision to vote to cut the police budget by over $800,000 in the wake of nationwide protests, accusing the city council of having “succumbed to an angry mob.”

In 1828, North Carolina Supreme Court Judge Thomas Ruffin wrote that a slave owner must have “uncontrolled authority over the body” of a slave to “render the submission … perfect.” Today Thomas Ruffin’s statue was removed from the NC Court of Appeals.

A man was recorded on video throwing red paint onto the Black Lives Matter mural that was recently painted on the street in front of Trump Tower, and which President Trump has sharply criticized as a “symbol of hate.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio later clapped back, tweeting: “To whoever vandalized our mural on 5th Avenue: nice try. [NYC Department of Transportation] has already fixed it. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is more than words, and it can’t be undone.”

Administration News

The Trump administration is moving forward with the end of a long-standing ban on the sale of gun silencers, also known as suppressors, to foreign buyers, handing a victory to firearm manufacturers after President Trump’s former deputy assistant and White House lawyer launched a campaign as a lobbyist for a gun silencer trade group.

President Donald Trump’s executive clemency to his longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone not only commuted the veteran Republican operative’s prison term but it also spared him a fine and two years of supervised release.

“I commute the entirety of the prison sentence imposed upon the said Roger Stone, Jr. to expire immediately,” according to Trump’s order.

“I also commute the entirety of the two-year term of supervised release with all its conditions, and finally, I remit any unpaid balance of the $20,000 fine imposed.”

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., again blocked the Trump administration from resuming executions just hours before the first federal death sentence since 2003 was scheduled to be carried out.

A private company that President Trump criticized over its efforts to construct a wall near the U.S.-Mexico border received $1.7 billion in federal contracts from the administration after lobbying the president personally on cable news, according to a new report.

More than 350 facilities nationwide have taken advantage of a temporary Environmental Protection Agency rule that lets companies forgo monitoring their water pollution during the coronavirus pandemic. The move is causing great concern among environmentalists: “Where facilities don’t monitor their own discharges and emissions, that can present significant environmental problems depending on what wasn’t reported that got into the environment.”

President Trump says the federal government may “take over cities” to combat rising crime: “Numbers are going to be coming down even if we have to go and take over cities.”

The United States budget deficit grew to a record $864 billion in June as the federal government continued pumping money into the economy to prop up workers and businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic

The Chinese government announced that it would impose sanctions on three American lawmakers and a diplomat in retaliation for similar moves last week by the Trump administration against four officials in China.

The sanctions targeted Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, all of whom are Republicans. Also named was Trump’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback.

The Trump administration banned four Chinese officials and a Chinese government agency last Thursday from accessing American banks and other financial institutions. It also restricted them from obtaining visas to the United States.

The sanctions are mostly symbolic on both sides, as neither the Chinese officials nor the Americans are known to have assets in each other’s financial systems.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Trump administration cannot withhold federal grants from California sanctuary cities, affirming previous rulings in the state.

Sources: ABC News, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, Independent, NBC News, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So

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Coronavirus/COVID 19 Update

Johns Hopkins University filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the Trump administration from stripping international students of their visas and forcing them to leave the U.S. if they are not taking any in-person courses in the fall.

Internal documents from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that fully reopening K-12 schools and universities would be the “highest risk” for the spread of coronavirus, according to a New York Times report, as President Donald Trump and his administration push for students and teachers to return in-person to classrooms.

The 69-page document obtained by the Times marked “For Internal Use Only” was among materials for federal public health response teams deployed to coronavirus hotspots to help local public health officials handle the outbreak, the newspaper reported.

The document was circulated this week, the Times reported, as Trump slammed the CDC guidelines around reopening schools and he, Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos increased their pressure on schools to fully reopen by the fall.

A long-expected upturn in U.S. coronavirus deaths has begun, driven by fatalities in states in the South and West.

“It’s consistently picking up. And it’s picking up at the time you’d expect it to,” said William Hanage, a Harvard University infectious diseases researcher.

According to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily reported deaths in the U.S. has increased from 578 two weeks ago to 664 on July 10 — still well below the heights hit in April.

Former President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are calling on the American people to “wear a mask to save lives” amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The Carter Center, the Atlanta-based charity founded by the former president and first lady, shared an image of the couple with the caption “Please wear a mask to save lives.” The Carters can be seen wearing white masks featuring the organization’s logo.

President Trump wore a mask during his visit to Walter Reed hospital on Saturday, marking the first time he has done so in front of cameras.

“If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed, we’ll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic,” Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates cautioned, calling for a COVID-19 vaccine to first go to countries that have been hit hardest by the ongoing pandemic.

A few dozen U.S. Marines have tested positive for coronavirus in Okinawa, Japan, officials announced Saturday.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is warning that the spikes in coronavirus cases across the South and on the West Coast could lead to the virus finding a foothold in the Northeast once again.

“It is going to come back here. It’s like being on a merry-go-round. It’s totally predictable,” Cuomo said. “And we’re going to go through an increase. I can feel it coming. And it is so unnecessary and so cruel.”

North Carolina, Oregon, Arkansas, Hawaii and Alaska recorded single-day highs Saturday.

South Carolina announced its highest single-day total for coronavirus cases on Saturday, recording more than 2,200 infections; its previous record was set on July 4 with 1,854 new cases. More than 22 percent of tests in the state came back positive on Friday — the highest positivity rate for the state yet.

Dozens of hospitals in Florida are at their ICU capacity as the state struggles to contain its massive spike of COVID-19 cases.

According to new data released by the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, almost 85 percent of the state’s ICU beds are occupied, with just 933 ICU available beds remaining across the state.

WFLA reported that 435 were hospitalized overnight Friday, a new record. At least 52 hospitals in the state have no ICU capacity left at all.

Paul Waldron—the commissioner for St. Johns County just south of Jacksonville, Florida—has tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently in the hospital in critical condition. Last week, Waldron voted against a countywide order requiring all residents to wear face masks as a way to prevent coronavirus infections.

Florida will start getting shipments this weekend of an antiviral drug that has shown signs of helping severely ill Covid-19 patients — cargo senior aides scored in part from New York just as Gov. Ron DeSantis was publicly dismissing the state’s help.

“Star Wars” Stormtroopers enforced mask-wearing and Mickey Mouse waved from a distance on Saturday as Florida’s Walt Disney World opened to the public for the first time in four months amid a surge of coronavirus cases in the state.

Cuyahoga, Ohio County Executive Armond Budish announced the establishment of a hotline to report people who are defying state order by not wearing face masks amid the surge in coronavirus cases in the state.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) on Saturday ordered bars to close and most residents to wear a mask outside. The state had an early outbreak that then receded, before a recent spike in cases and hospitalizations.

Louisiana has more cases per capita than all states but New York and New Jersey.

Texas lawmakers are asking Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to send federal resources to the region. The bipartisan group has asked HHS to set up a field hospital in the region and provide additional financial resources as the area experiences a surge in coronavirus cases.

Brazil, the world’s No. 2 coronavirus hotspot after the United States, recorded 1,071 new deaths from the outbreak on Saturday, with a total of 1,839,850 confirmed cases, the Health Ministry said.

Brazil has now recorded a total of 71,469 deaths.

Protests/Race Relations

Vice President Pence said the decision to remove Confederate statues should be made at the local level and panned protesters who have dismantled the monuments themselves.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Pence said he “wouldn’t begrudge any community or any state to determine what people ought to be remembered and memorialized.”

One of three former Wilmington Police Officers fired last month after unintentionally recorded conversations became public, revealing racist and violent language, has filed an appeal for reinstatement.

In a letter sent through his attorney to the Wilmington Civil Service Board on July 2, former WPD officer James B. Gilmore argued that his comments are protected by the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, claiming they were not racist but instead reflected a religious stance against idolatry.

Administration News

More than 140 companies and trade associations including Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Marriott, Target, Uber, Lyft, the National Retail Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that represent more than half of American private sector workers wrote to President Trump on Saturday urging him to leave the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in place. The letter cited public polling that found most Americans favor protecting Dreamers, the young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

“As large American employers and employer organizations, we strongly urge you to leave the DACA program in place.”

Updating an earlier story, Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen’s, imprisonment wasn’t related to the NY Post photo of him at a restaurant. Probation officers asked him to sign a document that would have barred him from speaking to reporters or publishing a book during the rest of his sentence, his legal adviser said.

Mr. Cohen, believing the agreement violated his First Amendment rights, refused to sign it, the adviser, Lanny Davis, said. Less than two hours later, federal marshals stepped out of an elevator with handcuffs and took Mr. Cohen back into custody.

The Trump administration announced a 25 percent tariff on $1.3 billion worth of French handbags, cosmetics and soaps in retaliation for a digital services tax on U.S. internet giants.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly recommended that President Trump not grant associate Roger Stone clemency over concerns of political blowback.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller, the top lawyer who led the Russia investigation, defended his teams’ findings on President Trump’s associate Roger Stone on Saturday after Trump moved to commute his sentence.

“[Stone] remains a convicted felon, and rightly so,” Mueller wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) sharply condemned President Trump’s commutation for longtime ally and political confidant Roger Stone, labeling it “historic corruption.”

“Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” Romney tweeted Saturday morning.

Presidential Campaign

President Trump on Saturday expressed confidence that rapper Kanye West — who recently announced that he plans to launch a late bid for the White House — could steal votes from Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in November, former Vice President Joe Biden.

“That shouldn’t be hard,” Trump tweeted, referring to West taking votes away from Biden. “Corrupt Joe has done nothing good for Black people!”

Sources: ABC News, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, NBC News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign News

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

Gov. Gary Herbert of Utah declared a state of emergency Thursday in response to protests in Salt Lake City that erupted after the authorities said the fatal police shooting of a 22-year-old man in May was justified.

Protesters smashed windows and splashed red paint on the district attorney’s office in Salt Lake City after prosecutors cleared police in the fatal shooting.

The Salt Lake County district attorney, Sim Gill, announced that there would be no criminal charges against the two Salt Lake City Police Department officers who shot the man, Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal, on May 23.

State troopers folded the Mississippi flag at the Capitol for the last time last week, a turnabout that was powered by a coalition of seemingly unlikely allies, including business-minded conservatives, Baptist ministers and the Black Lives Matter activists.

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was among those who emailed to criticize a Virginia town’s “Black Lives Matter” banner, telling city officials that protesters responding to the death of Black Americans in police custody “hate America.”

“BLM is a bit of a dangerous Trojan Horse and they are catching well-meaning people into dangerous posturing that can invite mob rule and property looting,” Thomas, who is white, reportedly wrote in a signed email that was shared with The Washington Post.

Police in St. Petersburg, Fla., said they will start fining protesters who block traffic during demonstrations this week following tense and dangerous standoffs between activists and drivers around the country.

Officers will be enforcing laws already on the books – and the St. Petersburg Police Department said Wednesday it would first begin a public awareness campaign by issuing warnings and handing out flyers.

After a few days, the department will begin issuing fines of $62.50.

Twitter suspended over 50 accounts operated by white nationalists Friday amid criticism over its handling of inflammatory posts on its platform.

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst says she supports renaming military bases that are named after Confederate figures even though she’s “been getting heck” from her own party over her stance.

Two suspended Buffalo Police officers are now back on the city payroll despite being charged with felony assault.

Officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe were suspended last month after shoving 75-year-old protester Martin Gugino to the ground, leading to serious injuries for the protester.

Administration News

The president of Goya Foods went on Fox News on Friday to defend comments he made a day earlier praising President Trump during a visit to the White House. The company has since become the target of a boycott and considerable backlash.

President Trump told reporters Friday that he is “looking at” pardoning Roger Stone, as he continued to build suspense over whether he will intervene on behalf of his former aide and longtime confidant before he is scheduled to report to prison next week.

“Well, I’ll be looking at it,” Trump said. “I think Roger Stone was very unfairly untreated, as were many people.”

The House Appropriations Committee voted to block a controversial Trump Administration transparency rule that the Environmental Protection Agency’s own independent board of science advisers criticized. Scientists have decried the 2018 rule, which the administration sought to broaden in March, as an effort to block the EPA from being able to use significant amounts of research in its rulemaking.

“This rule would place new crippling limits on what studies can be utilized when EPA crafts new regulation,” said the amendment’s sponsor, Rep. David Price (D-N.C.).

A former top Department of Veterans Affairs official in the Trump administration improperly steered a $5 million contract to personal friends, according to a report released Thursday by the department’s Office of Inspector General. The OIG report found that the actions of Peter Shelby, who was then the VA’s assistant secretary for human resources and administration at the time, were not only unethical but resulted in the complete waste of government funds.

President Trump says he intends to sign an executive order on immigration within the next month that he said will include a “road to citizenship” for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The president Tweeted: “Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status…and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!”

President Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on seven felony crimes on Friday, using the power of his office to help a former campaign adviser days before Mr. Stone was to report to a federal prison to serve a 40-month term.

President Trump confirmed for the first time on Friday that the U.S. launched a cyberattack on the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) in 2018.

The cyberattack, first reported by The Washington Post in 2019 but not confirmed publicly by the Trump administration, involved U.S. Cyber Command disrupting internet access for the building in St. Petersburg that houses the IRA on the night of the U.S. 2018 midterm elections, halting efforts to spread disinformation as Americans went to the polls.

Presidential Campaign

President Donald Trump on Friday accused former Vice President Joe Biden of plagiarizing his economic policies, a day after the presumptive Democratic nominee unveiled a plan to promote American manufacturing and goods.

But despite some similarities in messaging between Biden’s “Buy American” and Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, the two candidates’ policy plans significantly diverge.

“He plagiarized from me, but he could never pull it off,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about Biden’s plan for the economy. “He likes plagiarizing. It’s a plan that is very radical left. But he said the right things because he’s copying what I’ve done, but the difference is he can’t do it.”

Trump did not specify what parts of Biden’s economic plans were plagiarized.

Amid ongoing concerns of small crowds, the Trump campaign canceled a rally planned for Saturday in New Hampshire, citing safety concerns about an incoming tropical storm.

Former Vice President Joe Biden tore into President Trump as he prepared to visit a coronavirus-stricken Florida on Friday, blaming the president’s response to the pandemic for a sharp rise in cases and virus-related hospitalizations in the country’s largest battleground state.

“With over 232,000 cases in the state and over 4,000 deaths in Florida, it is clear that Trump’s response — ignore, blame others, and distract — has come at the expense of Florida families.”

The Past 24 Hours or So – Trump Administration News

Read Time: 5 Minutes

The Supreme Court shielded a trove of President Trump’s financial records from Congress.

The justices in Trump v. Mazars declined to grant Congress access to financial documents subpoenaed by a trio of Democratic-led House committees.

The Supreme Court granted New York state prosecutors access to President Trump’s tax returns. The ruling in Trump v. Vance makes it more likely that Trump’s tax returns are eventually made public, though it’s unclear if they would be disclosed before the November general election.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. declared a “tremendous victory” after the Supreme Court upheld his office’s subpoena for President Trump’s tax returns, calling it a win for the “nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one – not even a president – is above the law.”

In what could be considered an unhinged rant, the president took to Twitter following the SCOTUS ruling.

“We have a totally corrupt previous Administration, including a President and Vice President who spied on my campaign, AND GOT CAUGHT…and nothing happens to them. This crime was taking place even before my election, everyone knows it, and yet all are frozen stiff with fear….”

“…Won all against the Federal Government and the Democrats send everything to politically corrupt New York, which is falling apart with everyone leaving, to give it a second, third and fourth try. Now the Supreme Court gives a delay ruling that they would never have given…”

“….for another President. This is about PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT. We catch the other side SPYING on my campaign, the biggest political crime and scandal in U.S. history, and NOTHING HAPPENS. But despite this, I have done more than any President in history in first 3 1/2 years!”

Courts in the past have given “broad deference”. BUT NOT ME!

“The Supreme Court sends case back to Lower Court, arguments to continue. This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!”

President Trump, who is already more than a week late filing his annual financial disclosure, is being given 45 additional days to file the annual forms. A White House official said that Trump had requested an extension because the 2019 finances were “complicated” and he has “been focused on addressing the coronavirus crisis and other matters.”

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer for President Trump, was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals for violating the terms of his furlough. Cohen, who was supposed to be confined to his house, was photographed eating at a Manhattan restaurant weeks after being released from prison.

The Department of Justice said in a court filing that it’s “reasonable” for longtime Trump adviser and former Republican operative Roger Stone to begin his prison sentence next week, saying Stone failed to provide adequate reasoning as to why he should be treated differently from other convicted felons.

The judge hearing the criminal prosecution against U.S. President Donald Trump’s former adviser Michael Flynn asked an appeals court to reconsider a recent decision dismissing the case.

Attorney General William Barr persistently pressured Manhattan’s former top federal prosecutor to resign during a June 18 meeting at a New York hotel and in a subsequent phone call, the ousted prosecutor, Geoffrey Berman told lawmakers Thursday, detailing for the first time the series of events that led to his removal the next day.

Berman, in a written statement to the House Judiciary Committee, said Barr repeatedly attempted to coax Berman into resigning his post by suggesting he consider other positions in government, including the chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission or the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

“I said that there was no job offer that would entice me to resign from my position,” Berman told lawmakers in his opening statement

In contrast to efforts by the Trump administration to dismiss the C.I.A.’s judgment and to justify the White House’s failure to authorize any response to Moscow by downplaying the assessment of Russian bounties on U.S. troops as uncorroborated, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Congressional hearing, “If in fact there’s bounties, I am an outraged general.” “If, in fact, there’s bounties directed by the government of Russia or any of their institutions to kill American soldiers, that’s a big deal. That’s a real big deal.”

He also said that while the government so far lacks proof that any caused specific military casualties, “we are still looking.”

“We’re not done,” he continued. “We’re going to run this thing to the ground.”

Intelligence that included accounts from interrogated detainees and electronic intercepts of data showing payments from a bank account linked to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., to the Taliban, the C.I.A. concluded that Russia had escalated its support to the Taliban to include financial incentives for killing Americans and other coalition troops.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed that he had been briefed on information regarding Russian payments to the Taliban, seemingly acknowledging that Russia’s support for the militant group in Afghanistan is not a “hoax,” as President Donald Trump has claimed. However, Esper also made clear that he has not seen intelligence that corroborates claims that American troops were killed as a result of the “bounty” payments, walking a delicate line between acknowledging a well-known threat and potentially clashing with the President.

The Trump administration has sanctioned four Chinese officials and a regional security agency for the Chinese government’s repressive campaign against ethnic minorities.

The economic penalties and visa bans come on the same day that the White House confirmed it is finalizing a ban on federal contracts and contractors using five Chinese companies, some of which have ties to the campaign against Uighurs.

More than 100 Democratic House lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to end its transgender military ban following a Supreme Court ruling barring discrimination against LGBT workers.

Michael Pack, the Trump-appointed CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has reportedly signaled that he will not approve of visa renewals for foreign reporters who work for Voice of America and has fired the Radio Free Asia chief.

The White House pushed for a “correction” of a National Weather Service Tweet that contradicted President Trump during the “Sharpigate” scandal in 2019, according to a new internal watchdog report. The report from the Commerce Department inspector general also found that the White House was involved in an unsigned statement rebuking the tweet.

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations and Trump Administration News

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations

An attorney representing Thomas Lane, one of the former Minneapolis police officers charged for his role in the arrest and death of George Floyd, has filed a motion asking for the case against the Lane to be dismissed for what he called a “lack of probable cause based on the entire record.”

Senegal’s Goree Island, which for centuries served as a way station in the Transatlantic slave trade, has changed the name of its Europe Square in response to the death of George Floyd in the United States and the global movement it inspired.

It will now be known as Freedom and Human Dignity Square, the municipal council decided.

A police officer in Illinois has reportedly been placed on leave and lost his badge after he told local media about his department’s alleged attempts to conceal footage of the arrest of Eric Lurry, a Black man who died in police custody earlier this year.

A detective with the King County Sheriff’s Office in Washington state was placed on leave after he made comments mocking two protesters hit by a car in Seattle — one of whom died of their injuries.

The detective, Mike Brown, reportedly posted a photo on Facebook of a vehicle hitting a group of people, according to NBC affiliate King-TV in Seattle. The image was captioned “All lives splatter” and “Keep your ass off the road.”

The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors statue in Richmond, Virginia, was removed Wednesday morning, adding to the growing list of monuments ordered to come down in the former capital of the Confederacy, according to the city’s mayor.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney on July 1, citing his emergency powers declared in late May, ordered the removal of all city-owned Confederate statues.

The University of California Regents have appointed Michael V. Drake as the new head of the school system and become its first Black president.

The Board of Regents unanimously approved Drake, a physician. He will oversee the renowned system of five medical centers, 10 campuses, three nationally affiliated labs, more than 280,000 students and 220,000 faculty.

Black protesters were charged with felonies at a rate quadruple that of white ones during demonstrations over the death of George Floyd in New York City, according to a preliminary report from state Attorney General Letitia James’s office.

New York City is moving ahead with its plans to have a mural of the words “Black Lives Matter” painted on the street in front of Trump Tower this week, despite pushback from the president.

A Seattle man, Dawit Kelete, who the authorities said drove into a protest on a closed section of Interstate 5 over the weekend, killing one demonstrator, was charged on Wednesday with vehicular homicide, vehicular assault and reckless driving.

Two of the charges, vehicular homicide and vehicular assault, are felonies, a spokesman

The Washington State Patrol and the F.B.I. were still investigating the matter, and Mr. Kelete could face additional charges, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.

Amazon is pulling Washington Redskins merchandise from its website, with sellers given 48 hours to review and remove any products flagged by the company.

Administration News

The federal deficit in the first nine months of the fiscal year hit a record $2.7 trillion, nearly double the largest full-year deficit on record, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

In June alone, the deficit hit $863 billion, more than 107 times the $8 billion deficit recorded in June of last year.

The deficit is on track to exceed $3.8 trillion, shattering the $1.4 trillion record set in 2009 as the global financial crisis led to the Great Recession.

The Supreme Court upheld a Trump administration regulation allowing employers with religious objections to limit access to free birth control.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key witness in President Trump’s impeachment inquiry, is retiring from the US Army after more than 21 years of military service because he determined that his future in the armed forces “will forever be limited” due to political retaliation by the President and his allies, his lawyer told CNN Wednesday.

Vindman has endured a “campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation” spearheaded by the President following his testimony in the impeachment inquiry last year, according to his attorney, Amb. David Pressman.

Facebook removed 50 personal and professional pages connected to President Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone, who is due to report to prison next week.

The social media platform said Stone and his associates, including a prominent supporter of the right-wing Proud Boys group in Stone’s home state of Florida, had used fake accounts and followers to promote Stone’s books and posts.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper had approved Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman for promotion as part of a crop of new promotions due to be sent to the White House in the coming days, a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters on Wednesday.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Esper had approved the list on Monday with Vindman’s name.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that his department “will work with Congress” in regards to the delivery of U.S. funds earmarked for the World Health Organization, as the Trump administration begins the formal process of withdrawing from the global health body.

The U.S. owes an estimated $203 million as part of its assessed contributions to the WHO for its two-year operating budget. The amount also includes funds that have yet to be paid for the 2019 operating year.

The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Justice Department are looking into allegations that popular app TikTok failed to live up to a 2019 agreement aimed at protecting children’s privacy.

A federal court has upheld a lower court decision reversing a Trump administration policy that eliminated protections for grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador heaped praise on President Trump on Wednesday as the two leaders celebrated the official start of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) at the White House.

The top U.S. general in the Middle East predicts that a small amount of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

“I believe that going forward, they’re going to want us to be with them,” U.S. Central Command head Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told reporters Tuesday after he met with Iraq’s new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, according to The Associated Press.

“I don’t sense there’s a mood right now for us to depart precipitously. And I’m pretty confident of that.”

Initial Jobless Claims fell last week, even as a slew of states hard-hit with COVID-19 reintroduced restrictions.For the week ending July 4, 1.3 million people applied for initial unemployment claims, down from 1.427 million the week before.

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read TIme: 5 Minutes

Protest/Race Relations News

Faced with growing pressure to crack down on an “occupied” protest zone following two weekend shootings, Seattle’s mayor said that officials will move to wind down the blocks-long span of city streets taken over two weeks ago.

Senate Democrats began laying the groundwork to block a Republican-drafted police reform measure that they say falls far short of responding adequately to a national crisis over racial disparities in law enforcement practices.

The legislation written by Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott, is “not salvageable,” the Democrats say, adding that “we need bipartisan talks to get to a constructive starting point.”

Rhode Island Gov. Raimondo issued an executive order stripping the word “plantation” from official state documents and symbols, including the state seal.

The Louisville Police Department on Tuesday fired an officer over his role in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who died after city police fired several shots in her apartment while she was in her bed.

The FBI has determined that NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was not the victim of a hate crime and that a pull rope fashioned like a noose had been on a garage door at Talladega Superspeedway since as early as October, NASCAR said Tuesday.

“The FBI report concludes, and photographic evidence confirms, that the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall,” NASCAR said in its statement. “This was obviously well before the 43 team’s arrival and garage assignment.

The Charleston city council has unanimously voted to remove and relocate a statue of former vice president and slave advocate John C. Calhoun from a downtown square, a move that comes amid renewed calls for the removal of Confederate leaders and other figures believed to be symbols of racism.

President Trump called for Congress to take action against “lowlifes” who burn the American flag, seeking to put fresh pressure on lawmakers to pursue potential legislation.

“It is ashame [sic] that Congress doesn’t do something about the lowlifes that burn the American Flag. It should be stopped, and now!” Trump tweeted.

NOTE: The United States Supreme Court has ruled the rights of protesters to burn the American flag is protected under the First Amendment.

Administration News

President Trump again took aim at Fox News on Tuesday, saying he’s “not happy” with the network while arguing it “wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.”

“I’m not happy with Fox at all,” Trump told Christian Broadcast Network’s David Brody.

“My base hates what Fox News is doing,” he said before later adding that “Fox News wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.”

“Roger Ailes would never have let this happen.”

Twitter added an advisory to one of President Trump’s tweets that threatened protesters seeking to establish an “autonomous zone” in Washington, D.C., saying it violated the platform’s rules against abusive behavior.

“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behavior. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible,” reads the advisory added to Trump’s tweet.

Career prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, who withdrew from the Roger Stone case after DOJ leaders intervened to recommend a lighter sentence, will tell the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Justice Department leadership intervened in the sentencing of former Trump adviser Roger Stone for political purposes, according to his opening statement.

Part of the statement reads, “I was told that the U.S. Attorney’s instructions had nothing to do with Mr. Stone, the facts of the case, the law, or department policy. Instead, I was explicitly told the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and the U.S. Attorney was “afraid of the President.”

Roger Stone has asked a federal judge for a months-long delay to the start of his prison term, saying that underlying health issues placed him at “heightened risk of serious medical consequences” if exposed to the coronavirus while in prison.

The Pentagon’s top technology official and his deputy are resigning next month, a Defense Department official confirmed on Tuesday.

Mike Griffin, the Pentagon’s first undersecretary of research and engineering, and his deputy, Lisa Porter, will leave July 10.

A Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into California’s efforts to reduce vehicle emissions appeared to be politically motivated, a DOJ whistleblower wrote in testimony to lawmakers that was released Tuesday.

John W. Elias, a DOJ career employee slated to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, wrote that an investigation into California’s emissions agreements with four automakers was spurred shortly after tweets from President Trump complaining about the deal.

Presidential Campaign

President Trump has reportedly questioned the mental fitness of his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in recent days and suggested that Biden would fail a simple cognitive test administered to Trump in 2018.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the president recently made comments to several White House aides hinting that he did not believe Biden would pass the cognitive exam administered by his White House physician last year as part of an annual physical.

Long-serving White House communications official Hogan Gidley is moving over to Donald Trump’s campaign.

Gidley, who has spent nearly three years as a top White House spokesman, will serve as the campaign’s national press secretary. The reelection effort has made several major staff moves in recent weeks as it prepares for the general election, elevating longtime Trump political adviser Bill Stepien and rehiring 2016 campaign aide Jason Miller.

Dozens of Republican former U.S. national security officials are forming a group that will back Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, people familiar with the effort said, in a further sign that President Donald Trump has alienated some members of his own party.

The group includes at least two dozen officials who served under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, with dozens more in talks to join.

President Trump on Tuesday rallied a crowd – estimated to be 3,000 young attendees – of largely maskless student supporters in Phoenix, claiming Democrats were trying to keep the country “shut down” during the coronavirus pandemic in order to hurt the economy before the election.

Trump referenced the coronavirus throughout his remarks, repeatedly calling it “the plague” and at one point claiming it was “going away.” Trump also twice referred to the virus as the “kung flu,” a term that is widely condemned as racist. The term prompted cheers from the crowd Tuesday.

Sources: ABC News, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, ESPN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, KTUL, NBC News, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

In The Past 24 Hours Or So

Your Daily Dose of Trump and His Administration News

11/15

President Trump is taking his efforts to block the release of his tax returns to the Supreme Court, setting up a historic separation-of-powers test.

Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is being investigated by federal prosecutors for campaign finance violations and possibly breaking laws against bribing foreign officials.

Turkish media are seizing on President Erdoğan’s comments that President Trump had “no reaction” to his returning the American leader’s notorious letter to him, saying it shows a clear victory over Trump. A headline in Sabah Daily said that international media were reporting that Erdoğan returned the “scandalous” letter to Trump and the American president was “silent.” A headline in Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily quoted the Turkish leader talking about Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “I told him what he needed, he learned his lesson.”

The Justice Department inspector general’s office has told witnesses who are set to review draft sections of its long-awaited report on the FBI investigation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign that they will not be allowed to submit written feedback — one in a series of unusual restrictions that some fear could make the final document less accurate. As is the case in most inspector general probes, witnesses are being invited to review draft sections of the report and offer comments and corrections. But, unlike most cases, they are being told those comments must be conveyed only verbally.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced a new commission that he said will decide which human rights are more important to U.S. foreign policy. Every member of the commission is an anti-LGBTQ activist.

Mark Sandy, a longtime career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to testify Saturday in the House impeachment inquiry, potentially filling in important details on the holdup of military aid to Ukraine. Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell T. Vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear.

The US has warned Egypt of possible sanctions over Cairo’s decision to proceed with a purchase of Russian warplanes.A letter obtained by WSJ says the buy may “complicate future US defense transactions with and security assistance to Egypt.”

Trump is demanding that South Korea pay roughly 500% more in 2020 to cover the cost of keeping US troops on the peninsula. The price hike has frustrated Pentagon officials and deeply concerned Republican and Democratic lawmakers, according to military officials and congressional aides. It has angered and unnerved Seoul, where leaders are questioning US commitment to their alliance and wondering whether Trump will pull US forces if they don’t pay up.

President Trump on Thursday moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed by an aide to former national security adviser John Bolton seeking a ruling on whether he must comply with a congressional subpoena to testify in the House impeachment inquiry. In the filing, he sought to have a judge dismiss White House official Dr. Charles Kupperman lawsuit seeking guidance on whether he should comply with the subpoena or the president’s directive not to comply.

After news surfaced that President Trump’s phone call with U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was overheard by others in a restaurant in Ukraine, top former national security officials say Russian spies almost certainly overheard at least some of the president’s conversation.

The White House announced Friday that President Trump will attend the NATO leaders meeting in the United Kingdom early next month, where he is set to address shared costs between NATO member countries and attend a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth II.

President Trump denigrated Marie Yovanovitch on Twitter even as she testified about how she felt threatened by him, leading Democrats to accuse him of trying to intimidate a witness in real time. While Ambassador Yovanovitch was testifying before the House, President Trump live Tweeted: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

Roger Stone, the right-wing provocateur and longtime associate of President Trump, was convicted of 7 counts of lying to Congress and witness tampering. The verdict is another victory for former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose legal team alleged that Stone had tried to conceal from Congress his contacts with the Trump campaign and Wikileaks.

President Trump complained of a historic “double standard” after his longtime associate Roger Stone was convicted on seven felony counts, including lying to Congress and witness tampering related to his efforts to feed the Trump campaign information on WikiLeaks in 2016.

President Trump claimed the identity of the whistleblower who first raised concerns about his relationship with Ukraine is known to everyone in D.C. Trump told “The Dan Bongino Show,” “Everyone in Washington knows who it is, by the way. The whistleblower is no great secret. Everybody knows who the whistleblower is, and [it] has to be revealed.”

In a historic move, President Donald Trump announced Friday that hospitals will be required to disclose the rates they privately negotiate with insurers. Part of a larger transparency push aimed at reducing health care costs, the controversial requirement has already raised the ire of the powerful industry. Four hospital groups quickly promised to file a legal challenge, arguing the rule exceeds the administration’s authority.

Trump said he watched some of Friday’s proceedings and said, “I thought it was a disgrace. When we have great Republican representatives…and they’re not allowed to even ask a question. They’re not allowed to make a statement.”

NOTE: Time to make statements and ask questions are allotted to both Democrats and Republicans equally.

For full coverage of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s appearance before the House Intelligence Committee, visit The Hill http://bit.ly/2Qo4tyc

In The Past 24 Hours Or So

Your Daily Dose of Trump and His Administration News

11/12

Christopher Anderson, a top U.S. diplomat, testified before Congress that Trump’s push for Ukraine to launch specific investigations into 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and the 2016 election ran counter to the administration’s policy to combating corruption: “Long-standing U.S. government policy, as I understood it, was that we did not interfere in individual cases.”

Trump accused House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of editing and changing impeachment inquiry transcripts.

NOTE: There is no evidence to support the President’s claim.

President Trump slammed former President Obama and so-called “Dreamers” just hours before the Supreme Court will hear arguments about Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Trump Tweeted: “Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels.’ Some are very tough, hardened criminals. President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway. If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!”

NOTE: People with serious criminal histories are not eligible for DACA. Many of the people in DACA are “no longer very young” but a 2017 study found the most common age of entry was 3 years old. Obama did not say he had no legal right to sign the order.

White House officials are drafting a plan that would place conditions on U.S. foreign aid on how well countries treat religious minorities. The proposal would likely cover U.S. humanitarian assistance, but could also include military aid

Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates, testified that then candidate Trump and Roger Stone had a call in late July 2016 and afterwards Trump said that more information was forthcoming from Wikileaks. In his sworn statement to the Mueller Inquiry, Trump stated, “I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with [Stone], nor do I recall Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign.”

NOTE: Gates’ testimony suggests both Trump and Stone lied to prosecutors.

Leaked emails show that Trump’s top immigration advisor, Stephen Miller, lay out his anti-immigrant policies. His source material included: White nationalist websites; a “white genocide” themed novel; Eugenics-era laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in “Mein Kampf.” He raged at retailers who stopped selling Confederate flags after the massacre of black churchgoers in Charleston and argued repeatedly for “severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States”

Trump said of his daughter, Ivanka, “And when she started this, two and a half years ago, her goal was 500,000 Jobs,” He added, “She has now created 14 million jobs.

NOTE: There is no basis for this claim. Total US employment rise in past 3 years, including normal population growth, is around 6 million.

Trump Tweeted: “To think I signed the Whistleblower Protection Act!”

NOTE: George Bush signed it into law in 1989.

President Trump has considered firing the official who reported the whistleblower complaint to Congress, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The president has weighed getting rid of Inspector General Michael Atkinson because he provided the whistleblower complaint to Congress which sparked the impeachment inquiry