Ambassador to testify no quid pro quo assurance was Trump's
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. ambassador is expected to tell Congress that his text message reassuring another envoy that there was no quid pro quo in their interactions with Ukraine was based solely on what President Donald Trump told him, according to a person familiar with his coming testimony in the impeachment probe.Gordon Sondland, Trump’s hand-picked ambassador to the European Union, is among administration officials being subpoenaed to appear on Capitol Hill this week against the wishes of the White House. It’s the latest test between the legislative and executive branches of government, as the impeachment inquiry by House Democrats deepens.ADVERTISEMENTOn Monday, the House panels leading the investigation expect to hear from Fiona Hill, a former top Russia expert at the National Security Council.Sondland’s appearance, set for Thursday, comes after a cache of text messages from top envoys provided a vivid account of their work acting as intermediaries around the time Trump urged Ukraine’s new president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, to start investigations into a company linked to the family of a chief Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden.One witness who may not be called before Congress is the still anonymous government whistleblower who touched off the impeachment inquiry. Top Democrats say testimony and evidence coming in from other witnesses, and even the president himself, are backing up the whistleblower’s account of what transpired during Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy. Lawmakers have grown deeply concerned about protecting the person from Trump’s threats over the matter and may not wish to risk exposing the whistleblower’s identity.Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday, “We don’t need the whistleblower, who wasn’t on the call, to tell us what took place during the call. We have the best evidence of that.”Schiff said it “may not be necessary” to reveal the whistleblower’s identity as the House gathers evidence. “Our primary interest right now is making sure that that person is protected,” he said.The impeachment inquiry is testing the Constitution’s system of checks and balances as the House presses forward with the probe and the White House dismisses it as “illegitimate” without a formal vote of the House to open impeachment proceedings.ADVERTISEMENTIn calling for a vote, the White House is trying to press House Democrats who may be politically reluctant to put their names formally behind impeachment. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has resisted those efforts and is unlikely to budge as Congress returns. Democrats say Congress is well within its power as the legislative branch to conduct oversight of the president and it is Republicans, having grown weary of Trump’s actions, who may be in the greater political bind over a vote.Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said Sunday he’d be fine with taking a formal vote, “but it’s not required.”“Look, my own opinion is that we ought to just take this off the table because it’s such a non-issue, and there’s no doubt in my mind that of course if Nancy Pelosi does that she will have the votes and that will pass,” Himes said.Sondland’s appearance comes after text messages from top ambassadors described their interactions leading up to Trump’s call and the aftermath.Sondland is set to tell lawmakers that he did understand the administration was offering Zelenskiy a White House visit in exchange for a public statement committing to investigations Trump wanted, according to the person, who demanded anonymity to discuss remarks not yet given.But Sondland will say he did not know the company being talked about for an investigation, Burisma, was tied to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, the person said. Sondland understood the discussions about combating corruption to be part of a much broader and publicized Trump administration push that was widely shared, the person said.In the text exchange, the diplomats raised alarm that Trump appeared to up the ante, withholding military aid to Ukraine over the investigation.One seasoned diplomat on the text message, William Taylor, called it “crazy to withhold security assistance” to Ukraine in exchange for “help with a political campaign.”Sondland responds that the assertion is “incorrect” about Trump’s intentions. “The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” he said in the text message.The person familiar with Sondland’s testimony said that before Sondland sent that text, he spoke to Trump, who told him there was no quid pro quo. Sondland then repeated that message to Taylor.Schiff appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Himes spoke on ABC’s “This Week.”___Tucker reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
James Fallows: 2020 Time Capsule #1
We are again in a not yet sure moment.- About the upcoming election.- About the unfolding-by-the-minute consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.- About the recent collapse of the stock markets, and the less immediately visible, but ultimately far more damaging, economic and social effects of the sudden simultaneous collapse of the travel and lodging industries, of the live-events and sports and conference and entertainment businesses, of restaurants and bars, of taxis and trains, of stores in college towns, and of the impact of all of this on the people who unload baggage from airliners or clean rooms for hotel guests or work as security guards at museums or sell jerseys at baseball games. Such roles are not as resonant as “steelworkers” or “coal miners” in political or journalistic discourse, but these jobs collectively form a very large part of the economy, they’re very hard to do over the internet or “remotely,” and they’re being eliminated at a pace not seen in at least a dozen years, and probably since the 1930s.We don’t know.So behind our veil of ignorance about outcomes, this is another chronicle of what we knew and heard day by day, which I’ll intend to operate, as with the original series, through the upcoming election season.Obviously I am skipping through what would be several decades’ worth of news in normal circumstances: impeachment, the Democratic primaries, the evisceration of legal norms, and so on down a long list.Instead, for an arbitrary starting point, let’s begin with Trump’s Oval Office address last night on the virus threat. I have experience with this rhetorical form: I wrote a number of such addresses long ago when Jimmy Carter was president, and I have studied dozens of them in the intervening years.This latest Trump speech was uniquely incompetent and inappropriate, and it’s worth noting why, as American voters decide whether to retain him in office.One audience that Trump himself takes seriously—the world financial system—obviously took a dim view of his statement, as markets around the world headed sharply downward practically as soon as he began to talk. Of course, their view indirectly affects everyone else.But from a political, rhetorical, and civic perspective, what was wrong with the speech? While watching it, I was assessing the speech by two standards: What it showed about Trump and his styles of thought, and what it showed about presidents and their roles in similar moments of stress.As for Trump himself, his public vocabulary is strikingly limited on a deployable-word-count basis: “Many people are saying,” “it’s the greatest ever,” “we have tremendous people,” “very good things are happening,” “there has never been anything like it,” and of course “sir.”Equally striking is the consistency, or narrowness, of the messages Trump delivers. A huge proportion of his entire discourse can be boiled down to two themes:I am so great, and am doing a better job than anyone else ever has. (Biggest crowds, best economy, most loyal supporters, etc.) Other people are such cheaters—and it is outrageous what they are trying to get away with. (They’re sending rapists; they’re behind on their NATO payments; they’re ripping us off in trade; etc.) I won’t go through the whole classification of his discourse into these two categories, but nearly everything he said last night could be boiled down to one or the other of those themes.I am so great and am doing the best possible job. (“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history … Our team is the best anywhere in the world … Because of the economic policies that we have put into place over the last three years, we have the greatest economy anywhere in the world, by far.”) Other people are mistreating us and are to blame. (Repeated references to the “foreign virus,” banning entry from most foreign nationals who have recently been in Europe, etc.) Of course, every presidential address in every era has implicitly argued, I am doing a good job. Whether the challenge they’re dealing with is the Great Depression or the 9/11 attacks, Pearl Harbor or the Cuban Missile Crisis, when describing the challenge and their intended response, all presidents are effectively saying: You can feel better about this emergency, because I have a plan.But until Trump, other presidents have applied the “show, don’t tell” policy when it comes to their own competence. They want to show they are acting the way the country would hope, so they don’t have to say it.Trump says it himself. He quotes other people saying it about him. And he insists on hearing about his greatness from his retinue—most recently in the fawning statements made by his own vice president and secretary of health and human services, who preface their updates about the virus with North Korean-style compliments for the leader’s far-sighted action.Five years into Trump’s presence as a foreground political figure, many listeners are inured to the two unvarying notes in his presentations: that what is good has come from him, and what is bad has come from someone else. But the prominence of these two notes in an Oval Office address was a reminder of how much we have learned to overlook. This is not how presidents have ever talked before.And what about the speech, just as a speech? In my view it had three problems: how it was conceived; how it was written; and how it was delivered. (Plus, a bonus fourth problem I’ll get to at the end.)How it was conceived: An Oval Office address is by definition about a big problem. (Otherwise, why is a president imposing on our time this way?) And its purpose is to answer several explicit questions: Why did this happen? How bad is it? What are we going to do about it? It also, always, must answer a deeper, broader, and more important question: Will we be OK?Abraham Lincoln’s First and Second Inaugural Addresses can be thought of as precursors to Oval Office addresses of the broadcast era, and as the ideal form of such speeches, answering all these questions. (Why did this happen? “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war…. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.” Will we be OK? “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in..”)Again, that’s the ideal form, but it is one that other presidents have had in mind as the model to work toward. These addresses have been about us, the American family, not about me, the leader. But Trump has only the me note in his vocal and emotional range, except for them as the enemies. He used the word us in the speech, but it was just a word. Audiences swallow a lot of guff from politicians, entertainers, and other public figures. But over time, the public can size up its most familiar performers and recognize which words ring true to them, and which they’re just reading from a script.And this is entirely apart from the speech’s failure to address the major elephant-in-the-room questions reporters, governors, and public health officials had been asking. Starting with, Why are we so far behind with tests?How it was written: It was written badly.How it was delivered: Donald Trump is very effective and entertaining as an unscripted live performer, riffing and feeding off the energy of a crowd. Why does he keep going to big rallies? Partly because the crowds adore him there, and partly because this is what he’s genuinely good at. His rallies—part greatest-hits, part “you have to be there to believe it!” surprises—are great shows. That’s how he commanded so much free airtime on cable TV through 2015 and early 2016: it was the latest must-watch reality show.But you can’t do that in every speech. And while Trump can still slip a little bit of his rally-meister style into an hour-long State of the Union address, it’s just impossible in 10 minutes behind the Resolute desk. And thus he seemed robotic, even narcotized. Presumably he had seen the text before he encountered it on the TelePrompter—in normal circumstances, a president would have done practice run-throughs many times before the cameras came on. But to judge from his delivery, he was trying to parse his way through sentences he had never seen before. If this seems harsh, compare George W. Bush’s Oval Office address after the 9/11 attacks, or Ronald Reagan’s in 1986 on defense spending and arms-limitation talks.Bonus: Within an hour of Trump’s speech, other parts of the government were issuing “clarifications” about points he had misstated in his speech. No, not all travel from Europe was suspended. No, the European transit ban did not apply to cargo. No, Americans coming back didn’t need to be screened before reentry. And no, on other points.Had the need for immediate fact-checking arisen, with any previous Oval Office address? Not that I am aware of. Whatever political party holds the White House and whatever policies these speeches seek to advance, such addresses usually reflect the greatest level of attention to detail that a president’s team can apply. Unfortunately, it probably did so in this case, too.Twelve hours after Trump’s speech, Joe Biden gave an address that was “presidential,” by the standards listed above. It expressed concern for those suffering in medical, financial, or emotional ways. It laid out what was known and unknown about the challenge. Implicitly, it argued: We will be OK.What the contrast between the speeches means, politically or in terms of public health, we don’t know at this moment. As of this installment, we know that Donald Trump faced a familiar test of presidential mettle, and badly failed.More, and shorter, time capsules ahead.
Markets wary as US
There wasn’t a lot to Friday’s open, the lack of progress between the US and China following the latest round of trade talks leading to a muted start to the session.Given the amount of bad news out there at the moment – from Thursday’s trade talk-undermining tariff tit-for-tatting between the US and China, the ominous clouds of a no deal Brexit, and Trump’s potential legal problems – the markets have done well to not lose their heads this week.The FTSE was unchanged after the bell, lurking just above 7560. The index failed to capitalise on a rebound from its mining stocks, that sector having been something of a burden in the last few sessions.The pound, meanwhile, needs to try and claw back the losses it incurred followed Dominic Raab’s poorly received no deal Brexit advice on Thursday. It hasn’t been particularly successful so far: against the dollar it rose 0.1%, pushing cable above $1.283, while against the euro it actually slipped another 0.1%, keeping it the wrong side of €1.11 for the first time in over a fortnight.As for the Eurozone indices, a solid second quarter German GDP reading – it was confirmed at 0.5% – allowed the DAX to nudge 20 points higher. The CAC, meanwhile, could only add a handful of points, pushing above 5425 in the process.
Ex Trump Aide Asks Judge If He Should Follow White House Orders On Impeachment
WASHINGTON (AP) — An ex-White House adviser who’s supposed to testify before House impeachment investigators on Monday has asked a federal court whether he should comply with a subpoena or follow President Donald Trump’s directive against cooperating in what he dubs a “scam.” After getting a subpoena Friday, former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman quickly filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court in Washington. He asked a judge to decide whether he should accede to House demands for his testimony or to assert “immunity from congressional process” as directed by Trump. Kupperman, who provided foreign policy advice to the president, has been called to testify because the impeachment inquiry is rooted in a July 25 phone call Trump made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. During the call, Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to pursue investigations of Democratic political rival Joe Biden’s family and Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election that propelled Trump into the White House. At the time of the call, Trump was withholding congressionally approved military aid for Ukraine. He has repeatedly said there was no quid pro quo for the Ukraine investigations he was seeking, though witness testimony has contradicted that claim. Kupperman said he “cannot satisfy the competing demands of both the legislative and executive branches.” Without the court’s help, he said, he would have to make the decision himself — one that could “inflict grave constitutional injury” on either Congress or the presidency. His filing says “an erroneous judgment to abide by the President’s assertion of testimonial immunity would unlawfully impede the House from carrying out one of its most important core Constitutional responsibilities” — the power of impeachment — and subject Kupperman to “potential criminal liability for contempt of Congress.” On the other hand, “an erroneous judgment to appear and testify in obedience to the House Defendants’ subpoena would unlawfully impair the President in the exercise of his core national security responsibilities ... by revealing confidential communications” from advisers, according to the filing. He has asked the court to expedite a decision, but unless the judge issues an opinion by Monday, Kupperman’s testimony might not occur as scheduled. The lawsuit came as Democrats investigating the president won a victory in a separate case. A federal judge ordered the Justice Department on Friday to give the House secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and affirmed the legality of the Democrats impeachment inquiry. “To the extent the House’s role in the impeachment context is to investigate misconduct by the President and ascertain whether that conduct amounts to an impeachable offense warranting removal from office, the House performs a function somewhat akin to a grand jury,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote. On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he’s “not concerned with the impeachment scam. I am not because I did nothing wrong.” The Democrats’ inquiry continued at full speed Saturday with a rare weekend session. Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of state for Europe, testified behind closed doors. As was the case with other witnesses, the Trump administration directed Reeker not to testify, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the interaction. But Reeker appeared anyway after receiving his subpoena from the House, the people said. Reeker was expected to corroborate testimony from previous witnesses who have described the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, according to a person familiar with Reeker’s role in Ukraine policy. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss the testimony and spoke on condition of anonymity. Although he is currently the top U.S. diplomat for Europe and has been since Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovich was recalled earlier this year, Reeker was not directly involved in debate over aid to Ukraine, which other current and former officials have said was delegated to Sondland and Volker. Volker testified and released text messages that detailed conversations between him, Sondland and Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. In the messages, Taylor wrote that he thought it was “crazy” to withhold aid from Ukraine for help with a political campaign. Sondland and Taylor, who still work for the government, have already testified and detailed their concerns about the influence of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on Ukraine. Giuliani was leading the push for the investigations. Taylor testified that he was told the aid would be withheld until Ukraine conducted the investigations that Trump had requested. ___ AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee and Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost
Trump’s Brand of Transactional Politics
The hotel turned out to be profitable the day it opened. New York has since paid out a tax expenditure of hundreds of millions to the hotel. Trump no longer owns it, but the City is still paying, and will do so through April 2020.Trump’s machinations in the Grand Hyatt deal caught the attention of federal prosecutors. He parried with a meeting with federal agents without a lawyer, but with his young and beautiful wife, Ivana, and toddler son, Don Jr. No charges were filed.“This is a guy who learned to turn politics into money,” the late journalist Wayne Barrett told WNYC radio in a 1992 interview about his early biography of Trump.In the ’90s, when Trump, a generous donor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, wanted to build the Trump World Tower higher than zoning laws allowed, he hired a lobbying firm that was close to the mayor. The firm steered Trump’s project through three layers of approval in the city government, to the consternation of opponents, such as the former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, who lived nearby.Trump appears to have passed the lessons he learned from his father along to his children. In the mid-aughts, Trump gave his eldest children, Ivanka and Don Jr., oversight of the Trump SoHo condo and hotel. Not long after they cut the ribbon on the 43-story project in Lower Manhattan, the two, along with their father, were accused in a federal civil suit of “an ongoing pattern of fraudulent misrepresentations and deceptive sales practices.” The Trumps had conveyed to potential condo buyers that the building was 60 percent sold, when in fact it was less than 15 percent sold.The office of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., opened a criminal case zeroing in on Ivanka and Don Jr. When prosecutors found emails showing that Trump’s adult children knowingly defrauded potential buyers, Donald Trump’s team hired a set of well-connected lawyers to make the case that the younger Trumps’ statements were mere puffery—harmless exaggeration. Their argument didn’t work. Then Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, who had been one of Vance’s most generous donors, met with the D.A. Three months later, Vance overruled his own prosecutors and closed the case. After that, Kasowitz gave even more money. Years later, when my colleagues and I at WNYC published a story along with ProPublica and The New Yorker about the case, Vance gave the money back.The Trumps suffered no consequences.New York’s system was already corrupt, but the Trumps pushed it even further. Each time Trump called a politician and demanded to know where his tax abatement, or regulatory change, or financing package was, each time he pointedly noted his large donations, he helped normalize the influence of money over political power.Now that Trump is president, he can be on the receiving end of this system.
A lighter side of the Trump impeachment: The grammar of ‘quid pro quo’
One Latin phrase has come up over and over in the past year: quid pro quo. It defines the central question of President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine – did he make military funding contingent on an investigation into Joe Biden and his family? This is a language column, so we won’t go into the politics. Instead let’s talk about the many words and phrases, like quid pro quo, that English has acquired from the multifarious Latin pronouns quis and qui.These pronouns are often indistinguishable in Latin, and mean more or less the same thing: “who,” “what,” “which,” and “someone, something.” Quis is clearly visible in the Roman satirist Juvenal’s famous question, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” or “Who will guard the guards themselves?” In English, this phrase is often used to highlight the dangers of corruption among the powerful. They watch us; who watches them?But Latin nouns and pronouns decline, changing shape depending on the role they play in the sentence. Quid pro quo itself is just two different forms of quis, its neuter nominative form quid plus its ablative form quo. The phrase means “something for something.” Quomodo is “the manner, the means,” as in these lines from Henry Fielding’s classic “Tom Jones” (1749): “Northerton was desirous of departing ... and nothing remained for him but to contrive the Quomodo.” The feminine form of quo is qua, which gives us the sine qua non: the “without which, not,” or better translated, the “essential, indispensable.”In the dative case, used to indicate the recipient of a thing or action, quis becomes cui. “Cui bono?” – the question asked in hundreds of courtrooms and detective novels – means “to whom for a benefit?” or, more elegantly, “who profits?”The genitive plural contributed quorum (“of whom”), which means “the number ... of officers or members of a body that when duly assembled is legally competent to transact business.” Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. In English, quid is related both to the deepest mysteries of being and to the glibbest trivialities. From the 17th century, quid has meant “that which a thing is,” its essence. When a character in a 19th-century play says, “My age has seen ... the quid of things,” he is talking about the wisdom he has gained as he has grown older. But quid also produced quiddity, which often means “a trifling point”; quibble, to make frivolous objections; and quip, a cutting or witty remark. When mathematicians finish a proof, they can employ another qui relative, quod erat demonstrandum – “(that) which was to be demonstrated.” This indicates they believe they have proved the problem satisfactorily. So, Q.E.D., or as my high school geometry teacher translated it, “quit, enough done.”
UK retail sales stabilise; German confidence rises; Hong Kong shares surge
The CBI survey offers the retailers genuine hope that consumers are prepared to loosen their purse strings for the critical Christmas period; and suggests that some of the recent lacklustre sales performance has been due to consumers taking a breather before splashing out over the festive season. The survey indicates that retailers are relatively upbeat about the Christmas sales outlook for sales with a balance of +21% expecting sales volumes to be up year-on-year in December. This was the first positive expectations balance since June It also may well be that some consumers have recently held back on their retail sales, waiting for Black Friday price cuts and promotions in the latter part of November. However, the evidence of recent years suggests that Black Friday tends to have more of an impact in distorting the timing of retail sales rather than boosting them overall.
Latino Overdose Rates Are Rising : Shots
Enlarge this image From left to right: Felito Diaz, Julio Cesar Santiago, Richard Lopez and Irma Bermudez meet at Casa Esperanza, a treatment and transitional housing program in Roxbury, Mass. Jesse Costa/WBUR hide caption toggle caption Jesse Costa/WBUR From left to right: Felito Diaz, Julio Cesar Santiago, Richard Lopez and Irma Bermudez meet at Casa Esperanza, a treatment and transitional housing program in Roxbury, Mass. Jesse Costa/WBUR The tall, gangly man twists a cone of paper in his hands as stories from nearly 30 years of addiction pour out: the robbery that landed him in prison at 17; never getting his GED; going through the horrors of detox, maybe 40 times, including this latest, which he finished two weeks ago. He's now in a residential unit for at least 30 days."I'm a serious addict," says Julio Cesar Santiago, 44. "I still have dreams where I'm about to use drugs, and I have to wake up and get on my knees and pray, 'let God take this away from me,' because I don't want to go back. I know that if I go back out there, I'm done."Santiago has some reason to worry. Data on opioid addiction in his home state of Massachusetts shows the overdose death rate for Latinos there has doubled in three years, growing at twice the rate of whites and blacks.Opioid overdose deaths among Latinos are surging nationwide as well. While the overall death toll is still higher for whites, it's increasing faster for Latinos and blacks, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Latino fatalities increased 52.5 percent between 2014 and 2016 as compared to 45.8 percent for whites. (Statisticians say counts for Hispanics are typically underestimated by 3 to 5 percent.) The most substantial hike was among blacks — 83.9 percent.The data portrays a changing face of the opioid epidemic. Rates of fatal opioid overdoses per 100,000 across the U.S. from 2014-2016. Deaths rose 45.8% for Whites, 52.5% for Hispanics and 83.9% for Blacks, according to the CDC. Source: CDC; Credit:NPR hide caption toggle caption Source: CDC; Credit:NPR "What we thought initially, that this was a problem among non-Hispanic whites, is not quite accurate," says Robert Anderson, mortality statistics branch chief at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. "If you go back into the data, you can see the increases over time in all of these groups, but we tended to focus on the non-Hispanic whites because the rates were so much higher."There's little understanding about why overdose deaths are rising faster among blacks and Latinos than whites. Some physicians and outreach workers suspect the infiltration of fentanyl into cocaine is driving up fatalities among blacks. Enlarge this image A resident walks into the Casa Esperanza's Men's Program in Roxbury, Mass. Jesse Costa/WBUR hide caption toggle caption Jesse Costa/WBUR A resident walks into the Casa Esperanza's Men's Program in Roxbury, Mass. Jesse Costa/WBUR The picture of what's happening among Latinos has been murky, but interviews with nearly two dozen current and former drug users and their family members, addiction treatment providers and physicians reveal language and cultural barriers and even fear of deportation could be limiting the access of Latinos to life-saving treatment.Few bilingual treatment options Irma Bermudez, 43, describes herself as a "grateful recovering addict." She's living in the women's residential unit at Casa Esperanza, a collection of day treatment, residential programs and transitional housing in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood.Bermudez says the language barrier keeps anyone who can't read English out of treatment from the start, as they try to decipher websites or brochures that advertise options. If they call a number on the screen or walk into an office, "there's no translation — we're not going to get nothing out of it," Bermudez says. Rates of fatal opioid overdoses per 100,000 from 2014-2016 in Massachusetts. Source: Massachusetts Dept. of Health; Credit:NPR hide caption toggle caption Source: Massachusetts Dept. of Health; Credit:NPR Some of the Latinos interviewed for this story describe sitting through group counseling sessions, part of virtually every treatment program, and not being able to follow much, if any, of the conversation. They recall waiting for a translator to arrive for their individual appointment with a doctor or counselor and missing the session when the translator is late or doesn't show up at all.SAMHSA, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, maintains a Find Treatment website which includes listings of treatment offered in Spanish. But several Massachusetts providers listed there could not say how many translators they have or when they are available. The SAMHSA site is only available in English, with Spanish-language translators only available by phone.At Casa Esperanza, 100 men are waiting for a spot in the male residential program, so recovery coach Richard Lopez spends a lot time on the phone trying to get clients into a program he thinks has at least one translator.After battling with voicemail, says Lopez, he'll eventually get a call back; the agent typically offers to put Lopez's client on another waiting list. It frustrates him. Enlarge this image Recovery Coach Richard Lopez helps Latinos find addiction treatment with Spanish translation. Jesse Costa/WBUR hide caption toggle caption Jesse Costa/WBUR Recovery Coach Richard Lopez helps Latinos find addiction treatment with Spanish translation. Jesse Costa/WBUR "You're telling me that this person has to wait two to three months? I'm trying to save this person today," he says. "What am I going to do, bring these individuals to my house and handcuff them so they don't do nothing?"Casa Esperanza Executive Director Emily Stewart says Massachusetts needs a public information campaign via Spanish-language media that explains treatment options. She'd like that to include medication-assisted treatment, which she says is not well understood.Some research shows Latino drug users are less likely than others to have access to or use the addiction treatment medicines, methadone and buprenorphine. One study shows that may be shifting. But, Latinos with experience in the field say, access to buprenorphine (which is also known by the brand name Suboxone) is limited because there are few Spanish-speaking doctors who prescribe it.Cultural barriers — 'It's not cool to call 911'Lopez has close ties these days with health care providers, the police and EMTs. But that has changed dramatically from when he was using heroin. On the streets, he says,"It's not cool to be calling 911," when a person sees someone overdose. "I could get shot, and I won't call 911."It's a machismo thing, says Lopez."To the men in the house, the word 'help,' sounds like degrading, you know?" he says. Calling 911 "is like you're getting exiled from your community."Santiago says not everyone feels that way. A few men called EMTs to help revive him. "I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for them," he says.But Santiago and others say there's growing fear among Latinos they know of asking anyone perceived as a government agent for help — especially if the person who needs the help is not a U.S. citizen."They fear if they get involved they're going to get deported," says Felito Diaz, 41.Bermudez says Latino women have their own reasons to worry about calling 911 if a boyfriend or husband has stopped breathing. Enlarge this image Executive Director Emily Stewart, left, and Director of Programs Anna Rodriguez standing in the lobby of the Casa Esperanza Familias Unidas Outpatient Services. Jesse Costa/WBUR hide caption toggle caption Jesse Costa/WBUR Executive Director Emily Stewart, left, and Director of Programs Anna Rodriguez standing in the lobby of the Casa Esperanza Familias Unidas Outpatient Services. Jesse Costa/WBUR "If they are in a relationship and trying to protect someone, they might hesitate as well," says Bermudez, if the man would face arrest and possible jail time.Ties in the communityAnother reason some Latino drug users say they've been hit especially hard by this epidemic: A 2017 DEA report on drug trafficking noted that Mexican cartels control much of the illegal drug distribution in the United States, selling the drugs through a network of local gangs and small-scale dealers.In the Northeast, Dominican drug dealers tend to predominate."The Latinos are the ones bringing in the drugs here," says Rafael, a man who uses heroin and lives on the street in Boston, close to Casa Esperanza. "The Latinos are getting their hands in it, and they're liking it."NPR agreed not to use Rafael's last name because he uses illegal drugs.Some Spanish-speaking drug users in the Boston area say they get discounts on the first, most potent cut. Social connection matters, they say."Of course, I would feel more comfortable selling to a Latino if I was a drug dealer than a Caucasian or any other, because I know how to relate and get that money off them," says Lopez.The social networks of drug use create another layer of challenges for some Latinos, says Dr. Chinazo Cunningham, who treats many patients from Puerto Rico. She primarily works at a clinic affiliated with the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, in New York City."The family is such an important unit — it's difficult if there is substance use within the family for people to stop using opioids," Cunningham says.The burden of povertyThough Latinos are hardly a uniform community, many face an additional risk factor for addiction: poverty. About 20 percent of the community lives in poverty, compared to 9 percent of whites according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In Massachusetts, four times as many Latinos live below the poverty line as do whites. The majority of Casa Esperanza clients were recently homeless. The wait time for one of the agency's 37 individual or family housing units ranges from a year to a decade."If you've done all the work of getting somebody stabilized and then they leave and don't have a stable place to go, you're right back where you started," says Casa Esperanza's Stewart.Cunningham says the Latino community has been dealing with opioid addiction for decades and it is one reason for the group's relatively high incarceration rate. In Massachusetts, Latinos are sentenced to prison at five times the rate of whites."It's great that we're now talking about it because the opioid epidemic is affecting other populations," Cunningham says. "It's a little bit bittersweet that this hasn't been addressed years before. But it's good that we're talking about treatment rather than incarceration, and that this is a medical illness rather than a moral shortcoming."Nationally, says the CDC's Anderson, there's no sign that the surge of overdose deaths is abating in any population."We've already had two years of declining life expectancy in the U.S. and I think that when we see the 2017 data we'll see a third year," says Anderson. "That hasn't happened since the great influenza pandemic in the early 1900s."The death numbers for 2017 are expected out by the end of this year.This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WBUR and Kaiser Health News.
Trump impeachment: Lindsey Graham will 'not pretend to be a fair juror'
Lindsey Graham will not try to “pretend to be a fair juror” should Donald Trump face an impeachment trial in the US Senate.Speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar on Saturday, the South Carolina Republican and close Trump ally said he was “trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here. What I see coming, happening today, is just a partisan nonsense.”Trump faces two articles of impeachment arising from his attempts to have Ukraine carry out investigations favourable to his re-election campaign: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.A House vote is expected next week. If Trump is impeached, as is likely as Democrats hold the chamber, a trial will be held in the Senate in January. Republicans are in control there, few if any defections are likely and the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said the president will not be convicted and removed.The Kentuckian caused further anger among Democrats this week, when he said he was “taking my cues” from the White House regarding strategy for the trial.In response, the Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, said in a statement: “If articles of impeachment are sent to the Senate, every single senator will take an oath to render ‘impartial justice’.“Making sure the Senate conducts a fair and honest trial that allows all the facts to come out is paramount.”Graham disagrees.“This thing will come to the Senate,” he said on Saturday, “and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly.”Graham is familiar with the impeachment process and how the Senate stages a trial, having been a House manager for the Republicans in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.Asked if it was appropriate for him as a prospective juror to be discussing the case in such terms, he said: “Well, I must think so because I’m doing it.”He added: “Personally I think President Trump will come out of this stronger and the good news is that everybody in politics in America needs to prove to the American public we’re not all completely crazy. So there may be a spirit of compromise coming post-impeachment, born of political necessity, if anything else.”Graham said Joe Biden, a target of Trump’s alleged scheming, was a friend and would “do very well” in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But he also implied that Biden’s son’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company was corrupt.There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden, as there is no evidence of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, the other hobby horse pushed by Trump and his Republican backers.Witnesses in impeachment hearings held by the House intelligence committee outlined the scheme which Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, are alleged to have orchestrated the withholding of nearly $400m in military aid to Ukraine and a White House meeting.The House judiciary panel heard from legal scholars on the constitutional grounds for impeachment, before producing the articles to be voted on in a process subject to Republican protest and obstruction.“I think the best thing for America to do is get this behind us,” Graham said.“If you don’t like President Trump, you can vote against him in less than a year. It’s not like a politician is unaccountable if you don’t impeach them. So I think impeachment is going to end quickly in the Senate. I would prefer it to end as quickly as possible.” Donald Trump waves as he sits with navy midshipmen in Philadelphia. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/APGraham was also asked about his own past opposition to Trump, when both men were running for the Republican presidential nomination.Then, Graham famously called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”.“I said all of those things,” he said in Doha. “Clearly, I wasn’t a fan of his campaign, right? But here’s the way it has to work. When you lose, accept it. The American people didn’t believe that. They made him their president.”In other developments, multiple sources told news outlets Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Democrat opposed to impeachment, met Trump at the White House and was set to switch parties. A vulnerable representative from a swing seat, his defection would not affect the chances of impeachment being improved by the House.It was also reported that Trump, who attended the Army v Navy football game in Philadelphia, was still mulling who would represent him at the Senate trial.The White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, “is expected to take lead”, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted, citing “a person familiar with the talks”.“But it isn’t done yet. Trump has still been quizzing people about who should do it, and has wondered about Cipollone’s lack of experience on TV.”
Trump Is Wallowing in Self
But the president still wasn’t done. “Here’s the bottom line,” he said. “I’ve been very unfairly treated, and I don’t say that as paranoid. I’ve been very—everybody says it. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. But there was tremendous evidence right now as to how unfairly treated I was. President Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. It’s never happened in history. If it were the other way around, the people would be in jail for 50 years right now.”Just in case his bitterness wasn’t coming through clearly enough, the president added this: “That would be Comey, that would be Brennan, that would be all of this—the two lovers, Strzok and Page, they would be in jail now for many, many years. They would be in jail; it would’ve started two years ago, and they’d be there for 50 years. The fact is, they illegally spied on my campaign. Let’s see what happens. Despite that, I did more than any president in history in the first three and a half years.”With that, the interview ended.Such a disposition in almost anyone else—a teacher, a tax accountant, a CEO, a cab driver, a reality-television star—would be unfortunate enough. After all, people who obsess about being wronged are just plain unpleasant to be around: perpetually ungrateful, short-tempered, self-absorbed, never at peace, never at rest.But Donald Trump isn’t a teacher, a tax accountant, or (any longer) a reality-television star; he is, by virtue of the office he holds, in possession of unmatched power. The fact that he is devoid of any moral sensibilities or admirable human qualities—self-discipline, compassion, empathy, responsibility, courage, honesty, loyalty, prudence, temperance, a desire for justice—means he has no internal moral check; the question Is this the right thing to do? never enters his mind. As a result, he not only nurses his grievances; he acts on them. He lives to exact revenge, to watch his opponents suffer, to inflict pain on those who don’t bend before him. Even former war heroes who have died can’t escape his wrath.So Donald Trump is a vindictive man who also happens to be commander in chief and head of the executive branch, which includes the Justice Department, and there is no one around the president who will stand up to him. He has surrounded himself with lapdogs.But the problem doesn’t end there. In a single term, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party through and through, and his dispositional imprint on the GOP is as great as any in modern history, including Ronald Reagan’s.I say that as a person who was deeply shaped by Reagan and his presidency. My first job in government was working for the Reagan administration, when I was in my 20s. The conservative movement in the 1980s, although hardly flawless, was intellectually serious and politically optimistic. And Reagan himself was a man of personal decency, grace, and class. While often the target of nasty attacks, he maintained a remarkably charitable view of his political adversaries. “Remember, we have no enemies, only opponents,” the former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who worked for Reagan, quotes him as admonishing his staff.
Trump’s 3
These three developments suggest the three components of the Trump endgame for 2020:1) Attack the independence and integrity of the legal system;2) benefit from foreign help and trust that by the time the help is proved, it will be stale news of scant interest to anybody; and3) benefit from voting obstacles, particularly those that will impede black voting, and super-particularly those that will wedge apart the Democratic coalition on racial lines. (The Trump administration is not directly to blame for the coming mess in Kentucky—states manage elections—but it clearly relishes such situations.)The Trump campaign is crude in its methods. It’s oafish to claim, as Barr did, that somebody “resigned” without getting the resignation first. Trump has used more subtle means in the past. He apparently regarded the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Jessie Liu, as insufficiently obedient to his demands for a prosecution of former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe. Trump got rid of her by announcing her promotion to a big job at the Treasury Department. Once Liu resigned her U.S. attorney post, Trump then withdrew her nomination to the Treasury job. (Admittedly, that trick can be used only so many times before its targets get wise.) Liu was replaced by Tim Shea, a close adviser to Barr.Still, oafs can get the job done. Barr has made it his personal mission to protect Trump cronies on the wrong side of the law—and to thwart officials investigating those cronies.Michael Flynn: Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to federal investigators. Again, Barr intervened in the case, this time via his ally the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., who had replaced the tricked-into-resigning Liu. Barr and Shea sought to withdraw the prosecution of Flynn altogether, despite his guilty pleas—a course so startling that the judge in the case sought outside guidance from another retired federal judge, John Gleeson. Gleeson, in a written report, blasted the Barr-Shea actions as a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power.” He dismissed the justifications for the last-minute change of course as “obviously pretextual” to disguise the truth that the “decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.”
Germany, India shrug off US warnings on Huawei 5G
Chinese telecom giant Huawei is closing out December with clear progress on its participation in global 5G network rollouts, despite US warnings about the potential national security risks the company poses.India’s technology and communications minister announced on Monday (Dec. 30) that the country has decided to allow “all players” to participate in its 5G trials, including Huawei, as well as Sweden’s Ericsson, Finland’s Nokia, Samsung from South Korea and Cisco from the US. The trials will be conducted early next year, while India’s launch of its 5G network is expected to take place in 2021.“We thank the Indian government for their continued faith in Huawei,” said Jay Chen, CEO of Huawei India on Monday, according to the Economic Times. “We have our full confidence in the [prime minister Narendra] Modi government to drive 5G in India… Huawei is always committed to India.”The UK is still to decide whether it will allow Huawei to provide its 5G networks in January, but some telecom firms are already using Huawei equipment in “non-core” portions of their 5G rollouts.The developments come even as the US has actively lobbied against using Huawei for 5G, saying its equipment poses national security risks, citing its close ties with Beijing. Huawei has denied the US accusations, saying it would not hand over data to Beijing. The US has also put the company on a trade blacklist.Still, Huawei’s cost-effective equipment make it an attractive provider, as does its ability to provide end-to-end 5G services, from chipsets to devices, that few other players can offer currently. Market-access threats from Beijing toward European countries like Denmark and Germany could also have an impact on 5G decisions—though it’s unclear if the impact of such pressure will be in Beijing’s favor.In the case of India, since around 90% of its telecom equipment is imported, concerns over foreign surveillance would always loom large, whether it is Huawei, Nokia or Ericsson, wrote Munish Sharma, a consultant with the New Delhi think tank, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, in April. What India needs to do is to carry out a independent security review of Huawei’s equipment, he argued, as well as consider using its 5G purchases as a bargaining chip to adjust its trade imbalance with China.
The Proud Boys are a far
At the first 2020 presidential debate, Donald Trump was explicitly asked to denounce the white supremacists and rightwing militia groups that passionately support him. While an average person would expect this to be a straightforward answer, Trump, once again, failed to answer unambiguously. Instead he said: “Proud Boys – stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you what. Somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a rightwing problem.” Rather than harnessing an opportunity to ratchet down the rhetoric and talking points of white power groups, Trump’s not-very-coded language has actually energized Proud Boys and similar alt-right groups.The Proud Boys, for those unfamiliar, are a self-described “western chauvinist” men’s club established in 2016 by Gavin McInnes. The group sometimes paints itself as a wacky fraternal organization; in practice, it is much closer to a street gang, and McInnes has publicly described the group as a gang. Their gatherings tend to involve large amounts of drinking and violence. Members partake in unusual rituals to gain status within the group. They have a uniform (Fred Perry shirts), gang colors (black and yellow) and a mascot/symbol (a cockerel). Traditionally, the Proud Boys would be considered nothing more than a modernized version of racist skinheads. They package themselves, however, in a hipster persona that uses humor and irony to spread far-right talking points opposing feminism, immigration, political correctness and establishment politics.The blogger Ken White coined something called the goat rule: if you “ironically” kiss a goat, you are still a goat-kisser. (We are paraphrasing his original language, which was slightly stronger.) The Proud Boys like to give the impression that they simply enjoy using caustic or ironic humor to “trigger” liberals and “social justice warriors”. But they’re not ironic, transgressive humorists or provocateurs; they’re goat-kissers who are racist and sexist.From the perspective of the criminal justice system, the elements that form the Proud Boys’ collective identity are the same as the criteria that law enforcement agencies often use to designate street gangs. As gang experts and the authors of Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White, we think it’s extremely clear that the Proud Boys’ membership criteria, aesthetics and penchant for violence identify the group as a street gang. Yet the Proud Boys and other white power groups are not considered a criminal street gang by many police agencies and are generally absent in gang databases. This is especially concerning given that a 2006 FBI report found that some American police officers sympathize or even actively collaborate with far-right militias or white power groups.Trump’s recent overture to the Proud Boys is also troubling because of a phenomenon called “Big Gang Theory”. The Proud Boys are numerically small but, like a lot of gangs and splinter ideological groups, benefit from the (exaggerated) perception that they are highly organized, control a lot of territory and have members in many municipalities. This is reminiscent of the Hammerskins, the largest racist skinhead gang in the United States, which at its peak has probably never had more than about 500 members despite there being about 5,000 racist skinheads in the US.Like the Hammerskins, the Proud Boys give off the impression that they are bigger and more imposing than they actually are, as evidenced by the lack of attendees at their recent rally in Portland. Trump’s call for Proud Boys to “stand by” further plays into this embellished facade.Trump is pulling this far-right group more and more into the mainstream, providing the Proud Boys with the opportunity to gather support from a far bigger pool of potential recruits, which they will then slowly expose to their white supremacist rhetoric and affirmation of violence. Trump’s remarks also increase the risk that other extremist groups that are not as well-known as the Proud Boys will escalate their violence in order to gain similar attention.In our current period of political and social uncertainty, the Proud Boys, other white power gangs, and far-right militias will continue to draw more people into oppositional politics. Trump’s callous and deliberately ambiguous language, which far-right groups interpret as praise and endorsement, will only nurture more extremism. Shannon E Reid is an associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Matthew Valasik is an associate professor of sociology at Louisiana State University. They are the authors of Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White (University of California Press) Topics The far right Opinion Donald Trump Gangs comment
John Bolton Reportedly Says Trump Directed Him To Help Ukraine Quid Pro Quo Campaign
Former White House national security adviser John Bolton claims President Donald Trump told him to assist in a campaign to coerce Ukraine’s government into announcing investigations for Trump’s personal political gain, according to The New York Times. The Times published the bombshell report, which it attributed to Bolton’s unpublished book, just before Friday’s resumption of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice. It provides further reason for senators to hear from witnesses, particularly Bolton and the other White House officials he reportedly says were in the room. However, it’s unlikely to change anything: Republicans already had enough votes to block witnesses, and are expected to do so later on Friday. According to the Times report, Trump during an Oval Office meeting in May allegedly directed Bolton to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make sure Zelensky met with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to discuss investigations targeting Trump’s political rivals. Giuliani was the point person in Trump’s shadow foreign policy mission intent on forcing Ukraine to investigate 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden, witnesses said during House imnpeachment proceedings against Trump. Bolton writes that he ignored Trump’s order and did not call Zelensky. The account of Trump involving Bolton in a quid pro quo arrangement with Ukraine adds further weight to the impeachment charges against the president. Bolton alleges that Trump directly orchestrated the pressure campaign, and had an obsession with Ukraine based on inaccurate information and conspiracy theories, the Times reported. Bolton also claims that White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Giuliani were in the room when Trump ordered Bolton to call Zelensky. Trump denied Bolton’s recounting of events in a statement and claimed the meeting Bolton described never took place. Giuliani called Bolton’s description “absolutely, categorically untrue.” The meeting Bolton describes in his book draft reportedly took place months before Trump’s July phone call with Zelensky in which he requested investigations targeting Biden. It alleges that senior Trump administration figures were aware of Trump’s quid pro quo campaign long before the details of that call became public as a result of a whistleblower complaint. Bolton has been a central figure looming outside of Trump’s impeachment trial, with Democrats demanding that he should be allowed to testify and Republicans seeking to block that from happening. The White House has also sought to prevent Bolton from publishing his book, and Trump’s lawyers in the impeachment trial have argued the manuscript is inadmissible. Republicans on Friday appeared set to vote against allowing witnesses to testify in the trial, forestalling the possibility that Bolton would become its star. Leah Millis / Reuters U.S. national security adviser John Bolton reportedly writes in a draft of his upcoming book that President Donald Trump was personally directing the campaign to pressure Ukraine into announcing an investigation for personal political reasons. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost
F.T.C. Decision on Pursuing Facebook Antitrust Case Is Said to Be Near
Lawmakers and policymakers in Washington have ramped up antitrust actions against the largest technology companies, often in a bipartisan effort. On Tuesday, the Justice Department sued Google, accusing it of illegally maintaining its monopoly power in search and search advertising — the first such government action against a tech company in two decades. Two weeks ago, the House Judiciary Committee recommended taking action to break up the big tech platforms, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google.The actions reflect growing frustration toward the companies, which total around $5 trillion in value and have transformed commerce, speech, media and advertising globally. That power has drawn the scrutiny of conservatives like President Trump and liberals like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.The U.S. investigations began last year when the Justice Department started examining Google and other tech companies. Joseph Simons, the chairman of the F.T.C. and a Trump appointee, also opened an investigation into Facebook in June 2019. Around the same time, four dozen state attorneys general began a parallel investigation into the social network.Facebook has tangled with the F.T.C. before, but mainly over privacy issues. The company reached a privacy settlement in 2011 with the agency. In 2018, the F.T.C. opened an investigation into Facebook for violating that settlement, prompted by a report from The New York Times and The Observer of London on how the company allowed Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm to the Trump campaign, to harvest the personal information of its users. As a result, Facebook last year agreed to a record $5 billion settlement with the F.T.C. on data privacy violations.The antitrust investigation by the F.T.C. has been far-reaching. The agency has collected thousands of internal documents from Facebook’s leaders. It has also interviewed people from the company’s rivals, such as Snap, which owns the Snapchat app, about Facebook’s dominant position in social networking and its business practices.
Cory Booker's secret to long
Based on his standing in the presidential primary polls, voters don’t seem especially interested in Cory Booker’s policies. His personal life is another story. That’s due in large part to Booker’s relationship with the actor and activist Rosario Dawson, who shared details of their lives together in a recent profile in the Washington Post.“They are the rare power couple capable of fascinating political analysts, Hollywood gossips and your mother,” the Post writes.While the duo’s schedules, particularly with Booker on the campaign trail, don’t often overlap – “Maybe we can meet at the airport hotel,” he jokes in the piece – they’ve managed to make things work with a consistent routine of FaceTime, they explained.Booker sends her music to listen to every morning, and of late they’ve taken to reading books aloud to each other over the phone.“Dawson says they went two months without seeing each other. But they’ve made up for it with FaceTime, which they try to do twice a day,” the Post writes. “He’s gotten in the habit of sending her music every morning, and he just finished reading David Benioff’s World War II novel City of Thieves to her over the phone.”The book by Benioff, better known as the showrunner of Game of Thrones, is a piece of historical fiction about the siege of Leningrad during the second world war. City of Thieves is a coming-of-age story – as the Guardian described it upon its release in 2008: “Lev, a 17-year-old, chess-playing virgin, and Kolya, a charismatic ladies’ man, are given five days by a Red Army colonel to find a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake. Their road trip into a landscape gripped by near-starvation glints with heart-stopping sights.”At 258 pages long, Benioff’s novel would amount to a lot of hours spent reading on FaceTime.“Cory Booker is an Audiobook Boyfriend,” the Cut declared after the Post interview was published. Reading over long distances seems to be a favorite move of his. Booker told a similar story to the New York Times about reading The Lovely Bones over the phone with a previous girlfriend.“I was in a long-distance relationship, and my girlfriend decided we should read books together, so she chose first,” Booker told the Times. “I was not happy about her choice at first and tried to dissuade her.”However, as Booker and his girlfriend read aloud to each other over the phone, he learned to love Alice Sebold’s bestselling 2002 novel, which was adapted into a film starring Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon in 2009.“It was a beautiful, emotionally fulfilling book that I recommended to many, many others after I read it.”
Samantha Bee Skewers Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr.
But Bee saved her sharpest spears for Donald Trump Jr., who could be on thin legal ice over his June 2016 meeting with Russians at Trump Tower. President Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that the meeting was held to “get information on an opponent.”Bee said there were other dealings in which Trump Jr. had failed to cover his tracks, including the Trump SoHo, a luxury condominium-hotel in Lower Manhattan that struggled to attract guests and buyers.“The Trump family got sued for lying to buyers about the building’s sales figures, and Donnie wrote in his emails that nobody would ever find out about the scam because only people on the email chain or in the Trump Organization knew about it. Aw. This is about one step above writing a note that says, ‘Dear crime: I am guilty of you.’” — SAMANTHA BEE“Donnie even met alleged Russian agent Maria Butina at an N.R.A. dinner before the election. Any time there was collusion going on, Donnie was there. He shows up everywhere. He’s like the Forrest Gump of collusion!” — SAMANTHA BEEBee summed up the segment with a characteristically brutal jab.“This sad, sticky wad of congealed hair gel has spent his whole life seeking his dad’s approval and failing at it, and now he might be the one to bring down Trump’s presidency.” — SAMANTHA BEEThe Oscars on Wednesday announced a slate of changes, including shortening the broadcast and, more controversially, adding a category for “best popular film.” Jimmy Kimmel wants to know: Did he do something wrong?“It’s really kind of interesting: Apparently I did such a good job hosting the Oscars this year, they’ve decided to change everything about them.” — JIMMY KIMMELAs for the new category, count Kimmel in favor.“I guess someone over there had an idea. They said, ‘What if we honored some movies that people have actually seen?’ And everybody went, ‘Yeah, that’s great, we should do that.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is exciting. You know what this means? One day we may very well hear the words, ‘And the Oscar goes to: “The Fast and the Furious 18: Never Stop Fasting, Never Stop Furiousing.”’” — JIMMY KIMMEL
Andrew Yang: Working class sees Dems as 'coastal urban elites' who care about 'policing cultural issues'
closeVideoFox News GoFormer presidential candidate Andrew Yang offered a warning to his fellow Democrats this week following his underwhelming performance in the 2020 primaries. While Joe Biden appeared to be inching his way toward 270 electoral votes -- potentially denying President Trump a second term -- many of the down-ballot Democratic candidates were not nearly as successful. Results from Tuesday's election suggested the party likely failed to win control of the Senate and actually lost several House seats while maintaining a majority. During a CNN panel discussion Wednesday, Yang shared his own experience on the campaign trail trying to earn the votes of working-class people. CLICK HERE TO SEE FOX NEWS’ LIVE PROBABILITY DIALS"I would say, 'Hey! I'm running for president!' to a truck driver, retail worker, waitress in a diner. And they would say, 'What party?' And I'd say 'Democrat' and they would flinch like I said something really negative or I had just turned another color or something like that," Yang said."And there's something deeply wrong when working-class Americans have that response to a major party that theoretically is supposed to be fighting for them," he continued. "So you have to ask yourself, what has the Democratic Party been standing for in their minds? And in their minds, the Democratic Party, unfortunately, has taken on this role of the coastal urban elites who are more concerned about policing various cultural issues than improving their way of life that has been declining for years!"Yang, a New York businessman who's now a CNN contributor, called it a "fundamental problem for the Democratic Party," insisting the polarization of the country will "get worse" if his party can't solve the issue. "They lost a plant that had 1,500 workers. And so if you're a laid-off worker from that plant and you say 'What is the Democratic Party doing for me,' it's unclear," Yang explained. "We can talk about a unifying message from Joe Biden, he's naturally a unifying figure, but then there's the reality on the ground where their way of life has been disintegrating for years."He continued, "If we don't that, then we're going to see a continued acceleration towards the institutional mistrust that animated the Trump vote and will continue to do so."
Mueller rejects prosecutor's criticism of Trump
In a rare public statement on Tuesday, Robert Mueller pushed back on criticism from a prosecutor who worked on his Russia investigation, who said the special counsel “could have done more” to hold Donald Trump to account.“It is not surprising that members of the special counsel’s office did not always agree,” Mueller said, “but it is disappointing to hear criticism of our team based on incomplete information.”Mueller did not mention Andrew Weissmann by name. Formerly a top federal prosecutor, Weissmann is now a professor at New York University. His memoir of the Russia investigation, Where Law Ends, was released on Tuesday.Weissmann charges that in the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, Mueller and a senior deputy, Aaron Zebley, were cowed by the power of the presidency, too afraid to go after financial records or subpoena Trump family members.He also says Trump was clearly guilty of obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense, in actions including the firing of James Comey, Mueller’s successor as FBI director.Mueller outlined 11 instances of possible obstruction of justice. But he also cited a justice department standard that says a sitting president cannot be indicted and left further action to Congress.In his statement, Mueller said his team had known “our work would be scrutinised from all sides”. He also defended Zebley, who Weissmann even compares to the civil war general George McClellan, who was notoriously reluctant to fight.Zebley “was privy to the full scope of the investigation and all that was at issue”, Mueller said. “I selected him for that role because I knew from our 10 years working together that he is meticulous and principled. He was an invaluable and trusted counselor to me from start to finish.”Mueller’s own mental fitness and participation in the investigation has been called into question.“When important decisions had to be made,” he said on Tuesday, “I made them. I did so as I have always done, without any interest in currying favor or fear of the consequences. I stand by those decisions and by the conclusions of our investigation.”Weissmann did not immediately comment.The justice department has fired back at Weissmann and his book, revealing a court filing in which an FBI agent says the Mueller team was out to “get Trump”.Mueller did not communicate directly with the public while he was special counsel, which lasted nearly two years. He did make a public statement in May 2019, criticizing attorney general William Barr’s handling of the report; before testifying in Congress two months later.In July this year, Mueller wrote a column for the Washington Post in which he criticised Trump’s commutation of the sentence handed to Roger Stone, a longtime ally of the president, after Mueller indicted him.Mueller initiated proceedings against 34 individuals – among them Stone, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, his deputy Rick Gates, lawyer Michael Cohen and national security adviser Michael Flynn, all convicted – and three Russian companies.
Sen. Cory Booker Seeks Increased Transparency In Medicaid's Drug Decisions : Shots
Enlarge this image The "Medicaid Drug Decisions Transparency Act" would require pharmaceutical companies to disclose their payments to pharmacists and others who serve on state Medicaid drug boards — the advisory groups that decide which drugs Medicaid will and won't cover. Gary Waters/Ikon Images/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Gary Waters/Ikon Images/Getty Images The "Medicaid Drug Decisions Transparency Act" would require pharmaceutical companies to disclose their payments to pharmacists and others who serve on state Medicaid drug boards — the advisory groups that decide which drugs Medicaid will and won't cover. Gary Waters/Ikon Images/Getty Images Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., says he will introduce federal legislation this week that would require more transparency surrounding states' Medicaid drug decisions. The bill comes in response to a recent investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NPR.The measure, known as the "Medicaid Drug Decisions Transparency Act," would require pharmaceutical companies to disclose their payments to pharmacists and others who serve on state Medicaid drug boards. These boards help decide which drugs Medicaid patients will be able to access easily. Currently drugmakers must only disclose perks given to doctors, such as free dinners, speaking fees and consulting gigs. In addition, the bill would increase penalties for companies that fail to comply with reporting requirements. Shots - Health News Arizona Governor Takes Steps To Blunt Industry Influence On Medicaid "These are really nefarious tactics that drug companies use, and they use them to influence state Medicaid programs' drug coverage decisions," says Booker. "My bill's going to address this problem by increasing transparency — shining a light onto these payments."The proposed federal legislation was prompted by the recent Medicaid, Under the Influence investigation from the Center for Public Integrity and NPR, which revealed how drugmakers influence states' choices regarding drugs for Medicaid patients. Shots - Health News Investigation: Patients' Drug Options Under Medicaid Heavily Influenced By Drugmakers The investigation, published in July, found that drug companies swarm state Medicaid board meetings when their drugs are under consideration, and have given payments and perks to three out of five doctors recently serving on those boards. The companies' efforts to undermine state drug cost controls have helped push up Medicaid expenses nationwide.The Senate bill would also require states to publish and update the lists of members on their Medicaid drug boards. The Center for Public Integrity had to scour meeting minutes, call agencies and formally request public records to compile a list of board members across the U.S. Even so, reporters still could not obtain information on two committees in Illinois and South Carolina.Booker's bill would require the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide states with summaries of drug company payments made to members of their Medicaid drug committees.With only weeks remaining in the current session of Congress, the bill is unlikely to pass. But Booker says he hopes it will help set the upcoming agenda for Democrats; he intends to reintroduce it in 2019.The Center/NPR investigation previously prompted Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, to issue an executive order tightening his state's ethics rules and to boot a doctor from the Medicaid committee who had received more than $700,000 in payments and perks from drugmakers. Officials in Colorado, New York and Texas also took action in response to the Medicaid investigation.The Center for Public Integrity is a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. You can follow Liz Essley Whyte on Twitter at @l_e_whyte.