In rare move, N. Carolina county removes Confederate statue

A North Carolina county removed a Confederate statue from a historic courthouse early Wednesday, joining the handful of places around the state where such monuments have come down in recent years despite a law protecting them. Preparations began Tuesday night to carefully dismantle the statue of a soldier outside the historic Chatham County courthouse, where it had stood since 1907, and continued for hours overnight, said county spokeswoman Kara Lusk Dudley. The removal comes months after Winston-Salem officials removed a Confederate statue from land there that had passed into private hands.

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Trump press secretary backtracks claim Obama officials left 'You will fail' notes

Stephanie Grisham retracted claim she and her colleagues encountered notes after rejection from ex-Obama staffersStephanie Grisham at the White House in Washington DC, on 4 September. Photograph: REX/ShutterstockThe White House press secretary has backed down from her claim that Obama administration officials left behind notes for Trump staffers saying “You will fail” and “You aren’t going to make it”, after a number of aides denied the allegation.In a radio interview on Tuesday, Stephanie Grisham said she and her colleagues had encountered the notes upon entering White House offices.fundraiser“When we came into the White House, I’ll tell you something, every office was filled with Obama books, and we had notes left behind that said ‘You will fail’, ‘You aren’t going to make it’,” she said. “In the press office, there was a big note taped to a door that said that ‘You will fail’,” Grisham told the John Fredericks Show.Grisham retracted her claims, however, after a full-throated rejection from former Obama staffers.“This is absolutely not true,” Chris Lu, a White House cabinet secretary in the Obama administration, wrote on Twitter.“Obama repeatedly and publicly praised Bush cooperation during 2009 transition, and pledged we would provide same cooperation to whoever followed us. And that’s what we did. If Grisham is correct, why has it taken three years to come out?”Susan Rice, who served as Obama’s national security adviser, was similarly dismissive.“This is another bald-faced lie,” Rice wrote on Twitter.Other Obama officials, including Joanna Rosholm, the former press secretary to Michelle Obama, posted photos of the notes they had left behind. None of the notes said “You will fail”.Peter Velz, who worked as an assistant to the director of communications in the Obama administration, posted a photo of a note which said: “Best of luck to you and your team.”> This is the note I left my successor. Really dispiriting to hear this from @PressSec, a person with whom I spent a couple amicable hours with during the the 2016 transition where I wished her nothing but institutional knowledge, good luck and all our support. https://t.co/kGb0pa59fp pic.twitter.com/Jtis9TEZK1> > — Peter Velz (@petervelz) November 19, 2019After the backlash Grisham walked back from her initial remarks. She issued a statement saying the controversy was “silly” but did not expand on why she had made the claims.“[I] certainly wasn’t implying every office had that issue,” Grisham said.“I was talking specifically (and honestly) about our experience in the lower press office – nowhere else. I don’t know why everyone is so sensitive!”

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Jussie Smollett Files Suit against City of Chicago for ‘Malicious Prosecution’

Jussie Smollett filed a countersuit on Tuesday in response to a lawsuit brought by the city of Chicago, alleging the city engaged in "malicious prosecution" that caused the actor "humiliation, mental anguish and extreme emotional distress," the Chicago Sun Times reported Monday.Smollett was alleged to have staged a racist, homophobic crime against himself in January with the help of two friends, who themselves are brothers of Nigerian origin.A grand jury indicted Smollett in March, but Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx dropped the charges against the actor, citing the technically victimless nature of the hoax and his record of service to the community.The city of Chicago had filed a lawsuit against Smollett attempting to recover $130,106 from the Empire actor after investigating the staged crime. Smollett's lawyers assert in the counterclaim that because he has already paid $10,000 to the city "as payment in full in connection with the dismissal of the charges against him" he should be exempt from any further penalties.The counterclaim also alleges the two brothers made "false, self-serving, and unreliable statements" that the police nevertheless used "in order to close the investigation into the attack on Mr. Smollett."Foxx, who is running for reelection, admitted in a campaign video on Tuesday that she mishandled Smollett's case. In June the state appointed a special prosecutor to look into her actions regarding the case.After Foxx dropped charges against Smollett, an anonymous prosecutor in her office slammed her handling of the affair."This case was handled markedly different from any other case at 26th Street," the prosecutor wrote. "No one knows why, and more importantly, no one can explain why our boss, the head prosecutor of all of Cook County, has decided to so demean and debase both our hard work, and our already tenuous relationship with the Chicago Police Department."

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Mexicans sue Walmart over El Paso shooting

Mexico's government said Wednesday it has helped 10 Mexican citizens file lawsuits against Walmart over an August shooting at a store in El Paso, Texas, where a suspected white nationalist killed 22 people. "The objective of these suits, presented in El Paso county, is to hold the company responsible for not taking reasonable and necessary measures to protect its clients from the attack," the foreign ministry said in a statement. Eight Mexicans were killed and eight wounded in the August 3 attack in El Paso, a city on the US-Mexican border where 83 percent of the population is Latino.

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Netanyahu challenger fails to form coalition

Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief rival announced Wednesday that he had failed to form a new government, dashing his hopes of toppling the long-time Israeli prime minister and pushing the country closer toward an unprecedented third election in less than a year. The announcement by Benny Gantz, leader of the centrist Blue and White party, prolongs the political paralysis that has gripped the nation for the past year. It also provides a new lifeline for the embattled Netanyahu, who is desperate to remain in office as he prepares for an expected indictment on corruption charges, possibly as early as Thursday.

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Booker and Harris warn Dems: Electability doesn't just mean appealing to white voters

Electability is the biggest buzzword of the 2020 cycle. It’s what Democrats say they prize above all else: a nominee who can defeat Donald Trump. But it's also a code word. It tends to mask a racialized assumption about which Americans a candidate needs to win over in order to qualify as “electable”: that is, white voters who don’t live in big coastal cities.

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Fearful wait for justice a decade after Philippine massacre

A decade after 58 people were killed in the Philippines' worst political massacre, none of the alleged masterminds have been convicted yet, leaving families fearful that justice may never come. "We are afraid for the life of the prosecutor or even our judge," said Mary Grace Morales, whose sister and husband were among 32 journalists killed in the attack, making it one of world's deadliest on media workers. Ampatuan family leaders, who ruled the impoverished southern province of Maguindanao, are charged with organising the mass killing in a bid to quash an election challenge from a rival clan.

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Full coverage: Trump impeachment hearings — Day 5

Public hearings in the Trump impeachment inquiry continued on Capitol Hill Thursday, with Fiona Hill and David Holmes testifying in an open session.

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The Revolt Against Populism

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Virus Outbreak Closes Colorado Schools for More Than 20,000 Students

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No Deal on NAFTA Successor, but Democrats Point to Progress

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Ochenta y ocho días de recuperación: así ayudaron unas futbolistas a que su entrenador superara la tragedia

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Woman fights charges after stepkids see her topless at home

A Utah woman charged with a crime after her stepchildren saw her topless in her own home is fighting the case that could force her to register as a sex offender, pointing to a court ruling that overturned a topless ban in Colorado and helped fuel a movement. Tilli Buchanan’s attorneys argue that Utah’s law on lewdness involving a child is unfair because it treats men and women differently for baring their chests. Buchanan, 27, said she and her husband had taken off their shirts to keep their clothes from getting dusty while they hung drywall in their garage in a Salt Lake City suburb in late 2017 or early 2018.

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Report: Pompeo telling Republicans he wants to step down, run for Senate

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has shared with three prominent Republicans that he wants to resign and run for Senate next year in Kansas, Time reports.The Republicans told Time that Pompeo's original plan was to stay at the State Department until next spring, but because of the House impeachment inquiry, he's thinking about making an early -- and hopefully smooth -- exit. They do not know if Pompeo has discussed any of this with Trump.Pompeo's concern is that the longer he stays in the Trump administration, the more he will be criticized for not defending the current and former diplomats who have testified in the impeachment inquiry, Time reports. Trump loyalists have also accused Pompeo of not showing enough support to the president. Pompeo represented Kansas' 4th Congressional district from 2011 to 2017.More stories from theweek.com First-time nominees lead the pack in Grammy Award nominations Ken Starr on the Sondland testimony: 'It's over' Rudy Giuliani is now demanding an apology from the Republican counsel

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Fiona Hill put out fire in her hair with her hands before finishing test, Trump impeachment inquiry hears

A witness in the impeachment probe has told Congress that when she was a schoolgirl her pigtails were set on fire by a boy during an exam – and that she put the flames out herself before finishing.British-born Fiona Hill was asked about the incident while giving evidence to members of the House Intelligence Committee after it was raised by Democrat Jackie Speier.

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Notes on the November Democratic Debate Dud

One thing lacking from the November Democratic presidential-primary debate was much debate. There were no fireworks — no truly memorable clashes between the candidates — and what didn’t happen was more notable than what did.On impeachment, the Democratic candidates didn’t strongly prosecute the case against Trump last night. The very first question went to Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who was asked whether she would work to persuade her Republican Senate colleagues to vote to convict Trump and, if so, how. “Of course I will,” Warren said. “And the obvious answer is to say, first, read the Mueller Report, all 442 pages of it, that showed how the president tried to obstruct justice, and when Congress failed to act at that moment, and that the president felt free to break the law again and again and again. And that's what's happened with Ukraine.”So, after four days of public televised hearings about the Ukraine scandal, Warren provided no actual explanation of what happened and what the hearings revealed. For the rest of her answer, she railed against giving ambassadorships to wealthy donors, a longstanding, bipartisan problem that she herself has enabled through Senate confirmation votes.Nevertheless, Warren probably did what she needed to do at Wednesday’s debate: She didn’t let her equivocations about Medicare for All destroy her campaign the way Kamala Harris’s equivocations destroyed hers. Warren’s campaign has stalled since the October Democratic debate, when South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg attacked her for wanting to force 160 million Americans off of private insurance and for having no realistic plan to pay for a single-payer health-insurance system. Warren responded by releasing a widely panned plan to raise $20 trillion in taxes for the $30 trillion program. She then announced that she would likely push for Medicare for All only after a three-year transitional phase, suggesting she wasn’t that committed to the plan.Warren survived last night not so much by the strength of her arguments, but because Buttigieg declined to press his advantage against her — he glancingly hit her plan early on but didn’t follow through — and Bernie Sanders declined to attack her from the left.Former vice president Joe Biden ended up making the strongest case against Medicare for All: He pointed out that it couldn’t pass even the Democratic House, much less a Democratic Senate. “Nancy Pelosi is one of those people who doesn't think it makes sense,” he said, before making the pitch for a public option. “I trust the American people to make a judgment what they believe is in their interest.” Compared to earlier debates, Biden put in a relatively lucid performance. He still committed at least one cringe-worthy gaffe: When he was touting the support of African-American leaders, he claimed that he was endorsed by the “only” female African-American senator in history, Carol Moseley Braun, with Harris, a female African-American senator, standing a few feet away. (He later claimed that he said “first.”)Finally, perhaps the most noteworthy non-event of the evening was the fact that Pete Buttigieg, who is surging in Iowa, escaped unscathed. No one hammered him for being a McKinsey consultant. It wasn’t until late in the debate that Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard went after his willingness “to send our troops to Mexico to fight the cartels.”“We've been doing security cooperation with Mexico for years, with law-enforcement cooperation and a military relationship that could continue to be developed with training relationships, for example,” Buttigieg replied. “Do you seriously think anybody on this stage is proposing invading Mexico?” Gabbard’s attack likely did more to endear her to isolationists on the right than to Democratic primary voters.All in all, it was a dull debate, and it did little to clarify the Democratic presidential primary, which is going to be eclipsed in the news for the next couple months by an impeachment vote in the House and a trial in the Senate that Democratic presidential candidates — including the senators whom it will take off the campaign trail — don’t want to talk about.

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Eric Trump uses father's impeachment hearing to promote family's wine

Eric Trump reacted to damning testimony against his father at the impeachment hearings by promoting the family wine business.

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US Latinas need twice the time to match white male’s income

Government figures show that on average, Latinas in the United States are paid 54 cents for every dollar that a white, non-Hispanic male makes. A coalition of nongovernmental organizations is marking the Latina Women’s Equal Pay Day on Wednesday, highlighting the day on the calendar when the average Latina, working both 2018 and 2019, matches the 2018 income by white men. Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women's Law Center, said the numbers are "outrageous" and "devastating" because the trend has remained unaltered for decades, making impossible for these families to build wealth through generations.

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Cory Booker is right: Joe Biden must be 'high' to oppose legalizing marijuana

Joe Biden isn’t just old-fashioned. He’s a stubborn prohibitionist averse to catching up with reality — the inevitability of marijuana legalization.

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Trump erupts over ‘human scum’ impeachment investigators in rambling series of false and misleading tweets

Donald Trump has erupted over the ongoing impeachment inquiry in a series of false and misleading tweets in which he accused investigators of being “human scum”.“Corrupt politician Adam Schiff’s lies are growing by the day,” the US president tweeted on Thursday morning.

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U.S. warships sail in disputed South China Sea amid tensions

U.S. Navy warships, on two occasions in the past few days, have sailed near islands claimed by China in the South China Sea, the U.S. military told Reuters on Thursday, at a time of tension between the world's two largest economies.

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Supreme Court Urged to Allow Release of Trump’s Financial Records

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