Big Time News Blog: 12/10/19

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Representative Ted Yoho Becomes the 23rd House Republican to Announce Retirement

Representative Ted Yoho of Florida announced Tuesday that he will step down after completing his fourth term, joining the wave of House Republicans who have opted against running for reelection in 2020.Yoho had promised to serve no more than four terms in Congress."I ran on a pledge to serve four terms — eight years and come home," Yoho said in his announcement. "Many told me I was naive and they're probably right. I was told the district has changed three times and so the pledge isn't binding and I could rationalize that. However, I truly believe a person's word is their bond and should live up to their word."Yoho is the twenty-third House Republican to announce retirement in 2020. 26 Republicans retired in 2018, the year Democrats took back control of the House."Carolyn and I want to thank all of our awesome and loyal supporters who believed in us enough to give us the incredible honor to serve as a Member of the United States Congress, a government that represents the greatest country on earth," Yoho wrote in a letter to supporters.Yoho sits on the House Foreign Affairs and Agriculture Committees. Before running for Congress he worked as a large animal veterinarian.In November Yoho was thought to be considering retirement, but the congressman initially denied reports that he would be stepping down.The retirement wave is fueling concerns for GOP prospects in the 2020 congressional elections, although some of the affected districts are expected to remain in Republican control. Yoho's district is widely considered safe for Republicans, and the congressman is himself a staunch supporter of President Trump.

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Cities are criminalizing homelessness by banning people from camping in public. That's the wrong approach, report says

More cities are criminally punishing homeless people for sleeping in public, a new report shows, amid an increase in Americans living on the streets.

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Hong Kong's leader unbowed after massive weekend protest

Hong Kong's leader on Tuesday again ruled out further concessions to protesters who marched peacefully in their hundreds of thousands this past weekend, days before she is to travel to Beijing for regularly scheduled meetings with Communist Party leaders. The six-month protest movement has five demands, including that the leader of the semi-autonomous city and lawmakers all be directly elected and that police actions against protesters be independently investigated. “As for other demands, we really have to stick by certain important principles," she said.

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Why a War with North Korea Is Still the Least Bad Option

Should North Korea conduct a long-range nuclear test, it is in this backdrop that war on the peninsula becomes thinkable. This is because a future in which North Korea expands its long-range nuclear arsenal to the point of invulnerability, no matter the provocation, is one that the United States simply cannot live with.

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NASA says core stage of next Moon rocket now ready

NASA has completed the giant rocket that will take US astronauts back to the Moon, the space agency's head announced Monday, pledging the mission would take place in 2024 despite being beset by delays. The Space Launch System (SLS) is the tallest rocket ever built at a towering 212 feet (65 meters), the equivalent of a 20-story building. It is also the most powerful, designed to reach a record-breaking speed of Mach 23 before separating from its upper stage, the Orion crew capsule.

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‘Toxic’ Mueller Impeachment Article Threatens to Split Dems

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that House Democrats would proceed with articles of impeachment, she did so in the language of duty, history, and the Constitution. “This has nothing to do with politics,” she said. “It’s about the Constitution of the United States.”In almost the same breath, Pelosi revealed that it does, in fact, have at least something to do with politics. Asked what her “a-ha” moment was—the thing that got the long-reluctant speaker on board with impeachment—she said the Ukraine allegations against President Trump “changed everything.”“The polls,” said Pelosi, “went from 59 percent opposed to impeachment, to 34 in favor, to now even.”That conspicuous juxtaposition of lofty principle and hard political reality highlights the tension at the heart of the impeachment process as it heads into a decisive stretch. This week, Democrats’ sense of obligation and their sense of politics will be on a collision course as lawmakers debate, draft, and introduce their articles of impeachment against Trump, which are set to be revealed within days.That’s because the decision of what, exactly, to impeach Trump over will challenge the near-unanimity that’s existed within this big, fractious group of Democrats. Their overwhelming consensus so far has been that the president’s desire to pressure Ukraine into doing him personal political favors merited the use of the House’s most powerful check against a president for just the fourth time in the country’s history. No such consensus existed for other elements of Trump’s conduct in office, particularly the allegations of obstruction of justice outlined in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. The majority of the public, as Pelosi noted, did not feel those charges justified impeachment—and neither did she. Even though over half of the Democratic caucus was publicly supportive of impeachment before the Ukraine story emerged, the moderate and purple-district lawmakers who won them the majority dismissed a Mueller-based impeachment drive as political suicide. Now, Democratic leadership and lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee—the panel that led House Democrats’ charge on all things Mueller—are weighing whether to weave that thread into articles of impeachment. Few on Capitol Hill predict this will be a fight that tears the party apart, but strong views on the subject abide, and lawmakers on both ends of the debate are anxiously bracing for a decision that amounts to something like a final judgment from House Democrats on the president’s conduct. “From the very beginning, we were clear that the process should be clear, strategic, and efficient,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a freshman Democrat from a Trump-won district in Michigan. In a September op-ed written with several like-minded colleagues, Slotkin called for an impeachment inquiry based squarely on the anonymous whistleblower’s complaint. The move went down as the speaker’s come-to-Jesus moment on impeachment; she launched the inquiry the next day. “Clear, meaning we have to make the case to the American people. We got that strategic focus on specific articles, hone in on those—don't take a kitchen-sink approach, really think strategically. And then efficient. This doesn't need to be an 18-month process,” Slotkin told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “I have made myself clear that it should be a very tight group of articles, very limited, very focused.”This view is not exactly shared by many of Slotkin’s colleagues. “You might say I’m in the kitchen sink caucus,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, a northern California Democrat who has long backed impeachment. “This office has been abused and damaged in profound ways,” Huffman said on Friday. “I personally would be for holding him accountable for every bit of it. Not for every grievance we have—I wouldn't include his bad behavior or his offensive rhetoric—but some specific actions that I believe that have abused authority and rise to the level of impeachable offense, in my view, would go well beyond the current Ukraine scandal.”But many Democrats in this boat admit the moment is simply too important for the party to suffer any real show of discord. Huffman says he would “accept a more strategically focused set of articles if that's the decision,” but said he expected some kind of compromise to emerge. Over the weekend, the Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) held closed-door discussions about the possible scope of articles of impeachment and prepared members of the panel for the significant week to come. On Monday, the committee will convene for a hearing where lawmakers will hear prepared evidence for impeachment. According to a source familiar with the committee’s plans, Democrats spent the weekend huddling with Harvard constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe and holding mock hearings—during which Democrats played the roles of GOP members like top Judiciary Republican Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), who has made parliamentary and process based interruptions central to the party’s hearing strategy. The format of the hearing is a sign that Mueller’s Russia investigation could get another high-profile public airing. On Monday, attorneys for both Judiciary and the House Intelligence Committees will present evidence that Trump committed impeachable offenses. Intelligence submitted a lengthy report on the Ukraine matter, but Judiciary has spent all year focused on Mueller. On Sunday, Nadler appeared on CNN and said that he is seriously considering an article of impeachment based on the Mueller findings in order to establish a “pattern” of wrongdoing by Trump that goes beyond Ukraine and encompasses his entire presidency. Democrats both on Nadler’s panel and around the caucus see the logic to that move. “If there is an obstruction article, how do you ignore documented evidence of obstruction by the special counsel, for which he essentially said, ‘I’m not charging because of the Justice Department policy regarding the charging of a president,’ the Congress has remedies available,” said Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) on Friday. “To me, that's just like, a great big blinking light that says, yeah, you really need to look at that.”An idea percolating within the caucus is that the Mueller-related charges could be put to the floor precisely so that moderates could vote against them, while the Ukraine-focused articles would stand a far stronger chance of passing. “Including one or two counts of obstruction for the Mueller report is totally appropriate,” said Huffman. “And if our more politically fragile members feel like they've got to vote against that, let them do it.”But among those who represent competitive districts, taking such a vote may not be such an appealing prospect. One aide associated with the moderate wing of the party said any vote on Mueller-focused impeachment grounds puts these lawmakers in a “terrible position.”“Largely, there’s no support of idea of bringing up articles about Mueller,” said the aide, calling the investigation’s entire subject matter politically “toxic” in the districts these lawmakers represent. This wing of the party is anxiously watching to see how Nadler—likely with a heavy hand from the speaker—draws up the articles. “Thirty-one Democratic members of Congress in Trump districts are going to be living with the decisions he makes for the next year,” said the aide.There’s some hope, however, that this could result in some kind of compromise to be brokered this week that reconciles the tension baked into Democrats’ impeachment enterprise. “I mean, we're not gonna send everybody home happy,” said Huffman. “That's just inherent in the situation that has been forced upon us.”Among some of the lawmakers who decided to support impeachment knowing it could be a liability back home, there’s a sense that the most important Rubicon has already been crossed.“For many of us, if this was purely a political issue, we would not have come out in support of an inquiry,” said Slotkin, who is just one of several Democrats already seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of impeachment-based attack ads against them in their districts. “So you have this threshold where you say, doesn't matter what a poll says, it doesn't matter what my consultants are telling me to do, what matters is right and wrong.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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DeVos Tries Again to Cut Debt Relief for Students Who Were Misled

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Inspector general finds 'significant errors or omissions' in Trump adviser surveillance warrant

The long awaited 434-page report finds that FBI’s team conducting Crossfire Hurricane— the code name for the bureau’s investigation into links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin — improperly relied too heavily on allegations made by Christopher Steele, a former British spy who had been hired by an opposition research firm working for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

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New 'Varsity Blues' charges: Georgetown mom pleads guilty to cheating in son's online classes

In a new twist in the "Varsity Blues" admissions scandal, a California woman agreed to plead guilty to paying $9,000 to have someone take online classes for her son so he could graduate from Georgetown.

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UPDATE 1-Iran foreign ministry issues travel advisory for citizens not to visit America

Iran warned its citizens, particularly scientists, on Tuesday not to visit America, saying Iranians there were subjected to arbitrary and lengthy detention in inhuman conditions. "Iranian citizens, particularly elites and scientists, are requested to seriously avoid traveling to America, even to take part in scientific conferences and even having an invitation," a travel advisory on the foreign ministry website said. It cited, "America's cruel and one-sided laws toward Iranians, especially Iranian elites, and arbitrary and lengthy detention in completely inhuman conditions" as reasons for the travel advisory.

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New Zealand volcano: Hero tour guide skipper who turned his boat around after eruption to save injured tourists

As New Zealand Police announced a criminal investigation into the deaths on White Island and a sixth person died as a result of the volcanic eruption, it emerged that the death toll could have been higher were it not for the efforts of one tour boat captain in helping the rescue mission. Paul Kingi was a skipper on the White Island Tours boat, working alongside his friend Hayden Marshall-Inman, who did not survive the explosion. In a post on his company website, Pursuit Fishing Charters owner Rick Pollock, a 40-year veteran of the industry, said he had worked with Mr Kingi for five years and described him as "an outstanding man" and "amazingly resourceful". Mr Pollock said Mr Kingi had left the White Island "only minutes before the eruption", but immediately turned around, to be "the first back on, rescuing and assisting numerous injured back onto the waiting boats". "He went back again and again, ignoring the toxic environment and personal risk, until he was satisfied there were no more obvious survivors remaining… I'd like to recognise Paul for what he is on this occasion, nothing less than a hero," he said. Paul Kingi Mr Pollock added that he felt "devastated" for those affected by the disaster. "Initially as the reports were coming through I never thought it would turn out to be such a dire situation… Now we are forced to accept the severity of this event with many deaths and injuries. No doubt the fallout will continue to unfold as more information becomes known," he said. Mr Pollock expressed grief at the loss of Mr Marshall-Inman. "I've known this young man since he was three years old…. He put his all into the task at hand with his superlative people skills and broad smile coming to the fore… Sadly, this effervescent man's life has come to an end being the first deceased to be identified." "I can't imagine what his family is going through… My heart and thoughts go out to them in this most difficult of times." At 10.22pm local time Tuesday New Zealand Police confirmed that a sixth person had died as a result of the explosion on White Island, also known by its Maori name of Whakaari. The deceased had been evacuated and treated at Middlemore Hospital but died of their injuries. Earlier in the day Deputy Commissioner John Tims announced a criminal investigation into the deaths would be conducted, along with a WorkSafe New Zealand investigation. Health Department spokesperson Dr Pete Watson said 27 of the 31 rescued people had suffered severe burns. There are still eight people missing.

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U.S. Treasury Sanctions Latvian ‘Oligarch’ Over Corruption

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. sanctioned a Latvian “oligarch” and businesses related to him over corruption -- the first person from the Baltic nation that the Treasury has added to its so-called Magnitsky list of crooked officials.Lembergs, a former mayor of the port city of Ventspils, a key outlet for Russian crude exports in the 1990s, has been fighting graft charges in Latvian courts for about a decade.The country -- a NATO and European Union member -- is trying to rebuild its reputation after a string of money-laundering scandals and the ongoing trial of its central bank governor for bribery.“Lembergs has leveraged and corrupted law-enforcement officials to protect his interests and subvert politicians whom he otherwise was unable to control,” the Treasury said in a statement.Lembergs has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his court proceedings.To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Eglitis in Riga at aeglitis@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Andrew LangleyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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How Nancy Pelosi could lose the impeachment vote

Well, here we are. Impeachment articles against President Trump have been introduced — one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of justice — and a vote in the House is coming soon.The way forward seems entirely predictable. The Democratic majority in the House will vote "yes" on impeachment and the Republican-controlled Senate will decline to convict. Likewise, polling shows the impeachment inquiry has overwhelmingly served to reinforce Americans' previously held opinions about the president. Fully 95 percent of those who came away more convinced of Trump's guilt already thought he was guilty, and an equal 95 percent of those freshly persuaded of his innocence already believed he hasn't done anything impeachable.But here's an interesting thing: In survey data collected by Ipsos and FiveThirtyEight at the beginning of this month, 16.5 percent of Democrats said they believe Trump committed an impeachable offense but do not think he should be removed from office via impeachment. Instead, they say, his fate should be left to the voters to decide on Election Day 2020. Another 9.4 percent of Democratic respondents said Trump didn't commit an impeachable offense at all. If those numbers are reflected in Congress, the impeachment articles will fail.That outcome is unlikely, I'll grant you — but it's not entirely implausible, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says she's not whipping votes. "On an issue like this, we don't count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it," she told reporters the night before the articles of impeachment were announced. "I haven't counted votes, nor will I."I don't believe Pelosi has no sense of where each member of her caucus stands on this — or that Democratic representatives are unaware of the preferences of their party's leadership. Yet this statement paired with Pelosi's long reticence (reportedly on electorally strategic grounds) to move forward with impeachment suggests a real willingness to let House Democrats in vulnerable districts vote against the articles if they judge that's what's needed to stay in office and preserve the Democratic majority.There are 31 House districts that are held by Democrats but which voted for Trump, in some cases by large margins. One of those Democrats — Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), a 15-termer whose district gave Trump a 31-point victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 — voted against beginning the impeachment inquiry. Peterson seems unlikely to vote for the articles of impeachment, and he may not be alone. For these representatives, it's a lot easier to defend supporting an inquiry ("I just wanted to settle the matter once and for all" or even "I wanted to give the president a fair chance to clear his name") than backing impeachment itself.With a 235-seat majority (plus one independent, Justin Amash of Michigan, who has expressed support for impeachment) against 197 Republicans, House Democrats can only afford to lose 18 votes. If all 31 Trump-district Democrats vote "no," impeachment fails. If Democratic representatives share their national voter base's perspective from that Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight survey and vote accordingly, a whopping 63 would vote "no," so impeachment definitely fails.I doubt either of those outcomes are realistic, they make defections in the high teens or low 20s seem possible. And I'm not sure Pelosi (to say nothing of Democrats' presidential candidates) would hate a narrow loss, whatever she says publicly. The Senate verdict remains all but a foregone conclusion — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he "can't imagine a scenario" in which his chamber would convict and remove Trump, and without an anonymous vote, he's probably correct.Thus there's a sense in which Democrats' work here is done, a sense in which the impeachment vote, its final fate at trial basically predetermined by the Senate's partisan composition, is irrelevant. The inquiry is what mattered, and the inquiry has happened. The evidence of Trump's malfeasance has been aired. It had its opportunity to sway what few 2020 voters were available to be swayed. The trial, managed by GOP Senate leadership, will not be as politically useful for Democrats. So does it really make a difference if it proceeds? Does it really matter if the impeachment articles pass?My guess is Pelosi's private answer to these questions is, "Yes, but keeping the House majority matters more." If winning a Senate-doomed impeachment vote means losing the House, I can't imagine that's a victory Pelosi seeks. She probably has the votes — but if she doesn't, that's a plausible scenario in which she wouldn't mind.More stories from theweek.com Trump's pathological obsession with being laughed at The most important day of the impeachment inquiry Jerry Falwell Jr.'s false gospel of memes

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IG Report Details ‘Significant Omissions and Inaccurate Information’ in FISA Application to Surveil Carter Page

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz detailed how the FBI made “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in its FISA application to surveil Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page, including the application's reliance on the unverified Steele dossier.The inspector general found no evidence that the Russia probe was launched for political reasons but did conclude that the FBI’s FISA process fell “far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate,’” according to the extensive report.“The Crossfire Hurricane team failed to inform Department officials of significant information that was available to the team at the time that the FISA applications were drafted and filed,” the report asserts. “Much of that information was inconsistent with, or undercut, the assertions contained in the FISA applications that were used to support probable cause and, in some instances, resulted in inaccurate information being included in the applications.”The FBI knowingly omitted details of Steele’s prior working relationship with the CIA, as well as numerous potentially exculpatory statements he made to other sources that undercut central allegations included in the Steele dossier.The report also confirms that a top FBI national security lawyer doctored an email that explained that Page was “a source” for the CIA in order to give the opposite impression to the federal spy court.“We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed,” the report states.Before submitting their FISA application, which FBI officials resumed drafting on the same day they received the Steele information, the bureau “did not have information corroborating the specific allegations against Carter Page in Steele's reporting,” but pushed ahead with the application anyways. To corroborate Steele’s claim, the FBI cited Steele’s credentials as a former British intelligence officer and his work as a FBI source, claims that were "overstated and had not been approved by Steele's handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures.”The report also details how “FBI officials at every level” — including former deputy director Andrew McCabe and former director James Comey — agreed that Steele was reliable in illustrating that Page was a Russian asset, despite overhead concerns that Steele could have a partisan agenda given that he was being paid by the Democratic National Committee through the research firm Fusion GPS.The report contrasts the FBI’s view to that of the CIA, which “believed that the Steele election reporting was not completely vetted and did not merit inclusion in the body of the” 2017 intelligence community assessment of Russian interference, and “viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’”Following the release of the report, attorney general William Barr released a statement calling the FBI’s basis for launching the investigation “the thinnest of suspicions.”“While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process,” Barr said in his statement.U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is running a separate investigation under Barr’s authority into the FBI probe of the Trump campaign, said in a statement Monday that he disagreed with that IG finding in how the investigation was opened.

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Austria's Handke receives Nobel Literature Prize amid protests, criticism

Demonstrators braved freezing temperatures on Tuesday to protest against the awarding of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature to Austrian writer Peter Handke because of his support for the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Handke and the Nobel laureates in chemistry, medicine, physics and economics received their prizes from the Swedish king in a lavish ceremony at Stockholm Concert Hall on Tuesday evening. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded separately earlier on Tuesday in Oslo to Ethiopia's prime minister.

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Virginia gun rights activists vow to fight new restrictions

More than 200 gun rights activists wearing “Guns SAVE Lives” stickers rallied Monday in Virginia, vowing to fight any attempt by the new Democratic majority in the state legislature to pass new restrictions on gun ownership. "Hands off our guns, hands off our rights, and hands off our guns," said Bob Good, a member of the Campbell County Board of Supervisors.

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A protester from the conspiracy site InfoWars interrupted the latest impeachment hearing as soon as it began, shouting 'Trump is innocent!'

"We know who committed the crimes and it wasn't Trump. Trump is innocent!" the pro-Trump InfoWars protester yelled as he was escorted out of the room.

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Why the Marines Love Their LAV-25 "Destroyers"

A spunky and useful vehicle.

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US Army preparing biggest European deployment in years

The US Army is planning its biggest deployment of troops to Europe in 25 years, with 20,000 troops slated to take part in a massive force projection exercise at a time of increasingly adversarial relations with Russia. General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US ground forces in Europe, said 20,000 US-based troops will deploy next year to Europe where they will join some 9,000 other US soldiers already stationed there. Some 37,000 troops will then take part in exercises across 10 European countries from May to June, he told reporters at the Pentagon.

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