rawstory--2020-01-15--‘A truly historic moment’: 50 years after Congress passed ERA, amendment meets constitutional thresh

‘A truly historic moment’: 50 years after Congress passed ERA, amendment meets constitutional threshold with Virginia’s approval

The amendment is likely to be tied up in court battles following a Justice Department statement that the deadline for ratification has passed .
Women ’ s rights advocates celebrated Wednesday as the Virginia legislature became the 38th in the nation to approve the Equal Rights Amendment , nearly 100 years after activists first called for equality between men and women to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution .
The approval of the Equal Rights Amendment ( ERA ) by Virginia ’ s state Senate and House means that the required three-quarters of U.S. states have now voted to ratify @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congress in 1972 .
The law aims to constitutionally guarantee the same legal rights regarding pay equity and other workplace discrimination to all Americans regardless of sex .
It also provides protections for women from domestic abuse and pregnancy discrimination .
“ For the women of Virginia and the women of America , the resolution has finally passed , ” said Eileen Filler-Corn , the first female state House speaker in Virginia ’ s history , as the amendment was approved .
The resolution was passed with votes of 59-40 in the House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the approval of the ERA was celebrated as an historic achievement , for the time being the amendment ’ s step forward is largely symbolic .
As Virginia ’ s newly Democrat-controlled legislature was debating the amendment last week , President Donald Trump ’ s Justice Department issued a statement saying that because a 1982 deadline for ratification passed with only 35 states approving the ERA at the time , it is too late to add the amendment to the Constitution .
Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel wrote that Congress must start the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and once again gain the approval of 38 states .
The process could be further complicated by the fact that legislatures in Idaho , Kentucky , Nebraska , Tennessee , and South Dakota have rescinded their earlier approval of the ERA in recent years .
Pro-ERA groups including Equal Means Equal filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts earlier this month arguing that the deadline was not constitutionally binding .
“ We are not surprised that the Trump administration acted swiftly to declare its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment , ” Wendy Murphy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , told ABC News following the DOJ ’ s statement .
“ This development makes our lawsuit even more urgent.
” According to The Washington Post , “ several efforts are underway on Capitol Hill to either extend or restart the ratification process.
” ERA advocates have also argued that the rescissions of the five states are not constitutionally sound , but courts have yet to rule on the subject .
Despite the uncertainty over when Virginia ’ s approval might lead to a constitutional amendment , women ’ s rights advocates applauded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In her speech in favor of passing the amendment , state Sen. Mamie Locke rejected the claims by ERA critics that the law can not be added to the Constitution .
“ There ’ s no time limit on equal rights , ” said Locke .

The amendment is likely to be tied up in court battles following a Justice Department statement that the deadline for ratification has passed.
Women's rights advocates celebrated Wednesday as the Virginia legislature became the 38th in the nation to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, nearly 100 years after activists first called for equality between men and women to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
The approval of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by Virginia's state Senate and House means that the required three-quarters of U.S. states have now voted to ratify the amendment, which was passed by Congress in 1972.
The law aims to constitutionally guarantee the same legal rights regarding pay equity and other workplace discrimination to all Americans regardless of sex. It also provides protections for women from domestic abuse and pregnancy discrimination.
"For the women of Virginia and the women of America, the resolution has finally passed," said Eileen Filler-Corn, the first female state House speaker in Virginia's history, as the amendment was approved.
The resolution was passed with votes of 59-40 in the House and 28-12 in the Senate.
Although the approval of the ERA was celebrated as an historic achievement, for the time being the amendment's step forward is largely symbolic.
As Virginia's newly Democrat-controlled legislature was debating the amendment last week, President Donald Trump's Justice Department issued a statement saying that because a 1982 deadline for ratification passed with only 35 states approving the ERA at the time, it is too late to add the amendment to the Constitution.
Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel wrote that Congress must start the process of ratifying the ERA over again and once again gain the approval of 38 states. The process could be further complicated by the fact that legislatures in Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota have rescinded their earlier approval of the ERA in recent years.
Pro-ERA groups including Equal Means Equal filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts earlier this month arguing that the deadline was not constitutionally binding.
"We are not surprised that the Trump administration acted swiftly to declare its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment," Wendy Murphy, a lawyer for Equal Means Equal, toldABC News following the DOJ's statement. "This development makes our lawsuit even more urgent."
According toTheWashington Post, "several efforts are underway on Capitol Hill to either extend or restart the ratification process."
ERA advocates have also argued that the rescissions of the five states are not constitutionally sound, but courts have yet to rule on the subject.
Despite the uncertainty over when Virginia's approval might lead to a constitutional amendment, women's rights advocates applauded the state for "making history."
In her speech in favor of passing the amendment, state Sen. Mamie Locke rejected the claims by ERA critics that the law cannot be added to the Constitution.
"There's no time limit on equal rights," said Locke.


rawstory--2020-01-15--House Republicans are fleeing from GOP congressional candidate Robert Hyde after text messages revea

House Republicans are fleeing from GOP congressional candidate Robert Hyde after text messages revealed

Republican congressional hopeful Robert Hyde is facing significant pushback from his own party after evidence turned over to Congress from Lev Parnas implicated the candidate in President Donald Trump ’ s impeachment .
Earlier on Monday , the chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party urged Hyde to end his bid .
“ I have asked Rob Hyde to end his bid for Congress .
His campaign is a distraction for the Democrats to raise money and falsely label all Republicans with his antics .
In my view he is not helping other Republican candidates or Donald Trump win , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t just facing problems in Connecticut , Capitol Hill Republicans are also shunning his candidacy .
“ Congressional Republicans are distancing themselves from Robert Hyde , a controversial House candidate and GOP donor who has become the latest figure to get wrapped up in the Ukraine saga that led to President Donald Trump ’ s impeachment , ” Politico reports .
“ The top three Republican leaders in the House — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California , Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know Hyde and don ’ t support him , according to their offices.
” Hyde has been politically toxic since he became embroiled in the impeachment scandal .
“ The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released a trove of new evidence in its impeachment inquiry , including text messages between Hyde and Lev Parnas , an indicted former associate of Trump ’ s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani .
The communications appear to show that Hyde was working with Parnas to track Marie Yovanovitch , whom Giuliani was trying to oust as U.S. ambassador @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Republican congressional hopeful Robert Hyde is facing significant pushback from his own party after evidence turned over to Congress from Lev Parnas implicated the candidate in President Donald Trump's impeachment.
Earlier on Monday, the chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party urged Hyde to end his bid.
“I have asked Rob Hyde to end his bid for Congress. His campaign is a distraction for the Democrats to raise money and falsely label all Republicans with his antics. In my view he is not helping other Republican candidates or Donald Trump win,” J.R. Romano explained.
But Hyde isn't just facing problems in Connecticut, Capitol Hill Republicans are also shunning his candidacy.
"Congressional Republicans are distancing themselves from Robert Hyde, a controversial House candidate and GOP donor who has become the latest figure to get wrapped up in the Ukraine saga that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment," Politico reports. "The top three Republican leaders in the House — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming — all said they don’t know Hyde and don’t support him, according to their offices."
Hyde has been politically toxic since he became embroiled in the impeachment scandal.
"The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released a trove of new evidence in its impeachment inquiry, including text messages between Hyde and Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. The communications appear to show that Hyde was working with Parnas to track Marie Yovanovitch, whom Giuliani was trying to oust as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine," Politico noted.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Both political parties are furious McConnell wants to hide Senators from Americans during impeachmen

Both political parties are furious McConnell wants to hide Senators from Americans during impeachment

Republicans and Democrats are both furious with Senate Leader Mitch McConnell ( R-KY ) who wants to hide the impeachment proceedings from the American people .
Politico reported Wednesday that the Senate is working to restrict access to the trial because he wants to avoid access to the leaders by citizens .
During the confirmation hearing of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh , voters were able to meet their senators in the hallways .
Sen. John Kennedy ( R-LA ) said that the move sends the “ wrong message.
” “ It ’ s a huge mistake , ” Kennedy told Politico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women and grown men .
If they don ’ t want to make a comment , they know how to say ‘ no comment ’ … We aren ’ t children.
” Sen. Mike Braun ( R-IN ) agreed , saying that Americans should never be barred from having access to their elected leaders .
“ I don ’ t think you guys should ever be restricted , ” he said .
Braun also noted that he doesn ’ t have a problem talking to the press , but the McConnell restrictions are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some certainty to the individuals that maybe don ’ t want to interact.
” “ Finally , we ’ re being protected from the overbearing press , ” he said , deadpanned .
He also indicated that there would be a 15-minute delay from adjournment before questions could be asked .
Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt ( R-MO ) and Sen. John Cornyn ( R-TX ) both agreed that they didn ’ t want to allow access to voters or to the press because they don ’ t want to be “ @ @ @

Republicans and Democrats are both furious with Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who wants to hide the impeachment proceedings from the American people.
Politico reported Wednesday that the Senate is working to restrict access to the trial because he wants to avoid access to the leaders by citizens. During the confirmation hearing of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, voters were able to meet their senators in the hallways.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said that the move sends the “wrong message."
“It’s a huge mistake,” Kennedy told Politico. “U.S. senators are grown women and grown men. If they don’t want to make a comment, they know how to say ‘no comment’ ... We aren’t children.”
Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) agreed, saying that Americans should never be barred from having access to their elected leaders.
“I don’t think you guys should ever be restricted,” he said. Braun also noted that he doesn't have a problem talking to the press, but the McConnell restrictions are “kind of a way to give some certainty to the individuals that maybe don’t want to interact.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IN) mocked the move.
“Finally, we’re being protected from the overbearing press,” he said, deadpanned. He also indicated that there would be a 15-minute delay from adjournment before questions could be asked.
Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) both agreed that they didn't want to allow access to voters or to the press because they don't want to be "harassed."
Read the full report from Politico.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Kamala Harris: Senate Must halt confirmations of Trump’s judicial nominees until impeachment trial e

Kamala Harris: Senate Must halt confirmations of Trump’s judicial nominees until impeachment trial ends

U.S .
Senator Kamala Harris ( D-CA ) is calling for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to cease the confirmation @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump ’ s judicial nominees until his impeachment trial his concluded .
Should he @ @ @ @ @ office , his nominees would not go forward .
Sen. Harris called it “ wholly @ @ @ @ @ on any nominees .
“ Today , the United States Senate will receive articles of @ @ @ @ @ and begin to determine whether the president ’ s actions warrant his removal from office @ @ @ @ @ a statement on her government website .
“ The president is charged with high crimes @ @ @ @ @ Senate must take seriously its constitutional role in this process .
During the time when @ @ @ @ @ the Senate , it would be wholly inappropriate to advance the president ’ s nominees @ @ @ @ @ ”

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

"If you look at the sheer number of people charged in the Georgia case, you're talking about 18 Trump allies, including Trump himself," said anchor Abby Phillip. "They're accused of racketeering, at least one, and at least one related crime. There's a lot of conduct alleged here, including trying to tamper with voting machines, and actual voting information. What is your take on the actual information contained in this document?"
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
"So, a couple things," said Sununu. "I'm not a lawyer. I will say, this is incredibly similar to the federal indictment that Jack Smith is doing out of DOJ. Other than, as you brought up, now 18 people involved. That's a much bigger swath of individuals. Something that I think republicans need to take note of, this is a grand jury in a very conservative state. That said, this guy needs to be indicted. This isn't just the Department of Justice and the idea that it's all politicized. This is a grand jury in Georgia of all states."
All of this, said Sununu, underscores the fact that "this guy can't win in November."
"You might give him the nomination — I hope we don't — but this guy cannot win a state like New Hampshire, or Arizona, where these two states they absolutely have to have," said Sununu. "Last time I checked, you can't govern if you don't win. It's just gonna be another sob story for Donald Trump. And he's gonna crush the Republican ticket going down. I still am very hopeful the Republicans as a whole make a smart choice and find that one or two candidates to go against him by the time Iowa in New Hampshire hit."
Watch the video below or at the link.


rawstory--2020-01-15--New Trump revelations are a ‘fecal iceberg’ that will only lead to more damning info: Rick Wilson

On Wednesday ’ s edition of MSNBC ’ s “ Deadline : White House , ” former GOP strategist Rick Wilson laid out how the new revelations from the Lev Parnas documents affect President Donald Trump ’ s legal and political situation .
“ All of it was this corrupt , second-tier channel , as the letter proves , by Rudy [ Giuliani ] and by Parnas and by all these people in this pyramid of skells and weirdos and mooks , ” said Wilson .
“ And all of these people that were involved in this , they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
All the claims that the State Department had anything to do with this are just flatly wrong .
They were the ones trying to figure out where this outside influence is coming from.
” “ I think this is not the last thing we ’ re going to see , ” continued Wilson .
“ I always describe the Trump situation as a fecal iceberg .
There ’ s always more badness under the water .
You ’ re always going to find more and more and more of these kind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence that ’ s come out today , it points a lot of things directly .
One of the people listed in the Parnas notes is a guy named Brian Ballard .
He ’ s Trump ’ s favorite lobbyist … Brian Ballard ’ s employee Pam Bondi , who works for Ballard , who is a Ballard Partners employee , is now in the White House running the impeachment defense .
The Parnas things are like a Rosetta Stone to the entire affair.
” “ If I were these people , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” added Wilson grimly .
“ What ’ s going to happen ?
The only people who should be afraid are American diplomats that cross Donald Trump .
Bill Barr will never lift a finger to pursue justice if it gets in the way of Donald Trump ’ s political situation .
It ’ s a sick situation .
”

On Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," former GOP strategist Rick Wilson laid out how the new revelations from the Lev Parnas documents affect President Donald Trump's legal and political situation.
"All of it was this corrupt, second-tier channel, as the letter proves, by Rudy [Giuliani] and by Parnas and by all these people in this pyramid of skells and weirdos and mooks," said Wilson. "And all of these people that were involved in this, they're out of the State Department chain. All the claims that the State Department had anything to do with this are just flatly wrong. They were the ones trying to figure out where this outside influence is coming from."
"I think this is not the last thing we're going to see," continued Wilson. "I always describe the Trump situation as a fecal iceberg. There's always more badness under the water. You're always going to find more and more and more of these kind of things. And I think that this evidence that's come out today, it points a lot of things directly. One of the people listed in the Parnas notes is a guy named Brian Ballard. He's Trump's favorite lobbyist ... Brian Ballard's employee Pam Bondi, who works for Ballard, who is a Ballard Partners employee, is now in the White House running the impeachment defense. The Parnas things are like a Rosetta Stone to the entire affair."
"If I were these people, I would not have any fear though," added Wilson grimly. "What's going to happen? The only people who should be afraid are American diplomats that cross Donald Trump. Bill Barr will never lift a finger to pursue justice if it gets in the way of Donald Trump's political situation. It's a sick situation."
Watch below:


rawstory--2020-01-15--Nicolle Wallace thinks there may be 14 GOP senators who will vote for Bolton to testify

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace suggested that as many as 14 Republican senators would vote to allow former National Security Advisor @ @ @ @ @ President Donald Trump ’ s impeachment trial .
Wallace has known Bolton for almost 20 @ @ @ @ @ together in the George W. Bush administration .
“ And I think too , to @ @ @ @ @ support in the Senate , I remember the day the news broke that Bolton was @ @ @ @ @ to testify if subpoenaed , I suspected he knew where four votes might be hidden @ @ @ @ @ Four is the number of Republicans who would need to vote with Democrats to allow @ @ @ @ @ host said she believes the number has grown , saying , “ I think there @ @ @ @ @ people.
” “ He knows where the votes are and I think when he offered @ @ @ @ @ they were , ” Wallace added .

"They have surveillance footage from multiple locations referenced in this indictment," said anchor Alex Wagner. "The discovery burden will increase that, plus we have the possibility of additional pretrial motions that can't be stopped. One of those is called the severance motion. That is when one defendant says, I can't get a fair trial if I'm sitting next to that guy. That's a hard argument for someone like Walt Nauta to make, particularly given that he remains employed as Trump's body guy. But we don't know what the status of Carlos De Oliveira is right now. He also is not as implicated in the criminal charges here as Nauta and Trump are. He could see the pretrial publicity surrounding the former president is so massive that he and Nauta can't get a fair trial as ordinary people in the service of the former president."
"That seems a reasonable case to be made," said Wagner. Rubin agreed, saying, "I think their lawyers probably will make that case."
"When you talk about the evidence and discovery, there seems to be a lot of electronic records mentioned in this," said Wagner. "I know this is something that you have flagged. What stood out to you in this superseding indictment?"
"One of the things that stood out to me is really that there are more phones than we knew that were in Jack Smith's possession. One of the things we know is that they have Nauta's phones. How do we know that? Because his lawyer said so in open court last week that two of his — at least two of his phones were seized through a search warrant. What we now know is that they must have either De Oliveira or Trump Employee 4 ... they must have their phones as well. How do we know that? Because they have electronic communications that are solely between the two of them."
Watch the video below or at the link right here.


rawstory--2020-01-15--‘Uninterested in evidence’: Embattled Susan Collins blasted for dismissing threats to Ukraine Ambass

‘Uninterested in evidence’: Embattled Susan Collins blasted for dismissing threats to Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch

U.S .
Senator Susan Collins ( R-ME ) is once again under fire , this time for discounting and dismissing just-revealed threats to then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch .
The House of Representatives was just given intensely disturbing texts from indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas , which allegedly show him and a Trump donor now running for Congress .
Those texts are being described as threats to Yovanovitch .
Some are saying they appear to be threats to her security , illegal surveillance , and even possible discussion of a “ hit job ” against her .
Many believe the new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s Senate impeachment trial .
“ I wonder why the House did not put that into the record and it ’ s only now being revealed , ” she said , according to CNN ’ s Manu Raju , who described Collins ’ response as throwing “ cold water ” on the new evidence .
He adds that when she was told the new information was just handed to the House , she said : “ well doesn ’ t that suggest that the House did an incomplete job then ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying : Many are furious with the Maine Republican who is facing a challenging Senate re-election bid .

And the Monsanto trade was just one of 136 stock and other financial transactions — totaling between $3.05 million and $8.56 million — that Allen failed to properly report, according to an exclusive Raw Story analysis of federal financial disclosures.
"The omissions are so extensive that I'm just in suspense for what the possible explanation could be,” said Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director of ethics for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. “I haven't seen anything like this before with it going back this far."
ALSO READ: Revealed: Marjorie Taylor Greene's post-divorce finances — from Trump to Disney
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act requires key government officials, including members of Congress, to publicly report within 45 days most purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, commodity futures, securities and cryptocurrencies.
Passed by Congress in 2012, the STOCK Act is designed to stop insider trading, curb conflicts-of-interest and enhance transparency.
But many of the financial trades Allen reported earlier this month were at least three years past the STOCK Act’s reporting deadline. In response to a series of questions from Raw Story, Allen’s congressional office acknowledged in an emailed statement that the congressman experienced “reporting issues” and blamed them on a financial adviser who no longer works for the Georgia lawmaker.
“Congressman Allen’s investment decisions are handled by a financial adviser, who uses investment managers to implement trades at their own discretion, without consulting with or getting input from the Congressman,” said Carlton Norwood Jr., a spokesperson for Allen. “In May of this year, Congressman Allen became aware of some reporting issues and omissions that were caused by a compliance firm he had engaged. At that point, he hired counsel and a new compliance firm to start working with the House Ethics Committee to ensure all trades have been properly reported.”
Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA). Source: U.S. House of Representatives
Members of Congress are required to file what are known as “periodic transaction reports,” or PTRs, each time they make certain financial transactions worth more than $1,000.
The periodic transaction reports are due within 45 days of a trade being executed, whether by a member of Congress personally, or a financial adviser working on the member’s behalf. Lawmakers are only required by law to disclose the value of the trades in broad ranges.
“The [Aug. 10] PTR was filed as part of that process in consultation with House Ethics Committee counsel – who understands that it was the compliance firm, and not Congressman Allen, who was responsible for these errors and that additional action and amendments to his financial disclosure statements may be necessary,” Norwood said in a statement.
However, Payne says it’s ultimately up to the legislator to ensure that such reports are filed in a timely manner.
“It's always been clear that the member has the ultimate responsibility of filing the PTRs, and it cannot be simply blamed on any outside adviser,” Payne said.
The standard fine for violating the STOCK Act is $200. But the House Committee on Ethics and Senate Select Committee on Ethics have historically waived the fees for many violators.
"It's a black hole when it goes to the Ethics Committee, and we don't know if they will assess penalties, or they just don't do anything about it.” Payne said.
Tom Rust, staff director and chief counsel for the House Committee on Ethics, which is tasked with investigating alleged STOCK Act violations, said “no comment” when reached by Raw Story.
Asked by Raw Story whether Allen has paid a fine, Norwood did not respond.
ALSO READ: Sold! Wealthy N.Y. congressman dumps up to $37 million in stocks and bonds amid pressure to divest
Demian Brady, vice president of research for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, said there should be more transparency from the congressional ethics committees “to see how they're enforcing the laws that they're responsible for administering.”
“It shouldn’t be so difficult to figure out whether a member’s getting fined or not for late compliance with these basic, it seems to me, fairly straightforward and simple reporting requirements,” Brady said.
Allen is appointed to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its Subcommittees on Communications and Technology; Innovation, Data, and Commerce; and Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Materials. He is also appointed to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and its Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions.
Allen’s stock transactions span dozens of companies including energy companies like Dominion Energy, General Electric, ExxonMobil, NextEra Energy and Phillips 66, technology companies such as Microsoft and Verizon and mining company Freeport-McMo-Ran.
This is at least the third separate time Allen has violated the STOCK Act.
Raw Story reported in June that Allen was late in disclosing his spouse’s March 27 sale — valued between $100,001 to $250,000 — of stock in SouthState Corporation, a financial services company.
In 2021, Insider reported that Allen has several financial filing flubs related to his stock trade activity from 2019 and 2020.
Epidemic of violations
Dozens of members of Congress have failed to comply with the STOCK Act. During the 117th Congress from 2021 to 2022, at least 78 members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — were found to have violated the STOCK Act's disclosure provisions, according to a tally maintained by Insider.
Raw Story has this year identified 19 members of the 118th Congress who have broken the federal conflicts of interest law.
In recent weeks, repeat violators like Allen have broken the federal disclosure law again — Rep. Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) violated the STOCK Act for the third time in 14 months, Rep. Kathy Manning (D-N.C.) became a two-time offender and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) was several months late disclosing a family stock sale — again.
The ongoing violations come at a time when a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced several similar bills aimed at banning congressional stock trading.
"We see that the STOCK Act is not complied with the way it's intended to be, and if there are no consequences for the late filings, you continue to see that there probably will be less compliance with the law,” Payne said.
Campaign Legal Center supports legislation that would require members of Congress to divest of any stocks in individual companies, he said.
The most recent legislation introduced is the Ban Stock Trading for Government Officials Act, which would prohibit members of Congress, the president, the vice president, senior executive branch officials, their spouses and children from trading stocks and would require greater transparency with financial disclosures, The Hill reported.
Another two-party bill, the Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act was introduced in May and is co-sponsored in part by political rivals in Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
Other materially similar bills include the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act, the TRUST in Congress Act and the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act. In the decade since the STOCK Act’s passage, the push for a total ban on lawmakers trading stocks while in office gained but then lost momentum last year when the Democratic-led House, then led by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, decided not to conduct a hearing on any of the stock-ban bills and never brought it to the House floor for a vote.
News organizations including the New York Times, Insider, NPR and Sludge have documented rampant financial conflicts of interests among dozens of members of Congress, such as those who bought and sold defense contractor stock while occupying positions on congressional armed services committees or otherwise voting on measures to send such companies billions of federal dollars. The executive and judicial branches are riddled with similar financial conflict issues, too, as the Wall Street Journal hasreported.
The Wall Street Journal won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into financial conflicts among officials who work in federal agencies while Insider won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sunshine Award for its reporting on congressional financial conflicts.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Scientists find powerhouses that fight tumors from within

Lurking deep inside some tumors are “ factories ” full of immune cells that help the body fight a rearguard action against cancer and are key to helping some patients recover , new research shows .
In recent years doctors have turned to a new treatment for cancer , immunotherapy , which works by leveraging the body ’ s own immune system to fight tumors .
The technique has largely focused on white blood cells called T-cells , which are “ trained ” to recognize and attack cancer cells .
But the innovative treatment only works well for around 20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been trying to understand why some people respond better than others .
Three papers published on Thursday in the journal Nature point the way , identifying a key formation inside some tumors : tertiary lymphoid structures ( TLS ) .
These structures function like “ factories or schools ” for immune cells that help the body fight cancer , said Wolf Fridman , Professor Emeritus of Immunology of Universite de Paris at the Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers , who helped lead one of the studies .
“ The cells need to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tertiary lymphoid structures , ” where they effectively learn to recognise and attack cancer cells , Fridman told AFP .
Key to the findings is that T-cells are far from the only immune cells capable of taking the fight to cancer , with researchers finding the TLS were full of B-cells , a kind of immune cell that produces antibodies .
“ We have been T-cell addicts for 15 years in cancer , ” Fridman said with a laugh .
“ We analyzed these sarcomas to see what groups they had and what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeared.
” Beth Helmink , a fellow in surgical oncology at the University of Texas ’ s MD Anderson Cancer Center who worked on a second study , said the research changed perceptions of the role of B-cells in immunotherapy .
“ Through these studies , we find that B-cells are not just innocent bystanders , but are themselves contributing in a meaningful way to the anti-tumor immune response , ” she said in a statement issued by the Center .
The discovery is something of a surprise , as an abundance of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seen as a marker for poor prognosis .
But the studies found that patients with high levels of B-cells inside TLS in their tumors were more likely to respond well to immunotherapy .
“ These three studies provide exciting data demonstrating that… B cells which make antibodies significantly influence the responsiveness of patients with certain cancers to immunotherapy , ” said Lawrence Young , director of the University of Warwick ’ s Cancer Research Center , who was not involved in the studies .
The work “ could be used to improve the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” , he said .
There are still many unanswered questions .
Scientists are not yet sure why the structures form in some tumors and not others .
And while it now seems clear that B-cells inside the structures play a key role in the success of immunotherapy , scientists aren ’ t sure precisely how .
It may be that the B-cells are on the frontlines , producing antibodies that attack cancer cells efficiently .
Or they may be bolstering T-cells , or perhaps doing both .
And not all TLS are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ categories , but only one type was “ mature ” enough to churn out cancer-fighting immune cells .
Going forward , the research opens several promising avenues , the authors said .
Initially , it could help doctors screen patients to see which are most likely to respond well to immunotherapy .
And eventually , the research could mean more patients could be successfully treated with the technique , said Goran Jonsson , a professor of oncology and pathology at Lund University who worked on a third study .
“ If we come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ TLS formation , we could combine this with current immunotherapy regimens , ” he told AFP .
“ Most likely this would lead to more patients responding to immunotherapy .
”

Lurking deep inside some tumors are "factories" full of immune cells that help the body fight a rearguard action against cancer and are key to helping some patients recover, new research shows. In recent years doctors have turned to a new treatment for cancer, immunotherapy, which works by leveraging the body's own immune system to fight tumors.
The technique has largely focused on white blood cells called T-cells, which are "trained" to recognize and attack cancer cells.
But the innovative treatment only works well for around 20 percent of patients, and researchers have been trying to understand why some people respond better than others.
Three papers published on Thursday in the journal Nature point the way, identifying a key formation inside some tumors: tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS).
These structures function like "factories or schools" for immune cells that help the body fight cancer, said Wolf Fridman, Professor Emeritus of Immunology of Universite de Paris at the Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, who helped lead one of the studies.
"The cells need to be educated in schools, which are the tertiary lymphoid structures," where they effectively learn to recognise and attack cancer cells, Fridman told AFP.
- No longer 'innocent bystanders' -
Key to the findings is that T-cells are far from the only immune cells capable of taking the fight to cancer, with researchers finding the TLS were full of B-cells, a kind of immune cell that produces antibodies.
"We have been T-cell addicts for 15 years in cancer," Fridman said with a laugh.
"We analyzed these sarcomas to see what groups they had and what's striking is that these B-cells appeared."
Beth Helmink, a fellow in surgical oncology at the University of Texas's MD Anderson Cancer Center who worked on a second study, said the research changed perceptions of the role of B-cells in immunotherapy.
"Through these studies, we find that B-cells are not just innocent bystanders, but are themselves contributing in a meaningful way to the anti-tumor immune response," she said in a statement issued by the Center.
The discovery is something of a surprise, as an abundance of B-cells in cancer patients has sometimes been seen as a marker for poor prognosis.
But the studies found that patients with high levels of B-cells inside TLS in their tumors were more likely to respond well to immunotherapy.
"These three studies provide exciting data demonstrating that... B cells which make antibodies significantly influence the responsiveness of patients with certain cancers to immunotherapy," said Lawrence Young, director of the University of Warwick's Cancer Research Center, who was not involved in the studies.
The work "could be used to improve the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy for all patients", he said.
- Improving cancer treatment -
There are still many unanswered questions.
Scientists are not yet sure why the structures form in some tumors and not others.
And while it now seems clear that B-cells inside the structures play a key role in the success of immunotherapy, scientists aren't sure precisely how.
It may be that the B-cells are on the frontlines, producing antibodies that attack cancer cells efficiently.
Or they may be bolstering T-cells, or perhaps doing both.
And not all TLS are created equal: the researchers found three categories, but only one type was "mature" enough to churn out cancer-fighting immune cells.
Going forward, the research opens several promising avenues, the authors said.
Initially, it could help doctors screen patients to see which are most likely to respond well to immunotherapy.
And eventually, the research could mean more patients could be successfully treated with the technique, said Goran Jonsson, a professor of oncology and pathology at Lund University who worked on a third study.
"If we come up with a treatment that could enhance TLS formation, we could combine this with current immunotherapy regimens," he told AFP.
"Most likely this would lead to more patients responding to immunotherapy."


rawstory--2020-01-15--BUSTED: Jeffrey Epstein accused by Virgin Islands of trafficking girls as young as 11 — as recently

BUSTED: Jeffrey Epstein accused by Virgin Islands of trafficking girls as young as 11 — as recently as 2018

The Virgin Islands are alleging that Jeffrey Epstein continued to traffic underage girls during the administration of President Donald Trump .
“ A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the top law enforcement officer in the U.S. Virgin Islands alleges that multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked hundreds of young women and girls on his private island as recently as 2018 by using a web of shell companies to carry out and conceal his crimes , ” the Miami Herald reported Wednesday .
“ The allegations , if validated , broaden the scope of Epstein ’ s sexual trafficking , and sheds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ financier used to hide his illicit activities , ” the newspaper reported .
“ Epstein , who was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell last year , allegedly brought girls as young as 11 to his private island , known as Little St. James , and maintained a database to track their availability and movements , the lawsuit said.
” Epstein could have been imprisoned for life in 2017 .
“ Most of the companies were created in 2011 and 2012 , soon after Epstein registered as a sex offender in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to prostitution charges in Palm Beach County , the lawsuit said .
That 2007 plea came about after Epstein received a controversial non-prosecution agreement from then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta .
The deal shelved a federal sex trafficking indictment that could have put Epstein away for life , ” the newspaper reported .
Acosta went on to serve as Labor Secretary in the Trump administration .
Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York City in August .

The Virgin Islands are alleging that Jeffrey Epstein continued to traffic underage girls during the administration of President Donald Trump.
"A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the top law enforcement officer in the U.S. Virgin Islands alleges that multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked hundreds of young women and girls on his private island as recently as 2018 by using a web of shell companies to carry out and conceal his crimes," the Miami Heraldreported Wednesday.
"The allegations, if validated, broaden the scope of Epstein’s sexual trafficking, and sheds new light on the tactics the former financier used to hide his illicit activities," the newspaper reported. "Epstein, who was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell last year, allegedly brought girls as young as 11 to his private island, known as Little St. James, and maintained a database to track their availability and movements, the lawsuit said."
Epstein could have been imprisoned for life in 2017.
"Most of the companies were created in 2011 and 2012, soon after Epstein registered as a sex offender in the Virgin Islands following his 2007 guilty plea to prostitution charges in Palm Beach County, the lawsuit said. That 2007 plea came about after Epstein received a controversial non-prosecution agreement from then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta. The deal shelved a federal sex trafficking indictment that could have put Epstein away for life," the newspaper reported.
Acosta went on to serve as Labor Secretary in the Trump administration. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York City in August.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Iran crown prince predicts clerical regime will collapse within months

The heir of Iran ’ s deposed monarchy predicted Wednesday that the clerical regime will collapse within months and urged Western powers not to negotiate with it .
Reza Pahlavi said that major protests which erupted in November and again this month , after the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet , reminded him of the uprising that ousted his father in early 1979 .
“ It ’ s just a matter of time for it to reach its final climax .
I think we ’ re in that mode , ” the former crown prince told a news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ near in exile .
“ This is weeks or months preceding the ultimate collapse , not dissimilar to the last three months in 1978 before the revolution , ” he said .
While exiled activists have routinely predicted the fall of the regime , Pahlavi said that Iranians could “ smell the opportunity for the first time in 40 years this time.
” The 59-year-old heir to the Peacock Throne , who has not been to Iran since he was a teenager , cited as evidence what he called an easing of fear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-described reformists from the Islamic regime .
In an address to the Hudson Institute , Pahlavi largely supported President Donald Trump ’ s “ maximum pressure ” campaign that has sought to isolate the Iranian regime through severe sanctions , saying that past negotiations have failed .
“ It has long been time to recognize that this is not a normal regime and that it will not change its behavior , ” Pahlavi said .
“ My compatriots understand that this regime can not be reformed and must be removed.
” Iranians “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just moral support .
They expect not to be thrown under the bus in the name of diplomacy and negotiation.
” Trump previously held out hope of negotiations but has recently said he was unconcerned with talks and ordered the killing of a top Iranian general , Qasem Soleimani .
Pahlavi , whose Western-oriented father was closely allied with the United States , has played down prospects for restoration of the monarchy .
He says instead that he wants to support a broad coalition of Iranians who will replace the regime with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ represent all Iranians , Pahlavi said : “ It ’ s not about me , it ’ s about the people of Iran.
” “ You may not like the messenger , but is there something wrong with the message ?
”

The heir of Iran's deposed monarchy predicted Wednesday that the clerical regime will collapse within months and urged Western powers not to negotiate with it.
Reza Pahlavi said that major protests which erupted in November and again this month, after the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet, reminded him of the uprising that ousted his father in early 1979.
"It's just a matter of time for it to reach its final climax. I think we're in that mode," the former crown prince told a news conference in Washington, which he lives near in exile.
"This is weeks or months preceding the ultimate collapse, not dissimilar to the last three months in 1978 before the revolution," he said.
While exiled activists have routinely predicted the fall of the regime, Pahlavi said that Iranians could "smell the opportunity for the first time in 40 years this time."
The 59-year-old heir to the Peacock Throne, who has not been to Iran since he was a teenager, cited as evidence what he called an easing of fear among protesters and the growing distancing of self-described reformists from the Islamic regime.
In an address to the Hudson Institute, Pahlavi largely supported President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign that has sought to isolate the Iranian regime through severe sanctions, saying that past negotiations have failed.
"It has long been time to recognize that this is not a normal regime and that it will not change its behavior," Pahlavi said.
"My compatriots understand that this regime cannot be reformed and must be removed."
Iranians "expect the world to show more than just moral support. They expect not to be thrown under the bus in the name of diplomacy and negotiation."
Trump previously held out hope of negotiations but has recently said he was unconcerned with talks and ordered the killing of a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani.
Pahlavi, whose Western-oriented father was closely allied with the United States, has played down prospects for restoration of the monarchy.
He says instead that he wants to support a broad coalition of Iranians who will replace the regime with a secular democracy.
Asked whether he can represent all Iranians, Pahlavi said: "It's not about me, it's about the people of Iran."
"You may not like the messenger, but is there something wrong with the message?"
© 2020 AFP


rawstory--2020-01-15--UN warns more extreme weather ahead after hottest decade on record

The past decade has been the hottest on record , the UN said Wednesday , warning that the higher temperatures were expected to fuel numerous extreme weather events in 2020 and beyond .
The World Meteorological Organization , which based its findings on analysis of leading international datasets , said increases in global temperatures had already had dire consequences , pointing to “ retreating ice , record sea levels , increasing ocean heat and acidification , and extreme weather ” .
WMO said its research also confirmed data released by the European Union ’ s climate monitor last week showing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on record , after 2016 .
“ The year 2020 has started out where 2019 left off — with high-impact weather and climate-related events , ” WMO chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement , pointing in particular to the devastating bushfires that have been raging in Australia for months .
The bushfires , unprecedented in their duration and intensity , have claimed 28 lives and highlighted the type of disasters that scientists say the world will increasingly face due to global warming .
The fires have already destroyed more than 2,000 homes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ square kilometres ) of land — an area larger than South Korea or Portugal .
“ Unfortunately , we expect to see much extreme weather throughout 2020 and the coming decades , fuelled by record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere , ” Taalas said .
The UN agency said that average global temperatures during both the past five-year ( 2015-2019 ) and 10-year ( 2010-2019 ) periods were the highest ever recorded .
“ Since the 1980s each decade has been warmer than the previous one , ” the UN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ this trend is expected to continue ” .
The United Nations said last year that man-made greenhouse gas emissions needed to tumble 7.6 percent each year to 2030 in order to limit temperature rises to 1.5 Celsius — the more ambitious cap nations signed up to in the landmark Paris climate deal .
Current pledges to cut emissions put Earth on a path of several degrees warming by the end of the century .
European Geosciences Union/AFP/File / Mario HOPPMANN A handout photo provided by the European Geosciences Union in 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bear testing the strength of thin sea ice in the Arctic ; US data showed that polar sea ice coverage continued its downward trend in 2019 Taalas said that since modern records began in 1850 , the average global temperature had risen by around 1.1 degrees Celsius , and warned of significant warming in the future .
“ On the current path of carbon dioxide emissions , we are heading towards a temperature increase of three to five degrees Celsius by the end of the century , ” he warned .
Gavin Schmidt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Institute for Space Studies which provided one of the datasets , added that the trend line was unmistakable and could not be attributed to normal climate variability — a position taken by US President Donald Trump .
Both the Arctic and Antarctic oceans recorded their second-smallest average annual sea-ice coverage during the 1979–2019 period of record , the agency said .
WMO also highlighted a new study published this week in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences with data showing that ocean heat content was at a record high in 2019 .
The past five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in terms of ocean heat content , that study showed .
“ It is no surprise that 2019 was the second hottest year on record — nature has been persistently reminding us that we have to pick up the pace , ” said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal , leader of WWF ’ s global climate and energy practice , calling for dramatic measures to halt the warming trend .
“ This is not so much a record as a broken record , ” added Chris Rapley , a professor of climate science at University College @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grim regularity .
Yet the pace and scale of action to address climate change remains muted and far from the need .
”

In response to Trump’s rants, according to Vice News, Robertson had posted to Facebook multiple screeds about the “stolen” 2020 election. Believing Trump’s lie that President Biden was an illegitimate pretender to the White House, he posted:
“IN MY DREAM I SEE JOE BIDEN'S BODY IN A DARK CORNER OF A DC PARKING GARAGE WITH HIS HEAD SEVERED AND LYING IN A HUGE PUDDLE OF BLOOD. HOORAH!!!”
When news came that President Biden was coming to Utah this week, Robertson posted:
“PERHAPS UTAH WILL BECOME FAMOUS THIS WEEK AS THE PLACE A SNIPER TOOK OUT BIDEN THE MARXIST.”
Just a few days earlier, Trump had publicly condemned “the Marxists” who he said were persecuting him.
In openly encouraging rage and violence, Trump is following a well-worn path blazed by many terrorist leaders before him.
Osama bin Laden, for example, never killed anybody. Several narratives suggest he didn’t even know the details of 9/11 until the twin towers had fallen.
Bin Laden also apparently didn’t fund the attack on 9/11 (according to the 9/11 Commission), just as Trump didn’t fund Robertson or the thousands of terrorists who attempted to murder Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi on January 6th.
As ABC News reporter John Miller, who interviewed bin Laden and covered 9/11 extensively, wrote:
“He didn't pay for the World Trade Center bombing or the plot to kill Clinton, but [he thought] they were good ideas.”
Bin Laden inspired the attack with his rhetoric, just as Trump has inspired numerous terrorist assaults here in America with his rhetoric.
ABC News did a deep dive into presidential-inspired terrorism in America. While George W. Bush and Barack Obama said a lot of things in their combined 16 years in office, some fairly controversial, the network reports:
“ABC News could not find a single criminal case filed in federal or state court where an act of violence or threat was made in the name of President Barack Obama or President George W. Bush.”
That was very much not the case with Trump, however:
“But a nationwide review conducted by ABC News has identified at least 54 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence, or allegations of assault.”
From August 15, 2015 to April 30, 2020 (the article was published in May, 2020, long before the January 6th terror attack on the Capitol), ABC News identified over fifty separate cases where acts or attempted acts of terror were carried out against people Trump had targeted.
They ranged from beatings to murders to attempted mass killings:
“The 54 cases identified by ABC News are remarkable in that a link to the president is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt.
“These links are not speculative – they are documented in official records. And in the majority of cases identified by ABC News, it was perpetrators themselves who invoked the president in connection with their case, not anyone else.”
In the three-plus years since, there have, no doubt, been hundreds more. And now Trump is turning up the volume, stoking the often-violent fury of the people unfortunate enough to believe his lies.
Consider the top headline at Raw Story yesterday:
“‘Just the beginning’: Ex-FBI official warns more assassins could be inspired by Trump”
No former president in American history has encouraged such violence or tried to inspire stochastic terrorism.
It has simply never happened here before.
Outside of the Confederacy, no American politician has worked so hard to tear America apart, to pit citizens against each other, to destroy our republic from within. Neither has any former president made alliance with and taken hundreds of millions of dollars from hostile foreign agents like Putin’s oligarchs and Saudi Arabia’s MBS.
No president has ever invited a mob to attack the US Capitol and terrorize lawmakers to change the outcome of an election. This terrorist act led to the death of nine people, including four police officers, and Donald Trump has not only not apologized, but he has praised the terrorists he summoned and promised to pardon them.
He plays a song he sings with them at every one of his rallies. He speaks along with the prisoners, people accused of violence that could extend as far as murder. In solidarity with “their cause.”
He has never once condemned any of the murders, attempted murders and bombings, or other acts of violence that have been committed in his name over the past seven years. Instead, we hear that there are “very fine people on both sides.”
Frank Figliuzzi, former Assistant Director for Counterintelligence at the FBI, whose work involved terrorism and understands it well, told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner last night:
“If you think you've seen this before, it's because you have. It is a common theme, this concept that somebody is controlling the globe, controlling elections, and politics. And it's all bad. They're vile, they're subhuman. And it's also something called stochastic terrorism, which is the concept that some leader figures are putting out people as less than human, dehumanizing them, they're evil, and therefore it becomes easier for people to respond to that ideology and act out violently.
He talked about how this would actually be the second wave of Trump terrorism in America, were it to happen again.
“We certainly saw it in large numbers of people, a thousand arrested already, on January 6th, we saw people willing to die, including Ashli Babbitt, who consumed these Trump conspiracy theories, wrapped up in a Trump campaign flag as she's breaching security at the Capitol. We saw it in Cincinnati where a man breached security, or tried to, at the FBI's Cincinnati field office. Ended up dying in a cornfield after hours of standoff.”
Figliuzzi seemed struck by the solemnity of a former president encouraging acts of terrorism, and where it may go:
“I’m afraid this is not in any way the end of this, but rather just the beginning, as we continue to see Trump and his cohorts making vile accusations against people that are now prosecuting Trump, whether they are prosecutors or judges. So there is more of this coming. And law enforcement's challenge, of course, is to get out in front of this before the really bad thing happens."
Trump posting a picture of himself threatening New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg with a baseball bat isn’t cute or funny: it’s a call for brutality or an assassination. It’s an incitement to terrorism.
Now, facing the possibility of time in prison for his crimes, Trump is encouraging the wannabe and weekend terrorists among his base to murder witnesses, prosecutors, and the judges overseeing his case. And to influence jurors so at least one person may lie when questioned by the judge and claim that he is not a fervent Trump follower but then vote to hang the jury.
That would teach them to challenge him. They should have known better, like all those women, he would tell you. The criminal justice system shouldn’t have tried to come after him, he proclaims. Soon there will be carnage.
Outside of the occasional mob boss prosecution, only cases of terrorism have provoked state or federal officials to engage in the extensive security precautions now needed because of Trump’s incitements.
How can our newspapers and other media not see this? Anybody who has been in or near a country in a civil war understands the role Trump is playing.
Trump has openly said he wants to release information which the government says could be used to target people who have investigated him, testified against him, and might serve on the jury that could condemn him.
He is demanding the right to release it all, in defiance of every legal norm known, to devastate the case against him by polluting the jury pool through winning the case in the media before it even gets to court. If he can do that, the court action will seem petty.
Perception is everything, and he knows it. Every dictator in history knows it: that’s how they became dictators.
This is a man with no scruples and no limits. Anything you can imagine, he can probably exceed. Consider the headline at Mediaite yesterday:
“‘My Blood Ran Cold’: Ex-Trump Official Horrified By ‘Criminal Plot’ to Have Military ‘Turn Their Guns on Civilians to Facilitate a Losing Candidate’”
He has repeatedly lied to his followers that his First Amendment free speech rights are being abused, as a setup to cause Americans to lose confidence in our form of government.
In fact, the protective order that will be the focus of this Friday’s meeting in Judge Chutkan’s courtroom is designed to make sure the jury sees the evidence against Trump before he can publicize it to pollute the jury pool and intimidate witnesses who may testify against him.
Such protective orders are routine, but Trump wants to be tried in the court of public opinion, which he knows how to manipulate, rather than in a court of law, where he knows he will probably lose. He believes if he can get in the White House he can pardon himself, a classic dictator’s move. Terrorists like this kind of thing, too.
The mainstream American media has always been a few steps behind Trump in his march toward an attempted fascist takeover of America.
It took them years to use the simple word “lies” to describe his lies. They were reluctant to use the word “terrorism” in connection with January 6th (although The New York Times published an op-ed concluding that it was, in fact, a terrorist attack).
Now, even in the face of naked attacks on the rule of law, our court system, the FBI, and President Biden and VP Harris — they are reluctant to bluntly identify what are clearly incitements of a terrorist reaction to Trump’s prosecutions like we saw yesterday in Idaho.
Had similar characterizations of our police, courts, and intelligence agencies come from the president of Iran, for example, every media outlet in America would be identifying it as an explicit call to either tear the country apart or justify and activate terrorist violence.
Rachel Maddow recently noted that history won’t be asking how it was possible that a former president of the United States could be prosecuted for his crimes; instead, history will ask how such a criminal could have ever become president in the first place.
The answer, as we all know, was laid out by Robert Mueller’s investigation (the unredacted version of which Merrick Garland is still keeping confidential, even though it was written specifically to be released publicly).
Vladimir Putin made sure Paul Manafort was installed as Trump’s campaign manager after Viktor Yanukovych, the Putin puppet Manafort had installed in Ukraine, was thrown out.
Manafort, who didn’t even ask for a paycheck for running Trump’s campaign but did all the work for free, then fed confidential internal polling data to Russian intelligence showing where “persuasion” could help Trump or hurt Clinton.
That persuasion came to America by way of 29 million social media posts, viewed or liked 126 million times, from Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency — the Kremlin — specifically targeting American voters Manafort had identified in a half-dozen or so states.
In Pennsylvania, Trump won by 44,292 votes. In Wisconsin it was 22,748 votes, and in Michigan a mere 10,704 votes. Had Prigozhin not been successful in targeting those 77,744 voters for Putin and Trump, Hillary Clinton would — by any reasonable estimate — have become president in 2016.
Putin’s terror campaign is now targeting Ukraine, the country Trump withheld weapons from and tried to blackmail into helping him steal the 2020 election.
Putin’s man Trump’s terror campaign is now targeting us, at least those of us who are not straight white Trump supporters, as he has done virtually every day since he came down the escalator in Trump Tower and began his hateful rant about “Mexican rapists and murderers.”
How long will our court and criminal justice system tolerate this ongoing assault, this open campaign to promote stochastic terror?
How long will our media recoil from calling him a terrorist as more and more Americans are terrorized, beaten, and murdered by people invoking his name the way Mohamed Atta invoked bin Laden’s?
How long will the GOP continue to tolerate a man who encourages terrorism — even against members of his own party — among their ranks?
It’s possible that we “ain’t seen nothing yet” and Trump will activate far more widespread terror activity and violence before he goes down.
It could be a disaster like none of us have ever lived through, but that I have personally seen in several countries that descended into war.
I helped develop a refugee center in Uganda in the middle of the war with Idi Amin. And I was in South Sudan, on the border with Darfur, as the villages were being burned by the Janjaweed just 15 miles from me. And a few other uncomfortable places in the years I did international relief work.
When people turn against each other in the same country, from what I’ve seen, it is the most brutal kind of warfare.
It’s also possible that this fever will soon break, and America will begin to return to some semblance of normalcy as a whole new set of crises provoked by climate change beset our land and redirect our attention.
Or that Trump may simply self-destruct.
As they say in the news business, stay tuned.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Virginia capitol under State of Emergency — as white supremacists threaten violence ahead of pro-gun

Virginia capitol under State of Emergency — as white supremacists threaten violence ahead of pro-gun rally

Before a pro-gun rally planned for the state ’ s Capitol Square this coming Monday , Virginia Governor Ralph Northam @ @ @ @ @ state of emergency after law enforcement intelligence identified “ credible threats ” emanating from white @ @ @ @ @ NBC affiliate WCYB5 reports .
“ Law enforcement intelligence analysts have identified credible threats of @ @ @ @ @ along with white nationalist rhetoric and plans by out-of-state militia groups to attend , ” @ @ @ @ @ .
According to the declaration , any sort of weapon will be banned from the @ @ @ @ @ will be in effect from Friday , January 17 at 5 p.m. until Tuesday , @ @ @ @ @ You can read the full declaration of the state of emergency here .
Watch WCYB5 @ @ @ @ @ story below :

"I just want to go back to Giuliani for a second, since you know these characters all so well," said anchor Joy Reid. "I want to read you what The New York Times — there was an opinion piece by one of his biographers, Andrew Kirtzman and David Holly what they wrote about Rudy has become. They wrote this. 'Faced with the political irrelevance and collapsing client base that would accompany Mr. Trump's defeat, in 2020, he seemingly made a Faustian bargain, working to undermine democracy in order to save his career.' I feel like it was a few years before that. What do you make of the fact that the RICO guy is now the RICO defendant?"
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
"Well, it's Shakespearean in its dimensions, because Rudy was an evangelist about the rule of law in a very draconian way," said O'Brien. "And he used RICO, I think, to great effect, as we all know to go after the mob. The argument being that you could never touch the people at the head of the mob families, because they were very good at insulating their own actions from their minions who went out there, soldiers out on the street, who did the crimes. Rudy said, it was very important to attach what lower-level people did to the people orchestrating the schemes. Shades of Donald Trump much later. Everybody who has been pulled up in the January 6th investigation has complained that they came there because Trump asked them to come here. They thought they were doing what they had been told to do, and yet Trump wasn't being held accountable."
"The argument against RICO being used by Fani Willis to go after Trump is then that it's overreach," continued O'Brien. "That it should only go after organized crime. But the statute is meant to go against organized criminal conspiracies, not necessarily just conspiracies that Italian mobsters were targeted for. And in that context, one of Giuliani's biggest cases in addition to the commission case targeting the mobsters was Wall Street. He brought down Drexel Burnham. He targeted Michael Milken, he cited the person in the financial web involving insider trading and financial fraud. He himself recognized that RICO wasn't a statute that should only be used against people we traditionally call organized criminals. Fani Willis, as you noted in your opening, has also adapted it to target other people, including drug dealers. And so, I think that the idea that this thing that he created has now come around and snapped him up is both ironic but overdue because he sold himself out and he sold himself out to Trump."
"It's a reminder how easily Trump corrupts people in his orbit, but he can only corrupt them if they're corruptible," O'Brien added. "And Rudy, for all of his finger-wagging over the years at people of color for being street criminals, mobsters and many others for not following the rule of law, has now shown he's just as base and just as craven as any number of the people he once prosecuted."
Watch the video below or at the link here.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Trump supporter implicated in surveillance effort against Yovanovitch was a ‘known stalker with ment

Trump supporter implicated in surveillance effort against Yovanovitch was a ‘known stalker with mental health issues’: report

In a new report for The Intercept , journalist Lee Fang says that one of the key players in new revelations turned over to investigators by an associate of Rudy Giuliani “ was a known stalker with mental health issues.
” WhatsApp messages provided by Lev Parnas show communications with Trump donor and aspiring GOP lawmaker Robert F. Hyde appear to show an effort to surveil former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch .
In the messages , Hyde claims to have details regarding Yovanovitch ’ s movements and location in Kyiv and says he has connections to local security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ The startling messages show the extent to which the Giuliani associates were willing to at least entertain extreme tactics from a campaign donor who has courted controversy and even unsettled others , including fellow supporters of the president , ” Fang writes .
According to Fang , police records show that Hyde “ violated a restraining order issued by a Washington , DC superior court judge at the request of a Republican consultant who says that Hyde stalked her and intimidated her family over the last year.
” One of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Connecticut police “ confiscated Hyde ’ s firearms in connection to his violation of the restraining order , ” adding that Hyde was “ reported to authorities for ‘ unsettling behavior ’ and trespassing at a church in Connecticut , according to a separate police report last summer.
” Speaking to The Intercept , acquaintances of Hyde say he has a “ history of erratic behavior.
” “ Hyde publicized that he was placed in a psychiatric facility in Florida last May , following an incident at the Trump National Doral Miami resort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report written by the Doral Police Department at the time notes that Hyde expressed fear for his life and told officers that he ‘ was scared due to several painting workers and landscape working trying to do harm to him because they weren ’ t working . '
” Read Fang ’ s full report over at The Intercept .

Medical experts pushed back against Texas lawmakers’ assertions that puberty blockers and hormone therapies are experimental and put young transgender patients at risk as they testified Tuesday in a hearing that seeks to block a new law banning such medical treatment for kids.
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a doctor who treats adolescents and has been providing gender-affirming care for 17 years, said the body of medical research demonstrates these treatments have a high success rate in improving mental health outcomes of trans youth. But in her clinical work, the evidence is more obvious.
“Recently, I had one of my patients tell me, ‘If you had not allowed me, and helped shepherd me through these interventions, I don’t think I would be here,’” said Olson-Kennedy, the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
She added that hundreds of her patients have expressed the same sentiment in her nearly two decades treating roughly 1,100 young patients.
Texas families and doctors are suing the state to block Senate Bill 14 from going into effect Sept. 1. That new law would ban transgender youth from taking puberty blockers, receiving hormone therapies and having surgery, the latter of which is rarely performed on minors. Such medical interventions are used to treat gender dysphoria, a medical term for the distress someone experiences when their gender identity doesn’t match their body. The plaintiffs assert that the new law violates their parental rights and interferes with their ability to practice medicine.
Legal groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Lambda Legal and the Transgender Law Center requested that Travis County District Court Judge Maria Cantú Hexsel issue an injunction against the law.
In her opening statement of the two-day hearing, Assistant Attorney General Heather Dyer rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that SB 14 discriminates based on sex because, she said, people with gender dysphoria are not a protected class.
A central argument of lawmakers supporting SB 14 during the legislative session was that puberty blockers and hormone therapies put young patients at risk for fertility loss and a reduction of bone density. On Tuesday, defense attorneys for the state repeated these claims.
“SB 14 was designed to protect minors from scientifically unsound treatments,” Dyer said.
The medical experts called on by the plaintiffs rejected those claims Tuesday, arguing that the scientific literature supports the use of hormones or puberty blockers as a means to improve the mental health of transgender youth and reduces the dysphoria these young people feel.
“I would not consider estrogen or testosterone the end of the story for fertility,” said Dr. Daniel Shumer, a pediatric endocrinologist at the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor.
Pediatric endocrinology is the field of medicine that specializes in transgender adolescent health care.
Representing the state, Assistant Attorney General Johnathan Stone asked Shumer about the number of his patients who stopped receiving gender-affirming treatment. A group of people who refer to themselves as detransitioners have been vocal opponents of gender-affirming care for youth in legislative hearings throughout the country. During this year’s regular Texas legislative session, Republican lawmakers called on several people who had detransitioned to testify in support of SB 14.
Shumer said of his roughly 400 patients, 10 had stopped taking puberty blockers, a reversible treatment that delays the onset of puberty, and two had stopped taking hormones.
Olson-Kennedy noted that there are a variety of reasons people detransition — including a lack of acceptance of their new identity or a loss of health care access — but overall, the number of people who do take this step is very small.
The state’s only witness on Tuesday was evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, who has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology and ecology from the University of California Santa Barbara. Wright testified that humans can only be “observed and recorded” as either the male or female sex. While individuals can modify their secondary sex characteristics, like body hair and breast development, Wright said people cannot change their sex.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs noted that Wright was not an expert in gender dysphoria and had not published original research on the topic of biological sex. Wright, who is vocal on his social media platforms about his opposition to gender-affirming care for minors, was asked if he thought transgender individuals were delusional. Of the idea that people can change their sex from what was assigned at birth, he said, “that specific belief is a delusional belief.”
Dr. Aron Janssen, a psychiatrist at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, testified to the evidence that psychotherapy alone cannot alleviate gender dysphoria, asserting that puberty blockers or hormone therapy is medically necessary. By restricting access to these treatments, young patients will have worse outcomes, Janssen said.
“There’s an intense improvement we see amongst these kids,” Janssen said of his clinical experience.
Parents of trans youth and Texas health care workers testified about the impact SB 14 would have on their families and patients. One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Dr. David Paul, a pediatric endocrinologist who works at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, said SB 14 would strip him of the ability to provide the standard of care for his transgender patients.
“They are probably the most positive outcomes of all the patients I see,” Paul said of patients who receive gender-affirming care. If his patients couldn’t access this type of care, Paul said he worries their physical and mental health will deteriorate. He added he has already lost one of his patients to suicide.
One parent of a transgender child, identified by the pseudonym Mary Moe, said she and her daughter have moved out of the state in the wake of SB 14.
“I would like to return to Texas, but Texas has become very ugly to me and my family,” Moe said.
Texas lawmakers’ efforts to restrict gender-affirming care in Texas followed nearly identical campaigns from other Republican-led state legislatures. Across the country, 19 other states have passed similar legislation. Prohibiting doctors from providing gender-affirming care to trans youth is widely popular among Republican voters — over 85% of registered GOP voters in Texas supported these restrictions to some degree, according to an April poll by the Texas Politics Project.
But the wave of new legislation invited a series of lawsuits across the country seeking to block the laws from going into effect. Those suits have largely proved successful in federal courts.
In June, a federal judge ruled that Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for minors is unconstitutional because it violates the due-process and equal-protection rights of transgender children and their families. Federal judges in Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee have also blocked those states’ laws from going into effect. An appeals court intervened to allow Tennessee to implement its ban, and the Kentucky federal judge lifted the injunction he issued, allowing the law to go into effect.
This lawsuit is filed in state court and claims SB 14 violates parental-right protections laid out in the Texas Constitution.
Disclosure: The ACLU of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell awkwardly sit together at ceremony after House ends impeachment sta

Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell awkwardly sit together at ceremony after House ends impeachment stalemate

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ( D-CA ) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ( R-KY ) were pictured awkwardly sitting @ @ @ @ @ just hours after the House voted to send articles of impeachment to the Senate .
@ @ @ @ @ attending the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony for ALS advocate Steve Gleason were shared on Twitter @ @ @ @ @ hours after Pelosi ended a stalemate with McConnell over when articles of impeachment would be @ @ @ @ @ Take a look at the photos below .


rawstory--2020-01-15--Seven Florida Republicans file slew of anti-LGBTQ bills

Seven Florida Republican lawmakers have filed four bills attacking the LGBTQ community .
NBC News reports “ the bills would @ @ @ @ @ transgender children , repeal municipal and county ordinances protecting LGBTQ workers , and legalize so-called @ @ @ @ @ that had banned the medically debunked practice.
” Conversion therapy has been compared to torture @ @ @ @ @ victims of it , and states have been banning the practice given its ties to @ @ @ @ @ The lawmakers are Rep. Anthony Sabatini , Sen. Dennis Baxley , Rep. Bob Rommel , @ @ @ @ @ Michael Grant , Sen. Keith Perry , and Rep. Byron Donalds ( images above , @ @ @ @ @ s reporting . )
( NCRM has added links to their Twitter accounts . )
@ @ @ @ @ Gustavo reports on House Bill 136 , filed by Sabatini and Baxley , “ which @ @ @ @ @ felony for health care practitioners to administer treatment for transitioning or changing a child ’ @ @ @ @

“There are almost too many targets to keep track of,” said one Trump adviser familiar with the discussions.
One idea that has captured Trump's imagination is the creation of an "Office of Election Integrity" within the Department of Justice that would be tasked with re-litigating his 2020 election loss and aggressively pursuing claims of election fraud, especially in Democratic strongholds, that sources say was pitched by a longtime Republican activist and an attorney who's known Trump for years.
“I recall talking to a senior official in the Trump administration, who said after all of [these investigations] are over, we’ve got to think of a way to bring the Justice Department back into the government,” said Tom Fitton, president of the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch, who has argued the department should be more closely aligned with the president's priorities. “Is the Justice Department going to operate as an entity outside the White House as opposed to an entity that’s controlled by the president, as the Constitution requires?”
Trump likes the idea of issuing the wave of pardons right away, rather than waiting, and sources said that he seems intrigued by the idea of pardoning himself and then launching investigations into alleged "grand jury violations" that resulted in his indictments.
“This would be like hitting the delete key on all of DOJ’s work on these investigations,” said a person intimately familiar with the conversations.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Robert Hyde ‘should end his bid for Congress’: Connecticut GOP says impeachment figure is hurting Re

Robert Hyde ‘should end his bid for Congress’: Connecticut GOP says impeachment figure is hurting Republicans

One day after being caught up in President Donald Trump ’ s impeachment , the Connecticut Republican Party is asking Robert Hyde to end his congressional bid .
Hyde ’ s text messages were turned over to House investigators by Lev Parnas , which included shocking tales of surveilling the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine .
The chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party said it is time for Hyde to go .
“ I have asked Rob Hyde to end his bid for Congress .
His campaign is a distraction for the Democrats to raise money and falsely label all Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he is not helping other Republican candidates or Donald Trump win , ” J.R. Romano posted to Twitter .
Even before the recent scandals , there were calls for Hyde to end his congressional bid .
In December , after Hyde posted a misogynistic insult against Sen. Kamala Harris ( D-CA ) , the Hartford Courant wrote an editorial headlined , “ Robert F. Hyde , get out of the race .
The Republican party deserves better.
” At the time , Romano acknowledged that the comments were “ vile , ” but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race .

One day after being caught up in President Donald Trump's impeachment, the Connecticut Republican Party is asking Robert Hyde to end his congressional bid.
Hyde's text messages were turned over to House investigators by Lev Parnas, which included shocking tales of surveilling the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
The chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party said it is time for Hyde to go.
“I have asked Rob Hyde to end his bid for Congress. His campaign is a distraction for the Democrats to raise money and falsely label all Republicans with his antics. In my view he is not helping other Republican candidates or Donald Trump win," J.R. Romano posted to Twitter.
Even before the recent scandals, there were calls for Hyde to end his congressional bid.
In December, after Hyde posted a misogynistic insult against Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), the Hartford Courant wrote an editorial headlined, "Robert F. Hyde, get out of the race. The Republican party deserves better."
At the time, Romano acknowledged that the comments were "vile," but did not ask him to leave the race.


rawstory--2020-01-15--Ex-CIA official under Trump reveals the president’s disturbing use of intelligence — and doubts the

Ex-CIA official under Trump reveals the president’s disturbing use of intelligence — and doubts the reason for killing Suleimani

In a new post for the blog Just Security from the New York University Law School on Wednesday , a former CIA counterterrorist manager revealed details of his work under President Donald Trump and why he ’ s skeptical of the administration ’ s defense of killing Suleimani .
Douglas London , who worked at the CIA until the end of 2018 , said he “ often struggled in persuading the president to recognize the most important threats.
” Rather than caring about what career professionals thought were the biggest danger to the United States , Trump was instead interested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he could tout as personal victories .
This drew the president toward what London called “ celebrity targeted killing , ” that is , the assassination of high-profile figures whose names could make a big splash in the newspapers .
The killings of Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi , the former leader of ISIS , and of former Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani fall into this category .
This description of Trump ’ s priorities rings true — he is always trying to take credit for supposed presidential accomplishments , like his recent attempt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of cancer deaths .
Even before coming president , the appearance of success was always more important to him than actual business success .
In this spirit of killing “ celebrity ” targets , London said Trump was obsessed with killing a son of Osama bin Laden , Hamza , even though the intelligence community saw him as a low-priority target .
When it comes to the killing of Suleimani , which London was not involved in , the ex-CIA official argued that the Trump administration ’ s explanation for his killing doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ] appears to have been more about Trump , and the potential for headlines , rather than the intelligence , ” he wrote .
“ Soleimani ’ s very public removal was too great a headline to pass up for Trump , but there were other options.
” He also doubted that Gina Haspel , the current CIA director , recommended the killing , even though the New York Times has reported that she was on board .
It would have been “ uncharacteristic , ” he said , for her to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely lead to missiles being fired at U.S. troops .
She would have been unlikely to anticipate that Iran ’ s counterstrikes would not result in any known fatalities , as they did .
And as for the claim that there was some “ imminent threat , ” as Trump officials have claimed , that justified his killing , London didn ’ t buy this explanation : I do not debate we had intelligence regarding any number of prospective attacks Iran was facilitating through proxies in Iraq , and elsewhere .
But don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ design potential operations at various degrees of lethality and provocation , some of which they will execute , others to put aside for a rainy day .
It ’ s what they do .
The reality is that the U.S. government would have been legally bound to warn the public of a threat against an American embassy .
The U.S. Intelligence Community is also prohibited from exclusively warning American government officials of threats likewise faced by civilians , and regardless of nationality .
For this reason , the deep skepticism that has met @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was planning to attack four U.S. embassies is certainly warranted .
The White House ’ s narrative and the posture adopted by the intelligence agencies are inconsistent with U.S. options , if there was , in fact , a specific , credible , and imminent threat from Iran .
Rather , the Trump administration appears to have cherry-picked information from the broader intelligence to support its actions .
Intelligence assessments on the anticipated escalatory paths Iran would follow in response to kinetic U.S. retaliatory measures have been consistent and well briefed to every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the Iranians escalated , but that they pulled their punches to minimize casualties and provide an off ramp to further escalation .
Further undermining the Trump administration ’ s argument that the Soleimani strike disrupted an imminent plot to kill Americans , the IRGC is a military institution and so taking out its leader is unlike removing a key terrorist leader , whose death can often eliminate the planning , communications and direction for a particular attack .
The IRGC ’ s command and control are likely largely unaffected , whereas its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. acting without any deniability seems to have forced Iran ’ s hand to respond openly .
Read the full post at Just Security .

In a new post for the blog Just Security from the New York University Law School on Wednesday, a former CIA counterterrorist manager revealed details of his work under President Donald Trump and why he’s skeptical of the administration’s defense of killing Suleimani.
Douglas London, who worked at the CIA until the end of 2018, said he “often struggled in persuading the president to recognize the most important threats.”
Rather than caring about what career professionals thought were the biggest danger to the United States, Trump was instead interested in — what else? — actions that he could tout as personal victories. This drew the president toward what London called “celebrity targeted killing,” that is, the assassination of high-profile figures whose names could make a big splash in the newspapers. The killings of Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of ISIS, and of former Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani fall into this category.
This description of Trump’s priorities rings true — he is always trying to take credit for supposed presidential accomplishments, like his recent attempt to garner praise for the falling rate of cancer deaths. Even before coming president, the appearance of success was always more important to him than actual business success.
In this spirit of killing “celebrity” targets, London said Trump was obsessed with killing a son of Osama bin Laden, Hamza, even though the intelligence community saw him as a low-priority target.
When it comes to the killing of Suleimani, which London was not involved in, the ex-CIA official argued that the Trump administration’s explanation for his killing doesn’t add up.
“[It] appears to have been more about Trump, and the potential for headlines, rather than the intelligence,” he wrote. “Soleimani’s very public removal was too great a headline to pass up for Trump, but there were other options.”
He also doubted that Gina Haspel, the current CIA director, recommended the killing, even though the New York Times has reported that she was on board. It would have been “uncharacteristic,” he said, for her to recommend such a move when it would likely lead to missiles being fired at U.S. troops. She would have been unlikely to anticipate that Iran’s counterstrikes would not result in any known fatalities, as they did.
And as for the claim that there was some “imminent threat,” as Trump officials have claimed, that justified his killing, London didn’t buy this explanation:
I do not debate we had intelligence regarding any number of prospective attacks Iran was facilitating through proxies in Iraq, and elsewhere. But don’t we always? The Iranians design potential operations at various degrees of lethality and provocation, some of which they will execute, others to put aside for a rainy day. It’s what they do. The reality is that the U.S. government would have been legally bound to warn the public of a threat against an American embassy. The U.S. Intelligence Community is also prohibited from exclusively warning American government officials of threats likewise faced by civilians, and regardless of nationality. For this reason, the deep skepticism that has met the president’s claim that Iran was planning to attack four U.S. embassies is certainly warranted. The White House’s narrative and the posture adopted by the intelligence agencies are inconsistent with U.S. options, if there was, in fact, a specific, credible, and imminent threat from Iran. Rather, the Trump administration appears to have cherry-picked information from the broader intelligence to support its actions. Intelligence assessments on the anticipated escalatory paths Iran would follow in response to kinetic U.S. retaliatory measures have been consistent and well briefed to every president. The surprise wasn’t that the Iranians escalated, but that they pulled their punches to minimize casualties and provide an off ramp to further escalation. Further undermining the Trump administration’s argument that the Soleimani strike disrupted an imminent plot to kill Americans, the IRGC is a military institution and so taking out its leader is unlike removing a key terrorist leader, whose death can often eliminate the planning, communications and direction for a particular attack. The IRGC’s command and control are likely largely unaffected, whereas its resolve has likely increased. Moreover, the U.S. acting without any deniability seems to have forced Iran’s hand to respond openly.
Read the full post at Just Security.


rawstory--2020-01-15--This is how Rachel Maddow will grill Giuliani henchman Lev Parnas during tonight’s exclusive intervi

This is how Rachel Maddow will grill Giuliani henchman Lev Parnas during tonight’s exclusive interview

MSNBC gave breaking news treatment on Wednesday to a bombshell development in President Donald Trump ’ s impeachment .
“ I ’ m Ari Melber with Stephanie Ruhle and we are back with a major programming announcement , ” MSNBC ’ s chief legal correspondent said .
“ Moments after the House voted to send these articles of impeachment to the Senate , we have news that affects all of it because tonight on MSNBC , the [ Rudy ] Giuliani associate at the center of the scandal — who has been cooperating — Lev Parnas and his lawyer will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will air tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern , Mr. Parnas essentially breaking his silence .
He , of course , stands still under indictment in the Southern District of New York.
” The hosts interviewed MSNBC legal correspondent Maya Wiley , a veteran of the Southern District of New York .
“ But what I want to know is how is he going to handle a question from Rachel Maddow ?
” Wiley said .
“ You know Rachel is going deep — and she ’ s going deep , ” she explained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ questioning she would pursue .
“ So you were given Jay Sekulow ’ s phone number .
Did you call him ?
What was the conversation ?
What did he say and what did you say ?
” was one line of questioning .
“ Jay Sekulow will be Donald Trump ’ s defense attorney in the impeachment.
” “ Robert Hyde , was he getting foreign donor money ?
He ’ s running for Congress , ” she noted .