President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said during an interview that the only person he knows about who didn’t collude with Russia was Trump himself. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
After Rudy Giuliani’s latest comments, it’s everyone for themselves. And it’s a prosecutor’s dream for the special counsel.
Rudy Giuliani sent an unmistakable message Wednesday night: It’s everyone for themselves.
During a CNN interview, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer blurted out that the only person he knows about who didn’t collude with Russia was Trump himself. Although Giuliani tried to walk back his comments on Thursday, the remarks put the sprawling web of people caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on notice: No one is coming to save you.
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“Ya think!!!” one former Trump campaign official wrote to POLITICO when asked whether Giuliani was trying to protect the president at the expense of everyone who worked for him.
The Team Trump infighting has been a prosecutor’s dream for Mueller, opening up an ever-widening window into the behind-the-scenes workings of a rookie politician whose campaign has been under investigation for years. The special counsel and federal prosecutors have already benefited from the internal sniping, flipping Trump’s former lawyer, national security adviser and campaign chairman.
Bickering and backstabbing were Trump world trademarks long before the former businessman launched his White House bid, from the real estate mogul’s decades of private business dealings to his years as a reality television star.
But the attitude has taken on a completely new life as Mueller’s 20-month-old probe creeps increasingly closer to the president. Now the sniping can have long-term legal consequences, and the president and his former aides have used media interviews, social media posts and court filings to take shots at each other in the interest of protecting themselves and their reputations.
“Nobody is really on the same team anymore when you’ve worked with Donald Trump,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump 2016 campaign aide who has been questioned multiple times by Mueller and congressional investigators.
“Trump puts everyone against each other when you work for him,” he added. “While he demands loyalty, he doesn’t return it. Loyalty is not a two-way street, especially when you’ve got special counsel involved in it.”
Michael Zeldin, a former Mueller DOJ aide, likened the current divisions inside Trump world to the mafia.
“Even Whitey Bulger gets beaten to death for having squealed. That always made it hard for prosecutors because it was very hard to break someone out of the organization,” Zeldin said, referencing the famous Boston mobster. “Here, everyone is saying, ‘I can cooperate.’ Whether they are fully truthful, they all seem to be available.”
The latest example is Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer who appears to be sparing few in his bid to shorten his prison sentence and resurrect his image after being swept up in multiple investigations.
Cohen turned publicly against Trump last summer and even urged voters headed into the 2018 midterms to elect Democrats so that Congress could rein in his former boss’ presidency. Next month, Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee in a high-profile hearing expected to draw gavel-to-gavel media coverage.
He’s already spent months blaming the president for any suspect behavior during the campaign, saying his “weakness” was a “blind loyalty” to Trump. Hush payments that Cohen made to women alleging affairs with Trump? Made at Trump’s direction, Cohen said. Paying people a bag of cash to rig online polls in Trump’s favor? Done because Trump made the request — and it was a check, not a bag — Cohen claimed.
In the courtroom, Cohen’s legal team has also indirectly swiped at others in Trump’s orbit. Last month, Cohen attorney Guy Petrillo argued in court that his client’s cooperation with prosecutors “should substantially mitigate his sentence, and his action stands in profound contrast to the decision of some others not to cooperate and allegedly to double deal while pretending to cooperate.”
While Petrillo didn’t mention former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort by name, the reference was almost unmistakable. A source with knowledge of Cohen’s case confirmed that the passage was meant to invoke Manafort’s behavior.
The missives from Cohen and his legal team haven’t gone unnoticed. Trump himself struck back at his former fixer on Saturday night during a Fox News interview with a perplexing call for investigators to investigate Cohen’s father-in-law’s finances. “I guess he didn’t want to talk about his father-in-law. He’s trying to get his sentence reduced,” the president said.
Several other ex-Trump aides have turned on their former colleagues.
Rick Gates, who served under Manafort as deputy campaign chairman and then played a prominent role organizing Trump’s inauguration, has been cooperating with Mueller since pleading guilty last February. He served as a star witness against Manafort during his former boss’ trial in Alexandria, Va., where the longtime GOP operative was convicted on several charges of bank and tax fraud.
Gates is still spilling his ex-colleagues’ secrets to the special counsel. In a court filing earlier this week, an FBI agent recounted how Gates snitched on Manafort’s clandestine effort to get people appointed to Trump’s new administration in January 2017.
Attorneys for Michael Flynn have taken a more subtle approach.
His lawyers tried to compare the former Trump national security adviser favorably to other Mueller targets when making the argument that Flynn didn’t deserve jail time for lying to the FBI. In doing so, they essentially called out two people: former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Dutch attorney Alex Van Der Zwaan.
In a court filing, Flynn’s lawyers insinuated that Papadopoulos, who served a 14-day sentence last year for also lying to the FBI, was more mendacious than Flynn because he had been “specifically notified of the seriousness of the investigation” into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The FBI also warned Papadopoulos that lying to investigators was a federal offense, it said. Flynn had received neither warnings, the filing pointedly noted.
As for Van Der Zwaan, who spent 30 days in prison before being deported, Flynn’s attorneys argued that he was a “trained attorney who was represented by counsel” during his FBI interview — again, unlike Flynn.
For now, Flynn’s fate remains in the air. His sentencing has been postponed so he can continue cooperating in the Mueller probe.
The feuding among Trump associates isn’t just happening among people who have already been charged.
Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone — a Mueller target because of suspicions he had privileged knowledge that WikiLeaks was sitting on a stolen cache of Hillary Clinton campaign emails — has been on a PR blitz to tarnish several former friends as liars.
Stone has repeatedly derided New York-based liberal talk show host Randy Credico, placing the blame for any WikiLeaks back-channel communication on his ex-pal. Similarly, Stone has lobbed effusive insults at Jerome Corsi, the right-wing author and conspiracy theorist who also has drawn Mueller’s interest because of possible links to WikiLeaks. In an Instagram post last month, Stone accused Corsi of “working with Mueller to sandbag me on a fabricated perjury charge.”
They all have good reason to point the finger at each other. Stone has long said he expects to be indicted for lying to Mueller — a charge he denies. And Corsi’s lawyers have circulated a draft court document showing Mueller wanted their client to plead guilty to a false statement charge they say is bunk.
Open warfare in Trump’s orbit has produced its share of schadenfreude, as well.
“Justice was well-served today,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said in an NPR interview last August after Cohen pleaded guilty and Manafort was convicted on the same day.
Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House senior strategist, was ousted from Trump’s circle after he almost gleefully predicted trouble for the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who is in Mueller’s crosshairs for an election-year meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Clinton.
“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” he said in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.”
Annemarie McAvoy, a defense attorney and media consultant who previously represented Gates, said she wasn’t surprised by all of the discord. It starts with the president and trickles down to all the people who have worked for him, she said.
“Of course, every attorney is going to try to represent his or her client as zealously as possible and make them look the best and make everyone around them, who might say anything bad about them, look worse,” McAvoy said.
Typically in cases dealing with a large number of people from the same side of an organization, co-defendants will demonstrate some collegiality with each other. But, McAvoy said, there’s a different dynamic at play when none of the people who have been caught in the Mueller probe are on the same team anymore.
“All of these people have to try to, assuming they’re not going to jail, to make a living, deal with their neighbors, try to have some sort of normal life after this,” she said.
To Democrats, the infighting has occasionally prompted legal concerns. Several House chairmen issued a warning to the president on Sunday after he went after Cohen’s father-in-law, saying Trump appeared to be obstructing congressional oversight functions.
“Organized crime and international money laundering are a dirty business,” former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told POLITICO. “It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, as the ship is sinking, the rats are jumping out.”
Source Article from https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/17/giuliani-mueller-collusion-investigation-1110671
Hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers will march on Friday from the National Mall to the steps of the Supreme Court for the 46th annual March for Life.
The March for Life is both a demonstration and an act of solidarity with the tens of millions of unborn babies who have been aborted since the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized most abortions nationally.
But it’s also a chance to organize and educate, which is why the theme of this year’s march is “Unique From Day One.”
Perhaps the biggest change in the long, sad debate over abortion is that science, which was once seen as an ally of abortion advocates, is now recognized as being squarely on the side of life.
Every few months brings a technological advancement or scientific breakthrough that more fully reveals the unborn child as a living, feeling human being.
Most of what we now know about the fetus was unknown or in dispute when Roe was decided in 1973.
In his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that the court “was not in a position to speculate as to the answer” of when life begins. Blackmun proceeded to speculate, writing that, “There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth.”
We now know that’s not true. We now know that at the moment of fertilization, a new, unique human embryo with unique DNA is created. We now know that even at that early stage, an individual human life exists. We now know that the unborn baby’s heart begins to beat at three weeks, that brain waves can be detected as early as five weeks, and that all of the unborn baby’s organs are fully formed by 24 weeks.
Advancements in fetal medicine now make it possible for unborn babies to survive outside the womb as early as 22 weeks. The year Roe was decided, the lower limit was 28 weeks. We also know that unborn babies can feel pain at a point in the pregnancy when the most gruesome abortion procedures are still legal.
The more we recognize these facts, the easier it becomes to recognize the fact of the unborn baby’s humanity. And the harder it becomes to deny the baby’s inherent dignity.
Science has exposed the lie that a first-trimester baby is merely a clump of cells or a blob of tissue — or anything other than a human being. As Harvard Medical School’s Micheline Matthews-Roth has put it: “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life.”
Science also reveals that a third trimester baby is not substantially different from a newborn baby. She looks, moves, feels, and responds just like a newborn.
Last year British researcher Vincent Reid found that third-trimester fetuses respond to face-like images even while in the womb in the same way that newborn infants do. Reid told a reporter that his research “tells us that the fetus isn’t a passive processor of environmental information. It’s an active responder.”
In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report finding that the national abortion rate declined 26 percent between 2006 and 2015, hitting the lowest level that the government has on record. There are several reasons for the decline, including increased use of birth control, more restrictive abortion laws, and fewer teens having sex.
But it’s reasonable to believe that as the humanity of the fetus has become more apparent, more people have become less comfortable with abortion. Today, when a woman is informed of an unintended pregnancy, her first thought might no longer be about how she’s going to get rid of the cluster of life growing within her.
Instead, her first thought might be of the ultrasound picture of an unborn baby that her friend recently gleefully posted on social media to announce a pregnancy. Or it might be of the headline she just saw about a study finding that babies first encounter speech in the womb.
In the abortion debate, the science deniers are those who decry the taking of an innocent human life while somehow also celebrating the right to take an innocent unborn human life.
Science isn’t the only consideration in matters that carry profound moral and ethical significance. But on abortion, it can no longer be argued that science and faith are at odds.
In fact, science confirms what the Bible and other sacred texts teach us — that we are uniquely made from the moment we are conceived, and that we have moral status as human beings from that moment on.
Gary Bauer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/pro-life-is-pro-science
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Updated 8:58 PM ET, Thu January 17, 2019
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.
(CNN)There’s no single reason why tens of thousands of teachers in Los Angeles have taken to the picket lines this week, emptying classrooms in the country’s second-largest school district.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/us/why-los-angeles-teachers-are-striking-trnd/index.html
Former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke is set to be sentenced Friday for the shooting death of African-American teen Laquan McDonald.
Van Dyke’s attorneys have asked for probation.
Van Dyke, who is white, shot McDonald, who was 17 years old, 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.
Video released during the investigation showed McDonald was armed with a knife but the teen didn’t appear to be moving toward the police officers who responded.
In October, Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery. He was found not guilty of official misconduct.
For second-degree murder, Van Dyke’s sentence could stretch from probation up to 20 years. For aggravated battery with a firearm, he could face 6 to 30 years per charge.
Prosecutors have asked for a “significant amount of time.”
The former officer and his family are expected to speak at Friday’s sentencing.
McDonald’s family may also address the judge.
Three Chicago police officers on Thursday were found not guilty of falsifying details to cover up the shooting.
This story is developing. Please check back for more updates.
Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/US/chicago-police-officer-sentenced-laquan-mcdonald-murder/story?id=60466991
The Winter Storm Warning will go into effect at 3 p.m. Friday for Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Lake (Ill.), McHenry and Kane counties and will remain in effect until noon on Saturday. The Winter Storm Warning will go into effect at 7 p.m. for LaSalle, Kendall, Grundy, Will and Kankakee counties in Illinois and Lake, Porter, Jasper and Newton counties in Indiana. That Winter Storm Warning will also remain in effect until noon Saturday.
Snow will begin falling Friday afternoon into Saturday morning in the Chicago area, leaving behind 3 to 9 inches for many areas. Some could see well over that, with higher totals most likely north of I-88.
Snow is expected to begin falling across the Chicago area during the Friday afternoon rush hour, but will ramp up in the evening hours. The heaviest snow will fall from about 8 p.m. Friday until about 6 a.m. Saturday.
RELATED: Chicago’s Top 5 biggest snowstorms
Snow will taper off from north to south Saturday afternoon and evening.
Snow will likely be heavy enough to impact road and air travel. Winds will gust up to 35 mph which will lead to poor visibility in snow showers and also blowing/drifting snow.
Saturday’s temperature will reach a high of 26 degrees and a low of 12.
RELATED: ABC7 Accuweather Forecast
On Sunday, bitter cold temps and wind chills will take over with high temps reaching only 12 degrees, and a low of 0.
Lake effect snow will begin falling on Sunday, beginning along the Illinois lakeshore then rapidly swinging into northwest Indiana, adding additional accumulation in those areas.
The City of Chicago says it is ready for the storm, with 350,000 tons of salt at piles across the city and more than 300 snow vehicles ready to clear the streets.
Amtrak is warning people to check their train status this weekend, as some trains out of Chicago have already been canceled.
ComEd says it has increased staffing and is getting equipment ready ahead of the storm.
“ComEd has developed a plan and is prepared to have crews ready to respond in the event that there are weather-related issues,” said Terence R. Donnelly, president and chief operating officer, ComEd. “Our team is committed to responding to inclement weather issues and restoring any power interruptions as quickly and safely as possible.”
ComEd says anyone who encounters a downed power line can call 1-800-EDISON1 (1-800-334-7661) and Spanish-speaking customers can call 1-800-95-LUCES (1-800-955-8237). ComEd warns you should not approach downed power lines and do not shovel snow onto ComEd equipment.
Source Article from https://abc7chicago.com/weather/latest-live-track-snowstorm-could-dump-3-9-inches;-winter-storm-warning-to-go-in-effect/5095286/
President Trump now stands accused of directing his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about Trump’s attempt to court Vladimir Putin during the campaign and build a hotel in Moscow.
After two years of “bombshell” reports that proved duds, and “this is the beginning of the end!!!” declarations from the press, it’s natural to be skeptical of the import of this one. Also, after the biggest earlier bombshells turned out to be factual errors by the media, it’s natural to be skeptical of the validity of this one.
BuzzFeed reported this story on this is based on “two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” They are obviously anonymous. They may or may not be working with the special counsel’s office, and they reportedly were working on the Moscow Tower case ” before Mueller.”
[UPDATE: The reporters didn’t see the documents, we should note. They spoke to sources who say the documents exist. Also, one of the BuzzFeed reporters, Jason Leopold, has copped to inventing sources in the past. The other reporter, Anthony Cormier, says they have sources beyond the two who were willing to talk “on the record.”]
So everyone should replace their freakouts with patience for now.
But until we hear more, here are the reasons to take this latest report from BuzzFeed news seriously.
It’s not merely Cohen accusing Trump of ordering him to lie
Trump’s shady lawyer Michael Cohen is known to lie about important things — that’s probably what he’s most known for. That’s why Trump’s team responded with snark: “If you believe Cohen I can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
But if BuzzFeed’s sources are telling the truth, one doesn’t have to believe Cohen in order to believe Trump told Cohen to lie.
Here’s the key sentence: “The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.”
If this is accurate, it means more than one Trump Organization employee accused Trump of this, and that printed records may confirm it — all before Cohen confirmed it. That would be pretty solid evidence against the president.
Of course, I’d want to see the texts, emails, and other documents before assuming they show what these anonymous sources say they show.
Telling someone to lie to Congress is obstruction, according to Trump’s attorney general nominee
I’ve been skeptical about the other legal arguments against Trump. The campaign finance argument regarding Trump’s payoffs to a porn star seemed like a legal stretch. The idea that firing Comey was corrupt never seemed proven. The whole notion of “collusion” has been left fairly vague.
But instructing someone to lie to investigators looks a lot like obstruction of justice. That’s at least the opinion of William Barr, Trump’s nominee to be attorney general.
In a memo Barr wrote in June 2018, “obstruction laws prohibit a range of ‘bad acts’ — such as tampering with a witness….” He also wrote “if a President knowingly destroys or alters evidence, suborns perjury , or induces a witness to change testimony, or commits any act deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence, then he, like anyone else, commits the crime of obstruction.”
The relevant language, distilled: “if a President knowingly … suborns perjury … then he … commits the crime of obstruction.”
If Trump knowingly told Cohen to lie to Congress — lying to Congress is its own crime, similar to perjury — he did something pretty darn close to what Barr has previously said was obstruction.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to add more background on the reporting.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/heres-why-trump-should-worry-about-the-latest-report-on-his-directing-cohen-to-lie-to-congress
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(CNN)As the partial government shutdown nears the one-month mark, there have been a number of public opinion polls examining how the public feels about the shutdown, which was sparked by a funding standoff over President Donald Trump’s proposal for a new wall along the border with Mexico.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/polling-roundup-shutdown/index.html
On Saturday, women and their allies will take to the streets in cities around the world for the third annual Women’s March.
But this year, the leaders of Women’s March Inc. — one of the organizations that grew out of the original march, and the most visible public face of the march today — are facing calls to step down. The reasons include criticisms of their association with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and allegations that they made anti-Semitic remarks in planning meetings.
Women’s March Inc. is a national organization led by four activists from New York City — Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland — who helped organize the first march in Washington, DC, in 2017. The group also has local chapters that are planning marches in cities around the country this year, though other local marches are not affiliated with Women’s March Inc.
The controversy has contributed to the cancellation of at least one city march, and a number of progressive groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, have dropped their partnerships with the Women’s March, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee appears to have been removed from a list of partners on the Women’s March website.
Women’s March Inc. co-chairs Tamika Mallory and Bob Bland denied allegations of anti-Semitism in an appearance on The View on Monday. Asked by co-host Meghan McCain why she would publicly associate with Farrakhan, given his anti-Semitic remarks, Mallory said, “I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrakhan’s statements.”
“Do you condemn them?” McCain asked.
“I don’t agree with these statements,” Mallory reiterated.
She also resisted calls to step down. “I am willing to lead until my term at Women’s March is up,” she said.
“Women’s March exists to fight all forms of oppression and bigotry, including anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, white supremacy, ableism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, classism, and ageism,” Women’s March Inc. said in a statement to Vox, in response to a question about groups dropping partnerships. “That work continues with the release of our Women’s Agenda and lobby day this week in Washington, and our anniversary Marches happening all over the country this Saturday.”
No matter what happens at those marches, the influence of the Women’s March on American feminism — and on the left more broadly — is undeniable. And a groundswell of women’s activism in the wake of the 2016 election has led to an unprecedented number of women in the halls of political power; earlier this month, a record 117 women were sworn into Congress.
The future of Women’s March Inc., and of women’s marches around the country, may be in doubt. But the impact of the Women’s March as a broader movement on American politics endures.
Women’s March Inc. is no stranger to controversy, having weathered debates over representation of women of color and the inclusion (or exclusion) of a variety of groups from its official platform. But criticism of the group intensified in March 2018 when Mallory attended a Nation of Islam event at which Farrakhan made anti-Semitic remarks. In November, as controversy grew over the issue, Teresa Shook, whose 2016 Facebook post kicked off the first march, called on Mallory and the other co-chairs of Women’s March Inc. to step down.
Then in December, Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel at Tablet reported that, according to others involved in planning the march, Mallory and fellow Women’s March Inc. co-chair Carmen Perez had made anti-Semitic comments themselves. At a meeting to plan the first Women’s March, Mallory and Perez “asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people,” sources told Tablet.
Mallory and the Women’s March have denied these allegations. But the Tablet report, as well as Mallory’s association with Farrakhan, has led some groups to drop their affiliation with Women’s March Inc.
In December, the Washington state chapter of the Women’s March announced that it would disband and affiliate with a different progressive group, Smart Politics. Organizers in Spokane, Washington, still plan to hold a march.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, organizers of the New Orleans Women’s March announced they were canceling this Saturday’s event.
“Many of the sister marches have asked the leaders of Women’s March Inc. to resign but as of today, they have yet to do so,” said the National Organization for Women’s Baton Rouge chapter, which organized the New Orleans march. “The controversy is dampening efforts of sister marches to fundraise, enlist involvement, [and] find sponsors, and attendee numbers have drastically declined this year. New Orleans is no exception.”
A number of progressive organizations, from the SPLC to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, have dropped their affiliations with Women’s March Inc. over concerns about anti-Semitism, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.
“Moms Demand Action isn’t an official sponsor of the Women’s March, but plenty of chapters have chosen to participate in the locally organized events,” Taylor Maxwell, a spokesperson for Moms Demand Action, told Vox. The SPLC has not responded to Vox’s request for comment.
The DNC, once listed as a march sponsor on the Women’s March Inc. website, no longer appears there, according to CNN.
“The DNC stands in solidarity with all those fighting for women’s rights and holding the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers across the country accountable,” said DNC deputy communications director Sabrina Singh in a statement to Vox. “Women are on the front lines of fighting back against this administration and are the core of our Democratic Party.”
Asked if the relationship between the DNC and the Women’s March had changed from last year to this year, a DNC official declined to comment further.
Women’s March Inc. has been working to repair relationships with the Jewish community. According to the Washington Post, since anti-Semitism charges were first leveled at the organization, it has added three Jewish women to its steering committee and updated its platform to include a message of support for Jewish women.
It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to convince those concerned about the anti-Semitism allegations to turn out to march on Saturday. Sociology professor Dana R. Fisher, who studies protest movements, told the Post that turnout in Washington, DC, will probably number in the tens of thousands, far fewer than the estimated 470,000 people who attended the first Women’s March following the inauguration of President Trump in 2017.
But those who marched in 2017 may also be engaging in other forms of activism. Instead of a march on Saturday, Women’s March Chicago has organized Operation Activation, which encourages women and their allies to participate in community actions like neighborhood cleanups and postcard-writing campaigns advocating for progressive legislation. The decision to hold a day of action instead of a march wasn’t inspired by controversy around Women’s March Inc., according to a Women’s March Chicago fact sheet provided to Vox. Rather, the Chicago group chose to hold a march in October 2018 to mobilize voters for the midterm elections, and decided not to host two marches back to back. The group plans to march again in 2020.
And in addition to the march on Saturday, Women’s March Inc. is releasing a federal policy platform called the Women’s Agenda and organizing a day of lobbying on Capitol Hill on Friday in support of Medicare-for-all.
Through their platform, their marches, and their Women’s Convention in October 2017 in Detroit, the Women’s March organizers changed the mainstream conversation around feminism and left-wing politics in America, prompting a wider swath of women than ever before to think about women’s rights as part of a larger set of civil rights, including racial and economic justice.
That conversation will no doubt continue at marches on Saturday. But it will also continue at community actions and other events throughout the year — and in the halls of Congress, where more women than ever before now have the opportunity to craft legislation that affects all Americans.
Whatever happens in the streets on Saturday, the legacy of the women who marched all over the world in 2017 will persist for a long time to come.
Source Article from https://www.vox.com/2019/1/18/18185829/womens-march-2019-dnc-tamika-mallory-view
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As the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos approaches, a new survey of over 800 CEOs has revealed that global business leaders see recession as their number one external concern for 2019.
Threats to global trade and political instability ranked second and third, respectively, according to the survey Thursday by the research group The Conference Board.
The recession risk was touted as the number one concern in Japan, China and Latin America but was only placed third by American executives. In the U.S. threats to cybersecurity was listed as the source of greatest unease with new competitors second.
Trade barriers between the U.S. and China have created fears that a full-blown trade war could derail economies around the world. However, among the C-suite executives questioned in China, trade troubles ranked second while in the United States it came as low as fourth.
Click on image to view
Source: The Conference Board
The picture for internal business concerns was much clearer among CEOs around the world, with all regions ranking the attraction and retention of talent as their number one concern.
“As global competition increases while the pool of available workers decreases, it comes as no surprise that executives cited talent as a top issue in 2019 that’s keeping them up at night,” said Rebecca Ray, a report author and the executive vice president of human capital at The Conference Board.
There was also a strong consensus among CEOs that disruptive new technologies could upset their existing business models and markets.
China’s bosses stood out in the internal concerns category, by revealing fear over how to align compensation with business performance as wage pressures in the country increase.
In addition to gauging concerns for 2019, the survey also asked CEOs and other C-Suite executives about what they think the organization of the future will look like and how their own will perform.
American CEOs expressed the highest confidence level in their culture of any region globally while Chinese counterparts were most confident about their leaders and talent.
Next week, business and political leaders descend on Davos in Switzerland to attend the annual World Economic Forum.
A WEF report this week, called the Global Risks Report 2019, suggested that an increased risk of political confrontations between major powers will prevent business and governments from tackling pressing problems such as climate change or cyberattacks.
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/recession-is-the-number-one-fear-for-ceos-in-2019-survey-says.html
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a visit to Muscat, Oman, on Monday.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AP
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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AP
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a visit to Muscat, Oman, on Monday.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AP
The State Department on Thursday ordered employees to return to work next week, despite the partial government shutdown, saying it would figure out how to cover the next paycheck.
In a note posted on its website and emailed to staff, the department said it “is taking steps to make additional funds available to pay employee salaries.”
If the shutdown continues beyond the next pay period, State Department officials say they will have to work with Congress to reprogram funds in order to cover salaries.
The partial shutdown that began Dec. 22 caused the furloughs of 23 percent of State Department employees overseas and 40 percent of the domestic employees. Overall, there are 75,000 employees of the State Department, including nearly 50,000 local hires, most of whom are covered by local labor laws and have been receiving pay. Consular services have remained open, funded by passport and visa fees.
Employees will have to wait for the shutdown to end to get paid for the time they worked during the shutdown or were on furlough.
The statement said the department’s leadership has been “deeply concerned about the growing financial hardship and uncertainty affecting Department employees.”
“While the Department has done its best to address matters essential to achieving U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives during the ongoing lapse, it has become clear as the lapse has continued to historic lengths that we need our full team to address the myriad critical issues requiring U.S. leadership around the globe,” according to the announcement.
During a recent weeklong swing through the Middle East, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that morale was good despite the shutdown. And he went ahead and summoned all U.S. ambassadors back to Washington this week for a previously scheduled conference held Wednesday and Thursday.
That raised eyebrows among many foreign service officers, as did the inclusion of Susan Pompeo, the secretary’s wife, on the Middle East swing. During their travels, he defended her as a “force multiplier.” Others critical of her attendance on the trip noted the extra expense and staff required to support her and her activities.
During the shutdown, foreign service officers have had to embrace unusual cost-cutting measures in order to keep their missions afloat, according to emails seen by NPR.
One embassy in Europe was instructed to conserve heat and water because because there was no money in the budget to pay utility bills. Workers at a consulate in South America had to pay for their own gas for visits to Americans held in local jails and prisons. Several emails talked about foreign service officers paying local staff with their own money. All officers asked that their embassies not be identified and that their names not be published for fear of retribution.
“It’s getting more and more difficult to cover all the bases and figure out how to keep the lights on,” said Barbara Stephenson, a diplomat and president of the American Foreign Service Association. “It’s a huge drain on time and it has an organizational impact.”
Diplomats at one embassy in Africa told Stephenson the local community wanted to start a Go Fund Me campaign when they heard about the furloughs to help out. That sort of thing hurts the image of the U.S. and its diplomats, she said.
“If you’ve got a group of people whose job it is to project American global leadership and competence, and the fact that we’re the can-do problem-solving country in the world having an online Go Fund Me campaign, that really … is not the image you want to project,” she said.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/01/17/686372277/state-department-brings-employees-back-to-work-despite-shutdown
On Wednesday, one such patrol dropped in for a late lunch. Cars were double-parked in front of the restaurant and the sidewalks were full of people visiting the nearby vegetable market, according to residents and surveillance footage posted online.
A suicide bomber mixed into the crowd and detonated his explosive vest near the restaurant entrance. A fireball erupted in front of the restaurant, yanking down its sign, toppling the rotisserie and leaving the dead and wounded scattered in the street, according to witnesses and videos posted online.
“We saw civilians on the ground, kids, soldiers, fire still blazing in the shop,” Ahmed Himo, a local journalist, said by phone on Thursday. “It was a terrible scene.”
Ahmad Sulaiman, 12, was passing the restaurant on the way to his grandfather’s house when the blast happened.
“When I passed, there was the man who makes the shawarma sandwiches,” Ahmad said while being treated for leg injuries in a hospital. “Then fire flashed and disappeared and the man was no longer there.”
While rescue workers rushed the wounded to the hospital, three helicopters appeared in the sky, Mr. Himo said. One tried to land in the street but it was too narrow, so it landed on a soccer field nearby. The dead and wounded Americans were taken there and flown away.
On Friday the Pentagon identified three of the Americans who were killed as Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Fla., a Special Forces soldier, or Green Beret; Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon M. Kent, 35, of New York State, who was in the Navy; and Scott A. Wirtz, a Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employee, of St. Louis, Mo.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/world/middleeast/syria-bombing-manbij-attack.html
The chairman of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, recently proclaimed that “there are a heck of a lot of U.S. companies” that will suffer and watch “their earnings being downgraded,” as the U.S.-China trade dispute slogs on.
He’s right. Tariffs are a direct threat to American families, workers and companies, hindering economic growth and slowing hiring.
But the administration’s assertion that this self-inflicted pain will lead to long-term gain is unfounded. As stock prices tumble and investor confidence erodes, the administration should not ignore warnings of tariffs’ increasingly negative impact on American businesses of all sizes and across sectors.
The turmoil that tariffs are imposing on America’s economy is not simply a minor inconvenience. Calls from tech to agriculture to retail to manufacturing underscore the systemic and potentially irreversible damage this misguided trade strategy is wreaking on American companies and, ultimately, consumers.
Manufacturers spend decades forging contracts with their suppliers and other producers to build product components around the world. Discovering new sources, vetting the competency of new suppliers, and waiting for new manufacturing capacity to come online requires a significant investment of time and money – an investment that will erase the benefits businesses and consumers currently enjoy from existing U.S. supply chains, which are quite cost-effective.
Higher costs imposed by tariffs and potential re-routing of supply chains force businesses to rethink future spending, reduce new investments and slow hiring levels. The diversion of resources to pay tariffs also means fewer dollars for research and development, stifling breakthroughs in new product design, deployment and cutting-edge innovations — just as the U.S. government turns its attention to ensuring America retains its innovative edge in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
Consumers are also shouldering the burden with increased costs on everyday products, including technology devices such as routers, modems, e-readers, and headphones. While tech companies manufacture products across the United States, many of these products require components from China that can’t be obtained domestically or from other markets. As a result, these products are subject to tariffs, driving up costs for American consumers. A recent estimate found that Americans will pay an additional $3.2 billion this year alone for technology products because of the tariffs. And it’s not just tech. Tariffs have cost Americans more for other everyday goods, including groceries, baby products, pet food, and home appliances. American families should not continue to suffer on the false hope that the administration’s strategy will produce positive results.
Combined, these factors not only hurt consumers and businesses individually but also the growth of the U.S. economy and its ability to remain a leader in innovation.
Many sectors, including technology, appreciate the administration’s desires to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices and to seek open access to its market. These are serious issues that threaten America’s continued growth. However, tariffs are inflicting pain on U.S. consumers and businesses, creating new problems in supply chains without directly addressing China’s bad behavior. And the impact of tariffs on U.S. businesses, consumers and jobs will not be easily undone. New research shows that U.S. exports in categories subject to retaliatory tariffs dropped at least 37 percent in October 2018; once American companies lose market share, it’s exceedingly hard to regain those global customers.
As officials from China and the United States continue to negotiate, we urge the Trump administration to listen to American businesses and consumers and find a long-term solution that mobilizes an international coalition to address China’s unfair trade policies, eases the heightening trade tensions, and ends the tariffs that continue to inflict harm on the U.S. economy and American people.
Jonathan “Josh” Kallmer is the Executive Vice President of Policy for the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI).
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/trumps-tariff-war-is-all-self-inflicted-pain-and-likely-no-gain
Democratic leaders reacted with fury and demanded an investigation late Thursday following a new report that President Trump personally directed his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about the president’s push for a lucrative condo project in Moscow in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
The Thursday night report from BuzzFeed News cites two unnamed federal law enforcement officials who say Cohen acknowledged in interviews with the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that the president directed him to deceive Congress about key facts linking Trump to the proposed deal in Russia. Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying under oath about those details.
Democrats said that if the report is accurate, Trump must quickly be held to account for his role in the perjury, with some raising the specter of impeachment.
“The allegation that the President of the United States may have suborned perjury before our committee in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date,” wrote Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “We will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.”
“If the @Buzzfeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on BuzzFeed’s report. Lanny Davis, Cohen’s adviser, issued a statement to MSNBC’s Katy Tur saying that “Out of respect for Mr. Mueller’s and the Office of Special Counsel’s investigation, Mr. Cohen declined to respond to the questions asked by the reporters and so do I.”
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, responded to the report by saying, “If you believe Cohen I can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
But BuzzFeed says that Mueller’s office has more evidence than just Cohen’s testimony that Trump directed him to lie to Congress. Per the report, Cohen’s testimony is backed up by “interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.”
In November, Cohen admitted he’d falsely told Congress that Trump’s efforts to build a condo tower in Moscow ended in January 2016, when, in reality, those efforts continued through that June. As Mueller noted, Cohen’s testimony was an attempt to “minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1,” which is how Trump is referred to in the report. Trump had repeatedly insisted on the campaign trail that he had no ongoing business interests in Russia, even as the deal continued to unfold.
In court documents, Cohen admitted that he’d briefed Trump on his ongoing negotiations with Russian officials about the proposed deal and said that he’d consulted with Trump’s team before his false testimony before Congress. But he never said in those documents that Trump himself played any role in encouraging his false testimony.
According to BuzzFeed, Mueller’s team now has evidence that Trump did just that. Democratic leaders promised a quick probe into whether Trump, in fact, did direct Cohen to lie.
“I mean everything feels like a bombshell and we are all numb but I’m pretty sure if this story is true it’s – I’m going to be careful with my words here – something that congress must investigate thoroughly,” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted, “Listen, if Mueller does have multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller shouldn’t end his inquiry, but it’s about time for him to show Congress his cards before it’s too late for us to act.”
Added Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.): “This stunning Trump Tower Moscow story establishes a clear case of Obstruction of Justice, a felony. I’ve lost count now how many times @realDonaldTrump has engaged in Obstruction of Justice. Oh, fyi the first Article of Impeachment for Richard Nixon was Obstruction of Justice.”
Lieu later added in another tweet that “Based on the Buzzfeed report and numerous other articles showing @realDonaldTrump committed Obstruction of Justice and other possible felonies, it is time for the House Judiciary Committee to start holding hearings to establish a record of whether @POTUS committed high crimes.”
Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/18/democrats-demand-investigation-after-report-that-trump-ordered-michael-cohen-lie-congress-about-russian-project/
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(CNN)The longest government shutdown in history just reached the throwing-the-toys-out-of-the-stroller stage.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/donald-trump-government-shutdown-nancy-pelosi-afghanistan/index.html
The Drudge Report used the banner on its website on Thursday to react to a report on how a poll the website conducted was rigged to be more in favor of President Trump.
“Did Trump bribe Drudge poll?” read the top headline, linking to the original report of the poll-rigging.
The Wall Street Journal report published earlier in the morning said that Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen paid John Gauger, who owns a small tech company, to manipulate online polls in Trump’s favor before his presidential campaign.
Cohen confirmed the story in a tweet Thursday morning, adding that he regrets his “blind loyalty” to Trump.
“What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of Donald Trump. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it,” Cohen posted to Twitter.
The article says that both Drudge Report, a popular conservative aggregation website, and CNBC polls were targeted by the RedFinch Solutions LLC efforts on behalf of Cohen and Trump.
The Drudge Report, run by the reclusive Matt Drudge, has not posted anything else as to whether it detected any sort of attempted influence on its poll and if the efforts were successful in influencing the outcome.
The CNBC online poll that was targeted by RedFinch and Cohen in January 2014 asked respondents to narrow down a list of 200 of the country’s top business leaders to 25. However, Trump did not even make the second round of polling, which narrowed the list down to 100 before naming the top 25 top business leaders in celebration of its 25th anniversary.
At the time, Trump expressed his dismay with the poll, claiming that he was actually taken off the list when the votes had him ranked as the ninth top business leader.
“The #CNBC 25 poll is a joke,” Trump tweeted back in 2014. “I was in 9th place and taken off. (Politics?) No wonder @CNBC ratings are going down the tubes.”
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/drudge-report-banner-blares-did-trump-bribe-drudge-poll
Americans have lived through government shutdowns before. There have been 21 shutdowns (including the present one) since 1976, most frequently during periods of divided government. Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now President Trump have all had to spend days (and in the case of Clinton and Obama, weeks) with the government closed while lawmakers and the White House staff negotiate.
Sometimes the shutdown is a minor blip, the result of partisan bickering over menial budgetary issues. Cool heads eventually prevail, and people go back to work.
Never, however, have we seen a government shutdown as ridiculous as the current impasse. Nobody wants to negotiate; in fact, getting a meeting between the president and several moderate House Democrats as the White House tried to do this week has been a chore. Washington is now dominated by base politics, with Trump highly resistant to caving on the $5.7 billion he has demanded for his precious border wall and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., equally unwilling to provide a dollar of additional money for a vanity project they blast as “immoral.”
So here we are, 27 days into the longest government shutdown in history, effectively at square one. If there are any talks even occurring at this point, lawmakers aren’t exactly optimistic about them.
The first four weeks have been terrible. But this week, we entered a whole new plane of absurdity.
It began on Wednesday, when Pelosi notified Trump in a brief letter that it may be best for him to postpone the State of the Union address for a later date — like when he decides to reopen the government. Trump “thinks it’s OK not to pay people who do work,” Pelosi remarked during a news conference on Thursday. “I don’t and my caucus doesn’t either.” The move was pure politics and grandstanding on the part of America’s most powerful Democratic lawmaker, a way to get under Trump’s thin skin and make congressional Democrats look like the responsible party.
Yet Trump doesn’t take punches without punching back. On Thursday, Trump issued his own letter to Pelosi telling her that the trip she was going to take to Belgium, Egypt, and Afghanistan will be canceled due to the government shutdown. “In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay,” the letter read, “I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate.” It was typical Trump: sarcastic, petulant, proudly confrontational, and red meat to his most committed supporters.
The country’s two most powerful politicians are now duking it out over scheduling issues. If you thought Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reading Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor during the 2013 shutdown was a national embarrassment, the Trump-Pelosi cage match is so bone-chilling that it makes you want to find your passport and move to Canada.
Nobody wins when departments and agencies of the federal government run out of money and turn off the lights. While 800,000 federal employees are working without compensation and Transportation Security Administration employees are using their sick days, the public are wondering what about Washington turns the people they elect into such lunatics. Every day, the disconnect gets worse.
There is a common-sense solution on the table. Republicans and Democrats can pass a spending bill that pairs border wall money with permanent protections for illegal immigrant “Dreamers,” and Trump signs the bill into law, thereby reopening the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. A broader immigration debate will have to wait. This looks like the only way to end the standoff: Both sides need to swallow a bitter pill, act like adults, give the other political side a minor win, and recognize that they won’t get 100 percent of what they want.
Stop crying like kindergartners and canceling events, thinking that these tactics are something average people are impressed with. Deal with the business at hand before the public grow even more discombobulated with politics than they already are.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/as-trump-and-pelosi-become-ever-more-petulant-they-both-need-to-swallow-a-bitter-shutdown-pill
CLEVELAND — It’s finally here! After many days of computer prophecy, we now have a winter storm to track. Earlier Thursday, a small area of low pressure developed over the northern Rocky Mountains. This is what we’ve been waiting for! Its the humble beginning of our weekend winter storm.
Before today, every snowfall map posted on social media by amateur weather-ites has been literal fantasy. Monday’s computer-generated viral prediction of 34 inches of snow in Cleveland sent shockwaves through the interwebs. But, alas… that, too, was a hoax. Either that or something dreamed up by Sandra Bullock in a blindfold. Posting a computer model guidance snowfall prediction, five days before the storm, without the proper poop emoji attached, is always a meteorological No-No.
Watch my Facebook Live below discussing the winter storm.
The storm is finally, physically, on our weather map. Now we can look at it. Measure it. Stick 12 weather balloons down its low-level jet if we want to. All this info can now be fed into the computer models and the resulting guidance suddenly becomes better…more precise…more real.
We can now fine-tune our forecast a bit more:
1) Winter Storm WATCHES have been issued for ALL of northern Ohio for Saturday into Sunday. A WATCH doesn’t mean you get blasted, that’s what WARNINGS are for. A WATCH means it’s time to prepare.
2) Heavy snow is likely across parts of northern Ohio beginning Saturday morning. Peak snow intensity is likely to be from mid-afternoon Saturday through 2 or 3 am Sunday morning.
3) Snow will taper off quickly Sunday morning.
4) Snow totals of 4 to 8 inches will be common, with a few spots from near Canton to Youngstown seeing 8 to 12 inches by sunrise Sunday.
5) Winds make it worse! Wind gusts with the storm Saturday through Sunday will gust above 30 mph. This will result in low visibility on the roadways and lots of blowing and drifting snow! Wind chills will range between -10 and -25 Saturday night through Sunday.
6) Winds behind the storm will shift around to the north Sunday afternoon. Lake effect snow could give you a few more inches of snow Sunday night and Monday morning across the favored snow belt areas of northern Ohio.
7) Still time for the storm track to shift. Even the slightest shift in the storm’s path will change where the heavy snow will fall. There is also the potential for some sleet and freezing rain to mix in south of U.S. Route 30 Saturday afternoon. Any rain or sleet will cut down on snow totals in the end.
8) Time to make sure the car is gassed up and you have enough wine and cheese (and bread and milk) to get you through Saturday and Sunday. Stay connected
for the latest.
Source Article from https://www.news5cleveland.com/weather/weather-news/winter-storm-will-bring-heavy-snow-across-northeast-ohio
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has canceled his delegation’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week due to the partial U.S. government shutdown, according to a statement released by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on Thursday.
Trump, who attended last year’s Davos event, had planned to go again this year but pulled out last week as he grapples with Democrats in Congress over funding for a wall on the border with Mexico that has led to a partial shutdown of the government.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were expected to lead the U.S. delegation in Trump’s place, two senior administration officials said this week.
“Out of consideration for the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay and to ensure his team can assist as needed, President Trump has canceled his delegation’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,” Sanders’s statement said.
Mnuchin and Pompeo had planned to speak jointly to the opening session of the forum on Jan. 22. They were also expected to jointly host a dinner of the Group of Seven foreign and finance ministers to discuss national security and economic issues.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also planned to be part of the delegation.
(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Lisa Lambert and Sonya Hepinstall)
Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/01/17/trump-cancels-us-delegation-to-davos-forum/23645803/
Teachers in Los Angeles are in their fourth day of a strike. Among other things, union leaders are demanding smaller class sizes. But the benefits of reducing class size can be complicated.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/01/17/685116971/the-los-angeles-teacher-strikes-class-size-conundrum
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday addressed news coverage and criticism regarding his wife’s decision to return to teaching at a Virginia elementary school that explicitly bars LGBTQ employees and students.
“My wife and I have been in the public eye for quite a while, we’re used to the criticism,” Pence said in an interview with EWTN, a cable network that offers “news from a Catholic perspective.” But, he added, “to see major news organizations attacking Christian education is deeply offensive to us.”
“We have a rich tradition in America of Christian education, and frankly religious education broadly defined,” he continued. “We’ll let the other critics roll off our back, but this criticism of Christian education in America should stop.”
National news outlets, including NBC News, reported Wednesday on the publicly available employment application and parent agreement of Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia, where Karen Pence is now teaching art twice a week.
The school’s employment application asks applicants to initial a passage stating that they will “live a personal life of moral purity.” The “moral misconduct” that disqualifies potential employees includes “heterosexual activity outside of marriage (e.g., premarital sex, cohabitation, extramarital sex), homosexual or lesbian sexual activity, polygamy, transgender identity, any other violation of the unique roles of male and female, sexual harassment, use or viewing of pornographic material or websites, and sexual abuse or improprieties toward minors as defined by Scripture and federal or state law.”
Virginia, like most states, has no statewide legislation explicitly prohibiting private employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
A parent agreement posted on the school’s website states that Immanuel Christian School reserves the right to “refuse admission” or “discontinue enrollment” of a student if “the atmosphere or conduct within a particular home, the activities of a parent or guardian, or the activities of the student are counter to, or are in opposition to, the biblical lifestyle the school teaches.” The prohibited conduct and activities include “sexual immorality,” “homosexual activity or bi-sexual activity.”
The parent agreement cites Leviticus 20:13, a Bible passage that states, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
Karen Pence’s communications director on Wednesday said, “It’s absurd that her decision to teach art to children at a Christian school, and the school’s religious beliefs, are under attack.” Her office did not answer questions about her beliefs regarding employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and whether she believes homosexual activity and transgender identity constitute “moral misconduct.”
Immanuel Christian School’s policies are not uncommon for an evangelical Christian institution, according to Dartmouth College religion professor Randall Balmer, who said the religious right has “elevated sexuality into a litmus test of one’s faith.” However, its policies are out-of-touch with most religious Americans.
Most religious groups in the U.S. support same-sex marriage, according to a 2017 report by the Public Religion Research Institute. The study found approximately two-thirds of white mainline Protestants (67 percent), white Catholics (66 percent), Orthodox Christians (66 percent) and Latino Catholics (65 percent) favor same-sex marriage, along with 77 percent of Jewish Americans, 80 percent of Buddhists and 75 percent of Hindus. Opposition to gay marriage, according to the report, “is now confined to a few of the most conservative Christian religious traditions,” including white evangelical Protestants. The study also found majorities of nearly every major religious group in the U.S. now support legal protections against discrimination for LGBTQ Americans.
Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/mike-pence-calls-criticism-wife-s-job-anti-lgbtq-school-n960091
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Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump was startled Tuesday as he watched television coverage of his nominee for attorney general describing a warm relationship with the special counsel Robert Mueller in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/politics/donald-trump-william-barr-robert-mueller/index.html