After the talks ended, despite a slight reduction in violence with the Taliban, the militants have remained ascendant. But Trump said that over the past few months “we’ve hit them so hard, they’ve never been hit this hard. In the history of the war, they have never been hit this hard.” That, he indicated, is why “they want to make a deal.”
“It’s falling because the protesters got what they wanted,” said John Kilduff, partner with Again Capital. He said investors may now think the potential for disruption of Iraq oil exports has abated.
“Let’s see how the market reacts to this development. Scores were killed over the weekend,” he said.
Helima Croft, head of global commodities strategy at RBC, said the situation in Iraq now risks getting worse. “I think this is maybe far from over,” she said. “They are trading on a headline because they believe the Middle East is becoming more tranquil, not realizing that the battle for the future of Iraq is entering a more dangerous phase potentially.”
Protesters have focused on Iran’s influence in the country, which has water shortages, power outages and a high level of unemployment.
“There’s a sense the oil dividend is not being used to produce any economic dividend,” Croft said.
Croft said Abdul-Mahdi was expendable because he was not tied to any party, and the question now is when will elections take place.
“He was a consensus pick. What has to be a concern to Iran is that these Shiite protesters in Iraq have turned their rage on Iran,” said Croft.
Kilduff said the protests are another challenge to Iran in the region, at a time when its regime is also being challenged by violent protests in its own country. “That’s a key development, that the ire of the protesters is directed toward Iran,” he said.
As oil was being hit hard Friday, the outlook for the trade dispute between the U.S. and China looked more uncertain. The talks are expected to continue, but the potential for a deal became murkier after President Donald Trump signed a bill supporting protesters Wednesday, and Beijing responded negatively in return.
There are also doubts surfacing about OPEC’s meeting next week, with Russia potentially seeking to have its condensates exempted from the production quotas. News reports quoted unnamed sources saying Saudi Arabia does not want to shoulder a bigger percentage of the cuts.
“The OPEC meeting is looking more bearish by the day,” Kilduff said, noting that oil was also moving on technical factors. “The meeting looks like it might be going off the rails.” West Texas Intermediate futures slid just under the 50-day moving average at $55.62 per barrel.
Iraq is now the fourth government to fall, following Lebanon, Algeria and Sudan.
“Oil’s a totally broken barometer. The fact we’ve had multiple governments falling in the region does not mean the region is becoming more placid,” Croft said.
‘The Case for Trump’ author Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on impeachment proceedings on ‘The Story.’
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor David Hanson accused Democrats Friday of trying to impeach President Trump over “thought crimes,” saying the president did nothing illegal.
“If I want to think about speeding 80 miles an hour and I talk about thinking about it but I actually don’t, I’m not guilty of anything other than harboring a bad thought,” Hanson said on “The Story.” “So Trump may or may not, we don’t really know, the evidence suggests he didn’t think about delaying aid and that aid was delayed, but it wasn’t cut off. Maybe [Trump] thought about cutting it off. But that’s not a crime.”
The House Judiciary Committee is taking over the next phase of the impeachment inquiry into Trump as Chairman Jerrold Nadler announced plans for a hearing next week to weigh whether the president’s actions reach a level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and warrant articles of impeachment.
Nadler, D-N.Y., penned a letter to the president on Tuesday announcing a hearing for Dec. 4 at 10 a.m., and notifying him of the committee’s intentions to provide him with “certain privileges” while they consider “whether to recommend articles of impeachment to the full House.”
Guest host Ed Henry pressed Hanson, saying it looked like aid was held up only for Hanson to defend the president’s right to hold it up.
“It’s not against the law to hold up aid,” Hanson said. “But the bottom line is he didn’t cut it.”
“You’re going to convict people of… thought crimes, for considering cutting it,” Hanson added. “What would you do if you said, well, Barack Obama never gave them lethal aid and a lot of people died because of that? We’re not impeaching Barack Obama for that.”
Hanson said that unless former National Security Adviser John Bolton testifies, there is “nothing” Democrats have to impeach Trump.
“So unless they can bring in a marquee witness like John Bolton that has new information of direct testimony, of a conversation with the president, there is nothing, they know it,” Hanson said.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
At least three people were injured in a stabbing attack in The Hague, Netherlands, on Friday, Dutch police said. The incident happened inside the Hudson’s Bay department store along a busy shopping street, BBC News reported.
The three victims were released from the hospital after being treated for their injuries, police said.
The suspect is believed to be a man between 45 and 50-years-old. Police said he was wearing a grey jogging tracksuit.
“Due to the complexity and care, this takes time. We understand that there are many questions. As soon as we know more, we will report this via this channel,” Dutch police said on Twitter.
Police arrive at the Grote Marktstraat, one of the main shopping streets in the center of the Dutch city of The Hague, after several people were wounded in a stabbing incident on November 29, 2019.
SEM VAN DER WAL/ANP/AFP via Getty
The shopping area was busy due to Black Friday holiday shoppers, and many posts on social media show crowds of people running from the scene, as well as emergency services and helicopters.
An American Airlines flight landed with an extra passenger.
On Wednesday, Nereida Araujo gave birth to a healthy baby girl on the jetway of Flight 868, after the plane landed in Charlotte, North Carolina from Tampa, Florida during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
The uncommon birthplace inspired the newborn’s fitting moniker: Lizyana Sky Taylor.
“Baby Sky decided to enter the world on a plane,” Araujo wrote on Facebook. “Mommi (sic) handled it well thanks to everybody who assisted us with love & care.”
American Airlines spokesperson Crystal Byrd told USA TODAY that the airline “requested medical personnel due to a passenger who needed assistance” upon landing in Charlotte.
“Paramedics, along with the Charlotte Fire Department, assisted in the delivery of a healthy baby girl at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport on the jetway,” Grace Nelson, spokesperson for Mecklenburg EMS Agency, told USA TODAY.
Nelson added, “We are happy (and thankful of course!!) to be a part of this family’s story.”
According to Charlotte’s local news station, WSOC, Araujo said she was 38 weeks pregnant and cleared to fly by the airline and her doctor, before her water broke toward the end of the 1-hour-and-39-minute flight.
“I was sleeping and I felt like a pop in my lower back,” Araujo told the outlet. “I just felt like liquid and I woke my husband up.”
Nelson noted that Sky’s airport birthplace is “exceptionally rare.” But she’s not the first woman to go into labor on a plane. .
In February, an expectant mother gave birth to a baby boy thousands of feet in the air on a JetBlue flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Fort Lauderdale. The birth of the airline’s “youngest customer to date” coincidentally happened on a plane named “Born To Be Blue.”
Similarly, in June 2017, a baby boy was born on a Spirit Airlines flight from Fort Lauderdale to Dallas. As a result, the discount airline gifted the newborn free flights for himself and a guest every year on his birthday for life.
One of the heroes who tackled a knife-wielding terrorist after several people were stabbed near London Bridge said he just did “what any Londoner would do”.
Thomas Gray, 24, was among a group of men who dragged the killer to the floor near Fishmongers’ Hall on Friday, after the terrorist left two dead and several injured.
The 24-year-old, who is a tour firm manager, said he stamped on the terrorist’s wrist to try to make him release one of two large knives he was carrying.
Mr Gray said: “I was brought up on rugby and the rule is ‘one in, all in’. I did what any Londoner would do and tried to put a stop to it.”
At the time of the attack, he had been driving northbound on London Bridge with his colleague Stevie, when they saw several people running towards the south of the bridge.
He was among several heroes who helped restrain the attacker (Image: Twitter)
They immediately turned the car off and ran towards the attacker, who had been “wrestled” to the floor by “five or six other blokes”.
Mr Gray said: “He had two knives on him, one in each hand, and it looked like they were taped to his hand”.
“I stamped on his left wrist while someone else smacked his hand on the ground and kicked one of the knives away.
“I went to pick up the knife when I heard a cop say ‘he has got a bomb’.
“I then got back and hid behind a school bus which was full of kids at the time.”
Mr Gray said he saw “two or three” shots fired by police which hit the attacker, who then “hit the deck”.
“I then heard a fourth one and then a pop and a bang, followed by ‘run, run, run’,” he said.
The 24-year-old said he stamped on the terrorist’s wrist to try to make him release one of two large knives he was carrying (Image: Enterprise News and Pictures)
The attack took place near London Bridge on Friday afternoon (Image: Press Association Images)
“I turned and ran and then heard a volley of shots from behind us.”
Mr Gray told ITV News the attacker was being chased by five men with a “fire extinguisher” before he was wrestled to the ground.
Mr Gray’s colleague Stevie Hurst was also one of the heroes who helped restrain the knifeman (Image: Facebook)
Police and emergency crew deal with the terrorist incident on London Bridge (Image: Nils Jorgensen/INSTARimages.com)
The attacker, who was wearing a fake suicide vest and has not been named, was killed by police on London Bridge in full view of horrified onlookers.
The members of the public who intervened have been widely praised, with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan hailing their “breathtaking heroism” and Prime Minister Boris Johnson their “extraordinary bravery”.
A cordon remains in place around the area (Image: Jack Dredd/REX)
The University of Cambridge would not confirm if any of its staff or students were at Fishmongers’ Hall, which is just metres from where the suspect was shot by armed police.
Its comments come amid reports that a conference was being held there for a programme set up by Cambridge university staff.
A spokesman said: “We are gravely concerned at reports that University of Cambridge staff, students and alumni were caught up in the incident at London Bridge.
“We are urgently seeking clarification and further details. Our thoughts are with all those who have been affected by these terrible events.”
Video footage released after the attacks showed Naeem Rashid, 50, trying to tackle the alleged gunman, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, outside one of the mosques. The father of three, who had emigrated to New Zealand from Pakistan a decade earlier, was hailed as a hero in his home country after his death. Prime Minister Imran Khan awarded him a posthumous bravery award, and tweeted that he was “martyred” while trying to stop the gunman. Pakistan also declared a national day of mourning after the attack.
It’s unclear how American negotiators could get the Taliban to agree to a cease-fire now, when they were not able to do so earlier.
The American military has already begun scaling back its presence in the country, giving negotiators even less leverage than they had before. Last month, the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin S. Miller, said the number of troops had been reduced by 2,000 over the past year.
Mr. Trump, on Thursday, said he was “bringing down the number of troops substantially.”
For the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, Mr. Trump’s statements were welcome. For months, Mr. Ghani had unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Americans not to give away an American troop withdrawal without a cease-fire because that would leave his government even more vulnerable.
The government has already been weakened by being excluded from the talks so far because the Taliban refuse to engage before an American troop withdrawal.
Now, suddenly, the American president gave Mr. Ghani’s position a boost at a difficult time for him, when he is stuck in a bitter fight over his re-election in a disputed vote, which is tipping the country to crisis.
Mr. Ghani met with Mr. Trump at the Bagram Air Field on the eve of large protests by supporters of his rival, Abdullah Abdullah. Much of the Afghan capital was under a lockdown by security forces on Friday morning as thousands marched to a roundabout behind the presidential palace demanding fraudulent votes be thrown out.
Mr. Abdullah accuses the country’s election commission of including 300,000 questionable votes in favor of Mr. Ghani.
As the police cordoned off the area, empty buses and abandoned vehicles remained parked on the bridge. In the nearby Borough Market, a food and drink space that is popular with tourists, visitors were told to shelter in place, before eventually being evacuated.
Mayor Sadiq Khan of London said in a statement that he was in close contact with the police, and urged those in the city to follow police directions.
“We must — and we will — stay resolute in our determination to stand strong and united in the face of terror,” he said. “Those who seek to attack us and divide us will never succeed.”
The British Transport Police said that the nearby London Bridge station, one of the city’s busiest transit hubs, had been closed.
John McManus, a BBC reporter who was crossing the bridge at the time of the incident, told the news outlet that he had seen a group of men involved in a fight with another man on the bridge. The police then arrived, and “a number of shots were fired at this man.”
Matthew Marchand, 37, whose office faces the bridge, said it was “scary to think that this happens on your doorstep somehow.”
“Bob Johnson is not working class. He does not reflect the issue, nor does he even seem like he has the ability to speak to the issues of the working class,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, an organization focused on increasing black voter turnout, told The Washington Post’s Eugene Scott in July.
BREAKING/AP: The prime minister of Iraq, Adel Abdul Mahdi, says he is submitting his resignation. AP
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP arrived at Palm Beach International Airport at 6:53 this morning, after a whirlwind trip to Afghanistan, according to the pooler, our own ANITA KUMAR. TRUMP switched planes at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.
ANITA’S LEADALL from Bagram Air Field: “Trump uses surprise trip to Afghanistan to promote new peace talks”: “It was his first visit to the country, and the president used the opportunity to pledge that he would be resuming ceasefire discussions with the Taliban, the insurgent force the U.S. originally invaded Afghanistan to oust. Trump made the announcement during a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
“‘The Taliban wants to make a deal — we’ll see if they make a deal,’ he said during brief remarks to reporters following his meeting with Ghani, who had only been notified of Trump’s plans hours earlier. ‘If they do they do, and if they don’t they don’t. That’s fine.’”
— ANITA TAKES US BEHIND THE SCENES: “President Donald Trump started his day like so many others at his south Florida resort: a relaxing round of golf, a few sharp tweets and then a White House announcement that he’d be staying in for the evening.
“But this particular Wednesday — the night before Thanksgiving — ended with Trump escaping Mar-a-Lago without the usual presidential motorcade spectacle, boarding a military transport to Washington and then embarking on a 13-hour Air Force One flight into the heart of America’s longest war.” POLITICO
FINALLY, the WSJ ED BOARD takes on something meaningful: “A Revolt Against the Colonials”: “Perhaps it was inevitable given political trends on American campuses, but at George Washington University students no longer want anything to do with the school moniker since 1926: the Colonials. Yes, America’s founding isn’t nearly woke enough, or something.
“In March students passed a referendum, with about 54% of the vote, calling on GW to ditch the Colonials. A petition argued that ‘no matter how innocent the intention,’ the name is ‘received as extremely offensive’ because it ‘has too deep a connection to colonization and glorifies the act of systemic oppression.’ And here we were taught that the American colonists fought against British oppression, but forgive our OK Boomer education.
“The GW administration seems to be adapting to the new history. Shortly after the student vote, the school said it was ‘following the conversation’ but had ‘no specific comment.’ This summer a remodeled space called Colonial Central was re-christened the Student Services Hub. Freshman orientation is no longer Colonial Inauguration. Last year the basketball rally Colonial Madness became GDub Madness.”
— FROM JAKE: As an alum, if the Colonials become the Hippos, I’m done.
L.A. TIMES’ MARK Z. BARABAK with the big picture from MESA, ARIZ.: “Trump has turned the suburbs into a GOP disaster zone. Does that doom his reelection?”: “For decades, there was an unvaried rhythm to life in America’s suburbs: Carpool in the morning, watch sports on weekends, barbecue in the summer, vote Republican in November.
“Then came President Trump. The orderly subdivisions and kid-friendly communities that ring the nation’s cities have become a deathtrap for Republicans, as college-educated and upper-income women flee the party in droves, costing the GOP its House majority and sapping the party’s strength in state capitals and local governments nationwide.
“The dramatic shift is also reshaping the 2020 presidential race, elevating Democratic hopes in traditional GOP strongholds like Arizona and Georgia, and forcing Trump to redouble efforts to boost rural turnout to offset defectors who, some fear, may never vote Republican so long as the president is on the ballot. …
“With 11 electoral votes, Arizona is a bigger prize than Wisconsin — a Midwestern battleground both parties view as a key to the election — and the Grand Canyon State is expected to draw lavish attention and a fortune’s worth of advertising over the next year. Visiting last month, Vice President Mike Pence said he and Trump ‘are going to be in and out of Arizona a lot.’” LAT
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID … BEN WHITE: “President Donald Trump needs two big achievements to keep markets and the economy as glittering assets in his challenging 2020 reelection bid: passage of a new NAFTA and a trade deal with China.
“But Democrats are stringing him along on the first — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — and he’s engaged in a seemingly endless rope-a-dope with China on the second with no guarantee of success. That’s left the economy as a major wild card for next year.
“Businesses are sitting on cash instead of making investments. Growth is stalled at around 2 percent and expected to slow. Jobs numbers are decent but far from ‘yuge.’ And big campaign promises remain unfulfilled. Even Trump’s most ardent supporters acknowledge the president’s reelection bid would face enormous risks if the economy turns down next year.” POLITICO
— WSJ: “A Tight Job Market Insulates a Slowing Economy — and Perhaps Trump, Too,” by Shayndi Raice and Jon Hilsenrath in Rosendale, Wis.: “Two economic sectors especially exposed to President Trump’s trade confrontations — manufacturing and farming — have taken direct hits in Wisconsin and a handful of other politically important swing states in the heartland, contributing to slowing growth.
“But in an era of severe worker shortages, people losing jobs when a plant or a farm closes are quickly getting scooped up by others. This provides a safety net in the broader economy by keeping incomes and consumer spending strong. Exceptionally low unemployment amid economic challenges could well be a buffer for the president in the 2020 elections.” WSJ
TWO NAIL-IN-COFFIN STORIES FOR KAMALA HARRIS …
… NYT’S JONATHAN MARTIN, ASTEAD HERNDON and ALEX BURNS: “How Kamala Harris’s Campaign Unraveled”: “In early November, a few days after Senator Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign announced widespread layoffs and an intensified focus on Iowa, her senior aides gathered for a staff meeting at their Baltimore headquarters and pelted the campaign manager, Juan Rodriguez, with questions.
“What exactly was Ms. Harris’s new strategy? How much money and manpower could they put into Iowa? What would their presence be like in other early voting states? Mr. Rodriguez offered general, tentative answers that didn’t satisfy the room, according to two campaign officials directly familiar with the conversation. Some Harris aides sitting at the table could barely suppress their fury about what they saw as the undoing of a once-promising campaign. Their feelings were reflected days later by Kelly Mehlenbacher, the state operations director, in a blistering resignation letter obtained by The Times.
“‘This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly,’ Ms. Mehlenbacher wrote, assailing Mr. Rodriguez and Ms. Harris’s sister, Maya, the campaign chairwoman, for laying off aides with no notice. ‘With less than 90 days until Iowa we still do not have a real plan to win.’ …
“Representative Marcia Fudge, who has endorsed Ms. Harris and is a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in an interview that the senator was an exceptional candidate who had been poorly served by some top staff and must fire Mr. Rodriguez. But she also acknowledged that Ms. Harris bore a measure of responsibility for her problems — ‘it’s her campaign’ — and that the structure she created has not served her well.” NYT
— WAPO’S CHELSEA JANES in Greenville, S.C. with quite the lead: “Harris faces uphill climb amid questions about who she is”: “Sen. Kamala D. Harris had everything she needed to make her pitch. Big yellow cutout letters spelled “Justice for the People” on the stage behind her. White folding chairs splayed out ahead of her, most of them filled, and their occupants seemed happy to see her. Nothing smelled of a flailing campaign.
“‘I’m spending a lot of time in what I am now thinking of and considering to be my second home, South Carolina,’ Harris told the crowd, drawing some nods of approval. ‘I’m also spending a lot of time in Iowa,’ she added.
“It was typical of Harris and her campaign, which has often displayed a desire to be everything to everyone that has instead left voters with questions about who she is, what she believes and what her priorities and convictions would be as president.
“As a result, her candidacy is now teetering, weighed down by indecision within her campaign, her limits as a candidate and dwindling funds that have forced her to retreat in some places at a moment she expected to be surging. After last week’s debate in Atlanta, where she won high marks, her advisers were simply hoping she did well enough to inspire people to donate enough money so that she could air a new ad. As of Wednesday, they hadn’t.” WaPo
UNLIKESOME OTHER CANDIDATES, fizzling out just means that Harris goes back to the Senate, where she still has a massive perch.
NYT’S SYDNEY EMBER in Denison, Iowa: “O.K., Mayor: Why 37-Year-Old Pete Buttigieg Is Attracting Boomers”: “As Mr. Buttigieg, 37, looks to solidify his support in the remaining weeks before the Democratic primary season begins, he has found a wellspring of enthusiasm among a critical bloc of voters more frequently associated with Joseph R. Biden Jr.: older white Americans. …
“During a burst of campaign stops in Iowa this week, his first trip to the state since a Des Moines Register/CNN poll showed him with a commanding, nine-point lead here, Mr. Buttigieg repeatedly made appeals to older Iowans that were hardly subtle. ‘We’ve got to act not just to shore up Social Security but to make sure everybody can retire and live in dignity,’ he said at a rally on Monday evening in Council Bluffs, Iowa. ‘Call it my ‘Gray New Deal.’’ NYT
“Fox News Sunday”: Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) … Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). Panel: Jason Chaffetz, Jane Harman, Rich Lowry and Juan Williams. Power Player: Sandy Lerner.
“State of the Union”: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) … Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). Panel: Hillary Rosen, David Urban, Karen Finney and Doug Heye. (Dana Bash is the guest host).
“Face the Nation”: Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Book Panel: “Presidents, Patriotism, and Politics”: Michael Duffy, Ruth Marcus, Jon Meacham, Susan Page and David Rubenstein. Panel: Amy Walter, Ben Domenech, Jamal Simmons and Jeffrey Goldberg.
“Inside Politics”: Dan Balz, Margaret Talev, Seung Min Kim and Lisa Lerer. (Nia-Malika Henderson is the guest host).
“Meet the Press”: Panel: Betsy Woodruff Swan, David Brooks, Al Cardenas and Maria Teresa Kumar.
THE PRESIDENT’S FRIDAY … THE PRESIDENT returned to Mar-a-Lago from the airport at 7:18 a.m., per today’s pooler, the AFP’s Sebastian Smith. There is nothing on his public schedule today.
PLAYBOOK READS
HMMM … FROM “LUNCH WITH THE FT,” RONAN FARROW EDITION: “[W]hen word got around that Farrow was looking into the Weinstein story, he felt that his relationship with the [Hillary Clinton] — a beneficiary of donations from the producer — started to cool.
“Was that a painful revelation? ‘It’s remarkable how quickly even people with a long relationship with you will turn if you threaten the centres of power or the sources of funding around them,’ says Farrow evenly. ‘Ultimately, there are a lot of people out there who operate in that way. They’re beholden to powerful interests and if you go up against those interests, you become radioactive very quickly.’ Clinton’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.” FT
LITTLE ROCKET MAN — “How North Korea Soured on Donald Trump,” by The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman: “Kim Jong Un only wanted to engage with the president. Now he’s turning on him.” The Atlantic
ACROSS THE POND — “Black Friday backlash grows in Europe,” by Eline Schaart: “The U.S.-inspired sales day that has shops splashing big discounts to bring out the crowds is falling out of fashion in Europe.
“For many people, Black Friday is the best day of the year to buy a new phone, cheap flights or that coveted piece of clothing or furniture.
“But a growing chorus of environmental groups, policymakers and even retailers are encouraging people to boycott the shopping tradition — citing concerns that it breeds damaging consumerism and carries a terrible environmental footprint.” POLITICO Europe
TV TONIGHT — Bob Costa sits down with NYT’s Maggie Haberman and Time’s Jon Meacham for one-on-one conversations about the presidency and impeachment on a special edition of PBS’ “Washington Week” at 8 p.m.
SPOTTED at the 33rd annual Pilgrims Charity Luncheon, hosted by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) at the Palm Wednesday: Terry McAuliffe, Virginia House Speaker designate Eileen Filler-Corn, Justin Fairfax, Mark Ein, Howard Gutman, Gerald McGowan and Raoul Fernandez.
BIRTHDAYS: Janet Napolitano is 62 … Rahm Emanuel is 6-0 … Ann Fishman … Mike Fitzgerald (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) … L.A. Times’ Mark Barabak … Margaret Carlson … Emily Lenzner, EVP of global communications and public affairs at the MPAA … Joan Sass … Maggie Delahoyde … Hayley Dierker, COS of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee … Matt Hall, co-founder and partner at Harbinger, is 37 … Tom Doheny … Joe Sternlieb … CNN’s Pamela Brown … Ceara Flake … William Turner is 3-0 … Reuters’ Alissa de Carbonnel … Facebook’s Tomá Beczak … Christina Lee … Trent Spiner … Madeline Ryan … Cliff Hurst … Michelle Meadows … Chris Byrne … Bob Cardillo … Alexandra Ulmer … Dani Dayan …
… Shalom Lipner, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council … Liza Acevedo … Chris Frates, founder of Storyline and a SiriusXM host … former Indiana state Sen. Amanda Banks is 4-0 … Jemma York, speechwriter and communications adviser for Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) … former Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) is 68 … Robert Hedden … Ian Magruder … Louise Rothschild … Anastasia Szold … Jen Samawat … Sydelle Moore … Jonathan Hirshon … Cliff Wilkes … Gregory Ferenstein … Juri Jacoby … Sarah Venuto … Ryan Leavitt, partner at Barker Leavitt … Doug Wilson … Josh Stinn … Emily Hawkins
Two Carnival Cruise Line passengers died in a bus crash while on an independent tour in Belize on Wednesday.
“Sadly, two of our guests have died and the five others who were injured will continue their medical care in U.S.,” Robyn Fink, director of PR at Carnival, told USA TODAY in a statement. “Our Carnival CareTeam and medical staff are supporting guests and their families.” Guests from at least one other cruise line were also on the bus.
USA TODAY has reached out to the Belize Police Department and the U.S. State Department for more information.
The passengers were traveling on the Carnival Vista, a seven-day trip that left Galveston, Texas, on Nov. 23 and is set to return there Nov. 30. The ship was in Belize City Wednesday, according to CruiseMapper.
“Please keep our guests and their families in your thoughts and prayers,” Fink added in the statement.
BISHOP, Calif. — When Jamie Moore arrived home on a Thursday evening in March, she was surprised to find her mother-in-law in her living room. Glenda Moore, 67, had been sitting in her wheelchair for hours. Without anyone to help her to the bathroom, she’d had an accident. She was also having trouble breathing. “It was awful,” Jamie Moore recalled.
Glenda Moore told Jamie that she had been discharged from the Bishop Care Center nursing home, in Bishop, California. She had been living at the nursing home — a sprawling brick building on the side of a state highway — for several weeks, recovering from a back surgery that unexpectedly left her unable to walk much or take care of herself.
Several days earlier, nursing home administrators had shown Glenda Moore a letter from Medicare, explaining that her rehabilitation coverage was ending. She was unable to pay the nursing home’s more-than-$7,000 monthly fee, so, thinking she had no other options, she left. (A relative dropped her off at Jamie’s home, where Glenda Moore had lived previously, without telling Jamie.)
“They pushed her out and she was not ready,” Jamie Moore, who has worked as a nursing assistant, said. “She was not ready at all.”
Glenda Moore went to a nursing home to recover from a back surgery that unexpectedly left her unable to walk much or take care of herself.Valerie Bischoff / for NBC News
As the family later learned, Glenda Moore had the right to appeal the Medicare decision, or to apply for Medicaid — and, if she qualified (which she later did), to stay in the nursing home on Medicaid for as long as she needed nursing care. Instead, Moore’s family said, Moore became one of thousands of Americans discharged against their wishes or evicted from nursing homes each year. (The Bishop Care Center maintains that Moore’s health had improved and that she voluntarily left the facility, and points out that they gave her a document noting her right to appeal the Medicare decision.)
Nationally, long-term care ombudsmen, who advocate for elderly and disabled residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities, received 10,610 complaints about discharges and transfers in 2017, up from 9,192 in 2015. The ombudsmen, whose work is federally mandated and state-funded, receive more complaints about discharges and transfers than any other grievance.
The complaints likely expose just a small fraction of the problem, said Kelly Bagby, vice president at the AARP Foundation, a nonprofit that serves vulnerable people over 50.
“Most people don’t even know they have rights,” she said. And many complaints never result in a formal state investigation.
Advocates, experts and the federal government say that nursing homes tend to evict low-income, longer-term residents who receive Medicaid, to make room for shorter-term rehabilitation patients who are covered by Medicare. Medicare reimburses nursing homes at a higher rate than Medicaid, so it’s more lucrative for facilities to house Medicare patients who stay for short stints before recovering and moving elsewhere.
“Society’s problems are manifesting themselves on the doorsteps of nursing homes.”
In California, for example, the average state Medicaid reimbursement for a nursing home is $219 per day, according to the California Association of Health Facilities, while Medicare may reimburse more than $1,000 per day, but only for up to 20 days, when patients must begin paying part of the fees. (Medicare coverage ends completely after 100 days.) Advocates say that eviction notices are often handed out around the 20-day mark.
“It is illegal to discriminate against residents based on payment source, but it happens all the time,” said Tony Chicotel, attorney at the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, a nonprofit that supports long-term care residents in the state. “It feels like there’s just a tidal wave of cases.”
Chicotel said he receives calls every day from panicked residents or family members being threatened with discharge from a long-term care facility.
Deborah Pacyna, director of public affairs at the California Association of Health Facilities, a trade association representing nursing homes, told NBC News that improper and illegal discharges are “a really rare thing,” and that the issue is exaggerated by media attention.
She added that California’s Medicaid program, Medical, does not provide “adequate funding” to care for many patients with complicated health issues and behavioral disorders. “Medicare pays more. Those people are rehab patients; they’re in and out,” she said. “That is how they break even,” she added of nursing homes. “Society’s problems are manifesting themselves on the doorsteps of nursing homes.”
‘You’re just a piece of garbage’
Nursing homes are legally permitted to evict residents under several conditions: if a resident’s health improves sufficiently; if his presence in a facility puts others in danger; if the resident’s needs cannot be met by the facility; if he stops paying and has not applied for Medicare or Medicaid; or if the facility closes. Facilities are obligated under federal law to give 30 days’ notice, in writing, and also to work with the resident on a transition plan.
Bagby, of the AARP, said that while some residents are issued formal discharge letters with advance notice, others are asked or pressured to leave with “no due process rights, no notice.”
In one case in Los Angeles, in April 2018, Ronald Anderson said he was woken at night by the nursing home staff at the Avalon Villa Care Center and told he was being evicted. Anderson, 51 at the time, had moved into the facility over a year earlier to recover from a partial foot amputation. He said he was loaded into a van and dropped off on a sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles, which has one of the largest homeless populations in the country, according to a report from the California Department of Public Health.
Anderson, who is diabetic, was left in a wheelchair without his insulin or testing supplies — on a street cluttered with tent encampments and broken glass. The Department of Public Health report noted that he could have slipped into a coma or died.
“You’re just a piece of garbage,” Anderson said, from the Union Rescue Mission homeless shelter in Los Angeles where he now lives. “They’ll kick you right out on the curb.”
Ronald Anderson now lives at the Union Rescue Mission homeless shelter in Los Angeles.Valerie Bischoff / for NBC News
Avalon Villa Health Care, which runs the nursing home, later paid $450,000 to settle a civil complaint filed by the Los Angeles city attorney in response to Anderson’s case and other evictions of homeless residents, with the money going toward civil penalties, hiring and training Avalon Villa staff and finding temporary housing for the facility’s homeless residents. The city attorney set up an emergency hotline and invited members of the public to report cases of resident abandonment.
A lawyer for the Avalon Villa Care Center told NBC News that the facility “strongly disputes that it has inappropriately discharged any patients” and “rejects the allegations of the city attorney.”
The Rev. Andy Bales, director of the Union Rescue Mission, said “resident dumping” from nursing homes and hospitals is so common that the shelter set up a security camera outside — which Bales calls “the dump cam” — to capture evidence of it. He said he is aware of at least four instances from the last year in which people have been dropped off on nearby streets by hospitals or nursing homes — though he believes the number is higher. As a result of the security camera, he said, “They won’t dump them off in front of us anymore.”
California’s long-term care ombudsmen received 1,404 complaints about nursing home evictions in 2018, up from 1,022 in 2014. Severallawsuitsconcerning nursing home discharges have recently been filed in the state.
Molly Davies, a California long-term care ombudsman, said that in addition to receiving more complaints about evictions, “there has also been an uptick in the egregiousness of some of these cases.”
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In some instances, she and other experts said, nursing homes drop residents off at a low-cost motel and pay for a night or two. “We’ve seen cases with residents who have dementia put into a van and dropped downtown onto the streets, without the ability to care for themselves,” she said.
The California Department of Public Health does not track where nursing homes discharge patients, according to a department spokesman, nor does the California long-term care ombudsman program. In some instances, however, routine state inspections and inspections following complaints uncover problems.
In a 2018 incident, described in a California Department of Health and Human Services report, a Rosemead nursing home discharged a resident to a hotel without any medical equipment and without ensuring that the hotel was “a safe environment.” The female resident still required assistance with activities such as using the toilet and bathing, and was found to lack “the capacity to make her needs known.” The nursing home received a federal “deficiency” citation.
In another case that resulted in a deficiency citation, a nursing home resident who “needed extensive assistance” to move between locations in his bedroom was discharged to a motel — and, a few days later, ended up in a hospital for emergency care.
These practices are not unique to California. In Maryland, one nursing home resident was dropped off in Baltimore, a city she had never been to, according to the state attorney general’s office. In another instance, a Washington County Sheriff’s deputy accused a nursing home of discharging a resident to a storage unit on a hot summer day.
Even when residents appeal eviction decisions through a state process and win the right to return to a nursing home, that nursing home sometimes refuses to readmit them, a group of plaintiffs told the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in July. The case is still pending, but the appeals court agreed with the plaintiffs that federal law does not allow “meaningless show trials that allow nursing homes to persist in improper transfers and discharges.”
The California Department of Health Care Services, the California Department of Public Health and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services all declined to comment, citing department policy not to comment on pending litigation.
A push for enforcement
In 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services strengthened regulatory requirements around nursing home discharges and transfers, specifying that residents cannot be evicted for nonpayment while they are in the process of applying for Medicaid or appealing a Medicaid denial. A year later, the agency announced an initiative to prevent illegal nursing home discharges, acknowledging that “some discharges are driven by payment concerns, such as when Medicare or private pay residents shift to Medicaid as the payment source.”
So far, the agency has approved $784,630 for a program in California that focuses on training nursing home staff on discharge regulations, a spokeswoman said in an email. The agency also provided $84,00 for a smaller project in Montana. Beyond that, the agency is not acting directly to address illegal evictions but is instead encouraging states “to propose projects that seek to address facility-initiated discharges that violate federal regulations,” the spokeswoman said by email.
Advocates for nursing home patients said more is needed. They want both federal and state agencies to do more to enforce existing rules on evictions.
“We haven’t seen any change in practice,” said Davies, the California long-term care ombudsman. “We haven’t seen a reduction in inappropriate transfers and discharges. There are certain enforcement tools that they have that they aren’t using consistently.” These tools, she said, include substantial fines.
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But the federal government has made changes that reduced fines against nursing homes that harm or endanger residents. Nursing homes used to receive fines for each day a violation was observed, but after a change the Trump administration implemented in July 2017, nursing homes are now usually fined just once per retroactive violation.
Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, an advocacy group, says this change can affect the way illegal evictions are punished. For instance, a nursing home that evicts a patient and refuses to readmit the person may be fined one time, instead of every day that the resident is denied access to a bed.
In the first 18 months following the change in guidelines, nursing homes across the country paid about $47 million less in fines for all violations compared to the previous 18-month period, said Dr. David Gifford, senior vice president of quality and regulatory affairs at the American Health Care Association, the nursing home industry’s main lobbying group.
Gifford told NBC News that the change was not about saving the industry money, but was meant to ensure consistent standards. He said the new fine structure incentivizes nursing homes to report violations and improve resident care.
‘I thought I was completely covered’
After she left the Bishop Care Center nursing home in March, Glenda Moore grew sicker. Over the following weeks, she cycled among her son and daughter-in-law’s home, several emergency rooms and another nursing home an hour away. According to her son and daughter-in-law, she was diagnosed with a bladder infection and pneumonia.
“I don’t want to be a burden on the kids,” Glenda Moore told NBC News in an interview in April. “I had retirement insurance, I had Medicare, I thought I was completely covered. That doesn’t count for anything … I had no idea.”
In May, her family appealed her discharge from the center. At a hearing conducted by the California Department of Health Care Services, the nursing home’s administrator said Glenda Moore had left willingly, according to the state’s summary report.
The state’s hearing officer ultimately found that the facility “failed to meet all of the regulatory-mandated discharge planning requirements.” However, the hearing officer ruled in favor of the nursing home, noting that Glenda Moore agreed to leave and was given paperwork notifying her of her right to appeal Medicare’s noncoverage decision.
By late July, her weight had dropped to about 80 pounds. She was hospitalized, and on Aug. 2 she died from acute renal failure and cardiopulmonary arrest.
Glenda Moore lived for a time with her son and daughter-in-law. Valerie Bischoff / for NBC News
Her family believes she wouldn’t have become so sick if she had been able to stay in the Bishop Care Center for a few weeks longer, until she was more stable.
Jamie Moore said her mother-in-law’s experience has changed the way she thinks about her own retirement.
“I never thought about it much until now. It scares the crap out of me,” she said. “The system is the system. What are you doing to do?”
A divisive leader drove the opposition to extreme measures. The political climate was toxic — with little civil debate or middle ground. The clash ended in a high-risk political showdown that captured the nation’s attention and shaped the next election.
This was the 2012 battle to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker, not the 2019 fight to impeach President Donald Trump. But for some who lived through the former, the episodes have clear similarities and a warning for Democrats about overreach and distraction.
“In both cases, they thought just as they were upset about something, everyone was,” Walker said, describing one of his takeaways from the campaign that failed to remove him from office. “Just because your base feels strongly about something doesn’t mean that the majority of other voters do.”
Although moderates declined to join liberals back then in voting to eject Walker, Democrats warn against presuming they’ll break the same way for Trump next year in Wisconsin, a state seen as pivotal in 2020. Voters who were likely wary of undoing Walker’s election via a rare recall face a simpler choice in whether to hand Trump a second term, they say.
“People may not like impeachment, simply because it adds to the drama of his presidency, but that doesn’t mean they are on the fence or sympathetic to Trump,” said Jon Erpenbach, a Democratic Wisconsin state senator.
The Walker recall sprang from a law he signed just months into his first term that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public employees. Walker didn’t reveal his plan until after he was elected in 2010, and the move sparked massive protests that made Wisconsin the center of a growing national fight over union rights.
Angry activists gathered nearly a million signatures to force the recall. Although Democrats had fought hard against the bill, with some state senators even fleeing the state at one point to avoid a vote, they were initially reluctant to embrace the recall for fear it would hurt then-President Barack Obama’s reelection hopes in 2012.
The recall became a proxy battle ahead of the presidential election, with Democrats arguing that Walker unfairly targeted teachers, nurses and other public employees to weaken the unions that traditionally supported Democratic candidates. Walker argued that his proposal shouldn’t have been a surprise since he campaigned on forcing public employees to pay more for their benefits while capping how much they could bargain for in raises. He also argued that it wasn’t proper to use the extraordinary option of recall over a policy dispute.
Walker ultimately won the recall election in June 2012, becoming a conservative hero on his way to a short-lived run for president in 2015. In a testament to Wisconsin’s political division, just five months after Walker won the recall vote, Obama cruised to victory in Wisconsin on his way to reelection.
Trump is accused of improperly withholding U.S. military aid that Ukraine needed to resist Russian aggression in exchange for Ukraine’s new president investigating Trump political rival Joe Biden and his son. Trump has argued that he was within his rights to ask Ukraine to look into corruption and that impeachment is just an attempt by Democrats to remove him from office.
Both impeachment and attempting to recall governors from office are exceedingly rare. Impeachment has only been leveled by the House against two presidents, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton 130 years later. Richard Nixon was on the brink of it in 1974 before he resigned. Walker was only the third governor in U.S. history to face a recall election and the first to survive it.
The rarity of the remedy may help explain why voters are reluctant to do either one, said Charles Franklin, who has regularly surveyed voter attitudes in Wisconsin for Marquette University.
A Marquette University Law School poll conducted just as public impeachment hearings were beginning earlier this month showed 53% of voters in Wisconsin were against removing Trump for office, with just 40% in support. National polls have shown a more even divide.
Even more troubling for Wisconsin Democrats was that while 78% of Democrats supported removing Trump through impeachment, 93% of Republicans were against it. That stronger rallying behind the incumbent, with the other side not as unified, parallels what was seen during the Walker recall, Franklin said.
Walker saw his support among independent voters go from about even six months before the recall election to positive 16 points just before the election. The latest Marquette poll also shows independents currently breaking against impeachment, with 47% against and 36% in favor.
Mike Tate, who was chairman of the state Democratic Party during the recall and continues to work in the state as a consultant, cautioned against making too much of where independents are on impeachment — and where they may be next November. After the impeachment process runs its course, Democrats will move on to talk about many other issues throughout the presidential campaign, Tate said.
“Impeachment will be in the rearview mirror,” he said.
But Stephan Thompson, who led the state GOP during the recalls and went on to manage Walker’s successful 2014 reelection campaign, said impeachment is “such a monumental event in history and politics” that it will hang over Democrats the rest of the cycle and make it difficult for them to bring moderate voters back to their side.
“When the left pushes this hard and overreaches, it helps you band together with people because you’re all in the foxhole together,” Thompson said. “I think that’s something they don’t realize.”
Erpenbach, the state senator, was among those who fled to Illinois for two weeks to try to kill the anti-union bill. He argues that unlike the recall, which was motivated by a policy disagreement, Congress was forced to hold impeachment hearings because Trump is alleged to have violated the Constitution.
Democrats are taking a political chance, Erpenbach said, but they’re doing what the Constitution requires, a key distinction from the recall.
“It worries me that it could backfire,” Erpenbach said, “but that’s not the point.”
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