Stefanik and Schiff at the first public hearing on Wednesday also got into a heated exchange over the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry into Trump.
“Will you be prohibiting witnesses from answering members’ questions as you have in the closed-door depositions?” she asked.
Schiff responded that the only time he did so was “when it was apparent that members were seeking to out the whistleblower.”
“I’m disturbed to hear members of the committee who have in the past voiced strong support for whistleblower protections seek to undermine those protections by outing the whistleblower,” he added.
Trump on Sunday morning also retweeted posts from Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee and Stefanik herself.
Stefanik is on fire, the Oversight Committee Republicans tweeted, adding that “@RepAdamSchiff can do nothing but watch his #impeachment sham crumble.”
“How many times can Adam Schiff say ‘the Gentlewoman is NOT recognized’?” Stefanik asked. “He clearly has NO interest in letting Republicans have any say in the impeachment hearings. Watch him interrupt us multiple times and refuse to yield for our parliamentary questions.”
How many times can Adam Schiff say “the Gentlewoman is NOT recognized”? He clearly has NO interest in letting Republicans have any say in the impeachment hearings. Watch him interrupt us multiple times and refuse to yield for our parliamentary questions pic.twitter.com/DnudgOe5Ed
Later Sunday, Trump also slammed former George W. Bush campaign aide and ABC contributor Matthew Dowd for a since-deleted tweet that read, “Elise Stefanik is a perfect example of why just electing someone because they are a woman or a millennial doesn’t necessarily get you the leaders we need.”
“Dowd never understood the pulse of the Republican Party, present or past. He’s just a 3rd rate hit job for Fake News @ABC!” Trump wrote.
Dowd never understood the pulse of the Republican Party, present or past. He’s just a 3rd rate hit job for Fake News @ABC! https://t.co/RMIWNmBqOb
WASHINGTON – Gordon Sondland seemed to feast on his new-found political power when he first snagged a plum ambassadorship and landed in Brussels as America’s top diplomat to the European Union.
Appointed to the post by President Donald Trump after he donated $1 million to the president’s inaugural committee, Sondland had a direct line to the Oval Office. And he wasn’t shy, or even careful, about using it.
He apparently flaunted his ability to dial Trump’s phone number at will and told more seasoned administration officials to move aside as he usurped their portfolios – particularly when it came to Ukraine, even though it’s not part of the EU.
Now, Sondland’s relationship with Trump, and his extensive dealings with Ukraine, have put the former hotelier, and his boss, in a precarious position. On Wednesday, Sondland takes center stage in the House Democrats’ impeachment probe when he gives public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. For impeachment investigators, he serves as a unique witness; he was Trump’s point-man in the effort to push politically motivated investigations in Ukraine, and he seemed to have the most extensive, direct dealings with the president on the matter.
“Sondland will be the first individual in this inquiry to give open testimony about direct contacts with Mr. Trump on the issue of the investigations, military assistance (to Ukraine) and the relationship with Zelensky,” said Aaron David Miller, who served as a top State Department negotiator for past presidents of both parties and is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Whether he chooses to open the door to further teasers … I don’t know,” Miller said.
The wealthy Portland hotelier has already told lawmakers he relayed a quid pro quo to a top Ukraine official, telling him U.S. military aid to Ukraine was likely contingent on a public statement by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, committing to the investigations Trump wanted. These included one into former Vice President Joe Biden and another into a debunked theory about Ukraine’s involvement in 2016 election interference.
Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, likened Sondland’s diplomatic agenda to a “drug deal.” Bolton’s deputy, Fiona Hill, portrayed him as a dangerously uninformed and unconventional diplomat.
Now, new evidence emerged during last week’s first public impeachment hearing that makes Sondland an even more intriguing witness for House Democrats.
The top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, revealed Nov. 13 that one of his deputies overheard Sondland chatting with the president on July 26 while they were in a restaurant in Kiev.
During that cell phone call, “the member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone asking Ambassador Sondland about “the investigations,” Taylor recounted during the House Intelligence Committee’s first public impeachment hearing. “Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.”
After the call, Taylor’s aide asked Sondland what Trump thought about Ukraine. “Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden” than he does about Ukraine, Taylor recounted.
House Democrats interviewed Taylor’s aide during a closed-door session on Friday. David Holmes told lawmakers Sondland assured Trump that Zelensky “loves your ass” and would do “anything you ask him to” when asked about investigations he sought, according to his opening statement obtained by CNN and confirmed by The New York Times.
Holmes testified, “I then heard President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’ Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that President Zelensky will do ‘anything you ask him to.'”
Trump told reporters on Nov. 13 that he didn’t remember any Kiev phone call with Sondland.
“I know nothing about that. First time I’ve heard it,” the president said, adding that there was no quid pro quo “pure and simple.”
The day before the call with Sondland, on July 25, Trump pressed Zelensky to open the two investigations during a phone call that triggered a whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump had solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election. That allegation is the focus of the House Democrats’ investigation.
Even before the Nov. 13 revelation, Sondland had already told lawmakers that a White House visit for Zelensky – something the Ukrainian leader desperately wanted as a public demonstration of U.S. support – would be granted only after Zelensky publicly committed to the investigations Trump, and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were demanding. Sondland also told the impeachment panel that he “presumed” that U.S. military assistance was linked to a public Zelensky statement because there was no other credible explanation for a delay in that aid.
Sondland offered that testimony in a Nov. 4 addendum that he submitted to the House Democrats after his initial closed-door interview. He said testimony from other witnesses had refreshed his memory about his dealings with Ukrainian officials.
Taylor’s new information links Trump even more directly to the Ukraine pressure campaign. It also raises fresh questions about Sondland’s diplomatic portfolio and qualifications.
“He’s not someone who is trained either in the art of diplomacy or in the practicalities of information security,” said Ned Price, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst. Price noted that in Sondland’s initial closed-door testimony, he seemed to minimize Trump’s role in Ukraine by failing, for example, to mention the July 26 call and the link between U.S. military aid and the Biden investigation.
“I think he faces a decision as to if he wants to betray his political benefactor, or if he wants to risk his own reputation,” said Price, who also served as a National Security Council adviser under President Barack Obama. “Obviously he’s going to be facing a lot of pressure because it’s either him or Trump.”
Trump has moved to distance himself from Sondland in recent days. “I hardly know the gentleman,” he told reporters on Nov. 8. Before Sondland testified, Trump called Sondland “a really good man and great American” in a tweet.
Price and others say Sondland’s July 26 call with Trump raises red flags for another reason: it was likely a highly compromising security breach, and illustrates how lax Sondland was about following State Department protocols to protect sensitive information.
“The president is the most lucrative intelligence target throughout the world,” said Price. “When the Russians presumably heard that he was connected to the president of the United States, they knew they had hit the jackpot.”
Ukraine and Russia are essentially at war. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and Ukraine continues to battle Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of its territory.
Conducting a cell phone call with the president in a public place in Ukraine’s capital, “it just doesn’t get any worse than that,” said Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and author of “Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News.”
Watts said Ukraine is “ground zero” for Russian espionage campaigns, and Moscow almost certainly intercepted Sondland’s conversation with Trump on a major foreign policy issue of keen interest to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said the revelation about Sondland’s cell phone call with Trump was remarkable – and not just because it exposed their exchange to foreign espionage.
“Sondland calling Trump on a cellphone from Kyiv is extraordinary for all sorts of reasons,” McFaul said in a tweet. Normally, he said, EU ambassadors don’t call the president.
“They never do so to discuss Ukraine policy. Doing so on a cellphone from Kyiv means whole world was listening in,” McFaul wrote.
Even before Wednesday’s new disclosures, other witnesses had raised questions about Sondland’s security practices and his unorthodox approach to diplomacy. Fiona Hill, who until recently served as the Trump administration’s National Security Council adviser for Europe and Russia, said he engaged in behavior that posed a major “counterintelligence risk” and he seemed either unwilling or unable to follow normal diplomatic protocols.
“Ambassador Sondland would frequently give people my personal cell phone to call up and demand meetings” with her or with Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, Hill told lawmakers, according to a transcript of her testimony.
“We had all kinds of officials from Europe … literally appearing at the gates of the White House, calling on our personal phones, which are actually in lock boxes,” Hill said during her Oct. 14 closed-door interview. “I’d find endless messages from irate officials who’d been told that they were supposed to meet with me by Ambassador Sondland.”
Before he amended his testimony, Sondland had told lawmakers there was “no quid pro quo” and that Trump relayed that to him directly.
“There is no quid pro. The president repeated, no quid pro. No quid pro quo multiple times,” Sondland told lawmakers during his closed-door deposition Oct. 17. “This was a very short call. And I recaIl that the president was really in a bad mood.”
National Security Council official Timothy Morrison testified Oct. 31 that Hill told him he “would be wise” to stay away from engagement with Giuliani and the “parallel” pressure campaign on Ukraine.
“She mentioned that Gordon talked with Rudy, and she mentioned that she stayed away from any conversation with Rudy and that I would be wise to do the same,” Morrison said.
In his three-page amendment, Sondland said he recalled a Sept. 1 meeting in Warsaw with Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky, where he said aid wouldn’t resume without investigations.
“After that large meeting, I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland said.
Other diplomats, including Taylor and George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, said Trump and Giuliani’s demands for politically motivated investigations ran counter to U.S. national interests. Kent said the message also contradicted efforts to establish the rule of law in Ukraine.
“I believe he was looking to dig up political dirt against a potential rival in the next election cycle,” Kent told the Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, referring to Giuliani.
“I agree with Mr. Kent,” Taylor added.
Trump has said the July 25 call with Zelensky was “perfect” because he never mentioned the suspension of nearly the $400 million in military aid in exchange for Ukraine announcing investigations.
Many Republicans have attacked the impeachment inquiry as a sham. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., amounted the controversy to “a policy difference between the President of the United States and a few people at the State Department.”
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday the correct description is bribery.
“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery covered in the inquiry and the president abused power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday.
The Democratic nomination race remains unsettled because many voters are conflicted between what they want and whether they think can win. Some candidates who generate excitement are also seen as risky. Progressive policies are popular but might be too liberal to win swing voters. And while voters say they are satisfied with their current selection of candidates, very few have actually settled on one.
So, across the early primary and caucus states through Super Tuesday, voters’ top pick continues to swing back and forth between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, with neither able to break away.
Warren, whose support has dipped since last month, is seen by most as exciting; however, many also describe her as risky and worry her policy stances are too liberal to defeat President Trump, a sign that some of the recent critiques leveled at her may have slowed her momentum. Among Warren’s backers last month who now pick a different candidate, the bulk of them went to Biden and Pete Buttigieg.
Biden, who has regained the edge in both the poll and our delegate model, is described by most as safe but not exciting.
Bernie Sanders is holding strong in third place. Buttigieg has climbed into the top tier in Iowa and made big gains in New Hampshire.
Iowa now shows a clear top tier defined by Sanders, Biden and now Buttigieg — whose support in the state has tripled since September and risen seven points since just last month — and Warren, who was atop the list with Biden last month and has since dropped a bit.
In addition to his gains in Iowa and New Hampshire, Buttigieg has picked up support in the aggregate 18-state poll. CBS News recontacts voters for this study, and most of Buttigieg’s current supporters reported a different first-choice candidate last month, primarily Warren.
In recent weeks, Democratic voters have not grown more confident that their party’s eventual nominee will beat Mr. Trump. While most express some confidence, just 26% are very confident, a percentage that has barely budged since the summer.
There is concern among some Democrats that Sanders’ and Warren’s policy stances are too liberal to enable either of them to beat Mr. Trump, although it’s voters currently not supporting these candidates who are more likely to hold that view.
Overall, fewer think Buttigieg’s and Biden’s policy positions are too liberal to win. Most say their policy stances are about right for defeating Trump.
Along with policy stances, Democratic voters see different traits in different candidates. The poll presented a number of characteristics and asked whether they described each of the leading Democratic candidates. Far more Democratic voters describe Biden as “safe” than they do any of the other candidates asked about. At the same time, a third call him “boring.”
It’s not just Biden’s backers who call him safe. More than half of Democrats who don’t pick Biden as their first choice describe him as safe.
Warren and Sanders are viewed as “risky” more than the other top-tier candidates. Voters not considering these candidates are inclined to hold this view. Their own backers don’t feel they are risky. Most who view Warren and Sanders as risky also feel their policies are too liberal to beat Donald Trump.
Whether she’s safe or risky may not be the most important consideration for Warren supporters. Only one in five of them describe her as safe, indicating that a safe candidate is perhaps not the priority for them. In contrast, three in four of those backing Biden call him safe.
A majority of Democrats — 51% — describe Warren as “exciting,” the highest percentage for any of the candidates tested. Even among those who don’t pick her as their first choice, four in 10 call her exciting.
When voters are considering a candidate but not picking them as a first choice, it is concern about electability that holds them back. The poll asked voters what Biden, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg could do to become a first choice among voters who are considering them. The top answer was convincing voters they could defeat Mr. Trump, which outpaced all other reasons tested, such as convincing voters that their policies would work or that they could handle the job of president.
An unsettled race
Just a third of Democrats in these early states say they have definitely made up their mind about the candidate they are currently backing, so minds may change.
Voters’ degree of confidence in beating Mr. Trump is related to how settled they are in their candidate choice. Most who are very confident of a Democratic win in the general election say they have definitely made up their minds, while those with less confidence are less likely to be certain of their choice.
While there may be some uncertainty, there isn’t much desire for more choices. Amid one late entry in the race and the potential for another, roughly eight in 10 Democrats in the early states are satisfied with the current field. Those who are uneasy about the party’s prospects next November are more likely to want more choices.
If former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg were to enter the race, one in five Democrats say he would be one of the candidates they would consider, but more than twice as many say they would not consider him. A third haven’t heard enough about him.
Bloomberg gets more consideration from older Democrats, and moderate and conservative ones. Biden and Buttigieg backers are more likely to consider him than Warren or Sanders supporters. Interviews for the poll were completed before former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced his presidential bid.
Iowa: Tight at the top
Buttigieg’s recent gains in Iowa have essentially transformed the contest into a four-way race.
Many Iowa Democrats see Buttigieg as exciting and down-to-earth. Just a quarter describe him as risky, but a similar proportion call him safe. Warren is also viewed by four in 10 voters as exciting, but more view both her and Sanders as risky.
As with the other leading candidates, the question of whether he can beat Mr. Trump is the main reason voters who are considering Buttigieg say they aren’t picking him as their first choice.
Buttigieg has been spending a lot of time and money in the state, and that may be paying off. He now leads among two groups of Iowa Democrats Warren led among last month: those paying a lot of attention to the 2020 candidates and college graduates.
Buttigieg and Biden are the top choice among older Iowa Democrats, while Sanders maintains his advantage with younger voters.
Warren is the top second choice across the early states and in Iowa, a state where a voter’s second choice has important implications. (If a voter’s first-choice candidate doesn’t have enough support to be viable, they can choose to align with another candidate.) A plurality of Sanders and Buttigieg voters pick Warren second. On the other hand, current Biden voters in Iowa are more likely to pick Buttigieg or Sanders second than Warren.
New Hampshire: Warren leads, Buttigieg rises
Warren continues to lead in the Granite State, followed by Biden and Sanders. Buttigieg is still in fourth place, but his support has increased by nine points since last month. He has improved with different types of voters — both men and women, as well as liberals and moderates alike.
Nevada: Biden overtakes Sanders
Biden has opened up a lead among likely Democratic voters in Nevada, giving him a 10-point advantage over Sanders. Back in September, Sanders held a razor-thin lead over Biden in the state, but support for the Vermont senator has declined slightly, while support for Biden and Warren has risen, dropping Sanders into second place and two points ahead of Warren.
South Carolina: Biden still strong
Biden retains a commanding double-digit lead over Warren and Sanders in South Carolina, where he continues to secure the support of nearly half of Democratic likely voters. A majority of black Democrats are supporting Biden, and one in three white Democrats pick him first as well.
Biden is the top choice in the state regardless of voters’ self-described ideology, and while Sanders has a strong lead among voters under 30, Biden leads among all other age groups.
Beneath the top tier, Buttigieg has passed Kamala Harris for fourth place in both South Carolina and Nevada, but with less than 10% of the vote, he trails the top three candidates significantly and falls short of the 15% threshold to earn delegates. Buttigieg’s rise is particularly striking among older voters. Since September, support for Buttigieg among voters 65 and older rose from 6% to 18% in Nevada and from 4% to 11% in South Carolina.
Medicare for All: Support slips; Democrats eager for details on cost
One of the top issues being debated in the Democratic campaign is Medicare for All and how to pay for it. Support for this type of health program has dipped some from earlier this fall: 50% of early-state Democrats now favor it, down from 57% in September. The percentages opposing such a program and saying it depends on the costs and details have both inched up.
Nearly two-thirds say that when they are comparing candidates’ health care plans they are mainly listening for details about how candidates would pay for them. Far fewer say that they are listening for larger policy goals and the details can come later.
Democrats who are not currently in favor of Medicare for All are more eager for details on how candidates would pay for their plans, compared to Medicare for All proponents. More than four in 10 Warren and Sanders supporters say they are listening for larger policy goals on health care and the details can wait, compared to just 27% of Biden supporters who say that – more of them are looking for details.
This CBS News survey was conducted by YouGov between November 6 and 13, 2019. A representative sample of 18,710 registered voters was selected in 18 states expected to hold early primaries and caucuses (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia). This sample includes 8,866 self-identified Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2016 presidential vote. The margin of error is +/- 1.6 percentage points.
The phone call between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart at the center of Congress’ impeachment investigation was “inappropriate,” an aide to Vice President Mike Pence told lawmakers, according to a transcript released on Saturday.
Jennifer Williams, a foreign policy aide to Pence who was listening to the call on July 25, testified that Trump’s insistence that Ukraine carry out politically sensitive investigations “struck me as unusual and inappropriate.”
She said the discussion was “more political in nature” than phone calls with other foreign leaders, and included what she viewed as specific references to the president’s “personal political agenda.”
Trump’s call — which he has repeatedly termed “perfect” — is at the heart of the Democratic-led inquiry into whether the Republican president misused US foreign policy to undermine former Vice President Joe Biden, one of his potential opponents in the 2020 election.
Morrison, who resigned a day before his deposition last month, and Williams both expressed concerns about Trump’s remarks to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Williams and Morrison are scheduled to testify publicly next week.
“I was not comfortable with any idea that President Zelenskiy should allow himself to be involved in our politics,” Morrison told lawmakers. He also said found Zelenskiy’s tone in the call with Trump to be “obsequious.”
Morrison declined to say he thought the call was illegal or improper, stressing instead that he thought it would leak, damaging relations with Ukraine. He said he only learned later that the aid to Ukraine was conditioned on the investigations.
Elizabeth Warren wants to finance a single-payer health care system by, in part, requiring employers to take their current per-employee spending on health insurance and kick it over to the government instead.
This helps her achieve her desired talking point that the plan does not involve an increase in taxes on the middle class. But it’s also a highly unusual program design that you don’t really see in foreign health care systems. And as her plan acknowledges, it wouldn’t really be sustainable over the long run to have different employers facing sharply different health care costs when their employees are all getting the same health care regardless.
Somewhat contrary to the main public image of the two New England progressives, Sanders’s idea here seems more technocratically sound while Warren has basically chosen to fulfill a talking point at the expense of sound program design. On the other hand, you can’t change the health care system unless you win the election first. And new polling conducted by YouGov Blue on behalf of Data for Progress confirms that with her preferred pay-for, Medicare-for-all polls better than if you use alternate tax ideas.
Three options for financing Medicare-for-all
YouGov asked registered voters three different versions of a basically similar question, trying to probe public opinion about the trade-off between replacing private health spending with taxes.
The main setup of the question went like this: “In some versions of a Medicare-for-all system that have been proposed recently, all Americans would be added to a government-run health insurance plan. This would eliminate all out-of-pocket costs such as co-pays and deductibles, and would eliminate all monthly premiums. These would instead be paid in the form of taxes. The money you pay to health insurance companies would go to the government, and the average American’s take-home pay would not decrease.”
Then they asked, “Would you [support or oppose] replacing out-of-pocket costs, co-pays, and deductibles with taxes if the tax plan included …” followed by one of three different possible options:
… A tax on employers that requires them to pay for health care for every employee
… A tax on individuals earning more than $29,000 a year
… A fee paid by employers to the Medicare system for each employee they employ
The polling is decent but not amazing on all two possible answers, with the employer fee garnering more support and less opposition than the employee-side tax, and the income tax option being clearly underwater.
The appeal of the employer fee is that by design it guarantees that nobody’s nominal costs rise. Sanders, and especially his more vociferous advocates like Matt Bruenig, counter that in the long run proportional taxes of the kind Sanders is proposing will be more favorable to the majority of the population since they raise more money from high-income people.
Indeed, it is probably true that if you could walk everyone through the math on this and — critically — get them to believe that legal tax incidence matters less than economic tax incidence, they would come around to Sanders’s point of view. But at the moment, the per-worker fee seems uniformly more popular.
The employer fee is somewhat more popular with most groups
Looking at party ID, the payroll tax option garners two percentage points higher support from Democrats but is slightly lower with Republicans, independents, and those identifying as “other.”
The payroll tax is less supported by both men and women, less supported by African Americans and whites (though slightly more supported by Hispanics), and less supported by all educational categories except “some college.”
None of these differences are particularly large, reflecting the fact that the topline polling gap between these options is modest.
Poll numbers obviously don’t change the fact that a payroll tax would probably be more financially advantageous for most people. But in a world where even if the 2020 election goes extremely well for Democrats there is extremely little chance of a full-blown Medicare-for-all plan being enacted, all these proposals are campaign props more than real policy blueprints. And Warren has narrowly succeeded in crafting the prop she needs — something consonant with her “plans” schtick (which Sanders’s purposeful vagueness would not be) that also polls well.
BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards won a second term Saturday to remain the only Democratic governor in the Deep South despite an all-out effort by President Donald Trump to flip the seat to the Republican column.
Edwards narrowly beat wealthy Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, who invested more than $14 million of his own money to finance his campaign and tied himself to Trump from start to finish.
While many Republicans bemoaned the lack of star power in their candidates – powerhouse Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy and popular GOP state Attorney General Jeff Landry passed on the race – Edwards had to fend off Trump and Vice President Mike Pence during the months-long campaign.
Trump headlined three Louisiana rallies to oust Edwards, first in Lake Charles on the eve of the Oct. 12 primary election and then in Monroe and Bossier City during the runoff campaign.
The president told Louisiana voters the race was a symbolic referendum on his presidency, which he said is under attack by Democrats who’ve started impeachment hearings in the House.
“I need you to send a message to the corrupt Democrats in Washington,” Trump said Thursday during a rally in Bossier City.
And that could be done, Trump said, by electing Rispone.
“You’ve got to give me a big win, OK?” Trump told the crowd.
The president continued the onslaught on Twitter during Election Day Saturday: “Good morning Louisiana! … Get out and VOTE for @EddieRisone to be your next Gov!”
But in the end Trump’s coattails weren’t long enough to carry Rispone across the finish line.
Edwards predicted as much during his own rally in Shreveport Thursday, expressing confidence voters wouldn’t allow the president to nationalize the election.
“The voters of Louisiana are going to decide this election on Louisiana issues,” Edwards said. “They don’t need the president or anybody else to tell them how to vote.”
Edwards’ victory won’t bring with it a mandate for him to push through priorities like equal pay legislation and a Louisiana minimum wage higher than the national mandate of $7.25 per hour.
As a Democrat he’s still an anomaly both in the South and in Louisiana, where Edwards is the only Democrat to hold statewide office.
And he’ll face possible Republican super majorities in both chambers of the Louisiana Legislature during his second term.
Still, Edwards expressed optimism he and lawmakers can find common ground.
“Practically every major thing I ‘ve done as governor was done on a bipartisan basis,” he said.
Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, topped the latest poll of likely Democratic voters in Iowa, the first state in the nation to weigh in, via caucus, on who should be the blue party’s choice for president.
The moderate mayor supported by 25 percent of respondents was followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts with 16 percent; former Vice President Joe Biden, 15 percent; Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 15 percent; and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, 6 percent.
The poll of 500 likely caucus-goers was conducted by the Des Moines Register, CNN and Mediacom.
Buttigieg was described by the Register as having “rocketed to the top” of the crowded Democratic field of about 19 candidates. His standing has risen 16 percentage points since September, according to its polling.
Iowa will hold caucuses Feb. 3, making it the first state to officially say who should represent the Democratic Party in 2020. It will be followed by the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11, the Nevada primary Feb. 22 and South Carolina on Feb. 29.
The poll didn’t seem to give a lot of hope to the billionaires in the field, including California tech entrepreneur Tom Steyer, who registered 3 percent support, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a late entry to the field, who rang up 2 percent.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Sen. Kamala Harris of California all ended up in the middle of the pack, each with 3 percent support.
The poll was conducted Nov. 8 to 13 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
President Donald Trump spent more than two hours at Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday for what the White House said were medical tests as part of his annual physical.
The appointment wasn’t on Trump’s weekend public schedule, and his last physical was in February. Press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the 73-year-old president was “anticipating a very busy 2020” and wanted to take advantage of “a free weekend” in Washington to begin portions of his routine checkup.
She did not specify which tests he’d received or explain why the visit had not been disclosed in advance. Trump’s 2018 and 2019 physicals were both announced ahead of time and appeared on his public schedule.
Grisham said after the visit that the president had had “a quick exam and labs” and assured he remains in good health.
“The President remains healthy and energetic without complaints, as demonstrated by his repeated vigorous rally performances in front of thousands of Americans several times a week,” she said.
Trump also spent time at the hospital meeting with the family of a special forces soldier injured in Afghanistan. And he visited with medical staff “to share his thanks for all the outstanding care they provide to our Wounded Warriors, and wish them an early happy Thanksgiving,” Grisham said.
It was the president’s ninth visit to the hospital since taking office.
Walter Reed spokeswoman Sandy Dean said the hospital does not comment on patients who receive care at the facility and referred questions to the White House.
Trump’s last checkup in February, 2019 showed he had gained weight in office. At 243 pounds and 6 feet, 3 inches tall, he passed the official threshold for being considered obese, with a Body Mass Index of 30.4.
That checkup, which was supervised by Dr. Sean P. Conley, his physician, took more than four hours and involved a panel of 11 specialists.
“I am happy to announce the President of the United States is in very good health and I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his Presidency, and beyond,” Conley wrote afterward.
Test results were released six days later, showing that Trump weighed 243 pounds — up seven pounds from September 2016, before he became president.
A Body Mass Index rating of 30 is the level at which doctors consider someone obese under the commonly used formula. About 40 percent of Americans are obese, raising the risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke and some forms of cancer.
Trump doesn’t drink alcohol or smoke, but is known to enjoy fast food, steaks and desserts. His primary form of exercise is golf.
Saturday’s test came as House investigators on Capitol Hill were interviewing a White House budget official as part of the impeachment inquiry. Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong.
“We have felt a lot of momentum on the ground,” he said.
His rise also suggests that voters, in Iowa at least, are increasingly favoring a centrist agenda — a view that has drawn two new entrants, Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, into the race this month.
The poll results reflect the deep split within the Democratic Party over whether it is veering too far to the left to defeat President Trump. Speaking on Friday to a room of wealthy liberal donors, former President Barack Obama expressed concern about some of the policy ideas being promoted by some of the candidates, citing health care and immigration as issues where the proposals may not align with public opinion.
Though he did not single out any candidates directly, his remarks were seen as an implicit criticism of Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren, two of the leading candidates who are pushing policy plans once considered too liberal, like “Medicare for all,” with the broader goal of “political revolution” and “big, structural change.”
“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality,” Mr. Obama said. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”
Ms. Warren, who led the Register’s September poll, with 22 percent, fell 6 percentage points. Her poll numbers are now roughly what they were in June, when she was at 15 percent. Mr. Sanders, who suffered a heart attack shortly after the last poll results were released, climbed 4 percentage points.
On November 15, 2019, after former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch finished offering public testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s activities, many of those present stood and cheered for Yovanovitch as the session came to a close:
At the same time, according to a critical tweet, one of the Republican House members who had questioned Yovanovitch — Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York — turned to the camera and defiantly “flipped the bird” as she exited the chamber:
However, this picture was not a real photograph, but an alternate version of the original image that was digitally altered to make it falsely appear as if Stefanik were angrily offering the middle-finger salute:
When the fakeness of this picture was pointed out, the original poster deleted his tweet and issued an acknowledgement of his error, as well as an apology to Rep. Stefanik for posting the inauthentic image and calling her a “childish loser”:
I took down the picture after of Stefanik after someone pointed me to a graphic artist who had it on his timeline as an example of his “work.” I won’t defame him here.
I take responsibility for it as it was my tweet. It looked real to me, because of a number of factors, (more)
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As investigators continue to search for a motive behind the deadly shooting at a Southern California high school Thursday morning, the community of Santa Clarita is coming together to remember the children it lost.
Dominic Michael Blackwell, 14, and Gracie Anne Muehlberger, 15, died Thursday when another student opened fire at Saugus High School, injuring three others. The 16-year-old suspect, who shot himself, died Friday night.
One 14-year-old boy was released from the hospital Thursday, and two girls, 14 and 15, were expected to be released soon.
GoFundMe pages that appeared to be created by family members of the two students killed had each raised tens of thousands of dollars by Saturday.
“Our vivacious, funny, loyal, light of our lives, Cinderella, the daughter we always dreamed to have, fiercely strong and lover of all things fashionable — was our best friend,” Gracie’s parents wrote on the GoFundMe page. “She is going to be missed more than words will ever be able to express. We will love you always Sweetpea!”
A webpage organizer who appeared to know Dominic said that the Blackwell family was taking time to mourn their unexpected loss.
“This world lost a bright, shining light … personified by a goofy laugh, cheesy smile, and a huge, caring heart. He was taken from his family and friends in the most senseless of ways. His three brothers will miss their big brother greatly, and his parents’ dreams for him will never be realized,” the organizer wrote on Dominic’s GoFundMe page.
The organizers of the GoFundMe pages have not responded to USA TODAY for a request for comment.
Community members began placing flowers and cards outside the high school Thursday, and later that evening a vigil was held at the town’s Central Park. Students tied blue and silver balloons to a makeshift memorial, and members of the school’s Air Force Junior ROTC saluted the victims.
Despite uncertainty around whether the school’s football game Friday night would proceed, the Hart School District did not cancel the playoff.
Chants of “Saugus Strong!” rang out across the field as players wore Saugus Strong stickers on their helmets and students displayed signs saying “We Hart Saugus.” The students held a moment of silence and released balloons into the sky, according to local news outlet KHTS.
Several web pages offering support to those affected cropped up in the wake of the shooting.
A Facebook group dedicated to the Saugus Strong movement gained nearly 1,200 members during its first 24 hours. On Friday, the city of Santa Clarita launched a Saugus Strong website, which provides the community resources and encourages viewers worldwide to submit messages of love and support. By Saturday morning, the website had received more than 200 messages from across six continents.
Another vigil, “Saugus Strong,” is scheduled for 7 p.m. PT Sunday at Central Park. Sebastian Cazares, a Saugus alum and student body president at the local college, is helping to plan the vigil.
“I remember just a year ago when Parkland happened, me and hundreds of students stood up right in the quad to demand change and to make sure this tragedy never would happen again. We wrote letters to our representatives, and we passionately engaged in activism to stop these tragedies,” Cazares wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. “Little did I know at the time that at that same exact spot only a year or so later, our school would make the news and become another statistic.”
Community members can find support and resources at saugusstrong.org.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards talks to media in Shreveport, La., Thursday. Saturday, Edwards, a Democrat, beat out Republican Eddie Rispone, who President Trump endorsed.
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Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards talks to media in Shreveport, La., Thursday. Saturday, Edwards, a Democrat, beat out Republican Eddie Rispone, who President Trump endorsed.
Gerald Herbert/AP
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, held on to his seat Saturday after a tough challenge from his Republican opponent, Eddie Rispone, a wealthy businessman and political newcomer who President Trump supported.
Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South and is not a typical Democrat. He’s a pro-Second Amendment gun owner who signed one of the country’s strictest anti-abortion bills this year.
This is the third and final gubernatorial election of 2019 and the second loss for President Trump who campaigned for all three candidates. The president was in Louisiana this week and framed the race as a personal referendum, urging voters to unseat Edwards.
About two weeks ago, Republican Tate Reeves won the open seat in Mississippi, but in Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear ousted Republican incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin.
Edwards’ second term may be a bitter pill for Trump who had much invested in this year’s elections ahead of his own election in 2020.
A Russia expert testified that a top diplomat said President Trump was behind his pushing the Ukrainian president to announce investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden.
Timothy Morrison, a former deputy assistant to the president and the National Security Council’s former senior director for Europe and Russia, described a Sept. 7 phone call where he says U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland said “the President told him there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelensky had to do it and he should want to do it.”
Morrison testified behind closed doors that Sondland, along with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was helping lead a “second track” of U.S. foreign policy than the one being carried out by former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, Chargé d’Affaires for Ukraine William Taylor, and others at the State Department and elsewhere within the Trump administration.
Morrison said he became aware of the hold on U.S. military aid to Ukraine by July 15, with Ukraine becoming aware of the hold by Sept. 1 and raising the issue with Vice President Mike Pence. Sondland was pushing Zelensky’s top aide Andriy Yermak to have Zelensky announce an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, stemming from the younger Biden’s lucrative position on its board.
“He told me that in his — that what he communicated was that he believed the — what could help them move the aid was if the prosecutor general would to go to the mic and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation,” Morrison said of Sondland.
And the former NSC member said Sondland was doing this at Trump’s behest.
“In the context of what I understood to be the parallel process, Ambassador Sondland believed and at least related to me that the President was giving him instruction,” Morrison said, later adding, “He related to me he was acting — he was discussing these matters with the President.”
This may contradict Sondland’s own congressional testimony.
“I recall no discussions with any State Department or White House official about former Vice President Biden or his son,” Sondland said. “Nor do I recall taking part in any effort to encourage an investigation into the Bidens.”
On Friday, David Holmes, the counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, recounted a conversation he’d overheard between Sondland and Trump in July.
Holmes claimed he heard “President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s going to do the investigation?’ Ambassador Sondland replied, ‘He’s going to do it,’ adding that ‘President Zelensky will do anything you ask of him.’”
The House Intelligence Committee released Morrison’s Oct. 31 testimony Saturday. Morrison resigned from his post the same day he testified.
Morrison also listened in on the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, which formed the central part of the intelligence community whistleblower complaint sparking the Democrat-led impeachment investigation. He thought the call could be “damaging” if its contents were leaked, and testified he immediately spoke with lawyers on the NSC, asking them to review the call, and said NSC Legal Adviser John Eisenberg then made the decision to move the call transcript to a highly classified server, which he characterized as a “mistake” which hadn’t been fixed as of late September.
In the call, immediately after Zelensky expressed interest in purchasing anti-tank weaponry known as Javelins from the United States, Trump asked Zelesnky “to do us a favor though” and to look into CrowdStrike and any possible Ukrainian election interference in 2016. The president also urged Zelensky to investigate “the other thing,” referring to allegations of corruption related to Joe and Hunter Biden. Trump told Zelensky to speak with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.
Morrison said Sondland briefed Trump about the call before it happened, and said then-national security adviser John Bolton later advised him to report any issues to lawyers. He also said some information was coming second-hand from Fiona Hill, the National Security Council’s former senior director for Europe and Russia.
“She mentioned Rudy — and I should say clearly for the record that, in some cases, I consider Burisma to sort of be a bucket of issues,” Morrison said. “Burisma is Burisma the company, Burisma is Hunter Biden on the board, and I sometimes lump together Burisma and the 2016 server in my head, chiefly because they are all issues I tried to stay away from.”
“It did not — it was nothing a part of any — the proper policy process that I was involved in on Ukraine, it had nothing to do with the issues that the interagency was working on,” Morrison said.
Morrison will testify in public Tuesday. The release of the testimony from Morrison on Saturday coincided with the release of the closed-door deposition of Jennifer Williams, who will also testify publicly Tuesday.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, William Taylor, and fired Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified this week in the first public impeachment hearings.
Next week, the National Security Council’s Ukraine expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Kurt Volker, GordonSondland, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs Laura Cooper, undersecretary of state for political affairs David Hale, and Fiona Hill will testify in public too.
The poll differs from other recent Iowa polls, which showed Buttigieg, Biden, Warren and Sanders knotted closely together. The survey, released by CNN, the Des Moines Register and Mediacom, was of 500 likely Democratic caucusgoers and has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Authorities on Saturday were investigating how a teenage boy gained access to a firearm and why he opened fire in the quad at Saugus High School, killing two students and wounding three others.
Parents had just dropped their teenagers off at school when the gun fire rang out Thursday morning, sending panicked students running out and others barricading in offices and classrooms.
The suspected shooter, identified as 16-year-old Nathaniel Berhow, appeared to fire randomly at the crowd for a few seconds before turning the gun on himself, authorities said. He died at a hospital Friday afternoon, sheriff’s officials said.
Two of the five students shot, 15-year-old Gracie Anne Muehlberger and 14-year-old Dominic Blackwell, both died in the hospital on Thursday.
Berhow, a junior at the high school who authorities said carried out the attack on his 16th birthday, was described by officials and those who knew him as someone who wasn’t socially awkward or a loner. The teenager was a student athlete who was involved in school activities, the Sheriff’s Department said.
“This is kind of out of the blue,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said.
A student at the school said Berhow always seemed happy, and never talked about having any issues.
“We thought everything was fine,” Berhow’s former teammate, Logan Marquez, told KTLA. “So when he goes out and does something like this, we were so confused and are trying to piece everything together. But we’re coming up with nothing,”
Local authorities are working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to analyze the weapon used in the shooting and trace its origin.
The agency traced six firearms registered to Berhow’s father and all were accounted for, ATF Agent Carlos Canino said Friday. But at the teenager’s home, investigators found several other guns, some not registered to the father and some not registered at all, according to Villanueva.
Investigators were still trying to determine whether the gun found at the scene is related to the firearms found at the home.
Villanueva said surveillance showed that the shooter appeared to be counting his rounds and knew exactly how many he had as he stood in the middle of the quad, firing at students.
“He seemed very familiar with firing the weapon,” the sheriff said. “… it wasn’t a spur of the moment act.”
The firearm jammed at one point, but the teenager quickly cleared the malfunction and continued firing, according to the sheriff.
Authorities did not find a manifesto, diary or suicide note that would identify a motive, Capt. Kent Wegener of the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau said at a news conference Friday.
Two girls wounded in the shooting, ages 14 and 15, were expected to be discharged from the Providence Holy Cross Medical Center over the weekend. One had been shot in the left shoulder and lower right abdomen, and the other below the belly button, doctors said.
Saugus High School was expected to remain closed through the Thanksgiving break on Dec. 2, with optional programs offered to help students heal and process the trauma they’ve been through, Hart School District Deputy Superintendent Mike Kuhlman said in a written statement. All other schools within the district were scheduled to resume Monday.
KTLA’s Sareen Habeshian contributed to this report.
House Democrats on Saturday released a transcript of closed-door testimony from career foreign service officer and Vice President Pence staffer Jennifer Williams.
During the famed July 25 call, the president asked his foreign counterpart for a favor: He wanted Kyiv to open anti-corruption investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was employed by Burisma in the Obama era.
This is one of the many rounds of private testimony that has been released by the House recently. Public hearings in front of the House Intelligence Committee are expected to resume next week.
To read the entire transcript, click here or read below.
Attorney General William P. Barr, shown here last month in Topeka, Kansas, addressed The Federalist Society at an event on Friday night.
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Attorney General William P. Barr, shown here last month in Topeka, Kansas, addressed The Federalist Society at an event on Friday night.
Ed Zurga/Getty Images
Attorney General William Barr vociferously attacked Democratic lawmakers and federal judges on Friday and accused them of trying to limit Trump’s presidential power.
He stated during a sweeping speech at The Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, that Democrats “essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.”
Barr’s speech drew swift criticism from legal experts, some of whom decried its ideas as “authoritarian” and “dangerous.” It come as Trump’s use of presidential power faces intense scrutiny. Lawmakers involved in the impeachment inquiry are trying to determine whether the president abused the power of the presidency by seeking to trade military aide to Ukraine for a political favor.
You can watch the speech here:
The Attorney General has long been a champion of expansive presidential power, commenting on Friday that he “admires a muscular executive.”
Neil Kinkopf, a law professor at Georgia State University, testified at Barr’s confirmation hearing earlier this year that he opposed Barr’s nomination over concerns about his views on executive authority. Kinkopf saw the speech in person, and said Barr’s comments were “all very consistent with everything he’s always said.”
“But putting it together in the way he did yesterday with the broad sweep, I think it makes it absolutely clear what some of us have always thought – which is that this is a person who holds dangerous views about the scope of presidential power,” he added.
Barr described a “resistance” that began as soon as Trump was elected.”The fact of the matter is that in waging a scorched-earth, no holds barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law,” he said.
The attorney general expressed frustration that Trump has faced obstacles to implementing his policies, despite the fact that many of them were outlined for voters before they went to the polls. “While the president has certainly thrown out the traditional beltway playbook and punctilio, he was upfront about what he was going to do and the people decided they wanted him to serve as president,” he stated.
Kinkopf said he felt that Barr was making “a very dangerous suggestion that dissent and opposition is somehow contrary to democracy – it’s in fact the core and spirit of democracy.”
Richard Painter, who was the top ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, described the remarks as a “lunatic authoritarian speech.”
“While the attorney general is a political appointee of the president, the attorney general needs to maintain a posture of neutrality in ongoing investigations and particularly criminal matters,” Painter told NPR.
And yet, Painter said Barr’s speech was “extremely partisan, castigating the so-called resistance, characterizing all those who were concerned about the Trump administration as being part of the far left.”
Barr stated that the powers of the executive in the U.S. have been encroached upon for decades by the other branches of government. “This process, I think, has substantially weakened the function of the presidency to the detriment of the nation,” he said.
Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota, says he has seen the opposite – an expansion of executive power under Trump and previous presidents, including Bush and Barack Obama. “President Trump has gone further than his predecessors on the policy side,” he said.
Kinkopf also viewed Barr’s claim as ahistorical. He said that while Congress strongly reasserted its role in the aftermath of Vietnam, presidential power has been steadily expanding for decades since then. “I think since 1981, it’s been nothing but an upward line,” he said. Claims that Trump’s lawyers are making that he should be immune from criminal prosecution, Kinkopf added, are “virtually unprecedented.”
Barr also dished out criticism of the federal courts, which have frequently issued injunctions that acted to freeze controversial Trump policies, such as the travel ban that restricted entry into the U.S. for citizens of certain countries.
“It is no exaggeration to say that virtually every major policy of the Trump administration has been subjected to immediate freezing by the lower courts,” Barr stated. “No other president has been subjected to such sustained efforts to debilitate his agenda.”
The attorney general criticized the courts for considering the president’s motives when they assess the legality of a policy, saying this amounts to “attempts by courts to act like amateur psychiatrists.”
“Well, if that’s right, there is very little in the way of a legal constraint on the president’s exercise of his powers,” said Kinkopf. For example, if the president was motivated by a bribe to issue a pardon, there would be little mechanism to hold him accountable because it’s well within his authority to issue a pardon. “The suggestion that we can’t question his motives, that that’s somehow improper, cuts to the heart of the rule of law.”
He added that Trump is providing, in real time and on Twitter, clear statements about his motivations in a way that other presidents did not. “We have now a president who tweets his motives right in the middle of the night, constantly … and so what’s a court to do now that it has evidence that it never had access to before?”
He recalled talking to Kurt Volker, the former envoy to Ukraine, after an Aug. 2 White House meeting and pressing him on Sondland and the president’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was publicly discussing his desire for Ukraine to launch political investigations into Trump’s rivals. “I think we both agreed that Ambassador Sondland was, you know, sort of a free radical. He was sort of out there, engaging when he wanted, and it was not always possible to keep track of what it is that he was doing and who he was talking to.”
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