WASHINGTON — Change is a way of life in Washington. Politicians come and go with the whims of voters. But even by D.C. standards, the House Republicans have seen massive changes during President Trump’s administration. This coming week, as the House impeachment proceedings become public, those changes are going to be front-and-center.
When Trump arrived in the White House in 2017, there were 241 Republicans at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. in the House of Representatives. Today, 100 of those members have gone or have announced they are leaving. That’s 41 percent of that original 241 in the 115th House.
To be clear that’s not congressional seats lost, that’s a measure of actual people, the personalities that once roamed the halls of Congress that aren’t there anymore. They left for a range of reasons. Some left to take administration appointments, some lost and some just walked away.
While much is made of partisan flips — and they are obviously crucial in terms of who controls the House and Senate — Congress is ultimately a collection of people, and personalities matter. Personalities frame debates and set-up how committees are run. And the House’s GOP personalities are going to be defining the larger Republican Party when impeachment moves from private to public hearings this week.
The change in the House GOP over the last three years has been especially striking. Compare it to changes in the Democratic House in the same time period under President Barack Obama — from January 2009 to November 2011.
By this time in Obama’s first term he had seen 88 Democratic House members leave or announce they were leaving. That equaled about 34 percent of the 256 House Democrats that were in office when Obama was inaugurated.
That’s not a trivial number, but it’s still smaller than the current Republican departure figure. And remember Obama and Democrats suffered a massive defeat in the House in 2010 when the party lost 63 seats, the largest loss of seats in a midterm by a party in the House since WWII.
There are also some key differences in how the Trump and Obama House changes happened, the biggest one being the driving force behind the exits.
In the case of the Obama House, the majority of Democratic departures, 54 of them, came via the ballot box. Most were voted out in the Republican tsunami of 2010 that swept the GOP into power and dramatically altered the rest of Obama’s time in office — though some lost in primaries. Another 23 left of their own accord, through retirements or resignations.
For the Trump House, the election/retirement ratios are flipped.
A good number of changes in the Republican House, 36 of them, came through election defeats. But overall, the departures are being driven much more heavily by retirements and resignations. Half of the Republican House turnover has come via voluntary exit, 50 departures. And there was a lot of experience on that list.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a 10-term veteran, bowed out on his own. And there were 10 other Republican members who had served at least four terms in the House, who retired and whose seats stayed Republican. That is, they were not in real danger of losing, they just walked away and let different people take the reins of the party in the House.
And there are likely more departures on the way. We are heading into the holidays and the new year, always a prime time for members to announce they are not seeking reelection.
Keep these changes in mind this week when the House impeachment trial becomes a public affair. There has been a lot of turnover in the House in the past few years and not just in terms of partisanship. The president’s own party in the chamber looks very different than when he arrived in Washington.
The House Republicans have less institutional memory and more new faces than they did a few years ago – and those new faces have come to Congress in President Trump’s Washington. That’s likely to have some impact when temperatures and rhetoric rise around impeachment.
“This inquiry is not, and will not serve … as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit, or to facilitate the President’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm,” Schiff said in a statement.
“The Committee is evaluating the Minority’s witness requests and will give due consideration to witnesses within the scope of the impeachment inquiry, as voted on by the House,” said Schiff.
“As we move into the open hearing phase of the inquiry, the Committee is mindful that we are engaged in a sober endeavor rooted in the Constitution to determine whether the President of the United States engaged in misconduct that warrants impeachment by the House,” he added.
The House’s impeachment inquiry was launched in September amid Democratic concerns that Trump leveraged $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly open an investigation on unfounded corruption allegations against Joe Biden, a top political rival.
Trump and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill have repeated ungrounded theories that Joe Biden abused his power when as vice president he leaned on a Ukrainian prosecutor to drop an investigation into an energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. No evidence suggests that Biden was acting with his son’s interests in mind.
After several witnesses testified behind closed doors in recent weeks that they believed there was a quid pro quo surrounding Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, the impeachment investigation is set to enter a new phase next week when the Intelligence Committee holds the first round of public hearings.
While Republicans have denounced the process so far as not transparent enough, Democrats have aired concerns that the GOP could use the public hearings to derail the investigation and focus on the unfounded claims against Biden.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff rejected the GOP’s request that the panel summon Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to testify at public impeachment hearings next week.
The California Democrat also signaled he will not agree to some of the other witnesses Republicans requested Saturday, including Alexandra Chalupa, a former Democratic National Committee staffer who Republicans said worked with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., “to try to get political dirt on then-candidate Trump’s campaign.”
Schiff, who will head public impeachment hearings beginning Wednesday, said in a Saturday statement that he will consider a list of witness requests provided by the GOP.
“This inquiry is not, and will not serve, however, as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit, or to facilitate the President’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm,” he said.
Democrats plan to open the public hearings on Wednesday with testimony from acting Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor, who said in a closed-door deposition that he believed President Trump was withholding critical security aid from Ukraine in order to get Ukrainian government officials to investigate Biden and the Democrats.
Democrats are building an impeachment case that accuses Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
California Rep. Devin Nunes, who is the top Republican on the intelligence panel, sent a witness list to Schiff that included Hunter Biden as well as the anonymous whistleblower, whose complaint about a July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky launched the impeachment proceedings.
Trump asked Zelensky on the call to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s effort to oust a Ukraine prosecutor who was targeting the Burisma Holdings gas company, which employed Hunter Biden for a hefty salary.
Trump also wanted Zelensky to investigate allegations the Democratic National Committee was working with Ukraine officials in 2016 to find information that would be damaging to the Trump presidential campaign.
Republicans want to showcase witnesses who would back up Trump’s concerns about Democratic election interference and Ukrainian corruption and, in particular, why Hunter Biden won a seat on the gas company board despite having no experience.
The GOP list includes Ambassador Kurt Volker, who served as a special envoy to Ukraine. Nunes has requested Volker to serve on the same panel as Taylor.
Republicans also want to hear from David Hale, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, and Tim Morrison, senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council.
Morrison said in closed-door testimony that he did not believe Trump did anything wrong in his July 25 conversation with Zelensky.
Schiff is more likely to allow the GOP to call Volker, Hale, and Morrison.
Washington — Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is seeking to join a lawsuit asking a federal court to decide whether a White House official should either comply with a congressional subpoena in the impeachment inquiry or follow a White House directive not to testify.
President Trump is among the co-defendants in the suit, raising the prospect of the president’s own chief of staff joining a lawsuit against him.
The suit was filed by Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser under John Bolton. An attorney for Mulvaney noted in a motion to intervene in the case that the House was threatening to hold his client in contempt for defying a subpoena to appear, in spite of his “unquestioned status as a close and senior advisor to the President.”
It’s a question, Mulvaney attorney William Pittard said in the filing, of “whether the President’s authority must give way in the face of a congressional subpoena,” as well as whether the House “may take adverse action against” Mulvaney for defying its subpoena.
The House has withdrawn the subpoena against Kupperman and said that he should adhere to the ruling in a separate case over a subpoena for former White House counsel Don McGahn, a case that has been underway since early August. House Democrats sued McGahn for his testimony regarding “the scope and extent of misconduct by President Trump.” That case is likely to be decided sooner than Kupperman’s case.
In October, Kupperman, who had been subpoenaed by committees conducting the impeachment inquiry, was ordered by the White House not to appear.
Bolton, who was not subpoenaed by the House, has already said he would abide by the decision in this case, but Mulvaney’s new attempt to join Kupperman’s case as a plaintiff is of interest because he is explicitly comparing himself to Kupperman. The judge will now have to decide whether Mulvaney and Kupperman hold comparable roles in the White House and are thus able to take similar stances in the lawsuit.
Pittard made several arguments in the filing that Mulvaney should not be forced to testify. He said the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, Pittard said, “consistently has concluded that close personal advisors of presidents are immune from compelled congressional testimony.”
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon said he would hold a telephone conference regarding the motion by Mulvaney on Monday. The hearing is being held by phone because the courts are closed on Veterans Day.
An official working on the impeachment inquiry told CBS News that the president’s directive to Mulvaney to defy the congressional subpoena “has added to the growing body of evidence documenting his attempts to obstruct the House’s impeachment inquiry.”
The official also said, “If Mr. Mulvaney had information that contradicts the consistent and incriminating testimony of numerous public servants, Mr. Mulvaney would be eager to testify, instead of hiding behind the President’s ongoing efforts to conceal the truth.”
Reporting by Rob Legare and Clare Hymes. Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.
An 18-vehicle caravan carrying about 100 members of a Mormon community leaving their homes in Mexico after a violent attack arrived in Arizona on Saturday.
The families came nearly a week after the attack on Monday in which nine women and children were killed by what authorities said were hit men from drug cartels.
On Saturday, families went in and out of a gas station in Douglas near the port of entry as the sun began to set, the Arizona Daily Star reported. They filled up on gas, put air in their tires and got food before getting back on the road to Tucson and Phoenix.
Their trucks were loaded with boxes, bicycles, spare tires and bags, as they left the communities in Mexico their families have called home since the 1950s.
The families had lived in two hamlets in Mexico’s Sonora state: La Mora and Colonia LeBaron. Other residents of the hamlets planned to leave in the coming days.
Monday’s attack occurred as women traveled with children to visit relatives.
The spread-out community traces its origins to the end of polygamy more than a century ago, forcing Mormon families in the US with multiple wives to establish offshoots elsewhere.
Bryce Langford, whose mother was killed, told the Daily Star he was on his way to visit his brother at a hospital in Tucson. Dawna Ray Langford, 43, was killed with two of her sons, aged 11 and two. She is survived by 11 children and her husband, Bryce Langford said.
Of the children who escaped, one was shot in the face, another in the foot. One girl suffered gunshot wounds to her back and foot. Another of Langford’s brothers hid six children in brush and walked to La Mora for help.
“We’re very proud of him,” Langford said. “To be able to make those kind of decisions under those circumstances is something not a lot of people can say they can do.”
A girl first listed as missing walked off in another direction, despite her gunshot wounds, to get help.
Langford said the community has learned more about cartel hit men in the area in recent months, and people had been considering moving. After Monday’s ambush, they decided it was something they had to do. Most of the families are traveling to Phoenix, and others are heading to Tucson. They are not sure where they will settle down in the long term, Langford said.
Leah Langford-Staddon told the Associated Press her mother and another sister, Amy, came to Arizona with as many belongings as they could pack. Langford-Staddon said those leaving plan to scatter among their different relatives for now but would love to settle together in a new place.
“They spent the whole day yesterday packing. It was frantic,” she said by phone from Tucson, where she is standing watch at a hospital treating five wounded children.
Those who left made a quick decision, Langford-Staddon said, adding: “When it comes down to it, it’s just things that can be replaced.”
The population of La Mora had dwindled, with some only visiting a few times a year, Langford-Staddon said. Bryce Langford, who was raised in La Mora but now lives in North Dakota, said it wasn’t easy for his relatives to leave land they have called home for more than 50 years.
“The assets that they’ve acquired down there are tremendous,” he said. “And to have to up and leave from one day to the next and leave all that behind, there’s definitely a lot of sad people here.”
“You’re not going to get elected president by avoiding Iowa, by avoiding New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” Mr. Sanders said. “You’re not going to buy this election by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on media in California. Those days are gone.”
Mr. Bloomberg on Friday took the first step toward a candidacy, filing paperwork to qualify for the ballot in Alabama. His looming entry into the race has underscored its fluidity while presenting the threat of a centrist competitor to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
As a leading progressive, Mr. Sanders could potentially benefit from a Bloomberg candidacy that siphoned voters from Mr. Biden. But Mr. Sanders displayed no eagerness to see Mr. Bloomberg in the race, and was quick to draw a direct contrast between their efforts, saying his campaign had the grass-roots support to win rather than billions of dollars in the bank.
“Bloomberg can have his billions,” he said, “but that is why we are going to win this election.”
The rally was Mr. Sanders’s second public event of the day with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who joined him on Friday for a two-day swing through the first-in-the-nation caucus state. During a rally in Council Bluffs on Friday, both progressive politicians largely avoided making any references to Mr. Bloomberg.
Mr. Bloomberg’s early moves, and his suggestion that he would follow the unconventional campaign strategy of skipping all four traditional early-state contests and instead stake his candidacy on delegate-rich primary states like California and Texas, has supplied fresh fodder for candidates like Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who are both campaigning on anti-elitist, progressive messages.
President Trump continues to attack the whistleblower who led Democrats to open the impeachment inquiry. But Ivanka Trump took a different view. Paula Reid reports.
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“This inquiry is not, and will not serve … as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit, or to facilitate the President’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm,” Schiff said in a statement.
“The Committee is evaluating the Minority’s witness requests and will give due consideration to witnesses within the scope of the impeachment inquiry, as voted on by the House,” said Schiff.
“As we move into the open hearing phase of the inquiry, the Committee is mindful that we are engaged in a sober endeavor rooted in the Constitution to determine whether the President of the United States engaged in misconduct that warrants impeachment by the House,” he added.
The House’s impeachment inquiry was launched in September amid Democratic concerns that Trump leveraged $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly open an investigation on unfounded corruption allegations against Joe Biden, a top political rival.
Trump and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill have repeated ungrounded theories that Joe Biden abused his power when as vice president he leaned on a Ukrainian prosecutor to drop an investigation into an energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. No evidence suggests that Biden was acting with his son’s interests in mind.
After several witnesses testified behind closed doors in recent weeks that they believed there was a quid pro quo surrounding Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, the impeachment investigation is set to enter a new phase next week when the Intelligence Committee holds the first round of public hearings.
While Republicans have denounced the process so far as not transparent enough, Democrats have aired concerns that the GOP could use the public hearings to derail the investigation and focus on the unfounded claims against Biden.
Today, Republican representative Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sent Democrat Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a very angry letter in response to his Nov. 6 correspondence (pdf) on the presidential impeachment-inquiry process.
Schiff had invited Nunes and fellow Republicans to submit a witness list ahead of public proceedings in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s Ukraine dealings, which begin next week. The first open hearing will be held on Nov. 13, and House Resolution 660, which passed in late October, requires Schiff to ask his colleagues in the House minority to suggest witnesses with a justification for each request “which should be guided by the inquiry’s parameters.”
The requests won’t necessarily all be honored, but the Democrat did promise to consult on the proposed witnesses and evaluate their relevance. The offer was, after all, intended to address Republicans’ complaints that Democrats are running secret proceedings without their involvement, and Schiff wants to seem reasonable and fair.
Republican resistance
Still, the complaints continue unabated. Nunes in his letter to Schiff today accused Democrats of fabricating sinister evidence against the president “out of thin air” and ignoring Trump’s due process rights while leaking cherry-picked information from a private investigation designed to mislead the public and damage the executive.
He referred to the “impeachment inquiry” in quotes to emphasize Republicans’ view that the investigation is illegitimate and wrote, “Americans see through this sham impeachment process, despite Democrats’ retroactive attempt to legitimize it last week.” The Republican argued that traditional hearings allow the minority to call whatever witnesses they choose, without being subject to the majority’s approval. He decried the fact that there is no such automatic allowance in the upcoming proceedings.
Nonetheless, Nunes wrote, “to provide transparency to your otherwise opaque and unfair process…Americans deserve to hear from the following witnesses in an open setting.”
He provided a list of 10 witnesses, most notably including Hunter Biden, the son of former vice president and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival. Hunter was a board member of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Trump, in his own words, wanted Ukrainian authorities to investigate unproven allegations that Biden senior, in his capacity as an Obama administration official fighting corruption in Ukraine, attempted to redirect a corruption inquiry into the company because of his son’s involvement.
The impeachment inquiry is premised on a whistleblower report and subsequently uncovered evidence indicating that Trump conditioned foreign aid to Ukraine on an investigation into his political rival for personal gain. Since the inquiry’s initiation in September, Trump has also publicly called on Chinese authorities to investigate Biden and his son’s activities in China.
However, Nunes was careful in his request to avoid any of the inflammatory rhetoric that came ahead of it. Instead, he suggested merely that young Biden had insight on corruption in Ukraine that would be of use to Americans. Nunes noted his role as a Burisma board member and the fact that he was paid $50,000 a month while he served in that capacity.
The Republican also pointed out that it was publicly reported that the younger Biden was hired to improve Burisma’s image at the same time Biden senior was charged with fighting Ukrainian corruption. “Biden’s firsthand experiences with Burisma can assist the American public in understanding the nature and extent of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption, information that bears directly on President Trump’s longstanding and deeply-held skepticism of the country,” Nunes explained.
However, it seems highly unlikely that Schiff and his Democratic colleagues will agree that the younger Biden is key to the impeachment inquiry, especially not when he’s being presented as a witness who can justify the president’s skepticism of Ukraine. Democrats want to keep the focus on Trump and his actions, rather than on the Bidens.
Naming the whistleblower
Controversially, Nunes also asked that the whistleblower—whose report about a Trump phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky set off the chain of events leading to the current proceedings—be called to testify. That is another suggestion that seems likely to be rejected.
Naming the report writer undermines the whole idea behind laws protecting those who speak up about possible wrongdoing. The president and other Republicans have continually called for release of this person’s name, saying that only the Inspector General can be prosecuted for outing them based on federal whistleblower law. But that is an extremely narrow reading of the law, and it’s been challenged by experts.
Whatever happens, Republicans have already signaled that they won’t take any witness denials lying down. Nunes told Schiff in conclusion that his party will characterize denial of testimony by his proposed witnesses as “evidence…of denial of fundamental fairness and due process.”
One firefighter was injured fighting a brush fire that consumed 34 acres in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles Saturday night before crews stopped the still-active fire’s forward progress.
The fire, referred to as the Barham Fire by the Los Angeles Fire Department, could be seen from Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios and sent smoke billowing near the iconic Hollywood sign. LAFD reported no civilian injuries or structure damage. No structures were threatened as of about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, according to a LAFD release.
The injured firefighter is being taken to an area hospital; the injury is not life-threatening, a LAFD release says.
The forward progress of the fire was stopped around 5 p.m., according to a LAFD release.
The Warner Bros. Studio lot in Burbank was evacuated Saturday due to the fire, CNN reports.
The fire was 15% contained, LAFD reported at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos called former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg earlier this year and asked him if he was interested in running for president, according to Recode.
Bloomberg filed paperwork to enter the Democratic primary in Alabama this week, a major indicator that he may enter the 2020 presidential race.
But he told Bezos he was not considering a run at the time of their call, according to the report.
Bloomberg’s potential candidacy has already attracted the support of other billionaires, including investor Leon Cooperman, who has been highly critical of the more left-leaning candidates in the race.
Recode noted that Bezos has largely avoided electoral politics, and it is not clear whether he would actively support Bloomberg’s candidacy.
Bloomberg’s prospective entry into the Democratic primary comes amid continued polling and fundraising strength for Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the two most left-leaning candidates in the race.
First came the SUVs and golf carts. Then came the men on horseback.
Behind them, a small band of black men and women, dressed in early 1800s field pants and waistcoats, long flowing skirts and turbans, marched in tight military columns, wielding rakes, sickles and cane knives.
“On to New Orleans!” they chanted, thrusting their weapons high.
“Freedom or death!”
They were marching Friday through a tiny, mostly black neighborhood in LaPlace, a small city about 30 miles west of New Orleans, where 208 years ago enslaved black people rose up against their plantation master to challenge the institution of slavery.
Part radical history lesson, part visual spectacle, part documentary film shoot, Slave Rebellion Reenactment was conceived by New York-based artist Dread Scott, as a roving 20-mile, two-day journey that tells the little-known story of the 1811 German Coast Uprising, in which hundreds of field hands, slave drivers and house servants organized the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history.
A polarizingartistwho has won widespread acclaim — and notoriety — for his work on racial justice, Scott was born Scott Tyler, but goes by Dread Scott in tribute to Dred Scott, the 19th century slave who sued unsuccessfully for his freedom. His goal in reenacting the rebellion was not just to reimagine a bold but ephemeral moment in U.S. history, but to critique how the nation memorializes slavery.
“It’s a project about freedom and emancipation,” he said in an interview before the march. “People study George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who were enslavers. Why are their ideas of democracy studied, instead of these people who were trying to get to a society that didn’t have slavery at its foundation? … These people were heroes.”
The rebellion began on the night of Jan. 8, 1811, when Charles Deslondes, a slave overseer who was born in Haiti and brought to Louisiana by his French owners, led about two dozen slaves out of their small cabins on the Andry plantation.
The slave cabins are gone now, but the community is still home to mostly black residents.
On Friday morning, Scott performed the role of Deslondes as he stood outside Rising Star Baptist Church in the heart of Woodland Quarters, surrounded by two dozen reenactors and a scrum of documentary filmmakers, photographers, reporters and academics.
“The day we’ve been waiting for is here,” he bellowed. “Those who wish to die free, rise with me!”
As the group set off through the neighborhood, Donald August Sr., the church’s 62-year-old pastor who was dressed in salmon-colored field pants and a striped turban, hoped the spectacle would inspire pride in the community.
Many residents, he said, were not aware that the “Quarters” in their neighborhood’s name derived from its history as a slave quarters, or that enslaved black people struggled for freedom more than a century before the first modern-day civil rights march.
“It’s not in our history books,” he said. “This is a way to bring some kind of reflection to people’s minds.”
One of the first en route, Tyki Clayton, 18, dressed in a hoodie that said “CTB (CHASE THAT BAG),” was not thinking about history so much as his future as an upcoming rapper.
“Check me out,” he said as the costumed rebels passed. “I’m the hottest thing out here.”
Up and down the neighborhood, residents peered from the doorways of their bungalows and rusty mobile homes. Some came out to lean against chain-link fences and shoot footage from pickup trucks.
Erica Nicholas Cola, 56, who was bundled up in a black winter coat and hat, beamed as she held up her cellphone to shoot a video of the parade as it passed her mother Geneva’s house.
“It’s a long time coming,” she said.
But as the rebels cried “Join us!” the event organizers were swift to stop the public from taking part in the procession.
The sprawling mass media project, which took six years to organize, was not a conventional march or commemoration. Captured on film by Ghanaian-born British video artist John Akomfrah, the reenactment was a tightly choreographed undertaking involving a core of local pastors, students, teachers and community activists, with reinforcements of background extras and reenactors from New York and New Orleans.
Some of the most avid local champions of the 1811 uprising did not take part in the spectacle, complaining that the $1-million project funded by a string of arts organizations, was primarily a vehicle for a documentary film shoot rather than a serious attempt to inform and engage local communities.
Leon A. Waters, a descendant of the 1811 rebels who in 1996 published the first lengthy account of the uprising, “On to New Orleans!: Louisiana’s Heroic 1811 Slave Revolt,” pulled out of the march because he thought organizers missed an opportunity to engage with the descendants.
The event’s former community outreach director, Malcolm Suber, a labor activist who led the successful campaign to remove Confederate monuments in New Orleans, also backed out earlier this year, objecting to the reenactment’s focus on filmmaking.
“He is staging a film and doesn’t want anyone to be on the sidelines,” he said of Scott.
As the reenactors marched toward a Mississippi River levee, where they were met by more performers waving machetes and axes, viewers were instructed to remain behind a picket fence as the rebels stormed the slave master’s white French Creole home.
From a distance, the spectacle disappeared and all that could be heard were chants and screams. Then a white man playing Andry stumbled out of the house and was trapped on the porch by the rebels.
“Why are you doing this?” he yelled. “Haven’t I treated you with a master’s love and kindness?”
A rebel plunged an ax into his body, again and again, and he fell to the ground.
Shortly after the army left, armed with muskets seized from the house, the actor playing Andry pulled himself off the porch and made off in the opposite direction.
Historians disagree on what actually happened all those years ago. While most historical records indicate that the rebels killed the plantation owner’s son, but failed to kill Andry himself, one local historian maintains that Andry’s son died before the massacre.
The surreal procession of black SUVs with flashing blue lights, golf carts, ATVs, horses and actors playing liberated slaves continued down River Road, past a white woman standing in her yard in a bright pink bathrobe and more than a hundred students gathered outside Emily C. Watkins Elementary School with their teachers and principal.
“How far are they marching?” Jeanenne Grows, a 55-year-old U.S. postal carrier, asked as she waited for the procession to pass Azalea Drive.
Her eyes widened as she tried to stretch her mind around a 20-mile walk.
While the costumes were African, Haitian and French Creole-inspired — the products of a year of weekly sewing circles — the reenactors did not follow in the footsteps of their forebears and march barefoot or wear leather or suede slippers.
Rather, their feet were clad in Skechers, Rockport and New Balance.
Unlike the rebels, the reenactors also wore gel inserts, Band-Aids and thermal underwear. Some also wore lipstick, diamond wedding rings or fake eyelashes.
They made frequent stops, breaking formation to munch Lay’s potato chips and bananas, use porta-potties, check their cellphones, stretch in yoga poses, knit, nap and sing Southern Gospel tunes. Discussion veered from neoliberalism to the upcoming Saints-Falcons game and the Harriet Tubman movie.
Throughout, there was little vocal opposition to the march. And while some onlookers were thrilled to see the procession come through their neighborhood, most were just bemused.
A few stood silently, their arms crossed over their chests.
“I don’t know what they’re doing here,” a white woman said sharply as the army of the enslaved turned left to enter her community of two-story homes with manicured lawns. “This place didn’t exist in 1811!”
The biggest outrage was the road closure that stretched for blocks along the two-lane highway.
“What’s going on?” an elderly white woman asked as she rolled down the passenger window.
“Not a good day to do it, with all this traffic!” her husband fumed.
As the day wore on, and a harsh wind swept across the levee, some reenactors grumbled about their feet. A few left the procession to run errands or put on hoodies and smoke cigarettes.
In real life, in 1811, self-liberated slaves moved from plantation to plantation, amassing an army of between 200 and 500 as they set fire to their masters’ houses. Their goal was to link up with rebels in New Orleans.
But after two days, they were forced to retreat as a group of volunteer militia, troops and seamen approached Fortier Plantation in Kenner. Marching upriver, the rebels then encountered a militia assembled by Andry.
After a short battle, about 40 to 45 slaves were killed and the remainder slipped away into the swamps.
Many of the leaders, including Deslondes, were killed on the spot. Some were put on trial and executed, their heads chopped off and placed on poles along the river as a warning to other slaves.
But that is not how the Slave Rebellion Reenactment decided to end the story.
As the sun set and the sky turned dusty pink, a crowd of more than 100 spectators stood on the Bonnet Carre spillway Friday evening as the white militia appeared, dressed in red and blue frock coats with tall hats with gold tassels and white plumes.
A group of about 20 liberated slaves marched toward them, backed by a larger group chanting, “Freedom or death!”
After an exchange of gunfire, the militia scattered and retreated, and the army of the enslaved’s chant turned into a joyous call-and-response singsong.
We’re going to end slavery!
We’re going to end slavery!
On to New Orleans!
On to New Orleans!
On Saturday morning, the sun was shining as the reenactors picked up the march.
The antique army marched along the levee along the Mississippi, where the sprawling sugar plantations have been replaced by trailer parks and subdivisions, hulking steel and petrochemical plants. Nicknamed “Cancer Alley,” the region has one of the highest cancer rates in the nation.
Marching past the towering catalytic cracking towers and vast oil drums of a Shell petrochemical plant in Norco, Sonita Singh, an assistant professor of public health at Louisiana State University, considered the reenactment an opportunity to “recontextualize neocolonialism.”
“It’s wanton, absolute greed — the same greed that drove the slave trade,” she said as she stood on the levee during a break. “This makes that stark reality very clear.”
After marching past the historic Ormond and Destrehan plantations, strip malls and a Popeyes, the reenactors clambered onto buses that whisked them to New Orleans’ French Quarter.
In 1811, it was the site of Fort St. Charles, the city’s largest fortification.
“Freedom!” they shouted as they marched through the city’s thronging tourist and entertainment hub in a military-style second-line parade, bewildering tour guides and tipsy revelers holding plastic cups of hurricane rum drinks.
When they reached Congo Square, the location where Africans gathered on Sundays to sing and dance, they were welcomed by a brass band, drummers and Mardi Gras Indians in lavish costumes of purple feathers and sequins.
One by one, the reenactors took to a stage where, in a riff of Janelle Monáe’s protest anthem, “Hell You Talmbout,” they chanted the names of the leaders of the 1811 revolt. Most are known only by their first names.
In their questioning of witnesses so far, Republican lawmakers have been particularly focused on Hunter Biden, who received $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was U.S. vice president. They also sought to have witnesses elaborate on why Trump may have been upset with Ukraine and therefore potentially justified in holding back military funding, including asking questions about Ukrainian politicians who said negative things about Trump during his 2016 campaign, the transcripts show.
Neither Mr. Mulvaney nor his lawyers asked Mr. Kupperman, Mr. Bolton or their lawyer to join the suit, nor did they give them advance notice. Mr. Bolton and Mr. Kupperman now have to decide whether to support or oppose including Mr. Mulvaney in their action.
“The question whether the president’s authority must give way in the face of a congressional subpoena — the determination Mr. Kupperman has asked this court to make — is central to the question whether the House may take adverse action against Mr. Mulvaney, as threatened,” the lawyers, William Pittard and Christopher C. Muha, wrote in their motion. “For that reason, Mr. Mulvaney seeks to intervene here.”
The lawyers noted that Mr. Mulvaney “finds himself caught in that division, trapped between the commands of two of its coequal branches — with one of those branches threatening him with contempt.” But his situation is even more acute than Mr. Kupperman’s, the lawyers, added, and not just because he still works in the White House.
“Mr. Mulvaney is both a closer and a more senior adviser to the president than was Mr. Kupperman,” they wrote, noting that he has a cabinet-level position. “And, as the acting White House chief of staff, Mr. Mulvaney is among the most regular advisors of the president.”
Mr. Mulvaney’s decision to try to join the lawsuit was also puzzling because House Democrats have withdrawn their subpoena for Mr. Kupperman and made clear they do not want to fight a court battle to obtain his testimony or Mr. Bolton’s.
Mr. Cooper, representing Mr. Bolton, wrote to the House on Friday that his client possessed evidence important to the investigation but would not testify without a clarifying court ruling. Mr. Bolton, Mr. Cooper wrote, “was personally involved in many of the events, meetings, and conversations about which you have already received testimony, as well as many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed in the testimonies thus far.”
Peter Baker reported from Tuscaloosa, and Maggie Haberman from New York.
The Virginia House of Representatives — which was flipped blue in Tuesday’s elections — made history Saturday by naming Eileen Filler-Corn the Speaker of the House, The Washington Post reported.
Filler-Corn is the first woman and the first Jewish woman to hold the position in the House’s 400-year history.
She was chosen by members of the House Democratic Caucus, who voted via secret ballot in a Richmond, Va., hotel.
Additionally, the caucus voted Charniele Herring majority leader and Rip Sullivan caucus chairman.
Herring is the first woman and the first African American to be the chamber’s majority leader.
Filler-Corn won’t officially become the Speaker until the newly elected House convenes in January.
“This inquiry is not, and will not serve … as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit, or to facilitate the President’s effort to threaten, intimidate, and retaliate against the whistleblower who courageously raised the initial alarm,” Schiff said in a statement.
“The Committee is evaluating the Minority’s witness requests and will give due consideration to witnesses within the scope of the impeachment inquiry, as voted on by the House,” said Schiff.
“As we move into the open hearing phase of the inquiry, the Committee is mindful that we are engaged in a sober endeavor rooted in the Constitution to determine whether the President of the United States engaged in misconduct that warrants impeachment by the House,” he added.
The House’s impeachment inquiry was launched in September amid Democratic concerns that Trump leveraged $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly open an investigation on unfounded corruption allegations against Joe Biden, a top political rival.
Trump and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill have repeated ungrounded theories that Joe Biden abused his power when as vice president he leaned on a Ukrainian prosecutor to drop an investigation into an energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. No evidence suggests that Biden was acting with his son’s interests in mind.
After several witnesses testified behind closed doors in recent weeks that they believed there was a quid pro quo surrounding Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, the impeachment investigation is set to enter a new phase next week when the Intelligence Committee holds the first round of public hearings.
While Republicans have denounced the process so far as not transparent enough, Democrats have aired concerns that the GOP could use the public hearings to derail the investigation and focus on the unfounded claims against Biden.
In requesting testimony from the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry, Nunes said that “Trump should be afforded an opportunity to confront his accusers,” especially with what he claimed were “discrepancies” between the whistleblower’s complaint and witnesses’ closed-door testimony.
“It is imperative that the American people hear definitively how the whistleblower developed his or her information, and who else the whistleblower may have fed the information he or she gathered and how that treatment of classified information may have led to the false narrative being perpetrated by the Democrats during this process,” Nunes wrote.
In addition to the anonymous whistleblower, whose complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky president is at the center of the impeachment inquiry, Republicans also plan to call Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer.
It is unclear how many of the GOP’s requested witnesses will be approved by the majority House Democrats and Schiff, though several lawmakers have already expressed concerns about the possibility of outing the anonymous whistleblower.
Hunter Biden worked on the board of a natural gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch while his father served as vice president. Joe Biden pushed in 2016 for the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had been accused of overlooking corruption in his own office, threatening to withhold money if the prosecutor was not fired.
In a sign the House GOP may be looking beyond the current scope of the investigation, one of the witnesses included in the wish list is Nellie Ohr, a former Fusion GPS employee who is a top Republican target over their claims she helped produce the Steele dossier.
The House’s impeachment inquiry was launched in September amid Democratic concerns that Trump leveraged $400 million in military aid to pressure Zelensky to publicly open an investigation on unfounded corruption allegations against Joe Biden, a top political rival.
While the White House and its allies have cast the impeachment as a sham, Democrats have publicized testimony from several witnesses saying they believed there was a quid pro quo surrounding Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
This breaking news report was updated at 10:14 a.m.
House Republicans requested Saturday that several people, including Hunter Biden and the anonymous whistleblower, testify before select committees as a part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The request came as lawmakers prepare to hold public inquiry hearings beginning Wednesday. Three House committees have been privately questioning witnesses for the last several weeks.
A resolution outlining the process of the impeachment inquiry that passed the House in late October affords Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee the right to request certain witnesses be brought to testify. Those requests can only be granted by the chair of that committee, Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, or through the approval of the majority of the committee’s members.
Saturday, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, sent a letter to Schiff that both requested a number of witnesses be called and complaining that House Democrats’ “sham impeachment process” unfairly inhibits Republicans from fully participating in the hearings due to the rules around such requests.
These rules, as Vox’s Li Zhou notes, align with the procedures followed in past impeachment inquiries, but have nevertheless become a point of contention for Republicans.
The witnesses in the request also reflect Republican disdain for the inquiry. The list includes many President Donald Trump has accused of wrongdoing, including the whistleblower whose complaint kicked off the impeachment inquiry and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, as well as figures the president and his allies have derided as partisan players like the whistleblower’s sources and a former DNC staffer.
Following the release of the letter, Trump gave his two cents, arguing the list ought to be expanded to include “Nervous Nancy Pelosi” and “Sleepy Joe Biden.”
I recommend that Nervous Nancy Pelosi (who backed up Schiff’s lie), Shifty Adam Schiff, Sleepy Joe Biden, the Whistleblower (who miraculously disappeared after I released the transcript of the call), the 2nd Whistleblower (who also disappeared), & the I.G., be part of the list!
Schiff told NBC Saturday that he does not intend to call Biden to testify: “This inquiry is not and will not serve, however, as a vehicle to undertake the same sham investigations into the Bidens or 2016 that the President pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit,” Schiff said.
Democrats haven’t announced all of the people they will call to testify, but William Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine; George Kent, an assistant secretary in the State Department; and former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch are among them.
Who’s on the Republicans’ list
Republicans called for a number of people to be brought before the House as a part of the impeachment inquiry. They included several people who have already testified to committees privately, political strategists, and both major and minor players in the unfolding story of Trump’s relationship with Ukraine.
The anonymous whistleblower — and everyone who informed his complaint
The whistleblower is an intelligence official who wrote a 9-page complaint outlining how Trump “is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
The centerpiece of his complaint was a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky during which Trump appears to offer a military aid in exchange for Ukrainian officials investigating Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The White House has released a memo summarizing the contents of this call that reflects this request, and the whistleblower’s allegation has been supported by the sworn testimony of a number of current and former federal officials.
The whistleblower was scheduled to testify in a closed door session that was cancelled due to security concerns; he has worked to keep his identity secret in the face of threats from the president. This has led Trump and his allies to demand more information be made public about the whistleblower — and, given he complied his complaint from a variety of sources, that those who gave the whistleblower information be brought forward as well.
Republicans want to hear from both the whistleblower and his sources in open hearings. Schiff has made clear he wants to protect the anonymity of the whistleblower and his sources. Republicans should not expect this request to be granted.
Hunter Biden and his longtime business partner, Devon Archer
Both Biden and Archer had at one point been board members of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. As Vox’s Andrew Prokop reported, “Archer was Hunter’s business partner for his overseas work and helped made the connection that got him and later Hunter on the board of the Ukrainian gas company.” (Archer is also, apparently, a former Abercrombie and Fitch model, Yale student, and Citibank employee.)
Hunter Biden is the ne’er-do-well son of the former vice president, whose questionable ethical choices have been the subject of media scrutiny for decades. Hunter has accepted large payments from several foreign sources, and he was well compensated for serving on the board of a scandal-plagued Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma, despite having no evident qualifications for the post. Trump has claimed that Joe Biden intervened in Ukraine policy to help his son, but there’s no evidence that that’s true.
Trump’s unsubstantiated belief that Joe Biden improperly used the power of the vice presidency to aid his son is a key piece of what led him to pressure Ukraine to open an investigation. In his letter, Nunes claims Biden’s testimony is necessary to illuminate “President Trump’s longstanding and deeply-held skepticism” of Ukraine.
In his statement Saturday, Schiff made it clear he sees this request as an attempt to get Biden in front of television cameras so that the president’s allies can ask him questions that could damage his father’s presidential bid. These requests won’t be granted, either.
Alexandra Chalupa, former Democratic National Committee contractor
In Trump’s July call with Zelensky, he mentioned another conservative conspiracy theory: that Ukrainian officials tried to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. And Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate what he described as a Democratic National Committee server — presumably containing evidence of this assistance — that he believes is hidden in Ukraine.
As Vox’s Alex Ward has explained, these theories are untrue (and the server issue is technologically nonsensical).
However, they persist, and Republicans want to call a former DNC contractor who is at the heart of conspiracy theories about a Clinton-Ukraine connection, Alexandra Chalupa.
Accusations that Ukraine worked on behalf of Clinton have been floated, particularly on the right, following a 2017 report that a Ukrainian American contractor with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) passed along information about [former Trump campaign manager Paul] Manafort from Ukrainian officials to members of the Clinton campaign. That contractor, Alexandra Chalupa, told CNN she did give the DNC information about Manafort, but only what she knew about the man from her work as an activist.
Chalupa’s concerns about Manafort do not appear to be unfounded, given his business dealings with Ukraine led to a prison sentence early this year.
Chalupa, Nunes writes, can shed light on “the facts and circumstances surrounding Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election.”
However, there was no Ukrainian involvement in that election, and as Vox’s Alex Ward has written, officials have brought evidence proving this to Trump. Given she has little involvement in the matter at hand, and that the conspiracy theory to which she is attached has been disproved, it is difficult to see House Democrats calling Chalupa to testify.
Nellie Ohr, former contractor for research firm Fusion GPS
Like Chalupa, Nellie Ohr is a figure in the conspiracy theory that promotes a Ukraine-Clinton connection.
Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the company that hired Christopher Steele to put together a dossier on Trump that included several sensational claims that were later found to be false. Fusion GPS has been used by Democratic campaigns in the past to do opposition research; in 2016, a Democratic operative hired it on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC to research Trump.
According to Nunes, Ohr told committees in 2018 that Fusion GPS sources included high ranking Ukrainians. And Ohr, the lawmaker claims, can help illuminate “the facts and circumstances surrounding Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election.”
Again, it is known Ukraine did not meddle in the 2016 election. Like Chalupa, Ohr is highly unlikely to be called to testify.
Tim Morrison, former top White House aide for Europe and Russia policy
Unlike some of the other figures on the list, Tim Morrison is an important figure in the impeachment inquiry.
He told House committee members last week that, during a meeting between US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and Ukrainian officials, Sondland told the Ukrainians “it could be sufficient if the new Ukrainian prosecutor general, not President Zelensky, would commit to pursue the Burisma investigation” in exchange for the release of military aid.
Essentially, he told lawmakers there was quid pro quo: military aid in exchange for an investigation into the Bidens.
Nunes notes in the request that Morrison was on the July call during which Trump asked Ukrainians to investigate Biden in exchange for him stopping withholding military aid. Morrison’s testimony followed Taylor’s (who will testify again publicly) and corroborated much of what Taylor said. It isn’t clear whether the public testimonies of both men are needed, but unlike Biden, he may be called for the next phase of testimony.
David Hale, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs
Hale is the third-ranking official in the State Department. He spoke privately before House committees, where he was expected to say, among other things, that political machinations were a part of the agency’s decision not to defend Yovanovitch during the period leading up to her recall from Ukraine. He was also believed to have described pressure his department received from Rudy Giuliani related to removing her from her post.
Nunes writes Hale should be called because of this knowledge; however, Taylor, Kent, and Yovanovitch’s public testimonies will likely explore this territory as well.
Kurt Volker, former US special representative to Ukraine
Volker was the envoy to Ukraine between 2017 and earlier this year, when he resigned after he was named in the whistleblower report and mentioned on television by Giuliani. The whistleblower complaint describes Volker as a part of the exchange between Giuliani and the Ukrainians.
Volker gave lawmakers texts he exchanged with other officials that, as Vox’s Andrew Prokop writes, “show him as a willing participant in the effort to press Ukraine to launch the investigations Trump wanted.”
Nunes argues that if other officials like Taylor and Kent are being called for public hearings, Volker ought to be as well. Given his role, he just might be.
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