Former White House communications director Hope Hicks, a favorite former aide of President Donald Trump’s, is rejoining the administration to work for the president’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Hicks will serve as “counselor to the president and senior advisor, working for Jared Kushner’s office.”
Kushner told NBC News in a statement: “There is no one more devoted to implementing President Trump’s agenda than Hope Hicks. We are excited to have her back on the team.”
McEntee had become an advisor on Trump’s reelection campaign after being escorted from the White House in March 2018. He “is expected to take over the office that oversees presidential personnel appointments,” Haberman tweeted, citing two people briefed on the matter.
The White House declined CNBC’s request for comment on McEntee’s reported return.
Hicks started her career in the Trump orbit as an aide to Ivanka Trump for her fashion brand.
Hicks’ return is the latest example of the White House-Fox revolving door of staffers.
Fox Corp. confirmed Hicks’ departure in a statement. “We are proud of the work Hope has done and wish her well in her future endeavors,” the company said.
Hicks had been dating former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who at the time had been accused of spousal abuse. Hicks also admitted during testimony to the House Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election that she had told “white lies” for Trump.
The California Democrat declined to articulate her view on whether Congress should pursue additional investigations or take other steps to confront Trump’s actions ahead of the 2020 election. But she called for bipartisan resistance to the president’s move to interfere in the justice system.
“This is not what America is about,” Pelosi told reporters. “I would hope that Republicans who respect the rule of law, and I assume most of them do except for the aberration in the White House … would speak out on this.”
Stone is slated to be sentenced next week on his conviction for lying to congressional investigators about his efforts to procure damaging information about Hillary Clinton from Wikileaks and pass them on to the Trump campaign. He was also convicted of threatening a witness and urging him not to testify truthfully to lawmakers.
Prosecutors in the matter recommended Stone face a seven- to nine-year sentence because of the gravity of the investigation he impeded as well as repeated violations of a gag order imposed by the judge in the matter. Hours later, Trump tweeted that the proposed punishment was unfair, and later that day, the Justice Department overruled its own prosecutors and asked the judge for a lesser punishment. Trump later celebrated the move and attributed it to intervention by Barr.
The move alarmed veteran prosecutors and led to howls of protest among Democrats, while Republicans mostly shrugged or offered mild concern.
“Convince me that what Trump has done since the impeachment vote isn’t worse than what he did to warrant impeachment,” Sen. Chris Murphy tweeted Wednesday evening.
Even one Senate Democrat who backed Barr’s nomination to become attorney general raised concerns about his involvement in the Stone sentencing decision.
“Improper political interference in criminal proceedings and sentencing recommendations, if it occurred, raises serious moral and ethical questions about the independent and impartial application of the law,” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) wrote in a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, urging a review of the matter.
But House Democrats haven’t indicated whether they plan to take any specific steps in response to the episode other than questioning Barr about it on March 31, nearly seven weeks from now. Some have privately suggested the House should consider calling the DOJ prosecutors who issued the initial recommendation, all of whom withdrew from the case after Barr’s intervention. But it’s unclear if the Judiciary Committee is trying to secure their testimony.
Democrats are also weighing whether to reengage their investigation of Trump’s effort to press Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats on specious charges, which is what led to the House’s impeachment inquiry.
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World Health Organization officials are holding a press conference Thursday to update the public on the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more people than the 2003 SARS epidemic.
As of Thursday, more than 60,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported in over two dozen countries, resulting in least 1,300 deaths, almost exclusively in China. The WHO declared the virus a global health emergency last month, a rare designation that helps the international agency mobilize financial and political support to contain the outbreak.
The number of new cases of COVID-19 appeared to be stabilizing until Thursday, when a change in China’s methodology for determining the disease led to a spike in confirmed cases in Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Health authorities in Hubei said Thursday that “clinically diagnosed” cases now count toward the “confirmed case” count. The change was made so a broader set of patients can receive the same treatment as someone with a confirmed case, according to a CNBC translation of the official announcement in Chinese.
WHO officials said Tuesday the decision to revise how to define a case is normal.
“It’s normal, during the course of an outbreak to adapt the case definition because we need to be very close to the reality to monitor the disease, how it is unfolding,” said Dr. Sylvie Briand, WHO’s director of infectious hazards.
President Trump and Michael Bloomberg traded sharp jabs on Twitter Thursday, with the commander-in-chief ripping the Democratic presidential candidate as a “loser,” prompting the former Big Apple mayor to describe him as a “barking clown.”
“Mini Mike is a 5’4” mass of dead energy who does not want to be on the debate stage with these professional politicians. No boxes please,” Trump said in one of two tweets about Bloomberg, who is 5 feet 8. “He hates Crazy Bernie and will, with enough money, possibly stop him. Bernie’s people will go nuts!”
The president compared Bloomberg to one of his Republican challengers in 2016.
“Mini Mike Bloomberg is a LOSER who has money but can’t debate and has zero presence, you will see. He reminds me of a tiny version of Jeb ‘Low Energy’ Bush, but Jeb has more political skill and has treated the Black community much better than Mini!” he said.
But Bloomberg fired back with his own tweet 20 minutes later, taking aim at Trump’s reputation as a self-made billionaire real estate developer.
“@realDonaldTrump – we know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown,” Bloomberg said in a posting. “They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and incompetence.”
“I have the record & the resources to defeat you. And I will,” Bloomberg concluded.
Bloomberg, whose wealth Forbes estimates at $61.8 billion, making him the eighth-richest person in the US, is pouring his money into an advertising blitz to promote his presidential run and to knock Trump.
Since throwing his hat in the ring in November, Bloomberg, who is self-financing his campaign, has poured about $350 million into television, online and radio spots.
The media mogul has said he would be willing to spend $1 billion on the race.
Trump, whom Forbes estimates to be worth $3.1 billion, and associated committees raised $154 million in the last three months of 2019 and have $195 million on hand, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
The president and the Republican National Committee spent about $9 million on advertising and polling in the fourth quarter.
Trump and Bloomberg even ran dueling ads that cost $10 million each during the Super Bowl earlier this month.
CAYCE, S.C. — Investigators are looking for two vehicles seen in the neighborhood when 6-year-old Faye Swetlik vanished outside her home in South Carolina.
Faye was last seen playing in her front yard in Cayce after taking the bus home from school Monday. More than 250 officers and investigators are desperately searching for her.
“We’re hoping for the best. We want to get Faye back home,” said Sgt. Evan Antley of the Cayce Department of Public Safety. “So we’re not leaving any stone unturned. We are exhausting every resource we have and then some.”
Antley said investigators want to talk to the vehicles’ occupants — just like they’ve talked to the other people in the neighborhood.
Faye, who has strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes, was last seen Monday afternoon.
Police are stopping cars going in and out of the neighborhood and are going door to door, said Capt. Adam Myrick of the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.
Faye, a first grader at Springdale Elementary School, got off her bus on Monday afternoon and safely arrived at her house in the Churchill Heights neighborhood, according to Antley.
Sometime around 3:45 p.m., her family realized Faye was missing, he said.
“We’re not sure if she just walked off and is somewhere in the woods or at a neighbor’s house possibly in distress or fallen or something like that,” Antley said Tuesday. The FBI has also joined the search.
Police were called around 5 p.m. and began a search with more than 100 law enforcement personnel, including K-9s. The number of searchers increased to more than 250 by Tuesday.
Faye was last seen wearing a black shirt with the word “peace” on it. She was also wearing a flower print skirt and polka dot rain boots, according to the Cayce Department of Public Safety. She is 3 feet 10 inches and weighs about 65 pounds.
Faye is lactose intolerant and has a speech impediment, the department said. She currently has shoulder-length hair, according to Chief Byron Snellgrove of the Cayce Department of Public Safety.
Police are asking that anyone who has a video security system such as Ring and lives in the Churchill Heights neighborhood to contact law enforcement.
“Faye is a bubbly, energetic first grader,” Snellgrove said Tuesday evening. “Faye loves dresses, fancy shoes, spending time with her family, cats and playing outside. We’ve all been gathered for one thing here today and that’s to find Faye.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at a press conference on the House’s vote to remove the ratification deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment on Wednesday.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at a press conference on the House’s vote to remove the ratification deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment on Wednesday.
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Updated at 1:33 p.m. ET
The U.S. House has voted to remove the deadline on ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in an attempt to revive the amendment.The 232-183 vote fell largely along party lines with five Republicans supporting the measure and zero Democrats opposing it.
Changing the deadline is a key part of one route that some ERA proponents believe would lead to the amendment becoming a part of the Constitution, but the path forward is uncertain.
The proposed amendment says simply, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” and it has had a renaissance in recent years, with three states ratifying it since 2017.
However, the bill may well be stymied after this vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said earlier this month that he’s “personally not a supporter” of the amendment, and the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel has said that it considers the ERA “expired.”
In addition, there isn’t legal consensus that Congress can remove the deadline in this way.
The amendment, proposed in 1972, originally had a ratification deadline of 1979 attached to it. Congress later bumped that out to 1982, but by then, only 35 states had ratified it. Thirty-eight states need to ratify in order for a proposal to become an amendment.
But the deadline has never been further extended beyond 1982. The bill passed by the House on Thursday would retroactively remove that deadline.
Supporters argue that removal would allow the amendment to become a part of the Constitution.
In floor speeches Thursday morning, Democrats framed the amendment as being about fairness and inclusion. Some also made an economic argument.
“It’s not just about women; it’s about America,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “The ERA will strengthen America, unleashing the full power of women in our economy and upholding the value of equality in our democracy.”
Legal experts have argued that the amendment could protect women economically, like helping them get more equal pay and preventing pregnancy discrimination.
Republicans argued against the bill, saying that the amendment is unconstitutional, but they also particularly stressed the issue of abortion in their arguments.
“If ratified, the ERA would be used by pro-abortion groups to undo pro-life legislation and lead to more abortions and taxpayer-funded abortions,” said Arizona Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko.
There are 13 Republican women in the House, and they were heavily represented among those arguing against the ERA.
The amendment could impact abortion-related funding and regulations, and some abortion-rights proponents see the amendment as a way to bolster abortion rights. However, as constitutional law expert Martha Davis stressed to NPR in January, it’s not entirely clear what the impact would be.
The so-called three-state strategy to get to 38 states is one strategy that ERA defenders had been hoping for years would result in success. The other route — starting over with a fresh amendment — could be far more time-consuming.
However, it is one that some proponents have still been working at. New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney has reintroduced the Equal Rights Amendment multiple times.
On Monday Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she thinks that Congress should junk the current amendment and start over from scratch.
“I would like to see a new beginning,” Ginsburg told an audience celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the 19th Amendment. In particular, Ginsburg expressed concern about the validity of the ERA’s post-deadline ratification process.
Though she doesn’t consider the current ratification process viable, Ginsburg still believes an equal rights amendment should be passed. “Every constitution in the world written since the year 1950 … has the equivalent of an equal rights amendment, and we don’t,” noted Ginsburg.
NPR intern Christina Peck contributed to this report.
The US justice system is facing a crisis of credibility that could undermine the integrity of federal prosecutors, politicize the legal handling of Donald Trump’s friends and enemies, and ultimately threaten democracy itself, top lawyers warn.
A barrage of former justice department figures have sounded the alarm following a decision on Tuesday by the US attorney general, William Barr, to undercut a sentencing recommendation for Trump’s friend Roger Stone. In a new court filing, Barr’s office condemned the initial recommendation of seven to nine years in prison as “excessive and unwarranted”.
The direct interference of the US attorney general in an individual sentencing decision by his department’s own career professionals was highly unusual. The White House and Trump himself also appeared to be involved, with the president posting a tweet shortly before Barr made his move that called the original sentencing proposal for Stone “horrible and very unfair”.
Trump later congratulated Barr on “taking charge of a case that was totally out of control”.
In the fallout, all four career prosecutors who had framed the initial sentencing recommendation quit from the case in protest.
The new filing and the instant resignations it provoked have now led to an outpouring of rebuke from senior legal figures who cautioned that the rule of law is being shaken by Trump and his DoJ allies.
“This is a crisis of credibility,” said Sasha Samberg-Champion, a former federal appellate attorney now with Relman Colfax. “Nobody knows whether decisions are being made based on the facts and the law, or whether they are based on a political whim.”
Chiraag Bains of Demos, who worked for four years as a DoJ prosecutor, told the Guardian he was shocked by events.
“This will have serious consequences for staff morale at the justice department, for the credibility of justice department attorneys in court, and for the public’s sense that the justice system is fair. How are judges or juries supposed to have faith that prosecutors represent the impartial position of the United States and not a political agenda?” he said.
Two of Barr’s predecessors at the helm of the DoJ expressed their distress. Eric Holder, US attorney general under Barack Obama, said in a statement that the conduct over Stone had “put at risk the perceived – and real – neutral enforcement of our laws and, ultimately, endanger the fabric of our democracy”.
Sally Yates, who briefly held the position of acting attorney general at the start of the Trump presidency, poignantly tweeted that the career lawyers of the DoJ – like the four who had resigned from the case – “are the backbone and the heart of the department. Your noble dedication to the rule of law is the foundation of our republic.”
The insulation of justice officials from any political interference in their handling of criminal prosecutions is seen as the bedrock of the entire US justice system. The concept is enshrined in the mission statement of the DoJ: “To ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.”
In the wake of the Watergate scandal, new rules were put in place under the title “White House contacts policy” that severely restrict any communication between the president, his team and justice officials. That wall of separation has been honored by successive Republican and Democratic administrations since 1978.
“Trump has torn down that wall,” Bains said. “He treats the justice department’s prosecution powers as an arm of his political apparatus, to threaten perceived enemies and reward friends.”
Michael Bromwich, who acted as the DoJ’s official ethics watchdog between 1994 and 1999, was so alarmed by the apparent intervention of the White House in Stone’s sentencing that he called on federal prosecutors coming under improper political pressure to report it confidentially to his successors in the inspector general’s office. He said the integrity of government lawyers had been “publicly undermined to suit the whims of the White House”, and said the events amounted to “a cancer on our system of justice”.
Preet Bharara, the former US attorney for the southern district of New York, who was fired by Trump, accused Barr and the DoJ leadership of “humiliating its own career prosecutors, and giving special treatment to the president’s criminal associates. The worst part is they don’t seem even to care any more.”
Bharara is no stranger to the crossing of sacred lines by Trump and his cohorts. A few days before he was dismissed in March 2017, he received a phone call from Trump asking him to talk.
A direct call from the US president to a senior justice official in charge of highly sensitive investigations was utterly against protocol, and Bharara did not pick up the phone. Bharara later told the Guardian it was the best decision he ever made.
“Imagine what it would look like now if I were still US attorney and it became known that I had quiet little chats with the president at the same time we were investigating the Trump organisation.”
That is not the only incident in which Trump has attempted to wield the powers of the presidency to forward his political purposes and help his friends in their tangles with criminal prosecutors. In February 2017, Trump tried to cajole the then FBI director, James Comey, into ending an investigation into the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
According to NBC News, the interference in Flynn’s case continues to this day. The news outlet reported that, in an echo of the Stone affair, senior DoJ officials intervened last month to try to undercut government sentencing recommendations for Flynn and spare him any prison time for lying to the FBI.
How the current crisis plays out could boil down to what Amy Berman Jackson, the judge in the criminal case against Stone, does next.
Stone was convicted by a jury in November of lying to investigators, obstructing a congressional investigation and witness tampering. Jackson has so far proven herself to be immune to Stone’s legendary wiles. She now exclusively has the power to determine Stone’s sentence.
At the sentencing hearing, set for 20 February, she will also be able to ask the justice department’s lawyer probing and potentially awkward questions.
Barr will come under further questioning on 31 March when he has been called to appear before the House judiciary committee. Democratic leaders of the committee said they wanted to address “the misuse of our justice system for political purposes”.
“This is a test for the entire justice system,” Samberg-Champion said. “It will determine whether political interference will be allowed to happen – because if you allow it once there is nothing to stop it happening again.”
Even before today’s news, experts complained that epidemiological information from China has been incomplete, threatening containment efforts.
The new coronavirus is highly transmissible and will be difficult to squelch. A single infected “super-spreader” can infect dozens of others. Outbreaks can seem to recede, only to rebound in short order, as the weather or conditions change.
Recent clusters of coronavirus cases suggest the new coronavirus not only spreads quickly, but also in ways that are not entirely understood.
In Hong Kong, people living 10 floors apart were infected, and an unsealed pipe was blamed. A British citizen apparently infected 10 people, including some at a ski chalet, before he even knew he was sick.
In Tianjin, China, at least 33 of 102 confirmed patients had a connection of some sort with a large department store.
“This outbreak could still go in any direction,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said on Wednesday.
A change in diagnosis may make it still harder to track the virus, said Dr. Peter Rabinowitz, co-director of the University of Washington MetaCenter for Pandemic Preparedness and Global Health Security.
As February dawned, the fear of many Democrats was that impeachment was ruining their favorite senators’ chances to replace the man in the White House. The time their heroes spent chained to their desks in the U.S. Capitol as mute jurors in the trial, some griped, was time not spent in coffee shops and legion halls and wherever else voters can be found in Iowa and New Hampshire.
They need not have worried.
Impeachment duties did not stop Amy Klobuchar from surging, and it certainly hasn’t held back Bernie Sanders, who got the most votes in both states. True, Michael Bennet has dropped out. And yes, Elizabeth Warren had a lackluster Tuesday night. But both of those senators spent more time than the competition in New Hampshire, yet still earned fewer votes.
The biggest loser, however, may be Joe Biden, which was exactly what President Trump wanted all along. Biden wasn’t investigated by Ukraine, but impeachment subjected him and his son Hunter to a prolonged proctological examination that seems to have taken a toll.
Autopsies are not performed on living patients, and the Biden campaign clings very much to life. The onetime front-runner still seemed wounded Tuesday night when he fled to South Carolina before New Hampshire results were reported. Biden finished fifth, a nightmare scenario for a former vice president who promised no fewer than five times he would win the Granite State.
There are myriad reasons for Biden’s slow start, among them his propensity for committing gaffes, but as liberal writer Peter Beinart posited before the New Hampshire primary, impeachment hurt someone, and it wasn’t Trump.
“By keeping Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine in the news,” the New York University professor wrote in The Atlantic, Republicans “have turned them into a rough analogue to Hillary Clinton’s missing emails in 2016 — a pseudo-scandal that undermines a leading Democratic candidate’s reputation for honesty.”
“The impeachment effort and the Republican counterattack against it,” Beinart added, “have largely accomplished Trump’s goal.”
The Trump campaign agrees, in part.
No president wants to be impeached, but no other president has used impeachment to his electoral advantage either. Trump has made the most of it by using his constitutional woes to further animate his speeches, fundraise millions of dollars and drive his always faithful base into an unprecedented frenzy.
And while he never got his requested Ukrainian investigation (and China didn’t deliver either, even though the president asked its leaders nicely — and on the White House lawn, no less), attention, little of it good, has been paid to the business practices of the Biden family.
“This will go down as the worst political miscalculation in American politics,” Tim Murtaugh told RealClearPolitics in January as more than 7,000 Trump supporters filled the Drake University arena for a speech by the president. Does it help Trump? Does it hurt Biden? Ahead of the Iowa caucuses, the president’s campaign communications director answered yes to both questions.
“To the extent that it is forcing the media to talk about it, sure, it has been beneficial,” Murtaugh said. After all, Senate Democrats couldn’t accuse the president of trying to force the Ukrainians into investigating the Bidens without journalists also mentioning what he wanted investigated.
The business dealings of Hunter Biden have become common knowledge as a result. And a Ukrainian oil and gas company has become nearly a household name — at least among Trump supporters. As reported by every national paper and cable news channel, he took a job on the board of Burisma while his father was vice president. Joe Biden later, Trump alleges, improperly pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who at one time was investigating the company.
Republicans regularly question why Hunter Biden was serving in that capacity, why he was paid as much as $50,000 a month despite speaking not a word of that country’s language and having no experience in the field. Even more to the point, why didn’t Joe Biden put an end to an arrangement that raised eyebrows even within the Obama administration?
Trump asked for an investigation, and House Democrats impeached him for it, accusing the president of abusing the power of his office by withholding U.S. aid to force Ukraine’s hand. The fallout, Murtaugh told RCP, has only helped the president’s campaign. It’s filled their coffers and organized their grassroots, he said: “Every time the media and Democrats go into a frenzy on impeachment, we interact with voters more online and our fundraising goes through the roof.”
It is not clear whether Democratic voters saw the flames that Republicans were fanning around the early front-runner or if other factors led to his poor performance in Iowa and New Hampshire. But the impeachment drama coincided with Biden’s precipitous drop in the polls. He led the RealClearPolitics average through much of the previous year before dropping hard first in Iowa and then in New Hampshire.
And the hits keep on coming. There are stories not just about Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine but also in China, as well as questions about plum positions he got on cushy boards around Washington, D.C.
There were cracks in the candidate’s façade as a result. When Savannah Guthrie asked him about Ukraine, Biden lashed out at the NBC anchor, telling her, “You don’t know what you are talking about.” An Iowa voter accused him of abusing his power during the Obama administration to protect his son. Biden called the man “a damn liar.” The whole thing, he said again and again, was “malarkey.”
From the White House vantage point, what made this all so delicious was that Democrats did this to their own guy: Biden was felled by friendly fire. The main question in Republicans’ minds is whether it was deliberate or accidental. “It was out of Trump’s control,” a former campaign aide familiar with the president’s thinking told RCP. “Pelosi made the conscious decision to end Biden’s campaign when she filed those articles of impeachment. She knew what she was doing.”
Others aren’t so sure. “I think the story is less whether or not Trump got what he wanted and instead how foolish the Democrats were,” a former senior White House official told RCP. Republican voters are already inured to allegations of corruption made against the president, the source continued, and Democrats have already made up their minds. By impeaching the president over Ukraine, they didn’t change that calculus either way. But they necessarily turned up the volume on allegations against the former vice president.
“Another way to look at this,” the official said, “is that [Adam] Schiff was aiming at Trump but shot Biden’s campaign instead.” House Democrats must be asking themselves, the source speculated with obvious glee, “My god! Why didn’t we stop ourselves?”
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“It’s disappointing that Senator Sanders’ supporters have viciously attacked the Culinary Union and working families in Nevada simply because our union has provided facts on what certain healthcare proposals might do to take away the system of care we have built over 8 decades,” the union said in a statement.
STATEMENT by Geoconda Argüello-Kline: It’s disappointing Senator Sanders’ supporters have viciously attacked the Culinary Union & working families in NV simply because we provided facts on proposals that might takeaway what we have built over 8 decades. ➡️https://t.co/zUqTizBFSFpic.twitter.com/sWnRZ0r2vR
The union, which represents 60,000 employees in Las Vegas and Reno, received pushback from Sanders’s supporters after it circulated a flyer that stated the Vermont senator’s “Medicare for All” health care plan would “End Culinary Healthcare.”
That isn’t wrong; under Medicare for All, private health insurance would cease to exist and would be replaced with a government-run plan.
Sanders and his campaign argue it would benefit the entire country, and Sanders also has argued that overall health care expenses would be reduced.
But it would mean members of the culinary union could lose the health care coverage they have negotiated.
The flyer also stated, “Presidential candidates suggesting forcing millions of hard working people to give up their healthcare creates unnecessary division between workers, and will give us four more years of Trump.”
Sanders’s Nevada state director, Sarah Michelsen, responded to the flyer, saying, “Bernie has been clear that under Medicare for All, we will guarantee that coverage is as comprehensive or more so than the health care benefits union workers currently receive, and union health clinics, including the Culinary’s health clinic, will remain open to serve their members.”
According to the statement, union members went on strike for more than six years to protect the Culinary Health Fund, the health care plan the union currently has. The plan provides health care to more than 130,000 Nevadans.
“Our union believes that everyone has the right to good healthcare and that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege,” the union said. “We have already enacted a vision for what working people need – and it exists now. Workers should have the right to choose to keep the healthcare Culinary Union members have built, sacrificed for, and went on strike for 6 years, 4 months, and 10 days to protect.”
The butting of heads between the powerful union and the Sanders campaign comes just more than a week before the state’s caucuses on Feb. 21.
The coronavirus is causing travel demand to slump across the whole Asia-Pacific region, according to data released by travel analytics firm ForwardKeys on Thursday, with the region seeing a 10.5% slowdown in outbound travel bookings for March and April, excluding trips to and from China and Hong Kong. As of Feb. 9, the setback looks likely to be most marked in northeast Asia, where outbound bookings for March and April are 17.1% behind where they were at the same time last year.
A man wearing a face mask has his temperature checked before entering a community hospital in Shanghai on Thursday. China’s official death toll and infection numbers from the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus spiked dramatically on Thursday after authorities changed their counting methods.
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A man wearing a face mask has his temperature checked before entering a community hospital in Shanghai on Thursday. China’s official death toll and infection numbers from the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus spiked dramatically on Thursday after authorities changed their counting methods.
Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images
China’s Hubei province expanded its criteria for identifying new coronavirus infections on Thursday, causing a dramatic spike in reported cases at the epicenter of the disease, as Beijing moved to purge provincial party officials amid criticism of their handling of the epidemic.
Hubei, where the majority of the world’s infections have been concentrated, added a new category of “clinical cases” to its reporting. Now, patients will be included who exhibit all the symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus — including fever, cough and shortness of breath — but have either not been tested or tested negative for the virus itself.
The change — likely a response to the scarcity of test kits and questions about their reliability — caused a nine-fold increase in new reported cases in the province.
Hubei province reported 14,840 new cases Thursday, compared to 1,638 new cases the day before. Hubei also reported 242 new deaths, more than double the 94 reported on Wednesday.
So far, Hubei is the only province that has revised its definition of new cases. Others have not publicly reported “clinical” or asymptomatic cases. Beijing is expected later Thursday to report new nationwide statistics.
Change in Hubei case reporting has made it next to impossible to track its coronavirus trend.
Here is what new confirmed cases would have looked like according to the old method (testing) vs new method (clinical diagnosis). On old basis it would have been another decline today. pic.twitter.com/4EIF4cCjC1
The new numbers from Hubei added significantly to the latest China-wide figures reported Thursday: 15,152 new cases and 254 deaths. In its latest situation report, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday a total of 441 confirmed cases and one death (in the Philippines) in 24 countries outside China. WHO’s risk assessment for the virus is “very high” for China, and “high” regionally and globally.
With the latest numbers, there have been nearly 60,000 cases worldwide and more than 1,300 deaths.
Earlier this week, China’s senior epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, had said he believed the coronavirus pandemic would peak in late February and be finished by April. However, the new reporting criteria from Hubei has thrown previous estimates of the disease’s progression in China into disarray.
If the same counting method is adopted nationwide, it would disrupt the trend lines even further.
Officials held accountable
Meanwhile, China’s central government on Thursday appointed the former mayor of Shanghai, Ying Yong, to replace Jiang Chaoliang, the ruling Communist Party chief in Hubei, state-run Xinhua news agency said.
The high-level shakeup is testament to how seriously Beijing is taking widespread criticism from abroad and, most unusually, from the public at home, with many Chinese having taken to social media to express their frustration.
Academics in China, angered by the silencing of a whistleblower doctor who tried to sound the alarm in the early days of the epidemic and later succumbed to the disease himself, have also signed a public petition to “demand free speech,” the South China Morning Post reports.
Jiang’s ouster follows the firing of two of the province’s top health officials earlier this week. The Communist Party’s People’s Daily reports that Ma Guoqiang, party leader in the city of Wuhan, Hubei’s provincial capital, was also set to be dismissed and replaced by Wang Zhonglin, party secretary of Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong province.
The appointment of Ying, Wang and Chen Yixin, the deputy head of the new national task force overseeing the handling of the crisis, could signal Beijing’s concern over instability caused by the epidemic. Ying and Yixin are both close to Chinese leader Xi Jinping and all three officials have backgrounds in state security.
Chen said Tuesday that the situation in hardest-hit Wuhan was still uncertain and that “the scale of the spread has not been accurately estimated.”
Centrally located Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million, has been under quarantine for weeks with transport in and out of the metropolis shut down to prevent the spread of the disease. At least a dozen other Chinese cities, home to more than 60 million people combined, have been put on similar lock down.
The MS Westerdam is seen with a local fishing vessel in the foreground as the cruise ship approaches the port of Sihanoukville, on Cambodia’s southern coast on Thursday.
Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images
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Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images
The MS Westerdam is seen with a local fishing vessel in the foreground as the cruise ship approaches the port of Sihanoukville, on Cambodia’s southern coast on Thursday.
Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP via Getty Images
Beijing has forecast that the economic impact of the pandemic could shave a full percentage point off its first-quarter GDP. Disruptions to Chinese manufacturers have also had a knock-on effect for factories around the world that are dependent on China as a key link in their supply chains. In many cases, the disease has simply compounded the problems already experienced by the ongoing U.S.-China trade war.
Businesses in Wuhan have been told to remain closed until at least Feb. 21. Schools and universities are also closed until further notice.
Fear of contagion has also caused the U.S., and much of Asia and Europe, to implement travel restrictions on visitors from China.
In Japan, a cruise liner, the Diamond Princess, has been in quarantine for days in the port of Yokohama, near Tokyo, as the number of confirmed cases aboard continues to rise.
Japan’s health ministry said Thursday that 44 new cases had been identified on the giant cruise ship, bringing the total to 218 among the vessel’s 3,700 passengers and crew.
Another cruise ship, the MS Westerdam, which made port calls last month in Singapore and Hong Kong – two places that have reported coronavirus cases — has prompted fear and concern from officials in many countries. Despite having no reported cases of coronavirus among its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members, the vessel, operated by Holland America, has been turned away by Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Guam and Thailand.
The saga of the wayward Westerdam had been going on for days until Cambodia finally allowed it to dock there. Marinetraffic.com on Thursday listed the Westerdam as anchored at the port of Sihanoukville, where Holland America said in a statement Wednesday that the cruise would end.
“Guests will disembark in Sihanoukville over the next few days and transfer via charter flights to Phnom Penh for forward travel home,” the statement on the cruise operator’s website said. “Holland America Line will arrange and pay for all flights home, in addition to the full cruise refund and 100% future cruise credit already communicated.”
Tucker Carlson slammed federal prosecutors’ initial sentencing recommendation for former Trump associate Roger Stone Wednesday, criticizing those who celebrated a possible 9-year prison sentence for Stone and calling the matter a “political hit.”
“The typical rapist in this country spends four years in prison. Armed robbers, three years. Thugs who commit violent assault, less than a year and a half,” Carlson said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “But Roger Stone must do [up to] nine years, until he’s 76 years old, for lying.”
Carlson then ripped analysts on CNN and MSNBC who championed the sentencing, saying they denied Stone “compassion.” He also noted that Andrew Weissman, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s second-in-command, now works for MSNBC and that the judge in the case, Amy Berman Jackson, is a “Democratic partisan.”
“This is a pure political hit. Roger Stone is facing prison because he’s a high-profile Donald Trump supporter. It’s that simple,” Carlson said. “You want proof? Here it is. [Former CIA Director] John Brennan and [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper will sleep at home tonight. Both have been caught lying under oath, on camera, about matters of national importance. And yet neither is in jail. Neither has been indicted. Neither ever will be.”
“Now, Stone and his wife, who is 71 years old and deaf, have lost their home because of this. They have no insurance. They’re utterly broke,” Carlson said, turning back to Stone’s situation. “The whole thing is shocking and it’s disgusting. It’s a farce that discredits the entire American justice system.”
Carlson then accused Democrats of using Stone’s case to justify the discredited Russia investigation.
“Stone’s prosecution was designed in part to confirm the fantasies that Democrats have constructed to explain the outcome of the 2016 election. His conviction helps their case,” Carlson said. “In other words, if the Russia collusion story was a hoax and of course, it most certainly was a hoax, then why is Roger Stone going to prison for his role in it? If Roger Stone serves even a single day behind bars, the Russia lie will be validated as true.”
“The president must pardon Roger Stone or commute his sentence before he goes to jail,” Carlson claimed, adding: “Democrats will howl if he does that. Well, they’re howling anyway.”
“If Bernie ends up being one of these frontrunners, he’ll have to moderate. I’m not going socialist. Never been a socialist,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said. “If he doesn’t change, I’ve got a dilemma there. We’ll see. But we’re talking about hypotheticals. I think there’s going to be a lot happening between now and then.”
The soul-searching within the establishment wing of the Democratic Party comes after Sanders solidified his frontrunner status in Iowa and New Hampshire, which produced a pair of cringeworthy finishes for Biden. The former vice president did so poorly in New Hampshire that he ditched his own election night watch party to head to South Carolina, possibly giving an opening to Bloomberg, who skipped the first four contests.
“I’m feeling a momentum shift to Bloomberg right now,” said Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), who endorsed Biden in the summer and plans to stick with him.
One of the most glaring examples of the change in tide on Capitol Hill is a trio of Bloomberg endorsements from the Congressional Black Caucus on Wednesday — a not-so-subtle show of force against Biden, who remains the favored candidate among black voters nationally.
For months, many members of the CBC had either publicly or privately backed Biden, declining to endorse two of their fellow members running for president, Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, out of respect for the former vice president. And senior members of the CBC were the most vocal defenders of Biden last summer when he became embroiled in controversy over his comments about working with segregationists.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), a senior member of the CBC who endorsed Bloomberg on Wednesday, declined to say whether he thinks Sanders could beat Trump and added he would fully support the eventual nominee. But Meeks — who fought Bloomberg over his stop-and-frisk policies as mayor — said the trajectory of the race is what persuaded him to weigh in now.
“There’s a number of [candidates] who are ideologically where I am. But I also had to add to that electability,” Meeks said. “And that’s a tremendous consideration we’ll have to make because you can have the best ideology but if you’re not electable, then where are we? We’ve got to win.”
When asked whether Biden’s faltering was a factor, Meeks didn’t deny it: “To say that it was zero factor would not be the truth,” he said. “It was one of many factors because you’ve got to be able to pull it together, you’ve got to make sure that one has the ability to win.”
Several other CBC members said privately that they expected other black lawmakers who previously supported Biden to soon come out for Bloomberg.
But there are some concerns that Bloomberg, who has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the race so far, remains untested heading into Super Tuesday on March 3: He hasn’t gone head-to-head at a single debate this cycle, though he is expected to qualify for Nevada next week.
Some Democrats also fear a potential drip-drip of controversies, like a 2015 audio tape that surfaced this week on which Bloomberg defends his stop-and-frisk policies in language that have prompted accusations of racism.
For many Democrats, there is a real fear about Biden’s staying power, especially if Senate Republicans make good on their threat to investigate Hunter Biden’s role at a Ukrainian gas company now that Trump’s impeachment trial is over.
“Is the Senate going to bring in Hunter Biden?” Correa said, sighing. “That’s tough, the politics are tough.”
Two self-described moderate Democrats did finish strong in Iowa and New Hampshire, led by former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. But Democrats said privately they’re desperate for a candidate with the cash and name recognition to beat Trump — something they don’t know if Buttigieg or Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who finished a strong third in New Hampshire, can deliver — without exposing them to ceaseless GOP attacks on socialism.
“There’s a lot of people right now on the fence,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), a prominent supporter of Klobuchar. Asked about Klobuchar’s surge, Phillips said: “She is being elevated in more and more conversations every day. That said, so is Michael Bloomberg.”
The most intense fears are among the 30 Democrats sitting in districts that Trump won in 2016, who fear they can’t compete in 2020 if Sanders becomes the nominee and spurs months of “Medicare for All” attacks from GOP groups in their districts.
Some of the most endangered incumbents, like Rep. Anthony Brindisi of New York, have acknowledged they wouldn’t be able to support Sanders if he does become the nominee, hoping at best that voters split their ticket with Trump in November.
So far, those conversations among vulnerable Democrats have been happening mostly behind the scenes, pointing to internal polling in their districts that showed a Sanders ticket hurting their own reelection chances.
“The conversations are all the same: ‘Oh s—,’” one Democratic lawmaker with a tough reelection battle said.
Most Senate Democrats are cautious to go afterSanders publicly, in part out of reluctance to criticize a colleague or repeat any animosity from 2016, when the Vermont independent ran against Hillary Clinton. They also acknowledge his ideas have influenced the party and see little upside in weighing in with the race seeming fluid.
But some Senate Democrats have expressed concern about the effect Sanders could have on Democratic challengers in swing-state races. While Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Wednesday Democrats would coalesce around whoever the nominee is, others are not so sure.
“Sen. Sanders’ argument is that his candidacy will inspire and mobilize a whole new sector of our country that doesn’t typically vote,” added Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a Biden backer.
But Coons argued that he has yet to see evidence of that based on voter turnout in Iowa, which was lower than expected. New Hampshire turnout, however, did set a new record on Tuesday.
“He may make it harder rather than easier for us to take back the Senate,” Coons said.
Coons, along with other Biden backers in the Senate, are standing by their candidate and downplaying the former vice president’s disappointing performances in Iowa and New Hampshire. They argue that the two states are not good barometers when it comes to appeal to voters of color and are showing no signs of wanting to ditch their candidate for someone like Bloomberg, Buttigieg or Klobuchar.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) acknowledged Klobuchar had a “strong performance,” but he reiterated his support for Biden.
“They pointed out last night that 99 percent of African Americans and Latinos have not been heard from yet in the country,” he said. “ Let’s see what happens when you have a more diverse electorate.”
Nevada, which holds its caucus next week, has a large Latino population. South Carolina, where black voters make up a majority of the Democratic electorate, will hold its primary the next week.
“The media is trying to anoint a nominee at this point when it’s really still pretty early and there’s some really good candidates out there,” added Doug Jones of Alabama, the most vulnerable Democratic senator.
Jones, who is close to Biden, has conceded that a Sanders nomination would make his reelection tougher. “Joe is resilient, he has had more bounce backs in his life than most people could ever dream about … so I’m not too worried.”
Still, support for Biden had already been fraying at the edges even before Iowa, with some Democrats on Capitol Hill noting his poor performance at the polls as well as what they saw as declining energy on the campaign trail and on debate stages.
Biden still holds the most congressional endorsements among any candidate, though some Democrats suggest that support could erode if he underperforms again in the next two nominating contests.
“If Biden announced today that he was going to drop out, you’d have an avalanche of African Americans around the country going to Bloomberg,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who endorsed Biden last September and plans to stick with him.
“It would be foolish for anyone to say what happened in Iowa and New Hampshire is not going to have an impact, it will,” Cleaver said of Biden’s performance in the past 10 days. “There’s no question Nevada is extremely important.”
Burgess Everett and Laura Barron-Lopez contributed to this report.
Democrats have watched with increasing desperation. The House still holds subpoena power, and can use its control of the federal spending process to try to curb some unwanted excesses by the administration. But the chamber just used the Constitution’s most powerful tool for executive accountability, impeachment, and failed to win a conviction.
In the Senate, where Republicans are in control, some Democrats have taken to outright pleading with colleagues to speak up. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, interrupted a Banking Committee meeting Wednesday morning to implore his colleagues to stop what he called Mr. Trump’s “retribution tour.”
“We cannot give him a permanent license to turn the presidency and the executive branch into his own personal vengeance operation,” Mr. Brown said. “If we say nothing — and I include everyone in this committee, including myself — it will get worse. His behavior will get worse.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to convene emergency hearings on the Justice Department matter.
But Mr. Graham ruled it out, saying he had sought an explanation from Mr. Barr’s office about the decision to change the sentencing recommendation for Mr. Stone, and found it satisfactory.
“Should the president stay out of cases? Yeah, absolutely. He should not be commenting on cases in the system,” Mr. Graham said. “If I thought he’d done something that changed the outcome inappropriately, I’d be the first to say.”
“I’m comfortable the system is working,” he added.
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, chalked the Stone imbroglio up to the president’s social media habits.
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