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The United States and China have largely been at a standoff since negotiations broke down last month. The countries were unable to find a compromise on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, with the United States arguing for keeping many of them and Beijing insisting that they must come off as part of any trade deal.

The United States wants China to accelerate the opening of its market, improve protections for intellectual property and commit to big purchases of American products.

But talks faltered at the beginning of May when China made significant alterations to the text of the agreement. The Trump administration had been pushing for any changes to be codified in Chinese law, but Beijing backtracked and refused to make any legal changes as part of the deal, American officials said.

Since then, the two sides have only hardened their positions. China threatened to compile a blacklist of foreign companies and individuals that it considered “unreliable” and published a white paper last weekend arguing that the country would “never give in on major issues of principle.”

The Trump administration also answered harshly. In a statement on June 3, the United States Trade Representative and the Treasury Department accused China of pursuing “a blame game misrepresenting the nature and history of trade negotiations between the two countries.”

“Our negotiating positions have been consistent throughout these talks, and China backpedaled on important elements of what the parties had agreed to,” the American statement said.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been moving ahead with plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on the remaining roughly $300 billion of goods from China, and companies are becoming more concerned about the rapid increase in prices on a range of goods, including furniture, toys, mobile phones and sneakers. On June 17, a hearing is to be held in Washington to allow companies to weigh in on the impact of the tariffs.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/us/politics/mnuchin-g-20-china.html

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., suggested in a tweet Friday that “powerful people” are attempting to bribe President Trump into war with Iran.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez quoted a tweet by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold which linked to an article that revealed documents obtained from Trump hotels. According to the Post’s report, an Iraqi sheik reportedly stayed at a suite in Trump’s hotel in Washington D.C. for 26 days after urging the Trump administration to take a “hard-line” approach towards Iran in July 2018.

“Sure looks like powerful people are trying to bribe the President into war,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

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Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet garnered more than 30,000 likes and 7,000 retweets in under five hours, but responses to her statement were varied.

Concerns about escalating tensions between the United States and Iran prompted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to proclaim that the Trump administration is ready to sit down with Iran’s leaders for a conversation with “no preconditions.”

He added, however, that “the American effort to fundamentally reverse the malign activity of this Islamic Republic, this revolutionary force, is going to continue.”

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President Trump has consistently maintained that he does not want to resort to military intervention to respond to “credible threats” from Iran but will do so if it becomes necessary.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-trump-bribe-war-iran-twitter

Two young children were killed Friday when a drunk driver plowed into a horse-drawn buggy on the side of a Michigan highway, authorities said.

A 2-year-old and 6-year-old died when the pickup truck rear-ended the carriage in Marshall, Michigan, just outside Battle Creek, in the central part of the state. Both children died on the scene, Michigan State Police Sgt. Todd Price told ABC News.

There were seven people — two adults and five children — in the buggy at the time of the crash. All of them were thrown from the carriage, police said.

In addition to the two children who died, another child, age 4, was transported to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Jesse Bogan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/TNS via Getty Images
A sign on Shafer Road near Licking, Mo., warns drivers about Amish buggies.

A 3-year-old child and adult woman were also injured, according to CBS affiliate WWMT.

The driver, whose name has not been released, was intoxicated at the time of the accident, Price said. He is being held in Branch County Jail.

The Amish population in Michigan is about 15,465, according to a study by Elizabethtown College’s The Young Center. The school, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, is located in Lancaster County, which has one of the highest concentrations of Amish people in the country.

Michigan has the sixth-highest Amish population in the country, behind Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and New York.

Last month, a car hit a horse-drawn carriage in California Township, Michigan, about 40 minutes south of Marshall. The driver fled, but no one in the buggy was seriously injured, state police said.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/US/young-children-killed-drunk-driver-hits-amish-buggy/story?id=63574106

At the same time, Mr. López Obrador, who was elected on a promise to transform Mexico, tackling poverty and inequality, has big, expensive ambitions.

He has doubled pensions for the elderly, granted stipends to unemployed youth, paid a princely sum to cancel a new airport project started by his predecessor and vowed to build a new oil refinery. More broadly, he has promised to rescue the ailing state-run oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, which has racked up an astounding $100 billion in debt.

The fight with his giant neighbor risked plunging his country into an economic crisis that would endanger those plans.

Before the deal was made, Mr. López Obrador had called on Mexicans to rally on Saturday in the border city of Tijuana to both defend the dignity of Mexico and, at the same time, celebrate its friendship with the United States. On Friday night, he tweeted that the rally would go on as planned.

The agreement that Mr. Trump announced ended — at least for now — an escalation of the trade wars that the United States has waged against other countries, like China.

The new levies would have raised the cost of a wide array of products imported from Mexico, including cars, cucumbers, bluejeans, packaged food and chemicals. Mr. Trump had warned that he was prepared to ramp tariffs up each month until they hit 25 percent in October.

That would have been a drastic cost increase for the United States’ current largest trading partner, one that could have significantly increased prices for American consumers and ruptured long-established supply chains.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/us/politics/trump-tariffs-mexico.html

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Little is being held at a prison near Los Angeles on other murder charges. Little last week confessed to the murders of Stewart and Jane Doe in Cincinnati.

Det. Mark Piepmeier said it’s “weird to say” that Little was friendly, forthcoming and wanted to help identify Jane Doe when they spoke.

“I think he could blend in on the street, because as we’re sitting across from him he comes off as very normal,” Piepmeier said.

Little is too ill to travel, so Judge Melba Marsh expects to take his guilty plea from California via a video chat service, such as Skype. According to Deters’ recollection, that’s never been done in Hamilton County. Deters said he expects a plea in early August.

The FBI says it believes Little killed 93 women as he crisscrossed the United States for four decades. Little, who grew up in Lorain, Ohio, confessed to 90 killings between 1970 and 2005, the FBI said in November.

RELATED: Samuel Little, America’s most prolific serial killer, confesses to killing two women in Cincinnati

Little draws his victims. He writes notes on those pictures. And he remembers, in some cases, a lot of detail. Deters and police are hoping someone might recognize the “Jane Doe” in Little’s drawing below.





Jane Doe was a black woman. Little said he didn’t have the right color for her skin when he first made the drawing (above left), so authorities made a rendering of the drawing (right) with darker skin. Doe was slender with dark skin and dark eyes. She had short hair and wore a wig and glasses. She lived in an apartment in Over-the-Rhine with a Hispanic woman. Authorities believe Doe could have been 15 to 50 years old, and Little confessed to murdering her sometime between 1980 – 1999.

Interns are looking through files at the coroner’s office to see if one of Little’s victims could be Jane Doe, Deters said.

Little strangled his victims, Deters said. Autopsies showed no signs of rape.

“He specifically looked for girls with a certain neck type that he liked,” Deters said. “And that’s why he did it. That’s how twisted this guy is.”

Piepmeier said Little viewed strangulation as sex.

“He said, ‘How could you tell a man not to have intercourse with a woman? Well that’s like telling me not to strangle people,'” Piepmeier said.

Little targeted women who he thought would not be missed, “street people and prostitutes,” Piepmeier said.

Det. Kelly Best said Little was very intentional and specific with his crimes. He’d kill, dump the body and leave town.

Asked why Little drew pictures of his victims, Deters said, “Why did he kill them, I don’t know.”

“Look, this is the fifth serial killer that I’ve dealt personally with since I’ve been prosecutor,” Deters said. “They all have proclivities that people don’t understand, but the reality is, they have a compulsion to kill people. They’re not insane. They’re nothing but evil, period. And that is what we’re dealing with.”

Deters asks anyone who knows anything about Jane Doe to contact one of the following:

Source Article from https://www.abc15.com/news/national/serial-killer-suspect-of-93-murders-indicted-on-two-murder-charges-in-cincinnati


A windy, hot and dry weekend forecast has prompted the first red flag warning for parts of the North Bay in 2019, potentially leading to power outages over the weekend for thousands of area residents.

The National Weather Service on Friday morning warned that high-risk fire weather would return to Wine Country starting Friday night and last through Sunday afternoon for parts of Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties above 1,000 feet, including the Mayacamas Mountains and the hills of western Sonoma County.

Winds are expected to gust up to 50 mph Friday and Saturday on local peaks — potentially reaching 60 mph on Mt. St. Helena — with temperatures projected to get near or above 90 degrees, according to the weather service.

While trees and flowering brush might still be wet from May’s rains, potential fire fuels like grasses have already started to dry out, said Spencer Tangen, a weather service meteorologist. That development, combined with the potential for spiking wind speeds and dropping humidity, prompted the warning, he said.

“A lot of those finer fuels are really drying out and will be able to carry a fire,” Tangen said, referring to leaves and grasses in higher elevations that can fuel the rapid spread of flames.

PG&E announced late Friday it planned to shut off power to about 1,300 customers in eastern Napa County. The shutoff around the Lake Berryessa, Circle Oaks, Wooden Valley and Gordon Valley areas were set to begin at 6 a.m. Saturday, with affected customers set to be notified directly by PG&E. Smaller areas in Solano and Yolo counties were also set to be affected.

“We know how much our customers rely on electric service and would only consider temporarily turning off power in the interest of safety during extreme weather conditions,” Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice president of electric operations, said in a statement.


The utility’s equipment has been blamed for sparking numerous wildfires over the past few years, including the Camp fire in Butte County, which killed 85 people last year and destroyed more than 10,000 homes in and around the town of Paradise. State regulators recently approved a new wildfire prevention plan featuring expanded capabilities for PG&E to shut off power indefinitely to broad regions of Northern California.

Sonoma County officials held a conference call Friday afternoon to coordinate with meteorologists and local public safety and government officials in light of the red flag warning, said Chris Godley, the county’s emergency management director. He said it was important for residents to communicate with each other and not rely solely on government when preparing for the potential impacts of the weather.

“It really does come down to people being able to maintain their own situational awareness and being able to take action,” he said.

The weather service has issued a heat advisory covering Santa Rosa and other North Bay valley areas on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. with forecasts calling for record or near-record high temperatures.

Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt advised residents against mowing or trimming their lawns, kindling campfires, smoking cigarettes and driving with loose trailer chains. The first red flag warning of the year is a good opportunity to take stock of how one might evacuate if necessary, he said, noting that the spell of dry and windy weather was unlikely to be the last.

“This is the first of undoubtedly many to come, unfortunately,” he said.

More information about wildfire preparedness can be found at socoemergency.org.

Red flag warnings are generally more common in late summer after months of dry and hot weather, but Tangen noted that it wasn’t unusual to see such an advisory in early June.

Similar weather conditions were expected in Mendocino and Lake counties, but those areas are not yet under red flag warnings or fire weather watches Friday.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.


Source Article from https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9679185-181/hot-dry-weekend-forecast-for

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/07/politics/us-mexico-joint-declaration-release/index.html

London police arrested four teenagers Friday in the “homophobic” attack on a lesbian couple who were beaten bloody on a double decker bus. One of the victims, Melania Geymonat, described her harrowing experience of last Sunday’s incident on social media, saying a group of young men demanded she kiss her girlfriend, Chris, for their entertainment.

Metropolitan Police said the couple was riding on a top deck of a night bus to West Hempstead when the teens, aged 15 to 18, began to harass them with “lewd and homophobic” comments. According to Geymonat, even as the couple tried to defuse the situation, the youths attacked them anyway.  

“They started behaving like hooligans, demanding that we kissed so they could enjoy watching, calling us ‘lesbians’ and describing sexual positions,” she wrote on Facebook Wednesday. “Chris even pretended she was sick, but they kept on harassing us, throwing us coins and becoming more enthusiastic about it. The next thing I know is that Chris is in the middle of the bus fighting with them.” 

She added, “On an impulse, I went over there only to find her face bleeding and three of them beating her up. The next thing I know is I’m being punched.” Geymonat said she became dizzy and fell back; later she  realized police had arrived on the bus and she had blood all over her. A picture she uploaded with her Facebook post shows the two women sitting on the bus with bloodied faces and blood stains on their clothing.

The teens ran away, and a phone and bag were stolen during the assault, police said. Both women were taken to hospital for treatment to facial injuries and later released.

In an update on Friday, police said the four were arrested on suspicion of robbery and aggravated hate crime. They were taken to separate police stations for further questioning. Police also said they were reviewing surveillance video footage of the attack.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called the assault a “disgusting, misogynistic attack” on Twitter early Friday, while asking the public’s help to find the perpetrators.  

“Hate crimes against LGBT+ people will not be tolerated in London,” he tweeted. The @metpoliceuk are investigating. If you have any information about this call 101 to report it.”

New documentary explores the state of gay pride in America

As people take part in celebrations of LGQBT rights around the world for Pride Month, Geymonat expressed disappointment in having to be in fear of being attacked for being gay. 

“I’m tired of being taken as a SEXUAL OBJECT, of finding out that these situations are usual, of gay friends who were beaten up JUST BECAUSE,” she said. “We have to endure verbal harassment AND CHAUVINIST, MISOGYNISTIC AND HOMOPHOBIC VIOLENCE because when you stand up for yourself sh*t like this happens. I just hope that in June, Pride Month, stuff like this can be spoken out loudly so they STOP HAPPENING!”

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bus-attack-london-lesbian-couple-united-kingdom-homophobia-melania-geymonat-teens-arrested-today-2019-06-07/

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters speaks alongside Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien (right) and Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac (left) during a news conference to discuss cases linked to Samuel Little.

John Minchillo/AP


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John Minchillo/AP

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters speaks alongside Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien (right) and Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac (left) during a news conference to discuss cases linked to Samuel Little.

John Minchillo/AP

A man considered by federal law enforcement to be perhaps the deadliest serial killer in U.S. history was charged on Friday over the strangling deaths of two women in Ohio, charges that come after he admitted last week to killing three others in the state.

The five new victims of Samuel Little, 79, originally from Lorain, in northeastern Ohio, are believed to be among the more than 90 women he has confessed to killing. Little is already serving three life sentences for killings in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

The latest charges filed by prosecutors in Cincinnati are part of what authorities say was Little’s murderous rampage, killing women across 19 states over nearly half a century ending around 2005.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters told reporters that serial killers like Little are difficult for most people to comprehend.

“The reality is, they have a compulsion to kill people. They’re not insane,” Deters said. “They’re nothing but evil.”

Samuel Little, seen in an undated file photo, is serving three life sentences for killings in Los Angeles.

Ector County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office via AP


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Ector County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office via AP

Samuel Little, seen in an undated file photo, is serving three life sentences for killings in Los Angeles.

Ector County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office via AP

The Ohio prosecutors named Anna Lee Stewart, 33, who was strangled to death in October 1981, and an unidentified woman also thought to have been murdered by Little more than 30 years ago as victims in the case.

Deters said Little has agreed to plead guilty to the murders, which he is set to do in August. The cooperation, Deters said, came in exchange for sparing Little the death penalty.

Little, who is ill with diabetes and heart disease and is imprisoned in a Los Angeles facility, has drawn haunting sketches of many of the women he says he killed decades ago and remembers details about the crimes, but he has trouble remembering the names of his victims, investigators say. His method, though, follows a similar pattern.

“He strangled them. That is the way he enjoyed his pleasure,” Deters said. “He specifically looked for girls with a certain neck type,” he said. “That’s how twisted this guy is.”

Prosecutors say Little was a shoplifter by day who moonlighted as a violent attacker who spied on troubled neighborhoods and targeted women who were homeless, prostitutes or addicted to drugs. Targets, prosecutors said, Little deemed “no one would miss.”

In 2012, police arrested Little at a Louisville, Ky., homeless shelter. Authorities then extradited him to California on drug charges, only to have his DNA quickly matched to three unsolved murders in the 1980s, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Little was then convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole. Over time, the scope of his murders came into sharper focus.

Gary Ridgeway, the man known as the Green River Killer, pleaded guilty to killing 48 women in 2003 but confessed to murdering 71, which would make him the deadliest serial killer in American history.

But Deter, the Ohio prosecutor, said federal officials believe that Little was even more deadly.

“The FBI has told us that he’s the most prolific serial killer in the history of America,” Deter said.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730834875/most-prolific-serial-killer-in-america-confesses-to-murdering-5-more-women-in-oh

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s position as a moderate Democratic voice may be in danger if he changes positions when pressured, according to Mollie Hemingway.

Biden quickly “respond[ed] to a mob” in his party very quickly when he was pressed about his past support for the Hyde Amendment, Hemingway claimed Friday on “Special Report.”

Named for its chief sponsor, former Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the amendment prohibits federal funding of abortion except in special cases like a concern for the mother’s help or in the case of rape.

CHRIS STIREWALT: JOE BIDEN’S CAMPAIGN STAFF CONVINCED HIM TO CHANGE MIND ON HYDE AMENDMENT

“This was Joe Biden’s big claim to fame, that he was a moderate, that he wasn’t beholden to the activist base of his party,” the Federalist senior editor claimed. “That’s kind of the whole point of his candidacy, that he’s not someone who has to answer to their beck and call, but he can appeal to a broader audience.”

“The question is, if he is going to respond – after decades upon decades of having a position claiming he is pro-life, claiming he opposed abortion – to flip within 24 hours, it forces the question – what is the point of his candidacy if he is going to acquiesce to whatever their demands are?”

Host Mike Emanuel played a clip of Biden from a 2012 vice presidential debate, in which the former Delaware senator said his Catholic faith guided his position on abortion.

Emanuel asked Hemingway how an apparent change in tone would affect his four-decade record in government.

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“It’s not just abortion,” Hemingway responded. “It’s a whole host of issues on he’s been moderate or willing to compromise on all sorts of things.”

“The progressive left is not going to stop with just demanding full acquiescence on abortion up through nine months of pregnancy, there are a whole host of issues they’re going to demand acquiescence to.”

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/joe-biden-abortion-hyde-amendment-hemingway

The State Department has rejected at least four requests from different U.S. embassies to fly LGBTQ pride flags during the month of June.

U.S. embassies in Israel, Germany, Brazil, and Latvia have each made requests to fly rainbow flags on the embassy’s flag pole, and the Trump administration has rejected each request, according to NBC News. Pride flags are still allowed to be displayed elsewhere in each facility.

Under President Barack Obama, embassies were given blanket permission to fly LGBTQ pride flags throughout the month of June. The Trump administration altered that policy and now requires each embassy to get special permission to display the flag on the embassy flag pole.

U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is openly gay, is leading the Trump administration’s campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in the roughly 70 countries around the world where it is illegal.

“The pride flag will be on as many places as it can at the embassy,” embassy spokesman Joseph Giordono-Scholz said.

“The President’s recognition of Pride Month and his tweet encouraging our decriminalization campaign gives me even more pride to once again march in the Berlin Pride parade, hang a huge banner on the side of the Embassy recognizing our pride, host multiple events at the Embassy and the residence, and fly the gay pride flag,” Grenell said in a statement.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/state-dept-rejects-us-embassies-requests-to-fly-lgbtq-pride-flags-on-flagpoles

The head of the Colorado school district where Columbine High School is located has a drastic proposal aimed at thwarting would-be mass killers and tragedy pilgrims who have a “morbid fascination” with the massacre that happened there — tear the building down.

“The tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999 serves as a point of origin for this contagion of school shootings,” Superintendent Jason Glass wrote in a letter to parents and others in the Jefferson County School District. “School shooters refer to and study the Columbine shooting as a macabre source of inspiration and motivation.”

Glass said troubled people known as “Columbiners” are drawn to the school in the Denver suburb of Littleton.

“Most of them are there to satisfy curiosity or a macabre, but harmless, interest in the school,” he wrote. “For a small group of others, there is a potential to do harm.”

Case in point: 18-year-old Sol Pais who traveled in April to Colorado and had a suspicious fascination with the massacre forced Denver-area schools to close before taking her own life.

“In 1999, no guidance existed on what to do with a building such as Columbine High School,” Glass’ letter reads. “Today, school safety experts recommend tearing down buildings where school shootings take place. Since the morbid fascination with Columbine has been increasing over the years, rather than dissipating, we believe it is time for our community to consider this option for the existing Columbine building.”

Glass’ proposal came less than two months after the 20th anniversary of the April 20, 1999, massacre that was planned by two troubled students who murdered a dozen classmates and a teacher before they killed themselves.

Since then, experts have said, the Columbine killings have become a source of sick inspiration to other mass killers. The Washington Post, using police reports, published articles and various data bases, has calculated that as of Friday, more than 228,000 students “have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine.”

The tragedy at Columbine also changed the way new schools are built. Now things like buzzers, security cameras and bulletproof glass are as common as books and laptops at newly constructed schools.

Glass said they are “exploring the concept of asking voters for an additional $60 million to $70 million at the polls at some point in the future to construct a new high school for Columbine.”

Under Glass’ proposal, the existing building would be demolished and replaced with fields with “controlled entry points.” The Hope Memorial Library, which was built after the massacre, could be preserved and perhaps serve as the “cornerstone” for the new building, which would be built to the west of the current building.

The name Columbine High School would be retained and the “current school mascot and colors would be unchanged,” Glass wrote.

Tearing down the scene of a horrible crime is not a new idea.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School, where in 2012 a gunman killed 26 children and staffers with a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle before killing himself, was demolished two years later and a new school was built.

So was the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where 26 people were shot dead in November 2017.

As was the West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania where five Amish girls were murdered in 2006. That was replaced with another one-room schoolhouse.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/columbine-high-school-may-be-torn-down-because-morbid-fascination-n1015126

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said Friday his panel will vote next week on holding Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt after the pair of top Trump administration officials failed to cooperate with a probe into adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

“We gave Attorney General Barr and Secretary Ross every opportunity to produce the documents the Committee needs for our investigation, but rather than cooperate, they have decided that they would rather be held in contempt of Congress,” Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement.

“They produced none of the documents we asked for, they made no counter-offers regarding these documents, and they seem determined to continue the Trump Administration’s cover-up,” he added.

Cummings’ committee had, in April, issued subpoenas for documents related to an investigation into the Trump’s administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The subpoena was for all 2017 documents, both from within the Department of Justice and with outside entities, regarding the administration’s request to add a citizenship question to the census. That list included a memo from James Uthmeier, who served as an attorney to Ross, to John Gore, deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in the fall of 2017.

The deadline to comply with subpoenas was Thursday.

But the Department of Justice said in a letter to Cummings on Thursday night that it would not meet the deadline and said his committee should not vote to hold Barr in contempt because the agency had been accommodating with some document requests and offering staff to appear for transcribed interviews.

In the letter, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote that a contempt vote would be “premature” and halt any ongoing cooperation with the committee.

Cummings, in his letter Friday, ripped Boyd’s letter and rationale for not complying.

“The letters last night were case studies in double-speak. They claim that fighting witness interviews for months under threat of subpoena is evidence of a ‘good faith accommodations process,’ they suggest that Secretary Ross’ refusal to meet demonstrates that the Department ‘is eager to continue its cooperation with the Committee,’ and they argue that withholding every single one of the key unredacted documents we subpoenaed somehow proves that ‘there is no information to hide,'” Cummings wrote.

Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/06/07/cummings-threatens-contempt-for-barr-ross-after-failure-to-comply-with-census-subpoena/23743940/

After rejecting the idea publicly, Mexico eventually went along with it. And then, after vowing to limit the numbers and locations of those sent back to Mexico, the nation bowed to pressure on that as well.

Most Mexicans think agreeing to be a first country of asylum for migrants would be the wrong move — in part because doing so would not guarantee there would be no new demands in the future.

“Trump lives off confrontation and conflict,” added Mr. Poiré, the former Mexican interior secretary. “That is his core political strategy and when there is concession, he will immediately look for the next agenda and excuse to pick a fight with Mexico.”

Mr. López Obrador has, for the moment, maintained his friendly, optimistic tone. He has said he believes an agreement will be reached, and has insisted on amicable relations with the United States. But the consistent provocation of Mexico by Mr. Trump has long worried experts.

The nationalism and suspicion felt by an older generation of Mexicans toward the United States — which gave way to a strong bilateral relationship and economic cooperation in the post-free trade era — could easily be stoked.

“Up until two generations ago, most Mexicans, like myself, grew up accustomed to feeling deeply suspicious of the United States,” said Héctor Villarreal, a professor at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico. “We were experiencing a new generational shift and a really positive era of considering the U.S. our neighbor and our partner.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/world/americas/mexico-tariffs-amlo.html

The May 30 attack in London shocked the world for its brutality. Now four teenagers between ages 15 and 18 have been arrested for what appears to be a hate crime against a lesbian couple. In a photo taken by one of the victims, Melania Geymonat, the couple are shown bloodied and shocked after suffering a brutal assault.

The story became global news following widespread publication of that photo by the BBC on Friday. Still, it is welcome news that the police have arrested four suspects. And it is right that more resources were probably afforded to that investigation than others.

This incident is shocking for the capricious nature of what apparently motivated it: hate of two young ladies because they are gay. For a city that is heavily reliant on tourism for revenue generation and economic prosperity, this incident could not stand without investigation. Were the suspects to remain undetected, the attack might deter gay tourists from visiting in the future. In turn, London’s Metropolitan Police would have diverted significant investigative resources into tracking down those who carried out this attack. That likely entailed assigning officers to review CCTV footage, to track the bus passes used, and to trace the goods that were stolen from the two ladies. Specialist detectives in anti-hate units would also have been allocated to the task.

Fortunately, it seems the police are confident they have found the culprits. They are under suspicion of aggravated grievous bodily harm. That means the police are confident that the couples’ sexual orientation was a decisive factor in motivating the assault and that the couple suffered significant physical harm by it. Putting my English law school hat on, the nature of the injuries and the motive would appear to indicate a Category 2 sentencing guideline under English law. I would thus assume that, if charged and found guilty, at least some of the gang responsible will face more than a year in prison or a youth offenders institution.

Hopefully that sentence will discourage at least some others from carrying out a similar attack in the future.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/why-the-attack-on-lesbian-couple-in-london-is-a-big-deal

June 7 at 5:17 PM

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns reporter, reporters and lawyers start searching for clues.

In a purportedly just-the-facts speech Friday to the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York, Ginsburg gave plenty to dissect.

She teased pending decisions in cases about whether the census may contain a question on citizenship, and if the court would for the first time decide that a state’s electoral maps are so influenced by partisan gerrymandering that they violate voters’ constitutional rights.

Be prepared for sharp disagreements as the court finishes its work this month, she said.

So far, only a quarter of the court’s decisions have been closely divided, she noted. “Given the number of most-watched cases still unannounced, I cannot predict that the relatively low sharp divisions ratio will hold.”

With the court set to finish its work the last week of June, the justices by now know the outcomes and are writing and delivering opinions. The next batch will come on Monday.

Ginsburg didn’t give anything away, but she offered what could be interpreted as clues to her own thinking.

On the citizenship question, for instance, she laid out the facts of what she called “a case of huge importance.”

The Trump administration wants to ask everyone who receives the census form whether or not they are a citizen, something that hasn’t been done since 1950. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said the information would be useful in protecting minority voting rights.

Challengers — some states and civil rights groups — have said it would result in an undercount, because respondents would fear reporting noncitizens in their households. The motive of enforcing voter rights is pretext, they say, and the Justice Department has never before asked for such information.

Ginsburg noted census experts agree about the undercount, and that three lower-court judges have said the question cannot be added.

Then she noted legal similarities to a case from last term, in which she was in dissent.

“Speculators about the outcome [in the census case] note that last year, in Trump v. Hawaii, the court upheld the so-called ‘travel ban,’ in an opinion granting great deference to the executive,” Ginsburg said.

“Respondents in the census case have argued that a ruling in Secretary Ross’s favor would stretch deference beyond the breaking point.”

Ginsburg also mentioned the partisan gerrymandering cases — “very high on the most-watched cases list.” One involves congressional district maps drawn by the Republican leadership of North Carolina, and the other by Democrats in Maryland.

“Given modern technology, a state legislature can create a congressional delegation dramatically out of proportion to the actual overall vote count,” Ginsburg said, adding “however one comes out on the legal issues, partisan gerrymandering unsettles the fundamental premise that people elect their representatives, not vice versa.”

Ginsburg’s remarks on the topic are hardly a surprise. The Supreme Court has wrestled for decades with the question of whether courts have a role in policing partisan gerrymandering, and Ginsburg has said in previous cases that they do.

The 86-year-old justice noted other facts about the court. With Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh hiring an all-female staff of four clerks, she said, the court for the first time in history had more women than men serving as clerks.

“Women did not fare nearly as well as advocates,” she said. “Only about 21% of the attorneys presenting oral argument this term were female; of the thirty-four attorneys who appeared more than once, only six were women.”

Because people track such things, Ginsburg noted Justice Stephen G. Breyer spoke more than any other justice during oral arguments, and that Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked the first question more than anyone else.

Ginsburg told her audience that the most important thing that had happened to the court since her address to them last year was the resignation of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who for years had been the most influential member of the court.

His retirement “was, I would say, the event of greatest consequence for the current term, and perhaps for many terms ahead,” she said.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/justice-ginsburg-says-deep-divisions-on-the-way-and-supreme-court-watchers-look-for-clues/2019/06/07/c1796c86-8958-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html