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President Trump announced this week that he is officially recognizing the president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the interim president of Venezuela. This move is an extremely important shift in U.S. policy that could lead to many lives saved. Canada, Brazil and other countries have joined the U.S. The ruling president, Nicolas Maduro, quickly responded by severing all diplomatic ties with the U.S., and gave U.S. staff 72 hours to leave the country.

As Isaias Medina III – international lawyer, humanitarian activist, former Venezuelan diplomat to the United Nations, and one of the first to quit in disgust over Maduro’s policies – said to me this week, “Maduro’s induced humanitarian crisis, through weaponization of starvation and medical scarcity to remain in power, takes the life of hundreds of victims on a daily basis and has caused the forced displacement of more than 3 million people. In Venezuela, if you don’t have a 21st-century socialist apartheid card, you are walking down death row.”

When Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 he promised free health care for all. But this promise quickly deteriorated into a health care crisis, and under Nicolas Maduro, who has been president since 2013, the health care system has collapsed into a full-scale humanitarian crisis.

US-BACKED VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER DECLARES HIMSELF INTERIM PRESIDENT IN EFFORT TO OUST MADURO

According to the Venezuelan Society of Pediatrics and Childcare, 80 percent of children under 5 years of age are in some state of malnutrition. The Caritas international relief organization reported a neonatal death toll in 2016 of 11,400 children. The Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela has reported a medication shortage of 85 percent and according to the Venezuelan Medical Federation, 328,000 Venezuelans die every year because of lack of medicines.

Malaria, TB and HIV are resurging because of the poor conditions and lack of treatments. The former minister of health, Antonia Caporale, publicly reported more than 240,000 cases of Malaria in 2016 and a tripling of TB cases to 7,278 in 2015 – numbers that helped lead to her immediate removal from office.

Caritas has concluded that 82 percent of the population is impoverished, with 15 million in extreme poverty. Out of 23 million Venezuelans, 4.5 million are eating one meal per day or less, and more than 3 million eat from the garbage.

Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in Venezuela with 30,899 people dying of heart disease in 2013 and 11,164 of strokes, according to information obtained by Isaias Medina. The death rate for heart disease is still close to 15 percent, as it was in 1980 before there were acute interventions like angioplasty and stents or the latest medications.

On top of all the shortages, the horrid conditions and the poverty, medical personnel are leaving. 13,000 doctors have fled Venezuela over the past four years alone.

What should be done? With Maduro refusing humanitarian aid from other countries while at the same time strangling his own people, it is clear that he must be removed from power. As a physician, I am generally a pacifist. But in this case, observing the status quo could lead to millions more deaths. International military intervention may be necessary to save lives.

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President Trump has said, “I will continue to use the full weight of United States economic and diplomatic power to press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy. We continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people.”

The president’s timely statements should receive bipartisan support at home and around the world. The time for the world to intervene and remove Nicolas Maduro from power – for the sake of the safety of the Venezuelan people – is now.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM MARC SIEGEL

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dr-marc-siegel-time-to-end-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-venezuela-maduro-needs-to-be-removed-from-power

The Senate will take two votes Thursday to reopen the federal government and end the longest shutdown in history. Both votes are expected to fail. The shutdown will continue.

The pageantry of failed floor votes has become one of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s calling cards in the Senate over the past few years. They’ve proven a potent tool to defuse awkward standoffs and to navigate stalemates. It used to be that a failed bill on the Senate floor signaled weak leadership, but McConnell has used them to his tactical advantage in a highly polarized Washington.

McConnell has used this gambit before in high-pressure situations. Some Republican lobbyists in town have called it a “show them a body” strategy: holding votes you know will fail in order to break the impasse over a given issue.

As Vox reported during the contentious health care debate:

Observers in Washington think the Senate is preparing to take a failed vote that would bring a seven-year quest to repeal and replace Obamacare to a spectacular but definitive end.

It’s the “show them a body” strategy.

“I think the destination is already set. But what’s the path?” one Republican health care lobbyist, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, told me. “They have to be able to show the electorate a body, to say that they tried and failed.”

Now is a logical time for McConnell to call this play. Four weeks into the shutdown, Senate Republicans have been unwilling to move anything without Trump’s $5 billion for the border wall attached, and Democratic leaders are making no headway in their talks with the president. Democrats have been beating up McConnell for not allowing a vote to reopen the government. Now they’re going to get one — even if it won’t have the desired effect.

Failed votes aren’t exactly productive legislating, but they are still useful for Senate leadership because they give the appearance of work being done and force a reset once a legislative path is blocked.

What are the votes the Senate is about to take?

McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer negotiated a deal this week to vote on two proposals Thursday:

  1. President Trump’s proposal he announced Saturday, which would fund the government while also providing billions of dollars for border security and temporary protections for DACA recipients.
  2. A temporary government funding bill to fund the government at existing levels — with no immigration strings attached — which would reopen the government until February 8. A corresponding version of this bill has already been passed by the Democratic House.

Both bills would need 60 votes to advance. But there likely won’t be enough Republicans joining Democrats to pass a clean bill, and there are few Democrats willing to back Trump’s wall.

So what’s the point? Senators will get a public opportunity to release their frustrations by voting to open the government — and McConnell will have shown Democratic leaders and President Trump that neither course has the necessary support in the Senate right now.

Politico Playbook explained the objective of the dueling failed votes like this: “This is a pressure-valve release, of sorts.” It is not actually intended to end the shutdown.

McConnell has “showed them a body” before

We saw the same drama play out twice before, once on Obamacare repeal in 2017 and once during the earlier government shutdown over DACA and the wall last January.

During that first instance, the Obamacare repeal debate was already clearly in trouble. Yet McConnell kept moving toward a vote, despite having no clear path to getting 50 votes (that bill was operating under special rules that only required a bare majority) for any one plan. He seemed set on holding a vote, even if all it would show is that none of the existing repeal bills could pass.

The eventual vote went almost according to plan, though McConnell came closer to passing a health care bill out of the Senate than most people expected. Over a few days, the Senate took failed votes on a repeal-and-replace plan, a clean repeal bill, and a “skinny” repeal bill. The last one nearly managed to pass — McConnell having cleverly proven that none of the other bills had the necessary support, leaving the “skinny” bill as the only viable alternative — but John McCain stopped it with his infamous thumbs-down.

The strategy led to that spectacular flameout on the Senate floor, but it also added a note of finality to the months-long health care debate. McConnell and the rest of the Senate moved on to tax reform in the following months.

The same story played out a few months later. Senate Democrats shut down the government in January 2018 to try to force Trump to negotiate on a permanent fix for DACA recipients, whose legal status was at risk due to the administration. The president proved to be an unreliable negotiator, but Democrats still wanted some kind of concession in order to agree to reopen the government.

What they ended up getting was another “show them the body” moment. McConnell agreed not to bring up any specific immigration bill but rather to hold an “open and fair” floor debate on immigration as long as Democrats didn’t shut down the government again. So in early February, four varying immigration bills were put up for a vote. Each one ended up failing.

Once again, the Senate is preparing to take doomed votes on a big issue

The ploy had served McConnell’s purposes. The government reopened that January. The president was protected from an embarrassing comeuppance if his own plan had failed while a more migrant-friendly version passed. Both sides realized they didn’t actually have enough support for their positions to do anything productive on immigration, so they just moved on — until the latest immigration standoff led to yet another shutdown, one that still hasn’t been resolved.

Now we are set to do the same thing on Thursday. Senators will get to vote, but if both spending plans fail as expected, President Trump will be shielded from needing to issue a veto that keeps the government shut down. The votes won’t resolve the shutdown, in other words, but they might defuse the tension for a few days and give Republicans a chance to regroup.

It might sound strange, but these days, it’s just how the Senate works.

Source Article from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/24/18194335/government-shutdown-2019-senate-votes-spending-bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has finally done it: She has postponed the State of the Union address until after the government reopens.

The speaker announced in a letter Wednesday that “the House of Representatives will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the President’s State of the Union address in the House Chamber until government has opened.” The address is delivered from the House chamber at the invitation of Congress.

Though near-unheard-of, the speaker is well within her rights to cancel or postpone the speech indefinitely, Michael Steel, former press secretary to former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told the Washington Examiner.

It’s also a surprisingly simple thing for the speaker to uninvite the president. All she must do is simply say so. There’s nothing more to it than that. It’s “the Speaker’s call to extend (or rescind) the invitation,” said Steel.

Pelosi’s announcement comes almost immediately after the White House sent her office a letter Wednesday afternoon informing her of the president’s intent to deliver his address from the House chamber on Jan. 29.

“I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the State of our Union,” the letter reads.

It adds, “I look forward to seeing you on the evening on January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!”

This all starts with Pelosi’s proposal last week that the State of the Union address be postponed until after the shutdown has ended.

“The U.S. Secret Service was designated as the lead federal agency responsible for coordinating, planning, exercising, and implementing security for National Special Security Events by Public Law 106-544, December 19, 2000. However, both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now — with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs,” the speaker’s letter reads.

It added, “Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th.”

However, both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have disputed the speaker’s suggestion that they’ve been hobbled by the shutdown.

“The Department of Homeland Security and the US Secret Service are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union. We thank the Service for their mission focus and dedication and for all they do each day to secure our homeland,” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement released hours after Pelosi first pitched her proposal to the White House.

A Secret Service official also told NBC News last week that Pelosi’s supposed safety concerns are unfounded.

“It’s a no-fail mission,” the official told NBC News’ Pete Williams, adding that the “intelligence and protection functions” are “fully staffed” even though they are not being paid. “We’ve been planning for this for months, as we always do. It didn’t start up 29 days ago.”

Of course, it doesn’t take a Secret Service official’s remarks to see that postponing the president’s speech is about politics and not at all about safety concerns. Remember: Pelosi originally extended her State of the Union invitation to Trump on Jan. 3 — a full 12 days into the shutdown.

Trump responded last week to the speaker’s proposal by grounding a congressional delegation (including Pelosi) tour of Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan, citing the shutdown and the need to negotiate reopening the government as the reason why.

It’s possible Trump still shows up to the House on Jan. 29, and it is entirely possible Pelosi cuts the microphones and turns off the lights. She can even instruct the sergeant-at-arms to bar the door.

But it won’t come to all that — will it?

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/nancy-pelosi-has-every-right-to-postpone-trumps-state-of-the-union

President Trump often receives criticism for his supposed disinterest in the tradition of American moral leadership in international affairs. Some of this is fair, some is not. But when it comes to challenging the moral disgrace that is socialist Venezuela, Trump’s record is unequivocally stellar.

Trump took this leadership one step further on Wednesday, when he officially recognized Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful president. This serves the better future of a suffering people.

Why is this recognition so important?

Primarily because it will force new pressure onto those who provide Venezuela’s pretender president, Nicolas Maduro, with his insulation of power. As I noted on Tuesday, “Maduro is hardly an inspiring leader. Instead, Maduro’s support flows from the assessment of powerful Venezuelan figures that he presently offers the best means to their better interest. But if they believe that Maduro’s continued power will only make them weaker, and open them up to the risk of a legal reckoning in the post-Maduro era, they will move away from the pretender president.”

But the timing of Trump’s announcement is also excellent. After all, as you read this, millions of Venezuelans are marching through on their streets, demanding Maduro’s resignation. They are doing so because they have lived the lie of Maduro and Hugo Chavez’s socialist utopia for too long. And they know that lie for what it is: a Venezuela littered with starving children, professionals turned beggars and prostitutes, and the world’s most oil-rich nation now a political asylum.

More U.S. action will yet be necessary. The Trump administration should work with its allies, especially Brazil and Colombia, to impose a wide-ranging oil embargo on Venezuelan oil exports. Trump should also confront nations such as China, Russia, and Spain, which support Maduro’s evil. Nevertheless, this is a good step that will send shivers down the spines of Maduro’s cronies. America has put them on notice as usurpers of democracy. They must now choose whether to remedy their misjudgment, or reap the whirlwind when Maduro’s political future reaches its inevitable destination.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-recognition-of-juan-guaido-is-bold-moral-leadership-on-venezuela

Teachers and students in Los Angeles returned to their classrooms on Wednesday after a deal was reached, ending the city’s landmark teacher strike.

Though a deal was reached in Los Angeles, a similar conflict seems set to unfold in Denver as teachers there voted in favor of a strike.

The Denver teachers’ strike can legally start as of Monday, Jan. 28, after 93 percent of unionized teachers voted for the strike on Tuesday night.

“They’re striking for better pay. They’re striking for our profession. And they’re striking for Denver students,” Rob Gould, the union’s lead negotiator, said at a press conference Tuesday, according to The Denver Post.

David Zalubowski/AP, FILE
Kate Martin, a former teacher and current employee of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, unloads items for a potential teachers’ strike outside the union’s headquarters in south Denver, Jan. 17, 2019.

Those demands echo the ones called for in Los Angeles.

Teachers in California’s most populous city went on strike over teacher pay, class size and funding for school support staff, among other issues.

A deal was reached Tuesday, Jan. 22, which marked the ninth day of the strike that took 30,000 teachers out of classrooms.

Richard Vogel/AP
Parents and toddler wave to children as they return to the Evelyn Thurman Gratts Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles, Jan. 23, 2019, following a city wide teachers’ strike.

The contract that was reached included a 6 percent pay increase and a plan to lower class sizes over the next four years.

The Los Angeles mayor, the schools superintendent and the head of the teachers union announced at a joint news conference Tuesday that a tentative deal was reached, and the member teachers voted on it Tuesday evening, formalizing the deal.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/US/striking-la-teachers-return-class-denver-teachers-prepare/story?id=60568454

CLOSE

Majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and Minority leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor ahead of a vote on the most recent proposals to end the government shutdown.
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – House Democratic leaders are drafting a letter to President Donald Trump that would propose $5 billion in border security if he agrees to reopen the government, but Trump warned Wednesday that the partial government shutdown could drag on for a while.

The Democrats’ proposal does not include money for any “new structures” along the southern border as the president demanded, so it is unlikely to move as is. It is still significant because it’s the first time Democratic leaders will broadly lay out what they might accept in a compromise to end the government shutdown, which is in its 33rd day.

“It’s a starting point. You know, I think we all want border security. There is no question about it,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “It’s just that some of the things that are being pursued in the name of border security we disagree with.”

Thompson said he is involved in drafting the letter, which he expects to come from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

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“No new structures. The only thing we are talking about is existing structures, along with the judges and some other things,” Thompson said. He said there would be money for “some new” Customs and Border Protection agents and to bolster ports of entry.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the letter hasn’t been finalized, but “we are prepared to spend a very substantial sum of money because we share the view that borders need to be secure.”

The letter “is not a negotiation,” Hoyer said. “The letter is going to articulate what we believe is effective investment to accomplish border security.”

Thompson said protections for “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who came to the USA as children, are not included in the proposal.

At the White House, Trump said Wednesday the government shutdown could drag on because of the dispute over border security and his proposed border wall.

Democrats “don’t want to see crime stopped, which we could very easily do on the southern border. … This will go on for a while,” Trump said while taking questions during a health care event. 

In another sign the administration is bracing for a much longer shutdown, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has asked agencies to provide lists of programs that will be endangered if the shutdown lasts for weeks and even months more.

“Prudent management means planning and preparing for events without known end-dates,” said an administration statement. “As OMB continues to manage this partial lapse in appropriations, unfunded agencies are being asked to continue to share with OMB an ongoing list of programs that could be impacted within the coming weeks.”

Saturday, Trump offered a proposal that would include temporary protections for Dreamers as well as refugees who had been given Temporary Protected Status in the USA in exchange for $5.7 billion for his wall along the southern border. The president’s proposal would make it harder for minors from Central America to seek asylum, an idea Democrats oppose.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., scheduled a vote to begin debate on the president’s proposal Thursday. If that fails to get the 60 votes required, a bill that would fund all of the remaining government agencies through Feb. 8 will be voted on. 

“I want my friends, my Republican friends, to understand the stakes here. Reopening the government for three weeks may not sound like a long time, but it’s massively important to 800,000 public servants who have been languishing without pay,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Wednesday. 

It is unclear whether either bill will make it through the Senate.

The House voted 234-180 Wednesday to approve a spending bill that would reopen eight of the nine shuttered federal departments and fund them through Sept. 30. The House plans to vote on a separate bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 28. Neither bill is likely to receive a vote in the Senate.

On Wednesday, 30 centrist Democrats sent a letter to Pelosi calling on her to offer a vote on Trump’s border wall in exchange for his support to reopen the government. The wall is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled House.

Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a freshman lawmaker who took the lead in drafting the letter, told reporters the message was “we need to return to regular order, we need to open the government, we need to take these issues to committee, we need to analyze them in a facts-based way.”

“We promised our constituents that we would seek bipartisan solutions, and we feel that this proposal would gain bipartisan support and allow a transparent process,” the letter reads.

Luria, who represents a district Trump won in 2016, dismissed any notion that those on the letter were breaking with their leadership.

“This (letter) is very much in line with what we were just discussing in the caucus meeting,” Luria said after Democrats met Wednesday morning.

“I don’t think there’s any division” within the caucus, Luria said.

“It’s just coming from every direction, the pain that this is inflicting on people, so we just have to get the government open,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., another freshman. “Everything I’m hearing is the caucus is really united. It has to be.” 

Contributing: Maureen Groppe

More: What’s in the Republican immigration bill, and why Democrats oppose it

More: Will government shutdown impact security at Super Bowl LIII?

 

 

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/23/government-shutdown-house-democrats-make-new-offer-president-trump/2656117002/

If politics is just a big popularity contest, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is winning — or at least, she isn’t losing as badly as President Trump.

According to a new CBS poll, Pelosi is more popular than either Trump or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. When asked about her job performance, respondents gave Pelosi a 39 percent approval, with 50 percent disapproving.

Trump received only a 36 percent approval and 59 percent disapproval. McConnell didn’t fare any better, with a 25-55 approval-disapproval differential.

That politicians aren’t popular isn’t new. That Pelosi is more popular than the president after 32 days of a government shutdown over the border wall, however, is significant. At the very least, it shows that the new speaker, who retook the gavel for a second time at the beginning of the year, is weathering the crisis better than either of her negotiating partners.

The job approval polling tracks with overall opinion polling on the shutdown. The public blames Trump for letting the government go dark, though Republican voters are increasingly in favor of the wall as a concept.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/nancy-pelosi-more-popular-than-trump-after-monthlong-shutdown

Without clear information from the government, rumors can flourish. Beth Taurasi, from Colorado, said she heard from a fellow SNAP recipient that if the shutdown continues past February, the Trump administration would try to replace food benefits with boxes of canned goods ― an idea that nobody in Washington has actually suggested as a solution. (The Trump administration did suggest partially replacing SNAP benefits with food boxes last year, though the idea had not been thought out very well and it went nowhere.)

Source Article from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/government-shutdown-food-assistance-snap_us_5c488cb1e4b0b66936760e94

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(CNN)A gunman who barricaded himself in a SunTrust Bank in Florida killed at least five people in the branch on Wednesday, Sebring Police Chief Karl Hoglund said.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/us/sebring-florida-bank-incident/index.html

    In the latest twist in the ongoing saga over the State of the Union, President Trump on Wednesday wrote that he planned to ignore House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s disinvitation and proceed with delivering his speech on Jan. 29 “on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!”

    So can Trump simply show up to the House of Representatives to deliver his speech? And if he does, can Pelosi just have security kick him out?

    The answer is multi-layered.

    Under the rules, declaring a formal joint session of Congress requires the agreement of both the House and Senate. Without Pelosi’s consent, in other words, there can’t be a joint session.

    At the same time, however, as described by McClatchy, no rules would prevent Trump from entering the House chamber, or speaking on the House floor, whenever he wants. So he’s perfectly within his powers to show up and deliver his speech.

    That said, Pelosi, D-Calif., has other tools at her disposal to thwart Trump. She could shut off the lights, turn off the microphones, and also make sure that no cameras are allowed because the House won’t be in session.

    Both parties have done this to each other in the past.

    In 2008, during her first term as speaker, Pelosi adjourned without allowing a vote Republicans wanted related to offshore drilling, shut off the lights, and cut off the microphones to block Republicans from complaining about it. Republicans refused to leave the floor and kept on talking anyway.

    In 2016, Pelosi was on the opposite side of this sort of situation, when she joined Democrats in staging a sit-in after the Republican majority blocked gun control votes. Democrats remained on the floor in the dark after the House was put in recess and used social media to broadcast video from the protest.

    A CNN report at the time noted, “At one point, a police officer told the Democrats that they would be conducting a daily security sweep. ‘I’d ask that you clear the floor while that happens,’ the officer said. Pelosi responded: ‘That’s not going to happen’ and the security check then took place involving five agents and a dog as the House Democratic leader continued speaking, undeterred.”

    So, the way things are going, it’s certainly easy to imagine something similar happening. For instance, Trump could show up and start tweeting out photos and videos of him from the House floor ready to deliver the speech and complaining that Pelosi is barring cameras and keeping it dark.

    But, while there is some precedent for these sorts of games, it would take things to a new level if something like this were to take place involving the president arriving on Capitol Hill to deliver the State of the Union.

    Trump and his team have now had time to discuss various responses to Pelosi’s letter, including the possibility of delivering the speech from the White House, the Senate, or another location. He clearly reached the conclusion that simply showing up is a win-win. In this way of thinking, if Pelosi relents, it makes him look like a stronger leader who stared down Pelosi and won. If she pursues some of the strategies above to thwart him, it could potentially backfire and start to make her look like the unreasonable party.

    Of course, none of this, in the end, will bring lawmakers any closer to resolving the border wall impasse that has led to the government shutdown.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trump-can-show-up-to-deliver-the-state-of-the-union-but-pelosi-could-shut-off-the-lights-and-keep-out-cameras

    Feeling paralyzed by a 33-day partial government shutdown, a group of moderate House Democrats are growing restless — but they still aren’t going to give in to President Trump.

    “There is broad and growing concern about the impact of the shutdown and the human cost it’s imposing, so there’s a lot of frustration in that area — but not with our leadership,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), the chair of the House Budget Committee.

    Still, at least one Democrat is asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to give Trump something to get him to the negotiating table; Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), a first-term Democrat, is penning a letter to Pelosi asking her to guarantee a vote on some kind of border security package for the Department of Homeland Security by the end of February.

    Basically, Luria is trying to get Pelosi to agree that DHS officials will be given committee hearings to tell Congress what they need for border security, and secure a vote on the department’s funding request. That doesn’t mean it would get approved, but the hope is that the White House will see this as some sort of good-faith effort to negotiate and end the shutdown. A draft version of the letter was first reported by Politico.

    But even if Luria is trying to signal an openness to the other side, she and other moderates are still aligned with Pelosi’s central position: open up the government first, and only then will Democrats agree to negotiate on border security with the president. Luria is advocating a sweetener for Trump, rather than playing hardball.

    “Every Democrat who’s gone down to the White House, sent a letter, has said, ‘Open up the government and we’ll negotiate,’” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). “I don’t know of any Democrat who has not said, ‘What we need to do first is open up the government.’”

    “Once the president walks out of a room, it’s up to them [the White House] to initiate the talks,” Yarmuth added.

    Pelosi’s spokesperson Drew Hammill told Vox the White House still hasn’t reached out to Pelosi for any further negotiations this week, even as the Senate plans to take up two bills aimed at reopening the government on Thursday — both of which are expected to fail.

    Pelosi and Trump are in a stalemate. Moderates want a way out.

    Moderates are from districts that lean more conservative, and they have a distinct interest in making sure they are trying to work with Republicans to fix things that are broken in Washington. And right now, the thing that is broken in Washington is Washington.

    The most notable example of this was Trump inviting moderate Democrats in the House Problem Solvers Caucus to the White House to talk with him. But Trump has always been eager to exploit the optics of this to give the appearance that he’s peeling people away from Pelosi’s caucus — something the moderates refuted.

    “We were there not to negotiate anything other than try to inspire a negotiation and with a strong message we’ve got to do so when the government is open,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) last week. “Reopen government and get back to the table.”

    Other moderate Democrats have made it clear they are willing to negotiate with Trump over some sort of physical barrier, an idea Vox’s Tara Golshan laid out in more detail.

    “I have said multiple times that I support some element of a physical barrier as part of an overall package on border security, but it’s also got to include more funding for border agents; it’s got to include more technology,” Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-NY) told reporters. “But I’ve always been consistent in saying if the experts tell us a physical barrier makes sense, I will support it.”

    At least one moderate was willing to go further this week.

    “Give Trump the money,” said Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) in an interview with a local Minnesota radio station. “I’d give him the whole thing … put strings on it so you make sure he puts the wall where it needs to be. Why are we fighting over this? We’re going to build that wall anyway, at some time.”

    But even if everyone agrees that opening up the government is the starting point, many think Pelosi and Trump need to get together to talk — soon.

    “I agree with Ms. Pelosi. Open up government, pay the employees, then we negotiate,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who represents the border community of Laredo. “But now, I think pretty soon we’ve got to start looking at details. They’ve got to sit down and start negotiating, because right now it’s, ‘No, no.’”

    Source Article from https://www.vox.com/2019/1/23/18194327/moderate-house-democrats-shutdown-pelosi-trump

    President Trump often receives criticism for his supposed disinterest in the tradition of American moral leadership in international affairs. Some of this is fair, some is not. But when it comes to challenging the moral disgrace that is socialist Venezuela, Trump’s record is unequivocally stellar.

    Trump took this leadership one step further on Wednesday, when he officially recognized Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful president. This serves the better future of a suffering people.

    Why is this recognition so important?

    Primarily because it will force new pressure onto those who provide Venezuela’s pretender president, Nicolas Maduro, with his insulation of power. As I noted on Tuesday, “Maduro is hardly an inspiring leader. Instead, Maduro’s support flows from the assessment of powerful Venezuelan figures that he presently offers the best means to their better interest. But if they believe that Maduro’s continued power will only make them weaker, and open them up to the risk of a legal reckoning in the post-Maduro era, they will move away from the pretender president.”

    But the timing of Trump’s announcement is also excellent. After all, as you read this, millions of Venezuelans are marching through on their streets, demanding Maduro’s resignation. They are doing so because they have lived the lie of Maduro and Hugo Chavez’s socialist utopia for too long. And they know that lie for what it is: a Venezuela littered with starving children, professionals turned beggars and prostitutes, and the world’s most oil-rich nation now a political asylum.

    More U.S. action will yet be necessary. The Trump administration should work with its allies, especially Brazil and Colombia, to impose a wide-ranging oil embargo on Venezuelan oil exports. Trump should also confront nations such as China, Russia, and Spain, which support Maduro’s evil. Nevertheless, this is a good step that will send shivers down the spines of Maduro’s cronies. America has put them on notice as usurpers of democracy. They must now choose whether to remedy their misjudgment, or reap the whirlwind when Maduro’s political future reaches its inevitable destination.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-recognition-of-juan-guaido-is-bold-moral-leadership-on-venezuela

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    (CNN)A 36-year-old nurse has been arrested on suspicion of impregnating a woman in a vegetative state who unexpectedly gave birth last month at a Phoenix health care facility, police said Wednesday.

      Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/health/arizona-woman-birth-vegetative-state/index.html

      The only thing worse than a malicious lie is the people who try to keep it alive even after it has been thoroughly discredited.

      And that’s exactly what Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., did Tuesday evening when she repeated a series of disproven allegations leveled against a group of Covington Catholic High School students who attended the March for Life last week. They were falsely accused this weekend of “mobbing” Nathan Phillips, a Native American protester — footage of the incident shows otherwise.

      “The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it,’” the congresswoman said in a since-deleted tweeted.

      Her comments were made specifically in response to President Trump, who also tweeted Tuesday in reference to the March for Life incident that “the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream!”

      Rep. Omar’s tweet also claimed, falsely, that the Covington students “were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants.”

      Her note concluded with a reference to Nick Sandmann, the most visible student from the March for Life incident, claiming the teen’s “family hired a right wing PR firm to write his non-apology” for his interview this week with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie.

      It’s rare when someone manages to get this much wrong in such little space with so few words, but Omar has so far shown a special talent for this sort of thing. Let’s work through her baseless accusations, misleading statements, and outright falsehoods one by one.

      First, as far as we know, no one from Covington shouted, “it’s not rape if you enjoy it.” Someone did yell that, which is indefensible, but video of the incident also includes people stressing that the teen who yelled the offending phrase is not a Covington student. This is all the information we have regarding what was yelled and who yelled it — which is to say, Rep. Omar is making an accusation she can’t back up.

      Second, the congresswoman’s claim that the students “were taunting 5 Black men” is an outright lie. It was the other way around. The men in the video are members of the Black Israelites, a loathsome fringe hate group, and they were the ones who did the taunting. The Black Israelites called the high school students “crackers,” “faggots,” and accused them of being pedophiles. They accused the teens of “giving faggots rights.” They threatened the Covington students with violence. They also targeted a black Covington student, calling him a “n-gger” and telling him his classmates were going to murder him and harvest his organs (what?).

      Third, Omar’s claim that the students “surrounded Phillips and led racist chants” is misleading at best. Phillips approached the teens, banging away on a drum, and only then did the crowd part to form what I guess you could call a drum circle. Also, there is nothing to show the teens led racist chants, contrary to what Phillips told the Washington Post. The most controversial thing that can be seen in footage of the incident is when a few of the students appear to perform the “tomahawk chop” in response to Phillips’ provocation.

      I’m not going to die on the hill of a technicality like the difference between a chant and a hand motion, but it’s clear Omar is misrepresenting what actually happened. She characterizes Phillips as a passive victim of “racist chants.” That not accurate. The videos show he instigated the confrontation. What the footage does not show, however, is that the teens chanted things like “build the wall,” contra Phillips’ claims in subsequent interviews.

      Lastly, as to her point about the Sandmann’s hiring a public relations firm: Yes, and? Is enlisting the aid of spin doctors in and of itself a damning action? If so, I look forward to the forthcoming denunciations of the Planned Parenthood media machine, which includes SKD Knickerbocker and Fusion GPS, both of which are hugely successful in getting a submissive press to repeat the abortion provider’s talking points.

      On Wednesday, Rep. Omar’s nonsense tweet regarding the March for Life incident was deleted without explanation or apology.

      You know, between showing up late to the Covington smear campaign and the nonsensical, stumbling defense she offered last week of her conspiracy-mongering against Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., I’d say the congresswoman is not off to a great start.

      On the other hand, at least Omar has finally found some “Israelites” she is willing to defend.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/rep-ilhan-omar-quietly-deletes-inaccurate-attack-on-students-from-covington-catholic

      President Donald Trump’s advisers are reportedly urging him to bench his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and prevent him from making televised appearances following his hapless performances of late.

      According to The Associated Press, citing sources in and close to the White House, Trump is irritated by Giuliani’s recent mistakes, involving bombshell statements rapidly followed by confusing backtracking. The president reportedly thinks they distracted from what he views as vindication after an explosive BuzzFeed report was later brought into question.

      The ordeal has caused some of Trump’s advisers to urge the president to pull Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, from television appearances, though there is not a push for the lawyer to be fired, the AP reported. 

      Moreover, Republicans close to the White House told the AP they believe Giuliani may be appearing on TV after drinking alcohol, so he should be banned from evening appearances on news shows.

      Read more: “Wait, what tapes…?” Rudy Giuliani reveals he’s heard taped evidence in Trump-Russia investigation

      The White House and Giuliani did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

      Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office took the unusual step of disputing a report by BuzzFeed. Normally, Mueller does not comment on media reports. Citing two anonymous federal investigators, BuzzFeed reported that Mueller’s Russia investigation uncovered evidence showing Trump directed his former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about his business dealings in Moscow.

      Mueller’s office described the report as “inaccurate.” This was seized on by Trump and his allies, who accused BuzzFeed—which stands by its reporting—of spreading “fake news” and misinformation against the president.

      Meanwhile, Giuliani made headlines of his own. The lawyer recently tackled questions regarding the timeline for a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow. He told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that Trump was involved in talks about the business deal throughout the 2016 general election—which would have been as he simultaneously pushed for the lifting of sanctions against Russia and called on its government to expose the emails of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 

      Giuliani then issued a statement on Monday saying his comments “were hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President. My comments did not represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions.” 

      Read more: MSNBC panel savages Rudy Giuliani: “worst lawyer ever,” “he should be disbarred,” doesn’t understand “anything”

      Then, in an interview with The New Yorker, when asked about the BuzzFeed story, Giuliani revealed that he had listened to tapes.

      “I can tell you, from the moment I read the story, I knew the story was false. Because I have been through all the tapes, I have been through all the texts, I have been through all the emails, and I knew none existed,” he said.

      The New Yorker asked: “Wait, what tapes have you gone through?”

      Giuliani replied, “I shouldn’t have said ‘tapes.’ They alleged there were texts and emails that corroborated that Cohen was saying the president told him to lie. There were no texts, there were no e-mails, and the president never told him to lie.”

      Trump’s lawyer then clarified that he had listened to tapes “but none of them concern this.”

      Just before the media fallout from the BuzzFeed article, Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he “never said there was no collusion” between Russia and the Trump campaign, a focus of the Mueller investigation, just that the president would not necessarily be aware of it because thousands of people worked to get him elected.

      This is despite President Trump’s repeated and frustrated insistence that there was no collusion with Russia. Giuliani has also in the past said there was no collusion.

      Giuliani told Politico that he and Trump have known each other for 30 years “and I haven’t heard him complain. And nobody in the White House would complain to me. They just do it behind my back.”

      He added: “I do have a mastery of the facts, which is why I can spin them honestly, argue them several different ways… The problem is people don’t understand, or people don’t want to understand, alternative arguing, which is what you do in court all the time. People who want to understand it, do.”

      This article has been updated with another comment from Rudy Giuliani.

      President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the White House July 9, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Trump is reportedly frustrated by Giuliani’s recent media gaffes. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

      p:last-of-type::after, .node-type-slideshow .article-body > p:last-of-type::after{content:none}]]>

      Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/rudy-giuliani-donald-trump-media-tv-appearances-1301162

      The Covington Catholic High School students were criticized for their manic response to the Native drummer, Nathan Phillips, who was participating in the Indigenous Peoples March. One student, Nick Sandmann, stood inches from Phillips with a wide smirk. 

      Source Article from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sarah-huckabee-sanders-covington-kentucky-teens_us_5c487c4fe4b025aa26bf04aa

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      (CNN)A 36-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of impregnating woman in a vegetative state who gave birth last month at a Phoenix health care facility, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams said Wednesday.

      Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/health/arizona-woman-birth-vegetative-state/index.html

      Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is facing a social media backlash for going after Covington Catholic students anew Tuesday night, even after many in the media acknowledged initially misreporting on their widely viewed confrontation with a Native-American elder in Washington last week.

      Media figures initially seized on the viral confrontation between the group of students and Native-American elder Nathan Phillips. The initial clip appeared to show students antagonizing him, but additional video then emerged offering context, including that Phillips approached them amid a confrontation between the students and Black Hebrew Israelite protesters. The students pushed back on the initial criticism, and many of those critics have since retracted their statements — but others have revived the criticism.

      MEDIA TREATMENT OF COVINGTON STUDENTS ‘WAY WORSE’ THAN KAVANAUGH COVERAGE, CRITIC SAYS

      Omar weighed in on the subject, responding to President Trump’s tweet defending Covington student Nick Sandmann and his peers — by claiming they were taunting the black protesters despite accounts to the contrary and citing a videotaped comment about rape, though it’s unclear whether it was one of the Covington students who said it.

      Omar faced plenty of criticism for her tweet, with many calling her a “liar.”

      TUCKER CARLSON: THERE’S NO SYMPATHY FOR COVINGTON CATHOLIC TEENS IN AMERICA’S NEWSROOMS

      CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

      The newly elected representative was also criticized for a tweet claiming that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was “compromised,” admitting later to CNN that it was an “opinion.”

      Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rep-ilhan-omar-faces-backlash-for-new-attacks-on-covington-students

      Democrats have the opportunity to show the world which matters more to them: handing a defeat to President Trump or helping the people they care about, such as refugees, illegal immigrants in the U.S. since childhood, and federal workers.

      The White House over the weekend put forth a proposal that gives Democrats a lot on immigration while asking for very little.

      The trade: extended legal protection for thousands of immigrants living in the country currently awaiting the court system to determine their fate in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for construction of more wall barrier on the southern border.

      An agreement on such a deal would ideally reopen the full federal government and give both sides victories, however small, on immigration. It would also create breathing room for future negotiations on a bigger deal that would offer more security on the border and perhaps some kind of permanent status for immigrants here now in an uncomfortable legal limbo.

      Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Sunday that he would put the White House’s proposal to a vote this week. The bill’s passage would require the support of all Republicans, plus an additional seven Democrats, no doubt a high threshold to meet.

      But Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have called any vote pointless, a “nonstarter.”

      Is it a nonstarter for the 800,000 federal workers, some of whom are going on their second round without a paycheck? Is it a nonstarter for the farmers and other Americans who’ve seen their livelihoods stalled because they can’t access government agencies and services on which they rely? Is it a nonstarter for the thousands of immigrants in the country watching their futures hang in the balance?

      The shutdown started with Trump. He said he was proud to own it. But Democrats have a lot to gain by working with him to end it. They should invite the opportunity to debate the bill and offer up any amendments they see to their advantage.

      If, after the offer of a floor debate and a chance to add their amendments on immigration, they refuse to allow an up-or-down vote on the measure, the public will know that Democrats care more about opposing Trump than they care for immigrants in legal jeopardy.

      Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/what-do-democrats-care-about-helping-people-or-hurting-trump

      On Tuesday evening, Ms. Pelosi took another swipe at the president, using the phrase “Trump Shutdown” — which irked Mr. Trump in their televised Oval Office meeting last year — as she implored Republicans to vote for the Democrat-backed spending bill.

      “On Thursday, the Senate will have the opportunity to put a bipartisan bill on the president’s desk to reopen government and end this senseless shutdown,” Ms. Pelosi said.

      In the Senate, Mr. Trump’s proposal, which he promoted in a televised address on Saturday as a bipartisan compromise to pair wall funding with temporary legal protections for some immigrants, is facing all but certain death after White House officials conceded privately on Tuesday they had tacked on controversial proposals anathema to Democrats that would block many migrants from seeking asylum.

      The Republican legislation, unveiled Monday night, would provide $5.7 billion in wall funding and large spending increases for the detention and removal of immigrants, as well as three-year provisional protections for 700,000 of the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers and for about 325,000 immigrants mostly from Latin American countries and Haiti who have been living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status.

      As sweeteners to entice Democrats to back the measure, Mr. McConnell added $12.7 billion in disaster aid and an extension of the Violence Against Women Act, a measure that expired last year when government funding lapsed.

      “The opportunity to end all this is staring us right in the face,” Mr. McConnell said Tuesday, calling the president’s proposal “a comprehensive and bipartisan offer.”

      But the measure also included several changes to asylum law, long advocated by Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior adviser and an architect of his immigration agenda, that would make it more difficult for people to seek refuge in the United States from persecution and violence at home. Among them were provisions to bar Central American children from claiming asylum inside the United States, requiring them instead to do so in their own countries, and allow any of them to be quickly sent back to their own countries.

      Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/politics/government-shutdown-senate.html

      The strike has made teachers realize that, “we’re a lot stronger than we thought we were, so now we’re not going to let things slide,” said Nancy De La Torre, a first-grade teacher at Corona Avenue Elementary School in Bell. She’s OK knowing that the union didn’t get everything it set out for, because she feels that teachers will have more power in future negotiations, she said.

      Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-edu-teachers-strike-reaction-20190122-story.html