Despite being located in mandatory evacuation zones, certain Santa Rosa businesses continued operating this week in defiance of public safety calls to clear the area because of Kincade fire risks.
They appear to be mostly small companies around the west side of the city that retained power during PG&E’s preemptive shut-off that continues. It also included a Safeway supermarket.
The concern was palpable enough that city officials sent 10 teams of two staffers each around the city on Tuesday to visit businesses and residences to remind them that they were in a mandatory evacuation zone and should leave.
Law enforcement officials said they were worried that defying the Sonoma County Sheriff’s evacuation order posed a public safety threat given that the winds around the Kincade fire easily could have changed direction and took aim at the city and posed problems for emergency crews responding to calls.
Sheriff Mark Essick said he was aware of businesses operating in evacuated areas, a misdemeanor that can result in an arrest, but he is not strictly enforcing the law.
“I’d say it is a matter of discretion,” the sheriff said. “We are not going in and arresting them and dragging them out by the heels.”
Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro said the evacuation orders were put in place because of lessons learned during the 2017 Tubbs fire.
Just as troubling were concerns of employees who worked at the open businesses as well as their family members who contacted The Press Democrat about the matter and asked for anonymity because of possible retaliation from their employers.
“I’m very worried as I’m losing out on money and it’s just another level of stress added and I want to do the right thing,” wrote one worker whose employer on the west side of the city encouraged employees to come into work if possible.
Elected officials said they were troubled by the actions of these companies that kept operating when they were supposed to close. “That’s the wrong message,” county Supervisor Shirlee Zane said.
City councilman Chris Rogers acknowledged the evacuations were a hardship on small businesses. “If you are a small business and shut down for a few days, I understand the desire to get open,” he said.
Yet, he also was adamant businesses did the wrong thing by defying evacuations.
“The reality is, businesses should not have been open in the evacuation zone. Period. The City shouldn’t have had to go door to door telling them to be closed, they should have been closed,” Rogers wrote in a Facebook post.
The issue started to emerge Monday night, Rogers said, and became a bigger problem by Tuesday, forcing the city to address it. The tipping point came when Omelette Express in Railroad Square announced on Facebook Tuesday at 4:16 a.m. that it would be open that day in an evacuation zone.
Don Taylor, owner of Omelette Express, said he opened Tuesday morning after seeing others nearby working, specifically the construction crew building the new AC Hotel by Marriott at Fifth and Davis streets.
“I thought they must have lifted the ban or something. But that’s when the city came down and said I had to close” Taylor said. “I was confused because the only angle I had on that was they didn’t seem to stop the hotel people.”
“The notion that passing a tepid version of an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) bill—alone—is even close to getting the job done in addressing rampant gun violence in the U.S. is wrong and would be an ineffective cop out,” Schumer said in a statement.
He added that Democrats “are not going to settle for half-measures so Republicans can feel better and try to push the issue of gun violence off to the side.”
Schumer’s comments come as several Republican senators have floated passing legislation to provide incentives for states to pass red flag laws in response to last weekend’s mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas.
Red flag laws, as discussed by Republicans, would let family members petition for court orders to prevent dangerous individuals from being able to buy a gun. It would also let family members petition for court orders to have law enforcement temporarily remove a firearm.
“Even the strongest [extreme risk protection order] legislation won’t be fully effective without strong universal background checks. As long as the gun show and online sales loopholes exist, someone prohibited from possessing a gun under an ERPO law could still purchase a firearm far too easily,” Schumer said in a statement.
The House passed its background check bill earlier this year with only eight Republicans voting for it. The Senate companion bill has 42 backers, none of whom are Republicans, leaving it well short of the 60 votes needed to pass the chamber and head to Trump’s desk. The White House has threatened to veto the bill.
But Schumer added that Democrats would try to force a vote on the House bill if Republicans bring red flag legislation to the Senate floor.
“Democrats in the Senate will seek to require that any ERPO bill that comes to the floor is accompanied by a vote on the House-passed universal background checks legislation,” he said.
Detail of a scarf print from the Beyond Buckskin Boutique. Photo courtesy of shop.beyondbuckskin.com. Download Full Image
Morris said by spearheading innovative partnerships and leveraging resources from ASU, tribes and community organizations, she hopes that Inno-NATIONS will create a “collision community,” causing a ripple effect of economic change in tribal communities.
Both events are free and take place at The Department in downtown Phoenix.
Inno-NATIONS will also launch a three-day pilot cohort with approximately 20 Native American businesses starting in June.
“Beyond Buckskin” features Jessica Metcalfe, a Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Dartmouth graduate and entrepreneur, who grew a small online store into a successful boutique on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
The store promotes and sells Native American-made couture, streetwear, jewelry, and accessories from more than 40 Native American and First Nations artist, employing tribe members from the Turtle Mountain community.
ASU Now spoke to Metcalfe to discuss her work.
Jessica Metcalfe
Question: We’ve seen Native American fashion emerge and evolve. How did you get into the business?
Answer: I was writing my master’s thesis in 2005 and my advisor at the time had told me about some research she had done, which looked at Native American fashion in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. She had wondered if I was interested in picking up where her research left off. I looked into it and found that there were these breadcrumbs, little bits here in there, that something had been going on in the past 60-70 years, but hadn’t been looked at as a collective movement.
Through my doctoral dissertation, what I discovered was that Native American fashion has gone through waves of acknowledgements by the broader public, but what we’re experiencing now is perhaps the biggest wave yet.
You have designers like Patricia Michaels out at New York’s Style Fashion Week and the Native Fashion Now traveling exhibit touring the country, so there’s really a lot of exciting things happening lately. It’s coming from a collective movement. Designers basically grouping together to share costs but also to put together more events to cause a bigger ruckus.
Q: How did you build your online store into a brick-and-mortar business?
A: I first launched a blog in 2009 as an outlet for my dissertation research, and wanted to share it with more people and to also get more stories and experiences. My readers kept asking where could they see and buy these clothes? At that time, there wasn’t an easy way to access functions like a Native American Pow Wow or market in order to do that.
I had established a rapport with designers through my research and writing. They saw what I was doing through the blog and then a question popped into my head. “How would you feel about creating a business together?” There were 11 initial designers who said they needed the space, and I worked with them to sell their goods online. We just now opened our design lab on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. We are creating a system where we can meet demand and maximize a need in Indian Country.
We employ Native Americans from ages 15 to 22. There aren’t a whole lot of opportunities for people that age on the reservation. They either work at the grocery store or the gas station. One of them is interested in film and photography and so they run our photo shoots. Another person is interested in business entrepreneurship, and they get to see how an idea goes from concept to execution.
Q: The subtext is that this isn’t just about fashion but, history, representation and cultural appropriation?
A: Our clothing is just more than just objects. It’s about how the material was gathered, what the colors represent, what stories are being told and how does that tie into our value system. One of the things I often discuss is the Native American headdress. Our leaders wear them as a symbol of their leadership and the dedication to their communities. These stories are a way to share our culture with non-Natives and protect our legacy for future generations.
Q: Why is it important for Native American businesses to branch out into other cultures?
A: Native American people desperately need to diversify their economic opportunities on and off the reservations. Up until recently, people haven’t thought of fashion or art as a viable career path.
A recent study conducted by First Peoples Fund that found a third of all Native American people are practicing or are potential artists. That is a huge resource we already have in Indian Country and we need to tap it and develop it, and push for Natives in various fields to look at themselves as entrepreneurs and launching businesses.
Now, Native American people have an opportunity to make a positive impact in their local communities by reaching people through their art and sharing our culture with the rest of the world.
Mrs. Clinton then laid out a hypothetical to Ms. Maddow asking her to imagine a Democratic candidate for president coming on her show and saying: “China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns. I’m sure our media would richly reward you.”
“Now, according to the Mueller report, that is not conspiracy because it’s done right out in the open,” Mrs. Clinton said. The remark echoed one made by Mr. Trump about Mrs. Clinton’s private emails during the 2016 campaign: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump had said.
“If you’re going to let Russia get away with what they did and are still doing,” Mrs. Clinton continued sarcastically, why not “have a great power contest and let’s get the Chinese in on the side of somebody else.”
“Just saying that shows how absurd the situation we find ourselves in,” she said.
Frustrated Senate Republicans say the Trump administration has largely kept them in the dark about a possible military confrontation with Iran.
What GOP lawmakers already know, however, has them on edge. Trump has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group, a Patriot missile defense battery and an Air Force bomber task force to the Middle East, while the State Department has ordered a partial evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
A few legislators have received briefings, but many can only guess at the extent of the threat and where a ramp up in combat forces may lead.
Graham, the chairman of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, said he’s concerned about the evacuation of personnel from the Baghdad embassy given the regular attacks that facility endured during the height of the Iraq War.
“We’re clearly moving people,” he said. “This is a big deal.”
“We had people there during the height of the war,” he added of his experience at the Baghdad embassy. “I was there a bunch of time getting rocketed. If we could stay in operation then, it must be some kind of real threat.”
Republican senators say they don’t know whether Trump is really contemplating the deployment of 120,000 troops to the Middle East to deter attacks by Iranian-backed militants, which The New York Times first reported on Tuesday.
“There should be more briefings. I think we should have that sooner rather later. I’ve talked to the administration about that,” he said, referring to conversations he had in the previous 24 hours.
Gardner, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted that lawmakers don’t have an administration assessment on news reports that Iranian proxies were given the green light to attack U.S. personnel in the Middle East.
Asked if he was worried about a rapid escalation of military hostilities, Gardner responded, “Anytime you’re dealing with a regime like Iran that has painted ‘death to America’ on missiles that have killed American soldiers throughout the Middle East, it’s a grave concern.”
One alarming scenario is that Saudi Arabia, which is waging a military campaign in Yemen’s civil war, could launch a retaliatory attack against Iran and draw U.S. troops into a regional conflict. Saudi officials stated Tuesday that Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are backed by Iran, have carried out multiple drone attacks on Saudi oil pumping stations.
“I think it’s important that the administration know that they do not have the permission of Congress to go with Iran. The Constitution is very clear. Congress must declare war. I told the administration that today in our hearing. We had the undersecretary for policy from State. We want to be very clear to them they don’t have the prerogative to go to war without our authority,” he said.
Lawmakers have questions about the intelligence the Trump administration is using to justify the military deployment, which Britain, a close military ally, has called into doubt.
A senior British military official told reporters Tuesday that he did not see an increased risk of attack from Iran or connected militant groups. Major Gen. Chris Ghika, the deputy commander of a U.S.-led coalition battling ISIS, told The New York Times that “there has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq or Syria.”
GOP lawmakers say they are more inclined to trust American intelligence sources but feel frustrated that the administration hasn’t shared their information with the vast majority of them.
He called for senators to have a full briefing, arguing, “I think there’s a lot more to be known before decisions are made.”
A congressional official said the Gang of Eight, a group that includes the top Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate and House and the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Intelligence committees, will get a briefing on Iran Thursday.
A briefing of the entire Senate is expected next week, though some Republicans contend that could be too late given the speed at which events are moving in the Middle East.
“I’ve been here eight years, this is by far the single most imminent potential conflict of this significance,” Rubio added. “I pray that it changes. I don’t want us to have a war in that region. I hope it doesn’t happen that way, but we have to respond if attacked.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said “the American people need to be told why the administration is moving an aircraft carrier group, bombers and other assets into harm’s way” and warned of a repeat of the military buildup that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“There’s a saying that history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. The talk about secret information concerning Iran’s aggressive while refusing to give us information certainly smacks of Iraq,” he added.
Schumer also drew a comparison to Iraq on the Senate floor.
“The lessons of history teach us that when things are done in secret, behind closed doors, mistakes can be made and momentum built for a course of action that the nation ultimately regrets,” he said.
That money would be divided into two large tranches, each providing $1,000 per person and $500 per child – meaning a family of four would get $3,000, Mnuchin said in a Fox Business Network interview.
“As soon as Congress passes this, we get this out in three weeks. And then, six weeks later, if the president still has a national emergency, we’ll deliver another $3,000,” Mnuchin said.
Hahn, the head of one of those agencies, said at the White House that the FDA is “committed to continuing to provide regulatory flexibility and guidance.”
“We’re looking at everything that’s coming across our desks as possible treatment options,” Hahn said.
Some health authorities in the U.S. and China have been using Gilead Sciences‘ antiviral medication Remdesivir, which was tested as a possible treatment for the Ebola outbreak, in hopes that the drug can reduce the duration of the virus in patients. Antiviral drug Kaletra, developed by drugmaker AbbVie, has also been used by some authorities through so-called compassionate use programs.
A Florida police officer was suspended after he arrested two young children in school last week, including a 6-year-old who was acting out because of an apparent medical condition, a relative and police said.
Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolón said in a statement that the reserve school resource officer, Dennis Turner, did not obtain the approval of a commanding officer before making the arrests on Thursday, as department policy requires.
Turner was suspended while the department conducts an internal inquiry, Rolón said.
“The Orlando Police Department has a policy that addresses the arrest of a minor and our initial finding shows the policy was not followed,” Rolón said. “As a grandparent of three children less than 11 years old this is very concerning to me.”
NBC affiliate WFLA reported that the 6-year-old was charged with battery after she kicked someone at Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy, a K-5th grade charter school in Orlando.
The girl’s grandmother, Meralyn Kirkland, attributed her behavioral problems to sleep apnea, according to the station.
Kirkland said the girl was taken to a juvenile detention center Thursday where she was set to be processed.
The arrest was halted after a supervisor learned of it, Rolón said, and she was returned to school before being processed.
The 8-year-old, who was arrested in a separate incident, was processed and later released to a relative.
Additional information about that arrest was not immediately available.
The principal of Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy did not respond immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday, nor did a local police union.
Descifrando a Francisco: cómo piensa y actúa el Papa más político de la historia reciente. Sus definiciones sobre la economía. Claves del viaje a Cuba y los Estados Unidos.
El buenismo del Papa: Francisco se hizo popular con sus postulados bienpensantes y no paga el costo de gobernar un país. El anáilis de James Neilson.
Exclusivo: el periodista Facundo Pastor postula que el fiscal Alberto Nisman era un agente del FBI. Los entretelones de una investigación escalofriante.
La reinvención de Boudou: bajó 17 kilos, salió de su ostracismo político y se mostró con su nueva novia mexicana. Quién es esta ex diputada que nada tiene de nac&pop.
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César Pelli: el arquitecto argentino fue invitado por la XV Bienal de Arquitectura. Habla de la moda de su profesión y del disparate de la arquitectura de autor.
Los une las ganas de comer: las “Food raves” son tendencia en el mundo. En Europa y los Estados Unidos son un boom. La onda llega a la Argentina.
Ricardo “Chino” Darín: el actor de “Historia de un clan” habla de su personaje, sus proyectos, sus miedos y de las penas de amor.
Enfermedad de Lyme: es transmitida por una garrapata que no está en el país. Los ciervos suelen ser reservorios en bosques de Estados Unidos, Europa y Asia.
SAN GABRIEL, Calif. – A fire early Saturday destroyed the rooftop and most of the interior of a Catholic church in California that was undergoing renovation to mark its upcoming 250th anniversary celebration.
Fire alarms at the San Gabriel Mission rang around 4 a.m. When firefighters arrived, they saw smoke rising from the wooden rooftop in one corner of the historic structure, San Gabriel Fire Capt. Paul Negrete said.
Firefighters entered the church and tried to beat back the flames, but they had to retreat when roofing and other structural materials began to fall, Negrete said.
“We were trying to fight it from the inside. We weren’t able to because it became unsafe,” he said.
After evacuating the church, the crew was joined by up to 50 firefighters who tried to douse water on the 50-foot-high structure from ladder trucks, he said.
“The roof is completely gone,” the captain said. “The fire traversed the wood rapidly. The interior is pretty much destroyed up into the altar area.”
The cause of the fire was under investigation, Negrete said. He said the recent toppling of monuments to Junipero Serra, the founder of the California mission system who has long been a symbol of oppression among Indigenous activists, will be a factor in the investigation.
“This will be another box that they’re going to check off,” Negrete said.
Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, tweeted that he was “deeply troubled” by the fire as he awaits further information about its cause.
The church was the fourth of a string of missions established across California by Serra during the era of Spanish colonization. The Franciscan priest has long been praised by the church for bringing Roman Catholicism to what is now the western United States, but critics highlight a darker side to his legacy. In converting Native Americans to Catholicism, they said he forced them to abandon their culture or face brutal punishment.
Depictions of Serra have been protested and vandalized over the years, and Pope Francis’ decision in 2015 to elevate him to sainthood reopened old wounds. More recently, protests focusing on the rights and historical struggle of Black and Indigenous people led activists to topple statues of Serra in San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles.
In response, the San Gabriel Mission recently moved a bronze statue of Serra from the church entrance to its garden, away from public view, Terri Huerta, a spokeswoman for San Gabriel Mission, told the Los Angeles Times.
Police increased patrol and officials stepped security around the mission’s grounds about two weeks ago, she said.
The interior wall of the church was redone a week ago. Crews had just finished installing the pews as part of a larger renovation of the property to mark the anniversary of the founding of the mission in 1771, Huerta said.
The firefighters’ aggressive stance and “a little bit of a miracle” kept the flames from reaching the altar, she said.
The church had been preparing to reopen next weekend following a four-month closure to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Selena Quezada, 26, was in tears when she drove to the mission after she heard about the fire. She said she grew up in the parish and attended the elementary school on the church’s grounds.
“I was baptized here, I had my first communion here … I was getting ready to get married here next year so this hurts,” Quezada said. “It’s just really sad to see such a historic place burned down because this place means a lot to us.”
The church, built of stone, brick and mortar, originally had a vaulted ceiling that was damaged by two earthquakes in the early 1800s, Huerta said. Franciscan fathers replaced the ceiling with a wood-paneled ceiling, and the roof was last repaired following damage caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake, she said.
But prosecutors, citing what they called Mr. Epstein’s “yearslong scheme to sexually abuse underage girls” and his fortune of at least $500 million, have argued that Mr. Epstein would pose a danger to the community and might flee the country if granted bond.
The government had also said Mr. Epstein might try to obstruct justice if he were given bail. Prosecutors said that last year he wired $350,000 to two people who were potential witnesses against him at a trial.
Mr. Epstein’s lawyers said on Monday that the payment could have been “an act of generosity” to Mr. Epstein’s associates, and that government lawyers were unable to prove otherwise.
Mr. Epstein, 66, who faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted on the charges, has been held since his July 6 arrest in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, a highly secure jail that has housed accused terrorists, mobsters and, recently, the Mexican drug lord El Chapo.
In 2008, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges in Florida as part of a secret deal with federal prosecutors to satisfy a potential indictment on similar charges. He ended up serving a 13-month sentence in a local jail and avoided federal prosecution.
That deal was brokered by R. Alexander Acosta, a former United States attorney in Miami who resigned last week as President Trump’s Labor Secretary after public outrage over the Epstein agreement reached a fever pitch.
On Monday, defense lawyers for Mr. Epstein listed four additional Justice Department officials — two of whom now hold high-level government positions — who approved Mr. Epstein’s deal at the time.
A New York Times report alleges President Trump ordered a top-secret security clearance for his son-in-law and senior adviser despite concerns from top intelligence and White House officials.
A key House committee was gripped by infighting Monday as Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., released details of whistleblower allegations that dozens of people in the Trump administration were granted security clearances despite “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds.
Tricia Newbold, an 18-year government employee who oversees the issuance of clearances for some senior White House aides, said she compiled a list of at least 25 officials who were initially denied security clearances last year because of their backgrounds. But she said senior Trump aides overturned those decisions, despite it not being “in the best interest of national security.”
Newbold’s allegations were detailed in a letter and memo released Monday by Cummings of Maryland, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform committee.
The move prompted a fiery retort from top committee Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, of Ohio, whose office described the publication of the information as “reckless.”
“It is extremely unfortunate and disappointing that Chairman Cummings is now using this sensitive topic as a pretense for a partisan attack on the White House,” Jordan said in a statement. “Chairman Cummings’ investigation is not about restoring integrity to the security clearance process, it is an excuse to go fishing through the personal files of dedicated public servants.”
He complained that Newbold’s interview was only conducted Saturday morning – and Republicans “were not informed of the interview’s topic or witness until 3:30 the day before.” He also said some of the 25 examples cited included “non-political officials such as a GSA custodian.”
Jordan continued: “Chairman Cummings has departed from longstanding bipartisan oversight of the security clearance process to advance his partisan efforts to attack the President. His unilateral decision to release cherry-picked excerpts from one witness so early into an investigation is far from the constructive oversight he promised.”
The oversight panel has been investigating security clearances issued to senior officials including Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and former White House aide Rob Porter.
The letter comes about a month after The New York Times reported that Trump ordered officials to grant Kushner a clearance over the objections of national security officials and after Newbold spoke out to NBC News and other news outlets about her concerns. It also sets the stage for another fight between the White House and the Democratic-controlled House. Cummings said he will move this week to authorize his first subpoena in the probe.
Cummings said the subpoena will be for the deposition of Carl Kline, who served as the White House personnel security director and supervised Newbold. He has since left the White House for the Defense Department.
Newbold laid out her experience in the White House during a March 23 interview with bipartisan committee staff. Portions of that interview were in the memo released by Cummings.
According to the memo, Newbold’s list of overturned security clearance denials included “two current senior White House officials, as well as contractors and individuals throughout different components of the Executive Office of the President.”
“According to Ms. Newbold, these individuals had a wide range of serious disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct,” the memo says.
Newbold said she raised her concerns up the chain of command in the White House to no avail. Instead, she said, the White House retaliated, suspending her in January for 14 days without pay for not following a new policy requiring that documents be scanned as separate PDF files rather than one single PDF file.
Newbold said that when she returned to work in February, she was cut out of the security clearance process and removed from a supervisory responsibility.
Cummings’ memo doesn’t identify the officials on Newbold’s list. The committee has previously singled out Flynn, Porter and Kushner as it sought records from the White House about how their clearances were handled.
Flynn maintained his clearance even after the White House learned he lied to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador and that he was under federal investigation by the Justice Department for his previous foreign work.
Kushner failed to initially disclose numerous foreign meetings on security clearance forms, and according to the Times, career officials recommended against granting him one before Trump personally overruled them.
Porter had high-level access with an interim security clearance even though the FBI repeatedly told the White House of past allegations of domestic violence lodged against him by two ex-wives.
Porter resigned after the allegations becoming public.
(CNN)As the US averages more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths daily, not getting vaccinated is akin to driving while intoxicated, one health expert said Friday.
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Melissa Alonso, Jaide Garcia, Claudia Dominguez and Jennifer Feldman, Mirna Alsharif, Rebekah Riess and Liam Reilly contributed to this report.
President Trump had been vocally considering shutting down the southern border until he scaled back slightly on Thursday, giving Mexico one year to decide whether or not they’ll comply with his demands. His White House team probably talked him back from the ledge, since it seems he’s the only one in his own administration willing to take such a drastic step.
Indeed, senior staffers and Department of Homeland Security officials view closing ports of entry, what Trump calls a border shutdown, as a method of “last resort.” It’s not often that Trump entirely turns his back on his administration’s 2 cents, but when he does, it’s generally over immigration. This isn’t the first threat of this nature from Trump, and surely it won’t be the last, because, as is evident by his recent backtrack, the president’s not actually serious about shutting down the border. He really just wants the immigration debate to be framed in his favor. He hopes this will all be seen as a dichotomy between his pro-American immigration policy and the Democrats’ anti-American one.
It’s easy to see how empty Trump’s threat was: If he were to actually close the border, there would be dire economic consequences. It’s estimated there’s $1.5 billion worth of commerce occurring along the southern border every day. Meanwhile, from an immigration standpoint, nearly 500,000 people cross the border legally each day, and that’s just through Texas ports. With a border closure, shipments of vegetables and other goods would be halted, truck drivers blocked and stranded, and tourists denied passage of any kind. Trump loves to claim credit for the strong economy, but if he were to close the border, a plunge in stocks would most certainly follow.
It would punish a lot of innocent people, and Trump knows it. Following through on this threat as a political statement would have been extremely costly for Trump. But a claim like this one does force the Democrats who are running for president to reveal their stance on immigration, opening them up to attacks from Trump.
After all, President Trump’s 2016 campaign relied on the anxieties of middle America over immigrants taking jobs. He likely won’t stray from this strategy for the 2020 election, which is news to no one, including Democrats. But as Trump opponents elaborate on their positions in response to his pressure, the president is hoping they fall into his rhetorical trap by labeling themselves as open-border activists or “soft on crime” for their tolerance toward illegal immigration.
Trump recently unleashed a characteristic Twitter storm on the subject, prompting Democratic presidential hopefuls Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman from Texas, and Julián Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, to respond with their own sweeping immigration plans. For his part, Castro divulged that he wouldn’t consider an immigrant entering the U.S. without papers, no matter the circumstance, a federal crime. Trump will have a field day tearing down this proposal by attempting to rely on his “tough on crime” mentality, even though the electorate has steered away from this Reagan-era viewpoint.
O’Rourke is a native of El Paso, Texas, a city experiencing overcrowding due to customs and Border Patrol agents being reassigned to take care of unauthorized migrants. O’Rourke has highlighted Trump’s naive understanding on this matter by emphasizing that immigration policy is actually heavily tied to foreign policy, a reality Trump likes to avoid, evidenced by his recent call to cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, which would only exacerbate the flow of immigrants toward our borders.
One other presidential hopeful, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., already tried to distance herself from Trump by passionately advocating for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, known as “Dreamers.” On April 3, she introduced a bill to Congress, perhaps intended to differentiate herself from primary opponent O’Rourke, that would allow “Dreamers” to work as staffers or interns in Congress.
The immigration debate will be the main focus of the 2020 election, which means Democrats must fine-tune their positions on immigration in order not to fall into Trump’s rhetorical trap. But we should all remember that Trump’s first two years of hard-line stances on immigration hasn’t actually alleviated the biggest source of conservative apprehension: the surge in migration. In fact, March 2019 saw the highest migrant rate since 2008.
Who knows, Trump could easily be provoked once again to follow through on his threat, even if his original intent was to force Democrats to show their cards. But if he does, he’s not going to do anything but hurt his chances at a 2020 victory — and the everyday Americans he claims to champion.
Natalie Dowzicky (@Nat_Dowzicky) is a researcher at a think tank in Washington, D.C., and a Young Voices contributor.
A respected state pollster who correctly predicted Donald Trump‘s 2016 win in Florida has projected that the president will take the state again this year, and perhaps even by a wider margin
FOX 13 pollster Matt Towery went on air five days before Election Day in 2016 and predicted that Trump would win Florida. Trump did win Florida by 1.2 percentage points with a plurality of 49 percent of the popular vote over Hillary Clinton‘s 47.8 percent.
As Americans prepare to vote on November 3, Towery has predicted another close victory for Trump in Florida this year. “My final projection for Florida is Donald Trump will carry the state by at least a point, maybe a little better than he did last time—maybe even getting closer to two points,” he said, according to Fox 13.
Towery explained that his prediction relies on several factors: the similarity in polling compared to 2016, the president’s successes in Miami compared to 2016 and growing enthusiasm for his reelection campaign among Latino and African Americans in the state.
“I might add one of the reasons Trump is performing better than many expected in Florida is we’re seeing him do better with Hispanic Latino populations than we expected. That’s one,” Towery said. “The other is African American. In almost every state we polled, the African American vote is hitting at minimum 15%. I’ve never seen that in all the years I’ve polled.”
Towery also believes that Trump will take Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona. However, he declined to offer a prediction for the candidate that will take the electoral college and White House.
Political analysts have indicated a close race in Florida, a state that many have called a must-win to take the Oval Office. Trump appears to have the support of white men and rural voters, while Biden is expected to draw strong support among women and African Americans.
Biden is still leading Trump in most statewide polls. However, the margin has narrowed in recent weeks. On October 13, Trump trailed Biden by an average of 4.5 percentage points in the state, according to polling data maintained by FiveThirtyEight. That margin closed to 2.5 percentage points on the evening before November 3.
Florida’s two week early voting window closed on Sunday with roughly 8.97 ballots cast in the state. The figure was close to the 9.5 million overall ballots cast in 2016. Democrats accounted for 39 percent of the early votes, Republicans 38 percent and independents 21.5 percent.
Newsweek reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.
The Republican chairman of a Senate committee asked the Trump administration to fully declassify an email that President Barack Obama’s national security adviser sent to herself about Michael Flynn shortly before she left office, according to a report.
Sen. Ron Johnson is seeking the email sent by Susan Rice about a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting in which Obama and other top administration officials discussed the case against Flynn, who went on to become Trump’s national security adviser.
“I understand your office is currently reviewing a January 20, 2017, email from former national security advisor Susan Rice,” Johnson wrote in the letter to Attorney General William Barr that was viewed by Politico.
“In that email, Ambassador Rice summarized an Oval Office meeting with President Obama and other administration officials that occurred on January 5, 2017. A majority of Ambassador Rice’s email was declassified but a portion of the email remains classified,” wrote Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Johnson, of Wisconsin, said that as more information about the meeting becomes declassified, “it is essential that Congress and the American people understand what occurred” and noted that declassifying Rice’s email “will assist these efforts.”
In a portion of Rice’s email that had been declassified, she said Obama, after a briefing on Russian interference in the 2016 election, had a follow-up conversation with Rice, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Vice President Joe Biden.
“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book,’” Rice wrote. “The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”
Rice noted that there might be information related to Russia that should be held from the incoming Trump administration, writing, “we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”
Trump has accused Biden and Obama of trying to sabotage his administration through the Russia investigation.
The president has pointed to documents that show Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was among Obama White House officials who asked for Flynn to be unmasked after his conversations with a Russian ambassador were picked up by the intelligence community.
“This was all Obama. This was all Biden,” Trump told Fox Business. “These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them.”
Rice and other Obama officials have denied they did anything wrong and said “unmasking” is routine.
Michael Flynn and Susan Rice in 2017Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The Justice Department has moved to drop the case against Flynn, who was one of the first prosecutions carried out by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, saying the new information released raises questions about the FBI’s interview with Flynn.
It said the interview was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and was “conducted without any legitimate investigation.”
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Oklahoma lawyers argued Johnson & Johnson aggressively marketed opioids that overstated their effectiveness and underplayed the addiction risk. USA TODAY
Oklahoma’s $572 million judgment against Johnson & Johnson will likely be followed by more trials and legal settlements seeking to hold a drug company accountable for a U.S. opioid crisis that has ripped apart lives, families and communities.
Monday’s ruling could help shape negotiations over roughly 1,500 similar lawsuits filed by state, local and tribal governments consolidated before a federal judge in Ohio. And as the legal cases against the opioid industry accelerate, so do concerns about how the money from verdicts or settlements will be spent.
Following are questions and answers about the opioid crisis and what lies ahead.
Q: Why are so many governments are suing over opioids?
A: Forty-eight states plus around 2,000 local and tribal governments have sued companies in the drug industry, arguing those that make, distribute and sell the drugs are partly responsible for a crisis that has killed more than 400,000 people across the country since 2000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s including more than 47,000 in both 2017 and last year.
The plaintiffs argue that drugs were improperly marketed and that companies failed to stop suspicious orders from shipping.
A: The White House Council of Economic Advisers published a report in 2017 pegging the cost of the crisis at just over $500 billion in 2015. That includes lost productivity as well as costs borne by taxpayers, such as ambulance runs, jail treatment costs, and the costs of caring for children whose parents have died from opioid overdoses.
Q: What are opioids and how are they used?
A: They’re an addictive family of drugs that block pain signals between the body and brain. They include prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin, as well as illegal drugs such as heroin and illicit versions of fentanyl. Until recent decades, they were prescribed largely for pain for patients with cancer, at the end of their lives, or with acute pain, such as after surgery. Since the 1990s, there’s been a push in the medical world, partly funded by drug companies, to do better at treating pain – and opioids came to be seen as part of the solution.
Q: So what’s the problem?
A: Recent studies have questioned their effectiveness with chronic pain and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told prescribers to be cautious about using the powerful drugs to treat patients with long-term pain. Experts say the longer patients are on the drugs and the higher the doses they receive, the more likely they are to develop addictions. Also, more people with prescriptions means more access to the drugs for recreational users and addicts.
Q: What happened leading up to the Oklahoma judgment?
Oklahoma’s public nuisance lawsuit against several drugmakers and their subsidiaries was the first in the wave of opioid litigation to make it to trial. Before the start of the six-week trial in May, Oklahoma reached a $270 million deal with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and an $85 million settlement with Teva, both of which faced criticism from state lawmakers, who argued they have control over dispersing funds. The Purdue settlement calls for about $200 million to go into a trust to fund an addiction studies center at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa.
The remaining defendant, Johnson & Johnson and some of its subsidiaries, proceeded to trial.
Q: What makes the cases legally complicated?
A: There are dozens of defendants and thousands of plaintiffs with different interests. State and local governments are battling over control of any settlement money before any national deals have been reached.
In Oklahoma, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has told the state that the federal government is entitled to a portion of Oklahoma’s proceeds from its settlement with Purdue. Several local governments refused to participate in the lawsuit against Purdue so they could pursue their own, while others have criticized how most of the settlement money from that case is being spent.
Q: When did the opioid crisis begin?
A: By the early 2000s, the death toll from opioids was rising and there were growing numbers of thefts of drugs from pharmacies. In 2007, Purdue paid a $634 million fine and pleaded guilty to understanding the addiction risks of the drug. But the crisis only deepened after that. Prescriptions flowed freely at “pill mill” clinics, especially in Florida, where drug dealers would get drugs and spread them around the country.
Q: How widespread is the problem?
A: In recent years, opioid overdoses have been the nation’s largest cause of accidental deaths, ahead of even automobile accidents. The death tolls per capita have been the highest in places with the highest prescription rates. The Appalachian region has been hardest hit.
Q: Have prescriptions stopped being given out so freely?
A: Yes. States have used databases to track prescriptions and prescribers, pill mills have been shut down and prescribers have become more conservative in calling for the drugs since around 2011. Government guidelines and some insurance company standards have also been tightened. But as prescription rates started falling, death rates actually rose, with more addicts using deadlier illicit versions of opioids. Preliminary data shows that the death toll declined very slightly in 2018 for the first time since the crisis began.
Q: What’s next?
A: The first federal trial, involving claims from Ohio’s Cuyahoga and Summit counties, is scheduled for Oct. 21. The Cleveland-based judge in that case, Dan Polster, intends to use that as a bellwether, providing decisions that could apply to other cases. Polster is overseeing most of the opioid cases and is pushing the parties to settle.
Other cases in state and federal courts could be tried as soon as next year.
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Copper: Copper deficiency is more common among people with untreated celiac disease than the general population. It is sometimes confused with anemia but is now more frequently recognized as its condition. Good food sources of copper, which is important for heart and bone health as well as a strong immune system, include shellfish, whole grains, beans, nuts, potatoes, organ meats, dark leafy greens, dried fruits, cocoa, black pepper, and yeast. Pineapple Studio / Getty Images
Experts say formally unleashing impeachment would bolster Democrats’ arguments that they deserve to see sensitive documents from the Trump administration. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Judges have repeatedly ruled that Congress has a greater claim to sensitive documents when it can point to an ongoing legal matter, like impeachment.
Democrats know that impeachment is a losing proposition against President Donald Trump right now.
But there’s another rationale for launching impeachment that has some Democrats reconsidering the idea — getting access to the sensitive documents and testimony that Trump’s team is withholding.
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Judges have repeatedly ruled that Congress has a greater claim to sensitive government documents and personal information when it can point to an ongoing legal matter, instead of just a congressional investigation or legislative debate. And impeachment would give lawmakers that legal matter — the process is essentially a court procedure run by Congress where the House brings charges and the Senate holds the trial.
The idea might seem toxic to House Democratic leaders who have so far resisted impeachment overtures against the president, aware that the politically explosive move wouldn’t get through the Republican-led Senate and could turn off voters ahead of the 2020 election.
But legal experts and lawmakers across the ideological spectrum acknowledge that formally unleashing impeachment would bolster Democrats’ arguments that they deserve to see the president’s tax returns, interview senior officials, peruse special counsel Robert Mueller’s trove of evidence and see the details of Trump’s personal dealings with foreign leaders. So far, the Trump administration has vociferously argued it doesn’t need to acquiesce to such demands, which it says are merely part of a political hit job. The president’s personal attorneys have even punched back with lawsuits in some cases.
“One could imagine that if this stonewalling of the American people continues, that that may be something the committee would have to consider,” said Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which would lead impeachment proceedings.
“The Democrats’ hand would be strengthened if they were conducting a formal impeachment inquiry,” added Philip Lacovara, who served as counsel to the Watergate-era investigation of President Richard Nixon.
It’s a theory that has started bouncing around Capitol Hill. When House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, who is leading the Democrats’ fight for Trump-related information, mentioned in a recent hearing that his committee was able to get access to sensitive investigative materials during the Nixon and Clinton administrations, Republican Rep. Doug Collins quickly reminded him that the past access was impeachment-aided.
“If the chairman truly wanted to get at this information, then he can go to what I believe many in their heart desire is, is open the impeachment inquiry,” said the Georgia lawmaker, the panel’s top Republican.
Several GOP members have doubled down on that argument. “I think if you actually get into impeachment, it does open up access to more things,” said Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot.
Such a move “might well open up more public officials to being queried by staff personnel,” added Chabot, a longtime Judiciary Committee Republican who served on the panel during Clinton’s impeachment.
“But they don’t want to take that step because that’s not where the public is and they’re afraid it might hurt them in the next election,” he said. “So, they want to talk about impeachment, but they don’t want to do it.”
Indeed, Democratic leaders have continued to shy away from impeachment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that while Trump has driven the country into a “constitutional crisis,” Democrats want to tread cautiously on impeachment.
“That’s just the way it is,” Pelosi said. “And it is going to be based on fact and law and patriotism, not partisanship or anything else.”
Cicilline agreed, saying the House should first pursue other legal avenues to get their desired documents.
“I don’t think we’re there yet,” he said. “We have some litigation to pursue. But there’s no question it would enhance or strengthen our ability to compel the production of documents or witnesses.”
Still, frustration is building among Democrats. Since January, the party’s new House majority has tried to launch investigations and hold hearings only to have subpoenas ignored, some refuse to appear for testimony and the president’s attorneys counter with lawsuits. On Wednesday, Trump escalated the fight by invoking executive privilege to block the release of the full unredacted Mueller report.
Since the Watergate era, courts have repeatedly ruled that the House has greater claim to fight these rejections if it is in the middle of impeachment proceedings.
Legal experts point to a 1974 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that suggested the House Judiciary Committee had stronger claim to Nixon’s Oval Office tapes than a Senate committee because the House panel was overseeing impeachment proceedings.
“The investigative authority of the Judiciary Committee with respect to presidential conduct has an express constitutional source,” Chief Judge David Bazelon wrote in the ruling.
Another Watergate-era ruling from the D.C. Circuit blessed the idea that the House Judiciary Committee could receive normally secret grand jury material as part of preparation for possible impeachment.
And in 1984, an Atlanta-based federal appeals court approved the release of secret grand jury material to the House in connection with the impeachment of Alcee Hastings, a federal district court judge.
Several legal experts agree that Democrats would be in a better spot legally if they took the formal step of opening an impeachment case against Trump.
“History affords Congress maximum power only when it is investigating a possible impeachment,” Michael Conway, a House Judiciary Committee lawyer during the Nixon impeachment, wrote in a recent NBC op-ed.
Absent opening up impeachment proceedings, Syracuse University law professor David Driesen said he thinks the Trump administration has the upper hand in its court fights over the ignored subpoenas and requests. The current argument that the information is needed to help Congress craft legislation just won’t cut it, he said.
“I think the courts — especially conservative judges — are more likely to give weight to an impeachment inquiry than the claim that this is somehow relevant to legislation,” he said.
Democrats have started to flick at impeachment in their legal arguments.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats on Wednesday voted to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt for refusing to hand over the unredacted Mueller report and the special counsel’s underlying evidence. The contempt citation says the full Mueller report is needed to determine whether the committee should be “taking any further steps” to check the executive branch.
“That includes whether to approve articles of impeachment with respect to the President or any other Administration official,” the resolution says.
But some lawyers with Hill experience are cautioning Democrats against embracing impeachment proceedings solely for the benefit of new arguments to make in their legal briefs.
“I don’t think it’s the panacea that’s going to make all the problems go away,” said Alan Baron, who worked as an attorney for the House Judiciary Committee on four judicial impeachments, including the Hastings case.
“It does help you, but it doesn’t solve all your problems,” Baron added. He predicted the Trump administration would still resist Democratic-driven demands if it were to face impeachment and try to drag things out in court through the 2020 election. “The clock is already running,” he said.
Ted Kalo, a former general counsel for House Judiciary Democrats, cautioned against the “mistaken assumption that the commencement of an impeachment inquiry grants the House superpowers that would cause the Trump administration to comply with subpoenas quickly.”
“It wouldn’t,” he added. “It’s fair to assume the administration would still stonewall and the House would still be left with litigation as its primary means of enforcing its subpoenas.”
The House has plenty of leverage even without impeachment, Baron and Kalo both argued. And judges rarely second-guess congressional committees reasoning for obtaining records or testimony, they noted.
For example, about two years ago, the private investigation firm that commissioned the so-called Steele Dossier, Fusion GPS, sought to rein in a House Intelligence Committee subpoena for the firm’s bank records. Fusion’s lawyers said the request was certain to produce information irrelevant to the panel’s probe, including payments that had nothing at all to do with the dossier.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon declined to constrain the panel’s subpoena power.
“This court will not — and indeed, may not — engage in a line-by-line review of the committee’s requests,” wrote Leon, a George W. Bush appointee. The judge also cited a Supreme Court ruling, saying he had no authority to consider the “motives” behind Congress’ action.
Former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb acknowledged that impeachment would give the House additional legal clout but said Democrats so far have failed to prove that they’ve exhausted all other options.
“If they jump into impeachment they would have additional legal arguments, but they wouldn’t necessarily be perfected given how little they’ve done” to negotiate, said Cobb, who stressed that he was speaking solely for himself.
“I agree, marginally, that if they got into impeachment, they have slightly stronger arguments,” he added. “The problem is the failure to do the spadework on that puts them in a weak position.”
Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
Mexican military deployed throughout the country as part of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s vow to do more to apprehend migrants headed to the United States, have officially begun targeting foreigners who have hitched rides aboard a freight train known as “The Beast” to get to the U.S.-Mexico border, local media reported Sunday.
Mexican National Guard held up the “La Bestia” train in an unpopulated area near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, a city north of the Mexico-Guatemala border, where migrants have been crossing into the country.
The operation marked the first of its kind since López Obrador and President Trump reached a deal late Friday, in which the U.S. would hold off on tariffs against Mexican imports if the government did more to prevent people from traveling through the country.
“The National Guard was placed on one side, moment that was taken advantage of by more than 200 migrants who got off the train and fled,” Nataniel Hernández Núñe, director of the Digna Ochoa Human Rights Center, told El Universal.
Many “hid in the bush, so only 25 were arrested,” Hernández said.
The train was headed to Oaxaca, a state located northwest of Chiapas. From there, the train riders would have hopped onto another freight train.
A map of freight train routes migrants have used for more than a decade to travel through Mexico, according to a 2008 report titled “The challenges of migration in Mexico. A two-sided mirror.”
Mexico’s Institute for National Migration has previously said migrants who illegally entered the country and do not have temporary visas allowing them to travel through will be deported because they are in the country without legal permission.
Migrants have used freight trains at a lower rate in recent years compared to how popular it was around 2014 and 2015, when unaccompanied children and families began climbing aboard the trains to avoid paying smugglers to get them to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mexican authorities in 2014 declared it illegal to ride on the trains when the practice became widespread. Until this weekend, the move has gone largely unenforced.
The trains leave out of Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas then go up to Mexico City, located in the center of the country. From there, the trains go in a number of directions, giving migrants options as to which part of the U.S. border they would like to go. The journey typically takes two weeks.
Riding on top of the 12-foot-tall freight cars is dangerous. Injuries and deaths have been well-documented over the past decade, including last month, when a Honduran man trying to jump on board while the train was moving fell off and had his foot run over by a wheel.
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