President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan proposes a third round of stimulus checks of $1,400 for most Americans. Yet while that could extend a helping hand to millions of households still suffering from the pandemic’s economic fallout, it could be months until the payments arrive, analysts say.
The price tag for the relief package, called the American Rescue Plan, is likely to face pushback from Republican lawmakers, who last year resisted Democratic efforts to pass a $2 trillion bill. Heights Securities analyst Hunter Hammond expects the ultimate package to be trimmed to $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion. But most analysts think lawmakers on both sides of the aisle will back the $1,400 direct payments, which economists view as a lifeline for many cash-strapped workers who lost their jobs or have seen their income plummet during the pandemic.
Support for another stimulus package may gain steam given several developments that point to widening economic distress as the pandemic worsens, according to Ed Mills, an analyst with investment bank Raymond James. A weaker outlook for the labor market, with a bigger-than-expected 1 million jobless claims during the first week of January, as well as record number of COVID-19 infections and deaths, could push lawmakers to support Mr. Biden’s plan for additional stimulus, analysts say.
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer on Friday made an unfortunate slip of the tongue as he slammed former President Donald Trump’s conduct related to the Jan 6 Capitol riot.
Schumer was informing senators about the plans for an impeachment trial of the ex-president. The House last week impeached the president for “incitement of insurrection” for his alleged role in encouraging protesters who went on to storm the Capitol.
It was at that point when Schumer made a somewhat phallic flub.
It soon became a trending topic on Twitter. Meanwhile, back home in the Empire State, the New York Post declared that Schumer’s gaffe would be “hard to live down.”
The Biden administration wants to root out and eliminate what it believes to be an offensive word from every federal law.
The immigration bill President Joe Biden is sending Congress aims to appease progressives and illegal immigrants who want to be called something more pleasing to the ear than the current federal definition.
The word “alien” has peppered laws concerning those who are not American citizens since the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act.
Wendy Bell, the radio host let go by KDKA last fall, is joining WJAS Pittsburgh. She announced her new position in a Facebook post Wednesday.
“America needs common-sense conservatism,” she wrote.
JD Turco, senior vice president at St. Barnabas Broadcasting, which bought WJAS in November, confirmed Thursday that Bell will be joining the station.
“She’s going to be a conservative talk show host, in keeping with the lineup we have right now,” he said. “There’s a lot of conservative talk there. We believe she fits well into that lineup.”
The station features conservative voices that include Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
Bell’s new radio show will air Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. till noon and Friday from 9 a.m. to noon on WJAS 1320AM and 99.1 FM and the iHeartRadio app, beginning Jan. 25.
As Obama used to say, presidents are part of a long-running story. Trump’s paragraph was nasty, brutish and short
In so many ways it was all so gloriously, spectacularly, crushingly normal. The ceremonial rituals, the military band, the procession of dignitaries, the sprinkling of stars, and the entirely forgettable inaugural speech.
But for the pandemic masks, the death toll of more than 400,000 Americans, and the small army to deter another white supremacist insurrection, the scenes on the west side of the Capitol were the first signs of a restoration of democracy that came perilously close to collapse.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr swore to protect and defend the constitution on a giant family Bible that was bigger than his home state of Delaware. It appeared helpful for crushing large insects and small insurrectionists.
If anything survives in our collective memories of Biden’s speech, it will be the 46th president’s commitment to what used to be boilerplate language about the vital struggle to preserve democracy and rebuild something close to national unity.
“Today we celebrate the triumph, not of a candidate, but of a cause. The cause of democracy,” Biden began. “The people, the will of the people, has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded. We’ve learned that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”
It almost didn’t, of course. With a few more Republicans in the House, the will of the people would have been overturned. With a few fewer Republican state officials willing to stand up for free and fair elections, Biden’s autocratic predecessor would have been standing on that same spot. With a few more insurrectionists, several of those members of Congress seated on the Capitol steps might not have borne witness to history on Wednesday.Beyond defeating the pandemic, Biden called out three priorities that could never have emerged from the mouth of the man who promised, four years ago, to put America First.“A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer,” Biden promised. “A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, that we must confront and we will defeat.”Inaugural speeches typically try and fail to reach for historic stature. The Biden administration does not need to reach for history when history has dumped one of its greatest piles of destruction on its doorstep.The man now at the center of it all is a true believer in the notion that all politics is personal. He is a tactile politician who touches everyone literally, figuratively and most often hyperbolically. Citing Abraham Lincoln at the signing of the emancipation proclamation, Biden said he was typically, characteristically, literally, all in.“Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation,” he said. “And I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the foes we face: anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness. With unity, we can do great things, important things.”At that point, the progressive wing of the Democratic party rolled its collective eyes towards the heavens. Meanwhile, the fascist wing of the Republican party prepared to use that unity line in every speech defending its attempts to divide the nation and destroy democracy.Still, that’s Joe Biden, and as the man likes to say: God love ya.“Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another,” he beseeched the nation and the members of Congress beside him.“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated, and even manufactured.”Earlier on a cold January morning in the nation’s capital, a beleaguered world said good riddance to the raging fire of Trump’s presidency. It ended in a spasm of garbled thoughts, lies and language that represent the core character of the loser of last year’s election.Trump was always a caricature of the 1980s, trapped in an amber world where greed is still good, conspicuous consumption is always plated in gold, and the mix tape only plays totally inappropriate hits like YMCA.And so it came to pass that the colossal buffoon who pretended to be president for four years spoke to a miserably small crowd of blood relatives and paid help on the concrete at Joint Base Andrews. The TV pundits bravely suggested the scene resembled some campaign-like event, which would be true if the campaign was a jumble sale to repair a leaking roof.Trump shuffled off the presidential stage, showing off his rather large personal collection of lies, big and small.He pretended that his family had toiled in the White House rather than serve itself and watch TV (“People have no idea how hard this family worked”). He pretended that he respected his wife Melania, and that she was not in fact the least popular first lady on record. He fabricated once again his record of war veterans support.And he flat-out invented a performance on job creation that was the very worst since Herbert Hoover. “The job numbers have been absolutely incredible,” he declared, in ways that are indeed barely credible.
CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR DAVID CHALIAN: Those lights that are just shooting out of the Lincoln memorial along the reflecting pool, it’s like almost extensions of Joe Biden‘s arms embracing America. It was a moment where the new president came to town and sort of convened the country in this moment of remembrance, outstretching his arms…
Meanwhile, as the corporate press drools for Joe, they frantically spit on President Trump, the outgoing guy, trying to outdo each other on who’s more relieved that our national nightmare is over.
NBC ANCHOR WILLIE GEIST: A welcome sight for many Americans, President Trump is leaving Washington.
CNN ANCHOR WOLF BLITZER: It’s gonna be a little pathetic, a tiny little crowd at Joint Base Andrews.
CNN’S JIM ACOSTA: He’s almost leaving town like an autocrat.
CNN’S DANA BASH: He just looks like a small man.
NBC ANCHOR CHUCK TODD: He knows he is leaving [as] a pariah and nobody wants to be seen with him.
CNN ANCHOR DON LEMON: Four years ending with true ‘American carnage:’ A riot. A pandemic. Carnage.
It’s amazing, the emotional intensity of their conformity.
The media is so predictable you could set your watch to their lockstep.
The press are like children. Overjoyed that mommy’s deadbeat boyfriend finally moved out of the house.
Except they still can’t quit America’s bad boy.
Nope.
Trump has actually left a Trump-sized hole in their lives. And they’re trying to figure out how to fill it.
And with what?
Well, the media coverage will bounce between, softcore fluff masquerading as hard news, For example: “Hey, did you hear Joe has a Peloton, I got two sources to go on record!” to pieces remembering the awful past under the Fonzie/Godzilla hybrid that is Trump.
Dont worry, there will be no anonymous sources feeding CNN’S Blitzer false stories of Biden’s meltdowns.
What will they do after all their bitter, emotional farewells? When they realize their primary engine of profit — creating conflict and hate based on their own loathing for Trump — is finally gone.
Let’s ask Mara.
NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER MARA GAY: A lot of Americans of goodwill saw the true face of white supremacy and Trumpism at its core. … What is preventing us from coming together to fight our real enemies, like COVID, is racism. It is at the heart of what allowed Donald Trump free rein to terrorize the American people for four years.
Greg Gutfeld currently serves as host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) The Greg Gutfeld Show (Saturdays 10-11PM/ET) and co-host of The Five (weekdays 5-6PM/ET). He joined the network in 2007 as a contributor. He is author of the new book, “The Plus: Self-Help for People Who Hate Self-Help.” Click here for more information on Greg Gutfeld.
In an exclusive interview with KDKA political editor Jon Delano, state Rep. Ed Gainey said that if Peduto couldn’t get the job done in eight years, he doesn’t deserve another four years.
In four months, Pittsburgh Democrats will choose their nominee for mayor of Pittsburgh. Last week, Peduto announced his candidacy. This Saturday, he will get a major challenger in Gainey.
“There’s no question when you look at the economic disparity, there’s a problem – the racial disparity, it’s a problem. The housing disparity, it’s a problem,” Gainey told KDKA political editor Jon Delano.“
And if you haven’t done it in eight years, you’re not going to do it in the next four. So at the end of the day, that’s why I’m running for mayor,” Gainey added.
Gainey, who says he’s more liberal than Mayor Peduto but not a Democratic socialist, implies the mayor talks a good game but hasn’t delivered.
“It’s more than just talking about what we need to do. It’s about how we execute to get it done. We can talk about it all day, but I don’t want to talk about it. I want to do it,” Gainey said.
Now in his fifth term in the state Legislature, Gainey is a life-long Pittsburgher.
State Rep. Ed Gainey announced Tuesday he is challenging Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto in the Democratic primary.
“I’m running for mayor because I know that the working people of Pittsburgh need opportunities for good union jobs with a living wage and benefits, affordable housing, genuine public safety, and a city where we can all belong and contribute,” said Gainey, who turns 51 next month, in an announcement emailed Tuesday night. “We can uplift the City of Pittsburgh for everyone if we start with those who have been left behind.”
Gainey, of Lincoln-Lemington, is a father of three and is married to Michelle (Coburn) Gainey. He has served in the state House since 2013, representing the 24th District.
The primary election, on May 18, essentially decides the race for mayor of Pittsburgh, as the Republican voters are few and a Republican mayor has not served since the 1930s.
“I understand that city government has the power to change lives, uplift communities, and fix what’s broken in our city. Our city is divided, but when we all lay our heads down at night, I believe we all share the same vision for our families, our children, and our neighborhoods,” Gainey said. “To fulfill our vision for a better tomorrow, Pittsburgh deserves a mayor who will fight with all they’ve got to see the vision through. I’m ready for that fight, and as the next mayor of the city of Pittsburgh, I’ll be a mayor for all of us.”
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump will not be in attendance Wednesday to watch as his successor Joe Biden is sworn into office, but his absence will have little impact on what may be one of the most important moments of Inauguration Day, the handing off of the “nuclear football.”
Typically, the football would be handed off to another military aide standing on or nearby the inauguration viewing stand as Biden takes his oath of office.
But on Wednesday, that exchange will happen a bit differently as Trump is currently expected to depart Washington, DC, for Florida before Biden’s inauguration ceremony.
The nuclear football will likely travel with him, experts say, meaning there will be at least two briefcases in different locations, presenting a unique challenge of ensuring the transfer of authority goes smoothly.
While that process may play out slightly differently than it has in years past, there are safeguards in place to ensure a seamless transition of nuclear control from one president to the next, regardless of circumstance, according to Stephen Schwartz, a nonresident senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
To show their appreciation for the civil rights icon on the federal holiday, ICE tweeted an image of a King statue, with the text: “Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of hope, justice and equality.”
Without addressing King directly, Ocasio-Cortez retweeted the text and called for the agency to be abolished.
Ocasio-Cortez has called for dismantling the agency for years, even in moments when her Democratic colleagues appeared to back away from the idea.
Though Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter feed on Monday was filled with references to King and his legacy, King’s niece, Alveda King, told Fox News that the congresswoman ought to “take a page out of Martin Luther King Jr.’s book.”
The suggestion came in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments during a virtual town hall last week in which she referred to President Donald Trump as the “poison of White supremacy.”
This story was originally published by PublicSource, a news partner of NEXTpittsburgh. PublicSource is a nonprofit media organization delivering local journalism at publicsource.org. You can sign up for their newsletters at publicsource.org/newsletters.
The country is on edge after a mob incited by the president overtook the U.S. Capitol last week, resulting in the death of five people and a sense that the security of American democracy is at risk.
The Washington Post reported that right-wing groups are planning additional armed marches leading up to the Jan. 20 inauguration, according to Alethea Group, which analyzes and combats disinformation online. The report by Alethea Group’ showed plans for activity in all 50 state capitals as well as some other cities, including Pittsburgh.
In a Jan. 12 statement, the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office said the agency is aware of reports of possible “protests in our area,” and that FBI agents interviewed a “Pittsburgh-based individual” cited in the report. “At this time, we are not aware of any related threats in our region which includes Western Pennsylvania and the State of West Virginia,” the FBI said in the statement.
The national FBI director, according to the New York Times, told a number of police chiefs from around the country in a call Wednesday to be on high alert, even without verified threats, and warned of attacks on government buildings and businesses.
The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol caught authorities off guard despite being planned on the open internet. Could a fresh round of dangerous conflicts take authorities by surprise?
A new challenge for local authorities
Jillian Snider, an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York Police Department officer, said last week’s riot in Washington will cause law enforcement across the country to take more precautions than normal.
“I don’t think anyone would have predicted something as vile as what had occurred last week,” Snider said. “I think agencies are definitely going to step it up in terms of making sure they have more than sufficient personnel on scene to try and counteract anything that might be planned.”
The Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety did not answer questions about preparation, and FBI Pittsburgh did not answer questions related to threats beyond its Jan. 12 statement.
In a vote of confidence for the city’s ability to handle any situations that may arise, he referenced the G20 summit held in the city in 2009 and “a number of peaceful protests and walks this summer with very little incidents.”
John Sicilia, the president of the Allegheny County Chiefs of Police Association, said he is not aware of any credible threats in the region. He said federal, state and city law enforcement have been “very transparent” with sharing any intelligence that has come up.
“However, we’re always preparing for that worst-case scenario,” said Sicilia, who is also the chief of police of the Northern Regional Police Department, which serves several municipalities north of Pittsburgh. “Our reaction is always based on the action and how much people escalate a situation. If it’s peaceful protest, we certainly allow that to happen as long as it’s done legally. But once property is being destroyed or people are harmed, we obviously have to escalate our tactics and prevent people from being injured.”
The violent riot that took place in Washington last week was unlike any protest seen in Western Pennsylvania in 2020, or any time in memory. Sicilia said cooperation between agencies will be crucial if similar situations arise in the region.
“I don’t think agencies independently could ever be prepared for something like that,” Sicilia said. “But we have a very unique dynamic in the region here in Western Pennsylvania where law enforcement partners from across the region work together … I think collectively as a group we would have a very good handle on a situation like that.
“But for any one agency, a situation like we saw in Washington, D.C., would be overwhelming. But like I said, as a group, I feel that we would be able to keep the residents of this region safe and the property of this region from being destroyed.”
President-elect Joe Biden waves to reporters as walks out of The Queen theater Monday, Jan. 18, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping immigration bill on Day One of his administration, hoping to provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status, a massive reversal from the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.
The legislation puts Biden on track to deliver on a major campaign promise important to Latino voters and other immigrant communities after four years of President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies and mass deportations. It provides one of the fastest pathways to citizenship for those living without legal status of any measure in recent years, but it fails to include the traditional trade-off of enhanced border security favored by many Republicans, making passage in a narrowly divided Congress in doubt.
CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter (Dennis Van Tine/AP)
CNN is making no mistake about it: It wants to censor and close Newsmax from broadcasting as a cable news channel.
Apparently jolted by the fact Newsmax has skyrocketed to become the 4th highest-rated cable news channel in the country, the liberal CNN is decrying what it calls Newsmax’s “election denialism” and is seeking to have it “deplatformed” from cable and satellite systems across the nation.
Oliver Darcy, CNN’s leftwing media critic, has been demanding cable operators drop Newsmax, which is currently carried by every major system in the nation. Newsmax is also streamed free by most OTT platforms and devices.
In a CNN column in early January, Darcy falsely claimed conservative media caused the protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“After all, it was the very lies that Fox, Newsmax, and OAN spread that helped prime President Trump’s supporters into not believing the truth: That he lost an honest and fair election,” Darcy wrote.
Darcy’s demands have been echoed on CNN’s shows, including their Sunday media show “Reliable Sources” hosted by liberal media analyst Brian Stelter.
On this week’s Sunday show, Stelter’s guests focused on deplatforming Newsmax.
Unlike past presidents, Trump has shown little interest in using the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney system for assessing requests for executive clemency. Instead, petitioners are approaching the White House directly, calling or emailing senior adviser Jared Kushner, chief of staff Mark Meadows or White House counsel Pat Cipollone — when they can’t get a hold of Trump himself.
Many of the people Trump has chosen to pardon so far fall along predictable lines: associates such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn who remained loyal to him through their legal troubles; criminals with friendly or familial ties to the administration, such as Jared Kushner’s father Charles; celebrities or people connected to celebrities, such as Rod Blagojevich; and those whose cause was taken up by conservative media, such as Blackwater security guards who massacred Iraqi civilians.
He has pardoned or commuted the sentences of some people serving lengthy prison terms for low-level offenses, such as Alice Johnson, who spoke at the Republican National Convention.
But by and large, Trump’s pardon record has broken with historical norms. Many of the high-profile criminals he has pardoned have shown little contrition or remorse for their crimes and few have argued they were wrongfully convicted.He is expected to adhere to that record on Tuesday when he issues around 100 pardons or commutations. The final batch of clemency actions is expected to include a mix of criminal justice reform-minded pardons and more controversial ones secured or doled out to political allies. White collar criminals, high-profile rappers and a prominent eye doctor from Palm Beach, Florida, who is in prison after being convicted on dozens of counts of health care fraud, are expected to be on the list.
Because this is a situation we’ve never seen before, many people, understandably, have questions about what it all means for President Trump’s political future. We took those questions to our ABC Action News Political Analyst, Dr. Susan MacManus, to help clear some things up:
An impeachment alone does not prevent President Trump from running for public office again. The Senate would have to conduct an impeachment trial and first convict the president on an article of impeachment.
“Then another vote would have to be taken which would only require a simple majority to, in language that says, they can no longer run for office, but even that’s being debated at the moment,” said Dr. MacManus.
Another question being raised is if the Senate moves to try and convict the president, what happens to his benefits?
“His pension stays intact unless he is actually convicted and removed from office,” said Dr MacManus.
And his future lifetime secret service protection is another topic up for debate.
Constitutional lawyers are trying to define exactly who counts as a “former president.”
The Former Presidents Act makes it clear that the term “former president” means a person who served as President of the United States of America “whose service in such office shall have terminated other than by removal pursuant to section four of article II of the Constitution of the United States of America.”
But another law, the Former Presidents Protection Act, authorizes lifetime secret service protection for former presidents, but the act does not define exactly who falls under “former president.”
The unfortunate conclusion, according to Dr. MacManus, “Clear as mud, and it’s very frustrating to people who just want to know what’s going to happen next.”
All decisions Congress, or potentially the Supreme Court, may have to make.
NASHVILLE — For at least a week before Election Day, I was too anxious to focus. Donald Trump was running a re-election campaign founded in lies, and I had no faith that my fellow Americans would throw him out. The polls were reassuring, but I wasn’t reassured. Polls were reassuring in 2016, too, and this country still ended up in an abusive relationship with the most corrupt and dangerous president of my lifetime.
I had no faith, but I held out hope. The ubiquity of the anti-Trump ads created by The Lincoln Project, a group of Republican operatives endorsing Joe Biden, gave me hope. A change of heart in so many of my conservative friends — disgusted by Mr. Trump’s greed and deception and boorish behavior, disgusted by his inexplicable subservience to foreign despots, his encouragement of outrageous conspiracy theories, his loyalty to his own interests and no one else’s — gave me hope. Above all, the massive registration and get-out-the-vote effort in Black communities across the country gave me hope. Change was in the air — I could feel it. An uprising was upon us. A great repudiation was at hand.
A plan for containing the pandemic was finally coming. A serious reckoning with climate change, a fair approach to immigration, criminal justice reform, a strong health care safety net, a renewed emphasis on voting rights — all suddenly possible.
On election night I was quadruple-screening the coverage — The Times on my laptop, PBS on our television, Twitter on my iPad, half a dozen text threads going with friends on my phone — and the news kept getting grimmer and grimmer. “This is exactly the way I felt four years ago,” my brother texted as early results came in.
But it wasn’t the way I felt four years ago. This time I felt far, far worse.
People have had four years now to find out just how truly terrible Mr. Trump is. How indifferent he is to the norms of civil discourse and to the responsibilities of democracy itself. How transparently racist he is, how divisive, how selfish. We know he’s a chronic liar who, when caught out, simply doubles down on the lie. We know that he is using the levers of government to enrich himself. We know he delights in and urges on the most violent impulses of his most dangerous followers. We know he has let 237,000 Americans die on his watch and still has no plan for saving the rest of us.
I don’t discount for one instant the progress such news represents, and I celebrated as joyfully as anyone when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won. I celebrated their win, and I celebrated the resilience of our democracy. I celebrated the chance to right so many of the wrongs that have been done during the last four years. Mr. Biden can do an enormous amount of good, even if he ends up having to do it without the Senate.
But the 71 million people who voted for Donald Trump despite his incompetence, despite his lying, his bullying, his cheating, his racism, despite all the moral failings he proudly flaunts as virtues? Those people aren’t going anywhere, the poison-spewing right-wing media that created them isn’t going anywhere, and Donald Trump himself isn’t going anywhere. And it’s not remotely clear what the rest of us can do about any of that.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Shortly before the FBI used his dossier to secure a surveillance warrant targeting the Trump campaign, Christopher Steele met with State Department officials and relayed information suggesting Moscow was running an operation out of the Russian consulate in Miami.
There was just one problem with his intelligence: The Russians didn’t have a consulate in Florida’s largest city.
The anecdote, captured in contemporaneous memos and newly released testimony, illustrates just how bad some of Steele’s intelligence reporting was and how widely that was known inside the FBI, even as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was being assured by the bureau that Steele was deemed credible and there was no derogatory information about his work.
Kenneth Laycock, the FBI’s current Executive Assistant Director, was a section chief for Eurasian intelligence in fall 2016 when Steele made a visit to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec at the State Department.
During the October 2016 meeting, Steele admitted he was leaking to the news media while working as an FBI informant, a violation of his confidential human source agreement. (He later was terminated for it.) And he also relayed the anecdote about the Russian operation out of the Miami consulate, which officials immediately flagged as false, according to Kavalec’s own notes of the meeting.
“It is important to note that there is no Russian Consulate in Miami,” Kavalec wrote.
Laycock said Kavalec relayed her concerns to the FBI and that others working on the now-discredited Russia collusion investigation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane were also aware of Steele’s mistake.
“Do you recall — just trying to jog your memory here in case you do recall — Ms. Kavalec conveying information to you that Steele conveyed to her information about a Russian consulate being located in Miami and that was an inaccurate assessment on Steele’s part?” a Senate investigator asked Laycock in testimony taken last year but made public on Friday by the Senate Judiciary Committee,
“I recall a conversation about a consulate in Miami independent of what she had mentioned regarding what Mr. Steele said to her,” Laycock answered.
In a nationally televised speech, Rutte said he had informed King Willem-Alexander of his decision and pledged that his government would continue work to compensate affected parents as quickly as possible and to battle the coronavirus.
“We are of one mind that if the whole system has failed, we all must take responsibility, and that has led to the conclusion that I have just offered the king, the resignation of the entire Cabinet,” Rutte said.
Not long after delivering his statement, Rutte got on his bicycle and rode to the king’s palace in a forest in The Hague to formally inform him. Dutch television showed Rutte parking his bike at the bottom of steps leading into the palace and walking inside.
The move was seen as largely symbolic; Rutte’s government will remain in office in a caretaker mode until a new coalition is formed after a March 17 election in the Netherlands.
Biden’s stimulus plan, which includes the increased payments, would cost $1.9 trillion. According to The Washington Post, most people would end up with a total of $2,000 in stimulus, including $600 checks dispensed in recent legislation.
But that wasn’t enough for Ocasio-Cortez, who appeared to want the latest checks to reach $2,000 as she and others have repeatedly requested. “$2,000 means $2,000. $2,000 does not mean $1,400,″ she told the Post.
Biden pledged before the Georgia runoffs this month that a Democratic Senate would pass $2,000 stimulus checks.
By Charlie Deitch Pittsburgh Current Editor charlie@pittsburghcurrent.com
As this issue goes to press, the United States Congress just voted to impeach President Donald Trump for the second time.
Trump is the first President in history to be impeached twice. At this point, everyone is well aware of how we got to this place.
On Jan. 6, as Congress gathered to certify Joe Biden’s win for President of the United States, Donald Trump was down the street at the Washington Mall. Trump gave a speech that continued to feed his followers several false narratives that led to the Capitol insurrection:
The Election was stolen “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by bold and radical left Democrats, which is what they are doing, and stolen by the fake news media. That is what they have done and what they are doing. We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump said.
Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reverse the results of a fair election. “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. … All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people. And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said, Mike, that doesn’t take courage, what takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage, and then we are stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot, and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen. Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. (APPLAUSE) And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I’m not hearing good stories.”
The 56-year-old Democrat, who was first elected in 2013, revealed his bid for a third term in a pre-recorded video posted to his Facebook page, in which he fielded questions from a video grid of 10 community leaders. It’s “not really the brick and mortar of the development,” he told the activists, but “more about the people who call these neighborhoods home that is Pittsburgh.”
Westmoreland County elections officials Wednesday morning started counting more than two dozen provisional ballots cast in November but just recently discovered by staff during routine inspections of voting equipment.
Elections bureau staffers, serving as appointed members of a reconstituted provisional board, reviewed and qualified 20 ballots cast in North Huntingdon and one from Avonmore. Four ballots were rejected for being submitted by unregistered voters.
The North Huntingdon ballots, cast at the United Methodist Church on Coulterville Road, were discovered Dec. 28. Four additional ballots were found last week that were cast in Avonmore Borough, according to Elections Bureau Director JoAnn Sebastiani.
“They were inadvertently not reviewed (in November),” Sebastiani said of the Avonmore ballots.
When the House voted Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump for the second time, all 222 Democrats backed the move. Most Republicans opposed it, but with some notable exceptions.
These are the 10 Republican lawmakers who supported the move to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection:
President Joe Biden will have both houses of Congress in his corner — by some of the narrowest margins in history — but that is not a free pass, experts say.
“Unified government isn’t enough to let a party pass their legislative dreams into reality,” James Curry, a congressional scholar at the University of Utah, told The Post.
When Georgia’s runoff races flipped two red Senate seats blue Tuesday, Congress’s upper body split 50-50. With soon-to-be-veep Kamala Harris as Senate tie-breaker, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer will assume operational control — but only barely.
“The Georgia results make Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Jon Tester of Montana, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia the most powerful people in America,” said Ryan Girdusky, a writer on populist politics.
As the most moderate Democrats in the Senate, they’ll be deal-breakers on party lefties’ most progressive agenda items. And with their staunch support of the filibuster — the Senate rule requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation — Schumer’s bills can’t be too extreme for at least 10 Republicans’ liking.
“Basically, Democrats will only be able to get whatever it is that Manchin and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi can agree on,” political consultant Stewart Verdery said.
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With no help from Congress, Biden will unilaterally sign back on to the Paris Climate Accords, rejoin the World Health Organization, end travel restrictions on some Muslim countries, and reinstate DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects young illegal immigrants.“Trump got those things and more done through executive orders and regulatory changes,” said David Lublin, a professor at American University. “Biden will follow Trump’s lead.”
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump tweeted, making formal what many had long assumed: that Trump would eschew the traditional step of personally demonstrating the peaceful hand-off of power to President-elect Joe Biden. He’ll be the first outgoing president to skip his replacement’s inauguration in more than 150 years.
It came as Trump faces an uncertain final stretch in office. His top aides delivered a blunt warning to him Thursday as he sat sullenly in the West Wing and watched as his Republican allies, Cabinet secretaries and former senior staffers criticized or denounced him one by one.
His daughter Ivanka Trump, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, chief of staff Mark Meadows and others told Trump there was a real chance he would be removed from office — whether by his own Cabinet or lawmakers — if he did not more forcefully denounce the actions of his supporters who attacked the US Capitol the day before.
Trump did not initially want to issue a video decrying the loyalists whose actions he largely supported — and whom he said he “loved” a day earlier — but he told aides to prepare a speech and then he would decide.
Once he read over the brief script they had prepared, Trump agreed to record it Thursday evening — a relief to the senior staff, though concerns lingered he could backtrack during his final days in office given his actual position has remained unchanged: that he lost the election unfairly.
The top Democrats in Congress called on Thursday for President Trump’s immediate removal from office for his role in urging on the violent mob that overtook the Capitol a day before, disrupting the ratification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York called on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows him and the cabinet to wrest the power of the presidency from Mr. Trump.
If Mr. Pence declines to act, they said, Democrats were prepared to impeach Mr. Trump for a second time.
“While it’s only 13 days left, any day can be a horror show for America,” Ms. Pelosi said, calling Mr. Trump’s actions on Wednesday a “seditious act.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday said Vice President Pence should “immediately” invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Trump from office, while warning that if he refuses, Congress should “impeach the president.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) defended his decision to object to the certification of President-elect Joe Biden‘s Electoral College victory during a joint session of Congress after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called on him to resign after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.
“Sen. Cruz, you must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday. And how you fundraised off this riot,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at the lawmaker on Thursday.
“Both you and Senator Hawley must resign. If you do not, the Senate should move for your expulsion,” she added, referring to Sen. Josh Hawley
(CNN)Supporters of President Donald Trump have breached the US Capitol and one woman has been shot as one of the most iconic American buildings is engulfed in chaos after Trump urged his supporters to fight against the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes that confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s win.
Shortly after 1 p.m. ET hundreds of pro-Trump protesters pushed through barriers set up along the perimeter of the Capitol, where they tussled with officers in full riot gear, some calling the officers “traitors” for doing their jobs. About 90 minutes later, police said demonstrators got into the building and the doors to the House and Senate were being locked. Shortly after, the House floor was evacuated by police.
An armed standoff was taking place at the House front door as of 3 p.m. ET, and police officers had their guns drawn at someone who is trying to breach it. A Trump supporter was also pictured standing at the Senate dais.
A woman is in critical condition after being shot in the chest on the Capitol grounds, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The sources could not provide further details on the circumstances of the shooting.Vice President Mike Pence was also evacuated from Capitol, where he was to perform his role in the counting of electoral votes.Video from inside the Capitol showed Trump supporters marching through Statuary Hall. The US Capitol Police is asking for additional law enforcement for assistance, including federal authorities, per a source familiar.The source says there are several suspicious devices outside the Capitol building.House and Senate leadership is safe and in an undisclosed locations, according to a person familiar. A separate lawmaker said House members have been evacuated to a location that this source would not disclose.The US Capitol Police are working to secure the second floor of the Capitol first, and will then expand from there. Outside the Capitol, the DC Metropolitan Police Department continues to mass, but no major move has been made yet toward the crowd.The Capitol police officer in the House chamber told lawmakers that they may need to duck under their chairs and informed lawmakers that protesters were in the building’s Rotunda. Lots of House members were seen wearing gas masks as they move between Capitol buildings. Members were calling family to say they are OK.
Officials shouted and spoke over each other, at one point trying to conduct dueling sessions in a stark showcase of this year’s party divides over normally routine functions of democracy.
