March 1, 2019

Woman Who Attacked 91-Year-Old Man With a Brick Sentenced to 15 Years

A California woman who attacked a 91-year-old Mexican man with a concrete brick last summer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. Laquisha Jones, 30, of Los Angeles, had pleaded no contest in December to one count of elder abuse, infliction of injury for assaulting Rodolfo Rodriguez on July 4, leaving him with a shattered jaw and broken ribs. She also admitted to using a deadly weapon and that she inflicted great bodily injury on Rodriguez. A witness of the incident said Jones had been heard telling Rodriguez to “go back to Mexico” before she enlisted the help of several men to attack the elderly man, at one point allegedly claiming he had tried to “snatch” her daughter. Prosecutors said Jones was also convicted in 2017 of making other criminal threats, and was on probation at the time of the attack for that felony and for a misdemeanor.

READ IT AT CNN

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/woman-who-attacked-91-year-old-man-with-a-brick-sentenced-to-15-years?ref=home

March 1, 2019

Client 3 Hannity and Individual 1 Trump Rip Fixer Cohen

Hannity, who now says Cohen never represented him, and Trump, who regrets that he did, agreed that the fixer was no good.

Justin Baragona

02.28.19 11:02 PM ET



During Fox News host Sean Hannity's interview with President Trump that aired Thursday night, the two groused about their former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and credited him with the decision to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stay silent about her alleged affair with Trump.

Discussing Cohen’s House Oversight Committee testimony in which the one-time Trump fixer labeled the president a “conman” and a “cheat,” Trump complained that investigations into him are a “sad thing for our country.” Hannity, who has been described as Trump’s shadow chief of staff, then whined about his own legal association with “the fixer”.


“I was dragged into the Michael Cohen thing,” the Fox host said. “I interviewed him many times on TV. He was never my attorney. He did apologize to me for his attorney saying that in court.”

Hannity then set up the president, telling Trump that Cohen had told him “a dozen times that he made the decision on the payments” to Daniels and didn’t tell the president.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/client-3-hannity-and-individual-1-trump-rip-fixer-cohen?ref=home

March 1, 2019

Takeaways from a Failed Summit

March 1, 2019 at 9:25 am EST By Taegan Goddard

Richard Haass: “Things never should have reached this point. Summits at most are expected to negotiate the last 10% of a deal. The Hanoi summit appeared to have it backwards, requiring that the leaders negotiate 90% on the spot. The Hanoi summit showed the dangers of a president who over-personalizes diplomacy. Foreign policy is mostly about the details, not the chemistry.”

“By overplaying his hand, Kim may have saved the president from himself. If reports were right, the U.S. was prepared to agree to offer a degree of sanctions relief in exchange for North Korea dismantling one of its enrichment facilities. But North Korea could have done this, and still maintained or even expanded its ability to enrich uranium and produce bombs and missiles.”

“Although disappointed with the summit outcome and concerned about what comes next, U.S. allies in the region (above all, South Korea and Japan) will be relieved that President Trump did not give away too much in Hanoi — and, in particular, that he did not put the U.S. troop presence in South Korea on the table, or repeat the language used at the Singapore summit, which called for the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. That suggested the U.S. nuclear guarantee might be negotiable.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2019/03/01/takeaways-from-a-failed-summit/

March 1, 2019

Democrats face a dilemma on impeachment

First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

March 1, 2019, 8:33 AM EST

By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann

WASHINGTON — Democrats have a problem on their hands.

How do they reconcile their growing belief that President Trump has committed crimes — especially after Michael Cohen’s testimony on Wednesday — with their hesitation/reluctance to consider impeachment?

“Impeachment is the most serious thing you can do in American democracy. So it’s not ever something that you can take lightly,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, told MSNBC’s Kay Tur yesterday. “It’s something that obviously you need a big number of members of congress to believe in and to buy into and really for the American people to believe in.”

Yes, going down Impeachment Road is a political risk. (Hello, Newt Gingrich and congressional Republicans!) And yes, Democrats want to wait for Mueller. But if you believe that what President Trump has done is WAY WORSE than Clinton ever did, aren’t you tolerating/normalizing this kind of behavior if you don’t consider impeachment ASAP?

As Yoni Appelbaum wrote recently in The Atlantic, impeachment is a procedure the Founding Fathers spelled out to debate whether a president has committed crimes or lived up to his oath of office.

Bottom line: There’s no easy answer here for Democrats.

But here’s something to chew on: Has the impeachment process already begun (with Cohen’s testimony, more hearings, Mueller on the way), but Democrats just aren’t calling it that?

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/democrats-face-dilemma-impeachment-n978066?cid=public-rss_20190301

March 1, 2019

Rep. Ilhan Omar Defies Dem Leaders By Refusing to Recognize Venezuela's Guaido: 'Absolutely Not'

Rep. Ilhan Omar Defies Dem Leaders By Refusing to Recognize Venezuela’s Guaido: ‘Absolutely Not’

by Julio Rosas | Mar 1st, 2019, 9:01 am

In a new interview with The Intercept, Rep. Ilhan Omar said she does not recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president, defying leaders in her party. Guaido has been recognized by the United States and other countries as president in opposition to Nicolas Maduro‘s regime.

“So, what do you want to see happen in Venezuela? Do you have a solution, a preferred option of what should happen,” The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan asked.

“Well the constitution of Venezuela says that there needs to be an election called within 30 days and we’re waiting for that to happen. What we should be involved in is having diplomatic conversations and bringing people to the table and being a partner in facilitating that,” Omar said, adding “we are threatening, we are threatening intervention” and “sending humanitarian aid that is in the guise of, you know, eventually invading this country and the people of the country don’t want us there.”

When asked if she recognizes the opposition as the leader, Omar, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, “Absolutely not.”

more
https://www.mediaite.com/online/rep-ilhan-omar-defies-democratic-leaders-by-refusing-to-recognize-venezuelas-guaido-absolutely-not/

March 1, 2019

Trump downplays North Korean denial of negotiating terms

Source: Politico


By CAITLIN OPRYSKO 03/01/2019 08:37 AM EST

President Donald Trump on Friday downplayed any dissonance between the United States and North Korea after nuclear talks with Kim Jong Un fell apart earlier this week without a deal.

“Great to be back from Vietnam, an amazing place,” Trump tweeted. “We had very substantive negotiations with Kim Jong Un - we know what they want and they know what we must have. Relationship very good, let’s see what happens!”

Competing versions of each side’s demands emerged after Thursday’s summit in Vietnam between the two leaders.

Trump said in a news conference afterward that Kim demanded complete relief from sanctions in exchange for incremental progress toward denuclearization, while North Korean representatives in a rare press conference later disputed that account.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/01/trump-kim-summit-2019-1197242

March 1, 2019

Trump Suggests Hillary Clinton is Funding Michael Cohen

Source: Mediaite


by Aidan McLaughlin | Mar 1st, 2019, 8:24 am

President Donald Trump unleashed on his former lawyer Michael Cohen in a tweet on Friday morning, claiming his former lawyer praised him in a book pitch long after saying he had turned on the president.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1101467190824439808

Trump appears to be referring to a Daily Mail story on a book Cohen pitched, several weeks before the FBI raided his office in April 2018, that praised the president vociferously. In a subsequent tweet, Trump argued the book manuscript undermines Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee, and called on Congress to demand a copy.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1101469141213630464

Cohen has repeatedly claimed that after working for Trump for a decade — a man he now describes as a “a racist… a conman… a cheat” — two pivotal moments of Trump’s presidency made him turn on his former boss: the president’s remarks in July 2018 at the Helsinki summit with Russian Vladimir Putin, and his response to the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August 2017.

UPDATE: Trump adds in yet another tweet that “Cohen’s book manuscript shows that he committed perjury on a scale not seen before.” The president also makes the completely unfounded suggestion that Cohen is being paid by Hillary Clinton.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1101476470034259968

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Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-unleashes-on-cohen-claims-he-pushed-a-love-letter-book-on-potus-just-a-short-time-ago/

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Mediaite has edited the headline for this news article. Originally the headline was:
Trump Unleashes on Cohen, Claims He Pushed a 'Love Letter' Book on POTUS Just 'A Short Time Ago'

That headline has been edited to what is now appearing in the subject line of this OP

March 1, 2019

Former SDNY Chief: These Prosecutors May Indict A President The Beat With Ari Melber MSNBC

March 1, 2019

Trump administration set to roll out massive offshore oil plan, but many in GOP don't want it

Ledyard King, USA TODAY Published 6:00 a.m. ET March 1, 2019 | Updated 8:06 a.m. ET March 1, 2019

WASHINGTON – Republicans have eagerly lined up behind President Donald Trump's energy agenda: bringing back coal, expanding mineral extraction on public lands, reviving nuclear energy.

But when it comes to the president's proposal to massively expand offshore oil and gas drilling, many GOP leaders in coastal states want no part of exploration near their beaches or maritime communities.

“The administration is well aware of the state’s position, which is why we oppose the drilling," South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster, one of Trump's earliest and most ardent supporters, said in December.

"I support offshore drilling," Georgia Republican Gov. Kemp told the Savannah Morning News a few weeks ago. "I just don't think we need to be doing it off the coast of Georgia."

Kemp and McMaster are among a broad bipartisan, bicoastal anti-drilling set of voices whose opposition could punch a hole in Trump's America-First Offshore Energy Strategy – and muddy an issue that figures to be front-and-center during the 2020 elections.

more
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/01/trump-offshore-oil-drilling-plan-faces-resistance-even-before-release/2814275002/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatodaycomwashington-topstories

March 1, 2019

Opponents of Trump's national emergency close in on enough votes in Senate

MARCH 1, 2019 / 8:07 AM / AP

WASHINGTON — Senate opponents of President Trump's declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border have moved very close to having enough votes to prevail, and one Republican suggested the president risks a rebuff by the GOP-led chamber if he doesn't change course.

Mr. Trump's move would "turn a border crisis into a constitutional crisis," veteran Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander said on the Senate floor Thursday. But he stopped just short of saying he'd support a resolution blocking the president's move. Had Alexander pledged his vote, it would probably be enough for the Senate to pass a measure repealing the emergency declaration.

-snip-

Republicans say a Senate vote is likely in two weeks, but exactly what the Senate will vote on remains unclear.

Several Republicans said that behind closed doors, they were considering several options for alternative language. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was among those suggesting provisions making it harder for future presidents to divert federal dollars to projects of their choosing by declaring emergencies.

"I wouldn't be surprised if some changes are made," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

While the wall elicits wide public opposition, Mr. Trump remains wildly popular with hard-right voters and GOP lawmakers cross him at their peril. Mr. Trump warned Republicans anew against challenging him.

"I really think that Republicans that vote against border security and the wall, I think you know, I've been OK at predicting things, I think they put themselves at great jeopardy," the president said in an interview with Fox News Channel's "Hannity."

-snip-

more
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opponents-of-trump-national-emergency-close-in-on-enough-senate-votes/