White House officials and House and Senate staff members will meet at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) on Saturday in a bid to end the partial U.S. government shutdown, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Friday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) after members of the GOP booed her for voting for newly-elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted a taunting rebuttal: "Don't hate me cause you ain't me.""Over 200 membe...
One of America's first two Muslim congresswomen has explained in succinct and direct words exactly what the new "most diverse ever" Congress' goals are in the next session.
Just hours after being sworn in, Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib promised to go after President Trump, telling a group of left-wing supporters at a rally held by MoveOn near Capitol Hill, she would help Democrats “impeach the motherfucker.”
Interestingly, as The Daily Caller reported, new speaker Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday that she will withhold a decision on impeachment plans until special counsel Robert Mueller issues his report in the Russia investigation:
“Well we have to wait and see what happens with the Mueller report. We shouldn’t be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn’t avoid impeachment for a political reason. We just have to see how it comes.”
So how did Claas Relotius deceive an army of professional journalists for years and trigger the biggest journalism scandal in decades? With help from the American elite.
Microsoft is disabling the Cortana voice-over during the Windows 10 setup. It was originally introduced to be helpful for new PC users, but IT admins found it ...
Taliban fighters are threatening major oil wells near the northern Afghan city of Sar-e Pul following days of fighting in which dozens of members of the security forces have been killed and wounded, officials and residents said on Friday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat with Anderson Cooper for an upcoming 60 Minutes interview set to air this Sunday, a portion of which has been released as a promotion. In the released segment, Ocasio-Cortez reveals how exactly she suggests paying for the environmental agenda known as the “Green New Deal” — with remarkably higher tax rates for the super wealthy.
Ocasio-Cortez suggests in the clip that in her esteem, people should be doing more to pay their “fair share.” When Cooper pressed on how she could possibly pay for the deal, she pointed to the progressive tax rate system in the 1960s, explaining that if you earn 0 to $75,000 a year, you would only pay 10% or 15% in income tax.
She continued:
“But once you get to the tippie tops, on your $10 millionth, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60% or 70%. That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate. But it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more.”
Cooper replied that she was proposing a “radical agenda.”
“If that’s what radical means, call me a radical,” she said.
The newly elected New York representative has quickly become something of a lightning rod of attention for people of all political stripes, so this suggestion is certain to get as much attention as the recently revealed and viral clip of a teen-aged AOC doing a Breakfast Club style dance on a rooftop.
Over the last month we have learned much more about the circumstances surrounding the departure of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about a conversation with then-Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak; one on December 29, 2016 in which Flynn urged the Russians to "refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the US had imposed against Russia," and another conversation in which Kislyak told Flynn that Russia had decided to moderate its response following the request.
Nothing earth shattering, illegal, or collusive in the "witch hunt" sense - but Flynn was not forthcoming with the Justice Department, or Vice President Mike Pence. He was fired from his post and subsequently pleaded guilty in December 2017 to making false statements to the FBI.
Flynn has been painted as a Russian stooge ever since - with critics pointing to his sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Russia Today (RT) dinner as "Exhibit A" that he was clearly a Kremlin puppet. US Green Party candidate Jill Stein was also in attendance.
Except the Obama administration knew everything about the dinner, and Flynn briefed US intelligence officials on the trip, according to The Hill's John Solomon - whose claims his sources told him the contents of a classified briefing to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in May 2017, which Grassley begged to be released to the public.
"It appears the public release of this information would not pose any ongoing risk to national security. Moreover, the declassification would be in the public interest, and is in the interest of fairness to Lt. Gen. Flynn," wrote Grassley in an August 25, 2017 letter to James Mattis and DIA Director Gen. Vincent Stewart.
Were the information Grassley requested made public, America would have learned this, according to my sources:
Before Flynn made his infamous December 2015 trip to Moscow — as a retired general and then-adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — he alerted his former employer, the DIA.
He then attended a “defensive” or “protective” briefing before he ever sat alongside Vladimir Putin at the Russia Today (RT) dinner, or before he talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
The briefing educated and sensitized Flynn to possible efforts by his Russian host to compromise the former high-ranking defense official and prepared him for conversations in which he could potentially extract intelligence for U.S. agencies such as the DIA.
When Flynn returned from Moscow, he spent time briefing intelligence officials on what he learned during the Moscow contacts. Between two and nine intelligence officials attended the various meetings with Flynn about the RT event, and the information was moderately useful, about what one would expect from a public event, according to my sources.
In other words - when Obama's former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates publicly claimed Flynn had possibly been "compromised" by Moscow, the American public was denied the context surrounding the controversial RT dinner as the Justice Department remained silent.
Solomon notes that "Rather than a diplomatic embarrassment bordering on treason, Flynn’s conduct at the RT event provided some modest benefit to the U.S. intelligence community, something that many former military and intelligence officers continue to offer their country after retirement when they keep security clearances."
Would the central character in a Russian election hijack plot actually self-disclose his trip in advance? And then sit through a briefing on how to avoid being compromised by his foreign hosts? And then come back to America and be debriefed by U.S intelligence officers about who and what he saw?
And would a prosecutor recommend little or no prison time for a former general if that former military leader truly had compromised national security?
Of course, "there's no sugar-coating the mistakes Flynn did make," writes Solomon - noting that he misled the FBI and Pence - and that Flynn didn't file foreign-lobbying paperwork for money he received from Turkish business (of course, neither did "Steele Dossier" author Christopher Steele, who influenced the 2016 US election with his largely unverified anti-Trump opposition research).
That said - the narrative that Flynn was a Russian stooge "as evidenced" by the RT dinner is now dead. Moreover, Flynn was never charged with anything remotely related to the event, and he came back to the United States and reported intelligence which would ultimately benefit his country.
As Solomon puts it, "the first accounts of the Russia-Flynn story — like many others in the still-unproven collusion narrative — should be amended to reflect that the retired general acted like a patriot, not a traitor, when he visited Moscow for the RT event."
North Korea's ambassador to italy has disappeared, reports the BBC, citing comments reportedly made by South Korea's spy agency. The news follows unconfirmed reports that the diplomat, Jo Song-gil, had sought asylum from an unidentified Western country.
Jo, the 48-year-old son and son-in-law of high-ranking North Korean diplomats, fled the Rome embassy over a month ago with his wife according to government MP Kim Min-ki.
"Acting ambassador Jo Song-gil's term was ending in late November last year and he escaped the diplomatic compound in early November," Min-ki said.
Jo's father-in-law Lee Do-seop was a well-known ambassador to Thailand and Hong Kong. He has been acting ambassador in Rome since October 2017 following the expulsion of then-ambassador Mun Jong-nam amid a North Korean nuclear test a month prior.
The last North Korean senior diplomat to defect was the deputy ambassador to London, Thae Yong-ho, who abandoned his post in 2016 and took his wife and children to South Korea.
Thae Yong-ho, former deputy ambassador to Britain
As one of the highest-ranking officials to ever defect from the North, his move was seen as a blow to Kim Jong-un's regime. He would go on to urge the world to spread information in North Korea to undermine Mr Kim's status among his people. -BBC
South Korea's National Intelligence Service - which is responsible for interrogating North Korean defectors, told lawmakers that they have not heard from Jo Song-gil since early last month, and would not confirm that he was trying to defect to another country.
Italy's foreign ministry, meanwhile, told the BBC that they have no record of an asylum request from Jo.
Diplomatic sources said the last Italy heard of him was when officials received a note last year from the North Korean government saying that Mr Jo was being replaced.
South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo has reported that Mr Jo is in a "safe place" with his family, citing a diplomatic source. -BBC
To manage the fallout of high-profile defections, North Korean media has often insisted that any diplomats defecting are part of a South Korean or US plot to undermine its government. They are branded traitors, and any family they may have left behind can face severe consequences.
Thae Yong-ho, the former North Korean diplomat to London, has told South Korean reporters that he worked with Jo Song-gil, claiming that Jo was responsible for delivering luxury goods to North Korea through an Italian company, and that he may know more about Pyongyang's nuclear plans.
Rumors and suspicions about endemic and pervasive sexism during the Bernie Sanders' 2016 primary campaign have been circulating almost since he first emerged as a credible threat to Hillary Clinton (rumors that Clinton staffers have admitted they helped to fan to try and undermine Sanders' upstart challenge). But just as Sanders and a handful of other potential Democratic 2020 contenders are preparing to make their final decisions about whether to run for the nomination in 2020, it appears the #MeToo movement has finally come for Sanders and his legion of "BernieBros".
In an expansive expose that included on-the-record comments with a handful of former female Sanders' campaign staffers, the New York Times portrayed the Sanders campaign as a boys club where complaints about sexual harassment were largely ignored or not taken seriously, and where male employees were regularly paid more than their female counterparts.
Some of the women who worked on Sanders campaign have reportedly taken to a Facebook group where they have been sharing their stories, and all are demanding that, should Sanders choose to again seek the Democratic nomination in 2020, that he must ensure that these issues are addressed - or some of the financial backers and delegates who supported his campaign won't be returning.
According to the Times, the complaints have raised questions about whether Sanders is capable of adequately fighting for the interests of women.
At the start of its story, the Times shared an anecdote where one regional Latino outreach strategist complained to her boss that she had been harassed by a Sanders campaign surrogate. But instead of taking her complain seriously, the director responded with a snide remark, and promptly dismissed her claims.
She said the surrogate told her she had “beautiful curly hair” and asked if he could touch it, Ms. Di Lauro said in an interview. Thinking he would just touch a strand, she consented. But she said that he ran his hand through her hair in a "sexual way" and continued to grab, touch and "push my boundaries" for the rest of the day.
"I just wanted to be done with it so badly," she said.
When she reported the incident to Bill Velazquez, a manager on the Latino outreach team, he told her, “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger,” according to her account and another woman who witnessed the exchange. Then he laughed.
Accounts like Ms. Di Lauro’s - describing episodes of sexual harassment and demeaning treatment as well as pay disparity in Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign - have circulated in recent weeks in emails, online comments and private discussions among former supporters. Now, as the Vermont senator tries to build support for a second run at the White House, his perceived failure to address this issue has damaged his progressive bona fides, delegates and nearly a dozen former state and national staff members said in interviews over the last month.
One former female campaign official said the campaign's disorganized structure made it difficult to now whom to turn to with complaints about harassment - but this didn't stop her former supervisor for sidelining her after she declined an invitation to his hotel room.
"I did experience sexual harassment during the campaign, and there was no one who would or could help," said Samantha Davis, the former director of operations in Texas and New York, who also worked on the campaign’s advance team. She said that her supervisor marginalized her after she declined an invitation to his hotel room.
The experience has prompted some of Sanders' most dedicated female supporters to abandon the democratic socialist icon and declare that he doesn't need to vessel for the movement that he helped to create.
"I don’t think he has to be the vehicle or the platform for the movement that emerged from his campaign," said Sarah Slamen, who worked for the campaign in Texas, was the state coordinator in Louisiana and helped build out Our Revolution, a progressive organization born from Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign.
"Do you know how hard that is for me to say after working so hard for him?" she said.
Ms. Slamen quit the organization at the end of 2016 after she said she was berated by a male member of the Our Revolution steering committee for suggesting an organizing plan. In emails reviewed by The Times, she raised issues about sexist behavior with committee members who saw the incident and Our Revolution’s national board of directors. She said she received no reassurance that anything would change.
A lack of transparency surrounding the campaign's pay structure resulted in many female employees being paid far less than their male counterparts.
Some former staff members said there was little pay transparency, and employees often negotiated their own salaries - practices that tend to favor men, who often feel more comfortable requesting higher compensation packages.
Ms. Davis, the former state director, said that she was originally paid about $2,400 a month as a senior staff member and saw in the campaign’s records that a younger man who was originally supposed to report to her made $5,000 a month. She said that she brought the issue to the campaign’s chief operating officer, who adjusted her salary to achieve parity.
"I helped at least a dozen women request raises so that they would be paid on par with their male peers," Ms. Davis said.
In one of the most shocking anecdotes, a female employee described being assigned to stay at a campaign house in Chicago. After arriving, she learned that she would be sharing a room with three men whom she had never met. She described "shaking in fear" at the prospect.
Ms. Mendieta was among the Latino outreach team members who she said were expected to stay in a run-down house in Chicago in March 2016. When she arrived, she said she was told she was supposed to sleep in a room with three men she did not know.
"I was shaking with fear," she said. "Literally, I remember thinking to myself, 'What am I going to do?'" She said she reported the incident to Mr. Pelletier.
For what its worth, Sanders former campaign manager acknowledged the campaign's shortcomings, and claimed that Sanders and his team are already working to correct them in case he decides to run again.
Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign manager and currently a top adviser, said in an email that "anybody who committed harassment on the campaign would not be asked back" and expressed regret for some of the operation’s shortcomings.
"Was it too male? Yes. Was it too white? Yes," he said. "Would this be a priority to remedy on any future campaign? Definitely, and we share deeply in the urgency for all of us to make change. In 2016, as the size of our campaign exploded, we made efforts to make it a positive experience for people. That there was a failure pains me very much."
The timing of the story, at the beginning of a month where Sanders and dozens of other Democratic contenders could announce their plans to run, is certainly inauspicious for Sanders. And if anybody stands to benefit from this story, it's Elizabeth Warren, the ever-so-slightly less progressive female candidate who could seek to capitalize on Sanders' misfortune. But while this might not quash Sanders' hopes for a successful run in 2020, one thing is for sure: Somewhere, Hillary Clinton is staring at her phone and laughing.
When we reported that insider share buying outpaced selling by the widest margin in eight years during the eighth quarter, we facetiously stated that the indicator could portend a rebound for US shares (which have fallen further during the first sessions of the year). But now we have a better explanation: As buying by other insiders climbed during Q4, Mark Zuckerberg simply halted sales of his Facebook stock - making it the first quarter in more than two years where he refrained from selling.
As Zuck's programmatic selling of his shares was put on pause, Facebook endured a 20% drop during the quarter as new revelations about the company's policy of blithely sharing user data, as well as its targeted PR attacks on billionaire George Soros compounded the myriad scandals that had already rattled the firm this year.
Thirty-four-year-old Zuckerberg said back in September 2017 that he would sell between 35 million to 75 million Facebook shares over an 18-month period to fulfill his pledge to give away nearly all of his fortune during his lifetime. Since that time, Zuckerberg has sold about 30.4 million shares worth roughly $5.6 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Zuck's insider selling was scheduled in advance according to what's known as a 10b5-1 trading plan. However, these plans often include restrictions on price and volume limits that could temporarily halt sales.
Facebook shares have shed 38% over their value from a record high of $218.62 reached on July 25 as Facebook struggled with twin scandals pertaining to its lax data privacy efforts and its failure to stamp out fraudulent accounts intended to tamper with elections (including the 2016 election).
As of Wednesday, the hit to Facebook stock has destroyed $32.7 billion of Zuck's net worth, leaving him in seventh place on the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index.
Insiders from Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet - all of whom, like insiders at every other publicly traded company, must disclose their sales and purchases of company stock - sold about $7.1 billion of stock last year, the most since 2016, when they sold $10.7 billion.
As we've said in the past, insider buying can be a bullish indicator for shares since it suggests that executives might be loading up in anticipation of another round of corporate buybacks, allowing them to quickly flip the stock for a profit. And apparently, Zuck only sells at the highs. Which begs the question: will the halting of his stock sales portend a rebound for Facebook in the quarters to come, or does it simply mean that Zuck will be the ultimate bagholder on the way down?
