The GOP & far-right leaders regularly weaponize antisemitism against progressive leaders of color & use Jews as a shield,” the group said in a Twitter thread. “Where is their outrage when Trump is blatantly antisemitic? When he insinuates Jews control money & power? When he calls us disloyal?”
via ‘Pushing Blatant Antisemitism’: Trump Rebuked for ‘Disturbing’ Comments | Common Dreams News
The construction of a private border wall partially funded by rightwing allies of Donald Trump continued with vigor in south Texas this week, seemingly in blatant violation of a court injunction ordering work to be suspended.
On Thursday and Friday, within three days of a temporary restraining order being issued, the Guardian found construction crews with at least 10 heavy machinery vehicles moving soil, digging trenches and positioning tall metal posts along the US bank of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo county, which forms the border with Mexico. A 3.5-mile, privately-funded concrete barrier is planned on the site, near Mission, Texas.
via Private border wall construction continues despite court order | US news | The Guardian
Trump has made the Supreme Court the busiest court in the USA due all the cases against him being heard there. He owns that court. (ODT)
via Trump asks Supreme Court to fight House subpoena for his tax returns
We all know why that’s not what Trump said, though. And we all know why Fox News is telling its viewers to tune out of the Impeachment hearings. They are all very, very afraid of witnesses like Prof. Pamela S. Karlan.
via Impeachment Witness Rips GOP & Trump — Framers Would Be ‘Horrified’ | Crooks and Liars
US President Donald Trump subverted official foreign policy for his personal gain, undermined American national security and engaged in an unprecedented attempt to obstruct an impeachment investigation, according to a pivotal report released by Democrats.
The report by the Democrat-controlled House Intelligence Committee, released on Tuesday (Wednesday Australian time), provides a likely blueprint for forthcoming articles of impeachment against Trump over his dealings with Ukraine.
via ‘Worse than Nixon’: Democrats lay out impeachment case in landmark report
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Some of the Trump agenda is standard for a Republican president. White-collar criminal prosecutions have hit a 33-year low. The Justice Department defends state laws that could kick thousands off the voting rolls. The National Labor Relations Board is now more sympathetic to employers than unions. And military spending is on track to reach the same levels as during the height of the Iraq War.
But he’s gone further.
via Trump’s policy record: environment, Wall Street regulation, and more – Vox
People on the inside are forwarned of a Trump decision to bring the market down and the reverse and bring it back up wow easy money. (ODT)
The US president’s motorcade arrives at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 27, 2019. Trump is spending Thanksgiving week at his nearby Mar-a-Lago estate.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump was aware of the whistleblower complaint when he lifted the suspension of nearly $400 million in military assistance for Ukraine. The funds had been approved by Congress but were stalled by the administration without explanation.
She’s Australian and she’s black and imprisoned by Trump’s Racist American Immigration in revenge. So much for any special relationship (ODT)
“This no-jail outcome must’ve infuriated [immigration] officials who proceeded (without Adau’s knowledge) to revoke her valid visa and subsequently arrested her for being in the country illegally,” it states.
“Meanwhile, a judge never ordered that Adau should leave the country. My sister has been in jail for over two months, she’s not been given any trial since arrest by [US immigration] nor found guilty of overstaying her visa, just kept in jail indefinitely.”
Australian model locked in US immigration detention for months
Will this be appealed? (ODT)
via Judges Orders Trump’s Former White House Counsel to Testify Before Congress – Mother Jones
two lawyers for Lev Parnas say that Parnas tells them he arranged meetings for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) in the Ukraine for the purpose of pushing investigations of Hunter Biden and Burisma. They say he has offered to testify to Congress.
Nunes as Fox Guarding Henhouse: Parnas alleges he was part of Ukraine Scandal
Calls for Republican Rep. Devin Nunes to resign spread rapidly on social media Friday night following reports that Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, is willing to testify to House impeachment investigators that Nunes met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor in an effort to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.
Parnas’ attorney Joseph Bondy told CNN Friday that his client “learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December,” news that sparked the trending Twitter hashtag #NunesResign.
“When I saw my photo crossed out in a secret government database, I realized the secondary screening and interrogation wasn’t random. I was being targeted by my own government for reporting on conditions at the border.”
—Bing Guan, photojournalistFive journalists who were tracked, detained, and interrogated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for reporting on conditions at the southern border in 2018 and 2019 brought a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday for what the ACLU called an “unprecedented, coordinated attack on the freedom of the press.”
The crime that can’t be remembered (ODT)
Murdoch’s America (ODT)
via Fox News’ take on Sondland’s testimony: nothing to see here | US news | The Guardian
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a decorated military veteran responsible for co-ordinating US policy on Ukraine, said he reported the call because he feared that Ukraine was being drawn into a “partisan play” to benefit Trump politically.
via Impeachment: Alexander Vindman alarmed by Trump’s ‘improper’ Ukraine call
He might control the Senate and SCOTUS but not the House (ODT)
Trump refused to agree to an in-person interview with Mueller’s team. The president’s attorneys said that was because Trump feared a perjury trap—in other words, that he would be unable to testify without lying. When Trump eventually agreed to answer some questions in writing, he still refused to answer queries about allegations that he had obstructed justice.
via Congress Is Now Investigating Whether Trump Lied to Mueller – Mother Jones
Day Two focused on a Giuliani-run smear campaign and Trump’s passion for settling scores—real or imagined.
The blood drained from her face as Marie Yovanovitch, the career diplomat removed as the US ambassador to Ukraine, read the reconstructed transcript of President Donald Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the day it was released. There was the president referring directly to her: “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news,” Trump told the Ukrainian leader. And as Yovanovitch read on, she came across another Trump statement that seemed menacing: “She’s going to go through some things.” Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on Friday morning as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry, Yovanovitch recalled how she had been “shocked,” “appalled,” and “devastated” to see a president undermine and threaten a US ambassador. And about the same time as she was telling the committee this, Trump was blasting Yovanovitch, claiming, “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” This was a shocking move that even a Fox News anchor likened to witness intimidation.
Source: Marie Yovanovitch’s Testimony Showcases Donald Trump’s Obsession With Revenge – Mother Jones
Now, Giuliani and Parnas snipe at each other through their lawyers.
Unlike Fruman, Parnas is no longer represented by one of the President’s former lawyers, John Dowd. “Igor has much more money than Parnas and can afford a strong defense team,” says one of their confidants, trying to explain the split.
Trump ― the man who was obsessed with the fact that Hillary Clinton used a private email server as secretary of state ― continues to use a personal cellphone, despite warnings from security experts. The practice also, conveniently, allows him to avoid extra public scrutiny.
Trump’s cellphone does not have security features to shield his communications from espionage, and he has reportedly resisted measures to make his phone more secure.
via Rudy Giuliani’s Calls To Trump Are Conveniently Secret | HuffPost
Lindsey Graham says Trump’s Ukraine policy was incoherent. It wasn’t. He knew what he wanted. But the strategy to defend the president in this impeachment proceeding is certainly incoherent at this point. He will probably survive a trial in the Senate, but none of his defenders are going to come out looking any better than he does. The central fact they can’t accept is that his behavior was indefensible.
via Looks Like GOP Might Run With the “Moron Defense” for Trump | The Smirking Chimp
The anonymous author of a widely anticipated book on the Trump White House has described the US president as spiraling from crisis to crisis “like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower”, according to scathing extracts published by the Washington Post on Thursday.
The unnamed author, identified only as “a senior official in the Trump administration”, also says that colleagues considered resigning en masse in order to raise alarm about the president’s conduct, but ultimately decided against it, according to the Post.
via Trump quashes hopes of early resolution to US-China trade dispute | Business | The Guardian
Bill Taylor, George P Kent and Marie Yovanovitch will tell complementary parts of the story and how it affects national security
Democrats Rack Up Election Wins In The South Ahead Of 2020
In Virginia and Kentucky, Donald Trump hurt Republicans far more than he helped.
via Democrats Rack Up Election Wins In The South Ahead Of 2020 | HuffPost Australia
But doesn’t name them. 18% of Republican Voters don’t oppose impeachment or his removal and could vote either way in 2020. (ODT)
via Trump Dismisses Support For Impeachment: ‘I Have The Real Polls’ | HuffPost Australia
Republicans and even Trump was wrong in thanking Tim Morrison (ODT)
The ultimate American Trumplican “Sales Pitch”(ODT)
Trump still contends that the summary of the July call released by the White House clears him of any wrongdoing, a claim that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has distanced himself from and that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has effectively contradicted.
via Trump Allies Smear Decorated Veteran Testifying In Impeachment Inquiry | HuffPost Australia
Another UNPRECEDENTED move by Trump ODT)
Top Democrats reacted with anger to Donald Trump’s decision to go ahead with the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raid without giving them advance notice, on grounds that they were not to be trusted with such highly sensitive information.
In a break with precedent, Trump excluded senior Democrats on the so-called Gang of Eight – the group of congressional leaders who by law are to be informed of covert actions ordered by the US president – from all operational intelligence.
Those cut out of the loop included Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff, who chairs the House intelligence committee.
via Pelosi slams Trump for cutting Democrats out of loop on Baghdadi raid | World news | The Guardian
Donald Trump is so weak and pathetic he actually may have staged a photo from Saturday to make it appear as though he was monitoring the raid on the Baghdadi compound when his official schedule shows that he was actually on the golf course.
It’s truly sad when the Reality Show President* is more concerned about appearances than doing the real work that every single other President did before him. Here is a great compilation of real and unstaged photos taken by Pete Souza from the Situation Room, taken during the raid on Osama bin Laden. The most iconic is this one:
Did The White House Stage Situation Room Baghdadi Raid Photo? | Crooks and Liars
![Screenshot_2019-11-28 Adau M on Instagram “New month New beginning New mindset New focus New start New intentions New resul[...].png](https://peterimrich.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/screenshot_2019-11-28-adau-m-on-instagram-e2809cnew-month-new-beginning-new-mindset-new-focus-new-start-new-intentions-new-resul....png?w=845)
