25 Progressive Orgs Petition Nancy Pelosi to Begin Impeachment

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks during the the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention at Moscone Center in San Francisco on June 1, 2019. (Photo by Josh Edelson / AFP) (Photo credit should read JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)

By Joshua Caplan

Over 25 progressive groups have signed a letter once again demanding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

“As Speaker of the House, you have the power to ensure Congress exercises its constitutional obligation to hold this president accountable, but instead of using your power, you are giving us political excuses for why you shouldn’t,” the letter reads from far-left groups such as the Justice Democrats and the Women’s March.

“Instead of leading, you and your colleagues have asked us to wait — wait for the Mueller report, wait for the unredacted Mueller report, wait for Mueller’s testimony about the Mueller report, wait for more investigations, wait for bipartisan consensus, wait for impeachment to poll better, or wait for the 2020 election,” it continues.

The letter sent Tuesday comes as Pelosi continues to face immense pressure from dozens of Democrats on Capitol Hill to support impeachment. Over 50 congressional Democrats now say they support a measure to oust the president — as do several White House hopefuls, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ).

The coalition of far-left organizations also cited the Trump administration’s policies on immigration and LGBTQ rights in their plea for impeachment proceedings to begin.

The letter states: “Waiting is not a privilege available to the families separated by his deportation force or his Muslim ban, or the asylum seekers languishing in Mexico, or people threatened by his embrace of white supremacy, or the LGBTQ people whose rights he is taking away, or the women whose bodies he is trying to control or the communities threatened by his denial of the climate crisis.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s statement last Wednesday ignited a flurry of calls for impeachment despite reiterating his report’s key finding: Investigators determined the Trump campaign and Russia did not commit criminal conspiracy during the 2016 presidential election. Though the special counsel did note several episodes of potential obstruction of justice, Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined that the president had not done so.

Former UK spy and author of dossier that sparked Russiagate to give US testimony – report

CAP

The former British intelligence agent who authored the infamous dossier on President Trumpler’s alleged Russia ties has agreed to speak to American authorities, according to a UK media report.

Christopher Steele, the retired UK spy who now runs his own private intelligence firm, seems to have changed his mind since last week, when reports suggested he would not agree to speak to US officials. On Monday, however, the Times reported that Steele has since consented to the inquiry, and will meet with investigators from the US Attorney General’s office “within weeks.”

According to a source at Steele’s firm Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele decided to speak to US investigators in order to clear his name. Trump supporters have claimed it was inappropriate for the FBI probe into Trump’s Russia ties to rely on intelligence gathered by Steele, since that data was originally compiled while on retainer for a firm working for Hilary Clinton, then Trump’s political opponent for the office of US president.

Ex-MI6 spy who compiled Trump-Russia collusion dossier says it’s ‘70 to 90% accurate’

CAP

In 2016, Steele authored his 17-memo report on Trump’s alleged Russia ties on behalf of the firm Fusion and the dossier apparently formed the basis for a request by the Obama administration to wiretap a Trump campaign adviser, on suspicion of being a Russian agent. The dossier claimed Trump could be blackmailed by Moscow.

Steele’s compiled report spurred the FBI in May 2017 to launch an inquiry into Trump’s ties to Russia, a two-year-long investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller, which eventually “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

GOP/Dem Deal Spends 40X as Much on Foreign Countries as Border Wall

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By John Binder

A Republican-Democrat spending bill being offered to President Trump spends nearly 40 times as much on foreign aid as it does on a wall to secure the United States-Mexico border.

Though Trump requested about $5.7 billion to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a spending package written by elected Republicans and Democrats funds just $1.3 billion for 55 miles of wall at the border.

Meanwhile, the deal spends nearly 40 times as much American taxpayer money on foreign aid as it does on a border wall. In total, about $50 billion is spent on foreign aid, including:

See the source image
  • $9.15 billion for international security assistance
  • $1.9 billion for foreign food and hunger programs
  • $3.1 billion for global health programs
  • $3 billion for international development assistance
  • $3.7 billion to support the economies of foreign countries
  • $4.4 billion for international disaster assistance
  • $3.8 billion for assistance for foreign refugees

The $1.3 billion for a border wall in the spending bill is a fraction of the total $14.9 billion budget that is awarded to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. The bulk of funding in the CBP budget goes towards funding “border security technology.”

HUGE: Trump to Hold Second North Korean Summit Next Month

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Continuing to improve diplomatic relations with the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea, the White House announced Friday that it will hold a second summit with North Korea in late February.

“The announcement came minutes after Trump met with a top North Korean official in the Oval Office for over an hour,” according to Politico. “The North Korean official was reported to be carrying a letter for Trump from his country’s leader, the latest of several missives the two heads of state have exchanged.”

Trump continues make progress in securing peace on the Korean Peninsula, despite the fact that the alleged experts in the mainstream press said that he would have us nuked by this point in his presidency.

“President Donald J. Trump met with Kim Yong Chol for an hour and half, to discuss denuclearization and a second summit, which will take place near the end of Februarym [sic]” the White House reportedly said. “The President looks forward to meeting with Chairman Kim at a place to be announced at a later date.”

Trending: ‘Impeach Rashida Tlaib’ Petition Closes In on 250K Signatures, Highlights False-Residency Accusation

According to the report, Vietnam and Thailand have been mentioned as possible locations.

During the last North Korean summit, which took place in Singapore in spring of 2018, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un verbally committed to full denuclearization. The country has not launched a nuclear test missile since the meeting. North Korea also returned the remains of several U.S. Serviceman killed in the Korean war.

Trump, Mnuchin Call For GM To Pay Back Federal Bailout

By Tyler Durden

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Update: Apparently, Mnuchin is regretting giving his twitter username and password to his aides at Treasury and/or his wife.

After retweeting a tweet from a Trump fan account Wednesday morning, Mnuchin has deleted the retweet and would like the world to know that this wasn’t an “authorized” tweeting.

The tweet was retweeted from Mnuchin’s account this morning, but the original was sent last night, which probably accounts for the incorrect timing given in the Treasury Secretary’s follow up.

* * *

President Trump made his frustration with GM abundantly clear on Tuesday when he threatened to cut all EV subsidies to the Detroit carmaker. But on Wednesday both the president, this time joined by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, took the administration’s attacks on GM to their next logical endpoint: Demanding that the federal bailout recipient return the $11.2 billion loss eaten by taxpayers from the federal bailout that the company received during the depths of the financial crisis.

GM

“If GM doesn’t want to keep their jobs in the United States, they should pay back the $11.2 billion bailout that was funded by the American taxpayer,” read a tweet from a Trump fan account that the president and Mnuchin retweeted. Trump also retweeted two tweets about illegal immigration.

GM shares slid after Trump’s tweets Tuesday afternoon, but GM stock futures showed little immediate reaction to Trump’s threat. GM received billions in bailout money to shore up its troubled financial arm GMAC in 2008. After spinning off the subsidiary (which now trades as Ally Financial), GM saddled the Treasury with a more than $11 billion loss.

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After meeting with GM CEO Mary Barra, Larry Kudlow told reporters on Tuesday that he had conveyed the president’s anger to Barra, and explained that Trump feels betrayed by GM, and that he believes the carmaker “turned their back on him” by announcing the layoffs and plant closures, particularly after the Trump tax cuts handed billions of dollars back to corporations and allowed them to repatriate overseas cash.

Politicians on both sides of the US-Canada border were outraged by GM’s Monday announcement that it would close 5 North American plants (and two foreign plants) and fire nearly 15,000 workers in the US alone. Trump blasted the company for opting for layoffs and closures in the US while plants in Mexico and China remained open.

While we await a response from GM management, shareholders are a little nervous:

 

Wait–Did Twitter’s CEO Just Share A Post Calling For ‘Civil War,’ Wiping Out The GOP, And How We Should Be Like CA?

By Matt Vespa

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Well, if there were any lingering doubts about Twitter’s perceived bias against conservatives, look no further than what CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out last night. Apparently, a “good read” is a post co-written by a Center for American Progress senior fellow that calls for “civil war,” the destruction of the GOP, and the adoption of how California runs everything from sea to shining sea. Yeah, bipartisanship is dead, so mob rule is what’s needed.

Now, to be fair, the “civil war” will be won at the ballot box and demographic shifts, namely through the  so-called emerging Democratic majority, but the overall theme is quite explicit: conservative Republicans are not welcome until they reform. In other words, until they break to the power of progressivism. First, if California’s politics is the future of the country, I’d rather chug bleach.

Second, the whole post, which was written by Ruy Teixeira and Peter Leyden on Medium, is what you’d expect from the coastal elite. They say the tax bill is not popular; it is. Even BET’s founder said the bill has helped bring black workers back into the work force. Over 250 companies have doled out bonuses to their workers. Over three million workers have benefitted from this legislation. It’s a tax cut for the middle/working classes of America that Democrats universally opposed.

In all, the post notes the similarities between our first civil war and this one. We had two separate Americas. Two separate economic models in each sphere. Trump is apparently the harbinger of the GOP’s doom. How many times have people said this only to be proven incorrect? Remember when (now) two-time presidential loser Hillary Rodham Clinton was supposed to win 2016 in a landslide? Also the post cites California as the basis for this GOP collapse argument. California Republicans are a different breed; they’re not really conservative. It’s a deep-blue state. Are we shocked that the GOP doesn’t do well in such environments. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is hardly a prime example of those leading the conservative movement, though Terminator and Predator are some of my favorite movies of all time.

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Nothing alarming about social media mogul advocating to eliminate an entire side https://t.co/kULzaAr8CT

— Amy (@AmyOtto8) April 7, 2018

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In California, the GOP is pretty much a lighter version of the Democratic Party. So, if there is a liberal Republican and a liberal Democrat on the ballot, or a conservative Democrat and a Republican in a red state scenario, the latter in both cases will usually win. Why should a GOP voter entertain voting for a Democrat when there is a solid conservative running in an election?

Just look at Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. He was a very liberal Republican Senator; so liberal that he’s now a Democrat. Yet, in 2006, Sheldon Whitehouse booted him because Democrats had a hard-core liberal on the ballot (and RI is a blue state), despite both Chaffee and Whitehouse being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and strongly against the Bush tax cuts. Yet, beyond this—there are many ways to skin the electoral cat. The Democratic base was not enthused by Clinton. I don’t think they will be enthused by their 2020 choices, many of which are no-names and have rigid regional appeal. And the so-called emerging permanent Democratic majority (because public opinion doesn’t change *eye roll*) was turned off by Trump—and he still won.

Well, here are parts of the post. Debate amongst yourselves:

Trump is doing exactly what America needs him to do right now. He’s becoming increasingly conservative and outrageous by the day. Trump could have come into office with a genuinely new agenda that could have helped working people. Instead, he has spent the past year becoming a caricature of all things conservative?—?and in the meantime has alienated most of America and certainly all the growing political constituencies of the 21st century. He is turning the Republican brand toxic for millennials, women, Latinos, people of color, college-educated people, urban centers, the tech industry, and the economic powerhouses of the coasts, to name a few.

The Republican Party is playing their part perfectly, too. They completely fell for the Trump trap?—?and that’s exactly what America needed them to do.

[…]

Now the entire Republican Party, and the entire conservative movement that has controlled it for the past four decades, is fully positioned for the final takedown that will cast them out for a long period of time in the political wilderness. They deserve it.

[…]

America is desperate for a functioning political supermajority that can break out of our political stasis and boldly move ahead and take on our many 21st-century challenges. The nation can’t take much more of our one step forward, one step back politics that gets little done despite the need for massive changes.

America today has many parallels to America in the 1850s or America in the 1930s. Both of those decades ended with one side definitively winning, forming a political supermajority that restructured systems going forward to solve our problems once and for all. In the 1850s, we fought the Civil War, and the Republican Party won and then dominated American politics for 50 years. In the 1930s, the Democratic Party won and dominated American politics for roughly the same amount of time.

America today is in a similar position. Our technologies, our economy, our geopolitics are going through fundamental changes. We are facing new challenges, like climate change and massive economic inequality, that must be addressed with fundamental reforms.

America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two world views that must be resolved in short order.

California, as usual, resolved it early. The Democrats won; the Republicans lost. The conservative way forward lost; the progressive way forward began. As we’ve laid out in this series, California is the future, always about 15 years ahead of the rest of the country. That means that America, starting in 2018, is going to resolve it, too.

Whatever the case, the conclusion to all of these posts about the end of conservatism/GOP should always be wait and see. We don’t know—and frankly for the people who thought the Obama years realigned the country, brought about a high mark for liberal politics, and the marked the end of conservatism were dead wrong. In 2010, the GOP retook the House. In 2014, they recaptured the Senate—all while expanding their power at the state and local level.

Enthusiasm is surely with the Democrats—and they could do well in 2018. But Democrats have tons of candidates and division among the Left. Civil wars erupting during primaries can happen. In Texas, it already has, showing the gulf between the establishment and progressive (i.e. Bernie-ite) wings of the party is wide and the wounds are still raw. It’s quite possible the Left fumbles the ball at the goal line come Election Day. We’re over 200 days way from the midterms. I’d take this with a grain of salt, but say you do read the whole piece and blood pressures go through the roof—I redirect you to Mr. Kurt Schlichter.

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