Sen. Jeff Flake said he decided to call for a delay of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh‘s confirmation vote because the Senate is “just falling apart.”
In an interview published Saturday in The Atlanic, Flake said his refusal to issue a vote on Kavanaugh without a week-long “pause” for an FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh was a last-ditch effort to overcome partisan battles that have plagued the confirmation process.
“The US Senate as an institution—we’re coming apart at the seams,” the Arizona senator said. “There’s no currency, no market for reaching across the aisle. It just makes it so difficult.”
Flake, a key Republican swing vote, was the center of attention on Friday as he conferred with longtime friend and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, as well as other Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, before making his surprise proposal.
After three women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, lawmakers disagreed along party lines about how to proceed. Republicans pushed to move forward with Kavanaugh’s confirmation after hearing testimony from him and one of his accusers, the California professor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. But Democrats said there had to be an FBI background check into the claims against Kavanaugh before a final confirmation vote. They also slammed Republicans for refusing to call other witnesses to testify.
“We can’t just have the committee acting like this,” Flake said. “The majority and minority parties and their staffs just don’t work well together. There’s no trust. In the investigation, they can’t issue subpoenas like they should. It’s just falling apart.”
Flake said he was overwhelmed by “the hearing itself, the aftermath of the hearing, watching pundits talk about it on cable TV, seeing the protesters outside, encountering them in the hall.” He added that he found an ally in Coons.
“I told Chris, ‘Our country’s coming apart on this — and it can’t,’” Flake said. “And he felt the same.”
Coons and Flake stepped into the spotlight Friday, both with impassioned appeals to the committee for an FBI investigation minutes after two women who say they are sexual assault survivors cornered Flake in an elevator and said that by voting in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, he was telling women that “assault doesn’t matter.”
Flake said their “poignant” accounts came after he and other lawmakers saw an emotional and widespread response to Ford’s testimony Thursday. He added that all those things weighed on him leading up to the Friday afternoon vote.
Flake had released a statement that morning announcing that he would vote in favor of moving Kavanaugh’s nomination out of committee and onto the Senate floor. He told The Atlantic that despite his call for an investigation, he still intended to support Kavanaugh, “unless they turn up something — and they might.”
Thursday, the day Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was questioned before the Senate Judiciary Committee over allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, was “one of the most heartbreaking experiences” Samantha Bee endured since hosting Full Frontal. So the late-night comedian decided to cope by eating confetti cake and then throwing it at a cardboard cutout of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
“It’s Friday, Sep. 28, and I don’t have a show tonight, but yesterday a bunch of super-powerful white dudes stood up and yelled at rape survivors for messing up their schedules so I needed to either yell into a camera or eat an entire confetti cake. Honestly, I choose both,” Bee said in a video posted online.
She then slammed the “shriveled old scrotums” who “went on TV and basically told the world that any Ivy League chode’s career ambitions are worth more than all the women he may have hurt on his way there.” That includes Graham, who threw a “hissy fit,” and Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who was confronted by sexual assault survivors after he said he would vote for Kavanaugh.
“I know it’s never good when the fate of the nation hangs on Jeff Flake actually doing a thing,” Bee quipped. “He’s a real Atticus Finch [from To Kill a Mockingbird] if Atticus Finch had gone right into court and said, ‘I may be a little concerned about the treatment of black people. Anyway, bye!’”
Despite the frustration, Bee, sprawled out on a couch with confetti cake, has her coping mechanisms. She appreciates “the exquisite rage contouring on Alyssa Milano’s face” — the Charmed star attended the hearings with a sign that read “I Believe Survivors, No On Kavanaugh” — “meeting new dogs,” and her “life-size cardboard cutout of Lindsey Graham.”
Cue Bee hurling confetti cake at said cutout.
During the week, other late-night hosts, like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, dug deep with their zingers into the Kavanaugh hearings. But Bee ended her brief video by predicting a repeat of what happened after Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony against Clarence Thomas for sexual harassment: “an unprecedented number of women were swept into office, thanks to a massive wave of female rage.”
“We’re going to do that again in November,” she continued, referencing the midterm elections. “And then maybe we’ll power the eastern seaboard for a while. Pretty sure we’ll have some rage left over.”
Several of the UN’s most senior officials have pledged to redouble efforts to stamp out sexual abuse and exploitation within the organisation at this week’s general assembly in an attempt to eradicate a scourge that has shadowed its humanitarian work for decades.
The UN has been criticised for failing to properly handle hundreds of allegations made against its civilian staff and peacekeepers across the world, ranging from fathering children with women under their protection to transactional sex and child abuse.
Scandals have caused immense damage to its reputation and operations, particularly in Haiti, the Central African Republic and the other 13 countries where it runs peacekeeping missions. Secretary General Antonio Guterres last year called the issue a “global menace” and a top priority for his tenure as UN chief.
“The abuse not only undermines our values as humanitarians but he erodes the hard-earned trust the communities, the countries, our partners and donors place in us each and every day,” Executive Director of UNICEF Henrietta Fore told a meeting of UN agencies, NGOs and member states in New York City this week.
Fore called for a new change of culture throughout the UN, which employs 95,000 civilians and 90,000 police and soldiers, so victims feel able to come forward and report misconduct and perpetrators are sufficiently punished.
“We want fear and trust to trade places. We want perpetrators to feel fear and we want survivors to feel trust,” she said.
The UN’s mechanism for internal investigations became the subject of close scrutiny last year when leaked documents revealed it had botched 14 cases alleging sexual misconduct in the Central African Republic. The allegations dated mostly from 2016 and included rape and gang rape. Interviews were mishandled, the actions of the accused downplayed, and the cases were not added to the UN’s online database.
Public distrust of the UN is widespread in the conflict-gripped state and victims are often unwilling to report rapes and killings by peacekeepers for fear of retribution.
Not keeping peace
While on duty, UN peacekeeping soldiers remain under the legal jurisdiction of their home country. The UN can repatriate peacekeepers and ban them from further missions, but the troop contributing countries must determine any punishment if the sexual misconduct is criminal.
More than 340 allegations have been made against peacekeepers since 2010, though senior UN figures have said the true number of cases may be well above those reported.
Of these, a UN investigation found 99 claims substantiated, leading to 90 repatriations. Some 37 soldiers were jailed in their home countries, 16 were dismissed, and others fined or demoted.
Chief of the Public Affairs Section at the UN’s Departments of Peacekeeping and Field Support Nick Birnback told Al Jazeera the UN makes “robust” efforts to follow up with member states and record any punishments.
“There is no mission where [ending sexual abuse and exploitation] is not the highest priority,” he said.
The rules regarding civilian staff are murkier as the UN is often reluctant to hand over its staff to authorities in countries where it deems police and judicial systems to be dysfunctional or corrupt.
A UN official told Al Jazeera that in cases where a case of sexual abuse or exploitation by civilian employee is substantiated, they are dismissed and their home country is notified of the misconduct. It is not clear though, in cases where a criminal sexual offence has been committed, how many states can claim legal jurisdiction over their citizens while abroad on UN missions, or how they would conduct such an investigation.
Guterres has urged member states to adopt an international convention to resolve this ambiguity.
Only 37 of the 181 allegations made against civilian staff across 32 UN field missions since 2010 were found to be substantiated, with 26 leading to termination or dismissal. UN records show two of these cases leading to criminal action, one ending in dismissal and another in demotion.
A clearance system prevents staff with substantiated allegations against them being rehired within the UN, but offenders are not named publicly and the UN does not notify other organisations in the humanitarian sector to prevent their employment elsewhere.
Victim focus
Guterres appointed Australian legal and human rights expert Jane Connors to the new position of Victims’ Rights Advocate (VRA) in September last year to bring a sharp focus on the rights and needs of the victim rather than simply punishing the perpetrator.
Connors has spoken with victims in five UN mission countries across three continents, continued to build a trust fund for survivors, and established four regional VRA positions in Haiti, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“What comes from the top is very important but it has to go right, right down and there has to be continual effort to make people understand that this is unacceptable conduct,” she told Al Jazeera.
The needs of victims are diverse and must not be generalised, said Connors. Women who gave birth to children fathered by UN peacekeepers in Haiti told her they want secure healthcare and education for their children, while other victims in the Central African Republic want job and training opportunities.
“They want to go forwards with their lives,” she said. “They wish to have their perpetrator held accountable but they are not sitting there on their hands waiting.”
Critics have questioned the UN’s ability to conduct investigations into its own staff, drawing comparisons to decades of sexual abuse covered-up by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, but Connors believes the required independence can be achieved within the organisation.
“I think you can be [independent] if you have the checks and balances,” she said.
But some aid officials outside the UN are less optimistic about its promises of institutional reform from within.
“The UN is doing the same thing over and over again and finding news ways to dress it up as positive, forward movement,” said Paula Donovan, Co-Director of AIDS-Free World and its Code Blue campaign to end sexual abuse in UN missions.
Code Blue has called for a fully-independent special court system with the power to investigate and prosecute UN officials and peacekeepers in any jurisdiction.
Donovan said member states are shirking their responsibilities and are reluctant to make the structural reforms within the UN required to tackle the problem.
She also hit out at the “mystification” surrounding the legal immunity granted to UN staff.
Its officials across the world are given functional immunity, which protects them from local authorities when acting or speaking in line with their official duties.
Guterres has stressed that immunity offers no protection in cases of sexual abuse and exploitation, but Donovan claims this message has not taken root within the organisation, and that many victims are unaware they can pursue justice entirely outside the UN system.
“The UN has made it so complicated and so mysterious that its own staff, including even some senior officials, the population at large, the media, everyone is confused and thinks that somehow UN immunity means that only the UN can investigate and take action when crimes are committed by their own personnel,” she said.
“It’s not fair. It can’t happen that [UN staff] are the only people who can get away with sex crimes.”
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake on Sept. 26, 2018, condemned what he sees as a dangerous spectacle surrounding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Arizona Republic
U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake’s role in forcing a last-minute FBI investigation into allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was classic Jeff Flake.
It followed a familiar pattern for the retiring one-term Arizona Republican, who has been out of step with his party under President Donald Trump: Flake raised hopes of a breakthrough in the usual partisan stalemate, then fell back to the standard Republican position, and in the process frustrated people on the left and the right.
It also highlights the political no-man’s land where Flake has found himself since Trump moved into the White House.
For all of his verbal jousting with the president — through floor speeches, tweets, TV appearances and even a book — Flake largely has fallen in line with the White House’s Capitol Hill agenda.
To anti-Trump liberals, Flake is all talk and no action.
To pro-Trump Republicans, Flake is just a nuisance who is constantly undercutting the president.
To Flake, he’s a conservative in the tradition of Sen. Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan: supporting free speech, limited government, free trade and other pro-growth economic policies but whose party — and base — have moved in different directions.
Flake helped broker a seven-day FBI investigation of sexual-assault allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford against Kavanaugh. But after Friday’s hearing, he told reporters that he wants to see Kavanaugh confirmed for the high court.
Democrats were pleased to have an investigation, though they immediately worried that a week was not enough time to do a thorough job. Republicans saw the development as another pointless delay.
As Flake’s six-year tenure in the U.S. Senate winds down, he is at the center of the ideological struggle in Washington that he doesn’t control and doesn’t seem to enjoy.
This was captured on live television in a glum-faced encounter in an elevator Friday with women who demanded he justify his support for Kavanaugh. It echoed last year’s viral video of Flake getting an earful from a fellow airline passenger on GOP efforts to repeal “Obamacare.”
But in the end, Flake usually goes along with fellow Republicans on big issues such as rolling back the Affordable Care Act, tax reform and, as many observers expect, the Kavanaugh nomination.
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Women plea with Senator Flake to hear their concerns about confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh. USA TODAY
Battles with Trump
Flake has worried about the coarseness Trump brings to American politics and has decried the president’s incivility and uncouth behavior time and again on Twitter and on the Senate floor.
On some issues, such as tariffs, Flake opposes Trump.
But because Flake supports Trump in many other key areas, he doesn’t often vote against him, so the president is never really held accountable for behavior.
Flake also has fueled speculation that he might challenge Trump in the 2020 presidential race, in part with trips like Monday’s upcoming visit to New Hampshire.
Flake is scheduled to make his second appearance in the key early primary state to deliver an address titled, “After the Deluge: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle.”
Flake last year authored “Conscience of a Conservative,” an update on Goldwater’s classic text for Republicans.
But it’s unclear whether there is a market for Flake anywhere in the current GOP.
Richard Herrera, an Arizona State University associate professor of political science, said Flake does not see himself as a rubber stamp for Trump or the Republican Party.
“He wants to follow as close as possible what (the late Sen.) John McCain called for, which is regular order, which is respecting the process enough to allow for investigations when they’re called for,” Herrera said. “He sees it in this case as being called for and he has set aside political motivations to say this is what the Senate should be doing all the time.”
While McCain was lionized as a “maverick,” especially after his thumbs-down vote torpedoed GOP efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Flake’s efforts have been pilloried by Trump and ridiculed by the left.
Introducing the Jeff Flake Comfort Blanket — Warm yourself in the soft embrace of Senator Flake’s meaningless tweets. pic.twitter.com/FYeyQ7ep0d
From pushing immigration reforms that ultimately went nowhere to solidifying ties to Cuba — only to see Trump vaporize them — Flake has had a frustrating run in the Senate.
Flake championed comprehensive immigration reform, but never got a deal done. And his work with Democrats on the issue alienated many grass-roots conservative activists who consider a pathway to citizenship for immigrants without legal status to be “amnesty.”
He committed to voting for last year’s tax-reform package in exchange for what he called “a firm commitment” from Senate leaders and the White House to work with him on a legislative solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
In 2013, Flake voted against bipartisan legislation that would have tightened background checks on gun sales because he thought it went too far in cases involving private gun transfers. That earned him scorn from the left.
In 2017, after the gunman’s attack on the GOP congressional baseball team that wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., Flake acknowledged his shifting views on gun control, which brought criticism from the right.
Flake is a free-trader who believed that the economic embargo against Cuba, which dated to President John F. Kennedy’s administration, had long outlived its usefulness. He found an ally on the issue in Democratic President Barack Obama, only to see Trump reverse course.
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At the last minute, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, said he could not promise to vote for Kavanaugh on the Senate floor and called for a delay of up to a week for a further investigation. (Sept. 28) AP
Kavanaugh and Ford
When Kavanaugh appeared Thursday in an explosive hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Flake barely participated in the questioning, making one-minute remarks criticizing the process and leaving his decision open to speculation.
On Friday morning, after what he described as a sleepless night, Flake released a written statement saying he would vote in favor of Kavanaugh when the Judiciary Committee took up the nomination.
He did, but only after putting together the bipartisan deal that led to the new FBI investigation of the sexual-assault allegations against Kavanaugh and the weeklong delay in the Senate’s final vote.
Late Friday, Flake told The Arizona Republic he’s received text messages, emails and phone calls from women.
Flake said the unexpected moment with the women at the elevator left an impression.
“They were very passionate, you could tell it meant a lot to them,” Flake said. “That was only one aspect of the week — of the past two weeks. I’ve received so many phone calls and emails and texts from people, from women in particular, saying how much this process, and Dr. Ford’s testimony, had encouraged them to talk about their experiences. And that meant a lot. It did.”
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Two women cornered U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator Friday, moments after he announced he would vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court as emotions ran high in the U.S. Capitol. (Sept. 28) AP
With time running out in his one and only Senate term, Flake likely knows that his role in the Kavanaugh proceedings could have a big impact on his legacy.
“If Kavanaugh ends up being confirmed, then it probably isn’t going to hurt him too much among Republicans because he’ll be able to argue that he encouraged the Senate to take a move that eased doubts about Kavanaugh,” said John J. “Jack” Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.
“If, on the other hand, the delay should in some way lead to Kavanaugh’s defeat, that will be a lot more consequential for him, and Republicans will hold that against him. At the moment, he would definitely not be the favorite senator of the Republican base.”
In his interview with The Republic, Flake said the fight between the parties Thursday and Friday was just “ripping the country apart.”
He also suggested that his mind may still be open.
“It’s excruciating to hear testimony so compelling from the accuser and the accused,” he said. “I said you’d probably leave the hearing with as much doubt as certainty. It was our responsibility to do what we could to answer as many questions as we can. That’s what due diligence is. I think we haven’t done enough of it and I think the country felt the same way.”
The Flake-brokered compromise put the ball in motion for the brief FBI investigation, but the senator didn’t say he was backing away from confirming the judge.
And Trump was fine with the move, authorizing a “supplemental investigation” of Kavanaugh.
It was a deal, like others in Flake’s Senate term, that left everyone wishing for something better.
Eliza Collins of USA TODAY contributed to this article.
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North Korea says it will never disarm nuclear weapons first without more trust in US
North Korea says it will never disarm nuclear weapons first without more trust in the United States.
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Published 11:15 a.m. ET Sept. 29, 2018 | Updated 11:45 a.m. ET Sept. 29, 2018
UNITED NATIONS – North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho says his nation will never disarm its nuclear weapons first if it can’t trust Washington.
Ri was speaking Saturday at the United Nations General Assembly. He called on the United States to follow through on promises made during a summit in Singapore between the rivals’ leaders.
His comments come as US. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to be on the verge of restarting deadlocked nuclear diplomacy more than three months after the Singapore with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Ri says it’s a “pipe dream” that continued sanctions and U.S. objection to a declaration ending the Korean War will ever bring the North to its knees.
Washington is wary of agreeing to the declaration without Pyongyang first making significant disarmament moves.
Both Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump want a second summit. But there is widespread skepticism that Pyongyang is serious about renouncing an arsenal that the country likely sees as the only way to guarantee its safety.
Pompeo is planning to visit Pyongyang next month to prepare for a second Kim-Trump summit.
The Simpsons may be celebrating its 30th season this fall, but one show that’s hot on its heels (and will no doubt trip over them before falling into a pile of mud) is… America’s Funniest Home Videos. ABC’s family-friendly home video series kicks off its 29th season on Sunday night (when it’ll go flying into someone’s eye, surely). The season premiere will bid farewell to summer in the most fitting way — by showing a parade of people, young and old, agile and awkward, biting it by the beach, pool, or near any body of water. Check out this exclusive video above to see 16 wacky water wipeouts (and three other ones that take place in the sand).
Speaking of those musical montages, this season will feature a pastiche of World Cup goofs, wedding miscues, and doggie D’oh!’s. In other clips, there’s a turkey going postal on a mailman, a tiny frog freaking out a macho man, and a little boy who tries on glasses for the first time and realizes that his mom has a lot of wrinkles, “which could be wrong and fun at the same time,” host Alfonso Ribeiro tells EW. Additional giggles shall be mined from people saying silly things under sedation and folks losing consciousness on amusement park rides. “We have a segment featuring surprise parties gone wrong where a woman faints when startled by a roomful of screaming partiers, and the elevator doors closing on the guests of honor,” notes Ribeiro.
A new segment titled “Not Trending” brings you things that will never go viral, like canine trust falls and pantsless rototilling, and with the rise of high-quality footage from home security cameras, you will be treated to “things gone wrong in front of people’s houses and side of people’s houses,” says Ribeiro. “That should be funny especially in winter when we get a bunch of icy porches and sidewalks. As long as we don’t draw blood, we’re good.”
The season 29 premiere of AFV airs Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Sometimes a week is so upsetting you just have to find joy in the unexpected. Take this huge-ass pumpkin, for example.
Steve Geddes of Boscawen, New Hampshire just made U.S. history by growing a pumpkin so large it surpassed the record for largest pumpkin in America.
Congrats, sir!
As The Boston Globe reported, Geddes presented his 2,528-pound pumpkin at the Deerfield Fair this week, where he wound up taking first place in a contest for heaviest pumpkin and winning $6,000 in prize money.
Here are some photos of the very large pumpkin for your enjoyment.
Just in case you guys wanted to share this story, thought it was really cool. Last night at the Deerfield fair there was a new U.S record pumpkin weighed at 2528 pounds beating the previous one of 2363 pounds. It was grown by a grower of Steve geddes From N.H. pic.twitter.com/B2aSKqYsKp
Woody Lancaster, the northeast representative for the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, confirmed to The Boston Globe that not only did Geddes have the largest pumpkin at the fair this year, but he’s officially grown the largest pumpkin ever grown in North America.
Geddes now holds the U.S. record for heaviest pumpkin, beating the previous record of 2,363 pounds, but he also came remarkably close to the record for heaviest pumpkin in THE WORLD.
Mathias Willemijns of Belgium set the current world record for heaviest pumpkin back in Oct. 2016 with one that weighed a whopping 2,624 pounds, according to the Guinness World Records. But don’t worry Geddes, the world’s second largest pumpkin is still hella impressive and you’ve set the bar even higher for pumpkins in the United States.
If you want to see the pumpkin for yourself, head on over to the fair — which runs until Sept. 30 — and make your way to the fruit and vegetable building.
Long live autumn and long live pumpkins so ridiculously large they’d make Charlie Brown and the people of Halloweentown jealous.
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Shareef O’Neal, Shaq’s son, will sit out year at UCLA due to heart issue
Shareef O’Neal, a freshman forward and the son of former NBA star Shaquille, signed with UCLA earlier this year after initially committing to Arizona.
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UCLA freshman forward Shareef O’Neal, son of NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, will redshirt the 2018-19 season due to a heart condition that will require surgery, he told TMZ Sports. Time
UCLA men’s basketball player Shareef O’Neal announced Friday that he will sit out his freshman season due to “a serious heart issue” that will require surgery.
O’Neal, the son of former NBA star Shaquille, told TMZ Sports in a video interview that the undisclosed issue was discovered by UCLA doctors and will require surgery. But he said the injury is not believed to be career-ending and he expects to return to the court for the Bruins in the future.
“I am very blessed to be here living today, one of those moments on the court could’ve been my last breathe,” O’Neal later wrote on Instagram. “I want to thank god for looking out for me, I want to thank UCLA, my teammates and most importantly my family … this is just a small bump on the road and I gotta push through it.”
Blessed to be here living today, one of those moments on the court could’ve been my last… I will be back basketball world .. just wait on me I’ll miss you this year but you will always be with me https://t.co/YP4zZwg1FF
The UCLA basketball team confirmed that O’Neal will take a medical redshirt season but remain enrolled in classes during the 2018-19 academic year.
“The UCLA men’s basketball program completely supports Shareef and his family as he gets this issue resolved,” the team said in a statement.
O’Neal, 18, signed with UCLA earlier this year after initially committing to Arizona. The 6-foot-9, 215-pound forward averaged 27.6 points and 17.3 rebounds during his senior season at Crossroads School and was rated a consensus top-40 player in his recruiting class by 247 Sports, ESPN and Rivals.
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.
A federal judge has ruled that 200 Democratic members of Congress have legal standing to sue President Donald Trump for allegedly violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution by doing business with foreign governments while in office.
The emoluments clause bars presidents from accepting gifts from foreign and domestic interests without consent from Congress.
The case argues that the president has received foreign government favors, such as Chinese government trademarks for his companies, payments for hotel rooms and event-space rentals by representatives of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and proceeds from Chinese or Emirati-linked government purchases of office space in Trump Tower.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on Friday found that lawmakers have adequately shown that they have suffered harm from the president’s alleged violation of the clause.
“This is a bombshell victory enabling us to move forward to hold the president accountable for violating the chief corruption prohibition in the United States’ Constitution,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, told the Associated Press. “President Trump has been violating it repeatedly with impunity and now we as members need to hold him accountable.”
Elizabeth Wydra, attorney for the Democratic lawmakers and president of the nonprofit Constitutional Accountability Center who argued the case in court, said that “by recognizing that members of Congress have standing to sue, the court proved to all in America today that no one is above the law, not even the president.”
It was the second ruling by a federal court judge to advance such unprecedented constitutional lawsuits against Trump.
At issue is Trump’s refusal to give Congress any details of these financial transactions or to ask permission from Congress to conduct them.
Trump’s argument is that the transactions do not fit the Founding Fathers’ definition of “emoluments” because they are business deals, not payoffs. But the Democratic members of Congress said the president had effectively nullified their votes by not giving them anything to vote on.
The ruling, which can be appealed to the Supreme Court, says the plaintiffs’ case can proceed.
“The Clause requires the president to ask Congress before accepting a prohibited foreign emolument,” Sullivan wrote. If the allegations made by Democrats are true, he wrote, then “the president is accepting prohibited foreign emoluments without asking and without receiving a favorable reply from Congress.”
The judge has not ruled yet, however, on the merits portion of the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss, such as whether the definition of “emolument” was broad enough to include a foreign embassy paying the president to rent a hotel ballroom.
The Department of Justice, which is representing Trump in the case, said in a statement that it will continue to fight the lawsuit.
“We believe this case should be dismissed,” said Kelly Laco, a spokeswoman for the department, “and we will continue to defend the president in court.”
The District of Columbia case is one of three that argues the president is violating the emoluments clause, but this case is notable because the plaintiffs — members of Congress — are mentioned in the clause itself.
In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte ruled in July that the emoluments clause lawsuit filed in a Maryland federal court could proceed against Trump. That case, however, is only limited to earnings Trump has received from the Trump International Hotel, which opened in Washington in September 2016.
The case has moved to the legal discovery stage. The Justice Department, however, has asked for an appeal in that case and for all proceedings to halt until an appeals court rules.
Anderson Cooper of CNN, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, and Sean Hannity of Fox News are three of the biggest primetime anchors in media today.
Each anchor and their respective cable news network takes a unique and different angle on the news of the day during primetime programming. As a result, their audiences can come away with different perspectives on what’s happening in the US today.
Because of the role and platform that each host has, all three are able to shape and influence what viewers believe is the most important news in the world.
For a week, we watched all of their shows to compare what news each led their program off with. Here’s how the three primetime cable news anchors opened up their shows every night from September 10-14.
— Warm yourself in the soft embrace of Senator Flake’s meaningless tweets. 
I’ll miss you this year but you will always be with me 
Viral Eyes 