Day: October 4, 2019

House Democrats subpoenaed the White House for a slew of documents Friday, after the administration refused to voluntarily hand over information related to President Donald Trump’s July 25 call with the president of Ukraine.

The move is part of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into whether Trump jeopardized national security and used the office of the presidency for personal political gain by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Democrats are examining both this potential interference into the 2020 election as well as the administration’s alleged efforts to cover up their …

The CIA’s top lawyer sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department based on the now-famous whistleblower’s complaint about President Donald Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine. And no, that lawyer isn’t some deep-state conspiracist out to thwart the president: She’s a Trump appointee.

According to NBC News on Friday, CIA general counsel Courtney Simmons Elwood and another top official called the Justice Department on August 14 to make a criminal referral — weeks before the whistleblower complaint had become public.

“On that call, Elwood and John Eisenberg, the top legal adviser to the White House National Security Council, told the top …

The Hong Kong government has invoked a colonial-era law to ban face masks in an attempt to crack down on the months-long protest movement that’s gotten increasingly tense in recent weeks.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive, announced the ban Friday. “The decision to enact an anti-mask law is not easy one, but it is a necessary decision considering the situation today,” Lam said at a press conference.

The law, which went into effect Saturday at midnight local time, bans protesters from wearing any sort of mask or face covering, including paint, at any public gathering, including both lawful …

Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg is on the move through North America after leading the largest climate protest in history, a pair of strikes last month that drew more than 4 million into the streets around the world.

“So happy to say that the following weeks I’ll travel slowly through the North American continent, moving southwest and then eventually through South America towards Santiago,” the Chilean capital where a UN climate change conference is planned for early December, she wrote on Facebook recently. At that meeting, countries are expected to nail down how they plan to meet their obligations to …

On Thursday night, House Democrats released a series of text messages involving State Department officials related to the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

The texts involve, at various points, Kurt Volker (then the US special representative for Ukraine), Gordon Sondland (the US ambassador to the European Union), Bill Taylor (the top US diplomat at the US embassy in Ukraine), Rudy Giuliani, and Andrey Yermak (an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky).

You can read the texts below, or at this link.…

“A Girl from Arizona, Part 2” cements what last week’s Good Place season premiere suggested: The show’s final season is going to be a spin on its first, where the characters we know and love (as well as the audience) are in on everything from the first. (Tangent: It’s really remarkable how careful The Good Place was to not become dominated by twists after it pulled off such an amazing one in its season one finale. Most shows would have given in to the temptation!)

This episode contains some great signs that a spin on season one might work. Eleanor’s …

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Migrant DNA collection program to expand; Iraqi protests met with force.

The Trump administration wants migrants’ DNA

Loren Elliott/AFP/Getty Images

• The Trump administration plans to move forward with a program that collects and tests DNA from immigrants in federal detention, raising concerns about violations of privacy. [Vox / Nicole Narea]
• A 2005 law requires federal law enforcement to collect DNA from