House Democrats have signalled they could have articles of impeachment against Donald Trump drawn up by next week as the president faces a 5pm EST deadline (10pm GMT) to indicate whether or not his team intends to mount a defence at further House Judiciary Committee proceedings.
“Civilisation as we know it today is at stake in the next election, and certainly our planet,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi told a CNN town hall event in Washington on Thursday after making her historic announcement calling on Congress to commence the process.
The president was quick to lash out on Twitter, again inviting ridicule by calling for the CIA whistleblower whose initial complaint prompted the inquiry to reveal themselves, as his lawyers continue to battle to stop the release of his tax returns to Congress.
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House Republicans demand 'minority hearing day'
Doug Collins, the disruptive ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, has written to chairman Jerry Nadler demanding a "minority hearing day" for the opposition to call their own witnesses to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry.
Adam Schiff: 'Trump doesn’t give a s*** about what’s good for our country'
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff has given an interview to The New Yorker in which he says Trump "doesn’t give a s*** about what’s good for our country, what’s good for Ukraine".
"It’s all about what’s in it for him personally and for his re-election campaign," he continued.
'Joe Biden's campaign gaffe wasn't good. But the way his team dealt with it was even worse'
For Indy Voices, Jay Caruso has this on Biden's bad day at the office yesterday.
Trump blames 'Radical Left' for the 'evil of Drugs, Gangs and all other problems!'
This is pretty nutty - the president appears determined to push the line that the impeachment inquiry is holding up the government's legislative agenda and that the House Democrats are therefore responsible for all the ills of the world.
President facing fast-approaching impeachment inquiry deadline
Trump and his legal team are facing a 5pm EST deadline (10pm GMT) today - set by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler - to indicate whether or not they intend to attend further impeachment inquiry proceedings and mount a defence.
"We're still waiting until 5 o'clock tomorrow to hear from the president, whether he wants to present to the committee, and if he wants to, it will be done - I presume - next week. That's all I'm going to say," Nadler told reporters on Thursday as he left a meeting with Pelosi.
Committee Republicans have been given the same deadline to request witnesses, including any they might want to subpoena.
We learned yesterday that his panel will reconvene on Monday morning to formally present and debate the evidence against the president.
The clock is ticking.
Trump loyalist Matt Gaetz admits it's 'weird' Rudy Giuliani has flown out to Ukraine
Florida congressman and Trump cheerleader Matt Gaetz was interviewed by Chris Cuomo on CNN and even he had to admit it is "weird" that the president's personal attorney has flown out to Kiev.
Cuomo pressed Gaetz on these suspect Rudy tweets...
...but the GOP frat boy refused to be drawn on them and insisted he did not know who had sent the former NYC mayor out there or whether he was acting under his own steam.
Trump cheers robust job growth and low unemployment
In the last hour, the president has wasted little time in excitedly taking credit for the latest healthy US job numbers.
Hiring in the United States jumped last month to its highest level since January as US employers shrugged off trade conflicts and a global slowdown and added 266,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.5 per cent from 3.6 per cent in October, matching a half-century low, the US Labor Department reported on Friday. Wages rose a solid 3.1 per cent in November compared with a year earlier. Stock futures surged on the unexpectedly strong jobs report.
November's healthy job gain runs against a widespread view that many employers are either delaying hiring until a breakthrough in the US-China trade war is reached or are struggling to find workers with unemployment so low. The pace of hiring points to the resilience of the job market and economy more than a decade into the US economic expansion - the longest on record.
The steady job growth has helped reassure consumers that the economy is expanding and that their jobs and incomes remain secure. Consumer spending has become an even more important driver of growth as the Trump administration's trade conflicts have reduced exports and led many businesses to cut spending. Monthly job growth has in fact accelerated since this summer, averaging 205,000 over the past three months, up from just 135,000 in July.
Renewed concerns that trade will continue to hamper the US economy drove stock prices lower earlier this week, after Trump said he was willing to wait until after the 2020 elections to strike a preliminary trade agreement with China. With the two sides still haggling, the administration is set to impose 15 per cent tariffs on an additional $160bn (£122bn) of Chinese imports beginning on 15 December. Both sides have since suggested that the negotiations are making progress, but there is still no sign of a resolution.
The return of striking General Motors autoworkers added about 40,000 jobs in November, a one-time bounce-back that followed a similar decline in October, when the GM strikers weren't counted as employed. Excluding the returning strikers, factories added 13,000 jobs last month. In Friday's hiring data, besides reporting the healthy November gain, the government revised up its estimate of job growth for September and October by a combined 41,000.
Outsize hiring for the holiday shopping season did not appear to be a major driver of last month's job growth. Retailers added just 2,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis. And transportation and warehousing firms gained fewer than 16,000. Both figures are below last year's totals. The shopping season is shorter this year because Thanksgiving occurred later than in recent years, which might be delaying some temporary hiring.
Employers have been adding jobs at a solid enough pace to absorb new job seekers and to potentially lower the unemployment rate, though the pace of job growth is still down from last year's rate.
With tariffs hobbling manufacturing, the job market this year has underscored a bifurcation in the economy: Service industries - finance, engineering, health care and the like - have been hiring at a solid pace, while manufacturers, miners and builders have been posting weak numbers. Most analysts say they remain hopeful about the economy and the job market. The economy grew at a 2.1 per cent annual rate in the July-September quarter, and the annual pace is thought to be slowing to roughly 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent in the final three months of the year - sluggish but far from recessionary.
Consumer confidence has slipped in recent months but remains at a decent level, helping boost sales of expensive purchases, such as autos and appliances. With inflation surprisingly low, the Federal Reserve has cut its benchmark short-term interest rate three times this year. Those rate cuts have helped support the housing market. Sales of existing homes have risen nearly 5 per cent in the past year. Sales of new homes have soared by one-third.
AOC says if Trump administration cuts to food assistance had gone ahead when she was a student 'we might've just starved'
Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has caused a stir online with this tweet - invoking the death of her father - in which she attacks a Trump administration proposal, announced on Wednesday, that will see the tightening of rules for states seeking waivers from a requirement that food stamp recipients must be employed or enrolled in vocational training programmes.
The US government's own estimates say the plan could cut benefits for around 750,000 people.
Pete Buttigieg under fire for accepting donations from consultancy linked to ICE
Indiana mayor and 2020 rising star Pete Buttigieg has received a letter co-signed by four immigrant rights groups calling on him to return more than $50,000 (£38,100) he received in donations from McKinsey & Co, a consultancy that have advised Trump's hard-line Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on deportation policies.
Buttigieg used to work for McKinsey and has been urged to defy a non-disclosure agreement and explain his tenure with the consultancy by The New York Times, who first reported on the issue earlier this week, along with ProPublica.
(Logan Cyrus/AFP/Getty)
The Center for Popular Democracy Action, Make the Road Action, Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada Action and United We Dream Action signed the letter to Buttigieg, undertstandably angered that McKinsey reportedly advised ICE on cutting food, supervision and medical funding to detained immigrants.
McKinsey has since issued a statement denying those claims.
Buttigieg has meanwhile been criticised by Elizabeth Warren for holding behind-closed-doors fundraisers, demanding he release the names of all donors, while Bernie Sanders has condemned for his attack on his college tuition fee plans.
California asks Trump administration to release funds to fight homelessness
In the latest skirmish over California's homeless crisis, the state's governor, Gavin Newsom, has asked Trump to stop withholding federal housing vouchers that could benefit 50,000 homeless people.
Newsom told Trump he could "immediately order" the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to issue federal housing vouchers, a programme to assist low-income families, the elderly and the disabled find affordable homes in the private market.
"With a single stroke of your pen, you can make a major, positive impact on homelessness right away," the Democratic governor said in a statement issued by his office.
An estimated 130,000 people are homeless in California on any given day, more than any other state, HUD says.
Trump has pummeled California officials for months about the state's growing homeless problem. On a visit to San Francisco and Los Angeles in September, the Republican president said people living on the street were hurting the "prestige" of those cities and sympathised with homeowners whose property values or quality of life could be hit by homelessness.
The issue is just one front in a battle between the Trump administration and the leaders of the most-populous US state. They have also locked horns over auto emissions, high-speed rail funding, building a US-Mexico border wall and immigration regulations.
Newsom on Wednesday allocated $650m (£495m) directly to counties and cities to address homelessness across the state, saying he was frustrated with the federal government's slow process in allowing him to release the state funds.
The money has been held up waiting for HUD to certify an annual "point-in-time" count of homeless people on a single morning in January. The count is used to determine funding allocations.
But on a visit to Los Angeles in September, HUD Secretary Ben Carson rejected requests from California for more money to fight homelessness, saying the Trump administration was already doing its part and that "state and local policies have played a major role in the current crisis in California.
Earlier this week, Newsom hired an official that Trump had fired amid a dispute over White House proposals to deal with homelessness in California. Matthew Doherty, who had served as director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness during the Obama and Trump administrations, will now advise Newsom on the issue.
AP
Playboy model who claims she had affair with Trump suing Fox News over Tucker Carlson claim
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who says she had a 10-month affair with Trump, is suing Fox News, claiming that host Tucker Carlson intentionally defamed her on his nighttime show.
According to a lawsuit filed on Thursday, Carlson falsely accused McDougal of extortion last year on his show when he claimed that she “approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money”.
McDougal claims in her lawsuit that she never threatened Trump and that the accusations would have been easily identified as false, if Fox News or Carlson had attempted to fact check before airing.
Clark Mindock reports.
North Korea threatens to resume playground name-calling with Trump
Pyongyang has threatened to renew its war of words with Trump, warning it would have no choice but to “diagnose” the US president as a “dotard” if he continued to refer to Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man”.
After Trump repeated one of his favourite insults at this week’s Nato summit in London - where he also outlined his willingness to take military action against North Korea if necessary - a senior advisor to Kim urged the American leader to consider his future words wisely.
Choe Son-hui, the first deputy foreign minister, said via state media: “If any language and expressions stoking the atmosphere of confrontation are used once again on purpose at a crucial moment as now, that must really be diagnosed as the relapse of the dotage of a dotard.” Alrighty then!
Samuel Lovett reports.
Republican legal expert threatened after giving impeachment testimony
Professor Jonathan Turley, the Republican legal expert who appeared before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to argue against Trump's impeachment on constitutional grounds, has reported receiving threatening messages to his home and office since testifying.
Writing in an editorial for The Hill today, Professor Turley argues Democrats are offering passion over proof in their bid to evict the president form the White House.
Trump renews attack on press
The president's first tweet of the day is this resumption of his attack on the press, with this fatherly advice for the American people on not trusting anonymous sources.
Speaking of which, where is he claiming this statistic came from?
He's now hammering out retweets from Mike Pence, campaign manager Brad Parscale, GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Fox host Laura Ingraham, apparently without irony.
Trump 'routinely' made sensitive calls on lines open to Russian surveillance
The president has been routinely communicating with Giuliani and other individuals on mobile phones vulnerable to monitoring by Russian and other foreign intelligence services, according to current and former US officials, meaning the Kremlin could have learned of his attempt to get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens months before that effort was exposed.
"But her emails!"
Fox News in disarray as Pelosi confirms impeachment push
You might be wondering how Fox News is coping with yesterday's impeachment news.
Not well, is the answer.
Sean Hannity is threatening to "unload" on chat show host Jimmy Kimmel for making fun of him...
...while Tucker Carlson continues to argue the US should side with Russia and is now saying America should never have been donating military aid to Kiev in the first place to fend off Kremlin aggressions and bolster regional stability.
In worse news for Trump die-hards, the network's resident legal expert Andrew Napolitano says the president should "certainly" be impeached.
Here's Tom Embury-Dennis on that last point.
Rudy Giuliani's mysterious Ukraine adventures continue
"I'm a busy person. I don't have time to keep track of Rudy Giuliani, I just don't, but I do think that it is further indication of the arrogance of it all," Speaker Pelosi said at her CNN town hall last night.
It emerged yesterday that Trump's lawyer is in Kiev to shoot a documentary for a conservative news channel seeking to "debunk" the president's impeachment. Good luck with that one pal.
Here's our Moscow correspondent, Ollie Carroll, on what the old loon is up to.
Joe Biden loses cool on campaign trail: 'You're a damn liar, man'
Trump's possible 2020 rival Joe Biden lost his temper on the campaign trail in New Hampton, Iowa, yesterday when a member of his audience challenged him about the role he and his son Hunter played in Ukraine, parroting several favourite Republican conspiracy theories.
When the questioner - a retired farmer - accused Biden of sending his son to work for Ukrainian gas company Burisma, the candidate fumed: "You're a damn liar, man," Biden said. "That's not true, and no one has ever said that... Get your words straight, jack!"
When the same man suggested he might be too old for the presidency at 77, Biden hit back: "I'm not sedentary. I get up".
As a campaign staffer motioned to remove the microphone from the man speaking to him, the former veep continued: "Let him go. Look: The reason I'm running is because I've been around a long time and I know more than most people know. And I can get things done. That's why I'm running. And you want to check my shape, let's do pushups together, man. Let's run. Let's do whatever you wanna do. Let's take an IQ test."
Afterwards, both parties attempted to downplay the spat.
In better news for Biden, he has won the endorsement of former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Here's Alex Woodward again.
President asks Supreme Court to shield financial records
In the ongoing pursuit of Trump's tax returns, the president's legal team have asked the US Supreme Court to block a House subpoena demaning they be turned over.
Trump has appealed several lower court and appeals court decisions that have ruled in favour of releasing the documents, which have been requested by members of Congress as part of an ethics investigation and in a separate lawsuit from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
He has sought to shield those records, bringing his appeal to the country’s highest court for a second time.
Alex Woodward reports.
Trump lashes out at media over Middle Eastern troop commitment story
Trump also yesterday chaired a meeting of his permanent represenatives of the United Nations Security Council in the Cabinet Room, at which he blustered about his Nato performance and hit out at a Wall Street Journal report indicated he was about to commit large numbers of troops to the Middle East, a subject he later returned to on Twitter.
Such a gesture would of course contradict his recent determination to remove American forces from northern Syria - whatever the consequences for the locals - after prematurely declaring the war against Isis over. Whether he intended his latest assault on the media as a desperate distraction from the impeachment news is unknown but entirely possible given his past modus operandi.
The Washington Post meanwhile reports today that the president will be spending will be spending much of the coming days with his impeachment defence team, overseen by ex-Treasury official Tony Sayegh and former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, whose meeting place is said to be, "not a traditional war room, but more of an anti-impeachment talking-point factory", run out of a bunker-like space beneath Oval Office.
