William Taylor: withholding aid to Ukraine 'crazy'
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The House impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump is beginning its first public hearings with Bill Taylor, acting US ambassador to Ukraine, and State Department official George Kent. Both witnesses delivered joint-testimony to Congress as the president derides the process as a “partisan sham”.
Mr Trump has meanwhile reportedly been threatening to fire his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney over his recent blunders. He also previously considered axing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the US intelligence community, over his handling of the whistle-blower complaint about his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to The Washington Post.
Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal
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Meanwhile, as senior Republicans insist they will not be watching the hearings and Mr Trump hosts his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House on Wednesday, progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for the resignation of senior Trump aide Stephen Miller over racist emails he sent to the right-wing news site Breitbart, in which he advocated white nationalist ideologies.
Following a meeting between the two leaders, Mr Trump repeated to reporters at a press conference that the day's public impeachment hearings are a "witch hunt" and a "joke".
"I haven't watched, I haven't watched for one minute because I've been with the president which is much more important as far as I'm concerned," Mr Trump said.
But the leaders were at odds following their controversial summit, to which five Senators were invited, discussing Turkey's cease-fire against Kurdish forces in Syria, as well as a two-day $100b trade deal and Turkey's acquisition of Russian anti-aircraft weapons.
Trump blamed for rise in violent hate crimes against Hispanic Americans
Violent hate crimes have climbed to a 16-year year high in the US, with a surge in attacks on Hispanics, according to FBI data. Reports of hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018 from an alarming increase the previous year, but violence rose as attacks increasingly targeting people instead of property.
In its review of statistics collected from more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies, the FBI said there had been 7,120 hate crimes reported last year. The figure was 55 fewer than 2017, a year in the same bureau data recorded a 17 per cent increase in hate crimes from 2016. Reports of hate-motivated attacks on people account for 61 per cent of all hate crimes reported in 2018, a rise of 11.7 per cent. There were 24 murders, up from 15 in 2017.
The release of the data comes amid ongoing debate over Trump’s hardline immigration policies and follows the August mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in which the suspected gunman told police he was targeting Mexicans.
Janet Murguia, head of the Washington-based Latino civil rights organisation UnidosUS, said the president carried some responsibility for the increase. “President Trump frequently refers to Latinos in the most hateful and bigoted ways, and words matter,” she said. “Having just visited El Paso and hearing first-hand from the victims of the tragic shooting there, I know that hateful words have hateful consequences, and can result in violence and even death.”
Rudy Giuliani pens Wall Street Journal op-ed attacking impeachment inquiry as 'affront to American fair play'
The president's personal attorney has used an editorial in The Wall Street Journal to attack Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi over the impeachment inquiry, insisting Trump is "innocent" and that their "unprecedented" investigation represents "an affront to American fair play".
“In an ideal America, politicians would be held to the same standard regardless of party, and this inquiry would be over. But the left’s inability to accept the results of the 2016 election and fear of Mr Trump’s policy agenda have driven the Democrats into a frenzy,” Rudy says.
In case you missed it last night (how could you?), ex-South Carolina governor Mark Sanford dropped his short-lived and wildly unsuccessful bid to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination in 2020.
The man previously most famous for chasing off to Argentina with his mistress while his aides insisted he was "hiking the Appalachian trail" told reporters yesterday he no longer recognises the Republican Party but accepts there is little appetite for his campaign at the present time.
Trump's former ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has been on a media tour to promote her new book With All Due Respect and yesterday gave a gushing interview to Savannah Guthrie on NBC in which she said the president was always "truthful" in her experience.
Ex-Republican turned independent congressman Justin Amash was not impressed.
Left-wing super PAC targets disappointed Trump voters with $50m advertising blitz
The left-leaning super PAC American Bridge has ploughed $50m (£39m) into releasing a new series of anti-Trump attack ads focusing on people who voted for the president and now regret the decision, targeting rural Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the first flurry.
Trump ally Jim Jordan forced to deny failing to act on sexual misconduct allegation
Republican congressman Jim Jordan, a key ally of President Trump, has been accused of ignoring a historic accusation of sexual misconduct against a physio during his tenure at Ohio State University.
Dr Richard Strauss, who took his own life in 2005, was accused of masturbating in front of a college wrestling referee in a locker room shower when Jordan himself worked at the facility as an assistant coach. When the referree came foreward to report the incident, Jordan and a superior, head wrestling coach Russ Hellickson, allegedly dismissed the story with the words: "Yeah, that's Strauss".
The story is contained in a new lawsuit, which does not name Jordan directly but has provoked concern about his failure to act. Strauss is accused of having abused as many as 177 athletes over two decades.
“I’ve stood up against the IRS, stood up against the FBI, stood up against Adam Schiff, fought the Justice Department when the whole Trump-Russia thing - what they had done. ... The idea I’m not going to defend our athletes when I think they’re being harmed is ridiculous,” Jordan told his home town paper The Lima News this week.
“This is just, this is someone making a false statement.”
Steve Bannon says Nancy Pelosi's strategy to impeach Trump is 'quite brilliant'
Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon has praised the tactics deployed by Democrats to impeach his former boss and remove him from office as “quite brilliant”.
“The Democrats are so united in this,” he told CBS news. “I disagree with her ideologically, but I think Nancy Pelosi is a master of political warfare and I think strategically what she’s done here is, from their perspective, quite brilliant.”
Republican strategising and a cryptic Democratic promise
For Indy Voices, Andrew Feinberg has a little more insight into Republican strategy ahead of today's impeachment hearings. Kick off time is 10am in DC (or 3pm GMT).
'I am a DACA recipient - and it feels like my worst fears are coming true'
Trump yesterday disparaged beneficiaries of Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, known as "Dreamers", saying many are "hardened criminals" as the Supreme Court began weighing his call for the citizenship initiative to be scrapped.
Also for Voices, Roberto Arreola explains what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the president's rhetoric.
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