|
The top Senate Republican cited "blowback" to the idea, while the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee questioned its legal basis.
|
|
The president embraced Ken Paxton, a MAGA loyalist, over Senator John Cornyn, despite warnings from Republican leaders about Mr. Paxton's history of scandal.
|
|
(First column, 6th story, link)
Related stories:
SHOWDOWN: REVENGE TOUR COMES FOR MASSIE... DEVELOPING...
|
|
Donald Trump on Monday dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over a leak of his personal and business tax records, a bizarre case of a sitting president suing his own government and essentially acting as both plaintiff and defendant. This comes amid reports that Trump's Department of Justice was considering settling the case in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate victims of so-called weaponization of the DOJ under the Biden and Obama administrations. Trump allies who participated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol could file claims and be compensated.
"They want a $1.7 billion slush fund, which comes to a million dollars a head in terms of Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the insurrectionists, with $100 million left over of taxpayer money to spread around in different ways," says Congressmember Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who spoke with Democracy Now! shortly before news broke of Trump dropping the IRS lawsuit.
Raskin last week introduced the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which is geared toward curbing the president's profiteering from public office. "Corruption is the whole purpose of the Trump administration," says Raskin. "It's not like some eccentric peripheral thing; it's a vast money-making operation."
|
|
The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on Saturday due to the rapid spread of Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Ebola causes severe hemorrhagic fever and is often fatal. There's no approved vaccine for the strain of Ebola responsible for the current outbreak, known as the Bundibugyo variant. The WHO said in a statement that the outbreak is potentially much larger "than what is currently being detected and reported."
Public health professor and emergency room physician Dr. Craig Spencer, who is an Ebola survivor, says this Ebola outbreak could be the fourth largest in history. "This is going to be a really difficult outbreak to manage and respond to," says Spencer. The ability of healthcare workers to address the outbreak in eastern Congo, "given the violence and conflict, is anything but ideal."
Spencer adds that cuts to USAID and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization have increased the likelihood for viruses to spread nationally and internationally, citing outbreaks of measles in the U.S. and Ebola and hantavirus abroad. "This is not all just a coincidence," says Spencer. "This is a consequence of us cutting back our support."
|
|
