Lawmakers appeared a little closer Wednesday to passing yet another short-term spending bill to keep the government open, but as Senate Democrats looked increasingly likely to cave, conservatives in the House looked increasingly likely to fight ― or at least get some concessions. And depending on what demands GOP leaders give in to, those changes could still throw the Senate into chaos and the government into a shutdown.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) emerged from a meeting with Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) on Wednesday night saying House Republicans don’t yet have the votes to pass another short-term spending fix, called a continuing resolution (CR).
“At this point, if the vote were to happen today, there’s not the votes to fund it with Republican-only votes,” Meadows told reporters Wednesday night.
Still, Meadows said they were making “good progress,” and he expected leadership to have some accommodation for conservatives.
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Bill Clark via Getty Images
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said a short-term spending bill is on shaky ground. “At this point, if the vote were to happen today, there’s not the votes to fund it with Republican-only votes.”
After big wins in Virginia and Alabama last year, Democrats are poised to make gains in this November’s midterm elections.
But first, a series of contentious Democratic primaries could shape how well the party fares in November, as well as the ideological character of the incoming Democratic elected officials.
Some of the most pivotal Democratic Party primaries to watch in 2018.
Public defenders who work for Cook County, which includes Chicago, are dealing with what can only be described as nightmare levels of sexual assault and harassment, according to a lawsuit filed in Illinois federal court on Wednesday by six female lawyers.
Male inmates in courtroom lockups and Cook County Jail, one of the country’s largest, repeatedly exposed themselves and masturbated in front of lawyers, law clerks and interns, making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs, according to the lawsuit and other public complaints and reports.
The situation was widely known, but authorities did little to stop the behavior, the plaintiffs claimed.
The women filed the suit against their boss, Public Defender Amy Campanelli, and against Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, charging that Campanelli and Dart failed to take adequate measures to fix some of the most egregious examples of a hostile work environment.
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Jim Young / Reuters
A Cook County Sheriff’s police car patrols the exterior of the Cook County Jail in Chicago on Jan. 12, 2016.
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he believes he holds ultimate authority to direct the Department of Justice as he sees fit, while noting the ongoing inquiry into Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election has made the country “look very bad.”
Trump, speaking in an impromptu interview with The New York Times from his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, said more than a dozen times that no collusion had been uncovered during the sweeping probe by special counsel Robert Mueller. While he noted that the sooner the inquiry was completed, “the better it is for the country,” Trump also broke with his most ardent supporters and said he believed Mueller would treat him fairly.
“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” he told the Times. “But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.”
Activist Erica Garner, the eldest daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner, died Friday morning, less than a week after suffering a heart attack. She was 27.
Garner was an outspoken advocate for police accountability, calling for justice and police reform following the 2014 death of her father, whose dying gasps of “I can’t breathe” as a New York City police officer restrained him became a rallying cry at Black Lives Matter protests.
“It is important for us to show the world we can stand together as one people,” Garner wrote in a 2015 blog post for HuffPost. “It’s even more important for our youth to see us standing together and fighting for what is right. It shows them that they can push back against a corrupt system without being a so-called ‘thug.’ … Justice means equity to us.”
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Mike Segar / Reuters
Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, leads a chant at a protest and candlelight vigil in the Staten Island borough of New York City on Jan. 15, 2015.
Congress’ failure to renew a program that provides health care to low-income children by year’s end could cause almost 2 million kids to lose their coverage as soon as next month.
That’s according to a report published Wednesday by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. Federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is jointly run and financed by the federal government and the states, expired nearly two months ago. The program covers about 9 million children in the U.S.
But the GOP-controlled Congress, which made time to pass a sweeping tax bill that largely benefits corporations and the rich, didn’t get around to reauthorizing CHIP ― and now millions of children are in jeopardy.
States are rapidly running out of money to pay these children’s medical bills, and several have started notifying parents that their kids’ health care is poised to disappear. At least 14 states plan to terminate CHIP by the end of January, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
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Andrew Montoya
Audrey, Katrina and Scarlett Montoya of Longmont, Colorado, could lose their health care next month because Congress failed to pass legislation renewing the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
A major power outage at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Sunday prompted officials to order all flights headed there to be grounded at their departure points or diverted.
It would take nearly 11 hours for power to be restored.
The electricity outage, which occurred just before 1 p.m. local time, affected multiple terminals and delayed hundreds of flights, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement to HuffPost.
While the airport’s flight control tower operated “normally” during the outage, airport equipment in the terminals did not, according to the statement. The disruption prompted FAA officials to order a “ground stop,” which meant that flights headed to airport were held on the ground at their departure airport.
A fire at one of the airport’s underground electrical facilities caused the outage, according to a statement from Georgia Power, the utility company servicing the airport. Officials were continuing to investigate what caused the fire on Monday.
It’s Monday morning at 10 a.m., and I’m driving north up California’s famously stunning coastline toward the Thomas fire, the largest and most uncontrolled of five massive wildfires that have brought devastation to Southern California for the past week. I can see the enormous gloom ahead from 50 miles away ― brown smoke hovering over the southern edge of a fire that had consumed a staggering 230,000 acres so far.
I’m on my way to Ventura County, where the fire first began on Dec. 4 and from where it would eventually grow into the fifth largest in state history over the week that followed. Ventura is an iconic place, a once rugged beach town known for its citrus fruit farming and local surf spots, so often overshadowed by its big neighbor, Los Angeles.
By the time I got there, a grey haze had once again settled over the county, and smoke filled the air. To the east, a massive fire was rapidly spreading, producing a thick brown smoke cloud that reached all the way north, to Santa Barbara County. Firefighters and firetrucks peppered the landscape, racing toward the still active sections of the blaze while other rigs drove further up the coast. A pizza delivery driver wore a dust mask to keep some of the smoke out of his lungs as he carried on with his day.
Republican Roy Moore faced serious accusations of sexual misconduct in his bid to become Alabama’s next senator. But instead of bowing down and backing out, he stayed in the race and went on the attack ― just like Trump did in last year’s presidential race. He accused the media and the establishment of orchestrating a conspiracy against him, and cast the race as pitting good against evil, Christians versus everyone else.
Both Trump and Moore bet that their conservative base would stick by them and push them to victory.
But on Tuesday, Alabama sent a message that this time it wouldn’t work, not even in a conservative state that Trump won by 28 percentage points in 2016.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
It’s been difficult to watch the Christian community embrace a person like Donald Trump. Evangelicals have had to perform mental gymnastics to pretend Donald Trump felt about religion anything close to what they claim to feel. This was supposed to be the “family values” party. Mike Pence, who won’t even have dinner with a woman other than his wife, suddenly doesn’t mind that Trump had babies with three different women and said on tape that he liked to grab women by the p***y.
Trump might be a lying, scheming, narcissistic con-artist but he doesn’t pretend to be religious. Sure, he faked it a couple of times by holding up a Bible with pages looking like they’d never been opened. He also tried quoting some scriptures but that went horribly wrong when he said “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” But he doesn’t claim to consult God before making decisions.
As for family values, Trump’s been married three times, dumping each wife for the woman he was having an affair with. His wives raise his kids for him. On the Howard Stern show, Trump said “I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park.” Other than his adult children who run his businesses, we never see Trump spending time with his kids. There are a couple of photo-ops with his 10-year old, Barron. But instead of golfing at his resorts, shouldn’t Trump spend time with his, um, you know, 10 year old? He also has another daughter who is around so infrequently most people don’t remember her name. Obviously, Trump will never be mistaken for the dad from Leave It To Beaver.
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
10 Democratic Primaries To Watch
Nearly 11 hours for power to be restored
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
