PIAC News ✔️

[ad_1] Fact Check of the Day President Trump claimed “all these investigators” are Democrats — an overstatement — and incorrectly said that Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, served under President Obama for eight years. President Trump addressing the National Rifle Association Leadership Forum on Friday in Dallas. Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times President Trump said “So you have all these investigators; they’re Democrats. In all fairness, Bob Mueller worked for Obama for eight years.” the facts This is exaggerated. At least nine of the 17 lawyers on the team led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, have donated to Democratic campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission records. One has previously identified as a Democrat in a blog post . Three others are registered as Democrats, The Washington Post and PolitiFact have reported. But the political affiliations of the remaining four lawyers are unclear. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office confi...

[ad_1] WASHINGTON — President Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, made to a pornographic film actress several months before he denied any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in April, according to two people familiar with the arrangement. How much Mr. Trump knew about the payment to Stephanie Clifford, the actress, and who else was aware of it have been at the center of a swirling controversy for the past 48 hours touched off by a television interview with Rudolph W. Giuliani, a new addition to the president’s legal team. The interview was the first time a lawyer for the president had acknowledged that Mr. Trump had reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payments to Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. It was not immediately clear when Mr. Trump learned of the payment, which Mr. Cohen made in October 2016, at a time when news media outlets were poised to pay her for her story about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump in 2006. ...

[ad_1] “The reason why the president endorsed me and asked me to run is he wants somebody who can help him get his agenda done, not somebody who’s going to vote against him,” Mr. Renacci said as he sat in a booth at a chicken-wing restaurant here. Mr. Renacci, with an estimated net worth of at least $34 million, according to Roll Call , boasts of a long and varied business career, with involvement in nursing homes, Harley-Davidson dealerships, a Chevrolet dealership and partial ownership of an arena football team. A quiet, casual demeanor helped ingratiate him with working-class voters in his district south of Cleveland even as he held on to the traditional Chamber of Commerce Republican vote. “Businessmen and businesswomen have different styles,” he conceded. “I’m more the quiet style.” Photo In Tuesday’s primary, Mr. Renacci faces competition for Trump voters who might again be drawn to someone who presen...

[ad_1] Mr. Giuliani’s verbal strikes began on Wednesday night when he appeared with Sean Hannity on Fox News and declared that the F.B.I.’s office in New York — with which he worked closely during his time as United States attorney in Manhattan — had behaved like “storm-troopers” in conducting raids on the president’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. In the same interview, he called Mr. Comey “a disgraceful liar” and said he should be prosecuted. He also had strong words for the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which he dismissed as “tainted” and “totally garbage.” On Thursday morning, after Mr. Comey shot back on his Twitter account, saying that the New York F.B.I. was “devoted to the rule of law and the truth,” Mr. Giuliani assailed Mr. Comey, his onetime colleague in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, as a “sensitive little baby.” By Thursday afternoon, he had tossed another bomb, calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “step in” on t...

[ad_1] President Donald Trump harkened back to the racist attack he made on Mexican immigrants on the first day of his campaign in the summer of 2015 during a speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention Friday. “These countries send up their worst,” Trump said, addressing the crowd assembled in Dallas, Texas. “R emember in my opening speech, I  got criticized for it.  Remember?  Well, guess what.  They’re not sending their  finest.  That I can tell you.”  In his opening speech nearly three years ago, Trump said Mexico was “not sending their best,” a racist attack that drove his campaign and eventually catapulted him into the White House. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said at the time. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He resorted to the same dishonest smear Friday. “W...

[ad_1] Mr. Duckworth added that the Trump-Pence tag team appearance was encouraging: “It’s very good that they’re supporting the N.R.A.” The N.R.A. convention has unfolded, so far, as a display of strength and defiance for a group that is battling furious criticism from Democrats in Washington and on the midterm campaign trail. The N.R.A. has faced several policy setbacks on the state level in recent months, as Republican governors in Florida and Vermont signed gun restrictions the group opposed. Yet if Parkland cast a shadow over the political speeches on Friday, it was a faint one. The president alluded to the “monstrous attack” in Florida and described having been moved by his meetings with parents and survivors. But he dismissed gun-control proposals as ineffective, and pointed to a funding package for school-safety measures as an alternative. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence again called for allowing certain people to carry firearms on school property. And arguing that gun rights wer...

[ad_1] The Department of Homeland Security ended temporary deportation protection for 57,000 Honduran immigrants on Friday, forcing them to either find another legal way to stay in the country or pack up their lives and leave. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced that the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Honduras will officially end on September 9, 2019. Until then, Honduran immigrants on TPS will either have to change their legal status or leave the country. “The decision to terminate TPS for El Salvador was made after a review of the disaster-related conditions upon which the country’s original designation was based and an assessment of whether those originating conditions continue to exist as required by statute,” Nielsen’s office said in a statement. Honduras was added to the list of TPS countries in 1999 , after Hurricane Mitch devastated the country (along with Nicaragua, which was also added to TPS at the same time). Mitch was the deadliest hurricane in th...

[ad_1] ख़बर सुनें ख़बर सुनें अफ्रीका के जिबूती में स्थित चीन के सैन्य बेस पर मौजूद सैनिकों ने एक अमेरिकी विमान पर लेजर हमला कर दिया। इसमें दो अमेरिकी वायुसैनिक घायल हो गए। हालांकि चीन ने इन आरोपों को सिरे से खारिज कर दिया है।  पेंटागन की प्रवक्ता डाना डब्ल्यू वाइट ने कहा कि लेजर हमले में सी-130 विमान में सवार दो वायुसैनिक घायल हुए हैं। उन्हें यकीन है कि इसके पीछे चीन के सैनिक हैं। डान ने यह भी बताया कि दो से ज्यादा और दस से कम बार ऐसी घटनाएं हो चुकी हैं। हाल के हफ्तों में ऐसी घटनाएं बढ़ी हैं।  उन्होंने चीन के समक्ष इसका आधिकारिक विरोध दर्ज कराया है। मीडिया रिपोर्ट में दावा किया गया है कि यह लेजर पायलटों को कुछ समय के लिए अंधा भी कर सकता है। पेंटागन का आरोप है कि यह लेजर सैन्य स्तर का था, जिससे दो अमेरिकी पायलट घायल हो गए।   उधर, चीन के रक्षा और विदेश मंत्रालय ने अलग-अलग बयान जारी करके इन आरोपों को आधारहीन करार देते हुए नकार दिया है। चीन के विदेश मंत्रालय के प्रवक्ता हुआ चुनयिंग ने कहा, अमेरिका में कुछ लोगों को तथ्यों पर ध्यान देना चाहिए। न की ऐसे झूठे आरोप लगाने चाहिए। ज्ञात हो कि 2017 म...

[ad_1] President Donald Trump has sent a letter to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, assuring her that the United States will support the country with its refugee crisis, while continuing to “pressure Myanmar” to safely repatriate the nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing military crackdowns, Reuters reported   Friday. President Trump has made the offer several times in the past, but so far, but nothing has changed. In September, for instance, Trump  urged “strong and swift action” against Myanmar by the U.N. Security Council. In November, when he was on his tour of five Asian countries , he vowed , “The United States supports efforts to end the violence, to ensure accountability for atrocities committed, and to facilitate the safe and voluntary return of refugees. We welcome the commitments by the government of Myanmar, and we are ready to support the implementation of the [Rakhine] recommendations.” Rakhine state in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country of around 53 mi...

[ad_1] WASHINGTON — President Trump undercut his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Friday, and said the former New York mayor will eventually get the facts right regarding a payment to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Giuliani, who joined Mr. Trump’s legal team last month, “started a day ago,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to reporters on Friday as he left Washington to attend a National Rifle Association convention in Dallas. “He’s a great guy,” Mr. Trump said. “He’ll get his facts straight.” It was the first time the president addressed the inconsistent narrative about the payment made by his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels. Mr. Giuliani kicked off the confusion with an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, surprising even some of Mr. Trump’s other attorneys. In a series of Twitter posts the following morning, the president backed up what Mr. Giuliani said. But, on Friday...

[ad_1] Failure to stop business-as-usual global warming will deliver a severe economic blow to Southern states , a recent paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond finds. Remarkably, this ground-breaking study, “ Temperature and Growth ” concludes that “under the business-as-usual scenario, the projected trends in rising temperatures could depress U.S. economic growth by up to a third.” As the Wall Street Journal summed up the findings: “ Climate Change May Deeply Wound Long-Term U.S. Growth .” The study focused on the impact of high temperatures in productivity and found that rising temperatures have their biggest negative economic impact in the summer — but that it’s not just outdoor work like farming and construction that suffers. Using historical data, the authors showed that the finance, retail, and real estate sectors also get hit hard during the hottest summers. The authors note that a scenario of low CO2 emissions would sharply reduce the economic harm. But such a scen...

[ad_1] Failure to stop business-as-usual global warming will deliver a severe economic blow to Southern states , a recent paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond finds. Remarkably, this ground-breaking study, “ Temperature and Growth ” concludes that “under the business-as-usual scenario, the projected trends in rising temperatures could depress U.S. economic growth by up to a third.” As the Wall Street Journal summed up the findings: “ Climate Change May Deeply Wound Long-Term U.S. Growth .” The study focused on the impact of high temperatures in productivity and found that rising temperatures have their biggest negative economic impact in the summer — but that it’s not just outdoor work like farming and construction that suffers. Using historical data, the authors showed that the finance, retail, and real estate sectors also get hit hard during the hottest summers. The authors note that a scenario of low CO2 emissions would sharply reduce the economic harm. But such a scen...

[ad_1] It was harder to locate the strategy behind Mr. Trump’s swerving, stream-of-consciousness telephone interview last week on “Fox & Friends.” On live TV, the president seemed to stumble into acknowledging, for the first time, that he knew about his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, funneling $130,000 in hush money to an adult film actress who had claimed to have had an affair with the future president. “He represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal,” Mr. Trump said, as the show’s hosts listened politely. The president went on to say that Mr. Cohen does “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work — prompting prosecutors to file a fresh brief saying that the comment had undermined the president’s legal argument that documents seized from Mr. Cohen in a raid by prosecutors, were protected by attorney-client privilege. On Thursday, “Fox & Friends” played host to another awkward and possibly significant exchange. Mr. Giuliani, back on the network less th...

[ad_1] As his host tried to throw him several lifelines, Mr. Giuliani dug in, insisting that Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, had tried to keep Ms. Clifford from going public with the alleged affair before the 2016 election. He also called agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who raided Mr. Cohen’s office “storm troopers,” a reference to Nazis that offended others in the law enforcement community who once held Mr. Giuliani in largely high regard. Graphic The Loyalists and Washington Insiders Fighting Trump’s Legal Battles Lawyers from inside and outside the White House are confronting the Mueller inquiry, while others are focused on payments made to silence a pornographic film actress who said she had sex with Mr. Trump. ...