DECEMBER 31, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


CNN NEWS STORIES TODAY:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/app-news-section/quickly-catch-up-december-31/index.html
Quickly catch up on the day's news
By Delaney Strunk, CNN
Updated 2:45 PM ET, Mon December 31, 2018

(CNN)Here's what you might have missed Monday on CNN:

-- Sen. Elizabeth Warren launched a presidential exploratory committee ahead of an expected run for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
-- A new crew of Democrats has subpoena power and is ready to use it. Meet the House chairs who are about to make life harder for the President.
-- An American was arrested in Moscow last week "while carrying out an act of espionage," Russia's intelligence agency said.
-- House Democrats will vote on a legislative package to reopen the government on Thursday when they officially take over the chamber.
-- If it feels like the US has become increasingly divided along race, gender, and other identity lines — it's because it has, a recent report found.
-- A masked man with a loaded gun was arrested on his way to a Texas church to fulfill a "prophecy."
-- From jury duty to pet purchases, here's a look at some of the new laws going into effect in 2019.
-- Alexandra Black, a 22-year-old zoological park intern, was killed by an escaped lion at a conservation center in North Carolina.
-- Comedian Louis C.K. is in hot water again for reportedly making fun of Parkland shooting survivors in a recent comedy set.


https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/politics/democratic-investigations-chair-maxine-waters/index.html
By Jeremy Herb and Lauren Fox, CNN
Updated 2:56 PM ET, Mon December 31, 2018

(CNN)President Donald Trump will face an intensified level of scrutiny in the new year, with Democratic House committee chairs poised to comb through every corner of his administration, subpoena his Cabinet and investigate his personal finances, associates and business interests.

While Trump has directed his political attacks at Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, it's the committee chairs who will soon become his greatest foes.

The President -- no stranger to name calling or political swipes -- has already begun jabbing some of the incoming chairs on Twitter over the past two years, and he has decades of history with one of the new leaders. But despite Trump's declarations that he's prepared to play hardball with the Democratic investigators, there's a new crew of Democrats in Washington -- rising from the party's return to the majority in the House of Representatives -- who have subpoena power and are prepared to use it.

"If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!" Trump tweeted the day after this fall's midterm elections.

Meet the five chairs most likely to battle the President next year:

Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, speaks at an event in October 2014 in New York City. Nadler will lead the House Judiciary Committee next year. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Jerry Nadler

Trump's history with Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York dates to the 1980s, when they battled over Manhattan real estate while Nadler was in the New York State Assembly before he was elected to Congress. In his 2000 book, "The America We Deserve," Trump called Nadler "one of the most egregious hacks in contemporary politics."

"This guy wanted to put a railroad yard on the same property where I wanted to build a park and create the best middle-income housing in New York," Trump wrote in his book.

Now Nadler is set to lead the Judiciary Committee, which would put him in charge of any Democratic impeachment effort. His committee will also be in charge of handling a report from special counsel Robert Mueller and any fights that may arise about making it public.

Nadler's committee also has jurisdiction over Trump's signature issue: immigration, an area Nadler is poised to conduct rigorous oversight on -- from family separation to changes to asylum laws -- in the new Congress.

Nadler has said it's too soon to talk impeachment, even though there's a sizable chunk of Democratic advocates -- not to mention some House lawmakers -- who already want to move forward.

Nadler: Impeachable offense doesn't mean impeachment 04:40

That doesn't mean Nadler has avoided the "I" word altogether.

Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" earlier this month about Trump being implicated in Michael Cohen's crimes of paying women for their silence during the campaign, Nadler said: "They would be impeachable offenses."

But he said pursing impeachment is a different question.

"You don't necessarily launch an impeachment against the President because he committed an impeachable offense," Nadler said. "There are several things you have to look at."

If Democrats do to try to impeach Trump, Nadler will be one of the most important Democrats in the caucus -- and will likely face the breadth of Trump's backlash.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, answers questions following a committee meeting at the US in February in Washington. Schiff is expected to chair the House Intelligence Committee starting in January. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Adam Schiff

Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is no stranger to Trump's Twitter tongue lashings. As the top Democrat on the Republican-led House Russia investigation in 2017 and 2018, Schiff was a constant television presence breaking down the newest revelations about Russia and Trump's team.

The President has used multiple nicknames on Twitter for the California Democrat -- Sleazy Adam Schiff, Liddle' Adam Schiff and most recently "little Adam Schitt" -- a sign of his prominence among Trump's Democratic critics.

Schiff has accused Republicans of failing to investigate the ties between Trump's team and Russia, and he's promised to restart his committee's Russia investigation in several areas.

Among them: Schiff wants to investigate questions about Russian money laundering, to learn who Donald Trump Jr. was calling as he set up the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and to interview officials the committee has yet to speak to, like Michael Flynn.

Schiff is a soft-spoken lawmaker, but he's shown a willingness provide headline-grabbing quotes.

"There's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first President in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time," Schiff said earlier this month on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Richard Neal criticizes the Republican tax plan during at the US Capitol in November 2017 in Washington, DC. Neal will chair the House Ways and Means Committee in January. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Richard Neal

In the new Congress it will be Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, a deal-focused Democrat, who will have the job of asking for Trump's tax returns. While modern presidential nominees have publicly released their returns, Trump has defied the norm, which Democrats argue must be remedied.

Under IRS rules, there are only three people on Capitol Hill who can ask the Treasury Department for the President's tax returns: the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the head of the Joint Committee on Taxation and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Neal is the only Democrat.

While Neal has said he wants to ensure that requesting the returns doesn't distract from his committee's work on infrastructure, health care and oversight of the GOP's tax bill, a source close to the process told CNN that Neal has largely given up hope that Trump will turn over his tax returns willingly, given comments from the President's allies. Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani told CNN that the President would be prepared to fight in court over any formal request.

The source familiar with the process told CNN that Neal is prepared to ask the Treasury Department for the returns in the new year. When exactly he would do it is still under discussion.

Trump's tax returns aren't of interest just to Neal, however. Other incoming committee chairs have said the information within the returns could advance their own oversight.

"I think there's a lot of information in them that would be of interest to my committee. For example, we'd like to know exactly what ... has been the sources of income for this President," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the expected chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Cummings continued, "He's made all kinds of claims that he doesn't have relationships with Russia. He told us he didn't have any relationships with Russia, we come to find out that's not accurate. So there've been a lot of allegations, but I think the tax returns where he has to swear that the information is accurate, that would tell us a lot."

Elijah Cummings

After nearly a decade in the minority, Cummings has perhaps the broadest authority to investigate the Trump administration of any Democrat on Capitol Hill. Cummings -- even with his deep and focused voice -- is reserved, but strategic about the plans for his committee.

A foil to Republican chairs like Rep. Darrell Issa of California, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, Cummings has argued he plans to be in search of answers, not headlines -- although with his gavel, it's unlikely he will be able to avoid them.

Cummings has laid out a very clear path for his committee. Earlier this month, he re-sent 51 letters he'd sent while in the minority, asking the administration to comply by January 11. The letters ranged from questions about Cabinet secretary travel to immigration to security clearances to hurricane recovery efforts by the administration. But Cummings has also warned that he doesn't want his committee to only zero in on Trump's perceived failings.

"I believe that what we do in this Congress over the next year or so will have impact for the next 50 to 100 years," Cummings said. "We're going to cautiously go about with subpoenas. ... There would have to be something that has a compelling interest to the citizens of the United States, and would have to be something that comes under our jurisdiction. So there's certain criteria that has to be met. I do not expect to be issuing subpoenas -- even the 64 that we've asked for because there are so many things that are backed up. And we'll never get a chance to do everything."

Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, looks on before speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC in January. Waters will chair the House Financial Services Committee in January.

Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, looks on before speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC in January. Waters will chair the House Financial Services Committee in January.

Maxine Waters

Rep. Maxine Waters of California was pushing for impeachment back in 2017, and she's been among the most vocal and well-known Democrats to do so. Now she'll run the Financial Services Committee, which will give her an avenue to probe the finances of Trump and the Trump Organization.

That's also made her a target for the President, who went after Waters during the 2018 campaign in tweets and at campaign rallies as a way to fire up his base. He's also attacked Waters as a "low IQ person," which she has said is a racist attack.

"Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party," Trump tweeted in June. "She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!"

Waters has made controversial statements of her own, including her call for supporters to publicly harass members of the administration in response to Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, which led to family separations at the border.

While in the minority, Waters pressed for an investigation into Deutsche Bank, a lender to Trump that was separately implicated in a Russian money laundering operation in 2017. She's also pushed the Treasury Department to divulge financial ties between Russia and the Trump family.

The jurisdiction of Waters' committee makes it likely she'll clash with Trump in a way that particularly hits home for him: his finances.


THIS WAS CERTAINLY A CLOSE CALL. SOMEONE SUSPECTED A PROBLEM AND ACTED, JUST AS WE ALL SHOULD. WORDS LIKE “FULFILL A PROPHECY” IN SUCH A SITUATION FEELS VERY FRIGHTENING INDEED.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/31/us/church-scare-texas-man-arrested/index.html
A masked man with a loaded gun was arrested on his way to a Texas church to fulfill a 'prophecy'
By AJ Willingham, CNN
Updated 1:11 PM ET, Mon December 31, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- Tony Dwayne Albert, 33, of Houston, is charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon.

(CNN)A scary situation in Seguin, Texas, came to a peaceful end when an off-duty police officer apprehended a man who was wearing a surgical mask, carrying a handgun and acting erratically.

According to the Seguin Police Department, the officer approached Tony Dwayne Albert II on Sunday after concerned bystanders reported Albert for suspicious behavior. The officer noted that Albert was "wearing tactical style clothing, a surgical face shield, carrying a loaded firearm and extra ammunition."

An SPD spokeswoman said Albert claimed he was headed to an unidentified church to fulfill what he called a "prophecy."

Albert, 33, of Houston, was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon.

He was being held Monday at the Guadalupe County Jail on a $100,000 bond, according to online records. CNN has not been able to contact his attorney.

Employees at a Mexican restaurant in Seguin told CNN affiliate KSAT they became alarmed after Albert came in with a gun Sunday morning and asked where the nearest Baptist church was. After he left the restaurant they locked the front door and called police.

"The Seguin Police Department is extremely grateful to the citizen who called police," SPD spokeswoman Tanya Brown said. "If this subject was not stopped and apprehended the results could have ended differently."

The responding officer said Albert thought he was in a different city, according to KSAT. Brown told KSAT that police notified officials in the city Albert named, but they are not releasing the name of the city because Albert did not name a specific church or location.

"We don't want to scare people," she said.

Seguin is a city of about 30,000 people located some 35 miles northeast of San Antonio.

CNN's Marlena Baldacci contributed to this report


LOTS OF INUENDO HERE, AND NO SPECIFICS OR PROOF. NO NAMES OR CIRCUMSTANCES. I CHOSE THE NBC ARTICLE BECAUSE I EXPECTED IT TO BE A HIGHER QUALITY OF JOURNALISM THAN THE OTHER TWO ARTICLES. THIS IS MORE DIRTY TRICKS, PROBABLY, BUT IF THERE IS SOMETHING TRUE INVOLVED WITH THIS, I WANT IT TO COME OUT INTO THE OPEN. HOLDING IT BACK WON’T HELP ANYONE.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/bernie-sanders-camp-says-it-working-address-concerns-after-staffers-n953331
Bernie Sanders' camp says it is working to address concerns after staffers allege 'sexual violence' on 2016 campaign
"We share in the urgency for all of us to do better," the Vermont senator's campaign team said in a statement.
Dec. 31, 2018 / 1:36 PM EST
By Frank Thorp V and Jane C. Timm

PHOTOGRAPH -- U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a Get Out The Vote rally for Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed at Cobo Center in Detroit on Aug. 5, 2018.Jacob Hamilton / Ann Arbor News via AP file

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders' team said on Monday that it will continue to improve its policies after staffers alleged a "dangerous dynamic" of "sexual violence and harassment" on his 2016 presidential campaign.

"We share in the urgency for all of us to do better," Sanders' Senate campaign committee, Friends of Bernie Sanders, said in a statement provided to NBC News.

More than two dozen men and women who worked on Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign signed a letter published by Politico that alleged an "untenable and dangerous dynamic" of sexual harassment and sexual violence during the campaign. The letter did not cite specific instances.

VIDEO -- Sanders: 2020 presidential run not an easy decision
DEC. 13, 201803:33

The signatories requested a meeting with the Vermont senator, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, and other top staffers "for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle." Organizers of the effort told Politico they did not intend for the letter to become public.

Sexism in political campaigns is nothing new, but the letter highlights the challenges Democrats will face in the #MeToo era as the race for 2020 kicks into high gear. Sanders, 77, is said to be considering another White House bid. During the last presidential primary, Sanders, an independent who ran as a Democrat, was criticized for his treatment of rival Hillary Clinton, while his more vocal supporters came to be characterized as "Bernie Bros."

Sanders' campaign committee said in their statement that they wanted to allow the signatories to come forward in private and would "honor this principle with respect to this private letter."

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"Speaking generally, during 2016 there were a number of HR actions taken, and while it is not appropriate to discuss them individually, they ranged from employee counseling to immediate termination from the campaign," the statement said.

The committee also noted the "more robust policies and processes" implemented during Sanders' successful Senate reelection bid this year, including training and a toll free hotline for reporting incidents.

"Harassment of any kind is intolerable. Hearing the experiences and thoughts of individuals who worked on Bernie’s 2016 campaign is a vital part of our commitment to work within our progressive community to improve the lives of all people," the statement continued. "And that's why we will continue to examine these policies and processes, with feedback welcome, and will make any necessary changes, as we continue our work to build a world based on social, racial and economic justice."

Image: Image:
Frank Thorp V
Frank Thorp V is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the Senate.


Jane C. Timm
Jane C. Timm is a political reporter and fact checker for NBC News.


THE SUPPOSED SLIGHTING OF BLACK PEOPLE BY SANDERS OR HIS CAMPAIGN HAS CRAWLED OUT INTO THE OPEN AGAIN WITH A SUGGESTION THAT HIS VERMONT EVENT A FEW WEEKS AGO FOR PROGRESSIVES MIGHT HAVE PURPOSELY SLIGHTED BLACK PEOPLE. FIRST, SANDERS IS TOO INTELLIGENT TO DO THAT. SECOND, I NEVER HEARD ANYTHING SAID BY SANDERS THAT WOULD BOLSTER THAT BIT OF PARANOIA. I AM PRESENTING THE NYT ARTICLE FIRST BECAUSE IT SHOWS SANDERS IN A POSITIVE LIGHT INSTEAD OF ALLOWING THE ALMOST TOTALLY HATE-FILLED ARTICLES BY TWO VERMONT PAPERS, WHICH APPEAR SECOND AND THIRD TO REMAIN UNOPPOSED. YOU WILL NOTE THAT THE VERMONT PAPERS MENTIONED ARE NOT THE MAIN NEWS SOURCES FOR THE STATE.

THIS NYT ARTICLE DOESN’T HAVE THAT STOP BERNIE SLANT LIKE THE OTHER TWO. PERSONALLY, I BELIEVE WE WILL FIND OUT HOW MANY BLACK PEOPLE DISLIKE HIM WHEN THE ELECTION OCCURS. WE DO TOO MUCH PROGNOSTICATING ON THESE ELECTIONS. I FEEL SURE THAT NOT ALL BLACKS FEAR OR HATE HIM. I ALSO THINK THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE A DEEPLY IMBEDDED FEELING WHICH THE INDIVIDUAL WISHES TO KEEP. BOTH BLACKS AND WHITES HAVE HARD SET “IDENTITY” ISSUES THAT ONLY THEY CAN DROP. THAT’S WHAT KEEPS US FROM MOVING TOWARD SOMETHING AS AN INDIVIDUAL BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT RATHER THAN BECAUSE IT’S POLITICALLY CORRECT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/us/politics/bernie-sanders-obama-mississippi.html
Bernie Sanders Courts Black Voters Anew. But an Obama Reference Stings.
By Jonathan Martin
April 5, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH -- Senator Bernie Sanders, who struggled for support from black voters in his 2016 presidential bid, at a forum in Jackson, Miss., on the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.
Credit -- Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

JACKSON, Miss. — Senator Bernie Sanders insists he hasn’t decided whether to run again for president, but a 14-hour sprint across the Deep South on Wednesday made clear that he is not only thinking about it but is already trying to remedy his most significant vulnerability in 2016: his lack of support from black voters.

Mr. Sanders began the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination with a morning speech and a march in Memphis, helpfully captured in a picture on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s Twitter feed. He appeared at an economic justice forum here in Mississippi’s capital, speaking before a crowd that included far more African-Americans than his campaign events typically drew. And he wound down over a plate of wings at a late-night dinner with Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Jackson’s new mayor, a 35-year-old African-American and progressive.

Even more than recapturing the magic of 2016 in the early nominating states, Mr. Sanders’s prospects in 2020 would hinge in large part on whether he could garner far stronger support from African-Americans than the less than 20 percent of the vote that he won from them in Southern states.

Still, the same unvarnished bluntness, lack of polish and unwavering devotion to his tried-and-true message — which made him a global hero of the left — continue to create challenges for him. On Wednesday night, after the Jackson forum, Mr. Sanders faced sharp criticism from some African-Americans who thought he had reduced the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, to merely being what Mr. Sanders called a “charismatic individual.”

If any 2020 coalition of Sanders voters was as monochromatic as his supporters in the last campaign, he would find it nearly impossible to win the Democratic nomination, especially given the abundance of party leaders expected to run who could raid his political base of white progressives.

So the senator from Vermont — a state where the largest city has but one black barbershop — has begun trying to make inroads across the South and beyond and the country with black voters, who are perhaps the most crucial pillar in a multicandidate Democratic primary.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Reverend Al Sharpton
✔
@TheRevAl
Sen Bernie Sanders joined us in Memphis. #MLK50

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Earlier this year, Mr. Sanders invited Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Washington, telling Mr. Richmond, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, that he wanted to work more closely with the group. He recently convened a meeting in his office with two black economists who have researched issues of racial and class inequality. And later this month he is expected to join the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a North Carolina-based black pastor who has risen to prominence as a social justice activist, for a joint event at Duke University.

Yet even as he moves to forge new relationships among African-American leaders and Democrats, Mr. Sanders is demonstrating why it may prove difficult for him to command broad support with a bloc of voters who usually do not rally to the more liberal candidates in Democratic primaries.

Image -- The crowd that turned out to see Mr. Sanders on Wednesday night in Mississippi was more racially diverse than that at many of his 2016 campaign rallies.CreditBryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

Appearing with Mr. Lumumba, the Jackson mayor, at the forum on economic justice, Mr. Sanders was asked how he would engage millennial voters and remake the Democratic Party.

He immediately won applause by declaring that the party’s business model had “failed” and then recalled, as he and many Democrats often do, that the party had lost about 1,000 state legislative seats in the last decade.

But Mr. Sanders also said that these setbacks happened on the watch of “a charismatic individual named Barack Obama,” whom Mr. Sanders also called “an extraordinary candidate, brilliant guy.”

Few in the audience responded adversely, many of them having witnessed firsthand the decline of the state and local party. But the fact that his only mention of Mr. Obama was in reference to Democratic defeats, particularly during an event honoring Dr. King in a heavily black Deep South capital with a painful racial history, struck some critics as tone-deaf and even insensitive.

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Jeffrey Wright
✔
@jfreewright
Bernie Sanders down in Mississippi today - IN MISSISSIPPI - giving a master class on expressing TOTAL ignorance of how black folks work.

3,164
11:07 PM - Apr 4, 2018
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Imani Gandy
✔
@AngryBlackLady
did you mention that he was president much less that it was historic?

Because I saw you call him a ‘charismatic individual’—not even leader!

An ‘extraordinary candidate’—not even president!

And ‘brilliant guy’.

Perhaps your office will release a transcript of your remarks.

Bernie Sanders
✔
@BernieSanders
It's unfortunate that some have so degraded our discourse that my recognition of the historical significance of the Obama presidency is attacked. https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/981878100500926467 …

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1:23 PM - Apr 5, 2018
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On Thursday, Mr. Sanders and his top aides responded angrily to the suggestion he had diminished Mr. Obama. The senator tweeted that “some have so degraded our discourse that my recognition of the historical significance of the Obama presidency is attacked.”


Bernie Sanders
✔
@BernieSanders
It's unfortunate that some have so degraded our discourse that my recognition of the historical significance of the Obama presidency is attacked.

Briahna Joy Gray
@briebriejoy
Replying to @briebriejoy

I've been following the anti-Sanders press for some time now, so this is no surprise, but the enormous gulf between how I saw people respond to him in that room and how twitter is reacting is genuinely galling. However I am heartened at the end. Because the people get it.

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The episode was also a reminder of another hurdle in his way: the feud between many Sanders supporters and Democratic leaders and Hillary Clinton loyalists, which has been raging ever since he challenged Mrs. Clinton for the nomination. Mr. Sanders remains very much an insurgent in a party he still has not formally claimed as his own, a fact he made clear in a less remarked-upon part of the same answer: “The establishment,” he said, “doesn’t go quietly into the twilight.”

Mr. Richmond, the Congressional Black Caucus leader, said he did not think Mr. Sanders had slighted Mr. Obama. The mistake Mr. Sanders made, according to Mr. Richmond, was that he did not go the next step and explain why Democrats incurred so many down-ticket defeats during the Obama years.

“The real question is why it happened and it’s no secret: Everybody underestimated the backlash that would come to the first African-American president,” he said.

As Mr. Sanders seeks to gain support from black voters, the Jackson forum was also notable for what the senator did not say to the audience, which skewed young and was almost evenly divided between blacks and whites.

While briefly noting that Dr. King had been a “major political inspiration” for him, Mr. Sanders said nothing about his history as a civil rights activist and his arrest demonstrating against segregation as a college student.

“That’s the No. 1 selling point,” said Teneia Sanders Eichelberger, who plays in a husband-wife band here and supported Mr. Sanders in 2016. “For me and for my grandmother, who’s 82, she loved that about him.”

But unless they already knew about Mr. Sanders’s connection to the movement, hundreds of would-be Democratic primary voters left the gathering none the wiser. (Mrs. Clinton won the 2016 Mississippi Democratic primary with nearly 83 percent of the vote; Mr. Sanders took 16.5 percent.)

Part of Mr. Sanders’s appeal is that he is not a typical, lip-biting politician, ever on the lookout to find a personal connection with any audience. But his relentless focus on the policy dimensions of social justice, which has been the animating cause of his life, can also deprive him of creating bonds that can be essential, especially in building a multiracial coalition.

“Yes, I’m a fairly private person and I don’t like to talk about every aspect of my life,” Mr. Sanders acknowledged in a dressing room interview after the forum. “I think a lot of politicians do that in a way that is not appropriate.”

Upon hearing the suggestion that recounting his own youthful activism would be compelling to an audience full of younger voters becoming activists in their own right, he all but rolled his eyes.

“Somebody might be interested in what I did 50 years ago, that’s fine,” Mr. Sanders said with an evident lack of enthusiasm. “Or what I did yesterday. But what people have got to start focusing on is not me. It’s how we transform America.”

Image --
Bernie Sanders memorabilia was on sale outside the forum in Jackson, Miss., where the senator spoke on Wednesday night.CreditBryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

Mr. Sanders’s reticence can frustrate even his closest supporters.

“If you’re talking to a black audience, you’ve got to say, ‘I was fighting for fair housing in the ’60s,’ ” said Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a top Sanders surrogate in 2016, noting that he has “an interesting story to tell.”

Several of those at the forum Wednesday night said they liked what they heard. And as is typical for Mr. Sanders, who in 2016 did best among millennials, the younger black attendees were the most enthusiastic.

“To hear his voice and see what he stands for, it’s powerful,” said Cassandra Hogue, 26, who backed Mrs. Clinton two years ago as part of what she called “a legacy thing” for the Clintons but said she would be open to supporting Mr. Sanders in 2020.

Deterrian Jones, 19, made the two-hour-plus drive from the University of Mississippi to Jackson and clutched a handful of buttons he bought from vendors outside, one of which featured Mr. Sanders’s unmistakable visage and logo but with a new slogan: “Hindsight 2020.”

“He talks to millennials, unlike other politicians,” Mr. Jones said.

Yet Mr. Sanders could encounter trouble among black voters if he faces a black Democrat in the primary. “Black voters take special pride in being able to vote for viable African-American candidates,” said former congressman Mike Espy, who plans to run for the Senate.

And while few in attendance at the forum said it so directly, many alluded to Mr. Sanders’s age — he is 76 — and voiced a desire for new blood.

“It’s really time for change,” said Rachael Ighoavodha, 24, a recent Jackson State University graduate sporting a “Black Girl Magic” pin. “It’s time for something new.”

In the interview, Mr. Sanders repeatedly assailed what he called the media’s excessive focus on personality over substance. But when confronted with questions about his age, he replied with good-natured humor on a process question.

”What did you say?” he said, feigning hearing loss and gripping a reporter by the shoulder. “Get me my cane.” Yes, age is a fair question, he said. “But health is a factor,” Mr. Sanders quickly added, before turning to an aide and asking how many times the senator had missed work because he was ill.

The staffer could not recall a single instance.

A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 2018, on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Sanders, in Courting Blacks, Is Tripped Up by Notion He Slighted Obama. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe



THIS NATIONAL REVIEW ARTICLE CONSISTS SOLELY OF A HUGE BARRAGE OF ATTACKS ON BERNIE SANDERS BY A KNOWN “CONSERVATIVE” BLOGGER JIM GERAGHTY IN A “CONSERVATIVE” VENUE. THE VICIOUSNESS OF IT LEADS ME TO DOUBT BOTH HIS HONESTY AND FAIRNESS, AS WELL AS THE NUMBER OF SPECIFIC COMPLAINTS. IT LOOKS LIKE THE WORK OF AN “ELECTION RESEARCH” ORGANIZATION TO ME.

GERAGHTY CLEARLY HAS A GRUDGE AGAINST SANDERS. I’VE NEVER HEARD MOST OF THESE THINGS FROM ANOTHER SOURCE, AND THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT ACCUSATIONS HERE THAT IT LOOKS LIKE A SMEAR TO ME. WHO WOULD PAY FOR THAT? PROBABLY THE MAINSTREAM DEMOCRATS, BUT PERHAPS TRUMP AS WELL. HE REALLY DOESN’T LIKE AN OPPONENT WHO IS TOO STRONG. HE TRIES TO HAMSTRING THEM AHEAD OF TIME.

THE NEXT ARTICLE AFTER THAT, FROM ARGUS, GIVES THE PERSONAL COMPLAINTS FROM A MORE LOCAL VIEW, WHICH IS THAT SANDERS AT THE RECENT SANDERS INSTITUTE ACTIVITY, SEEMED TO SOME BLACK GROUPS THAT HE HAD EXCLUDED THEM FROM THE LIST OF SPEAKERS AND ATTENDEES. THAT IS THE ONLY THING THAT LOGICALLY EXPLAINS THIS TORRENT OF SPITE FROM BLACK SOURCES NOW.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/bernie-sanders-twenty-things-you-didnt-know/
Twenty Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Bernie Sanders
By JIM GERAGHTY
December 31, 2018 6:30 AM

ART -- (NRO Illustration: Elijah Smith; Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

The Vermont senator’s history of taxing hospitals, getting slapped, and IRA meetings, and his “honorary woman” status
1) Longtime friend and supporter Garrison Nelson, a political scientist at the University of Vermont, told The New Yorker in 2015, “Bernie’s the last person you’d want to be stuck on a desert island with. Two weeks of lectures about health care, and you’d look for a shark and dive in.”

2) In 2016, he probably received more write-in votes for president, without running in the general election, than anyone else in American history. Only eight states count write-in votes for candidates who did not file paperwork to run in the general election.

In 2016, 18,218 Vermont voters wrote in his name in the presidential general election, which was 5.8 percent of the total vote. That was more than libertarian Gary Johnson and Green-party nominee Jill Stein — combined. In California, Sanders got 79,341, which was more than Evan McMullin; in Pennsylvania, Sanders had 6,060; in New Hampshire, Sanders won 4,493; and in Rhode Island, 3,497 (again ahead of McMullin). Among the states that counted write-in votes, Sanders had 111,609 votes.

In 1996, Green-party nominee Ralph Nader received 685,297 votes, but he was a write-in candidate in some states and listed on the ballot in others.

3) His first campaign for public office started because he simply showed up and volunteered. In 1971, Vermont Republican senator Winston Prouty died, setting up a special election. A young Bernie Sanders chose to attend the meeting of the newly formed Liberty Union party, which he described in his memoir as “a small peace-oriented third party.” (The party called for “nonviolent revolutionary socialism” and compared the draft to slavery.)

In Sanders’s account, he became the candidate for Senate because at the meeting the party needed a candidate; he raised his hand and volunteered. He won 2 percent statewide. In the subsequent decade, Sanders twice ran as the Liberty Union party’s candidate for Senate and twice for governor, never winning more than 6 percent of the vote. During this time, he declared on the campaign trail that the Central Intelligence Agency was “a dangerous institution that has got to go,” and that “right-wing lunatics use it to prop up fascist dictatorships.”

By the time Sanders was elected to Congress, the Liberty Union party saw him as a sellout, calling him “Bernie the Bomber,” charging “Bernie became an imperialist to get elected in 1990” and declaring, “Bernie’s selling out says clearly to working people and those unable to find work that even leftists become mainstream politicians, when and if they win office.” The group also observed that, at the time, Sanders had “no person of color on his staff.”

4) His first successful campaign, for mayor of Burlington in 1981, was largely driven by opposition to higher residential property taxes.

The city’s five-term Democratic mayor, Gordon Paquette, proposed raising property taxes by 65 cents per $100 of assessed value and barely bothered to campaign. Sanders contended that the city’s needs could be funded by a 25-cent increase, and the voters preferred the lower hike.

As the New York Times described it, “Mr. Sanders did not campaign as a Socialist and Mr. Paquette did not make an issue of it.” He told the paper, “I’m not going to war with the city’s financial and business community and I know that there is little I can do from City Hall to accomplish my dreams for society.”

Sanders called property taxes regressive because “they are not based on ability to pay” and boasted that he held off any additional residential property tax increases for seven years. But while he was mayor, the city implemented taxes on meals and hotel rooms, raised commercial and industrial property taxes, and taxed cable television.

5) It didn’t take long for Sanders to start pushing policy in unorthodox directions, most notably declaring in 1987 that the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, now known as the University of Vermont Medical Center, was no longer tax-exempt; he sent the hospital a tax bill for $2.9 million. Sanders declared, “There are a heck of a lot of people up there making a heck of a lot of money.” This led to a court fight; a superior court judge ruled against the city on all counts, declaring that “statutes should not be construed in such a way that will lead to irrational or absurd consequences.” Twelve years later, after Sanders had departed the mayor’s office to become Vermont’s lone representative in the U.S. House, the hospital and Burlington reached an agreement on payments in return for municipal services and higher levels of charitable care.

6) Shortly after being elected as mayor, Sanders kicked off of the 40th annual Chittenden County United Way fundraising drive by announcing to gasps, “I don’t believe in charities.” Sanders went on to argue that government, rather than charity organizations, should take over responsibility for social programs.

7) As mayor, Sanders liked to pursue his own foreign policy. In 1985, he lamented that Americans were unfairly and unreasonably hostile to the Soviet Union, telling the Los Angeles Times:

A handful of people in this country are making decisions, whipping up Cold War hysteria, making us hate the Russians. We’re spending billions on military. Why can’t we take some of that money to pay for thousands of U.S. children to go to the Soviet Union?

(In the preceding few years, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007, and pushed for the institution of martial law in Poland.)

The city of Burlington issued many proclamations about U.S. foreign policy. “I did not want to see taxpayer dollars going to the CIA for an appalling war,” Sanders wrote in his 1998 autobiography, Outsider in the House. “While most of the Democrats and Republicans on the Board of Alderman disagreed, to us this was very much a municipal issue.”

8) He argued that bread lines in Communist countries were a sign of the system’s success:

It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food: The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death.

He said in a 1985 interview that he espoused “traditional socialist goals — public ownership of oil companies, factories, utilities, banks, etc.”

In the mid 1980s, Burlington’s minor-league baseball team was named the “Vermont Reds,” but this was not, as some Internet sites claim, a salute to Communism. The team was affiliated with the major-league Cincinnati Reds. However, Sanders’s softball team was indeed called “the People’s Republic of Burlington.”

9) In 1985, Sanders was invited by the Nicaraguan government to Managua to visit for the celebration of the sixth anniversary of the rebel Sandinista takeover. According to Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, “Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, ‘Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die,’ while President Daniel Ortega condemned ‘state terrorism’ by America.” A UPI wire service report described the chant; Sanders has many times discussed attending the rally, calling it “a profoundly emotional experience,” but he has never mentioned the chant.

10) That 1985 Los Angeles Times article also noted that “representatives from the Irish Republican Army have stopped by Sanders’ office during the past four years.” A subsequent Boston Globe article stated, “members of the Irish Republican Army were regularly invited to City Hall.”

11) Many profiles of Sanders mention that he and his wife Jane “honeymooned in the Soviet Union,” which is technically accurate but a bit misleading. Burlington had a “sister city” program with Yaroslavl in Russia, and a foreign-exchange trip with the Soviet Union was scheduled in 1988. Sanders later said that he and his wife “set their wedding date to coincide with that trip because they didn’t want to take more time off.”

12) For much of his career, Sanders has theorized that there is a psychological or psychosomatic aspect to cancer: “When the human spirit is broken, when the life force is squashed, cancer becomes a possibility,” the 28-year-old Sanders wrote in the Vermont Freeman, an alternative newspaper, in December 1969. In 1988, discussing the death of Nora Astorga, a Sandinista politician who had died of cervical cancer. Sanders said:

I have my own feelings about what causes cancer and the psychosomatic aspects of cancer. . . . One wonders if the war did not claim another victim of another person who couldn’t deal with her tremendous grief and suffering that’s going on in her own country.

In one of his infamous essays in the Freeman, Sanders wrote, in 1969, “The manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develop breast cancer, among other things.”

13) In 1988, Sanders attended a non-binding Vermont Democratic-party caucus in Burlington, supporting Jesse Jackson. In Outsider in the House, he writes, “A number of old-line Dems stood up and turned around as I delivered my speech. And when I returned to my seat, a woman in the audience slapped me across the face.” Sanders said it was the first and last time he ever participated in a formal Democratic-party function. Because Vermont has no formal party registration, he has never formally registered as a Democrat, although by 1994, the Vermont Democratic party stopped running candidates against him. In early 2015, he filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for president as a Democrat.

14) In 1989, Sanders taught at the Institute of Policy Studies at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and came away somewhat disappointed. “I know that conservatives worry a great deal about Harvard,” Sanders wrote in Outsider in the House. “They see it as a bastion of progressive thought, the brain trust for revolution. Trust me. They can stop worrying. Harvard has many wonderful attributes, but the revolution will not start at Harvard University.”

15) In his 1986 campaign for governor, Sanders declared he would be a better feminist than the incumbent, Democratic governor Madeleine Kunin. He dismissed her in an interview, declaring, “Many people are excited because she’s the first woman governor. But after that, there ain’t much.” Feminist groups didn’t seem to mind; at a 1996 rally for his congressional campaign, feminist Gloria Steinem called him “an honorary woman.”

16) Sanders relationship with another liberal Vermont politician, Howard Dean, is surprisingly complicated. In 1996, then-governor Howard Dean said he had never voted for Sanders, who was then in his third term as a congressman. Dean said he had left his ballot blank. In 1993, when Sanders was pushing for the state to embrace Canadian-style single-payer health care, Dean accused Sanders of being dishonest about the costs:

I don’t think it’s fair for politicians to raise these kinds of expectations and pretend it’s going to cost everybody less because it’s not going to happen. That’s just not fair. People have had that done to them for a long time. Ronald Reagan was a master of that kind of stuff.

Sanders responded, “I have never been attacked for being like Ronald Reagan. I find that very amusing.”

As a superdelegate, Dean voted for Hillary Clinton over Sanders in 2016. In December 2017, Howard Dean said during an appearance on MSNBC that older members of the Democratic party need “to get the hell out of the way and have somebody who is 50 running the country.”

17) In 2015, a Vermont alternative newspaper held a “Bernie Sanders sound-alike contest,” and more than 40 people participated. The winner was comedian James Adomian, who imitated Sanders insisting that pizza and cheesy bread are “a right for all people, and not just a privilege for the few.”

18) During his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders said he wanted to end fracking entirely, that there has never been a single U.S. trade agreement with a foreign country that he’s been comfortable with, and declared, “It makes no sense that students and their parents pay higher interest rates for college than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages.” The comparison ignores the concept of collateral and the fact that most homeowners and car buyers put money down at the time of purchase. It is difficult to repossess an education.

19) In 2016 and 2017, Sanders made more than $1 million, mostly from book advances and royalties. He received a half-million-dollar advance for this year’s book, Where We Go from Here. (Ironically, back in 1974, Sanders told the Burlington Free Press, “Nobody should earn more than $1 million.”) When the senator received some grief during the 2016 campaign for not releasing his tax returns, he said his wife does the couple’s taxes. Days later, he released his 2014 returns, showing adjusted gross income of $205,271. Despite Sanders’s 1981 statement that he didn’t believe in charities, he and his wife donated $8,350 to charity, according to the return.

20) The population of Vermont is so heavily white that the NAACP didn’t establish a branch in the state until 2015. Progressives among the roughly 1.2 percent of Vermonters that are African-American have at times accused Sanders of neglecting them.

In December 2018, the Sanders Institute — a think tank founded in 2017 by Sanders’s wife, Jane, and her son from a previous marriage, David Driscoll, who previously worked at a snowboarding company — held a three-day conference on the progressive agenda. Fourteen progressive and African-American community leaders objected to a lack of local representatives invited or speaking. They signed a letter declaring, “This is either a major oversight or just one more example of how institutional oppression looks, even among those who are progressive.”

Some of the criticism was even harsher. Curtiss Reed Jr., executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, told a local newspaper,

This is a well-established pattern that Sanders has illustrated over the decades of marginalizing people of color, of not extending himself to understand our experiences here as they relate to micro-aggressions, micro-invalidations, micro-injustices. He has shown himself incapable or unwilling to do what it takes to engage us, one-to-one or collectively, in terms of understanding what our experiences are in this state and how he might be able to mitigate the negative effects of systemic racism.

JIM GERAGHTY — Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review. @jimgeraghty


ANTI-SANDERS VOICES SPEAK FROM SOME RACIALLY ACTIVIST GROUPS, AS VOICED BY PATRICK MCARDLE AT TIMESARGUS.COM LOCAL NEWS. FROM WHAT I CAN GATHER, THOUGH THIS IS LESS SPECIFIC INFORMATION AND MORE INVECTIVE STATING THAT SANDERS IS NOT “AWOKE,” AND THAT HIS SANDERS INSTITUTE DID NOT INVITE ENOUGH LOCAL PEOPLE OF COLOR TO THE RECENT GATHERING, IMPLYING THAT IT WAS A “MICRO-AGGRESSION,” OR IN MORE COMMON USAGE, A SNUB. ONE WOMAN STATES THAT SOME WHO DID GO HAD TO “BEG THEIR WAY IN.” I THINK IN ALL PROBABILITY THEY HAD TO LIMIT THE LIST OR SIMPLY DIDN’T THINK OF EACH ONE AS BEING INTERESTED IN ATTENDING. PERHAPS ALL THE SANDERS INSTITUTE NEEDED TO DO WAS POST AN ANNOUNCEMENT THAT ATTENDEES WOULD BE LIMITED TO A CERTAIN NUMBER AND GIVE A TELEPHONE NUMBER FOR LOCAL PEOPLE TO CALL CONCERNING EXTRA SEATS, THE WAY LITTLE THEATERS SOMETIMES DO. AS IT IS, THOUGH, HE IS BEING PRESENTED IN A BAD LIGHT, THOUGH WITH NO SPECIFIC CHARGES EXCEPT AN INFERRED EXCLUSION. THE FACT THAT A NUMBER OF PEOPLE FROM VERMONT WHO APPEAR TO FEEL THAT THE STATE IS EXCLUDING TOWARD PEOPLE OF COLOR IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM, HOWEVER, AND SANDERS SHOULD CONSIDER IT FOR HIS ATTENTION. THE FACT THAT BOTH OF THESE NEWS OUTLETS ARE KNOWN TO BE “CONSERVATIVE,” IS NOT INSIGNIFICANT, THOUGH, AND CAUSES ME TO QUESTION EVEN THE RELIABILITY OF THIS INFORMATION.

https://www.timesargus.com/news/local/social-justice-leaders-challenge-sanders/article_2f805e07-335a-5c10-b69c-3d34e394c0cb.html
social justice groups
Social justice leaders challenge Sanders
By Patrick Mcardle Staff Writer Dec 4, 2018 0

Last week, the Sanders Institute hosted a three-day forum on progressive ideas, but looking at the guest list, a number of Vermonters, many of them black leaders of political organizations, are feeling excluded, angry and marginalized.

The event was described by the Associated Press as a “pep rally for ... policy issues such as universal health care, protecting the environment and economic and criminal justice reform.” The Sanders Institute is an independent nonprofit but Sen. Bernie Sanders was a speaker at the event.

A letter written by Tabitha Pohl-Moore and Steffen Gillom, the presidents of the NAACP’s Rutland Area Branch and Windham County Branch, respectively, and signed by other social justice leaders, asked how Sanders “could be ‘awoken,’ in the words of Victor Lee Lewis, when you come home to Vermont to talk about justice and institutional oppression and don’t invite the very people you represent?”

Pohl-Moore called the forum an “elitist event” that excluded Vermonters who worked diligently with marginalized people to create Vermont’s reputation as a progressive state.

“If there is a meeting and they are sitting at the table, we ask them to have a seat on that table,” added Wafic Faour, a member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine and Black Lives Matter of Greater Burlington.

Kiah Morris, a former state representative for Bennington, who resigned because she was receiving threats and harassment, said it was not news that Vermont was in the midst of a “crisis when it comes to the rights and the experiences of people of color.”

“It’s international news. If there was ever an opportunity to show our Vermont leaders — because it was held in Vermont. That was not a mistake — so if we ask the global leaders that we are to be driving these conversations, than we have to be there. There is no future without us,” she said.

Asked to explain how the guests and speakers were chosen for the forum and to respond to the letter from Pohl-Moore and Gillom, which was posted on Facebook, Sanders’ office released a statement.

“The senator is proud that the Sanders Institute was able to bring progressives from all over the country and from throughout the world to our state of Vermont to discuss some of the biggest issues we face. Needless to say, in Vermont, like other states across the country, there are some very serious social and racial justice challenges, and the senator looks forward to continuing his work with Vermonters on these issues.”

Morris said she was especially offended because people of color already recognized systemic racism as toxic.

“For us to be excluded and only considered as an afterthought and to have to sort of beg our way in is a ridiculous notion,” she said.

Beverly Little Thunder, an activist and member of the Peace and Justice Board, called the effort to pass responsibility to the Sanders Institute an “old game played by white men all over this country.”

Discussing the event on Monday, many who had spent years or even decades working for social justice expressed disappointment in Sanders.

“This is a well-established pattern that Sanders has illustrated over the decades of marginalizing people of color, of not extending himself to understand our experiences here as they relate to micro-aggressions, micro-invalidations, micro-injustices. He has shown himself incapable or unwilling to do what it takes to engage us, one-to-one or collectively, in terms of understanding what our experiences are in this state and how he might be able to mitigate the negative effects of systemic racism,” said Curtiss Reed Jr., executive director of Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity.

Reed added Sanders had “never stepped foot in the arena of social justice for the state of Vermont.”

The executive director for Justice For All, Mark Hughes, said he was going to say “all the things nobody is saying.”

“We also have a so-called progressive, neo-liberal white movement across this state that worships — and I say that with a capital W — Bernie Sanders and will come at you, sideways, if you say anything about him, in conjunction with Bernie being extremely defensive, which creates an environment similar to that that’s created by Trump himself because no one wants to say anything,” he said.

Gillom said progressive politicians could be taking a risk by not considering exclusion.

“Gone are the days when people of color are just going to sit by idly while movements use our intellectual capacity and promote themselves on our backs and we just go with it. We have come a long way and people of color are resilient,” he said.

Hughes added that the issue would not be forgotten.

“We’re disappointed in what Bernie Sanders had to say about this. … I expect there will be some pushback, especially from our so-called white neo-liberal progressives who are hugely protective of Bernie, I’m fully expecting that and I’m looking forward to the conversations,” he said.

patrick.mcardle@rutlandherald.com


THE GATHERING

https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/vermont/2018/12/31/bernie-sanders-2016-campaign-workers-demand-meeting-sexual-harassment-politics-politico/2450852002/
Politico: Former Sanders campaign workers demand meeting on sexual harassment in political work
Nicole Higgins DeSmet, Burlington Free Press Published 2:57 p.m. ET Dec. 31, 2018 | Updated 3:12 p.m. ET Dec. 31, 2018

PHOTOGRAPH – SANDERS SPEAKING Photo: (APRIL McCULLUM/FREE PRESS)

Former staff of potential presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, want to get ahead of a possible 2020 run with a talk about sexual violence and harassment on Sanders political campaign, according to Politico, a political news site and magazine based near Washington, D.C.

The group hopes to "mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle," according to the letter, which also states that such issues are ubiquitous on political campaigns in general, not specific to Sanders' campaign.

More: VT Insights: 5 signs Bernie Sanders is running in 2020
More: Bernie Sanders gathers with progressive faithful as 2020 hangs in the air

More than a dozen former campaign staffers for Sen. Sander's signed the letter asking to sit down with the Senator and 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver as well as other top staff including: Caryn Compton, Ari Rabin-Havt, Arianna Jones and Shannon Jackson, according to the document published by Politico on Dec. 30, 2018.

The letter writers hope to create a "gold standard" harassment policy.

Sanders staff did not respond to a request for comment to confirm the letters or answer if the requested meeting was scheduled, by the time of publication.

The letter, published by Politico, kept the writers anonymous. No specific incidents of harassment were outlined.

Here is a copy:

DOCUMENT
TEXT

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Alex Thompson, the reporter who broke the story, posted a Tweet showing a response from the Friends of Bernie Sanders, Sander's principal campaign fundraising group.

The campaign group, according to the letter, condemned harassment, welcomed feedback and promised to honor the privacy of the signatories to the letter.

There was no mention of a specific meeting to address the concerns.


Alex Thompson
✔
@AlxThomp
· Dec 30, 2018
Exclusive: More than 2 dozen women and men who worked on Bernie's 2016 campaign are seeking a meeting with Sanders + advisers to “discuss the issue of sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign" according to a copy of letter obtained by POLITICO. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/30/bernie-sanders-campaign-harassment-1077014 …

View image on Twitter

Alex Thompson
✔
@AlxThomp
Friends of Bernie Sanders, the senator's principal campaign committee, responded to the letter in the attached statement. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/30/bernie-sanders-campaign-harassment-1077014 … pic.twitter.com/VSVCryCkNd

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Contact Nicole Higgins DeSmet ndesmet@freepressmedia.com or 802-660-1845. Follow her on Twitter @NicoleHDeSmet.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46716605
Bangladesh election: Opposition demands new vote
30 December 2018

VIDEO -- There were violent scenes outside polling stations


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46714553
Channel migrants: UK and France to step up patrols
DECEMBER 31, 2018 8 hours ago

DECEMBER 30, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


MOST OF THE ARTICLES I SAW THE LAST FEW DAYS WERE ABOUT MIGRANT CHILDREN, WHICH IS AS SAD TO ME AS THE YEAR BY YEAR DEGRADATION OF OUR HUMAN AND ANIMAL HABITAT ON EARTH. THERE IS SOMETHING EVIL ABOUT MISTREATMENT OF CHILDREN, THOUGH, SO I AM HAPPY TO SEE THE STRONG FOCUS ON THIS IN THE NEWS.

MOST AMERICANS ARE SO THRILLED WITH MACHINES AND GADGETS THAT THEY DON’T WORRY AS MUCH ABOUT THE NEGATIVE INFLUENCES ON THE BASIC ENJOYMENT OF LIFE THAT WE HAVE COME TO TAKE FOR GRANTED. OF COURSE, TO MANY, MONEY IS THEIR PREOCCUPATION AND THEIR JOY.

I JUST HAD A FLASHBACK OF A CARTOON SCENE FROM MY CHILDHOOD OF SCROOGE MCDUCK WALLOWING HAPPILY IN A SMALL MOUNTAIN OF GOLDEN COINS. PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR SAYING “MONEY QUACKS.”

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/30/us/arizona-migrant-child-abuse-allegations/index.html
Videos showing shelter staffers pushing, shoving migrant children under review for possible criminal charges
By Dakin Andone, Devon M. Sayers and Marlena Baldacci, CNN
Updated 7:02 PM ET, Sun December 30, 2018

(CNN)A case regarding the alleged abuse of migrant children in a Southwest Key shelter will be referred to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for review and to determine whether criminal charges will be filed, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

The news comes after the Arizona Republic obtained surveillance videos through an open records request that show staffers pushing and dragging migrant children in a shelter operated by Southwest Key, the nation's largest provider of migrant children shelters.

New York Times reports Southwest Key subject of probe, but shelter provider says no contact with feds

According to the newspaper, the incidents took place at the Hacienda Del Sol shelter in Youngtown, Arizona, in mid-September and involved three children and numerous staffers.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office initially told CNN it investigated the allegations but determined the actions did not rise to the level of criminal charges.

But the office changed its mind and said in an updated statement released Sunday: "Based upon the evidence gathered during this thorough investigation, MCSO executive command has made the decision to submit the case to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for its review and determination of criminal charges."

The case will be submitted on Monday, the sheriff's office said.

Videos show staff members shoving, dragging children

Southwest Key closed the Hacienda Del Sol facility in late October after negotiations with state health authorities who were considering revoking the licenses of 13 Southwest Key shelters in Arizona, according to the Arizona Republic.

CNN previously reported the Arizona Department of Health Services considered the move because Southwest Key had failed to provide the department with proof it conducts background checks on employees.

The videos were blurred and edited by the state's Department of Health Services, which licenses the migrant shelters.

Play Video -- Who's caring for kids separated from parents at border? 02:06

One clip published by the Arizona Republic shows a male staffer dragging a young child into the room and pushing him against the wall. There appears to be a confrontation between the two before the male staffer leaves the room.

Another video shows a female staff member pulling a child through the room and attempting to enter another room.

The child lies on the ground and the female staffer drags the child through the doorway as another staff member pulls a different child into the conference room and drags that child into the next room.

CNN has filed a Freedom of Information request to obtain the videos.

Two staffers fired, source says

Southwest Key declined to comment on the case now being referred to the Maricopa County Attorney, but referred CNN to a statement the company issued at the time of the incident.

"We wholeheartedly welcomed the Office of Refugee Resettlement's decision to suspend operations at Hacienda Del Sol and are working to thoroughly retrain our staff," Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller told the Arizona Republic in a statement on October 5.

"We are simultaneously engaging the Child Welfare Consulting Partnership* to do an independent, top to bottom review of our processes, procedures, hiring and training in our Arizona shelters."

After children die in US custody, authorities turn to nation's pediatricians for guidance

According to a source with direct knowledge of how the incidents in the videos were handled, Southwest Key self-reported to the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Refugee Resettlement and local police at the time the events occurred.

After an internal investigation, two staff members were fired and additional disciplinary measures were taken against other staffers, the source said.

The Arizona Department of Health Services confirmed in a statement to the Arizona Republic that it did receive a report about the incident in mid-September and that it prompted an investigation and an on-site inspection.

CNN has reached out to both the Arizona Department of Health Services and the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.

CNN's Chris Boyette and Faith Karimi contributed to this report.


VIDEO

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2018/12/28/migrant-kids-dragged-shoved-video-footage-arizona-shelter/2436296002/
Videos: Migrant children dragged, pushed at Southwest Key shelter
Mary Jo Pitzl, Arizona Republic Published 7:21 p.m. MT Dec. 28, 2018 | Updated 10:43 p.m. MT Dec. 28, 2018

Videos from a Southwest Key shelter for migrant children show staffers dragging and pushing children, incidents that occurred shortly before the federal government suspended the shelter's operations early this fall.

The Arizona Republic obtained the videos from the Arizona Department of Health Services under state public-records law.

Southwest Key had reported the mid-September incidents, which involved three children and numerous staffers at the Youngtown shelter, to state authorities, as well as local law-enforcement and federal officials, but declined to publicly provide details at the time.

Southwest Key ultimately closed the shelter, called Hacienda Del Sol, in late October. That came in the wake of negotiations with state health authorities over potential revocation of all 13 licenses that Southwest Key holds in Arizona, because of the company's lapses in background checks for staff.

MORE: Southwest Key to close 2 Phoenix-area migrant-child shelters, pay fine to state

Protesters voice concerns about Southwest Key
Fullscreen
Kids dragged, slapped

One surveillance video shows a male staffer dragging and pulling a boy into a room, then slapping him and pushing him against a wall. The staffer then recoils when it appears the child strikes him. The staffer then leaves the room, and the boy is seen retreating to a corner, then pounding on the window in a door to an adjacent room.

A second video shows a female staffer hustling a child through a conference room, then dragging the child into an adjoining room because the child had lain down and tried to block the doorway with their legs. It is unclear from the edited video if the child is a boy or girl.

As that is happening, another staffer pulls a child with extended arms into the same room. All the while, workers doing other tasks in the conference room go about their business, with one seen adjusting her ponytail.

A third video shows a disrupted classroom setting, but the exact actions are unclear from the blurry image.

The state agency blurred the videos to protect the privacy of the children depicted.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva says “I’m assuming I’m seeing the best of” Tucson immigration facility and that the delay “lowers the believability factor.” Kaila White, The Republic | azcentral.com

It's unclear if the incidents directly prompted the federal intervention. The videos were from Sept. 14, 17 and 21, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which investigated the incidents. The federal government, which contracts with Southwest Key to house migrant children, suspended operations at the facility in early October.

Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller declined to elaborate on the incidents Friday. Instead, he reiterated what the shelter operator said in October: welcoming the move by federal authorities to suspend the facility's operations and pledging to retrain all staff.

The Arizona Republic in October submitted a records request to the Sheriff's Office for details on the incidents that prompted the suspension. The agency has yet to provide records, but late Friday, a spokesman said after reviewing the specific surveillance videos, as well as hours of other videos to ensure no harm to children, it found no grounds for criminal charges.

"(T)he investigation determined that while physical force and restraint techniques were used against these minor children, these actions did not rise to the level of criminal charges," Sgt. Joaquin Enriquez said in a statement.

State law permits the kinds of restraint techniques shown in the videos, he said.

State health officials declined to comment on the videos.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva tours Southwest Key Programs shelter in Tucson

Background checks missing

As [sic] the same time the incidents captured on video were happening, Southwest Key was under pressure from state regulators over failing to ensure that all of its employees were properly backgrounded. The health department threatened to revoke the licenses of all 13 Southwest Key shelters.

But settlement talks resulted in Southwest Key agreeing to close two shelters in exchange for the state dropping its revocation threat. One of them was the Youngtown facility.

The shelter had previously been dogged by allegations of sexual assault involving children. Those earlier investigations ended with a plea deal for one boy who was accused by his roommate of placing his penis inside the roommate's mouth. Two other cases of alleged inappropriate actions with children were unsubstantiated.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, after a tour of a shelter for migrant kids on July 6, 2018, says the children are being cared for but ultimately it left him sad. Kaila White, The Republic | azcentral.com

Those allegations predated the surge of unaccompanied minors sent to Arizona shelters when the Trump administration last summer ordered migrant children to be separated from their parents at the border.

At the same time Southwest Key announced it was closing Hacienda Del Sol in Youngtown, it also shuttered its Casa Phoenix shelter just south of downtown. Neither Southwest Key nor the state health department would comment on why that shelter, which housed as many as 400 children, was shut down.

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl.

READ MORE:

Arizona Southwest Key shelter was closed because staff abused kids, feds say
Feds close migrant children shelter after incident
State moves to pull Southwest Key's licenses
Southwest Key employee accused of sexually abusing 14-year-old migrant girl
Southwest Key worker convicted of molesting minors at Mesa migrant shelter
State: Migrant shelters didn't background check employees
Southwest Key facility in Tucson


"Child Welfare Consulting Partnership*" --

THIS SEVERAL PAGE-LONG PDF CONTAINS ALL YOU’LL EVER WANT TO KNOW ABOUT CHILD WELFARE CONSULTING PARTNERSHIP AND ITS’ EFFORTS TO CORRECT AND SUPPORT SWK.ORG. YOU CAN READ IT AT THIS WEBSITE:
https://www.swkey.org/UnidosLetter102418-FINAL.pdf


THIS STORY IS AS MUCH A LIST OF CAUTIONS FOR DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE AS A PROUD WELCOMING, THOUGH SCHOEN’S BACKGROUND HAS LARGELY BEEN WITH DEMOCRATS. HE IS ALSO A CONSULTANT WITH FOX NEWS. DRAT! HE IS IMPLYING THAT THE NON-CLINTONIAN DEMOCRATS WILL BE UNWISE AND OBSTRUCTIVE, BUT I HAVE SEEN NO SIGNS OF THAT, AT LEAST NOT JUST ON GENERAL PRINCIPLES, AS WITH THE TEA PARTY REPUBLICANS. DISRUPTIVE OR OBSTRUCTIONIST BEHAVIOR IN POLITICS IS MORE LIKELY A PLOY THAN A PERMANENT STANCE.

WHEN A PARTY IS IN THE MAJORITY, THEY DON’T NEED TO BE STUBBORN LIKE THEIR MASCOT, THE DONKEY. I WOULD NOT WANT THEM TO JUST TODDLE RIGHT ALONG WHERE THE TRUMP FORCES WANT TO LEAD THEM AS SEVERAL ARTICLES HAVE SAID THIS LAST WEEK, EITHER, THOUGH. TRUMP IS JUST PLAYING ONE OF HIS HEAD GAMES AND TRYING TO MILK THE GOVERNMENT DRY ON HIS, TO MANY PEOPLE, FOOLISH BORDER WALL. HE HAS SAID NOT ONE WORD THAT I SAW ABOUT THE DEATHS OF YOUNG CHILDREN IN THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS. WE MUST GET THAT SITUATION CHANGED IN OUR BORDER PATROL ACTIONS.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/423216-resolving-the-shutdown-gives-democrats-great-opportunity
Resolving the shutdown gives Democrats great opportunity
BY DOUGLAS SCHOEN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/30/18 10:00 AM EST
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

By the end of last week, it was apparent no progress had been made on reopening the government. President Trump and top lawmakers were not even talking. Republicans leaders also reportedly are admitting in private what already appears to be quite clear, which is that they will not get a new deal before the new Congress begins its session this coming week.

Indeed, I have argued that the decision President Trump made to enter this shutdown was foolish and only set our country back, especially as trade tensions with China have increased, administration overturn worsened with the departures of Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in the hot seat over simply following the clear course of action to raise interest rates the central bank had signaled for months.

Adding to this, the recent deaths of two children who were coming with their families to immigrate to the United States while in custody of Customs and Border Patrol has continued to shine a negative light on the administration. Despite these complicated factors, which only harm our position economically and globally, I would instead like to shift focus to the tremendous position the new House majority Democrats find themselves in and how to take full advantage of this great opportunity.

While most Democrats who won election to the House focused primarily on protecting and assisting undocumented immigrants, and not the essential border security component of immigration reform, I would like to again emphasize the importance of border security to these Democrats as a bargaining chip that can allow them to accomplish two critical tasks.

The first and obvious task is reforming our broken immigration system. President Trump has made his position clear that the government will remain in a shutdown until our border is secured. Rather than cause more gridlock over this facet of the issue, the Democrats would be wise to forge a compromise with him on protecting law abiding undocumented immigrants who are here in our country proudly seeking the American dream in exchange for more physical and technological border security.

Nancy Pelosi, the presumptive Speaker of the House, called out President Trump for fear mongering with immigration. She said he “talked about terrorists coming in over that particular border, which was not so. He talked about people bringing in diseases and all the rest of that, which was not so.” While she is correct in her assertions of people trying to enter the country, she fails to recognize the importance of border security.

A report published earlier this year by the Bipartisan Policy Center stated that most Americans “do not feel that anyone is controlling the process or supervising who enters the country legally, and they think that insecure borders make it easier for people to come to the United States illegally.” This alone will be an important task for the Democrats to overcome.

While it is true that this deal will involve building fences and walls, it will also allow our border security agents, as well as our Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, to have better access to technologies and tools that will make their jobs, as well as the experiences of migrants, significantly safer and allow the system to run much more effectively.

The second task, which is arguably of greatest importance to the new House majority Democrats to achieve, is to prove to Americans that they can in fact get things done in Washington and deliver the reforms they promised on the campaign trail. The Democrats have a great opportunity to take charge on a terribly wrong sighted shutdown that President Trump repeatedly called for and reinforce the fact to the public that they can effectively enact reforms, even after the Republicans repeatedly failed to do so while controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress.

I fully understand the barriers to such a compromise. I am concerned that the drastic ideological shift the Democrats have taken over the past two years will prevent them from coming together on this key issue to deliver critical reforms. The stakes, however, could not be higher for the future of the party. Resistance toward President Trump and the Republicans across the aisle is simply not what voters want or need from the new Congress.

This approach will prevent progress on getting anything done and will hinder the ability of the Democrats to show they are the party with a proactive governing agenda that offers an effective set of alternative policies, rather than the party that simply boasts the loudest voices.

In no uncertain terms, the next two years in Congress will be essential for framing the 2020 election. The Democrats, particularly those in the House majority, must focus on strong governance focused on solutions. The excitement from the 2018 election has already worn thin. Starting this week, the Democrats must demonstrate how to lead, employ checks and balances with great prudence, and should not merely resist and obstruct.

Douglas E. Schoen* (@DouglasESchoen) served as a pollster for President Clinton. A longtime political consultant, he is also a Fox News contributor and the author of 11 books, including “Putin’s Master Plan: To Destroy Europe, Divide NATO, and Restore Russian Power and Global Influence.”


ZOO WORK IS DANGEROUS, AND HERE SOMEONE MUST HAVE LEFT THE CAGE OPEN. THIS WOMAN WAS JUST OUT OF COLLEGE. HER PHOTOGRAPH LOOKS YOUNG AND SWEET, YET SHE HAD TO DIE TODAY. I’M VERY SORRY TO SEE THESE THINGS WHEN THEY HAPPEN. ANIMAL WORK LIKE THIS IS USUALLY A LABOR OF LOVE RATHER THAN JUST A JOB, AND THEY ALL KNOW IT COULD END LIKE THIS. CONGRATULATIONS TO HER FOR HAVING THE BELIEF IN HERSELF TO GO OUTSIDE THE CLASSIC SAFE, BORING “WOMAN’S WORK.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/escaped-lion-kills-worker-north-carolina-zoo-n953121
Escaped lion kills 22-year-old intern at North Carolina zoo
"The Conservators Center is devastated by the loss of a human life today," the zoo said in a statement.
Dec. 30, 2018 / 3:53 PM EST
By Janelle Griffith

VIDEO – LION KILLS INTERN AT NORTH CAROLINA ZOO DURATION 00:57
DECEMBER 30, 2018

A 22-year-old intern at a North Carolina zoo was killed Sunday after a lion escaped a locked space.

The Conservators Center in Burlington — between Greensboro and Durham — announced that the intern was killed during a routine cleaning of an animal enclosure at about 11:30 a.m. ET.

The victim was identified by the Caswell County Sheriff's Office as Alexandra Black, 22, a native of New Palestine, Indiana, and a recent graduate of Indiana State University.

PHOTOGRAPH -- Alexandra Black, 22, who was killed Sunday by an escaped lion at a North Carolina zoo.

"While a husbandry team led by a professionally trained animal keeper was carrying out a routine enclosure cleaning, one of the lions somehow left a locked space and entered the space the humans were in and quickly killed one person," the zoo said in a statement. "The Conservators Center is devastated by the loss of a human life today."

The lion was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies. The center said it is investigating how the lion escaped its enclosure and that the zoo will be closed until further notice.

Lion kills intern at North Carolina Zoo

Black had been employed at the Conservators Center for approximately two weeks, authorities said.

The Conservators Center houses more than 80 animals from 20 species, including about 20 big cats, such as lions, leopards and tigers.

In 2004, the zoo assisted the U.S. Department of Agriculture by accepting 14 lions and tigers that were part of a larger confiscation of animals living in unacceptable conditions, the center's website states. It has more than 16,000 visitors each year.

Janelle Griffith
Janelle Griffith is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.



THIS ARTICLE DOESN’T SAY THAT THE UTILITY IS CERTAINLY THE CAUSE, BUT THEY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THEY COULD BE. THAT’S GOOD. HONESTY TAKES COURAGE, AND I DOUBT THAT THEY ACTED MALICIOUSLY, THOUGH THEY VERY LIKELY MAY HAVE BEEN NEGLIGENT. THERE’S A LOT OF NEGLIGENCE IN AMERICA IN MY VIEW, AND LESS SOCIETAL PRESSURE AGAINST IT THAN WHEN I WAS YOUNG. WE AREN’T EXACTLY IDEALISTIC ANYMORE.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-utility-pg-e-could-face-murder-charges-if-found-n953141
California utility, PG&E, could face murder charges if found liable in deadly wildfire
The utility acknowledged in a document obtained by CNBC last month that its equipment may have sparked the deadly Camp Fire, which killed at least 88 people.
Dec. 30, 2018 / 4:54 PM EST
By Tim Stelloh

Image: CalFire firefighter Scott Wit surveys burnt out vehicles near a fallen power line on the side of the road after the Camp fire tore through the area in Paradise, California on Nov. 10, 2018.Josh Edelson / AFP - Getty Images

California’s giant utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, could face charges up to murder if it is found criminally liable in any of the state's recent deadly wildfires, the state’s attorney general said in a court filing.

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office said PG&E could face the most serious in a range of criminal charges if it is found to have caused any of the recent deadly fires — and acted with malice in the operation and maintenance of its equipment, according to a brief filed Friday in Northern California’s federal district court.

The court filing came after U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the utility — the state’s largest — to determine if it played any role in the Camp Fire, which in November killed at least 88 people, destroyed nearly 14,000 homes and laid waste to most of the city of Paradise in Northern California.

Alsup is overseeing a sentence against PG&E in a separate case, a 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion south of San Francisco that killed eight people and injured dozens more.

PG&E acknowledged in a document obtained by CNBC last month that its equipment may have sparked the Camp Fire, the state's deadliest wildfire ever, which ignited on the morning of Nov. 8 and tore across 240 square miles in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The utility did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors said an investigation would need to probe PG&E’s operations, maintenance and safety practices to see if it committed a crime “with the requisite mental intent.”

The company could face a series of lesser charges, including involuntary manslaughter, if it didn’t properly clear vegetation around its power lines and poles, the brief said.

PG&E could be charged with other felony crimes if it is found to have acted recklessly, prosecutors said.

Tim Stelloh
Tim Stelloh is a reporter for NBC News, based in California.



THE LA TIMES IS A WELL-KNOWN LIBERAL NEWSPAPER, FRIENDLY TO BERNIE SANDERS AND SOCIAL CAUSES. I DO HOPE THIS COMPUTER VIRUS WASN’T DIRECTED SPECIFICALLY AT THEM, AND BY A POLITICALLY INFLUENCED GROUP, TRUMP, INC, MAYBE. I KNOW. PARANOIA. IT’S THE TIMES WE LIVE IN. STILL, LOOK ALSO AT THIS ARTICLE BELOW: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-times-delivery-disruption-20181229-story.html.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/computer-virus-hits-southern-california-newspapers-n953001?icid=recommended
Computer virus hits newspapers coast-to-coast
"It’s likely that the issues will affect the process of printing and delivering the Sunday newspapers as well," the Los Angeles Times said in a statement.
Dec. 29, 2018 / 5:55 PM EST / Updated Dec. 29, 2018 / 9:27 PM EST
By Dennis Romero

PHOTOGRAPH -- A cyclist rides on the sidewalk past the Los Angeles Times building in downtown Los Angeles in 2016.Damian Dovarganes / AP

Even old-school printed newspapers aren't immune from the pitfalls of technology.

Tribune Publishing said Saturday night that malware affected its ability to print newspapers across its chain of outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun and the Orlando Sentinel.

Many subscribers to the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune, which were previously owned by Tribune Publishing and still share some production technology with the company, stepped into a chilly sunny morning Saturday only to find empty doorsteps.

The computer malware was detected Friday and "impacted some back-office systems which are primarily used to publish and produce newspapers across our properties," said Marisa Kollias, Tribune communications vice president, in a statement.

"There is no evidence that customer credit card information or personally identifiable information has been compromised," she said. "The personal data of our subscribers, online users, and advertising clients has not been compromised."

The Los Angeles Times, citing an anonymous source, described the malware as part of a cyberattack with foreign origins. The Times and the Union-Tribune were sold by Tribune Publishing to Los Angeles biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong in June.

Kollias said Tribune Publishing was putting a "workaround" in place.

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"We have been actively working with all of the relevant vendors to resolve the systems issues and restore timely service to our customers," the Times said in its own statement. "However, it’s likely that the issues will affect the process of printing and delivering the Sunday newspapers as well."

Regional editions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which are printed at the Los Angeles Times' Olympic printing plant downtown, also were impacted, the L.A. company said.

The Ventura County Star newspaper in Southern California also was affected, the paper said in a note to readers.

In the meantime, readers of the Los Angeles and San Diego newspapers were invited to view print-like digital editions online.

Dennis Romero
Dennis Romero writes for NBC News and is based in Los Angeles.


“.... THE SOURCE WOULD NOT DETAIL WHAT EVIDENCE LED THE COMPANY TO BELIEVE THE BREACH CAME FROM OVERSEAS.”

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-times-delivery-disruption-20181229-story.html
Malware attack disrupts delivery of L.A. Times and Tribune papers across the U.S.
By TONY BARBOZA, MEG JAMES and EMILY ALPERT REYES
DEC 29, 2018 | 8:10 PM

The Los Angeles Times and other newspapers were hit by a malware attack. (Los Angeles Times)

What first arose as a server outage was identified Saturday as a malware attack, which appears to have originated from outside the United States and hobbled computer systems and delayed weekend deliveries of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers across the country.

Technology teams worked feverishly to quarantine the computer virus, but it spread through Tribune Publishing’s network and reinfected systems crucial to the news production and printing process. Multiple newspapers around the country were affected because they share a production platform.

The attack delayed distribution of Saturday editions of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union Tribune. It also stymied distribution of the West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, which are printed at the Los Angeles Times’ Olympic printing plant in downtown Los Angeles.

By Saturday afternoon, the company suspected the cyberattack originated from outside the United States, but officials said it was too soon to say whether it was carried out by a foreign state or some other entity, said a source with knowledge of the situation.

“We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. The source would not detail what evidence led the company to believe the breach came from overseas.

Foreign cyberattack hits newspapers: Here is what we know »

Tribune Publishing said in a statement Saturday that “the personal data of our subscribers, online users, and advertising clients has not been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank our readers and advertising partners for their patience as we investigate the situation.”

“Every market across the company was impacted,” said Marisa Kollias, spokeswoman for Tribune Publishing. She declined to provide specifics on the disruptions, but the company’s properties include the Chicago Tribune; Baltimore Sun; Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.; Hartford Courant; New York Daily News; South Florida Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel.

No other details about the origin of the attack were immediately available and the motive remained unclear.

Tribune Publishing sold The Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune to Los Angeles biotech entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong in June, but the two companies continue to share various systems, including software.

It’s unclear how many Times subscribers were impacted by late deliveries and the paper could not provide firm numbers, but a source said that a majority received their papers Saturday morning, albeit several hours late. The Times said that print subscribers who did not get their papers Saturday would receive them with their regularly scheduled delivery of the Sunday edition.

“We apologize to our customers for this inconvenience,” The Times said in a statement. “Thank you for your patience and support as we respond to this ongoing matter.”

The Times and the San Diego paper became aware of the problem near midnight on Thursday. Programmers worked to isolate the bug, which Tribune Publishing identified as a malware attack, but at every turn the programmers ran into additional issues trying to access a myriad of files, including advertisements that needed to be added to the pages or paid obituaries.

After identifying the server outage as a virus, technology teams made progress Friday quarantining it and bringing back servers, but some of their security patches didn’t hold and the virus began to reinfect the network, impacting a series of servers used for news production and manufacturing processes.

By late Friday, the attack was hindering the transmission of pages from offices across Southern California to printing presses as publication deadlines approached.

At one point, Times staffers were making contingency plans to hand-deliver pages from the editorial offices in El Segundo to its Olympic printing plant in downtown Los Angeles. Working through the problems created a logjam at the plant, and the resulting cascade of delays pushed back printing and delivery.

San Diego was particularly hard hit by the problem, in large part because of the paper’s position in the press run. Between 85% and 90% of the Saturday edition of the Union-Tribune did not reach subscribers on Saturday morning, said Jeff Light, publisher and editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“Papers that should have arrived in San Diego around 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. instead arrived at 7 a.m. and 8 a.m.” Light said. Because the newspaper relies on independent contractors to deliver the paper to neighborhoods, many of those people were not available later in the day to do the deliveries.

The first signs of trouble at the Union-Tribune came late Thursday night when sports editors tried to send information, via digital files, to the plate-making facility. But those digital files which contain information that ultimately becomes the pages of the newspaper would not transmit to the plate-making process. Editors seemed to be locked out of the system, having to perform work-arounds.

The transmission of community editions, including the Glendale News Press and Burbank Leader, also appeared in doubt Friday night. Ultimately, a page designer in Orange County figured out he could send all the community papers’ news pages from his unaffected computer, said John Canalis, executive editor of Times Community News.

The problem caused widespread issues in South Florida, one of Tribune Publishing’s major markets. The South Florida Sun Sentinel told readers that it had been “crippled this weekend by a computer virus that shut down production and hampered phone lines,” according to a story on its website.

Malware attacks are extremely common, affecting millions of computers in homes, offices and other organizations every day, said Salim Neino, chief executive of the company Kryptos Logic.

In some cases, dubbed “ransomware,” the attackers disable the system and demand money, said Neino, whose company tackled a major ransomware attack called WannaCry last year.

In other instances, the goal is simply to disrupt or “break stuff” by wiping systems, Neino said. Malware has also been used to quietly infect computers and then sell access to other cybercriminals, who can steal banking credentials or exploit other valuable information, Neino said.

Several individuals with knowledge of the Tribune situation said the attack appeared to be in the form of “Ryuk” ransomware. One company insider, who was not authorized to comment publicly, said the corrupted Tribune Publishing computer files contained the extension “.ryk.”

“Ryuk” attacks are “highly targeted, well-resourced and planned,” according to an August advisory by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ cybersecurity program. Victims are deliberately targeted and “only crucial assets and resources are infected in each targeted network.”

It was unclear whether company officials have been in contact with law enforcement regarding the suspected attack. But Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said “we are aware of reports of a potential cyber incident effecting several news outlets, and are working with our government and industry partners to better understand the situation.”

Tribune declined to comment on the specifics of the malware attack.

Neino also said that tracking the identity of attackers can be difficult since malware code is often freely distributed online.

For instance, even if an attack appears to be Russian because of the “malware family traits,” Neino said, “code still could have been sourced, weaponized and deployed by an actor who downloaded it from an underground forum anywhere in the world.”

Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit public interest research group, said that “usually when someone tries to disrupt a significant digital resource like a newspaper, you're looking at an experienced and sophisticated hacker.”

Dixon added that the holidays are "a well-known time for mischief" by digital troublemakers, because organizations are more thinly staffed.

"It's an optimal time to attack a major target," she said.

The highest-profile cyberattack of a media company was in late 2014 at Sony Pictures Entertainment in Culver City. Hackers, which the FBI later determined were affiliated with the North Korean government, broke into Sony Pictures’ computer system and copied huge chunks of data, which they later posted online for the world to see.

Emily Alpert Reyes

Emily Alpert Reyes covers City Hall for the Los Angeles Times. She previously reported on the census and demographics, tracking how our lives are changing in Los Angeles, California and the country. Before joining The Times, she worked for the pioneering nonprofit news website voiceofsandiego.org, winning national awards for her reporting on education. She has also traveled to Bolivia as a fellow with the International Reporting Project and survived the University of Chicago.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Ja1ChQTPk
Paul McCartney still listens to the radio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTu9kgsZoV0
"60 Minutes" Presents: 21st Century Cons