Author: PolitCens

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is getting heat over a solo hair salon visit in San Francisco at a time when California businesses are limited by concern over coronavirus.But Pelosi’s spokesman said she was complying with the rules as presented to her by eSalon SF.
“This business offered for the Speaker to come in on Monday and told her they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business,” said spokesman Drew Hammill in a statement. “The Speaker complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment.”
Footage aired by Fox News Channel shows Pelosi, her mask around her neck rather than on her face, walking through the establishment. A stylist follows her, wearing a mask.
The salon owner said she rents chairs to stylists, one of whom let her know in advance that Pelosi wanted a wash and a blow dry. California guidelines on salons vary by county, but San Francisco officials have not yet permitted indoor salons to open. The owner said she considered the service “a slap in the face” to business owners who have been forced to close.
Conservatives pounced, casting Pelosi as a hypocrite.
“Speaker Pelosi has pushed policies that would keep our economy closed and our small businesses shut down. But for herself?” Senate Republicans tweeted. “A salon visit whenever she pleases.”
Pelosi says Republicans could help create the conditions to safely reopen if they would only “listen to the scientists.”
“Republicans are rejecting the funding needed for testing and tracing to crush the virus and safely reopen schools and the economy,” she wrote in a letter Friday to her Democratic colleagues.
 
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More than a dozen “60 Minutes” interviews with former President Barack Obama, beginning when he was a U.S. Senator, have been compiled into an audio release.
Simon & Schuster Audio announced Thursday that “Barack Obama: The 60 Minutes Interviews” will come out Oct. 13. The audiobook features CBS News journalist Steve Kroft, who first met with Obama in January 2007 and spoke with him throughout his presidency, culminating in a discussion shortly before Obama left office in 2017.
“Over the span of just a few years, Barack Obama evolved from inexperienced freshman senator into one of the most powerful people in the world,” Kroft said in a statement. “This audiobook collection allows listeners to hear that remarkable transformation in Obama’s own voice and words, as it is unfolding.”
The audiobook also includes joint interviews with Obama and his wife, Michelle, and former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would stop accepting new political ads in the week before the U.S. presidential election in November, bowing to concern that its loose approach to free speech could once again be exploited to interfere with the vote.
 
The world’s biggest social network also said it was creating a label for posts by candidates or campaigns that try to claim victory before the election results are official, and widening the criteria for content to be removed as voter suppression.
 
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the changes that he was concerned about the unique challenges voters would face due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has prompted a surge in voting by mail.
 
 “I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country,” he said.
 
 Zuckerberg has previously defended his decision to allow for a freewheeling political conversation on Facebook, including through paid ads, which the company exempts from its fact-checking program with external partners, including Reuters.
 
 He said in his post he continued to believe that the “best antidote to bad speech is more speech,” but acknowledged that in the final days of an election, “there may not be enough time to contest new claims.”
 
 Facebook will continue to allow campaigns and others to run political ads that are already in the system, and will permit them to change spending amounts and user targeting, but will block adjustments to the ads’ content or design.
 
 Facebook has been battered by criticism, including from its own employees, since allowing several inflammatory posts by President Donald Trump to remain untouched earlier this summer, including one which contained misleading claims about mail-in ballots.
 
 Disinformation experts have also raised the alarm, echoed in threat assessments by Facebook executives, about false claims and conspiracy theories spreading in the increasingly likely scenario that official results are not immediately available on election night.
 
 Zuckerberg said Facebook was “increasingly seeing attempts to undermine the legitimacy of our elections from within our own borders” in addition to foreign influence campaigns, like the one it and U.S. intelligence agencies determined Russia carried out to meddle in the 2016 vote.
 
 Moscow has denied the allegations.
 
 To address those threats, Facebook will label any posts seeking to delegitimize the outcome of the election, he wrote. The company also will remove posts with misinformation about COVID-19 and voting, which Zuckerberg said could be used to scare people away from exercising their right to vote.
 
 Seeking to boost credible information in addition to tamping down misleading posts, Facebook will partner with Reuters to provide news in the social network’s Voting Information Center about official results.
 
 Zuckerberg said the company would not plan to make any further changes to its election policies beyond those listed in his post before the official declaration of the result.
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The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for records about the widespread mail delivery delays that have pulled the Postal Service into the political spotlight as it prepares to handle an onslaught of ballots in the November election.
The subpoena, which seeks documents related to operational changes that have slowed mail and the agency’s plans for the presidential election, comes after committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney said DeJoy has not sufficiently answered the panel’s requests for more information.
“It is clear that a subpoena has become necessary to further the Committee’s investigation and help inform potential legislative actions,” Maloney, D-N.Y., said this week.
DeJoy, a major donor to Republicans and President Donald Trump, took over the agency in June after a career in logistics and set in motion a set of policy changes that have delayed mail and sparked concern over the agency’s ability to process mail-in ballots this fall.
He has appeared before Congress twice in recent weeks to testify about the removal of the agency’s blue collection boxes and mail sorting machines, as well as changes to trucking operations and overtime hours that postal workers say are resulting in delays. Amid a public outcry, DeJoy said he halted some of the changes until after election.
Democrats have been pushing for increased oversight of the Postal Service following DeJoy’s operational changes and Trump’s baseless claims that mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud.
The president has also admitted that he was withholding emergency money from the agency in order to make it more difficult for the service to process what is expected to be a record number of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The committee is also asking for information about how DeJoy, whose appointment broke a long line of postmaster generals with previous experience at the agency, was picked for the job, as well as any communications between DeJoy and the Trump campaign. It is also requesting DeJoy’s unredacted calendar along with records on potential communications with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
In a letter Friday to the committee, DeJoy said postal leadership has expanded a task force on election mail with local officials and said his staff was working to provide the requested materials. He has said election mail is his “No. 1 priority,” and that he will authorize expanded use of overtime, extra truck trips and other measures in the weeks before the election to ensure on-time delivery of ballots.
A spokesman for the Postal Service said the agency will comply with its legal obligations.
“We remain surprised and confused by Chairwoman Maloney’s insistence on issuing a subpoena to the Postal Service in the midst of ongoing dialogue with her staff on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform to produce information in an orderly fashion. We fully intend to comply with our obligations under the law,” the statement read.
The subpoena placed a noon Sept. 16 deadline for DeJoy to provide the records.
Separately, an audit  from the inspector general of the Postal Service found that more than a million mail-in ballots were sent to voters late during the primary elections. The watchdog urged greater cooperation between states and the agency ahead of the November election.
The report found state election boards sent more than a million ballots within a week of their primaries, creating a “high risk” that they couldn’t be filled out and returned in time to be counted. In thousands of cases across the country, ballots were sent out after states’ mailing deadlines or on election day.
The inspector general also identified a handful of “concerns” surrounding election mail, including ballots sent without bar-coded tracking technology, mail-in ballot designs that make processing difficult, postmark requirements and out-of-date voter addresses.
“Resolving these issues will require higher level partnerships and cooperation between the Postal Service and various state officials, including secretaries of state and state election boards,” the auditors wrote. “Timely delivery of election and political mail is necessary to ensure the integrity of the U.S. election process.”
The report found election officials in Kentucky and New York sent more than 600,000 mail-in ballots late during their primaries. In Pennsylvania, 500 ballots were mailed after election day.
Seventeen states sent more than a half-million ballots after mailing deadlines, and 44,000 ballots were mailed on or a day before election day in 11 states. Also, an analysis of political and election mail in seven Postal Service processing centers between April and June identified around 1.6 million mail pieces that were not delivered on time.
The report did not evaluate controversial operational changes implemented by DeJoy. The inspector general’s office has opened a separate inquiry into those changes.
DeJoy has recommended that voters request absentee ballots at least 15 days before the election and then return them within seven days from election day.
“To be clear, these recommendations are designed to help ensure that ballots will be delivered and counted, and should in no way be misconstrued to imply that we lack confidence in our ability to deliver those ballots. We can, and will, handle the volume of election mail we receive,” DeJoy told the House Oversight committee last week.
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U.S. Senator Ed Markey won a high-profile Democratic primary Tuesday, defeating a challenge by Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy III.The 39-year-old Kennedy had cast the 74-year-old Markey as out of touch after a long career in Congress and drew a late endorsement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.But Markey had strong popularity in Massachusetts and had the support of prominent progressives in the Democratic Party, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Markey will be a strong favorite in the general election in November when he faces Republican candidate Kevin O’Connor.Several Democratic House incumbents also fended off primary challengers Tuesday.House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Richard Neal defeated Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse in a race in the state’s 1st Congressional District and will serve a new term starting in January since he faces no opponent on the November ballot.In the 6th Congressional District, Congressman Seth Moulton, who briefly ran in the race for president before dropping out last year, defeated two challengers.In the 8th Congressional District, incumbent Congressman Stephen Lynch defeated infectious disease expert Robbie Goldstein.
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A former friend and adviser of Melania Trump said Tuesday that she made recordings of her conversations with the first lady because she needed evidence to protect herself amid questions about the costs of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, whose book “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady,” was released this week, helped produce Trump’s inauguration and later worked for the first lady as an unpaid White House adviser.
Wolkoff left the White House in February 2018 when her contract was terminated. The White House blasted the book as “full of mistruths and paranoia.”
Separately, Wolkoff told The Washington Post that Mrs. Trump used private email accounts while at the White House. Others in the White House, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, have been criticized for doing official business on private accounts – but, unlike them, the first lady is not a government employee.
In an interview on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Wolkoff said, “I’ve been accused of taping my friend, as the White House said, and how horrible of a human being I am for doing that.”
“And they’re right. If she was my friend, it would be horrible. But Melania and the White House had accused me of criminal activity and publicly shamed and fired me and made me their scapegoat,” Wolkoff said. “At that moment in time, that’s when I pressed record. She was no longer my friend and she was willing to let them take me down.”
Wolkoff said Melania Trump told her that White House attorneys claimed there was no other choice but to turn her back on her friend because there was a possible probe of the presidential inauguration committee. Wolkoff said she taped the first lady because “I was going to do anything in my power to make sure that I was protected.”
Stephanie Grisham, chief of staff and spokesperson for Melania Trump, said Wolkoff was out for revenge.
“Anybody who secretly tapes their self-described best friend is, by definition, dishonest,” Grisham said.
“The book is not only full of mistruths and paranoia, it is based on some imagined need for revenge. Wolkoff builds herself up while belittling and blaming everyone she worked with, yet she still managed to be the victim. Sadly, this is a deeply insecure woman who’s need to be relevant defies logic.”
In the book, Wolkoff says she wished she had never met the first lady, who is a former fashion model. Wolkoff, a New York-based event planner, said the pair first met in 2003 in the hallways of Vogue magazine, where Wolkoff worked.
Wolkoff devotes two of the book’s 11 chapters to planning for the January 2017 inauguration, describing the committee responsible for raising money to pay for several days of events as beset with organizational and communications issues that complicated her work.
She says she repeatedly raised questions about spending but she eventually came to be viewed as the problem. Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee raised nearly $107 million for the lavish event, an unprecedented inaugural price tag nearly twice that of President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.
Some of those involved in or aware of the committee’s work told The Associated Press in September 2017 that the orchestration of the inauguration was marred by last-minute decisions, staffing turnover and little financial oversight.
Wolkoff told ABC News in an interview broadcast Monday that she continues to cooperate with multiple criminal investigations into the committee’s operations.
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A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday granted President Donald Trump’s request to delay Manhattan’s district attorney from accessing his tax returns in connection with a criminal probe of his business practices. The unsigned order by a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan was a victory for the president in his yearlong quest to block District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. from enforcing a grand jury subpoena for eight years of personal and corporate returns. Trump has been challenging an Aug. 20 decision by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero to let Vance obtain the returns from the president’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA. FILE – Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. speaks at a news conference in New York, Feb. 24, 2020.The district attorney had wanted access to the returns even during Trump’s appeal, but Tuesday’s order ends that possibility for now. Oral arguments have been scheduled for Sept. 25. Vance began his probe after news that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet before the 2016 election about claimed sexual encounters with Trump, which the president has denied. In July, the Supreme Court refused to block the subpoena, rejecting Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal probes while in the White House, but said Trump could raise other objections. Trump is seeking reelection on Nov. 3. Vance has complained that dragging out the litigation has effectively given the Republican president the immunity he wanted. Grand jury proceedings are held in secret, and if Trump’s tax returns were handed over it could take months for the public to learn their contents. The prior six presidents, both Republican and Democrat, from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, have released their tax returns. Following the Supreme Court ruling, Trump claimed that the subpoena from Vance, a Democrat, was “wildly overbroad” and issued in bad faith. In seeking a stay, William Consovoy, a lawyer for Trump, told the appeals court that giving Vance a chance even to see the returns would cause the president irreparable harm. “The status quo can never be restored,” he said. “We can’t make them forget what they learn.” Carey Dunne, a lawyer for Vance, downplayed that concern. “The toothpaste can be put back into the tube sufficiently to protect people’s rights,” he said. Dunne also said each category of documents Vance sought was “directly relevant” to his probe, and Trump offered no specifics to suggest otherwise. 
 
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