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Bill introduced to prevent President Trump from using disaster relief funds for border wall

A bill has been introduced in congress to prevent President Trump from using disaster relief funds to build the border wall.
The legislation was proposed by a group senate democrats, including several 2020 presidential contenders.
If passed, the bill would block the White House from tapping into funds from the Department of Homeland Security, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers.
This comes as the President signed the compromise deal last week which provides about $1.4-billion to build a border barrier. He then declared a national emergency to secure more funding for wall construction.
The White House has yet to respond to this bill.

OAN Newsroom
8:20 PM PT — Sun. Feb. 17, 2019

McCabe says Rosenstein was 'absolutely serious' about secretly recording Trump

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said in an interview broadcast Sunday that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "was not joking" when he suggested secretly recording President Donald Trump in the Oval Office following the May 2017 dismissal of FBI Director James Comey.
McCabe, speaking to CBS News' "60 Minutes," recounted a conversation soon after Comey's firing about the ongoing Russia investigation in which he said Rosenstein told him: "I never get searched when I go into the White House. I could easily wear a recording device. They wouldn't know it was there."
"Now, he was not joking," McCabe said of Rosenstein's comments. "He was absolutely serious. And in fact, he brought it up in the next meeting we had."
McCabe told "60 Minutes" that he "never actually considered taking [Rosenstein] up on the offer," but said he did discuss the matter with the FBI's then-general counsel, James A. Baker. Last fall, Baker told lawmakers during a closed-door deposition that McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page came to Baker "contemporaneously" and told him details of the meeting where Rosenstein made the comments. Baker told congressional investigators he took the word of McCabe and Page "seriously."
McCabe told CBS News that "I think the general counsel had a heart attack" when he told him of Rosenstein's plan.
"And when he got up off the floor, he said, 'I, I, that's a bridge too far. We're not there yet,'" McCabe added. Days later, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the bureau's investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Rosenstein repeatedly has denied he "pursued or authorized recording the president" and also has denied McCabe's suggestion that the deputy attorney general had broached the idea of invoking the Constitution's 25th Amendment, which allows Cabinet members to seek the removal of a president if they conclude that he or she is mentally unfit. The Justice Department echoed both denials in a statement released last week, saying Rosenstein "was not in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment."
"Rod raised the [25th Amendment] issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort," McCabe told interviewer Scott Pelley, adding that he believed Rosenstein was "counting votes or possible votes" to remove Trump from office.
"What seemed to be coursing through the mind of the deputy attorney general was getting rid of the president of the United States one way or another," Pelley suggested.
"I can't confirm that," McCabe answered. "But what I can say is, the deputy attorney general was definitely very concerned about the president, about his capacity and about his intent at that point in time."
According to McCabe, Rosenstein was affected by what McCabe called an "incredibly turbulent, incredibly stressful" time after Comey's firing. The former FBI deputy director claimed Trump had instructed Rosenstein to cite the Russia investigation in a memo Rosenstein wrote justifying Comey's dismissal.
"[Trump was] saying things like, 'Make sure you put Russia in your memo.' That concerned Rod in the same way that it concerned me and the FBI investigators on the Russia case," said McCabe, who added that Rosenstein "explained to the president that he did not need Russia in his memo. And the president responded, 'I understand that. I am asking you to put Russia in the memo anyway.'"
During his interview, McCabe criticized Trump for what he called an "unwillingness to learn the true state of affairs that he has to deal with every day." He cited an account by an anonymous FBI official who met with the president only to be met with "several unrelated diatribes by Trump."
"One of those was commenting on the recent missile launches by the government of North Korea," McCabe said. "And, essentially, the president said he did not believe that the North Koreans had the capability to hit us here with ballistic missiles in the United States. And he did not believe that because [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin had told him they did not. President Putin had told him that the North Koreans don't actually have those missiles."
When intelligence officials allegedly told Trump that their information did not match what the Russian leader had told him, Trump allegedly said, "I don't care. I believe Putin."
McCabe was dismissed from the FBI in March 2018 after the Justice Department's internal watchdog concluded he approved leaking information to a Wall Street Journal reporter in order to cast himself in a positive light, then lied under oath about it. In the interview broadcast Sunday, McCabe denied intentionally misleading the DOJ's internal investigators, saying: "There's absolutely no reason for anyone and certainly not for me to misrepresent what happened ... Did I ever intentionally mislead the people I spoke to? I did not. I had no reason to. And I did not."
He added, "I believe I was fired because I opened a case against the president of the United States."
In the White House response to McCabe's claims, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders noted that "Andrew McCabe was fired in total disgrace from the FBI because he lied to investigators on multiple occasions, including under oath. His selfish and destructive agenda drove him to open a completely baseless investigation into the President. His actions were so shameful that he was referred to federal prosecutors.
"Andrew McCabe has no credibility and is an embarrassment to the men and women of the FBI and our great country."

Graham defends Trump's border security spending push, says Kentucky students better off

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., reiterated his support for President Trump's national emergency declaration at the southern border Sunday, telling CBS News' "Face The Nation" that students in Kentucky would be better off if funds that might have gone toward the construction of a new middle school would go toward building a wall along the frontier.
White House officials said Friday that they plan to spend $8 billion on the wall — the nearly $1.4 billion Congress approved for new fences and barriers, plus more than $6 billion drawn from other funds. "Face The Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan suggested to Graham that $3.6 billion of that $6 billion could come from military construction, including "including construction of a middle school in Kentucky, housing for military families, improvements for bases like Camp Pendleton [in California] and Hanscom Air Force Base [in Massachusetts]."
"Well, the president will have to make a decision where to get the money," Graham responded. "Let's just say for a moment that he took some money out of the military construction budget.
"I would say it's better for the middle-school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border," the senator added. "We'll get them the school they need. But right now we've got a national emergency on our hands. Opioid addiction is going through the roof in this country. Thousands of Americans died last year or dying this year because we can't control the flow of drugs into this country and all of it's coming across the border."
Graham also declined to say whether Congress should restrict the definition of a national emergency in order to act as more of a check on the executive branch.
"I think that every member of Congress has watched three presidents send troops to the border," he said, "Bush, Obama, now Trump. Not one of us have complained about deploying forces to the border to secure the border. It's pretty hard for me to understand the legal difference between sending troops and having them build a barrier."
"Unfortunately, when it comes to Trump, the Congress is locked down and will not give him what we've given past presidents," Graham added.  So, unfortunately, he's got to do it on his own and I support his decision to go that route."

Bill de Blasio corrects Ocasio-Cortez's claim about spending Amazon tax break money

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, said Sunday that Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right, was wrong to have claimed the collapse of the Amazon deal would free up $3 billion to fix the city’s subways and hire more teachers. (AP)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested on Sunday that critics of the potential Amazon campus New York City — such as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — got the facts wrong over the money behind the tax breaks.
On Sunday morning, de Blasio responded in the affirmative when Chuck Todd of NBC News’ “Meet the Press” asked if the tax breaks offered to Amazon weren’t “money you had over here. And it was going over there.”
The Democratic mayor said: “And that $3 billion that would go back in tax incentives was only after we were getting the jobs and getting the revenue.”
“There’s no money — right,” de Blasio added.
Amazon had chosen the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens to build a $2.5 billion campus that could house 25,000 workers, in addition to new offices planned for northern Virginia.
“If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves, if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We can put a lot of people to work for that money, if we wanted to,” Ocasio-Cortez said last week after the technology giant announced on Thursday that it had dropped plans to build the new headquarters in America’s largest city amid pressure from politicians and activists.
AMAZON BLASTS OCASIO-CORTEZ, SAYS ‘WE DON’T WANT TO WORK IN THIS ENVIRONMENT IN THE LONG TERM’
The mayor also noted to Todd that the deal could have been a way for progressive leaders to show a balance on economic issues.
“I have no problem with my fellow progressives critiquing a deal or wanting more from Amazon — I wanted more from Amazon, too,” de Blasio said. “The bottom line is, this was an example of an abuse of corporate power. They had an agreement with the people of New York City.”
He added: “They said they wanted a partnership, but the minute there were criticisms, they walked away. What does that say to working people, that a company would leave them high and dry, simply because some people raised criticism?”
The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying technology jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building in Amazon orange in November.
De Blasio and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the $2.8 billion in tax breaks and subsidies they were offering Amazon would result in $27 billion in tax revenue. The governor and the mayor had argued that the project would spur economic growth that would pay for the $2.8 billion in state and city incentives many times over.
“We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York,” the online giant from Seattle said in a blog post announcing its withdrawal.
Cuomo lashed out at fellow New York politicians over Amazon’s change of heart, saying the project would have helped diversify the city’s economy, cement its status as an emerging hub of technology and generate money for schools, housing and transit.
“A small group (of) politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community,” he said.

Democrat Liberals Move To Texas Cartoons

Leaving Texas :-)

Report: U.S.-Backed SDF Close to Defeating Last ISIS Stronghold

U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters sit outside a building as fight against Islamic State militants continue in the village of Baghouz, Syria, Saturday, Feb. 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:22 PM PT — Sat. Feb. 16, 2019

U.S.-backed forces in Syria discuss the progress in the campaign against the Islamic State, which is nearing its end after years of unrest in the country.
On Saturday, a commander with the Syrian Democratic Forces said the final push to retake the last territory held by ISIS is underway.
The announcement follows a week of intense airstrikes as the rebel-held territory has been reduced to less than one square mile.
This marks the final stages of a four year campaign to defeat the so-called caliphate, which once held a large amount of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Los Angeles City Council’s president suggests to deploy ‘army of cats’ to deal with rat situation

Democrat

Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson describe how members of his staff had heard rustling sounds at City Hall.

He thought it’d be a purrrr-fict idea.
Herb Wesson, the president of Los Angeles’ City Council, suggested deploying an “army of cats” to fight City Hall’s rodent problem but was told Friday that adding cats to the equation would likely only worsen the issue.
Anyone who’s ever seen Tom and Jerry knows that cats can be lethal to smaller prey, even though a recent study suggested otherwise. But the idea seems to have even less of a chance of implementation due to city health officials said cats would help spread fleas in the 91-year-old building and its City Hall East annex.
“The fleas from the rat would immediately jump onto the cat,” Dr. Dawn Terashita, an associate director at the city’s Department of Public Health, told The Los Angeles Times.
Downtown Los Angeles is in the midst of a typhus outbreak, according to health officials, with several homeless people who live near City Hall among those afflicted. It flourishes in unsanitary conditions and is often spread by infected fleas hitching rides on rats. It is rarely fatal when treated quickly with antibiotics but epidemics killed thousands in the Middle Ages.
The paper reported that at least two city employees say they were bitten by fleas. Eric Garcetti, the mayor, said the health risks are minimal.
“It’s been rats since I’ve been there,” Garcetti told the paper. “[There is] one case that may or may not have come from there, but that still is in the normal range of what we have each year.”