Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders call for climate change emergency mobilization, seeks a re-do of failed Green New Deal

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce Tuesday a resolution declaring a climate change emergency, a move that comes after the Green New Deal failed to take off the ground earlier this year.
The resolution, also co-sponsored by Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, will call for a wide-scale mobilization to combat the emergency and restore the climate “for future generations.”
“The global warming caused by human activities,” claims the draft resolution, according to the Mother Jones magazine, “has resulted in a climate emergency that … demands a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale.”

The global warming caused by human activities has resulted in a climate emergency that … demands a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale.”
— The resolution

Ocasio-Cortez and Blumenauer, meanwhile, also wrote to fellow members of Congress urging them to declare climate change an emergency in a bid to “swiftly mobilize federal resources in response.”
The resolution, according to the outlet, details how climate change impacts public health and national security of the U.S., though it doesn’t make any exact recommendations how to address the so-called emergency.
The latest declaration comes after Ocasio-Cortez’s signature Green New Deal, a sweeping Democratic proposal for dealing with climate change, failed a test vote in the U.S. Senate back in March, with 42 Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voting “present.”
Both the New York Democrat and her colleagues decried Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s move to bring the Green New Deal up for a vote, saying the Republicans purposely rushed the vote while McConnell only wanted Democrats to go on record to support the sweeping proposal that he himself called “a radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy.”
The Green New Deal calls for the U.S. to shift away from fossil fuels such as oil and coal and replace them with renewable sources such as wind and solar power. It calls for virtual elimination by 2030 of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming. Republicans have railed against the proposal, saying it would devastate the economy and trigger massive tax increases.
It remains unclear how the new resolution differs from the Green New Deal, though a spokesperson for Sanders told the magazine that unlike President Trump’s emergencies, the climate change declaration warrants the use of emergency powers.
“President Trump has routinely declared phony national emergencies to advance his deeply unpopular agenda,” the spokesperson said. “On the existential threat of climate change, Trump insists on calling it a hoax.”

Pelosi calls for Acosta to step down over Epstein plea deal, hits Trump

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Monday called on Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to step down for what she called an “unconscionable agreement” with Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged earlier with sex trafficking in New York City federal court.
Acosta, who was a U.S. attorney in Miami back in 2008, helped Epstein secure a plea deal that resulted in an 18-month sentence. He served 13 months. The deal was criticized as lenient because he could have faced a life sentence.
Pelosi said in a tweet late Monday that Acosta’s agreement with Epstein was kept from his “young victims” and prevented them from seeking justice. She said Trump was aware of the background when Acosta was appointed.
Acosta negotiated a deal that resulted in two state solicitation charges—a felony—and resulted in county jail. There were no federal charges. The Washington Post reported that Epstein was allowed to work from his office six days a week. The alleged victims were not told about the deal, the report said.
The Miami Herald called the allegations back then “stomach-turning.” They included allegations that the wealthy financier lured dozens of troubled girls to an estate in Palm Beach and had sex with them. The paper’s editorial called the allegations a “Ponzi scheme,” because he would allegedly use new girls to recruit more.
The Herald’s editorial said that in 2008, Acosta kept the alleged victims out of the process and failed to "even inform them of his lenient plea deal with Epstein. In February, U.S. Judge Kenneth Marra ruled that Acosta’s office broke the law by not telling Epstein’s victims of the sweetheart deal. In contrast, [U.S. Attorney Geoffrey] Berman, has issued a public call for women to contact his office to help him build his sex-trafficking case against Epstein.”
Acosta has defended the plea deal as appropriate under the circumstances, though the White House said in February that it was “looking into” his handling of the deal.
Epstein, the 66-year-old hedge fund manager, was charged in a newly unsealed federal indictment with sex trafficking and conspiracy during the early 2000s. He could get up to 45 years in prison if convicted. Prosecutors alleged that Epstein, who was arrested on Saturday, preyed on "dozens" of victims as young as 14.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., told Fox News that Epstein’s initial sentence was “absurd” and said it is not a time "for people to say, ‘oh, is a Republican or Democrat going to be implicated?’ Every American should stand on the side of those little girls."
Two White House officials told The Washington Post that Trump does not have plans to force out Acosta.
Epstein has pleaded not guilty.
Fox News' Gregg Re and the AP contributed to this report

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Tom Steyer may launch 2020 presidential campaign this week: reports

California liberal billionaire Tom Steyer is reconsidering running for president in 2020 despite declining to enter the crowded race of Dems vying for the White House months ago, reports said.
Steyer, an environmentalist who's spent billions in ad dollars and other efforts to urge the impeachment of President Trump, told staffers last week he plans to formally launch his 2020 campaign Tuesday, three people familiar with his plans told Politico. Steyer would become the twenty-sixth Democrat competing for the party’s nomination to take on Trump.
He revealed his plan during a private conference call with his San Francisco office and two progressive organizations he funds, Need to Impeach and NextGen America, but has yet to make the bid public, the Atlantic also reported.
Steyer told people he would announce his 2020 campaign in January only to travel to Des Moines to declare he was not running. He instead used the trip to hold a town hall for his Need to Impeach group, which over the course of two years has grown to be the largest progressive-leaning organization in the country with 8 million members, the Atlantic reported.
At the time, the 62-year-old former hedge fund manager said he would not run because he was satisfied with Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan for the nation’s economy and supported Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s campaign’s focus on climate change. A source knowledgeable of Steyer’s plan said he’s still satisfied with Warren's campaign but is disappointed Inslee hasn’t broken one-percent in the polls, the Atlantic reported.
Steyer also is reportedly frustrated with House Dems for not scheduling impeachment hearings. A source told the Atlantic that Steyer’s campaign would challenge President Trump’s claim that the economy is thriving under his leadership. That person said Steyer would also challenge Trump’s identity as a billionaire turned politician, given that Steyer is a “self-made” billionaire himself.
Steyer touted with the idea of running for office in the past. He said he'd run for California governor in 2018 and the Senate in 2016 but failed to enter either race.

State driver’s license databases prove valuable for FBI, ICE for facial-recognition searches: report

Federal authorities have had access to millions of Americans’ photos without their consent or approval from Congress by tapping into state driver’s license databases and have turned into an “unprecedented surveillance infrastructure” that some critics see as an "ask-permission-later" system, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The agencies reportedly using the databases include the F.B.I and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most of the photos at the DMV are of citizens never charged with a crime and not the subject of an investigation.
“It’s really a surveillance-first, ask-permission-later system,” Jake Laperruque, a senior counsel at a government watchdog, told the paper. He said the FBI alone “does 4,000 searches every month, and a lot of them go through state DMVs.”
ICE did not immediately respond to an email from Fox News late Sunday. An agency spokesman told the paper that its "investigative techniques are generally considered law-enforcement sensitive.”
The FBI did not immediately respond to Fox News, but referred the paper to last month’s testimony of a top agency official who called facial-recognition critical to “preserve our security.”
The Post's exclusive report cited internal documents obtained by a public-records request by researchers from Georgetown Law. The report, citing a Government Accountability Office memo last month, also said that since 2011, the FBI has logged 390,000 facial-recognition searches in various departments, including the DMV.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., told the paper in an email that access to this information by law enforcement is often done in the “shadows” and with no consent.
The report said 21 states allow the practice, while cities like San Francisco have banned public agencies from the procedure.

UK Trade Minister to apologize after leaked cables call Trump 'inept' and 'clumsy': report

The U.K.’s Trade Minister on Monday said he will apologize to Ivanka Trump after leaked diplomatic cables showed Britain’s ambassador to the United States describing President Trump as “dysfunctional” and “inept.”
Britain’s Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox is scheduled to meet with Ivanka Trump during his visit to Washington, Reuters reported.
“I will be apologizing for the fact that either our civil service or elements of our political class have not lived up to the expectations that either we have or the United States has about their behavior, which in this particular case has lapsed in a most extraordinary and unacceptable way,” Fox told BBC radio.
Ambassador Kim Darroch described the Trump administration as “diplomatically clumsy and inept” and said he doubted it would become “substantially more normal,” in one of several memos published by the Mail on Sunday.
Trump condemned Darroch, asserting that he has “not served the U.K. well,” and saying: “We are not big fans of that man.”
Fox also cautioned that the leak of confidential memos could damage relations between the two countries.
“Malicious leaks of this nature are unprofessional, unethical and unpatriotic and can actually lead to a damage to that relationship which can therefore affect our wider security interest,” Fox said.
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.

Omar fires back after Pelosi calls out far-left Dems who voted against border bill

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Sunday joined Democrats who took issue with a recent interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who criticized the influence of the four freshmen lawmakers who voted against the $4.6 billion border bill signed into law last week by President Trump.
Pelosi, who was interviewed by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, played down the influence these representatives wield, saying, “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got."
Pelosi was referring to Omar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.
The four freshmen voted against the border bill they essentially said did not go far enough and, according to the Washington Post, was simply “throwing more money” at the Trump administration’s "human rights abuses.
Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to explain to Pelosi, 79, that “public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment.”
“And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country,” she continued.
Omar wrote in response to Ocasio-Cortez, “Patetico! You know they’re just salty about WHO is wielding the power to shift “public sentiment” these days, sis. Sorry not sorry.”
The emergency legislation, required to ease overcrowded, often harsh conditions at U.S. holding facilities for migrants seeking asylum, mostly from Central American nations like Honduras and El Salvador, passed by a bipartisan 305-102 vote.
Pelosi said at the time that the bill would allow resources to get to children held at the border.
“As we pass the Senate bill, we will do so with a battle cry as to how we go forward to protect children in a way that truly honors their dignity and worth,” she wrote in a letter to lawmakers. The New York Times’ headline read, “House Passes Senate Border Bill in Striking Defeat for Pelosi.”
Fox News' Dom Calicchio contributed to this report

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