News

The Hill reports: The former classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was said to have been in the room when Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulted a woman decades ago, has told senators he will not testify at next week’s hearing. Mark Judge wrote in a brief letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley ...

Anita Hill writes for the New York Times: With the current heightened awareness of sexual violence comes heightened accountability for our representatives. To do better, the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee must demonstrate a clear understanding that sexual violence is a social reality to which elected representatives must respond. A fair, neutral and well-thought-out course is the only way to approach ...

CBS News reports: President Trump is meeting with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda at the White House Tuesday. This is Duda’s first official visit to the White House since Trump took office. The two are expected to discuss trade, the military and security, according to the White House. Poland’s First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda is also visiting the White House. The two ...

CNBC reports: Bob Woodward’s Trump administration tell-all “Fear: Trump in the White House” had the highest first-week sales of any book in Simon & Schuster’s 94-year history, the publisher said on Tuesday. “Fear” sold 1.1 million copies in its first week in print, e-book and audio formats. The book also broke records for pre-orders and first-day sales at Simon & ...

Talking Points Memo reports: Interesting and perhaps disturbing moment a short time ago as Carrie Severino, spokesperson of the Judicial Crisis Network, was interviewed on CNN. The JCN is the central campaign arm for Republican judicial nominations. The Federalist Society grooms and chooses the nominees. The JCN runs the campaigns, runs political ads in Senators’ states, as necessary. Here Severino ...

Mediaite reports:  The Twitterverse is having a collective meltdown over the fact that Mario Kart became a trending topic today for all the wrong reasons. No, the beloved Super Mario-themed racing game franchise is not getting the 9th installment, not yet anyway. Daniel’s remarks attracted online attention really fast, particularly the fact that she compared Trump’s penis to the good ...

Fortune reports: Ratings data released today by Nielsen show Maddow ended the week as the most-watched cable news show for the week, beating out competition from CNN and longtime top-rated cable news network Fox News Channel. Among viewers 25-54, the demographic most coveted by advertisers, Maddow remained on top, with an average audience of 667,000 viewers. The Wrap reports: On ...

Bloomberg reports: A private survey conducted for the Republican National Committee and obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek contains alarming news for Republicans hoping to hold on to control of Congress in November: Most Trump supporters don’t believe there’s a threat that Democrats will win back the House. President Trump’s boasts that a “red wave” could increase Republican majorities appear to have ...

The Guardian reports: In a tell-all memoir, the pornographic actor Stormy Daniels details salacious descriptions of her time with Donald Trump, wonders if he is fit to be president and claims he offered to cheat for her in his reality TV show. “We’ll figure out a way to get you the challenges beforehand,” she quotes him as saying. “And we ...

ABC News reports: President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, is ready to be sentenced later this year for pleading guilty to lying to the FBI in the Russia probe, according to a status report his lawyer filed jointly Monday with special counsel Robert Mueller. After months of delays, Judge Emmet Sullivan is now ...

The New York Times reports: The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, under mounting pressure from senators of his own party, will call President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the woman who has accused him of sexual assault before the committee on Monday for extraordinary public hearings just weeks before the midterm elections. Senator John Kennedy, ...

“We’ve just got to stay motivated. You know, that’s the real problem. Our guys, they’re getting everything that they’re wanting. I mean, my father’s going through his list of promises and checking them off one after the other after the other. They’re sitting back and saying, ‘Hey this is great.’ They don’t realize Trump’s on the ticket in 2018.  “They ...

The Syracuse Post-Standard reports: Actress Diane Neal will be on the November ballot as an independent congressional candidate in a sprawling upstate New York district after winning a court case over her petition signatures. The state Board of Elections last month rejected over 1,800 of the more than 4,100 signatures on Neal’s petition to get on the ballot in the ...

Politico reports: The Judicial Crisis Network is planning a $1.5 million television ad campaign that will feature a longtime friend of Kavanaugh’s, according to a person familiar with the buy. “We are not going to allow a last-minute smear campaign destroy a good and decent man who has an unblemished personal record,” the person said. JCN has already spent millions ...

Reuters reports: Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Inc, was sued on Monday for defamation for allegedly suggesting that one of the rescuers of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a Thailand cave in July was a pedophile. Vernon Unsworth, a British caver, filed his lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, more than two months ...

Courthouse News reports: The oldest nuclear power plant in the country will shut down later today, months earlier than scheduled and a decade before its license runs out. Located by the Jersey Shore, about 50 miles east of Philadelphia in Lacey Township, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station went online on Dec. 1, 1969, and was granted the country’s first nuclear ...

Via press release from GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley: Anyone who comes forward as Dr. Ford has deserves to be heard, so I will continue working on a way to hear her out in an appropriate, precedented and respectful manner. The standard procedure for updates to any nominee’s background investigation file is to conduct separate follow-up calls with relevant parties. In ...

The Buffalo News reports: Rep. Chris Collins will stay on the congressional ballot in November even though he remains under indictment on insider trading charges, according to four sources familiar with the situation. The sources, who asked not to be identified, say Collins has heeded the advice of his criminal attorneys who fear the potential complications of protracted election law ...

The Chicago Tribune reports: The more than 700 students enrolled at St. Ben’s this year were greeted by 30 new bright blue pull boxes on the walls, fixtures installed because of concern about the possibility of a deadly school shooting. The school also spent $40,000 on new security cameras. More than 20 schools in Illinois, including St. Ben’s, now have ...

Hillary Clinton has penned an essay for The Atlantic. An excerpt: It’s been nearly two years since Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes to become president of the United States. On the day after, in my concession speech, I said, “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” I hoped that my fears for our future ...