The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton
Impeachment witness provides firsthand account of hearing Trump demand ‘investigation’ of Bidens by Ukraine
Trump specifically inquired about political investigations he wanted carried out by Ukraine during a July phone call with a top U.S. diplomat who then told colleagues that the president was most interested in a probe into former vice president Joe Biden and his son, a State Department aide said Friday in closed-door testimony that could significantly advance House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
David Holmes, an embassy staffer in Kyiv, testified that he overheard a July 26 phone call in which Trump pressed U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland about whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would “do the investigation,” according to three people who have read his opening statement and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe its contents.
“Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that President Zelensky will do ‘anything you ask him to,’ ” Holmes said, according to these people.
Roger Stone guilty on all counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering
A federal jury on Friday convicted longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone of tampering with a witness and lying to Congress about his efforts to learn of hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The panel of nine women and three men deliberated for less than two days before finding Stone, 67, guilty on all seven counts resulting from his September 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, which was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Kremlin’s efforts to damage Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Los Angeles Times
Trump blasts ambassador as she testifies, prompting intimidation warning from Schiff
Even as ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch warned Friday about the national security risks of publicly undermining American diplomats, … Trump took to Twitter to discredit her, handing Democrats additional ammunition for their impeachment case.
Yovanovitch, the latest career diplomat to testify publicly in the House impeachment inquiry, largely accomplished what Democrats hoped she would in their second day of public hearings. The State Department veteran, who was recalled in May amid a flurry of unfounded rumors that she was anti-Trump, put a sympathetic face on the investigation as she described her confusion and despair at being abruptly sidelined.
She said she understood the president’s right to replace an ambassador at any time but said, “I do wonder why it’s necessary to smear my reputation falsely.”
Asylum officers rebel against Trump policies they say are immoral and illegal
It took Doug Stephens two days to decide: He wasn’t going to implement … Trump’s latest policy to restrict immigration, known as Remain in Mexico. The asylum officer wouldn’t interview any more immigrants, only to send them back across the border to face potential danger.
As a federal employee, refusing to abide by policy probably meant that he’d be fired. But as a trained attorney, Stephens told The Times, the five interviews he’d been assigned were five too many. They were illegal.
“They’re definitely immoral,” Stephens said he told his supervisor in San Francisco. “And I’m not doing them.”
The Oregonian
Feds issue final environmental analysis of Jordan Cove natural gas export project in Coos Bay
The proposed Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas terminal and its 230-mile feeder pipeline in southern Oregon would have some adverse and significant impacts on both Coos Bay and on 18 threatened and endangered species, according to staff at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The agency’s staff issued their final environmental analysis of the controversial natural gas export project Friday, concluding it would result in “temporary, long-term and permanent impacts on the environment.” Many of those impacts would not be significant or could be reduced to less than significant levels with mitigation measures, the analysis said, but staff concluded that some would be adverse and significant.
The staff analysis is neither an approval nor denial of the project; that’s up to a vote of the agency’s presidentially appointed commissioners after the analysis goes through a public comment period and incorporates any subsequent revisions.
Billings Gazette
Reproductive health services lacking on Crow Reservation, study shows
There is a lack of reproductive health care and accessibility for women on the Crow Reservation, and it’s hard for women to access the resources that are available, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation published Thursday.
On the Crow Reservation medical resources specific to reproductive health care are stretched thin, the report found. Researchers identified the Crow Reservation as one of five “medically underserved” communities because of its rural location, shortage of medical providers, a “declining number of family planning providers,” and high rates of teen pregnancy.
Other places studied were Tulare County, California; Selma, Alabama; Erie, Pennsylvania; and St. Louis.
Arizona Republic
Sinema, McSally split over controversial Trump court pick Steven Menashi
Arizona's Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Martha McSally split this week over a divisive judicial nomination. The Senate voted 51-41 Thursday to confirm Steven Menashi to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. […]
Menashi emerged as one of Trump's most controversial judicial nominees. He came under fire for his record as a U.S. Department of Education attorney under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and has been blasted for past writings, including a 2010 piece about "ethnonationalism."
Carl Tobias, the Williams Chair in Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and an expert on judicial politics on Capitol Hill, said despite the controversy surrounding Menashi, Senate Republicans are confirming everybody who Trump offers for the appeals courts.
The Daily Beast
Coincidence? Giuliani Ally Pete Sessions Was Eyed for Top Slot in Ukraine
At the same time that Rudy Giuliani and his now-indicted pals were pushing for President Donald Trump to remove Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Ukraine, Trump administration officials were eyeing potential contenders to take over her job.
One of the people in the mix, according to three sources familiar with the discussions, was Pete Sessions, a former congressman who called for Yovanovitch’s firing. He is also a longtime ally of the former New York Mayor, and is believed to have been the “beneficiary of approximately $3 million in independent expenditures” from a PAC funded in part by Giuliani’s indicted cronies, according to a federal indictment.
CNN
Trump ignores Pentagon advice and intervenes in military war crimes cases
Donald Trump ignored Pentagon advice Friday to pardon two officers and restore the rank of a third after all faced war crimes allegations.
Trump granted a full pardon to Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and a full pardon to Army Major Mathew Golsteyn, and restored the rank of Navy SEAL Eddie R. Gallagher, who had been demoted.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other senior military leaders had told the President that a presidential pardon could potentially damage the integrity of the military judicial system, the ability of military leaders to ensure good order and discipline, and the confidence of US allies and partners who host US troops.
Obama warns 2020 candidates about getting out of step with voters: Be 'rooted in reality'
Former President Barack Obama used an appearance at a high-dollar donor confab on Friday to urge the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls to "pay some attention to where voters actually are," warning them about going so far on certain policies that they become out of step with voters.
Obama said that some Democrats are listening too closely to liberal Twitter and progressive activists, specifically singling out issues like health care and immigration and, in what amounted to a stern warning to the 2020 field, bluntly said that voters are "less revolutionary than ... interested in improvement" and warned about turning off certain segments of the electorate by not being "rooted in reality."
"My one cautionary note is I think it is very important for all the candidates who are running at every level to pay some attention to where voters actually are," Obama said, specifically saying he doesn't think candidates should be "diluted into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven't heard a bold enough proposal."
Austin Statesman
Appeals court voids ruling that found Texas in violation of voting law
A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned a lower-court ruling that had found Texas in violation of U.S. voter registration laws.
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals negated the findings of U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, who in May ordered state officials to create a process that lets Texans simultaneously register to vote when they obtain or renew a driver's license on the Department of Public Safety website.
The current system — directing online users to a separate page run by the Texas secretary of state, where they must download a voter registration form, print it out and mail it to their county registrar — violates the National Voter Registration Act's motor-voter provision by adding several hurdles to the registration process that people who obtain or renew a license in person do not face, Garcia ruled.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed, arguing that Garcia sought to impose "costly and unreasonable" solutions for a system that already meets federal requirements.
AP News
Abrams’ group aims to reach Georgia voters who may be purged
Stacey Abrams’ voting rights organization is aiming to reach Georgia voters who could be purged from the state’s election rolls as soon as next month.
Fair Fight Action is mobilizing hundreds of volunteers coming out of Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta to make calls to potentially affected voters. The group is hosting a phone bank at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Thursday. Presidential candidates participating in the debate have also been invited to attend.
Georgia’s secretary of state recently announced that the office will purge 312,000 people from the rolls, including about 120,000 who could be kicked off for not voting in recent elections. Fair Fight Action is suing the secretary of state, arguing in part that a “use it or lose it” stance is unconstitutional.
Warren says getting to ‘Medicare for All’ will take 3 years
Elizabeth Warren announced Friday that she would expand public health insurance during her first 100 days in office, but wouldn’t push for passage of a “Medicare for All” program until the third year of her presidency, a timeline that acknowledges how tough it will be to shift to a system of government-run health care.
The Massachusetts Democratic senator released a health care transition plan that first vows to build on existing programs, including the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. Warren says she’ll then work with Congress to pass pieces of a universal coverage proposal more gradually, with the whole thing being ready “no later than” her third year in office.
The Kansas City Star
Trump will nominate KC Library’s Crosby Kemper III to federal agency he wants to close
Donald Trump will nominate Crosby Kemper III, executive director of the Kansas City Public Library, to lead a little-known independent federal agency that the White House has repeatedly sought to shutter.
Kemper, who has headed the local library since 2005, will become director of the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS), pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The agency is tasked with supporting the nation’s museums and libraries with research, policy and grants.
That institute, which says it is the primary source of federal funding for museums and libraries, has an annual budget of about $242 million. But Trump’s federal budget proposals for the last three years have sought to close the agency.
News & Observer
North Carolina lawmakers OK new 2020 congressional maps. Now it’s up to the courts.
The Republican-led North Carolina Senate approved a new congressional district map Friday to be used in 2020 that is likely to shrink the GOP’s edge in the state’s congressional delegation.
But Democrats plan to challenge the map in court again.
The map passed the N.C. House on Thursday, part of a swift process completed with the Dec. 2 opening of the filing period for congressional candidates in mind. Lawmakers drew the new map after a three-judge panel indicated it was likely to toss the previous map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The map passed the Senate on a party line vote.
The Guardian
Big plastic polluters accused of cynically backing US recycling day
America’s government-backed national recycling awareness day is being used as cover by large corporations that are churning out enormous volumes of plastic that end up strewn across landscapes, rivers and in the ocean, critics have said.
The America Recycles Day event on Friday is being vigorously promoted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a way to encourage Americans to recycle more.
But critics point out that the initiative is the brainchild of Keep America Beautiful, a not-for-profit founded and backed by large companies that produce vast quantities of plastic products that end up as pollution.
Current backers include Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Pepsico, and Altria, the tobacco giant formerly known as Phillip Morris. Decades of campaigns by the group have emphasized individual responsibility for plastic recycling, which data reveals to be a largely broken system.
Climate change may be behind fall of ancient empire, say researchers
The Neo-Assyrian empire was a mighty superpower that dominated the near east for 300 years before its dramatic collapse. Now researchers say they have a novel theory for what was behind its rise and fall: climate change.
The empire emerged in about 912BC and grew to stretch from the Mediterranean down to Egypt and out to the Persian Gulf.
But shortly after the death of the king Ashurbanipal around 630BC, the empire began to crumble, with the grand city of Nineveh sacked in 612BC. By the end of the seventh century BC, the empire’s fall was complete.
Now scientists say the reversal in the empire’s fortunes appears to coincide with a dramatic shift in its climate from wet to dry – a potentially crucial change in an empire reliant on crops.
Deutsche Welle
Germany: Far-right lawmaker ousted from committee over anti-Semitism
In a move unprecedented in modern German history, lawmakers on Wednesday stripped a far-right politician of his role as a parliamentary committee chair. He had made comments widely condemned as anti-Semitic.
Stephan Brandner, a lawyer and member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, had served as head of the legal affairs committee in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament.
All parliamentary groups within the Bundestag, except his own party's, voted for Brandner's removal from the post. "The dismissal of Brandner is a clear signal against incitement and hatred — we are finally returning dignity to the office," said Jan-Marco Luczak, deputy parliamentary spokesperson for Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats (CDU). Johannes Fechner, a parliamentary legal expert for the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), said "Mr. Brandner was simply no longer acceptable."
The Sydney Morning Herald
Safety in numbers: As a horror fire season looms, firefighters are struggling to attract new volunteers
The members of Andrew Veitch’s rural fire brigade, based at Lake Innes just south of Port Macquarie, have been living on their nerves for months. […]
But in other parts of the state, especially in regions further from major town centres, it’s been a struggle to attract and retain new volunteers. Older brigade members, those with perhaps 40 or 50 years’ of fire-fighting experience, are gradually retiring from frontline roles, and there is no rush of new blood to take their place. Changing methods of land management and agriculture mean fewer workers on farms and in the towns which support rural communities. Then there is the impact of the drought.
“People are moving away,” says Veitch. “Kids on farms are moving away, going to universities or towns or to the mines to get work because the farms have no income on them. Some of the farmer brigades out west are really struggling. I saw a truck out there that would normally carry five, it had two on it ... trying to man a truck around the clock.”
BBC News
Hong Kong in first recession for a decade amid protests
Hong Kong has confirmed it has entered its first recession for a decade as it continues to be gripped by protests.
Its economy shrank 3.2% in the July-to-September period compared with the prior quarter, figures showed, confirming earlier preliminary data.
It means the economy has contracted for two quarters in a row, which is the usual definition of a recession.
Tourists are staying away and shops are suffering amid battles between anti-government protesters and police.
Hong Kong: 'I was tear gassed getting my lunch'
"I've been tear gassed a few times, but never when I was outside my office - popping out to get my lunch," says one trader at HSBC.
He is describing the moment this week when Hong Kong's protests came to the central financial district , one of the world's biggest commercial hubs.
He says it was a watershed moment, that's made him and many of his peers question their future in the city.
Al Jazeera
Sri Lanka set for presidential vote after divisive campaign
Sri Lankans are set to vote on Saturday to elect a new president in an election that has seen rising religious tensions and a slowing economy take centre stage in the South Asian island nation.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former defence minister and brother of two-time former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, and Sajith Premadasa, the ruling United National Party's (UNP) candidate, are the top two contenders in a poll that has a record 35 candidates vying to lead Sri Lanka's government.