Gwen Ifill didn't want it to be a big deal.

The legendary journalist knew she'd served as a trailblazer for women and especially a beacon of what is professionally possible for women of color. But in an interview with The New York Times, she said she was eager for the days when it would not seem "like any breakthrough at all" for a black woman to be anchoring a national news program.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/801055141/journalist-gwen-ifill-honored-with-black-heritage-forever-stamp


And yet, more than three years after her death, Ifill is still making breakthroughs. This time, on a stamp.

Trump allies are handing out cash to black voters
Organizers have begun holding events in black communities where they lavish praise on the president while handing out thousands of dollars in giveaways.

Allies of Donald Trump have begun holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on the president as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars to lucky attendees.

The first giveaway took place last month in Cleveland, where recipients whose winning tickets were drawn from a bin landed cash gifts in increments of several hundred dollars, stuffed into envelopes. A second giveaway scheduled for this month in Virginia has been postponed, and more are said to be in the works.


The tour comes as Trump’s campaign has been investing its own money to make inroads with black voters and erode Democrats’ overwhelming advantage with them. But the cash giveaways are organized under the auspices of an outside charity, the Urban Revitalization Coalition, permitting donors to remain anonymous and make tax-deductible contributions.


The organizers say the events are run by the book and intended to promote economic development in inner cities. But the group behind the cash giveaways is registered as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. One leading legal expert on nonprofit law said the arrangement raises questions about the group’s tax-exempt status, because it does not appear to be vetting the recipients of its money for legitimate charitable need.

"Charities are required to spend their money on charitable and educational activities,” said Marcus Owens, a former director of the Exempt Organizations Division at the Internal Revenue Service who is now in private practice at the law firm Loeb & Loeb. “It's not immediately clear to me how simply giving money away to people at an event is a charitable act.”

Asked about the legality of the giveaways in a brief phone interview, the Urban Revitalization Coalition’s CEO, Darrell Scott, said that most gifts were between $300 and $500, and that the group mandates that anyone who receives over $600 fills out a W-9 form in order to ensure compliance with tax law. He did not respond to follow-up questions about how the giveaways were structured and whether they met the legal standard for a charitable act.

Scott declined to name the donors funding the effort. "I'd rather not,” he said. “They prefer to remain anonymous."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/29/trump-black-voters-cash-giveaways-108072

he final 2019 numbers for “jaywalking” summonses are in and … the NYPD is still carrying out a racially suspect policy of ticketing black and Hispanic pedestrians.

Over the entire year, cops issued 90 percent of illegal walking tickets citywide to blacks and Hispanics, mirroring Streetsblog’s findings for the first three-quarters of 2019 — an investigation that led to strong denunciations of the NYPD from a wide range of political officials.

The final numbers for 2019 reveal:

Total tickets issued for illegal or unsafe crossing: 397

Tickets issued to blacks and Hispanics (where race is indicated on the summons): 354 (89.8 percent).

To people aged 25 and under: 213 (53.6 percent)

Blacks and Hispanics comprise about 55 percent of the population. People between 18 and 25 are roughly 7 percent.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/01/27/jaywalking-while-black-final-2019-numbers-show-race-based-nypd-crackdown-continues/

BOSTON (Reuters) - In his first address to the U.S. Congress, President Donald Trump hailed General Motors Co, Harley-Davidson Inc, Intel Corp and seven other companies as innovators and job creators, predicting they would be among those producing “tens of thousands of new American jobs” and investing “billions and billions of dollars.”

Nearly three years later, with unemployment at the lowest in half a century, that first presidential portfolio has stumbled to fulfill that forecast. While Trump’s 10 companies have spent billions on new factories and upgrades, they failed to keep pace with new hires, according to a Reuters analysis of the group’s capital expenditures and headcount since 2017.

Collective employment at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, Ford Motor Co, GM, Harley, Intel, Lockheed Martin Corp, Sprint Corp, Walmart Inc and small biotech Amicus Therapeutics has remained flat at about 2 million workers, the analysis shows. In the same period, total U.S. employment has risen by 4.5%.



For a broader picture, the U.S. economy has produced an average of 193,000 new jobs per month, over the past three years. But even with the benefit of Trump’s 2017 massive corporate tax rate cut, that is 14% less than the 224,000 jobs per month created during the last three years of Barack Obama’s administration, according to U.S. Department of Labor figures.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-jobs-trump-analysis/trumps-first-presidential-portfolio-lags-job-stock-market-growth-idUSKBN1ZT18L

https://twitter.com/NBCPolitics/status/1222562945516933122

Trump's lawyers rolled out a breathtaking new defense


https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/29/politics/impeachment-watch-january-29/index.html

President Donald Trump's impeachment lawyer Alan Dershowitz on Wednesday rolled out a novel and very Trumpian legal argument in his client's defense: The President's personal interest is the national interest when he's up for reelection.

The logic here is that Trump believes his reelection is what's best for the country, so therefore whatever he does to secure a second term is, by definition, in the national interest. That's despite the fact that what he did was hold up US aid, approved by Congress, as leverage to get the investigation he wanted into former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential 2020 rival.
Read the whole story.
Could any President be impeached under that standard? I talked on Wednesday's podcast with CNN legal analyst Michael Zeldin. Plus, CNN congressional reporter Lauren Fox describes the scene at the Capitol and whether former national security adviser John Bolton will be called as a witness. Listen here.

UPDATE - 2-2-2020: Gofundme set for his treatment https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-goldberg-shaun-weiss-treatment-fund


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https://news.sky.com/story/mighty-ducks-actor-shaun-weiss-arrested-for-burglary-while-on-methamphetamine-11920647

WASHINGTON — The stability of President Trump’s standing with voters is one of the hallmarks of his presidency: No matter the headlines, his approval ratings change very little.
That may be especially true in California — a mostly liberal state with a significant conservative minority — where Trump’s deep unpopularity shows no sign of abating.

California voters disapprove of Trump by roughly 2-1, according to the latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, conducted for the Los Angeles Times.

Although some national polls have seen Trump’s standing with voters tick up slightly in recent months, his numbers in California have not changed significantly since the last Berkeley poll done in late November or, in fact, since previous Berkeley polls over the last two years.



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Trump’s standing has moved even less, starting out far lower than most presidents and then remaining stuck near 40% approval nationwide.



Political scientists say the lack of change reflects the nation’s deepening partisanship, which has shrunk the number of swing voters and hardened the views of people on both sides of the aisle.

In California, nearly all registered Democrats, 95%, disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with 86% saying they disapprove strongly, the Berkeley poll found. Among the state’s outnumbered registered Republicans, opinion is only somewhat less uniform: 90% approve of Trump’s work, with 66% approving strongly.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-01-29/trump-approval-california-has-not-shifted-remains-low

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7941211/Flight-carrying-240-Americans-evacuated-Wuhan-diverted-military-airbase.html

The US government chartered the plane to fly out diplomats from the US Consulate and other US citizens

It left before dawn and was due to make a refueling stop in Alaska before flying to Ontario, California

But late on Tuesday it was announced the flight would be diverted to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside

San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman made the announcement but gave no explanation as to why

The Department of Health and Human Services and CDC say 20 airports across the US will screen for the virus
China has cut off access to Wuhan and 16 other cities to prevent people from leaving and spreading the virus
In addition to the United States, countries including Japan and South Korea have also planned evacuations
The death toll in China now stands at 132; the number of confirmed cases there is nearing 6,000
By LAUREN FRUEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and MARY KEKATOS SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

https://twitter.com/artkincell/status/1222218602222424066