NASA has received the first results from its Juno mission to Jupiter, and the findings are surprising. Researchers long held certain assumptions about Jupiter, things that Juno’s early findings have challenged. One of the surprising discoveries were the massive storms on the planet, ones with cyclones as large as our own planet. As well, current measurements indicate that Jupiter’s magnetic … Continue reading
Wanted to go to Apple’s WWDC 2017 developer event, but couldn’t get tickets? You’ll still be able to watch the opening keynote in real-time, with Apple confirming that it will again be streaming the event when it kicks off on June 5th. From 10am PT for what will probably last around two hours, we’re expecting to hear about the latest … Continue reading
U.S. deaths from Alzheimer’s disease rose by more than 50 percent from 1999 to 2014, and rates are expected to continue to rise, reflecting the nation’s aging population and increasing life expectancy, American researchers said on Thursday.
In addition, a larger proportion of people with Alzheimer’s are dying at home rather than a medical facility, according to the report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for 3.6 percent of all deaths in 2014, the report said.
Researchers have long predicted increased cases of Alzheimer’s as more of the nation’s baby boom generation passes the age of 65, putting them at higher risk for the age-related disease. The number of U.S. residents aged 65 and older living with Alzheimer’s is expected to nearly triple to 13.8 million by 2050.
There is no cure for Alzheimer’s, a fatal brain disease that slowly robs its victims of the ability to think and care for themselves.
According to the report by researchers at the CDC and Georgia State University, 93,541 people died from Alzheimer’s in the United States in 2014, a 54.5 percent increase compared with 1999.
During that period, the percentage of people who died from Alzheimer’s in a medical facility fell by more than half to 6.6 percent in 2014, from 14.7 percent in 1999.
Meanwhile, the number of people with Alzheimer’s who died at home increased to 24.9 percent in 2014, from 13.9 percent in 1999, researchers reported in the CDC’s weekly report on death and disease.
The sharp increase in Alzheimer’s deaths coupled with the rising number of people with Alzheimer’s dying at home have likely added to the burden on family members and others struggling to care for their stricken family members, they said.
The report suggests these individuals would benefit from services such as respite care and case management to ease the burden of caring for a person with Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer’s is the leading cause of dementia and affects 5.5 million adults in the United States. It is expected to affect 13.8 million U.S. adults over 65 by the year 2050.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen)
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The fate of President Donald Trump’s order to ban travelers from six predominantly Muslim nations, blocked by federal courts, may soon be in the hands of the conservative-majority Supreme Court, where his appointee Neil Gorsuch could help settle the matter.
After the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined on Thursday to lift a Maryland federal judge’s injunction halting the temporary ban ordered by Trump on March 6, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the administration would appeal to the Supreme Court.
A second regional federal appeals court heard arguments on May 15 in Seattle in the administration’s appeal of a decision by a federal judge in Hawaii also to block the ban. A ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending.
The Justice Department has not made clear when the administration would make its formal appeal or whether it would wait for the 9th Circuit ruling before appealing.
If they take it up, the justices would be called upon to decide whether courts should always defer to the president over allowing certain people to enter the country, especially when national security is the stated reason for an action as in this case. They also would have to decide if Trump’s order violated the U.S. Constitution’s bar against the government favoring one religion over another, as the ban’s challengers assert.
Gorsuch’s April confirmation by the Republican-led Senate over Democratic opposition restored the court’s 5-4 majority, which means that if all the conservative justices side with the administration the ban would be restored regardless of how the four liberal justices vote.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Gorsuch was questioned about Trump’s criticism of judges who ruled against the ban. Gorsuch avoided commenting on the legal issue, saying only that he would not be “rubber stamp” for any president.
While the justices could decide in the coming weeks whether to hear the case, they likely would not hold oral arguments until late in the year, with a ruling sometime after that. A final resolution may not come until perhaps a year after Trump issued the executive order.
The justices are not required to hear any case, but this one meets important criteria cited by experts, including that it would be the federal government filing the appeal and that it involves a nationwide injunction.
The administration could file an emergency application seeking to put the order into effect while the litigation on its legality continues. At least five justices must agree for any such request to be granted.
While the court could split 5-4 along ideological lines, it also is possible some conservative justices could join the liberals in overturning the travel ban, libertarian law professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University said.
“Conservatives in other contexts often take a hard line against any kind of government discrimination (based) on race or religion or the like, even if the motivation may be benign. Also conservatives have concerns about government infringements on religion,” Somin said.
The 4th Circuit said the ban’s challengers, including refugee groups, in the case argued by the American Civil Liberties Union were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violated the Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring any religion. In the 10-3 ruling, three Republican-appointed judges dissented.
The Republican president’s March 6 order, replacing an earlier Jan. 27 one also blocked by the courts, called for barring people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government implements stricter visa screening. It also called for suspending all refugee admissions for 120 days.
KENNEDY’S REASONING
The travel ban’s challengers may take some comfort from the appeals court ruling’s reliance on a concurring opinion in a 2015 Supreme Court immigration case by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the court’s liberals in big cases.
In the 2015 case, Kennedy wrote that in the immigration context, the government’s actions can be questioned if there is evidence of bad faith.
“As with any opinion by Justice Kennedy, I think the million-dollar question is just what he meant in his concurrence, and this may be a perfect case to find out,” University of Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck said.
In Thursday’s ruling, 4th Circuit Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote that the plaintiffs had shown there was “ample evidence” of bad faith, which gave the green light to probe whether there were reasons for the order other than the administration’s stated national security rationale.
The administration has argued the temporary travel ban was needed to guard against terrorist attacks. Gregory wrote that the order uses “vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Trump during the presidential campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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Economic concerns, perennially a top priority for Americans, have been dethroned by concerns about health care, new polling shows.
When Congress considered the first version of the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, earlier this spring, worries about health care shot up ― 45 percent of Americans named it among the two issues most important to them, according to a March HuffPost/YouGov poll, with the economy at just 39 percent.
Months later, as the health care debate reignites, health care remains the public’s predominant focus. Forty-seven percent of Americans see it as a top concern, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll out this week, compared to 38 percent for the economy and 20 percent for immigration.
The relationship between the Trump administration and Russia, which has dominated headlines in recent weeks, scores far below, with just 12 percent naming it as a top issue.
Concerns, however, aren’t equally distributed across political lines. The majority of voters who supported Hillary Clinton in last year’s election ― 55 percent ― say health care is among their top concerns, with 31 percent saying they’re also concerned by the president’s relationship with Russia. Americans who didn’t vote, or who supported a third-party candidate, are about equally concerned about health care ― 51 percent call it a top issue ― but far less invested in Russia. Instead, 35 percent name the economy as another top issue.
President Donald Trump’s voters, meanwhile, stand alone in continuing to focus on the economy, which 56 percent name as a top issue, and immigration, which 42 percent prioritize. A relatively small 31 percent rank health care as a key concern.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll was also one of several this week to examine overall support for the AHCA, which remains deeply unpopular. Below is a roundup of all the polling fielded since last Monday. (As The Washington Post notes, it’s even more unpopular when explicitly labeled as a Republican bill.)
GOP WINS IN MONTANA CONGRESSIONAL RACE – Republican Greg Gianforte ― who is currently facing charges for allegedly assaulting a reporter ― won the special election for Montana’s House seat Thursday night. An early take on what his victory means, from Kyle Kondik: “According to a running tally by Daily Kos Elections, MT-AL represented the 18th [special] election since last November’s presidential election, and the Democrat has now performed better than Clinton in 12 of them, and on average they’ve done 11 points better in terms of margin — a stark contrast to special elections conducted in the leadup to the 2014 midterms, when Democrats routinely undershot Barack Obama’s 2012 margins. … Thursday’s results provide both parties with a little bit of mental reinforcement. Republicans avoided a loss that could have further upset their jittery battleground members, and Democrats can point to overall special election trends that suggest the opportunity for significant gains next year if they can be replicated on a nationalized scale. There’s a long way to go.” [Sabato’s Crystal Ball]
Did the assault hurt Gianforte’s chances? – Sean Trende: “The alleged assault probably hurt Gianforte. There was some speculation that it might not, and the outcome seems consistent with this. It isn’t a crazy theory; picking up and tossing a reporter for a British newspaper isn’t necessarily the worst possible news in a state like Montana (or my home state of Oklahoma). But I’m not sure this is what happened. Gianforte’s totals ran about even in the early vote and Election Day tallies. While this could be interpreted as evidence that the incident didn’t harm him, we should keep in mind that Republicans typically run ahead of Democrats in Election Day voting. We can’t know for certain, but it is entirely possible that Gianforte’s numbers were depressed by the incident, but that much of the vote was already locked in.” [RCP]
What the race could say about 2018 – Harry Enten, prior to the polls’ close: “If Gianforte wins by only a small margin or loses, it would be consistent with the three previous special election results so far this year. While Republicans haven’t lost a race that a House Republican won in 2016, the Democratic candidates have, on average, outperformed expectations by 16 points. The consistency here is key. Any single House special election is susceptible to district-specific factors. (There’s the body-slamming incident, to take just one example. … But special elections as a group have done a decent job of forecasting the following midterm’s House results. When a party vastly underperforms the past presidential vote consistently, it tends to do poorly in the following midterm. If the average House Republican candidate has underperformed nationally by 16 points once all the special elections occur, it would be on par with 2006, when Democrats took back the House.” [538]
HERE’S THE MAIN REASON PEOPLE DIDN’T VOTE IN 2016 – HuffPollster: “A quarter of Americans who didn’t vote last year say they opted out because they didn’t like the candidates or campaign issues, double the percentage who gave the same reason in 2012. About 13 percent of non-voters named that as a reason for not voting in 2012, according to U.S. Census data on turnout released this month. Twenty-five percent say it’s why they didn’t vote in 2016, making it by far the most commonly cited rationale. Fifteen percent of non-voters said they didn’t vote last year because they were ‘not interested,’ while 14 percent said they were ‘too busy’ or had a ‘conflicting schedule,’ and 12 percent cited an ‘illness or disability.’ Dissatisfaction with candidates or campaign issues has been increasing since 2000, when the Census first asked about reasons for not voting with their current wording. However, the change in 2016 is the largest jump so far.” [HuffPost]
MOST AMERICANS AREN’T PERSONALLY CONCERNED ABOUT TERRORISM – HuffPollster: “Most Americans aren’t worried they’ll be personally affected by an act of terrorism, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll taken this week in the wake of an attack in Manchester, England. Thirty-nine percent of Americans say they’re concerned that they or someone in their family will become a victim of terrorism, with 12 percent saying they worry a great deal, and 27 percent saying they worry only somewhat. Another 50 percent say they’re not very worried, or not worried at all. That’s a modest uptick from a February poll, in which 32 percent were at least somewhat worried and 57 percent were not very worried or not worried at all. It’s not clear whether the change has any direct relationship to the attack in Manchester. Concerns about gun violence also ticked up, from 33 percent in March to 37 percent in the most recent poll.” [HuffPost]
RECENT SURVEYS OFFER LITTLE GOOD NEWS FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP – A sampling of the key findings from national polls this week:
Fox News: “American voters disagree with President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, think the dismissal was for self-serving reasons, and approve of a special counsel being appointed to investigate Russian government efforts to influence the election and the Trump campaign. In addition, a majority opposes the Republican plan to replace Obamacare.”
Monmouth University: “Donald Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’ when he got to Washington, but only 1-in-4 Americans think he is making progress on that front. In fact, an even larger number think he is actually making the swamp worse, according to the latest Monmouth University Poll. Only one-third of the public feels the president gives enough attention to bread and butter issues important to American families. On the congressional front, many believe that the House passed the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) primarily to give Republicans a political win rather than fix the health care system.”
Quinnipiac University: “American voters believe 54-43 percent that President Donald Trump is abusing the powers of his office, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. … The president is under water among every party, gender, educational, age and racial group except Republicans, who approve 84-13 percent; white voters with no college degree, who approve 52-40 percent, and white men who are split 47-46 percent.”
David Wasserman suggests a strategy for interpreting this year’s special elections. [Cook Political]
Nathan Gonzales argues that 2018 could be a “potentially great set of elections” for Democrats. [Roll Call]
Nate Silver writes that President Donald Trump’s “strong approval” score is waning. [538]
Frank Newport and Andrew Dugan find that Americans think keeping manufacturing jobs is key to job creation. [Gallup]
Shan Wang notes that Americans’ distaste for “the media” doesn’t extend to their own go-to outlets. [Nieman Lab]
Phillip Connor looks at data showing fewer refugees have resettled in the United States since last October. [Pew]
Cameron Easley writes that a plurality of voters think Trump worked to hinder the FBI Russian investigation. [Morning Consult]
Claire Cain Miller and Kevin Quealy survey political scientists on the state of American democracy, with pessimistic results. [NYT]
President John F. Kennedy tops the favorability rankings for recent presidents. [Sabato’s Crystal Ball]
Quoctrung Bui and Susan Chira find that Trump’s budget cuts would affect women more than men. [NYT]
Kenneth Olmstead notes that most Americans live in households with multiple connected devices. [Pew]
Serena Williams, now on the board of SurveyMonkey, wrote a poll. [SurveyMonkey]
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Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed a law this week to clarify language in the state constitution that many say worked to systematically prevent African-Americans from voting.
During a 1901 constitutional convention openly called to establish white supremacy in the state, the Alabama constitution was amended to disenfranchise anyone who had committed a misdemeanor of “moral turpitude.” The Supreme Court found the language unconstitutional in 1985. But lawmakers altered the language slightly ― making it apply only to felonies ― and reinserted it into the constitution in the 1990s.
And because there wasn’t a set definition of which felonies constituted a crime of moral turpitude, local election officials had broad authority to deny people the right to vote.
People who have been convicted of such crimes could vote if they paid fines and fees ― something that effectively constitutes a poll tax. Some 250,000 people were disenfranchised because of the law, including about 15 percent of the state’s African-American voting population and less than 5 percent of its white population.
The law Ivey signed this week defines fewer than 50 crimes ― offenses including murder, kidnapping and rape ― that constitute a felony of “moral turpitude.”
“Up until the passage of this bill, there was absolutely no definition of who had the right to vote and who didn’t,” said Danielle Lang, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, which brought a lawsuit against Alabama last year over the moral turpitude law.
“The result of that, I think, is that by and large almost everyone was deterred from applying to vote because you were asked to sign under penalty of perjury that you had not been convicted of a disqualifying felony,” she said. “Well, there was no way to know if your felony was disqualifying or not.”
Up until the passage of this bill, there was absolutely no definition of who had the right to vote and who didn’t.
Danielle Lang, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center
It is unclear how many people will be affected by the change, but the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates it could be thousands. Yet some say the new law doesn’t go far enough to address racial disparities in the law because it doesn’t include white-collar crimes such as fraud and public corruption.
Lang said she’s still waiting to see data addressing the racial impact of the new moral turpitude definitions, but that she thinks some of them are puzzling.
“The absence of white-collar crimes in general are kind of glaring. Why theft crimes would be included, but other kind of white-collar crimes that are the equivalent of theft, like fraud type of crimes, is confusing to me,” she said. “It leads one to wonder whether it has to do with who falls into those different categories.”
She added that much of the success of the new law will depend on how much communication there is to voters ― for example, whether the state informs people who were kicked off the voting rolls that they are now eligible to vote.
Lang noted people who do commit crimes of moral turpitude under the new law would still be subject to paying fees or fines, something she said she’d continue to try to get removed.
“I can’t really imagine how it’s anything other than a poll tax,” she said. “If you have two individuals who are similarly situated that have exactly the same crimes, the only distinction between whether or not they can vote, is whether they can afford to pay the fines and fees the state has assessed against them.”
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R) used an analogy about ice cream as he dismissed concerns that the new law still could deprive many people of the right to vote.
“If we had a stand in Anytown, U.S.A., and in that stand on Main Street we’re giving out ice cream,” he told ThinkProgress. “Anybody can come. They can only get one cone and it’s vanilla. There’s going to be some people who are gonna cry because they can’t get but one scoop, and there’s gonna be some people who are gonna cry because we don’t have chocolate.”
“I don’t worry about the people who want two scoops,” he said, “and I don’t worry about the people who want a different flavor.”
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Artist Yehuda Devir takes life with his wife Maya in Tel Aviv and turns it into relatable comic book-style illustrations.
The pair has been together for eight years and will be celebrating their first wedding anniversary in two months.
“My inspiration for these comics is simply our daily lives,” the artist told HuffPost. “These are real cases that happen to us.”
The couple met while they were in the army, became best friends and, over time, the platonic relationship turned into a romantic one.
“Because of her, I make these illustrations ― she just gives me laughter and happiness for life,” Devir told HuffPost. “She is also an artist, in my opinion, better than me, and I sometimes get her reviews about the illustrations I do.”
To see more of Devir’s work, visit his website or follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
H/T Bored Panda
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SAN FRANCISCO — City officials this week began providing public defenders to immigrants unable to afford an attorney to help fight deportation attempts in court.
The new program is the third immigration unit in the U.S. run by a public defender’s office. Supporters say it’s an indispensable service for San Francisco, where immigrants make up one-third of the population, as President Donald Trump’s administration rolls out its aggressive border enforcement and deportation agenda.
Immigrants without attorneys are more likely to lose deportation cases than people defended by a lawyer, according to studies. Yet, in nearly 40 percent of cases, people take their chances without representation, according to Department of Justice figures.
Without legal guidance, immigrants are pressured into making decisions that affect their ability to stay in the country before understanding all of their options, according to critics.
“Miguel,” a man in his 20s from Central America, stood in front of a camera and video screen at a California detention center early last year. He’s a legal resident, and had lived in the Bay Area for almost nine years. But for months, he’d been held in a detention center, targeted for deportation because of his first criminal conviction.
The video in front of him connected to a courtroom in San Francisco, showing a federal judge and a prosecutor who argued for Miguel’s removal.
Miguel, a native Spanish speaker, could not afford a lawyer. He struggled with the judge’s repeated questions about his asylum application, according to transcripts of his case.
“Okay. Sir, I asked you if you have that application filled out today. Did I not?” the judge said.
Miguel, speaking in English even though an interpreter was available, appeared overwhelmed by the proceedings.
‘Yes, but I wasn’t able to get any help. I tried to get an attorney, but there was no answer, and I couldn’t fill it out because I didn’t have any help. And that’s why I didn’t do it,” Miguel said.
It had been a month since Miguel’s previous appearance before the judge, who had given him additional time to fill out the forms to fight his removal from the U.S. At that earlier hearing, Miguel told the judge he found no attorney who would take his case from the list of free and reduced-fee immigration lawyers provided by the court, according to a transcript.
Frustration crept into the judge’s comments.
“Sir, you and I had a conversation. You were supposed to fill out that application today. So I can find today that you’ve given up your application and find you removed,” the judge said. “Sir, you can be removed right now from the United States. Because I don’t appreciate people not following the court’s orders. And you made a promise that that application was going to be filled out and sent today. And now you come with nothing.”
“What can I do? I don’t know how to read. I don’t know how to write. I couldn’t fill it out,” Miguel said.
The scene is Kafkaesque. A legal resident is threatened with immediate deportation by a judge impatient with his inability to fill out documents thrust in front of him. The judge ultimately relented and allowed the man additional time to complete the forms.
Details about Miguel’s identity have been withheld by his current attorney, who worried that criticizing immigration procedures could negatively affect his chances of remaining in the U.S. on appeal.
The case shows typical challenges non-citizens face in immigration courts, where there is no right to a court-appointed lawyer. Immigration cases are classified as civil matters. People who can’t afford to hire a lawyer are only entitled to a public defender in criminal court.
“To a person undergoing them, they feel like a criminal process. The government brings up everything it can,” said Raha Jorjani, an Alameda County public defender in nearby Oakland who now represents Miguel. “It’s an absolutely bewildering process. We’re talking about some of the most complicated laws in the nation.”
Only New York City and Alameda County public defenders’ offices established immigration units before San Francisco. Other localities are devoting resources to hire lawyers for immigrants. Los Angeles announced a $10-million fund for local immigrants facing deportation in December. Chicago put together $1.3 million for a defense fund around the same time. Austin, Texas, put up emergency funds in February. Nonprofits and some law firms have offered pro bono legal aid for years.
Access to an attorney could have immense benefits for detainees. Studies have shown that in immigration court, having a lawyer makes a defendant six times more likely to prevail than counterparts defending themselves, according to the San Francisco Public Defender’s office. Yet, more than 73,000 immigrants — almost 40 percent of all cases — ventured into immigration court without a lawyer in 2016, according to Department of Justice figures.
“Having a lawyer evens the playing field,” said UCLA professor Hiroshi Motomura, an expert in immigration law. “Procedurally, it becomes a much more fair fight.”
It’s a critical time for immigrants. Arrests by immigration officials have risen 38 percent this year under Trump’s administration, and the White House budget proposal seeks $2.7 billion in additional funding for border security and immigration enforcement. Trump also has threatened to slash funds to so-called sanctuary cities that don’t cooperate with federal immigration policy.
The Trump administration’s hostile attitude toward immigrants, ironically, made it easier for San Francisco city officials to reach agreement on spending $200,000 on three lawyers and a paralegal for the rest of the year, according to Francisco Ugarte, head of the public defender’s immigration unit.
“Our goal is to create some semblance of due process in the immigration court,” Ugarte said. “There’s one thing that we can bank on. He [Trump] wants to deport more people and be aggressive. He’s put a ton of fear into immigrant communities.”
Ugarte’s team of three lawyers each will balance about 50 cases at a time. That’s not enough to provide every detainee with a lawyer, as about 1,500 detained immigrants have court dates in San Francisco each year, but it’s a start, the public defender’s office said.
Critics say the program is a waste of government resources. “I don’t believe there is an appetite among the citizens in California to use their taxpayer dollars to defend undocumented immigrants who may have committed crimes,” Sue Caro, a state Republican Party official, told The Mercury News.
Even with attorneys on hand, immigrants lack many of the other familiar protections against unfairness in criminal courts. There is no right to a speedy trial or statute of limitations, for instance.
“Having representation is significant, huge and would go a long way,” said Jorjani. “But unfortunately, I don’t think the system is that fair.”
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A new profile of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton published Friday reveals her initial reaction to President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey earlier this month.
The profile, written by New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister, contains the first major interview the 2016 Democratic nominee has given since her narrow loss to Trump in November.
“I am less surprised than I am worried,” Clinton said of Comey’s firing. “Not that he shouldn’t have been disciplined. And certainly the Trump campaign relished everything that was done to me in July and then particularly in October.”
“Having said that, I think what’s going on now is an effort to derail and bury the Russia inquiry, and I think that’s terrible for our country,” she added.
She also said she hopes “this abrupt and distressing action will raise enough questions in the minds of Republicans for them to conclude that it is worthy of careful attention, because left unchecked … this will not just bite Democrats, or me; this will undermine our electoral system.”
Read the full New York Magazine profile here.
Traister interviewed Clinton just one day after Trump fired Comey. Since then, multiple revelations have emerged during the FBI’s ongoing investigation into whether Trump associates actively colluded with Russian officials to sway the outcome of the election, including that Trump allegedly asked Comey to end the probe.
Clinton referenced those revelations during a commencement speech she gave at her alma mater, Wellesley College, on Friday. During her remarks, she spoke about the mood on campus when Richard Nixon was elected president, in an apparent jab at Trump.
“We were furious about the past presidential election of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice, after firing the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice,” she said.
While many of her former staffers had a lot to say about Comey’s firing, Clinton herself has largely stayed out of the ensuing debate.
Under Comey’s leadership, the FBI investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure at the State Department. In July, Comey announced he would not recommend charges against Clinton. But in October, less than two weeks before the election, Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the bureau was considering reopening its investigation after finding additional emails.
The FBI was eventually able to review those emails before the election and found that they didn’t change Comey’s previous recommendation against charges. However, many, including Clinton herself, felt Comey’s letter was partially to blame for her narrow loss to Trump.
In a memo explaining why he recommended terminating Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the handling of Clinton’s emails had caused “substantial damage” to the FBI’s reputation and credibility.
“I cannot defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken,” Rosenstein wrote. “Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.”
However, Trump later told NBC’s Lester Holt that the decision to fire Comey was his own, and that he considered “this Russia thing” while assessing Comey’s future at the Justice Department.
Comey addressed his handling of the Clinton investigation during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3.
“It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election, but honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision,” he testified.
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When Rio de Janeiro resident Davi Moreira goes to Brazil’s famous Ipanema beach, he always has a splashingly good time.
The 22-year-old is a wannabe merman who loves resting on the rocks by the sea as he wears one of five colorful mermaid tails.
“It’s a lifestyle, a way of expressing my love and respect for the sea and this encounter between two worlds. When I’m in the water I feel like another person,” he told Agence France-Presse as he leisured on rocks with his handmade tail glittering in the sun.
Moreira takes his merman passion very “sea-riously.” Besides sporting a “Little Mermaid” tattoo on his body, his home is chock-full of Ariel-themed memorabilia including cups, shirts, dolls and even a bedcover featuring the red-headed mermaid.
Merman Moreira attracts waves of attention from fellow mermaid “afish-cianados,” but also some insults from a few crabs.
“People laugh at me because I am different, but I laugh back because they are all the same,” he said. “I’m not trying to escape reality. I know perfectly well how to deal with adult life. But this makes me happy and I’m not causing anyone any harm.”
Moreira’s lifestyle choice gets approval from at least one slightly envious local, an elderly woman in the video above.
“I think that if I would have had a fancy dress like that when I was a child, it would have been a dream,” she said.
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