VA Del. Tim Hugo, Sally Jenkins, Amb. John Bolton, Rep. Paul Gosar, Elizabeth Schultz and Rep. Dave Brat joined WMAL on Thursday!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

5am – A/B/C   Flynn kept FBI interview concealed from White House, Trump.

NBC News also has learned that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who informed the White House about Flynn’s interview two days after it took place, has cooperated with the special counsel. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who was allegedly asked by Trump to lean on Comey to drop his investigation, has also been interviewed, according to people familiar with the inquiry. One person familiar with the matter described Pompeo, Coats and Rogers as “peripheral witnesses” to the Comey firing. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who played a key role in Comey’s departure and was a top adviser on the Trump campaign, was interviewed by Mueller last week as the special counsel’s team inches closer to possibly questioning the president himself.

5am – D         LARRY NASSAR SENTENCED:

• Former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar sentenced to up to 175 years in prison
• Michigan State Univ. president resigns in wake of Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, Michigan State University President Lou Anna Simon resigned Wednesday night amid widening denunciations of how the school handled the Larry Nassar sex-abuse scandal.”As tragedies are politicized, blame is inevitable,” Simon said in a written statement that seemed likely to only further infuriate her critics. “As president, it is only natural that I am the focus of this anger.”
• U.S. Olympic Committee CEO calls for more resignations over Larry Nassar abuse scandal. Fallout from an Olympic sexual-abuse scandal continued to spread Wednesday, as officials called for top sports and academic leaders to resign over victims’ allegations that several institutions had enabled Dr. Larry Nassar’s abuse of gymnasts and other young athletes for decades.  Michigan State University President Lou Anna Simon announced she was resigning just hours after a judge imposed a prison term of 40 years to 175 years on Nassar, a former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics team doctor.
• “Let this sentence strike fear in anyone who thinks it is OK to hurt another person” Aly Raisman as Larry Nassar is sent to prison for the rest of his life for abusing at least 150 girls and women.

5am – E         Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office ends agreement with ICE to hold wanted inmates.  FAIRFAX, Va. – The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office said it is terminating an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and will no longer hold inmates wanted by the federal agency past their release date. Starting on May 23, the sheriff’s office will no longer honor requests to detain individuals with a detention order unless there is a corresponding criminal detainer issued by a court. Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid said the department no longer needed to have an agreement that required it to extend its resources. “I am pleased with Sheriff Stacey Kincaid’s decision to take this step,” said Fairfax County Board of Supervisors chairman Sharon Bulova in a news release. “The Sheriff and her Deputies operate the County jail and are not federal immigration officials.” However, Fairfax County School Board member Elizabeth Schultz is concerned this could put students at risk and said the abrupt shift in policy could spell danger, not only for the community, but for school campuses across the county. “They had to enact and take action to break the relationship with the federal government and for the life of me I can’t understand, not only for the adult population, but for the children in our schools – girls who are potentially subject to sex trafficking issues,” Schultz said. “Everything that we are trying to educate and protect children about, this seems to fly in the face of.” Fairfax County Public Schools is the tenth-largest school district in the country and reportedly has the sixth-largest population for undocumented minors.

6am – A         Flu season pummels DC area. (Washington Post) — A vicious strain of the flu is battering the Washington region, mirroring a wave of debilitating illness that in recent weeks has seized the entire United States, health officials say. With the number of cases across the country still rising, health officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia are reporting a surge in patients showing up at doctor’s offices and emergency rooms suffering from fever, severe headaches, muscle aches and nausea. The spike is touching all age groups, although young children and the elderly appear to be most vulnerable, and many hospitals and nursing homes have restricted visitation. In the District, health officials counted 382 new influenza cases during the first two weeks of January — more than half of the 624 reported in the city since flu season began in October. “Looking at this season and the past five seasons, this is the worst one we’ve seen,” said Preetha Iyengar, supervisory epidemiologist at the District’s Department of Health. The increase in the District reflects what health officials are reporting from coast to coast, including California, where some hospitals are setting up tents to triage the overflow of patients. In the second week of January, more people were treated for flulike symptoms than at any equivalent time in nearly a decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since the start of flu season, nearly 9,000 people have been hospitalized nationwide, the CDC reported. A total of 30 children have died, including 10 during the week that ended Jan. 13. “There’s a lot of flu out there right now — that’s the simple way to put it,” said Kristen Nordlund, a CDC spokeswoman. In Montgomery County, where nine public schools have reported upticks in absences due to illness, officials Tuesday issued a warning about widespread cases of the flu and urged precautions and vaccinations. The county’s six hospitals on Tuesday announced that they would bar from their facilities all children under the age of 12 and visitors experiencing symptoms that include fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose and muscle aches. Visitors exhibiting flu symptoms who go to a hospital to visit a patient will be asked to wear masks.

6am – B/C     IMMIGRATION NEWS:

• White House will roll out legislative framework for immigration Monday — (Axios) Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that President Trump will release a framework for what he hopes to see in an immigration reform bill on Monday. Asked whether that’ll include a path to citizenship for Dreamers, Sanders said, “If I told you now it would kind of take away the fun for Monday.”
• Trump considering plan to give DREAMers a path to citizenship ‘at some point in the future’ (USA Today) — WASHINGTON –  President Trump said Wednesday he wants to give young immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children a path to citizenship. “We’re going to morph into it … It’s going to happen, at some point in the future, over a period of 10 to 12 years,” Trump told reporters.  Trump, who is expected to unveil a new legislative framework on immigration on Monday, said a fix for the DREAMers must occur before Congress takes on comprehensive immigration legislation, which he called “the bigger immigration problem.”  Trump also said he is seeking $25 billion for a wall along the border with Mexico, and $5 billion for other security measures. “We’re going to do a great job with DACA,” Trump said, referring to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but insisted the wall is essential. “If you don’t have a wall, you don’t have DACA,” Trump said.  Trump said the administration is talking about a long-term plan for about 800 miles of wall, but not in areas already guarded by mountains, large bodies of water, and rough terrain. “Where you have a mountain, you don’t build a wall,” Trump said.
• SANCTUARY CITIES: Trump: “The Justice Dept today has announced a critical legal step to hold accountable sanctuary cities that violate federal law and free criminal aliens back into our communities. We can’t have that.”
• Trump: Mayors who skipped White House event prioritized ‘criminal, illegal immigrants’
• President Trump will release a “legislative framework” on immigration issues next week that “represents a compromise that members of both parties can support,” said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.
• WH CoS Kelly expected to come to Capitol Hill tomorrow with the WH’s DACA plan. Senators will be here. But the House isn’t even in session the rest of the week.
• Sen. Bernie Sanders: “A wall made a whole lot of sense in the 15th century when China built The Great Wall,” but there are better ways to provide security now
• FLASHBACK: DURBIN — I’m not going to let anything distract me from my singular mission: making sure that Dreamers have the protection and certainty about their future that they deserve.
• Poll: 84% Say The Schumer Shutdown Was “Mainly Unnecessary”
• DOJ Threatens Legal Action Against 23 Potential Sanctuary Jurisdictions

6am – D         INTERVIEW – VA DEL TIM HUGO — representing the 40th district, which includes the municipalities of Catharpin, Clifton, and Fairfax Station and is the Majority Caucus Chairman for the Virginia House Republican Caucus

• Del. Tim Hugo, a member of Virginia’s House Republican leadership, represents parts of Fairfax and Prince William counties. Hugo is the Majority Caucus Chairman for the House Republican Caucus. He is the Vice Chairman of the Finance Committee and also serves on the Commerce and Labor, Transportation, and Privileges and Election Committees. Delegate Hugo represents Centreville, Clifton, Fairfax, and Fairfax Station in Fairfax County as well as Catharpin, Gainesville, Haymarket, and Manassas in Prince William County.
• Fairfax County Government ‏@fairfaxcounty  Jan 23: .@fairfaxsheriff terminates intergovernmental service agreement with @ICEgov; will no longer hold inmates past their release date unless an ICE administrative request to detain the inmate is accompanied by a criminal detainer issued by a court.
• Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office ends agreement with ICE to hold wanted inmates. FAIRFAX, Va. – The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office said it is terminating an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and will no longer hold inmates wanted by the federal agency past their release date. Starting on May 23, the sheriff’s office will no longer honor requests to detain individuals with a detention order unless there is a corresponding criminal detainer issued by a court. Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid said the department no longer needed to have an agreement that required it to extend its resources. “I am pleased with Sheriff Stacey Kincaid’s decision to take this step,” said Fairfax County Board of Supervisors chairman Sharon Bulova in a news release. “The Sheriff and her Deputies operate the County jail and are not federal immigration officials.” However, Fairfax County School Board member Elizabeth Schultz is concerned this could put students at risk and said the abrupt shift in policy could spell danger, not only for the community, but for school campuses across the county.

6am – E         MEMO UPDATE:

• DOJ Battle Over FISA Abuse Memo Heats Up. (Daily Caller)  – The Justice Department is making a last-ditch effort to prevent the release of a controversial memo alleging surveillance abuse involving the infamous Steele dossier. In a letter sent Wednesday to California Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Justice Department official Stephen Boyd argued that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” for the committee to release the memo without first consulting the Justice Department and FBI. Boyd asserted that the “unprecedented” move could create national security risks and damage future investigations.
• Daily Beast: Devin Nunes’ Anti-FBI Memo Names James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, and Andrew McCabe
• House Intel Committee Could Vote on Releasing FISA Memo Next Week. The classified House Intelligence Committee could vote on releasing a classified memo detailing FBI abuse related to its investigation of the Trump campaign as early as next week, according to a Republican congressman and two sources. “That vote could occur as soon as next week,” said Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) in a statement Wednesday. “Only through transparency and openness can we learn the truth, conduct appropriate oversight, and hold government officials accountable.” One source said the vote could occur as early as Monday, but the other source said the vote would “likely” be the week after next, since Congress is only in session for three days next week. Pursuant to House rules, the committee would simply need to take a vote in order to release the classified memo to the public, and since Republicans having an overwhelming majority on the committee, the memo will all but certainly be released. There would be a five-day waiting period for President Trump to object, but he is not expected to object.
• Rep. Adam Schiff tries to distract from calls to #ReleaseTheMemo with DIFFERENT memo: Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have crafted their own classified memo, to counter the Nunes memo that hasn’t been released. Adam Schiff: Hey, Guys, I Have My Own Memo Do You Want To See It? After a week of sniveling and bellyaching over the decision by the House Judiciary Committee to make available to House members a memo detailing alleged abuse of FISA and pervasive bias against Trump among some senior FBI personnel, Adam Schiff has now decided that since the memo is going to be released that he has to write a counter memo.

6am – F         DAVOS / TRUMP ECONOMY:

• Trump arrives in Davos, set to promote his ‘America First’ policy. (Fox News) – President Trump touched down in Switzerland early Thursday, where he intends to bring his “America First” message to a skeptical – and possibly hostile – gathering of global political and business leaders at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. Trump, much of whose base back home views the meeting as a conference of global elitists, is expected to meet with world leaders, attend a reception, host a dinner for European business executives and give a keynote address Friday.
• Fox News Poll: As Trump ends year one, record number rate economy ‘excellent’. A Fox News Poll conducted at the end of President Trump’s first year in the White House finds more voters rate the economy positively today than have in nearly two decades.  And they give the White House credit for that:  nearly twice as many say the Trump administration has made the economy better than made it worse: 40 percent vs. 22 percent.  One-third says the administration has not made a difference (34 percent).
• Starbucks is spending $250 million to raise wages, create 8,000 jobs, and improve benefits for 150,000 employees. It’s just the latest in a very long list of companies that have increased worker compensation as a result of the Republican tax cuts.

7am – A          INTERVIEW – SALLY JENKINS — a sports columnist for The Washington Post

• Dr. Larry Nassar Sentenced to 40 to 175 Years for Sexual Abuse. In a sexual abuse scandal that has reverberated across the American sports scene, former Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced Wednesday to 40 to 175 years in prison for molesting young gymnasts and other athletes. The punishment was handed down in a Michigan courtroom where Judge Rosemarie Aquilina had spent days listening to impassioned, angry statements from about 150 women — including Olympic champions — who had been victimized by Nassar.
• Michigan State Univ. president resigns in wake of Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, Michigan State University President Lou Anna Simon resigned Wednesday night amid widening denunciations of how the school handled the Larry Nassar sex-abuse scandal.”As tragedies are politicized, blame is inevitable,” Simon said in a written statement that seemed likely to only further infuriate her critics. “As president, it is only natural that I am the focus of this anger.”
• U.S. Olympic Committee CEO calls for more resignations over Larry Nassar abuse scandal. Fallout from an Olympic sexual-abuse scandal continued to spread Wednesday, as officials called for top sports and academic leaders to resign over victims’ allegations that several institutions had enabled Dr. Larry Nassar’s abuse of gymnasts and other young athletes for decades.  Michigan State University President Lou Anna Simon announced she was resigning just hours after a judge imposed a prison term of 40 years to 175 years on Nassar, a former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics team doctor.
• SALLY JENKINS: USA Gymnastics allowed Larry Nassar to prey upon innocent victims. Congress must investigate.  (By Sally Jenkins / Washington Post) — A national organization with the initials USA on it forced young girls to submit to pelvic exams by a child molester. Literally hundreds of them were isolated in mandatory “camps” and were repeatedly assaulted by a barehanded pedophile for years on end, while nobody cared to notice that no decent doctor would perform such an exam on young girls, much less ungloved. Where in the fresh red hell is an independent investigation into USA Gymnastics, and why isn’t Congress threatening to smash the U.S. Olympic Committee’s charter into pieces with a gavel over this? It’s only the worst sex abuse scandal in the history of sports — and maybe in the history of this country. USA Gymnastics not only allowed serial pedophile Larry Nassar unsupervised access to the scores of girls in its charge over 30 years, it required them to submit to him and his utterly unjustifiable vaginal examinations. There was no saying, “I don’t like this doctor. I want my own.” The organizations systematically deprived them of any right to say no, to ask for alternate treatment. It makes the Hollywood rapes look principled.

7am – B         ENTERTAINMENT NEWS:

• Elton farewell tour comes to DC in September. Legendary pop star Elton John announces retirement tour. “My priorities now are my children, and my husband, and my family…the time is right to say thank you to all my fans around the world, globally, and then to say goodbye.”
• Elton John announces he will retire from touring: ‘My priorities have changed’
• ‘Tootsie’ Musical Targets Broadway in 2019. “Tootsie” is on its way to Broadway, setting a pre-Broadway run in Chicago this fall, with producers hoping to open the show in New York in the spring of 2019. Santino Fontana, the Tony nominee (“Cinderella”) whose screen work includes “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and the voice of the devious prince Hans in “Frozen,” will step into the role played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1982 Columbia Pictures comedy. David Yazbek, currently the toast of Broadway with his strong-selling awards contender “The Band’s Visit,” will pen the score with a book by Robert Horn (“Living Single,” “13,” “Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance”), based on the story by Don McGuire and Larry Gelbart. Scott Ellis, whose recent Broadway work includes the Roundabout Theatre Company revivals of “She Loves Me” and “On the Twentieth Century,” directs, with Denis Jones (“Holiday Inn”) on board to choreograph.
• MURPHY BROWN: ‘Murphy Brown’ returning to CBS with 13 new episodes.  Candice Bergen is returning for the sitcom reboot, which will air during the 2018-19 season. Not one to be left out of TV’s current reboot frenzy, CBS is adding another vintage comedy to its lineup: Murphy Brown. The landmark sitcom, from Diane English and starring Candice Bergen, was an Emmy darling and a cultural touchstone for its then-uncommon portrayal of a single working mother. The Warner Bros. produced effort has received a 13-episode straight-to-series order and will include Bergen reprising her role. English is returning as well, serving as writer and executive producer through her Bend in the Road Productions shingle.

7am – C         GRUMPY CAT WINS LAWSUIT: The Grumpy Cat Limited company was awarded $710,001 in damages on Monday when a California jury decided that the beverage company Grenade was guilty of infringing on its copyright and trademark.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – AMBASSADOR JOHN BOLTON – Former UN Ambassador — discussed President Trump in Davos and NBC kissing up to North Korea.

• NBC News anchor Lester Holt is facing backlash on social media after he said he and his crew were “treated with respect” by North Korean officials during their trip to the Masikryong Ski Resort in the totalitarian country.
• Trump arrives in Davos, set to promote his ‘America First’ policy. President Trump touched down in Switzerland early Thursday, where he intends to bring his “America First” message to a skeptical – and possibly hostile – gathering of global political and business leaders at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. Trump, much of whose base back home views the meeting as a conference of global elitists, is expected to meet with world leaders, attend a reception, host a dinner for European business executives and give a keynote address Friday. Trump should not expect a warm welcome after spending much of his first year as president pushing the pro-America agenda, in rhetoric as well as trade policy. Even before his arrival, world leaders signaled veiled displeasure with the American president’s policies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her address Wednesday, warned of the dangers of protectionism, and her French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, spoke of a “shared framework” and shared responsibilities among nations. “We are seeing nationalism, populism and in a lot of countries a polarized atmosphere,” Merkel said Wednesday, in a speech at Davos. “We believe that isolation won’t help us. We believe we need to cooperate, that protectionism is not the answer.

7am – E         Alexa is no longer going to take your sexist abuse. (Hot Air) – The #MeToo movement has inspired some odd responses but this one may be the oddest that I’ve seen. Over at the Atlantic, there’s a piece arguing that Alexa—the female voice associated with Amazon’s voice-activated, home automation product—is a victim of oppression, or maybe a setback for feminism, or something. What is clear is that Amazon has created a digital house servant and made it a semi-competent woman:

    If you ask Alexa, the voice-assistant software in Amazon Echo devices, if it’s a feminist, it will respond in the affirmative. “I am a feminist. As is anyone who believes in bridging the inequality between men and women in society,” it continues. At Quartz, Leah Fessler recently noted that it’s a vast improvement over just a year ago, when Alexa would take abuse like “you’re a bitch” or “you’re a slut” in stride. “Well, thanks for the feedback,” the robot used to say. Now, it disengages instead, saying something like, “I’m not going to respond to that.”

    As waves of sexual-harassment allegations crash against the shores of work culture, now is a good time to support women—even robots with female personas like Alexa. But let’s not give Amazon too much credit. The company gave Alexa a woman’s voice and name in the first place, and then set it up for ire and abuse by giving Alexa the impossible task of responding accurately to an infinity of requests and commands.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — CONGRESSMAN PAUL GOSAR (R-AZ) – discussed the latest on the memo and what’s next for immigration/DACA.

8am – B/C     INTERVIEW — Fairfax County School Board member ELIZABETH SCHULTZ – discussed Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office ending agreement with ICE to hold wanted inmates.  (Fox 5 DC) — Fairfax County School Board member Elizabeth Schultz is concerned this could put students at risk and said the abrupt shift in policy could spell danger, not only for the community, but for school campuses across the county. “They had to enact and take action to break the relationship with the federal government and for the life of me I can’t understand, not only for the adult population, but for the children in our schools – girls who are potentially subject to sex trafficking issues,” Schultz said. “Everything that we are trying to educate and protect children about, this seems to fly in the face of.” Fairfax County Public Schools is the tenth-largest school district in the country and reportedly has the sixth-largest population for undocumented minors. Schultz said she was blindsided by the new policy that could put a strain on the school district’s efforts to curb gang violence. She also said the elimination of the agreement could potentially release criminals who have ICE detention orders.

8am – D/E     INTERVIEW — CONGRESSMAN DAVE BRAT – (R-VA)  — discussed his thoughts on what’s next for immigration / DACA.

• White House will roll out legislative framework for immigration Monday –– (Axios) Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that President Trump will release a framework for what he hopes to see in an immigration reform bill on Monday. Asked whether that’ll include a path to citizenship for Dreamers, Sanders said, “If I told you now it would kind of take away the fun for Monday.”-
• PUPPERS Act of 2017 – Preventing Unkind and Painful Procedures and Experiments on Respected Species Act of 2017 or the PUPPERS Act of 2017: This bill prohibits the Department of Veterans Affairs, in carrying out research within the Veterans Health Administration, from purchasing, breeding, transporting, housing, feeding, maintaining, disposing of, or experimenting on dogs as part of the conduct of any study that causes significant pain or distress.