Amber Athey, RNC’s Liz Harrington and Washington Post’s Scott Allen joined WMAL on Tuesday morning!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C Warren‘s plan to wipe out student debt (and how she’d pay for it. Many in the Democratic presidential field have already signed onto plans for free public college. (NBC News) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., unveiled a plan Monday that would offer free tuition at public colleges while canceling up to $50,000 in student debt for over 40 million Americans. Warren said her proposal was designed to confront a recent surge in student loans, now totaling $1.5 trillion nationally. She blamed insufficient funding for higher education — the result of lower taxes — for the mounting student debt.

5am – D         VISA OVERSTAYS: Trump Signing Memo Cracking Down On Visa Overstays. (Daily Caller/Amber Athey) — President Donald Trump will be signing a memorandum recommending severe sanctions on countries with high rates of visa overstays in the United States. The memorandum recommends, among other measures, placing travel restrictions on citizens of the 20 countries who have higher than 10% visa overstay rates, including Chad, Yemen, Syria, Angola and others. Over 415,000 individuals were suspected of overstaying their short-term visitor visas in FY 2018, according to Department of Homeland Security data as of March 2019.

5am – E         SUBPOENAS: TRUMP SUES TOP DEMOCRAT TO BLOCK A SUBPOENA FOR HIS FINANCIAL RECORDS. (Daily Caller) — President Donald Trump is suing a top Democrat in order to block a subpoena that demands an accounting firm hand over the president’s financial records to Congress. The lawsuit, filed in a D.C. federal court Monday by Trump’s legal team, referred to the subpoena as a “weapon” in a “political war” being waged against the president by Democrats. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings and chief investigative counsel Peter Kenny are named as defendants in the suit, CNBC reported.

6am – A/B/C/D/EF   CNN’S TOWN HALL RECAP:

• CNN had back-to-back town halls with five Democratic presidential candidates on April 22. Five Democratic presidential candidates appeared back-to-back CNN town halls. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren participated in a live, internationally telecast 2020 event from New Hampshire on April 22.
• Warren Doubles Down on Trump Impeachment: ‘No Political Inconvenience Exception’ to the Constitution
• Klobuchar Punts on Impeachment Question at CNN Town Hall: ‘Up to the House’
• Kamala Harris Tells CNN Town Hall ‘I Believe That Congress Should Take the Steps Towards Impeachment’
• Bernie Sanders Confronted on ‘Failures of Socialism’ By Student Whose Family Fled Soviet Russia
• Bernie Sanders Tells Chris Cuomo That Even Boston Marathon Bomber Should Vote From Prison
• Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris Confronted With Questions on Felony Voting After Bernie Backs Idea at CNN Town Hall
• Democrat Elizabeth Warren says that she wants to “roll back student loan debt for about 95% of students who have debt”

7am – A         INTERVIEW – AMBER ATHEY – White House correspondent, The Daily Caller – discussed the latest White House news: Trump sues Cummings over subpoena  and Fed picks trouble.

• VISA OVERSTAYS: Trump Signing Memo Cracking Down On Visa Overstays. (Daily Caller/Amber Athey) — President Donald Trump will be signing a memorandum recommending severe sanctions on countries with high rates of visa overstays in the United States. The memorandum recommends, among other measures, placing travel restrictions on citizens of the 20 countries who have higher than 10% visa overstay rates, including Chad, Yemen, Syria, Angola and others. Over 415,000 individuals were suspected of overstaying their short-term visitor visas in FY 2018, according to Department of Homeland Security data as of March 2019.
• SUBPOENAS: TRUMP SUES TOP DEMOCRAT TO BLOCK A SUBPOENA FOR HIS FINANCIAL RECORDS. (Daily Caller) — President Donald Trump is suing a top Democrat in order to block a subpoena that demands an accounting firm hand over the president’s financial records to Congress. The lawsuit, filed in a D.C. federal court Monday by Trump’s legal team, referred to the subpoena as a “weapon” in a “political war” being waged against the president by Democrats. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings and chief investigative counsel Peter Kenny are named as defendants in the suit, CNBC reported.
• House Judiciary Committee Subpoenas Ex-White House Counsel Don McGahn
• FED PICKS: TRUMP FED PICK STEPHEN MOORE RESPONDS TO ‘CHARACTER ASSASSINATION’ BY CNN. Stephen Moore, one of President Donald Trump’s recent picks to join the Federal Reserve Board, slammed the media on Monday for attacks over old columns he wrote about women in sports. CNN published an article Monday quoting four columns Moore, a former economic adviser to the Trump campaign, wrote in the early 2000s for National Review magazine. The columns included pithy jokes and commentary about banning female announcers and referees from NCAA basketball games and questioning why ESPN would ever air women’s basketball. “How outrageous is this? This year they allowed a woman ref a men’s NCAA game. Liberals celebrate this breakthrough as a triumph for gender equity,” Moore “Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women? What’s next? Women invited to bachelor parties?”
• Herman Cain withdraws from consideration for the Federal Reserve. Trump says he won’t nominate Herman Cain for Fed seat. “My friend Herman Cain, a truly wonderful man, has asked me not to  nominate him for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board,” Trump tweeted. “I  will respect his wishes. Herman is a great American who truly loves our Country!”

7am – B         Dem leaders reject immediate impeachment proceedings in urgent conference call. (Fox News) — Leaders of the House Democrats backed off the idea of immediately launching impeachment proceedings against President Trump in an urgent conference call Monday evening amid a growing rift among the party’s rank-and-file members, presidential contenders and committee chairs on the contentious issue. Fox News is told by two senior sources on the private conference call that even House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, an anti-Trump firebrand, told fellow Democrats that while she personally favored going forward with impeachment proceedings, she was not pushing for other members to join her. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her leadership team were clear there were no immediate plans to move forward with impeachment, Fox News is also told. Well-placed sources said it was a spirited 87-minute call involving more than 170 Democrat members, including House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff and House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings. “We have to save our democracy,” Pelosi said, according to the sources. “This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about saving our democracy. If it is what we need to do to honor our responsibility to the Constitution – if that’s the place the facts take us, that’s the place we have to go.” Pelosi asserted that more investigations were needed: “We don’t have to go to articles of impeachment to obtain the facts, the presentation of facts.”

7am – C         SRI LANKA UPDATE:

• National day of mourning for Sri Lankans as death toll rises to 310. Sri Lankans have been observing a national day of mourning, marked by a three-minute silence at 8.30am local time. The first mass burials from Sunday’s bomb attacks have been taking place in Negombo, where an explosion killed churchgoers at St Sebastian’s.    The death toll has risen to 310. Forty people have been arrested in connection wtih the attacks.
• Sidwell Friends 5th-Grader Killed in Sri Lanka Bombings. A fifth-grade student from Sidwell Friends died in the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, according to the school. Kieran Shafritz de Zoysa was on leave of absence from Sidwell, living and studying in Sri Lanka. He was to return to Sidwell to study at the middle school next school year. “Kieran was passionate about learning, he adored his friends, and he was incredibly excited about returning to Sidwell Friends this coming school year,” the middle school’s principal wrote in a letter to parents. “We are beyond sorry not to get the opportunity to welcome Kieran to the middle school.” Sidwell will have counselors on hand to talk about Kieran’s death with students and staff when they return from break Tuesday.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – LIZ HARRINGTON – RNC SPOKESWOMAN – reacted to last night’s CNN town halls.

7am – E         AWKWARD KLOBUCHAR MOMENTS AT CNN TOWN HALL:

• Klobuchar makes awkward joke to Chris Cuomo as she’s talking to the audience and looks over at Chris Cuomo who is just standing there with enough distance from her but she complains anyway: “I feel you creeping over my shoulder. Not in a Trump-ian manner”
• Democrat presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar has to tell CNN’s audience to “cheer” for her after she said that she won in Michele Bachmann’s district

8am – A/B/C Warren’s plan to wipe out student debt (and how she’d pay for it. Many in the Democratic presidential field have already signed onto plans for free public college. (NBC News) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., unveiled a plan Monday that would offer free tuition at public colleges while canceling up to $50,000 in student debt for over 40 million Americans. Warren said her proposal was designed to confront a recent surge in student loans, now totaling $1.5 trillion nationally. She blamed insufficient funding for higher education — the result of lower taxes — for the mounting student debt. “The first step in addressing this crisis is to deal head-on with the outstanding debt that is weighing down millions of families and should never have been required in the first place,” she said in a statement. Much of the 2020 Democratic presidential field has already signed onto plans for either free public college, a signature part of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ platform, or debt-free college, as well as various proposals to refinance student debt and lower interest rates. President Donald Trump last month proposed limiting the amount of loans students can take out while offering a new income-based repayment option. Warren’s proposal goes further by allowing former students to immediately wipe out their debt. Households making under $100,000 could cancel up to $50,000 of student loan debt. Those making up to $250,000 could still qualify for partial debt cancellation, with the amount available declining by $1 for every $3 they make over $100,000. In an accompanying analysis, her campaign estimated that 95 percent of Americans with student loan debt would qualify for relief under her plan and more than 75 percent would wipe their debt out entirely.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – SCOTT ALLEN – Sports Reporter, Washington Post – recapped the latest on Caps playoffs and how are the Nats doing so far this season.

• Washington Capitals‏ @Capitals: See you on Wednesday, DC. CapsCanes Game 6 FINAL SCORE : Caps 2 – Hurricanes 5  / Series tied, 3-3
• Alex Ovechkin slashes Saku Maenalanen, applauds the penalty call and gets ejected

8am – E         Couple expecting first baby wants free meals, therapy from neighbors. (NY Post) — This outrageous crowdsourcing request is leaving a bad taste in the mouth of Twitter readers. Most people ask for meal donations out of need — but a Philadelphia man has taken to the Meal Train “giving” website asking for elaborate cuisine and “mental-health check-ins” — because he can’t seem to handle the impending birth of his first child. “As the father-to-be, I’m teetering on a fence of emotions,” the man, Jim Burns, writes on Meal Train — adding that his wife, Alex, is due to give birth April 29. “One of the things I’m most afraid of is not getting a great deal of sleep and as a result not being in the best frame of mind to offer my wife the support she needs to recover from the child-birthing process.” The expecting parents, who live in the Fishtown neighborhood, aren’t just asking for canned food. In the special instructions menu, Burns posted a lengthy list of favorite dishes — separated by breakfast, lunch and dinner — along with links to their recipes. Breakfast, for instance, can be Paleo breakfast egg muffins with thinly sliced cremini mushrooms, pork breakfast sausage, and 3 tablespoons of melted and cooled ghee. Burns also posted no fewer than 11 dinner ideas, including a spiced lamb meatball and Swiss chard stew. As for their favorite snacks, they list dry-roasted, unsalted almonds, homemade granola and chocolate peanut butter energy balls. But don’t expect a thank you: Burns requests that people text him to ask what they need, but notes that it shouldn’t always require a visit inside his house. “If we could use some food but prefer no distractions, I’ll put a big white cooler in our side yard,” he writes.