Dana Hedgpeth, Gordon Chang, NBC’s Adam Tuss and DC metro union’s Barry Hobson joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C Vince Discussed The Parking Wars In His Neighborhood

5am – D         Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection efforts targeting the Trump campaign were “lawful and appropriate,” a person familiar with the situation told Fox News on Monday evening. John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, will conduct the inquiry, the source said. The move comes as the Trump administration has pushed for answers on why federal authorities conducted the surveillance — as well as whether Democrats were the ones who improperly colluded with foreign actors. There are now *three* separate inquiries into the origins of the Russia investigation.

5am – E         Actress Felicity Huffman pleads guilty and apologizes to other students and parents over the college cheating scam. Prosecutors are recommending four months in federal prison.

6am – A/B/C Neighbors in DC Could Soon Issue Parking Tickets. (NBC Washington) — A new pilot program would allow up to 10 people per ward to use an app to issue a citation. Some D.C. residents may soon be receiving parking tickets from their neighbors. A pilot program, called the Citizen Safety Enforcement Pilot Program, would allow up to 10 people per ward to dole out citations after receiving some training. If more than 10 people per ward apply for the position, participants in the program would be chosen by lottery. The people selected would use an app that allows them to take a picture of an infraction, post it and then issue a citation. Anyone issued a citation could dispute it. The new program is part of councilmember Charles Allen’s omnibus “Vision Zero” bill, which expands and amends Washington’s efforts traffic laws to prevent pedestrian deaths. Seven other councilmembers have also signed onto the bill. The bill aims to address the lack of progress being made to protect pedestrians and cyclists in the city. Two recent traffic fatalities have spurred legislation to expand bike lanes in April.

6am – D         CHINA TRADE WAR:

• Trump Warns China Against ‘Substantial’ Retaliation in Trade War.
• President Trump says he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Japan next month to discuss trade while reassuring farmers the United States will provide about $15 billion in subsidies. The President told reporters in the Oval Office “I love the position we’re in” and tweeted “China will be hurt very badly” if there is no trade deal.

• China Strikes Back: Tariffs on U.S. Goods to Rise June 1.  China said on Monday it would impose higher tariffs on a range of U.S. goods including frozen vegetables and liquefied natural gas, striking back in its trade war with Washington after U.S. President Donald Trump warned it not to. The move, widely expected after the United States last week raised tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports, heightened fears the world’s two largest economies were spiraling into a no-holds-barred dispute that could derail the global economy. China’s finance ministry said it plans to set import tariffs ranging from 5% to 25% on 5,140 U.S. products on a revised $60 billion target list. It said the tariffs will take effect on June 1.

6am – E         INTERVIEW – DANA HEDPETH – Washington Post reporter – discussed the latest news about the George Washington Parkway sinkhole.

• George Washington Memorial Parkway lane expected to reopen Tuesday after sinkhole damages road. (Washington Post/By Dana Hedgpeth) — National Park Service officials said they plan to reopen one of two northbound lanes of the George Washington Memorial Parkway by Tuesday evening’s rush hour as crews work to fix a 10-foot-deep sinkhole in the road that opened up late Friday. The road has been closed since Friday evening after a U.S. Park Police officer found the sinkhole. On Monday, Park Service officials said rain has slowed repair work, but they expect to reopen “one lane in time for the evening rush hour on Tuesday.” In a statement, officials said they were working with the Federal Highway Administration to “inject grout to stabilize soil.” The grout works like foam and expands to fill in the “gaps in the eroded soil.” They said that “once the ground is stabilized, one lane will reopen,” but cautioned that it depends on the weather. The sinkhole measured about 30 feet long and 20 feet wide. Crews worked throughout the weekend to fix the road.

6am – F         Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat and red state winner, announces presidential run. (NBC News) — Montana Gov. Steve Bullock announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in a video on Tuesday, highlighting that he’s the only candidate in the race to have won in a red state. “We need to defeat Donald Trump in 2020 and defeat the corrupt system that lets campaign money drown out the people’s voice, so we can finally make good on the promise of a fair shot for everyone,” Bullock said in a statement. He enters the contest as a long shot, with little money, name-recognition and a late start.

7am – A         An author reported a black Metro worker for eating on a train. Now she might lose her book deal.  Author Natasha Tynes has ignited a firestorm on social media, where she criticized a black Metro employee for eating on the train and reported the woman to transit officials. Tynes, a Jordanian American writer and World Bank employee in Washington, tweeted a photo of the woman Friday, showing the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employee in uniform, eating on the Red Line. Tynes tagged the WMATA account, reporting that when she confronted the woman for breaking Metro rules, the woman replied, “worry about yourself.” “When you’re on your morning commute & see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train,” Tynes tweeted. “I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope @wmata responds.” The backlash was swift on social media with some people decrying Tynes’s tweet as racist, calling out the self-described “minority writer” for shaming a black woman and potentially getting her into trouble. Even Tynes’s book distributor took issue with her targeting a woman of color in such a public way. Amid the uproar, the author apologized, saying she was “truly sorry” for the tweet, which she acknowledged had been deleted. By early Saturday morning, her Twitter account had been set to private and her personal website appears to be unavailable.

7am –B/C      Rep. Rashida Tlaib Defends Holocaust Comments to Seth Meyers: ‘Racist Idiots’ Twisted My Words. The congresswoman joked that next time she’ll speak at a fourth-grade level so the ‘racist idiots’ will understand her better. Last week, during his fateful interview with Meghan McCain, Seth Meyers urged The View host to be “careful” with the language she has used to criticize Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has been repeatedly accused by the right of promoting anti-Semitism.

• Trump blasts Tlaib over Holocaust comments, accuses her of ‘tremendous hatred.’ President Trump joined the chorus of criticism Monday against freshman Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib over her recent remarks about the Holocaust. “Democrat Rep. Tlaib is being slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust. She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people,” Trump tweeted. “Can you imagine what would happen if I ever said what she said, and says?”
• Nancy Pelosi ‏@SpeakerPelosi Republicans’ desperate attempts to smear @RepRashida & misrepresent her comments are outrageous. President @realDonaldTrump & House GOP should apologize to Rep. Tlaib & the American people for their gross misrepresentations.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – GORDON CHANG – author of “The Coming Collapse of China.” @GordonGChang. Chang analyzed the trade war with China.

7am – E         CONGRESSMAN DESCRIBES WHAT IT’S LIKE BEING MISTAKEN FOR DISGRACED GOV. NORTHAM. (Daily Caller) — Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is still in office, months after a racist yearbook photo of him resurfaced following comments he made that some considered infanticidal. The Daily Caller jokingly asked Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina during a sit-down interview if he had ever been mistaken for the disgraced governor. It turns out he had.  “People would say, ‘You oughta resign.’ My response is, ‘Why should I resign?’” Norman said. 

8am – A         INTERVIEW – ADAM TUSS – Transportation Reporter/Anchor for NBC Washington @AdamTuss

• George Washington Memorial Parkway lane expected to reopen Tuesday after sinkhole damages road
• DC transit worker, who was reported to her bosses on social media by an author for eating on the train, will not face disciplinary action, Metro workers union official says.
• Adam has been covering the coming metro summer shutdown so he could touch on that as well.

8am – B/C     Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez join up to preach Green New Deal, take jabs at Biden. (The Hill) — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was in familiar territory Monday evening, speaking to a college auditorium of liberal-leaning students and young voters. The 2020 presidential candidate joined progressive darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to preach the benefits of the ambitious Green New Deal climate plan, at a time when climate change is rising to prominence as a top issue for Democratic voters. “How do we take on an industry with unlimited wealth, unlimited power, and unlimited resources?” Sanders said of the fossil fuel industry. “We need a political revolution.” Speaking at Howard University, a historic African American college just a mile from the U.S. Capitol Building, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez praised the tenets of the climate action plan that in part aims to transition the U.S. economy to a 100 percent renewable energy grid by 2030 and create green jobs in the process.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – BARRY HOBSON – Chief of Staff at Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 (DC METRO UNION)

• DC transit worker, who was reported to her bosses on social media by an author for eating on the train, will not face disciplinary action, Metro workers union official says. (NBC News) — A Washington transit worker who was reported to her bosses on social media by author Natasha Tynes for eating on the train will not face disciplinary action, an official from the Metro workers union said Monday. Barry Hobson, the chief of staff for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, told NBC News that Paul Wiedefeld, the general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, said there would be no action taken against the woman. Tynes, a writer and World Bank employee in Washington, posted a photo on Twitter of the woman, who has not been publicly identified, eating on the train in uniform Friday morning. “When you’re on your morning commute & see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train,” Tynes wrote in a tweet. “I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope @wmata responds. When I asked the employee about this, her response was, ‘worry about yourself.'”
• According to the WMATA’ union, the employee was well within her rights to eat on board one of its trains. The Associated Press reported that Barry Hobson, the chief of staff for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, said an email was sent last week “from the Metro Transit police chief telling officers to stop writing tickets for fare evasion, eating, drinking, spitting and playing music without headphones until further notice.” Therefore, Hobson said in a statement, “our operator clearly was doing no wrong.”