Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Spencer Brown

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C INTERVIEW: Spencer Brown – Spokesperson for The Young America’s Foundation

5am – D/E IMPEACHMENT NEWS:

• Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, says she was “disturbed” to hear Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell say there would be “total coordination” between the White House and the Senate over the upcoming presidential impeachment trial.
• The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reworked the lyrics for the song “Twelve Days of Christmas”, replacing the iconic “Partridge in a Pear Tree” and “my true love love gave to me” with “on the first day of Christmas Congress gave to me impeachment and divided country.”
• FISA court review order leaves out key FBI players implicated in Horowitz report

6am – A/B/C Democrats Seek To Outlaw Suburban, Single-Family House Zoning, Calling It Racist And Bad For The Environment (Daily Caller)

• Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs.
• Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.
• Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation.

6am – D Hunter Biden is subject of criminal probes, says PI firm hinting at more incriminating details (Fox News) Hunter Biden, the 49-year-old son of former Vice President Joe Biden, has been dodging discovery requests in connection with a paternity case in Arkansas, and is “the subject of more than one criminal investigation involving fraud, money laundering and a counterfeiting scheme,” a private investigation firm claimed this week in a bizarre court filing. In addition, the Florida-based D&A Investigations told Fox News that its investigators have found that the intelligence community whistleblower at the center of the Democrats’ impeachment effort against President Trump accompanied Joe Biden when he traveled to Ukraine in early 2016 and, by his own admission, pressured the country’s government to fire its top prosecutor by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid.

6am – E Notre Dame rector sees ‘maybe’ 50 percent chance cathedral can be saved (AP) The rector of Notre Dame Cathedral says the Paris landmark is still so fragile that there’s a “50% chance” the structure might not be saved, because scaffolding installed before this year’s fire is threatening the vaults of the Gothic monument. Monsignor Patrick Chauvet said restoration work isn’t likely to begin until 2021 — and described his “heartache” that Notre Dame couldn’t hold Christmas services this year, for the first time since the French Revolution.

6am – F Prosecutors: Avenatti was $15M in debt during Nike extortion (The Hill) Lawyer Michael Avenatti was more than $15 million in debt when he tried to extort as much as $25 million from Nike, prosecutors alleged in court papers filed late Tuesday. Prosecutors said they will demonstrate at trial that Avenatti owed “conservatively, in excess of $15 million” and that evidence will show that he had “extraordinary indebtedness, and thus the need and motive to quickly generate substantial sums of money at the time when he engaged in the charged conduct,”

7am – A/B/C Americans’ View Of Higher Education Takes A Major Drop (Forbes) Only half of Americans now believe that a college education is “very important,” a dramatic decrease from the 70% who said it was very important in 2013. And 13% of adults believe that higher education is “not too important,” more than twice the percentage (6%) in 2013… Positive perceptions of higher education have been declining in recent years, but the decrease is most noticeable among young adults—a 33 percentage point drop. According to Gallup, only 4% of adults aged 18 to 29 now believe higher education to be “very important.”

7am – D National debt disappears as 2020 campaign issue – but it keeps growing (Fox News) Almost a decade after out-of-control spending and borrowing fueled the Tea Party revolution in a historic midterm election, no major presidential candidates from either party seem interested in the national debt that now stands at more than $23 trillion, leaving every American citizen owing almost $70,000.

Meanwhile, the federal deficit—or the annual budget shortfall—is more than $1 trillion.

7am – E Netanyahu rushed to bomb shelter after rocket attack on southern Israel

8am – A INTERVIEW: Henry Rogers – Investigative Reporter from the Daily Caller

Topic: Former Hawaii Governor Says Tulsi Gabbard Should Resign

8am – B/C  ‘Makes me feel like I have hope’: Strangers write holiday cards to the homeless (WJLA) “We make greetings cards, beautiful cards, funny cards just like any other place it’s just that our card makers are folks who have experienced homelessness,” says Sandridge. Sandridge also gives back, allotting 15 percent of card sales to the designer and another 10 percent to a charity of their choice. Sandridge adds, “So we’ve been collecting cards for about a month.” His idea here was this holiday season to have some of his card makers and DC residents pen cards for people who don’t have a permanent home. He’s spending Christmas week delivering nearly 1000 cards to shelters throughout the region. One such center that passed out cards was A-SPAN, a homeless services center in Arlington, Virginia. “It’s a time when you are not surrounded by your family it’s easy to start feeling alone. And if we could change that that would just be very special in all the lives of folks we’re hopefully going to touch.”

8am – D Nonstop violence as Baltimore nears record homicide rate (AP) Baltimore could wrap up 2019 with its highest per-capita homicide rate on record as killings of adults and minors alike for drugs, retribution, money or no clear reason continue to add up and city officials appear unable to stop the violence.

Police recorded 338 homicides as of Tuesday, following a week of relentless gunfire that saw eight people shot — three of them fatally — in one day and nine others — one fatally — another day. That total is up from 309 in 2018 and four shy of the 342 killings tallied in 2017 and 2015, the year when the city’s homicide rate suddenly spiked.

8am – E  President Trump, Melania Trump share holiday video: ‘We wish everyone a joyous and merry Christmas’