The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series dedicated to chronicling the eschaton. Please add news or other items in the comments.
Seven Days
Gov. Phil Scott was sitting alone in his ceremonial Statehouse office when his top aide walked in and handed him a small stack of papers.
"You might want to take a few minutes to read this through," chief of staff Jason Gibbs told his boss.
It was late morning on Friday, February 16. Three days earlier, according to the Vermont State Police, 18-year-old Jack Sawyer had purchased a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun at Dick's Sporting Goods in Rutland in order to kill "as many as I can get" at Fair Haven Union High School. […]
"I remember some of the sensations as I was reading it," the governor recalled. "I remember the shock, the guilt, the relief ... and a bit of anger, as well." Guilt, he elaborated, "that I could be so naïve" as to think that Vermont would escape America's epidemic of mass shootings. Anger that somebody "would take the lives of innocent kids."
It was then that a switch flipped in the governor's head.
Universal Background Checks Clear Vermont Senate
The Vermont Senate gave preliminary approval Thursday to a proposal that would mandate background checks for most gun transactions, including private sales between individuals.
The measure, authored by Sen. Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden), had languished for years in the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Thursday, Baruth bypassed the panel by amending another bill on the Senate floor to include the universal background check language.
Baruth’s amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 17 to 13. The underlying legislation, which addresses state storage of seized firearms, will face another vote in the chamber on Friday before it is sent to the House.
KUOW
How a Seattle family brought oysters back from the brink
Oysters are a cornerstone of Pacific Northwest cuisine. But there was a time when our region’s oysters were in trouble, all but obliterated by over-harvesting and pollution.
Then a Japanese immigrant helped turn things around.
His name was Masahide Yamashita, and he came to Seattle from Japan in 1902.
“He was only 19 years old,” said Patrick Yamashita, Masahide's grandson. “And I think he came here in part because he didn’t want to get drafted into the army in Japan.”
Washington Post
Trump gets his tariffs — and much of the world plans to strike back
Trump on Thursday said he will impose punishing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum in a major escalation of his “America First” trade offensive, defying Republican congressional leaders, inviting retaliation by U.S. trading partners and shaking the stock market.
Speaking at the White House, the president said he had decided to levy tariffs of 25 percent on foreign-made steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
“We’ll be imposing tariffs on steel imports and tariffs on aluminum imports, and you’re going to see a lot of good things happen,” Trump said. “You’re going to see expansions of the companies.”
Trump’s move, under a little-used national security provision of U.S. trade law, is expected to trigger legal challenges by China, the European Union and Brazil at the World Trade Organization. It also prompted predictions that it will backfire on American farmers and other exporters.
Washington-Moscow relations get colder, with Russia seeing Trump as ‘lost cause’
It may still be far from the depths of the Cold War, but Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Thursday speech, outlining new, “invincible” weapons to overcome U.S. defenses, lowered the already chilly temperature of the relationship by several degrees.
Few experts on either side believe that the new weapons, assuming they actually exist and are ever deployed, would change the balance of power between two nations that already have the ability to destroy each other many times over.
At the same time, there is widespread agreement that the rhetorical attacks, stalled diplomacy and military escalation that increasingly characterize U.S.-Russia relations are counterproductive to global security.
Senate Intelligence leaders suspect Republicans leaked a top Democrat’s text messages
Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee suspect House Republicans leaked to conservative media text messages between the panel’s top Democrat and a lobbyist he hoped could connect him with the author of a dossier alleging President Trump has ties to Russian officials, according to people familiar with the matter.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) recently raised with Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) their concerns about what appear to be leaks from the House Intelligence Committee, they said. Ryan’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said the speaker “heard the senators on their concerns and encouraged them to take them up directly with their counterparts.”
A spokesman for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Intelligence panel, did not respond to a request for comment. Burr would say only that “the vice chairman and I updated the speaker on our investigation and that was the extent of it.” He denied the Senate panel had concluded who was behind the leak and declined to provide further details about the conversation.
The Guardian
Gun control hopes dashed as lawmakers signal shift to banking reform
In just three weeks, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are expected to march on Washington to demand Congress act to prevent gun violence, in the aftermath of the Parkland massacre last month. But on Thursday, lawmakers left Washington after their first week back since the Florida school shooting – without a plan.
There was a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill and a sense of urgency in both parties that inaction was no longer an option in the face of public outrage, led by the Florida students who survived the attack.
But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced that the chamber would move on to banking legislation next week – extinguishing hope that lawmakers would act swiftly to pass gun legislation after the Valentine’s Day shooting that left 17 students and educators dead .
Federal Reserve chairman tells Congress US economy 'remains strong'
The US economy “remains strong”, the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, told Congress on Tuesday as he signaled the central bank is on course to carry on gradually increasing interest rates in the coming months.
In his first congressional testimony since his appointment, Powell painted an upbeat picture of the country’s economic health and dismissed recent wobbles in the stock market.
“Some of the headwinds the US economy faced in previous years have turned into tailwinds,” said Powell. He told Congress his “personal outlook for the economy has strengthened since December”.
Actions today will decide Antarctic ice sheet loss and sea level rise
A new study published in Nature looks at how much global sea level will continue to rise even if we manage to meet the Paris climate target of staying below 2°C hotter than pre-industrial temperatures. The issue is that sea levels keep rising for several hundred years after we stabilize temperatures, largely due to the continued melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland from the heat already in the climate system.
The study considered two scenarios. In the first, human carbon pollution peaks somewhere between 2020 and 2035 and falls quickly thereafter, reaching zero between 2035 and 2055 and staying there. Global temperatures in the first scenario peak at and remain steady below 2°C. In the second scenario, we capture and sequester carbon to reach net negative emissions (more captured than emitted) between 2040 and 2060, resulting in falling global temperatures in the second half of the century.
BBC News
Loch Ness Monster on new 10p coins from Royal Mint
Kenyan conservationists expressed outrage Thursday after construction of a railway line began inside Nairobi's famed national park, saying this defied a court order halting the project.
The extension of a Chinese-built railway that is Kenya's biggest infrastructure project since independence through the vast wildlife reserve on the outskirts of Nairobi has been tied up in legal battles since 2016.
However last week, cranes, heavy machinery and scores of workers from the China Road and Bridge Corporation set up inside the park borders, working furiously inside an area cordoned off and protected by armed rangers.
Syrian and Russian forces kept up military pressure on rebel-held Eastern Ghouta Thursday as their controversial unilateral truce failed to yield a humanitarian breakthrough.
More than 40 trucks loaded with aid were unable to reach the 400,000 people living in the battered enclave, prompting fresh calls for a United Nations ceasefire to be implemented.
A five-hour daily "pause" announced by Moscow on Monday has led to a reduction in the bombardment that killed hundreds in only a few days and sparked global outrage last month.
Cyberattack 'ongoing' against German government network
The German government's IT network is under an "ongoing" cyberattack, the parliamentary committee on intelligence affairs said Thursday, without confirming a media report that Russian hackers were behind the assault.
"It is a real cyberattack on parts of the government system. It's an ongoing process, an ongoing attack," said Armin Schuster, chairman of the committee, adding that no further details could be given to avoid passing crucial information on to the attackers.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the hacking was "a technically sophisticated attack that had been planned for some time", adding that it had been brought under control.
Reuters
Brazil court upholds forestry law changes in blow to environmentalists
Brazil’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld major changes to laws that protect the Amazon and other biomes, reducing penalties for past illegal deforestation in a blow to environmentalists trying to protect the world’s largest rainforest.
Congress agreed to sweeping revisions in the law in 2012 that included an amnesty program for illegal deforestation on “small properties” that occurred before 2008 and reduced restoration requirements in others.
The changes effectively reduced deforested land that must be restored under previous rules by 112,000 square miles (290,000 square km), an area nearly the size of Italy, according to a 2014 study published in the journal Science.
Lawmakers question Trump ties to Panama project linked to laundering, trafficking
Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee have asked the Trump Organization if it was aware of allegations that real estate agents and investors involved in the Trump Ocean Club in Panama had ties to money laundering and drug trafficking.
Democratic Representatives Norma Torres and Eliot Engel sent the letter, seen by Reuters, to the Trump Organization’s general counsel, Alan Garten, on Wednesday evening.
They asked what due diligence was done on investors and agents involved in the project, which earned President Donald Trump between $30 million and $50 million for lending his name to it, according to court records.
Los Angeles Times
U.S. ambassador to Mexico quits in latest departure of high power talent from the State Department
Roberta Jacobson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico and one of the State Department’s most experienced Latin America hands, said Thursday that she is quitting even as U.S. relations with Mexico appear to have nose dived.
Jacobson, who spent 31 years as a diplomat, becomes the latest veteran foreign service officer to step down in what has become an unusual exodus of departing senior talent under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Joseph Yun, special representative on North Korea, resigned earlier this week, and John Feeley, the U.S. ambassador to Panama, announced his decision to leave in January. Feeley said he could no longer advocate for U.S. policy in the Trump administration.
Pentagon's new problem after years of crying poverty: Spending all the cash
After complaining for years that it was starved for cash, the Pentagon now says it may have more money than it can possibly spend.
The windfall is due to a budget deal between Congress and the White House last month that promises an added $80 billion for defense this fiscal year, including a requested $19.6-billion hike for "operations and maintenance"—an all-purpose Pentagon account used to fund troop training, ammunition, maintenance of tanks, warplanes and ships, and other daily needs.
Defense Secretary James M. Mattis pushed for a sharp increase in the account this year, arguing that years of budget wrangling had degraded the military's readiness to wage war.
NPR News
Depth Of Russian Politician's Cultivation Of NRA Ties Revealed
A prominent Kremlin-linked Russian politician has methodically cultivated ties with leaders of the National Rifle Association, and documented efforts in real time over six years to leverage those connections and gain access deeper into American politics, NPR has learned.
Russian politician Alexander Torshin claimed his ties to the National Rifle Association provided him access to Donald Trump — and the opportunity to serve as a foreign election observer in the United States during the 2012 election.
Torshin is a prolific Twitter user, logging nearly 150,000 tweets, mostly in Russian, since his account was created in 2011. Previously obscured by language and by sheer volume of tweets, Torshin has written numerous times about his connections with the NRA, of which he's a known paid lifetime member. NPR has translated a selection of those posts that document Torshin's relationship to the group.
Here's What It Would Take To Repeal The Second Amendment
A proposed amendment to the Constitution must first be passed by Congress with two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate.
The two chambers have not achieved such a margin for a newly written amendment to the Constitution in nearly half a century. The last such effort was the 26th Amendment (lowering the voting age nationwide from 21 to 18), and it cleared Capitol Hill in March 1971. […]
Even after surviving both chambers of Congress in 1971, the 18-year-old vote amendment still had to survive the second stage of the process — the more difficult stage.
Just like all the other amendments before it, the new voting age had to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. That is currently at least 38 states. Another way to look at it: If as few as 13 states refuse, the amendment stalls.
The Daily Beast
Exclusive: Secret Documents From Russia’s Election Trolls Leak
The Kremlin-backed troll farm at the center of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election has quietly suffered a catastrophic security breach, The Daily Beast has confirmed, in a leak that spilled new details of its operations onto obscure corners of the internet.
The Russian “information exchange” Joker.Buzz, which auctions off often stolen or confidential information, advertised a leak for a large cache of the Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) internal documents. It includes names of Americans, activists in particular, whom the organization specifically targeted; American-based proxies used to access Reddit and the viral meme site 9Gag; and login information for troll farm accounts.
Even the advertisement for the document dump provides a trove of previously unknown information about the breadth of Russia’s disinformation effort in the United States, including rallies pushed by IRA social media accounts that turned violent.
NBC News
AP: NRA-backed congressman booed at town hall over guns
Grumbling and jeers met the request for a moment of silence for the 17 people killed last week in the Florida school shooting.
"Let's do something for them!" one man yelled at the beginning of Republican Rep. Mike Coffman's town hall Tuesday night. Another participant cried out, "We're done with thoughts and prayers!"
Coffman's swing district in the Denver suburbs is all too familiar with mass shootings.
White House preparing for McMaster exit as early as next month
The White House is preparing to replace H.R. McMaster as national security adviser as early as next month in a move orchestrated by chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis, according to five people familiar with the discussions.
The move would be the latest in a long string of staff shake-ups at the White House over the past year and comes after months of strained relations between the president and McMaster.
A leading candidate to become President Donald Trump’s third national security adviser is the auto industry executive Stephen Biegun, according to the officials.