Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman, jck, and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
I’d like to thnk Besame and Magnifico for filling in for me last week...the little break I managed to have was greatly appreciated.
Of course, as fortune would have, my work schedule got really wacky for a number of reasons so as this OND posts tonight...I will still be at work...I will join you after 11:30 pm.
Washington Post: ‘Dump Trump!’ Protesters across the nation rally for impeachment by Griff White, Annie Gowen, Scott Wilson, and Lori Rozsa
DETROIT — Demonstrators in big cities and small towns from coast to coast rallied Tuesday for President Trump's impeachment, celebrating the historic step the House is expected to take Wednesday while bemoaning that the push to oust him is almost certain to die in the Senate.
Protesters in the dark of a snowy New England evening chanted “Dump Trump,” while those marching in the warmth of southern Florida brandished signs reading “Impeach Putin’s Puppet.” In Republican-dominated Kansas, they repeated a mantra: “Country over party.” In Texas, they fretted that despite the House’s vote, Trump will get away with it all.
Organizers said that there were more than 600 protests nationwide — from Hawaii to Maine — with the goal of demonstrating “to our lawmakers that their constituents are behind them to defend the Constitution.”
In many places, the rallies functioned less as a chance to vent about Trump’s Ukraine dealings — the matter for which he faces impeachment — than as an opportunity for collective catharsis over the entire track record of a president disapproved of by slightly more than half the country.
When I get a chance, I am going to come back to that point about catharsis...yes, it is sorely needed but I don’t think that now is the time for it.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday she is “very serious” about the city growing its own recreational marijuana to give minorities a chance to learn the business and share the wealth — a plan the governor’s office later praised.
Lightfoot said up to $15 million generated by tax-increment financing could be used as seed money for the plan to open a “cooperative cultivation center” that residents of color could “buy into” — either with a “modest cash investment” or with “sweat equity.”
She said the idea is aimed at overcoming the biggest impediment to minority ownership: access to capital.
“This is a very, very expensive business to get involved with. The basics to be a cultivator requires about a $13 million to $15 million investment. There are not a lot of people that have that, particularly in a market that a lot of banks and traditional lenders won’t touch,” she said.
Philadelphia Enquirer: ‘We’ve got serious issues’: Inside Jeff Van Drew’s impeachment-fueled defection to the GOP by Pranshu Verma
Jeff Van Drew got some bad news last Wednesday.
The results of an internal poll of the New Jersey congressman’s district were finally in after he had spent months as the most vocal Democratic critic of his party’s push to impeach President Donald Trump. And things weren’t looking good.
“We’ve got serious issues to talk about,” one of Van Drew’s strategists told him.
Forty-eight hours later, Van Drew was in the White House with his chief of staff. He agreed to defect to the GOP. By Saturday, news of his plan had gone public. By Sunday, almost his entire Washington staff had quit in protest. And after days of silence, he finally spoke Tuesday, still without addressing what he plans to do.
“I’m not discussing any of that now. There will be a time,” he said as he rode an elevator to an afternoon House vote. “I’m reevaluating my life and my thoughts.”
Such a dizzying week was the inevitable result of a clumsy approach to the politics of impeachment, according to interviews with multiple people who had direct knowledge of Van Drew’s thinking in the weeks leading up to his party switch and spoke on condition of anonymity to share private conversations.
Dallas Morning News: Judge will soon decide whether to move Attorney General Ken Paxton’s criminal cases back to Collin County by Lauren McGaughy
HOUSTON — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was indicted for securities fraud in 2015, will soon hear whether his criminal cases will be moved back to Collin County.
On Tuesday afternoon, Harris County District Court Judge Robert Johnson heard from Paxton’s attorneys and the special prosecutors pursuing the case about where the trials should take place. Paxton wants the cases moved back to Collin County, where the alleged crimes took place. The prosecution wants them in Harris County, where they were moved in 2017 over concerns that a local jury would be partial to Paxton, who has lived in McKinney for decades.
Johnson said he would announce his decision Jan. 29 at 3 p.m.
“I’d like Mr. Paxton to be here,” Johnson said Tuesday, nodding toward where the attorney general and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, were sitting. “The court is not going to make a ruling on this at this time."
Tuesday’s hearing marked the first time the parties have met on the case in years.
Mother Jones: The Big Loser in Congress’ Spending Compromise: The District of Columbia by Patrick Caldwell
As Congress rushes to pass comprehensive spending legislation this week to avert a government shutdown, Democrats are giving up residents of the nation’s capital as part of the deal.
On Monday, Democrats and Republicans unveiled the $1.3 trillion spending bills that will keep the government funded through next year. The compromise package includes a pair of provisions that House Democrats had initially removed, both of which strike against DC “home rule” by barring the local government from spending its own money how it wishes. As a result of the compromise, the DC government will continue to be barred from helping low-income women pay for abortions and setting up up a legal market for marijuana sales.
DC residents lack real representation in Congress, with no senators and one nonvoting delegate in the House. Congress also has the ability to overrule legislation passed by the District government—a power it lacks for any state or other locality.
New York: Boeing’s 737 Max Was a Disastrous Error. So Why Is the Company’s Stock Still Going Up? By Jeff Wise
Yesterday’s news from Boeing was of a now-familiar variety: grim. The company announced that it would temporarily stop building the 737 Max, the troubled jet that has spent most of the year grounded in the wake of two fatal crashes. Even after a nine-month-long string of bad news, the decision registers as particularly dire, tantamount to an admission that the company sees no clear end to the Max’s troubles.
There is a great deal of ruin in a country, Adam Smith observed, and the same is true for a $200 billion globe-straddling conglomerate whose sprawl embraces space launch, satellites, and military aircraft, so at first even the grounding of the company’s best-selling passenger jet didn’t seem like an existential crisis. The company had some 5,000 orders on the books for the 737 Max alone, enough to keep the production line humming for years. It seemed obvious that Boeing would fix whatever was wrong with the planes, get them back in the air, and return to booking exorbitant profits.
But that’s not what happened. As Boeing struggled to fix the Max’s flaws, more turned up. The grounding dragged on, and despite Boeing’s repeated assurances that all would soon be set right, the end never seemed to draw any closer. Stakeholders got increasingly fed up. Customers dropped their orders. Regulators expressed frustration and dissatisfaction. The press piled on, dubbing the Max a “death machine.”
Reuters: U.S. judge approves PG&E deal with California wildfire victims; stock jumps by Tom Hals
(Reuters) - A U.S. bankruptcy judge approved on Tuesday PG&E Corp’s (PCG.N) $13.5 billion settlement with victims of Californian wildfires, and the company’s stock rallied as the utility gained momentum to emerge from bankruptcy in June as planned.
“I don’t think we’ve heard a single person say it’s a bad settlement,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali said during a six-hour hearing in San Francisco.
The settlement provides cash and PG&E stock to a trust for the benefit of individual wildfire victims.
Montali also approved an $11 billion agreement with insurance companies, locking up the last and two most significant creditor groups.
Adding momentum to PG&E’s plan, a lawyer for Governor Gavin Newsom told Montali the governor viewed the wildfire settlement as fair. “We don’t want to stand in the way of that,” Nancy Mitchell said.
Talking Points Memo: Dem Senators Tell GOP Chairmen To Put Up Or Shut Up About Ukraine by Josh Kovensky
Republicans are facilitating “foreign interference” in the 2020 election by probing “discredited” allegations of Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election, three Democratic Senators wrote in a Tuesday letter.
The message – addressed to Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ron Johnson (R-WS), and Charles Grassley (R-IA) – accuses the Senators of embarking on an investigation that “could advance the Russian disinformation and election interference efforts.”
The letter was sent from the ranking members of the Senate Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Finance Committees to their respective chairs.
Johnson and Grassley have opened an investigation into unsubstantiated allegations that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 election. The probe appears to focus on – and mirror the claims of – Andrii Telizhenko, a former staffer at Ukraine’s embassy in Washington in 2016 who says he bore witness to an effort at collusion by the Democratic National Committee and the Ukrainian government.
Washington Post: The Daily 202: Alexander Hamilton has been cast in a starring role for impeachment's closing arguments by James Hohmann
With Mariana Alfaro
THE BIG IDEA: Just as oceans rise and empires fall, Alexander Hamilton keeps coming up in the room where it happens.
Alexander Hamilton wrote 11 essays in the Federalist Papers about the powers of the presidency, including two specifically about the power of impeachment. He’s certainly a legitimate source to cite when debating what the framers intended when they drafted the Constitution.
But the orphan from the West Indies who became our first treasury secretary has also become something of a historical celebrity since the last impeachment fight 21 years ago, which helps explain why his name is coming up in the public debate much more than it did last time.
The musical bearing Hamilton’s name, which debuted on Broadway in 2015, remains a culturally resonant sensation. It’s helped the man who never became president – spoiler alert: he was killed in a duel – overshadow fellow Founding Fathers who did, including his “Federalist” co-author James Madison and arch-rival Thomas Jefferson.
A group of more than 700 historians and scholars published an open letter last night urging the House to impeach President Trump. It’s no coincidence that the letter mentions Hamilton six times. The signatories include public intellectuals like Robert Caro, Ken Burns and Ron Chernow. Chernow wrote the 818-page biography of Hamilton that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the hip-hop show that dramatically transformed public perceptions of the Founding Father.
Sydney Morning Herald: Nine per cent of Sydney's water goes down the drain by Julie Power
The average resident is using 26 litres less water a day than a year ago but worsening leaks caused nine per cent of the 570,643 megalitres supplied by Sydney Water in 2018/19 to go down the drain.
As the drought causes clay soil to contract, Sydney Water's 47,000 kilometres of water and wastewater pipes were cracking under pressure, causing leaks and breaks.
"These factors led to a higher backlog of repair jobs and increase in the time leaks are running before repair," a report has found.
It comes as the NSW Minister for Water Melinda Pavey said average daily water use per person was down seven per cent from 209 litres in 2017/18 to 193 litres in 2018/2019.
AFP: Hundreds of thousands protest in France over pension reform plans
Hundreds of thousands of French protesters took to the streets Tuesday in a pension reform standoff that has sparked nearly two weeks of crippling transport strikes, with the government vowing it will not give in to union demands to drop the overhaul.
Police said they fired tear gas in Paris after protesters hurled projectiles at them, with 30 people arrested in the French capital.
Pressure is growing on President Emmanuel Macron just days before the Christmas break and late Tuesday he named a new pensions chief to lead fresh talks with the unions set for Wednesday.
Lawmaker Laurent Pietraszewski will oversee the negotiations, replacing the last top official who was forced to resign on Monday when it emerged he had failed to declare income.
Teachers, hospital workers and other public employees joined transport workers on Tuesday for the third big day of marches since the dispute began on December 5.
Reuters: Chinese leader Xi visits gambling hub Macau as nearby Hong Kong seethes by Farah Master
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China’s President Xi Jinping begins a three-day visit to the gambling hub of Macau on Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary of its handover to China, with security tight as protests rock nearby Hong Kong.
Xi’s visit to the former Portuguese colony, where he is expected to announce a slew of supportive policies, is widely seen as a reward for Macau’s stability and loyalty, unlike the former British colony of Hong Kong, which has been rocked by anti-government protests for six months.
Xi is expected to announce measures for Macau aimed at diversifying its casino-dependent economy into a financial center, including a new yuan-denominated stock exchange.
The full schedule of Xi’s visit, his longest official trip to Macau, has not been announced but he will attend the swearing-in of Macau’s newly chosen Beijing-backed leader, Ho Iat-seng, on Friday.
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a good evening! And...I will see you this Saturday night for...science! and next Tuesdau (Xmas Eve!) I will see you from Detroit.