Friday, July 3, 2020

WH considering second round 'seriously' since first round 'worked very well'

Yahoo Finance
DENITSA TSEKOVA
Jul 2nd 2020 4:42PM
After President Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed support for more stimulus and potentially a second round of checks, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said he could back direct payments.
“We’re going to seriously consider whether we need to do more direct payments,” Mnuchin said at a White House press conference on Thursday. “Worked very well.”
Trump also said at the press conference that his administration has started working on the next phase of stimulus, but whether the additional unemployment benefits under the CARES Act would be extended or if there would be more direct payment to Americans remained unclear.
Under the CARES Act enacted in March, the government sent $270 billion in stimulus checks as of May 31 to over 160 million Americans. Each payment is worth up to $1,200 per qualifying adult, plus a $500 bonus for children under 17. The act also added an extra $600-a-week in unemployment benefits that is set to expire at the end of July.
Mnuchin added that a second round of stimulus payments would be sent to “legal Americans” only.
The $3 trillion HEROES Act, which passed the House in May and has been held up in the Republican-dominated Senate, proposed $1,200 direct payment per individual with a maximum amount of $6,000 per household. 
The payments under the Act would also have been available to those with Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) and their families. That means that more than 4.3 million adults and 3.5 million children would be eligible for the payment compared with the first round, according to ITEP.
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In the first round of stimulus, people without a Social Security number and nonresident aliens — those who aren’t a U.S. citizen or U.S. national and don’t have a green card or have not passed the substantial presence test — weren’t eligible for payments.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
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On Thursday, Mnuchin said he’s discussing the need for future stimulus and is, “having conversations with certain members of Democrats and Republicans to get ideas.”
“Our position is that legal Americans — American citizens — should get the payments. That's our focus,” Mnuchin said. “If people are here illegally, they're not going to get economic payments”
Denitsa is a writer for Yahoo Finance and Cashay, a new personal finance website. Follow her on Twitter @denitsa_tsekova.
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Swalwell: Trump 'makes us look like geniuses every day for impeaching him' (Swalwell, also known as Fart Blossom)

Yahoo News
MICHAEL ISIKOFF
Jul 2nd 2020 8:48PM
WASHINGTON — One of the most vocal advocates in the U.S. House of Representatives for impeaching President Trump said the recent disclosures that the White House failed to act on intelligence showing that Russian operatives were paying bounties to kill American soldiers fully vindicates the congressional efforts to remove him from office late last year.

“I think he makes us look like geniuses every day for impeaching him,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., in a Thursday interview with the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast.

“He was impeached for putting his personal interests above the country’s. And again, it looks like that's what’s happening here. ... Now, if these allegations are true and the Russians are paying for the lives of American soldiers on the battlefield, the cost is the blood of our soldiers and I think the American people will understand that.”
As a member of the House intelligence and judiciary committees, Swalwell played a key role in the investigations last year that led the Democratic-controlled House to approve two articles of impeachment against the president, triggering a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate that found Trump not guilty. Swalwell has written a new book, “Endgame: Inside the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump,” the first account of the impeachment battle from one of its principals.

On “Skullduggery,” Swalwell insisted that the impeachment investigation, or at a minimum the threat of impeachment, forced the White House last September to release military aid for Ukraine that the president had withheld until the Ukrainian government cooperated with investigations he requested into Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and that country’s role in the 2016 elections.

“Once we launched that investigation, that is what led to Ukraine getting the aid that they were supposed to get,” Swalwell said. “So if you check the president ... ultimately you can get the right result. You know, Ukraine wouldn't have gotten that aid if we had not opened that investigation.”

Download or subscribe on iTunes: “Skullduggery” from Yahoo News

“I think we will only regret that we didn’t do more when it comes to President Trump,” said Swalwell. As for former national security adviser John Bolton’s claim that the House committed “impeachment malpractice” because the Ukraine-focused charges were too narrow, Swalwell was dismissive, and cited Bolton's previous refusal to testify during the Senate trial in January. “I mean it, it's like a fireman showing up with his truck and hose after the building's been burned to the ground and saying, ‘Um, I’m here, guys. And I’m ready to help.’ And then criticizing the folks who would try to put the fire out.”
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Swalwell said he would like to see the House also impeach Attorney General William Barr — if only to serve as a check on his continued meddling in criminal cases of interest to the president.
And as  a member of the Intelligence Committee, Swalwell said he has reviewed the underlying intelligence reports about the Russian payment of bounties to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and that it was clear to him “it’s certainly not a hoax,” as the president has claimed.
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Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell from California
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“This is information that went into the President’s Daily Brief,” he said. “This is not the back of a bar napkin.”
As for the president’s claim that the intelligence was not fully vetted and was never orally briefed to him, Swalwell noted that it was deemed serious enough to alert U.S. coalition partners in Afghanistan as well as U.S. military commanders in theatre.
“He’s the commander in chief. The fact that he would not be told about this just, frankly, I think it’s bulls***.”  
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White Mich. couple arrested after gun pulled on Black family

The Associated Press
COREY WILLIAMS
Jul 3rd 2020 5:19AM
A white couple was arrested after at least one handgun was pulled on a Black woman and her daughters during a videotaped confrontation in a restaurant parking lot in Michigan, authorities said Thursday.
Jillian Wuestenberg, 32, and Eric Wuestenberg, 42, were charged Thursday with felonious assault, Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper said in a release. It was not immediately clear when they would be arraigned or if they have attorneys who could comment on the allegations.
Cellphone video captured the confrontation Wednesday outside a Chipotle in Orion Township, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.
Jillian Wuestenberg can be seen outside her vehicle shouting, “Get the (expletive) away! Get away!” while pointing a handgun.
She eventually gets back in her vehicle which is driven away by her husband.
Sheriff Michael Bouchard told reporters that the couple is from Independence Township and both have concealed pistol licenses. Deputies seized two handguns from the couple after they were detained Wednesday night following the encounter.
'White people aren't racist'
The Detroit News first reported on the three-minute video posted online that shows part of the interaction. Takelia Hill, who is Black, told the newspaper that it happened after the white woman bumped into Hill's teenage daughter as they were entering the fast food restaurant.
The video footage starts after that, in the parking lot. A woman since identified as Jillian Wuestenberg is heard arguing with Hill and her daughters. Wuestenberg climbs into the vehicle, rolls down the window and says, “White people aren't racist,” and, “I care about you," before the vehicle she was in starts to back away.
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Her husband, who had led his wife to the vehicle, turns to the camera and asks, “Who ... do you think you guys are?" using an expletive.
Then, as someone is standing behind the vehicle, Jillian Wuestenberg jumps out and points a handgun in the direction of a person who's recording. She screams at people to get away from her and her vehicle. A woman shouts, “She's got a gun on me!” and urges someone in the parking lot to call the police.
'An unfortunate set of circumstances'
Wuestenberg then lowers the gun, climbs into the passenger seat and the vehicle drives off.
Cooper, the prosecutor, told The Associated Press that her office viewed the available video and looked at the facts before filing charges.
“It is an unfortunate set of circumstances that tempers run high over, basically, not much of an incident,” she said of the initial alleged spark that caused the confrontation.
Bouchard said people are “picking sides” and that threatening calls were made to the sheriff’s office dispatch center after the videos were posted online.
“We don’t see sides. We see facts,” he said. “There’s a lot of tension in our society, a lot of tension among folks and people with each other. I would just say this, we are asking and expect our police — and rightfully so — to deescalate every situation they possibly can, and we should be doing that. But I would say that needs to happen with us individually in our own lives and situations, that we interact with each other and deescalate those moments.”
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