Trump administration asks city officials in Iowa to remove LGBTQ-inclusive art from public spaces
Officials in Ames, Iowa say the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has requested the city remove inclusive multi-colored crosswalk art in a letter sent this month.
Ames, a college town with a population of around 67,000 people, installed painted sidewalks earlier this month. The new art includes gender non-binary pride colors, rainbow colors for LGBTQ rights, and colors representing support of transgender equality.
It is reportedly unusual for a federal agency to make such a call and Ames officials believe the FHWA does not have jurisdiction over the roads in question.
“The FHWA did not have a direct answer to this question, and it appears they are still researching whether they have any regulatory authority in this situation,” officials in Ames said, according to local news station KCCI. “These streets are not part of a federal highway and these streets receive no federal funding. With the system of federalism in the United States, the federal government does not have jurisdiction over everything.”
Biden is currently in second place, according to the latest polls of Iowa voters, at 20%. Elizabeth Warren is leading the polls in Iowa, with 22% of voters saying she is most likely to receive their vote.
Trump tells reporters he would win the Nobel Peace prize 'if they gave it out fairly'
In an erratic exchange with reporters from Pakistan on Monday, Donald Trump said he would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “if they gave it out fairly.”
He spoke with the press outside the United Nations General Assembly ahead of a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Members of the Pakistani press praised him , saying he would “definitely” be deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize if he could solve tensions in the Kashmir region.
“I think I’m gonna get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t,” Trump said.
He went on to complain about former president Barack Obama receiving the prize in 200. The committee awarded Obama the prize for his “efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
“They gave one to Obama immediately upon his ascent to the presidency, and he had no idea why he got it,” Trump said. “And you know what? That was the only thing I agreed with him on.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize at the request of the U.S. government in February 2019.
Manhattan’s district attorney urged a judge on Monday to reject Donald Trump’s efforts to block prosecutors from obtaining his tax returns, saying the president wants “sweeping immunity.”
From the Associated Press:
District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. filed papers in federal court after Trump’s attorneys sued last week to stop Vance from forcing the president’s accounting firm to release eight years of his state and federal returns in a criminal probe.
Vance urged a judge to reject Trump’s request for a temporary order blocking Vance’s subpoena for the records in a probe of payments made to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. He also asked U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero to dismiss the lawsuit.
Vance said Trump was asserting the “remarkable proposition” that a sitting president not only enjoys blanket immunity from criminal prosecution, but also isn’t required to submit to any routine grand jury request for information about what he, his businesses or employees did before he took office.
“The law provides no such sweeping immunity,” the court papers said.
“Here, the question is not whether a state prosecutor can indict a sitting President,” the papers said. “Instead, the issue is whether a third party, having been duly served with a state grand jury subpoena seeking the books and records of a number of individuals and corporate entities, including those of the President, must comply with the subpoena.”
Trump’s lawyers have called the subpoena requests by Vance, a Democrat, a “bad faith effort to harass” Trump.
Trump’s lawyers say records shouldn’t be released until Trump leaves office.
Three House chairmen have threatened to subpoena the Trump administration for documents related to Donald Trump’s attempts to dig up damaging information on rival Joe Biden.
Trump admitted Sunday he had spoken to the president of Ukraine in an attempt to reopen an investigation of a business with links to the former vice-president’s son.
Democratic lawmakers have said this use of the presidential office to investigate a political adversary is grounds for impeachment.
A joint statement penned by Eliot L Engel, the House foreign affairs committee chairman, Adam B Schiff, the House intelligence committee chairman, and Elijah E Cummings, the House oversight committee chairman, took the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to task for withholding documents on the matter and gave him until Thursday to respond to the inquiry.
“Seeking to enlist a foreign actor to interfere with an American election undermines our sovereignty, democracy and the constitution, which the president is sworn to preserve, protect and defend,” the chairmen wrote in the letter. “Yet the president and his personal attorney now appear to be openly engaging in precisely this type of abuse of power involving the Ukrainian government ahead of the 2020 election.”
The committees asked for the documents two weeks ago. Since then, it has emerged that Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is holding back a whistleblower complaint from Congress. The AP and other news outlets have reported the complaint is linked to a phone call where Trump pressured Ukraine’s leader to investigate Joe Biden’s son.
Ilhan Omar said in an interview at the Iowa People’s Presidential Forum that Joe Biden is not the right candidate for “progress we all want to see”.
“I think it’s been very clear to many of the people creating the kind of movement that is exciting generations that we want somebody who really has a plan that is going to tackle a lot of the systematic challenges that we have,” she said. “And he doesn’t.”
Omar, a House representative from Minnesota, has made waves as a member of a progressive group of new Congress members alongside representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
She did not indicate if she backed any of the other candidates running for office in 2020.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Kari Paul, will be taking over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Trump pushed back against reports that he allegedly pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden, arguing that “crooked” journalists should be more concerned about the former vice-president’s actions. (But there has been no evidence to substantiate Trump’s corruption claims against Biden.)
Meanwhile, one of Trump’s advisers reportedly acknowledged that the Ukraine controversy could become a “serious problem”.
Mitch McConnell accused Democratic lawmakers of trying to “politicize” the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president after Chuck Schumer demanded oversight hearings on the matter.
The Democratic National Committee announced its heightened requirements to qualify for the fifth presidential debate. Candidates must attract at least 165,000 unique donors and receive at least 3% of support in four polls (or 5% of support in two early-state polls).
Young climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the UN general assembly and denounced leaders’ inaction on combating climate change. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg said.
Kari will have more on the news of the day, so stay tuned.
Another Democratic presidential candidate, Amy Klobuchar, is tweeting about the DNC’s heightened requirements to qualify for the fifth debate, urging her supporters to donate.
ALERT: The DNC just raised the thresholds for the next #DemDebate. We have one poll in and three to go. Can you help keep our momentum going to ensure we have a spot on the debate stage?
But according to an MSNBC reporter, the Minnesota senator has already crossed the fundraising threshold of attracting at least 165,000 unique donors.
Klobuchar has the donors to make the November stage, and recent polls (especially in Iowa) have been heading in the right direction for her, too. https://t.co/NqrdQQ0vEc
There were more than two dozen arrests in the nation’s capital over this morning’s “Shut Down DC” climate crisis protests.
The US Capitol as backdrop to climate crisis protests Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Strategically staged as a direct action, demonstrators blocked major commuter arteries in Washington, DC.
Climate activists blocked morning commuter traffic this morning in Washington. The protests coincided with a on-day UN Climate Action Summit in New York, in the week of the United Nations General Assembly. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Media
At least 26 people had been arrested before 9.30AM, according to the capital’s Metropolitan Police Department. The protests were organized under the umbrella of at least 20 organizations, including 350.org, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and Friends of the Earth, with the hashtag #ShutDownDC, demanding “sweeping action” on the climate crisis.
Climate activists on Independence Avenue near Capitol Hill today Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
Crowds blocked traffic, causing gridlock, as they demanded action from world leaders. They were part of the global climate strike led by youth activists that brought many millions of people out to protest last Friday in the largest climate protest in history.
Johnson expresses confidence in Trump's ability to strike Iran deal
Boris Johnson, the British prime minister facing severe political troubles back home, expressed confidence that Trump would be able to strike a new deal with Iran after throwing out the 2015 nuclear agreement.
UK PM Boris Johnson to @LesterHoltNBC: "We are virtually certain" Iran is behind the recent attacks on major oil sites in Saudi Arabia.
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) September 23, 2019
“Let’s do a better deal,” Johnson told NBC News. “I think there’s one guy who can do a better deal ... and that is the president of the United States. I hope there will be a Trump deal.”
Johnson added that Britain was “virtually certain” Iran was behind the attack earlier this month on a Saudi oil facility and that he considered Trump to be a “very, very brilliant negotiator”.
Trump resurfaced his “Fredo” insult against Chris Cuomo when discussing the CNN host’s recent interview with the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
“I watched Rudy take apart Fredo,” Trump said of the interview. “Rudy Giuliani took Fredo to the cleaners. First time I’ve watched CNN in a long time.”
CNN's @ChrisCuomo: "Did you ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?"@RudyGiuliani: "Of course I did"
President Trump's attorney says he had spoken with a Ukrainian official about Joe Biden's possible role in that government's dismissal of a prosecutor who investigated Biden's son. pic.twitter.com/hqmqtmx2VW
Giuliani’s interview with Cuomo went viral after the president’s lawyer contradicted himself about whether he had asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and accused the CNN host of being “the enemy”.
