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Joe Biden consoles daughter of ailing John McCain on ‘The View’

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is awarded the 2017 Liberty Medal by former Vice President Joe Biden at Independence Hall in Philadelphia this past October.

 (REUTERS/Charles Mostoller)

Former Vice President Joe Biden appeared Wednesday on ABC’s “The View,” where he offered words of encouragement to panelist Meghan McCain after she began crying while discussing her father’s battle with brain cancer.

Meghan McCain told Biden she hadn’t been able to get through his new memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” which centers on the 2015 death of Biden’s son, Beau, from an aggressive tumor called glioblastoma. Doctors diagnosed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., with the same type of tumor this past summer.

“I think about Beau almost every day and I was told that this doesn’t get easier but that you cultivate the tools to work with this and live with this,” Meghan McCain said, her voice breaking. “I know you and your family have been through tragedy I couldn’t conceive of.”

Biden, who served with John McCain in the Senate, stood up and moved from his seat on the set to sit next to her and hold her hand. He told Meghan McCain not to lose hope and that a medical breakthrough is possible.

“And it can happen tomorrow,” said Biden, who added, “there is hope, and if anybody can make it, your dad … her dad is one of my best friends … The thing that I found, and Beau insisted on and your dad’s going to insist on, is you’ve got to maintain hope. You have to have hope.”

A statement issued late Wednesday by the senator’s office said he’s at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland receiving treatment for the “normal side effects of his ongoing cancer therapy.” He looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible, the statement added

McCain, 81, underwent surgery in mid-July to remove a two-inch blood clot in his brain after being diagnosed with glioblastoma. He rebounded quickly, however, returning to Washington and entering the Senate on July 25 to a standing ovation from his colleagues.

But McCain’s condition has appeared to worsen in recent weeks. He suffered a minor tear in his right Achilles tendon, forcing him to wear a walking brace. McCain eventually began using a wheelchair with members of his staff pushing him where he needed to go.

As a Navy pilot, McCain lived through a July 1967 fire that killed 134 sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. The following October, his plane was shot down during a bombing mission over Hanoi. He spent more than five years as a prisoner of war. McCain also has survived several bouts with melanoma, a dangerous skin cancer.

Biden, 74, considered a run for the Oval Office in 2016, but decided against it, later citing the trauma of his son death keeping him from the race. During his “The View” appearance, Biden recounted his long friendship with John McCain and how McCain had befriended Beau many years earlier when he served as a Navy liaison officer to the Senate.

Biden also laughed while remembering their political clashes, with the two Senate heavyweights going toe to toe.

“Her dad goes after me hammer and tong,” Biden told the audience. But he also said that, even now, if he called John McCain and asked for help, he’d be there for him.

Meghan McCain thanked Biden later, tweeting she had no words to convey her “immense gratitude.”

“Your strength, hope and fortitude are an inspiration to me and so many others daily,” she wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A timeline of Omarosa Manigault’s greatest — and worst — hits in the Trump White House


Omarosa Manigault, director of communications for the White House Public Liaison Office, attends the daily news briefing on Oct. 27. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Omarosa Manigault: the villain, the honorable, the unemployed.

After just under a year of serving as the White House’s director of communications for the Public Liaison Office — while doing a scant amount of actual liaisoning — Manigault has left the building. And the whiff of drama is trailing in her wake. Whether she strutted out of the West Wing with stilettos blazing or was escorted out by security, one thing is clear: She made her mark.

Staying true to her reality-show roots, Manigault, who first stole hearts and spurned haters when she arrived on the scene as the devil du jour of “The Apprentice,” never let her hefty title or proximity to the president outshine her story line.

So as the postmortems of Manigault’s tenure in the White House begin to pile up, we offer a timeline of the former Trump insider’s greatest (or worst) hits. Consider this an unofficial outline for Manigault’s next book, one of the “other opportunities” she plans to pursue, according to a person close to her.

February 2016: Tamara Holder vs. Manigault. While just a regular ol’ Trump supporter appearing on cable news to burnish her former boss’s credentials, Manigault calls out Holder, a Fox News contributor and critic of Trump, for having “big boobs.

June 2016: The former “Apprentice” star, still without an official role in the presidential campaign, dubs herself Trump’s “Valerie Jarrett,” telling a crowd of women at a business conference that she was “the person who pulls him back when he goes too far.” She adds, “I told him to stop calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas.” (Sage advice that obviously had an expiration date.)

July 2016: While serving as then-candidate Trump’s director of African American outreach, Manigault, who is an ordained minister, gets engaged to Pastor John Allen Newman of Jacksonville, Fla. The two have been dating for less than a year.

January 2017: Manigault officially joins the White House team.

February 2017: Manigault vs. Nordstrom shoppers. While hunting for a wedding dress, Manigault is accosted by two women who aren’t fans. “These fat ladies won’t stop following me,” a person recalls Manigault telling employees at the Tysons Corner shop. One of the women allegedly calls the White House staffer “Trump’s whore.” Security is called.

Later in February 2017: Manigault vs. journalist April Ryan. The epic beef between the two former pals kicks off when Ryan, a longtime White House correspondent, accuses the White House aide of trying to “physically intimidate” her outside of then-press secretary Sean Spicer’s office. Ryan adds that Manigault verbally threatened her, to which the White House aide responds, “Fake news!”

April 2017: Manigault dips her toe back into the reality pond with an appearance on TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress.” According to White House financial disclosures, in exchange for her appearance, she “received a wedding package which included a wedding dress, custom veil, and accessories with an estimated value of $25,000.”

Later in April 2017: Manigault gets married. After reportedly postponing and relocating her wedding due to security concerns — and staging an elaborate photo shoot at 1600 Penn with her 39-person bridal party — the White House aide ties the knot in front of 150 guests at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. She promises to take Newman “for richer or for richer.”

June 2017: Manigault vs. the Congressional Black Caucus. In an attempt to actually liaise and invite caucus members to the White House, the Trump aide still manages to ruffles feathers. The former reality-TV star signs the invitation to legislators as “the Honorable Omarosa Manigault,” a honorific that is generally not used when referring to oneself.

August 2017: Manigault vs. the National Association of Black Journalists. During a contentious appearance at the group’s convention in New Orleans, Manigault tells the crowd during a panel discussion about her work in the White House, saying: “I fight on the front lines every day. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Things do not go well.

September 2017: Manigault vs. April Ryan (again). During the Congressional Black Caucus’s annual gala, Ryan and her co-host, comedian Anthony Anderson, joke that Manigault had “some trouble getting in at the door.” Although it turns out she was there, the White House aide and Ryan later go at it on Twitter. Manigault claims that the veteran reporter’s “big break” came because of her and Trump. Ryan responds, in part, “You need to worry about your job and why the entire room booed you last night!”

December 2017: The White House announces that Manigault has tendered her resignation. The reality-show alum remains uncharacteristically silent on Twitter. But Ryan, her former pal, does not. According to the White House journalist, Manigault was fired by John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff. Manigault is not happy, to say the least, according to Ryan.

Republicans Near Agreement on Higher Corporate Tax Rate and Lower Rate on Wealthiest

“We don’t have it right this minute, but we’re getting closer,” Mr. Cornyn said shortly before lunchtime. “We’ve Ping-Ponged a number of offers and counteroffers back and forth.”

The bipartisan conference committee is scheduled to hold its one public meeting on Wednesday afternoon. While that meeting will give Republicans and Democrats a final chance to publicly debate the merits of a $1.5 trillion tax cut, it is not expected to alter the trajectory of the bill or its details.

“We look forward to scheduling this bill after they’re done with their work, posting it, giving it the appropriate time so everyone can read it, and pass it, sending it to the president’s desk,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the House majority leader.

Republicans are speeding ahead with the legislation despite criticism from Democrats that the bill hurts the middle class, benefits the rich and creates a raft of new loopholes that corporations and wealthy Americans can exploit. A special election for the Senate in Alabama has added to the pressure, as polls show that Doug Jones, a Democrat, has a chance to beat Roy S. Moore, a Republican judge who has been accused of child molestation. If Democrats are able to flip the seat, the narrow Republican majority in the Senate would fall to 51 to 49.

House and Senate Republicans have been working behind closed doors to hash out the final details of the tax plan, and they hope to hold a vote next week. Republican leaders want to completee a consensus bill in the next few days, and release its text on Friday. If all goes according to plan, the Senate would take the bill up on Monday and the House would follow on Tuesday or Wednesday.

On Tuesday, speculation on the Capitol swirled over which measures in the House and Senate tax bills would survive, be tweaked or be cut. Vice President Mike Pence huddled with Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means committee and joined Senate Republicans for lunch to discuss the remaining details of the tax plan.

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House vs. Senate: The Tax Changes Up for Debate and How Different Taxpayers Would Fare

Republicans must resolve the differences between the two versions of their tax bill before they can pass a final version.


The big sticking points that remain include whether to retain the House bill’s cap on the mortgage interest deduction, whether to scrap or keep the corporate alternative minimum tax and the estate tax for individuals, and how low to set the corporate tax rate.

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“Certainly the president indicated he would be willing to go up a bit, and there’s been some other concerns,” Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said of raising the corporate tax rate to pay for other fixes in the bill. “Everything’s a little bit in flux.”

Among the most politically sensitive issues lingering is how to treat the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, which is capped at $10,000 in property taxes in the House and Senate bills. Lawmakers have been working through possible compromises that would let people continue to deduct a certain amount of property or income taxes, but Republicans still run the risk of raising taxes on broad portions of middle-income constituents.

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Lawmakers must keep the cost of the bill to $1.5 trillion if they are to pass it along party lines. Scaling back the SALT deduction appears to be a risk some are willing to take.

“Will there be some outliers who pay more in taxes? Yes,” Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, said on Tuesday on CNBC. “There are some people who will pay more because they live in very high-tax jurisdictions.”

However, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, called on Republicans members of the conference committee to rethink eliminating the state and local tax deduction as they craft a final bill.

“Among the plan’s deficiencies is the elimination of the state and local tax deduction, which since the advent of our federal income tax has prevented the double taxation of Americans’ income and allowed states to operate as laboratories of experiment as our founders intended,” Mr. Issa wrote in a letter to the committee members.

This week, several independent “dynamic” scores of the tax bills, which include the potential revenue-raising effects of economic growth, found that the proposed legislation would still add to the deficit after a decade.

The Treasury Department released a one-page study on Monday that showed the tax plan more than paying for itself, but only if economic growth averaged 2.9 percent a year over the next 10 years and if other economic policies proposed by the Trump administration were enacted. Most mainstream economists say they believe that such a high rate of economic growth is not possible.

While many tax experts criticized the report as unrealistic, Speaker Paul D. Ryan praised the Treasury analysis on Tuesday.

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“I think that estimate makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Ryan said, arguing that the economic models used by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation were less reflective of reality.

Democrats and progressives have been assailing Republicans for recklessly adding to the debt and giving big tax breaks to the rich.

“I would hope my Republican colleagues are taking a look at how the American people feel about this disastrous tax bill,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, referring to polling that shows the tax bill as unpopular among the general public. “I hope that they understand that is not what the American people want.”

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.


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Illegal cooking fire caused devastating Skirball Fire in Southern Calif., officials say

LOS ANGELES — The devastating blaze that broke out in the densely-populated Sepulveda Pass area last week was caused by a cooking fire, authorities announced Tuesday. The Los Angeles Fire Department stated that arson investigators determined the Skirball Fire — which broke out in the early-morning hours of Dec. 6 — was caused by a cooking fire at an encampment in a brush area near the Sepulveda Pass and the 405 Freeway.

CBS Los Angeles reports that when firefighters arrived on scene that morning, no one was found in the area, LAFD reports. No arrests have been made. It was unclear if the blaze was considered intentional in nature.

LAFD cites the National Park Service as saying that approximately 90 percent of wildfires nationwide are human-caused.

The 422-acre Skirball Fire broke out at 4:50 a.m. Dec. 6 on the east side of the 405 Freeway near Mulholland Drive. It destroyed six homes and damaged 12 others, and at one time prompted the evacuation of about 700 homes and an apartment building. It also shut down the 405 Freeway for several hours.

One firefighter suffered neck burns and was treated at a hospital, authorities said. Another firefighter suffered minor injuries.

As of Tuesday, the fire was 85 percent contained, CBS Los Angeles reports. About 70 firefighters were still working to fully extinguish the blaze. All mandatory evacuation orders were lifted Sunday afternoon for all areas affected by the Skirball Fire. All road closures were also lifted, with no restrictions in place.

At its height, evacuation orders covered a 3.2-square-mile area bounded by Mulholland Drive to the north, Sunset Boulevard to the south, the San Diego Freeway to the west and Roscomare Road on the east. The exception to the evacuation order was the Bel-Air Crest housing development, which was not threatened, according to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

The Getty Center and the nearby Skirball Center, both on the west side of the freeway, reopened Friday, when classes at UCLA, Cal State Northridge, Los Angeles Valley College and Santa Monica College resumed.

All Los Angeles Unified School District schools in the San Fernando Valley and some on the west side of Los Angeles — a total of 265 district schools and charter schools — were closed Thursday and Friday.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District closed all of its schools Wednesday and Thursday.

The fire burned in the same general area as the devastating Bel-Air Fire of 1961. That blaze destroyed about 500 homes and led to various policy changes, including a prohibition on wood-shingle roofs and the strict requirement to clear brush around properties.

Ed Lee, San Francisco’s first Asian American mayor, dies after heart attack at 65

Ed Lee, who was the son of Chinese immigrants and rose to become the first Asian American mayor of San Francisco in 2011, died early Tuesday after a heart attack.

Former mayor Willie Brown told the San Francisco Examiner that Lee was shopping at his neighborhood Safeway when he suffered the attack. Lee died just after 1 a.m. at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, with friends, family and colleagues by his side, the city said.

The 65-year-old Democrat — an affordable-housing advocate who led the city during a time of ballooning rents and explosive real estate prices — was remembered by political leaders as a defender of civil rights. This year Lee clashed with President Trump by declaring that San Francisco would remain an immigrant-friendly sanctuary city.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called Lee “a true champion for working people.”

Lee, an activist lawyer before he began working for city agencies, was “one of America’s most passionate champions for climate action,” former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg said in a statement.

Board of Supervisors President London Breed, who is now acting mayor, said Lee lived “a life of service . . . cut short far too soon.” Speaking at a City Hall news conference Monday morning, she said, “Ed Lee fought against discrimination, working on the front lines to keep tenants from being evicted. He was, from the dawn of his career, an advocate for the powerless, a voice for the overlooked.”

The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board remembered Lee as “a mayor who calmed S.F. City Hall.” “For a man who entered City Hall’s Room 200 with no particular appetite for the rough and tumble of elective office, Ed Lee proved remarkably adept at navigating and bridging the divisions,” the Chronicle said. “He set a temperate tone for a city that desperately needed it.”

Under Lee, who became mayor when his predecessor, Gavin Newsome, left to become California’s lieutenant governor, the city pushed through San Francisco’s 2011 “Twitter tax,” which sliced payroll taxes for businesses that relocated to the city’s mid-Market district. The business-friendly policies helped lure tech companies, bringing a wave of new, wealthy residents. Lee then spent the rest of his time as mayor trying a variety of measures to make housing affordable for all San Franciscans, as housing costs soared to heights only attainable by the wealthy.

He also accomplished what he referred to as his “legacy project,” convincing the NBA’s Golden State Warriors to relocate to a billion-dollar arena in San Francisco in 2019.

“His love and passion for sports, including the Warriors, defined him as much as his witty humor and engaging personality,” the team said in a statement. “We will be eternally grateful for his commitment to the building of Chase Center.”

Edwin Mah Lee was born to immigrant parents who came to the United States from the Chinese province of Guangdong and settled in Seattle. He told the Northwest Asian Weekly that he was the fifth of six children in a home where both parents worked — his father in local restaurants, his mother doing odd jobs around Seattle. When Lee was 15, his father died of a heart attack, and Lee worked in restaurants to help support his family.

Lee was the first member of his family to attend college and graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine in 1974. Four years later, he received a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley, where he also became interested in politics.

Lee worked for the San Francisco Asian Law Caucus, advocating for immigrant rights and affordable housing. He later joined city government, leading the Human Rights Commission and the Department of Public Works, among other agencies.

He was serving as city administrator when he was appointed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to replace Newsom, who left to become California’s lieutenant governor in January 2011. In a tweet on Tuesday, Newsom said that Lee’s “intellect, integrity, boundless optimism contagious love elevated our City.”

More than a third of San Francisco’s 870,887 residents are Asian, according to census data, and Lee said his election in November  2011 was a stride toward equality. “I am able to make a link to the Asian communities,” he told Northwest Asian Weekly. “Being mayor helps them to know that they no longer are second-class citizens.”

Before the 2011 election, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “there are roughly 10,000 Lees in San Francisco, an expected boost for the mayor at the ballot box.” Lee beat a crowded field of 16 candidates, then coasted to reelection in 2015.

“Mayor Lee took deep pride in serving as the first Asian-American Mayor of San Francisco,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D), who represents San Francisco in Congress. “His greatest source of joy was his beloved family, and our city owes a debt of gratitude to his wife, Anita, and his daughters, Brianna and Tania, for sharing this exceptional, lovely person with us.”

Lee became known as one of the most progressive mayors in the United States, and he clashed with Trump over San Francisco’s designation as a sanctuary city. Under the policy — one of the most expansive in the country — local police won’t cooperate with federal immigration officials in all but the most extreme cases.

In January, an hour after Trump announced a federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Lee held a news conference at City Hall. “I am here today to say we are still a sanctuary city,” he said, according to the Chronicle. “We stand by our sanctuary city because we want everybody to feel safe and utilize the services they deserve, including education and health care . . . It is my obligation to keep our city united, keep it strong . . . Crime doesn’t know documentation. Disease doesn’t know documentation.”

The conservative news outlet Breitbart deemed Lee “somewhat controversial” for the stance, noting that Lee stood by the policy “even after the killing of Kate Steinle by an illegal alien who had been deported five times already and had deliberately moved to the city to avoid deportation again.”

TechCrunch said that Lee “positioned himself as an advocate to attract and keep tech companies in the city,” His aim was not simply to get tech companies to come to San Francisco, TechCrunch said, but to “leverage the wealth of that industry to try to address the city’s problems.”

Political leaders remembered a leader who had been fighting for San Franciscans for decades.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who served as the city’s mayor in the late 1970s and 1980s, called Lee’s death “a very sad day for San Francisco and all of us who knew Ed.” She said Lee “was an excellent mayor of a great but sometimes challenging city. His equanimity and quiet management style was effective and allowed him to solve problems as they occurred.”

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) called Lee “a public servant who tackled every challenge with modesty, civility and hard work. As the son of immigrants who became mayor of one of America’s largest cities, Ed broke down barriers and blazed a trail for future generations to follow. And at this inflection moment in our country when some have promoted hatred and division, Mayor Lee has been an outspoken advocate for diversity and inclusion.”

Harris added that “when he first ran for mayor, Ed campaigned on the message, ‘Ed Lee Gets It Done.’ For 65 remarkable years, he did.”

Lee’s death comes nearly three decades after another San Francisco Mayor, George Moscone, died in office.

Moscone was fatally shot two years into his term, along with San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, by Dan White, a former member of the board of supervisors.

Today in Taxes: Busy Behind the Scenes

Let’s unpack what he meant:

Mr. Rubio helped make possible the Senate’s proposed $2,000 child tax credit, which had been $1,650 per child in the version of the bill unveiled by the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Rubio had wanted to make that tax credit even more generous, allowing it to be refundable against payroll taxes for parents who don’t earn enough to qualify for the entire $2,000. In the current Senate bill, just $1,100 is refundable.

Mr. Rubio lost that bid in a Senate fight last week. His amendment, offered with Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), would have paid for an expanded tax credit by setting the corporate tax rate at 20.94%, instead of the 20% rate proposed in both Senate and House bills. It was defeated in a 29-71 vote.

Now, Republican negotiators are meeting behind closed doors to iron out differences between House and Senate bills. They must decide whether to back the House approach to the child tax credit, set at $1,600, or the Senate’s $2,000 child credit, which phases out at incomes of up to $500,000.

Mr. Rubio’s message is two-fold: He wants the Senate’s version of the child tax credit to prevail. But he’s also worried that negotiators will opt for a corporate tax rate of higher than 20% to free up room for other priorities. Mr. Rubio is saying that if the corporate rate goes any higher than 20%, his priority—a more generous child tax credit—can’t get lost in the mix of competing demands.

The risk is that Mr. Rubio might vote against the tax bill, which passed 51-49 last week and can only afford one more Republican defection if the final version is to become law. (Vice President Mike Pence can break a 50-50 tie.) It isn’t clear whether Mr. Rubio would withhold his vote. He could have voted against the Senate tax bill last week to demonstrate his leverage, but he didn’t.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Rubio didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Alabama Senate race hurtles to a dramatic finish

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — On the day before voters cast their votes in Alabama’s roller-coaster Senate special election, Democrat Doug Jones is enlisting last-minute help from former President Barack Obama, while Republican Roy Moore is expected to emerge from hiding at a final-hour rally with Steve Bannon.

The anticipation surrounding the highest-profile special election in years grew with a surprise poll from Fox News showing Jones ahead by double-digits — defying a slew of other surveys that had Moore clinging to a narrow lead.

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While Moore prepped for an evening rally with Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and right-wing provocateur, Jones’ campaign is circulated robocalls from Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden.

The flurry of 11th-hour activity was a fitting conclusion to a race that has captivated the country, with the possibility of Democrats picking off a coveted Senate seat in deep-red territory against a Republican accused of preying on teenagers as a man in his 30s. The contest has exposed some painful rifts in the Republican Party that have yet to heal during Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House.

But it has also raised questions about Democrats’ ability to win over African-American voters without Obama on the ballot, especially in Southern states where tough voter ID laws already make such turnout operations difficult.

Speaking to reporters at Chris Z’s, a diner in Birmingham, on Monday, Jones dismissed the polling discrepancies and tried pivoting back to local matters by saying he cares for polls just as much as Nick Saban and Gus Malzahn, the coaches for the nationally-ranked University of Alabama and Auburn University football teams.

Still, Jones was careful not to confirm that Obama had recorded a supportive message for him, hyper-vigilant about appearing to accept support from such a controversial figure in such an overwhelmingly Republican state.

“The only robo-call I know about for sure is the one from my wife,” he said.

Appearing at his first of three planned events Monday, Jones immediately reminded the press of comments made by Sen. Richard Shelby, the longtime Alabama Republican who reiterated on Sunday that he had written in a candidate rather than vote for Moore.

Jones’ campaign on Sunday quickly turned two clips of Shelby denouncing Moore into digital ads, and it kept a television spot featuring similar comments in rotation for the closing stretch. In order to win in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Shelby himself in 1992 — before he switched parties — Jones’ team is counting on conservatives turned off by Moore to either vote for him or write in a third option.

Pushing the write-in option, Democratic super PAC American Bridge on Sunday began targeting persuadable Republican voters with a digital ad urging them to back Saban. The editorial board of AL.com, a large newspaper group in the state, chipped in on Sunday as well, urging conservatives to follow Shelby’s lead.

Moore, who disappeared from the campaign trail over the weekend to watch the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, according to Republicans close to his campaign, has spent the closing hours aiming to shore up his own support among the GOP base.

Declining to appear in public for days before Monday’s rally — he even skipped church on Sunday — Moore instead stuck to friendly radio programs, while his allies bombarded local airwaves and screens with anti-Jones ads highlighting the Democrat’s support for abortion rights and lashing him to the national party.

After Trump rallied for Moore just over the border in Pensacola, Fla. late last week, he also recorded a robo-call for the candidate. And joining the pro-Trump America First Action super PAC that has disclosed spending over $1 million for Moore this month, the Republican National Committee recently resumed its support for the candidate after earlier pulling out of a joint fundraising agreement with him.

Still, that move has not sat well with many Republicans aligned with the party establishment. In Monday, Nebraska RNC committeewoman Joyce Simmons resigned from the group.

“I strongly disagree with the recent RNC financial support directed to the Alabama Republican Party for use in the Roy Moore race. There is much I could say about this situation, but I will defer to this weekend’s comments by Senator Shelby,” she emailed fellow committee officials.

The move reflected one of Moore’s central challenges: winning over pro-Trump Republicans who remain skeptical of him.

Solution Fund, a pro-Moore super PAC, on Monday emailed supporters asking for a final financial push making specifically that pitch.

“Hundreds of thousand[s] of voters that voted last November to stop Hillary Clinton did not vote in the September Alabama Senate Primary,” the note read. “Our focus through election closing on Tuesday is to get these voters to polls.”

Judge rules transgender people can enlist in military, denying Trump bid to delay deadline

A federal judge on Monday denied the Trump administration’s request to delay an order requiring the military to begin accepting transgender recruits starting Jan. 1, saying the argument for more time seemed based on “vague claims.”

“The Court is not persuaded that Defendants will be irreparably injured by” meeting the New Year’s Day deadline, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

The ruling from Kollar-Kotelly of the District of Columbia follows her earlier opinion blocking the president’s ban on military recruitment of transgender men and women that possibly would have forced the dismissal of current service members starting in March.

“With only a brief hiatus, Defendants have had the opportunity to prepare for the accession of transgender individuals into the military for nearly one and a half years,” when the policy was initially issued in June 2016, she wrote. “Especially in light of the record evidence showing, with specifics, that considerable work has already been done, the Court is not convinced by the vague claims in [the government’s] declaration that a stay is needed.”

A second federal judge in Baltimore also issued a preliminary injunction in November that goes further, preventing the administration from denying funding for sex-reassignment surgeries once the order were to take effect.

Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said in a statment, “We disagree with the Courts ruling and are currently evaluating the next steps. Plaintiffs’ lawsuit challenging military service requirements is premature for many reasons, including that the Defense Department is actively reviewing such service requirements, as the President ordered, and because none of the Plaintiffs have established that they will be impacted by current policies on military service.”

In July, President Trump surprised military leaders and members of Congress when he announced the proposal in a series of tweets. Trump’s order reversed an Obama-era policy allowing transgender people to serve openly and receive funding for sex-reassignment surgery.

In October, Kollar-Kotelly found challengers likely to prevail in asserting that the president’s order violates equal-protection guarantees in the Constitution. The administration has appealed the ruling and in the meantime hadasked the judge to temporarily postpone the recruitment requirement.

On Monday, Kollar-Kotelly noted that the government waited three weeks to appeal her Oct. 30 order barring the military from implementing a transgender ban, did not file its motion to stay the Jan. 1 deadline until Wednesday and has not sought any sort of expedited review of her initial decision.

“The Court notes that Defendants’ portrayal of their situation as an emergency is belied by their litigation tactics,” the judge wrote, adding, “If complying with the military’s previously established January 1, 2018 deadline to begin accession was as unmanageable as Defendants now suggest, one would have expected Defendants to act with more alacrity.”

In a statement, the Pentagon said it will comply with the court’s order, while pursuing its appeal, writing that “DoD and the Department of Justice are actively pursuing relief from those court orders in order to allow an ongoing policy review scheduled to be completed before the end of March.”

After the Jan. 1 start was cleared Monday, former Navy secretary Raymond Edwin Mabus Jr. said in a statement that allowing transgender candidates to enlist is not a complicated process and that nearly all the necessary preparation had been completed by the time he left office more than a year ago. “It is inconsistent with my understanding of the status of those efforts and the working of military personnel to conclude that the military would not be prepared almost a year later — and six months after the date on which the policy was originally scheduled to take effect,” Mabus wrote.

Forcing the military to accept transgender applicants and implement such a significant change in policy may “negatively impact military readiness,” government lawyers had said in asking for the delay.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said in court filings that the military had already been preparing to accept transgender recruits. Before the change in administration, the Defense Department was gearing up to accept transgender applicants starting in July 2017 and had started training and other preparations.

“The government cannot credibly claim that it will be irreparably harmed by implementing a policy that it was on track to implement almost six months ago,” according to the filing from the plaintiffs.

“This administration needs to stop creating fake problems and get on with it,” said GLAD transgender rights project director Jennifer Levi after Kollar-Kotelly’s decision Monday.

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Hannibal Buress Asked Cop to Call Him an Uber … Before Arrest

Hannibal Buress seemed like he was trying to do the right thing before getting busted for disorderly intoxication … ’cause he asked a cop to order him a ride home.

TMZ has obtained Hannibal’s arrest affidavit from his Saturday night bust in Miami, in which the arresting officer describes what allegedly happened before he arrested the comedian.

The officer says Hannibal approached him with blood shot eyes and a strong odor of alcohol coming from his breath, and then asked him to call him an Uber. The officer says he refused, which caused Hannibal to become angry and belligerent. 

The cop goes on to say Hannibal then went inside a bar, which the cop says he asked Hannibal to leave since he was too drunk. The two then made it outside, where the officer says Hannibal continued to hurl profanities at him and caused a crowd to form.

The cop says he asked him to leave 5 times before cuffing him.

As we reported … Hannibal was released around 6 AM Sunday on a $500 bond. His mug shot was pretty epic, too. 

Trump pays tribute to ‘brave men and women’ of civil rights movement

 President Trump spent about 30 minutes inside Mississippi’s glimmering civil rights museum Saturday, strolling through exhibits honoring jailed and assassinated leaders before delivering a brief speech at a private ceremony.

The president’s visit to commemorate the opening — the capstone of Mississippi’s bicentennial celebration — brought protests and boycotts and evoked raw emotions in the center of the Deep South, the core of the generations-long civil rights movement. Trump delivered his speech to a largely white audience, and his motorcade left before the main opening ceremony — for which hordes of people had gathered in freezing temperatures and a rare snowfall. Tickets had been sold out for months. 

Trump largely stuck to prepared remarks, with an occasional impromptu comment. 

“Those are very big phrases, very big words,” he said, after reading his speech on Jim Crow laws, segregation, emancipation and achieving the “sacred birthright of equality.”

Trump praised several civil rights leaders by name, including Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in his Jackson driveway in 1963.

“Here, we memorialize the brave men and women who struggled to sacrifice, and sacrifice so much, so that others might live in freedom,” Trump said. 

In contrast with his 76-minute rally in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday night, the president finished speaking within 10 minutes — and was gone five minutes after. The often voluble Trump was largely silent as he walked past a Confederate flag insignia, a replica of a Mississippi county jail where protesters were held and beaten, a plaque honoring hundreds of Freedom Riders, an elaborate light sculpture and portraits of slaves in the 1800s. He looked mostly ahead, occasionally stopping briefly to look at a picture or sign, as he was guided by the governor and locals. 

“I didn’t have the courage to do what they did,” Reuben Anderson — the first black Supreme Court justice in the state and chairman of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Foundation — who was the president’s tour guide, said to Trump regarding the Tougaloo Nine, who integrated the library in Jackson in 1961. “They took their lives in their hands.”

The museum includes the Freedom Wall, a timeline of slavery from 1619 to the end of the Civil War in 1865, as well as mementos of the civil rights era — including a blood-soaked chessboard from a jailhouse, shards of glass from a bombed church, the rifle used to kill Evers, textbooks from segregated schools — and portraits and names of thousands involved in the struggle. Trump saw two exhibits, blocked from the lobby by a curtain, and was soon whisked away. 

The visit was carefully calibrated — with organizers creating an earlier ceremony for Trump to keynote, and protesters never coming within shouting distance of the president. Organizers and Trump’s aides alikefeared widespread protests, but the president wanted to attend after he was invited by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant. 

In some ways, the day was a dichotomy of scenes. Trump was greeted by an adoring crowd largely made up of white Mississippians at Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport; others gathered along the snowy roadways, waving American flags and snapping pictures of his motorcade. 

Trump is popular in the state, having won in 2016 with 58 percentage points compared with Hillary Clinton’s 40 percentage points, and was hailed by Bryant, who greeted him at the airport and rode with him in the presidential limousine. 

Bryant told the crowd that, with his busy schedule, it was nearly impossible for Trump to come from Washington for the museum event. (Trump was actually in Florida for the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate.)

He received loud applause during his brief remarks at the private ceremony.

“We’ve been through a whole lot. We’ve seen a whole lot. But we’re a forgiving and loving state,” Anderson said.

On High Street, a few blocks from the new museum, about 100 demonstrators protested the president’s presence, saying that they were disgusted with Trump’s rhetoric on race — including statements that black voters are impoverished with no jobs, his years of questioning President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, his attacks on black athletes and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), and his moves as president. Some put Confederate flag stickers over their mouths as a form of silent protest. Others chanted, “No hate in our state.” Many carried handmade signs. One read, “There’s nothing civil or right about Donald Trump.”

Lewis, the famed civil rights leader, boycotted. The NAACP had a separate ceremony earlier in the day.

“The martyrs of Mississippi who have died for our civil rights, for our progress, will not allow me to stand with Donald Trump,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D) said, explaining his absence.

Amos C. Brown, a veteran civil rights activist who, at 14, founded the NAACP’s first youth council, also boycotted the museum opening. “It was a mockery for him to be present,” Brown said of Trump. “He has not been involved at all in the struggle.”

At the formal opening, speakers talked more about the unusually frigid weather than the president.

Paula Barksdale, a Jackson native, flew from her home in Texas to attend the ceremony. Barksdale grew up next door to Evers. From her childhood, she remembers being awakened by the sound of the gunshots that killed him.

She described the museum’s opening as “just awesome,” but she had mixed feelings on the president’s attendance. 

“I think it’s kind of good that he came,” Barksdale said. “But actually, no, I don’t think that. Nobody saw him. He wasn’t going to affect my decision to come either way.”

Al White of Duck Hill, Miss., waited outside the museum with his 12-year-old daughter for their turn to enter. White, who drove an hour and a half to attend the ceremony, said he thinks the museum is especially important for the youths of Mississippi. “I think this is a good first step,” he said. “A chance to move in a different direction.”

The Mississippi Bicentennial Choir sang gospel hymns as the crowd moved toward a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the entrance. Around 1 p.m., long lines formed as the museum finally opened its doors. By that time, Trump was headed to his estate, where he planned to watch the Army-Navy college football game. He said he was pulling for both teams.

DeNeen L. Brown in Washington contributed to this report.