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

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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.

‘More Black Abortions.’ ‘Neo-Nazis.’ Sharp-edged radio ads target Alabama’s black voters.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The ad from Stars and Stripes Forever runs only infrequently; the conservative super PAC has spent just $4,720 to put it on some of Alabama’s black radio stations. But like all of the super PAC’s work, it grabs the listener’s attention with a fictional conversation between two fictional black voters about Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Doug Jones.

“I heard Doug Jones would add even more black babies to the 300,000 already being aborted this year,” a female voice says.

“Three hundred thousand black babies aborted?” a shocked male voice responds.

“A vote for Doug Jones is a vote for more black abortions, no school choice and higher taxes for job creators,” the first voice says.

“So he says whatever he needs to get our votes …”

. . . then keeps us down once he’s elected.”

The ad, which makes no mention of Republican nominee Roy Moore, is the latest product of a group originally created to help win the 2016 presidential nomination for Ben Carson. But in Alabama, it has been drowned out by harsh Democratic ads that attack Moore directly, accusing him of unexplored ties to white supremacists.

In urban areas where Jones needs to win big, the super PAC Highway 31 — a team-up between the Senate Majority PAC and Priorities USA, two Democratic groups — has purchased pre-roll ads that run before some YouTube videos. Over just a few seconds, images of Dylann Roof, who has been sentenced to death for killing nine people at a historically black church in South Carolina, flash across the screen.

[Why party identity causes voters to stand behind their politicians – no matter what]

“Roy Moore has ties to the same white supremacists who inspired the Charleston shooter,” says a narrator in the ad. “Vote for Doug Jones.”

In another spot, paid for by the Jones campaign and playing on radio stations, male and female narrators take turns warning of the support Moore has received from the far right.

“A Mississippi KKK group backed Moore’s refusal to enforce federal law,” the narrators say. “Moore’s organization took $1,000 from a neo-Nazi group. His candidacy is backed by the racist alt-right groups. And Moore is a birther, still insisting that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and isn’t an American.”

Not every ad aimed at black voters is quite as bracing. In another common spot, paid for by the Alabama New South Alliance, a recap of Jones’s work as a U.S. attorney who prosecuted hate groups is coupled with his promise of what he would do in the Senate.

“Just one vote in the United States Senate saved Obamacare,” the ad’s narrator says. “Just one more vote can save this whole country.”

Both camps are confident that their direct approaches — which are not reflected in the TV ads that most voters have seen — will help their sides meet turnout models. In Stars and Stripes Forever’s case, the ad is designed to urge black voters not to vote at all. On its website, the PAC takes partial credit for Donald Trump’s gains with black voters relative to Mitt Romney, something Democrats think was more of a response to Hillary Clinton motivating fewer voters than Barack Obama. The anti-Democratic ads were designed after 2002 spots, controversial at the time, that ran on black radio in areas where black turnout decreased.

“While the increase in the Republican vote was not dramatic, the decrease in votes for the Democratic candidate was very significant,” the PAC explains. “Not only did the black and Hispanic vote total not increase as predicted by the Washington, D.C., GOP consultants, it actually declined substantially in both black and Hispanic areas reached by the radio and television advertising.”

Alabama Democrats, however, are cautiously optimistic about black turnout today. Jones spent the morning zipping between heavily black precincts; in Montgomery County, the single largest stronghold of black Democratic voters, local election officials said Tuesday that turnout might reach that of the 2016 general election. Jones, the first competitive Democratic candidate for federal office here since the early 1990s, also has been able to fully fund turnout operations in the so-called “black belt.”

Today in Taxes: Busy Behind the Scenes

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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.

Reporter asks Sanders if she has ever been sexually harassed

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Amid an ongoing national discussion about sexual misconduct, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to answer directly when asked during Monday’s press briefing if she herself has ever been sexually harassed.

CNN’s Brian Karem asked Sanders the question during a tense briefing in which Sanders had sparred with reporters over “fake news” and discussed the sexual harassment allegations against President TrumpDonald John TrumpHouse Democrat slams Donald Trump Jr. for ‘serious case of amnesia’ after testimony Skier Lindsey Vonn: I don’t want to represent Trump at Olympics Poll: 4 in 10 Republicans think senior Trump advisers had improper dealings with Russia MORE.

“As a woman standing up there talking to us, I know your job is to relate what the president says, have you ever been sexually harassed and do you understand — and I’m not saying by the president — I’m saying ever,” Karem asked. “And secondly, do you have any empathy for those who come forward? Because it’s very difficult.”

Sanders responded that she does empathize with sexual harassment victims, but did not say whether she had personal experiences with harassment.

“I absolutely would say that I have an empathy for any individual who has been sexually harassed, and that certainly would be the policy of the White House,” she said. “I’m not here to speak about my personal experience on that front, but I’m here to relay information on behalf of the president.”

The press briefing came after several senators called for Trump to step down over the resurgence of the more than 16 accusations that he sexually harassed or assaulted women. Three of Trump’s accusers held a press conference Monday in which they called for a congressional investigation into their allegations.

The official White House position on the Trump allegations is that all of the women are lying.

Alabama Senate race hurtles to a dramatic finish

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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.

Story Continued Below

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.”

Trump accusers renew sexual misconduct charges against him, say it was ‘heartbreaking’ to see him elected

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As the country grapples with a national reckoning over sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men, three women who accused the most high-profile man in America again questioned Monday why their claims did nothing to stop him from winning the presidency.

It was “heartbreaking” for women to go public with their claims against President Trump last year, only to see him ascend to the Oval Office, said Samantha Holvey, a former Miss USA contestant who in October 2016 said Trump inappropriately inspected pageant participants.

“I put myself out there for the entire world, and nobody cared,” Holvey said Monday on NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today” show.

[President Trump and accusations of sexual misconduct: The complete list]

During the television appearance and a news conference, Holvey sat alongside Jessica Leeds, a New York woman who said Trump groped her on a plane, and Rachel Crooks, who said he kissed her on the lips at Trump Tower, to renew their allegations against the president.

The women also called for Congress to investigate these allegations amid the dramatic shift happening nationwide in response to charges of sexual misconduct against men from Hollywood to Capitol Hill. Claims have erupted across industry after industry, against lawmakers and movie stars alike, as the country has shown a sudden, newfound willingness to take such accusations seriously.

Trump has denied all of the allegations against him, which were made public after The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” recording last year capturing Trump boasting about grabbing women by the genitals.

The White House’s position is that Trump’s accusers are lying and that the issue was settled when he was elected president after the stories emerged.

“These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory,” the White House said in a statement Monday. “The timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes, and the publicity tour that has begun only further confirms the political motives behind them.”

[‘My pain is everyday’: After Weinstein’s fall, Trump accusers wonder: Why not him?]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s press secretary, repeated that sentiment later Monday afternoon, telling reporters the president has denied all the charges against him and saying “these allegations have been answered through” the election.

“The American people knew this and voted for the president and we feel like we’re ready to move forward,” Sanders said of the allegations. She added: “The president has firsthand knowledge on what he did and didn’t do.”

The women who spoke Monday morning on television recounted their allegations against Trump, saying they felt threatened and disgusted by these encounters with the future president.

“I was shocked,” Crooks told Kelly after describing Trump kissing her at Trump Tower. “Devastated. It happened so fast. … I wish I would’ve been courageous enough to say, ‘What’s going on and you need to stop this.’”

Crooks said she felt at the time that she had no way to respond to the situation out of fear that if she reported it to her bosses — who did business with Trump’s organization — she might lose her job. “I wish I had been stronger,” she said. Crooks said she came forward after reading an account from another woman accusing Trump of misconduct, saying that this made her feel a sense of relief knowing that “it wasn’t just me.”

When the women were read the White House’s statement Monday describing their claims as false, Crooks called it “laughable.”

[‘All that anger’s unleashed’: How sexual misconduct stories persuade other victims to come forward]

The news conference was organized by Brave New Films, a nonprofit group launched by Robert Greenwald, an Emmy Award-winning producer, with the goal of promoting activism around progressive causes through short low-budget documentaries. The group has a budget of about $2.6 million, according to Jim Miller, its executive director.

The company, which aims for mass free distribution via YouTube and other social networks, has produced videos about gun control and mass incarceration. In November, it posted a video about the women accusing Trump, weaving together clips of them retelling their stories. That video, along with the news conference, was funded by donations of between $5 and $50 that came in response to social media and email solicitations, the group said.

Greenwald said after the video was launched, his group decided to contact the women, some of whom hesitated when they received an email about it.

“I didn’t want to go through it all again,” Holvey said in an interview after the news conference, recalling the backlash a year ago and the feeling that she hadn’t been heard. But the idea of getting together with other women who had similar experiences interested her.

“As a group there might be more of an impact,” she said. And she was also noticing a change in her Facebook feed in the #MeToo era, seeing people asking: “What about Trump?”

[While Democrats call for resignations, conservative women stand by colleagues accused of sexual misconduct]

Some women contacted by Brave New Films were too fearful of joining the news conference, Greenwald said. The three who did gather met at a dinner Sunday night for the first time.

Beyond pushing for renewed attention to their claims, it was unclear what the women hoped would be the next step after the news conference. Greenwald said that answer would come later, saying for now that he believes “we have an opportunity.”

Leeds said at the news conference Monday that none of the women were speaking publicly for fame, but instead were doing it because they felt it was the right thing to do.

“None of us want this attention,” Leeds said at the news conference. “None of us are comfortable with it. … But this is important, so when asked, we speak out.”

The women spoke Monday as a wave of allegations of sexual assault and harassment by men have swept across the country in recent weeks, stretching into fields including politics, entertainment, the media, the courts and the finance industry.

Numerous high-profile men have been fired or suspended, including Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and broadcaster Charlie Rose, while others have announced plans to step down, including Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), both of whom said last week that they would leave Congress over mounting allegations.

[How Congress plays by different rules on sexual harassment and misconduct]

At least four senators have called on Trump to resign over the allegations. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told CNN on Monday that Trump should step down over what she called “credible” allegations, echoing comments made by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) saying that Trump should resign or consider doing so.

Trump has endorsed Roy Moore, the Republican nominee in Alabama’s closely fought Senate election, even after multiple women came forward to say that Moore made advances toward them when they were teens and he was in his 30s. One of the accusers said she was 14 at the time. Moore has denied the allegations,

For Trump’s accusers, they say it appears Moore is following the script Trump used a year ago in his own election.

“He was able to just deny what we said, and that got him elected just fine,” Crooks said Monday about Trump. “It’s like he’s passing the torch for Roy to do the same.”

Holvey suggested it made sense for Trump’s accusers to speak to the public again given the way the country’s atmosphere — and response to alleged sexual misconduct — has shifted over the last year.

“Let’s try round two,” she said. “The environment’s different, let’s try again.”

A day before the women spoke, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that women who have accused Trump “should be heard.”

Haley’s comments were a sharp break from the White House’s position, and they were particularly notable coming from one of the most high-profile women serving in Trump’s administration.

“They should be heard, and they should be dealt with,” Haley said when asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” about the allegations other women have made against Trump. “And I think we heard from them before the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.”

[Trump may face a reckoning in case brought by female accuser]

For women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct last year, watching other men felled by allegations has left them wondering why their claims did not have the same impact during the presidential campaign.

In addition to denying the accusations against him, Trump has vowed to sue his accusers and produce “substantial evidence” he said would disprove their claims. So far, Trump has not followed through on either promise.

The only lawsuit to emerge from the allegations against Trump came from one of his accusers, Summer Zervos, who sued him in New York for defamation over Trump’s repeated comments that all of the women were liars.

Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” said Trump kissed and groped her during a 2007 encounter at the Beverly Hills Hotel. In response, Trump said: “False stories. All made up. Lies. Lies. No witnesses. No nothing. All big lies.”

Trump’s attorneys have decried Zervos’s lawsuit, calling it “politically motivated” and based on allegations of something “that never occurred.” They are seeking to have it dismissed, saying Trump was expressing a political opinion and that a sitting U.S. president cannot be sued in state court.

Sellers reported from New York. This story has been updated.

Further reading:

Nikki Haley says Trump’s accusers ‘should be heard’

In Franken’s wake, three senators call on President Trump to resign

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

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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.

[Federal judge says Trump administration can’t stop funding sex-reassignment surgery for service members]

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.

[Trumps wants to ban transgender military troops. His top general feels differently.]

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.”

[Mattis asked these two men to help determine the future of transgender military service]

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.

Read more:

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Benghazi juror: Prosecutors overplayed emotional appeal, lacked proof Abu Khattala killed Americans

“You there fatboy? On a donut break?” Taunting texts to a cop result in criminal case.

New York Bomber Was Inspired by ISIS Christmas Attacks, Officials Say

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Mr. Ullah acted alone, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, adding that no other devices had been found.

“Our lives revolve around the subway,” the mayor said. “The choice of New York is always for a reason, because we are a beacon to the world. And we actually show that a society of many faiths and many backgrounds can work.”

Surveillance Video Shows Bomb Going Off in New York Transit Hub

Surveillance cameras captured the moments before and after a suspect appeared to detonate a bomb in a New York City subway tunnel connecting Times Square and Port Authority stations.


By THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 11, 2017.


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“The terrorists want to undermine that,” the mayor added. “They yearn to attack New York City.”

Mr. de Blasio spoke within hours of the attack. But the investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force was still in its preliminary stages.

Christina Bethea was in the underground walkway, headed to her job as a security guard, when the explosion nearly knocked her over, sending a haze of smoke into the corridor packed with commuters. She did not see where it came from, she said. “As soon as we heard ‘boom!’ we began to run,” she said. An hour after the attack, she stood outside the Port Authority, calling her mother and father in North Carolina to tell them she was O.K. “I feel good,” Ms. Bethea said. “I am alive!”

The authorities were searching Mr. Ullah’s residence on Ocean Parkway, pursuant to a federal warrant, one law enforcement official said. While no formal announcement had been made, both federal and local law enforcement officials indicated that Mr. Ullah would be prosecuted in federal court in Manhattan by the office of the acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joon H. Kim. The attack is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is made up largely of F.B.I. agents and New York detectives, along with investigators from a score of other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

The attack roiled commutes across the region. All subway lines were directed to skip 42nd Street stops, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. By late morning, only the A, C, and E were still skipping the stop. The Port Authority was evacuated for several hours; it reopened around 10:30 a.m. All morning, thwarted travelers spilled into the streets of Times Square, towing suitcases in bewildered silence. They gathered at police cordons stretched across 42nd Street, filming a scene of organized chaos as scores of emergency vehicles arrived at the scene every few minutes.

John Frank, 54, was standing on 42nd Street by the Port Authority exit when he felt tremors through the pavement. “That’s how strong it was,” he said. Everyone began to run. He stood on Eighth Avenue a few blocks away on Monday morning, shaken, leaning on a garbage pail for support. “In New York City, we are vulnerable to a lot of things,” he said. “These incidents are happening too frequently.”

Brian M. Rosenthal contributed reporting.


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

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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. 

Tom Savage shaking on ground after massive hit, briefly returns to game

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3:35 PM ET

HOUSTON — Texans quarterback Tom Savage remained on the ground with his hands twitching following a hit in the first half of Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers.

Sources: Fiedorowicz’s career may be cut short

Texans tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz, who suffered at least his third concussion of the 2017 season last weekend against the Titans, could be forced to retire at age 26, sources told ESPN.

Savage was hit by 49ers defensive end Elvis Dumervil while throwing an incomplete pass on third down. He appeared to have troubling getting up and seemed dazed, and his hands were visibly shaking.

He was checked out in the medical tent for less than three minutes then returned to the game for one series and threw two incomplete passes. He went to the locker room with two minutes remaining in the half and was replaced by T.J. Yates.

After taking the hit, Savage spent time talking to the team’s medical staff. Before the Texans’ next offensive series, a team official held on to Savage’s jersey and arm as he tried to go on to the field. Savage could be seen arguing with the team official before he was escorted to the locker room by the team’s trainer.

The Texans have ruled Savage out with a concussion.

That Savage was allowed back on the field at all drew the ire of Chris Nowinski, the founding CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation and co-director of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.

On his first series, Yates led the Texans on a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive, throwing a 7-yard pass to wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.