BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, SARAH LAZARUS

& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, October 4, 2019

—Ted Cruz

MISSIONARY DEPOSITION

It took one—literally, one!— witness, former Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, for House Democrats to find smoking gun evidence that President Trump withheld military assistance and a White House meeting from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky until Zelensky agreed to interfere in the 2020 election. 

On Thursday night, House committees released a batch of text messages between Volker and other State Department officials that revealed the following:

• White House envoys used a promised meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky as leverage to pressure Ukraine to open an investigation into Joe Biden. The meeting had been held up for two months, and Trump’s team made it clear that Zelensky had to commit to making up dirt about Biden to get his foot in the door. Quid pro quo, part I.
  
  
• A senior American diplomat in Ukraine told colleagues he suspected that the $391 million in aid that Trump had frozen was also dependent on those investigations. QPQ the sequel: 2 Quid, 2 Quorious.
  
  
• Rudy Giuliani punched up Ukraine’s statement about pursuing investigations of “corruption” to make the references to Hunter Biden and 2016 explicit. Quid Pro Quo: The Force Awakens? You get it. These are crimes.

Today we also learned:

• The House will depose the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland—the guy in the text messages who was like ‘we are definitely not committing crimes here in these recorded text messages, now let’s proceed by phone’—on Tuesday.
  
  
• House Democrats have demanded a ton of documents from Vice President Pence and the White House as part of their impeachment inquiry. Pence’s face-to-face meeting with President Zelensky last month, which Trump skipped to track Hurricane Dorian* (*play golf), along with the fact that he was briefed on the infamous Trump-Zelensky phone call, has implicated him in the scandal. 

The GOP response is...decidedly mixed.

• Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) seems to have had enough, at least on Twitter: “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.” It remains to be seen if he’ll do anything about it.
   
• Mitch McConnell, by contrast, has cited his power to save Trump from the impeachment process to raise money for his Senate campaign: "Nancy Pelosi is in the clutches of a left-wing mob. They've finally convinced her to impeach the President... The way that impeachment stops is a Senate majority, with me as majority leader." Very on the level! 

Republicans suddenly face a stark choice: Are they with Trump, or with democracy and the rule of law? 

At a town hall on Thursday, a constituent asked Trump-loyalist Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), “Where is the line? When are you guys going to say, ‘Enough,’ and stand up and say, ‘I’m not backing any of this?’”

It’s a terrific question, and one that every Republican will soon have to answer on the record. 

On November 12, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments challenging President Trump’s unlawful termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA provides temporary protection from deportation for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. The stakes here are high: if the Supreme Court doesn’t slap this down, 700,000 Dreamers who have lived in the U.S. for most of their lives could be deported to countries they don’t remember. This is family separation on horrifying scale: DACA recipients are parents to 256,000 U.S. citizen kids, and nearly every DACA recipient is part of a mixed-status family.

As the hearing approaches, a coalition of immigrant rights organizations have launched the Home is Here campaign. Most people don’t realize this case is pending, including Dreamers, and the campaign’s goal is to change that. It’ll organize events and rallies across the country over the next six weeks, and help DACA recipients renew their protected status while they still can.

You can make a huge difference by contributing to a Dreamer’s renewal fee →

Hey team, it’s Priyanka! Sadly the time has come for my last What A Day. But this isn’t quite a goodbye—I’ll still be here at Crooked as our brand marketing editor, hosting our livestreams, doing Vote Save America coverage, and working on some fun new content. So hopefully you’ll be seeing lots more from me soon! In the meantime, you’ll be in great hands here. And don’t worry—I’ve already got confirmation from Brian and Sarah that our Cardi B and Meghan Markle coverage isn’t going anywhere! Thanks for doing the news with me, it’s been quite a ride!

The Supreme Court will hear arguments about a Louisiana law that requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within a 30 mile radius. Though it does not pose a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, this will be the first abortion case that the court has taken up since Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch were confirmed. The law would force most of the state’s abortion clinics to close, leaving only one doctor eligible to perform abortions in Louisiana. Hear more on this case from Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Justice, in this week’s episode of Hysteria → 

Attorney General William Barr and his counterparts in Australia and Britain want Facebook to create a loophole in its plan to fully encrypt WhatsApp and other messaging services. Those “back doors” would give authorities access to user messages, nominally to fight terrorism, crime, and child pornography. Tech companies argue they seriously undermine individual privacy. 

Two women have sued actor James Franco and his business partners and production company for allegedly sexually exploiting women who took classes at their now-defunct acting school, Studio 4. They say that the men exploited students with nudity requirements in work, and in a Sex Scenes master class that did not involve typical safeguards for women in those roles. They also argue that the classes, which cost between $300-750, bypassed California regulations that prevent actors from being charged to audition. Franco faces a long and growing list of sexual misconduct allegations. 

The U.S. economy added 136,000 jobs in September, well below last year’s average monthly growth. The unemployment rate has hit a 50-year low, but the big picture still suggests the economy is slowing.

Iranian hackers targeted President Trump’s re-election campaign, as well as the email accounts of government officials and political journalists. Finally, a country proactive enough to interfere in our election without having to be asked.

At least 53 people have died this week in violent anti-government protests in Iraq. The protests started in Baghdad, where demonstrators remain frustrated by high unemployment, corruption, and the lack of public services. On Friday, security forces opened fire directly at hundreds of protesters, and authorities instituted a round-the-clock curfew and shut down the internet in an effort to stop the rallies. 

Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam used emergency powers to ban face masks at the city’s pro-democracy protests. The announcement drove thousands of protesters into the streets—many of whom wore masks. The Streisand effect, but for democracy movements.

Diahann Carroll, the first black woman in history to star in her own television series, Julia, has died at 84. She won a Tony Award and was nominated for an Oscar.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week to determine whether LGBTQ people are protected from workplace discrimination on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or if existing civil-rights law does not cover it and that kind of discrimination remains legal. The specific passage in question prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and the court will decide whether that language covers LGBTQ people. The Trump administration has weighed in (you’ll never guess how!) with two amicus briefs arguing that trans people aren’t protected under the law and neither are gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.

Dolphins have returned to swimming, mating, and even giving birth in the Potomac River thanks to decreased pollution levels and expanded forest protections, which have also ushered in the return of bald eagles and other species native to the area. Though the Potomac is still not safe for people to swim in, researchers have been able to count over 1,000 dolphins—up from 200 in 2015. They hope that the evidence of a rare wild dolphin birth earlier this year—only the third documented observation ever—will help area residents think of the river differently. 

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