Top News Stories for Today – Jan 15, 2019
Top News Stories for Today – Jan 15, 2019
Trump threatening to pull US out of NATO
President Trump told aides numerous times last year that he wants to pull the US out of NATO, essentially destroying the 70-year-old military alliance between the US, Canada, and Europe, senior administration officials tell The New York Times.
Trump, who does not favor alliances, most frequently complains about European nations not spending enough on defense, portraying that as an unacceptable burden on the US Weakening or neutering NATO is perhaps the top geopolitical goal of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s “repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials,” the Times reports. NATO has strong bipartisan support in Congress, and if Trump decided to withdraw, lawmakers have a year to block the move. The New York Times via The Week
Democrats eye censure of Steve King
The highest-ranking Republican in the US Congress sharply denounced Congressman Steve King of Iowa for racially charged comments. “There is no place in the Republican Party, the Congress or the country for an ideology of racial supremacy of any kind,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday. McConnell joined fellow Republicans in condemning King, as House Democrats announced plans to censure him.
The fallout against King stems from an interview published in The New York Times last week in which King lamented, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” But his offensive remarks date back to 2006 when he compared immigrants to livestock. VOA
Historic Brexit deal vote awaited
MPs are preparing to vote on whether to back Theresa May’s deal for leaving the European Union. The so-called “meaningful vote” will take place later as five days of debate on Brexit comes to an end. May has called for politicians to back her deal or risk “letting the British people down”.
But with many of her own MPs expected to join opposition parties to vote against the deal, it is widely expected to be defeated. MPs will also be able to suggest amendments that could reshape the deal before voting starts. BBC
Trump said he never worked for Russia
US President Donald Trump declared Monday, “I never worked for Russia,” days after news reports suggested he might be beholden to Russia and President Vladimir Putin.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that Federal Bureau of Investigation officials started investigating whether Trump “was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence” because of his behavior after he fired former FBI chief James Comey in May 2017. VOA
King removed from committee assignments
Following backlash to inflammatory comments he made during a New York Times interview last week, the House Republican Steering Committee removed Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) from all of his congressional committee assignments, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced Monday night. During the interview, King asked, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
In a statement, King said his remarks were “mischaracterized,” and he only wondered when “Western civilization became a derogatory term in political discourse today.” He said McCarthy’s “decision to remove me from committees is a political decision that ignores the truth,” and he does not plan on resigning. Earlier in the day, Reps. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) filed resolutions to censure King for his remarks. CNN via The Week
Antarctica is melting 6 times faster
Antarctica is losing its icy covering at an absolutely unprecedented rate, a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found. Antarctica’s glaciers may have melted at an astounding 40 billion tons per year in the 1980s, but that total increased more than sixfold from 2009 to 2019.
In the National Academy’s most recent measurement, Antarctica’s ice sheet lost 250 billion tons of ice every year. Seeing as it takes 360 billion tons of melting ice to produce a millimeter of sea level rise, sea levels have gone up by nearly 7 millimeters due to Antarctica’s melt alone. At the world’s current carbon emissions rate, global sea levels could rise 3 feet by 2100. The Washington Post via The Week
2nd US judge blocks Trump’s birth control rules
A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing new rules allowing employers to obtain exemptions from an Obamacare requirement that they provide health insurance that covers women’s birth control. US District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia issued a nationwide injunction preventing the rules from taking effect, a day after another judge issued a more limited ruling blocking their enforcement in 13 states and the District of Columbia.
The rules would let businesses or nonprofits lodge religious or moral objections to obtain exemptions from the Obamacare mandate that employers provide contraceptive coverage in health insurance with no copayment. Reuters