The House Benghazi Committee may have gotten all the attention recently, but House Republicans want you to remember that they have more than one iron in the fire. On Tuesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced that he and 18 Republican colleagues had filed a motion to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The resolution, which accuses Koskinen of violating the public trust and misleading Congress about IRS targeting of conservative groups, will go next to the House Judiciary Committee.
Chaffetz and his committee Republicans filed their motion four days after the Justice Department closed its investigation into the IRS scandal — which involved scrutiny of mostly conservative and Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status — without filing criminal charges. Koskinen was appointed after the scandal broke, but Chaffetz accuses him of erasing backup tapes with emails from Lois Lerner, the central IRS figure targeted by Republicans. "Impeachment is the appropriate tool to restore public confidence in the IRS and to protect the institutional interests of Congress," Chaffetz said.
House Democrats opposed the impeachment resolution and called it politically motivated. There's no evidence that Koskinen defied Congress or misled the public, said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on Chaffetz's committee. The IRS has spent $20 million and 160,000 employee hours cooperating with investigations, including the "ridiculous" one by the House Oversight Committee, Cummings said, and "calling this resolution a 'stunt' or a 'joke' would be insulting to stunts and jokes." Impeachment of an agency head is a step above holding him or her in contempt, The Washington Post notes, calling it "highly unusual," perhaps last used against War Secretary William Belknap in 1876. Peter Weber
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Monday it's "in the final development phase" of a mobile "digital passport" app that would tell airlines if international travelers had been vaccinated against COVID-19. The app would help "get people traveling again safely," IATA's Nick Careen said in a statement, by "giving governments confidence that systematic COVID-19 testing can work as a replacement for quarantine requirements."
Australia's Qantas announced Monday that it's on board with requiring a "vaccination passport" for international travelers, starting next year. "We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say for international travelers, that we will ask people to have the vaccination before they get on the aircraft," Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told Australia's Network 9. Korean Air and Air New Zealand also backed the idea but said any changes would have to be coordinated with their respective governments.
In the past few weeks, Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Oxford University-AstraZeneca have announced that large trials showed their respective COVID-19 vaccines to be safe and hightly effective at preventing the disease. This encouraging news "has given airlines and nations hope they may soon be able to revive suspended flight routes and dust off lucrative tourism plans," The Associated Press reports. "But countries in Asia and the Pacific, in particular, are determined not to let their hard-won gains against the virus evaporate."
The IATA and International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways, have been working on a digital pass they hope to roll out in the first quarter of 2021. This app would use blockchain technology and wouldn't store user data, IATA said. Korean Air is among those in the airline industry looking at trying out CommonPass, an app endorsed by the World Economic Forum and created with the Commons Project Foundation, and International SOS's AOKpass is currently being used on flights between Abu Dhabi and Pakistan. Peter Weber
General Motors CEO Mary Barra threw President Trump under the electric car Monday, announcing in a letter to environmental groups that GM will no longer support the Trump administration's battle to strip California of its own clean-air standards and signaling the automaker is ready to work with President-elect Joe Biden on climate policy.
"President-elect Biden recently said, 'I believe that we can own the 21st century car market again by moving to electric vehicles.' We at General Motors couldn't agree more," Barra wrote. "We believe the ambitious electrification goals of the president-elect, California, and General Motors are aligned, to address climate change by drastically reducing automobile emissions." GM announced last week that it's testing a new battery chemistry that should bring its electric vehicles to the same price range as gas-powered ones within five years.
Barra urged Toyota, Fiat-Chrysler, and the 10 smaller automakers that had sided with Trump to flip sides, too, and Toyota said it is "assessing the situation" and mostly wants uniform fuel standards in all 50 states.
"GM's maneuvering was a public humiliation to Mr. Trump," The New York Times reports. "Barra gave no warning to the administration, but she did speak by telephone on Monday with Mary Nichols, California's top climate regulator and an architect of the Obama-era fuel economy rules." Two people familiar with Barra's thinking told the Times her actions were clearly prompted by the outcome of the presidential race, but "even so, the way she did it took analysts aback."
Trump reversed President Barack Obama's national fuel standards upon taking office, lowering the target to 40 miles per gallon by 2025 from 54.5 mpg. California then quietly reached a deal with Honda, Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, and Volvo to get to 51 mpg by 2026, enraging Trump, who then moved in September 2019 to revoke California's unique ability to set its own tailpipe emission standards. GM and its allied automakers sided with Trump when environmental groups sued to block that move. The 51 mpg compromise "is now seen as the likely model for a new, Biden-era fuel economy rule," the Times reports.
"This huge pivot, so closely following an election result, particularly from a firm like General Motors, is a big, big deal," said University of Michigan public policy professor Barry Rabe. "This is the first big industrial step toward the next president. Are other industries going to have epiphanies and pivot?" Peter Weber
Elijah and Zachary Wheeler enjoy basketball so much it didn't bother them that their hoop was broken — they played despite it, due to their love of the game.
The Ohio brothers had no idea that Aubrey, a delivery driver with FedEx, saw them playing all the time and decided to surprise the family with a brand new hoop, leaving the gift, along with a basketball, on their front porch. "This was just such a blessing for her to do this, and I never ever expected it," the boys' mother, Coledo Wheeler, told Good Morning America. "It really was a total shock."
Elijah, 11, is now starting every day before school shooting hoops. The Wheeler family is looking forward to the next time Aubrey is in the neighborhood, so they can let her know in person how much her gift meant to them. "This was definitely something that was special, and it was inspiring," Coledo said. Catherine Garcia
President Trump gave what aides say is the closest he will come to conceding his loss to President-elect Joe Biden on Monday night, tweeting that while he is still fighting in court, "in the best interest of our country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same." The Emily in his tweet, General Services Administration head Emily Murphy, had already formally started the presidential transition process.
In an unusually personal letter to Biden and a separate email to her staff, Murphy said she had made the decision to finally start the peaceful transfer of power "independently, based on the law and available facts." She added: "I was never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official — including those who work at the White House or GSA — with regard to the substance or timing of my decision."
Murphy was looking for political cover to start the transition while Trump, with GOP backing, refused to concede, and she was afraid the angry president would "fire her and her top aides if she moved forward," The Washington Post reports. Her letter to Biden was issued shortly after Michigan certified Biden's victory, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court shot down yet another Trump legal challenge, and Republican pressure mounted for the transfer to commence.
But the ball started rolling late last week. Murphy's "team had notified the White House Counsel's Office on Friday that she planned to designate Biden the winner on Monday," the Post reports. "Murphy did not hear anything back." Trump hit his own "major inflection point" a day earlier, when his lawyers Rudy Giuliani and, especially, Sidney Powell, made wild, widely mocked vote fraud allegations but failed to present any credible evidence, Politico reports. Trump's more competent legal advisers, Jay Sekulow and Pat Cipollone, told him his chaotic legal strategy was getting untenable.
Still, "Trump only reluctantly agreed to let the transition begin," he "was described as angry about the situation," and he spent Monday calling political advisers "to say he had doubts about the GSA initiating the transition," the Post reports. "Despite Trump's resistance, officials throughout his administration were planning to coordinate directly with counterparts on the Biden team starting Tuesday," and "Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told other officials Monday evening it was time to begin the transition." Peter Weber
David Dinkins, New York City's first and only Black mayor, died Monday. He was 93.
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Dinkins graduated from Howard University, and while enrolled at Brooklyn Law School, worked at a liquor store owned by his father-in-law. Dinkins became involved with Democratic politics in Harlem, first serving in the state assembly, then becoming city clerk and Manhattan borough president.
In 1989, Dinkins defeated incumbent mayor Ed Koch and future mayor Rudy Giuliani, and at the time he was elected, the city's finances were in shambles. The first few years of his term were marked by a record number of homicides and race riots. A state investigation determined that Dinkins didn't act in a timely manner to stop the racial violence, and he was narrowly defeated in 1993 by Giuliani.
After leaving office, Dinkins was active in several charities and taught public affairs at Columbia University. In 2013, he published an autobiography, A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic. Dinkins and his wife, Joyce, had two children: Donna and David Jr. Joyce Dinkins died on Oct. 11. Catherine Garcia
Guitar Center filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Saturday, with CEO Ron Japinga saying this is "an important and positive step in our process to significantly reduce our debt."
Based in California, Guitar Center opened in 1959, and is the largest musical instrument store in the U.S. The company, which has more than 13,000 employees, said it will keep all 510 of its stores open through the holidays.
Guitar Center declared in court documents that it was on "extraordinarily sound footing" before the pandemic, and its sales dropped primarily because of stores having to close due to the coronavirus. Company officials said Guitar Center has more than $1.3 billion in debt, and under a reorganization plan, that number will be reduced by nearly $800 million, CBS News reports.
Several major retailers have filed for bankruptcy protection amid the pandemic, including Neiman Marcus, Hertz, and J.C. Penney. Catherine Garcia