On Thursday night, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who ran for Senate against incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D), filed suit against Broward and Palm Beach counties, accusing "unethical liberals" of trying to steal the election.
Scott is suing as a Senate candidate, not the governor. On Tuesday night, the race was too close to call, with Scott in the lead. The race has tightened as more votes have been counted, and Scott is now asking the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the official counts. Scott claims that Broward County and Palm Beach County supervisors are engaging in "rampant fraud," and he alleged that "left-wing activists in Broward County have been coming up with more and more ballots out of nowhere."
As of Thursday night, Scott has 15,092 more votes than Nelson, The Tampa Bay Times reports. Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Nelson, called Scott's action "politically motivated and borne out of desperation," and said "the goal here is to see that all the votes in Florida are counted and counted accurately." Catherine Garcia
One day before Lion Air Flight 610 crashed last October shortly after taking off from Jakarta, a different crew struggled to gain control of the plane as it entered a dive, people familiar with the incident told Bloomberg.
An off-duty pilot was sitting in the cockpit of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet on Oct. 28, and quickly realized that the anti-stalling flight-control system was malfunctioning. He directed the crew to cut the power to the motor that was forcing the nose down, Bloomberg reports, and the plane stabilized. Investigators said the same malfunction happened the next day, Oct. 29, causing the plane to crash into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.
This previously undisclosed detail was not mentioned in the report released by Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee. It's believed that a similar issue with the anti-stalling system led to an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 plane crashing on March 10 after taking off from Addis Ababa. Following the Lion Air crash, two U.S. pilots' associations shared their concerns that the possible risks associated with the anti-stalling system were not clearly stated during training and in manuals. Catherine Garcia
The White House is refusing to give the House Oversight Committee any documents or produce any witnesses for its investigations, Chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday night, choosing to engage in an "unprecedented level of stonewalling, delay, and obstruction."
Cummings said that Democrats were elected so the House could serve as a "truly independent check and balance on the executive branch." His committee is the House's primary investigative body, and he has sent the White House 12 letters on six topics, "some routine and some relating to our core national security interests." The White House, Cummings said, "has not turned over a single piece of paper to our committee or made a single official available for testimony during the 116th Congress."
One investigation is focusing on White House security clearances, in the wake of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lying about his communications with the former Russian ambassador to the United States and reports that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received a clearance despite warnings. The White House "offered to let us read — but not keep — a few pages of policy documents that have nothing to do with the officials we are investigating, along with a general briefing on those policies during which they will answer no questions about specific employees," Cummings said.
Cummings shared the different requests that have been ignored, including to provide documents related to Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, making hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, and White House officials allegedly using private email to conduct business, which is illegal. "If our committee must resort to issuing subpoenas, there should be no doubt about why," Cummings said. Read the entire revealing op-ed at The Washington Post. Catherine Garcia
Postpartum depression affects as many as 400,000 women in the United States every year, and on Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug specifically created to treat the disorder.
Brexanolone, also known as Zulresso, is delivered intravenously. The infusion takes 60 hours, and during a clinical trial, most participants showed improvement within 24 hours of receiving the drug, and reported they still felt the effects 30 days later. Brexanolone contains a synthetic form of allopregnanolone, a derivative of progesterone, which increases during pregnancy and drops dramatically after giving birth. It is thought allopregnanolone could contribute to postpartum depression.
Women with postpartum depression often feel profound sadness, anxiety, or despair. Many are treated with antidepressants that take weeks to kick in, and sometimes don't work at all, as they do not address the hormonal changes that happen during and after pregnancy. Each infusion is expected to cost $20,000 to $35,000, NBC News reports, and it's unknown how much insurance will cover. Researchers said each patient will likely only need one infusion. It is expected the FDA will soon decide if the drug is safe for women while breastfeeding. Catherine Garcia
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Catholic diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and its former bishop, Michael Bransfield, alleging that they violated the state's consumer protection laws by "knowingly" employing pedophiles.
The suit alleges that the diocese and Bransfield did not conduct substantial background checks on people hired to work in Catholic schools and camps, The Washington Post reports, and then tried to "cover up and conceal arguably criminal behavior of child sexual abuse." The first incident mentioned in the suit took place in 1965, when a priest accused of sexually abusing a child was hired by the diocese, and later became director of Camp Tygart despite new alleged victims coming forward. Morrisey is seeking to block the diocese from "continuation of any such conduct."
By using consumer law to file a civil lawsuit, the church's files could be viewed through legal discovery. The diocese, which covers the whole state, released a statement Tuesday saying it "strongly and unconditionally rejects the complaint's assertion that the diocese is not wholly committed to the protection of children." Last week, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori prohibited Bransfield from conducting any priestly duties, after multiple adults accused him of sexual harassment. Catherine Garcia
A group of German archaeologists found about 400 artifacts from World War II after excavating three rural sites near the towns of Warstein, Suttrop, and Eversberg, LiveScience reported on Tuesday.
While exploring the sites of former Nazi camps, the researchers said that most of the 400 artifacts came from Langenbach Valley near Warstein, where LiveScience says 60 women, 10 men, and a child "were taken into the forest, under the pretense of being moved to a different labor camp, and then shot." The vast array of personal items included everything from prayer books and dictionaries to shoes, harmonicas, and Soviet coins — all believed to have been owned by and buried with the massacre's victims.
Bullet cartridges were also found scattered in the area, which could suggest that some of the Polish and Russian forced laborers tried to escape the firing squad. Nazis killed 208 laborers in the region at the end of the war, and only 14 of the victims have ever been identified by name, due to Nazi efforts to conceal their crimes.
Matthias Löb, the director of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe — the group behind the excavation — said in a statement that despite the tragic finds, these discoveries serve as an essential reminder of the atrocities committed during that period. Löb also said Germany has seen an increase in "trivialization" and denial of Nazi crimes, and that the discovery of these artifacts are proof of a part of German history "that we have to face." Read more at LiveScience. Marina Pedrosa
Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 Democratic presidential campaign team announced 15 new hires today, including 10 women.
Among the slew of hirings is Briahna Joy Gray, a former attorney and the senior politics editor at The Intercept, who will join the staff as Sanders' national press secretary.
The campaign says that now every single one of its teams "has women, and predominantly women of color, in leadership positions," per Refinery29. Indeed, women make up around 70 percent of the national leadership team.
The campaign, HuffPost reported, was surely determined to address concerns leftover from the Vermont senator's 2016 presidential run, when the staff was criticized for including few women and people of color. That campaign staff was also plagued by allegations of sexual harassment, which several female staffers said were ignored.
Sanders also hired journalist Dave Sirota, who used to serve as Sanders' press secretary in the House of Representatives, as a speechwriter and senior adviser. Sirota, whom The Atlantic has called Sanders' "Twitter attack dog" because of his reputation for "savaging" Democratic opponents, had reportedly been working for the senator in an unofficial capacity for several months, despite Sanders' remarks that suggested he wanted his campaign to remain free of antagonism. Read more on Sirota's hiring at The Atlantic. Tim O'Donnell