The White House is refusing to give the House Oversight Committee any documents or produce any witnesses for its investigations, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday night. He called this an "unprecedented level of stonewalling, delay, and obstruction."
Cummings, the committee chair, said 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 focused on White House security clearances in the wake of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lying about his communications with the Russian ambassador and reports that President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received a top-secret clearance despite warnings from security officials. 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 wrote.
Cummings listed the different requests that have been ignored, including asks for documents related to Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, making hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, and for information about 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
North Korea said Tuesday that the U.S. will put talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to denuclearize at risk if it goes ahead with summer military exercises with South Korea, Reuters reports. The North Korean Foreign Ministry said the U.S. is continuing a pattern of "unilaterally reneging on its commitments" to North Korea, so Pyongyang has to reconsider its own commitments to discontinue missile and nuclear weapons tests while talks continue.
President Trump last month tried to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to resume talks on giving up his nuclear weapons by arranging a spur-of-the-moment meeting with Kim on the border between the two Koreas that resulted in an agreement to restart working-level talks that had been on hold since the collapse of their second summit in February. Harold Maass
Netflix is excising a graphic scene from its teen drama 13 Reasons Why after more than two years of criticism.
The Netflix original series based on a young adult novel about a high-school student who takes her own life originally contained a disturbing and explicit depiction of suicide in its finale that sparked debate when it aired in March 2017. The show's creators defended the scene as their way of showing the horror of suicide, while experts raised concerns over how the scene might affect vulnerable young viewers. A study in April found that suicides among those between age 10 and 17 spiked the month after 13 Reasons Why premiered on Netflix, although this increase could not be definitively tied to the series' release, NPR reports.
Now, two years later, the controversial suicide scene has been edited out of the show. In the version currently streaming on Netflix, only the moments immediately before and after Hannah's suicide are shown, but the series no longer depicts the character cutting her wrists as in the original version.
Netflix in a statement on Tuesday said that "we've been mindful about the ongoing debate around the show" and decided to edit the scene "on the advice of medical experts." Creator Brian Yorkey said, as he has in past interviews, that the intent of the scene was to "tell the truth about the horror of such an act" so that "no one would ever wish to emulate it" but that the creators have "heard concerns" ahead of the third season's launch. He concludes that this new version will "do the most good for the most people while mitigating any risk for especially vulnerable young viewers." Brendan Morrow
More than 100 people have been killed in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, with heavy rains causing widespread flooding and triggering landslides.
Millions of people have been displaced from their homes, including 4.3 million in the Indian states of Assam and Bihar. It is the beginning of monsoon season, and the rain started on Thursday, leaving roads and railroad tracks underwater. It's estimated that some parts of Nepal saw nearly 16 inches of rain in the last few days, and in Bangladesh, officials are keeping an eye on the swollen rivers that flow into the country from India.
During the 2017 monsoon season, at least 800 people were killed in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, with countless crops and homes destroyed. Catherine Garcia
Attorney George Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and one of the most prominent conservative critics of President Trump, said he always viewed Trump as "boorish, dim-witted, inarticulate, incoherent, narcissistic, and insensitive," but also thought he was an "equal-opportunity bully — in his uniquely crass and crude manner, he'll attack anyone he thinks is critical of him."
In an op-ed published Monday night in The Washington Post, Conway writes that because of Trump's tweets on Sunday, telling four Democratic lawmakers, all women of color, to "go back" where they came from, there is no doubt that "naiveté, resentment, and outright racism, roiled in a toxic mix, have given us a racist president. Trump could have used vile slurs, including the vilest of them all, and the intent and effect would have been no less clear."
Conway's mother came to the U.S. from the Philippines, and while he remembers in the 1970s a woman approached her in a parking lot and said "Go back to your country," this never really bothered him, because "to my mind, most Americans weren't like that. The woman in the parking lot was just a boor, an ignoramus, an aberration." Now, he can see there are more people in the world who share this woman's point of view, and it horrifies him that Trump appears to be one of them.
"Trump is not some random, embittered person in a parking lot — he's the president of the United States," Conway said. "By virtue of his office, he speaks for the country. What's at stake now is more important than judges or tax cuts or regulations or any policy issue of the day. What's at stake are the nation's ideals, its very soul." Read the entire op-ed at The Washington Post. Catherine Garcia