Don't call into question the patriotism of a Purple Heart recipient and expect to walk away unscathed.
On Thursday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) tweeted several inflammatory things about Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the director of European Affairs for the White House National Security Council. Vindman was on President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and while testifying before House impeachment investigators, Vindman said he was troubled by Trump's request that Ukraine open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, and knew he had to inform superiors.
During the afternoon's impeachment proceedings, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) called Vindman an "American patriot," which led to Blackburn tweeting, "How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America's greatest enemy?"
Vindman's lawyer David Pressman reacted swiftly, saying in a statement, "This difficult moment in our country calls for seriousness and seriousness of purpose. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has sacrificed enormously for our country. He believes in our country. And he believes in our country's great institutions, including the United States Senate." Vindman served in the Iraq War, and received a Purple Heart for injuries he sustained in an IED attack.
"That a member of the Senate — at a moment when the Senate is undertaking its most solemn responsibility — would choose to take to Twitter to spread slander about a member of the military is testament to cowardice," Pressman continued. "While Sen. Blackburn fires off defamatory tweets, Lt. Col. Vindman will continue to do what he has always done: serve our country dutifully and with honor." Catherine Garcia
A man was killed on Saturday night after being hit by a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans.
Police said the victim appeared to fall between two sections of a large tandem float at the Krewe of Endymion. Just days earlier, a 58-year-old woman was run over by a parade float at the Krewe of Nyx. Following the man's death, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced tandem floats, which are several floats connected together and pulled by a tractor, are now banned.
"To be confronted with such tragedy a second time at the height of our Carnival celebrations seems an unimaginable burden to bear," Cantrell said in a statement. "The city and the people of New Orleans will come together, we will grieve together, and we will persevere together." Cantrell also said the city will "be looking at further changes that need to be made to make our routes and our celebrations more safe — but the work starts right now."
Two additional people were injured on Sunday when they fell from a float in the Krewe of Thoth parade. Police said they were both transferred to a trauma center, and are in stable condition. Catherine Garcia
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson has rejected a request from Roger Stone that she recuse herself from his criminal case.
Stone, a longtime friend and adviser of President Trump, was found guilty of lying to Congress and witness tampering late last year, and on Thursday, was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Stone is asking for a new trial, claiming that a juror was impartial. After the jury reached its verdict, Jackson said the jurors "served with integrity," and Stone's legal team has argued that this shows she is biased, and must recuse herself before a ruling is made on a new trial.
Jackson wrote on Sunday that there is "no factual or legal support for the motion of disqualification," and "the pleading appears to be nothing more than an attempt to use the court's docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words 'judge' and 'biased' in it." Catherine Garcia
Former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson announced on Sunday that she is endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
During a surprise appearance at Sanders' rally in Austin, Texas, Williamson said he "has been taking a stand for a very long time. He has been consistent, he has been convicted, he has been committed. And now it's time, I'm here and you're here, because it's time for us to take a stand with Bernie."
She also rejected the idea that Sanders can't defeat President Trump in November. "I'll tell you what's already happened to those who say it cannot happen," Williamson said. "You just tell them this: It already happened. He won Iowa. It already happened, he won New Hampshire. It already happened, he won Nevada." His supporters are "tired of saying pretty please," she added. "We're going to stand up, we're going to show up because we woke up. We're here and we're with Bernie." Williamson, who also endorsed Sanders when he ran for president in 2016, exited the race in early January. Catherine Garcia
The Trump administration appears divided over whether to alter some expiring aspects of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Some White House officials within the Domestic Policy Council, spurred by the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page which has since been called into question, are hoping to overhaul parts of FISA which are soon due to lapse. One change they're proposing, which has actually been pushed for a long time by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, is to eventually notify subjects of national-security surveillance that they had been surveilled.
There will likely be some hurdles, though. The National Security Council, for example, generally advocates for expanded surveillance powers, and some other administration officials reportedly have privately expressed concern that the effort to scale back some of the spying powers may go too far.
President Trump hasn't said anything about the expiring segments of FISA, but he has complained about the law in relation to Page and his campaign. Still, per the Journal, presidents historically have avoided scaling back surveillance powers because they fear they'll be blamed in the event of a terrorist attack. Read more at The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell
If you saw the reports that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was briefed by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia was trying to aid his Democratic presidential campaign, you might have wondered, why exactly, Moscow was targeting him. After all, President Trump is still apparently the candidate the Kremlin hopes wins, and Sanders and Trump certainly have different ideological stances.
GQ's Julia Ioffe set out to answer that question, and while she reports that some people think Sanders' non-interventionist foreign policy platform is appealing to Moscow, or that he will be easier for Trump to defeat than other more moderate candidates, she also found that it may be more about optics. "The ideal scenario is to maintain schism and uncertainty in the States till the end," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a Russian political scientist who used to advise Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Our candidate is chaos."
Essentially, as described by Ioffe's sources, Moscow is licking its chops over what could be the most extreme U.S. presidential election in quite some time, if not ever, and they want to see the country turn on itself. "All of this infighting, this cannibalism, they create and deepen the crisis of the American system," said Andranik Migranyan, a close friend of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who used to run a Russian government-funded think tank.
Migranyan went on to question — perhaps facetiously — whether the U.S. will still exist after 2025. "Your country is hurtling toward the abyss," he said.
Of course, it's unclear if that's precisely why the Kremlin seems okay with a Sanders victory — and Migranyan denies Russia is actually meddling — but it's not difficult to imagine Moscow would enjoy an even more hotly contested election than in 2016. Read more at GQ. Tim O'Donnell