An Upper East Side woman was halfway out of a window, 200 feet in the air, when cops started trying to calm her down yesterday afternoon. Their efforts worked, and officers were able to coax her back into the 85th Street building. We call it good work. The Post calls it “high drama.” We guess both apply. [NYP]
THE FEED
Signs that we’re nearing the end of single-stream recycling as we know it
The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins.
But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded on to trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility and burned, according to the city’s government.
It’s a situation being replicated across the US as cities struggle to adapt to a recent ban by China on the import of items intended for reuse.
Until recently, China had been taking about 40% of US paper, plastics and other recyclables but this trans-Pacific waste route has now ground to a halt. In July 2017, China told the World Trade Organization it no longer wanted to be the end point for yang laji, or foreign garbage, with the country keen to grapple with its own mountains of waste.
A former Fox News contributor has been accused of sexual misconduct
A former member of Fox News’ “Medical A-Team” was reportedly sued by three female patients within the past year claiming he lured them into sexual relationships that degraded the women through beatings and bondage. One woman even got a tattoo featuring the doctor’s initials so that he could claim “ownership” of her.
One Ohio woman described how she received Ketamine shots from visited Ablow in 2015 to treat her depression and started having Skype sessions with him. Ablow reportedly began to ask the woman personal questions, then started asking her about her sexual preferences—specifically if she liked to be dominant or submissive.
Another former patient of Ablow’s, from New York, got a tattoo of Ablow’s initials upon his request and endured allegedly abusive behavior.
russia investigation
What If the Mueller Report Does Actually Drop Next Week?
How Biden’s potential absence in 2020 could skew the chances of other contenders.
Cameron Easley, Washington editor, Morning Consult
Sanders, Harris, and Warren could be key beneficiaries of Biden’s existing support … Sanders would be the biggest beneficiary if Biden decides not to run. Twenty-four percent of the likely Democratic primary voters who said the former vice president was their first choice picked the Vermont senator as their runner-up, compared with 11 percent who opted for Kamala Harris as second choice and 10 percent who chose Elizabeth Warren.
Tim Malloy, assistant director, Quinnipiac University Poll
Take him out of the equation and Sen. Kamala Harris would appear to be the frontrunner with a virtual army of would-be Democrats, from the far left to the more moderate, assembling campaign teams and looking for an opening.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor, Sabato’s Crystal Ball
My guess is that Biden’s support would not immediately go to one person disproportionately. Maybe Bernie Sanders would benefit only because he has the most name ID (along with Biden) of the candidates. But I don’t know if that would actually make Sanders a likelier nominee; these early polls can be just a measure of name ID.
In the early going, Kamala Harris has seemed to make the biggest splash of the candidates who are not otherwise well-known nationally. That said, I do not believe there is a true frontrunner in this race as of yet.
Confirmation from earlier today that we’re in the weirdest possible timeline
Roger Stone is now seated at the defense table for a hearing on his Instagram post.
—@ryanjreilly
China has been using DNA technology provided by a Massachusetts company to crack down on Uighur Muslims
China wants to make the country’s Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, more subservient to the Communist Party. It has detained up to a million people in what China calls “re-education” camps, drawing condemnation from human rights groups and a threat of sanctions from the Trump administration.
Collecting genetic material is a key part of China’s campaign, according to human rights groups and Uighur activists. They say a comprehensive DNA database could be used to chase down any Uighurs who resist conforming to the campaign.
To bolster their DNA capabilities, scientists affiliated with China’s police used equipment made by Thermo Fisher, a Massachusetts company. For comparison with Uighur DNA, they also relied on genetic material from people around the world that was provided by Kenneth Kidd, a prominent Yale University geneticist.
On Wednesday, Thermo Fisher said it would no longer sell its equipment in Xinjiang, the part of China where the campaign to track Uighurs is mostly taking place. The company said separately in an earlier statement to The New York Times that it was working with American officials to figure out how its technology was being used.
It’s taken almost a month for the labor market to recover from the record shutdown
JUST IN: Filings for U.S. unemployment benefits fell by more than expected to a four-week low, a sign the labor market is regaining its footing following the longest-ever government shutdown https://t.co/hEaqSdspHa pic.twitter.com/MPRtCjKjls
—@business
Meet John C. Fry, the newest character in the investigations into Trump’s circle
Federal prosecutors say an IRS investigator in California has admitted leaking confidential details of financial transactions by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to Michael Avenatti, lawyer for Stormy Daniels.
John C. Fry has been charged in federal court with searching for and disseminating Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), reports filed by banks when they note potentially suspicious transactions.
Federal officials say they found telephone records that indicate Fry placed a phone call from his personal cell phone to that of Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti the day before Avenatti released details of Cohen’s financial transactions, and the day after.
According to the complaint, he conducted numerous searches related to Cohen, and downloaded five SARs, including one related to a bank account for Essential Consultants.
More concerning details about CNN’s new hire Sarah Isgur Flores
.@CNN’s new political editor Sarah Isgur Flores was included in internal @TheJusticeDept email discussions about the #2020census #citizenshipquestion during her time as a DOJ spokesperson.
From deposition of DOJ’s John Gore by @ACLU’s @dale_e_ho👇https://t.co/PpILtLmfU1 pic.twitter.com/Rm49puVb3d
—@hansilowang
From deposition of DOJ’s John Gore by @ACLU’s @dale_e_ho👇https://t.co/PpILtLmfU1 pic.twitter.com/Rm49puVb3d
Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee, pictured right, apologizes for picture in an Auburn yearbook in which he is dressed as a Confederate solider: “With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that participating in that was insensitive and I’ve come to regret it.”
Photo: Auburn University Glomerata
California’s public pension fund is a major investor in the National Enquirer, owning as much as a third of its parent company American Media Inc.
The National Enquirer has been one of President Trump’s most controversial allies, delivering scathing coverage of his opponents to super market check-out lines and funneling $150,000 to one of his alleged mistresses to buy her silence.
So it will probably come as a surprise to California state employees and taxpayers to learn they were helping fund those efforts.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, California’s massive public pension fund, CalPERS, was one of the biggest investors in the debt-laden owner of the National Enquirer, according to public records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.
The big dollar targets for Democrats just so happen to include the four major states that went to Obama in 2012 and to Trump in 2016
.@prioritiesUSA, the largest Dem super PAC, is launching an early $100M presidential effort in FL, WI, MI, and PA, @guycecil tells reporters in DC this AM. Phase two, before the end of this year, will expand into NV, NH, AZ, NC, and GA.
—@gdebenedetti
bernie sanders
Bernie Sanders’s Two-Pronged Attack on American Exceptionalism
crime
It’s Time for Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to Resign
One of the more voracious readers in recent presidential history, Obama will not have a traditional presidential library
The four-building, 19-acre “working center for citizenship,” set to be built in a public park on the South Side of Chicago, will include a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” a two-story event space, an athletic center, a recording studio, a winter garden, even a sledding hill.
In a break with precedent, there will be no research library on site, and none of Mr. Obama’s official presidential records. Instead, the Obama Foundation will pay to digitize the roughly 30 million pages of unclassified paper records from the administration so they can be made available online.
And the entire complex, including the museum chronicling Mr. Obama’s presidency, will be run by the foundation, a private nonprofit entity, rather than by the National Archives and Records Administration, the federal agency that administers the libraries and museums for all presidents going back to Herbert Hoover.
A GOP challenger approaches New Hampshire
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday he expects to make a springtime trip to New Hampshire as he weighs a 2020 challenge to Donald Trump — and accused the Republican National Committee of going to extraordinary lengths to shield the president from a potentially draining primary.
“Typically they try to be fair arbiters of a process and I’ve never seen anything like it and I’ve been involved in the Republican Party for most of my life. It’s unprecedented. And in my opinion it’s not the way we should be going about our politics,” Hogan, a popular two-term Maryland governor, said in an interview with POLITICO. “It’s very undemocratic and to say, ‘We’re in some cases not going to allow a debate, we may not have a primary…’”
The 62-year-old Hogan, who won reelection in liberal Maryland last year, has openly flirted with a primary challenge in recent weeks. The governor used his January inauguration speech to implicitly go after the president and to raise the specter of impeachment. He later met with conservative columnist and prominent Trump critic Bill Kristol, who has been seeking out a 2020 Republican primary challenger.
More chilling details about the white nationalist Coast Guard lieutenant who appeared to be planning a killing spree
At his detention hearing, prosecutors said that Hasson spent $14,000 a year on arms and equipment to prepare for an attack and that he read manifestos of several mass attackers, including the Unabomber and the Virginia Tech shooter.
Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland,” prosecutors said in court filings. It’s unclear whether Hasson had a specific date for an attack, but the government said he had been stockpiling weapons for at least two years.
During the raid this month, law enforcement officers seized 15 firearms and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his residence in the suburbs just north of Washington.
As recently as Jan. 17, Hasson created a list of “traitors” and targets in a spreadsheet while reviewing various broadcast news sites from his work computer, court filings show. The list included people prosecutors believe to be Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), CNN reporter Don Lemon and nearly two dozen others.
Official condemnation for the sordid role Alexander Acosta played in the Jeffrey Epstein child-sex case
A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors — among them, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with a wealthy, politically connected sex trafficker and concealed it from more than 30 of his underage victims.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said that the evidence he reviewed showed that Jeffrey Epstein had been operating an international sex operation in which he and others recruited underage girls — not only in Florida — but from overseas, in violation of federal law.
“Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him.,’’ wrote Marra, who is based in Palm Beach County. “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.’’
Instead of prosecuting Epstein under federal sex trafficking laws, Acosta, then the U.S. attorney in Miami, helped negotiate a non-prosecution agreement that gave Epstein and his co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution. Epstein, who lived in a Palm Beach mansion, was allowed to quietly plead guilty in state court to two prostitution charges and served just 13 months in the county jail. His accomplices, some of whom have never been identified, were never charged.
Benjamin Hart
Ed Kilgore
Benjamin Hart
Ed Kilgore
Benjamin Hart
Ed Kilgore
Benjamin Hart
Ed Kilgore
Benjamin Hart
Ed Kilgore
Benjamin Hart
Ed Kilgore
elections
New Election Ordered in North Carolina House District Over Possible Fraud
A new Congressional election is on the way in North Carolina
BREAKING: North Carolina orders new election in undecided US House race after hearing evidence it was tainted by ballot fraud.
—@AP
Judge imposes strict gag order on Roger Stone, who likes to talk
ABJ: “So, no, Mr. Stone. I’m not giving you another chance. I have serious doubts about whether you have learned any lesson at all.”
“From this moment on, the defendant may not speak publicly about the investigation or the case or any of the participants”
—@awprokop
“From this moment on, the defendant may not speak publicly about the investigation or the case or any of the participants”
A worst New York nightmare comes true — though reportedly it was wood under the tracks, not the track itself
This guy was crowd-funding his legal bills
Judge Jackson also just read from Roger Stone’s financial filings, according to which he makes $47,000 a month as a consultant
—@rachelweinerwp
international intrigue
Maduro and Venezuela’s Opposition Prepare for Dramatic Confrontation
technology
Some American Airlines Seats Have Built-in Cameras
Roger Stone goes with the “I’m an idiot” defense in trying to explain an Instagram post that juxtaposed the judge overseeing his case with what appeared to be crosshairs
Roger Stone on the stand now: “I believe I abused the order for which I am sorry. I am kicking myself over my own stupidity. I offer no excuse for it, no justification. It was the outgrowth of a lapse in judgement.”
—@SamanthaJoRoth
A huge development in the North Carolina election-fraud saga
the top line
What Killed the Biggest Passenger Plane Ever Flown?
transit woes
The Battle Over High-Speed Rail Money Is Part of Trump’s War on California
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