Latino group urges state lawmaker to make primary challenge to Democrat for Georgia House seat

An influential national Latino political group on Thursday launched a campaign to draft state Rep. Brenda Lopez Romero (D) to run for Georgia's 7th congressional district.

The campaign, dubbed "Run, Brenda, Run," was launched by the Latino Victory Fund, which last month ran a similar campaign encouraging Assistant Speaker Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) to run to replace retiring Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.).

If Lopez enters the race, it could generate a contentious Democratic primary fight.

Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.) won reelection in 2018 by just more than 400 votes over Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux, who has pledged to run again in 2020, and has raised more than $350,000 for her campaign.

The Latino Victory campaign comes with support from big names in the Georgia Democratic Party.

Both Georgia Assembly House Minority Leader Bob Trammell and House Democratic chair James Beverly spoke out to encourage López to challenge Bourdeaux.

“Brenda Lopez Romero is a proven legislator who knows how to get things done, and that’s exactly why we need Brenda to run for the United States Congress. I proudly join this effort, because Georgia deserves a leader like Brenda in Washington,” Beverly said in a statement.

Georgia's 7th district is a diverse and urban district that's been increasingly in the sights of Democrats.

It's a majority-minority district where 45 percent of the population is white, 21 percent is black, 14 percent is Asian and 19 percent is Hispanic.

Georgia as a whole has a significant and growing Hispanic population, but has never sent a Hispanic representative to Washington.

“State Representative Brenda Lopez Romero knows the importance of building a pipeline of qualified and viable Latino candidates in Georgia. I am proud to have worked closely with Brenda to make sure we are training the next Latino leaders in our state," said Jason Esteves, the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education Board chair

"Now more than ever, we must show Brenda Lopez Romero that a grassroots army is ready to have her back and that we want her to run for Georgia 7th Congressional District," added Esteves.

https://thehill.com/latino/439479-latino-group-urges-state-lawmaker-to-make-primary-challenge-to-democrat-for-georgia

>"Run, Brenda, Run,"

Not to slide but…any anons seen Run, Ronny, Run? Don't make the mistake as I did and watch it with your in-laws…

Deutsche Bank Is Scrambling For A 'Plan B' To Justify Abandoning Commerzbank Merger Talks

The fraught, government-assisted courtship of troubled German banking giants Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank has hit yet another snag. According to a series of reports published Thursday morning, concerns about a mass defection of mutual clients moving some, or all, of their business is giving Deutsche Bank - long reputed to be the more reluctant partner - cold feet.

Deutsche CEO Christian Sewing is reportedly trying to devise a 'Plan B' to pitch to investors who support the tie-up. These investors are reportedly demanding that if Deutsche doesn't go ahead with the merger, it must come up with a plan to turnaround its struggling business as its streak of declining revenue is widely expected to continue.

However, while investors are demanding that the bank try 'something different', the options reportedly under consideration (as described by Bloomberg) sound like more of the same: They include a) more cost cuts, focusing on DB's investment bank and b) a nebulous 'strategy shift' that would involve more upfront costs. However, Sewing must at least find a way to paint the turd gold, so to speak, since a return to his original strategy simply 'wouldn't be credible'.

In another sign that the deal could be headed for the rocks, BBG noted that after five weeks of talks, the two banks are apparently no closer to a deal. Meanwhile, more Social Democrats, the party of finance minister Olaf Scholz - who is perhaps the biggest proponent of a merger, which he hopes will create a new German 'national champion' to support its industrial sector - are siding with the labor unions from the two banks, which have warned that a merger could lead to the loss of 40,000 jobs.

Yet even after senior ECB policymakers reportedly expressed skepticism about the deal, the talks have continued, perhaps because two other European lenders, Italy's Unicredit and Dutch ING, have expressed an overt interest in buying Commerzbank.

Deutsche Bank Supervisory Board Chairman Paul Achleitner has said DB will give an update by April 26, when DB's Q1 earnings are due out. Commerzbank has been pushing for an earlier update.

Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank are at odds over how many clients would ditch the Frankfurt-based rivals if they merged, highlighting one of the many obstacles to a deal that could transform the face of German banking. Many companies in Germany are clients of both Deutsche and Commerzbank.

Some of them are expected to move parts of their business to rival lenders if the merger happens to avoid becoming overly dependent on a single lender. Deutsche’s internal estimates suggest that this would result in lost revenue of slightly more than €1bn a year, or about 3.5 per cent of the two lenders’ combined pro forma revenue of €33.5bn.

Commerzbank’s view is much more benign, however. It expects that the merged group will suffer only about half of the revenue losses its larger rival is predicting, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-18/deutsche-bank-scrambling-plan-b-justify-abandoning-commerzbank-merger-talks

>Plan B

US halts recent practice of disclosing nuclear weapon total

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has halted, without explanation, the recent U.S. government practice of disclosing the current size of the nuclear weapons stockpile.

The decision was revealed in a recent Department of Energy letter to the Federation of American Scientists, a private group that studies nuclear weapons issues and advocates for government openness on national security issues.

The Obama administration, in May 2010, had declassified for the first time the full history of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile from its beginning in 1945. It revealed that the warhead total stood at 5,113 as of Sept. 30, 2009, approximately the number that private experts had estimated and about 84 percent below the official peak number of 31,255 warheads in 1967.

As recently as last year, the Trump administration had disclosed that the stockpile consisted of 3,822 nuclear warheads as of Sept. 30, 2017, down 196 warheads from the year before. The 2017 figure was made public in response to a request by the scientists group, which asked for a 2018 update last October.

"After careful consideration … it was determined that the requested information cannot be declassified at this time," the Energy Department wrote in an April 5 letter responding to the federation's request. The department provided no explanation for the decision, which it said was made by the Formerly Restricted Data Declassification Working Group, consisting of officials from the departments of Defense and Energy.

"Formerly Restricted Data" is a category of classification that pertains to information such as nuclear stockpile quantities, warhead yields and locations.

The Russian government does not disclose its nuclear stockpile total. The Federation of American Scientists estimates Russia has about 4,350.

Nuclear warheads are attached to bombs and missiles, such as those carried by strategic bomber aircraft, ballistic missile submarines and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, which form the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Hans M. Kristensen, director of the federation's Nuclear Information Project, wrote in an analysis Wednesday that the decision against disclosing the 2018 nuclear stockpile number was "unnecessary and counterproductive." In his view there is no national security rationale for keeping the number secret.

"The decision walks back nearly a decade of U.S. nuclear weapons transparency policy — in fact, longer if including stockpile transparency initiatives in the late-1990s," Kristensen wrote.

"With this decision," he added, "the Trump administration surrenders any pressure on other nuclear-armed states to be more transparent about the size of their nuclear weapon stockpiles. This is curious since the Trump administration had repeatedly complained about secrecy in the Russian and Chinese arsenals. Instead, it now appears to endorse their secrecy."

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/04/18/us-halts-recent-practice-of-disclosing-nuclear-weapon-total/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ag-william-barr-speaks-about-mueller-report-ahead-of-its-release-live-blog

AG William Barr speaks about Mueller report ahead of its release – live blog