Feinstein breaks home-state endorsement rule to spurn Kamala Harris and back Biden: 'I feel very loyal to him

Almost all the senators in the 2020 Democratic presidential field enjoy the support of their fellow home state Democratic senators, but California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., broke that mold with her endorsement of former Vice President Joe Biden over her fellow Californian, Sen. Kamala Harris Feinstein told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that she feels more loyal to Biden than Harris. “I’ve known Joe Biden for 20 years. When he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he made me the first woman. We have a longstanding relationship that dates way back. I love Kamala, I appreciate her, but she has known about this for some time. But that’s what I’m going to do. I feel very loyal to him," Feinstein said.

Other senators, several of them, like Feinstien, 85, veteran lawmakers, either don't share the same bond with Biden, 76, or don't have the same sense of loyalty. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as a “proven leader with a strong message” the day Sanders announced his candidacy. When Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., announced his candidacy, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said that Booker “makes a great friend, and will make an even greater president.” Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., was “proud to stand with” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., when Klobuchar announced her campaign, and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., threw his support behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, when she announced her candidacy. The only other senator seeking the presidency without the support of a home-state Democratic senator is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Shumer, D-N.Y., said in March that he will “stay out of the presidential” race. “Let's see who the best candidate is," he said.

Feinstein, on the other hand, not only threw her support behind Biden but also drew attention to the limited experience in national politics of Harris, 54. Harris was elected to the Senate in 2016. “She’s brand-new here, so it takes a little bit of time to get to know somebody,” Feinstein said in January. Feinstein’s support of Biden rather than Harris underscores the difference between older factions of the Democratic Party and the new, aggressive, liberal wing. While the two senators vote together about nine times out of 10, according to ProPublica, Feinstein's approach to some controversial issues differs from Harris. "A lot of the positions that Biden's taken that he's getting flak for, Feinstein's taken the same positions along the way," John Thomas, a Republican strategist in California, told the Washington Examiner. There may been some history here as well.

When Harris was San Francisco district attorney, her handling of a 2004 killing of a police officer by a gang member prompted sharp criticism from Feinstein. Harris said that she would not seek the death penalty for the killer, and in response, Feinstein said that if she had known that Harris was against the death penalty, she probably wouldn’t have endorsed her for district attorney.

Feinstein also disagreed with comments Harris made about "Medicare for all," which would eliminate private health insurance, at a CNN town hall in January. “Who of us has not had that situation, where you’ve got to wait for approval and the doctor says well, ‘I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this.’ Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on,” Harris said at the town hall. In response, Feinstein said she was "not there” on eliminating private health insurance. "Feinstein respects seniority," Thomas said, noting that she is also very relationship-oriented and is more familiar with Biden. "Almost stroking her own ego, she needs to go with someone who has a comparable level of seniority." Harris on Tuesday ignored questions from the Washington Examiner in the halls of the Capitol, and her campaign and Senate office did not return requests for comment.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/feinstein-breaks-home-state-endorsement-rule-to-spurn-kamala-harris-and-back-biden-i-feel-very-loyal-to-him

>>6443735

Indeed, Hillary 2016 all over again.

Neal plans next steps on obtaining Trump's tax returns by end of week

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal said Tuesday that the committee will weigh its options regarding its demand to review President Trump’s tax returns, hinting it could soon take the administration to court to force the release of the documents. “There does not have to be an intermediary step,” Neal said. Regarding the status of the tax returns investigation, the Massachusetts Democrat said that he would be consulting with lawyers for the committee and for the House Thursday, and that “I’ll have an answer for you by the end of the week."

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin denied Neal's request for Trump's tax returns on Monday, saying that there wasn't a legitimate purpose for the demand, setting up the possibility of a court battle. Neal downplayed the possibility of issuing a subpoena, noting that other committees have not been successful in obtaining information from the administration that way. And he all but ruled out a motion to hold Mnuchin in contempt of Congress, telling reporters the committee is not currently considering that. “We’re going to talk on Thursday, but that’s not a point of conversation at the moment,” Neal said. Citing advice from the House’s legal counsel not to comment on the ongoing investigation into Trump’s taxes, Neal declined to comment on a New York Times report Tuesday that Trump did not pay taxes in eight of the years 1985 through 1994 due to business losses, which totaled approximately $1.2 billion.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/neal-plans-next-steps-on-obtaining-trumps-tax-returns-by-end-of-week

Meanwhile: House Ways And Means Chair Refused To Release His Own Tax Returns

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/04/house-ways-and-means-chair-refused-to-release-tax-returns/

>>6443748

She can try all she wants..it won't help her escape prosecution.

>>6443807

Speaks volumes doesn't it, they never learn.

Schneiderman Accuser Says The Abuse Got Worse After Trump Won The Election

One of the women who accused former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of physical and verbal abuse said it got worse after President Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Because of what his quick rise as a prominent anti-Trumper did to his ego, Tanya Selvaratnam said Trump’s win exacerbated Schneiderman’s abusive tendencies. The Washington Post included her remarks in a report on her life since coming forward with the accusations last year. She accused Schneiderman of verbally demeaning her and physically abusing her during sex. Selvaratnam told The Washington Post she was disillusioned by the disconnect she saw between Schneiderman’s public image as a #MeToo champion — “People would literally be coming up to him and saying: Save us” — and his treatment of her in private. And that compounded the “trauma of the Trump era” for her.

From The Washington Post: “The abuse seemed to worsen after Donald Trump was elected, she says, as Schneiderman began burnishing his reputation as one of the president-elect’s primary antagonists. ‘I was seeing behind the scenes that it was kind of smoke and mirrors, his ability to actually take down the president,’ she recalls. ‘I was disillusioned on many levels — with him as a person and as a politician.’ The trauma of the Trump era felt both personal and political. ‘People would literally be coming up to him and saying: Save us,‘ she says. ‘I witnessed this time and time again. In the back of my mind, I’d think, Do they have any idea what he does to me at home?’ A few weeks later, she went with a friend to his apartment to pick up her things. Selvaratnam still thought she was alone in having suffered from his abuse, and that the pressures of the Trump win had been, in part, to blame. But the friend who escorted her, Jennifer Gonnerman, a staff writer at the New Yorker, said she bet there were other women with similar experiences.”

Selvaratnam said she doesn’t regret coming forward, and is working on a book to help other victims of abuse. Schneiderman resigned in May 2018, just hours after she and three other women detailed the allegations of abuse in a report by The New Yorker. He initially denied the allegations, but later apologized after prosecutors decided not to press charges.

https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/05/07/schneiderman-abuse-victim-trump-election/

Lawsuits: Amazon Fired Women After They Got Pregnant

Amazon has been hit with at least seven wrongful termination lawsuits, as seven female warehouse employees claim that the company fired them after they had gotten pregnant. Seven women are suing Amazon for wrongful termination, alleging that the company fired them from its warehouse after they got pregnant, according to a report by CNET, adding that the firings had occurred within the time-span of the past four years.

One of the women suing Amazon, Beverly Rosales, told CNET that Amazon claims it fired her for taking too much time off of work, but Rosales says that her termination stemmed from her need to visit the restroom more often, which her manager counted as “time off task,” meaning the time taken off outside of the allotted breaks employees have throughout the workday. Rosales says that her manager told her it would be “against the rules” to use the restroom more often, suggesting that extra restroom visits would accumulate and count toward time off task. “When I had to go to the restroom, she literally stayed in that spot and waited for me to come back so she could talk to me about it,” said Rosales to CNET, '“After that, I would just hold it towards the end of the day because I didn’t want to get fired.”'

An Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement to CNET that the former employee’s claims are “absolutely not true.” “It is absolutely not true that Amazon would fire any employee for being pregnant,” said the Amazon spokeswoman, “we are an equal opportunity employer — we work with our employees to accommodate their medical needs including pregnancy-related needs. We also support new parents by offering various maternity and parental leave benefits.” Questionable practices involving restroom visits appear to be a frequent issue at Amazon. Last year, an undercover journalist and whistleblower reported that Amazon employees working in a warehouse in Staffordshire, United Kingdom were using what he referred to as a “toilet bottle” system, in which employees secretly urinated in a bottle rather than take trips to the restrooms.

The Amazon employees considered the locations of the restrooms to be too sporadically placed, making it difficult for them to get to a restroom and then back to work quickly enough, which they believed put them at risk of getting fired, according to Business Insider, which added that drivers of Amazon-affiliated courier companies also said they found bottles of urine left by other drivers. In February, AJC reported that a former Amazon employee in Kentucky sued the company, alleging that he had been fired after Amazon discriminated against him for having Crohn’s disease, a digestive disorder that caused him to take frequent trips to the restroom. Another Amazon employee contracted the flu while pregnant in 2017, according to CNET, adding that the employee was advised to take three days off of work to rest, because the doctor said that there were difficulties detecting her baby’s heartbeat. The lawsuit alleges that an Amazon human resources manager said that the company “does not accept doctor’s notes,” and that the pregnant employee was fired four days later. The federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not allow for companies to discriminate against pregnant women.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/07/lawsuits-amazon-fired-women-after-they-got-pregnant/

Hackers steal $41 million worth of bitcoin from Binance cryptocurrency exchange

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hackers stole bitcoin worth $41 million from Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, the company said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges around the world.

The 7,000 bitcoin were withdrawn by hackers using a variety of techniques, “including phishing, viruses and other attacks”, according to a post on Binance’s website by chief executive officer Zhao Changpeng. The post said user funds would not be affected because the company would use its secure asset fund for users to cover the loss. Bitcoin’s price dropped by as much as 4.2 percent in early Asian trading as news of the hack broke, although it later recovered some of its losses. Zhao said on Twitter other crypto exchanges, including Coinbase, had blocked deposits from addresses linked to the hack.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currency-cyber-binance/hackers-steal-41-million-worth-of-bitcoin-from-binance-cryptocurrency-exchange-idUSKCN1SE0FK

Facebook executive meets with U.S. lawmakers to discuss privacy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With a multibillion-dollar settlement looming for Facebook over user privacy violations, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg met with U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss legislation to protect users of the social network, officials said. The meetings had been long planned and were not to discuss reports that Facebook will soon settle a probe by the Federal Trade Commission into privacy lapses, according to a Facebook spokeswoman.

Sandberg met with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, a Republican, and Democratic Senator Mark Warner and was expected to meet with Republican Senator Jerry Moran later on Tuesday, representatives for the senators confirmed. Moran and Wicker are among the six senators on a working group to draft a bill aimed at setting standards for online privacy for consumers. Sandberg met Monday with Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, according to a staffer in the senator’s office.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating allegations that Facebook failed to live up to a 2011 consent decree to protect users’ privacy. The world’s largest social media network is accused of inappropriately sharing information belonging to 87 million users with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Facebook said last month the settlement could cost between $3 billion and $5 billion. Several published reports say a settlement would require the company to create an independent privacy oversight committee and take other steps to safeguard users. The steps would include appointing a federally approved privacy official at the highest level of Facebook and creating a privacy oversight committee that may include Facebook board members. FTC Chairman Joe Simons declined comment on the agency’s probe after a hearing on Tuesday before a Senate appropriations subcommittee.

In the hearing, two lawmakers urged Simons to be tougher, with some of the concern focusing on the big social media platforms. Senator John Kennedy, a Republican, pressed Simons on when the FTC’s newly formed high-tech task force would bring significant new cases. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat, made a similar point, saying to Simons: “I’m concerned you could be doing much more.”

The potential settlement has found few defenders on Capitol Hill. In a letter to the FTC, Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Josh Hawley, a Republican, told the agency that even a $5 billion civil penalty was a “bargain for Facebook” and urged the agency to hold top officials, potentially including founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, personally responsible.

Wyden argued on Tuesday that the social media giant appeared to be getting off easy. “First, Mark Zuckerberg has shown clear disregard for his customers’ privacy. He already has immense personal control over Facebook. I don’t see how making him a compliance officer solves Facebook’s problems,” Wyden said in an email comment. “Second, a $5 billion fine is simply not enough to be a deterrent to a company like Facebook.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-ftc-congress/facebook-executive-meets-with-u-s-lawmakers-to-discuss-privacy-idUSKCN1SD2BQ

Trump Supporters Arrive Early for Wednesday’s Panama City Beach, FL Rally

Supporters of President Donald Trump arrived early on Tuesday for the President’s reelection rally being held in Panama City Beach, Florida, Wednesday evening. The rally is being held at the Aaron Bessant Amphitheater, a beautiful open-air venue with a mix of seating and standing room with a varying reported capacity of 7,500 to 10,000 people. In the parking lot next to the venue, supporters parked early with some displaying their love of President Trump. Early arrivals came from Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Michigan and from all over Florida. As the evening went on dozens of Trump supporters were hanging out with more driving through asking when would be a good time to come on Wednesday for the rally. Answer: EARLY!!!

Across from the venue, an RV driven by Women 4 Trump Sarasota-Manatee was draped with a large Trump 2020 banner. Next to it was a truck driven by a man from Alabama who had pro-Trump (and Mark Levin) signs with large lettering on the sides and back of the truck.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/05/trump-supporters-arrive-early-for-wednesdays-panama-city-beach-fl-rally/