WASHINGTON: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi openly questioned President Donald Trump’s fitness to remain in office Thursday, suggesting a family or staff “intervention” for the good of the nation after his dramatic blow-up at a White House meeting with Democrats.
No, said Trump’s spokeswoman, it’s the Democrats who are “insane” if they think he should work on legislation with them when they accuse him of engaging in a cover-up in the Trump-Russia election investigation.
Both the Republican president and Democratic leaders dug in a day after Trump stalked out of the Cabinet Room demanding an end to all congressional probes before he would work with Congress on crumbling US infrastructure and other matters. By Thursday as Congress prepared to recess for the Memorial Day break, both sides were questioning each other’s stability, with the president insisting on Twitter that he was calm when he left the White House meeting that was to focus on infrastructure spending after just three minutes.
Pelosi said Trump has established a pattern of unpredictability, and at one point she even joked about the 25th Amendment, the Constitution’s provision laying out the procedure for replacing a president.
“I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference, adding that she prays for him and the nation.
“Maybe he wants to take a leave of absence,” she said. Asked whether she’s concerned about Trump’s well-being, she replied, “I am.”
Pelosi also said the White House is “crying out” for the Democrats to launch impeachment hearings — the idea being that such a move would help him politically. White House aides believe that if Democrats move to impeach — and even if they win approval of articles of impeachment in the House — Trump would be acquitted in the GOP-controlled Senate, supporting his assertion that he’s a victim of Democratic harassment and helping him toward re-election.
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said the comment by Pelosi was “irresponsible.”
However genuine, accusations of infirmity dominated the exchanges on Thursday and raised questions about whether Pelosi and Trump could work together on must-do tasks this year, such as raising the debt limit and funding the government. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said staff-level work on critical policy and spending continues.
Yet Sanders also said on CNN that it was “lunacy” and “insane” for Democrats to think everyone could just proceed after Pelosi accused Trump of a “cover-up” just before the meeting Wednesday.
“It’s very hard to have a meeting where you accuse the president of the United States of a crime and an hour later show up and act as if nothing has happened,” Sanders told reporters outside the White House.
Hanging over the increasingly personal exchanges is a drumbeat among about two dozen Democrats and one Republican to launch impeachment hearings against Trump based on details in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that Trump repeatedly tried to block the investigation . Pelosi has resisted, preferring a methodical process by which Congress investigates and lays out the facts on the question of obstruction of justice. But she’s been clear this week that any such finding could be worthy of a formal indictment by the House — that is, impeachment.
Pelosi also is balancing the calls for impeachment with the concerns of members from divided districts who helped flip the House to Democratic control and now face tough re-elections 2020.
Pelosi, the second in line to the presidency, said she thinks Trump’s actions Wednesday were part of his skill at distraction. But she also suggested that he’s unpredictable.
“Sometimes when we’re talking to him he agrees,” she said, only to change his mind. “He says he’s in charge and he may be.”
During questions, Pelosi also joked with a reporter about the 25th Amendment. “That’s a good idea. I am going to take it up with my caucus. Not that they haven’t been thinking about it.”
She has been insulting Trump since the meeting on Wednesday.
“For some reason, maybe it was lack of confidence on his part ... he took a pass, and it just makes me wonder why he did that,” she told reporters back on Capitol Hill. “In any event I pray for the president of the United States.”
“Nancy, thank you so much for your prayers, I know you truly mean it!” Trump tweeted from the White House.
Yet the White House is returning the Democrats’ insults.
Repeatedly pressed on why the president seemed unwilling to multitask and work on legislation as other presidents under investigation have, Sanders maintained, “I think the Democrats have shown that they’re not capable of doing anything else.”
In fact, the Democratic-controlled House has passed several bills on issues including firearms background checks, prescription drugs and campaign finance reforms — though they were dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Sanders insisted that Trump’s walk-out Wednesday wasn’t planned before Pelosi’s comments and that the White House placard that appeared on Trump’s lectern as he denounced Democrats moments later had been printed “weeks ago.” Asked why Trump couldn’t work with Democrats after Pelosi’s comments because he felt insulted, Sanders said, “The president’s feelings weren’t hurt. She accused him of a crime. Let that sink in.”
Pelosi questions Trump’s fitness. Time for ‘intervention’?
Pelosi questions Trump’s fitness. Time for ‘intervention’?
Trump vows to pursue executions after Biden commutes most of federal death row
- Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions.
Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”
He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden.
Is it a plan in motion or more rhetoric?
On the campaign trail, Trump often called for expanding the federal death penalty — including for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill US citizens.
“Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.”
Berman said Trump’s statement at this point seems to be just a response to Biden’s commutation.
“I’m inclined to think it’s still in sort of more the rhetoric phase. Just, ‘don’t worry. The new sheriff is coming. I like the death penalty,’” he said.
Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007.
Death row inmates are mostly sentenced by states
Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates compared with more than 2,000 who have been sentenced to death by states.
“The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said.
A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty.
Could rape now be punishable by death?
Berman said Trump’s statement, along with some recent actions by states, may present an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that considers the death penalty disproportionate punishment for rape.
“That would literally take decades to unfold. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight,” Berman said.
Before one of Trump’s rallies on Aug. 20, his prepared remarks released to the media said he would announce he would ask for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never delivered the line.
What were the cases highlighted by Trump?
One of the men Trump highlighted on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was sentenced to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old girl in a suburban Chicago park several years before.
The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and slaying of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, days after shooting the girl’s mother in a wildlife park in Arizona. Court records show he admitted to both killings.
Some families of victims expressed anger with Biden’s decision, but the president had faced pressure from advocacy groups urging him to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The ACLU and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops were some of the groups that applauded the decision.
Biden left three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in UShistory.
Airstrikes target suspected Pakistani Taliban hideouts in Afghanistan
- The strikes were carried out in a mountainous area in Paktika province bordering Pakistan, said the officials
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistan in rare airstrikes targeted multiple suspected hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban inside neighboring Afghanistan on Tuesday, dismantling a training facility and killing some insurgents, four security officials said.
The strikes were carried out in a mountainous area in Paktika province bordering Pakistan, said the officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record. It was unclear whether the jets went deep inside Afghanistan, and how the strikes were launched.
No spokesman for Pakistan’s military was immediately available to share further details. But it was the second such attack on alleged hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban since March, when Pakistan said intelligence-based strikes took place in the border regions inside Afghanistan.
In Kabul, the Afghan Defense Ministry condemned the airstrikes by Pakistan, saying the bombing targeted civilians, including women and children.
It said that most of the victims were refugees from the Waziristan region.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considers this a brutal act against all international principles and blatant aggression and strongly condemns it,” the ministry said.
Local residents said at least eight people, including women and children, were killed in the airstrikes by Pakistan. They said the death toll from the strikes may rise.
In a post on the X platform, the Afghan defense ministry said the Pakistani side should know that such unilateral measures are not a solution to any problem.
“The Islamic Emirate will not leave this cowardly act unanswered but rather considers the defense of its territory and territory to be its inalienable right.”
The strikes came hours after Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, traveled to Kabul to discuss a range of issues, including how to enhance bilateral trade, and improve ties.
Sadiq during the visit met with Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghanistan’s acting interior minister, to offer his condolences over the Dec. 11 killing of his uncle Khalil Haqqani. He was the minister for refugees and repatriation who died in a suicide bombing that was claimed by a regional affiliate of the Daesh group.
Sadiq in a post on X said he also met with Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and he “held wide ranging discussions. Agreed to work together to further strengthen bilateral cooperation as well as for peace and progress in the region.”
A delegation of the pro-Taliban Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam also visited Kabul on Tuesday to convey condolences over the killing of Haqqani’s uncle.
Islamabad often claims that the Pakistani Taliban use Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan, a charge Kabul has denied.
Syed Muhammad Ali, an Islamabad-based security expert, said Tuesday’s airstrike “represents a clear and blunt warning to Pakistani Taliban that Pakistan will use all the available means against the terrorist outfit both inside and outside its borders.” However, it is not an indiscriminate use of force and due care was taken by Pakistan in ensuring that only the terrorist bases were hit and no civilian loss of life and property took place, he said.
The Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, whose leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan.
The TTP has stepped up attacks on Pakistani soldiers and police since November 2022, when it unilaterally ended a ceasefire with the government after the failure of months of talks hosted by Afghanistan’s government in Kabul. The TTP in recent months has killed and wounded dozens of soldiers in attacks inside the country.
On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis launches holy Jubilee year
- Pope had drawn an angry response from Israel at the weekend for condemning the “cruelty” of Israel’s strikes in Gaza that killed children
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis opened the “Holy Door” of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve on Tuesday, launching the Jubilee year of Catholic celebrations set to draw more than 30 million pilgrims to Rome.
The 88-year-old pontiff, who has recently been suffering from a cold, was pushed in a wheelchair up to the huge, ornate bronze door and knocked on it, before the doors opened.
In a ceremony watched on screens by thousands of faithful outside in St. Peter’s Square, the Argentine pontiff went through the door followed by a procession, as the bells of the Vatican basilica rang out.
Over the next 12 months, Catholic pilgrims will pass through the door — which is normally bricked up — by tradition benefiting from a “plenary indulgence,” a type of forgiveness for their sins.
Pope Francis then presided over the Christmas Eve mass in St. Peter’s, where he turned once again to the victims of war.
“We think of wars, of machine-gunned children, of bombs on schools and hospitals,” he said in his homily.
The pope had drawn an angry response from Israel at the weekend for condemning the “cruelty” of Israel’s strikes in Gaza that killed children.
He was due to deliver his traditional Christmas Day blessing, Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world), at midday on Wednesday.
Some 700 security officers are being deployed around the Vatican and Rome for the Jubilee celebrations, with measures further tightened following Friday’s car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Germany.
Much of Rome has also been given a facelift in preparation, with monuments such as the Trevi Fountain and the Ponte Sant’Angelo cleaned up and roads redesigned to improve the flow of traffic.
Many residents have questioned how the Eternal City — where key sites are already overcrowded and public transport is unreliable — will cope with millions more visitors next year.
Key Jubilee projects were only finished in the last few days after months of work that turned much of the city into a building site.
Inaugurating a new road tunnel at Piazza Pia next to the Vatican on Monday, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said it had taken a “little civil miracle” to get the project finished in time.
Over the course of the next few days, Holy Doors will be opened in Rome’s three major basilicas and in Catholic churches around the world.
On Thursday, Pope Francis will open a Holy Door at Rebibbia prison in Rome and preside over a mass in a show of support for the inmates.
Organized by the Church every 25 years, the Jubilee is intended as a period of reflection and penance, and is marked by a long list of cultural and religious events, from masses to exhibitions, conferences and concerts.
“It’s my first time in Rome and for me, to be here at the Vatican, I feel already blessed,” said Lisbeth Dembele, a 52-year-old French tourist visiting St. Peter’s Square earlier.
The Jubilee, whose motto this year is “Pilgrims of Hope,” is primarily aimed at the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics, but also aims to also reach a wider audience.
Traditions have evolved since the first such event back in 1300, launched by Pope Boniface VIII.
This year, the Vatican has provided pilgrims with online registration and multilingual phone apps to navigate events.
Snowstorm cuts power to tens of thousands in Bosnia
- At the same time, in the western part of Bosnia, a state of emergency was declared after severe weather blocked all entry and exit points to the municipality of Drvar, cutting off its 17,000 residents
SARAJEVO: Parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina were cut off and more than 170,000 people were left without electricity on Tuesday due to a snowstorm gripping the region.
“Despite efforts and continuous work to repair the faults, the electricity supply situation worsened. Currently, 127,000 metering points are without power,” distributor Elektroprivreda BiH said.
Elektrokrajina, which covers the municipalities of the Serb entity in Bosnia, Republika Srpska, also announced that around 50,000 of its users are without power.
“All available field teams have been deployed and have been working since the early morning hours to repair the faults,” the company stated.
At the same time, in the western part of Bosnia, a state of emergency was declared after severe weather blocked all entry and exit points to the municipality of Drvar, cutting off its 17,000 residents.
“The situation is extremely difficult. The snow keeps falling. People are stranded in the snow,” Jasna Pecanac, the president of the Drvar Municipal Council, told local media.
Snowdrifts in some villages around Drvar are up to two meters high, and the heavy blizzard is making clearing efforts even more difficult.
“We are requesting assistance for snow clearing. All available machinery is already in the field,” said Pecanac.
The snow is heaviest in the western parts of the country, where a red weather alert is in effect.
In the hilly and mountainous areas of this region, the severe snowstorm has caused numerous faults in the electricity distribution network.
The Serbian official Hydrometeorological Institute has issued a warning that heavy snowfall will continue.
1 dead after Russian missile hits Ukrainian apartment block
- Gov. Serhii Lysak said at least 11 other people were injured and more people could be trapped beneath the rubble of the four-story apartment block
KYIV: A Russian ballistic missile struck a residential building Tuesday in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih and at least one person was killed, local authorities said.
Gov. Serhii Lysak said at least 11 other people were injured and more people could be trapped beneath the rubble of the four-story apartment block.
Social media footage showed one side of the building had almost completely collapsed.
“Unfortunately, we are preparing for difficult news,” Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul wrote on his Telegram channel.
Minutes before his post, Ukraine’s air force alerted a “ballistic missile strike threat” for southern and central regions of Ukraine, later signaling a “high-speed” target flying in the direction of Kryvyi Rih.
The strike came as Ukraine prepared to officially celebrate Christmas for the second time on Dec. 25. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed legislation in July 2023 to bring Ukraine’s public Christmas holiday in line with the majority of other European countries, rather than the later date followed in Russia.
The shift sought to assert Ukraine’s national identity amid Russia’s full-scale invasion.
“While the rest of the world celebrates Christmas, Ukrainians continue to suffer from endless Russian attacks,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, wrote on social media.
