DELEITURAS

• The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction forbidding Texas from stripping Planned Parenthood of Medicaid Funds.
• The decision is also significant for its harsh criticism of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. 
• The case will now return to a federal trial court, where Planned Parenthood will have another chance to secure an injunction against Texas. 

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction forbidding Texas from stripping Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funds Thursday, while stridently criticizing the abortion-provider for its rhetoric and medical practices.

“Planned Parenthood’s reprehensible conduct, captured in undercover videos, proves that it is not a ‘qualified’ provider under the Medicaid Act, so we are confident we will ultimately prevail,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement after Thursday’s ruling.

The case arose after a pro-life group called the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood violating medical and ethical standards codified in federal law and state regulations. Texas terminated its Medicaid provider agreement with Planned Parenthood shortly thereafter, citing infractions documented in the videos.

In turn, Planned Parenthood asked a federal court to restore its Medicaid funding. Thursday’s ruling — which related to a jurisdictional issue in that case — is especially striking for its numerous rebukes of Planned Parenthood. Judge Edith Jones, a Ronald Reagan appointee, delivered the opinion.

Perhaps the most noteworthy of the decision’s reprimands is a graphic depiction of post-abortion fetal remains taken from a CMP video on the fourth page of the opinion. A small arm is visible in the picture. Texas cited the manner in which Planned Parenthood disposes of fetal remains as one reason for terminating their Medicaid eligibility.

In another instance, the decision all but accuses Planned Parenthood of breaking federal law banning partial birth abortions. The ruling highlights a CMP video in which an administrator called Dr. Tram Nguyen said doctors at one facility could evacuate an intact fetus — thereby breaking federal law — provided they sign a form that they did not “intend” to do so. Such procedures allow researchers to recover organs like the thymus or the liver.

Later in the opinion, the panel chides Planned Parenthood for failing to engage with Nguyen’s comments in court filings.

“The plaintiffs’ briefing with regard to the substance of the discussions contained in the videos is curiously silent,” the decision reads.

Planned Parenthood has denied that they intentionally alter abortion procedures for such purposes.

The panel also dismissed Planned Parenthood’s claim that the CMP videos were “deceptively edited,” a soundbite that redounded across the press after the tapes first appeared.

“The record reflects that [the Texas Office of Inspector General] had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited,” a footnote in the decision reads. “And [Planned Parenthood] did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage.”

Finally the panel accused the judiciary of politicking on abortion cases. Ordinarily, providers like Planned Parenthood must challenge Medicaid termination decisions in an administrative forum and state court before seeking a federal court’s intervention. By allowing Planned Parenthood to skip directly to federal court — as the trial court did here — the 5th Circuit said that judges are engaging in ideological favoritism.

“Had [Texas] terminated the Medicaid provider agreements of any other type of health care provider, the incongruity of allowing that provider to use patient litigation proxies to avoid administrative review and [reach] federal court would be obvious and unacceptable,” the ruling reads.

The decision comes as pro-life activists gather in Washington in advance of Friday’s March for Life.

The question before the 5th Circuit did not relate to abortion directly: after Texas disqualified Planned Parenthood from Medicaid eligibility, the abortion-provider sued, claiming the federal Medicaid statute allowed them to do so. A federal district judge agreed, allowed the lawsuit to proceed. The 5th Circuit had to decide whether that decision was correct.

The federal appeals courts are divided over the answer to that question. Though the Supreme Court generally intervenes when the circuits disagree over the same question of law, the justices denied review in a related controversy from Kansas in December 2018, drawing a vigorous dissent from Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch which accused the Court of playing politics.

In that instance, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the Court’s liberal bloc, effectively preserving a pro-Planned Parenthood decision in the lower court.

The 5th Circuit’s Thursday decision concluded that they are bound by precedent to find that Planned Parenthood can proceed with its lawsuit in federal court under the Medicaid statute, though Jones wrote a concurrence to her own majority opinion urging the full 5th Circuit to revisit that question.

However, the 5th Circuit gave Texas a partial victory, finding that the trial court assessed Planned Parenthood’s request for an injunction under the wrong standard. The panel lifted the injunction, and ordered the lower court judge to reconsider Planned Parenthood’s request under a different standard which is more accommodating of Texas.

As such, the state has a much better chance of prevailing when the matter returns to the trial court for further proceedings.

Texas awards approximately $3.4 million to Planned Parenthood affiliates through Medicaid annually. The decision notes this is a “smidgen” of the revenue Planned Parenthood’s Texas affiliates generate each year, which runs over $57 million.

A Republican National Committee (RNC) committeeman sent an email out to fellow members asking for an amendment to existing rules which would guarantee President Donald Trump become the presumptive GOP nominee in 2020 Wednesday.

RNC National Committeeman for the Virgin Islands, Jevon O.A. Williams, sent the email to RNC members, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation, just hours after The Washington Post published an op-ed by Utah Republican Senator-elect Mitt Romney, which bashed Trump and his presidency. Williams said in order to close “loopholes in the re-nomination campaign” the RNC should change the rules at their winter meeting in January, making Trump the Republican nominee, so that no one in the party could run against him in the 2020 presidential campaign.

“Imagine my surprise when I read the junior senator-elect from Utah’s unprecedented rebuke of President Donald J. Trump in an op-ed on the pages of The Washington Post that ran before he was even sworn into office. I couldn’t believe this was coming from our party’s 2012 nominee, who, despite differences in politics, still professes to be a Republican. With Republicans like him who needs Democrats,” Williams said in the email to RNC members.

Williams said the rules in place do not take into account an incumbent president running for re-election, saying the proposed resolution would “declare” him the 2020 Republican presidential nominee.

“I am asking for your support to take the unprecedented step of amending the rules to close loopholes in the re-nomination campaign, including Rule 40. These rules, as I read them and has been reported in the press, didn’t take into account an incumbent president running for re-election,” Williams continued.

“Beyond a rules amendment, I also ask for your support of a resolution declaring the RNC’s unanimous and unequivocal endorsement of President Trump for re-nomination. This resolution would also declare him the presumptive nominee in 2020. I intend for both of these items to be acted upon at the winter meeting later this month, including, if necessary, by suspending the rules to take up this business,” he concluded.

Hours later, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Romney’s niece, responded to his op-ed which criticized Trump, saying his “attack” in the op-ed is “disappointing and unproductive.”

Trump responded to the op-ed early Wednesday morning, saying he hope Romney won’t be a “Flake” in the Senate, also saying “I won big, and he didn’t. He should be happy for all Republicans. Be a TEAM player & WIN!”

Romney will be sworn in as the next senator from Utah Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the U.S. Senate will take up a criminal justice reform bill backed by President Donald Trump, on the House floor Tuesday morning.

McConnell said in his speech it is likely the Senate will work between Christmas and New Year’s, “if necessary,” in order to pass criminal justice reform legislation before 2019. The Senate will now take on the bipartisan bill called the “First Step Act,” after pressure from the White House and other members of the Senate who have been pushing for the legislation to be passed.

“At the request of the president and following improvements to the legislation that has been secured by several members, the Senate will take up the recently revised criminal justice bill this month. I intend to turn to the new text as early as the end of this week. So as a result of this additional legislative business, members should now be prepared to work between Christmas and New Year’s, if necessary, in order to complete our work,” McConnell said in his floor speech Tuesday.

“Let me say that again. Unless we approach all this work in a highly collaborative, productive way and take real advantage of unanimous consent to expedite proceedings, it is virtually certain that the Senate will need to be in session between Christmas and New Year’s in order to complete this work,” McConnell continued.

Trump has endorsed the bill, which includes both prison and sentencing reforms, and wants to pass the legislation before Democrats take control of the House on Jan. 3.

Funding for the government was set to expire on Dec. 7. However, the House passed a two-week resolution to avoid a government shutdown by unanimous consent in a voice vote, meaning members did not have to be present for the vote. The bill was then approved by the Senate, which is in session, funding the government until Dec. 21.

• Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence that the Trump campaign or any Trump associates conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
• That finding deals a heavy blow to Democrats and some in the media who have pushed at least seven different theories of collusion over the past two-plus years.
• Many of those theories derived from the infamous Steele dossier.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller put a nail in the coffin for the numerous conspiracy theories that the Trump campaign worked with Russian operatives to influence the 2016 election.

Over the past two years, at least seven main theories of collusion have appeared in the press and through the infamous Steele dossier.

Former Trump associates Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone were all alleged at various points to have colluded with Russia. The infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was also alleged to be where collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia occurred.

And then there was the case of Peter Smith, the late GOP operative who allegedly worked with hackers to track down Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.

The theories percolated in the media, often stoked by Democrats like California Rep. Adam Schiff, who said he saw “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion.

But Mueller dispelled those theories in a report of his 22-month investigation.

“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Mueller wrote, according to Attorney General William Barr.

Mueller found no evidence that Trump, his associates, or other Americans worked with Russians to release emails through WikiLeaks. He also found no evidence that Trump associates helped the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company that planted disinformation on American social media networks.

Here are those seven conspiracy theories.

Carter Page

The Steele dossier alleges that Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, took part in a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and Russian leadership. According to former British spy Christopher Steele, Page was working under the direction of Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman, to carry out the conspiracy.

“The reason for using WikiLeaks was ‘plausible deniability’ and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team,” alleged Steele in a memo in late July 2016.

In exchange for the help, Trump’s team agreed to side with Russia on the Ukraine issue.

According to Steele’s Aug. 10, 2016 memo, Page had “conceived and promoted” the idea of releasing stolen DNC emails through WikiLeaks in order to swing Democrats away from Hillary Clinton and towards Bernie Sanders.

Steele also claimed that Page met in Moscow with two Kremlin insiders, Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin, in early July 2016. Diveykin is alleged in the dossier to have told Page about blackmail material on both Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Page has vehemently denied the allegations from the dossier, which the FBI used to obtain four surveillance warrants against the former Trump aide.

Page was not charged in the Mueller investigation.

George Papadopoulos

The FBI’s initial collusion theory involved Papadopoulos, a 32-year-old energy consultant.

On July 31, 2016, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Papadopoulos based on a tip the bureau had received from the Australian government.

Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the U.K., had claimed that during a May 10, 2016 meeting in London, Papadopoulos told him that Russia had information on Hillary Clinton that it planned to release later in the campaign.

Papadopoulos claims that two weeks before that meeting, he had breakfast in London with another diplomat, Joseph Mifsud, who told him that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands” of her emails.

Papadopoulos insists that he did not tell anyone on the campaign about Mifsud’s remarks and that he did not view, handle or disseminate Clinton emails.

He pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017 to lying to the FBI about the extent of his contacts with Mifsud, but he was never charged with a more serious crime.

He served a 14-day prison term and is releasing a book on Tuesday.

Michael Cohen

The former Trump lawyer is accused in the dossier of visiting Prague in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials for the purposes of paying off hackers.

“The agenda comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign,” reads Steele’s Dec. 13, 2016 memo.

The dossier’s allegations against Cohen were viewed as some of the strongest claims of collusion that have surfaced during Russia gate.

Cohen vehemently denied the claims ever since BuzzFeed published the dossier. On Feb. 27, after he had been sentenced in the special counsel’s probe to three years in prison, Cohen testified that he has never been to Prague.

The testimony was seen as a knockout blow for the dossier’s credibility. Mueller’s findings seemingly ended all debate on the matter.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on Dec. 12 on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud, illegal campaign contributions and making false statements to Congress.

Paul Manafort

In addition to being linked in the dossier to Carter Page, the former Trump campaign chairman was found to have sent cryptic emails during the campaign referencing Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who was locked in a business dispute with Manafort.

The special counsel also focused Manafort’s role in sending polling data during the campaign to two Russian oligarchs.

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in an email to an associate on July 7, 2016, The Washington Post has reported.

In April 2016, shortly after he joined the Trump team, Manafort asked the same associate in an email how he could use his new position to “get whole.”

The email has widely been interpreted as Manafort suggesting that he would use his job on the Trump campaign to settle his debts with Deripaska.

But little came of Manafort’s links to Deripaska. Manafort was convicted in federal court in Virginia on Aug. 21, 2018 on charges related to his Ukraine consulting work. He cooperated with the special counsel after pleading guilty on Sept. 14, 2018 to working as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine.

The special counsel’s office hinted at times that prosecutors had evidence that dealt with the core issues of the investigation, but they never presented the evidence during court hearings.

Manafort was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison on March 13.

Trump Tower

Democrats have seized on a June 9, 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians as the strongest verifiable evidence of collusion to emerge during the Russia saga.

Trump Jr. accepted the meeting after receiving an email on June 3, 2016 from Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who worked for Russian pop star Emin Agalarov.

In the email, Goldstone said that Agalarov’s billionaire father had met with Russia’s “Crown prosecutor” and wanted to offer the Trump campaign “with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very helpful to your father.”

Trump Jr. enthusiastically accepted, writing: “If it is what you say I love it.”

Goldstone responded to say that a “Russian government attorney” would fly to the U.S. for the meeting.

Trump Jr. attended the meeting with Manafort and Jared Kushner. Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya attended along with Goldstone and several other Russians.

All attendees have claimed that the meeting was a waste of time and that no information regarding the campaign was exchanged.

Veselnitskaya provided the campaign with a short memo containing research compiled by Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that, ironically, commissioned the Steele dossier. Veselnitskaya was working at the time with Fusion GPS on an investigation of Bill Browder, a London-based financier who spearheaded the Magnitsky Act, a sanctions law opposed by the Kremlin.

Mueller investigated the Trump Tower meeting. Goldstone and other attendees appeared before Mueller’s grand jury.

Goldstone responded to Mueller’s finding of no collusion in a message to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“After 2 years, Robert Mueller has delivered his report, stating there was no collusion in the 2016 Presidential election,” Goldstone said.

“That includes my email to Donald Trump Jr. and the subsequent Trump Tower meeting…which as I have stated from the beginning, had nothing to do with collusion.”

Veselnitskaya was indicted by prosecutors in Manhattan related to her work against Bill Browder. No other Trump Tower attendees other than Manafort were charged by the special counsel.

Roger Stone/Jerome Corsi

One theory of collusion that emerged over the past year was that Trump confidant Roger Stone and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi were somehow linked to WikiLeaks.

Prosecutors keyed in on Stone because of tweets he sent and remarks he made in August 2016 that suggested he had some inside knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release emails stolen from Democrats.

Stone said in interviews that he had communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. On Aug. 21, 2016 he tweeted that it would “soon [be] the Podesta’s time in the barrel.”

Stone has insisted that he had no direct contact with WikiLeaks or Assange. He also claims that he did not know that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails would be released by WikiLeaks in October 2016.

Instead, he’s maintained that he received tips about the timing and seriousness of the email releases from Randy Credico, a left-wing activist who is friends with a WikiLeaks attorney.

Stone released text messages that showed Credico providing information about the timing of the email releases.

Corsi was a focus because of emails he sent in August 2016 in which he suggested he had inside knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans.

“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps,” Corsi wrote in the Aug. 2, 2016, email to Stone, seemingly referring to Assange, who lives under asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

“One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.”

“Time to let more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC.”

Corsi was offered a plea deal by the special counsel but says he rejected it. Prosecutors wanted him to plead guilty to making false statements about exchanging WikiLeaks-related emails with Stone.

Corsi claims that he deduced on his own that WikiLeaks had Podesta’s emails and that he had no contact with anyone affiliated with the group.

Stone was indicted by the special counsel on Jan. 24, but not on charges related to conspiracy with Russia or WikiLeaks. He was instead charged with making false statements to the House Intelligence Committee regarding his discussions about WikiLeaks with associates and Trump campaign officials.

Peter Smith

One of the more bizarre collusion conspiracy theories involved Peter Smith, a GOP donor and political operative who lived in Chicago.

The Wall Street Journal first reported in June 2017 that Smith worked with numerous conservative operatives and hackers to obtain the 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her private server.

The conspiracy theory came to encompass close Trump associates, including Michael Flynn. Smith wrote in correspondence that he had been in contact with Flynn regarding the effort to hunt down Clinton’s emails.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Mueller was asking witnesses about the Smith operation. The story festered in the media, with follow-up reporting from BuzzFeed.

Smith died by suicide on May 14, 2017.

• A California state lawmaker introduced a bill to ban paper receipts starting in 2022.
• Environmentalists say the bill will also protect people from “toxins” in paper receipts, including BPA.
• However, experts and regulatory agencies say BPA is safe at current levels and not harmful.

A Democratic state lawmaker introduced legislation to get rid of paper receipts, but is using a bizarre justification for why paper receipts should be taken out of stores — they’re full of toxins.

Assemblyman Phil Ting, the bill’s sponsor, and his environmental allies say chemicals found on most receipts are coated with “toxins,” in particular, one called Bisphenol A (BPA).

“Almost all of these receipts have BPA,” Ting said during a press conference, adding BPA “is harmful to the environment, harmful to our health.”

“There’s a negative impact on the environment with these receipts, the inability to recycle them, as well as the contact with BPA.”

Ting’s bill would require all California businesses to offer digital receipts by January 2022, and only give paper ones to customers that specifically request them. Supporters say banning receipts would keep customers and workers from being exposed to “toxins” on receipts.

However, the politician’s depiction of BPA as a “toxin” differs from the opinions of experts and most international regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“Eliminating paper receipts is fine — nobody really wants them, anyway,” Alex Berezow, vice president of scientific affairs at the American Council on Science and Health, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“But we shouldn’t fabricate reasons to support this policy,” Berezow said. “The minuscule amounts of BPA in receipt paper aren’t even remotely harmful.”

BPA is an industrial chemical used to make hard, clear plastics. The chemical is found in water bottles and beverage containers people use every day. For years, environmentalists have argued it’s a dangerous “toxin” that needs to be taken out of circulation.

But the FDA says “BPA is safe at the current levels occurring in foods.” FDA based its opinion on reviews of hundreds of scientific studies. In February, the FDA released an extremely comprehensive study that looked at the effect of BPA in rats. Based on those results, the FDA said: “BPA is safe for the currently authorized uses in food containers and packaging.”

In 2012 and 2013, the FDA no longer allowed for BPA to be used in baby bottles or formula packaging. The FDA stressed, though, that amending its regulations for infant products “is not based on safety,” but because industry stopped using the chemical in those products.

Green America, the environmental group backing the bill, however, said people face serious health risks from toxins absorbed into people’s skin when they touch receipts. The group said BPA is linked to “serious health problems, including numerous types of cancer, diabetes, and reproductive issues.”

“Over time, this legislation would prevent millions of trees from being logged for paper receipts, which fewer and fewer consumers want, and which often go straight to landfills,” Green America’s climate and recycling director Beth Porter said in a statement.

Green America cited an Ecology Center paper that estimated 93 percent of paper receipts are coated with BPA and BPS. Sounds scary, but do receipts actually pose a threat to public health?

Ting’s proposal mirrors a statewide ban on plastic straws in California that went into effect at the beginning of 2019. The cities of San Francisco and Seattle also passed laws to ban plastic straws last year, and the U.K. became the first country to pass a nationwide ban on plastic straws.

Ting also said his bill would “free consumers” of the burden of having to decide what to do with their receipts, like finding a trash can or a drawer to stuff them in. Apparently, having your email inbox cluttered is much more convenient.

“My understanding is already most retailers, especially most large retailers, their software, their point-of-sale systems, already can do this, so we’re giving them enough time to be able to implement it,” Ting said.

The cost? “We don’t have a cost estimate right now,” Ting told reporters Tuesday.

Another Central American migrant caravan is reportedly forming, but its final destination is not the U.S.-Mexico border, according to immigration activists and Mexican media.

As many as 15,000 people could travel in the migrant caravan scheduled to leave Honduras Jan. 15, according to reports cited by The San Diego Union-Tribune.

“We assume that this caravan … will pick up more people in El Salvador and Guatemala. But their aim is to arrive in Chiapas and request work there,” Irma Garrido of migrant advocate group Reactiva Tijuana Foundation said according to a story by Mexico News Daily Monday.

President Donald Trump tweeted about the caravan Friday morning and discussed closing the U.S.-Mexico border and ending U.S. foreign aid to Central American countries.

“Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money. Word is that a new Caravan is forming in Honduras and they are doing nothing about it. We will be cutting off all aid to these 3 countries – taking advantage of U.S. for years!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

His tweet came just a few weeks after the U.S. promised $5.8 billion in aid and investment Dec. 18, reported The Associated Press.

But the migrants may not try to make it to the U.S. and instead are interested in working on railroad and reforestation projects announced by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, reported Mexico Daily News.

Many asylum seekers are still on the Mexico side of the border and have been for months because of the Trump administration’s new directive of requiring them to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed. The directive is likely to be challenged in court by immigration-rights groups who argue it violates international laws and the Constitution’s guarantee of due process.

Thousands of caravan members are temporarily staying in the Mexican city of Tijuana and costing the city roughly $28,000 a day, Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum revealed.

Several caravans of Central American migrants headed for the U.S. border have made their way north in 2018. One caravan was set to arrive around the time of the November midterm elections and ignited a firestorm of debate on both the left and the right.

News of the potential 2019 caravan comes as Congress is at a stalemate over a government shutdown triggered by Democrats’ refusal to support funding for Trump’s border wall.

French police arrested hundreds of protesters associated with the so-called Yellow Vest movement as France is now dealing with more fallout from a failed set of carbon taxes designed to tackle climate change.

Police arrested more than 700 people Saturday morning and searched protesters for items like the now-famed yellows vests they wear to signify allegiance to the country’s working class. Four people have died and scores more wounded during the weeks-long protests, which began in mid-November.

Protesters attempted to set a drugstore ablaze on the Champs-Élysées, placing burning Christmas trees against the building. A trove of riot police eventually dispersed the crowd and knocked down barricades the crowd placed in front of the buildings Officials hoped French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to nix an unpopular carbon tax might help defuse the situation.

WATCH:

Those hopes were dashed on Saturday. “We drove all night,” Julien Lezer, an electrician from a resort town in France, told The New York Times. “We don’t agree with the current system anymore; it doesn’t represent us. It’s not in the regions that things change; it’s in Paris. It’s when the people from the regions go to Paris that the politicians listen.”

Others shared similar concerns about the direction Macron is attempting to take France.

Axelle Cavalheiro, who traveled to Paris from a rural section of France known for its agriculture, told reporters. “We are overtaxed; there are taxes on everything, gas,” he said. “At the Élysée, they spend 300,000 euros on carpeting, 10,000 a month for the hairdresser,” Cavalheiro noted, referring to the presidential palace.

Another demonstrator named John Schiltz, a train-track worker, promised to keep protesting until Macron resigns. “He has to go,” he told reporters, referring to the former banker-turned French president. “He’s adding all these taxes without helping us at all, it’s just tax, tax, tax.”

The protesters are growing louder as Macron’s approval rating dwindles. Still, the number of protesters has fallen since the demonstrations began in November; nearly 300,000 people turned out Nov. 17, and less than half of that on Dec. 1, according to French authorities. Officials have relied on armored vehicles to patrol Paris, which hasn’t happened since WWII.

Some are worried that the Yellow Vest movement could spread elsewhere. Police used extraordinary means to put down copycat protests in Belgium, another country seeking to enact stiff taxes on carbon. About 100 people were arrested as the police used tear gas and water cannons against Belgium protesters.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that he will “absolutely” investigate allegations made in a controversial BuzzFeed article even though the report has been directly disputed by the special counsel’s office.

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Schiff told CBS’s “Face the Nation” when asked whether he would investigate allegations laid out in a BuzzFeed article published on Thursday.

“Congress has a fundamental interest in two things. First, getting to the bottom why this witness came before us and lied, and who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie,” the California Democrat added.

But in a rare move, the special counsel issued an on-the-record statement disputing the key allegations made in the BuzzFeed story.

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said in a statement on Friday night.

Schiff said that he assumed the Mueller statement was prompted by the reaction to the BuzzFeed story.

“Also it may have to do with the special council wanting to use Michael Cohen as a witness in further prosecutions and wanted to make sure that the public didn’t have the perception he was saying more than he was saying, at least to the special council,” Schiff said.

A recent profile piece has identified several progressive institutions that are funding the Sunrise Movement, a nascent environmentalist organization that is quickly wielding influence in Washington, D.C.

Founded in April 2017, the Sunrise Movement is a newcomer among the many green organizations that have already been established for generations. However, the youth-led climate group has quickly garnered national attention and high-dollar donations from across the country. Between its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities, the group was able to raise just shy of $1 million during 2018 — and members intend to raise $2.5 million in 2019.

Despite growing attention from the media, it’s been difficult to pinpoint exactly who is funding the Sunrise Movement. The group is not legally required to disclose their donors. However, a recent report from Inside Philanthropy, an outlet focused on philanthropic groups and their big donors, shed some light.

The Rockefeller Fund, the Wallace Global Fund and the Winslow Foundation are core funders of Sunrise Movement. The three groups have continued to finance a large portion of Sunrise’s operations, with institutional funders making up 55 percent of the group’s 2018 budget. Thirty-five percent of its budget came from individual donors, and the rest came from non-profit partners.

Sunrise’s core funders have a long history of bankrolling left-wing activities.

The Global Wallace Fund has given nearly $7 million to population control groups since the 1990s. The Rockefeller Family Fund has led a war against ExxonMobil, acknowledging that it has colluded with Democratic attorneys general and funded negative media coverage against the oil company.

“What’s been nice about [the past month] is that our impact is incredibly clear and everybody is seeing it, because of the way we’ve been able to put truly ambitious and truly equitable climate action on the map in a way that nobody expected,” William Lawrence, co-founder and development director for Sunrise, stated. “That’s opened some doors that might have been closed before, because people are seeing the value of movement building.”

Sunrise, which has been an ardent supporter of the Green New Deal, protested outside Nancy Pelosi’s office late last year, demanding the Speaker-in-waiting take more action on climate change. Their efforts received widespread attention when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — now a New York Democratic congresswoman — joined them in protest.

The group enjoyed a surge in donations after the protest.

At least some of the salaries for Sunrise Movement staffers, according to Inside Philanthropies, are not based on conventional compensation agreements, but on what members claim they need to support themselves.

Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the “National Popular Vote Act” into law Friday in an effort to elect the next U.S. president by popular vote.

This makes Colorado the 13th jurisdiction (12 states, plus the District of Columbia) enacting similar legislation to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).

The law, having made its way through both legislative chambers without one Republican vote, commits Colorado’s nine electoral votes to the presidential candidate who achieves the majority of votes of the aggregate states regardless of how Colorado actually votes.

The NPVIC is an agreement between states to pool their electoral votes and voting results together into one aggregate pot. The candidate with the majority receives all electoral votes, regardless of individual state results. States who have formally joined the compact represent 181 electoral votes. The compact becomes official when that number hits 270, or enough votes to elect the president.

Jurisdictions that have joined include (electoral votes in parens): California (55), New York (29), Illinois (20), New Jersey (14), Washington (12), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Hawaii (4), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and the District of Columbia (3). All of them carried former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The current Electoral College works like this: Colorado cast 2,780,247 votes in the 2016 presidential election. Of those, 1,338,370 were for Clinton, 1,202,484 were for Donald Trump and 238,893 were for other candidates. Consequently, Colorado awarded all nine of its electoral votes to Clinton, which is what electors do in winner-take-all states (every state except Maine and Nebraska).

Popular opposition to the NPVIC claims it abolishes the Electoral College, which it doesn’t technically do, since that would require amending the Constitution (which requires two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states). Rather, by binding electors to vote for candidates achieving a plurality outside their own state, it achieves the results of a popular vote while leaving the

The impact of voter fraud would also increase exponentially, according to opponents.

“Currently, a fraudulent vote is counted only in the district in which it was cast and therefore can affect the electoral votes only in that particular state” said Michael Norton, president of the Colorado Freedom Institute, in an op-ed for the Colorado Springs Gazette. “Under the NPV, however, vote fraud in any state would affect the aggregate national vote. It is obvious that there would be a drastic increase in the potential benefit obtained from casting fraudulent ballots in larger states.”

NPVIC will likely be challenged in the courts.

“I think the reason you’ve seen nothing so far is it’s not actionable yet,” John Samples, vice president of Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., told The Washington Free Beacon. “The compact is designed in such a way that it doesn’t come into existence until you get that state that provides the [270 vote] majority. So you have to have states with a majority of Electoral College votes before the compact exists. So it doesn’t now, and presumably anyone that sued to stop this would lack standing.”

Currently, two more bills wait for a governor’s signature — one in Delaware and another in New Mexico. This will bring the total electoral votes to 189. Legislation has been introduced in Nevada (6), Oregon (7) and Maine (4) — all states with Democratic governing “trifectas,” or control of all three branches of state government.