Monday Morning Read

Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading – and a summary of Investigative Post’s reporting from the previous week –  in your inbox Sunday mornings.

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Chris Collins – remember him, the convicted felon who relocated to Florida and was later pardoned by Donald Trump? – is making noise about running for Congress in the Sunshine State. Or perhaps he’s simply making noise. Collins recently went on an anti-gay rant in which he lectured about ethics and morality. This, from a disgraced, and disgraceful, felon.

Terry Pegula is looking for more ways to get even richer. (And that’s not counting his success in getting taxpayers to build his football team a new stadium.)

It appears there’s been some funny business going on in the Erie County Clerk’s office involving the handling of money and documents. Sandy Tan of The Buffalo News reports that problems, and a lack of oversight, are nothing new.

Our friend Mark Scheer at the Niagara Gazette reports on the latest economic development scheme in the Cataract City, otherwise known as a natural wonder and manmade disaster.

Ken Kruly’s latest edition of Politics and Other Stuff is chock full of news and insights.

Old news worth repeating, via The Wall Street Journal: Tesla’s plant in South Buffalo has failed to deliver. (There’s little to nothing in the story we haven’t previously reported.)

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Freedom of Information laws enacted in the wake of the Watergate scandal were intended to improve public access to government records and data. Too often these days, politicians and bureaucrats (mis)use it to delay the release of information the public and press are entitled to. (New York State and the City of Buffalo are especially bad.) The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, wrote about how Newfoundland and Labrador are doing right by the public by adding teeth to its FOI laws. We in New York should take note.

How low can Donald Trump go? He recently posted on his social media platform what he said was Barack Obama’s home address. A gunman soon showed up in the neighborhood, looking for what he said was a “good angle on a shot.” The suspect was a Jan. 6 rioter. You know, Trump’s kind of guy.

Buy your tickets to our benefit concert featuring Tom Toles

Politico published an insightful interview with the author of American Whitelash,  which documents this nation’s history of violence carried out by white supremacists. Said author Wesley Lowery: “This book is an attempt to put human faces on the relentless cycle of violence that has defined American history, to put flesh and bone on our discussion of white supremacist terror.”

July 3 was the hottest day in the earth’s recorded history. No, wait, July 4 was the hottest. The week as a whole was record shattering.

Here’s a feel-good baseball story. Two of them, actually, involving the restoration of one of the few Negro leagues stadiums still standing in Paterson, New Jersey, and perhaps the future site of a Yankees-Mets “Field of Dreams” game. Another good baseball read: Satchel Paige’s major league debut, 75 years ago. As a 42-year old “rookie,” he went 6 and 1 and helped Cleveland win a World Series.

The post Monday Morning Read appeared first on Investigative Post.

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Benjamin Netanyahu Warns That Israel Will ‘Finish the Job’ the ‘Hard Way’ If Hamas Rejects Trump Peace Plan

Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would end the war in Gaza "the hard way" if Hamas doesn't agree to and abide by Donald Trump's peace deal.

The post Benjamin Netanyahu Warns That Israel Will ‘Finish the Job’ the ‘Hard Way’ If Hamas Rejects Trump Peace Plan first appeared on Mediaite.

‘Don’t need that!’ Top Republicans bicker over shutdown relief pay for troops



As the federal government shutdown rages on, Republicans in Congress have a new headache to worry about as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) clashes with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) about whether to convene to pass an emergency extension of pay for troops.

The shutdown has no end in sight, with Democrats demanding an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that stabilize millions of people's insurance premiums as a condition of their votes, and Republicans refusing to negotiate on this matter until the government reopens.

According to Politico, "the unusual tactical disagreement between the two top congressional leaders played out in front of cameras Tuesday on Capitol Hill as the shutdown heads into its second week."

Johnson, who has not convened the House in days, told reporters this week, “I’m certainly open to that. We’ve done it in the past. We want to make sure that our troops are paid.”

Thune, however, disagreed, saying, “Honestly, you don’t need that.”

“Obviously, there are certain constituencies — many of them are going to be impacted in a very negative way by what’s happened here. But the simplest way to end it is not try to exempt this group or that one or that group. It’s to get the government open," he added.

In Thune's view, Republicans should hold firm and not even call the House back until Democrats in the Senate agree to pass the funding bill the House already passed.

Further complicating the issue is that House Republicans have avoided swearing in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). Grijalva is the final vote needed for a Trump-opposed bipartisan discharge petition for the House to compel the Trump administration to release the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files.

But as a consequence of the House's inaction, noted policy analyst Matthew Yglesias, this inaction is also to the GOP's detriment, as with the House gone, they are incapable of forcing messaging votes to try to shift blame for the shutdown onto Democrats.

Russ Vought Announces Firings of Federal Workers: ‘The RIFs Have Begun’

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought announced on Friday that his office has started firing federal workers.

The post Russ Vought Announces Firings of Federal Workers: ‘The RIFs Have Begun’ first appeared on Mediaite.

FEMA pressures staff to rat out colleagues who have criticized Trump anonymously: report



A number of Federal Emergency Management Agency staff that openly criticized President Donald Trump are under intense investigation from FEMA leadership, and under threats of termination should they refuse to reveal the names of their colleagues who criticized Trump anonymously, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Nearly 200 FEMA employees signed onto a letter in August pushing back against the Trump administration’s cuts to FEMA, warning that the cuts could jeopardize the agency’s ability to adequately respond to disasters.

More than a dozen FEMA employees – all of whom signed onto the letter – were soon placed on leave. Now, remaining staff that had signed onto the letter using their name are being investigated by agency leadership, being threatened to reveal the names of their colleagues who signed the letter anonymously, according to insiders who spoke with Bloomberg and documents reviewed by the outlet.

“The interviews with FEMA workers have been carried out by the agency's division that investigates employee misconduct, and those interviewed have been told they risk being fired for failure to cooperate,” Bloomberg writes in its report. “The employees have been instructed not to bring counsel, according to people familiar with the process.”

The revelation that FEMA staff under investigation were being instructed not to bring legal counsel was revealed, in part, by Colette Delawalla, the founder of the nonprofit organization Stand Up for Science, the same organization that helped FEMA staff publish its letter of dissent.

“They are not really given an option not to comply,” Delawalla told Bloomberg. “They don’t have guidance while they’re in there.”

Trump has previously said he wanted to phase out FEMA and “bring it down to the state level,” with the agency struggling to respond to emergencies such as the deadly Texas flood in July following new Trump administration policies that led to funding lapses for the agency.

A previous batch of FEMA employees – 140 of them – were placed on leave back in July for signing onto a different letter of dissent, which itself followed a number of FEMA employees being forcibly reassigned to work for Immigrations Customs and Enforcement amid Trump’s mass deportation push.

Critics have characterized the FEMA purges as a blatant violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act, which provides clear protections for government employees from retaliation for disclosing information that is a “specific danger to public health or safety.”