TRNS News Notes is brought to you by Victoria Jones. Victoria Jones is the Chief White House correspondent and global analyst of the Washington DC based Talk Radio News Service, where her insight and analysis are made available to over 400 news talk radio stations around the country and internationally.

In the News

  • Midterm Madness: “Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.”
  • Five keys to Republicans winning the Senate
  • Midterm Madness: One more day
  • Ready for losses, Obama sets new agenda
  • Cruzing for confrontation
  • Ferguson no-fly zone aimed at media
  • SCOTUS today: Born in – – – Israel?
  • Maine nurse slams Christie on Ebola
  • UN panel issues dire climate warning
  • Terminally ill Brittany Maynard dies
  • Virgin Galactic crash: ?

 

Midterm Madness: “Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.”
• President Obama finished out his brief midterm campaign run in Philadelphia on Sunday, urging Democrats to get to the polls and to oust sitting Republican Gov Tom Corbett. “You’ve gotta vote,” he told the crowd of 5,500. “I have got a simple message: we’ve got to vote … Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.” (Politico, WaPo, NYT, me)

• Democratic Sen Jeanne Shaheen and her GOP rival Scott Brown are running neck-and-neck on the eve of Election Day, according to two new polls released Sunday night in New Hampshire. A WMUR Granite State Poll has Shaheen leading Brown 46% to 43% among likely voters. A New England College poll shows both taking 48%

• In Georgia, most polls over the past week show Republican David Perdue retaking a 2-3 point lead over Democrat Michelle Nunn in the Senate race. Perdue’s gains come from white voters

• The Des Moines Register’s final poll of the Iowa Senate race shows Republican Joni Ernst with a 7-point lead over Democrat Bruce Braley, 51% to 44%. The Register’s pollster, J. Ann Selzer, who has a good track record, told the paper: “This race looks like it’s decided.”
Five Keys to Republicans Winning the Senate
• Don’t blow the easy ones. It would be stunning if Republicans fail to grab three seats where veteran Democrats are retiring and where President Obama lost badly: West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana. Those states should put the GOP halfway to its goal of six pickups (AP, me)

• Target four other states Obama lost. Democrats Mark Pryor (AR) and Mary Landrieu (LA) look to buck the the South’s continued drift toward the GOP. In Alaska, Mark Begich (D) is struggling. Dems feel slightly better about first-termer Kay Hagan (D) of North Carolina. GOP victories in three of these four states give them the magic six

• Don’t go backward. But if Republicans lose any seats they now hold, they’ll need to take more than six from Democrats to gain the majority. Republicans fret the most about Georgia, where Dem Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue are battling it out. In Kansas independent Greg Orman might beat GOP Sen Pat Roberts – but Orman could align with the GOP

• Win in a few states Mitt Romney lost. Republicans have a chance to grab Colorado from Sen Mark Udall (D) and Joni Ernst (R) looks poised to win Iowa where Sen Tom Harkin (D) is retiring. Dems feel slightly better about fending off Republican challenger Scott Brown in NH against Sen Jeanne Shaheen (D)

• Endure uncertainty and win runoffs. Election night could be long, messy and uncertain. We might not know Alaska’s results for a week. A 6 Dec runoff is likely in Louisiana between Landrieu and GOP Rep Bill Cassidy. In Georgia, a runoff wouldn’t be held until January

Midterm Madness: One More Day
• While rallying the faithful on behalf of Gov Dan Malloy (D-CT) in Bridgeport Sunday, President Obama was interrupted at least four times by activists, shouting at him to take action on immigration. “It’s the other party that’s blocked it,” Obama said over commotion in the audience (Hill, Politico, WaPo, Buzzfeed, me)

• Retiring Sen Tom Harkin (D-IA) said last week, “There’s sort of this sense that, ‘Well, I hear so much about Joni Ernst. She is really attractive, and she sounds nice.’ Well, I gotta thinking about that. I don’t care if she’s as good looking as Taylor Swift or as nice as Mr Rogers, but if she votes like Michele Bachmann, she’s wrong for the state of Iowa.”

• At a fish fry in rural North Carolina, GOP Senate candidate Thom Tillis repeatedly tied opponent Sen Kay Hagan (D) to President Obama. “He will pack the federal courts with the most liberal activist judges you’ve ever seen. He will sign an executive order granting amnesty, threatening the American workers and threatening our safety and security.”

• Sen Rand Paul (R-KY said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press that, while he doesn’t think voter ID is unreasonable, “I just think it’s a dumb idea for Republicans to emphasize this and say, ‘This is how we’re going to win the elections.”

• DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) predicted Sunday on ABC’s This Week that her party will hold the Senate thanks to its “superior” ground games in key states. RNC chair Reince Priebus said on the same show, “Our ground game is whipping their ground game.”

Ready for Losses, Obama Sets New Agenda
• Whipsawed by events and facing another midterm electoral defeat, President Obama has directed his team to forge a policy agenda to regain momentum for his final two years in office even as some advisers urge that he rethink the way he governs. Top aides have been meeting for weeks (NYT, me)

• Obama will continue to exercise his executive authority to advance Democratic policies on climate change, immigration, energy, gay rights and economic issues, aides said. The president may announce quickly after the election a unilateral overhaul of immigration rules

• But Obama will also confront the question of whether he needs to change the way he operates. Even some of his strongest supporters are quietly recommending changes in his staff and a more open decision-making process

• Among advisers inside and outside the WH, there’s a growing sense that Obama has closed himself off within a shrinking circle of aides. Some advisers who had been influential said they were no longer consulted as much. They worry that Denis McDonough, WH chief of staff, has taken on too much himself

• Then there’s the question of working with a possible Republican Senate majority. Republicans said the onus would be on Obama, faulting him for being unwilling to accommodate the opposition. Rep Tom Cole (R-OK) said that his party faced a similar choice. “It will be as much a test for the Republicans as the Democrats.”

Cruz Looking for Confrontation
• In an interview with WaPo in Alaska, Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) made clear that he’s pushing hard for a Republican-led Senate to be as conservative and confrontational as the Republican-led House. He wouldn’t pledge his support for Sen Mitch McConnell for Republican leader (WaPo, me)

• Piggybacking on what House leaders have done, Cruz said the first order of business should be a series of hearings on President Obama, “looking at the abuse of power, the executive abuse, the regulatory abuse, the lawlessness that sadly has pervaded this administration.”

• Republicans should “pursue every means possible to repeal Obamacare,” Cruz said, including forcing a vote through parliamentary procedures that would get around a possible filibuster by Democrats. If that leads to a veto by Obama, Republicans should then vote on provisions of the health law, “one at a time.”

• Two weeks ago, Cruz wrote an op-ed in USA Today laying out 10 conservative priorities he thinks Republicans should pursue, including moving toward a flat tax and drawing a hard line on illegal immigrants. In the WaPo interview, Cruz reiterated some of those points, such as approving the Keystone XL pipeline

• Rep Peter King (R-NY), a Long Island moderate, said Republicans should be wary of Cruz’s guidance. “He is the last one we should listen to,” King said in an interview Sunday. “Don’t forget – a year ago he brought Republicans over the cliff.”

• U.S. Marine Sgt Andrew Tahmooressi, freed from a Mexican jail after serving eight months for crossing the border with loaded guns, needs some time to “decompress” and is looking forward to dinner at South Beach seafood eatery Joe’s Stone Crab (AP)
Ferguson No-Fly Zone Aimed at Media
• The U.S. govt agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson MO for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests (AP, me)

• At one point a manager at the FAA’s Kansas City center said police “did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this TFR (temporary flight restriction) all day long. They didn’t want media in there.” AP obtained the recordings through a FOIA

• The conversations contradict claims by the St Louis County PD, which responded to demonstrations following the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, that the restriction was solely for safety and had nothing to do with preventing media from witnessing the violence or the police response

• Police said at the time, and again as recently as late Friday to the AP, that they requested the flight restriction in response to shots fired at a police helicopter

• But police officials confirmed there was no damage to their helicopter and were unable to provide an incident report on the shooting. On the tapes, an FAA manager describes the helicopter shooting as unconfirmed “rumors.”

Police Deny
• An FAA manager urged modifying the flight restriction so that planes landing at Lambert-St Louis Airport could still enter the airspace around Ferguson. An FAA official wasn’t concerned: “A lot of the time the
[lesser restriction] just keeps the press out, anyways. They don’t understand the difference.”

• The same day that notice was issued, a county police spox publicly denied the no-fly zone was to prevent news helicopters from covering the events. “We understand that that’s the perception out there, but it truly is for the safety of the pilots,” Sgt Brian Schellman told NBC News

• The flight restriction remained in place until 22 Aug, FAA records show. A police captain wanted it extended when officials were set to identify Officer Darren Wilson by name as the officer who shot Brown and because Brown’s funeral would “bring out the emotions,” the recordings show

• “We just don’t know what to expect,” he told the FAA. “We’re monitoring that. So, last night we shot a lot of tear gas, we had a lot of shots fired into the air again. It did quiet down after midnight, but with that … we don’t know when that’s going to erupt.”

SCOTUS Case: Born in – – – Israel?
• Today, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Obama admin must follow a 2002 law enacted by Congress that allows U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their birthplace on passports (Reuters, TRNS, me)

• It’s a foreign policy minefield for the U.S. govt, which has refused to enforce the law since it was enacted. The concern for the U.S. is that the law could be interpreted as an endorsement of Israel’s hotly disputed sovereignty claim over Jerusalem, a holy city for Judaism, Islam and Christianity

• The case was instigated by the parents of a Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen, Menachem Zivotofsky, 12, because they want his passport to state that he was born in Israel. Their legal fight has bounced around the U.S. court system for a decade, including a previous trip to SCOTUS on a more technical procedural issue

&&&

• The legal question is whether the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on the president’s exclusive right on whether to recognize a foreign nation and under what terms. The admin has told the court that the president alone gets to make key foreign policy decisions

• The State Dept’s position is that a loss for the U.S. govt would be perceived around the world as a reversal of American policy that could cause “irreversible damage” to the govt’s power to influence the peace process, according to court papers

• If enforced, the law sends the message that “the U.S. has concluded that Israel exercises sovereignty over Jerusalem,” admin lawyers said in court papers. The govt currently requires that the passports of any U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem list only the name of the city
Maine Nurse Slams Christie on Ebola
• Kaci Hickox, the nurse who returned to the U.S. from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone in October, this weekend promised to stay away from the center of the town Fort Kent ME even though she won’t be required to stay in quarantine (TPM, Guardian, Politico, me)

• “I didn’t mean to bring this media storm onto this community, either, but I think unfortunately sometimes, especially when up against governors, you don’t always have an option,” she said Sunday

• “I understand that the community has been through a lot in the past week and that I do, you know, apologize to them for that. I will not go into town, into crowded public places. You know, I have had a few friends come visit me in my home and that’s absolutely fantastic,” Hickox said

• “I just read an op-ed by Bill Fahey today. And he said, you know, When Gov Christie stated that it was an abundance of caution, which is his reason for putting health care workers in sort of quarantine for three weeks, it was really an abundance of politics.” She said she thought all the scientific, medical and public health community agrees “with me on that statement.”

• Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, “If you’re coming to visit your relatives, couldn’t that wait for a few months? What I’m saying is elective travel, commercial travel for people who just want to visit the U.S., that really isn’t a necessity.” He said the ban shouldn’t apply to humanitarian workers

• Raw vid: Wilson Kipsang and Mary Keitany, both of Kenya, dominate New York Marathon (AP)

UN Panel Issues Dire Climate Warning
• Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse emissions to zero this century, the UN’s panel on climate change said Sunday in its fourth and final volume of its giant climate assessment (AP, NYT, me)

• Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, the mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year

• Yet there’s been no sign that national leaders are willing to discuss allocating the trillion-ton emissions budget among countries, an approach that would raise political and moral questions of fairness. On the contrary: They are moving toward a relatively weak argument that would essentially let each country decide for itself how much effort to put into global warming

• The report cited mass die-offs of forests, including those in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that’s leading to increased coastal flooding, and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands of people

• But the report offered hope. The tools needed to set the world on a low-emissions path are there; it just has to break its addiction to the oil, coal and gas that power the global energy system while polluting the atmosphere with heat-trapping CO2, the chief greenhouse gas

• Vid: Chris Rock opens Saturday Night Live – and he goes there on the Freedom Tower, the Boston Marathon Bombings and Christmas. Critics are saying he went too far – that’s the point

Terminally Ill Brittany Maynard Dies
• Brittany Maynard, the terminally-ill 29-year-old who spent her final days advocating for death-with-dignity laws, took lethal drugs prescribed by her physician on Saturday and died, a spox said, “as she intended – peacefully in her bedroom, in the arms of her loved ones.” (WaPo, me)

• Maynard, who was diagnosed earlier this year with a stage 4 malignant brain tumor, said last month that she planned to die 1 Nov in her home in Portland OR with help from her doctor. And Saturday, she said her final farewell

• “The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers. I even have a ring of support around my bed as I type … Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!”

• Near the end, Maynard’s symptoms worsened. She was suffering from frequent seizures, head and neck pain and “stroke-like symptoms,” said Sean Crowley, a spox for Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit advocacy organization for the terminally ill. The group published an obit for Maynard, accompanied by a fund-raising appeal

Advocate for Physician-Assisted Suicide
• Critics of death-with-dignity laws, such as the National Right to Life organization, have called the organization “ghoulish” in its handling of Maynard’s case. “While we would never criticize Maynard,” NRL said on its website, “we are angry that Compassion & Choices would exploit her tragedy for its own malevolent purposes.”

• Maynard was diagnosed on New Year’s Day with brain cancer. By April, she was told she had six months to live. She looked at treatment options – and side effects. She considered hospice care. Then she made her decision: doctor-assisted death. She and her husband moved to Oregon, one of five states with legal protections for the terminally ill

• She soon became an advocate for physician-assisted suicide and gained national attention in her fight to move other states to enact similar legislation. She will be remembered as an adventurous traveler, having spent time teaching at orphanages in Kathmandu; working in Costa Rica, traveling in Tanzania and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro

• “I am so lucky to have known the love of an amazing husband (my husband Dan is a hero), a loving caring mother, and an incredible group of friends and extended family. I hope you will all take up my request to carry on this work, and support them as they carry on my legacy. I’m so grateful to you all.”
• Vid: Nik Wallenda walks across the Chicago River on a tightrope between skyscrapers – with and without blindfold

Virgin Galactic Crash: ?
• A safety device on the Virgin Galactic spacecraft that crashed on Friday deployed early during the fatal test flight, investigators say. Christopher Hart, acting chair of the NTSB, said the “feathering” device, designed to slow the craft on re-entry, activated without a command from the pilots (BBC, WSJ, FT, TRNS, me)

• Hart said it was too early to say this caused the crash, in which one of the pilots died and the other pilot was severely injured. Earlier, Virgin Galactic rebuffed criticism of its safety practices. The company said any suggestion that safety had not been its top priority was “categorically untrue.”

• Virgin Galactic had aimed to send tourists into space early next year, and has already taken more than 700 flight bookings at $250,000 each. Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson and his family planned to be on the first flight. Branson has flown to California to “be with the team.”

• Hart said one of the pilots had enabled the feathering device, but the second stage of its deployment had happened “without being commanded.” He said SpaceShipTwo’s fuel tanks and engines, which were highlighted in media reports over the weekend, showed no signs of being compromised. It was using a type of rocket fuel never before used in flight

• The project has been subject to numerous delays, and its commercial launch has been pushed back several times. The FT reported that the venture is facing financial difficulties – with $400 million in funding from Abu Dhabi now dried up and Virgin Group covering the day-to-day expenses

• Vid: Jazz great clarinetist Acker Bilk had died at 85. Here he is performing “Stranger on the Shore” (1961) live in 1988

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Victoria Jones

TRNS’ Shane Farnan and Celina Gore contributed to this report

 

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