Week In The News: Impeachment Clamor, Migrant Children Deaths, Severe Weather

With David Folkenflik

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she prays for the nation amid impeachment cries. A sixth migrant child dies in U.S. custody. Tornadoes, floods slam the Plains and Midwest. Activists rally for abortion rights. The roundtable is here.

Guests

Janet Hook, national political reporter for the Los Angeles Times. (@hookjan)

Toluse Olorunnipa, White House reporter for the Washington Post. (@ToluseO)

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

From The Reading List

NBC News: “Pelosi tells colleagues Trump is ‘villainous’ — and he wants to be impeached” — “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told her Democratic colleagues Thursday that President Donald Trump ‘wants to be impeached’ so that he can be vindicated by the Senate.

“Pelosi made the comments at a closed-door morning meeting, two Democratic aides told NBC News, who also said that Pelosi called Trump’s actions ‘villainous.’

“The aide said that Pelosi was implying that she will stick to her current plan to keep investigating the president and his administration without jumping to impeachment, though she didn’t explicitly address strategy in her remarks.

“‘Let me be very clear: the president’s behavior, as far as his obstruction of justice, the things that he is doing, it’s in plain sight, it cannot be denied — ignoring subpoenas, obstruction of justice,’ Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference Thursday following the closed-door meeting.”

CNN: “This is the devastation tornadoes and floods wrought in the central US” — “Violent storms tore through the central US this week, devastating parts of Missouri and Oklahoma, which were hit by dozens of tornadoes and flooding.

“Here’s what the carnage looked like after days of havoc.”

The Guardian: “Outcry after Trump officials reveal sixth migrant child died in US custody” — “The Trump administration has been forced to reveal that a 10-year-old migrant girl died in its custody more than seven months ago, sparking further outcry after a spate of recent migrant child deaths while detained by the US government.

“The 10 year-old girl from El Salvador is the sixth child to die in custody in the past eight months. Her death was not previously reported by authorities and was only made public late on Wednesday after a report by CBS News.

“The child’s name and how she entered the US has not been made public by authorities, but a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which administers the care of unaccompanied minors, told CBS the child had a history of congenital heart defects.”

Washington Post: “Conrad Black’s unconventional path to a pardon boosted by one of Trump’s biggest on-air defenders” — “Before receiving a full pardon from President Trump on charges of fraud and obstruction of justice last week, former media mogul Conrad Black enlisted one of Trump’s biggest on-air defenders, Alan Dershowitz, to get the president’s attention.

“Dershowitz — a Harvard law professor who has regularly gone on television to declare Trump’s innocence of obstruction of justice charges — said he wrote a letter to the White House requesting the pardon.

“Dershowitz’s letter, which was reviewed by the White House Counsel’s Office, played a major role in getting Trump and his legal advisers on board, according to Black, a Canadian billionaire and former Trump business partner who wrote a glowing book about the president last year.”

Los Angeles Times: “In key swing-state rally, Joe Biden condemns Trump as a ‘divider’” — “Joe Biden, holding the first large-scale rally of his 2020 presidential campaign, Saturday issued a broad call for national unity, denounced President Donald Trump as the ‘divider in chief’ and plunged into a challenging new phase of competition with his Democratic rivals.

“A career politician who came to Washington in a less polarized era, Biden promised to work across the partisan aisle – defying skeptics within his own party who worry that Biden’s old-school style is outdated and not confrontational enough to defeat Trump.

“‘They say Democrats are so angry – that the angrier a candidate can be, the better chance he or she has to win the Democratic nomination,’ Biden told the sun-drenched crowd in Philadelphia. ‘Well, I don’t believe it. I believe Democrats want to unify this nation.’ ”

Anna Bauman produced this hour for broadcast.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org. [Copyright 2019 NPR]