Despite a Democrat majority in Oregon State Senate and a popular Democratic bill, Democrats will kill the proposed legislation after Republican senators skipped town to avoid the vote.

Initially, Democrats requested the policy to return the missing senators.

However, enough Democrats have since been convinced by Republicans to surrender the legislation, and the missing Republicans will be returning to their jobs.

>SALEM — Oregon Senate Republicans plan to return to the state Capitol and resume voting on bills Saturday morning, caucus leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. said on Friday.

>Baertschiger, of Grants Pass, said lawmakers have an obligation to pass budget bills, and he believes lawmakers can complete that work by the midnight Sunday deadline for lawmakers to adjourn. Democrats have a slate of other policy bills they also want to pass, and Baertschiger would not say whether Republicans would waive procedural rules to allow votes on that legislation in the waning hours of the legislative session.

>Altogether, more than a hundred bills and resolutions are still pending in the Legislature and need Senate approval.

>"There’s no reason to have a special session,” Baertschiger said in a press conference at the Capitol. "If we have a special session, it’s because (Democratic) leadership chose to have a special session.”

>Republicans have shut down the Oregon Senate for more than a week, by walking out and denying Democrats the 20-member quorum they need to conduct business. They did so with the stated purpose of blocking a climate change bill, but have given mixed public messages that they might also be trying to stop various other bills. There are 18 Democrats and 12 Republicans in the Oregon Senate.

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/06/oregon-senate-republicans-will-return-to-work-on-saturday-leader-says.html

Officials in West Palm Beach, Florida are trying a new method of driving homeless people away from a city-owned rental facility: children's music. The wildly popular and extremely repetitive children's songs, Baby Shark and Raining Tacos, play on an endless loop through the night. The children's songs serve as a deterrent around the city's Lake Pavilion, a glass-walled events venue overlooking the downtown waterfront that hosted 164 events over the last year.

This is not the first time that music has been used as a deterrent; Three years ago, officials in nearby Lake Worth Beach tried using classical music to drive away drug dealers and the homeless, US media report. The method proved ineffective as the targeted groups appeared to enjoy the classical tunes.

http://archive.is/zpH4x

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-democrats-republicans/house-condemns-trump-over-racist-comments-tweeted-at-congresswomen-idUSKCN1UB1QO

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to condemn President Donald Trump for “racist comments” against four minority Democratic congresswomen, a symbolic vote aimed at shaming Trump and his fellow Republicans who stood by him.

Tempers flared in the hours leading up to the vote that mainly split along party lines, the culmination of three days of outrage sparked by a Trump tweetstorm that diverted attention from all other business in Washington.

Trump had told the group of congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

All four lawmakers - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan - are U.S. citizens. Three were born in the United States.

Democrats, who have a majority in the House, passed the symbolic resolution of condemnation on Tuesday evening, which said the House “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.”

Four Republicans joined the Democrats to support the measure.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has struggled at times to work with the progressive newcomers in her caucus, staunchly defended them in the debate.

“These comments from the White House are disgraceful and disgusting and these comments are racist,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi’s comments put the House into a two-hour limbo after Republicans argued she went too far in her comments and broke debate rules.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized Democrats for remarks that upset the “order and decency” of the chamber, saying: “Today is the day that historians will write about.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-poll/republican-support-for-trump-rises-after-racially-charged-tweets-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKCN1UB2UD

The national survey, conducted on Monday and Tuesday after Trump told the lawmakers they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” showed his net approval among members of his Republican Party rose by 5 percentage points to 72%, compared with a similar poll that ran last week.

Trump, who is seeking re-election next year, has lost support, however, with Democrats and independents since the Sunday tweetstorm.

Among independents, about three out of 10 said they approved of Trump, down from four out of 10 a week ago. His net approval - the percentage who approve minus the percentage who disapprove - dropped by 2 points among Democrats in the poll.

Trump’s overall approval remained unchanged over the past week. According to the poll, 41% of the U.S. public said they approved of his performance in office, while 55% disapproved.

Kyoto animation is physically on fire now. Suspected arson.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190718/k10011996791000.html

1/3 disapprove

"The finding, based on a survey of 2,884 people, coincided with the first dip in more than a decade in people saying they think sex before marriage is not at all wrong, with people from non-Christian religious groups the most likely to disapprove."


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/11/acceptance-gay-sex-decline-uk-first-time-since-aids-crisis

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/cohen-documents-reveal-series-calls-trump-team-national/story?id=64414673

President Donald Trump and his campaign may have had prior knowledge of a deal to silence Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who allegedly engaged in an extra-marital affair with the then-presidential candidate in the weeks leading up the 2016 election, newly-unsealed court records suggest.

In unredacted search warrant documents revealed Thursday, an FBI special agent described a series of phone calls in October of 2016 between the president’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, the president’s then-campaign press secretary, Hope Hicks, and Trump himself.

In between calls with Hicks and Trump – one of which was a three-way phone conversation – Cohen communicated by text and phone with two executives at American Media Inc., publisher of The National Enquirer, at times immediately afterwards. In those discussions, Cohen repeatedly invoked the name “Keith,” referring to Keith Davidson, the lawyer representing adult film-star Stormy Daniels.

President Trump on Sunday night doubled down amid a growing backlash over his earlier tweets telling a group of Democratic congresswomen that they should "go back" to the countries that they came from.

"So sad to see the Democrats sticking up for people who speak so badly of our Country and who, in addition, hate Israel with a true and unbridled passion. Whenever confronted, they call their adversaries, including Nancy Pelosi, 'RACIST,'" Trump said in a pair of tweets.

"Their disgusting language and the many terrible things they say about the United States must not be allowed to go unchallenged. If the Democrat Party wants to continue to condone such disgraceful behavior, then we look even more forward to seeing you at the ballot box in 2020!" he continued.

Trump was responding to outrage over comments he made earlier on Sunday in which he targeted a group of unnamed progressive congresswomen "who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe."

In the tweets, which appeared to be directed at Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), the president suggested they "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/453021-trump-doubles-down-after-telling-democratic-congresswomen-to-go-back