Jonathan Turley, a law professor and Fox News contributor, will join Republican senators for lunch on Tuesday to discuss the constitutionality of Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial.

Turley, who was Republicans’ lone expert during Trump’s first impeachment, has argued that impeaching a former president is “at odds” with the Constitution. It’s a question that has divided scholars.

A bipartisan coalition of constitutional experts that included members of the conservative Federalist Society legal group wrote in an open letter that “our carefully considered views of the law lead all of us to agree that the Constitution permits the impeachment, conviction, and disqualification of former officers, including presidents.” Turley offered a rebuttal to the letter.

Many Republican senators, squeezed between a Trump-loving base and brazen actions of the former president, have turned to this argument as a way to object to the trial without passing judgement on whether Trump committed an impeachable offense.

Democrats have dismissed this argument, pointing to historical precedented – the 1876 impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap, who was tried after he resigned over allegations he received kickbacks. On Monday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer also countered that it’s only possible to disqualify an official from ever holding public office again after the official has been convicted in a Senate impeachment trial – a punishment officials could avoid by resigning or leaving office.

“It makes no sense whatsoever that a president—or any official—could commit a heinous crime against our country and then defeat Congress’ impeachment powers by simply resigning, so as to avoid accountability and a vote to disqualify them from future office,” Schumer said.

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, has said he intends to force a vote on the question, putting his colleagues on the record over where they stand on the constitutionality of an impeaching a former president. Though the effort is likely to fail, it will provide insight into the thinking of several senators who have been more circumspect about their views on impeachment, including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

We were expecting Joe Biden to speak at 2pm EST today about his racial equity agenda, and to sign executive orders which will address policing, housing and prison conditions. Another event has just been added to his public schedule – a 4:45pm address on the fight against the Covid pandemic.

A strange story about Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler emerging from the weekend, as the Washington Post report:

On Sunday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was walking outside a craft brewery on the Oregon city’s southwest side when a man walked up to him and shouted, “Thanks for ruining the city!”

Moments later, the Democratic mayor blasted the man in the eyes with pepper spray.

“Oh my God!” the man cried in an audio recording of the encounter published by the Willamette Week. “Wow … I can’t see. The mayor has just thrown something at me.”

The encounter between Wheeler and the unidentified man was recorded by former Portland mayor Sam Adams, who later told police that the man, who was unmasked, had accosted them on the street with a video camera.

Tim Becker, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, told The Washington Post in an email Monday that Wheeler is cooperating with police “and encourages others involved to do the same.” Adams declined to comment.

The man, who told Wheeler he had taken pictures of him at the pub, accused the mayor of disregarding coronavirus safety measures during his meeting with Adams, Wheeler wrote in an emailed statement to police.

“He accused me of sitting in a restaurant without a mask,” Wheeler said. “I informed him the current covid regulations allow people to take their mask off for the purpose of eating and drinking.”

Read more here: Washington Post – Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler pepper-sprayed a maskless man who accused him of disregarding coronavirus measures

Senator Bernie Sanders says the widespread suffering caused by the pandemic-induced economic crisis has made it “morally imperative” to increase the US’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. And in an interview with the Guardian, Sanders and other lawmakers pushing for a higher minimum wage say the chances of enacting a $15 minimum are better than ever before now that President Joe Biden has called for a $15 federal minimum as part of his emergency Covid legislative package.

Raising the minimum to $15 would more than double the current $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage, but many Republicans oppose the move, saying it would hurt business.

In an interview, Sanders, who championed a $15 minimum wage as a presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020, voiced excitement about the prospects of raising the minimum wage, which hasn’t increased since 2009, the longest stretch without an increase since Congress first enacted a minimum wage in 1938.

“This country faces an enormous economic crisis that is aggravated by the pandemic,” Sanders said. “We’re looking at terrible levels of unemployment. We’re looking at growing income and wealth inequality. What concerns me as much as anything is that half our people are living paycheck to paycheck. Millions of people are trying to survive on starvation wages. For me, it’s morally imperative that we raise the minimum wage to a living wage that’s at least $15 an hour.”

The House voted last July to raise the minimum wage to $15 in steps through 2025, but then Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blocked a vote on it. With the White House, Senate and House under Democratic control, Sanders said the chances are good to enact a $15 minimum, although he said it would be hard to attract 10 Republican Senators to support it, making it hard to overcome a filibuster.

Sanders, the incoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, sees another route to passage, saying it could be done under the “budget reconciliation” – a process where measures deemed to have budgetary impact can be approved by simple majority vote. “It clearly has to be done by reconciliation. That’s something I’m working very hard on,” said Sanders.

Read more of Steven Greenhouse’s report here: Sanders in new push for $15 minimum wage under Biden: ‘For me, it’s morally imperative’

President Joe Biden is up and tweeting. Or, at least someone from his campaign is anyway. The first Biden tweet of the day doesn’t have quite the same feeling that he’s hunched over his phone while watching a news network that the last White House incumbent always seemed to have.

Biden’s @POTUS account is setting the scene for today’s expected announcements on the administration’s racial equity agenda, saying that “America has never lived up to its founding promise of equality for all.”

About 150 people have now been charged in connection with the 6 January Capitol riot. Authorities have had quite a bit of help tracking people down – in fact in dozens of cases, supporters of Donald Trump downright flaunted their activity on social media on the day of the deadly insurrection. Later, apparently realizing they were in trouble with the law, they deleted their accounts only to discover their friends and family members had already taken screenshots of their selfies, videos and comments and sent them to the FBI.

Even with the help from the rioters themselves, investigators must still work rigorously to link the images to the vandalism and suspects to the acts on 6 January in order to prove their case in court. And because so few were arrested at the scene, the FBI and the US Marshals Service have been forced to send agents to track suspects down.

In the last few weeks, the FBI has received more than 200,000 photos and video tips related to the riot. Investigators have put up billboards in several states with photos of wanted rioters, report the Associated Press. Working on tips from co-workers, acquaintances and friends, agents have tracked down driver’s license photos to match their faces with those captured on camera in the building. In some cases, authorities got records from Facebook or Twitter to connect their social media accounts to their email addresses or phone numbers. In others, agents used records from license plate readers to confirm their travels.

More than 800 are believed to have made their way into the Capitol, although it’s likely not everyone will be tracked down and charged with a crime. And those that do feel the long arm of the law may not face the maximum charges available. A special group of prosecutors is examining whether to bring sedition charges against the rioters, which carry up to 20 years in prison. One trio was charged with conspiracy; most have been charged with crimes like unlawful entry and disorderly conduct.

“Just because you’ve left the DC region, you can still expect a knock on the door if we find out that you were part of criminal activity inside the Capitol,” Steven D’Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington office, said earlier this month. “Bottom line — the FBI is not sparing any resources in this investigation.”

Akin Olla, political strategist and organizer who hosts the This is The Revolution podcast, writes for us this morning, arguing that the FBI can’t investigate white extremism until it first investigates itself:

The FBI has a long history of fulfilling the function of white supremacy in the United States. While the Tulsa Massacre was ongoing, the FBI’s predecessor was busy investigating Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. The FBI’s first director, J Edgar Hoover, waged war on the Civil Rights Movement from its onset. The war was ramped up in the age of Cointelpro, an FBI program designed to surveil, dismantle, and destroy any movement working to end racism or capitalist exploitation in the United States. The FBI occasionally investigated white supremacists during this era (1956 to 1971),but spent the vast majority of its resources fighting those committed to Black and Indigenous liberation.

While the FBI likes to pretend that those were crimes of the past, there are more recent examples of white supremacist behavior in the organization. There is evidence that some FBI agents and other federal agents frequented an annual party called “The Good Ol’ Boys Roundup” from 1980 to 1996. The “Roundup” was known as a whites-only gathering that involved the selling of fake “N—-r hunting licenses” and T-shirts with King’s face in a sniper’s crosshairs. While the Department of Justice insists that federal agents weren’t overwhelmingly engaged in racist behavior, their investigation of the Roundup was primarily conducted through interviews with participants of the event itself.

The modern FBI has a problematic track record, too. In 2017 the bureau created a new counter-terrorism designation in response to the rise of Black Lives Matter and a new wave of the Black Liberation Movement. The new designation “Black Identity Extremists” has already been used to surveil and arrest at least one Black activist, Rakem Balogun, an open socialist and member of a number of leftwing Black power organizations. The FBI cited Balogun’s Facebook posts to justify raiding his home and arresting him; all the charges against him were unsubstantiated and later dropped. The designation has been criticized by many, including the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the nation’s largest organizations of Black police officers. And while Balogun was the first to be openly targeted, it is clear he is far from the only Black activist currently being surveilled.

Read more here: Akin Olla – The FBI can’t investigate white extremism until it first investigates itself

Also on the foreign policy front, one of the Biden administration’s most pressing task will be to develop a relationship with China. Joe McDonald and Paul Wiseman have written for Associated Press today how they think that might play out.

They report that economists say Biden won’t confront Beijing right away because he wants to focus on the coronavirus and the economy. But he looks set to renew pressure over trade and technology grievances that prompted Donald Trump to hike tariffs on Chinese imports in 2017.

Negotiators might tone down Trump’s focus on narrowing China’s multibillion-dollar trade surplus with the United States and push harder to open its state-dominated economy, which matters more in the long run, economists say. But no abrupt tariff cuts or other big changes are expected.

“I think Biden will focus more on trying to extract structural reforms,” said Louis Kuijs of Oxford Economics. “It’s going to take some time before we get any shift or explicit announcements.”

Biden is evaluating tariffs on Chinese goods and wants to coordinate future steps with allies, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday. She gave no indication of possible changes. “The president is committed to stopping China’s economic abuses,” Psaki said.

China faces more opposition than ever in Washington due to its trade record, territorial disputes with neighbors, crackdown on Hong Kong, reports of abuses against ethnic Muslims and accusations of technology theft and spying.

“The ground has shifted in a significant way,” said Nathan Sheets, a former Treasury undersecretary for international affairs in the Obama administration.

Katherine Tai, Biden’s choice to succeed US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, sounded a hawkish note on China in a speech this month.

“We face stiffening competition from a growing and ambitious China,” said Tai. “A China whose economy is directed by central planners who are not subject to the pressures of political pluralism, democratic elections or popular opinion.’’

A quick foreign policy snap from Reuters here, that Iran has threatened to block short-notice inspections of its nuclear facilities by the United Nations atomic agency as it presses Joe Biden’s new administration to reverse the economic sanctions imposed on Tehran by Donald Trump.

Trump pulled Washington out of Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with world powers in 2018 and reimposed US sanctions that had been lifted under it, prompting Tehran to violate its conditions. Biden has said he will rejoin the pact if Tehran resumes strict compliance.

The agreement requires Tehran to implement an Additional Protocol, which provides inspectors with wide-ranging access to information on Iran’s nuclear activities and the ability to inspect any site it deems necessary to verify that those activities are peaceful.

In what appeared to be a display of brinkmanship, Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said the first steps to restrict inspections related to the Additional Protocol would begin in the first week of the Iranian month of Esfand, which starts on 19 February.

“Our law is very clear regarding this issue,” he told a televised news conference. “But it does not mean Iran will stop other inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Iran’s parliament passed a law in December that obliges the government to harden its nuclear stance if US sanctions are not lifted in two months. But Iran has repeatedly said it can quickly reverse its course if they are removed.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reiterated that possibility at a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

“If favorable actions are taken before that time…Iran will not interfere with the admission of (IAEA) inspectors under the additional protocol,” he said.

Iran this month resumed enriching uranium to 20% fissile strength at the underground Fordow nuclear plant, a level Tehran achieved before striking the 2015 deal aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“Of course, Washington will not have all the time in the world … the window of opportunity is very limited,” Rabiei said.

Dalroy Connell has worked as a stagehand for the Portland Trailblazers since 1995 when the basketball team began playing games at the Rose Garden Arena. When the pandemic hit the US in March 2020, public events were shut down and NBA games were briefly suspended before the season moved to a “bubble” in Orlando, Florida, and the season recommenced without fans in July 2020.

Connell and his colleagues have been on unemployment ever since, but when the 2020-2021 NBA season began in December 2020, instead of bringing back several of these workers, the Portland Trailblazers replaced most of the unionized crew who work their games with non-union workers, even as their jobs running the sound and lighting equipment are required whether or not fans are in attendance.

Like many workers around the US Connell believes he has been locked out from his job by a company that has used the coronavirus pandemic as a tool to break unions.

“It’s a blatant slap in the face,” said Connell. “They’re using positions in the house, people who already work there to do things we normally do.”

The workers’ union, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 28, has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board and held protests outside of Portland Trailblazers home games.

Connell alleged management at the Portland Trailblazers has frequently fought the union over the past several years, with the latest refusal to recall union workers an extension of this trend.

“Here we are wasting a ton of money on legal fees just to give a few guys some work. It’s a five-hour job. It’s so easy to work this out,” he added.

Read more of Michael Sainato’s report: US companies using pandemic as a tool to break unions, workers claim

Julian Borger

Avril Haines, who now oversees all 16 US intelligence agencies, is unlike any of the spies who came before her, and not just because she is the country’s first female director of national intelligence.

She is also the first intelligence chief to have to make an emergency landing while trying to cross the Atlantic in a tiny plane; the first to take a year out in Japan to learn judo; and surely the first anywhere in the world to have owned a cafe-bookstore that staged frequent erotica nights.

“What’s interesting about Avril is that she’s just a voraciously curious person who will throw herself into whatever she’s doing,” said Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s former speechwriter and foreign policy aide who is a close friend of Haines.

The Haines backstory makes her an unlikely spy, but proved no obstacle to getting bipartisan support. She was the first Biden nominee to be confirmed, with 84-10 Senate vote on Wednesday night.

David Priess, a former CIA official now chief operating officer at the Lawfare Institute, said her unusual life story is an advantage in the world of espionage.

“She has to be able to understand and to lead everyone from analysts to intelligence collectors to engineers to pilots to disguise artists to accountants,” Priess said.

“Having that diverse set of experiences very much helps her to lead the very diverse and disparate intelligence community.”

Haines’ period of lifestyle experimentation anyway ended decades ago, in 1998 when she started a law degree. Since then she has been a legal counsel in the Senate, state department and White House, the deputy director of the CIA and deputy national security adviser.

Senate Republicans, who had confirmed her Trump-appointed predecessor, John Ratcliffe, despite his lack of any significant experience in intelligence and his exaggeration of his previous brushes with security work, had few excuses to oppose her.

The main source of scepticism comes from human rights activists, over whether she might be too much of an insider, with too much baggage. She redacted the report on torture – some argue over-redacted it – and she codified a set of procedures and rules for the use of drone strikes in the assassinations of terror suspects.

Read more of Julian Borger’s profile here: Avril Haines’s unusual backstory makes her an unlikely chief of US intelligence