Initial meetings already underway on passenger rail idea for Southern Montana

The Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority is wasting no time pursuing the idea of restoring passenger rail service across Southern Montana.

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  • Israeli plan to share vaccines frozen by legal questions

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  • Prince Harry on life in California and what he thinks about The Crown

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  • Asian Man in Critical Condition After Being Stabbed in the Back With a Butcher Knife in NY Chinatown

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  • Ted Cruz's colleagues mocked him by putting memes of his Cancun trip in the Senate gym locker room: 'Bienvenido de Nuevo, Ted!'

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  • Prince Harry Tells Friend James Corden He Left the Royal Family Because It Was Destroying His Mental Health

    KOEN VAN WEELPrince Harry has said that he stepped back from royal duties because the British press was “toxic” and “destroying” his mental health.In an extraordinary interview unparalleled in the annals of royal history, Harry gave a candid interview to his close friend James Corden on The Late Late Show while they toured Los Angeles on an open-air double-decker bus. Corden was a guest at Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018 and arrived at the evening reception dressed as Henry VIII. Another guest at the wedding, Oprah Winfrey, has taped an interview primarily with Meghan that will be screened next weekend.Oprah Winfrey’s Interview With Meghan Markle and Harry Will ‘Shine a Light on What They Have Been Through’The two men were served afternoon tea, which Corden said he had provided to remind Harry of home, however the tea service was abandoned after the bus braked sharply, depositing the contents of a tea trolley on top of the prince.“Clear it up, Harry,” Corden joked as the prince picked up tea cups and scones.While the 17-minute long package had a humorous tone and was packed with jokes and gags, it also provided the most candid insight yet into why Harry withdrew from royal duties.Asked about his decision to leave royal life, Harry said he was left with no choice because the British press “was destroying my mental health.”He said of the “toxic” situation: “I did what any husband and father would do—I need to get my family out of here.”In what will be perceived as a dig at the royal establishment that refused to accept Harry and Meghan’s proposal of a hybrid public-private role, Harry said: “We never walked away, and as far as I’m concerned, what decisions are made on that side, I will never walk away.”Royal Family ‘Wringing Their Hands’ at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s ActivismHarry said that his life now would continue to be about “public service” and added that he and Meghan were “trying to bring some compassion and try to make people happy and try to change the world in any small way we can.”When Harry said he and Meghan often watched Jeopardy! and Netflix (with whom the couple recently signed a $100 million production deal) in the evenings after putting Archie to bed, Corden asked him about The Crown and its controversial portrayal of his family’s history.Harry, who joked he would like to be played in the series by Damian Lewis, said he preferred it to the tabloid media coverage of the royals because it “does not pretend to be news.”He added: “It’s fictional. But it’s loosely based on the truth.“Of course it’s not strictly accurate, but it gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle—the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else—what can come from that.”He continued: “I’m way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing the stories written about my family, or my wife or myself, because it’s the difference between fiction—take it how you will—and being reported on as fact because you’re supposedly news. I have a real issue with that.”Harry also opened up about meeting Meghan and how he knew she was the one on their second date.“We hit it off with each other, and we were just so comfortable in each other’s company,” he said.“Dating me or any member of the royal family is kind of flipped upside down. All the dates become dinners or watching the TV or chatting at home.“We went from zero to 60 in the first two months.”Meghan, who is pregnant with the couple’s second child, made a cameo in the interview via FaceTime when Harry and Corden paid a trip to the house from the ’90s TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.When Corden suggested the couple should buy the house, Meghan said: “I think we’ve done enough moving.”During the visit to the house, Corden and Harry spoke to the owner and jokingly made an offer to buy it, before Harry asked if he could use the toilet.“I’m actually dying for a pee. Can I use your bathroom?” he asked.Showing that family relations are at least still somewhat functional, Harry said his grandmother, the queen, bought his son Archie a waffle maker for Christmas.He revealed Meghan now makes waffles with a “beautiful organic mix” and they eat them for breakfast with toppings including berries and syrup.He also said that both his grandparents know how to use Zoom, but joked that his grandfather slams the laptop shut physically to finish a call.Over to you, Oprah.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • They met on Bumble. She claims he killed her dogs. Now she's speaking out to help others isolated amid COVID-19.

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  • Newly confirmed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is 'obsessed' with creating 'clean-energy jobs'

    The Senate on Thursday confirmed former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, 64-35, to lead the Energy Department, with 14 Republicans joining all 50 members of the Democratic caucus to give President Biden his 10th Cabinet-level appointee (plus one deputy secretary). After her confirmation, Granholm tweeted that she's "obsessed with creating good-paying clean energy jobs in all corners of America in service of addressing our climate crisis" and "impatient for results." Granholm repeated her priorities on MSNBC Thursday night. "I am all about bringing clean-energy jobs" to communities, especially those, like Michigan, reliant on fossil fuels, she told host Chris Hayes. "I am totally obsessed about how to create good-paying jobs in America," and the clean-energy sector "is the biggest opportunity for us." The market is shifting toward green energy, regardless of what politicians prefer, and the Energy Department's 17 national labs are creating ways to not only expand renewable energy but also "decarbonize fossil fuels," Granholm said. "And honestly, if we can bring the supply chains for all of these clean-energy products to the United States, instead of letting our economic competitors eat us for lunch, the jobs that could be created for us in the U.S. — good-paying jobs — are boundless." Biden has sent the Senate more nominations, and gotten fewer of them confirmed, than any recent president, Axios reports, citing a count by the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post. Biden has submitted more nominees to the Senate — but received fewer confirmations — than recent presidents, data shows. https://t.co/tZQbBPahjI pic.twitter.com/BbuqlSmwOP — Axios (@axios) February 26, 2021 "The new president is facing a pandemic without a surgeon general or head of the Department of Health and Human Services, he confronts an economic crisis without his leaders at Labor or Commerce, and domestic terrorism is on the rise with no attorney general," Axios notes. You can track Biden's nominations at The Washington Post. More stories from theweek.comJournalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiryHusband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6Josh Hawley, Senator No

  • Husband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6

    Illinois state Rep. Chris Miller (R), the husband of freshman U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), acknowledged Thursday that his pickup truck was parked in a restricted area outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, but he said the "Three Percenter" militia sticker on the back window doesn't mean anything. "Army friend gave me decal," Miller told The Daily Beast in an email late Thursday. "Thought it was a cool decal. Took it off because of negative pub." He said he "never was member" of the militia and "didn't know anything about 3% till fake news started this fake story and read about them." Online sleuths had linked him to the truck visible in footage from a CBS News report, earlier Thursday. The #Sedition3PTruck with government plates parked in a restricted zone from 1:02. #SeditionHunters #Sedition3P Source: https://t.co/DubmxJhjSZ pic.twitter.com/INCs6geEYg — Phoenix on Wheels (@phoenixonwheels) February 25, 2021 The Three Percenters, founded in 2008, are a "radical militia group" implicated in leading the Jan. 6 siege along with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other far-right extremist groups, the FBI said in an affidavit filed in the case against alleged rioter Robert Gieswein. Their name comes from the apocryphal claim that only 3 percent of U.S. colonists fought in the Revolutionary War, and they fashion themselves as the same kind of tyranny-stomping "patriots." Miller's wife, Mary Miller, is most famous for favorably quoting Nazi leader Adolf Hitler at a "Moms for America" rally outside the Capitol on Jan. 5. "Hitler was right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future," she told the rally, apologizing later when video of her comments went viral but insisting that "some are trying to intentionally twist my words to mean something antithetical to my beliefs." More stories from theweek.comJournalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiryJosh Hawley, Senator NoDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriously

  • Prince Harry says 99-year-old Prince Philip just slams his laptop shut instead of hanging up at the end of Zoom calls

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  • Journalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiry

    Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien, one of the few journalists who has seen former President Donald Trump's tax returns, told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night he will sleep better now that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance finally has eight years of Trump's financial documents, from 2011 to 2019. Trump "is very afraid of what's in these documents, I think," because they put him in serious criminal jeopardy, O'Brien said, but he isn't the only one implicated. O'Brien went on to explain why he thinks it's likely Trump's chief accountant, Allen Weisselberg, will flip on Trump. "The thing to really focus in on here is that it's not just the tax records that Cy Vance has now," O'Brien said. "He probably has reams and reams of the accountant's work product. This is a criminal case, they're going to need to prove criminal intent on the part of Trump, his three eldest children, Allen Weisselberg, and anyone else in the Trump Organization who's fallen under the parameters of this investigation. And if there are email and notes and other records of communication about what they intended to do when they inflated the value of buildings so they could get loans against them and then turned around and deflated the value of the buildings so they could pay lower taxes on them, and there's a communication around that that predates any of these tax entries, that is gold for a prosecutor." A few hours earlier, O'Brien told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that the particular eight years of documents Vance's team has "is important, because it predates Trump's ascent into the White House, and I think helps build the narrative around the money trail and Trump's motivations for his destructive and obscene dance with people like Vladimir Putin. It's a shame they couldn't go back further — think this is one of the tragic misses of Robert Mueller's investigation, he could have gone back further, I think, than Cy Vance is able to into Trump's finances." O'Brien also underscored that the investigation implicates at least Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, and "it also targets people inside the Trump Organization who might flip on Trump if they're exposed to criminal liability," but "the brass ring in all of this is that if Trump has a criminal conviction, he cannot run for president again, and that's looming over this entire thing as well." More stories from theweek.comHusband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6Josh Hawley, Senator NoDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriously

  • Ilhan Omar leads calls to fire Senate official who scuppered $15 wage rise

    Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled provision in $1.9tn Covid stimulus bill did not qualify for budget reconciliation Ilhan Omar tweeted: ‘What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.’ Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters The progressive Democrat Ilhan Omar has called for the firing of the government official who effectively blocked the party’s plans to raise the minimum wage. Democratic plans to include a gradual raise to $15 in Joe Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus bill were effectively ended on Thursday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled it should not be part of the package. The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, who has held the non-partisan position since 2012, dashed hopes of including the raise in the bill – the first increase in over a decade. “Abolish the filibuster. Replace the parliamentarian,” Omar said in a tweet. “What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.” Abolish the filibuster.Replace the parliamentarian.What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 26, 2021 Biden campaigned on a pledge to increase the minimum wage to $15. Low-wage workers and unions have campaigned for a rise since 2012, and its inclusion in the coronavirus stimulus bill had been seen as a major victory. While the proposal faced universal opposition by Republican senators and skepticism from some Democrats, Senator Bernie Sanders and others were confident that it could be pushed through with a simple majority in the Senate, where the Democrats hold a slim majority. In order to achieve this, the proposal would have to be passed by “budget reconciliation” – a mechanism that allows legislation to bypass the 60% vote bills need to get through the Senate. Late on Thursday, MacDonough ruled that the wage increase did not meet the standards for budget reconciliation. The parliamentarian acts as an impartial judge and has only been removed from office once. MacDonough is well respected by many members of both parties, and the Biden administration seems unlikely to push for her removal. Other progressive Democrats have proposed a less drastic solution – overruling her. “The Senate parliamentarian issues an advisory opinion,” congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said in a tweet. “The VP can overrule them – as has been done before. We should do EVERYTHING we can to keep our promise, deliver a $15 minimum wage, and give 27 million workers a raise.” Sanders, one of the most ardent supporters of a minimum-wage increase, has proposed an alternative plan – imposing penalties and incentives to push companies toward higher wages. “I will be working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations that don’t pay workers at least $15 an hour, and to provide small businesses with the incentives they need to raise wages,” Sanders said in a statement. “That amendment must be included in this reconciliation bill.” Sanders’ comments come after a Senate hearing on Thursday where he lambasted the low wages paid by McDonald’s, Walmart and others. Sanders pointed to a government report that found nearly half of workers who make less than $15 an hour rely on public assistance programs that cost taxpayers $107bn each year. The American people are “sick and tired” of subsidizing “starvation wages” at these companies, Sanders said.

  • Prince Harry tells all to James Corden on Archie's first word, his views on The Crown and family life with Meghan

    The Duke of Sussex has blamed the media for his departure from royal life, saying that the British press were “destroying his mental health.” Prince Harry, 36, told chat show host James Corden that things had become so “toxic” he felt he had no option but to remove his family from the situation. The Duke’s 17-minute segment on Corden’s The Late Late Show, which included a cameo appearance from his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, came ahead of the couple’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, to be broadcast in the US next Sunday. It also coincided with the Queen’s first public comments about the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, illustrating that their engagements were no longer co-ordinated with those of the Royal Family. The reaction to his interview at Buckingham Palace was one of resigned shoulder-shrugging as sources said there was no desire to offer comment or “create a drama” every time the couple appeared on television. “They are getting on with their lives,” one told the Telegraph. “Everyone knew about it and it was their own choice.” A source close to the Duke said he considered it a good opportunity to have some fun, whilst also opening up about his life and his decisions during what had been “a bit of a heavy time.” The segment was filmed in Los Angeles on February 5, before it was confirmed that the Sussexes would not be returning to royal life. Although they had been given “an indication” of what was to come, nothing had been finalised and at the time, the couple did not know for certain that they would be stripped of their royal patronages and titles, it was claimed.

  • What the Neera Tanden affair reveals about the Washington DC swamp

    In defense of an awful nominee and a corrupt DC culture, Republicans engage in hypocrisy while Democrats trample the causes they purport to care about ‘As evidenced by her record, Tanden is a victim in the same way war is peace, which is to say that she is not a victim, she is a perpetrator.’ Photograph: Reuters When sifting through the wreckage to try to make sense of this epoch, future anthropologists should dust off whatever records will be preserved about Neera Tanden’s star-crossed nomination to an obscure-but-powerful White House office. The whole episode is a museum-ready diorama in miniature illustrating so many things that died in the transition from democracy to oligarchy. And in this affair, all the politicians, pundits, news outlets and Democratic party apparatchiks involved are very blatantly telling on themselves. Tanden is being nominated to run the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the federal budget. As a political operative and head of a corporate-funded thinktank, she does not have especially relevant experience for the appointment – in fact, whether in gubernatorial administrations, mayoral offices or Capitol Hill budget committees, there are far more qualified experts for this gig. Moreover, her particular record would raise significant red flags as a job applicant for even a mid-level management position in any organization, much less the White House: during her tenure running the Center for American Progress, she reportedly outed a sexual harassment victim and physically assaulted an employee. While she was running the organization, CAP raked in corporate and foreign government cash and a report was revised in a way that helped a billionaire donor avoid scrutiny of his bigoted policing policy. Critics allege that Tanden busted a union of journalists. And she floated social security cuts when Democrats in Congress were trying to stop them. Even if you discount Tanden’s infamous statement about Libya and oil, as well as her vicious crusade against Senator Bernie Sanders and the progressive base of the Democratic party, all of these other items would seem to disqualify Tanden for a job atop a Democratic administration that claims to respect expertise and want to protect women, workers’ rights, social programs and government ethics. From the beginning, every single Democratic senator could have simply cited Biden’s promise to be the “most pro-union president” and stated that they would not vote to confirm anyone accused of undermining a union. Or they could have said that they are not going to allow someone who runs a corporate-funded thinktank – and whose nomination is being boosted by one of the most diabolical corporate lobbying groups in Washington – to be in charge of the White House office that can grant government ethics waivers. At the absolute barest minimum, these issues should have been major topics of discussion in her confirmation hearings and in the news media. But the opposite has happened. This record is almost nowhere to be found in the discourse. Instead, the central topic of discussion is Tanden’s late-night, out-of-control rage-tweeting. On the right, the Republican party of troll-in-chief Donald Trump is pretending that Tanden’s online rhetoric – rather than her record – is disqualifying. On the left, the Democratic noise machine is calling out the Republican party’s hypocrisy, while wrongly pretending that Tanden is a victim. These self-righteous Tanden defenders have gone completely silent about her actual record. Meanwhile, save for a few bits of solid policy-focused reporting, journalists are mostly hounding senators to get their reactions to Tanden’s tweets rather than asking them about her past behavior. Some media folk are even promoting the Neera-As-Victim mythology, somehow disregarding and distracting attention from Tanden’s alleged attack on a union of journalists. As evidenced by her record, Tanden is a victim in the same way war is peace, which is to say that she is not a victim, she is a perpetrator. But the Republican party, the Democratic party and the Washington media machine will not allow the record documenting that basic, verifiable, indisputable reality to be reviewed, litigated or considered. The debate is being deliberately ramrodded into a conversation about her online etiquette, which has absolutely no relevance to the actual appointment (and I say that as an occasional target of Tanden’s Twitter vitriol). All of this is a grotesque form of erasure. Democratic politicians, Beltway Liberals, and media voices are not merely swatting away, rationalizing or justifying Tanden’s record on the merits, they are doing something worse: they are trying to memory-hole Tanden’s record and pretend it doesn’t exist, even though she laid waste to the same liberal causes these defenders purport to care about. Moreover, the Tanden brigade – and their online army now bullying reporters with racist vitriol – are cynically relying on a political and media environment that will allow such memory-holing to take place. They are banking on the brute force of their own denialist propaganda and a miasma of distracting misinformation to make sure that nobody recognizes that they are exposing themselves. They are making clear that their hope for career advancement, their desire for White House access, and their personal connections to a thinktank powerbroker are more important to them than any social cause. Taken together, such behaviors represent more than the death of expertise. They signify the premeditated murder of the most basic facts that are supposed to inform democratic decision-making. The motives here are unstated but obvious: nobody in either party or in the Washington media wants to center Tanden’s nomination on her actual record, because if that record becomes disqualifying for career advancement in Washington, it could set a precedent jeopardizing the personal career prospects of every creature slithering through the Washington swamp. Indeed, if corruption, mismanagement, bullying, union busting and let-them-eat-cake-style austerity ideology are suddenly perceived negatively, then all the real-life Veep characters in Washington – the politicians, operatives and media elites who’ve spent their whole lives angling for fancy White House titles – could be out of luck. Appreciating the power of this tribal motivation is crucial, because it accounts for why Democrats seem to be spending as much or more political capital on trying to rescue Tanden’s nomination than on enacting policies to rescue Americans from an economic disaster. That’s no overstatement: the White House has signaled it is working the phones and pulling out all the stops for the OMB nominee at the very same time the administration is signaling a potential pre-emptive retreat on the minimum wage and a willingness to limit promised survival checks. Such skewed priorities and misguided decisions might seem inexplicable to those future anthropologists looking back at this moment. However, it will all make perfect sense to them if they understand that the Tanden affair exemplifies how in this era of end-stage democracy, the first and foremost priority of the effete political elite wasn’t helping millions of people, it wasn’t defending the progressive agenda, and it wasn’t even ensuring electoral success. It was something deeper, more tribal, and more corrupt: swamp self-preservation. David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter