5: How Cops Could Run Wild Under Trump
In the early hours of an icy morning in 1993, Robert Beck and his college friends left a Halloween party in Pittsburgh. The 23-year-old had borrowed his parents’ car for the occasion, and the vehicle swerved as he moved to pull out of a parking lot. That’s around the time local cop Anthony Williams blocked Beck’s path with his cruiser, apparently determined to question the rehabilitation counselor about drunk driving. Beck would later testify in court that he was beaten and pistol-whipped in the course of being arrested, and that the police officer was never disciplined despite a history of excessive force.
Beck’s was just one of many Pittsburgh-area police brutality cases to produce litigation and draw media scrutiny in the 1990s. At the time, however, there was no formal mechanism by which the federal government could rein in rogue cops. But in 1994, Congress passed a bill that allowed the feds—and specifically the Department of Justice—to intervene when they suspected systemic civil rights violations. An ensuing probe of the Pittsburgh PD produced the first-ever settlement between the DOJ and local law enforcement.
Vice News
4: DONALD TRUMP HOPES TO ABOLISH INTELLIGENCE CHIEF POSITION, REVERSE CIA REFORMS
DONALD TRUMP’S NATIONAL security team is discussing plans to dismantle the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the organization that was created in response to the 9/11 attacks, according to an adviser to the president-elect and a former senior intelligence official. The news comes as the current director of national intelligence, James Clapper, announced his resignation Thursday.
The Trump national security team has been meeting in recent days, planning the removal of the cabinet-level position and assessing how to fold parts of the organization into the 16 federal intelligence agencies it oversees, according to both people with knowledge of the plans. If the restructuring is accomplished, it would undo legislation passed by Congress in 2004, dismantle the biggest American intelligence bureaucracy created since the end of World War II, and roll back a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.
The national security team believes the effort will be “long and messy” but is confident it will be successful, according to the former senior U.S. intelligence official who is consulting with those involved in the transition.
Both sources asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about confidential plans.
The Intercept
3: After Trump Elected, Nearly 200 Nations Proclaim “Urgent Duty” to Implement Paris Climate Accord
As Democracy Now! broadcasts from the U.N. climate talks in Marrakech, Morocco, we report that nearly 200 nations have agreed on a proclamation that declares implementation of the Paris climate accord to be an “urgent duty.” This comes just over a week after the election of Donald Trump, who has vowed to pull the United states out of the Paris Agreement and has called climate change a Chinese-created hoax. Meanwhile, climate activists staged protests targeting corporate sponsors of the climate talks.
Democracy Now
2: Air strike hits children’s hospital in Syria’s Aleppo
An air strike has hit a children’s hospital in Syria’s eastern Aleppo, forcing its medical staff to evacuate their patients, including several newborn babies still in incubators.
The moment of the attack on Friday was captured by an Al Jazeera crew, including journalist Amro Halabi, who was reporting about survivors of previous Syrian government and Russian air strikes in the rebel-held areas of the city.
Halabi was showing scenes of a man and his two children, who suffered breathing problems from an earlier attack on Friday, when the room turned dark immediately followed by a loud explosion.
Aljazeera
1: Trump cabinet appointments will ‘undo decades of progress’, rights activists say
Rights activists have condemned Donald Trump for three cabinet appointments they say could “undo decades of progress” towards racial equality and effectively legitimise the use of torture.
The US president-elect on Friday picked Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Representative Mike Pompeo as director of the CIA and retired lieutenant-general Michael Flynn as national security adviser.
The hawkish trio have made inflammatory statements about race relations, immigration, Islam and the use of torture, and signal a provocative shift of the national security apparatus to the right. For liberals they appeared to confirm some of their darkest fears about the incoming Trump administration.
Sessions, a 69-year-old senator from Alabama, a state with a tormented history of segregation that spurred Rosa Parks’ bus protest, has been accused of racist comments in the past. He will succeed two African Americans – Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch – who served under Barack Obama.
The Guardian
