Friday News Roundup - Domestic

WAMU 88.5

Published May 3, 2019 at 10:06 AM EDT

Mourners, including Poway Mayor Steve Vaus (hat) and his wife Corrie, participate in a candle light vigil for the victims of the Chabad of Poway Synagogue shooting at the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church on April 27, 2019 in Poway, California.

On Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee — his first appearance since releasing a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 election.

Barr told the Committee that he did not misrepresent Mueller’s report, and blamed the press for “reading too much” into his initial summary.

But in a letter to Barr released on Wednesday, Mueller said otherwise. “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions,” he wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”

Barr declined to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, sparking anger among Democrats.

What’s next?

“The place where law and politics meet each other is in the impeachment process,” Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center told us. He also noted that the attorney general can be impeached by the same process as the president, according to the Constitution.

Meanwhile, President Trump has agreed to a $2 trillion infrastructure spending plan. He now has three weeks to decide how to pay for it. How will this play out in Congress?

We’re also following the latest on two anti-Semitic incidents.

On Saturday, a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one person and injuring several others. Officials are investigating whether the suspected shooter posted a racist screed on 8chan before the attack.

According to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic assaults doubled in the U.S. in 2018.

The New York Times has also apologized for a cartoon widely condemned as anti-Semitic, which depicts President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

We cover all this and more.

Text by Kathryn Fink.

GUESTS

Marc Fisher, Senior editor, The Washington Post; @mffisher

Kimberly Adams, Correspondent, Marketplace; @KA_Marketplace

Josh Gerstein, Senior legal affairs contributor, Politico; @joshgerstein

Jon Collins, Class and criminal justice reporter, MPR; @jonscollins

For more, visit https://the1a.org.