Stormy Daniels on ‘60 Minutes’

Adult film star Stormy Daniels has said in a lawsuit that she had an "intimate" relationship with Donald Trump a decade before he became president. In an interview which aired Sunday night, she said that she was threatened in 2011 inside a Las Vegas parking garage with her infant daughter present and was told not to go public with her story. 

In a wide-ranging interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said the threat came weeks after she'd agreed to tell her story to a sister publication of InTouch magazine, an interview that didn't run at the time. 

“I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. Taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the backseat, diaper bag, you know, getting all the stuff out. And a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story’,” Daniels said. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone,” she added. 

Daniels said that she didn't go to the police because she was scared and that she never again saw the man who threatened her, but she said she'd “100 percent” be able to recognize him if she ever saw him again.

The Chicago Gun Situation

Rahm Emanuel is the 44th and current mayor of Chicago. A member of the Democratic Party, Emanuel was elected in 2011 and re-elected on April 7, 2015. Emanuel is expected to run for a third term in 2019. 

Chicago, a city that has consistently ranked among the top in homicides in recent years and become synonymous with guns, has now seen a full year of reductions in gun violence, police said. Police officials in the nation’s third-largest city are expressing cautious optimism that they’re turning the corner in reducing the scourge of gun violence that’s accounted for more thousands of deaths in Chicago during the past two years. 

Homicides are down 22%, and shooting incidents have decreased by 28% through the first two months of 2018 compared with the same point last year, according to police department data released Thursday. 

“The progress we have made over the last 12 months to reduce gun violence in Chicago could not have been achieved without the hard work and dedication of our police officers who carried out our data-driven, technology-led crime strategy,” said Superintendent Eddie Johnson. “Despite this progress, our work is not yet complete.” 

Chicago recorded approximately 650 homicides in 2017 and 762 homicides in 2016, the vast majority in several poor and predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides. It matched a level typical of the late 1980s and 1990s, when many major metro areas dealt with the scourge of gang-fueled drug violence. 

Chicago recorded 286 shooting incidents and 78 slayings through the first two months of 2018, down from 399 shooting incidents and 101 slayings at the same point last year. The city has continually been pilloried by President Trump, who has compared Chicago to a war-torn nation. 

While Chicago has been the center of Trump’s ire, it had a lower per-capita homicide rate last year than five of the 50 largest U.S. cities, according to a USA TODAY analysis. Baltimore, New Orleans, Detroit, Kansas City and Memphis all had higher rates.

Even with the reduction in shootings and deaths, Chicago continues to be bedeviled by gun violence.

Earlier this month, popular Chicago police commander Paul Bauer was gunned down in broad daylight outside a downtown state government building.

Media Coverage of “March for our Lives”

The report on the actual size of the March for Our Lives crowd was spotlighted in a CBS News article. The report claimed that more than 200,000 people attended the demonstration in Washington D.C. on Saturday, according to Digital Design & Imaging Service Inc., (DDIS). The Virginia-based firm uses a proprietary method for calculating crowd size using aerial photos. 

The peak crowd size was 202,796 people, with a margin of error of 15 percent, the DDIS said. The crowd reached its largest size at 1 p.m., according to the company's estimates. The organizers put the total number of attendees at closer to 800,000. 

Multiple newspapers reported the 800,000 number but attributed it to “march organizers.” Many cable news outlets generalized with “hundreds of thousands.” 

The largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history was the 2017 Women's March, with a crowd size of 440,000 people, according to DDIS’ estimates.

Amid homeless ‘emergency,’ LA seeks to shelter homeless people

Last Friday, the Los Angeles City Council considered a motion that would enact a plan to provide housing for every transient in the city, as it continues to grapple with a housing shortage which has spiked rents and sent thousands of people into homelessness. Legislators are considering proposals that could pump an additional $1.5 billion into homelessness prevention next year, efforts that could lead to thousands of new beds for those needing shelter. 

The motion, introduced by Councilmen Mike Bonin and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, says there is little evidence that anything is being done to create or improve shelters for the homeless in the city and that a true sense of emergency is needed to deal with the problem. 

The effort comes last week as seven members of the city council also pledged to build 222 units of permanent housing for homeless individuals in each of the city’s 15 council districts by 2020.

In February, the council unanimously approved putting about 60 homeless people in trailers on a downtown lot at Arcadia and Alameda streets. The trailers, which contain bathrooms, showers and beds, are expected to cost about $2 million to build and another $1 million to operate. 

The motion being considered seeks a number of actions from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority and from some city departments. The council approved a motion last Friday requesting that the countywide Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority develop a “framework of an Emergency Response to Homelessness Plan, outlining what steps and what funds would be required to provide an alternative to encampments for 100 percent of the Los Angeles homeless population by December 31, 2018.” 

The 2017 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count found that 57,794 people are living on the streets of L.A. County, a 23 percent jump from the year before. Within the city of L.A., that number is more than 34,100.

Sen. Kristen Gillibrand wants a Federal Jobs Guarantee

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand told The Nation that she supports a government backed jobs guarantee. Gillibrand is the Senator from New York, taking over for Hillary Clinton in 2009. She is now expected to be a front runner in the 2020 election as a Democratic candidate. 

In an attempt to gain more middle-class voters, she has changed some of her views to follow a more socialist perspective. 

In a statement to The Nationabout a government backed job guarantee, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand stated: “Guaranteed jobs programs, creating floors for wages and benefits, and expanding the right to collectively bargain are exactly the type of roles that government must take to shift power back to workers and our communities.” Democratic think tanks have been prepping detailed policies for how the federal government can guarantee that every worker can get a job, over the past few years.

Poll: Less than half of Americans trust Facebook to obey U.S. privacy laws

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that was released on Sunday, March 25, fewer than half of Americans trust Facebook to obey privacy laws. 

Question: “How much, if at all, do you trust these companies to obey laws that protect your personal information?” They listed the options of, Apple Inc, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo.

• 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information
• 66 percent who said they trust Amazon
• 62 percent who trust Google
• 60 percent for Microsoft
• 47 percent for Yahoo

Another question asked, “How often, if at all, do you use or access the following sites/services? 51% said they use Facebook ‘continuously throughout the day’, Facebook was the most used site/service. 

It is too early to say if distrust will cause people to step back from Facebook, eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said. Customers of banks or other industries do not necessarily quit after losing faith, she said. 

Facebook shares tumbled 14 percent last week, while the hashtag #DeleteFacebook gained traction online and the company’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, faced demands that he appears before U.S. lawmakers to testify in a hearing.

American Adults Just Keep Getting Fatter

New data shows that nearly 40 percent of American’s were obese in 2015 and 2016, a sharp increase from a decade earlier, federal health officials reported Friday. In 2005, about 32 percent of American’s were obese. The prevalence of severe obesity in U.S. adults is also rising, heightening their risks of developing heart disease, diabetes and various cancers. 

Public health experts said that they were alarmed by the continuing rise in obesity among adults and by the fact that efforts to educate people about the health risks of a poor diet do not seem to be working. 

While the latest data does not explain why Americans continue to get heavier, nutritionists and other experts cite lifestyle, genetics and, most importantly, a poor diet as factors. 

U.S. fast-food sales rose 22.7 percent from 2012-2017, according to Euromonitor, while packaged-food sales rose 8.8 percent.

Mail Time!

• Bill, I sincerely believe that Trump should fire Mueller immediately unless Mueller can identify a crime that Trump has committed. What does Trump have to lose? 

• All I am hearing on cable news is speculation. I so appreciate the fact that you do not speculate and never tolerated your guests speculating. The most alarming issue is the speculated remarks reported as fact. 

• My local NBC Boston station reported numerous times Saturday and again on Sunday that the marches were "Organized by Students" and then in an interview with a local Boston student who attended a rally at the Boston Commons, the student mouthed one of the talking points you mentioned would happen.

Word of the Day: Bumptious