January 1, Dems Ponder Impeachment Exit Strategy 

This Day in History | 1941 

Germany declares war on the United States. 

Good morning Middle Americans, 

Looks like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is looking for the impeachment exit ramp. 

She’s not putting her name on the plan, but at least four House Democrats are looking to censure President Trump. That would be one stop short of impeachment. It’s a slap on the wrist, and meaningless outside of Washington D.C..  That would still require Republicans to publicly admit that President Trump did something wrong. And it’s not clear if there are any GOP members willing to go there. 

Also today, the program that trains Saudi pilots on US military bases has been grounded after last week’s shooting in Pensacola.  

Bill Cosby will stay behind bars. The Pennsylvania Superior court denied his request to have his conviction overturned.  And finally, an Arizona man has a very unique emotional support animal. It’s actually thousands of animals.  

Read all about it!

– Fraser Dixon 

Small Group of Democrats Floats Censure Instead of Impeachment

(Politico) – It’s an unlikely outcome, but it underscores lingering angst among some moderates.

A small group of vulnerable House Democrats is floating the longshot idea of censuring President Donald Trump instead of impeaching him, according to multiple lawmakers familiar with the conversations.

Those Democrats, all representing districts that Trump won in 2016, huddled on Monday afternoon in an 11th-hour bid to weigh additional — though unlikely — options to punish the president for his role in the Ukraine scandal as the House speeds toward an impeachment vote next week.

Read more from Politico here

Nearly 175 Saudi Military Aviation Students Grounded in U.S. After Base Shooting

(Reuters) – More than 300 Saudi Arabian military aviation students have been grounded as part of a “safety stand-down” after a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people last week at a U.S. Navy base in Florida, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

The FBI has said U.S. investigators believe Saudi Air Force Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, acted alone when he attacked a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, before he was fatally shot by a deputy sheriff.

The shootings have again raised questions about the U.S. military relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has come under heightened scrutiny in Congress over the war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year.

Read more about the suspended training program here 

Bill Cosby Loses Appeal of Sexual Assault Conviction

(AP) – Bill Cosby lost his bid to overturn his sexual assault conviction Tuesday, as an appeals court upheld the verdict in the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.

In its ruling, the Superior Court affirmed the right of prosecutors to call other accusers to bolster their case — the same issue fought over in movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial, now set for Jan. 6.

“This decision is a reminder that no one is above the law,” Andrea Constand, the victim in Cosby’s case, said in a text message to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Cosby’s lawyers had complained that the judge had let five women testify at last year’s retrial in suburban Philadelphia, although he had let just one woman testify at the first trial in 2017.

Read more here 

Arizona Man Registers Bees as Emotional Support Animals

(Fox News) – An Arizona man’s emotional support animal is creating quite a buzz.

Prescott Valley, Ariz., resident David Keller thinks the application process to register an emotional support animal is too easy — so he tried registering a swarm of bees as his service pet.

It worked.

“A lot of people thought it was hilarious and a lot of people were getting upset,” Keller tells CBS affiliate WTRF-TV. He recently went on a website called USAServiceDogRegistration.com and successfully uploaded a random photo of a beehive as a service animal “to bring awareness to the issue that anyone could do this,” he explains.

Learn more from WTRF-TV here