1. The latest: Texts show pressure on Ukraine.

• Top U.S. diplomats encouraged Ukraine’s newly elected president to conduct an investigation linked to Joe Biden’s family in return for a high-profile visit to Washington with President Donald Trump. It soon escalated into what one feared was a “crazy” swap that risked vital U.S. military aid.
• That’s according to a cache of text messages released late Thursday by House investigators following a 10-hour interview with one of the diplomats, Kurt Volker, who stepped down as special envoy to Ukraine amid the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
• The text messages convey a distinct campaign among the three diplomats, who — apparently against some of their stated better judgment — appear to be trying to help Ukraine reset its relationship with Trump by pushing his interest in investigating his Democratic rival and the 2016 election.
• Perhaps the most significant thing the texts show is that the effort to apply pressure on Ukraine wasn’t just President Trump himself making a few random comments, but rather a foreign policy initiative carried out by administration officials.
• Read that full story, including the texts themselves, HERE.
• Meanwhile, the White House is preparing to formally object to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as soon as today, saying it won’t cooperate with the probe because it was initiated without a vote of the House.
• The White House Counsel’s Office was preparing to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi objecting to the form of the impeachment investigation.
• Pelosi last week announced that the House was beginning the formal inquiry but didn’t seek the consent of the full chamber, as was done for impeachment investigations into former Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
• Trump allies have suggested for days that without a formal vote, the House is merely conducting standard oversight, entitling lawmakers to a lesser level of disclosure from the administration. The Justice Department raised similar arguments last month, though that was before Pelosi announced the impeachment investigation.
• That full story HERE.

 

2. Charter school group gets start up funds.

• The non-profit New Schools for Alabama will soon use $400,000 in state funds for their charter school incubator program.
• New Schools Executive Director Tyler Barnett told Alabama Daily News that the funds will go toward their school founders’ program, which identifies promising local leaders and helps them cultivate a successful charter school application.
• “It’s a year-long fellowship where we identify at least two high-caliber candidates per year and support them with robust technical assistance to make sure they have a high-quality charter school application,” Barnett said.
• Charter schools are publicly funded but operate outside the traditional structure of public schools. According to the 2015 law that allows them in Alabama, their applications must be approved by either local authorizing boards or a state commission.
• The legislative Contract Review Committee approved the $400,000 to New Schools on Thursday. It’s part of a total of $800,000 in the 2020 education budget for the Alabama Charter School Commission, the state organization that can approve charter schools.
• The chosen applicants of the program also get to participate in a year-long residency program that allows them to shadow a leader or a high performing charter management organization from another state that has proven successful results with creating a charter school.
• Full story from Caroline Beck HERE.

 

A message from

The Boeing Company.

• As Alabama’s largest aerospace employer, Boeing has 3,100 employees driving innovation that affects the nation.

• Boeing’s Alabama workforce is taking a lead role in building Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket ever built to take us to the Moon and Mars. Operations in Alabama also include headquarters for Boeing Strategic Missile Defense Systems and Ground-based Midcourse Defense, the nation’s only shield against long-range ballistic missile attacks.

• Boeing also works with nearly 200 businesses across Alabama, generating $600 million in expenditures that directly and indirectly support 20,000 jobs.

• As we celebrate Manufacturing Day, this is an opportunity to pay tribute to the Boeing employees driving the economy in Alabama.

 

 

 

3. Drought worsens.

• Not sure if you noticed, but it’s pretty hot out there.
• It’s also pretty dry, and Alabama’s drought conditions are worsening.
• In fact, more than 45 million people across 14 Southern states are now in the midst of what’s being called a “flash drought” that’s cracking farm soil, drying up ponds and raising the risk of wildfires, scientists said Thursday.
• The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday shows extreme drought conditions in parts of Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and the Florida panhandle.
• Overall, nearly 20 percent of the lower 48 U.S. states is experiencing drought conditions.
• The current drought has been putting stress on a wide variety of crops across the South, including cotton, peanuts and tobacco, according to reports from the National Drought Mitigation Center.
• Read more from Jeff Martin and see the latest maps HERE.

 

4. Inside Alabama Politics.

• Rep. Mike Jones could land Community College gig;
• Shelby ‘instrumental’ in Airbus tariff decision;
• Senate poll shows Tuberville sustaining lead;
• Sen. Cam Ward eyes run for Supreme Court;
• Any appetite for paid college athletes in Alabama?

5. Sports ball.

• No. 7 Auburn (5-0, 2-0) and 10th-ranked Florida (5-0, 2-0) will face off Saturday in a battle of two of the five remaining unbeaten teams from the heavyweight Southeastern Conference.
• The winner will remain squarely in the hunt for the College Football Playoff, while the loser will face an uphill climb to stay in the mix for even a division race.
• Head coaches Gus Malzahn and Dan Mullen have faced each other five times before, with Malzahn winning three of the five. But Malzahn has never coached in “The Swamp,” Florida’s stadium known for giving opponents headaches.
• Read more on college football’s biggest matchup of the weekend plus some of my memories from Auburn-Florida games over the years HERE.

 

News Briefs.

 

• ATHENS, Ala. (AP) — Authorities say the three people found dead at a north Alabama home were killed amid a domestic dispute that ended with a double murder and suicide.
• Al.com reports Limestone County Sheriff’s spokesman Stephen Young says the bodies were found during a welfare check Wednesday. The victims were identified as 48-year-old Jerry Thomas Phillips and 52-year-old Jamie Lynn Phillips. Young says they were killed by 31-year-old Robert Eart Gilchrist III, who shot himself inside the home after police arrived.
• Young says Gilchrist was Jamie Phillips’ son and was recently released from prison in Tennessee.
• Authorities found the bodies after getting a call from a relative, who hadn’t been able to contact the Phillips. The caller says Gilchrist told her the Phillips did not wish to speak to her.

• OXFORD, Ala. (AP) — Police say the death of an 11-month-old Alabama boy who was left in a parked car was an accident, but a grand jury will still look at the case.
• Oxford Police Chief Bill Partridge told a news conference Wednesday that investigators didn’t find any criminal intent in the child’s death last week.
• He says a report is being turned over to Calhoun County prosecutors so grand jurors can review the case.
• The boy and his twin sister were found in a vehicle parked outside a car dealership last Friday. The girl was fine, but the boy died.
• Authorities say the twins’ father works at the business and mistakenly left them in the vehicle. The chief says it wasn’t the man’s normal routine to take the babies to day care.

• AUBURN, Ala. (AP) — An animal rights group was Mississippi State to retire its live bulldog mascot named Jak after he was crashed into by an Auburn University player making a mad dash for the end zone.
• News outlets report People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has sent a letter to the Mississippi college, saying it was sheer luck that Jak wasn’t severely injured or killed in the Saturday clash with tailback JaTarvious Whitlow.
• Whitlow scored the first touchdown of the game, entering the end zone with a momentum that carried him past the goal line and out of bounds, where he crashed into Jak, who then briefly left the sidelines.
• Jak’s official Twitter account says his chin and right hind leg were bruised, and he’ll return to mascot duties next week.

• Nearly 1,700 priests and other clergy members that the Roman Catholic Church considers credibly accused of child sexual abuse are living under the radar with little to no oversight from religious authorities or law enforcement, decades after the first wave of the church abuse scandal roiled U.S. dioceses, an Associated Press investigation has found.
• These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to playgrounds and day care centers. They foster and care for children.
• And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing child pornography, the AP’s analysis found.
• A recent push by Roman Catholic dioceses across the U.S. to publish the names of those it considers to be credibly accused has opened a window into the daunting problem of how to monitor and track priests who often were never criminally charged and, in many cases, were removed from or left the church to live as private citizens.
• Dioceses and religious orders so far have shared the names of more than 5,100 clergy members, with more than three-quarters of the names released just in the last year. The AP researched the nearly 2,000 who remain alive to determine where they have lived and worked – the largest-scale review to date of what happened to priests named as possible sexual abusers.
• Full story from Claudia Lauer and Meghan Hoyer HERE.

 

Headlines.

Front Pages (images link to newspaper websites, which you should visit and patronize)