Spring allergy season has begun. Where is it worse in Canada?
The spring allergy season has started early in many parts of Canada, with high levels of pollen in some cities already. Experts weigh in on which areas have it worse so far this season.
House Democrats say they will vote on legislation this fall to curb the power of the president, an effort to rein in executive powers that they say President Donald Trump flagrantly abused.
The legislation, expected to be introduced Tuesday, would limit the president's pardon power, strengthen laws to ban presidents from receiving gifts or payments from foreign governments, better protect independent agency watchdogs and whistleblowers from firing or retribution and give Congress better tools to enforce subpoenas. It was written with the input of President Joe Biden's White House and incorporates a previous version that Democrats introduced just before the November election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill is intended to restore checks and balances between Congress and the executive branch “so that no president of whatever party can ever assume that he or she has the power to usurp the power of the other branches of government.”
The legislation, Pelosi said, is “specific in its remedies and its inoculations against future abuse.”
The bill comes as Trump mulls another run for president and as Democrats defend a thin majority in the 2022 midterm elections. Most provisions in the legislation are in direct response to actions by Trump or his administration that Democrats saw as abuses of presidential power, including his firing of agency whistleblowers, his defiance of congressional subpoenas and his campaign's interactions with Russians in the 2016 election.
The Democrats say they negotiated the bill with the White House, which thought some aspects of the original legislation went too far. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat on the measure, said Tuesday that while they haven't agreed with the administration on every provision, they made specific tweaks to accommodate them. Those changes would allow the White House to continue to protect some information from subpoenas and shield Congress from seeing some confidential communications between administration officials, Schiff said.
“We have accommodated their feedback, but we're not in complete accord,” and will continue to work with the White House, Schiff said. He added that Biden has been supportive of the reforms generally.
White House spokesman Chris Meagher said in a statement that administration officials “strongly support efforts to restore guardrails and breathe life back into those longstanding norms” and that they are working with Congress to do that.
The bill is likely to be a tough sell in the 50-50 Senate, where Democrats need at least 10 votes to pass legislation and where Republicans have been reluctant to defy the former president.
Schiff said that loyalty to Trump is what makes the bill necessary.
“What was also very revealing in the last four years is that so many of our current checks and balances really depended on members of Congress of both parties having a deep abiding conviction of support for their own institution - that each would jealously guard their own institution,” he said. “And that broke down. When members were more devoted to the person of the president than they were to the institution, that's made I think many of these reforms necessary.”
The legislation would prevent presidents from pardoning themselves - Trump once tweeted he had the “absolute power” to do just that as he was being investigated by the Justice Department - and would tighten federal bribery laws to clarify that a pardon could be considered a “thing of value.” It suspends the statute of limitations for any federal offense committed by a sitting president or vice president and strengthens regulations around foreign gifts.
It would also expedite the judicial process for enforcing congressional subpoenas and allow the court to levy fines on officials who willfully fail to comply. Dozens of Trump administration officials faced little consequence for defying subpoenas and ignoring information requests during Democrats' two impeachment probes and other investigations.
The bill would require stronger reporting requirements for campaigns and clarify and enhance criminal penalties for campaigns that accept foreign information sought or obtained for political advantage - a response to the Trump campaign's interactions with Russians during the 2016 campaign, including conversations between the president's son Donald Trump Jr. and intermediaries about information that could incriminate Democrat Hillary Clinton.
A report by special counsel Robert Mueller found multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, but determined there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between the two.
The spring allergy season has started early in many parts of Canada, with high levels of pollen in some cities already. Experts weigh in on which areas have it worse so far this season.
Premier Doug Ford says that lawsuits launched by four Ontario school boards against a trio of social media platforms are “nonsense” and risk becoming a distraction to the work that really matters.
Multiple flight attendants from Pakistan International Airlines have abandoned their jobs and are believed to have sought asylum in Canada in the past year and a half, a spokesperson for the government-owned airline says.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
Calgary police have shut down a number of bridges into and out of the downtown core as officers deal with a distraught individual.
King Charles III gave public remarks for Maundy Thursday, addressing the importance of acts of friendship, following his and Catherine, Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnoses.
Peggy is a stout and muscular Staffordshire bull terrier, and Molly is a magpie, an Australian bird best known for swooping on humans during breeding season, not for befriending dogs. But in an emotional video posted online, Peggy’s owners announced that the animals had been separated.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Rainfall warnings of up to 90 millimetres, air quality advisories and other alerts have been issued for seven Canadian provinces, according to the latest forecasts.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.
The owner of an e-bike business says he has doubts police will find the roughly $500,000 worth of product that was stolen from a shipping container last week, while police say he “complicated” their investigation by posting video of the theft.
At least one Costco store in Ottawa has implemented a digital card scanner for member entry, a departure from the traditional in-person card check, in an effort to crack-down on shoppers who have not paid a membership fee.
With the solar eclipse just a week away, it’s time to think about how to safely view the celestial show.