Wayne Brady To Join ‘Hamilton’ Cast As Aaron Burr (Sir)

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Whose Hamilton is this, anyway? As correctly predicted by the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones last Thursday, Wayne Brady will be taking on the role of Aaron Burr in the Chicago company of Hamilton, beginning January 17.
Brady, best known for the TV improve series Whose Line Is It Anyway? and more recently as the host of the revived game show Let’s Make a Deal, did a recent stint in the Broadway production of Kinky Boots in the leading role of drag queen Lola; he's also appeared in the Broadway cast of the musical Chicago. Brady replaces two-time Tony Award nominee Joshua Henry, who stunned as Burr when the Chicago company opened last fall; Henry departs to lead the new national touring company, which kicks off in San Francisco in March.
Brady is committed to Hamilton in Chicago through April 9, according to an announcement this afternoon from Broadway in Chicago. He'll join the remaining Chicago principals, including Miguel Cervantes as Alexander Hamilton, Ari Afar as Eliza Hamilton and Karen Olivo as Angelica Schuyler. Brady is, arguably, the first actor to be cast across Hamilton’s two years and now three companies who is better known for work onscreen than onstage. Hamilton plays the Private Bank Theatre in Chicago; tickets are currently on sale into September.

Is Sessions, Trump's Attorney General Pick, Trying to Paper Over His Record

Sen. Jeff Sessions will face tough questions from Democrats over his record on civil rights, race relations, immigration and other issues in two days of hearings on his nomination to be attorney general.
Democrats are targeting eight of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations, but Sessions’ hearing could be the most contentious of the lot, with a fellow senator taking the unprecedented step of testifying against him.
Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, will speak out against Sessions Wednesday, becoming the first sitting senator to testify against a fellow senator in a confirmation hearing. Booker said he decided to take this step because of Sessions’ comments criticizing parts of the Voting Rights Act and his recent opposition to criminal justice reform and immigration reform.
“I do not take lightly the decision to testify against a Senate colleague,” Booker said in a statement. “But the immense powers of the attorney general combined with the deeply troubling views of this nominee is a call to conscience.”
Booker is scheduled to testify alongside civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.
Thirty years ago, Sessions’ bid to become a district judge failed in the Senate over accusations that he called a black lawyer “boy” — Sessions denied this — and called the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American.” As a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, Sessions also unsuccessfully brought charges for voting fraud against an activist who was registering black voters. He has criticized the Voting Rights Act, although he voted to reauthorize it in 2006.
Sessions will produce witnesses who will speak to his record of supporting civil rights over his long career, according to Ken Blackwell, the Trump transition team’s domestic policy chief. Sessions was pictured holding hands with Lewis in a commemorative march in Selma in 2015.
“We will not allow them to ‘Bork’ him,” Blackwell said — referring to the Democratic torpedoing of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 — “no matter how sophisticated they think their effort to define and to destroy his exemplary public record is.”
There are just 48 Democrats in the Senate, and it’s unlikely the minority party would scoop up the three Republican defections needed to block Sessions’ nomination. (Also, some Democrats may end up backing Sessions — Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has already thrown his support behind him.) Still, Democrats can use the hearing to air their concerns about Sessions, who was a close adviser to Trump throughout the campaign, and make the argument that his views are outside of the mainstream.
Sessions will also likely face questions about whether he will keep the Justice Department independent of the White House so that it does not become an investigatory arm of the president, and senators will seek assurance that he will look into allegations of wrongdoing within the executive branch. Most of the rules preventing the Justice Department’s politicization are not laws, but policies that can be changed by an incoming administration, according to Politico’s Isaac Arnsdorf. While on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to throw Hillary Clinton in jail when he became president, but he has since said he’s not interested in prosecuting his former rival. Democrats are keen to find out whether Sessions would say no to a White House request to prosecute a political enemy, for example.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters Monday that he planned to ask Sessions about whether he would adequately enforce the nation’s gun laws to ensure that felons cannot purchase weapons. Sessions has an A-plus rating from the NRA.


Immigration will also likely be a hot-button topic during the hearing. Sessions has consistently favored tightening legal immigration and deporting illegal immigrants. He helped kill bipartisan efforts to reform the immigration system and offer some undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship in 2013. He’s also questioned whether people born in the United States should automatically be granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
“I’ll be asking about immigration issues, particularly related to the religious test that his prospective boss has suggested — the Muslim registry,” Blumenthal said. The senator said he will focus on “areas where I think he is clearly out of the mainstream.”
Carrie Severino, policy director at the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said she believes Sessions will enforce immigration laws more aggressively than the Obama administration did.
“People realize we do need to enforce our immigration laws,” Severino said. “Sessions is someone who’s committed his life to the rule of law.”

Trump: Only 'stupid' people think warm ties with Russia are a bad thing

Trump: solely 'stupid' individuals, fools oppose higher Russia ties...


President-elect Donald Trump same Sabbatum that "only 'stupid' individuals or fools" would dismiss nearer ties with Russia, ANd he appeared untouched when his classified informing on an intelligence report that defendant capital of the Russian Federation of meddling on his behalf within the election that catapulted him to power.

"Having sensible|an honest|a decent} relationship with Russia may be a good issue, not a nasty issue," Trump same in an exceedingly series of tweets.

He added, "We have enough issues while not one more one," and same Russians would respect "us so much more" below his administration than they are doing with Barack Obama within the White House

Trump repeatedly has questioned the assessment by yankee intelligence agencies that the Kremlin interfered within the 2016 election, and a classified report conferred to him Fri appeared to have very little modified his thinking.

The report expressly tied Russian President Vladimir Putin to election meddling and same that capital of the Russian Federation had a "clear preference" for Republican Trump in his race against Democrat Sir Edmund Percival Hillary Clinton.

But Trump tweeted that with the various world problems coping with the us, it does not would like peevish ties with Russia on the list. "Only 'stupid' individuals, or fools, would assume that it's bad" to possess a decent relationship, he said, and advised his approach may permit the adversaries to figure along to unravel "some of the various nice and pressing issues and problems with the WORLD!"

Even as intelligences officers looked back in their reports on the election, they additionally created a hard prediction: Russia is not done intrusive in U.S. politics and policymaking.

Immediately when the Gregorian calendar month. 8 election, Russia began a "spear-phishing" campaign to do to trick individuals into revealing their email passwords, targeting U.S. government workers and assume tanks that concentrate on national security, defense and policy, the report same.

The report was the foremost careful public account to this point of Russian efforts to hack the e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats, among them Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.

The unclassified version same Russian government provided emails to the anti-secrecy cluster WikiLeaks even if the website's founder, statesman Assange, has denied that it got the emails it free from the Russian government. The report noted that the emails might are had middlemen.

Russia additionally used state-funded info and paid "trolls" to create nasty comments on social media services, the report same. Moreover, intelligence officers believe that capital of the Russian Federation can apply lessons learned from its activities within the election to place its fingerprint on future elections within the us and allied nations.

The public report was minus classified details that intelligence officers shared with President Barack Obama on Thursday.

In a temporary interview with The Associated go on Fri, Trump same he "learned a lot" from his discussions with intelligence officers, however he declined to mention whether or not he accepted their assertion that Russia had intruded within the election on his behalf.

After finally seeing the intelligence behind the claims of the outgoing Obama administration, Trump free a one-page statement that didn't address whether or not Russia wanted to interfere. Instead, he said, "there was fully no result on the end result of the election" which there "was no meddling any with ballot machines."

Intelligence officers haven't created that claim. and also the report declared that the Department of Homeland Security didn't assume that the systems that were targeted or compromised by Russian actors were "involved in vote tallying."

The report free publically lacked details regarding however the U.S. learned what it same it is aware of, like any intercepted conversations or electronic messages among Russian leaders, as well as Putin, or regarding specific hacker techniques or digital tools the U.S. might have derived back to Russia in its investigations. specifically however the U.S. monitors its adversaries in Internet may be a closely guarded secret. Revealing such details might facilitate foreign governments more obscure their activities.



The unclassified version enclosed footnotes acknowledging that it "does not embrace the complete supporting data on key components of the influence campaign." It same its conclusions were a dead ringer for the classified version, that was a lot of careful.

The unclassified report same the Russian effort was each political and private.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public religion within the U.S. democratic method, denigrate Secretary Clinton and damage her electability and potential presidency," it said. "We more assess Putin and also the Russian government developed a transparent preference for President-elect Trump."

Putin possibly wished to discredit Clinton as a result of he blames her for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and since he resents her for uncomplimentary comments she has created regarding him, the report same.

Before the intelligence agencies completed their assessment, Obama declared sanctions against Russia. Trump has not same whether or not he can undo them once he takes workplace, however lawmakers area unit job for a lot of retributory measures against Russia and have very little to no craving to roll back any current sanctions.

Trump same he would appoint a team among 3 months of taking workplace to develop a concept to "aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks."

On Sabbatum, he same he wished retired subunit. Dan Coats to be national intelligence director, describing the previous member of the Senate Intelligence Committee because the right person to steer the new administration's "ceaseless vigilance against those that ask for to try and do US damage."

Coats, in an exceedingly statement free by Trump's transition team, said: "There isn't any higher priority than keeping America safe, and that i can utilize each tool at my disposal to create that happen."

Trump once again challenges U.S. intelligence agencies on Russian hacking in campaign

Russian President vladimir putin come into being to undermine the 2016 U.S. election Associate in Nursingd discredit former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an unexampled "influence campaign", eventually deciding to assist the possibilities of President-elect Donald Trump, per a unclassified report by the U.S. Intelligence Community.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public religion within the U.S. democratic method, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and damage her electability," per the report, free late on weekday"
"We more assess statesman and also the Russian government developed a transparent preference for President-elect Trump," the report continued , adding, "Putin and also the Russian government aspired to assist President-elect Trump's election possibilities once attainable."
The release of the report by the highest 3 U.S. intelligence agencies came simply hours when intelligence chiefs gave a classified informing to Trump in big apple. Outgoing President Barack Obama, World Health Organization ordered the report, was briefed on the fabric..
In the report, each the Central intelligence and also the Federal Bureau of Investigation state they need "high confidence" in their conclusions. a 3rd intelligence branch, the National Security Agency, whereas in agreement, aforementioned it had solely "moderate" confidence within the findings.
Late weekday, Trump, instead of criticizing statesman Associate in Nursing Russia for intrusive in an yank election, announce a tweet that blames the Democrats for being hacked.
''Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to require place,'' Trump tweeted.

He more tweeted that ''The Republican National Committee had robust defense,'' while not creating any regard to Russia's election change of state.
Trump known as his informing weekday "constructive", however maintained in a very statement that any efforts by Russia or alternative countries to interfere with the U.S. election had "absolutely no impact on the outcome".
Trump additionally secure to appoint a team to return up with an inspiration to combat cyberattacks on the U.S. by Russia and China, similarly as from alternative countries and entities, inside ninety days of his inauguration.
"America's safety and security are going to be my No one priority," Trump aforementioned within the statement. "The strategies, tools and techniques we tend to U.S.e to stay America safe mustn't be a discussion which will profit people who ask for to try to to us damage."
Earlier weekday, however, Trump characterised the intelligence community's insistence that Russia interfered within the elections as a "political witch hunt" throughout Associate in Nursing interview with The big apple Times, spoken language it absolutely was being allotted by opponents World Health Organization were still upset concerning losing to him.
His failure to totally endorse the U.S. intelligence community's findings even when the informing is probably going to stir more disputation.
White House interpreter twit Earnest went to date on question Trump's motives, citing a series of tweets by the president-elect.
"His issues square measure concerning one thing aside from protective classified data," Earnest aforementioned weekday. "What those issues square measure are some things that i will let him articulate."
Some U.S. lawmakers World Health Organization have additionally been briefed on the classified version of the report have come back away with way completely different determinations.
"Suffice to mention, it's gorgeous in its conclusions," aforementioned House legislator urban center Pelosi.
Another Democrat, Representative Benzedrine Thompson, aforementioned the classified report "presents compelling evidence" of Russian interference.
The ranking member of the House independent agency Committee additionally aforementioned it absolutely was "stunning and quite shameful that the president-elect has instead place his energy towards impugning the Intelligence Community he can shortly be overseeing."
"This could be a heavy chapter in Associate in Nursing current story," Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, aforementioned in a very statement weekday.
"The Intelligence Community's report on Russian activities and intentions in recent {us|United States|United States of America|America|US|U.S.|USA|U.S.A.|North yank country|North American nation} elections highlights for the American folks the direct and aggressive covert influence campaign conducted against our nation," aforementioned Burr, a Republican. "I expect that out our nation's leaders can counter these activities suitably."