edtonight on newsroom, after a marathon session, the use judiciary committee passes articles of impeachment against president trump. also, pg&e is offering more than $13 million to wildlife wildfire victims are kqed arts looks back at the milestones, trends, and activists that have galvanized the bay area as the decade draws to a close. good evening and welcome to kqed newsroom, i am michael crosby. we begin tonight with the latest developments in the impeachment cabattle on pitol hill. friday morning the house judiciarcommittee passed two articles of impeachment against the president. abuse of power and obstruction of congress. democrats claim president trump abused his office for political gain when he tried to pressure ukraine into opening an

investigation intopolitical val joe biden. and that he obstructed congre by defying numerous subpoenas for documents and testimony as part of their impeachment i probe. unittheir opposition, rushing through the impeachment process and using it to rn overtu the results of the 2016 election. president trump has defended his dealings with ukraine and called the investigation a quote witchhunt. here to discuss this our republican consultant and seniou contd to bulwark tim miller. he is with us. and also ron aldinger who joins us via skype fr washington. thank you for being here with us. why just two articles of impeachment for the democrats abuse of porur and obion of congress over president trump's dealings with ukraine? why not obstruction of justice in the mueller report, there were 10 instances listed. or bribery that the democrats were exciting even before this began. >> the democrats made a choice. they could've reached to n,the

shotloaded it up and given the president both girls, as you suggest. there was lots in the mueller report are there habeen a number of other subpoena branches of government. there was much else they could've done that they chose the rifle. they chose what th thought they could make clear to the public in short form and say we looked at all of the other th things and ght we could tolerate them. but now the whistleblower has come forward and made this so imperative so we had to go ahead and concentrate on ukraine. >> is here from tim, yourth ghts on these two articles. what do you think? >> i think the democrats have tried to make a jument that nancy speaker pelosi in particular did not want this to drag on, did not want this in impeachment. i thought this was a clean hit a aned to move forward. i think that there is if this was a legitimate attempt to ovy

to rthe president, if the goal here was we really believe the president should be removed before the 20 election, i think a longer effort looking into and investigating more of the pridents taxes, investigating his actions in raudi arabia, turkey, e would have been about to go in the hopes that something is uncovered that may be jostled some republicans through. clearly, no republicans will be jostled by this and i think we will have what is pretty close to a partyline vote in both houses. >> is tim says, ju how fast this is moving. i wonder what your thoughts are with the fact that there seem to be o directly been viable cases here. >> most people are focused on the holidays and focus on their own lives, asyou would expect. among those people who are paying a lot of attention, there seems to be a slight break in favor ofimpeachment for those who have formed an opinion. most people would rather shrug their shlders and concentrate on everything else in their life. we will see what happens when we get back after the holidays. they are talking about a fairly

short trial. but even in a short trial, many pethle will be getting r first introduction to some of the evidence, some of the facts in the case and what else might be out there about president trump. has decided to hear the case in respect to the presidents withholding of tax turns. the have lost in a uple of appeals courts and is going to the supreme court for review. we will see what they decide to do as far as it comes to the president keeping his tax turns secret when theyare under subpoena from several different sources. >> since you mentioned the senate trial, i'm curious to know what your thoughts are about the senate majority leader mcconnell already saying this is going to come under thee white house co at least as far as he's concerned. they will be directing things. >> he said he was coordinatiyt evng he did with the white house counsel. that would not be normal behavior for a juror anall 100 senators are sworn in as

jurors to preside in this case. he is going get some criticism for that. but mitch mcconnell is used to criticism and used withstanding it and he is more than glad to take the slings and arrows as long as it means he can be the leader of the republicans in the senate and therefore the leader of the es senate and the clally that president trump has. at least on capitol hill. >> tim, let me go back to you. your thoughts about the strategy of bringing up all th amendments that the republicans did that were obviously going to be shot down as maybe the presidenis going to be tried in the trial and that will be shut down by the democrats. toi don't want make a predictive tea reading here but the fact is when we look back on that, why ? those amendmen >> i think this was a quote for them 92 impeachment where they switch side or e republicans accuse the democrats are putting on a clown nose and putting on a circus. publicans as well. c for th >> showcasing. >> yeah, we will call hunter

you want to call mitch mulvaney we will call the ukrainian prosecutor. trying to make the impeachment implicated r the voters, but also seem like a ridiculous ur proc my issue on thdemocratic side, it doesn't seem like they are really working, obviously mcconnell is blkading here. the democrats aren't forcing the issue. forcing john bolton to testify, subpoena some of the higher level officials and the trump administration. that leads me to believe that they are rather happy with the president and then gets blocked in the senate and they can accuse mcconnell of obstruction. >> we all knowhow it will turn out in terms of witnesses being called for the senate trial. but i'm interested in finding out from you, you are a repuican consultant but the tr the republicanto talk about the president looking at corruption in ukraine and trying to do things to ameliorate corruption? where else does trump look for corruption in any nation in the world? r the viewers that don't te

follow me on twi am a hostile to the president republican. it is the most absurd argument, the idea that he cares about corruption is absurd in the extreme, he never showed th . anywhere el but looking specifically at ukraine and that call, he never mentions any corruption in any context aside the prisma issue and hunter biden. it's not as if they onesident his phone call also discussed, mentioned a whole list of oligarchs and hunter them. s bo was just one of it was a very narrow request about bidenand then the second request was on absurd conspiracy theory asking the esident to look into thether dnc server was hidden somewhere in ukraine. >> there are moderate democrats talking about censure and other conservatives in swing states they had strong support of president trump that they had

to buck. >> the president picked up 40 seats in the election in 2018. when you do that you are g suddenly taker for a lot of districts that voted for donald trump for president and voted for a republican florids congresscently as 2016. sohat is quite an achievement on one hand, but it also gives you a raer tenuous holdon many of those 40 seats. so a lot of these democrats are taking a sincere risk, a true risk that they are probably going to vote for impeachment anyway, but they are going to take their time announcing it. they will consult with the people back in their district, they will try to think of the very best arguments to put forward for why they are doing this. but they know that many of their voters are going to be uncomfortable with that vote and they know this is going to make life more difficult for them in 2020. >> speaking of 2020, following some of the quick quesons. what dyou foresee as far as the possibility and thinking about steve bannon and the former white howhe strategist said there is a real possibility that democrats can lose the house majority.

ron appel for example show against him to some degree and steve banner was worried they se would the white house again and lose the house. >> that would be steve bannon's opinion. but i would al say thatif president trump is reelected, that automatically would mean that the pressure would be on the democrats in their effort to keep control of the house and if the president is rebeing ected, that should mean good news for republican candidates up and down the ballot. certainly in the senate, certainly in the hous of representatives. >> tim, i know you want in cr here, the des have a tough time with their messaging, don't they? úparticularly in impeachment. i thinright beforei came over here i saw that representative arruda in orange county, this is a prime example of someone in tough spot. he came out and said he would be for impeachment rather than center. he isstrepresenting a ct that has been voting for republicans since the 50s. and so how do you try to rs balance vopeople like me republican voters thatt ers are

like trump that flipped in 2018 in orange county and voted for representative arruda. they probably don't want somebody that goes to washington and is just anti- republican agenda, and tied republican agenda for impeachment. he will walk the line. on the other hand i think he's stuck with this derecratic caucus you really start to lose support of your democratic donor base and grassroot base if you don't votefor impeachment. i think the democratic reps and voters in that are in a tough spot. i do have to say i think the bannon call to the house would actually flip back. as it sestands today, s to be a little bit of a stretch. think the most likely outcomes are the republicans up pick up baseats in districts like orange county but also oklahoma city, charleston, places that are very democratic and unfriendly time because of trump's unpopularity that they are likely to give back. >> letme think both of our guests for their expert analysis. tim miller thank you for being

with us, ron albee, thank you for being with us. thank you so much to both of you. >> thank you. it released a $13.5 billion settlement agreement with wildfire victims. the deal would resolve claims ctims of the 20 17th northbay wildfires, last year'sd campfires, other recent blazes. it also launched a turning point in pg&e's efforts to emerge from bankptcy on protec pg&s e until june 30 last year to tap into the wildfire insurance fund established by lawmakers to help utities pay for future wildfire claims. joining me now is kqed politics and government correspondent murray's marissa lagos. always happy to be with you. let's talk about the settlement it's self. who is eligible and how are

they going to pay it what >> we are talking abtht sands of wildfire victims and actuly the ghost ship fire from oakland is also part of this settlement. me past buyers as well. essentially what will happen is if the government finds off and the judge signs off in the s coming dere will be a 60 day period for wildfire survival to file an additional claim. they had to file a claim by december 31 with the bankruptcy court but then they get to te on this fund. they will really have the last decision-making power over whether to accept this pr osal. and if thdo, i think you are right, this will be, pg&e will be well on its way out of bankruptcy. >> we will talk more about the victims and so forth, but who is getting rich off of this or makingoney off of is? monday, 60 % stock in pg&e went up and that was the most in two ghmonths. >> that's stock prices have fluctuated wildly this ock prices fluctuating as an opportunity to make money. people trading on the stock or making money. offered as half cash, have stock. victims would own 20 % of the company at this go through. this was also a big win for a group of shareholders i rehave

ly been struggling, along with pg&e management to maintain control of pg&e when it exits and pepsi. theytiave been fi with bondholders who also obviously are part of the pg&e infrastructure and they, we have seena lot of money being made on the stock market and also through the legal fees ano thisuptcy. it's happening and i have a big story coming out next week that will kind of detail some of the ways people are making money on wall street. ia>> other than gubernat disapproval, what could unsettle the settleme here? what cousrupt it? >> if victims are not happy with it that could certainly end the settlement and really spell big problems for pg&e. as i said, t ey do a vote. but i do think this is the biggest piece of this bankruptcy . previously therwas a lot of concern over the fact that insurance companies had also reachedsettlements with pg&e. therwas a concern that $11 llion settlement would undercut i think what we are seeing here

, since this number is bigger, is a pretty good likelihood that it goes forward. >> what about the likelihood of privatization or municipal station? the governor talked about taking over pg&e, mayor san jose has been talking about going on a private path to publicitutdid is the settlement having much impact ou assee it question make >> i do think that this is, again if everyone at the table agrees that the framework here, it really undercuts e argument of people like mayor locarno who would like to see a ocustomer owned co-ev san francisco who wanted to buy pg&e's infrastructure. there's a lot of problems with the idea allowing mourban places that are quite frankly bigger customer base and easierr to because they don't have the same wildfire liability sort of issues to separate from the rest of the grid. so i do think this is going to make it a little harder fopeople who uld like to see a drastic change in this company. although, to be fair, we could still sethem looking into a gas and an electric company

or even into smaller utilitie i think the idea of a public power is not going to be as ttractive if you have wildfire victims lining up with all >> is on e l.a. eholders. times poll? >> yeah, people are definitely not pleased with the company but i think they also don't have, there is no consensus among voters or even repairs of what they would like to see happen. i think honestly making something public makes a lot of people nervous for a lot of reasons. >> fema is looking for about a $4 billion payoff on all of this in the oes is looking for money. there are a lot of places that are at least trying, to some extent commit to take from the money available to victims and abe victims are upset t this. >> yeah, i think again, it's not surprising the government entities are going to try to pr after ate utility to get back to feel what they are owed. i think when you end up hitting a fema and operation emergencic serv against wildfire victims and becomes more complicated. the truth is, a lot of details of where this 13.5 billioe goes ill going to be sort of left to a trustee that will be

appointed to oversee the fund. so we don't know if the government will be atall successful or if individual victims will see thlion share, i would guess it would be the latter. >> we will have to wait and see. in the meantime, thare talking about achieving confirmaon in the organization plan in advance of the 2020 deadline and they seem >> i think if erything moves forward, if the government signs off, the judge signs off, victims sign off, they could exit bankruptcy before june. >> can you talk about the weaudit? >> yeah, saw an audit that said essentially pg&e has taken $123 million that they were supposed to use under grounding power lines and ed it for the priorities. you know, i think this is par for the coursethwit company. in some ways it raises bigger questions about the regulators and state oversight than even pg&e itself. we know they have always sort of moved around money, we saw that with the san bruno msexplosion and the probwith

the gas lines. i think the issue here is does this add more fuel to the fireit for s of pg&e to push more oversight, to push the governor exercise mopower over the utility. >> back to the victims which i promise we will talk more about to find out who is eligible they are talking about things like mental anguish. i don't know how people prove thatlegitimacy of and paying for vernal funeral expenses can can you prove dying because of the wildfire. sometimes i can be ambiguous. >> one man filed a claim for a 200+ million dollar emerald he said he lost in the campfire. that will be up to the trustee who oversees this wildfire fund to sort of sort out. the victims attorneys will have some oversight of that trustee decision. there's a lot of people i involved andink there will be foan to make sure that the money is spread around as evenly as possible and to the people that need it >> the deadline for filing is one? deny the deadline for filing r a claim at all is december and in the new year we will see a 60 day period where the

victims who have filed for those claims will be able to essentially exerse right and vote on the settlement. >> we have a little time left, can you talk about the effects this will have on the insurance industry? >> we are seeing huge thproblem he insurance industries, a lot of areas where they don't they have also been paid out a lot in their claims against pg&e and they have reached this $11 million settlement. i think there are open questions about that market and reallyhat the state can do to make it more even moving forward. >> likely that pg&e, as a ttresult of the ment, will move forward on a lot of things they have been, shall we say, not exactly up ? stop >> i think that will be a key question for the bankruptcy frankly. governor right beyonddollars and sense of this bankruptcy, what kind of chges is pg&e willin put in place moving forward around their management and the management instructor for the safety structure. back to regulators, they have been sitting on a lot of these problems and i think there are

some real ouy questions what controls they need to exercise moving forward on safety questions, wildfire safety, and quite rfrankly broa safety. >> blackouts? >> i don't think those are have a lot had a lot of rain lately so we e not in that situation right now. but again, if they don't make a lot of significant investmeans and s to the way their business is done, they warn those could go on for a decade. the government doesn't want to see that, no one wants to see that. but it's habecause we have had a much more successful season in terms of the loss of property and life than we did the last two years. >> always great to talk to you, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me, michael. the giants first world series56victory in years to the deadly ghost ship e warehouse fire. thbay area has seen a lot of uperand downs the past decade. big tech and the big economy disrupted the traditional workplace. devastating wildfires brought new urgency and attention to in the 2018, oakland emerged as

a filmmaking talent wh hits like black panther. the kqed team who reviews how the last 10 years have redefined the bay area in our turbulent decade joining me now is kqed oflead editor the project nausea bonus gaia. welcome. >> ank you. >>tabby with us. let's begin with finding out how you curated this. i think it is difficult to pick 10, one from each year, when you have so many things that happened through the decade. >> absanutely. i think ne that has been living in the bay area the past decade thinking back on erything that happens can almost give you whiplash. there have been these crazy highs with the sports victories in black panther the bay area this big hollywood moment. but under that there has also been mass displacement, the widening wealth inequality. range of stories that captured all these events that have impacted culture and day-to-day life for most people ling here. >> you mentioned the things that rocked the bay area. for example, point to the

occupy movement in oakland and how that had such an extraordinary effect. m st wondering, if you can look in the tea leaves a little for us, doyou thinthat inequality if you were doing things tenure from now would still be the case for arctic's h and activistfind themselves displaced with nowhere to go? >> by the way things are going, i would inc. yes. affordable housing is not being built up being made available at the rate that it needs to be to acmmodate all the people th need it. there is a growing homelessness crisis where there is no end in sight. in the bay area, houses th were affordable are not affordable any longer. i think unle drastic measur are taken, then yes this is a problem we will be looking at and 10 more years. >> it's grim. and artists being this waste, not only artists, but you ta about the space is so difficult to find for galleries in any kind of art shows period.

>> absolutel i think in addition to the expensive there are nomany ng, places where artists can express themselves. i think we saw that in the 2013 story in the series that kicks off. at the same time, we hath e skyrocketing commercial and residental instances in san francisco. a lot of artists left the city and the region. metaphor for this tos a there were no places to go so ghost ship and then the fire of course, it was the main highlight of 2016. >> yes, so in 2016 already in e ars leading up to that, these types of unpermitted artist where hearses were already being evicted because you know, landlords saw opportunities to bring in higher-paying tenants and then strip really cemented that trend where these unpermitd warehouses became more of a liability for landlords and it e

really acceledisplacement of artists at the lowest end of the income spectrum. >> there was a positive thing that you highlighted, let's focus onthose for the moment. talkinr example about films, it was a big year for films. you write about this and also right out the empire of empire building. empire is a record company and suddenly becomes main san francisco and changes the whole terrain. >> yeah, emre has been a ge positive addition to the bay area cultural landscape in the last 10 years. i thk historically there has been this narrative of bay area artists being overlooked by be major so i think it's really incredible that causation only, the founder of it, a san francisco native, evenly built this business from the ground up and created this really smart divisional tragedy at a time where digital labels streaming and he rnessed the the major-label systems so

that's hu. >> talk about film a little more, sorry to bother you but the film last black man in san francisco, we had lots of things tat were really pretty exciting as far as san francisco is a film city. >> absolutely. with black panther d the ng films that followed, it really t a spotlight on the bay area as this hub of filmmaking talent. at the same time, kind of similar to music, the bay area reis notesented in hollywood very often. i think theslyfilmmakers re took that opportunity to say in somedeeper often about displacement and inequality. as we saw in sorry to bother you, it's all about kind of how the workforce is being exploited . and then black panther in san francisco and blind spotting as welley. deal with gentrification in san francisco and oakland. there were nods to that in end when they come back to build the wakonda science center . >> leme go back to the ghost ship for a moment, that not prly epitomizes the struggle of

entst as far as you are concerned? >> i think it represented a huge cultural loss. the ss people who away in ghost ship were really pillars of the arts community in oakland and more broadly in the bay ar a lot of them were making work that may not be mainstream commercial, but it did have a lot of impact just on the region. they created this real tightknit community where people could make experimental work that is really pushing the envelope in a lot of ysin addition to the personal loss of all the people that were affected by these 36 deaths, it was a great cultural loss for the region as well. >> in 2016, you spotlight the problem with release, racial shootings, deaths. talk about turbulce and devastating things that occurred in the

racist attacks put up by the police. but there was an upside to that. me serious changes. ought not only resignation of the police chief but serious reform pain the police ment. >> it really did. that was one of the stories i was very excited to highlight wi. the hunger stri it started in 2016 when the wrapper clipped out brought four other activists together and they campt in front of the poli station. before long, thousands of people joined them in protest and they waged one of the longest hunger strikes in san francisco history. i think at the time it was a little unclear what effects i would have and ere it was going but shortly after it did leado the chief resigning from spd and shortly after, the department of justice gave the police department 272 accommodations for reform. as of now, they have only completed about 10 % of them. although there waa pretty significant drop in officer involved shootings, especially

in 2019, there hadn't been one until a couple weeks ago when theralwas a nonfshooting from s fpd. >> it certainly has en a turbulent decade but thank you so much for outlining it for us and the work your am has done. appreciate it. >> thank you. that will deliver us. you can learn more about the milestones and movements i had impacts on the bay area in 2010 by going tokqed.org/ r turbulent decade. as always, you can find more of kqed.org/newsroom. i am michael krasner ian, thank you for joining us.

robert: articles of impeachment head to the floor.>> he third time in a little over a century and a half, the house judiciary committee has voted articles of impeachment against the president for abuse of power and obstruction of congress. >> aye. robert: bate lines arerawn. >> the evidence is overwhelming and uncontested. >> this is a travesty. >> to use the power of impeachment on this nonsense is an embarrassment to this country. robert: and republicans turn the spotlight to the justice department inspector general report. next. ♪ announcer: this is "washington week." funding is provid by -- >> before we talk about y