The Impeachment Trail: As Congress prepares to take open testimony today, Rep. Adam Schiff of the intelligence committee says bribery could be one of the charges in a bill of impeachment against President Trump.

  Schiff told NPR that at the time the Constitution was written, bribery “connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you’re offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation’s interest.”

  Democrats say Trump demanded that Ukraine investigate Vice President Joe Biden and his son in exchange for the release of nearly $400 million in military aid approved by Congress.

  “The basic allegations against the president are that he sought foreign interference in a US election, that he conditioned official acts on the performance of these political favors,” Schiff said. “And those official acts include a White House meeting that the president of Ukraine desperately sought with President Trump, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded military assistance for a country that is at war with Russia and a country that the United States has a deep national security interest in making sure it can defend itself.”

  In other developments, The NY Times reports that President Trump considered firing the intelligence community inspector general who flagged the whistleblower report about the president’s dealings as credible and worthy of investigation.

  The Times reports according to White House sources that in recent weeks Trump has continued to raise the prospect of firing the IG, Michael Atkinson. One source told the paper that Trump sees Atkinson as disloyal — that would be disloyal to Trump rather than the country and the rule of law.

  If Trump fires Atkinson, it would be a political shot in his own foot. 

Dream On: After oral arguments yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be the only conservative justice even slightly on the fence about whether President Trump can cancel DACA, the order by President Obama that allows nearly 800,000 illegal immigrants brought into the country as children to remain in the US.

  Although Trump has the authority to cancel the executive order of his predecessor, the court is likely to consider the effect of uprooting hundreds of thousands of people and possibly returning them to countries they barely know and don’t speak the language. Under DACA, children of illegal immigrants can remain in the US if they were under 16 when their parents brought them to the country up to the year 2007.

  President Trump was pressing his anti-immigrant message yesterday on Twitter saying, “Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels.’ Some are very tough, hardened criminals.” 

  According to government figures, 90 percent of the people protected by DACA work and 45 percent are enrolled in school.

  The Trump Justice Department simply said the program was illegal and must be shut down. 

  Arguing for DACA, Washington lawyer Ted Olson said federal law requires the government to give a detailed explanation before taking an action that affects hundreds of thousands of people and the businesses that employ them.

It would be one thing, he said, “if they provided a rational explanation and took responsibility for their decision.”

  Speaking of immigration, the Southern Poverty Law Center has leaked a trove of damaging emails from the account of Trump’s chief immigration adviser, Stephen Miller.

  The emails promoted stories from white nationalist and fringe media organizations to staffers of the right wing website Breitbart. Other messages show him trying to link race and crime. Still more refer to VDARE, a prominent white nationalist website and InfoWars, a site that peddles conspiracy theories. 

Return Fire: The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal by Remington Arms, allowing the families of the Sandy Hook School massacre to proceed with their lawsuit against the gun maker. Remington made the Bushmaster assault rifle used by the shooter Adam Lanza in 2013 to kill 20 first-graders and six adults.

  Although gun makers are protected from lawsuits under federal law, the Sandy Hook families accuse Remington of violating Connecticut’s unfair trade practices law when it “knowingly marketed and promoted the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle for use in assaults against human beings.”

The Madding Crowd: Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg flew to Arkansas to file paperwork for entering the state’s Democratic presidential primary. Republican Mark Sanford, a former member of Congress and governor of South Carolina, ended his run to unseat President Trump as his party’s nominee. He never had a chance.

The Bulletin Board: A 17-year-old boy in Detroit whose lungs were destroyed by vaping received a double-lung transplant. — An unusually high tide has led to flooding in the streets of about 45 percent of Venice, Italy.

Deep Freeze: Detroit, 9 degrees; Chicago, 14; Lexington, Ky., 14; Washington, DC, 26; New York, 23; Burlington, Vt. 9; Bangor, Me., 13.

End of Days: Romance, pregnancy, birth death, marriage, and divorce; they’ve all happened on the long-running daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” In the latest plotlines, Jennifer lapsed into a coma after surgery and Ben is accused of murdering Will’s sister. Now comes a real life crisis for the actors — layoffs. The entire cast of “Days” has been given a release from their contracts as the show goes into a hiatus of undetermined length.

  With viewership of daytime soaps dropping, this could be a shrewd although brutal business move. The producers have enough shows in the can to go into next summer and they have the option to call everyone back next year for lower pay, take it or leave it. It’s enough to put an actor into a coma. 

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