Germany will refuse to take part in a US-led maritime mission in the Strait of Hormuz, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced. Maas said that there "cannot be a military solution" to the current crisis in the Persian Gulf.

Speaking in Warsaw, Poland on Wednesday, Maas said that Germany will turn down Washington's request, which was revealed by the US Embassy in Berlin on Tuesday.

That Germany would refuse to assist the American-led mission is no surprise. Washington's request was the subject of intense debate in Berlin, with opposition parties on the left and right pressuring Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government into saying no.

"We have to avoid further escalation in the Strait of Hormuz," Maas said on Wednesday. "That has always been our position." Compared to the United States and some of its allies, Germany has enjoyed relatively cordial relations with Tehran since the 1970s.

Despite Germany's refusal to join the US-led mission, some politicians in Berlin remain open to another kind of deployment. "The alternative is a European mission, if necessary without the British, if they decide for the US," Norbert Roettgen, a member of Merkel's CDU party, told German media on Tuesday.

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A mass departure of top aides shook House Democrats' campaign arm Tuesday, an exodus prompted by complaints from Hispanic and black lawmakers that the organization's staff lacked diversity.

The tumult comes in a period when race has become a partisan battlefield, following a series of Twitter attacks by President Donald Trump on House Democrats of color. In his latest blasts, he has disparaged Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings and his city of Baltimore, which is majority black.

Some Examiner disingenousness here. Trump did not attack Cummings for his race, but for his dismal performance representing Boston, a black hole (no pun intended) that HUD has sunk millions into with no discerntable results.

The shake-up also occurred as both parties are already fundraising and recruiting candidates for the 2020 elections, in which Democrats will be defending their House majority. The DCCC outspent its counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee, in the 2018 elections that saw Democrats regain House control after eight years in the minority.

Lawmakers complaining about the DCCC's staff have included Texas Democratic Reps. Filemon Vela and Vicente Gonzalez and Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Bustos, 57, became chairwoman of the campaign committee following the 2018 elections, arguing she would be effective because she has represented a swing district that swung to support Trump in 2016.

Hispanic lawmakers became disenchanted after she replaced top staffers, including many minorities, with aides who were largely white, said an aide to Gonzalez who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly. New committee leaders often name long-time aides to their staffs.

Maybe those aides were largely competent?

In a statement last weekend, Gonzalez and Vela said the DCCC was "in complete chaos." They said Bustos should appoint a person of color to be executive director "to restore confidence in the organization and to promote diversity."

Fudge also told Politico, which first reported about the DCCC's disarray, about her unhappiness about the committee's lack of diversity.

"It is shocking, and something needs to be done about it," she said.

Gabrielle Brown, spokeswoman for the Congressional Black Caucus, said black House lawmakers have been holding meetings with DCCC officials for months at which they expressed similar concerns. None of the lawmakers complained about the DCCC's performance this year in raising money and finding candidates to challenge Republicans, the committee's main job.

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