ImageA row of gates guards the entrance to Amazon Go.Credit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesSEATTLE — The first clue that there’s something unusual about Amazon’s store of the future hits you right at the front door. It feels as if you are entering a subway station. A row of gates guard the entrance to the store, known as Amazon Go, allowing in only people with the store’s smartphone app.Inside is an 1,800-square foot mini-market packed with shelves of food that you can find in a lot of other convenience stores — soda, potato chips, ketchup. It also has some food usually found at Whole Foods, the supermarket chain that Amazon owns.But the technology that is also inside, mostly tucked away out of sight, enables a shopping experience like no other. There are no cashiers or registers anywhere. Shoppers leave the store through those same gates, without pausing to pull out a credit card. Their Amazon account automatically gets charged for what they take out the door.On Monday, the store will open to the public for the first time. Gianna Puerini, the executive in charge of Amazon Go, recently gave tours of the store, in downtown Seattle. This is a look at what shoppers will encounter. ImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesImageThere is no need for a shopping cart. Products can go straight into a shopping bag.Credit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesThere are no shopping carts or baskets inside Amazon Go. Since the checkout process is automated, what would be the point of them anyway? Instead, customers put items directly into the shopping bag they’ll walk out with. Every time customers grab an item off a shelf, Amazon says the product is automatically put into the shopping cart of their online account. If customers put the item back on the shelf, Amazon removes it from their virtual basket. The only sign of the technology that makes this possible floats above the store shelves — arrays of small cameras, hundreds of them throughout the store. Amazon won’t say much about how the system works, other than to say it involves sophisticated computer vision and machine learning software. Translation: Amazon’s technology can see and identify every item in the store, without attaching a special chip to every can of soup and bag of trail mix. ImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesThere were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads. For now, Amazon says its technology simply changes the role of employees — the same way it describes the impact of automation on its warehouse workers. “We’ve just put associates on different kinds of tasks where we think it adds to the customer experience,” Ms. Puerini said.Those tasks include restocking shelves and helping customers troubleshoot any technical problems. Store employees mill about ready to help customers find items, and there is a kitchen next door with chefs preparing meals for sale in the store. Because there are no cashiers, an employee sits in the wine and beer section of the store, checking I.D.s before customers can take alcohol off the shelves.ImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesMost people who spend any time in a supermarket understand how vexing the checkout process can be, with clogged lines for cashiers and customers who fumble with self-checkout kiosks.At Amazon Go, checking out feels like — there’s no other way to put it — shoplifting. It is only a few minutes after walking out of the store, when Amazon sends an electronic receipt for purchases, that the feeling goes away. Actual shoplifting is not easy at Amazon Go. With permission from Amazon, I tried to trick the store’s camera system by wrapping a shopping bag around a $4.35 four-pack of vanilla soda while it was still on a shelf, tucking it under my arm and walking out of the store. Amazon charged me for it.ImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesImageCredit...Kyle Johnson for The New York TimesA big unanswered question is where Amazon plans to take the technology. It won’t say whether it plans to open more Amazon Go stores, or leave this as a one-of-a-kind novelty. A more intriguing possibility is that it could use the technology inside Whole Foods stores, though Ms. Puerini said Amazon has “no plans” to do so. There’s even speculation that Amazon could sell the system to other retailers, much as it sells its cloud computing services to other companies. For now, visitors to Amazon Go may want to watch their purchases: Without a register staring them in the face at checkout, it’s easy to overspend.

closeVideoTrump on protests: ‘I don’t think Democrats have courage to control these people, suburbs are next’Protests move into residential neighborhoods; reaction from ‘Outnumbered.’Conservative commentator Candace Owens blasted Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Thursday for suggesting President Trump's rhetoric about the suburbs was a "racist dog whistle."Amid the unrest that has taken place in cities across the country, Trump has attempted to channel his "law and order" message to the suburbs, warning that if Democrats are in control, the violence will expand beyond the urban areas."Biden REFUSED to use the term, LAW & ORDER! There go the Suburbs," Trump tweeted Wednesday, referring to an exchange they had during Tuesday's presidential debate in Cleveland.CHRIS WALLACE: TRUMP 'BEARS THE PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENED' AT THE DEBATEBiden fired back, insisting Trump's comments about the suburbs have racial undertones."Enough with the racist dog whistles, Donald. You wouldn’t know a suburb unless you took a wrong turn," Biden said, repeating the quip he made from the debate.That tweet didn't sit well with Owens.BET FOUNDER SUGGESTS HE'S VOTING AGAINST BIDEN: 'I WILL TAKE THE DEVIL I KNOW OVER THE DEVIL I DON'T KNOW'"This is such an odd response — “Suburbs” is a racist dog whistle?" Owens wrote.She then asked, "Do Black people not live in the suburbs, @JoeBiden?"CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The subject of "law and order" has become a dominant theme during the presidential race. The Trump campaign is pushing the message that the chaos in Democrat-run cities will only continue if Biden is elected president while the Biden campaign is telling voters that such violence is happening under Trump's watch.

President Donald Trump’s latest and greatest scandal centers on a key decision: his suspension of US military aid to Ukraine.The Eastern European nation was expecting nearly $400 million in US support — including weapons, training, and advisers — to boost its effort to fight off Russia which invaded the country in 2014. But by the time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky got on the now infamous July 25 call with Trump, that aid had yet to be sent. It’s therefore no surprise Zelensky mentioned the assistance to Trump, to which Trump responded he’d like Zelensky to do him a “favor” in return: investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.It certainly seems like a quid pro quo was pretty clearly implied: You want your aid? Help me dig up dirt on my 2020 political rival.Trump, however, continues to plead his innocence on Twitter by claiming nothing improper happened on the call. “IT WAS A PERFECT CONVERSATION WITH UKRAINE PRESIDENT!”— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2019 Which means much of the current drama threatening Trump’s presidency comes down to this: Exactly why was the military aid held up in the first place?What we know is already damning.The $391 million in military aid to Ukraine had already been approved in the 2019 federal budget. It was meant to bolster Ukrainian forces in their ongoing conflict against Russian invaders in the country’s east and included money for arms and radar systems as well as funding for naval forces and NATO aid.The Trump administration initially told Congress it was releasing the aid to Ukraine on February 28. It repeated that assertion to Congress again on May 23, but failed to explain to lawmakers but struggled to explain — both publicly and to the lawmakers who approved the aid — exactly why the funds were withheld. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell couldn’t get a straight answer from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper over the summer on why the aid hadn’t been dispersed yet.But then on September 11, the Trump administration suddenly disbursed the money.So what changed? It’s not entirely clear.Senate Republicans immediately said it happened because Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) threatened to block $5 billion in Pentagon spending for 2020 if the aid wasn’t sent. The next day, GOP members of the Senate Appropriations Committee said the assistance had been held while the White House assessed whether Zelensky, who came to power in May, was aligned with the US and NATO over Russia. That was an odd argument, since one of Zelensky’s main electoral platforms was combating Moscow and ending the war.But thanks to reports in the Washington Post and New York Times this week, we now have a little more information.Mick Mulvaney, the dual-hatted acting White House chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget, told leaders at the State Department and Pentagon in mid-July that Trump wanted the money withheld because he had “concerns” about the aid’s necessity. Those departments were instructed to inform members of Congress with questions about the delay that the money was coming but that its disbursement had been held up by “interagency process.” Those questions did come, but lawmakers received little information. That timing is important, since Mulvaney’s announcement came about a week before Trump and Zelensky spoke on the phone. What makes matters worse, some say, is that the directive came from the president himself — meaning Trump may have used the new delay as leverage to extract something from his Ukrainian counterpart.Trump has changed his story about why he personally withheld the military support at least twice. On Monday, Trump told reporters that his decision was due to concerns about corruption in Zelensky’s new government. But asked a similar question on Tuesday, Trump’s talking point suddenly changed: now he said he’d withheld the aid out of frustration that European countries were not doing enough to support Ukraine themselves.“My complaint has always been, and I’d withhold again, and I’ll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine, because they’re not doing it,” Trump told reporters ahead of his speech to the United Nations General Assembly.The change from Monday to Tuesday was captured in this clip put together by CNN. Wow -- CNN put together this clip highlighting how Trump changed his public rationale for withholding aid to Ukraine from yesterday to today pic.twitter.com/25QJ8VPsnU— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 24, 2019 Ukraine, meanwhile, has tried to stay out of it. Ahead of Zelensky’s meeting with Trump at the UN this week, the Ukrainian president told the press that he doesn’t want to interfere in US domestic politics.Put together, it’s still unclear just why Trump delayed the nearly $400 million in military assistance. Defenders say Trump has long questioned why the US spends money on others’ defenses, while critics argue he conveniently used it as leverage so Zelensky would “do us a favor,” as the White House call summary shows the president saying.The critics’ argument is bolstered by one thing in particular: Trump’s obsession with having Ukraine look into Biden’s family.The exchange at the middle of Trump’s call with Zelensky centers on Joe Biden’s role in efforts to remove Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in 2016. Trump and his allies have asserted — without any evidence — that Biden’s participation in Shokin’s ouster was itself corrupt and specifically that it was aimed at protecting his son Hunter.At the time, Hunter Biden was on the board of a company, Burisma, whose owner was under investigation for corruption and money laundering. Shokin was believed to be hindering that investigation and anti-corruption investigation in Ukraine more broadly. This was frustrating the Ukrainian executive branch, the US, international finance officials, and some NATO allies — all of which had stakes in a corruption-free Ukraine, given the civil and military aid some were funneling to the country to help it fend off Russian aggression. So in 2016, Biden told the Ukrainian government that their loan guarantees would be cut off unless they removed Shokin. He told the story at a session at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours,” Biden said. “I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’” The former vice president said after the threat, “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”Though Biden may have taken credit for it, this was hardly his unique idea. “Everyone in the Western community wanted Shokin sacked,” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told the Wall Street Journal. “The whole G7, the IMF, the EBRD, everybody was united that Shokin must go, and the spokesman for this was Joe Biden.”So despite his boast last year, Biden seem to have played a very minor role in Shokin’s firing. Within the Obama administration, the idea to remove him came from the US’s embassy in Ukraine, and the sentiment the prosecutor was hindering anti-corruption efforts was shared by the US’s partners and Ukrainian citizens. Nevertheless, Trump maintains Biden personally had Shokin fired in order to protect Hunter from criminal liability. This does not make a lot of sense considering the removal of Shokin had the potential to hurt Hunter, given the US hoped to replace the prosecutor with someone more fully committed to pursuing an anti-corruption agenda. Biden himself has called the accusation false and has said Trump concocted it to distract from the whistleblower investigation: “Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum,” Biden said Saturday. “And he’s using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me.”The question now is if Trump’s abuse of power will be proven without a shadow of a doubt. One way to know for sure would be to uncover exactly why Trump withheld the Ukraine aid in the first place.A whistleblower in the intelligence community has sparked a political scandal involving President Trump and a pair of Bidens. Vox’s Andrew Prokop explains.Looking for a quick way to keep up with the never-ending news cycle? Host Sean Rameswaram will guide you through the most important stories at the end of each day.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Will you help keep Vox free for all? There is tremendous power in understanding. Vox answers your most important questions and gives you clear information to help make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. A financial contribution to Vox will help us continue providing free explanatory journalism to the millions who are relying on us. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today, from as little as $3.

closeVideoDoes chaos of Iowa caucuses tarnish Democratic Party brand?Iowa Democratic Party chairman apologizes, calls failure to deliver results from caucuses unacceptable; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'Matthew Skidmore is exhausted. He hasn’t been home for two months and he doesn’t know when he will next see his family.That’s because over eight months ago, he dropped everything to follow Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign around the country.“Andrew's campaign brought me out of depression. Andrew's campaign made me see, like, the value in life again," Skidmore told Fox News from outside Yang’s third of seven events last Saturday. "And I don't know if there's any other candidate that has a message that is so powerful, that is able to transform people's lives like that because I'm in such a complete, like, opposite position than where I was maybe eight months ago just mentally.”WHERE DOES ANDREW YANG STAND ON THE ISSUES?Skidmore may be tired, but he is not alone. He is just one of many hard-core “Yang Gang” members who have cast their lives aside to trail Yang’s campaign. Fox News spoke with three of Yang’s most devoted followers -- and what’s more, they are all former Republican voters.Skidmore is a 20-year-old self-described “right-leaning independent” hailing from Maryland that started his own online company at the age of 15. In March 2019, he and his friend Zach started a YouTube channel that was originally meant to talk about politics in general. But by May, he was full-on “Yang Gang” and the channel converted to following the presidential candidate through Iowa and New Hampshire live-streaming his events.To do this, Skidmore turned his company over to his older brother and began fundraising through Patreon (an online donation-based platform used by content creators). He also fundraises for the candidate with a direct link on his profile. With the original objective of $100,000, Skidmore raised $25,000 in one day alone and says he has well surpassed his goal. Matt Skidmore meets Andrew Yang's wife Evelyn at a campaign event. (Photo provided by Matthew Skidmore) Russell Peterson is a 44-year-old North Carolinian who quit his job as an Olive Garden server and uprooted his wife, Elasa, and 4-year-old son, Zephaniah, for the cause. He describes himself as a “Yang-ocrat” and a part of the “broke-folk-vote,” a lifelong conservative that “never voted for a Democrat in my life wouldn't even consider it up until this point.”Yang is the only person he will cast a vote for in 2020, even if it means a write-in. He told Fox News that he was converted by Yang’s appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast -- a sentiment heard frequently from Yang’s supporters.“His vision for America is just so profiled in, so humanity first. It was like a breath of fresh air," Peterson said. "And I was like finally somebody is talking my language, somebody's actually trying to address the problems that affect my life."But it was at the Clyburn Fish Fry, the annual June event hosted by Congressman James Clyburn in Columbia, S.C. where every four years Democratic presidential candidates flock to win over voters, that Peterson felt wholly convinced. He called that the turning point for Yang saying, “There was so few of us, we were like, the smallest group, but we made so much noise, we got the crowd so energized.” Just after that he started his youtube channel “Grassroots Yang Gang” and has garnered 11,000 subscribers since. Russell Peterson and his wife Elasa pose for a picture with Andrew Yang. (Photo provided by Russell Peterson) He and his family have also become “homeless” after their landlord asked them to vacate their North Carolina home for personal reasons last summer. They have been living mostly with his sister in Vermont, five minutes north of the New Hampshire border.“I went to my wife, and we discussed it and we thought that the greatest use of our voice would be to come up to New Hampshire, and try to, you know, Yang as many people as possible before the primaries, and that's what we've been doing ever since,” he said. (“Yang“ is now a verb used by his supporters for convincing someone to vote for the candidate.) When they aren’t live streaming campaign events, they use their channel to show themselves door-knocking or talking with other Yang supporters.Fred Ramey, a 43-year-old former salesman now trucker, is in a different boat. Rather than quitting his job, Ramey convinced his employer to allow him to wrap the trucks he was driving to become a mobile billboard for the presidential hopeful. (He says he did it by “Yang-ing” them.) He met Yang last May when the candidate was riding with truckers in an effort to prove his point about automation.“I took the meeting with him in order to disprove him," he said. "And in order to try to figure out who he was and what he's about I listened to his book in audio form, and when I did that, I was completely swayed the other direction. I decided that I was going to go full force and really support Andrew with 100 percent reckless abandonment… I just knew that I had to drop the Red vs Blue tribalism and join alongside with Andrew and make sure he gets into office.“ Fred Ramey speaks at an Andrew Yang campaign event. (Photo provided by Fred Ramey.) Since then Ramey estimates he has driven his “Yang-ed out” trucks over 50,000 miles and tells Fox News that a private analyst calculated over 1.2 million people have laid eyes on his truck. He also started a super PAC, “Truckers for Yang” that he uses to raise money for new truck wraps. He calls it, “a grassroots effort to bring people together behind Andrew and his policies.”Ramey told Fox News that a majority of PAC donors are supporters who have maxed out their ability to donate to the campaign officially. He is also starting a program to use his trucks to give voters rides to the polls, having launched it for the Iowa caucuses.None of these gentlemen are receiving any help or funding from the campaign. In fact, they all told Fox News they are careful not to cross any lines that could “get the campaign in trouble." Ramey and Skidmore have worked with professionals to make sure that no campaign finance laws are broken and never coordinate their movements with his staff.But they all say that their relationship with Yang and his employees is great, and Ramey calls his bond with Yang “very personal,” texting him regularly for life and leadership advice. (Yang apparently uses an abundance of thumbs up and American flag emojis when texting.) Fred Ramey of "Truckers for Yang" talks to Fox News outside Yang's Saturday night rally in Des Moines, IA. Peterson was quick to point out that Yang is the most welcoming candidate to “former Trump-ers” frequently pausing his events to applaud them for the change of heart.“Andrew has never once demonized us for voting for Donald Trump or anybody else's voting for Trump,” he said.Yang tells them that he understands why they voted for Trump -- that he saw the right problems but presented the wrong solutions and that Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the real solution to the “fourth industrial revolution,” not a wall.Skidmore took a while to warm up to the idea of a UBI but was won over by Yang’s “value added tax” which would fund it. As someone who runs his business on Amazon, he sees their success as inherently good for society but also recognizes that it is creating an issue for other Americans.“I think the value added tax is a really good idea… You don't want to stop progress. But at the end of the day, there has to be something there for people who do lose their jobs due to a changing economy … truthfully, my stocks are doing pretty good this year," he said. "Thanks, I guess to Trump or whoever. But I've just realized how impactful everyone getting $1,000 a month no questions asked would be to just improve so many people's lives and prevent so many people from reaching that point, rock bottom.”Peterson (whose brother is a trucker) spoke to Fox News about the threat of automation and said that UBI or the “Freedom Dividend” as Yang calls it is the best solution to poverty in America.“I mean, do you have any faith that the government's gonna spend your money right, I don't," he said. "For a long time, they say instead of giving that money to them. Why don't we give them back to the American people?”VideoAll three men have run into each other on the road and consider themselves good acquaintances. They describe the “Yang Gang” like a family. Peterson credits Yang’s “humanity First” vision for the welcoming nature of his followers.“When you go into it knowing that is humanity first -- with that mindset already in place, man it's just a natural thing," he said. "There's a lot of ... There's a lot of love in the Yang Gang because we've all grasped on to this vision that Andrew has for the country. And we're all behind that because most of us don't want to see our neighbors struggling."Most of us don't want to fight with our neighbors, regardless of their color or creed or whatever. We don't care about that. What we do care about is just getting along and all of us doing a little bit better.”None of them were ready to discuss what happens if Yang drops out of the race. When asked about these followers, the Yang campaign had no comment.

But Trump later said in an interview with NBC News that he had decided to fire Comey "regardless" of what Rosenstein recommended."I think as far as the firing of James Comey, it's been pretty clear the president has the authority to fire anyone within the federal government that he sees fit isn't doing the duty that is appropriate for that job. So, I don't think there's any question about his ability to fire Jim Comey or anyone else in the federal government," Spicer said.Spicer said he was unaware at the time of the president’s request.“I think it's no secret, the president's made it very clear that he didn't feel as though Attorney General Sessions needed to recuse himself from this matter,” Spicer said today. “And that he wanted a robust defense of something that he doesn't think that he's been wrongly accused of.”There was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and no wrongdoing by Trump, Spicer told “GMA.”“There is an investigation. I'm not going to get in the way of it but as far as I know and from what I saw, no, there was nothing that was ever done that I think was inappropriate or illegal,” Spicer said.Spicer also commented on Michael Wolff’s new book -- “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” -- which is out today and contains allegations that Trump never wanted to be president and that several of his advisers questioned Trump’s intelligence.One of Trump’s lawyer sent the author and the publisher a cease-and- desist letter Thursday.When asked whether Trump was wrong in trying to prevent the book from publication, Spicer argued that the president has a right to defend himself.“There's a difference between defamation and reporting. And I think in some of these cases where you’re making wild accusations about the president and his family, he absolutely has a right to defend himself,” Spicer said.Spicer added, “I’ll leave it up to the president’s lawyers to figure out what the legal recourse is. But at the end of the day, the First Amendment is a two-way street.”Spicer, who was a source in Wolff’s book, said some of the quotes and anecdotes are true, but the context in which they’re given is not.“One of the problems that we’re seeing with this book -- and it’s not just Trump staffers and White House officials pushing back -- but you’re seeing a lot of mainstream media members as well calling into question the sourcing, the sloppiness of how he attributes stuff, even the author’s origin note at the beginning of the book notes that in many cases he took anecdotes and rephrased them,” Spicer said.The White House has called the book “tabloid gossip, full of false and fraudulent claims.”

Seattle may be best known for two things: endless rain and left-leaning politics. (Fine, you can add Amazon and surging housing prices to that list—more on that later.) Both were out in full force at the Crosscut Festival, where the regional, non-profit news website convened a day of thoughtful conversations with politicians, writers, activists, and pundits.Julian Castro, the former Obama-appointed secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Jay Inslee, Washington state’s governor, were pressed on the prospect of their 2020 presidential candidacies. Castro answered with a definite “maybe,” saying his final decision would come after the 2018 midterm elections. Inslee sidestepped the question with a joke, saying he’d support California governor Jerry Brown, should he ever choose to run.Castro also offered advice for the Democratic Party, saying it should focus on two messages, as Crosscut’s Lilly Fowler wrote: “1. That it stands for everyone, no matter the color of skin, rich or poor. 2. That it will be a party that stands for accountability.” Castro also jokingly accused his identical twin brother, Joaquín Castro, a U.S representative from Texas, of buying Twitter followers. “Mine are natural, organic,” he said.The current administration—and the twisted road we’ve taken to get to it—was the main topic of conversation among former White House staffers David Litt, Scott McClellan, and David Frum. “There’s a culture of malice and there is a culture of not caring,” said Litt, an Obama White House veteran, describing the current White House. Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, highlighted the increasing skepticism in democracy as one of the reasons Trump made it all the way to the White House. He cited recent academic research conducted among citizens in Europe. “Among people born in the 1930s, around 90% said yes, [democracy] is essential. Among people born after 1980, it’s about 25%.”“All the Presidents’ Men” panel at Crosscut Festival 2018. [Photo: Jason Redmond for Crosscut]Litt, a former Obama speechwriter and millennial who now writes for Funny Or Die, pushed back on the idea that younger people are done with democracy. Perhaps, he argued, given Clinton’s flawed candidacy and Trump’s by-a-hair electoral college win, Trump’s presidency was something akin to “an accident.”Frum seized upon that idea to offer what he called a possible “happy ending” by way of an analogy. He described the feeling of fatigued driving at night, when an oncoming car’s bright lights jostle you awake. “That jolts you, and you spring to your attention, you correct yourself, and the adrenaline from that near-miss gets you safely home,” he said. “And I sometimes wonder if that’s what Donald Trump could be—that he’s the near-miss that gets us safely home.”[Photo: Jason Redmond for Crosscut]A heavy-hitting panel of current and former police chiefs examined the question of police reform in 2018. Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, who joined the Oakland Police Department in early 2017 during the height of a sex scandal, said, “Until you change culture, that reform is limited. Because I can change your policies, I can change your training, but until I change your heart and your mind, that culture does not change.”Oakland police chief Anne Kirkpatrick [Photo: Jason Redmond for Crosscut]Former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper was challenged on a claim he’s been known to make: As moderator David Kroman summed up Stamper’s notion, when it comes to policing, “It’s not one bad apple—it’s the whole barrel that’s rotten.” Current Seattle police chief Carmen Best defended the integrity of the “hard-working and wonderful people” in the Seattle Police Department. “We have some bad apples that we have to hold accountable . . . but I wouldn’t say the whole barrel is bad. “We have really good people who are working really hard to do public service.”Norm Stamper speaks during “Top Cops Talk Police Reform” at Crosscut Festival 2018. [Photo: Jason Redmond for Crosscut]Kirkpatrick agreed, but said that there were systemic issues that impacted “the barrel.” Remembering her own department’s scandalous past, she asked, “What was the culture in this department that allowed that? If you look at it from that perspective, we’re all in that barrel.” — The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) November 30, 2017The impact of Amazon on its hometown is also, many say, reflected in the city’s skyrocketing housing prices, and its near-San Francisco measures of inequality. During a conversation on the impact of growth and gentrification on the city, Roger Valdez, the director of Growth for Seattle, put the emphasis on the city council, stressing the need for a greater supply of affordable housing of all varieties and a closer look at policies that, he argues, make it hard to spark any kind of housing development. “Amazon didn’t raise your rent. The City Council did,” Valdez said, as Crosscut reported.Even with new construction and new housing, Inye Wokoma, a filmmaker and resident in the historically black Central District, worried about the displacement of the community and the erosion of home ownership. “I’m not certain the new fact of density will provide the kind of flexibility that builds community and relationships that can perpetuate across centuries,” he said.Building community was an implicit theme for the festival and the website behind it. Crosscut is one of a growing number of locally owned, often nonprofit, news-focused web-only publications that are providing stronger coverage in their respective regions, including the Texas Tribune in Austin and Minnesota’s MinnPost. Crosscut, founded in 2007 by journalist David Brewster to focus more reporting power on Northwestern politics, policy, and social and cultural issues, became a not-for-profit in 2009, and in 2015, it merged with the local PBS affiliate, KCTS, under a nonprofit called Cascade Public Media.Read more: A Tech Billionaire Wants To Reboot The “Best Music Scene In The World”After a decade of online, reader-supported reporting, the festival was the website’s chance to give its Seattle community a space to engage in conversation that previously had just lived in the comments section.“Crosscut has always been an organization that takes its mission beyond the office walls,” Greg Hanscom, executive editor of Crosscut and KCTS9, wrote in an email to Fast Company. “We’re about more than just lucid, incisive reporting; we believe that we have to bring people together and foster conversation out in the real world. From that standpoint, this was a real breakthrough for us.”In a letter they sent to the event’s attendees on Friday, Barack and Michelle Obama emphasized the importance of real-life festivals like this. “Progress in our nation happens when caring and engaged individuals come together to speak out and hold us accountable to our highest ideals.”Watch video from the festival’s main stage here.With additional reporting by Alex Pasternack.

Donald Trump’s efforts to drastically limit the right to asylum in the US came under legal challenge in California as lawyers for migrant rights groups argued that the president had overridden immigration laws and placed the lives of migrant children in jeopardy.The Trump administration issued a new rule on 9 November that effectively banned migrants from claiming asylum if they crossed the US border outside of a designated port of entry. The rule, issued by presidential decree, penalises thousands of migrants, many of whom are mothers and children fleeing violence in Central America, who cross the border illegally.Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued before Judge Jon Tigar on Monday that the administration’s new rule violates the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that any person present in the US can claim asylum irrespective of how they entered the country. The applicants are requesting the judge issue a temporary restraining order on the rule.“The administration is trying to override what Congress has done,” argued Lee Gelerent, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigration rights project. He added: “Entering between a port of entry has no bearing on what danger you may be in.”Gelerent argued the new rules would lead to a “real humanitarian crisis” and said that unaccompanied minors currently waiting to enter the US at ports of entry were already being turned away by authorities.“That’s why we believe there’s a critical need,” Gelerent said. “Those kids are in critical danger.”Trump issued the proclamation shortly after the midterm elections during which the president ratched up anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail and invoked conspiracy theories about a migrant caravan thousands of miles from the US.The radical restrictions are part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to curtail immigration into the US, which led to the family separation crisis earlier in the year and the administration’s policy of banning migrants from several Muslim-majority countries. But the policy is perhaps the most legally precarious given the wording of the Immigration and National Security Act.During a number of exchanges between Judge Tigar and the justice department attorney Scott Stewart, the administration was asked to explain how the new rules did not override current legislation.In a hypothetical question, Judge Tigar asked: “Let’s say we said you can come to the hearing at the federal court in any vehicle. But then we have a rule if you came here on a bicycle, you’re not getting in?“How does that not render the expression of congressional intent null?”Stewart argued that the government was under no “mandatory burden” to allow asylum to any one individual and suggested the new policy would still allow people to make claims if they crossed into the US legally.But pressed for assurances that meritorious cases would not slip through the net, Stewart would not be drawn.“Does the government contend … that no claims for relief that were granted in the past, will now be denied?” Judge Tigar asked.“I can’t predict what will happen,” Stewart responded.The court adjourned on Monday morning after less than two hours of arguments. A ruling is expected soon. Topics US immigration Refugees Trump administration news

It’s unusual for a president to pardon someone who pleaded guilty before they are sentenced, but pardoning General Michael Flynn on Tuesday may be the least bizarre and destructive thing Trump did in relation to this investigation.Flynn resigned in 2017 just 24 days after he was named Trump’s first national security adviser, and four days after public reports that he discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador despite repeated denials from the Trump administration that he had done so. Months later, Trump tweeted that he “fired” Flynn because he “lied to the Vice President and the FBI.”Yet a day after Flynn resigned, Trump met with FBI Director James Comey and several other officials in the Oval Office. Trump excused all of them from the meeting except for Comey, stating repeatedly that he wanted to speak to Comey alone. When the others left, Trump told Comey that Flynn was “a good guy” and urged him to “see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” Comey did not do so, and less than three months later, Trump fired him.Comey’s firing ultimately resulted in the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, leading to a multi-year criminal investigation that Trump publicly and privately obstructed. While Mueller famously refused to reach a conclusion regarding Trump’s criminal liability, I was one of over a thousand former federal prosecutors who concluded that Trump obstructed justice. If Trump had pardoned Flynn instead of secretly pushing Comey to drop the investigation, none of that may have happened.Mueller took over the investigation of Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of a cooperation deal with the Special Counsel’s Office. At the time, that looked like a favorable agreement for Flynn, who may have faced additional charges and was looking at a likely sentence of probation or minimal prison time.The Justice Department successfully argued that Flynn’s guilty plea should stand, and because Flynn had failed to fully cooperate with the Justice Department after Mueller’s investigation ended, the DOJ later sought a prison sentence for Flynn. But in January, the Justice Department abruptly changed course, suggesting that probation would be warranted even though Flynn was not fully cooperative.The Trump administration then sought to dismiss its own case against Flynn, an extremely unusual move given that Flynn had already pleaded guilty. DOJ argued that “newly discovered evidence” revealed that Flynn's lies to the FBI were not “material” to the FBI's underlying investigation. The “materiality” requirement is just that the lie was “capable of influencing” the FBI, not that it actually did.Needless to say, that is a standard that is very favorable to the Justice Department, which routinely argues that it should apply despite widespread criticism from defense attorneys. Not only did the DOJ contradict its own longstanding policy, but it did so due to the notes taken by the FBI of their interview with Flynn, which DOJ was aware of all along.The judge in that case found that this stunning reversal by the Justice Department smelled so fishy that he appointed a retired judge who had publicly criticized DOJ’s about-face to argue against the dismissal, given that both sides in Flynn’s case supported it. When Flynn appealed the judge’s decision to appoint the former judge to argue the other side of the issue, Flynn appealed, and Trump’s Justice Department sided with Flynn.Flynn’s appeal ultimately failed, and the case is still ongoing, but the Justice Department diminished its reputation, contributed to growing concern that it had become politicized, and created a precedent that will haunt it for years to come. But the harm to the Department of Justice would have been avoided if Trump hadn’t postponed this decision until his electoral defeat, implicitly acknowledged by the pardon, forced his hand.Many have decried Trump’s pardon of an unrepentant liar whom he obstructed justice to shield, but the real damage was done by the president over the past four years. If Trump had pardoned Flynn in the beginning, he would have saved himself a lot of headaches and the Department of Justice wouldn’t have embarrassed itself by giving special treatment to the president’s friend. Like many of Trump’s decisions as president, how he reached the decision was worse than the decision itself.

The 3.5 million Americans who make a living as cashiers should keep their eye on an experiment underway in Seattle, Washington.Amazon Go, a much-anticipated grocery store in the e-commerce giant’s hometown, will open to the public tomorrow (Jan. 22). The futuristic store doesn’t have cashiers or self-checkout machines; instead a customer scans a code on the Amazon Go app to enter, and then is tracked around the store as they pick up items. The items they leave the store with are tallied up and charged to their Amazon account.Amazon Go is possible due to recent advances in artificial intelligence and camera technology. The AI algorithms can now watch the various video feeds and identify who is picking up an item, and which item they’re picking up.The project, which has been beta tested by Amazon employees for a little more than a year, was reportedly delayed in 2017 due to the complexity of tracking crowds of fast-walking humans. The store’s tech didn’t work when more than 20 people were inside or were moving too fast, the Wall Street Journal reported.Journalists from MIT Tech Review, Recode, the New York Times and USA Today were given access to the store ahead of the launch, and did not report any problems with the way the tech works. USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise does say that Amazon is capping the number of people the store can hold at 97. The NYTimes’ Nick Wingfield even tried to shoplift a 4-pack of soda, but when he walked out the store charged him anyway.On the shelves, reporters found typical grocery store fare, like snacks and pre-made sandwiches for lunchtime office workers, but also Amazon-made meal kits and Amazon food brands such as Wickedly Prime. The store also has a small wine and beer section, where IDs are checked by a human Amazon employee.It’s unclear how this technology will play out in the workforce. While experts caution that industries that face automation often end up adding more employees over time, a Quartz analysis found that Amazon is killing more jobs than it is creating.

Pete Buttigieg came under stepped-up attack from fellow Democrats eager Sunday to slow his momentum in the presidential race by highlighting his struggle to attract African American support, his lack of broad government experience and willingness to collect checks from well-heeled campaign donors.The 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Ind., riding a surge of interest after his performance in last week’s Iowa caucuses, responded by hitting back.He surfaced on all five of Washington’s Sunday morning talk shows, where he asserted that efforts to stop his sudden political rise reflect the very sort of Beltway insularity and arrogance that put off many voters.“We know that we might look small from the perspective of Washington,” he said on CNN, referring to his stewardship of a city of roughly 100,000 residents. “But for us it is what is going on in Washington that is small and small-minded.”Three days before New Hampshire votes in the nation’s first presidential primary, the state was blanketed with a mantle of snow and buried in a blizzard of politicking: candidates stumping, their supporters door-knocking, the television airwaves saturated with advertising.While Buttigieg fended off criticism, chiefly from former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for rivals to focus their efforts on beating President Trump, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar boasted of crossover appeal that could broaden support for the Democratic ticket in November. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar speaks at the University of Southern New Hampshire in Manchester on Sunday. (Getty Images) “I’m someone that can bring people with me, that doesn’t shut them out,” Klobuchar, a three-term senator and former Hennepin County attorney, told a crowd of several hundred at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester. “I’ve won every place, every race, every time.”Buttigieg, who was a national political unknown a year ago, was the focus of not just his political opponents but curiosity-seekers who flooded his appearances, producing some of the largest crowds in the state this election season. Rivals take aim at Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg at feisty Democratic debate Rivals take aim at Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg at feisty Democratic debate Rival candidates tried to slow the momentum of Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders on the debate stage Friday night, as election day in New Hampshire approaches with the two leading the pack. Rebecca Powell, who described herself an “Elizabeth Warren supporter with an open mind,” showed up in Nashua, near the Massachusetts border, intrigued after Buttigieg finished effectively tied with Sanders in Iowa.“Honestly, the momentum and the way that he talks and his cadence and attitude really reminds me a lot of [President] Obama,” said Powell, 28, who works at a psychiatric hospital in Nashua. “You have to have someone who can handle the scrapping but still kind of rise above it.”Buttigieg didn’t just respond to attacks. In Dover, in coastal New Hampshire, he launched one of his own, suggesting that Sanders was too divisive to win in November.“I respect Senator Sanders, but when I hear this message go out that you’re either for a revolution or you’ve got to be status quo, that’s a vision for this country that doesn’t have room for most of us,” Buttigieg said.New Hampshire has a history of political volatility — Obama was leading Hillary Clinton by 10 percentage points in some 2008 polls just before she beat him in the primary — so any opinion surveys must be viewed skeptically.Still, it was evident that Buttigieg has been the candidate with momentum in the last week, and others scrambled to keep him from notching a victory Tuesday that could launch him into Nevada, which votes Feb. 22, and the rapid succession of contests that follow.Few candidates stand to lose as much from a poor showing as Biden, whose fourth-place Iowa finish banished any sense he was the most electable candidate in the field, or that the nominating fight would be settled anytime soon. Joe Biden has a few (actually many) things on his mind Joe Biden has a few (actually many) things on his mind Facing dire political straits, the former vice president steps out and holds forth before reporters in Manchester, N.H. More Coverage McManus: Buttigieg wants to be the Goldilocks candidate. It just might work Democratic presidential candidates attacking Pete Buttigieg as New Hampshire primary nears He stepped up efforts to reignite his candidacy Sunday with an ABC interview in which he repeatedly and pointedly critiqued Buttigieg.“No one has ever won the nomination without being able to get overwhelming support from the African American community,” said Biden, whose political base rests on the support of black voters. “And, so far, no one’s been doing that but me.” Biden also took aim at Sanders, warning that his identification as a democratic socialist could hurt down-ballot Democrats. “You’re going to win with that label?” he scoffed. Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Hampton, N.H., on Sunday. (Getty Images) Biden took a less confrontational approach at a freewheeling town hall in Hampton, in eastern New Hampshire, where he commended Buttigieg and Sanders on their Iowa showing. (Sanders won the most votes, but the winner there has historically been judged by the competition for national delegates, where Buttigieg led 14-12, state party officials said Sunday. Warren followed with eight, Biden had six, and Klobuchar one.)“They did a great job,” Biden said of Buttigieg and Sanders. “They were really well-organized, better organized than we were.”Sanders, campaigning just off the Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, used an appearance before several hundred supporters to assail Buttigieg for his support among affluent donors. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders holds a town hall at the Hanover Inn Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H., on Sunday.(Joe Raedle / Getty Images) “I’m running against some guys — Pete Buttigieg, among others — who have raised campaign funds from over 40 billionaires, 40 billionaires, heads of large corporations,” said Sanders, who has made his strong support among small-dollar givers a fundamental part of his candidacy.While some of those running — Biden and Buttiegieg, among them — have warned of too-drastic change, supporters of Sanders said his calls for political revolution were precisely what appealed to them. “I feel like he’s the most radical candidate,” said Olivia Lovelace of Houston, a Dartmouth junior, “and I’m looking for the most radical candidate.”Warren, speaking to hundreds of supporters at a middle school in Concord, the state capital, made a similar pitch for “big structural change,” starting with efforts to take on the corruption she called endemic to Washington and the political process. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at a rally at Rundlett Middle School in Concord, N.H., on Sunday. (Getty Images) By overhauling the political system and the influence of moneyed interests, Warren said, “We can build a very different America. We can build an America of opportunity for every single human being in this country.”Warren made no overt mention of her rivals when she spoke, though she did take a veiled swipe at Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is sinking a part of his vast fortune into the campaign. Have you seen Michael Bloomberg during ‘Jeopardy’ or NFL games? He’s spending millions to make sure you do Have you seen Michael Bloomberg during ‘Jeopardy’ or NFL games? He’s spending millions to make sure you do Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s advertising for California’s March 3 election is unprecedented for a Democratic presidential primary. More Coverage Skelton: Time for Democratic presidential candidates to take on California issues Touting her plan to raise taxes 2 cents on the dollar of assets over $50 million, Warren said — with some exaggeration — billionaires had taken to weeping over the proposal. “Some cry. Some ran for president,” she said, to a knowing laugh from the crowed. “Figured it was cheaper than paying 2 cents.”Warren told reporters afterward said she was shunning direct attacks on other candidates and sticking to her own positive message because the most important thing was to unify Democrats to take on Trump.“We’re going to have to bring our party together,” she said. “And the way we do this is not by launching a bunch of attacks on each other and trying to tear each other down. The way we do this is that we talk about the things that we can run on together.”Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak and David Lauter and special correspondent Caroline S. Engelmayer contributed to this report from New Hampshire. 2020: Democratic primaries and key presidential election dates 2020: Democratic primaries and key presidential election dates Here are key dates and events on the the 2020 presidential election calendar, including dates of debates, caucuses, primaries and conventions.

Alan Taylor June 11, 2020 21 Photos In Focus Brazil has reported more than 775,000 cases of the new coronavirus and has attributed more than 39,800 deaths to the disease so far, with daily death tolls continuing to climb in recent days—as many as 1,200 per day. While President Jair Bolsonaro has tried to downplay the threat, local authorities and communities are working hard to slow the spread of the virus, as well as to treat those affected. Tarso Sarraf, a photographer working for Agence France-Presse, recently traveled with health-care workers attending to the residents of small river communities and larger towns in Marajo Island, at the mouth of the Amazon River, in Brazil’s Para state. Read more Hints: View this page full screen.Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email/span>

Over the next 45 hours, the president would go on to tweet 11 times - blasting the Russia investigation and blaming Democrats for failing to stop Russian interference, which he once denied.Then came the bombshell at 11:08 p.m. Saturday. The president connected one of the deadliest mass school shootings in history to the Russia investigation.“Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russia collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!” Trump tweeted, following dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club.For some context, there are about 35,000 people working for the FBI, including about 12,000 agents, according to FBI statistics. The FBI has “a lot of people,” and, “They’re not all working on Russia, I can tell you that. There’s a lot of other stuff going on,” one federal law enforcement official told ABC News.Even the presence of chief of staff John Kelly – known to bring some order to a chaotic White House but who has said his role isn't to stop the president from tweeting – didn’t seem to help contain what soon turned into a twitter tirade.There was bi-partisan backlash. Members of his own party even said he went too far.“This is a president who claims vindication anytime someone sneezes,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said on CNN.One survivor of the Florida high school shooting tweeted to the president: “Oh my god. 17 OF MY CLASSMATES AND FRIENDS ARE GONE AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO MAKE THIS ABOUT RUSSIA???!! HAVE A DAMN HEART. You can keep all of you fake and meaningless “thoughts and prayers.”On Friday, shortly after arriving in Florida, Trump traveled to Broward County to visit first responders and victim’s families after last week's shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – a visit that appeared to have a more congratulatory feel focused on praising law enforcement officials.The Saturday Twitter barrage was just the beginning.President Trump then took another swipe at the ongoing Russia probes early Sunday morning, tweeting “If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption, and chaos within the U.S. they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!”The president even called him out for that comment, saying “General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impact or changed by the Russians.”“Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes. The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!” he tweeted.Oprah discussed speculation surrounding a 2020 run, and while not ruling it out, said she really doesn’t think she’s cut out to be president.“I am actually humbled by the fact that people think that I could be a leader of the free world, but it’s just not in my spirit, it’s not my DNA,” she said.

Donald Trump cast doubt on memos of conversations between him and the fired FBI deputy director that have reportedly been handed to Robert Mueller, claiming Andrew McCabe did not take notes during their meetings.Seeing Trump’s offensive against McCabe as an attack on Mueller himself, several senior Republicans rallied to support the former FBI director, who is investigating Russian election interference and links between Trump aides and Moscow.“Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe,” Trump tweeted on Sunday morning in a volley of angry messages, “but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?”McCabe was fired on Friday night, two days short of qualifying for his pension and officially for allowing a leak to the press and failing to be candid about it under oath.Trump also targeted Comey, the FBI director he fired last May, a move that led to the appointment of Mueller. Comey has also said he wrote memos concerning interactions with Trump.Trump tweeted: “Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G when asked ‘have you ever been an anonymous source … or known someone else to be an anonymous source...?’ He said strongly ‘never, no.’ He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.” Trump was evidently watching a Fox News show which played an exchange from a 3 May 2017 congressional hearing in which Comey was questioned by Republican senator Chuck Grassley and denied leaking information about FBI investigations. Speculation over a potential move against Mueller grew on Saturday when Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, said he hoped the firing of McCabe would prompt Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, to shut down the Russia inquiry.Dowd first claimed to have been speaking for the president, then told outlets including the Guardian he was not. He then told Axios Trump “didn’t have any problem” with his statement.On Sunday Trey Gowdy, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, used an appearance on Fox News Sunday to advise: “If you have an innocent client, Mr Dowd, act like it.” Jeff Flake, a Republican Arizona senator and fierce critic of the president, told CNN’s State of the Union Trump “seems to be building towards” firing Mueller, adding: “I just hope it doesn’t go there, it cannot – we cannot in Congress accept that. I would expect pushback in the next few days, urging Trump not to go there.”Former New Jersey governor and Trump ally Chris Christie told ABC’s This Week he did not think Trump would fire Mueller. “If he did do it it would be inappropriate,” he said. “Bob Mueller has conducted this investigation so far with great integrity, without leaking and by showing results and I don’t think the president is going to fire somebody like that.”Late on Sunday White House lawyer Ty Cobb said the president was not contemplating a move against Mueller.“In response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the administration, the White House yet again confirms that the president is not considering or discussing the firing of the special counsel, Robert Mueller.”Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, told ABC both parties should oppose any move against Mueller. If it happened, he said, “I would hope that it would prompt all Democrats and Republicans in the House to pass an independent counsel law and reinstate Bob Mueller. It undoubtedly would result in a constitutional crisis.”Schiff said Democrats on his committee “will certainly be able to show the facts supporting the issue of collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia when they issue their findings. The Republican committee leadership closed its inquiry this week and announced it had not found any such collusion.Regarding McCabe’s dismissal, Schiff said that while it may have been justified it was too early to tell if it “could also be tainted”. He asked rhetorically whether those around Comey were being targeted because they would corroborate any charge of obstruction of justice by the president arising from Mueller’s work. “That’s a question that we also have to answer,” he said.The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said on Friday he fired McCabe in part because he allowed two FBI agents to speak to a Wall Street Journal reporter about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and the activities of the Clinton Foundation.McCabe, who was quick to characterise his firing as an attack by the Trump administration on Mueller, has said he was authorized to allow the exchange.On Saturday, Trump repeatedly claimed his innocence, tweeting: “The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!”On Sunday, he claimed Mueller’s team of investigators contained “13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans … another Dem recently added” and asked “does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!”Mueller and McCabe are Republicans. McCabe’s wife ran for office in Virginia as a Democrat and received donations from a political action committee run by a Clinton ally.McCabe told Axios Trump had asked him: “What was it like when your wife lost? … So tell me, what was it like to lose?” Dowd told the same website the president “never made that statement according to two others who were present”. Comey will publish a book, entitled A Higher Loyalty, next month. On Saturday he tweeted: “Mr President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.” Topics Trump-Russia investigation Trump administration Donald Trump Robert Mueller FBI Republicans US politics news

Joe Biden received some good news ahead of what promises to be a challenging Iowa caucus: a poll released on Saturday that shows him the overwhelming favourite for the Democratic presidential nomination among black Americans.The former vice-president and senator from Delaware leads nationally but has seen his advantage in Iowa dwindle, with some polls regarding the first formal election-year test placing his closest national rival, Bernie Sanders, at the head of the field.Nationally, however, a new Washington Post/IPSO poll gives Biden a seemingly unassailable lead with black voters, 48% to 20% for Sanders.No other candidate, including Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren (9%), former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey senator Cory Booker (both 4%), returned better than single-digit support.Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana who has performed strongly in Iowa and New Hampshire, the second state to vote, attracted just 2% support.“I think neither Warren nor Sanders and certainly not Pete Buttigieg have ever had a breakthrough with African American voters sufficient to eliminate Biden’s advantage,” Republican strategist Rick Wilson told the Guardian in an interview conducted before the Post poll was published.“And also, Biden’s got the secret weapon. If Barack Obama is free to get out there [for him] and do the campaigning that only he can do in American political life, I think that would be a meaningful lift.”The poll showed that Sanders was most popular with black voters under 35, with 42% to Biden’s 30%, mirroring the Vermont senator’s standing with young white voters in other recent nationwide polling.But Biden regains a sharp advantage in the 35-to-49 age group (41%-16%), and among voters older than 65 there is no contest: Biden enjoys 68% popularity, with second-placed Sanders floundering at 8%.The poll, of Democrat-leaning registered voters was conducted between 2 and 8 January, and according to the Post “illuminates the contours of Biden’s support among different subsets of the black electorate”.His popularity endures, the article states, “despite questions about his age [Biden will be 78 a little more than two weeks after election day on 3 November], his past positions on forced school bussing and his relationships with southern segregationist senators”.In Iowa, which will vote on 3 February, Biden has slipped to a virtual tie with Sanders, according to modelling by the FiveThirtyEight website. A Des Moines Register/CNN poll had Sanders edging ahead.The national poll of black voters therefore offers a timely boost to Biden’s campaign.“No candidate will win the Democratic presidential nomination without significant support from African Americans,” wrote Post columnist Jonathan Capehart in his analysis of the poll.“They are the foundation of the party, and black women are its backbone. And the poll, like many national polls before it, makes it clear that they want Trump defeated and they think former vice-president Joe Biden is the person to do it.”Booker, a New Jersey senator who is African American, has not qualified for Tuesday’s Democratic debate in Des Moines. But he did attract more support in the Post poll than Buttigieg.The Post noted that the former mayor, 37, “is among the leaders in polls in the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire but … a lack of familiarity with him and concerns about his experience and sexual orientation appear to be contributing to his current standing” with black voters.Buttigieg, the Post added, “has said that as African Americans get to know him, he will gain more support, but the poll undercuts that assertion.”

Maybe there is a lot of code shared as well, I have no clue, but it is foolish to make that assumption.I've made no such assumption. What I've assumed is that changing how they write code is a large undertaking and that it's unlikely that they managed to do so before the development of 5G.2012 - 2020 is not a "handful of years"When do you think 5G started to be developed? Do you really think they only started working on it after 2017?The point is that they are willing to open all the code, all the hardware.They never said that, you inferred that.What's more, the US federal government I guarantee *ALREADY HAS* reverse engineered all the code and hardware, a long time ago.Umm... they are good but they aren't gods. I'm sure they have exploits for the system but that doesn't mean they have completely reverse engineered all the gear.So if Huawei is saying anyone can see it, that means that the feds have known for a long time as well that there is actually nothing to be concerned with.They didn't

This November, voters in two states could take significant steps toward ending the US’s near-total criminal prohibition of psychedelic drugs.In Oregon, voters will decide on a ballot measure that would allow psilocybin mushrooms, also known as magic mushrooms, to be used for medical purposes. In Washington, DC, voters could, in effect, decriminalize a range of psychedelic plants and fungi.The measures are seen by many activists as the next stage in scaling back America’s war on drugs, now that marijuana legalization has already reached 11 states and could be legalized in four more in the November election. Polls show strong support for marijuana legalization, but it’s unclear how much public backing there is for measures decriminalizing psychedelics or legalizing them for medicinal purposes. Denver became the first US city to vote to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms in 2019, but no state has decriminalized or legalized psychedelic substances for medical use.But activists may have an advantage in Oregon and Washington, DC — both of which are very liberal, and were among the first jurisdictions to legalize cannabis for recreational uses (although DC, due to a bill passed by Congress, still prohibits sales).The Oregon and DC, measures, then, stand to set the stage for future drug policy reform efforts. If two progressive places move forward with their measures, that may signal a wider public appetite for expanding access to psychedelic drugs. If the measures fail — especially in an election year that currently seems very favorable to more progressive causes — drug policy reformers almost certainly have their work cut out for them.Oregon’s Measure 109 would create a program for administering psilocybin products, such as magic mushrooms, to patients for medical purposes. Unlike medical marijuana laws, this wouldn’t mean that patients could just get a doctor’s recommendation and then buy psilocybin at a dispensary. Instead, they’d be able to buy, possess, and consume the psychedelic drug at a “psilocybin service center” in which they’d be supervised and guided through their trips by trained facilitators. There aren’t set limits on which conditions would let patients qualify, but they’d have to be 21 or older, and the Oregon Health Authority would set up regulations.There’s a growing body of research for this type of approach. The idea is that a person taking psychedelics on their own can have a bad or even traumatic experience. But under proper supervision, a trained facilitator can guide someone to make the most of the experience. The studies done so far tended to be small, but they’re promising — with potential benefits for a range of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addiction. Unlike other medications for such conditions, the research indicates that just one or two doses can have effects for years or even decades.The research is so promising, in fact, that the Food and Drug Administration has allowed psychedelic treatments with psilocybin and MDMA (also known as ecstasy or molly) to go forward in clinical trials. There’s a chance that, regardless of what voters decide in Oregon this year, these drugs could be legal for medical use in some capacity in the coming years.Why does this seem to work? In short, psychedelic treatments appear to offer a greater sense of perspective — a decoupling of the mind and ego, described as “ego dissolution” — that helps people work through serious mental health conditions. Some of the early studies looked at the effects on cancer patients, who dealt with serious, understandable dread over their potentially imminent deaths. In 2015, Michael Pollan wrote in the New Yorker on early participants’ experiences:A woman I’ll call Deborah Ames, a breast-cancer survivor in her sixties (she asked not to be identified), described zipping through space as if in a video game until she arrived at the wall of a crematorium and realized, with a fright, “I’ve died and now I’m going to be cremated. The next thing I know, I’m below the ground in this gorgeous forest, deep woods, loamy and brown. There are roots all around me and I’m seeing the trees growing, and I’m part of them. It didn’t feel sad or happy, just natural, contented, peaceful. I wasn’t gone. I was part of the earth.” Several patients described edging up to the precipice of death and looking over to the other side. Tammy Burgess, given a diagnosis of ovarian cancer at fifty-five, found herself gazing across “the great plain of consciousness. It was very serene and beautiful. I felt alone but I could reach out and touch anyone I’d ever known. When my time came, that’s where my life would go once it left me and that was O.K.”For the skeptical, this can sound a bit strange. But advocates and experts point out that what matters here is whether these experiences that might seem fishy to skeptics are real for the patients. If someone genuinely believes they saw God or the face of death, and that helped them get through a mental health issue, then that’s a good therapy even if it doesn’t meet a rigid understanding of secular and scientific principles.“What it represents in the brain, we’re not really sure,” James Rucker, a clinical lecturer at King’s College London who worked on a psychedelic-depression study, previously told me. “The way they describe it is often symbolic of what’s going on in their head. Take the goddess leading you through. Maybe it’s the goddess leading you through your depression and out the other side — if you take the metaphor like that.”Critics worry that a program like the one Oregon activists have proposed could end up going very wrong. If facilitators aren’t properly trained, if patients aren’t properly vetted for conditions like schizophrenia, or if psychedelic drugs end up outside of these facilities, that could lead to a lot of bad trips and scary anecdotes — the kind that shut down research into psychedelics in the 1960s and ’70s, leading to their total prohibition.Advocates and experts in the field actually share these concerns, which is why many argue that it’s important to set up a solid structure for how the drugs are administered to people. They don’t want a medical marijuana model for psychedelics.“Above and beyond anything else, it’s essential to preserve strong safety parameters,” Charles Grob, who’s led much of the recent psychedelic research, previously told me. “Without that, the work really cannot proceed.” For Oregon, the question is whether all of that will be convincing to voters. It’s at least convincing enough for the Oregon Democratic Party, which endorsed the measure. But with no polls so far this year investigating the public’s opinion of the measure, whether it will succeed is an open question.In the nation’s capital, activists are taking a different approach: With Initiative 81, they’re hoping to effectively decriminalize several psychedelic substances.Technically, the measure would force local police to deprioritize the enforcement of laws against the non-commercial cultivation, distribution, possession, and use of “entheogenic plants and fungi,” and ask prosecutors to also drop cases related to these same substances. In practice, advocates say DC would no longer enforce laws against these psychedelic drugs. But the measure wouldn’t allow commercial sales of the drugs — so don’t expect psychedelic dispensaries to pop up.Advocates argue that these plant- and fungi-based drugs aren’t very dangerous, and that they would even benefit some people. (Both claims are backed by some evidence.) So, advocates say, law enforcement shouldn’t prioritize action against psychedelic substances. And any problems the drugs do cause, like a bad trip, can be handled on a case-by-case basis — by public health agencies or other social services rather than by law enforcement.Opponents worry that decriminalization could lead to more drug use and, perhaps, an increase in bad or even violent psychedelic experiences. Indeed, these concerns are why some advocates of medical psychedelics say that these substances should only be allowed in supervised, controlled settings.It’s possible drug use will rise if the initiative is successful: In Portugal, the decriminalization of all drugs — which was coupled with boosts to drug addiction treatment and harm reduction services — seemed to lead to more lifetime drug use overall but less problematic use. (Like DC’s initiative, Portugal does not allow commercial sales.)It’s also possible this change has almost no effect at all. In the three years before Denver decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms, the city’s police arrested about 50 people a year for the possession or sale of shrooms, and prosecutors acted on only 11 of those cases, out of thousands of arrests overall in the city each year. (DC’s police department didn’t respond to a public records request for similar data for the District.)Washington, DC, wouldn’t be the first city to enact such a measure, following the lead of Denver and some other cities. But it would be the closest thing to a state approving such an effort.It’s unclear if DC’s measure will pass. The one poll on the issue found up to 60 percent support, but it was commissioned by the campaign.If it does pass, the measure could face two extra hurdles: the DC Council and Congress, either of which could move to overturn the measure even if voters approve it. Again, it’s unclear if either would actually make such a move.Over the past decade, progressives have increasingly called to “end the war on drugs” — citing, in particular, the vast racial disparities in anti-drug law enforcement. While some lawmakers have taken up that call, legislation has often lagged behind what progressive activists — and voters — support. So activists and voters have begun to take matters into their own hands with ballot measures.Marijuana legalization is one such example. There’s a lot of support for marijuana legalization, with even a majority of Republicans, who are typically more skeptical of drug policy reform, backing the change in public polls. Yet progressive politicians have lagged behind voters on this issue — for instance, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, opposes marijuana legalization (though he backs decriminalization).Rather than wait for politicians to catch up, activists have gone through the state ballot initiative process to get the change they want. In 2012, that approach made Colorado and Washington the first two states to legalize marijuana. Nine more states, and DC, have since followed (although two states, Illinois and Vermont, did so through their legislatures). Four other states have legalization measures on the ballot this year.Given their successes with marijuana, drug policy reformers are now looking for other ways to scale back the war on drugs through ballot measures. That includes the psychedelic drug ballot measures, as well as another measure in Oregon that would decriminalize all drugs. The question now is if the voters will be as receptive of these ideas as drug policy reformers hope they are.If voters do prove receptive, that could make Oregon’s Measure 109 and DC’s Initiative 81 the beginning of a broader push for both decriminalization and legalization in the next few years. But it all begins with Oregon and DC this November. Will you help keep Vox free for all? There is tremendous power in understanding. Vox answers your most important questions and gives you clear information to help make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. A financial contribution to Vox will help us continue providing free explanatory journalism to the millions who are relying on us. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today, from as little as $3.

As Mr. Biden eventually acknowledged, that did not work as he had hoped.“It was a mistake to assume the president would use the authority we gave him properly,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 2005.But on the campaign trail this election cycle, he has suggested he opposed the war and Mr. Bush’s conduct from the beginning, claims that do not match the historical record.“Immediately, the moment it started, I came out against the war at that moment,” he told NPR in an interview in September. His campaign later said he had misspoken, according to a fact check from The Washington Post. At a campaign stop in Des Moines this month, Mr. Biden said, “The president then went ahead with ‘shock and awe,’ and right after that, and from the very moment he did that, right after that, I opposed what he was doing,” a misleading assertion at best, according to an assessment from CNN.Mr. Biden did ultimately become a vocal opponent of the Bush administration’s stewardship of the war, and went on to serve as vice president to Barack Obama, a critic of the conflict. The war took a personal toll when his elder son, Beau Biden, deployed to Iraq in 2008 with the Delaware Army National Guard. Beau Biden died in 2015 from brain cancer, and his father has discussed the possibility of a link between the illness and exposure to pits of burning waste on military bases.Ms. Boxer attended a fund-raiser for Mr. Biden last week, though she said she was not yet formally endorsing him, and spoke warmly about her former Foreign Relations Committee colleague in an interview. She emphasized his record and all he had done in the nearly two decades since they clashed on Iraq.“They fought very hard to get us on board and we fought very hard to get them to stop,” Ms. Boxer said. “Once he saw that it was a mistake, he really stepped up to the plate to try and come up with a way out of this war.”Ahead of that 2002 vote, Mr. Biden stood on the Senate floor to explain his support for the war authorization. He followed Senator Hillary Clinton of New York — who in her later presidential campaigns also faced scrutiny over her Iraq war vote — and spoke for an hour.

Crime & JusticeObamacare and Maybe the Election on Supreme Court’s DocketHIGH STAKESEight justices will hear cases by conference call, including challenges to voting in key states, while the potential ninth waits in the wings. Welcome to 2020.Jay MichaelsonPublished Oct. 05, 2020 4:49AM ET BEAST INSIDEopinionManuel Balce Ceneta/GettyUnder the shadow of an unprecedented, unprincipled, and chaotic confirmation process for a new justice, not to mention the election, the pandemic, and a president in the hospital casting doubt on the transfer of power, the Supreme Court begins its 2020-21 term on Monday.As usual, there are several high-profile cases and emergency petitions on the court’s docket, touching the Affordable Care Act, voting rights, LGBTQ equality, immigration, and President Donald Trump’s border wall, among other issues.But of course, it’s not business as usual. Oral arguments will be taking place over the phone, largely open to observers. All of the cases to be heard in the month of October were postponed from last spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And of course, only eight justices will be on the call. Here’s a look at what’s at stake.

KYIV—Ukraine is ready to investigate the connections Joe Biden’s son Hunter had with the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, according to Anton Geraschenko, a senior adviser to the country’s interior minister who would oversee such an inquiry. Geraschenko told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview that “as soon as there is an official request" Ukraine will look into the case, but “currently there is no open investigation.”“Clearly,” said Geraschenko, “Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.” Among the counts on which Manafort was convicted: tax evasion. “We do not investigate Biden in Ukraine, since we have not received a single official request to do so,” said Geraschenko.His remarks last week came amid widespread speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump had made vital U.S. military aid for Ukraine contingent on such an inquiry, but had tried to do so informally through unofficial representatives, including his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Giuliani’s adviser on Ukraine, Sam Kislin. But Geraschenko spoke before the appearance of a Washington Post story on Thursday that implied that an intelligence community whistleblower may have reported that the untoward quid pro quo was put forth directly by Trump in a phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president last July. Geraschenko reconfirmed his statements in a phone call on Friday.The U.S. administration has thus far blocked efforts by Congress to learn precisely what the whistleblower reported, which Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson deemed an “urgent matter” while offering no details. The Post, citing two sources, said the allegation involved a “promise” made to a foreign leader. Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 to congratulate him on his election. According to the official readout on Ukraine's presidency website, "Donald Trump is convinced that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve image of Ukraine, complete investigation of corruption cases, which inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the USA." Toward the end of August, the White House reportedly was considering whether to block $250 million of funds to support Ukraine’s military in its war against Russian-backed separatists. On Sept. 12, however, that funding was released, and even increased. Congressional pressure played a role, and it is unclear whether the whistleblower’s reported “promise” allegations, made soon after the Zelensky phone call, did as well. (On Friday, Zelensky’s office announced that he will meet with Trump next week.)What’s certain is that American and Ukrainian politics are closely connected these days, and on Thursday evening Giuliani admitted he had asked officials in Ukraine to investigate Biden. Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo in a contentious interview that there is nothing wrong with pressing for an investigation into corruption.Others might call this whole affair a matter of political—indeed, geopolitical—extortion.At a minimum, Giuliani’s pressure has been interpreted here as weakening this country’s institutions by pressing them to dig for dirt on Trump’s most important Democratic challenger. “Both the United States and Ukraine are throwing Biden’s case at each other like a hot potato.”— Serhiy Leshchenko, former member of Ukraine's parliamentUkraine’s law enforcement agencies believe that it is up to U.S. investigators to ascertain, specifically, whether Biden’s son had any missed U.S. tax payments on income from Ukraine. Hunter Biden actually took a job with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holding in 2014 and worked there for five years, then quietly quit in April, soon after his father announced his presidential candidacy. It is unclear how much money Burisma paid Hunter Biden in total. Whatever it was, he may rue the work, given the political cost.Ex-MP Serhiy Leshchenko, the Ukrainian pro-Western politician and corruption fighter, has been in the epicenter of the scandal since Giuliani mentioned his name as one of “the enemies of Donald Trump and the USA.” The Trump attorney continued to criticize Ukraine’s leadership by saying that Ukraine’s president “is surrounded by people who are the enemies of the president [Trump] and people who are clearly corrupt.”Any word of criticism pronounced by such influential Americans may be damaging to careers here. As a result of Giuliani’s statements, Leshchenko has lost a promising role on Zelensky’s team. “Both the United States and Ukraine are throwing Biden’s case at each other like a hot potato, pushing each other to begin investigating Biden,” Leshchenko told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “I totally understand, and I don’t want to be in the way, since Zelensky clearly does not want to quarrel with Trump. The United States is our main strategic partner and I value that.” Earlier this month, President Zelensky publicly thanked Trump for releasing the military aid vital for his country. Zelensky spoke at the annual Yalta European Strategy conference, which this year had a symbolic title: Happiness Now. Ukraine elected Zelensky and his supporters in parliament by a landslide earlier this year, largely in response to the alleged corruption of his predecessor and amid hopes the former comedian-turned-politician could end the war with separatists that has killed more than 13,000 people.To bring an end to the carnage, Zelensky needs strong international support. He hopes to strike a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin with backing from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron at a so-called Normandy Four meeting later this month. Russia and Ukraine recently swapped prisoners, a positive sign, but Zelensky has offered no clues on possible concessions. He demands, as did his predecessor, that Russia return the annexed Crimean peninsula to Ukraine, a non-starter for Putin.The Trump administration eventually released $390 million in military aid to Ukraine, $140 million more than the amount Kyiv had expected before the administration suspended the funds for “review” last month.“For now, we would like America to support us more, and not only with money but also with the newest weapons in our war against the aggressor, the Russian Federation,” Geraschenko, the adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, told The Daily Beast. “We want a status as NATO’s special partner, allowing us to buy any weapons in the U.S., including the newest anti-aircraft rockets to defend our country in case Russia decides to attack from the air; our technology is more than 40 years old.”Zelensky’s team is struggling to overcome war, poverty, and corruption. Clearly, the idea of helping politicians of foreign states win elections is not a part of his public agenda. “This is a very special stage in Ukraine’s development: We have completely changed this year, our mentality has changed, we realize that the entire world is watching us right now,” Roman Truba, head of the State Bureau of Investigations, said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast.Truba’s agency neither investigated Biden’s son nor Burisma Holding. There were no signs of illegality in Biden’s work in Ukraine, he said. “The State Bureau of Investigations should be an independent institution. I wish we would become as highly qualified, equipped with all modern technologies, and professional as the FBI.”

The opposition Congress party has called the hasty cremation "a gross violation of human rights". On social media, many have called it "illegal" and "immoral".