Big tech companies have long rebuffed attempts by the U.S. federal government to scrutinize or scale back their market power. Now they face a scrappy new coalition as well: prosecutors from nearly all 50 states.In a rare show of bipartisan force, attorneys general from 48 states along with Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia are investigating whether Google's huge online search and advertising business is engaging in monopolistic behavior. The Texas-led antitrust investigation of Google, announced Monday, follows a separate multistate investigation of Facebook's market dominance that was revealed Friday.The state moves follow similar sweeping antitrust tech investigations launched by the Federal Trade Commission and the Trump administration's Department of Justice; the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee is conducting a similar probe. But should federal officials tire of their work, the state-led efforts could keep them on their toes.States have worked closely together on other matters, such as the fight to curb opioid abuse. But the sheer number participating in this kind of antitrust effort is unprecedented and gives it more weight, said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, a Republican."It's just an accumulation of public frustration, whether it's from consumers, other players in the market, regulators, lawmakers," Mr. Reyes said in an interview Monday. On impeachment, Jim Jordan goes for the takedownFiona Scott Morton, a Yale economics professor and former antitrust official at the Justice Department under the Obama administration, said it's important that states are taking the lead because the Trump administration is "not really enforcing antitrust law except against companies the president is upset with."She noted the Trump administration's unsuccessful push to use antitrust law to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, which owns CNN, a frequent target of Mr. Trump's criticism; and Friday's announcement that federal antitrust enforcers would investigate automakers that worked with California on tougher emissions limits."That's not what consumers want," she said. "Consumers want to be protected from anticompetitive conduct."States haven't seriously taken up antitrust enforcement – using laws originally crafted to combat railroad and oil barons in the 19th century – since a major antitrust case against Microsoft about two decades ago. Then, state leadership helped propel federal action.Back in 2016, Mr. Reyes and a Democratic counterpart, Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, tried unsuccessfully to get the Federal Trade Commission to reopen an earlier investigation into Google for allegedly favoring its own products in search results.The FTC declined, leaving European regulators to take the lead in similar probes overseas, Mr. Reyes said.Google's parent company, Alphabet, has a market value of more than $820 billion and controls so many facets of the internet that it's almost impossible to surf the web for long without running into at least one of its services. Google's dominance in online search and advertising enables it to target millions of consumers for their personal data.The company – and peers such as Amazon, Facebook, and Apple – have long argued that although their businesses are large, they are useful and beneficial to consumers. Influenced by the popularity of the companies' ubiquitous tech products and their significant lobbying power, most American political leaders didn't challenge that view.But the public debate over the tech industry has changed dramatically since Messrs. Reyes and Racine sent their letter to the FTC at the end of the Obama administration three years ago. Culprits in that shift include Facebook's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, in which a political data mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump's presidential campaign improperly accessed the personal data of as many as 87 million users.On Monday, Messrs. Reyes and Racine joined forces again – this time flanked by nearly a dozen mostly Republican state attorneys general on the steps of the Supreme Court and dozens more from both parties who signed onto the formal investigation."Ignoring 50 AGs is a lot more difficult than ignoring two AGs," Mr. Reyes said. "DC and Utah had raised these issues but didn't feel we had enough firepower or resources on our own."Scott Morton, the Yale professor, said most states have laws that mimic federal antitrust laws, but it can be harder for state attorneys general to enforce those laws because they don't usually have in-house antitrust experts. They can get around that, she added, by working together with other states and hiring shared experts.Mr. Reyes emphasized that the state-led effort is not "anti-tech," and argued it is "actually for the benefit of the tech ecosystem to help level the playing field."He said there's nothing wrong with Google being the dominant search player if it's done fairly, but the investigation will look into whether Google crosses the line "between aggressive business practices and illegal ones."A tech trade association that has supported some antitrust measures expressed wariness about how states are proceeding. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. "We hope the investigations will be law and evidence-based and will restrain from overly politicizing these inquiries, and that both companies and authorities will work together in good faith," said Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association.This story was reported by The Associated Press. Associated Press writers Rachel Lerman in San Francisco and Marcy Gordon in Washington contributed to this report.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller shaped the 2016 election coverage of the hard right-wing website Breitbart with material drawn from prominent white nationalists, Islamophobes, and far-right websites, according to a new investigative report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).Miller also railed against those wishing to remove Confederate monuments and flags from public display in the wake of Dylann Roof’s murderous 2015 attack on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and praised America’s early 20th-century race-based, restrictionist immigration policies.Emails from Miller to a former Breitbart writer, sent before and after he joined the Trump campaign, show Miller obsessively focused on injecting white nationalist-style talking points on race and crime, Confederate monuments, and Islam into the far-right website’s campaign coverage, the SPLC report says.Miller, one of the few surviving initial appointees in the administration, has been credited with orchestrating Trump’s restrictionist immigration policies.The SPLC story is based largely on emails provided by a former Breitbart writer, Katie McHugh. McHugh was fired by Breitbart over a series of anti-Muslim tweets and has since renounced the far right, telling the SPLC that the movement is “evil”.However, throughout 2015 and 2016, as the Trump campaign progressed and she became an increasingly influential voice at Breitbart, McHugh told the SPLC that Miller urged her in a steady drumbeat of emails and phone calls to promote arguments from sources popular with far-right and white nationalist movements.Miller’s emails had a “strikingly narrow” focus on race and immigration, according to the SPLC report.At various times, the SPLC reports, Miller recommendations for McHugh included the white nationalist website, VDare; Camp of the Saints, a racist novel focused on a “replacement” of European whites by mass third-world immigration; conspiracy site Infowars; and Refugee Resettlement Watch, a fringe anti-immigrant site whose tagline is “They are changing America by changing the people”.McHugh also says that in a phone call, Miller suggested that she promote an analysis of race and crime featured on the website of a white nationalist organization, American Renaissance. The American Renaissance article he mentioned was the subject of significant interest on the far right in 2015.In the two weeks following the murder of nine people at a church in Charleston by the white supremacist Dylann Roof as Americans demanded the removal of Confederate statues and flags, Miller encouraged McHugh to turn the narrative back on leftists and Latinos.“Should the cross be removed from immigrant communities, in light of the history of Spanish conquest?” he asked in one email on 24 June.“When will the left be made to apologize for the blood on their hands supporting every commie regime since Stalin?” he asked in another the following day.When another mass shooting happened in Oregon in October 2015, Miller wrote that the killer, Chris Harper-Mercer “is described as ‘mixed race’ and born in England. Any chance of piecing that profile together more, or will it all be covered up?”Miller repeatedly brings up President Calvin Coolidge, who is revered among white nationalists for signing the 1924 Immigration Act which included racial quotas for immigration.In one email, Miller remarks on a report about the beginning of Immigrant Heritage Month by writing: “This would seem a good opportunity to remind people about the heritage established by Calvin Coolidge, which covers four decades of the 20th century.” The four decades in question is the period between the passage of the Immigration Act and the abolition of racial quotas.Miller also hints at conspiratorial explanations for the maintenance of current immigration policies. Mainstream coverage of the 50th anniversary of the removal of racial quotas in immigration policy had lacked detail, Miller believed, because “Elites can’t allow the people to see that their condition is not the product of events beyond their control, but the product of policy they foisted onto them.”.Miller used a US government email address during the early part of the correspondence, when he was an aide to senator Jeff Sessions, and then announced his new job on the Trump campaign, and a new email address, to recipients including McHugh.As well as McHugh, recipients of his emails included others then at Breitbart who subsequently worked in the Trump administration, including Steve Bannon and current Trump aide, Julia Hahn. Topics Breitbart The far right Trump administration Donald Trump US politics news

Elsewhere, Wilson criticizes the idea that a focus on text is a kind of “white supremacy.” That may sound bizarre, but at a conference about “white supremacy culture” in education convened by the New York City schools chancellor Richard Carranza, attendees were shown a slide explaining that white-supremacist thinking includes “worship of the written word” and even “objectivity.” The petition quotes Wilson’s concern and then, with no argumentation whatsoever, flags him as “protecting white supremacy culture and a paternalistic orientation toward the work of social justice reform.”The petition makes nothing approaching a meaningful case against Wilson’s blog post, much less his fitness as CEO of Ascend. The writers aim to persuade not through argument, but through aura; the petition bristles with terms such as white supremacy and culturally responsive, in response to which educated whites today are trained to nod on the pain of being tarred as bigots. The language typified by this petition doesn’t sit you down; it shoves you against the wall.Readers ought not suppose that this lingo constitutes a kind of higher wisdom. The $10 words and long sentences give an impression of reflection and authority, but quite often they are the vehicle of flabby reasoning.For example, the writers of the petition seem oddly unfamiliar with how to construct a point. Follow, if you can, this passage accusing Wilson of being a white supremacist: “The article later reinforces the importance of this liberal education by stating such an education ‘empowers them to escape poverty and dependency.’” Um, just how is that hope offensive from the CEO of a charter school? The petitioners fail to make it clear in their composition that they consider this very liberal education to be a sham.Or the petition claims that Wilson “dismisses certain ‘damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture’ such as ‘worship of the written word’ as means of justifying reduced intellectual expectations of students.” In English, the petitioners are suggesting that Wilson dismisses “worship of the written word,” one of the “damaging characteristics of white supremacy,” in order to reduce intellectual expectations. But what the petitioners intend to say, through the clunky use of scare quotes, is that Wilson dismisses the claim that worship of the written word is white supremacist. Again, the petitioners reveal an almost mysterious lack of concern with precision of expression and organization of thought—as if the terminology alone constitutes suasion. I doubt that people of this orientation are the ones who should be deciding who runs a network of educational institutions.Overall, the document is redolent of the star chamber. The idea that Wilson’s socially concerned blog post contains “oppressive content that perpetuates white supremacist ideology” is as absurd as the idea that Galileo was immoral for espousing heliocentrism. And yet this shoddy, performative document, which history will judge as a peculiar and regrettable token of its era, apparently led to Wilson’s ejection from an organization that improves the lives of underserved black children, and that he himself founded.

“It definitely stung a little because it was my profile picture and I’ve had it for three years now, and it’s just my face — I’m wearing a regular T-shirt that I think I got at the Gap,” Ms. Ray said. She said it had taken several days for her appeal to reach a person at Facebook. The photo was then approved, but it was too late for a contest her blog was running. Facebook’s ad practices have long been scrutinized, even more so after 13 Russians were indicted in February on charges that they tried to disrupt the 2016 presidential election by, among other things, distributing divisive ads through the social network. But the disputes raised by Ms. Venero and Ms. Ray are indicative of questions raised by smaller advertisers, who rely on Facebook to market their work but often have to navigate the appeals process themselves. Facebook prohibits adult content in ads, including “depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions” and “activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.” The rules also extend to “implied nudity,” “excessive visible skin” and images that are too focused on individual body parts “even if not explicitly sexual in nature.” On Facebook’s website, all of the examples showed women. “Facebook’s policies have the effect of sexualizing women’s bodies in a way that is not necessary and very unhealthy for society,” said Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates digital privacy protections. She added that while the company allowed topless men, it took a strict approach to nudity of a female torso. Joel Jones, Facebook’s vice president of global marketing solutions operations, said that the company tended to be “conservative” when monitoring ads that people might find offensive but that its enforcement of adult content did not distinguish between men and women. Human reviewers are trained with examples that feature both men and women, Mr. Jones said, and he noted that more women appeared in ads — almost twice as often as men in a sampling during the previous 30 days.For advertisers, debating what constitutes “adult content” with those human reviewers can be frustrating. Goodbye Bread, an edgy online retailer for young women, said it had a heated debate with Facebook in December over the image of young woman modeling a leopard-print mesh shirt. Facebook said the picture was too suggestive.

When Apple reported earnings for its April-through-June quarter yesterday, results seemed mixed. While sales growth was flat for the iPhone, Apple’s growing services business—which includes Apple Music, iCloud, and the App Store—brought in a surprising $9.5 billion, which fueled a record quarter.What does all this mean? My favorite Apple analysts explain the stories told in the numbers:“Services continue to a powerful earnings engine for Apple and keeps growing,” said Creative Strategies principal analyst Tim Bajarin in an email to Fast Company. “ASPs (average selling prices) have risen on iPhones and even though growth was not spectacular, the profits from iPhones kept rising.”“Apple is well positioned to grow even further in the next two quarters, and with new iPhones coming this fall, they should continue to have record sales and earnings well through the end of the year,” Bajarin said.“The growth in both high-end iPhones and the services business highlights the ongoing strength of the Apple brand and its ability to deliver across multiple segments even in a somewhat challenging market,” said Technalysis principal analyst Bob O’Donnell in a Tuesday email to Fast Company. “The numbers also demonstrate that predictions about the overall tech market being oversaturated may have been premature.”“Once again, Apple silenced its critics by blowing away revenue numbers led by upgrades to the high-priced iPhone X, said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in a note to Fast Company Tuesday. “Other” products, even though the company doesn’t break out details, were up big as well, a very positive sign for Watch, HomePod or Apple TV.”On the bad news in the earnings announcement, Moorhead said: “Year over year, iPads and Macs were down, which is a bit troubling, but not completely unexpected.”[Photo: Julian O’hayon/Unsplash]Morgan Stanley’s Katey Huberty, in a research note issued Wednesday morning: In the June quarter, paid subscriptions to Apple Services topped 300 million users (a 60% growth year-over-year), and the App Store, AppleCare, Apple Music, iCloud and Apple Pay all set new June quarterly revenue records. For the App Store, results were even more impressive when considering the Chinese government reportedly slowed the process of new app approvals in the quarter (China is biggest App Store country in the world) . . .”Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart, in a note to subscribers Wednesday: “Apple didn’t just report good 3Q18 results. Instead, Apple reported the latest of what has been a string of quarters going back to 2016 that demonstrate improved performance across a number of product categories. When looking at broader industry trends, it’s fair to describe Apple’s overall performance as shockingly good.”On the iPhone’s $724 ASP in the quarter, Cybart said: “It is clear that customers’ willingness to pay higher prices for flagship iPhones has been grossly underestimated.”He added: “Meanwhile, the Apple Services and Wearables machines are gaining momentum, which will set Apple up nicely for continued revenue growth over the coming quarters.”Rod Hall and the Equities Research team at Goldman Sachs, in a note issued Tuesday night: Apple demonstrated better demand resiliency than we had expected in the summer as evidenced by an iPhone ASP of $724, which was 5% ahead of our forecast. Guidance (Apple forecast revenues of between $60 billion and $62 billion in its September-ending quarter) was just a touch ahead of our numbers . . . Given the better ASP delivery, we move our 12-month (Apple stock) price target up to $200 . . .”Apple stock, in fact, broke the $200 barrier on Wednesday. If the shares hit a price of $203.45, Apple becomes the first U.S. company in history to hit a trillion-dollar valuation. Overall, if you own some Apple stock today, you’re probably feeling pretty good.

closeVideoBernie Sanders, Andrew Yang reveal their criminal justice plans2020 White House hopefuls Sen. Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang lay out their reform plans.Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang may have hit upon one issue for which he's sure to get bipartisan support: Thursday nights in the fall are for football – not debates.Yang on Wednesday bemoaned the date of the third Democratic presidential primary debate, a three-hour affair in Houston set for 8 p.m. on Thursday.ANDREW YANG CHALLENGES TED CRUZ TO BASKETBALL, CRUZ ACCEPTS: 'BRING IT'That time, of course, means the debate will go head-to-head against an NFC South matchup between the Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which is set for an 8:20 p.m. kickoff and is airing on the NFL Network.“Why would you have a Democratic debate at the same time as an NFL game?” Yang asked in a tweet. “Football fans vote too.”Yang, from talking about Carmelo Anthony and Jeremy Lin to challenging Sen. Ted Cruz to a game of basketball, clearly has the sports fan’s ear.DEM 2020 HOPEFUL ANDREW YANG TEASES HE HAS 'SOMETHING BIG' IN STORE FOR DEBATEThe tech entrepreneur has promised to do something big on the debate stage in Houston. He teased the reveal in a tweet Wednesday.

Andrew Yang has been my favorite Democrat to watch this election cycle, partly because he’s the candidate I would most like to be friends with. That’s why I was so disappointed to see him resort to a cheap stunt during last week’s debate. I assumed that having earned his way into the first debate where all the candidates would share the same stage at the same time, Yang would seize this moment to explain the core issue that has propelled his candidacy. In case you missed it (and you wouldn’t have seen it during the debate!), Yang’s fundamental message is that a lot of working-class Americans have been left behind, and the culprit is automation. This problem, Yang insists, is going to get much more pervasive. Like the Industrial Revolution, it will lead to tremendous dislocation and disruption. To manage this inevitable transformation, Yang proposes a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month, an amount specifically chosen to be big enough to mitigate the harm without being so big as to disincentivize work. Indeed, Yang argues that his “freedom dividend” could actually liberate us to pursue our inventions, passions, and dreams. The brilliance here is that Yang frames what might otherwise be seen as a radical progressive idea in language that sounds good to conservative ears. But instead of telling this (admittedly longer) story, Yang chose to turn his opening debate statement into a raffle where 10 families will win a “freedom dividend” of $1,000 a month for a year. By turning his big idea into a sort of game, Yang doesn’t just skip over the seriousness of a looming automation dystopia—he actually trivializes it. What is more, the idea of giving away money based on luck or need (it’s not actually clear how winners will be determined) actually steps on Yang’s own messaging. That’s because Yang carefully avoids framing UBI as a giveaway (indeed, to qualify for the check, you’d have to opt out of welfare payments). Instead, he sells it as something you’ve earned—like Social Security—by virtue of being a “citizen of the richest, most advanced country in the world.” So why would an obviously smart entrepreneur squander the best chance he might ever have to make his substantive argument to a large TV audience? According to Politico, the idea helped Yang “raise $1 million in the 72 hours since the debate and collect more than 450,000 email addresses from people who entered the online raffle…” Once you view the idea through the prism of list acquisition, rather than traditional message delivery, you begin to see the method to the madness. This, of course, raises legal questions. FEC experts seem to see this as problematic and dubious, though there is a general sense that nothing will be done to stop it. We live in a world where a foreign government providing opposition research to a candidate doesn’t necessarily qualify as “a thing of value,” and where using campaign funds to ostensibly pay voters can be seen as mere campaign advertising. “The idea helped Yang “raise $1 million in the 72 hours since the debate and collect more than 450,000 email addresses from people who entered the online raffle…””It also raises a practical question: Where does this end?In recent years, we have seen the proliferation of cloying candidates begging us to “visit my website” or to text such-and-such message to such-and-such number. As far as I can tell, though, this is the first time audiences have been invited to participate by virtue of being given the chance to win cash. And since it has apparently worked, I’m worried that everyone else will get in on the act. That means we can expect to see more elites exploiting their positions of influence and undermining their credibility—all in the service of shameless self-promotion. I, for one, have had enough of that. Want to win a copy of my latest eBook? Sign up for my email newsletter at www.mattklewis.com. Terms and conditions may apply!

transcriptSenator Kirsten Gillibrand on Al FrankenHosted by Michael Barbaro; produced by Jessica Cheung and Rachel Quester, with help from Theo Balcomb and Luke Vander Ploeg; and edited by Lisa Tobin and M.J. Davis LinWe asked the Democratic presidential candidate how her decision to call for the resignation of a Senate colleague may have affected her campaign and her party.Tuesday, August 20th, 2019michael barbaroFrom The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today —archived recordingA growing firestorm on Capitol Hill after Democratic Senator Al Franken is accused of forcibly kissing and groping a woman more than a decade ago.michael barbaroConservative talk show host Leeann Tweeden accused Franken of sexually inappropriate conduct when they worked together on a U.S.O. tour.archived recording 1Another woman is coming forward to make groping accusations against Minnesota senator Democrat Al Franken.archived recording 2Another woman has come forward to accuse Franken of sexual misconduct.archived recording 3This just came in that Kirsten Gillibrand, senator from New York, she is now calling on Senator Al Franken to resign. This is marking the first time a senator has called on the Minnesota Democrat to leave office.archived recording 4First, it was Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and then Claire McCaskill, Mazie Hirono, Maggie Hassan, Patty Murray, Kamala Harris, Tammy Baldwin, who have now called on their colleague to resign.archived recording (al franken)Nothing I have done as a senator, nothing, has brought dishonor on this institution, and I am confident that the Ethics Committee would agree. Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.michael barbaroNearly two years after Senator Al Franken’s resignation over allegations of sexual harassment, new reporting about those allegations has revived the debate —archived recordingAl Franken is back in the headlines and trending tonight. That’s thanks to this article published in The New Yorker today.michael barbaro— over whether the Democratic Party, particularly senators now seeking the presidency in 2020, moved too fast in calling on him to resign.archived recording 1The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer says parts of Tweeden’s account don’t hold up, like her claim Franken wrote one skit so he’d have an excuse to kiss her repeatedly.archived recording 2When asked if he regretted resigning, Franken replied, oh yeah, absolutely. And seven senators went on the record saying they regret calling for his resignation.archived recording 3No regrets for the White House hopeful Kirsten Gillibrand.archived recording 4Furious Democrats called her a traitor, but on this subject, Gillibrand is unapologetic.michael barbaroSenator Kirsten Gillibrand says absolutely not. It’s Tuesday, August 20.kirsten gillibrandYou ready? Are we ready? Is Michael already on the phone?[interposing voices]kirsten gillibrandO.K.michael barbaroHello?kirsten gillibrandHello.michael barbaroHey, Senator Gillibrand. It’s Michael Barbaro.kirsten gillibrandHi, Michael. How are you?michael barbaroHow are you?kirsten gillibrandI’m well.michael barbaroWhere are you?kirsten gillibrandI’m in my house in D.C.michael barbaroSo you’re on a break from the campaign trail?kirsten gillibrandCorrect.michael barbaroSo we wanted to talk to you because you’re running a presidential campaign that has really distinguished itself by focusing on gender, gender inequities, questions around harassment and equal representation. And for many Americans, the way that they first came to know you for that, and maybe the way they first got to know you, period, was through your leadership in calling for Senator Al Franken of Minnesota to step down after allegations of harassment back in 2017. And in recent weeks, there’s been some new reporting on what happened back then. So to start, I want to go back to that time, to right before the first allegation against Franken. This is November of 2017. The Harvey Weinstein story has just broken in The Times, and that’s followed very shortly after by accusations against Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama. What do you remember, Senator, about that time?kirsten gillibrandWell, there was even more than that going on. There was a breaking story about rampant sexual harassment claims on Capitol Hill, and I was actually working on legislation to change the rules of how we deal with sexual harassment in Congress. There was also my constant fight to end sexual assault in the U.S. military, and so there was a lot going on at that moment before those allegations came out.michael barbaroSo you were very actively working on this issue before the #MeToo issue had kind of broken open.kirsten gillibrandAbsolutely, for over five years, in fact.michael barbaroSo what was the conversation going on among Democrats as you were considering how to handle the allegations against Roy Moore?kirsten gillibrandOn those allegations, there was a lot of clarity, and there was a lot of clarity up front. You had someone who was accused multiple times of pedophilia and of inappropriate sexual contact with underage women, and there was really no ambiguity with regard to that — certainly not from Democrats.michael barbaroI wonder, had it yet occurred to you that the #MeToo movement would reach the Democratic Party?kirsten gillibrandI had no doubt it would. The scourge of sexual assault, sexual harassment, is prevalent everywhere, and I knew full well that it would at some point come to Congress, and it was coming to Congress.michael barbaroSo what do you remember about the first allegation leveled against your friend and your fellow Democrat, Al Franken?kirsten gillibrandWell, I remember I was sitting in an Armed Services hearing when a staffer showed me the breaking news and the photo, and I read the article, and it was disturbing and concerning. And I think over a couple of hours, I was ultimately asked what I thought, and I said there should be an ethics investigation.michael barbaroSo what happened that changed your approach? Because, of course, ultimately, you called for Franken to resign, and there wasn’t an ethics investigation.kirsten gillibrandRight. What transpired over the next three weeks was a lot of information. Eight allegations emerged. Each one was determined to be credible and was corroborated in real time by the national media. Two of the allegations that emerged were since he was elected, and the eighth allegation happened to be a congressional staffer. And the nature of the allegations were all very similar, and with each allegation, as it grew, it created more and more concern in my mind. I couldn’t defend him. I couldn’t carry his water, and my silence was doing exactly that. So I got to the point where I wanted to say, very clearly, that I didn’t think it was acceptable, and that I felt that he really needed to resign. Now, 34 other members of the Senate followed me pretty quickly. Some within minutes. Several who are running for president today. I also, as you know, Michael, have two sons. And my oldest, Theo, is now 15. And the conversations we were having at home were upsetting to me as a mother. Mom, why are you so tough on Al Franken? And so I had to have clarity as a mom, and just say to Theo at the time, it’s not O.K. for anyone to grope someone without their consent, or to forcibly kiss them without their consent. It’s not O.K. for Senator Franken, and it’s certainly not O.K. for Theo. So I had to have clarity, and so I made my decision, and Senator Franken, he had his own choices. He could have explained himself, he could have stuck it out to his ethics investigation, and he could have waited till his next election. Those were all his decisions, not mine.michael barbaroBut why did you yourself no longer want to wait for the ethics investigation? You said he could have waited, but you called for his resignation.kirsten gillibrandRight. I just reached the point where I couldn’t defend him. He had also already acknowledged that he had crossed a line. He acknowledged that he had to be much more careful and sensitive in the future. And when he had the opportunity to talk to me and our colleagues, he didn’t really take that opportunity.michael barbaroDid you reach out to him?kirsten gillibrandNo, and we were there, and he knew that we were concerned. Me and several other senators.michael barbaroAnd what do you mean by clarity? You just used that word. Because it’s clear that some people looking back on this case see it as a gray zone. So how would you define clarity for the Democratic Party?kirsten gillibrandWell, from my perspective, when you grope a woman without her consent, when you forcibly kiss a woman without her consent, those are actions that are not appropriate for someone who wants to serve in the public. It’s a pattern that is disturbing, and I just can’t defend it, and I couldn’t defend it.[music]archived recording (al franken)Over the last few weeks, a number of women have come forward to talk about how they felt my actions had affected them. I was shocked. I was upset. But in responding to their claims, I also wanted to be respectful of that broader conversation, because all women deserve to be heard, and their experiences taken seriously. I think that was the right thing to do. I also think it gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that, in fact, I haven’t done. Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently. Serving in the United States Senate has been the great honor of my life. I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator, nothing, has brought dishonor on this institution.michael barbaroWe’ll be right back.You said the allegations were corroborated by the national media, kind of in real time. Of course, there have been these developments in recent weeks with significant reporting in The New Yorker that has challenged many of those accounts, raised questions about their accuracy.kirsten gillibrandI don’t think that’s accurate, actually. I felt that piece only challenged one account. There were eight credible allegations. From what I read, it really seemed to delve into only one.michael barbaroThe one being the first.kirsten gillibrandCorrect. Not the one about the person who served in the military, not the one about the congressional staffer, not the one about the former elected official, not the few who were groped at the state fair.michael barbaroWell, the reporting did address the former congressional staffer. The one that I —kirsten gillibrandNot really. I think there was maybe two sentences on it.michael barbaroI think in the case of the other allegations, and this was what The New Yorker article seemed to establish — several of them were about perception of Senator Franken’s actions. And what Jane Mayer asked the congressional aide was if it was possible that Franken hadn’t been making a sexual advance. This was a case where, perhaps, he had just been clumsy when he reached in to hug her, and the woman responded, quote, “Is there a difference if someone tries to do something to you unwanted?” And I wonder what you make —kirsten gillibrandYeah. The allegation — I just have to stop you there.michael barbaroGo ahead, please.kirsten gillibrandThe allegation was of a forcible kiss. It was not a hug. Let’s not confuse the issue. And when he made that gesture, in whatever form he did, he said the words, “That’s my right as an entertainer.” And as someone who is trying to make the workplace safe for all young men and women who work in Congress, to not stand by her, and to not be able to protect her, I wouldn’t be a good senator, and I wouldn’t be able to continue to lead on these issues. I think the question was, how do you feel about destroying a senator’s career? And to ask that question is the perfection of victim blaming, and it is unfortunate that that would be said to a young female staffer who has devoted herself to public service.michael barbaroWere you at all troubled by the new information that emerged when it came to the first allegation, Ms. Tweeden? I know you’re saying that, ultimately, it was about the kind of cumulative understanding of behavior, but there were some specific revelations about the people around the woman who made these allegations, about inconsistencies and inaccuracies of things she claimed happened, or that were unique to her that turned out to not be right, according to interviews. A play wasn’t written by Al Franken, according to Jane Mayer’s reporting, just so he could kiss her. He had written similar skits before, and many women had played those roles. That allegation ultimately opened the door for these other allegations to come forward. So is it problematic? Is it worrisome to you that there are inaccuracies, and lots of questions and challenges around that first allegation?kirsten gillibrandThe fact that he admitted to crossing the line in many examples — he said, I quote, “I crossed a line for some women. I know that, and any number is too many.” The fact that he said he had to be much more careful and sensitive in the future. Those were his words that came out after the third allegation. So I think just picking apart one allegation is really harmful. I think it’s harmful to the larger moment that we’re in, because how would you feel, Michael, if you were the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth allegation? How would you feel if you were the congressional staffer, to see members of your own institution saying you’re not sure now? I think it’s a pretty devastating feeling, and I think it pushed us back, I think, for women and men across America who have been abused, assaulted, harassed, afraid to come forward because of retaliation.michael barbaroI hear you pushing back on all of the reporting there. Is there room to challenge those who accuse?kirsten gillibrandOf course there is. That’s what justice is about. When you say believe women, what that means is not they get to decide whether something happened or didn’t. It means that you will do an investigation. When a rape survivor runs into a police station, and she said, I was just raped, and the police officer says to her, oh, well, is that what you were wearing? Oh, you knew the person? Oh, you were drinking? They’re disbelieving her, and so they are not doing an investigation. What the phrase means is believe them as much as you believe someone else who runs into a police station and said, my car was stolen, and start the investigation. And so that’s the whole point. The #MeToo movement and being able to come forward with your truth is so that you can tell what happened to you, so perhaps there’s a chance at justice. The truth is there’s women and men all across America who will never be able to call out their boss, whose bosses aren’t famous enough where a public call-out would make a difference. They could never be able to even have the hope of justice. And so I thought that this is a moment where I needed to speak my truth, that this was something that I didn’t think was O.K., and given eight allegations and two since he was elected, and having the eighth one be someone who works in my place of work. Again, and as I said, this is something I had been working on for months before this. It caused grave concern to me.michael barbaroI completely understand the point you’re making, and how difficult it has been for women to come forward. But as you said, much of the investigation in this case has been done by the media, not traditional investigators. And this latest reporting seems to provide some new information that an investigation would likely have shed light on. So in retrospect, do you wish that Senator Franken had held on for the ethics investigation? So that when we talk about justice, we can look at the results of a proper investigation, and so there’s no ambiguity — go ahead.kirsten gillibrandRight, Michael, but you’re asking me about something that’s not my choice. Whether or not to stick it out for an ethics investigation is Al Franken’s decision, and his decision alone. He’s entitled to every bit of investigative work. He could have sued every woman that came forward and gone to the criminal justice system. He could have sued them for fraud. He could have had any measure of investigation that he wanted. He’s the one who chose not to have that. But what he is not entitled to, Michael, and I want to be clear on this, is my silence. He’s not entitled to the Democratic Party being in his corner. Because if that’s what’s expected of us, then his role as senator is more important than the rest of our roles as senator. That we can be speakers of truth. That we can stand with a woman who works in our workplace who felt not only attacked, but felt devalued. So those are my choices, whether to speak out or not. I am somebody who stands up for people who need protection, who need their voices to be lifted up, and I will stand with those eight survivors. I would do it again today, and that’s the courage we need to have, and I’m grateful that the Democratic Party has the courage to do that.michael barbaroYou’re totally right that, ultimately, it was his choice. It was. He decided to step down. I wonder if, ultimately, though, your cause would be strengthened by an investigation into allegations like this, because in that case, there’s no room for ambiguity. There’s no room for anyone to say, we are just believing women with no proof, and in the process, we may be ruining careers without evidence. If it just makes everything you just said stronger, if you help ensure that there is due process — and that is a process that you can influence with your voice, and potentially, in this case, did influence.kirsten gillibrandI was not willing to stay silent for however many months that investigation was going to take place. In a lot of these instances, we are asked what you believe and what you think because we are members of Congress, and because we are decision makers on these issues. I don’t think people waited for Harvey Weinstein to have a full criminal investigation before they decided he had to go. I don’t think people waited for any of the examples that you could raise in multiple venues in different industries. I just knew I got to the point where I couldn’t defend him. So I chose to say, I’m not O.K. with this.michael barbaroWhat do you make of the fact that in the months that have passed since Franken resigned, a number of your Democratic colleagues have now said that they regret joining you in calling for his resignation? What does that tell you? Does it mean that some of your Democratic colleagues have lost that clarity, in your mind?kirsten gillibrandNo, I think it represents a struggle that a lot of people are having right now with this idea of redemption, and this idea of forgiveness. And how does someone who has made mistakes re-emerge in any context or any industry?michael barbaroAnd how much room for forgiveness do you see there as being in this moment?kirsten gillibrandI think it’s there for anyone who wants it. It just is a matter of having the humility and grace to take responsibility, to know that you need to say you’re sorry, and move on from there. I think for everyone, there’s always that path. You just have to choose to take it.michael barbaroWhat would you like, in that sense, to hear from Senator Franken? In this moment, he is saying he regrets stepping down. He’s denying many of the allegations in the way that they’re being framed. I’m guessing you don’t see that as the kind of contrition that you’re looking for.kirsten gillibrandMy perspective doesn’t matter. This is for Senator Franken. What happens from here on in is his decision, and how he decides to take this moment.michael barbaroWell, more broadly, as someone who has become a leader on this issue, what would you like to see men doing who are in the kind of position that Franken is in?kirsten gillibrandYou know, it’s interesting. I haven’t really seen it yet, but I would imagine somebody who wanted to re-emerge in whatever industry they’re in just needs to apologize. Whatever the appropriate act of taking responsibility is would depend on what they were accused of, and what the context is. Having the humility to recognize you’re wrong, and having the grace to seek forgiveness. That’s it. That’s all it takes. It’s not hard. It’s just very rare.michael barbaroI want to talk about your presidential campaign as it relates to all of this. As we talked about, in many ways, this kind of brought you onto the national stage. Your advocacy for women has become quite central to your campaign. And I wonder what you make of the fact — and I hate talking about polling, but with apologies — that you’re polling quite low in this moment, and that the Democrat who’s currently leading in the polls, Joe Biden, faced accusations of inappropriate touching himself a couple months ago, and continued on with his campaign, and seems to be doing quite well. Does that trouble you, or does that tell you anything?kirsten gillibrandI don’t think that’s necessarily the reason. I don’t think the Al Franken thing has helped. I think it’s hurt when it comes to Democratic donors. I mean, I think it’s been —michael barbaroIt’s hurt you?kirsten gillibrandClearly established — yeah — and written about that some donors don’t want to support my campaign. But I could have told anybody at the time that there is literally no reward for standing up to powerful men who are good at their day job, and I’ve been doing it for a long time.michael barbaroI know this is a provocative question, and that’s why it’s, perhaps, my last one. What about the possibility that you’re not just hurting your own candidacy with this approach that you’ve just laid out, but, perhaps, hurting the Democratic Party? Just stick with me for a second. I’m mindful that just ahead of the 2018 midterms, Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault, and he continued on with his Supreme Court nomination. Your Republican colleagues in the Senate, they stood by him, and they and he, Kavanaugh, prevailed in getting confirmed. We started talking about this idea that Democrats should hold themselves to a different standard. And watching this play out, is there a danger in the Democratic Party playing by a different set of rules than the Republicans? That you might discover that Americans don’t necessarily agree with the standards that the party is using — that you, Senator Gillibrand, are applying, and that the party will suffer, while the Republicans only gain power?kirsten gillibrandSo I couldn’t disagree with you more, Michael. First of all, I disagree with the notion that Democrats paid a price over Al Franken. I think Tina Smith is an extraordinary U.S. senator doing a great job, and having a higher electoral victory than her predecessor. I think Kamala Harris, who replaced Al Franken on the Judiciary Committee, has shown she is a tremendous voice on that committee, and has done an outstanding job. The fact that Roy Moore was not elected, and we have an extraordinary Democrat in Doug Jones. The fact that 2018 was an enormous victory for the Democratic Party. Not only did we flip the House of Representatives because women ran in red and purple places across this country, we had extraordinary victories across the country. Women in America know that the Democratic Party values them. Women in America know that the Republican Party might not. And I would challenge the Democratic Party — do not lose sight that you have to do the right thing, even when it’s hard. And I think that when we value women and do the right thing long-term, we will prevail, we will be stronger, and we will earn the support of Americans, because we value their mothers, their daughters and their sisters.michael barbaroSo if your candidacy might have been hurt by this, but you think that there are these other signs that the Democrats really gained from all of this, what’s the takeaway that you want to leave listeners with?kirsten gillibrandSometimes it’s very hard to do what’s right. I know it’s hard. It’s really hard. And it’s really hard when the person is someone you care about, and admire, and like, and enjoy, and think is really good, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t anyway.[music]michael barbaroWell, Senator, I really want to thank you for taking time to talk about this. I really appreciate it. We all do.kirsten gillibrandYou’re welcome.michael barbaroWe’ll be right back.Here’s what else you need to know today.archived recording (ilhan omar)The decision to ban me and my colleague, the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress, is nothing less than an attempt by an ally of the United States to suppress our ability to do our jobs as elected officials.michael barbaroDuring a joint news conference on Monday, Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib publicly condemned Israel’s decision to bar them from visiting the country, but said that would not discourage them from speaking out about the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli control.archived recording (ilhan omar)Denying visit to duly elected members of Congress is not consistent with being an ally, and denying millions of people freedom of movement, or expression, or self-determination is not consistent with being a democracy.michael barbaroOmar encouraged her congressional colleagues to take the trip that she and Tlaib have been denied.archived recording (ilhan omar)So I would encourage my colleagues to visit. Meet with the people we were going to meet with. See the things we were going to see. Hear the stories we were going to hear.We cannot, we cannot let Trump and Netanyahu succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us. So I call on all of you to go. The occupation is real. Barring members of Congress from seeing it does not make it go away.michael barbaroIsrael said it had barred the lawmakers because of Omar and Tlaib’s support for boycotting the country over its treatment of Palestinians, but said it would have allowed Tlaib, whose grandmother lives in the West Bank, to visit her if Tlaib agreed not to promote the boycotts during her visit. Tlaib said she could not comply with those conditions.archived recording (rashida tlaib)I think my grandmother said it beautifully when she said I’m her [SPEAKING ARABIC]. [SPEAKING ARABIC] in Arabic means her bird, and she said I’m her dream manifested. I am her free bird. So why would I come back and be caged and bow down when my election rose her head up high, gave her dignity for the first time? And so through tears, at three o’clock in the morning, we all decided as a family that I could not go until I was a free American United States congresswoman coming there, not only —michael barbaroAnd —archived recording (james p. o'neill)No one believes that Officer Pantaleo got out of bed on July 17, 2014 thinking he would make choices and take actions during an otherwise routine arrest that would lead to another person’s death.michael barbaroFive years after the death of Eric Garner, whose final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, the New York City police officer blamed for his death has been fired.archived recording (james p. o'neill)But an officer’s choices and actions, even made under extreme pressure, matter.michael barbaroThe officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who put Garner in a chokehold in Staten Island in 2014, was not charged with a crime by either the city or the federal government, but an N.Y.P.D. judge found him guilty of reckless assault and had recommended his termination.archived recording (james p. o'neill)In this case, the unintended consequence of Mr. Garner’s death must have a consequence of its own.michael barbaroOn Monday afternoon, Garner’s mother responded to Pantaleo’s firing.archived recording (gwen carr)Yeah, Pantaleo, you may have lost your job, but I lost a son. July 17, 2014, I lost my son. You cannot replace that. You can get another job. Maybe at Burger King.michael barbaroThat’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

ISIS says it was behind a terrorist attack on a Christian family in Quetta, Pakistan, that killed four people one day after Easter Sunday. The relatives had been riding in a rickshaw when motorcycle-riding gunmen opened fire on them.Three men and a woman died in the attack. A fifth person riding in the rickshaw — a 12-year-old girl — survived and was taken to the hospital, Pakistan's Dawn news agency says.From Islamabad, NPR's Diaa Hadid reports:"By targeting the family on the road, the gunmen found a weak link: Pakistani forces had stepped up security around churches, to stop militants who target Christians on their holiest days. But the roads are still vulnerable. "The family was traveling in Quetta, a garrison town near the Afghan border. It's the same town where ISIS militants stormed a church compound right before Christmas. They killed nine people."According to Pakistan's Express Tribune, roughly 2 percent of Pakistan's population is Christian.

The backlash to #MeToo was always going to begin in earnest with Al Franken. A famous celebrity and well-liked politician in the Democratic party, the harassment accusations that were made against him by eight women were met with skepticism and disdain by liberal Americans who had previously been supportive of the movement, but were unwilling to see it come for one of their own.In July, these Americans were cheered by a New Yorker article by Jane Mayer, an investigative reporter with a history of tackling powerful figures on the right, which aimed to exonerate Franken. Uncharacteristically for the accomplished Mayer, the article was incompletely and credulously reported. It poked significant holes in the account of one Franken accuser, the radio host Leeann Tweeden, but did nothing to cast doubt on the other seven accusers. Instead, the piece dismissed their allegations with hand-waving assurances from Franken allies that they were sure he hadn’t meant any harm. Despite its failures of argument and reporting, the article accomplished its desired goal: conventional wisdom among middle-class liberals shifted to seeing Franken not as a man held responsible for his own actions, but as the victim of a nefarious plot at the hands of overzealous feminists.It has often been observed that in sexual misconduct cases, a woman’s word is not given equal weight to a man’s. Sometimes it takes dozens of women’s testimony to be given the weight of one man’s – think of the case of Bill Cosby, in which 60 women came forward with similar allegations of drugging and sexual assault, and the comedian still needed to be tried twice. Mayer’s attempt to exonerate Franken took on an inverse logic: that even if there are many women accusing a man, only one of those women need have her credibility cast into doubt for all of their testimonies to be cast aside.After the Mayer piece was published, legacy media publications took up the task of publishing other, similarly skeptical or damning pieces on the #MeToo movement. Unusually powerful in shaping conventional wisdom among their broad readership, these publications have begun depicting the #MeToo movement as an excessive and emotional moral panic that victimized men, rather than a political movement for women’s safety and dignity.Days after the New Yorker published Mayer’s piece, the New York Times broadcast an uncommonly aggressive interview with Kirsten Gillibrand, then a 2020 presidential hopeful and one of the more than 30 senators who called for Franken’s resignation. Gillibrand was tasked with responding to Mayer’s piece, and in the interview, the normally soft-spoken and accommodating Michael Barbaro pressed Gillibrand with uncommon antagonism, asking if she was responsible for Franken’s downfall and whether her actions – hers, that is, not Franken’s – had hurt the Democratic party. Gillibrand, who had been widely blamed for Franken’s resignation, admirably stood her ground. But it wasn’t enough to save her campaign. She dropped out of the presidential race just days later.Meanwhile, the New Yorker followed up its Mayer piece with a pair of lengthy interviews on its Radio Hour podcast with Alondra Nelson, a professor of sociology, and Jeannie Suk Gersen, a legal academic from Harvard. Together, they sought to grapple with Me Too cases in which people apparently “allowed sexual contact” but “because of power dynamics” those same people “weren’t actually capable of giving consent.”An example that was provided was Louis CK, the comedian who is said to have masturbated in front of less powerful female industry insiders without their consent. Nelson notes that though those women “didn’t run out of room” that “doesn’t mean” that they gave consent – a puzzling and unnecessary reminder, which suggests Nelson thinks women could actually cast doubt on their own unwillingness by failing to flee.For her part, Gersen claimed that the notion of consent was inherently ambiguous, even arbitrary, because “There’s a lot of sex that’s about that zone of not being sure, of being experimental. You know, even doing something and having regret later”. Her argument grants sex a mystical and unknowable quality that it does not quite have, and waves away with a “who-can-say” faux profundity all of the pain and injustice of sexual assaults like those perpetrated by CK. The interview partook of a victim-blaming logic that attempts to use the richness of sexuality as a weapon against women seeking sexual justice. Taken together, the pieces are evidence of a growing backlash in mainstream legacy media against #MeToo, a backlash that will privilege those who wish to roll back feminist gains and delay feminist ends. Backlash politics are nothing new – Susan Faludi wrote about the phenomenon in her 1991 opus Backlash, which described the wave of antifeminist reaction that emerged in the 1980s following the second-wave feminist movement. Anti-feminism of the backlash variety, she says, comes cloaked in the rhetoric of reasonableness and respectability – even those who see themselves as feminists are often drawn to it. “The backlash is not a conspiracy,” she writes, “with a council dispatching agents from some central control room, nor are the people who serve its ends often aware of their role … for the most part its workings are encoded and internalised, diffuse and chameleonic.” The feminist philosopher Kate Manne deftly described this phenomenon of “reasonable” anti-feminism when she said: “The misogynist’s bullying feels like a moral crusade, not a witch-hunt.”In other words, the backlash could be thought of as a return to familiar social and intellectual habits, habits that subvert justice but which are comforting to the powerful. Among these habits are that of depicting women as incompetent and untrustworthy, of thinking of men as honorable and incapable of meaning any harm, of thinking of feminists as unreasonable, and their calls for men to think more about the emotions, rights and desires of women as unreasonable, even totalitarian. These are familiar habits to a lot of people, including people who think of themselves as good and socially conscientious, people who read the New York Times, or vote Democratic, or have a stack of New Yorkers in their living rooms. As they partake in the backlash, deriding women who come forward for doing so, doubting that these women were really unwilling, and heaping sympathy upon men who have been accused, they will think that they are being just, being nuanced, being sensitive of the vagaries and doubts that emerge when trying to do what’s right – even as they give all the benefits of all their doubts to men, and not to women.This emerging backlash will present a challenge to the feminist movement that has emerged in the #MeToo era, but it is not a new challenge, or a surprising one: anti-feminist reaction follows every feminist movement with the certainty and regularity of the tides. “The anti-feminist backlash has been set off not by women’s achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it,” Faludi said. “It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finish line.” But the #MeToo movement has radicalized a generation of women, making them keenly aware that they do not have to silently suffer from sexual violence, or meekly accept the indignities of sexual harassment. Un-radicalizing these women, and making them accept an anti-feminist future, would be as impossible as to un-cook an omelette, or un-ring a bell. Moira Donegan is a columnist for the Guardian US. This article was amended on 11 September 2019 to add more context to the cited New Yorker podcast. It was also corrected to reflect the fact that Jeannie Suk Gersen is an academic at Harvard, not Yale Topics #MeToo movement Opinion Feminism Al Franken Kirsten Gillibrand Women comment

Tech entrepreneur, author and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang says the impeachment inquiry being conducted by House Democrats "is the right way to go." But he also cautions that those who support impeachment should be realistic about the chances of a GOP-controlled Senate voting to remove President Trump from office. "I think impeachment is the right way to go, but I do not think that we should have any illusions that it's necessarily going to be successful," Yang told NPR's Noel King on Saturday as part of NPR's Off Script series of interviews with 2020 presidential candidates. "When we are talking about Donald Trump, we are losing to Donald Trump, even if it's in the context of talking about impeaching him," Yang said. Instead, Yang said, Democrats should be articulating a new vision for the United States. "That's how we move the country forward. That's how we'll win in 2020," Yang said. Enlarge this image Entrepreneur and presidential hopeful Andrew Yang prepares for a meeting with undecided voters in Manhattan. A.J. Chavar for NPR hide caption toggle caption A.J. Chavar for NPR Entrepreneur and presidential hopeful Andrew Yang prepares for a meeting with undecided voters in Manhattan. A.J. Chavar for NPR On the subject of winning, King pushed Yang on whether he can actually secure the Democratic nomination."Are you running for president to win?" King asked. "Or are you running for president to introduce ideas into the conversation?"In response, Yang struck a confident tone."I 100% can win," he said. "I'm running to solve the biggest problems of our time."Yang has never run for public office and was a relative unknown before he launched his Oval Office bid. He has managed to break through a crowded Democratic field with a sobering message that new technologies are already responsible for killing millions of American jobs. His signature proposal of a universal basic income, which his campaign calls a "freedom dividend," would give every American adult $1,000 a month, no strings attached. Yang says he would pay for it by consolidating certain welfare programs and implementing a 10% tax on the goods and services that businesses produce. A universal basic income is necessary, Yang argues, to mitigate "an unprecedented crisis" of wide-scale job losses due to automation. King pointed to the fact that Yang is garnering single digits in presidential preference surveys. Enlarge this image Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, NPR host and correspondent Noel King (center, right), and undecided voters Hetal Jani and John Zeitler talk politics over fried soup dumplings at Baodega in Manhattan. A.J. Chavar for NPR hide caption toggle caption A.J. Chavar for NPR Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, NPR host and correspondent Noel King (center, right), and undecided voters Hetal Jani and John Zeitler talk politics over fried soup dumplings at Baodega in Manhattan. A.J. Chavar for NPR According to RealClearPolitics, Yang is polling at roughly 2%, putting him slightly ahead of other presidential hopefuls, such as New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and about even with former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke. But he lags far behind top-tier candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. 2020 Candidate Conversations: Off Script Cory Booker Asked About Struggles With Black Voters: 'Let My Work Speak For Me' 2020 Candidate Conversations: Off Script VIDEO: Beto O'Rourke Wants To Ban, Confiscate Some Guns. Texas Voters Want Details King floated the possibility of Yang serving in different ways — commerce secretary, perhaps. He was noncommittal but left the door open. "I'm open to contributing in any of a range of roles," Yang said.The interview took place in New York City's Flatiron District, roughly 2 miles away from Trump Tower, at a dim sum restaurant Yang selected called Baodega. As the American-born son of Taiwanese immigrants, Yang's Asian heritage is central to his campaign, something he reflected on during the interview. "It's given me a lot of joy and pride to think about an Asian child turning on the Democratic debates and seeing me up on that stage," Yang said. "Hopefully, it gives them a sense that we're just as American as anyone else." 2020 Candidate Conversations: Off Script 'I Have To Ask You This': Julián Castro Pressed By Immigration Activist, Rancher On the campaign trial, Yang has received criticism for playing up Asian stereotypes, which has produced mixed reactions from Asian Americans, as a recent Vox report detailed. In one debate, he said, "The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math." Yang has taken a jaunty approach to campaigning, including at times donning a blue and white hat with "MATH" on it — an acronym for "Make America Think Harder." It's a tongue-in-cheek play on Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again," and it has been a hit with his followers. His most devoted supporters even have a moniker — the Yang Gang.

Comments Related Extras Related Videos Video Transcript Transcript for Samsung announces new flip phone Today's tech like Samsung hyping its portable phone a top company executive saying the long rumored device will be used as a tablet. That can be folded into a phone the company sensible global fund could debut as soon as next month at Samsung's developer conference. And apple seems ready to fight robo call. The company has filed a patent for technology allowing an iPhone to determine. If an incoming call is from a legit source if that's not the case the phone would send the user warning. It's unclear if or when the technology will be used in a future iPhone and finally a robot showing off some mad athletic skills. This is the atlas robot is the latest star from the robot masters at Boston dynamics at Liz seems ready for American ninja warrior he each step up on that staggered set of boxes was nearly sixteen inches high. Good going atlas not bad those are tech bytes. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Separate estimates, including one by the United Nations in February, put the group’s strength even higher. James F. Jeffrey, the American special envoy for Syria, said this month that there are 15,000 to 20,000 armed Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, “although many are in sleeper cells.”American officials said that the Pentagon was concerned about Islamic State fighters returning from the front lines to stoke violence in their hometowns across Iraq and Syria. The United States will continue its bombing campaign against the extremist group and to assist local forces in both countries who are the first line of defense against Islamic State fighters.“ISIS’s post-caliphate insurgency in Iraq is accelerating faster than efforts to prevent it by the U.S.,” concluded an analysis this month by the Institute for the Study of War.The United States now has 5,200 troops in Iraq, mostly spread between two main bases, including Al Asad in western Anbar Province, which Mr. Trump visited in December. In Syria, Mr. Trump has ordered all but a residual American force of 400 troops to withdraw. Armed drones and warplanes will continue to provide air support.Legislation pending in Iraq’s Parliament could limit United States military operations in the country by reducing the number of American troops there, restricting their movements or even demanding a full withdrawal by a certain, if yet unspecified, date.Mr. Jeffrey made clear that the liberation of the declared caliphate — an area that nearly five years ago stretched to the size of Britain — did not eradicate the Islamic State’s potency.“There is a great concern,” he said.

The recent arrests of Jarrett William Smith, a former U.S. Army soldier who discussed plans to “bomb a major U.S. news network,” and Conor Climo, a Las Vegas man who plotted attacks on a synagogue and LGBT bar, give an inkling of the growing threat posed by far-right terrorists in the United States.The problem of white supremacist violence is international. From the horrific attack on a mosque in Christ Church, New Zealand, to the assault on a synagogue in the German city of Halle, the movement often follows the same horrific script—live-streaming the carnage, disseminating a manifesto, comments full of tongue-in-cheek internet references—and governments are scrambling to counter this threat. But U.S. laws have a special problem, what might be called a “terror gap” between “foreign” and “domestic” terror organizations.While the arrests of Smith and Climo mark a new level of initiative by the federal government, there is still much more to be done. What allows far-right terrorist groups to thrive in the U.S. is a legal double standard that binds the hands of even the most proactive members of law enforcement.This double standard is exemplified by groups like Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi paramilitary group with major influence in the far-right online community. A video this past May shows people with Atomwaffen patches on their arms carrying out paramilitary drills with assault rifles. They then burn the flags of Israel, the United Nations, the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” snake, the gay pride rainbow, Black Lives Matter, the police-supporting Thin Blue Line—designating any and all as enemies. If it weren’t for the Atomwaffen branding, you’d think you were watching footage of an ISIS training camp on American soil.Now combine this militancy with a widely aimed recruitment operation. Messages on Telegram, the far-right’s current online hub, recruit on behalf of Atomwaffen, directing prospects to different email addresses of region-specific chapters across the US, Europe, South America, and Australia. Minding its popularity, it’s not surprising to see that Atomwaffen has inspired other neo-Nazis to launch offshoot chapters or like-minded groups across the globe, such as Feuerkrieg Division, a growing neo-Nazi organization which both Climo and Smith were associated with.“While actual acts of domestic terrorism—killing, assaulting, harassing—are obvious crimes, being a member of domestic terrorist organizations is not.”Media by such groups often advocate for terrorism and praise far-right attackers, including the Halle shooter and Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.This type of propaganda is a major lifeblood to the far-right community, just as it is for any extremist group or movement—no terrorist organization can grow without it. The world witnessed the power of media with the rise of ISIS, leading governments to counter propagandists with the same urgency as fighters or financiers. That is precisely why last October, a 34-year-old man named Ashraf Al Safoo was arrested for his work with Khattab Media Foundation, a prominent ISIS-linked media group that issued scores of threats and incitements against elections, public events, and other targets. Safoo himself never killed or planned to kill anyone, but the media he created helped amplify ISIS’ dangerous message, making him no less guilty of aiding the group. Taking note of Safoo’s story, you might ask yourself how groups like Atomwaffen or Feuerkrieg Division can run their threat propaganda machines—let alone carry out paramilitary drills with the objective of overthrowing the U.S. government—with little to no interference. The answer is simple: what they do is, for the most part, not illegal.“The far-right community has grown dramatically in the last year, with new waves of attacks and uninterrupted online spaces that inspire them—a very similar condition to that of ISIS shortly before it established its so-called Caliphate.”The reason the U.S. government can arrest ISIS recruiters or media workers like Safoo and others is because the groups they support are Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), making their activities grounds for, in the language of court documents, “conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization.” To support or be a member of an FTO in any capacity is a crime.While actual acts of domestic terrorism—killing, assaulting, harassing—are obvious crimes, being a member of domestic terrorist organizations like Atomwaffen or Feuerkrieg Division in and of itself is not, despite their blatantly stated goals to spark collapse of the U.S. through terrorism. The very phrase “domestic terrorist group” is in many ways legally meaningless. As assistant FBI Director Michael McGarrity explained before the House Homeland Security Committee in May: “A white supremacist organization is an ideology, it's a belief. But they're not designated as a terrorist organization.”This lack of adequate domestic terror laws too often leaves far-right terrorist propaganda, incitement, and recruitment messages under the classification of hate speech, something protected under the First Amendment. A group like Atomwaffen, which bluntly and loudly states its goals for violence, is a perfect example of why this makes for a domestic security crisis. Noting this problem, I’d like to echo the yet small but growing voices of legislators and others seeking to end this double standard in how we protect our nation from terrorism. The world has made immense progress against ISIS online and on the ground, in no small part due to the clear-cut laws against promoting it, whether financially, militarily, through its incitement propaganda machine. That said, the U.S. legal system shouldn’t have to wait until the brink of an attack—or, as it too often does, the aftermath of one—to prosecute terrorists like Climo or Smith. Membership of a group like Atomwaffen should bear all the same legal weight as ISIS, al Qaeda, or any other terrorist organization we don’t flinch at pursuing. Any such list of designations should be regularly updated to address the rapidly changing landscape of groups that either form or, under pressure, dissolve only to reemerge under different names.Such laws will make it immensely clearer to these far-right organizations and the platforms hosting them that they cannot remain online.I don’t embrace such measures lightly. I’ve been very vocal throughout my counter-terrorism career speaking out against overreaching measures by the government, whether attempting to regulating encrypted messenger services or other ill-guided policies.But the far-right community has grown dramatically in the last year, with new waves of attacks and uninterrupted online spaces that inspire them—a very similar condition to that of ISIS shortly before it established its so-called Caliphate. This is a critical moment for the U.S. government to prove if it is capable of learning from history. While terrorist legislation will not be a silver bullet to stop the threat of attacks by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, it would mark a major step in the right direction.As it’s increasingly said these days, "Terrorism is terrorism.” So why perpetuate the legal double standard?

From glorious highs to rock bottom, Indians hooked to cryptocurrencies have seen it all in the last year.In 2017, the price of a bitcoin, the world’s best known virtual currency, rose from around $900 at the start of the year to nearly $20,000 by December. This fuelled a boom in trade and a rise in the number of investors in India, subsequently appearing on the Narendra Modi government and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) radar.The authorities soon made known their uneasiness with virtual currencies and cautioned investors. A few warning signals and conflicted statements later, the RBI finally pulled the plug on cryptocurrency exchanges.On July 06, a near-complete crackdown—at least temporarily—on cryptocurrencies will take hold in India. The RBI has instructed banks to shut down all accounts, including those of investors, that deal with bitcoin and other similar currencies. And with bank accounts frozen, all rupee-related trade will come to a grinding halt, bringing down overall volumes.Here’s a timeline of how India slowly but steadily choked its cryptocurrency ecosystem over the last few months:November 2017: Investors make a beeline for cryptocurrencies like never before. Fuelled by the price boom, customer registrations increase rapidly.January 2018: More government caveats are issued to clarify that cryptocurrencies are not legal tender. The income tax department reportedly begins sending tax notices to investors. Banks suspend the withdrawal and deposit facilities of some exchanges. Some lenders disassociate with them completely.February 2018: In his annual budget speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley once again comes down heavily on virtual currencies. The government, he says, will go all out to eliminate their use in financing illegitimate activities. They won’t be included as part of the payments system, Jaitley adds.Subhash Chandra Garg, secretary in the department of economic affairs, who is heading a committee on cryptocurrencies, says draft regulations will be out before the end of the financial year 2019.March 2018: Due to regulatory ambiguity and a correction in prices, investor interest takes a beating.April 2018: The RBI directs lenders to wind down all banking relationships with exchanges and virtual currency investors within three months. Yet, it says the feasibility of these coins is being studied and hints at launching its own digital currency.Disappointed by the blanket ban, cryptocurrency exchanges drag the central bank to court.May 2018: The supreme court clubs the multiple cryptocurrency cases against the RBI. Before closing for summer vacation, the court asks bourses to engage directly with the central bank on the ban. It also asks the attorney general of India, KK Venugopal, to be present on the next date of hearing, July 20.June 2018: Through the end of May and the first week of June, the exchanges send detailed representations to the RBI on why this ban should be lifted. They say they’re open to more scrutiny and willing to be regulated.Meanwhile, a New Delhi-based lawyer reveals the RBI’s response to a right to information plea on the ban. It says no research was done and no panel formed by the banking regulator before coming down heavily on the exchanges.Garg tells television channel ET Now that a draft regulation is in the works and is likely to be wrapped up in the first half of July.July 2018: Some petitioners seek a stay order from the supreme court on the ban at least till the next date of the hearing. Their request is denied.The ban comes into effect tomorrow (July 06).

Forty-seven attorneys general have joined onto the recently announced antitrust investigation into Facebook, the New York attorney general's office announced Tuesday, super-charging a probe that comes amid broader scrutiny of Big Tech by the U.S. government.New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that a broad range of states, represented by both Democratic and Republican attorneys general, will participate in probing Facebook's market dominance and business practices over the next several months. The investigation has grown significantly since James launched the probe in June with then just seven other attorneys general. "After continued bipartisan conversations with attorneys general from around the country, today I am announcing that we have vastly expanded the list of states, districts, and territories investigating Facebook for potential antitrust violations," James said in a statement on Tuesday."Our investigation now has the support of 47 attorneys general from around the nation, who are all concerned that Facebook may have put consumer data at risk, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, and increased the price of advertising," she said. "As we continue our investigation, we will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions stifled competition and put users at risk.”The Facebook investigation is ramping up alongside a multistate probe of Google, another Silicon Valley giant that has attracted widespread scrutiny over its treatment of user data and smaller competitors.In September, a coalition of 50 attorneys general stood in front of the Supreme Court to officially announce they are investigating Google for potential violations of antitrust law. Both state probes could potentially culminate in aggressive legal challenges to the companies' market dominance. California, where Google and Facebook's headquarters are located, has notably stayed out of both the Facebook and Google antitrust investigations so far. Earlier this month, California Attorney General Xavier BecerraXavier BecerraOvernight Health Care: Democratic group to only endorse AG candidates who back abortion rights | Protect Our Care launches seven-figure ad buy to boost vulnerable Dems | California sues Juul California sues Juul for allegedly marketing to young people Overnight Energy: House Science Committee hits EPA with subpoenas | California sues EPA over Trump revoking emissions waiver | Interior disbands board that floated privatization at national parks MORE told reporters that his office does not publicly announce ongoing probes."How do you know we’re not investigating?" Becerra asked. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is conducting a wide-ranging review of Big Tech over antitrust concerns, and the Federal Trade Commission is building out its resources as it investigates companies including Facebook and Amazon. Each of the investigations is currently following a separate track, but the regulators and states will have to confer increasingly to ensure they are not building identical cases. "Big Tech must account for its actions," Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican, said in a statement on Tuesday. "I am proud to join my Republican and Democrat colleagues in efforts to ensure Tech Giants can no longer hide behind complexity and complicity.”Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who is leading the Google probe, has also joined onto the Facebook investigation. Facebook has vowed to cooperate with the investigation, but pushes back on any implication that it functions as a social media or digital advertising monopoly. "People have multiple choices for every one of the services we provide," Will Castleberry, Facebook's vice president of state and local policy, said in a statement when the antitrust probe was launched. "We understand that if we stop innovating, people can easily leave our platform. This underscores the competition we face, not only in the US but around the globe.""We will of course work constructively with state attorneys general," Castleberry said. "And we welcome a conversation with policymakers about the competitive environment in which we operate.”

Firefighters in California have been battling wildfires across the state as winds are expected to pick up again. The Kincade fire in Sonoma county, in the north of the US state, had destroyed 124 homes and other structures by Tuesday morning and was threatening 90,000 structures. Crews were also working to control a fire near the Getty Museum in Los Angeles that had prompted evacuations on Monday California wildfires: fierce winds may spread blazes as millions lose power

Andrew Yang is up in the polls and up to ... something.The businessman and presidential candidate will be doing something "big" and "unprecedented" on debate night Thursday, a senior campaign official told NBC News. The official wouldn't say what.Yang will be sharing the debate stage with the nine other top-polling Democrats in Houston, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.The candidate joined in on the tease on social media.Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the debateOn Tuesday, he shared a clip from "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" that made note of recent campaign events where he played basketball, danced and crowd-surfed."Only problem is, Andrew, you realize you're going to have to keep escalating your stunts," Noah said in the clip. In response, Yang tweeted, "Don't worry @Trevornoah, we've got something big in store!"On Wednesday afternoon, he tweeted, "For those wondering I will be crowdsurfing in sandals at Thursday's debate."Yang pulled a similar stunt before the July debate, joking in a tweet that, "I would like to signal to the press that I will be attacking Michael Bennet at next week's debate," referring to the Colorado senator and fellow presidential candidate."If I only get 3 minutes of talking time in the next debate I'm still using all of them to attack @MichaelBennet," he said.Should Yang's hints come to fruition, it wouldn't be the first time his debate performance has been unprecedented. He's also believed to be the first male candidate to not wear a necktie in a nationally televised presidential debate.

Since President Trump suddenly withdrew American troops from Syria last week, he has repeatedly claimed that he’s simply fulfilling his campaign promise of ending the United States’ “endless wars.” It’s an appealing sentiment, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. The cruelty of the conflict he’s helped Turkey unleash in Northern Syria, and his lack of empathy towards those being affected, lays bare the emptiness of his words. Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of Trump claiming the mantle of anti-war president, while instituting policies that actually encourage the killing of civilians. Trump’s calls for an end to American involvement in armed conflicts are a far cry from what he’s actually done as Commander-in-Chief. He has only expanded the so-called “war on terror,” bombing everywhere from Somalia to Libya to Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan, all while deliberately making U.S. actions far more brutal for the people living in these countries.In 2017, for example, the United States-led “war of annihilation” to oust the non-state armed group calling itself the “Islamic State” from Raqqa, Syria led to the deaths of at least 1,600 civilians, according to a study by Amnesty International and the UK-based monitoring group Airwars. The relentless aerial bombardment left the city in ruins. Under President Obama, the U.S. occasionally targeted al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate located in Somalia. After President Trump was elected, the air campaign tripled. Until last spring, the U.S. military claimed it hadn’t killed a single civilian in Somalia; after Amnesty International—the organization that I work for—documented 14 civilians killed from just five of the more than 110 air strikes since early 2017, the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) finally acknowledged two civilian deaths. But given that U.S. investigations don’t include any interviews with witnesses or victims of strikes, the way Amnesty’s do, it’s likely the actual death toll from US air strikes in Somalia—now at least 131 since early 2017—is much higher.While much of U.S. policy on lethal targeting remains secret, it’s clear the U.S. military under Trump has opened the aperture on U.S. killings, with lethal consequences for civilians. AFRICOM recently offered a hint as to how that happened. In late September, Amnesty reported that three more Somali men who had been killed in a U.S. airstrike in March were not “al Shabaab terrorists” as the U.S. had alleged, but civilian farmers with no evidence of links to any armed group. In making this assessment, Amnesty interviewed 11 people and pored over media reports, U.S. government statements, vehicle purchase records, official IDs, medical records, videos and photographic evidence of the scene of the attack and injuries sustained by the victims. Everyone the organization spoke to was adamant that none of the men was a member of Al-Shabaab. Also, Al-Shabaab did not prevent the relatives of those killed from collecting and burying their remains, which the armed group generally does when its own fighters are killed.When told of Amnesty’s findings, AFRICOM responded: “This airstrike was conducted against lower level al-Shabaab members to decrease morale ahead of Somali Army operations… Specifically, information gathered before and after the strike indicated that all individuals injured or killed were members or affiliates of al-Shabaab.” AFRICOM did not provide any evidence for its claim or indicate it would investigate further. But even more disturbing, the U.S. has no legal authority to target “affiliates” of non-state armed groups. The laws of war are clear that only actual fighting members of those groups may be targeted. Meanwhile, how the U.S. military assesses who is a fighter or an “affiliate” without conducting any on-the-ground or even remote witness interviews remains a mystery. In general, the military has been far more lax about investigating the impact of its airstrikes since the Trump administration began. In places like Syria or Somalia, where the U.S. has only a small troop presence, it rarely, if ever, conducts site visits or interviews witnesses or victims after lethal strikes to find out who it’s actually killed. In places the U.S. has ground troops stationed, like Iraq and Afghanistan, such visits and interviews used to be done, but as the “forever wars” stretched on and the U.S. began to rely more heavily on air power—both manned and unmanned—investigating their impact has become more challenging, and apparently a lower priority. For instance, in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper recently acknowledged that U.S. strikes there have increased on Trump’s orders, saying: “The president did want us to pick up in response to heinous attacks that the Taliban and others conducted throughout Afghanistan… We did pick up the pace considerably.” According to the Military Times, what “pick[ing] up the pace” meant was dropping more bombs in a single month than at any point since October 2010. Even before this latest increase in bombing, it had already been reported that in the first quarter of 2019, for the first time ever, forces allied with the Afghan government, including the U.S. military, were responsible for more civilian deaths than the Taliban and other insurgents. This hasn’t stopped the Pentagon from claiming its lethal attacks aren’t killing civilians, though. On the contrary, the U.S. has adopted the age-old policy of “deny, deny, deny” despite being given a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Just last week, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report verifying that U.S. airstrikes, aimed at meth labs in Western Afghanistan, had killed dozens of civilians. Although the Pentagon claimed the victims were actually all Taliban fighters and therefore “lawful military targets,” the UN insisted the men inside the labs “were not performing combat functions”—making it illegal to target them.Even when the United Nations or NGOs like Amnesty International investigate, visiting strike sites and interviewing witnesses and survivors, as well as examining satellite and publicly available evidence, the U.S. military provides nothing more than a boilerplate denial. In the case of the meth-lab bombings on May 5, UNAMA investigators received reports on 145 civilian casualties resulting from the airstrikes on May 5. Of those, UNAMA verified 39 civilian casualties (30 deaths, five injured and four whose status of killed or injured remains undetermined). The report also confirmed claims that some of the sites struck were not drug labs. In response, the Pentagon wrote: “Combined assessments determined the strikes did not cause deaths or injuries to non-combatants.” This standard response allows them to put an end to the inquiry, without disclosing how they reached their conclusion.This dispute highlights an alarming trend we’ve seen emerge. The U.S. engages in lethal strikes—often air strikes, based on some combination of aerial surveillance and unspecified “intelligence” on the ground—and when people are killed and injured, the Pentagon insists the victims were all “militants” or “terrorists” and lawful targets under the laws of war. How the U.S. defines those terms—and whether those definitions meet legal requirements—remains a mystery.If President Trump cares as deeply about civilian protection as he claims, then while the U.S. is still fighting these wars, his administration needs to follow the law and minimize harm to civilians. That doesn’t mean conveniently mis-categorizing everyone killed or injured as a “combatant”; it means actually taking all feasible precautions, both while planning and while carrying out the military operation, to prevent harm to all civilians, their homes and vital civilian infrastructure, like electrical grids and water supplies. And it means conducting meaningful investigations afterward to find out who was actually killed and injured and what their status really was. The U.S. cannot honorably end its role in these conflicts without an honest assessment of whom the U.S. has killed, under what justification, and by providing reparations or assistance to civilian survivors. No amount of rosy rhetoric or unplanned troop withdrawal will help the civilians who’ve lost their families, homes and communities due to U.S. actions. President Trump can disingenuously claim he’s ending “forever wars,” even as he sends more troops to more countries; but the devastating consequences for civilians on the ground continue. Daphne Eviatar is Director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, where she tackles issues pertaining to detention, interrogation, national security, and the use of lethal force. Prior to Amnesty, Daphne was at Human Rights First, where she served as Senior Counsel.

An ambulance on its way to rescue people wounded in a Turkish airstrike has been damaged in a bombing, in the latest of what Kurdish groups say is a pattern of attacks against medical staff in north-eastern Syria.The ambulance, which had red markings indicating it was a medical vehicle, was heading to villages north of the town of Tal Tamr on Saturday afternoon when it was struck by shrapnel from a weapon that exploded close by. The two paramedics inside were injured in the blast.“The ambulance was targeted with heavy weapons,” said Cadus, an independent German aid group and joint operator of the vehicle. “At the time of the attack our ambulance was not operating at the frontline.”Aram Hamidi, a Kurdish paramedic in the vehicle, said it had been hit by Turkish fire. “Our ambulance was struck and destroyed,” he said in a video interview released by the Rojava Information Center, a media collective working in the area.“Both I and my colleague who was driving were injured … I was wounded by shrapnel. I still have a piece in my jaw, and all my teeth are broken.”Photographs of the ambulance – also operated by the Kurdish Red Crescent, a humanitarian organisation not affiliated with the International Committee of the Red Cross – showed cracked windows and bloodstains on the seats.A series of agreements between Ankara, Moscow and Washington halted a Turkish invasion of north-eastern Syria earlier this month, but fighting continues on the frontiers of territory under Turkey’s control.Kurdish groups say medical personnel have been targeted throughout the Turkish operation in the area and continue to be vulnerable. The Rojava Information Center estimates that five medical personnel have been killed since the invasion began last month. Three were abducted and executed and two died in drone strikes. A further seven at least have been injured, it said.Sebastian Jünemann, the chief executive of Cadus, said it was unclear whether the ambulance had been hit by a drone or artillery fire, and that it was hard to tell if had been deliberately targeted. He said Cadus coordinated its movements with the UN’s civil-military coordination centre.“We have been targeted by Isis in Mosul but never by a state actor like Turkey for example,” Jünemann said. “In Mosul we took certain security measures … but in this situation the actor is a Nato member so we are assured that we are secure. Normally we should be safe.”Kurdish groups accuse Turkish forces and their militia allies of attacking Kurdish Red Crescent medical infrastructure, including the repeated targeting of a hospital in the city of Ras al-Ayn, and an artillery shell that landed near a medical convoy a week ago, killing a member of the Free Burma Rangers, an independent humanitarian group.The Turkish government has consistently denied it deliberately targets medical vehicles or facilities. The Turkish foreign ministry has been contacted for comment. Topics Kurds Syria Turkey Middle East and North Africa news