Enlarge this image A smartphone shows a Facebook notice that says additional reporting is available regarding a doctored video that purported to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words. Eric Risberg/AP hide caption toggle caption Eric Risberg/AP A smartphone shows a Facebook notice that says additional reporting is available regarding a doctored video that purported to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words. Eric Risberg/AP House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been leaving Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hanging.Following Facebook's decision not to take down an altered video of Pelosi that suggested the speaker had been drunk, Zuckerberg reached out personally to the speaker, which was first reported by The Washington Post last month. In the time since, Pelosi has still not returned the powerful executive's call, according to a source familiar with the speaker's views. While spurning Zuckerberg, the speaker has since taken a meeting with Chris Hughes, an original Facebook founder who has made waves recently by calling for Facebook to be broken up. And with the speaker's blessing, the House Judiciary Committee's Antitrust subcommittee launched a probe into whether too much power has been concentrated in a small number of U.S. tech firms. The investigation was launched just days after the altered video of Pelosi was circulating."We are living in a monopoly moment. And if you look at in particular the digital marketplace ... there's tremendous market concentration — and that presents special implications for workers and consumers and users of those platforms," said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., who is leading that investigation as chair of that subcommittee.He said the probe was part of the Democratic Party's broader goal of looking at the growing concentration of economic power in America, which he said has contributed to wage stagnation in recent years.Cicilline told NPR that Pelosi was consulted about the investigation before it was publicly announced and that "she's been very supportive of it." He added that he had met with Hughes recently, calling the former Facebook co-founder "a very eloquent voice about the urgency of this moment." These meetings with Hughes and the launch of what is expected to be an 18-month antitrust investigation are signals that Democrats on Capitol Hill are serious about curbing the power of Facebook and other big tech firms. And it's a reflection of how the once-cozy relationship between top Democratic leaders and social media companies have become increasingly strained as Silicon Valley grapples with how to deal with fast-growing concerns about privacy, disinformation and allegations of censorship. "It's very clear these technology companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves," Cicilline said. Pelosi has historically been a booster and beneficiary of leading tech companies, many of them based right outside her California district. But Russia's use of social media platforms to spread disinformation — among other scandals in the industry — have given her and her party pause.Prior to 2016, the tech sector was a place where Democrats could obtain what they viewed as "clean money" — uncontroversial funds to propel their campaigns."The Democratic Party in the '90s found Wall Street money to be quite amenable," said Jeff Hauser, who heads the watchdog group The Revolving Door Project. "That became toxic in 2008. And that funding source for Democrats has been replaced by big tech for the last decade." Politics Red Shift: How Republicans Plan To Catch Democrats In Online Fundraising Pelosi is no exception. Over the course of her career, she has received six-figure sums from Microsoft and from Alphabet, the parent of Google, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. She has also taken in more than $76,000 from Facebook and more than $30,000 from Amazon. All told, tech firms have provided Pelosi's political efforts more than $1.3 million over the course of her career, said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. Historically, the chumminess was reciprocated. Congress has long had a hands- off attitude for this industry, seen by many Democrats both as a source of innovation and generally aligned with progressive values."They had always been perceived by progressives as doing a social good, as socially progressive, as being from areas represented by progressives. ... So there really wasn't a perception that these companies were dangerous," said Sarah Miller, who is a co-chair of Freedom from Facebook, a progressive coalition calling for Facebook's breakup.But Democrats faced a turning point when Russians used social media to spread false information during the 2016 presidential election, and, according to the U.S. intelligence community, sought to assist Donald Trump's campaign. Increasing concerns about consumer privacy have increased pressure on Congress to act in recent months. "I don't think that progressives really understood the core business models of these companies and how they are based on deep surveillance of their users, and then using that data ... to target advertising in ways that we've seen are incredibly dangerous for democratic societies," Miller said. Big tech's challenges were made personal for Pelosi when an altered, false video made the rounds on Facebook. The video had been edited to make her sound as if she were slurring, and suggested that she was drunk. Pelosi told KQED in an interview, "I don't even drink, so I can chalk it up to chocolate, but I don't drink alcohol."Facebook took more than a day to catch on to the video and decided to keep the video up, citing its internal policies. The video was ultimately flagged as false and the video's distribution was limited.Pelosi found that action insufficient. In her view, the incident illustrated how Facebook had facilitated foreign falsehoods during the 2016 campaign."Now we have said all along, 'Oh poor Facebook. They were unwittingly exploited by the Russians,' " Pelosi told KQED. "Facebook has proven, by not taking down something they know is false, that they were willing enablers of the Russian interference in our elections."Facebook declined to comment for this article. But Zuckerberg recently spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival, calling the Pelosi video incident an "execution mistake" because of how long it took for Facebook's systems to flag the video for review. Zuckerberg also pushed back against calls for Facebook to be broken up, arguing that it is Facebook's size and power that allow it to tackle important questions like election integrity and how to remove harmful content. "What we are investing in safety and security is greater than the whole revenue of our company was earlier this decade when we went public," Zuckerberg said at the conference.But Pelosi's ire is a signal from Democrats to the broader industry. Some of the same tech companies that have been among the Democratic Party's strongest supporters may soon discover that the instinct to celebrate their innovation is being replaced with an inclination to regulate.

Every part of the U.S. has a different local term for a convenience store: the bodega, the corner store—even “the Wawa,” a chain name that Northeasteners use generically. Now Amazon wants to extend its brand to the notion of a grab-and-go shop with Amazon Go, a store that literally lets you grab and go. On Monday, more than a year after the company unveiled the concept and began a beta-test phase open only to its own employees, the first Amazon Go in Seattle will welcome all shoppers.In December 2016, when the company first teased the automated store–which eliminates cashiers and checkouts in favor of AI and cameras that detect the products you select—it said that it was coming in early 2017. Last March, however, the Wall Street Journal’s Laura Stevens reported that Amazon was having trouble getting its “Just Walk Out” technology to work as the place filled up with customers. Amazon Go’s VP of technology, Dilip Kumar, who gave me a pre-opening tour, acknowledges that Amazon had expected to let in non-Amazonians earlier. But he says that the delay was because its employees embraced the beta program, providing enough willing participants until the store was ready to exit its beta phase.For now, Amazon Go has a single location deep in Amazon’s own world. It’s on the ground level of Amazon’s Day 1 skyscraper, next to its Spheres, which are sort of giant-scale terrariums. (Kumar says that the company expects to roll out more locations on an unspecified timeline.) The store has been highly visible from the sidewalk since it opened to employees, with windows into the kitchens that let passersby watch staff make fresh prepared food and meal kits.[Photo: Glenn Fleishman]Amazon Go works like—well, like a physical manifestation of Amazon’s 1-Click checkout, where you “click” by taking an item off a shelf. On arrival, you launch the Go app, which comes out today for iPhones and Android phones and connects to your Amazon account. It displays a 2D code that you scan at one of several glass security gates. The code identifies you to the store and opens the gate. (You can also check in other people—a spouse, a kid, a friend—whose purchases will be added to your tab.) Once you’re in, AI algorithms start to track you and everything you pick up and keep. You can bag your items as you go if you so choose, and need interact with an employee only if you’re buying alcohol, in which case an associate standing in the liquor area will check your ID.Using a phone provided by Amazon, I tested the system by picking up a can of LaCroix water and leaving the store. It was a non-event, which is sort of the point. The experience doesn’t feel like an act of advanced technology unless you scan the ceiling and notice the hundreds of matte-black cameras surveying the shopping floor below. “You can just walk in, take what you want, and leave,” says Kumar.To enter the Amazon Go store, you scan in using a smartphone app. [Photo: Glenn Fleishman]The Software Behind The StoreJust how the store keeps track of you and your purchases isn’t clear. Kumar deflected questions about AI back to the customer experience, and the company has provided little detail about how the Go technology works behind the scenes other than saying it’s developed software to perform tasks such as identifying products—whether they’re on a shelf or off it, and even if they’re partially obscured by something else. (The store doesn’t use more conventional technologies such as RFID tags to track items, but can take a cue from a normal barcode on a product.)“You use machine learning and use computer vision in a way that makes this experience completely seamless,” says Kumar. “We have spent a lot of time figuring out how to make our algorithms and our sensors reliable, highly available, and very efficient so that you get things right and we’re very accurate.”Despite the Wall Street Journal’s report of early glitches, Amazon’s back-end system is ostensibly now powerful enough to handle a store full of shoppers, up to maximum capacity as established by the fire code. Kumar says that Go won’t impose any limit lower than that. During my tour, a constant stream of Amazonians passed through the store. They weren’t plants, and I didn’t see any frustrated purchasers.The necessary processing capacity and software to track dozens of people and their purchases would have sounded implausible a few years ago. But compared to driverless cars—already an impending reality, involving chaotic uncontrolled situations with unpredictable numbers of people, vehicles, and other stuff—monitoring known items in a fixed location seems a lot more straightforward.The fact that you can stroll out of Amazon Go at will with products in hand might sound like an invitation to shoplifters. But “overall, we’re not overly concerned about it or overly focused on it,” says Kumar. The store could wind up with a low theft rate just because of the check-in process, which gives it a record of who’s been on the premises.If you regard the idea of a store watching you shop as a privacy invasion, you might also want to steer clear of today’s garden-variety grocery stores, which are themselves decked out with cameras for security purposes. Facial-recognition technology is already deployed in retail outlets of all sorts and its use will radically increase in coming years. But will Amazon use data from your Go trips to do things like suggesting Prime items to order for home delivery based on what you bought (or didn’t buy) in the store? We don’t yet know, because the company isn’t saying much about how Go fits into its broader relationship with consumers.Look closely at the store’s ceiling, and you’ll see the AI-powered cameras that take the place of a conventional checkout. [Photo: Glenn Fleishman]The War On (Time) PovertyAmazon also isn’t providing a direct explanation of why it decided to build an AI-infused convenience store. But it does articulate the customer it has in mind: one with “time poverty.” That category generally includes working professionals who are urban dwellers. They’re busy enough that a regular shopping trip seems unachievable, but they want relatively affordable fresh food instead of processed or frozen goods. That same customer is a target of Amazon’s Whole Foods Markets, which helps clarify the company’s overarching grocery strategy and might provide a clue as to where it could locate future stores.The Go format also fits with AmazonFresh Pickup, which Amazon has been testing in Seattle. That service offers places to collect grocery orders at your convenience, with no cost for Prime members, instead of having to be home during delivery windows and pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee.And although Kumar didn’t emphasize it, Amazon Go adds a retail angle to the meal kits Amazon started delivering in mid-2017 via AmazonFresh. Though market leader Blue Apron and others are still struggling to make meal kits profitable, it’s a $5 billion business that analysts expect to double by 2020–and is exactly the kind of inefficient and uncertain market that Amazon likes to wade into with its ability to deploy on a vast scale through multiple channels. This first Amazon Go store makes both meal kits and prepared foods in its adjacent kitchen, but they’d presumably be prepared in a central kitchen in each city or neighborhood if Go rolls out in any quantity.Prepared fresh foods are an Amazon Go mainstay. [Photo: Glenn Fleishman]With a meal kit for two costing less than $20, an Amazon Go store can’t push enough kits on its own to make up a major portion of its revenue, even though they’re high-margin items and the store has no delivery costs. The stores’ bread and butter will be bread and butter—and salads, drinks of both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic variety, chips, and a lot of miscellaneous items. This first store is stocked with Amazon-branded goods, those of major brands, some Whole Foods products, and a few exclusives, including a co-branded chocolate with local high-end chocolatier firm Theo. Unlike a 7-Eleven, Go doesn’t sell convenience-store staples such as cigarettes, lottery tickets, or gift cards, and Amazon has no plans to add them.You’ll bag your own groceries at Amazon Go, since there are no checkouts. [Photo: Glenn Fleishman]It might seem like Amazon Go is designed for introverts, but the real purpose seems to be to serve increasingly dense areas in cities that have gained thousands or tens of thousands of residents and in which the rents are too high to support a typical corner store or grocery. In many places, these shops have already been replaced with high-end restaurants and retail stores, making it tough to pick up groceries without making a trip outside the immediate neighborhood.In 2017, I worked out of a space two blocks from Amazon Go. Had it been open to the public at the time, I would have welcomed it the few days a week I was in the area, where skyrocketing rents have crowded out groceries of all sizes—except a nearby Whole Foods, where the checkout lines are often long even if you just want a few items. Still, were Go stores to wind up in neighborhoods with other choices, I’d likely prefer the human touch of a mom-and-pop shop.Truthfully, as Amazon’s second all-new foray into retail after its 13-store brick-and-mortar chain of bookshops, there’s much that Amazon Go doesn’t reinvent, despite the AI gloss. The 1,800-square-foot high-touch, well-lit store, with hip, moderately loud music piped in, feels like a shrunken full-scale supermarket—like a Whole Foods, in fact, even though Amazon says that planning began five years ago, long before the Whole Foods courtship and merger.In a way that’s classic Amazon, Amazon Go is actually a machine designed for throughput, but the mechanisms that make customers the cogs are hidden. The concept could allow the volume and margins to turn a profit that would be worth making. And it’s a new way for Amazon to gather intensely valuable information about some of its core customers, embedding them even deeper into into the all-encompassing Amazon ecosystem that’s starting to fill every niche. Did I mention reports that the company is apparently looking into filling prescriptions?Whatever the future holds, Kumar says it’s time for this first store to open: “We feel confident and comfortable, and we’re ready to go.”

“Kamala Harris stopped her campaign because of the campaign finance rules and the fact that she couldn’t do what we see billionaires do in this race, which is flooding ads to jack up their polling numbers and get in,” he told ABC News’ “This Week.” “There are a lot of people hurt this week, including members of my family and friends who are supporting me,” Booker added, praising Harris as an “incredibly talented African American woman” who has “broken glass ceilings at every point of her career.” Sen. Cory Booker criticizes big money in politics: "Kamala Harris stopped her campaign because of the campaign finance rules and the fact that she couldn't do what we see billionaires do in this race ... there are a lot of people hurt this week." https://t.co/jDvCwgtQ2W pic.twitter.com/5YJ8L8ojEY— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 8, 2019 Harris withdrew on Tuesday, leaving an all-white set of candidates who have so far qualified for the next debate on Dec. 19. None of the remaining candidates of color ― Booker, businessman Andrew Yang, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ― has yet made the cut. In an email to supporters, Harris cited financial troubles as the death knell of her 2020 bid. “I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign,” she wrote. “And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.” Just before her announcement, The New York Times reported that a financial audit revealed Harris would have to push her campaign into debt if she continued. While Booker suggested the playing field is unfair for candidates who are not among the ultra-rich, none of the current front-runners ― former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ― are billionaires. Conversely, billionaires in the race haven’t fared well in national polls. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who entered the race last month, is at 2% in The New York Times’ national polling average, and philanthropist Tom Steyer has been unable to climb out of the single digits at 1%. Meanwhile, both have launched enormously expensive ad campaigns in efforts to boost their bids. Harris rocketed to stardom among the crowded field of Democrats when, during a debate in June, she called out Biden’s past opposition to busing to desegregate schools. She subsequently shot to 15% in the polls, tumbling back down from late summer into the fall as funding dwindled. RELATED COVERAGE With Kamala Harris Out, Democrats' Leading Presidential Candidates Are All White Trump Trolls Kamala Harris' Exit And Gets Hilariously Burned Kamala Harris Dropping Out Of Presidential Race Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

Delmar E. Church Jr., the president and one of the principal owners of a Chicago-area commercial flooring company, pleaded guilty for his role in a conspiracy to rig bids and fix prices for commercial flooring services and products sold in the United States, the Department of Justice announced. The defendant is cooperating with the department’s ongoing investigation.According to the plea agreement filed in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, Illinois, from at least as early as 2009 until at least June 22, 2017, Church engaged in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition in the commercial flooring market by agreeing with other individuals and companies to submit complementary bids so the designated company would win the bid. Church’s plea is the sixth plea in the investigation.“American businesses and institutions deserve the benefits of competition when soliciting bids for commercial construction services and products,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. “The recent guilty plea — a plea from the highest-ranking executive to date — marks the continued progress of and latest milestone in this investigation. The Antitrust Division and its law enforcement partners are committed to holding responsible the most-senior culpable individuals that engage in and direct harmful bid rigging conspiracies.”“Competition in the marketplace helps level the playing field for both businesses and consumers,” said Special Agent in Charge Emmerson Buie Jr. of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Chicago Field Office. “This guilty plea serves as a warning to bid riggers and price fixers that the FBI and its partners will hold them accountable for their crimes.”Violations of the Sherman Act carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million criminal fine for individuals. The maximum fine may be increased to twice the gain derived from or twice the loss suffered by the victims of the crime, if either of those amounts is greater than the statutory maximum fine.The guilty plea is the result of an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into bid rigging, price fixing, and other anticompetitive conduct in the commercial flooring industry being conducted by the Antitrust Division’s Chicago Office and the FBI’s Chicago Field Office. Anyone with information on bid rigging, price fixing, or other anticompetitive conduct related to the commercial flooring industry should contact the Antitrust Division’s Chicago Office at 312-984-7200 or Citizen Complaint Center at 888-647-3258, or visit http://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations.

8 Images Protests continue in Hong Kong View Slideshow

Biden had alternatives and could have packed his Cabinet with appointees not known primarily for their bureaucratic skill: Mayor Pete Buttigieg or Senator Mitt Romney at State, say, or Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois at Defense. Buttigieg or Duckworth would reassure Democrats that new voices can still rise in the establishment. A Romney nomination would reassure Republicans that Biden does not intend to hunt them to extinction for the sin of enabling Donald Trump. Instead, Biden chose three Democratic policy virtuosos, the exact people you would choose if you wanted to reassure everyone, at the risk of boring them, that the incoming administration will resemble the one that left in 2017, with a modest generational upgrade.Sullivan articulated the goals of this familiar team in The Atlantic last year. His manifesto’s bland decency is characteristic of our shared home state of Minnesota. “Despite its flaws,” Sullivan argued, “America possesses distinctive attributes that can be put to work to advance both the national interest and the larger common interest.” Forget Ovaltine—too spicy! This is a tall glass of warm milk. America shouldn’t be conceited. We should admit error and do better next time. Our purpose is to “protect and defend the American way of life,” not just for us, but for other countries whose blessings have not placed them in a position to lead the world against “aggression, authoritarianism, and malignant corruption.” Pompeo famously said he would bring “swagger” to the State Department. Sullivan’s essay heralds the cancellation of that particular initiative, which sounded doomed anyway, since nothing is less swaggery than announcing one’s intention to swagger.So hypercompetence is coming back. The bad news is that 2016, the last full year in which this hypercompetent team was in power, was a bit of a nightmare, particularly in the Middle East. The Obama administration had learned the lesson of Iraq, where regime change and nation building had failed. Instead it tried supporting Libyan rebels with weapons but not nation building, and supporting Syrian rebels with neither weapons nor nation building. Both countries devolved into apocalyptic messes. I seem to remember a group called ISIS that would slaughter dozens of innocent civilians at a time, not only in Iraq and Syria but also in places such as Paris and Orlando. Central Europe had to digest a massive refugee flow from Syria and Afghanistan, and the resulting borborygmus upended European politics and enabled a populist wave that has yet to crest.Blinken and Sullivan negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran deal. In theory, the Iran deal froze the Iranian nuclear program, in exchange for sanctions relief, cash, and other goodies for Tehran. Stopping Iranian nuclear development is a proper goal, but even the deal’s defenders acknowledged that it guaranteed the survival of an odious regime and did little to constrain its nonnuclear misbehavior across the region. Maybe the deal was worth cutting; nuclear nonproliferation is worth a concession or two. Even if it was, it should have made you wince, and prepare for a tumultuous future of proxy wars. None of the hard-won negotiations with Iran yielded a result as concrete as the diplomatic normalization between Israel and three Arab states, a Trump achievement that Obama wouldn’t have managed in a third term, or possibly even a fourth.

Three days after US attorney general Jeff Sessions officially recused himself from the probe into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, Sessions tried to discredit then-FBI director James Comey, according to a richly reported New York Times story (paywall).An aide to Sessions asked a Capitol Hill staffer whether he had dirt on Comey, explaining that Sessions wanted “one negative article a day in the news media” about him, the Times writes. A Justice Department spokeswoman denied the events to the Times, saying “this did not happen and would not happen,” but in an interview with the Lawfare podcast, the article’s author Michael Schmidt said the paper was “comfortable” with the story’s accuracy.The alleged event came two days after Comey told Congress he felt “mildly nauseous” about the idea he had influenced the 2016 election in favor of Trump and refused to confirm or deny whether he was investigating him. This reportedly enraged Trump, who on the same day, according to the Times, “unloaded on Sessions” for washing his hands of the investigation.On Trump’s orders, White House lawyers had unsuccessfully tried to stop Sessions from recusing himself, the Times reports. Trump reportedly hoped Sessions would protect him from the probe.Sessions’ ploy to get damaging information on Comey was “part of an apparent effort to undermine the FBI director,” the Times writes. Former US attorney Preet Bharara, a Democrat, suggested doing this should be enough for an attorney general to be dismissed.

Indeed, the specter of death seems to have been hanging over this protest movement—prompted by legislation, since withdrawn, enabling the extradition of criminal suspects to face trial in mainland China—almost from the moment it began.The protesters’ demands were initially summed up in a three-character slogan: “Fan song zhong!” A direct translation is “Oppose sending to China,” but digging a little deeper, one finds a darker core. Song zhong is a homophone for the phrase meaning “to see off a dying relative.” (It is also incidentally a homophone for the phrase “to give a clock,” which is why a clock is always considered an unlucky gift in China, effectively wishing death upon the recipient.) The slogan thus has death embedded in it, and so could be understood to mean “Oppose sending us to our death”—whether by extradition to China, or through the death of civil liberties in Hong Kong.For the first mass rally of these protests—on June 9, in which more than 1 million people took to the streets—participants dressed in white, the traditional color of mourning in Chinese culture, and chanted their death-laced slogan. A week later, at an even larger rally of 2 million people, the largest in Hong Kong’s history, participants dressed in the West’s traditional mourning color of black. This time there was an actual death to mourn. The night before, a protester had climbed scaffolding erected outside a shopping center, strung up a banner bearing the movement’s slogans, and appeared to be threatening to jump; in what seemed to be a tragic accident, rescue workers had slipped trying to save him, and the demonstrator fell to his death. The next day, protesters carried white flowers—markets across the city reportedly sold out their entire stock—and a shrine grew outside the mall as people piled those flowers in tribute, lit candles and incense, and left messages of condolence. More suicides would follow; some left messages supporting the protests before leaping to their deaths. In total, as many as eight such deaths have been associated with the protest movement.Then, when Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam initially announced that the extradition bill would not be proceeding, she also turned to mortality-tinged metaphors. In her English statement to the press, she said bluntly, “The bill is dead.” The phrase she used was also death-related: The bill was “shou zhong zheng qin,” meaning that it had “died a natural death in its bed,” something that online critics were quick to point out did not reflect the true state of affairs surrounding a bill that effectively had been killed by the protesters.This willingness to invoke death so directly—in words and imagery—is significant. Hong Kong is traditionally deeply superstitious, and death-related symbols are anathema. The number four is considered unlucky because it is a homophone for death, and many apartment blocks, for example, lack a fourth floor; it is considered inauspicious to stick chopsticks vertically into a rice bowl, because it is reminiscent of incense sticks burning to commemorate the dead.But death is something protesters now appear willing to contemplate. In recent weeks, violence on the part of both demonstrators and police has reached levels not seen in Hong Kong since the Cultural Revolution riots of the late 1960s. The Umbrella Movement was sparked by outrage at police using tear gas during a single incident. For over a month now, tear gas has been deployed almost every single weekend. Police have also turned to rubber bullets, pepper pellets, beanbag rounds, and—debuting them at a recent weekend protest—water cannons. Officers have on several occasions drawn their service weapons and, in a couple of instances, fired warning shots into the air.

Donald Trump has demonstrated yet again that he is the opposite of his reality TV persona who relished telling contestants to their face: “You’re fired!”In real life, FBI director James Comey learned of his termination last year from television screens in a room where he was making a speech to bureau agents in Los Angeles. And on Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson found out about his demise when Trump announced it in a tweet, according to state department officials.Strangely for a hard-nosed, swaggering New York businessman, Trump appears to have a congenital aversion to delivering the bad news in person when it’s not a TV show. Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was also ousted by tweet, while former chief strategist Steve Bannon got wind of his imminent removal while Trump was at Camp David.But why now for the secretary of state? Tillerson – who had reportedly branded Trump “a fucking moron” and been challenged by the president to an IQ test – appeared to have weathered the worst storm. Last November, White House officials let it be known there was a plan to replace him but, after a lunch with Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Trump proclaimed that it was all “fake news”.The secretary of state reached his first anniversary in charge. Perhaps even he was surprised. At an event with one of his predecessors, Condoleezza Rice, in Stanford, California, in January, he was sufficiently relaxed to joke about Trump: “Well, he’s world class at social media and I’m not and I want to confess here in the heart of the creation of this great technology, I have no social media accounts. I have never had any and I don’t intend to have any.”But as the low-tech Tillerson trudged on, something changed in the White House in recent weeks. The turnover of staff, already dizzying, gathered even more momentum. Many close observers have described Trump as newly unfiltered and unshackled, with fewer and fewer pairs of hands to save him from himself.This has two components. First, more unilateral decision-making by Trump himself. Last week alone he followed one of his few core ideological beliefs by announcing trade tariffs on steel and aluminium, despite warnings of a global trade war, then suddenly said he was ready to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.Secondly, personnel. Trump is creating an administration in his own image, not likely to contradict him but rather to provide affirmation. Less a team of rivals than a chorus of praise singers. “So I’ve gotten to know a lot of people very well over the last year and I’m really at a point where we’re getting very close to having the cabinet and other things that I want,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.The tariffs decision led to the resignation of his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, another moderating influence who had dared to disagree. The North Korean move exposed how Tillerson was being left out of the loop. On Tuesday, Trump also highlighted how the two men differ over the Iran nuclear deal, with Tillerson in favor and Trump against. Trump’s replacement secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is on “the same wavelength” as his boss, as the president put it.Trump and Tillerson, an imperious corporate CEO from Texas, did not have that kind of chemistry, and the president’s mind was made up by the end of last week. Chief of staff John Kelly called – and woke up – the secretary during his tour of Africa, though what was said remains disputed. Disagreements over Russia in the past 24 hours were therefore not decisive, and Pompeo is no fan of Vladimir Putin.The exact timing seems best explained by Tillerson having arrived back on US soil on Tuesday morning. Even so, the optics of firing him soon after he condemned Russia in appreciably harsher terms than the White House were jarring. It also remains perpetually curious that Trump shows more respect to Putin than Tillerson or Attorney General Jeff Sessions.Other potential side-effects for the news cycle: the Tillerson story may overshadow Tuesday night’s House special election in Pennsylvania, where a Trump-backed Republican appears on course for defeat, as well as the dismissal of White House aide John McEntee and allegations of Trump having had an extramarital affair with pornographic actor Stormy Daniels. Whether these were on the president’s mind when he hit send on his tweet is, of course, anyone’s guess.

Today Amazon is officially opening Amazon Go, a cashier-less grocery store in Seattle that lets shoppers buy items without paying cash, swiping a card, or interacting with a single human being.The opening marks a watershed moment in retail, signaling a future of automated, AI-powered shopping and checkout. But Amazon is not moving toward this future alone. A bevy of companies in China, where Amazon is pretty much a non-player in tech, are also racing to popularize cashier-less stores. And while few can match Amazon’s technology right now, the speed at which the stores are opening suggests that such shopping could become widespread in China faster than it does in the US or elsewhere.Armed with $80 million in fresh funding, BingoBox is one of several venture-backed startups opening cashier-free convenience stores across China. Compared to Amazon Go, it’s low-fi. Amazon uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to match the face of the buyer with the items in one’s bag, to eliminate checkout altogether. At BingoBox, all items are labeled with an RFID tag. When checking out, users scan the items using a standard self-checkout machine and then pay using WeChat. The company is working on phasing out its RFID tag system, however, and moving toward image recognition for automatic purchases, similar to Amazon Go.Formally launched in 2016, BingoBox now has over 200 shops in 29 cities in China that sell snacks, beverages, and other items, according to a company spokesperson.Dozens of other startups have emerged in the past year launching similar or identical concepts. According to data aggregator ITJuzi, in the third quarter of 2017 alone, China’s cashier-less stores sector attracted 1 billion yuan (about $156 million) in funding.Some of these business are even simpler than BingoBox. F5 Future Store, headquartered in Guangzhou, is a cashier-less shop that lets users buy snacks and small meals. While it’s an enclosed space with no humans on the watch, it’s more like a glorified vending machine than an unmanned store. Users select food on a touchscreen, make a payment through WeChat, and a snack pops out from a chute. There’s also a “self-cleaning” table. F5’s venture backers include Sinovation Ventures, an AI-centric fund founded by machine learning expert Kaifu Lee, the former head of Google China.China’s internet giants have also made forays into cashier-less stores. Last month JD, one of the country’s largest e-commerce companies, announced a partnership with property developer China Overseas Land & Investment to roll out hundreds of stores that combine facial recognition, QR codes, and RFID to eliminate checkout and boost data analytics (there are five so far). Last week in Shanghai, social media giant Tencent opened a pop-up store in partnership with EasyGo, another venture-backed startup focused on cashier-less stores, where customers could purchase WeChat-themed merchandise. While e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group has yet to launch a genuine unmanned store, last summer its Taobao business launched Tao Cafe, a pop-up outlet that was cashier-less but still staffed with human baristas.China’s wave of “unmanned” outlets includes more than shopping. Cashier-less restaurants, karaoke booths, and mini-gyms have also spread across the country. Like the stores, these outlets are relatively low-tech, enabling payments using WeChat or its ilk. But as a whole, the rapid emergence of all-things “unmanned” in China shows how quickly the country’s tech companies will jump on a new trend—at times, much faster than their stateside counterparts.

Google is declining to hand over certain documents and raising concerns about anti-Google bias amid the multistate antitrust investigation into its digital advertising practices, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. Google lawyers have been pushing back on the scope and scale of some document requests from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who has been leading the 48-state investigation, the Journal reported. And Google is continuing to raise concerns about some of the experts that Paxton's office has tapped to help with the antitrust investigation, pointing out several of those consultants have worked with Google rivals or critics.A Google spokeswoman said the back-and-forth with Texas over particular documents is a standard part of any legal inquiry. She said Google has had similar discussions about the scope of document requests with regulatory bodies around the world.“It's standard practice to discuss the scope of document requests. To date, Texas has requested, and we have provided, over 100,000 pages of information," a Google spokeswoman said. "We have a strong track record of constructive cooperation with regulators around the world. But we're also concerned with the irregular way this investigation is proceeding, including unusual arrangements with advisers who work with our competitors and vocal complainants." Paxton, meanwhile, told the Journal, “Every indication right now is they don’t believe that they’re clean because they don’t act in any way like they are." According to documents reviewed by the Journal, Google has been reluctant to hand over personal communications from executives at the company and private messages among particular Google employees. A source familiar told The Hill that the team looking into Google in Texas changed over the course of their correspondence, creating delays, and Google is planning to produce more documents on key topics.Last year, Google filed a petition in a Texas court seeking assurances that consultants working on Paxton's multistate investigation into the company will not leak any confidential information to Google's rivals. In a petition filed with the state District Court of Travis County, Google raised concerns over two consultants, in particular, both of whom have worked for Google competitors or antagonists.The tech giant and its parent company, Alphabet, asked the Texas judge to place safeguards around what those consultants can share as the antitrust investigation moves forward. Even as that effort moves forward, however, Google said it has continued producing documents to Paxton's office. A coalition of 50 attorneys general has signed onto the investigation into Google, which is looking into whether the company potentially violated antitrust law as it became a titan of the tech industry.

The UK has retained possession of a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean that includes the strategic US airbase of Diego Garcia through political pressure and secret threats, the international court of justice has been told.In the opening submissions of a legal challenge to British sovereignty of the Chagos Islands at the court in The Hague, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, Mauritius’s defence minister, alleged that his country was coerced into giving up a large swathe of its territory before independence.That separation was in breach of UN resolution 1514, passed in 1960, which specifically banned the breakup of colonies before independence, the Mauritian government argued before the UN-backed court, which specialises in territorial and border disputes between states.The four-day session will hear from representatives of 22 countries in a dispute over colonial history and the rights of exiled islanders to return. The ICJ’s judgment will be advisory, rather than legally binding. Nonetheless, it will be a significant moment in the UK’s increasingly isolated efforts to hold on to the Chagos archipelago.Jugnauth told the court: “I am the only one still alive among those who participated in the Mauritius constitutional conference at Lancaster House [in London] in 1965, where talks on the ultimate status of Mauritius were held.” Those talks resulted in “the unlawful detachment of an integral part of our territory on the eve of our independence”, he said.“These secret meetings were not, at that time, made known to the other Mauritian representatives, myself included, although we were later told of the immense pressure that was imposed on the small group.”After independence in 1968, most of the 1,500 islanders were deported so that the largest island, Diego Garcia, could be leased to the US for a strategic airbase in 1971. The islanders have never been allowed to return home.Mauritius’s presentation included a video statement by an exiled Chagossian, Marie Liseby Elysé, who was forcibly evicted from the islands in 1973. “We were like animals and slaves in that ship. People were dying of sadness,” she said. Prof Philippe Sands QC, representing Mauritius, told the ICJ: “No country wishes to be a colony. The mere possibility engenders strong feelings. A recent British foreign secretary’s [Boris Johnson] statement made that clear a few weeks ago in his resignation letter. He complained to the prime minister that she was adopting a path, in respect of Britain’s intended departure from the EU, that would turn the country into one ‘headed for the status of colony’.“... The United Kingdom does not wish to be a colony, yet it stands before this court to defend a status as coloniser of Mauritius, a significant part of whose territory it administers.”Instead of resettlement, Sands pointed out, the UK proposes to fund “heritage visits”. They would allow a handful of former “Man Fridays” - as some colonial documents refer to members of the Chagossian community - to visit their old homes for a few hours.“The right to self-determination is not a ‘heritage’ issue. This is not Africa in the late 19th or early 20th century. This is September 2018.”The court will consider two key questions: the first is whether the decolonisation of Mauritius was completed lawfully when it was granted independence in 1968 following its separation from the Chagos archipelago; the second concerns the ability of Mauritius to resettle its nationals, who were originally deported from the archipelago, back on the islands.Three years before Mauritius was granted independence, the UK decided to separate the Chagos islands from the rest of its Indian Ocean colony. The UK has promised to return the Chagos islands to Mauritius when they are no longer needed for defence purposes, but refuses to give a date.Appearing for the UK, the solicitor general, Robert Buckland QC MP, urged the ICJ to reject the request for an advisory opinion: “The court is, in reality, being asked to resolve a sovereignty dispute.”The UK, Buckland said, “accepts that the way Chagossions were treated was shameful and wrong and deeply regrets that fact”.He denied that the 1965 agreement was made under duress. In 1982, Mauritius and the UK signed a treaty that reached “full and final settlement” of Mauritian claims to the archipelago, he added. That deal has since been recognised by the European court of human rights.The UK has recently invested £40m in resettlement programmes to help Chagossians living elsewhere, Buckland said.The hearing continues. Judgment will be reserved.

Democrats in the House of Representatives released the full text of the two articles of impeachment they will introduce against President Donald Trump on Tuesday.The first article is about “abuse of power” and focuses on the underlying facts of the Ukraine scandal — it alleges that Trump improperly pressured the Ukrainians to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, by withholding both a White House meeting and military aid from them.The second article, on “obstruction of Congress,” is about Trump’s attempts to stonewall the impeachment inquiry by instructing witnesses not to testify and government agencies not to comply with subpoenas.An article of impeachment is essentially a “charge” against the president that the House of Representatives is considering approving. The final House votes on impeachment will be a yes or no vote on each article. If even one is approved, Trump would be impeached — and the Senate would then hold a trial to determine whether to actually remove him from office.Before these articles of impeachment make it to the House floor next week, the Judiciary Committee will vote on both this week, and is expected to approve them easily. You can read the full text of each article below, or at this link. Will you help keep Vox free for all? Millions of people rely on Vox to understand how the policy decisions made in Washington, from health care to unemployment to housing, could impact their lives. Our work is well-sourced, research-driven, and in-depth. And that kind of work takes resources. Even after the economy recovers, advertising alone will never be enough to support it. If you have already made a contribution to Vox, thank you. If you haven’t, help us keep our journalism free for everyone by making a financial contribution today, from as little as $3.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are again going to court to challenge the Trump administration, this time over its policy to bar detained asylum seekers from asking a judge to grant them bond.The ACLU, American Immigration Council (AIC) and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project filed a legal challenge over the policy in US district court in Seattle on Thursday. They say it puts thousands of people at risk of being detained for months or years while they wait for their cases to work their way through a backlogged immigration court system.The attorney general, William Barr, announced in mid-April that asylum seekers who have shown they have a credible fear of returning to their country and are facing removal do not have the right to be released on bond by an immigration court judge while their cases are pending.Usually, an asylum seeker who crosses between ports of entry would have the right to ask a judge to grant them bond for release. Under the new ruling, they will have to wait in detention until their case is adjudicated.Michael Tan, senior staff attorney with ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the policy unconstitutionally strips people of their right to a hearing.“At the end of the day, the government doesn’t get to lock people up without due process,” Tan said. “And the most basic part of due process is a hearing to determine whether a person should be locked up or not.”Barr’s ruling is scheduled to take effect in mid-July and comes amid a frustrating time for the administration as the number of border crossers has climbed sharply. Most are families from Central America who are fleeing violence and poverty. Many seek asylum.Trina Realmuto, directing attorney with the AIC, called the ruling part of the administration’s crusade to deter and prevent asylum seekers from requesting protection in the United States.“We will continue fighting the administration’s use of mass incarceration as a weapon to punish migrants,” Realmuto said in a statement.There were 161,000 asylum applications filed in the last fiscal year and 46,000 in the first quarter of 2019, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration courts.The number of decisions by immigration judges that Donald Trump’s administration has referred to itself for review is unprecedented, according to Sarah Pierce, policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. The administration – under both Barr and the former attorney general Jeff Sessions – has reviewed a total of 10 immigration rulings. That is compared with four under Barack Obama’s tenure and nine during George W Bush’s.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed with top European Union officials to intensify Brexit trade talks over the summer as both sides seek to reach a deal before a year-end deadline.During a video call on Monday with top EU officials including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Mr. Johnson said that he wanted a trade deal concluded by the end of summer.In...

Political appointees at the interior department have sought to play up climate pollution from California wildfires while downplaying emissions from fossil fuels as a way of promoting more logging in the nation’s forests, internal emails obtained by the Guardian reveal.The messaging plan was crafted in support of Donald Trump’s pro-industry arguments for harvesting more timber in California, which he says would thin forests and prevent fires – a point experts refute.The emails show officials seeking to estimate the carbon emissions from devastating 2018 fires in California so they could compare them to the carbon footprint of the state’s electricity sector and then publish statements encouraging cutting down trees.The records offer a look behind the scenes at how Trump and his appointees have tried to craft a narrative that forest protection efforts are responsible for wildfires, including in California, even as science shows fires are becoming more intense largely because of climate change.James Reilly, a former petroleum geologist and astronaut who is the director of the US Geological Survey, in a series of emails in 2018 asked scientists to “gin up” emissions figures for him. He also said the numbers would make a “decent sound bite”, and acknowledged that wildfire emissions estimates could vary based on what kind of trees were burning but picked the ones that he said would make “a good story”.Scientists who reviewed the exchanges said that at best Reilly used unfortunate language and the department cherry-picked data to help achieve their pro-industry policy goals; at worst he and others exploited a disaster and manipulated the data.The emails add to concerns that the Trump administration is doing industry’s bidding rather than pursuing the public interest. Across agencies, top positions are filled by former lobbyists, and dozens of investigative reports have revealed agencies working closely with major industries to ease pollution, public health and safety regulations.A USGS spokesperson said Reilly’s emails were “intended to instruct the subject matter expert to do the calculations as quickly as possible based on the best available data at the time and provide results in clear understandable language that the Secretary could use to effectively communicate to a variety of audiences.” The agency added that it “stands by the integrity of its science”When forests burn, they do emit greenhouse gases. But one expert said the numbers the interior department put forth are significant overestimates. They say logging wouldn’t necessarily help prevent or lessen wildfires. On the contrary, logging could negate the ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide humans are emitting at record rates.Chad Hanson, a California-based forest ecologist who co-founded the John Muir Project and who has opposed logging after fires, called the strategizing revealed in the emails a “blatant political manipulation of science”.Mark Harmon, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, said while it’s normal for the department to want to quantify emissions from fires, it’s unclear whether they began the process with a particular figure in mind.“Gin-up is an unfortunate phrase to be sure, but it might have been a very imprecise way to ask for an estimate. It certainly does not inspire confidence,” Harmon said.He said the resulting quotes from top officials and press releases from the department are “about what you would expect from agencies trying to justify actions they already decided to take with minimal analysis”.Harmon added that “the effect of logging on fires is highly variable,” depending on how it is done and the weather conditions.Not long after the interior department came up with its carbon emission estimates from the 2018 California wildfires, Trump issued an executive order instructing federal land managers to significantly increase the amount of timber they harvest. This fall, he also proposed allowing logging in Alaska’s Tongass national forest, the largest intact temperate rainforest in North America.Trump has also tweeted multiple times about wildfires, saying they are caused by bad land management or environmental laws that make water unavailable.Monica Turner, a fire ecology scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said “it is climate that is responsible for the size and severity of these fires”.An Interior department spokesperson said the department’s role is to follow the laws and use the best science and that it continues “to work to best understand and address the impacts of an ever-changing climate.”Agency officials started emphasizing wildfire emissions data as a talking point as early as August 2018.In an email chain that month, Reilly was asked by interior’s former deputy chief of staff Downey Magallanes to sign off on a statement that fires in 2018 had emitted 95.6m tons of CO2.“Interesting statistics,” Reilly responded, noting that emissions would vary based on the types of trees on the land. “…We assumed woodlands mix since we don’t currently have details on the overall land cover types involved. Any variance to the fuel type will still leave it in the range to make the comparison, however. I’ll use this one if you don’t object. Makes a good story.”Reilly, who was confirmed to his position in April 2018, later asked career scientists at the agency for updated numbers, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.“I need to get a number for total CO2 releases for the recent CA fires and a comparison against emissions for all energy in US … Tasker from the boss; back to me ASAP,” he said on 10 October 2018. His boss at the time was the former interior secretary Ryan Zinke.The job fell to Doug Beard, the director of the National Climate Adaptation Science Center, and Bradley Reed, an associate program coordinator in the Geographic Analysis and Monitoring Program, who responded with numbers from his team that afternoon.In November 2018, Reilly once again asked for the same estimates of carbon dioxide generated by two devastating fires that fall in California – the Camp and Woolsey fires.“The Secretary likes to have this kind of information when he speaks with the media,” Reilly said in a 16 November email to David Applegate, the associate director for natural hazards.Applegate directed Beard to get the numbers, and Reilly chimed in, asking Beard: “Can you have [the scientists] gin up an estimate on the total CO2 equivalent releases are so far for the current 2 fires in CA?” He said he wanted to compare the figures to the carbon pollution caused by transportation in California. “That would make a decent sound bite the Sec could use to put some perspective on it,” said Reilly.Just a week earlier, the ferocious Camp fire had destroyed Paradise, California, killing dozens and becoming the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history. The scenes detailed were horrific.Conservatives have insisted that the wildfires are happening because environmentalists have overzealously encouraged the conservation of forests. Trump has battled with California – the face of the American progressive movement he opposes – over a multitude of other issues, including the state’s longstanding climate policy of requiring new cars to go farther on less fuel.The new emails show communications staffers and political appointees using government scientists as foot soldiers in those battles.Now, under the leadership of the former lobbyist David Bernhardt, the agency has sought to remove consideration of climate change from many of its decisions, while expanding oil and gas drilling on federal land. Multiple whistleblowers have accused the department of stifling climate science.Bernhardt in a May 2019 hearing told lawmakers there are no laws obligating him to combat climate change.After Reilly asked his staff to calculate the wildfire emissions numbers in November, an interior spokeswoman emailed him asking for the same information so she could put out a statement from Zinke. A few days later, the agency published a press release on Zinke’s behalf, with the title “New Analysis Shows 2018 California Wildfires Emitted as Much Carbon Dioxide as an Entire Year’s Worth of Electricity.”“There’s too much dead and dying timber in the forest, which fuels these catastrophic fires,” Zinke said. “Proper management of our forests, to include small prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and other techniques, will improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfires, while also helping curb the carbon emissions.”Hanson, the forest and fire ecologist, said that in addition to using the government data for political purposes, the department numbers overstated the carbon emissions from forest fires while downplaying emissions from fossil fuels.He said that the carbon emissions numbers generated by USGS and released to the public were an “overestimate” that “can’t be squared with empirical data” from field studies of post-wildfire burn sites in California. Other scientists the Guardian spoke with did not dispute the government’s data, but did find fault with the way it was presented to the public.“The comparison of fire to electrical emissions [in California] was not explained or justified”, said Harmon, the Oregon State University scientist. “Picking other sectors would have left an entirely different image in the reader’s mind…If the comparison had been made nationally it would have been found that fire related emissions of carbon dioxide were equivalent to 1.7% of fossil fuel related emissions. So it is hard to escape the conclusion that some cherry picking was going on.”Jayson O’Neill, the deputy director of the Western Values Project, said the emails are another example of the administration “trying to find ways to tell a story to achieve industry goals”.“As wildfire experts have repeatedly explained, you can’t log or even ‘rake’ our way out of this mess,” O’Neill said. “The Trump administration and the interior department are pushing mystical theories that are false in order to justify gutting public land protections to advance their pro-industry and lobbyist dominated agenda.” Topics Environment Trump administration Wildfires Logging and land-clearing California Natural disasters and extreme weather US politics news

Oregon may take a big first step toward ending the war on drugs this November, with voters set to decide whether the state will decriminalize all drugs through the ballot initiative Measure 110.The initiative would decriminalize all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, and redirect the savings — along with sales tax revenue from marijuana, which is currently legal in the state — to setting up a drug addiction treatment and recovery program. It’s an attempt to replace the criminal justice approach for drugs with a public health one. Decriminalization is very different from legalization. In general, decriminalization means the removal of criminal penalties — particularly prison time — for the possession and use of a drug, but not the legalization of sales. So people wouldn’t get arrested for having small amounts of heroin or cocaine on them, but don’t expect stores legally selling either substance to pop up.Supporters of decriminalization argue that drug misuse and addiction are public health issues, not problems for the criminal justice system. They claim that criminal prohibition leads to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary, racially biased arrests each year in the US — a costly endeavor, straining police resources and contributing to mass incarceration, that does little to actually help people struggling with drug use. Instead, they advocate for resources to be put toward education, treatment, and harm reduction services. Meanwhile, other laws remain on the books to deal with any crime or violence that arises due to drugs.Opponents argue that decriminalization would remove a powerful deterrent to trying and using drugs, potentially fueling more drug use and addiction. They claim criminal penalties attached to drug possession can also be leveraged — through, say, drug courts — to push people into addiction treatment they otherwise wouldn’t accept. And to the extent there are racial disparities in such arrests, they argue that’s a problem with bias in law enforcement and systemic racism across American society in general, not necessarily a result of drug prohibition itself.Some critics separately question if the ballot initiative would really direct sufficient funding to addiction treatment. The campaign behind the measure claims, citing state analyses, that it would at least quadruple state funding to recovery services in particular.Oregon would be the first state to decriminalize all drugs. To date, the most aggressive steps that states have taken to scale back the war on drugs are to legalize marijuana and to defelonize all drugs, which can still leave criminal penalties like jail or prison time in place. But actual drug decriminalization is untried in the modern US.Still, Oregon wouldn’t be the first place to decriminalize drugs. Portugal did it in 2001, earning a lot of continued media coverage (including at Vox). The effects seem, on net, positive: Coupled with boosts to drug addiction treatment and harm reduction services, decriminalization seemed to lead to more lifetime drug use overall but less problematic use.Such an approach could have different results in the US. Supporters are hoping that voters in Oregon, however, will at least be willing to give it a try. If voters embrace the approach, and it works, prohibition opponents could use Oregon to make a case for scaling back the war on drugs more broadly — similar to the approach they’ve taken with marijuana policies.It begins, however, in Oregon.Oregon’s Measure 110 would remove criminal penalties for the personal, noncommercial possession of a controlled substance, while giving people caught with small amounts of drugs the option to either pay a fine of no more than $100 or get a “completed health assessment” done through an addiction recovery center. The measure would decriminalize all drugs classified Schedule I through IV under the law, including cocaine, heroin, and meth. According to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, the measure would lead to a roughly 91 percent decrease in drug possession arrests and convictions in Oregon. Black and Native American people, who are currently overrepresented relative to their population for possession arrests and convictions, would disproportionately benefit.The measure would also direct savings from law enforcement and incarceration costs as well as tax revenue from marijuana sales to a new drug addiction treatment and recovery program. The funds would be overseen by an oversight council set up by the Oregon Health Authority made up of treatment providers, a harm reduction services provider, a drug researcher, and people who’ve dealt with addiction, among others. The funds will be audited by the secretary of state’s office at least once every two years.The measure, in other words, takes a two-pronged approach to drug decriminalization: It tries to eliminate the criminal justice system’s role in simple drug possession, while shifting the issue to a public health system by both facilitating health assessments and directing more funds to addiction treatment and harm reduction services.The potential benefits aren’t just fewer arrests and convictions, but also a reduction in the collateral damage that can come from those arrests and convictions, including a criminal record that makes it harder to get a job, housing, schooling, or a range of social services.At the same time, the reality is America’s addiction treatment system is still underfunded and underregulated. As Vox’s Rehab Racket series exposed, the current system is full of questionable programs that don’t provide evidence-based treatment but nonetheless can cost tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.There’s also some cause for concern that state funds will flow to substandard treatment providers. Local, state, and federal governments already offer some funds and grants for addiction treatment facilities. But many of the agencies that give out these funds often fall under heavy lobbying by the industry — leading them to perpetuate the broken system as it exists today. Oregon’s measure tries to chip away at these problems by setting aside a pot of funds overseen by a council tasked with ensuring the money is spent wisely.Critics of Measure 110 maintain that it would fail to live up to its promise. They argue that the reallocation of existing spending isn’t enough to fully fund drug addiction treatment services. And some, like Oregon Council for Behavioral Health Executive Director Heather Jefferis, argue the reallocation would take away funds from services, including education and behavioral health, that currently help prevent addiction. “Shifting funds from one part of the continuum of care to another does not equate to increased funding,” Jefferis told me.The campaign counters, citing in part a state analysis, that Measure 110 would effectively put more than $100 million a year for addiction recovery services in particular — up from the $25 million a year that Oregon currently spends outside of Medicaid and the criminal justice system. “This measure is a big step forward,” Peter Zuckerman, campaign manager for Yes on 110, told me. “But,” he acknowledged, “it doesn’t solve everything.”The opposition, backed particularly by law enforcement, also argues the measure will lead to more drug use and addiction — as criminal penalties can no longer be used or leveraged to deter people from drug use and direct them to treatment. While drug courts built on penalties for drug-related crimes do help some people struggling with misuse or addiction, the question is if the threat of jail, prison, or a criminal record is really necessary to get people to treatment. A criminal penalty may even have the opposite effect — deterring people from getting help because they know that, in effect, they’ll be admitting to a crime and possibly exposing themselves to all the consequences that come with that.Given that decriminalization is so far untried in the US, it’s difficult to say how it would play out. In that sense, Measure 110 would create a real-time experiment for Oregon and the rest of the country.But first, Oregon’s measure will need to get voters’ approval. It’s unclear how likely it is to pass, due to a lack of polls. But a few big political actors in the state, including the Oregon Democratic Party, have backed the proposal.There’s no modern example of decriminalization within the US for Oregon voters to draw from. But the measure does very loosely follow the structure of what Portugal did back in 2001: The country decriminalized all drugs, and pushed people toward better funded and supported treatment and harm reduction services.A 2009 report from the libertarian Cato Institute, written by Glenn Greenwald, concluded that decriminalization spared people from the “fear of arrest” when they sought help for their addiction and “freed up resources that could be channeled into treatment and other harm reduction programs.”After the change, Portugal saw a decrease in drug-related deaths and drops in reported past-year and past-month drug use, according to a 2014 report from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which advocates for legalization. But it also saw an increase in lifetime prevalence of drug use, as well as an uptick in reported use among teens after 2007.Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times in 2017, after visiting Portugal to see its model in action: After more than 15 years, it’s clear which approach worked better. The United States drug policy failed spectacularly, with about as many Americans dying last year of overdoses — around 64,000 — as were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined. In contrast, Portugal may be winning the war on drugs — by ending it. Today, the Health Ministry estimates that only about 25,000 Portuguese use heroin, down from 100,000 when the policy began. Crucially, Portugal adopted special commissions that attempt to push people with drug addictions to treatment with the threat of penalties, including fines and the revocation of professional licenses. Although the success of the commissions has yet to be thoroughly evaluated, it’s possible that even as decriminalization increased drug use, the commissions and improved access to treatment got so many people off drugs that use fell or held steady overall.The requirement in Oregon’s measure for a completed health assessment via an addiction recovery center could work similarly to Portugal’s commissions, pushing people to get care instead of paying a fine. But it remains to be seen if these assessments will provide enough encouragement to seek treatment, or if people will generally decide to pay the $100 fine instead of getting the assessment done.Also similar to Portugal, Oregon’s measure is pushing to put more money toward addiction treatment. But a lingering question is if the Oregon measure will truly match the scale of Portugal’s big investment into its own addiction treatment system — particularly towards evidence-based approaches like medications for opioid addiction and needle exchanges.Given these potential differences, Oregon’s approach may not work as well as Portugal’s. But if voters adopt the measure, it would be as close to the Portugal model as any state has gotten in modern times. And if it works, drug policy reformers could leverage the example to spread the idea around the country.Over the past decade, progressives have increasingly called to “end the war on drugs” — citing, in particular, the vast racial disparities in anti-drug law enforcement. While some lawmakers have taken up that call, legislation has often lagged behind what progressive activists — and voters — support. So activists and voters have begun to take matters into their own hands with ballot measures.Marijuana legalization is one such example. There’s a lot of support for marijuana legalization, with even a majority of Republicans, who are typically more skeptical of drug policy reform, backing the change in public polls. Yet progressive politicians have lagged behind voters on this issue — for instance, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, opposes marijuana legalization (though he backs decriminalization).Rather than wait for politicians to catch up, activists have gone through the state ballot initiative process to get the change they want. In 2012, that approach made Colorado and Washington the first two states to legalize marijuana. Nine more states, and DC, have since followed (although two states, Illinois and Vermont, did so through their legislatures). Four other states have legalization measures on the ballot in November.Given their successes with marijuana, drug policy reformers are now looking for other ways to scale back the war on drugs through ballot measures. That includes Oregon’s drug decriminalization measure, as well as other ballot measures, including one in Oregon, involving psychedelic substances. The question now is if the voters will be as receptive to these ideas as drug policy reformers hope they are.If voters do prove receptive, that could make the new measures the beginning of a broader push in the next few years, similar to what the US has already seen with marijuana. But first, we’ll have to see how the vote works out in Oregon this November. Will you help keep Vox free for all? Millions of people rely on Vox to understand how the policy decisions made in Washington, from health care to unemployment to housing, could impact their lives. Our work is well-sourced, research-driven, and in-depth. And that kind of work takes resources. Even after the economy recovers, advertising alone will never be enough to support it. If you have already made a contribution to Vox, thank you. If you haven’t, help us keep our journalism free for everyone by making a financial contribution today, from as little as $3.

“What’s so pro-life about forced hysterectomies?” It’s an obvious follow-up question after the revelation that the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump forced unwanted reproductive medical procedures on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainees. And with some rank-and-file anti-abortion workers resigning rather than stomach supporting Trump, it lays open the question of whether the movement, even with its judicial success and the possibility of one more appointment to the supreme court, can survive the damage Trump has inflicted.During the last election, the desire to overturn Roe v Wade had some holding their noses and voting for Trump. Four years later, the problems of standing with such a deeply immoral president, a string of horrific policy actions and a small but significant change in the voting patterns of religious conservatives all may be combining to hasten the diminishment of the movement even as it reaches a coveted milestone.Christianity Today recently reported that the executive director for Ohio Right to Life resigned rather than support Trump in 2020. According to Stephanie Ranade Krider: “Nothing about his words or actions are kind or gentle or faithful or full of self-control.” I understand her sentiment. As someone activated into the “pro-life” movement while a student at Liberty University in the 1980s, I believed our work should affirm the value of each human being made in the image of God. Trump’s foul-mouthed debasement of his opponents is in stark contrast to that value.The lifeblood of any movement is deeply committed followers. It is difficult to motivate volunteers without even pretending to affirm the core values of compassion and love for all life. As a Republican campaign operative in the 1980s and 90s, I experienced the importance a shared sense of values and a common struggle played in uniting anti-abortioners to work for an emerging conservative majority in the Virginia legislature. It’s unfathomable to imagine uniting those same faithful door walkers and envelope stuffers toward working for a president who locks kids in cages or forces sterilization on detained immigrants.It should come as no surprise that a small but significant number of conservative evangelical and Catholic voters have made the decision to shift their vote to Joe Biden and the Democratic party. As Vote Common Good reported in a swing state poll released last week, evangelicals and Catholics are on track to swing toward Biden an average of 11% in five key states. While that may be seen as a small number compared to the hold the Republican party and the anti-abortion movement has had on these voters, it should be seen as the continuation of a trend, especially among younger voters.In 2008, I spent more than 200 hours interviewing young evangelicals who were leaving the organized evangelical church behind. The primary reason was the disconnect they felt between their faith, the teaching of scripture and the political actions of the religious right. According to one young evangelical I interviewed: “We couldn’t understand – where did people like the Moral Majority come from and why aren’t they focused on the issues Jesus cared about?”Some may argue that younger evangelicals are still as anti-abortion as their parents, and that has some statistical backing. But they are also less likely to fall in line with religious leaders and their political projects. That may be an ironic byproduct of the desire for credibility within the evangelical academy. Beginning in the 1990s, schools like Liberty, Wheaton and Biola implemented a more rigorous plan of academics in biblical education and church history. Armed with that increased knowledge, younger evangelicals reject the biblical and historical shortsightedness the religious right brings to the culture wars. They find they cannot ignore the preponderance of scripture that demands justice for workers, people of all races and even migrant children at the border.Younger evangelicals were supposed to be the next generation of anti-abortion and conservative leaders. But many I spoke to are forming neo-monastic communities to serve among and care for the poor. Others are fueling movements toward social justice, care for creation and racial healing. So, even if Trump is able to put an anti-abortion replacement on the supreme court it may prove to be a pyrrhic victory. Overturning Roe will not make abortion illegal, but rather shift the fight back to the individual states. With younger evangelicals engaging with Black Lives Matter, the fight for climate action and prison reform, it seems unlikely they will take up the mantle of the state by state anti-abortion fight, especially when it has become so caustically linked to Donald Trump and the abuses against life and decency during his time in office.We need to foster ways for faithful evangelicals to act faithfully, to reclaim the moral narrative and provide space to advocate for the election of leaders who reflect a full set of Christian values that will help our nation heal. This is why I am lending my voice to the New Moral Majority and participating in actions to reclaim our sacred story. In the past few weeks, frustrated by the reality that children are still being separated from their families and placed into detention, over 450 faith leaders called upon Trump to change course. To learn now that mothers of the separated children have been forced to have hysterectomies is news that sends shockwaves through communities of faith. It’s the type of government intervention in the family planning process that is not only fundamentally immoral, but against every freedom we claim to protect for all those made in the image of God.I once asked a younger evangelical who grew up in a Republican and anti-abortion household why he has chosen a life of service among the urban poor. He said: “They blew it, man. Our parents and their generation. They cared more about power than people. We needed to do something new.” Indeed. Will Samson is a former Republican operative. His research on changes to American Evangelicalism is published in The New Evangelical Social Engagement, Oxford University Press

It's Thursday, Nov. 20, 2019. Let's start here.1. Sondland's spotlightThe Ukrainian president would get a meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump if he opened investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, according to Sondland, who noted that it was his "presumption" that nearly $400 million in military aid would be withheld as well, although he said Trump never told him directly that it would be.ABC News Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams goes through Sondland's testimony on "Start Here" and questions whether Democrats were able to make their case in the impeachment inquiry to the public."I don't think there's any question that the Democrats have demonstrated that the president was demanding investigations in exchange for a White House visit, in exchange for aid, but that doesn't necessarily mean he gets impeached and removed from office," he says.2. Democrats debateThe impeachment inquiry was top of mind for Democrats at the Democratic debate in Atlanta last night, but all eyes were also on South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg after his recent surge in the polls in Iowa.ABC News Deputy Political Director MaryAlice Parks has highlights from the debate on today's podcast."Start Here," ABC News' flagship podcast, offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn or the ABC News app. Follow @StartHereABC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for exclusive content and show updates.Elsewhere:'Saddened, disturbed and angered': A food worker at a Texas elementary school has been arrested after allegedly placing a small hidden camera inside a boy’s bathroom.'Really proud': As Apple broke ground at its newest facility, in Texas, CEO Tim Cook said the company was proud to make its "most powerful computer ever" in the U.S., and opened up about having the president's ear and navigating business in China amid political tripwires and an ongoing trade war.'Unconscious and not breathing': A Washington State University student died four hours before fellow fraternity members first called 911 to report that he was unresponsive, investigators revealed Wednesday.'False statements': Former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett has filed a counter lawsuit against the city of Chicago, claiming that authorities "maliciously" prosecuted him after he claimed he was attacked by two masked assailants in January.From our friends at FiveThirtyEight:'What went down in the fifth Democratic debate': One thing was certain though: Democratic candidates seemed less willing to see how far they could push each other to the left on big policy ideas. Some of the lower-tier candidates like Klobuchar and Booker managed to deliver strong performances this evening, as well. Tonight could prove pivotal for Booker’s future in the race, too, as he’s still a long shot to qualify for the Dec. 19 debate.Doff your cap:Thanksgiving is a little more than a week away but some residents in Wisconsin have been watching one star turkey for weeks.That's because a bird has been walking from home to home, keeping in step, with the postal worker who delivers the mail to the neighborhood on Tacoma Drive in Waukesha County."OK, seriously. This turkey has been stalking the mail truck throughout the entire neighborhood," resident Sherry Michaels said in a video she posted to Facebook on Monday. "Oh my God. ... This is so funny.""I can't say he's annoying. It's Thanksgiving," the mailman said. "Too close to his holiday."

Democratic 2020 candidates tore into Donald Trump at the fifth presidential debate in Atlanta on Wednesday night, hours after a senior US diplomat gave explosive testimony during impeachment hearings that directly implicated the president in a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine.Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, stunned Washington with bombshell evidence that blew a hole in the White House’s defences, implicated numerous senior officials and left the US president facing probable impeachment.In a two-and-half-hour debate that featured 10 candidates and raced through a wide range of issues from healthcare, housing and race to climate change and white nationalism, Elizabeth Warren argued it was Democrats and Republican senators’ “constitutional responsibility” to remove Trump from office.“We have a criminal living in the White House,” said Kamala Harris. “Ambassador Sondland by his own words told us that everyone was in the loop. That makes it a criminal enterprise.”Referring to the fact that Sondland was appointed to his position after making a $1m donation to Trump’s inaugural fund, Warren focussed her criticism on corruption: “We are not going to give away these ambassador posts to the highest bidder.”Bernie Sanders, by contrast, warned that the party must not become “consumed” by Trump and the impeachment inquiry or risk losing the election to him again in November 2020.Joe Biden, in a reply riddled with verbal stumbles, argued that the impeachment inquiry is evidence that Trump fears him more than any other candidate. At the heart of the impeachment inquiry is whether Trump abused the power of his office by attempting to enlist Ukraine to open an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter.Biden has continued to maintain his status as frontrunner in the crowded field of 2020 Democratic candidates, based in large part on his enduring support from African American voters.But in the month since the last presidential debate, rising star Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor has emerged as a threat to “top tier” candidates Biden, Warren and Sanders in the key early voting state of Iowa, while Warren has seen her lead slip as she faces sustained attacks over how she would pay for her sweeping policy proposals.The evening’s debate was moderated by an all-female panel for only the third time in US history. Between the moderators – NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker, Washington Post White House reporter Ashley Parker and MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell – and the four female candidates there were more women on stage than men. It was a striking image that reflects the diverse base of the Democratic party, which is increasingly led by women and people of color.Harris and Cory Booker, the two black senators on the stage tangled with Biden during a discussion on how the party can appeal to African American voters.Booker said he has plenty of experience with this black voters: “I’ve been one since I was 18.” He then rebuked Biden for his recent comments objecting to the legalization of marijuana. “I thought you might’ve been high when you said it,” Booker quipped of Biden’s argument that research hasn’t shown it is not a gateway drug.In his response, Biden said he believes marijuana should be decriminalized and that “everyone anyone who has a record should be let out of jail. Their records expunged”.Biden then started boasting about his enduring support among African American voters. “I come out of the black community in terms of my support,” Biden said and listed some of his prominent endorsements. “Three former chairs of the Black Caucus. The only black African-American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate.”Harris threw her hands in the air, laughing: “Nope. That’s not true. The other one is here.”Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman to be elected to the Senate, has endorsed Biden. But the second, Harris, was standing right next to him.The issues of voting rights, paid family leave and climate change received a rare substantive exchanges.“It is the number one threat to humanity, it is an existential issue,” Biden said, after billionaire candidate Tom Steyer accused him of not addressing the crisis with an appropriate level of urgency.The tone was far less confrontational than past debates as candidates mostly argued for a united front on issues like abortion while distinguishing themselves on healthcare, taxes and foreign policy.It was widely anticipated that Buttigieg, 37, would be a prime target for the other candidates after he emerged this week as the frontrunner in Iowa, but the attacks mostly came in the final moments.“I think experience should matter,” Amy Klobuchar said, noting the young mayor’s lack of a governing record. Earlier in the evening, the three-term senator lamented the double standard women face when running for office.Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard also took a swipe at Buttigieg, the only other veteran on the stage, in one of the sharpest clashes of the evening.She said military experience alone wasn’t enough to qualify someone for the presidency. The mayor retorted that Gabbard’s decision to sit down with the “murderous dictator” Syrian president Bashar al-Assad showed a lack of judgement.In another exchange Harris, who Gabbard assailed in an earlier debate, was given the opportunity to respond to Gabbard’s critique of the Democratic party’s foreign policy. Harris unloaded, saying it was a shame to share a stage with a candidate who spent Barack Obama’s presidency criticizing him on Fox News, “buddied up” to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and would not criticize a war criminal.There were lighter moments. Asked what he would say to Vladimir Putin if he was to win the election, tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang said he might begin by saying: “Sorry I beat your guy.”Of the candidates who qualified for the October debate in Ohio, only Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, failed to meet the required polling threshold for this one. Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, dropped out of the race earlier this month.The former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick entered the race last week and the former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has filed to appear on the ballot in a handful of Super Tuesday states, in a sign that he intends to run.Six candidates – Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Harris and Klobuchar – have so far qualified for the sixth Democratic debate due to be held on 19 December in Los Angeles. Topics US elections 2020 Democrats US politics Pete Buttigieg Joe Biden Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders news