The Trump administration is ramping up its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, according to the Washington Post, once again igniting a politically controversial matter that has managed to live on for the past three-and-a-half years. These emails — which were sent to Clinton’s unsecured private server during her time at the State Department — spurred an entire investigation back in 2015 and were the subject of much debate during the 2016 presidential election. Ultimately, the FBI was unable to find any malign intent on Clinton’s part.Despite the FBI dropping the case, Trump did not; he used it to attack Clinton throughout the election and has brought it up consistently throughout his presidency, most recently on the sidelines of the 2019 UN general assembly, where he called the affair “one of the great crimes.”Now, as Trump faces allegations from a whistleblower that he misused his power while attempting to have a potential political rival investigated, the Post reports his administration is investigating a former rival as well.Up to 130 current and former State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Clinton’s private email address have been contacted by State Department investigators, the Post’s Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe, and Karoun Demirjian reported. The process of contacting these officials began 18 months ago, died down, and was then revived again last month. And it’s not just senior officials who have been affected by this investigation. Low-ranking staffers whose emails ended up in Clinton’s inbox have been contacted as well. All of these officials were notified by the State Department that they had potentially committed security violations because their emails to Clinton from years ago had been retroactively classified, according to letters reviewed by the Post. State Department officials deny the investigation’s renewal is politically motivated, claiming that this is merely standard protocol for an investigation that started before Donald Trump even became president. “This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” a senior State Department official told the Post. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about three-and-a-half years.”Other officials, however, see the investigation as politically motivated harassment, particularly given most of those sent letters saying they had “been identified as possibly bearing some culpability” in “security incidents” were ultimately found to be “not culpable” of any illegal actions. “It is such an obscene abuse of power and time involving so many people for so many years,” one former official told the Post. “This has just sucked up people’s lives for years and years.”The emails in question were mostly sent to Clinton’s unsecured private server. During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton handled work-related material with her personal email address, which was hosted on a private server set up for her and her husband, Bill Clinton, back in 2001. Given the potentially sensitive nature of some State Department work, this drew criticism. When this information came to light, the FBI launched an investigation into whether Clinton had broken federal law by mishandling classified information. In the end, the FBI declined to bring a case against Hillary Clinton — though then-FBI Director James Comey did break standard procedure by calling her “extremely careless.” Although the FBI dropped the case, the public did not, and it is sometimes seen as one of the reasons why Clinton lost the 2016 election. And it’s never been forgotten by Trump, even after almost three years in office. In fact, he won’t stop talking about it. Trump continues to bring up Clinton’s emails as a way to rally his supporters. A former senior official familiar with the current email investigation told the Post that the State Department probe was a way “to keep the Clinton email issue alive.”Indeed, Trump kept the issue alive in recent days while at the UN. During a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — who Trump asked in July to help him find Democratic National Committee emails Trump believes are hidden in Ukraine — the president responded to a question from a reporter asking if he thought Ukraine was storing Clinton’s emails with “could be.” The president then spoke at length about what he sees as corruption in the Democratic Party and what he claims was wrongdoing by Clinton.“Frankly, I think that one of the great crimes committed is Hillary Clinton deleting 33,000 emails after Congress sends her a subpoena,” he said. To be clear, the 33,000 emails Trump mentioned were deleted four months before the subpoena because they were determined by Clinton’s staff to be personal. The deletion of the emails after the subpoena was issued were done by an employee managing the server who had not followed instructions to do so earlier, according to NBC. The State Department’s current crackdown on those associated with the Clinton emails is especially remarkable considering the Trump administration’s security struggles, current and former officials told the Post. These include sharing highly classified information with adversaries like Russia and tweeting out images from secret intelligence devices. The Trump administration has also been criticized for its handling of security clearances, particularly when Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House official Jared Kushner was given top-secret security clearance, despite concerns from intelligence officials. And Trump now has his own server problem. A whistleblower alleges the Trump administration broke protocol to place notes from a call with Zelensky (in which the president asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate the DNC emails and potential presidential rival Joe Biden) in a codeword-level system meant only for top government secrets. The whistleblower also claims this was done to protect the president from allegations he abused his power on the call, and writes in his complaint that call notes were moved to this server a number of times to conceal “politically sensitive” information.These allegations and the notifications being sent by the State Department have Trump’s critics arguing the president is using his executive power to attack political rivals.While officials at the State Department argue they are merely following procedure, some of those affected by the investigation disagree, like Jeffrey Feltman, a former assistant secretary for Near East Affairs: “I’d like to think that this is just routine, but something strange is going on.”Whether anything will result from the email investigation remains to be seen. Some Republican lawmakers have pressed the State Department to complete its review into the classified information stored in Clinton’s personal email server and report back to Congress. Before that happens, though, Trump could face a question of impeachment over his administration’s own server use and concerns he may have attempted to have a different political rival investigated.

‘OH, I LOVE KAMALA’Kamala Harris Is Running Out of TimeTuesday’s Democratic debate may be her last best chance to make her case.Sophia A. NelsonUpdated 10.14.19 8:14AM ET / Published 10.14.19 4:48AM ET BEAST INSIDEopinionPhoto Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast/Photos GettyNever mind asking if America is ready for her—it appears that the Democratic party is not ready for her. The “her”, of course, is the powerful, smart, savvy 54-year-old black female senator from California who knows how to land a punch.It’s hard to remember that power now, as Kamala Harris has fallen behind South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttiegeg and even former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke in some polls. This is the same Harris whom 22,000 people cheered for when she announced that she was running for president this past Martin Luther King Day.

The retreat of U.S. forces in Syria away from the Turkish invasion is having a downstream effect benefitting the so-called Islamic State. The American surveillance aircraft that had been watching ISIS are now watching their own troops. Protecting the remaining U.S. forces in Syria is now the priority for the U.S. drones and manned aircraft overhead, according to a knowledgeable U.S. official who was not permitted to speak to reporters. It’s a mission of necessity now that the remaining hundreds of American servicemembers in Syria have come under attack from the army of their NATO ally and the Syrian Kurds whom the U.S. betrayed are now welcoming in Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-sponsored forces. Their presence has propelled the U.S. in northeastern Syria toward an endgame, since the U.S. betrayal of the Kurds removed the local partner the U.S. needed to wage war against ISIS members—who are now breaking free of their prisons.The remaining hundreds of U.S. troops, for now, have pulled back to the southern at-Tanf base near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders. American reconnaissance and surveillance over Syria is now about protecting bivouacking U.S. forces, the official said, rather than watching what happens to the newly-freed ISIS fighters. Among the reconnaissance assets remaining over Syria are Apache attack helicopters, a measurement of preparation for a withdrawal under fire. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday that the Turkish forces pose an “unacceptable risk” to the remaining American forces, prompting what he called a “deliberate withdrawal of U.S. military personnel from northeast Syria.” Esper blamed Turkey for the “release of many dangerous ISIS detainees”; hours earlier, President Trump blamed the Kurdish forces he double-crossed.Uncertainty surrounds the remnant of the U.S. mission in Syria. But without both persistent overwatch and a partner on the ground—consequences of Trump acquiescing to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s invasion—the basic prerequisites for mitigating any ISIS revival in Syria are gone. Many observers now expect ISIS to reconstitute itself in some form. In its media releases, ISIS still continues to claim a range of operations against Kurdish targets in attacks across northeastern Syria. In an operation announced on Sunday, ISIS media claimed its fighters shelled a U.S. military base in Hasakah governorate, not far from the sprawling ISIS detention camp in al-Hol, which it says U.S. forces have used to launch Apache raids against its forces. Over a week after giving Turkey a green light to invade, Trump announced Monday that he will sanction Ankara economically for the invasion in a forthcoming executive order. In addition to declaring the Turks “responsible” for detaining ISIS fighters, Trump referenced keeping a “small footprint” of U.S. troops at at-Tanf “to continue to disrupt remnants of ISIS.” Without a Syrian partner on the ground and with overhead hardware focused on protecting themselves, it remains to be seen what that small force can accomplish. Esper said in a Monday statement that the Turkish invasion—which the administration is now claiming to have always opposed despite Trump’s public acquiescence to it—had endangered the anti-ISIS mission. Erdogan will bear “full responsibility” for any ISIS resurgence, according to the Pentagon chief. “Trying to leave the Middle East is a little like Michael Corleone trying to leave the Mafia. You can try but you are going to keep being pulled back in.”— David PetraeusAt the Beirut Institute Summit in Abu Dhabi, Gen. David Petraeus, former director of Central Intelligence and, prior to that, commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military operations in the Mideast, warned there was no walking away from the threat of ISIS or from the region. “Trying to leave the Middle East is a little like Michael Corleone trying to leave the Mafia,” Petraeus said, referring to the Godfather movies. “You can try but you are going to keep being pulled back in.”Sir John Scarlett, former head of the Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, said flatly there is “no substitute” for the U.S. in the region, notwithstanding Trump’s desire to bail out.“It certainly does not appear there is a master plan,” said Petraeus. “I am deeply concerned that a U.S. withdrawal will lead to an ISIS resurgence,” said Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, and along with that will come huge ethnic displacement, refugee flows, and damage to U.S. credibility.“Clearly ISIS is going to be resurgent after this,” Petraeus said, and there will be a new “tsunami of refugees.”Some of the participants noted the irony of the way the situation is developing, as the U.S. will now, in practical terms, rely on the savage regime of Bashar al-Assad—which once it hoped to oust—to finish the job of eliminating ISIS fighters.— with additional reporting by Adam Rawnsley

With the surprise withdrawal of US forces in Syria and the subsequent — and immediate — commencement of Turkish military operations against Syrian Kurdish forces, chaos has ensued. Kurdish forces are claiming that hundreds of ISIS prisoners have escaped at the Ain Issa detention facility while fighting raged nearby, while two officials told the New York Times that the US military had failed to secure 60 or so high-value detainees before its forces departed. President Donald Trump, however, has assured Americans that his new approach would not prove a threat to the US homeland, saying, “They’re going to be escaping to Europe.” Europeans, to be sure, will not find this reassuring. Given the thousands of Europeans who went to fight for the Islamic State and the problems Europe has had with jihadist terrorism in general, they should be alarmed by the US abandonment of the Syrian Kurds and the possible escape of large numbers of ISIS prisoners. The good news is that the potential threat illustrates the counterterrorism progress made in the years since 9/11, but the end of the US role in Syria is clearly bad news.Europe has a painful record when it comes to jihadist terrorism, suffering repeated mass casualty attacks in the post-9/11 era, including an ISIS-orchestrated set of strikes in Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people. European states, however, have made strides on this front, bolstering intelligence collection and sharing, toughening up their laws, and otherwise improving counterterrorism measures. The latest crisis in Syria highlights the need for Europe to continue its aggressive counterterrorism policies, improve how it handles terrorists in jail, and develop a more coherent set of policies to handle suspected terrorist detainees.Europe’s response to jihadist terrorism has long been uneven — often dramatically so. France, which suffered repeated attacks on its soil from the Algerian civil war in the mid-1990s, adopted an aggressive counterterrorism program, and its intelligence service went from clueless to superb as the decade wore on. The United Kingdom preferred to keep the jihadists close in the 1990s, allowing London to become a home for dissidents and propagandists of all sorts, many of whom encouraged young Muslims to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya, and other places with insurgent battlegrounds. The British hope was that by monitoring them and allowing a safety valve, they could control the dangers. Other countries — such as Belgium, Germany, and Italy — simply ignored the problem. The jihadists, after all, seemed focused overseas, and the attacks on France could be waved off as an Algeria-specific problem that was a bitter legacy of French colonialism. For some countries, 9/11 represented a change. The sheer scale of the devastation opened eyes to the risk of terrorism at home. For others, a more aggressive counterterrorism posture seemed an easy way to appease the United States, which saw the fight against Al Qaeda as the world’s top security concern. But the resulting greater pressure on European jihadist networks, and the participation of some European states in the military campaign in Afghanistan, angered the jihadists and proved, in their eyes, the enmity of Europe. Al Qaeda in particular began to turn the networks developed to export foreign fighters from Europe into operational nodes to attack the continent. The 2004 Madrid bombings and the 2005 London attacks, which killed 191 and 52 people respectively, were bitter fruits of this shift. Even tiny Denmark was at risk after a Danish newspaper published cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed, leading to repeated threats against the country. In 2015, jihadists would kill 12 staff members of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris for its insults to the prophet. People observe a moment of silence in memory of the victims of the July 7, 2005, London bombings, in front of the British Embassy in Madrid, Spain. The bombings came a year after the deadly March 2004 railway attacks in Madrid. Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images A man takes a picture of a mural of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper staff who were killed in a terrorist attack in 2015 in Paris, France. Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images In the face of this violence, Europe continued to improve, albeit fitfully. Those touched directly by the threat, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark, initiated crackdowns and an array of programs, ranging from intelligence collection to efforts to “combat violent extremism” — using social programs and improving community ties to decrease the alienation of Muslim communities. Europe also expanded intelligence sharing among its members and with the United States.Complicating the efforts of European security services, Europe also has an array of radical networks that seek the imposition of Islamic law and are hostile to the values and legitimacy of European governments. Al Muhajiroun, which was active in the United Kingdom until the 2005 crackdown and whose successors remain active, was linked to 25 percent of the UK terrorism convictions between 1998 and 2015. An Al Muhajiroun leader even radicalized one of the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombers. Other European countries had similar, if less potent, organizations like Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Denmark. These organizations create networks among like-minded radicals — at home, throughout Europe, and abroad in the Muslim world — that can easily be co-opted by their violent members.Despite this long history, many European states found themselves overwhelmed by the flow of foreign fighters and the wave of terrorism that swept Europe during the Syrian jihad. Some of this was related to the staggering scale of the foreign fighter flows. Almost 6,000 European Muslims traveled to fight in Syria, compared with around 700 between 1990 and 2010 to Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Iraq combined.The tide began to turn in 2015. The United States, working with France and the United Kingdom and other European countries, partnered with the Iraqi government, local Iraqi militias, and the Syrian Kurds to fight ISIS, with the group’s other enemies, such as Iran, also playing important roles. Slowly, but steadily, the once-mighty caliphate shrank, and by 2019 ISIS no longer controlled territory. Many of the foreign volunteers died in the fighting, but thousands found themselves in prison camps in Iraq or run by Syrian Kurds. There they lingered, with the Kurds (unlike the Iraqis) reluctant to execute them, but with most European states unwilling to repatriate their nationals.The steady destruction of the above-ground ISIS caliphate seems to have been a boon to Europe; both the number of terrorist attacks and total fatalities have fallen in recent years. In Europe, 14 people have died from jihadist terrorism in 2018, a steep fall from 2015, when attacks in Paris and elsewhere led to 150 deaths. Beyond the falling death toll, the biggest sign of success is the diminished role of foreign fighters. Those who had fought in foreign wars played a dominant role in European terrorism in the post-9/11 era but now, as a Danish intelligence report notes, “Attacks in Europe are overwhelmingly committed by lone individuals who have not been to a conflict zone.” Most of the European foreign fighters either died in Iraq and Syria, were detained there, kept on fighting underground, or were arrested upon return. Either way, the wave of attacks that analysts feared a couple of years ago did not materialize. But the Syrian Kurds are now focusing on the Turkish military, and it is likely that ISIS prisoners are escaping already. Even a small number of hardened, dedicated fighters could pose a major terrorism threat; research has proven they are far more lethal. The Islamic State is highly opportunistic, and it will use the ensuing chaos and distraction of its enemies to reconstitute itself, increasing the danger of international terrorism as well as local violence.One bit of good news is that Europe’s earlier problems with terrorism stemmed, in part, from a series of self-made failures, several of which have been corrected. When the Islamic State emerged in 2012-’13, some intelligence services simply had their eyes closed. Others were woefully underfunded. Thus they failed to detect the problem before it grew beyond their control. The Dutch intelligence service at first believed the Netherlands had few domestic radicals and only in hindsight realized that 2013 represented a banner year for recruitment, when almost 100 volunteers went to Syria. In the Hague, Islamic State supporters, often affiliated with groups like Sharia4Holland, brandished the Caliphate’s black flag in demonstrations, called for the death of “dirty Jews,” and discussed openly on Twitter and Facebook the call to make jihad. Ignoring Europe’s own history with foreign fighters, many local authorities often at first secretly smiled as these volunteers, many troublemakers or criminals, left for the Caliphate. Their departure led to a fall in crime and, some officials hoped, would remove a potential source of radicalism. As French officials made it clear to me in 2014, “it is not a concern if they die there — only if they come back.” People gather at a makeshift memorial next to the Bataclan theater in Paris, France, on November 14, 2015, following a series of terrorist attacks resulting in the death of at least 120 people. Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images But the 2015 Paris and Brussels attacks revealed gaping holes in Europe’s counterterrorism net: Lists of suspects were often not shared, and different countries used different systems of transliteration, hindering basic data searches. Even for countries with effective security services like France, vulnerability was still high, as less proficient neighbors like Belgium create de facto havens where terrorists face far less pressure. Many European states did not have laws criminalizing participation in foreign wars on behalf of a terrorist group. The same weak legal codes hindered the prosecution of both departing and returning foreign fighters. Indeed, some fighters ended up in extralegal detention because their home countries lacked appropriate criminal authorities to handle their cases.European states have become more aggressive and many of these problems have diminished, which will make it harder for escaping European foreign fighters to wreak havoc. Security services are far better resourced and, after the wake-up calls of Paris in 2015 and Brussels in 2016, more focused on the present danger. Europe, as a whole, also toughened up its laws. UN Resolution 2178 demanded states take action to stop foreign fighters from joining up with terrorist groups and Resolution 2396 focused on stopping terrorist travel. A number of European states link their domestic laws to UN resolutions, and thus gave states the impetus to crack down at home and cooperate more abroad.Another problem: Transit to and from Syria remained easy. Part of this was due to the lax policies of Turkey, which until 2015 tolerated the flow of foreigners to Syria as part of its overall campaign to unseat President Bashar al-Assad by supporting an array of opposition forces. This gave jihadists easy access to the war zone from Europe and vice versa. When in 2015 Ankara began to crack down at home and secure its border with Syria, ISIS was dealt a major blow.Given Turkey’s expanding role in Syria in the wake of its invasion of Kurdish territories, European states will depend on it even more. First, Turkey may take over some prison camps or otherwise become a large-scale jailor of Islamic State members, though the reports of prison escapes are discouraging on this score. Second, it will remain an important potential transit point to Europe. In both cases, Turkey’s actions — or inactions — will shape the scale of the terrorist threat to Europe.With Syria again in flux and the possible return of many foreign fighters, European states need to continue to resource their security services and otherwise prepare for violence. Part of this necessity is also due to a growing back and forth between right-wing extremism and jihadist violence, where the jihadist attacks are used by white supremacists to justify attacks on Muslims — a circle that must be broken. Europe also needs longer jail times for those convicted of terrorism-related crimes. Too often, individuals are sentenced to short jail terms. In the United States, the average prison sentence for jihadist-linked terrorism is almost 15 years; in Europe, sentences are usually only a few years, leading to a revolving-door problem. Police officers block the access to the house of Olivier Corel, who was suspected on helping with the Paris terror attacks on November 13, 2015 in Ariège, France on November 24, 2015. Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images As a result, individuals are often still at a prime age for jihadist recruitment in jail and for violence when they leave incarceration. Indeed, given the large number of radicals in jail, there is a danger that they will become more radical or radicalize others. Jail, in other words, risks making the problem worse. Some European states have made progress in improving training for prison personnel and developed special prisons for convicted jihadists. Belgium has “satellite prisons” with more monitoring and better-trained staff. Prison staff also receive more extensive training on identifying radicalization, and specialized personnel are present to focus on terrorists.Third, Europe has tried to outsource the returnee question, including the more than 1,500 children of European origin who went to the Caliphate — or were born there. Dodging this issue has become far more difficult, given the US military withdrawal from Turkey and the Turkish assault on Syrian Kurds. European states, courting popular opinion, have tried to strip citizenship from dual-passport holders and otherwise shove the responsibility onto others. In addition, they risk sending potential terrorists to countries with weaker legal systems or that otherwise will not properly manage the threat. Most irresponsible is ignoring the children left behind. US Kurdish allies in Syria and Iraqi forces hold hundreds of European children born of Islamic State fighters. Children should be treated as victims rather than as future terrorists: The scholarship done so far indicates little serious risk that they will become terrorists themselves. Abandoning them is a moral failure.Europe has come a long way since its tolerant and somewhat incompetent approach of the 1990s. Unfortunately, Trump’s policy decisions have increased the terrorism threat Europeans now face, and they are right to worry that attacks orchestrated or inspired by ISIS are more likely. Their governments must grapple with a potentially stronger ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the increased risk of radicals returning home, and they must do so knowing that the Trump administration seems to care little if this happens. Daniel Byman is a professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. This essay draws on his new book, Road Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad. Follow him on Twitter: @dbyman.Turkey sent troops and tanks to its border with Syria hours after President Trump announced he would be removing US forces from the nation. Syrian Kurds feel betrayed and ISIS is watching. Looking for a quick way to keep up with the never-ending news cycle? Host Sean Rameswaram will guide you through the most important stories at the end of each day.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed into law on Friday a statewide ban on private prisons, in a move likely to set off another legal battle between the Trump administration and California.The new law prohibits California’s prison authority from contracting with private companies to jail criminal detainees and requires the state to phase out existing contracts by 2028. The ban also applies to companies that hold immigrant detainees for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.A Geo Group spokesperson said that the company, which operates four private prisons and two immigration detention centers in California, has been in talks with Ice and the US Marshals Service, and that they believe the new law will be struck down by the courts.“In particular, we believe the restrictions to force a phase-out of federal detention facilities under private management run afoul of the US constitution’s supremacy clause,” the company’s spokesperson said. “States cannot lawfully pass legislation mandating the closure of federal facilities that displease them on the basis of ideological differences.”California lawmakers disagree and say the ban is part of a broader criminal justice reform push that will protect prisoners serving criminal sentences and immigrants in civil detention from dangerous conditions inside privately run jails.“We are sending a powerful message that we vehemently oppose the practice of profiteering off the backs of Californians in custody, that we will stand up for the health, safety and welfare of our people, and that we are committed to humane treatment for all,” said the assembly member Rob Bonta, who authored the measure, AB 32.Grisel Ruiz, the supervising attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, predicted the law would withstand any legal challenge by the Trump administration or private prison companies.“This is a step in the right direction,” said Ruiz. “It’s bold and big and totally within California’s police powers to do this.”Several constitutional legal scholars chimed in during hearings for the bill this past summer about whether the ban could be applied to private prisons housing federal prisoners and immigration detainees. The UC Berkeley law dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, wrote in an analysis of the bill that states had broad powers to protect citizens and non-citizens within their borders.“I do not believe that this is pre-empted by federal law or violates any intergovernmental immunity doctrine,” wrote Chemerinsky. “Quite importantly, California is not regulating the federal government; it is regulating private companies, which is very much within the state’s constitutional authority.”An Ice spokeswoman, Paige Hughes, said Department of Homeland Security attorneys still needed to review the law. But Hughes added: “The idea that a state law can bind the hands of a federal law enforcement agency managing a national network of detention facilities is wrong.”Hughes said the law could result in Ice transferring detainees out of the state and far away from families and attorneys.Ruiz said that Ice should release immigrant detainees rather than transferring them out of state. “If fed chooses to transfer people, then advocates will view that as a retaliatory act against California and we will fight tooth and nail to defend those people.” Topics US prisons California news

“I want to know who’s the person that gave the whistle-blower—who’s the person that gave the whistle-blower the information, because that’s close to a spy,” the president said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right? We used to handle them a little differently than we do now.”On Sunday, he demanded to “meet not only my accuser” but also others who “illegally” gave information on his calls to that person. This is a perversion of the whistle-blower process, which is a legal process—contrary to Trump’s accusations of lawbreaking—and which is designed to shield people with damaging information from intimidation and retaliation. On Monday, Trump said, “We’re trying to find out about a whistle-blower.”Trump and his allies, both those on his staff and those in the media, have also gone on the offensive against Congress. The foremost target of this has been Schiff, the California Democrat who is the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. At the start of last week’s testimony from Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, Schiff delivered a slightly exaggerated paraphrase of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Since then, Trump has repeatedly attacked Schiff on Twitter and in remarks. “Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn’t exist.” “Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public.” “I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.” “Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people. It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?” “Why isn’t Congressman Adam Schiff being brought up on charges for fraudulently making up a statement and reading it to Congress as if this statement, which was very dishonest and bad for me, was directly made by the President of the United States?” “Congressman Adam Schiff should resign.” Etcetera.This is absurd. First, Schiff was joking, though his joke was ill-advised; he acknowledged in the same hearing that the remarks were intended as satirical. Besides, the transcript was released publicly for anyone who wanted to read it. Even if Schiff had been attempting to pass the paraphrase off as genuine, it’s not “fraud” or illegal to do so, and remarks by members of Congress are broadly protected under the Constitution’s speech-and-debate clause. Although Trump has labeled any number of things he doesn’t like as treason, it should go without saying that none of this rises anywhere near betraying the country. That’s just as well for the president, because if making up elaborate lies were treasonous, he’d be locked up in a brig right now.

The conflict engulfing north-east Syria is a wholly avoidable disaster. It was widely foreseen. It could, and should, have been prevented. Responsibility lies principally with Turkey’s bellicose president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But many others share the blame, including a criminally incompetent Donald Trump, Islamic State jihadists, who previously destabilised the area, and the international community, which has failed, over the course of eight bloody years, to halt Syria’s civil war.The terrifyingly indiscriminate Turkish artillery barrages and air strikes directed at towns and villages in Kurdish-held areas along the border shame those who ordered them. Erdoğan’s claim that his forces are only targeting terrorists is given the lie by the rising toll of civilian deaths and injuries. Aid agencies have evacuated. Hospitals have closed. The UN says about 100,000 people have fled so far. With Turkey rejecting calls to halt the offensive, it could all get much worse.This is a calamity foretold. Turkey has longstanding, legitimate border security concerns. It believes the Kurdish militia that controls north-east Syria is in league with its old foe, the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which the US and the EU, like Ankara, regard as terrorists. Erdoğan had been threatening military action east of the Euphrates for months. Only the presence of US troops stopped him.US officials say an agreement with the Turks was in place, providing for joint border security patrols. But this was not enough for Erdoğan. His impatience arose not from the immediacy of the terrorist threat, which he often exaggerates, but stemmed, at least in part, from his need for a political “win” after recent election setbacks and from rising rightwing nationalist pressure to repatriate Syrian refugees to a Turkish-controlled “safe zone”.It is at this point that Erdoğan’s agenda converged with Trump’s visceral aversion to “endless” foreign wars and the impeachment furore in Washington. When Erdoğan phoned last Sunday evening, demanding that the US lift its veto on intervention, Trump saw a chance to both bring the troops home and distract attention from his Ukraine shenanigans.Official assertions that Trump did not give Erdoğan a green light are pure eyewash. The White House statement issued after the phone conversation makes clear this is exactly what happened. And yet, on one level, this outcome is unsurprising. Erdoğan and Trump are two of a kind: unscrupulous, instinctively authoritarian leaders ever ready to bend the truth. Neither can be trusted.These two men have something else in common. They do not understand, nor do they sufficiently care about, the consequences of their actions. Trump seems to have been genuinely taken aback by the storm of criticism, including from Republicans, which greeted his decision to pull back US troops. He was rightly lambasted for betraying America’s Kurdish allies and helping Russia, Iran and Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Fears were raised that Isis jihadists held under Kurdish guard might escape.The fate of detained Isis fighters, totalling about 10,000 across northern Syria and Iraq, is an issue to which Erdoğan, too, has plainly not given enough thought. He says Turkey will ensure they do not abscond. But his unimpressive ground forces, still thrashing about on the border, cannot be counted on to fulfil such pledges. Already there are reports of an Isis prison break in a town under Turkish bombardment and two Isis suicide bombings.Trump repeatedly, untruthfully, boasts that Isis was defeated on his watch. The “caliphate” is destroyed, but the jihadists still pose a threat, as a new International Crisis Group study shows. There are persistent reports that the organisation is regrouping. Trump and Erdoğan have potentially assisted this process. Who could blame Kurdish fighters, with their homes under attack, if they abandoned the detention camps and went to resist the invader?The international community is at fault, too, for failing to establish a process for bringing Isis terrorists to justice. Leaving them, their families and supporters stuck indefinitely in desert camps was never going to work. Western countries, including Britain, have mostly dodged their responsibilities in this regard, concerned that jihadists who hold British or European citizenship could be freed by domestic courts for lack of admissible evidence. To address this problem, they should consider the creation, under UN auspices, of an international criminal tribunal for counter-terrorism.Sadly, as the entire history of the Syrian war suggests, the chances of such international collaboration actually happening are all but non-existent. The UN security council, debating Turkey’s action, could not even agree a joint statement, due in part to the usual Russian obstructionism. The EU will discuss it at this week’s summit. Expect little more than stern words. Nato is just looking on. Meanwhile, Trump blusters about sanctions, as if it all had nothing to do with him.Pity the people of northern Syria, bombed and blasted from their homes by a ruthless autocrat who should, if there were any justice, face a war crimes tribunal. It seems there is no helping them. What an outrage. No wonder the world is in such a mess. Topics Syria Opinion Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Donald Trump Islamic State Middle East and North Africa editorials

This past spring, California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, asked me just how high the price of electric service might climb under the New Normal and what the implications of such increases would be. My answer was simple and rather frightening. If the fires of 2017 and 2018 reflect a catastrophic new pattern, both in terms of annual losses and utility culpability, California utilities could face $15 billion in new liabilities every year. The utilities would soon exhaust their ability to borrow more money in order to spread the costs over many years. Then there would be little choice other than imposing those cost on a utility’s customers. For PG&E’s customers to contribute $15 billion to cover new liabilities, electric bills would have to double in the first year.This would make electric service unaffordable for many customers, and it would increase the cost of electricity-dependent manufacturing and services. Significantly, it would undermine the state’s ability to attain its ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation is the largest source of such emissions in California. The replacement of gasoline and diesel vehicles with electric vehicles is a major part of the state’s greenhouse gas reduction strategy. Significantly higher electricity prices could eliminate the cost advantage of going electric. It would also become more difficult to persuade consumers to switch to electricity from natural gas for heating and cooking.Perhaps the rate of catastrophic fires California has experienced over the past two years will not be sustained, but there’s every reason to expect many horrific future fires. California cannot pay for repeated multibillion-dollar losses. The long-term solution is to reduce the intensity of future wildfires by reducing the availability of burnable fuels and better managing our forests. This is a mammoth task, requiring commitment from all property managers — state, local, federal and private. The Camp Fire tragedy was a compendium of many hundreds of stories about ways in which property owners and managers along the route did or did not properly maintain their land. PG&E may be the biggest culprit so far, but every person and business in or near the state’s vast wild lands has to be held accountable for failing to take the necessary steps to reduce the intensity of wildfires as the climate changes and makes these wild infernos more likely. And as we have seen, California has far to go to attain this critical goal.Steven Weissman, a former administrative law judge for the California Public Utility Commission, is a lecturer at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Most implausible of all, of course, is the idea that Trump-era America is slouching toward Gilead. Yes, some states have passed draconian abortion curbs, currently unenforced because of Roe v. Wade, and there’s a chance Roe itself could be undone by a conservative Supreme Court. Even so, several states have also moved to expand abortion rights, now protected in more than a dozen states—including Massachusetts, where The Handmaid’s Tale is set—if Roe falls.In the worst-case scenario, many American women, especially those unable to afford out-of-state travel, will lose access to abortion (though the abortion pill would make those restrictions much easier to circumvent). As a pro-choice feminist, I deplore the recent push to restrict women’s reproductive freedom. But is it a step toward a society that bars nearly all women from non-domestic pursuits and practices forced surrogate motherhood via monthly rape? No. It’s worth noting that Poland has a near-total abortion ban, as did Ireland until last year—yet, far from Gileadean horrors, both countries have consistently ranked above the U.S. on the United Nations gender-inequality index. (Both have also had several female leaders.)But middle-class white women aren’t the quarry in Trump’s America. The real victims of Trumpism—other than the norms of American democracy—are the same groups that are the principal targets of Trump’s hateful rhetoric: refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented (and sometimes legal) immigrants, most of them Latin American, Middle Eastern, or African. The extent to which The Handmaid’s Tale shifts that role to middle-class, mostly white women was especially blatant last year, when the parent-child separations at the U.S. border were in the news just as the second season of the Hulu series focused on flashback story lines in which two Handmaids were torn away from their children. The parallel was inevitably and melodramatically noted, with one writer asserting that the show had become “too damn real” to watch. But the dispossessed mothers on The Handmaid’s Tale—a Boston book editor and a Montana-born, Harvard-educated scientist—came from a far different demographic than the border-crossers.

A thousand US troops will be withdrawn from northern Syria as “quickly as possible,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Sunday, a day after President Donald Trump approved the withdrawal that would almost completely eliminate the US military presence in the region. Esper confirmed the withdrawal on CBS’ Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday. The news comes amidst an incursion by Turkish military forces into Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria that has led to displacement and alleged atrocities against civilian populations. These alleged atrocities include executions, like one shared in a video that appears to depict the roadside execution of a Kurd by a Turkish fighter or a Turkey-backed Syrian fighter.Turkey entered northern Syria last week, shortly after the US withdrew about 50 US troops from the area. Trump justified that initial withdrawal by saying he wanted to decrease overseas military engagement. Turkey has said it hopes to establish a “safe zone” for the millions of Syrian refugees it has accepted during the Syrian conflict in an area that would extend about 20 miles into northeastern Syria. It also wants to push Kurdish forces it claims are aligned with terrorists further from its border with Syria. The US and Turkey had been working together to police the Syrian-Turkish border, but following a call between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that practice changed.Only about 300 American soldiers will remain in Syria after this latest withdrawal, according to two US military officials who spoke to NBC News. Military officials have said that withdrawal was one of few options available to the US, because as Turkey ramps up its military engagement in the region, US forces would have become outnumbered and at risk of conflict with Turkish forces. Critics have argued the withdrawal is not about protecting American troops, but about Trump making way for Turkish forces to enter into the region. They also accuse Trump of abandoning a key US ally in the fight against ISIS, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF is considered by Turkey to be linked to Kurdish separatist groups that both the United States and Turkey consider terrorist organizations, and Turkish leaders have used this as one of their justifications for the offensive. Also of concern for those critical of the Turkish action is the fact the SDF is in charge of a large number of ISIS prisoners. Trump’s former secretary of defense, James Mattis, said Sunday on Meet the Press that the removal of US troops could lead to ISIS’ resurgence. More than 10,000 ISIS members have been held in SDF-run prisons, but many of the troops guarding those detention centers have left their posts in order to ward off the Turkish invasion. Some ISIS fighters have allegedly already escaped, and nearly 800 women and children affiliated with the terrorist group reportedly escaped detention on Sunday.Beyond fears the Turkish operation could help ISIS are worries it will worsen the Syrian refugee crisis. The United Nations said that more than 130,000 people living in and around northern Syrian have been displaced as a result of conflict between Turkey and Kurdish forces, and added that an additional 400,000 civilians living in this zone may require aid. Turkey has reportedly already killed more than 20 Syrian Kurds, including at least one child. Trump defended his decision on Twitter on Sunday, saying it was “very smart” not to get involved in a conflict at the Turkish border: Very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change. Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight. They have no idea what a bad decision they have made. Why are they not asking for a Declaration of War?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2019 In the meantime, he has warned Turkey that atrocities against Kurds and other ethnic minorities in the region would trigger economic sanctions. He has not, however, been specific about what those sanctions might entail or what red lines Turkey would have to cross to trigger them. This lack of clarity has angered even some of the president’s staunchest allies in Congress, some of whom have begun collaborating with Democrats to prepare their own sanctions packages. Reports coming out of Syria have been dramatic. Mortar has been falling on towns and cities along the border, and Kurds have fled some towns. Civilians, including at least one child, have been reportedly killed. The UN has warned of a growing number of displaced people, and as Vox’s Nicole Narea has reported, the Turkish operation could trigger mass displacement in a country already facing a refugee crisis: As many as 300,000 people could be affected in a country that has watched 6.6 million refugees flee, and that has seen another 6.1 million people become internally displaced since 2011. Analysts have expressed concern that this new conflict could spill over the border into Iraq, sending tremors of instability across the region, and leading to a resurgence of ISIS. Fighters with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have reported that some imprisoned ISIS fighters have become free because security at their detention centers has waned during the conflict, although the US reportedly moved two high-profile prisoners out of the country in advance of the invasion. Human rights observers have claimed that civilians have been executed in the days since Turkey entered northern Syria. On Saturday, pro-Kurdish demonstrations took place in Germany and France, and leaders from those countries have both said they will cease to export weapons to Turkey while this military engagement is underway. Russia and Israel have also weighed in. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has acted as a liaison to Damascus in high-pressure moments before, said his government will seek to “establish a dialogue between Turkey and Syria.”“We have reason to believe that it is in the interests of both parties,” he said Thursday. “At the same time, we will negotiate that nevertheless the contacts will be established between Damascus and Kurdish organizations that reject extremism and terrorist methods activities.”Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, one of the only nations that supports the existence of an independent Kurdish state — a position that Turkey has stood strongly against for decades — said Thursday that Israel would offer humanitarian aid to the Kurds.“Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies,” he said. On Sunday, however, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that while the Trump administration is concerned about humanitarian issues, its overall goal was not to defend Kurds, but to pull the US out of “endless wars.”“I think the analogy that everybody’s saying is, we’re abandoning the Kurds, like the Kurds are these longstanding allies,” he told ABC’s This Week. “Our role in Syria was not to defend land for the Kurds in historical issues. Our focus was to defeat ISIS.” Despite Mnuchin’s assertion, many lawmakers — including many Republicans — see the Kurds as key allies, and argue allowing Turkey to fight them will send a message to other potential anti-terror allies that the US cannot be trusted.Trump attempted to head off this criticism with a tweet Monday claiming he would “destroy and obliterate” Turkey’s economy if they committed atrocities. But as Vox’s Alex Ward reported, congresspeople were not convinced.Critics of Trump’s initial decision to withdraw troops from Syria came from both sides of the aisle, and have led to a bipartisan effort to design specific sanctions in response to Turkey’s actions. On Wednesday, Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced a bill in the Senate that would impose financial penalties on Turkey’s highest political leaders — including President Erdoğan — and military for invading Syria’s north. As Vox’s Alex Ward reported, the bill targets top Turkish leaders as well as its energy sector, an unprecedented move against a NATO ally: Turkey’s energy sector would take a hit. According to the bill outline, it would target “any foreign person or entity who supplies goods, services, technology, information, or other support that maintains or supports Turkey’s domestic petroleum production and natural gas production for the used by its armed forces.” There’s also a section about restricting travel for Turkish leaders to the US and filing reports, as well as a part on how humanitarian aid, medical assistance, election help, and intelligence sharing would be exempted. Still, if passed and signed by the president, the legislation would be a major hit on a NATO ally. The sanctions could come off Turkey if the US certifies that it’s not unilaterally operating in Syria, meaning it either left the area or worked in tandem with the US. The administration has to make a determination on that every 90 days and report to Congress. Sunday morning, Graham praised Trump for signaling support for the bill, saying “there is strong bipartisan support for such sanction’s and it is imperative that we do not allow Turkey’s aggression to lead to the destruction of a valuable ally — the Kurds - and the reemergence of ISIS.” Turkey’s actions will only benefit ISIS, Iran, and Russia, and creates a nightmare for Israel. Turkey is NOT acting as a good NATO ally.— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) October 13, 2019 Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has overseen ramped-up economic sanctions against Iran, said on Sunday that the US is “ready to go at a moment’s notice to put on sanctions” against Turkey.“These sanctions could be starting small, they could be maximum pressure, which would destroy the Turkish economy,” he said on ABC’s This Week. .@jonkarl on the U.S. imposing sanctions on Turkey: "What are you waiting for? ... This is a rapidly deteriorating situation."Sec. Steve Mnuchin: "You're correct. It is moving quickly ... we're ready to go at a moments notice to put on sanctions" https://t.co/BvkB9h7oKz pic.twitter.com/T61PaHffq6— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 13, 2019 Sanctions could include shutting down US dollar transactions with the entire Turkish government, Mnuchin added, and he said a plan is ready to be put into action once approved by the president. In the same tweet in which he acknowledged Graham’s sanctions efforts, Trump gave little indication as to whether he would order sanctions, noting “Turkey has asked that it not be done.” And he did not add any clarity to what would cause him to issue such an order. Instead, as the fighting rages on, he wrote, “Stay tuned!”Turkey is sending troops and tanks to its border with Syria hours after President Trump announced he would be removing US forces from the nation. Syrian Kurds feel betrayed and ISIS is watching. Looking for a quick way to keep up with the never-ending news cycle? Host Sean Rameswaram will guide you through the most important stories at the end of each day.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In interviews, other allies of the president who were instrumental in the Kavanaugh fight said that the impeachment inquiry was a much different and, in some ways, more difficult case for them to defend in the court of public opinion because of its complexity.Much of Mr. Trump’s public response, and the defense from his surrogates, has focused on the process of impeachment rather than the actual facts of the case. But it is harder to rally public support around questions of due process and fairness than it is to simply insist that the president has committed no wrongdoing.Part of what was so simple about the Kavanaugh case was that conservatives believed him over his accuser. But when it comes to the Ukraine episode, polls have shown that the public thinks Mr. Trump has not been truthful about his actions.And the president has vacillated repeatedly. He has called the House process a “kangaroo court.” Then he vowed to cooperate, insisting he had nothing to hide, only to have the White House announce that neither he nor the executive branch would willingly provide testimony or documents because House Democrats were not following established precedent on impeachment and were denying Mr. Trump due process.Conservative activists said they sometimes found it difficult to follow the lead of the White House, which has sent mixed signals about how seriously it is taking the prospect that Mr. Trump could be impeached. At a closed-door conference last weekend in New Orleans for the Council for National Policy, a group of conservative movement leaders, Vice President Mike Pence made no mention of impeachment during his speech, which struck some attendees as unusual.Republicans also had a significant procedural advantage during the Kavanaugh hearings: As the majority in the Senate, they had the sole discretion to set the timetable, which they kept extremely short — to just nine days. But they will not have such an advantage during the first portion of any impeachment proceedings, which House Democrats will dictate.Ms. Pelosi has vowed to move the investigation along as quickly as possible and would like a vote before the end of the year. But Republicans have been left guessing, along with the rest of the country, about what the investigation might uncover or who else might come forward. This uncertainty has made settling on a messaging strategy more complicated and not as efficient as it might otherwise be.

In the week since Donald Trump’s fateful phone conversation with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the US has entirely abandoned the Kurds, its most effective allies in the Middle East, and with them a Syria strategy that was five years in the making.The Islamic State flag has been raised once more and the last vestige of US credibility as a reliable partner lies crushed under Turkish tank tracks. It has arguably been the worst seven days for US foreign policy since the invasion of Iraq.Administration officials have been under orders to deny that Trump gave Erdoğan a green light to invade north-eastern Syria, despite all the indications to the contrary. After the Turkish leader announced his intention to invade, Trump invited him to the White House, one of the most coveted rewards a US president can bestow. And even as his aides are instructed to lie on his behalf, Trump continues to flash a green light on Twitter, and not just to the Turks.While echoing Turkey’s view of the Kurds as terrorists, Trump declared: “Others may want to come in and fight for one side or the other. Let them!”Those “others” include the Assad regime, and its Iranian and Russian backers, to whom the Kurds have appealed for their own salvation, as their US partners pack their bags and leave. A close, very personal and highly effective partnership between US (as well as British and French) advisers and Kurdish fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which took nearly five years to forge, has been totally undone in a few days.Since the US started dropping supplies to besieged Kurdish fighters in Kobane in late 2014, that partnership succeeded in rolling back Isis, rooting it out from one stronghold after another. At the same time, it held the regime at bay across a significant swath of Syria.These were Washington’s limited objectives in Syria, inherited from the Obama administration. And they were achieved at very little cost to the US. The price was paid almost solely by the SDF, which lost 11,000 fighters.Regime forces are moving northwards into areas that were in the US sphere of influence just a few days ago, at the invitation of the SDF, desperate for assistance in the face of Turkey’s murderous Syrian proxy militias. At the same time, Isis detainees are escaping from SDF detention facilities and the movement is reconstituting. The speed of the unravelling has been breathtaking.Trump has played down the Kurdish relationship as purely transactional. They had been given a lot of money and equipment, he pointed out. But it was not transactional for the soldiers who fought at each others’s shoulders, and the civilians killed as a result of the Trump-Erdoğan understanding. The US has let the Kurds down before, but Trump’s sheer callousness has made it hard to imagine that this betrayal will be forgiven in the foreseeable future.The US military is also unlikely to forget being forced to cut and run, and watch a respected ally being crushed. There is considerable anger being reported from junior officers in the field and the generals back in the Pentagon. The next time US soldiers go looking for local partners to act as ground forces, it will be much harder. Who would fight with America now?After three years of Trump, that is an increasingly difficult question to answer. The president has lavished praise on adversaries such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, while insulting allies in Europe and Asia who he has convinced himself are ripping off the American taxpayer.The flip side of the impeachment scandal is that while the US president was seeking to force his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to dig up dirt on Trump’s political rival, he was paying no heed to the supposed priority of his own administration, to bolster Ukraine in the face of the Russian threat. That does not seem to have been a factor for him.There are even questions about Nato’s survival if Trump wins re-election next year. Erdoğan’s actions have raised doubts about Turkey’s continued membership, while Trump sees the alliance as a club of freeloaders exploiting the US. Until recently he was boxed in by a phalanx of his own officials with traditional Republican pro-Nato views. But the so-called “adults in the room” have dispersed one by one. Trump, increasingly unmoored, convinced of his own “great and unmatched wisdom”, is just improvising, calling foreign leaders and making decisions affecting millions of people.What guides those decisions is obscure. The sprawling, ramshackle Trump business empire means he is rife with conflicts of interests every time he talks to Erdoğan or Putin or Mohammed bin Salman. Many of those conversations happen with few if any witnesses and any permanent record, as we have discovered in the course of the Ukraine saga, is locked up in a top secret system.The descent of US foreign policy into chaos is a reflection of a broader failure of its political system. The constitution is supposed to give Congress a decisive say in treaties and the declaration of war, just as it is supposed to stop the US president from receiving emoluments from foreign powers.None of that is functioning, mostly because Trump has a demagogic hold on the Republican party, whose members fear political obliteration if they dissent. And the president is gambling that the courts have been sufficiently packed with Republican loyalists over the decades that he feels he can afford to flout the law.At each new demonstration of the president’s venality and volatility, there are predictions that the tide is about to turn, even Republicans have had enough and the republic is about to reassert itself. Such predictions may eventually come true, but it may well be too late for US credibility as an ally. It is already too late for the Kurds. Topics US foreign policy Syria Kurds Turkey Donald Trump Middle East and North Africa analysis

“It’s true, Giuliani may finally be under federal investigation, meaning events have finally caught up with his face, which perpetually looks like someone who just found out they’re under investigation,” cracked Oliver. “And look, this news shouldn’t be remotely surprising. On a list of things that Giuliani is likely to be under, federal investigation might even narrowly beat out his own cousin.” (Yes, Giuliani notoriously married his second cousin.) The federal probe is reportedly tied to two of Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who’ve been arrested and charged with illegally funneling foreign donations to political campaigns—including $325,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC. “OK, come on! These two men are just cartoonishly suspicious!” Oliver joked of Parnas and Fruman. “They look like they’re about to sell you a rocket launcher in a Grand Theft Auto game. And if that wasn’t suspicious enough, they were arrested at the airport trying to fly out of the country with one-way tickets.” “In any case, thanks largely to their political contributions, these two gained entry to Republican inner circles. Here is a photo that [Parnas] posted, captioned ‘Power breakfast !!!’ with Don Jr., whose very presence alone disqualifies this meal from being a ‘power breakfast,’” Oliver added.Parnas and Fruman also posed for a photo with President Trump and Vice President Pence at the White House. “And it’s going to be pretty difficult for Giuliani in particular to distance himself here,” Oliver opined, “because he reportedly had lunch with them just hours before they were arrested, and it is not hard to find evidence of their relationship online.” The HBO host then threw to a viral online video of Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani partying it up at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., last year. The plot thickens. “We know Giuliani wanted career diplomat Maria Yovanovitch removed as ambassador to Ukraine because he felt she was blocking his anti-Biden campaign. Igor and Lev also wanted her gone—enter [former] congressman Pete Sessions. Igor and Lev donated a bunch of money to him, and at a meeting, Parnas apparently told him the ambassador was ‘disloyal to Trump’ and that she’d been ‘bad-mouthing our president,’” explained Oliver. Sessions, a former House Republican from Texas, subsequently wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleging that Yovanovitch had “disdain” for the president, and she was subsequently removed—something that Trump brought up on his infamous phone call with the Ukrainian president, asking him to investigate the Bidens numerous times and saying Yovanovitch was “bad news” and “going to go through some things.” “Wow. That’s ominous,” said Oliver. And, when Trump was asked during a press scrum whether Giuliani was still his personal attorney, he replied, “Well, I don’t know… he’s a very good attorney, and he has been my attorney.” “Oh, that is not good, Rudy, because history suggests that sooner or later Trump will abandon him, at which point, to paraphrase his maybe client, Giuliani’s going to be ‘going through some things.’”

Kamala Harris just unveiled a massive plan to give new parents and caregivers up to six months of paid time off from work.The proposal is part of her new “Children’s Agenda,” which aims to cut childhood poverty in half and includes benefits such as childcare subsidies and free preschool for low- and moderate-income families.But Harris’s promise to provide workers with paid parental leave is worth focusing on. It’s the most generous paid-leave proposal from any of the 2020 candidates and would put the United States in line with most of the world’s developed countries by offering parents generous paid time off to care for a new child. It would also apply to workers who need to take time off to care for a sick relative.“Guaranteeing six months of paid leave will bring us closer to economic justice for workers and ensures newborn children or children who are sick can get the care they need from a parent without thrusting the family into upheaval,” Harris said in a statement announcing the proposal.Her plan goes far beyond Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s signature legislative proposal, the Family Act, which most other Democratic frontrunners have endorsed, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg. That plan provides three months of paid leave to families, with up to 66 percent of each worker’s income covered by a small increase to payroll taxes (paid by workers and employers). Both parents could each use the benefit when they choose to.Harris’s plan, on the other hand, is lighter on details. Families earning less than $75,000 would get 100 percent of their income covered for six months, but it’s unclear what percentage is covered for everyone else. It’s also unclear how much the program will cost. Harris’s team says funding would come from raising payroll taxes, corporate taxes, and income taxes on the top 1 percent of income earners. Yet the plan doesn’t mention how much of a tax increase that would involve. That’s an important detail, considering that six months of paid leave won’t be cheap. Still, Harris should get credit for tackling an issue that matters to most voters and working families. And while it may seem radical, it’s really not. Researchers consider six months of paid parental leave ideal for a child’s health and a parent’s employer. It would also ease the financial strain on working-class families.The idea of a government-run program to provide maternity and paternity leave to new parents is not controversial. About 74 percent of registered US voters in 2016 said the government should require businesses to offer employees paid parental leave. When you break down poll numbers, the support is overwhelming across genders, political parties, and even income groups. Another survey shows that 82 percent of voters believe working mothers should get paid maternity leave. Whether the respondent was Republicans or Democrats, male or female, didn’t matter — a majority support the idea that all parents should get paid time off.In other words, it’s a safe political issue for Democrats and Republicans to tackle, if only Republicans weren’t so hesitant to make businesses pay part — or all — of the cost. Right now, under federal law, workers can take up to four months of leave after the birth or adoption of a child. But there is no requirement that it be paid.Nearly every industrialized country in the world provides working mothers with at least three months of paid maternity leave — the minimum recommended by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization. In most of those countries, employers and employees pay a tax to fund the benefit. Canada has this type of system, which allows parents to take a year of leave while receiving 55 percent of their salary the entire time (up to 80 percent of wages are covered for low-income workers).Some US businesses voluntarily offer paid parental leave to their workers, but only about one in 10 workers in the country get such a benefit from their employer. Low-wage workers are the least likely to get it. In response to federal inaction on the issue, several states have started requiring employers to provide some paid leave: California, New York, and the District of Columbia are among those that do.Research shows that paid-leave programs improve child health, promote gender equality, and help keep women in the workforce. Studies indicate that California’s paid-leave law, which went into effect in 2004, led to an increase in work hours and income for mothers with young children. And paid leave has been linked to lower poverty rates in 18 countries.The need for paid leave in the United States is more urgent than ever, as nearly half of two-parent US households have parents who both work full-time jobs. Economists believe the lack of paid leave is one reason more American women aren’t joining the labor force, and that’s bad news for the US economy. About 59.1 percent of women over the age of 20 are part of the US workforce, reflecting a slight decline since 2008 when 61 percent held full-time or part-time jobs. When women joined the public labor force en masse in the 1970s, their earnings were a huge boost to the US economy, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama. They attributed nearly all of the middle-class income growth since 1970 to the rise of women entering the US workforce. But female participation in the job market began to flatten out in the 1990s, even among women in their prime working years (25-54 years old).Nearly a third of this decline of American women in the labor force can be explained by the lack of family-friendly workplace policies in the United States, including paid leave for new parents, according to research by economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn at Cornell University.Coming up with an effective paid parental leave system in the United States isn’t hard. The hard part is getting Republicans to agree that businesses should pay for some of it. Harris hasn’t mentioned how she would persuade a potentially divided Congress to pass such an ambitious paid-leave program if she were in the White House. What’s clear is that it’s a huge improvement over what Republicans have put forward.In March, Republicans in Congress tried to revive a flawed plan to give working parents paid maternity and paternity leave.Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a bill called The Cradle Act, which they describe as the best option for paid leave because it doesn’t create “a massive mandated government program.” But the truth is, it’s not paid leave at all. It’s another version of unpaid leave that workers would have to fund themselves.Here’s how it would work: The Cradle Act would let workers access some of their Social Security retirement income in advance to make up for some of the wages they would lose when taking parental leave. Workers would still bear the cost of taking time off — by delaying their retirement by twice as many months as they took off for parental leave. Someone who takes the maximum three months off, for example, would need to delay their Social Security retirement benefit by six months.The bill is nearly identical to one Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) proposed last year, called the Economic Security Act for New Parents, with support from White House adviser Ivanka Trump. They didn’t get enough bipartisan support for it so it went nowhere.So far, The Cradle Act also has very little support. And it’s possible that Harris’s plan could end up like that too. But her Children’s Agenda is not a bill, it’s a campaign message. Harris needs a boost in the polls to have a chance in the race, and she’s betting that a campaign focused on working families will make the difference.

The gap between our rhetorical policy and our actions constantly bedeviled U.S. policy making. In August 2011, several months after the start of the Syrian uprising and in the midst of the Libya operation, Obama joined our key European partners in declaring that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” But having learned the lessons of regime change in Iraq, and sobered by the complexity of sustaining even an air campaign in Libya, no principal argued for direct military intervention with U.S. ground troops to force out Assad, as President George W. Bush had done to Saddam Hussein. The costs in blood and treasure to the U.S. were massive in Iraq. Syria would be just as bad, if not worse, given Iran’s strong backing. Once Russia put its forces into Syria in September 2015, any effort at regime change could have courted World War III.But we did consider and reconsider, again and again, many significant steps short of direct war against Assad. We imposed what U.S. and European sanctions we could, but absent UN Security Council authority, which Russia consistently blocked, comprehensive global sanctions were not achievable. We provided almost $6 billion in humanitarian assistance to the victims of Syria’s conflict and more to the neighboring states coping with the burden. We spent untold amounts of senior-level energy trying to negotiate with Russia, Syria, and other key players to end the conflict peacefully. At various points, we tried to exploit potential diplomatic openings, but none ever came to fruition.After more than a year of intense internal debate, Obama decided in 2013 to join our Sunni Arab and Turkish partners in vetting, arming, and later training Syrian rebels. The challenge we continually faced, however, was that some of the rebels were genuine political opponents of Assad, while others were members of lethal terrorist groups. Still others were somewhere in between. The terrorist groups, such as the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, were the best anti-Assad fighters, but we would never assist them. The difficulty was how to help the good guys, and those in the gray area, without inadvertently providing sophisticated weapons and training to terrorists.We tried to walk that fine line. But the rebels were fractured and lacked a coherent, achievable political agenda. The assistance we provided was significant, but not as much as the rebels wanted and arguably needed. We did not do the maximum, because we assessed that the long-term risks of passing the most dangerous weapons to rebels in a murky war zone outweighed the benefits. While the U.S.-supported rebels fought as best they could, they were unlikely ever to threaten the regime’s survival without direct U.S. military intervention.Within the Obama national-security team, the principals fought over Syria longer and harder than on any issue during my tenure. John Kerry, John Brennan, and Samantha Power argued for the U.S. to do more—provide more lethal weapons to the rebels, take targeted strikes against Assad or his air force, and perhaps establish safe zones for civilians. Others—including me and Denis McDonough, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey and his successor, Joe Dunford—were equally tortured by the suffering in Syria, but opposed deeper U.S. military involvement.

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration imposed sanctions Thursday against a Moscow-based firm and five vessels the Treasury Department said shipped fuel to Syria used to support the Assad regime’s bombing campaigns against civilians.The action announced by the U.S. Treasury Department is designed not only to disrupt fuel deliveries to Syria, but to highlight Russia’s military support for a government accused by the U.S. and others of committing war crimes....

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce on Wednesday that Facebook has agreed to a sweeping settlement of allegations it mishandled user privacy and pay roughly $5bn, two people briefed on the matter said.As part of the settlement, Facebook will agree to create a board committee on privacy and will agree to new executive certifications on user privacy, the people said.The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the FTC will allege Facebook misled users about its handling of their phone numbers and its use of two-factor authentication as part of a wide-ranging complaint that accompanies a settlement ending the government’s privacy investigation, citing two people familiar with the matter.Under the terms of the FTC settlement, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, will have to personally certify that the company is taking steps to protect consumer privacy, reported the Wall Street Journal.The deal, which does not require Facebook to admit culpability for its alleged misdeeds in the Cambridge Analytica data breach, requires Zuckerberg to certify quarterly that Facebook’s privacy controls are in place, according to the WSJ report. A false statement in the certifications would be subject to potential penalties.The deal was approved by the FTC’s five-member board by a 3-2 vote, with three Republicans voting in favor and two Democrats dissenting, the Journal added.The settlement will need to be approved by a federal judge.The FTC confirmed in March 2018 it had opened an investigation into allegations Facebook inappropriately shared information belonging to 87 million users with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The inquiry has focused on whether the data-sharing violated a 2011 consent agreement between Facebook and the regulator and then widened to include other privacy allegations.A person briefed on the matter said neither the phone number nor two-factor authentication issues were part of the initial Cambridge Analytica investigation.Reuters contributed reporting Topics Facebook Social networking news

closeVideoABC uses footage shot in America to show warfare between Syria and TurkeyABC News aired the wrong footage during its coverage of a battle between Syria and Turkey. The battlefield images came from a gun range in Kentucky. The network has issued an apology.ABC issued a correction and apology Monday for reportedly using video from a Kentucky gun range while falsely claiming it depicted a fierce battle between Syrian Kurds and Turkish forces.The network aired the footage on Sunday night and Monday morning, framing it as battlefield video, when, in fact, it appears to be from a night gun demonstration at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky.The footage first aired on Sunday's "World News Tonight" as anchor Tom Llamas claimed it showed a Turkish attack on a group of Kurdish civilians in a Syrian border town.The chyron beneath the video read: "CRISIS IN SYRIA. ISIS prisoners escape as death toll rises in attack."GRAHAM RIPS EX-OBAMA OFFICIALS' CRITICISM OF TRUMP'S SYRIA POLICY: 'LIKE GOING TO A SUMO WRESTLER FOR DIET ADVICE'ABC responded to the error on Twitter Monday and issued a correction."CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight" Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy," the network tweeted. "ABC News regrets the error.""Good Morning America" also tweeted out a correction on Monday that was identical to the one released by "World News Tonight."The video appears identical to online footage called “Knob Creek night shoot 2017.” At one point in the broadcast, the clip was described as being "obtained by ABC News."The clip showed people firing tracer rounds as massive explosions occurred in the distance, while bystanders used cell phones to record.

On Monday night, with all the other late-night hosts off this week except for Jimmy Kimmel, The Daily Show host Trevor Noah teed off on the latest news out of Trumpville: that the president’s decision to abandon our Kurdish allies in northern Syria at the behest of Turkey has not only led to the Kurds being under attack but also the escape of hundreds of ISIS prisoners they’d previously held captive. “Sweet Jesus,” exclaimed Noah. “Donald Trump is the only person who can find a way to make the Middle East more chaotic. Turkey invading, Kurds fleeing, ISIS escaping?! Like, the Middle East was already a geopolitical Jenga tower, with everyone trying to figure out the right move, and then Donald Trump comes in and he’s like, ‘What if we move the whole table?’” “Trump has justified his position to pull out of Syria by saying this is all part of his larger plan to bring American troops back home, and that makes sense,” Noah continued. “What doesn’t make sense is that ‘home’ seems to be another country in the Middle East.”Yes, Trump has reportedly sent 2,800 troops to Saudi Arabia in response to alleged attacks on Saudi oil facilities that the Trump administration has blamed on Iran. “We are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia. But, are you ready? Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything that we’re doing. That’s a first!” Trump said during one of his regular White House lawn pressers. “Yeah, he’s right—that is a first. I don’t think America has ever rented out its military before. Like, that is a wild thing,” offered Noah. “He’s selling the military and ‘other things’? What are the ‘other things’? Does anybody ask? Nobody? What, does he just sneak Eric into the shipment?” “It’s weird that you can rent out America’s military,” Noah added, before throwing to the show’s senior war correspondent, Desi Lydic, to help “clear things up.” “President Trump is just fulfilling his promise to pull U.S. troops out of the Middle East,” said Lydic. “And you know what? It’s refreshing! A lot of men say they’ll pull out, but they don’t. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven times… I have seven kids now.”

Power shutdowns intended to prevent more devastating California wildfires are raising concerns about another environmental threat: air pollution. Utilities temporarily halted service to more than 2 million people this week, fearing high winds would knock down power lines and ignite infernos. That led many hospitals, businesses and others to fire up standby generators, some fueled with diesel and gasoline that spew toxic emissions. Some officials say that could further harm California's already poor air quality. They say it's too early to know how significant the effects could be. But the need to consider environmental impacts of blackouts is a new wrinkle for policymakers and planners dealing with a constant threat of catastrophic fires and more extreme weather due to climate change.