The F.B.I. collected four memos from Mr. Comey’s house in Virginia in June 2017, and he told agents he had written two others but did not have them. The F.B.I. eventually recovered seven memos in total, which were later turned over to Mr. Mueller. Congress made the memos public in April 2018, and Mr. Comey wrote about them in a book published last year.Mr. Comey showed copies of a memo to a friend, Daniel C. Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, Mr. Richman has confirmed. “I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter,” Mr. Comey testified to Congress in June 2017. “I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”Mr. Trump’s request to Mr. Comey that the F.B.I. end an investigation into Michael T. Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, was revealed in a New York Times article that cited one of the memos. The Justice Department announced the appointment of a special counsel the next day.“Confidential” is the lowest of the three classification levels established by an executive order that regulates the handling of government information deemed sensitive. The highest level, “top secret,” is applied to information whose unauthorized disclosure could be expected to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security. Leaks of “secret” information would cause “serious damage” and of “confidential” information, mere “damage.”

Amazon notched a 16% jump in lobbying outlays, to $12.4 million, making it the top spender so far in 2019 among all companies, according to quarterly reports released last week.Apple boosted spending by 8% so far this year, and Microsoft Corp. by 9%. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTSDo you think big tech has too much influence in Washington? Why or why not? Join the conversation below. Among individual U.S. companies, Facebook was ranked No. 2 in lobbying spending through Sept. 30, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, followed by Northrop Grumman Corp. NOC -0.99% at $11 million.The tech lobbying uptick comes amid heightened scrutiny of tech companies in Washington. Facebook is facing antitrust investigations from the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department and state attorneys general. Amazon is a target of a nascent Federal Trade Commission probe into its market power.The House Judiciary Committee is examining Apple, Facebook and Amazon as well as search giant Google.The firms have said they welcome the scrutiny and are working with investigators. In a speech at Georgetown University, Mark Zuckerberg discussed the ways Facebook has tightened controls on who can run political ads while still preserving his commitment to freedom of speech. VIDEO: FACEBOOK / PHOTO: NICK WASS/ASSOCIATED PRESS Google also faces antitrust probes by the Justice Department and states. Its parent, Alphabet Inc., bucked the trend in lobbying spending, posting a 41% decline amid a shake-up of its government affairs operation.Google still spent $9.8 million on lobbying through Sept. 30, and like other big tech companies, it is taking steps to present a positive message to Washington.In subway stations and at Reagan National Airport, Google has papered turnstiles and walls touting its privacy controls. It also opened pop-up kiosks where consumers could get personalized guidance to set their privacy settings to secure their data. Google has papered turnstiles and walls touting its privacy controls. Photo: John Corrigan/The Wall Street Journal Amazon took over a busy pedestrian square near the National Mall this month to showcase the mom-and-pop sellers on its marketplace, a not-so-subtle response to those who say the e-commerce titan is suffocating small businesses.Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is suddenly a regular presence, making three visits to Washington in the past five weeks including a policy speech at Georgetown University and a stop at the White House.“I’m not sure whether Mr. Zuckerberg has bought an apartment here yet or not, but he is certainly spending much, much more time and not just him,” said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.). “They were behind the curve in getting out talking to policy makers.”A Google spokeswoman said the privacy kiosks and ads were designed to help consumers and tied to National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Nicholas Denisson, Amazon’s vice president of small business, said the small-business event was a first, but that company has long recognized small sellers in other ways.Facebook and Apple declined to comment.Some consumer advocates view tech firms’ spending as a means of gaining allies ahead of what could be bruising months to come.“When you don’t have a home in terms of the political parties in Washington, D.C., you have to do your best to buy one,” said Mike Tanglis, research director at Public Citizen, which supports breaking up large tech firms.One driver of the spending by Facebook and Amazon: the firms’ expanding ambitions.Before this year, Facebook didn’t often deal with financial issues on Capitol Hill. Then in June it announced plans for a global cryptocurrency, drawing a barrage of criticism. It has since has hired seven new outside lobbying firms to work on financial issues, including two former aides to the GOP chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.Amazon wants more government business, and on Friday lost a Pentagon cloud-computing deal worth as much as $10 billion to Microsoft. Amazon has brought on seven additional outside lobbying shops since the middle of 2018, including former members of Congress and congressional aides who work to influence federal spending.Apple still spends less than other tech giants, but is also facing new threats in Washington. It is a target of the House antitrust probe, and Chief Executive Tim Cookhas forged a relationship with President Trump in an effort to keep tariffs off the iPhones and other products it imports from China.Apple spent $5.5 million through Sept. 30, and Microsoft Corp. spent $7.8 million.The decline in Google’s lobbying spending follows recent leadership changes, including firing a number of its U.S. lobbying firms. Last month, it brought on Mark Isakowitz, former chief of staff to Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio), to captain its Washington, D.C., office.Google touted its own small-business chops at a June event in the Capitol hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which counts Google as a paying member.Reporters, congressional staffers, and others found on their seats a glossy flier explaining how Google’s YouTube helps U.S. small businesses find customers abroad. Chief Executive Sundar Pichai spoke about digital trade, then yielded the floor to sellers of bedding and children’s bicycles.Amazon has brought sellers to Washington to speak to their local member of Congress about their success, according to congressional aides. An Amazon spokeswoman said these meetings began before the antitrust probes.And on a sunny afternoon in Washington’s Wharf neighborhood near the National Mall earlier this month, Amazon featured about 20 purveyors of snacks, candles, headphones and more who handed out samples and business cards to passersby. Behind an “Amazon Small Business Spotlight” sign, they took turns sitting in a makeshift TV studio for interviews broadcast on Amazon.com.For its part, Facebook sponsored a September event hosted by publisher the Atlantic, putting its name on a lounge area where attendees were invited to work and take meetings.The sponsorship gave Nick Clegg, the former U.K. deputy prime minister leading Facebook’s policy and communications work, a platform to preach against Big Tech breakups.“Pulling apart these tech companies isn’t going to do anything to deal with some of the underlying challenges we all have to rise together to meet,” Mr. Clegg said.Mr. Zuckerberg’s recent schedule has included face time with President Trump, lawmakers in both parties and television hosts.His pushback against calls for Facebook to take down inaccurate political ads won him praise from critics including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), who has accused social media firms of censoring conservatives. Before his testimony at the House Financial Services Committee last week, Mr. Zuckerberg visited Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D., Mo.), one of the panel’s senior members. The scheduled 30-minute meeting ran more than an hour as they discussed the company’s efforts to combat dangerous speech, Mr. Cleaver said.At the hearing, Mr. Zuckerberg faced hostile questions. But afterward Mr. Cleaver, recalling the face-to-face meeting, said: “I feel better about Facebook and better about Mr. Zuckerberg.”Ahead of the testimony, Facebook gave lawmakers a sheet estimating how many small businesses in their district use the social-media platform. “Facebook is proudly supporting your community,” it read.

Most fair definitions of that term would include Trump’s offer to perform official acts in exchange for something of value—that is, a Ukrainian investigation of Joe Biden’s son. Yet Democrats wisely avoided making charges whose factual basis was in any way debatable. They may have realized that, under the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in McDonnell v. United States, which scaled back the definition of political corruption in criminal cases, Trump could make a superficially plausible argument against an impeachment article about bribery. The criminal law doesn’t technically govern impeachment, but it might have provided Trump with just enough philosophical cover to drag out the process.Democrats also declined to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice based on the Mueller report, even though both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton faced such charges in their impeachments. This was likely a pragmatic political decision rather than a legal one. Trump’s bold attempts to kill the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election are ancient news at this point.Had Democrats included these and possibly other charges, Republicans might have had fodder for their defense that Democrats are out-of-control Trump haters who wanted to undo the 2016 election the moment the Electoral College was called for him over Hillary Clinton. A laundry list of impeachment charges, some more easily provable than others, would have invited a whole host of factual and political distractions, allowing Republicans in Congress to dodge the actual evidence and vote to acquit based on any number of rationales of varying legitimacy.With their two-step impeachment dance—abuse of office and obstruction of Congress—Democrats have instead put Republicans in a box. On both proposed articles of impeachment, the facts are clear and largely unrebutted—unless, of course, one is willing to forgo facts entirely and run amok with lies. Indeed, Rudy Giuliani has still been globe-trotting in an effort to resuscitate the debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, so as to gin up an excuse for Trump’s refusal to timely give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky $391 million in military aid and a White House meeting absent Zelensky’s announcement of investigations into the Bidens.The only question that remains is what to do about the facts. If the Senate acquits as expected, the answer will be: We’ll do nothing. That answer, in turn, will bend the Constitution and our system of separated powers in significant ways.First, it will mean that overwhelming obstruction of Congress by a president is okay with Congress itself. Ouch. President Trump refused to turn over a single document to Congress in connection with impeachment, but not on the grounds of executive privilege. Ditto regarding his directive that no one who served in his administration should comply with subpoenas for testimony. His stonewalling is based on a legally insupportable theory that anyone who ever worked for him has total immunity from showing up in response to a subpoena in the first place. The Supreme Court refused to give Nixon and Clinton themselves such protection. If presidents aren’t immune from subpoenas, their employees certainly aren’t either.

President Donald Trump is traveling around the country and holding packed campaign rallies in the middle of a pandemic with few masks and no social distancing. These campaign rallies serve as snapshots of the president’s messaging as he heads into the home stretch of his flagging reelection campaign. The picture isn’t pretty.From the podium, Trump routinely mocks local regulations against large gatherings, which he refers to without a sense of irony as “protests against stupidity.” Instead of touting his accomplishments or outlining a second-term agenda, Trump is praising white people for their genes and suggesting women of color who serve in Congress should be prosecuted. He’s offering apologia for the Confederacy while barely trying to conceal his authoritarian designs.Those tuning in to Trump’s rallies will see a power-hungry president who is increasingly turning up the race-baiting and attacks on the free press. His base loves it, but it should worry everyone else.Trump’s Friday evening speech in Bemidji, Minnesota, began just before news broke of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Trump made it through his more than two-hour speech without learning about it, which resulted in surreal scenes of him talking about his two Supreme Court nominations in the past tense as people yelled out things like, “Ginsburg is dead!”Speaking in a largely white part of a largely white state, the big takeaway from Trump’s speech was how many different forms of racism it featured. He began by alluding to Minnesota’s Somali population and said, sarcastically, “Are you having a good time with your refugees?” "Are you having a good time with your refugees?" -- Trump immediately pivots to full blown racism pic.twitter.com/ds9UEpLf9v— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2020 The Minneapolis part of that community is represented in Congress by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee whom Trump has demonized for years. During his Bemidji speech, Trump pushed conspiracy theories about Omar’s personal life and suggested she and two other women of color who serve in Congress should be prosecuted.“We’ll prosecute ’em. Yeah. Why not?” Trump said to cheers. "We'll prosecute 'em. Yeah. Why not?" -- Trump suggests congress members AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib should be prosecuted pic.twitter.com/3Sz4c5B8al— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2020 Then there was the sight of a US president campaigning on a pro-Confederate platform. Minnesota fought as part of the Union during the Civil War, but Trump heaped praise on Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, who he said would have “won except for Gettysburg” and whom he described as “incredible.” "[Lincoln] was getting beaten a lot by Robert E Lee. They want to rip down his statue all over the place ... he would have won except for Gettysburg ... these were incredible things" -- Trump praises the top general who fought on behalf on slavery pic.twitter.com/7dnzZ9nQJV— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2020 Things somehow got even worse. Toward the end of his speech, Trump praised his mostly white audience for their “good genes” — comments that left open the question of what genes the president thinks are bad.“You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota,” he said. "You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota." -- Trump pic.twitter.com/OiF63qZaKx— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2020 Of course, it’s not exactly breaking news at this late date that Trump uses racist rhetoric. But it’s remarkable just how racist his reelection campaign is. And by pitting his supporters against Minnesota’s Somali community, his strategy of using race to divide and conquer was on full display. If Trump’s Friday speech was about racism, his showing the next night in Fayetteville, North Carolina, was about authoritarianism.Trump began with a brief tribute to Ginsburg, but quickly pivoted to talking about his plans to fill her seat as soon as possible as his fans chanted, “Fill that seat!” Trump begins by saying nice things about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Trump's audience isn't thrilled about it but politely refrains from booing. But he immediately pivots to how he plans to quickly fill the seat, prompting huge applause & chants of "fill that seat" that he encourages. pic.twitter.com/AHyhtxN2Rx— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2020 If anyone was hoping that Trump’s motives are untainted, he quickly disabused them of the notion, saying, “We’re gonna have a victory on November 3rd the likes of which you’ve never seen.” He quickly added that “we’re counting on the federal court system to make it so we can actually have an evening where we know who wins.” "We're gonna have a victory on November 3rd the likes of which you've never seen. Now we're counting on the federal court system to make it so we can actually have an evening where we know who wins" -- Trump pic.twitter.com/q5bfsJQb76— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2020 These comments alluded to Trump’s insistence that mail voting, which has proven to be safe and effective in a number of states and is in higher demand than ever because of the coronavirus pandemic, is being used by Democrats to “rig” the 2020 election against him. He wants people to believe that any delay in tallying results is tantamount to fraud, and is hoping the Supreme Court will have his back.That wasn’t the only corrupt quid pro quo Trump boasted about during that speech. He also said that as a condition of Oracle’s involvement in a TikTok sale, he’s demanding that Oracle’s leadership “do me a favor” and “put up $5 billion into a fund for education so we can educate people as to real history of our country, not the fake history.” Holy shit. Trump says that as a condition of TikTok's sale, he tried to shake down Oracle to put $5 billion into a fund "so we can educate people as to the real history of our country -- the real history, not the fake." pic.twitter.com/82CMVDeodF— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 19, 2020 Trump doesn’t have the power to extort private companies like that. But he wants you to think he does, and his supporters may think so too.Another element of Trump’s authoritarianism was in evidence in remarks he made in both Minnesota and North Carolina about MSNBC host Ali Velshi, who was tear-gassed and shot by a rubber bullet live on air while covering the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis.“It was the most beautiful thing,” Trump said in Bemidji, alluding to video of Velshi getting shot. “It’s called law and order.” "It was the most beautiful thing ... it's called law and order" -- Trump gloats about @AliVelshi getting hit by a rubber bullet in Minneapolis. Sick stuff. pic.twitter.com/bgKSmmL8O7— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2020 On Saturday — hours before Trump again lauded the law enforcement officials who shot Velshi — MSNBC sent a statement to Vox characterizing the president’s comments as a threat against free speech.“Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy,” it said. “When the president mocks a journalist for the injury he sustained while putting himself in harm’s way to inform the public, he endangers thousands of other journalists and undermines our freedoms.”But what one person views as a threat to constitutional liberties, another views as an applause line at a campaign rally. The events themselves are a public health risk amid the president’s flouting of public health regulations during a pandemic. In a sense, perhaps what Trump’s latest rallies showed most clearly is America’s polarization between people with a sense of empathy on one hand, and the president’s base on the other. 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.

After spending hours swatting away Democratic questions about her personal judicial views, Judge Amy Coney Barrett made a significant admission on Tuesday afternoon: that she did not consider the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling to a settled legal matter, or a “super-precedent,” at the U.S. Supreme Court.While Barrett did not signal that she intends to vote to undo Roe if given the opportunity, she opened a door that President Trump’s previous two nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court did not. In 2018, Judge Brett Kavanaugh said in his confirmation hearing that Roe was “precedent on precedent” and “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court.” In 2017, Neil Gorsuch did not call Roe a super-precedent but also conveyed that he viewed it as a settled matter.Meanwhile, Barrett, under questioning from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), said differently on the second day of her confirmation hearings. She defined super-precedent as a matter “so well settled that no political actors push further overruling.”“Roe is not a super-precedent,” said Barrett, “but that does not mean it should be overruled. It just means that it does not fall on the small handful of cases like Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. Board that no one questions anymore.”Barrett’s articulation, then, would indicate she believes the standard of super-precedent at the high court cannot be met so long as that precedent is actively being challenged. And anti-abortion groups have been chipping away at rulings upholding abortion rights for years, and have made no secret of their desire to secure a court that oveturns Roe altogether.Those groups have rallied behind Barrett’s confirmation, and while she has not personally articulated a legal rationale to overturn Roe, she has aligned herself with anti-Roe views in the past and is known as an archconservative jurist and legal thinker.The exchange between Klobuchar and Barrett produced the first fresh insight into the judge’s views on an issue central to the stakes of her confirmation fight—or any of her views, really. Over the course of six hours on Tuesday, Barrett rebuffed Democratic attempts to secure answers from her on how she sees the legal standing of the Affordable Care Act, gun rights, voting rights, abortion, and other key issues. She did so citing the so-called “Ginsburg Standard,” set by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in her confirmation hearing declined to preview how she might approach key issues on the bench.Klobuchar was able to sneak by that defense by interrogating Barrett about something she’d written in a law journal, set aside as fair game for questioning, and leveraging it into a question about Roe, as well as several other hot-button cases. Barrett declined to get into those.“I am left with looking at the tracks of the record and where it leads the American people, and I think it leads us to a place that will have severe repercussions for them,” Klobuchar concluded. “Thank you.”

closeVideoDemocrats allege Trump abused his power to solicit interference from a foreign government in the 2020 electionFormer DOJ prosecutor James Trusty weighs in on a whistleblower complaint that President Trump encouraged the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden's son's business dealings.President Trump launched a social media broadside Saturday against House Democrats' impeachment inquiry, calling it the "single greatest scam in the history of American politics.""How do you impeach a President who has created the greatest Economy in the history of our Country, entirely rebuilt our Military into the most powerful it has ever been, Cut Record Taxes & Regulations, fixed the VA & gotten Choice for our Vets (after 45 years), & so much more?" he asked.The president specifically attacked the complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower, who accused Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." Democrats, following the whistleblower's lead, have accused Trump of threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine in a July 25 call unless the Eastern European country's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and their business dealings there."The Whistleblower’s complaint is completely different and at odds from my actual conversation with the new President of Ukraine. The so-called 'Whistleblower' knew practically NOTHING in that those ridiculous charges were far more dramatic & wrong," said Trump.A memorandum of the Trump-Zelensky call was made public Wednesday. It shows that while Trump sought an investigation into the Biden family for corruption, the president did not explicitly leverage military aid.Trump again defended his call on Saturday, saying: "The conversation with the new and very good Ukraine President, who told the Fake News, at the United Nations, that HE WAS NOT PRESSURED BY ME IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, should by and of itself bring an end to the new and most recent Witch Hunt. Others ended in ashes!"While meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, Zelensky told reporters that "nobody pushed me" during the call with Trump.SCHIFF SLAMMED FOR CHLAKING UP 'DISTURBING' FICTIONAL ACCOUNT OF TRUMP-UKRAINE CALL TO 'PARODY'Trump also attacked House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., accusing him of "fraudulently and illegally inserted his made up & twisted words into my call with the Ukrainian President to make it look like I did something very wrong. He then boldly read those words to Congress and millions of people, defaming & libeling me."The president then repeated his claim that Schiff "must resign from Congress!"In a video message earlier Saturday evening, Trump said that Democrats were "trying to stop me because I am fighting for you!""The Democrats want to take away your guns, they want to take away your health care, they want to take away your vote, they want to take away your freedom, they want to take away your judges, they want to take away everything," Trump said."We can never let this happen. We’re fighting to drain the swamp and that’s exactly what I’m doing, and you see why we have to do it, because our country is at stake like never before," he continued."It’s all very simple. They’re trying to stop me because I’m fighting for you, and I’ll never let that happen," the president concluded.On Saturday morning, Trump sent a series of tweets using all capital letters, saying: "Presidential Harassment!", "Make America Great Again!" and "Keep America Great!"He also called out several Democrats by name and said they were the "Do Nothing Democrat Savages.""Can you imagine if these Do Nothing Democrat Savages, people like [Jerry] Nadler, [Adam] Schiff, AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] Plus 3, and many more, had a Republican Party who would have done to Obama what the Do Nothings are doing to me," Trump said. "Oh well, maybe next time!"TRUMP CALLS AOC, SCHIFF AND NADLER 'DEMOCRAT SAVAGES' AS IMPEACHMENT CALLS INTENSIFYThe initial whistleblower complaint was forwarded to Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire on Aug. 26, who testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Maguire said the complaint alleged serious wrongdoing by the president but that it was not his role to judge whether the allegations were credible or not.On Friday, the Democratic chairs of three House committees subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to Ukraine that they say pertain to the inquiry.Schiff, Foreign Affairs chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.; and Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a letter they would consider the State Department's refusal to comply by Oct. 4 as "evidence of obstruction."The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Paula Blasik is reading a tablet in the food court of the Mall of New Hampshire when a reporter asks her about Washington’s sudden plunge toward an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.The longtime Granite State resident says that she’s against it. “From the moment he won, you heard about impeachment,” she says. Democrats in Congress “have spent a lot of time and money not doing their job,” she adds.Where does she get her information on U.S. politics? Ms. Blasik, a long-time independent who voted for Mr. Trump, says she watches all the news channels but always comes back to Fox News, because she feels it best enables her to make up her own mind.Ed Thomas has a very different point of view. Readying his fishing bait on the docks at Tybee Island, Georgia, he says he’d been waffling on whether to impeach the president or let the people oust him on Election Day. But after seeing the latest headlines he now is now leaning toward impeachment of a president he calls “nasty and divisive.”“Get rid of him, I say,” says the resident of Daytona, Florida. Mr. Thomas’s go-to source of political news, he adds, is MSNBC. It’s not just an election that divides America, it’s where to go for factsWelcome to Impeachment Autumn, 2019.As Washington struggles with high-stakes drama the nation’s citizens sometimes seem split into polarized camps that view the situation through different lenses. That division is shaped in part by party identification, or partisan leaning derived from personal characteristics. But it is also due to the fact that those on opposite sides of the debate rarely consume the same news sources.With impeachment, the division between conservative media such as Fox News and radio host Rush Limbaugh and what has long been known as the legacy mainstream news media already promises to be so wide it is as if they were living in alternate worlds.It’s a split that could help President Trump. Conservative outlets have for the most part aggressively defended the White House against House Democrats’ impeachment push. That’s a factor that didn’t exist during Watergate.If he’d had Fox, “I honestly think Richard Nixon would have survived,” says Brian Rosenwald, author of “Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took over a Political Party That Took Over the United States.” Bryan Woolston/Reuters A supporter of President Donald Trump attempts to remove a sign from the hands of a protester that called for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and impeachment of President Trump during a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug. 1, 2019. Until this week poll data showed that generally impeachment was unpopular with U.S. voters. But the revelations that in a phone call President Trump pushed Ukraine’s leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, and charges that he withheld U.S. aid to Ukraine to compel such an investigation, have begun to substantially change American public opinion.An NPR/PBS Marist poll from earlier this week showed 49% of respondents support a House impeachment inquiry, and 46% oppose such a move. The results of a Politico/Morning Consult survey from the same time period were 43% for an impeachment probe, and 43% against.Pollsters cautioned that the numbers on impeachment questions are almost certain to jump around in coming weeks, depending on poll timing, wording, and the degree to which the public is paying attention to events.“It’s just the beginning,” said Marist Poll director Barbara Carvalho in a Marist “Poll Hub” podcast.American political media this week reflected a similar split. Friday morning on CNN’s website the lead headline was “Pelosi says Attorney General has gone ‘rogue.’” At the very same time, on the Fox News website was a somewhat opposite line: “Trump, allies escalate attacks over Ukraine call furor.” Conservative talk host Rush Limbaugh was even blunter. “Pure, unadulterated lies,” read the top of his website. For his listeners, he did not need to identify which side he saw as lying.“In the conservative media world, scandals are fusing here,” says Dr. Rosenwald, a University of Pennsylvania political historian whose book “Talk Radio’s America” follows the development of the symbiosis between the GOP and conservative outlets. Conservatives have long charged, with little evidence, that Mr. Biden headed off Ukrainian investigation in his son Hunter Biden’s activities. A thinly sourced right-wing conspiracy theory also holds that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that was behind the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign officials. Mr. Trump asked for investigations of both these things in the July phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart.The mainstream media, for its part, puts little credence in these charges, says Dr. Rosenwald. Many outlets perhaps feel they focused too much on Hillary Clinton’s emails, and not enough on President Trump’s background, in 2016. As a result, so far they are not being swayed by the Republican attempt to frame the Ukraine situation as something that’s largely about Mr. Biden, his son, and past actions.So between conservative and mainstream media “you’re going to see a bigger split than usual,” says Dr. Rosenwald. “Right now the MSM has no patience for GOP spin.”The upper Midwest states, the swing region that tipped the White House to Mr. Trump in 2016, is watching the week’s developments closely as well.Sauk County, Wisconsin, is a battleground county in a battleground state. In 2016, Mr. Trump surprised pollsters by winning Wisconsin with a 1% margin. Sauk County’s margin was even thinner. The president won it with fewer than 200 votes out of nearly 32,000 cast.This week’s revelations that Mr. Trump urged the president of Ukraine to investigate a political rival may swing that vote the other way in 2020, says Mark Greenwood, leaning against the lunch counter of the Greenwood Cafe in Reedsburg, where he serves as manager and cook. “I think this is the final nail in the coffin,” says Mr. Greenwood, who voted for both of the Presidents Bush as well as Barack Obama but has consistently opposed Mr. Trump. “This again shows that the guy has no deference for any type of law.”But it will be a close vote, he adds, because the county is a patchwork of red and blue. Cyclists share country lanes with pickups. People walk their dogs on a leash at one residence, while down the road farm dogs roam free. Adjacent to Dane County, home of the state capital and the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus, Sauk County has seen an influx of people from Dane, who build homes in and around Sauk’s many dairies and grain farms, but still commute to the city.“As goofy as Trump is, there are a lot of people who like him,” says Mr. Greenwood.Back at the Mall of New Hampshire, Charlie (who did not give his last name), sits alone on a bench, an empty ice cream cup next to him. Asked about impeachment, he says he’s against it, because he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016.“The Democrats will do anything. ... I hate to say it, but they don’t have any morals,” Charlie says.He watches mainly Fox because he feels he gets a “better picture” of what’s going on. But occasionally, Charlie says, he tunes into MSNBC.“I do watch it sometimes, just to make sure I’m right about it being too liberal,” he says.On the other hand, Catherine Handy, walking through the mall with a friend, believes people who watch only Fox are the ones getting a limited picture. She had a family member who watched only Fox News, and voted for Trump, she says. She got them to branch out to NPR, PBS, and MSNBC, and now they regret their vote, she says.Trump voters have the country’s interests at heart, she says, but their support for the president is based on limited information. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. “I think the people who are pro-Trump are very patriotic. If they really knew what he was doing, they would be as enraged as the rest of us who are in the know,” Ms. Handy says.Staff writer Laurent Belsie contributed to this report from Wisconsin’s Sauk County.

And there it was, practically out of the blue, at a press conference, Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, by and large admitted that the president held back military aid to force Ukraine to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden. Asked whether the administration had told the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that funding would not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened as well, Mulvaney said: “We do – we do that all the time with foreign policy.”An admission of the quid pro quo deal that Trump has been denying so vigorously for the past weeks. And although Mulvaney seemed to be walking back his admission only a few hours later, this could be the new impeachment counter-strategy of the increasingly embattled White House. And it would be a good one too.Most importantly, because it fits the “let Trump be Trump” strategy that his boosters have been pushing since the beginning – against the more cautious and worried Republican establishment. When pushed by the journalist, Mulvaney didn’t back down but double down. “And I have news for everybody,” he said. “Get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.”This is exactly what Trump and the Republican base wants to hear. It plays to all his greatest hits. First and foremost, it has Trump back on the offensive, rather than the defensive. What all Republicans admire, even the ones “upset” by his vulgar behavior and tweets, is his open confrontations with “the liberal establishment”. Trump is the only Republican politician that is able to “own the libs” and that pays big dividends among a population that has convinced itself that they are the biggest victims of liberal political correctness.This strategy plays to Trump as the taboo-breaker. Yes, I did it, and I don’t care. I am not like you, professional politicians, the swamp. And third, it speaks to his “masculine” leadership style, bold and risky, in sharp contrast to the “effeminate” approach of Democrats and Republicans In Name Only (Rinos).But it also completely changes the importance of the impeachment procedure in the House. When the House committee will find evidence for the quid pro quo deal, which seems near certain at this point, many people, and particularly most Republicans, will respond much more blasé. “We already knew that.” It raises the bar for the committee to come up with something “new” and “shocking”.And it also forces Republican lawmakers to take sides already now, when the dirty details and prodding proof of the deal are not yet known. It is much harder for Republicans to “betray” their president now than after the House committee comes with “new” and “shocking” evidence. In fact, various Republicans were already working the Fox programs to minimize the importance of a possible quid pro quo deal, arguing that the withholding of military aid was also in the best interest of the US military.Finally, Mulvaney’s “slip of the tongue” admission was perfectly timed. He said it only a few hours after the vice-president, Mike Pence, had announced “a truce” with Turkey, in the bloody Turkish attacks of Kurdish-dominated northern Syria, at least temporarily stemming the outspoken dissent of the hawkish faction of the Republican party. And a day after the alleged “Pelosi meltdown”, which conservatives are spinning as evidence of the lack of respect for and willingness to collaborate with Trump. They now have several weeks to convince their base that the quid pro quo deal, which will sound more “normal” with every day that goes by, is nothing special and just one of the many “fake scandals” that the Democrats try to use to remove a president they never gave a chance.Don’t get me wrong. There is no guarantee that this will work. Who knows what the House committees will come up with in the coming weeks. God knows that there is more than enough to uncover. But at the very least it has Trump back in control of the Republican narrative. Looking strong and still supported by the vast majority of Republicans, who keep opposing impeachment. It has raised the bar for Republicans to turn against their president and for Democrats to shock the nation. The ball is back in their corner. Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia

In a series of tweets this morning (Nov. 3), US president Donald Trump accused California governor Gavin Newsom of mismanaging the state’s ongoing forest fires, and threatened to pull federal funding. “No more,” the president warned.Newsom took a combative approach to Trump’s threats, pointing out that the US president is a climate change denier.In recent weeks, more than 180,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. Half a million more Californians have been left without power. Trump has long believed that the best solution is to “clean” the state’s forest floors. He cited Finland as an exemplar—to the great amusement of many Finns, who photographed themselves this time last year taking up rakes and vacuums in mockery of the president.If Trump intends to follow through with his threats, he will have to act quickly: Federal agencies have already promised millions in aid to fight the fires in California. In April, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) committed to give nearly $500 million in grants and loans to assist survivors of last year’s fires.

For the first time in years, the foreign policy fight in the 2020 US presidential election isn’t about which candidate would best win wars, but rather which would most quickly end them.President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are both trying to position themselves as the leader who will finally extricate America from its “forever wars” and focus more on domestic issues. In essence, in what has turned into a “peace election,” they’re both pushing to be the “peace candidate” despite having track records that make it hard to claim such a title.“I’m bringing our troops back from Afghanistan. I’m bringing our troops back from Iraq. We’re almost out of almost every place,” Trump said during an ABC News town hall last Tuesday — even though the total number of US troops abroad has slightly increased since his predecessor Barack Obama left office. Trump also referenced two normalization agreements between Arab Gulf nations and Israel the US helped broker, to convince voters his foreign policy brought about harmony without bloodshed.Two days later, during a CNN town hall, Biden answered an Afghanistan War veteran who asked if the Democrat would bring US troops home from that 19-year conflict. “Yes, I would,” Biden replied, citing his opposition to troop increases during the Obama administration, though he said he’d keep a small counterterrorism force behind. Then he went after Trump: “This president is the one that has increased the number, not reduced the number” of soldiers in Afghanistan.It’s clear why Trump and Biden are fiercely competing on this issue. A survey by the Eurasia Group Foundation this month found supporters of both candidates prefer they maintain “a focus on the domestic needs and the health of American democracy, while avoiding unnecessary intervention beyond the borders of the United States.” After decades of war with little to show for it, Americans of all political stripes appear tired of the deadly, bloody, and costly misadventures — and the leaders of both parties have taken notice.“No one should be surprised that candidates are fighting over this ground. It’s where most of the voters are,” said Matthew Duss, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s foreign policy adviser, who is also consulting Biden’s campaign on foreign policy. “There’s a real base for these ideas: a trans-partisan, restraint-oriented movement making its presence felt.”The problem, though, is that both Trump and Biden are deeply flawed messengers here. Trump, for example, must contend with the military’s Friday announcement that it would send about 100 more troops into Syria to defend against Russian provocations, even though that same day the president told reporters “we’re out of Syria.”And Biden must still address why he would never again back a faulty war, like the one in Iraq, and why he doesn’t want to make drastic cuts to the defense budget. Both candidates, then, aren’t exactly who they say they are. “This may be a peace election without a peace candidate,” said Stephen Wertheim, author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy.A peace election like 2020 is extremely rare, in part because foreign policy rarely features so prominently in the battle for voters. That’s also the case this time around, but the difference is the grand consensus on what to do about America’s wars: End them.Experts told me there hasn’t been an election like this one in a long time. There was the election of 1940, when debate raged over America’s potential entrance into the European war, or 1968, when both candidates claimed they knew how to achieve peace in Vietnam. In both instances, the winning candidate had to appeal to voters worried about the nation embroiling itself in war, even if they ultimately didn’t live up to that promise.In 1940, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought a third term against Republican Wendell Willkie. The nation debated whether it should send troops to fight in what would later be known as World War II, with most Americans opposed to the idea. Willkie presented himself as more anti-war than he was, putting FDR in a tight spot. So on October 30, 1940 — a week before Election Day — the incumbent reiterated the bold vow he and others knew he couldn’t keep but that he kept promising anyway: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again, and again, and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars,” FDR boomed, receiving a large ovation from the Boston crowd.After the attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US entered the war in Europe at President Roosevelt’s direction. Fighting that war was the right call, in the end, but experts said it still hurt FDR’s credibility with some Americans who’d believed what he promised them.Nearly 30 years later, in 1968, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon ran on an unabashedly hawkish anti-communist platform. But public opposition to the Vietnam War was growing in the US, particularly after the North Vietnamese forces’ shocking attacks in January 1968, known as the Tet Offensive, made it painfully clear that President Lyndon Johnson’s claims that the war was going well and that US troops might soon be able to withdraw were false. By the spring of 1968, Nixon was running against Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, after Johnson had stunned the nation by announcing he would not run for reelection. Humphrey was Johnson’s vice president, and was thus intimately involved in — and, in the eyes of some voters, tainted by — the Johnson administration’s escalation of the war in Vietnam. So in part to help boost Humphrey’s electoral chances, then, the Johnson administration initiated peace negotiations aimed at finally ending the Vietnam War.Nixon now suddenly needed to somehow make himself look less like the anti-communist hawk he was known to be and more of a peacemaker. To do this, he pursued a two-pronged strategy: First, he met privately with journalists and told them in background and off-the-record briefings that, contrary to his more publicly hawkish statements, he had a plan to end the war. Second, he set about trying to secretly sabotage the Johnson administration peace talks. He wasn’t actually planning to end the war if he won, but that didn’t matter. The rumor that Nixon had a “secret plan” to do so made its way to the public, just as he’d known it would. After Nixon prolonged America’s involvement in Vietnam from the Oval Office, some voters felt duped because they’d bought the idea that he was the peace candidate — a sense of betrayal that contributed to the scale and staying power of years-long anti-war protests.There’s been a recent change to that trajectory. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, presidential candidates had to detail how they would command the military to defeat terrorists and all other enemies abroad. While the elections featured war-weary skeptics of those endeavors, candidates still had to prove a desire to keep fighting.Barack Obama rose to prominence partly due to his Iraq War opposition, yes. But what many forget is that, at the same time, he argued for sending more troops to Afghanistan. “For at least a year now, I have called for two additional brigades, perhaps three” in Afghanistan, then-Sen. Obama said during the 2008 presidential election. “I think one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here. We got distracted by Iraq.”Today, though, it seems the debate has shifted back to promising less war, not more of it. That’s why Trump and Biden are working overtime to make their cases stick, though they clearly have their work cut out for them.If you take a quick look at Trump’s and Biden’s records, it becomes clear neither is — or may ever be — the peace candidate.Under Trump’s watch, the US has dropped bombs at a record pace in Afghanistan; killed the leaders of ISIS and Iran’s elite forces; supported the Saudi-led war in Yemen despite bipartisan congressional opposition; escalated US attacks on terrorist targets in Somalia without seriously investigating civilian casualties; and threatened military action in Venezuela and North Korea. Meanwhile, Biden voted to invade Iraq and authorized airstrikes on Yugoslavia while in the Senate, and backed Obama’s failed interventions in Syria and Libya, though the former vice president later said he didn’t support the North African operation. He also told Stars and Stripes last week that he doesn’t foresee making any large cuts to the defense budget, despite its enormity.Such previous actions and positions explain why Trump and Biden are having to work hard to look more dovish now. “Both candidates are particularly weak on this issue,” said Andrew Johnstone, co-editor of US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton.“You’ll have peace in the Middle East, and this is without war and without losing — and I’m talking about on both sides — but without losing our great, young soldiers,” Trump said. “Going there” — the region, he meant — “was the worst decision in the history of our country. We’ve spent $8 trillion and we’ve lost thousands of lives but really millions of lives because I view both sides.”Trump is also touting his two nominations by right-leaning Scandinavian politicians for the Nobel Peace Prize — one for the Middle East deals and another for a new US-brokered pact between Serbia and Kosovo — though it’s unclear if he’ll win the award. What’s more, he’s promising to sign a new Iran nuclear deal in the first month of his second term instead of boasting that he’ll bomb the country. Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize following Israel-UAE accord https://t.co/hYElcJX9j6 via @nypost— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2020 Biden is also using any opportunity he gets to note his opposition to fighting new and old wars unless core US interests are at stake. “It’s past time to end the forever wars, which have cost us untold blood and treasure,” he said during a major foreign policy address in July 2019.“We should bring the vast majority of our troops home — from the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East — and narrowly focus our mission on al-Qaeda and ISIS. And we should end our support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen,” he continued. “Staying entrenched in unwinnable conflicts drains our capacity to lead on other issues that require our attention, and it prevents us from rebuilding the other instruments of American power.”Biden later told the New York Times he’d “bring American combat troops in Afghanistan home during my first term. Any residual US military presence in Afghanistan would be focused only on counterterrorism operations.” Both candidates have the space to say such things, not only because the public is disenchanted with years-long conflicts but also because there just isn’t a new, clear war Americans want to fight. Unlike with the Nazis in World War II or al-Qaeda in 9/11, there’s no enemy the nation can get behind defeating.Of course, Trump’s and Biden’s stances could shift over the next two months before the election, or especially during their presidencies. For instance, Johnstone, at the University of Leicester in the UK, warns that “if there was an actual attack on America or troops overseas, that might change things quite quickly.” And Emma Ashford, a US foreign policy expert at the CATO Institute think tank, said that when it comes to China, “we’re going to see both sides try to one-up the other on hawkishness.”Trump has blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic and launched a trade war with the country, while Biden’s team has spoken openly about denying Beijing further access to the South China Sea and about how his opponent “has sold all of us out to China in every way” — signaling an unwillingness to give Beijing an inch in relations with Washington. Neither stance “is quite the same as war,” Ashford notes, “but [they’re] certainly a more hawkish approach.”The two questions that arise from all this, then, are 1) how much Americans value Trump’s and Biden’s “forever war” promises over their track records, and similarly 2) will voters even view the political fight as a peace election? If not, the candidates’ rhetoric may not be that important in the end.Still, it’s noteworthy that, time after time, the Republican and the Democrat repeatedly say they will do whatever possible to end the wars America is already in and not initiate a new one. It’s certainly a change, and for many like Wertheim, now at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, a welcome one.“Trump and Biden seem to recognize the unpopularity of continued and new wars and are trying to appeal to public sentiment — rightly so,” he said. 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.

As congressional investigators continue to circle around President Donald Trump’s attempts to enlist foreign leaders as foot soldiers in his re-election campaign, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney defiantly admitted on Thursday that the president held up military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country’s president into investigating an unproven conspiracy theory about Democratic corruption during the 2016 presidential election.“Did [President Trump] also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely—no question about that. That’s it, and that’s why we held up the money,” Mulvaney told reporters Thursday in a rare White House press briefing. “What happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation, and that is absolutely appropriate.”Anyone with a problem with that, Mulvaney added, is a naif.“I have news for everybody: get over it,” Mulvaney said, in response to ABC’s Jon Karl, who noted that what Mulvaney had just described was exactly the sort of “quid pro quo” arrangement that Trump has repeatedly denied. “There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.”In a statement released later Thursday afternoon, after his comments regarding a “quid pro quo”-type understanding sparked a media firestorm, Mulvaney blamed the media for accurately reporting his comments.“There never was any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server,” Mulvaney said. “‪Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian and military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.‬”Mulvaney’s comments during the presser, held to announce that the president had chosen his own golf resort to host the G7 Summit next summer, severely undercut the White House’s persistent denials that Trump had held back nearly $400 million in congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine in the hopes of pressuring President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating unproven theories about two of Trump’s political opponents: the Democratic National Committee and former Vice President Joe Biden.In a partial transcript of a July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Trump asked the leader to investigate Biden’s son’s work with a Ukrainian energy company, and offered the assistance of both his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Attorney General William Barr in doing so. “A lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Trump said at the time, baselessly adding that “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.”Trump also requested on the call that Ukraine investigate CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that investigated the hacking of the DNC’s email servers in 2016. The president has floated the conspiracy theory that the hacked servers are in Ukraine, and that their discovery would prove that the Democratic Party leaked damaging emails during the campaign in order to discredit a potential Trump victory as being won through Russian interference. (The American intelligence community has found no indication that anyone but the Russian government was behind the hacking and release of the emails.)That phone call, which so concerned White House staff that the transcript was placed on a separate server accessible only to a select few staff, prompted a whistleblower complaint about the president’s behavior and has resulted in an impeachment inquiry against President Trump.Mulvaney, who claimed in the presser that pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival is no different than using foreign aide to pressure governments into cracking down on illegal immigration, insisted that the openness with which the Trump administration has described the alleged wrongdoing is proof that there was, in fact, no wrongdoing.“Everyone wants to believe there’s a coverup,” Mulvaney said. “You don’t give stuff to the public and say ‘here it is' if you are trying to cover something up.”

US House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Sept. 24 a formal impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, after the president allegedly pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to find information that could damage Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.The action followed many months of speculation on whether the House would move forward with an official impeachment, something that had been discussed since Robert Mueller conducted his investigation of Russian meddling in the US election and the president’s possible obstruction of justice in its development.Unsurprisingly, the impeachment investigation is the news of the moment, but do people actually care? Online marketing platform SEMrush looked at Google searches and trends, as well as Twitter, and found out that they do, albeit apparently not yet as much as they did two years ago.Searches for “Trump impeachment” actually peaked in May 2017—when Mueller was named special counsel on the investigation. The search’s second-highest volume occurred in February 2017, followed by November 2017. The volume today isn’t as high, though Google Trends projects it will go up.Further, while the number of people searching “impeachment” went up as Pelosi announced the inquiry, it went down shortly thereafter. Another search that peaked long before the official inquiry was launched is “how does impeachment work,” which reached its highest numbers on the eve of the 2016 election.Still, nearly five times more people searched for “Trump impeachment” on Sept. 25 than they did on Sept. 23. SEMrush says the search volumes for the term went up 469%.It seems, however, that people are turning to the internet to follow the developments, rather than debate about it. The company analyzed over 60,000 tweets shared about a Trump impeachment on Sept. 23 (7,500 tweets), Sept. 24 (7,900 tweets), and Sept. 25 (when the volume of tweets went up to 45,000). An analysis of the sentiments found that the polarized, negative tweets about Trump were fewer than the positive ones—respectively, 6% of the tweets criticized the president, while 9.4% supported him. But the vast majority of the tweets (84.5%) were neutral in content.

Hours after acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney held a disastrous press briefing in which he acknowledged a quid pro quo with Ukraine and said politics were influencing President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions, Fox News host Laura Ingraham tried to blame Mulvaney’s performance on the fact that he isn’t a lawyer.There’s just one problem with Ingraham’s theory: Mulvaney is a lawyer.Midway through Thursday afternoon’s White House presser, the acting chief of staff said Trump mentioned the corruption he was concerned about in Ukraine was “related to the DNC server” and that was the reason “why we held up the money.” After admitting to a quid pro quo, Mulvaney added that everybody needs to “get over it” and realize there’s “going to be political influence in foreign policy.”Discussing Mulvaney’s remarkable and damning comments on her primetime Fox News show Thursday night, Ingraham told her two guests—both attorneys—that Mulvaney struggled because he apparently wasn’t used to answering questions about legal issues.“Look, I got to say, we’re all lawyers here,” she stated. “There’s a reason [Attorney General] Bill Barr doesn’t do a lot of press conferences, but he would know how to answer those questions. I’m not piling on Mulvaney, I don’t want to do that.”“I don’t think that’s helpful,” Ingraham continued. “But when you have a legal issue before a lot of people who aren’t lawyers, the last thing you want to do is try to get out there and say a whole bunch of things really fast and then say, ‘Well, the context was,’ going back, and the reach back was—and then there’s not enough of a pause between one thought and another, and then they could say, ‘Aha, see, see, you did,’ and then have to go back and clean it up afterward.”She went on to note that Mulvaney tried to walk back his comments later in the day, reading aloud his entire statement before adding: “You never want to have to come back and clarify, it happens, especially when you’re not used to doing these things on a regular basis.”Mulvaney, meanwhile, graduated from the law school at the University of North Carolina in 1992 and spent the next five years practicing law with the firm James, McElroy & Diehl.While Ingraham appeared to not realize that Mulvaney actually is a lawyer who once worked for a firm, at least she didn’t call him “dumb.”

Enlarge this image A man holds a sample of the opioid antidote Narcan during a training session at a New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene office in March. Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images A man holds a sample of the opioid antidote Narcan during a training session at a New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene office in March. Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams made a plea in April for more Americans to be prepared to administer naloxone, an opioid antidote, in case they or people close to them suffer an overdose."The call to action is to recognize if you're at risk," Adams told NPR's Rachel Martin. "And if you or a loved one are at risk, keep within reach, know how to use naloxone."Nearly every state has made it easier for people to get naloxone by allowing pharmacists to dispense the drug without an individual prescription. Public health officials are able to write what are called standing orders, essentially prescriptions that cover everyone in their jurisdiction.Some states require training in how to use naloxone, typically given as a nasal spray called Narcan or with an EpiPen-like automatic injection, in order for someone to pick up naloxone. But the medicine is simple to use either way.After the surgeon general called for more people to be prepared with naloxone, we decided to ask Americans about their knowledge about the opioid antidote's availability, attitudes toward using it and experience with the medicine in the latest NPR-IBM Watson Health Health Poll. The survey queried more than 3,000 households nationwide in May.We wondered how many people know about naloxone and the fact that someone doesn't have to be a medical professional to administer it. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they were aware of the antidote and that it could be given by laypeople; 41 percent said they weren't. (Responses sum to more than 100 because of rounding.) NPR-IBM Watson Health hide caption toggle caption NPR-IBM Watson Health We then asked people who knew about naloxone if they would need a prescription to get it. The answers were pretty evenly divided among three options: yes, no and not sure/no response."Why, with all the attention we've had in the media, why don't more Americans know about naloxone?" asks Dr. Anil Jain, vice president and chief health information officer for IBM Watson Health. "When people did know, why did people think they needed a prescription?" While the survey doesn't get at the causes, Jain says, the findings underscore the need for greater public awareness.Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen says the lack of knowledge among Americans at large isn't all that surprising. "Policy alone is necessary but not sufficient," she says. "People still don't know to go to the pharmacy to get access to naloxone, especially individuals at the highest risk."To change that, she says, "you have to have continued education and the delivery of services" where people need them.In Baltimore, the health department maps where overdoses are happening and sends outreach workers to the areas. But money is an issue, even at a negotiated cost of $75 per naloxone kit, Wen says. There isn't enough naloxone to go around. "Every week we take stock of how many naloxone kits we have for the rest of fiscal year," she says. "Who's at most risk? Those are who we give the naloxone to."The NPR-IBM Watson Health Poll asked people if they would be willing to use Narcan, the nasal spray form of naloxone, to help a person who had overdosed. Fifty-eight percent said they would and 29 percent said no. Thirteen precent weren't sure or didn't respond. Only 47 percent of people 65 and older said they would be willing to do it.When asked about the auto-injector option, 68 percent of respondents said they would be willing to administer naloxone that way and 22 percent of people said they wouldn't be.Finally, we asked whether people had obtained naloxone, and 10 percent said they or someone in their household had. Among those people, 81 percent said the naloxone had been used, but the sample size for this question was small, making interpretation difficult.The nationwide poll has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. You can find the questions and full results here.

On Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump went before the cameras and a small audience at the White House to giddily declare victory in his turf war against the Democrats’ (and Mitt Romney’s!) “Impeachment HOAX.”What followed was a rambling hodge-podge of commemoration, grievance-peddling, right-wing talking points, and gory, violent detail. He namechecked his friends and dragged his enemies. It wasn’t so much a victory lap as it was a brief history of the Trump era, as told and written by Donald J. Trump.“It was evil, it was corrupt,” the president said—referring to not just the Ukraine saga and impeachment drive but to the past three years of scandal and investigations—to a roaring, applauding crowd that included members of his impeachment defense and legal team. “Dirty cops, bad people,” he added, sniping at fired FBI director James Comey in particular.But Trump wasn’t content to just riff on impeachment, acquittal, and the “corrupt,” anti-MAGA deep state. He regaled the gathering with claims of how his 2016 victory over Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton kept the U.S. economy safe and sound. “If we didn’t win, the stock market would have crashed,” he alleged. He bragged about defying the polls during 2016 that suggested he’d tank on election night. He talked about how well he was doing “in Iowa” with Republican voters right now. And he railed against “bullshit.”“It’s a celebration,” Trump said about the day’s event. “I’ve done things wrong in my life, I will admit… but this is what the end result is,” he noted, as an uneven laugh-line.The president talked about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and “Russia, Russia Russia,” and how “it was all bullshit” that “ruined” the lives of some of his advisers and supporters. (Trump has repeatedly said “bullshit” in public over the past year, and he’s privately bragged about all the headlines he can generate simply by swearing.) He mocked “Bob Mueller” for his public testimony on Capitol Hill. He slammed Democrats as “vicious as hell” and “lousy” politicians who will “probably come back for more.” He briefly lashed out at “illegal aliens,” as well as the Democrats’ ongoing Iowa caucus fiasco. He sneered at the “FBI lovers…Lisa and Peter.” He lauded Senate majority leader and “great guy” who’s “tough to read” Mitch McConnell for being so effective at stacking the judiciary with conservative judges. He went down a list praising many of his Republican fellow-travelers and diehards such as Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, even complimenting the congressman’s “body” and how much he worked out.He said, in an attempt at charm, that Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise set a “record for blood loss” in 2017 when some “whackjob” shot him. “What a guy!” Trump droned on, before launching into a gratuitous tangent about the horrific congressional-baseball shooting.And Trump, of course, bashed Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the only GOP senator who voted with the Democratic lawmakers in the impeachment trial Wednesday, as nothing more than a “failed presidential candidate” who ran one of the “worst” campaigns in the history of campaigning.“They brought me to the final stages of impeachment,” the president said, before pivoting to his “gorgeous” and “total acquittal.”His remarks at the White House came just hours after his appearance at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, where he devoted a chunk of his time to trashing Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Romney. He reprised those attacks in the White House East Room, telling supporters that Romney’s religious invocations seemed phony and that he doesn’t believe Pelosi when she says she prays for his soul.In his remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Romney invoked his faith as a reason he voted to convict Trump during the Senate impeachment trial; Pelosi has repeatedly said that she prays for this president.On Thursday, the president appeared unwilling and unready to let the Ukraine affair go, using his White House address to briefly touch on the foreign work of Hunter Biden, the son of Barack Obama’s vice president and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.Meanwhile, some of his top allies in media, the Republican Party, and his inner circle have publicly indicated that they aren’t through with the Biden family, either.Rudy Giuliani—Trump’s personal lawyer whose Biden and Ukraine dirt-digging resulted in this president’s impeachment—told The Daily Beast earlier this week he plans on “ramping up,” post-acquittal, his probe into Joe and Hunter Biden. “It’s a matter of the fair administration of justice for real,” he said. And roughly one hour after Trump’s acquittal Wednesday, Republican senators Ron Johnson (WI) and Chuck Grassley (IA) announced a review regarding “potential conflicts of interest posed by the business activities of Hunter Biden and his associates during the Obama” years.And it was merely two weeks ago that Eric Ueland, a top aide to Trump and the White House’s legislative affairs director, strode passed a huddle of Capitol Hill reporters, saying, “I can’t wait for the revenge.”On Thursday, as he neared the conclusion of his hour-long monologue, the president told the audience that “we went through hell,” and that his “sick,” “rotten” liberal political enemies on the Hill still endeavor to “destroy our country.”Trump, with First Lady Melania Trump at his side, finished by telling those gathered, “It’s an honor to be with the people in this room, thank you very much, everybody, thank you.”

At an event in the White House Roosevelt Room Friday afternoon, a reporter asked Trump: “Mr. President, do you want to clarify what Mick Mulvaney said yesterday?”Trump replied quickly, “I think he clarified it," before pivoting to off-topic comments about his visit to Texas on Thursday.White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham appeared on Fox and Friends Friday morning, praising Mulvaney's performance at his briefing Thursday, emphasizing that “we put a statement out clarifying some of the things that the media got themselves in a tizzy over.”While Mulvaney, in a statement issued Thursday evening after his admission set of a political firestorm, claimed the press had decided to "misconstrue" what he had said -- despite reporting using the actual words he spoke in the White House briefing room hours earlier -- the president, who seemingly attacks the so-called "Fake News" at nearly every opportunity, did not weigh in further about Mulvaney's admission.At midday Thursday, Mulvaney had recounted that the president told him he didn’t want to send Ukraine “a bunch of money and have them waste it, and have them spend it, have them use it to line their own pockets.”“Those were the driving factors,” Mulvaney told reporters in the White House briefing room. “Did he also mention to me in the past that the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely, no question about that. But that’s it and that’s why we held up the money.” (The "server" reference is to a debunked conspiracy theory that Trump has long clung to: that the Democratic National Committee’s hacked email server was being held in Ukraine – and that individuals in Ukraine were behind an effort to sabotage his 2016 election. Last month, Trump’s own former homeland security adviser called the theory “completely false.” )“So the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason that he ordered you to withhold funding to Ukraine?” ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl asked.“’Look back to what happened in 2016,’ certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with the nation,” Mulvaney said. “And that is absolutely equivalent.”“What you described is a quid pro quo,” Karl pressed. “It is: Funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democrats’ server happens as well.”“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” Mulvaney answered.In a terse statement issued Thursday evening, Trump's personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said, "The President's legal counsel was not involved in acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney's press briefing."After hours of backlash, Mulvaney attempted to clarify his comments shortly after Thursday.“Once again, the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump. Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election," Mulvaney noted. "The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server. The only reasons we were holding the money was because of concern about lack of support from other nations and concerns over corruption."Mulvaney added in the statement that he repeatedly cited the president's interest in "rooting out corruption in Ukraine, and ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly and appropriately" during the news conference."There was never any connection between the funds and the Ukrainians doing anything with the server - this was made explicitly obvious by the fact that the aid money was delivered without any action on the part of the Ukrainians regarding the server," he said. "There never was any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server.”Mulvaney did not mention that a rough White House transcript of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shows the investigation into alleged corruption Trump and the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, wanted specified a probe of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, sat on the board.Asked whether Giuliani's role was problematic, Mulvaney dismissed questions raised about having a private citizen, not a government official, involved in U.S. foreign policy."It is not illegal, it is not impeachable. The president gets to use who he wants to use. If he wants to fire me and hire someone else, he can. The president gets to set foreign policy. He gets to choose who to do so. As long as it does not violate law or laws regarding confidential information or classified material or anything like that the president can use who he wants tom" he argued.Mulvaney, who stepped into the role of acting chief of staff from his post as the director of the Office of Management and Budget, insisted that an investigation of Joe Biden was not part of the equation, and dismissed the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as a “witch hunt.”“I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” Mulvaney said. “That is going to happen. Elections have consequences and foreign policy is going to change from the Obama administration to the Trump administration.”While previous American presidents have pressured foreign leaders in order to achieve U.S. policy objectives, it has not been considered acceptable that they could do so for the personal benefit they might get from an investigation into political opponents, and many Democrats have said doing so, by itself, is grounds for impeachment.Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee and is leading the impeachment investigation, called Mulvaney's blocking of the aid "illicit.""With his acknowledgement now that military aid to a vital ally, battling Russia as we speak, was withheld in part out of the desire by the president to have Ukraine investigate the DNC server or Democrats of 2016, things have just gone from very, very bad to much, much worse," Schiff said. "The idea that vital military assistance would be withheld for such a patently political reason, for reason of serving the presidential election campaign, is a phenomenal breach of the president’s duty to defend our national security."ABC News' Benjamin Gittleson contributed to this report.

Supporters of the tax cite data showing Seattle's median home prices have soared to $820,000, and more than 41% of renters are classed as "rent-burdened". That means they spend around a third of their income on housing.

"The foreign interference threat is at unprecedented levels. It will evolve so we've got to make sure our approach evolves with it," Education Minister Dan Tehan told reporters.

transcriptListen to ‘The Daily’: The Week Diplomats Broke Their SilenceHosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Clare Toeniskoetter and Rachel Quester, and edited by Lisa TobinHow several career diplomats illuminated the state of foreign policy in the Trump administration, even as the White House tried to block them from testifying.rachel questerThere he is.michael barbaroI was not warned about the wind.rachel questerGood morning.michael barbaroHi.clare toeniskoetterHi!rachel questerSondland is testifying as we speak.michael barbaroThis is a big day.Hey, we’re here to get press credentials? We’re from The New York Times.All right. We’re in the House.So we’re in a — oh, watch out, people are coming. The House speaker is walking by with a very significant entourage. That was Nancy Pelosi. That was cool.O.K. So what are we doing? Oh, we’re waiting for Nick to get off the phone.clare toeniskoetterWe also could say hi.michael barbaroI have a croissant I’d like to finish.michael barbaroFrom The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”speakerAre you going to bring him in for a deposition?michael barbaroToday —speaker 1Nothing further at this moment.speaker 2Does this move the ball for impeachment, in your mind?michael barbaroA week inside the U.S. Capitol as the impeachment inquiry enters a pivotal phase.It’s Friday, October 18.nicholas fandosThere’s a bunch of rooms, so —michael barbaroO.K.clare toeniskoetterWhat’s going on?michael barbaroWe’re just trying to find a room that is quiet enough to make an episode of “The Daily.”nicholas fandosI think this will work.michael barbaroO.K. Here we go. Nick Fandos, you’ve been on the Hill all week. Walk me through this. What does the impeachment inquiry actually look like on the ground?nicholas fandosYeah. So, I mean, the crazy thing is that the house opened this impeachment inquiry a little more than three weeks ago now on their way out of town for a two-week recess. So members were scattered all over the country, meeting with constituents, holding town halls, while back here in the Capitol, a core group of staff members, basically, for the House Intelligence Committee and a couple of others, stuck around and began issuing subpoenas and requests, setting up the very first witness depositions for their investigation. And so this week was the week that five of those depositions, one a day, were lined up, and lawmakers were going to be coming back. So that’s kind of what I was expecting when I arrived at the Capitol on Monday.rachel questerHello.nicholas fandosHey, it’s Nick.rachel questerHi, how’s it going?nicholas fandosAnd I met up with our colleagues from “The Daily,” Rachel Quester and Clare Toeniskoetter, who were going to spend the week with me.nicholas fandosIt’s so nice outside.rachel questerIt’s so nice outside.nicholas fandosWe had to meet up outside of the Capitol because it was Columbus Day, actually. The press galleries and all the functional staff were not working here. So I had to escort them in specially. We walked inside and down three sets of stairs.clare toeniskoetterWhere are we?nicholas fandosWe’re standing now beside the doors to the House Intelligence Committee SCIF.nicholas fandosAnd at the bottom of those stairs, we end up at the secured rooms, we call it the SCIF, of the House Intelligence Committee —clare toeniskoetterWait, SCIF? Secure —nicholas fandosCompartmentalized Information Facility.nicholas fandos— which is one of the most secretive in Congress. It’s where this investigation is taking place, all behind closed doors.nicholas fandosAnd they have these red stickers on them, which get photographed all the time and are always in the newspaper, which just say “restricted area.” You can’t go there.nicholas fandosSo the three of us and a bunch of reporters were gathered around outside, basically waiting for any emissaries to come out of the room and give some sense of what was going on back there with the very first witness deposition.nicholas fandosWe spend all day trying to mentally pierce that barrier.michael barbaroSo it says something about this week that this room is where Congress is holding these hearings.nicholas fandosYeah, that’s right. I mean, it’s entirely outside of the public view. This is an investigation that could result in an attempt to remove President Trump. And the earliest stages of the investigation, at least, are all being conducted out of public view. And this has been a source of some contention early on.archived recording (jim jordan)The first two interviews, totalling approximately 20 hours, not one single thing was said in those respective interviews that the American people should not be able to see, should not be able to hear.nicholas fandosRepublicans have really seized on it to accuse Democrats of, basically, trying to impeach Trump in private —archived recording (jim jordan)The tragedy here, and the crime here, is that the American people don’t get to see what’s going on in these sessions.nicholas fandos— of hiding important work from the American people and from the press, who might be able to evaluate it. And the Democrats argue, though, that basically, this is investigative best practice. That, unlike past impeachments, they don’t already know what the story is. They need to find out the details. And the best way to investigate it is in private, where witnesses can’t line up their stories by hearing what somebody else testified, where lawyers can ask most of the questions, rather than lawmakers who are, maybe, trying to fundraise off of some quip, or speak to their constituents at a public hearing. And this allows them, ideally, to move quickly and collect a lot of information efficiently.And then, they figure out, what have we found? And what is the best of what we’ve got? And they move that, then, into the public sphere. And they present that evidence, they invite their best witnesses to come and testify, and they can kind of control the story that they’re building against the president.michael barbaroMuch like a prosecutor, or a district attorney, quietly builds a case, makes an announcement of whether or not there’s an indictment, and then goes to trial.nicholas fandosThat’s right. The rub, of course, is that this is Congress. And politicians love to blab. They get information that looks damaging to the president. If you’re a Democrat, you’d love for that to get out.michael barbaroSo what’s the situation on Monday when it comes to these hearings? What’s actually happening in that SCIF, behind those closed doors?nicholas fandosSo for most of the day Monday, all I know is that this former White House official, Fiona Hill, is in there testifying.And it’s hour after hour after hour. There’s very little information coming out. My feet are getting sore.nicholas fandosHey. Are you still free?nicholas fandosChit-chatting with other reporters. Basically waiting for any kind of emissary to come out of the room and give us a sense of what’s going on.nicholas fandosIt seems pretty quiet. I think Schiff just left to go — he’s speaking at the 92nd Street Y.michael barbaroYou’re just spending the day standing outside this room.nicholas fandosRight.nicholas fandos[SIGHS]clare toeniskoetterHow many hours do you think you’ve spent standing, waiting, doing nothing so far?nicholas fandosI don’t know. Probably north of 30 hours, 35 hours. But it’ll get worse.nicholas fandosAnd it was a long day. And, eventually, the sun goes down. Fiona Hill is still not done. And she finally leaves at about 8 o’clock.clare toeniskoetterBye, thank you!nicholas fandosI just kind of had to go home. Because there was not a whole lot more reporting to do here.michael barbaroHmm.nicholas fandosAnd it was only as I was walking back up to my apartment building that I started hearing from some sources and being able to piece together, over the next couple of hours, what had actually happened that day. And the testimony, it turns out, was pretty remarkable.michael barbaroWhat was the testimony?nicholas fandosSo you’ve got to keep in mind, Fiona Hill is a respected career Russia expert who was brought in to the Trump administration to work for John Bolton on the National Security Council as one of the president’s top advisers on Europe and Russia policy. So she’s right at the center of traditional decision making around policy towards Ukraine. And the account that she gives is that there was a meeting earlier this summer in July where several other diplomats, including Gordon Sondland, a former Trump donor who had become ambassador to the European Union, met with some Ukrainian officials. And she tells lawmakers that this meeting veered dangerously off course, from her perspective, and that she and her boss, John Bolton, were so alarmed by what was said that Bolton told her, you need to go to White House lawyers right now and tell them that we’re not part of, and this was a quote, “whatever drug deal” these guys are cooking up.michael barbaroWow.nicholas fandosNot a literal drug deal. But what Bolton and Hill thought was going on is that Sondland and the president’s private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were basically holding out from the Ukrainians a White House meeting with President Trump, which is what they wanted, as leverage for the Ukrainians agreeing to investigate Democrats and Democratic issues that could benefit the president politically. Hill also testified that, at one point, Bolton referred to Giuliani as a “hand grenade” that’s “going to blow everybody up.” And so we were able to basically pull together this and some other elements of the story and publish it, I think, about 10:30 at night, and really be able to tell the story of day one behind those closed doors.michael barbaroSo beyond this being a very juicy scoop, what’s the significance of the testimony that Fiona Hill gave? What does it do for the inquiry?nicholas fandosSo there are a couple things that I would say. One is that she implicates her boss, John Bolton, who is a boldface name in Washington. He’s the president’s top national security adviser. And saying that high up in the chain, the president’s national security adviser is calling this a “drug deal,” was so concerned about this he had me go to the lawyers — and it kind of opened the door to the fact that this set of events that we’re learning about in retrospect were setting off alarms in real time, and at very high levels of the government. The other aspect of it, though, is that I’m looking ahead to the rest of the week, and it seems pretty clear she’s not going to be the last person. Unlike in past investigations, where the White House has successfully shut down Congress, important witnesses are coming, and they’re going to talk, and they’re going to tell their story. We’re actually going to understand what happened here.michael barbaroNick, I guess I just have, like, a collegial inquiry here. What’s the point of standing around all day if you end up getting the best stuff when you get home at, like, 10 o’clock at night?nicholas fandos[LAUGHS]michael barbaroDoesn’t that suggest that maybe you’re not going about this in the most efficient way?nicholas fandosUhh, it’s a fair point.But we do learn some pretty significant details that set the stage for the rest of the week.michael barbaroO.K. So what happens the next day, on Tuesday?rachel questerReady for day two.clare toeniskoetterYeah.nicholas fandosSo on Tuesday, we know that there is going to be another one of these closed-door depositions that’s probably going to go on again for hours, this time with a senior State Department official who was more or less in charge of Ukraine policy for the State Department.speaker 1So Julie’s group, we’re going to gather up. Make sure we have everybody. I don’t see Brian.speaker 2I don’t either.nicholas fandosBut the first thing that I notice as I arrive at the Capitol is that the place has been transformed overnight.rachel questerO.K., so Nick just walked away, because he got a call from a member of Congress.nicholas fandosAfter two weeks of recess, lawmakers are back.speakerMadam Speaker, will there be an formal vote on an impeachment inquiry? Madam Speaker?nicholas fandosThere are even tourists wandering around through the SCIF area, running into reporters.speaker 1In part to keep an eye on the British.speaker 2Yeah, it’s somewhere up there. Oh, wait. There we go.nicholas fandosStopping, looking at the TV reporters, who they recognize from CNN.speaker 1Have you guys heard of the whole impeachment inquiry?speaker 2Mm-hmm.speaker 3Yeah. That’s craziness.nicholas fandosThe press corps seems to have somehow doubled. I don’t know how, because it’s already been huge following this stuff. And there’s just kind of an energy gripping the place that comes with 535 or so lawmakers and their staff, their kind of entourages, being back, moving around the Capitol.michael barbaroCan any member of Congress walk into the SCIF, right by you, and actually listen to these depositions as testimony?nicholas fandosThe answer is no. And we actually saw it a couple times this week, when Republicans tried to go in and sit in on these depositions. But they were not on the committees that are leading the investigation. And therefore, under the committee rules, they ended up getting kicked out. But with lawmakers back in town, you’re talking about three committees that are leading the impeachment investigation. That’s dozens and dozens of lawmakers that sit on those. And they can all go and sit in. And they can come out, and they’re not supposed to talk in detail about what transpired, but they can give general impressions and hints about what they heard. In one case, one Democrat came out and basically broke the rules and just talked about what was happening completely.archived recordingHow did the questioning go today, Gerry?archived recording (gerry connolly)I thought it was very powerful testimony.michael barbaroAnd what did this Democrat divulge?nicholas fandosSo he comes out and says —archived recording (gerry connolly)Here is a senior State Department official responsible for six countries, one of which is Ukraine —nicholas fandos— that he’d just heard the witness in the room, a State Department official named George Kent —archived recording (gerry connolly)— who found himself outside of a parallel process that he felt was undermining 28 years of U.S. policy in promoting the rule of law in Ukraine.nicholas fandos— that he and other career diplomats who were in charge of the State Department’s policy toward Ukraine had been shoved aside —archived recording (gerry connolly)All of the people charged with policy in Ukraine were replaced, apparently, after a May 23rd meeting at the White House organized by Mick Mulvaney, not John Bolton or Pompeo.nicholas fandos— and were told, starting late in the spring, that basically, their services weren’t needed anymore —archived recording (gerry connolly)And that was wrong. He used that word, “wrong.”nicholas fandos— that policy towards Ukraine was going to be run by Gordon Sondland, and Rudy Giuliani, and others out of the White House —archived recording (gerry connolly)The import of this testimony is deeply disturbing, especially the role of Rudy Giuliani.nicholas fandos— and they may as well lay low.michael barbaroAnd what’s the significance of that?nicholas fandosSo the significance of that is that you have here another high-level American diplomat saying that the normal channels for foreign policy that have guided American policy for quite a long time are being stepped on, basically, by the White House, which is putting their own guys in charge. And one of them that he singles out, yet again, is Gordon Sondland. Now you have a second witness, two in two days, coming forward and giving a pretty consistent account.This is all picking up a little bit of momentum.michael barbaroSo I’m taking it you didn’t watch the Democratic debate.nicholas fandosI did not watch the Democratic debate, and I did not watch playoff baseball.michael barbaro[LAUGHS]nicholas fandosWhat if we take a 20-minute break, and I can go and satisfy my editors a little bit by updating some stories?michael barbaroYeah. All right. We’ll be back, as we say.nicholas fandosO.K. More soon.clare toeniskoetterThanks, Nick.nicholas fandosYou guys going to hang here?michael barbaroYeah.rachel questerO.K. Should we go to break there?michael barbaroThat was the idea.clare toeniskoetterSee ya!michael barbaroO.K. So Wednesday.nicholas fandosWednesday. Another day, another diplomat. This time, it’s a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who quit the State Department last week, reportedly because he was so frustrated by the very things that we’re talking about. He tried to raise alarms by that and didn’t get a response. And he was so fed up, he said he quit. So it’s clear after three days of testimony that we’re starting to see the diplomatic and foreign policy core, the expertise, the professional class that handles American foreign policy through Democratic and Republican administrations, basically coming one by one to tell a remarkably consistent story about how, in ways that they were uncomfortable with and they had not seen before, they were getting pushed aside. And the policy that was being executed in their place — they would say it’s not even a policy — but the actions in their place, basically, rather than, to put it in their words, the policy serving the well-being of the Ukrainians and the United States, it was serving the well-being of the president of the United States. And that was about it.michael barbaroBut how exactly is that the basis of an impeachment inquiry?nicholas fandosSo it’s not the fact that they were pushed aside that they see as so problematic. They’re telling a story about what happened once they were pushed aside. They think that’s created a set of conditions that led to these events that are at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. And that’s really what investigators are trying to get to the bottom of. And now, they’ve been able to establish how the circumstances, or the scene, was set for those things to happen by these current and former diplomats. But they still have more investigative work to flesh that out. ^CLARE TOENISKOETTER^ O.K., we’re walking up.speakerAll right. So I’m going to just watch for —nicholas fandosIf that’s O.K.speakerYeah, yeah.nicholas fandosSo in the middle of all this on Wednesday, I meet up with my colleague, Sheryl Stolberg.nicholas fandosYeah, we’ll probably go to one of those tables.sheryl gay stolbergYou think it’ll be a standing interview?nicholas fandosI hope not. But, you know, a guy’s got to get his steps in.nicholas fandosAnd we’re going to go upstairs into the Capitol to interview Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman who chairs the Intelligence Committee and is the man at the center of all these hearings leading the impeachment investigation. We had been hoping to sit down with Schiff in his office and have a kind of quieter, more reflective meeting. But indicative of the way things are in the middle of this inquiry, his staff asked, instead, if we could meet in a reception room.sheryl gay stolbergLet’s take this corner.nicholas fandosRight off the floor of the Capitol, where there were different meet-and-greets going on, and constituents were meeting with their members of Congress. And the room was buzzing and lively.And we staked out a corner where we could talk to Congressman Schiff.adam schiffHow are you doing?nicholas fandosHow are you?adam schiffGood.nicholas fandosHere, and Sheryl’s over here too.sheryl gay stolbergHi!adam schiffHi, how are you?nicholas fandosAnd we were able to put to him some, kind of, key questions about what we thought was going on to see how he sees it.sheryl gay stolbergYou know, the president talks a lot about the deep state. Does it strike you that this is exactly what he fears, or what he thinks of as the deep state?adam schiffYou know, the deep state theory used to be a fringe theory in third-world countries or kooky conspiracy theorists at home. When the president talks about the deep state, what he’s really talking about is, in particular, people that expose his wrongdoing and misconduct.nicholas fandosAt one point, we put the question to him of what he made of all these diplomats coming forward and telling this story.adam schiffYou know, there’s no revolt, and there’s no deep state.sheryl gay stolbergI’m being —nicholas fandosHe quibbled a little bit with the wording that Sheryl used. But he basically said, I agree with the premise of the question.adam schiffI think it’s a very serious attack on career public servants who are unwilling to compromise themselves in the president’s service.This has to be the last question because I’ve got to go vote on the last vote.sheryl gay stolbergI have two more real quickies. Do you have enough evidence to impeach?adam schiffI’ve got to go vote.sheryl gay stolbergCan he come back or is that it?nicholas fandosI can ask.michael barbaroSo another busy day. Where is your head as Wednesday comes to an end?nicholas fandosSo by the end of Wednesday, it just feels inescapable that this is all building, at least this week, towards Gordon Sondland coming in himself on Thursday and giving his account of what happened, of facing questions about these various accusations and accounts that investigators have been getting all week. And figuring out, how does he explain this stuff? How does he view what was going on? And we left the Capitol Wednesday evening waiting to see exactly what he was going to say.michael barbaroRight. Like, if this is a play, the character that everyone’s been talking about for the last 90 minutes eventually has to come onstage and say something.nicholas fandosThat’s right. Except for, in this case, the stage is behind closed doors. And saying something, it turns out, amounts to releasing an 18-page opening statement Thursday morning right before he begins to answer questions.nicholas fandosHello.michael barbaroHi.nicholas fandosWelcome.michael barbaroVery nice to see you.nicholas fandosVery nice to see you.michael barbaroSo that’s how Thursday morning begins. I walk into the Capitol with Rachel and Clare just as, it seems, you are digesting Gordon Sondland’s opening statements.nicholas fandosAnd my morning was basically spent trying to go through 18 pages of what he was going to go in there and say.nicholas fandosWe received a copy of his opening statement. And Mike Schmidt, our colleague, and I pored through it to try and figure out, what’s new here? What’s he addressing? What does he have to say? And a couple of things jumped out at us. He basically says, in a meeting that he had with President Trump in May, not long after the new Ukrainian president is elected, President Trump basically rejected Sondland’s advice and the advice of other diplomats that were with him who said, you know, Mr. President, we think you ought to meet with this new guy. We think he’s going to do good work. Trump didn’t seem interested, and then directed them, Sondland said, to go through Rudy Giuliani, to go through his private lawyer.michael barbaroOn Ukraine foreign policy.nicholas fandosHe gave Sondland, his ambassador to the European Union, and other high-ranking officials in the room the direct impression that he had empowered Rudy Giuliani to basically run American policy toward Ukraine.michael barbaroWow.nicholas fandosI mean, all week we’d been hearing these career nonpartisan diplomats coming in and pointing at Gordon Sondland. And here you have Gordon Sondland turning around just as quickly and pointing at the president and Rudy Giuliani and saying, everything I did, I did because they told me to. And I didn’t always feel good about it. I don’t think Rudy Giuliani should have been involved. I think the men and women of the State Department ought to be running our foreign policy, he testified. But I have to follow the directions of the president. And I thought, more or less, that I could work within those parameters to still achieve an end that I believed in, to still help Ukraine. And he said something interesting. He says, I didn’t realize at first. It was only later that I realized that Rudy Giuliani may have had some other motivations in mind. As if all of this is not enough, one of the president’s loyal diplomats seeming to turn on him and point the finger back at him.michael barbaroHello.michael shearHow are you?michael barbaroMr. Shear.michael shearGood to see you.nicholas fandosMy colleague Mike Shear walks up.michael barbaroI’m just going to say, any email that starts with, “This will be interesting,” I want to read the rest of.michael shearMick Mulvaney is about to give a press briefing.nicholas fandosOh, jeez.nicholas fandosAnd says, hey, the White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who never addresses the press, has just scheduled a 12:30 press conference at the White House. He’s going to talk to reporters. And we think he’s going to talk about Ukraine.michael shearBut, I mean, he should get a lot of questions about this stuff, about impeachment. I mean, he’s going to the White House press briefing room.nicholas fandosSo Mike and I go back to a press room just outside the SCIF and set up shop around his computer, where we tune into this press conference.michael barbaroMm-hmm.rachel quester(WHISPERING) What’s happening?michael barbaroWe’re with Nick Fandos and Mike Shear watching Mulvaney.nicholas fandosHe starts to field questions. And it gets crazy really fast.archived recording (mick mulvaney)Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the D.N.C. server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that’s it. And that’s why we held up the money.nicholas fandosAfter this week of slow drip disclosures, and after weeks of the White House denying that there had been any kind of leverage, or quid pro quo, or exchange with the Ukrainians around the suspension of security aid for the country, he comes out and basically says — he does say, on the record, that —archived recordingSo the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to the Ukraine?archived recording (mick mulvaney)The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation. Then that is absolutely appropriate.nicholas fandosThe White House withheld the aid for several reasons. And one of those reasons was President Trump wanted Ukraine to first commit to investigating potential collusion between Ukrainians and Democrats in the 2016 election that was meant to undermine his campaign. And on top of it, Mulvaney says, yep, this was the deal.archived recordingLet’s be clear. What you’ve just described is a quid pro quo.nicholas fandosReporters quickly call it a quid pro quo.archived recordingIt is — funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened as well.archived recording (mick mulvaney)We do that all the time with foreign policy.nicholas fandosAnd he said, that’s fine. It happens all the time. There’s nothing wrong with it.archived recording (mick mulvaney)If you read the news reports, and you believe them — what did McKinney say yesterday? Well, McKinney said yesterday that he was really upset with the political influence in foreign policy, that was one of the reasons he was so upset about this. And I have news for everybody, get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.michael barbaroI mean, that’s an extraordinary thing for the White House chief of staff to say.nicholas fandosIt is. And he goes a little bit further. He’s asked about Rudy Giuliani and his role. And his defense, again, is essentially that the president of the United States gets to dictate foreign policy. And if he wants his personal lawyer — a guy who he’s not paying, a guy who’s doing business, by the way, in Ukraine at the same time he’s evidently doing diplomacy — to run American foreign policy, well, that’s his prerogative. Elections have consequences. And that’s O.K. There’s nothing wrong with it.archived recording (mick mulvaney)Elections do have consequences. And they should. And your foreign policy is going to change. Obama did it in one way, we’re doing it in a different way. And there’s no problem with that.nicholas fandosIt’s a pretty stunning assertion. A pretty stunning view of executive power. It suggests the White House has not been telling the whole truth up till today.michael barbaroAnd then decided to tell it in a kind of extreme, unexpected way.nicholas fandosRight. It’s a little baffling to understand what exactly Mick Mulvaney was doing here.archived recording (mick mulvaney)I’m not going to take anymore. It’s nice to see everybody. Thanks again.nicholas fandosAll right, so we should — we should get on the phone.mike shearWhat the hell just happened?michael barbaroWhy don’t you take some time to figure out what this all means?nicholas fandosThere’s also probably about to be a House vote, where we may need to go and see if we can’t get some quick reaction.nicholas fandosYou know, it was pretty evident in the hour or so after that press conference that lawmakers on Capitol Hill didn’t quite know what to make of it either.recording^Today, the chief of staff said what we’ve always just talked about. It was also about exonerating Russia and looking at the 2016 election.nicholas fandosSome said, well, they just admitted to the whole thing, I suppose. So what do we do now? Others, Adam Schiff said —archived recording (adam schiff)It certainly indicates that things have gone from very, very bad to much, much worse.nicholas fandosA story that’s very, very bad just got much, much worse.michael barbaroWell, to the extent, Nick, that it’s knowable, what do you make of why the White House decided to do this? It’s kind of hard to understand.nicholas fandosIt is. We don’t know if Mulvaney was acting on his own authority, who had put him out there. The president’s legal team, one of his other lawyers who’s not Rudy Giuliani, said he hadn’t been consulted before Mulvaney went out there. You know, there has been a move that President Trump returns to time and again in his presidency. And part of me wonders if this isn’t the same thing, where, when he’s being accused of something bad, of having done something under the table or that would be deemed inappropriate for others, instead of pretending he didn’t, he just kind of throws it all out into the open and says, you know, yeah, I did this. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. So what? Tell me it’s wrong. And I think at the end of this week, one of the biggest questions that I think emerges from all this stuff is that it’s now up to Congress, not just Democrats, but Republicans, too, to answer that question and say, is this right, or is this wrong? If he’s going to own up to most of it, and assuming that more officials come forward and fill in different pieces of this story as we’re coming to understand it, you know, can they stomach that? And is that a transgression that they’re willing to say is worthy of impeachment and worthy of his removal from office? I mean, it’s kind of on the president’s part, potentially, the ultimate high-stakes bluff, and I don’t think we know yet where things are going to fall out.[music]nicholas fandosI think what we’re left with at the end of this week is, like, a question. Is this a story of a bunch of career diplomats, who have never really much liked President Trump or his policies, rebelling against him? And I don’t think that they really see it that way. From their perspective, you know, they’re used to having policy differences with presidents of both parties. They’re trained to implement the policies of Republicans and of Democrats. What I think is different, what is leading otherwise anonymous officials to blow the whistle, to march up to Capitol Hill and walk down all those flights of steps to the House SCIF and tell the story as they see it, is that they see this as something fundamentally different, and, importantly, as a part of their responsibility as permanent agents of the government, of people who are working on behalf of the American people, not a particular president, and that only when things seem to get so bad did they decide they needed to speak up.michael barbaroNick, thank you for essentially giving us your entire week. We appreciate it.nicholas fandosIt was a pleasure to have the company.michael barbaroIt can get lonely in front of a SCIF, I imagine. Anyway, thank you, truly.nicholas fandosYeah, I’m glad you guys were here. It’s been quite a story.michael barbaroThe rest — so on Thursday night, there was a huge bipartisan outcry, and the White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, tries to walk back his comments about a quid pro quo with Ukraine. He issues a statement essentially denying what he has said just a few hours earlier. And I’m going to read you the quote. He said, “Let me be clear. There was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.” We’ll be right back.sheryl gay stolbergHow does it sound?michael barbaroIt sounds pretty good.sheryl gay stolbergSound O.K.?michael barbaroI’ve never actually produced a bit of — any audio on my own. So this is a bit of an experiment.sheryl gay stolbergO.K., great.michael barbaroAnd I think this is definitely the first time we have done the headlines of “The Daily” inside the Senate press gallery. So Sheryl Stolberg — oh, I think, I’m supposed to hold this to my own mouth.michael barbaroSo Sheryl, what do we need to know today?sheryl gay stolbergSo it was a really busy news day.archived recording (mike pence)Today, I’m proud to report, thanks to the strong leadership of President Donald Trump and the strong relationship between President Erdogan in Turkey and the United States of America that today, the United States and Turkey have agreed to a cease-fire in Syria.sheryl gay stolbergVice President Pence flew to Turkey, and on Thursday afternoon, he announced that Turkey had agreed to a cease-fire in which the Turkish government would suspend its military operations in northern Syria for five days in order to give the Kurds time to clear the area. So that raises the question, is this a breakthrough, or is this just giving Turkey what it wants in the first place, because they wanted the Kurds out?michael barbaroWhat else?archived recordingWill you support this deal? What do you think of it?archived recording (jeremy corbyn)Well, from what we’ve read of this deal, it doesn’t meet our demands or our expectations.sheryl gay stolbergThere’s finally a deal for Brexit that the European Union and Britain both think will work. But it’s not clear if it’s going to pass, because it has to go through Parliament, and the Labour Party has already said it’s opposed.archived recording (jeremy corbyn)We are unhappy with this deal, and as it stands, we’ll vote against it.sheryl gay stolbergAnd finally, on Thursday, it was a sad day here in the Capitol, because Representative Elijah Cummings, a towering figure in the House, died. Cummings was a son of sharecroppers. His own presence here was really a miracle to him.archived recording (elijah cummings)My father had never been in the Capitol building. He said, isn’t this the place where they used to call us slaves? I said, yes sir. And isn’t this the place they used to call us three-fifths of a man? I said, yes, sir. And isn’t this the place that they used to call us chattel? I say, yes, yes, yes, sir. And I’ll never forget, he said, when I think about you being sworn in today, he said, now I see what I could have been if I had had an opportunity.sheryl gay stolbergAnd over the last year, as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, he had been a central figure in the investigations of the president, and in his role in these investigations, he continually pleaded for decency.archived recording (elijah cummings)We are better than this. We are so much — we really are. As a country, we are so much better than this. And I’m hoping that all of us can get back to this democracy that we want and that we should be passing on to our children so that they can do better than what we did.michael barbaroSheryl, thank you.sheryl gay stolbergThank you, Michael.clare toeniskoetterWe’re walking out?^michael barbaro^: 945 p.m. We appear to be the last journalists inside the U.S. Capitol. Feels like a good time to talk about who made the shows this week. “The Daily” is made by Theo Balcomb, Andy Mills, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson. Walking and doing credits at the same time?clare toeniskoetterChallenging.michael barbaroWendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Alexandra Leigh Young, Jonathan Wolfe, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Adizah Eghan, Kelly Prime. Thank God for automatic doors. Julia Longoria, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Jazmín Aguilera, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Monika Evstatieva, and Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk, of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Julia Simon, Stella Tan, Lauren Jackson and the entire Washington bureau of The Times. That’s it for “The Daily.” I am a very out-of-breath Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.clare toeniskoetterLook at the moon!rachel questerOh, it’s so beautiful!clare toeniskoetterI haven’t been outside —

Paul Manafort, the disgraced former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was released from prison on Wednesday and will serve out the rest of his sentence under home confinement.ABC News, the first to report Manafort’s release, said the 71-year-old was let go from the FCI Loretto prison in Pennsylvania on Wednesday morning. He will be confined to his apartment in northern Virginia.Manafort was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in March 2019, for convictions including unregistered lobbying, tax fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. He worked for Trump’s election campaign for five months in 2016, including as campaign chair.Manafort’s lawyers wrote to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in April, asking that he be transferred to home confinement for “the remainder of his sentence or, alternatively, for the duration of the on-going Covid-19 pandemic”.The attorneys wrote that Manafort has “high blood pressure, liver disease, and respiratory ailments”.In March 2019 Manafort arrived at his sentencing hearing in Washington DC, in a wheelchair, suffering from gout.He has been in custody since June 2018, when a federal judge revoked his bail after Manafort was charged with attempting to influence witness testimony. Manafort later pleaded guilty to a count related to witness tampering.In April the American Civil Liberties Union, in conjunction with several epidemiologists, said jails could cause an extra 99,000 US deaths from coronavirus, owing to overcrowding and only basic levels of sanitation.The Department of Justice (DoJ) issued guidelines in April relating to the release of inmates to home confinement. The DoJ said it would focus on inmates at low or medium-security prisons, prioritizing the release of those who have served half of their sentence, or have 18 months or less left and have served at least 25% of their time.Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, who is serving a three- year prison sentence for crimes including facilitating illegal payments to silence two women who alleged affairs with Trump, is due to be moved to home confinement later this month.