President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet is shaping up to be a team of “firsts,” and he introduced yet another of his history-making nominations Wednesday: Pete Buttigieg as his pick to lead the Department of Transportation.If confirmed, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would be the first openly gay member of a presidential Cabinet to be confirmed by the Senate.“This Cabinet will be the most representative of any Cabinet in American history,” Biden said before formally introducing Buttigieg as his nominee. “We’ll have a Cabinet of barrier breakers, a Cabinet of firsts.”Biden said Buttigieg is his ninth “precedent-busting” pick -- his previous ones include, most notably, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who will be the first woman to serve in that role; Alejandro Mayorkas to head the Department of Homeland Security, who would be the first Latino in that role; and retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin as defense secretary, who would be the first Black American in the role.Biden described Buttigieg as “one of the smartest people you’ll ever meet,” a “management expert,” “a policy wonk with a big heart” and a “new voice with new ideas determined to move past old politics.”“What I admire about Pete is, he’s always clear about who he is, what he believes and how he wants to bring people in, not exclude them,” he said before turning the podium over to Buttigieg.After discussing his experience in the infrastructure and transportation space, Buttigieg acknowledged that “the eyes of history are on this appointment, knowing that this is the first time an American president has ever sent an openly LGBTQ Cabinet member to the Senate for confirmation.”Buttigieg, who said he even proposed to his husband in an airport terminal, recalled seeing a news story as a teenager in Indiana about James Hormel, President Bill Clinton’s pick for ambassador to Luxembourg, who, Buttigieg recalled, was “attacked and denied a vote in the Senate because he was gay, ultimately able to serve only by a recess appointment.”“I learned something about some of the limits that exist in this country when it comes to who is allowed to belong, but just as important, I saw how those limits could be challenged,” he said of watching the Hormel story. “So, two decades later, I can’t help but think of a 17-year-old somewhere who might be watching us right now, somebody who wonders whether and where they belong in the world or even in their own family, and I’m thinking about the message that today’s announcement is sending to them.”Even before Biden formally announced Buttigieg as his pick to lead the Department of Transportation, LGBTQ advocates were celebrating.“Pete’s nomination is a new milestone in a decadeslong effort to ensure LGBTQ people are represented throughout our government – and its impact will reverberate well beyond the department he will lead,” Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Institute, said in a statement.“It distances our nation from a troubled legacy of barring out LGBTQ people from government positions and moves us closer to the president-elect’s vision of a government that reflects America.”Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, said Buttigieg’s “voice as a champion for the LGBTQ community in the Cabinet room will help President-elect Biden build back our nation better, stronger and more equal than before.”“This is a historic moment for our community, though not the end of our advocacy,” David said in a statement. “We have and will continue to engage with the Biden-Harris Transition team to ensure that LGBTQ people will be appointed at all levels of government and that those appointments will reflect the full diversity of our community, including and especially LGBTQ people of color and transgender and gender-nonconforming people.While Buttigieg is expected to be the first openly gay presidential Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, he will not be the first overall. That distinction belongs to Richard Grenell, who served as acting director of national intelligence under President Donald Trump from February to May.Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram

“Who the heck consents to having a company track them across the internet,” she remembered thinking. “They could only do it because they had monopoly power to do something that clearly goes against consumer interests.”After leaving the ad world in 2017, she spent the next year researching and writing a paper on why Facebook was a monopoly. When she was done, she submitted her paper to the websites of about a dozen law reviews. To her surprise, the Berkeley Business Law Journal, which is associated with the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, agreed to publish her work. Ms. Srinivasan said she cried at the news.Her Facebook paper quickly captured the attention of regulators. In March 2019, a month after it was published, Representative David Cicilline, the Democratic chairman of the House antitrust subcommittee, wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to investigate Facebook on antitrust grounds citing her paper among other works. The New York attorney general’s office later asked her to speak to its lawyers about her work.This year, she took aim with her Stanford Technology Law Review article at the other behemoth of the online ad world: Google. She explained the complex world of online ad exchanges, where display ads are sold and bought in milliseconds. Ms. Srinivasan argued that Google dominates nearly all facets of these markets, representing buyers and sellers while also operating the largest exchange.While other electronic trading markets — namely, financial markets — are heavily regulated to prevent conflicts of interest and unfair advantages of speed and inside information, online ad trading is largely unregulated. She argued that Google’s dominance inflated the price of ads — a concept described as a “monopoly tax” in the multistate lawsuit led by Texas.Marshall Steinbaum, an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s economics department, wrote on Twitter that Ms. Srinivasan’s articles on Google and Facebook had a greater influence on the recently filed antitrust cases than all the other research about those companies or tech in general by traditional economists focused on competition policy.“Her papers are just very clearly on point about the actual conduct of the platforms and its competitive significance,” Mr. Steinbaum said. “They’re helpful to enforcers and come from a perspective of someone who obviously knows the industry and the facts.”

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro blasted United States sanctions in his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, while avoiding any mention of a report accusing his government of crimes against humanity. In a lengthy, prerecorded speech that ran more than twice the allotted time, the socialist leader denounced what he called a “criminal, inhuman aggression” by the U.S. aimed at ousting him from power, and said Venezuela would resist.“The world must know that we are prepared to fight with the force of our history, our spirit, reason and international law,” he said, standing before a giant portrait of South American independence hero Simón Bolivar.ADVERTISEMENTThe speech marks Maduro’s return to the world stage after his absence last year as political tumult embroiled the country. The U.S., which doesn’t recognize him as Venezuela’s legitimate president, has indicted him on drug charges. Maduro likely would have skipped this year’s proceedings too, had the pandemic not forced the U.N. summit to go virtual. Even though he would have U.N. diplomatic immunity, Maduro would be taking a risk by traveling to the U.S., where there is a $15 million bounty for information leading to his arrest.The South American nation’s political feud pitting Maduro against U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó frequently spills into the international arena, where the world’s greatest powers have staked a claim in the country’s discord. This year’s online General Assembly offered Maduro a leg up, relegating opposition leaders who in 2019 held side events with powerful leaders further along the margins.Guaidó nonetheless tried to make his voice heard, releasing his own pre-recorded video in rebuttal to Maduro on social media platforms. Standing before four Venezuelan flags, he spoke as if addressing a room full of dignitaries, calling his statement “an act of democratic vindication” by the nation’s “true representatives.”“The dictatorial regime of Nicolás Maduro with its ties to drug trafficking and human rights violations is also usurping Venezuela’s right to speak,” he said.The online sphere, as it turns out, still offered both men a stage, but Maduro’s outsized image on giant screens broadcasting his speech in the green marbled U.N. General Assembly hall nonetheless served as a symbolic microcosm for the country’s ordeal.Though deeply unpopular, Maduro still controls every aspect of life in Venezuela. Guaidó, though backed by influential world leaders, is increasingly powerless within the beleaguered nation, his popularity dropping as he struggles to rally more than a small crowd of supporters at recent calls for protest.The United Nations has been providing humanitarian aid and shining a light on human rights abuses. The secretary general has pressed for dialogue. Though nearly 60 nations support Guaidó, many U.N. members back Maduro.“I do think the fact that Maduro is recognized by the majority of U.N. members highlights the difference between Guaidó’s democratic legitimacy and Maduro’s de facto control on the ground,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank. “Over time Maduro has effectively demonstrated he is the one in charge.”Peppering his remarks with jabs at the U.S., Maduro strove to present himself as a diplomatic statesman, noting that he recently freed several dozen prisoners, including several high-profile opposition leaders. And, as he often does, he portrayed himself as a man of dialogue, looking to peacefully resolve the country’s ills.“It is through political, diplomatic and mutually agreed upon negotiation that we will reach the solution of this dispute inherited from imperial colonialism,” he said.At no point did Maduro mention a recent scathing, in-depth report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council that accuses his government of grisly crimes including torture and killings allegedly carried out by security forces. The techniques they used included electric shocks, genital mutilation and asphyxiation.Heads of state from several neighboring nations have used their platform at the General Assembly to denounce Maduro as an autocrat whose poor handling of his country’s oil wealth has led to a humanitarian and economic collapse. Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra implored the U.N. to help find a political solution to Venezuela’s crisis “before it turns into a chronic situation which nobody desires, especially the Venezuelan people who suffer from it.”Guaidó, for his part, urged U.N. member nations who have been silent until now to join in pressuring the Maduro government to back down.“To those who at some point justified or supported Maduro: I want to reiterate the call to do what’s right, stop human rights violations that in this instant continue, to collaborate to put an end to the terror that the egregious dictatorship intends to impose,” he said.Venezuela is in the midst of a staggering economic decline that even before the COVID-19 pandemic was considered worse than the U.S. Great Depression. The Trump administration has hit the Maduro government with sanctions. Maduro characterized the punitive measures as an “illegal blockade” that have dealt a crippling blow but which his administration has managed to circumvent.“It is a battle for peace, for our homeland, for the region, for humanity,” he said standing along Venezuelan and U.N. flags in a towering, red-carpeted room.He also denounced the U.S. as “the most serious threat to peace in this world.”Online, neither Maduro nor Guaidó seemed to generate wide viewership, though Venezuelans on both sides of the feud weighed in with comments that seemed to reflect a mutual exhaustion from an ordeal that has brought them few solutions.“Give us a speech with concrete actions, please,” one man implored. “We are tired.”

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has introduced his one-time Democratic primary rival Pete Buttigieg as his nominee for transportation secretary, saying the 38-year-old can be “a new voice” in the fight against economic inequality, institutional racism and climate change. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would be the first openly gay person confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet position. Biden hailed that milestone Wednesday while saying that by the time he’s done filling out his new administration’s top jobs, it will have more women and people of color than ever, including “a Cabinet that is opening doors and breaking down barriers, and accessing the full brains and talent we have so much of.”ADVERTISEMENTBiden said Buttigieg offers “a new voice with new ideas determined to move past old politics.”“We need someone who knows how to work with state, local and federal agencies,” Biden said, noting that highways are in disrepair and that some bridges “are on the verge of collapse.”Beyond standard transportation fixes, which are easier to promise than for administrations to get through Congress, Biden wants to rejuvenate the post-coronavirus pandemic economy and create thousands of green jobs by making environmentally friendly retrofits and public works improvements.The president-elect noted that much of the nation, including his home state of Delaware, faces the risk of rising sea levels. A more immediate challenge, though, will be enforcing Biden’s promised mask-wearing mandate for airplanes and public transportation systems to slow the spread of the coronavirus.“At its best, transportation makes the American dream possible, getting people and goods to where they need to be, directly and indirectly creating good-paying jobs,” Buttigieg said. “At its worst, misguided policies and missed opportunities can reinforce racial, economic and environmental injustice, dividing or isolating neighborhoods, undermining government’s basic role to empower everyone to thrive.” Buttigieg mentioned his affinity for trains while acknowledging that he would be only the “second-biggest” Amtrak enthusiast in the administration, given that Biden rode the rails for years between Washington and Wilmington, Delaware, while serving in the Senate. Buttigieg also mentioned that he proposed to his husband, Chasten, at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Buttigieg was the only Cabinet choice, after Biden’s defense secretary nominee, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, to appear at a solo announcement ceremony rather than be introduced with other picks. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris joined via videoconference from Washington because of a snowstorm.ADVERTISEMENTSen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said Buttigieg was “more than ready to finally address our nation’s infrastructure crisis.” Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., applauded Biden for tapping someone with “plenty of intellect, vision and drive” to take a shot at modernizing America’s crumbling transportation infrastructure.Others weren’t as thrilled.“I don’t know him at all,” Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a pivotal Republican in the closely divided Senate, told reporters in Washington. She instead brought up Rahm Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor and chief of staff to President Barack Obama. Emanuel was mentioned as a potential candidate for several Biden Cabinet posts but drew strong backlash from progressives.“I think Rahm Emanuel would have been a strong choice,” Collins said. As Biden, Harris and Buttigieg talked about how they got to know one another during the contested Democratic primary, it was easy to imagine the 2024 campaign beginning to take shape as the Cabinet introduction unfolded. Biden, 78, has said he sees himself as a bridge to a new generation of leaders such as Buttigieg.If Biden opts not to run again in 2024, Harris would be his political heir apparent. But that may not stop Buttigieg and other rising Democrats from launching primary challenges. Buttigieg praised Harris for her “trailblazing leadership and friendship,” and Harris used virtually the same language, calling Buttigieg a “trailblazing leader.” During the primary, Buttigieg was initially written off as the leader of a small town competing against far more established figures. But he zeroed in on a message of generational change to finish the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses in a virtual tie with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.Buttigieg’s campaign stumbled, however, in appealing to Black voters who play a critical role in Democratic politics. As the primary moved into more diverse states such as South Carolina, Buttigieg faltered and quickly withdrew from the race. His relatively early backing of Biden ushered in a remarkably swift unification of the party around its ultimate nominee.In the primary, Biden took a shining to Buttigieg, who he said reminded him of his late son, Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general who had urged his father to make a third run for the White House. Beau Biden died in 2015.Biden’s selection of Buttigieg for transportation secretary drew praise from LGBTQ rights groups.“Its impact will reverberate well-beyond the department he will lead,” added Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Institute.But the South Bend chapter of Black Lives Matter denounced the nomination. The group had made its displeasure with Buttigieg known during his presidential campaign, following the 2019 South Bend shooting of a Black man by a white police officer.“We saw Black communities have their houses torn down by his administration,” BLM’s South Bend leader Jorden Giger said in a statement, referring to Buttigieg’s effort to tear down substandard housing. “We saw the machinery of his police turned against Black people.”

closeVideoFox News Flash top headlines for December 15Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.President-elect Joe Biden tapped Pete Buttigieg to serve as transportation secretary, but as leader of South Bend, Ind. the former mayor had a pothole problem. The 38-year-old served as mayor from 2012 to 2020, as he forayed into national politics in the Democratic primary. But in 2019, the South Bend Tribune reported that many residents felt the city had the ”worst pothole situation in the state." The Tribune reported one year earlier that potholes at the time were the worst area repair shops had seen in “over 10 years." Lines of vehicles reportedly awaited repair for pothole damages every day. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Rich Ferrara Jr., service manager at Rick’s Auten Road 66 in South Bend. Another local auto repair shop owner said that damage typically came out to between $500 and $1,000.Though the state allows motorists to file claims for damage caused by potholes, it’s unclear how many file claims and how many claims are processed. Potholes are the product of freezing-thawing temperatures, and as groundwater expands and contracts the pavement loosens. In 2019, Domino’s Pizza stepped in -- offering South Bend a $5,000 “Paving for Pizza” grant to fill in potholes. Customers had been asked to nominate their hometown so carryout pizza could have a smooth delivery home. South Bend city engineer Kara Boyles said the city fills about 22,000 potholes annually and has a budget of $90,000. James Mueller, Buttigieg’s Democratic successor, ran on a platform of repairing the pothole problem. "Potholes are unsightly hazards that can cause damage to vehicles and create unsafe driving conditions. I will commit to improving the city’s response times to road hazards like potholes and seek new materials that will last longer through our harsh weather conditions,” his platform read. In 2017, top aides to Mayor Buttigieg expressed interest in having the road in front of Buttigieg’s house repaved, though it was not initially slated for repavement by the city. Emails obtained by the Free Beacon show Buttigieg’s then-chief of staff Angela Kouters expressing concern Buttigieg’s road was not on the maintenance list. "What’s going on with the paving on North Shore? It wasn’t on the latest paving list," Kouters wrote in an email to the city's then-deputy director of public works, Jitin Kain. She sent the email two days before the city released its paving schedule. Kain replied that she had "mentioned to the mayor that north shore was being added." Buttigieg’s road was repaved 10 days later, city records show. The portion of road in front of his home was in better condition than roads around it, records show. Eric Horvath, South Bend’s public works director, denied that Buttigieg had any part in his street being added to the list.

The day before the 2016 election, Gordon Hintz remembers feeling insecure when it came to Hillary Clinton’s chances at winning Wisconsin.Even around August of that year, Hintz, then a state representative who is now the Democratic minority leader in the Wisconsin Assembly, said he had been worried that Donald Trump was going to win Wisconsin and the presidency as well. He remembers knocking on doors and finding “gender bias, Clinton fatigue, and a rawness in the electorate that Trump was exploiting.”And as Wisconsin prepares again to be a closely watched swing state on election night, Hintz is among the Democrats in the state feeling better about Joe Biden’s chances at being able to do what Clinton couldn’t in the state.“It’s hard to imagine where Donald Trump would get the votes to deliver Wisconsin given that just about every demographic that was a positive for him, either in negating Democrats' advantage or increasing his vote share, is worse than it was in ’16,” Hintz said, predicting a Biden win in the state.But even with polling favoring Biden and clear determination from Democrats in the state to not repeat past mistakes, the 2016 results aren’t easily forgotten by some as they look to election day even as they tout the work the state party has done. Trump narrowly won Wisconsin by almost 23,000 votes out of the more than 2.97 million cast in the state in the race, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.“Because of 2016 we’re afraid of our own optimism, kind of,” said Allin Walker, the elections officer for the Democratic party of Door County where Trump narrowly won in 2016. “So there has been no let-up just because Biden is doing well in the polls.”“After 2016, I am not predicting anything and I knock on wood every time I say anything the tiniest bit optimistic,” said Mary Arnold, who is now chair of the Columbia County Democratic Party and described herself as “cautiously optimistic,” even while noting that “nothing is in the bag.”At the same time, Republicans' rallying cry has often involved some version of the mantra that the polls in 2016 were wrong and they feel the energy on the ground for Trump is even better this time around.Trump himself spent part of a rally last Friday in Green Bay ranting about an ABC/Washington Post poll that showed him down 17 points in the state. While other polls have shown the president trailing Biden, the former vice president’s lead in the ABC/Post poll was more pronounced.“I actually do think that the president has a better shot to win Wisconsin than the polls suggest, just because he seems to outperform the polls,” said Stephanie Soucek, the chairwoman of the Door County Republican Party.But while Trump was able to run in 2016 as a political outsider who reveled in attacking Clinton, 2020 has been far different. This time Trump is burdened by a record and a pandemic his White House has done little to curtail. Instead of encouraging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended mitigation tactics, Trump has continued to mock mask-wearing and doubled down on his insistence that the country is “rounding the turn,” even though the claim is demonstrably false. On Saturday, Wisconsin reported 5,278 new coronavirus cases for a new one day high, according to state data.But while both candidates breezed through the state in recent days, their closing messages might not matter to many voters. The New York Times reported Monday that “absentee turnout in Wisconsin so far amounts to 63 percent of the state’s 2016 electorate.” Still, Wisconsin Democrats like state Senate Minority leader Janet Bewley were staying busy on the eve of election day. The Democratic National Committee member said Monday morning she was trying not to predict the outcome as she dropped off campaign literature in one of the final acts of campaigning for the 2020 cycle.“Without having the confirmation of a positive experience four years ago, I feel like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football,” Bewley said, who described herself as “very cautiously optimistic” about Biden’s chances in the state. “I just don't want to fall flat on my back again in disappointment.”But by the afternoon before the election, Bewley said in a text message she believes “after all is said and done, we are going to win. Joe Biden will be our next president.”Trump was set to return again to Wisconsin Monday night for a rally in Kenosha. The area became a flashpoint for anger in August because of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man who was filmed being shot repeatedly in the back. In the protests that followed Blake’s shooting, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with murder over allegedly killing two protesters, The Daily Beast previously reported. Trump later defended Rittenhouse during a briefing at the White House.But on that same day elsewhere in the state, Democrats were looking to put the failures of the past behind them. In a text message, Tammy Wood, the leader of the Sauk County Democratic Party, made clear Monday that she was consumed with reaching out to voters until the very end. In her county, Trump won by just 109 votes in the 2016 contest, according to state election data.“Democrats all across the state understand how consequential our work is,” Wood said in the message, adding later “too many American(s) are counting on us.”

The Seattle-based tech giant announced Friday that it was expanding its workforce footprint in Bellevue, with new office space plans that will host a total of 25,000 employees in the next several years, the Seattle Times reports.Bellevue, meanwhile, hasn't provided tax breaks or financial incentives to lure Amazon.Since 2016, the company has been leasing space in the tony Eastside suburb about 10 miles east of downtown Seattle, just across Lake Washington. Amazon now hosts about 3,000 workers there and has been growing its presence steadily in Bellevue’s robust downtown corridor, which will soon be connected with a Link light-rail station.The latest announcement details Amazon’s plan for the tony Eastside suburb, which will include leasing 2 million square feet at two towers that are both under construction. The company is also seeking a permit for a second skyscraper of its own, the Seattle Times reports.John Schoettler, Amazon vice president of global real estate and facilities, called Bellevue a “business-friendly community with great amenities, a high quality of life, and a fantastic talent pool.”Amazon’s main presence will still be near downtown Seattle, where it hosts about 55,000 employees in a mix of buildings it leases and owns. The company said it has no new projects planned for Seattle and wouldn’t comment on its future hiring in the city.Amazon has yet to comment publicly on Seattle’s recently approved 1.4% payroll tax on the salaries of employees earning $150,000 or more, but the Downtown Seattle Association -- of which Amazon is a member -- has opposed the city’s new tax, saying it will prompt employers to leave Seattle.The tax, which goes into effect next year, is expected to raise more than $200 million per year for homelessness services and the city’s coronavirus pandemic response, among other issues.Since moving and rapidly transforming Seattle, the company has proudly touted its urban location as a unique model that appeals to a young, city-loving workforce. That was in contrast to the usual suburban tech company headquarter build-out.The latest expansion to downtown Bellevue is a blend of the two campus models and puts Amazon closer to rival Microsoft’s Redmond location. It’s also a homecoming for Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who started his books-by-mail business 26 years ago in a Bellevue garage.Amazon’s workers aren’t expected back into the office until January 2021.———This story has been updated to correct that Amazon plans to add the employees in the next several years, not five years.

Biden and his campaign are smart enough to pick up on the easy wins afforded by President Donald Trump’s disastrous foreign policies. A President Biden would work with allies and through multilateral institutions and would return to international agreements, along the lines of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that advantage the United States. He would surely be a less corrosive force on civil-military issues than Trump, whose threats to use the U.S. armed forces to quell protests have caused alarm both at home and among American allies abroad. Biden wouldn’t invoke national security to impose tariffs on allies such as Canada or divert money appropriated for our military by Congress to other purposes. Those policy corrections alone would go a long way to restoring trust and confidence in American international leadership.Yet while Biden might prove steadier than the incumbent on foreign policy, that is a low standard. And on some issues, Biden seems either to share Trump’s reflexes or accept his basic premises, raising the question of how much a Biden administration would change the substance of American policies.Trump rails against trade; Biden so far has shown little inclination to defend it. And while Biden castigates Trump for withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his own approach toward trade throughout his career has been more partisan than philosophical. The former Delaware senator voted with Democratic presidents and mostly against deals negotiated by Republicans. During the Bush administration, he voted against trade agreements with Singapore, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Oman. His 2020 campaign, as The Atlantic’s David Frum recently noted, has not staked out firm positions on trade matters, amid growing protectionist sentiment in his party and in Washington more generally. To those of us who continue to believe in the benefits of trade, Biden’s current ambiguity is arguably more encouraging than Hillary Clinton’s winking claim that she’d abandon the TPP, or Obama’s campaign claim in 2008 that he’d renegotiate NAFTA. But Biden’s positions will be shaped more by the political winds than by principled support of a globalized economic system, and are unlikely to produce much-needed initiatives to strengthen the multilateral trading system.

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration on Monday blacklisted a major Chinese government-owned defense company it said sold goods to Venezuela that aided political repression by the regime of President Nicolás Maduro.The U.S. Treasury Department said goods sold by China National Electronics Import & Export Corp., or CEIEC, helped the Maduro government restrict internet service and conduct digital surveillance and cyber operations against political opponents.The action comes amid diplomatic tensions between Washington and Beijing across issues including commerce, espionage, military operations and relations with Hong Kong and Taiwan. The sanctions precede a Dec. 6 parliamentary election in Venezuela that the U.S. says will be fraudulent. The Trump administration says the Maduro government fixed previous elections and maintains an illegitimate hold on power through repression of the political opposition. The U.S. has backed the government-in-exile led by Juan Guaído as the country’s only legitimate authority. The U.S. views the Maduro government as a major security threat, citing its relationships with Iran, China, Russia and South American drug cartels.

If there’s one person who can get liberals to (at least briefly) enjoy watching Fox News, at the moment it appears to be Pete Buttigieg.In recent months, the former South Bend mayor and 2020 presidential candidate has been the most high-profile Joe Biden surrogate to regularly appear on a network most left-leaning politicians typically attempt to ignore or avoid. Democrats have seemingly delighted in Buttigieg’s appearances, videos of which have become increasingly popular online because of the 38-year-old’s deft deflections of the pro-Trump talking points posited by Fox News hosts.As such, his interviews have gone viral on social media among left-leaning resistance types, and caught the eyes of political pundits, Democratic consultants, and extremely online celebrities.Before Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate, Buttigieg appeared on Fox News with anchors Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, who asked him about a Democratic proposal to include aid for undocumented immigrants in a new financial stimulus package—an idea that would bring horror to many Fox News viewers.Buttigieg, whose Democratic primary debate performances were occasionally criticized as lackluster, smoothly turned the argument around, noting that immigrants deserve humane treatment, too, during a worldwide pandemic, and then reminding the hosts that Donald Trump had paid less income tax than many immigrants who have worked for him.“When you have employers like the Trump Organization that have a history of hiring illegal immigrants, you still want to make sure that they don’t get COVID,” he said. “You saw the group of undocumented immigrants, for example, who worked for Donald Trump and paid more in taxes than he did. The workplaces they’re in are workplaces where all different people are and customers too. I think we would all agree we want everyone, regardless of their immigration status, to be free of this deadly virus.”But a particular moment seemed to resonate with Democrats online in which Buttigieg swatted away MacCallum’s question on how Sen. Kamala Harris squares her previous support for Medicare for All with Biden’s stated opposition to the idea. “There’s a classic parlor game of trying to find a little bit of daylight between running mates,” the ex-mayor began, taking a jab at the stereotypical “Dems in disarray” premise underlying her question. “And if people want to play that game, we could look into why an evangelical Christian like Mike Pence wants to be on a ticket with the president caught with a porn star; or how he feels about the immigration policy that he called ‘unconstitutional’ before he decided to team up with Donald Trump.”He continued: “If folks want to play that game, we can do it all night. But I think what most Americans want to hear about is: Are our families going to be better protected than they have been by this president who’s failed to secure America in the face of one of the most dangerous things ever to happen to our country?”That moment received widespread plaudits from Democrats and celebrities online, including filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who called his performance a “thing of beauty.”Buttigieg went deeper into the hornet’s nest on Thursday morning—appearing on Fox & Friends, the president’s favorite morning show—and calmly rattling off arguments about Trump that would normally seem verboten on such an unabashedly pro-Trump program.“We know he’s lying,” the ex-mayor confidently declared after host Steve Doocy interrupted him to insist that Trump has denied calling U.S. troops “losers” or “suckers,” as The Atlantic reported last month. Buttigieg reminded Fox’s viewers that Trump publicly called the late John McCain a “loser,” and faked an injury to avoid serving during the Vietnam War. “If you really believe the president now on this kind of stuff, I’ve got a bridge to sell you,” he said, smirking into the camera.“Sure you’re more likely to have a back-and-forth on Fox since it’s not preaching to the choir, but Pete enjoys that… especially after spending the past few weeks getting into character as Mike Pence. He knows it’s a valuable way to connect with voters who might not otherwise hear our message,” Buttigieg spokesman Sean Savett told The Daily Beast. “Reaching out to swing voters and future former Republicans is something Pete did throughout his own campaign, and it’s what he will continue to do when he goes on Fox as a Biden surrogate and in his interviews with outlets across the spectrum. As Democrats, we can’t afford to miss an opportunity to meet voters where they are to make our case for why Joe Biden is much better equipped than Donald Trump to be President of the United States.”The appearances have impressed life-long mainstream Democratic operatives like Ben LaBolt, a former national press secretary for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, who told The Daily Beast: “He is particularly skilled at bursting the filter bubble of the network, and doing it with Midwestern charm and a smile and completely breaking down the lie of the day that Fox's programming is premised on.”And, ultimately, Buttigieg’s Fox News hits are part of the Biden campaign’s decision to opt for a lighter touch with the network.The former vice president himself has not appeared on the network since March, when he sat down with Chris Wallace, and has rebuffed numerous interview requests, frustrating some employees at the right-leaning cable news network. As The Daily Beast previously reported, while Biden has appeared on other television networks, the campaign has focused much of its attention on local news, granting interviews to non-national outlets in key battleground states including Arizona, Wisconsin, and Florida.But the campaign has maintained a presence on Fox News via the network’s paid Democratic commentators, a handful of campaign staffers, and national political figures like Sen. Chris Coons and Rep. Tim Ryan, who has been a regular on Fox News for years. Biden’s surrogate and communications shops have worked with these politicians to coordinate appearances on the network, preferring to stick largely to the more straight-laced daytime news programs.The former mayor became a target of ire on the progressive left during the primaries for overtly tacking toward the center, seemingly altering or obscuring his positions on issues like Medicare for All and playing up his suit-and-tie moderation to contrast with the “social justice warriors” to his left.But he has continued to endear himself to Bidenworld by being willing to go on Fox News, emerging as the campaign’s go-to on-air cable surrogate.Multiple Biden campaign sources said they have been thrilled with the South Bend mayor’s recent performances on the network, noting that his Midwestern demeanor and military background have allowed him to flip the script on anchors unaccustomed to regularly sparring with a Democrat with his biography.In several recent Fox News appearances, he’s used his Christian faith to question the religious convictions and hypocrisies of Vice President Mike Pence, invoked his own military record as a backdrop for criticisms of Trump’s treatment of the military, and even cited his own failures in the 2020 Democratic primary as a testament to Biden’s resilience as a candidate.A source familiar with the Biden campaign’s strategy said Buttigieg’s recent interviews have been the result of coordination between the mayor and the campaign’s comms and surrogate teams. The campaign has encouraged the mayor to appear on outlets including Fox News, and has often worked to coordinate the logistics of his interviews, working to provide space for Buttigieg this week at the Salt Lake City hotel where the campaign had set up a studio for remote TV appearances.But despite his recent spate of viral clips, Fox News actually isn’t unfamiliar territory for the former South Bend mayor.During the 2020 Democratic primary, Buttigieg was one of just a handful of candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, who agreed to participate in standalone town-hall events with the network. The mayor’s camp has long tried to compete for viewers on Fox News, clearly avoiding the bombastic right-wing primetime hosts but trying to craft a message and strategy appealing to centrist and center-right voters who may tune into its “straight news” programming.Buttigieg’s enthusiasm for appearing on the conservative network—which has, throughout the Trump presidency, often appeared to be almost an arm of the White House communications team—hasn’t been shared by many other Democrats.Liberal watchdogs like Media Matters have sought to actively dissuade Democrats from appearing on the network, arguing that such interviews legitimize Fox News, which they said should be treated like an informal arm of the Republican Party. Sen. Elizabeth Warren notably embraced this view, making the network—which she deemed a “hate-for-profit racket”—a regular punching bag in campaign speeches, and using her opposition to appearing on the network as a tool to build her virtual email list.Still, critics on the left aren’t the only ones who haven’t taken kindly to Buttigieg’s past appearances on Fox News.During the Democratic presidential primaries last year, Trump complained about the airtime Buttigieg had received on the network, and lamented the praise anchor Chris Wallace had for the mayor’s background.“Hard to believe that @FoxNews is wasting airtime on Mayor Pete, as Chris Wallace likes to call him. Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems. They got dumped from the Democrats boring debates, and they just want in,” he wrote in one such Twitter tirade.“They forgot the people who got them there. Chris Wallace said, ‘I actually think, whether you like his opinions or not, that Mayor Pete has a lot of substance...fascinating biography.’ Gee, he never speaks well of me - I like Mike Wallace better...and Alfred E. Newman will never be President!”

“Today’s news is one step in a process which could take years to play out in its entirety,” he wrote. He asked employees not to openly discuss the cases, “except with our legal team.”Other antitrust experts said the cases would be smooth sailing. “This is straightforward and an easy case,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia law school who has been part of an effort by academics, public interest groups and the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes that is arguing for regulators to break up Facebook. Mr. Wu, a contributor to The New York Times’s opinion pages, said it would be a simple case of showing that Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp to maintain their dominance.How the U.S. government and states pursue their cases against Facebook will be closely watched amid a wave of legal actions intent on limiting the power of the world’s largest tech companies. Google is battling an antitrust suit that the Justice Department filed in October, and state attorneys general are expected to soon file separate suits against it. Regulators are also investigating Apple and Amazon.The penalties that regulators are seeking in the case against Facebook are especially onerous. They proposed that courts block future mergers and force the company to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. Ian Conner, the F.T.C.’s head of competition enforcement, said the remedies would help restore competition and “provide a foundation for future competitors to grow and innovate without the threat of being crushed by Facebook.”But cases challenging consummated mergers are uncommon, as are lawsuits that seek to break up companies, legal experts said. The last major antitrust lawsuit that led to divestitures was against AT&T in 1984, said William Kovacic, a former Republican chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. In that case, AT&T was ordered to sell local telecommunications companies known as Baby Bells.Decades have passed without a similar action. That is partly because courts are often told by defendants and economists that forcing companies to sell parts of themselves is too heavy-handed, Mr. Kovacic said. “Courts historically have expressed anxiety about doing it,” he said.Mr. Kovacic added that even though he thought the case against Facebook had merit, another difficulty for the F.T.C. and the states would be to prove that the world would have been better off if the mergers with Instagram and WhatsApp had not happened. “It’s hard to prove a hypothetical,” he said.

Former US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has been formally nominated by President-elect Joe Biden to be his transportation secretary. It marks the first time an openly LGBT cabinet member has been sent to the Senate for confirmation.But, if confirmed, the former South Bend mayor will not be the first LGBT person to serve at cabinet level - Richard Grenell was Donald Trump's acting intelligence chief earlier this year.Mr Biden's cabinet choices so far have included several historic firsts.

A court in London has said that it will need to decide which of Venezuela’s duelling political factions to recognise before ruling on president Nicolas Maduro’s request for the Bank of England to hand over gold the country has in its vaults.For decades, Venezuela has stored gold that makes up part of its central bank reserves in the vaults of foreign financial institutions including the Bank of England, which provides gold custodian services to developing countries. But since 2018, the bank has refused to transfer the funds to Maduro’s government, which Britain does not recognise.Earlier this month, Venezuela’s central bank made a legal claim to try to force the bank to release 930 million euros ($1.03 billion) in gold to fund Venezuela’s coronavirus response. The government says it has a deal with the UN Development Programme to administer the funds.But according to statements from both parties, the court said it would begin hearings no earlier than 22 June to determine which party could represent Venezuela in the case: Maduro or Juan Guaidó, the leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly.Dozens of countries, including Britain, recognise Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, arguing Maduro rigged his 2018 re-election. Guaidó has appointed a parallel central bank board of directors.Maduro, who retains the support of Venezuela’s armed forces and allies Russia and China, calls Guaidó a US puppet seeking to oust him in a coup. Lawyers at Zaiwalla and Co, which represent the central bank of Maduro’s government in the case, called the result “a fair and good outcome”.Guaidó’s chief overseas legal representative confirmed the contents of the ruling and said “the Maduro regime’s true aim is to use central bank resources outside of parliamentary controls.”The Bank of England declined to comment.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, has at times proved an obstacle to the advancement of immigrant rights during her three years on the Seventh Circuit.As an appellate court judge, Barrett helped to advance one of Trump’s key immigration policies. She sided with his administration in a case over Trump’s policy imposing a wealth test on the millions of immigrants who seek to come to the US annually. In her whopping 40-page dissent in that case, she laid out why the US has the right to block people who it deems likely to become dependent on public assistance in the future — even if they have never used public assistance in the past.She has also repeatedly refused to review cases brought by immigrants applying for humanitarian protections and other immigration benefits who claimed they had been wrongfully denied. Some of those decisions may have negative repercussions for future such applicants; given that they set a precedent to be followed by judges in lower courts, these refusals could make it harder for immigrants to challenge an adverse decision from a consular officer on their visa application or obtain deportation relief from an immigration judge. But her rulings haven’t always led to adverse outcomes for immigrants. In one case, she actually prevented the Trump administration from ending a policy that allows immigration judges to indefinitely close deportation cases in which the immigrant doesn’t appear to be a priority for enforcement, giving them a chance to live in the US without fear of deportation. With Barrett’s mixed record — and only three years of experience on the federal bench — it’s difficult to predict how she would rule on immigration cases before the Supreme Court if she is confirmed, as expected.The Supreme Court has upheld some of Trump’s signature immigration policies, including his travel ban policy. But it has also thwarted him at key moments: It has temporarily prevented him from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed more than 700,000 young unauthorized immigrants to live and work in the US, and blocked him from putting a citizenship question on the 2020 census, which experts said would depress response rates in immigrant communities. In those rulings against Trump, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s liberals and cast deciding votes. It’s not clear whether Barrett would play a similar role — or if she would tip the scales in favor of conservatives on high-profile immigration cases going forward. One such case challenging Trump’s policy to exclude unauthorized immigrants from census population counts that will be used to redraw congressional districts in 2021 will likely come before the justices by the end of the year. Here are some of the key immigration decisions Barrett has issued so far:Perhaps Barrett’s most pivotal immigration ruling was her dissent in the case Cook County v. Wolf, in which the Seventh Circuit temporarily prevented the Trump administration from implementing its so-called “public charge” rule that created barriers to low-income immigrants seeking to enter the US. Published last year by the Department of Homeland Security, the rule established a test to determine whether an immigrant applying to enter the US, extend their visa, or convert their temporary immigration status into a green card is likely to end up relying on public benefits in the future. The rule has given immigration officials more leeway to turn away those who are “likely to be a public charge” based on an evaluation of 20 factors, ranging from the use of certain public benefits programs — including food stamps, Section 8 housing vouchers, and Medicaid — to English-language proficiency. It represents one of President Trump’s biggest blows to legal immigration so far.In June, a majority of the Seventh Circuit voted to strike down the rule, arguing that it “set[s] a trap for the unwary by penalizing people for accepting benefits Congress made available to them.” In her 40-page dissent, Barrett said she would have upheld the rule, arguing that those challenging it had set forth an exceedingly narrow definition of what it means to be a “public charge” that isn’t consistent with federal law. She also argued that the court should adopt the administration’s definition of “public charge” under the doctrine of Chevron deference, which mandates that judges defer to government agencies’ interpretation of federal law. “Congress’s willingness to authorize funds to help immigrants who encounter unexpected trouble is perfectly consistent with its reluctance to admit immigrants whose need for help is predictable upon arrival,” she wrote in her dissent. The rule went into effect again earlier this month following another federal court ruling. It has affected immigrants applying for green cards nationwide and at consulates abroad, as well as those applying for temporary visas overseas such as tourists, business travelers, students, and skilled workers.The administration hasn’t released detailed data on how many people have been affected by the rule. But Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan think tank Migration Policy Institute, told Vox that 69 percent of the roughly 5.5 million people who were granted green cards over the past five years would have had at least one negative factor under the rule — which officials could have used as justification to reject their applications for immigration benefits.Former US Attorney Jeff Sessions had tried to revoke a little-known, but key tool that allows immigration judges to make determinations about which immigrants should be prioritized for deportation.That tool, known as “administrative closure,” allows judges to put deportation proceedings on hold indefinitely for people who already applied for immigration benefits with another government agency. For example, it might apply to a noncitizen who overstayed their visa but is married to a US citizen who applied for a green card with US Citizenship Immigration Services on their behalf.Sessions had tried to severely limit the circumstances under which immigration judges can administratively close a case, which had the effect of preventing people in deportation proceedings from getting the immigration benefits to which they were entitled.But in June, Barrett argued in the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in the case Meza Morales v. Barr that Sessions’ decision to do so violated federal regulations that allow immigration judges to “take any action... that is appropriate and necessary” to complete their cases. “[A]n immigration judge might sometimes conclude, in exercising the discretion granted by [federal regulation], that it is appropriate and necessary to dispose of a case through administrative closure,” she wrote. “Moreover, cases must be disposed of fairly, and granting a noncitizen the opportunity to pursue relief to which she is entitled may be appropriate and necessary for a fair disposition.”In August 2018, Barrett refused to review a Salvadoran citizen’s petition for humanitarian protection in the US, which had been dismissed by immigration judges who didn’t find him to be a credible witness. Gerson Alvarenga-Flores had testified that he fled El Salvador after witnessing his friend’s murder at the hands of criminal gang members, who consequently threatened him. After he was apprehended at the border and detained, he claimed that he feared returning to his home country and applied for several forms of humanitarian protection, including asylum and protections under the Convention Against Torture. The immigration judge in his case found inconsistencies in Alvarenga’s testimony describing two separate incidents: He claimed that he had been attacked by gang members while in a taxi and, on another occasion, said he was approached by them on a bus. Alvarenga explained that he gave the testimony in English, even though he does not speak English, which could have led to the confusion. But the judge nevertheless concluded that his account of being targeted by gangs wasn’t credible, without even considering whether he would have deserved humanitarian protection. Writing an opinion on behalf of a panel of Seventh Circuit judges, Barrett deferred to the immigration judge, agreeing that Alvarenga was unable to provide an adequate explanation for the discrepancies in his account. “These two encounters with gang members were crucial to Alvarenga’s claim that gang members were likely to torture him if he returned to El Salvador, yet he could not keep the facts straight with respect to either one,” she wrote. In January 2019, Barrett refused to reconsider a case brought by a naturalized US citizen, Moshin Yafai, whose wife, Zahoor Ahmed, a citizen of Yemen, was twice denied a green card. The consular officer had denied Ahmed’s green card on the grounds that she allegedly tried to smuggle her two children across the border, even though Ahmed and her husband had provided documentation to the embassy that their children had died in a drowning accident. Writing the Seventh Circuit’s majority opinion, Barrett found that the consular officer nevertheless did not appear to act in bad faith and even asked for more information, “suggest[ing] a desire to get it right.” That meant her court couldn’t review the consular officer’s decision, she said.The ruling could make it harder for visa applicants to challenge arbitrary denials down the line. Generally, courts can’t review the decisions of consular officers, who interview applicants for immigration benefits and decide whether or not to approve their visas or green cards. There is a narrow exception in the law that allows a US citizen to challenge a consular officer’s decision if it infringes on one of their constitutional rights. But it’s not clear whether one of those constitutional rights is to live with one’s spouse in the US, as Yafai had argued, she said.“The status of this right is uncertain,” she wrote in the opinion. “Even if the denial of Ahmed’s visa application implicated a constitutional right of Yafai’s, his claim fails because the consular officer’s decision was facially legitimate and bona fide.”In June 2019, Barrett cast the deciding vote in a Seventh Circuit case resulting in the immediate deportation of a Mexican immigrant who had been a lawful permanent resident of the US for three decades and first arrived in the US at age 10. He had been convicted for drug crimes resulting in a more than 10-year prison sentence, but because his mother was a US citizen, he believed he had a right to remain in the US. The immigrant, Ruben Lopez Ramos, was not given the chance to argue that his deportation violated his rights under the Constitution’s equal protection clause. A short, one-paragraph order sealed his fate, claiming that his argument was “irrational” and had “little chance of succeeding.”One of Barrett’s colleagues, dissenting, argued that Ramos should have been given his day in court, noting that, due to a now-repealed law, he would have derived US citizenship from his mother had she lived in the US prior to his birth and he could not have been deported. Ramos argued that he was subjected to differential treatment under that law in violation of his equal protection rights. “He might be right,” US Circuit Judge David Hamilton wrote. Ultimately, however, due to Barrett’s vote, the Seventh Circuit never considered the issue. Will you help us celebrate seven years of Vox? Since Vox started in 2014, we’ve held tight to our mission: to make the most important issues clear and comprehensible, and empower you to shape the world in which you live. Where other news organizations focus on what just happened, we focus on the context. We’re committed to keeping our distinctive explanatory journalism free, but that work is expensive, and advertising alone won’t sustain our ambitions. Help us celebrate Vox, and support our unique mission, by making a $7 contribution today..

The difference is money. If your smart tv charged users to download apps or collected a tax off of every in-app purchase, then they your smart tv or Tesla should allow side loading apps too.Given that there are literally thousands of counterexamples to these sorts of unfounded assertions, I'm at a loss as to why I keep seeing them.Agreed. It is entirely possible to violate antitrust laws by giving something away for free. Case in point: Microsoft Internet Explorer. :-)Most obviously, how do you explain game consoles? They're closed systems with distribution strictly controlled by the manufacturers. Want to publish an app for their platforms, either as a download or on a disc? You've always needed to be properly licensed, gone through their approval processes, and given them a cut of the sale. Are you telling me that regulators have turned a blind eye for the past several decades as these "monopolies" have run rampant?Here, we disagree. Lack of action is not prima facie evidence of lack of violation, and even if it were, is would still not be evidence that similar actions in similar (but still meaningfully different) industries would be equally lawful.Most lawmakers and federal regulators don't play games, and don't care about games. Most lawmakers and federal regulators do have

Donald Trump will no longer be president in two months. But an unconstitutional memorandum he handed down last July could potentially shape both US policy and American elections for the next decade, if the Supreme Court, scheduled to hear the case on November 30, allows that memo to take effect.The Constitution provides that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.” Nevertheless, Trump’s memo claims that “aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status” should not be counted when seats in the House of Representatives are allocated following the 2020 census.The memo, in other words, violates the unambiguous text of the Constitution, as well as federal laws governing who should be included in census counts.The courts have thus far approached Trump’s memo with considerable skepticism. Four different three-judge panels have all unanimously concluded that Trump may not exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count. That means that a dozen judges, some appointed by Democrats and some by Republicans, all agree that Trump’s memo is unconstitutional.Nevertheless, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. New York, one of the four cases challenging Trump’s unconstitutional memo.The mere fact that the Court will hear this case does not necessarily mean that a majority of the justices are inclined to side with the lame-duck president. The justices normally get to pick and choose which cases they want to hear — ordinarily, four justices must agree to hear a case before it can be argued in the Supreme Court. But federal law sometimes requires the Court to decide cases that involve time-sensitive, election-related issues, such as how many seats each state will have in the next House of Representatives.New York is one of these rare cases that arise under the Court’s mandatory jurisdiction. The justices cannot simply ignore this case even if they agree with the lower courts that ruled against Trump.So it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that the Supreme Court will agree with the unanimous consensus of the lower court judges who’ve considered Trump’s memo and rejected it. Nevertheless, with six conservatives on the Court — including three Trump appointees — there is no guarantee that Trump will lose.Trump’s memo claims that the Constitution’s provisions, governing who should be counted for purposes of apportionment, should not be read literally. “Although the Constitution requires the ‘persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed,’ to be enumerated in the census,” Trump says in his memo, “that requirement has never been understood to include in the apportionment base every individual physically present within a State’s boundaries at the time of the census.”He’s not wrong that some foreign nationals, who may be physically present in the United States during a census, are not counted. Tourists, foreign diplomats, international businesspeople, and other non-citizens who temporarily visit the United States typically are not included in the census. “The term ‘persons in each State,’” Trump’s memo fairly reasonably notes, “has been interpreted to mean that only the ‘inhabitants’ of each State should be included.”This general premise — that only “inhabitants” of a state, and not temporarily foreign visitors, should be counted by the census — is fairly uncontroversial. But Trump then claims the power to decide who counts as an “inhabitant” for census purposes. “Determining which persons should be considered ‘inhabitants’ for the purpose of apportionment requires the exercise of judgment,” his memo argues. And Trump, according to his lawyers, “validly exercised that judgment in deciding to exclude illegal aliens ‘to the maximum extent feasible and consistent with the discretion delegated to the executive branch.’” But Trump’s lawyers do not cite an actual statute giving Trump the power to determine who counts as an “inhabitant” of a state, and the federal laws governing the census suggest that Trump does not have this power. Those laws provide that the secretary of commerce shall report the “total population by States” to the president once the census is done counting individuals, and they require the president to “transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State” once he is done reviewing the census. These references to the “total population” and the “whole number of persons” suggest that the president may not pick and choose who is counted.Moreover, as the lower court that ruled against Trump in New York held, “it does not follow that illegal aliens — a category defined by legal status, not residence — can be excluded” from the census by claiming that they are not “inhabitants” of a state. “To the contrary,” the court explained, while quoting from Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, “the ordinary definition of the term ‘inhabitant’ is ‘one that occupies a particular place regularly, routinely, or for a period of time.’”Many undocumented immigrants reside in a state for “many years or even decades,” the court continued. These immigrants are as much “inhabitants” of those states as any other resident. Two of the judges who joined this opinion, it is worth noting, were appointed by Republican President George W. Bush.Unable to cite any legal authority giving Trump the power to decide who is an “inhabitant” of a state, Trump’s brief points to a handful of other sources — some legal, some otherwise — which are at least somewhat consistent with the outgoing president’s understanding of who counts as an “inhabitant.” Trump’s brief, for example, quotes a line from a 1992 Supreme Court decision, which says that the determination of whether a particular individual should be counted by the census may “include some element of allegiance or enduring tie to a place” — though it’s unclear what quoting this line adds to Trump’s argument because an undocumented immigrant who has long resided in the same state has an “enduring tie” to the place.Similarly, Trump’s brief points to The Law of Nations, a 1758 treatise by the Swiss lawyer Emmerich de Vattel, which defined the term “inhabitant” to include “strangers, who are permitted to settle and stay in the country.”American courts do not typically rely on 262-year-old books by European authors to override the unambiguous text of the Constitution. And there’s also a glaring problem with relying on Vattel to determine who should be counted by the census. As one of the plaintiffs’ briefs in the New York case explains, “Vattel defined ‘inhabitants’ as ‘distinguished from citizens’ — i.e., in his lexicon, only noncitizens were classified as ‘inhabitants.’” Thus, if the Supreme Court were to rely on Vattel’s definition of an “inhabitant” to determine who should be counted by the census, it would exclude US citizens from the count. House apportionment would be determined solely based on how many non-citizens were lawfully residing in each state.The Supreme Court hears a lot of difficult cases, but Trump v. New York is not one of them. Trump’s memo is at odds with clear constitutional text. Trump’s brief offers little support for his arguments. Every judge to consider Trump’s memo has ruled against it. And it’s not even clear that the justices would have agreed to hear this case in the first place if it didn’t fall within the Court’s mandatory jurisdiction.But the case is also being heard by a deeply conservative Court that appears emboldened by the confirmation of new Justice Amy Coney Barrett to move the law dramatically to the right — especially in cases impacting elections. New York, in other words, will be an early test of just how emboldened the Court’s new majority has become. If the justices back Trump in New York, despite clear constitutional text to the contrary, then that’s a worrisome sign about the future of the rule of law in the United States.In any event, the Court is likely to decide this case very quickly. By law, Trump must inform Congress of how House seats will be apportioned among the states by January 10, 2021. Will you help us celebrate seven years of Vox? Since Vox started in 2014, we’ve held tight to our mission: to make the most important issues clear and comprehensible, and empower you to shape the world in which you live. Where other news organizations focus on what just happened, we focus on the context. We’re committed to keeping our distinctive explanatory journalism free, but that work is expensive, and advertising alone won’t sustain our ambitions. Help us celebrate Vox, and support our unique mission, by making a $7 contribution today..

Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice issued the following statement today in connection with the closing of the division’s investigation into the proposed acquisition of Refinitiv by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG):“After an extensive review of the proposed transaction, the Antitrust Division determined that the combination of LSEG and Refinitiv is unlikely to result in harm to competition or American consumers.”LSEG, headquartered in London, operates the London Stock Exchange, the Italian stock exchange, Borsa Italiana, and a number of other trading platforms for trading of stocks, other equity-like exchange traded products, bonds and derivatives. LSEG offers indexes such as the FTSE 100 and Russell 2000, analytical tools, and data solutions through its FTSE Russell business.Refinitiv, headquartered in New York City, is one of the main providers of financial markets data and infrastructure. Refinitiv offers consolidated real-time and non-real time data feeds of stocks and other discrete content, and desktop solutions and terminals for financial industry professionals. It also supplies foreign exchange benchmarks and controls several electronic trading venues in various asset classes.In August 2019, LSEG and Refinitiv announced that LSEG had reached an agreement to acquire Refinitiv in a transaction valued at approximately $27 billion. Following that announcement, the Antitrust Division conducted a comprehensive eight-month investigation, during which it reviewed documents, analyzed data, and interviewed industry participants.In conducting its analysis, the Division considered the vertical relationships between LSEG and Refinitiv where one firm serves as a supplier to the other of needed inputs, as well as the horizontal aspects of the transaction where LSEG and Refinitiv offer competing products. In analyzing these different aspects to the transaction, the Division used both the recently released Vertical Merger Guidelines and the Horizontal Merger Guidelines, issued by the Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission.When analyzing the vertical aspects of the transaction, the division considered how the proposed transaction could affect the ability and incentives of LSEG and Refinitiv to change the licensing terms for proprietary data feeds used by their rivals to supply products that compete against similar products from LSEG and Refinitiv. Examples of such data feeds include pricing data for financial instruments, currency benchmark rates, and securities identifiers.The division’s analysis considered how changes in the licensing of LSEG’s and Refinitiv’s proprietary data feeds could affect competition for financial indexes and financial data products, and found that the proposed transaction is unlikely to significantly lessen competition for those products where rivals rely on LSEG and Refinitiv for inputs. In many instances, for example, the rivals who purchase products and services from LSEG or Refinitiv also sell products and services back to LSEG and Refinitiv. The division’s analysis took into account the competitive significance in the United States of LSEG’s and Refinitiv’s products compared to their rivals’ products, and the bargaining relationships these rivals have with LSEG and Refinitiv. The division’s analysis also considered the possible competitive effects of the proposed transaction on customers in the United States of LSEG, Refinitiv, and their rivals. Because LSEG and Refinitiv’s rivals would maintain significant bargaining leverage that would make post-transaction price increases unlikely, and because any potential increase in the fees of the combined firm would not likely be passed on to customers, the division concluded the vertical aspects of the transaction would not cause a significant lessening of competition.With respect to the horizontal aspects of the transaction, the division found that in areas where LSEG and Refinitiv offer similar products, such as financial indexes, that the combination of the companies’ products are unlikely to significantly lessen competition. This analysis was based on a review of LSEG’s and Refinitiv’s products that are similar to each other, an analysis of whether these products actually compete against each other in the United States, and the small changes the transaction would likely cause in post-transaction market concentration for these products based on the companies’ market shares in the United States.The division considered several theories of harm in its review of the proposed transaction, and concluded that these theories were not supported by the available evidence. For these and other reasons, the division determined that the proposed transaction is unlikely to substantially harm consumers in the United States and therefore closed its investigation.

The government had long endorsed such takeovers to win rural support and attempt to reduce inequality.Suddenly, on Sept. 24, Ms. Granado said a black-clad special operations police squad burst into her home, threw her 9-year-old daughter to the floor and threatened to beat the activist in front of the child if she didn’t come with them. She was taken to a police station and accused of illegal land occupation and livestock rustling, a charge Ms. Granado denied.She was released the next day for lack of evidence, but was detained again two days later, this time by military commandos. Ms. Granado said in her time in custody she was handcuffed, threatened with phony drug charges, and told she would be executed.It was not an idle threat in a country where the United Nations investigators have implicated Mr. Maduro’s special operations police, known as FAES, in thousands of extrajudicial executions in poor neighborhoods in recent years.“I was truly terrified, because apart from being a social activist, I’m also a mother,” said Ms. Granado. “The only thing I could think of were my children.”Ms. Granado said that the timing, the brutality and the arbitrary nature of her detentions pointed to a desire by the local authorities to deter her from running for congress. She said she lives in constant fear, frequently changing safe houses.But she said she would carry on her campaign.“The people’s support for us is what hurts them the most,” she said, referring to the government.

But Judge Ellis seemed to see Mr. Manafort’s case as more strictly about tax evasion. He noted that one fraudulent loan application was never actually approved, and questioned whether Mr. Manafort had in fact intended to cause that bank a loss when he lied to get another loan. “I don’t know that there’s any other way to defraud a bank and not intend it to lose the money,” Mr. Andres replied.Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said Judge Ellis’s sentence seemed strangely light, especially given that the judge denied every objection raised by Mr. Manafort’s lawyers to the sentencing guidelines. “He refuted all of the arguments of the defense, yet ultimately ruled very much in favor of their client,” Mr. Tobias said.He was also struck, he said, by the judge’s praise of Mr. Manafort’s character. “He’s lived an otherwise blameless life,” Judge Ellis said of a man who acknowledged orchestrating a sophisticated financial fraud scheme that lasted a decade. “And he’s also earned the admiration of a number of people.”To the very end, Judge Ellis showed his distaste for special counsels. He said the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had the authority to prosecute Mr. Manafort, but “that doesn’t mean that I decided the wisdom or appropriateness of delegating to special prosecutors broad powers.” Judge Ellis cut off a prosecutor as he tried to explain the special counsel’s position on the appropriate fine for Mr. Manafort, admonishing: “That’s the government’s position. I don’t want to hear special counsel.”The defense has played on the judge’s sentiments, insisting that Mr. Manafort has been relentlessly pursued for garden-variety crimes only because of his importance to the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian interference in 2016 presidential election. On Thursday, Kevin Downing, Mr. Manafort’s lead lawyer, took up that refrain again, repeatedly saying that a local United States attorney’s office would have handled the case differently.In federal court in Washington, where Judge Amy Berman Jackson will sentence Mr. Manafort next week on two conspiracy charges, that strategy has been noticeably less effective.Some legal experts suggested that Mr. Mueller’s team might respond to Judge Ellis’s decision by asking Judge Jackson for a specific sentence on the two conspiracy charges, which each carry a maximum penalty of five years.

The Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Facebook Inc. puts the regulatory spotlight on the deal-making history of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who has personally engineered the tech giant’s biggest acquisitions.The FTC and a group of 46 states in separate antitrust lawsuits on Wednesday alleged that Facebook engaged in a yearslong campaign to acquire or stymie nascent technology companies that it feared could become rivals. The FTC said it was seeking court relief that could include forcing Facebook to sell two of its biggest acquisitions: messaging service WhatsApp and photo-sharing app Instagram, which competition authorities previously chose not to challenge.The claims put the CEO’s competitive behavior front and center. Since co-founding the social network in his dorm as a Harvard sophomore, Mr. Zuckerberg has closely managed its approach to rivals, including the deals for Instagram, WhatsApp and virtual-reality company Oculus VR, which have helped make Facebook into a giant with a market value of around $800 billion.Facebook said that the complaints amounted to “revisionist history” and that the company’s success was based on investment, innovation and value to users and customers. The Instagram and WhatsApp deals “were intended to provide better products for the people who use them, and they unquestionably did,” Facebook General Counsel Jennifer Newstead said in a statement.Mr. Zuckerberg’s internal discussions about some of those deals, made public through Wednesday’s complaints and through previous litigation and inquiries into Facebook’s practices, have laid bare his competitive concerns over the years with upstarts that had comparatively tiny user bases.