WASHINGTON (AP) — A House freshman from New Jersey who was planning to break with his party and vote against impeaching President Donald Trump will become a Republican, a GOP official said Saturday.Top House Republicans have been told of Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s decision, according to a GOP official familiar with the conversations. The lawmaker had discussed switching parties in a meeting with Trump at the White House on Friday, an administration official said Saturday. Van Drew’s decision underscores the pressures facing moderate Democrats from Trump-leaning districts as next week’s impeachment vote approaches. Van Drew won his southern New Jersey district by 8 percentage points last year, but Trump carried it by 5 points in 2016 and Van Drew was considered one of the more vulnerable House Democrats going into next November’s congressional elections.ADVERTISEMENTThere are 31 House Democrats who represent districts Trump carried in the 2016 election, and many of them have been nervous about the political repercussions they would face by voting to impeach Trump. The House Republican campaign committee has already run ads targeting many of them, but most are expected to support Trump’s impeachment. A senior Democratic aide said Van Drew had not notified House Democratic leaders about his decision. All the aides spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The senior Democratic aide provided what was described as a poll conducted earlier this month by Van Drew’s campaign showing that by more than a 2-1 margin, people in his district would prefer a different candidate than Van Drew in the Democratic primary and general election. Rumors surfaced last week that Van Drew might switch parties, and he repeatedly denied them to reporters. But he reaffirmed his plan to oppose impeachment, barring new evidence. ``It doesn’t mean that I agree with everything the president may have said or done. It means that I don’t believe that these are impeachable offenses,`` he said in an interview Thursday. Van Drew and a spokesperson did not answer their cellphones or return text messages on Saturday. Trump put out a congratulatory tweet early Sunday. “Thank you for your honesty Jeff. All of the Democrats know you are right, but unlike you, they don’t have the “guts” to say so!”Even with his defection, there remains no doubt that the Democratic-controlled House will vote to impeach Trump on a near party-line vote. ADVERTISEMENTDemocrats will still control the chamber by 232-198, plus an independent and four vacancies. Until now, Van Drew and Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota were the only Democrats expected to vote against impeachment, with perhaps a small handful of others joining them. House Republicans seem on track to oppose impeachment unanimously.Van Drew was a longtime state senator. His congressional district had been under Republican control for nearly two decades before he was elected.The House is set to approve two articles of impeachment against Trump this coming week. Democrats, who hold the majority, expect support from all but a few of their members. No Republicans are expected to join them. The Republican-controlled Senate is then all but certain to acquit Trump after a trial in January. Van Drew has argued that the process is likely just to further divide the country and it would be better to let voters decide Trump’s fate in next year’s election. In the first article of impeachment, Trump is accused of abusing his presidential power by asking Ukraine to investigate his 2020 rival Joe Biden while holding military aid as leverage. In the second article, he’s accused of obstructing Congress by blocking the House’s efforts to investigate his actions. ___Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire contributed to this story.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney insisted Sunday that he did not say that President Donald Trump held up military aid for Ukraine for political purposes — despite acknowledging the issue at the heart of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry during a televised press conference."I'm flinching because that's what people are saying that I said, but I didn't say that," Mulvaney told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace of the comments he made — and then walked back in a contradictory statement — Thursday."There were two reasons that we held up the aid," he continued. "We've talked about this at some length. The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. The president was also concerned about whether or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to Ukraine as well."Mulvaney, who is also the director of the Office of Management and Budget, added that he had discussed in the past with the president a debunked conspiracy theory about a Democratic National Committee email server hidden in Ukraine, but said, "it wasn't connected to the aid""And that's where I think people got sidetracked this weekend at that press conference," he said. "Two reasons for holding back the aid."Wallace interjected, saying he believed "anyone listening to what you said in that briefing could only come to one conclusion." Wallace then played a tape of Mulvaney's remarks from Thursday, when the acting chief of staff said the nearly $400 million in Congress-approved security aid for Ukraine was held up because Trump is skeptical about foreign aid, had concerns about corruption, and wanted Ukraine to probe a debunked conspiracy involving the 2016 U.S. election."So the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason he ordered to withhold funding to Ukraine?" ABC's Jonathan Karl asked."The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing he was worried about in corruption with that nation, and that is absolutely appropriate," Mulvaney said.Karl pressed Mulvaney, saying, "To be clear: what you just described is a quid pro quo. It is 'funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened, as well.'""We do that all the time with foreign policy," Mulvaney responded, adding that the administration had also held up money to three Central American countries so that they would change their immigration policies."Get over it," he said. "There's going to be political influence in foreign policy."The clip Wallace showed ended after Mulvaney's "We do that all the time" remarks, to which Mulvaney told Wallace to watch what he said before that comment."No, you totally said that," Wallace shot back, highlighting Mulvaney's linking of the military aid to the politically advantageous probe.At the time, Mulvaney's acknowledgment that the aid had been withheld for political reasons angered and confused Trump allies inside and outside the administration, according to two people familiar with the matter. One of them called Mulvaney’s comments in the White House briefing room "an unmitigated disaster."For the past month, Trump and allies have insisted no quid pro quo took place regarding Ukraine. House Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry into the president after a whistleblower filed a complaint over Trump's July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the administration's subsequent response.In a White House summary of the call, Trump asked Zelenskiy for a "favor" shortly after the latter discussed U.S. military aid. That favor included asking Zelesnkiy to probe the conspiracy theory about a Democratic National Committee email server, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.Mulvaney on Thursday insisted that the holdup had "absolutely nothing to do with Biden.""I was involved with the process by which the money was held up temporarily, OK?" Mulvaney said. "Three issues for that. The corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in the support of the Ukraine, and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice. That's completely legitimate."A senior Justice Department official said in response: "If the White House was withholding aid from Ukraine with regard to any investigation by the Justice Department, that’s news to us."Mulvaney then walked his remarks back later that day, saying in a statement: "There was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election."The debunked DNC server conspiracy — known as "CrowdStrike" — seeks to distance Russia from culpability in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm that investigated the hacking, and the conspiracy theory paints its findings about Russia's hacking efforts as suspect and politically motivated.Last month, Trump's former homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, told ABC's "This Week" that the theory is "not only a conspiracy, it is completely debunked," adding that "it has no validity.""Can I see how people took that the wrong way? Absolutely," Mulvaney said Sunday. "But I never said there was a quid pro quo cause there isn't."Mulvaney also told Wallace that he "absolutely positively" did not consider resigning after Thursday's uproar."I'm very happy working there," he said. "Did I have the perfect press conference? No. But again, the facts are on our side."He said he believes he is still "doing a pretty good job as the chief of staff and I think the president agrees."Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asked Sunday on "This Week" about Mulvaney's comments, said: "I will leave to the chief of staff to explain what it is he said and what he intended."

WASHINGTON—Federal Trade Commission staff members are recommending that the agency bring an antitrust case against Facebook Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, but commissioners haven’t yet reached a decision.The five-member FTC met privately via videoconference Thursday to discuss next steps, without taking action, the people said.The FTC has spent more than a year looking into complaints that Facebook has been using its powerful market position to stifle competition, part of a broader effort by U.S. antitrust authorities to examine the conduct of big technology companies.The FTC listed Thursday’s meeting on its public calendar but didn’t reveal the topic, saying it was discussing a nonpublic law enforcement matter. The commissioners, three Republicans and two Democrats, can’t all talk about an enforcement action as a group unless they announce a formal meeting.The Wall Street Journal reported in September that the FTC was gearing up to file a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook by year-end, with staffers preparing a draft complaint. With this week’s discussions, the commission could be headed toward a decision in as soon as the next few weeks, the people familiar with the matter said.

Democrats began summoning witnesses to Capitol Hill to testify, and their accounts are slowly filtering out to the public—through prepared opening statements and leaks, and now this week in transcripts of the closed-door depositions. Something peculiar has come out of those accounts. Career professional staffers have told a consistent story, in which Trump sought to extort from Ukraine a statement promising to investigate the Biden family and hacking of the 2016 U.S. election in exchange for a meeting and congressionally appropriated aid.Trump appointees have also told a consistent story, including Ambassadors Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker and the former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill. Here’s the noncatch: It’s the same story as the one told by the career staffers. Yes, there are some minor discrepancies; Sondland initially denied communicating the quid pro quo to Ukraine, but then updated his testimony on Monday to agree with other accounts. In most respects, and in broad terms, the accounts are surprisingly similar. Everyone knows what the president knew and when he knew it.But surely Trump is telling a different story? Not really. The president has fulminated against the investigation as a witch hunt, and he has insisted he did nothing wrong—but that’s more a matter of interpretation than fact. Trump has argued (implausibly, but nevertheless) that the very-incriminating partial transcript of his call with Zelensky exonerates him. Some congressional Republicans suggested that once the full depositions were released, they would contain exculpatory information, but that hasn’t happened yet either.Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani said on Twitter Wednesday that when he pressed for Ukraine to make the statements, he was doing so as Trump’s personal attorney, rather than in some foreign-policy capacity—in effect confirming that the extortion was to benefit the president personally.In theory, this ought to be great news for Democrats. They set out to prove that Trump abused his power by extorting Ukraine for help in his reelection campaign, and so far they have produced a fat pile of evidence supporting that theory, balanced on the other side of the ledger by little more than process complaints and attacks on the motivation of the witnesses. In a courtroom, they’d be in great shape; in fact, the other side might be seeking a plea deal.But an impeachment, with its political nature, is more like a crime show than a criminal trial. If there’s no suspense or drama, you lose your audience. Columbo can’t ask one more thing if the suspect coughs everything up at the first question. And if you lose your audience, it’s hard to win on politics.When the Ukraine scandal broke and Pelosi announced the inquiry, public support for impeachment, long underwater, suddenly inverted. By October 14, a few days after Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testified to investigators, a majority of Americans—50.3 percent—backed impeachment, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. Since then, the facts have only gotten worse for Trump—but there have been few surprises. Sondland’s reversal on whether there was truly a quid pro quo was most interesting as palace intrigue; the quid pro quo was already clear enough. FiveThirtyEight now shows that the support for impeachment has slipped to 47.7 percent, still a plurality but a decline.

Here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:TOP STORIESThat Quid Pro QuoGordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a key defender of President Trump in the impeachment inquiry, has revised his statement to House impeachment investigators. Documents show that Sondland said that other witnesses had “refreshed my recollection” and that he now remembers telling a Ukrainian official that nearly $400 million in American aid would probably not be released unless the country publicly committed to conducting investigations that Trump wanted.His new account undercuts White House officials who have repeatedly pointed to Sondland’s testimony that he did not believe there was quid pro quo. And as one of the few impeachment witnesses so far who had direct access to Trump, Sondland cannot be dismissed as a so-called Never Trumper.During his original Oct. 17 deposition, Sondland also testified that demands from Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, “kept getting more insidious.”More Politics— Democrats have won full control of the Virginia Legislature for the first time in more than two decades, while the race for governor in deeply Republican Kentucky was too close to call despite a last-minute boost from Trump.— Juli Briskman, the woman who lost her job after displaying her middle finger at Trump’s motorcade, has won a seat on a county board of supervisors in Virginia.— A number of California municipalities held elections on Tuesday. Here are the latest results for L.A. County and California Assembly District 1.Mormons With a Past in MexicoTrump has called for a “war” against Mexico’s increasingly powerful criminal groups after nine U.S. citizens were killed Monday when their vehicles were ambushed by gunmen in northern Mexico. The six women and three children who died included descendants of a fundamentalist Mormon community that has lived in Mexico for decades. Some of the victims shared the last name LeBaron. Here’s a closer look at the LeBaron family’s history. A suspect has been arrested and is under investigation for possible connections with the deaths.Big Changes on USC’s BoardAfter a series of scandals over the last few years, USC trustees have approved far-reaching changes to their governing board. Among the plans are to dramatically reduce the board’s size, impose term and age limits, diversify membership and limit the ability of the university president and board chair to handpick members of the powerful executive committee. Will the reforms be enough? Read on.Dancing to Deal With the GriefThursday will mark the first anniversary of the Borderline Bar & Grill massacre, the shooting that killed 12 people at the Thousand Oaks club. Since then, the city has assigned a police officer to each victim’s family to make sure no need goes unmet and hosted memorials. One of the most poignant tributes has come in the form of a line dancing club, founded by one of the victims and now carried forward by survivors.The Mess at LAXGetting to and from Los Angeles International Airport has never been easy, and its new LAXit system for Uber, Lyft and taxis has brought even more turmoil — so much so that airport officials have announced that they will expand a new pickup area starting today. For some businesses, the chaos is creating burdens. For others, it presents opportunity.Your support helps us deliver the news that matters most. Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times. Newsletter Must-read stories from the L.A. Times Get all the day's most vital news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. FROM THE ARCHIVESOn this date in 1974, Jerry Brown would give a victory speech after having defeated Republican Houston Flournoy by about 175,000 votes out of 6 million cast for his first go-around as governor of California.“Brown served notice he would take a hard line on spending proposals,” The Times reported. “ ‘People want a new spirit,’ he told newsmen, ‘but they don’t want to pay more taxes to achieve it.’'' Nov. 6, 1974: Gov.-elect Jerry Brown talks with reporters at his campaign headquarters in Los Angeles shortly before giving his victory speech.(Rick Meyer / Los Angeles Times) CALIFORNIA— The DMV suffered what it called a data breach that let federal agencies, including immigration authorities, improperly access the Social Security information of 3,200 drivers.— Expect California’s fire season to last through December, with the rainy season starting late, a new report suggests.— A grand jury has handed down a 16-charge indictment for a man accused of killing a father in last year’s Malibu campground shooting and of other attacks in the area dating back to 2016.— An AIDS foundation that has fought with L.A. over real estate development and slammed its handling of homelessness is now suing the city, saying it was improperly turned down for funding to house homeless people.HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS— The internet clamor over Keanu Reeves’ LACMA appearance with longtime collaborator Alexandra Grant neglected one small thing: They’ve been holding hands for years.— Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” isn’t just a nearly flawless elegy for a beautifully flawed couple, our critic Justin Chang writes. It’s also one of the year’s best movies about acting.— ABC News denies that it killed reporting on Jeffrey Epstein.NATION-WORLD— An anti-Semite and white supremacist was arrested in Colorado and accused of plotting to bomb a synagogue.— Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said she has Chinese President Xi Jinping’s backing in her handling of months-long anti-government protests. Beijing has been signaling it might tighten its grip on the semiautonomous territory.— Meanwhile, Beijing has a condition for Trump in agreeing to an interim trade deal: Drop the tariffs. Whether he’ll oblige is another matter.BUSINESS— Two rival experts agree: Our 401(k)s haven’t helped us save enough for retirement.— The self-driving Uber test car that hit and killed a woman in Arizona last year wasn’t programmed to recognize pedestrians, documents show.SPORTS— LeBron James led the Lakers with his third triple-double in a row in a victory over the Chicago Bulls, in which Lakers’ reserves also played a big role.— This offseason, the Dodgers should focus on truths, not beliefs, columnist Bill Plaschke writes.— Chairman Dean Spanos says there’s no truth to a report that the Chargers are considering a move to London: “We’re not going anywhere.”OPINION— Yes, “OK boomer” stings, but take it from (boomer) critic Mary McNamara: “This is exactly how it’s supposed to work. Social progression is fueled in large part by generational tension.”— Trump is officially pulling the U.S. out of the Paris accord. Now Republicans need a playbook for curbing climate change, writes law professor Jonathan H. Adler.WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING— Why do so many purebred pets in China end up homeless? (RadiiChina)ONLY IN L.A.Tear it down. That’s the fate L.A. city prosecutors want for a boondoggle of an unfinished Bel-Air megamansion that for years has been at the center of criminal charges, court battles and an FBI investigation. Until recently, the city had been working to bring it in line with codes with the help of developer Mohamed Hadid — better known for his stint on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and his supermodel daughters Gigi and Bella — but that changed last week when a structural engineer found that structures supporting it were deficient.Hadid pleaded no contest two years ago to criminal charges tied to the behemoth building, which the city said was far bigger than allowed and had bedrooms, decks and an IMAX theater that were never approved. But prosecutors’ new push is welcome news to neighbors suing to try to get it torn down, saying it puts them at risk downhill. “You still have this horrendous thing hanging over the hillside,” one said in 2017. His nickname for it: the Starship Enterprise.If you like this newsletter, please share it with friends. Comments or ideas? Email us at [email protected].

This deception has surfaced repeatedly, in the face of contrary words from his military people and sometimes from his own statements acknowledging that bringing the soldiers back doesn't mean right now, or on any schedule that he's disclosed.Trump has spread problematic information on the impeachment process, the economy and the environment over the past week as well.A look at some of the recent rhetoric from the political arena:CROWD SIZETRUMP, on his Oct. 17 rally in Dallas: "I had 25,000 people — close — in that arena. A record crowd." — Cabinet meeting.THE FACTS: No record crowd at the arena, said the Dallas Police Department.A spokeswoman, Tamika Dameron, said the Dallas Fire-Rescue Department and American Airlines Center calculated the number inside at 18,500, less than capacity for basketball games.During the Mavericks 2011 NBA Finals series, the highest attendance at the American Airlines Center was 20,433.———IMPEACHMENTTRUMP, regarding the phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the center of the impeachment investigation: "They never thought that I'd do this — I released a transcription, done by stenographers, of the exact conversation I had." — Cabinet meeting Monday.THE FACTS: Not true. The memorandum of Trump's July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy itself makes clear that it does not capture the exact words between the leaders.The document says it is "not a verbatim transcript" and instead "records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty Officers and NSC policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place. A number of factors can affect the accuracy of the record." It cited potential factors such as the quality of the phone connection, variations in accent "and/or interpretation."NSC refers to the National Security Council.———TRUMP, on Democrats' impeachment inquiry into his phone call with Ukraine's president: "Now they have what should be extremely easy to beat, because I have a perfect phone call. I made a perfect call — not a good call; a perfect call. In fact, a friend of mine, who's a great lawyer, said, 'Did you know this would be the subject of all of this scrutiny? Because the way you expressed yourself, this is like a perfect call.'" — Cabinet meeting.THE FACTS: Although Trump is entitled to see perfection in his words and deeds, he appears to use the term to suggest that his conduct in the phone call was by the book and validated as such by an anonymous lawyer-friend. That's a hard argument to sustain.In his phone call, Trump told Zelenskiy "I would like for you to do us a favor" and investigate Joe Biden, his businessman son and Democrats going back to the 2016 U.S. election. Diplomat William Taylor testified this past week that Trump directly linked his request for that favor to military aid that he had abruptly suspended to Ukraine.As for the call being "perfect," it was actually worrisome enough so that White House lawyers moved a rough transcript of it to a highly secure system where fewer officials would have access to it than is normally the case for conversations between Trump and world leaders.Trump often points to other people describing his phone call as perfect even if they didn't. This month, Trump claimed that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had told him the call was "the most innocent" he's read, but McConnell said he never discussed the Ukraine phone call with Trump.———SYRIATRUMP: "When these pundit fools who have called the Middle East wrong for 20 years ask what we are getting out of the deal, I simply say, THE OIL, AND WE ARE BRINGING OUR SOLDIERS BACK HOME, ISIS SECURED!" — tweet Friday.THE FACTS: The troops aren't coming back despite the tweet shouting.Trump has acknowledged as much at times, though he reserves the all-caps tweeting to emphasize troop repatriation.In a prior tweet, he declared: "Our soldiers have left and are leaving Syria for other places" before "COMING HOME" at a time he doesn't specify.He said earlier in the week some forces may remain in Syria to keep oilfields secure and make sure they don't fall into the hands of a resurgent Islamic State group.The Pentagon says it is still working on plans for how to continue the anti-IS campaign in Syria and Iraq. In addition, the U.S. is sending more troops to Saudi Arabia.———TRUMP: "We were supposed to be there for 30 days; that was almost 10 years ago. So we're there for 30 days, and now we're leaving." — remarks on Syria.THE FACTS: He's misrepresenting the intended scope of U.S. involvement in Syria. Previous administrations never set a one-month timeline for completion.The U.S.-led coalition began airstrikes on IS militants in Syria in September 2014. About a year later, the Pentagon said teams of special operations forces began going into Syria to conduct raids and start efforts to partner with the Kurdish forces.Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter made it clear to Congress at that time that the Pentagon was ready to expand operations with the Kurds and would continue to do so as needed to battle IS, without setting a specific deadline.At an Oct. 30, 2015, press conference , White House press secretary Josh Earnest said when asked how long troops would stay that "this is not a short-term proposition" in terms of America's counter-IS strategy.———TRUMP: "American forces defeated 100% of the ISIS caliphate during the last two years." — remarks on Syria.THE FACTS: His claim of a 100% defeat is misleading because IS still poses a threat.No one disputes that IS has lost its caliphate — the large swath of territory it once controlled in parts of Syria and Iraq. But the group remains a threat to reemerge if the conditions that allowed its rise, like civil war in Syria and a lack of effective governance in Iraq, are not corrected.U.N. experts warned in August that IS leaders are aiming to consolidate and create conditions for an "eventual resurgence in its Iraqi and Syrian heartlands."Another concern is that the chaos triggered by the Oct. 9 Turkish incursion, which followed Trump's decision to have about two dozen American troops step away from the attack zone, could allow larger numbers of Islamic State fighters to escape from prisons that have been operated by the Kurds now under attack.———DORALTRUMP: "I give away my salary. It's, I guess, close to $450,000. ...They say that no other president has done it. I'm surprised, to be honest with you. They actually say that George Washington may have been the only other President that did." — Cabinet meeting.THE FACTS: His presidential history is wrong.He's not the only president since Washington to give away his salary: Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy gave theirs to charity.And Washington didn't give his away. He initially tried to decline his pay but agreed to take it after Congress insisted.The presidential salary is $400,000, plus $50,000 to cover expenses.———TRUMP, explaining one reason he wanted to host a Group of Seven summit at his Doral resort in Florida before he backtracked under criticism: "Best location. Right next to the airport, Miami International — one of the biggest airports in the world. Some people say it's the biggest." — Cabinet meeting.THE FACTS: Miami International Airport is nowhere close to being the world's largest airport; it's not even in the top 20 as measured by passenger volume.According to data on the airport's own website, Miami's airport ranks 42nd in the world based on passengers.———NORTH KOREATRUMP, on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un: "You could end up in a war. President Obama told me that. He said, 'The biggest problem — I don't know how to solve it.' He told me doesn't know how to solve it. I said, 'Did you ever call him?' 'No.' Actually, he tried 11 times. But the man on the other side — the gentleman on the side did not take his call. OK? Lack of respect. But he takes my call." — Cabinet meeting.THE FACTS: This story of Kim ghosting Obama appears to be pure fiction.Ben Rhodes, who was on Obama's national security team for both terms, said Obama never tried to call or meet Kim."I honestly don't even remember being in a single meeting my entire time in the White House where anyone even suggested the idea of a Kim call or meeting," Rhodes told The Associated Press.Obama came into his presidency saying he'd be willing to meet Kim and other U.S. adversaries "without preconditions," but never publicly pursued such contact with the North Korean leader.He met Cuba's President Raul Castro and spoke to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani by phone but took an icy stance with Kim in 2009 as North Korea was escalating missile and nuclear tests."Since I came into office, the one thing I was clear about was, we're not going to reward this kind of provocative behavior," he said in 2013. "You don't get to bang your — your spoon on the table and somehow you get your way."Trump has portrayed his diplomacy with Kim as happening due to a special personal chemistry and friendship, saying he's in "no rush" to get Kim to commit fully to denuclearization.———BIDENJOE BIDEN, responding to Trump's tweet referring to impeachment proceedings led by House Democrats as a "lynching": "Impeachment is not 'lynching,' it is part of our Constitution. Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It's despicable." — tweet Tuesday.THE FACTS: Biden may want to heed his own words about using the word loosely.An October 1998 clip of him in a CNN interview shows him using the same word to refer to the impeachment process against Democratic President Bill Clinton."Even if the president should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard, the very high bar, that was set by the founders as to what constituted an impeachable offense," Biden said in that interview.In a tweet later Tuesday, Biden apologized for making a similar reference two decades ago while arguing Trump's offense was more extreme.———CLIMATETRUMP: "I withdrew the United States from the terrible, one-sided Paris Climate Accord. It was a total disaster for our country. ... So, we did away with that one." — remarks Wednesday in Pittsburgh.THE FACTS: The U.S. hasn't withdrawn from the accord and it won't be out before the next election, at the earliest.According to the terms of the agreement, the first day Trump can begin the formal process of withdrawing from the 2015 landmark deal is Nov. 4, when the U.S. can submit a letter of notice to the United Nations. Withdrawing takes a year, meaning the U.S. could officially leave the day after the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election.Under the agreement, every country created and chose its own goals to reduce carbon pollution.———TRUMP: "We canceled the last administration's so-called Clean Power Plan. Sounds nice, but it wasn't so nice. It was a disaster, which would have cost Americans nearly $40 billion a year and caused electricity prices to soar to double digits, while cutting coal production by almost 250 million tons." — Pittsburgh remarks.THE FACTS: He's exaggerating the cost savings from ditching the Obama-era power plan.Trump's own Environmental Protection Agency, in 2017, estimated cost-savings starting as low as $2.6 billion a year and increasing to as much as $33 billion a year by 2030. That's well short of $40 billion a year.And it's only half the ledger. The $33 billion does not include an estimation of how much the benefits of Obama's plan would be worth.The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in 2018 calculated that repeated analyses by the EPA showed that benefits of the clean power plan — fewer illnesses and deaths turned into dollar amounts based on a formula on the value of each life — usually outweighed the costs, at times by a lot.The research service noted that the EPA's 2017 report essentially says that the decision to shelve Obama's rules could end up saving taxpayers as much as $14 billion a year — far from Trump's claim of $40 billion — or costing them as much as $28 billion a year. Neither extreme in that analysis supports Trump's statement.———TRUMP: "Our air right now and our water right now is as clean as it's been in decades. ... I'm proud that, today, the United States has among the very cleanest air and drinking water on Earth — anywhere on Earth ... It's really incredible. But we're at a very, very good point environmentally right now." — Pittsburgh remarks.THE FACTS: Trump is incorrect. Air quality hasn't improved under the Trump administration.And it's a stretch to say the U.S. is among the countries with the cleanest air. Dozens of nations have less smoggy air.As to water quality, one measure, Yale University's global Environmental Performance Index, finds the U.S. tied with nine other countries as having the cleanest drinking water.But after decades of improvement, progress in air quality has stalled. Over the last two years the U.S. had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data show.There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when the U.S had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980, according to an AP analysis of EPA data.A new study this month by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that deadly air particle pollution increased 5.5% in the United States between 2016 and 2018 after declining by 24.2% from 2009 to 2016."The increase was associated with 9,700 premature deaths in 2018," the study by Karen Clay and Nicholas Muller said. "At conventional valuations, these deaths represent damages of $89 billion."The Obama administration set records for the fewest air-polluted days.———ECONOMYTRUMP: "When I took office, everybody said that China would be the largest economy in the world within the first two years." — remarks Wednesday to reporters.THE FACTS: Not everyone said that because the chances of it happening are none to slim.Even if the U.S. economy had not grown at all since 2016, China's gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — would have had to have surged an unimaginable 79% in three years to pull even with America's. That comes to growth of more than 21% a year — something even China's super-charged economy has never approached.———TRUMP: "The Federal Reserve is derelict in its duties if it doesn't lower the Rate and even, ideally, stimulate. Take a look around the World at our competitors. Germany and others are actually GETTING PAID to borrow money. Fed was way too fast to raise, and way too slow to cut!" — tweet Thursday.THE FACTS: He's misrepresenting the impact of Federal Reserve policies and is mistaken about Germany's economy, suggesting that it enjoys some kind of advantage. In fact, negative yields are a sign of that economy's weakness.By having even slightly positive interest rates compared with the rest of the world, the United States is in a better position to attract global investment.Like Germany, Japan and much of Europe are also struggling with interest rates on government debt that are negative or close to negative.———TRUMP: "We are now an economic powerhouse like never before ... Our economic might is stronger than it's ever been." — remarks Wednesday on Syria.THE FACTS: The U.S. economy isn't at its strongest ever.In the late 1990s, growth topped 4% for four straight years, a level it has not reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth reached 7.2% in 1984. The economy grew 2.9% in 2018 — the same pace it reached in 2015 under President Barack Obama — and hasn't hit historically high growth rates.The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low of 3.7%, but the proportion of Americans with a job was higher in the 1990s. Wages were rising at a faster pace back then, too.———Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein, Josh Boak, Paul Wiseman, Robert Burns, Zeke Miller and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.———Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bdFollow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheckEDITOR'S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

But, first, the summary of the July 25 call released by the White House corroborates rather than undercuts the allegation that Trump was pressuring Ukraine’s leader. Second, Zelensky, who still must curry favor with the White House out of geopolitical necessity, has a powerful motive to obfuscate in accordance with Trump’s wishes. Third, Trump is a serial liar even when not facing impeachment. Fourth, the decision to release the funds to Ukraine when faced with a whistle-blower complaint and public revelation hardly suggests that there was never any pressure campaign. Indeed, Trump has no credible alternative account of why the funds were ever delayed.“On December 10,” the Republicans point out, “a close aide to President Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, denied discussing a quid pro quo with Gordon Sondland … It is difficult to conceive that a months-long pressure campaign existed when the alleged victims are not aware of it and deny being pressured.” The Republicans pit Yermak, a Ukrainian official with every incentive to lie for Trump, against Sondland, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee, was appointed European Union ambassador by Trump, and thereafter found himself working on Trump’s Ukraine agenda.Republicans purport to find the million-dollar Trump donor giving sworn testimony––seemingly against personal interest––less credible than the Ukrainian. Why? And if there were no “months-long pressure campaign,” what was Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, doing talking to Ukrainians and interfacing with U.S. officials on Ukraine policy before publicly stating that he urged the country to probe the Bidens?“Simply stated, the Majority is advancing an impeachment based on policy differences with the President,” the Republicans allege, “a dangerous and slippery slope that our Founders cautioned against.” While the impeachment inquiry has at times strayed into policy and procedural critiques, the core case against Trump is not about either. There is no partisan divide about whether Ukraine should pursue anti-corruption, as the Obama administration encouraged, or whether it ought to receive U.S. military aid that Congress had already approved. Crucially, Democrats insist that Trump acted with a corrupt motive to benefit himself. The Republican position is not that it’s fine for presidents to pressure foreign governments to help their chances in U.S. elections, but that Trump didn’t do that.What’s more, the Republicans question whether a request to investigate the Bidens is tied to the 2020 election. “Asking the president of Ukraine to ‘look into’ potential corruption involving Hunter Biden’s employment at a notoriously corrupt company in Ukraine is not ‘corrupting democratic elections,’” they insist. “Any request, however remote, that might benefit a politician politically is not an invitation to corrupt an election. To portray the President’s request as corrupting the 2020 election is disingenuous, at best.”

Late-night hosts on Wednesday discussed this week’s special elections, Donald Trump Jr’s legal jeopardy and the Trump administration’s move to now crack down on legal immigration.Full Frontal’s Samantha Bee discussed Paul Manafort’s trial and Donald Trump Jr’s various legal entanglements.“Former Trump campaign chair and man-who-would-go-missing-in-a-Sopranos-episode Paul Manafort is the first member of Trump’s inner circle to go on trial in the Russia probe,” she began, detailing Manafort’s work for foreign interests and charges of money laundering and tax fraud.“Unfortunately, besides being regular evil, Manafort might have also gotten in over his head,” she continued. “Right before he joined the Trump campaign he was in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17m.”Manafort, she explained, placed his income in shell companies and tax shelters while laundering money through expenses purchases, like a $21,000 watch and an $15,000 ostrich jacket.“Money laundering makes sense because the only other reason to own this jacket is if you’re doing a cocaine deal in 1987,” Bee quipped. “Weak defenses aside, Trump seems pretty comfortable letting Manafort twist in the wind, but would he do the same thing to his own flesh and blood? It kind of seems like it.”Bee then mentioned Trump’s tweet last week about his “wonderful son Donald”, in which the president inadvertently confessed that the purpose of his son’s 2016 meeting in trump Tower with Russian nationals was to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.“It must’ve been a shocking moment for Don Jr when his father threw him under the bus,” Bee said. “He probably thought, ‘Oh my god, Dad knows I exist.’”Invoking his trips to foreign countries, where deals have been inked for the Trump Organization, Bee went on: “Of all the Trump scandals that Don has bungled into, none is more important slash stupid than his interactions with Russia.”She then aired a clip where Donald Trump Jr was asked about his contradictory defenses of the Trump Tower meeting by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, at which point the call seems to disconnect.“Yeah, reception is kind of spotty when you’re calling from a fleeing Bronco,” Bee said.“You guys know elections?” asked Stephen Colbert. “We still have those and, in fact, we had a bunch of them yesterday around the country, some primaries, a special election.”Colbert then mentioned Tuesday’s special election in Ohio’s 12th congressional district, which pitted Trump-endorsed Republican Troy Balderson against Democrat Danny O’Connor.“The 12th has sent a Republican to Congress for the last 35 years, and in 2016 it went for Trump by 11 points, so it should’ve been a blowout,” explained Colbert. “But the race still hasn’t been called.”“It was also an historic night because 11 women are now gubernatorial nominees,” the host added. “And in Kansas, a Democratic nomination for Congress went to Sharice Davids, a Native American, openly gay attorney and a first-time candidate.”Colbert then moved onto Trump, who’s still on vacation at his country club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “But he hasn’t forgotten about the Mueller investigation,” the host noted, referencing an NBC News report claiming that, while golfing with Republican senator Lindsey Graham, Trump “brought up ending the Russia probe about 20 times”.“You know that they say,” Colbert quipped. “Trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of a very stable genius.”Finally, Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah discussed the administration’s plan to halt legal immigration.“Immigrants,” he began. “They’re the one thing Donald Trump hates more than reading and suits that fit.” “Since Trump began his campaign, he’s had it out for illegal immigrants, and it feels like every week the Trump administration rolls out a new policy aimed at drop-kicking immigrants out of America,” he continued. “But this week was a doozy.”Noah then aired news coverage of the administration’s plan to implement a program making it more difficult for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards.“Trump is now coming for legal immigrants,” he said. “And I just wanted to say, thank you so much for having me.”Team Trump said they liked immigrants who played by the rules. Now they’re out to change those rules. pic.twitter.com/qU3hFCw3lT— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 9, 2018 Noah continued: “Really, it’s no surprise that this latest anti-immigrant policy is the brainchild of Stephen Miller, senior White House adviser and young Mr Burns. Although we don’t often hear from Miller, he’s the mastermind who shaped many of Trump’s cruelest policies, including the Muslim ban, overturning Daca and kids in cages.”The program, Noah explained, could affect the fate of over 20 million legal immigrants, especially those who’ve used public programs like Obamacare, child health insurance or food stamps.“They’re saying the US won’t allow legal immigrants to stay in the US if they’ve ever used what they call public assistance,” Noah said, noting that, during the campaign, Trump’s focus was on what he called “bad” immigrants and “hombres”.“First it was bad hombres out,” he said. “Then, as time progressed, it moved to ‘I know there are good hombres, but they came here in a bad way’. Everyone else was cool because they came in legally.”“Now, we also see that’s not true anymore,” Noah added. “If you came here legally, and you used certain services you were allowed to use legally, now the Trump administration is telling you to get the fuck out.”

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. There's good news about the future of the Internet. A new 5G network is being created now, which will not only offer faster downloading on cell phones. It will provide the kind of connectivity we need in the era of the Internet of Things - driverless cars, Internet-connected medical devices, smart TVs and virtual assistants. But there are dangers that could be lurking in the equipment needed to build the new network. The Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei is dominating the creation of 5G networks around the world. For years, classified intelligence reports from the U.S. have warned that China would one day use Huawei to penetrate American networks for cyber-espionage or cyberattacks.In the U.S., the National Security Agency has banned AT&T and Verizon from using Huawei products in America's 5G network. And last month, the U.S. had a top executive from Huawei arrested in Canada so she could be extradited to the U.S. The growing cyberthreat posed by China was stressed in the Worldwide Threat Assessment - a report from the U.S. intelligence community - that was released this week. And all this is part of the backdrop for this week's trade negotiations between the U.S. and China. My guest David Sanger is the author of a book about cyberwar and cyber-sabotage called "The Perfect Weapon." He's a national security correspondent for The New York Times.David Sanger, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Let's start with the 5G network. What is it? And how will it affect our phones, our devices and all our interconnectivity?DAVID SANGER: Well, at its simplest, the 5G network is an increase in speed and range for what you see on your cell phone. So 5G means just fifth generation. But it's actually much more than that. The hope is that when you're using your phone or some other device over Wi-Fi, you'll get no lag time and that you'll get near instantaneous download of data, webpages and so forth. But as 5G was being rolled out, there was a recognition that the Internet had fundamentally changed, that this was a moment to roll out something that could accommodate a world in which the Internet of Things was connecting up to all of these other wireless devices. And so that's autonomous cars, which, of course, need to constantly get data back and forth from the cloud, constant connectivity so that they know where they are in addition to their sensors helping you drive. It's for every other Internet-connected device that you have.And, you know, when you think about it, Terry, it was just about 10 years ago that in your own house, you probably only had one or two Internet-connected devices - a laptop computer and a desktop computer, maybe. But today you walk into your house and, you know, you've got your Fitbit. And you're waking up Alexa and getting it to play you music. And you've got a smart TV. And you probably have an Internet-connected car parked outside. Even if it isn't a fancy car, most basic cars have some Internet connectivity to them. You might have an Internet-connected refrigerator. You have all of these different devices. And right now worldwide - at the end of last year, we think that there were about 14 billion Internet of Things devices around the world. And by the end of next year, 2020, the estimate is there will be 20 billion.So that gives you a sense of how rapidly we're changing the environment. And the next network has to be able to handle all of that and, of course, handle the GPS needs for navigation, handle greater government and military needs. So this next 5G network is more than just something that'll make your phone faster. It's actually going to be the central nervous system, the backbone of the next generation of the Internet.GROSS: And that's exactly the concern about the Chinese telecom giant Huawei because they're building some of these 5G networks around the world. So what is the concern about this Chinese telecom giant and the 5G network?SANGER: Well, the first thing about Huawei is that while most Americans haven't come in direct contact with it because Huawei phones are not sold that widely in the United States, they are sold nearly universally when you're in Asia and very widely in Europe, in Africa, in Latin America. In fact, at the end of last year, Huawei actually just edged out Apple as the second-largest provider of cell phones in the world. The only one ahead of it is Samsung. But the other part of their business and the part that we really worry about the most is the construction of the giant switches that make up these 5G networks.Now, in the old days of switching, you would think of switches as big, physical devices. What's happened and what is particularly notable about 5G is that the network itself, while it has some hardware to it and, obviously, there are cell phone towers and sort of a radio part of it, the switches are almost entirely software. And they constantly reconfigure themselves. And they are enormously complex. So the old days of doing what the defense department and the National Security Agency and others used to do - which is take a piece of foreign equipment, put it in a laboratory, poke around it, try to figure out if there are flaws or back doors or something that could help an adversary - that's virtually impossible to do when the product is an ever-evolving piece of software. It gets updated as often as your iPhone gets updated when you have it sitting on your bedside table and Apple sends a new, updated operating system to it overnight. So that's what will happen with this 5G network.The concern is that for the first time in our history, we would be reliant on a foreign manufacturer - in this case, a foreign manufacturer of a potential adversary that's also the world's second largest economy - building the highway, backbone, central nervous system of a system that we rely on for everything from our financial transactions to our - many of our military operations to, of course, our communications. And the question is, can you trust a foreign actor to be responsible for that? And what happens when Huawei gets that command under Chinese law from the Chinese government to either grab a piece of information or close down part of the network?GROSS: So describe some more of the kind of trouble that China could create with Huawei building 5G networks in countries around the world where China is becoming increasingly powerful.SANGER: If China is in command of the network itself and has sort of end end control from phones for which it makes its own chips to the software on the switch to all of the other tentacles of the central nervous system, that it, basically, can do whatever it wants. And the chances that you would see it are relatively diminished. Big network operators like AT&T and Verizon, if they bought Huawei equipment - and it's pretty clear the government is not going to allow them to do that - would have some visibility into the system.But it's also possible that Huawei might be able to reach back from China directly into the equipment and software it's put in to go manipulate data. What could you do with that? Well, in the Worldwide Threat Assessment that came out earlier this week, the nation's intelligence chiefs mentioned, in particular, that China already has the capability to shut down, at least briefly, the natural gas network. They also said the Russians could do the same briefly with the electric grid.If you had a country that was in full control of your networks, they could shut it down. They could siphon the traffic off to a place you didn't want it to go. They could siphon it back to China. And they would probably have a easier time intercepting it. Now, of course, a lot of that traffic is going to run encrypted. It's not as if the Chinese would be able to look at everything or would want to. But the more network equipment they put in, the more control they would have. And, of course, the Chinese government reserves the right to tell them what to go do with it.GROSS: So is Huawei involved in any aspect of the construction of the 5G network in the U.S.?SANGER: Not anything notable in the United States now - there were a number of classified meetings that took place between the intelligence agencies, the executives of the big telecom firms - AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, so forth. And there was a lot of discussion about letting - whether or not to let Huawei bid on the construction of some parts of this 5G network as they are doing around the world. And, in fact, some of the telecom companies argued to Congress and to the intelligence agencies that it would make sense to let Huawei bid.And the reason is that if they wanted to bid, they would have to provide their software, their equipment to a test facility in the United States. And the National Security Agency, which is the nation's largest electronic spy agency, and the telecom providers would all be able to crawl around in that software and see if there were any backdoors, see how it was designed. But in the end, the intelligence community didn't even want to take that risk.GROSS: The founder of Huawei is a former engineer with the People's Liberation Army in China, and some people think he's still connected to the People's Liberation Army. And some people also argue that private companies like Huawei are still under the control of Chinese - of China's authoritarian government. So what's your assessment of how much control the Chinese government has over Huawei and how much control Chinese intelligence has over Huawei and has access to whatever data Huawei gets or can tell Huawei, collect data from this country; collect this data from that country?SANGER: Well, the founder who you're describing, Ren Zhengfei, is, as you said, a former PLA officer. He then, when he left the PLA, built Huawei initially in the - wiring up the rural parts of China. And he's become obviously one of the most powerful businessmen in China. He's a member of the Communist Party. He's enormously influential there. He has insisted that the Chinese military, the PLA, which has done much of the hacking against the United States, has no role in his company and no continuing control. I've never found any evidence that the United States could prove that the PLA has operative control over Huawei. And of course, Mr. Zheng (ph) has denied it.Now, that issue consumed the U.S. government for years and years until about two years ago when the Chinese government issued a new set of laws under President Xi, Xi Jinping, that basically said any Chinese company - but particularly the telecom companies - would have to participate in Chinese intelligence operations if they are so instructed, that they would have to turn over data that they had. It's not clear, of course, in China what the legal process would be. And so now people say to me, you know, it doesn't make any difference, David, whether or not the PLA has control over Huawei because the law means that the Chinese government has turned the company into its agent.GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's a national security correspondent for The New York Times, and his latest book is called "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, And Fear In The Cyber Age." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF ALEXANDRE DESPLAT'S "SPY MEETING")GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times. We're talking about the 5G network that is being created now and will soon become the central nervous system of the Internet. The Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei is dominating the creation of 5G networks around the world. For years, classified U.S. intelligence reports have warned that China would one day use Huawei to penetrate American networks for cyber espionage or cyberattacks.So we were talking about the founder of Huawei and his connections to the Chinese military and Huawei's connections to the Chinese government. The founder of Huawei - his daughter was arrested in Canada at the request of the U.S. and indicted last week. So what are those charges? And what are their significance?SANGER: Well, the first thing we know about the daughter is, in her own right, she's a very powerful figure within Huawei. She's the chief financial officer. But she's also been the architect of a lot of Huawei's spread around the world. When she was arrested in Canada in December at the request of the United States, it was not for any charges that Huawei had participated in espionage against the U.S. It was not for - on any charges that it had participated in cyberattacks on the United States. Instead, it was based on a charge that she had been behind a giant fraud in which Huawei used a cut-out company to violate the sanctions that the United States had against Iran and that this company was in fact a Huawei - secretly a Huawei subsidiary and was doing business with Iran in violation of those sanctions.So the U.S. is using the Iran sanctions violation to go after the company. Now, the other interesting part about this is that President Trump at one point in December after she was arrested but before she was indicted publicly mused about the fact that he might trade her away in the course of the trade negotiations. Thus the president was politicizing what until then had been a legal action going through normal legal channels. And one of the interesting questions is whether the Canadians are going to extradite her because there have been several Canadians now arrested in China so that they have counter-hostages. And it's possible that the Canadians may determine that this case is more political than criminal.GROSS: President Trump has said that he knows more about technology than anyone. What's your understanding of how much he understands the issue of Huawei and its potential ability to hack America, to spy on America?SANGER: Well, I have a couple of concerns. The first is the president's mind turns, as he has said himself many times, to things you can build. And so issues around software networks and so forth just don't come naturally to him. He hasn't shown much of an inclination to learn about it during the time he's president according to people who used to be in the administration, including in the national security field. The president has a somewhat hazy understanding about the risks of cyber-escalation. So when you think about our cyber-risk, one concern is one we've discussed already today, which is surveillance. Basically, you can use these networks to steal data.But the coming concerns, Terry, have to do more with data manipulation - what happens if you change the data? That's the problem of deep fakes. Something that would look like a politician was speaking, but it wasn't really the words coming out of his mouth. It's been faked. It could be substituting numbers and financial transactions. It could be substituting the targeting information in nuclear or non-nuclear weapons. It could be changing the blood types of every soldier and sailor in the United States if you got into the databases of the military. So there's data manipulation that's a concern. And if any country that had access to the networks, you would worry about that.And then the third is cyberattack, and that is that if we went to war or were conducting covert operations, every country in the world now has cyber in its battle plans, and usually in the first 24 hours of its battle plans. In "The Perfect Weapon," I describe a plan the United States had if we went to war with Iran, called Nitro Zeus, to basically unplug Iran's communications and electricity grids. Well, imagine that that's in the Chinese plans for the United States. If they're in control of the communications grid of the U.S. or its allies, you can imagine how much easier that is to do.Now, there is a concern here that we could get into a world of Red Scare, and the president himself might be fueling that some. And I have concerns that we're blaming too much on the Chinese. But the fact of the matter is, these are all major, complex vulnerabilities that, as Henry Kissinger said to me as I was working on the book, are so much more complex than the issues that came up with China in the Cold War.GROSS: And you're concerned that our president doesn't really comprehend those issues and therefore can't adequately address them.SANGER: That's right. And, you know, there are escalation issues here, as well. I mean, there's still a big debate in the United States government about how you respond to a cyberattack. When the Chinese got into Google and other companies in 2009, there were Google engineers who wanted to retaliate directly against the servers where the attack was coming from. Fortunately, they were stopped. But had that gone ahead, or had it gone ahead with another company, the question would be to the Chinese, is this attack, this counterattack, coming from a private company, coming from some hackers, has it been commanded by the United States? Is a company operating on behalf of the U.S.? And then they would escalate.So you get all the same kind of escalation issues that we worried about in the nuclear age, but you get them in this technology world in which shutting down or diverting data becomes your new weapon. And we don't really understand that escalatory response. Now, the president, in August of last year, issued a new classified order to the National Security Agency that basically gave the director of the National Security Agency more leeway to go respond to offensive cyberactions and to initiate some without presidential approval. But still we don't understand who's in control of the escalation.GROSS: My guest is David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times who is also the author of the book, "The Perfect Weapon," about cyberwar and cyber-espionage. We'll talk more after we take a short break. And our jazz critic Kevin Whitehead will review a reissue featuring pianist Oscar Peterson and a studio orchestra playing 1960s pop covers. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times and author of "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, And Fear In The Cyber Age." We're talking about the new 5G network that will soon become the central nervous system of the Internet, providing faster speeds and greater interconnectivity for the era we're entering where nearly everything, from cars to medical devices, connects to the Internet. The Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei is dominating the creation of 5G networks around the world. For years, classified U.S. intelligence reports have warned that China would one day use Huawei to penetrate American networks for cyber-espionage or cyberattacks.The Worldwide Threat Assessment that was released by intelligence agencies this week said that there's a growing cyberthreat from Russia and China, and that Russia and China are now more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s. So what does that say to you about the cyberthreat posed by this alignment of Russia and China?SANGER: Well, it was a fascinating assertion that they made, And I think it was accurate. We have not seen Russia and China cooperate this way since the mid-'50s. And, of course, China only came into being as the People's Republic in 1949. So it was very early in its history, and it was an extremely poor country. It's worth remembering today that Russia and China have very different objectives. Russia's main objective is one of disruption. It does not have much economic power. Its economy is basically the size of Italy's. It does not have the ability to go build these networks. It does not have much economic power. Its economy is basically the size of Italy's. It does not have the ability to go build these networks around the world the way China is doing. It does not have the technology to do it, but it can be a huge disruptor.And of course, we saw them act to disrupt networks and voting systems in Ukraine. We saw their interference in the 2016 election here in the United States, and we've seen them take cyber action elsewhere in the world. We've seen their submarines go out and track where the fiber optic cables are laid around the world. They're only, you know, less than 200 major fiber optic undersea cables. And the Russians have the ability to cut those cables deep undersea. That would be a huge disruption. That could black out communications in the United States. So that's the Russian side.The Chinese have a much different set of objectives. If the world gets disrupted, no one's going to suffer more than they will because their economy is so interdependent with ours and with other major economies around the world. So they're less likely to disrupt, but they're much more likely to want control and subtle ability to divert traffic in those networks. And that's the concern about Huawei.GROSS: But with Russia and China being in closer cooperation than at any other time since the 1950s, what's the combination of those two countries looking like? Like, if Russia's about disruption and China is about control, when you put the two together, what's the new formula?SANGER: Well, the new formula is a diminished role for the United States. That's part of the concern about the degree to which we have alienated our allies. And this issue about Huawei intersects with the alienation of the allies very closely because what's going on now is the United States is going around the world to allies and say, hey, we're living in a new world. The Russians and the Chinese are cooperating more than we've ever seen. We're trying to keep everybody from spinning into a new form of a cold war - Cold War 2.0. And while the Russians and the Chinese have very different strategic objectives, there may be moments - there will be moments when they will have a common objective in diminishing the power of the United States. That's the one area where they both have great common interests.And so it's important that the United States be able to go work with its allies to figure out how you both contain this threat and respond to it, but also how you retain control of your own networks. So what the U.S. is doing right now is it's going around to its allies, particularly the NATO allies, and saying, don't build Huawei into your systems. And there's some urgency to this because the big decisions about contracts to build the 5G networks will be made in the next six months or so. The U.S. has been in Poland, where they have rather unsubtly suggested that if the Poles really want a new, small military - American military base in Poland - it's been referred to sort of informally as Fort Trump by the Polish leadership - they better build a network that does not use Huawei.There's been pressure on the Canadians, the British. And of course, in Latin America and in Africa, the Chinese have been mounting their own counteroffensive where they're coming in offering very low-cost building of the networks, frequently with Chinese government loans to go do it. What's that remind you of? It's a lot like what the United States did in the 1950s and '60s when we tried to use our foreign aid to go build up close allies by building up their technology and their industry. But now the Chinese are doing it, and they're doing it with the networking technology.GROSS: So our unilateral approach to world affairs, our alienation of our allies is really working against us when it comes to this new technological era of the 5G network.SANGER: You know, Terry, the most interesting observation in that worldwide threat assessment was the assertion that the unilateralism of the United States - they didn't use the phrase America first, but they could've - has made American allies and partners - meaning people who were not necessarily full allies - reassess their relationship with the U.S. and look for power relationships and protection elsewhere. And of course, that means they're looking mostly to the Chinese because they're the only other ones who have a market big enough and have an economy big enough to actually be of significant help to them.You've seen this happen in the Philippines - a country that used to be, at one point, an American colony - where the leadership of the Philippines, a great American ally, is getting closer and closer to the Chinese leadership. You're seeing it happen to some degree in South Korea where - by the way, in Seoul, Huawei was a big player in the competition to rebuild the cell network for Seoul, which is used by American forces who are based around Seoul. You're seeing this happen throughout Africa, where the United States has put a whole lot less money into rebuilding infrastructure, helping countries along than the Chinese have.GROSS: Some of the things you've described about China's capabilities of spying on us and hacking data and interfering with cyberwar, even - I mean, that's - it's some pretty terrifying stuff. At the same time, the U.S. has done similar things to China and other countries. Would you describe an operation that was named Shotgiant?SANGER: Terry, Shotgiant was a National Security Agency operation that happened around 2010. We know about it because some of the details were leaked out in the Snowden documents. It was an effort by the NSA to do to Huawei exactly what we have accused Huawei of doing to us, which is breaking into networks, figuring out how they operate and setting ourselves up to either steal information from those networks or cripple them in the future.What did the NSA do? It got into Huawei's corporate systems in Shenzhen, the Chinese industrial city. It looked for any evidence that the Chinese PLA was actually secretly controlling the company - doesn't appear they found any. It looked to understand how Huawei's equipment operated, how the software worked so that if Huawei sold a network switching system to an American adversary - say, Venezuela or Cuba or someplace that clearly wouldn't buy American equipment - then the NSA would have an easier time breaking into that equipment. The - this is not unusual. This is what the United States government created the NSA to go do. This is the kind of offensive cyber activity that the NSA conducts not only against China but against Russia, Iran, North Korea and so forth.But what it gets at - and the Chinese use it for these purposes - is that the United States is not above any of these kind of network manipulation issues that we've been worrying about in regard to Huawei. We do it ourselves. And Huawei's argument is, why would you be any safer in the world if you're a foreign country with an American or European-built network than with a Chinese-built network? - because they make the argument that the NSA is going to get into an American-built network or a network in Europe. And, certainly, the Snowden docs are full of examples of cases where we have done that.SANGER: Well, let's take a short break here. And then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's a national security correspondent for The New York Times. And his latest book is called "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage And Fear In The Cyber Age." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF AMANDA GARDIER'S "FJORD")GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times. We've been talking about how the deep involvement of the Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei in the development of the new 5G network in many countries could threaten our cybersecurity.If you're negotiating an arms control deal, there are ways that you can verify or come close to verifying whether a nuclear program is continuing, how many weapons the country has, where they're being stored. You can have inspectors go to observe facilities that you know exist. When it comes to, like, cyber issues, it's so much harder to verify what's going on. So what kind of treaty is even possible when it comes to something that is invisible like cyber-control, cyberattack, cyber-espionage, cyber-sabotage?SANGER: Terry, you've raised the fundamental question that has been haunting us in the cyber age. And it's one of the reasons I went to write "The Perfect Weapon" because this is so much more of a vexing problem than we had in the days of the 1950s, when we had nuclear weapons, the Russians did and the Chinese were about to. They first got theirs in the 1960s. You could do treaties in the nuclear age because there was a very limited number of players. First, it was just us and the Soviets, then the Chinese, of course, some other NATO players, later on, Israel, India, Pakistan. And you can count the weapons. And more importantly, you can count missiles. You can send inspectors just as you described. None of this is true in the cyber age.In the cyber age, the aggressor could be a state - might be Russia or China or Iran or North Korea. But it could be a criminal group. It could be a terrorist group. It could be teenagers. And none of those groups sign treaties, particularly teenagers, right? So the first problem is there's just too many players. The second is the technology is so inexpensive. This is what makes it the perfect weapon because it's so cheap that you don't need to be a China or a Russia to play in the cyber arena. By my count, there are probably around 35 countries today that have sophisticated cybercapability and could mount a sophisticated cyberattack, not just a denial of service attack that turned out the lights but something more sophisticated. So treaties will not work here. So what are the other options?Well, there are a lot of other ideas. But most of them circulate around codes of conduct - a sort of digital Geneva Convention. And it's an interesting concept because the real Geneva Conventions were not created by governments. The Geneva Convention meetings were organized by the Red Cross. And the idea was to protect civilians. So if you and I, Terry, were trying to come up with a list of things to protect, I think we'd probably sit down and say, OK. Electric grid should be off-limits because if you turn those off, you hurt the most vulnerable people. Communication systems and especially emergency communications - and that's where Huawei intersects with this. You'd want those to be off-limits from cyberattack. You'd probably want election systems to be off-limits.So I could imagine a digital Geneva Convention in which you gathered countries together and they agree to this. And it's not enforceable or inspectable, but you're beginning to set some global standards. One of the difficulties with this idea - even though I think it's sort of the best of the bad ideas that are out there - is that I'm not sure the United States would sign on to that.GROSS: Why not?SANGER: Imagine the intelligence leaders gathering in the situation room, saying, do we really want to limit the next president of the United States or this president from interfering in an election if it would be a way to get Maduro out of office? Do you really want to stop us from turning off electric power grids if we might be able to bring a country to its knees without firing a shot? After all, we had a plan - Nitro Zeus - to turn off all the power in Iran if we got into a conflict with them. So I don't even think the U.S. would sign on to this.GROSS: You know, the power equation, when it comes to cyber, has really changed because there was a period when the U.S. was the kind of ruler of cyberweapons and cyber potential. And that's just, like, no longer true. So if we do anything like that, there will be a cyber-counterattack and vice versa. So the stakes are really higher than they've ever been, I think.SANGER: And our control of the technology, as you point out, is less than it's ever been. Look. The Internet was first invented in the United States - you know, the ARPANET - what became the Internet later on - only 35 years ago. And then, of course, it's Silicon Valley companies that have dominated the technology that's come out of that. That era is ending, just as the era in which Britain and Portugal and a few other major naval powers could rule the world because they had the best. That era is ending, just as the era in which Britain and Portugal and a few other major naval powers could rule the world because they had the best ships. And we're not going to get this back. It's not as if we're going to go back to an era when we were the ones who dominated all of this technology.And now, for the first time in our modern history, we are facing a peer adversary in China that has an economy that will sooner or later overtake the United States in size and that is investing heavily in the major technologies on which 5G will allow big progress - artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, quantum computing. And, you know, you go into that worldwide threat assessment, I thought one of the most interesting points on it was that our absence of big strategy in many of these technologies is allowing adversaries to close the gap very quickly.Now, if you wanted to declare a national emergency about something, that threat assessment would suggest that's the issue on which the president might want to go declare a national emergency and come up with a strategy, rather than just focusing on the wall.GROSS: Is there anyone in the Trump administration who you look to as being, like, the foremost expert on cyber issues?SANGER: You know, there were, Terry. I thought that the president got off to a pretty good start on this. He hired a homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, who had had some fairly good experience in cyber issues in the Bush administration and had spent time on it when he was out of office. There was also a White House coordinator for cyber issues, a man named Rob Joyce, who had spent his entire career at the National Security Agency. And he ran something called the Tailored Access Operations unit. That's sort of the special forces of the NSA that breaks into foreign computing systems.And the job of the White House cybersecurity coordinator was to try to bring together all of these complex defensive and offensive issues and the policy issues together. They were focused on it. So what happened? John Bolton came in in the spring as the new national security adviser after the firing of H.R. McMaster. Mr. Bolton, in his first week, got rid of the homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, and replaced him with a Coast Guard admiral who is, by his own admission, not very familiar with cyber issues.Then Mr. Bolton eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator. I guess he must have concluded we were over-coordinated in this government, I suspect because he didn't like the fact that the cybersecurity coordinator had a sort of direct line to the president. In eliminating the position, he has downgraded the number of people within the White House who deal with this.And it doesn't seem to me that the policy is being debated at the level at which it needs to be or coordinated between the Pentagon, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Commerce Department and so many others who need to work on this. They have gotten policies out on Huawei. They may get this executive order out. But I'm afraid there's no big strategic thinking going on at the White House level.GROSS: Well, David Sanger, thank you so much for talking with us.SANGER: Great to be with you again.GROSS: David Sanger is a national security correspondent for The New York Times and author of "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, And Fear In The Cyber Age." After we take a short break, our jazz critic, Kevin Whitehead, will review a reissue featuring pianist Oscar Peterson and a studio orchestra playing 1960s pop covers. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF AARON PARKS' "SMALL PLANET")Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania reached for a different comparison, likening the Democrats’ December impeachment of Trump to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, which drew the U.S. into World War II. “Today, December 18, 2019, is another date that will live in infamy,” he said.Republicans said the Democrats had had it in for Trump from the minute he took office; that they could not countenance an election in which the states, through the Electoral College, overruled the popular vote of the people; that they would gin up any controversy as an excuse to impeach a president they just plain didn’t like.There was some truth in this. There were Democrats who saw Trump as a threat to the constitutional order from the outset, who called for his ouster for all manner of actions and statements, from the corporate profits he continued to rake in as president, to his various racist outbursts, to his drive to ban travel from majority-Muslim countries, to the allegations of obstruction of justice documented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.If there was a mandate in Trump’s slim 2016 victory, it wasn’t for a particular set of policies but for a tough-talking dealmaker to dispense with the stale niceties of official Washington. The new president delivered on that promise with his Twitter feed alone, and if it were only a few cherished norms that he’d abandoned, perhaps today’s vote would never have happened.Opening the six-hour floor debate shortly after noon today, Pelosi said Trump was “an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections.” Standing alongside an image of the American flag and a quote from the Pledge of Allegiance, Pelosi struck the same somber, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone that she has throughout the process. Impeachment was not a desire but an obligation. “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty,” she said. “It is tragic that the president’s actions make impeachment necessary.”That message became a theme among Pelosi’s members. “I did not come to Congress to impeach the president” was the refrain, uttered as a rebuttal to the GOP’s argument that the whole thing was precooked and as a reminder that Democrats waited nine months before even launching their inquiry.As the debate wore on and the votes drew close, Republicans began heckling Democrats, drawing reprimands for order in the chamber from the presiding officer. They jeered Representative Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and they audibly scoffed as Majority Leader Steny Hoyer recounted the Democrats’ reluctance to pursue impeachment until recently. “We did not want this,” Hoyer said somberly. A Republican on the floor replied, “Oh, come on!”It wasn’t Trump’s shirking of norms but his obvious and outspoken disdain for rules and even laws that made his impeachment, at least with the benefit of hindsight, inevitable. That, and his refusal to quit when he was ahead. Pelosi was ready to give Trump a pass for his profiteering, for his defiance of Congress in directing money to his border wall and in stonewalling Democratic oversight investigations, for his alleged misdeeds in the Mueller report. But it was lost on no one that Trump’s call with Zelensky came on the day after Mueller’s lackluster performance on Capitol Hill lifted, once and for all, the two-year cloud that had cast his presidency in shadow.

There’s a new character about to take the stage in the impeachment drama. President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may not like what he has to say. Phil Reeker, the assistant secretary of State in the Bureau of Europe and Eurasian Affairs, is set to appear for questioning Saturday on Capitol Hill. Congressional aides say they’re unsure which members will show up to the weekend session but two individuals with knowledge of Reeker’s plans say the State official will likely unveil additional details about the efforts to push out former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, including who above him at the department knew about the campaign, and when. Reeker is also set to touch on what he knew of Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s involvement with Rudy Giuliani and the effort to convince Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, sources say. Reeker kicks off another long string of depositions in the impeachment inquiry that includes the highly-anticipated testimony of the first national security council witness—Senior Director for Europe and Russia Tim Morrison—as well as Charles Kupperman, former deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs.Reeker is the sixth State Department official to testify in the inquiry, which has focused in part on how Pompeo and his staff learned of and handled a shadow effort by the president’s personal attorney to run U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine. His testimony is expected to deal another blow to a department where officials are now working overtime to try and restore confidence in the U.S. foreign policy system.An attorney for Reeker did not respond to a request for comment. But those who have worked with Reeker in the past describe him as a straight shooter who is well-liked in the department.“He is a career guy. He’s been at this a long time and he’s not about to give that all up to protect anyone,” one State Department official told The Daily Beast. Since taking up his post in March, Reeker has spent a significant amount of time interacting with Sondland and dealing with Ukraine policy, according to officials with knowledge of his schedule. Reeker also holds a direct line to senior officials at the department including David Hale, the under secretary for political affairs, as well as Secretary Pompeo. During the effort to oust Yovanovitch, Reeker reportedly relayed concerns by George Kent, his deputy, about the campaign to Hale.In his testimony earlier this week, William Taylor, the top diplomat in the country, said President Trump, in a phone call with Sondland, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had to “clear things up and do it in public” before the shipment of military aid to Ukraine. Individuals familiar with Reeker’s plans say the career diplomat is likely to confirm parts of Taylor’s testimony as it relates to Sondland and Yovanovitch.“I have a feeling Phil will go in there Saturday and do exactly what Taylor said,” the State Department official said.Even before he assumed his current role, Reeker occasionally worked with Sondland. Reeker, a career diplomat, previously served as the civilian deputy commander at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. In February he traveled to Odessa, Ukraine with Sondland, Kurt Volker, the former U.S. representative for Ukraine negotiations, Andrzej Sadoś, a Polish diplomat who serves as a permanent representative of Poland to the European Union, and Ana Birchall, the Romanian Minister of Justice. In April, in the midst of the beginning of a campaign to remove Yovanovitch, Reeker attended a dinner hosted by Sondland in Brussels. The dinner was in honor of the EU Ambassador to the U.S. Stavros Lambrinidis. Other U.S. officials in attendance included former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer, Larry Kudlow, top economic adviser to President Trump, Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser and Urlich Brechbuhl, the State Department’s counselor. Birchall also attended the dinner. Birchall met with Attorney General Bill Barr in June in Romania and Barr subsequently invited the minister to Washington. In a recent interview with Fox News, Giuliani suggested he had information about the Bidens’ dealings in Romania, saying “I haven’t got to Romania. Wait til’ we get to Romania.”Reeker inherited what State Department officials describe as a “beat-down” bureau in March, following the tenure of Wess Mitchell. “Mitchell created a really uncomfortable dynamic for a lot of career people,” a former State Department official said. “He pushed forward a log of Trumpian views, like engaging with autocrats, that had some geopolitical wrapping around them. The bureau was run into the ground on the back of these ideas that are just kind of ... not tenable.”

The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump Wednesday evening for both abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.The first article of impeachment, charging Trump with abuse of power, passed by a 230-197 margin. The second article, on obstruction of Congress, passed 229-198.The votes went down almost entirely on party lines. Justin Amash (I-MI), who left the Republican Party earlier this year, voted for impeachment. Just two Democrats — Reps. Collin Peterson (D-MN) and Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ), the latter of whom is reportedly joining the Republican Party — voted against the first article of impeachment. A third, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), voted for the first article but against the second. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), voted “present” (neither yes or no) on both articles. Every other Democrat and Republican voting has stuck with his or her respective party.This impeachment vote does not remove President Trump from office. Instead, all it does is pave the way for a trial in the Senate. It is the Senate that will vote on whether to convict and remove Trump. And his acquittal there, in that GOP-controlled chamber, is all but certain.The partisan split on the impeachment issue is remarkable because many of the underlying facts in the impeachment inquiry aren’t even disputed.President Trump did urge Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and the DNC server in their July 25 phone call. Trump officials did present the Ukrainians with a “quid pro quo” — an announcement on investigations would get Zelensky a meeting at the White House. President Trump did block hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine in part to get Ukraine to launch investigations, his chief of staff admitted.All of this, Democrats argued, meant Trump clearly abused his power. “When President Trump conditioned military aid on a personal favor, he harmed America’s national security,” House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said during a day-long floor debate. ”And when he demanded that a foreign government target his domestic political rival, he took steps to corrupt our next election.”Yet none of this was sufficient to convince a single House Republican to vote for impeachment. Instead, the GOP united to defend their unquestioned leader: President Trump.Republicans offered a variety of justifications for their no votes. Some simply said the Democrats’ process was too rushed. Some said there wasn’t enough evidence Trump did the things alleged. Some argued that, even if he did do them, it wouldn’t be so bad, because it’s really the Bidens, not Trump, who are corrupt. Some argued the Democrats themselves didn’t believe the conduct was so bad, and were just impeaching Trump out of personal animus or political fears about 2020. And some focused on insisting Democrats shouldn’t overturn “the will of the voters” (as, apparently, expressed in key Electoral College states in 2016).Lurking behind all this, though, was the unavoidable fact that although Trump remains unpopular overall, he’s still quite popular with Republican voters. Those voters want their representatives to continue to support Trump. And so they did just that.Some Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump almost since he was inaugurated in 2017, but that was a minority position in the House caucus as 2019 began with Democrats in control for the first time since he took office. House leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi in fact spent most of the year trying to fend off pressure from the party’s base to impeach Trump (on either the Mueller investigation’s findings or other alleged abuses of office).But everything changed in September, when news broke that a whistleblower alleged that Trump pressured Ukraine’s government to investigate the Bidens. Dramatic revelation after dramatic revelation followed, and Democrats — including some moderate members in Trump-voting districts — decided they had to take action. So Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed an impeachment inquiry for the first time on September 24.What followed was a relatively brief but surprisingly revelatory fact-gathering process in the House, led by Chairman Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee. A lineup of current and former administration officials defied the White House’s edict not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, and came in to give closed-door depositions. One witness, former special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, even turned over a series of damning text messages laying out the efforts to pressure the Ukrainians. The Intelligence Committee then called some of those witnesses back to give testimony at public hearings in November. Testimony from all these witnesses confirmed and further fleshed out the whistleblower’s initial account — and made clear there was a months-long pressure campaign on the Ukrainians, involving not one but two quid pro quos. They were: a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president in exchange for the announcement of investigations, and the release of $391 million in blocked military aid in exchange for that announcement.Yet the Trump administration refused to turn over any documents whatsoever, and other witnesses with potentially important information decided to obey the White House’s demand that they not testify. So, rather than spend months fighting legal battles in court (as they have in other oversight investigations into the Trump administration), Democrats decided to simply move forward with what they had — arguing that their findings more than merited impeachment already. In December, the Intelligence Committee completed a report on their findings and passed the baton to the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over impeachment. After just one hearing with legal experts, Democrats on that committee drafted their articles of impeachment — alleging abuse of power, and obstruction of Congress — and approved them one week later.House Republicans, though, have closed ranks around the president, defending his conduct with a variety of justifications. Some have complained about the process for the impeachment inquiry, some say they haven’t seen proof that Trump did what’s alleged, some say that what’s alleged isn’t so bad even if Trump did do it.Those members of Congress who have tried to oppose their party on impeachment have quickly found their lives remarkably uncomfortable. Amash of Michigan announced he supported Trump’s impeachment over Mueller’s findings back in May, but then left the GOP to become an independent in July. Van Drew, meanwhile, announced he opposed impeachment — and, this month, word got out that he planned to switch over to the Republican Party.Republican opposition didn’t impact the outcome in the House, which is controlled by Democrats. But it will be a far bigger problem for impeachment supporters in the Senate, which is controlled by the GOP, and where it would take a 67-vote supermajority to actually remove Trump from office. So long as Republican support for Trump remains strong, that isn’t going to happen. (And his job approval numbers have actually increased a bit since the inquiry began.)Democrats, then, will likely have to content themselves with putting a black mark by Trump’s name in history — and will have to redouble their efforts to try to oust him in the 2020 election. Because while the impeachment inquiry has unearthed a great deal of new information about Trump’s misconduct, that information has changed few, if any, Republican minds. 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. 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Donald Trump has shown little taste for military adventure. He avoided the draft in Vietnam. He fell out with his once-beloved generals. He stunned the world by pulling troops out of Syria and abandoning America’s Kurdish allies.But on the political battlefield, the president has shown how he and his allies intend to fight impeachment: with a blitzkrieg aimed at deflecting, distracting and discrediting. What he lacks in coherent strategy, he makes up for in shock and awe. Trump will send in the tanks and take no prisoners.It appears that most Republicans are still willing to march behind him, not by defending what many see as indefensible – the president’s offer of a quid pro quo to Ukraine – but by throwing sand into the gears of the impeachment process. With the help of Fox News, they are set to intensify attacks on the legitimacy of the inquiry itself, demonising its leaders and sowing doubt wherever possible.The great unknown is whether the approach will prove as effective as their efforts to undermine the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, potentially boosting Trump in the 2020 election, or the case against him will be so compelling that he will be removed from office or defeated at the polls.“Trump is using the same approach he did to subvert the Mueller report: undermining the legitimacy of the messenger, assigning political motives to those who testify and relying on the Fox News firewall to serve up propaganda to his base,” said Kurt Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee.“The difference is that with Mueller we had a lot of time where we didn’t know anything. In the impeachment inquiry we are getting a steady stream of new information that is providing context.”House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is a month old. Unlike Mueller it has moved at warp speed, subpoenaing witnesses, gathering testimony and building evidence against the president some say makes it inevitable he will be impeached by the House and put on trial by the Republican-controlled Senate.This week Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, made the most damning allegations yet about a quid pro quo in which Trump threatened to suspend military aid and the offer of a White House meeting unless Ukraine agreed to announce investigations into political rivals including the former vice-president Joe Biden, a potential opponent in next year’s presidential election.Taylor, a respected Vietnam war veteran with half a century of public service, also described an “irregular, informal policy channel” by which the Trump administration was pursuing objectives in Ukraine “running contrary to the goals of longstanding US policy”. His evidence reportedly prompted “a lot of sighs and gasps” in the hearing room.The backlash from Trump was as swift as it was expected. Since the shadow of impeachment fell, the president has put down a daily barrage of tweets. Responding to Taylor and other members of his own party he sees as disloyal, he described “Never Trumper Republicans” as “human scum”.On the same day, about 30 House Republicans barged into the secure facility where the impeachment depositions are being taken and ordered pizza. The testimony of a Pentagon official was postponed by more than five hours. The members complained about lack of transparency as evidence is being given behind closed doors.It was not their only gambit. Earlier in the week Republicans attempted to censure Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee, for his handling of the impeachment inquiry, only for the Democratic majority to set the resolution aside. On Thursday Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee and a Trump loyalist, introduced a resolution condemning the inquiry as an unfair, secretive and designed to embarrass the president.In an ominous development, the justice department stepped up its review of the origins of Mueller’s Russia investigation, giving prosecutors the ability to issue subpoenas, potentially form a grand jury and compel witnesses to give testimony and bring federal criminal charges. The move raised fears of a politically motivated ploy to burnish the overall narrative that Trump is a victim of the deep state, casting impeachment as Mueller 2.0.But there was still little sign of a war bunker where a strategy is being coordinated. Instead it appears to be a case of a scattergun and “fire at will”, a measure of how ill-equipped the White House is for the battle to come. More than 1,000 days into Trump’s presidency, its ranks are severely depleted.The chief strategist Steve Bannon is long gone. Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary, has never given a formal briefing to reporters in the west wing. Trump does not have a permanent chief of staff, only Mick Mulvaney in an acting capacity. Earlier this month Mulvaney held a disastrous briefing in which he blurted out a confession of a quid pro quo with Ukraine, only to issue a retraction later.It means there are fewer guardrails on a president who would be capricious, impulsive and mendacious even if surrounded by the best and the brightest.Bardella added: “No matter who’s working in the White House, we already know it will be blown to hell by Trump’s tweets on any given day. You can have the best organisation in the world but it’s useless if the principal is so undisciplined.”The lack of structure could not be more different from the last president to be impeached, Bill Clinton, who set up a dedicated “war room” while getting on with the business of governing.Graham, now working with the White House on a better coordinated strategy but then an impeachment manager in the House, told reporters this week the Clinton example should be followed because he “had a team that was organised, that had legal minds that could understand what was being said versus the legal proceedings in question, and they were on message every day”.The senator from South Carolina added: “President Clinton defended himself but he never stopped being president. And I think one of the reasons that he survived is that the public may not have liked what the president had done but believed that he was still able to do his job … I’m hoping that will become the model here.”The sentiment was echoed by Chris Ruddy, a conservative media executive and friend of Trump. He told the Guardian: “Bill Clinton had a pretty good approach – better than Richard Nixon. It should be ‘business as usual’ where they’re pushing legislation on healthcare, immigration, infrastructure.”Public opinion does not favour removing Trump from office, Ruddy argued, so the White House should avoid a politically costly battle.“We’re in a political payback system where everyone is trying to out up each other. If you look at the poll numbers, he’s actually holding up, although there’s a hardening of people who favour impeachment and removal. He’s not actually in a bad situation.”On Friday the Axios website reported “a de facto impeachment war room” had sprung up at the White House with the primary objective of ensuring that should the House impeach Trump, there will not be the 20 or more Republican defections required in the Senate to convict him.“Almost every morning around 10am, there’s an impeachment ‘messaging coordination’ meeting in either the Situation Room or the Roosevelt Room” involving senior officials, the report said.But critics argue that “messaging” is doomed from the start in this case because the facts are so devastating. Trump has openly encouraged Ukraine – and China – to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. With Taylor’s compelling evidence, it appears to be case closed. Some problems are unspinnable.Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and Trump critic, said the president’s exertion of pressure on the leader of Ukraine had been tantamount to blackmail and extortion.“It was such an abuse of power. I can’t think of a president who’s done anything more impeachable or worse than that. It’s indefensible and anyone who defends it is going to face some liabilities because it’s so egregious.”He described the Republican fightback as “lawlessness, disorder and chaos. Undermining the process and smearing the witnesses and engaging in ‘whataboutism’ is the main strategy. The question is whether they will be successful, as they were with Mueller, at discrediting the process. Democrats have to step up their game and be more transparent about what they’re doing.”For all the noisy grandstanding this week, Republicans said little about the substance of the allegations. Their extraordinary invasion of the Scif [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] on Capitol Hill was fodder for TV networks and briefly stole the limelight from the damaging evidence being presented. It seemed a classic Trumpian ploy of shifting attention with a showy spectacle and earned thanks from the president for being “tough, smart, and understanding in detail the greatest Witch Hunt in American History”.But whether it can be sustained is questionable. Democrats are gearing up for televised hearings that could begin next month and feature dramatic and damaging testimony from the likes of the former national security adviser John Bolton. Republicans are hamstrung by a torrent of revelations that makes today’s deniable rumour tomorrow’s smoking gun.Bill Galston, a former policy adviser in the Clinton administration, said: “If there is a White House strategy, I haven’t discerned it up to now. It’s very difficult to form a strategy that others are prepared to rely on and execute if you have reason to believe that that what is held to be true today might not be true tomorrow.“The White House has a credibility problem and members of the president’s party don’t know what they don’t know.“There’s a saying, ‘If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.’ The Scif incident we saw this week was an exercise in table-pounding by Republicans. What they’re doing now is a very poor substitute for a strategy.”Trump retains two not so secret weapons to amplify his message: fiery rallies, which he is holding with greater frequency, and conservative media.A survey published this week by the Public Religion Research Institute showed the group most loyal to the president is Republicans who watch Fox News. More than half of Republicans whose primary news source is Fox said almost nothing could change their approval of Trump. For Republicans who get their news elsewhere, the figure is considerably lower.Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added: “If I was in the White House now, I would send a delegation to [Fox News host] Sean Hannity and say, ‘Sir, you have more credibility with the president than anyone else. If you believe, as we do, that he needs a coherent strategy, can you make that case for us? We officially work for the president but you unofficially work for him.’“It seems like a joke but, as I sit here and think about it, I’m falling in love with the idea.” Topics Trump impeachment inquiry The Observer Donald Trump Trump administration US politics Republicans Democrats US Congress features

Donald Trump has hit back at his former chief of staff, John Kelly, after Kelly said he had warned the president about impeachment.Kelly said he “felt bad” for having left Trump’s side, because his advice was not followed and the president therefore faced impeachment.Speaking at the Sea Island Summit, an event in Georgia organised by the conservative Washington Examiner, Kelly said that on leaving, he had said: “Whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man’ – someone who won’t tell you the truth.”“Don’t do that,” the retired marine general said he had told Trump. “Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached.”CNN reported that the US president denied Kelly’s remarks.“John Kelly never said that,” Trump said, according to CNN. “He never said anything like that.“If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of the office. He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else.”The White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, confirmed Trump’s response: “I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.”Kelly, 69, left his post in December last year, to criticism that he had not managed to restrain Trump’s wilder impulses.The former South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney replaced Kelly and still fills the role in an acting capacity. He is under pressure, having told reporters that Trump did make Ukraine the subject of a quid pro quo, withholding nearly $400m in US military aid while asking for political favours – the issue at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.Trump denies having done so but the House foreign affairs, intelligence and oversight committees have heard extensive testimony to the contrary.On Saturday Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, met the committees behind closed doors at the Capitol. The Trump administration directed him not to testify, a person familiar with the situation told Reuters, but Reeker appeared after receiving a subpoena.The top US diplomat for Europe told the committees he had not known US aid may have been withheld in order to pressure Ukraine’s new president to conduct investigations helpful to Trump, a source told Reuters. The source said Reeker was prepared to say he had largely left Ukraine policy to Kurt Volker, then US special representative for Ukraine negotiations, and others.Reeker took up his post on 18 March, overseeing 50 countries including Russia and Ukraine at a time when the ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, faced public criticism at home.The source told Reuters Reeker sought a stronger state department defence of Yovanovitch, who was brought back early in May, but this appeared to have been stymied “from the top”. It was not clear if the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, objected.Other officials have said the Ukraine issue was delegated to Volker and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union.The Wall Street Journal reported that Sondland told House committees that he believed agreeing to open investigations into Burisma Group – a gas company where Joe Biden’s son once served on the board – and into alleged 2016 election interference, was a condition for a White House meeting between Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Asked whether that arrangement was a quid pro quo, Sondland said that he wasn’t a lawyer, but that he believed the answer was yes, the WSJ reported Sondland’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, as saying.Volker testified and released text messages that detailed conversations between him, Sondland and Bill Taylor, now the top US diplomat in Ukraine. Taylor wrote that he thought it was “crazy” to withhold aid for help with a political campaign.Taylor testified that he was told the aid would be withheld until Ukraine conducted the investigations Trump requested. Sondland and Taylor have detailed their concerns about the influence of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.Another diplomat, George Kent, testified that he was told to “lie low” and defer to three political appointees. Yovanovitch has accused the Trump administration of recalling her based on false claims.The House committees have scheduled several depositions for next week, all behind closed doors. On Monday, former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman is due to testify. On Tuesday, lawmakers expect Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top expert on Ukraine.Kathryn Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security, is scheduled for Wednesday and Tim Morrison, a White House adviser on Russia and Europe, is set to appear on Thursday.On Friday this week, Kupperman received a subpoena. He asked a federal court if he should comply or follow Trump’s directive not to, because he “cannot satisfy the competing demands of both the legislative and executive branches”. Without the court’s help, he said, he would have to make a decision that could “inflict grave constitutional injury” on Congress or the presidency.Unless the judge issues an opinion by Monday, his testimony might not occur as scheduled.Also on Friday, a federal judge rejected a claim by Trump and his Republican allies that the impeachment process was illegitimate because the full House had not voted to authorize it. The judge ordered the administration to give the judiciary committee secret material from the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.“The American people had another victory yesterday in the court decision validating not only the impeachment inquiry but the imperative that the administration stop stonewalling,” the House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, leading the inquiry, told Reuters.Doug Collins, the top Republican on the judiciary committee, said he looked forward to “an expeditious appeal”.In Georgia on Saturday, Kelly insisted he had “an awful lot of, to say the least, second thoughts about leaving” the White House.“It pains me to see what’s going on,” he said, “because I believe if I was still there or someone like me was there, [Trump] would not be kind of, all over the place.”The impeachment inquiry is expected to lead to a House vote before Christmas, most likely sending Trump to the Senate for trial. A conviction is unlikely but the White House and Republicans have faced criticism for their response so far, chaotic and confrontational rather than coordinated and effective.“Someone has got to be a guide that tells [the president] that you either have the authority or you don’t, or ‘Mr President, don’t do it,’” Kelly said. “Don’t hire someone that will just nod and say, ‘That’s a great idea Mr President.’ Because you will be impeached.”He added: “The system that should be in place, clearly – the system of advising, bringing in experts in, having these discussions with the president so he can make an informed decision, that clearly is not in place. And I feel bad that I left.”From Camp David, Trump tweeted that he’s “not concerned with the impeachment scam … because I did nothing wrong.” Topics Trump impeachment inquiry Donald Trump Trump administration US Congress US politics Democrats Republicans news

Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), in an attempt to gin up the crowd at President Donald Trump’s rally in Macon, Georgia, on Friday, took the opportunity to mock Sen. Kamala Harris’s name. “The most insidious thing that Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are trying to perpetrate, and Bernie, and Elizabeth, and KAH-mah-la, or Kah-MAH-la, or KAH-mah-la or Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever,” he said.It’s a move that was blatantly racist, and one that framed Harris — who is the first Black woman and first South Asian American woman to be a major party vice presidential nominee — as someone who’s different. A Perdue spokesperson pushed back on this interpretation after the senator received extensive blowback for his actions. “Senator Perdue simply mispronounced Senator Harris’ name, and he didn’t mean anything by it,” said Perdue’s campaign communications director, John Burke, in a tweet. Perdue’s behavior, however, was all too familiar for many people of color who recognized his attempts to “other” Harris because she has a name that may be less common than his, or more difficult to pronounce. As BuzzFeed News’s Clarissa-Jan Lim reported, Twitter users began using the hashtag #MyNameIs to share their names and the meanings behind them, emphasizing that pronouncing them correctly was simply a “basic form of respect.”Perdue’s actions, ultimately, were very much in line with Trump’s own rhetoric about immigrants and people of color. Among other things, Trump has described asylum seekers as an “invasion,” called Black Lives Matter protesters “thugs,” and told progressive congresswomen of color that they should “go back” and “fix the ... places from which they came.” Trump also recently declined to condemn white supremacists, instead telling the Proud Boys, a far-right hate group, to “stand back and stand by.”Perdue’s statement also mirrors the way the president has made light of Harris’s name in recent weeks, including at rallies. Trump mispronounces Kamala Harris's name, which he repeats numerous times like it's an incantation or something pic.twitter.com/CUtgyKe8QW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 8, 2020 It was the president Perdue was echoing in his attempt to demean Harris — one of his Senate colleagues for the last four years — and to denigrate her candidacy. He’s also far from the only one who’s used this tactic in a way to undercut Harris. Earlier this year, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson mispronounced her name as well and bristled when a guest urged him to correct it. “Out of respect, for somebody who’s going to be on the national ticket, pronouncing her name right is actually kind of a bare minimum,” Democratic strategist Richard Goodstein said at the time. Making fun of the way someone’s name sounds or is pronounced has been a long-standing way to “other” someone and disrespect their identity, sending a clear message about how little effort a person is willing to put in to treat someone else with dignity. As a KUOW public radio report noted, research done by Rita Kohli and Daniel Solórzano at the University of California found that, in school settings, the mispronunciation of names creates feelings of “anxiety and alienation” as well as pressure for people to adapt their names and conform to expectations that others may set for them. Perdue’s actions have since garnered backlash: Following his appearance at the rally, Perdue’s Democratic Senate competitor, Jon Ossoff, who criticized his statements as “bigoted mockery,” has raised $1 million, according to his campaign. Ossoff and Perdue are locked in a tight race, with the RealClearPolitics polling average showing the two within 1 percentage point of one another, and Cook Political Report rating the race as a toss-up, meaning each is looking for ways to gain a late advantage. In making fun of Harris’s name, Perdue appears to have given his opponent a fundraising victory, while unnecessarily creating an embarrassing situation for himself. 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.

“You do karate, chink?” the biggest bully barked at Andrew Yang, as he kneed the future 2020 US presidential candidate in his groin and sent him face-first into the schoolyard dirt.It was a taunting question Yang’s tormentors often asked him before they beat up the town’s only Asian kid. Yang was an easy target. He was smaller and scrawny compared to his peers – something he couldn’t help because he’d skipped a grade to join them. Yang endured years of beatings, until he decided to take his aggressors’ advice and train in a martial art.It took a few years, but by age 14, Yang was able to do something he hadn’t before. He won a fight.“Someone picked a fight with me and I surprised them because I started to fight back,” Yang told the Guardian. “He hit me first and didn’t expect me to hit back. He seemed really surprised by the suddenness of it.” It wasn’t a long affair, but it ended with Yang having be pulled off his attacker by the other astonished schoolchildren.What does Yang’s experience have to do with sports? For mixed martial arts, it turns out a whole lot. As an active campaign surrogate on the trail, Yang is reportedly high on Joe Biden’s list of potential cabinet appointees should the former vice-president win Tuesday’s presidential election. Depending on his placement, Yang believes he could get the Muhammed Ali Boxing Reform Act, which establishes federal protections for boxers, extended to MMA within the next two years. All MMA promotions would be affected by the new regulations, but none so much as the UFC, which enjoys a global lion’s share of the sport’s overall profits.Yang, who studied kung fu and competed in taekwondo through his early 20s, loves watching UFC fights. He got hooked on a reality show called The Ultimate Fighter in 2005 and was immediately drawn to it.The brainchild of the UFC, TUF is widely credited with introducing mixed martial arts to a new generation of fans who supported and sustained the new sport as it punched, kicked and choked its way into mainstream consciousness in the mid-2000s. Yang was among that crucial generation. He waxes about the first live TUF finale pitting Forrest Griffin against Stephan Bonnar – a barn-burner that became water-cooler fodder that Monday and convinced Spike TV to sign TUF up for a few more seasons. Yang even had his bachelor party at a UFC event in Las Vegas.As Yang’s appreciation for MMA grew, so did his connection to the fighters and his curiosity as to how it all worked. Many state athletic commissions are required to provide a list of the fighters’ purses. When Yang looked at one, his jaw dropped. The numbers just didn’t add up.“I admire the fighters, as they’re disciplined in their training,” Yang said. “They should not worry about making ends meet when they’re one of the top fighters in the world.”With data provided last year through discovery in an anti-trust lawsuit currently playing out against the UFC, it can be ascertained that anywhere from 10% to 18% of the UFC’s total revenues go to the fighters, as opposed to the 50% athletes get in other major sports. It should be noted that these figures only reflect fighter pay through 2017. Today, more fighters are making million-dollar paydays – newly retired lightweight kingpin Khabib Nurmagomedov – made at least $3m (but probably closer to $10m) for his seven-minute destruction of Justin Gaethe at UFC 254 a week ago. Yet two other fighters on the same card took home purses closer to $13,500.Yang saw such a discrepancy in fighter pay that he included ‘Empowering MMA Fighters’ as one of his presidential campaign platforms. His plan was to bring federal regulation to MMA through the Ali Act, which was passed in 2000 to protect prizefighters from coercive contracts, among other fighter protections when dealing with promoters.“The Ali Act would fundamentally change the UFC’s business model,” wrote Erik Magraken, a managing partner of the British Columbia litigation firm MacIsaac & Company, who has written extensively on the subject for combatsportslaw.com. “The door would be open for more competition from other promotions. Stars would enjoy market free agency far more frequently and open bidding from multiple promoters would be a reality. Many of the exploitative contract provisions the UFC has used to gain their position in the market would be prohibited.”Currently, MMA fighters are widely signed to multi-fight contracts with lengthy duration terms. If a fighter is injured or turns down a bout for another reason, their contract freezes until they become active again. The UFC also has a liberal ability to cut a fighter at any time.“The UFC has such market prominence that they can treat their fighters, even stars, as replaceable cogs in the machine,” wrote Magraken. “This option would largely be lost if the Ali Act was in place. Every prominent fighter would force the books to be open. Many fighters would take a stand.”Free of long-term contracts, fighters would have the ability to negotiate one fight at a time and talent would likely spread more evenly across all the sport’s promotions. The Ali Act would also address rankings. Unlike boxing, there are no independent organizations to rank the fighters, largely because the UFC hasn’t agreed to work with one. The UFC provides its own rankings for the independent media to vote on, though a vast majority do not participate. Recently, welterweight Leon Edwards was abruptly cut from the UFC’s rankings, because he wouldn’t commit to any of the opponents presented to him. A few hours later Edwards had a new opponent and his name returned to the rankings within hours.“Promoter-controlled titles would be eliminated,” wrote Magakren. “Instead, these would be overseen by outside sanctioning organizations. These organizations are regulated under the legislation with requirements for objective ranking criteria and other protection for the fighters – rank and title would become objective property rights of fighters. These could then be used when exploring and negotiating their market worth instead of tools of promotional control.”Yang believes this will be a strong start, but federal regulation will be the first swing in a one-two combination.“Applying the Ali Act would a big step forward, but to me, MMA fighters need either a union or pro association, so they can negotiate for a fairer share of the revenue stream,” Yang said. “Big changes need to happen, and I’d like to do this on a human level.” Topics MMA UFC US sports Boxing Joe Biden features

closeVideoWatch: Former WH Chief of Staff John Kelly on President TrumpListen to John Kelly's comments about President Trump at the Sea Island Summit in GA.Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said Saturday that he warned President Trump about a possible impeachment were he to hire a "yes man," allegedly pointing fingers at Trump's current acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and other advisers."I said, whatever you do -- and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place -- I said whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’ someone who won’t tell you the truth -- don’t do that," Kelly said at the Washington Examiner's Sea Island Summit political conference in Georgia. "Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached."President Trump announced last December that Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, would leave his post at the end of 2018 following a 17-month tenure in the administration. Kelly previously served as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. It was widely rumored he was considering leaving his position as chief of staff.Video“It pains me to see what’s going on because I believe if I was still there or someone like me was there, he would not be kind of, all over the place," the retired general said Saturday, later saying that the "system" of advising the president so he can make informed decisions "clearly is not in place.""And I feel bad that I left," Kelly added.TRUMP BLASTS DEMS OVER 'SHAM' IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY 'BEHIND CLOSED DOORS': 'THEY CANNOT WIN'Trump fired back at Kelly's statements Saturday, claiming his former chief of staff "never said that, never said anything like that.""If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of office," Trump said in a statement Saturday. "He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else does."White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said Kelly "was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president."GRAHAM LASHES OUT AT IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY: 'IF WE WERE DOING THIS, YOU'D BE BEATING THE SHI-- OUT OF US'Kelly, 69, said Saturday: "Someone has got to be a guide that tells [the president] that you either have the authority or you don’t, or Mr. President, don’t do it. Don’t hire someone that will just nod and say, ‘That’s a great idea, Mr. President.’ Because you will be impeached."VideoHouse Democrats in September launched an impeachment probe into President Trump after an intelligence community whistleblower filed a complaint that accused Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."The complaint centered around a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It alleged Trump pushed for a "quid pro quo," threatening to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless the country investigated 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden, his 49-year-old son Hunter and their business dealings in the country.Democrats, spearheaded by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., have since issued a slew of subpoenas and requests for massive amounts of documents they say relate to the call, and Trump and others' interactions with Ukraine -- including Trump's personal attorney Rudy Guiliani.Kelly said Saturday he warned Trump "almost 11 months ago," adding that he had "second thoughts about leaving."

Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill gave an account of a tense White House meeting that’s key to the impeachment inquiry, in a deposition transcript released Friday.At this July 10 sit-down between Trump administration officials and Ukrainian officials, Hill said, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland “blurted out” that there was an agreement: Ukraine’s president would get a meeting with President Donald Trump, if Ukraine agreed to launch certain investigations.Hill testified that National Security Adviser John Bolton reacted very badly to this — first ending the meeting, and later telling her, in rather colorful terms, to report it to the NSC’s lawyer, John Eisenberg.“He told me, and this is a direct quote,” Hill said, “‘You go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and [acting White House Chief of Staff Mick] Mulvaney are cooking up on this.’”Hill was the Trump administration’s top National Security Council official handling European and Russian issues until she left her post soon after this controversial meeting. That means she was already out of the picture by the time of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president, and the holdup of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine. So she couldn’t shed much light on those topics.But her testimony on the events she did witness certainly gives the sense that she thought something was dreadfully amiss regarding Ukraine policy in the Trump administration.She also pointed to a deeper involvement of the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, than has been known so far. The meeting in question, on July 10, brought two of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, Andrey Yermak and Oleksandr Danylyuk, to the White House, to meet with Bolton, Hill, and other officials from the NSC. The now-famous “Three Amigos” who had taken on a major role in directing Ukraine policy — Sondland, Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry — also attended.At first, Hill said, the meeting was ordinary. The Ukrainians asked for advice on streamlining their own national security council. They also were pressing their demand for a White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — but Bolton was unwilling to commit to one yet.That, Hill says, is when Sondland “blurted out: Well, we have an agreement with the Chief of Staff for a meeting if these investigations in the energy sector start.”“We all kind of looked up and thought that was somewhat odd,” Hill testified, and Bolton “immediately stiffened and ended the meeting.”“He said: Well, it was very nice to see you, you know, I can’t discuss a meeting at this time,” Hill went on. “It was very abrupt.”Sondland, however, asked both the Americans and the Ukrainians to move with him to another room, to discuss next steps. Bolton chose not to go. But he told Hill, in her recounting: “Go down to the Ward Room right now and find out what they’re talking about and come back and talk to me.” She did so, and she recounted what she’d heard to the impeachment investigators: “Ambassador Sondland, in front of the Ukrainians, as I came in, was talking about how he had an agreement with Chief of Staff Mulvaney for a meeting with the Ukrainians if they were going to go forward with investigations. And my director for Ukraine was looking completely alarmed.”Hill said she then cut in and told Sondland that they couldn’t talk about that in front of the Ukrainians. But, Hill continued, “Ambassador Sondland cut me off, and he said: We have an agreement that they’ll have a meeting.”Finally, they got the Ukrainians to leave the room. And then, Hill recounted, Sondland talked about discussions he’d had with Mulvaney and Rudy Giuliani on this subject. Hill had insisted planning for such a meeting had to go through the proper process, after which Sondland backed off.Afterward, she said she reported back to Bolton, who told her: “You go and tell [NSC lawyer John] Eisenberg that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.”Hill also testified that it was “apparent” to her at this point that Sondland’s reference to investigations “in the energy sector” was code for Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company Hunter Biden had sat on the board of — in part because Rudy Giuliani had been saying as much on television for some time.Bolton, she says, was aware of this as well. “In Ambassador Bolton’s office, when I was meeting with him, the television was always on,” Hill testified. “And it was usually on Fox News.”All this means, according to Hill’s account, that an early quid pro quo was communicated to the Ukrainians, weeks in advance of Trump’s now-infamous phone call with Zelensky on July 25: if they wanted a White House meeting for Zelensky, they had to agree to investigate Burisma.Trump administration officials like Sondland and Volker continued to communicate this quid pro quo to the Ukrainians through July and August. (Later, at the end of August and in early September, Sondland conveyed an even broader quid quo pro — saying that hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine also hinged on the investigations Trump wanted.)Another interesting bit of Hill’s testimony is that she suggested Sondland was working with Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on this. Sondland has attempted to claim the demand for investigations was entirely coming from Rudy Giuliani. But, per Hill, the very top White House staffer underneath the president — Mulvaney — was knee-deep in this too.Hill said that, at an earlier point, Sondland even managed to circumvent the NSC’s process to add a paragraph to a letter Trump was sending to Zelensky. “Ambassador Sondland coordinated on that letter directly with the Chief of Staff,” Hill said. This suggests, again, that Sondland had juice in the highest levels of the White House — and that he wasn’t, as some Trump defenders have begun suggesting, freelancing or working on his own. 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.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a striking shift from President Donald Trump’s claim of “perfect” dealings with Ukraine, his defense asserted Wednesday at his Senate trial that a trade of U.S. military aid for political favors — even if proven — could not be grounds for his impeachment.Trump’s defenders relied on retired professor Alan Dershowitz, a member of their team, who told senators that every politician conflates his own interest with the public interest. “It cannot be impeachable,” he declared.Democrats pressed hard to force the Senate to call more witnesses to testify, but Republicans appeared intently focused on bringing the impeachment trial to a vote of acquittal, possibly in a matter of days. Even new revelations from former national security adviser John Bolton were countered by the president’s lawyers, who used Wednesday’s unusual question-and-answer session to warn off prolonging the proceeding, insisting senators have heard enough. ADVERTISEMENTDemocrats argued Bolton’s forthcoming book cannot be ignored. It contends he personally heard Trump say he wanted military aid withheld from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden — the abuse of power charge that is the first article of impeachment. The vote on calling witnesses is expected by Friday.As Chief Justice John Roberts fielded queries, Texas Republican Ted Cruz asked if it mattered whether there was a quid pro quo?Simply, no, declared Dershowitz, who said many politicians equate their reelection with the public good. “That’s why it’s so dangerous to try to psychoanalyze a president,” he said.Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat leading the House prosecutors, appeared stunned. “All quid pro quos are not the same,” he retorted. Some might be acceptable, some not. “And you don’t need to be a mind reader to figure out which is which. For one thing, you can ask John Bolton.”With voting on witnesses later this week, Democrats, amid the backdrop of protesters swarming the Capitol, are making a last-ditch push to sway Republicans to call Bolton and others to appear for testimony and ensure a “fair trial.” Trump faces charges from the House that he abused his power like no other president, jeopardizing Ukraine and U.S.-Ukraine relations by using the military aid as leverage while the vulnerable ally battled Russia. The second article of impeachment says Trump then obstructed the House probe in a way that threatened the nation’s three-branch system of checks and balances.ADVERTISEMENTOver two days, senators are grilling the House Democrats prosecuting the case and the Republican president’s defense team. Dozens of questions were asked and answered Wednesday in five-minute clips, with senators under orders to sit silently without comment, submitting their questions in writing. They finished shortly past 11 p.m. and were expected to keep going Thursday.Democratic leader Chuck Schumer asked whether the Senate could really render a fair verdict without hearing from Bolton or acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, both potential eyewitnesses to Trump’s actions.“Don’t wait for the book. Don’t wait ’til March 17, when it is in black and white to find out the answer to your question,” Schiff told the Senate. That publication date is now in doubt. The White House on Wednesday released a letter to Bolton’s attorney objecting to “significant amounts of classified information” in the manuscript, including at the top secret level. Bolton and his attorney have insisted the book does not contain any classified information.The White House action could delay the book’s publication if Bolton, who resigned last September — Trump says he was fired — is forced to revise his draft.GOP senators are straining to balance the new revelations with pressure for quick acquittal. They have been sternly warned by party leaders that calling Bolton as a witness could entangle the trial in lengthy legal battles and delay Trump’s expected acquittal.White House lawyers made exactly that point. Attorney Pat Philbin said in response to the Democrats’ first question, “This institution will effectively be paralyzed for months.” That was echoed by others.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell huddled privately with senators for a third consecutive day, acknowledging he didn’t yet have the votes to brush back Democratic demands for witnesses now that revelations from Bolton have roiled the trial. But Republicans said they were making progress.Republican ideas for dealing with Bolton and his book were fizzling almost as soon as they arose — among them, “swapping” witnesses with Democrats or issuing a subpoena for Bolton’s manuscript.Most Republican senators don’t want to extend the trial by calling Bolton, and most Democrats would rather avoid dragging the Bidens further into the impeachment proceedings. The Bidens were a focus of defense arguments, though no evidence of wrongdoing has emerged. Bolton writes in a forthcoming book that Trump told him he wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until it helped with investigations into Biden. That assertion, if true, would undercut a key defense argument and go to the heart of one of the two articles of impeachment against the president.“I think Bolton probably has something to offer us,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. She met privately Wednesday with McConnell.Trump disagreed in a tweet Wednesday in which he complained that Bolton, after he left the White House, “goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security.” The uncertainty about witnesses arises days before crucial votes on the issue. In a Senate split 53-47 in favor of Republicans, at least four GOP senators must join all Democrats to reach the 51 votes required to call witnesses, decide whom to call or do nearly anything else in the trial. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine tried to give fresh momentum to a one-for-one witness deal, saying it’s “very important that there be fairness, that each side be able to select a witness or two.” But Democrats dismissed those offers.“It’s irrelevant. It’s a distraction,” said Schumer.Collins, Murkowski and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney signaled an interest in calling Bolton or other witnesses, and questions and answers at times appeared directed at them.Schiff’s response to Dershowitz focused on one particular senator: He asked his audience to imagine what would have happened if then-President Barack Obama asked the Russians to dig up dirt on then-candidate Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee?Romney, standing at the back of the chamber, smiled occasionally at mention of his name. Far from voiding the last election, Schiff said, impeachment is protecting the next one, in 2020, from any future Trump efforts to ask foreign governments to intervene.Republicans tried to engage the president’s defense, at times raising the profile of the still anonymous government whistleblower whose complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine sparked the impeachment inquiry. Democrats kept focus on the case for Trump’s conviction and removal, which would require 67 votes in the Senate and seems unlikely. At times, there were telling exchanges. In one, the White House team could not fully respond when Collins and Murkowski asked if Trump had ever pursued Biden investigations before the former vice president announced his presidential bid in 2019.Philbin argued that relying on foreign information in a U.S. campaign isn’t necessarily a campaign law violation, drawing objections later from Democrats. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who said he was “flabbergasted.”In another, Dershowitz acknowledged he has changed his thinking on what the Founders intended with impeachment and keeps “refining” his views.As the long night drew to a close, so did Schiff’s remarks, warning senators they were lowering the bar for Trump, dressing it up with legalese. “Corruption is still corruption,” he said. One person watching from the sidelines Wednesday was Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Parnas arrived at the Capitol but could not enter the Senate with his court-ordered electronic-tracking device. He has turned over evidence for the investigation, and said he wants to testify.___Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump’s response to the House of Representatives’ approval of two articles of impeachment against him was, in some respects, even uglier than could’ve reasonably been anticipated. And given Trump’s track record, that’s saying something.At the exact moment the House approved the first article of impeachment, Trump was 600 miles away at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, telling a relatively innocuous, absurd tale he’s repeatedly told about how the military’s stealth planes are literally invisible. I’m case you’re we’re wondering what Trump was saying at the exact moment they reached 216 votes for impeachment, it was another insane story about how he thinks stealth fighters are actually invisible. pic.twitter.com/IPlRHinz2m— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 19, 2019 Things took a darker turn from there, however. Instead of backing away from the conspiracy theories about the Bidens that are at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Trump leaned into them, at one point claiming that if he did what the Bidens have done, “they’d bring the electric chair back.” Though that said more about his sense of victimization by House Democrats, its underlying assumption is that former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter did something criminal. But the bad optics of Hunter Biden serving in a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time as his father was involved in Ukraine policy aside, there’s not a shred of evidence supporting Trump’s claims.At other points during the rally, Trump basked in “lock her up!” chants directed at Hillary Clinton, and suggested she might end up behind bars. (The crowd also directed “lock her up” chants at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier in the night, when Vice President Mike Pence was on stage.) He heaped scorn on the Democrat who oversaw the House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings, chair Adam Schiff, calling him “not the best looking guy I’ve ever seen,” and on former FBI Director James Comey, saying “Did I do a great job when I fired his ass?”But the lowest moment of the night came when Trump attacked Debbie Dingell, a Democratic congresswoman from the state he was speaking in, for voting in favor of impeachment. He even went as far as suggesting that her husband, the late World War II veteran and former congressman John Dingell, whose seat she now holds, is in hell.Trump began his attack on Dingell by suggesting she owed him something for allowing her husband to have a state funeral after he passed away earlier this year. He claimed Debbie Dingell called him and thanked him.“‘He’s looking down, he’d be so thrilled. Thank you so much sir,’” Trump said, paraphrasing Debbie, before going on to suggest that heaven is not where John Dingell ended up. “I said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Maybe he’s looking up — I don’t know.”The response of Trump’s audience to those comments indicated it may have been a bit much even for them. Trump laments that Debbie Dingell voted to impeach him despite the fact that he allowed the normal state funeral to proceed for her late husband, former Rep. John Dingell. Trump then suggests John Dingell is in hell -- to audible groans. pic.twitter.com/wsYfddNIA9— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 19, 2019 After the rally, Debbie Dingell responded by tweeting about how hurtful Trump’s comments are as she deals with the first holiday season following her husband’s passing. Mr. President, let’s set politics aside. My husband earned all his accolades after a lifetime of service. I’m preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love. You brought me down in a way you can never imagine and your hurtful words just made my healing much harder.— Rep. Debbie Dingell (@RepDebDingell) December 19, 2019 Dingell wasn’t the only woman Trump targeted with comments that were in extremely poor taste. Early during his speech, after protesters unfurled a banner that read “DON THE CON. YOU’RE FIRED!” Trump responded by calling a woman protester “a real slob” and lamented that security guards weren’t rougher with her while kicking her out of the arena. Trump disses a woman protester: "There is a slob, there is a real slob ... She will get hell when she comes back home with mom."Trump then laments that security didn't rough her up as she was getting kicked out. pic.twitter.com/sIFZfg18LQ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 19, 2019 When he wasn’t on the attack, Trump tried to spin becoming the third president in American history to be impeached, touting the fact that not a single House Republican voted in favor of impeachment. He claimed that the “lawless partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat party,” even though a Fox News poll that was released on Sunday showed a majority of registered voters favoring the course of action the House took on Wednesday.Trump also played the victim, whining about how hard impeachment has been on his family. TRUMP whines about impeachment: "But it's my life. Very unfair to my family. I have to say this. Very unfair to my family. What they put my family through is a disgrace. Me - it's my life, it's fine. But what they've put my family through is a disgrace & they ought to be ashamed" pic.twitter.com/xHXJoI8ONQ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 19, 2019 Trump’s speech, which was more than two hours in length, showed that he’s not repentant about being impeached. Coming as it did a day after he sent Pelosi a rambling, angry letter about the impeachment vote, it indicated he’s not dealing well with the strain.But even though a Senate trial is now officially looming, Trump, if anything, escalated the ugliness. And why not? After all, unless Republicans suddenly become bothered by his bad behavior — and there’s no indication they will — he has little reason to fear becoming the first president to be removed from office.The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage. 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. 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