WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats moved aggressively to draw up formal articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Thursday, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying he “leaves us no choice” but to act swiftly because he’s likely to corrupt the system again unless removed before next year’s election.A strictly partisan effort at this point, derided immediately by Trump and other leading Republicans as a sham and a hoax, it is a politically risky undertaking. Democrats say it is their duty, in the aftermath of the Ukraine probe, while Republicans say it will drive Pelosi’s majority from office.ADVERTISEMENTCongress must act, Pelosi said. “The democracy is what is at stake.”“The president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution,” she said in a somber address at the Capitol. “He is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit. The president has engaged in abuse of power, undermining our national security and jeopardizing the integrity of our elections.”Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong. He tweeted that the Democrats “have gone crazy.”At the core of the impeachment probe is a July phone call with the president of Ukraine, in which Trump pressed the leader to investigate Democrats, including political rival Joe Biden. At the same time the White House was withholding military aid from Ukraine, an ally bordering an aggressive Russia.Drafting articles of impeachment is a milestone moment, only the fourth time in U.S. history Congress has tried to remove a president, and it intensifies the rigid and polarizing partisanship of the Trump era that is consuming Washington and dividing the nation.The speaker delivered her historic announcement in solemn tones at the Capitol, drawing on the Constitution and the Founding Fathers in forcefully claiming Congress’ oversight of the president in the nation’s system of checks and balances. Democrats are already beginning to prepare the formal charges, pushing toward House votes, possibly before Christmas. “Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairmen to proceed with articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said.Seemingly eager to fight, Trump tweeted that if Democrats “are going to impeach me, do it now, fast.” Though he has fought the House investigation, trying to bar current and former officials from testifying, he said he now wants to move on to a “fair trial” in the Senate. ADVERTISEMENTApproval of articles of impeachment is considered likely in the Democratic-majority House. Conviction in a following trial in the Republican-dominated Senate seems very unlikely.Once reluctant to pursue impeachment, warning it was too divisive for the country and needed to be bipartisan, Pelosi is now leading Congress into politically uncertain terrain for all sides just ahead of the election year.Republican are standing lockstep with Trump, unswayed by arguments that his actions amount to wrongdoing, let alone impeachable offenses. That is leaving Democrats to go it alone in a campaign to consider removing the 45th president from office. At a town hall late Thursday on CNN, Pelosi said she would have no regrets if impeachment ended up helping Trump’s reelection effort. “This isn’t about politics at all,” she said. “It’s about honoring our oath of office” — to defend the Constitution.Pelosi has emphasized the Russia connection, from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into 2016 election interference to the president’s phone call this summer with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that set off alarms in Washington.Russia and President Vladimir Putin benefited most from Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, she said. “All roads lead to Putin. Understand that,” she declared at a morning news conference at the Capitol. “That was the a-ha moment.”She spoke solemnly and calmly, but that changed when she was asked as she was leaving if she hates Trump.Pelosi stiffened, returned to the podium and responded sharply that the president’s views and politics are for the voters to judge at elections but impeachment “is about the Constitution.” She said that as a Catholic, she does not hate the president but rather is praying for him daily.Trump quickly tweeted back that he didn’t believe her.Trump’s allies argue that voters, not lawmakers, should decide the president’s future. But Democrats say the nation cannot wait for the 2020 election, alleging Trump’s past efforts to have foreign countries intervene in the presidential campaign are forcing them to act to prevent him from doing it again. Pelosi said the still-anonymous whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s Ukraine call changed the dynamic, creating the urgency to act.The number of articles and the allegations they will include will be both a legal and political exercise for the House committee chairmen, who will be meeting privately. They must balance electoral dynamics while striving to hit the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”Pulling from the House’s 300-page investigation of the Ukraine matter, Democrats are focusing on at least three areas — abuse of power, bribery and obstruction — that could result in two to five articles, they say.They argue that Trump abused the power of his office by putting personal political gain over national security interests; engaging in bribery by holding out $400 million in military aid that Congress had approved for Ukraine; and then obstructing Congress by stonewalling the investigation.Some liberal Democrats want to reach further into Trump’s actions, particularly regarding the findings from special counsel Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. That could produce an additional article of obstruction not only of Congress, but also of justice.But more centrist and moderate Democrats, those lawmakers who are most at risk of political fallout from the impeachment proceedings, prefer to stick with the Ukraine matter as a simpler narrative that Americans can more easily understand.The GOP Leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, said Pelosi is more concerned about tearing the president down than building the country up. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., criticized Democrats for focusing on impeachment over other issues, though many House-passed bills are waiting for action in his chamber. “It’s all impeachment, all the time,” he said.At the White House, press secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that Pelosi and the Democrats “should be ashamed.”House members are preparing to vote on the articles of impeachment in the Judiciary Committee, possibly as soon as next week. The committee set a Monday hearing to receive the Intelligence Committee’s report outlining the findings against the president.The House is expecting a full vote by Christmas. That would send the issue to the Senate for a trial in the new year.___Associated Press writers Matthew Daly, Zeke Miller, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Colleen Long, Eric Tucker and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

This has a historical echo with the later years of the Soviet Union. In the 1970s and ’80s, many Soviet citizens—among them young people, writers, and artists, the sorts of people one would expect to be engaged in political life—pulled away from politics, which seemed to them to be a waste of time. They were not dissidents or activists; they just didn’t care. This lack of interest took different forms. In his study of the late Soviet period, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, the anthropologist Alexei Yurchak describes some young Soviets forming odd, apolitical artist collectives, while others joined clubs whose members passionately debated more or less everything except current events. “Everyone understood everything, so why speak about that? It was uninteresting,” a former university student told Yurchak dismissively of dissident politics. Likewise, in an exchange with an American sociologist during this period, one Soviet rock musician explained, “We’re interested in universal problems which don’t depend on this or that system, or on a particular time.” His bandmate chimed in: “People are interested in politics, and I don’t know why they are.”These Soviet musicians might have agreed with Atwood’s suggestion that artists should focus on timeless explorations of what it means to be human. Yurchak also quotes a onetime member of an apolitical literary club remembering the group as an “artificially created microclimate”—which recalls Atwood’s vision of an artistic garden separate from politics, or the Instagrammable comfort of domestic cozy. Writing in The New York Review of Books in 2019, the British writer Viv Groskop wondered whether Westerners overwhelmed by the news might wish to adopt the Soviet tradition of “internal exile” and curl into themselves to find peace away from politics. “It is reasonable,” Groskop wrote, “to conclude that apathy must surely be defensible as some kind of political act.”Those Soviets who withdrew from politics were responding to the boredom of a public life curtailed by official limitations on what could and couldn’t be said. Today, the boredom of the Trump era is the product of a different kind of censorship, what the journalist Peter Pomerantsev calls “censorship through noise.” Instead of the tedium of silence, this is the tedium of endless clatter. But it has the same effect. Whether you choose not to speak about politics and turn your attention elsewhere, or you decide to say the same thing over and over again, the odds are that political leadership will carry on just as it did before. So why bother at all?The United States is not yet in the extreme circumstances in which Yurchak’s subjects found themselves. When Atwood suggested in 2017 that artists should tend their own gardens, she was not recommending that they turn away from the news entirely—after all, she’s continued to speak publicly about the Trump presidency and explore political themes in her fiction—but rather that they remember that there are ideas outside politics. If Trump retains power for a second term, though, resisting the pull of apathy may prove more difficult. This pervasive disinterest is a dangerous thing for a democracy, which depends on political engagement among its people in order to survive. And Trump would surely welcome such detachment, which would only make it easier for him to hold on to power.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei discusses how his company will navigate the trade war, concerns over whether its equipment could be used to spy for Beijing and his road trip across America. Photo: Anthony Kwan for The Wall Street Journal By Jan. 23, 2020 5:30 am ET BEIJING—The U.S. is preparing for a longer and broader campaign to banish Huawei Technologies Co. from next-generation 5G cellular networks around the world, as Washington faces resistance on the front line of its lobbying campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. U.K. officials have indicated they would restrict but not forbid the use of Huawei equipment. The Trump administration sees Britain and Germany as bellwethers that could prompt other nations to welcome Huawei, a giant maker of cellular equipment that... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions. House Democrats released the full transcripts of closed-door depositions with witnesses in the impeachment inquiry. They corroborate what we already know: There was a quid pro quo. [Vox / Lauren Katz] Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU and Trump donor, revised his previous testimony to say that — yep — there was a quid pro quo after all. That’s the first time a Trump ally willingly offered such information. [Vox / Andrew Prokop] So wait: Why are Democrats holding risky open hearings next week if they have all the information they need? Because they want Americans to hear about for themselves, Democrats say. [Vox / Alex Ward] John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, is willing to testify as long as a court allows him to over the White House’s objections. It could make the inquiry’s most dramatic moment. [Washington Post / Carol Leonnig and Tom Hamburger] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came oh-so close to caving to Trump’s demands by going on CNN to announce an investigation into the Bidens. But in the end he didn’t have to — everyone in Washington found out about the frozen military aid to Ukraine. [New York Times / Andrew Kramer] Vox released a mega-explainer of the impeachment drama. It’s the most comprehensive guide to the entire story, and the team here will update it to keep you in the know on the twists and turns. [Vox / Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Prokop] In response to the controversial Bolivian presidential election last month, protesters escalated unrest by snatching the mayor of Vinto. [New York Times / Mónica Machicao and Kirk Semple] Protesters doused Patricia Arce in red paint, chopped off her hair, forced her to sign an ad-hoc resignation letter, and paraded her in the streets without shoes. They claim that Arce organized a pro-government crowd that clashed with the anti-government demonstrators, killing one protester from the latter group. [BBC] This latest chapter in global protests began when Bolivian President Evo Morales overrode the voting down of a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a third term. Morales then proceeded to declare himself the outright winner of the election and put an end to a potential runoff. [AP News / Carlos Valdez] Following an outcry from the people of Bolivia, the opposition party, and international election monitors, the votes were recounted to reveal Morales’s victory by a slim margin, but it didn’t stop swirling accusations of electoral fraud and protesters clashing with counterprotesters in the streets. [Reuters / Vivian Sequera and Daniel Ramos] Foreign Policy put the protests in Bolivia in context with a pessimistic view of the protests sweeping across Latin America. [Foreign Policy / Christopher Sabatini and Anar Bata] On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, reflections on how much has actually changed. [Washington Post] A lawsuit from a referee claims that Jim Jordan — a Congress member who was previously an assistant football coach at Ohio State University — was aware of the acts of sexual misconduct by Dr. Richard Strauss at OSU. [NBC News / Corky Siemaszko] One Florida library’s refusal to pay for a “fake news” subscription mirrors a larger fight between journalism and Trump. [Tampa Bay Times / Zachary T. Sampson and Josh Fiallo] ACLU lawyers are bringing a case against the US government’s unwillingness to disclose how they use facial recognition technology. [Vox / Delia Paunescu] Kurds warn the EU that Europe could face a surge in ISIS fighter arrivals if it fails to take a harder line with Turkey. [Reuters / Guy Faulconbridge] “There isn’t really a gender achievement gap in math, but there is in reading.” [Assistant professor at St. John’s University Erin Fahle asserting that females read about two-thirds of an academic year ahead of their male peers]One of the biggest moments in the Cold War started with a little confusion at a press conference. [YouTube / Coleman Lowndes]Survey: the epidemic of teen vaping continues to surge, unabated Will you help keep Vox free for all? Millions of people rely on Vox to understand how the policy decisions made in Washington, from health care to unemployment to housing, could impact their lives. Our work is well-sourced, research-driven, and in-depth. And that kind of work takes resources. Even after the economy recovers, advertising alone will never be enough to support it. If you have already made a contribution to Vox, thank you. If you haven’t, help us keep our journalism free for everyone by making a financial contribution today, from as little as $3.

The bribe would be obvious to everyone if Trump and the people acting on his behalf had told the Ukrainians, We’ll release your military aid, but do us the favor of contributing $1 million to Trump 2020.Instead, they pressed Ukraine for a favor as valuable to Trump 2020 as $1 million: They asked Ukraine to launch, or at least to announce, a corruption investigation into the Biden family. In return, Team Trump implied, Ukraine would get its military aid or an Oval Office meeting.Trump asked for a favor that would benefit him politically and tied it to foreign aid. He sought a thing he valued because it would help him get reelected with the implied promise that it would change his behavior as president.It doesn’t matter that Ukraine didn’t deliver the thing of value––mere solicitation of a bribe is verboten. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich went to prison for soliciting money in exchange for an appointment to the U.S. Senate. It didn’t matter that he never got paid. The recording of his request was enough.The bribery charge sticks to Trump whether one looks to federal law or to the understanding of bribery in the era of the Framers.Aaron Blake reports on current law at The Washington Post: The federal bribery statute says someone has committed bribery if he or she is a “public official” who “directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally … in return for … being influenced in the performance of any official act.” The argument here would be that Trump sought politically helpful investigations from Ukraine in exchange for releasing military aid and/or granting a much-sought Oval Office meeting for its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. To date, six officials have said there was some kind of quid pro quo there. As for bribery as the Framers understood it, a trio of attorneys writing at Lawfare quote 18th- and early-19th-century legal treatises to show that the constitutional understanding was even broader than what federal law now prohibits––put simply, bribery was “understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit rather than for the public interest.”They go on to explain: The understanding of bribery at the Founding maps perfectly onto Trump’s conduct in his call with Zelensky. As noted above, Trump made clear to Zelensky that he was asking him for a “favor”—not a favor to benefit the United States as a whole or the public interest, but a favor that would accrue to the personal benefit of Trump by harming his political rival. Trump’s request that Zelensky work with his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, underscores that Trump was seeking a private benefit. And Trump was not seeking this “undue reward” (to quote “Russell on Crimes” and the Delaware statute) as a mere aside unrelated to the president’s official role. Rather, he did so in the course of an official diplomatic conversation with a head-of-state. In fact, Rudy Giuliani has since stated, “The investigation I conducted concerning 2016 Ukrainian collusion and corruption, was done solely as a defense attorney to defend my client against false charges, that kept changing as one after another were disproven,” characterizing his own actions as something not done to benefit the American people, but done “solely” to benefit Trump.

Jeff Daniels has one bit of advice for Joe Biden in Tuesday’s debate against Donald Trump: Punch him in the mouth. Figuratively. (Fast-forward to 12:10 below.) Daniels, who plays then-FBI Director James Comey in the early days of the Trump presidency in “The Comey Rule,” suggested Monday on “The Late Late Show” that the Democratic challenger needs to confront Trump like a fighter. “You wanna take on a bully? Punch him in the mouth ... with your words,” Daniels told host James Corden. “Call him on the lies, call him on the flip-flops, call him on ‘don’t worry, it’s just a hoax, it’s just like the flu.’” “He’s never called on it,” the “Dumb and Dumber” actor continued. Trump’s supporters “need to know,” he added. “They were conned once. It can’t happen again. Not now. It’s too important.” In the title role of the new Showtime miniseries, the star’s Comey defies Trump’s demand for loyalty. Daniels said he briefly considered playing both Comey and Trump (who was eventually played by Brendan Gleeson). However, his wife persuaded him to drop the idea because Trump talks too much, requiring excessive dialogue to memorize. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

closeVideoDemocratic lawmaker explains his opposition to impeachmentRep. Jeff Van Drew weighs in on 'Fox & Friends.'President Trump on Sunday praised Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., amid speculation that the anti-impeachment Democrat plans to switch to the Republican Party as the House readies for a full vote on impeaching the president.Van Drew -- who has spent months criticizing fellow Democrats for their push to impeach Trump -- met with Trump on Friday to discuss going across party lines. He is one of only two Democrats who voted against opening an impeachment inquiry into Trump and has remained a fervent voice in opposition to impeaching the president."Wow, that would be big," Trump tweeted early Sunday morning of Van Drew's planned party switch. "Always heard Jeff is very smart!"A source told Fox News that Van Drew may be seeking a Rose Garden ceremony if he were to switch.The news of Van Drew's possible party flip drew harsh criticism from Democrats, who called it a political move aimed at turning around his flagging approval numbers in New Jersey's 2nd Conngressional District.New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, called the party switch "cynical and desperate.""Jeff Van Drew has chosen his political career over our Constitution," Murphy said in a statement Friday night. "Despite knowing full well that the president has abused the powers of his office, Congressman Van Drew is now willing to enable Donald Trump just to try to salvage his own election."He added: "Betraying our values by siding with Donald Trump is the final straw and made it impossible for him to continue being supported by our party, as grassroots activists, local party leaders in his district, and I have made clear in recent weeks."HOUSE DEM RAILS AGAINST IMPEACHMENT PUSH: 'EVERYTHING OUR COUNTRY DOESN'T STAND FOR'“He’s an NRA favorite. He’s passed no meaningful legislation, he’s raised no money and his own polling shows he has no chance in the election,” a senior Democratic source told The Hill. “This has nothing to do with impeachment and everything to do with a politician who hasn’t delivered for his constituents.”A recent internal poll conducted for the Democrats found that 58 percent of primary voters in his district wanted to nominate another candidate, while only 28 percent said Van Drew should be renominated.The Washington Post first reported that Trump had personally urged Van Drew to jump ship and that the lawmaker strongly considering it. The New York Times reported that he could make an announcement as soon as next week, just as the House gears up to vote on impeachment.A spokesperson for Van Drew did not immediately return a request for comment. Two Democratic aides told Fox News that they expected Van Drew to switch parties.While Van Drew has called President Trump’s conduct in relation to his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “unsavory,” he has repeatedly said he did not see evidence that would justify his removal from office. He was one of just two House Democrats to oppose the House’s November vote to set impeachment rules.In an interview with Fox Business last month, he said he would vote against articles of impeachment unless he hears evidence against President Trump that "rises to the level of treason or a high crime."He said the "Founding Fathers had vigorous debates of whether they would even allow impeachment in the Constitution," and that he favors allowing voters to decide the matter in next year's election."You don't disenfranchise voters, millions upon millions of voters. Voters choose their leaders in America," Van Drew had said.VideoThe Times reported that during conversations between Van Drew and Trump advisers, where the freshman congressman said he was nervous about losing his seat either in a Democratic primary -- due to his opposition to impeachment in a liberal state -- or in a general election. A Democratic aide told Fox News that a recent poll his campaign took showed another Democrat would beat him in a primary race.The Times reported that while Van Drew has not yet made a final decision, he was serious enough that he discussed what day to make an announcement and whether to do it before the upcoming vote on articles of impeachment.The meeting came the same day that the House Judiciary Committee voted to adopt two articles of impeachment in a party-line vote. The article allege abuse of power and obstruction by Trump. Should the House adopt the articles next week, it could trigger a Senate trial in the new year just as 2020 presidential primaries are about to get underway."Today is a solemn and sad day," Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told reporters after the vote. "For the third time in a little over a century and a half, the House Judiciary Committee has voted articles of impeachment against the president -- for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House will act expeditiously."Fox News' Andrew O'Reilly, Marisa Schultz, Sam Dorman and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

On Friday night, one week after fervidly defending ex-Fox News host Megyn Kelly over her firing from NBC News (this after she defended the practice of blackface on Halloween), Bill Maher returned to his HBO program Real Time. And, prior to a softball interview with Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, the comedian addressed the latest impeachment-trial madness from President Trump’s legal defense team—namely, lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s claim that, because Trump believes “his election is in the public interest… if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” “You saw Alan Dershowitz, the president’s chief lawyer there at the trial, say that any action taken by this president to help his re-election is, by definition, in the public interest. When did we decide that?” asked Maher. “I can commit any crime if it’s good for me, because then it’s good for America? That’s like saying you can’t arrest a car thief if he thinks he should be walking more.” “Alan Dershowitz, I tell ya. What happens to these people? Alan Dershowitz used to be normal!” he continued, jokingly adding, “He came up with this idea when he was on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane, which he was a lot. He was getting a massage from I’m sure a completely age-appropriate young lady, in his underwear, and he ran it by her, this theory, and she said, ‘Please, don’t make my job disgusting.’” (Dershowitz was a close acquaintance of Epstein’s as well as on his legal defense team, and at least two of Epstein’s trafficked victims say that he directed them to have sex with Dershowitz. While Dershowitz admitted to receiving a massage at Epstein’s mansion, in his underwear, he’s denied the claims of sex with trafficked women.) Then, Maher reacted with disgust to Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-TN) decision to not allow witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial, thus closing the door on the Democratic pipe dream of actually, you know, allowing witnesses in a trial—instead of a show trial. “So, it’s a done deal. This is gonna happen. Trump will get acquitted on Wednesday,” offered Maher. “As always, with Trump, nothing will happen to him. He’s had bigger slaps on the wrist from Melania. And in the future, when Trump shoots someone on Fifth Avenue, Mitch McConnell will be there to lick the blood on his shoes.” “So, we’re officially living in a dictatorship,” he exclaimed, “and not even one with good rail service!”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team realized it had a potential problem in U.S. relations on May 10, when Rudolph W. Giuliani told Fox News that a Ukrainian advisor to the newly elected leader was a Trump enemy.“I’m convinced that [Zelensky] is surrounded by people who are enemies of the president, and one person in particular, who is clearly corrupt and involved in this scheme,” Giuliani said.The former New York mayor, now serving as President Trump’s private attorney, was talking about Sergei Leshchenko, a young member of parliament and former investigative journalist who was in line for a top position in the Ukrainian president’s new administration.The next day, Leshchenko was dismissed from consideration for Zelensky’s team.Zelensky’s advisors understood that Giuliani was a mouthpiece for President Trump, and the last thing the new Ukrainian president wanted was a sour start with the White House.“For the new president, it was impossible to have such a negative narrative with an American president at the very beginning,” Leshchenko said. “So, it of course had a bad impact on my political prospects with Zelensky’s team.”From that moment, Leshchenko became the focal point in Giuliani’s campaign to push conspiracy theories involving Ukraine. But what was at the heart of Giuliani’s narrative was a mysterious accounting book that became known as “the black ledger.”In 2016, Leshchenko was part of a group of young politicians pushing for democratic reforms in Ukraine. In his former life as a journalist, he had developed a reputation for hard-hitting reporting that exposed high-profile corruption cases. Ukrainian lawmaker Sergei Leshchenko, standing in front of a screen showing an image of former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, at a news conference in Kyiv on Aug. 19, 2016.(Sergei Supinsky / AFP/Getty Images) That August, Leshchenko held a news conference in Kyiv to disclose the existence of a notebook found in a burned-out room in the headquarters of Ukraine’s former ruling political party. The book revealed a list of purported secret payments made by Ukraine’s former pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovich, to Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.Leshchenko certainly had reason to dislike Manafort. Before joining Trump’s election campaign in 2016, Manafort had worked as Yanukovich’s consultant. Leshchenko and other anti-corruption, pro-reform leaders in Ukraine blamed Manafort for helping Yanukovich get elected in 2010. The president then used his position to get rich by stealing from Ukrainian government coffers.In 2013, government corruption had helped ignite the Maidan street revolution in Kyiv. Yanukovich fled to Russia, which occupied and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula a month later. Moscow continues to support a separatist insurgency fighting Ukrainian government forces in the east.A U.S. federal court in March sentenced Manafort to 7½ years for fraud and money laundering, some of which stemmed from unreported payments from Ukraine.Manafort’s imprisonment came out of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt.” Paul Manafort’s VIP jail treatment: A private phone line, a laptop and his own shower Paul Manafort’s VIP jail treatment: A private phone line, a laptop and his own shower When President Trump’s former campaign chairman wants to call his lawyers from jail, he doesn’t have to line up at a pay phone. Trump blamed Ukraine for Manafort’s troubles, saying the incident proved that Ukraine “tried to take me down.” He started pressing for an investigation into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies had established that Russia, not Ukraine, had meddled in the election.By May, Leshchenko was in Giuliani’s sights.In a series of interviews on Fox News and CNN, Giuliani accused Leshchenko of colluding with Democrats to interfere in the election. By Giuliani’s accounts, Ukrainians — namely Leshchenko — conspired with Democrats to focus attention on Manafort’s business in Ukraine in an attempt to cripple the Trump campaign.Giuliani called the black ledger a “complete fake.” Ukrainian lawmaker Sergei Leshchenko holds pages purportedly from a ledger showing payments to Paul Manafort by the party of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich during a news conference in Kyiv in 2016.(Sergei Supinsky / AFP/Getty Images) Leshchenko denies Giuliani’s accusations. He said he was shocked when he realized Trump’s personal lawyer was dragging Ukraine into the fray of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and trying to bring Leshchenko’s reputation down with it.“This story intoxicated the whole U.S.-Ukraine narrative,” said Leshchenko, a tall, thin 39-year-old with the look of a college professor.Zelensky, a former comedian with no previous political experience, was elected in April with more than 73% of the vote.“I support him, and I like his way to destroy this establishment of cronyism and corruption, which was very destructive for Ukraine for the past 25 years,” Leshchenko said.Leshchenko said he understood that if the Trump White House viewed Leshchenko as part of Zelensky’s team, it would be damaging for the new Ukrainian president, so he agreed to drop out of the running to join the new administration.“I told [Zelensky] I cannot keep you as a hostage of my problems with Giuliani,” he said.Zelensky should keep his distance, Leshchenko added: “Ukraine needs bipartisan support in America. We don’t need to be in the middle of a U.S. political scandal.”Trump has hinted that he believes Ukraine is harboring a computer server containing emails sent by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the president’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 election. Bitcoin, malware and ‘spearphishing’ helped Russian agents hack Democratic Party computers in 2016 election Bitcoin, malware and ‘spearphishing’ helped Russian agents hack Democratic Party computers in 2016 election The email landed in John Podesta’s crowded inbox around March 19, 2016, during the height of the presidential primaries, and it appeared to be a standard security request from Google for Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman to change his password. So far, no evidence has emerged to support any of these accusations or theories.On Thursday, White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney seemed to confirm that Trump’s administration was still firmly holding on to many of the false narratives about Ukraine spun by Giuliani and other Trump allies. Sergei Leshchenko is interviewed on Ukrainian radio about becoming a target of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s accusations on Oct. 10, 2019.(Sabra Ayres / Los Angeles Times) At a news conference in Washington, Mulvaney said Trump had frozen about $400 million in security aid to Ukraine as a way of pressuring Kyiv to investigate allegations that Ukraine was responsible for hacking Democratic Party emails in 2016.“We all know that place is corrupt,” Mulvaney said about Ukraine. He defended Trump’s suspension of the security aid, which Ukraine needs in its fight against Russia-backed separatists militias on its eastern flank, saying it was related to U.S. concerns about Ukrainian corruption.And in particular, Trump wanted Kyiv to investigate his widely debunked theory that the DNC server was still in Ukraine.“That’s why we held up the money,” Mulvaney told reporters. He later walked back his claim, saying there was no quid pro quo.Leshchenko, who is no longer in parliament, has tried to dispute Giuliani’s smear campaign against him on social media and even asked some mediators to try to set up a meeting. It wouldn’t be the first time the two have met. In June 2017, a Ukrainian oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk, invited Leshchenko and several other young reform-minded Ukrainian lawmakers to meet Giuliani during a visit to Kyiv.“He was known then as the former New York mayor, so we all agreed to meet him and didn’t think much of it,” he said, showing a photo on his phone of Giuliani and himself.

closeVideoSupreme Court rules Trump's 'remain in Mexico' asylum policy can continue amid ongoing litigationAsylum policy allowed to continue while under litigation; Border Patrol Union president Brandon Judd reacts.Even as the nation is focused on closing the borders to regions affected by coronavirus, the Supreme Court issued a key ruling on a much more controversial border issue, one likely to have more significant, longer-term implications. The high court blocked the Ninth Circuit’s erroneous decision declaring Migrant Protection Protocols – President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy – likely unconstitutional.At issue is an April 8, 2019, injunction by a U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. The court considered whether the federal government may require non-Mexican asylum seekers, who arrive via Mexico without sufficient admission documentation, to wait in Mexico until their asylum petitions are approved by an immigration judge.This limbo status, which may last months or more, significantly decreases the attractiveness of the southern border asylum strategy for migrants.GREGG JARRETT: JUDGE WHO ATTACKED CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS IS A BIASED LIBERAL FLAMETHROWERThe District Court’s opinion focused largely on the little-understood issue of refoulement. Article 33 of the United Nations 1951 Convention prohibits nations from deporting a refugee to a nation where his “life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religious, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” The District Court reasoned that Homeland Security’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) violated international anti-refoulement obligations and issued a nationwide injunction against the practice.This week’s Supreme Court decision to stay the lower court’s ruling does not speak to the merits — or constitutionality — of the MPP. It does, however, give the federal government the authority to enforce the policy while the high court decides whether to hear the case, a decision that could take months. If the court decides not to hear the case, the stay would be lifted and the District Court’s decision would stand.This is good news for the rule of law and an orderly and fair asylum process.The alternative to Trump’s commonsense policy is for asylum seekers to remain in the United States, with little to no limitations, for the duration of their immigration proceedings, which can take years. While that may sound reasonable for asylum seekers here in good faith, the reality is that many are actually economic migrants. They have compelling reasons to come to our country but do not fit widely accepted definitions of asylum eligibility.While we perhaps cannot blame immigrants for wanting to enjoy our great country, it is incumbent upon political leaders to ensure that only immigrants who enter the country legally – including through asylum programs – are allowed to stay. A significant percentage of asylum seekers simply never show up for their immigration hearings once admitted into the country – 44 percent, according to 2019 government statistics. For those who seek to exploit our asylum process illegally, America currently has little recourse. And when sanctuary cities or states such as California refuse to cooperate — or even communicate — with federal immigration enforcement, they give illegal aliens the ability to usurp federal law.States also provide plenty of incentives to stay. According to the Pew Research Center, an estimated 1.75 million of California’s workforce – nearly 1 in 10 workers – is an illegal alien. Add in incentives such as no-questions-asked driver’s licenses for undocumented aliens (over 1 million in California alone), free healthcare, generous welfare benefits and court-mandated free education, and many state governments have created very enticing conditions enabling the abuse of our immigration laws.While we perhaps cannot blame immigrants for wanting to enjoy our great country, it is incumbent upon political leaders to ensure that only immigrants who enter the country legally – including through asylum programs – are allowed to stay.In response to the issue of refoulement, the solicitor general correctly pointed out that “DHS specified that MPP will not be applied to any alien who will more likely than not face state-sponsored violence, or persecution … in Mexico.”He added, “If an alien who is potentially amendable to MPP affirmatively states that he or she has a fear of persecution or torture in Mexico … that alien will be referred to a [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)] asylum officer for screening … to assess whether it is more likely than not that the alien when face torture or persecution.” As such, the District Court’s concern for potential refoulement was unfounded.Legally, the president has broad discretion over immigration policy and enforcement and specifically has the authority to impose the “wait in Mexico” rule. Since Trump took office, Democrats have made every effort to derail the implementation of his policies, especially his immigration policies. They often go to federal district courts with friendly judges ready to issue sweeping, nationwide injunctions of questionable legality. This chaos has to end.The Supreme Court now has the opportunity to correct the District Court’s overbroad and legally infirm opinion and by doing so, may permanently restore President Trump’s authority to enforce federal immigration laws in a manner that balances the legitimate interests of asylum seekers against a long history of abuse of the asylum program and the safety and fairness needs of our national immigration policies.If the high court also chooses to address the issue of runaway national injunctions, so much the better. A return to balance and normative rulings is long overdue.

Democrats and Republicans have an issue they both agree on: tech companies have too much power and antitrust authorities should move to curb it. Where they disagree, however, is how to rein in the companies, especially when it comes to regulating perceptions of political bias on the platforms. Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri both called for stronger antitrust enforcement and privacy protections for users of technology products during a panel discussion Monday at the WSJ Tech Live conference. Sen. Hawley said authorities should bring an antitrust case against Google-parent Alphabet Inc. and probably Facebook Inc. He also urged reform of the Federal Trade Commission to strengthen its enforcement of antitrust rules.Rep. Cicilline agreed that laws and federal agencies needed to be modernized to give the government new-enforcement capabilities. “What we really want is antitrust enforcement that brings real competition back into the marketplace,” he said.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao is being investigated by the House Oversight and Reform Committee over whether she is using her office to benefit herself and her family. The investigation announced Monday will look into whether Chao has used her role in the Trump administration to further hers and her family’s shipping business, Foremost Group. She has also been accused of failing to divest from stock in a major construction company before taking office. “The Committee is examining your misstatements of fact, your actions that may have benefitted the company in which you continued to hold shares, and your compliance with ethics and financial disclosure requirements,” said a letter to Chao signed by House Oversight and Reform Committee chairman Elijah Cummings and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, chairman of the Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy.Hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans made to the Foremost Group from a bank run by the Chinese government are being reexamined in light of Chao’s activity as Transportation Secretary. Lawmakers are investigating whether her public appearances and meetings with Chinese officials were made in an effort to boost her family business. A spokesman for the Transportation Department dismissed these “media attacks” in a statement provided to the Hill. “The Department has received a letter seeking information on a variety of topics based on publicly available information and news coverage. We look forward to responding to the Committee’s request. Media attacks targeting the Secretary’s family are stale and only attempt to undermine her long career of public service,” the spokesman said.The committee has requested Chao respond to al requests for communication by Sept. 30.

In 2017, then-Senator Al Franken asked federal judicial nominee Professor Amy Coney Barrett a simple question: What is the nature of your relationship with the far-right legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom? At the time, Barrett pleaded ignorance about ADF’s sustained campaigns against LGBTQ people both in the United States and abroad.“I’m invited to give a lot of talks as a law professor and it is not—I don’t know what all of ADF’s policy positions are,” Barrett told Franken. “It has never been my practice to investigate all of the policy positions of a group that invites me to speak.”Now Barrett is President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This time Senate Democrats have a deeper understanding of Barrett’s concerning history with ADF, an organization labeled an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They must use that understanding to put Barrett on the record about her long-time involvement with ADF, and its disturbing history of stridently anti-LGBTQ activism.ADF’s record of anti-LGBTQ advocacy is beyond dispute: a study by news magazine Religion & Politics found that over 20 percent of ADF’s public advocacy involved fighting against same-sex marriage. Another 20 percent opposed legal abortion. Nearly half of ADF’s work focused on “religious liberty” issues, an umbrella category that includes ADF’s legal lobbying to gut the Affordable Care Act.The conservative legal minds at ADF have been intimately involved in everything from Hobby Lobby’s successful efforts to carve out a “religious exemption” to offering contraception under the ACA to defending Colorado business Masterpiece Cakeshop in its quest to deny service to gay and lesbian couples seeking a wedding cake.But this is no run-of-the-mill right-wing legal group: Alan Sears, who led the ADF until 2017, openly compared gay and lesbian activists to “Nazis,” and likened the social recognition of gay and lesbians to a “new promotion of pedophilia.” And even as the organization rushed to sanitize its image in the wake of Barrett’s rise to conservative legal stardom, ADF has been unrelenting in its attacks on LGBTQ protections.In the United States, their advocacy has called for the recriminalization of homosexuality and the reinstatement of legalized workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender workers. Abroad, ADF unsuccessfully defended a French law that required chemical sterilization of transgender Europeans seeking to have their gender legally recognized.In a press release that has since vanished from the ADF website but draws from a publicly available ADF international court filing, the organization’s legal team made clear their goal was to deny “self-determination” to transgender Europeans seeking recognition. “Such a right to self determination is not defined and would hold an indeterminable scope which would be by definition incompatible with the states interests and the rights of others,” ADF argued.Barrett told Franken in 2017 that she had no idea ADF was involved in these legal ploys, saying only that the designation of ADF as a hate group was “controversial” and that she personally “did not have that impression of ADF.”But available facts paint a picture of an active pipeline between Notre Dame Law School, where Barrett taught, and ADF fellowships and staff roles. In fact, it can be a challenge to find a conservative professor in Notre Dame’s legal program who hasn’t built a long-term relationship with ADF.Barrett’s close relationship to ADF comes through her paid work with the organization’s Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which has trained over 2,400 conservative law students in the tactics of masking anti-LGBTQ legal attacks under the guise of “religious liberty” casework. In 2017, Barrett argued her involvement with ADF was limited to lecturing Blackstone Fellows—not engaging in any of ADF’s foundational work of terrorizing the global LGBTQ community.But here’s how the Blackstone Fellowship described itself in a now-disappeared section of their website:“Alliance Defending Freedom seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries,” the page read. “This is catholic, universal orthodoxy and it is desperately crucial for cultural renewal. Christians must strive to build glorious cultural cathedrals, rather than shanty tin sheds.”Notre Dame’s law school has successfully placed an average of four students in competitive Blackstone Legal Fellowships every year since the early 2000s, when the program featured only 24 fellows. Many Notre Dame fellows passed through the Blackstone program after working as teaching aides or research assistants to two professors: Amy Coney Barrett and her lifelong friend and booster Richard Garnett.Garnett wears multiple hats in the conservative legal community: he serves as both the Director of the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School and also a paid part of ADF’s legal faculty. He’s also a regular defender of Barrett in the press, often in stories that include quotes from other ADF sources that seek to portray criticism of Barrett’s involvement in ADF as an attack on her Catholic faith.Does anyone believe Barrett “didn’t know” about ADF’s policy proposals? After five years delivering paid lectures, years funneling students into ADF feeder programs and cheering on lifelong friends who obtained faculty and advisory roles at ADF, does the Senate Judiciary Committee buy the fantasy that Barrett simply had no idea ADF—and some of her closest friends— were peddling vehemently anti-LGBTQ legal advocacy?At her 2017 confirmation hearing, Barrett told Franken that she was “now generally aware” multiple organizations categorize ADF as a far-right hate group masquerading as a buttoned-up conservative legal advocacy organization. Yet in the three years since, she has never said whether she finds anything in ADF’s portfolio especially condemnable. Her silence speaks volumes.Franken was right to push Barrett on her long-time relationship with ADF in 2017, but didn’t go far enough. Senate Democrats must demand Barrett explain in her own words the anti-LGBTQ, pro-sterilization legal arguments of an organization she has long supported with paid speeches and a university-supported pipeline of young, conservative legal talent. Democrats must uncover what of ADF’s radical agenda Barrett believes, and what poison she was willing to humor for a paycheck.With Republicans sacrificing their integrity to rubber stamp any Trump nominee, the task falls to Democrats to protect the integrity of our Supreme Court.

Despite a pandemic that’s shocked the entire economy and impending antitrust lawsuits, Big Tech is doing rather well. Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook raked in a huge amount of money last quarter: $38 billion in profits on nearly $240 billion in revenue. For the most part, this represents growth over what these companies made last year, despite the worst recession in the United States since World War II. These numbers are striking not just for the tremendous amount of money these four companies are making but also because Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook seem to be defying this moment in history. Earlier this month, a long-awaited congressional report accused the companies of anti-competitive behavior, and some politicians are asking that they be broken up. Meanwhile, unemployment is double the rate it was in the beginning of the year, and numerous industries are struggling to stay afloat. But as many of us have been stuck at home, Big Tech’s services have been more important than ever, becoming the primary way many of us interact with the outside world. So what’s been bad for restaurants, airlines, and countless other industries has been good for the world’s biggest tech companies. In the quarter ending September 30, Amazon’s profits rose nearly 200 percent from a year earlier. Google’s profit grew about 60 percent and Facebook’s 30 percent. Even Apple, whose profits were down slightly, brought in a healthy $12.7 billion in profit. Revenue was up for each of these companies. Amazon, which has seen its dominance rise especially sharply during the pandemic as people’s shopping habits shifted online, saw record revenue of $96 billion, a 37 percent increase compared with last year. As a result of these earnings, Big Tech’s stocks are at or near all-time highs. This is a notable milestone, since Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple stock all took a big hit back in March. But unlike many other companies still suffering from that blow, these four companies’ stock prices have now more than recovered. On average, their market cap is up about 50 percent since then. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up about 5 percent (Apple is included in the index, helping buoy the whole average). These massive numbers don’t mean much to the average person, since many Americans don’t have a real stake in the stock market. Instead, shareholders are the ones who benefit — as well as the companies themselves, who are able to reinvest these profits to become even bigger and make competition even harder. As the government ramps up its antitrust cases against Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, their outsize profits are going to become more important. 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) — President Donald Trump is persisting in a claim that goes to the heart of the U.S. military withdrawal from Syria — that he’s bringing the troops home. He isn’t.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:ADVERTISEMENTCROWD 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.ADVERTISEMENTTHE 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.Most of the roughly 1,000 troops leaving Syria are going to Iraq or other locations in the Middle East such as Jordan. And some will stay in Syria.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.___Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

The Clinton impeachment took place amid the rise of Fox News and the Drudge Report and it felt at the time like a whole new political reality. It was an ugly moment. Larry Flynt, the pornography king, offered a $1 million bounty for dirt on lawmakers’ sex lives, exposing Republicans including the incoming speaker of the House. Mr. Clinton’s foes could bypass the mainstream media filters and pump into circulation wild conspiracy theories and salacious gossip about him through the internet.But as it turned out, the fragmentation of society and reality was only in its infancy. Today’s impeachment battle occurs in a news and social media environment that rewards the loudest, angriest voices and has separated Americans into their own information silos.Conspiracy theories are everywhere and conspiracy theorists are in the White House and Congress. Mr. Clinton could go before television cameras, but he had no Twitter to slam out 123 messages in a single day nor a Fox News to hammer home his version of events night after night.The parties have become even more homogeneous in the last 21 years and the divisions starker. Mr. Trump is the most polarizing president in modern history, playing to racial, ideological and economic rifts rather than seeking to heal them. He has set the tone with relentless attacks and misrepresentations, amplified by conservative and social media. While Mr. Clinton acknowledged wrongdoing, even as he denied breaking the law, Mr. Trump never admits mistakes and forces his allies to defend him without qualification.The animus Mr. Trump generated among his critics led to talk of impeaching him even before he took office. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders came under powerful pressure from their liberal base to abandon their reluctance to pursue impeachment after revelations of the president’s effort to solicit foreign assistance with his domestic political battles. Some worry that impeachment will now become just one more political weapon. “Whenever one has the president of one party now and the House of the other party I think we’re going to see this more often,” said Representative Steve Chabot, Republican of Ohio and another of the 1998 survivors still on the Judiciary Committee. “And it really is divisive and it really does keep you from focusing on many other things.”

Donald Trump may have cemented international fame with his TV catchphrase “You’re fired,” yet he seems to hate using it in real life.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson today (March 13) became the latest senior figure to be ousted, seemingly without an official notification. The White House has insisted that Trump asked Tillerson to go on March 9, but the State Department is telling a different story, with one source there telling CNN that Tillerson found out via Twitter. Even the department’s official statement was rather blunt:“The secretary did not speak to the president and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve, and still believes strongly that public service is a noble calling,” said undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs Steve Goldstein. “The secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security. He will miss his colleagues at the Department of State and the foreign ministers he has worked with throughout the world.” Hours later, Goldstein was fired.Tillerson is not the first to be unceremoniously dumped by this president. FBI director James Comey found out he had been sacked on TV while addressing agents in the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. Comey reportedly made a joke to ease the situation, then phoned FBI headquarters to find out that he had, indeed, been fired.Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was among the first high-profile Republicans to back Trump after abandoning his own 2016 presidential bid, and was nearly his pick to be vice president. But even Christie was booted from his role running Trump’s presidential transition team by proxy—he was given the message by Steve Bannon, the 2016 campaign manager who became Trump’s chief White House strategist. In 2017, Bannon was ousted in similar fashion, when he was told by Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly that he needed to resign.

The question of whether there’s clear evidence of a quid pro quo—a probe into Joe Biden and his son in exchange for the continuation of U.S. military aid to Ukraine—is less important than it might seem in part because such a bargain would have been implicit in the communication. Here was the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military speaking with the leader of a smaller country reliant on American support to fend off Russia, not to mention a commander in chief who had long been ambivalent about backing Ukraine and whose personal lawyer had, for months prior to the call, been on a quasi-official crusade to get the Ukrainian government to scrutinize the Bidens. In the phone call, Trump notes that “the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine” shortly before urging Zelensky to work with the U.S. attorney general to “look into” the former U.S. vice president. The quid and the quo were, if nothing else, the background noise of the call.Yet the debate about the existence of a trade-off also distracts from the gravity of what Trump was up to, even if the matter of defense assistance is set aside: the president of the United States apparently exploiting his vast powers in foreign affairs to compel law-enforcement authorities in another country (along with his own) to manufacture dirt on a political rival and thus intercede in the 2020 presidential election. The whistle-blower acted out of concern that the president’s behavior presented risks not only to national security, but also to the “U.S. government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections.”In a letter to the acting director of national intelligence, the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, elaborated on the whistle-blower’s concerns. He noted that U.S. laws and regulations prohibit people from soliciting something of value to their political campaign from a foreign national. (The Justice Department has argued that Trump’s back-and-forth with Zelensky did not amount to this, though other legal experts dispute this conclusion.) “Alleged conduct by a senior U.S. public official to seek foreign assistance to interfere in or influence a Federal election would constitute a ‘serious or flagrant problem [or] abuse,’” Atkinson added, and could also leave that official and those in league with him vulnerable to foreign intelligence services that are aware of the activity.Then Atkinson really twisted the knife, quoting Trump’s former director of national intelligence as saying the intelligence agencies have “no higher priority mission than working to counter adversary efforts to undermine the very core of our democratic process” and citing Trump’s own statement a year ago upon issuing an executive order to impose sanctions in the event of foreign influence in a U.S. election: I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that the ability of persons located, in whole or in part, outside the United States to interfere in or undermine public confidence in United States elections, including through the unauthorized accessing of election and campaign infrastructure or the covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. In recent days, however, Trump has defended his actions with regard to Biden and Ukraine as literally and figuratively unimpeachable—“A PERFECT CONVERSATION”—effectively declaring to the world open season on American elections.

WASHINGTON — U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials were briefed late last month on a threat against the Pentagon's most senior leaders while they are on American soil, not just traveling overseas, according to five senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter.Some officials said the briefings suggested the threat, which remains active, may be potential retaliation for the U.S. military's assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January, although the information provided did not draw a definitive link.The briefings have included information that suggests the targets of the threat are U.S. military leaders who were involved in the decision and operation to assassinate Soleimani, officials said. The briefings have also included information about a list, compiled by adversaries, of the names of military leaders who are to be targeted, according to two senior U.S. officials.Notably, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has been traveling in the Middle East and South Asia this week, but the trip was shrouded in even more secrecy than usual, suggesting a possible security concern. Reporters traveling with Esper were not allowed to report his visits to Bahrain or Israel until after he left each country, even though he spent two nights in Bahrain.The briefings of FBI, CIA and military officials on the threat took place after an incident on the evening of Sept. 22 involving a senior leader at the Defense Department, officials said.The Defense Department leader left the Pentagon that evening in a government-owned black SUV driven by a member of his security detail, when an unknown vehicle immediately began to follow them, officials said. The driver, identified as an Iranian national, was in a vehicle with Virginia license plates and trailed closely behind the official SUV for five to seven miles, at times driving aggressively, according to officials who described a report on the incident that was created by the Pentagon.The Pentagon and the FBI disagree about whether it was a serious attempt to target a senior Defense Department leader, officials said, with the Pentagon raising more concern. The FBI investigated the incident and determined it was not part of any larger threat to senior military leaders or connected directly back to Iran, officials said.U.S. officials could not account for the disparity between the Pentagon's view of the matter and the FBI's.NBC News is withholding the name of the senior leader at the request of the Defense Department, which cited security concerns. Three officials briefed on the incident named the leader, while others declined to do so.One senior administration official said the incident was "concerning."The security detail for the Defense Department leader who was followed last month when leaving the Pentagon eventually lost the trailing vehicle and changed routes, officials said. The Pentagon subsequently issued a Be on the Lookout alert, called a BOLO, and shared the information with federal law enforcement, officials said.They said the alert included photos of the driver and the vehicle, as well as the vehicle's license plate. Briefings that officials received on the incident included information about the driver's Facebook and Instagram accounts, showing that he has friends in Iran and Afghanistan, two officials said.Officials would not say whether the man was questioned or taken into custody.“The Department of Defense takes seriously the safety of all of our personnel,” said Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman. “We will not discuss intelligence regarding potential threats to senior leaders nor the range of force protection measures we have in place to address these threats.”Hoffman also said that for international travel by Defense Department officials, "security measures [are decided] on a case-by-case basis in coordination with appropriate U.S. and host nation law enforcement officials to protect our hosts, traveling officials, their support staff and accompanying media. We are constantly evaluating the threat environment.”The CIA and FBI declined to comment.The White House declined to comment, including on whether President Donald Trump was briefed on the incident.Three senior congressional aides said that the so-called Gang of Eight — the leaders of the Congressional caucuses and the intelligence committees — had not been briefed on the Sept. 22 incident.Top Pentagon leaders have 24-hour security and usually travel in official vehicle convoys. Two officials said the driver of the vehicle with Virginia plates may not have known who was in the official SUV when it left the Pentagon the evening of Sept. 22. They said the car could have followed the vehicles simply because whomever was in the SUV was likely a military leader.

Enlarge this image Rick Gates, business partner of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty on Friday to two charges and will begin cooperating with federal prosecutors. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption toggle caption Alex Brandon/AP Rick Gates, business partner of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty on Friday to two charges and will begin cooperating with federal prosecutors. Alex Brandon/AP Updated at 5:28 p.m. ETRick Gates, the business partner of Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty on Friday to two charges and will begin cooperating with federal prosecutors investigating the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.Gates appeared in federal court on Friday afternoon. He told Judge Amy Berman Jackson he was making the plea of his own free will.Under U.S. sentencing guidelines, Gates could get between four and six years in prison, but prosecutors said they would consider Gates' cooperation with their investigation and could later ask the court to be lenient.According to new court documents filed in the case, Gates has pleaded guilty to two charges.The first is conspiracy against the United States for "impeding, impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful governmental functions of a government agency, namely" the Justice Department and the Treasury Department.The second is making false statements. According to court documents, Gates lied to the special counsel and the FBI on Feb. 1 about a meeting that took place in March 2013 and was attended by Manafort, a "senior lobbyist" who is unnamed and a member of Congress who is unnamed.Gates acknowledged lying about there being no discussions about Ukraine at the meeting.The member of Congress was California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and the lobbyist was former member of Congress Vin Weber, now a partner with the firm Mercury.A spokesman for Rohrabacher, Ken Grubbs, said Rohrabacher has long acknowledged the meeting took place."The three reminisced and talked mostly about politics," Grubbs said. "The subject of Ukraine came up in passing. It is no secret that Manafort represented [then-Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych's interests, but as chairman of the relevant European subcommittee, the congressman has listened to all points of view on Ukraine. We may only speculate that Manafort needed to report back to his client that Ukraine was discussed."The superseding indictmentsGates' guilty plea on Friday followed a new indictment from Thursday evening in which prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller leveled even more charges against Manafort and Gates than they had been facing before. The two men were accused of laundering millions of dollars from overseas, hiding money from the IRS and other crimes. National Security Mueller Brings More Charges Against Manafort, Gates Manafort plans to continue fighting the charges."Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence," he said in a written statement on Friday.Continued Manafort: "I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me."On Friday evening after Gates' plea in federal court, the special counsel's office unveiled another superseding indictment against Manafort. The new charges against the onetime Trump campaign chairman include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and making false statements. National Security FACT CHECK: Why Didn't Obama Stop Russia's Election Interference In 2016? Neither Manafort nor Gates has been charged with conspiring with Russia's attack on the 2016 election. Gates' change in plea, however, raises the prospect that Manafort's legal situation also could change again.Prosecutors could use testimony from Gates to make what would be essentially a case against Manafort for colluding with the 2016 Russian election interference effort, if there is one to be made.Gates' evidence may increase the likelihood of a conviction on the charges already leveled against Manafort. Gates also could have additional information about Manafort that could result in new charges against him.One possibility is that Manafort and his lawyers, cognizant of these perils, might change his plea and ask for their own deal with prosecutors. If that happened, the special counsel's office might ask Manafort to give evidence about other people in the Trump campaign orbit.