Cecillia D. Wang, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents immigrants challenging the mandatory detentions, said the law requires prompt action. Mr. Tripp, taking into account other parts of the law, said immigrants convicted of crimes may be detained years after their release.The difference matters, for hundreds and perhaps thousands of immigrants, because people detained under the law are not entitled to a hearing to determine whether they are dangerous or pose a flight risk.The plaintiffs include people who entered the country illegally, tourists or students who overstayed their visas and lawful permanent residents. Among them are immigrants who arrived in the United States legally as infants, committed minor crimes like possessing marijuana and were detained years after completing their sentences.The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, concluded that the law requires mandatory detention only if the federal authorities take immigrants into custody soon after they are released.“Because Congress’s use of the word ‘when’ conveys immediacy,” Jacqueline H. Nguyen wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel, “we conclude that the immigration detention must occur promptly upon the aliens’ release from criminal custody.”Justice Kavanaugh disagreed, saying the 1996 law put no time limits on the detentions it required.“That raises a real question for me whether we should be superimposing a time limit into the statute when Congress, at least as I read it, did not itself do so,” he said.Justice Breyer said the solution was to allow immigrants detained long after release from criminal custody to have bail hearings. He said those would allow immigrants who were not dangerous and who posed no flight risk to return to their communities. “The baddies will be in jail,” he said, “and the ones who are no risk won’t be.”

An Iraqi man who lost his wife, daughter, brother and nephew in an airstrike after US intelligence misidentified his home as an Islamic state headquarters, is believed to be the first civilian awarded compensation by coalition forces.Basim Razzo, 61, who cannot walk because of his injuries, has been made a “voluntary offer” of nearly €1m by the Dutch government, whose F16 jets were responsible for the attack near the city of Mosul five years ago.The Dutch defence minister, Ank Bijleveld, said in a letter to the country’s parliament that the government was not admitting liability over the deaths but that “in view of the special aspects and circumstances of this concrete, specific case and the debate”, it had been decided “for humanitarian reasons, to proceed to the voluntary offer of compensation”.Razzo’s house, and his brother’s home next door, were destroyed in the early hours of 20 September 2015 during a precision strike based on faulty intelligence that the two buildings were an Isis bomb-making facility. Anti-Isis coalition forces posted a recording of the attack on YouTube.Razzo’s wife, Mayada, sleeping next to him, was killed instantly, along with his 21-year-old daughter, Tuqa, his brother Mohannad, and his 18-year-old nephew, Najib. Razzo’s sister-in-law, Azza, survived after being thrown through her bedroom window by the blast.Compensation claims were made possible only after a pilot involved in the air raid agreed to be interviewed anonymously by Dutch media outlets last year.Responding to the Dutch government’s decision, Razzo said he wished to meet the pilot responsible for the strike “so we can make peace”.He said: “I had actually lost all hope. I was very surprised and emotional when my lawyer called. The case can … finally be closed. I am very pleased with how quickly the Netherlands resolved this. In the United States they send me from pillar to post and eventually it led to nothing. Now we can live in a house of our own again, I can take care of my family and I still need to undergo an operation for my hip in Turkey. After that we will see how it goes.”Razzo’s lawyer in the Netherlands, Liesbeth Zegveld, said the offer of compensation had come after a meeting at the Dutch ministry of defence in June, which her client had participated in through Skype.Zegveld said: “On that occasion the ministry offered its apologies to Razzo. It was all a mistake. I then detailed the damages in a letter. The minister subsequently offered roughly the amount demanded. In the shadowy air war against IS, in which civilian casualties are generally not reported or denied, this is a unique case, for the Netherlands, but also for the coalition and other countries participating in the coalition agains IS.”Details of the compensation were not made public but the sum is understood to be nearly €1m (about £909,000).Razzo’s case was cited in a New York Times investigation suggesting that of the coalition strikes it could identify, one in five had resulted in civilian deaths because of proximity to a legitimate target, or because of flawed or outdated intelligence.Zegveld told the Guardian: “When I opened the letter containing the response of the ministry to our claim, I first could not believe what I read. I represent war victims for over 20 years now. Both the amount and the fact that no court intervention was needed is unique. I called Basim, he was driving, he had to stop. He had tears in his eyes.”

I worked under Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during his investigation of Bill Clinton. In those proceedings, Clinton was represented primarily by his private attorneys. Under Trump, the lines that should separate the president’s personal interests from those of the American populace have blurred. Even as news reports have described Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, as being improperly enmeshed in diplomatic communications with Ukraine, lawyers for the Justice Department and the White House have taken dubious legal postures to impede lawful investigations of Trump’s conduct. When an intelligence-community insider accused Trump of using American military aid as a lever to make Ukraine pursue a baseless investigation of Joe Biden and his son, for example, the governing statute legally obligated the acting director of national intelligence to hand over the complaint to Congress. Instead, Barr’s Justice Department issued an irresponsible legal opinion to justify keeping the whistle-blower complaint from Congress—despite the inspector general’s official determination that the complaint was “credible” and of “urgent concern,” thereby triggering congressional oversight.The whole purpose of inspectors general and whistle-blower laws—which pre-date the Constitution itself—is to make sure that legitimate insider information of wrongdoing within the executive branch sees the light of scrutiny by a co-equal branch of government. The laws exist to protect the public. Justice Department lawyers know this.The latest troubling missive came from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, whose October 8 memo lays out the president’s rationale for keeping the entire executive branch from cooperating with the House’s impeachment inquiry. In his letter to Congress, Cipollone advances a host of frivolous arguments. He insists that President Trump “cannot permit his Administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under the circumstances,” and that the inquiry “lacks any legitimate foundation” under the Constitution. Cipollone goes on to posit that impeachment itself is constitutionally improper because it “seek[s] to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen.”This gripe is one to take up with the Framers of the Constitution, which allows for the impeachment and removal of a president for grievous misconduct. The inquiry’s legitimate foundation lies in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the House “shall have the sole power of impeachment.” This is as black-and-white as the law gets.While it’s not unprecedented for political appointees to back the president, Richard Nixon’s attorney general, Elliot Richardson, resigned his post rather than execute a presidential directive that he fire the prosecutor charged with investigating his boss. Richardson’s predecessor, John N. Mitchell, stood by the president, but went to jail for his Watergate-related crimes.

Broadly speaking, there are two Republican defenses of Donald Trump. The first is the hard-shell, Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows variant: This is all outrageous, and the real criminals are the Democrats and Jim Comey and the lovely Lisa Page. This defense is what drives these nutso GOP requests to have Hunter Biden appear under oath before the House, which is about as likely as the U.S. Olympic Committee hiring Jordan as its wrestling coach.The second, soft-shell variant is one you’ve heard a thousand times: Well, what he did was bad, or a little bad, or maybe not what I would have done; but it doesn’t rise to the level of being impeachable.This is the attempt to sound “reasonable,” far more rational than Graham, who just openly says he won’t even read the testimony transcripts. In fact, it’s not reasonable at all. In its way, it’s worse than the full Jordan, and more insidious, because in sounding reasonable on the surface it masks the cancer that is eating the Republican Party and has been, in fact, since before Donald Trump ran for president.That cancer is that this is no longer a small-d democratic party. It’s an authoritarian party. And the seemingly reasonable, soft-shell defense of Trump is grounded in that authoritarianism.Let me explain what I mean here by starting with the question of why these Republicans say that what Trump did was bad but not impeachable. One answer is obvious: They are afraid of Trump and his voters. They fear that Trump can turn his people against them and defeat them. And that’s maddening to the rest of us, but it’s also in a way comforting, because it implies that once Trump is off the scene, this madness will lift and they’ll return to “normal.”So it’s true, but it is not the only thing that’s true. They also say that everything Trump has done is unimpeachable for this far creepier and less reassuring reason: They do not want to admit that any Republican president is capable of doing anything illegal or impeachable while in office. They simply will not allow that precedent to be established.“Conventional wisdom holds that Trump made the GOP lose its mind. The truth is the opposite: The GOP had lost its mind before Trump, which is why he was able to take it over.”It’s still the case that too few people understand the truth about the modern GOP. It is an un-American party. It is not interested in democracy. It is interested in power. It doesn’t care how it gets it. Twice in the last five elections, its winning presidential candidates have lost the popular vote. Suppose that had gone the other way around. Do you think the Electoral College would still exist? I can assure you it would not. They would have found a way to gut it. But because the un-democratic results in 2000 and 2016 happened to favor them—hey, the Electoral College is great! Whatever it takes.Everything Republicans do with respect to our political processes is explained by this truth. Matt Bevin says, with zero evidence, that there were voting irregularities in Kentucky. Yes, he’s just being a Trumpy asshole on one level, but on another, he’s asserting this fundamental Republican truth of our age: Power is more important than democracy. He’ll steal it however he can, if he can get away with it.And as I said, all this preceded Trump. All the crazy gerrymandering is about power over democracy. Remember when the state legislatures of Wisconsin and North Carolina tried to strip their governor’s office of powers during lame-duck sessions because the incoming governors were Democrats? Power over democracy—or, in that case, limiting the legitimate democratic power of the other side. And of course Merrick Garland. Power over democracy.None of those things—and there are others, some truly Reichstag-ish ideas like ending direct popular elections of senators, which is a thing—have anything whatsoever to do with Trump. Instead, it’s the other way around. That is, conventional wisdom holds that Trump made the GOP lose its mind. The truth is the opposite: The GOP had lost its mind before Trump, which is why he was able to take it over. He was exactly what they were waiting for.I was trying to explain all this in a New York Review of Books piece in 2018, and while I consider it mildly self-indulgent to quote myself at length, I’m going to do it in this case. Yes, I wrote, the Republicans of the Bush-Cheney era were ideologically extreme; but even then, the Republican Party remained committed to the basic idea of democratic allocation of power. Since the Civil War, Democrats and Republicans have fought sometimes fiercely over their ideological goals, but they always respected the idea of limits on their power.No one had come along to suggest that power should be unlimited. But now someone has, and we have learned something very interesting, and alarming, about these “conservatives,” both the rank and file and holders of high office: Their overwhelming commitment is not to democratic allocation of power, but to their ideological goals—the annihilation of liberalism, the restoration of a white ethno-nationalist hegemony.A lot of them find Trump embarrassing or worse, but on this basic point, the vast majority of them agree with Trump and appreciate the way he has freed them from having to pretend. So of course they’re not going to admit Trump did anything impeachable. On Planet Earth, what Trump did is open-and-shut impeachable. As Republicans surely would agree if a Democratic president had done it. But here’s the thing—no Democratic president would hold up military aid for another country unless its president agreed to investigate his or her political opponents because Democrats, while of course not perfect people, have enough respect for the institutions of democracy that they just wouldn’t do that. Most Republicans probably wouldn’t do it either. But now that one has, it’s possible that others will, and as long as that possibility exists, Republicans have to act like it wasn’t really that bad a thing to do. A “mistake.” Oh, I nearly forgot: There’s defense 2-b, that it can’t be a crime if it didn’t succeed. Nikki Haley is the latest to trot this one out. This also is legally insane on its face (there are a lot of crimes in our penal code called “attempted” this or that, and they’re still crimes). But, again, it is rooted in the party’s authoritarian DNA. It’s a desperate rationale for holding on to power at all costs.Is there some line that even Trump can’t cross, that will make Republicans say enough, and choose democracy over power? In theory, yes, but only if their backs are against the wall and the garrotes are held at their necks. Until that unlikely day, we will hear excuse after excuse.David Frum wrote in January 2018: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” He was late. They already had. But he was, to quote an old Frum book title, Dead Right. So when you hear someone on television say that Republicans’ posture is all about their fear of Trump, don’t buy it. It’s partly about that. But it’s also about this. If they were to acquiesce in the removal of a Republican president, they’d be placing democracy ahead of power. And this is one thing that we know they will not do.

A transgender man alleges that actor Rosario Dawson and her family subjected him to transphobic harassment and violent abuse, according to a suit filed in a Los Angeles court.Dawson, 40, is the girlfriend of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.The suit, filed Friday, alleges that Dawson and three members of her family violated Dedrek Finley’s civil rights by discriminating against him for his transgender status. The suit seeks damages for that as well as battery, assault, emotional distress and several other allegations.Neither the family’s lawyer, Alan Kossoff, nor representatives for Rosario Dawson immediately responded to NBC News’ request for comment.According to the suit, Finley, 55, moved from Beacon, New York, to Los Angeles in December 2017 to work as a handyman for the Dawson family and "renovate and remodel Rosario's personal residence," which promised him consistent work. He later moved into a North Hollywood home rented by the family and soon after came out to them as transgender, telling the family that he would now be known as Dedrek and use he/him pronouns.Immediately after Finley came out as transgender, “the family misgendered him multiple times each day, with deliberate indifference as to the appropriate way to address Mr. Finley,” the suit claims. Rosario Dawson, “acted with deliberate indifference and did nothing to correct the situation.”“Instead, in response to Mr. Finley’s complaints, Rosario would respond to Mr. Finley, ‘You’re a grown woman,’” despite the fact that Finley had come out as transgender to the family.The suit alleges that in February of last year, just months after coming out, Finley was ordered to move out but refused to because there was no legal grounds for his eviction.On April 28, 2018, Finley alleges that the family worked together to assault him. Isabel Dawson, Rosario’s mother, allegedly dragged Finley by his arm out of a window and then attacked him.“Once Mr. Finley was lying helpless on the ground outside, Isabel, who is substantially larger than Mr. Finley, got on top of Mr. Finley’s body and began punching him,” the suit states. “While beating Mr. Finley, Isabel screamed, ‘You’re not so much of a man now,’ which was a clear and denigrating reference to Mr. Finley’s gender identity.”The suit alleges Rosario Dawson assisted in the assault by sitting on top of him and “actively restraining him while he was on the ground to ensure that her mother could continue battering him.”Isabel Dawson also allegedly threatened to kill Finley’s cat if he did not move out and stomped on his hand during the attack and stole his cellphone, which Finley alleges contains video of the previous threats made against him.A day after the alleged attack, Finley was granted a temporary restraining order against Isabel Dawson, according to the suit.Tasha Alyssa Hill, an attorney representing Finley, told NBC News that her client had no choice but to sue the Dawson family.“As his attorney, we have reached out numerous times to the Dawson family attorney seeking to resolve this before having to file suit,” Hill stated. She said after receiving no response, the suit was filed last week before the statute of limitations expired.Hill affirmed the lawsuit’s allegation that the Dawson family’s treatment of Finley was due to his gender identity.“Mr. Finley had a good relationship with the family, did work with them in New York and had a good enough relationship that they invited him to California and offered him a living situation and a full time working situation for the family,” Hill said. “When they did that, they knew him as a lesbian woman.”“When he came out to California and decided to come out to them as a transgender man, that’s when things started going south,” Hill added.Hill said her client just wants wants “just and fair.”“He just wants to get some sort of compensation, so he can get back on track with his life so he can put this incident behind him,” Hills said.Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram

The Republican Party knows how to use polarizing rhetoric to split people along tribal lines. Donald Trump spent most of the 2018 midterm campaign talking up the “caravan,” the Central American refugees who were marching toward the U.S. border seeking asylum. Their numbers were small to begin with, and they dwindled further as they neared the border. Nonetheless, they made a useful talking point for Republicans, who wanted to remind their base on which side of the ideological divide they belonged. When Trump sent the U.S. military to the border, the subsequent outrage was justified, but it was also a trap: It drew attention away from real-life issues and encouraged voters to think they had to make a false choice between the caravan, crime, and illegal immigration on the one hand, and tradition, safety, and law and order on the other. In a few key states, that gimmick worked. “The caravan helped him,” former Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri bluntly said after she lost to Josh Hawley, a Republican. She noted that her opponent was also helped by the “Kavanaugh thing,” meaning the story, presented by Republican media, of an upright conservative—a man trying to protect families—smeared by dangerous liberals.Inciting a culture war didn’t work everywhere. And in places where it didn’t—in all those suburban House seats won by centrist Democrats, for example—that was often not because candidates loudly denounced the president’s use of troops at the border, but because they changed the subject. When undecided voters were thinking about jobs and health care, they were prepared to break their habits and vote for Democrats.

6. Who is the third unnamed “traveler” in the last Friday's Mueller indictment?According to the indictment of the 13 Russians last week, an unnamed and unindicted employee of the IRA traveled to Atlanta for four days in November 2014. The employee appears to be part of the IRA’s IT department, since he or she reported on the trip afterward and filed expenses with the IT director, Sergey P. Polozov, whose job it was to procure servers and other technical infrastructure inside the US to help mask the origins of the IRA’s activity. Mueller’s team surely knows the individual’s name—why didn’t they include it in the indictment and why wasn’t that person indicted at the same time? There are a lot of internal documents, communications, and specific directives cited in the indictment. Does Mueller have another nonpublic cooperator—and, if so, what else has he or she provided to Mueller?7. Is it a coincidence that the IRA organized a “Down with Hillary” rally in New York for the same day that Wikileaks dumped the DNC emails?As more evidence emerges through Mueller’s indictments, there are new timelines to trace. The Russian “specialists” at the IRA appear to have devoted significant effort to promoting a “Down with Hillary” rally in New York that was scheduled—weeks in advance—for the same day that Wikileaks dumped tens of thousands of emails stolen from the DNC. How much did the IRA know about and align with the efforts of other Russian entities, like the hacking teams Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear that targeted the DNC, the DCCC, and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta?8. Which, if any, Americans cooperated with the Russian efforts?This question goes to the political heart of Mueller’s inquiry. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein made a rare public statement last Friday to announce the charges against the Internet Research Agency; he pointedly noted that no Americans were wittingly involved in the matter “in this indictment,” which President Trump wrongly seized upon as vindication (“Case Closed,” he tweeted), but most observers interpreted the statement as an artful way of saying that there might be cooperation alleged in a future indictment.For instance, there were three unnamed Trump campaign staff mentioned in the indictment, officials who were approached by IRA specialists. Notably absent from the indictment’s otherwise high level of detail is whether there were replies to those overtures. The new indictment also talks about the IRA’s decision to promote Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who appeared at the same December 2015 dinner in Moscow with Vladimir Putin that Gen. Michael Flynn attended. Is there any link between her attendance and the IRA’s decision to promote her candidacy? Similarly, there are plenty of unanswered questions about the Trump campaign’s repeated contacts with Russian officials and Russian nationals—and their repeated lies about such contacts when asked about them.9. What was the ongoing evidence of Carter Page’s cooperation with Russian agents?The widely derided “nothingburger” of the so-called Nunes Memo did establish one intriguing piece of evidence: The 90-day FISA warrant to surveil one-time campaign adviser Page was renewed three times, by three different deputy attorneys general: Sally Yates, Dana Boente, and Rod Rosenstein. Each time, in order for it to have been renewed, there would have needed to be new evidence that Page was still involved in foreign intelligence matters. What exactly was that evidence—and who was Carter Page talking to, well into 2017?10. How big is “Project Lakhta”?Mueller’s indictment of the Internet Research Agency refers obliquely to the IRA as part of a “larger… interference operation” funded by the oligarch Yevgeny V. Prigozhin that was known as Project Lakhta. The indictment says, “Project Lahkta had multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in various countries, including the United States.” Is this a bread crumb pointing toward future indictments or other investigative avenues? Did Project Lakhta also involve other “active measures” conducted by other entities, like perhaps some of the active cyber intrusions we saw conducted by the Russian government’s hacking teams known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear?

One Davis Manafort venture, a private equity fund called Pericles, was set up to buy small companies in Russia and Eastern Europe within industries that had yet to consolidate: cable television, for example, or pharmaceutical manufacturing. The fund’s biggest investor was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian oligarch.For Mr. Gates, then in his mid-30s, partnering with moguls such as Mr. Deripaska seemed like a route to the kind of financial success enjoyed by Mr. Manafort, a multimillionaire with vacation homes in the Hamptons and in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Gates had read news reports of Mr. Deripaska’s problems with the State Department, but said he was not overly troubled by them; the Russian was already in business with blue-chip American firms like General Motors.In 2007, Mr. Gates and his wife traded in their $700,000 home in Richmond, Va., taking out a $1.5 million loan for a house in one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, public records show.“We thought we had a good business model,” Mr. Gates said. “We thought we were going to be successful.”As it turned out, the fund foundered amid the global economic crisis, and the only deal with Mr. Deripaska devolved into a legal dispute. But today, nearly a decade later, investigators are known to have an interest in the money that Mr. Manafort and his colleagues made in Eastern Europe, how those funds were paid and the offshore conduits such as Cyprus through which that money traveled.Handwritten ledgers found in a former office of Mr. Yanukovych’s political party indicate that it made $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Mr. Manafort between 2007 and 2012. Other recently disclosed documents suggest that a payment earmarked in those ledgers for Mr. Manafort may instead have been paid through an offshore bank account and as a supposed payment for a computer.

A bipartisan group of senators aresounding the antitrust enforcement alarm Friday over Facebook's newly announced acquisition of Giphy, a GIF-making and sharing website. The Verge reports:Democrats are planning to introduce a bill called the "Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act" that would impose a moratorium on large mergers until the FTC "determines that small businesses, workers, and consumers" were "no longer under severe financial distress."

A 22-year-old American student who has been held for a week at an Israeli airport accused of supporting a pro-Palestinian boycott campaign has become the focus of a debate around the country’s growing intolerance of critics.Lara Alqasem, a US citizen with Palestinian grandparents, arrived at Ben-Gurion airport last week with a valid student visa, but authorities barred her from entering and ordered her deportation.An immigration authority spokeswoman, Sabine Haddad, said late on Tuesday that Alqasem would contest the ban in court.“She can fly back to the United States whenever she likes,” Haddad said. “She decided to appeal and is being held in the facility for those refused entry,” she added. No date was given for the hearing.While free speech is broadly protected in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration and its parliamentary allies have waged a campaign against domestic and international critics.Last year, parliament passed a law banning entry into Israel for those who support the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, echoing measures against South Africa during the apartheid era.The prime minister has tasked the ministry of strategic affairs and public diplomacy to lead the fight against BDS, which Israel sees as a strategic threat, particularly as it has grown in popularity among university students.Alqasem is the former president of the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The group is aligned with the BDS movement, which holds among its demands an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories.“We work to prevent the entry of those who promote the antisemitic BDS campaign,” said the strategic affairs minister, Gilad Erdan. “We’ll continue to expose the lies of the BDS, including regarding the prevention of entry of those who promote it.”However, Alqasem has argued that she never actively took part in boycott efforts. “We’re talking about someone who simply wants to study in Israel, who is not boycotting anything,” said her lawyer, Yotam Ben-Hillel. “She’s not even part of the student organisation anymore.”Her former Hebrew teacher at the University of Florida described Alqasem as an open-minded and curious student who had a “positive attitude toward Judaism, Jews, and the state of Israel”. Alqasem had registered to study a master’s degree in human rights at Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which has said it would support her appeal.A number of vocal Jewish critics without BDS links have also been detained and interrogated about their political views while entering the country this year. And in July, parliament passed a law that allowed for a ban of groups critical of the armed forces or the state from entering schools and speaking to students.Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report Topics Israel Palestinian territories Middle East and North Africa news

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang made a stunning argument in a Washington Post op-ed this week: To combat the recent surge in hate crimes and racism amid the coronavirus pandemic, he suggested, Asian Americans should showcase just how American they are through acts of patriotism and community.Effectively, he wrote, Asians can help end racism by being the best citizens we can be: We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness in ways we never have before. We need to step up, help our neighbors, donate gear, vote, wear red white and blue, volunteer, fund aid organizations, and do everything in our power to accelerate the end of this crisis. We should show without a shadow of a doubt that we are Americans who will do our part for our country in this time of need.Yang, who came to this conclusion after an unsettling experience of his own, appears to believe that contributing civically in a visible way is the best approach to respond to acts of prejudice.While it’s entirely fair for him to want to confront such biases in his own way, the application of his reasoning is where things get concerning. There’s certainly a worthwhile case to be made that everyone, regardless of their background, should be stepping up and helping their communities during this devastating crisis. But Yang’s point is specifically aimed at Asian Americans.In fact, he suggests that Asian Americans, as a group, need to demonstrate that they are positive contributors to society just to be treated as equals. It’s a deeply flawed argument that puts the onus on Asian Americans to make themselves more palatable to those who would discriminate against them. And it’s also among the latest to advance a misguided theory of “respectability politics.”As Damon Young explained in the Root, “respectability politics” is an idea that picked up momentum in the 1990s and has been used to urge black Americans to dress or behave in a certain way as a means to neutralize racism. “It’s generally defined as what happens when minority and/or marginalized groups are told (or teach themselves) that in order to receive better treatment from the group in power, they must behave better,” Young writes.Yang’s op-ed makes this very case for Asian Americans, and in doing so, completely misunderstands who needs to take responsibility for the uptick in xenophobia and harassment that’s emerged as the coronavirus outbreak has gotten worse.Ultimately, the issues of racism that his piece calls out are very real: According to a recent ABC News report, the FBI expects the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans to increase as the US continues to deal with the coronavirus — and as President Donald Trump and other members of his administration have used racist names to characterize the illness.Last week, Stop AAPI Hate, an online reporting forum, said it had received more than 650 reports of discrimination toward Asian Americans since March 18. Such incidents have included both verbal abuse and violent attacks, including the stabbing of an Asian American family at a Texas Sam’s Club.Yang’s argument pushes for action in response to such incidents, but in the wrong way. Suggesting that Asian Americans “need to show their American-ness” places the pressure for combating racism on people of color — and echoes a longtime pattern of doing so.The issue with arguments that favor respectability politics is that they ignore how racism works: They argue that people of color need to change in order to achieve baseline equality in how they are treated, when the issue is that the people perpetuating these biases are the ones who should change their behavior so that they aren’t, well, racist.Several journalists have noted that arguments similar to Yang’s were made toward Muslim Americans in the wake of 9/11, when people were asked to respond to prejudice by showing how patriotic they were. FWIW there were similar arguments made about Muslim Americans after of 9-11 — if you “prove” your patriotism then society will see you as truly American and not the problem.Same arguments are made for immigrants.None of it has decreased hate crimes.https://t.co/j52029bGAD— Deepa Shivaram (@deepa_shivaram) April 1, 2020 Yang saying "We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness..." reminds me of the pressure Muslims/Arabs/brown people were under post-9/11 and since to prove we are "moderate/good," of McCain telling a woman Obama isn't Arab, and when Trump went after Khizr Khan pic.twitter.com/8tjV8KgzY8— Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) April 2, 2020 As Young points out in the Root, such efforts aren’t only misguided, they’re ineffective.In one citation in his op-ed, Yang notes that Japanese Americans joined the military at high rates during World War II to demonstrate their allegiance to the United States. While this commitment is incredibly admirable of those who made it, military service did little to prevent members of the Japanese American community from being sent to internment camps solely on the basis of their ethnicity.There is no simple solution to combating the xenophobia that’s grown in recent weeks: As Yang notes, telling people to not be racist isn’t likely to be enough. It is, however, a start.Part of what’s helped fuel such discriminatory sentiment around the coronavirus is the decision by Trump and other Republican leaders to dub it the “Chinese virus,” an act that goes against guidelines by the World Health Organization, which cautions against associating the names of an illness with any specific location because it could cause stigmatization.While Trump has since said that the Asian American community should be protected, it’s a statement he made without even acknowledging his own comments and role in promoting racism. What’s desperately needed to further address ongoing prejudice now is more lawmakers and others who have a public platform, Yang included, being willing to call it out and condemn verbal or physical attacks against Asian Americans.This week, several House members — including Reps. Judy Chu and Hakeem Jeffries — were among those who vocalized such positions. Similarly, Sens. Kamala Harris, Tammy Duckworth, and Mazie Hirono, as well as Rep. Grace Meng, have introduced a resolution that calls on law enforcement to hold people accountable for the hate crimes they commit.“Let’s be clear: COVID-19 does not target any group by race or ethnicity. We must condemn any instance of racism or discrimination, wherever it exists,” Harris said in a statement.Among the concerning elements of Yang’s op-ed is that it operates off an assumption that Asian Americans have something to prove with regards to just how much they belong in the United States. Yang’s point that Asian Americans should “wear red white and blue” feels especially ludicrous. Laying out my Andrew Yang-approved outfit for work tomorrow pic.twitter.com/NG2LG6VxT4— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) April 3, 2020 Certainly, the premise that Asian Americans are considered “other” is a viewpoint from which those who hold discriminatory beliefs may operate. After all, it’s a longstanding bias grounded in an ugly history of xenophobia that has existed since people of Asian descent began immigrating to the US, one that includes the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, both of which were aimed at barring Chinese people from entering the country.It’s disheartening, however, to see this dynamic acknowledged as the default assumption by an Asian American leader himself.There’s nothing to be gained in denying the reality that Asian Americans, many immigrant groups, and people of color are still treated differently by those who hold biases or find it advantageous to inflame existing disparities.But explicitly telling Asian Americans that we need to justify our Americanness reinforces such frames instead of rejecting them completely. An informed public is critical right now. This is an unprecedented election. Millions of people are relying on Vox for clear explanations of the state of the vote, whether the election is fair, and what the outcome might mean for the policy decisions that could affect their lives. We are monitoring vote counts around the clock, talking to sources, and channeling the firehose of news into comprehensible information. And that work takes resources. You can help support our explanatory journalism, and keep it free for everyone, by making a financial contribution today.

Apple unveiled its new range of iPhones on Tuesday and analysts suggested its biggest success of the season could be its smallest new product: the iPhone 12 Mini.It will be Apple’s smallest flagship iPhone since the iPhone 6, which was introduced in 2014, and tech experts said it could mark an about-turn in the trend for ever-larger phones – and be a particularly big hit with women.“The big news for me is the iPhone 12 Mini,” said Ben Wood, of the tech consultancy CCS Insight. “After years of phones getting progressively bigger, Apple is reversing the trend by offering a flagship product in a smaller package. I think it’ll be a hugely popular move. Where Apple goes, others follow, and I expect all rivals to make similar moves over the next 12 months.“The fact that the iPhone 12 Mini also supports 5G is a further advantage. Apple’s positioning of the device as the ‘smallest, thinnest and lightest 5G phone in the world’ will undoubtedly grab headlines.”As well as being a low-cost device, the Mini also addresses long-running criticisms of gender bias in the hardware design of smartphones. The author Caroline Criado Perez, in her award-winning book Invisible Women, writes: “The average smartphone is now 5.5 inches … the average man can comfortably use his device one-handed – but the average woman’s hand is not much bigger than the handset itself.”That could lead to upgrades from users who have stuck with older or smaller devices, such as Apple’s budget iPhone SE, until now the company’s smallest phone still on the market.The presence of 5G will help reassure those users that their new phone is future-proof, said analysts at the stockbroker Peel Hunt. The lack of a “killer app”, like mobile video was for 4G, could mean less pressure to upgrade in the short term, “but in a pandemic, your mobile is your lifeline”, they added.The current weak point remains the mobile networks. Coverage is patchy, particularly in the US, where a specific variety of 5G, called mmWave, is being rolled out. That technology, which is not in use in most of the rest of the world, trades huge speeds for poor signal strength.It is only supported by the iPhone 12 models sold in the US, which have had to include a special “window” in the phone to prevent the signal from being blocked by the metal case, but even then, buyers will still experience their connection downgraded by trees, buildings and even thick glass blocking line-of-sight with mobile phone masts.Lynnette Luna, at analysis firm GlobalData, said she expected the teething problems to pass. “Apple has the clout to bring new technologies to the forefront once it adopts them – we saw this happen when 4G was a new technology. While many are concerned 5G networks are not robust enough to spur adoption of the new iPhone 12 line, there are other reasons consumers will want to buy the phone.“Across the entire line, Apple has significantly improved the processor speed, display and camera quality, especially in low light, which should resonate with many consumers.”CeramicShieldA new glass technology involving a “high-temperature crystallisation step that grows nano-ceramic crystals within the glass matrix”. Apple says that reduces the smashability of the screen by four times compared with previous models.MagSafeMagSafe for iPhone is Apple’s attempt to reduce the hassle of wireless charging – and introduce a new line of accessories to boot. Magnets in the back of the phone align it with chargers, and allow for new cases to clip on.5GThe latest and greatest of mobile technology is here, although for many users it may initially prove a damp squib. Fast download speeds are available in ideal conditions, at the cost of shorter battery life when in use. The real benefits will come when crowded hotspots finally manage to use the technology to increase capacity.LiDARThink “radar with lasers” and you’re halfway there. LiDAR technology lets the new iPhones Pro accurately measure distance, even in low-light conditions. Apple says it will speed up autofocus on its cameras, but the real plan is to use it for AR, or augmented reality, technology.Edge-to-edge screenThe new squared-off edges on the iPhones 12 allow the screen to run closer to the edge than it ever has before. That means the iPhone 12 Mini can have a screen as big as the iPhone 6 Plus, in a device the same size as the iPhone 6. Topics iPhone Apple Smartphones Mobile phones analysis

PADAS, Philippines — While neither guided bomb nor armored vehicle, a gray oblong water pump sticking out from the brush along a remote dirt road is intended to be just as clear a sign of the United States’ efforts to stop the spread of the Islamic State.It has taken two months, an American Special Operations civil affairs team, three nonprofit organizations and an entire platoon from the Philippine Army to bring the pump to Padas, a village of about 3,000 people in the Mindanao chain of islands in the country’s south. If all goes to plan, water from the pump will help impoverished farmers establish trust in the government, and, in turn, seek to undermine the militants’ influence.“Whatever the international community gives us, we’ll accept,” said Macaraya Ampuan, an influential leader in the village. “But first thing to address is security. Eliminate ISIS so our livelihoods can be stable.”The contest between the Philippines government and shadowy insurgents in one small village in the Pacific Ocean carries familiar echoes of the United States’ long wars and counterinsurgency campaigns against Islamist extremists since the terrorist attacks of 2001. But the project in Padas is also linked to the defeat of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria and the Pentagon’s race to stop its resurgence in other parts of the globe.ImageAmerican soldiers after military exercises on Lubang Island in the Philippines.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York TimesThe Islamic State claimed responsibility for twin bombings in January at a Catholic cathedral on the Philippine island of Jolo, killing 23 people. They were an eerily similar prelude to coordinated bombings on Easter Sunday targeting Christian churches and tourist hotels across Sri Lanka that killed at least 250 people — another attack claimed by the Islamic State.Years ago, the Pentagon identified the Philippines as a remote locale where the Islamic State could expand and flourish. The American military’s focus on Padas was fueled by concerns about a backlash among local residents, and a possible regrouping by insurgents after the bloody battle for a nearby city, Marawi, in 2017.The monthslong siege there left hundreds dead, displaced thousands more and plunged much of the city into ruin. What remained of the Islamic State affiliate fled to the south and to other islands, and they started to rebuild and recruit around villages like Padas.The Philippines is a majority Christian country with a minority Muslim population in the south. A November report to Congress put the number of Islamic State fighters in the Philippines at around 500.ImageThe monthslong siege in Marawi left hundreds dead, displaced thousands more and plunged much of the city into ruin.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York TimesThe American military has deployed about 250 troops to the southern Philippines. They are part of a counterterrorism campaign that has existed in some capacity since 2002, but was officially restarted by the Pentagon in 2017 under the name Operation Pacific Eagle.The mission is rarely promoted because of sporadic political tensions between Washington and Manila, the Philippine capital. President Rodrigo Duterte has previously threatened to eject American forces from the country.During the battle for Marawi, the Pentagon played down the American military’s role, stating that troops there provided only support and assistance. However, officials said Marine commandos helped break the siege by training Philippine snipers who were struggling to defeat expert marksmen among the extremists who proved difficult to target within the city’s concrete buildings.Now, Marine Special Operations units work quietly alongside Philippine troops spread throughout the country’s southern isles. The United States Army’s only Special Operations civil affairs team in the Philippines is also helping the villages around Marawi, where security concerns prevent State Department officials from traveling.ImageThe American military’s focus on Padas was fueled by concerns about a backlash among residents, and a possible regrouping by insurgents after the bloody battle for Marawi in 2017.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York TimesAt the tip of that effort is the $58,000 water pump in Padas.The project to bring it to the village was started by Capt. Angela Smith, the leader of the four-person civil affairs team, after residents told her of their two-mile trek to get water. The machine, and the solar panels that power it, was donated by two nonprofit organizations: the U.S.-Philippines Society and Spirit of America.“One water pump, one classroom that we help build, those things make a difference,” Ambassador Sung Yong Kim, the American envoy to the Philippines, said in a recent interview. “So we want to do as much as that as possible.”The State Department and the United States Agency for International Development have funded nearly $60 million for reconstruction efforts around Marawi.Captain Smith’s team, whose soldiers wear civilian clothes and are often escorted by a Marine Special Operations unit based in Marawi, is the military’s latest embrace of a trademark American counterinsurgency strategy of winning over local populations.ImageAmerican and Philippine special forces during a military exercise on Lubang Island.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York TimesIn the lake region between Marwai and Padas, “internally displaced persons and their communities are vulnerable to violent extremist recruiting and influence,” Captain Smith said in an email. “Our goal is to work with our Philippine partners to facilitate assistance in areas of greatest need.”Similar efforts were taken in Afghanistan and Iraq, including by American troops who worked with and paid Sunni militias known as the Sahwa, or the Awakening, at the height of the Iraq War. That mission was largely credited with turning the tide against the insurgency in Iraq, before American forces withdrew in 2011 and the Islamic State swept across much of the country three years later.Broadly, the American military’s practice of counterinsurgency since 2001 has been plagued by frustration and failure. Many of the places where it was deployed are now under the influence or control of militants, either because the insurgents were never defeated, residents were hostile or noncommittal or the Western troops left.In Padas, officials said it is a gamble to ensure that the extremist group does not regain the strength it mustered before the siege of Marawi, which caught the Pentagon almost entirely off guard.ImageDuring the battle for Marawi, the Pentagon played down the American military’s role. However, officials said Marine commandos helped break the siege by helping train Philippine snipers.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times“This village used to be controlled by the Islamic State,” said Cpl. Jumar Dayanan, a soldier with the Philippine Army platoon who was sent to live in Padas. “But now we’re trying to win the hearts and minds.”Last month, Philippine troops killed Abu Dar, the nom de guerre of the third and last surviving Islamic State leader who was responsible for planning and carrying out the battle in Marawi. Mr. Dar was shot roughly 500 yards from the water pump in Padas in a gunfight with Philippine Army forces who were supported by Marine commandos, villagers and American officials said.The Philippines’ southern islands have long been a home for insurgents. Thick jungle, porous borders and little government presence have bolstered a range of extremist groups with money, weapons and militants arriving by sea from Indonesia and Malaysia.But in Padas, and the other villages around Marawi, the United States is fighting just as much against economics as it is against a creeping ideology.ImageWooden labels mark a mass grave of bodies recovered from Marawi.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York TimesWages as low as $6 a day are the market compensation for untrained construction workers in the Marawi area, said Alikman Niaga, who runs a small contracting company around the city. Residents can be paid triple that amount by joining groups that have pledged loyalty to the Islamic State, according to villagers and American officials.In 2017, the Islamic State’s leadership in the Middle East funneled tens of thousands of dollars to its Philippine counterparts to recruit fighters and help seize territory.Mr. Ampuan, the village leader who once commanded the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Padas, is afraid there are Islamic State fighters who have been recruited from his community but have yet to surrender or be killed.“They know people in the community,” Mr. Ampuan said. “ISIS offers money and guns to the young people. Young people are not aware of the reality when they join.”ImageMacaraya Ampuan, an influential leader in Padas and a former commander in the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, meeting with villagers, contractors and nongovernmental organization workers about the newly installed pump.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times[For more stories about the experiences and costs of war, sign up for the weekly At War newsletter.]The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is a separatist militia that signed a peace deal with Manila in 2014. While Muslims in the southern Philippines gained more autonomy last year under a new law, Mr. Ampuan said government officials in Manila still have not given the people of Padas the necessary authority to stop the Islamic State from infiltrating the village.The government’s presence in Padas also makes residents skittish, he said.That tension is mirrored by the 30-member Philippine Army platoon living in a few abandoned farming sheds in Padas, some of whom warily eye the villagers as possible Islamic State sympathizers.Trying to mediate from the middle are the American civil affairs soldiers and employees of Impl. Project, a nonprofit group based in Virginia that works on development and stabilization in conflict zones. They are working in tandem in Padas to install the four-gallon-a-minute water pump and help form a local council to manage it.For the water pump to work, the Philippine military must provide enough security to protect the people who, in turn, need to learn how to keep it running.“The water pump becomes the vehicle for them to learn how to govern themselves again,” said Justin Richmond, the founder of Impl. and a former Army Special Operations soldier.

The United Kingdom’s relationship with the United States is facing another stern test over whether to allow the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which the U.S. and others accuse of being a security threat, to manage the roll-out of new broadband technology.A meeting in London between senior U.S. and British officials this week came at an awkward time for the U.K. as it prepares to leave the European Union, the world’s largest economic bloc, at the end of the month.Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government plans to carve out its own trade relationships as an independent nation, with both the U.S. and China set to be key targets for trade deals.On Monday, a senior U.S. delegation gave Johnson’s government a warning about the risks of allowing Huawei to build its 5G technology, arguing that doing so could compromise the two nations’ close intelligence-sharing relationship. The U.K. has yet to make a final decision, but an announcement is expected soon.While details of the meeting were not released by either government, a senior Trump administration official said the U.S. team was in London to “share information about the risks of using Chinese vendors in 5G networks.”Washington has long considered Huawei a threat, fearing that its access to vast amounts of personal data could be used for espionage, and President Donald Trump signed an executive order last May effectively banning it from operating in the U.S.Matt Pottinger, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, was at the London gathering, along with Rob Blair, an assistant to the president and special representative for international telecommunications policy; and Chris Ford, acting undersecretary of state, the administration official said.The American team handed over a dossier outlining the risks of using Huawei and the threat to the U.S.-U.K. intelligence sharing relationship, according to multiple press reports. Both countries are members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, along with Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Australia and New Zealand have also ruled out using Huawei to build 5G infrastructure.According to reports in British news outlets, including The Guardian, The Times, Sky News and the Financial Times, the U.S. dossier argued that it would be “nothing short of madness” for the U.K. to proceed with Huawei as the key contractor on 5G.Huawei dismissed allegations that it could undermine the U.K.’s national security as “unsubstantiated.”Stephanie Hare, a British academic and technology expert, said China was making its approach “very clear.”“If you ban us, we’ll punish you on trade and investment,” she said. “And the U.K. desperately wants to keep China onside because of Brexit. It needs to be making greater deals.”“At the same time, it also wants a trade deal with the U.S. and it could go to the back of the queue, as Barack Obama famously said, or it could be put front and center,” she added, referring to the former president’s criticism of the Brexit campaign.5G, or fifth-generation telecom systems that improve on existing 4G connections, will allow internet-connected devices to operate much faster and communicate with other devices more efficiently, potentially opening up opportunities for more automation at home, in the workplace, in retail and in transportation.Huawei already provides all four of the U.K.’s cellular networks with limited 5G technology, but the company doesn’t yet have access to the core national infrastructure, where customers’ personal details are held.Some British analysts agree that there are real dangers to Chinese companies being involved in key information infrastructure projects.“Whatever Huawei says about its ownership is entirely irrelevant,” said Charles Parton, a China expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank.“The point is no Chinese company is going to turn down a request from the Chinese government to do something. It’s just not going to happen whatever the Huawei publicity machine says,” he said. “By taking on Huawei you’re putting your faith in the benevolence of the Chinese Communist Party for the next 20 years, because there are going to be many, many upgrades and so on.”While the U.K. has made no final decision on Huawei — which has been involved in the country’s telecoms systems since 2005 — Johnson told BBC News on Wednesday that anyone who disagrees with the company having such a role should come up with an alternative.“The British public deserve to have access to the best possible technology,” he said. “We want to put in gigabit broadband for everybody. If people oppose one brand or another they have to tell us what is the alternative.”However, he added, in a reference to U.S. concerns, that he wouldn’t “prejudice our national security or our ability to cooperate with Five Eyes intelligence partners.”Another senior Trump administration official told NBC News it was a “positive sign” that Johnson was open to alternatives and admitted that the U.K. has a “different philosophy” on the issue than the U.S.The economic incentive behind 5G is huge. A report released in December by Oxford Economics, a British analysis firm, predicted that the U.K. economy could miss out on up to 11.8 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) by 2035 if it restricts the growth of 5G.And there is a strong feeling in some parts of the British establishment that the U.S. warnings are overblown and the cost of ditching Huawei would be too high.Andrew Parker, head of the secretive British domestic security agency MI5, told the Financial Times on Monday that he had “no reason today to think” that the U.K. would damage its intelligence relationship with the U.S. if it chooses Huawei.In any case, if the U.S. fails to convince the U.K. of the risks of working with Huawei, it will be faced with trying to change London’s mind, argues Hare.“Boris Johnson knows what the alternatives are, he’s had them presented to him. What he’s really saying is that it will cost the UK billions to remove Huawei and it will probably get hit by some sort of retaliation,” she said. “What he’s really saying, the real alternative, is ‘show us the money.’”Victor Zhang, vice president of Huawei, said in a statement: “Huawei has worked with the U.K.’s telecoms companies for 15 years and looks forward to supplying the best technologies that help companies like BT and Vodafone fulfil the government’s commitment to make gigabit broadband available to all.”BT and Vodafone are large British telecommunications companies.“We are confident that the U.K. government will make a decision based upon evidence, as opposed to unsubstantiated allegations,” he said.

closeVideoFox News Flash top entertainment headlines for September 17Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Check out what's clicking today in entertainment.John Leguizamo will not be tuning into the Emmys this year.The "Critical Thinking" star, 56, recently spoke with Yahoo! Entertainment and expressed his irritation with the lack of Latinx representation in the nominees.“I’m boycotting,” he stated. “If you don’t have Latin people, there’s no reason for me to see it. What’s the point?”JOHN LEGUIZAMO SAYS PARTICIPATING IN POLITICS IS 'MY CIVIC DUTY'He then blamed industry bigwigs for not bringing stories featuring Latino people to the forefront. John Leguizamo has announced his intention to boycott the 2020 Emmy Awards over the lack of Latinx representation. (Photo by David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images) “It’s unbelievable that our stories aren’t being told and there’s one reason for that,” said the actor. “Executives don’t see us, don’t get us — don’t care about us.”None of the nominees in the major categories are of Latinx heritage. The acting nominations feature at least one Black actor for each category, and a handful of other actors of color are in the mix as well.The actor insisted that Latinx stories make up less than 1percent of the stories told by Hollywood networks and streamers, calling it "cultural apartheid."2020 PRIMETIME EMMY NOMINATIONS: THE COMPLETE LIST"I’m just dying to see positive Latin stories out there," he added.The Television Academy provided a statement to the Los Angeles Times, in which they admitted that while there are more nominees of color in recent years, the representation has not been equal."We feel it is a very positive sign that over the past decade the well-deserved recognition of performers of color has increased from 1 in 10 to 1 in 3 nominees across all performer categories," said the organization. "Clearly that increase in representation has not been equal for all groups, and clearly there is still more to do to improve both gender and racial representation across all categories."The Academy did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.Leguizamo, an Emmy winner himself, recently spoke to Fox News about the importance of Latinx representation in the media."Let our kids see themselves represented so they can understand that they are worthy, that they are important that they can be somebody," he said.The actor said that seeing people like yourself "reflected in your history textbooks, in the literature you're reading and the movies you're seeing" helps to "visualize yourself in a successful future."

In the year since President Donald Trump issued his “zero tolerance” and “extreme vetting” policies, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other government agencies have ramped up social media surveillance of citizens, immigrants, and foreign visitors. How and when the technology is used remains largely unknown.On Thursday the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Northern California sued the federal government for information on its social media surveillance activities, including those related to the extreme vetting initiative.“Social media surveillance has become a major priority for the federal government in recent years,” said Hugh Handeyside, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The public has a right to know how the federal government monitors social media users and speech, whether agencies are retaining social media content, and whether the government is using surveillance products to label activists and people of color as threats to public safety based on their First Amendment-protected conduct.”The ACLU and ACLU of Northern California filed suit in the Northern District California after various agencies failed to respond to a May 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. According to the ACLU, the FBI could neither confirm nor deny the existence of records relating to the FOIA request. In addition to the FBI, the defendants are the DOJ, DHS, ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the State Department.As we reported in November, immigration and homeland security agencies depend upon a number of data mining companies to monitor social media, under contracts that are mostly hidden from public view. Alongside a ramp-up in covert internet surveillance, a growth in domestic monitoring by U.S. agencies after September 11 has laid the groundwork for companies like Palantir, which was seeded with CIA funds and has secured at least $1 billion in federal contracts since 2009.The company–whose chairman Peter Thiel was a Trump campaign supporter and is a member of Facebook’s board–is one of a number of ICE’s software suppliers. A 2016 Privacy Impact Assessment by DHS noted that personnel within ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations were using Palantir software “to manage immigration cases that are presented for criminal prosecution,” but also for non-criminal situations, “to query the system for information that supports its civil immigration enforcement cases.”The ACLU lawsuit would require government agencies to provide its guidelines on social media surveillance, as well as their communications with private businesses and social media platforms, and documents related to “the purchasing or building of social media monitoring tools, among other records.”“Multiple agencies are taking steps to monitor social media users and their speech, activities, and associations,” the complaint reads in its introduction. “According to publicly available information, Defendants are investing in technology and systems that enable the programmatic and sustained tracking of U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike.”Related: Apple’s inconvenient truth: It’s part of the data surveillance economyIn the lawsuit, the ACLU expresses worry that social media surveillance will chill free speech, but also lead to targeting of racial and religious minorities, as well as those who dissent against official government policies. And any targeting of social media profiles of immigrants or those living in the U.S. under visas would most likely mean the surveillance of these individuals’ communications with other people not targeted for surveillance, including American citizens.

Last month Germany’s version of the Sun, Bild, ran a sensationalist attack on the outgoing president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi. Depicting the central banker as “Count Draghila”, replete with vampirish teeth and velvet collar, the article portrayed the ECB boss as a fiend sucking the bank accounts of German savers dry of billions of euros with low interest rates. A day later the tabloid interviewed the head of the German central bank to ram the message home under the headline “Is our money in danger?”. There is an undoubted perception across Europe’s largest economy that the ECB was penalising savers through easy money policies that have given populists a stick to beat mainstream politicians with. However, the release of the latest economic data shows that Mr Draghi was right and German sentiment was wrong.It is increasingly clear the risk of recession in Europe is rising. Growth is sputtering while inflation is falling. The eurozone manufacturing sector suffered its worst month in seven years while inflation dropped to a three-year low. Mr Draghi has for years attempted to resuscitate the eurozone’s sluggish economy through monetary means. Last month the ECB lowered interest rates further into negative territory and restarted the ECB programme of buying bonds. Yet as one economist perceptively put it, the problem for the eurozone is that “weak credit growth is driven by the lack of demand from creditworthy borrowers rather than the supply cost of finance”. This can be solved in part by governments stepping up to boost demand in the eurozone. Mr Draghi is right to say it is no longer tenable to claim that monetary policy alone can deal with the entrenched problems of the continental economy. Instead he correctly called for fiscal policy to become the main economic instrument to sustain demand in the eurozone.Nineteen countries in the European Union use the euro as their currency. Yet for all sorts of reasons Europe has denied governments the ability to use their budgets to boost demand. The diverging priorities of various parts of the euro area add to the dilemma: Germany has low levels of unemployment but a third of young workers are unemployed in Italy and Spain. While core economies are worried about cheap money fuelling runaway house prices, the ones on the periphery suffer from high borrowing costs. That is why Mr Draghi’s necessary call is provocative.In the face of the threats to the EU there ought to be much more engagement with people’s angst and dislocation. Mr Draghi’s replacement, Christine Lagarde, says fiscal policy is required “to respond to the threat of populism”. In the EU, France’s Emmanuel Macron deserves credit for recognising two years ago that “Europe’s fiscal policy is too restrictive … and our jobless are paying the price”. Despite enacting painful reforms at home to win Germany over to his cause, Mr Macron unfortunately failed to get agreement for a eurozone fiscal capacity big enough to offer meaningful stimulus that would be funded by a share of taxation currently going to national budgets. Instead of a bazooka with hundreds of billions of euros in funding, in June eurozone nations could only agree a peashooter of a fund worth €17bn. Perhaps fiscal policy at the eurozone level ought not to be run along German lines. It would be better if onerous fiscal rules for nations on borrowing and debt were relaxed. Since 2008 there has been a growing political divide. To bridge this requires a shift in the balance of power and thinking within Europe to promote cohesion and solidarity. Politicians must seize an opportunity from the continent’s ongoing economic trouble.

Nominees: Better Call Saul (AMC), Killing Eve (BBC America), The Crown (Netflix), The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu), The Mandalorian (Disney+), Ozark (Netflix), Stranger Things (Netflix), Succession (HBO)With the reign of Game of Thrones now over – the Emmys juggernaut won four out of the last five years – the dramatic field is cracked wide open, though with a familiar hue. Critically adored Better Call Saul, the contract killer romp Killing Eve, and constant Netflix recommended suggestion Ozark all return with consecutive nominations this year, as does 2017 winner The Handmaid’s Tale. The fact that the The Mandalorian, director Jon Favreau’s expansion of the Star Wars universe, is here is at least half attributable to the viral freakout over Baby Yoda; Emmy voters are unlikely to go for the marquee launch of Disney+, nor for the magnetic, if narratively redundant, third outing of Stranger Things, which aired in the summer of 2019. The steady, sumptuous royal drama of The Crown is reliable awards material, but all odds are and should be on HBO’s Succession, whose second season turned the prickly, brutally funny portrait of a media conglomerate family of scoundrels into can’t-miss television.Will win: SuccessionShould win: SuccessionNominees: Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO), The Good Place (NBC), Schitt’s Creek (Pop TV), Dead To Me (Netflix), Insecure (HBO), The Kominsky Method (Netflix), The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (Amazon), What We Do In The Shadows (FX)Last year, Fleabag, the caustic, fourth wall-smashing British series created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, upstaged the final season of perennial favorite Veep to sweep the comedy awards. With Fleabag and Veep off the table, and former darling The Marvelous Mrs Maisel middling in its third season, the comedy field is once again turned over; new entries Dead to Me, starring Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate as two women who meet in a grief support group, and FX’s What We Do In The Shadows, a spin-off of the beloved Taika Waititi vampire mockumentary, are outside shots, as are sturdy but niche favorites Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Kominsky Method. There’s a case to be made for awarding Insecure’s deft handling of the rift between best friends Issa (best comedic actress nominee Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji, nominated for best supporting) in the show’s resurgent fourth season. But the award is all but certain to go to the final season of Schitt’s Creek, the bubbly Canadian sitcom about a rich family forced to move to a small town that found new life (and Emmy voters) on Netflix.Will win: Schitt’s CreekShould win: InsecureNominees: Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu), Mrs America (FX), Unbelievable (Netflix), Unorthodox (Netflix), Watchmen (HBO)Stories written, directed, and focusing on women make for one of the most stacked limited series categories in years, from Hulu’s buzzy, high-wattage Little Fires Everywhere (Reese Witherspoon taking Big Little Lies maternal melodrama to suburban Ohio) to Netflix’s Unorthodox, a searing portrait of a young runaway bride from ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Brooklyn. It’s hard to snub Netflix’s Unbelievable, whose true-story portrait of catching a serial rapist was gutting, gripping competence porn buoyed by stellar performances from Kaitlyn Dever, Merritt Wever, and Toni Collette. In any other year, FX’s meticulous and expansive historical drama Mrs America, anchored by a mesmerizing Cate Blanchett as bête noire of 70s feminism Phyllis Schlafly, would take the prize. But no show was as ambitious in addressing America’s dark present or as critically hailed this year as Watchmen.Will win: WatchmenShould win: WatchmenNominees: Jodie Comer (Killing Eve), Sandra Oh (Killing Eve), Zendaya (Euphoria), Jennifer Aniston (Morning Show), Laura Linney (Ozark), Olivia Colman (The Crown)Last year’s surprise winner Jodie Comer returns again for her fierce, chameleonic portrayal of contract killer Villanelle, after upstaging 2019’s favorite: co-star, Sandra Oh. This year’s slate of actresses include returning and established awards talent Laura Linney and Oscars queen Olivia Colman (as none other than Queen Elizabeth II herself) and the welcome addition of Zendaya, who grounded the teenage melodrama of Euphoria with relatable, human weight. Though Oh deserves the prize for carrying the other half of a Killing Eve’s zany tone, Emmy voters are more than likely to favor Aniston, Hollywood’s long-reigning girl-next-door, for her career-high performance as under-appreciated, stoic morning news anchor Alex Levy.Will win: Jennifer AnistonShould win: Sandra OhNominees: Jason Bateman (Ozark), Sterling K Brown (This Is Us), Billy Porter (Pose), Steve Carrell (Morning Show), Jeremy Strong (Succession), Brian Cox (Succession)Ozark’s Jason Bateman and Sterling K Brown of This Is Us return as best actor nominees this year, as does last year’s triumphant winner Billy Porter, still delivering career-best work on FX’s Pose, Ryan Murphy’s portrait of New York’s ballroom scene in the early 90s. Steve Carrell, playing a long-running morning show host disgraced in the #MeToo movement (the comparisons to Matt Lauer are clear) replaces the oft-nominated but as yet unrewarded Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul. But as with best drama, this category belongs to breakout hit Succession: Jeremy Strong delivered an impressive turn playing wounded dog Kendall, the heir to a billion-dollar media conglomerate you hate to love, and deserves his own category for Kendall’s “L to the OG” rap. But there is no Succession without a compelling, infuriating tyrant at the center, and Cox’s half-smile in the season finale is as inscrutably good as it gets.Will win: Brian CoxShould win: Brian CoxNominees: Christina Applegate (Dead to Me), Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), Linda Cardellini (Dead to Me), Tracee Ellis-Ross (black-ish), Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek), Issa Rae (Insecure)For six years, until the Fleabag sweep, there was only ever one answer to best comedy actress: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for her portrayal of bumbling vice president Selina Meyer. With Louis-Dreyfus and last year’s champ Phoebe Waller-Bridge gone, the comedy category is up in the air – there’s 2018 winner Rachel Brosnahan for The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, and duo Christian Applegate and Linda Cardellini for Dead to Me. Issa Rae, as creator and star of Insecure, and Black-ish’s Tracee Ellis-Ross both deserve recognition, but voters will most likely be swayed by long-standing goodwill for the luminous work of Catherine O’Hara, who hasn’t won an Emmy since 1981 and whose outrageous, bizarrely accented role as Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek has earned her a new legion of passionate fans.Will win: Catherine O’HaraShould win: Issa RaeNominees: Anthony Anderson (Black-ish), Don Cheadle (Black Monday), Ted Danson (The Good Place), Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method), Eugene Levy (Schitt’s Creek), Ramy Youssef (Ramy)HBO’s hitman-comedy Barry, starring last year’s winner Bill Hader, is on hiatus this year, so the best comedy actor slot is anyone’s game. Anthony Anderson as conflicted family man Dre, Don Cheadle as a manic Wall Street trader, and Michael Douglas (seriously, who has seen The Kominsky Method?) are outside shots; given Schitt’s Creek general popularity, we’ll give an edge to Eugene Levy as broke video store tycoon Johnny Rose. Voters are most likely to favor Ted Danson, whose portrayal of The Bad Place’s best character on The Good Place anchored the NBC series’ finale, but a just world would reward Ramy Youssef, who won a Golden Globe for best actor in January, for his darkly observant POV comedy as a Muslim, Egyptian-American man in New Jersey.Will win: Ted DansonShould win: Ramy YoussefNominees: Kerry Washington (Little Fires Everywhere), Octavia Spencer (Self Made), Cate Blanchett (Mrs America), Regina King (Watchmen), Shira Haas (Unorthodox)This is perhaps the most competitive category in the field, a slot stacked with heavyweights – Kerry Washington as a black mother upending a ferociously white suburb, Octavia Spencer as America’s first black female millionaire — as well as a remarkable debut from Israeli actor Shira Haas for her starring turn in Unorthodox. If this were not 2020, it likely be a lock for Cate Blanchett, who somehow both disappears into and radiates from the character of Phyllis Schlafly, the 1970s political organizer who mobilized housewife opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. But this is 2020 — a dark year presaged by Watchmen, and held together by the unimpeachable Regina King.Will win: Regina KingShould win: Regina KingNominees: Jeremy Irons (Watchmen), Hugh Jackman (Bad Education), Jeremy Pope (Hollywood), Paul Mescal (Normal People), Mark Ruffalo (I Know This Much Is True)The race for lead actor in a limited series is one of the few to be truly up in the air; Emmy voters are as likely to reward veteran actors such as Jeremy Irons in the critically beloved Watchmen as Broadway star Jeremy Pope for Ryan Murphy’s uneven revisionist history drama Hollywood. Odds are better for Hugh Jackman for his anchoring turn in HBO’s well-reviewed, if under-seen, Bad Education, but voters will most likely reward Mark Ruffalo for a performance seemingly written in a lab to garner Emmy votes; in HBO’s too-brutal-to-watch I Know This Much Is True, Ruffalo plays identical twins afflicted by schizophrenia, grief, and myriad other tragedies. Ruffalo’s dual performances holds together what many critics have called a slog of a series, Irish actor Paul Mescal deserves the prize for a fearless debut performance in Normal People that, along with costar Daisy Edgar-Jones keeps what could’ve been a stale adaptation of the Sally Rooney novel tactile and vulnerable.Will win: Mark RuffaloShould win: Paul MescalNominees: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS), Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS), Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC), The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Comedy Central), Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)Entertainment has had to make massive adjustments this year (see: host Jimmy Kimmel presiding over a Zoom ceremony), and no genre has evinced the resourcefulness, resiliency, and flexibility as late-night television. The at-home sets – the white void of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Stephen Colbert’s pre-monologue riffs with wife Evie, Trevor Noah’s apartment – have captured the strange universality and humanizing scramble of the pandemic. Emmy voters have long favored the brash yet deeply researched rambles of John Oliver – Last Week Tonight has won the past four years – and likely will again, as the show has continued to rip into critically misunderstood or under-seen aspects of the American criminal justice system. But the award should go to Trevor Noah, whose pivot to raw responses to the horrors of police brutality – grounded but searching, didactic without condescending – have become widely shared, essential viewing during America’s summer of racial reckoning.Will win: Last Week Tonight with John OliverShould win: The Daily Show with Trevor NoahMahershala Ali (Ramy)Alan Arkin (The Kominsky Method)Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine)Sterling K Brown (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel)William Jackson Harper (The Good Place)Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) — Should win, Will winTony Shalhoub (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel)Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live)Alex Borstein (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel) – Will winBetty Gilpin (GLOW)D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place)Marin Hinkle (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)Kate McKinnon (Saturday Night Live)Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek)Yvonne Orji (Insecure) — Should winCecily Strong (Saturday Night Live)Nicholas Braun (Succession) — Should winKieran Culkin (Succession) — Will winBilly Crudup (The Morning Show)Mark Duplass (The Morning Show)Giancarlo Esposito (Better Call Saul)Matthew Macfayden (Succession)Bradley Whitford (The Handmaid’s Tale)Jeffrey Wright (Westworld)Helena Bonham Carter (The Crown) – Will winLaura Dern (Big Little Lies)Julia Garner (Ozark)Thandie Newton (Westworld)Sarah Snook (Succession) — Should winFiona Shaw (Killing Eve)Meryl Streep (Big Little Lies)Samira Wiley (The Handmaid’s Tale)Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen) – Should winJovan Adepo (Watchmen)Tituss Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. The Reverend)Louis Gossett Jr. (Watchmen)Dylan McDermott (Hollywood)Jim Parsons (Hollywood) – Will winUzo Aduba (Mrs America)Toni Collette (Unbelievable)Margo Martindale (Mrs America)Jean Smart (Watchmen) – Will win, should winHolland Taylor (Hollywood)Tracey Ullman (Mrs America) Topics Emmys 2020 Emmys Awards and prizes Television US television Succession The Crown features

Throughout the impeachment process, President Trump and his allies have come up with novel ways to defend the president against allegations of misconduct that range from misdirection to outright lies. As Trump’s Senate trial progresses, a clip put together by Media Matters for America shows just how dramatically defenders of President Donald Trump are willing to move the goalposts in their defenses of the president.Last September, and in the months that followed, Trump’s Republican defenders acknowledged that if Trump linked the release of military aid to Ukraine with political favors, it would be a big deal. They insisted, however, there was no evidence that any corrupt quid pro quo actually existed. But on the heels of news breaking on Sunday about former National Security Adviser John Bolton saying he has firsthand knowledge that Trump did in fact make that linkage, evidence of a corrupt quid pro quo is suddenly being met with yawns.The then-and-now clip of Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy talking about the Ukraine scandal illustrates this shift in an especially stark manner.Watch the two clips back to back for yourself: Steve Doocy's shifting perspective on Trump and Ukraine pic.twitter.com/uqGK2oSzMG— Media Matters (@mmfa) January 27, 2020 Four months ago, Doocy proclaimed that “if the president said [to the Ukrainian government], you know — ‘I’ll give you the money but you gotta investigate Joe Biden’ — that is really off-the-rails wrong.” In short, he acknowledged that a quid pro quo linking military aid to political favors would be indefensible, but he suggested the question was irrelevant because it didn’t happen.But today, hours after news broke about Bolton’s book and its revelation that Trump directly told him the release of military aid was linked to his desired investigations, Doocy is singing a very different tune. To hear him say it now, the quid pro quo revelation is old news and not a big deal.Referring to a New York Times report about a draft of Bolton’s forthcoming book, Doocy noted that “apparently it says Bolton was told Trump wanted to continue freezing money to Ukraine until they helped with probes of the Bidens,” but then downplayed the quid pro quo. “But we heard him [Trump] in the transcript say he wanted President Zelensky to look into the Bidens and what happened in 2016, so is this a big, big, big story?” he said.This sort of spin isn’t just a Fox News thing — as journalist Judd Legum detailed in a Twitter thread, a number of Republicans, including Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, have made the same shift from denying the quid pro quo to downplaying it. 3. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX):1/15: Quid pro quo allegations were "hearsay... people who had no direct evidence, witnesses who'd never even met President Trump" 1/27: On Bolton: "It doesn’t change the underlying facts"— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) January 27, 2020 Similarly, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), who is part of Trump’s defense team, shifted from tweeting there was “zero quid pro quo” last September to saying Monday, “the facts haven’t changed.” Sen. Lindsey’s Graham’s (R-SC) position has also changed:In a way, this is true: Witness testimony has showed the president attempted to trade aid for the investigations, and Bolton’s information merely confirms that fact. But that’s not what Collins means.Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), another member of Trump’s defense team, went from saying “there was definitely no quid pro quo” in early October to dismissing Bolton’s account of the quid pro quo as “a desperate attempt [by Democrats] to resusciate their dying political dreams” on Monday. (Never mind that Bolton is a Republican who worked for numerous Republican presidents.)Along similar lines, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) went from falsely claiming just last Friday that a major problem with the case against Trump is the lack of firsthand witnesses to saying on Monday that Democratic efforts to compel the testimony of Bolton, who would be a firsthand witness, is just an effort to “string this thing out as long as they can.”Other Republicans are even contradicting themselves within individual news conferences. During one on Monday, Sen. John Barrasso said of the Bolton revelation that “there’s going to be something new coming out every day,” and later claimed that “the facts of the case remain the same. There is nothing new here to what the House managers have been saying.”Moving the goalposts in Trump’s defense seems to be becoming a regular thing for Barrasso. On Friday, I wrote about how he did the same thing regarding an audio recording that indicates Trump was lying about his relationship with Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani’s former fixer and a central figure in the Ukraine scheme.It’s no longer surprising that Republicans are willing to contradict themselves and to endure cognitive dissonance to defend Trump. After all, many of them spent the first week of the impeachment trial complaining that Democrats weren’t presenting new evidence, ignoring that they began the trial by voting to prevent Democrats from presenting new evidence. But if they’re willing to put their heads in the sand in response to an account from a former administration official that indicates Trump is guilty of what he’s being accused of, it raises the question of what (if anything) Republicans wouldn’t defend.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? The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. It’s essential that all Americans are able to access clear, concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives, and the lives of their families and communities. That is our mission at Vox. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election: Contribute today from as little as $3.

This is one of the many things that makes Trump’s Twitter feed such a bizarre phenomenon. If he did this privately, it would—rightly—be a massive scandal. Yet when he does it as part of a few dozen wildly varied tweets over the course of a morning, it’s written off as just another wacky missive from the wacky president. Becoming numb to Trump’s tweets is easy, as I’ve written of myself, but these show just how dangerous that is.It’s a crime to try to withhold funds appropriated by Congress in order to interfere with voting. The effort to expand access to mail-in voting is an obviously reasonable response that’s designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while also allowing the most people to exercise their right to vote. Ideally, this wouldn’t be a partisan matter. Yet Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds from these states because he contends that sending out absentee-ballot applications will benefit Democrats.One oddity of this tantrum is that there’s no evidence that voting by mail actually helps Democrats, nor is there evidence that it is a major risk for fraud. What Trump is really thinking is hard to know. He has continued to espouse blatantly false claims about voter fraud in 2016, and he may believe them, or perhaps he has simply calculated that higher turnout in 2020 could doom his reelection chances. Trump has left the burden for most of the pandemic response to the states; only when the fallout threatens him politically does he start to throw his weight around. (As Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, noted in reply, Republican officials in several more decidedly red states have taken similar actions, without being threatened.)In short, Trump is trying to use the force and funds of the federal government to enhance his reelection chances—and if that sounds familiar, it’s because he was impeached in December for doing much the same. In that case, he tried to strong-arm Ukraine behind closed doors to investigate the Biden family; today, it’s just another tossed-off tweet.These particular messages are part of a new genre Trump seems to be trying out: the tattletale tweet, in which he tags in some other authority and demands that they take action. He recently tagged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai in complaints about NBC’s Chuck Todd, seeming to call for the FCC to “fire” Todd, a power it does not have. More successfully, he demanded that Senator Lindsey Graham investigate the so-called Obamagate scandal, and while Graham has demurred (so far) on calling Barack Obama to testify, he quickly hopped to and said he would hold hearings, subpoenaing a raft of other officials.These messages are a little strange on their face, since Trump could easily call Vought or Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and order him to withhold funds to Michigan or Nevada; he could call Pai or Graham privately too. But they would probably tell him that his requests are illegal, and he’d be deprived of a chance to grandstand. Since everyone knows that the president is more interested in performance than execution, and that he often loses interest before following through on things he talks about—remember when he asserted absolute authority over states just a month ago?—he derives some sort of perverse plausible deniability. But dismissing this as another idle Trump threat or musing lets him off too easy and enables his lawlessness.