US-backed fighters have transported civilians from the last speck of Islamic State’s dying “caliphate” in Syria, as they press on with the battle to defeat the jihadist group.More than four years after Isis overran large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq to declare a caliphate, it has lost all but a tiny patch in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border.More than 40 trucks carrying men, women and children left the enclave on Friday, according to AFP reporters at a position of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) outside the village.Most were women and children, their clothes caked in dust, but the passengers also included men with their faces wrapped in chequered scarves. Women clung to the railings of the trucks as they departed in the second such large-scale evacuation in three days.On the back of one of the trucks, three men covered their faces with their hands, apparently not wanting to be caught on camera. One woman raised the index finger of her right hand in an Islamist gesture.Asked what the situation was like inside Baghouz, a young man replied: “Not good.”An SDF spokesman, Adnan Afrin, said more than 2,000 people were estimated to still be inside the pocket of territory, and more trucks were expected to bring them out. Once the evacuations have ended, the SDF would expel the last jihadists from the less than half a square kilometre (a fifth of a square mile) they still hold, he said.“When the civilians leave, we will see how many civilians and IS fighters remain inside and what they want to do,” he said. “They will be faced with a choice: war or surrender.”Earlier on Friday, another SDF spokesman, Mustafa Bali, said he hoped civilian evacuations could be completed by Saturday.The SDF evacuated 3,000 people on Wednesday – mostly women and children – but the trucks that left on Thursday were almost empty.Bali said screening had determined that most of those evacuated on Wednesday were foreigners. “The majority are Iraqi and from countries of the former Soviet Union, but there are also Europeans among them,” he said.David Eubank, the leader of the Free Burma Rangers volunteer aid group, said they included many French women, as well as others from Australia, Austria, Germany and Russia, and one woman from Britain.Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog, urged the SDF and the US-led coalition to make protecting civilians a priority.“Just because they may be families of Isis members or sympathised with them does not take away their protected status,” the watchdog’s Nadim Houry said.Beyond Baghouz, Isis retains a presence in the vast Syrian desert and sleeper cells elsewhere, and continues to claim deadly attacks inside SDF-held territory. On Thursday, the group detonated a car bomb that killed 20 people near the Omar oil field, the main base for the SDF operation in Baghouz.The battle for the village is now the only live front in Syria’s complex war, which has killed 360,000 people and displaced millions since 2011. Any SDF victory in Baghouz would accelerate an expected withdrawal of US troops from Syria announced in December by the US president, Donald Trump.Kurdish forces, who have spearheaded the US-backed fight against Isis in Syria, have expressed fear that a full pullout would leave them exposed to a long-threatened attack by neighbouring Turkey.But Washington said on Thursday the US military would keep some troops in Syria after the withdrawal. “A small peacekeeping group of about 200 will remain in Syria for a period of time,” the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, said.At the height of its rule, Isis imposed its brutal ideology on an area roughly the size of the UK, attracting thousands of supporters from abroad. But some of those foreigners have been killed, while the SDF holds hundreds more.Syria’s Kurds have long requested that the Isis members’ home countries take them back, but foreign governments have been reluctant.On Thursday, the father of Hoda Muthana, 24, who joined Isis in Syria, sued to bring her home after the Trump administration declared she was not a US citizen.The London teenager Shamima Begum, meanwhile, faces being left stateless after Britain said it would revoke her citizenship after she joined Isis aged 15, and authorities in Bangladesh, where her parents were born, said the country would not take in the now 19-year-old. Topics Syria Islamic State Middle East and North Africa news

One of the greatest reversals of recent years is that of Senator Harry Reid, who in 2005, as the Democrat’s minority leader, made an impassioned plea to preserve the filibuster in the face of Republican threats to destroy it. “What they are attempting to do in this instance is really too bad,” said Reid, in a long speech emphasizing the importance of Senate tradition. “It will change this body forever … There will be a precedent set that will be here forever if the vote we take tomorrow prevails.” Eight years later, as the majority leader, Reid sharply disagreed. “The Senate is a living thing,” he declared, “and to survive it must change, as it has over the history of this great country … To remain relevant and effective as an institution, the Senate must evolve to meet the challenges of this modern era.” Later that day, the Democrats dramatically revised the Senate filibuster rules.Nobody should be surprised, then, to see the same thing happen with regard to impeachment. Many of the most outspoken defenders of President Trump today were pushing hard for the president’s impeachment just a few years ago. The difference is that the president then was Barack Obama. Many of Obama’s actions seemed, to his critics, to be those of an imperial president who was out of control. Republicans openly went after more than one Obama official: In 2015, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee moved without success to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for, among other things, failing to comply with a House subpoena. The late Elijah Cummings, then the committee’s ranking Democrat, retorted that the “ridiculous resolution” would do nothing other than show the Republicans’ “obsession with diving into investigative rabbit holes that waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars while having absolutely no positive impact on a single American.” What a difference four years can make.Quite clearly, then, impeachment has once again been politicized—one might almost say weaponized—during the past two or three decades. But the more troubling question is whether Democrats and Republicans in this hyperpartisan age are simply more willing than their predecessors to use impeachment as a political weapon, or whether they are, in fact, living in two different worlds that make their narratives so different that they genuinely can’t understand each other, at least regarding what constitutes a threat to the American system of government. In 1998, Republicans in the House impeached Clinton, knowing that they almost certainly wouldn’t get a conviction in the Senate. Why do such a thing? Was it truly a matter of principle, as they maintained, or merely a strategy to energize their base for the upcoming elections? At any rate, their stated reason was that the nation’s top law-enforcement officer, himself a lawyer, had intentionally lied under oath, and for that reason he had to go. The Democratic narrative was that this was about nothing more than a private sexual escapade—a consensual tryst—that had no effect on the public interest.

Today, Sept. 27, US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the viewing public about sexual misconduct allegations leveled by Christine Blasey Ford. We’ll watch raptly, yet nothing will be established. That’s practically guaranteed.The hearings involve questioning the nominee and his accuser. No witnesses will be called. There has been no discovery period. No burden of proof has been established. And we don’t even really know what we’re looking for, though purportedly it’s a thing called “credibility.”Unlike a trial, where a process for uncovering and submitting information is laid out in advance and followed strictly, the rules of presentation are clear, standards and definitions have been established, and objections are registered to preserve the right to appeal rulings by a neutral arbiter, this hearing is a slapdash attempt to offer the appearance of fairness with no actual substance. It’s mere theater.US president Donald Trump said at a press conference at the United Nations on Sept. 26 that he, too, will be watching and could be convinced that Kavanaugh’s nomination should be withdrawn if the judge doesn’t seem credible. But what exactly does that mean? Most likely, that Trump and senators will be going with their gut or political ambitions, as there is no clear definition of what it takes to “seem” credible in this kind of hearing.As attorney and professor Anita Hill pointed out in a Sept. 18 op-ed in the New York Times (paywall), when she in 1991 accused now-justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his Senate confirmation process, the concept of such accusations derailing a nomination seemed novel. The judiciary committee had no rules on how to handle the allegations and so a group of all-male senators grilled Hill but allowed no witnesses to corroborate her stories.Now, nearly 30 years later, little has changed. “That the Senate Judiciary Committee still lacks a protocol for vetting sexual harassment and assault claims that surface during a confirmation hearing suggests that the committee has learned little from the Thomas hearing, much less the more recent #MeToo movement,” Hill wrote.There’s still not an established process for handling misconduct allegations. In other words, the committee is basically winging it, making things up as they go. Republican senators have figured out how to appear more fair, or so they believe by hiring a female prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, to do their questioning. This will possibly help with optics, sparing us the pictures we saw of Hill, a lone female facing a row of male interrogators in power.However, it won’t solve the fundamental problem—murkiness. The standards here just aren’t clear. And what happens next? Do the other women who’ve accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct go ignored, or can Ford and the nominee say something that might trigger additional hearings?Kavanaugh himself said repeatedly in an interview on Fox News this week that he just wants a fair hearing and a chance to defend his integrity. But the judge knows better than most that what he’s participating in is basically political theater.Because there’s been no neutral investigation to establish the facts, no rules of the road, and the hearing is a rushed affair designed to placate, this is not an opportunity to uncover truth. Instead, it’s more of a national event, government entertainment, and we get to watch some people sweat.

5G is proving controversial for Chinese telecoms companies abroad. At home, it’s helping them to thrive.Hong Kong-listed shares in Chinese companies related to 5G—the superfast next—generation wireless networks that will power applications from autonomous vehicles to the Internet of Things—have gone through the roof lately. Telecom-equipment maker ZTE, whose stock was hammered last year by the threat of U.S. sanctions, has surged 30% this year. State-owned cellular-infrastructure companies China Tower and China Communications Services are both up more than 20%. Some smaller companies have chalked up even bigger gains: antenna manufacturer Comba Telecom is up 71%. The frenzy has been sparked by recent indications from Beijing that it will accelerate construction of 5G networks and issue temporary licenses for operators to use them in selected cities this year. That has raised hopes of a spending bonanza for equipment and component makers. Morgan Stanley has previously estimated that Chinese carriers like China Mobile will invest around $421 billion over the next decade or so on 5G, more than twice what they spent building out the current 4G network. Huawei argues its case. Photo: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg News Beijing’s words of support are timely, given the pressure faced by ZTE and its bigger, unlisted rival Huawei overseas. The U.S. is trying to persuade its allies to ban these Chinese vendors from supplying their 5G networks, and has had some success, including in Australia and Japan. About half of Huawei’s revenue came from outside China in 2017, the most recent data available; for ZTE, overseas revenue was a third of the total in the first half of last year. Investors, though, may be getting ahead of themselves. Beijing is merely sticking to its timetable: The country’s three main carriers long planned to launch commercial 5G services next year, so the network buildout was always to start this year. And technical bottlenecks, particularly around chip supplies, could slow investment. The possibility that the U.S. will take a still-harder stance against Huawei remains a threat too. Washington could try to cut off key Huawei suppliers like Qualcomm, as it did temporarily with ZTE last year. Any such action could delay China’s 5G rollout. Such risks seem pertinent, given that some Chinese equipment and infrastructure companies don’t look so cheap any more. China Communications Services, for example, now trades at 15.7 times expected earnings over the next 12 months, its highest in five years. It’s time investors dialed back hopes for this particular network effect. The FCC recently announced a plan to encourage a blazing fast wireless service called 5G. But what is 5G? And how far is the U.S. from rolling it out? Photo: Reuters Write to Jacky Wong at [email protected] Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

The company, one of the world's biggest makers of smartphones and telecommunications equipment, took the unusual step of publishing an open letter to Australian lawmakers on Monday. Recent public comments linking Huawei to security concerns "are ill informed and not based on facts," Huawei Australia's chairman and two board directors wrote in the letter. Australian wireless carriers will soon need to hire companies to build new superfast mobile networks. But Huawei faces opposition from Australian national security agencies, according to reports last week from outlets including the Australian Financial Review and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The concerns are linked to alleged ties between Huawei and the Chinese government, according to the reports. Related: What is 5G? In its open letter, the company insisted that it is "a private company, owned by our employees with no other shareholders." But the company has been dogged by security concerns for years. In 2012, it was blocked from the bidding for a huge Australian national broadband network. Huawei has also faced a lot of pressure in the United States, with lawmakers and security agencies accusing it of ties to the Chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly denied that its products pose security risks, but it has remained largely shut out of the US market. In Australia, it has successfully bid for private contracts in the past. It's currently the country's largest supplier of wireless technology, with relationships with three of the major mobile carrier networks. Related: Who needs the US? Huawei profits jump 28% In its open letter to lawmakers, the company emphasized that it has more than 700 employees in the country and that over half of the Australian population "rely on us for their daily communication needs." It argued that other countries -- including the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand -- "have managed to embrace Huawei's technology within their own national security frameworks." "We believe this can be done in Australia also," the letter said. The company said it had proposed to Australian government agencies that it could "build an evaluation and testing center to ensure independent verification of our equipment right here in Australia, just as we have done in other countries." The Australian prime minister's office did not respond to a request for comment.

BERLIN -- Facebook is pushing back against a German ruling that could make it harder for the company to combine data from all the services it runs in order to target ads even more precisely.German antitrust authorities ruled Thursday that Facebook was exploiting its dominance in social media to force users to share data from other Facebook-owned services like WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as third-party websites through the "Like" and "Share" buttons.The Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, isn't contesting Facebook's use of customer data to target ads on the main Facebook service. Rather, the ruling said Facebook should have to get permission separately before using customer data from other apps and websites to do so.Facebook said it would appeal.The company currently collects data on users' activities on Facebook and the other apps it owns, along with third-party websites. So, what someone views, likes or shares on Instagram — or the broader web — could be used to show that person an ad on Facebook.Facebook also has been moving to further integrate WhatsApp and Instagram into its main service after initially promising to keep both as stand-alone companies when it bought them.Although Facebook hasn't given many details on its plans to integrate messaging, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently that the idea is to help users message one another more easily, without having to worry about who's on which service. The company also said it would encrypt all the messaging services, something it does by default only with WhatsApp.But critics have raised another possible reason — the threat of antitrust crackdowns. Essentially, if Facebook combines its messaging services so that they are different in name and design only, it will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to then separate out and spin off Instagram and WhatsApp as separate companies.Combining the three services also lets Facebook build more complete data profiles on all of its users. Already, businesses can already target Facebook and Instagram users together with the same ad campaign, and ads are likely coming to WhatsApp eventually.Then there's competition from other messaging services, such as Apple's or Google's. Users are more likely to stay within Facebook's properties if they can easily message their friends across different services, rather than having to switch between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.Privacy attorney Scott Vernick said he expects the integration plans to draw regulatory scrutiny, particularly in Europe. That's because of Facebook's promises that it would keep the companies separate when it bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. WhatsApp's founders quit the company over disagreements about user privacy."There is a high chance for antitrust concerns, as well as those over how user data is collected and used," Vernick said.There are also worries that Facebook could build deeper profiles, such as by linking phone numbers to real-life identities, he added. Facebook doesn't require users to add their phone number, but WhatsApp is generally used with phone numbers. Between the two, Facebook gets more data.In ruling that Facebook was a "dominant company," the Cartel Office said it was subject to "special obligations under competition law" and "must take into account that Facebook users practically cannot switch to other social networks.""The only choice the user has is either to accept the comprehensive combination of data or to refrain from using the social network," it said in its judgment. "In such a difficult situation the user's choice cannot be referred to as voluntary consent."The office said many users were not aware that Facebook is able to "collect an almost unlimited amount of any type of user data from third-party sources."Facebook said German authorities underestimated the competition Facebook has in Germany from YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter and others. The company said it had been cooperating with the Cartel Office since 2016 and would "defend these important arguments in court."Regardless of whether the German ruling — which would only apply in Germany — sticks, Vernick said the European data protection commission is already looking closely at Facebook's integration plans and the data it collects across all its services and beyond.——Ortutay reported from New York.

Amazon is laying off several hundred corporate employees in a rare shift of resources to other parts of its business, the Seattle Times reports. The layoffs will include people at its Seattle headquarters and across global operations, according to a Times’ source familiar with the cuts, and mainly include folks working in the consumer retail business.The layoffs are relatively modest for a company that employs 560,000 worldwide, including 40,000 in Seattle, with plans to add another 50,000 at its new second headquarters, dubbed H2Q.The company’s recent hiring sprees, however, put some units over budget, according to employees interviewed by the Times. “As part of our annual planning process, we are making head count adjustments across the company — small reductions in a couple of places and aggressive hiring in many others,” Amazon told Quartz in a statement. “For affected employees, we work to find roles in the areas where we are hiring.”The company has already notified some employees, according to the Times. The remaining affected employees will be notified in the next few weeks.This story has been updated to include comment from Amazon.

A major Democratic presidential event geared toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander community was held for the first time in history this past weekend. All Democratic presidential hopefuls were invited to the forum, which took place in Costa Mesa, California, at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on Sunday. Three candidates ― tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and activist Tom Steyer ― participated in the event. During the event, candidates took the stage individually, taking questions from moderators and audience members and addressing issues that weigh heavily on the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, including immigration and income inequality. Yang ended up making headlines at the forum for crowdsurfing, riding atop a sea of his own supporters, who have been dubbed the #YangGang. In addition to his main proposal of universal basic income, the candidate also touched on climate change, among other issues. He called for further investment in renewable energy as well as relocating people from residents from areas with rising sea levels. Along with his platform, the presidential hopeful, who’s Asian American himself, opened up about the bullying he had received in his younger years due to his race. He said that, as the son of Taiwanese immigrants, “You feel like your spot in this country is somewhat in question.” “I was one of the only Asian kids in my town and that made me feel like i had to prove myself a lot. I got, I guess you’d call it, bullied a lot,” he said. “I got called ‘chink’ and ‘gook’ regularly and I felt like I had a choice at that time to either take it or fight, and so I decided to fight and I ... was very skinny so I would lose most all of those fights.” Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, called for the end of “wasteful, counterproductive wars.” The lawmaker said that she would meet with the Taliban “under the right circumstance that would further our national security” and called on the for the end of the U.S.’ role as “the world’s police.” The congresswoman also said she’d protect LGBTQ rights and work to lift the travel ban. Tom Steyer, a billionaire philanthropist, explained to the crowd that, as a presidential hopeful, he is largely focused on climate change. He announced that, if elected, he would declare a “climate emergency” on his first day in office. While explaining his involvement in the political sphere, Steyer assured the audience that “it isn’t like I just came to [politics].” The billionaire, who founded political advocacy group NextGen America, explained he’d spent years advocating for tobacco taxes and clean energy among other causes. “I’ve been doing this for 10 years,” he said. Varun Nikore, president of one of the forum’s organizing groups, AAPI Victory Fund, told HuffPost that he felt more presidential hopefuls should’ve taken the opportunity to reach Asian American voters. “It’s unfortunate that candidates can’t be more straight with a constituency group that is the fastest-growing constituency group in the country,” he said. “This is a big missed opportunity.” Nikore told HuffPost that while he felt the event was a success, campaigns have a long way to go before they’ve proven they value the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. He noted that he was disappointed the other candidates did not take the opportunity to speak to an important constituency, calling their inability to show up an “epic fail.” Research shows that in battleground states, Asian Americans have the power to flip districts. Analysis from AAPI Data shows that during last year’s midterm elections, the racial group had the ability to make significant impacts in 27 congressional districts across 11 states. Nikore argued that, given the crowded Democratic field, presidential hopefuls should be putting in further efforts to speak to Asian Americans as every last vote counts. The AAPI Victory Fund president said that even as candidates attempt to clinch majority-white states like Iowa and New Hampshire, constituents of color could could make a difference in ranking with so many individuals in the running. “Do you not think that you have to fight for every last sliver of the votes and microtarget every last voter, every last ethnicity, every last demographic?” he asked. He added that the forum was also significant in that it featured three Asian American hosts: MSNBC’s Richard Liu and Ester Lee and author Viet Nguyen. Two rounds of Democratic debates have occurred, and each adhered to the DNC request that at least one woman and one person of color serve as moderators. However not a single one has featured an Asian American or Pacific Islander host thus far. In August, the Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Rising & Empowering (ASPIRE) political action committee issued a letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, demanding representation from the community on the debate stage in future debates. “Under your leadership, there are more Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) holding senior positions at the DNC than at any other time in the organization’s history,” the letter read. “An important way to further this commitment to our community would be to ensure that at least one of the DNC-sponsored presidential debates features an AAPI moderator.” Going forward, Nikore said that Asian American and Pacific Islander groups will be holding candidates’ “feet to the fire” and demanding they do a better job of outreach to the community. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! 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Forget quid pro quo, when there’s a drag queen in town you’ll get quip pro quo. And there was no doubt in Washington on Wednesday – there was a drag queen in town.Performer Pissi Myles, of New Jersey, sashayed into the congressional building where the first public impeachment hearings in the Trump-Ukraine scandal were taking place.In her scarlet dress and stilettos, flawless blond hair to the heavens, Myles cut a fierce figure on Capitol Hill. She was there to cover the hearing for Happs, a live news startup, and could be seen broadcasting live from a pink smartphone.Getting through security was touch and go, but Myles made it to the heart of the action, alongside the hundreds favoring somber suits and conservative coiffure.“Tensions are high, and the bar for who’s allowed in the Longworth House is very, very low,” she told NBC News.In a broadcast posted to Twitter she described the effect she’d had: “It’s pretty crazy. I’m apparently being referred to as the lady in red, I’ve been called Ruby Giuliani. It’s a little offensive to me that they would assume I took a side in this conversation.”Of the significance of the day’s testimony, she said: “We’ve heard people saying it was all about quid-pro-quo but today we actually got to hear the testimony and hear what the actual elements of that were … Everyone is so divided. It’s really the most polarizing political activity I’ve seen in a very long time.”Myles performs in New York and across the north-east. Her online bio states that: “Pissi Myles was born kicking and screaming and hasn’t stopped since.”It adds that she has been a winner of the Philly Drag Wars and Miss Fish NYC contests and performs regularly at the Pines on Fire Island, a popular beach town destination for LGBTQ New Yorkers in summer.She also told NBC News that “It’s a crazy day in Washington!” Funny, that’s just what the acting ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, said (more or less) when he heard that the Trump administration was holding up military aid to the country in order to pressure it to investigate Donald Trump’s American political rivals.The Illinois Democratic representative Jan Schakowsky, who happened to be a sartorial congressional standout in her brilliant red suit when she bumped into Myles, quickly tucked herself under the towering and ecstatic queen’s wing and shared the resulting picture on Facebook.“So glad Pissi Myles and I were matching!” she wrote.Whether the hearing matched up to expectations is a whole other question. It was certainly a Pissi contest and the only sure winner was Myles. Topics Trump impeachment inquiry US politics news

In arguments that intermittently advanced conspiracy theories, attacked the whistleblower, and questioned House Democrats’ fact pattern, President Trump’s defense counsel made a haphazard case against convicting the president in the impeachment trial this week. Over three days, a panel of attorneys including, notably, Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, argued that Democrats were attempting to invalidate the results of the 2016 election. “They’ve basically said, ‘Let’s cancel an election over a meeting with Ukraine,’” White House counsel Pat Cipollone said.Counsel also tried to thread the needle, suggesting that Trump didn’t commit the offenses he is charged with, and that even if he had, they do not meet the threshold for removal from office. The House has charged the president with abuse of power over his attempt to coerce a foreign country to investigate one of his political opponents, and obstruction of Congress over his attempt to stonewall lawmakers’ inquiry into that matter.House Democrats had anticipated several of these points and offered counterarguments ahead of time: They noted that the purpose of impeachment was for Congress to check presidents when they’ve abused their power and pointed to constitutional scholars who’ve argued that a crime is not needed to warrant impeachment. Ultimately, Trump’s counsel was focused on keeping the trial short, in order to move toward a speedy acquittal: They needed to provide Senate Republicans just enough cover to say that they’d heard enough and conclude that more witness testimony isn’t necessary. Revelations leaked from former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s forthcoming book might have complicated that plan, but Trump’s team worked to downplay them. And given GOP lawmakers’ focus on acquitting the president quickly, it’s likely that this case resonated.Trump’s defense attempted to cast doubt on the facts that have been presented during the impeachment trial and, in doing so, inadvertently helped make the case for calling more witnesses. Trump’s counsel on Saturday argued that many of the individuals Democrats cited did not have firsthand knowledge about the quid pro quo the president is accused of engaging in with Ukraine.“Most of the Democrats’ witnesses have never spoken to the president at all, let alone about Ukraine,” Trump attorney Mike Purpura said. “All Democrats have to support the alleged link between security assistance and investigations are Ambassador Sondland’s assumptions and presumptions.” Sondland and State Department official David Holmes testified to their understanding of this quid pro quo and said there was no other explanation for the facts that were presented to them. But, as Trump’s team was able to point out, neither of them were explicitly told this was a quid pro quo in stark terms. Sondland’s credibility, in particular, was questioned. In perhaps one of the most effective moments of the Republicans’ arguments, counsel displayed a supercut of Sondland’s testimony in the House during which he repeatedly said that his conclusions were based on his own “assumptions.” “In his public testimony, Ambassador Sondland used variations of the words presume, assume, guess, speculate, and belief over 30 times,” Purpura said. But since Purpura made that argument, a New York Times report has come out revealing that Bolton has said he was directly told by Trump about the quid pro quo between military aid and political investigations. Democrats emphasized that Republicans’ arguments have only bolstered the case for including more witnesses who have direct knowledge about the alleged quid pro quo. “They made a really compelling case for why the Senate should call witnesses and documents,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. “They kept saying there are no eyewitness accounts, but there are people who have eyewitness accounts.”Starr, the independent counsel who conducted the investigation that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, is now over impeachment, it appears. In remarks heavily laced with irony, Starr argued that impeachment — as a means for Congress to check the president — was now being used far too often. “The Senate is being called to sit as the high court of impeachment all too frequently,” Starr said. “Indeed, we are living in what I think can aptly be described as the ‘Age of Impeachment.’”As Vox’s Sean Collins notes, these arguments were presented against the backdrop of Starr’s involvement in past impeachment proceedings: He led Republican efforts in the House to investigate Clinton, and published his findings in what became known as the Starr Report, a document that was far more showy than Mueller’s work, and one that made an express recommendation, finding Clinton’s conduct “may constitute grounds for impeachment.”Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi highlighted media reports that had previously raised concerns about Hunter Biden’s seat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company. It’s a subject Trump’s defense has been keen to focus on to suggest that the president was attempting to root out corruption in his requests to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Democrats, however, have provided detailed evidence to demonstrate that Trump’s request to Zelensky was singularly focused on this political investigation and not broader corruption. A debunked conspiracy theory had also suggested that part of the reason Joe Biden pushed to fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was to protect his son Hunter Biden from further scrutiny.There is no evidence that this was the case, a point that House impeachment manager Rep. Sylvia Garcia emphasized. “Every witness with knowledge of this issue testified that Vice President Biden was carrying out official US policy,” she said. Bondi suggested that Trump’s defense team focused on the Bidens because House impeachment managers had done so first, even though it was likely they would have done so either way. “We would prefer not to be discussing this, but the House managers have placed this squarely at issue, so we must address it,” Bondi said. Trump counsel Alan Dershowitz attempted to neutralize the New York Times’s Bolton report by arguing that it simply doesn’t matter. In his remarks on Monday, Dershowitz said that the explicit outlining of a quid pro quo in Bolton’s manuscript does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. “Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz said. “That is clear from the history, that is clear from the language of the Constitution. You cannot turn conduct that is not impeachable into impeachable conduct, simply by using words like quid pro quo and personal benefit.”The central point of Dershowitz’s remarks was that the impeachment of a president required a crime, a perspective that many constitutional scholars disagree with. Sekulow rounded out the defense arguments by calling on lawmakers to disregard the revelations from the Bolton manuscript, arguing that the Times’s report doesn’t qualify as evidence given its reliance on unnamed sources who had seen the book. “You cannot impeach a president on an unsourced allegation,” Sekulow said. The Bolton revelations have played a major role in renewing pressure on Republican senators to consider hearing witnesses who have direct knowledge about Trump’s handling of Ukraine aid. Trump’s counsel, however, has argued that the allegations aren’t substantive enough to be considered — and that even if true, they do not constitute an impeachable act.Bolton’s manuscript, of course, only further strengthens Democrats’ comprehensive slate of evidence noting how Trump conditioned military aid on political favors. Whether enough senators want to hear from Bolton, however, is an open question. Much like the House impeachment managers, Trump’s counsel dug up some old video clips in order to use Democrats’ past words against them. As part of their closing, Trump’s lawyers played clips of a number of prominent Democrats, including Reps. Jerry Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, and Schumer, to show how their perspectives on impeachment had changed since the 1990s. “If you look to the words from the past that I think are instructive, they’re instructive because they were right then and they’re right now,” Cipollone said. These clips featured Democrats making several of the same arguments during Clinton’s impeachment trial that Republicans used this time around, including arguing, for example, that impeachment should not be leveraged on a partisan basis. “There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment,” Nadler said. “By these actions you would undo the free election that expressed the will of the American people in 1996,” Lofgren said. “My fear is that when a Republican wins, the White House Democrats will demand payback,” Schumer said. The House impeachment managers employed a similar tactic when they played clips of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s remarks as a House manager during the 1998 trial. In both cases, this method was quite effective, drawing a visceral reaction from senators in the audience and demonstrating how much positions have shifted for lawmakers in both parties.

Kamala Harris has suspended her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, a dramatic reversal of fortunes for a candidate who began the race with promise.Two months before the Iowa caucuses, Harris’s departure was unexpected. At the start of her campaign, Democrats viewed the California senator as one of the party’s strongest contenders against Donald Trump – a barrier-breaking former prosecutor who could rebuild the coalition of voters that helped elect Barack Obama twice.But she struggled to define a clear rationale for her candidacy and in recent weeks her campaign was beset by upheaval and layoffs.Harris notified her staff on Tuesday afternoon shortly, according to a campaign aide, before her campaign emailed supporters.In the email, Harris wrote: “I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life. My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”“But I want to be clear with you,” she added. “I am still very much in this fight.”As the news dropped, Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, tweeted a picture of the couple embracing with the caption: “I’ve got you. As always.”Harris officially launched her campaign in January with an impressive rally in Oakland that drew nearly 22,000 people and even earned plaudits from Trump, who called it the “best opening so far”.She posted a strong performance in the first debate in Miami in June, in stark opposition to the former vice-president, Joe Biden.But the polling and fundraising boost that followed that debate performance was short-lived, and after that she never managed to break into the first rank of candidates, which Biden still leads from the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.Harris recently shifted her focus to Iowa, the first state to vote, in hopes that a top-tier finish could propel her forward. But Buttigieg has moved into leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, the next state to vote.Harris was the only African American woman in the primary, a point of pride for her campaign.“Our campaign uniquely spoke to the experiences of black women and people of color – and their importance to the success and future of this party,” Harris said in the email to supporters.“Our campaign demanded no one should be taken for granted by any political party. We will keep up that fight because no one should be made to fight alone.”The deadline to appear on the primary ballot in California is Friday and polling showed that Harris was trailing far behind in her home state, a troubling sign for any presidential hopeful.Harris had already met the fundraising and polling requirements to qualify for the December debate in Los Angeles. With her withdrawal, six candidates are now expected to participate in the debate – all of them white. There are nine days left for other candidates to qualify.The primary race has been shaped by progressive ideas and Harris found herself stuck between the sweeping populism of Warren and Sanders and the return-to-normal appeal of Biden.She began by casting herself as a reform-minded progressive, signing on to Sanders’ Medicare for All bill in the Senate. But her prosecutorial past and a shift on Medicare for all policy drew criticism from the left that she struggled to overcome.At the same time, she was unable to chip away at Biden’s strength among black voters, a crucial Democratic constituency that her campaign identified as a priority.Her campaign, which drew inspiration from Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress, initially presented Harris as the candidate “speaking truth” in response to Trump’s persistent attacks on women and minorities as well as the urgency of acting on gun violence and criminal justice reform.But her wavering on policy reinforced the “Cautious Kamala” reputation she developed as she climbed the ranks from San Francisco district attorney to attorney general of California and then US senator.Supporters say Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, faced a double standard as a woman of color running for the presidency in the shadow of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016. Recently she began to speak about what she called the “elephant in the room” – her electability as a woman of color.In a final iteration of her campaign’s messaging, Harris presented herself as the candidate best equipped to “prosecute” the case against Trump. “Justice is on the ballot,” she told voters in the last debate.Supporters eager to see Harris take on Trump may yet have a chance next year, when the Senate is likely to hold an impeachment trial against Trump. As a member of the Senate judiciary committee, Harris has become well known for her sharp questioning of Trump administration officials and she is likely to be a prominent voice.A Twitter exchange with the president on Tuesday night offered a glimpse of what that clash might look like.“Too bad. We will miss you Kamala!” said Trump, who has made a point to comment on every Democratic drop out, even long-shot candidates.“Don’t worry, Mr President,” Harris shot back. “I’ll see you at your trial.”Her Democratic rivals responded to the news with a mix of shock and regret.Biden told reporters he had “mixed emotions” about her departure while praising Harris as a “first-rate intellect, first-rate candidate [and] real competitor”.Buttigieg celebrated the California senator’s long career and predicted she would continue to play a vital role in the Democratic party.Entrepreneur Andrew Yang said he was “stunned” to see Harris end her campaign and thanked her for offering his family “help and guidance when she didn’t need to”.Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who clashed with Harris during the debates, said she respected Harris.“Love you, sister,” said New Jersey senator Cory Booker.In a video, Julián Castro, the former housing secretary under Obama and the only Hispanic candidate running for president, assailed the media for its coverage of her campaign, saying that as a black woman she was held to a double standard that was “grossly unfair and unfortunate”. Topics Kamala Harris Democrats US politics US elections 2020 news

closeVideoBiden, Harris hold no public events as sprint to Election Day beginsNew poll shows President Trump and Joe Biden close in Florida; Peter Doocy reports.The Biden camp has yet to release an official arts agenda and didn’t respond to a Fox News request for comment.“Throughout his career Vice President Biden has been a strong supporter of the arts,” a campaign spokesperson told Hyperallergic. “Vice President Biden knows investing in the arts is critical for job creation and he is committed to promoting and supporting the arts in schools as well as the diversity and richness of ideas that keep the artworld alive.”VideoAs a senator, Biden was always a strong arts supporter.In 1997, he voted against Amendment 1206 in 1997, which would have privatized American arts funding.In 1973, he supported a resolution to create the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress; in 2000, he helped designate March as Arts Education Month.In 2003, Biden was an original cosponsor of legislation to establish the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and he has pledged to create a Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino if elected.VideoAs a senator, Harris has backed resolutions for Hispanic Heritage Month and Filipino American History Month.This summer, Harris co-sponsored the Confederate Monument Removal Act, a provision to remove statues and busts of those who served the Confederacy or have "unambiguous records of racial intolerance" from the U.S. Capitol.According to the text of the bill, Confederate statues and busts would mean depictions of individuals who voluntarily served as part of the Confederate military, the military of a state while it was rebelling against the United States or anyone who served as a Confederate government official.In years past, Harris helped create SFMOMA Matches, a mentoring program that helped students from underserved communities with interest in visual art.“Kamala was my first pick when the primaries were in session, and it was because I studied her and how she had learned to listen to people,” said artist Lee Quiñones, a member of Arts for Biden-Harris. “And Biden is coming right off the Obama ticket, they were very much involved in the arts. So I knew that they would have a keen eye to working with artists.”He told Hyperallergic about the future role of art in America: a discontinuation of the artless Trump administration.“I think that artists can open the aperture of life through the power of their art. That goes along with good administration practices and policy pushing. I think we need to flip the script.”

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Fitbits on our wrists collect our health and fitness data; Apple promises privacy but lots of iPhone apps can still share our personal information; and who really knows what they’re agreeing to when a website asks, “Do You Accept All Cookies?” Most people just click “OK” and hope for the best, says former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.“The amount of data we’re giving up is unprecedented in human history,” says Yang, who lives in New York but is helping lead the campaign for a data privacy initiative on California’s Nov. 3 ballot. “Don’t you think it’s time we did something about it?”Yang is chairing the advisory board for Proposition 24, which he and other supporters see as a model for other states as the U.S. tries to catch up with protections that already exist in Europe.The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 would expand the rights Californians were given to their personal data in a groundbreaking law approved two years ago, which took effect in January. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 was intended to give residents more control over their personal information collected online. It limited how companies gather personal data and make money from it and gave consumers the right to know what a company has collected and have it deleted, as well as the right to opt out of the sale of their personal information.But between the time the law was passed and took effect, major companies have found ways to dodge requirements. Tech and business lobbyists are pressuring the Legislature to water it down further, with proposals to undo parts of the law, says Alastair Mactaggart, a San Francisco real estate developer who spearheaded support for the 2018 law and is behind the effort to amend it.“Business is actively seeking to undermine the protections that were just put in place,” says Mactaggart. He began advocating for consumer privacy after a dinner party conversation with a Google employee who told him people would be shocked by how much the company knows about them. As more time passes without restrictions, he said “these businesses, because of the nature of their power, will be too powerful to regulate."To help research and draft the measure, Mactaggart said he hired Ashkan Soltani, former Federal Trade Commission chief technologist, and consulted with numerous other privacy experts.The measure is supported by Common Sense Media and Consumer Watchdog, along with several privacy experts and labor organizations that say the measure will strengthen the law and protect it from industry attempts to dilute it.The pro-24 campaign has raised over $5.5 million, most of it from Mactaggart.The campaign to defeat the measure has raised just $50,000. Opponents say the 52-page initiative is so complicated that most voters won’t read it, or understand their rights if they do. Early voting begins Monday.Opponents include groups like the California Small Business Association, a handful of local chambers of commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, which say it's too soon to rewrite the law. They say the measure would further burden small businesses still trying to comply with the new law. “And now Prop. 24 would upend all of that for an even more stringent, onerous law," the NFIB said in a statement.The ACLU of Northern California is also opposed, saying some updates would actually hurt consumers.“Overall, it is a step backward for privacy in California,” said Jacob Snow, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. He argues Proposition 24 would make it easier for businesses to charge customers higher prices — or “pay for privacy" — if they refuse the collection of their data, or downgrade service for those who don't pay the fee, which could hurt low-income communities and those who can't pay to protect themselves.“That’s not how privacy should work. It should not be a luxury that only rich people can afford," he said.Mactaggart says these objections are a misrepresentation of the measure and that the “pay for privacy” provision is already part of the existing law.Proposition 24 would also create the California Privacy Protection Agency, with an annual budget of $10 million, to enforce the law and fine companies for violations.Now, only the state attorney general can bring enforcement actions, but Attorney General Xavier Becerra has said his office has limited resources and could only bring a handful of cases each year.It would also triple the fines on companies that violate kids’ privacy or illegally collect and sell their private information, while closing some of the loopholes that proponents say companies such as Facebook, Google and Spotify have exploited by saying they're not selling personal information but “sharing” it with partners. Consumers could also opt out of data sharing and sales of private information about everything from their race and ethnicity to union membership or religion.“I think this is going to be an opportunity for us to set a national standard,” said Yang. “As soon as other states see that Californians have these data and privacy rights, they’re going to want the same thing.”

Standard Oil Co. and American Telephone and Telegraph Co. were the technological titans of their day, commanding more than 80% of their markets.Today’s tech giants are just as dominant: In the U.S., Alphabet Inc.’s Google drives 89% of internet search; 95% of young adults on the internet use a Facebook Inc. product; and Amazon.com Inc. now accounts for 75% of electronic book sales. Those firms that aren’t monopolists are duopolists: Google and Facebook absorbed 63% of online ad spending last year; Google and Apple Inc. provide 99% of mobile phone operating systems; while Apple and Microsoft Corp. supply 95% of desktop operating systems.A growing number of critics think these tech giants need to be broken up or regulated as Standard Oil and AT&T once were. Their alleged sins run the gamut from disseminating fake news and fostering addiction to laying waste to small towns’ shopping districts. But antitrust regulators have a narrow test: Does their size leave consumers worse off?By that standard, there isn’t a clear case for going after big tech—at least for now. They are driving down prices and rolling out new and often improved products and services every week. That may not be true in the future: If market dominance means fewer competitors and less innovation, consumers will be worse off than if those companies had been restrained. “The impact on innovation can be the most important competitive effect” in an antitrust case, says Fiona Scott Morton, a Yale University economist who served in the Justice Department’s antitrust division under Barack Obama.

Welcome to Hillicon Valley, The Hill's newsletter detailing all you need to know about the tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. If you don’t already, be sure to sign up for our newsletter with this LINK.Welcome! Follow our cyber reporter, Maggie Miller (@magmill95), and tech team, Chris Mills Rodrigo (@chrisismills) and Rebecca Klar (@rebeccaklar_), for more coverage.AT LONG LAST: The House Judiciary panel on antitrust released its long-awaited report on competition in digital marketplaces Tuesday after multiple delays and a rocky effort to secure bipartisan support for its proposals.The Democratic report — which was crafted over 15 months using more than a million documents, testimony gathered in and out of hearings and interviews with hundreds in the industry — paints the country’s biggest tech companies as gatekeepers that stifle competition.It focuses on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, which were worth a combined $5 trillion in September and made up a third of the S&P 500.The report includes a series of recommendations on how to address the concentration of market power in those firms, including revamping existing antitrust laws and strengthening the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice antitrust team.The challenge for Democrats now turns to getting bipartisan support for those proposals.While the investigation launched last June was always billed as a cooperative effort between the parties, support for the recommendations appears to have frayed on party lines.The release was reportedly delayed Monday in an effort to get Republican support while Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), ranking member of the full Judiciary committee, asked that his colleagues not sign on.Rep. Ken BuckKenneth (Ken) Robert BuckHillicon Valley: Congressional antitrust report rips tech firms | Facebook tightens ban on QAnon content | Social media groups urged to weed out disinformation targeting minority voters Congressional antitrust report rips tech firms for stifling competition GOP lawmaker says China could use TikTok consumer data against US in a conflict MORE (R-Colo.), considered the key swing vote on the committee, circulated a draft memo earlier this week obtained by Politico saying that some of the report’s recommendations "are non-starters for conservatives."The report acknowledges that not every lawmaker will endorse its entirety, but stresses the findings show a need for reform.“Although we do not expect that all of our Members will agree on every finding and recommendation identified in this Report, we firmly believe that the totality of the evidence produced during this investigation demonstrates the pressing need for legislative action and reform,” it reads. “These firms have too much power, and that power must be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and enforcement.”Read more here. QANON CRACKDOWN: Facebook announced an escalation of its ban on QAnon content Tuesday, pledging to ban all accounts affiliated with the sprawling conspiracy theory from its platform.The social media giant in August banned QAnon accounts that specifically discussed violence, which led to 1,500 page, group and profile takedowns.Starting Tuesday, the ban will extend to all affiliated pages, groups and accounts. “We are starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and need[s] to continue in the coming days and weeks,” Facebook said in a blog post.Read more here. DISINFORMATION CONCERNS: Officials on Tuesday urged social media platforms to take further steps to root out and remove disinformation and misinformation targeting minority groups that could lead to voter disenfranchisement in the upcoming elections.Rep. Lauren UnderwoodLauren UnderwoodHillicon Valley: Congressional antitrust report rips tech firms | Facebook tightens ban on QAnon content | Social media groups urged to weed out disinformation targeting minority voters Officials urge social media groups to weed out election disinformation targeting minority voters Hillicon Valley: House panel says Intelligence Community not equipped to address Chinese threats | House approves bill to send cyber resources to state, local governments MORE (D-Ill.), who took over as chair of the House Homeland Security Committee’s cybersecurity subcommittee last month, sounded the alarm on disinformation efforts against minority groups, particularly against the Black community. Underwood sent letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on Tuesday expressing concerns that both malicious foreign actors and those in the U.S. could use social media to spread disinformation aimed at preventing Black individuals from voting. “The continued efforts to maliciously target Black voters on your platforms raise questions about whether you, as Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, fully appreciate the range of tactics that have been used to suppress Black turnout and the many forms that such suppression may take,” Underwood wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “This election will take place under unprecedented circumstances, and both accurate and inaccurate information will no doubt spread quickly on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.”Underwood was not alone in expressing concerns. Read more here. FACEBOOK REMOVE’S TRUMP POST: Facebook removed a post Tuesday from President Trump falsely claiming that the flu is more lethal than COVID-19.“Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu,” he wrote in the post. “Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”CNN first reported the takedown.More than 209,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 this year, more than in the past five flu seasons combined.The annual flu death total has been between 12,000 and 61,000 since 2010, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.The last time that U.S. flu deaths hit an estimated 100,000 was in 1968.“We remove incorrect information about the severity of COVID-19, and have now removed this post,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said.Read more here. WARNER URGES DISINFORMATION SAFEGUARDS: Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called on Facebook, Twitter and Google to implement safeguards against the spread of disinformation on their platforms in the remaining weeks before Nov. 3. Warner wrote individual letters to the tech giants Tuesday urging “stronger accountability and transparency standards in the context of our nation’s upcoming election,” underscoring his request by highlighting past and ongoing foreign efforts to interfere in U.S. elections. He called for the companies to better identify, label or remove disinformation and misinformationWarner said Facebook and Google are vectors “for disinformation, viral misinformation and voters suppression efforts,” and that misinformation spreading on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube pose “a serious threat” to national security. Read more here. RUSSIA'S BACK, BACK AGAIN: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday pointed to Russia as the key nation involved in spreading disinformation and misinformation in the U.S., along with posing an “acute” cybersecurity threat headed into the next year. “Foreign influence activity will target U.S. foreign and domestic policy, international events such as COVID-19, and democratic processes and institutions, including the 2020 Presidential election,” DHS wrote in the 2020 Homeland Threat Assessment (HTA), released Tuesday. “Russia is the likely primary covert influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation within the Homeland,” the agency noted. “We assess that Moscow’s primary objective is to increase its global standing and influence by weakening America—domestically and abroad—through efforts to sow discord, distract, shape public sentiment, and undermine trust in Western democratic institutions and processes.”The assessment from DHS came as concerns around foreign threats to elections have spiked in the past few months. A top official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed in August that Russia, China and Iran were actively interfering in U.S. elections this year, four years after Russia launched a sweeping campaign designed to favor now-President Trump. Democrats recently demanded DHS make public more information around election threats following an ABC News report on a bulletin sent to law enforcement officials by DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis that warned Russian agents were likely to “amplify” concerns around mail-in voting to undermine public trust in the upcoming elections. Beyond disinformation concerns, DHS on Tuesday also highlighted cyber threats to elections and to the 2020 Census, with the agency noting that it expected nation states to attempt to interfere.“Advanced persistent threat or other malicious cyber actors likely will target election-related infrastructure as the 2020 Presidential election approaches, focusing on voter PII [personally identifiable information], municipal or state networks, or state election officials directly. Operations could occur throughout the 2020 election cycle—through pre-election activities, Election Day, and the post-election period,” DHS wrote. Read more here. HOUSE PANEL TELLS INTEL COMMUNITY TO STEP UP: A House Intelligence Committee subcommittee on Tuesday urged the intelligence community to take steps to boost its science and technology innovation work, warning that without improvements, the U.S. could fall behind other nations, including China.The Subcommittee on Strategic Technologies and Advanced Research issued a report recommending a series of steps to ensure the U.S. could keep pace on the international stage with technologies including quantum computing, 5G and artificial intelligence, but warned that there was no time to lose.“We must act now,” the subcommittee wrote in the report. “Studies, reports and commissions have warned for decades about the risks to national security from the steady erosion in our innovative capacity. Those risks are no longer abstract or speculative. They are upon us and presenting us with ever more adversity and ever more limited policy options.”Recommendations included the reestablishment of the Office of Technology Assessment in the House of Representatives, a nonpartisan agency that provided guidance to Congress on technology-related legislation. It was closed in 1995 after the then-GOP controlled House cut its funding. Other recommendations include improving private sector collaboration, improving science and technology education to build a future workforce, establishing an Intelligence Innovation Board and strengthening and focusing science and technology leadership within the intelligence community. The subcommittee also stressed the need for the U.S. to lead on the establishment of norms and standards on science and technology, particularly in order to combat increasing cybersecurity threats, pointing to both foreign threats to U.S. elections and cyberattacks against major U.S. companies. Read more here. ADMINISTRATION TO TARGET VISAS: The Trump administration announced additional immigration reforms on Tuesday aimed at making it more difficult for skilled foreign workers to acquire visas.The changes are the latest effort by the Trump administration in recent months to crack down on the use of visas as part of its broader attempt to limit the flow of foreign workers.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expected to publish regulations targeting H-1B visas that are granted to skilled workers and are common in the tech industry. Recipients can typically stay in the United States for multiple years.The rules, which will go into effect in 60 days, would heighten requirements for businesses that hire foreign workers on H-1B visas, according to details reviewed by The Hill. The changes may be challenged in court.Read more here. INSTAGRAM HEAD WARNS AGAINST TIKTOK BAN: The head of Instagram on Tuesday warned that the Trump administration’s push to ban the Chinese-owned app TikTok could set a precedent leading to global bans of U.S.-based social media companies, including Instagram and its parent company, Facebook. “I think the important thing is that if the U.S. ends up banning TikTok, that sets a really powerful precedent for companies all over the world to ban companies like Instagram or Facebook,” Instagram's Adam Mosseri said on NBC’s “Today.”“And I think a lot of U.S. companies benefit greatly, like ours, from being able to operate all over the world,” Mosseri continued. “And the risk of that precedent being set or pushed forward, I think is much greater than the benefit we have from slowing down a competitor.”Read more here. Lighter click: The future is nowAn op-ed to chew on: Fixing government’s trillion-dollar system glitch NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:Spread of a conspiracy theory about Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis show why TikTok must be proactive about QAnon misinformation (Media Matters for America / Olivia Little)Kickstarter Settles Complaint That It Retaliated Against Union Organizer (Motherboard / Lauren Kaori Gurley)

Enlarge this image President Trump insists there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine — but the phrase was not always synonymous with a shakedown. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images President Trump insists there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine — but the phrase was not always synonymous with a shakedown. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images A bit of Latin has been on the lips of many lately: quid pro quo. The phrase has been broadly invoked in the House impeachment inquiry into President Trump and his interactions with the leader of Ukraine.Trump and many of his allies deny there was a quid pro quo — they say that Trump did not withhold military aid to Ukraine as part of an exchange for investigations that could help Trump politically in the 2020 campaign. (Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney admitted that link in a press briefing last week but then later walked back his comments.) Politics Judge Orders DOJ To Hand Over Mueller Material, Validates Impeachment Probe U.S. diplomat William Taylor's recent testimony to congressional investigators supports allegations that Trump withheld military assistance as part of a parallel — and informal — Ukraine policy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said that proving quid pro quo is not a requirement for impeachment, but the phrase has stuck. "In Latin it just simply means something for something," says Ben Zimmer, language columnist for The Wall Street Journal. But, he notes, "I think that the political situation can't help but inform the way that we're going to understand this particular phrase, even though it's been in the language for oh, about 500 years."An exchange — not necessarily an equal oneZimmer says the first recorded use of the phrase quid pro quo in English meant something totally different. "In the 16th century, very often if you've got a drug from an apothecary, what you would be getting might not be exactly what you asked for," he says. Enlarge this image L'Etude du Procureur, The Lawyers Office, Plate III from the series The Trades, ca 1632-1633, etching by Abraham Bosse, France, 17th century. De Agostini Picture Library/De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption De Agostini Picture Library/De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images L'Etude du Procureur, The Lawyers Office, Plate III from the series The Trades, ca 1632-1633, etching by Abraham Bosse, France, 17th century. De Agostini Picture Library/De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images Instead of the quid you asked for, you got the quo. It sounds harmless enough, but Zimmer says it could lead to problems. "Very often the drugs that were swapped out would lead to someone getting something that didn't work as well or could even be harmful. And so, this was a practice that people were scared of," he says. That's where the idea of an exchange started. Fast-forward another century, and lawyers start using quid pro quo a lot. National As President Trump Tweets And Deletes, The Historical Record Takes Shape "Lawyers love using Latin, and that was true way back in the 16th and 17th century, when quid pro quo started getting picked up to refer to an exchange of one thing for another — and again, that in a legalistic context could be very neutral. It's simply one thing for another," he says. "But this more negative connotation has always carried through — that there is perhaps some sort of corrupt intents on at least one side of this mutual relationship, perhaps the motives are not so pure." What about a favor? If a quid pro quo by definition is something for something else, then what about the word "favor"? In his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, President Trump asked him for a "favor." Trump insists there was no pressure. Webster's defines "favor" as a "gracious kindness." There's no mention of expecting something in return. But that is not always how it plays out in real life."There's a quid pro quo built into every relationship — every conversation. We talk in a certain way because we expect some response," says Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University. "I want you to like me, and so then you might be friends. Or we are friends, I want to stay friends." Politics Gordon Sondland, The Ambassador Whose Texts Put Him At The Center Of Ukraine Scandal People don't usually attach strings to the favors they do for family, Tannen says. But the further people get outside that circle, the more complicated the favor becomes, even between peers. At times, people may not even realize their own expectations for reciprocity.It gets infinitely messier when there's a power dynamic at play. It's natural, Zimmer says, "when we are in this type of transactional relationship to think, 'Am I really getting the something of equal value here or am I being taken advantage of?' "Tannen adds that how the trade-off is articulated — or how it is not — is key. "That's what I think we're dealing with often in public situations where people are caught on tape, say, making what we all know is a demand but not in so many words, so they can say, 'Oh no, that's not what I meant.' " Politics As Ukraine Affair Expands, So Could Giuliani's Legal Exposure There is inherent drama in the quid pro quo. It's about relationships, it's about trust and power, spoken and unspoken expectations. The idea is everywhere in popular culture, and now, because of the Ukraine scandal, quid pro quo is everywhere in our politics. Zimmer says gone are the days when it could be descriptive, or morally neutral. "Now it's more like a shakedown. It's more like: You have to do this for me or else." Marc Rivers and Steve Tripoli produced and edited this story for broadcast. Heidi Glenn adapted it for the Web.

Donald Trump’s presidency, it has been widely observed, bends the laws of time. Scandals that would have dogged other presidents for years tend to be here today, gone tomorrow. Fifteen minutes of fame is now likely to count for no more than 15 seconds.But even by the standards of the Trump universe, this week has been a blur. And at its heart was a single, devastating hour on Tuesday 21 August that effectively turned the president of the United States into an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal crime.But first, there was Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s lawyer, the former New York mayor, set the tone last Sunday with an Orwellian comment on the NBC network’s Meet the Press. Asked whether the president would give his version of events in testimony to Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Giuliani warned of a perjury trap and said: “Truth isn’t truth.”Interviewer Chuck Todd put his hand on his forehead and said: “This is going to become a bad meme!” And it did.At the White House on Monday, Trump hosted an event to highlight success stories of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He said that a border patrol agent, who is Latino, “speaks perfect English” as he beckoned him to the stage. He also misstated the acronym for US Customs and Border Protection at least eight times, referring to it as “CBC”, as in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.So far, so Trumpian – fairly typical of this extraordinary presidency. But then came, to use primary election parlance, Super Tuesday. At around 4.30pm, in courtrooms 200 miles apart, a pair of Trump associates delivered a one-two punch that stunned the White House and revived whispers of impeachment.In New York, Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen implicated the president in a crime to influence the 2016 presidential election. Pleading guilty to dodging taxes and campaign finance violations, he alleged that Trump directed him to pay hush money to prevent two women – a Playboy model and pornographic actor – speaking out about extramarital affairs.In Alexandria, Virginia, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was found guilty of eight tax and bank fraud charges and could now spend the rest of his life behind bars – unless Trump chooses to pardon him.Fittingly for the reality TV presidency, the courtroom dramas unfolded just minutes apart, and continued cable news channels’ love-hate relationship with the president. At 4.48pm, CNN host Jake Tapper told viewers: “I apologise. We have more breaking news. It’s like a Saturday Night Live skit.”“No day during President Trump’s 19 months in office could prove as dangerous or debilitating as Tuesday,” wrote Dan Balz in the Washington Post. “Everything that happened in a pair of courtrooms hundreds of miles apart strengthened the hand of special counsel Robert S Mueller III and weakened that of the president of the United States.”Cohen’s plea bargain statement could be exhibit A if Democrats win the House of Representatives in November and launch a campaign to impeach the president, though the party continues to play down such talk. And Cohen’s lawyer embarked on a media tour saying his client was eager to sing like a canary for Mueller.But the day from hell was far from done. The Republican congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife were indicted on corruption charges, namely converting more than $250,000 in campaign money to pay for personal expenses, including dental work, fast food, golf outings and holidays and trips for their family and nearly a dozen relatives.In 2016, Hunter was the second member of Congress to endorse Trump for president. Earlier this month the first, Chris Collins of New York was indicted for insider trading. The third? Jeff Sessions, now Trump’s out-of-favour attorney general.Set against all this, Trump would not have been pleased to find his latest campaign rally something of an anticlimax. Somewhat subdued in Charleston, West Virginia, he made no mention of Cohen, Manafort or Hunter, but he did taunt the media: “Where is the collusion? You know they’re still looking for collusion. Where is the collusion? Find some collusion. We want to find the collusion.”And with irony clearly dead, Trump’s supporters chanted “Lock her up!” – an old refrain about his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton.By 8.53pm, the TV news veteran Dan Rather, who has seen it all, was tweeting: “I’ve been saying ‘Wow’ since about 4 o’clock this afternoon, and have yet to stop.”And then, in one more dose of humiliation, the candidate Trump endorsed for governor of Wyoming, Foster Friess, lost the Republican primary to the state treasurer, Mark Gordon.The day was a vivid illustration of a news cycle operating at hyperspeed. Bob Shrum, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, drew comparisons with Watergate – particularly the “Saturday Night Massacre”, when Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the attorney general and his deputy – and the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.Shrum added: “But we now just go from one stunning story to another. Instead of Alpha to Omega, it’s Cohen to Omarosa,” – a reference to the reality TV star turned White House aide whose gossipy memoir already feels like an aeon ago.Then there was Wednesday. At 8.44am, Trump tweeted: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” He described Manafort as “a brave man” who took the rap and suggested that the fact 10 of his charges were undecided was proof of a “witch hunt”.Later, the president gave an interview to Fox News which, as always, had sought to play down the firestorm. He denied instructing to Cohen to commit a crime. “They weren’t taken out of campaign finance, that’s the big thing,” Trump said. “That’s a much bigger thing. Did they come out of the campaign? They didn’t come from the campaign. They came from me.”He also claimed that he did not find out about the payments until “later”, contradicting earlier statements. For the first time, the Washington Post’s factchecker said the president was lying rather than merely misleading or false. “The president’s statement was a lie – and the people speaking for him repeated it,” the Post commented.Even Trump, the irrepressible force of nature who fights every crisis by punching back harder, “seemed subdued”, the New York Times reported. “He appeared to realize the serious nature of what had just taken place, and yet his relative calm – contrasted with his more typical lashing out when he is anxious – unnerved some of his aides.”Not for the first time, perhaps seeking affirmation, on Wednesday night he turned to Fox News. There he saw a spurious Tucker Carlson report pushing a white nationalist conspiracy theory that white farmers in South Africa are being persecuted and murdered in Zimbabwe-style land grabs. Trump tweeted his outrage and promised to consult the state department, whose own human rights report on South Africa had made no mention of the issue.It was one more white grievance dog whistle to add to all the rest. The South African government issued a swift rebuke and summoned US officials. Patrick Gaspard, the former US ambassador to South Africa, described the intervention as “astounding and deeply disturbing”. He said: “I can draw a line from the irresponsible statements he made in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville and him lifting up tropes from white nationalists in South Africa.”On Thursday there was no let-up. It emerged that David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc, which owns the pro-Trump National Enquirer, had been granted immunity to provide information about Cohen and Trump’s involvement with payments to the two women who allege sexual affairs. The Associated Press added fuel to the fire by reporting that the Enquirer kept such secrets locked in a safe, lending it extraordinary power.That night, the New York Times reported that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was considering pursuing criminal charges against the Trump Organization and two senior company officials in connection with one of the hush money payments.Meanwhile Trump traded verbal blows with Sessions, whom he said he had only appointed because of his campaign support. On Friday morning he kept going with tweets, urging the attorney general to investigate Hillary Clinton and Democrats in the interests of balance. “Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!” Speculation that Sessions will be fired intensified – again, a public feud that in any other era would have dominated headlines.But instead attention turned back to Trump’s legal crisis as the Wall Street Journal reported that Allen Weisselberg, his longtime financial gatekeeper, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors for providing information about Cohen. There was an ominous sense that the walls are finally closing in on the president.But as ever during Trump’s wild weeks, there were things being missed or not receiving sufficient information. Buried under the news avalanche: the White House released a greenhouse gas emissions plan that could boost output from coal-fired power plants rather than push them towards closure. Trump’s supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, moved closer to confirmation as he appeared to get the nod of approval from the Republican senator Susan Collins.Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted: “i understand the focus on politics here at home, but 1) NK is not denuclearizing; 2) Venezuela is on the precipice; 3) a crisis with/over Iran is brewing; 4) climate change is worse sooner than predicted; 5) US relations w China and Russia are at post-Cold War nadir. just sayin’”.The worst week yet of the Trump presidency? It faces stiff competition from his responses to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, a devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki. Indeed, with this man in the White House, every week feels like a lifetime. Topics Donald Trump Trump administration Republicans US politics Rudy Giuliani Robert Mueller Michael Cohen features

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, alarmed by the rise of Chinese electronics supplier Huawei Technologies Co., wants Washington to subsidize firms that could counter China’s 5G advances. The proposed Utilizing Strategic Allied Telecommunications Act would steer at least $750 million toward companies developing fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technology and create a separate $500 million fund for companies that deploy “trusted and secure” equipment around the world.Sens. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) and Mark Warner (D., Va.), who lead the Senate’s intelligence committee, introduced the bill.A draft version of the law didn’t name specific companies, but its sponsors said the move would challenge Chinese telecom-equipment makers. Shenzhen-based Huawei has become the world’s top supplier of cellular radio equipment. U.S. officials have accused the Chinese government of subsidizing Huawei’s growth abroad through low-cost loans and other support that gives the company an edge against Western rivals.Huawei has said that it benefits from government support available to any company.

Jack Allen, senior Europe economist at Capital Economics, told the BBC: "If you look at Germany across 2018 we've seen a pretty broad-based slowdown in growth. We've seen household consumption slow, we've seen business investment slow and we've seen export growth slow.

Mr. Trump’s trade war has been weighing on European growth since early last year, but the effect was mostly psychological until recently. The uncertainty created by the administration’s tariffs made manufacturers reluctant to expand factories or add workers.The tariffs’ impact is becoming more tangible, cutting into the earnings of companies like Salzgitter, a steel maker in the German city of the same name. Salzgitter warned this month that pretax profit in 2019 would be half or less than the 347 million euros, or $391 million, that the company earned in 2018.American tariffs on steel imports are partly to blame, although mostly indirectly, said Bernhard Kleinermann, a Salzgitter spokesman. The levies caused producers in countries like Russia and Turkey to flood Europe with steel they could no longer sell to customers in the United States, driving down prices.Trade was not the only dead weight on Germany’s growth. Britain’s looming departure from the European Union, and the prospect that it might happen without an agreement covering future economic relations, was another significant source of anxiety.German carmakers struggled to comply with tougher emissions standards, which delayed delivery of new vehicles. Even an especially dry summer played a role. The level of the Rhine River fell so low that barge traffic became impossible, holding up shipments of German chemicals that normally travel by water.Those were temporary problems, though, making some economists optimistic that growth could improve in the coming months. The horizon will seem much brighter if Britain overcomes its political deadlock and works out a deal with Brussels, and if the United States and China can resolve their differences over trade.Economists also expect the Chinese government to stimulate the country’s economy, which would help revive demand for German products like cars and machine tools.