HONG KONG—When Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping visited a military base in Southeast China this month, he told members of the party’s Marine Corps to “focus your minds and energy on preparing to go to war.” His speech came shortly after the Trump administration said it would move forward with a $7 billion arms sale to Taiwan, which China has threatened to retaliate against if it goes through.Xi has long wanted to absorb Taiwan under the Communist Party’s rule—he’s openly stated his ambition to “reunify” the democratic island with mainland China while he is the party’s helmsman. And his strategy to dominate Taiwan includes more than gunboats, jets, and boots on the ground. For decades, party leadership in Beijing has leaned on what Xi calls his “magic weapon” to leverage trade relationships and shared ethnic roots to lay the groundwork for entrenched CCP influence in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora abroad: wielding soft power through China’s United Front Work Department.Compared to the CCP’s military jingoism and propaganda-spreading “wolf warrior” diplomats, the United Front works behind the scenes, often targeting wealthy individuals with transnational holdings to do the CCP’s bidding through persuasion, economic incentives, and blackmail, or by funneling money toward grassroots organizations that shape opinions about the party among Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and expat Chinese communities.Far more than an advocacy mechanism, United Front receives at least $1.4 billion each year from the CCP—the actual figure is likely much higher, as some budget details are classified. These funds may even outstrip the budgets for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Public Security, fueling the primary engine for the party’s gray-area influence efforts at home and abroad.But it is in Taiwan and among the broader Taiwanese community where the United Front’s influence is most evident.The United Front Work Department was first formed in 1942, during the Chinese Civil War, as an arm of the CCP that set out to instill Mao Zedong’s ideology in all social strata and establish party oversight over groups that weren’t part of the CCP’s hierarchy. Through the years, the United Front’s scope of work expanded based on the overall goals of party leadership, and came to include intelligence operations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas. And at home, United Front officials exert control even over some foreign enterprises; its officials routinely meet with heads of factories, including subsidiaries of overseas corporations.Since 2015, Xi has steered new and useful resources toward the United Front, adding new bureaus to give it the manpower and funds it needs to leave deeper imprints across the globe—and especially across the strait in Taiwan, where the United Front has been ramping up operations since the late 1980s to subvert Taiwanese democracy.China’s growth into the second largest economy over the past four decades meant Taiwan’s enterprises have had to rely on business ties with the mainland for their own economic survival. In June 2014, hundreds of Taiwanese business executives gathered in Shenzhen, a Chinese city that borders Hong Kong. Their guest of honor was the chief of the United Front’s Shenzhen section, who spoke to his audience about making Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” a reality in Taiwan as well as the prospect of reunification. When he finished, applause erupted in the hotel’s banquet hall, Reuters reported.Similar scenes have played out since then in other parts of China, according to Taiwanese and Chinese business people I spoke to between early 2015 and the end of 2019. Local branches of the United Front keep tabs on the number of Taiwanese citizens who are in China for education or work, and include details from background checks in their annual reports to CCP leadership. The organization is involved in shaping China’s commercial environment, offering favorable conditions to entice Taiwanese business executives into setting up shop across the strait—a carrot to complement the People’s Liberation Army’s explosive stick. This special attention gives the CCP an opening to call in debts.That happened ahead of last year’s presidential election in Taiwan, when the United Front put pressure on Taiwanese media executives and senior journalists after a series of sponsored “exchanges” with news organizations in China, deploying economic incentives and threats of barring them from the lucrative Chinese market.In the weeks leading up to Taiwan’s presidential election in January, disinformation and propaganda flooded the airwaves, TV programs, and online content, playing up the incumbent Tsai Ing-wen’s friendly ties with the United States and Japan to suggest she was selling out Taiwan. On Facebook, there was a barrage of posts that claimed votes for the opposition’s candidate, who was seen to have China-friendly leanings, would not be counted.While it is difficult to separate disinformation originating from domestic Taiwanese rivalries from interference directed by Beijing, the United Front did organize a conference on how to mobilize on the internet in November 2019—two months before Taiwan voted—covering subjects like “guiding political thought” in cyberspace.One example is the United Front’s partnership with the Cyberspace Administration of China to hire social media influencers and livestreamers who can amplify the party’s message online. In the weeks leading up to Taiwan’s presidential election this year, clusters of Taiwanese models uploaded photos of themselves striking the same pose onto Facebook and Instagram, with similarly worded posts including complaints about social and economic conditions under Tsai’s administration.Despite the disinformation campaigns, Tsai was the eventual winner.Long before Taiwanese nationals seek employment or reach the age to vote, the United Front already has their eyes on them. Sung Wen-Ti, a visiting fellow at the Australian Center on China in the World, a research institute that is part of the Australian National University, said the United Front operates at all levels of society to “win hearts and minds.” Sung hails from Taiwan, and his research focus covers Taiwanese politics, Chinese elite politics, and U.S.-China-Taiwan relations.Sung pointed to the United Front’s engagements to “court Taiwanese youth,” offering “hospitality, experience, and opportunity” to students of all ages. One example is the Straits Peace Angels initiative, which is co-sponsored by the CCP’s Young Pioneers division and has organizational input from the All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots. The program focuses on children aged 7 to 14 who are from Taiwan, and brings them to mainland China for visits where they are paired with children of their own age, in a bid to establish long-term relationships. Its mandate says, “cross-strait friendship ought to start from the babies.”This echoes a statement by Xi in August 2019, when he referenced suggestions made by the CCP’s historians: “Our youngsters should be branded with red since their childhood.”Once programs like the Peace Angels lock in on young children in Taiwan, the United Front is in it for the long haul to shape pro-CCP opinions, forming a pipeline “from school students, grassroots-level community association heads, media and scholars, all the way to senior politicians,” Sung said.In recent years, Taiwan has been losing foreign allies, with nations dialing back diplomatic relations with the island nation to only recognize the People’s Republic of China. Now, only 15 states—dotting Central America, the Caribbean, Polynesia, Micronesia, plus the Holy See—have formal diplomatic ties with Taipei.Even so, the United States remains Taiwan’s most significant backer. Facing an existential crisis in early October because of increasing military aggression from China, the island nation’s legislators urged their Ministry of Foreign Affairs to seek formal recognition from Washington—and gain a real ally that might make Beijing back off. However, knowing that this outcome is virtually impossible, the Kuomintang—which was the CCP’s rival during the Chinese Civil War but has in recent years adopted a Beijing-friendly stance—may be trying to “out-hawk the hawks and do the foreign policy equivalent of virtue signaling” in an attempt to repair its reputation in Taiwan, according to Sung Wen-Ti. By putting forth the proposal to approach Washington, the KMT casts the image that it may now be keeping the CCP at arm’s length.“Our youngsters should be branded with red since their childhood.”Responding to The Daily Beast’s inquiry about the bipartisan resolution on reaching out to Washington, Taiwanese foreign minister Joseph Wu said his ministry will “seek every opportunity to further enhance bilateral ties with the United States one step at a time.” In September, Wu told France 24 that his island nation is “on the front line defending democracies from being taken over by communist China.”Yet Taiwan’s economy remains intimately intertwined with mainland China’s—and it’s precisely this enmeshment that the United Front relies on to force its way into Taiwanese circles, building upon a presence that was first established decades ago.While a full-on military invasion of Taiwan is a concern, the United Front also occupies significant real estate in the minds of Taiwanese officials. In conversations with me in the past two years, the island nation’s officials and diplomats have stopped short of saying that they seek to decouple Taiwan’s economy from mainland China’s, but the overarching idea is to persuade Taiwanese enterprises to rethink their links with Chinese labor and investment, as well as related business ties, and encourage them to move their operations back to Taiwan. The goal is to limit channels that the United Front can exploit in its long game to lure Taiwanese elites into its spheres of influence.To understand the scale and intensity of the United Front’s operations in Taiwan and further afield, and how much leverage it can have over individuals who depend on China’s market forces, an examination of the United Front’s activities within China’s borders—such as its role in the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs—provides a sense of just how far the Front can go and how its every move intertwines with the party leadership’s rosy proclamations.In October, China was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council, and will maintain its seat from 2021 to 2023. In early October, 39 countries, led by Germany, condemned the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, where more than 1 million people are kept in detention camps, which Chinese officials say are vocational training centers. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) also estimates that at least 80,000 Uyghurs from Xinjiang have been subjected to forced labor transfers organized by the Chinese government from 2017 to 2019.ASPI specifically pointed out that a United Front official based in Qingdao, 3,500 km east of Xinjiang, told Uyghur workers at a Korean-owned shoe factory’s night school that they must “strengthen their identification with the state and the nation. The school’s name, the Pomegranate Seed Night School, references a precept from Xi Jinping: “Every ethnic group must tightly bind together like the seeds of a pomegranate.”China has 56 ethnic groups, including the dominant Han-Chinese who make up more than 90 percent of the population. The CCP implements policies to tweak or even erase elements of the cultures of non-Han groups, with the most brutal measures leveled at Tibetans and Uyghurs. Meanwhile, the party’s propagandists paint a picture of harmony and unity—like the many seeds in Xi’s pomegranate. Without the party, the implication runs, how can you thrive and bear fruit?The United Front’s proven track record of incubating influence and managing progress toward the CCP’s long-term objectives makes it the perfect vessel for the party to extend its ideological reach across the globe—close to home in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and crossing into the Chinese diaspora in western Europe and North America. Overseas Chinese include people who fled China during the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, and Hongkongers who left the city before it was handed back to China in 1997, as well as their offspring. The United Front wants to bring them back into the fold by playing up shared cultural roots, creating one identity, all loyal to the CCP.During a tour of Southeast China last week, the CCP leader said, “An important quality of overseas Chinese is that they love their country, love their roots, love their families... China’s reform and opening up, its development, cannot be separated from the many overseas Chinese whose hearts are tied to their motherland.”For all of Xi and the United Front’s soft-power operations, and their push to get Taiwan to self-identify with China and the CCP as one people, their moves may be backfiring, at least in the short term. Since Taiwan’s election, unfavorable views towards the CCP in Taiwan have been at a peak—and are shifting into new territory with Taipei’s courting of WashingtonWith the U.S. selling more arms to Taiwan than ever before, experts expect to see more incursions by Chinese jets and bombers into Taiwanese airspace, as well as more PLA Navy gunboats hugging the median line in the Taiwan Strait—in what CCP-backed outlet Global Times called “a rehearsal for a Taiwan takeover.” For years, PLA troops have been training in Inner Mongolia to storm the presidential office in Taipei.War would surely be fraught for both sides—which is why Xi might be hoping the United Front’s longstanding influence operations could ultimately persuade Taiwan’s elite to step back from a full-on conflict and move towards China on their own.“Most of the United Front’s work is generally more geared towards indirectly and slowly shifting the general atmosphere,” Sung Wen-Ti said. “To put this in another way, methodologically, the United Front provides conducive conditions to changes, rather than sufficient conditions. Tracing a clear causal channel is often challenging, because for clear causal claims you need both conducive and sufficient conditions to be present, and United Front is only part of the picture.”Despite the recent saber-rattling from both sides, the United Front’s decades-long campaign for the fate of Taiwan may be yielding results. Sung explained, “What we can say is that the United Front has likely created a constituency in Taiwan that is socially embedded in China, economically dependent on stable cross-strait relations, and politically more sympathetic towards placating Beijing’s preferences.”

President Trump has repeatedly promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to an abortion in America. By putting Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the Court, he moved one step closer to that goal.Barrett, who was confirmed by the Senate on Monday, attracted praise from social conservatives for her religious faith as well as her strict interpretation of the Constitution. As a judge on the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, she issued conservative decisions in cases involving the Second Amendment and immigration, among others. But her views on abortion got particular attention during her confirmation process, given the president’s promise on Roe and the political importance of the issue in an election year.During her confirmation hearings, Barrett did not directly answer questions about how she would rule on abortion rights. But she has made her personal opinion on the issue clear in the past, signing her name to a 2006 newspaper ad opposing “abortion on demand.” She has twice voted in abortion cases, both times in ways favorable to abortion restrictions. And while she’s said she doesn’t believe Roe will be overturned outright, she’s also made clear that she’s open to reversing Supreme Court precedent if she thinks a previous decision goes against the Constitution.She might get that opportunity soon, with more than a dozen abortion cases just one step away from the Court. And while no one knows for certain what kind of justice she would be, her past certainly suggests she could be a deciding vote to reverse Roe and eliminate the legal right to abortion in America.At 48, Barrett doesn’t have a long judicial record, as the LA Times noted in 2018 when she was first floated as a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy. Barrett was confirmed to the Seventh Circuit, her first judgeship, in 2017.Since then, she’s voted in two abortion cases, each time in ways that could be seen as friendly to abortion restrictions. In one, Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., the Seventh Circuit voted to block an Indiana law requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions. Barrett joined a dissent saying the law should have been allowed to take effect, as ABA Journal reports.The second case, Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., concerned an Indiana law that would have banned abortions on the basis of race, sex, or Down syndrome diagnosis, as well as requiring that fetal remains be buried or cremated. A lower court struck down the law, and the state of Indiana appealed only the fetal remains portion. A panel of the Seventh Circuit declined to rehear the case, but Barrett joined the dissent, arguing that the case should be reheard and bringing up potential legal merits of the ban on race- or sex-selective abortions, even though that part of the law was no longer actually at issue. The dissenters called the law a “eugenics statute” and wrote that “none of the Court’s abortion decisions holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex, race, and other attributes of children.”In addition to these votes, Barrett has made a number of public statements on Roe and abortion over the years. Perhaps most notably, in 2006 she signed her name to an ad placed by the group St. Joseph County Right to Life in the South Bend Tribune, an Indiana newspaper. The ad stated that the undersigned “oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death,” the New York Times reported.The ad has raised additional concerns because St. Joseph County Right to Life opposes in vitro fertilization, and has stated that the discarding of frozen embryos generated through IVF should be criminalized, as BuzzFeed News reported. In response to concerns about this position, the White House directed BuzzFeed to a statement by Barrett on the day of her nomination: “Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold.”Barrett, a Catholic and member of the religious group People of Praise, has also said that she personally believes life begins at conception, and that Roe “ignited a national controversy” by deciding the issue of abortion by court order rather than leaving it to the states.However, Barrett has also said several times that she believes the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe. “I don’t think the core case, Roe’s core holding that women have a right to an abortion, I don’t think that would change,” she said in a 2016 appearance at Jacksonville University. “But I think the question of whether people can get very late-term abortions, you know, how many restrictions can be put on clinics, I think that will change.”The idea that the Court was more likely to let states chip away at abortion access than to reverse Roe outright was common for many years among advocates on both sides of the abortion issue. Indeed, conservative state legislatures have worked for years to restrict abortion within the bounds of Roe, with Louisiana, Texas, and other states passing numerous laws that have shut down clinics across the South and Midwest. But now the calculus is changing. As Nina Totenberg and Domenico Montanaro note at NPR, Trump has already appointed two conservative justices to the Court, moving it significantly to the right. And some believe that Chief Justice John Roberts may be more amenable to a direct challenge to Roe than to the kinds of incremental clinic restrictions that were at issue in the recent June Medical Services v. Russo, in which he voted to strike down a Louisiana abortion law.And, of course, the death of Justice Ginsburg leaves Trump the opportunity to pull the Court even further to the right. Should Barrett join it, conservative justices might well have the votes — and the will — to go after the right to an abortion directly. If they do, states would be able to ban abortion outright, rather than just passing laws making the procedure harder to get. Should such an opportunity present itself, Barrett has made clear that judicial precedent wouldn’t necessarily be an obstacle for her. The judge has said she believes the Supreme Court has the responsibility to revisit and potentially overturn old rulings that its current members feel conflict with the Constitution.“I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and that is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it,” Barrett wrote in 2013.Like previous nominees to the Supreme Court, including Brett Kavanaugh, Barrett declined to provide substantive answers about her thoughts on Roe during her confirmation hearing, arguing that to do so “signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another on a pending case.” However, she did provide some clues. For example, she referred to a category of rulings she called “superprecedents” or “cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling,” as CBS News reported. That category included the cases Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down school segregation, and Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated laws against interracial marriage, she said — but not Roe v. Wade. In the case of that decision, “calls for its overruling have never ceased,” Barrett told the Senate Judiciary Committee. To many, that signaled that she saw Roe as a decision the current Court could revisit — and potentially reverse.Despite her past votes and writings, no one knows for sure how Barrett will rule in a Supreme Court abortion case until she gets to consider one. But one thing is clear: Barrett has no particular allegiance to Roe v. Wade, or to Supreme Court precedent more generally. And if she is given the opportunity to overturn the 1973 decision, nothing in her record suggests she won’t take it. Vox turns 7 this month. 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For Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, it’s the propaganda gift that keeps on giving, buoying a leader long in Washington’s crosshairs.For Juan Guaidó, it’s just the latest misstep, reviving questions about the competence of the Trump administration’s man in Caracas.Last week’s botched amphibious assault on the Venezuelan coast quickly became a Maduro rallying cry, a Bay of Pigs in miniature, complete with a pair of captured U.S. gunmen — Iraq war veterans who were soon on state TV admitting their roles in a B-movie plot to kidnap Maduro and fly him to the United States.Venezuelan forces easily foiled the three-boat fleet of sea invaders, most of them Venezuelan defectors, being ferried to a busy port zone and a remote stretch of beach on the country’s Caribbean coast, at the northern tip of South America. Eight intruders were killed and some three dozen captured, the government said, with the two ex-U.S. Army soldiers among the prisoners. “Who were they fighting for? For Donald Trump, it’s that simple, let no one doubt it,” declared Maduro, who denounced the “Rambo” operation as he brandished the U.S. passports of the two captives.Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo denied any “direct” U.S. involvement and declined to provide details on who financed the operation.”As for who bankrolled it, we’re not prepared to share any more information about what we know took place,” Pompeo told reporters. “We’ll unpack that at an appropriate time.”President Trump sought to dismiss the affair as a freelance amateur hour.“I saw the pictures on a beach,” Trump told Fox News. “It wasn’t led by Gen. George Washington, obviously.”Meantime, Guaidó — whose self-declared interim presidency has been rocked by a series of stumbles over the last 16 months — was hard-pressed to explain away his signature on a jaw-dropping $210-million contract with Silvercorp USA, the Florida security firm that acknowledged it was behind the raid. The funds were to be backed by “Venezuelan barrels of oil” extracted once Maduro was out and replaced by Guaidó.Juan José Rendón, a key Guaidó associate who also signed the contract, depicted it as a tentative accord ditched soon after it was signed last Oct. 16. The contract “was part of a preliminary agreement that never became effective,” Rendón told CNN Español.Rendón, however, did acknowledge paying $50,000 to Silvercorp for expenses.The damage-control spin didn’t diminish the unsightly optics for the camp of Guaidó, whose leadership is recognized by Washington and more than 50 allied capitals. A mercenary attack is an unfortunate look in a region with profound historic antipathy to outside meddling.Late Friday, Guaidó filmed a video message distancing himself from the operation. “We don’t need foreign mercenaries,” Guaidó fumed, capping an especially rough week at the office.Guaidó’s frequent forecasts of imminent revolt against the “usurper” Maduro — whose 2018 reelection he denounces as illegitimate — have all proved illusory. “The opposition has reached the end of its errors,” said Jesus Seguías, an independent political analyst in Caracas. “They no longer have the margin of error to keep on exercising policy as they have been doing.”Guaidó and his U.S. sponsors have consistently failed to flip the Venezuelan military high command, the nation’s key power brokers, despite repeated assertions from Guaidó and the Trump administration that the top brass was poised to turn on Maduro.In the aftermath of the failed attack, military leaders rallied around Maduro, accompanying him at the presidential palace to view scripted taped interviews with the captured U.S. gunmen. News outlets and social media accounts displayed images of Venezuelan troops and allied militiamen hunting down “terrorist mercenaries,” as patriotic music blared.“These events clearly have a negative effect on Guaidó and his efforts to portray himself as a competent and legitimate government [leader],” David Smilde of Tulane University told VPItv, an online Venezuelan television channel. “It helps Maduro, at least in the short term,” added Smilde, who is a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy group.The debacle also threatened new rifts in the long-fragmented Venezuelan opposition, which united in January 2019 to endorse Guaidó's presidential self-declaration.Primero Justicia, a major opposition group, called for an investigation and demanded that Guaidó sack anyone involved. The plot “ends up frustrating our people and destroying the confidence among those of us who fight for political change,” Primero Justicia said in a statementThe opposition group voiced alarm that Guaidó’s team — showered with tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid — had evolved into a “bureaucratic caste” and was losing sight of the goal of political transformation.The episode was especially troubling, Seguías added, because it demonstrated that Guaidó and his handlers still contemplated a military solution to the years-long political and economic turmoil buffeting a country that was once among Latin America’s richest. “They keep on believing in the armed path to solve the Venezuelan crisis,” Seguías said of the Guaidó camp. “Yet the United States has said on various occasions that an armed solution is not possible.”Washington officially backs a negotiated solution in Venezuela, though Trump has stressed that all options remain open.“If I wanted to go into Venezuela, I wouldn’t make a secret about it,” Trump told Fox News after the failed assault. “It would be called an army. It would be called an invasion.”How a group of gunmen in three boats planned to take the country’s main international airport, advance into heavily guarded Caracas, force their way into Miraflores palace and snatch Maduro and top aides was unclear. The two U.S. captives said the total force involved about 50 to 60 men, including the maritime crews and anticipated infiltrators on the ground.Apparently, the attackers expected their assault would spark a popular uprising.“My hope is that these guys will galvanize thousands of Venezuelans to fight for their freedom,” Jordan Goudreau, Silvercorp USA’s founder and a former U.S. special forces soldier, told Florida-based Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo in a video interview as the invasion unfolded. “The point is to get in and show it can be done.”Goudreau, 43, was not on the ground for the mission. His current whereabouts are not publicly known. The plan, the captured Americans said on Venezuelan television, was for the U.S. raiders to telephone Goudreau once they had secured Maduro, who has a $15-million U.S. reward on his head for drug-trafficking charges. Goudreau was then to summon aircraft to extract Maduro. It was unclear who was expected to provide air transport. Goudreau, a decorated veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was probably in over his head in the intrigue-heavy sphere of Venezuelan opposition politics, which he apparently first experienced as a security advisor at a pro-Guaidó concert along the Colombian border in February 2019. As his on-the-ground partner in Colombia, Goudreau chose a former Venezuelan general, Cliver Alcalá. The ex-general had been under U.S. Treasury Department sanctions since 2011 for having pioneered “an arms-for-drugs route” with Colombian rebels. Alcalá moved to Colombia two years ago after breaking ranks with Maduro’s government, which calls him a drug kingpin.The Goudreau-Alcalá partnership ended abruptly in late March when U.S. authorities indicted Alcalá on drug-trafficking charges, part of the same sweeping “narco-terrorism” prosecution that accused Maduro and top aides of flooding the United States with cocaine — charges denied by Maduro. Washington also posted a $10-million reward for information leading to Alcalá's capture. From his home in Barranquilla, Colombia, Alcalá, formerly a shadowy background figure, gave a radio interview boasting of his role in training Venezuelan insurgents along with unnamed U.S. “associates,” and of a “contract” with Guaidó. The ex-general declared he was leading “a military operation against the dictatorship of Maduro.” Alcalá was soon whisked off on a Drug Enforcement Administration jet that had been granted special permission to land in Colombia amid the coronavirus lockdown and take him into U.S. custody. “When [Alcalá] was arrested, that was mind-blowing to a lot of people,” Goudreau said in the video interview. “He was the biggest enemy of the Maduro regime.”The mission, dubbed “Operation Gideon,” never really had a chance since Venezuelan intelligence had thoroughly infiltrated the months-long underground training campaign in Colombia that preceded last week’s maritime strike.Weeks earlier, Diosdado Cabello, the No. 2 man in Maduro’s socialist party, was already featuring on his weekly television program photos of “the gringo mercenary” Goudreau, along with images from the webpage of Goudreau’s company, Silvercorp USA. The Maduro loyalist also displayed photos of safe houses in the Colombian city of Riohacha where Venezuelan defectors and their U.S. advisors were staying. He even described the contract signed by Guaidó.“We’ve been investigating them for six months,” Cabello boasted of the plotters. “We have recordings, photos.”For reasons that remain perplexing, Goudreau nonetheless green-lighted the attack to “liberate” Venezuela. Those captured, including Goudreau’s two ex-Army buddies, will face terrorism charges under Venezuelan law, Maduro vowed.Gloating in triumph, the Venezuelan leader was especially thankful to the remote fishing and coconut-palm hamlet of Chuao, where locals intercepted the two haggard Americans and other would-be liberators on the beach as their boat ran out of gas. By Goudreau’s account, all were desperately seasick. “Captured by the people’s power of the fishermen!” Maduro proclaimed last Monday. “My applause to the patriotic fishermen!” Staff writer McDonnell reported from Mexico City and special correspondent Mogollon from Caracas. Staff Writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington and special correspondent Chris Kraul in Bogotá, Colombia, contributed to this report.

closeVideoPete Buttigieg questions Trump's COVID response, praises Biden's ability to handle campaign trail demandsPete Buttigieg weighs in on President Trump's handling of COVID-19 and comments if Biden can handle the strains of a presidential campaign trail.The coronavirus pandemic has undoubtedly turned political but former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg told “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that he hopes the handling of a vaccine doesn’t follow the same track record.“A safe, effective vaccine can't come soon enough,” he said. “The sooner that happens, the better chance we have of being able to get this virus under control and just have our lives back… And my hope is that this will be an area free from political interference.”Buttigieg, a Joe Biden campaign surrogate, said he’s specifically worried about this interference since President Trump has a “track record” of mixing politics in public health.Biden and running mate Kamala Harris also have expressed concern in the reliability of a vaccine under President Trump. President Donald Trump smiles as gets cheers from the crowd as he arrives to participate in a Latinos for Trump Coalition roundtable Monday, Sept. 14, 2020, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) “Donald Trump's not great when it comes to keeping a promise that something will be delivered on a certain date,” he said. “Remember when he told us there'd be a health care plan in two weeks? I mean, he said that, I don't know, six weeks ago.”Buttigieg compared Trump and Biden as presidential contenders by pointing out that the former vice president would never “stuff his supporters into a room without masks in an indoor space” out of respect for voters, as the president has during rallies.“When you do that, you show a level of fundamental disrespect for your own supporters,” he said. “Think about how low an opinion the Trump campaign must have of Trump supporters… You set a certain tone when you lead people to a certain place. And if you lead people to danger, you bear some responsibility for that.”

Mexico has long looked to its most important ally — the United States — in times of crisis, and its diplomatic campaign for a coronavirus vaccine is no exception.At least three U.S. pharmaceutical companies have agreements with the Mexican government that could reduce how long its citizens have to wait for vaccinations.But officials in Mexico and many other developing countries are well aware that the United States is consumed by its own coronavirus crisis and led by a president who preaches “America first.”And so they have also turned to two other superpowers that are more than willing to fill the void: China and Russia.The governments of both countries have already been marketing still-unproven vaccines around the world, seizing on the likelihood of a global bottleneck to deepen ties abroad and expand their influence at a time when the United States has pulled out of multiple international agreements and shunned the World Health Organization.Russia’s trade ministry said it has received interest from more than 20 countries for a total of more than a billion doses. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is cutting its own deals and offering enticements, including a $1-billion loan program to help Latin American and Caribbean nations purchase its vaccines.Both China and Russia have plans to supply vaccines to Mexico. Wearing a mask against the spread of the coronavirus, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard answers questions during a press conference at the airport in Toluca, Mexico, on May 5.(Marco Ugarte / AP) “We are not putting all our eggs in one basket,” said Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard.There are 7.8 billion people in the world. Ending the pandemic with a vaccine could require immunizing 80% of them.Given that many of the vaccines now in development are expected to require two shots, that could mean more than 12 billion doses.Even with manufacturing capacity ramping up, vaccine executives say inoculating the world could take until 2024.The wealthiest countries will almost certainly be first in line.After antiretroviral therapies for suppressing HIV became widely available in the United States and Europe in 1997, it took almost seven years — and millions of deaths — for them to be distributed across Africa.While the H1N1 pandemic was erupting in the spring of 2009, the United States and other rich countries paid to reserve virtually the entire supply of potential vaccines — agreeing to release 10% of it to developing countries only after it became clear months later that the virus was less deadly than originally thought.Today, the planet seems just as unlikely to operate as one big, happy family. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, more than 70 countries seized control of medical supplies to prevent them from being shared or sold abroad. After the antiviral drug Remdesivir showed promise, the United States bought 90% of the global supply.Already, wealthy countries that make up just 13% of the global population have pre-purchased more than half of the vaccine that major companies have pledged to produce, according to the aid organization Oxfam.The United States pre-purchased 800 million doses of various experimental vaccines in a bet that at least one candidate will prove safe and effective.Operation Warp Speed — the multi-billion-dollar U.S. government partnership with several private companies to develop, manufacture and distribute vaccines — may eventually benefit poorer countries, but it is not clear when. Peter Marks, a senior Food and Drug Administration official, said in June that the allocation of U.S. vaccines will resemble overhead oxygen masks on a depressurizing plane: Help yourself before helping others.That leaves developing countries two options.The first is to wait it out. COVAX, a global partnership co-led by the World Health Organization, plans to pool vaccines and make them available in low-income countries for healthcare workers and people at high risk of dying from the virus.The effort is lagging because the White House has refused to pay into the fund, saying in September that it would not be “constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.” A staff member tests samples of a potential vaccine at a production plant of SinoPharm in Beijing. In the global race to make a coronavirus vaccine, the state-owned Chinese company is boasting that it gave its employees experimental shots even before the government OK’d testing in people. (Zhang Yuwei / AP) Even if the effort meets its goals, the countries that benefit will still have to find more vaccine elsewhere. For example, the WHO anticipates that all of Africa will receive about 220 million doses, but that ideally it needs more than a billion.Tom Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations, called COVAX a “heroic effort” that is “swimming against the tide of history.”The second option is vaccine diplomacy. That’s where China and Russia come in.China has been on a tear in recent years to expand its global influence, funding oil pipelines, maritime networks and other infrastructure projects that could eventually stretch across more than 100 countries.The pandemic — and the worldwide need for a vaccine — presented a unique opportunity to exercise soft power. But China had a problem: Because it has managed to control its own coronavirus outbreak through strict quarantine orders and other measures, the companies developing half a dozen vaccines lacked the right conditions to run clinical trials.Many other countries with few prospects of securing vaccines by other means were happy to oblige. Chinese trials are now underway — or expected to start soon — in at least a dozen countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Morocco, Indonesia and Bahrain.In return for 9,000 volunteer test subjects, Brazil has negotiated the right to buy some 120 million doses of the vaccine being developed by the Chinese company Sinovac, possibly starting as soon as December.The deal also calls for Brazil — which has lots of experience manufacturing pharmaceuticals — to help produce the vaccine that it will use.Testing abroad could also help build China build international confidence in its medical research establishment, which has been wracked by a series of vaccine safety scandals.Chinese officials have announced that they are not planning widespread vaccinations of their own citizens.More important to China is being able to vaccinate people in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam in hopes of recruiting allies and marshaling support for its overseas agenda, including claims over disputed territory in the South China Sea.Pakistan — which has been promised enough vaccine for about a fifth of the population — has notably refrained from condemning China for its treatment of Pakistani Uighurs. Medical diplomacy in Russia dates back to the days of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union exported massive amounts of cheap vaccines to the developing world.Early in the pandemic, the Russian government sent thousands of masks and ventilators to Italy in shipments decorated with hearts: “From Russia With Love.”If there were any doubts that he sees vaccine development as the new international space race, they were quelled when Russia announced the name of its new vaccine: Sputnik V.The first of three vaccines that Russia expects to bring to market, it was developed at the government’s Gamaleya Institute and approved after testing in just 76 volunteers.Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his own daughter had taken the vaccine, a nod to the 1950s Russian researchers who inoculated their own children against smallpox.The vaccine was also tested on volunteer soldiers and is now undergoing further testing in at least 30,000 people. The United Arab Emirates — which has enrolled at least 50,000 people in Russian and Chinese clinical trials — has already begun issuing emergency authorizations to start vaccinations.The United States is no stranger to vaccine diplomacy.In the 1970s, it helped fund mass inoculation programs to eradicate smallpox in South America, Asia and Africa. Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deployed hundreds of workers around the world in an effort to finally wipe out polio.“Those white coats are the world’s best ambassadors,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt. “It sounds corny, but it works.”When it comes to the coronavirus, the Trump administration appears to be breaking with that tradition.“There’s no public official statement saying they’re going to use the U.S. vaccines to support poor countries to fight COVID,” said Yanzhong Huang, the director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University. He said that silence has been a gift to China and Russia: “The U.S. is handing them the opportunity.”In Mexico, which has budgeted $1.7 billion for vaccine purchases, the deal-making is well underway.The Chinese company CanSino Biologics plans to conduct Phase 3 clinical trials there and is now under contract to supply shots for 35 million people. The Russian government said that at least 16 million Mexicans could receive Sputnik V.In addition, the British company AstraZeneca has agreed to supply vaccine for 39 million more people — as Mexican authorities angle to make the country a hub for distribution of the vaccine throughout Latin America. Mexico has also signed a commitment to COVAX to buy vaccines for at least 25 million people.For the moment, the United States — its biggest trading partner — remains a smaller player in the vaccine strategy of Mexico.A deal with the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is expected to supply shots for up to 17 million people. The U.S. companies Johnson & Johnson and Novavax are planning trials in Mexico that would assure it faster access to those vaccines if approved.“All this is obviously our bet that Mexico is in the front row of access,” said Martha Delgado, the undersecretary of state who is coordinating the vaccine search. “That we will not be left behind.”Baumgaertner reported from Los Angeles and McDonnell from Mexico City.

The giant tech companies whose services are woven into the fabric of social life are now the targets of a widening assault by government competition enforcers. Regulators filed landmark antitrust lawsuits Wednesday against Facebook, the second major government offensive this year against once seemingly untouchable tech behemoths.The Federal Trade Commission and 48 states and districts sued the social network giant, accusing it of abusing its market power to squash smaller competitors and seeking remedies that could include a forced spinoff of Facebook’s prized Instagram and WhatsApp messaging services. The company’s conduct has crimped consumers’ choices and harmed their data privacy, the regulators charged.Once lionized as innovators and job creators – and largely left alone by Washington for nearly two decades – Big Tech companies have seen their political fortunes plummet. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple have come under scrutiny from Congress, federal regulators, state attorneys general, and European authorities. Their once-considerable political support in Congress has eroded.Lawmakers of both major parties are championing stronger oversight of the industry, arguing that its massive market power is out of control, crushing smaller competitors and endangering consumer privacy.There’s little likelihood the pressure will ease up. President-elect Joe Biden has said the breakup of Big Tech giants should be seriously considered. What Georgia voting law actually says – and why stakes seem so highLawmakers and consumer advocates have accused Facebook of anticompetitive behavior, most starkly in buying up aspiring smaller rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp and by copying features introduced by competitors. Critics say such tactics squash competition and could limit viable alternatives for consumers looking, for instance, for comparable services that do less tracking for targeted advertising. Businesses, including mom and pop shops, might have to pay more for ads if they have fewer choices to reach consumers online.The new lawsuits were announced by the FTC and New York Attorney General Letitia James, culminating separate investigations over the past year and a half.The FTC said Facebook has engaged in a “a systematic strategy” to eliminate its competition, including by purchasing smaller up-and-coming rivals like Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.At a news conference, Ms. James said “it’s really critically important that we block this predatory acquisition of companies and that we restore confidence to the market.”“For nearly a decade Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users,” said Ms. James, a Democrat. “They reduced choices for consumers. They stifled innovation, and they degraded privacy protections for millions of Americans.”Facebook called the government’s claims “revisionist history” that punishes successful businesses and noted that the FTC cleared the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions years ago. “The government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final,” Facebook general counsel Jennifer Newstead said in a statement.Antitrust skeptics point to newer social media services such as TikTok and Snapchat as rivals that could “overtake” older platforms like Facebook.Facebook is the world’s biggest social network with 2.7 billion users and a company with a market value of nearly $800 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the world’s fifth-richest individual and the most public face of Big Tech swagger.Ms. James alleged that Facebook had a practice of opening its site to third-party app developers, then abruptly cutting off developers that it saw as a threat. The lawsuit – which includes 46 states, Guam, and the District of Columbia – accuses Facebook of anti-competitive conduct and using its market dominance to harvest consumer data and reap a fortune in advertising revenues.Online ads make up the bulk of the company’s revenue, which reached over $70 billion last year.North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who was on the executive committee of attorneys general conducting the investigation, said the litigation could alter the communications landscape much the way the breakup of AT&T’s local phone service monopoly did in the early 1980s.“Our hope is to restructure the social networking marketplace in the United States, and right now there’s one player,” Mr. Stein told reporters.Antitrust expert Rebecca Allensworth, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, said it is “hard to win any antitrust lawsuit and this one is not any different.” But as far as antitrust cases go, she added, the government has a strong one.“These lawsuits mark an important turning point in the battle to rein in Big Tech monopolies and to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement,” said Alex Harman, competition policy advocate for Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.The Justice Department sued Google in October for abusing its dominance in online search and advertising – the government’s most significant attempt to buttress competition since its historic case against Microsoft two decades ago.That suit, announced just two weeks before Election Day, brought accusations of political motivation from some quarters. It was filed by a cabinet agency headed by an attorney general seen as a close ally of President Donald Trump, who has often publicly criticized Google.The FTC, by contrast, is an independent regulatory agency whose five commissioners currently include three Republicans and two Democrats. Two of the three Republicans, Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson, voted against the agency’s action against Facebook. And the coalition of 48 states and districts that sued Facebook is bipartisan.Instagram and WhatsApp are among some 70 companies that Facebook has acquired over the past 15 years. But they are the ones most frequently held up by Facebook critics as properties that should be split off.Facebook paid a mere $1 billion for Instagram – considered one of the cleverest deals ever in the industry – bolstering the social network’s business a month before its stock went public. At the time, the photo-sharing app had about 30 million users and wasn’t producing any revenue. A few years later, Facebook acquired WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging service, for $19 billion. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. Mr. Zuckerberg vowed both companies would be run independently, but over the years the services have become increasingly integrated. Users are now able to link accounts and share content across the platforms. Instagram now has more than 1 billion users worldwide. Such integration could make it more difficult to break off the companies.This story was reported by The Associated Press. AP journalists Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California, and Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Mr. Trump, who is using increasingly harsh language as he describes himself as a “law and order” president, has portrayed demonstrators as “thugs” and “terrorists,” and last week threatened to deploy the military nationwide to overpower protesters. And on Friday, as Mr. Trump discussed a stronger-than-expected jobs report, he also invoked Mr. Floyd, saying, “Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country.”In a speech, Mr. Biden called those remarks “despicable.”Earlier in the week, Mr. Biden laced into Mr. Trump in a separate address for fanning the “flames of hate”and turning “this country into a battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears” as he called for a national reckoning over systemic racism.While the protests have been largely peaceful, Mr. Biden also nodded to violent clashes between the police and some people in the crowds, as well as looters, urging a “nation enraged” that “we cannot let our rage consume us.”Previously, both he and Mr. Trump spoke by phone with Mr. Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd. Philonise Floyd told CNN that the conversation with the president was “very brief.”Mr. Biden will meet with the Floyd family amid ongoing protests against police violence and racism that are unfolding across the country, including huge marches on Saturday, and as Mr. Biden is still navigating how to travel safely during the coronavirus outbreak, which kept him confined to campaigning from home for months.

Facebook is facing perhaps its greatest existential threat yet as the company prepares to battle two antitrust lawsuits brought by the US government and more than 40 states. But while analysts are calling the crackdown an important step, whether the social media giant can be reined in remains to be seen.The lawsuits brought against Facebook on Wednesday accuse the company of wielding its “monopoly power” to crush and overwhelm its rivals. The cases tackle Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in particular, deals which federal regulators now say should be unwound.The move by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 48 attorneys general is being heralded by some analysts as an unprecedented move, and one that’s long overdue. But there’s still a long way to go, especially as the lawsuits could take years to litigate.“I don’t think anything is going to happen in the short run,” says George Hay, a professor of Law at Cornell University and former member of the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division. “I think Facebook has no incentive to resolve this case. It is not like they are facing jail sentences or a big fine.”The attacks against Facebook come in the form of twin lawsuits, one brought by the FTC and another brought by a coalition of states. They accuse Facebook of creating and holding on to a monopoly in its market, with a sprawling network of acquisitions that were intentionally anticompetitive, and strategically shut out software developers that could have grown into competitors. With its monopoly, consumers were not only left without broader engagement options, but were also pushed into accepting Facebook’s now notorious privacy issues.Hay adds that the issues brought by the complaints are narrow in nature, especially their focus on two particular acquisitions: a $1bn deal to buy the photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012, and the $19bn purchase of the global messaging service WhatsApp in 2014.Together, the buys brought the top four social media companies worldwide under Facebook’s control, and both the FTC and the states’ complaints detail how Facebook executives saw the apps as potential competitors before paying huge sums to acquire them.The lawsuits represent the biggest antitrust cases in a generation, comparable to the lawsuit against Microsoft Corp in 1998. The federal government eventually settled that case, but the years-long court fight and extended scrutiny prevented the company from thwarting competitors, and is credited with clearing the way for the explosive growth of the internet.But the Silicon Valley of today is even more powerful and fast-moving, and the lawsuits may end up being too little too late if regulators are unable to break up the company for years to come. “These two entities have been absorbed into Facebook and Facebook could replicate them,” he says. “I suspect they will continue to litigate and who knows – at the end of the day, maybe the FTC will succeed. But that’s a long way off.”The suits do go further than the two acquisitions, also focusing on Facebook’s tactics to block potentially competitive third-party software developers from using its systems, and Hay acknowledges that shining a light on the company’s strategies could alter their behavior. But, he says, that might not be enough to enable one of these small companies to rise through the ranks and actually compete. Others see the suits as an essential step to squash anticompetitive actions taken by the company, and set an important precedent for a tech industry that has yet to be effectively regulated.“Unraveling existing mergers is hard, especially when 10 years have passed. But it is possible,” says Mark Lemley, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He adds that this case is a much bigger deal than a separate antitrust suit filed against Google in October by the Department of Justice. “They are seeking to break up parts of Facebook,” he writes, adding that if Facebook is forced to open its application programming interface (API) to competitors it could open up significant competition.“It never should have gotten to this point,” says Matt Stoller, the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, who sides with Lemley in seeing the suit as a big step forward. “After 20 years of lawlessness, people are trying to enforce the law.”Facebook has faced scrutiny over its user data practices for years, and Stoller and others hope the lawsuits will shed light on this and other issues linked to the company’s market dominance.“It’s pretty obvious that they should be unwound,” he adds. “The moment they got market power they stopped protecting your data because they wanted more information and you didn’t have anywhere else to go.”“Very glad to see states connect FB’s monopolization to all around quality degradation, including increase in ad load, proliferation of fake accounts, and inaccurate performance & other metrics for advertisers,” tweeted Lina Khan, an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School, on Wednesday, adding she hoped the suits will mark “yet another step forward in the growing efforts to rehabilitate antitrust laws & recover antimonopoly”.Both suits are the results of months-long investigation by the states and the FTC, which built on a separate inquiry conducted by the US House judiciary subcommittee. That inquiry released millions of documents that appeared to show that Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were concerned the apps could become competition, before aggressively pursuing them.The FTC cleared Facebook for the acquisitions when they occurred, a move the company is hoping to leverage in mounting a strong defense. Facebook executives are also arguing that their company has helped the apps grow, and that they weren’t competitive when they were brought under Facebook ownership.“This is revisionist history,” said Facebook’s vice-president and general counsel, Jennifer Newstead, in a statement provided to the Guardian. “The government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final. People and small businesses don’t choose to use Facebook’s free services and advertising because they have to, they use them because our apps and services deliver the most value. We are going to vigorously defend people’s ability to continue making that choice.”The company is expected to fight hard to hold on to its online empire, which now also includes recently acquired Giphy, a hugely popular moving-image app and Kustomer, an e-commerce app. Facebook has also had a lot of time to prepare its defenses, as the antitrust suits were expected for months.Mark Patterson, a professor at Fordham Law School says it is possible Facebook could try to settle, or agree to more oversight in order to avoid selling parts of its business. But no matter what happens, he says, this is big. Bigger than the new Google case and bigger than antitrust cases against Microsoft and AT&T in the late 80s and 90s.“It’s the most significant antitrust suit since the original trust cases 100 years ago,” he says. “The role that Facebook plays in terms of the information it delivers to people, makes this a way bigger deal.”

Trump says off-the-cuff things all the time, especially at rallies, but there are plenty of reasons to believe this one is true. The president has repeatedly dismissed the doctor’s advice, and has bridled against any kind of coronavirus policy, even as Fauci has grown more outspoken. During a call with campaign staff in October, Trump complained that he wanted to fire Fauci, but he was too popular: “Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him.” If Trump is reelected, however, he’ll be much less worried about popularity. The president can’t fire Fauci directly—he’s a civil servant—but he could instruct his appointees to do so. And if they don’t? He’ll fire through them, Nixon-style, until he finds one who will.If you don’t believe me, look at his plans for other appointees. Also yesterday, the FBI announced that it was investigating an incident in which ruffians in trucks, bedecked with Trump flags, tried to run a Biden-Harris bus off the road in Texas. Trump immediately smacked down the bureau in a tweet.“In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” he wrote. “Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!”FBI Director Chris Wray has already popped up on lists written by well-sourced reporters of top-priority firings if Trump is reelected. You may recall that Wray ended up in that job after Trump fired James Comey in May 2017, in one of the most damaging decisions of his presidency. The job holds a 10-year term, and although presidents have the power to fire FBI directors, they usually have not used it. But Wray would likely be shown the door because he has proved too impervious to political pressure for Trump’s taste. (Unlike Comey, Wray didn’t even produce a splash October surprise on the Democratic candidate.)Another likely target is Defense Secretary Mark Esper. As at the FBI, the trajectory of the role during the Trump administration is instructive. The first Pentagon head was James Mattis, who was widely respected in Washington, and resigned in late 2018 in a disagreement with the president over Syria policy. He was replaced by Esper, who was widely viewed as an empty suit—a literal lobbyist for the weapons giant Raytheon whose major qualification was a long-standing friendship with the secretary of state, and dependable Trump sycophant, Mike Pompeo.But Esper has also proved too independent. The bar isn’t high: He simply distanced himself from Trump’s ill-advised June clearance of Lafayette Square outside the White House, and only after the fact. Even so, rumors of Esper’s postelection demise have circulated ever since.

Two antitrust lawsuits have been filed against Google in two days. That makes a total of three antitrust cases against the search giant, including one filed in October by the Department of Justice.This latest legal action filed Thursday by the attorneys general from 35 states accuses Google of using anti-competitive behavior to maintain its search and search advertising monopolies. The spate of lawsuits follows years of criticism from competitors, lawmakers, and activists about Google and other big tech companies like Facebook that have for years been accused of employing anti-competitive practices. Each of the cases being brought against Google has a slightly different angle and is brought by a different group of states and governing bodies. The cases could last for years and, over time, the lawsuits brought by the states could be combined with the federal case. The end result could lead to Google being broken up into smaller companies, according to Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute and author of Monopolies Suck. “I don’t think it’s really a battle of are consumers harmed or not,” Hubbard told Recode. “It’s a battle of if they broke the law or not.”The latest case, like the one from the DOJ, focuses on Google search. It alleges that Google used three forms of anti-competitive conduct to keep its search and search ad monopolies. Those include deals with competitors like Apple to keep it as a default search engine, using its dominant search ad marketing tool to thwart competitors in its marketplace, and disadvantaging search results for rivals who operate more specialized search platforms like those for travel or restaurants.“Google takes advantage of certain specialized vertical providers’ dependence on Google, treating them differently than participants in other commercial segments and further limiting their ability to acquire customers,” the report reads.While both this and the Justice Department case focus on the search and search ad monopolies, the lawsuit from the state attorneys general builds on and is broader than the DOJ case. “[T]his Complaint alleges additional facts demonstrating a broader pattern of Google’s anticompetitive conduct, harming consumers, advertisers, and the competitive process,” the complaint reads.Google responded to the latest lawsuit with a blog post by Adam Cohen, Google’s director of economic policy, that said changes to its search would hurt consumers. “[The lawsuit] suggests we shouldn’t have worked to make Search better and that we should, in fact, be less useful to you,” the post reads. “This lawsuit demands changes to the design of Google Search, requiring us to prominently feature online middlemen in place of direct connections to businesses.” The lawsuit carries support from a bipartisan group of attorneys general, unlike the DOJ case which only had the support of Republican AGs. “Google sits at the crossroads of so many areas of our digital economy and has used its dominance to illegally squash competitors, monitor nearly every aspect of our digital lives, and profit to the tune of billions,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, who helped lead the case.The lawsuit is welcome news for the digital media industry. “This latest suit underscores the bipartisan, broad-ranging concerns regarding Google’s anti-competitive behavior,” Jason Kint, CEO of digital media trade association Digital Content Next, said in a statement to Recode. “We’re pleased to see nearly every state stepping up to crack down on Google’s coordinated activities, which were designed to cement its dominance at the expense of publishers, advertisers and consumers.” The latest suit differs from the one filed yesterday by a group of 10 Republican state attorneys general alleging anti-competitive practices related to its ad technology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, led the investigation into Google and announced the lawsuit in a video posted to Twitter a few hours before the lawsuit was filed. “Google repeatedly used its monopolistic power to control pricing, engage in market collusions to rig auctions in a tremendous violation of justice,” Paxton said in the video.The lawsuit alleges that Google engaged in a wide variety of anti-competitive behavior to create and maintain its monopoly power in digital ad markets and keep out competitors. It also alleges that Google and Facebook illegally agreed not to compete with each other. This could be an especially damaging count against both companies, as Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act forbids two companies to collude in such a way, and such cases tend to be easier to prove in court.“In addition to representing both the buyers and the sellers of online display advertising, Google also operates the largest exchange AdX,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed by Republican attorneys general in Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Kentucky, as well as Texas. “In this electronically traded market, Google is pitcher, batter, and umpire, all at the same time.”This is akin to the New York Stock Exchange also controlling the buying and selling of stocks. “They’re getting information that they shouldn’t have if the market is supposed to be properly functioning,” Hubbard told Recode. “We don’t tolerate this in other sectors.” Google spokesperson Julie McAlister told the New York Times that “Attorney General Paxton’s ad tech claims are meritless” and that the company “will strongly defend ourselves from his baseless claims in court.”This lawsuit is the first to focus on Google’s dominance in ad tech. More specifically, it says that Google uses its market power to “extract a very high tax of [redacted] percent of the ad dollars otherwise flowing to the countless online publishers and content producers like online newspapers, cooking websites, and blogs who survive by selling advertisements on their websites and apps.” In turn, these businesses pass costs on to consumers, causing them harm, according to the lawsuit.Last year, Google brought in nearly $162 billion in revenue, the vast majority of which came from advertising. Google controls nearly a third of all digital ad spending in the US, according to eMarketer. Since its tools dominate all parts of the ad process, Google is said to have unfair visibility that allows it to maintain its dominance, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Keach Hagey and Vivien Ngo, who last year explained how Google’s ad tech works and why publishers and rivals have long complained about it. Meanwhile, Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has recently made news for filing a specious lawsuit against swing states in an effort to overturn the results of the presidential election. He lost the lawsuit but, the Atlantic argues, won in an effort to bolster his political career and distract from his own legal troubles, including securities fraud and felony counts he faces for allegedly trying to get investors to buy stock in a company without telling them he got a commission for it.The two cases launched by state attorneys general follow a similar volley of legal action from a federal level. In October, the Justice Department and 11 states filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company used its search dominance to preserve its other monopolies, including advertising. The suit also claimed that Google was paying some companies and blocking out others to maintain its lead over competitors. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year, for example, to make its search engine the default in the Safari web browser.The DOJ says that Google has a monopoly over search in the US, where Google controls 90 percent of the market. And because it’s free to use Google search — consumers pay for the service by giving the company their personal data — the government’s antitrust case is built on the idea that Google’s dominance results in less competition, which could lead to lower-quality products.“If the government does not enforce the antitrust laws to enable competition, we could lose the next wave of innovation,” Justice Department spokesperson Marc Raimondi said in a press briefing. “If that happens, Americans may never get to see the next Google.”Google is hardly the only big tech company facing scrutiny from government regulators. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states filed a suit against Facebook, saying that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp amounted to anti-competitive practices that harm consumers. And ahead of that case, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google were the subjects of a 400-page report from Democrats on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust. The report argued that these, the four biggest tech companies in the world, abused their power as gatekeepers to the industry and that new regulations should rein them in. “To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons,” the report’s introduction states.Whether any of these lawsuits will effect meaningful change remains to be seen. Antitrust cases are notoriously difficult to win, and some argue that it could be difficult to prove that the dominance of these massive tech companies actually harms consumers. Google providing a powerful search tool and streamlining the digital advertising marketplace, for instance, benefits many users. But the sheer number of antitrust cases against Big Tech that have been launched in the final months of this year suggests that the government at least thinks there’s a chance for change.Resolving these cases will not be a quick affair, by the way. The government’s case against Microsoft, which started in 1998, went on for years. It’s also hard to compare now to then. Based on the huge and ever-expanding role Big Tech companies play in our lives today, the cases being brought this year are even larger and more complex. Vox turns 7 this month. 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The Comey Rule, a new miniseries from Captain Phillips scribe Billy Ray, airing in two parts, attacks the question of “Who is James Comey?” on two fronts.Ray shines when working in the literal, informational sense, as he lays out the events of the months surrounding Donald Trump’s election with brisk procedural expertise. But in the soul-searching abstract, an already delicate subject undergoes an ethical portraiture fraught with misjudgments. However wittingly, the writer-director has assembled a dutiful and comprehensive account of Comey’s failures, which nonetheless attempts to vaunt its protagonist as a tragic hero simply too good to survive in this compromised world. As big pills to swallow go, this one’s approximately fist-sized.Comey rose to prominence for most Americans in late 2016, when he ordered a top-to-bottom investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email servers in his capacity as director of the FBI. His decision to do so in an unusually public fashion, and so close to such a tightly contested election, struck many on the left as an attempt to cast a pall on Clinton’s credibility. His eventual conclusion that she hadn’t done anything prosecutable displeased many on the right, and his choice to re-open the case file with mere weeks left on the clock in light of a newly discovered laptop seemed to anger just about everyone. Having eroded all goodwill with those reading the daily headlines bearing his name, he stayed on under Trump for a brief handful of months before an unceremonious sacking. A baffled populace (represented first by a late-night snippet in which Stephen Colbert compares Comey to Harry Potter character Severus Snape) wondered where this man’s allegiances lay, and what the hell he thought he was doing.Documented with a journalistic attention to minutiae, the behind-the-scenes mechanics of these seismic policy calls make for crackling drama. As in his writing on everything from Flightplan to State of Play to the recent Richard Jewell, Ray demonstrates a proficiency for rendering the insider-talk of an industry comprehensible to outsiders without dumbing it down. The urgently delivered dialogue about packets and memos, while not quite at the high standard set by last year’s The Report, communicates what the real-world professionals find so fascinating in this outwardly dry job. (Ray does also revive his unsavory archetype of the cutthroat woman willing to use her sex appeal to get ahead – Olivia Wilde’s Richard Jewell character reincarnated here as Oona Chaplin’s coarse-mannered staffer Lisa Page.)In these meetings, Comey makes gargantuan errors in his game-time calls while the advisers in his orbit warn him of the exact outcomes that allowed Trump to seize and amass power. He willfully blinds himself to the far-reaching implications of his management, holding fast to the patently ridiculous premise that the FBI’s movements are informed by no political leaning. His explanation for the protocol-flouting emails announcement goes that the bureau must break with their custom of not commenting on open cases because the American people deserve to know who they might be voting for. (At this same time, he’s looking into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, which somehow don’t merit the same level of alarm.) He reasons that if Clinton got elected and it turned out that the FBI hadn’t divulged the possibility of her law-breaking, no one would ever trust them again. For this to seem nobly impartial, one must accept that the average American currently trusts the FBI, which, again, big pill.Comey’s staffer Trisha (Amy Seimetz) steps up as the adult in the room when she notes that publicizing the fact they’re looking through Clinton’s computers will tip the scales in favor of Trump. Comey chastises her for even thinking that way, as if his plan is somehow exempt from its obvious partisan realities. This happens again once Trump takes office; Comey’s people beg him to stand against all the blatant violations of the presidency, and he remains confident that the normal mechanisms of government will sort this all out. At his frequent pre-firing dinners with Trump, get-togethers testing the separation between the executive branch and federal law enforcement, Comey stays mum and keeps private notes that will one day take book form. He refuses to realize that doing nothing still counts as doing something. Neutrality, moving trains, et cetera.Because this series works from Comey’s own tell-some book, A Higher Loyalty, the rationale for his actions lands with the soft touch of an absolution-seeking defense. As Ray would have it, Comey’s problem is that he’s virtuous to a fault. The writing affirms that continuing to play the game and maintain propriety and adhere to tradition was the right thing to do but simply ineffective under Trump. We now have the perspective to see that in actuality, this was a form of weakness, a form of compliance, and a form of stupidity. Comey gets to go out on a note of dignity, learning that he’s been dismissed from a TV in the background while he gives a speech to custodians at FBI headquarters that everyone’s work is vitally important. To the end, he keeps a steadfast faith in the very institutions that have thoroughly and repeatedly bungled their responsibilities under Trump. The trouble is that Ray mirrors this stance even as he scrupulously illustrates the opposite, placing rousing inspirational music over footage of Comey dooming us all. They jointly believe in nothing but the rules – not goodness, not rightness, only standard operating procedure.A note to the faction of viewers tuning in for Brendan Gleeson’s take on Trump, the first substantive dramatized portrayal of the sitting commander-in-chief from the realm of prestige TV. He only shows up on night two, and when he does, it’s easy to forget that he’s supposed to be the draw. It’s a fine impression and middling performance, better in its particulars than in its essence. Visually, he’s a dead ringer in profile, but looks unnatural in head-on shots. The hair’s wrong, missing the comb-over’s wispy structural complexities. And though Gleeson’s got the tone of voice down pat, he can’t master the cadence, that aimless lilt that saunters from one half-formed thought to the next.That might be the writing, which feeds faux-Trump lines more coherent than the free-form word-jazz that spills out of his mouth with a semi-cognizant viscosity. His Trump behaves like a common jerk rather than a nihilistic force of spiteful chaos, which is to say that he’s recognizably human. Ultimately, it all comes back to the same surplus of good faith coloring the depiction of Comey. Ray wants to fit the last four years into a framework comprehensible to politics as we know them, when the cruel senselessness plowing through the status quo has always been this administration’s defining feature and greatest weapon. We’re way out where the buses don’t run. No use looking for one to take us home. The Comey Rule starts on Showtime in the US on 27 September and in the UK on Sky Atlantic on 30 September

The Trump administration has stopped vital technical assistance to pro-democracy groups in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran, which had helped activists evade state surveillance and sidestep internet censorship.The Open Technology Fund (OTF) has had to stop all its operations in Belarus, and many of its activities supporting civil society in Hong Kong and Iran, because a congressionally-mandated grant of nearly $20m has been withheld by a new Trump appointee, Michael Pack.The OTF is a small non-profit organisation that develops technologies for evading cyber-surveillance and for circumventing internet and radio blackouts imposed by authoritarian regimes. It provides daily help to pro-democracy movements in installing and maintaining them, with the aim of staying at least one step ahead of the state.The chair of the OTF board, Karen Kornbluh, said the end of funding from the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which Pack has been running since June, would mean that activists living under repressive regimes were at increased risk.“They are more vulnerable,” Kornbluh told the Guardian. “It means from a US perspective, it’s really undermining this core tool that we have for protecting democratic values and protecting those who are seeking their freedoms overseas.”She added the freeze also meant that the populations in those countries will find it harder to listen to the Voice of America, the USAGM’s flagship broadcaster, and USAGM-funded stations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, because it would be more difficult to overcome state jamming methods.“We have these agencies and we’re kneecapping them,” said Kornbluh, a former US ambassador and now director of the digital innovation and democracy initiative at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.Pack had agreed over a month ago to appear before the House foreign affairs committee on Thursday, but cancelled with a few days notice and then ignored a committee subpoena to attend.Since taking over USAGM in June, Pack – an ally of the rightwing ideologue and former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon – purged all the top management and boards of the broadcasters under its control, froze spending, and elevated the profile of pro-administration comment in relation to news.Kornbluh and former USAGM officials testifying before the foreign affairs committee described a climate of chaos and creeping authoritarianism at the agency that was sapping the credibility of VOA, RFE/RL and other US broadcasters, with consequences for US national security.They also said Pack was endangering journalists by refusing to renew the visas for foreign journalists working for VOA, leading to their deportation, potentially to countries where they could be at risk.In some cases, the management has intervened with US immigration and citizenship services to prevent the journalists from securing other visas, and even bought unsolicited tickets home for VOA reporters.“They want to demonstrate that as many people as possible are returning back to their countries,” one of the affected VOA journalists said. “I feel like we serve his purpose of America First, foreigners out, media are bad. I would never expect that from a democracy.”Pack claimed to have an administrative meeting on Thursday which meant he could not attend the congressional hearing, but the committee chair, Eliot Engel, noted that the USAGM meeting appeared to have been called long after Pack first agreed to appear in Congress.Pack’s office has suggested that visas and funds were frozen over security concerns, but Kornbluh denied allegations that OTF staff used Zoom and were careless with computer drives. The Fund staff do not use Zoom and uses for the cloud rather than physical drives for storage, she said.Last month, OTF took USAGM to court, resulting in the reinstatement of Kornbluh and its president Laura Cunningham, who Pack had sought to purge, but the congressionally-approved funds have still not been unblocked.Witnesses at Thursday’s hearing said Pack’s motives for hollowing out the agency were unclear. The USAGM did not respond to a request for comment.In an interview with the rightwing Federalist blog last month, Pack claimed that a dispute over vetting procedures meant that the VOA could be infiltrated by foreign intelligence agencies, suggesting that being a journalist was “a great cover for a spy”.At Thursday’s committee hearing, Pack was lambasted for echoing the language authoritarian regimes use to justify imprisoning journalists.“To assert that spies from foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated the establishment,” Ryan Crocker, a former USAGM board member. “Not only does it discredit our reputation for honesty, it puts everyone out there in the field at danger.”Grant Turner, the former chief financial officer and acting USAGM CEO said that Pack’s funding freeze had created chaos. At one point, he said there was no money in the agency headquarters to buy toilet roll.“Nothing in my 17 years [of government experience] comes even close to the gross mismanagement, the abuse of authority, the violations of law, that have occurred since Michael Pack assumed the role of CEO at USAGM,” Turner told the committee.

BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP) — The Seattle suburb of Bellevue may soon be Amazon’s unofficial “HQ3.”The Seattle-based tech giant announced Friday that it was expanding its workforce footprint in Bellevue, with new office space plans that will host a total of 25,000 employees in the next several years, the Seattle Times reports. That’s the same number of employees promised for Arlington, Virginia, by 2030. The Washington DC-area city won Amazon’s closely-watched HQ2 sweepstakes in 2018 by offering $573 million in cash grants and tax incentives. Amazon in exchange pledged to bring 25,000 new jobs that will pay on average $150,000 a year.ADVERTISEMENTBellevue, meanwhile, hasn’t provided tax breaks or financial incentives to lure Amazon. Since 2016, the company has been leasing space in the tony Eastside suburb about 10 miles east of downtown Seattle, just across Lake Washington. Amazon now hosts about 3,000 workers there and has been growing its presence steadily in Bellevue’s robust downtown corridor, which will soon be connected with a Link light-rail station. The latest announcement details Amazon’s plan for the tony Eastside suburb, which will include leasing 2 million square feet at two towers that are both under construction. The company is also seeking a permit for a second skyscraper of its own, the Seattle Times reports.John Schoettler, Amazon vice president of global real estate and facilities, called Bellevue a “business-friendly community with great amenities, a high quality of life, and a fantastic talent pool.”Amazon’s main presence will still be near downtown Seattle, where it hosts about 55,000 employees in a mix of buildings it leases and owns. The company said it has no new projects planned for Seattle and wouldn’t comment on its future hiring in the city.Amazon has yet to comment publicly on Seattle’s recently approved 1.4% payroll tax on the salaries of employees earning $150,000 or more, but the Downtown Seattle Association -- of which Amazon is a member -- has opposed the city’s new tax, saying it will prompt employers to leave Seattle. The tax, which goes into effect next year, is expected to raise more than $200 million per year for homelessness services and the city’s coronavirus pandemic response, among other issues.Since moving and rapidly transforming Seattle, the company has proudly touted its urban location as a unique model that appeals to a young, city-loving workforce. That was in contrast to the usual suburban tech company headquarter build-out.ADVERTISEMENTThe latest expansion to downtown Bellevue is a blend of the two campus models and puts Amazon closer to rival Microsoft’s Redmond location. It’s also a homecoming for Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who started his books-by-mail business 26 years ago in a Bellevue garage.Amazon’s workers aren’t expected back into the office until January 2021. ___This story has been updated to correct that Amazon plans to add the employees in the next several years, not five years.

If the Supreme Court decides to actually decide Trump v. New York, a case asking if President Trump can exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 census count, Trump is very likely to lose. Both Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett appeared very skeptical of acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall’s attempt to defend Trump’s policy, which is unambiguously unconstitutional, during Monday’s oral arguments. Add in the three liberal justices, and that’s a majority of the Court that may be opposed to Trump’s policy. Only Justice Samuel Alito offered much of a defense of it, so it’s possible a ruling will be more lopsided than a 5-4 ruling.But the case is procedurally very messy. Several justices expressed doubts that the Court has jurisdiction to hear it now, though they could potentially take it up again after the census is finalized. It’s also unclear whether the Court should rule on this case on the expedited schedule originally proposed by Trump’s Justice Department. The Justice Department had asked for the case to be decided before a December 31 statutory deadline to transmit the results of the 2020 census to Trump. But Wall seemed to concede early in Monday’s arguments that the Commerce Department is “not currently on pace” for that milestone, so Trump may not be able to meet a January 10 deadline to inform Congress of the new census’s impact on representation in the US House of Representatives.President-elect Joe Biden, meanwhile, becomes president at noon on January 20. And once he becomes president, he can render this case moot by rescinding Trump’s policy excluding undocumented immigrants from the census, assuming that the census has not been finalized by that point.The Trump administration, in other words, appears to be engaged in a disorganized race against the clock to implement an unconstitutional policy before Trump’s term expires. And the justices appear uncertain about whether to end it now, or whether to let it play out and potentially invalidate Trump’s policy later.The New York case turns on a memorandum Trump issued in July, which provides that “for the purpose of the reapportionment of Representatives following the 2020 census, it is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status.” Thus, if Trump gets his way, undocumented immigrants will not be counted when House representation is doled out to each of the 50 states following the census.Trump’s memo violates the unambiguous text of the Constitution. Under the 14th Amendment, “representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.” Undocumented immigrants are “persons.”To get around this constitutional requirement, Trump claims that the 14th Amendment should not be read literally. “Although the Constitution requires the ‘persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed,’ to be enumerated in the census,” Trump says in his memo, “that requirement has never been understood to include in the apportionment base every individual physically present within a State’s boundaries at the time of the census.”On this narrow point, Trump is correct. There are some foreign nationals, such as tourists and foreign diplomats, who generally are not counted by the census, even if they are physically present when the census is being taken. “The term ‘persons in each State,’” Trump’s memo notes, “has been interpreted to mean that only the ‘inhabitants’ of each State should be included.”Yet, while Trump is largely correct that only “inhabitants” of a state are counted for purposes of the census, Trump then claims a broad power to determine who counts as an inhabitant and who does not — and then he wields this assumed power to insist that undocumented immigrants are not inhabitants of the state where they reside.But this claim cannot be squared with the meaning of the word “inhabitant.” As the lower court that ruled against Trump in New York held, “it does not follow that illegal aliens — a category defined by legal status, not residence — can be excluded” from the census by claiming that they are not “inhabitants” of a state. “To the contrary,” the court explained, while quoting from Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, “the ordinary definition of the term ‘inhabitant’ is ‘one that occupies a particular place regularly, routinely, or for a period of time.’”Many undocumented immigrants reside in a state for “many years or even decades,” the court continued. Such individuals are clearly “inhabitants” of the state where they live, even if they are not lawfully present.Trump’s newest appointee to the Court, Barrett, offered a forceful rebuttal to the attempt to defend Trump’s policy. “A lot of the historical evidence and longstanding practice really cuts against your position,” Barrett told Wall. She added that there is evidence that “in the founding era, an ‘inhabitant’ was a dweller, who lives and resides in a place.” Thus, an immigrant who has resided in a state for many months or years — or even one who has only lived there briefly — would count as an “inhabitant.”Kavanaugh, another Trump appointee, also said that he believes there are “forceful constitutional and statutory arguments” against Trump’s position. So it is very likely that a majority of the Court will vote to reject Trump’s policy — if, that is, the Court decides this case at all.The policy laid out in Trump’s July memo is categorical. The memo states that “it is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status.” So, the memo suggests that any undocumented immigrant should be excluded from the census for apportionment purposes.But acting Solicitor General Wall spent time in oral arguments claiming that the administration isn’t sure how many undocumented immigrants it will be able to identify, or whether Trump will try to exclude more than a “subset” of the estimated 10-11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. This subset, which might only include immigrants who are currently being detained with an eye towards removal, could be much smaller than the total number of undocumented immigrants in the country.The reason why the question of how many immigrants will be excluded matters is because of a doctrine known as “standing.” Broadly speaking, a plaintiff may not challenge a federal policy unless they can show that there is a “substantial risk” that they will be injured by that policy.As a general rule, a state has standing to challenge a census-related policy if they are likely to lose House seats under that policy. But it is far more likely that one of the plaintiff states will lose representation if millions of undocumented immigrants are excluded from the census than if only maybe tens of thousands of immigrants are excluded.For this reason, several justices suggested that maybe the Court should wait to decide this case until after we know how many immigrants Trump will exclude.If the Court goes down that path, it’s unclear what happens next. As noted above, Trump might not manage to send the final House appointment results to Congress before he leaves office. So the justices could be able to sit on this case until January 20, let President Biden rescind Trump’s memo, and then declare the case moot.Alternatively, the Court could dismiss the case, let Trump do whatever he is going to do, and then the plaintiff states could file a new lawsuit as soon as Trump sends his apportionment results to Congress. Under this alternative outcome, Trump would win a temporary victory, but Trump’s policy would still most likely fall victim to future litigation.Kavanaugh and Barrett also appeared to entertain a third possibility. The Court could strike down the categorical exclusion of undocumented immigrants laid out in Trump’s July memorandum, but they could also permit Trump to issue a new memorandum that might exclude certain subcategories of undocumented immigrants (such as people currently in immigration detention). The plaintiff states could then file a new lawsuit challenging the legality of that new memorandum.In any event, it appears unlikely that Trump’s original policy will stand. There appear to be at least five Supreme Court members — and potentially more than five — who think that Trump does not have the power to categorically exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count.The open question is whether the Court will decide this case quickly, or whether they will string this case out, potentially raising a cloud of uncertainty over the apportionment process for months or more. Vox turns 7 this month. Although the world has changed a lot since our founding, we’ve held tight to our mission: to make the most important issues clear and comprehensible, and empower you to shape the world in which you live. We’re committed to keeping our unique journalism free for all who need it. Help us celebrate Vox’s 7th birthday and support our unique mission by making a $7 financial contribution today.

Comey, making his first appearance before Congress since a harshly critical inspector general report on the investigation, acknowledged under questioning that the FBI's process for conducting surveillance on a former Trump campaign adviser was “sloppy” and “embarrassing." He said he would not have certified the surveillance had he known then what he knows now about applications the FBI submitted in 2016 and 2017 to eavesdrop on the aide, Carter Page.Though Comey acknowledged the FBI’s shortcomings in the surveillance of Page, he also described that aspect of the probe as a “slice” of the broader Russia investigation, which he defended as legitimate and valid.But those answers, including Comey's repeated assertions that he had been unaware at the time of the extent of problems, frustrated Republicans who point to the surveillance flaws to try to discredit the overall Russia investigation.A Justice Department inspector general report identified errors and omissions in each of the four applications that the FBI submitted to obtain warrants to surveil Page, who was never charged with any wrongdoing. The FBI relied in part on Democratic-funded research in applying for those warrants. The inspector general report, and documents released in recent months, have raised questions about the reliability of that research.The FBI relied on that documentation “over and over and over” again even though it was “fundamentally unsound,” said the Judiciary Committee chairman, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.“What do we do? We just say, ‘Well, that was bad, that’s the way it goes?’ Does anybody get fired? Does anybody go to jail?” Graham said. "To my Democratic friends, if it happened to us, it can happen to you.”Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017 but has remained a prominent and complicated character for Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans have joined Trump in heaping scorn on Comey, but Democrats have not embraced him either, angered by his public statements made during the Hillary Clinton email case that they believe contributed to her loss.Democrats lamented the backward-looking nature of Wednesday's hearing, saying the FBI had good reason to investigate contacts between Trump associates and Russia and that the committee's time could be better spent on other matters.“Most people think we should be talking about other things, except maybe President Trump,” said Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.Comey defended the investigation, which was opened after a campaign adviser boasted that he had heard Russia had damaging information about Clinton. The probe examined multiple contacts between Russians and Trump associates during the 2016 campaign. Comey noted that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation resulted in criminal charges against dozens of people.“In the main, it was done by the book. It was appropriate, and it was essential that it be done,” Comey said.He later added: “The overall investigation was very important. The Page slice of it? Far less given the scope.”But Comey, the latest high-profile former official from the FBI or Justice Department to testify in Graham's investigation, acknowledged “embarrassing” problems in the handling of surveillance applications. He said had he known then about the problems, he would not have certified the surveillance “without a much fuller discussion” within the FBI.“I'm not looking to shirk responsibility,” Comey said. “The director is responsible.”A Justice Department inspector general report did not find evidence of partisan bias and concluded the investigation was opened for a legitimate reason. But Republican lawmakers have seized on the critical aspects of the watchdog report to cast broader doubt on the Russia investigation. They have also released documents they say support the conclusion that the probe was flawed.On Tuesday, Graham revealed that he had received declassified information on the probe from national intelligence director John Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist, even though Ratcliffe has said he does not know if it is true.In a letter to Graham made public Tuesday, Ratcliffe said that in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained “insight” into Russian spycraft alleging that Clinton had “approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against” Trump.But Ratcliffe added that American intelligence agencies do “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”Comey brushed aside questions about that document, saying, “I don’t understand Mr. Ratcliffe's letter well enough to comment on it. It’s confusing."The Senate panel has already heard from Rod Rosenstein and Sally Yates, both former deputy attorneys general, and has scheduled testimony from ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Though Mr. Buttigieg began his TV ad campaign in Iowa first, there are fewer ads on the air for him in the final week before the caucuses than there are for his competitors. Mr. Buttigieg is being outspent by Mr. Sanders, Ms. Warren and the super PAC backing Mr. Biden — though with the local airwaves saturated by political ads there can be just as much value in making news by going on the attack on the stump as there is in buying more TV time.Pressed by reporters earlier this week, Mr. Buttigieg had resisted calling Mr. Sanders a risk himself and would not say if he believed Mr. Sanders could beat Mr. Trump. On Thursday, he cast his new remarks as airing an “honest and respectful” difference between the visions of the three men. He also acknowledged that he needs a “strong finish” in the Iowa race.“This is certainly the moment when folks are choosing, and I want to make sure everyone understands the choice between us,” he told reporters. “We’re competing, it’s a respectful but important competition about what the best approach is going to be.”In a moment when many Democrats want party unity around the goal of defeating Mr. Trump, a message that Mr. Biden has often pressed from the stage despite swipes at rivals, there’s a chance that the harsher hits could backfire. Aides to other candidates say Iowa Democrats aren’t eager for a contentious race. “I don’t think there’s an appetite for the negativity among Iowa caucusgoers,” said Norm Sterzenbach, who advises Senator Amy Klobuchar’s caucus strategy. “I think historically when there have been aggressive negative campaigns, it has not necessarily worked out the way the candidates had wanted it to.”Now that Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden are ahead of him, Mr. Buttigieg has shifted from an argument against a progressive revolution toward one focused around his rivals’ age, albeit without explicitly calling Mr. Sanders, 78, and Mr. Biden, 77, old.Many of Mr. Buttigieg’s campaign stops have the words “TURN THE PAGE” spelled out in large blue letters behind the stage, a reminder of both his own far younger age, 38, and the idea that he would be free of the political entanglements and baggage that he ascribes to Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders.

Two antitrust lawsuits have been filed against Google in two days. That makes a total of three antitrust cases against the search giant, including one filed in October by the Department of Justice.This latest legal action filed Thursday by the attorneys general from 35 states accuses Google of using anti-competitive behavior to maintain its search and search advertising monopolies. The spate of lawsuits follows years of criticism from competitors, lawmakers, and activists about Google and other big tech companies like Facebook that have for years been accused of employing anti-competitive practices. Each of the cases being brought against Google has a slightly different angle and is brought by a different group of states and governing bodies. The cases could last for years and, over time, the lawsuits brought by the states could be combined with the federal case. The end result could lead to Google being broken up into smaller companies, according to Sally Hubbard, director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute and author of Monopolies Suck. “I don’t think it’s really a battle of are consumers harmed or not,” Hubbard told Recode. “It’s a battle of if they broke the law or not.”The latest case, like the one from the DOJ, focuses on Google search. It alleges that Google used three forms of anti-competitive conduct to keep its search and search ad monopolies. Those include deals with competitors like Apple to keep it as a default search engine, using its dominant search ad marketing tool to thwart competitors in its marketplace, and disadvantaging search results for rivals who operate more specialized search platforms like those for travel or restaurants.“Google takes advantage of certain specialized vertical providers’ dependence on Google, treating them differently than participants in other commercial segments and further limiting their ability to acquire customers,” the report reads.While both this and the Justice Department case focus on the search and search ad monopolies, the lawsuit from the state attorneys general builds on and is broader than the DOJ case. “[T]his Complaint alleges additional facts demonstrating a broader pattern of Google’s anticompetitive conduct, harming consumers, advertisers, and the competitive process,” the complaint reads.Google responded to the latest lawsuit with a blog post by Adam Cohen, Google’s director of economic policy, that said changes to its search would hurt consumers. “[The lawsuit] suggests we shouldn’t have worked to make Search better and that we should, in fact, be less useful to you,” the post reads. “This lawsuit demands changes to the design of Google Search, requiring us to prominently feature online middlemen in place of direct connections to businesses.” The lawsuit carries support from a bipartisan group of attorneys general, unlike the DOJ case which only had the support of Republican AGs. “Google sits at the crossroads of so many areas of our digital economy and has used its dominance to illegally squash competitors, monitor nearly every aspect of our digital lives, and profit to the tune of billions,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, who helped lead the case.The lawsuit is welcome news for the digital media industry. “This latest suit underscores the bipartisan, broad-ranging concerns regarding Google’s anti-competitive behavior,” Jason Kint, CEO of digital media trade association Digital Content Next, said in a statement to Recode. “We’re pleased to see nearly every state stepping up to crack down on Google’s coordinated activities, which were designed to cement its dominance at the expense of publishers, advertisers and consumers.” The latest suit differs from the one filed yesterday by a group of 10 Republican state attorneys general alleging anti-competitive practices related to its ad technology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, led the investigation into Google and announced the lawsuit in a video posted to Twitter a few hours before the lawsuit was filed. “Google repeatedly used its monopolistic power to control pricing, engage in market collusions to rig auctions in a tremendous violation of justice,” Paxton said in the video.The lawsuit alleges that Google engaged in a wide variety of anti-competitive behavior to create and maintain its monopoly power in digital ad markets and keep out competitors. It also alleges that Google and Facebook illegally agreed not to compete with each other. This could be an especially damaging count against both companies, as Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act forbids two companies to collude in such a way, and such cases tend to be easier to prove in court.“In addition to representing both the buyers and the sellers of online display advertising, Google also operates the largest exchange AdX,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed by Republican attorneys general in Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Kentucky, as well as Texas. “In this electronically traded market, Google is pitcher, batter, and umpire, all at the same time.”This is akin to the New York Stock Exchange also controlling the buying and selling of stocks. “They’re getting information that they shouldn’t have if the market is supposed to be properly functioning,” Hubbard told Recode. “We don’t tolerate this in other sectors.” Google spokesperson Julie McAlister told the New York Times that “Attorney General Paxton’s ad tech claims are meritless” and that the company “will strongly defend ourselves from his baseless claims in court.”This lawsuit is the first to focus on Google’s dominance in ad tech. More specifically, it says that Google uses its market power to “extract a very high tax of [redacted] percent of the ad dollars otherwise flowing to the countless online publishers and content producers like online newspapers, cooking websites, and blogs who survive by selling advertisements on their websites and apps.” In turn, these businesses pass costs on to consumers, causing them harm, according to the lawsuit.Last year, Google brought in nearly $162 billion in revenue, the vast majority of which came from advertising. Google controls nearly a third of all digital ad spending in the US, according to eMarketer. Since its tools dominate all parts of the ad process, Google is said to have unfair visibility that allows it to maintain its dominance, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Keach Hagey and Vivien Ngo, who last year explained how Google’s ad tech works and why publishers and rivals have long complained about it. Meanwhile, Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has recently made news for filing a specious lawsuit against swing states in an effort to overturn the results of the presidential election. He lost the lawsuit but, the Atlantic argues, won in an effort to bolster his political career and distract from his own legal troubles, including securities fraud and felony counts he faces for allegedly trying to get investors to buy stock in a company without telling them he got a commission for it.The two cases launched by state attorneys general follow a similar volley of legal action from a federal level. In October, the Justice Department and 11 states filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company used its search dominance to preserve its other monopolies, including advertising. The suit also claimed that Google was paying some companies and blocking out others to maintain its lead over competitors. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year, for example, to make its search engine the default in the Safari web browser.The DOJ says that Google has a monopoly over search in the US, where Google controls 90 percent of the market. And because it’s free to use Google search — consumers pay for the service by giving the company their personal data — the government’s antitrust case is built on the idea that Google’s dominance results in less competition, which could lead to lower-quality products.“If the government does not enforce the antitrust laws to enable competition, we could lose the next wave of innovation,” Justice Department spokesperson Marc Raimondi said in a press briefing. “If that happens, Americans may never get to see the next Google.”Google is hardly the only big tech company facing scrutiny from government regulators. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states filed a suit against Facebook, saying that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp amounted to anti-competitive practices that harm consumers. And ahead of that case, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google were the subjects of a 400-page report from Democrats on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust. The report argued that these, the four biggest tech companies in the world, abused their power as gatekeepers to the industry and that new regulations should rein them in. “To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons,” the report’s introduction states.Whether any of these lawsuits will effect meaningful change remains to be seen. Antitrust cases are notoriously difficult to win, and some argue that it could be difficult to prove that the dominance of these massive tech companies actually harms consumers. Google providing a powerful search tool and streamlining the digital advertising marketplace, for instance, benefits many users. But the sheer number of antitrust cases against Big Tech that have been launched in the final months of this year suggests that the government at least thinks there’s a chance for change.Resolving these cases will not be a quick affair, by the way. The government’s case against Microsoft, which started in 1998, went on for years. It’s also hard to compare now to then. Based on the huge and ever-expanding role Big Tech companies play in our lives today, the cases being brought this year are even larger and more complex. Vox turns 7 this month. Although the world has changed a lot since our founding, we’ve held tight to our mission: to make the most important issues clear and comprehensible, and empower you to shape the world in which you live. We’re committed to keeping our unique journalism free for all who need it. Help us celebrate Vox’s 7th birthday and support our unique mission by making a $7 financial contribution today.

Pete Buttigieg knew he was foraying into unfriendly confines when he was en route to Orange City, the seat of Iowa’s most conservative county.The gay ex-mayor of South Bend, Indiana, may be in the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates seeking to win this vital first voting state next month, but his sexuality was seen as likely to be a major issue in this corner of the state, Sioux county.The campaign braced for protesters in light of public burnings of library books depicting gay relationships and vociferous opposition to the town’s annual gay Pride festival, said Ben Halle, Buttigieg’s Iowa communications director, to the Guardian.Halle said he didn’t know what to expect as far as a crowd, but he said it was fair to expect opposition as Buttigieg’s campaign rolled into town.“What you need to realize with Sioux county is there’s a very strong religious flavor there, from their courts to their public squares,” said Ned Bjornstad, a former elected prosecutor in north-west Iowa turned veteran defense attorney who practices regularly in Orange City. “For a candidate like Buttigieg, I’d expect protesters.”There weren’t any.As Buttigieg entered the Prairie Winds Events Center in downtown Orange City, a crowd of around 200 instead roared in a standing ovation.Regan Harms, a 22-year-old senior majoring in biblical studies at Northwestern College in Orange City, said she wasn’t at all surprised with the turnout. As she introduced Buttigieg, she described him as a neighbor and fellow midwesterner, one who understands life in rural America.“Iowans long for someone who understands them,” Harms said. “The second you meet him, you get that impression that he almost knows you. Of course he can come into Orange City, and people will like him. There’s that common bond among midwesterners.”But Orange City is hostile territory to Democrats and fervently socially conservative. There, no Democrat running for governor or president has registered over 18% support since 2008. In Orange City, penalties are levied for work on Sunday. In July, a petition listing over 300 signatures asked the Orange City public library to ban books related to homosexual relationships and transgender people. A man was even convicted of burning said books outside the library.In nearby Sioux Center in September, the Sioux County Conservatives alleged a restaurant was “celebrating sin” by hosting Pride brunch on a Sunday.When asked whether people in Orange City cared about whether Buttigieg was gay, Harms said she wouldn’t answer that question.“It’s a divisive topic here in town, of course,” she said. “Obviously, some people care, but look at this crowd. Others don’t.”Buttigieg maintains he’s the candidate who can blaze the trail. After he announced he was gay, he won a second term in South Bend with a greater share of the vote.While the Orange City crowd wasn’t roaring when Buttigieg announced his socially progressive platforms, only one crowd member asked him whether the country was ready for its first gay president. Buttigieg replied that it had taken a leap of faith to run as a gay man in South Bend, and it would take another to win the presidency.“In the last 50 years, every Democratic president has a perspective outside Washington, is new on the national scene, and is of a new generation,” he said. “I check all those boxes.”With less than three weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, Buttigieg’s chances are as good as any, said Brad Best, professor of political science at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Buttigieg has consistently polled in the top four in Iowa and New Hampshire since the late summer, but has suffered a slide as of late as the campaign enters a frenetic final period.“I can’t think of anyone more anathema to the seat of Sioux county, but a packed house there suggests there’s broad appeal, for whatever reason,” Best said.Some Democrats believe that Trump’s behavior in office and scandal-plagued personal and political life may be hurting him even in this Republican stronghold and opening an unlikely door to candidates like Buttigieg – who himself confesses a deep religious faith.“Look at it this way: the red wall has begun to crack,” said the former state senator David Johnson, who used to represent the area. Johnson left the Republican party and declared himself an independent after it declared Trump its nominee.“Think about it: there were over 200 people in Orange City to see Pete Buttigieg and there aren’t even 2,000 registered Democrats in that county. That means there are independents and Republicans in that crowd,” Price said.Corrie Hayes, a 21-year-old senior at Northwestern College, said she was impressed particularly with his response to a question about abortion rights, when he said that in the Book of Genesis, life begins with breath. She wouldn’t get into her positions on policy – she said she was deeply religious and her faith guided her every day – but she said she could tell Buttigieg was sincere about his faith.Hayes feels it isn’t fair to question whether Buttigieg is “electable” simply because he’s gay.“People [in Orange City] love each other regardless of who you are,” she said. “And that’s the reason I like Pete. He feels the same way.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg chased California votes on Friday in dueling events, looking to sway Democrats in the state that delivers the largest haul of delegates in the presidential contest.Appearing at a short-term housing complex for the homeless, Buttigieg promised a new era of help for people living on the streets, while Biden sought to upstage the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor with a formal endorsement from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti attended by firefighters. The endorsement was initially announced Thursday.Garcetti called Biden a longtime friend, “the right leader at the right moment.” Garcetti was an early supporter of President Barack Obama, in whose administration Biden served as vice president for eight years.ADVERTISEMENTButtigieg’s stop highlighted the homeless crisis in Los Angeles, where tent cities line downtown streets and freeway underpasses are frequently filled with makeshift communities of people with nowhere else to go. He listened intently to stories from residents of the so-called bridge home who described their journey from the streets to the shelter, where they are linked with health services, receive assistance restoring their lives and, hopefully, locate permanent housing. Residents can stay up to nine months.Jessica Kelly, who said she once had a career in pharmaceutical sales, described how her life unraveled after a string of back surgeries led to opioid misuse and, eventually, a heroin addition. After several years without a home, finding a bed at the shelter has been “a blessing for me,” she told Buttigieg. Buttigieg has said he will invest $430 billion to make affordable housing available for over 7 million families while aiming to end homelessness for families with children.The mayor stressed that homeless was a problem that cuts across communities “of every size, in every climate.” He has faced criticism in his hometown for being too slow to act, but his campaign said homelessness was cut by 25% during his tenure.A small but noisy group of Black Lives Matter protesters shadowed his visit, chanting on a sidewalk outside the shelter that Buttigieg was a “fake” and “anti-black.” A planned outdoor discussion with residents was moved indoors, though the din of the protesters could still be faintly heard in the room.“The people of South Bend feel abandoned,” said protester Kahmiil Middleton, who lives in South Bend.Buttigieg told reporters afterward, “It is important to me that I have the support that I do from black residents of South Bend. I know that support is not 100%, and I respect those political differences.”ADVERTISEMENTCandidates are competing for over 400 delegates in California’s March 3 primary, though mail-in ballots will be going out a month earlier, at the time the Iowa caucuses kick off the presidential election.Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has a massive volunteer organizing effort underway in California, while billionaire Michael Bloomberg has been spending tens of millions on TV advertising across the heavily Democratic state. With Garcetti’s endorsement, Biden is strengthening his position as the favorite within the Democratic establishment.President Donald Trump, who lost California by over 4 million votes in 2016, has called the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other big cities disgraceful and faulted the “liberal establishment” for the problem.___Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”

Republican senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, who is facing the toughest re-election race of his career, is tied with his Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, 48-48, in a Quinnipiac University poll. Other recent polls have also suggested an increasingly tight race. Graham, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee, is moving swiftly on the nomination of conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the supreme court seat vacated by Ruth Bader Ginsburg – despite saying four years ago no president at the end of his term should nominate a supreme court justice.“If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,’” he said in 2016, when Justice Antonin Scalia died, and Graham refused to consider then-president Barack Obama’s nominee. The Quinnipiac poll sampled likely voters. Of those polled, 49% said the winner of the presidential election should nominate a justice, whereas 47 % said Donald Trump should select a justice before the election.South Carolinians also said Harrison was more honest and empathetic than Graham. No Democrat has been elected to the Senate from South Carolina since 1998.