U.S. allies on the nonviolent side of the conflict have suffered a similar fate. Aid workers, activists, journalists, local administrators, medical workers, proponents of human rights and civil society—all these and more received various forms of U.S. training and backing over the years, and all were targeted regularly. ISIS killed U.S.-backed activists in Syria and even across the border in Turkey as Assad and Russia bombed hospitals run by international nonprofits. Support from the United States, it turned out, was not a blanket of security; these Syrians were not afforded special protection as global citizens of the modern Rome. Instead, they had targets on their backs. No one embodied this better than the activist Raed Fares, who was open about the support he received. Fares traveled regularly to Washington to meet with U.S. officials and lawmakers, but even as the threats against him mounted, he always returned to Syria. He was there in the fall of 2018 as Assad’s forces closed in on his native province of Idlib, well aware by then that his was a lost cause. “I want to die here,” he told me then. He was killed by an assassin’s bullet not long after.Now, with Trump having suddenly decided this month to pull American forces out of northern Syria, unleashing a Turkish invasion and chaotic days of violence and displacement, the U.S.-allied Syrians who remain in the country are having to choose whether to press ahead with their own unlikely causes or escape.Kurdish-controlled Syria had been the last bastion for those who cast their lot with the American cause. It was run by a U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led militia called the Syrian Democratic Forces, which had cleared the large swath of northeastern Syria from ISIS, and its security was guaranteed by the presence of some 1,000 U.S. troops. As the SDF sought to stabilize the region and set up a form of self-governance, Western aid groups and their local staffs worked on everything from providing humanitarian assistance and rebuilding infrastructure to clearing unexploded roadside bombs and ordnance from air strikes. But Turkey sees the SDF as an enemy, and Trump ordered the U.S. withdrawal so his Turkish counterpart could invade.I spoke with one Syrian aid worker who has been coordinating humanitarian projects funded by the U.S. State Department. He was torn between wanting to continue his work while at the same wondering whether he should flee to safety. The hasty U.S. departure has forced the SDF to seek a deal with Assad to ward off further Turkish incursions. Regime troops have already returned to some SDF areas and could soon return to more, putting anyone with U.S. ties at risk. This month, Syria's foreign minister accused anyone who had worked with the SDF of committing crimes against the country, vowing, "There won’t be any foothold for U.S. agents on Syrian territory.” The aid worker, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety, said he believed regime forces would come for him and other NGO staff. Still, he told me, his conscience would not allow him to leave—he was responsible for managing humanitarian aid, and there were those who needed help. “But in the end,” he said, “there might not be another option.”

If clothes and mobile phones weren’t enough, there’s a new battleground in India’s e-commerce war: insurance.And Amazon is its latest entrant.The Seattle-based giant’s India unit in filings with the ministry of corporate affairs, described its intent to enter India’s rapidly growing insurance industry, BloombergQuint reported yesterday (Sept. 17). The firm’s digital-payments arm, Amazon Pay, is slated to roll out the specific products, along with other financial products like loans and EMI services.The world’s largest e-commerce company has for years been locked in a fierce competition with Bengaluru-based Flipkart, the biggest Indian firm in the industry. Besides other categories that the two firms compete in, Amazon has been investing heavily in fintech and financial products for some time now. Just last month, it acquired Sequoia Capital-backed startup Tapzo to help support Amazon Pay. A questionnaire that Quartz e-mailed to Amazon is yet to receive a response.E-commerce firms whose business model lies in forming a “customer connect” try to “sell everything their customer needs,” including, now, insurance products, said Kalpesh Mehta, partner at auditing firm Deloitte Haskins & Sells. Yet, this could turn out to be a long-drawn battle considering the insurance industry’s low level of penetration in the country (pdf).In February this year, payments major Paytm created two separate insurance companies, including a life-insurance firm designed to compete even with state-owned behemoth Life Insurance Corporation of India. The company, already backed by Softbank and Alibaba, got a “game-changer” of an investment from Warren Buffet just two weeks ago.A year ago, Flipkart, in which Walmart acquired a controlling stake this May, reportedly declared its intent to enter the insurance market. The Bengaluru-based firm is also betting hard on fintech.Now all eyes are on the issue of regulation. Flipkart reportedly sought the Insurance Regulatory and Developmental Authority of India’s (IRDAI) approval months ago, but there’s been no word since. Paytm, on the other hand, received the nod last September, and has incorporated its two insurance companies, Paytm Life Insurance Corporation and Paytm General Insurance Corporation. Amazon, on its part, is yet to even apply, according to sources cited in BloombergQuint’s report. Among the new, tech-oriented entrants, payment-bank companies are likely to have an edge, Mehta of Deloitte Haskins & Sells said. “Payment banks actually connect with customers for financial needs,” he told Quartz. “When you’re doing your financial transactions—transferring funds, receiving funds, and also looking at all the options of how to use your money—that is the time when you would look at insurance, not when you are looking at buying products.” Meanhwile, Amazon’s somewhat delayed entry won’t cost it much since overall insurance coverage itself remains quite low in India. Between 2001 and 2017, it rose by just one percentage point, from 2.7% to 3.7%, according to a study by industry body Assocham. The insurance coverage is projected to grow far more quickly in the next few years, with the industry value estimated to rise from the current $72 billion (Rs5 lakh crore) to $280 billion by 2020.As the rivalry plays out, Indian insurance, dominated for decades now by public players and specialist firms, may soon be disrupted by new-age companies—perhaps even sparking the sector’s take-off after years of sclerotic growth.

Enlarge this image Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is reintroducing a bill to make marijuana legal on the federal level, with the support of several other Senate Democrats running for president. Charlie Neibergall/AP hide caption toggle caption Charlie Neibergall/AP Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is reintroducing a bill to make marijuana legal on the federal level, with the support of several other Senate Democrats running for president. Charlie Neibergall/AP New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, one of half a dozen Democratic senators running for the White House, is reintroducing a bill on Thursday that would fundamentally end the federal government's prohibition on marijuana.The Marijuana Justice Act, which was first introduced by Booker in August of 2017, seeks to make marijuana legal at the federal level by removing it from the list of controlled substances, while also expunging the convictions of previous marijuana drug offenders and reinvesting in low-income and minority communities that were particularly hard hit by the federal government's war on drugs.Some other senators running for president are co-sponsors of the legislation, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as well as Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, who is considering a bid. Politics Which Democrats Are Running In 2020 — And Which Still Might Two key senators from the Midwest are not listed as co-sponsors: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who's also running for president, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who is mulling a 2020 bid.Ten states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized some amount of recreational marijuana, and 33 states plus D.C. allow medical marijuana.Warren introduced a bipartisan piece of legislation last year with Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., to prevent the federal prohibition on marijuana from applying to states that had already legalized it. But Booker's legislation, which she supports, is a more sweeping change.The bill is retroactive and would apply to people currently serving time for marijuana-related offenses.The support for Booker's proposal among fellow Senate Democrats vying for the White House is a sign of how much the party has shifted in recent years, and the degree to which candidates feel they need to bolster their progressive credentials in a crowded Democratic field. Politics Beyond 'Bumper Sticker' Slogans: 2020 Democrats Debate Details Of Medicare-For-All It's also an indication of the overall appetite for progressive policies in the 2020 Democratic primary race.Sanders re-introduced the Raise the Wage Act last month, which would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour. It was co-sponsored by nearly every Democratic senator considering a run for the presidency: Booker, Brown, Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, Merkley and Warren.Likewise, Booker, Gillibrand, Harris, Merkley and Warren were all co-sponsors of Sanders' 2017 Medicare-for-all bill. Politics Joe Biden 'Very Close' To 2020 Decision As His Family Gives Its Blessing Analysis Are Democrats Ready To 'Feel The Bern' Or Is Sanders The 'MySpace' Of 2020?

"Facebook, YouTube, and Twitterhave agreed on first steps to curb harmful content online, big advertisers announced on Wednesday, following boycotts of social media platforms accused of tolerating hate speech," Reuters reports:The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, one of America's largest groups opposing hate speech, told Reuters there were many details that still need to be resolved. "These commitments must be followed in a timely and comprehensive manner to ensure they are not the kind of empty promises that we have seen too often from Facebook."And in a follow-up article, Reuters notes that despite the agreement, advertisers who'd boycotted Facebook and other social media sites "are not all rushing back".The chief brand officer at Procter & Gamble tells Reuters that with half of all media spending now devoted to digital ads, "It's time for digital platforms to apply content standards properly."A Facebook spokersperson pointed out that 95% of hate speech removed by Facebook is now detected before being reported — whereas in 2017, that number was just 23%.

The Republican-led House intelligence committee on Friday officially declared the end of its Russia investigation, saying in its final report that it found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.The report’s conclusion is fiercely opposed by Democrats on the committee, who say the panel did not interview enough witnesses or gather enough evidence. The investigation began with bipartisan promise but ultimately succumbed to factional squabbling. Republicans had already announced the main findings last month. An investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller is ongoing, as are investigations led by the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees. The House panel did find that Russia sought to sow discord in the US through cyberattacks and social media. Some portions of the report are redacted for national security reasons. Republicans say they will pressure intelligence agencies to be able to release more information. Mike Conaway of Texas, who has been leading the investigation, said he was “extremely disappointed with the overzealous redactions” made by the intelligence agencies. Many of the blacked out details include information already public such as witness names and previously declassified information, he said.Conaway said the committee had pledged to be “as transparent as possible”, adding: “I don’t believe the information we’re releasing today meets that standard, which is why my team and I will continue to challenge the [intelligence community’s] many unnecessary redactions with the hopes of releasing more of the report in the coming months.”Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, issued a scathing statement. Republicans, he said, had “a fundamentally flawed approach to the investigation”, the conclusions of which he said were “superficial and political”.The California Democrat went on: “Throughout the investigation, committee Republicans chose not to seriously investigate – or even see, when in plain sight – evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, instead adopting the role of defense counsel for key investigation witnesses.”Trump has repeatedly said there was “no collusion”. On Friday, he tweeted: “Just Out: House Intelligence Committee Report released. ‘No evidence’ that the Trump Campaign ‘colluded, coordinated or conspired with Russia’. Clinton Campaign paid for Opposition Research obtained from Russia– Wow! A total Witch Hunt! MUST END NOW!”Trump later spoke to reporters in the Oval Office, where he was meeting German chancellor Angela Merkel. The president called the report “very good” and “totally conclusive”.“No collusion, no coordination, no nothing,” he said. “It’s a witch hunt. That’s all it is. There was no collusion with Russia.” He then said: “The report was very powerful, very strong.”The New York Times reported, meanwhile, that the Russian lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower in June 2016, promising compromising information on Hillary Clinton, has closer ties to the Russian government than she has previously admitted.Natalia Veselnitskaya reportedly told NBC News in an interview to be broadcast on Friday she was “a lawyer and … an informant” for Russia’s prosecutor general.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday night temporarily suspending the issuance of green cards to immigrants abroad, saying it’s needed to protect American jobs amid an unemployment crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier drafts of the executive order would have also suspended the issuance of new visas. But the New York Times reported that Trump ultimately decided against it after pushback from business groups that rely on foreign workers, particularly in the tech sector. Under the executive order, American citizens are still able to apply for green cards on behalf of their minor children and spouses, and immigrants residing in the US can convert their existing visas into green cards. But immigrants living abroad, including the family members of green card holders and adult children of US citizens, won’t be granted green cards for a period of 60 days unless they are seeking to enter the US to perform an essential job in the health care sector. Roughly 358,000 green card applications could be affected.“As we move forward, we’ll examine what additional immigration-related measures should be put in place to protect US workers,” Trump said during a press conference on Tuesday. “We want to protect our US workers and I think as we move forward, we will become more and more protective of them.”Trump had already shut down many parts of the immigration system prior to announcing the executive order: Migrants on the southern border are being turned away, and foreign consulates are no longer processing visas. Travelers from China and Europe are banned from entering the US. But on Monday night, he signaled that he wanted to go further: “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” Trump tweeted.White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed in a statement on Tuesday that the action was necessary “at a time when Americans are looking to get back to work.” As the coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic fallout has worsened, the Trump administration has shied away from aggressive action on addressing issues with testing and shortages of medical equipment. It has been much less reluctant to crack down on immigration — seizing the opportunity to advance the restrictionist policies the president has pursued for years. The Trump administration had already restricted immigration amid the pandemic. The executive order goes a step further in curtailing legal immigration. In March, the State Department suspended routine visa processing at its consulates and embassies abroad, which has significantly slowed legal immigration. Some 9.2 million visas were issued at consulates and embassies abroad in 2019.The US’s borders with Canada and Mexico are closed to nonessential travel. The Trump administration has also implemented a system to swiftly turn away migrants arriving on the southern border during the pandemic. Migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are processed in the field rather than inside US Border Patrol stations, and without so much as a medical exam, they’re sent back to Mexico in an average of 96 minutes, the Texas Tribune reported.The administration had further postponed all court dates prior to April 22 for migrants in the “Remain in Mexico” program who have been sent back to Mexico while they wait for the outcome of their asylum applications in the US. Their applications will now be delayed. Trump also restricted travel from China and Europe, which he has repeatedly touted as key to keeping the coronavirus at bay in the US. The US, however, now has more reported coronavirus cases than any other country in the world, and testing capacity is still well below that of some other developed countries.All of these restrictions taken together have already made it much more difficult for legal immigrants applying for visas abroad, asylum seekers at the southern border, and citizens of China and Europe to come to the US. Trump’s executive order will now block, at least for the next two months, those looking to settle in the US permanently, if they’re applying for green cards abroad.Workers in essential fields will still be able to obtain visas under the executive order. That’s particularly critical given concerns about labor shortages in health care and agriculture.As patient demand continues to increase nationwide and with more health care workers unable to show up for work, either because they contract the virus or because they have to self-quarantine, many hospitals are facing staff shortages. The US health system already relies heavily on immigrants, who make up 17 percent of all health care workers and more than 25 percent of all doctors. And some states have sought to increase staff by waiving licensing requirements for foreign medical school graduates so they can contribute to the coronavirus response. Farmers have also been voicing concerns about potential labor shortages that could threaten the food supply. They rely on seasonal agricultural workers, many of whom come to the US from Mexico on H-2A visas.Still, farmers worry about visa processing delays and the prospect that fewer workers may want to risk coming to the US this year amid the pandemic.Support Vox’s explanatory journalismEvery day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

Mr. Manafort recognized the Kremlin’s interests, the report said. “This model can greatly benefit the Putin government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitments to success,” he wrote in a memo to Mr. Deripaska.The report called Mr. Manafort’s efforts for the oligarch “in effect, influence work for the Russian government and its interests.”For over a decade, the work made Mr. Manafort fabulously wealthy. At lunch after Mr. Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, the report said, the new Ukrainian leader “snapped his fingers” and gave Mr. Manafort a jar of caviar worth $30,000 to $40,000.Despite questions about who was behind Mr. Kilimnik — both financially and politically — Mr. Manafort increasingly depended on him. But by 2014, the Ukraine work had dried up.Mr. Yanukovych had been forced out as president after a popular uprising and fled to Russia. Mr. Manafort claimed the Ukrainian oligarchs had stiffed him out of millions for his work for Mr. Yanukovych. And Mr. Deripaska was trying to collect from Mr. Manafort for a failed private equity deal in Eastern Europe.Now broke, Mr. Manafort volunteered to work for the Trump campaign, which hired him in March 2016. In a memo, Mr. Manafort offered to brief Mr. Deripaska on “this development with Trump.”Mr. Manafort also speedily passed along the news of his new job to Mr. Kilimnik, who traveled to the United States specifically to meet him in May and again in August 2016. According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed Mr. Kilimnik on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.

The children ranged in age from about 2 to 16. It seemed that several of them had no one to pick them up, but authorities declined to answer any questions.Even after the 40-minute processing, it was not over. A Honduran official stepped out and announced that all of those who had arrived would have to travel to a center for migrant children for additional screening before they could be officially returned to their families.As Fernanda was carried toward a beige van that idled outside, the distance between her and her family growing, she began to squeal and flap her arms in protest. Her mother slipped into the group and climbed in the van along with her. Her grandparents and aunts followed in their truck.After a couple of hours, mother and daughter came out.Fernanda had counted “all the numbers” in English while they were inside, Ms. Davila said. “She told me all about what they did over there.”Mr. Lazo grabbed his granddaughter. “Who am I?” he asked her.She did not respond. “Soy tu papá, mi amor,” he said. “It’s your papa, my love.”On closer inspection, they noticed her body was covered in red spots and scabs, apparently from scratching herself. A nurse at the center said it was an allergy, Ms. Davila said, and prescribed skin cream. But Fernanda had never had such an allergy, they said.Weary but happy, the family stopped for a celebratory meal of fried fish near Lago de Yojoa, a big lake.

The divisions over the new drug’s approval comes after opioid overdose deaths surged to more than 40,000 last year, including more than 30,000 from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. States and the federal governments have cracked down on the prescribing of opioids, and many chronic pain patients have complained about being undertreated or losing access to opioids entirely.Dr. Brown, who heads the advisory committee on analgesics and anesthetic drug products, was not present for the committee vote last month. But in the letter he wrote afterward, he described trying to resuscitate doctors, medical students and other health care providers — “some successfully” — who had overdosed on the IV form of sufentanil at the medical center where he works“It is so potent that abusers of this intravenous formulation often die when they inject the first dose,” he wrote.Dr. Brown also questioned whether the F.D.A. would succeed in enforcing regulations once dangerous drugs hit the market.“It is my observation that once the F.D.A. approves an opioid compound,” he wrote, “there are no safeguards as to the population that will be exposed, the post-marketing analysis of prescribing behavior, or the ongoing analysis of the risks of the drug to the general population.”Critics of the approval include four Democratic senators — Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.In a letter to Dr. Gottlieb on Tuesday, they questioned why Dr. Brown’s committee went ahead and recommended approval on Oct. 12 without him present. They also asked why a different F.D.A. advisory group, the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, had not been involved.An F.D.A. spokeswoman said that while the issue was not brought formally in front of the drug safety committee, “there were drug safety and risk experts on the committee whose expert input was taken very seriously throughout this process.”

“We are living in the 21st century, in the E.U.,” he added. “It is the right time to start recognizing these families as families.”Thirteen of the European Union’s 28 member states currently allow same-sex marriage, while a further nine allow civil unions or something similar. Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have neither.Robert Wintemute, a professor of human rights law at King’s College London, said that the principle that spouses include same-sex partners will be immediately binding for all courts in the bloc’s current members, and for those in any countries that join later.It could also put pressure on the six member states without legal recognition of same-sex unions to introduce some form of legislation, he added.The verdict was widely expected. In January, a senior legal adviser to the court, Advocate General Melchior Wathelet, issued an opinion that highlighted the evolution of member states’ views on same-sex marriage over the previous decade.Definitions of marriage as a union only between two people of the opposite sex were no longer generally accepted by European Union countries, he said.The couple’s lawyer, Iustina Ionescu, described the case as “not just about same-sex marriage but about what the E.U. stands for — dignity, equality, respect for basic freedoms for all of us.”

In an emergency, the normal rules do not apply. Coronavirus has shown the EU can do things differently. Early on the commission dumped its obsession with balancing the books. The prohibition on monetary financing of government debt by the European Central Bank (ECB) was dropped. This allowed member states the freedom to mitigate the damage of a Covid recession without worrying too much about borrowing levels.That fear was well-founded. The EU had used high debt levels as a reason to intervene in public policy. Emma Clancy, an economist for the leftwing block of MEPs, has noted the commission had used debt burdens to ask member states to cut spending on, or privatise, healthcare services 63 times between 2011 and 2018. In the EU there is often an Olympian disdain for critics of its fiscal and monetary rules. This is understandable. No one likes to be reminded of one’s own mistakes.But the EU’s architecture needs a shake-up. The bloc was on the edge of recession before coronavirus sent member states into a slump. The EU was wrong not to take a long look at itself after a decade of needless mistakes. In 2012 rigid adherence to its rules converted a private debt crisis into a public debt crisis in southern states, choking off growth with self-imposed austerity. As economies flatlined the bond markets boycotted those nations that looked to be running out of cash. The ECB sat on its hands, happy for “market discipline” to work its way through the system. Public services shrank and unemployment spiralled upwards. Populists found fertile ground for their bitter politics.But not everyone was hit hard. Germany was barely dented by the eurozone crisis. When coronavirus struck Berlin could muster the largest response in the EU. Countries such as Italy, Spain and France did not have the capacity to do the same. States are diverging not converging. Both the European commission and the ECB are moving to change their rules. It’s difficult to say where they are going. The voices for reform are growing louder. The Hans-Böckler-Stiftung thinktank, allied to German trade unions, advocates a looser EU fiscal policy. The current rules say that EU states ought to keep debt below 60% of GDP and run budget deficits of 3%. To impose such targets today would produce a continent-wide depression. Eurozone debt is forecast to rise to above 100% of GDP next year, while average deficits will be 8% of GDP. No wonder France’s Europe minister says it’s unimaginable that budget restrictions could return. To hit treaty targets would require not blood-letting but amputation.The EU should use this crisis to do capitalism differently. This requires a rethink of what governments are for: rather than simply fixing market failures when they arise, they ought to deliver sustainable and inclusive growth. This means jettisoning austerity-inducing budget rules. The ECB should be allowed to purchase national bonds, based on the social needs of member states. This would allow EU nations to spend without fretting about debt. The former German finance minister has sounded a note of caution about such steps. But corona-related public debt has been monetised by the ECB and there’s been no rise in inflation.The EU ought to adopt, not outlaw, Keynesian policies. Across the continent deflation looms and unemployment is rising. There’s insufficient internal eurozone demand to sustain German, let alone Europe’s, industry. EU governments tied their hands by adopting external constraints that could be blamed for unpopular policies. International institutions were scapegoated and macroeconomic choices were not debated. Britain may have left the club but ought to care. The EU’s changes should not come at the expense of European cooperation. Governments that maximise citizens’ wellbeing would be a better basis for a renewed European project than one presented as the inevitable outcome of a harsh globalisation.

Editor’s note: This article was updated at 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 22 to include testimony from senior U.S. diplomat William Taylor Jr.A key part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump involves three Latin words: quid pro quo, literally “this for that.” Did President Trump withhold aid from Ukraine to pressure it to launch an investigation that might benefit him politically?Democrats charge that the president abused his office by improperly leveraging U.S. foreign policy to try to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and to pursue a debunked theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails in 2016.President Trump’s defenders insist that while the president may have asked the Ukrainian leader for help with certain matters, it was entirely appropriate and there was no quid pro quo. Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney recently complicated that argument by seeming to say there was a quid pro quo, but that’s a common feature of foreign policy – an assertion he later tried to walk back.On Tuesday, explosive testimony from William Taylor Jr., the senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, added a new dimension and new urgency to the quid pro quo question. Mr. Taylor told House impeachment investigators that President Trump did withhold Ukraine aid and a promised White House meeting for Ukraine’s leader until Ukrainian officials publicly promised to investigate the Bidens, father and son. Will Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis change anything? Or everything?If true Mr. Taylor’s assertions would directly contradict the president’s “no quid pro quo” stance, while calling into question the accuracy of several impeachment witnesses who have stated they were unaware of such pressure.Mr. Taylor was acting ambassador for the U.S. in Ukraine. His Tuesday testimony occurred behind closed doors, but news organizations obtained copies of his 15-page opening statement, which was apparently based on copious notes and memos for the record from Mr. Taylor’s files.In short, he said that the quid pro quo was real, and drew a line directly from President Trump to the mysterious withholding of American military aid intended to help Ukraine defend against Russian incursion on its territory.“I said on September 9 in a message to [Ambassador to the European Union] Gordon Sondland that withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be ‘crazy’. I believed that then, and I still believe that,” Mr. Taylor said in his opening statement.Mr. Taylor said that Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and political appointee who donated to the Trump campaign, informed him of the reasons for the unusual hold in a phone call. Everything was dependent on a public statement by Ukraine of an investigation into Biden-related matters, Mr. Sondland said, according to Mr. Taylor.The president wanted Ukraine in a “public box,” Mr. Taylor was told. Presumably this would help ensure the investigations really occurred. It might also have been a means, by itself, of throwing doubt on the honesty of former Vice President Biden and his son.“Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman,” Mr. Taylor said in his statement. “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.”A diplomat with five decades of experience, Mr. Taylor described a situation in which there were two channels for Ukraine policy, “one regular, and one highly irregular.” The latter consisted of Mr. Sondland, special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.Democrats who heard Mr. Taylor’s testimony described it as a possible inflection point in their impeachment inquiry. Republicans were tight-lipped about what the diplomat had said.There is sure to be a fight over Mr. Taylor’s credibility, and over the question of whether his statements really describe a direct line from the Oval Office to Ukraine, or simply his mistaken impression of what the circumstances were in this case.One possible line of defense: GOP lawmakers are likely to describe Mr. Taylor as a bureaucrat disgruntled by the fact that the Trump administration was sapping the bureaucracy’s power and implementing new policies on its own, of which the career State Department hierarchy simply disapproved.Democratic House investigators are almost certain to try and speak again with Mr. Sondland. In his previous appearance, compelled by a House subpoena, Mr. Sondland had said that President Trump had told him there was no quid pro quo in this instance, but he was not certain of the truth of that assertion. He also said that he did not recall having discussions with any State Department or White House official about former Vice President Biden or his son.It may all come down to Mr. Trump’s intent.In many circumstances it is perfectly proper for a high U.S. official, even a president, to ask foreign countries for assistance with an ongoing law enforcement investigation, according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.“Such calls can shortcut bureaucratic red tape, particularly if the evidence is held, as with this case, by national security or justice officials,” Mr. Turley wrote in an October 2 column in The Hill.It may also be appropriate in some circumstances for a president to ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival, as President Trump appears to have done by urging the Ukrainian president to investigate the activities of former Vice President Biden and his son Hunter Biden. As Ohio State constitutional law professor Edward Foley points out in Politico, it all depends on what the rival may have been doing, and whether the president has the nation’s broader interests at heart.In 1804, former Vice President Aaron Burr contacted the British government, looking for foreign support to cut the western portion of the U.S. away to form a separate country. President Thomas Jefferson, who detested Mr. Burr, eventually had the former vice president tried for treason. Probing this alleged deal was clearly in the country’s interest.“Jefferson as president would have been acting responsibly if he had requested Britain’s assistance in the investigation of Burr,” Mr. Foley writes. In his dealings with Ukraine, including his call to investigate Mr. Biden and his son, was Mr. Trump acting for the good of the nation, or the benefit of himself? The impeachment inquiry will be tasked with answering that question. Evidence may include public statements and private discussions among staff members about possible quid pro quos. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. To determine intent, lawmakers will have to judge what they believe was in Mr. Trump’s heart, as well as his actions.“That is a tricky – but not impossible – bar for Congress to clear,” writes Mr. Foley.

Celebrations have been held on the streets of Welch in West Virginia to commemorate Veterans Day. The city is in McDowell County, where US President Donald Trump received more than 70% of the vote in the 2016 election. The BBC spoke to local people about the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Mr Trump.Filmed by Peter Murtaugh and Shane Colella.

The group’s motivations for the attacks remain unknown. It has made no public statements, nor has it claimed credit for the attacks. But military and intelligence officials said it was most likely formed in reaction to the extreme poverty in Mozambique’s only predominantly Muslim region.“We are at an inflection point in the broader campaign against terrorism,” said Laith Alkhouri, a senior director at Flashpoint, a business risk intelligence company in New York, assessing the global terrorist threat.Over the past month alone, and armed with new authorities from Mr. Trump, American Special Operations forces continue to hunt Islamic State and Qaeda operatives. In June, Mr. Trump nominated a former member of the Navy SEALs, Vice Adm. Joseph Maguire, to be the next director of the National Counterterrorism Center.On June 6, an American Reaper drone killed four Islamic State fighters near Bani Walid, Libya, about 110 miles southeast of Tripoli, Libya’s capital. A week later, another Reaper killed a Qaeda operative 50 miles southeast of Bani Walid. Ten days later, in central Yemen, American airstrikes attacked Qaeda fighters in the contested central Hadramout region.The risks of these missions was laid bare on June 8, when an American Special Operations soldier was killed and four others were wounded in an attack in southwestern Somalia against Shabab fighters.Even away from the battlefield, extremists on social media and the internet are proving to be potent. French authorities foiled a ricin plot by an Egyptian-born student in May after intercepting messages on the secure social media platform Telegram.And in Cologne, Germany, authorities acting on information from American intelligence agencies last month arrested a Tunisian man who tried to buy 1,000 castor bean seeds and a coffee grinder online. The shell of the castor bean is highly poisonous and can be used to make ricin.

Alissa Quart’s fearless, innovative poems adroitly confront the stuff of contemporary life, from mass shootings to DNA searches to MRIs to abortion clinics to a baby’s fever. Some of her poems collected in Thoughts and Prayers, two of which are reprinted below, deploy the actual language of public figures, such as James Comey and, in a poem published here for the first time, the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower. All poems published here with the permission of the author.

The web of connections between Donald Trump’s convicted campaign manager and an indicted man who tried to dig up dirt on his political rival runs tighter and longer than previously understood.Rudy Giuliani ally Igor Fruman and ex-Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort have been friendly for years, two sources familiar with their relationship tell The Daily Beast.And that relationship — stretching from New York to London to Kyiv — long predated Rudy Giuliani’s wide-ranging attempts to discredit the evidence that played a key role in kicking off Manafort's political downfall and eventual incarceration.Joseph Bondy, the lawyer for Fruman associate Lev Parnas, said Manafort and Fruman were friendly for years before their respective indictments. A friend of Manafort’s, who spoke anonymously to discuss non-public matters, confirmed that Fruman and Manafort have known each other for years. He said Fruman invited Manafort to the opening party for Buddha-Bar in Kyiv many years ago, and that the two men have discussed business. Buddha-Bar opened in the summer of 2008. Bondy said the pair also spent time together in London and New York.Kevin Downing, a Washington attorney who represented Paul Manafort, initially represented both Parnas and Fruman after their arrests for campaign finance-related charges. According to Bondy, he told the two men that Manafort sent them greetings and was glad to hear he was representing them. Bondy also said Giuliani communicated with Manafort and his lawyers after his incarceration, including about a document alleging illegal payments to Manafort known as the “black ledger.” There was a hope that if the document could be proven to be a fraud, it could help Manafort’s legal case and get him released from prison, Bondy said. A lawyer for Fruman declined to comment for this story. Downing did not respond to requests for comment. Giuliani and members of his legal team did not respond to requests for comment. Giuliani told The Washington Post in October that he discussed the ledger with Manafort through his lawyer. He also told the paper he did not think he could exonerate Manafort and didn’t push Trump to pardon him. In late 2018, as the Mueller investigation was drawing to a close, Giuliani and his allies worked to draft a counter-report that would rebut Mueller’s work. (Manafort was one of the first targets of Mueller’s probe, and was convicted of multiple charges related to work he did in Ukraine for a Russia-friendly political party.) Giuliani never released that report. But he also didn’t toss it; he told The Daily Beast in October that materials he gave the State Department came from his effort to find information in Ukraine that could exonerate Trump. Relations with Ukraine have shadowed Trump and his allies even before he was elected president. On August 14, 2016, The New York Times reported that Manafort may have received millions of dollars in “illegal, off-the-books” cash from the pro-Russia political party he worked for. The story was a body blow to Manafort, who left Trump’s campaign five days after it was published. Serhiy Leshchenko, then a Ukrainian parliamentarian, played an instrumental role in the black ledger. In the years after the publication of the story, Manafort’s life fell apart. Nine months after Trump’s inauguration, he was arrested and charged with a host of crimes. By March 2019, he had been sentenced to a seven-year prison term. He and his allies blamed the black ledger for starting the calamity. And given that Leshchenko was a government official when he shared the documents, Trump’s allies have said their release was an example of election meddling by Kyiv. Parnas told The Daily Beast that Giuliani tried to push Leshchenko away from Zelensky; Giuliani himself has called him an enemy of the United States.Giuliani has said his scrutiny of the black ledger fed directly into his focus on the Bidens. “What happened is that I was investigating, going back to last year, complaints that the Ukrainian people, several people in Ukraine, knew about a tremendous amount of collusion between Ukrainian officials, and Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee, including a completely fraudulent document that was produced, in order to begin the investigation of Manafort,” he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on September 19 of this year. “They were trying to get to us. But they were being blocked by the Ambassador who was Obama-appointee, in Ukraine, who was holding back this information. In the course of investigating that, I found out this incredible story about Joe Biden that he bribed the President of the Ukraine in order to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.”In other words, Giuliani’s efforts to undermine the Mueller probe—and stand up for Manafort—led directly to his Biden dirt-digging endeavors. Parnas has said he and Fruman were right there to help. Parnas has said he put Giuliani on speaker phone at the beginning of meetings with Ukrainian officials to prove he had clout with Trump. He also said he told an aide to Ukraine’s then-President Elect Volodymyr Zelensky that he needed to announce such investigations if they wanted to receive an already-promised delivery of U.S. military aid. Parnas, Fruman, and Manafort have one notable shared acquaintance: Ukrainian oligarch Dmitryo Firtash. Parnas briefly worked for Firtash’s American lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who helped Giuliani on the Biden effort. Manafort and Firtash, meanwhile, once considered going into business together to buy a New York hotel for $800 million (the investment did not materialize). In an interview last year with The Daily Beast, Firtash said Manafort had a reputation for being “very successful, and very smart.”Like Fruman, Parnas, and Manafort, Firtash has some American legal problems. Not only have U.S. officials claimed he has ties to Russian organized crime, the Justice Department charged him years ago with conspiring to bribe Indian government officials. Firtash maintains his innocence and is fighting extradition from his home in Vienna, Austria. Fruman and Parnas were arrested in October on their way to Vienna and charged with a number of campaign finance crimes, to which they have pleaded not guilty. Fruman has kept his head down in the months since then. Parnas, however, has shared reams of documents, photos, and audio clips with Congressional impeachment investigators. And he has publicly discussed his work with Giuliani, including in interviews with MSNBC, CNN, and The Daily Beast. While Giuliani lambasted Mueller for his treatment of Manafort, he has largely kept mum about Parnas and Fruman. Parnas has said that silence informed his decision to go public about his misadventures in Trumpworld.

closeVideoRep. Hakeem Jeffries previews impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary CommitteeNew York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, joins Chris Wallace on 'Fox News Sunday.'Three days before the House Judiciary Committee is set to call witnesses to testify at a hearing regarding the possible impeachment of President Trump, their identities are being kept hidden not just from the White House, but even members of the committee itself.Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., gave the White House until Sunday evening to decide if they would like to participate in Wednesday’s hearing, and gave Trump until Friday regarding a defense at future hearings. But Nadler's fellow New York Democrat and committee member Rep. Hakeem Jeffries admitted Sunday that even he still does not know who will be testifying,COLLINS: SCHIFF WILL BE GOP'S 'FIRST AND FOREMOST WITNESS' FOR IMPEACHMENT HEARING“The committee hasn’t been provided with that information yet,” Jeffries told “Fox News Sunday.”All that is known so far is that there will be four witnesses, they will be constitutional law experts, and that three will be chosen by the Democratic majority and one by the Republican minority.When asked why it could not have been two witnesses for each side, Jeffries stated, “Well that’s something to be discussed,” but then shifted to discussing the Trump appointees who previously testified before the House Intelligence Committee.Earlier in the program, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., called out Democrats for the time crunch they have imposed on Republicans and the White House, along with a lack of information regarding the next stage in the impeachment process. Collins claimed Nadler gave neitherTrump nor Republicans enough time to determine how to move forward. The Intelligence Committee’s report on the previous testimony has yet to be released, and Collins said it is not expected until the night before or even the morning of Wednesday’s hearing.“Chairman Nadler sent a letter asking us by Friday to present this list and present all the things that we would like to do,” he said. “However, we’re not going to see the Schiff report, as it is going to be known, out of committee until Tuesday night, possibly Wednesday morning before we get to see it.”Jeffries did note that he would be happy to hear from any defense witnesses who could assist Trump in fighting allegations that he improperly withheld military aid from Ukraine in exchange for investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.“If the president would like to come forward and present an actual witness who can provide some exculpatory information as to why the aid was withheld, we all would welcome that,” Jeffries said.Jeffries, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, also pushed back against claims that his party has been out to impeach Trump from the moment he took office. Despite efforts to investigate Trump based on allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia, that Trump himself tried to obstruct that investigation, and now the current Ukraine allegations, Jeffries claimed impeachment was not the Democrats’ goal from Day One.“As it relates to the impeachment inquiry that we’re in right now, we are here reluctantly,” he said. “The impeachment of a president is not something we came to Congress to do.”

When House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff gavels to order the first impeachment hearing of a president in 21 years on Wednesday morning, it will not be his first rodeo. A decade ago, he led the impeachment process in the House and the prosecution in the Senate of two federal judges.One was convicted and removed from office, and the other resigned before the Senate trial concluded. Only 15 federal judges have been impeached over the course of U.S. history, so midwifing two successful removals is significant. “I have a lot of confidence in Schiff, who knows the process as almost nobody else on the Hill,” says Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “The Democrats will be fairly focused and direct while the Republicans shout, ‘Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden.”Pitney points out that Rep. Jim Jordan, a Freedom Party stalwart added to the Intelligence committee in time for tomorrow’s hearing, couldn’t get a security clearance if he weren’t a member of Congress. Jordan is named in a lawsuit filed against Ohio State University for his alleged role in ignoring complaints of sexual assault when he was an assistant wrestling coach at OSU from 1986 to 1994. The challenge for the Democrats is to move beyond “quid pro quo,” and bring the case they’re building against the president back to bribery, which is in the Constitution as an impeachable offense. “It’s not about whether there is a ‘quid pro quo,’ though there was,” says Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice. “This was a shakedown for personal and political gain.” Bribery and extortion are words people know, and It’s important after three years of Trump undermining the rule of law—paying hush money to women, ridiculing the emoluments clause in the Constitution as “phony,” stonewalling subpoenas, downplaying Rudy Giuliani’s failure to register as a foreign lobbyist, and having his lawyer argue that he can’t even be investigated for criminal behavior should he shoot someone on Fifth Avenue—that a bright line get drawn, beyond which this president and any subsequent president cannot stray. “Eroding respect for the rule of law is one of the worst things Trump has done, over and above the specific crimes he has committed,” Pitney told the Daily Beast. He adds to the list Kellyanne Conway’s infamous “blah blah blah” response when she was caught violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits political appointees in the White House from engaging in some blatant forms of campaign activity. “This is a guy who has literally said that Article 2 of the Constitution allows him to do whatever he wants,” says Pitney, whose forthcoming book is titled The Un-American: The Fake Patriotism of Donald J. Trump.A Republican staffer on Capitol Hill before joining academia, Pitney writes from a conservative perspective in assessing Trump’s behavior. “It’s hard to think of any other president who has so directly contradicted the intention of the Founders. We look to the president to preserve and protect the Constitution, and he is undermining and corroding it.” New York Rep. Peter King’s announcement that he will retire sent a strong signal about the danger that Republicans see approaching in 2020. King is a fixture on Capitol Hill, having served almost 27 years, and he is the 19th Republican to call it quits. An Irish Republican with the gift of gab, he won his Long Island district by 6 points in 2018, his smallest margin since his first race, and he’s watching once reliably Republican Long Island take a sharp turn toward the Democrats. He wouldn’t admit it publicly, but many of this season’s retirees are wary that Trump would have been a drag on them next November. And getting out now avoids being tied on the ballot to a president who could end up disgraced in the history books. Republicans have had to make this deal with the devil for the policies they like—tax cuts and conservative judges, and to stay in power—but it comes with a cost. The party that championed the rule of law when Bill Clinton was caught lying about sex, has forfeited any legitimate claim to the laws that are supposed to govern the conduct of the executive branch. “They pay lip service to the rule of law but there is no evidence they truly respect it, or pay attention to the Constitution,” says Matt Dallek, a political historian at the George Washington Graduate School of Political Management. He expects the hearings will be compelling, but unlikely to change Republican behavior. “This is the tradeoff they have made. They may wish he were more ethical or less corrupt, but even the ones who know better, they’ve made their calculation.” And they’re sticking with Trump.

Conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus have swirled around discussion of the pandemic since it began. Such theories tend to proliferate during times of crisis, as people search for elusive explanations at a time of tremendous uncertainty. But there’s also something else that’s keeping them alive: Institutions in American life entrusted to inform the public have been amplifying them.The latest example of this phenomenon was a controversial decision by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns one of America’s largest local television networks. The company planned to air a new interview with discredited researcher and conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits, who suggests — despite all evidence and research stating otherwise — that one of the Trump administration’s top scientists, Dr. Anthony Fauci, may have created the coronavirus.Sinclair was fiercely criticized for its decision to give Mikovits a platform on an episode of America This Week initially set to air on its local stations this weekend, and after facing pushback from progressive watchdogs like Media Matters and influential journalists, the company announced that it would delay broadcasting the episode so it can bring “together other viewpoints and provide additional context.” As things stand, Sinclair may still air a newly edited version of the episode, giving Mikovits a broadcast platform. (Sinclair did not respond to a request for comment.) Even if the company ultimately decides to kill the episode, serious damage has already been done. The episode was placed on the show’s website, and the controversy alone has brought a new wave of attention to Mikovits’s bizarre and widely debunked conspiracy theories about the virus, giving her fearmongering about Covid-19 a broader audience.Ahead of the interview, Mikovits had struggled to find a platform for her fringe views; a viral video featuring an interview with her — an extended trailer for a documentary called Plandemic — was banned by YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo in May. In the clip, she made false claims that coronavirus is “activated” by protective masks, that a coronavirus vaccine will “kill millions,” and that Fauci was involved in a plot by elites to use the pandemic to seize political power and profit off vaccines. In her new interview with America This Week, Mikovits alleges that Fauci has, for the past decade, “manufactured” and shipped coronaviruses to Wuhan, China. Her attorney Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer with his own history of peddling bizarre conspiracy theories, also appeared on the show and claimed the “origins” of the coronavirus were in the US. The host of the show, Eric Bolling, did not challenge or refute the evidence-free claims, despite scientists’ research suggesting Covid-19 jumped from an animal to humans. Throughout the segment, an onscreen graphic reads, “DID DR. FAUCI CREATE COVID-19?”After his interview with Mikovits and Klayman, Bolling interviewed Fox News medical contributor Nicole Saphier, a radiologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in what appeared to be an attempt to balance the conspiracy theories of his earlier guests. Saphier said she did not believe that Fauci engineered the coronavirus, but she also said that there were “several theories” about its origins and endorsed the theory of Covid-19 possibly being “man-made within a laboratory,” a theory for which there is no evidence.Sinclair is not the first media outlet to play a role in amplifying conspiracy theories. For example, in April, former Trump adviser Roger Stone shared the theory that philanthropist Bill Gates may have created the coronavirus and planned to use a vaccine to surveil the public with injected microchips on a New York radio show — and the New York Post ran a story on it without questioning or refuting it.The most influential political office in the land — the presidency — has lent credence to theories that the virus is part of a nefarious plan as well. President Donald Trump has said that he also believes a Chinese lab may have accidentally or deliberately released the virus. His own intelligence agencies, however, had ruled out theories of an intentional release of the virus and had not found evidence it was man-made.But Sinclair’s plan to broadcast conspiracy theories has experts uniquely worried. The broadcaster has vast national reach with its channels, and some may not realize their local news — typically a domain for what is perceived as apolitical information — is coming from a pro-Trump company with a questionable commitment to truth-telling and an agenda to spread right-wing ideas. “People tend to trust their local news stations, more than many other types of media,” Liz Suhay, a scholar of political psychology at American University, told me. “Misinformation spread via these outlets will persuade millions.”Experts say that, historically speaking, the public is more receptive to conspiracy theories during catastrophes.“Conspiracy theories flourish in times of crisis, which is obviously the case here,” Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent and an expert in conspiratorial thinking, told Vox’s Jane Coaston in April. “They tend to surround big events that require big explanations [because] small explanations are unsatisfying.”But the specific content of conspiracy theories is also important — and can provide clues about the societies where the theories take hold. As Coaston has explained, pandemics fuel conspiracy theories that grapple not only with disease but also with social and political structures: Historically, with every plague and pandemic, there have been conspiracy theories to explain their origin and how to potentially stop their progression. Often, those conspiracy theories play on existing concerns and work within cultural contexts. For example, during the Black Death, a 14th-century outbreak of bubonic plague that killed at least 35 percent of Europe’s population, conspiracy theories targeted Jewish people — already the subject of ire and deep concern — as the source of the plague, leading to the torture and murder of thousands of Jews in response. (As anti-Semitism is itself a conspiracy theory, it’s not surprising to see anti-Semitic conspiracy theories arise during the coronavirus pandemic as well.) More recent pandemics have seen the rise of their own conspiracy theories, ones that formed in response to underlying concerns as much as they did to a virus or disease. “AIDS denialists,” for example — people who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS — were responding not just to AIDS, but to the context of AIDS in the United States of the 1980s, a disease that seemed to kill the most vulnerable and most despised in society with little attention or care from mainstream authority figures. That led some people, already experienced in distrusting institutions that had only served to disadvantage and oppress them, to distrust them even more in the face of a crisis. We’re seeing some analogous dynamics play out today: Conspiracy theories discussed during the era of coronavirus also reflect certain strands of popular thought about power in America and the world today. At a time of staggering socioeconomic inequality in the US, and at a specific moment when disease is revealing the life-or-death stakes of that inequality, the emergence of conspiracy theories that suggest the virus is a plan by elites to accumulate profit and power should not be surprising. A Pew Research Center survey from June found that about a quarter of Americans see at least some truth in the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus outbreak was intentionally planned by powerful people. (Five percent say it’s “definitely true” and 20 percent say it’s “probably true,” with a 1.6 percentage point margin of error.)Matt Motta, a professor of political science at Oklahoma State University who studies the intersection of politics and science, said in an email that Sinclair’s decision to air the interview could increase the number of true believers in the most extreme theories.“Even though many Americans accept misinformation about the origins of Covid-19 (e.g., that it was created in a lab), belief in the ‘Plandemic’ conspiracy has largely been relegated to only the most ardent conspiracy theorists. That’s in part due to the relatively swift action social media companies took to remove the video from their platforms,” he wrote. “Sinclair’s decision to air this interview without challenging its claims risks pushing some of these extreme views into the mainstream.”Experts have emphasized that local news is a particularly potent way to spread conspiracy theories because of the unique role local broadcasts play in distributing news — meaning even a new version of Sinclair’s Mikovits interview providing “additional context” may not be enough to limit the proliferation of Mikovits’s conspiracy theory.“The fact that the story is ostensibly balanced is nonsense, as the view being presented [by Mikovits] has no support among experts, and ‘balanced’ formats can be misleading,” Brendan Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth who researches misperceptions about politics and health care, told me.In fact, placing Mikovits among credible experts may actually give her conspiracy theory greater credence to viewers, effectively giving her ideas the same legitimacy as the scientifically based statements those experts make. Pew polling conducted in June found most Americans don’t have much trust in national news outlets’ ability to deliver facts about the coronavirus, a result mirrored in a late June New York Times/Siena College poll. Americans were found to have greater trust in their local news outlets, however, with 50 percent saying their local news presents factual coverage of Covid-19 at least most of the time — 6 percentage points more than national outlets (again, with a 1.6 percentage point margin of error). Overall, studies show that the public generally has substantially more trust in local television news and newspapers than in their national counterparts. In other words, Sinclair broadcasting conspiracy theories could influence people’s attitudes and beliefs more deeply than CNN or Fox News.The mainstreaming of conspiracy theories about the inception and spread of Covid-19 could seriously complicate the country’s ability to manage the pandemic by corroding the public’s inclination to comply with expert guidance.Motta pointed to a study he co-authored that found that people who have been more exposed to misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus in the media — through right-leaning news, in particular — are more likely to accept those claims as true, and are subsequently less likely to accept warnings about the severity of the pandemic from scientific experts. “The risks are very real,” he warned.Suhay noted that the pandemic’s end could be delayed by conspiracy theories, telling me, “I think the most concerning harm in this instance is that many of the Covid conspiracy theories circulating are directly and indirectly ‘anti-vax’ — which means they are likely to drive down the number of people willing to be vaccinated against the disease when a vaccine eventually becomes available.”If major media outlets continue to give oxygen to ungrounded theories about the virus and trust in experts diminishes, delayed vaccination times and poor compliance with social distancing protocols could intensify the crisis. Conspiracy theories about the world will always exist, but it’s up to institutions tasked with telling the truth to avoid giving a platform to claims that have no demonstrable basis in reality and to rigorously refute them through careful and factual explanation.Support Vox’s explanatory journalismEvery day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

Protests in Hong Kong over the past 11 weeks have shown two things—Hong Kong people won’t easily bow to Beijing’s threats, and Beijing is working very hard to create an alternative universe of information.More details are emerging about efforts by China’s state media and associated entities to turn opinion against the protest movement, which began in opposition to a bill that would have made it possible to extradite criminal suspects to the mainland.The state campaign’s tactics have included posting images purporting to be of a “foreign commander” of the protests (which actually showed a New York Times journalist), rewriting a famous anti-Nazi poem to assail the protesters, releasing rap songs, and buying promoted tweets on Twitter.The activity has been so robust—though not in the least sophisticated, and probably not very effective—Twitter on Aug. 19 said it had suspended 936 accounts originating from within China that “were deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground.” It also early suspended 200,000 “spammy” accounts tied to the activity.Still, social-media influence operations by state-affiliated organizations look set to continue.The same day as Twitter’s announcement, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), China’s internet regulator, put out the shortlist for a contract to help it operate and grow overseas social accounts on platforms such as on Facebook. It didn’t specify the accounts in question. On Aug. 16, state news agency China News Services (link in Chinese) announced the winner of its project to build its social media presence overseas. Together, they are spending more than $1 million.The CAC will pay 80% of its 5.8 million yuan ($820,000) contract to the operator at the start and the rest after one year of operation, according to its announcement. The project asked for a team of at least six who could “tell China’s stories with multiple angles, express China’s voice, and get overseas audience recognition and support for Xi Jinping Thought.” State-run newspaper People’s Daily and Guangming Daily are among the three final bidders.The China News Service’s contract request has more specific goals. It wants to increase Twitter followers on its two accounts by 580,000 within six months. Among the new followers, at least 8% need to come from North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The bidding criteria says having a foreigner on the team could help the team get more points. (The bid goes to the team with the highest score.)The campaign to gain influence on foreign social media seems to have begun weeks earlier. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a similar project for 3.38 million yuan ($480,000) on June 21, five days after two million Hong Kong protestors called for full withdrawal of the extradition bill and for an inquiry into allegations of police brutality. The hawkish newspaper Global Times won the foreign ministry contract.Since then, at least a dozen protests of have criss-crossed the city every weekend as demonstrators have broadened their demands to include universal suffrage. Last week protesters who shut down the airport over two days also tied up and beat two men, one of whom later turned out to be a Global Times reporter. The protests have been more moderate since then, with many in the movement upset over the beatings.Calls for comment to the CAC and the agency helping with the bid went unanswered. China News Service hung up on a call for comment. The agency for CNS declined to comment on whether the government budget comes from the local or central government, citing confidential information.China’s propaganda will need to navigate major platforms’ rules, which now ban promoted tweets by state-run news media. A research team with Canberra-based think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted that most of the accounts suspended by Twitter this week are “old spam or marketing accounts which appear to have been recently repurposed (possibly bought) to push anti-#HK propaganda.” In any case, China isn’t stopping there.