Some responses were more blunt. “Heartland is code. And I’m over it,” wrote Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It erases the legitimacy of the experiences and reality of Black mid-Westerners and cloaks white mid-Western communities in a gauzy innocence and authenticity.” In response to the journalist Michele Norris’s critique, Brent Staples, an editorial writer for The New York Times, tweeted: “I feel you. ‘Heartland’ ‘Midwest’ ‘Working class’—all terms of art in political analysis that serve as code for ‘white.’”Coded or not, that word, heartland, has been linked to Buttigieg since he burst onto the scene as a small-town mayor with national ambitions. An interview with Buttigieg on the PBS series The Open Mind in April 2017 was titled “Dreams of the Heartland,” and in September 2018 he was one of three midwestern mayors featured on a panel at an AtlanticLIVE event in Des Moines, Iowa, called “The Heartland Summit.” When he joined the presidential race early last year, New York magazine dubbed him “the Democrats’ folksiest heartland hope.”Buttigieg, for his part, has embraced the term. In the November debate, he made the case for selecting someone who “has a different kind of experience … and bringing that to Washington so that Washington can start looking a little more like our best-run communities in the heartland before the other way around starts to happen.” The policy section of his website includes a page titled “A Commitment to America’s Heartland: Unleashing the Potential of Rural America.”Buttigieg’s fellow midwesterner Amy Klobuchar has been working the “heartland” angle just as hard this primary season. As Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote in The Atlantic last April, the Minnesota senator has emphasized the ill-defined notion of “heartland economics.” Campaigning in Iowa, Klobuchar has said, “I think it’s important to have someone from the heartland on the ticket.”Given how strenuously Buttigieg and Klobuchar have been making their “heartland” pitches, you might think the word is embedded deep in midwesterners’ DNA. But the word’s political currency as a folksy label for Middle America extends back only to World War II.Although the Oxford English Dictionary traces heartland back to 1634 as a poetic term for “a place where love resides,” the term didn’t gain purchase in geopolitics until the 20th century. The British geographer Halford Mackinder used “The Heartland” to refer to the interior of the interlocking continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, a landmass he called “the World-Island.” Eastern Europe held the key to control of the “Heartland” and in turn the “World-Island,” Mackinder argued in his 1919 book, Democratic Ideals and Reality.As the European powers clashed in World War II, American commentators seized on Mackinder’s model, looking inward to find the equivalent North American “Heartland.” The first mentions of an American “heartland” in newspaper databases appeared in 1943—the same year a more outward-looking geopolitical expression, globalism, also took hold. Indeed, the early appeals to the nation’s “heartland” can be thought of as a cozy, reassuring domestic reaction to the “globalist” anxieties of the day.

Amanda Edwards, a former Democratic member of the Houston City Council who announced in 2019 she is running for U.S. Senate, and shares Mr. Buttigieg’s birthday. Not getting as much traction as I wanted in the area of transit in the city of Houston. We’re adding 4.2 million people to our eight county region and we have not added the resources I would like to see.ImageJasmine ClarkGeorgia House of RepresentativesElected with 10,877 votesPete Buttigieg, asked by Jake Tapper whether he wants to start a family in the White House:I don’t see why not. It wouldn’t be the first time that children have arrived to a first couple, but obviously that’s a conversation I had better have with Chasten before I go into it too much on television.Jasmine Clark: Balancing child care is one of the things that keeps me up at night the most as a legislator. It’s not just as a legislator, it’s as a working mom. What I find is the lack of a real schedule as a legislator makes child care difficult. In Georgia, on the first day we adjourn and they tell us we’re coming back tomorrow. And then the next day. But there’s no schedule, so it’s difficult to plan out things way far in advance. Some days we leave the capitol at noon and some days at 8 p.m. The traditional child care setting is closed by 6 p.m.Jessica Hembree: Honoring my obligations to our school without cannibalizing or compromising my obligations to my own family is one of the hardest balances to walk. I’ve set up strict parameters, like I will only do two activities a week that take me away from time with my kids. I think if a man set those kinds of boundaries it would be seen as admirable, but as a woman I know they’re not perceived the same way.Nicole Frethem: I mean, child care was one of the big policy things I wanted to do more to invest in, especially in our family child care providers which in Minnesota are licensed by the county agencies I would oversee as a commissioner. It’s both personal and professional and political for me to talk about child care. The first day after getting sworn in, I had meetings and my daughter was recovering from a little stomach bug and couldn’t go back to day care quite yet so I brought her into the office with me.Jocabed Marquez: I have a nine-year-old. The thing that makes it difficult for me is I’m currently alone in Texas with my daughter. My husband is in Florida, he works for NASA. He accepted that position, then I got elected and I couldn’t be like ‘hey voters, you all voted for me, bye.’ I have a lot of evening meetings and council sometimes goes from 3 p.m. to 12 a.m. and it’s really difficult to balance. My daughter’s like ‘you always drag me to meetings, I want to do something fun.’

closeVideoLindsey Graham: FBI knew Steele dossier sub-source was Russian spySenate Judiciary chair joins 'Hannity' to break down the new developmentsFormer FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday said it didn’t “ring a bell” when asked whether he received an investigative referral on Hillary Clinton purportedly approving “a plan” attempting to tie President Donald Trump to Russia and distract from her email scandal before the 2016 election.During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Chairman Lindsey Graham asked Comey about the newly declassified information released Tuesday by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.According to the declassified information, in September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral on Clinton purportedly approving “a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” in order to distract the public from her email scandal. That referral was sent to Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok.“You don’t remember getting an investigatory lead from the intelligence community? Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to James Comey and Strzok regarding Clinton’s approval of a plan [about] Trump…as a means of distraction?” Graham asked Comey Wednesday.“That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” Comey replied.“That’s a pretty stunning thing that it doesn’t ring a bell,” Graham fired back. “You get this inquiry from the intelligence community to look at the Clinton campaign trying to create a distraction, accusing Trump of being a Russian agent or a Russian stooge.”Graham questioned “how far-fetched is that,” citing the fact that Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS and ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to author and compile information for the controversial and unverified anti-Trump dossier.The dossier contains claims about alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia that served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants obtained against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.“A bunch of crap to be used against an American citizen,” Graham said. “You don’t recall this?”Comey replied: “It doesn’t sound familiar.”Asked later, by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the matter, Comey said: “I don’t know what the director is doing.”Graham’s line of questioning came after Ratcliffe informed the committee Tuesday that the Obama administration obtained Russian intelligence in July 2016 with allegations against Clinton, but cautioned that the intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the text to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”Ratcliffe, in the letter sent to the committee, did not offer specifics on the intelligence, but did reveal that former CIA Director John Brennan’s handwritten notes show that he briefed former President Obama on the information.According to Ratcliffe’s letter, the intelligence included the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”Nick Merrill, Clinton's spokesperson, called the allegations "baseless b———t.""This is Russian disinformation," tweeted Rachel Cohen, spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., adding that it was "laundered by the Director Of National Intelligence and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”“This is extraordinary,” she tweeted.But Ratcliffe, in a statement released after the information was made public, pushed back on the idea he was advancing "Russian disinformation.""To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to Fox News. “I’ll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days.”Graham, of South Carolina, said he would review the information, noting that Ratcliffe would make it available in a classified setting.“This latest information provided by DNI Ratcliffe shows there may have been a double standard by the FBI regarding allegations against the Clinton campaign and Russia," Graham said.The new information will likely add to criticisms from Republicans and those close to the president about the Russia investigation.Attorney General Barr last year appointed U.S. Attorney of Connecticut John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller completed his years-long investigation into whether the campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.It is unclear whether this information will be considered part of Durham’s investigation.

The share of the Spanish population to have contracted coronavirus has nearly doubled to almost 10%, or about 4.7 million people, in the second wave of contagion since late summer, results from the latest stage of a nationwide antibody study showed.More than 51,400 people were tested and surveyed across Spain in the second half of November for the prevalence study, which suggests the infections by far exceed the number of confirmed cases in Spain, of just over 1.75 million.“One in 10 people living in Spain would have been infected ... half during the first wave and the other half during this second epidemic wave,” said Raquel Yotti, director of Spain’s Carlos III health institute, which co-led the study.Prevalence in Madrid was the highest of all Spanish regions, with 18.6% of the population testing positive for Covid-19 antibodies.Previous results of the study - published in July after testing nearly 70,000 people in April-June - showed a prevalence rate of just over 5%.Spain has been one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries by the pandemic, both in terms of contagion and the economic impact. A total of 48,401 people have died from the coronavirus, with the toll climbing by 388 over the last 24 hours.Data from the health ministry also showed 10,328 new coronavirus cases were reported on Tuesday, bringing the total since the onset of the pandemic to 1,762,212 infections.The infection rate measured over the previous 14 days is up for a second day in a row at nearly 199 cases per 100,000 people.The government decided a second state of emergency in October with new restrictions such as night-time curfews to stem resurgent infections, which helped to reduce new cases to less than 200 per 100,000 people this month.

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is taking pains to distance himself from McKinsey, the elite consulting firm where the former South Bend mayor worked after graduate school.But Buttigieg’s ties to McKinsey still run deep throughout his campaign, including through the ranks of deep-pocketed donors who help fund it. Forty McKinsey employees have donated to Buttigieg’s campaign, including those involved in the firm’s corporate restructuring, banking and biotech, private equity, pharmaceutical, defense industry and oil and gas divisions.Those donors include top-tier employees for the firm. Gary Pinkus, the chairman of McKinsey in North America, donated $2,800. Adam Barth, from McKinsey’s Houston office who consults utilities for the company, donated $2,800. Rajesh Parekh, a senior partner who heads McKinsey’s pharmaceuticals and medical products practice, donated $2,000. Kurt Chauviere, a partner who specializes in banking and corporate restructuring for McKinsey, gave $1,000.McKinsey employees have also headlined or been slated to headline fundraising events for Buttigieg. And according to multiple analyses of Federal Election Commission filings, Buttigieg has received more donations from McKinsey employees than any other Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential field.The ongoing support suggests that, at the least, Buttigieg will continue to face tough criticism about McKinsey throughout his time on the campaign trail, even as he pivots away from the company.The Buttigieg campaign has focused less on his time at McKinsey and more on what strategists call “kitchen table issues” – economic issues that affect everyday Americans. Buttigieg himself has penned op-eds and laced that subject area into his speeches. His campaign has also been running ads on digital platforms hyping his campaign’s economic platform.On Friday the campaign released an ad featuring the Iowa state senator Bill Dotzler describing how Buttigieg is “committed to raising the economic security of Iowans”. That ad is the latest in a series of TV and digital ads airing in Iowa and New Hampshire, focused on economic issues. The ads don’t cite his time at McKinsey.Buttigieg has removed the word “businessman” from his Twitter bio, said in a recent debate that his time as an associate at the consulting firm was not the “biggest part” of his career and called “bullshit” when a New York Times editorial board member suggested that Buttigieg was directly involved in a bread pricing scandal related to McKinsey.In the past Buttigieg more closely tied himself to the firm. When he ran unsuccessfully for state treasurer in Indiana he leaned heavily on his three years at McKinsey. But as some of the firm’s controversial dealings have come to light, he has taken extra steps to demystify anything he did at the company and also voice disagreement with some of the firm’s practices in recent years.Buttigieg has been dogged by pressing questions and criticism of his Buttigieg’s tenure there. Buttigieg, from the start of his presidential campaign, has emphasized that he worked more on grocery pricing and later revealed that other clients included Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Resources Defense Council, among others.Buttigieg has denied involvement in any of the controversial work the company did but that hasn’t stopped McKinsey from serving as a flashpoint for his critics or defenders.It’s unclear how the barrage of attacks will play in the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, which Buttigieg campaign officials recently told donors is key to his long-term prospects in the presidential race. Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and founder of the political risk and consulting firm Eurasia Group, said that Buttigieg’s McKinsey work is unlikely to prove to be a liability in Iowa.“It’s a New York thing. It’s a DC thing,” Bremmer said, adding most of the criticism about Buttigieg’s time at McKinsey has been “ludicrous” and “beyond stupid”. “He was a junior consultant. He was working 80 hours a week doing scuttwork on whatever client they tell him to work on. There is literally zero autonomy for these people.”Bremmer said that the criticism of Buttigieg really just “shows perniciousness in an attempt to smear the guy”.Some of the toughest news cycles for Buttigieg during the campaign have involved his fundraising practices, providing ammunition for opponents who say the candidate is too closely linked to corporate largesse.About a month after revelations about a fundraiser in a wine cave in California, the Buttigieg campaign has increased security to prevent leaks at fundraisers. Donors were asked to check their phones at a fundraising cattle call in Chicago over the weekend where high-ranking Buttigieg campaign officials, including his campaign manager, Mike Schmuhl; senior strategist Michael Halle; the national constituency director, Hasoni Pratts; and the national policy director, Sonal Shah; laid out the state of the campaign and their path through Iowa and New Hampshire.Buttigieg’s time at McKinsey was not a major topic of discussion, according to multiple Democratic with knowledge of the meeting.“I don’t think it’s a big deal for voters,” one Buttigieg donor said of McKinsey. “It’s a salient issue only for the elites, for the chattering class. But most voters don’t know what McKinsey is, let alone care that he worked for a supermarket chain and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.”But Murshed Zaheed, a veteran progressive strategist, said Buttigieg’s McKinsey ties won’t go away and are an ongoing liability.“I think what McKinsey has done is it has cast a dark pall over his campaign on a number of fronts because I think it has cast a shadow of questions when it comes to transparency and ethics,” Zaheed said. “His whole time at McKinsey really raises questions about his cosiness to Wall Street.”

In San Antonio today, 34-year-old Kristopher Sean Matthews (aka Ali Jibreel) admitted to conspiring to provide material support to the designated foreign terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham/Syria (aka ISIS), announced Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Gregg N. Sofer for the Western District of Texas, and FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher Combs, San Antonio Division.Appearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth S. Chestney, Matthews pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge to provide material support to ISIS. By pleading guilty, Matthews admitted that since May 2019, he conspired with 22-year-old Jaylyn Christopher Molina (aka Abdur Rahim) of Cost, TX, to share bomb-making information for the purposes of domestic and foreign attacks on behalf of ISIS and to radicalize and recruit other individuals to support ISIS.Matthews faces up to 20 years in federal prison. He remains in federal custody pending sentencing scheduled for 10:30 am on March 4, 2021, before Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia in San Antonio.Molina and Matthews were charged by a federal grand jury indictment handed down on Oct. 14, 2020, with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and one substantive count of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Molina, who remains in federal custody, faces up to 40 years in federal prison upon conviction.The San Antonio FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), with valuable assistance from the San Antonio Police Department, the United States Secret Service, and the Gonzalez County Sheriff’s Office, continues to investigate this case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mark Roomberg, William R. Harris, and Eric Fuchs and DOJ Trial Attorneys George Kraehe and Felice J. Viti of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section are prosecuting this case on behalf of the government.It is important to note that an indictment is merely a charge and should not be considered as evidence of guilt. Molina is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Venezuela’s oil industry—rich in reserves, a crucial Allied resource in World War II, a founding member of OPEC—is grinding toward a halt.Venezuela has greater oil stores than any other country. But after years of corruption, mismanagement and more recently U.S. sanctions, its oil output has dropped to a tenth of what it was two decades ago. From Lake Maracaibo in the west to the Orinoco oil belt in the east, abandoned wells rust in the sun as looters scavenge the metal. The last drilling rig still working in Venezuela shut down in August. The country is on course, by the end of this year, to be pumping little more oil than the state of Wyoming. “Twenty percent of the world’s oil is in Venezuela, but what good is it if we can’t monetize it?” said Carlos Mendoza, an ambassador under the late socialist president Hugo Chávez, who enjoyed an oil bonanza when prices were high but starved the industry of investment and maintenance funds. “We’re entering a post-oil era,” Mr. Mendoza said.

Apple devices received a surprise update as the company released the latest version of its operating systems for iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs and Watches with just one day’s notice.But while the new updates bring a wealth of new features for free, some independent developers are warning that the short notice has left them frantically rushing to update their own apps to work with the new systems.With the Wednesday release date announced by surprise during the company’s press event on Tuesday, the updates – iOS 14, iPadOS 14, tvOS 14 and watchOS 7 – hit users’ devices at the same time that the final beta version, known as the “gold master”, was made available to developers.Many of the new features included in the updates have been eagerly awaited. On iPhones and iPads, users have finally been given the ability to change their default web browser and email client, while Apple Watches have gained cycling directions in a few cities in the US and China, as well as sleep tracking and hand washing alerts.Apple also launched its own secure translation feature, which it hopes will provide a more privacy-focused alternative to Google Translate for users who are not comfortable with the search giant having access to their queries.But the surprise launch means that some of those features are causing trouble for developers, who assumed they would have a week or two more to finalise their updates. Many popular email applications and web browsers, for instance, can not yet be set as default.Even those developers who had managed to finish their updates early found problems in pushing their changes to users. The App Store only accepted updates made using the latest version of Apple’s coding tools from 10pm UK time on Wednesday night, leaving little time for the apps to then go through Apple’s own review process.“This is a whole lot of unnecessary stress on developers in an otherwise stressful year,” wrote Steve Troughton-Smith, an independent Apple developer. Some developers were even recommending users wait a week or so, in case a regularly-used app has an unexpected bug on the new operating system.For those users who do decide to update to iOS 14 immediately, though, there are a lot of welcome rewards. The company has borrowed many usability enhancements from the Android operating system, including an “app library” to keep homescreens clean and tidy, as well as widgets that let users display things like weather forecasts, calendar events and to-do lists on the screen.Eventually, users may have to upgrade to access other products and services. The “app clips” feature, introduced in iOS 14, allows people to access some functions of an app that may be needed to access a service, without downloading the full app. It’s intended to be used for services such as scooter rentals, allowing people to quickly and easily sign up for an account and hop on a rented vehicle.

Boris Johnson has been forced to cave into to Conservative backbench rebels opposed to the presence of Huawei in 5G networks and has drawn up plans to reduce the Chinese company’s involvement to zero by 2023.The prime minister’s retreat is designed to stave off what could have been an embarrassing defeat when his existing proposal to reduce Huawei to a 35% market share was to be voted on in the Commons.Although Johnson boasts an 80 strong majority, the number of Conservative MPs willing to rebel on the issue is now estimated to be 50 – enough in theory to defeat the government – as anti-Chinese sentiment hardens in the light of the coronavirus crisis.The mooted retreat will delight the White House which has been relentlessly campaigning against Huawei, but is likely to provoke a hostile reaction from Beijing, which has believed the UK was open to inward investment until now.The original plan was signed off as recently as January with the support of Britain’s intelligence agencies. They argued that any risks that Huawei equipment could be exploited for mass surveillance could be contained.But political concerns about the Chinese company lingered. The rebels forced a vote on an unrelated telecoms bill in early March, and 38 Conservative MPs voted with the opposition after Johnson refused to slash Huawei’s market share to zero.At the time, that was not enough to defeat No 10 but sources close to the rebels said a growing number of the 2019 intake of MPs were ready to vote against the government, in a sign of escalating geo-political tension with China.As the coronavirus crisis worsened, China has been accused of not being transparent about the early phases of the disease – while tension has also risen further as Beijing has recently threatened to impose a new national security law on Hong Kong.Senior ministers also want to reduce the UK’s economic dependance on China for essential goods in the light of the crisis and have begun to draw up “Project Defend” aimed at boosting British self sufficiency in strategic medical and technological sectors – following warnings from intelligence agencies that the UK needed to reassess its relationship with China.Downing Street declined to comment although sources said the reports of the Johnson plan were accurate. But last night one of the rebel leaders, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, welcome the change of heart. “This is very good news and I hope and believe it will be the start of a complete and thorough review of our dangerous dependency on China.”

When Donald Trump descended a golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York in 2015 and declared that Mexican immigrants were “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” he not only announced he was running for president — he set the tone for a campaign where immigration took center stage. Four years later, Trump has fundamentally reshaped the immigration system in ways that would be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. In a second term, he could embrace further restrictionist policies. But he hasn’t taken a victory lap. Instead, on the campaign trail, the topic has largely receded into the background. The rhetoric Trump used against immigrants in 2016 — painting them as a foreign danger to American life — has been, in 2020, more often turned against protesters, particularly those affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement.Trump has presented himself as the “law and order” candidate. He was a vocal opponent of the protests over racial inequity and police violence that broke out over the summer and efforts to defund the police. And he has stoked fear about public safety in Democratic cities and surrounding suburbs, including exaggerating the looting and violence that broke out amid some otherwise peaceful protests.Immigration hasn’t been fully absent from the campaign. Trump still repeats anti-immigrant rhetoric at his rallies and has spent millions on amplifying that messaging through ads. At a rally in North Carolina on Sunday, he read aloud the song lyrics of “The Snake,” which tells the story of a “tenderhearted woman” who unsuspectingly rescues a half-frozen snake that later bites her. Trump has invoked the song, once a regular feature of his rallies in 2016, as a xenophobic parable about the risks of unauthorized immigration. Meanwhile, Trump administration officials — including those at the Department of Homeland Security and White House senior adviser Stephen Miller — have pursued a parallel strategy of stoking fear about the dangers of Democratic immigration policies in critical swing states.But while the stakes for immigration are high, the issue hasn’t been central to Trump’s pitch. “In 2016, immigration was seen by Republicans and Trump as an issue that not only mobilized white grievance voters that form his core support, but also peeled off swing voters in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It was a double hit.”Trump has once again sought to make people of color the enemy as a means of scaring white voters into supporting him, but this time the targets are different, Sharry said. “It’s still racism,” he said. “But it’s not the xenophobia branch of racism.” When Trump announced his run in 2016, he also vowed to build a “great, great wall on our southern border” and that he would make Mexico pay for it. “Build the wall” became a rallying cry among his supporters, who embraced his claims that the US immigration system served the elite, not America’s blue-collar workers, as well as his inaccurate)= portrait of immigrants as violent criminals and low-skilled workers who steal American jobs and drain taxpayer resources. But the issue extended beyond his hardcore supporters. In 2016, immigration was a top motivating issue for voters: 70 percent said immigration was “very important,” more so than Supreme Court appointments, race relations, the environment, and abortion. Trump and his party had successfully put the issue on the national agenda.Immigration also featured prominently in analyses of why Trump won and in voters’ rationale for their choices. His win was largely attributed to a revolt among white working-class voters who overwhelmingly cited anxiety over immigration as the reason they voted for Trump. Views of immigration also represented one of the biggest divides among people who voted for Trump and those who voted for Hillary Clinton.The strategy, though, had limits, which became evident during the midterms in 2018, when Trump stoked fear about an “invasion” of migrant caravans and foreign “criminals” and “smugglers” while stumping for Republican candidates. The Republican pollster David Winston later concluded that the party’s focus on immigration, rather than the then-strong economy, is what ultimately cost Republicans the House majority that year, eroding their support among independents. Democrats, who largely focused on health care instead, took back 41 House seats. Trump has largely delivered on his promises to restrict immigration overall. But the policies that have come to define Trump’s record on immigration — including the separation of migrant families on the southern border and his attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed more than 700,000 young unauthorized immigrants to live and work in the US — are deeply unpopular among voters of both parties. It also seems that voters’ attitudes toward immigration are changing, possibly an effect of the restrictionist policies Trump has pursued. More Americans now welcome increased levels of immigration. And immigration has declined in importance to voters overall since 2016, eclipsed by more pressing concerns including the pandemic. “The bottom line is basically that immigration as a wedge issue has lost its edge because instead of working among swing voters, it backfires among swing voters,” Sharry said. “And it’s gone from being an issue that Democrats feared to being the issue that Republicans avoid.”But for Trump’s base, immigration remains a top motivating issue — and the president still aims to satisfy them with plenty of anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail. His primary defense to criticism of his response to the Covid-19 pandemic is that he decided to impose a travel ban on China. In the final presidential debate — the only one that addressed immigration — he falsely claimed that only immigrants who have an “extremely low IQ” show up for court hearings and that migrant children who had been separated from their parents by his administration had been smuggled across the border by criminals and gang members. One ad, which ran in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin, decries Biden’s plan to legalize millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US, claiming it would allow them to compete for American jobs and become eligible for public benefits. Miller, Trump’s senior adviser and the architect of his immigration policy, has also acted as the president’s surrogate, speaking in hyperbolic terms about what he sees as the “nightmare of epic proportions” of Democrats’ immigration policies in an October 29 press call. He stoked fear about what would happen if Biden were to begin releasing certain immigrants who cross the border without authorization into the interior of the US, as he has proposed.“Within a week of that happening, there would be a rush on the border on a global scale unseen before in the whole of human history,” he said. “Every smuggling and trafficking organization on planet Earth would get the news and millions will come, not just from this hemisphere, but from the whole of the planet.”These eleventh-hour appeals on immigration smell of desperation as Trump’s path to victory appears increasingly narrow. “It’s clear that Trump isn’t loosening his grip on immigration, but rather desperately grasping at straws to reach a bloc of voters who oppose his record on the issue and reject his vision of America,” Tyler Moran, the executive director of Immigration Hub, said in a statement.In the last stretch of the campaign, Trump administration officials attempted to put immigration back on the map as an election issue. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security, including acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy Ken Cuccinelli, have been on a tour of several battleground states — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Minnesota, and Texas — holding at least five press conferences in the past six weeks amplifying the president’s messaging on immigration. Wolf and Cuccinelli have been among the president’s staunchest defenders in the administration, going to bat for him in the media over the years, but these press conferences stand out because they are so close to Election Day. Some of the press conferences have concerned routine enforcement actions that would typically be publicized with a simple press release. For instance, Cuccinelli traveled to Pittsburgh on October 21 to speak about the arrest of 15 foreign students accused of visa fraud, only a fraction of whom were actually arrested in Pennsylvania (the agency didn’t specify how many, but acknowledged that at least some of the arrests had occurred in Massachusetts, Washington, DC, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Tennessee.)“Today’s announcement is just another example of the Trump administration not only putting America first but making sure the laws of our immigration system are enforced,” he told reporters at the time. Also in Pennsylvania, the federal government has erected billboards warning of immigrants “WANTED BY ICE” who had been charged with or convicted of crimes ranging from assault to robbery. Because they had been released from jail on bond or after completing their sentences without being referred to ICE, the agency claims on the billboard that such sanctuary policies are a “REAL DANGER.”The border wall has also become a prop in the agency’s public messaging. After racing to finish the border wall in the months leading up to the election, DHS officials have been eager to claim that Trump made good on his campaign vow. (Almost 400 of the 450 miles of border wall Trump promised by the end of the year have been completed, but Mexico never paid for it — rather, that $15 billion burden fell on taxpayers and largely was transferred from the Pentagon’s budget.)Wolf traveled to the border on October 29 to tout the progress on construction, making abundantly clear what he thought was at stake in the presidential election. He said that Biden’s policies would create a surge of migration at the border and pose a threat to national security. “Let me be clear, each of those policies would endanger the lives of the border patrol and Americans across the country,” he said.He also tweeted out a video making jabs at journalists who cast doubt about whether Trump would complete the border wall and whether it would even serve its intended purpose of “securing the border.” It’s not clear whether the video was produced by the Department of Homeland Security, but it might as well have been a campaign ad: They said it couldn’t be done…They tried to block itThey tried to spin itThey tried to hide the truthThey were wrong. 400 times and counting. pic.twitter.com/MWWP4cgoPi— Acting Secretary Chad Wolf (@DHS_Wolf) October 29, 2020 David Lapan, a former spokesperson for DHS, called it a “misuse of [government] resources” and “clear electioneering.” Trump’s messaging on immigration has become part and parcel of his broader theme of “law and order,” a phrase repeated by politicians since Barry Goldwater used it as a cudgel against the civil rights movement and that Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have uttered more than 90 times on the campaign trail this year. While the focus of Trump’s ire is different than that of his anti-immigrant tirades in 2016, it’s motivated by the same goal: to maintain a white, European-majority population and cast people of color as the enemy. “Trump’s reelection campaign has implemented a bifurcated strategy to serve up xenophobia to his base and target suburban voters with ‘law and order’ dog whistles against immigrants and communities of color,” Moran said.In 2016, he stoked fear about international criminal gangs like MS-13 and “invasions” of migrant caravans. Now he’s stoking fear about looting in liberal cities and an “invasion” of low-income housing into suburbia. Upon taking office, he said that he supported immigrants who sought to come to the US legally, but denounced Democratic “sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities as “lawless.” (Though he later slashed legal immigration, too.) He also described the southern border as “lawless,” implementing a “zero tolerance” policy that aimed to prosecute anyone who crossed the border without authorization. Now he’s demonizing Democratic cities that allow “lawless” protests to continue. The parallels in his language are no accident. They have the effect of tapping into fear of the “other” among white voters — whether that’s immigrants or the people of color leading the summer’s protests. It resonates with some voters: One Republican in Minnesota told the New York Times in 2018 that she feared migrant gangs could seize summer lake homes in the state. “What’s to stop them?” she said. “We have a lot of people who live on lakes in the summer and winter someplace else. When they come back in the spring, their house would be occupied.”It’s for that reason that Trump has made his candidacy synonymous with white power, an association he has repeatedly shown reluctance to disavow. When asked to condemn white supremacists at one of the presidential debates, he instead told them to “stand back and stand by.” Some of his supporters have made their support for white supremacy plain, including one attendee at a recent rally in Florida who flashed a white power sign. But in a country that is on track to become a majority-minority country by the 2040s, it’s unclear how Republicans, if they continue to embrace the nativism and racism stoked by Trump, will still win elections. 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.

Mr. Comey said he had “no idea what on earth” Mr. Barr meant by saying the F.B.I. lacked sufficient reason to begin investigating the Trump campaign. He accused Mr. Barr of acting “at odds with the nature of the department” to remain outside the political fray.“When the attorney general starts acting like the personal lawyer for the president, it threatens that, and that is a priceless thing,” Mr. Comey said.The former director also took on the most direct claim related to the investigation that Republicans have leveled against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee for president.Mr. Comey denounced an unfounded assertion pushed by Republicans — including Mr. Trump at the first presidential debate on Tuesday — that in an Oval Office meeting in the final days of the Obama administration, Mr. Biden came up with the legal theory for prosecuting Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.The Justice Department has released handwritten F.B.I. notes that Mr. Trump and his allies claim as supporting evidence. But former F.B.I. officials say Republicans are misrepresenting the notes and taking them out of context.Mr. Comey, who attended the meeting, said that Mr. Biden had played no role in directing the investigation. “I would remember it because it’d be highly inappropriate for a president or vice president to suggest prosecution or investigation of anyone — and it did not happen,” Mr. Comey said.Mr. Graham spent much of the hearing building his case around the unverified intelligence made public by Mr. Ratcliffe, in an apparent bid to help Mr. Trump politically. The years-old intelligence, rejected by other investigators, suggested that Russian intelligence officers had acquired information that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan for her 2016 campaign to elevate concerns about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.Mr. Comey said he was not aware of the intelligence. “I have read Mr. Ratcliffe’s letter, which frankly I have trouble understanding,” he said.

Apple Inc. became a $2 trillion company on Wednesday. The irony is this shows just how little it can afford to lose.On Wednesday morning, Apple’s share price topped the level needed to exceed a $2 trillion market capitalization. That level didn’t quite hold at the closing bell. But Apple has still enjoyed a strong run: The stock has averaged a weekly gain of 3.5% since the beginning of June, according to FactSet. Its business has proven surprisingly resilient to the pandemic. The company still generates more than 80% of its revenue by selling high-price devices made almost entirely in China, where the outbreak first occurred. Combined revenue from all those devices grew 10% year over year in Apple’s most recent fiscal quarter ended June 27. The stock has jumped more than 20% since those results were reported on July 30.But Apple is also now facing an unprecedented challenge to its App Store business, putting it in the crosshairs of lawmakers and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. The matter has escalated significantly over the past few days, as Epic Games sued both Apple and Google in federal court after the two companies removed its popular “Fortnite” videogame from their app marketplaces as Epic tried an end run around their respective payment systems. In a new twist Monday, Epic sought a restraining order against Apple to prevent the game’s removal and to keep Apple from ejecting Epic from its developer program.Since its launch in 2008, the App Store has grown into a crucial business for Apple. Based on regulatory filings, the App Store has been the largest contributor to the growth of Apple’s services segment in three of the past four fiscal years. The services segment is now Apple’s second-largest segment after the iPhone—and the one that has delivered the most steady growth over the past four years as the smartphone business has matured. Service gross margins are also key to Apple’s overall business model, coming in 34 percentage points higher than the company’s product gross margins for the nine-month period ended June 27.The ultimate outcome of the Epic lawsuit and regulatory probes is impossible to predict. But at $2 trillion, the market is valuing Apple as if nothing could go wrong. At that level, the stock trades at more than 32 times forward earnings—or 31 times excluding $81 billion in net cash on the company’s balance sheet. That is its highest multiple in more than a decade. It is also about double the multiple the shares fetched when Apple’s market value first crossed the $1 trillion mark in August 2018.

Well, that happened.Just over one month after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, the Senate voted almost entirely along party lines to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. President Trump has been quite clear that he thinks “it’s very important that we have nine Justices” if we have a contested election, strongly suggesting that Trump expects Barrett to rule in his favor if the election ends up in front of the Court. The incoming justice has been coy about whether she would do so — or even whether she will hear cases involving the 2020 election in the first place.During her confirmation hearing, Democratic senators repeatedly asked Barrett whether she would commit to recuse from cases related to the 2020 election, due to the appearance of impropriety created by Trump’s comments. Barrett, however, would only offer a vague promise of “fully and faithfully applying the law of recusal” if asked to sit out an election case.Similarly, while Barrett’s record suggests that she agrees with the Republican Party’s opposition to abortion and Obamacare, much of her scholarship discusses legal theory at a very high level of generality and offers little insight into how she would decide specific cases. We know that Barrett will be a very conservative justice. But we don’t yet know if she will embrace the radical, even nihilistic approach preferred by someone like Justice Clarence Thomas, who has suggested that federal child labor laws are unconstitutional. We don’t know how much she’ll feel bound by precedent, or whether she’ll be moved by public opinion in cases where conservative “originalists” like herself read the law in ways that are wildly at odds with the public’s preferences.But these are contentious times, and the Supreme Court has an unusually contentious docket. Almost immediately after joining the Court, Barrett will confront cases that seek to move the law dramatically to the right — often relying on arguments that even many leading conservatives view as ridiculous.The four cases below will likely help us gain an understanding of whether Barrett is a right-wing outlier, even within an increasingly conservative federal judiciary. The votes she casts in these cases, and the specific legal arguments that she signs onto, may show us just how hostile the Court’s newest member is to democracy, and whether she’s willing to embrace deeply radical legal arguments that undermine progressive policy or punish interest groups aligned with the Democratic Party.To be sure, Democrats should not necessarily heave a sigh of relief even if Barrett rejects the conservative position in each of these lawsuits. These four cases represent some of the most extreme arguments before the Court, and there are others that could well be revelatory. How Barrett rules on them should offer a window into just how radical the newest justice is likely to be.Earlier this month, the Supreme Court handed down a brief order in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, which left in place a Pennsylvania state Supreme Court decision allowing some mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted — although it is far from clear that this decision will remain in place now that Barrett is on the Court.On the surface, Republican Party was a defeat for the GOP, which hoped to have these ballots tossed out. But the Court divided 4-4 in Republican Party, meaning that Barrett could potentially provide the fifth vote to trash these ballots. The Pennsylvania GOP has already asked the Supreme Court to reconsider this case. So Barrett’s very first action as a justice could be to hand the GOP a victory against voting rights.One of the GOP’s primary arguments in Republican Party — an argument that three justices seemed to endorse in Bush v. Gore (2000) — is astonishingly radical. The GOP argues that only the state’s Republican-controlled legislature — not the state Supreme Court or some other body — is allowed to determine how Pennsylvania chooses presidential electors. Taken to its logical extreme, the Republican Party’s argument could invalidate state constitutional provisions protecting the right to vote, at least in presidential elections. It could even allow Republicans to steal the 2020 election for President Trump. This latter point may seem far-fetched, but bear with me. The Constitution provides that “each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” members of the Electoral College. In its briefs in Republican Party, the GOP focuses on the word “Legislature,” claiming that only the Pennsylvania state legislature may set the state’s rules for choosing presidential electors, and not the state Supreme Court.For more than a century, the Supreme Court has understood the word “legislature,” when used in this or similar contexts, to refer to whatever the valid lawmaking process is within that state. As the Court held most recently in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (2015), the word “legislature” should be read “in accordance with the State’s prescriptions for lawmaking, which may include the referendum and the Governor’s veto.” Similarly, if a state’s constitution protects voting rights and gives the state Supreme Court the power to interpret state law, then the state Supreme Court may make binding decisions regarding how state law or a state constitution should be interpreted during a presidential election.The Arizona decision was 5-4, however, with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writing the majority opinion. While the four dissenting justices in Republican Party did not explain why they voted with the GOP, it’s not unreasonable to think that they voted the way they did because they agree with the GOP’s hyper-literal interpretation of the word “legislature.” Indeed, two of those four dissenters, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, signaled that they do agree with the GOP’s approach in an opinion handed down Monday night.So what would it mean if Justice Barrett provides the fifth vote for this interpretation of the Constitution? For starters, it could mean that state constitutional provisions protecting the right to vote would no longer function in presidential elections. The GOP is quite explicit about this in one of its briefs, claiming that to the extent that the Pennsylvania Constitution conflicts with the GOP’s understanding of the word “Legislature,” “the State Constitution must give way.”But that’s only the beginning. If the Supreme Court embraces the GOP’s understanding of the word “Legislature,” Republicans could potentially hand down pivotal rulings in battleground states that hand Trump a second term.Although every state has a law providing that the state’s electoral votes will be decided in a popular election, the Constitution does not actually require such an election. Again, it provides that “each State shall appoint” presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”Under the Republican Party’s theory in the Pennsylvania lawsuit, only the elected representatives in the state’s legislative body are allowed to make this determination. The state courts are cut out of the process because the judicial branch is not the “Legislature.” A similar logic could apply to Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor — again, because the governor is part of the state’s executive branch, not the “Legislature.” In other words, Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan could potentially overrule the voters of their state, or stop a close and contested count, and simply assign their states’ electoral votes to Trump. All three states have Democratic governors, but if the Supreme Court reads the word “Legislature” in a hyper-literal way, those governors would not be allowed to veto such legislation. One of Barrett’s very first actions as a justice could be to weigh in on such a question. To be clear, we don’t know for sure if the Court’s conservatives would take such an argument all the way to that conclusion. But the Court’s 4-4 vote in Republican Party certainly left the door open to such a reading. On November 10, just one week after Election Day, the Court will hear oral arguments in California v. Texas, the latest effort by Republican lawyers to repeal the Affordable Care Act through litigation. Unlike previous efforts to convince the Supreme Court to take out Obamacare, however, the plaintiffs’ arguments in this lawsuit are widely viewed as laughable even among conservative opponents of Obamacare.As Yuval Levin, a prominent conservative policy wonk, wrote in the National Review, the Texas lawsuit “doesn’t even merit being called silly. It’s ridiculous.”As originally enacted, the Affordable Care Act required most Americans to either carry health insurance or pay at least $695 in additional taxes. The Supreme Court upheld this requirement, commonly known as the “individual mandate,” as a valid exercise of Congress’s power to levy taxes in National Federation of Individual Business v. Sebelius (2012). The 2017 tax law signed by President Trump, however, effectively repealed the individual mandate by reducing the amount of the tax for people who do not have insurance to zero dollars. The plaintiffs argue that this zeroed-out mandate — which tells people that they must be insured or else they’ll be forced to pay absolutely nothing — is unconstitutional. Their theory is that the original mandate was upheld as a tax, and a zero dollar tax is no tax at all.That’s a plausible argument, but hardly an airtight one. It also shouldn’t be more than an academic argument. Who cares if a “mandate” that does nothing at all is constitutional or not?The answer can be summarized in one word: “severability.” When a court strikes down a provision of law that is part of a broader statute, it often must ask whether the rest of the statute can stand without the invalid provision. Ordinarily, this is a speculative inquiry. The court must try to figure out what law Congress would have enacted if it had known that a single provision of that law would be struck down.But in Texas, no speculation is necessary. Congress spent the bulk of 2017 debating whether to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, it didn’t have the votes to do so. So it repealed just one provision: the individual mandate.We know, in other words, that Congress would have preferred to leave the rest of the law intact if the zeroed-out mandate were struck down, because Congress left the rest of the law intact!This conclusion is bolstered by the Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy v. NCAA (2018), which held that courts should preserve as much of the statute as possible if they strike down one provision. “In order for other ... provisions to fall,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Court in Murphy, “it must be ‘evident that [Congress] would not have enacted those provisions which are within its power, independently of [those] which [are] not.’”There’s also another glaring problem with the Texas lawsuit. Federal courts are not allowed to hear a lawsuit challenging a particular legal provision unless the plaintiff has been injured in some way by that law — this is a requirement known as “standing.” But no one is injured by a zero dollar tax, so no one should have standing to raise the arguments presented in the Texas case.Yuval Levin, in other words, is correct. The plaintiffs’ arguments in Texas are ridiculous. If Barrett accepts them, it raises very serious questions about whether the new justice is capable of distinguishing her own conservative political views from the law.The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides that “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.” This is unambiguous text. With a narrow exception for certain Native Americans, all “persons” must be counted in the decennial census, regardless of their immigration status.And yet, last July, President Trump released a memorandum announcing 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, in violation of the plain text of the Constitution, Trump would not allow the census to count undocumented immigrants for the purpose of determining how much representation each state receives in the House of Representatives.Notably, about 20 percent of the estimated 10.6 million undocumented immigrants in the United States live in California. If Trump’s unconstitutional plan — which is now before the justices in Trump v. New York — succeeds, then the nation’s largest blue state could lose as many as three House seats. (It’s likely that Texas, a one-time Republican stronghold that is starting to trend toward Democrats, would also be hit hard.)In his memorandum, Trump tries to get around the Constitution’s explicit text by claiming that undocumented immigrants do not count as “inhabitants” of the state where they live.“Although the Constitution requires the ‘persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed,’ to be enumerated in the census,” Trump claims, “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.”As Trump correctly notes, there are many people who may be present in the United States — tourists visiting from other nations, foreign diplomats, and businesspeople, for example — who are not counted by the census. “The term ‘persons in each State’ has been interpreted to mean that only the ‘inhabitants’ of each State should be included,” Trump argues, and “determining which persons should be considered ‘inhabitants’ for the purpose of apportionment requires the exercise of judgment.”At the most general level, Trump is right that someone needs to determine which individuals who may be temporarily present in a state do not count as a resident of that state. But that doesn’t mean that Trump himself gets to make this determination, or that this decision can be made arbitrarily.As a federal court that rejected Trump’s argument explains, “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 continues, 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.” They are as much “inhabitants” of those states as any other resident. The three-judge panel — two appointed by George W. Bush, one by Barack Obama — ruled unanimously.The legal questions in the New York case are, in the words of the lower court that rejected Trump’s arguments, “not particularly close or complicated.” More than four decades ago, in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977), the Supreme Court held that public sector unions may, under certain circumstances, charge “agency fees” to non-members of the union. These fees are intended to reimburse the union for services it provides to such non-members.Then, in 2018, the Supreme Court decided Janus v. AFSCME by a 5-4 vote along party lines. Janus overruled Abood, and held that public sector unions may not charge agency fees to non-members.So, from 1977 until 2018, agency fees charged by public sector unions were legal. And they were legal because the Supreme Court said they were legal.Nevertheless, anti-union litigators have, since Janus, brought a wave of cases claiming that unions have to pay back many of the agency fees that they charged prior to the Court’s decision in Janus — again, during a period when it was legal for unions to charge such fees. Though these cases have not fared well for the anti-union side in the lower courts, many of them are now before the Supreme Court.For the time being, at least, the Supreme Court has not announced whether it will hear these cases or not. But the justices have discussed these anti-union cases at multiple conferences — a sign that at least some members of the Court want to take them up.As one of the federal appeals courts that rejected these lawsuits explained, “the Rule of Law requires that parties abide by, and be able to rely on, what the law is,” not what the law may become in the future. It would be extraordinary if Barrett — or any other justice — voted to sanction unions for actions that, again, the Supreme Court itself held to be legal at the time that the union engaged in those actions. Millions turn to Vox to understand what’s happening in the news. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today from as little as $3.

WASHINGTON—Big Tech’s legal woes are expected to worsen in the coming weeks as federal and state antitrust authorities prepare to file new lawsuits against Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, people familiar with the matter said.The authorities are readying as many as four more cases targeting Google or Facebook by the end of January, these people said, following the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google last month. Federal and state officials are probing whether the tech giants abused their power in the internet economy—Google to dominate search and advertising, and Facebook to dominate social media.Google and Facebook have denied doing so, saying they operate in highly competitive markets and that their services, which are mostly free, benefit consumers.If Facebook were to be sued, it would mark the first government antitrust action against the social-media titan in the U.S. Facebook has come under particular criticism from Republicans and Democrats in Congress as well as President-elect Joe Biden over its content-moderation policies.

Venezuela’s oil industry—rich in reserves, a crucial Allied resource in World War II, a founding member of OPEC—is grinding toward a halt.Venezuela has greater oil stores than any other country. But after years of corruption, mismanagement and more recently U.S. sanctions, its oil output has dropped to a tenth of what it was two decades ago. From Lake Maracaibo in the west to the Orinoco oil belt in the east, abandoned wells rust in the sun as looters scavenge the metal. The last drilling rig still working in Venezuela shut down in August. The country is on course, by the end of this year, to be pumping little more oil than the state of Wyoming. “Twenty percent of the world’s oil is in Venezuela, but what good is it if we can’t monetize it?” said Carlos Mendoza, an ambassador under the late socialist president Hugo Chávez, who enjoyed an oil bonanza when prices were high but starved the industry of investment and maintenance funds. “We’re entering a post-oil era,” Mr. Mendoza said.

The UK is well on its way to ridding its telecommunications networks of equipment made by Chinese vendor Huawei, which it believes to be a national security risk. That was the—relatively—easy part. The hard part is what comes next: Finding an alternative. But looking at the release yesterday (Nov. 30) of a highly-anticipated strategy for vendor diversification, the UK government is coming up short.Huawei has operated in the UK for 20 years and analysts say it supplied competitively priced equipment and services that surpassed the (admittedly slim) competition. As a result it gained large shares, estimated at 44% and 35% respectively (pdf, p. 3), of the UK’s fiber-to-the-property (FTTP) and mobile access (MA) network markets. This is an industry that has consolidated so much over the years that, in Europe at least, it now consists of just two major non-Huawei players: Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson.But Huawei is also a “high-risk” vendor. The UK believes the company could be compelled by Chinese law to install backdoors into British telecommunications networks, and effectively spy on the UK or sabotage its networks—a charge Huawei denies. After the US imposed sanctions on the company, the UK banned Huawei from its networks entirely and said all its existing equipment must be stripped out by 2027.“Traditional mobile networks rely on radio access equipment—the kit that sits on masts and rooftops used to transmit mobile phone signals—that tightly bundles proprietary hardware with software provided by the biggest groups. However open RAN systems allow networks to chop and change those components and use kit from smaller companies.”The idea behind Open RAN is to move towards open-source and interoperable networks to reduce dependency on a single vendor. It also promotes the switch from hardware to software, which should reduce maintenance and installation costs.But analysts say the technology is potentially overhyped. So far, it’s mostly been implemented in rural areas with no legacy equipment, where operators could start from scratch. The leader in this emerging industry is Japanese firm Rakuten, which worked with NEC to implement Open RAN in Japan, the first and so far only major country to have implemented the technology at scale. Other small trials are under way, such as Dish in the US, and Vodafone in the UK (paywall).Tech research company Gartner recently wrote in a report that “it is too early to plan for wide-scale deployment” of Open RAN but that operators should look into its potential benefits. When Scott Petty, Vodafone UK’s CTO, spoke to Parliament about Open RAN in July, he said (pdf, p. 14) “capability for our bigger cities where the most advanced features, speed, and capacity are required will not be at scale until 2024 or 2025.” Meanwhile, the CEO of BT, which has not invested in Open RAN to the same degree as Vodafone, said he would only be able to deploy it towards “the back end of 2026 or 2027.”“Open RAN is not magic,” explains Stefan Pongratz, vice president at the Silicon Valley telecoms research group Dell’Oro Group. “It will take time for the technology to mature and for new entrants to gain the expertise, scale, and credibility to compete with…established suppliers like Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia.”But Chris Silberberg, a London-based analyst for Omdia, a tech research firm, says some of the criticism of Open RAN may miss the point. It’s overhyped “if you expect [it] to be a panacea.” Instead, he says, the UK’s strategy is a recognition of where mobile networks are headed, which is towards more openness. Seen from that point of view, Open RAN is “perhaps less of a revolution and more of an evolution.” And the UK may soon be leading the charge.Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly stated that Nokia is a Swedish company and Ericsson a Finnish company. It is the opposite.

One such risk is Trump’s executive order on TikTok, which the administration presents as an issue of data sovereignty. Administration officials cite fears that the Chinese can access data from the video-sharing app, mainly used by American teens, that could be used for more insidious purposes. But this attempt to control data could set a dangerous precedent for US companies operating in Europe, where some officials don’t want data stored in the US, Schmidt says. Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook-owned Instagram, said Friday that any short-term benefit to Facebook from banning TikTok is “greatly outweighed by the risks of a fragmented internet.”A different problem is posed by the proposed restrictions on WeChat, which is not only the largest messaging platform in China but also the primary mobile payments system. Detailed rules have not yet been published, but the order could ban WeChat on Chinese iPhones or phones running Google’s Android. For American retailers, such as Starbucks or McDonald’s, the inability to use WeChat’s mobile payments app would potentially drive away most Chinese consumers.The beneficiaries of this crude approach will be the very Chinese firms, such as Huawei, that the administration wants to punish. Meanwhile firms like Apple, which depends on China for almost one-sixth of its revenue, could be devastated.Tech’s tentative pushback is being overwhelmed by a fevered anti-China mood, even if it may harm American interests, some analysts say. “This non-debate that we are having is driven primarily by a desire to hurt China, whatever the cost,” says Evan Feigenbaum, a China expert and former Asia adviser to President George W. Bush now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Instead, many policy experts argue for a different approach—a US-led effort to compete with global standards and global platforms that dominate the marketplace. In this view, it makes more sense to challenge Chinese attempts to set global standards, rather than divide the internet into competing realms.Schmidt, the former Google CEO, is a major Democratic donor who long defended Google’s efforts to do business in China. He acknowledges the serious security and competitive challenges posed by China, but he says the US needs a well thought out strategy to identify, develop, and protect key areas of technology. He is a member of the Defense Innovation Board, which advises the defense secretary on how to foster technological innovation. He suggests the US identify five or 10 key technologies—such as artificial intelligence—and focus on those, including imposing security controls. “High walls, small plot” is the new slogan for that approach.Tech policymakers, some of whom are engaged with the Biden campaign, told WIRED that they anticipate a Biden administration will pursue a more nuanced approach.“A Biden administration would think rationally through how do we remain the best innovation power on earth,” predicts Anja Manuel, a specialist on Asia and on technology and security interactions and the director of the Aspen Security Forum. Manuel is close to the Biden campaign, despite having served in previous Republican administrations and cofounding an influential consulting firm with three former Bush cabinet officials.These advisers advocate working with allies in Europe and Japan to set global export controls that prevent China from evading US sanctions by buying technology elsewhere. They want to boost R&D spending, fund basic research, and allow Chinese and other students into US universities, brainpower they contend ultimately benefits the USThose voices will be heard in a Biden administration, says former Obama official Bader. “Biden, unlike Trump, actually is a dealmaker. That’s his nature. He will never be the guy who says we have to take an ideological stand.”Still, some worry that the decoupling of the Chinese and US economies has acquired a momentum that will survive even if Biden wins the presidency. “The trajectory is being baked in now,” argues Feigenbaum, who advises firms doing business in China. “In a year, it will be hard to throw the reverse switch on a lot of this stuff.”Others anticipate room to roll back the worst excesses of the anti-China wave. Yet, the power of the hardline anti-China narrative at this moment is hard to deny.“Nuance and distinctions will not help win the political battle,” says Eileen Donahoe, a former Obama official who directs Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator. “Donald Trump has succeeded in controlling the dominant political narrative with a simplistic political idea—‘China bad.’”More Great WIRED Stories📩 Want the latest on tech, science, and more? Sign up for our newsletters!Gravity, gizmos, and a grand theory of interstellar travelMeet this year’s WIRED25: People who are making things betterHow financial apps get you to spend more and question lessParenting in the age of the pandemic podTikTok and the evolution of digital blackface🏃🏽‍♀️ Want the best tools to get healthy? Check out our Gear team’s picks for the best fitness trackers, running gear (including shoes and socks), and best headphones

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Apple has become the first U.S. company to boast a market value of $2 trillion as technology continues to reshape a world where smartphones are like appendages and digital services are like instruments orchestrating people's lives.The stock later backtracked to close at $462.83, but it didn't diminish a remarkable achievement that came just two years after Apple became the first U.S. company with a $1 trillion market value. It comes amid a devastating pandemic that has shoved the economy into a deep recession and caused unemployment rates to soar to the worst levels since the Great Depression nearly a century ago.Apple's stock has climbed nearly 58% this year. In recent weeks, the rally has been bolstered by excitement over a four-for-one stock split that Apple announced late last month in an effort to make its shares more affordable to a wider swath of investors.The broader boom in tech stocks also has helped the benchmark S&P 500 index reach new highs after steep declines earlier in the year. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company, Alphabet account for nearly 23% of the S&P 500’s entire value.Apple isn't the first company in the world to reach a market value of $2 trillion. That honor belongs to energy producer Saudi Aramco, which attained it in December 2019. Saudi Aramco now trails Apple with a market value of about $1.8 trillion.Now that technology has clearly become the oil of the 21st century, other industry leaders could soon be joining Apple in the $2 trillion club, now that it is clear technology has become the oil of the 21st century. Many industry analysts are predicting Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet could eclipse the milestone in the upcoming months too.But regulators and lawmakers looking into allegations that Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook have been illegally abusing their power to stifle competition could spook investors if their investigations result in moves that undercut the companies' profits.Not all technology companies are doing as well as they were before the pandemic. Google, for instance, suffered the first quarterly revenue decline from the previous year in its history during the April-June period as the advertising sales that generate most of its profit tapered off amid pandemic-driven lockdowns across the U.S.But Apple has fared extraordinarily well, buoyed by the timely April debut of a new iPhone model priced at about $400, 40% to 60% less than the fancier devices that it released last fall. The company will face another litmus test in October when it is expected to unveil a line-up of new iPhones, including a model capable of connection on the next generation of ultra-fast wireless networks known as 5G.The next wave of high-priced iPhones, coming out a few weeks later than usual because of production delays caused by the pandemic, are expected to test the depths of Apple's customer loyalty as well how much people are willing to spend during tough times for most people outside the technology industry.

Apple became the first American company to reach a market cap of $2 trillion on Wednesday as its share price hit $467.The Silicon Valley giant first reached a $1 trillion market cap in August 2018, meaning the company managed to double in valuation in just two years.Apple's meteoric growth is emblematic of tech's market success more broadly.Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet all have market caps over $1 trillion.During the coronavirus pandemic, which has bankrupted thousands of businesses and costed millions their jobs, tech companies have flourished.These four tech companies along with Facebook constitute 20 percent of the S&P 500, and have carried its growth during a time when most other companies in the index have experienced losses.Apple posted a particularly strong third quarter, raking in nearly $60 billion in revenue and posting huge growth in its products and services markets.All of this is growth is despite the closures of many of its brick-and-mortar stores.

Apple Inc. on Wednesday became the first U.S. public company to eclipse $2 trillion in market value, a dizzying achievement that highlights the iPhone maker’s commanding role in the world economy. Shares of Apple rose as much as 1.4% to $468.65, eclipsing the $467.77 mark needed to reach the milestone. They ended the day up 0.1% at $462.83, putting the company’s market value just below $2 trillion.The stock has more than doubled from its March 23 low, boosted by steady demand for the company’s devices and better-than-feared results in its core iPhone business as millions of Americans work from home. Consumers’ increasing reliance on technology is driving growth for Apple and other large internet companies such as Amazon.com Inc. That has created a chasm between the tech industry and other sectors from energy to travel that have seen the coronavirus sap demand and fuel a wave of bankruptcies. The technology sector is one of the few industries expected to continue expanding in the years ahead, pushing investors large and small to pour money into the group.The milestone is the latest for Apple under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who succeeded late co-founder and product inventor Steve Jobs in 2011. Mr. Cook has expanded the company’s footprint in China and leaned on its services business—encompassing everything from its app store to Apple Music—to generate steady growth and dispel concerns that Apple is too reliant on the iPhone.