From his elite education to his posh accent, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is, despite his shambling appearance, the very embodiment of a wealthy, powerful and privileged British establishment. But as the 55-year-old prime minister crisscrosses the country in advance of an enormously consequential election next month, he is casting himself in a role that has served him well throughout his political career: a cheerfully down-to- earth guy, a full-throated man of the people. In a campaign dominated by Brexit — Britain’s tortuous effort to leave the European Union — Johnson is wielding the populist cudgel in ways that many critics fear could have long-term, damaging effects on the country’s centuries-old democratic traditions. He bashes Parliament, pooh-poohs the authority of the courts and accuses political rivals of seeking to thwart the will of the people, as expressed in the 2016 Brexit referendum.The prime minister, who assumed his office in July on the strength of a leadership vote by about 160,000 dues-paying members of his Conservative Party, is for the first time the party’s standard-bearer in a general election set for Dec. 12, two years ahead of schedule. Much is at stake: If Johnson can win a parliamentary majority, he vows to swiftly push through a thrice-delayed Brexit, brushing aside fears of economic upheaval and social disruption.This election is being portrayed in many quarters as a far-reaching referendum on Britain’s status as a pillar of a postwar order that has kept peace in Europe for seven decades and perhaps, ultimately, whether the United Kingdom will remain united. But on the campaign trail, Johnson hews to a simple, repetitive message: “Get Brexit done!”Opponents struggling to connect with voters are left to voice more nuanced themes: That leaving the European Union, rather than representing a clean break, will only mark the start of decades of complex and contentious negotiations. That rather than asserting its sovereignty, a post-Brexit Britain will find itself at the mercy of potentially predatory trading partners, perhaps including the United States. That the lifting up of society’s “left-behinds” must involve a recalibration of domestic priorities and won’t be achieved simply by turning Britain’s back on its closest partners.A scant month before the vote, opinion polls give Johnson’s party a commanding lead. But analysts say traditional party loyalties may break down as voters seek to find a way to express their views on whether to “leave” or “remain.” That was the ballot question on the June 2016 Brexit referendum that resulted in a narrow 52%-48% vote to depart the bloc and has left the country at loggerheads since. “Brexit identity is more powerful than party identity, and people will try to vote to get the best outcome in line with that,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London. That scrambles the notion of simple party-line loyalties and introduces the notion of “tactical” voting guided by Brexit, he and others say.Under Johnson, the Conservative platform centers on getting out of the EU — but the even harder-line, single-issue Brexit Party, created this year to contest European Parliament elections, says Johnson has already ceded too much ground to EU negotiators. It could thus siphon off votes cast by the most die-hard Brexit advocates, who would prefer to see Britain “crash out” of the bloc without a withdrawal accord.President Trump, in commentary delivered via Twitter and soundbites from the White House, has called on Johnson to strike an electoral pact with Nigel Farage, the far-right politician who is not contesting a seat, but is leading the Brexit Party’s national campaign.“What I’d like to see is for Nigel and Boris to come together,” Trump told reporters last week. But although Trump considers both men his ideological allies and calls each his good friend, a public embrace by the two is considered unlikely. Many moderate members of Johnson’s party are put off at least in part by Farage’s longtime association with nationalist-fringe figures who openly espouse racist and anti-Muslim views.The Labor Party, the main opposition, has sought to tread a centrist path, saying it would negotiate a new Brexit accord and then put it to a popular vote. But it is hampered by the seeming ambiguity of its Brexit stance, and by the personal unpopularity of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who is considered by many voters to be too radical and is also dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism.That leaves the straight-up “remain” stance to voters scattered among smaller opposition parties such as the Liberal Democratic Party and the Scottish National Party, Scotland’s largest. The latter represents a direct challenge to Johnson not only in opposing Brexit, which Scottish voters emphatically rejected, 62% to 38%, but also by seeking to revive an independence referendum if Britain pushes ahead with plans to leave the EU. The prime minister has said he would try to block any new Scottish breakaway vote, saying Scotland’s failed 2014 independence referendum settled the matter. Mindful that Johnson benefits from a divided opposition, some of the smaller parties are forming an alliance, looking at dozens of constituencies across England and Wales where candidates would step aside in one another’s favor in a bid to garner more seats for members of Parliament opposing Brexit.Amid this fragmented landscape — and even before the campaign’s formal start last week— Johnson has alarmed many critics with his willingness to batter democratic norms and institutions, including some important precepts of Britain’s unwritten constitution.When Parliament voted this year to prevent the prime minister from crashing out of the EU without a departure accord, Johnson angrily branded it a “surrender” bill, saying his hands had been tied because he could no longer seek to win concessions from the bloc by threatening a chaotic split.When he suspended Parliament, limiting the time for weighing Brexit-related matters in advance of a then-scheduled Halloween departure date, he received a highly unusual smackdown from the Supreme Court, which ruled that he had acted unlawfully in sending lawmakers home — and strongly implied, while not saying so directly, that he had lied to the public, and to Queen Elizabeth II, about his motives. Johnson grudgingly acceded as Parliament was reconvened, but his lieutenants railed bitterly about judicial overreach.His opening campaign salvos have revolved around accusing his opponents of bad faith and of undermining democracy — a script that may sound familiar to those following the impeachment proceedings unfolding across the Atlantic against Trump.“We can take back control!” Johnson told cheering followers at his party’s election launch. “This country is aching to move on…. Let’s make 2020 about the people of this country, and not its politicians!” In a headline-sized quote splashed across the front page of the Telegraph newspaper last week, he likened his opponents to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.While Johnson’s populist rhetoric may sound incongruous coming from someone with a background redolent of the spoils of Britain’s class system — he attended preparatory school at Eton, an incubating ground for future prime ministers, and studied classics at Oxford, where he was the president of the Oxford Union debating society — the prime minister has long proved adept at presenting himself as a champion of the downtrodden, analysts say.“He knows exactly how to raise the volume, how to make people get angry and jump up and down,” said Johnson’s biographer Andrew Gimson. “And he knows exactly how to use humor to puncture anyone being pompous or dull — in the theater of politics, people see him as one of the most enjoyable performers.”Still, a freewheeling style that worked well in lower-stakes endeavors — Johnson was an extremely popular mayor of London, despite or perhaps because of a sometimes-bumbling image — may play less well in an election in which Britain could have a great deal to lose.And in the long run, his jabs and gibes directed at the establishment could erode faith in the very institutions that the country will rely upon as it seeks to navigate what is generally regarded as one of its most polarized political climates of modern times, analysts say.“This country has been split right down the middle, and frustration has mounted on both sides,” said Bale, the political scientist. “Political identity is freighted with all sorts of misconceptions and prejudices about the other side, so it makes for this really poisonous atmosphere.”And as the vote draws closer, he said, passions are likely to only intensify.“Campaigns tend to get dirtier as they go on,” Bale said. “So it’s already ugly, with one thing certain: that it’s going to get uglier.”

Hong Kong's pro-democracy opposition won a stunning landslide victory in weekend local elections in a clear rebuke to city leader Carrie Lam over her handling of violent protests that have divided the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.Wu Chi-wai, leader of the city's biggest pro-democracy party, said Monday that the bloc swept nearly 90% of 452 district council seats, which will help it take unprecedented control of 17 out of 18 district councils. The results were based on official tallies announced by election officials.The result of Sunday's electionscould force the central government in Beijing to rethink how to handle the unrest, which is now in its sixth month. The district councils have little power, but the vote became a referendum on public support for the protests."It's nothing short of a revolution. This is a landslide," said Willy Lam, a political expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "It's a sound repudiation of the Carrie Lam administration and shows the silent majority are behind the demands of the protesters."The pro-democracy camp hailed its astounding gains in the normally low-key race as a victory for the people and said Carrie Lam and Beijing must now seriously heed protesters' demands, in particular a call for an independent commission to investigate the events of the past six months. "We are only vehicles used to reflect the people's concerns," said Wu. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Fierce women’s advocate, and icon in her own rightBeijing, which blames foreign powers for fomenting the unrest in Hong Kong, has showed no signs that it may soften its stance on the former British colony, which was returned to China in 1997. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters during a visit to Tokyo on Monday that any attempts to undermine Hong Kong will be futile. "No matter what kind of things happen in Hong Kong, Hong Kong is a part of Chinese territory," he said. "Any attempts to destroy Hong Kong or harm Hong Kong's stability and development cannot possibly succeed."But the election result will add new pressure on Carrie Lam, who pledged to reflect on the people's voice. Some pro-establishment candidates have already pointed fingers at Lam for their loss."There are various analyses and interpretations in the community in relation to the results, and quite a few are of the view that the results reflect people's dissatisfaction with the current situation and the deep-seated problems in society," Lam said in a statement.A record 71% of Hong Kong's 4.1 million registered voters cast ballots in the city's only fully democratic elections, well exceeding the 47% turnout in the same poll four years ago.The largest pro-establishment political party suffered the biggest setback, with only 21 of its 182 candidates winning. Starry Lee, head of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said the government must review its response to the crisis and do more to reconcile society.Many pro-Beijing political heavyweights were trounced, including controversial lawmaker Junius Ho, who is reviled by protesters for supporting a bloody mob attack on demonstrators in July. Ho was stabbed with a knife during campaigning this month.The winners included many youth activists and a candidate who replaced activist Joshua Wong, the only person barred from running in the election. Pro-democracy rally organizer Jimmy Sham, who was beaten by hammer-wielding assailants last month, also triumphed, as did a pro-democracy lawmaker who had part of his ear bitten off by an assailant.Celebrations broke out outside polling stations overnight when results were announced. At lunchtime Monday, dozens of supporters gathered in a business district for a victory rally. A woman popped a champagne bottle and poured drinks for everyone. "This is historic. As our city plummets from being semi-autonomous to semi-authoritarian, we react by showing what's democracy in action," Wong tweeted.More than 5,000 people have been arrested in the unrest that has contributed to Hong Kong's first recession in a decade.Supporters from both sides of the divide hope the election will pave a peaceful way out after months of pitched battles between protesters and police, capped by a university siege this month. An estimated 30 protesters, fearing arrests, are still holding out at the campus, which has been ringed by police for days. "With the mandate from the Hong Kong people, protesters expect concessions from Beijing, but those concessions won't be coming. Confrontations may intensify," warned political analyst Lam. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. The victory will see the pro-democracy camp secure 117 seats in the 1,200-member pro-Beijing panel that elects the city's leader. It will bolster their influence, as the bloc usually has over 300 supporters on the panel but still falls short of the majority.The turmoil started in June over a now-abandoned extradition bill that many viewed as a sign of creeping Chinese control over Hong Kong. Protesters have expanded their demands to include free elections for the city's leader and members of the legislature, as well as an investigation into alleged police brutality.

The last time Andrew Yang was on The Ezra Klein Show, he was just beginning his long-shot campaign for the presidency. Now, he’s fresh off a speaking slot at the Democratic convention and, as he reveals in this episode, talking to Joe Biden about a very specific role in a Biden administration. Which is all to say: A lot has changed for Andrew Yang in the past few years. And even more has changed in the world. So I asked Yang back on the show to talk through this new world and his possible role in it. Among our topics: Could a universal basic income be the way we rebuild a fairer economy post-coronavirus? What’s changed in AI, and AI’s likely effect on the economy, over the past five years? What’s the one mistake Yang wishes the Democratic Party would stop making? What did he learn from the surprising success of his own campaign? What job is he talking to Joe Biden about taking if Democrats win in November? Democrats think of themselves as the party of government. So why don’t they care more about making government work? How can Democrats get away with endlessly claiming to support ideas they have no actual intention of passing? Do progressives have an overly dystopian view of technology? Is there a way to pull presidential campaigns out of value statements and into real plans for governing? The unusual power Joe Biden holds in American politics And much more.You can listen to our discussion here, or by subscribing to The Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts.This podcast is part of a larger Vox project called The Great Rebuild, which is made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network, a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them, and to build more inclusive and equitable societies. All Great Rebuild coverage is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.Help keep Vox free for allMillions turn to Vox each month to understand what’s happening in the news, from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work, and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. Contribute today from as little as $3.

It’s hard not to think that, in normal times, any one of these things would have been enough to give some members of the president’s own party pause, let alone all three.At the same time, there’s still truth to the President’s increasingly unhinged tweet storms: There is “NO COLLUSION,” at least not yet.But Mueller hasn’t connected any of those dots yet, which is why everyone is eagerly awaiting the Mueller Report, in whatever form it may take. Nancy Pelosi’s comments last week seemed to speak out loud that which had already been baked into the capital’s political firmament and the GOP’s calculus: Sure, the president has been credibly accused of crimes, but none of them so far were that startling or astonishing.Mueller—or the Southern District, or one of the other 18-plus investigations targeting the president—could dramatically alter the impeachment narrative in Washington in at least three ways: (1) by outlining clear evidence of a specific presidential crime, (2) a demonstrable, smoking-gun-included pattern of obstruction, or (3) demonstrable action taken to compromise American interests at the expense of advancing a foreign power’s goals, including actively conspiring with Russia in the 2016 campaign.As the president’s tweets and his TV lawyer Rudy Giuliani continue to harp, we haven’t seen any of those scenarios unfold yet. But if Mueller or SDNY has any of that, it's going to make it very hard for the GOP line to hold.For the first scenario—leaving aside the campaign finance allegations, which the GOP seems to have decided don’t matter and that prosecutors don’t seem inclined to push forward yet—we haven’t seen specific evidence in court filings of Donald Trump’s irrefutable personal involvement in specific crimes, either in his role as a businessman, as a candidate, or as president. If, though, there’s clear, credible, documentable evidence that the president suborned perjury, lied to the special counsel, or engaged in any manner of other crimes, it seems clear that Congress would treat that very differently, especially if it was framed in a way that Mueller, prosecutors, or the Justice Department indicate they would normally recommend criminal charges. This is partly why the reaction to BuzzFeed’s not-entirely-clear bombshell that Trump “directed” Cohen to lie hit with such impact: Within hours, impeachment calls on Capitol Hill were coming fast, and it was only the unprecedented statement by Mueller’s office that pumped the brakes.As for obstruction of justice, pundits have tied themselves in knots over the past two years debating whether the president could be charged with obstruction of justice or impeached over the firing of FBI director James Comey, whether the president was acting within his Article II executive powers, and so on. That approach almost certainly defines Mueller’s obstruction investigation too narrowly.Mueller appears to have been laying the groundwork for a much broader pattern of obstruction, a pattern of lies, actions, and obfuscations where the Comey firing is merely one of many related incidents—potentially dozens—that stretch across multiple years and leave no doubt of the president’s intent to obstruct. This is potentially backed up by documentary evidence like contemporaneous notes, memos, emails, or telephone calls. Mueller has expressed his interest in the Air Force One statement drafted by the president, downplaying the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, as well as potentially Michael Cohen’s coordination, if any, with the White House over his false testimony to Congress. One specific line from the special counsel’s filing in Cohen’s case might telegraph where Mueller is heading: “By publicly presenting this false narrative, the defendant deliberately shifted the timeline of what had occurred in hopes of limiting the investigations into possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.” This scenario—of a president seeking to mislead the American public—was part of the charges against Richard Nixon, after all.

Facebook must pay a $5 billion fine after the FTC found the social media company deceived users and improperly managed their personal data. Under the settlement, Facebook is also subject to stricter oversight on how it manages user data. WSJ explains what that means for users. Photo: Andrew Harnik / Associated Press By,and Feb. 6, 2020 8:00 am ET European Union antitrust investigators have sought internal documents related to Facebook Inc.’s alleged efforts to identify and squash potential rivals, deepening authorities’ preliminary probe into the social-media company, according to people familiar with the matter. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has in recent weeks ramped up its pursuit of documents related to allegations by rival companies and politicians that Facebook leveraged access to its users’ data to stifle competition, rewarding partners and... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

The November Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta came at the end of a marathon day of political news, marked by US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland’s historic testimony before the House Intelligence Committee confirming that President Donald Trump tied military aid to Ukraine to investigations into the Biden family. Indeed, moderator Rachel Maddow opened the debate with a question about the Sondland testimony.But the rest of the night barely touched on the impeachment process, swerving from agricultural policy to wealth taxes to climate to military intervention. It was a fairly solid night for the field as a whole, with even bottom-tier candidates like Tom Steyer having standout moments. Some, though, won more than others. Here’s who ended the night up, and who ended up worse than they started.The South Bend, Indiana, mayor is having a moment. He’s skyrocketed to the top of the RealClearPolitics average of the polls in Iowa, the first state to vote in the primaries. He’s also creeping up in New Hampshire. At Wednesday’s debate, Buttigieg had one goal: keep that momentum going.He succeeded. Throughout the debate, Buttigieg avoided attacks from his high-polling opponents on the debate stage, while using his time to push his message as an outsider and a more moderate candidate who could unite the country.When Buttigieg was asked about perhaps his biggest weakness — his lack of experience — he managed to spin the question positively, framing himself as an outsider: “I get it’s not traditional establishment Washington experience, but I would argue we need something very different right now. In order to defeat this president, we need somebody who can go toe-to-toe who actually comes from the kinds of communities that he’s been appealing to.”In a campaign that has focused a lot on wealth inequality and the role of billionaires in the political system, Buttigieg also made the point that he’s as far removed from a billionaire as anyone on the debate stage: “I don’t talk a big game about helping the working class while helicoptering between golf courses with my name on them. I don’t even golf. As a matter of fact, I never thought I’d be on a Forbes magazine list, but they did one of all the candidates by wealth, and I am literally the least wealthy person on this stage.”And yes, he also used his time to directly pander to the Iowa voters he’s hoping to help carry his campaign early on — dedicating an answer about farming subsidies to get into granular details about President Trump’s trade war and how soybean farmers are particularly struggling as a result of the current administration’s policies, which are issues that are hurting Trump in Iowa.Just how big of a role these debates play in elections is a genuine question. But at the very least, Buttigieg didn’t seem to hurt himself.—German LopezSen. Elizabeth Warren walked into Wednesday’s debate in a perhaps weaker position than she has been in previous showdowns — Pete Buttigieg’s star is rising in Iowa, and she’s been bogged down in the weeds of Medicare-for-all plans for weeks. But she demonstrated that, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, her framework still anchors much of the conversation on issues such as the economy and health care. And she got to remind voters of one of her most popular proposals: the wealth tax, or, as she’s branded it, two cents.“When you make it big, when you make it really big, when you make it [to] the top one-tenth of one percent big, pitch in two cents, so everybody else gets a chance to make it,” the Massachusetts Democrat said on Wednesday. Under her plan, Americans with fortunes of more than $50 million would pay a 2 percent annual tax (where she gets the “two cents” from); for those with more than $1 billion, that tax would rise to 3 percent. It’s a popular idea, and Warren knows it, even if it’s earned her some billionaire enemies. “Regardless of party affiliation, people understand across this country our government is working better and better for the billionaires, for the rich, for the well-connected, and worse and worse for everyone else,” she said. Sen. Cory Booker tried to push Warren on the merits of the wealth tax proposal. He argued that while tax loopholes and cheating are a problem, Democrats also need to talk about growth. He said the wealth tax is “cumbersome” and hard to evaluate. “We can get the same amount of revenue through just taxation,” he said. But Warren successfully parried, saying, “Just the idea of what is behind, what is fair: today, the 99 percent in America are on track to pay about 7.2 percent of their total wealth in taxes. The top one tenth of 1 percent that I want to say pay 2 cents more, they’ll pay 3.2 percent more in America. I’m tired of free-loading billionaires.”The rest of the night was solid for Warren — she defended abortion rights, spoke about race, and highlighted her focus on rooting out corruption — and preserved her position in the 2020 race. — Emily StewartFor about 1 hour and 40 minutes, Cory Booker had a fairly standard, uneventful debate. He got in a good line about being the other Rhodes Scholar mayor on the stage, a light jab at Pete Buttigieg that didn’t land with much force. He had a confusing and forgettable exchange with Elizabeth Warren critiquing her wealth tax plan on technical grounds — a fair hit, but one better reserved for a policy paper than the debate stage.Then the topic came to the black vote, and Booker broke through.One of the many challenges facing his campaign so far — and Sen. Kamala Harris’s — has been his failure to break through with black voters nationwide and in South Carolina (where black voters make up a big part of the Democratic primary electorate). Former Vice President Joe Biden’s name recognition and connection to the Obama presidency have apparently been sufficient to swamp any arguments Booker and Harris have tried to make for themselves as superior champions of black voters’ interests.So Booker decided to fight the fight directly. He first brushed off Buttigieg’s attempts to cater to black voters by noting he’s “been one since I turned 18,” and didn’t “need a focus group” to tell him what black voters think and value — a nice move that subtly undermined the implicit premise behind the question that there’s a monolithic “black vote” to be won en masse.But then he turned to Joe Biden, and turned an electability question about race into a concrete policy disagreement, noting Joe Biden’s opposition to nationwide marijuana legalization, underlining how devastating marijuana criminalization has been to black men and black communities, and pushing Biden into an embarrassing, fumbling answer in which he claimed the support of the “the only African American woman who’s been elected to the Senate” — to which Harris simply replied, “No, the other one is here.”To break into Biden’s base of black support, Booker needed to draw out clear policy differences with Biden and also to challenge Biden’s claims to respect and revere the black community. He didn’t even need to do the latter himself — he just put an obstacle in front of Biden and just watched as Biden tripped over it.— Dylan MatthewsStacey Abrams was very narrowly ahead in polling averages in her 2018 race to become governor of Georgia, but when the votes were counted, she lost. Yet on the debate stage Wednesday night, she was a winner — robbed of her rightful victory. “It was the voter suppression, particularly of African-American communities, that prevented us from having a governor Stacey Abrams right now,” Booker said early in the evening, in a debate held in Abrams’s home state. His Senate colleague Amy Klobuchar said that under a fair system, “Stacey Abrams would be governor of this state.” And Bernie Sanders referred to “voter suppression which cost the democratic party a governorship here in this state.”This is a narrative that’s been building for a year in the Democratic Party, and the remarks on stage Wednesday merely echoed things that Sen. Kamala Harris and others have been saying for months. But on Wednesday night, that all didn’t matter. The candidates on stage played to the home crowd, and made Abrams a winner — at least for a night.— Matthew YglesiasOn paper, Joe Biden has a strong claim to the Democratic nomination. He was the vice president to a president who is still very popular among Democrats, and he has a record of connecting to the white working class voters that President Trump has peeled off from the Democratic Party.But these debates have not shown Biden at his best. That was on display on Wednesday. Biden’s answers were long-winded, hard to follow, and at times ended abruptly with little explanation.One awkward moment came when Cory Booker called Biden out for his opposition to marijuana legalization — a position that makes Biden more conservative than the median Republican on this issue, based on recent polls. In explaining his political appeal, Biden responded, “I’m part of that Obama coalition. I come out of a black community in terms of my support” — a weird claim for a white candidate. He then suggested that the “only” black woman elected to the US Senate endorsed him, ignoring that one of the black women elected to the Senate, Kamala Harris, was right there on stage literally debating him. The whole moment drew laughter from the crowd and candidates.The awkwardness came through even when Biden should have had good moments. He was asked in the debate about what he will do about the Me Too movement, and started talking about domestic violence — an obvious pivot for someone who helped pass the original Violence Against Women Act in the 1990s. Biden at first gave a solid answer on his record. Then he went with an unfortunate metaphor: “So we have to just change the culture, period, and keep punching at it and punching at it.” That was … not the best choice of words for this issue.These problems are compounded by real questions about Biden’s age — he turned 77 on Wednesday — and if he’s still fit for the presidency. When Biden gives stumbling and at times incoherent answers, he does little to dispel those concerns.— German LopezDespite the meaty discussion of former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro’s proposal to decriminalize border crossings early in the Democratic primary race, immigration has received a cursory treatment in the debates ever since. Wednesday night’s debate was no different. The only question touching upon immigration was about President Trump’s border wall — perhaps the least effective of his immigration policies, if the flashiest. There was no mention, meanwhile, of how Trump has systematically put asylum nearly out of reach for most migrants arriving at the southern border. Just this week, the administration started sending migrants back to Guatemala under one of a series of agreements it has brokered in Central America in recent months. But there’s also the administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy — under which 57,000 migrants have been sent back to Mexico while they await a decision on their US asylum applications — and its rule preventing migrants from being granted asylum if they passed through any country other than their own before arriving in the US.Democratic candidates have spoken out against Trump policies that have already incited public outrage, denouncing the administration’s practice of separating families at the border and calling for protections for unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children known as DREAMers. “A great nation does not separate children from their families,” Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday. But the candidates haven’t given the same attention to the demise of asylum under Trump. And the one candidate who keeps talking about it (Castro) didn’t make the cut for the debate stage. It’s arguably the single biggest development in immigration policy under the Trump administration and an unprecedented departure from the US’s tradition of protecting vulnerable populations — and Democrats are overlooking it. — Nicole NareaHealth care has been the most discussed topic at the Democratic debates up until now, but when it came up on Wednesday, nobody’s heart seemed to be in it.It was featured in Bernie Sanders’s opening, as it always is. But after that, it was Pete Buttigieg — who had attacked Elizabeth Warren in particular over Medicare-for-all at the last debate — who made an intentional pivot to health care. He framed it as part of his answer about how he would try to bridge partisan divisions in Washington; he has attacked the single-payer plan supported by Sanders and Warren as potentially too politically divisive. He prefers a public option insurance plan that anybody could buy into.”On health care, the reason I insist on Medicare-for-all-who-want-it as the strategy to deliver on that goal we share of universal health care is that that is something that as a governing strategy we can unify the American people around,” he said.Warren, who put out a plan last week on how she would get to Medicare-for-all, was asked whether her position could cost her votes (she said it wouldn’t, she has a plan). Sanders also had his say (the US system is “dysfunctional”) as did Biden (Medicare-for-all “couldn’t pass the United States Senate right now with Democrats”).But there wasn’t really any substantive back-and-forth, at least compared to past debates. The candidates and the moderators went through the motions for the health care segment and moved on. Fair enough. Health care had gotten twice as much discussion as foreign policy and other important issues like climate change and trade in previous debates.Everybody hit their marks Wednesday, but it seemed everyone was happy to take a breather from health care.— Dylan Scott

closeVideoWhite House steps up sanctions against Venezuela to increase pressure on MaduroThe Trump administration has frozen Venezuelan government assets in the U.S. in efforts to push Nicolas Maduro out of power; Blake Burman reports from the White House.MIAMI -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro stood defiant in the face of a $15 million bounty by the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges, calling Donald Trump a "racist cowboy" and warning that he is ready to fight by whatever means necessary should the U.S. and neighboring Colombia dare to invade.Maduro's bellicose remarks Thursday night came hours after the U.S. announced sweeping indictments against the socialist leader and several members of his inner circle for allegedly converting Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups.One indictment by prosecutors in New York accused Maduro and socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello, head of the rubber-stamp constitutional assembly, of conspiring with Colombian rebels and members of the military "to flood the United States with cocaine" and use the drug trade as a "weapon against America."VideoMaduro, a former bus driver who fashions himself an everyman icon of the Latin American left, said the charges were politically motivated. He said they ignore U.S. ally Colombia's role as the main source of the world's cocaine and his own role in facilitating peace talks between Colombia's government and that country"s rebels over the past decade."Donald Trump, you are a miserable human being," Maduro railed during his televised address. "You manage international relations like a New York mafia extortion artist you once were as a real estate boss."What was some of Maduro's most venomous rhetoric ever against Trump also came with a threat of military force: "If one day the imperialists and Colombian oligarchy dare to touch even a single hair, they will face the Bolivarian fury of an entire nation that will wipe them all out."Earlier, Venezuela's chief prosecutor opened an investigation against opposition leader Juan Guaido for allegedly plotting a coup with retired army Gen. Cliver Alcala, who after being named in the U.S. indictments said he had stockpiled assault weapons in Colombia for a cross-border incursion. Without offering evidence, Maduro said the Drug Enforcement Administration was behind a plan by Alcala to assassinate him and other political leaders.The indictment of a functioning head of state is highly unusual and is bound to ratchet up tensions with Washington as the spread of the coronavirus threatens to collapse Venezuela's shortage-plagued health system. Maduro has ordered Venezuelans to stay home in an effort to curb the spread of the virus, which officials say has infected 107 people and claimed its first death Thursday.Criminal acts to advance a drug and weapons conspiracy that dates back to the start of Hugo Chavez's revolution in 1999 occurred as far afield as Syria, Mexico, Honduras and Iran, the indictment alleges. Attorney General William Barr estimated the conspiracy helped smuggle as much as 250 metric tons of cocaine a year out of South America."The Maduro regime is awash in corruption and criminality," Barr said in an online news conference from Washington. "While the Venezuelan people suffer, this cabal lines their pockets with drug money, and the proceeds of their corruption. And this has to come to an end."The coordinated unsealing of indictments against 14 officials and government-connected individuals, along with the announcement of rewards of $55 million against Maduro and four others, attacked all the key planks of what Barr called the "corrupt Venezuelan regime," including the Maduro-dominated judiciary and the powerful armed forces.In Miami, prosecutors charged Supreme Court Chief Justice Maikel Moreno with laundering in the U.S. at least $3 million in illegal proceeds from case fixing in Venezuela, including one involving a General Motors factory. Much of the money he spent on private aircraft, luxury watches and shopping at Prada, prosecutors allege.Maduro's defense minister, Gen. Vladimir Padrino, was charged with conspiracy to smuggle narcotics in a May 2019 indictment unsealed in Washington."This announcement is a major blow for Maduro who has been running Venezuela like a mafia state, with rampant corruption and widespread atrocities, and absolute impunity," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch. "With this indictment he may now lose his aura of invincibility, of being completely above the law, which is very welcome news."But its unclear how it brings Venezuela any closer to ending a 15-month standoff between Maduro, who has the support of Russia and China, and the U.S.-backed Guaido. It also could fragment the U.S.-led coalition against Maduro if European and Latin American allies think the Trump administration is overreaching. An estimated 5 million Venezuelans have left the country in recent years, fleeing hyperinflation and widespread food and medicine shortages."It's an incredibly dangerous gamble to redouble the offensive against Maduro's regime when the priority must be to shore up the country's collapsing health system and prevent an even worse migrant exodus," said Ivan Briscoe, the Latin America director for the Crisis Group. "These U.S. charges could spell doom for any thaw, expose Guaido to grave risks, and appear high-handedly indifferent to the immediate suffering of Venezuela's people."Maduro has long accused the U.S. "empire" of looking for any excuse to take control of the world's largest oil reserves, likening its plotting to the 1989 invasion of Panama and the removal of strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega to face drug trafficking charges in Florida.Barr and Elliott Abrams, the State Department's special envoy on Venezuela, are driving the hawkish U.S. stance toward Maduro, much as they pushed for Noriega's ouster in the late 1980s -- Barr as a senior Justice Department official and Abrams as assistant secretary of state for Latin America.U.S. officials see other parallels as well. Noriega transformed Panama into a playground for violent, international drug cartels, and the Trump administration has accused Maduro and his military henchmen of harboring drug traffickers, guerrillas from Colombia and even Hezbollah, a designated terrorist group.They also have accused government officials together with well-connected businessmen of stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from the state coffers, much of it from state oil giant PDVSA, which has seen its production plunge to a seven-decade low.Still, charging Maduro was no easy task. Sitting foreign leaders normally enjoy immunity from prosecution under U.S. law and international norms.

Facebook must pay a $5 billion fine after the FTC found the social media company deceived users and improperly managed their personal data. Under the settlement, Facebook is also subject to stricter oversight on how it manages user data. WSJ explains what that means for users. Photo: Andrew Harnik / Associated Press By,and Feb. 6, 2020 8:00 am ET European Union antitrust investigators have sought internal documents related to Facebook Inc.’s alleged efforts to identify and squash potential rivals, deepening authorities’ preliminary probe into the social-media company, according to people familiar with the matter. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has in recent weeks ramped up its pursuit of documents related to allegations by rival companies and politicians that Facebook leveraged access to its users’ data to stifle competition, rewarding partners and... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

Once upon a time, wise elders foretold that east and west would meet, a reviving and ruling power coming together in new leadership. The idea of a Sino-American G2, reaching bilateral consensus on key issues to prudently steer the international community, always sounded like a fairytale. But from this moment in time, it seems more like a bad joke. As a pandemic threatens millions of lives, and further suffering through a global recession, the shortcomings of China and the US are increasingly glaring.Chinese authorities covered up the Wuhan outbreak and harassed those who tried to blow the whistle, allowing the coronavirus to spread within and then beyond its borders – though subsequent draconian measures appear to have contained the internal spread, for now at least, and should have bought time for other countries to prepare. Chinese diplomats and state media promoted wild conspiracy theories suggesting the virus originated, or was even created, in the US, even if officials may now be drawing back. Last week, with everyone’s attention on the pandemic, Beijing threw out US journalists from major news organisations in belated retaliation for tightened controls on Chinese state media companies in the US.Meanwhile, Donald Trump spent weeks dismissing concerns and suggested the virus would “disappear” and was “very well under control”. He ceded responsibility to states and now wants to return to business as usual, as if that were possible – even as the World Health Organization warns that America could become the new centre of the pandemic. Medical experts and governors are in despair. He tried to lure a German firm developing a possible vaccine to the US. He promoted an unproven treatment. With gratuitous cruelty, his administration has tightened sanctions on Iran, one of the worst-hit countries. He has, until this week, insisted on referring to “the Chinese virus” despite the resulting stigma and hate crime.Mr Trump may yet regret his finger-pointing; many materials needed for equipment such as masks are mainly produced in China. Pundits have blamed predatory pricing by Chinese firms for ending penicillin and aspirin production in the US, but the US has also showed complacency in failing to protect key national resources and relying on foreign production.Washington’s failures are allowing Beijing, despite its own culpability, to restore its image and build foreign influence. “The only country that can help us is China … European solidarity does not exist,” declared the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, last week; masks and health experts arrived days later. China’s dispatches of medical supplies to other countries are welcome; so presumably were the shipments it received from the EU when the outbreak emerged, and the equipment that European neighbours have shared with each other. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, warned on Tuesday of a “struggle for influence”, including through the “politics of generosity”. The bloc must show that solidarity is not an empty phrase, he wrote.The pandemic has underscored the need for international cooperation. When problems are global, solutions must be too. But it has also shown once more that China and the US are neither fit to lead, nor interested in cooperation, and that the rest of the world will need to find its own ways of working together. Topics Coronavirus outbreak Opinion China Trump administration US politics Infectious diseases Donald Trump Europe editorials

US authorities are transferring into federal prisons about 1,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainees, officials told Reuters on Thursday, in the first large-scale use of federal prisons to hold detainees amid a Trump administration crackdown on people entering the country illegally. An Ice spokeswoman told Reuters five federal prisons will temporarily take in detainees awaiting civil immigration court hearings, including potential asylum seekers, with one prison in Victorville, California, preparing to house 1,000 people. Officials of a prison employees’ union said the influx of Ice detainees raises questions about prison staffing and safety. Union leaders at prisons in California, Texas and Washington state who spoke to Reuters said they had little time to prepare for the large intake of detainees.At Victorville, the prison getting the largest number of people, workers are moving about 500 inmates in a medium-security facility to make space, said John Kostelnik, local president for the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals union. “There is so much movement going on,” said Kostelnik. “Everyone is running around like a chicken without their head.”An Ice spokeswoman, Dani Bennett, said: “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working to meet the demand for additional immigration detention space, both long and short term” due to a surge in illegal border crossings and a US Department of Justice zero-tolerance policy. “To meet this need, Ice is collaborating with the US Marshals Service, the Bureau of Prisons, private detention facility operators and local government agencies,” she said in a statement to Reuters. Topics US immigration US prisons Trump administration news

Three U.S. senators todayurged Comcast to open all of its Wi-Fi hotspotsto children who lack Internet access at home during the pandemic. Ars Technica reports:In the letter, the senators ask Comcast to answer a list of questions by May 22. They also want the company to provide specific details on how opening up the hotspots would affect network performance."Please identify the specific performance issues that you anticipate would impact Comcast subscribers and their ability to get the level of service for which they pay if Comcast removed the paywall on its residential public Wi-Fi networks," the senators wrote. "For each issue you identify, please explain why the use today of a subscriber's public network by someone who has purchased an access pass from Comcast does not cause the same problem."

As President Donald Trump weighs ideas for punishing China over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, some inside and outside the White House want him to respond forcefully.“In my personal opinion, we should drop the fucking hammer on them. Stop being such pussies,” a senior White House official told me, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose internal deliberations.Top Trump allies, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Republican senators, are pushing Trump to castigate China. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example, has said the US should “make China pay big time.”The Washington Post reported Thursday that US officials from multiple agencies were planning to gather that day to discuss crafting some sort of retaliation against China.“President Trump has fumed to aides and others in recent days about China, blaming the country for withholding information about the virus,” the Post reported.The Chinese government delayed releasing information about the outbreak of Covid-19 in the city of Wuhan, costing world governments precious time to prepare. It’s ruthlessly exploiting the pandemic to further its own foreign policy goals. And on Friday, Sky News reported that the Chinese government is refusing to allow investigators with the World Health Organization to participate in China’s inquiries into the virus’s origin.These actions — as well as Trump’s likely desire to deflect some of the blame from his own administration’s poor response to the coronavirus crisis in the US — are why the Trump administration is looking to formally rebuke China in some way. Here’s what’s in the works.“Punishing China is definitely where the president’s head is at right now,” one senior adviser told the Washington Post on Thursday.Yet Trump, in public at least, has sounded far more cautious about using these measures. “You start playing those games and that’s tough,” Trump said at a press conference on Thursday when asked about the idea of canceling interest payments to China, adding that doing so could undermine the “sanctity of the [US] dollar.”This echoes comments made the same day by Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who called reports the administration was considering canceling debt payments “absolutely and unequivocally untrue,” adding that “the full faith and credit of US debt obligations is sacrosanct.”This is why the senior White House official I spoke to said they’re “very doubtful senior advisers will allow” the debt-payment idea to go forward, acknowledging that Congress would likely try to block such a move anyway.But some Trump advisers and allies are still pushing the president to retaliate against China in some way.At the same Thursday press conference, Trump suggested another idea: imposing billions of dollars in additional tariffs on China.To punish China, the US “can do it with tariffs,” Trump said Thursday.Yet there’s (at least) one big, glaring problem with this idea: Though Trump has long believed that China pays these tariffs and the money goes to the US Treasury, that is not at all how tariffs actually work.Tariffs raise the price of buying Chinese goods for American consumers. The idea is that by making Chinese products more expensive, American consumers will stop buying them from China and buy them more cheaply from somewhere else instead. While that would ultimately harm Chinese producers in the long run, in the short run, it’s American consumers who are stuck paying these tariffs, not China.With US unemployment claims having reached a staggering 30 million and the country facing an economic downturn unseen since the Great Depression, making things more expensive for American consumers would be less a punishment on China and more a self-own.On top of that, the US has already placed tariffs on nearly every major Chinese product, so it’s not even clear that the eventual impact on Chinese manufacturers would be all that meaningful.Still, it seems some kind of retaliation is coming. Asked Friday about the administration’s China considerations, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said she wouldn’t get ahead of the president on any announcements, but she reiterated Trump’s “displeasure with China,” adding, “It’s no secret that China mishandled this situation.”Some sort of grander planning has already begun.Multiple sources at the State Department told me that Pompeo has almost every office doing some sort of work involving China. Whether in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, or elsewhere, Pompeo has staff looking at ways to counter China’s aims, such as having US allies end certain business contracts with Beijing.However, some in the State Department believe there’s no real strategy to the top-down directive. The entire idea is “shortsighted,” said one staffer tasked with finding ways to push back on China, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press. “The China approach is all over the place.”Another State Department staffer pushed back against the notion that the department is in search of a more-robust-than-normal stance against China. “It is our standard policy to counter Chinese influence,” they told me.What’s clear, though, is that the administration is thinking of ways to up the ante against China. When, and what, Trump decides to do is what everyone’s waiting on.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.

Donald Trump attacked the special counsel Robert Mueller just hours before he was to deliver details on how two of the president’s closest former aides have helped or hindered an investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 election campaign.In a series of angry tweets Trump attacked Mueller – as he has done frequently before – and alleged he was only picking on Republicans in his investigation.Trump said Mueller had numerous “conflicts of interest” and accused him of ignoring Democrats, and especially his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.Mueller last month accused Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, of breaching a plea bargain deal by lying to prosecutors, and he will submit information on those alleged lies in a filing to a federal court in Washington.That could include shedding new light on Manafort’s business dealings or his consulting work for pro-Kremlin interests in Ukraine.Manafort, who maintains that he has been truthful with Mueller, managed Trump’s campaign for three months in 2016.Also on Friday, Mueller’s office and the southern district of New York are to file sentencing memos on Michael Cohen, Trump’s former private lawyer.Cohen pleaded guilty to financial crimes in a New York court in August, and last week to lying to Congress in a Mueller case. Sentencing for both of those cases will be handled by one judge.Attention will focus on whether Mueller discloses new information to supplement Cohen’s admission last week that he sought help from the Kremlin for a Trump skyscraper in Moscow late into the 2016 campaign.Mueller’s investigation has infuriated Trump. He denies any collusion between his team and Russia, and accuses Mueller’s prosecutors of pressuring his former aides to lie about him, his election campaign and his business dealings.The president has called Cohen a liar and “weak person”.Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, said he was eager to see whether Mueller’s prosecutors directly or tacitly support Cohen’s assertions that Trump directed him to make hush payments to women in violation of campaign finance law and that he let the White House know what he planned to tell Congress about the Moscow skyscraper project. Cohen now says he lied in that testimony.“If the government does not contest that, it indicates that it is consistent with the evidence that they do have,” Mariotti said, referring to Cohen’s assertions. “It could be a big day.”The filings on Cohen and Manafort follow a sentencing memo this week on Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.In that memo, Mueller praised Flynn for providing “substantial” cooperation and argued that Flynn should receive no prison time, a move widely seen by legal experts as a message to other would-be cooperators that assistance would be rewarded.Cohen is hoping he will get similar credit, emphasising in a court filing last week that his decision to cooperate came in the face of fierce criticism by Trump of Mueller’s investigation.Cohen’s lawyers also argued that celebrities engaged in similar tax evasion cases – one of the core charges against him – faced only civil penalties. They said his financial crimes were unsophisticated, noting that no overseas accounts were used.Manafort, in addition to allegedly lying to Mueller, was convicted in a separate case in Virginia for a sophisticated bank and tax fraud scheme that included tens of millions of dollars in payments for his work in Ukraine.Mariotti said he expected Mueller’s office to be unsparing in its submission on Friday. “They want the judge to throw the book at Manafort, sending a message to him and everyone else,” he said. Topics Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Russia Paul Manafort Michael Cohen Robert Mueller news

Everyone is looking for a #release. In the political Twittersphere, it’s usually about paperwork. #ReleaseTheReport on Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Or, conversely, #ReleaseTheMemo that supposedly damned the entire inquiry. In the portions of the internet most consumed by fandom—stan Twitter, niche subreddits, meme YouTube—the release that people are chasing is often an alternate, potentially fictional director’s cut of a middling movie. Especially if it’s a movie that was always doomed to sorely disappointed them.The inevitably fan-disappointing film du jour is Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the final installment of the sequel trilogy helmed by director J. J. Abrams. Negative fan sentiment—mostly about the movie being overcrowded with characters, forced (sorry) full of Easter eggs, and emotionally unsatisfying—was at a steady digital murmur until an incendiary Reddit post went viral on January 2, 2020. The post was from user egoshoppe, a moderator of the r/saltierthancrait subreddit, which is, by its own description, “a community for those who are critical of the recent new Star Wars revival from Disney.” According to egoshoppe, the fans weren’t alone in finding Rise of Skywalker mediocre. Supposedly, J. J. Abrams didn’t like it either.In the (extremely unverified) post, egoshoppe claims to have had contact with an unnamed source who worked on Rise of Skywalker. The source alleges that Abrams made a three-hour cut of the film that Disney and Lucasfilm edited and released without his permission or involvement. The “why” of it all gets a little hazy, though, since motives for the changes to the purported #JJCut range from appeasing parts of the fandom to making Abrams look bad as revenge for signing with Warner Bros.Then came the backlash denouncing the #JJCut as an implausible bit of fantasy, a poorly conceived conspiracy theory with zero verification. (Admittedly, that Warner Bros. revenge angle does seem far-fetched, especially since the deal with WarnerMedia was signed with Abrams’ production company, Bad Robot, which has been working with Warner for years.) Egoshoppe asked to remain unnamed to avoid further scrutiny. The post’s virality was wholly unforeseen and unintended. “I’m just a geek and a Star Wars fan sharing what my source shared with me. I have never had media attention over a Reddit post,” they say. “The hashtag started organically while I was asleep. I’m not even on Twitter.”While #ReleaseTheJJCut may have caught egoshoppe by surprise, it does fit neatly into online fandom tradition. It rhymes most closely with #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, which fans employed to call for an alternate, grittier cut of Justice League made by director Zack Snyder before he was replaced by Joss Whedon. (Their thirst is unquenched even two years later: Fans paid for a #ReleaseTheSnyderCut ad during an English soccer match just this week.) The phenomena isn’t specific to giant blockbusters, either. Any time a beloved television show or franchise is due to end, whether it’s Sherlock or Game of Thrones, some fans will develop and invest emotionally in how things “ought” to play out. If the story doesn’t bend their way, studios and production companies throttling art to fit their corporate will make fitting villains, ripe for conspiracy theorizing.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The combative White House letter vowing to defy the “illegitimate” impeachment inquiry has actually put President Donald Trump on a more certain path to charges. His refusal to honor subpoenas or allow testimony would likely play into a formal accusation against him.The letter sent to House leaders by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone Tuesday evening declared the president would not cooperate with the investigation — a clear reason, Democrats say, to write an article of impeachment charging him with obstruction.The White House insists that a formal House vote is necessary just to start the impeachment process. But Democrats are moving ahead without one, confident for now that they are backed by the Constitution and Trump’s own acknowledgements of trying to persuade a foreign government to investigate a political foe.ADVERTISEMENT“The White House should be warned that continued efforts to hide the truth of the president’s abuse of power from the American people will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in response to the letter. “Mr. President, you are not above the law. You will be held accountable.”Trump again defended his decision not to cooperate, calling a whistleblower’s complaint about his call with Ukraine’s leader “a fraud being perpetrated on the American public” and saying Republicans are being treated unfairly. He repeated he was being vilified for “a perfect phone call.”But the president also undercut his no-cooperation argument Wednesday by putting conditions on his willingness, saying he would cooperate only if the House held a vote and Democrats would “give us our rights.”Bolstered by polls showing increased public support for impeachment, Pelosi has shown no signs of shifting her strategy. Democrats plan to continue investigating while focusing on the president’s own acknowledgements that he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his country’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election and also political rival Joe Biden and his family.“The evidence provided by the president and his people has already been overwhelming,” even without additional witness testimony, said Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes. Himes is a Democratic member of the House intelligence committee, which is leading the Ukraine investigation.The intelligence panel, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Government Reform panels, subpoenaed Gordon Sondland, the U.S. European Union ambassador, on Tuesday after Trump’s State Department barred him from showing up at a scheduled deposition. Texts provided by another diplomat last week showed Sondland and others navigating Trump’s demands for investigations as they spoke to Ukrainian government officials about a possible visit to Washington.Trump’s stonewalling of impeachment comes as polls find that Americans are more likely to approve than disapprove of the inquiry, even as they divide on whether Trump should be removed from office. A new Washington Post-Schar School poll finds 58% supportive of the decision by Congress to launch an impeachment inquiry that could lead to Trump being removed from office. About half of all Americans also think Congress should remove Trump from office.Still, the White House signaled it would not give an inch. Trump has taken to Twitter frequently to bash the probe, charging that the inquiry is not about anything more than partisan politics.“The Do Nothing Democrats are Con Artists, only looking to hurt the Republican Party and President,” Trump wrote. “Their total focus is 2020, nothing more, and nothing less.”After two weeks of an unfocused response to the impeachment probe, the White House letter amounted to the first volley in a strategy that is more defined — but one that carries its own risks.“All that defiance does is add to the case” against the president, including obstruction of Congress, said Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who sits on the Oversight and Foreign Affairs panels. He said the White House strategy actually works to convince the public of the president’s guilt, citing the recent polls.“The public gets what’s happening,” Connolly said.But Trump allies both inside and outside the West Wing were pleased at the shot the letter represented.They argue their best chance at winning the politics of impeachment is to emulate the just-say-no tactics they used for much of the special counsel’s Russia probe and against other investigations launched by Democrats in the House majority.By making the fight as contentious as possible, the White House hopes to convince voters that the impeachment process is simply about politics. They also want to push the proceedings into next year, when the first ballots of the 2020 primaries are cast. That would make it easier for Republicans to demand that impeachment be put aside in favor of letting the voters decide in November.He also said that the impeachment fight will end up in the Supreme Court, but it’s unclear whether Democrats will go to court at all and risk long delay. They could simply move to an article of impeachment on obstruction.Aware of the risks, Democrats are planning to move quickly — unlike the two-year Russia investigation, which Republicans had ample time to try and discredit. Multiple subpoenas sent by the House panels — including to the White House, Cabinet agencies and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani — came with a deadline to respond within the next two weeks.Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser who focused on Russia, is expected to meet with three House committees behind closed doors Monday, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential meeting.As the House returns from a recess next Tuesday, the Democrats plan to hold hearings and votes to make their case, including legislation designed to improve the security of elections and prevent foreign interference. But they are so far declining to hold high profile hearings featuring fierce, argumentative allies of the president, including Giuliani, who was involved in the negotiations with Ukraine.Democrats believe the president’s own words are paramount to impeachment and don’t want to distract from that.But they will also continue to investigate.“I think what we have is overwhelming evidence that the president has engaged in multiple wrongdoings,” said Florida Rep. Val Demings, a member of both the intelligence and Judiciary panels. “But what we don’t know is how much more is out there.”___Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Jill Colvin and Darlene Superville contributed.

A single step inside the socialist Kshama Sawant’s office on the second floor of City Hall in downtown Seattle and a visitor knows exactly where the newly re-elected city council member stands politically.One wall is plastered with every imaginable poster on policies she’s pushed for, including rent control and $15 an hour minimum wage. One bright red poster says, “Unionize Amazon” and “Tax Bezos” in large white letters. It offers a glimpse into a potential upcoming battle for Sawant now that she beat her rival, the business-backed Egan Orion, despite his unprecedented financial support from Amazon.The collection is her “labor of love” and frequently updated with the day’s latest struggles, says Sawant, who is sitting at a long table in her office Tuesday with a mason jar filled with apple cider (It’s from PCC Community Markets, a local food cooperative whose workers, she happily reveals, are unionized).She’s been up since well before 5am, juggling a day packed with media interviews and council meetings. But you wouldn’t know it by the rapid-fire analysis she provides of her recent momentous win.She says that she hopes other candidates like her across the world take note of this major victory.“The fact that a socialist who has been an unapologetic fighter for ordinary people and who has doggedly used a movement-building approach and shown herself to be extremely effective and successful, that you can win three elections, that should be extremely empowering for our movements,” said Sawant, who will now be starting her third term in office in January.Amazon, which is headquartered in Seattle, contributed $1.5m into the local city council elections by way of a political action committee sponsored by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. The Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy backed her opponent, Orion, and six other candidates considered to be business-friendly. Only two of them ultimately won. Kshama Sawant’s campaign office in Seattle. Photograph: Elaine Thompson/APSawant, a Mumbai-educated economist and former tech worker, said the Amazon money certainly had a negative impact on her campaign, citing the many attack mailers and online attack ads that have circulated. But it also helped to further galvanize her grassroots support. Her campaign ultimately saw hundreds of volunteers who knocked on more than 200,000 doors, and over $500,000 in donations from hundreds of individual donors across the US.On election night, Sawant trailed Orion by 8%, but days later, after the remaining ballots were counted, she managed to take the lead. Washington state runs a vote-by-mail system, which means it can take days to achieve a final count. It wasn’t until the following Tuesday that Orion conceded.In 2013, Sawant unseated the 16-year incumbent Richard Conlin, a Democrat, to become the first socialist on the Seattle council in nearly a century. Since then, she has helped to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and provide renters with more rights.From the beginning she has been a fierce critic of big business and its influence on Seattle.Last year, she drew national headlines through her push for the controversial head tax, a per-employee tax on large corporations. Amazon has about 45,000 workers in Seattle, so it would have potentially had to pay millions each year through the tax. The funds would have been used for housing for the homeless, but was repealed one month after passing unanimously.Now that she has been re-elected, Sawant says one key priority will be to push again for this type of tax. She says she believes it’s possible as long as she builds up an even more powerful movement.Sawant has long been viewed as one of the area’s more controversial politicians. One key complaint has been about her ability to collaborate and work with fellow council members in order to get policy enacted. As one editorial published last month in the Seattle Times put it, “The Socialist Alternative rabble rouser – or should I say champion of the common people – has shown herself not especially interested in comity and compromise.” Kshama Sawant speaks to her supporters, 5 November 2019, at the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center, in Seattle. Photograph: Genna Martin/APSawant said she believes in being cordial and building unity with other elected officials, but ultimately her job is to represent the interests of the working people.“When they say that, ‘Oh we don’t have a good working relationship,’ what they are actually saying is that I am not accountable to them, I’m accountable to the movement,” said Sawant. “But that’s not something I hide, that’s not something I’m planning to change and I’m proud of that because that is the only winning strategy.”In her upcoming term, two of her key priorities will be on pushing for a tax on big business, and rent control, something she has been advocating for since she was first elected. In September, she introduced a proposal that would limit rent increases to the rate of inflation.When she kicks off her new office term, she will now be the most senior member of the city council. But if anyone thinks that’s going to have any impact on how she governs, you would be sorely mistaken.“Just because I’m technically senior, that doesn’t mean that I’m now suddenly going to lead the establishment wing of the council,” she says. “I am still going to be 100% loyal to the movement that I am a part of and continue to use my office to build that struggle even more strongly that we already have.”

This "opioid" thing keeps cycling between "Let people dying in agony from terminal cancer suffer, because God Forbid they might get addicted" and "Give the pills out freely, the more the merrier, whoopee!!!"Now, it's swung more to the "Suffering from intractable pain? Tough cookies, suck it up, buttercup, we won't let you have anything stronger than Tylenol" side.It seems weird that there's enough money in it for bribery to pay off; opioids (the old standard ones, anyway) are pretty dang cheap.It is a class of drugs you have to be really careful with. People react differently to them. Some (like me and my wife) it just helps with pain, and we have no motivation to take them otherwise. Some, like my Grandmother, it makes feel unpleasantly groggy and doped up. Some get sick and just can't take them.And some... it's "Oh, wow, WHERE have you BEEN all my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Those people probably can't take them, at least, not without extreme care. (Thinking about a story told by a cartoonist who took Lortabs after shoulder surgery; got hooked almost immediately, painfully got off them as soon as he found out he was hooked, but had serious cravings for them for a year afterwards.)That's not even getting into the ultra-scary high-potency synthetics like Fentynl, and the even stronger ones.But pending some new class of drugs that relieve pain by a different mechanism that doesn't risk addiction ... What's the alternative?

The unprecedented landslide victory of the pro-democracy camp in the Hong Kong district council election was a “slap on the cheek” for the city’s government but the violent protests that have roiled the city for nearly six months will not stop if authorities continue to ignore citizens’ political demands, analysts have said.In an effective proxy referendum on the city’s pro-democracy movement, nearly 3 million people voted, representing more than 71% of the electorate and nearly half of Hong Kong’s population.Protesters had agreed on social media to pause their actions, creating the first teargas-free weekend since mid-August, to record the largest democratic participation that Hong Kong has ever seen, both in absolute numbers and in turnout rates.Pro-democracy politicians took control of nearly all of the city’s 18 district councils in what analysts said was a unanimous vote of no confidence in the government.Joseph Cheng, retired political science professor at the City University of Hong Kong, said Hong Kong people had seized the opportunity to express their dissatisfaction in the government and wanted to put pressure on the government to respond to their political demands.“They have not given up on their support for the pro-democracy camp and the protesters,” Cheng said. “This is a slap on the cheek for Carrie Lam’s administration who insisted that the silent majority was supporting the government.”Cheng warned that if the government failed to respond, protests would not die down. “To simply suppress will not return society to normality. Carrie Lam does not have the policy to allow us to return to normality,” he said.Cheng said the large numbers of arrests after the intense, violent conflicts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Polytechnic University in recent weeks had dented the increasingly radical anti-government movement but protests would continue if the government failed to address political demands.“The ball is in the government’s court,” he said. “But the government has this attitude that I can’t satisfy your demands and I can’t accept pressure from you. I think Beijing will continue to adopt a hardline stance and will not make concessions - they know that ultimately, Hong Kong people want democracy and they just won’t give it.”Victoria Hui, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, said she hoped that Beijing would listen to “the loud and clear voices of Hong Kong people” but given that it has not responded to their political demands before, she was not optimistic.“They may even take the opposite lesson that they have to rein in the district councils more by changing the rules of the games next time. If they do, Hong Kong will only become even more ungovernable than now,” she said.“Hong Kong people would opt for the ballots any time; but if denied that, they will risk confronting the police’s bullets,” she said. “Protests will continue unless their demands are met … if they are not heeded, there will be more troubles.”Ivan Choy, a senior lecturer on electoral politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, also noted that if the government continued to refuse to seek political resolution to solve the crisis, there would be a fresh round of public anger and confrontation. He said the peaceful state of the past weekend was “fragile” and temporary.“My concern is that they will ignore the public opinion and this will spark anger and increase the confrontational sentiments,” Choy said.Kenneth Chan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the victory of the pro-democracy movement could be seen as a window of opportunity to find a way out of the political impasse and “may as well be a turning point if [the Beijing and Hong Kong governments] gracefully accept the verdict of the people”.But he said the government could also “ignore the political meanings of the results altogether” and “that will certainly provoke strong reactions which lead to a new round of street battles between the police and the protesters”.“In any case, the first response from Carrie Lam is going to determine where Hong Kong is turning to, or still stuck in a gridlock and even new rounds of street level confrontation,” he said.Cheng said the landslide victory would help lay the foundation for the 2020 legislative council elections, because the pro-democracy camp will have more resources for political campaigns after grabbing district election seats.Johnny Lau, a commentator on Chinese politics, said Beijing may make strategic adjustments to minimise sparking more negative public reactions and would continue to blame foreign meddling in local politics. But as it made clear in its Hong Kong policies announced in the Communist party’s Fourth Plenum, it would tighten up its governance of Hong Kong through stepped-up control of its government and the police.It has also pledged to empower security agencies to enforce Chinese sovereignty in the city, and to intensify patriotic education, especially among young people and school children. It may also limit the powers of the local district councils now that they are dominated by democrats, Lau said. Topics Hong Kong China Asia Pacific analysis

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to the FBI and to the special counsel’s office on five different matters after entering an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors, Robert Mueller alleged in a court filing on Friday.Manafort tried to hide the fact that he had contact with “an administration official” inside the White House as late as May 2018, according to Mueller’s filing, which was partially redacted and did not specify what Manafort had discussed with the White House.Manafort was convicted earlier this year of eight felony fraud charges and is fighting additional charges relating to his former career as a political consultant in the Soviet bloc – work that overlapped with his time as chairman of the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016.Former campaign officials and Trump aides are simultaneously under pressure from Mueller, who is investigating alleged collusion between the campaign and Russian operatives in the run-up to the election.Separately on Friday, Mueller filed a memorandum describing how the former Trump aide Michael Cohen had cooperated with his office in describing his own contacts with White House officials on matters close to the “core” Mueller investigation.“Manafort told multiple discernible lies – these were not instances of mere memory lapses,” Mueller said in his Friday submission to the court, citing “independent documentary and testimonial evidence” as well as electronic records obtained from Manafort.Mueller alleged that Manafort also lied about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former business partner in Ukraine; about Kilimnick’s participation in an alleged conspiracy to tailor the testimony of two witnesses; about a wire transfer to a firm working for Manafort; and about information pertinent to another justice department investigation, the details of which were undisclosed.Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters the filing said “absolutely nothing about the president” and “even less about collusion”. Portions of the filing were redacted.In sum, Manafort sat for 12 meetings with special counsel, including three prior to the plea agreement, Mueller said. He has testified twice before a federal grand jury.Mueller submitted the document to explain why a cooperation agreement with Manafort reached in September had fallen apart. Manafort denies lying to Mueller, but both sides have requested that the court not delay sentencing Manafort on multiple fraud convictions.Manafort was chairman of the Trump campaign for five months in the spring of 2016, a period Mueller has scrutinized closely. The special counsel is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians tampering in the presidential election.Manafort, 69, was convicted in August of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to report a foreign bank account. The charges carry a maximum sentence of decades in prison. Topics Paul Manafort Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Russia Trump administration Michael Cohen news

Congress is back — meaning Senate Republicans are going to have to start answering pointed questions about where they stand on impeachment. While it’s pretty unlikely enough Republican senators will actually vote to convict President Donald Trump if articles of impeachment are brought against him, members who represent swing states, such as Susan Collins, might feel pressure to defect due to pushback from their constituents. Others, like Mitt Romney, have vocalized opposition to the president in the past and are among the most likely to do so again. As Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman writes, it’s possible that a definitive statement from a lawmaker like Romney could be the “pressure point” to embolden other Republicans to confront Trump on impeachment. Thus far, the Senate Republican response to a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been mixed. According to a Washington Post analysis, roughly 15 Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns or pushed for more information about Trump’s call asking Zelensky for help investigating Hunter Biden, the son of his 2020 rival Joe Biden. Several Republicans have also spoken out in response to Trump pressuring the Chinese government to investigate Hunter Biden, comments the president made publicly to the press.The other 38 Republicans, meanwhile, have sought to undercut the whistleblower’s credibility and thrown their backing behind the president. No Republican senators have gone so far as to express support for the impeachment inquiry. In order for the Senate to convict the president of charges, 20 Senate Republicans would have to join with the 47-member Democratic caucus in order to reach the 67-person supermajority threshold that’s needed. Still, any breaks within the Republican conference don’t look great for Trump and help give Democrats further ammunition to use against him in the 2020 election. Trump himself is counting on Republican senators’ support, reportedly calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at frequent intervals to stress the need for GOP unity.For now, the Republicans facing the most pressure — particularly those up for reelection in 2020 — are broadly saying they need more “facts” before they can take a conclusive stance on Trump’s calls for foreign help. Their responses offer a way to dodge questions about his behavior while maintaining some semblance of accountability. With new information coming out seemingly every day and with Congress in session once more, here are a slew of lawmakers we’re watching and what they’ve said on the subject so far: Romney, an on-again, off-again, critic of the president, has offered some of the strongest rebukes of Trump’s comments about China and Ukraine: “When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated.” By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019 He’s declined to comment more directly on the impeachment inquiry, however: “I haven’t spoken with any other Republican senator about the impeachment process, either in person or by email or text. I haven’t discussed that with anybody.” (The Salt Lake Tribune)Collins is among the most vulnerable Republicans this cycle and will need to win over a hefty number of independents to hang onto her seat. She’s criticized Trump’s comments about China:“I thought the president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent. It’s completely inappropriate.” (Bangor Daily News)But she’s declined to take a stand explicitly on the impeachment inquiry, citing her role as a potential juror: “If there are articles of impeachment I would be a juror just as I was in the trial for President Clinton, and as a juror I think it’s inappropriate for me to reach conclusions about evidence or to comment on the proceedings in the House.” (Bloomberg)Sasse, a one-time Trump critic who’s since earned the president’s endorsement ahead of a reelection fight in 2020, has slammed the president’s comments about China: “Hold up: Americans don’t look to Chinese commies for the truth. If the Biden kid broke laws by selling his name to Beijing, that’s a matter for American courts, not communist tyrants running torture camps.” (Omaha World-Herald)When it comes to the impeachment inquiry, Sasse is focused on rounding up more information: “I’m glad the President agreed with the requests a number of us have been making that the administration release this unredacted transcript. The President should also provide all additional relevant materials to the Committee. At a time when foreign powers work every day to exploit our divisions, it’s important for public trust that Americans know what did and did not happen here. We need shared facts. As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence fulfills its oversight responsibilities, this first release is the right choice for the country.” (Sasse press statement)Ernst, a senator who’s fighting to keep her seat in a swing state, dodged questions about Trump’s Ukraine call during the recess: “I don’t know that we have that information in front of us.” (Associated Press)She’s argued, however, that the whistleblower should be shielded from potential retaliation: “Whistleblowers should be protected.” (The Washington Post)Murkowski, a Republican who’s broken with Trump in the past on Kavanaugh and the Affordable Care Act, has pushed for more information about the allegations raised against Trump: “What I find equally troubling is that even before there has been any considered review, that people have decided. There is either ‘absolutely, you must get rid of him tomorrow’ viewpoint or ‘he must stay in and no questions asked.’” “I’m also trying to think to myself, if this set of facts were to be in front of me and the president was President Hillary Clinton as opposed to President Donald Trump, would I be viewing this in a different way? Because if I do, that’s wrong. I shouldn’t view whether what is right and what is wrong based on the political affiliation of the individual that we are considering.” (The Hill) A Murkowski spokesperson has previously said that the senator will work on informing herself while the House conducts its impeachment inquiry: “In terms of the formal impeachment inquiry —that lies in the House of Representatives. Right now the Senate doesn’t have a part in this until the House reviews and they act. Until the point the Senate has a role in this, Senator Murkowski will wait to see the process play out in the House. Separately, she’s doing all she can to make sure she’s informed on the current allegations and will review the full transcript from the phone call in question when it’s released.” (KTUU News)While McSally was pretty critical of an impeachment inquiry when it was first announced, calling it a “distraction,” she’s since shifted her tone quite a bit. Facing a tough election in 2020, she recently refrained from taking a decisive position on the inquiry: “This a serious matter, like I’ve said, and I think we’ve seen some partisan dynamics going on. And I think as Americans, none of us should be throwing around the ‘I-word’ as if it’s a joke. “I think people want us to take a serious look at this and not have it be just partisan bickering going on.” (Talking Points Memo) “I am going to, when information is presented to me that’s been investigated by people who are not being partisan, we will share and be in our role going forward.” (Arizona Republic) Gardner, a vulnerable senator who’s up for reelection in 2020, evaded questions over the recess about Trump’s requests for foreign government interference: “It’s an answer that you get from a very serious investigation.” (Associated Press)Meanwhile, Gardner has criticized the impeachment inquiry as a partisan effort: “I joined my Senate colleagues in unanimously supporting the release of the whistleblower report, and I support the Senate Intelligence Committee’s on-going bipartisan review to gather all of the facts. Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry to appease the far-left isn’t something the majority of Americans support and will sharply divide the country.” (CPR News)Alexander, a lawmaker who’s retiring from his seat, has called Trump’s conduct “inappropriate” but notes that he sees impeachment as a “mistake”:“It’s inappropriate for the president to be talking with foreign governments about investigating his political opponents, but impeachment would be a mistake. An election, which is just around the corner, is the right way to decide who should be president. Impeachment has never removed a president. It will only divide the country further.” (WREG News)Vox’s Andrew Prokop explains why the White House is now refusing to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Ezra Klein scrutinizes the Republican strategy.Looking for a quick way to keep up with the never-ending news cycle? Host Sean Rameswaram will guide you through the most important stories at the end of each day.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.