In a striking rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected his plan to repeal the popular Obama-era order that protected so-called Dreamers, the approximately 700,000 young immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children.Led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court called the decision to cancel the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, arbitrary and not justified. The program allows these young people to register with the government and, if they have a clean criminal record, to obtain a work permit and be assured they will not be deported. At least 27,000 DACA participants are employed as healthcare workers. Trump had been confident that the high court, with its majority of Republican appointees, would rule in his favor and say the chief executive had the power to “unwind” the policy.But the chief justice joined with the four liberals on the court to rule that Trump and his administration had failed to give an explanation for why it was repealing a popular and widely lauded program. 1/12 Claudia Rueda cries while talking about the Supreme Court decision at a protest outside Los Angeles Police Department headquarters. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) 2/12 Edwin Soto Saucedo embraces friend and fellow DACA recipient Karla Estrada. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) 3/12 Denea Joseph talks about the Supreme Court ruling in downtown Los Angeles. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) 4/12 Outside the U.S. Supreme Court building. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) 5/12 DACA recipient Edwin Soto Saucedo at a protest in downtown Los Angeles. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) 6/12 A rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court building. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) 7/12 A celebratory car caravan around MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 8/12 A celebration around MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 9/12 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient Roberto Martinez celebrates in front of the Supreme Court. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press ) 10/12 “Dreamers” and their supporters stage a celebratory car caravan around MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 11/12 Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) celebrates with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and supporters outside the Supreme Court building. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press) 12/12 A celebration at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) The justices did not conclude that Trump’s repeal violated the Constitution or exceeded his authority under immigration law. Instead, the majority blocked the action on the grounds that Trump’s team had failed to explain its rationale as required by the Administrative Procedure Act. Adopted in the 1940s in response to the New Deal and the massive growth of government, the act requires officials to explain and justify abrupt changes in regulatory rules. The decision made for an unusually bad week for Trump and conservatives. On Monday, the court rejected the Trump administration’s position that a 1964 civil rights law should not protect LGBTQ workers from discrimination, and separately it sided with California in a legal battle over so-called sanctuary laws protecting immigrants. The justices also turned down a series of appeals urging the court to expand gun rights. Until this week, conservatives had been confident that they had a lock on the high court with Trump’s two court appointees — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh. But Gorsuch wrote Monday’s 6-3 opinion upholding civil rights for LGBTQ employees. And Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, has now joined the liberals to knock down one of Trump’s signature immigration initiatives. “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?” Trump tweeted Thursday.Trump dismissed the ruling as “highly political” and “seemingly not based on the law,” and used it as an opportunity to campaign for his reelection. “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives.” He said it underscored the need to appoint more conservatives to the Supreme Court and repeated his promise to only appoint future justices from a list of candidates hand-picked and vetted by conservative groups.The fight over DACA already promised to play big in the 2020 election, with presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign emphasizing his commitment to providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers as it seeks to mobilize Latino voters in key battleground states such as Arizona.“The Supreme Court’s ruling today is a victory made possible by the courage and resilience of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who bravely stood up and refused to be ignored,” Biden said in a statement. “As president, I will immediately work to make it permanent by sending a bill to Congress on day one of my administration.”Democratic leaders said Thursday that they believe the court’s decision — and Trump’s reaction to it — will motivate Latino voters even more.“If Donald Trump wins in November, he will end DACA,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, in a call with reporters. “For every voter who cares about Dreamers, please understand this: The future of Dreamers depends 100% on the outcome of the November election …. We can’t lift our foot off the gas, and we won’t.”The DACA case, whose outcome affects the lives and careers of hundreds of thousands of young people, is the most far-reaching immigration dispute to reach the high court during Trump’s tenure.The decision, in Department of Homeland Security vs. Regents of the University of California, is similar to last year’s ruling that blocked Trump’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.On Thursday, Roberts spoke for the same 5-4 majority, and his opinion follows similar reasoning. The chief justice said Trump’s Homeland Security Department did not put forth a valid reason for revoking the DACA program, just as he said Trump’s Commerce Department did not provide a valid reason for adding the citizenship question.“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Roberts wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what, if anything, to do about the hardship to DACA recipients. That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner.”Legal experts said the administration has only itself to blame for the loss. “It’s not that Chief Justice Roberts is a closet progressive. He’s not. It’s that the Trump administration is really bad at administrative law,” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, tweeted.Usually, the chief justice and the court’s conservatives argue for deferring to the federal government on regulatory matters, particularly in an area like immigration. Two years ago, for example, the chief justice wrote a 5-4 opinion deferring to Trump and upholding his travel ban on foreign visitors and immigrants.But such deference requires the justices to have confidence in the decision-making process within the government. Thursday’s decision is the latest sign that Roberts, who spent much of January presiding over Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, may be growing increasingly skeptical about decisions that come out of the Trump administration. The court ordered that the DACA case be remanded so that the Homeland Security Department could better explain its actions. Meanwhile, DACA will remain in effect. While the administration could now devise a new explanation, there is little or no chance a second attempt to end DACA would win approval from the courts this year.Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined in the decision. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Gorsuch and Kavanaugh voted to uphold Trump’s plan. The decision is likely to prove popular with the American public. Opinion polls over the past year have found that three-fourths of Americans believe the Dreamers should be granted a permanent status and allowed to become citizens. Both Republicans and Democrats have voiced support for them.The ruling also likely closes the door on any action in Congress this year to resolve the issue. Trump had hoped that, if he won, he would have been able to use the decision as leverage against Democrats by offering to assist the Dreamers in exchange for new restrictions on legal immigration. Democrats had already rejected such a deal. Now they’re likely to wait until next year, when they hope to have increased their numbers in Congress after the November election.California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra celebrated the outcome. “Ending DACA would have been cruel to the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who call America home, and it would have been bad for our nation’s health. Today we prevailed on behalf of every Dreamer who has worked hard to help build our country — our neighbors, teachers, doctors and first responders.” President Obama extended relief to these young people in 2012 because he said they had done nothing wrong. They had been brought to this country by their parents as children, had grown up here and started families and careers. It made no sense, he said, for the government to target them for deportation. Although Trump lauded the Dreamers during his 2016 campaign, his administration took a hard line on immigration from the start and announced in 2017 the DACA program would be ended. It was not clear why the program was being ended, other than that then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions believed it was illegal. The announcement triggered a long legal battle in the courts that began in California.University of California President Janet Napolitano, who launched the DACA program when she was Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in federal court in San Francisco along with Becerra. They argued that the administration had not put forth a valid reason for terminating the popular program.U.S. District Judge William Alsup agreed in January 2018 and handed down a nationwide order that put the repeal on hold. The Trump administration had acted based on “a flawed legal premise,” he said, adding that “DACA was and remains a valid legal exercise” by immigration officials. The administration appealed, but in November 2018, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court upheld the judge’s order in a 3-0 decision. The Supreme Court refused to intervene for a time but last year agreed to hear the government’s appeal, along with parallel cases from New York and Washington, D.C.Times staff writer Evan Halper in Washington contributed to this report.

In a striking rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected his plan to repeal the popular Obama-era order that protected so-called Dreamers, the nearly 800,000 young immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children.Led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court called the decision to cancel the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, arbitrary and not justified. The program allows these young people to register with the government, and if they have clean records, to obtain a work permit. At least 27,000 of these DACA recipients are employed as healthcare workers. Trump had been confident that high court with its majority of Republican appointees would rule in his favor and say the chief executive had the power to “unwind” the policy.The decision follows several other defeats this week for Trump. On Monday the court rejected the Trump administration’s position that a 1964 civil rights law should not protect LGBTQ workers from discrimination, and separately it sided with California in a legal battle over so-called sanctuary laws.The DACA case was perhaps the year’s biggest immigration dispute at the high court.Today’s decision is similar to last year’s ruling that blocked Trump’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.On Monday, Roberts spoke for the same 5-4 majority, and his opinion follows the same reasoning. The chief justice said Trump’s Homeland Security officials did not put forth a valid reason for revoking the DACA program, just as he said it did not provide a valid reason for adding the citizenship question.“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Roberts wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what, if anything, to do about the hardship to DACA recipients. That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner. The appropriate recourse is therefore to remand to DHS so that it may consider the problem anew.”It is a remarkable turn of events for Roberts and the court. Two years ago, the chief justice wrote a 5-4 opinion deferring to Trump and upholding his travel ban on foreign visitors and immigrants. Now he has switched sides in several momentous cases and blocked Trump’s action as unwarranted and unjustified.Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh all voted to uphold Trump’s plan. The decision is likely to prove popular with the American public. Opinion polls over the past year have found that three-fourths of Americans believe the Dreamers should be granted a permanent status and allowed to become citizens. Both Republicans and Democrats have voiced support for them.The ruling also likely closes the door on any action in Congress this year to resolve the issue. Trump had hoped that if he won, he would have been able to use the decision as leverage against Democrats by offering to assist the Dreamers in exchange for new restrictions on legal immigration. Democrats had already rejected such a deal and now are likely to wait until next year, when they hope to have increased their numbers in Congress after the November election.California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra celebrated the outcome. “Ending DACA would have been cruel to the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who call America home, and it would have been bad for our nation’s health. Today we prevailed on behalf of every Dreamer who has worked hard to help build our country—our neighbors, teachers, doctors, and first responders.” The Obama administration announced the DACA policy in 2012 and said the government had no interest in arresting and deporting young people who were working in this country, contributing to their communities and obeying the laws. The order allowed them to register with the government, and if they had a clean record, to obtain a work permit.The policy proved to be popular with Republicans as well as Democrats, and it went largely unchallenged until 2017 when Trump’s Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, a hardliner on immigration, decreed the policy of “deferred” enforcement was unconstitutional and should be revoked.President Obama relied on his executive authority over enforcement policy when he announced the DACA policy in 2012. Obama said he wanted federal agents to pursue criminals, drug traffickers and smugglers, but “defer action” against those who had done nothing wrong and were contributing to their communities and the nation. At the time, Obama was urging Congress to adopt an immigration reform law, but those hopes were dashed in 2013 when House Republicans blocked a broad reform measure that passed by a large bipartisan majority in the Senate.Several months after taking office, Trump and his homeland security advisors announced they planned to “wind down” the DACA program. They did so based on an opinion from then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions that Obama’s policy was illegal. University of California President Janet Napolitano, who launched the DACA program when she was Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in federal court in San Francisco along with California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra. They argued that Trump’s lawyers had not put forth a valid reason for terminating the popular program.U.S. District Judge William Alsup agreed in January 2018 and handed down a nationwide order that put the repeal on hold. Trump’s lawyers had acted based on “a flawed legal premise,” he said, adding that “DACA was and remains a valid legal exercise” by immigration officials. The administration appealed, but in November 2018, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court upheld the judge’s order in a 3-0 decision. The Supreme Court refused to intervene for a time, but agreed last year to hear the government’s appeal in U.S. Department of Homeland Security vs. Regents of the University of California, along with parallel cases from New York and Washington, D.C..

A woman who grabbed a “Make America Great Again” hat off a man’s head in a Massachusetts restaurant is facing deportation after being arrested at the scene, but her immigration lawyer says she is in the US legally.Rosiane Santos was charged with assault and battery for grabbing Bryton Turner’s hat bearing Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, while in a Mexican restaurant in the coastal town of Falmouth on 15 February. She was required to appear in court and pleaded not guilty.Turner recorded the encounter at the Casa Vallarta restaurant and posted it online. The 41-year-old Santos was taken into custody on Tuesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and released pending removal proceedings. Ice says the Brazil native is in the US illegally.Immigration attorney Katarina Kozakova says Santos married a US citizen and has applied for a green card.Turner said that he “never would’ve assumed she was illegal” but that “now she has to suffer the consequences”.“We filed for a green card in November,” Kozakova, who works for Joyce & Associates, told the Cape Cod Times. “It is still pending, so she is in an authorized state.”Santos has driving infractions on her record since obtaining her Massachusetts driving license in 1996, but “has never been convicted of anything that would jeopardize a green card”, according to Kozakova.According to the police report, she told officers she objected to the man eating in a Mexican restaurant while wearing the hat with the Trump election campaign slogan, which is widely associated with the president’s anti-immigration rhetoric and hardline policies. Police said she was “highly intoxicated” and uncooperative during her arrest. Topics Massachusetts US immigration news

For more than a decade, faith leaders from black and brown communities have come to Congress with the same request: spend more money on local strategies to prevent gun violence.Now, the New Jersey senator Cory Booker is introducing legislation that would devote $90m a year to programs that prevent urban gun violence.Booker’s new grant program would focus federal dollars on helping the cities with the highest gun homicide rates, and it would prioritize funding for strategies that do not contribute to mass incarceration.Instead of simply directing more federal money to local law enforcement, the new legislation would require cities to give at least half of their federal grant dollars to community organizations that provide services to high-risk people, or to a public department “that is not a law enforcement agency”.Booker’s bill does not include any gun control provisions: it’s focused on strategies that prevent shootings by focusing on the people, not the guns.“We’re in a tough political climate,” said Pastor Michael McBride, a California-based activist who has spent the last decade campaigning for more resources for local gun violence prevention. “This approach charts a way forward that does not bog us down in these intense debates over the second amendment or gun control.”Booker’s legislation is designed to fund programs that have shown success in reducing gun violence in cities such as Oakland and Richmond, California; Boston, Massachusetts; and New York City. The legislation would devote $90m a year over 10 years to evidence-based approaches to gun violence reduction.In the past decade, as they have invested public dollars into expanding community-based strategies, Oakland has seen a 44% decrease in its gun homicide rate, and nearby Richmond has seen a 67% decrease in its gun homicide rate.The decreases in Oakland, Richmond, and San Francisco have driven a 30% decrease in the overall gun homicide rate across the greater San Francisco Bay Area, even as the number of people living in poverty in the region has increased, and as property crime has spiked in some areas. The decrease in the area is much larger than in the nation overall.The successful local strategies highlighted in Booker’s legislation include investing in street outreach workers or “violence interrupters”, trusted community members who intervene in local gang conflicts to keep violence from spreading; funding intervention programs in hospitals to help shooting victims change their lives; and supporting “group violence intervention” strategies, such as Boston’s Operation Ceasefire, that bring together law enforcement, community partners, and faith leaders to intervene with the small number of men in each city who are most likely to shoot or be shot.Booker’s Break the Cycle of Violence Act is co-sponsored by the US representative Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat whose father was shot to death during a robbery when he was 19.“These deaths are preventable,” Horsford said in a statement.Mass shootings are usually the focus of America’s gun control debate. But the majority of America’s gun homicide victims are killed in smaller daily shootings in neighborhoods that have struggled with gun violence for decades.Black men and boys, who make up just 6% of America’s overall population, represent more than 50% of the country’s gun homicide victims.A 2015 Guardian investigation found that half of the country’s gun homicides were concentrated in just 127 cities and towns. Experts have argued for years that American gun violence is highly concentrated, and that one of the best ways to save lives is to devote more resources into the neighborhoods with the greatest need.Black and brown activists have often felt “invisible” and “erased” from the American gun control debate, McBride said.“Our communities are used as props, but never really given serious consideration on how to scale up strategies that save our lives and heal our communities,” he said.The new legislation focuses resources on the majority of America’s gun violence victims – and it also focuses on solutions that are less politically controversial than gun control laws, McBride said.“We think Republicans, historically, have been huge supporters of these kinds of strategies, because of the role that faith communities and redemption and healing play,” he said. Topics US gun control Guns and lies Gun crime Cory Booker news

The White House sought to freeze aid to Ukraine just 91 minutes after President Trump spoke to President Volodymyr Zelensky by phone in July, a newly-released government email has revealed.The email, telling the Pentagon to "hold off", was sent by a senior White House official.In the phone call, Mr Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to investigate his political rival, Democrat Joe Biden.Mr Trump has been impeached for abuse of power over the issue.Democrats say the phone call shows Mr Trump used the office for personal political gain.A US whistleblower who heard about the conversation raised concerns, which ultimately triggered the impeachment inquiry. What does it take to impeach a president? Trump impeachment: A very simple guide How Ukraine story unfolded Mr Trump was formally impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday, but is unlikely to be removed from office as the case will go to trial in the US Senate, where his Republican party has a majority.The newly-released email was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity following a court order in a freedom of information case. It shows that a senior White House official, Mike Duffey, contacted senior defence officials about withholding Ukraine's aid just over an hour-and-a-half after Mr Trump ended a 25 July call with President Zelensky.A rough transcript of that call was declassified by the White House following a whistleblower complaint it was being covered-up. The transcript shows Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky to "do us a favour" and investigate Joe Biden, currently a frontrunner to be the Democratic candidate in the 2020 White House race, and his son Hunter Biden, who had previously worked for a Ukrainian energy company.In the email Mr Duffey asks that the Department of Defense "hold off" on providing aid following the administration's plan to review."Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute direction," the email reads.Rachel Semmel, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, dismissed the characterisation of the email in a statement to US media on Sunday."It's reckless to tie the hold of funds to the phone call. As has been established and publicly reported, the hold was announced in an interagency meeting on July 18," CNN quoted her as saying. "To pull a line out of one email and fail to address the context is misleading and inaccurate."Meanwhile the top Democrat in the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, said the email proved the need for new witnesses and evidence at President Trump's impeachment trial. "If there was ever an argument that we need Mr Duffey to come and testify, this is that information. This email is explosive," Mr Schumer said. "A top administration official, one that we requested, is saying, stop the aid 90 minutes after Trump called Zelensky and said keep it hush, hush. What more do you need to request a witness?" A US state divided by impeachment How will Senate trial work? "Until we hear from the witnesses, until we get the documents, the American people will correctly assume that those blocking their testimony were aiding and abetting a cover up, plain and simple," Mr Schumer added."So I'll close by saying this: President Trump, release the emails, let the witnesses testify, what are you afraid of?"The start date of the trial is in doubt, as partisan wrangling between the parties continues.Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader who will determine the terms of the trial, wants the case to be considered without testimony.But Democrats say new witnesses should be heard in the Senate, including at least four current and former White House aides with knowledge of the Ukraine affair.They want Mr McConnell to clarify whose testimony will be allowed.Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, has postponed sending the impeachment charges to the Senate until the rules of the Senate trial are acceptable to her party.Mr Trump tweeted on Sunday that the Democrats' case in the "impeachment hoax" was "dead" and called Ms Pelosi "crazy Nancy".Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the 100-seat chamber, making a conviction - which requires a two-thirds vote - extremely unlikely. A SIMPLE GUIDE: If you want a basic take, this one's for you GO DEEPER: Here's a 100, 300 and 800-word summary of the story A STATE DIVIDED: What New Hampshire makes of it YOUR QUESTIONS: Will Trump really testify? HISTORY: Can an impeached president remain popular? CASE FOR & AGAINST: What legal scholars say about Trump conduct WHAT'S IMPEACHMENT? A political process to remove a president

Democrat Cory Booker says he will run for president in the 2020 election, joining a crowded field of candidates seeking the party's nomination.The New Jersey senator, 49, was elected in 2013 after serving as mayor of the state's largest city, Newark.He has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, slamming his administration's policies on issues such as immigration and climate change.Mr Booker has long been touted as a rising star of the Democratic Party.As Mr Booker aims to become the nation's second black president, his campaign launch falls on the first day of US Black History Month. He has offered his first three interviews post-launch to radio programmes with black and Latino hosts, the New York Times reported.Mr Booker's video announcement, entitled We Will Rise, focused on the emotions of America's civil rights movement, calling on the country to find a "common purpose".Building on themes of community and sacrifice, he notes in his campaign video that he is the only senator who lives in a low-income, inner-city neighbourhood.But Mr Booker will face tough competition in the party's primary, with a number of hotly-tipped candidates having already announced their intentions to run.Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard and Julian Castro will all contest the Democratic nomination.It is the first time that more than one woman has competed for the party's candidacy.Speaking on ABC's The View programme shortly after his reveal, Mr Booker described the upcoming battle with other Democrats for the nomination as just "sibling rivalry".He emphasised that his campaign would focus on unity, saying: "This is a time when too many people are trying to pit people against each other."Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican and former presidential candidate, told CNBC he liked Mr Booker personally, but it was "too early to figure out" if he was a frontrunner.The first black senator from New Jersey, Mr Booker grew up in Harrington Park, a mainly white, suburban town in the state.He played for his high school football team before going on to attend a number of top universities, including Stanford, Oxford and eventually Yale Law School.After graduating, he moved to Newark to set up a non-profit organisation providing legal aid to poor families in difficult circumstances. Which Democrats are running in 2020? The lessons Democrats can learn for 2020 Who will lead the left? In the run up to his 2006 landslide election as mayor, he lived in a notorious housing project in the city and featured in a film that documented his campaign as a young, black, politician. He was elected to Congress in 2013 by a significant margin, and became the second black member of the Senate at the time.Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC NewsWe've reached the point in the presidential pool party where candidates are no longer dipping their toes in the water, they're shouting "cannonball" and hurling themselves in.On Friday Cory Booker rolled out an inspirational-style video and will be hitting the road in Iowa and South Carolina, starting what he hopes is the long journey to the Democratic nomination.It will be hard to find a more gifted orator in the 2020 Democratic field than the New Jersey senator. He prowls the stage with a restless energy. His sentences are grandiose; he emotes every word.If the presidential race were a declamation contest, Mr Booker would head the pack. And even though it's not, he still has a number of advantages. His proximity to New York has made him a prodigious fund-raiser. His background reflects the diversity of the modern Democratic Party. His time as mayor of blue-collar Newark gives him a grounding to the plight of the underprivileged.Many on the left don't trust him, however. They view his big-money ties as a liability and haven't forgotten his 2012 defence of Republican Mitt Romney's venture-capital background.In a crowded field, Mr Booker will be pressed to convince Democratic voters he's the one to take them to the promised land. His silver tongue will get quite a workout.As a bachelor, Senator Booker has often faced questions about his sexuality from political opponents and journalists.At university with Cory BookerLast year, when asked about the speculation on the subject, he told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he is heterosexual."Every candidate should run on their authentic self, tell their truth, and more importantly, or most importantly, talk about their vision for the country," he said.If elected, Mr Booker would become the first unmarried president since Grover Cleveland was elected in 1885.He also regularly posts about his vegan diet and his exercise routine on social media.Mr Booker has called for reform of the criminal justice system, affordable healthcare and the legalisation of marijuana. He is a progressive on social issues, supporting gun control, same-sex marriage, and he has previously tabled a bill that would outlaw "gay cure" therapy. In a recent speech in Iowa, he spoke about gender equality and criticised President Trump's record on women's rights."We're not defined by a president who does not believe women," he said. "We're going to be defined when this state not only says that we believe women, but we elect women."Mr Booker released classified documents relating to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh last year and vehemently opposed his nomination, stating that supporters were "complicit in evil".His progressive views - and open criticism of the president on social media - has not gone unnoticed. At a rally last October, Mr Trump said Mr Booker "did one of the worst jobs of any mayor" and "destroyed what he did, he was so bad".The president has also targeted him on Twitter, posting in 2016: "If Cory Booker is the future of the Democratic Party, they have no future!"Last year, the senator was among those targeted in a mail-bombing campaign that was aimed at critics of Mr Trump.A suspicious item addressed to him was found at a mail facility in Florida.

Against these attitudes, Pompeo and others sounding alarms about Huawei can be perfunctorily dismissed as protectionists, xenophobes, or military hawks. The American secretary of state has become a particular target of criticism in China, where government officials and the media have described him as a font of “lies and fallacies” and a “Cold War warrior.”Yet the West has ample reason for caution about Chinese 5G suppliers. For one, the recent Chinese National Intelligence Law requires these companies to comply with Communist Party demands to turn over data or otherwise engage in snooping or network-disruption activities. Party-backed actors in China’s public and private sectors also have a long record of cyberattacks on the West, including stealing intellectual property from companies and sensitive personal information on citizens.The case against Huawei isn’t just guilt by association. The company itself is suspected of committing blatant corporate espionage: A Justice Department indictment from early 2019 cited highly specific demands by Huawei headquarters in China for information from engineers embedded in T-Mobile’s facility in Bellevue, Washington. An email exchange exposed Huawei’s pressure on employees in the field to steal even guarded equipment and trade secrets; according to the Justice Department, a bonus program offered rewards for the most valuable information stolen. One Huawei employee, the U.S. government alleges, literally walked out the door with a proprietary robotic arm in his bag.And recent revelations about how China’s ruling party exploits the full panoply of personal information it has amassed about its citizens—facial-recognition images, mandatory DNA samples, 24-hour GPS coordinates, and search-history and online-activity tracking, as well as plain old eavesdropping—to quash religious freedom and basic rights should give major pause to Western governments and wireless carriers alike.While Pompeo’s State Department has been pressing its case at one international forum to the next, his message has been met with some skepticism in Europe. Simply to acknowledge 5G as a security threat invites headaches that EU governments and telecom carriers would rather not contemplate. Ripping out Chinese gear would be a massive financial and logistical undertaking.European regulators are used to viewing the American tech industry as a rival, and they bristle today at taking direction from Washington. And despite the fact that two 5G suppliers are European, and EU officials have argued for “technological sovereignty”—a term most reasonably construed to mean technological independence from the United States—member nations have not yet settled on a joint policy.On top of that, the EU single market prides itself on principles of fair competition and an unwillingness to favor or reject a company because of its national origin, especially when its products are competitive, as Huawei’s are, on metrics such as price. The irony in this approach, of course, is that the Chinese state has subsidized efforts by Huawei to undercut its European and South Korean competitors, not least because of the possibility of obtaining geopolitical leverage. The Wall Street Journal estimated recently that as much as $75 billion in state support fueled Huawei’s rise. The failure to see 5G beyond the consumer lens is also a failure to understand Chinese companies as implements of state power as much as private entities in their own right.

Instead of talking about automation, I should have been talking about a pandemic.Harris: These coronavirus closures will put a lot of Americans in financially precarious situations. Does a onetime injection of money help? Or is this something that needs to be continuous?Yang: It would be immensely helpful right now in this time of crisis. I think it should be $1,000 per month of economic lockdown. And the CDC just announced that they’re advising against gatherings of 50-plus [people] for eight weeks. So we should be looking at a minimum of two months at $1,000 per person. But we don’t know if the world’s going to reopen in eight weeks. It’s unclear what data we would have that would enable the CDC or other policy makers to give us the all clear. So it should be $1,000 a month until this crisis is over. And obviously anyone who knows anything about me knows I think it should then just continue in perpetuity.We should do this right now to help keep millions of American families above the waterline. Seventy-eight percent of Americans are already living paycheck to paycheck; almost half can’t afford an unexpected $400 bill—and that was before we shut down hundreds of thousands of businesses, not just bars and restaurants and theaters. If you look at the ripple effect of every canceled sporting event, every canceled conference; hotels are firing people right and left right now. You’re looking at, essentially, a negation of a significant proportion of our economic activity for a month. There’s really no effective way you can try and make workers whole that does not involve putting money into everyone’s hands.And this is one thing I find ridiculous and frustrating when politicians talk about making people whole. It’s like, how do you make a parking attendant who just lost all of his shifts whole? You know, he’s not paying a payroll tax now.Harris: To add to that, the gig economy has always been very insecure. Does providing people with a baseline of money add some security to the system?Yang: I’m for a universal basic income of $1,000 a month in perpetuity for all American adults. I think it’s necessary in the face of how our economy has evolved where the vast majority of new jobs that are getting created are temp, gig, or contract jobs that get disappeared any moment, are precarious, and do not have any benefits attached to them, typically.We should have universal health care for similar reasons. The fact is our employment-based health-care system is purely an accident, based on our experience in World War II, where there were pay caps and companies bolted on health insurance trying to attract workers. And now we’re stuck with this completely messed-up hodgepodge where your insurance is tied to a full-time job that exists for fewer and fewer Americans. Because again, most of the new jobs that are getting created are gig and contract jobs. So these are massive economic and social changes that we just have adapted to in a meaningful way. And this coronavirus crisis is going to be devastating for millions of Americans—socially, economically, physically. But a lot of these vulnerabilities existed prior to the coronavirus highlighting them.

Melissa Godsey credits the medication Suboxone, also known as buprenorphine, for her recovery from a years-long struggle with opioid and meth addiction. As she told me, the medication has let her “live a normal life.”But for a while, the 35-year-old from Seattle feared that she would be cut off from the treatment. This week, Godsey had to turn herself in to serve a two-year sentence in federal prison for identity theft — while she was using, she stole credit cards so she could afford drugs. The feds don’t typically offer medications for opioid addiction in prison, even though studies show the medications are the gold standard for opioid addiction treatment and save lives.With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Godsey got an exemption in a legal settlement with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It’s one of the handful of cases in recent years in which the ACLU was able to push prison officials to offer medications for opioid addiction. But this exemption is still really rare, even as the country is in the middle of a drug overdose crisis linked to nearly 770,000 deaths since 1999.Just Rhode Island and Vermont officially offer all three federally approved opioid addiction medications (buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone) to jail and prison inmates. The 48 other states and the federal government offer them only in limited circumstances or not at all.The lack of adequate treatment in jails and prisons puts a vulnerable population of around 2.3 million people at risk. About 58 percent of people in state prisons and about 63 percent of those sentenced in jails meet the definition for drug dependence or misuse, compared to 5 percent of the general population, according to a 2017 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Yet a 2017 study by Johns Hopkins researchers found that less than 5 percent of people who were referred to opioid use disorder treatment through the justice system received methadone or buprenorphine, compared to nearly 41 percent of people referred through other sources.The result is likely more overdoses and deaths. A 2007 study in The New England Journal of Medicine found ex-inmates’ risk of a fatal overdose is 129 times as high as it is for the general population during the two weeks after release. Other studies have backed up the finding that recently released inmates are at particular risk of overdose. In Rhode Island, a preliminary research letter in 2018 found that the state’s program offering medications for opioid addiction was followed by a more than 60 percent drop in overdose deaths among recently released inmates.But many local and state lawmakers and jail and prison officials remain skeptical. Some of that skepticism is driven by stigma: the view that addiction is a moral failing, not a medical condition, so public resources shouldn’t go to treating it. Stigma toward medications for addiction — like the myth that medications are simply “replacing one drug with another” — is especially prominent. And there are funding and logistical concerns with better addiction treatment programs in jails and prisons, although Rhode Island and Vermont show those issues can be overcome.“We have a population that’s incredibly vulnerable,” Sarah Wakeman, medical director at the Massachusetts General Hospital Substance Use Disorder Initiative, previously told me. “It’s really inexcusable that we don’t make this available for people who are at such risk of death.”Godsey was especially concerned that she would backslide without Suboxone. Since getting on the medication in 2018 through an addiction treatment program, she has been able to start putting her life back together for herself and her kids. (She has custody of three of her four children, who will be cared for by family and friends while she’s in prison.) She plans to go back to school, taking classes while in prison, to get into social work. For the first time in a while, Godsey explained, things feel stable.“My whole life, it feels like my brain is needing something more. I don’t have enough positive cells in my body to make it so I’m normal,” she told me. “When I’m on Suboxone, it caps that effect. Even for meth, for anything. My brain is no longer searching for something else.” Melissa Godsey says Suboxone has been crucial to her recovery, helping her stabilize her mind. Courtesy of the ACLU Godsey had tried to get off buprenorphine before. While staying at housing with Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission, she was told that she had to get off the medication. In the three days that Godsey tried to do that, things rapidly deteriorated.“I had suicidal thoughts and kept wanting to get loaded,” Godsey said.A spokesperson for Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission said in a statement that the program tries to be flexible and avoids a zero-tolerance approach, but doesn’t allow medications for opioid addiction because it’s “an abstinence-based program.” (The idea that getting on medication for opioid addiction isn’t “real” recovery is a harmful but prevalent myth.)Ultimately, Godsey got back on buprenorphine, and she was kicked out of the house. She and three of her kids were forced to live in her dad’s one-bedroom apartment, sleeping on the floor, until she was able to secure an apartment with government aid.Godsey worried that she would go down a similar path if she couldn’t stay on Suboxone in prison. Not only could that lead to suicidal thoughts, she said, but she was concerned it would lead her to mingle with “bad people” in an attempt to get drugs. In other words, it could hurt her attempts toward rehabilitation while incarcerated.With the ACLU’s help, she got a very rare exemption.Although the Supreme Court has found that prisoners are entitled to proper health care, medical services in prison are far from ideal — as jails and prisons avoid paying too much for even lifesaving interventions to reduce expenses. But things appear to be particularly bad when it comes to addiction treatment, a space in which jails and prisons don’t even act like they’re providing adequate care.Separately, Michigan plans to offer the three medications in all state prisons by 2023, and Maryland plans to do so in all its local jails by then as well. Those policies still exclude some populations — local jails in Michigan and state prisons in Maryland — but they’re expansions nonetheless.Other states are pursuing similar efforts, although it’s unclear how expansive or accessible their programs really are or will be, according to the ACLU.In response to questions about Godsey's case, the BOP sent me a statement: “For privacy reasons, we do not comment on a particular inmate’s health status or medical treatment. However, we can share that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has a robust drug treatment strategy that includes cognitive behavioral therapy programs of varying intensity. Depending on a variety of factors, inmates may receive Methadone, Vivitrol (Naltrexone), or Suboxone (Buprenorphine) as part of the BOP’s medication assisted treatment (MAT) program for inmates with opioid use disorder (OUD). The BOP screens all inmates for substance use disorder when they enter the BOP’s custody.”The ACLU hopes its work, through lawsuits and lobbying, will inspire a change. “The end goal is that everybody in America who is in jail and prison [and] who is clinically indicated gets medication-assisted treatment,” Joey Longley, equal justice works fellow at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, told me. “I think we’re moving in that direction now, based on the litigation and legislation strategy that we’ve taken.”Godsey, at least, has in some ways been one of the lucky ones in this system. In 2018, she was arrested and jailed over her use of stolen credit cards. But when she got out — still under the supervision of law enforcement — she got on Suboxone treatment. As she put it, “I was already done. I already wanted help. I hated where I was.”She got custody of three of her kids, who are 6, 12, and 13 years old, back. (The fourth, an 18-year-old, lives with his dad.) She started making plans for her future. As of January, she’s nearing two years in full recovery from opioid and meth use. But federal prosecutors had refused to drop the charges against her.“I brought my kids [to the sentencing hearing] thinking it was going to be a happy thing,” she said. “But it wasn’t. It was a life-altering thing. The judge said, ‘Your mom will be a better mom when she gets out.’ And two years it was.”Then came another round of bad news: The federal prison system wouldn’t let her stay on Suboxone while in prison. It took a lawsuit, with the ACLU’s help, to get the Federal Bureau of Prisons to agree to let her stay on the medications while in prison.Godsey still worries. Although she got an apartment for her kids, and family and friends have agreed to help with them, she’s worried about what will happen with her children while she’s in prison. She described the situation as “the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”But at least she’ll have a better chance of remaining in recovery by staying on Suboxone.“I hate doing drugs. I hate it. I hate what it does to my family,” Godsey said. “I don’t want to live if I have to use drugs. Just take me out, because I’m just going to end up hurting everybody. That’s how it feels. If I had to go to prison and feel that, I mean, I couldn’t even envision it.”

Voter lists have become the latest battleground in the run-up to elections in the world’s third-largest democracy, with claims of infiltration by Chinese and Russian hackers and millions of “ghost voters” being added.Last week – a month before the election – the head of Indonesia’s election commission (KPU) fuelled foreign meddling fears after he was quoted as saying that hackers from Russia and China had been unrelenting in attempts to “manipulate and modify” Indonesia’s electoral roll, which includes the data of more than 187 million eligible voters.However the claim made by commission chief Arief Budiman was disputed by its own IT security team. Harry Sufehmi, an IT infrastructure consultant at the KPU, said there were constant hacking attempts which appear to be from countries such as China, Russia and the US, but the attempts most likely originated at home.“Probably most of them are local hackers,” explains Sufehmi, “They are just using jump points in those countries to cover their trail.”In February, President Joko Widodo accused the opposition of utilising “Russian propaganda” to spread disinformation. Facebook has also banned foreign election advertisements in the lead-up to the April poll.Yet despite fears of foreign interference and hackers attempting to hijack Indonesia’s upcoming polls, the KPU’s security team said the frequency and source of attempted hacks on its voter database remain unchanged since 2014, when Indonesia last held presidential elections.“There are 10 to 20 attempts on average per day, but mostly automated attempts, not an actual hacker crafting some kind of special attack,” said Sufehmi, “So far I think it is mostly individuals, not state actors, and just individuals from Indonesia. That is consistent with patterns we have observed for years, since 2014.”Hacking attempts on the voter database are so constant they are considered “normal”, said Sufehmi. As a high-profile institute, successfully infiltrating the national electoral database would be considered a badge of honour in underground hacker circles.With no successful attempts, the team tasked with safeguarding the voter list believes it is currently secure, but there are concerns about irregularities creeping into the data in other ways.The opposition alleges there are 17.5m questionable identities in the voter list this year – an unsupported claim the election commission is investigating.Earlier this month the elections commission removed the names of 101 foreign nationals that had made their way on to national electoral roll. On Monday two more foreigners, one from the UK and the US, were found on the list in West Java.The announcement followed uproar last month over reports a Chinese national and permanent resident of Indonesia was also found on that list. The confusion and negligence was put down to similarities between the permanent resident and citizen ID cards.In a campaign environment awash with fake news, the error added to longstanding fears about Chinese influence in Indonesia.This January, rumours alleging that seven containers full of millions of marked ballot papers shipped from China were being stored at a Jakarta port quickly went viral. The election commission labelled the claim a hoax.Fears over “ghost voters” and other anomalies in Indonesia’s electoral roll are a regular occurrence.In 2014 the constitutional court dismissed a claim by defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto – who is running again this year – that there had been fraud in the voter list. Topics Indonesia Asia Pacific Joko Widodo news

The US supreme court has allowed the Trump administration to block immigrants seeking permanent residency in America on the basis of their likelihood to use public benefits such as housing assistance, healthcare and food stamps even for short periods of time.In response, the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez labelled the Monday ruling “shameful” and said: “The American Dream isn’t a private club.”The hardline policy, an expansion of the so-called public charge rule, has been litigated in lower courts by a collective of Democratic-leaning states and migrant rights activists, leading to several nationwide injunctions. The supreme court ruling lifts such blocks, allowing the policy to go into effect as litigation continues.The justices voted 5-4 along ideological lines, with the conservative majority including chief justice John Roberts and the two judges appointed by Donald Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, carrying the ruling.Opponents of the policy, announced last August, argue it is essentially a wealth test that disproportionately affects non-white applicants for lawful permanent residency.“America shouldn’t have a wealth test for admission,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “It’s a place where millions of people are descendants of immigrants who came w[ith] nothing [and] made a life. The American Dream isn’t a private club with a cover charge – it’s the possibility of remaking your future.”The Trump administration lauded the decision, and argued the lower court injunctions were an example of judicial overreach.“It is very clear the US supreme court is fed up with these national injunctions by judges who are trying to impose their policy preferences instead of enforcing the law,” said Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security.The policy, which dramatically expands the public charge rule that previously covered applicants likely to need substantial and lengthy assistance, is the latest hardline immigration policy the supreme court has allowed to go into effect. A 2019 survey by the Urban Institute found that the Trump public charge rule was already deterring people from seeking benefits for US citizen children, for fear of harming their own immigration status. Benefits for family members are not considered under the rule.In a concurring opinion written by Gorsuch and joined by Clarence Thomas, the court criticised the use of nationwide injunctions.“It has become increasingly apparent that this court must, at some point, confront these important objections to this increasingly widespread practice,” Gorsuch stated. “As the brief and furious history of the regulation before us illustrates, the routine issuance of universal injunctions is patently unworkable, sowing chaos for litigants, the government, courts, and all those affected by these conflicting decisions.” Topics US immigration US supreme court Law (US) US politics Trump administration news

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered five major tech companies to hand over detailed information on hundreds of acquisitions made over the past decade, it announced on Tuesday.As part of its continued antitrust investigations, the agency, which enforces consumer protection laws, has required Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook to provide documents and other information on the purpose and scope of their takeovers of smaller companies from 2010 to 2019.Large acquisitions, such as Facebook’s purchase of Instagram in 2012 or Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods, must be approved by the FTC in advance. But the FTC said the focus on deals small enough not to have been legally required to be named in previous filings will help the agency understand “whether large tech companies are making potentially anticompetitive acquisitions of nascent or potential competitors”.Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, has said the company buys smaller companies on an average of every two to three weeks.Joe Simons, the FTC chairman, said in a statement that the initiative “will enable the Commission to take a closer look at acquisitions in this important sector, and also to evaluate whether the federal agencies are getting adequate notice of transactions that might harm competition”.The intensifying scrutiny comes amid calls from some lawmakers to overhaul the FTC entirely, saying it is not doing enough to hold big tech accountable. Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri, introduced a plan on Monday proposing the agency be absorbed into the Department of Justice.“The FTC isn’t working,” Hawley said in a statement announcing the proposal. “It wastes time in turf wars with the DOJ, nobody is accountable for decisions, and it lacks the ‘teeth’ to get after Big Tech’s rampant abuses.”However, critics of Hawley say the proposal reflects his belief that digital platforms deliberately operate with bias against conservatives, and that changes to the FTC would not offer any meaningful benefits to Americans.“Justice department also has a poor record fighting against mergers from the digital industry,” said Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a not-for-profit consumer protection group. “The last thing Americans need now is to allow the justice department to become the ‘super’ agency addressing the surveillance economy.”Tuesday’s announcement marks just the latest inquest into big tech. It comes after dozens of states launched antitrust investigations into tech companies in September 2019, focusing on whether Facebook’s dominance in the digital space has unfairly stifled competition and looking at Google’s digital advertising impact.The FTC said it would consider the information requested when evaluating whether smaller mergers should also be disclosed ahead of time.Amazon declined to comment on the investigation, while Google, Apple and Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.A Microsoft spokesperson said: “We look forward to working with the FTC to answer their questions.”

WASHINGTON — Two legal setbacks for President Donald Trump this week are reigniting the Supreme Court as an issue in the 2020 election, given that the winner could pick one or more new justices.Trump said Thursday that he will release a short list for the Supreme Court by Sept. 1. Democratic nominee-in-waiting Joe Biden has said only that he would put a Black woman on the court, without mentioning names. His campaign had no comment when asked whether he intends to release a list of prospects before the election Nov. 3.The stakes are enormous.Next year, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the leader of the liberal wing, will turn 88. Stephen Breyer, also a Democratic appointee, will turn 82. The next oldest justices are Republican appointees Clarence Thomas, who will turn 72, and Samuel Alito, who will be 71."If Trump wins re-election, he'll probably get the chance to replace one or two liberal justices on the Supreme Court," said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA School of Law. "You could imagine that Trump gains a supermajority on the court where the swing justice might be Brett Kavanaugh."Trump's promise to release a new short list follows a similar gambit that paid off in 2016, rallying conservatives by embracing their judicial vision. He hopes to replicate the feat in 2020, using the two setbacks this week to motivate conservatives after the Supreme Court ruled to temporarily preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young immigrants and to uphold LGBTQ workplace rights."The recent Supreme Court decisions, not only on DACA, Sanctuary Cities, Census, and others, tell you only one thing, we need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court," Trump said in a series of tweets, adding: "Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important than ever before (Second Amendment, Right to Life, Religous Liberty, etc.) – VOTE 2020."'Turning the law on its head'Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.Kavanaugh and another Trump-picked justice, Neil Gorsuch, have cemented a 5-4 Republican-appointed majority and have likely pushed the court to the right, because Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy, who sided with liberals on some major issues. Expanding that majority could yield conservative victories on issues from abortion rights and gun rights to civil rights and campaign finance.Yet some conservatives worry that the immigration and LGBTQ rights rulings undermine Trump's pitch to evangelicals that he will install judges who advance their goals."I think each individual justice thinks they are doing the correct thing, but they are turning the law on its head and denying the will of the people as expressed in the 2016 election," said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and Trump supporter.Download the NBC News app for breaking news and alertsThe liberal euphoria could be short-lived, as the Supreme Court has yet to rule on major cases involving abortion rights and Trump's tax returns. With some exceptions, the court has shifted rightward over the last decade and a half. Overall, Trump is outpacing presidents for the last 40 years in confirming judges."The decisions of the last few days should remind us all of the immense power of the Supreme Court — and the generational impact its justices can have," Biden tweeted Thursday evening. "We have the power to shape the Court's future this November — and we can't forget that."Chris Kang, a former deputy counsel to President Barack Obama and co-founder of the progressive group Demand Justice, warned Democrats that more Trump court picks could set their goals back for years to come."The risk is that every single progressive attempt to address the pressing issues of our time is going to be undermined by a partisan, political Supreme Court," Kang said. "You're already seeing it in areas like voting rights, money in politics and partisan gerrymandering that make it harder to even elect Democrats in the first place."A 'stolen branch of government'The partisan wars have extended to the courts as the two parties increasingly appoint different types of judges. Whereas Republican nominees tend to see government authority as constrained by what the framers of the Constitution explicitly enumerated, Democratic nominees generally see a "living Constitution" crafted with broad language to adapt to changing times."Is the Constitution essentially a document of law, or is it a political document and an empty vessel to be filled by transient majorities?" asked Roger Pilon, a constitutional scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute. "The Trump judges — they are deeply schooled in all of this. They are mostly Federalist Society members."Justice Antonin Scalia's unexpected death in early 2016 elevated the Supreme Court as an issue, and Trump won over some conservative skeptics by releasing a list of names from which he'd pick a replacement. The list galvanized conservatives, who have been more attuned to the courts as a voting issue over the last generation."But for Justice Scalia's death and that list, he would not be president," said John McGinnis, a professor at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law and a member of the Federalist Society, some leaders of which have vetted and advised on Trump's court prospects.The gambit worked after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made the extraordinary decision to refuse to consider Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, escalating a political war over the courts that began in the 1980s.Winkler, describing the importance of elections on the courts, said McConnell's refusal to allow a vote on Garland shaped that race and the course of U.S. history."A court system that was about to make a strong turn to the left has been captured by the right and totally transformed," he said. "It's not just a stolen Supreme Court seat. It's a stolen branch of government."

But Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains skeptical, telling colleagues during a private call late last month that the public still “isn’t there on impeachment.” Many of the caucus’s more moderate members, whose districts are crucial to maintaining the Democrats’ majority, have not backed impeachment either. And Republicans remain unified behind Mr. Trump.Just as consequentially, court cases have hamstrung Democrats’ ability to stage potentially powerful public hearings — in part as a result of Mr. Trump’s stonewalling of congressional oversight efforts. Rulings in two cases — one on unsealing grand jury secrets from Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, and the other to enforce a subpoena for the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II — are expected this fall. They could determine whether lawmakers will be able to blunt the White House’s attempts to run out the clock by slow-walking document production and ordering major witnesses not to appear before lawmakers without a court order.For now, Democratic congressional investigators agree they should push ahead, even if impeachment ultimately remains beyond their grasp.“If we aren’t able to collect the evidence that we need to present a credible case before the election, well, at least maybe we will have put enough evidence out there that the public can exercise another form of regime change that is in the Constitution and vote,” said Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a Pennsylvania Democrat on the committee.The Judiciary Committee will take a substantial step to organize its effort this week. Lawmakers are expected to vote to establish rules and procedures governing the inquiry, including allowing staff lawyers to question witnesses and the president’s lawyers to more formally offer a defense, according to an official familiar with the committee’s plans.Democrats began examining the hush payments and other areas of scrutiny in the spring, requesting documents and taking other early steps. But they have focused mostly on Mr. Mueller’s investigation and his account of Mr. Trump’s repeated attempts to thwart his team.

(Reuters) ― U.S. President Donald Trump has invited British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to visit him in the White House in the new year, British media reported on Sunday. Trump’s invitation was made after the British prime minister’s election win this month, The Sunday Times newspaper reported. Britain wants to strike a new trade deal with the United States after it leaves the European Union at the end of January. “Some potential dates have been floated in mid-January but nothing has yet been formally agreed. But it is clear that both sides want to make it happen some time in early 2020,” the Sunday Times quoted a source close to the White House as saying. ASSOCIATED PRESS NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, right, welcome U.S. President Donald Trump during a NATO leaders meeting at The Grove hotel and resort in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019. Johnson is reluctant to make the visit before delivering Brexit on Jan. 31 and would prefer to go after a cabinet reshuffle scheduled in February, when he is expected to appoint cabinet office minister Michael Gove as his new trade negotiator, The Mail on Sunday reported. That could allow Johnson to take Gove on the U.S. visit ahead of talks of a post-Brexit trade deal, according to the report. Some Downing Street insiders, however, have concerns about a visit by Johnson due to fears the prime minister could be dragged into Trump’s ongoing impeachment proceedings, the Sunday Times reported. Johnson won approval for his Brexit deal in the British parliament on Friday, the first step towards fulfilling his election pledge to deliver Britain’s departure from the European Union by Jan. 31. As Britain prepares to leave the bloc, Johnson and Trump agreed in a phone call last Monday to pursue an “ambitious” UK-U.S. free trade agreement. After Johnson’s election win on Dec. 12, Trump had said Britain and the United States were now free to strike a “massive” new trade deal after Brexit. “This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the EU,” Trump had said in a tweet earlier this month. The White House and Downing Street did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the reported invitation to Johnson. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore/Sam Holmes/Susan Fenton) Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

2. Eric Garcetti stays out.Even into early 2019, the 48-year-old Los Angeles mayor was still toying with the idea of a presidential bid. But while seemingly every other Democrat in America had entered the race, Garcetti decided not to. His day job running the second-biggest city in the country was seen as a major impediment.Around that time, Pete Buttigieg, who was running a city a fraction of the size of L.A., was just announcing his exploratory committee.Does Garcetti have regrets about his decision? In an interview with Isaac, he denied any regrets, even as he flashed pangs of wistfulness.3. Pete Buttigieg stays near the top.Chances are you know how to pronounce Buttigieg without thinking twice. That alone is a testament to the meteoric rise of “Mayor Pete,” who until this month, had been mayor of a city with far fewer people than Los Angeles or Newark.When Buttigieg officially launched his presidential campaign last April, he’d understood that “this is a long shot, or maybe a loooong shot.” Here’s what Isaac wrote then: Three months ago, Buttigieg and I sat for two hours at a restaurant in New York, and no one knew who he was. A month ago, he was still being laughed off as the guy with the weird last name. He was running less of a campaign than an amazingly aggressive press operation. These days, he’s the sensation with the weird last name: “In the Era of the Impossible, this could be happening. But can anyone pronounce his last name?” Matt Drudge tweeted. —Saahil Desai*« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »1. “The difference might seem like mere semantics, but it helps underscore how different Sanders’s approach to foreign policy is from that of his competitors.”After the Iran crisis dominated headlines last week, Senator Bernie Sanders took a victory lap by talking up his anti-war record and untraditional foreign policy. The moment gave him a boost with Americans who know little of him beyond his reputation as the candidate who rails against billionaires and supports universal health care, Elaine Godfrey reports.2. “And this is the real reason the Trump impeachment trial will be boring: the president himself.”Don’t expect any fireworks in the Senate’s impeachment trial: It will be mostly pageantry and a matter of form, and even if the GOP allows for witnesses to testify, they will be few and controlled, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write. Still, there's one figure who might introduce some surprise.*« EVENING READ »(NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION; FREDERICK HILL MESERVE COLLECTION)The Origins of the Celebrity Political SpouseThe year: 1856. The candidate: John Charles Frémont, of the brand-new Republican Party. Thousands of men elbowed for space as they shouted for their candidate to emerge onto his iron balcony. The nominee stepped out and gave a short speech, but after he withdrew, the crowd wanted more. “Mrs. Frémont!” someone cried, then others took up the refrain. “Madam Frémont! Jessie! Jessie! Give us Jessie!” Nothing quite like this had happened before. “For a lady to make her appearance before a political crowd like this is an innovation,” observed a young man in the crowd. Disapproving, another man beside him tried to hush the calls for Jessie, but his was a lonely voice as many shouted louder. A man appeared on the balcony and tried to explain why Jessie should not come out: “Such occasions as this are apt to disconcert ladies,” he called down, but the crowd refused to leave. At last, to “a universal shout,” Jessie appeared on the balcony. Steve Inskeep on the remarkable Jessie Benton Frémont, political spouse.* Today’s newsletter was written by Saahil Desai, an associate editor on our Politics team and Christian Paz, a Politics fellow. It was edited by Shan Wang, who oversees newsletters. You can reply directly to this newsletter with questions or comments, or send a note to [email protected]. Your support makes our journalism possible. Subscribe here. Saahil Desaiis an associate editor atThe Atlantic, where he covers politics and policy.Connect Twitter Christian Pazis an assistant editor atThe Atlantic.Connect Twitter

Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, secured a crushing victory in the UK’s general election as voters backed his promise to “get Brexit done” and take the country out of the European Union by 31 January next year.Johnson’s Conservatives captured 364 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons with all bar one seat counted, a comfortable majority of 74 and the party’s best showing in a parliamentary election since Margaret Thatcher triumphed in 1987.He addressed the nation just after 7am in London, saying Brexit was now the “irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people” and promising those who lent their vote to the Tories in traditional Labour areas: “I will not let you down.”Earlier, in his seat of Uxbridge and West Ruislip west of London, he said the government had been given “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done … I think this will turn out to be a historic election that gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people”.As results from across the country suggested the exit poll would prove correct and seat after seat in the opposition Labour party’s strongholds swung from Labour red to Tory blue, Johnson’s gamble on calling an early vote after long months of parliamentary deadlock over Brexit appeared to have paid off.The prime minister will now move swiftly to ratify the Brexit deal he sealed with Brussels, allowing Britain to exit the bloc, more than 40 years after it originally joined, at the end of next month – nearly a year later than originally planned and three-and-a-half years after Britain voted to leave.He said in an address outside Downing Street on Friday that both sides of the debate should “find closure and let the healing begin”, but Brexit will be far from “done”. Johnson must now negotiate a multi-part deal governing the UK’s future relationship with the world’s largest trading bloc, a process most experts think could take years but he has promised can be completed during an 11-month transition period due to end in December 2020.Labour, meanwhile, whose leader, the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, had presented voters a manifesto offering a second Brexit referendum and a radical expansion of the state, was plunged into bitter recriminations after the party won just 203 seats, its worst result in 84 years.Labour lost seats it had held for long decades in former industrial areas in the Midlands and north of the country England as voters who had overwhelmingly backed Brexit in the June 2016 referendum swung towards the Conservatives. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has declared he will not lead the Labour party into the next general election. Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/APCorbyn, 70, said on Friday he would not lead the party into the next election. He said he was “obviously very sad at the result we’ve achieved” and suggested he will step down in the early part of next year, but insisted he had “pride” in the party’s policies.His critics blamed the party’s losses on Corbyn’s ambiguity over Brexit and said voters had expressed antipathy to him during the campaign. Corbyn, who was elected leader in 2015, has alienated moderates by shifting the party firmly away from the centre ground that brought Labour three successive election victories under Tony Blair.He has also faced accusations of failing to tackle antisemitism in the party. “It’s Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn was a disaster for Labour – everyone knew that he couldn’t lead the working class out of a paper bag,” said Alan Johnson, one of Blair’s former ministers.Ruth Smeeth, a Labour MP who lost her Midlands seat, said Corbyn should take the blame for the party’s defeat and resign. “There are genuine questions about whether the Labour party has a right to exist,” she said. “Who do we exist to represent?”But loyalists blamed Brexit for the debacle, and insisted the party could not return to the centre. “We need to fight back, not triangulate,” said Richard Burgon, Corbyn’s justice spokesman. “People on the doorstep weren’t complaining about our policies, and we wouldn’t have had the policies ... if it weren’t for Jeremy’s leadership.”The anti-Brexit Scottish National party was on course to win a sweeping victory in Scotland, seizing 48 of the 59 seats and setting the scene for it to campaign for a second vote on secession from England after rejecting independence in 2014. Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat leader, began the election campaign saying she could become the country’s next prime minister, but ended up losing her seat. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersThe Liberal Democrats leader, Jo Swinson, resigned after losing her seat in Scotland to an SNP candidate. The Lib Dems, as pro-European as the SNP, returned 13 MPs to Westminster. The election results would “bring dread and dismay and people are looking for hope”, Swinson said.The SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, said: “There is a mandate now to offer the people of Scotland the choice over our own future … Boris Johnson may have a mandate to take England out of the EU. He emphatically does not have a mandate to take Scotland out of the EU.”The bombastic, permanently dishevelled Johnson, who was elected prime minister by his party only 20 weeks ago after his predecessor, Theresa May, failed to get her Brexit deal through a deeply divided parliament, called the vote to break what he described as the paralysis of a political system broken by the deeply divisive Brexit project.As well as promising to “get Brexit done”, Johnson pledged increased spending on health, education and the police, and was handed a boost early in the campaign when arch-Eurosceptic Nigel Farage said his Brexit party – which failed to win any seats – would not compete in hundreds of seats to avoid splitting the pro-Brexit vote.His thumping majority should now allow him to ignore the threat of rebellion by Eurosceptics in his own party, possibly opening up the prospect of a softening in the hardline approach he has so far adopted towards Brexit.

NEW YORK (AP) — Using stark “us vs. them” language, President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign have begun framing his impeachment not as a judgment on his conduct but as a referendum on how Democrats regard him and his supporters. Mere days from the start of an election year, the White House and its allies are painting Trump’s impeachment on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress as an effort to undo his 2016 victory and discount the will of the people. There was nothing subtle about Trump’s pinned tweet shortly after impeachment: “In reality, they’re not after me. They’re after you,” was plastered above a photo of Trump pointing at the reader. “I’m just in the way.” All but certain to be acquitted in next year’s trial by the Republican-controlled Senate, Trump has considered a barnstorming tour after the yet-to-be-scheduled trial ends, hoping to use a backward-looking message to propel him forward in 2020. His campaign believes that anger at impeachment may be the motivation needed to bring out voters who stayed home in the 2016 election but approve of the president and are fed up with the Washington establishment. “After three years of sinister witch hunts, hoaxes, scams,” Trump roared during an impeachment-night rally in Michigan, “the House Democrats are trying to nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans.” The president’s words evoked his 2016 campaign’s closing message that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, had mocked the “deplorables” who supported him. In 2020, he’s ready to lean in once again on culture war divisions to portray his campaign as a movement under attack by the Washington status quo. Trump’s allies in the House struck a similar chord during the impeachment debate as several Republican lawmakers hammered home the word “hate,” declaring that Democrats despised the president and his base. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had gone out of her way days earlie r to say she does not “hate” Trump. “We face this horror because of this map,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., before a poster of red and blue states. “They call this Republican map flyover country, they call us deplorables, they fear our faith, they fear our strength, they fear our unity, they fear our vote, and they fear our president.” As lawmakers and Trump fled Washington for a holiday break, the timing and details of the Senate trial remained in doubt. Pelosi said she was delaying transmitting the two articles of impeachment to the Senate until she had more information on trial arrangements. Even with the expected Senate acquittal, Trump would be the first president to run for reelection after impeachment. White House officials believe a lengthy trial delay would reinforce how, in their view, Pelosi has manipulated the process to deny Trump the opportunity to defend himself and clear his name. The hope is that could drive outrage among his supporters that would be sustained beyond a Senate vote. Campaign officials say they have seen jumps in fundraising, volunteers and rally attendance since the impeachment inquiry began. Aides believe impeachment could be key in turning out the 8.8 million voters the campaign has identified as backing the president in 2016 and who still support him, but who did not come out to vote during the 2018 elections. Republicans draw parallels with the fiery 2018 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which rallied the GOP base and brought in new donors. Since the impeachment proceedings began, the Republican National Committee has seen 600,000 new donors. The campaign and the RNC took in $10 million in small-dollar donations in just 48 hours during impeachment week. “This lit up our base, lit up the people that are supporters of the president. They’re frustrated, they’re upset, and that motivates voters,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said recently. “They have ignited a flame underneath them.” The campaign’s bullishness stood in contrast to the somber tone struck by Democrats, including those running for president, who maintain that Trump’s efforts to push Ukraine to investigate a Trump political foe are grounds for impeachment. Democratic lawmakers say they are proceeding with efforts to impeach Trump out of constitutional duty, not for political gain, and all seven candidates on stage at the Democrats’ debate on Thursday night backed impeachment. National polls have consistently shown Trump trailing most major Democratic candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. “I have no doubt his hardcore supporters will buy his lies on this but I think the vast majority of the country will see the fog and misdirection Trump tries to put up,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, senior adviser at the liberal group MoveOn.org. “No amount of spin can cover up the fact that Trump is now only the third president to be impeached and the first ever to be impeached for seeking to undermine our elections and risk our national security.” Trump’s advisers believe many voters who backed Trump three years ago, including those who were for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, supported him because they wanted a change in Washington. While Trump will be running next year as an incumbent, some Republican strategists believe he can still cast himself as an insurgent because he has been dogged by investigations that have denied him a fair chance to govern. “The silver lining for the president with being impeached is that it gives him a continued rationale to run as the outsider who is being an attacked by the elites for trying to bring big change to Washington,” said Sam Nunberg, who advised Trump in his first campaign. “He’ll not only, as any sitting president, be able to point to what he’s accomplished, he can say ‘I was able to do all that even though I didn’t have a real first term because I was under attack from Day One,’” Nunberg continued. “And he can say, ‘If you send me back for a second term, it’ll be our real first term.’” ___ Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

Sending 100's of "officials" to top tech to get them in line.No, that is not what this is about. This is the city of Hangzhou, not the central CCP. Hangzhou is located about 2 hours by train south of Shanghai, and is one of the most liberal and prosperous cities, in one of the most liberal and prosperous regions, in all of China.The goal is likely exactly what they say it is: To facilitate communication and cooperation between the city government and the companies that do business there, for the benefit of both the companies and the residents of Hangzhou. Zhejiang Province in general, and Hangzhou in particular, has a reputation for being very business friendly.Not everything that happens in China is evil. You should get a passport and go there. You will be shocked at how different it is from the propaganda that the media is spoon feeding you. Be sure to visit Hangzhou, take a long hike around West Lake [wikipedia.org]. Hangzhou is a beautiful city, full of history and friendly people.