“I believe the Prince of Darkness could start a branch of hell in the District of Columbia (if he has not already done it), and carry it on unimpeached by the Congress of the United States, even though the Constitution were bristling with articles forbidding hells in this country,” Mark Twain wrote in 1868 about the first-ever presidential impeachment of Andrew Johnson, commander-in-chief #17.The sentence could arguably have been penned today, and reading Twain is a helpful reminder that there really is nothing new under the sun or in American politics.Just like on a historic winter weekend past, American lawmakers will spend this Saturday considering impeachment. President Donald Trump’s lawyers will make opening statements in the Senate trial, arguing that commander-in-chief #45 committed no impeachable offenses and accusing Democrats of turning policy disputes into constitutional violations, claims that mirror Twain’s complaints about “Radical Republicans” of yore.Twain came to work in Washington, DC in November 1867, just before Johnson’s impeachment trial. He complained about local atmospheric conditions, writing:There is too much weather … It is tricky, it is changeable, it is to the last degree unreliable. It has catered for a political atmosphere so long that it has come at last to be thoroughly imbued with the political nature … if the President is quiet, the sun comes out; if he touches the tender gold market, it turns up cold and freezes out the speculators; if he hints at foreign troubles, it hails; if he threatens Congress, it thunders; if treason and impeachment are broached, lo, there is an earthquake!The correspondent quickly landed a congressional side hustle for extra cash, a common practice back then. Twain visited Nevada senator William Stewart wearing a battered hat, with “an evil-smelling cigar protrud[ing] from the corner of his mouth,” the politician recalled. Despite this “sinister appearance,” Stewart hired Twain as his secretary, and the aspiring novelist returned the favor by forging the senator’s signature, responding to constituent complaints with literary-style admonitions, and rejecting a Treasury Department report because “there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no sentiment—no heroes, no plot, no pictures—not even wood-cuts.”By contrast, Twain’s political pieces had all that (minus the wood-cuts). He penned a satire featuring himself as the hero in a rollicking fake news account mocking calls for president Johnson’s impeachment. In it, Twain, as “Doorkeeper of the Senate,” charges chamber entrance fees, votes on both sides of motions, and interrupts scheduled discussions to talk female suffrage by “always commencing with the same tiresome formula of ‘Woman! Oh, woman.'”The “grand tableaux” concludes with two Judiciary Committee impeachment reports about these alleged constitutional infractions. However, the allegations levied against Johnson weren’t as laughable as the humorist’s fictional account.Johnson had been Republican president Abraham Lincoln’s vice president, a Democrat from Tennessee who served as VP for only 42 days before Lincoln’s 1865 assassination. The southerner’s conciliatory approach to states threatening secession after the civil war angered “Radical Republicans.” They blamed Johnson’s leniency for the Black Codes, which denied freed slaves their civil rights, that Confederate states imposed once back in the union’s fold.Battle wounds were fresh and Johnson’s presidency was stormy. After attempting to dismiss war secretary Edward Stanton without congressional approval in violation of the Office of Tenure Act that the president had vetoed, Radical Republicans in 1867 moved for impeachment.As Trump supporters now complain, it was not the first time the president’s opposition called for his removal. Like some today, Twain believed the prosecution stemmed from a kind of “deep state” conspiracy in a government “filled with radicals who have openly clamored for the impeachment of the President.” Indeed, the 19th-century writer at times sounded starkly like team Trump.Take the recording ABC News reported on yesterday, related to the president’s allegedly corrupt Ukraine dealings. It seems to reveal two former business associates of Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani last year complaining that longtime State Department employee, US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, was badmouthing Trump and predicting impeachment, to which the president apparently responded, “Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”Yovanovitch was eventually recalled. Trump has denied association with his lawyer’s people. But he admits he was never a “fan” of the ambassador, defending his decision to remove her as presidential prerogative and not part of any corrupt scheme.Or as Twain once put it, “A Cabinet may dispense patronage. The one we have at Washington does this on a small scale, but more to the President’s injury than benefit. Nearly all the government employés are in sympathy with Congress, supply[ing] aid and comfort to the radicals.”The “radicals” past made headway. As Twain wrote, “And out of the midst of the political gloom, impeachment, that dead corpse, rose up and walked forth again!”Twain’s zombie is back now, and if Johnson’s historic trial is any indication, Trump will be acquitted. The 17th president narrowly avoided conviction after a long, bifurcated Senate trial that concluded in late spring.Twain predicted this outcome by early April, having watched impeachment excitement fade, only to be subsumed by cynical political calculations. He accused impeaching Republicans of a disconcerting “disposition to drop the high moral ground,” fearful of retaliation upon recapture of the presidency.But he spared no one his scorn. “The Democrats do not howl about impeachment much now, a fact that awakens suspicion. Maybe they are satisfied that to martyr the President would make a vast amount of Democratic capital for the next election,” Twain wrote.His analysis still works. A presidential election is looming and both parties will be considering the consequences of this impeachment in that light. Concerns about coming payback may convince Democrats to strategically chill. Republicans have compared Trump’s martyrdom to Jesus’s plight, hoping a failed attempt will help him win four more years in November.Time will tell just how much history repeats. But it’s notable that the Democrat Johnson lost his post-trial election to a “Radical Republican.”In the end, however, Twain condemned both parties for placing politics above principles, putting all jokes aside and writing, “This everlasting compelling of honesty, morality, justice and the law to bend the knee to policy, is the rottenest thing in a republican form of government. It is cowardly, degraded and mischievous; and in its own good time it will bring destruction upon this broad-shouldered fabric of ours.”

transcriptListen to ‘The Daily’: The Candidates: Pete ButtigiegHosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Clare Toeniskoetter and Luke Vander Ploeg, and edited by Paige CowettIn studio with “The Daily,” the Indiana mayor talks about how his lifelong political ambitions were complicated by the secret he kept for decades.pete buttigiegI remember in history class, must have been a junior, it was during the impeachment process of President Clinton or all the scandal, everything that was going on. And I remember the teacher was just kind of riffing on this, and he said, you know, would anybody here ever want to be president or want to run for office, seeing what a mess and what an ugly place Washington was? And I just — maybe involuntarily, my hand went up. And from then on, it became that the running joke of the class that I’d wind up running for president.And then by the time I got to college, they had this Institute of Politics at Harvard, and every day, there’d be a different speaker who would come through. And I remember when I was there as a freshman, people like Donna Brazile who had just come off managing the Gore campaign and Rick Davis, who had done the same thing for McCain. And the former president of Ecuador, he’d been deposed in a coup. You’d just kind of hang around and watch them and see what they were like. The biggest realization was that they’re just people. These people who were shaping the world, people I was seeing on TV were obviously very impressive people, but they were just people. I think it changed my awareness of the fact that, on some level, I could be part of that world, too. But in a very simple sense, especially coming from Indiana, it seemed that it was a choice. You could be in elected office, or you could be an out gay person, not both, at least not where I was from.From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”archived recording (cory booker)I am running.archived recording (amy klobuchar)I announce my candidacy —archived recording (elizabeth warren)— for President of the United States of America.michael barbaroPart one in our series on the pivotal moments in the lives of the top four Democratic candidates for president.archived recording (joe biden)I’m running for president.archived recording (pete buttigieg)And I’m running for president.archived recording (kamala harris)President of the United States.archived recording (bernie sanders)President of the United States.michael barbaroToday —archived recording (pete buttigieg)I’m a proud son of South Bend, Indiana, and I am running for President of the United States.michael barbaroPete Buttigieg. It’s Friday, November 22.So Jeremy Peters, you cover politics for The Times, and you’ve been closely tracking Mayor Buttigieg. And in order to better understand the Democratic field of presidential candidates, we’re trying to figure out the most revealing moments in their lives. So when it comes to Pete Buttigieg, what moment should we focus on?jeremy petersWell, Mayor Pete has always been a candidate for whom his story, his biography is very central to his appeal to voters, and he’s got a great story to tell. He’s been elected mayor of this medium-sized town in Indiana before turning 30. He has an Ivy League pedigree. He’s been a Rhodes Scholar. He’s worked at a prestigious consulting firm. He’s gone off to Afghanistan as part of the Navy Reserves. So he has all of these components that you kind of think if you’re a voter, wow, he really stands out. There’s something unique about this guy. But at the same time, for most of his adult life, he had this nagging secret, the secret that he couldn’t confront because he thought that it would mean the end to this political career that he had spent so much time perfecting, basically since he went away to college and decided, hey, you know, I can run for president. And he doesn’t see how it’s possible for the politician with the perfect background, the perfect resume to also be open about their sexuality, in his case. So how he reconciles this inner turmoil with his very public ambition I think is a defining moment in his life, if not the defining moment.michael barbaroAll right. Welcome to the studio.pete buttigiegThank you.michael barbaroYou’re going to sit there.pete buttigiegAll right.jeremy petersSo that story begins in 1982 in South Bend, Indiana where Peter Buttigieg was born.michael barbaroMayor, tell me about the kind of kid that you were, growing up in Indiana?pete buttigiegWell, I think I was, safe to say, a little on the nerdy side. I lived in a neighborhood kind of in the middle of South Bend, close to a park where you would have as much as possible what you’d call a prototypical Midwestern kid’s upbringing, you know, playing in the park with friends, a lot of time in the house. I was really interested in baseball cards, but I was more interested in categorizing them than I was in baseball, I think. I loved science and science fiction. I loved reading, plus I was an only child. So I think it’s safe to say I had a lot of interior life going on in a fairly quiet house where it was a dog and my parents, who were both academics, and me.michael barbaroWhat was your introduction to even the idea of politics?pete buttigiegPolitics was always in the air in our house just because my parents were very politically passionate. They really cared about what was happening.I can remember the Democratic Convention. It must have been 1988.archived recordingNBC News continues its coverage of America’s convention.pete buttigiegI would’ve been six years old and my parents explaining what a convention was. I remember Jesse Jackson giving a speech.archived recording (jesse jackson)When I look out at this convention, I see the face of America — red, yellow, brown, black, and white. We are all precious in God’s sight, the real rainbow coalition.pete buttigiegAnd I remember my parents thinking it was important to watch the Republican Convention, too. I mean, you would stop — even though I don’t it ever crossed their mind to ever vote for a Republican.archived recordingNow let’s go down to the podium. Here is George Herbert Walker Bush addressing his convention.pete buttigiegEverything in the house would kind of stop when it was time to watch what was playing out.archived recordingThank you.michael barbaroAt what moment in this early phase of your life did you go from just watching this and maybe finding it very fascinating to feeling really drawn to it?pete buttigiegWell, when I got to college, it felt like the Republicans and the Democrats, at the time, it’s crazy to think about now, polarized as we are. But what it felt like when I showed up as a freshman on campus was that the two parties were converging and not necessarily in a good place, that you had this kind of center-right and center-left, both of them very committed to growth in business, but it seemed not very committed at all to some of the questions of how we take care of vulnerable people around the country. And I think there’s a moment for any kind of well-spoken or intelligent young person watching the news when you see a senator or a candidate saying something or doing something and you think, well, that’s not right. I could do that. I could do it different. Now, you might be wrong. They might be way more sophisticated than you are, and you can’t see it. Or you might be right, and it might well be the case that what they’re saying is just not right. But I certainly had that feeling reinforced when I saw these figures come to campus, some of whom were extremely impressive, but none of whom seemed like they were on a different plane of existence. They were just people.michael barbaroSo at this point, a year or two into Harvard, have you made up your mind that you were probably going to find a way to have a career in politics?pete buttigiegI knew I wanted a career that involved policy. I don’t think I’d figured out for sure that that meant running. Plus, you know, when I thought about it, even well before I was coming to terms with the fact that I was gay, I knew that I had no political connections at home. I had an unpronounceable name, and I was a Democrat who lived in Indiana. So it was not obvious that I could overcome some of the obstacles toward running. But I think it’s safe to say by the time I graduated, I had some sense that I could see myself doing it.michael barbaroWell, I want to talk to you about that realization of your sexuality in particular. Obviously, your candidacy is historic in a couple of different ways, and among those is the fact you’re the first major party presidential candidate who is openly gay. And so I want to ask you about that part of your identity. When did you sense that you were gay? When did that realization start to dawn on you?pete buttigiegI think it depends what you mean by realization, right? There are things you could point to going way back, certainly a fascination I had with a classmate when I was about 12 that, in hindsight, is very obviously a crush. But I was not willing to think of it that way, although some part of me must have — I mean, I wasn’t stupid either, right? So you have this kind of awareness that was definitely there by the time I was hitting middle school. But taking a word like gay and applying it to myself, I was still years away from being able to do that, even in my own mind.michael barbaroWell, what did you do with those feelings?pete buttigiegI guess I packed them up, yeah.michael barbaroPacked them up —pete buttigiegNot much would be the best answer.michael barbaroPack them up and put them where?pete buttigiegI don’t know. I don’t know how these things work, even in your own mind. I just didn’t explore them. That’s for sure. First of all, there were not a lot of out gay people that I knew as such growing up. I mean, in high school, it was exactly zero. There was just no sense of gay life or a gay community. And when I got to college, that’s when the kind of internal battle was starting to heat up.michael barbaroWhy?pete buttigiegI think because you just can’t escape it. I mean, my god, you’re in college, right? I mean, any feelings you have, especially in the romantic department, are going to start asserting themselves even more fiercely than they have when you get to college. For a lot of people, it’s a big part of what you spend college on.michael barbaroRight. So how did you deal with it?pete buttigiegSame way I dealt with it up to then, just packed it away. Dated women, remarkable women. Because I enjoyed these relationships, I think I could defer facing the fact that that wasn’t the same as what it was to be in love with somebody.michael barbaroAnd your political ambition was already solid at that point?pete buttigiegYeah, I still didn’t know exactly where it would take me or what it would mean, but I think by then, I knew that there was a good chance I was going to be running for office in my adult life. But at that point, I’m still clinging to some kind of hope, however vanishing, that maybe I’m straight or I’m bisexual and I can just not worry about the gay part. I think when I thought about my career, certainly when I talked about my future and how I was going to be involved, I wasn’t even thinking about the possibility that that would come into contact with this developing side of me. But I’m sure to the extent that I thought what it would mean to come to terms with the fact that I was at very least different and, as became increasingly clear, gay, that one of the things that would have kept that in its corner was the simple fact that that didn’t fit with any of the other things I wanted to do in life, not just a career, but a family. I wanted to get married. I wanted to have kids. From my perspective, you could be married and have kids or you could be gay, not both.michael barbaroYou graduated in 2004. That — correct me if I’m wrong. That’s the year when Massachusetts —pete buttigiegThat’s right.michael barbaro— legalizes gay marriage.pete buttigiegYes.archived recordingThe court today, as you know, in a 4-3 advisory opinion to the Senate has a rule that in a November 18, 2003 decision, they meant marriage. They meant equality. They meant that the Commonwealth may no longer deny marriage rights to same-sex couples, including —michael barbaroSo I say that only to try to understand, are you falling behind the culture, in a sense? Are you ignoring some of the signs that these things are changing?archived recordingMarriage and only marriage will be enough to satisfy the requirements of the Massachusetts Constitution.pete buttigiegWell, the thing is I wasn’t from Massachusetts. I was in Massachusetts for a while, but I never felt like I was from there. And nothing against Massachusetts, but I realized pretty quick after turning up at Harvard that I didn’t belong there either.michael barbaroWhy not?pete buttigiegIt was just — it was just a different culture. I didn’t realize that. I didn’t realize that I was Midwestern until I left the Midwest. And just little things, cultural things, the way — I don’t know, the way people interact, what’s expected of you. Once I got there, I realized that socially, I was way more Midwestern than I thought.michael barbaroSo take me from graduating from Harvard to your decision to join the Navy Reserves.pete buttigiegYeah, so it starts with 9/11. Actually, it starts before 9/11. There’s this family tradition of serving in the military. There’s a painting hanging on the wall of my parents’ house of a relative, a great uncle who I kind of idolized in theory. He was an Army Air Corps pilot. And so I had this idea, this maybe romantic idea, of being in the military, and then it never really became real. But I remember on 9/11 thinking, oh, well, war isn’t just a thing that happens in other places or in other periods of history. Like, war has come to my generation, and thinking, at least in the back of my head, that that might mean I would be involved, but not taking any steps to do that. But that turned into more and more of a nagging feeling when some friends of mine started to serve. A friend of mine from college shared with me just before we graduated that he had decided to join the Navy Reserve. I was fascinated. And then when I was talking to someone about applying for the Rhodes Scholarship and how I wanted to talk about my interest in public service and to the faculty member who was giving advice to students, and just said, pointedly, like, you might want to really think about how you’re going to say that, knowing that you’re going to be competing against people from the military academies. Oh yeah, that’s true. Like, my chest thumping about caring about public service feels a lot smaller held up against what others are doing.michael barbaroDo you think that was one of the things that might have drawn you to military service, knowing that to get a Rhodes, to be in that world, in that league, you know, it might be a good thing?pete buttigiegI think definitely that it was part of how you’re true to a culture of service. And also the Kennedy presidency kind of hangs over certainly the Kennedy School, as you might imagine. And that can’t be separated from his military career.michael barbaroMm-hmm.pete buttigiegI mean, really, it was almost an expectation that you would’ve served, up until roughly the time when I came of age when everything shifted.michael barbaroAn expectation that you would serve —pete buttigiegWell, when you’re looking at the history of the people we were studying —michael barbaroOf presidents.pete buttigieg— who have made history. Yep, as presidents. And then the thing that put me over the top was this experience knocking on doors in Iowa with a couple of buddies from college who went out. We took a week off and rented a car, and it was the last few days before the Iowa caucuses, and we were volunteers for Obama. They sent us to this very rural area, some of the lowest income counties in Iowa. And it felt like any time I met a young — especially young man — it was somebody who was serving or was about to serve. And I started to realize, we had service that used to be something that bridged people together. Now it’s completely different, that if you were rural or low-income, you were highly likely to serve. If you were from a background like mine, which was middle class economically, but I’d had the chance to go to an institution like Harvard, almost nobody with that background was serving. And I began to feel like it wasn’t just this kind of thing I thought about that I hadn’t gotten around to. It was that I was part of the problem. I was part of the divide. That was the thing that kind of propelled me that last few inches toward being ready to yank open the door of the recruiting office in Indiana and say, hey, how do I sign up?michael barbaroI wondered, do you think you joined the military in part because you knew what it would mean for a political career?pete buttigiegYou know, I wrestled with that because as soon as I get that question, there’s a part of me that thinks, if the answer is yes, does that mean the service wasn’t pure in some way? And I remember at the time asking myself if being in the military was as unpopular as it is today popular, would I still do it? And I want to believe the answer is yes, but there’s no way to go back and prove it. I’m not somebody who thinks that it’s, like, a prerequisite that if you want to run for office you need to have served. But I do think if you have a heart for elected office, one way to put your money where your mouth is to have been in that kind of service, too.michael barbaroThat strikes me as a very candid answer because of course, you could just say, well, of course I would have done it, even if there was no possible —pete buttigiegYeah.michael barbaro— political benefit.pete buttigiegAnd I want to say that. I just can’t prove it.michael barbaroSo I want to talk about this run for mayor for just a little bit. Whenever you run for office, your character is on display. And at this point, you are keeping something quite elemental about yourself secret. Did it feel like you were hiding something?pete buttigiegNot really. The only time it felt that way was when there was small talk about whether I was dating, and I would crack a joke or something. We’d be sitting in a studio like this one and a radio host would ask a question. And I’d say, well, if anybody listening is into economic policy and long walks on the beach, go ahead and reach out and just kind of play the busy single person, which is what I was, except for the fact that I wasn’t actively looking for love. I was going out of my way to avoid it. But if somebody who is straight up asked me on the record, to this day, I’m not sure what I would have done.michael barbaroDo you think that that would have potentially cost you the mayoralty, might have kept you from being mayor or staying mayor?pete buttigiegYeah, I think there’s a good chance of it. There’s a reason why no — as far as I know, no out gay person had ever run for mayor of any place in Indiana.michael barbaroThis is a state with strong Christian values, and —pete buttigieg— not known for progressive social outlooks on politics. And here I am, rocking up, 29 years old saying, trust me, support me. Never mind this state legislator who has earned tons of credibility in this community. Never mind this county councilman who’s the party favorite. Go with me instead. If there had been anything that looked like a skeleton or a vulnerability, I think it probably would have sunk me before I got anywhere at all.michael barbaroSo I want to now move into this notion of you reconciling these things.pete buttigiegYeah, so when I first joined the Reserve, the message was kind of you’re pretty much going to go to one of these wars, and we’ll let you know which one. And so I knew that, at a certain point, it was coming. And of course, I didn’t want to take office in South Bend without a plan for this. So we had gamed it out with my team, if I get orders, here’s what you do. And when I received my orders and knew I was going for sure, I don’t think even then it occurred to me that it would have much to do with my sexuality. If anything, I was thankful that I was single, right? The hardest thing for people to deploy is the fact that you’re leaving behind somebody you love, in addition to all the professional complications. But then, the more I started getting mentally ready for going over and really thinking about what it meant, the more it started weighing on me that I didn’t have a — wasn’t coming back to a family, my parents, of course, but I wasn’t coming back to a household. And more than that, I had no idea what it was like to be in love. And the idea that I’m — here I am. I’m a grown-ass man. I own a home. I’m the mayor of my city. I’m a military officer. And if I get killed over there, I will go to my grave not knowing what it’s like to be in love. And that just made me realize how untenable the situation I was in really was. And up until then, it didn’t seem untenable, I guess because I was so busy, and I might have deferred coming out and having a dating life forever, if not for this moment where I’m thinking, shit, I could die.michael barbaroYou wrote a letter I want to ask you about.pete buttigiegYeah, you know, it’s a thing you do. I assume everybody does it. I don’t know. But it’s the thing you do when you go to war, right? You want to make sure that you have the last word on your life and leave a few instructions. So I wrote up a letter, put an envelope, put just in case on the outside. Put it in the desk drawer, would’ve been pretty easy to find if worse comes to worst. And that’s a real moment, too, because you’re sitting there staring at the screen trying to figure out how to give a short accounting of your life.michael barbaroAnd what did you say?pete buttigiegWell, what I said was that I wouldn’t want people to think that I’d been cheated, that obviously it’d be terrible if I didn’t come back, but I also had this amazing life where I have wonderful friendships, and I got to serve my community in a way that very few people get to do, let alone at my age, and that I’d had this very fulfilling life. And of course, it’d be too bad if something happened to me, but to keep that in perspective. But if you’re asking if there was, like, P.S. I’m gay, no.michael barbaroThat’s kind of what I was asking. So you are deployed.pete buttigiegYeah.michael barbaroYou do not die.pete buttigiegRight.michael barbaroYou come back, and you’re mayor.pete buttigiegYeah.michael barbaroAnd how do you decide that it’s time to come out?pete buttigiegWell, I think by the time I hit the ground and I was back, I knew that I was going to come out and then it’s just — it was more how and when. I remember resenting the idea that you’re supposed to have to come out, right? Straight people don’t have to come out. Why do I? And then, while I’m in the process of figuring this out —archived recordingThank you all for coming. It’s been a tough week here in the Hoosier state, but we’re going to move forward.pete buttigiegWe have this explosive controversy over Mike Pence, the Governor Mike Pence and his so-called Religious Freedom bill.archived recordingThe Religious Freedom Restoration Act was about religious liberty, not about discrimination.pete buttigiegSo suddenly, we’re on national television, my state, as the most officially anti-gay state in the country.I’m fighting him on it, of course, because it’s a terrible policy. But now, I’m fighting this terrible, anti-gay policy putatively from the perspective of a straight ally, wondering whether I’m more effective because people don’t know that I’m gay. And at the same time, knowing that this just kind of speeds things up even more that, like, it’s just a really weird position to be in, to be having all these hypothetical arguments about discrimination against gay people, when it really means me. Meanwhile, this is also the period when we realize that soon the Supreme Court is going to weigh in on marriage. I mean, all of this was happening in that early part of 2015 while I’m wrestling with how to do this. And so oddly enough, it was —— as busy as I was as mayor. Military duty actually felt like, kind of almost like a break because it was eight hour days, 40 hour week. I wasn’t used to having that much time, and so is a lot of time to sit and write and think and call friends and get advice.michael barbaroSo you produce a plan.pete buttigiegYeah, well I produced a letter, an op-ed I guess.michael barbaroMm-hmm. What was the essential line that I’m sure you remember that you wrote?pete buttigiegI remember saying that it’s just part of who I am and that it has no bearing on how I do my job, that the way I do my — did my job either as an officer or as a mayor or in business had nothing to do with the fact that I was gay and that —michael barbaroIt still sounds a little defensive.pete buttigiegYeah.michael barbaroOr maybe a little scared.pete buttigiegProbably. Yeah, I mean, you know, I didn’t feel like I was coming out guns blazing. I felt like I — again, part of me was bothered that I had to share this at all. Then part of me knew that it would do some good if I did, I mean, not just in my own life. That I — my main agenda was, personally, I wanted to get out there and start dating. But also that it would mean something, might mean all kinds of things to a whole bunch of different people when I came out and said this.michael barbaroWe’ll be right back.archived recordingA very personal announcement coming from South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg today. In an essay published in today’s South Bend Tribune, the mayor announced he is gay. Currently in the midst of running for a second term, Pete Buttigieg penned an essay in Tuesday’s South Bend Tribune revealing he was gay. A lot of people wondering why he chose to make this announcement now. It comes just months after the state’s religious freedom law thrust the state into the national debate on gay rights. As for the mayor himself, he says nothing is different, nothing has changed, and his focus is on South Bend.michael barbaroI want to talk about the timing, the exact moment of the op-ed because my sense is that at this phase of your career, you’re up for re-election, right? You’ve won the primary. And winning the primary, in a sense, means you’re standing a very good shot of winning.pete buttigiegDepending on the year, but yeah, in South Bend, it should be.michael barbaroSo does that mean you deliberately chose a — like, a safe, low-risk time to do this?pete buttigiegI don’t know. I would think that going into a Democratic primary would be a safer time than going into a general election. And I think also the decision to do this came by way of realizing that there is no such thing as a safe time. I was just done with not having the kind of personal life that I wanted to have.michael barbaroSo once you come out, how does your personal life change?pete buttigiegWell, I started dating, and that kind of changes everything. I mean, I still had this very demanding job. You’re the mayor, and so anybody in town that you ask to have a cup of coffee is —michael barbaroIt’s a thing.pete buttigiegYeah, it’s a thing. It might be misinterpreted. You could cross some line without meaning to. I mean, most of the people I interacted with were either people who needed something from me, people I needed something from or people who worked for me. So it’s not, like, a very healthy pool for dating is what I’m saying. And I remember thinking there were all these kind of city fathers who, early on in my time as mayor, seemed determined to fix me up with their daughters. And I remember just thinking, like, where are you now? Did none of you have, like, a son or a nephew or something? So I did what millennials do. I went online. Turns out there’s apps for all of this. There was O.K. Cupid, Tinder. The one that actually came through for me was called Hinge. And it’s supposed to serve up people that — I don’t know how the algorithm works. But I find this guy, this cute guy with a big smile, and I’m like, I want to know this guy. So we start chatting. Well, I was chatting with a lot of people, but obviously, he’s the one I remember because that was Chasten.michael barbaroYour future husband.pete buttigiegYes.michael barbaroSo your story, to many people, is particularly compelling one, everything we just discussed. You are a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, you’re a veteran. You’re gay. You’re religious. And from your own description of yourself, it feels like you have been thinking about politics and preparing, to some degree, to run for president for a very long time, even though you’re quite young. And I’m sure you understand this and have heard this. That has led to this perception of a person kind of, perhaps, orchestrating a political biography. Do you ever question whether that, no matter what your intention, is — could possibly undermine the power of the story itself, however genuine?pete buttigiegYeah, I mean, I think we’re conditioned to not like the idea of somebody who sat around thinking all their lives about how to become president. And I don’t view myself that way, although I get that that story has been written around me. Although, I also don’t know what it is we expect, that somebody kind of gets struck by lightning and then they turn into somebody who might become president. We all have these paths, right, that bring us to where we are. And I think anybody in professional life or even social life thinks about the story that you tell about yourself. At the end of the day, I’m not doing this because I have this personal need to be in elected office or to be the president. I’m not coming at the presidency as a thing that I’d like to occupy. I’m coming at it as this way to do something that I think I’m able to do. And I think it’s helpful in the sense that I could also have a very happy life doing something else. And oddly, I think that — that helps prepare me to do what’s required to do this. And this is advice I give talking to students, too. Imagine somebody is being sworn in, an ambitious, talented person kind of in the middle of their career is being sworn in as an assistant secretary in the State Department for the Middle East. And then imagine if that person has got there one of two ways. In kind of universe A, it’s a person who woke up one day in high school and said, I want to be the assistant secretary for the Middle East, and took the right courses and got the right jobs and had the right fellowships and wrote the right papers and did everything in order to occupy that title. And the other person is somebody who said, I — woke up in high school and said, I want to be the person who makes the United States a force toward peace in the Middle East. And they don’t know what that’s going to mean, and maybe it means they start out becoming an activist or maybe they’re an academic or maybe they’re a civil servant or whatever. But by whatever winding path, they wind up in this job, right? Which of those two scenarios is going to lead to somebody who’s better equipped to take that job they’ve been handed? I’ve got to think it’s the latter. And so what I’ve tried to do in my life is to prepare myself to be useful to others. And yes, I think that, in all likelihood, means in a form that involves holding office or seeking office or at least public life where I speak to lots of people, sometimes millions at the same time. But it’s not about, necessarily, having one title or another. And so I think if you overthink it, that’s where you start to lose the fidelity to what it is that would guide you when you actually get what you’ve been chasing for a long time.Jeremy, what do we learn from Mayor Pete Buttigieg about the way he reconciled his political ambition with this essential fact about himself that he feared would endanger that ambition?jeremy petersI think we learn a lot about his decision-making process, not just how he internalizes decisions personally, but how he thinks about them in the longer arc of a political career. And he’s been very intentional all along the way about choosing certain endeavors that he thinks would benefit a long-term political career. Now some people would think, on the one hand, that’s too calculating. I don’t want somebody who’s thought about being president since he was a teenager. And, you know, in the era when voters seemed to prize authenticity in their political figures, they could see that as inauthentic. On the other hand, the decision that he made to wait seems to have borne out to his benefit. I mean, here he is, the first openly gay candidate for president of the United States who has a legitimate shot at being his party’s nominee. Look at where he is in the Democratic primary right now. He’s rocketed to the top of the polls. He’s brought in all this money in large part because he’s gay, and that opened a lot of doors with Democratic donors. He’s heading into the Iowa caucuses in the lead by some measures. But we won’t know if his decision to wait actually was the right one until people start voting. So it seems to have worked out well for him right now, but no one’s cast a single vote. And we don’t know how voters in the Democratic primary are going to react. We certainly don’t know how voters in a general election are going to react. So we’re just not going to know until Democratic voters have their say.michael barbaroMayor, when you think back to your younger self —pete buttigiegYeah.michael barbaroNot just your teenage self, but even your college self and your post-collegiate self who was so fearful about telling the world that you were gay, what do you kind of wish you could tell that person, that version of Mayor Buttigieg?pete buttigiegWell, back then, I would have thought this other fact, if I dared to unpack it, this fact about my life, this way in which I was different, was the thing that could multiply all the other stuff by zero, in terms of the impact I was going to have in the world, that I might very well choose that path, but that the price would be that I wouldn’t get to make a difference in public life. And if you want proof of God having a sense of humor, one of the things I’m seeing now, especially in the interactions I have on the campaign trail and the fact that this campaign is historic in a lot of ways, is that that same fact that I thought would mean never getting to this point might actually be one of the things that makes it matter the most.michael barbaroMm-hmm.pete buttigiegIt’s a strange thing to think about that the one thing that I couldn’t control, the one thing that might have meant that it would be better not to have any aspirations related to politics at all could be the very thing that anchors the moral and emotional purpose of this entire campaign.michael barbaroThank you very much.pete buttigiegThanks for having me.michael barbaroWe’ll be right back.Here’s what else you need to know today.archived recording (fiona hill)And I did say to him, Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up, and here we are.michael barbaroIn the latest public testimony before impeachment investigators, Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, recalled her growing frustration with Ambassador Gordon Sondland, as she realized he was pursuing a political agenda in Ukraine on behalf of President Trump.archived recording (fiona hill)He was being involved in a domestic, political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy and those two things have just diverged.michael barbaroHill testified that when Trump and Sondland pressed Ukraine to investigate the discredited theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, they were playing directly into Russia’s hands, since Russia wants to deflect attention away from its interference.archived recording (fiona hill)This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. These fictions are harmful, even if they’re deployed for purely domestic, political purposes.michael barbaroAnd Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted on charges of bribery and fraud after a long-running corruption investigation, throwing his political future into doubt at a moment when neither he nor his chief rival have been able to form a governing coalition. The charges involve allegations that Netanyahu accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts in return for political favors and performed favors for Israeli media tycoons in exchange for favorable news coverage.“The Daily” is made by Theo Balcomb, Andy Mills, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Alexandra Leigh Young, Jonathan Wolfe, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Adizah Eghan, Kelly Prime, Julia Longoria, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Jazmín Aguilera, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Monika Evstatieva, Sayre Quevedo, Neena Pathak and Dan Powell.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Julia Simon, Stella Tan, Lauren Jackson and Bianca Giaever.That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.

ERIC THAYER / Reuters Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) in Los Angeles, California, earlier in October. COLUMBIA, S.C. ― Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) slammed President Donald Trump during a forum on criminal justice reform at Benedict College, a historically black institution, which she had initially decided to boycott. The Democratic presidential candidate previously announced that she would not participate in the forum because a sponsoring organization, the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center, gave an award to Trump after his speech on Friday. The senator rejoined the event on Saturday after the organization was dropped as an event sponsor and more students were admitted. “I just couldn’t believe that Donald Trump would be given an award as it relates to criminal justice reform,” Harris said. “This is somebody who has disrespected the voices that have been present for decades about the need for reform in this system.” Trump spoke on Friday before a curated crowd that included just a handful of students and was otherwise made up of his supporters. A large group of anti-Trump protesters demonstrated just outside of the college. “We’ll never let up on our efforts to ensure that our justice system is fair for every single American,” Trump said, before going on to talk about himself. “And I have my own experience, you know that. You see what’s going on with the witch hunt. It’s a terrible thing that’s going on in our country.” He later bashed Harris for initially pulling out of the forum, calling her a “badly failing presidential candidate.” Harris said it was offensive that Trump compared his experience as president to the plight of average Americans in the criminal justice system. “He dares to compare himself to the people who have been at the wrong end of the system that is in need of reform?” Harris said. “He has a team of lawyers. By contrast, 80% of the people charged with crimes in the United States of America cannot afford a lawyer.” Harris, who was introduced as the only presidential candidate to attend a historically black university, was warmly received by the crowd, which — unlike the audience for Trump’s speech — included a large number of Benedict College students. The forum was sponsored by Verizon, HuffPost’s parent company. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

As Americans prepare for Thanksgiving, the House Judiciary Committee is getting ready for a big event next week. On Dec. 4, its members will hold a hearing on the “constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment.” Donald Trump has been invited to attend (pdf).Based on the president’s response to the impeachment inquiry thus far, it seems likely he’ll decline the offer and opine on the hearing via Twitter instead. Trump has continually decried the probe into his Ukraine dealings as a sham, and showing up at this hearing, or sending a lawyer, might in his mind only legitimize the inquiry he’s dubbed a witch hunt.Still, Trump has been offered an opportunity to have his counsel question witnesses about constitutional process and the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the impeachment clause. In a statement, judiciary committee chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York acknowledged Trump’s disdain for the inquiry and essentially dared him not to participate. Nadler stated:At base, the President has a choice to make: he can take this opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process. I hope that he chooses to participate in the inquiry, directly or through counsel, as other Presidents have done before him.Nadler also warned Trump that thwarting the investigation by preventing documents or blocking witnesses will count against him if the House does decide to move forward with articles of impeachment. He reminded the president that attending was “not a right but a privilege” being extended out of the committee’s desire to ensure a fair, informative, constitutionally sound process.The hearing will examine the framers’ intent regarding the Constitution’s impeachment clause and analyze the “constitutional framework” through which to view the evidence, Nadler explained. This gathering is, in some sense, a public civics lesson, a legal debate illuminating the concept of impeachment generally and how the allegations against Trump fit specifically, if at all.The intelligence committee is expected to soon file a report laying out all the evidence presented privately and publicly to this point, perhaps even ahead of the upcoming hearing. But Trump might not have the benefit of studying that report before deciding on his participation, as he has been given a deadline of Dec. 1 at 6pm to respond to the invitation.White House aides are reportedly debating whether to participate in the event. An unnamed source “familiar with the deliberations” told the New York Times that they haven’t reached a decision yet.But Nadler shouldn’t hold his breath for a yes. It’s a pretty safe bet that the president doesn’t intend to show and that Americans will hear plenty from him anyway. During witness testimony in recent weeks, Trump has tweeted about the impeachment inquiry, inserting himself deeper even as he denounces the process and its participants. If he has something to say about the framers, constitutional law, or anything else, expect him to tweet it.

One of President Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters in the Senate raged against the president’s Sunday night announcement that America will bow out of Syria while Turkey attacks allied Kurds in the region, calling the decision on Monday “shortsighted and irresponsible.”Appearing on Trump-boosting morning show Fox & Friends, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was asked whether he supported the president’s move, prompting the hawkish Republican lawmaker to exclaim, “Absolutely not.”“If I didn’t see Donald Trump’s name on the tweet, I thought it would be [former President] Obama’s rationale for getting out of Iraq.” he said. “This is gonna lead to ISIS’s reemergence!”Graham went on to say this was a “big win for ISIS,” claiming that the Kurds in the area will align with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad because they’d have no choice due to the United States abandoning them. “So this is a big win for Iran and Assad,” he added.(During another Fox & Friends segment, co-host Brian Kilmeade criticized the president as well, calling the president’s decision “disastrous” and that it would leave the Kurds to fend for themselves.)The South Carolina senator then stated that the “Kurds stepped up when nobody else would to fight ISIS,” noting that if we abandon the Kurds at this point, nobody will want to help America in the future in fighting radical Islam. Graham also pushed back on Trump’s claim that ISIS has been eradicated.“The biggest lie being told by the administration [is] that ISIS is defeated,” he declared. “This impulsive decision by the president has undone all the gains we’ve made, thrown the region into further chaos. Iran is licking their chops. And if I’m an ISIS fighter, I’ve got a second lease on life. So to those who think ISIS has been defeated, you will soon see.”“I hope I’m making myself clear how shortsighted and irresponsible this decision is, in my view,” Graham concluded.The GOP lawmaker continued to blast the president’s move on Twitter following his Fox & Friends appearance, saying he doesn’t “believe it is a good idea to outsource the fight against ISIS to Russia, Iran and Turkey.”“I feel very bad for the Americans and allies who have sacrificed to destroy the ISIS Caliphate because this decision virtually reassures the reemergence of ISIS. So sad. So dangerous,” he wrote in another tweet. “President Trump may be tired of fighting radical Islam. They are NOT tired of fighting us.”Furthermore, piggybacking off his assertion on Fox & Friends that he would do everything he can to sanction Turkey if they invade Syria, Graham announced that he would “introduce bipartisan sanctions against Turkey if they invade Syria and will call for their suspension from NATO if they attack Kurdish forces who assisted the U.S. in the destruction of the ISIS Caliphate.”Graham wasn’t alone among Trump’s allies and loyalists to call out the president over his decision to stand aside as Turkey attacks one of America’s most reliable allies in the region. For example, Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said we “must always have the backs of our allies” and leaving the Kurds to “die is a big mistake.” And Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), weeks after competing with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for Trump’s affections, called it a “catastrophic mistake” to pull out of Syria, adding that terrorists “thousands of miles away can and will use their safe-havens to launch attacks against America.”Facing overwhelming criticism from within his own party on the Turkey-Syria decision, Trump tweeted late Monday morning that if Turkey does anything that “I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).”

Boris Johnson has hit the pause button on his Brexit legislation after MPs rejected his plan to get it through the Commons in three days.MPs backed his Withdrawal Agreement Bill - but minutes later voted against the timetable, leaving it "in limbo".After the vote, EU Council President Donald Tusk said he would recommend EU leaders backed an extension to the 31 October Brexit deadline.But a No 10 source said if a delay was granted, the PM would seek an election. LIVE: Reaction after Brexit bill paused by PM How would another Brexit delay work? How soon could there be a general election? On Saturday, Mr Johnson complied with a law demanding he write to the EU to ask for a three-month extension, but did not sign the letter.Following the result in the Commons, he said it was Parliament and not the government that had requested an extension.Mr Johnson said he would reiterate his pledge to EU leaders, telling them it was still his policy to leave by the end of October.But Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg told MPs it was "very hard" to see how the necessary laws could be passed to leave with a deal by the deadline.A spokesman from the European Commission said: "[The Commission] takes note of tonight's result and expects the UK government to inform us about the next steps."But Mr Tusk tweeted he would "recommend the EU27 accept the UK request for an extension" in order to "avoid a no-deal Brexit". The BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler said: "[The] temptation amongst most I speak to tonight in EU circles is to grant the 31 Jan extension."And the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said that meant the government's plan to seek an election was "looking likely". However, an EU source told BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming the bloc was considering a "flextension" - an extension with a maximum end date, but the flexibility for the UK to leave early if a deal is ratified. Please upgrade your browser to view this interactive Following Tuesday's Commons votes, a Downing Street source said Parliament "blew its last chance". They added: "If Parliament's delay is agreed by Brussels, then the only way the country can move on is with an election."Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Johnson was "the author of his own misfortune".He told the Commons that MPs had "refused to be bounced into debating a hugely significantly piece of legislation in just two days, with barely any notice or an analysis of the economic impact of this bill".But Mr Corbyn offered to enter discussions over a "sensible" timetable for the PM's deal to go through Parliament.The SNP's leader, Ian Blackford, said it was "another humiliating defeat" for the PM, and MPs had "spoken with a very clear voice to tell the PM he is not on".Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson called on Mr Johnson to "end the brinkmanship and replace it with some statesmanship" in order to secure an extension with the EU. Boris Johnson agreed his new plan with EU leaders last week, but has repeatedly pledged to leave the bloc by the end of October, with or without a deal. This is despite him having to ask for an extension to Brexit on Saturday after MPs backed an amendment attempting to block a no-deal. The bill that would turn his plan into law - the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - was published on Monday evening, and he urged MPs to back a three-day timetable to push it through the Commons ahead of the Halloween deadline. The PM told Parliament if it "decides to delay everything until January or possibly longer", he would seek an election - but he did not say what the government would do if the EU offered a shorter extension.MPs did approve the bill on its first hurdle through the Commons - called the second reading - by 329 votes to 299.But in a vote straight after, they rejected the so-called programme motion, in other words the planned timetable to get the bill through Parliament, by 14 votes after a number of MPs criticised the pace of the legislation. Mr Johnson told the Commons: "I will speak to EU member states about their intentions [but] until they have reached a decision - until we reach a decision, I will say - we will pause this legislation."In the meantime, however, he said the government would "take the only responsible course and accelerate our preparations for a no deal outcome".The PM added: "Let me be clear. Our policy remains that we should not delay [and] that we should leave the EU on 31 October."If an election were to be triggered this week, the earliest it could take place would be Thursday 28 November, as the law requires 25 days between an election being called in Parliament and polling day.But Mr Johnson cannot force an election himself and would need the backing of Parliament.MPs had been due to debate the bill over Wednesday and Thursday, but will now return to discussing the contents of the Queen's Speech - which put forward the government's domestic agenda for the new session of Parliament.Confused about what just happened? Or what happens now? Submit your questions on the latest Brexit developments.In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read the terms and conditions.Use this form to ask your question:

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Carly Fiorina, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, says “it is vital” that President Donald Trump be impeached, but she did not go so far as to say he should be removed from office.The Democratic-led House is expected to vote Wednesday to approve two impeachment articles, though the president’s removal by the GOP-controlled Senate appears unlikely. The articles charge that Trump abused his power and betrayed the nation as he urged Ukraine to investigate his political rivals and withheld military aid to the country.Fiorina’s comments are similar to those of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another 2016 GOP presidential candidate, who said in October that he supports impeaching the president. ADVERTISEMENTIn a lengthy interview on the CNN podcast “Boss Files with Poppy Harlow” that aired Monday, Fiorina said she has no idea if she’ll run for president again. And while she voted for Trump in 2016, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive said she’s been “very disappointed.”On whether she would vote for Trump in 2020, she noted that she agrees with him on some issues but wants to wait until the Democrats have selected their nominee.“Honestly, it depends who the Democrats put up,” she said. Fiorina also said she didn’t know if Trump had been a net positive for America. “I think the jury’s out,” she said. “And I think it’s one of those things where time will tell.”Early in the 2016 Republican primary race, Fiorina had a memorable response for Trump after he was quoted in Rolling Stone magazine criticizing Fiorina’s face. She was the only woman in the GOP field.“Look at that face,” Trump said. “Would anyone vote for that?” He later said he was talking about her persona, not her looks.Fiorina had a retort for him at the Republicans’ second prime-time debate: “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”

The woman who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York on Independence Day last year to protest against the separation of migrant families at the US-Mexico border has been sentenced to five years’ probation and 200 hours of community service.Therese Patricia Okoumou, who is known as Patricia, was sentenced in a New York court on Tuesday after being convicted last December of trespass for attempting to climb the outside of the Statue of Liberty last 4 July, then refusing to come down, as police helicopters circled and the monument was evacuated.Okoumou arrived at court with clear tape across her mouth, to protest against what she said are restrictions to her freedom of expression in relation to her determination to carry out direct action-style protest over immigration rights.The judge in the case ordered her to remove the tape before she could be sentenced, and Okoumou complied. She had also written on her face the words “I care” and turned up in court with fellow activists in support.She had been facing up to 18 months in prison and had lately been under house arrest for breaking her bail conditions after carrying out a direct action protest in Texas, while her New York sentencing was pending.“I do not need probation, and I do not belong in prison. I am not a criminal,” Okoumou told the judge, Gabriel Gorenstein.Okoumou captured the attention of the world on live TV after she broke away from a protest over harsh US immigration policy, organized at the Statue of Liberty by the activism group Rise and Resist, and, alone, began climbing the base of the statue. She had aimed to climb all the way up to the top of the figure, but was unable to ascend the slippery metal and huddled at the base of “Lady Liberty” as law enforcement officers closed in.She later told the Guardian, in an exclusive interview, that she was kept awake at night by images of migrant children ripped from their parents’ arms after crossing the border and then kept in child detention centers and camps in the US.“I had thought, ‘It’s the Statue of Liberty, it’s the Fourth of July and there are children in cages, we are doing a protest but I want to send an even stronger message and this is the perfect day for it.’ All of those elements together were necessary to give me the courage,” she said at the time.Okoumou has called for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal agency (Ice).Last November she traveled to Paris and unfurled anti-Ice banners on the Eiffel Tower, explaining to the Guardian that because the French had given America the Statue of Liberty it seemed like an appropriate location for a demonstration.“I must continue,” she said of her protests. Topics New York Protest US immigration news

President Donald Trump on Monday defended his widely condemned decision to greenlight a Turkish military operation that jeopardizes the lives of U.S.-allied Kurdish forces fighting the self-described Islamic State in northern Syria. In an extraordinary shift in U.S. foreign policy, the White House released a statement late Sunday announcing that American forces would “no longer be in the immediate area,” allowing Turkey to invade northern Syria. Any captured ISIS fighters are now the responsibility of Turkey, the White House added. The Kurds, an ethnic group, lead the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main ally of the U.S. in Syria. The Turkish government, however, considers them to be terrorists. Middle Eastern and foreign policy experts have warned that allowing Turkey to invade northern Syria will result in a genocide against the Kurds. But Trump, in a series of tweets Monday, essentially told the Kurds that the United States has supported them for years, but now they’re on their own. “The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago,” the president wrote. “We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight.” “The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so,” he continued. “[I]t is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN.” Trump added that it’s now up to Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds to “figure the situation out.” “They all hate ISIS, have been enemies for years,” he tweeted. “We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!” The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago. We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight. When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area. We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate,.....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019 ....including capturing thousands of ISIS fighters, mostly from Europe. But Europe did not want them back, they said you keep them USA! I said “NO, we did you a great favor and now you want us to hold them in U.S. prisons at tremendous cost. They are yours for trials.” They.....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019 .....again said “NO,” thinking, as usual, that the U.S. is always the “sucker,” on NATO, on Trade, on everything. The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so. They have been fighting Turkey for decades. I held off this fight for....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019 ....almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN. Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to.....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019 ...figure the situation out, and what they want to do with the captured ISIS fighters in their “neighborhood.” They all hate ISIS, have been enemies for years. We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019 In a statement Sunday, the SDF said a Turkish invasion would “displace our people” and could “result in many civilian casualties.” The forces warned that Trump’s decision to withdraw support in northern Syria will reverse the progress they’ve made on defeating ISIS and make the war-torn country a “permanent conflict area.” Several senior Republicans pushed back on Trump’s plan to desert the Kurds. “I hope I’m making myself clear how shortsighted and irresponsible this decision is in my view,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told “Fox & Friends” on Monday. “This, to me, is just unnerving to its core.” Trump called for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces in Syria last December, but he ultimately reversed his decision following backlash from American intelligence officials, foreign allies and U.S. lawmakers, including Graham. This story has been updated with a statement from the Syrian Democratic Forces. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

Mr. Booker’s appearance at Saturday’s victory party, Mr. Demers noted, was the same event at which Mr. Obama made his New Hampshire debut in 2006, though that marked the first time Mr. Obama had stepped foot in the state and he was greeted by greater fanfare. The hosts of the Nashua house party that Mr. Booker attended Saturday also hosted Mr. Obama’s first house party.“I think the Booker approach is effective,” said Jim Donchess, the mayor of Nashua, who met with Mr. Booker on Saturday morning for nearly an hour. “We need to heal some of the divisions and mistrust.”Joining Mr. Donchess and Mr. Booker over coffee was Cindy Rosenwald, a newly elected state senator to whom Mr. Booker had directed some of his donors to support in 2018. She said she appreciated the two maximum-sized contributions she had received from supporters of Mr. Booker. “It was totally significant,” she said.Mr. Booker was also in the state in late October, campaigning for some local Democrats shortly before the midterm elections. While in town then, Mr. Booker also had a meet-and-greet dinner with a few dozen local Democratic officials and political brokers at a Manchester restaurant.The dinner turned out to be the same evening as the clinching game of the World Series for the Boston Red Sox. Televisions broadcast the game in the background as the political types lingered with Mr. Booker. Some called it a sign of his 2020 allure that many still attended, though a few did slip away before the final out.Mr. Booker’s formidable social media presence would be a potential advantage in 2020, though his often-packed Instagram feed was conspicuously quiet on Saturday. One woman who ran into Mr. Booker at the Nashua coffee shop said she already followed him on Facebook. “I’ve seen so much of your stuff everywhere,” the woman, Lisa Coffey, told him.

closeVideoVarney on UK election: Johnson's victory 'crushing defeat' for socialistsStuart Varney discusses the UK election and how the victory of Boris Johnson could pave the way for a trade deal with the U.S.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson dealt a "crushing defeat" to socialists and his victory in Britain's general election could have implications for the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., Fox Business host Stuart Varney said Friday."It was a crushing defeat for the socialists both over there and over here. ... It's a shot in the arm for the conservative movement worldwide," Varney told “Fox & Friends." "The collectivists were thoroughly beaten, they were routed. There's a message in America for AOC, Senator Warren and [Bernie] Sanders."Varney believes President Trump will have a similarly large victory in 2020 if the Democrats continue to move toward socialism.Johnson vowed on Friday morning to “get Brexit done” by Jan. 31, 2020 with “no ifs, no buts, no maybes” following his Conservative Party’s landslide victory in the country’s general election.A sudden burst in London-listed companies brought European markets to record peaks early Friday, Reuters reported, as investors celebrated the probable end of more than three-and-a-half years of political turmoil in Britain once the United Kingdom settles on a deal to leave the European Union.“This election means that getting Brexit done is now the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people. With this election, I think we put an end to all those miserable threats of a second referendum,” Johnson told supporters.Varney said the win “paves the way for the Brits to get out of socialist Europe, and it paves the way for a really good trade deal with Trump for the United States."VideoJohnson also promised that his Conservative Party’s top priority is to massively increase investments in the National Health Service and “make this country the cleanest, greenest on Earth with our far-reaching environmental program.”“You voted to be carbon neutral by 2015 and you also voted to be Corbyn neutral by Christmas and we’ll do that, too,” he said, referring to socialist Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who announced his intention to step down after his party's defeat in the election.Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.

However they see Amazon, for good or ill, residents of the fastest-growing city in the US largely agree on the price Seattle has paid to be the home of the megacorporation: surging rents, homelessness, traffic-clogged streets, overburdened public transport, an influx of young men in polo shirts and a creeping uniformity rubbing against the city’s counterculture.But the issue of Jeff Bezos’s balls is far from settled. “Have you seen the Bezos balls?” asked Dave Christie, a jewellery maker at a waterfront market who makes no secret of his personal dislike for the man who founded and still runs Amazon. “No one wanted them. They’ve disfigured downtown. Giant balls say everything about the man. Bezos is holding Seattle hostage.”It’s not strictly true to say everyone is against the three huge plant-forested glass spheres at what Amazon calls its “campus” in the heart of the city. The Bezos balls, as the conservatories are popularly known, are modelled on the greenhouses at London’s Kew Gardens, feature walkways above fig trees, ferns and rhododendrons, and provide hot-desking for Amazon workers looking for a break from the neighbouring office tower. “They are absolutely gorgeous. There was nothing in that area 10 years ago,” said Jen Reed, selling jerky from another market stall. “I don’t hate Amazon the way that a lot of people hate them. Seattle has changed a lot. My rent’s gone from $500 to $1,000, but outside of that Amazon have been beneficial. It’s give and take, and anyway we invited them here.”But even those sympathetic to the biggest retailer in the US are questioning whether there has been more take than give. Amazon has long been accused of stretching the city’s transit and education systems, and its highly paid workers have driven up prices of goods and housing.The resentful murmur recently became a roar after Amazon reacted to the city’s latest tax proposal, which would have charged large businesses an annual $275 per employee, by resorting to what critics call blackmail. In mid-June, less than a month after unanimously passing the tax, Seattle’s council abandoned it in the face of threats from the corporation. The tension has sharpened the debate about whether the city can retain its identity as one of the most progressive in the country, or is destined to be just another tech hub.Ironically, given Amazon’s much-publicised “city sweepstakes”, in which municipalities in North America are competing to land the company’s second headquarters, Seattle did not reach a Faustian pact with Amazon to lure it in the first place. The city gave no tax breaks and passed no anti-union laws, although the fact that Washington state law bars income tax was certainly appealing. The council did encourage the firm’s massive growth, however, with accommodations on building regulations that helped drive $4bn in construction.Amazon has remade Seattle in many ways beyond new buildings. The city’s population has surged by about 40% since the company was founded, and nearly 20,000 people a year are moving there, often drawn by the company and its orbit. The tech industry has brought higher-paying jobs, with its average salary about $100,000. But that is twice as much as half the workers in the city earn, and the latter’s spending power is dropping sharply, creating a clear economic divide between some of the city’s population and the new arrivals. The better-paid have driven up house prices by 70% in five years, and rents with them, as they suck up the limited housing stock. The lower-paid are being forced out of the city, into smaller accommodation or on to the streets. The Seattle area now has the highest homeless population in the country after New York and Los Angeles, with more than 11,000 people without a permanent home, many living in tent camps under bridges, in parks and in cemeteries. “It’s incredibly difficult to find housing in Seattle now,” said Nicole Keenan-Lai, executive director of Puget Sound Sage, a Seattle thinktank focused on low-income and minority communities. “Two years ago a study came out that said 35% of Seattle’s homeless population has some college or a college degree.” John Burbank of the Economic Opportunity Institute said there is a a direct link between the surge in highly paid jobs and the numbers of people forced on to the street.“There’s an incredible correlation between the increase in homelessness and the increase in the number of people who have incomes in excess of $250,000,” he said. “That has grown by almost 50% between 2011 and 2017. The population of homeless kids in the Seattle public schools has grown from 1,300 kids to 4,200.”Amazon has sought to improve its standing with financial support for organisations such as Mary’s Place to build a new shelter for 200 homeless women and families. It is a similar story as schools and public transportation grapple to keep up with the rapidly rising population and the demographic shift it is causing. While use of public transport is falling in many major cities in the US, down more than 7% in Los Angeles in 2016 and 10% in Washington DC, it was up by 4% in Seattle. The city has redesigned bus routes and upgraded the South Lake Union Trolley, known locally by the unfortunate acronym of the Slut, to the Amazon campus in the area, but the system is struggling. The company has contributed towards some of the cost of the upgrades, including buying an additional streetcar and giving $700,000 toward running the bus service this year. But still the flow of cars to the Amazon campus has led to long traffic jams to the interstate. The bus route to the same area, the No 8, is notorious as one of the most overcrowded and delayed in the city, prompting a derisory Twitter account with the slogan “You can’t say late without 8!”.In other cities, rising salaries would be a boon to public coffers, but Seattle is burdened with one of the most regressive tax systems in the country.With no income tax, the financing of public works falls more heavily on the less well off through sales and property taxes. “We have a tax system in which if you’re making less than $25,000, you’re paying about 18% of your income in state and local taxes. If you’re above $250,000 you’re paying about 4% of your income in state and local taxes,” said Burbank. “As a result we’re leaving millions of dollars on the table that should be going into public investments in our state and in our city. We’re increasing taxes on the people who can least afford to pay taxes and we’re letting the affluent off the hook.”This is not how large numbers of people in Seattle think things should work. They argue that Amazon should contribute to upgrading a transport system that’s struggling under the influx it created, and improving schools that provide the educated workforce the company benefits from. “It is sort of a bipolar relationship because we do have a progressive city in some respects, we have a progressive city council in some respects, and then we have an environment that embraces individual wealth,” said Burbank.“I think Amazon’s attitude has to do with the difference between social liberties and economic equality. Bezos was helpful in the campaign for same-sex marriage, but he also put $100,000 in opposition to the [initiative on introducing an] income tax that we ran in our state in 2010. “So if it has to do with personal freedom, that’s OK. But if it has to do with actually trying to create a shared quality of life which entails taxation of the affluent or higher taxation, that’s not OK. And so this is a really good city for him because we have a lot of personal freedom and we have no taxation. Of course chickens are going to come home to roost at some point.” Bezos’s company has arguably done much to erode the liberal and progressive culture of the city that first attracted him. Unlike other locally based giant corporations such as Microsoft, Starbucks and Boeing, Amazon planted itself in the heart of the city, and the influx of well-paid tech workers has changed the feel of Seattle. Keenan-Lai sees it in the erosion of the identity of her old neighbourhood on the city’s Capitol Hill and the disappearance of older, quirky restaurants, driven out by newer, more polished places. “I can’t begrudge people moving to try to find opportunity,” she said. “But I do hear a lot of people say ‘I don’t want those programmers coming to Seattle’. It does create a lot of tension. Amazon represents both innovation and progress, and also dystopian fears for a lot of folks.” Reed, at the market stall, added: “It’s definitely weird when you go into a dive bar that used to have bike gangs and now everyone’s in a polo shirt.”The city council has struggled to find a path that remains true to Seattle’s progressive values while keeping the source of much of its recent prosperity happy. In 2015 it became the first major US city to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour. Keenan-Lai said 100,000 people – then quarter of the working population of the city – benefited from the measure, but that its impact was swiftly eroded. “The increase in the cost of housing has exceeded the increase in wages,” she said. “When we were advocating for $15 an hour the idea was that everyone who lived in Seattle could afford to live here. Our housing market just skyrocketed.”Seattle, forced by the lack of an income tax to hunt for innovative means of raising revenue, has run into resistance from Amazon at every turn. The friction peaked over the recent worker tax, which was expected to raise around $50m a year to help pay for affordable housing and services for people made homeless by escalating rents and property prices. Amazon, however, in actions critics called blackmail, characterised it as a “jobs tax”, threatened to freeze construction in the city and backed a petition drive to put the issue to a popular vote in November.The city’s chamber of commerce and other businesses threw their weight behind the ballot initiative. Popular support for the measure collapsed amid accusations that it would cost jobs and that the money would not be put to good use because the council lacks a coherent strategy to cope with the homeless crisis. Under pressure from Amazon, the council broke, and only two of the city’s nine councillors voted to keep the tax. One of them, Kshama Sawant, a member of Socialist Alternative, accused the council of a “cowardly betrayal” and called Bezos “our enemy”.Sawant, a driving force behind the $15 minimum wage, said it would be a mistake to expect Amazon to behave any differently. The company, she said, could easily afford the tax but opposed it for ideological reasons.“It’s not a tax on jobs,” she said. “It is not a tax on employees. It’s a tax on big business. For the people who would actually be paying this, it is pocket change, and yet they are fighting fiercely against it. ‘Good corporate citizen’ is an oxymoron, because Jeff Bezos and the billionaire class have no incentive to do the right thing.”Amazon has said that while it opposed the worker tax, it is “deeply committed to being part of the solution”, and points to its support of nonprofits in the city. The company declined to comment for this article.Critics are not persuaded. Some see the company as attempting to shape a future in which Seattle’s residents are dependent on Amazon’s largesse through the funding of NGOs to deal with social issues, giving the company undue power at the expense of democratic institutions. “Amazon is very much, ‘We want to save the world too, let’s do it together.’ And then as you get into the details, not so much,” said Keenan-Lai. “There is a lot of benefit we provide to Amazon but the city has had a really hard time extracting benefit from the company in return.” Still, Keenan-Lai said the city’s history of progressive struggle is deep-rooted. “There’s been a long understanding that corporations can’t continue doing what they’re doing,” she said. “In Seattle, we’ve been fighting back for a long time.”This week Guardian Cities takes a deeper look at the relationship between tech and US cities, asking whether tax giveaways are worth the cost. Join the discussion on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and explore the series here Topics Big tech, desperate cities Amazon Seattle Internet E-commerce Tax and spending features

closeVideoFBI documents reveal new details on President Trump's firing of James ComeyA look at what new FBI documents are revealing surrounding the circumstances around President Trump's firing of James Comey.New FBI documents from former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation revealed details of the circumstances surrounding President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey.The documents, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from BuzzFeed News and CNN, include redacted copies of "302" records, which detail interviews conducted by federal investigators. Among them was an interview with an unidentified supervisory special agent who recalled the events of May 9, 2017.LINDSEY GRAHAM TO JAMES COMEY: 'YOU GOT A LOT TO SAY, COME IN UNDER OATH AND SAY IT'The agent recalled that at approximately 4:51 p.m. the White House asked for Comey's email address. Events moved swiftly from that point on."Upon being asked whether the Director's unclassifed or classified email was needed, the White House representative advised [redacted] 'it doesn't matter, just give us his email address.'"In response, Comey's unclassified, secret and top-secret addresses were sent over, the agent said.Roughly four minutes later, the White House called the FBI to notify them that White House representative Keith Schiller was at FBI headquarters to deliver a letter, the document says. After a failed attempt to reach Comey's chief of staff James Rybicki, Schiller was finally met at the FBI's visitor center at 5:38 p.m. by someone whose name remains redacted. Schiller produced the letter and was then taken to Comey's executive suite.Comey was not in Washington, D.C., at the time, so Schiller left the letter with someone in the office, the agent recalled.By then, news of Comey's firing had already gotten out. After Schiller left, the agent said, someone commented that the person who received the letter "may have just handled history."

The terrorist group is defeated and routed. But its backup plan survives. From a report: It all began on October 27, 2019. Rumour was, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was dead. Nothing was confirmed, but already the jihadist world online was thrumming with excitement and trepidation. "I was walking through an airport," Moustafa Ayad tells me. "Jet-lagged out of my mind." A deputy director of the counter-extremism think tank Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Ayad tries to stay on top of the constant struggles and skirmishes, retreats and resurgences between Isis and their many enemies online. That day, as he scrolled through his phone, a blitz of Isis propaganda stared back at him. The digital Jihad was raising a dirge to Baghdadi on Twitter. Flitting from account to pro-Isis account, Ayad noticed something strange. Some accounts carried short, discreet links, not within their tweets, but nestled in their biographies. He clicked. The link, he realised, was not quite like any other he'd ever followed before. On his phone, Ayad saw folder after folder of meticulously catalogued terrorist content. "I thought it was a joke," Ayad says. "Some kind of scam." In the echoing marbled expanse of Dubai International Airport, on public Wi-Fi, in a Starbucks queue, he had stumbled upon a gigantic, sprawling cache of Isis material. He clicked on a PowerPoint presentation, one of countless now in front of him. "Al Qaeda Airlines", it said: a case study of the mechanics of hijacking planes, making your own chloroform, and the cell structure needed to organise a coordinated terrorist attack. Just then, a dim tannoy announced his flight. Over the weeks that followed, Ayad and his colleagues at the ISD began their journey through the cache. At first glance, the cache looks like a bunch of files on DropBox -- its colour palette an on-brand Isis black-and-white, with a roster of ordinary folders. But the first thing you notice is the size. Its 4,000 folders hold over a terabyte and a half of multimedia multilingual content, spanning Arabic, English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Bangla, Turkish, and Pashto. "It's a blueprint for terrorism, complete with footnotes" Ayad tells me. "It's everything anyone with an inclination for violence would need to carry out an attack." The cache's content is a blend of the official products of Isis itself with those of often more obscure precursors, such as the Tawhid wal-Jihad Group, who fought coalition forces in Iraq, and the umbrella organisation of other insurgent groups, Majlis Shura al-Mujahidin. A small amount of it -- just a few per cent by size -- captures in screeds and sermons the ideas of key ideologues of Isis itself. The key personality in the "Fatwas over the Airwaves" folder, for instance, is Turki al Banali, a Bahraini cleric-turned-recruiter who in each episode desperately gives the core concepts of Salafi Jihadism an Isis-friendly spin. Much of the stash, however, simply portrays daily life within Isis, back when the terrorist group still controlled a chunk of territory sitting astride Syria and Iraq. There are school curricula covering the six core subjects that, some estimates believe, were once taught to 130,000 children: English, PE, Arabic, Koranic Studies, Geography & History and a subject called "'ideology", a course of indoctrination in Isis's party lines expounding on the death and destruction awaiting all those who strayed outside of them. It is a mix of the banal and the horrifying -- conjugating verbs and killing the infidels, where early readers learn that "S is for sniper" and "G is for grenade".

Our relatives who defend Trump are not Trump. They are not facing a “witch hunt.” In fact, Trump and his operatives have bewitched ordinary Americans into supporting his interests over their own. Our relatives are the victims of Trump’s lies, of Trump’s policies, of his raids on democracy, of his tax cuts for the rich, of his tariffs, of his assaults on affordable health care, of his terrorization of job-creating immigrants, of his do-nothing climate and gun policies, of his use of the presidential power to enrich himself rather than low- and middle-income Americans.What has Trump done for our relatives who are not superrich and white and male other than entertain their destructive bigotries and fears and desires? What are we willing to do for their well-being? Who else is going to usher our relatives out of the reality show and back into reality? Relatives are best positioned to be these ushers. All this avoiding and attacking our relatives, and self-censoring around our relatives, ensures that our families remain as divided as our society.And how can we forget the victims of Trumpism? In avoiding our relatives, we are ignoring the harm of Trump, at the same time we claim to oppose Trump, at the same time we claim to support equity and justice. In keeping the peace with our relatives, we are prolonging the war against everything and everyone we claim to hold dear in the United States of America.But attacking our relatives’ Trump stories at every turn is not the answer—even if that’s what Trump does against the stories of truth. When we lecture down to relatives about everything that is wrong with them, Trump operatives are enticing them by saying that nothing is wrong with them.We should be consistently chasing truth, even as we implore our relatives to join the chase. We must find a way to meet our loved ones where they are, on their same level, as people who are imperfect and learning, just as they are. In meeting them where they are, we should be getting to know where they are, and who they are.Every one of our loved ones is different, even if many of them share the same Trump. Instead of avoiding or attacking them, why not figure out ways to bring them closer? Instead of holding our tongues, we should be asking questions about the lives of their minds to figure out the environment driving them away from truth and into the clutches of Trump. We should be asking about their social circles; their philosophies; their experiences; their self-interests; their alternative facts; their constructions of history, personal and societal; their problems; and who and what they blame for their problems. We should be asking these questions casually, over time, as we go on an ice run with them this weekend, as we catch a movie next week, as we grab lunch next month.

At the first Democratic Debate free of male moderators, Andrea Mitchell opened up by calling bullshit on Pete Buttigieg: “You were elected mayor in a Democratic city receiving just under 11,000 votes. and in your only statewide race you lost by 25 points. Why should Democrats take the risk of betting on you?”It was a particularly sweet moment to see a 73-year-old woman pointing out the sexist double standard Pete’s been riding. Voters judge men on potential regardless of their puny qualifications. Women have to have qualifications, and receipts. Buttigieg hit back with a broadside against his opponents’ “traditional establishment Washington experience.” Except he’d be every bit at home in D.C., where his Harvard and McKinsey credentials hardly stand out, something Cory Booker underscored when he reminded the audience that, "I happen to be the other Rhodes Scholar Mayor on this stage.” As Amy Klobuchar and Tulsi Gabbard both highlighted Buttigieg’s lack of experience Wednesday evening, the millennial mayor now leading the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire looked cowed at points. But off the debate stage the 37-year-old and a rising cabal of centrist men have been aggressively going after the most senior woman in the race, 70-year-old Elizabeth Warren, in clearly gendered terms.They’ve been doing it for a reason: It works.Mitchell asked Klobuchar at one point about her comment that the women on the stage wouldn’t be there if they had Buttigieg’s résumé, and she elaborated on it while declining to attack him directly: “What I said is true. Women are held to a higher standard,” she said. “I think any working woman out there, any woman that's at home knows exactly what I mean. We have to work harder, and that's a fact.”One reason Warren has to work harder is that Buttigieg, Joe Biden and latecomers Deval Patrick and Mike Bloomberg are all gleefully handwringing every chance they get about the “divisive,” “angry,” “unyielding,” “elitist,” big-thinking bitch. The solution? A reasonable guy. Each of them just happens to know one.“We have to bring some humility alongside the brilliance and creativity in the field,” Patrick said last week, offering his “uniquely broad” skill set to justify a late entry into the race. Bloomberg has framed Warren’s concrete plans as unworkable, impractical and even unconstitutional, even though he’s yet to offer any plans of his own. “I think there’s got to be some humility in our policy here,” Buttigieg bloviated in an interview earlier this month, positioning himself in a two-person race against a woman who has plenty more to boast about. But on stage with Warren, Buttigieg didn’t seem to have the guts or gravitas to openly disagree with her. Despite his farmboy act, Mayor Pete knows exactly what he and his surrogates are doing by dog-whistling about what a crazy, unlikable woman she is. It’s easier than actually debating her on their essential differences like whether healthcare should be a privilege or a human right.Yes, people have been calling Bernie Sanders a crazy socialist for decades, but the implication for a woman is about her competence, not just the merits of her ideas. Given the history of women getting locked up and institutionalized for “outbursts” which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual defined as “hysteria” until 1980, this woman-specific disease (literally “of the womb”) cuts straight to the question of electability. It’s a potent attack as Warren tries to consolidate her frontrunner status in what remains a crowded and fluid field, and polls show voters declaring that of course they would vote for a woman but that they’re not so sure about their family members and friends. Beware the cabal of reasonable men.

Enlarge this image Cory Booker poses for a portrait at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. Underlying many of Booker's points is a belief that it's possible to create bipartisan consensus, even while the partisan divide in America seems to grow ever wider. Amr Alfiky/NPR hide caption toggle caption Amr Alfiky/NPR Cory Booker poses for a portrait at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. Underlying many of Booker's points is a belief that it's possible to create bipartisan consensus, even while the partisan divide in America seems to grow ever wider. Amr Alfiky/NPR Sen. Cory Booker talks about politics in grand, even spiritual terms.Speaking to NPR about his run for the presidency, the New Jersey Democrat used phrases like "coalitions of conscience," "sacred honor" and "courageous empathy."But those hopeful ideas pose a major challenge for Booker: how to translate his aggressively optimistic view of American democracy into any sort of policy action, especially with such gaping differences between the two parties on a wide range of policy areas. Politics DNC Bars Fox News From Hosting 2020 Primary Debates Politics Which Democrats Are Running In 2020 — And Which Still Might He's the first of the 2020 presidential candidates whom NPR's Morning Edition spoke to in a series of conversations to explore their core campaign messages called Opening Arguments.Host Steve Inskeep interviewed Booker about not only what he wants to accomplish as president, but also why he thinks large (and often progressive) policy leaps are possible."The founders were imperfect geniuses. They wrote a lot of our bigotries into [the Constitution]. ... If you think about how we have overcome those things, it's always been by creating, first, calls to consciousness, speaking truth about the injustices, and then bringing together those uncommon coalitions.""We are a nation of conscience, and I found partners on the other side of the aisle who agree with me on these issues. And we can build from there. In fact, when I first came to the Senate, people laughed. I had people telling me, 'There's no way you're going to get a comprehensive criminal justice reform bill done.' "Underlying many of Booker's points is a firm belief that it's possible to create bipartisan consensus, even while the partisan divide in America seems to grow ever wider.Booker argues that he's the man to create that consensus because of his record as mayor of Newark, where he at times worked with Republican Gov. Chris Christie; his work passing the bipartisan FIRST STEP Act on criminal justice; and legislation he worked on with Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., to create "opportunity zones." The basic idea is that investors would get a tax break for putting their recent investment gains into projects in low-income areas. Politics 2020 Democrats Wrestle With A Big Question: What Are Reparations? Booker acknowledges that building bridges between Republicans and Democrats will be difficult. He told NPR the story of a Midwestern farm family that at first refused to meet with him."They call the person that was showing me around and said, 'Hey we're a Christian family. We can't have Cory Booker in our home.' Because we have these outrage machines that are making the highest corporate profits they've ever made, because of their telling us to hate each other so much," Booker said.In the end, however, Booker said he won the family over via "dad jokes" and finding some common areas of agreement on farm policy."This is a system that just grinds people into it who are the most vulnerable. You know, you can judge a lot by a country by who they incarcerate."There are some countries that incarcerate political opposition, some countries that incarcerate the media ... but if you look at our prisons and jails we incarcerate overwhelmingly the addicted, mentally ill, low-income, low-income, low-income folks ... and then disproportionately people of color." Sen. Cory Booker addresses criminal justice Listen · 4:01 4:01 Toggle more options Download Embed Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/700552687/701019759" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Criminal justice reform is one of Booker's key policy areas in his presidential policy platform — he often cites the statistics that the U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of its incarcerated population. He was a key force behind the FIRST STEP Act, which President Trump signed into law. Among other things, that law ends the "three-strike penalty" that gave some offenders automatic life sentences, it helps judges avoid imposing mandatory minimum sentences, and it gives prisoners more access to rehabilitation programs. Politics 2020 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Support Marijuana Legalization Bill Booker will soon introduce what he calls the Next Step Act, a package of further criminal justice changes. It includes provisions that would legalize marijuana at the federal level, eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, and give felons the right to vote.This is one big area where Booker would likely have an uphill battle with Republicans. A recent Florida measure to give felons the right to vote faced stiff GOP opposition, though it passed and went into effect in January. Enlarge this image "You can judge a lot by a country by who they incarcerate," Cory Booker tells NPR. Amr Alfiky/NPR hide caption toggle caption Amr Alfiky/NPR "You can judge a lot by a country by who they incarcerate," Cory Booker tells NPR. Amr Alfiky/NPR "We were one vote shy from bringing down Medicare eligibility to 55. One vote shy. I'm going to fight for that one vote when I'm running in 2020, because what would that have done?"Booker is one among several 2020 presidential candidates backing Bernie Sanders' Medicare-for-all bill. However, he stressed in this interview that he has also backed other, less-sweeping health care proposals, like reducing the Medicare eligibility age to 55, from the current age of 65.He also said that despite pressure from some on the left, he would not eliminate the Senate filibuster to pass a health care overhaul like Medicare-for-all. Politics Most Democratic 2020 Hopefuls Not Ready To Bust The Filibuster To Push Party Agenda His reasoning is that without the filibuster, "the kind of things they could have done in the first two years of the Trump administration would have been so damaging to people.""And we need to understand that there's good reason to have a Senate where we're forced to find pragmatic bipartisan solutions," he added."Why do we need to universally condemn entire sectors of our society, as opposed to talking about what's happening within them that is in violation of values and creating regulations and rules that make sure that they are affirming what's in the best interest of our country?"Booker has close ties to the technology industry, even while he has co-sponsored greater regulation on tech companies. A recent piece from Recode's Theodore Schleifer detailed the tension at the heart of this relationship. As tech companies are at the center of discussions about privacy, political misinformation and hate speech, Booker's past friendliness with the industry — and potential for taking donations from the Silicon Valley elite — could turn off some progressive voters.Booker is staking out positions critical of tech companies, saying that he supports more regulation on privacy and security issues. He said too few companies control too much of the industry to expect them to self-regulate, and he criticized practices like contracting low-wage jobs, instead of providing corporate benefits to those workers. Politics Cory Booker Makes It Official: He's Running For President In 2020 Politics Bernie Sanders Signs Democratic Party Loyalty Pledge For 2020 Run Kevin Tidmarsh and Steve Mullis produced and edited this interview for broadcast.

closeVideoMollie Hemmingway on significance of Obama White House meetingWas Obama meeting on January 5, 2017 the genesis of the Russia probe? The Federalist's Mollie Hemmingway weighs in.The Federalist senior editor and Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway told "The Ingraham Angle" Monday that new information proves former President Barack Obama sought to use the Russia investigation to hinder the incoming Trump administration.Hemingway focused on a Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting that was attended by Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-FBI director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as detailed in documents that were declassified last week as part of the DOJ's motion to dismiss the case against former National Security adviser Michael Flynn.OBAMA WHITE HOUSE MAY HAVE SEEN 'OPPORTUNITY TO DISRUPT' FLYNN, EX-FBI OFFICIAL SAYS At one point, Hemingway said, "Obama asked the people who would be leaving at the end of his administration to leave the meeting. And he kept only those two people who would be continuing on into the Trump administration: James Comey and [deputy Attorney General] Sally Yates."And that's where they started hatching their plan to make sure that the incoming administration would not find out what they had been doing or what they planned to continue doing in terms of spying on the Trump campaign and people affiliated with it," she added.Obama told Comey and Yates he had "learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversation with Russia's then-ambassador to the U.S. about sanctions. Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information."NBC ADMITS 'MEET THE PRESS' DECEPTIVELY EDITED BARR REMARKS ON FLYNNHemingway also criticized NBC News' "Meet The Press" for playing an out-of-context clip from an interview Attorney General William Barr gave to CBS News."This is an example of what has been going on for years, where the exact opposite of the truth keeps on getting reported. And they just keep on suppressing information," Hemingway said. "This idea that Attorney General Barr, by caring transparently about the rule of law, doesn't care about the rule of law while the people who lie on 302's [FBI interview report forms] or destroy 302's ... who destroy evidence, who illegally spy on the Trump campaign with these warrants that were ill-gotten, who illegally interview people. That's not rule of law. That is a problem."And I think people are aware that Attorney General Barr cares deeply about rule of law and wants to hold people accountable for not caring about it over the course of the last several years," Hemingway added.Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.

Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which gave millions of low-income adults access to health insurance, was linked to a 6 percent reduction in opioid overdose death rates — potentially preventing thousands of deaths — according to a new study in JAMA Network Open.The study looked at what happened in counties in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act by 2017, compared to counties in states that didn’t expand Medicaid, accounting for variables like demographic and policy differences. The Medicaid expansion was made optional in a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, and only 32 states and Washington, DC, had opted to expand by the study period (with the total rising to 37 in the past few years).The study helps put to rest claims by some Republican lawmakers, particularly Sen. Ron Johnson (WI), that the Medicaid expansion made the opioid crisis worse by expanding access to painkillers. The new study, echoing others before it, suggests the Medicaid expansion had the opposite effect, and that there wasn’t a link between the expansion and more deaths caused by painkillers, with the possible — and relatively uncommon — exception of methadone used in pain treatment.The researchers found that Medicaid expansion counties had a 6 percent lower rate in opioid overdose deaths than non-expansion counties. That was mostly due to an 11 percent lower rate of deaths involving heroin and a 10 percent lower rate for deaths linked to synthetic opioids excluding methadone (primarily fentanyl, now the biggest contributor to fatal drug overdoses in the US).“What I find most exciting about this is we see a reduction in overdoses involving heroin and synthetics,” Magdalena Cerdá, one of the study’s authors, told me. “We haven’t been able to find a lot of policy solutions to do that, but this is one of the first policy measures that does seem to have an effect in terms of reducing overdose deaths from those opioids that are the leading contributors to overdose deaths.”There was no association between the Medicaid expansion and deaths involving natural and semi-synthetic opioids, which includes traditional painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin.There was, however, a link between the Medicaid expansion and an 11 percent increase in overdose deaths involving methadone. Although methadone is used very effectively in addiction treatment, the great majority of deaths linked to methadone, based on multiple investigations into the topic, are a result of methadone used in pain treatment. That seems to be what’s going on here: Medicaid plans have historically favored methadone for chronic pain treatment — because it’s so cheap — so perhaps Medicaid led to an increase in access to methadone for pain treatment and, as a result, more misuse and overdoses.“This does not in any way detract from the notion that methadone is an effective way to treat opioid use disorder and reduce future overdose deaths,” Cerdá said, citing evidence that methadone reduces the mortality rate among opioid addiction patients by half or more and keeps people in treatment better than non-medication approaches. “Really, the likely explanation here is around methadone used to treat pain.”Still, methadone is only involved in a fraction of opioid overdose deaths. On net, the study found the Medicaid expansion likely prevented fatal opioid overdoses: “[O]ur findings suggest that these states would have had between 83,906 and 90,360 deaths in the absence of the expansion, implying that Medicaid expansion may have prevented between 1,678 and 8,132 deaths in these states during those years.”That leads to a nuanced story: The Medicaid expansion may have contributed to some more deaths in pain treatment — although there’s no empirical evidence this is true for traditional painkillers, as this study and another one found — but still ended up saving far more lives by expanding access to addiction treatment.Other research backs this up. A 2019 study published in Health Affairs found that after West Virginia expanded Medicaid, the number of people diagnosed for opioid use disorder under the program rose — and the number of people on buprenorphine, one of the gold-standard medications for opioid addiction, increased as well. In other words, the Medicaid expansion appeared to expand access to evidence-based addiction treatment.The study has some weaknesses. For one, it’s the first study looking at the effects of the Medicaid expansion on overdose deaths at the county level. Given that, studies using different models and assumptions may come to different conclusions. More research is needed to verify the findings.The data used in the study for overdose deaths generally undercounts opioid overdose deaths because the drugs behind some overdoses aren’t always identified. The study also measured the effects of the Medicaid expansion on the general population, not just the beneficiaries that directly benefited from Medicaid. (A study exclusively looking at Medicaid beneficiaries could find even better results for the expansion.) And the study treated the expansion as a binary — whether states enacted the expansion or not — which blurs differences between states’ Medicaid programs that could produce different effects.For Cerdá, those caveats are room for more research to tease out how Medicaid may bring down overdose deaths. She also wants to study the increase in methadone deaths, which could help policymakers figure out how to mitigate any risks of the expansion while keeping the benefits.For now, though, the study suggests that state policymakers have a policy lever available to them to potentially fight the ongoing opioid epidemic, which has contributed to more than 700,000 opioid overdose deaths since 1999. As part of Vox’s Rehab Racket project, I have heard time and time again how important insurance is to obtaining quality addiction care. Lawmakers in the 13 states that haven’t moved to expand Medicaid now have a window to ameliorate at least part of the problem of poor insurance coverage leading to more cases of untreated addiction and overdose deaths.

A lawyer for Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, said the Ukranian-American business man is now willing to help with the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.After initially denying requests from the Congressional committee to impeach Donald Trump he is now prepared to comply with requests for records and testimony from congressional impeachment investigators.“We will honor and not avoid the committee’s requests to the extent they are legally proper, while scrupulously protecting Mr Parnas’ privileges including that of the Fifth Amendment,” said the lawyer, Joseph Bondy, referring to his client’s constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.His previous lawyer, John Dowd, wrote to the committees in early October complaining that their requests for documents were “overly broad and unduly burdensome.”Parnas pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court last month to being part of a scheme that used a shell company to donate money to a pro-Trump election committee and illegally raise money for a former congressman as part of an effort to have the president remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.Trump’s request to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a July 25 phone call to investigate the Bidens was at the heart of a whistleblower complaint by an intelligence officer that sparked the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24.