Brazil has just elected as its president a far-right nationalist with authoritarian tendencies and fascist inclinations. The country’s 900,000-strong indigenous people are among the many minority groups Jair Bolsonaro has frequently targeted with vitriolic hostility. “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated their Indians,” he once said. If he enacts his campaign promises, the first peoples of Brazil face catastrophe; in some cases, genocide.There are around 100 uncontacted tribes in Brazil, more than anywhere else on earth, and all are in peril unless their land is protected. Bolsonaro has threatened to close down FUNAI, the government’s indigenous affairs department, which is charged with protecting indigenous land. Already battling against budget cuts, if it disappears uncontacted peoples face annihilation.Earlier this year, FUNAI released footage of a man known as the Last of his Tribe; a lone survivor of waves of genocidal attacks in the 1970s and 80s as loggers and ranchers bulldozed their way through the forest. These invaders murdered his entire family, his community and neighbouring communities. If the mechanisms to protect indigenous territories and prevent such atrocities, already woefully inadequate, are removed, this vital part of human diversity will be wiped out forever.Bolsonaro thinks “Indians smell, are uneducated and don’t speak our language”, and that “the recognition of indigenous land is an obstacle to agribusiness”. He declares that he will reduce or abolish Amazonian indigenous reserves and has vowed on several occasions: “If I become president, there will not be one centimetre more of indigenous land.” He recently corrected himself, declaring that he meant not one millimetre.This has profound implications for the country’s indigenous peoples, who rely totally on their land for their livelihood and their physical and spiritual wellbeing. The struggle to protect tribal people’s lives and livelihoods, and the ecosystems they depend on, is already brutal and bloody.Survival works closely with groups from the Guajajara tribe in Brazil’s Maranhão state, who have taken it upon themselves to protect what remains of this eastern edge of the Amazon rainforest; not only for the hundreds of Guajajara families who call it home, but also their far less numerous neighbours: the uncontacted Awá. These “guardians of the Amazon” are subject to violent attacks from the powerful logging mafias who operate illegally in the area. Some estimates suggest up to 80 members of the tribe have been killed since 2000.Meanwhile, in the north, in the largest area of forest under indigenous control in the world, the Yanomami are besieged by illegal gold miners. The tribe, whose territory extends over the border into Venezuela, is suffering a measles epidemic, most likely as a result of these invaders. This disease is a particular threat to uncontacted Yanomami groups, and medical attention on both sides of the border has been inadequate. Dozens have died. As well as sickness, these miners have mounted violent attacks on some communities, often with impunity. In May, two uncontacted Yanomami were reportedly murdered by gold miners working illegally near their community.These violent incursions are likely to increase as loggers, land grabbers and miners feel emboldened by Bolsonaro, and make greater and more brutal advances into indigenous territories all over Brazil. The cost will be measured in indigenous lives and environmental destruction. A mounting body of evidence continues to demonstrate that properly enforced indigenous land rights, recognising indigenous peoples’ stewardship over the land, is the most effective and cheapest means of conservation. Tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world and manage their environment and its wildlife better than anyone else.For those tribes already dispossessed of their land, Bolsonaro’s regime could destroy them as a people. Survival has been working for decades with the Guarani people of Mato Grosso do Sul, whose land has already been stolen by ranchers and agribusiness. Today, they live in overcrowded reservations or camped on the side of the highways in utter destitution. This meagre existence will become more miserable still in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Despairing of a meaningful future, many young Guarani have taken their lives, and the tribe has one of the highest suicides rates in the world. Existing indigenous land rights, now under threat, are the only thing standing in the way of this scenario playing out in many more areas of the Amazon.Bolsonaro’s hate speech supercharges a public discourse in which incitement to racial hatred is taken as a green light to kill with impunity. At least 110 indigenous people were assassinated in Brazil in 2017 and there are already indicators that these murders will rise. On the day of the elections, an attack by gunmen on a Guarani community left 15 people injured, including a nine-year-old child. In an extraordinary and disturbing threat, filmed recently in Congress itself, Bolsonaro told the tribes of Roraima state what he planned to do in Raposa Serra do Sol, a large indigenous territory recognised in 2005 after years of bitter conflict with cattle ranchers: “We are going to rip up Raposa Serra do Sol and give guns to all the ranchers…”The extent to which Bolsonaro will be able to tear up the Indians’ constitutional rights remains to be seen, but it’s clear that what is at stake is the soul of Brazil, the future of the Amazon rainforest – and the extraordinary human diversity represented by its 305 distinct tribes. Brazil has shown that where indigenous peoples’ land is properly protected they not only thrive, but so do some of the planet’s most diverse and endangered eco-systems, from the Amazon and Atlantic rainforests to the savannas.When Survival International was established in 1969, some predicted that indigenous people in Brazil would soon die out. Next year is our 50th anniversary and the indigenous peoples are still here, but they’ll need powerful global support to face down what could be an impending genocide. Alliances with indigenous organisations, both at institutional and grassroots level, can exert a powerful force, and by amplifying indigenous voices on the global stage we can change the world in their favour.As the Guarani said recently: “If indigenous peoples become extinct and dead, the lives of all are threatened, for we are the guardians of nature. Without forest, without water, without rivers, there is no life, there is no way for any Brazilian to survive. We resisted 518 years ago, we fight in victory and defeat, our land is our mother. As long as the sun still shines, and while there is still fresh air under the shade of a tree, while there is still a river to bathe in, we will fight.”• Fiona Watson is director of research and advocacy at Survival International Topics Jair Bolsonaro Opinion Brazil Americas Amazon rainforest Deforestation Trees and forests Conservation comment

closeVideoMajority of illegal immigrants in US receiving taxpayer-funded government benefitsCentral American migrants are arriving by the thousands without a penny to their name. How do they get by? William La Jeunesse breaks down the cost.The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to enforce its "public charge" restriction, a sweeping rule that would deny permanent residency or entry into the United States to certain immigrants considered likely to use government assistance.The ruling could impact how immigrants and their families, particularly those that are considered low-income, potentially go about their lives without much-needed services available only through government programs.The 5-4 vote by the court's conservative majority reversed a lower court decision that kept it from being implemented while legal challenges in other states proceeded. The rule was published in August and would give the government more power to deny visas or green cards if it believes immigrants will rely on public assistance such as food stamps and taxpayer-funded health care benefits or housing programs.It would make it more difficult for immigrants to obtain permanent residency if they have or are likely to use public benefits.VideoThe Trump administration has defended the rule as a way to ensure immigrants remain financially self-sufficient. Critics say it is designed to limit the number of poor immigrants who enter the country.The rule, announced by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in August, defines a “public charge” as an immigrant who received one or more designated benefits for more than 12 months within a 36-month period.Those benefits that would be designated included Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), as well as most forms of Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps.VideoThe court’s liberal justices, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, would have blocked the regulation’s enforcement. Under previous administration's only cash benefits were considered to determine whether an immigrant might be considered a "public charge"The implementation of the rule could have a chilling effect on immigrant communities, with low-income immigrants most likely to be negatively impacted.Many could be forced to drop much-needed public benefits for themselves and their families in an effort to not jeopardize their legal status in the U.S.In a September report, the Kaiser Family Foundation said up to 4.7 million people could be forced to withdraw from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program if the rule were into effect, potentially putting the children's health at risk.JUDGE BLOCKS ‘PUBLIC CHARGE’ RULE THAT WOULD RESTRICT GREEN CARDS FOR IMMIGRANTS ON WELFAREVideoA 2019 Urban Institute study found that people are already being deterred from applying for benefits for their U.S.-born children, fearing that it could harm their own immigration status. The study also found that 14 percent of nearly 2,000 adults who were born outside the U.S. or living with foreign-born family members have been dissuaded from participating in public benefit programs for fear it would impact their chances to obtain green cards, The Los Angeles Times reported last year.Even before the rule was announced, agencies across the country reported declining enrollment in programs for pregnant women, children.The rule does not penalize applicants for benefits received by a family member, like a child who is a citizen. But many are scared and need convincing.The Times also found some parents had removed their children from special education programs out of fear.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to deny green cards to immigrants who are thought to be likely to make even occasional and minor use of public benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers.The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s conservative justices in the majority. The court’s brief order gave no reasons for lifting preliminary injunctions that had blocked the new program. Challenges to the program will continue to move forward in courts around the nation.The administration announced in August that it would revise the so-called public charge rule, which allows officials to deny permanent legal status, also known as a green card, to immigrants who are likely to need public assistance. In the past, only substantial and sustained monetary help or long-term institutionalization counted, and fewer than 1 percent of applicants were disqualified on public-charge grounds.The administration’s revised rule broadened the criteria to include “noncash benefits providing for basic needs such as housing or food” used in any 12 months in a 36-month period. Use of two kinds of benefits in a single month counts as two months, and so on.The new rule was challenged in courts around the country, and five trial judges entered injunctions blocking it. Appellate courts stayed some but not all of the injunctions while appeals moved forward, and the appeals themselves have been placed on fast tracks.The Supreme Court considered two cases brought in New York, one by groups that provide services to immigrants and the other by New York, Connecticut, Vermont and New York City. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, denied the administration’s request for a stay of two nationwide injunctions issued by a trial judge, and it scheduled arguments in the first week of March.Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, issued on Monday a concurring opinion addressing what they said was the growing problem of nationwide injunctions.“It has become increasingly apparent that this court must, at some point, confront these important objections to this increasingly widespread practice,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “As the brief and furious history of the regulation before us illustrates, the routine issuance of universal injunctions is patently unworkable, sowing chaos for litigants, the government, courts, and all those affected by these conflicting decisions.”“I concur in the court’s decision to issue a stay,” Justice Gorsuch continued. “But I hope, too, that we might at an appropriate juncture take up some of the underlying equitable and constitutional questions raised by the rise of nationwide injunctions.”Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, on Monday praised the Supreme Court decision.“It is very clear the U.S. Supreme Court is fed up with these national injunctions by judges who are trying to impose their policy preferences instead of enforcing the law,” Mr. Cuccinelli said.He noted that the Supreme Court has permitted the administration to move forward with other aspects of its immigration policy. In September, the court let the administration bar most Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the United States.In July, the court allowed the administration to begin using $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for construction of a wall along the southwestern border. In 2018, the court upheld Mr. Trump’s ban on travel from several majority Muslim countries.Ghita Schwarz, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents groups challenging the new program, said in a statement that “the court’s decision to lift the injunction is very disappointing, but our challenge to the draconian public charge rule is still moving forward.”In asking the Supreme Court to lift the injunctions in the new case, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco wrote that the new rule was authorized by a federal statute that made immigrants inadmissible if “they are likely at any time to become a public charge.” The new rule, Mr. Francisco wrote, was a permissible interpretation of that phrase.“An alien who depends on public assistance for necessities such as food and shelter for extended periods may qualify as a ‘public charge’ even if that assistance is not provided through cash benefits or does not provide the alien’s sole or primary means of support,” Mr. Francisco wrote.Barbara D. Underwood, the New York solicitor general, responded that the new policy “would radically disrupt over a century of settled immigration policy and public-benefits programs.”“The rule’s vast expansion of ‘public charge’ — to include employed individuals who receive any amount of certain means-tested benefits for even brief periods of time — is a stark departure from a more-than-century-long consensus that has limited the term to individuals who are primarily dependent on the government for long-term subsistence,” she wrote.“‘Public charge’ has never included,” Ms. Underwood wrote, “employed persons who receive modest or temporary amounts of government benefits designed to promote health or upward mobility.”Lawyers for the private groups challenging the new policy, relying on estimates published by the Department of Homeland Security, wrote that “the rule will cause hundreds of thousands of individuals and households, in many cases noncitizens not even subject to public charge scrutiny, to forego public benefits for which they are eligible, out of fear and confusion about the consequences for their immigration status of accepting such benefits.”That could lead, they wrote, summarizing the department’s findings, to “increased malnutrition (especially for pregnant or breastfeeding women, infants, or children) and increased prevalence of communicable diseases, increased poverty and housing instability.”Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, said the new program has “already had a measurable effect on Medicaid enrollment,” adding that “we have documented evidence of people just disappearing off the rolls.”Mr. Francisco told the Supreme Court that discouraging immigrants seeking green cards from using public benefits was a lawful goal.“And to the extent that the rule might cause disenrollment by aliens who are not subject to the rule, such disenrollment is unwarranted, easily corrected and temporary,” he added. “It does not outweigh the long-term harms the government will experience while the rule is enjoined.”Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Abby Goodnough contributed reporting.

For the ninth consecutive weekend pro-democracy protesters rallied on the streets of Hong Kong against a controversial extradition bill. As clashes between protestors and police became more violent, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, apologised for introducing the extradition bill and declared it ‘dead’. However protesters – who are calling for Lam’s resignation and for the complete withdrawal of the bill – continued to draw huge crowds

WASHINGTON—A divided Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to begin implementing rules that make it easier for the government to deny limited-income immigrants residency or admission to the U.S. because they use public-assistance programs or might use them in the future.The court, in a written order Monday, granted the administration’s emergency request to start enforcing the rules for now, a move that nullifies an order by a federal appeals court that blocked the immigration restrictions while litigation was ongoing....

WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead on Monday for one of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, allowing his administration to implement a rule denying legal permanent residency to certain immigrants deemed likely to require government assistance in the future. The justices, on a 5-4 vote, granted the administration’s request to lift a lower court’s injunction that had blocked the so-called public charge policy, which has been criticized by immigrant rights advocates as a “wealth test” that would disproportionately keep out non-white immigrants. The court’s five conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, carried the day. The court’s four liberal justices said they would have denied the administration’s request to put the injunction on hold. The action was announced even as Roberts sat as the presiding officer in Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. ASSOCIATED PRESS President Donald Trump walks to a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci) Lawsuits aiming to block the policy were filed against the administration by the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont as well as by New York City and several nonprofit organizations. In imposing an injunction blocking implementation of the rule, U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan on Oct. 11 called the policy “repugnant to the American Dream” and a “policy of exclusion in search of a justification.” The administration had asked the high court to let the rule go into effect even before the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on Trump’s appeal of Daniels’ injunction against the rule. The 2nd Circuit is considering the matter on an expedited basis, with legal papers to be submitted by Feb. 14 and arguments to be held soon afterward. (Reporting by Kristina Cooke, Lawrence Hurley, Jonathan Stempel, and Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham) testPromoTitleReplace testPromoDekReplace Join HuffPost Today! No thanks. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

As Donald Trump repeated his demand that the whistleblower who triggered the impeachment inquiry should be identified, White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway refused to say the president did not offer the leader of Ukraine a quid pro quo involving military aid and the investigation of his political rivals.“The whistleblower got it sooo wrong that HE must come forward,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “The Fake News Media knows who he is but, being an arm of the Democrat [sic] Party, don’t want to reveal him because there would be hell to pay. Reveal the Whistleblower and end the Impeachment Hoax!”The whistleblower’s lawyer later said the unnamed CIA official was willing to answer Republican questions in writing, but not to be identified.In a heated exchange on CNN’s State of the Union, meanwhile, Conway refused to answer yes or no when asked if Trump had ever offered Zelenskiy a quid pro quo.“I don’t know,” she said, “but I know they’ve got their aid. Here’s what’s unimpeachably true: Ukraine has the aid, and the Ukrainian president has said he had no idea the aid was being held up and felt no such pressure.”Trump took a different tack. When the president returned to the White House from New York, the Guardian asked him directly if there was a quid pro quo.He said: “No, not at all, not at all.”Trump, White House aides and their Republican allies continue to attempt to paint a 25 July call between Trump and Zelenskiy as wholly innocent, despite the evidence contained in its own partial transcript and sworn testimony from national security officials.That testimony was given to House members on Capitol Hill in private. After Republican complaints about the closed-door proceedings – in which Republican representatives took full part – Democrats this week staged a House vote, clearing the way for public hearings.On Sunday, senior Republicans attacked that process. On ABC’s This Week, Republican House whip Steve Scalise said the House resolution formalising impeachment was passed “in a very partisan way”.On CBS’s Face the Nation, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said intelligence chair Adam Schiff “and his staff” should be questioned in public “because he is the only person who knows who this whistleblower is”.On CNN, host Dana Bash stuck to her guns, asking Conway to “definitively” say no quid pro quo was ever offered to Ukraine.“There was no quid pro quo on this call,” Conway said, carefully, brandishing what appeared to be the partial transcript of the Zelenskiy call. “President Trump never said to the Ukrainian president, ‘Do this and you’ll get your aid.’ It’s simply not here. It’s not in the transcript.”On Capitol Hill this week, Lt Col Alexander Vindman, a national security staffer, testified that he had been concerned by what was said in the call, by steps taken to keep it secret and by what he said were inaccuracies and omissions in the published version.Trump called Vindman a “Never Trumper”, a kind of Republican he recently called “human scum”. Conway deflected questions about whether the president would apply that description to Vindman, who was wounded in Iraq and who attended his testimony in his army uniform.Whatever the president did, Conway said, again following the party line, it was not an impeachable offense. Speaking to Fox News Sunday, she added that Trump could not be impeached based on interpretations of his actions by White House staffers.“We impeach presidents of the United States sparingly and because 67 senators say that a democratically elected president needs to be removed,” she said, “not because a couple of news outlets say there are eight quid pro quos in the transcript.”If the House votes to impeach Trump, as would be expected on party lines, his trial would be held in the Senate. Twenty Republican senators would have to vote against the president for him to be convicted and removed.That remains unlikely. A number of Republican senators have gone so far as to say Ukrainian aid was indeed held up unless Zelenskiy agreed to investigate Biden, but they have added that it was not an impeachable offence to do so.Conway said: “The reason you see every single Republican vote against an impeachment inquiry is because they haven’t seen evidence of high crimes or a misdemeanour.”On CNN, Bash pressed on. Was Conway confident there was never a quid pro quo?“I feel totally confident Ukraine has the aid and is using it right now.”“Kellyanne, quid pro quo. Yes or No?”“I don’t know whether aid was being held up,” Conway said. “But I do know that we’re trying to impeach a president … but why? There’s nothing in this conversation so far resonates in this country, especially in the 17 swing states.”As Conway held the White House line on TV, her husband George Conway was busy on Twitter: recommending articles and books about the impeachment process.A high-profile Republican lawyer, he has emerged as one of Trump’s most vehement critics online and in the press. The mysteries of his marriage remain a hot gossip item. Topics Trump impeachment inquiry Donald Trump Trump administration Kellyanne Conway US politics Republicans news

Even before Donald Trump began blasting the “bad hombres” to his south, he was not known for his love of Latin America.“I didn’t particularly want to go,” he grumbled of a whistlestop 1989 trip to Rio de Janeiro during which he declined to spend even a single night at his destination. “But there are some wealthy people in Brazil.”So Rex Tillerson’s awkward attempt to reconquer the region’s affections this week – and his warnings about China’s “predatory” advance – have puzzled many Latin American officials, irritated Beijing and set a new stage for the global jostle between the world’s top two economies. “The US is doing everything it can to alienate the region … dissing you, criticising you, calling you a shithole,” complained Jorge Guajardo, Mexico’s former ambassador to China. “Xi Jinping can just ignore the region and he’s already winning.”Few in Washington believe Xi, a mojito-loving authoritarian considered China’s most powerful ruler since Mao, is doing the former, though. Trump has yet to set foot in Latin America or the Caribbean and there are doubts over whether he will participate in April’s Summit of the Americas, in Peru. Xi, on the other hand, has visited three times since 2012, hailing a “vibrant and promising region” that – with China’s help – was “embracing another golden period of development”. Compliments have been matched with billions of dollars of investments. China, as Tillerson noted last week, is now the largest trading partner of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru.“There is a sense that China is increasingly active in Latin America … and that we are seeing bigger announcements, bigger numbers, bigger deals, bigger projects,” says Margaret Myers, director of the Inter-American Dialogue’s China and Latin America program. “All of these things are bound to catch the attention of those up north.”Even so, Tillerson’s unusually blunt denunciation of China’s “imperial” menace has left experts wondering if other factors are at play. Harold Trinkunas, a Stanford University scholar who has studied the political implications of Beijing’s Latin American footprint, suspects Trump’s own hawkishness towards China is one of those factors.In last year’s national security strategy, the US president attacked Chinese efforts “to pull the region into its orbit through state-led investments and loans”. In January’s State of the Union address, Trump labelled Beijing a “rival” endangering America’s interests, economy and values.“If you go back even two years, there certainly were a large number of people inside the state department and the defense department … raising concerns about China’s role in Latin America,” says Trinkunas. “They finally maybe have somebody who’s willing to give voice to those opinions.” Niggling US discomfort about China’s regional push has also been exacerbated by at least two specific developments. One is Xi’s signature foreign policy venture, the Belt and Road initiative, a $900bn infrastructure blitz critics suspect is designed largely to cement China’s position as “a mighty force” on the world stage. During a recent summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Chile, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, stopped short of formally including his hosts in the scheme. But Myers, who anticipates a spree of China-backed projects in the region over the coming years anyway, believes it has nevertheless become “a source of considerable concern and anxiety” for Washington. Panama’s decision last year to cut ties with Taiwan and embrace Beijing has also raised eyebrows. In a recent essay attacking China’s “disturbing” advance, Evan Ellis, a US Army War College Latin America specialist, warned Panama’s pivot could give Beijing “significant leverage over the Panamanian government, further eroding once significant US influence over Central America’s principal commercial hub and strategic chokepoint”. Eyeing Chinese investments, the Dominican Republic and perhaps other regional countries are expected to follow suit. “That is only going to fan the flames,” Myers predicts. Beijing has condemned Tillerson’s portrayal of China as a malign presence. “Such blunt lecturing shows that the Trump White House still intends to keep Latin America strictly within its sphere of influence,” China’s official news wire, Xinhua, fumed. “It is like putting up a big sign that says: ‘Stay away! I own it.’”“It’s America that Latin America doesn’t need, not China,” says Guo Cunhai, head of Beijing’s Community for Latin America and Chinese Studies. “It’s just a pity Latin America lives so close to the devil.” Many western analysts are skeptical of China’s ability or desire to politically exploit what Tillerson called its economic “foothold” in Latin America. “Of course the more the Chinese invest, the more they will want to influence things in the region to protect their investments. But I see this as largely motivated by economic rather than strategic interests,” says Trinkunas. Matt Ferchen, a scholar from the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy who studies China’s role in the developing world, says the threat China’s “illiberal influence” poses to Latin America’s democracies is also exaggerated. “I don’t see anyone in the region … saying: ‘Oh, we’d really like some of that authoritarian one-party thing you’ve got!’” What Latin American countries would like, say experts, is for the Trump administration to re-engage with, rather than lecture, the region. “This idea that the US gets to tell Latin America what is in its best interests or not – that’s just idiotic. No one is going to listen,” says Ferchen.Trinkunas believes many regional leaders may welcome increased rivalry between Washington and Beijing: “For Latin America, the best situation to be in is to be able to play off China against the United States. Competition … is to their advantage.”Trump’s insults, though, needed to stop. “He just doesn’t understand why he should dedicate more than a second of thought to Latin America – he couldn’t care less,” says Guajardo, the former Mexican ambassador. “Now the Chinese see fertile territory.”Additional reporting by Wang Xueying Topics Americas China US foreign policy Donald Trump analysis

Every holiday conversation about cryptocurrency over the last few years boils down to one question: Should I buy some?Whether your grandma corners you in the kitchen or your uncle nudges you during dinner, it seems everybody wants to know if they can make a quick buck off bitcoin. Hope springs eternal. As you settle in for the Thanksgiving weekend, you can welcome these inquiries because Quartz has you covered with an easy guide.Tell your family: The market is bouncing back.This year has been delightfully kind to bitcoin buyers, providing an 88% return year-to-date. If you bought one bitcoin on Jan. 1, 2019, your investment (of $3,750) would now be worth about $7,000.Of course, that gamble would have peaked near $12,000 in August before tapering off rather dramatically. November, in particular, has been a tough month for the digital currency, with bitcoin falling to a six-month low.Tell your family: China is cracking down (again).Some analysts have blamed the downturn on China, which—after briefly embracing blockchain—renewed its crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges. Since late 2017, the country has officially banned crypto trading, but a thriving underground economy remains for over-the-counter, or person-to-person, swaps. China has expressed opposition to mining, the energy-intensive process used to confirm transactions and earn new bitcoin. (There’s also a chance the country could issue a digital yuan, but that remains to be seen.)Tell your family: Most likely.Yes. In crypto, volatility is the name of the game. If I were a betting man, I’d say bitcoin may even reach $20,000 again. The most enthusiastic crypto watchers are waiting for May 2020, when bitcoin’s issuance rate—the speed at which new units enter circulation—is expected to drop sharply. Currently, mining bitcoin provides a “block reward” of 12.5 bitcoins ($90,000). Soon enough though, that reward will programmatically halve to 6.25 bitcoins, a process that will intermittently repeat.Tell your family: It’s a mess…So you’ve heard of Libra! It’s Facebook’s digital currency, which it announced in June. The truth is, Libra’s not really a cryptocurrency. Facebook just uses a bunch of fancy marketing language, but hey.Nobody really knows if Facebook’s going to launch Libra—it’s been beset by delays, regulators hate it, and some of Facebook’s most prominent partners already quit the project. Last month, Facebook waved goodbye to Mastercard and Visa, among others. Although Facebook’s crypto strategy is on the rocks, it’s worth paying attention to WhatsApp Pay and the recently announced Facebook Pay. Whether or not Facebook goes “all-in” on crypto, the company’s trying to find a way into your wallet.Tell your family: Nobody can determine bitcoin’s value. Ultimately investing in bitcoin is betting that somebody else will pay more for it in the future.Buying bitcoin is like going to Las Vegas. Sure, you could double your money, but you could just as easily lose your shirt. Bitcoin is like the stock market on steroids and it’s even less regulated. Lots of crypto traders are still worried about market manipulation.Ultimately, I can’t say whether bitcoin is a good or bad investment, but it’s an exciting one. Telling people you own $100 of bitcoin makes you part of the club—and it will probably make you question things about the financial system.To me, that is the investment. Bitcoin is the ultimate teacher. It challenges preconceived ideas about money and helps a person realize that our institutions are surprisingly frail.For me, $100 is just the right amount to feel a rush when bitcoin rises—and it’s upsetting (but not devastating) when it plummets. Personally, I think people should consider retirement investments before making a short-term gamble, but everyone wants to live a little. So, why not? Have fun and buy a lottery ticket.Russia’s largest bitcoin mine turns water into cash (Bloomberg)110 nursing homes cut off from health records in ransomware attack (Krebs On Security)The case for a bitcoin ETF (CoinDesk)Boldstart Ventures drops interest in enterprise blockchain (WSJ)New bill would make Facebook’s cryptocurrency a security under the law, inviting greater regulation (CNBC)What makes a ‘narrative violation’? (NYT)Please send news, tips, and deep-fried turkeys to [email protected]. Today’s Private Key was written by Matthew De Silva and edited by Mike Murphy. Make sure to save room for pie.

Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.Donald Trump continued to assert on Sunday that there was no quid pro quo demanded in his now-infamous July phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, nor in any of his administration’s other dealings with Ukraine and its president. But Trump’s allies are under increasing pressure – and appear increasingly reluctant – to deny the existence of such a quid pro quo. The president also repeated his demand for the whistleblower who first flagged concerns about the call – triggering the impeachment inquiry – to be identified. Lawyer’s offer. A lawyer for the whistleblower said on Sunday that his client was prepared to answer questions in writing from House Republicans in an attempt to stem efforts by Trump and his allies to unmask them. Manafort conspiracy. Documents from the Mueller inquiry suggest Trump’s jailed former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, advanced the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee. Iowa issues. While impeachment may be the issue on everyone’s lips in DC, it is far from foremost in the first primary state, writes Art Cullen. Iowans are more interested in healthcare, immigration, corn and the climate. Pompeo for Kansas? Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has been spending an inordinate amount of time in Kansas, reports Julian Borger. Is he readying a bid for Senate in his home state? The US president has once again waded into British politics, repeating his suggestion that the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, form a rightwing, pro-Brexit pact with Nigel Farage’s Brexit party at the country’s December general election. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Sunday, Trump said the two men were “both friends of mine”, adding: “What I’d like to see is for Nigel and Boris to come together. I think that’s a possibility.” A no from Nigel ... Farage, who has stood for election seven times without success, announced on Sunday that he would not make an eighth bid to become an MP, saying he could “serve the cause better” by backing his party’s 600 other candidates. … and a no from Boris. Johnson rejected Trump’s suggestion of an electoral pact and said the president was “patently in error” to claim his proposed Brexit deal would prevent a US-UK trade deal. Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico last December on a promise to pacify the country’s widespread violence by addressing the social roots of crime. Almost a year later, the bloodshed is worse than ever. There are close to 100 murders per day nationwide, while gunmen recently paralyzed a major city by waging battle with police to free the arrested son of Mexico’s most famous drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Tom Phillips reports from Tijuana as part of a new Guardian series. Vanished students. The Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi reflects on the fate of the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014: “We Mexicans live in a cemetery full of bodies with no story, and stories with no body.” McDonald’s CEO, Steve Easterbrook, has quit the role after it emerged he had engaged in a consensual relationship with an employee, in violation of the fast food firm’s policies. The US national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, has criticised China’s militarisation of the South China Sea at the Asean-US summit in Bangkok, condemning Beijing’s “intimidation” of smaller nations in the strategically crucial maritime region. Delhi has introduced new rules whereby private vehicles with odd or even license plate numbers will be banned from the roads on alternate days, in a bid to reduce air pollution in the smog-afflicted Indian capital. A federal judge in Oregon has put on hold a Trump administration rule that requires immigrants to prove they have healthcare coverage before they are granted a visa. Flea: ‘I grew up running around naked’In his new memoir, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist, Flea, reflects on a violent childhood and his conflicted friendship with the band’s frontman, Anthony Kiedis. “I became entranced with the idea of getting under the narrative, to find out the ‘why’ of my early life,” he tells Jim Farber.Trump and UFC: a cosy relationship with cagefightingThe president may have been met largely with boos as he attended a UFC event in New York on Saturday night, but his relationship with the promotion and its leadership has long been a cosy one. There is also an overlap between fans of cage-fighting and the far right, as Karim Zidan reports.Imelda Marcos documentary: ‘She’s an unreliable narrator’Lauren Greenfield, the filmmaker who captured the lives of the US super-rich in 2012’s Queen of Versailles, has a new subject: the former Philippine first lady, Imelda Marcos. “I was interested in the contradiction between her personal charisma and its terrible consequences,” she tells Charles Bramesco.‘Expensive clothes hid my loneliness’The grief of losing her father exacerbated Huma Qureshi’s burgeoning addiction to expensive clothes. But when she met her future husband, she felt her loneliness lift. And then, when they moved in together, she realised they had no room for most of her wardrobe.Fewer than 100 days before the Iowa primary, the Democrats still have no clear frontrunner. But in running on a leftwing message that doesn’t alienate the base or the establishment, Elizabeth Warren has given herself the best chance of victory, says Cas Mudde. The Massachusetts senator is not just among the three most popular candidates, she is also the (clear) top second choice candidate among the supporters of both Biden and Sanders. Lewis Hamilton came second at Sunday’s US Grand Prix, but that was enough to give the British driver his sixth Formula One world championship – and to put the 34-year-old behind only Michael Schumacher as the most successful driver in the sport’s history.The San Francisco 49ers are now the only undefeated team in the NFL, after the Baltimore Ravens inflicted New England’s first defeat of the season, beating the Patriots 37-20 at the M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday.The US morning briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now. Topics First Thing news

Another option is to smear not just the whistle-blower, but all those other witnesses as well. Indeed, this weekend Trump hinted vaguely at information the press will learn “very soon” about Vindman’s political affiliation. But the unexpected Republican revolt against the suggestion of Vindman having dual loyalties suggests that, at this late hour of the day, there may finally be some defenses that just will not fly.Then there’s the option of falling back on process complaints. During the vote on impeachment procedures, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise foreshadowed this approach, standing in front of a large placard with an image of a hammer and sickle alongside St. Basil’s Cathedral and decrying the “Soviet-style,” “sham” impeachment process that he understood the resolution would authorize. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy argued to reporters that the investigation had been poisoned from the outset by a lack of “due process” and that a vote midway through could not undo that damage. In McCarthy’s description, the Democrats’ initial decision to hold closed hearings is a poisonous tree, and all subsequent impeachment processes are its malign fruit.The problem with this approach is that it assumes people will be so outraged by closed-door depositions weeks earlier that they will not care or hear what live witnesses are saying in public in real time. Process arguments, particularly bad ones, can get the president only so far.The final option is to cease contesting what happened, but to assert instead that it was the president’s prerogative to act as he did, that he acted properly or reasonably, or at least that—whatever one may think of his choices—he did not act impeachably. The Washington Post the other day reported that Senate Republicans were heading in this direction. And this defense, from a strategic point of view, is well advised. It is, after all, the only option that doesn’t require the denial of facts, the defamation of individuals, or persistent distraction from what the president actually did.But this approach will require a redefinition of long-standing public perceptions of presidential propriety, to claim that nothing is unacceptable about a president using the tools of statecraft for individual gain. According to the Post, this would likely make more moderate Republicans edgy. What’s more, this tactic has already been tried once—by Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who angrily insisted that anyone outraged by the quid pro quo should just “deal with it.” And it quickly backfired, with Mulvaney forced to retract his statement.As the public phase of impeachment proceedings begins in our era of perfect partisanship, has the expectation that presidents will act in a public-spirited matter now also become a partisan stance? Quinta Jurecicis a contributing writer atThe Atlanticand the managing editor ofLawfare.Connect Twitter Benjamin Wittesis a contributing writer atThe Atlantic, the editor in chief ofLawfare,and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Connect Twitter

Less than four months out from the November election, the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has been consistently polling ahead of Donald Trump.The president’s approval numbers remain underwater, and Democrats believe they can seriously compete in traditionally red states including Texas, as Trump faces sustained criticism for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis linked to it, as well as the ongoing anti-racism protests against police brutality.For Democrats, these are not the only indicators that things are going well. Infighting between the progressive wing of the party and the establishment wing has been relatively minimal, as they come together to focus on Biden’s campaign to push Trump out of the White House.Some top party officials are feeling ambitious, and want to ride another potential “blue wave” to try to win races that are usually out of reach in states like Georgia and Ohio. But there’s a strain of caution running through the Democratic party as well. Things looked great for them for a while in 2016, too, but Republicans ended up with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, and the memory of that cataclysmic loss is still fresh.“I mean, we are emotionally and mentally scarred in such a way that we are not going to feel comfortable until a week after Biden is sworn in,” said the Democratic strategist Tom Bowen.In any election cycle, campaign officials use cautious phrases like “we’re not leaving anything to chance” or “campaigning like we’re 10 points down until election day” – and the 2020 presidential race is no different. But coupled with that is an argument that Trump’s case for re-election is not reaching the voters he needs to.A recent Biden campaign surrogates memo by his deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said: “No matter how hard he tries, the only candidates Trump’s attacks harm are himself and the down-ballot Republicans who’ve handcuffed themselves to him. Simply put, the American people just aren’t buying his fabrications about [Biden].”The memo went on to tick off the problems with each of Trump’s arguments.On Tuesday, in another sign that Democrats see a rare opening to compete in what are usually Republican strongholds, the Biden campaign began airing a 60-second general election ad in Texas, fueled by a six-figure ad buy. That ad is the first in a $15m multi-state blitz in six battleground states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona. Joe Biden supporters demonstrate in Little Havana, Miami, last week. The Biden campaign is spending big on ads in Florida. Photograph: Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPAMeanwhile, the pro-Trump America First Action Super Pac is pouring $23m into Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and Wisconsin but not Michigan – a state that Trump needs to win re-election. Trump himself has been campaigning over the last few months in reliably red states. Private polling for Republicans also shows the president in trouble in what are usually reliably conservative states.All of which suggests Democrats have the upper hand over Republicans. But Democratic state officials and operatives expect polls to tighten and the summer high to end. In multiple interviews, these officials were hopeful but also realistic that the next few months won’t be easy.Democrats often cite 2016, where polls showed Hillary Clinton as the clear favorite to win the presidency. At that time, and again now, some Democrats also felt retaking control of the Senate was possible.“I’m not going to argue that there isn’t some anxiety there, and I think that 2016 put that in our being because we were feeling very secure that we would have a Democratic president, and things changed so rapidly,” said the Kansas Democratic party chairwoman, Vicki Hiatt.Democrats are hoping to win a US Senate seat in Kansas this cycle, which would usually be unheard of. “I think over the past three and a half years we’ve seen some very unpredictable things happen that we would never have expected. I think that is where that anxiety comes from. For me personally, I’m not going to rest until we have this thing done. I’m cautiously optimistic but I’m not taking anything for granted.”From September, Biden and Trump will face each other in three televised debates, something Republican campaign officials hope the president will be able to dominate. Democrats are also expecting some kind of “October surprise” from the Trump campaign and a barrage of warnings about Democratic control of the White House and Congress.“That tightening will happen. It’s natural. So what we need to be doing is building up our reserves now,” said the Maryland Democratic party chairwoman, Yvette Lewis. “So we can’t waste time right now worrying about the what-ifs.”The Tennessee Democratic party chairwoman, Mary Mancini, said that Republicans have not yet thrown their full offensive force against Democratic candidates this cycle.“Now what they could do and what they’re trying to do is fearmonger their way into winning,” Mancini said. “I think the most damaging and frightening thing is we have yet to see the all-out assault from the Republican party in terms of using fear to motivate voters. We’ve seen a little of it but it’s the tip of the iceberg for the Republican party.”The pandemic has also changed the reality of campaigning for office. More voters will be voting by mail rather than in person, potentially delaying the final results on election night. Trump has argued, contrary to established evidence, that voting by mail is vulnerable to fraud.“I think my greatest fear is what the Republicans do now and over the next few months to delegitimise the election,” said Aryeh Alex, the executive director of the Ohio Democrats’ state house campaign arm.Julian Mulvey, a veteran Democratic ad maker, added: “Every Democrat should be worried. Every Democrat should be nervous because it won’t be over till it’s over. But I think everyone is nervously optimistic right now.”

Amid reports that President Donald Trump is planning to expand his travel ban, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is sending a message: She announced Monday that the House will hold a vote in the coming weeks on a bill that would dismantle it altogether.The bill, known as the National Origin-Based Anti-discrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act, would repeal Trump’s travel ban on citizens of seven countries and limit the president’s authority to issue such sweeping bans in the future. It would also strengthen existing prohibitions on religious discrimination with respect to visa applications guaranteed by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) — what immigrant advocates have praised as a means of protecting the rights of American Muslims. The INA currently bans discrimination in the issuance of visas only on the basis of “race, sex, nationality, place of birth and place of residence.” There is no provision prohibiting religious discrimination, which made it more difficult for immigrant advocates to argue that the travel ban was unlawful. The bill seeks to correct this by amending the INA to require that any travel ban be temporary, based on credible evidence, subject to congressional oversight, and be created only in response to specific actions foreign entities have taken to threaten the US. The bill also states that a ban must also advance a compelling government interest in the least restrictive way possible. These proposals have been praised by immigration advocates, like those at the National Immigration Law Center, who said they would “ensure that future presidents would not be allowed to issue orders based so clearly on anti-Muslim bias or any other religion-based animus and that every visa applicant would receive individual consideration.” The House Judiciary Committee will debate and potentially amend the bill, which has broad Democratic support, in the next two weeks, and is expected to advance to the floor for a full House vote. But even if the bill passes the House, it has little prospect of clearing — or even being considered in — the Republican-led Senate, where several recent immigration bills have languished. This congressional reality makes Pelosi’s show of support for the bill appear to be as much about warning Trump to think twice about expanding his travel ban as it is about policy. “House Democrats continue to stand opposed to President Trump’s cruel, un-American travel ban in all of its iterations,” Pelosi said in a statement Monday.Politico reported last week that Trump is weighing expanding the existing ban to cover citizens of seven additional countries: Belarus, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. The ban would prevent most citizens of those countries from coming to the US, with exceptions for refugees and those who already have US green cards or visas.Under the first version of the ban, unveiled in January 2017, citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, including those who held US green cards and dual US citizenship, were held for questioning for many hours at airports across the country and were denied entry to the US. A de facto “Muslim ban,” the policy appeared to be the execution of Trump’s call on the campaign trail for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the US and sparked widespread protests throughout the country.That ban was amended in the face of court challenges; the version of the ban now in place — the third Trump has issued — was upheld by the US Supreme Court in June 2018. It places restrictions on citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and North Korea who seek to enter the US. (Chad was taken off the list of countries subject to the ban last April after it met the Trump administration’s demands to share information with US authorities that could aid in efforts to vet foreigners.)The NO BAN Act is an effort to negate the Supreme Court’s ruling, albeit one that’s unlikely to succeed. But even if it fails in the Senate, the bill will allow Democrats to contrast themselves with Trump ahead of the 2020 election and present themselves as a party that welcomes immigrants, rather than keeping them out.

The so-called “lungs of the world” are belching smoke as farmers set out after 10 August in a “day of fires” to clear forest for grazing cattle and planting soybeans. The result was more than 10,000 new fires spreading in the Brazilian rainforest, kindled by drought that drives wildfires raging from Russia to Africa.Brazilian deforestation is no act of non-government organizations, as the president, Jair Bolsonaro – who called himself “Captain Chainsaw” – absurdly claimed. He ran for president last year exhorting homesteaders to stake their claim by cutting or burning. They scoff at scientists and outsiders alarmed that the planet could cook that much faster if the rain forest is torched, and have openly stated their goals shielded in sovereignty.The number of fires increased more than 80% this year as the US trade war with China peaked. The Day of Fires was called just as China declared it would no longer buy US agricultural products. The biggest import from China was soybeans, accounting for over half Iowa’s annual crop.This is part of a long-term development that has seen China invest in production capacity in Central and South America to shift its soy dependence away from the US.Brazil is now the top exporter of soybeans to China. It is also building its beef export business in Asia as an African virus cut the Chinese hog herd in half, which will take years to rebuild.As Brazilian savannas that grazed livestock give way to soybean cultivation, cattle move into the rain forest along with row-crop production.As if the world were not already awash in soybeans, and corn. Upper midwest farmers have watched their soy prices drop by a third as Donald Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, ratchet up their rhetoric and tariffs.Iowa soybean growers carefully cultivated China for decades to open up new export markets. Since the days that Nixon’s agriculture secretary, Earl Butz, commanded farmers to plant fencerow to fencerow to feed the world, China became Iowa’s top soy customer. When the state’s governor, Terry Branstad, was appointed ambassador, Iowa farmers thought the key to the door of the Forbidden City had been given to them. Then Trump, who said he loves farmers, started the trade wars with China, Mexico and Canada.“You will never see the Chinese market the way you had it,” former Mexican ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo told me. “They will never make the mistake of depending on the United States again.”He adds that Mexican buyers also are leery of counting on US agriculture suppliers. They have a free trade agreement with Brazil. They do not have one with the US.Arrangements have been made. The supply chain has been twisted another direction. Now, Brazilians are using that language of feeding the world, and planting every last acre by expropriating rain forest from indigenous people if Chinese demand dictates it. And it does.The soybeans sit in the bin in Iowa and Illinois awaiting a better day, as a harvest fast approaches, while the rain forest burns. In the rolling hills of southern Iowa painted in green pasture you can’t scare up a cattle buyer anymore. The beef slaughter plants in Fort Dodge and Denison are closed now, as the action moves to South America’s new frontier. We are growing so much soy and corn that the Gulf of Mexico is choking from excess fertilizer streaming down the Mississippi River. What we can’t feed to hogs and poultry we burn for ethanol, competing with the Brazilian cane growers who create environmental disasters all their own. Because of the trade wars, Trump has doled out $30bn over two years in disaster payments to make up for depressed soybean markets. We can’t seem to give it away. It has many Iowa farmers talking with presidential candidates about doing things differently – like growing less corn and beans, and instead fighting the climate crisisby planting crops that capture carbon while restoring soil.Yet the forest burns, and its carbon-capturing capacity goes up in smoke. All for some cheaper soybeans and hamburger. Trade wars may end, but supply chains are hard to bend back. Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times in north-west Iowa, where he won the Pulitzer prize for editorial writing. He is author of the book Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper (Viking, 2018) Topics Amazon rainforest Opinion Brazil Deforestation Trees and forests comment

The exodus of major advertisers from Facebook continues to grow as the company weathers criticism over its handling of racist, violent and other hateful rhetoric on the platform. On Monday, Ford became one of the latest companies to pause social media advertising when it announced a 30-day halt. Another major brand, Pepsi, is reportedly weighing a similar move, following Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Unilever and dozens of other brands shifting their ad dollars away from Facebook. The brands said they are standing up against hate speech. Clorox, for instance, said it will stop all advertising on Facebook through December because "we feel compelled to take action against hate speech."Facebook has been under intense scrutiny over its handling of recent posts by President Trump. After weeks of a staunch hands-off approach, CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday reversed course as a parade of brands began severing their ties with the company. Zuckerberg said Facebook will put warning labels on posts that break its rules, even if they are newsworthy, opening the door to potentially labeling posts by Trump.Civil rights groups — including the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP and Color of Change — launched a campaign called #StopHateForProfit and urged brands to halt Facebook advertising during July, saying the social network profits off bigotry, racism and violence. For Facebook, which also owns Instagram, advertising is the single most important source of money, bringing in almost all revenue — or close to $70 billion — last year.Ford spokesman Said Deep told NPR on Monday that it is "actively engaged" with initiatives led by the Association of National Advertisers to increase "accountability, transparency and trusted measurement to clean up the digital and social media ecosystem.""The existence of content that includes hate speech, violence and racial injustice on social platforms needs to be eradicated," Deep said in a statement.Zuckerberg has long maintained that people should be able to see what politicians say, no matter how offensive, and has criticized Twitter's decision to label the president's tweets earlier this year. He has not addressed the advertising boycotts so far."A handful of times a year, we make a decision to leave up content that would otherwise violate our policies because we consider that the public interest value outweighs the risk of that content," he said on Friday. "In the same way that news outlets will often report what a politician says, we think it's important that people should generally be able to see it for themselves on our platforms, too."Editor's note: Facebook, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Unilever are among NPR's financial supporters. NPR's Shannon Bond and Camila Domonoske contributed to this report.

US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook called the move a "political stunt" during a joint press conference with the Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir on Monday."It's propaganda that we're used to," Hook said. "This has nothing to do with national security, international peace or promoting stability, so we see it for what it is -- it's a propaganda stunt that no one takes seriously and makes the Iranians look foolish," he added.Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport in January along with five others, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).The strike, condemned by Iran and its allies as an "assassination," raised the specter of further regional destabilization.A spokesman for Iran's judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Esmaili, announced in early June that an Iranian citizen had been sentenced to death for allegedly working for foreign intelligence agencies. Esmaili claimed that Seyed Mahmoud Mousavi Majd disclosed the whereabouts of Soleimani to US intelligence officials.Barr and Pompeo shift justification for Iran strike from 'imminent' threat to deterrenceThe Trump administration viewed Soleimani as a ruthless killer, and the President told reporters in January that the general should have been taken out by previous presidents.The Pentagon blamed Soleimani for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and US allies in the months leading up to his killing. "General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region," the Pentagon said at the time, calling the strike "decisive defensive" action aimed at deterring future Iranian attacks.

Tabatabai said that the only historical U.S. actions she could think of that approached the level of provocation of the Soleimani killing were American support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the U.S. military’s downing of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988, and the suspected U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet cyber campaign against Iran’s nuclear program under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. U.S. support for the Iraqis may have played a role in Iran supporting militants who launched deadly attacks on the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. But the Reagan administration claimed that the shoot-down of the Iranian plane was a mistake and apologized for the incident, which perhaps contributed to Iran’s restrained response. And the Stuxnet attack was difficult to attribute definitively, though Tehran did react by beefing up its offensive cyber capabilities.Now the United States has taken out arguably the second-most-powerful figure in Iran, and has claimed responsibility for the killing publicly and boastfully. In the 40 years of conflict between the two countries, such a moment has never come before. And that’s why, despite such a long track record, it’s so hard to predict what will happen next. What is predictable is that Iran will seek to exact revenge, and that it will aim for elements of surprise that will throw the United States off balance.Just because Iran wants to avoid a direct war with the United States doesn’t mean its response to Soleimani’s killing won’t be fierce. The fear of that blowback is, in fact, what kept previous U.S. administrations from striking Soleimani when they had the chance.The former U.S. official Ilan Goldenberg, who has forecast what war with Iran could look like, foresees Iran breaking free of the remaining restraints on its nuclear-weapons program. He also expects Tehran to green-light “all-out conflict” by Shiite militias in Iraq against American forces, diplomats, and personnel in Iraq; Hezbollah attacks against Americans in Lebanon and targets in Israel; rocket attacks on international oil assets or U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; and potentially even terrorist attacks in the United States and around the world. The counterterrorism analyst Charles Lister anticipates intense violence in Syria and Iraq that will pressure the United States to withdraw militarily from both countries, while the Middle East expert Jon Alterman thinks cyber warfare is coming. “The entire world will need to be on high alert for months or (more likely) years,” he writes.As Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted on Thursday, war with Iran, in contrast to the Gulf War or the Iraq War, will be fought across the region and perhaps the wider world against an array of civilian, economic, and military targets. There’s a reason U.S. allies in the region, no fans of Iran and Soleimani, have reacted with considerable foreboding to this week’s developments. The Saudis, for example, have urged “self-restraint” to avert “unbearable consequences,” while the Israeli government has expressed muted approval for the operation while bracing for Iranian retaliation.

Maier’s post tapped a vein among some nonbinary scientists, who felt the sting of being overlooked. After all, if you're a nonbinary person, it’s hard to read that line and not feel like you are not significant, yourself. “Part of me is like, ‘This is normal,” says Rasmussen, who is disappointed but not surprised by research language like this—they grew up on this planet, after all. “A newer part of me says, ‘This is not right. This is harmful. This is excluding me. This is excluding my friends.’”Maier didn’t expect the tweet to attract so much notice. “I made the tweet, I fell asleep, and I woke up and had more notifications on Twitter than I had ever seen in my life,” says Maier. “It was a spotlight that I wasn’t really expecting.” The post garnered a couple dozen retweets, and more than 150 likes. Beck Strauss, an independent researcher who studies planetary geophysics, reached out to Maier about writing up a rebuttal.“HELLO friends, it has been a wild couple of hours & I am marveling at the power of twitter,” Maier posted in response. “In any case, if anyone is interested in being added to a group DM to legitimately discuss the possibility of turning this into a white paper, please respond to this tweet or DM me!”Soon, Maier was messaging with interested parties, including Rasmussen, and discussing a potential paper for the decadal survey panel. Maier’s post, Rasmussen says, “brought us out of the woodwork.”The three and their other coauthors worked on writing up concrete ways the field could improve for nonbinary people. Among the changes they suggested in their paper: Asking people to volunteer their gender identity for demographic research (rather than, say, asking an ickily-named automated program called SexMachine to infer it), paying social scientists to help do research in astronomy, and anonymizing telescope proposals to minimize gender bias by putting all the applicants’ ideas on the same footing.The authors are mostly graduate students (for many, this is their first published paper), but their early-career ideas and insights will reach astronomy’s highest echelons—thanks to the human panel. “There’s just so many more people out there caring about these issues than I thought,” says Maier.The human panel will consider issues beyond gender, too. One of the papers is about how to create “realistic job training” for astronomy students, most of whom won’t become professors in the overcrowded field. Another group sent along ideas for combating unconscious bias in areas like recruitment, hiring, choosing guest speakers, and evaluating scientific proposals, based on methods the Space Telescope Science Institute has employed and tested. Other researchers presented a path and rationale for dropping the GRE, which they argued doesn’t accurately predict a student’s success in graduate school but does show “statistically significant score differentials across gender, race, and citizenship, with notably lower scores for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Nave Americans, and women of all races as compared to White and Asian American men.” The authors of one paper suggest that the field invest in hiring astronomy faculty at minority-serving institutions, while another recommends making astronomy careers more accessible to people with disabilities.Several of the papers deal with the conflict over Maunakea, a mountain sacred to Native Hawaiians where astronomers want to build a big instrument called the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). For years, Native Hawaiian opponents, who see the scope as a colonialist intrusion, have clashed with scientists who want to move forward with construction anyway. In 2015, Hawaii’s state supreme court revoked TMT’s construction permit, and then restored it in 2018. Last year, protesters camped at the base of the site for months, blocking building access.

Donald Trump has made a habit of questioning people’s origins—particularly those of his political rivals. He spread ”birther” conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, demanding to see the former president’s birth certificate as proof of his American citizenship status. And he has repeatedly called Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren a liar for claiming to have Native American heritage. At a rally in Montana this summer, Trump went so far as to make a hypothetical bet. Imagining a debate with Warren, he told the crowd:“I’m going to get one of those little [DNA testing] kits and in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims she’s of Indian heritage… And we will say, ‘I will give you a million dollars, paid for by Trump, to your favorite charity, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.’Now Warren says Trump needs to pony up. In a highly-publicized ad rolled out today, the Democratic senator revealed the results of a DNA test that provides “strong evidence” she has Native American blood dating back six to 10 generations. She was quick to remind Trump of his pledge:In the video, Warren tells Carlos Bustamante, a professor of genetics at Stanford and adviser to Ancestry and 23andMe: “The president likes to call my mom a liar. What do the facts say?” Bustamante responds, “The facts suggest that you absolutely have a Native American ancestor in your pedigree,” as Warren nods. Bustamante’s full genetic profile of Warren (pdf) is now posted on her website.Regardless, as Annie Linskey points out in The Boston Globe, the ad is certainly important in that it is “another indication of how seriously Warren is considering running for president.”Trump and his die-hard supporters seem unlikely to be persuaded that Warren is telling the truth about her heritage. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway sought to dismiss the value of the DNA test, telling reporters, “everybody likes to pick their junk science or sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days.” And Trump himself told reporters, “Who cares?”But some observers say that convincing Trump was never the point.Whether or not Warren decides to run, she seems to be attempting to avoid the pitfalls that Hillary Clinton faced as the first female Democratic nominee for the presidency. Clinton was criticized for being overly private during her campaign, often chafing at releasing personal information. As Linskey points out, “By taking a DNA test, Warren is showing that if she runs for president, she plans to be a very different candidate than Hillary Clinton was.”

TEHRAN — Iran has put out an arrest warrant and requested a red notice be published by Interpol for President Donald Trump following the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January, the Iranian state news agency FARS reported Monday.Ali Alghasi Mehr, the prosecutor general of Tehran, said arrest warrants had been ordered for 36 people who were involved in or cooperated with the “terror” of Soleimani, including U.S. military and political officials, the news agency reported.A judicial official has also "declared a red notice on Interpol," Mehr added, according to FARS.The Department of State and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.Trump is at the top of the list of those wanted, according to FARS. No other officials were immediately identified.A red notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action. It is at the discretion of local law enforcement authorities whether to act on the notices.When asked whether Iran had requested a red notice for Trump, among others, a spokesperson for Interpol said in an emailed statement that its constitution forbids it from undertaking "any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character."The spokesperson did not say whether Interpol had received Iran's request.The U.S. killing of Soleimani, the high-profile commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, on Jan. 2, brought simmering tensions between Tehran and Washington to a boiling point. Iran retaliated days later by firing more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi air bases housing U.S. forces.In a statement announcing the death of Soleimani in January, the Department of Defense said that the U.S. military had taken "decisive defensive action" to protect U.S. personnel abroad."This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans," the Defense Department added. "The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world."Trump withdrew the United States from a nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2018 and has imposed a wave of economic sanctions on the country's oil industry, as well as banking and other key sectors. The 2015 nuclear deal eased U.S. and United Nations sanctions on Iran in return for limits on Tehran's nuclear program.