Enlarge / A US Lockheed Martin F-35 Fighter is displayed during the 53rd International Paris Air Show last year in its natural state: on the ground. A poor "mission capable" rate plagues the F-35, as well as cybersecurity vulnerabilities and a gun that won't shoot straight, according to an upcoming Pentagon report. (credit: Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
The latest report on the progress of the US Defense Department's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is due out soon from the Office of the Secretary of Defense's director for operational test and evaluation (DOT&E), Robert Behler.
Last year's report was full of bad news. And based on Bloomberg Government's Tony Capaccio's early access to the new report, we know much of that bad news is still bad news. In fact, the only real good news is that there are no new major flaws in the $428 billion aircraft program reported by Behler's team.
But the bad is still bad. For starters, the Air Force version of the F-35 can't hit what it shoots its gun at.
Of course he does, because the GOP is only populated by soulless ghouls at this point.
Wilbur Ross in the Fox Business studios last month. | Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
“I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”
During a Thursday morning appearance on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made a ghoulish effort to find an “America First” silver lining to the Chinese coronavirus that has already killed 170 people and infected nearly 8,000 more, and threatens to become a global pandemic.
In short: Ross thinks it’s potentially a good thing for the US economy.
Asked by Bartiromo if the new coronavirus puts economic growth at risk, Ross responded by offering thoughts and prayers to those directly affected, before saying, “I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease.” But he then proceeded to take a victory lap by making a case that the outbreak might present a moneymaking opportunity in the United States.
“The fact is, it does give business yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain,” said Ross. “It’s another risk factor that people need to take into account. So I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”
“Ah, that’s a good point,” Bartiromo replied.
Watch:
Secretary Wilbur Ross says coronavirus will be good for [checks notes] American jobs: "I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America." pic.twitter.com/Y4SbDIcTi4
But an economic evaluation of Ross’s claim is ultimately beside the point. What matters is that a top Trump administration official barely hesitated before reducing a global outbreak that has already killed nearly 200 humans and could kill thousands more to a business opportunity. In that way, Ross’s comments represent a distillation of the zero-sum worldview Trump has repeatedly articulated about how what’s bad for China is good for the US — although it appears economic hostilities have ceased at least for the moment due to the trade deal the administration and China announced earlier this month.
Ross has a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth. Almost exactly one year ago, he generated similarly negative headlines for the administration when he downplayed the impact of the then-ongoing government shutdown by going on CNBC and suggesting affected workers should go further in debt to make ends meet.
“The 30 days of pay that some people will be out, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it,” Ross said.
Assuming that there are three Republican senators who care enough about their country and the rule of law to want witnesses and documents in Donald Trump's impeachment trial (not a given by any means) Chief Justice John Roberts could be put in a difficult position. He would have to break the a 50-50 tie either voting for a sham trial or a real one. Or, do what the conventional wisdom expects and choose not to decide and let entropy win. At a stalemate, the side asking for witnesses would lose.
Thus far, Roberts has been more of a spectator than an umpire, to use his infamous analogy during his confirmation hearing of what his role on the Supreme Court would be—"calling balls and strikes." He's watched while Republican senators made the presentation by House managers a farce, napping through the discussion, playing with toys, standing in the back of the room chatting, reading unrelated books, or just flat out leaving the room for long stretches. That is against the rules of impeachment trials, rules he's there to enforce. That has not impressed the experts. So far, Roberts has been "less of a force than some people expected or hoped for," Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor and impeachment expert told the Washington Post. Few watching this have high hopes that he'll rise to the challenge.
The only peep out of him on the proceedings was a "both sides" scolding of Rep. Jerry Nadler spurred on, of course, by Sen. Susan Collins' note tattling on him. He's done something helpful in rebuffing Sen. Rand Paul's efforts to out the person who blew the whistle on Trump's Ukraine extortion. That was done behind the scenes, even before the question and answer period began Wednesday.
So, with his chance to actually do the job, call the balls and strikes, the big question is whether he'll step up to save the institution of the Senate from itself, try to save the republic from Trump, or even try to save his own legacy. One Democrat, Sen. Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, is going to attempt to force the issue by offering a motion putting pressure on Roberts to decide. Republicans will almost certainly defeat it, but that doesn't mean Roberts couldn't be the hero all of his own accord.
The plan to ban private cars from Market Street -- one of the city's busiest and most dangerous downtown thoroughfares -- enjoys a remarkable level of local support. From a report: In a city known for stunning vistas, San Francisco's Market Street offers a notoriously ugly tangle of traffic. Cars and delivery trucks vie with bikes and pedestrians along this downtown corridor, as buses and a historic streetcar clatter through the mix. Dedicated lanes for transit and bikes end abruptly several blocks from the street's terminus at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. But the vehicular frenzy is ending, in part: Starting Wednesday, private vehicles -- meaning both passenger automobiles and for-hire ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft -- may no longer drive down Market, east of 10th Street. Only buses, streetcars, traditional taxis, ambulances, and freight drop-offs are still allowed. The closure to private vehicle traffic heralds the start of a new era for the city's central spine, and perhaps for San Francisco at large, as it joins cities around the world that are restricting cars from downtown centers.
"We need to do better than use Market as a queuing place for the Bay Bridge," said Jeffrey Tumlin, the newly arrived executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. "Today represents the way the world is finally changing how it thinks about the role of transportation in cities." After decades of debate, the vision for a car-free Market Street has arrived at a remarkable level of support among activists, politicians, planners, and businesses. (Especially compared to the rancor and legal challenges that greeted New York City's long-delayed effort to create a car-free busway along 14th Street in Manhattan.) In October, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's board of directors voted unanimously in support of a $600 million "Better Market Street" capital construction plan. Ground is set to break on construction for a protected bikeway, repaved sidewalk, fresh streetscaping, and updated streetcar infrastructure by the start of 2021.
In this photograph taken on November 14, 2019, an Afghan deminer working for the Danish Demining Group holds a mortar bomb during the scanning of a combat zone dating back to the Soviet invasion at Ahangaran in the central Afghan province of Bamiyan. | Mohammad Ali Shaida/AFP via Getty Images
This reverses an Obama administration restriction on landmine stockpiles and use in war.
In yet another reversal of an Obama-era policy, President Donald Trump will allow the US military to again use landmines in conflicts around the world.
According to an internal State Department cable obtained by Vox, Trump has rescinded former President Barack Obama’s 2014 directive to no longer “produce or otherwise acquire any anti-personnel landmines,” known as APLs, which are small explosive devices placed under, on, or near the ground. The cable also lifts the Obama administration’s restriction on deploying landmines outside of the Korean Peninsula.
Landmines are a particularly gruesome weapon. If a person triggers a landmine by stepping on it and survives, the severe injuries typically require the amputation of limbs or multiple operations. The International Committee of the Red Cross reports that “war surgeons consider them among the worst injuries they have to treat.”
The Landmine Monitor, a watchdog group, says that there have been roughly 130,000 casualties due to landmines between 1999 and 2018, the majority of which have been civilians.
More than 160 countries have signed on to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines. The US, however, has never signed it.
Obama’s 2014 directive restricted landmine use to just the Korean Peninsula, “to reduce humanitarian harm,” according to Rob Berschinski, who worked in the human rights office of Obama’s National Security Council.
But Obama declined to ban them outright. The reason, Berschinski said, was that the Pentagon felt there were still reasons to use landmines on the Korean Peninsula, mainly to thwart a potential North Korean invasion.
But under Trump’s new policy, the US military can now use landmines anywhere, including in “future potential conflicts,” according to the cable.
“The United States will not sacrifice American service members’ safety,” the cable reads, “particularly when technologically advanced safeguards are available that can allow landmines to be employed responsibly to ensure our military’s warfighting advantage, while also limiting the risk of unintended harm to civilians.”
Importantly, the cable also notes that the US will continue to “prohibit the use of any ‘persistent’ landmines” that don’t have a self-destruct or self-activate function.
This is a dramatic policy change, and one that has arms control experts and humanitarian groups deeply concerned. “It is a complete flouting of established international norms, a smack in the face to civilians at risk from long-existing stockpiles, and breaks with decades of precedent,” said Rachel Stohl, an arms control expert at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.
But it’s unclear whether the military even wanted this change in the first place. Multiple experts — including US defense officials — said that the US military has clearly found anti-personnel landmines not to be that helpful in war.
“The United States has not used landmines in a new theater of military operation for nearly thirty years — since 1991 — yet it continues to stockpile millions of these obsolete weapons,” Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, told me.
It’s therefore worth noting that Trump’s soon-to-be-announced action may not change much on the battlefield, and may have been done just to remove another Obama-era restriction.
The administration will officially announce the decision on Friday after briefing allies on the policy change, according to the cable. “There is a change coming out, but I’m not going to comment on it before it is,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters on Thursday morning.
Gay republicans are the most self loathing creatures around.
Radio host Stacy Washington, a campaign surrogate for Donald Trump who serves on two of the president’s re-election advisory boards, has called homosexuality “deviant sexual behavior,” said that LGBTQ people are “three levels of above the Nazis,” and wholeheartedly endorsed conversion therapy.
Media Matters reports: Washington is a commentator, radio host, and Air Force veteran who has appeared in outlets including Fox News, Newsmax TV, and the now-defunct NRATV. She was formerly a host of a program aired on American Family Radio, the radio arm of extreme anti-LGBTQ group American Family Association, before the network culled much of its programming and its dedicated Urban Family Communications network. The outlet regularly pushes misinformation and hate about the LGBTQ community to nearly 200 stations and affiliates in 35 states. Washington now hosts a podcast that is available on various platforms. She is also a member of the Trump campaign’s Black Voices for Trump and Veterans for Trump advisory boards. Washington met with Trump at the November 8 launch of his Black Voices for Trump coalition. She tweeted on January 8 that she was “pleased to join the Vets for Trump Advisory Board.” She has visited the White House and recently spokeas a Trump surrogate at a Missouri campaign kickoff hosted by the state’s Republican Party.
Check out a few of Washington’s anti-LGBTQ Facebook posts below.
A section of President Donald Trump’s border wall—which is not new, but merely replaced an existing structure—collapsed Wednesday in 37 mph winds.
WATCH: A part of the border wall between Calexico, CA and Mexicali, Mexico tipped over into Mexico on Wednesday afternoon, according to Mexicali police. Trees next to the wall have kept it from falling over entirely. No injuries or damages have been reported so far. pic.twitter.com/PVl4s8VS00
CNN reports: Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the sections that gave way had recently been set in a new concrete foundation in Calexico, California. The concrete had not yet cured, according to Pitones, and the wall panels were unable to withstand the windy conditions. … Earlier this month, the administration announced that the wall had reached the 100-mile mark, the majority of which was replacing barriers with newer, enhanced designs, and around half a mile was constructed in the Rio Grande Valley where no wall previously existed. The White House has pushed for construction on the US-Mexico border to be dubbed new wall, according to a former administration official. There was a “constant drumbeat” from the White House to call it “new wall” within the Department of Homeland Security, the official added. “There is a lot of pressure on the President to deliver in the campaign promise.”
The collapse occurred hours after Trump proclaimed during a rally in New Jersey, “The money is won. And we are now building that beautiful wall. This powerful border wall is going up at record speed, and we just reached over 100 miles of wall. And next year we’ll be over 400 miles. And shortly thereafter it will be complete.”
Here’s how PolitiFact responded: Trump is referring to a court victory allowing him to use $3.6 billion for military construction projects toward the wall instead. (Congress was not giving Trump the money he wanted for the wall, so he declared a national emergency in order to tap the military funds.) Most of the border wall projects replace or bolster existing fencing. As for 400 more miles coming next year, it’s not immediately clear what he’s referring to. He said the same thing in May about 2020. In short, the wall still has a long way to go before it matches Trump’s vision from 2016.
Trump went on to repeat his claim that Mexico will pay for the wall, but PolitiFact notes: There’s no evidence of this. We asked the Trump team for more details and haven’t heard back. Trump previously claimed that Mexico would pay for the wall through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which he will soon sign. There is no provision for the wall in the free trade agreement.
In the olden days of December 2015, Sen. Lindsey Graham had some seriously strong opinions about Donald Trump. Appearing on CNN at the time, Graham remarked that he was “disgusted” by then President-elect Trump’s remarks that he wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. Just in case you don’t remember the old Sen. Lindsey Graham, here are his exact words:
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: I want to talk to the Trump supporters for a minute. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you like about this. I think what you like is he appears to be strong, when the rest of us are weak. He’s a very successful businessman and he’s going to make everything great. He’s going to take all the problems of the world and put them in a box and make your life better. That’s what he’s selling.
Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women that wear the uniform are fighting for. I‘ve been in the Air Force for 33 years—I retired this June. He’s the ISIL man of the year, by the way. I just got back from Morocco a week ago this Monday—
It is here that Sen. Graham talked about military personnel he met with who were concerned by Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric.
SEN. GRAHAM: I don’t think he has a clue about anything. He’s just trying to get his numbers up and get the biggest reaction he can. He’s putting our soldiers and diplomats at risk. He’s empowering the enemy. And this ban, if actually enacted, would take people who have been interpreters, who came to our side in Iraq and Afghanistan—who are under siege in their own countries—and basically becomes a death sentence for them.
December 2015 Sen. Graham finished by saying that if viewers wanted to “Make America Great again, tell Donald Trump to go to hell!”
2015 Sen. Graham was right … to a degree. Donald Trump, it turns out, does represent the Republican Party. Donald Trump is stronger than the rest of you. Also, Donald Trump wasn’t a very successful businessman. He was a bankrupt and corrupt businessman. But: potatoes, tomatoes.
Fuck the South and their racist shithead campaign in the name of "history", when it's just a thin cover for white supremacy.
A Tennessee Democrat deftly called out the realities of the Civil War in a state house hearing Tuesday, forcing a Confederate enthusiast to truly consider the legacies he is fighting so hard to protect. Remember, by certain people in certain parts of the United States, the Civil War is framed as a war with heroes on both sides. These soldiers, certain people maintain, were fighting nobly against each other over issues that had absolutely nothing to do with the abolition of chattel slavery. The Confederate flag honors the “lost cause” of that battle, and statues of those soldiers supposedly do the same.
That framing is all wrong, of course. The Confederacy wanted to continue the horrific practice of enslaving human beings—and its soldiers were willing to die for it. Yet, in certain parts of the United States, Confederate battle flags still fly high. In Mississippi, the state flag prominently features the Southern Cross. Hundreds and hundreds of statues of key Confederate figures still abound in the South’s public spaces and most were erected in the 1900s, not in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, as a Jim Crow intimidation tactic. No matter when these statues were placed—on college campuses, in parks, and on government property—it’s undeniable that to honor the Confederacy is to honor secession. To honor the Confederacy is to honor treason. To honor the Confederacy is to honor the greatest scourge in this nation’s history.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich put it in 2018, “People across the country are waking up to the reality that these tributes to the Confederacy perpetuate the idea of white supremacy and glorify a regime that supported the torture, murder and enslavement of black people. That’s why white supremacists today continue to wave the Confederate flag. It’s time for courageous political leaders to say enough is enough.”
Which brings us to Tennessee State Rep. Jason Hodges’ highly effective approach to a Confederate historian determined to keep a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest in the state Capitol building. Bedford Forrest, as a reminder, was a Confederate general AND a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The bill in question, proposed by Knoxville Democrat Rep. Rick Staples, sought to replace the bust of the KKK leader with someone a bit more representative of human decency … including national treasure Dolly Parton.
Alas, fans of the Confederacy were there to defend the continued tribute to a bonafide traitor to the United States as a super-good idea, including “War Between the States” expert Dr. Michael Bradley. Rep. Hodges shut the historian all the way down.
Can’t watch? There’s a transcript below, which goes beyond the video below.
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In committee today, Rep. Rick Staples proposed removing Nathan Bedford Forrest's bust from the Capital. During a Confederate historians' bargaining to keep it, @JasonAHodgesTN asked an important question that reveals the horrific acts the bust actually represents. pic.twitter.com/1hoRZo3lms
TENN. REP. JASON HODGES: "I heard you disputing earlier 'how many people were massacred,' not that there weren't people massacred. So what is a good number? How many people can you massacre and still be honored? Just out of curiosity. You're not disputing that the guy didn't massacre people, you're disputing how many. What's a good number to still be honored by the state of Tennessee?"
DR. MICHAEL BRADLEY: “First of all, we do not know how many people were massacred, that is if we’re going to use the term ‘massacre’ at all. Because the term ‘massacre’ is obviously a loaded word. It was never used by some people and it was by others. For many years Forrest was referred to as ‘the Butcher of Fort Pillow.’ ‘Massacre’ was used by the—”
HODGES: “Well let’s go with ‘butcher.’ How many people can I butcher and still be honored by the state of Tennessee?”
BRADLEY: ”Probably a large number because many of our people have done it in the past, including some of those who have statues on the Capitol grounds. And to answer your question: Why don’t you ask the Native Americans about Andrew Jackson, or ask Andrew Johnson about the policies of officers under his command? There are over 500 civilians and Confederate officers of war.
HODGES: ”Because this bill is concerning Nathan Bedford Forrest, sir. Thank you.”
Ryan Goodman, editor in chief over at Just Security, published a very interesting piece on Wednesday. In it, Goodman goes back through history and looks at the 10 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who voted both for and against the impeachment of then-President Richard Nixon in 1974. More importantly, he looks at their obituaries to see whether his backers’ decisions to support a clearly unhinged and corrupt politician were remembered. According to Goodman, not only was it mentioned in these long-deceased officials’ obituaries, but it was the defining moment of their careers. Reading some of obituary headlines, you begin to get the scope.
“Former Rep. Joseph Maraziti, 78, Defender of Nixon on Watergate”
“Wiley Mayne; House GOP Member Who Voted Not to Impeach Nixon”
“Sandman, Nixon Supporter, Dies”
“Charles Wiggins, 72, Dies; Led Nixon’s Defense in Hearings”
Alternately, Goodman looked at the obituaries of Republican congressmen who voted in favor of impeaching Nixon. Those GOP officials’ careers were also definitively marked by their decision to break with party rank-and-file to make the right decision.
Just Security is a U.S. national security law and policy think tank and media outlet.
Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz arrives at the Capitol on January 29, 2020. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Trump’s lawyer argued that anything the president does to stay in power is unimpeachable, short of actual crimes.
One of the defenses presented by one of Trump’s lawyers during Wednesday’s portion of the Senate impeachment trial stood out from the others — big time.
That’s because it would give presidents almost unlimited power to pervert foreign policy into dirty tricks aimed at boosting their political prospects by defining anything they do to stay in office as part of the national interest.
In response to a Republican senator’s question about whether it’s true that “quid pro quos are often used in foreign policy,” Alan Dershowitz argued they are. But he then went a step further and made a case that even quid pro quos that most everyone would agree are unacceptable aren’t impeachable offenses.
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz said.
Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz: "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment." https://t.co/jKErQcS1Iypic.twitter.com/zo4rL6Zbla
It would be a much harder case if a hypothetical president of the United States said to a hypothetical leader of a foreign country, ‘unless you build a hotel with my name on it, and unless you give me a million dollar kickback, I will withhold the funds.’ That’s an easy case. That’s purely corrupt and in the purely private interest.
But a complex middle case is, ‘I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was. If I’m not elected the national interest will suffer greatly.’ That cannot be impeachable.
In other words, if the president thinks his or her reelection itself is in the public interest of the United States, then anything short of crimes he or she does to make that happen — including strong-arming foreign governments into announcing investigations into political foes — is justified.
It’s instructive to consider the sorts of things presidents could get away with if Dershowitz’s argument were accepted. And House impeachment manager Adam Schiff did just that immediately after Dershowitz spoke.
Schiff used the example of President Barack Obama’s infamous March 2012 hot mic conversation with then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in which Obama told Medvedev he’d have more “flexibility” to work with Russia “after my election.”
Schiff asked senators to consider a hypothetical situation in which Obama had instead asked Medvedev to open an investigation into Mitt Romney, his political opponent at the time, and threatened to impose sanctions on Russia if he didn’t.
Nobody would argue a request of that sort is acceptable. And yet by Dershowitz’s standard, it wouldn’t meet the bar for impeachment and removal.
Schiff points out that if Obama had asked Medvedev to investigate Romney on a hot mic, Republicans would've impeached him faster than you can say "emails" pic.twitter.com/wMmfuoR2L9
One could even argue that Trump’s conduct with Ukraine was more egregious than the Obama hypothetical, as Trump held up congressionally authorized military aid as part of his quid pro quo and didn’t go through the proper channels to do so. The US government’s top internal watchdog concluded earlier this month that the Trump administration “broke the law when it withheld military aid to Ukraine last year after Congress had approved its disbursal,” as my colleague Alex Ward explained.
On Twitter, Garry Kasparov, chair of the Human Rights Foundation, characterized Dershowitz’s argument as nakedly authoritarian.
Wow, Dershowitz is actually making the King Louis XIV argument right now! Trump is good for the country, so anything he does to stay in power is the national interest, even if corrupt or illegal. That's the language of every king & dictator: I am the end and the means justify me.
Dershowitz’s argument illustrates a broader dynamic I wrote about earlier today: that with former National Security Adviser John Bolton now reportedly prepared to testify that Trump told him directly that the release of the Ukraine aid was conditional on the Ukrainian government agreeing to investigate the Bidens, Republicans are moving the goalposts from “quid pro quos are bad but Trump didn’t do one” to “quid pro quos don’t matter.”
Enlarge / If another game as big as Dota 2 emerges from a mod of a Blizzard title, Blizzard wants to be sure it owns the rights completely. (credit: Blizzard Entertainment)
As influential as Warcraft III was in the real-time strategy genre, the game's most enduring legacy might be as the basis for genre-defining, fan-made custom game spin-offs like Defense of the Ancients (aka Dota) and Auto Chess in its wake. Now, Blizzard is taking steps to ensure it retains complete ownership of any such custom games that originate from its titles in the future, including those that come out of Warcraft III's recently released Reforged update.
Custom Games are and shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Blizzard. Without limiting the foregoing, you hereby assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games, including but not limited to any copyrights in the content of any Custom Games.
Blizzard's claim on custom-game copyrights is important because while it's hard to effectively copyright the basic concept of a game, you can copyright the original characters, art, and writing associated with the game itself. Blizzard learned this the hard way a decade ago, when Valve bought the Dota copyright from some of the modders who created it.
Cruz at the Capitol on Tuesday. | Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
Cruz and other Republicans are using Fox News to dismiss John Bolton’s testimony before it even happens.
Trump-loyalist Republican senators went on Fox News on Tuesday evening and made a last-ditch defense of the president: A quid pro quo is no big deal.
“Quid pro quo doesn’t matter,” Sen. Ted Cruz told Sean Hannity. “[Bolton’s] point is what? That doesn’t tell us anything,” said John Kennedy. Getting Bolton’s testimony “was the House’s responsibility,” added Rick Scott during a particularly awkward interview.
Umm Rick Scott is squirming on Fox News while being confronted with questions on John Bolton pic.twitter.com/Lt6k8KYHpG
The background of this, of course, is that former National Security Adviser John Bolton is reportedly prepared to testify he has first-hand knowledge of a quid pro quo in which President Donald Trump linked the release of held-up military aid to Ukraine to the government there helping him with investigations aimed at damaging his domestic political foes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly told Republican senators on Tuesday he doesn’t have the votes to block Democrats and four Republicans from compelling Bolton’s testimony during the ongoing impeachment trial.
So now that it’s becoming harder to deny the quid pro quo, Republican senators are learning to love it — and using the Trump-friendly confines of Fox News to downplay Bolton’s revelations before he even has the chance to testify.
“I think it [Bolton’s account] should be taken with a grain of salt ... I think it doesn’t matter what he has to say,” claimed Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday, who a short time after his Fox News appearance was photographed hanging out at the Trump International Hotel just blocks away from the White House, a property the president still owns and profits from.
The notable thing about Republicans loving to learn the quid pro quo is that before news about Bolton’s position broke on Sunday, the Trumpworld line was that there was no evidence one ever existed. For instance, just two weeks ago, Cruz dismissed quid pro allegations as mere “hearsay” coming from “people who had no direct evidence, witnesses who’d never even met President Trump.”
But now that news has broken about Bolton claiming to have first-hand knowledge of a quid pro quo based on a conversation he had with the president, Cruz has suddenly moved the goalposts to “quid pro quo doesn’t matter.”
Ted Cruz now says it doesn’t matter if the President engaged in a quid pro quo pic.twitter.com/EQLbkosG41
During his Wednesday appearance on Hannity, Cruz argued that “a president is always justified, and in fact has a responsibility, to investigate credible accusations of corruption” — his implication that was what Trump was up to in withholding military aid from Ukraine. But Trump didn’t go through the proper congressional channels to hold up the aid, and the claim that the hold-up was rooted in concerns about corruption is belied by the fact that a top Defense Department official told Congress last May that Ukraine had made good enough progress on anti-corruption efforts to merit the aid.
Though Cruz wants people to believe it was no big deal, the US government’s top internal watchdog concluded earlier this month that the Trump administration “broke the law when it withheld military aid to Ukraine last year after Congress had approved its disbursal,” as my colleague Alex Ward explained.
And, of course, Trump never even mentioned the word “corruption” during the July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that’s at the heart of his impeachment. But he did specifically discuss his desire to have the Ukrainian government launch investigations aimed at tarnishing Joe Biden and other Democrats, and he suggested those investigations were linked to military aid, telling Zelensky, “I would like you to do us a favor though.”
The Trump administration did end up releasing the aid to Ukraine in September, but only after the White House got wind that a whistleblower had sounded the alarm about the July 25 phone call and other aspects of Trump’s Ukraine dealings. Republicans have argued that since the aid was released and Trump’s desired investigations were never announced, Trump did nothing wrong. But that’s a bit like arguing a would-be bank robber has nothing to explain if they flee the scene of the crime without any money after a security alarm goes off.
But, perhaps most importantly, Republicans learning to love the quid pro quo illustrates how far they’re willing to go to defend Trump. They have no shame about contradicting statements they made just weeks ago, interpreting Trump’s actions in a way inconsistent with the known facts, and insisting — absurdly — that arguably the most corrupt president in American history has good faith concerns about corruption abroad.
And, at least in Rand Paul’s case, when they’re done going on TV and arguing that Trump is a principled anti-corruption fighter, they head across town to patronize his business — and in the process refute their narratives.
Nathan Pearson showcased revenge of the queerest kind, reenacting a scene of genius fantasy at Characters Welcome, a monthly comedy showcase at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City.
How does one best get revenge on a high school bully? While calmly eating a bowl of Honey Nut cheerios in the bully’s own kitchen and recalling the events of the night before.
Yeah, and Trump seems oblivious to how it looks for him to have yet another employee that he has to try to burn down.
Technically, pogonophobia is the fear of beards. There doesn’t seem to be a term that applies strictly to the fear of a prickly upper-lip infestation that looks as if it should come with six-guns and a rabbit obsession. So maybe Boltonophobia will have to do.
This strange affliction has spread almost overnight across the Republican Party, with an incidence rate that appears to approach 100%. But if there’s one person who represents the index case for breaking into sweat at the view of a mustache, it’s Donald Trump. Trump may be more popular than Lincoln in the polls that occur only inside his head, but support for seeing former national security adviser John Bolton spill what he knows about Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine is overwhelmingly popular in the real world. So of course Trump is responding by spraying his fear all over Twitter.
Trump’s renewed assault on John Bolton, that coffee boy who I hardly knew and who was never that smart anyway, began on Tuesday afternoon and was still going on Wednesday morning. According to Trump, Bolton is a guy who “begged” him for a job, which Trump gave him out of pity, despite warnings from others. Then Bolton immediately made a series of mistakes and overstatements that would have led the United States into “World War VI.” Actually, Trump said “World War Six,” though Trump should surely have had sufficient WrestleMania experience to pick up a few Roman numerals by now.
Anyway, Trump immediately fired Bolton for his warmongering and rank incompetence. Where “immediately” is a year and a half later.
Trump also makes a compelling argument that Bolton failed to complain that anything was wrong at the time. Which would be somewhat more convincing had not the newspapers at the time been filled with stories of Bolton-Trump blowouts at the White House. And if half of those who testified in Trump’s House impeachment had not name-dropped the national security adviser. Sure, Bolton described the scheme in Ukraine as a “drug deal,” and, okay, he told more than one of those who reported to him to inform the lawyers about what was going on, and maybe he kicked Trump’s ambassador to the E.U. out of his office for trying to execute on extortion … but that doesn’t mean he complained.
Then Trump makes his ultimate complaint about Bolton: The manuscript that Bolton has submitted to his publisher is “nasty and untrue.” At the same time, it is “all classified and national security.” It might seem like it would be impossible for a book to be both an untrue personal attack and chock-full of classified national security information. But apparently Bolton is supertalented that way.
And very, very scary. Is it too soon for another It remake?
Fucking religious bigots are happy to have more kids killing themselves.
SOPA Images via Getty Images
Proposals in eight states would ban puberty blockers and hormones for trans minors.
Greyson was already menstruating when he started taking puberty blockers at age 12, so when he stopped getting his period because of the drug, he was “over-the-moon happy.” His mother, Lauren Rodriguez, worried about the risks she read about online, specifically loss of bone density. However, after further reading, she learned that the side effect pops up only after long-term use, or about seven to 10 years — and most trans kids take blockers for just a year or two. In the year and a half Greyson was on them, the most difficult side effect he faced was hot flashes.
Before his transition, Greyson was on antidepressants just to deal with his dysphoria, Rodriguez said. “If I had known what was making my ‘daughter’ at the time so unhappy, I would have done it at 3, which is just a social transition,” she said, referring to respecting transgender kids’ chosen names, pronouns, and style of dress, without any medical interventions before puberty.
Deciding whether to allow a trans adolescent to go on puberty blockers is a decision most parents don’t take lightly. They often talk to doctors and psychologists, and the general guidelines of most major American medical associations recommend affirming a child’s gender exploration in order to improve their mental health. Transitioning is a slow, deliberative process for minors, and only adolescents who are insistent, persistent, and consistent in their gender identity over long periods are recommended for medical intervention.
However, some conservative politicians want to take that decision out of the hands of doctors and parents who know these teens best — and put it in the hands of the state. In fact, in Greyson’s home state of Texas, lawmakers have promised to introduce legislation that would essentially ban, midway, his medical transitioning once their next legislative session begins in 2021.
Eight statelegislatures — including Missouri, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, South Carolina, Kentucky, and South Dakota— have already introduced bills this yearthat would criminally punish doctors who follow best practices for treating adolescents with gender dysphoria. In South Dakota, for example, doctors who prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones could face a $2,000 fine and a year in prison under the proposed law. South Dakota’s version of the bill was even prioritized and became the first bill of the decade to pass out of committee. On Wednesday, it passed the House in a 46-23 vote.
Lawmakers in Texas, Utah, and Georgia have promised to introduce similar bills once their legislative sessions begin. And while a New Hampshire bill wouldn’t criminalize doctors, it would classify gender-affirming care for minors as child abuse.
In other words, should any of the bills become law, they would effectively cut off many adolescents from medically necessary and, often, lifesaving treatment for gender dysphoria. There are approximately 150,000 transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, and studies show that kids in Gen Z identify as more queer and trans than previous generations. A 2018 study found that the risk of developing a mental health condition was three to 13 times higher for transgender and gender-diverse youth than for their cisgender peers.
“The crisis that trans youth are facing right now is not a hypothetical,” said Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the National Women’s Law Center. “It is real and it is well-documented and it is extremely severe. Efforts to limit the very solutions to that crisis are ignorant in the extreme and are a dangerous manifestation of rank partisanship and political opportunism.”
Bills banning trans care for kids are the new bathroom bills, part of conservatives’ larger culture war against trans people. Conservative media and politicians have been fanning the flames for this fight for years in hopes of rallying the base over a nonexistent threat — a threat that only puts trans lives, like Greyson’s, in danger.
What spurred the latest trend in anti-trans laws
The recentconservative push for an outright ban on transition care for minors grew directly from the social media disinformation campaign surrounding Luna Younger, a 7-year-old trans girl from Dallas caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between parents who disagree over her gender identity. A Texas judge overruled a jury decision to award full custody of Luna to her mother, Anne Georgulas, in late September. That means Luna’s father, Jeffrey Younger, who insists on dressing his child as a boy and forced her to cut her hair, has an equal say in future medical decisions for Luna.
Driving the conversation about the case were primarily conservative media outlets. In the week following the initial jury decision, 23 conservative news sites published 55 stories about Younger, and all opposed the child’s transition. According to data from Media Matters, those 55 stories earned 3.5 million Facebook interactions.
People were so riled up online that some sent threats to Georgulas; she was “viciously attacked and threatened by complete strangers,” her attorneys told the Daily Caller. Several prominent Texas officials even added to the fray: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott promised to order the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate Georgulas. State Rep. Steve Toth said he would propose legislation to “add ‘transitioning of a minor’ as child abuse.” A version of the bill is expected on the Texas docket when the legislature reconvenes next year.
It didn’t take but a few months for this groundswell of conservative opposition to spur the introduction of legislation seeking to ban the medical transitioning of minors altogether.
While South Dakota’s bill would threaten doctors with prison time, states like Missouri are taking a different tack. That state’s bill would automatically report any parent who affirms their child’s trans identity with medical care to Child Protective Services for child abuse, and any doctors found to be dispensing blockers or hormones to minors would have their medical licenses revoked.
Kentucky’s bill, which was introduced on Tuesday, goes well beyond those of Missouri and South Dakota: It would allow either parent to override consent for transition care, a right which the state cannot overrule; it would require all government agents to disclose to parents whether a child expresses gender dysphoria or gender-variant behavior; and it would protect the right of any government employee, including teachers, to express their views on gender identity, including misgendering or harassing transgender students. Additionally, any adult (or minor with parent or guardian permission) who had previously been given transition care would be allowed to sue doctors for damages for the next 20 years.
Because the bills don’t stop at banning puberty blockers, a second South Dakota bill introduced Tuesday would require any teacher, school psychologist, or social worker to out any students they suspect may be suffering from gender dysphoria to the student’s parents. And let’s not forget the bills targeting trans school sports participation.
The anti-trans fight has moved from bathroom access to legislating over children’s bodies. With so many bills in process, LGBTQ advocates worry that the passage of one could trigger passage of the rest, casting the progress of trans children back at least half a century.
There is an abundance of misinformation on how trans children are medically treated in adolescence
Confusion and misinformation are rampant in the debate over treating transgender adolescents. While many conservatives falsely claim that doctors are performing genital surgeries on children, a more nuanced conversation is actually taking place between young teens, doctors, and parents.
“Children often have a clear sense of their gender identity as young as three or four years old. However, no medical intervention occurs for younger children, and the best practice is to provide psychological and social affirmation until very early puberty,” Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, director of the National LGBT Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, told Vox. “Once a child reaches the cusp of puberty, whether they desire and access pubertal suppression or not, psychosocial gender affirmation by family and peers through adolescence and adulthood remains critical for good mental health outcomes.”
Once adolescents reach ages 9 to 14, puberty blockers can be a tool to prevent permanent changes from natal puberty from taking place so that can become more mentally mature before deciding the course of their permanent treatment.
“Blockers put puberty on hold so that adolescents have more time to decide what to do next. Without them, the adolescent will have physical changes that are difficult if not impossible to reverse. Often, it requires surgery to undo these changes down the line,” Dr. Jack Turban, resident physician in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he researches the mental health of transgender youth, told Vox.
However, ultraconservatives and trans-exclusionary radical feminists, along with some extreme sexologists, have other ideas for those children’s futures, lobbying to ban puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for all minors. While the proposed bills are new, the ideology behind them is old. Bill proponents appeal to the fallacy that natal puberty is natural and therefore necessary for all kids.
But this approach would force trans girls into male puberty and trans boys into female puberty without their consent, and brings along its own permanent changes, which could partially be reversed only with painful and expensive medical treatments in adulthood. Trans women forced through male puberty would have to undergo electrolysis to remove facial hair and may be left with a body frame (shoulder and hip width) that would be unchangeable surgically. Trans men would have to have surgery to remove their breasts and, like trans women, be forced to live in an unwanted body frame for their entire lives.
Those permanent changes were discussed between Rodriguez, her son, and her son’s doctor before he started testosterone, the hormone taken by transmasculine people as part of their medical transition. “‘If we start this, the changes are permanent,’” Rodriguez recalled the doctor saying. “‘Once you have a beard, you have a beard. Once you have a mustache, mustache. Once your voice drops, your voice drops. There’s no going back to it.’ And everything he said, Grey was like, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’”
So many conservative arguments against trans rights deploy the specter of “big, scary” trans women’s bodies in female spaces — which was the crux of the bathroom bills and the latest push against trans athletes. Trans girls who receive early support through puberty blockers and eventual cross-sex hormones end up with normal female body and bone development, making their bodies much less easily marked for social exclusion and poking a hole in conservative scaremongering against trans rights.
With their legislation, conservative lawmakers are removing parents’ and kids’ choices altogether, forcing their own political ideology on the medical choices of private citizens.
The South Dakota bill has even received out-of-state help. It’s being pushed by a small coalition of conservative special interest groups, with activists and doctors from as far away as Seattle and California testifying mostly via video. The bill’s original sponsor, Rep. Fred Deutsch, also attended an anti-trans conference hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation titled “Summit on Protecting Children From Sexualization” in October, according to the Washington Post. (When Vox contact the Heritage Foundation about its involvement in the legislation, the foundation sent a link to an article co-written by a Heritage research fellow in defense of prohibiting the “physical interventions on the bodies of children to ‘affirm’ their ‘gender identity.’” Deutsch has not returned Vox’s request for comment.)
Meanwhile, local South Dakotadoctors and medical experts have been testifying against the bill. Public health researcher Michaela Seiber pointed out that much of the research Deutsch presented actually supports affirming care for gender-diverse youth.
“I was curious about what studies he was actually using to support all of this stuff, but when I started diving into them, they were actually from publications that I think he should have realized were very anti what he’s trying to promote,” Seiber told Vox.
According to Seiber, Deutsch cherry-picked rare potential side effects of puberty blockers from safety studies and presented them as if every youth who goes on blockers will experience them. “He made mistakes that undergrads might not even do anymore, just picking out little pieces out of context and using as his support.”
These laws could mean a matter of life or death for trans kids
The political fight has worried young trans people across the country who depend on their medication to keep their gender dysphoria at bay. According to data from the Trevor Project, 76 percent of LGBTQ youth felt that the recent political climate impacted their mental health or sense of self. Over the past year, the Trevor Project has supported more than 150 LGBTQ youth in crisis in South Dakota.
“They’re using transgender youth as political pawns to advance a particular agenda,” said Alexis Chavez, medical director at the Trevor Project, referring toconservative politicians. “They’re advancing it under the guise that they’re doing what’s best for the youth, but they’re not basing it on any evidence. They’re not basing it on clinical best practices. They’re not using providers who are working day to day with these youth to make these laws. It’s really unfortunate because they’re targeting some of the most vulnerable population.”
“What is most important is for a parent to listen, respect, and support their child’s self-expressed identity. This encourages open conversations that may be difficult but [are] key to the child’s mental health and the family’s resilience and well-being,” wrote Jason Rafferty, a pediatrician and child psychiatrist at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, and a professor at Brown University, in a key American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement in 2018.
The effects of supporting a trans child can also be lifesaving. Late last week, new analysis from a group of researchers who specialize in studying trans youth found that access to puberty blockers significantly lowers lifetime suicidality in trans people.
That’s the biggest concern for mothers like Rodriguez. “He’d kill himself,” she replied when asked how her son would react if the state took his hormones away. “He’s already flat-out said that.”
Conservatives in Texas have prioritized anti-trans legislation in each of the last three sessions, including trying and failing to pass a statewide bathroom bill in 2018. Should the legislature enact a ban on hormone blockers and other medical treatment for gender dysphoria, Rodriguez says she’d have no choice but to pick up and move out of state.
“I will have to sell my house; I will have to quit the job at the nonprofit that I love,” she said. “But we’re going to have to go to a more affirming state. I can’t expect my child to thrive and continue to live if [they] pass this.”
While some families with trans kids may be able to afford to leave the state, others may be forced to find medical solutions across state lines, and still others will have no choice but to abruptly stop their medical transitions entirely.
According to Branstetter, conservatives pushing these bans need to be prepared for the worst possible outcome. “Is Rep. Deutsch ready to host in his office the first family that is forced to bury their 12-year-old because he wanted to be a hero in right-wing media?”
The state now threatens to insert itself into the most basic decisions of body and identity, all to drive a handful of votes from the conservative base to win in an election year. Lost in the conservative rush to tamp down the trans rights movement are the very real lives of trans kids who simply want to transition and move on to adulthood.
We know Mitch McConnell doesn’t want witnesses. We know he controls everything about this trial. But what the voters want is something else. So, see you in November, Mr Current Majority Leader.
Perhaps the main thing to come out of impeachment is that whereas before we strongly suspected the Congressional GOP were lying knaves in it for power, we now know for certain Congressional GOP are lying knaves in it for power.
Even if the Senate does not remove Donald Trump, this impeachment is far from a mistake
The judgment of the court of public opinion will matter more to history and the 2020 elections than the verdict in the Senate impeachment trial.
I would most emphatically suggest that undertaking the impeachment investigation was far from a mistake. Even with the deck stacked against a just outcome by a GOP leadership that has lost sight of the most basic ideals associated with public service, much good has come out of this process and might come out of it even in the event of an acquittal.
First, the mere pursuit of the facts by the House has both underscored the importance of accountability, and it has, in a very systematic and public way, revealed the facts of this case. Trump, McConnell and the army of parrots spouting White House talking points may repeatedly say otherwise, but the president’s wrongdoing has been made crystal clear, and many of those detailing or corroborating it have been witnesses who are above reproach, objective and distinguished. Many of them are Trump appointees or apolitical career public servants. Today, poll after poll reveals that a substantial majority of Americans believe that the president is guilty of wrongdoing, and about half believe he should be removed from office.
When facts are bad:
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Senate Majority Whip John Thune told us the Senate shouldn’t hear from Bolton, arguing it could create an “endless cycle†when “facts are all out there.â€Â“I don’t think that anything that he’s going to say changes the fact..I think people kind of know what the fact pattern is.â€Â
And that about sums it up. So keep calling your Senators.
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4/ Hunter on the stand is also a great opportunity for the house managers to start talking about Jared, Nepotism Barbie, Don Junior, and Eric the Slow. unintended consequences. How do they work?
Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly tells Sarasota crowd ‘I believe John Bolton’
President Donald Trump is denying that he told former National Security Advisor John Bolton he wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until the country launched investigations into Joe Biden and his son, allegations that Bolton levies in his new book, according to news reports.
But one of Trump’s former top aides told a Sarasota audience Monday evening that if the reporting on what Bolton wrote is accurate, he believes Bolton.
“If John Bolton says that in the book, I believe John Bolton,” said retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 18 months.
Maybe that will get McMaster and Mattis off the fence.
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Woke up a bit ago to some angry texts from Rudy Giuliani. He's pissed Dems aren't considering calling him as a witness and says "they are afraid of my physical presence." "Why do they want Bolton if not me," he says. "Again I really should stop wasting my time." #impeachment
Trump waived executive privilege when he called Bolton a liar
If the Senate decides to summon the former national security adviser, the president won’t have much recourse left.
President Trump refers to himself as a counterpuncher. This time, he might have punched too hard.
In a series of tweets just after midnight Monday, Trump responded to weekend reporting about a forthcoming book by his former national security adviser John Bolton. The book reportedly reveals that Trump tied military aid for Ukraine to his demands for investigations into his political rivals. Trump’s tweets directly dispute the truth of these claims. He may have been hoping to push wavering Senate Republicans away from agreeing to call Bolton to testify in the impeachment trial. But in the process, Trump probably waived any executive privilege that he could have claimed to keep Bolton quiet if that gambit fails.
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It's stunning that some folks are treating the idea that Senate Republicans were "blindsided" by the Bolton bombshell as a real argument. It's self-incriminating. What really "blindsided" them is that their cover-up for Trump has been upended. New piece: https://t.co/PzWeTgIYQS
Republicans Are Trying to Interfere in the 2020 Democratic Primary
Here’s the quote:
Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening and I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters. Those Democratic caucus goers — will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not as certain about that.
In other words, the smear campaign against Joe Biden is an attempt by Republicans to interfere in the Democratic primary to knock him out of contention.
Democratic voters are free to make of this what they will. But the one thing they can’t do is to allow this kind of disinformation campaign based on conspiracy theories to be effective. Lying about opponents is now the modus operandi of Republicans because they are steeped in having to defend the most corrupt president in this country’s history. Disinformation is all they’ve got and they will use it mercilessly—especially against an opponent they fear.
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"Pretty subtle, huh?" Biden says after reading Ernst's comments. "You Iowa caucus-goers have a chance for a two-fer. You can ruin Donald Trump's night by caucusing for me. And you can ruin Joni Ernst's night."
Not to mention the Democratic presidential race. It can be done, if you put your mind to it.
Gail: I have to admit the Bolton revelation — which, as you point out, is a big moment but not exactly a big surprise — perked me up. But one of the many downsides of the Senate trial is the amount of time people are having to spend contemplating the heart and mind of Susan Collins.
The Coronavirus Questions that Scientists are Racing to Answer
Although scientists have learned a lot so far, there is still much they do not know about the novel virus spreading in China and other countries
HOW DANGEROUS IS THIS INFECTION?
The reports emerging suggest a pretty significant portion of cases are seriously ill. For instance, in a report China’s national health authorities posted Monday, about 17% of total cases were severely ill. And about 3% of confirmed cases had died.
Those are frightening numbers. But if the confirmed cases represent only a fraction of the total cases — and they likely do — that could really change the math. Until we have a better handle on the total number of cases it’s premature to draw conclusions.
Is China ready for this major global health challenge?
Beijing invested heavily in public health around the world — but left troubling gaps at home
Is China protecting its global image — or its citizens?
Chinese officials have been working hard since SARS to build up the country’s reputation as a global health leader. Indeed, China’s investments in global health help make up for funding shortfalls, including recent reductions in global health commitment from countries such as the United States.
But the stigma of the SARS coverups at home in 2003 may overpower the impact of these global assistance efforts. China is receiving big hits to its domestic and international reputation because of its lack of preparedness to fight yet another outbreak of a strange pneumonia-like virus within its borders.
This kind of pressure speaks to Chinese leaders, who don’t want to be “forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame,” as one Communist Party statement explained last week. Ultimately, it is this type of pressure that might help China figure out how to balance its commitment to global health with that of domestic preparedness.
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"Electability" has become a watchword of this year's Democratic primary, but the polling on what that actually means to voters is really complicated. I tried to break it down a bit: https://t.co/Jz8KWPWfgq
U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning and gave a head-scratching explanation for why the nation’s homelessness crisis is booming. Given his politics, his appearing on Fox is far from a surprise, but the now-viral clip is uniquely stunning.
Before we get into the clip itself, it’s worth looking back on what Carson has said and done as HUD secretary in the Trump administration. Early in his tenure, he’d already started destroying public housing. This month, he proposed a rule to weaken fair housing enforcement in federal housing programs. He also allegedly made transphobic comments during HUD staff meetings about transgender women accessing women’s shelters. On a lighter note, he once confused a banking term with the brand name of a cookie.
Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt asked Carson how people should respond to homeless people they encounter. Should they give money to people on the street?
Carson compared the U.S. to Japan, claiming that Japan has “virtually no homelessness” (which, by the way, is not true at all) and blaming homelessness in the U.S. on regulations that “keep you from being able to use technology.” He cited modular homes and innovative manufactured housing as examples of things that “stacks and stacks” of regulations keep people from taking advantage of. He also said that instead of just “throwing more and more” money, vouchers, or services at people, people need to get “out of the system.” Meaning, presumably, that they need to be stripped of all government support.
It’s a real trip.
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On Fox & Friends, HUD Secretary Ben Carson blames homelessness on "stacks and stacks of regulations that keep you from being able to use technology." pic.twitter.com/aeZr4InJ6U
Judging by his Twitter post from this morning, he seems to think it went pretty well.
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Great joining @foxandfriends with @LynnePattonHUD to discuss last night's homelessness count in NYC and HUD's increased support for local organizations across the country that provide services, a safe place to sleep, and food for our most vulnerable Americans. pic.twitter.com/MOEw6piOh7
Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, on the other hand, campaigned for president with a full, detailed plan on how to best support homeless people and make housing affordable, and visited homeless communities. Homeless people are not boogeymen or abstractions; they’re people who need government support.
Of course...the GOP is the party of useful idiots.
Almost everything about Donald Trump's finances remains murky, because Donald Trump has refused to do the customary tax disclosure of what he owns and who owns him, while his cabinet blocks outright any congressional attempts to review that material. But we do know, in a bit of an ironic twist, who is paying for Trump's lie-filled legal defense during his Senate impeachment trial. You will not be surprised to learn it ain't Donald Trump.
The Trump defense is in large part being paid, reports The Washington Post, by the Republican National Committee. Yes, it is the Republican Party itself, through the donations of America's greatest suckers, that is paying to argue that a Republican-and-only-a-Republican president can demand that a foreign government assist his reelection efforts, and can use the tools of his public office to extort it into doing so. Impeachment word-sayers Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin had received $225,000 as of November, says the Post, but we can expect that amount to balloon significantly.
The RNC's costs to defend Trump are expected to be in the millions, all of it coming from Trump-supporting Republican donors (presuming, of course, there's no Lev Parnas or other foreign-agent cash mixed in, which is not a bet anyone should take). This is less money that Trump's supporters have to donate toward actual Republican campaigns, so this is good news. That doesn't mean that the rest of America isn't on the hook for some of Trump's defense, however: Taxpayers of course pay for the Justice Department and White House-based government lawyers who have done their damnedest to obstruct the House's impeachment investigation and continue to argue vigorously that the Senate has no right to or need for evidence either.
But the rest of the details, like Trump's own finances, remain murky. Defender Alan Dershowitz claims he is not receiving a penny for his work defending Trump, which checks out, because Alan Dershowitz would consider national television time to be the best pay anybody could possibly give him, and will probably be using his own recordings ... privately ... for the next 10 years. Ken Starr isn't talking at all, because Ken Starr has gotten very reluctant to talk about much of anything since his most recent scandal—or maybe he decided he needs all the fact-hiding practice he can get, just to keep himself limber.
Of course it's a sham, just trying to rescue his corrupt friend Netanyahu
A man peeps from inside his caravan in the Israeli Shilo settlement in the West Bank on January 27, 2020. | Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images
“The real threat to peace is if the plan succeeds,” an expert told Vox.
President Donald Trump claims his peace plan for Israel and Palestine will prove to be a triumph that will last for the next 80 years. But it’s unclear whether it will be viable for even 80 minutes.
That’s because most analysts believe the deal — the political portion of which was finally released on Tuesday — is dead on arrival.
“It’s a total shitshow,” a former senior White House official familiar with the peace plan process told me the day before its release.
In roughly 50 pages, the administration’s political strategy — masterminded by Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner — aims to solve the intractable problems that have stymied both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades.
It defines the future of Israeli settlements, how Palestinians might conditionally form a state, and America’s view of Israel’s myriad security concerns.
Kobi Gideon/GPO/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
US President Donald Trump meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on January 27, 2020.
What it doesn’t do is provide a “right of return” for displaced Palestinians to their ancestral homes in Israel, allow for a sovereign state of Palestine to form a military that it could use to threaten Israel (or to defend itself against Israel), or give Palestinians any meaningful part of Jerusalem as its capital.
In fact, it essentially ignores all of the Palestinians’ key desires, as the plan was drafted with no input from Palestinian leaders.
The rollout’s optics, which featured Trump alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but with no Palestinian leadership present, won’t quell those concerns. Some even argue the plan’s release is more meant to help Netanyahu win a tough election in March.
“The so-called ‘deal of the century’ isn’t a peace plan at all. It is a plan to reelect Benjamin Netanyahu,” Guy Ziv, an Israel expert at American University, told me. “If this plan was truly aimed at breaking the diplomatic stalemate, the Palestinians would have been consulted in the plan’s formulation.” He noted that their negotiators cut off ties when Trump’s team decided to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
“It’s not a serious plan,” Ziv continued. “It satisfies neither the national aspirations of the Palestinian people nor Israel’s security needs.”
But to hear Trump tell it, he has brokered the most important diplomatic breakthroughs not just of his presidency but of modern history. “It’s been a long and very arduous process to arrive at this moment,” Trump said in a speech at the White House Tuesday, standing next to a smiling Netanyahu. “All prior administrations from President Lyndon Johnson have tried and bitterly failed, but I was not elected to do small things or shy away from big problems.”
Netanyahu, for his part, was thrilled with the outcome.
“I believe that down the decades, and perhaps down the centuries, we will also remember January 28, 2020, because on this day, you became the first world leader to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over areas that are vital to our security and central to our heritage,” the prime minister said to Trump.
Which means it already looks like the Trump administration has deepened the crisis it promised to solve. “The real threat to peace is if the plan succeeds,” Khaled Elgindy, an adviser to Palestinian leadership from 2004 to 2009, told me.
What the new peace plan actually says
There’s a lot to this document, but there are four major elements of the new political proposal in particular you need to know about: 1) Israel keeps the vast majority of Jerusalem as its sovereign capital; 2) Palestinians get no right of return; 3) it redraws borders mainly between Israel and the West Bank; and 4) doesn’t allow for Palestine to create a fighting force to defend itself.
Christina Animashuan/Vox
Jerusalem
First, Israel gets the entirety of an undivided Jerusalem as its capital. A future state of Palestine would get a few neighborhoods in far eastern Jerusalem.
That’s a major decision. For the first 20 years of Israel’s existence, Jerusalem was divided. Israel controlled the parts of Jerusalem and its suburbs inside the red dotted line on this map, while Jordan controlled everything outside of it (blue dotted lines separate Jerusalem proper from suburbs):
Jordan controlled the Temple Mount, a hill in the map’s brown splotch. The hill hosts the Western Wall, a retaining wall of an ancient Jewish temple and one of Judaism’s holiest sites, and two of Islam’s most important landmarks, the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Israeli Jews weren’t allowed to pray in the area while Jordan controlled it. During the 1967 war, Israel took control of East Jerusalem.
Israel calls Jerusalem its undivided capital today, but few countries recognize it as such. UN Security Council Resolution 478 condemns Israel’s decision to annex East Jerusalem as a violation of international law and calls for a compromise solution.
So for the Trump administration to basically say, “Sorry, all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel,” is a gutsy move that will make Israel’s leaders happy but doom any chance of bringing the Palestinians on board.
No “right of return” for Palestinian refugees
The plan explicitly states that there shall be no “right to return” for the millions of Palestinians forced out of their ancestral homes during the formation of the Israeli state.
The 1948 war uprooted 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, creating a refugee crisis that is still not resolved. Palestinians call this mass eviction the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — and its legacy remains one of the most intractable issues in ongoing peace negotiations.
Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees, defined as people displaced in 1948 and their descendants. A core Palestinian demand in peace negotiations is some kind of justice for these refugees, most commonly in the form of the “right of return” to the homes their families abandoned at the time.
Israel can’t accept the right of return without abandoning either its Jewish or democratic identity. Adding 7 million Arabs to Israel’s population would make Jews a minority; Israel’s total population is about 8 million, a number that includes the 1.5 million Arabs already there. So Israelis refuse to even consider including the right to return in any final status deal — and now, it seems, the Americans agree with that view.
The plan lays out three options for these refugees:
1. Absorption into the State of Palestine (subject to the limitations provided below);
2. Local integration in current host countries (subject to those countries consent); or
3. The acceptance of 5,000 refugees each year, for up to ten years (50,000 total refugees), in individual Organization of Islamic Cooperation member countries who agree to participate in Palestinian refugee resettlement (subject to those individual countries’ agreement).
Redrawing of borders
The proposal redraws borders to effectively give Israel more land in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, in exchange for “land swaps” that include two areas in the Negev Desert.
Here’s the “conceptual map” included in the proposal:
As you can see, the map gives Israel a large chunk of the West Bank where there are currently a number of Israeli settlements. These settlements in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory are currently illegal under international law and are not considered part of Israel proper. This plan would change that by granting Israel the big section of land they’re built on.
The map also shows that Israel would take control of the Jordan River Valley. That’s a promise Netanyahu made to his people last September, and it’s highly controversial.
The Jordan Valley runs along the east edge of the West Bank, the heavily Palestinian-populated area taken by Israel in the 1967 war, marking its boundary with neighboring Jordan. It contains both Palestinian population centers, like the city of Jericho, and a number of Israeli settlements.
The most credible argument for Israel formally seizing control of this land is essentially strategic. Israel has faced invasions from Jordan before, and an IDF military presence in the Jordan Valley is arguably vital to protecting Israel from a hypothetical future invasion.
However, there is no imminent risk of such an invasion to justify an immediate land grab. And there are lots of arrangements by which Israel could protect legitimate security interests in the Jordan Valley without outright seizing the land. It could station some troops there with permission from a Palestinian state, for example.
Which means the plan looks simply like a big land grab that would also ruin any hope of a future Palestinian state.
A permanently demilitarized state of Palestine
Finally, the plan calls for a future state of Palestine to basically never be able to secure itself.
“The State of Palestine will not have the right to forge military, intelligence or security agreements with any state or organization that adversely affect the State of Israel’s security, as determined by the State of Israel,” the document reads. “The State of Palestine will not be able to develop military or paramilitary capabilities inside or outside of the State of Palestine.”
In other words, a future Palestinian state would not be able to create armed forces to protect itself or fight others. This might seem prudent for Israel’s security, but it would basically leave the state of Palestine at the mercy of Israel’s strong military, giving Israel a greater ability to bully its future neighbor.
There’s an economic component to the peace plan too
Dubbed “Peace to Prosperity,” the economic plan was billed as “a vision to empower the Palestinian people to build a prosperous and vibrant Palestinian society.” The administration claimed it had “the potential to facilitate more than $50 billion in new investment over ten years.”
Crucially, the plan lacked any details about a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That was by design: Kushner decided to put out the economic half before releasing the political half, saying that releasing the economic bit was “less controversial.” But without that second political half, the economic proposal was essentially meaningless.
It’s hard to imagine anyone investing billions of dollars in big infrastructure and transportation projects for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza while the Israeli government continues to annex more and more territory in the former and regularlybombs the latter. The question now is if the political portion satisfies any of those concerns, but experts almost unanimously say that it won’t.
No plan was ever going to be perfect. Past administrations, Republican and Democrat, failed to realize a peace deal. Trump’s plan was thus always likely to join theirs on the trash heap of diplomatic history.
But this administration’s attempt differed in the way it bluntly sidelined Palestinian interests and leaders while prioritizing Israeli interests. It was less of a negotiation, then, and more of a strong-arming.
The peace plan continues Trump’s support for Israel’s right wing
A hallmark of Trump’s approach to the Middle East is his close personal relationship with Netanyahu and his support for the right-wing government he leads.
Their friendship, and Trump’s extremely pro-Israel advisers — from Vice President Mike Pence to US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to Kushner himself — have led his administration to back many of Netanyahu’s priorities in the region, in some cases overturning decades of US foreign policy and destroying the chance of bringing Palestinians into the process.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman stand next to the dedication plaque at the US Embassy in Jerusalem on March 21, 2019.
In March 2019, the US recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel, another massive change in US foreign policy. The Golan Heights, as Neri Zilber wrote for Vox in 2018, is a “strategic area of elevated land situated along Israel’s northern border with Syria. For decades it was part of Syria ... [but] Israel conquered the region during the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move not recognized by the international community.”
And last November, Pompeo announced he was reversing a longstanding State Department legal opinion labeling Israel’s settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law. The new position sharply contradicted mainstream interpretations of the law, the historical US approach to the conflict, and the broader international community’s view of the situation.
The announcement sent a clear message to Israeli settlers and its government: Go ahead and keep moving into land that the Palestinians want as a home for their future state.
All of that, mixed in with Trump’s order to close a Palestinian mission in Washington and stopping aid for Palestinian refugees, showed just how much Trump favored Netanyahu’s vision for Israel and why Palestinian leaders gave up on the process.
But Trump also had a domestic political reason to do all this: Republicans want the US president to show pro-Israel bona fides.
There’s been a remarkable surge in pro-Israel sentiment among Republicans over the past several decades. Gallup polling shows that in 1988, 47 percent of Republicans and 42 percent of Democrats took Israel’s side in the conflict with the Palestinians. As of March 2019, that figure is roughly similar for Democrats (43 percent) but dramatically higher for Republicans (76 percent).
It is therefore in Trump’s political interest to keep siding with Netanyahu.
“Rather than build on previous efforts, the Trump White House has taken measures, such as recognizing Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and created a plan that serves the interests of Netanyahu, Israeli settlers, and the agenda of the conservative evangelical community in the US — the latter a key part of Trump’s base,” American University’s Ziv said.
And that brings us to why Trump wanted to release the peace plan now.
The new plan is mainly about Netanyahu, not peace
Netanyahu is battling corruption and bribery charges while simultaneously campaigning for reelection in March 2020.
A November 2019 indictment against Netanyahu covers three different cases, with his alleged offenses including the receipt of inappropriate gifts from a billionaire and corrupt arrangements with media magnates aimed at improving his press coverage. The technical charges are bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust — bribery being the most serious under Israeli law.
Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Israeli Likud party campaign posters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strewn on the floor at the party headquarters in Tel Aviv on April 10, 2019.
Jail time is not out of the question: Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert got wrapped up in a bribery scandal during his time in office in the late 2000s and eventually served more than a year in prison.
The indictment came at a critical time in Israeli politics: the aftermath of an inconclusive election. Neither Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party nor its chief rival, the centrist Blue and White party led by Benny Gantz, has been able to form a governing coalition.
The parties had been in talks to ally and form a national unity coalition, but one of the key sticking points has been Netanyahu himself. He wants to keep the top job in some capacity, while Blue and White leaders have adamantly refused to allow him to do so while an indictment is still on the table.
That’s why Israel will have its third election in a year to form a government, with Netanyahu’s and Gantz’s parties still the leaders. This political and legal crisis has left Netanyahu clawing for power. Enter Trump, who with this right-wing-friendly strategy could give his Israeli friend a boost.
“The timing of this plan’s release was clearly orchestrated by Netanyahu and his supporters in Washington. It provides an embattled prime minister, who seems to be on his way out, with a major pre-election gift — possibly a life raft,” says Ziv. “It shifts the focus of the Israeli election campaign from an indicted prime minister who may face prison time to a plan that is portrayed as highly favorable to Israel.”
“It’s therefore the most blatant interference in domestic Israeli affairs we’ve seen to date,” he concluded.
Enlarge / Comcast Xfinity van in Santa Clara, California, August 17, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado)
Comcast reduced capital spending on its cable division in 2019, devoting less money to network extensions and improvements despite a series of government favors that were supposed to accelerate broadband expansions.
"For the twelve months ended December 31, 2019, Cable capital expenditures decreased 10.5 percent to $6.9 billion," down from $7.7 billion in 2018, Comcast, the nation's largest home Internet provider, said in its earnings announcement last week. "Cable capital expenditures represented 11.9 percent of Cable revenue compared to 13.8 percent in 2018."
Comcast cable revenue rose 3.7 percent, from $56 billion in 2018 to $58.1 billion in 2019. Cable-division EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) rose 7.3 percent, from $21.7 billion to $23.3 billion in 2019.
Well then, but the GOP only believes the lies they need in the moment.
Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told a crowd in Sarasota, Florida that he believes former National Security Adviser John Bolton if his new book asserts that Donald Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine until it launched an investigation into Joe Biden, the Herald Tribune reports.
Said Kelly at the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall lecture series: “If John Bolton says that in the book I believe John Bolton,” adding, “Every single time I was with him … he always gave the president the unvarnished truth.”
On Monday, Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma offered nervous Republicans an exit ramp from the dilemma posed by former national security adviser John Bolton. Rather than have Bolton appear as a witness in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Republicans would instead have a chance to look at the manuscript of Bolton’s upcoming book, which claims that Bolton has knowledge as a firsthand witness to Trump’s alleged actions, in secret, and then determine how to proceed.
On Tuesday, Lindsey Graham signed on to this scheme, calling for the manuscript to be made available in ”a classified setting.” Not only is this an obvious ploy to prevent Bolton from ever answering questions in front of Mitch McConnell’s personally controlled camera; it also means that Republicans, after a trial in which they have constantly accused Democrats of changing the rules to gather evidence in “secret,” are genuinely looking to change the rules … so they can examine evidence. In secret.
Bolton has already volunteered to appear before the Senate if subpoenaed, and over the weekend The New York Times revealed that Bolton’s upcoming book details a conversation in which Donald Trump explicitly connects military assistance for Ukraine to extorting an investigation by that country into Joe Biden. Keeping that information out of the Senate trial has become a growing challenge, as polls show swelling support for the testimony of Bolton and other potential witnesses.
The idea of a secret review of the manuscript offers Republicans several attractive options. First, they can emerge from the classified setting to declare that there’s no there there, no matter what’s actually contained in the text. Second, they can condemn Bolton’s text as a money grab from someone whom Fox News is now repositioning from a longtime Republican hardliner to a “deep state agent” who is part of a conspiracy featuring former FBI Director James Comey. Finally, Bolton’s manuscript can be cherry-picked for both complimentary statements about Trump and derogatory comments about Democrats.
If this scheme goes forward, expect Graham to simultaneously claim that Bolton’s manuscript is a smear against Trump and that it says bad, bad things about Nancy Pelosi/Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama. But most of all, expect Graham and other Republicans to claim that, after reviewing the manuscript, they find no reason for Bolton to answer any more questions. Especially when Trump is going to fight Bolton’s appearance.
Then Republicans can demand that Joe Biden appear. After all, they’ll say, they heard from Bolton.
Insanity. The GOP will defend absolutely anything.
Professor Alan Dershowitz listens to President Donald Trump speak during a Hanukkah Reception in the East Room of the White House on December 11, 2019, in Washington, DC. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The sad thing is, he might be right.
On Monday evening, Trump counsel Alan Dershowitz finally addressed the news that had been looming over the entire day’s impeachment proceedings: that President Trump explicitly told former National Security Adviser John Bolton he was withholding US military aid to Ukraine until the country began investigating the Biden family.
While other lawyers on the team refrained from mentioning it, Dershowitz explicitly confronted the revelations that were first reported Sunday night by the New York Times, citing sources familiar with a manuscript by Bolton that contained the assertion.
Bolton’s account is notable because it provides a first-person confirmation of Trump describing a quid pro quo, something that would seem to address a common Republican complaint about the lack of firsthand corroboration of a Ukrainian pressure campaign.
Dershowitz aimed to neutralize Bolton’s allegations in a bid to discourage growing discussion around calling the former White House official to testify. He argued that the actions Bolton describes in his book do not qualify as an impeachable offense, a common theme of his remarks Monday, in which he argued the articles of impeachment do not meet the standard needed to justify removal of the president.
“Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz said. “That is clear from the history, that is clear from the language of the Constitution. You cannot turn conduct that is not impeachable into impeachable conduct, simply by using words like quid pro quo and personal benefit.”
"If a president, any president, were to have done what the Times reported about the content of the Bolton manuscript, that would not constitute an impeachable offense."
— Alan Dershowitz during the second day of President Trump's defense during the Senate impeachment trial. pic.twitter.com/CL9Kn8yind
“Quid pro quo, alone, is not a basis for abuse of power. It’s part of the way foreign policy has been operated by presidents since the beginning of time,” Dershowitz added, citing a hypothetical example of a president withholding aid or a White House meeting to Israel, in exchange for a commitment from Israeli leaders to halt the construction of settlements.
What Dershowitz’s argument failed to note, however, is that the quid pro quo Trump is specifically charged with centers on his alleged leveraging of military aid to obtain personal political favors that could benefit his reelection.
Throughout his arguments on Monday, Dershowitz suggested that the charges Trump faces cannot be classified as “crimes,” and therefore do not meet the criteria of impeachable offenses. He also stated that “abuse of power” is a common complaint that’s been used against presidents in the past, and claimed it is too vague a charge to qualify as grounds for impeachment.
As Vox’s Ian Millhiser has written, this perspective is counter to the opinion of many constitutional law experts, who note that no crime is required for an act to be impeachable. Dershowitz acknowledged this reality himself both during his remarks on Monday and more explicitly in comments he made in 1998 during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, which he says he’s since reevaluated.
“It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime. If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president and who abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime,” Dershowitz said roughly two decades ago.
Given many Republicans’ reluctance to call witnesses, however, Dershowitz’s latest statements might be just enough to give lawmakers the cover they need to reject a vote on the matter later this week.
Dershowitz’s argument comes as Republican senators weigh whether to call more witnesses
Dershowitz’s Bolton comments had one primary goal: convincing Republican senators who are on the fence about calling new witnesses that no further testimony is necessary.
Although the majority of Republicans have been interested in a speedy trial and have balked at pushing for more witness testimony, a contingent of at least four lawmakers could sway a vote expected Friday.
The new Bolton revelations, especially, appeared to renew interest in calling witnesses. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), one of three moderates who has publicly signaled support for witnesses, posited that it was “increasingly likely” that more Republicans would do the same. And Sen. Angus King (I-ME), in an NPR interview, guessed that as many as five to 10 Republicans could vote in support of a motion for witnesses.
Trump’s defense team hopes to halt any movement toward having witnesses in order to curtail any new, damning revelations and proceed quickly to the president’s acquittal. But to succeed in this effort, they need to present Republicans who are still weighing this decision with convincing reasons why new testimony isn’t necessary.
Despite what even Republican lawmakers have said in the past, it seems the defense’s strategy is to do as Dershowitz did and argue that there’s nothing illegitimate about the quid pro quo alleged in Bolton’s manuscript.
A healthy relationship begins with a commitment to self-work.
In 2020, I am vowing to only date men committed to prioritizing their emotional and mental health. If he doesn’t go to therapy, I’m not interested.
In my last serious relationship, I had both the benefit of exploring my toxic behavior patterns and the burden of being with a partner who refused to do the same. Our relationship started to shift when, during the height of an argument, I grew frustrated when my attempts at “helping” him solve a problem were being ignored. He followed up, like he often did, by screaming at the top of his lungs. Then he said something that snatched the movement from my body: “I’m not your project or something you can control.”
This was my second relationship where what I called “the lack of appreciation for my help” my partner called “controlling.” I realized I was the common denominator here.
What started as an exploration of trying to understand my own harmful behaviors ended in a commitment to therapy. There, I learned to call my attraction to “broken” men something more than a lack of gratitude or control; the illusion of “fixing” them allowed me to ignore all the areas whereI was fractured. It allowed me to overlook the ways childhood traumas shaped my current relationship choices. It was classic avoidance.
For months, I remained both in the relationship and in therapy to do the deeper work on myself. I directed my gaze away from scrutinizing his behavior and toward addressing the root of my own. I practiced mindfulness to reduce anxiety, used journaling to record and disrupt unhealthy patterns, and rotated coping mechanisms until I found one that fit. I was slowly forming healthy new habits. The need to control others was replaced by a desire for self-improvement.
Meanwhile, he refused to go to therapy or even examine his own harmful patterns. He saw therapy as a “useless waste of time” that had nothing to do with “real life.” Besides, “nobody” in his family believed in “that stuff” and they all turned out “fine.”
My former partner was not an anomaly. According to the American Psychological Association, research shows “men of all ages and ethnicities are less likely than women to seek help for all sorts of problems — including depression and substance abuse.” Which is particularly alarming considering the data that suggests “men make up over 75 percent of suicide victims in the United States.
O’Brien Wimbish, a clinically trained therapist who specializes in intimacy and infidelity recovery, told Vox, “A lot of men are still operating under an unhealthy belief that addressing their feelings isn’t masculine. They think talking about their emotions — or even identifying an emotion other than rage — can make them what they consider soft. So they shut down, or sometimes become more aggressive, in their interpersonal relationships.”
Wimbish, who has never treated me or my former partner, offered a perspective that was consistent with my experience. During the course of our relationship, my former partner’s propensity for screaming escalated to name-calling, and conflicts reached an all-time high. Or perhaps my tolerance for toxic relationships hit at an all-time low. But eventually, his version of love was no longer enough. I wanted reciprocity.
I ended that relationship aware that constant self-work is a prerequisite for an emotionally healthier life and, if both parties are committed to it, the possibility of a healthy relationship.
To be clear, therapy is not a magic pill. “Committing to therapy does not mean your relationship will be immune to trials,” Wimbish said, “but it certainly helps if both parties are fully invested in doing the work for their individual growth.”
Therapy is also not cheap. Mental health providers in many cities can charge $75-$150 for a 45-minute session. Rates in New York City can be upward of $200 per hour. Therapists like Wimbish mitigate this by offering a sliding scale for payments. Sometimes, when the cost is still too high for me, I scale back and reserve sessions for particularly stressful seasons. And if a sliding payment scale is still a financial burden, research suggests regular practices of things like mindful meditation and creating a positive social support system can be forms of self-work. Wimbish added, “establishing an accountability system centered around a self-improvement goal can increase success and sustainability.”
There’s also the fact that therapy doesn’t work if you don’t apply it once the session is over. As Wimbish said, “You will not get the full benefits of therapy sessions without doing the homework assigned. It requires a personal commitment outside of my office.” If therapy has taught me anything, it’s taught me that the real work starts when you go home and use a new coping skill in response to stress or anxiety, instead of engaging in a familiar unhealthy habit.
These days, I have refined my approach to dating. Now, during that early stage when a man mentions how long he’s been single, instead of inquiring about the details of the breakup, I ask how he managed the healing process. I recently met a guy who wasn’t alarmed by the question. Without pause, he identified a couple of healthy coping strategies provided by his therapist. This on its own does not mean he will be the best partner for me. Rather, it suggests that he recognizes self-work as an individual process, one that he isn’t socialized to be ashamed of. Which is a healthy start.
Shanita Hubbard is a former therapist, current adjunct sociology professor, and the author of the upcoming book Miseducating: A Woman’s Guide to Hip-Hop.
Wilbur Ross in the Fox Business studios last month. | Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
In this photograph taken on November 14, 2019, an Afghan deminer working for the Danish Demining Group holds a mortar bomb during the scanning of a combat zone dating back to the Soviet invasion at Ahangaran in the central Afghan province of Bamiyan. | Mohammad Ali Shaida/AFP via Getty Images
Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz arrives at the Capitol on January 29, 2020. | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Cruz at the Capitol on Tuesday. | Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
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A man peeps from inside his caravan in the Israeli Shilo settlement in the West Bank on January 27, 2020. | Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images
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Professor Alan Dershowitz listens to President Donald Trump speak during a Hanukkah Reception in the East Room of the White House on December 11, 2019, in Washington, DC. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images
