James.galbraith

George MacKay in 1917. | Universal Pictures

The director wanted his World War I drama to feel more like “a ticking-clock thriller” than a war movie.

The new drama 1917, which director Sam Mendes wrote based on his grandfather’s stories about World War I, was not technically filmed in a single take. If you pay attention, you can see places where the film fudges a little.

But the film does a good approximation of that technique, which makes it feel as if you’re living the events of the movie in “real time” and has been used in movies in the past, most recently in the 2014 Best Picture winner Birdman. In the case of 1917, the one-shot technique is used to tell a story about two young British privates (George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) who are tasked by their general (Colin Firth) with taking a message from their trenches and across no man’s land to Colonel MacKenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch), who’s leading his men into a giant trap.

It’s a nearly impossible task, but they faithfully go for it, encountering all kinds of peril along the way with other soldiers (including Richard Madden, Mark Strong, and Andrew Scott). It’s the first film that experienced director Mendes (Skyfall, American Beauty, Road to Perdition) has also written, and I spoke with him by phone about why he decided to make the film seem as if it’s one continuous shot, as well as the challenges of casting a movie like this.

Universal Pictures

Alissa Wilkinson

How did you decide upon the “one shot” concept for 1917?

Sam Mendes

I wanted to tell this story in two hours of “real time.” So I felt like it was a natural thing, to lock the audience into the men’s experiences. In a movie that operates more like a ticking-clock thriller at times, I wanted an audience to feel every second passing and take every step with them, and also be aware of geography and distance and physical difficulty. The feeling that you are going to have to live through the story with them is accentuated by not cutting.

Alissa Wilkinson

There are other movies that use the “one shot” idea — many people know of Birdman, or the Hitchcock movie Rope — but while watching 1917, I found myself thinking about books that follow characters through a day in “real time,” like Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, or James Joyce’s Ulysses. The big difference is that those books follow one character, and then they pass another character on the street, and then they start to follow that other character, more like Birdman. In 1917, you’re sticking with just one or two characters the whole time. Did that make it especially challenging for you or the actors?

Sam Mendes

It’s challenging to keep it from becoming repetitive. Even though, as you say, it’s sticking with one or two characters, ultimately the film is constantly shifting your relationship with them, and so the point of view isn’t always subjective. Sometimes you see them, but don’t see what they see. Sometimes you see what they see before they do. Sometimes it’s very intimate and very subjective; sometimes it’s very objective, and you see them quite small in a big landscape.

So, there’s a dance between the camera and the characters and the landscapes, all three of which are moving all the time. That [cinematic] language was something that [cinematographer] Roger Deakins and I really worked hard to kind of develop.

Universal Pictures

Alissa Wilkinson

It’s a weird paradox, because on the one hand, we personally experience our lives as if we’re in a one-shot movie. On the other hand, that style and perspective are not what movies have taught us to expect.

Sam Mendes

No. But you have to ask yourself why the grammar of film has developed the way it has. And it is an interesting question. We experience life much closer to one longer continuous shot. So we might expect the grammar of film to be the same. But the grammar of film was developed because cameras were not able to do what human beings can. They were too big. They were too bulky. They only shot on film. You had to cut at a certain point.

That’s no longer the case. So there is a way of communicating now, which is not using the traditional tools, the traditional grammar of cinema that developed the last one hundred years.

[1917 is] not shot in a way that’s designed to draw attention to itself. I don’t really want people to think about the camera. If you’re aware of it for the first 10 minutes, then hopefully thereafter you forget about it, and you just watch the story.

Alissa Wilkinson

There’s also all of these short appearances by famous actors, playing figures who in some cases would be kind of celebrities to these young soldiers — captains and commanders. How did you go about casting for those roles?

Sam Mendes

We cast who I thought were the best people for the roles, rather than thinking, Well, I need some famous actors. Of course, you’re not unaware that you’re making a fairly large movie, and you want people to come and see it. And that doesn’t hurt.

But I wanted people with that natural instant authority. Colin Firth, or Benedict Cumberbatch, or Andrew Scott — they have that skill, to be able to impose themselves upon the scene almost instantly and hit the ground running.

I was also trying to get that feeling of two relatively ordinary soldiers intersecting with these lives that are grounded in theirs, in a way, but have a higher status. Part of the reason we cast young and relatively unknown actors [as the main characters] was to give the feeling that these are two young men among 2 million, and that they’re — this is a weird thing to say — not particularly special. There’s an ordinariness to them. They’re intersecting with the lives that are writ large, in a different way from theirs.

So that was how I decided to do it. I talked to [the more famous actors] about the project as a whole, what the overall goal of the film was, instead of their individual roles. I think some of those guys are relieved to not carry the burden of the whole film for a change, to play supporting roles, and to be in something that they believe in, but they don’t have to take full responsibility for, or spend any time marketing, either.

And once you persuade one “heavyweight,” like a Colin Firth, to do it, then you could call up Benedict and say, “Colin Firth’s doing one of these characters,” and then you get both of them. It becomes easier and easier as you get further along. So it takes one person to say yes, and then you have a kind of domino effect.

Universal Pictures

Alissa Wilkinson

How is the rehearsal process different for a movie like this from other films?

Sam Mendes

We couldn’t do anything until we had rehearsed, because we had to measure the distance that every scene took. We had to measure the journey. So we couldn’t build a trench until we’d walked the distance that the trench needed to be, and then apply the same rule to the no man’s land and the quarries, and the fields and orchards and farm houses and canals and towns at night. All of them could not be built or even conceived until we knew how long they should be. And we didn’t know how long they should be until we’d acted it. So we started the process by rehearsing in empty fields, holding scripts, and marking out the journey with flags and poles.

And only then were we able to actually move forward. So we were rehearsing for months off and on, but really what we were doing is including the actors in what would be a normal pre-production process, for six or eight months. We had them there from day one. That, frankly, is a luxury not normally afforded, because actors are busy. But I made sure that when I offered these two lads the role, they understood it was a long job, and that they had to be there as part of the team, from the very beginning of pre-production. So that’s how we did it.

Alissa Wilkinson

You’re an experienced theater director — was there any way in which directing this film drew on those same directing muscles?

Sam Mendes

I certainly I used that same muscle. I was having to judge rhythm and pace and tempo without cutting. And that’s what one does all the time in theater. I’m not unused to telling a story that lasts two hours or two-and-a-half hours, with no breaks.

On the other hand, the landscape of the film was constantly moving — atmosphere, light, conditions — and the relationship between the camera and the actors was constantly changing in a way that it doesn’t on stage. In theater, the relationship between the viewer and the people being looked at is pretty consistent, whereas here it was changing all the time. So in another way, it was just the opposite of the theater experience, and very cinematic. This film was a weird mixture of the two.

1917 opened in limited theaters on Christmas Day. It will open nationwide on January 10.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What's this one for? Who knows! Electronic gadgets fade away but their cables live on forever at home. From a report: There's a box that moved with Sarah Loveless and her husband from San Diego to Charleston, S.C., from Charleston to Dallas and from Dallas to Richland, Wash. The box, never unpacked, went into a closet or the garage each time. Contents: 20 to 30 electronics cords. "The box was just always a part of our life," says Ms. Loveless, 38. "It wasn't useful to us. We weren't doing anything with it except for moving it." Four years ago, they sorted through the box, paired a handful of cords with the respective devices and got rid of the rest. It was like having a weight lifted, she says and remembers thinking: "This isn't going to happen again. Why would we keep cords we don't need?" Then last summer, going through the garage, Ms. Loveless noticed a bag. "There is another collection of cords," she says. "I was just kind of, like, I thought we handled this. I thought this was in the past." For as long as consumer electronics have existed, people have had a hard time ditching the old cords to expired and outdated devices. The TV sets, computers, printers, camcorders, VCRs, DVD players, MiniDisc players, BlackBerrys and iPods that the cords belonged to may not even be in their owner's possession. But the cords survive, squirreled away in drawers and bags and boxes. They might be useful someday, people tell themselves, even if some cords' purposes are lost to history. Henry Hall, of Bradenton, Fla., recalls going through his girlfriend's stuff after it came off the moving truck when she moved in with him in 2011. "There's this filing cabinet," says Mr. Hall, 34, a freelance artist who remembers her telling him: "That's just cords that I haven't sorted through."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The president makes a strong argument for Congress to constrain his warmaking authority.

President Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, on January 9, 2020. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Trump reportedly spoke to associates about feeling pressure from Republican lawmakers ahead of his Senate impeachment trial.

It looks like President Donald Trump may have considered his impeachment prospects when making the decision to kill Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani last week. If that’s the case, then the Trump-ordered strike wasn’t solely about protecting Americans from an imminent threat — it was also partially about saving his presidency.

The administration has made a slapdash case for why it chose to assassinate Soleimani, but the main arguments have been that he was planning to attack Americans within days, and that the US would always respond forcefully after US citizens were killed. In December, an Iranian-backed militia killed an American contractor in Iraq.

But the Wall Street Journal on Thursday night included an eye-popping tidbit in its story about how Trump came to green-light the Soleimani operation: “Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.”

In other words, the president felt the need to shore up support from some unnamed Republican lawmakers ahead of his imminent Senate impeachment trial.

It’s important to note that the above passage is just a short paragraph in a much longer piece about the inner workings of the Trump administration’s Soleimani discussions. And so far there is no other evidence to suggest that Trump didn’t give the order mainly to deter Iran from threatening Americans, although it’s unclear just how “imminent” that threat truly was.

But if Trump did consider impeachment when opting to kill the Iranian general — even if for a moment — then this is quite the scandal. It would mean the president didn’t just have the interests of the nation or the world in mind when bringing the US and Iran to the brink of war, but also his own personal political interests.

More reporting is needed to see just how much impeachment weighed on Trump’s mind when he gave the order. At a minimum, though, the Wall Street Journal’s reporting calls into question the legality of Trump’s Soleimani strike and the true intention behind it. And at worst, Trump’s decision to kill a foreign leader — as much as he may have deserved his fate — partly for political gain, is arguably impeachable on its own.

Way to bury the lede, Wall Street Journal! The newspaper did a deep dive into Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, but you have to read 29 paragraphs in to get to the real news.

“Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.”

Twenty. Nine. Paragraphs.

And then the article ... moves on.

So Donald Trump assassinated a high-ranking foreign official, risking massive war, in part because it would help him in an impeachment trial that’s happening because he tried to use U.S. military aid to extort a foreign country into helping him win re-election.

Actually, that scans.

And then the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reported it buried deep in a long article, as if it was no big. Actually, that also scans.

In an apparent swipe at PayPal's recent $4 billion acquisition of Honey, a popular browser extension that tracks prices and discount codes, Amazon labeled the service as "a security risk" for shoppers over the holidays. Wired reports: "Honey tracks your private shopping behavior, collects data like your order history and items saved, and can read or change any of your data on any website you visit," the message read. "To keep your data private and secure, uninstall this extension immediately." It was followed by a hyperlink where users could learn how to do so. Screenshots of the warning were posted to forums and social media by Honey users, like Ryan Hutchins, an editor at Politico. Honey isn't some obscure browser extension from an unknown developer. Founded in 2012, the Los Angeles-based startup now boasts over 17 million users. It finds discount codes to save shoppers money at tens of thousands of online retailers, including Amazon. Amazon's warning, which began appearing on December 20, confused and angered many of Honey's users, some of whom complained on its official social media channels. The browser extension has been compatible with Amazon since it was founded, and it is a significant part of Honey's appeal. Amazon declined to explain why it decided to label Honey a security risk so suddenly last month. "Our goal is to warn customers about browser extensions that collect personal shopping data without their knowledge or consent," a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. They declined to answer follow-up questions about the basis for that claim. Honey says in its privacy policy that it doesn't "track your search engine history, emails, or your browsing on any site that is not a retail website." "We're aware that Droplist and other Honey features were not available on Amazon for a period of time. We know these are tools that people love and worked quickly to restore the functionality. Our extension is not -- and has never been -- a security risk and is safe to use," a Honey spokesperson said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lock her up? Not so fast!

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is winding down an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s business dealings — championed by Trump himself — after the probe turned up “nothing worth pursuing,” the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Under pressure from the president and GOP lawmakers, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions launched the review in 2017, appointing U.S. Attorney John Huber of Utah to look into the former Democratic presidential nominee.

From the Salt Lake Tribune: “The inquiry focused on the Clinton Foundation and its ties to the sale of Uranium One and the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. ‘Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing — though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers,’ those officials told the Post.”

More from Vanity Fair: “Despite Republicans’ long insistence on Clinton’s wrongdoing—and Trump’s favorite ‘lock her up’ rallying cry—the fact that the Huber investigation has reportedly been a bust doesn’t seem to come as much surprise to those inside the Justice Department itself. Senior Justice officials cited by the Post said that the investigation had largely been viewed as little more than a way to appease Trump and his Republican allies, and officials expected the inquiry was “unlikely to lead to anything of significance.’ … Of course, Clinton being cleared of wrongdoing by Trump’s own executive branch isn’t about to stop the president from bashing Hillary nonetheless. … Less than an hour after the Post report came out, Trump was back on the campaign trail attacking Hillary, repeating his favorite 2016 talking points to a crowd of supporters—Clinton’s innocence be damned. ‘Crooked Hillary—you should lock her up, I’ll tell you,’ Trump told supporters.”

Watch a clip of Trump calling for Clinton to be jailed at his rally on Thursday night below.

Trump on Hillary Clinton: "Crooked Hillary — you should lock her up, I'll tell you." pic.twitter.com/XzSbgBTl5a

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2020

The post Justice Dept. Winds Down Probe of Clinton, Finds ‘Nothing Worth Pursuing’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

There is bipartisan agreement in Congress that doing something to help people faced with surprise medical bills and unsurprising massive prescription drug costs would be a great thing—and not just for their reelection prospects, but an actual good thing for actual people. But we can't have nice things anymore, and that's because of the for-profit healthcare industry and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In a letter to House Democrats outlining priorities for the year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put both high on that list. In fact, in the next few weeks a bipartisan group of House members is going to try to find a solution for surprise billing, or patients getting bills for care they thought was covered but turned out to not be when the provider or facility were not in their insurance network. Because someone is going to have to be on the hook for covering those costs if the patient isn't, it's created a massive fight between doctors and hospitals on one side and insurers and employers on the other. And Congress is caught in between.

As Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett told Politico, the "agreement is that something should be done about each of those issues, but there is great debate about what it is." He adds that this year "is probably more campaign speeches than serious bipartisan policymaking." Serious bipartisan policymaking means wins for everyone, and that's where the election comes in. McConnell will not let Pelosi and any Democrats have a win on anything, and his stubbornness extends to one of his own longtime Republican colleagues in the Senate who is retiring this year.

"I'm going to do everything I can to keep surprise medical billing on the front burner between now and May," Senate Health Committee chairman Lamar Alexander told Politico. "It's a bill almost everyone wants passed, except a handful of people and the private equity firms that benefit from it." McConnell is among that handful of people. And if he's against this effort, he's even more against doing something about drug costs.

There's a current bipartisan Senate bill, negotiated between Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Chuck Grassley, that McConnell is refusing to allow to move simply because it fines pharmaceutical companies who hike prices up beyond the rate of inflation. That's pretty much the minimum price constraint that could be put on drug companies, and it's too much for Mitch.

Politico gives the last word to the nation's one-time biggest Medicare fraudster, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who says they just can't move forward on these reforms because “It's so polarizing. […] I think people, because it's so polarizing, are scared to do anything. And they don't have to right now. There's no pressure up here."

There needs to be pressure up there—lots of pressure. And it needs to come from us.

We can help House and Senate Democrats save our health care by increasing their numbers. Please give $3 to help Democrats in each of these races!

Democratic candidate Mike Espy is facing some tough racism in his campaign to become the next U.S. senator of Mississippi. Facing off against Cindy Hyde-Smith—who was appointed by soon-to-be-leaving Governor Phil Bryant—Espy has already had to deal with the general racism any person of color has to face in the country. That has been compounded by the fact that Hyde-Smith and her Republican support system have decided to lean into using racism, or “economic anxiety” as some traditional media outlets like put it, as their main political platform.

On Jan. 2, Gov. Bryant tweeted out: “I intend to work for @cindyhydesmith as if the fate of America depended on her single election. If Mike Espy and the liberal Democrats gain the Senate we will take that first step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Media outlet Deep South Voice reports that Espy sent out an email that used the Bryant tweet as a rallying cry against the kind of conservative ethno-bullshit people like Bryant and Hyde-Smith have been running on, saying “Cindy Hyde-Smith said her 2020 campaign ‘will be meaner this time.’ Based on this statement made by the Governor of Mississippi, we can all see where this is going. If we want a leader who aspires to bring us together and who will work on both sides of the aisle, rather than divide, we must elect Mike Espy this year.”

Hyde-Smith was able to beat out Espy in the 2018 special election runoff for former Senator Thad Cochran’s seat, even after “joking” about being all gung-ho for a “public hanging,” in Mississippi. She was able to hold onto to the seat gifted to her by Gov. Bryant even after images of her rocking Confederate gear surfaced. In fact, Bryant’s defense of Hyde-Smith, after her public lynching joke debacle, was to hold a press conference, with Hyde-Smith on the stage, where he spent most of his time calling abortion “black genocide.” 

And so, Bryant and Hyde-Smith, and their white supremacist in chief will continue to run on racism. Good old classic, easy to understand racism. These aren’t dog whistles. This is the Republican Party becoming more of what it is. A political organization built to preserve white male hegemony, and more specifically, wealthy white male hegemony.

A Republican state senator from Arizona wants to prohibit any mention of the word “homosexuality” in the state’s public and charter schools.

Sen. Sylvia Allen, who hails from the town of Snowflake, introduced the provision as part of a sweeping new bill to gut sex-education curriculum in the state. The bill is scheduled for a hearing next Tuesday, the second day of Arizona’s legislative session, before the Senate Education Committee, which Allen chairs.

From 12news.com: “The bill, SB 1082, would remove the word ‘homosexuality’ from the definition of ‘sexual conduct’ that can be discussed in Arizona schools. It would also ban sex education before seventh grade. Health education would be allowed in kindergarten through six grade. Students or their parents would have the right to sue a school district or charter school operator for failing to follow the new sex-ed regulations.”

Democrats say Allen’s proposed “homosexuality” ban appears to be an attempt to replace the state’s “no promo homo” law, which was repealed in response to a lawsuit last year. The “no promo homo” law prohibited instruction that “promotes a homosexual lifestyle” or “portrays homosexuality as a positive alternative lifestyle.” It also barred teachers from saying that there are safe methods of homosexual sex.

Equality Arizona, a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the “no promo homo” statute, responded to Allen’s bill on its Facebook page: “During the last session, legislators repealed an anti-LGBTQ statute to avoid an indefensible million dollar lawsuit. We urge the Senate to not go backwards, and to work specifically on bipartisan legislation instead of creating obstacles for school districts, parents, and students who want the right to an inclusive education. Giving parents the right to sue school districts enforces a chilling effect where students will not learn any advancements in science or health and will continue to perpetuate myths about their development, their bodies, ultimately stunting their maturity. The choice is ours: We either empower and affirm all students, and by doing so reduce an LGBTQ youth’s suicide risk by 40% or we keep those risk rates where they’re at. There is no middle ground here. The consequences are deadly.”

UPDATE: According to Arizona Capital Times reporter Dillon Rosenblatt, Allen has issued a statement Thursday saying she will remove the “homosexuality” provision from the bill:

New: Sylvia Allen released a statement saying she will remove the provision that has garnered a lot of criticism from her sex ed bill SB1082. Story: https://t.co/bM60r7V8sc pic.twitter.com/vySj38Y8Pf

— Dillon Rosenblatt (@DillonReedRose) January 9, 2020

The post This Arizona Lawmaker from Snowflake — Yes, Snowflake — is Triggered by the Word ‘Homosexuality’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Billionaire Tom Steyer has qualified for next week's Democratic presidential debate on the strength of an apparent polling surge in two early-nominating states.

Two Fox News polls released on Thursday evening, just one day ahead of the qualification deadline, show Steyer in double-digits, moving past some top-tier candidates on his way to making the debate stage.

In a new Fox News poll in Nevada, former Vice President Joe Biden leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), 23 percent to 17 percent. Steyer is tied for third place with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), with both at 12 percent.

Former South Bend (Ind.) Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a distant fifth at 6 percent, followed by Andrew Yang’s 4 percent.

In a second new poll, in South Carolina, Biden is well ahead with 36 percent of the vote. But Steyer is in second place with 15 percent, jockeying with Sanders (14 percent) and Warren (10 percent).

No other candidate cracks double digits. Buttigieg is well back in fifth, at 4 percent, with no other candidate higher than 2 percent.

Steyer has inundated early-state markets with advertising since beginning his presidential bid in July. In six months he’s shoveled out $11.2 million in South Carolina on TV spots and lots of direct mail appeals. In Nevada, he's put out $10.3 million in television and radio ads so far, and has an additional $270,000 booked. That's well ahead of the second-highest spender in the state: Warren, who has $1.2 million aired or booked through February.

His most recent TV spot, airing exclusively in South Carolina and Nevada markets, features mostly black and Hispanic voters lauding his ability to beat Trump. One ad in Nevada is entirely in Spanish.

In South Carolina, which is the largest early state by population but votes fourth in the Democratic nominating process, Steyer is outspending the rest of the field by several million dollars, including Biden, who has earmarked over $800,000 in ads there so far but has promised $6 million to spend closer to the Feb. 29 primary.

Candidates can qualify for the debate, which is set to be on Jan. 14 in Iowa, by hitting 5 percent in four polls approved by the Democratic National Committee — or 7 percent in two early state polls. Candidates also need to hit 225,000 unique donors.

Steyer hits the early-state polling route through the Fox News polls released on Thursday, and has previously announced that he has hit the donor threshold.

Steyer joins five other candidates who have already qualified for the debate: Biden, Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sanders and Warren.

Steyer is the only candidate who, so far, has fulfilled just the early-state polling route. The other five candidates hit both 7 percent in two early state polls and 5 percent in four polls, early state or national.

Crucially, the pair of Fox News polls does not bring any of the other bubble candidates any closer to making it on stage, with the Friday night deadline rapidly approaching.

Yang — who has said he has hit the donor mark, but only has one of the four needed polls — was at 4 percent in Nevada and 2 percent in South Carolina.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who has hit the donor mark but has not reached 5 percent support in any qualifying polls, was at 3 percent in Nevada and 2 percent in South Carolina.

The last candidate with an outside shot, Tulsi Gabbard — who has not publicly said she has hit the donor mark, but was within striking distance and also does not have any qualifying polls — registered 2 percent support in Nevada and 1 percent in South Carolina.

A third Fox News poll released Thursday from Wisconsin does not count as a qualifying poll. Biden is at 23 percent to Sanders’ 21 percent. Warren is at 13 percent, Buttigieg is at 9 percent and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is at 7 percent.

In head-to-head matchups in Wisconsin, which is expected to be a closely-watched general election state, Biden leads President Donald Trump, 46 percent to 41 percent. Sanders leads Trump, 46 percent to 42 percent.

There is at least one more poll coming before the qualifying deadline: The Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll, which will be released Friday evening.

Hanging over the debate is the looming Trump impeachment trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told Republican senators on Thursday that he expects House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to transmit the articles of impeachment as soon as Friday, POLITICO reported, which could mean the trial starting as soon as Monday or Tuesday.

DNC chairman Tom Perez said on MSNBC earlier in the week the party would reschedule the debate if the trial, which requires Klobuchar, Sanders and Warren to attend, creates a conflict. "Obviously, if there’s a trial on the 14th, then we’ll move the debate," said Perez. "If there’s not, then we’re going to have the debate.”

A DNC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment for what the party committee’s plans are for Tuesday’s debate.

All three Fox News polls were conducted between Jan. 5-8. The South Carolina poll surveyed 808 Democratic primary voters and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points. The Nevada poll surveyed 635 Democratic caucus-goers and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.

The Wisconsin poll surveyed 671 Democratic primary voters, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points. For the general election matchups, 1,504 voters were polled, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.5 percentage points.

Maya King contributed to this report.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

House Republicans are exploring efforts to formally condemn Speaker Nancy Pelosi for withholding impeachment articles from the Senate, eager to whack Democrats who are increasingly divided on the issue.

GOP Rep. Bradley Byrne, who is running for an Alabama Senate seat, introduced a censure resolution on Thursday morning to rebuke Pelosi for hanging on to the articles of impeachment since December. Republicans have the option to force a floor vote on the measure though Democrats would surely move to table it, just as they did with a censure resolution against House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

“Speaker Pelosi’s decision to hold the articles of impeachment against President Trump in a pathetic and unconstitutional attempt to extract concessions from the Senate is an unprecedented abuse of power,” Byrne said in a statement.

And Rep. Morgan Griffith, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, raised a series of parliamentary inquiries on the House floor to increase scrutiny on Pelosi. The Virginia Republican asked whether there is any precedent for Pelosi sitting on the impeachment articles and if there is any action the House can take “since the speaker has not been able to physically do an essential part of her administrative duties.”

The lawmaker presiding over the House floor rebuffed his questions, saying they were improper inquiries.

Pelosi, meanwhile, is unmoved by the criticism from the GOP or the complaints coming from those in her own party. While some Senate Democrats are starting to get antsy over the delay in an impeachment trial, the speaker has remained steadfast that she won’t transmit the articles until she sees the Senate GOP’s impeachment trial rules. Most House Democrats have applauded her push to keep the narrative focused on a fair and comprehensive trial.

“I’ll send them over when I’m ready,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. “And that’ll probably be soon.”

The rising focus on Pelosi in recent days has pushed Republicans to quietly weigh potential legislative maneuvers — such as crafting a previous question motion — to force Pelosi’s hand. The GOP’s desire to turn up the heat on the speaker reflects a broad feeling in the Republican Conference that they are on the winning side of this messaging battle.

And while no House Republicans support impeachment, they know Trump has been anxious to be vindicated in a Senate trial and are eager to give him what he wants.

Ultimately, there is little Republicans can do from a procedural standpoint, other than try to force a vote on the censure resolution. And the House’s impeachment rules indeed grant Pelosi the power to submit the articles and name impeachment managers at a time of her choosing.

Still, Republicans are eager to frame the debate as Democrats just being too afraid to make their argument to the GOP-controlled Senate, where Trump is expected to be acquitted of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in the Ukraine inquiry.

“She has the gall to say she wants to determine what happens in the Senate? Maybe she is more concerned that her case is so weak,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters. “The speaker does not have the power to continue to hold.”

Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans are also eyeing their legislative options. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump's top allies, introduced a resolution criticizing House Democrats for the weeks-long delay and calling on them to act immediately. And Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a resolution to change the Senate rules and dismiss Trump’s impeachment if the articles aren’t transmitted.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is signing onto Hawley's resolution. Though McConnell won't move to change Senate rules in the coming days, it's a response intended to speed up future potential impeachments in case a similar rift occurs between a speaker and Senate majority leader, a source familiar with his plans said.

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

Iowa isn’t the only early-nominating state where the top of the Democratic presidential field is crowded and muddled with just weeks to go: According to a new poll of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, the top four candidates are effectively neck-and-neck.

The Monmouth University poll — the first survey in New Hampshire conducted entirely after the new year — shows Pete Buttigieg atop the field with 20 percent, followed closely by Joe Biden at 19 percent. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are just a tick below, at 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is a distant fifth, at 6 percent.

Buttigieg has doubled his support since Monmouth’s last poll in September, while Sanders has jumped 6 points. Warren’s fall has been sharpest: She is down 12 points from September, while Biden has also slipped by 6 points.

New Hampshire voters will go to the polls on Feb. 11, eight days after the Iowa caucuses. Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said the jumble at the top of the poll is a sign of potential volatility coming out of Iowa.

“The race remains fairly wide open,” said Murray. “To the extent that New Hampshire voters could take some cues from Iowa, it’s also worth keeping an eye on lower-polling candidates like Klobuchar if any of the leading contenders stumble in the earlier Iowa contest.”

Among self-identified liberal voters, Sanders (26 percent) and Warren (24 percent) lead Biden (16 percent) and Buttigieg (16 percent). But the race is flipped among voters who identify as moderate or conservative: Buttigieg (25 percent) and Biden (22 percent) are ahead of Sanders (10 percent) and Warren (7 percent).

Below the top five candidates, the poll also represents a major blow to those hoping to make next week's debate in Iowa.

The five candidates above 5 percent in the Monmouth poll — the level of support candidates have to hit in four polls approved by the DNC to participate in the debate — have all already qualified.

The bubble candidates who haven't qualified — Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard — all measured below that. Gabbard and Steyer came closest, with 4 percent.

The deadline to qualify is Friday night, so it's unlikely anyone else will make it.

The Monmouth University poll was conducted Jan. 3-7, surveying 697 registered voters, 404 of whom said they were likely to vote in the Democratic presidential primary. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

With the assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, followed by retaliatory air strikes at abandoned U.S. bases in Iraq, the Republican Party has once again found itself trying to pretend they are doing something resembling due diligence when it comes to their commander in chief. Sens. Mike Lee and Rand Paul made some headlines on Wednesday after they held a press conference saying that the briefing on the matter by the Trump administration to Congress was “insulting.” Sen. Lee went on to say that the briefing was the “worst” he had ever seen.

Pence made his way onto the news outlets Thursday, to do what he’s been doing since he got the phone call from Donald Trump three years ago, acting like someone committing treason. Speaking with Savannah Guthrie on NBC, Pence explained that the reason the Trump administration couldn’t provide a classified congressional briefing with actual evidence to justify assassinating General Soleimani was because no one can know the super special secret intelligence that only he and Donald Trump, and maybe someone else knows.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Well, some of that has to do with what's called sources and methods, Savannah. That if we were to share all of the intelligence—in fact, some of the most compelling evidence that Qassem Soleimani was preparing an imminent attack against American forces and American personnel also represents some of the most sensitive intelligence that we have—it could compromise those sources and methods.

This is quite a thing to say. While the Pentagon has very clearly said they believe that Iran’s response was most likely meant to lessen any human casualties, Mike Pence and Donald Trump have special intelligence that clearly the rest of the government does not yet have. It’s so special that even Republican stooges like Sen. Mike Lee cannot be told about it. But don’t worry, Pence is going to create a straw man rhetorical argument about what Mike Lee’s problem really is ...Yemen. 

PENCE: I have tremendous respect for Senator Mike Lee. I recognize he's had a difference of opinion with our administration over self-defense measures the president authorized in Yemen. We'll welcome those debates going forward, but I can assure your viewers that those of us that have seen all the evidence, that saw the evidence in realtime, know that president Trump made the right decision to take Qassem Soleimani off the battlefield. America is safer. The world is safer now, even after the Iranian response. No American casualties and Iran is standing down.

This seems to be in regards to Sen. Lee’s support of a bill to end America’s military participation in Yemen. So, you see, this Mike Lee guy isn’t strong like Ox, the way Trump and Pence are. And while the Yemen war is another thing all together—and the bill Lee supported was pushed in March of 2019—this is somehow the reason why a guy that has called climate change an “elitist issue,” is freaking out about how dubious this administration is concerning the possibilities of starting World War 3. Guthrie followed up this question to once again ask about this super secret information that Trump and Pence used in their decision-making, especially since Trump has famously taken every chance he could to attack and demean and undermine the U.S. intelligence community.

PENCE: Well, I can tell you, in President Donald Trump, the American people have a leader that is always going to ask the tough questions, whether it be military personnel or intelligence personnel but I can tell you, I was there every step of the way, Savannah, and we were gathering intelligence in realtime that was brought to the president that Qassem Soleimani was planning imminent attacks in response to our air strikes on five Iranian-backed militia bases. He was planning imminent attacks that were larger in the region against American forces, and President Donald Trump put American lives and American protection first. He made the right decision and America and the world are safer today as a result.

Mike Pence is lying. Or, let’s say he isn’t telling the entire truth.* There’s a chance that someone like Stephen Miller or Sean Hannity mentioned that Soleimani is a person who could coordinate an attack on U.S. interests in the Middle East and that statement is being taken as “intelligence.” For all we know, Sebastian Gorka passed a note written with a Sharpie on the back of a TGIF placemat that said he thought Iran was going to attack Iraq. 

But Pence has a precedent to lie and know he will face zero consequences. Last I heard, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice are all walking around free. In fact, this administration has been filled with people who have yet to be justifiably punished for their terrible actions in regards to our war in Iraq. Our current attorney general himself was brought in because of his reputation for helping corrupt administrations to cover-up their crimes.

* As in most of the truth is not being told.

x x YouTube Video

Next stop, Kansas!

Construction in December of the SUNOCO Mariner II East Pipeline in Exton, Pennsylvania. Residents and local officials have expressed strong opposition to the pipelines carrying fracked gas liquids to be shipped overseas for plastics manufacturing. | Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images

It’s one of the biggest deregulatory changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act in nearly three decades.

President Donald Trump’s administration is about to make it easier for companies to build pipelines, bridges, and roads without an environmental review — opening the door to projects that could pollute the US and accelerate climate change.

The proposed rule, first reported by the New York Times and announced by Trump Thursday, would be the biggest deregulatory change to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act in nearly three decades. Currently, all major federal construction projects must undergo a mandatory review, or environmental impact statement, if they’re expected to have major effects on the surrounding ecosystem. However, the new standard would create a new “non-major” project category, allowing smaller federal infrastructure projects to begin construction without a review.

Trump’s administration — which has waged a widespread campaign to roll back environmental regulations and protections — had hinted this was coming.

“While the goals of NEPA remain the same as they did 50 years ago, the environmental review process designed to improve decision making has become increasingly complex and difficult to navigate,” the White House said in a January 1 statement on the landmark legislation’s anniversary.

Industry organizations, such as the American Petroleum Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce, and several transportation groups, had been seeking such a change for years. Many of them complained in a November letter to Mary Neumayr, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, about the lengthy environmental review process, which they contended currently takes an average of almost six years and can produce reports that encompass hundreds of pages — a message that resonated with the Trump administration.

Announcing the change Thursday, Trump said too many projects are “tied up and bogged down by an outrageously slow and burdensome federal approval process.” Under the proposal, reports will now be subject to page limits and must be completed within two years.

However, the rule’s broad language may allow for some large construction projects to skip a review.

According to the New York Times, one administration official familiar with the changes said there will be no set dollar figure for separating major from non-major projects, which could open the door for “major mining, drilling and other projects to avoid environmental assessments.”

The proposed rule also does not mention climate change but could pose problems for federal agencies’ efforts to combat it, according to the Times report:

The changes would also eliminate the need for agencies to consider the “cumulative impacts” of projects, which in recent years courts have said include studying the planet-warming consequences of emitting more greenhouse gases.

And not only will they not have to account for a project’s impact on climate change, but agencies also won’t have to examine whether rising sea levels or other effects of climate change will compromise a bridge or road’s safety in the future.

Trump’s attacks on the environment

Thursday’s announced rule change is just the latest in the Trump administration’s years of assault on environmental regulations. Despite vague campaign promises to “promote clean air and water,” the New York Times has identified 58 separate rules rolling back environmental protections that have completed the administrative process, and 37 more that are still in the works.

The rollbacks span across the environmental spectrum, from clean air and water rules, to loosening regulations governing oil and gas extraction, to wildlife protections. And the president, long a climate change skeptic, is taking the steps to fulfill a campaign promise to withdraw from the Paris climate accords.

Last month, Trump ordered an administrative review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense program, which encourages use of low-flow bathroom fixtures such as toilets and showers. “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. They end up using more water,” Trump said at the time.

The quality of air and water in the US is mixed, with lead contamination and air pollution of increasing concern to scientists. Trump, however, has done little to address these issues, and began unraveling the environmental protections put in place by his predecessors almost immediately after assuming office, as Vox’s Matthew Yglesias has explained:

Most of these rollbacks’ impacts will be felt primarily in the long term, but already, particulate pollution is getting worse, reversing years of progress. A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon estimates that 9,700 more Americans died due to air pollution in 2018 than in 2016, in part due to regulatory changes. But the Trump administration is moving to restrict the range of evidence used to demonstrate air pollution’s harms, hoping to forestall the promulgation of new standards that would lead to stricter regulation.

...

Trump’s goal of boosting America’s natural resource extraction industries has been largely successful. There is no broad-based revival of the coal industry, but employment in coal mining has stabilized and is rising slightly in a reversal of recent trends. American oil output has soared to the point where net imports of crude oil and petroleum products are at their lowest level in generations and the country is likely to become a net exporter in the near future. Natural gas output, meanwhile, has soared to record highs, continuing a rapid growth pattern that began during the Obama presidency.

Democratic-controlled state governments and environmental advocates have turned to the courts to fight back against the administration’s loosening regulatory agenda. In August last year, more than 20 states sued the EPA over a rollback of climate change rules for power plants. In September, 22 Democratic states sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a division within the Department of Transportation, over a rule that revoked states’ rights to set their own vehicle emissions standards.

A similar fate could be in store for the administration’s latest proposed rule. The Environmental Protection Act requires that all federal projects undergo an environmental impact study, and it’s unclear whether that portion of the law can be changed by administrative fiat. “A regulation can’t change the requirements of a statute as interpreted by the courts,” Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University, told the Times.

In fact, he said that the loosened regulations could lead to more lawsuits against individual infrastructure and energy projects, which could exacerbate the long construction delays the proposed rule seeks to bring to an end.

Back in November, President Donald Trump appointed right-wing cable TV news pundit Jenna Ellis as a senior legal adviser to both himself and his 2020 re-election campaign.

Ellis, who previously served as public policy director at the James Dobson Family Institute, has a disgusting history of anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim rhetoric, according to a new report from Media Matters.

For example, Ellis has said that HIV is “God’s moral law,” that the Stonewall Inn monument is “a celebration of sin,” and that “Christians cannot follow God and accept or condone or participate in homosexuality.”

From Media Matters: “Ellis has also worked against bans against conversion therapy, a dangerous and discredited practice that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In 2019, she testified at a Colorado House committee hearing against a bill protecting youth from the practice. Ellis joined the Trump campaign as a senior legal adviser in November. Axios reported at the time that ‘Trump has said he’s impressed by Ellis’ TV appearances, according to a person close to him. He indicated that he wanted to give her a bigger job, and his team briefly discussed bringing her into the White House.'”

More from the Daily Beast: “[Ellis’] book complains that the Supreme Court ‘told the LGBT community that their homosexual lifestyle was not just legal privately, but morally validated openly through government recognition and social celebration and therefore equally as valued as heterosexual unions.’ In the wake of a 2015 shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left 49 dead, Ellis penned a column that condemned the massacre, but bemoaned that it was being used to dignify homosexuality. ‘I’m disappointed conservatives are acquiescing to the LGBT agenda,’ Ellis wrote. ‘Let me be clear—the Orlando shooting was absolutely terrible and tragic. But the response to this tragedy should not be embracing and advocating for gay rights.’ The piece was headlined, ‘Two Wrongs Do Not Make an LGBT Right.'”

A few of Ellis’ more disturbing Facebook posts below.

The post Senior Trump Adviser: HIV is ‘God’s Moral Law,’ Stonewall Monument is a ‘Celebration of Sin’ appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Terrorist-lovers, all of you!

The ACLU is getting involved after a Texas superintendent threatened parents with legal action for using a high school’s logo in a graphic supporting LGBTQ students. 

The graphic featuring a rainbow flag behind the Wimberley High School logo (above) was created in advance of the town’s first LGBTQ Pride parade in September. But controversy erupted when a supportive school board member donned a T-shirt emblazoned with the graphic in a Facebook post. 

Last month, Superintendent Dwain York sent a letter to parents saying they must remove the graphic from social media and print by Jan. 6, or they’ll receive a cease-and-desist letter from the district’s attorney. In his letter, York alleged the parents are infringing upon the district’s copyright of the logo, which he called “a serious concern.”  

But the ACLU disagrees, saying in a letter to York this week that the district is violating the parents’ First Amendment rights by targeting them based on the content of their speech. According to the ACLU, local businesses and others have been using versions of the Wimberley High School logo for years without incident, including one company that sells T-shirts featuring a Christian cross. The ACLU says the pro-LGBTQ graphic is protected under the Fair Use Doctrine, which allows the use of copyrighted material in political statements. 

“In order to avoid significant legal liability at the detriment of Wimberley taxpayers, students and parents, the school district should immediately cease taking adverse action against anyone who has posted the altered logo and send a retraction to everyone who received the letter from Superintendent (Dwain) York,” ACLU attorney Brian Klosterboer wrote to the district. 

In response to the ACLU letter, York on Wednesday appeared to walk back his threat, according to CBS Austin.

“As we begin this new year, Wimberley ISD wants to bring this community together, and if any actions that we have taken contributed to any disharmony, all of us at WISD take to heart our leadership role in bringing about unity,” York said in a statement.

One parent of an LGBTQ student, Brian Burke, told CBS Austin he has no plans to take down the graphic from his social media. 

“We will not be bullied,” Burke said. “You bring those thoughts into our school district, and you demonize the gay community, and you vilify and you marginalize, [and] that’s not going to roll in Wimberley Independent School District. It’s wrong.”

Back in November, amid the controversy over the graphic, the Wimberley school board voted down a proposal to add LGBTQ students to the district’s nondiscrimination policy, by a margin of 4-3.  

Wimberley, with a population of about 2,600, is situated approximately 40 miles southwest of Austin. 

The post Texas School District Threatens Parents for Supporting LGBTQ Students appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

For Democrats, the Sun Belt imperative is growing more urgent.

While most in the party are preoccupied with winning back the three Rust Belt states that tipped the 2016 election to Donald Trump, both people and political power are continuing to migrate inexorably from that region to the younger and more diverse states in the Southeast and Southwest.

This sustained population shift reinforces the consequences of Trump’s political repositioning of the Republican Party. Trump has targeted his polarizing message and agenda heavily toward the priorities of the older and non-college-educated white voters who still dominate most of the Rust Belt. That will make it tough for Democrats to rely on those states, particularly in presidential races, as much as they did during the 1990s and earlier this century.

In the near future, then, Democrats will likely need to offset any Republican gains in the Rust Belt by winning more elections in Sun Belt states, which are adding more of the diverse, white-collar, and urbanized voters at the core of the modern Democratic coalition. Through the coming decade and beyond, the crucial variable that could tilt the national balance of power between the parties may be whether Democrats can leverage those demographic advantages in the Sun Belt to break the hold Republicans have enjoyed on most of the region since at least the 1970s.

“If Democrats can make that pivot, they are in the driver’s seat for a long time to come, because these Sun Belt states are the growing states,” William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, told me.

The challenge facing Democrats is that while the demographic trends are more favorable for them in the Sun Belt, the political attitudes among the white population specifically are not. This could expose the party to the same risk in 2020 that I wrote about on Election Day 2016: that the Democrats’ old coalition in the Rust Belt will crumble faster than its new coalition coalesces in the Sun Belt. If that happens, it could leave Democrats just short in enough key states in both regions to allow Trump to win reelection, even if he loses the total popular vote by a greater margin than he did last time.

[Read: Democrats’ two roads to beating Trump]

While Democrats posted significant gains in both areas in the 2018 elections, in many ways their Sun Belt victories were more striking because they showed the party improving in places it had not successfully competed in before, including the suburbs of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and Phoenix. Some strategists are now warning that the Democrats’ intense focus on Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania shouldn’t distract them from efforts to advance from those Sun Belt beachheads in 2020. They’re especially concerned because the results of state legislative races in the region will determine redistricting processes, which will shape the political competition in those states for the next decade.

“It’s hard not to be obsessed with the three states that tipped the election to Donald Trump, but it’s also easy to be fighting the last war,” says Vicky Hausman, a co-founder of Forward Majority, a group working to elect Democrats to state seats. “I think our job right now is to sound the alarm that there is insufficient attention and focus and investment, particularly at the legislative level … in these Sun Belt states. And Democrats around the country have a clear interest in making smart investments there.”

The continued growth of the Sun Belt is the biggest takeaway from the new population estimates that the Census Bureau released in late December. They were the last before the 2020 decennial census, which will be used to reapportion both congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states.

Using these estimates, Kimball Brace, the president of the nonpartisan political-data firm Election Data Services, has calculated that seven states are on track to gain House seats and Electoral College votes, while 10 are in position to lose them. (New distributions would first affect the 2022 midterm elections and later the 2024 presidential contest.) The states that voted for Trump in 2016 would make a net gain of three Electoral College votes, while the states that voted for Hillary Clinton would lose three, a modest partisan shift in all.

But on a regional basis, the new numbers have profound implications. Brace projects that Texas will add three House seats and Florida two, while North Carolina, Arizona, and Colorado will add one each. The losers are mostly concentrated across the Northeast and upper Midwest: New York, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Minnesota are all on track to lose a seat.

The reapportionments after both the 2000 and 2010 censuses produced comparable shifts in representation from the Northeast and Midwest to the Sun Belt. If the projections for 2020 prove accurate, it will mean that since the start of this century, more than 30 seats and Electoral College votes will have shifted from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt, with no Rust Belt state gaining a seat at any point. A map from Election Data Services tracking the cumulative impact of reapportionment from 1910 through 2010 captures an even more dramatic shift of power and population to the Sun Belt states.

Not long ago, most political observers would have viewed these trends as an unqualified threat to Democrats because the party has relied so heavily on states across the Northeast and Midwest, especially in presidential races. And that’s still true in one respect: Democrats remain dominant in the Northeast states and, thus, are hurt by the population trends draining seats from New England and the mid-Atlantic.

But the steady decline of the Midwest now has consequences for both parties because those states are so integral to Trump’s political strategy. From immigration and trade to race relations and gun control, Trump has focused his agenda on maximizing the GOP’s support among older, blue-collar, nonurban, and Christian white voters, groups that remain powerful, even preponderant, across the Midwest, even as they’re shrinking as a share of the national population. That emphasis helped him flip a total of five Rust Belt states that voted for Barack Obama in 2012, including the three he dislodged from the Democrats’ “blue wall”: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

[Read: Trump’s reelection is sitting on a knife’s edge]

But if Brace’s projections are right, in this century those five states will shed a combined 13 Electoral College votes. Put another way: Trump is steering the GOP toward greater reliance on the Rust Belt precisely as the region’s overall electoral clout is receding. That’s a geographic parallel to the demographic trade Trump has imposed on his party by trying to squeeze bigger margins out of voter groups that are dwindling.

The price for this trade is the resistance he’s triggered among younger people, voters of color, and college-educated white voters, all of them concentrated in the nation’s major metropolitan areas—and prominent in the Sun Belt.

But even as those groups helped power Democratic victories in 2018, Republicans have still maintained their overall advantage in most southeastern and southwestern states. That trend suggests Republicans are unlikely to conclude that Trump has set the party on an unsustainable course until Democrats prove they can consistently win elections there.

The possible swing states in the Sun Belt look more favorable for Democrats than their Rust Belt counterparts do on virtually every key demographic measure that now divides the parties.

Consider racial diversity in the six Sun Belt states that both sides view, to varying degrees, as potential battlegrounds this year: North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in the Southeast, and Texas, Arizona, and Nevada in the Southwest.

According to Frey’s calculations, across those six states, nonwhite people already constitute a majority of the population ages 18 to 64 in Texas and Nevada; almost exactly half of that group in Arizona, Georgia, and Florida; and about two-fifths in North Carolina. While white people still compose most of the senior population in each of those states (except Texas), minorities represent most of the under-18 population in all of them (except North Carolina). That means that with each passing year, the population eligible to vote in those states will tilt more toward racial minorities at a time when Trump’s mission for the GOP has deeply antagonized them. “That’s really where all the growth is in all of these states,” Frey told me.

The picture looks very different in the six Rust Belt states that both sides have historically viewed as battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Ohio (though the final two appear very steep climbs for Democrats against Trump). In all of them, Frey found, white people constitute about three-fourths or more of the 18-to-64 population and at least 84 percent of the senior population. Well over half of the people under age 18 are white as well.

Other demographic measures point toward the same divergence. Using census data, Frey has calculated that white voters without a college degree—one of Trump’s core constituencies—cast a bigger share of the vote in 2018 in each of the Rust Belt battlegrounds than they did in any of the Sun Belt swing states. White Christians are also much more heavily represented in the Rust Belt than the Sun Belt, according to poll results from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute.

But two factors above all have prevented Democrats from fully capitalizing on favorable Sun Belt trends. One is a persistent problem mobilizing the growing population of minority voters, especially young ones, to turn out. Comparing the past two midterm elections, in 2014 and 2018, Democrats saw gains among black voters in the Southeast and Latinos in the Southwest. But Latino participation in particular remains well below the level for white voters, and experts say it’s unclear that 2020 will show much improvement.

Stephanie Valencia, a co-founder and the president of EquisLabs, a Democratic firm studying Latino voters, told me that dislike of Trump “is not enough” to guarantee bigger turnout. “Democrats cannot afford to rest on the fact that Latinos hate Trump and question his moral character and question his handling of the issues that matter to them,” she said. “We need an aspirational vision of what this country can be, and not just how we are going to stop Trump from being president.”

The other challenge facing Democrats is that both non-college-educated and college-educated white voters in the Sun Belt have traditionally leaned more conservative than they do in the Rust Belt. In 2018 exit polls, Trump’s approval rating among both groups was higher in the Sun Belt than in the Rust Belt, with the gap especially wide among college-educated white voters.

[Read: Brace for a voter-turnout tsunami]

Still, Democrats’ wins in suburban House races across the Sun Belt—as well as the results of the Senate contests in Texas, Arizona, and Nevada—showed clear cracks in the once-impregnable Republican dominance among white-collar Sun Belt voters.

Hausman argues that Democrats must now try to capitalize on those openings and capture state legislative chambers there. Frey agreed, noting that having control of redistricting could provide Republicans their final “wall” against the growing diversity that is mostly driving the population growth in the Sun Belt. Focusing primarily on suburban seats within major metropolitan areas, Hausman’s group is mounting an effort to flip Republican-controlled chambers in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida.

Democrats are focusing heavily on those same diverse and white-collar areas this year as they target Republican-held House seats in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, as well as GOP-controlled Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Georgia. On the presidential level, they envision Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina as fallbacks if they can’t recapture any of the Rust Belt battlegrounds from Trump. (Democrats are also hoping to significantly improve their presidential performance in Texas and Georgia, though both remain long shots for 2020.)

Nicole McCleskey, a New Mexico–based Republican pollster, acknowledged to me that a recoil from Trump, particularly among women, has hurt the GOP in the Southwest suburbs. But she remains optimistic that the GOP can hold Texas and Arizona in both the Senate and presidential contests, noting that Republicans easily carried the governor’s elections in both states last year, despite the nationwide Democratic tide.

Once those suburban voters “put a face to what the Democratic Party is really about, it becomes a much more uphill struggle for them,” she told me. “In these suburban areas, when you start talking about what does Medicare for All mean for you, cost for you, I think it changes the face of what this election is about.”

One of the core underlying dynamics of modern American politics—what Frey has called “the cultural generation gap” and I have termed the collision between the “brown and the gray”—is the ongoing political battle between the predominantly white, conservative-leaning older generations, centered on the Baby Boom, and the more diverse and more liberal Millennial and younger generations.

The Sun Belt is where this confrontation is unfolding most directly: In states such as Texas, Arizona, and Nevada, Frey’s calculations show, white people compose at least twice as great a share of the over-65 population as they do of the population under 18.

The principal battlefield of the 2020 election may remain Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But the unstinting population shifts that the census recorded last month make it inevitable that the partisan and generational struggles for control of the nation’s direction will be decided more and more in the Sun Belt.

The Trump administration really doesn’t want the American public to know how much money the Secret Service is spending to follow Donald Trump and his family around to their various resorts and golf clubs. As part of a plan to bring the Secret Service back into the Treasury Department, Democrats are pushing for a cost disclosure requirement, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is trying hard to keep the requirement from going into effect until after the election.

Democrats want the costs of protecting presidents and their families reported within 120 days. Mnuchin says sure, that can be reported … starting in December 2020. We know a little about what the Secret Service is spending on Trump’s endless trips to Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster, numbers helpfully rounded up by The Washington Post:

Trump has left the Washington, D.C., area to visit his own properties more than 50 times. Trump’s first four trips to Mar-a-Lago cost the Secret Service about $1.3 million apiece, with other government spending on those trips bringing the total cost to $3.4 million per trip. That would mean that Trump’s next 22 Mar-a-Lago visits would have cost the federal government $75 million. There was one month in 2017 when the Government Accountability Office estimated Trump’s travel costs at $13.6 million. “If spending continued at that pace, Trump would have exceeded Obama’s total expenses [over eight years] before the end of his first year in office,” The Post’s Carol Leonnig and David Fahrenthold report. The Secret Service spent $250,000 at Trump’s resorts themselves over a five-month period in 2017. Don Jr. and Eric Trump have made business trips to five countries, with Secret Service protection.

No wonder the Trump administration doesn’t want the full picture getting out between now and November.

Sen. Mike Lee is furious over the briefing he received on Iran. It's worse than you thought.

Pivoting away from the Iran crisis and his pending impeachment trial, President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning about the stock market.

Politically, it might seem like a good move, except that Trump mistakenly referred to retirement accounts as “409K’S” instead of “401Ks.”

About an hour later, Trump deleted and replaced the tweet with a corrected version, but here’s a screen grab of the original:

“STOCK MARKET AT ALL-TIME HIGH!” Trump wrote in all caps. “HOW ARE YOUR 409K’S DOING? 70%, 80%, 90% up? Only 50% up! What are you doing wrong?”

Trump followed up by taking credit for the lowering the cancer death rate:

U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2020

“U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration,” he wrote.

Raw Story notes that the largest ever decline in the cancer death rate actually took place under President Barack Obama, not Trump.

Reactions from Twitter below.

Self proclaimed business genius wants to know how your 409K’s are doing pic.twitter.com/5kUyzdAScb

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) January 9, 2020

The stock market has been relatively flat over the past two years because of Trump’s various trade wars.

Unclear how household cleansers have been doing. pic.twitter.com/i0SkH4WUzt

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) January 9, 2020

pic.twitter.com/LzajfeWC3V

— Slade (@Slade) January 9, 2020

Apparently what I'm doing wrong is investing in a 401K when I should be investing in a 409K pic.twitter.com/wsrrbssz7H

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) January 9, 2020

Just checked, my 409K balance is zero.

Send hamberders and covfefe https://t.co/1Jb4D9tx2r

— Angry Staffer (@AngrierWHStaff) January 9, 2020

In lieu of making fun of the PRESIDENT for talking about a thing that doesn't exist, I'll use this opportunity to remind you that half of Americans don't own a single share of stock (including in retirement accounts) and that the richest 10% of Americans own 80% of stock. https://t.co/EYwFeeAFSZ

— Michael Linden (@MichaelSLinden) January 9, 2020

He's going to run on claiming he cured cancer, amazing. https://t.co/aWbjEdjdd9

— Gary Legum (@GaryLegum) January 9, 2020

This is like a parody of how presidents try to take credit for all good news during their tenure. https://t.co/7Nfo3LnVHd

— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) January 9, 2020

Good news everyone, Trump personally lowered the death rate from cancer! Unclear why he waited until the third year but kind of him to exercise his Godlike powers on our behalf and better late than never! https://t.co/BoUh260uXT

— Aaron Fritschner (@Fritschner) January 9, 2020

The post Trump Wants to Know How Your ‘409K’S’ are Doing, Takes Credit for Lowering Cancer Death Rate appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to the media after attending a briefing with administration officials about the situation with Iran on January 8, 2020, in Washington, DC.  | Mark Wilson/Getty Images

At one point, the CIA director told lawmakers to read an intelligence report instead of just briefing them.

Democratic lawmakers with questions about the rationale behind the Trump administration’s decision to kill Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani didn’t get the answers they wanted at the time of his death.

The administration promised all of their concerns would be addressed during Senate and House briefings on secret Iranian intelligence. Those briefings concluded Wednesday afternoon — and most Democrats (and some Republicans) are pissed.

Under questioning from House Democrats about US intelligence relating to whether Soleimani posed an imminent threat to Americans, as the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed without offering public evidence, CIA Director Gina Haspel didn’t answer directly.

“Read the report,” she said, referencing a document with intelligence relating to the Soleimani conversation. After audible sighs from lawmakers and requests for her to brief the information during Wednesday’s session, she responded matter-of-factly, “Well, it’s a lengthy report.”

That moment encapsulates why many lawmakers from both parties are frustrated with how top Trump Cabinet officials — including Haspel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien — have handled communication about Soleimani’s death. They argue the administration failed to give them an adequate briefing as US-Iran tensions roil, and that it continues to do so.

Wednesday’s briefings showed little sign that lawmakers’ complaints will be addressed. In one case, according to a House Democratic aide, briefers were even “shushing” lawmakers who asked tough questions.

The briefings to the House and Senate were so poor that even Republicans have criticized the Trump officials’ performance.

This was “probably the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the US Senate,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told reporters after the Senate session. Lee and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) both said they will now support a war powers resolution led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) to restrict the president’s ability to go to war with Iran, something many Republican leaders — like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — have come out against.

Lee even said that one of the briefers’ response to how the administration would request an authorization for the use of military force was, “I’m sure we could think of something.”

(It is worth noting, though, that Lee and Paul were two of the four Republican senators who voted with Democrats to curtail Trump’s ability to go to war with Iran last summer.)

And it wasn’t just traditional critics of Trump’s national security policy who were angered by the sessions: The responses from lawmakers in the briefing room have been unanimously poor. Democrats offered some of the sharpest critiques.

“It seemed like they didn’t have a lot of information they could give us,” said a senior Democratic House member who, like four others, spoke to me on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified briefing. “They don’t have any” underlying facts to establish an imminent threat, the lawmaker said. “The information we got was no more detailed or revealing than what we’ve read in the news or seen on the TV.”

“They gave us no time, place, or method”

According to multiple people in the room, Trump’s national security team gave lawmakers aiming to understand the administration’s Iran policy and intelligence next to nothing.

“They were evasive and the answers were unsatisfactory,” a senior Democratic lawmaker told me.

There was really only one point on which the administration gave specific detail, another senior Democratic Congress member told me. (Well, sort of.)

“They did give us a window on the ‘imminent’ threat, but the window was so large that it doesn’t necessarily constitute ‘imminent,’” the lawmaker said, adding that the stated time frame around what the administration has described as an imminent threat was “days” rather than “weeks.”

“They gave us no time, place, or method” when describing the Soleimani threat, the Congress member continued. “Instead, we got a historical overview of decades-long malign activities from Iran. It begs the question: Was the attack on Soleimani more in retribution for what he’s done, or what he was planning?”

Others said the meeting in the House devolved into pettiness. In one instance, according to a House Democratic aide, a Democratic lawmaker asked a difficult question, prompting the briefers to turn to a Republican for an easier question while ignoring the one just asked. In another moment, a Democratic Congress member asked a multi-part question that briefers failed to answer fully. When the lawmaker tried to follow up, “they got shushed.”

What’s more, the defense and military officials were asked multiple direct questions about the legal justification for Trump to order a strike on Soleimani. Both Esper and Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair, looked uncomfortable, a Democratic aide said, and turned to their legal team because they apparently didn’t have the answers themselves. “There were no justifications,” the Democratic aide said. “It was totally insufficient.”

The Senate briefing, based on both Republican and Democratic public responses, also didn’t go well. “The president has not supplied convincing evidence that his strike stopped an imminent attack on US forces. Nothing we’ve seen has changed my mind,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), who has proposed a bill to withhold funding for an Iran war unless Trump seeks congressional authorization, said on the Senate floor after the briefing.

Paul referenced claims by O’Brien, Trump’s top national security aide in the White House, who has said the 2002 authorization for war with Iraq supported the legal rationale for killing Soleimani — an Iranian — in Baghdad. “That is absurd, that is an insult,” he said.

And according to a Democratic Senate aide, the briefers didn’t touch on anything that would provide evidence of an “imminent” attack. “There was no way they could know for sure,” the aide said after speaking with their boss on what happened inside the room. “There was nothing specific they could point to.”

After Iran’s weak strike on two US military targets in Iraq Tuesday night, and Trump’s Wednesday speech declaring Tehran aimed to deescalate tensions, it seems that neither country is currently on the path to war. Still, even behind closed doors, the administration can’t satisfactorily answer why it nearly went to war with Iran in the first place — and that, on its own, is deeply worrying.

Li Zhou contributed to this report.

An administration briefing to the Senate on the newest Middle East crisis seems to have done serious damage to Donald Trump’s case. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, CIA director Gina Haspel, and Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Mark Milly addressed the Senate earlier this afternoon, and Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee appear to be livid over the case presented.

For the most part, both House and Senate reactions were grotesquely predictable: Democrats condemned the briefing as "sophomoric" and unconvincing, while reliable Trump supporters like Rep. Mark Meadows and the ever-shrinking Sen. Marco Rubio declared it "compelling."

That shifted once the Senate briefing was over, when Paul and Lee went before cameras to blast the briefers.

The briefing was "less than satisfying," an angry Paul told reporters. Lee went farther: "That was insulting," he said, and "This was probably the worst briefing I've seen on military issues in the nine years I've been here." Both senators indicated they would be supporting an upcoming Democratic resolution limiting the administration's powers to launch military strikes targeting Iran.

Wednesday, Jan 8, 2020 · 10:13:34 PM +00:00 · Hunter

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GOP Sen. Mike Lee goes off on the Trump briefing: "They had to leave after 75 minutes, while they’re in the process of telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public. I find that absolutely insane. I think it’s unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/rs6LOimfAm

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 8, 2020

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....fox decided to cut away from the press conference pic.twitter.com/etOlcFJ3iP

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) January 8, 2020

In the midst of his rather somnalistic remarks on the conflict with Iran, Donald Trump slipped in some of his standard claims to have “completely rebuilt” the American military in just the last three years. Thankfully, Trump did not wander into his usual companion piece, in which he claims that American troops couldn’t fight terrorists because they were out of bullets when he arrived, but Trump did venture into other interesting territory. On the subject of missiles, Trump not only claimed that America’s missiles are ”big, powerful, accurate, lethal, and fast,” which is … disturbing on several levels; he also made a statement that was not so much a missile but a bombshell.

According to Trump, “Under construction are many hypersonic missiles.” This isn’t exactly the revelation of a secret project, because U.S. research into hypersonics was revealed a year ago. However, what was revealed then—under the not all all terrifying name of “Prompt Global Strike”—was a research report to Congress on the potential of such weapons. What Trump suggested indicates that multiple hypersonic weapons are in active development. 

Despite the immediate nature of the event, Trump’s statement about these missiles may be far more important in the long term than anything happening with Iran. Because that claim, if true, not only represents Trump unveiling a weapons program; it also may signal the start of a new arms race with Russia to build weapons that destroy any possibility of defense. In a sense, Donald Trump just drove a nail into the coffin of Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program. He also killed the idea that there was any possibility of responding to news of a launch with anything but a devastating counterstrike.

Because hypersonic missiles threaten to create a whole new order of threat, one that negates both defensive systems and strategic planning. What’s being created is a class of weapons that reduces the time between a possible launch and the impact of a warhead from minutes down to seconds. It creates a heightened possibility of triggering a worldwide cataclysm on the basis of fear and error.

Considering the pattern of error, backtracking, misstatement, and impulsive acts revealed over the last week, the idea of a weapons system that leads to even less opportunity to reconsider before potentially world-shattering action is taken should be terrifying. And that’s exactly what a hypersonic missile system is: a weapons system that demands such a fast response that there’s no time for mistakes. No time to evaluate consequences. No time even to wince before the warhead arrives.

While it’s temping to think of missiles as lightning-quick, in fact many cruise missiles travel at speeds not much greater than those of a commercial airliner. That’s made such weapons highly subject to defensive systems—especially when those missiles have been programmed to follow particular paths, such as highways, when seeking their targets. Some cruise missiles have even been taken down by anti-aircraft systems. More modern cruise missiles, in particular those from Russia, are faster, but most still fly at speeds similar to those obtained by fighter jets.

Ballistic missiles, particularly those whose flight paths loft them free of the atmosphere, can approach targets at tremendous speeds, reaching many, many times the speed of sound. Their long, high arcs still make them subject to possible interception—which is what the expensive and generally unsuccessful systems of the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative were all about. However, tactical ballistic weapons, whose arcs are shorter but whose speeds are much slower, are much easier to intercept.

Destruction of an incoming cruise missile or ballistic missile is still far from certain, even with the most modern defensive systems. But defensive systems such as the Patriot, which intercepts an incoming missile or rocket using a guided missile traveling at up to 3,000 mph, have proven themselves in real-world battlefields. Over 8,000 Patriot systems are deployed around the world, and they continue to be upgraded to handle a wider range of targets. The latest version of the Patriot can take on drones, rockets, and tactical ballistic missiles like those that Iran fired into Iraq on Tuesday evening with some measure of success—though it doesn’t seem that the U.S. deployed such systems on Tuesday, possibly because advanced intelligence made it clear that the incoming missiles did not threaten critical targets. If so, then the fact that Iran’s weapons generated no casualties may tie directly to the fact that they were simply slow enough to get out of the way of.

Everything about that is going to change. Moving to an age of hypersonic missiles is almost like a switch from analog to binary warfare—an age in which launch and impact are impossibly close together. These are systems that negate defense, nullify the idea of shelters, and make Mutually Assured Destruction much more assured.

Vladimir Putin has been touting Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles for some time. Just two weeks ago, he announced the first deployment of a system known as the Avangard ”hypersonic glide” vehicle. Avangard launches like a sadly all-too-normal ballistic missile, but rather than coming down in an arc that would make the second half of the flight subject to interception, the new system includes a payload that can maneuver, retarget, and dodge, all while traveling at a staggering Mach 27—that is, over 20,000 mph. China is working on a similar vehicle. These are systems that can deliver megaton-class devices to target in seconds, with essentially no chance of interception by any system on the drawing board.

This is by no means the only class of hypersonics in the works. While Russia’s speediest cruise missile is capable of hitting Mach 4, a new class is under development. The U.S. may bring the Mach 6 High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW) on line within the next year. In testing, Russia’s new Zircon class of missiles has already passed Mach 8. At that speed, had Iran launched a Zircon on Tuesday, it would have impacted Erdil military base less than two minutes after launch. And Russia is claiming the final product will be faster.

Other countries are looking at the development of hypersonics, but even those that may be a generation behind won’t be left out. Because Russia is promising to make the Zircon available for purchase for ranges up to 175 miles. Or one minute.

In the middle of a series of events that have revealed (again) just how much can go wrong in planning and executing a military operation, Trump also revealed that the United States is stepping up deployment of systems with which making a mistake is not an option. These are systems that aren’t just scary because Trump’s finger will be on the button. They’re scary because they require a response speed that ensures that no one’s finger will be there.

In 1983, a false alarm from the Soviet Union’s early-warning system indicated multiple incoming ballistic missiles from the United States. A single man made the judgment that the warning was a mistake and aborted a Soviet response. Hypersonics make it almost certain that human beings will be removed from the decision loop.

In a world where the United States had taken the lead on international arms agreements—such as negotiating the joint agreement on limiting nuclear development in Iran—America might be in a position to step in and help guide the world to an agreement on hypersonics. Might be able to champion an agreement that says weapons both impossible to defend against and too fast to offer time for proper evaluation are also too dangerous to exist. Instead, we live in the world where Trump walked away from the Iran agreement, walked away from the the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and has dismissed the idea of new strategic arms agreements. 

Don't think the Senate leader can be shamed into mounting a fair impeachment trial.

Kirill Kukhmar\TASS via Getty Images

$1,000 can raise a class’s test scores by as much as cutting class size by a third.

An emergency situation that turned out to be mostly a false alarm led a lot of schools in Los Angeles to install air filters, and something strange happened: Test scores went up. By a lot. And the gains were sustained in the subsequent year rather than fading away.

That’s what NYU’s Michael Gilraine finds in a new working paper titled “Air Filters, Pollution, and Student Achievement” that looks at the surprising consequences of the Aliso Canyon gas leak in 2015.

The impact of the air filters is strikingly large given what a simple change we’re talking about. The school district didn’t reengineer the school buildings or make dramatic education reforms; they just installed $700 commercially available filters that you could plug into any room in the country. But it’s consistent with a growing literature on the cognitive impact of air pollution, which finds that everyone from chess players to baseball umpires to workers in a pear-packing factory suffer deteriorations in performance when the air is more polluted.

If Gilraine’s result holds up to further scrutiny, he will have identified what’s probably the single most cost-effective education policy intervention — one that should have particularly large benefits for low-income children.

And while it’s too hasty to draw sweeping conclusions on the basis of one study, it would be incredibly cheap to have a few cities experiment with installing air filters in some of their schools to get more data and draw clearer conclusions about exactly how much of a difference this makes.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak, explained

Back on October 23, 2015, employees of the Southern California Gas Company discovered a massive leak in the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility near Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Significant for the larger purposes of the study, the Porter Ranch area is known for having “some of the cleanest air in the Valley year-round.”

The gas leak was a huge catastrophe from the standpoint of greenhouse gas emissions, but also naturally raised concerns in the local community about the immediate impact on public health.

Facing political pressure from concerned parents and teachers, Gilraine writes, “the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the owner of the gas well, the Southern California Gas Company, placed air filters in every classroom, office and common area in all schools within five miles of the gas leak at the end of January 2016.”

Strikingly, however, air testing conducted around the time of the installation of the filters shows that the schools didn’t actually have abnormally high levels of the kinds of pollution that are normally associated with natural gas. Methane is lighter than air, and by the time the filters were installed — nearly three months after the leak — the extra pollution caused was all the way up in the sky and not affecting school buildings.

Consequently, the installation of the filters served not to remove extra contamination caused by the leak, but simply to clean up the normal amount of background indoor air pollution present in the Valley. That lets Gilraine estimate the difference in student performance for schools just inside the boundary compared to those just outside.

He finds that math scores went up by 0.20 standard deviations and English scores by 0.18 standard deviations, and the results hold up even when you control for “detailed student demographics, including residential ZIP Code fixed effects that help control for a student’s exposure to pollution at home.”

For context, this is comparable in scale to some of the most optimistic studies on the potential benefits of smaller class sizes, with Alan Krueger finding that cutting class size by a third leads to a 0.22 standard deviation improvement in academic performance. Other studies find smaller or even negative effects (because adding teachers means bringing in less experienced or less effective ones), but even accepting the positive findings it obviously costs much more than $700 per classroom to achieve class size reductions of that scale.

This is a big, but not implausible, number

The effect Gilraine finds is strikingly large given that it’s a seemingly trivial intervention.

But Sefi Roth of the London School of Economics studied university students’ test performance relative to air pollution levels on the day of the test alone. He found that taking a test in a filtered rather than unfiltered room would raise test scores by 0.09 standard deviations. That’s about half the impact Gilraine found, just based on day-of-test air quality. In Gilraine’s natural experiment, students benefited from cleaner air for about four months. Given that context, it’s not incredibly surprising that you could see an impact that’s about twice as large.

What’s natural to ask — though unknowable from the study before us — is how much more change we could see if students benefited from an entire school year of clean air. Or perhaps an entire school career, from pre-K through high school graduation, of clean air.

One striking thing about this is the government has long been aware that indoor air pollution is a potential problem. But according to currently prevailing Indoor Air Quality standards, there was nothing wrong with the air in the schools. Filters were installed because of an essentially unwarranted panic about natural gas.

And while Los Angeles is a fairly high-pollution part of the country, outdoor particulate levels are higher in many areas — including New York, Chicago, and Houston — than they were in the impacted neighborhood. In other words, there’s no reason to think the impacted schools were unusually deficient in their air quality. They just happen to be the ones that installed filters.

A cheap, scalable initiative

For a sense of scale, Mathematica Policy Research’s best evidence on the effectiveness of the highly touted KIPP charter school network finds that after three years at KIPP there is significant improvement on three out of four test metrics — up 0.25 standard deviations on one English test, 0.22 standard deviations on another, and 0.28 standard deviations on one of two math tests.

Those are big gains, and they help explain why there is so much enthusiasm about KIPP in some quarters, even as charter schools remain politically controversial and charters in general seem to produce roughly average results.

This is bigger than the impact of letting kids benefit from clean air for four months. But installing the full suite of air filters costs about $1,000 per classroom, and continuing to operate them beyond the first year is cheaper than that. And best of all, unlike totally reworking school operations, it could be scaled up very quickly.

It would be almost trivially easy to get a variety of school districts all around the country to randomly select schools for the installation of air filters. That would rapidly generate a ton of additional data, and if the results continued to be promising, the initiative could be made universal very quickly.

The benefits, on their face, would be extremely large at a relatively low cost. And since air pollution is generally worse in lower-income communities, you would not only raise test scores nationally, but make progress on the big socioeconomic gaps in student achievement that have proven very difficult to remedy.

Sen. Susan Collins, in August 2016 when she assumed Hillary Clinton would be the next president:

"I will not be voting for Donald Trump for president. This is not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican. But Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country."

Collins in January 2020 on her decision to protect Trump with a sham impeachment hearing:

"I don't think Chuck Schumer is very interested in my opinion since he's just launched a website in Maine and just committed an additional $700,000 in additional negative advertising from the Majority Forward PAC. […] I don’t think he's really very interested in doing anything but trying to defeat me by telling lies to the people of Maine. And you can quote me on that."

So much for that whole "impartial juror" schtick she was spouting all fall.

She's as petty a partisan as Moscow Mitch could hope for, and an easily bribed one, at that. She's firmly joined the ranks of party-over-country Republicans. She needs to be defeated.

Collins has chosen her side, and it's not Maine any more. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

President Trump addresses the situation with Iran during a press conference on January 8, 2020. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

This was not the Iran “victory” speech Trump needed to give.

Donald Trump had the chance of his presidency to stand at a White House lectern, look out on the country he leads, and declare to the world his victory over Iran after a deadly standoff.

He blew that chance.

Trump did the bare minimum in his Wednesday morning address, which was to recognize that Iran’s weak attack on two American military sites in Iraq was a deescalation. Instead of specifically targeting US troops at al-Asad airbase and Erbil, it appears Tehran may have missed them on purpose, leading to zero US or Iraqi casualties.

“Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world,” Trump said.

But then his remarks took a turn: He chose not to take the victory lap and use the occasion to boast about his diplomatic and military prowess. He instead escalated his pressure campaign against Iran — the same campaign that fueled this crisis in the first place.

The three ways Trump needlessly escalated the Iran standoff

First, Trump announced he would impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic, increasing America’s economic squeeze on the country that has already decimated its economy.

“The United States will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime,” Trump said. “These powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior.”

Iran aims to force Trump to lift the sanctions campaign by bombing oil tankers in international waters, striking Saudi oil fields, and even downing US drones. Those actions partly helped bring Washington and Tehran to the brink of all-out war this week. Adding further sanctions on Iran is more likely to lead Tehran to lash out again than to step back from the brink.

Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images

Second, Trump called on all parties to the Iran nuclear deal to exit it like the US did in 2018. “The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China to ... break away from the remnants of the Iran deal or JCPOA, and we must all work together toward making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place,” he stated.

That’s unlikely to happen, as those European nations want to do business with Iran and Russia and China are Tehran’s allies. But it gives the Islamic Republic another reason to unshackle itself from the nuclear deal’s restrictions and move closer to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Earlier this week, the Iranian regime said it would no longer honor its nuclear enrichment limits — possibly inching it closer to getting the bomb.

Finally, Trump called on the US’s NATO allies to be “much more involved in the Middle East process.” It’s not entirely clear what the president means by this, especially since NATO forces are already in the Middle East, including at the bases in Iraq that were targeted by Iran Tuesday night.

One possibility is that Trump wants more troops from NATO countries to deploy to the region to fend off future Iranian aggression. It’s doubtful allies would have the appetite for that, though, and surely Iran wouldn’t want more Western forces in the area. After all, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated on Wednesday morning that Iran’s goal now is to force US troops out of the Middle East. Having more troops enter the region to join American ones would be viewed as an escalation by Tehran.

Some international security experts, like the Atlantic Council’s Barry Pavel, see Trump’s rhetoric as consistent with his previous policies. “He still wants to get a deal” with Iran, he told me. “That’s his top policy goal. That’s how he got started and that’s where he wants to end up.” And Trump was never going to stop his maximum-pressure campaign against Iran, and one speech was never going to make both countries suddenly become friends.

But he did have a chance not to shoot another shot at Iran when it was waving the white flag. With these new statements and actions, then, Trump made the US-Iran standoff worse when he could’ve made it better.