Big Time News Blog: 12/15/19

Sunday, December 15, 2019

G.D.P. Is Broken, but We Can Fix It

By BY DAVID LEONHARDT from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2RQwgs2

Operation Plunder: How 1 Hellish Battle Slowed The Allies' Capture Of Nazi Germany

The battle was utter hell.

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Trump set to announce he's withdrawing 4,000 troops from Afghanistan amid troubled peace talks with Taliban

President Trump in 2016 campaigned on pulling the US out of wars like Afghanistan, but has been unable to make good on that promise.

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Greta Thunberg apologizes for "against the wall" comment

Thunberg says she was translating a Swedish saying into English and was not calling for violence.

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Wisconsin judge's ruling could purge 200,000 from voter rolls

* Voters must confirm address within 30 days or lose franchise * Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016A Wisconsin judge’s order to boot more than 200,000 people from voter rolls in the battleground state spurred condemnation from Democrats, amid claims of voter suppression.If the decision stands, it could have an impact on the 2020 presidential election. In 2016, Donald Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes. Subsequent contests have also returned tight margins.“I won the race for governor by less than 30,000 votes,” tweeted Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat who beat the former Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker last year.“This move pushed by Republicans to remove 200,000 Wisconsinites from the voter rolls is just another attempt at overriding the will of the people and stifling the democratic process.“Voting is a fundamental right, and we should be making it easier for folks to vote, not harder. It’s time for Republicans to move on from the election we had more than a year ago and start working on the pressing issues facing our state.”In October, the Wisconsin Elections Commission mailed a letter to 234,000 voters who it thought might have moved, requesting that they update registration information.As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (Will), a conservative group, then filed suit.The lawsuit said the voters contacted should have 30 days to confirm their addresses. If they did not do so, Will said, their registration status should be changed from “eligible” to “ineligible”.Will asked county circuit judge Paul Malloy to grant an injunction that would require election authorities to purge the rolls. In his ruling on Friday, Malloy identified a legal obligation to strip the rolls in 30 days.“I don’t want to see someone deactivated but I don’t write the law,” said Malloy, who was appointed in 2002 by the then Republican governor, Scott McCallum, and has since been re-elected. “There’s no basis for saying 12 to 24 months is a good time frame. It’s not that difficult to do it sooner … If you don’t like [it], you have to go back to the legislature.”In a statement, the elections commission said it would analyze “the judge’s oral decision and [consult] with the six members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission on next steps”.Will’s president, Rick Esenberg, said: “This case is about whether a state agency can ignore clearly written state law. Today’s court order requires the Wisconsin Elections Commission to follow state law, and we look forward to making the case that they must continue to follow state law.”Voting authorities and the League of Women Voters indicated they would fight the decision, which Malloy refused to stay pending appeals.According to the Journal Sentinel, the cities of Milwaukee and Madison – Democratic strongholds – are home to 14% of the state’s registered voters but received 23% of letters sent out. Fifty-five percent of the mailings, meanwhile, went to areas where Hillary Clinton beat Trump.Eric Holder, US attorney general under Barack Obama, commented on Twitter.“Here they go,” he said. “Voter purge in Wisconsin that disproportionately targets Democrats, people of color and those who voted for Hillary in 2016. The expected unfairness. Fight this Wisconsin! Fight for a fair election.”Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democratic congressman, wrote: “At a time when voter suppression [and] purging eligible voters from rolls is rampant nationwide, we should do everything in our power to ensure no one wrongfully loses their voice at the ballot box in Wisconsin or anywhere.”Ben Wikler, chair of the state Democratic party, criticized the decision and called for action, writing: “A rightwing lawsuit triggered a 200,000-voter purge in Wisconsin yesterday. But we still have same-day registration in this state. So now our job is to organize harder than they can suppress.”

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Fox News poll on impeachment contradicts President Trump

A new Fox News poll on voter support for impeachment contradicted President Trump, who recently boasted major support in favor of “No Impeachment.”

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Anger erupts at U.N. climate summit as major economies resist bold action

Major economies resisted calls for bolder climate commitments as a U.N. summit in Madrid limped toward a delayed conclusion on Saturday, dimming hopes that nations will act in time to stop rising temperatures devastating people and the natural world. With the two-week gathering spilling into the weekend, campaigners and many delegates slammed Chile, presiding over the talks, for drafting a summit text that they said risked throwing the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle global warming into reverse. "At a time when scientists are queuing up to warn about terrifying consequences if emissions keep rising, and school children are taking to the streets in their millions, what we have here in Madrid is a betrayal of people across the world," said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think-tank in Nairobi.

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Senate Democrats Demand White House Testimony on Impeachment

(Bloomberg) -- Democrats demanded that members of the Trump administration testify in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, in a letter sent Sunday night from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.Schumer laid out detailed proposals for the impeachment trial, which he said should start on Jan. 9 after “pre-trial housekeeping measures” are adopted Jan. 6, and follow a similar structure to the 1999 trial of President Bill Clinton.Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Adviser John Bolton were among those named by Schumer.The letter comes as a top Democrat in the House, Representative Adam Schiff said the impeachment process won’t be a failure if Trump is acquitted by the Senate, as seems almost certain. Republicans control the 100-member body; some GOP members have declared their minds made up.“No, it isn’t a failure. At least it’s not a failure in the sense of our constitutional duty in the House,” Schiff, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.”On the same program, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, continued to press the Democrats’ case, saying Trump “poses a continuing threat” to U.S. national security and democracy.“Do we have a constitutional democracy, or do we have a monarchy where the president is unaccountable? That’s what at stake here,” Nadler said.Here’s the Story on Trump, Ukraine and Impeachment: QuickTakeThe judiciary committee on Friday recommended Trump’s impeachment in a party-line vote. The panel acted on two counts, one charging Trump with abuse of power and the other with obstruction of Congress for his conduct around a July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president.Bitter partisan disagreement continues over whether the ultimate constitutional punishment fits the nature of the president’s alleged misconduct. Across the country, polls show about half of Americans support impeaching Trump, with responses falling along party lines.Trump said again on Sunday that he’d done nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine, including a “PERFECT phone call” with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump urged the Ukrainian leader to “look into” allegations of wrongdoing by former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 competitor, and his son, Hunter.The votes to advance the articles of impeachment for consideration by the full House this week will almost inevitably lead to Trump becoming only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.Schiff said he was “confident” there will be a majority in the House to impeach the president, even as Republicans target 31 Democratic lawmakers from districts that Trump won in 2016.The process would then move to a trial in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority.A Guide to the Investigations and Lawsuits Plaguing the PresidentSenator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a top Trump ally, on Saturday rejected the idea that he must be a “fair juror” in the Senate. “I think impeachment is going to end quickly in the Senate,” Graham told CNN from Qatar, where he was attending the Doha Forum. “I want to end this matter quickly and move on to other things.”A handful of Democrats are likely to vote against impeachment in the House, Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, predicted Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He indicted that he would most likely vote to acquit Trump.By contrast, Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, indicated a more open mind. “We ought to hear what the House impeachment managers have to say, give the president‘s attorneys an opportunity to make the defense, and then make a decision about whether, and to what extent it will go forward from there,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said on CNN that he would withhold judgment “until I see the evidence and hear the prosecution.”Trump UnboundBrown and Nadler joined other Democrats in criticizing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for vowing, in an interview on Fox News on Thursday, “total coordination with the White House” on impeachment strategy.“The constitution prescribes a special oath for the senators when they sit as a trial in impeachment,” Nadler said. “They have to pledge to do impartial justice. And here you have the majority leader of the Senate, in effect the foreman of the jury, saying he’s going to work hand in glove with the defense attorney.”On “Meet the Press,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said that if Trump is exonerated, “he will be unbounded. I’m gravely concerned about what else he might do between now and the 2020 election, when there are no restrictions on his behavior.”Graham also told CBS on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” that he would welcome a meeting with Rudy Giuliani to discuss the Trump lawyer’s just-ended trip to Ukraine to dig up political dirt for Trump.“I don’t know what Rudy found. I don’t know what he was up to when he was in the Ukraine,” Graham said. “We can look at what Rudy’s got and Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and anything else you want to look at, after impeachment. But if Rudy wants to come to the Judiciary Committee and testify about what he found, he’s welcome to do so.”Guiliani issued a series of tweets on Sunday that he said were evidence “garnered through hundreds of hours of research” including the visit to Ukraine, where he traveled with a camera crew from the conservative One America News cable network.The impeachment process threatens to create peril for Democratic lawmakers in moderate districts, including several elected in November’s midterm election and others who serve in districts won by Trump in 2016.On Saturday, freshman Representative Jeff Van Drew reportedly was considering changing his party affiliation to Republican, a possible switch applauded by the president on Twitter.On ABC, Nadler said Van Drew’s falling approval ratings in his Southern New Jersey district were the real motivation. “What he’s reacting to is public polling that shows he can’t get renominated, his electorate in his district is 24% to renominate him and 60% to nominate someone else,” Nadler said.\--With assistance from Erik Wasson.To contact the reporters on this story: Jordan Yadoo in Washington at jyadoo@bloomberg.net;Hailey Waller in New York at hwaller@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Ian FisherFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Comey Admits Errors in Surveillance Warrants, but Defends F.B.I.

By BY MICHAEL D. SHEAR from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/38BijEl

Super Tuesday voters prefer a practical Democratic nominee to an idealistic one, poll shows

Most Democratic voters in Super Tuesday states don't want to do any dreaming this election. Instead they want some a candidate with some old-fashioned practicality, a new CBS News/YouGov poll shows.Among the Democrats, or Democrat-leaning, voters polled, 59 percent said they prefer a practical nominee compared to just 19 percent who said they want a realistic. That's apparently a good thing for former Vice President Joe Biden who led among those surveyed who prefer a practical candidate. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the favorite among the idealistic crowd, while the other top contender at the moment, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) held steady in both groups.> WHAT DO DEMOCRATS IN SUPER TUESDAY STATES WANT? A nominee who’s practical over one that is idealistic. Biden leads among those who want practicality, while Sanders has the edge among those who want an idealistic one. Warren gets a similar level of support among both groups. pic.twitter.com/Xy4jReZs1z> > — Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) December 15, 2019Somewhat surprisingly, the numbers are pretty consistent across demographics. Men and women prefer practicality at the same rate, as do millennials and baby boomers. And those who consider themselves to be more liberal in ideology are actually more in favor of practicality than conservative-leaning Democratic voters, who appreciate idealism at a higher clip. Black voters have one of the lowest rates favoring practicality at just 44 percent, but there's not much variation when it comes to idealism, which hovers at 22 percent. The difference, therefore, comes from the 34 percent who aren't sure which they prefer.The CBS Survey was conducted by YouGov between Dec. 3 and Dec. 11. The sample includes 10,379 self-identified Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters in 14 states expected to hold primaries on Super Tuesday. The margin of error is 1.3 percentage points. Read the full results here.More stories from theweek.com Trump's pathological obsession with being laughed at The most important day of the impeachment inquiry Jerry Falwell Jr.'s false gospel of memes

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New Zealand eruption death toll rises to 18

The death toll from New Zealand's White Island volcano eruption rose to 18 Sunday, including two people whose bodies have not been recovered, police said. Deputy police commissioner Mike Clement said there was "every chance" the bodies had been washed into the sea from the stream where they were last seen Monday. The death toll now stands at 18 after an Australian victim who had been repatriated to Sydney died in hospital almost a week after the deadly eruption.

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75 years on, Battle of the Bulge memories bond people

THIMISTER-CLERMONT, Belgium (AP) — As a schoolboy three quarters of a century ago, Marcel Schmetz would regularly see open trucks rumble past to a makeshift American cemetery — filled with bodies, some headless, some limbless, blood seeping from the vehicles onto the roads that the U.S. soldiers had given their lives to liberate. Sometimes, Schmetz said, there were over 200bodies a day, casualties of one of the bloodiest and most important battles in World War II: The Battle of the Bulge which started 75 years ago on Monday and effectively sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany. ”It gave me nightmares," Schmetz said.

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Blowback from U.K. election burns Warren, Sanders

Centrists warn Corbyn defeat highlights the dangers of a progressive nominee.

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Purdue Pharma’s foreign affiliate now selling overdose cure

Some conference attendees were stunned when they saw the company logo: Mundipharma, the international affiliate of Purdue Pharma — the maker of the blockbuster opioid, OxyContin, widely blamed for unleashing the American overdose epidemic. “You’re in the business of selling medicine that causes addiction and overdoses, and now you’re in the business of selling medicine that treats addiction and overdoses?” asked Dr. Andrew Kolodny, an outspoken critic of Purdue who has testified against the company in court. As Purdue Pharma buckles under a mountain of litigation and public protest in the United States, its foreign affiliate, Mundipharma, has expanded abroad, using some of the same tactics to sell the addictive opioids that made its owners, the Sackler family, among the richest in the world.

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Pawn shop operator Ahmed A-Hady arrested as Jersey City shooting investigation expands

A pawn shop operator was arrested on a weapons charge as authorities expanded their investigation into last week's Jersey City shooting rampage.

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Boris Johnson's victory is 'catastrophic warning' to Democrats: Bloomberg

Boris Johnson's election victory is a 'catastrophic warning' to Democrats in the United States, presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg has warned.

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China welcomes preliminary deal in trade war it blames on US

China expressed cautious optimism Saturday about a first-step trade agreement that dials down a trade war it blames the U.S. for starting. Chinese experts and news media joined government officials in saying the deal would reduce uncertainty for companies, at least in the short term. “It at least stabilizes the situation and lays a foundation for the next round of trade talks or canceling additional tariffs in the future," said Tu Xinquan, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

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An exclusive fundraiser reveals Pete Buttigieg is being backed by some of Silicon Valley's wealthiest families

Buttigieg has come under fire from rival Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren for his ties to big tech.

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Switzerland Plans to Send Its Old Fighter Jets Back to the U.S.

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is expected to buy 22 aging fighter jets from Switzerland, a country that’s struggling to modernize its own air force.U.S. Navy representatives and the Swiss defense procurement agency, known as Armasuisse, discussed the deal in July, an agency spokesman said by email on Sunday. The contract is expected to be signed once U.S. lawmakers approve the fiscal 2020 defense budget, he said.President Donald Trump is seeking $718 billion in Pentagon funding for 2020, including $39.7 million for the F-5s, an aircraft first delivered to Switzerland in 1978. Nowadays, the U.S. uses the F-5 to simulate enemy planes in aerial combat training.Switzerland has been trying to buy new warplanes for years. Voters in 2014 rejected a 3.1 billion-franc ($3.2 billion) order for Saab AB Gripen fighter jets. Switzerland now plans to spend about 6 billion francs on new fighter jets, according to SonntagsZeitung newspaper and previous Swiss media reports.“If the Americans want to take over the scrap iron, they should do it,” Beat Flach, a Green Liberal lawmaker, told SonntagsZeitung, which reported on the planned sale on Sunday. “It’s better than having the Tigers rot in a parking lot.”To contact the reporter on this story: Albertina Torsoli in Geneva at atorsoli@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Beth Mellor at bmellor@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka, James AmottFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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