Attention to the Unseen

CNN reports: Hundreds of veterans of Barack Obama’s campaigns and administration have signed on to endorse Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president, as multiple Democratic presidential candidates compete to claim the popular former president’s political coalition and legacy. With the Iowa caucuses less than two months away, more than 200 Obama alumni joined a signature-gathering effort led by a pair of former senior Obama aides, Sara El-Amine and Jon Carson. Among other roles, El-Amine was national director of Obama’s 2012 re-election…

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Noah Feldman writes: The jockeying has already begun over the structure of President Donald Trump’s Senate trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has discussed it with the White House counsel; Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has sent McConnell a letter proposing detailed protocols. All this action, even before the House of Representatives has formally impeached Trump, might be making you wonder: Isn’t there some pre-existing trial protocol required by the Constitution? Do we really have to have a debate about…

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., fields questions from reporters about an impeachment trial in the Senate, Dec. 10, 2019. AP/J. Scott Applewhite By Steven Lubet, Northwestern University Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell created a predictable stir when he told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would structure the impending impeachment trial of President Donald Trump in “total coordination with the White House counsel’s office.” He added, “There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position…

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The Washington Post reports: Overnight, the number of registered voters in Georgia shrank by more than 300,000 in a contested but court-sanctioned action that could redefine the 2020 election, critics warned. State officials have downplayed the mass cancellation, arguing it is routine “list maintenance.” Others say the practice amounts to a large-scale and undemocratic voter purge, which comes just over three months before Georgia’s presidential primaries. This week, a federal judge allowed the secretary of state’s office to remove about…

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  In the weeks leading up to the UK general election triggered by the Brexit crisis, Phoebe Greenwood and Ekaterina Ochagavia drove the length of the contentious border dividing Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland.

Politico reports: On the eve of his likely impeachment, President Donald Trump has opted to act as his own defense lawyer. In a six-page, stream-of-consciousness diatribe sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and released by the White House on Tuesday afternoon, Trump denounced the Democrats’ two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — as “not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory,” engaging with a process the White House had until now spurned in protest….

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George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson write: Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics. As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character. That’s why we are announcing the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country’s story and values,…

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Matthew Yglesias writes: Democrats have a Senate problem, and not just in the sense that Republicans currently hold the majority or that the prospect of that changing in 2020 is relatively slim. The problem is that the odds of ever changing it are slimmer than is generally realized. Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and advocacy organization, is trying to raise alarm bells about the issue. In a new memo, co-founder Colin McAuliffe writes that “the Senate is an…

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