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Full text of the whistle-blower complaint describing evidence of Trump’s flagrant abuse of power

Full text of the whistle-blower complaint describing evidence of Trump’s flagrant abuse of power

In a letter addressed to the chairs of the Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence, the whistle-blower wrote: In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political…

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Former Ukraine prosecutor says Hunter Biden ‘did not violate anything’

Former Ukraine prosecutor says Hunter Biden ‘did not violate anything’

The Washington Post reports: A former top Ukrainian prosecutor, whose allegations were at the heart of the dirt-digging effort by Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Thursday he believed that Hunter Biden did not run afoul of any laws in Ukraine. “From the perspective of Ukrainian legislation, he did not violate anything,” former Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko told The Washington Post in his first interview since the disclosure of a whistleblower complaint alleging pressure by President Trump on Ukraine’s president, Volodymr…

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Trump’s asylum ban will result in the death, kidnapping and torture of individuals seeking safety

Trump’s asylum ban will result in the death, kidnapping and torture of individuals seeking safety

By Sarah F. Rogerson, Albany Law School The Trump administration’s latest restrictive immigration policy, known as the asylum ban, was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The ban effectively ends asylum relief for the vast majority of refugees seeking it at the U.S.-Mexico border. It prevents individuals from applying for asylum in the United States if they could have pursued asylum in another country first. There are few exceptions: (1) if you lose your asylum claim in a third…

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Income inequality in America is the highest it’s been since census started tracking it, data shows

Income inequality in America is the highest it’s been since census started tracking it, data shows

The Washington Post reports: Last year, income inequality in the United States reached its highest level since the Census Bureau started tracking it in 1967, according to federal data released Thursday. In the midst of the longest economic expansion the United States has ever seen, with poverty and unemployment rates at historic lows, the separation between rich and poor from 2017 and 2018 was greater than it has ever been, federal data show. Nine states saw spikes in that divide:…

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Consciousness doesn’t depend on language

Consciousness doesn’t depend on language

Christof Koch writes: The contrast could not have been starker—here was one of the world’s most revered figures, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, expressing his belief that all life is sentient, while I, as a card-carrying neuroscientist, presented the contemporary Western consensus that some animals might, perhaps, possibly, share the precious gift of sentience, of conscious experience, with humans. The setting was a symposium between Buddhist monk-scholars and Western scientists in a Tibetan monastery in Southern India, fostering a…

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The world’s oceans are in danger, major climate change report warns

The world’s oceans are in danger, major climate change report warns

The New York Times reports: Earth’s oceans are under severe strain from climate change, a major new United Nations report warns, which threatens everything from the ability to harvest seafood to the well-being of hundreds of millions of people living along the coasts. Rising temperatures are contributing to a drop in fish populations in many regions, and oxygen levels in the ocean are declining while acidity levels are on the rise, posing risks to important marine ecosystems, according to the…

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In seeking Ukraine favor, Trump was vulnerable to foreign spies, intelligence inspector general warned

In seeking Ukraine favor, Trump was vulnerable to foreign spies, intelligence inspector general warned

Reuters reports: U.S. President Donald Trump potentially exposed himself to “serious national security and counter-intelligence risks” when he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a leading political rival, Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, and his son, the intelligence community’s inspector general warned. The previously undisclosed warning, included in a Justice Department legal opinion released on Wednesday, reflected the concerns of a whistleblower who filed a complaint about a July 25 call between Trump and then newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr…

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Trump’s ‘complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript’ is unlikely to be a transcript or complete

Trump’s ‘complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript’ is unlikely to be a transcript or complete

Reuters reports: Trump said on Tuesday a “complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript” of the July 25 call would be released on Wednesday. In it, the Republican president is alleged to have pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden, the U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner. The transcript would show the call was “totally appropriate,” Trump said on Twitter. However, standard practice when a president is talking to a foreign leader is not to make a recording but to have…

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Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined

Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined

The Washington Post reports: President Trump’s attempt to pressure the leader of Ukraine followed a months-long fight inside the administration that sidelined national security officials and empowered political loyalists — including the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani — to exploit the U.S. relationship with Kiev, current and former U.S. officials said. The sequence, which began early this year, involved the abrupt removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the circumvention of senior officials on the National Security Council, and…

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Intelligence chief threatened to resign if he couldn’t speak freely before Congress on whistleblower complaint

Intelligence chief threatened to resign if he couldn’t speak freely before Congress on whistleblower complaint

The Washington Post reports: The acting Director of National Intelligence threatened to resign over concerns that the White House might attempt to force him to stonewall Congress when he testifies Thursday about an explosive whistleblower complaint about the president, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The revelation reflects the extraordinary tensions between the White House and the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence official over a matter that has triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump. The officials said…

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How the Little Ice Age ushered in the modern world

How the Little Ice Age ushered in the modern world

Philipp Blom writes: The Little Ice Age offers a historical point of cautious comparison for the most existentially urgent problem of the present. Cooling is not heating, of course, and the Little Ice Age was almost certainly not man-made. Yet while the cultural, economic, political, and technological context was quite different, it was exactly these areas of human life that would change dramatically as direct or indirect consequences of societies being forced to adapt to climate change. A whole world…

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Pelosi announces formal impeachment inquiry of Trump, saying his actions were a ‘betrayal of national security’

Pelosi announces formal impeachment inquiry of Trump, saying his actions were a ‘betrayal of national security’

The Washington Post reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, a dramatic turnaround by the Democratic leader that sets up a constitutional and political clash pitting the Congress against the nation’s chief executive. “The actions of the Trump presidency have revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said in brief remarks. “Therefore,…

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UK supreme court ruling is a devastating blow for a failed prime minister

UK supreme court ruling is a devastating blow for a failed prime minister

Martin Kettle writes: The supreme court has delivered a comprehensive demolition of Boris Johnson’s government and its handling of Brexit. The unanimous judgment of the 11 justices, announced by Lady Hale this morning, amounts to a root and branch rejection of the prime minister’s attempts to rule without parliament, to take Britain out of the European Union by 31 October without a deal, and to contrive a premature general election. The judgment was incisive and without any waffle. It was…

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