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A realist’s guide to impeachment

A realist’s guide to impeachment

David Frum writes: Here are some guidelines to impeachment for realists: 1. Keep the story simple. Some have proposed a massive array of inquiries, delving into every facet of Trump’s corruption and abuse of power. This approach ensures a process that goes slow, yields confusing masses of facts, and opens endless opportunities for bad faith excuse-making by Trump and his enablers. Congress is not very good at investigating, and the more investigations Congress pursues, the more it is likely to…

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400 million indigenous people protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity

400 million indigenous people protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity

The Guardian reports: As presidents, prime ministers and corporate executives gathered at the UN climate action summit on Monday, for the first time, an indigenous representative joined the event in a formal capacity. Tuntiak Katan of the Ecuadorian Shuar people spoke on behalf of the International Indigenous People’s Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), a caucus of indigenous rights advocates who, for years, has been working towards more robust participation and inclusion at the UN level in response to the climate…

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Melting permafrost, caused by global warming, poses a huge threat to Russia’s oil and gas industry

Melting permafrost, caused by global warming, poses a huge threat to Russia’s oil and gas industry

Julian Lee writes: President Vladimir Putin needs to go green quickly to stop the permafrost from melting, so that Russian oil and gas companies can keep pumping the hydrocarbons that are warming the planet and making the permafrost melt. Even I’m struggling with the warped logic of that one, but it’s the conclusion I’ve reached from Russia’s sudden ratification of the Paris climate accord and from reading the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Until now, climate…

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The failed personal, social, and economic promise of Silicon Valley

The failed personal, social, and economic promise of Silicon Valley

Kim Phillips-Fein writes: For many years, Silicon Valley and the machines that came out of it were presented as personally, economically, and socially transformative, agents of revolution at both the level of the individual and the whole social order. They were democratizing, uncontrolled, anarchic, and new. Most of all, they were supposed to be fun—to open up a space of play and freedom. How is it, then, that just a few decades in, we find ourselves trapped in a dreary…

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Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election

Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election

The Washington Post reports: President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted alarmed White House officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter. The comments, which have not been previously reported, were…

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History isn’t a good guide for understanding Trump’s impeachment case

History isn’t a good guide for understanding Trump’s impeachment case

David Greenberg writes: The internet is awash in historical explainers and hot takes trying to make sense of our sudden constitutional crisis. Marshalled on behalf of a range of competing viewpoints, the arguments are sprinkled with references to Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton—the three presidents who faced impeachment proceedings before Donald Trump. Which one applies to the current president and his apparent effort to enlist Ukraine in going after Joe Biden, his potential opponent in the 2020 election?…

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Trump regards attorney general like his personal lawyer

Trump regards attorney general like his personal lawyer

The Associated Press reports: As Washington plunges into impeachment, Attorney General William Barr finds himself engulfed in the political firestorm, facing questions about his role in President Donald Trump’s outreach to Ukraine and the administration’s attempts to keep a whistleblower complaint from Congress. Trump repeatedly told Ukraine’s president in a telephone call that Barr and Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani could help investigate Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden, according to a rough transcript of that summertime conversation. Justice Department officials…

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Under Trump, the United States has turned into a rule-of-law catastrophe

Under Trump, the United States has turned into a rule-of-law catastrophe

Anne Applebaum writes: In the nearly 30 years that have elapsed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, I doubt whether a single day has gone by without some Western diplomat, somewhere in the post-Soviet space, talking about the need for the rule of law. The U.S.S.R. was a totalitarian state in which judges and prosecutors were controlled by the ruling party. The result was injustice, oppression and corruption. Since the former Soviet republics gained independence, Europeans and…

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NRA’s LaPierre asks Trump to ‘stop the games’ over gun legislation in discussion about its support

NRA’s LaPierre asks Trump to ‘stop the games’ over gun legislation in discussion about its support

The New York Times reports: President Trump met in the White House on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and discussed prospective gun legislation and whether the N.R.A. could provide support for the president as he faces impeachment and a more difficult re-election campaign, according to two people familiar with the meeting. During the meeting, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting…

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Hunter Biden and the corrupt culture of influence-peddling that has long been deemed socially acceptable

Hunter Biden and the corrupt culture of influence-peddling that has long been deemed socially acceptable

Sarah Chayes writes: How did this get to be standard practice? The whistle-blower scandal that has prompted the fourth presidential impeachment process in American history has put a spectacle from earlier this decade back on display: the jaw-smacking feast of scavengers who circled around Ukraine as Viktor Yanukovych, a Moscow-linked kleptocrat, was driven from power. Ukraine’s crisis was the latest to energize a club whose culture has come to be treated as normal—a culture in which top-tier lawyers, former U.S….

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To pay attention, the brain uses filters, not a spotlight

To pay attention, the brain uses filters, not a spotlight

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: We can pick out a conversation in a loud room, amid the rise and fall of other voices or the hum of an air conditioner. We can spot a set of keys in a sea of clutter, or register a raccoon darting into the path of our onrushing car. Somehow, even with massive amounts of information flooding our senses, we’re able to focus on what’s important and act on it. Attentional processes are the brain’s way of…

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How an intelligence analyst, playing by the rules, triggered the greatest reckoning of Trump’s presidency

How an intelligence analyst, playing by the rules, triggered the greatest reckoning of Trump’s presidency

Mike Giglio writes: On his first day in office, in January 2017, Donald Trump paid a visit to the CIA. He stood before its Memorial Wall, which then had 117 stars commemorating those who lost their lives in the line of duty. “I want to just let you know, I am so behind you,” Trump told the crowd of intelligence officials who’d gathered to hear him speak. “And I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted,…

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Trump, the TV president, finally meets a media story he can’t control

Trump, the TV president, finally meets a media story he can’t control

Margaret Sullivan writes: Donald Trump’s presidency would have been impossible without his reality-TV fame from NBC’s “The Apprentice.” And he is skilled at dominating the visual medium that still matters so much — even in our digital age — from his raucous rallies to his impromptu media gaggles outside a whirring helicopter to his symbiotic relationship with Fox News. But not this week. In a tectonic shift of media attention, every major television network — broadcast and cable alike —…

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A special counsel must investigate Rudy Giuliani and Bill Barr

A special counsel must investigate Rudy Giuliani and Bill Barr

Noah Feldman writes: The Department of Justice must investigate Rudy Giuliani’s potential crimes in trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election. It also needs to investigate whether White House officials criminally covered up evidence of Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. And because the whistle-blower complaint alleges that the top law enforcement official in the federal government, Attorney General William Barr, “appears to be involved” in these events, a special counsel must be appointed. Barr…

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