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Trump’s conduct reaches ‘threshold of impeachment’ says first GOP lawmaker

Trump’s conduct reaches ‘threshold of impeachment’ says first GOP lawmaker

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The New York Times reports: Representative Justin Amash, an iconoclastic Republican of Michigan who has considered a run against President Trump in 2020, became the first member of his party serving in Congress to publicly suggest that the president’s conduct had reached the “threshold of impeachment.” Mr. Amash, 39, used Mr. Trump’s favorite medium — Twitter — to join a groundswell of Democrats who have concluded that the president’s behavior, including instances of potential obstruction of justice laid out in…

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A path for regulators to break up Facebook remains unclear

A path for regulators to break up Facebook remains unclear

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April Glaser writes: Facebook is big. Possibly too big. Which is why the chorus of experts and former Facebookers who think it’s time to break the company up is getting louder. Last Thursday, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wrote a mammoth op-ed in the New York Times about why the company that made him very wealthy should be less powerful. In his view, the way to do that is to make the market more competitive. To do that, Hughes recommends (among…

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Lending practices like those behind 2008 financial crash devastated a generation of taxi drivers

Lending practices like those behind 2008 financial crash devastated a generation of taxi drivers

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The New York Times reports: The phone call that ruined Mohammed Hoque’s life came in April 2014 as he began another long day driving a New York City taxi, a job he had held since emigrating from Bangladesh nine years earlier. The call came from a prominent businessman who was selling a medallion, the coveted city permit that allows a driver to own a yellow cab instead of working for someone else. If Mr. Hoque gave him $50,000 that day,…

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What happened in what was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election?

What happened in what was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election?

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The New York Times reports: The polls said this would be Australia’s climate change election, when voters confronted harsh reality and elected leaders who would tackle the problem. And in some districts, it was true: Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who stymied climate policy for years, lost to an independent who campaigned on the issue. A few other new candidates prioritizing climate change also won. But over all, Australians shrugged off the warming seas killing the Great Barrier Reef…

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Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?

Has the politics of climate change finally reached a tipping point?

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John Vidal writes: Last week a small campaign group in the staunchly conservative town of Shrewsbury called a public meeting about climate change. The organisers were delighted when 150 people turned up. Even they were surprised, though, when people unanimously said they were prepared to give up flying, change their boilers and cars, eat less meat and even overthrow capitalism to get a grip on climate change. But this was just a straw in the political wind whipping through middle…

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Trump shows signs he will pardon servicemen accused or convicted of war crimes

Trump shows signs he will pardon servicemen accused or convicted of war crimes

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The New York Times reports: President Trump has requested the immediate preparation of paperwork needed to pardon several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes — including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse — indicating that he is considering pardons for the men on or around Memorial Day, according to two United States officials. The requests are for Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher of the Navy SEALs, who is scheduled to stand trial…

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Barr’s FBI investigation, Trump and the threat from within

Barr’s FBI investigation, Trump and the threat from within

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Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, writes: On Monday, Attorney General William Barr, acting more like defense counsel for a cornered president than the nation’s top law enforcement official, ordered a U.S. Attorney review the FBI’s decision to open a counterintelligence investigation into alleged ties between Trump associates and Russia in 2016. This action, coupled with Barr’s previous reckless conduct, unwittingly promotes the interests of America’s enemies as Barr perpetuates dangerous conspiracy theories about secret Washington cabals and…

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The partisan divide on how to read the intelligence on Iran

The partisan divide on how to read the intelligence on Iran

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The Atlantic reports: Adam Schiff, the combative chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, didn’t contest the recent intelligence that the Trump administration said was behind its newly aggressive posture toward Iran. Nor did he accuse the White House of misrepresenting it. Instead he returned to a critique that Democrats have made of Trump’s hawkish Iran policy from the start: that it will lead America down the path of an ill-planned confrontation. “It’s not that I think there isn’t intelligence to…

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American journalism is suffering from ‘truth decay’

American journalism is suffering from ‘truth decay’

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Quentin Fottrell writes: American journalism is losing its objectivity. That’s according to a new analysis on news discourse by the RAND Corporation. In the study, released Wednesday, researchers found a major shift occurred between 1989 and 2017 as journalism expanded beyond traditional media, such as newspapers and broadcast networks, to newer media, including 24-hour cable news channels and digital outlets. “Notably, these measurable changes vary in extent and nature for different news platforms,” it found. RAND is a nonprofit nonpartisan…

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Iran threat debate is set off by images of missiles on small boats

Iran threat debate is set off by images of missiles on small boats

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The New York Times reports: The intelligence that caused the White House to escalate its warnings about a threat from Iran came from photographs of missiles on small boats in the Persian Gulf that were put on board by Iranian paramilitary forces, three American officials said. Overhead imagery showed fully assembled missiles, stoking fears that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps would fire them at United States naval ships. Additional pieces of intelligence picked up threats against commercial shipping and potential…

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Iranians do want regime change — but not the kind Washington hawks are pushing

Iranians do want regime change — but not the kind Washington hawks are pushing

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Vali Nasr writes: Talk of “regime change” is once again in the air, and this time Iran is in the gun sights. President Trump — who withdrew from the nuclear deal Iran had signed with the United States, Europe, Russia and China — still insists that his goal is diplomacy. Only “maximum pressure” will bring Iran back to the negotiating table, the White House says: That’s the rationale for punishing economic sanctions that are aimed at reducing Iran’s exports to…

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Venezuela’s collapse is the worst outside of war in decades, economists say

Venezuela’s collapse is the worst outside of war in decades, economists say

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The New York Times reports: Zimbabwe’s collapse under Robert Mugabe. The fall of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s disastrous unraveling in the 1990s. The crumbling of Venezuela’s economy has now outpaced them all. Venezuela’s fall is the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years, economists say. “It’s really hard to think of a human tragedy of this scale outside civil war,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University and former chief economist at the…

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Matt Taibbi’s ‘liberal embrace of war’ screed cites zero liberals embracing war

Matt Taibbi’s ‘liberal embrace of war’ screed cites zero liberals embracing war

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Jonathan Chait writes: Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has taken the brave and lonely stance that William Barr was wise and correct in his presentation of the Mueller report and decision not to charge the president with obstruction. (“It was Mueller, not Barr, who concluded there was no underlying crime,” concluded Taibbi, “so if the next stage of this madness is haggling over an obstruction charge, that would likely entail calling for a prosecution of Trump for obstructing an investigation into…

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Judge orders public release of what Michael Flynn said in call to Russian ambassador

Judge orders public release of what Michael Flynn said in call to Russian ambassador

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The Washington Post reports: A federal judge on Thursday ordered that prosecutors make public a transcript of a phone call that former national security adviser Michael Flynn tried hard to hide with a lie: his conversation with a Russian ambassador in late 2016. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered the government also to provide a public transcript of a November 2017 voice mail involving Flynn. In that sensitive call, President Trump’s attorney left a message for Flynn’s…

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