In an editorial, The Guardian says: Brexit is not over. The separation has been agreed. But not the terms. We are now in transition for a further 11 months to an unknown destination. In practice, everyday life today will be the same as before. The country will not plunge into the abyss, a fact that will be shamelessly misrepresented over the coming weeks by Brexit supporters. For the rest of this year, EU rules and obligations still apply. But it…
A. Trevor Thrall and Jordan Cohen write: The Trump administration announced Friday that it is adding six new countries to the existing travel ban, joining the seven already on the list. The ban means that citizens living in these nations cannot get visas to travel to the United States without getting a special waiver, dramatically reducing the number of people from these countries visiting the United States. The administration’s rationale for the ban is that conditions in those countries, especially…
The Washington Post reports: Hours after the Senate voted against seeking new evidence in the impeachment case against President Trump, the administration acknowledged the existence of two dozen emails that could reveal the president’s thinking about withholding military aid to Ukraine. In a midnight court filing, the Department of Justice explained why it shouldn’t have to unredact copies of more than 100 emails written by officials at the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department about the hold…
The Washington Post reports: A trove of documents released on Friday evening provide the clearest glimpse yet into how President Trump’s inaccurate statements, altered forecast map and tweets regarding Hurricane Dorian’s forecast path rattled top officials along with rank and file scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in September. The documents, released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from The Washington Post and other media outlets, show that the No. 2 official at the agency,…
Frankie Schembri writes: In a reversal of its decision last week, the World Health Organization on Thursday officially declared the spread of a novel coronavirus a global health emergency. The virus, which first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of December, has according to the WHO been confirmed in 7,818 cases globally, though China itself has reported higher numbers. Most infections reported by the WHO — 7,736 as of Thursday — remained in China, as have all of…
BuzzFeed reports: A popular pro-Trump website has released the personal information of a scientist from Wuhan, China, falsely accusing them of creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon, in a plot it said is the real-life version of the video game Resident Evil. On Wednesday, far-right news site Zero Hedge claimed without evidence that a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology created the strain of the virus that has led the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency….
Peter Hamby writes: The Bernie bed-wetting has reached full-blown rubber sheet mode. With Bernie Sanders hanging on to a slim polling lead in Iowa and an even bigger one in New Hampshire, panicked Democrats are sounding the alarm that Bernie Sanders could surf a wave of unstoppable momentum all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. Nominating Sanders to run against Donald Trump would be an “Act of Insanity,” according to New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait. “Dems Tormented…
BuzzFeed reports: After days of arguments and questioning in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, many Republican senators have come to the same conclusion: The president did it, and they don’t care. House Democrats voted to impeach Trump on claims he abused his power by withholding military aid to Ukraine in exchange for an announcement the country would investigate political rival, Joe Biden. Democrats also argued the president stonewalled the House’s investigation leading to the second article of impeachment, obstruction of…
The New York Times reports: More than two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate his political opponents, President Trump directed John R. Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton. Mr. Trump gave the instruction, Mr. Bolton wrote, during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney,…
The Guardian reports: Emmanuel Macron warned Europeans that Brexit was an “alarm signal” of huge historic significance as the EU flag was hauled from the flagpole outside the UK government’s main office in Brussels, marking the end of Britain’s membership of the bloc. Speaking in Paris, the French president referenced the defining nature of the British decision to turn its back on 47 years of membership. “There is a long history between France and Britain, one made of blood, freedom,…
Daniel Levy writes: From the mid-1990s to the early noughties, much of my professional life was spent in a rather niche pursuit that came flooding back to me with yesterday’s release of President Trump’s “Peace Vision.” The drafting of Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements became my thing—sometimes in uniform serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sometimes as a concerned citizen in informal and often clandestine talks, and sometimes as an adviser in the offices of the Israeli prime minister and then…
McKay Coppins writes: Jonah goldberg, the conservative author and longtime fixture at National Review, used to have a go-to metaphor he’d deploy whenever he found himself defending one of his noisier compatriots in the right-wing media. “I had this whole spiel about how the conservative movement is like a symphony,” he told me in a recent interview. “You need the fine woodwinds like Yuval Levin or Irving Kristol, but you also need that guy with the big gong who just…
Noah Feldman writes: As Republicans scramble to argue that they don’t need to call witnesses in President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, one argument seems to be gaining traction: that witnesses are irrelevant, because even if Trump did everything he’s accused of doing, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. This argument isn’t merely wrong. It is the single most dangerous argument that any of Trump’s defenders have made during the entire impeachment process. If abuse of power isn’t…
The Washington Post reports: Ten days before Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman dined with President Trump at his Washington hotel, they were part of a small group of Republican Party donors who met with the president at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, a new recording shows. The two men — who later assisted Rudolph W. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine — were part of a gathering held in an ornate room of the property and also attended by Republican National Committee Chairwoman…
Politico reports: Democrats are bracing for the possibility that if President Donald Trump loses the 2020 election, he and his aides will bungle a smooth handover of power — and maybe even try to outright sabotage the transition. At least one outside group that works with the 2020 Democratic campaigns has quietly launched a transition-related effort designed to offer an early look at the landscape that awaits them if they oust Trump. Separately, a prominent good government organization, the Partnership…
Anand Menon writes: Dawn, 24 June 2016. College Green. That small patch of grass opposite the Palace of Westminster. A flag-waving group of men – Nigel Farage and co – celebrates raucously. An ashen-faced Jeremy Corbyn arrives to tell the prime minister that article 50 should be triggered immediately. A senior FT reporter runs past, gasping that “the PM’s resigned and it’s only the third story on our website”. And so, the post-referendum odyssey began. In the sun, on the…