Browsed by
Category: Politics

A great big gift not on Trump’s disclosure form: Giuliani’s legal advice

A great big gift not on Trump’s disclosure form: Giuliani’s legal advice

The New York Times reports: For the past 20 months, President Trump has received free personal legal services from one of America’s highest-paid lawyers, who has traveled around the country and across the ocean to defend him in the special counsel’s inquiry and press Ukraine to investigate a political rival and unfounded conspiracy theories. The lawyer, of course, is Rudolph W. Giuliani, but Mr. Trump did not mention Mr. Giuliani or his unpaid labor on the annual financial disclosure he…

Read More Read More

Judge’s decision may shine light on secret Trump-Putin meeting notes

Judge’s decision may shine light on secret Trump-Putin meeting notes

Yahoo News reports: A district court judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered administration lawyers to explain why, for more than two years, the White House has refused to turn over to the State Department an interpreter’s notes from a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. That meeting took place in the summer of 2017, during a summit of the G-20 nations in Hamburg, Germany. The two men got along so well that the meeting, which was supposed…

Read More Read More

The American conservatives who believe ‘Russia is on our side’

The American conservatives who believe ‘Russia is on our side’

Anne Applebaum writes: Sherwood Eddy was a prominent American missionary as well as that now rare thing, a Christian socialist. In the 1920s and ’30s, he made more than a dozen trips to the Soviet Union. He was not blind to the problems of the U.S.S.R., but he also found much to like. In place of squabbling, corrupt democratic politicians, he wrote in one of his books on the country, “Stalin rules … by his sagacity, his honesty, his rugged…

Read More Read More

Trump’s Ukraine plot appears to have been financed by Russia

Trump’s Ukraine plot appears to have been financed by Russia

Jonathan Chait writes: President Trump is facing impeachment primarily for abusing his power for political gain, extorting a foreign country to discredit his political rivals. The secondary aspect of the plot is that the target of his extortion is hardly random. Ukraine is the victim of Russian aggression, and Russia’s continuing incursions into Ukrainian territory is the muscle that gave Trump’s threats leverage. Trump’s domestic interests are one intended beneficiary of his scheme. The other is Vladimir Putin. Trump and…

Read More Read More

Eric Holder: William Barr is unfit to be attorney general

Eric Holder: William Barr is unfit to be attorney general

Eric Holder, writes: As a former U.S. attorney general, I am reluctant to publicly criticize my successors. I respect the office and understand just how tough the job can be. But recently, Attorney General William P. Barr has made a series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official that they demand a response from someone who held the same office. Last month, at…

Read More Read More

EU aims to stir global action with pledge on climate crisis

EU aims to stir global action with pledge on climate crisis

The Guardian reports: The EU will attempt to revive the world’s flagging attempts to tackle the climate crisis with a historic proposal from Brussels to halve emissions by 2030, and reach net zero carbon by mid-century. Wednesday’s announcement is seen as the vital first step towards gathering a “coalition of ambition” among key countries to fulfil the pledges of the 2015 Paris agreement, which is in danger of languishing amid deadlocked UN talks. Ursula von der Leyen, the new president…

Read More Read More

The ‘Russia hoax’ is itself a hoax

The ‘Russia hoax’ is itself a hoax

Adam Serwer writes: If you are following mainstream news outlets, you know that in 2016, Donald Trump benefited from a Russian hacking and disinformation campaign designed to help him get elected, even as he sought permission from the Russian government to build a hotel in Moscow. You know that he deflected blame from Russia for that campaign, even as he sought to benefit from it politically. You know that shortly after the election, Trump told Russian officials in the Oval…

Read More Read More

Trump lashes out at FBI director in wake of Justice Department inspector general’s report

Trump lashes out at FBI director in wake of Justice Department inspector general’s report

  The Washington Post reports: President Trump lashed out Tuesday morning at FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, suggesting that “he will never be able to fix the FBI” based on his reaction to a Justice Department inspector general’s report examining the bureau’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign. “I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump tweeted. “With that kind of attitude, he will never…

Read More Read More

Trump called for Seoul evacuation at height of North Korea tensions, new book says

Trump called for Seoul evacuation at height of North Korea tensions, new book says

The Guardian reports: Trump had been repeatedly told that US freedom of action against North Korea was constrained by the fact that the regime’s artillery could demolish the South Korean capital in retaliation for any attack, inflicting mass casualties on its population of 25 million. “They have to move,” Trump said, according to Bergen, who adds that his officials were initially unsure if the president was joking. But Trump then repeated the line. “They have to move!” No action was…

Read More Read More

The Millennials vs. Boomers fight divides the Democratic Party

The Millennials vs. Boomers fight divides the Democratic Party

Derek Thompson writes: To many observers, it might seem like young voters have remade the Democratic Party in their image—as a claque of “woke” socialists. In May, the historian Niall Ferguson and Eyck Freymann, a research analyst, wrote in The Atlantic that the U.S. was at the brink of a great generation war, in which older conservative Republicans would do battle with Democrats, who were “rapidly becoming the party of the young.” But upon closer examination, the Democrats aren’t really…

Read More Read More

The Afghanistan Papers: 18 years of lying about the war

The Afghanistan Papers: 18 years of lying about the war

The Washington Post reports: A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished…

Read More Read More

James Comey: The truth is finally out. The FBI fulfilled its mission

James Comey: The truth is finally out. The FBI fulfilled its mission

James Comey writes: For two years, the president of the United States and his followers have loudly declared that the FBI acted unlawfully in conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. They repeatedly told the American people that the FBI had done all sorts of bad things, such as tapping Donald Trump’s wires during the campaign, opening an investigation without adequate cause, with the intent to damage Trump, and inserting secret informants into the Trump…

Read More Read More

AG Barr yet again defends Trump instead of upholding the integrity of the Justice Department

AG Barr yet again defends Trump instead of upholding the integrity of the Justice Department

The New York Times reports: Attorney General William P. Barr sharply criticized on Monday the F.B.I.’s decision to open the Russia investigation, undercutting a major finding in a long-awaited watchdog report and at the same time showing his willingness to act as President Trump’s vocal defender. The report, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, found that the F.B.I. had adequate reason in 2016 to open an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia. Mr. Horowitz did…

Read More Read More

Shocking revelation: Elizabeth Warren got paid for her work

Shocking revelation: Elizabeth Warren got paid for her work

Vox reports: Sen. Bernie Sanders sold a lot of books and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got an expensive haircut and now Sen. Elizabeth Warren was compensated for her legal services. All of these matters have generated a lot of chatter and media coverage in recent months, because progressive politicians apparently are supposed to eschew … money. It was Warren who ignited the latest iteration of this progressive impurity news cycle over the weekend when on Sunday she detailed how much she…

Read More Read More