Attention to the Unseen

Ronald Brownstein writes: Just how far will Republicans go in following President Donald Trump’s embrace of Russia? An answer may be crystallizing as the GOP mobilizes its defense of the president against impeachment. Both congressional Republicans and conservative commentators are defending Trump from impeachment partly by accusing Ukraine of intervening against him in the 2016 presidential election—despite repeated warnings from national-security and intelligence officials that those claims are not only baseless, but advance Vladimir Putin’s goal of discrediting Ukraine. Earlier…

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The Guardian reports: The British diplomat in charge of explaining Brexit to the US government, Congress and public, has resigned, saying she was no longer prepared to “peddle half-truths on behalf of a government I do not trust”. Alexandra Hall Hall, the Brexit counsellor at the UK embassy in Washington, had been frustrated with the job for some time, according to friends and colleagues. They said she felt she was not being given enough reliable information to do her job,…

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John Major, a former British prime minister, writes: At elections, political tribes join together to promote their own policies and criticise those of their opponents. That’s the nature of elections. But there are always individuals who enhance parliament. And there are always policies upon which every party can agree. One is democracy, and the right of every adult to vote. At every election the future of our country is at stake. But on this occasion even more than usual. When…

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Robin Wright writes: In mid-November, in a surprise overnight announcement, the revolutionary regime in Iran hiked the price of gasoline. By standards anywhere else in the world, it is still pitifully cheap. A litre of gas increased from eight cents to twelve cents—or to fifty cents per gallon—for the first fifteen gallons each month. That’s about a tankful for a large car. After that, gas went up to ninety cents per gallon. (The U.S. average is around two dollars and…

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The Washington Post reports: A State Department official said Thursday that 1,000 or more protesters may have been killed during weeks of unrest in Iran and that the United States has received video that shows troops firing machine guns mounted on trucks at protesters in one incident. Brian Hook, the special representative for Iran, said the Trump administration will ask Congress to impose harsh sanctions on officials responsible for the alleged atrocities and mistreatment of thousands of protesters who have…

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Charles Sykes writes: As the rough beast of impeachment races forward, Democrats need to pause for a quick reality check. No matter how compelling the evidence against President Trump may be—and it is quite compelling—they will not ultimately succeed in removing Trump from office. So what remains are more modest but nevertheless worthy goals: Winning over a handful of independent-minded House Republicans (an apparently extinct species), persuading at least a few Senate Republicans to break with the president, moving public…

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Christopher Miller reports: Rudy Giuliani has made a surprise visit to Kyiv — but the city isn’t buzzing with his arrival. It’s groaning. Giuliani arriving with his shady band of conspiracy theorists — just as Democrats move to officially file impeachment charges against President Donald Trump — is the last thing Ukrainians who have tried desperately to stay out of the drama unfolding in Washington wanted. Kyiv is trying to focus on upcoming peace talks with Russia to end the…

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Rachel Morris writes: In the two years and 308 days that Donald Trump has been president, he has constructed zero miles of wall along the southern border of the United States. He has, to be fair, replaced or reinforced 76 miles of existing fence and signed it with a sharpie. A private group has also built a barrier less than a mile long with some help from Steve Bannon and money raised on GoFundMe. But along the 2,000 miles from…

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The New York Times reports: The House Judiciary Committee opened an epic partisan clash over the impeachment of President Trump on Wednesday at a hearing where Democrats and Republicans offered up dueling legal scholars who disagreed over whether the president’s conduct rose to the constitutional threshold to warrant his removal from office. At the start of a new phase in Democrats’ fast-moving push to impeach Mr. Trump, three law professors they invited to testify declared that the president’s move to…

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Nicholas Burns writes: During a testy joint press conference at the NATO summit in London yesterday, President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, argued openly over how the 70-year-old alliance should handle Russia, the Islamic State, and Turkey. When interacting with allied leaders, Trump’s predecessors have generally followed a golden rule: Disagreements with friends are okay—but only behind the scenes, not in public. Trump, in contrast, seems to relish going after the Europeans in full view of the…

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Tom McTague writes: On January 22, 1948, Britain’s foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, got to his feet in the House of Commons to lay the foundations of the Western world’s postwar order. Bevin—a working-class titan, trade-union leader, and fierce critic of Communism—set out the urgent need to “organise the kindred souls of the West” in the face of the emerging totalitarian reality of the Soviet Union. Addressing his fellow members of Parliament—some of whom remained sympathetic to Moscow, Britain’s wartime ally,…

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The Washington Post reports: It was important for Sandra Diaz to be invisible. Before entering the Trump family villa, she would tie back her hair, pull on latex gloves and step into delicate paper shoe coverings. She knew not to wear makeup or perfume that might leave the faintest trace of her presence. As Donald Trump’s personal maid, Diaz was dealing with a fussy celebrity owner who presided like a monarch over the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster long before…

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  William Davies writes: One of the cornerstones of liberal politics, dating back to the Enlightenment, is the idea of a “separation of powers”. This typically refers to the tripartite system of government, separating executive, legislature and judiciary, on which the US constitution was built. But liberalism depends on other varieties of separation, or at least their appearance. It assumes, for instance, that “the economy” is relatively separate from “the state”. To most liberals, even the concentration of power in…

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Bob Bauer writes: Donald Trump’s Republican congressional allies are throwing up different defenses against impeachment and hoping that something may sell. They say that he didn’t seek a corrupt political bargain with Ukraine, but that if he did, he failed, and the mere attempt is not impeachable. Or that it is not clear that he did it, because the evidence against him is unreliable “hearsay.” It’s all been very confusing. But the larger story — the crucial constitutional story —…

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