Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: Senior Trump administration officials in recent days threatened a presidential veto that could have led to a government shutdown if House Democrats refused to drop language requiring prompt release of future military aid for Ukraine, according to five administration and congressional officials. The language was ultimately left out of mammoth year-end spending legislation that passed the House and Senate this week ahead of a Saturday shutdown deadline. The White House said President Trump would sign the…

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The New York Times reports: Christianity Today, a prominent evangelical magazine, called for President Trump to be removed from office in a blistering editorial on Thursday, a day after he became the third president in history to be impeached and face expulsion by the Senate. The move was the most notable example of dissent among the religious conservative base that has supported Mr. Trump through controversy after controversy, and came at one of the most vulnerable moments of his presidency….

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The Washington Post reports: On Jan. 2, 2016, in a remote stretch of southeastern Oregon, a cadre of anti-government militiamen carrying pistols and long guns stationed themselves at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a federally owned park. Their armed occupation ended 41 days later with one protester shot dead by police and more than two dozen others facing federal charges. Now, investigators commissioned by the Washington State House of Representatives say the anti-government occupiers had a high-profile…

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The New York Times reports: The federal prosecutor scrutinizing the Russia investigation has begun examining the role of the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan in how the intelligence community assessed Russia’s 2016 election interference, according to three people briefed on the inquiry. John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on his inquiry. He wants to learn what Mr….

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The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration gave old-fashioned, incandescent lightbulbs a holiday gift Friday: a new lease on life. The Energy Department made a final determination Friday that it would not impose stricter energy efficiency standards for “general service” lightbulbs set to take effect Jan. 1, on the grounds that they “are not economically justified.” The move affects roughly 3 billion — nearly half — of the bulbs in sockets in U.S. homes. Consumer groups estimate that the reversal…

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The Guardian reports: Britain has taken a pivotal step towards leaving the European Union as Boris Johnson was rewarded for the Conservatives’ thumping general election victory with a majority of 124 for his Brexit deal in the House of Commons. Addressing MPs on Friday morning, the prime minister sought to draw a line under three years of bitter parliamentary conflict, urging his colleagues to “discard the old labels of leave and remain”. After comfortably passing its second reading by 358…

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The Washington Post reports: Almost from the moment he took office, President Trump seized on a theory that troubled his senior aides: Ukraine, he told them on many occasions, had tried to stop him from winning the White House. After meeting privately in July 2017 with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Trump grew more insistent that Ukraine worked to defeat him, according to multiple former officials familiar with his assertions. The president’s intense…

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Jonathan Chait writes: That President Trump’s Ukraine policy led to articles of impeachment against him was largely a matter of chance. A CIA official decided to collect evidence that the administration’s foreign policy was being used as a domestic oppo-research shakedown. The director of national intelligence suppressed the complaint, but Congress managed to find out about it just before Ukraine’s president was set to announce investigations into Trump’s domestic opponents, improbably foiling the scheme. This unlucky sequence explains Trump’s fixation…

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Noah Feldman writes: Now that the House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald Trump, what is the constitutional status of the two articles of impeachment? Must they be transmitted to the Senate to trigger a trial, or could they be held back by the House until the Senate decides what the trial will look like, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has hinted? The Constitution doesn’t say how fast the articles must go to the Senate. Some modest delay is…

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CNN reports: Hundreds of veterans of Barack Obama’s campaigns and administration have signed on to endorse Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president, as multiple Democratic presidential candidates compete to claim the popular former president’s political coalition and legacy. With the Iowa caucuses less than two months away, more than 200 Obama alumni joined a signature-gathering effort led by a pair of former senior Obama aides, Sara El-Amine and Jon Carson. Among other roles, El-Amine was national director of Obama’s 2012 re-election…

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Noah Feldman writes: The jockeying has already begun over the structure of President Donald Trump’s Senate trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has discussed it with the White House counsel; Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has sent McConnell a letter proposing detailed protocols. All this action, even before the House of Representatives has formally impeached Trump, might be making you wonder: Isn’t there some pre-existing trial protocol required by the Constitution? Do we really have to have a debate about…

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., fields questions from reporters about an impeachment trial in the Senate, Dec. 10, 2019. AP/J. Scott Applewhite By Steven Lubet, Northwestern University Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell created a predictable stir when he told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would structure the impending impeachment trial of President Donald Trump in “total coordination with the White House counsel’s office.” He added, “There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position…

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The Washington Post reports: Overnight, the number of registered voters in Georgia shrank by more than 300,000 in a contested but court-sanctioned action that could redefine the 2020 election, critics warned. State officials have downplayed the mass cancellation, arguing it is routine “list maintenance.” Others say the practice amounts to a large-scale and undemocratic voter purge, which comes just over three months before Georgia’s presidential primaries. This week, a federal judge allowed the secretary of state’s office to remove about…

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  In the weeks leading up to the UK general election triggered by the Brexit crisis, Phoebe Greenwood and Ekaterina Ochagavia drove the length of the contentious border dividing Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland.