Attention to the Unseen

Reuters reports: Iran has stepped in to prevent the ouster of Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi by two of Iraq’s most influential figures amid weeks of anti-government demonstrations, sources close to both men told Reuters. Populist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demanded this week that Abdul Mahdi call an early election to quell the biggest mass protests in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. The demonstrations are fueled by anger at corruption and widespread economic…

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Joshua C. Huder writes: On Thursday, five weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the House adopted a resolution confirming that inquiry. The timing is somewhat confusing: The House has had success in several recent court cases, and there’s nothing in the Constitution or in House rules that requires it to adopt a resolution to conduct an impeachment inquiry. So why now? So far, the impeachment investigation has developed in mostly the same way…

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The Atlantic reports: More than a month into the House Democrats’ official impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump, Americans’ support for the inquiry still looks a bit fuzzy. While the most recent national polls show that roughly 50 percent of the country condones the effort, surveys in several key swing states have shown narrower margins of support. But across all the polling, one trend is strikingly clear: Women are much more likely than men to consider the president’s actions worthy…

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The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has intervened in the UK’s nascent election campaign, calling on Boris Johnson to team up with Nigel Farage to form an “unstoppable force” and claiming Jeremy Corbyn would be “so bad for your country”. Speaking to Farage on LBC Radio, the US president also said Johnson’s Brexit deal could prevent the UK from agreeing a trade deal with the US. Trump said the US “can’t make a trade deal with the UK” under “certain aspects…

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Inside Climate News reports: Murray Energy, the U.S. coal company whose founder’s “wish list” was a virtual template for the Trump administration’s rollback of federal environmental and climate regulations, filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday. It’s the latest in a wave of bankruptcy filings by coal companies that are struggling to compete in a market where their product—once the lowest-cost fuel for producing electricity—is now more expensive than natural gas and renewable sources. Among them, Murray’s bankruptcy stands out, in part,…

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Julia Ioffe writes: Almost as soon as news of Vindman’s planned testimony broke on Monday night, Trump’s allies seized on Vindman’s birthplace and language abilities as proof of his disloyalty to the United States. John Yoo, architect of the post-9/11 torture program, even went so far as to accuse Vindman of “espionage” on behalf of the Ukrainians. It was an assertion repeated by a former Republican congressman who is now a CNN commentator. Of course, what they meant was that…

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Jonathan Chait writes: “Hillary Clinton emerged recently to claim, with no basis in fact, that I am being ‘groomed’ by the Russian government to undermine America,” claims Tulsi Gabbard in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today. In fact, as even the conservative Washington Examiner acknowledges, Clinton did not say that. She said Republicans were grooming Gabbard. And far from refuting that charge, everything about Gabbard’s op-ed confirms Clinton was probably right. It is in Gabbard’s interest to conflate the charge…

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  Politico reports: Though Democrats are more confident than ever in their growing impeachment case against President Donald Trump, they’re also setting their sights on a top Trump ally: Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Some Democrats have begun to raise the specter that Sondland, a Republican donor who is Trump’s representative to the European Union, perjured himself during his closed-door testimony to impeachment investigators earlier this month. Testimony from other witnesses has put the credibility of Trump’s most favorable witness into serious…

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Politico reports: Republican leaders are stepping up to defend Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman against vicious attacks from President Donald Trump’s allies. Republicans may quibble with the substance of Vindman’s testimony as they try to protect Trump from the fast-moving impeachment inquiry. But congressional GOP leaders say it’s out of bounds to question Vindman’s patriotism and allegiance to the United States, as some conservative pundits did on Monday night. Several top Republicans on Tuesday made emphatic statements in support of Vindman,…

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Rafael Behr writes: MPs on all sides are trepidatious about a December ballot. Christmas is not traditional election season and it isn’t clear how kindly the electorate will take to the idea. Brexit has already corroded traditional party allegiances and incentivised tactical voting. There is no one pendulum swinging between blue and red. In 2017, polls at the start of the contest proved a hopeless guide to the final outcome. Johnson has no intention of repelling voters as efficiently as…

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The Washington Post reports: Republican senators are lost and adrift as the impeachment inquiry enters its second month, navigating the grave threat to President Trump largely in the dark, frustrated by the absence of a credible case to defend his conduct and anxious about the historic reckoning that likely awaits them. Recent days have delivered the most damaging testimony yet about Trump and his advisers commandeering Ukraine policy for the president’s personal political goals, which his allies on Capitol Hill…

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