Matthew Yglesias at Vox writes—America needs to hear — under oath — from Pompeo, Perry, Pence, and Bolton:
Rep. Devin Nunes is actually right about something: The key witnesses in the Trump impeachment hearings so far haven’t said that President Donald Trump directly told them to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. But while Nunes keeps ranting and raving about his desire to hear directly from the no-longer-relevant whistleblower, the real issue is that we need to hear from people in Trump’s inner circle: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Vice President Mike Pence, and, of course, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.
Wednesday morning’s testimony from Ambassador Gordon Sondland was full of revelations, including that he had a conversation with Pence in Poland about the linkage between the suspension of aid and Trump’s desire for investigations into the former vice president. “Everyone was in the loop,” according to Sondland — a point he insisted on at several points during his opening statement, asserting that all the top officials in the Trump administration understood what was happening. [...]
Republicans aren’t going to agree to remove Trump. Everything that’s happening here is political display for the benefit of the voters. And to that end it would be extremely edifying to have extended public discussion of why the White House is stonewalling and why we can’t find out more about exactly who did what when.
The Washington Post Editorial Board: ‘Everyone was in the loop’: Gordon Sondland makes two stunning points.
The New York Times Editorial Board: Sondland Has Implicated the President and His Top Men.
Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos at The Nation write—Strike for Sunshine. To defeat fossil fuel, we need a low-carbon labor movement.
Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times writes—Donald Trump’s Gordon Problem Republicans tried to throw Gordon Sondland under the bus. He took Trump with him:
Over the first three days of testimony in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, Republicans have tried out a number of defenses. After the Wednesday testimony of Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, almost all of them have been incinerated. [...]
“This obviously has been one of those bombshell days,” Ken Starr, the former special prosecutor who investigated Bill Clinton, said on Fox News after Sondland’s morning testimony. I suspect that by the time anyone reads this, Republicans will have cooked up talking points pretending that nothing Sondland said actually matters.
But at this point, all they can do is obfuscate. About the push for investigations, Sondland said, “Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret.” This administration is rotten to the core and fundamentally disloyal to the country it purports to serve. So is every politician who still tries to explain its corruption away.
Noah Bookbinder at The New York Times writes—Gordon Sondland Leaves Us With No Other Option. The case is simple, and the evidence supporting impeachment is now crystal clear.
History will remember Wednesday as the day a United States ambassador testified under oath before Congress and laid out a clear, simple and damning case that President Trump abused the power of his office and committed bribery, an act for which the Constitution leaves but one outcome.
The evidence was already overwhelming, but now there can be no question about it: Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony was the smoking gun.
This is largely because the facts presented are simple. At the direction of Mr. Trump and Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, United States officials communicated to the government of Ukraine that a White House visit for the new Ukrainian president was contingent on the Ukrainian president publicly announcing investigations into the dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden and a conspiracy theory about the 2016 elections. Later, a congressionally appropriated $391 million military aid package was added to the leverage. [...]
After today, there can be no question that the only action left for patriotic Americans is to call for the impeachment, conviction and removal of President Trump.
Richard Wolffe at The Guardian writes—Sleazy Sondland overcomes his amnesia and dishes the dirt on Trump:
In the latest installment of All the President’s Weasels, the political burp known as Gordon Sondland tried to cast himself as more of grandiloquent belch.
Based on his earlier cameo appearances, you might have thought that Trump’s ambassador to the European Union was a shallow, vainglorious sycophant who was desperately solicitous to cozy up to his shallow, vainglorious boss.
In that regard, you would be correct. However, Gordon would now like to correct your correctness, much as he would very much like to refresh the record about his previous sworn testimony, in line with his refreshed memory, which was only partially correct. [...]
“We weren’t happy with the president’s directive to talk with Rudy,” Gordon said. “We did not want to involve Mr Giuliani. I believed then, as I do now, that the men and women of the state department, not the president’s personal lawyer, should take responsibility for Ukraine matters.”
That would be all the men and women of the state department, except for the actual ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was somehow cut out of every one of our Gordon’s many emails and messages about his work in her country. Which is not yet a member of the European Union, where he was supposed to park his rear end.
Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes—In Gordon Sondland, Trump has met his match:
Unloading on his boss and colleagues seemed to energize the ambassador. Under the table, his feet tapped out a steady drum roll as he talked. Others in the administration had testified about the “Gordon Problem” that was interfering with Ukraine policy. Now, the one with a Gordon Problem is Trump.
At the first break in Sondland’s testimony, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the committee’s ranking Republican, turned to the minority counsel, Steve Castor, with a look as though his favorite uncle had died. In the audience, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), one of Trump’s biggest defenders, stroked his forehead as though trying to ease a migraine. Republicans in the audience filtered out. Several Republican members of the panel decamped to a staff room — presumably to revise strategy.
Apparently, the resulting consensus was that Sondland would have to be discredited. “You don’t have records, you don’t have notes, you don’t have a lot of recollections,” Castor later told Sondland. “This is the trifecta of unreliability.” Alas for Castor, Sondland’s testimony came with incriminating emails and text messages.
Ilana Novick at TruthDig writes—Half of American Men Can’t Handle the Prospect of a Woman President:
In 2019, just 49% of American men say they are comfortable with a woman president, according to a new poll on attitudes toward gender and power by consulting firm Kantar Public and Women Political Leaders, an Iceland-based nonprofit coalition of female politicians.
The poll surveyed 22,000 people ages 18 to 64 across eleven countries (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States), 2,000 of whom were Americans. Respondents were asked for their opinions on women and men’s suitability for leadership roles across multiple industries, as well as in politics. Countries were scored on an index of 1-100, 100 being a country with “perfect equality.” Even with just under half of U.S. men surveyed approving of a woman as head of state, the U.S. came in third, with a score of 75. Germany and France, at 77, tied for first place.
American women’s views were somewhat more favorable, with 59% saying they would approve of a woman heading a country. Unfortunately, there’s not much solace for women leaders in the other countries surveyed. Only in Canada (53%) and the U.K. (56%) did men report they were even slightly more comfortable with a woman as head of state than were the men surveyed in the other nine countries.
At least respondents are being honest. Three years after the 2016 election, where a woman came within spitting distance of the presidency (and lost), a compendium of previous polls shows that Americans continue to find creative ways to avoid admitting they feel uncomfortable with a woman in the White House.
Chris Kromm at The Guardian writes—How did Democrats win Louisiana? With classic progressive populism:
It’s not that Louisiana magically turned blue in 2019. Indeed, of the state’s six congressional districts, Edwards won a majority in just one: the blue-leaning 2nd district, which includes swaths of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. While Edwards took the governor’s race, Republicans seized a super-majority in the Louisiana senate, giving them the power to override gubernatorial vetoes, and gained five seats in the Louisiana house, just two short of a super-majority. As Stephen Waguespack of the conservative Louisiana Association of Business and Industry enthused: “The [Louisiana] legislature is more conservative, more pro-business than ever before.”
The disconnect between Democrats’ victory in the governor’s race and their eroding ground in the state legislature speaks to the power of Republican gerrymandering, which has greatly diluted the electoral clout of Democrats in Louisiana and other southern states. For Democrats, this is one reason that Edwards’ victory was so critical: when Louisiana begins redistricting in 2021, Governor Edwards will have veto power over legislative and congressional maps created by the state legislature, forcing compromises that could, for example, lead to the creation of a second Democratic-leaning congressional district.
Aside from Trump’s diminishing power to inspire voters, what else might Louisiana tell us about the country’s political landscape heading into 2020? One lesson is that, if Democrats hope to succeed in 2020—not only in the presidential contest, but all down-ticket races – they must energize and mobilize their base. In much of the south, this means African American voters. Edwards only got a majority in one congressional district, but the 85% of votes he won in the heavily African American, disproportionately urban 2nd district made all the difference. Between the 12 October primary and last weekend’s runoff in the governor’s race, turnout in the second district jumped by 42,000 voters—a critical boost in a race Edwards won by just over 40,000 votes statewide.
That mobilization didn’t happen by itself.
Jason Johnson at The Root writes—Julián Castro Says the Democratic Primary Isn’t Fair to Black Folks. He’s Right and Here’s How You Fix It:
For weeks now, former Housing and Urban Development secretary, presidential candidate and one true heir to the Obama legacy, Julian Castro, has been pointing out the obvious: It’s peak hypocrisy that the Democratic Party, whose base is largely black, starts the primary process in Iowa and New Hampshire, states that are 90 percent white.
The first two contests, which receive a disproportionate amount of power in determining the eventual Democratic nominee, are whiter than the United States as a whole and much whiter than the present and future of the Democratic Party. Iowa and New Hampshire are Taylor Swift riding a polar bear through a cotton field into a lake of sour cream levels of whiteness. It would be easy to discount Castro’s criticism as sour grapes—he’s doing poorly in Iowa, and won’t make the November Democratic debate this week, but he’s making both a practical and political argument that the DNC would be wise to listen to.
As a practical matter, the African-American base of the Democratic Party is locked out until the third primary contest (South Carolina), a point where many candidates may have already dropped out of the race. As a political matter, states with larger, more diverse black populations come so late in the primary calendar, black votes are essentially rubber stamps on a “frontrunner,” or worse, get lost in the shuffle of half a dozen Super Tuesday states that see more commercials than candidates on the ground.
Lydia Polgreen at The Guardian writes—The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity:
For the last few years, scientists have argued that we’re living through a distinctly new geological age. They call it the Anthropocene: a new age characterized by humanity’s profound impact on Earth itself as evidenced by pollution, mass extinction and climate change.
We are currently facing a new systemic collapse, one that has built far more swiftly but poses potent risks for all of humanity: the collapse of the information ecosystem. We see it play out every day with the viral spread of misinformation, widening news deserts and the proliferation of fake news. This collapse has much in common with the environmental collapse of the planet that we’re only now beginning to grasp, and its consequences for life as we know it are shaping up to be just as profound.
The digital revolution greatly expanded human knowledge and wealth much as the industrial revolution did 150 years earlier when new technologies, notably the combustion engine, brought about extraordinary economic growth. And much like the building of great railways and interstate highways allowed people to connect, the creation of tools that allow anyone to be their own publisher has made it possible for new voices to reach large audiences around the world.
But if the price of the industrial revolution was planetary destruction on an unimaginable scale, the digital revolution may be costly in a different but similarly destructive way. William Randolph Hearst owned the means of production and was free to publish made up stories to sell papers and stoke the Spanish-American war. Today, everyone is free to be their own propagandist.
The scale of the threat is hard to overstate.
Sam Adler-Bell at The New Republic writes—Why the Hell Did Democrats Just Extend the Patriot Act?
It may seem to many Americans that Washington is entirely consumed by the impeachment inquiry, and that no other important business is getting done on Capitol Hill. But on Tuesday, in a break from televised hearings, the House of Representatives voted to fund the government through December 20. If passed by the Senate, the continuing resolution would prevent a government shutdown and forestall a debate about border-wall funding.
That’s all well and good, except that Democratic leaders had slipped something else into the bill: a three-month extension of the Patriot Act, the post-9/11 law that gave the federal government sweeping surveillance and search powers and circumvented traditional law-enforcement rules. Key provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire on December 15, including Section 215, the legal underpinning of the call detail records program exposed in the very first Edward Snowden leak.
“It’s surreal,” Representative Justin Amash told me on Tuesday, just before the vote. Amash, an independent who left the Republican Party over his opposition to President Trump, pointed to the hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle. Republicans have “decried FISA abuse” against the president and his aides, he said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, “and Democrats have highlighted Trump’s abuse of his executive powers, yet they’re teaming up to extend the administration’s authority to warrantlessly gather data on Americans.”
Yvette Cabrera at Grist writes—Candidates are finally talking about environmental justice. Advocates want more than words:
Those keeping tabs on the Democratic presidential primary — which has its fifth debate Wednesday in Atlanta, Georgia — have probably heard the term “environmental justice” come up often over the past few months. The term refers to the outsized burden that both the causes and effects of climate change place on low-income and minority communities around the United States, and it’s a major tent pole of many of the climate plans put forward by candidates, from former Vice President Joe Biden to New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. It’s been mentioned in previous debates and was on the lips of nearly every candidate who participated in CNN’s September climate town-hall marathon.
But on the heels of a historic environmental justice presidential forum, held in Orangeburg, South Carolina, earlier this month, leading grassroots advocates say that lip service on this issue is not enough. It’s past time, they claim, for the 2020 Democratic candidates to detail for voters how they plan to make good on promises to tackle issues such as pollution and climate impacts in vulnerable communities across the nation.
“We want the tap dance to stop,” said Michele Roberts, the national co-coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, which aids grassroots organizations working in communities burdened by toxic chemicals, polluting facilities, and contaminated sites. ”We want to see how it is that their plans will address and not leave any communities behind.”
Bill McKibben at The Guardian writes—The climate science is clear: it's now or never to avert catastrophe:
The one thing never to forget about global warming is that it’s a timed test.
It’s ignoble and dangerous to delay progress on any important issue, of course – if, in 2020, America continues to ignore the healthcare needs of many of its citizens, those people will sicken, die, go bankrupt. The damage will be very real. But that damage won’t make it harder, come 2021 or 2025 or 2030, to do the right thing about healthcare.
But the climate crisis doesn’t work like that. If we don’t solve it soon, we will never solve it, because we will pass a series of irrevocable tipping points—and we’re clearly now approaching those deadlines. You can tell because there’s half as much ice in the Arctic, and because forests catch fire with heartbreaking regularity and because we see record deluge. But the deadlines are not just impressionistic—they’re rooted in the latest science.