Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Republican senators Wednesday to be ready for an impeachment trial of ... Trump as soon as Thanksgiving, as the Senate began to brace for a political maelstrom that would engulf the nation.
An air of inevitability has taken hold in Congress, with the expectation Trump will become the third president in history to be impeached — and Republicans believe they need to prepare to defend the president. While McConnell briefed senators on what would happen during a Senate trial, House GOP leaders convened what they expect will be regular impeachment strategy sessions. […]
The GOP’s internal reality check on Trump’s impeachment comes as House Democrats have had success securing damaging testimony from current and former State Department and National Security Council officials, many of whom are voicing long-held concerns about Trump’s actions on Ukraine.
The hasty U.S. pullback from Syria is a searing moment in America’s withdrawal from the Middle East
The blow to America’s standing in the Middle East was sudden and unexpectedly swift. Within the space of a few hours, advances by Turkish troops in Syria this week had compelled the U.S. military’s Syrian Kurdish allies to switch sides, unraveled years of U.S. Syria policy and recalibrated the balance of power in the Middle East.
As Russia and Syrian troops roll into vacated towns and U.S. bases, the winners are counting the spoils.
The withdrawal delivered a huge victory to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who won back control of an area roughly amounting to a third of the country almost overnight. It affirmed Moscow as the arbiter of Syria’s fate and the rising power in the Middle East. It sent another signal to Iran that Washington has no appetite for the kind of confrontation that its rhetoric suggests and that Iran’s expanded influence in Syria is now likely to go unchallenged.
Los Angeles Times
California billionaire Tom Steyer spent $47 million in 84 days on presidential bid
California billionaire Tom Steyer spent $47 million during the first three months of his presidential bid — a jaw-dropping sum that places him on track to join the biggest self-funding political candidates in American history.
So far, Steyer has remained mired in the low single digits in the polls in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The candidate who has topped most of these polls, former Vice President Joe Biden, finds himself in a precarious financial position — he spent more money than he raised in recent months, and has significantly less in the bank than his top rivals, according to campaign finance disclosure forms released late Tuesday.
Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic consultant, said Biden is better known than his Democratic rivals because of his nearly half-century in office, so he may not need as much money as other candidates. However, the campaign finance numbers — Biden raised $15.7 million and spent $17.7 million in the third quarter of 2019, leaving him with $9 million in the bank — could send a negative signal to donors, Sragow said.
House votes to condemn Trump’s withdrawal of troops from Syria
The House on Wednesday approved a resolution condemning ... Trump’s decision to recall U.S. forces from northeastern Syria.
The bipartisan resolution says Congress opposes the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a decision that prompted aggressive attacks from Turkish forces on Kurdish fighters, who had been a strong U.S. ally in battling the Islamic State terrorist group.
The measure passed 354-60, with strong Republican support — a rarity in the House, where GOP members are usually strongly loyal to Trump.
Bloomberg
Pelosi Cites Trump ‘Meltdown’ as Republicans Blasts Syria Reversal
A White House meeting between Donald Trump and congressional leaders to contain fallout from the Syria crisis broke down abruptly Wednesday, with the president hurling insults at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who accused him of having a “meltdown.”
Pelosi said Trump appeared to be “shaken” after 129 Republican lawmakers backed a resolution rebuking him for withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s insults of Pelosi during a “nasty diatribe” prompted Democratic leaders to leave.
A Democratic source familiar with the discussion said the president erupted after Schumer quoted Trump’s former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who said Sunday on NBC that if the U.S. doesn’t keep up pressure, Islamic State “will resurge.”
Democratic Debate Draws Smallest Audience: Campaign Update
The television audience for Tuesday’s Democratic primary debate was the smallest of any forum so far this year, according to Nielsen Media Research ratings.
Just 8.5 million people tuned into the debate, which was televised on CNN and co-sponsored by the New York Times. That’s less than 8.7 million for the July 30 debate also televised on CNN.
Cable debates typically get lower ratings than those on over-the-air networks, and Tuesday’s event in Westerville, Ohio, also competed against a deciding National League Championship Series game between the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Guardian
Fourth man held in campaign fraud case involving Rudy Giuliani associates
A Florida man wanted in a campaign finance case involving associates of Rudy Giuliani is in federal custody after flying Wednesday to Kennedy airport in New York City to turn himself in, federal authorities said.
David Correia, 44, was named in an indictment with two Giuliani associates and another man arrested last week on charges they made illegal contributions to politicians and a political action committee supporting Donald Trump. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, is Trump’s personal lawyer.
All the other defendants in the case were already in custody.
Johnson seeks DUP backing in race against time over Brexit deal
Boris Johnson is in a race against time to secure the Democratic Unionist party’s backing for his newly negotiated Brexit deal as EU leaders said they were ready to approve the agreement on Thursday if the prime minister succeeds.
Plans to publish a full legal text ahead of the leaders’ summit had to be put on hold to the frustration of EU officials after the DUP raised a series of objections to the tentative agreement.
Politico
'I'm standing right here in the middle of climate change': How USDA is failing farmers
[…] American farmers are reeling after extreme rains followed by a “bomb cyclone”— an explosive storm that brought high winds and severe blizzard conditions — ravaged the heartland, turning once productive fields into lakes, killing livestock and destroying grain stores. The barrage of wet weather across the country this spring left a record-shattering 20 million acres unable to be planted — an area nearly the size of South Carolina. Other weather-related disasters, from fires in the West to hurricanes in the Southeast, have converged to make the past year one of the worst for agriculture in decades.
But the Agriculture Department is doing little to help farmers adapt to what experts predict is the new norm: increasingly extreme weather across much of the U.S. The department, which has a hand in just about every aspect of the industry, from doling out loans to subsidizing crop insurance, spends just 0.3 percent of its $144 billion budget helping farmers adapt to climate change, whether it’s identifying the unique risks each region faces or helping producers rethink their practices so they’re better able to withstand extreme rain and periods of drought.
Even these limited efforts, however, have been severely hampered by the Trump administration’s hostility to even discussing climate change, according to interviews with dozens of current and former officials, farmers and scientists.
'Don’t be a fool!': Trump threatened Turkish president in letter
Donald Trump warned President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey against being “a tough guy” and “a fool” in a bombastic letter last week that was apparently delivered as the Turkish military launched its invasion of northeast Syria.
In the letter, which was authenticated by the White House, Trump urges his foreign counterpart to negotiate an end to Turkey’s assault against U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters, which has drawn widespread condemnation by the international community.
ProPublica
Never-Before-Seen Trump Tax Documents Show Major Inconsistencies
Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump’s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings’ property tax.
For instance, Trump told the lender that he took in twice as much rent from one building as he reported to tax authorities during the same year, 2017. He also gave conflicting occupancy figures for one of his signature skyscrapers, located at 40 Wall Street.
Lenders like to see a rising occupancy level as a sign of what they call “leasing momentum.” Sure enough, the company told a lender that 40 Wall Street had been 58.9% leased on Dec. 31, 2012, and then rose to 95% a few years later. The company told tax officials the building was 81% rented as of Jan. 5, 2013.
We Found a “Staggering” 281 Lobbyists Who’ve Worked in the Trump Administration
At the halfway mark of … Donald Trump’s first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.
With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump’s swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for.
Ars Technica
A House budget committee has likely killed the 2024 Moon landing
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with legislators who write the House's version of the space agency's budget. The hearing came after six months of frenetic lobbying by Bridenstine to win support from Congress for his Artemis Program plan to accelerate a human return to the Moon from the year 2028 to 2024.
It appears as though those efforts were unsuccessful.
"I remain extremely concerned by the proposed advancement by four years of this mission," said Jose Serrano, a Democrat from New York who chairs the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. "The eyes of the world are upon us. We cannot afford to fail. Therefore, I believe that it is better to use the original NASA schedule of 2028 in order to have a successful, safe, and cost-effective mission for the benefit of the American people and the world."
US green economy’s growth dwarfs the fossil fuel industry’s
[…] According to new data, by 2016 it was generating more than $1.3 trillion in annual revenue and employed approximately 9.5 million people—making it the largest green market in the world. It has been growing rapidly, too—between 2013 and 2016, both the industry’s value and employment figures grew by 20%.
For some time, economic data on the green economy in many countries has been lacking. In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped measuring jobs in the green economy in March 2013 due to budget cuts. This meant that US politicians were not able to make informed decisions about the relative merits of supporting green industry or backing fossil fuels—as Trump had pledged to do during his 2016 campaign.