Clinton famously never made it to Wisconsin, where her failure to campaign is widely believed to have cost her a state that had not voted Republican for president since 1984 -- less than 23,000 votes ultimately decided the contest.Democrats are determined not to make that tactical mistake again. The national party pointedly placed its nominating convention next summer in Milwaukee -- where a 19 percent drop in African American turnout doomed Clinton's chances in 2016.Locally, the party is attempting to expand on Clinton's anemic performance in the WOW counties by tapping into a vein of anti-Trump sentiment that they say is palpable. Democrats have had teams on the ground organizing for months in the suburbs."I know if we get 40 percent we almost guarantee a Democrat a victory statewide," Waukesha County Democratic Party Chairman Matt Lowe said. "We're seeing so many volunteers every day that I don't think 40 percent is a total pipe dream."The Democratic optimism is in part fueled by Trump's underwhelming 2016 performance in the WOW counties, where he lagged behind Mitt Romney's 2012 pace. Republicans there haven't entirely warmed to the president since then."It isn't that the Republican Party is withering away in the WOW counties; it was that they weren't particularly thrilled with Trump and they showed it by not voting for him," said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll. "Trump still struggles to get more than 40 percent approval, even in the WOW counties. It really is an open question about whether Republicans have come back to him here."Democratic hopes are also colored by last year's toppling of GOP Gov. Scott Walker and a Democratic sweep of every statewide office -- a humbling defeat for what was once one of the strongest state parties in the country.The debacle was emblematic of the political havoc unleashed by the Trump era, which hastened the end of the one-time Wisconsin GOP power triumvirate of Walker, former House Speaker Paul Ryan and former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.Other pillars of the old guard have also seen fit to leave the scene: Suburban Milwaukee Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the second longest-serving congressman in the nation and an early Trump skeptic, announced in early September he would not run for reelection. At the local level, activists and county chairs, including in Waukesha County, have also stepped aside.Aaron Perry, a Waukesha alderman, said he grew so tired of Trump and accompanying GOP policies that in June he switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat."There comes a point where everybody has their own threshold of how much they can take," Perry said. "We're getting to the point now where there's no way he's gaining supporters. The only way for Trump to go is down."
Netanyahu also is scuttling a meeting on the General Assembly sidelines with President Donald Trump. Trump tweeted Saturday that he would meet with the prime minister to discuss a potential mutual defense treaty with Israel.Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will speak on the same day that Netanyahu was scheduled to address the world body.
Nearly two dozen U.S. lobbying groups have joined forces to try to rein in U.S. President Donald Trump's power to unilaterally impose tariffs amid growing concern about the negative economic impact of his trade policies.Led by the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), the groups on Wednesday said they had formed the Tariff Reform Coalition to urge Congress to wrestle back greater control of trade policy and increase its oversight of the president's use of tariffs.Trump, who has dubbed himself "Tariff Man," has imposed or planned tariffs on steel, aluminum and nearly all $500 billion in products imported from China each year, as he pursues an "America First" policy aimed at rebalancing U.S. trade ties.
Prominent California Democratic Party donor Edward Buck has been charged with operating a drug den after injecting a man with methamphetamine in his West Hollywood home where two other men previously died of apparent overdoses, prosecutors said.Buck, who donated to former President Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, is a well-known activist in California politics.
Democracy is what we do to prevent political disagreement from turning into violent conflict. But the premise of Trumpist populism is that the legitimacy and authority of government is conditional on agreement with the political preferences of a shrinking minority of citizens -- a group mainly composed of white, Christian conservatives.Who, you may sensibly ask, granted Tucker Carlson's target demographic veto power over the legislative will of the American people? Nobody. They got high on their own supply and anointed themselves the "real American" sovereigns of the realm. But their relative numbers are dwindling, and they live in fear of a future in which the law of the land reliably tracks the will of the people. Therein lies the appeal of a personal cache of AR-15s.Weapons of mass death, and the submissive fear they engender, put teeth on that shrinking minority's entitled claim to indefinite power. Without the threat of violence, what have they really got? Votes? Sooner or later, they won't have enough, and they know it.Nearly every Republican policy priority lacks majority support. New restrictions on abortion are unpopular. Slashing legal immigration levels is unpopular. The president's single major legislative achievement, tax cuts for corporations and high earners, is unpopular.Public support for enhanced background checks stands at an astonishing 90 percent, and 60 percent (and more) support a ban on assault weapon sales. Yet Republican legislatures block modest, popular gun control measures at every turn. The security of the minority's self-ascribed right to make the rules has become their platform's major plank, because unpopular rules don't stand a chance without it. Float a rule that threatens their grip on power, no matter how popular, and it's "my AR is waiting for you, Robert Francis."
Gun violence hits America's youth and rural states the hardest and has reached the highest levels in decades, a report released Wednesday by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee has found.U.S. teens and young adults, ages 15-24, are 50 times more likely to die by gun violence than they are in other economically advanced countries, according to the 50-state breakdown.In 2017 -- the year of a mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 and injured hundreds -- nearly 40,000 people died from gun-related injuries, including 2,500 school children, the report said, noting that six in 10 gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides.That year marked the first time firearms killed more people than motor vehicle accidents, the report said.Rural states, meanwhile, have the highest rates of gun deaths and bear the largest costs as a share of their economies. Nationally, the cost of gun violence in the U.S. runs $229 billion a year, or 1.4 percent of the gross domestic product, the report said.
Since Brazil's new government took office, policymakers and investors have rightly focused on social security reform as a crucial ingredient for the country's long-term solvency. Now that an ambitious reform package has passed the lower house, the government and Congress are looking to other areas, such as tax reform and reducing the oversized wage bill, to help boost growth.But almost under the radar, the government has also continued a large divestiture program that started under the previous administration. President Jair Bolsonaro's government has promised to deepen that effort by selling or shuttering as many state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as possible.This program could help Brazil with some large fiscal challenges. Social security was the most important structural reform, and others remain that are crucial for sustained economic growth. But privatization can offer improvements in efficiency and reduce or eliminate the drain from loss-making SOEs. Moreover, privatization revenue would help finance a transition to fiscal sustainability by reducing government debt issuance to cover deficits.Brazil's federal assets set for immediate sale fall into four main categories:1. Companies with a direct government stake, such as Eletrobras (where only IPO rights worth around $15 billion would be included) and some smaller companies.2. Listed equity shares in private companies held by development bank BNDES and the treasury (totaling $28 billion as of February 2019; BNDES has already sold $8.5 billion this year), not counting BNDES investments in closely held companies, debentures, or funds.3. Contingent stakes in presalt excess oil transfer rights ($21.7 billion, discounted for indemnification of Petrobras and 30% transfer to regional governments).4. Concessions such as airports, ports, railroads, and toll roads, with an estimated value $8.4 billion (with $1.5 billion sold in 2019 so far).
The ad features scary-looking photos of brown-skinned prison inmates with facial tattoos while the narrator says that Bevin will "outlaw" sanctuary cities--even though there are none in Kentucky. The narrator goes on to say that Beshear "would allow illegal immigrants to swarm our state," and ties Bevin to Trump.If any of that looks and sounds familiar, it is exactly the kind of ad that Ed Gillepie aired as he was losing the Virginia governor's race in 2017. Bevin is putting all of his chips on Trump and racism as a winning combination, which might play better in Kentucky than it did in Virginia.
I was born and raised in China, and so when I came to live in the Upper Valley last year, I was eager to try the American version of my native cuisine. What I found in the area's Chinese restaurants both appalled me, and invigorated me.Let me start by saying that "Chinese food" in New England is quite different from what you'll get in my home country. China, it goes without saying, is a big country, with a culinary tradition that's as deep as it is broad. The American version simplifies it and heightens a few qualities. And some of it is just plain odd. The chefs here -- whether they operate out of take-out storefronts or conventional restaurants -- are fond of deep-fried wontons and of stir-frying sweet vegetables in way too much oil.This recalls what you'll get if you go to an "American" restaurant in China: greasy stew, weird cheeses, cloying cookies, as if cooks had decided to wipe away all the flavor and leave nothing but sugar, salt and fat. Shadows of oily meat and sickly sweetness ran through both of these ersatz versions of great, complex cuisines made somehow lesser in translation.But then I decided to look deeper, and went on a quest to find the soul of Chinese food in the Upper Valley. Our area represents a small drop in a big ocean. According to "Chow: Making the Chinese American Restaurant," an exhibition at the Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn, N.Y. (on view through Dec. 8), there are nearly 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. -- three times the number of McDonalds. You can find them everywhere with similar names: Peking Star, Oriental Garden, Star of the Orient, Dragon Garden; a real game of mix-and-match. They offer similar menus, and similar fortune cookies -- a Japanese invention that I've never seen in China. Most of them are run by staffers from the province of Fujian, which is as dependable a source for the global Chinese Food Industrial Complex as the Napa Valley is to wine or MIT is for scientists. All of these restaurants are working from a similar template, and we see it in clear focus in the Upper Valley.
Corey Lewandowski: The Mueller report was very clear. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction.
— New Day (@NewDay) September 18, 2019
Alisyn Camerota: That's not what the Mueller report said, Corey.
Corey: It absolutely says that...
Alisyn: ... Did you read the Mueller report?
Corey: No, I never did pic.twitter.com/kBrM9F9Mx9
Numerous states are pushing major anti-vaping efforts, testing everything from banning flavored cartridges to PSA messages aimed at teens that feel like rehashes of the anti-cigarette movement.That now extends to local government: D.C. suburb Montgomery County is considering a rule that'd ban vape shops from within a 1/2 mile of public middle and high schools -- effectively closing 19 of the county's 22 stores, the WashPost notes.Legal vaping manufacturers (particularly in the marijuana variety) are rushing to make sure their product doesn't get mistaken for the bootlegged cartridges that officials believe are causing some of the vaping-related lung illnesses.
In new @QuinnipiacPoll data more voters who approve of Trump say whites face discrimination (57%) than say immigrants (48%) or African Americans do (41%). https://t.co/DzNWyA6A5x
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) September 17, 2019
[B]erke worked around Lewandowski's stonewalling and as much as got the Trump man to admit that he lies in public by contrasting his comments in the media--playing his appearances on a big screen--with the facts presented in the Mueller report.The lawyer played a clip of Lewandowski on MSNBC in a May 2019 interview saying he did not remember President Trump ever asking him to "get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape, or form, ever."Yet Lewandowski had told Mueller in 2018 that Trump had directed him to deliver a message to his Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he should make a statement in support of the president and committing to limit the jurisdiction of the special counsel.At a follow-up meeting, Trump instructed Lewandowski--who had arranged for someone else to deliver the message in the future--to tell Sessions that if he would not meet with him, he would be fired. Lewandowski made notes of both discussions with Trump and kept them in a safe."I have no obligation to be honest with the media because they are just as dishonest as anybody else," a rattled Lewandowski replied when Berke highlighted his lie on MSNBC.Berke's measured, razor-sharp performance received plaudits on social media as he found a way around Lewandowski's constant references to executive privilege by focusing on his public statements in the media and in his own book about his relationship with Trump."Barry Berke absolutely killed it," tweeted Harvard law professor Jennifer Taub. "Every lawyer and law student must watch this segment of the hearing. Such amazing cross-examination of Corey Lewandowski."The writer James Fallows tweeted: "Watching Barry Berke question Lewandowski, compared w question-speeches from most of the committee members, is like watching an NBA player compared with high schoolers."Former Republican congressman David Jolly told MSNBC on Tuesday evening that Lewandowski gave Democrats "what they needed today for an article of impeachment against the president of the United States for obstruction of justice."
Weeks shy of his 95th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday he doesn't believe he could have managed the most powerful office in the world at 80 years old.
The World Cup, played over the next month or so in Japan, will be watched by fans from Tonga to Kenya, Russia to New Zealand; even the USA, where it's become a big deal in universities. And, of course, in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, both north and south.If football really is our "national game" we are, as a group of nations, pretty bad at it. It certainly doesn't bring us joy. Sometimes when I listen to Garry or Rob, droning on during The Today Programme sports news about some ghastly score draw in the Scottish League (the only news line being that someone chucked a coin at the goalie), I wonder whether the sporting powers that be properly understand the truth: that the game really binding us together as a nation is not football but rugby union.Every corner of the UK is good at it. The Scots are unlikely to win the World Cup but they have a fantastic team who will last the course with the world's best - and they are the weakest of the Home Nations. The Irish (including several players from Northern Ireland) could win, as might either Wales or England. Indeed Ireland, England and Wales are all in the top five world rankings.So this World Cup should be a celebration of a sport that we are all good at: in the South Wales Valleys, the Scottish Lowlands, in Lancashire and the East Midlands, all the way down to Cornwall where the long running campaign for a national stadium is led by supporters of the Cornish Pirates rugby team. Rugby does not need to "come home" because it is already home. It is part of life.