Three officials said Bolton argued against Trump calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25 because he was concerned the president wasn't coordinating with advisers on what to say and might air personal grievances. The officials declined to say whether that included concerns that Trump might raise questions about his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Ukraine.Bolton was among the senior members of the president's national security team, including Vice President Mike Pence, who did not listen in on the Zelenskiy call, officials said.
Head-of-state phone calls are a big-ticket item, scheduled rarely, and meant to open the way for a significant new agenda, to close a tough deal, or to manage a crisis that affects America's national security. Preparation for such calls is carefully managed, drawing on experts across the government's national-security community to winnow down the agenda to issues that only the president can litigate, coordinate talking points and positions among colleagues, and ensure that there will be no surprises from foreign counterparts.The transcript of President Donald Trump's call with the Ukrainian president, too, looks eerily familiar. Note takers in the White House Situation Room collaborate with NSC directors and use speech-to-text software to pull together a working transcript that chronicles the call, a great resource when listening to translations. NSC and press experts quickly draft a public read-out of the discussion, attempting to shaping the message for a range of audiences. Summaries and records of presidential calls are in high demand among government officials, who use them as a map to plan their next steps. They are usually shared briefly and informally among colleagues and then more formally at senior-leader levels, when memos for the record are complete. Distribution of such memos may be constrained by the sensitivity of negotiations or if they make reference to high-risk security activities, but it is generally accepted that sharing as much as possible about such discussions is beneficial and desirable.The other elements of the discussion are, taken on their own, also not unusual. Career ambassadors can play a stabilizing role in delivering policy messages, bridging the gap between foreign governments and American administrations. Special envoys--including private citizens--occupy a trickier place in the execution of foreign-policy portfolios, sometimes offering an outlet for tough negotiations and other times awkwardly making waves without bureaucratic resources or sway. Foreign assistance can be usefully conditioned on progress in governance, human rights, security, and cooperation. And high-profile travel and bilateral meetings can be a carrot--or a stick--for a rewarding partnership.The whistle-blower's complaint is shocking because it offers all of these elements reflected in a warped fun-house mirror. Regardless of the machinations of his staff, Trump sought and conducted this phone call with the intent of executing personal and political business.
.@HillaryClinton trolls Trump as impeachment talk ramps up: "But my emails" https://t.co/eqTHb1WqEM
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 30, 2019
Senator Mitch McConnell appeared to put to rest speculation that he would use his position to derail any impeachment effort by the Democratic-led House by avoiding a trial at all. [...]Three House committees on Monday said a subpoena for documents had been sent to Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani, a former New York mayor, had said on television that he asked the government of Ukraine to "target" former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a potential Democratic candidate to run against Trump in the 2020 election.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took part in the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Wall Street Journal reported, something also likely to draw the attention of House investigators.
NEW: Attorney General Barr has held private meetings overseas w/ foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intel agencies' examination of Russian interference in the 2016 electionhttps://t.co/DsQZ2pJ1qa
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 30, 2019
KIEV, Ukraine -- In the United States, Paul J. Manafort is facing prosecution on charges of money laundering and financial fraud stemming from his decade of work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.But in Ukraine, where officials are wary of offending President Trump, four meandering cases that involve Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump's former campaign chairman, have been effectively frozen by Ukraine's chief prosecutor.The cases are just too sensitive for a government deeply reliant on United States financial and military aid, and keenly aware of Mr. Trump's distaste for the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into possible collusion between Russia and his campaign, some lawmakers say.The decision to halt the investigations by an anticorruption prosecutor was handed down at a delicate moment for Ukraine, as the Trump administration was finalizing plans to sell the country sophisticated anti-tank missiles, called Javelins.
President Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent telephone call to help Attorney General William P. Barr gather information for a Justice Department inquiry that Mr. Trump hopes will discredit the Mueller investigation, according to two American officials with knowledge of the call.The White House restricted access to the call's transcript to a small group of the president's aides, one of the officials said, an unusual decision that is similar to the handling of a July call with the Ukrainian president that is at the heart of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump. [...]In making the request, Mr. Trump was in effect asking the Australian government to investigate itself. The F.B.I.'s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election began after Australian officials told the bureau that the Russian government had made overtures to the Trump campaign about releasing political damaging information about Hillary Clinton.Australian officials shared that information after its top official in Britain met in London in May 2016 with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who told the Australian about the Russian dirt on Mrs. Clinton.
Former investigators who fear Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz will pull punches in his upcoming report on alleged FBI abuses point to his inquiry into the so-called tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in 2016.
Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder talks about her book Lost in Math with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hossenfelder argues that the latest theories in physics have failed to find empirical confirmation. Particles that were predicted to be discovered by the mathematics have failed to show up. Whether or not there is a multiverse has no observable consequences. Hossenfelder argues that physicists have become overly enamored with the elegance and aesthetics of their theories and that using beauty to evaluate a model is unscientific. The conversation includes a discussion of similar challenges in economics.
In interviews on Sunday talk shows, top GOP allies of the President repeated White House talking points -- or in the case of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, appeared to be reading directly from a prepared script. In an appearance on CBS' "60 Minutes," House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy was challenged for regurgitating White House talking points, though he denied having received them.Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, and CNN's Jake Tapper got into a contentious exchange Sunday on "State of the Union" after the lawmaker made false and misleading claims about the unfolding Ukraine drama.The Sunday appearances did little to quell the furor around Trump's behavior.While they were in front of cameras without a strong rebuttal, Trump privately resisted appeals for help. He has dismissed talks of forming an impeachment response team, raging that talk of bringing former aides back to help him projected weakness.
Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) resigned, effective Tuesday, ahead of a scheduled hearing to change his plea to guilty in an insider trading case. [...]Collins was the first congressmember to endorse President Trump's campaign and remained a strong supporter ever since.
In a sane world, the reaction of Republicans to the "memorandum of telephone conversation" between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, combined with the whistle-blower complaint filed by an intelligence officer describing a White House cover-up, would be similar to the response of Republicans after the release, on Aug. 5, 1974, of the "smoking gun" tape that finally broke the Nixon presidency. Republicans would begin to abandon Mr. Trump, with senior figures urging him in private and in public to resign.This may be asking too much of Republicans, who have lost their way in the Trump era. One might hope that some of the party's elected officials would forcefully condemn the president on the grounds that there is now demonstrable evidence that he had crossed an ethical line and abused his power in ways even beyond what he had done previously, which was problematic enough.But things are very different today than they were in the summer of '74. Mr. Trump was on to something when he famously said, during the 2016 campaign, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, O.K.? It's, like, incredible." What most people took to be hyperbole turned out to be closer to reality.
We are currently sending money to 20,000 Kenyans in different communities. It's a randomised control trial, which means these 20,000 people are divided into three different groups. Those in the first group receive the basic income as a lump sum. In the second group, everyone 18 years old or older receives $22 per month for two years. Adults in the third group also receive $22 per month, but this time for twelve years. This experiment began a year and a half ago.Both the scale and ambition of this project are truly massive. Now that you're 18 months in, do you have some preliminary results you could share?We don't yet have statistical data, but we have already had many conversations with participants about how their basic incomes have impacted their lives, work, risk-taking, migration, financial planning, personal relationships, and even experiences with domestic violence.In terms of work, we've been told that the basic income has given people their first feeling of what it's like to be an employed person. To feel what you and I feel when we earn money every month. And what they say is that for the first time, they're able to plan. They don't just spend money at the spur of the moment because it came, or live each day as it comes. They plan for their month, and they are even working harder because they realise that this money has given them a head start. They need more than just what the money can offer.We have seen situations where recipients have moved from their original villages to small towns or lake sides to look for work. People who previously were grounded in their villages now say, 'You know what? I have some little money. I can travel. I can afford a house for $5, and so I can take the risk to stay in a neighbouring town and look for a job. And if I get that job, it can supplement what I'm doing.'I remember one lady who, the moment she started receiving the basic income, left her baby with her mother. For six months she went to the nearest town and started a small business. That business grew, and today she has taken back her baby. This money gave her a head start in opening a small business, and now that business can take care of the two of them.We also see parents taking their children to school, responding to their medical needs, including taking out government medical insurance so that they can better handle risks. It's as if basic income is giving people a new lease of life. I have seen them become vibrant, as if they're living life anew. Why? Because basic income has increased the number of meals people take in a day. Nutrition has improved across board.
Presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris told MSNBC the impeachment process won't take long because President Donald Trump has already confessed."Here's the thing, Joy," Harris said during a phone interview with AM Joy's Joy Reid. "Basically, the president has confessed and there is evidence of consciousness of guilt which is, they tried to bury the transcript. We've got a transcript. I mean frankly, people have said to me you know 'do you think these hearings are going to take very long?' Not really because there's a whole lot of direct evidence including his virtual confession."Harris explained she is confident the House Democrats' impeachment process will be successful."So we just need to get on with it and not be distracted by the okie-doke and those people who would have us looking at the shiny thing over there," Harris said.
McCarthy is asked about when Trump said, "I would like you to do us a favor though."
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 30, 2019
MCCARTHY: You just added another word.
PELLEY: No, it's in the transcript.
MCCARTHY: He said-"I'd like you to do a favor though"?
PELLEY: Yes, it's in the White House transcript. pic.twitter.com/Sc8Lsv25xX
One begins to wonder if Steve Bannon's master plan isn't working....Former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's People's Party (ÖVP) won a clear victory in Austria's snap parliamentary election.Kurz's party scored 37.1 percent in Sunday's vote -- an increase of 5.7 percentage points compared with the 2017 poll.The far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) suffered a worse-than-expected loss, down almost 10 percentage points to around 16%, a sign that the party's reputation may have suffered after a corruption scandal earlier this year.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) on Sunday criticized President Trump for quoting a pastor saying impeachment could trigger a "Civil War-like fracture" in the country."I have visited nations ravaged by civil war," Kinzinger tweeted."I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant."