Chris Hedges's Blog, page 113

Lawyer: Trump Whistleblower Willing to Take Written GOP Questions

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for the whistleblower who raised alarms about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine said Sunday his client is willing to answer written questions submitted by House Republicans.

The surprise offer, made to Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, would allow Republicans to ask questions of the whistleblower, who spurred the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry, without having to go through the committee’s chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Attorney Mark Zaid tweeted that the whistleblower would answer questions directly from Republican members “in writing, under oath & penalty of perjury,” part of a bid to stem escalating efforts by Trump and his GOP allies to unmask the person’s identity. Only queries seeking the person’s identity won’t be answered, he said.

“Being a whistleblower is not a partisan job nor is impeachment an objective. That is not our role,” Zaid tweeted. “So we have offered to @DevinNunes.”

“We will ensure timely answers,” he said.

Nunes’ office did not have immediate comment.

The offer comes as Trump has repeatedly demanded the release of the whistleblower’s identity, tweeting Sunday that the person “must come forward.” The whistleblower raised concerns about Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he pressed Zelenskiy to investigate Trump’s political rivals. That call became the catalyst for the impeachment inquiry.

The whistleblower’s secondhand account of the call has been providing a road map for House Democrats investigating whether the president and others in his orbit pressured Ukraine to probe political opponents, including former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Reveal the Whistleblower and end the Impeachment Hoax!” Trump tweeted.

Trump later Sunday pushed the news media to divulge the whistleblower’s identity, asserting that the person’s accounting of events is incorrect. The whistleblower’s complaint has been corroborated by people with firsthand knowledge of the events who have appeared on Capitol Hill.

“They know who it is. You know who it is. You just don’t want to report it,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “And you know you’d be doing the public a service if you did.”

U.S. whistleblower laws exist to protect the identity and careers of people who bring forward accusations of wrongdoing by government officials. Lawmakers in both parties have historically backed those protections.

The Associated Press typically does not reveal the identity of whistleblowers.

The whistleblower has become a central fixation for Republicans, and in particular the president. Republicans view a political opportunity in unmasking the CIA official, whom the intelligence community’s inspector general said could have “arguable political bias.” The inspector general nevertheless found the whistleblower’s complaint to be “credible.”

The president believes that if he can expose bias in the initial allegations against him, he can paint the entire impeachment inquiry it launched as a partisan, political probe. To this point, Republicans have largely fought the impeachment inquiry on process, not substance, believing it was tainted because interviews were conducted in closed sessions — ignoring that GOP lawmakers were in attendance — and complaining that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had not called a vote to launch the matter.

But Pelosi called such a vote last week and the inquiry may soon shift into open hearings. Now, Trump is demanding that his allies defend his actions, insisting that he did nothing wrong while arguing that quid pro quos like the one allegedly offered Ukraine are common occurrences while leveraging power in conducting foreign policy.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Sunday that he had not yet discussed the whistleblower’s offer with Nunes, but stressed that the person should answer questions in a public appearance before the committee.

“When you’re talking about the removal of the president of the United States, undoing democracy, undoing what the American public had voted for, I think that individual should come before the committee,” McCarthy told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“We need an openness that people understand this,” he added.

Zaid said his team had addressed the issue of alleged bias with Republican members of the committee and had stressed the need for anonymity to maintain the safety of the whistleblower and that person’s family, “but with little effect in halting the attacks.”

“Let me be absolutely clear: Our willingness to cooperate has not changed,” tweeted Andrew P. Bakaj, another attorney representing the whistleblower. “What we object to and find offensive, however, is the effort to uncover the identity of the whistleblower.”

Bakaj wrote on Saturday that “their fixation on exposing the whistleblower’s identity is simply because they’re at a loss as to how to address the investigations the underlying disclosure prompted.”

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Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.

Attacker Stabs Several, Bites Off Politician’s Ear as Hong Kong Boils

HONG KONG — A knife-wielding man slashed several people and bit off part of the ear of a pro-democracy politician in Hong Kong on Sunday, as riot police stormed several malls to thwart protesters who have been demanding government reforms for nearly five months.

The bloody attack erupted outside one of those shopping complexes, Cityplaza on Hong Kong Island. Local media said the attacker told his victims that Hong Kong belongs to China.

Television footage showed the man biting the ear of district councilor Andrew Chiu, who had tried to stop him from leaving after the stabbings. The attacker was then badly beaten up by a crowd after the attack, before police arrived. Five people were injured, two critically and two seriously, news reports said.

The attack came late Sunday, a day in which protesters had been urged online to gather at seven locations, including malls, to sustain a push for political reform following a chaotic day of clashes with police on Saturday.

Most of the rallies didn’t pan out as scores of riot police took positions, searching and arresting people, dispersing crowds and blocking access to a park next to the office of the city’s embattled leader, Carrie Lam.

Some small pockets of hardcore demonstrators were undeterred.

As protesters chanted slogans at the New Town Plaza shopping mall in Sha Tin, police said they moved in after some “masked rioters” with fire extinguishers vandalized turnstiles and smashed windows at the subway station linked to the mall.

At two malls in the New Territories in the north, protesters vandalized shops, threw paint and attacked a branch of Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya, which has been frequently targeted after the chain’s owner voiced support for the Hong Kong police.

Police rushed into one of the malls after objects were thrown at them. At another, protesters used umbrellas and cable ties to lock the mall entrance to prevent police from entering.

Later in the day, police stormed Cityplaza after some protesters sprayed graffiti at a restaurant. A human chain by dozens of people was broken up and angry shoppers heckled the police.

The protests began in early June over a now-shelved plan to allow extraditions to mainland China but have since swelled into a movement seeking other demands, including direct elections for Hong Kong’s leaders and an independent inquiry into police conduct.

Lam has refused to budge on the demands, and instead has focused on measures that she said contributed to protesters’ anger, such as creating jobs and easing housing woes in one of the world’s most expensive cities. She invoked emergency powers last month to ban face masks at rallies, provoking further anger.

Her office said Sunday that Lam, currently in Shanghai, will head to Beijing on Tuesday. She is due to hold talks Wednesday with Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng and join a meeting on the development of the Greater Bay Area that aims to link Hong Kong, Macao and nine other cities in southern China.

The ambitious project will help make it easier for Hong Kong residents to work and reside in mainland Chinese cities, and bolster the flow of people and goods, Lam’s office said in a statement.

But the plan has also sparked concerns over China’s growing influence over the territory. Many protesters fear Beijing is slowly infringing on the freedoms guaranteed to Hong Kong when the former British colony returned to Chinese control in 1997.

On Saturday, protesters for the first time attacked the Hong Kong office of China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency in a show of anger against Beijing, a day after China warned of tightening its grip on the city to quell the unrest. The attack on Xinhua came after chaos broke out downtown, with police firing tear gas and protesters tossing gasoline bombs.

Xinhua in a statement strongly condemned the “barbaric acts of mobs” that had vandalized and set fire to the lobby of its Asia-Pacific office building. The Hong Kong Journalists Association also deplored “any act of sabotage against the media” and called for an end to violence against the press.

Protesters have frequently targeted Chinese banks and businesses. In July, demonstrators threw eggs at China’s liaison office in Hong Kong and defaced the Chinese national emblem in a move slammed by Beijing as a direct challenge to its authority.

On Friday, the Communist Party in Beijing vowed to “establish and strengthen a legal system and enforcement mechanism” to prevent foreign powers from sowing acts of “separatism, subversion, infiltration and sabotage” in Hong Kong.

U.S. Judge Blocks Trump’s Health Insurance Rule for Immigrants

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday put on hold a Trump administration rule requiring immigrants prove they will have health insurance or can pay for medical care before they can get visas.

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon granted a temporary restraining order that prevents the rule from going into effect Sunday. It’s not clear when he will rule on the merits of the case.

Seven U.S. citizens and a nonprofit organization filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday contending the rule would block nearly two-thirds of all prospective legal immigrants.

The lawsuit also said the rule would greatly reduce or eliminate the number of immigrants who enter the United States with family sponsored visas.

“We’re very grateful that the court recognized the need to block the health care ban immediately,” says Justice Action Center senior litigator Esther Sung, who argued at Saturday’s hearing on behalf of the plaintiffs. “The ban would separate families and cut two-thirds of green-card-based immigration starting tonight, were the ban not stopped.”

The proclamation signed by President Donald Trump in early October applies to people seeking immigrant visas from abroad — not those in the U.S. already. It does not affect lawful permanent residents. It does not apply to asylum-seekers, refugees or children.

The proclamation says immigrants will be barred from entering the country unless they are to be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs.

The rule is the Trump administration’s latest effort to limit immigrant access to public programs while trying to move the country away from a family based immigration system to a merit-based system.

The White House said in a statement Sunday that it strongly disagrees with the decision.

“Once again, a nationwide injunction is permitting a single judge to thwart the President’s policy judgment on a matter where Congress expressly gave the President authority,” said the statement from Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.

“It is wrong and unfair for a single district court judge to thwart the policies that the President determined would best protect the United States healthcare system — and for the United States taxpayers to suffer the grave consequences of the immense strain inflicted on the healthcare system from subsidizing uncompensated care for those seeking admission.

Under the government’s visa rule, the required insurance can be bought individually or provided by an employer and it can be short-term coverage or catastrophic.

Medicaid doesn’t count, and an immigrant can’t get a visa if using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies when buying insurance. The federal government pays for those subsidies.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank, 57% of U.S. immigrants had private health insurance in 2017, compared with 69% of U.S.-born, and 30% had public health insurance coverage, compared with 36% of native-born.

The uninsured rate for immigrants dropped from 32% to 20% from 2013 to 2017, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to Migration Policy.

There are about 1.1 million people who obtain green cards each year.

“Countless thousands across the country can breathe a sigh of relief today because the court recognized the urgent and irreparable harm that would have been inflicted” without the hold, said Jesse Bless, director of federal litigation at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Earlier this year, the administration made sweeping changes to regulations that would deny green cards to immigrants who use some forms of public assistance, but the courts have blocked that measure.

A Useful New Life for Waste Plastic

Swedish scientists say they have found a way to recycle plastic perfectly: their new process can turn any waste plastic back into new plastic of identical quality – and recover all of it.

The process can convert thrown-away plastic bottles, cups, bags, buckets and other detritus into a gas and, from that, fashion new materials. That is, complete recycling would be possible from existing, no-longer-wanted materials rather than petrochemical feedstock.

In 2015, the world generated more than 320 million tonnes of polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene and other polymers. Perhaps 200 million tonnes was neither incinerated nor recycled. As much as 12 million tonnes may have escaped into the oceans. No more than 14% was collected for recovery. Only 2% could be converted to a high-quality product, and 8% became plastic of lower quality. Around 4% was lost altogether.

“We should not forget that plastic is a fantastic material – it gives us products that we could otherwise only dream of. The problem is that it is manufactured at such low cost that it has been cheaper to produce new plastics from oil and fossil gas than reusing plastic waste,” said Henrik Thunman of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, who with colleagues developed a way of “cracking” plastic with steam.

“Through finding the right temperature – which is around 850°C – and the right heating rate and residence time, we have been able to demonstrate the proposed method at a scale where we can turn 200kg of plastic waste an hour into a useful gas mixture. This can then be recycled at the molecular level to become new plastic materials of virgin quality.”

Professor Thunman and his fellow researchers report in the journal Sustainable Materials and Technologies that their process could be designed and integrated into existing petrochemical plants, and scaled up a hundredfold or more, ultimately to transform them into tomorrow’s recycling refineries.

It would work for all plastic waste, including detritus swept up by the tide, or unearthed from landfill.

Plastic is likely to be the enduring legacy of human occupation of the planet. Long after the species is extinguished, seemingly indestructible polymer evidence will endure in the rock strata to mark the Anthropocene, the human epoch.

Plastic waste pollution has been identified as a growing international  challenge and the polymers, sometimes in microparticle form, are finding their way to every part of the planet, and into the tissues of the great marine animals.

Creating a market

About 40% of global plastic waste in 2015 was collected in some form for incineration; about 60% was “disposed of”. Around 1% leaked into the natural world, to add to the threat to living things.

The latest demonstration of laboratory ingenuity from researchers determined to confront the Anthropocene challenge promises the possibility of a circular economy for the plastic that exists already.

“Circular use would help give used plastics a true value, and thus an economic impetus for collecting it anywhere on Earth,” said Professor Thunman.

“In turn, this would help minimize the release of plastic into nature, and create a market for collection of plastic that has already polluted the natural environment.”

Oil Companies Must Cut Production by 35% to Meet Paris Climate Accord

A new report released Friday claims that if fossil fuel companies want to have any chance of hitting Paris Climate Accord numbers by 2040, they will have to cut production by over a third.

“Oil and gas companies seem to be operating under a business-as-usual mindset in which they can grow without limit, while taking minimal steps to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for,” said environmental advocacy group As You Sow energy program manager Lila Holzman. “This report emphasizes that no company is taking sufficient action to reduce the risk of climate breakdown.”

Carbon Tracker’s “Balancing the Budget” details the long road for extractive industries “to keep emissions within international climate targets and protect shareholder value.”

As @ExxonMobil & @Chevron announce their quarterly earnings, our new report, Balancing the Budget, shows they must cut production 55% & 35% to meet the #ParisAgreement & protect investors https://t.co/QGYmQw58GI

— Carbon Tracker (@CarbonBubble) November 1, 2019

“We estimate that as a group, the major oil and gas companies need to reduce production by 35% to 2040 to stay within their B2DS budgets,” the report explains. “Within this decline there is significant variation, from Shell (-10%) to ConocoPhillips (-85%) reflecting current and future project mix.”

The news was met with a sense of urgency from climate advocates, who said that fossil fuel companies need to make a choice.

“As oil and gas majors keep one foot a decarbonizing world and one foot in business as usual this report shows how that position is untenable for much longer,” tweeted Fletcher School dean Rachel Kyte.

As You Sow president Danielle Fugere said that the report confirmed what climate activists have been saying for years.

“Oil and gas companies’ investments are taking the world down a catastrophic pathway that threatens the planet and the global economy,” said Fugere. “We are already seeing destructive impacts worldwide—and the world has only warmed one degree.”

“To right the ship and set us on a sustainable course, investors must demand that these companies set Paris-aligned targets and begin strategically reducing investments in oil and gas projects,” Fugere added. “This is a necessary step on the pathway toward preserving a livable planet.”

Airbnb Bans ‘Party Houses’ After California Shooting Kills 5

ORINDA, Calif. — Airbnb’s CEO said the company was taking actions against unauthorized parties in the wake of a deadly shooting at a Halloween party held at an Airbnb rental home in California.

In a series of tweets, Brian Chesky said Saturday the San Francisco-based company is expanding manual screening of “high risk” reservations and will remove guests who fail to comply with policies banning parties at Airbnb rental homes.

He also said the company is forming a “rapid response team” when complaints of unauthorized parties come in.

“We must do better, and we will. This is unacceptable,” he tweeted.

Five people died after a Thursday night shooting that sent some 100 terrified partygoers running for their lives in the San Francisco suburb of Orinda.

The four-bedroom home had been rented on Airbnb by a woman who told the owner her dozen family members had asthma and needed to escape smoke from a wildfire, the person with knowledge of the transaction told The Associated Press. A fire burning in Sonoma County about 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of Orinda earlier in the week fouled the air over a wide area.

The owner was suspicious of a one-night rental on Halloween and before agreeing reminded the renter that no parties were allowed, said the person with knowledge of the transaction, who was not authorized to publicly disclose the information and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The owner, Michael Wang, said his wife reached out to the renter Thursday night after neighbors contacted them about the party. The renter said there were only a dozen people at the home but Wang said he could see more people on video from his doorbell camera.

“We called the police. They were on the way to go there to stop them, but before we got there the neighbor already sent us a message saying there was a shooting,” he told the Chronicle.

No arrests had been made and there was no immediate word on a motive for the attack. Two guns were found at the property, authorities said.

Three people, all from the Bay Area, died at the scene and a fourth died at the hospital, authorities initially said. The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office identified them Friday evening as Tiyon Farley, 22, of Antioch; Omar Taylor, 24, of Pittsburg; Ramon Hill Jr., 23; and Javin County, 29. The sheriff’s office identified a fifth victim, 19-year-old Oshiana Tompkins of Vallejo and Hercules, late Friday night, saying she died at a hospital.

Taylor’s father, Omar Taylor Sr., said his son was hired to play music at the party.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” he told The East Bay Times.

Other people were wounded by gunshots or injured in the panic that followed, authorities said.

The party at the four-bedroom house apparently was advertised on social media as an “Airbnb mansion party.”

Orinda, with a population of about 20,000, requires short-term rental hosts to register with the city annually and pay an occupancy tax. The maximum occupancy is 13 people.

Orinda city documents show officials issued violations in March for exceeding the home’s maximum occupancy and illegal parking. City Manager Steve Salomon said the homeowner had resolved previous complaints lodged in February over occupancy and noise and in July over overflowing trash.

Airbnb is “urgently investigating” what happened, spokesman Ben Breit said in an email.

Airbnb has banned the renter from its platform and the home has been removed as a listing, he said.

One attendee said he was enjoying the music and watching people dance when he heard shots and people started running.

The screaming seemed to last forever, said Devan, who asked that his last name not be used because he feared for his safety.

“Everybody started running, scrambling,” he said. “People were just collapsing and friends were helping friends. It was a scary situation and then as everyone is panicking and stuff, there were more shots.”

Devan shot a video posted to Instagram that showed a wounded man on the ground and a police officer standing over him and a woman saying she needs to go to the hospital “because my hand’s been blown off.”

On Friday, police tape surrounded the block as people came to collect their cars and other belongings. One woman in tears told reporters the father of her child had been killed. She left before giving her name.

Romond Reynolds picked up the car of his son, 24-year-old Armani Reynolds, who he said was left comatose by the shooting.

“All I know is that he’s a victim and was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Reynolds said.

Neighbor Shahram Saki, 61, said in a phone interview that some fleeing partygoers hid in the bushes in his front yard and others begged to be let into his home.

“They were screaming for help. I told them, ‘You gotta get out of here,'” Saki said. “I was scared to death, anything could have happened.”

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Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco and Brady McCombs in Salt Lake City contributed.

UAW President Taking Leave Amid Corruption Probe

DETROIT — The United Auto Workers announced Saturday that President Gary Jones is taking a paid leave of absence amid a federal investigation of corruption within the union.

The UAW said Jones requested the leave, which is effective Sunday. UAW Vice President Rory Gamble will serve as acting president.

“The UAW is fighting tooth and nail to ensure our members have a brighter future. I do not want anything to distract from the mission,” Jones said in a statement.

The union is in the middle of negotiating new four-year contracts with Detroit automakers.

UAW-represented workers at General Motors Co. recently approved a new contract after a 40-day strike. Union members are scheduled to begin voting Monday on a proposed contract with Ford Motor Co., which Gamble helped negotiate. If Ford workers ratify the agreement, the UAW will begin bargaining with Fiat Chrysler.

The FBI has been investigating fraud and misuse of funds at the UAW for more than two years. Ten people have been convicted so far, including union leaders and auto company officials.

Jones has not been charged, but federal agents searched his suburban Detroit home in August in connection with the investigation.

In a recent court filing, federal prosecutors alleged that seven top UAW officials had conspired since 2010 to embezzle funds through schemes such as submitting false vouchers for conference expenses.

The Detroit News, citing sources familiar with the investigation, said Jones is one of the unnamed union leaders.

U.K. Temporarily Halts Fracking in What Critics See as ‘Election Stunt’

LONDON — The British government announced Saturday that it will no longer allow fracking because of new scientific analysis that casts doubts on the safety of the controversial practice, but some critics called the action an election stunt and demanded a permanent ban.

The government said the decision was based on a finding by the Oil and Gas Authority that it is not possible to clearly predict the likelihood or severity of earthquakes linked to fracking operations.

The decision to announce a moratorium on fracking means the government will no longer support its use of for shale gas extraction and planning proposals with fracking will not be moved forward.

Business and Energy Secretary Andrea Leadsom said the new scientific report makes clear that the government cannot rule out future “unacceptable impacts” on local communities where fracking is allowed.

“For this reason, I have concluded that we should put a moratorium on fracking in England with immediate effect,” she said.

The government’s new position was announced at the start of what is expected to be a hard-fought campaign ahead of a Dec. 12 national election. There have been considerable protests against fracking in recent years.

The announcement drew praise from local activists and environmental groups although some called for a permanent ban on the practice, not just a halt in the approval process.

Activist Maureen Mills from the Halsall Against Fracking group, said the decision was welcome because fracking had taken an “immeasurable” toll on her region of northwestern England.

“Our communities are left physically and mentally drained and devastated. For what? Years of anguish, research, protest, tears and fears,” she said. “Stopping this industry has always been our goal and our reasons are now being taken seriously.”

But politicians from the opposition Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats warned that the government’s reversal on fracking may be a temporary ploy to garner votes during the upcoming national vote.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn called the move “an election stunt” that would likely be reversed the day after the vote if Prime Minister Boris Johnson is still in power.

“We’re quite clear, we will end fracking. We think it’s unnecessary, we think it’s pollutive of ground water systems, and also all the evidence from Preston New Road in Lancashire is it’s actually dangerous and has caused serious earth tremors,” Corbyn said.

Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace, said fracking has no future in Britain because of widespread opposition.

“Opening up a new fossil fuel industry in this climate emergency was always an awful idea and it’s only seemed worse as the industry has lurched from mishap to disaster,” she said. “Grassroots activists across the country deserve huge credit.”

Democrats Can’t Ignore Their Biden Problem Forever

Earlier this week, in a vote that saw only two Democratic defections, the House of Representatives approved a package of ground rules for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. According to The Associated Press, the vote will allow Congress to “transition from weeks of closed-door interviews with witnesses to public hearings and ultimately to possible votes on whether to recommend Trump’s removal from office.” (Republicans, for their part, voted unanimously against, with White House Press Secretary Stephanie deriding the opposition’s “unhinged obsession with this illegitimate impeachment proceeding.”)

Even at this early stage, public opinion on impeachment would appear to favor the Democrats. As of this writing, 48% of Americans support an inquiry versus 43.9% who do not, per FiveThirtyEight, while a poll released Friday from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a split of 47 to 38%, if only a third of respondents believe it should be a congressional priority. Yet buried in the poll’s findings is a statistic both the Democratic Party and its rank-and-file members ignore at their peril: seven in 10 Republicans believe it was inappropriate for former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, and 6 in 10 Democrats agree.

They’re not wrong. As Ryan Grim writes for The Intercept, Biden’s family has been profiting off his office for years, and the Democratic Party would be foolish to pretend otherwise. While Grim is careful to debunk the Republican conspiracy theory that the then-vice president demanded Ukraine’s top prosecutor be fired as a protective measure—”it did more to hurt his son’s company than anything else”—he nonetheless acknowledges that Hunter had no business holding his position in the first place.

Following the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, organizations like Burisima Holdings, whose owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, had ties to the deposed administration, became targets for investigation. Enter Hunter Biden, who maintained a seat on the company board for $50,000 per month despite lacking any meaningful experience in the field and his documented struggles with substance abuse. For Grim, the play was “obvious”: Biden’s mere affiliation with Burisima, and the weight of his surname in the West, would dissuade any prosecutor from looking too closely at the company’s operations. “It is the entire reason Hunter Biden was paid so handsomely to do nothing but sell his name to the company,” he concludes. “That’s corruption. Enough.”

This perfectly legal brand of corruption is ubiquitous in Washington. Indeed, it’s been one of the trademarks of Joe Biden’s long and frequently inglorious career in public office. Sarah Chayes, author of “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens National Security,” put things succinctly for The Atlantic in September:

Some of these gigs require more ethical compromises than others. When allegations of ethical lapses or wrongdoing surface against people on one side of the aisle, they can always claim that someone on the other side has done far worse. But taken together, all of these examples have contributed to a toxic norm. Joe Biden is the man who, as a senator, walked out of a dinner with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Biden was one of the most vocal champions of anticorruption efforts in the Obama administration. So when this same Biden takes his son with him to China aboard Air Force Two, and within days Hunter joins the board of an investment advisory firm with stakes in China, it does not matter what father and son discussed. Joe Biden has enabled this brand of practice, made it bipartisan orthodoxy. And the ethical standard in these cases—people’s basic understanding of right and wrong—becomes whatever federal law allows. Which is a lot.

As the machinery of impeachment whirs and the 2020 election creeps ever closer, Democrats have a choice: they can provide a genuine alternative to the kind of self-dealing that has defined the Trump administration or they can present themselves, again, as the lesser of two evils and risk countless voters staying home next November. Nominating Joe Biden may all but guarantee the latter.

Read more at The Intercept.

Beto O’Rourke Announces He’s Dropping 2020 Presidential Bid

WASHINGTON — Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, announced Friday that he was ending his Democratic presidential campaign, which failed to recapture the enthusiasm, interest and fundraising prowess of his 2018 Senate race.

Addressing supporters in Iowa, O’Rourke said that while his campaign was ending, he planned to stay active in the fight to defeat President Donald Trump. “I will be part of this and so will you,” he said.

O’Rourke was urged to run for president by many Democrats, including supporters of former President Barack Obama, who were energized by his narrow Senate loss last year in Texas, a reliably Republican state. He raised a record $80 million from donors across the country, visited every county in Texas and used social media and livestreaming video to engage directly with voters. He ultimately lost to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz by 3 percentage points.

But O’Rourke, 47, struggled to replicate that model in the presidential primary, and both his polling and his fundraising dwindled significantly in recent months.

“Though it is difficult to accept, it is clear to me now that this campaign does not have the means to move forward successfully,” he wrote in a Medium post formally announcing the end of his campaign. “Acknowledging this now is in the best interests of those in the campaign; it is in the best interests of this party as we seek to unify around a nominee; and it is in the best interests of the country.”

O’Rourke’s decision comes as the Democratic primary enters a critical stretch. With three months until the kickoff Iowa caucuses, polls consistently show a trio of candidates leading the way: former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, with Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, showing strength in Iowa, as well. Lower polling candidates face difficult questions about whether they have the money to sustain a campaign through the first primary contests.

Earlier this week, Kamala Harris, another candidate who entered the race to much fanfare, announced she was downscaling her campaign, laying off some staffers and reorienting almost exclusively to focus on Iowa.

O’Rourke entered the race as the feel-good, dynamic candidate who had the ability to appeal to both Republicans and Democrats and work across the aisle in Washington. He met with

But he immediately faced criticism that he had a sense of entitlement, particularly after the release of a Vanity Fair interview on the eve of his campaign launch in which he appeared to say he was “born” to be in presidential politics.

After quickly pulling in $9.4 million during his first two weeks in the race, O’Rourke’s financial situation deteriorated. By the end of June, he was spending more than his campaign was taking in. By the end of September, he had just $3.2 million cash on hand while spending double that over the previous three months, campaign finance records show.

Perhaps more significantly, the small-dollar contributions that fueled his Senate bid and the early days of his presidential campaign slowed to a $1.9 million trickle.

The former congressman also struggled to articulate a consistent vision and messaging as a presidential candidate.

He spent several weeks trying to build his campaign around climate change, calling global warming the greatest existential threat the country had ever faced. But as the excitement over his candidacy began to fade, O’Rourke was forced to stage a “reintroduction” of his campaign to reinvigorate it. After a gunman opened fire at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso, killing 22 people, O’Rourke more heavily embraced gun control, saying he would take assault weapons away from existing owners.

As O’Rourke’s standing in the presidential primary plummeted, some Democrats urged him to return to Texas for another Senate run. He has repeatedly denied having any interest in that race.

O’Rourke’s decision came hours before he was supposed to join other Democratic contenders at a party dinner in Iowa. Campaign volunteers were still collecting voter information and handing out “Beto” stickers” outside the event amid a steady rain as the candidate announced he was dropping out.

O’Rourke did not endorse another Democrat for the nomination, saying the country will be well served by any of the other candidates, “and I’m going to be proud to support whoever that nominee is.”

Trump quickly weighed in on O’Rourke’s exit, saying in a tweet: “Oh no, Beto just dropped out of race for President despite him saying he was “born for this.” I don’t think so!”

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Associated Press writer Brian Slodysko contributed to this report from Washington. Weissert reported from Des Moines, Iowa.