Chris Hedges's Blog, page 492

Can Donald Trump Unite the World (Against Himself)?

One thing already seems clear in the Trump era: the world will not turn out to be the American president’s playground.  His ultra-unilateralist, rejectionist policies on trade, the Iran denuclearization agreement, the costs of defense, and climate change are already creating an incipient anti-Trump movement globally (and in the United States as well). To a remarkable degree, the countries he has targeted are banding together to oppose him and his policies.  That still inchoate but gathering opposition assures that, whatever Donald Trump’s view of America may be, it is no longer — in the phrase coined 20 years ago by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — the “indispensable nation.” Abroad or even at home, with the president facing increasingly strong headwinds on climate change at the state and local level, we’re entering a new world order on the heels of the collapsed American domination of the past three-quarters of a century.

Let’s consider the opposition Trump has generated on an issue-by-issue basis.

Cross-Border Trade

In January 2017, on his first day in office, President Trump promptly withdrew the United States from the long-negotiated 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, deeply disappointing among others a close ally, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He had assiduously curried favor with Trump as soon as he was elected on and off the golf course.  A day earlier in January, Abe had even succeeded in getting his own parliament to approve the agreement.

But in an act by Washington’s allies unprecedented in the last seven decades, Abe, along with the leaders of the 10 other countries in that pact — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam — refused to take Trump’s executive order as TPP’s death sentence.  Instead, in a groundbreaking step into a new world, they resumed negotiations on the pact in the Chilean city of Viña del Mar.

This March, after months of deliberation, they signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in Chile’s capital city, Santiago. For the signatories, it reduces tariffs drastically, while introducing sweeping new trade rules in markets covering half a trillion people on either side of the Pacific Ocean.

This was a landmark event, inaugurating an era in which countries long accustomed to following cues from Washington forged ahead without its participation. In doing so, they rejected Trump’s view of trade as a zero-sum game, consisting of winners and losers. Reflecting the common perception of the signatories, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said, “We need to stay on the course of globalization, yet learning from our past mistakes.”

Bachelet’s view was shared by Abe, who leads the country with the third largest economy in the world. Japan is a key player in global trade. So, too, is the 28-member European Union (EU) whose aggregate gross domestic product ($17.278 trillion) far exceeds Japan’s ($4.872 trillion).

Soon after recovering from Trump’s TPP exit, Abe decided to revive his country’s stalled free trade talks with the EU. Their shared disapproval of the American president’s trade policy led the two sides to rapidly overcome their differences. In July 2017, Abe formally agreed to an outline of a free-trade deal with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.  By so doing, the EU and Japan, highly developed democracies, made clear their commitment to the liberal, free-trading, rules-based international order, which runs counter to Trump’s worldview.

In July 2018 in Brussels, the European Union and Japan inked the globe’s largest free trade deal, the Economic Partnership Agreement. Remarkably, it covers almost a third of the globe’s gross domestic product and 600 million people. Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s minister for economic revitalization, summed up the situation in this way: “The signing of the Japan-EU deal today will show the world once again our unwavering political will to promote free trade.” Juncker was even more upbeat.  “[The] impact of today’s agreement goes far beyond our shores,” he said. “We are showing that we are stronger and better off when we work together. And we are leading by example, showing that trade is about more than tariffs and barriers. It is about values, principles, and finding win-win solutions for all those concerned.”

For the first time since the end of World War II, Washington’s allies in the West as well as the East thumbed their noses at an American president.  That made it a truly historic event.

The EU Goes Head to Head With Trump

In May, when Donald Trump exited the multilateral Iran denuclearization deal endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, Juncker was equally strident in his criticism of him. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had been signed in July 2015 by six world powers (America, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia) and the EU, was being implemented as specified in the document. Yet Trump announced the re-imposition of the American sanctions that had been in place before the JCPOA. These covered Iran’s energy, banking, and other sectors, and included a provision penalizing foreign businesses worldwide that continued trading with or investing in Iran.

The American president’s 11-minute TV address explaining his decision ignored the 10 quarterly reports by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency confirming that Iran was in compliance with the pact. Altogether his address contained 10 false or misleading statements, including the howler that Iran was on the “cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.”

Before launching economic warfare against Tehran, Trump had alienated the EU by refusing to grant it an exemption from steel and aluminum tariffs he started imposing on China and other countries in March. An American president is authorized to take such action only to protect “national security.” EU officials argued, to no avail, that their bloc was an ally of the United States and so, by definition, not a national security threat.

“We are witnessing today a new phenomenon: the capricious assertiveness of the American administration,” Tusk said, on the eve of an EU summit in Sofia, Bulgaria, in mid-May. “Looking at the latest decisions of President Trump, some could even think, ‘With friends like that, who needs enemies?’” At that meeting, EU members agreed unanimously to stick to the JCPOA as long as Iran agreed to do the same.

On August 7th, U.S. sanctions went into effect on any financial transactions involving American dollars relating to Iran’s automotive sector, purchases of commercial planes, and metals, including gold. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, immediately instructed European companies not to comply with Washington’s demand to cease trading with Iran. Those firms deciding to pull out would require the EU’s authorization to do so. The commission went on to set up a mechanism that would allow firms affected by the sanctions to sue the American government in the national courts of member states.

Russia and China, co-signatories to the JCPOA, concurred with the EU.  “We are deeply disappointed by U.S. steps to re-impose its national sanctions against Iran,” said the Russian foreign ministry. “This is a clear example of Washington violating U.N. resolution 2231 [on the Iran deal] and international law.” China’s foreign ministry also regretted Washington’s decision and urged all involved parties to stay on track for full implementation of the 2015 accord.

The unanimously adopted Security Council Resolution 2231, passed under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, had endorsed the Iran denuclearization pact, making it part of international law. It included a call for “promoting and facilitating the development of normal economic and trade contacts and cooperation with Iran.”

As if brazenly violating international law weren’t enough, the Trump administration decided to penalize U.N. member states for abiding by that resolution — a frontal attack on a rules-based international order. Fearing U.S. sanctions, some European companies had already backed off their Iranian investments and trade before August 7th. Consider that an apt illustration of a Trumpian world in which it’s the lawbreaker who punishes the law-abiding.

Trump on NATO

As a businessman occupying the White House, Donald Trump has introduced a profit-and-loss paradigm to foreign policy — be it cross-border trade or military budgets. That helps explain his continual drumbeat of criticism about how other NATO members are not spending enough on defense.

At the July NATO summit in Brussels, Trump was implacable on that issue, summing up his position in this way to CBS News: “Many of those countries are in NATO and they weren’t paying their bills.” A typical Trumpian claim, it bore no relation to reality.  As German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen explained, “NATO does not have a debt account.”

Apparently, the president confused direct and indirect contributions to NATO. In 2017, NATO’s budget was $1.652 billion. Member states contribute according to an agreed-upon formula related to a country’s GDP. The U.S. contributes 22.14% of that budget, Germany 14.65%, France 10.63%, and Britain 9.84%. All paid on time.

Then there are indirect contributions to NATO. These are related to how much equipment and manpower a member state volunteers to a certain military operation, of which the best known at the moment continues to be the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan launched after the 9/11 attacks almost 17 years ago. In order to facilitate and encourage such contributions, NATO leaders agreed in 2014 to increase their spending on defense to at least 2% of their GDP by 2024. Many are on course to do so. Recently, however, Trump upped the ante, suggesting that the figure be 4%, a goal even the U.S., with by far the largest military budget in the world, does not now reach.

Currently, the U.S. is spending 3.6% of its GDP on its military. That amounts to $683 billion (and the military budget Trump just signed raised that to $717 billion), or 71% of total NATO defense spending. That is what led the American president to describe the present situation as “disproportionate and not fair to the taxpayers of the United States.” Unsurprisingly, Trump failed to compare like with like. Defense of country is normally defined in terms of a possible aggressor. In that sense, the European members of NATO are focused on Russia. Collectively, NATO’s EU members spend $254 billion on defense, or 10 times Russia’s $24.2 billion defense budget.

By contrast, since the end of World War II, the Pentagon has equipped itself to fight wars across the world and dominate both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. That explains why, of the 20 aircraft carriers in service around the globe, 10 belong to its navy. Constructing an aircraft carrier takes years and is hugely expensive, apart from the support ships it needs to form a complete carrier task force.  But as a well-armed, aircraft-equipped, floating part of sovereign U.S. territory, powered by dual nuclear reactors, it is unmatched in its lethal power. This is what led former defense secretary William Cohen to state that, without “flattops,” the United States would have “less of a voice, less of an influence.”

In stark contrast, among Washington’s European allies, Britain has just one aircraft carrier, as does France. Notably, their carriers rarely steam past the Horn of Africa or the Persian Gulf.

Britain is already past the 2% mark for defense spending and France is just .2% short of the agreed-upon target. Since May of last year, France has been governed by 40-year-old President Emmanuel Macron, a staunch advocate of the closer integration, financially and otherwise, of EU members.  In a September 2017 speech, he floated the idea of a joint enterprise to allow Europe’s militaries to coordinate and react swiftly together.  As a result, this June, ministers from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal signed a letter of intent in Luxembourg to form the European Intervention Initiative (EII).  It would exist outside the EU’s structures and be focused on joint planning for future natural disasters, crisis intervention, and the evacuation of citizens from hostile countries, among other things.

At present, its aims remain modest, but the key point is simple.  The principle that European militaries should act collectively without the involvement of the Pentagon is to be put into practice.  That is likely to prove but one more step on the path toward turning Albright’s indispensable nation into an increasingly dispensable America. If Donald Trump or his successor persists in weakening NATO, he or she will only encourage the Europeans to build on the EII concept.

A Climate-Denying President Is Rebuffed at Home

As a global opposition to Donald Trump begins to form, on one issue, climate change — that affects all humanity — a distinctly American opposition is preparing to join the growing international one.  In June 2017, Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, while appointing an unparalleled crew of climate-change deniers to his administration and reneging on President Barack Obama’s pledge by 2025 to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% (from 2005 levels).

To the relief of most of the planet’s inhabitants, Trump’s withdrawal proved to be a solo act, with the remaining 194 signatories remaining firmly on board. Their representatives were among the 3,000 diplomats and observers who assembled in Bonn, Germany, in May to deliberate on giving the agreement further clout. To the consternation of the Trump administration, the next crucial meeting, a Global Climate Action Summit, will take place in September –and guess where? —  in California.

That state’s governor, Jerry Brown, has been a key figure in rallying support for the Paris Accord and opposition to Trump’s climate-change deniers at the state and local levels. Along with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, Brown has sponsored the We Are Still In coalition. In November 2017, the two of them published a remarkable report showing that cities, states, and businesses representing more than half of the U.S. economy and population had declared their support for the agreement. “If these non-federal actors were a country,” it pointed out, “their economy would be the third largest in the world, bigger than all but two national parties to the Paris Agreement.”

In his withdrawal statement, Trump stated that “the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.” That accord’s main aim was to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees centigrade from the pre-industrial level. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” Trump added.  Within a few hours, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto tweeted back, “I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy & future.”

Pittsburgh is one of 405 municipalities representing 70 million Americans that have signed on to a Climate Mayors initiative, which has only grown in the past year. More than 80 American cities — even some, like San Diego, run by Republicans — have committed to a future of 100% renewable energy. In fact, Trump’s decision actually spurred some cities to make new efforts to accelerate the pace of change. New York decided to electrify its bus fleet and pledged to divest from fossil fuels, while suing the world’s largest oil corporations for their role in escalating sea-level rise, heat waves, and other natural disasters. It also promised to abandon coal-fired electricity, as did Los Angeles.

Donald Trump is not going to change.  He has declared his intention to seek reelection in 2020 and will continue to nurture his base by endlessly demonstrating his version of Make America Great Again. The 54 million followers he has on Twitter generally seem to applaud the macho bluster with which he conducts his bouts of disruptive diplomacy. So don’t expect him to moderate either his ultra-unilateralist policies or the style in which he delivers them.

The question for the future is this: To what extent can the incipient anti-Trump movement globally and domestically coalesce in ways that will set our world on a new course — one that will make Donald Trump and his Washington cronies the dinosaurs of Planet Earth? 

Bernie Sanders Mops Floor With Trump in 2020 Matchup Poll

Polling results  Wednesday by Politico/Morning Consult show that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is widely speculated to make another run for the Oval Office in 2020, would beat President Donald Trump by double digits.

In a face-off between Sanders and Trump, the senator garnered a 12-point lead, with 44 percent of respondents favoring Sanders, 32 percent who said they would vote to re-elect the president, and 24 percent who didn’t know or had no opinion.

Sanders has repeatedly insisted to journalists that he is currently focused on serving in the Senate and his re-election, though he reportedly has been quietly considering a 2020 bid for months and has declined multiple opportunities to rule out a run.

“What I have said time and time again, my focus right now is on 2018 and to do everything that I can to end one-party rule of the House and the Senate,” Sanders told Stephen Colbert last week. “We’re working really, really hard on that, but it is too early to be talking about 2020.”

While the Vermont senator was the most popular Democratic contender among the 11 included on the poll, former Vice President Joe Biden ranked second, beating Trump 43 to 31 percent. Biden, who has led the pack in some previous polling, said last month that he will make a decision about running by next January and encouraged other 2020 hopefuls to do the same.

This latest poll was conducted Aug. 16–18, before Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign violations that implicate the president; former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted for bank and tax fraud felonies; and Rep. Duncan Hunter, the second congressman to back Trump’s 2016 run, was indicted for allegedly spending campaign funds on everything from family vacations to videos games.

Just hours before those damning developments for Trump associates and supporters on Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another potential 2020 contender, unveiled sweeping new anti-corruption legislation. Though Warren’s lead over Trump was slimmer than that of Sanders or Biden, she still led the president 34 to 30 percent, with the remaining 36 percent of respondents undecided.

The other eight potential Democratic candidates included in the poll—Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), and Kamala Harris (Calif.); New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; Montana Gov. Steve Bullock; Rep. John Delaney (Md.); former Attorney General Eric Holder; and Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels‘ attorney—trailed Trump to varying degrees:

Trump Accuses Michael Cohen of Lying Under Pressure

WASHINGTON — The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times local):

7 p.m.

President Donald Trump is accusing his former lawyer Michael Cohen of lying under pressure of prosecution as his White House grapples with allegations that the president orchestrated a campaign cover-up to buy the silence of two women who claimed he had affairs with them.

Trump took to Twitter to accuse Cohen of making up “stories in order to get a ‘deal'” from federal prosecutors. Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight charges, including campaign finance violations that he said he carried out in coordination with Trump.

The White House has signaled no clear strategy for managing the fallout. At a White House briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted at least seven times that Trump had done nothing wrong and was not the subject of criminal charges.

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3 p.m.

The White House says President Donald Trump did nothing wrong the day after his former attorney Michael Cohen said Trump had directed him to make hush money payments to two women with the express purpose of “influencing the election.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells reporters that the president has “done nothing wrong” and stresses, “There are no charges against him.”

She also calls it “a ridiculous accusation” to suggest the president had lied when he said he didn’t know about the payments at the time they were made.

Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to a number of charges, including campaign finance violations.

Asked whether the president is concerned about what Cohen might tell the special counsel investigating Russia election middling: “I don’t think the president is concerned at all.”

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2:45 p.m.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she’s “not aware” of conversations about a possible presidential pardon for Paul Manafort.

Manafort–President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman–was convicted Tuesday in federal court of eight financial crimes stemming from his work before he joined Trump’s campaign in 2016. A jury deadlocked on 10 other counts against Manafort.

Trump tweeted Wednesday about his respect for Manafort and called him a “brave man” for choosing to go trial over cooperating with prosecutors. Trump has also called Manafort’s situation “sad.”

Echoing the president, Sanders says Wednesday that Manafort’s case doesn’t have anything to do with the president, the president’s campaign or the White House.

She says conversations about a pardon for Manafort are “not something that’s been up for discussion.”

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2 p.m.

President Donald Trump is defending the hush money payments made by his former attorney Michael Cohen to a pair of women, insisting, contrary to Cohen’s guilty plea, that the effort wasn’t “even a campaign violation.”

Trump is telling “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt in an interview set to air Thursday that the payments “didn’t come out of the campaign, and that’s big.”

He says wrongly that if the money had come from the campaign, “that could be a little dicey,” but since it “came from me” it’s “not even a campaign violation.”

Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to a series of charges and said Trump had directed him to arrange the payments to influence the election.

Corporations are not permitted to contribute to campaigns and money intended to influence an election must be reported.

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1:30 p.m.

The White House is rejecting calls from Democrats to delay confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Democrats say the hearings should be delayed following the conviction of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, and the guilty plea of Michael Cohen, who implicated Trump in a federal crime.

White House spokesman Raj Shah says the Democrats look “increasingly desperate.” He says the confirmation hearings will begin on Sept. 4 as scheduled and Kavanaugh “will be there.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says the hearings should not be held until Kavanaugh answers questions about executive power, including whether a sitting president can be forced to comply with a subpoena.

He says the Senate shouldn’t confirm a justice who believes that presidents “are virtually above the law.”

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1:20 p.m.

New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is urging Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte to hold immediate hearings on President Donald Trump’s persistent attacks on the Justice Department and the FBI. Nadler says the continued criticism by Trump on Twitter and in public comments are intended to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Nadler said the guilty plea Tuesday by Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, means that “the president of the United States is now directly implicated in a criminal conspiracy.” Nadler says Congress must act to “respond to this culture of corruption that has taken hold under Mr. Trump and Republican congressional majorities.”

Nadler urged Goodlatte to take up a bill Nadler co-sponsored that protects Mueller’s investigation.

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11:45 a.m.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for Republicans to delay Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in the wake of Paul Manafort’s conviction and Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, calling the developments “a game changer.”

Schumer argues that Kavanaugh has refused to answer whether President Donald Trump can be forced to comply with a subpoena. He said that refusal, combined with Cohen implicating Trump in a federal crime, makes the danger of Kavanaugh’s nomination “abundantly clear.”

He says the president is on the verge of making a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, which may soon determine the extent of his legal jeopardy.

He says the Senate shouldn’t confirm a justice who believes that presidents “are virtually above the law and only Congress can check a president’s power.”

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11:40 a.m.

Defense lawyers for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort are asking a federal judge to hold back a transcript referencing the special counsel’s investigation that led to Manafort’s financial fraud convictions.

In a motion filed Wednesday, Manafort’s attorneys are asking U.S. District Judge T.C. Ellis lll to withhold portions of a bench discussion that occurred during the trial that ended with Manafort’s conviction on 8 counts Tuesday. Ellis initially sealed the material after a request from prosecutors.

Prosecutors raised objections when Manafort’s lawyers tried to prompt testimony about the special counsel’s pre-trial questioning of former Manafort protege Rick Gates, who testified against his former boss.

Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing had asked Gates whether he had informed prosecutors about four alleged extramarital affairs, but the judge halted that line of questioning.

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11 a.m.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi says impeaching President Donald Trump is “not a priority” for Democrats despite the conviction of Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and the guilty plea of his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Pelosi tells The Associated Press that “impeachment has to spring from something else.”

Pelosi says she prefers for Democrats, if they win the House in November, to conduct oversight and ensure Special Counsel Robert Mueller can finish his work.

She says: “If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see. It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward.”

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10:25 a.m.

President Donald Trump is seeking to downplay Michael Cohen’s guilty plea to campaign finance violations, suggesting that his former fixer’s admission to federal crimes was akin to record-keeping violations.

Trump tweeted Wednesday that Cohen “plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!”

Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and implicated Trump in a campaign cover-up to buy the silence of women who said they had sexual relationships with him.

Trump appeared to be referencing that Obama’s 2008 campaign was fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for reporting violations that stemmed from missing notices for donations received during the final days of the campaign.

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9:45 a.m.

Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, would probably be willing to testify before Congress without being granted immunity.

That’s the word from Lanny Davis, Cohen’s personal attorney, who tells CNN it’s his belief that Cohen would agree to testify again. He cautions that he has not spoken with Cohen about it.

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday said they want Cohen to appear again before their panel. They cited press reports that assert Cohen knew in advance about a meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. The senators said Cohen indicated otherwise during his testimony.

Davis says Cohen testified truthfully and was unable to correct the press reports due to the ongoing criminal investigation.

Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to campaign-finance violations and other charges.

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9:28 a.m.

President Donald Trump is accusing his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, of making up “stories in order to get a ‘deal.'”

The president’s tweet Wednesday comes after Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges in a case that poses a direct threat to Trump.

Trump says on Twitter that he feels “very badly” for former campaign chairman Paul Manafort who was convicted on financial crimes.

The president says in Manafort’s case, “Justice” took a 12-year-old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” – make up stories in order to get a “deal.”

Trump says of Manafort, he has “Such respect for a brave man!”

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9 a.m.

President Donald Trump says he wouldn’t recommend his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Trump tweeted Wednesday: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to campaign-finance violations and other charges and implicated the president in his wrongdoing. Cohen said Trump directed him to arrange the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model to fend off damage to his White House bid.

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8 a.m.

Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has information of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller handling the Russia probe. That’s according to Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis.

Davis said the information could include whether Trump knew ahead of time about the hacking of Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential election, knowledge about a possible conspiracy to corrupt American democracy by the Russians and the failure to report that knowledge to the FBI.

Davis spoke in a series of television interviews Wednesday.

Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to campaign-finance violations and other charges. And he says Trump directed him to arrange the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model to fend off damage to his White House bid.

Davis also says Cohen wouldn’t want to be pardoned by Trump.

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12:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer has pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and his onetime campaign chairman has been convicted for financial fraud — and those developments are raising questions about Trump’s potential legal jeopardy.

Michael Cohen, who was Trump’s longtime attorney, has entered a guilty plea in New York, and says he and Trump arranged the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

And in a Virginia courtroom, onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been convicted of financial crimes.

S&P 500 Marks Longest Bull Run on Mixed Day for Indexes

The bull market in U.S. stocks is now the longest on record.

The current bull run on Wall Street became the longest in history on Wednesday at 3,453 days, beating the bull market of the 1990s that ended in the dot-com collapse in 2000.

That’s how long the benchmark S&P 500 index of major U.S. stocks has gone without a drop of 20 percent or more, the traditional definition of a bear market.

Despite its long duration, this bull market actually wasn’t as big in terms of overall gains as the 1990s one.

The milestone arrived on a listless day of trading that left the S&P 500 with a slight loss. Gains by technology and energy companies outweighed losses in industrial stocks, banks and other sectors.

“This expansion is alive and well, this bull market is alive and well,” said Jason Pride, chief investment officer for private clients at Glenmede. “Valuations are definitely higher than we tend to like to see them, but they’re actually not that atypical for the back part of an economic expansion.”

The S&P 500 index finished with a loss of 1.14 points, or 0.04 percent, at 2,861.82. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 88.69 points, or 0.3 percent, to 25,733.60. The Nasdaq composite gained 29.92 points, or 0.4 percent, to 7,889.10.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks picked up 4.50 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,722.54. The Russell marked its second straight all-time high.

Gainers finished with a slight edge on decliners on the New York Stock Exchange.

The bull market for U.S. stocks began in March 2009 and has now lasted nine years, five months and 13 days, a record that few would have predicted when the market struggled to find its footing after a 50 percent plunge during the financial crisis.

The long rally has added trillions of dollars to household wealth, helping the economy, and stands as a testament to the ability of large U.S. companies to squeeze out profits in tough times and confidence among investors as they shrugged off repeated crises and kept buying.

President Donald Trump, who has pointed to the stock market as a sign that the economic policies he’s implemented are working, weighed in with a tweet Wednesday. “Longest bull run in the history of the stock market, congratulations America!” he wrote.

Despite its longevity, the bull market lags others on the basis of magnitude, or the cumulative gain it has generated for investors.

As of Tuesday, the S&P 500 had climbed 323 percent over the current bull market. By comparison, the bull market that ran through much of the 1990s and ended in March 2000 led to a 417 percent gain for the S&P 500, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

“While it’s long in time, it could still go on longer because, magnitude-wise, it’s just not that far (along),” Pride said.

Despite the milestone, investors mainly kept an eye on company earnings reports and the release of the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s most recent meeting of policymakers earlier this month.

The minutes of their discussions revealed deepening concerns that escalating trade wars could hurt the economy. The minutes also underscored expectations that the central bank is likely to increase its policy rate at its next meeting in September. Many economists believe another rate hike will follow in December.

The afternoon release of the minutes didn’t have much of an impact on the market, which continued to trade in a narrow range.

Later this week, central bankers, including new Fed chief Jerome Powell, gather in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, an annual symposium that has often generated market-moving news.

Stocks traded mostly in a narrow range for much of the day Wednesday.

Technology sector stocks reversed course after an early slide. Nvidia gained 3.8 percent to $262.82.

Traders also bid up shares in a couple of big retailers that reported quarterly results that topped Wall Street’s expectations. Target climbed 3.2 percent to $85.94, while Lowe’s jumped 5.8 percent to $105.52.

Industrial stocks took some of the heaviest losses. American Airlines Group lost 2.8 percent to $39.19.

U.S. benchmark crude climbed 3.1 percent to $67.87 per barrel in New York. Brent crude, the standard for international oil prices, dipped 0.1 percent to $74.70 per barrel in London.

The pickup in oil prices helped boost energy sector stocks. Marathon Oil gained 3.3 percent to $20.87.

In other energy futures trading, heating oil rose 2.1 percent to $2.17 a gallon. Wholesale gasoline gained 2.5 percent to $2.07 a gallon. Natural gas dropped 0.8 percent to $2.96 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 2.82 percent from 2.84 percent late Tuesday.

The dollar rose to 110.57 yen from 110.40 yen late Tuesday. The euro strengthened to $1.1589 from $1.1574.

Gold rose 0.3 percent to $1,203.30 an ounce. Silver fell 0.1 percent to $14.75 an ounce. Copper slid 0.7 percent to $2.69 a pound.

In Europe, Germany’s DAX was flat, while France’s CAC 40 edged up 0.2 percent. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares added 0.1 percent. In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 closed 0.6 percent higher. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.3 percent. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.1 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.6 percent.

Bernie Sanders Rallies Against ‘Greed’ of Billionaires Like Jeff Bezos

In an email sent out Wednesday to supporters, Sen. Bernie Sanders called out members of the billionaire class for enriching themselves at others’ expense. In the same gesture, he called on Americans to push back against their exploitation of the power their economic positions afford them—and of the labor force that sustains it.

And Sanders named names. Specifically, the Vermont senator lashed out at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who has recently made headlines about his skyrocketing executive compensation—in 10 seconds, Bezos makes more than the median annual salary for Amazon employees—as well as about Bezos’ comments about looking to space for new ways to spend his vast wealth.

Echoing themes picked up by other commentators, Sanders pointed out that there are many more necessary and obvious places where Bezos could channel his funds. “Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the moon,” Sanders wrote, “how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers a living wage?”

This wasn’t the first time Bezos has inspired Sanders to vent against what he has characterized, in a refrain he pushed during his 2016 presidential campaign, as a “rigged economy.” Wednesday’s blast made explicit how much Amazon’s inadequate wages wind up costing the rest of the country in the long run. As “thousands of Amazon employees are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing because their wages are too low,” Sanders wrote, taxpayers are forced to pick up the bill. “I don’t believe that ordinary Americans should be subsidizing the wealthiest person in the world because he pays his employees inadequate wages,” he said.

Though Bezos didn’t respond to the finer points (or any points, for that matter) of the legislator’s critique, Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer backed Sanders up:

The entire statement is a powerful indictment of wealth inequality and the exploitation of workers from one of our most respected political leaders. Most of us, myself included, underestimate the unprecedented concentration of power in a few hands in recent years. It is a much ignored labor story of rank exploitation of workers that gives the lie to holding immigrant labor responsible.

Read Sanders’ petition in full below:

I want to ask you to clear your mind for a moment and count to 10.

1…

2…

3…

4…

5…

6…

7…

8…

9…

10…

In those 10 seconds, Jeff Bezos, the owner and founder of Amazon, made more money than the median employee of Amazon makes in an entire year. An entire year.

Think about that.

Think about how hard that family member has to work for an entire year, the days she or he goes into work sick, or has a sick child, or struggles to buy school supplies or Christmas presents, to make what one man makes in 10 seconds.

According to Time magazine, from January 1 through May 1 of this year, Jeff Bezos saw his wealth increase by $275 million every single day for a total increase in wealth of $33 billion in a four-month period.

Meanwhile, thousands of Amazon employees are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing because their wages are too low. And guess who pays for that? You do. Frankly, I don’t believe that ordinary Americans should be subsidizing the wealthiest person in the world because he pays his employees inadequate wages.

But it gets remarkably more ridiculous: Jeff Bezos has so much money that he says the only way he could possibly spend it all is on space travel.

Space travel. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It is absolutely absurd.

Well here is a radical idea: Instead of attempting to explore Mars or go to the moon, how about Jeff Bezos pays his workers a living wage? How about he improves the working conditions at Amazon warehouses across the country so people stop dying on the job? He can no doubt do that and have billions of dollars left over to spend on anything he wants.

So today, whether or not you use Amazon, I want to ask you to join me in sending a message to Jeff Bezos:

Sign my petition to Jeff Bezos: It is long past time you start to pay your workers a living wage and improve working conditions at Amazon warehouses all across the country. He needs to know that you are aware of his company’s greed, which seems to have no end.

Now, I have never understood how someone could have hundreds of billions of dollars and feel the desperate need for even more. I would think that, with the amount of money he has, Jeff Bezos might just be able to get by.

And I think there is something weird and wrong with people who have that much and are willing to step over working people, many with families and young children, in order to get more and more.

But this is not just about the greed of one man. These are policy failures as well.

Last year, Amazon made $5.6 billion in profits and did not pay one penny in federal income taxes. The Trump tax cuts rewarded Amazon with almost $1 billion more. And city after city is offering additional tax breaks, mostly in secret, for the right to host Amazon’s second corporate headquarters.

In my view, a nation cannot survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little. Millions of people across this country struggle to put bread on the table and are one paycheck away from economic devastation, and the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good.

It has got to stop.

But that starts with all of us making our voices heard and being clear — loudly and directly — that this kind of greed is intolerable, and it must end. And that starts with you:

Sign my petition to Jeff Bezos: It is long past time you start to pay your workers a living wage and improve working conditions at Amazon warehouses all across the country. He needs to know that you are aware of his company’s greed, which seems to have no end.

As Americans, we must ask ourselves one fundamental question, and that is whether or not this is the kind of country and economic culture we are comfortable with.

I am not. And I don’t believe you are either.

Thank you for making your voice heard.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren’s Anti-Corruption Stance Shifts When Foreign Policy Is Raised

On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren addressed the National Press Club, outlining with great specificity a host of proposals on issues including eliminating financial conflicts, close the revolving door between business and government and, perhaps most notably, reforming corporate structures.

Warren gave a blistering attack on corporate power run amok, giving example after example; she touched on how Congressman Billy Tauzin did the pharmaceutical lobby’s bidding by preventing a bill for expanded Medicare coverage from allowing the program to negotiate lower drug prices. Noted Warren: “In December of 2003, the very same month the bill was signed into law, PhRMA—the drug companies’ biggest lobbying group—dangled the possibility that Billy could be their next CEO. In February of 2004,” Warren continued, “Congressman Tauzin announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election. Ten months later, he became CEO of PhRMA—at an annual salary of $2 million. Big Pharma certainly knows how to say ‘thank you for your service.’ ”

But I found that Warren’s tenacity when ripping things like corporate lobbyists’ “pre-bribes” suddenly evaporated when dealing with issues like the enormous military budget and Israeli assaults on Palestinian children.

The Press Club moderator, Angela Greiling Keane, early in the news conference asked about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s keeping press out of town hall meetings, pairing that with Trump’s outright attacks on media.

Husseini: Sam Husseini with The Nation and the Institute for Public Accuracy. Cortez, who was mentioned earlier, and other likely incoming congressional members next year propose slashing the military budget to help pay for human and environmental needs. Do you agree? And if I could, a second question: would you consider introducing and sponsoring [a version of] Betty McCollum’s bill on Palestinian children’s rights in the Senate?

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Warren: I now sit on Armed Services and I have been in the middle of the sausage making factory on that one. And that has pushed me even more strongly in the direction of systemic reforms. I want to be able to have those debates. I want to be able to get them out in the open and talk about these poor issues that affect our government, affect our people. I want to be able to debate them on the floor of the senate. I want to be able to do amendments on them. Right now the whole of big money over our government stops much of that. It chokes off much of the debate we should have. So I am going to give you a system-wide answer because I think that’s what matters here. This is not about one particular proposal, this is all the way across. How is it that we get the voices of the people heard in government instead of over and over the voices of the wealthy and the well connected. The voices of those with higher armies of lobbyists. So for me that’s what this is about.

But part of the power that the wealthy and well connected have is getting direct responses to their specific concerns. Political funders are unlikely impressed with broad “system-wide answers.”

In a sense, her non-response to very direct questions rather highlighted the problem she is presumably addressing.

And we’ve been here before.


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Bernie Sanders, in his 2016 presidential run, was remarkably vague or even outright repressive regarding foreign policy, especially early on. This reach almost comical proportions when during a debate on CBS just after the November 2015 bombing in Paris he tried to avoid substantially addressing the issue, wanting instead to fall back on income inequality. Certainly, Sanders was arguably treated very unfairly by the Democratic Party and media establishment, but he was greatly diminished by not having serious foreign policy answers.

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Warren and other purportedly progressive candidates may be set to repeat that. Sanders did address foreign policy more at the end of the campaign and since, but his answers are still problematic at times, and at best it was all too little, too late.

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One question is, realistically, what are Warren’s goals here? It could well be a good faith effort by someone committed to changing the world for the better. But then, why the selectivity?

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If it was enactment of these policies, then the strongest way to do that might have been to find a rogue Republican to pair up with on at least some aspects of her proposals so as to avoid charges being purely politically motivated. When questioned by a New York Post reporter at the news conference, Warren couldn’t name a Republican whom she might work with. This would especially be the case since Trump—like Obama before him—ran against the establishment.

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Is it to make her a leading contender for the Democratic nomination? If so, the hope would be that she’s not simply playing the role of what Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report calls “sheepdogging“—that is, the presidential run or promise of a run by a Sanders or Warren as simply a tool the Democratic Party establishment uses to keep enough of the public on the reservation, so to speak.
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Said Warren of her own financial reform proposals: “Inside Washington, some of these proposals will be very unpopular, even with some of my friends. Outside Washington, I expect that most people will see these ideas as no-brainers and be shocked they’re not already the law.”

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Why doesn’t the same principle apply to funding perpetual wars and massive human rights abuses against children?

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Editor’s note: This story and the below video were originally published on Sam Husseini’s website.




https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Elizabeth_Warren_NPC_8_21_18.mp4

Banks Are Becoming Obsolete in China—Could the U.S. Be Next?

The U.S. credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard?

It seems China’s new mobile payment ecosystems can. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:

The future of consumer payments may not be designed in New York or London but in China. There, money flows mainly through a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking—all run by two of the world’s most valuable companies. That contrasts with the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments. Western bankers and credit-card executives who travel to China keep returning with the same anxiety: Payments can happen cheaply and easily without them.

The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a major technology company—whether one from China or a U.S. giant such as Amazon or Facebook—might replicate the success of the Chinese mobile payment systems, cutting banks out.

According to John Engen, writing in American Banker in May 2018, “China processed a whopping $12.8 trillion in mobile payments” in the first ten months of 2017. Today even China’s street merchants don’t want cash. Payment for everything is handled with a phone and a QR code (a type of barcode). More than 90 percent of Chinese mobile payments are run through Alipay and WeChat Pay, rival platforms backed by the country’s two largest internet conglomerates, Alibaba and Tencent Holdings. Alibaba is the Amazon of China, while Tencent Holdings is the owner of WeChat, a messaging and social media app with more than a billion users.

Alibaba created Alipay in 2004 to let millions of potential customers who lacked credit and debit cards shop on its giant online marketplace. Alipay is free for smaller users of its platform. As total monthly transactions rise, so does the charge; but even at its maximum, it’s less than half what PayPal charges: around 1.2 percent. Tencent Holdings similarly introduced its payments function in 2005 in order to keep users inside its messaging system longer. The American equivalent would be Amazon and Facebook serving as the major conduits for U.S. payments.

WeChat and Alibaba have grown into full-blown digital ecosystems—around-the-clock hubs for managing the details of daily life. WeChat users can schedule doctor appointments, order food, hail rides and much more through “mini-apps” on the core app. Alipay calls itself a “global lifestyle super-app” and has similar functions.

Both have flourished by making mobile payments cheap and easy to use. Consumers can pay for everything with their mobile apps and can make person-to-person payments. Everyone has a unique QR code and transfers are free. Users don’t need to sign into a bank or payments app when transacting. They simply press the “pay” button on the ecosystem’s main app and their unique QR code appears for the merchant to scan. Engen writes:

A growing number of retailers, including McDonald’s and Starbucks, have self-scanning devices near the cash register to read QR codes. The process takes seconds, moving customers along so quickly that anyone using cash gets eye-rolls for slowing things down.

Merchants that lack a point-of-sale device can simply post a piece of paper with their QR code near the register for customers to point their phones’ cameras at and execute payments in reverse.

A system built on QR codes might not be as secure as the near-field communication technology used by ApplePay and other apps in the U.S. market. But it’s cheaper for merchants, who don’t have to buy a piece of technology to accept a payment.

The mobile payment systems are a boon to merchants and their customers, but local bankers complain that they are slowly being driven out of business. Alipay and WeChat have become a duopoly that is impossible to fight. Engen writes that banks are often reduced to “dumb pipes”—silent funders whose accounts are used to top up customers’ digital wallets. The bank bears the compliance and other account-related expenses, and it does not get the fees and branding opportunities typical of cards and other bank-run options. The bank is seen as a place to deposit money and link it to WeChat or Alipay. Bankers are being “disintermediated”—cut out of the loop as middlemen.

If Amazon, Facebook or one of their Chinese counterparts duplicated the success of China’s mobile ecosystems in the U.S., they could take $43 billion in merchant fees from credit card companies, processors and banks, along with about $3 billion in bank fees for checking accounts. In addition, there is the potential loss of money market deposits, which are also migrating to the mobile ecosystem duopoly in China. In 2017, Alipay’s affiliate Yu’e Bao surpassed JPMorgan Chase’s Government Money Market Fund as the world’s largest money market fund, with more than $200 billion in assets. Engen quotes one financial services leader who observes, “The speed of migration to their wealth-management and money-market funds has been tremendous. That’s bad news for traditional banks, where deposits are the foundation of the business.”

An Amazon-style mobile ecosystem could challenge not only the payments system but the lending business of banks. Amazon is already making small-business loans, finding ways to cut into banks’ swipe-fee revenue and competing against prepaid card issuers; and it evidently has broader ambitions. Checking accounts, small business credit cards and even mortgages appear to be in the company’s sights.

In an October 2017 article titled “The Future of Banks Is Probably Not Banks,” tech innovator Andy O’Sullivan observed that Amazon has a relatively new service called “Amazon Cash,” where consumers can use a barcode to load cash into their Amazon accounts through physical retailers. The service is intended for consumers who don’t have bank cards, but O’Sullivan notes that it raises some interesting possibilities. Amazon could do a deal with retailers to allow consumers to use their Amazon accounts in stores, or it could offer credit to buy particular items. No bank would be involved, just a tech giant that already has a relationship with the consumer, offering him or her additional services. Phone payment systems are already training customers to go without bank cards, which means edging out banks.

Taking those concepts even further, Amazon (or eBay or Craigslist) could set up a digital credit system that bypassed bank-created money altogether. Users could sell goods and services online for credits, which they could then spend online for other goods and services. The credits of this online ecosystem would constitute its own user-generated currency. Credits could trade in a digital credit clearing system similar to the digital community currencies used worldwide, systems in which “money” is effectively generated by users themselves.

Like community currencies, an Amazon-style credit clearing system would be independent of both banks and government; but Amazon itself is a private for-profit megalithic system. Like its Wall Street counterparts, it has a shady reputation, having been variously charged with worker exploitation, unfair trade practices, environmental degradation and extracting outsize profits from trades. However, both President Trump on the right and Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the left are now threatening to turn Amazon, Facebook and other tech giants into public utilities.

This opens some interesting theoretical possibilities. We could one day have a national nonprofit digital ecosystem operated as a cooperative, a public utility in which profits are returned to the users in the form of reduced prices. Users could create their own money by “monetizing” their own credit, in a community currency system in which the “community” is the nation—or even the world.

Republicans (and Some Democrats Too) Reject Impeachment Talk

WASHINGTON — Michael Cohen’s guilty plea implicating President Trump in a crime reverberated across the political landscape Wednesday, with Republicans rejecting talk of impeachment without evidence of Russian collusion. Democrats steered clear of the word, too, and zeroed in instead on what they called a “cesspool” of corruption engulfing the White House.

The one-two punch ahead of the midterm elections — the plea from former Trump lawyer Cohen and the fraud conviction of one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort — is presenting the biggest loyalty test yet for Republicans who have been reluctant to criticize the president. Democrats face their own challenge in trying to tamp down calls for impeachment for fear that will galvanize GOP voters in November.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brushed past reporters Wednesday without answering questions about Cohen or the possibility that the lawyer’s accusations about an illegal campaign cover-up are grounds for impeachment proceedings against Trump. GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is away from Washington, had no direct response either.

Trump’s strongest supporters are taking the view that, absent evidence of collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election, there is just no case for impeachment.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University and a Trump confidant, shrugged off the legal developments.

“Anything short of the campaign actually conspiring with Russia to try to impact the election, anything short of that will just be background noise,” Falwell said.

Doug Deason, a Texas-based donor and major Trump supporter, said: “In no way, shape or form did we think we were hiring St. Trump to repair the morals of the country.”

Even those few Republicans who have been willing to speak out about Trump are treading carefully in the wake of Cohen’s guilty plea.

“I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything like I’ve witnessed over the last year and a half. Probably, the American people haven’t in modern times,” said retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. But he stopped short of passing further judgment on the Cohen case.

“I’m sure there’s going to be other revelations that come up,” he said, “and I think we ought to just let the process work.”

Cohen on Tuesday said Trump directed a hush-money scheme before the 2016 election to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom said they had sexual relationships with Trump. Trump has accused Cohen of making up “stories in order to get a ‘deal’ ” from federal prosecutors.

The president defended the hush-money payments Wednesday, saying, incorrectly, that the effort outlined in Cohen’s guilty plea wasn’t “even a campaign violation.” Trump told Fox News in an interview set to air Thursday that the payments “didn’t come out of the campaign, and that’s big.”

The accusation from Cohen has inflamed public debate about impeachment. Democratic leaders have sought to downplay the possibility of impeachment ahead of the midterm elections, fearing overreach that could cause Republicans to rally around the president.

Democratic donor Tom Steyer’s Twitter feed Wednesday called for others to join his campaign to impeach the president. “How much more corruption do we need to see?” he tweeted.

Ben Wikler, Washington director for the liberal advocacy group MoveOn, said he wants Democrats in Congress to join organizations like his that have been demanding impeachment for several weeks.

“Now that Trump’s personal lawyer has implicated him in a crime, not supporting impeachment feels like a dodge,” Wikler said. “Impeachment doesn’t have to be the core of your message to the electorate, but it’s not something you can bury your head in the sand and ignore.”

But Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi said that unless other information emerges, impeaching Trump is “not a priority” for Democrats if they regain control of the House this fall. Pelosi said she prefers to see Democrats work to ensure special counsel Robert Mueller can finish his investigation.

“If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see,” Pelosi said Tuesday as the news about Cohen was unfolding.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer used the developments to press the Democrats’ case against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying Republicans should hit “pause” on their push toward confirmation.

He expressed concern about Kavanaugh’s unwillingness to indict a sitting president, as is Justice Department policy, or subpoena a president to testify. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing is set for Sept. 4.

“This Republican Congress has done almost nothing to check this president,” Schumer said. “We cannot allow the Supreme Court to be captured as well.”

The House is on summer break for campaign season. The Senate is in session, trying to wrap up a rare August work period that GOP leaders had hoped would be invigorating. Instead, senators at the Capitol are finding themselves facing questions they often have no answers for.

Some Republican strategists are privately worried about the party’s prospects in November because of the scandals. Democrats see a similar opening in what Schumer has called “a cesspool around this president.”

“I think we’re beyond the tip of the iceberg. We’re in the middle of the iceberg right now, given how many people so close to the president are on their way to jail,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

“My hope is that Republicans don’t retreat into a corner. This is a moment where the future of the presidency is at stake. This isn’t about politics or point-scoring, so I’ll take my time to come to a conclusion. But I hope Republicans will also be willing to look at the facts and come to a non-political conclusion that’s best for the country.”

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Associated Press writers and reporters Dustin Weaver and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

Here Out West, ‘Smoke Season’ Keeps Getting Worse

Right now, much of the west is affected by wildfires.

An unlucky minority will have to evacuate their homes, and some will lose their homes altogether — or even their lives. But for millions more across the west, “smoke season” is a real thing.

Vast swaths of the west can be covered in smoke for extended periods, and inhaling the fine particles in the smoke is deleterious to one’s health.

This year, fires resulted in the closing of Yosemite National Park and part of Glacier National Park. The Ferguson Fire in Yosemite is just one of many recent fires within the park, including the enormous Rim Fire in 2013, the fifth largest fire in California history.

As a Californian, fires are a regular part of life.

The Cedar Fire of 2003 in San Diego was so massive that the smoke interfered with air traffic. I canceled a backpacking trip in 2015 due to the Rough Fire in King’s Canyon National Park.

I went on a road trip that summer and the sky was hazy with smoke in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado. I was told the smoke came from fires in Washington.

In 2016, I spent a few weeks staying with a friend in rural San Diego County. I loved the area, and thought I might like to live there. Then, I thought, “This place looks like it could go up in smoke.” Within the month, it did. The aptly named Border Fire broke out in Campo, and my friend had to evacuate.

All of that is nothing compared to what a friend went through last summer in Montana. She and her family (including a toddler) were cooped up in their home for ages, trying to avoid inhaling the smoke. She had to install air filters to attempt to keep at least the indoor air clean.

The increase in wildfires is linked to the climate crisis.

The equation is simple. When it’s hotter outside, water evaporates faster, so the “fuel” (trees, vegetation) is drier and more flammable. The many trees killed by drought and bark beetles also contribute to the dryness of the fuel.

As the effects of climate change get worse, they’re also going to get more costly — in dollars, lives, and in quality of life. It would be far cheaper to prevent and mitigate the climate crisis.

Cheaper and better.

We’re going to end up spending money either way: whether we pay to develop non-polluting energy sources, restore forests, and take other steps to prevent catastrophic climate change, or whether we don’t, and then we have to pay for the consequences.

The costs of inaction? More wildfires and more hurricanes destroy more homes and take more human lives. Inhaled smoke from wildfires leads to increased respiratory illnesses. Sea levels rise and some parts of the world end up under water.

Unfortunately, simply leaving it all up to individuals and to the market isn’t enough to prevent this outcome. We need to act collectively — as a nation and as a world. We’ve already pulled out of the Paris Climate agreement, which was inadequate but at least it was something.

Climate change is real — ask anyone living through smoke season. With midterm elections coming up, candidates should be pressed to clarify just what they’re going to do about it.

DNC Reports Hacking Attempt on Voter Database

CHICAGO—The Democratic National Committee says it has thwarted an attempt to hack its database that houses information on tens of millions of voters across the country.

A party official said DNC contractors notified the party Tuesday of an apparent hacking attempt. The committee notified law enforcement. The official said no information was compromised.

The party official said it’s not clear what third party was attempting the hack.

Bob Lord is the DNC’s chief security officer. He briefed the leaders of state parties on the matter at a party gathering this morning in Chicago. The DNC distributes the voter file to state parties for Democratic candidates to use the information.

Lord said in a statement afterward that the Trump administration is not doing enough to protect American democracy.