Saudi king says attacks by Iran-backed groups threaten global oil

Saudi Arabia's King Salman said on Saturday that attacks on Saudi oil assets last month by Iran-backed groups are a threat to global oil supplies and regional security.

from Reuters: World News https://reut.rs/2I9JLwu

'Jeopardy!' star James Holzhauer wins again Friday, could break money record on Monday - USA TODAY

1. 'Jeopardy!' star James Holzhauer wins again Friday, could break money record on Monday  USA TODAY
2. Jeopardy's James Holzhauer nails his favorite Babe Ruth quote, shockingly doesn't sweep category  Yahoo Sports
3. James Holzhauer Strikes Out On Easy Babe Ruth 'Jeopardy!' Question  HuffPost
4. ‘Jeopardy!’ star tells Vegas crowd he credits win streak to gambling skills  Fox News
5. Naperville native James Holzhauer could break Ken Jennings' 'Jeopardy!' record by Monday  Chicago Tribune
6. View full coverage on Google News

from Top stories - Google News http://bit.ly/30YPyxp

Trump backs Boris Johnson; calls Duchess of Sussex 'nasty'

US president backs Tory in leadership run and reacts to criticism by duchess

Donald Trump has backed Boris Johnson to be the next prime minister, in an interview with the Sun in which he also called Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, “nasty”.

The president, speaking to the British newspaper before he visits the UK on Monday, expressed support for the former foreign secretary in his bid to replace Theresa May, saying: “I think Boris would do a very good job. I think he would be excellent.”

Continue reading...

from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2WhU7UY

New Mexico town gets death threats after halting crowd-funded border wall

A New Mexico mayor on Thursday said he and his staff received multiple death threats after they briefly halted construction of a crowd-funded, private border wall by a group that then urged supporters to tell the city to "stop playing games," and alleged it was tied to drug cartels. The Florida-based group has raised $23 million via crowd-funding site GoFundMe.com to build private border walls to halt smuggling and a surge in undocumented migrants, after funding for President Donald Trump's promised wall was blocked. Perea described the tactics of We Build the Wall as a "cheap blow," and the American Civil Liberties Union accused it of pursuing a "white Nationalist" agenda.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2ELc5UX

Florida Gov. DeSantis meets with Netanyahu in Israel

JERUSALEM (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis met with Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, calling the embattled Israeli prime minister a "strong leader" on the governor's final day of a trade mission to Israel.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2HN8VCc

Jussie Smollett: Possible deal was in the works a month before charges dropped, documents show

New documents on the Jussie Smollett case show that prosecutors told Chicago police detectives that a possible deal with the actor was in the works a month before charges against him were dropped.Smollett was charged in March with 16 counts alleging he lied to police when reporting he'd been the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack in January. Police contend the black and openly gay actor allegedly staged the attack because he was unhappy with his salary and wanted publicity.Prosecutors dropped charges on 26 March without Smollett admitting guilt. Then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police Superintendent Eddie Johnson expressed outrage over the prosecutors' decision. Smollett has maintained his innocence. The approximately 460 pages of new documents show that detectives investigating Smollett's allegations were told by Cook County prosecutors a deal with the Empire actor could include a $10,000 fine and community service. The detectives did not pass the information to superiors. "They didn't pass it on because they didn't know it (the case) was going to be handled the way it was," said Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. In the documents released on Thursday, detectives note the Chicago Police Department was informed by the Cook County State's Attorney's office on 28 February that they could no longer investigate the crime. Smollett was indicted on 7 March. The lead investigators in the case met with Assistant State's Attorney Risa Lanier, who informed detectives "that she felt the case would be settled with Smollett paying the city of Chicago $10,000 in restitution and doing community service". The detectives closed the case at that point because an arrest was made and the alleged offender was being prosecuted, according to Guglielmi.It was the attorneys for Smollett who announced charges alleging he lied to police about attack had been dropped. At the time, Johnson said he learned of the deal prosecutors made with Smollett when the deal was announced by lawyers, adding he didn't think justice was being served. However, he didn't directly criticise prosecutors."My job as a police officer is to investigate an incident, gather evidence, gather the facts and present them to the state's attorney," Johnson said. "That's what we did. I stand behind the detectives' investigation." The Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association said the dismissal of the charges was "an affront to prosecutors across the state" as well as police, victims of hate crimes and the county as a whole.The city of Chicago is seeking $130,000 from Smollett to cover the costs of the investigation into his reported beating. The city claims about two dozen detectives and officers investigated the entertainer's report that he was attacked, resulting in a "substantial number of overtime hours."Additional reporting by agencies

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2W1dFYN

Mueller’s ‘Insufficient Evidence’ Doesn’t Mean What Trump Says It Does

Befitting the former U.S. Marine, it’s thorough, exhaustive in detail, even exasperating in its attention to fine legal arguments and Justice Department policy guidelines. Speaking about it publicly for the first time on Wednesday, Mueller made a point to say that the pages contained his words, carefully chosen. It follows, then, that the report as reiterated by Mueller isn’t easily reduced to catch phrases.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2WCasTA

AP sources: White House wanted USS McCain moved for Trump

The White House wanted the U.S. Navy to keep a warship named for the late Sen. John McCain out of President Donald Trump's view during his trip to Japan, three U.S. officials said Wednesday.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2XdUM6g

Man charged after Nassau County police find woman, 2 boys with autism, 1 teen in car with 'CALL 911' sign

A man was charged after police say a woman holding a "CALL 911" sign and her three children were found inside his car on Long Island.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2HKmGRS

Showdown over Missouri abortion clinic postponed as governor weighs in

Gov. Mike Parson said court intervention in the fight over whether to renew the license of Missouri's lone abortion provider would be "reckless."

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/30UIsKd

Gen-Z Contestants Chase Wordy Highs, 'Spellebrity' Status at the Scripps National Spelling Bee

Today's elite spellers bring a distinctive approach to competition, self-presentation, and what it means to win.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2Z1dcYu

North Korea Executed Envoy Over Trump-Kim Summit, Chosun Reports

Kim Hyok Chol, who led working-level negotiations for the February summit in Hanoi, was executed by firing squad after being charged with espionage after allegedly being co-opted by the U.S., the newspaper said Friday, citing an unidentified source. Speculation has swirled for months about the fate of Kim Hyok Chol, who hasn’t received any recent mentions in state media dispatches. Previous South Korean media reports about senior North Korean officials being executed following the talks have proven false.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2MjrUsf

Google quietly ruined Chrome, and we almost missed it

Google's Chrome is the most popular way to browse the web on desktop and mobile, thanks to a combination of features that make it a reliable, albeit sometimes resource-intensive, app. However, Google's recent moves are going to ruin the Chrome experience for many users, and we nearly missed them.Google a few months ago announced a proposal to change the way Chrome extensions work, which would prevent current ad blockers from working. Google received plenty of negative feedback from users, but this hasn't deterred the company from going forward with these plans.Google a few days ago responded to some of the criticism (via 9to5Google) regarding its Manifest V3 changes, explaining what will change going forward. The company confirmed that the ad blocking capabilities of Chrome would no longer be available to regular Chrome users. Chrome will still block content if you're a paid, enterprise user of Chrome.A Google's spokesperson told 9to5Google that "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers," adding that Google is "actively working with the developer community to get feedback and iterate on the design of a privacy-preserving content filtering system that limits the amount of sensitive browser data shared with third parties."However, as the blog points out, the Chrome changes will make it impossible for most Chrome ad blockers to work in the near future. Google's moves aren't surprising, considering that it makes money from advertising. Alphabet noted in a recent SEC Form 10-K filing that ad blocking extensions are a "risk factor" to revenue:> New and existing technologies could affect our ability to customize ads and/or could block ads online, which would harm our business.> > Technologies have been developed to make customizable ads more difficult or to block the display of ads altogether, and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the core functionality of third-party digital advertising. Most of our Google revenues are derived from fees paid to us in connection with the display of ads online. As a result, such technologies and tools could adversely affect our operating results.What's also interesting is that Google made it clear during I/O 2019 that it wants to offer better privacy and security to users, something that seemed to go against its bottom line. Google tried to redefine privacy to suit it needs around that time. The fact that it's trying to protect the customizable ads that it sells to businesses is also an indication that Google won't give up collecting user data anytime soon.In Google's defense, we'll remind you the company is looking to improve the advertising experience on the web, and prevent the kind of annoying ads that you'd use ad blockers to stop from appearing in the first place.Also, in the same response, Google said that future versions of Chrome will make it easier for end-users to deal with permissions that extensions require and force developers to inform end-users of what data their extensions will access. The move is meant to protect privacy and prevent abuse, which is certainly laudable. However, that doesn't minimize the fact that Google plans to temporarily or permanently disable third-party ad blockers.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2XiUoDz

Cardi B due in court in New York City after rejecting plea in strip club melee

Cardi B is accused of throwing bottles and chairs at two bartenders at a New York City strip club after accusing them of having sex with her husband.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2Z2DFVh

Escalating Iran crisis looks a lot like the path US took to Iraq war

The U.S. went to war in Iraq in 2003 based on flawed intelligence supported by hawkish policy makers. Is it doomed to repeat the error with Iran?

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2QC9DFe

Nissan's technology could pay in Renault-FCA deal -sources

BEIJING/TOKYO, May 30 (Reuters) - Nissan's advanced technologies including platforms and electric powertrains could give it leverage in a merger involving Renault and Fiat Chrysler, thanks to a royalty system it has with the former, two people with knowledge of the matter said. A merged Renault-Fiat Chrysler could face an extra hurdle each time it uses technology developed by Nissan Motor Co or Mitsubishi Motors Corp, while the two Japanese automakers stand to gain a client in Fiat Chrysler (FCA) , one of the people said. Nissan's technology, particularly in electrification and emissions reduction, could give it some sway in the $35 billion potential tie-up between Renault and FCA, even as its stake in the newly formed company would be diluted.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2MhhglP

Trump Tariffs on Mexico Irk Key Republican Allies in Congress

The president’s announcement Thursday surprised many Republicans who hoped to focus on passing a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada known as the USMCA. Trump said he will impose a 5% tariff on all imports from Mexico -- ramping up 5 percentage points every month until hitting 25% in October -- unless Mexico takes "decisive measures" to stem migrants entering the U.S.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/3104Xxl

'I'm also struggling every day': An NFL player on the loss of his sister

Devastated by the suicide of his older sister, Thomas opens up about his loss and shares his dedication to fighting America's mental health crisis.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2wxsh7G
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A boy, a chicken sandwich and a federal case over dinner at Colonial Williamsburg - The Washington Post

1. A boy, a chicken sandwich and a federal case over dinner at Colonial Williamsburg  The Washington Post
2. Court: Lawsuit over boy’s gluten-free meal can proceed  WTOP
3. View full coverage on Google News

from Top stories - Google News https://wapo.st/2XjIk4M

Trump heads to London amid Brexit furor and political upheaval in Europe. What could go wrong? - Los Angeles Times

1. Trump heads to London amid Brexit furor and political upheaval in Europe. What could go wrong?  Los Angeles Times
2. Trump UK state visit: Full details including lunch with the Queen revealed  Daily Mail
3. How Trump Undermined Theresa May  The Atlantic
4. Britain is in crisis. So why is President Trump coming to visit?  The Washington Post
5. Trump and May End Relationship That Began Strained and Only Got Worse  Bloomberg
6. View full coverage on Google News

from Top stories - Google News https://lat.ms/2wx7am0

Uber reports $1 billion loss in first post-IPO quarterly results - Ars Technica

1. Uber reports $1 billion loss in first post-IPO quarterly results  Ars Technica
2. Uber loses $1 billion in quarter as costs grow for drivers, food delivery  Yahoo Finance
3. Uber Lost $1 Billion In 1st Quarter, Hopes Profit-Slashing Price Cuts Ease Up Soon  NPR
4. Uber's Earnings Call Provides More Fuel For Lyft's Shares Than Uber's  TheStreet
5. How Uber Hopes to Profit From Public Transit  The New York Times
6. View full coverage on Google News

from Top stories - Google News http://bit.ly/2Wd3ftU

At Least 11 Dead in Virginia Beach Shooting at Government Center

Police say the gunman, who is also dead, was a city employee in the public works office.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2EMBFsR

NCAA baseball tournament: Tiering the field; CWS picks

The field is set for the 2019 college baseball tournament. Here's how each team stacks up, plus predictions for who will make it to Omaha.

from www.espn.com - TOP https://es.pn/2wrCSRy

Welcome to a golden age of American hockey talent

With at least five potential American top-10 picks, the 2019 NHL draft class could come to define the future of United States hockey.

from www.espn.com - TOP https://es.pn/2wuGFxy

24/7 Surveillance with Shocking Rewards and Punishments: Could China's Big Brother System Come to USA?

It's like an Orwellian Big Brother nightmare. The Chinese Communist Party is using advanced technology to secure government control over the lives of nearly everyone in the society by establishing a system of social credits based on each person's perceived behaviors and attitudes.  

from CBNNews.com http://bit.ly/2YUlrW4

'I Thought We Were Going to Die': US Missionaries Ambushed, Saved by Mysterious Man on Motorcycle

These American missionaries were ambushed by an armed gang firing machine guns at them in Haiti. One missionary was shot and was bleeding out, but then a mysterious man showed up.

from CBNNews.com http://bit.ly/2YRjdXm

Loyola's Spencer, Terps' Taylor win Tewaaraton

Loyola of Maryland's high-scoring attackman Pat Spencer and Maryland goalie Megan Taylor have won the Tewaaraton Award, given annually to the top male and top female player in college lacrosse.

from www.espn.com - NCAA https://es.pn/2HNXpGF

OSU trustees move to revoke honor for doctor

Ohio State trustees could vote Friday on canceling the mark of distinguished service for deceased former team doctor Richard Strauss, who was found to have sexually abused young men over two decades.

from www.espn.com - NCAA https://es.pn/2W1sIS7

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Trump announces escalating tariffs against Mexico, starting at 5 percent, until illegal immigrants 'STOP'

05/30/19 4:47 PM

'Fight for Bodily Privacy Far From Over': Supreme Court Declines Transgender Locker Room Case

The US Supreme Court declined to hear a case Tuesday concerning a Pennsylvania school district's policy that allows transgender students to use locker rooms and restrooms matching their gender identity, disregarding other students' bodily privacy rights.

from CBNNews.com http://bit.ly/2WaLKdB

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Louisiana's governor, a Democrat, signs 'heartbeat' abortion bill into law

05/30/19 2:28 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Former Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, who served in Congress for more than 45 years before retiring last year, has di

05/30/19 7:55 AM

Woman swims ‘directly over’ shark in Florida, frightening video shows

A lone swimmer in the Gulf of Mexico was circled by a shark without her knowing, a stunning video shows.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2HK3fIR

8-foot alligator visits Florida elementary school just before summer break

An 8-foot, 2-inch alligator was found by a custodian at the Palm View Elementary School in Palmetto, Fla., according to the Bradenton Herald. It was found before students had arrived for their second to last day of school, based on the district calendar.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2EJv42n

Ancient seabed buried deep in Earth can create diamonds, study says

Diamonds are a girl's best friend, but where exactly do they come from?

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2JMRR1q

Neanderthals may have been driven to extinction by a tiny drop in fertility rates

Neanderthals could have gone extinct due to a slight drop in their fertility rates, a new study finds.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2HMthvj

California researchers have found a new way to bring oxygen to Mars

One of the biggest issues with putting astronauts on Mars is the weak atmosphere and the lack of oxygen needed to sustain life. Astronauts would need to wear spacesuits almost constantly to live and work on the Red Planet. However, a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology may have come up with a solution for the difficult issue – the astronauts could generate their own oxygen at will. 

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2wrGz9R

Ancient rocky structure found beneath Antarctica. And it's messing with the ice.

An ancient rocky structure found at the heart of the Ross ice shelf helps determine where Antarctica's ice melts and where it stays firm and frozen.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2wuyJfI

Mysterious 19th-century shipwreck discovered by accident in the Gulf of Mexico

A mysterious 19th-century shipwreck has been discovered by researchers testing underwater drone equipment in the Gulf of Mexico.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2MjW5zv

Apollo 11 Moon landing celebrated with new LEGO set

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Lego has partnered with NASA to create the LEGO Creator Expert NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2Xbf68o

100 years ago, a total solar eclipse experiment confirmed Einstein's theory of relativity

One hundred years ago today, in the wake of the first World War, a British astronomer watched a solar eclipse for signs that a German physicist may have been right about warps in the universe.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2Wb0OYO

Astronomers catch distant star producing massive flare and plasma blob

Astronomers may have spotted a distant star spitting out a giant flare that packed 100,000 times more energy than any seen from Earth's sun, a new study finds.

from FOX News https://fxn.ws/2MjaSdV

Israel’s Parliament Votes to Dissolve, Triggering Snap Election

Security guard wants 'sincere' apology from Zeke

A security guard who was allegedly knocked down by Ezekiel Elliott in Las Vegas says he wants a "sincere" apology from the Cowboys running back.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2wsL7ge
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Sack attack: Mack wants to be best LB of all time

After posting a team-high 12.5 sacks in his first season with the Bears, Khalil Mack expects a full offseason with the team will help him be even better in 2019. "I want to be the best to play the game," he said.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2Xk9R6s
via IFTTT

OBJ buys customized orange Rolls-Royce

Odell Beckham Jr.'s has purchased a tricked-out, orange Rolls-Royce complete with a pop-up hood ornament that features a miniaturized model of him in a Browns uniform making one of the one-handed catches he became known for while with the Giants.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2HJ3cwW
via IFTTT

Predicting the story of the season for all 32 NFL teams

Can the Packers' new coach vibe with Aaron Rodgers? Will the Browns live the dream? These are two of NFL Nation's stories to watch in 2019.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2HDU251
via IFTTT

The NFL's unfinished offseason business: Top free agents, biggest questions, more

Can the Browns really make the leap? Where will Gerald McCoy land? With 100 days until the regular season kicks off, here's what's left to settle.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2JH2FxX
via IFTTT

James Conner's 2019 approach: 'I haven't earned anything'

The third-year running back is ready to do whatever it takes to hoist a trophy, including share the load in the backfield.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2HHgKck
via IFTTT

Make-A-Wish fan makes bigger impact than Christian McCaffrey's biceps

On a hot, muggy day for OTAs, 11-year-old Peyton Raper gives Christian McCaffrey and the rest of the Panthers a boost.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2ECz9W0
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Bart Starr was 'the boss' but he was 'such a gentleman'

Former Packers president Bob Harlan loved Starr for a reason only those who knew the legendary QB behind the scenes could fully articulate.

from www.espn.com - NFL https://es.pn/2EylJKI
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Mueller Spoke. Part of America Heard Laurel, and Part of America Heard Yanny.

He was really just trying to pass the baton to Congress again.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2IjqEAj

Why Does Jimmy Kimmel Live Keep Doing This?

Segments like "Can Young People Read a Clock?" smugly tell us absolutely nothing.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2HMWZAt

What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in the Elton John Biopic

Are Elton John’s songs really so personal? Did he really try to kill himself? We separate truth from artistic license in Rocketman.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2W1SuWd

Robert Mueller Was Telling Nancy Pelosi to Begin Impeachment Proceedings

Pelosi’s foot-dragging is becoming not just untenable, but a dereliction of her constitutional duty.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2I5XOmN

Former Federal Prosecutors Agree on Trump

If you know federal prosecutors, having them reach consensus is not an easy feat.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2wBzYtT

The Department of Energy Is Now Calling Fossil Fuels “Molecules of Freedom” and “Freedom Gas”

Freedom gas!

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2MfQXfE

Robert Mueller Delivers Statement Emphasizing That He Did Not Clear Trump of Obstruction

Here’s what the special counsel said at Wednesday’s surprise press conference.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2WqxCfR

What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Black Men

Man Up talks about what television often tells us about being a man and what happens when you don’t relate to that depiction.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2MqMK9k

Here’s What Twitter’s Smartest Liberals and Conservatives Are Saying About Mueller’s Surprise News Conference

Follow along.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2ECT1bh

White Campground Manager Pulls Gun on Black Mississippi Couple Trying to Have a Picnic

“Get, get, you don’t belong here,” the manager allegedly told the couple.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2JL9Vst

Watch Robert Mueller’s Surprise Press Conference Live

It's suddenly a very interesting Wednesday in Washington.

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2Wtqcs9

Dear Prudence Podcast: Help! I Hate Hosting Overnight Guests. My Husband Thinks I’m Rude.

At what age can I reasonably expect people to just get a hotel if they’re visiting the city and not specifically us?

from Slate Magazine http://bit.ly/2VYbxAV

Justin Amash and the Moral Minority

On Tuesday, Representative Justin Amash faced his constituents for the first time since becoming the only congressional Republican to urge Donald Trump’s impeachment.

For two hours, he stood at the front of a high-school auditorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan, taking comments and questions from a divided crowd. A majority of those present joined a standing ovation after one constituent declared, “I want to salute your courage.” But some attendees insisted that President Trump is the victim of groundless persecution by his political opponents, and that their GOP congressman’s call for impeachment is a betrayal.

Amash got the best of the debates that ensued.

Several Trump supporters alleged that the FBI was guilty of abusing the process for obtaining warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and ought to be punished for spying on the Trump campaign. Why didn’t Amash seem to care about “deep state” abuses like that?

[Read: How Trump broke the Freedom Caucus]

In reply, Amash accurately noted that he has been the leading champion of FISA-reform efforts in the House of Representatives, that he had introduced an amendment that would have reined in the ability of the surveillance community to spy on all Americans, and that both the Trump administration and many congressional Republicans had opposed him, fighting to expand those very powers.

“They don’t support FISA reform,” he declared. “They are not protecting your rights. They want to protect the president. But the rest of you, forget about it. The government can spy on all of you, and they don’t give one crap about it.”

But it was Amash’s comments about character and virtue that best underscored why he presents a potent challenge to Trump loyalists in the Republican Party.  “More than anyone in our government, we need the president to be ethical, to be of high moral character, and to do the right thing,” he said. “And the pattern you find in the Mueller report is someone who does not meet that standard.”

Trump’s moral deficiencies trouble many of Amash’s constituents.

“As a retired educator, a grandparent, a parent, someone who has taught in Sunday schools, I don’t know how we tell our children not to lie, that it’s wrong to lie, when it’s evident throughout the highest levels of government,” one woman said. “I don’t know how we teach our children not to bully on the playground when bullying comments are constantly coming out in the media.”

[J. W. Verret: I’m a Republican and I oppose Trump. Now what?]

The crowd responded powerfully when Amash spoke against the example Trump was setting for children, perhaps because Amash made the version of a moral critique most likely to resonate with constitutional conservatives and libertarians. After a Trump supporter noted that the economy is strong and complained that many Americans oppose the president anyway, for example, Amash said:

Think about how well things are going with the economy and people are still so mad. Why is that? … I think it’s because of the tone we’re setting at the top. We’re not treating one another with respect. We need to bring that back. We need to treat one another with love and respect. And we don’t have that right now. If there’s one thing that I pray and hope for our country it’s that we’ll love each other and care about each other regardless of our backgrounds and differences.

This kind of division is dangerous and it destroys liberty.

I’m a big believer in liberty and the Constitution. Nobody cares about liberty in Congress more than I do. One thing you see around the world is liberty cannot survive in a system where people hate each other and where there is no virtue. You can’t have a system like that. Our Founders and Framers talked about that. You have to have people who care about virtue and you have to have love.

If you hate each other, if you disparage each other, other systems prevail … When you have people who are angry and upset at each other all the time, you’re much more likely to create a system where the government takes more control.

Later, another Trump supporter declared that the people applauding Amash for coming out for impeachment might pretend to like him, but were unlikely to vote for him in the next election. He chided Amash to wake up to that reality. Amash replied:

I represent the entire district. So it doesn’t matter to me if a person voted for me or didn’t vote for me, or donated to me or didn’t donate to me. I think I’ve been pretty clear about that. That’s not going to change my principles and who I am … I agree with you that many of the people cheering me on aren’t going to support my campaign. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. This is what it means to be a bigger person. It doesn’t matter to me that some people won’t support me or are hypocritical. You have to do the right thing regardless.

Amash’s criticism of Trump may never spur an impeachment inquiry. But the nature of it forces conservative Trump voters to make a clarifying choice: To stay loyal to a president of bad character, they must attack a man of good character who votes in accordance with the principles they share.

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2WcX4WF

Laurie Abraham and Thomas Gebremedhin Join The Atlantic as Senior Editors

May 29, 2019 (Washington, D.C.)—The Atlantic today announced two new senior editors joining the staff of the print magazine: Laurie Abraham and Thomas Gebremedhin. Abraham, currently executive features editor at New York magazine, and Gebremedhin, who joins The Atlantic from WSJ Magazine, where he was culture editor, will both expand the range of stories and subjects covered across the magazine. They begin this summer and will be based in New York.

The hires were announced today by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the magazine Don Peck, and deputy editor of the magazine Denise Wills.

Abraham will bring her omnivorous interests to a wide range of subjects at The Atlantic—with a focus on producing great narratives. Abraham comes to The Atlantic from New York magazine, where she served as executive features editor. Prior to that role, she was a senior editor and executive editor at ELLE, and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine. She's the author of Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America and The Husbands and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group.

In his new role, Gebremedhin will immediately enrich the magazine’s coverage of culture and the arts, even as he expands his purview into politics, technology, and other subjects. Gebremedhin was previously the culture editor at WSJ Magazine, where he edited features for the print magazine and covered culture for the website. He also conducted interviews for the magazine; his subjects have included Glenn Close, Marissa Mayer, Timothee Chalamet, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Lethem, Patti Smith, RuPaul, and Saorise Ronan. Before joining the Journal in 2015, he was an assistant editor at Random House and a features assistant at Vogue.

Abraham and Gebremedhin join the magazine staff in the midst of a run of highly influential cover stories: March’s cover called on Congress to “Impeach Donald Trump,” starting a national debate that continues today; April’s cover, “How Much Immigration Is Too Much,” examined America’s immigration crisis, and recommended new legislation to better enforce the border; and the June cover, on newsstands now, suggests that the Catholic Church “Abolish the Priesthood,” making the argument for the end of clericalism to preserve the religion.  

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2Wattgw

The Controversial Kid ASMR Community

It started in preschool for Gracie. She and her classmates were coloring with markers. The crinkling of the paper and the squeak of the markers made Gracie so tired that she put her head on the table and fell asleep. It kept happening, that tingly, drowsy feeling, when she heard tapping sounds or whispering. In 2011, when Gracie was 7, she learned that the feeling had a name: ASMR, which stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, the unscientific name for the relaxed, euphoric feeling some people report experiencing when they hear certain “triggers,” such as whispered voices, crinkling paper, or fingernails tapping on a hard surface. Many people also call the feeling “tingles.”

The term was coined nearly a decade ago, and since then, ASMR has blossomed into a cultural oddity with a robust online community, largely centered around YouTube videos. These videos, though all intended to create that ASMR feeling, use a wide variety of tactics to get there. Sometimes it’s a person whispering into the camera, pretending to wash the viewer’s face or massage her head. There are also meditations; role plays of teachers, doctor visits, and even alien abductions; and disembodied hands tapping books or scratching bars of soap. Some people find chewing and “mouth sounds” tingle-inducing. There are ASMR celebrities with hundreds of thousands of devotees. There was even a Super Bowl commercial this year featuring Zoë Kravitz tapping a beer bottle, ASMR-style. And now there is an established community of kids making ASMR videos, too, and Gracie is part of it.

Now 15, Gracie, who is homeschooled and lives in Colorado, uploads several videos a week to her YouTube channel, Gracie K. (The kids in this piece, and their family members, are being identified by their first name only to protect minors’ privacy.) Sometimes she whispers diarylike updates about what’s going on in her life. Sometimes she shows viewers her artwork. Sometimes she puts paper clips on her fingers and taps on things (she’s not allowed to get acrylic nails). She talks to her viewers about recovering from anorexia, often in a soft, quiet voice.

Gracie made her first ASMR video just before she left home to go to rehab for an eating disorder. It was a 10-minute whispered makeup tutorial. When she left for treatment, she had about 7,000 subscribers to her channel. When she returned a month later, her video had garnered thousands more views, and her subscriber base had doubled.

Kid ASMR videos have a slightly different feel than their adult counterparts. Though both have elements of comfort and creativity, many kid ASMR videos skew playful and silly. Kids seem less likely to make videos featuring massage, for example. Many popular kid ASMR videos involve slime, eating snacks such as seaweed or sour candy, or variations on the theme of “mean older sister does your makeup.” Some kids seem like they’re just playing a pretend game with a camera trained on them. Others have the polished charisma of a grown-up TV personality. Some are teenagers, such as Gracie K. and Makenna, 13, of Life With MaK, a channel with more than 1 million subscribers. Others are much younger—such as the 4-year-old Aoki, the star of ASMR Toddler. These channels all have parental involvement—Makenna even got her mom to create her own ASMR account, Life With Momma MaK.

There are also scores of lower-tech videos made by children, many of whom appear unsupervised. In one, titled “Asmr doing your hair and realization,” a girl who looks to be 8 or 9 years old sits in a bathroom or closet filming herself whispering a hairstyle tutorial. (It wasn’t until I scrolled through the comments that I realized she had confused the word realization for relaxation.) In another grainy video, a young girl does a lengthy, rambling librarian role play at what seems to be a family desktop computer. During the video, someone offscreen calls “10 more minutes” and she freezes momentarily, as if the viewer has caught her in the act of something forbidden.

[Read: Raised by YouTube]

With smartphones and iPads at their fingertips, it is easy for many minors to surf the web—and it’s also simple for them to upload content without adult help. Gracie’s mother, Cori, knew her daughter had a YouTube channel, but she just assumed that it was for her friends. “I had no idea she had so many followers, until she asked me for my bank-account number so that she could have a place to put her earnings!” she says. (YouTube allows users with 1,000 subscribers or 4,000 hours of viewings to run ads on their videos and make a profit.) Nichole, Makenna’s mother, says that Makenna told her she was making ASMR videos online. Though she thought it was strange at first, Nichole encouraged the hobby, and got more involved as the channel grew.

Gracie says that making ASMR videos was a lifeline for her when she was struggling with an eating disorder. She now uses her fame to help fans with similar struggles, answering about 30 to 40 messages a day via her Instagram account from teens and kids who are struggling with eating disorders or mental health.“When my eating disorder was really bad, ASMR was the only thing that made me feel better,” she says.

For Makenna, ASMR was a path to success as a YouTuber. “It’s pretty easy,” she says. “All you gotta do is whisper.”

Cori and Nichole say that YouTube has given their daughters confidence. “She’s just blossomed as a child,” Nichole says. According to her mother, Gracie has made enough money from her channel to afford a down payment on a house or car. “We treat it like a family business or a chore. She has a schedule,” Cori says.

It’s hard to say just who is watching these kids whispering into their iPad, and whether the audience is similar to that of adult ASMR. Makenna and Nichole say Google’s analytics indicate that Makenna’s viewers are mostly 18 to 24 years old. But Evan, 15, the creator of the channel Evan’s ASMR, says it’s likely that the primary audience is younger people, that kids lie about their age on YouTube.

“If you enter a certain age, YouTube only lets you see certain kinds of videos,” he explains. “So kids know to say they are 18, because they want to see everything.”

Adults may enjoy kid ASMR, too—many people say they first experienced the feeling as children, and the videos may evoke nostalgic childhood memories. Katrina Rae Heston says that the sight and sound of her children playing pretend games trigger the feeling. “It’s usually the most intense form I experience,” she posted in response to a question I posed on an ASMR discussion group on Facebook. But she doesn’t seek out ASMR made by kids online, because it makes her feel uncomfortable.

She is not alone in her discomfort. The whispering, the pretend closeness, the simulation of touch—it makes plenty of people squirm, even coming from ASMR videos made by adults. Some people find it inappropriate for children to be performing that sort of manufactured intimacy, or worry that it could expose them to harassing comments.

The YouTube user PaymoneyWubby explained his views on it in a video from the fall called “Kids doing ASMR is a problem.” His exact problem with kid ASMR was left vague, but he seemed to hint that it was sexual, and described a general “creepiness.” His post sparked reply videos from other critics and from ASMR fans and creators defending kid ASMR. Heavily featured in PaymoneyWubby’s video was a video by Makenna, in which she noisily eats raw honeycomb. Makenna says it was the honeycomb video that made her channel explode in popularity. Suddenly, kid ASMR was getting a lot of attention.

Even some ASMR fans have their reservations about this genre. “I remember years ago, before the ASMR community, there was a video of a girl at some family function playing with her mom or someone’s hair. It had a crazy amount of views! I watched it all the time,” Brandi Modisette told me via the Facebook ASMR Research and Discussion group. “As much as they trigger me, I just feel weird watching them on YouTube now. Unfortunately all I can think about are all the creeps.”

Sadly, creeps are a real concern. Child-made ASMR videos raised alarms for YouTube when the company started seeing more of them about a year ago, says Jessica Mason, the policy and copyright communications lead at Google, which owns YouTube. She says the company has consulted psychiatrists and ASMR experts who have said that people seek out ASMR to help with insomnia, anxiety, and stress. But the company has still been wary—though ASMR isn’t necessarily sexual, it is inherently sensual, and sometimes pushes up against the blurry line of what can be considered inappropriate. The company monitors any content featuring minors, Mason says, but ASMR in particular gave them pause. Adult ASMR sometimes does veer into sexual territory, with intentionally seductive videos and girlfriend or boyfriend role plays.

“ASMR can bleed into content that seems to sexualize minors,” Mason says. “Excessively focusing on the mouth, close-ups, things like that … It’s a tricky line because we welcome ASMR, we know there are benefits to it, but we can’t let everything through. We never have good data on what kids are doing because of all of the restrictions around studying kids, researching kids.”

YouTube’s policy says that no one under 13 is allowed to launch and operate a channel (Makenna started her channel when she was 12). Any channel starring a child that looks like it doesn’t have parental involvement is flagged, questioned, and deleted if no adults can verify that they run it. Many ASMR channels starring kids have the disclaimer “This is a parent-run account.” From the time I began reporting this story to now, I saw several kid ASMR videos disappear from the platform.

Makenna’s honeycomb video brought her notoriety and a large following—but it also flagged concerns for YouTube. YouTube forbids content featuring minors “engaged in provocative, sexual, or sexually suggestive activities,” according to its community guidelines. According to Mason, that and other videos were flagged by the company’s “reviewers,” people around the world who flag things that seem to run afoul of these guidelines—for the honeycomb video, it was the “mouth sounds” that were deemed inappropriate. “YouTube told us specifically that they do not allow minors to eat honeycomb on their platform,” Nichole says.

[Read: When kids realize their whole life is already online]

Makenna has had many other videos deleted: her “Sassy Police Officer Pulls You Over” video, a video featuring a tarantula, another in which she is breaking an iPhone screen, a gift-unwrapping video.

And then there are the comments. Over the past several months, according to Mason, YouTube has noticed a disturbing phenomenon of commenters on videos of children—usually innocuous videos, such as home movies or gymnastics performances—making inappropriate remarks: comments about their appearance, time stamps highlighting brief moments when a child appears to be in a compromising position or flashing some skin. Worse yet, pedophiles were exchanging information and web links in these comment sections, meaning these videos were separated from child pornography by just a couple of clicks. It is not clear if links like these were shared under ASMR videos in particular, but they could have been.

Mason says YouTube has trained machine-learning devices and human monitors to comb through videos for incriminating content. They flag and delete comments, disable accounts, and report thousands of accounts to authorities. After discovering thousands of offending comments, the company decided to disable comments entirely on any videos featuring a minor until it can find a better solution to the problem. This took effect in January.

“I have seen some stuff on YouTube that I wish I hadn’t seen,” Gracie says. Before comments were disabled, she and her mother filtered out comments, as did Makenna and her mother, that included certain words and phrases, such as ugly and Kill yourself. Most of the comments they removed weren’t sexual, but of a bullying nature. Gracie and Makenna say that method was enough to make them feel safe, and that they wish YouTube hadn’t done away with comments entirely.

“I always tell my subscribers that I’m only one comment away, and now they can’t really reach me, because there’s not a way to communicate,” Gracie says.

For now, kid ASMR is able to continue with only occasional disruption. Jason Nolan, a professor of early-childhood studies at Ryerson University in Canada suggests that ASMR might be beneficial for kids whose childhood is overscheduled and largely indoors, lacking sensory play. “Children in less modern and urbanized contexts may have more time to play outdoors, climb things, lie in the grass and watch the clouds as tree leaves whisper in the wind,” he says. “The multisensory world of a child with regular and sustained access to unstructured play in natural environments may itself may be a form of ASMR-like experiences.” Making or watching these videos, he thinks, could provide similar sensory play for kids.

Makenna, for her part, has a slightly less enchanted view.

“I’m not sure I’ll keep doing ASMR into high school,” she says. “There’s always going to be something on the internet everyone’s doing. I’m going to watch to see if it goes downhill and go from there.”

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/30KzzD0

House Democrats Have More Potent Options Than Impeachment

The fight between President Donald Trump and House Democrats over the House’s investigations of the president has escalated into what several outlets now describe as an “all-out war.” Most commentators believe that House Democrats are powerless in the face of the Trump administration’s defiance. Litigation to enforce congressional subpoenas will stall in the courts, while any attempt to remove Trump from office with impeachment will die in the Senate. Voters are losing their patience with investigations that produce no results. But if the House backs off, Trump will declare victory, and future presidents may conclude that they are immune from oversight. The options for Democrats seem bleak.

House Democrats, however, have an ace up their sleeve. Actually, a pair of aces: the power to shut down the government and the power to trigger a debt default. These options are far more potent than impeachment because the Democrats do not need the support of Republicans to use them. The problem is that the options may be too powerful: If used unwisely, they could hurt the Democrats—and the country—more than Trump. To prevail, the Democrats must play their cards shrewdly.

If they go this route, Democrats will face criticism from commentators who extol the virtues of moderation. Budgetary brinkmanship, after all, is mostly a tactic from the GOP’s playbook—one that congressional Republicans used in the Bill Clinton years and again under Barack Obama. Shouldn’t Democrats play the role of the adult in the room, rather than holding the federal government hostage for short-term advantage?

[David A. Graham: Trump’s impeachment finger trap]

Here, though, the goal is not to win a policy dispute over health care or taxes. It’s to preserve Congress’s traditional, constitutionally sanctioned role in overseeing the executive—an essential task for countering abuse of executive power regardless of the party identification of the president. And House Democrats would be doing exactly what the Framers envisioned when they assigned to the legislature exclusive authority over borrowing and spending. For the Democrats, the only effective response to the norm-busting aggression of the Trump administration is to bust some norms themselves.

The stakes are high. The Trump team has sought to stymie 20 different congressional inquiries. The conflicts that have drawn the most attention involve subpoenas related to the Mueller report and to Trump’s tax files. But the interbranch battle is about more than any specific document or witness appearance. Without the power to compel testimony and obtain documents, Congress cannot fulfill its role in overseeing the executive.

Congress’s traditional tools to enforce its subpoenas are either symbolic or archaic. Refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena is a federal crime, but no one expects Trump’s Justice Department to prosecute Trump-administration officials for defying Democrat-controlled committees. The House can file a federal lawsuit to enforce a subpoena, but those cases can take years to resolve. In an earlier era, the House might have dispatched its sergeant-at-arms to arrest a subpoena scofflaw, but that option hasn’t been used in more than a half century.

Realistically, the House will not lock any administration official in jail anytime soon. What it can do is force federal agencies to shutter their doors on October 1, when the federal government’s fiscal year 2019 budget expires. Or the House could up the ante and refuse to raise the debt ceiling, in which case the federal government’s fiscal slack will likely run out in September or October. Unless both chambers of Congress vote to lift the debt cap, the United States will default.

[Quinta Jurecic: Impeachment is a refusal to accept the unacceptable]

Some House Democrats realize they can capitalize on these looming deadlines. Representative Adam Schiff of California suggested last month that House Democrats might tie funding for federal agencies to compliance with congressional subpoenas. A bolder move would be to add the debt ceiling to the pot. House Democrats might tell Trump: Cooperate with reasonable oversight demands, or out go the lights come autumn.

The problem, of course, is that Trump may refuse to give in to the Democrats’ threats. He will know that if the Democrats follow through, the consequences will be felt by ordinary Americans who depend upon government safety-net programs, federal workers who rely on regular paychecks, and savers who will see the value of their Treasury bonds tumble. While voters overwhelmingly faulted Trump—not congressional Democrats—for the last government shutdown, the source of the last shutdown was Trump’s insistence that Congress pay for a border wall that Trump had previously promised Mexico would fund. If they tied these bills to compliance with subpoenas, Democrats might be seen as the instigators.

However, the politics are more favorable to Democrats than they might seem at first sight. House Democrats, more so than Trump, would face significant political costs if they entered a budget showdown and then folded. Many of their members—especially from solidly blue districts—could face tough primary races if they bowed to the president. The ghost of Joe Crowley, the Queens congressman deposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a 2018 Democratic primary, looms large. Trump, meanwhile, has the Republican Party in a stranglehold and faces no credible primary challenge. Both sides know that if Trump blinks, most of his base will forgive him.

House Democrats and the president also face different constraints from their donors. If Democrats are seen as soft on Trump, the spigot of campaign cash from contributors such as the billionaire Tom Steyer may be turned off—or start to flow against them. The last thing Republican funders want is for budget gridlock to unsettle markets. And if there is any lesson from the last shutdown, it’s that Trump will cave once an impasse inconveniences his biggest financial backers. What brought Trump to the table in January was a stoppage at LaGuardia, the airport closest to Wall Street.

[Read: The rank and file are starting to defy Pelosi on impeachment]

And Trump—as an incumbent president—is the one whose political fortunes are most closely tied to the overall economy. If a shutdown or default slows growth, or sends the stock market into a tailspin, Trump’s biggest electoral advantage entering 2020 will be lost. While he will blame the Democrats, voters tend to blame the president for adverse economic conditions.

Finally, Democrats may get an assist from Trump, who announced last December that he was “proud to shut down the government.” His bravado helped ensure that he took the blame. This time, he has already said that “if there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” an idea he amplified by blowing up last week’s meeting with top Democrats on infrastructure legislation. And yet he left himself room for maneuver—dodging a question last week from a reporter who asked Trump whether he would refuse to sign budget and debt bills if Congress continued its investigations.

All this offers a path forward for the Democrats. The key, for them, is to make clear that congressional oversight is an established part of the American system that Trump seeks to overthrow, and to tie themselves to this mast—insisting they have no choice but to withhold funds and authorizations until the president cooperates with the investigations. And by laying out their demands for subpoena compliance early and building support among their voters and their donors, Democrats can put themselves in a position where backing down at a late date is more politically costly than following through.

If Trump recognizes that Democrats are committed to their course of action, he may see that his options have narrowed: Comply with their subpoenas or else brace for a shutdown, or an even more devastating debt default. At that point, backroom negotiations could lead to a face-saving compromise in which Congress’s oversight powers are recognized and preserved.

It is, no doubt, a risky gamble. But the alternative—allowing the president to evade congressional oversight entirely—is even riskier. House Democrats hold the better hand in this game of constitutional poker. But they can’t win the game unless they play their best cards.

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2JLY6lO

Full of Fire and Fury, Signifying Nothing

Here we go again: another juicy book about the White House, early leaks, a round of flat denials, shortly to be followed—in all likelihood—by a set of fevered interpretations and recriminations.

The book is Siege, by Michael Wolff. The Guardian obtained an early copy of the book, which is due out next week, and the first details suggest that it will provide fodder for days of news coverage and debate—following in the path of Wolff’s previous book, 2018’s Fire and Fury.

Yet it’s hard to imagine Siege achieving the same impact as its predecessor. In part that’s because Wolff didn’t have the same unfettered access to the White House this time, and in part that’s because of questions that were raised about his methods and results in Fire and Fury. But the bigger problem is the format. Tell-alls about Donald Trump’s administration feel increasingly obsolete. What more can we learn about a president who is already so heavily exposed?

[Read: “Fire and Fury” is a perfectly postmodern White House book]

Once upon a time, the tell-all would actually tell something new about a president. My colleague James Fallows’s 1979 Atlantic article on Jimmy Carter revealed the president’s strengths and shortcomings, including a tendency toward micromanagement that led him to personally approve requests to use the White House tennis courts. The former George W. Bush press secretary Scott McClellan’s 2008 What Happened offered just what its title promised—a full, inside account of the administration’s workings, especially in the run-up to the Iraq War. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed the extent to which domestic political considerations weighed on Barack Obama’s foreign-policy decisions. Articles and books like these offered both new detail and new interpretation that could help the public understand leaders and perhaps change public opinion about them.

At its outset, the Trump administration looked like a perfect setting for new tell-alls. It featured a president who disregarded all norms, a public that couldn’t look away, and lots of current and former staffers with axes to grind, making them the perfect sources for, or authors of, exposés. And indeed, the first year or so of the presidency was fertile. Early on, every Friday afternoon brought a contest between The New York Times and The Washington Post for the splashiest report. After that came the books, climaxing with Wolff’s entry in January 2018.

Fire and Fury sold, well, furiously, which encouraged the market for such books. In February, the Times wondered, “Is everyone in Washington writing a tell-all? It sure seems like it.” The books came from White House aides (Omarosa Manigault-Newman, Cliff Sims, Sean Spicer); career G-men settling scores (James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Preet Bharara); others in the general Trump vicinity (Chris Christie); and reporters, including the éminence grise of the White House potboiler, Bob Woodward. There are plenty more coming.

Many of these books sold well, but they shed more heat than light. At best, they offered new detail about Trump and some of the more important or interesting moments in his tenure. But they struggled to teach any larger lessons about the president, and as a result, they haven’t made much of an impact on politics.

“Beyond a considerable boost to the profit margins of Simon & Schuster,” Jeff Greenfield wrote of Woodward’s Fear in the fall, “the response in Washington from President Donald Trump’s allies, and even from his longtime critics, has been a virtual shrug.”

Don’t blame the authors—or rather, don’t blame them for this. Plenty of these tell-alls are sloppy, or self-serving, or sycophantic, and their authors can answer for that. But it’s not the writers’ fault that they aren’t reconfiguring the image of the president or his administration. Not only has Trump been exhaustively covered by the press, but he often goes through his business, including his petty feuds, his tantrums, and his changes of view on policy questions, in plain sight. That was, in fact, a core element of his preemptive defense against accusations of obstruction of justice: So many of his actions were out in the open. How could they constitute a conspiracy when they happened on Twitter? (This cuts both ways: Transparency should not confer absolution.)

Fire and Fury came under intense scrutiny even before it hit shelves, as journalists and political insiders questioned many of the specifics of Wolff’s account and critiqued his methods. These critics picked apart specific anecdotes or moments, but there was general agreement that the book’s broad-strokes portrait of Trump felt right. Axios’s Mike Allen perfectly summed up this conventional wisdom:

There are definitely parts of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” that are wrong, sloppy, or betray off-the-record confidence. But there are two things he gets absolutely right, even in the eyes of White House officials who think some of the book’s scenes are fiction: his spot-on portrait of Trump as an emotionally erratic president, and the low opinion of him among some of those serving him.

Yet anyone who was paying even casual attention to Trump’s presidency knew by January 2018 that Trump was emotionally erratic and that many of his aides held him in disdain.

The book, and many like it, largely served to flatter the preconceptions of Trump’s critics. These readers might understand that the details aren’t 100 percent accurate, but they don’t really care. For the slight majority of registered voters who already say they definitely won’t vote for Trump in 2020, it’s close enough. (There’s a different kind of book that flatters the preconceptions of Trump’s fans, but it tends to be more polemic or commentary than memoir or reportage.)

[Read: Donald Trump and Michael Wolff are the perfect pairing of subject and chronicler]

If these books tell a Trump-skeptical audience that Trump is not a conventional president, they offer the same message to a more receptive Trump-supporting audience. The president himself has embraced the idea. Responding to complaints about his tweeting in 2017, he remarked (on Twitter, of course), “My use of social media is not Presidential—it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL.”

The notion was ridiculed, rightly, at the time. But voters seem to be coming around. A Gallup poll released Tuesday found that 40 percent of voters believe Trump “has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have,” up from just 33 percent two years ago. That still lags far behind Bush and Obama, but the size of the increase suggests that Trump has convinced some voters that what he’s doing is presidential, simply by virtue of the fact that he is the president and he is doing it.

Yet that uptick comes even as Trump’s approval/disapproval numbers remain essentially stable. Just as there are voters who disapprove of Trump and are willing to believe, or at least accept, “truthy” accounts of him, there’s another set who don’t care whether the accounts are true and continue to support him.

The balance of Siege remains to be revealed, but the first two juicy claims in The Guardian’s report help show why the tell-all genre is becoming a snooze. The paper reports that Wolff claims Trump reacted to witness-cooperation deals taken by his former fixer Michael Cohen, the Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, and the tabloid publisher David Pecker by saying, “The Jews always flip.” Perhaps Trump said this and perhaps he didn’t, but it’s already well established that he has resorted to stereotypes about Jews on various occasions, and has a long history of bigoted views and comments. Whether the quote is real or not, it doesn’t convey anything new about Trump.

The Guardian also reports that Siege says Special Counsel Robert Mueller drew up an indictment against Trump for obstruction of justice but never filed it. Mueller’s spokesman says that no such document exists, and his team has proved almost entirely leak-proof, with the exception of one score-settling leak against the attorney general. Unless and until other reports corroborate this claim, it’s probably best to treat it cautiously.

It’s Mueller who may lay claim to the title of the ultimate tell-all writer of the Trump administration. When his 448-page report was released to the public, critics strained to find literary meaning and significance in it. But the value was not in the composition, but in the content. Aided—unlike any of the other authors—by subpoena power, Mueller was able to draw a more nuanced and revealing portrait of Trump and the first two years of his presidency than any other author.

[David A. Graham: Mueller’s damning portrait of Trump]

Mueller’s report offered new detail, such as Trump’s meltdown over Mueller’s appointment (“This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”) and his refusal to return a resignation letter to his attorney general, instead carrying it with him overseas. The report also offered a big-picture charge, revealing the extent and length of Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice, though Mueller stopped just short of calling it that.

Yet even the Mueller report has had little immediate effect. Trump’s approval rating has stayed stable (suggesting neither the exoneration he claimed nor the KO his critics dreamed of). Mueller did change Representative Justin Amash’s mind, though, and if House Democrats ultimately move to impeach the president, it will only cement the Mueller report’s status as the pinnacle of Trump tell-alls.

Just because the potency of tell-alls has weakened doesn’t mean the stream of books will diminish. The Associated Press revealed Tuesday that former Defense Secretary James Mattis will publish a memoir this summer. Mattis might actually have something new to say about Trump: Not only did he have significant policy differences with the president—according to Woodward, he simply discarded directives he found foolish—but he managed to last for two years in the administration by saying little to the press. But Mattis warns that he’s writing a different kind of book: “I’m old-fashioned: I don’t write about sitting Presidents, so those looking for a tell-all will be disappointed.”

No wonder Mattis has a reputation for wisdom.

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2K9Ymup

The Fall of a Model Democracy

The recipe is not a good one: a brazen businessman, a contentious election, and a hint of criminality.

Those troubling ingredients were brought to a boil in Benin this month as one of the world’s strongest democracies saw opposition parties barred from running for office, protesters taking to the streets, and an unknown number of arrests and deaths. As demonstrations grew over April’s parliamentary elections, President Patrice Talon also blocked access to the internet and unleashed the police. The story might seem routine in other parts of the developing world, but it’s an anomaly in Benin, which sparked a wave of African democratization in the 1990s and has remained resistant to breakdown and backsliding ever since.

After three decades of peace and progress, the West African nation now finds itself facing the “democratic recession,” a term the political scientist Larry Diamond coined to describe an apparent trend that has taken its toll on every continent. From populist victories in the United States and Britain to far-right parties entrenching themselves in power in Brazil and Hungary, as well as emboldened authoritarians in Turkey and the Philippines, the erosion of the quantity and quality of democracy has become worrying. Now Benin joins the list.

[Read: Tanzania was East Africa’s strongest democracy. Then came “the bulldozer.”]

Distressing though the developments are, the conditions that permitted the present situation are not new. In Benin and beyond, it is important to understand the crisis of democracy in the 21st century, in no small part, as a crisis of expectations from the 20th century.

Benin’s story mirrors many around the world, but its ending is—or seemed to be—much better. Colonized by France at the end of the 19th century and devastated by coups in the middle of the 20th century, Benin’s independence would ultimately be spoiled by a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship that nearly made it to the 21st century. But when communism finally collapsed, a transition to democracy more fruitful than most was born. Soon, free and fair elections, functional institutions, and guarantees of individual liberty became hallmarks of the country.

Until now, Benin has been held in high esteem by the world’s democracy watchers, ranking near the top of several well-regarded indexes on governance, freedom of the press, political participation, and more. On various measures, its democracy has outperformed not only most of Africa, but also most of Asia and Latin America, according to Reporters Without Borders; parts of Europe, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit; and also the United States, according to Freedom House.

All that is now threatened by Talon, the businessman-president, whose alleged ill-gotten gains, apparent bankrolling of favorable politicians, purported plot to poison his predecessor, and rabble-rousing are worrying indications of how much further Benin’s democracy might fall.

The transformation began last August when Benin’s election commission, stacked with Talon’s supporters, made two tweaks to the cost of running and the threshold for winning. Under the new system, parties in the parliamentary elections would have to pay 249 million CFA francs or $402,397 to field candidates—a 1,500 percent increase from the previous amount. In addition, parties would have to secure 10 percent of the total national vote to enter the legislature, forcing local parties to build a national presence. (Previously, parties were elected through proportional representation, leading to dozens of parties in parliament.)

The intention was purportedly noble. “This is the end of strongmen, of political parties constructed around a personality, around a city, or around a region,” Gildas Agonkan, a deputy in the National Assembly, told Jeune Afrique, a leading African magazine, at the time. Or as Claire Adida, a scholar of Benin and an expert on West Africa at the University of California San Diego, told me, the government argued that the changes would reduce the proliferation of registered political parties, of which there are currently more than 200, in order to make politicians come together, enter broader coalitions, and work across ethnic and regional lines. But, she added, “it’s unclear how those reforms would lead to that.”

[Read: The future of Kenya’s democracy is hanging in the balance]

They didn’t. What happened instead was a clearing of the field. Two months before April’s election, Benin’s election commission announced that no opposition party—not even one bloc that makes up more than one-third of the assembly—would be eligible to contest the legislative elections. Only President Talon, Benin’s “Cotton King” who had built a $400 million fortune in agriculture, was able to hop the hurdles he had created, lending his deep pockets, familiarity to voters, and control of the courts to his loyalists seeking election. As the news sunk in and suggested a return to one-party rule, protesters and the police took to the streets.

In the weeks before the election, the unrest grew and the president gave little ground, refusing to delay voting as his predecessor had done amid similar struggles and scrutiny. (There have been troubles in past elections, as well--but the country recovered from those impasses.) When the unopposed election finally arrived on April 28, the situation became more severe as Talon blocked access to Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and ultimately the internet.

The nation’s new illiberalism was clear. Voter turnout was reported to reach 23 percent, about one-third of the usual amount. Then the clashes turned fatal as police kidnapped protesters, shot into crowds, and reportedly killed at least seven people.

Now the streets are cleared and life, for some, is back to normal. And as all 83 of the National Assembly’s seats have been filled by the president’s deputies, order—for whatever it’s worth—has been restored too. Democracy, however, has not.

When Larry Diamond, the political scientist at Stanford University, warned the world of the “democratic recession” in his famous 2015 essay, declines such as Benin’s were what he had in mind. He spoke of an “erosion in electoral fairness, political pluralism, and civic space for opposition and dissent.” This has recently become familiar to Benin, with its fixed election, absence of the opposition, and muzzling of the media. The cause, Diamond said, would be “abusive executives intent upon concentrating their personal power.”

[Read: A dangerous immigration crackdown in West Africa]

Although the impulse to tie Benin to a greater global “democratic recession” is fair, much of the hand-wringing fails to acknowledge that democracy has struggled in the past too. This reaction implies that democracy was essentially unblemished until an unexplained unraveling in the past decade.

This has been far from the case. Benin’s democracy was undoubtedly a success like few others, but, as with all democracies, its success was fragile. Its party politics have long been frail and fractured: Three of four presidents since democracy took hold in 1991 were independents, and some 200 parties are in uneasy existence. Corruption and clientelism have long been endemic, as bribes are common and kinship politics is widespread. Moreover, many elections have experienced delays, disruptions, and accusations of irregularities—most notably in 2001, 2011, and 2016—albeit to a lesser degree than in 2019. Bids to entrench presidential authority and extend term limits have existed too.

Around the world, there is an impulse to speak longingly of past triumphs of democracy. This impulse is more emotional than empirical.

In the same issue of the Journal of Democracy that Diamond announced the “democratic recession,” two other academics, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, pushed back. The problem was perception, they wrote. “The excessive optimism and voluntarism that pervaded analyses of early post–Cold War transitions generated unrealistic expectations that, when not realized, gave rise to exaggerated pessimism and gloom.” Now, in Benin and beyond, we continue to do what they cautioned against: remember the past with optimism, bemoan the present with pessimism, and ignore the realities in between.

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2JJ93oj

The Supreme Court Dodges an Abortion Case

“There’s a fundamental principle of law that derives from Sherlock Holmes,” Justice Samuel Alito mused from the bench last November, “which is the dog that didn’t bark.”

Alito was referring to “The Adventure of Silver Blaze,” in which a watchdog at a stable did not bark at an intruder because, as Holmes deduced, “the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.” There are, however, other reasons that a watchdog might not bark. The dog might be asleep, or well fed and torpid, or muzzled. Or perhaps the dog might have muzzled itself.

Self-muzzling seems to be what the Supreme Court has done so far this term in the contentious area of abortion, now boiling over in the states. In February, the Court granted a temporary stay of a Louisiana abortion law that would have put five of the state’s six abortion providers out of business. But Chief Justice John Roberts, who cast the deciding vote, gave no hint of how he would vote on the law when the Court gave the case full consideration. And on Tuesday, the Court dodged the validity of an Indiana statute that required abortion clinics to dispose of an aborted fetus in much the same manner as the body of a dead person, and, second, required doctors to tell women seeking abortion that state law forbade choosing abortion “solely because of the fetus’s race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, or diagnosis or potential diagnosis of the fetus having Down syndrome or any other disability.”

[Michael Wear: The abortion debate is no longer about policy]

In a remarkable feat of procedural legerdemain, the Court made the issues disappear. It decided that the “fetal remains” provision could take effect because the court below had used the wrong standard to decide the issue, and continued an injunction on the “non-discrimination” law—while claiming to express no view on its validity.

The law at issue in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky was passed in 2016 and signed by then-Governor Mike Pence, who said at the time that it would “ensure the dignified final treatment of the unborn and prohibit[] abortions that are based only on the unborn child’s sex, race, color, national origin, ancestry or disability, including Down syndrome.” Soon after, a panel of the Seventh Circuit struck down both provisions. The “non-discrimination” provision, it reasoned, contravenes 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which held that state laws may not impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s choice. The Casey Court explained that, under that standard, abortion before viability is the pregnant woman’s decision alone; the state does not get to evaluate her reasons.

“The [non-discrimination] provisions prohibit abortions prior to viability if the abortion is sought for a particular purpose,” the Seventh Circuit panel majority wrote. Thus, they “are far greater than a substantial obstacle; they are absolute prohibitions on abortions prior to viability which the Supreme Court has clearly held cannot be imposed by the State.”

As for the “fetal remains” provision, the panel majority said, there was no need to apply the Casey standard, because the law was irrational. Until its passage, abortion clinics had been allowed to incinerate fetal remains along with other human tissue, such as organs removed during surgery. Under the new law, fetal remains, unlike cadavers, could receive “simultaneous cremation” rather than individual disposal—but they could not be removed from the facility without a “permit for the transportation and disposition of a dead human body.” The woman who obtained the abortion could also take the remains herself and dispose of them as she chose.

[Read: A pastor’s case for the morality of abortion]

Indiana argued that the “fetal remains” provision embodied the state’s “moral and scientific judgment that a fetus is a human being.” But since Roe v. Wade, the panel majority noted, Supreme Court precedent has held that states cannot impose this doctrine of “fetal personhood” on women seeking abortion. “Simply put, the law does not recognize that an aborted fetus is a person,” the panel wrote.

Indiana petitioned the Supreme Court for review, arguing that:

The fetal disposition provision expands on long-established legal and cultural traditions of recognizing the dignity and humanity of the fetus. The non-discrimination provision, on the other hand, is a qualitatively new type of abortion statute that responds to new technological developments allowing women to make a choice not contemplated at the time of Roe v. Wade: the choice of which child to bear.

On Tuesday, the Court—for now — reversed the “fetal remains” decision, allowing that part of the law to take effect. A 1983 Supreme Court case had said that states do have a “legitimate interest” in “dignified disposal of human remains.” Thus, the Court reasoned, the finding of irrationality was an error. The Court implied that the “fetal remains” provision should in fact have been judged under the Casey standard.

Instead of saying anything of substance, the majority said it would wait for cases under way in other circuits that do seek to apply that standard: “Our opinion expresses no view on those challenges.” The Court also said it would not decide the “discrimination” issue, since “only the Seventh Circuit has thus far addressed this kind of law,” and the justices wanted to hear from other circuits before wading in. The opinion “expresse[d] no view on the merits” of this issue either.

In theory, the “undue burden” standard should be harder, not easier, for a “fetal remains” law to pass than the “rational basis” standard (which in essence asks only, “Is this law crazy?”). But in the past three years, the very meaning of “undue burden,” never crystalline in the first place, has become blurred beyond recognition, and no one knows what the post-Kennedy Court will do with it. Thus, as draconian abortion bans hurtle toward its inbox, the Court has managed to deal with this earlier contentious case by not really dealing with it at all.

[Read: State-mandated mourning for aborted fetuses]

Justice Clarence Thomas, by contrast, is always eager to share his opinion. His separate opinion is remarkably broad: It suggests that states should be able to ban—and indeed should ban—not only abortion but birth control as well.

The reason, Thomas argues, is that both birth control and abortion were embraced in the early 20th century by the eugenics movement. The most extreme form of this movement believed that government policy should be aimed at ensuring that the fittest human stock reproduced itself, while the unfit—those with congenital medical conditions, or the unintelligent, “feeble-minded,” and insane—should be put on the road to extinction by birth control, abortion, or sterilization. Some parts of the movement were solidly racist, and indeed provided inspiration for the genocidal ideology of National Socialism in Germany.

Margaret Sanger, a pioneer of birth control and a founder of Planned Parenthood, was, Thomas argued, not only a eugenicist, but a racist who aimed at limiting or even eliminating the African American population. The claim stems in part from a 1939 letter in which Sanger wrote that birth-control advocates should reach out to black ministers to explain the goals of the movement: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Sanger’s words, in context, seem to me pretty clearly to indicate that she was afraid that black Americans would wrongly come to believe that birth control was a white plot. Nonetheless, the pro-genocide reading has already been embraced by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and the former presidential candidate Herman Cain. With Thomas’s embrace, it has now achieved a trifecta among the far-right wing of African American conservatism.

Citing Sanger in the abortion context is odd, however: Sanger was, in fact, never in favor of legal abortion; even Thomas admits, more or less under his breath, that she vocally opposed “the horrors of abortion and infanticide.” Thus, though Thomas does not say so, the genocide-related arguments he is making must apply with at least equal force to birth control itself. Thomas seems to be hinting that, once abortion is outlawed, the movement will have another objective—ending birth control as well.

Remarkably, in the 20 pages of Thomas’s opinion, not one word or phrase ever describes the choice of abortion as a decision made by a woman for reasons of her own. “There are,” he reports, “areas of New York city in which black children are more likely to be aborted than they are to be born alive—and up to eight times more likely to be aborted than white children in the same area. Whatever the reason for these disparities, they suggest that, insofar as abortion is viewed as a method of ‘family planning,’ black people do indeed ‘tak[e] the brunt of the ‘planning.’” If black women are choosing to abort, in other words, they could not be making this most personal of decisions independently; sinister unseen forces must be imposing it on them.

If there is any comfort in this decision for advocates of reproductive rights, it is that not even Thomas’s ideological soul mate, Justice Neil Gorsuch, was willing to join such a flamboyant opinion. That’s not much, but it’s all I can see. Overall, the Court is playing its abortion cards very close to the vest. If it is going to continue to be a watchdog of abortion rights, it seems likely to be a very quiet one indeed.

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/30Ld693