The family of one of the victims of last week’s shooting at a Pensacola naval base was “floored” by the long lines of uniformed personnel solemnly saluting as they drove to the base where he was killed.
When the family of Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, entered Naval Air Station Pensacola, the girlfriend of the victim’s brother captured the dramatic scene in video posted on Facebook Live on Sunday.
The grieving parents, Benjamin Watson and Shelia Wilemon Watson, were silent as they motored through the seemingly endless lines of saluting servicemen and women on both sides of the road.
The only sounds captured in the dramatic video were of the blinking hazard lights, sniffles and tears.
“They were astounded and deeply moved by the outpouring of love and support,” the victim’s brother Zack Watsontold the Pensacola News Journal. “Though my parents had two of their children join the Navy, they had not been able to directly observe the connection and camaraderie between everyone that wears a uniform. In a word, they were floored.”
Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, from Coffee, Ala.U.S. Navy Photo / AP
Jason Bortz, a spokesman for Naval Air Station Pensacola, said “definitely more than a thousand” personnel were on the road to salute Watson’s family.
“We just wanted to do something to honor our shipmates,” Bortz said. “They were all volunteers that came out, nobody was directed to come out. And the response was overwhelming.”
“Heavily wounded, he made his way out to flag down first responders and gave an accurate description of the shooter,” his father said. “He died serving his country.”
“I would say that in the last five to six years, I haven’t seen confidence levels this low heading into winter,” said Siva Anandaciva, a chief analyst at The King’s Fund, a health care charity.
Ms. Barcroft lives in the Coventry area, a pocket of working-class Labour strongholds in central England being targeted by Mr. Johnson, and she is one of many voters for whom the health service has become the dominant issue in the days leading up to the election. Some polls show that the health service is neck and neck with Brexit as the most important issue to potential voters.
For Labour, success on Election Day is dependent in large part on whether it can pull the focus from Brexit and make a case that Mr. Johnson would squander precious public services.
The party has pledged to outspend the Conservatives by pumping an additional 26 billion pounds, or about $34 billion, into the health service annually by 2024. Eager to hold onto its mantle as the party of the National Health Service, Labour has also vowed to undo shifts in recent decades toward privatization — a move that would entail a major reorganization of the health service.
A Labour supporter for most of her life, Ms. Barcroft is sympathetic to Mr. Johnson’s message that Britain needs to get Brexit done, despite her misgivings about voting for it in 2016. But since then, she has also dealt with the ravages of an overburdened health service working under the cloud of Brexit.
Ms. Barcroft, a Type 1 diabetic, has had to keep a stock of out-of-date, secondhand insulin in her fridge, just in case a disorderly Brexit suddenly chokes off her usual supply.
The $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general’s office alleged that Exxon deceived investors about the true cost of climate change. The trial, which began in October and was the first climate fraud lawsuit to go to trial, was the result of a four-year investigation.
“Despite this decision, we will continue to fight to ensure companies are held responsible for actions that undermine and jeopardize the financial health and safety of Americans across our country, and we will continue to fight to end climate change,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement following the verdict.
The case focused on how Exxon, the United States’ largest oil company, accounted for the future potential cost of climate change. New York’s case accused the company of misrepresenting these costs, with James arguing that the company used one set of numbers publicly, while operating with a less conservative forecast internally.
When he took the stand on Oct. 30, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson said that the company tried to understand the impact of climate change and tried to accurately communicate this impact to shareholders. Exxon said the case was misleading and politically motivated and the result of a coordinated effort by anti-fossil fuel groups.
“Today’s ruling affirms the position ExxonMobil has held throughout the New York Attorney General’s baseless investigation,” Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said in a statement. “We provided our investors with accurate information on the risks of climate change. The court agreed that the Attorney General failed to make a case, even with the extremely low threshold of the Martin Act in its favor,” he added, while noting that the company would continue to invest in technologies seeking to reduce emissions.
The case was dismissed “with prejudice,” which means that “this case cannot be tried again on these facts in New York,” Columbia University Law Professor John Coffee said. He added that it could go to New York State Appellate Court and a federal case would be “very unlikely” and “ill-fated.”
“Federal courts would have to respect this ruling under principles of res judicata, but it is conceivable that someone could allege violations of the federal securities laws and sue Exxon,” he said.
Police hunted for the 42-year-old for several hours before they tracked him to his vehicle, where he shot himself in the head as the police helicopter hovered overhead, according to regional police head Tomas Kuzel. He added that the gunman was using an illegal 9mm handgun.
What’s happening now: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has asked committee chairs to proceed with articles of impeachment – meaning they will write a list of what they see as impeachable offenses by the president. The House Judiciary Committee met on Monday for presentations on Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine from lawyers for the House Intelligence Committee.
What happens next: House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) told reporters that he and the chairmen of other House committees would announce specific articles of impeachment against Trump at a news conference Tuesday morning. Those articles will be voted on, one by one, by the Judiciary Committee and then the full House. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
Want to understand the impeachment inquiry better?Sign up for the 5-Minute Fix to get a guide in your inbox every weekday. Have questions?Submit them here, and they may be answered in the newsletter.
While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and senior Democrats have made clear they are proceeding with impeachment, House Democrats are still debating whether the articles should narrowly focus on Ukraine or to expand the scope of the articles to include the allegations detailed by former special counsel Robert Mueller.
While there are advocates for this approach, one source familiar with the discussions said it appeared that getting the necessary votes to pass the article of obstruction of justice out of the House could be difficult, as moderate Democrats have resisted moving beyond the narrow scope of Ukraine.
House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff this weekend seemed to indicate he did not support including the Mueller allegations in the impeachment articles.
Keep this in mind: But even if Democrats don’t include a separate article on obstruction of justice, they are expected to include references to the Mueller allegations in the other articles to show that Trump’s misconduct was part of a larger pattern, according to the sources.
‘The Afghanistan Papers’ detail government efforts to mislead public on Afghanistan; Kentucky Senator Rand Paul weighs in.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., responded Monday to a Washington Post report that top U.S. officials painted an optimistic public picture of the war in Afghanistan’s progress while privately grousing that the conflict was unwinnable.
“I think our young men and women that we send to war, our best and our brightest, they deserve better,” Paul said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.” “They deserve an open airing of what is the mission. I’ve been saying for several years now that I can’t meet a general anywhere who can tell me really what is the mission we’re trying to accomplish in Afghanistan.”
Paul also called on Congress to hold a “full, open debate on whether or not we should still be at war.”
“I was for that war to punish those who attacked us on 9/11,” Paul added. “But this is a far different mission now.”
The Post obtained and published a massive trove of confidential government documents which it says were part of a federal project aimed at figuring out what had gone wrong in the 18-year-long conflict. U.S. generals, diplomats, Afghan officials and hundreds of others directly involved in the war were interviewed, and more than 2,000 pages of notes were taken on their conversations the Post reported.
The notes on the interviews, which began in 2014, were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act following a 3-year legal battle, the Post said.
Paul senator called on Afghanistan to “step up” and police itself and for Islamic authorities to root out radical jihadists.
“I think after 19 years, the government of Afghanistan needs to step up. The people of Afghanistan need to step up,” Paul said. “And ultimately, I think Islam needs to police Islam. It can’t be Americans always doing the job for everyone.”
Paul also commented on the shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola by a Saudi Arabian national, saying that the kingdom should not be granted “easy forgiveness” and that the flight training program should be put on hold.
“I think we never fully realized that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. We haven’t realized that they actually killed a journalist and chopped him up and dismembered him in a consulate,” Paul said, referencing Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. “And now we have Saudi pilots coming over here, ostensibly to train, to be our allies, shooting our own soldiers. No, I think there shouldn’t be any kind of easy forgiveness for Saudi Arabia.”
The gunman, whom an official told Fox News has been identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, killed three people and wounded eight others before he was shot by a sheriff’s deputy.
Fox News’ Gregg Re and Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
It’s now official: Russia, Russia, Russia really was fake news from the start. There was no factual basis for the FBI to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign.
That means there was no need for the appointment of a special counsel and that Robert Mueller should have stayed in retirement. It means the two years of rumors and accusations and the giant cloud of suspicions over the White House produced by Mueller’s headhunters were unfair and unjustified.
It also means J. Edgar Hoover can finally rest in peace. James Comey is now revealed to be the dirtiest cop ever to run the FBI.
Those are the most important takeaways from Monday’s remarkable events. In the span of a few hours, the talking points that Democrats, much of the media and government insiders used to try to defeat Trump in 2016 and then upend his presidency were exposed as false and sinister distortions.
Taken together, the findings and statements from the Justice Department are potentially more important even than when Mueller reported he found no evidence Trump colluded with Russia. In effect, we now can say for certain that the search for collusion itself was corrupted from the start and that the numerous examples of misconduct were not honest mistakes.
It was more than a small coincidence that the day started with House Democrats droning on in yet another impeachment hearing. Their determination to drive Trump from office by hook and crook has continued uninterrupted since his inauguration.
But now comes the counter narrative, and it has the advantage of compelling facts.
First came the Justice Department’s Inspector General report, which laid bare a damning series of mistakes, omissions and failures by Comey’s top associates in conducting the Trump campaign probe. The IG, Michael Horowitz, found seven instances alone where agents gave judges inaccurate or incomplete information when seeking a spying warrant on Carter Page, and said 10 more mistakes were added in three following applications.
Horowitz confirmed that the Christopher Steele dossier financed by Hillary Clinton was essential to getting the warrants, even though many in the FBI knew Steele’s information was disputed by someone he identified as a source. If the secret FISA court judges had the information, it’s probable Page never would have been spied on.
Where does he go to get his reputation back?
Horowitz also demonstrated that an FBI agent investigating Gen. Michael Flynn took part in an unrelated meeting with Trump in August 2016 as part of the probe. In other words, the agent was in the same room with his prey and the presidential candidate of the opposition party under false pretenses.
It also happened at a second meeting. If that isn’t spying directly on Trump, what the hell was it?
Horowitz made two crucial findings that gave Democrats and their media handmaidens some comfort. First, he found that the opening of the investigation met the department’s very low threshold requirements. Second, he found no evidence that the documented bias against Trump by agents and officials played a role in the agency’s decision-making or actions.
That conclusion is generous to a fault given that all the mistakes and failures to communicate ran in the same direction as the bias. It’s more than suspicious when agents who are revealed to have said in texts and e-mails that they will stop Trump then conduct an investigation where all the information that doesn’t fit with guilt is somehow misplaced or ignored.
At any rate, the comfort Horowitz provided to Trump haters was quickly shattered. Attorney General Bill Barr and John Durham, the US attorney investigating the investigators, both issued extraordinary statements disagreeing with him on key points.
Barr was especially direct, saying “the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” He also charged that “FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source.”
Durham, whose probe started as a review but has become a criminal investigation, suggested he has far more information than Horowitz because he is not limited to Justice Department personnel and documents. “Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham added.
It is hard to overstate the combined effect of those two statements. They build on the bare facts Horowitz produces to warn that far more damaging information is coming and that the misconduct will not get a pass.
Bring it on. The damage done to the FBI’s credibility by the abuse of power under Comey will take years to restore, but it can begin only when there is a full accounting of what happened in 2016.
Barr and Durham, as they surely know already, will need very thick skins. In addition to the rogue officials who corrupted their offices, the raw hatred for Trump is leading millions of Americans to adopt the dangerous view that anything goes as long as Trump is the target.
If that view prevails, America is finished as a nation of laws. Then it’s only a matter of time until elections no longer matter. And then what?
All eyes in this week’s UK election will be on constituencies like this one in North Wales, where Labour could lose power for the first time since 1935. Given that the Brexit vote in 2016 was followed by the election of Donald Trump months later, does the populist sentiment driving this change teach us anything about next year’s US election?
James Thomas, an ex-Marine who has lived in Wrexham his entire life, stands outside his town’s football stadium at half-time and smokes a cigarette.
Although he says his home has hit a bit of a lull, he thinks it has a bright future. Why he feels this way should deeply trouble the Labour Party faithful ahead of Thursday’s general election. “When the Conservatives come into power, they’ll sort it all out,” he says.
The 35-year-old mechanical engineer says both he and his 70-year-old grandfather – lifetime Labour supporters – are planning on voting Tory for the first time this week, and there’s one main reason. “The Conservative Party will get Brexit done and get it out of the way, and then we’ll move on,” he says.
Like 59% of the Wrexham constituency, Thomas voted Leave in the 2016 referendum on British membership in the European Union. He says he did so because he wanted to stem the flow of immigration into the country – and it’s also why he’s backing Boris Johnson over Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, whom he says “hasn’t got a clue”.
“I don’t want to come across as negative toward the foreign people coming across,” he says. “If the foreign people coming across are doctors, then I’m all for that. But if they’re coming across and just claiming all the taxes and all that and not working, then we should get rid of them.”
Corbyn, he says, is “all for the druggies, all the whiskey heads and all, giving money to the ones on the streets and all that”.
“What about us,” Thomas asks, “the people who actually work?”
Image copyright Getty Images
“Get Brexit Done” is a common refrain for the Conservatives – a slogan plastered on billboards and signs that surround party leader Boris Johnson at the party’s campaign events. The force of Johnson’s personality, his iconoclastic manner, also has drawn voters like Thomas to the Conservatives, which he says is no longer the party for just the wealthy.
“I tell all my friends that Boris Johnson will do what he says,” he continues. “He’s exactly the same as Donald Trump. Donald Trump says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it.”
Trump’s 2016 supporters in the US said time and time again that his blunt truth-telling, even if it sometimes offended, was one of his most compelling attributes. It suggests the two Anglophone leaders have more in common than just their much-talked-about hair.
Like Johnson, Trump also has an electoral slogan, “Keep America Great,” that suggests work still to be done. It is a call to his electoral coalition to once again put him over the top.
There’s no doubt Wrexham, a once thriving mining town in the north of Wales, has fallen on hard times. Unemployment is up. Poverty rates are rising. Drug addiction is a growing problem.
Even on a Saturday night, the historic old downtown is largely empty, with people sleeping rough in the darkened alcoves of empty storefronts.
The town still has its charm. The Pontcysyllte aqueduct, an elevated canal completed in 1805, is an engineering marvel. The local university, Wrexham Glyndwr, is expanding. And the town’s football club, Wrexham AFC, with its long and storied history, is a source of local pride.
Image copyright Alamy
The Red Dragons are the third-oldest professional football team in the world, with achievements that include winning the FA Trophy in 2013 and a stunning upset of defending champions Arsenal in a 1992 FA Cup third-round match.
Like the town, however, the football club is currently struggling. While its stadium, the Racecourse Ground, is the oldest venue that still hosts international matches, it shows all of its 142 years. Many of the once bright-red seats have faded to a pale pink from exposure to the elements. The standing terrace, behind the east goal, is no longer open to the public and appears from a distance to be on the verge of a rusty collapse.
The team itself has dropped out of the league and into the fifth tier of English football, teetering near the relegation zone once again.
In its heyday, the stadium held more than 34,000 to watch a 1957 match against Manchester United. On a blustery afternoon last Saturday, roughly 3,000 die-hard fans watched them take on Solihull Moors.
Two walls cracking
Wrexham’s parliamentary constituency is one of dozens held by the Labour Party that voted leave in 2016. Because the Conservative Party is firmly backing leave, while Labour is divided on the issue, these seats are being heavily targeted by the Tories as pick-up opportunities. Recent polling suggests the Conservatives may be on to something.
Victory in places like Wrexham – old, post-industrial towns and constituencies across central and northern UK – could hold the key for a Tory majority in Thursday’s election. Much like the Democratic Party’s “Blue Wall” of old industrial mid-western states in the US that chose Republican Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Labour’s “Red Wall” shows signs of cracking.
One doesn’t have to look hard to see parallels. Like Wrexham, places such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio in the US were once the nation’s industrial heartland, where coal mining, steel production and manufacturing provided a stable livelihood. Now much of the region is struggling with economic uncertainty, drug addiction and decaying urban centres.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption
A former steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
In 2016, voter dissatisfaction in the US mid-west, and in large swaths of the central and northern UK, gave rise to an electoral earthquake. First it was the June Brexit referendum, where a narrow majority of UK voters opted to leave the European Union. Five months later, it was Trump’s similarly narrow victory.
In one case it was a man who served as the hammer that forged an electoral realignment. In the other it was a single-issue vote. But at the heart of both was a conservative populism centred around trade and immigration. This week’s UK general election is a key test to see whether 2016 was a sign of a durable political shift in the UK. And, like the 2016 Brexit vote, there will be many in the US watching carefully to see if British politics once again foreshadows events to come in the US.
Moving on
Even among Wrexham’s Labour voters, there are signs of Brexit fatigue – and a desire to put the whole divisive ordeal behind them.
“The country was given the opportunity to vote,” says Erfyl Jones, a Wrexham supporter who came to Saturday’s Wrexham match from nearby Denbigh. “The people went out to vote. That result should be respected by everybody. We should move on.”
On Sunday afternoon, Corbyn finished up a two-day campaign blitz through Wales that included three northern towns. He skipped Wrexham, however, opting to visit constituencies currently held by Conservatives.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption
Corbyn in north Wales
During his stump speeches, Corbyn barely mentioned Brexit at all, instead attacking the Tories for their post-recession austerity policies and a willingness, he says, to sacrifice the National Health Service in trade negotiations with the US.
It’s a reflection of the delicate position Labour finds itself in during these last days of the general election campaign. The party supports leaving the EU, but it wants to renegotiate the terms of the exit and then submit the results to another national vote. It’s an attempt to please both the remain and the leave factions within the party, but it could end up satisfying neither.
“Brexit has really divided people,” says Lyndsey Lynch, a Labour activist from Holyhead who attended a Corbyn rally in Bangor on Sunday. “Discussion has descended into name-calling, which is really disappointing.”
She says the parts of the UK that voted leave did so to disrupt the status quo – a sentiment she understands.
“People have been left behind,” she says. “They are feeling the pinch. People are more impoverished. It’s very much understandable for them to say we’re not having this anymore.”
Across the Atlantic, even some Democrats will acknowledge that a similar sentiment – to send a message to the nation’s governing class – was a significant reason for Trump’s 2016 success. And there have been calls among Democrats to “move on” from Trump, and instead talk about issues – like healthcare, education and the environment – rather than simply campaign against the current White House resident.
With Trump on the ballot in 2020, of course, that will be a challenge. Democrats in Congress are also on the verge of impeaching the president, forcing a Senate trial for only the third time in US history.
And even though Corbyn is focusing on his own slate of issues, Brexit is still unresolved three years later, with whether and how to leave the EU continuing to be a source of anxiety and anger.
A moment of truth
At the Wrexham game on Saturday, Mark Thomas sits in the bleachers with a smile on his face. “We’re winning,” he says. “That’s good news for a change.”
A long-time Labour supporter, the lorry driver says he’s not planning on voting on Thursday. “I can’t see anybody that’s going to do any different,” he says. “The politicians will do what they want at the end of the day. They’re not bothered about people sitting in this ground or any other.”
Media captionBoris Johnson or Donald Trump: Who’s got it worse?
Thomas voted remain, and says he isn’t bothering to vote because the only parties firmly behind remain – the Liberal Democrats and the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru – have no chance of winning in Wrexham.
If Labour hopes to hold off the Conservatives, it needs voters like Thomas, but he’s probably not the only one who has decided to sit this election out. Thomas says the Wrexham voters who chose Leave didn’t think things through. He understands, however, why they were confused.
“There’s a lot of scaremongering,” he says. “If we’re going to come out of Europe, oh we’re going to be trouble. If we stay in Europe, oh we’re in trouble. People don’t know what to think.”
Beneath the stands, twin brothers Carl and Mark Davis swig beers and give voice to that confusion. While the ex-workers in the now-shuttered steel mill are dedicated Labour supporters, Carl voted Remain, while Mark chose Leave.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption
Terraces at the Racecourse Ground, home to Wrexham FC, in September
“Vote Tory? I’d rather jump off the Eiffel Tower, if I can still get there,” Mark says. “But you have to look out for the working people.”
On Thursday, Labour will have to rely on traditional party allegiances like those of the Davis brothers holding strong enough to keep places like Wrexham in its column, despite the tectonic shifts the Brexit referendum vote may be creating in British politics.
Next year in the US, Democrats seek to win back the disaffected voters who switched to Republican in 2016. As many as nine million people who backed Barack Obama also voted for Trump.
Mr Johnson’s Conservative Party could be on the verge of creating a new electoral constituency unlike any that came before it. In November 2020, Mr Trump will try to prove that his conservative populism was more than just a one-time blip – but likewise a sign of a governing coalition that can endure.
In the US, the final verdict is 11 months off. In the UK, however, the results will land in just a few days.
The city of Pensacola, Fla., was hit with a cyberattack, shutting down much of the city computer network, days after a Saudi air force student opened fire at a military base there.
“The city of Pensacola is experiencing a cyberattack that began this weekend that is impacting our city network, including phones and email at City Hall and some of our other buildings,” Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson said at a Monday briefing.
As recovery operations continued Tuesday, police announced that they will be launching a criminal investigation into the incident, the Associated Press reported. At a news conference, Judy Turner, mayor of Whakatane, one of the mainland towns closest to White Island, said the investigation is “a natural process that would need to happen in these circumstances.”
What’s happening now: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has asked committee chairs to proceed with articles of impeachment – meaning they will write a list of what they see as impeachable offenses by the president. The House Judiciary Committee met on Monday for presentations on Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine from lawyers for the House Intelligence Committee.
What happens next: House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) told reporters that he and the chairmen of other House committees would announce specific articles of impeachment against Trump at a news conference Tuesday morning. Those articles will be voted on, one by one, by the Judiciary Committee and then the full House. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
Want to understand the impeachment inquiry better?Sign up for the 5-Minute Fix to get a guide in your inbox every weekday. Have questions?Submit them here, and they may be answered in the newsletter.
What’s happening now: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has asked committee chairs to proceed with articles of impeachment – meaning they will write a list of what they see as impeachable offenses by the president. The House Judiciary Committee met on Monday for presentations on Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine from lawyers for the House Intelligence Committee.
What happens next: House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) told reporters that he and the chairmen of other House committees would announce specific articles of impeachment against Trump at a news conference Tuesday morning. Those articles will be voted on, one by one, by the Judiciary Committee and then the full House. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
Want to understand the impeachment inquiry better?Sign up for the 5-Minute Fix to get a guide in your inbox every weekday. Have questions?Submit them here, and they may be answered in the newsletter.
“I was going to do an outline of it and try to present it at the convenience of the Republicans in Congress and the attorney general at the end of this week,” Giuliani told “War Room: Impeachment,” a radio show hosted by former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon.
Giuliani added that his report on his findings should be completed by Wednesday or Thursday, but he was unsure when they would be made public.
He also said he hoped to speak with Republicans before the House moved forward with articles of impeachment against Trump centered on the president’s conduct toward Ukraine.
Photos posted on social media show Giuliani met during the week with a former Ukrainian diplomat who has propagated an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine meddled to help Democrats in the 2016 election. He also huddled with a Ukrainian lawmaker who proposed a joint corruption investigation between the U.S. and Ukraine.
The meetings were documented by One America News (OAN), a conservative network that traveled with Giuliani to Ukraine.
It’s unclear whether Trump was aware of Giuliani’s meetings ahead of time.
“I just know he came back from someplace, and he’s going to make a report, I think to the attorney general and to Congress,” Trump told reporters on Saturday. “He says he has a lot of good information. I have not spoken to him about that information.”
But the timing of the trip made some of Trump’s allies uneasy and is sure to draw attention from Democrats and federal prosecutors. The Southern District of New York is reportedly investigating Giuliani’s business dealings overseas.
Giuliani’s trip last week came on the heels of a 300-page report from the House Intelligence Committee alleging that Trump made U.S. security aid and a White House meeting for Ukraine conditional on Kyiv announcing investigations into the president’s political rivals.
Government officials testified last month that it was Giuliani who urged Ukraine to announce those investigations, and they alleged that the president’s personal attorney was conducting a shadow foreign policy outside of regular diplomatic channels.
The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing Monday during which Democrats and Republicans are presenting their findings from the Intelligence Committee hearings. The Judiciary Committee could introduce articles of impeachment against Trump later this week.
“Be very careful about how you throw around dollars and giving,” said Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), the panel’s top Republican. He then noted that both Goldman and House Judiciary Committee Democratic counsel Barry Berke, who also testified Monday, were donors to the Democratic Party.
“We already are not answering questions, and you are here without a pin because your chairman will not testify; that says all we need to hear. He doesn’t even stand behind his own report, he sends you,” Collins said.
Goldman pushed back strongly against Collins’s comments, asking him what his “implication” was.
“The implication is we want Schiff in that chair and not you. The implication is the person that wrote the report is the person who should come and present it, and you weren’t elected by anybody, and you’re the one giving this testimony in place of the chairman,” Gaetz said. “I hope that clears up the implication.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to Daniel Goldman: “We want Schiff in that chair, not you. The implication is that the person that wrote the report is the person that should come and present it. You weren’t elected by anybody and you’re here giving testimony in place of the chairman.” pic.twitter.com/S4jgfvrGaE
These are the Brexit elections. Even if many wish they weren’t.
Whoever wins the election will ultimately determine whether the United Kingdom leaves the European Union early next year — and, if it does, they’ll likely be determining what that future relationship might look like.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party have vowed that if they reclaim their majority in Parliament, they will “get Brexit done” by quickly passing the prime minister’s Brexit deal and moving to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the EU by the end of 2020.
Labour, the opposition party led by Jeremy Corbyn, is instead proposing to renegotiate the Brexit deal, and then put it back to the British people for a final vote on whether they want to leave the EU on those terms — or just remain in the EU after all.
Protesters demonstrate against the EU referendum result outside the Houses of Parliament in London, England on June 28, 2016. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Some smaller parties are in the mix, from the new Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage, which prefers a hard Brexit, to the Liberal Democrats, led by Jo Swinson, which has promised to cancel Brexit altogether. These parties were never expected to win majorities outright, and now, as the election date nears, there are signs — especially among Brexit supporters — that their voters are moving to the two major parties that actually have a chance.
Right now, the Conservatives lead most polls, which would put them on pace to win a majority, though maybe not a huge one. That would see Johnson would return as prime minister with a Parliament finally behind him. Some recent polls have shown that lead narrowing a bit, and if continues, things may get a lot messier. A close vote could mean a hung Parliament, where no one party has a clear majority.
Much is uncertain, not least because of the weird timing of the elections: just before the holidays, and with winter approaching — not exactly an ideal time for either canvassers or voters. Then there’s the fatigue on all sides over the never-ending Brexit political fight. All of this could affect turnout.
All parties are promising that when (if) they’re in power, it won’t be all about Brexit. But none of the Brexit options parties are offering to voters can deliver a simple solution resolving the EU-UK divorce. Because there is none.
Here’s what you need to know about the UK elections on Thursday.
Why is the UK having elections now?
The UK wasn’t supposed to have elections until 2022, given that the country just voted in 2017. But in that election, the Conservatives lost their majority.
They were able to retain power through an arrangement with the conservative Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, where the DUP supported the Conservatives on key votes but wasn’t formally part of their governing coalition.
But Brexit tested that shaky majority. Then-Prime Minister Theresa May couldn’t get her Brexit deal through Parliament, thanks to the extreme Brexiteers in her partyrepeatedly voting it down.
British Prime Minister Theresa May holds a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s country retreat Chequers to discuss department-by-department Brexit action plans in Ellesborough, England on August 31, 2016.Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Normally, this would crater a government, as ruling without a majority really doesn’t work in parliamentary systems. And Johnson very much wanted to hold new elections to try to win back a secure majority. But timing and the quirks of a law known as the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act roadblocked everything.
The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act made it so that Johnson needed two-thirds of lawmakers to agree to call an election. And Labour and other opposition parties refused to agree until they could guarantee that the previous Brexit deadline of October 31 would be extended, which they saw as an insurance policy against a no-deal Brexit.
So the stalemate continued through the fall. But it worked, at least from the perspective of the opposition parties. Even though Johnson brought back a revised deal from the EU (which Parliament even backed in the first vote), the prime minister was forced to get an extension, something he didn’t want to do, and Brexit was postponed until January 31, 2020. Even though Labour, in particular, was wary about their electoral chances — Johnson did, and still does, have a lead — they had little choice but to finally agree to an election. So, at the end of October, they relented.
This time, the entire United Kingdom gets to vote on whether it wants the Conservatives, still led by Johnson, to remain in power, or if they’d rather opt for someone else, specifically Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Other smaller parties definitely have the power to take votes away from the two major parties, which could immensely influence the election. But the prime minister will almost certainly come from the Conservative or Labour party.
Johnson — whose full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (yes, seriously) — is the 55-year-old former Mayor of London who was one of the main pro-Brexit campaigners.
He took over the party (and premiership) in July, promising to deliver Brexit by October 31. He failed — mostly because Parliament thwarted him.
Now, Johnson is telling voters that if they elect a Conservative majority that will back him up, he’ll “get Brexit done” and “unleash the potential of the whole UK.”
We have 9 days to get Brexit done and unleash the potential of the whole UK!
The Conservatives’ Brexit vision is extraordinarily sunny. Their manifesto (which operates like a party platform in the US, but is taken far more seriously given that a parliamentary majority should make it easy to implement that agenda) promises that Johnson will pass his Brexit agreement immediately, taking the UK out of the EU in January.
Then he’ll quickly begin negotiations with the EU on a free-trade agreement, wrapping that up by the current December 31, 2020, deadline. The Conservatives say they will not extend that deadline, meaning they’re planning to take just 11 months or so to figure out the country’s future trading relationship with the EU after the breakup alone took three years. The party also promises to have 80 percent of UK trade covered with new deals with key partners, including the United States, in the next three years.
So if you want Brexit, what Johnson and the Conservatives are selling sounds pretty darn good, even if what they’re promising is going to be a lot messier and much harder to accomplish in practice.
It’s an attempt to walk back some of the policies of austerity of the Conservative-led government since 2010, which have not been all that popular. Indeed, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Labour party member, has blamed the rise in knife crime on the Conservative-mandated cuts to police funding.
But for the most part, the Conservatives are really driving their Brexit promise hard. Boris even got a new bus for it.
Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party
Corbyn has been the leader of the Labour Party since 2015, and though he did better than expected in the 2017 election, things are not looking so great this time around.
Corbyn is deeply unpopular. So is Johnson to a lot of voters, but Corbyn has some extra baggage. Corbyn, a self-described socialist, is sometimes perceived as being too left-wing and he’s held some radical views, particularly on foreign policy, that some of the more moderate voters in his party reject.
Corbyn has been critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which is not anti-Semitic, but he has made some uncomfortable statements, including calling members of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” in 2009. He’s had to apologize for other past comments, including a 2012 Facebook message he sent to a mural artist which depicted anti-Semitic tropes.
But there have been major instances of anti-Semitism within the ranks of the Labour party since Corbyn’s rise to power (some MPs were suspended), which has led some critics to accuse him of allowing anti-Semitism to fester within the party, or at least failing to do enough to condemn it and take the very real concerns from Jewish lawmakers and others in the community seriously.
And, ahead of this election, The Jewish Chronicle used its front page in early November to call on voters to reject Corbyn, and the UK’s chief rabbi called a “mendacious fiction” that the Labour party has ended anti-Semitism within the party.
Corbyn has a long, long history as an anti-racist campaigner, and he’s condemned anti-Semitism publicly. But he has come off equivocal on the issue at times, including a November interview with a BBC reporter where he refused to apologize for anti-Semitism within the party. Corbyn has since done so, he’s repeatedly made clear that he did not accept anti-Semitism “in any form.” Either way, Corbyn has repeatedly been confronted by this controversy, and may be coloring voters’ views.
Corbyn and Labour’s somewhat muddled stance on Brexit in an election that is absolutely all about Brexit may also be a liability. Labour’s manifesto states they will renegotiate the Brexit deal in three months, seeking closer ties with the EU. Then, they’ll hold another referendum in six months, where they will ask the public whether they want to leave with the EU with Labour’s deal, or remain in the EU.
Leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn arrives at a gathering of European Socialists prior to a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels, Belgium on October 17, 2019. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
That’s a tight timeline to renegotiate a deal and hold another vote, and it means delaying and prolonging Brexit well into 2020 — all of which will require buy-in from the EU. Corbyn himself has said he’ll stay “neutral” on the question of whether the EU should leave or remain, even though many lawmakers in his party want him to advocate for remaining.
Labour is in a much trickier spot than Conservatives, which have gone all-in on Brexit, and the party has followed. A huge core of Labour’s voters favor Remain, but Labour also holds seats in constituencies that voted Leave, many in traditional working-class strongholds such as in the north of England.
Labour is trying to avoid alienating the Leavers or Remainers in its party. The problem is, by “fence-sitting” Labour risks satisfying no one. Conservatives are framing a vote for Labour as essentially a vote to delay Brexit and ultimately Remain, anyway. Add that to Corbyn’s other woes, and it helps explain some of Labour’s struggles.
“In addition to all the reasons why people don’t like Corbyn, the reason why Labour is not winning is because they’re not differentiating themselves in a clear way on the key issue from Conservatives,” Abraham Newman, a professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, told me. “It’s hard to be a strategic voter when that would force you to vote for a party that’s only lukewarm on your strategic interests.”
Corbyn has tried really hard to shift the conversation away from Brexit — not just because the Labour position is a bit confusing, but because Labour’s other policies are actually quite popular with voters.
Labour’s manifesto promises free university tuition, increases in health spending and taxes on the rich, and the nationalization of some industries, including railways and internet broadband. While these policies may seem positively radical to Americans — especially something like nationalizing the railways — they enjoy support among voters in the UK.
Labour’s policies don’t seem to be the problem, then. Rightly or wrongly, the problem may be Corbyn himself.
Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are strongly pro-Remain, and their leader, the 39-year-old Jo Swinson, has said that if her party wins the majority (it won’t) it will revoke Article 50 and stop Brexit altogether.
The Lib Dems (as they’re known for short) looked to be a serious electoral player ahead of any election: a pro-Remain party that could attract both moderate Conservatives and Labour members who supported staying in the EU, but also couldn’t quite get behind but couldn’t quite get behind Corbyn.
But it hasn’t played out that way. “The Liberal Democrats have already been substantially squeezed, as the Brits say, with their voting percentage going down pretty substantially during the campaign,” Harold Clarke, a polling expert at the University of Texas-Dallas, told me.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson addresses the audience onstage at Proud Embankment in London, England, on July 22, 2019.Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Swinson has had some stumbles on the campaign trail, and hasn’t been as strong a campaigner as some thought she might be. The Lib Dems rose in popularity by supporting a second Brexit referendum, though they made it clear they favored “Remain” as an option.
But the party’s later decision to embrace an explicit “cancel Brexit” platform has made some voters queasy, as just outright canceling the results of a referendum does sound pretty undemocratic compared to holding a second referendum in which all voters would get another say.
So there probably won’t be a Liberal Democratic surge. But the party could still make a huge difference if it wins some key seats — especially if there’s a hung Parliament, as both majority parties will be trying to get its support.
Swinson has said that she won’t back either Johnson or Corbyn, but that her party’s ultimate goal is to stop Brexit; this seems to hint that Labour might be able to woo her and the party. But how influential they will be ultimately depends on Thursday’s outcome.
Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party
Farage is the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and an ardent supporter of the campaign to leave the EU. He founded the new Brexit Party in April to … well, you can probably figure it out from the party’s name.
The difference between the Conservatives and Farage’s Brexit Party is that the latter would be perfectly fine leaving the EU without a deal and just severing ties as bluntly as possible.
May was seen as too soft on Brexit, which enabled Farage to peel off some of the more hardcore Brexiteers from the Conservative Party. But Johnson emerged from the Brexiteers’ camp. And even though Johnson failed on his promise to take the EU out of the UK by October 31, he made it pretty darn clear he would have if he could have.
Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP and Vote Leave campaigner, arrives to speak to the assembled media at College Green, Westminster in London on June 24, 2016. Mary Turner/Getty Images
Farage originally promised to stand parliamentary candidates in all 650 districts — which rightfully made the Conservatives nervous, over fears of splitting the Brexit vote. Then, in November, Farage said that the Brexit Party wouldn’t challenge the 317 seats Conservatives won in 2017, a big boost for Johnson.
What Farage didn’t do, however, was stand down in seats Conservatives were trying to pick off from Labour, so the parties could still split the vote in critical seats that might be a bit harder to win.
Amy P. Smith, a teacher in British politics and public policy at the University of Sheffield, told me this was probably the Brexit Party’s electoral undoing.
“If you want to leave the EU and you’ve got the choice of a Conservative member of Parliament or a Brexit Party member of Parliament, you’re probably going to vote the Conservative one,” she explained, “because they’ve got a bigger chance of forming a government and you’ve got a bigger chance of seeing Brexit actually happening.”
Brexit supporters do seem to be consolidating behind the Conservatives, as voters see them as the viable and realistic option to get Brexit done. Afew members of Farage’s Brexit Party even quit the party to back the Conservatives in this election. This is all good news for Boris, at least for now. Farage may not be so forgiving if Johnson is reelected and struggles on any of his Brexit plans.
The others
There are a few other smaller parties who could have some impact on the outcome such as the Greens, who favor a second referendum and remaining in the EU, and are part of a “Remain alliance” with the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru, a Welsh party. This must means each put up whichever candidate had the best chance of winning in a particular constituency, rather than challenging them and splitting the Remain vote.
Another critical player may be the Scottish National Party (SNP), which also opposes Brexit and which many see as a possible partner for Labour if it does better than expected, for the price of another Scottish independence referendum.
There’s also Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. Even though the DUP’s 10 MPs supported the Conservatives in 2017, that might be harder this time, as the party strongly opposes Johnson’s Brexit deal. The major nationalist party in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein, doesn’t take its seats out of protest.
The polls say Conservatives are in the lead … but are the polls right?
Right now, Conservatives have about a 10-point lead in the polls (43 percent in a recent YouGov poll, compared to 33 percent for Labour), though that’s fluctuated and may very well change as the UK nears election day. This would mean a Conservative majority, though maybe not a huge one — one recent estimate put it at about 38 seats.
The polls have been pretty consistent, though Labour has slightly improved its standing in recent weeks. But as Clarke, the polling expert at the University of Texas-Dallas, noted, “There’s no real indication of a strong Labour surge, like we saw from two years ago.”
There is a lot of uncertainty going into this election, and UK voters are right to be a little skittish when it comes to polling based on what happened in 2017 with May’s large lead crumbling, and the Leave upset in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Voters attend a polling station in East London on the day of the general election on June 8, 2017.Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images
A lot will have to do with turnout, especially if young people vote in great numbers, which is seen as favoring Labour. More than 3 million people have registered to vote since the election was called, according to the Guardian, two-thirds of them under age 34. And again, the weird timing of the December elections — weather, holidays, travel — might factor in.
Another big unknown is tactical voting. The UK has a first-past-the-post system, so whoever gets the most votes in an individual constituency, wins. If Brexit is the big issue, voters may not vote for the candidate they like best, but the one most likely to either fulfill or stop Brexit. That means that in a tight race, even if someone is, say, all in on the Liberal Democrats, they just might suck it up and vote Labour if it means that’s one less pro-Brexit seat.
There are indications that this might happen — or at least that voters are starting to be realistic. Polls show voters are abandoning some of those smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party, and going with the two parties that can actually form a government.
“People are realizing more and more that if they want Brexit to happen, or if they want a chance to Remain, they’ve got to pick between the Conservatives or Labour,” Smith, from the University of Sheffield, said.
Smith added that this a pretty normal thing that happens in British campaigning. “The last two years, an increase in small parties is an anomaly in our system,” she said. So it all kind of makes sense, along with some missteps by the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party have made.
There have also been a few polls that show the Conservatives with a much narrower lead over Labour — including one showing a 6-point lead. That would make an outright Conservative majority less likely, opening up the possibility of a hung Parliament.
In that scenario, whoever won the most votes would get to try to form a government — if they can, that is. And even if a party can, as the past two years have shown, a divided, messy Parliament has made legislating difficult, especially on Brexit. This election, then, rather than clarifying the UK’s stance on Brexit, could make it knottier.
And even if the polls are right, and Johnson wins a majority, “getting Brexit done” will not be as simple as promised. Leaving the EU is actually the easy part; the next phase of negotiating the future relationship with the bloc is going to be much more complex. Johnson has promised he will not delay these negotiations past 2020, but even in the best of circumstances, it’s going to be a challenge to meet that deadline. And whatever the outcome it will reshape the UK’s economy.
“There no sigh of relief after this election,” Newman said.
“You know the expression, ‘Hold on to your hats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride’?” he added. “That’s what the UK is in for for the next decade.”
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