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In audio of a closed-door fundraiser obtained by the Washington Post and NBC News, President Trump boasts to donors that he "had no idea" whether he was correct when he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada.

As she tried to explain why Trump had been right all along, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders cited trade in goods alone, leaving out trade in services. Services make up a significantly larger share of the US economy than goods production. And it isn't clear from Trump's remarks whether that is really what he was talking about.

This caught-on-tape moment comes less than a week after Trump signed proclamations putting stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Those tariffs won't immediately apply to Canada and Mexico, as those countries are in the midst of renegotiating, along with the U.S., the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Based on other comments, Trump is planning to leverage the threat of tariffs to negotiate better trade terms with U.S. trading partners.

Canada votes in a general election on Monday, and the campaign rhetoric to this date has been toxic and "a desert from a public policy point of view," says veteran Canadian pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research. All that has undeniably turned off Canada's voters, and added another layer of complexity to one of the most unpredictable Canadian elections in recent history

The two top contenders are Liberal leader and incumbent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. Through it all, they've been tangled in a virtual tie for the popular vote. Neither has a clear path to governing in Canada's parliamentary system. "If people were to describe the election, it would be 'Indecision 2019'," says Nanos.

Canada's election takes place in 338 ridings or seats across the country, and preliminary results should be announced around 8pm on election night. One hundred and seventy seats are needed to be able to form a majority government, and polls show neither Trudeau nor Scheer are anywhere near that threshold.

Syrian Refugees Greeted by Justin Trudeau in Canada

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a battery of politicians from across the political spectrum were on hand at the Toronto airport to greet the refugees.

The widespread embrace of the plan by the Canadian public stands in stark contrast with the controversy raging over the issue in the United States, where many politicians, especially on the right, have called for bans or restrictions on the admission of Syrian refugees.

Canada voted in its first new leader in nearly a decade in a general election that handed Justin Trudeau's Liberal party an absolute majority -- and dealt a stunning blow to incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The victory denied a fourth term to Harper and his Conservative party. Harper has held the position since February 2006.

Liberal candidates have secured 184 seats -- or "ridings," the Canadian term for federal electoral districts -- putting them over the line for forming a majority government. A total of 170 seats are needed for a majority.

hy is Justin Trudeau buying a pipeline? Canada’s government announced yesterday it was planning to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5bn. This pipeline – which transports oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the western coast of British Columbia – is at the centre of a bitter political war that shows no signs of abating.

So what’s going on? The logic to Trudeau’s action may lie in an obscure and often overlooked agreement called the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (Fipa). This agreement, ratified in 2014, was negotiated by the previous Harper government. It was passed without a vote in Parliament. Fipa, which remains in place until 2045, was signed to ensure that China got a pipeline built from Alberta to BC, among other benefits.

Now he has bought that pipeline, and will have to live with the political fallout, which will likely include protesters, court cases and other acts of civil disobedience. In what might be a strategy to avoid lawsuits from Chinese companies that may result in massive secret payouts, Trudeau’s government may find itself arresting Canadians.

The Three-Fifths Compromise, an agreement reached during the negotiations in 1787 to create the United States Constitution, found that, for the purposes of representation and taxation, only three-fifths of a state’s enslaved people would be counted toward its total population. It is regarded as one of the most racist deals among the states during the country’s founding.

Yet in a speech in the Tennessee General Assembly on Tuesday, one representative defended the compromise, arguing that it was “a bitter, bitter pill” that was necessary to curtail the power of slaveholding states and that helped clear the way to ending slavery

— remarks that were rebuked by critics, including Black colleagues, as insulting and demeaning

psychologists report finding what they were looking for: a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popula

r music

the words “I” and “me” appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there’s been a corresponding decline in “we” and “us” and the expression of positive emotions.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has suggested his counterparts south of the border would do well to know more about the rest of the world.

He answered in stereotypical Canadian fashion, suggesting "it might be nice" if Americans "paid a little more attention to the world."

n myriad polls and surveys, Americans are often found to be among the most "ignorant" populations in the developed world. Contrary to trends elsewhere, the rate of foreign language study by college students in the United States is declining, not increasing.

Women Have Very Little Political Power Anywhere In The World

When Canada's new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced he had appointed women to half of his government's cabinet positions, many people asked him why.  "Because it's 2015," he replied. 

A new report on global gender equality by the World Economic Forum, the Geneva-based nonprofit most famous for its uber-elite economic conference in Davos, Switzerland, shows that while women are inching toward global parity in education, health, and to a lesser extent economic outcomes, they are still woefully underrepresented in national governments. 

While the Liberal Party had emerged on top in several polls over the past week, its lead was short of conclusive and Mr. Trudeau was an untested figure. There was no ambiguity, however, in Monday’s results.

he Conservatives were reduced to 99 seats from 159 in the last Parliament, according to preliminary results. The New Democratic Party, which had held second place and formed the official opposition, held on to only 44 seats after suffering substantial losses in Quebec to the Liberals.

Canada election: Liberals sweep to power

The centrist Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, started the campaign in third place but in a stunning turnaround now command a majority.

During the 11-week election campaign, the Liberal Party said it would:

So we return to the question that vexes NeverTrumpers and Democrats: Why are Republicans such quivering sycophants, willing to lie and debase themselves in support of an unpopular president who is repudiating many of the principles they have spent their lives advancing?

I’d suggest there are three distinct groups of Republican grovelers. Some may fall into multiple categories

First are the cynics who know Trump is unfit, if not dangerous; however, they’ll get what they can (e.g., judges, tax cuts) and bolster their resumes (e.g., working for the administration, getting fawning Fox News coverage). When Trump bottoms out, they’ll move on

My parents, both immigrants, were Republicans. I supported Republican candidates throughout my early adult life and then successfully ran for office as a Republican. The Republican Party, I believed, stood for limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty — principles that had made the American Dream possible for my family.

In recent years, though, I’ve become disenchanted with party politics and frightened by what I see from it. The two-party system has evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions

George Washington was so concerned as he watched political parties take shape in America that he dedicated much of his farewell address to warning that partisanship, although “inseparable from our nature,” was the people’s “worst enemy.”

The Minnesota court of appeals has ordered a judge to reconsider adding third-degree murder to charges against the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is accused of killing George Floyd last year.

The development could delay Chauvin’s trial, which is due to begin with jury selection on Monday.

The killing, which a bystander recorded on video, sparked the biggest civil rights uprising in the US since the 1960s, spilling over at times into rioting but reinvigorating the Black Lives Matter movement and forcing a fresh reckoning on police brutality and broader, systemic racism.

By Justin FentonIn late 2015, I interviewed several young police officers over lunch in the middle of their patrol shift.

I asked each officer the same question: What do you want to be doing in 10 years? I assumed one might say “detective,” another “chief.”

Most of them responded with the same word: “tactical.” They wanted to be on a SWAT team, or something like it, handling shootouts and other high-risk situations.

as the Presidential campaign exposed increasingly toxic divisions in America, Antonio García Martínez, a forty-year-old former Facebook product manager living in San Francisco, bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and brought in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos,” he told me. The author of “Chaos Monkeys,” an acerbic Silicon Valley memoir, García Martínez wanted a refuge that would be far from cities but not entirely isolated. “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob,” he said. “No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.” Once he started telling peers in the Bay Area about his “little island project,” they came “out of the woodwork” to describe their own preparations, he said. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.”

In private Facebook groups, wealthy survivalists swap tips on gas masks, bunkers, and locations safe from the effects of climate change. One member, the head of an investment firm, told me, “I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and I have an underground bunker with an air-filtration system.” He said that his preparations probably put him at the “extreme” end among his peers. But he added, “A lot of my friends do the guns and the motorcycles and the gold coins. That’s not too rare anymore.”

Tim Chang, a forty-four-year-old managing director at Mayfield Fund, a venture-capital firm, told me, “There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens.” He said, “I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to.” He and his wife, who is in technology, keep a set of bags packed for themselves and their four-year-old daughter. He told me, “I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’ ”

The positive aspects of online dating are clear: the Internet makes it easier for single people to meet other single people with whom they might be compatible, raising the bar for what they consider a good relationship. But what if online dating makes it too easy to meet someone new? What if it raises the bar for a good relationship too high? What if the prospect of finding an ever-more-compatible mate with the click of a mouse means a future of relationship instability, in which we keep chasing the elusive rabbit around the dating track?

the rise of online dating will mean an overall decrease in commitment.

I often wonder whether matching you up with great people is getting so efficient, and the process so enjoyable, that marriage will become obsolete.”

McConnell believes Obama’s words in the 57th Inaugural Address were “unabashedly far-left of center.” Maybe in 1956 that was true. Or 1981. But not in 2013. Obama’s framework is the new center. Call him a liberal. But if you forget the label, and poll on the substance of his remarks, you find a broad, fresh coalition siding with the president on all the major issues he highlighted.This doesn’t necessarily mean the country is more “liberal.” But it does mean, at the least, that the center has moved, and Republicans have not.

Looking at the coming battles in Washington, Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, spoke more political truth in one sentence than Boehner and McConnell have in four years of speeches. “The public is not behind us,” he said, “and that’s a real problem for our party.”

Google is announcing that it wants to cut out the middleman—that is to say, other websites—and serve you content within its own lovely little walled garden. That sound you just heard was a bunch of media publishers rushing to book an extra appointment with their shrink.

Back when search, and not social media, ruled the internet, Google was the sun around which the news industry orbited. Getting to the top of Google’s results was the key that unlocked buckets of page views. Outlet after outlet spent countless hours trying to figure out how to game Google’s prized, secretive algorithm. Whole swaths of the industry were killed instantly if Google tweaked the algorithm.

Facebook is now the sun. Facebook is the company keeping everyone up at night. Facebook is the place shaping how stories get chosen, how they get written, how they are packaged and how they show up on its site. And Facebook does all of this with just as much secrecy and just as little accountability as Google did.