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oel Kaplan, vice-president of global public policy at Facebook, manages the company’s relationships with policymakers around the world. A former law clerk to archconservative justice Antonin Scalia on the supreme court, he served as deputy chief of staff for policy under former president George W Bush from 2006 to 2009, joining Facebook two years later

Warren noted on Twitter this week: “Since he was hired, Facebook spent over $71 million on lobbying—nearly 100 times what it had spent before Kaplan joined.”

Kaplan has reportedly advocated for rightwing sites such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller, which earlier this year became a partner in Facebook’s factchecking program. Founded by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, the Daily Caller is pro-Trump, anti-immigrant and widely criticised for the way it reported on a fake nude photo of the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Facebook’s Washington headquarters also includes Kevin Martin, vice-president of US public policy and former chairman, under Bush, of the Federal Communications Commission – where a congressional report said his “heavy-handed, opaque and non-collegial management style … created distrust, suspicion and turmoil”

Katie Harbath, the company’s public policy director for global elections, led digital strategy for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee. She has been the principal defender of the company’s decision to allow political advert

The price paid for this achievement is that the communications system lacks any means to convince nongroup members. How can you convince people when they cannot understand what on Earth you are talking about?

Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and the others have fenced off conservative Americans from the rest of American society. Within that safe space, insiders hear only what is familiar and comforting. When those protected insiders step outside into the larger world, they find themselves completely unprepared for it

The job of Republican members of Congress at the hearing was not to win converts. Their job at the hearing was to enforce orthodoxy and punish heresy—not to convince, but to corral. They had better hope that enforcement will be enough, because enforcement is all they still know how to do.

The legislation approved by Congress this week would impose sanctions on Chinese officials who commit human rights abuses in the semiautonomous island territory and place Hong Kong’s special economic status under greater scrutiny.

Security forces in Hong Kong have escalated their crackdown on pro-democracy protesters this month, prompting Congress to approve a Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act it had been considering for months.

Mr. Trump said that the protests were a complicating factor in his trade negotiations with Beijing, which have stalled ahead of an important Dec. 15 deadline, when Mr. Trump must decide whether to issue yet more tariffs on Chinese goods.

he also took credit for the fact that China had not extinguished the protests with a sweeping and violent crackdown.

Mr. Trump and other administration officials have warned that an overwhelming Chinese response would have wider repercussions in the relationship between China and Beijing, including in the trade talks.But analysts say there are many reasons China’s government has refrained from an all-out violent crackdown like the one that snuffed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. They include the risk of an enormous international backlash and lasting damage to Hong Kong’s powerhouse economy.

Congress passed its Hong Kong bill with an overwhelming majority, meaning that it could probably override a presidential veto easily, the first override of his presidency. Mr. Trump could also choose not to sign the bill without vetoing it, in which case it would also become law.

Mr. Trump has also begun to echo Mr. Barr’s assertions. In an interview on Fox on Friday, he said that the decision to investigate his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia “was an overthrow attempt at the presidency.”

Now that the claim that Mr. Trump never pressured Mr. Zelensky no longer holds, “the argument has got to be a ‘so what’ argument — Bill Barr’s argument that the president did all these things, but this is what a president can do,” said Stuart Gerson, a Checks & Balances member who was a senior campaign adviser to George Bush and a Justice Department official in his administration.

“The Republicans in the Senate and in the House think they’re in a Parliament, and their responsibility is to a prime minister to whom they owe party loyalty,” Mr. Gerson said. “That’s not the American tradition. One can recognize substantial executive power, but that doesn’t mean the legislative branch should be dead.”

Mr. Barr has argued that his view of presidential power stems directly from the Constitution. It delineates the responsibilities of the three branches of government, he has said, rather than allowing the legislature and the judiciary to check the powers of the president as two of three co-equal governing powers.

That interpretation of history “has no factual basis,” Checks & Balances wrote in its statement, including the claim that “the founders shared in any respect his vision of an unchecked president, and his assertion that this view was dominant until it came under attack from courts and Congress a few decades ago.”

The group said that the “only imaginable basis” for Mr. Barr’s conclusion that Mr. Trump did not obstruct the Russia investigation “was his legal view that the president is given total control over all investigations by the Constitution.”

Mr. Fried suggested that Mr. Barr’s interpretation of the law set a dangerous precedent. “Conservatism is respect for the rule of law. It is respect for tradition,” he said. “The people who claim they’re conservatives today are demanding loyalty to this completely lawless, ignorant, foul-mouthed president.”

Mr. Gerson echoed that sentiment. “It’s important for conservatives to speak up,” he said. “This administration is anything but conservative.”

Still, Schiff said, “we have to figure this out, because it is, I think, rapidly balkanizing the country, and it has also created an environment in which there is a wholesale attack on the idea of truth. If we don’t have a set of common experiences, then there’s nothing more deleterious to a democracy than that.”

Last month, Trump also signed a bill into law that raised the legal age for buying tobacco products to 21 from 18.

Keep your spirits up, don’t get down, it’s not all on you. “God is in charge of history.”

in 2002. Zevon was dying of mesothelioma, and Mr. Letterman asked how his illness had changed him.

“From your perspective now,” Mr. Letterman asked, “Do you know something about life and death that maybe I don’t know now?” Mr. Zevon answered: “I know how much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.”

from the writer Laurens van der Post in 1961: “We live not only our own lives but, whether we know it or not, also the life of our time.” We are all making history together, we are part of an era, and we are responsible to each other and to this great project.

The Democratic primary field is still flailing and doesn’t see it’s flailing. At the moment their theory of the country is wrong, and it’s wrong because it’s a theory, not a cold-eyed look at circumstances and facts on the ground.

It isn’t true that America will never go socialist. Maybe it will, but not under current conditions—full employment, rising wages.

Maybe all this will be settled at an open convention. But they ought to know by now they went too far left too quickly. And sometimes you have to stand up to the base.

Underlying his eventual decisions will be an unspoken theme of his re-election campaign: I’ve been president three years and the world didn’t blow up. My critics said it would because I’m crazy. I’m crazy like a fox! I kept things cool. That theme is about to be put to a test.

The belief that big tech needs to be corralled—to be broken up or declared public utilities—will grow on the left and right

a single strong, focused disagreement can be enough to turn a voter against liberalism, especially if liberals seem uncompromising on that issue.

None of this needs to spell doom for liberals; it just requires them to prioritize and compromise.

nstead of recognizing populism as a motley coalition united primarily by opposition to liberalism’s rule, liberals want to believe they’re facing a unitary enemy — a revanchist patriarchal white supremacy, infecting every branch and tributary of the right.

in the long run, the global trend suggests that a liberalism that remains inflexible in the face of variegated resistance is the ideology more likely to be crushed.

"I'd rather have you voting than sitting here listening to me introduce you, OK?" Trump said by way of dismissal.He reserved some of his highest praise for Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the billionaire casino owners and Republican mega-donors, and Lou Dobbs, the conservative Fox Business host, who were seated in the front row. He questioned where the owner of Dobbs' network was.

The President veered between various recollections of Republican senators -- Lindsey Graham a "much better golfer than people would understand," Chuck Grassley made James Comey "choke like a dog" -- to an upcoming Mount Rushmore fireworks display he claimed to have saved from cancellation by environmentalists.

Through it all, China's vice premier Liu He stood on stage nearby, mostly stone-faced. Not for the first time, Trump left his foreign visitor to watch awkwardly as he riffed on all manner of grievances and recollections.

Reading a letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said the completed trade deal showed "our two countries have the ability to act on the basis of equality and mutual respect" and that "through dialogue and consultation" issues could be handled and resolved.

"I'd like you to just relax a little while, take it easy, go out, see a movie," he told the vice premier. "Tell President Xi, I said President, go out, have a round of golf."

Since he came to power, Xi's government has shut down scores of golf courses across China and effectively banned the 88 million members of the ruling Communist Party from playing.

“Remember the dishwasher? You’d press it, boom! There’d be, like, an explosion. Five minutes later you open it up, the steam pours out,” he said. Trump then criticized newer models, claiming women – just women – across the country have to now wash their dishes “10 times”.

The rant follows months of increasing criticisms from Republican lawmakers to energy regulators over stricter environmental standards. According to the International Energy Agency, a common critique of energy-efficient appliances is that they are inefficient, resulting in more usage, reversing energy savings effects.

The criticisms also come just a day after some Republicans condemned bipartisan legislation to gradually eliminate or reduce heat-trapping chemicals in air conditioners and refrigerators.

Opponents pinpoint a potential rise in costs for consumers. But the bipartisan legislation has support from environmental advocates and appliance industry leaders even as Trump probably calculates it has appeal to a support base skeptical of environmental causes and hostile to government regulation.

“We are letting our government know that no matter what they do, we will never stay silent,” Nadxely Sanchez, of Voces de la Frontera, told the local Fox affiliate WITI.

“All of this is all part of [a] strategy and of course to draw attention away from our debate,” she said. “What do animals do? They just kind of pee on your carpet.”

"Before I begin, I must say that I can only imagine what you may have heard, or perhaps read, over the past few weeks," Harry bega

"The U.K. is my home and a place that I love. That will never change," he continued

Harry then stressed that he and Markle still held the same values, and she's still the same woman he's loved.

"The decision that I have made for my wife and I to step back is not one I made lightly," the Prince said

"Unfortunately, that wasn't possible," he stated. "I've accepted this knowing it doesn't change who I am or how committed I am, but I hope it helps you understand what it had come to, that I would step my family back from all I have ever known to take a step forward into what I hope can be a more peaceful life."

Harry then explained that he and Markle, 38, originally hoped to support the queen without funds from the public.

Harry then thanked the crowd for taking "me under your wing" after the death of his mother, Diana, 23 years ago.

"You looked after me for so long, but the media is a powerful force

Harry concluded by saying he holds "the utmost respect" for his grandmother, and is "incredibly grateful for the support his family has shown him in recent months.

The speech came after the announcement that Harry and Markle will no longer be referred to as "royal highness" and will pay back the $3.1 million they used to renovate their home, Frogmore Cottage.

A video of the speech was posted to the official Instagram page of Harry and Markle, simply captioned: "Remarks from The Duke of Sussex at tonight’s dinner for supporters of Sentebale in London."

Graham had previously floated the idea that the GOP majority could immediately vote to dismiss the case before hearing any arguments, but now he states that this does not appear to be a possibility given the lack of sufficient Republican support for such action.

The Senate trial is set to begin Tuesday.

Graham remains confident that Republicans are still united enough to acquit Trump at the conclusion of the trial.

t Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans on keeping the Senate in session for 12 hours a day so that House Democrats would be done presenting their arguments Wednesday.

Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are among a small group of Republicans who have yet to completely shut the door on new witnesses

“If we call one witness, we’re going to call all the witnesses,” Graham said.

The trial could include testimony from top Trump advisers with firsthand knowledge of his alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. But the White House has indicated that Trump would invoke executive privilege to prevent such advisers from testifying, setting up a court fight that could drag the trial out for weeks or longer.

The House impeachment managers, who will act as prosecutors, declared the president must be removed for putting his political career ahead of the public trust and seeking to hide that betrayal from Congress and the American people.

The seven managers led by intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff published a 46-page tiral brief. A 61-page “statement of material facts” was attached.

Another impeachment manager, Jason Crow of Colorado, said the White House was in effect arguing that Trump was above the law. “If all of the president’s arguments are true, that a president can’t be indicted, and that the abuse of power, the abuse of public trust doesn’t count as an impeachable offense – if that is true, then no president can be held accountable,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “Then the president truly is above the law.”

Trump must be removed, Democrats argue, owing to the egregiousness of his past misconduct and his ongoing efforts to encourage foreign tampering in US elections.

“President Trump’s continuing presence in office undermines the integrity of our democratic processes and endangers our national security,” the managers wrote. “President Trump’s abuse of power requires his conviction and removal from office.”

Just 51.7% of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot, according to the US Elections Project. That was the lowest since 18-year-olds got the vote before the 1972 election. In raw numbers, a little more than 96 million voters decided to take part in that year's presidential election.

the US Elections Project estimates a turnout rate of 66.7% of the voting-eligible population.

What's amazing is how far back you have to go to beat 66.7% for a turnout rate in a presidential election. There wasn't a higher turnout rate in either the 20th or 21st century.

Half of the voter-eligible population turned out to vote in 2018. This 50.0% turnout rate was more than 13 points higher than in 2014 (36.7%). In raw numbers, nearly 120 million turned out in 2018 compared to only a little more than 80 million in 2014.

The strong feelings toward Trump also drove record donations to political candidates up and down the ballot.

Through November 30, 2020, the FEC reports that nearly $24 billion was raised by federal candidates, PACs and party committees during the 2020 election cycle. No other year comes anywhere close to that total. For comparison, a little more than $9 billion was raised by federal candidates, PACs and party committees during the 2016 election cycle.

Looking just at the presidential candidates, over $4 billion was taken in. Never before had more than $2 billion been raised.

In the House races, candidates raised $1.9 billion. Again, that's a record for any cycle. The next highest total was in 2018 with Trump in the White House. During the midterm cycle, $1.7 billion was raised by House candidates.

The interest in elections during the past four years isn't just about Trump the individual. It's about everything around Trump and everything that can strengthen or lessen the power he has.

Nobody knew exactly how that belief would manifest itself; I certainly never expected to see platoons of insurrectionists scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol and sacking the place in broad daylight. Still, shocking as this was, it wasn’t a bit surprising. The attempted coup d'état had been unfolding in slow motion over the previous nine weeks. Anyone who couldn’t see this coming chose not to see it coming. And that goes for much of the Republican Party.

there’s one conclusion of which I’m certain: The “fringe” of our politics no longer exists. Between the democratization of information and the diminished confidence in establishment politicians and institutions ranging from the media to corporate America, particularly on the right, there is no longer any buffer between mainstream thought and the extreme elements of our politics.

The president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, urged him to invoke martial law. The Texas Republican Party suggested seceding from the union. The Arizona Republican Party endorsed martyrdom. Eric Metaxas, the pseudo-evangelical leader with a devoted following on the right, followed suit. “I’d be happy to die in this fight,” he told the president during a radio interview. “This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”

All of that was before the president alleged the greatest conspiracy in American history.

More than a few told me I was being “hysterical,” at which point things got heated, as I would plead with them to consider the consequences if even a fractional number of the president’s most fervent supporters took his allegations, and his calls to action, at face value. When I submitted that violence was a real possibility, they would snicker. Riots? Looting? That’s what Democrats do!

So convinced were the president’s allies that his rhetoric was harmless that many not only rationalized it, but actually dialed it up. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator who once skewered Trump’s dishonesty, promised “earth-shattering” evidence to support his former rival’s claims of a rigged election. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted that “President Trump won this election,” told of a plot to cheat him and alerted the viewers watching him on Fox News, “We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who famously called Trump “a pathological liar,” himself lied so frequently and so shamelessly it became difficult to keep up. Dozens of other congressional Republicans leveled sweeping, unsubstantiated allegations of mass voter fraud, some of them promoting the #stopthesteal campaign online.

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich floated the arrest of election workers. Mark Levin, the right-wing radio host, urged Republican-controlled legislatures to ignore the results of their state elections and send pro-Trump slates to the Electoral College. Right-wing propaganda outlets like The Federalist and One America News churned out deceptive content framing the election as inherently and obviously corrupt. The RNC hosted disgraced lawyer Sidney Powell for a sanctioned news conference that bordered on clinically insane, parts of which were tweeted by the @GOP account. The president’s lawyers and surrogates screamed about hacked voting machines and international treachery and Biden-logoed vans full of ballots. One conservative group paid a former police captain a quarter-million dollars to investigate voter fraud; he performed an armed hijacking of an air-conditioning repair truck, only to discover there were no fake ballots inside.

As the Electoral College meeting drew closer, hundreds of Republican members of Congress signed on to a publicity-stunt lawsuit aimed at invalidating tens of millions of votes for Biden. When it failed, the legislatures in several states closed public proceedings in response to actionable threats

The first time I heard someone casually suggest an “imminent civil war,” on a reporting trip in January 2020, I shrugged it off. But then I heard it again. And again. Before long, it was perfectly routine. Everywhere I went, I heard people talk about stocking up on artillery. I heard people talk about hunting down cabals of politically connected pedophiles. I heard people talk about the irreconcilable differences that now divide this country. I heard people talk about the president, their president, being sabotaged by a “deep state” of evil Beltway bureaucrats who want to end their way of life. I heard people talk about a time approaching when they would need to take matters into their own hands.

Despite all of these arrows pointing toward disaster — and despite Trump encouraging his followers to descend on Washington come January 6, to agitate against certification of Biden’s victory — not a single Republican I’d spoken with in recent weeks sounded anxious

the point remains: They were conned into coming to D.C. in the first place, not just by Trump with his compulsive lying, but by the legions of Republicans who refused to counter those lies, believing it couldn’t hurt to humor the president and stoke the fires of his base.

it has long been canon on the right that leftists — and only leftists — cause mayhem and destruction. Democrats are the party of charred cities and Defund the Police; Republicans are the party of law and order and Back the Blue. As Republicans have reminded us a million times, the Tea Party never held a rally without picking up its trash and leaving the area cleaner than they found it.

And yet, the right has changed dramatically over the past decade. It has radicalized from the ground up, in substance and in style. It has grown noticeably militant.

Trump once told me, “The Tea Party still exists — except now it’s called Make America Great Again.” But that’s not quite accurate. The core of the Tea Party was senior citizens in lawn chairs waving miniature flags and handing out literature; the only people in costumes wore ruffled shirts and tri-corner hats. The core of the MAGA movement is edgier, more aggressive and less friendly; its adherents would rather cosplay the Sons of Anarchy than the Sons of Liberty.

There is one thing that connects these movements: Both were born out of deception

Republican leaders convinced the grassroots of 2009 and 2010 that they could freeze government spending and reform entitlement programs and repeal Obamacare

Trump convinced the grassroots of 2015 and 2016 that he, too, could repeal Obamacare, while also making Mexico pay for a border wall and overhauling the nation’s infrastructure

The key difference is that the Tea Party slowly faded into obscurity as voters realized these promises politicians made were a scam, whereas the MAGA movement has only grown more intensely committed with each new con dangled in front of them.

Make no mistake: Plenty of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol complex on Wednesday really, truly believed that Trump had been cheated out of four more years; that Vice President Mike Pence had unilateral power to revise the election results; that their takeover of the building could change the course of history

The notion of real troublemaking simply didn’t compute. Many of these Republicans have kept so blissfully ensconced in the MAGA embrace that they’ve chosen not to see its ugly side.

For the past nine weeks, I’ve had a lot of highly unusual conversations with administration officials, Republican lawmakers and conservative media figures.

Based on my reporting, it seemed obvious the president was leading the country down a dangerous and uncharted road. I hoped they could see that. I hoped they would do something — anything.

From party headquarters, the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman flung reckless insinuations left and right as her top staffers peddled a catalogue of factually inaccurate claims. The two Republican senators from Georgia, desperate to keep in Trump’s good graces ahead of their runoff elections, demanded the resignation of the Republican secretary of state for no reason other than the president’s broad assertions of corruption, none of which stood up to multiple recounts and investigations by GOP officials statewide

Local lawmakers in states like Michigan and Wisconsin told Republicans they’d been cheated, citing the suspicious late-night counting of mail ballots, when they were the ones who had refused to allow those ballots to be counted earlier,