The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton.
The Washington PostTrump abused his office and that White House officials tried to cover it up
The whistleblower complaint at the heart of the burgeoning controversy over … Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president claims not only that Trump misused his office for personal gain and endangered national security, but also that unidentified White House officials tried to keep it a secret even within the government. […]
The transcript, the whistleblower alleged, was then loaded onto a separate system meant for highly classified information. And according to White House officials who informed the whistleblower, that was “not the first time” a transcript was put there because of concerns about politics rather than national security, the complaint alleged.
Trump, the whistleblower wrote, was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
The Trump administration has set the cap on the number of refugees admitted to the United States next year at 18,000, the lowest level since the program began four decades ago, officials said Thursday.
The new limit represents a 40 percent drop from the 2019 cap and marks the third consecutive year that the administration has slashed the program since the United States admitted nearly 85,000 refugees in President Barack Obama’s final year in office.
Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’
Hillary Clinton dismissed ... Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.
The former secretary of state… offered a scathing assessment of the [Trump], his 2016 win and the latest allegations that he tried to obtain incriminating information from a foreign government about Joe Biden, a possible 2020 opponent, according to excerpts released by CBS from a wide-ranging ] interview for its “Sunday Morning” show,
Los Angeles TimesPelosi decries White House ‘cover-up’ as whistleblower complaint becomes public
House Democrats’ fast-growing impeachment investigation centered on … Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to help him against a political rival gained strength Thursday as a whistleblower’s extraordinary complaint against the president became public, revealing a claim that White House officials tried to “lock down” records of the president’s actions. […]
Pelosi said the allegations about Trump’s contacts with Ukraine would now be the central focus of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
“Their actions are a cover-up,” Pelosi said at her weekly press briefing Thursday. “It’s not only happened that one time. My understanding is it may have happened before.”
In a bid to evade prison for his part in the college admissions scandal, one Los Angeles business executive attempted a risky balancing act.
Stephen Semprevivo entered a felony guilty plea for paying the scam’s leader $400,000 to sneak his son into Georgetown University. Nonetheless, through one of his attorneys, Semprevivo told a judge he shouldn’t be put behind bars because he was a “victim” in the case and had been preyed upon and hoodwinked.
Semprevivo’s plea for leniency failed Thursday when the judge sentenced him to four months in federal prison, making him the latest parent in the case to be punished with incarceration. He must report to prison by Nov. 7.
U.K.'s Boris Johnson stirring up bile, endangering lawmakers, critics say
Angry and despairing British lawmakers accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday of whipping up violence and division with his charged language about opponents of Brexit, and the speaker of the House of Commons pleaded for an end to the “toxic” atmosphere.
But government and Parliament remained at loggerheads as lawmakers rejected a request to adjourn for a week so that Johnson’s Conservatives could attend the governing party’s annual conference. […]
In a raucous, ill-tempered parliamentary debate on Wednesday, Johnson referred to an opposition law ordering a Brexit delay as the “Surrender Act” and the “Humiliation Bill,” and he said postponing the country’s departure would “betray” the people. He also brushed off concerns that his forceful language might endanger legislators as “humbug.”
BloombergCensus Says U.S. Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
Income inequality in America widened “significantly” last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published Thursday.
A measure of inequality known as the Gini index rose to 0.485 from 0.482 in 2017, according to the bureau’s survey of household finances. The measure compares incomes at the top and bottom of the distribution, and a score of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate the impact of … Donald Trump’s end-2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy.Trump, Manhattan DA Reach Temporary Accord on Tax Subpoena
Donald Trump’s attorneys reached a temporary agreement with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance delaying the deadline for Mazars USA LLP, Trump’s accountants, to comply with a subpoena for his taxes and for other financial papers.
The deal calls for Mazars to continue gathering documents responsive to the subpoena and provides for it to begin turning them over to state prosecutors on Oct. 7 or two days after a judge rules on Trump’s request to block the subpoena, whichever comes first.
The GuardianMont Blanc glacier in danger of collapse, experts warn
Italian authorities have closed off roads and evacuated homes after experts warned that a portion of a Mont Blanc glacier is at risk of collapse.
Stefano Miserocchi, the mayor of the town of Courmayeur, said “public safety is a priority” after experts from the Fondazione Montagna Sicura (Safe Mountains Foundation) in the Aosta Valley said up to 250,000 cubic metres of ice was in danger of sliding off the Planpincieux glacier on the Grandes Jorasses peak.
“This phenomenon once again testifies that the mountain is in a phase of strong change due to climatic factors, therefore it is particularly vulnerable,” Miserocchi said in a statement.
Imran Khan warns UN of potential nuclear war in Kashmir
Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, has said he has been trying to raise the alarm at the United Nations this week about the danger of a nuclear war breaking out over Kashmir.
India and Pakistan came close to a conflict in February when India bombed Pakistani territory for the first time in a half century and warplanes from both countries fought a dogfight over the divided region.
Tensions were defused when Pakistan returned a downed Indian pilot. But they have grown again since India revoked a constitutional clause that endowed semi-autonomous status on the part of Kashmir under its control in August. India moved hundreds of thousands of troops to the region and carried out thousands of arrests.
No drones, drinking or dissent: China lays down law ahead of 70th anniversary
Kites. Balloons. Pigeons. Drones. Alcohol. The list of things that have been banned in the run up to the 70th anniversary of the founding of China keeps growing. […]
The crackdown is fiercest among those who criticise the government. Normally outspoken activists and critics have been ordered not to speak to foreign media. Some, who have expressed support for the Hong Kong protests, have had to promise they won’t travel to the city until well after the anniversary on 1 October. […]
The tightening of control in the run up to the celebrations comes as Beijing is facing what is arguably its most difficult chapter since 1989, when the military killed thousands pro-democracy protesters, plunging the country into international isolation.
Financial TimesNato rejects Russian offer on nuclear missiles freeze
Nato has rejected a Russian proposal for a freeze in the deployment of short and medium-range nuclear missiles after the US withdrew from a landmark cold war-era anti-proliferation pact that banned the weapons.
The military alliance on Thursday dismissed the Kremlin offer as not credible, since it would leave in place batteries of such weapons that western states say have already been deployed in western Russia and are able to target many European capitals.
The Russian move is part of a dispute over the unravelling of international non-proliferation efforts, in which Moscow has sought to present itself as peacemaker trying to restore global security. The Kremlin denies allegations by Washington and other Nato members that its new generation SSC-8 missiles violated the 1987 US-Russia Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
Donald Tusk attacks ‘fake leaders’ who lie to stay in power
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, has launched a blistering broadside against “fake leaders” and the battle between patriotism and internationalism urged by … Donald Trump.
While Mr Tusk did not name the US leader in his valedictory speech at the UN General Assembly, he left little doubt about his main target in an address in which he denounced those who flirt with dictators and “use lies as a permanent method to maintain power”. […]
“If the powerful of our world do not understand this, they will go down in history not as leaders, but as fake leaders,” said Mr Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who was once detained for his anti-Communist activities. “And rightly so.”
The Sydney Morning HeraldHotter oceans, wilder weather, less ice: the IPCC upgrades projections to catastrophic
Sea levels will rise higher and faster than previously predicted under drastically revised projections released on Wednesday night by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A new IPCC report says inaction on climate change will likely result in sea level rise of 1.1 metres by 2100 - up from the 2013 projection of more than 90cm. Without action, the seas will be five metres higher by 2300.
The IPCC report, an update of the IPCC’s 2013 oceans report, warns that already stressed coastlines face bigger waves and storm surges as oceans warm and ice melts. In particular it highlights that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets is contributing to accelerating sea level rises.
Low-lying coastal communities face regular extreme flooding by mid-century with some islands and coastal settlements to be made uninhabitable. Even if political action can cap global warming to two degrees Celsius, the report warns that warming oceans and melting sea ice glaciers will raise sea levels by 30 to 60cm by 2100.
Airlines' shrinking leg room to be investigated for safety risks
Amid complaints that airline seats have become too small to accommodate the average American, the US government will test how fast passengers can evacuate a plane in setting minimum seat sizes for the first time.
The Federal Aviation Administration will conduct evacuation tests with 720 people over 12 days in November, Deputy Administrator Dan Elwell said at a US House hearing on Thursday.
"Americans are getting bigger and seat size is important but it has to be looked at in the context of safety," Elwell said. "We are going to get you an answer on seat pitch." […]
Current rules say airlines must be able to evacuate passengers within 90 seconds and do not set requirements on seat size.
Deutsche Welle IPCC climatologist Hans-Otto Pörtner: 'There is no time to wait'The land report sparked a major discussion about what we have to do to tackle climate change and secure the future. Politicians even appear finally to feel the need to act. How does the ocean and cryosphere report relate to that — do you expect this report to have a similar effect?
I would say yes. It complements our picture of the whole planet and how it responds to climate change. This concerns, for example, the role of cryosphere to provide fresh water to people. We see vanishing glaciers. This concerns some of the areas on the planet which depend mostly on the glaciers as a fresh water resource. This is another element where the cryosphere plays a role. Limiting the degree of sea level rise is an existential necessity for many coastlines including coastlines in Europe because we may otherwise lose places, lose large infrastructure.
So, I mean, what additional motivation do you need in addition to all the other information that was provided and the emissions scenarios discussed in the 1.5C degree report, which tells us that emissions reductions need to reach about 50% compared to 2010 by 2030 and then reach net zero by 2050.
And we add to the rich information that we already have telling us it's time to act. And there is no time to wait. There's no time for extensive discussions, political discussions, we should have all the technologies available to us in place to help us mitigate climate change. And as we cannot reduce the climate to its original state, there is also the need to adapt and these options are considered in the report.
No-deal Brexit would mean Irish border controls, says EU's Juncker
Border controls will be placed between Northern Ireland the Republic of Ireland if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, said Jean-Claude Juncker, chief of the European Union's executive arm. Juncker told Britain's Sky News the EU has to "make sure that the interests of the European Union and of the internal market will be preserved."
How to preserve a frictionless border between EU member Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, is the thorniest issue in the Brexit discussions.
The EU fears a hard border could cause unrest in Northern Ireland and undermine the fragile peace provided by a 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland, and British security forces and pro-British unionists.
Star TribuneFamily health plan costs exceed $20,000 for first time
The average cost of family coverage in employer health plans pushed above the $20,000 mark for the first time this year, according to a new report, as the 5% average increase in premiums exceeded the growth rate for wages and general inflation. […]
The numbers come from an annual national survey by the California-based Kaiser Family Foundation on cost trends for employer health plan coverage, the market where about 153 million Americans obtain health insurance via private-sector carriers.
“The average family premium is now $20,000, so that’s a milestone — not, obviously, in a good way,” said Drew Altman, the foundation’s president, in a news conference on Wednesday. “It’s as expensive as buying an economy car, but buying it every year.”
NPRPoll: Nearly Half Of Americans Support Impeachment Inquiry
Americans are split, 49%-46%, on whether they approve of Democrats' impeachment inquiry into … Trump, and independents at this point are not on board, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll finds.
But the pollsters warn that the new developments could change public opinion quickly, especially with 7 in 10 saying they are paying attention to the news. […]
Americans are also split on whether the impeachment inquiry is a serious matter (50%) or just politics (48%) and whether it's worth going through with if the Senate doesn't convict and Trump gets to stay in office. By a 2-point margin, 49%-47%, they say it's not worth it.
The 'OK' Hand Gesture Is Now Listed As A Symbol Of Hate
The "OK" hand gesture, commonly seen as a way of indicating that all is well, has now been classified as something else: a symbol of hate.
On Thursday, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, added 36 symbols to its "Hate on Display" database including the index finger-to-thumb sign that in some corners of the Internet has become associated with white supremacy and the far right.
Oren Segal, director of the ADL's Center on Extremism, told NPR that for years on fringe online message boards such as 4chan and 8chan, the "OK" sign has been deployed in memes and other images promoting hate. Given the number of white supremacists who have adopted it, he said it can now carry a nefarious message.
"Context is always key," Segal said.
The crowded room was awaiting one word: "Fire."
Everyone was in uniform; there were scheduled briefings, last-minute discussions, final rehearsals. "They wanted to look me in the eye and say, 'Are you sure this is going to work?' " an operator named Neal said. "Every time, I had to say yes, no matter what I thought." He was nervous, but confident. U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency had never worked together on something this big before.
Four teams sat at workstations set up like high school carrels. Sergeants sat before keyboards; intelligence analysts on one side, linguists and support staff on another. Each station was armed with four flat-screen computer monitors on adjustable arms and a pile of target lists and IP addresses and online aliases. They were cyberwarriors, and they all sat in the kind of oversize office chairs Internet gamers settle into before a long night.
The Daily BeastJacques Chirac Stood Up to George W. Bush on Iraq, and Made Paris Shine
Jacques Chirac, whose family announced his death at age 86 on Thursday, was in many ways the French president with the greatest affinity for the United States, yet without question he was the one most reviled by Americans.
His offense? In 2003 he tried to keep the George W. Bush administration from going to war in Iraq, working to thwart the endorsement of the United Nations Security Council and publicly rejecting Washington’s attempts to build a “coalition of the willing” to take down dictator Saddam Hussein. […]
Chirac’s attempts to prevent the American invasion of Iraq led to an outburst of hysterical francophobia in the States. “French fries” were renamed “freedom fries,” Bordeaux and Burgundy got poured down various drains, and as plonk coursed through the sewers critics on the Web borrowed a line from The Simpsons: The French, they said, were “cheese eating surrender monkeys.”
VoxAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s unusual plan to make jobs better, explained
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wants companies to be “friendlier” to their employees. And she wants the federal government to reward companies for it.
The New York representative introduced a series of bills Wednesday aimed at creating what she calls a “just society.” That includes bills to update the federal poverty line, expand tenants’ rights, and to extend federal programs to all immigrants and former prisoners.
She also wants to make sure all taxpayer-funded government contracts go to businesses that treat their workers well. It’s called the Uplift Our Workers Act.
The bill would require the federal Office of Contract Compliance to create a scoring system that ranks businesses based on “worker friendliness.” Companies with the most worker-friendly policies would get the highest score, which in turn would give them an advantage in winning a lucrative government contract.
Joseph Maguire’s congressional testimony: key takeaways
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has unexpectedly found himself in the middle of the scandal surrounding … Donald Trump’s apparent attempt to enlist Ukraine’s help in winning the 2020 election. […]
Under questioning from [House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam] Schiff, for instance, Maguire wouldn’t directly refute the president’s characterization of the whistleblower as a “political hack,” and would only say that he doesn’t know who the whistleblower is but that he believes the individual was “acting in good faith.” […]
At numerous points throughout the hearing, Maguire insisted that nobody — the president included — is above the law. But those words are in tension with the way he handled the whistleblower complaint, which might never have come to light if it weren’t for a letter [Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael] Atkinson wrote to Congress.
Poll: the Green New Deal is popular in swing House districts
The Green New Deal — a set of principles for addressing the climate crisis in the US — has become a rallying cry for the Democratic base ever since progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced it in February.
But to go from a big idea to a reality, the Green New Deal needs support from the full ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party. It’s been embraced by a number of leading presidential contenders, but any actual bill would need backing from a Democratic House and Senate as well. While some worry the Green New Deal could be a political liability for Democrats (conservative Republicans have ridiculed and lied about it), there’s new polling that suggests the idea does well in swing districts Democrats flipped in the 2018 midterms.
The AtlanticThe Oceans We Know Won’t Survive Climate Change
Today a baby girl was born. Consider the years of her life—how she’ll think back to her childhood in the ’20s (the 2020s) and become a teenager in the ’30s. If she’s an American citizen, she’ll cast her first vote for president in the 2040 election; she might graduate from college a year or two later. In the year 2050, she’ll turn 31, and she’ll be both fully grown up and young enough to look to the end of the century—and imagine she may get to see it.
We hold the fate of that girl—and of the society she inhabits—in our hands. That’s the message of a blockbuster new report, released today, from the United Nations–led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
While the report covers how climate change is reshaping the oceans and ice sheets, its deeper focus is how water, in all its forms, is closely tied to human flourishing. If our water-related problems are relatively easy to manage, then the problem of self-government is also easier. But if we keep spewing carbon pollution into the air, then the resulting planetary upheaval would constitute “a major strike against the human endeavor,” says Michael Oppenheimer, a lead author of the report and a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.
Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?
[…] America’s unique synthesis of wealth and worship has puzzled international observers and foiled their grandest theories of a global secular takeover. In the late 19th century, an array of celebrity philosophers—the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—proclaimed the death of God, and predicted that atheism would follow scientific discovery and modernity in the West, sure as smoke follows fire.
Stubbornly pious Americans threw a wrench in the secularization thesis. Deep into the 20th century, more than nine in 10 Americans said they believed in God and belonged to an organized religion, with the great majority of them calling themselves Christian. That number held steady—through the sexual-revolution ’60s, through the rootless and anxious ’70s, and through the “greed is good” ’80s.
But in the early 1990s, the historical tether between American identity and faith snapped. Religious non-affiliation in the U.S. started to rise—and rise, and rise. By the early 2000s, the share of Americans who said they didn’t associate with any established religion (also known as “nones”) had doubled. By the 2010s, this grab bag of atheists, agnostics, and spiritual dabblers had tripled in size.
USA TodaySuicide among troops spikes in 2018 to highest rate in five years, Pentagon says
The rate of suicide among military troops increased to its highest level in five years, according to a report released Thursday by the Pentagon.
The rate of suicide among active-duty troops was 24.8 per 100,000 people in 2018. In 2017, that figure was 21.9 per 100,000 troops. Five years ago, the suicide rate among troops was 18.5 per 100,000 service members.
The Pentagon attributed the overall spike in the rate to small increases in suicides across all the services. The military's suicide rate compares with 18.2 people per 100,000 for all Americans ages 17 to 59. The report maintains that, adjusting for age and gender, the military's rate is roughly the same as American society.
A dangerous red flower is driving record numbers of migrants to flee Guatemala
Poor Guatemalan farmers turned to heroin poppies. When the military destroyed their crops, many had only one other choice: Flee to the U.S.
Surrounded by green fields of potatoes, oats and corn on his small farm, Carlos Lopez recalled the decent money he was earning before last year, cultivating a different crop he referred to simply as “the plant."
The plants, ones with the bright red flowers, “are worth a lot more than these other crops,” Lopez said, wearing a blue baseball hat, sitting on a plastic chair behind his two-room, mud-splattered house.
“Amapola,” said Lopez, speaking the Spanish word for poppy.
Vanity Fair“It’s Management Bedlam”: Madness at Fox News as Trump Faces Impeachment
Trump’s final bulwark is liable to be his first one: Fox News. Fox controls the flow of information—what facts are, whether allegations are to be believed—to huge swaths of his base. And Republican senators, who will ultimately decide whether the president remains in office, are in turn exquisitely sensitive to the opinions of Trump’s base. But even before the whistle-blower’s revelations, Fox was having something of a Trump identity crisis, and that bulwark has been wavering. In recent weeks, Trump has bashed Fox News on Twitter, taking particular issue lately with its polling, which, like other reputable polls, has shown the president under significant water. Meanwhile, Trump’s biggest booster seems to be having doubts of his own. This morning, Sean Hannity told friends the whistle-blower’s allegations are “really bad,” a person briefed on Hannity’s conversations told me. (Hannity did not respond to a request for comment). And according to four sources, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch is already thinking about how to position the network for a post-Trump future. A person close to Lachlan told me that Fox News has been the highest rated cable network for seventeen years, and “the success has never depended on any one administration.” […]
Inside Fox News, tensions over Trump are becoming harder to contain as a long-running cold war between the network’s news and opinion sides turns hot. Fox has often taken a nothing-to-see-here approach to Trump scandals, but impeachment is a different animal. “It’s management bedlam,” a Fox staffer told me. “This massive thing happened, and no one knows how to cover it.” The schism was evident this week as a feud erupted between afternoon anchor Shepard Smith and prime-time host Tucker Carlson. […] Seeking to quell the internecine strife before it carried into a third day, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace communicated to Smith this morning to stop attacking Carlson, a person briefed on the conversation said. “They said if he does it again, he’s off the air,” the source said. […]
Among the powerful voices advising Lachlan that Fox should decisively break with the president is former House speaker Paul Ryan, who joined the Fox board in March. “Paul is embarrassed about Trump and now he has the power to do something about it,” an executive who’s spoken with Ryan told me.
The RootCNBC Survey Finds Wall Street Democrats Will Sit Things Out if Elizabeth Warren’s Their Nominee
It’s all about the Benjamins, baby—even for Wall Street bigwigs who call themselves Democrats, who say they’ll sit out the election, or even wholesale back Donald Trump, if Elizabeth Warren, the big-banks-bashing senator from Massachusetts, is their party’s presidential nominee.
That’s the finding of a recent informal survey by CNBC of private equity, hedge fund and big bank executives, the class of folks that politicos, including the Democrats, depend on for big fundraising dollars.
“You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help … Trump,’” one senior private equity exec who requested anonymity for fear of Democratic Party blowback told CNBC.
Ars TechnicaClimate stakes are high for ice and oceans, IPCC report explains
"Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions with increased temperatures, greater upper-ocean stratification, further acidification, oxygen decline, and altered net primary production." That's one of the top-line conclusions detailed in a new IPCC report released Wednesday. This latest report—the volunteer work of over 100 scientists summarizing almost 7,000 published studies—focuses on our planet's ocean and cryosphere, describing the changes we've measured, projected future changes, and the choices before us. […]
Much of the report deals with trends relevant to marine life. Rising temperatures and falling pH (caused by increasing atmospheric CO2), along with circulation changes, threaten many species that are already suffering from human activities like overfishing. Compared to the last few decades, the report projects that a high-emissions scenario would result in a sobering 15% (±6) drop in marine-animal biomass. The maximum potential catch of fisheries would drop 20-24%.
xThe whistleblower says officials covered up Trump's call by moving it to an ultra-classified computer system.This is a *much* worse abuse than it seems.I spoke to a former NSC staffer, who explained in detail how this really works and what it means:https://t.co/j3Y1XEiB1k
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) September 26, 2019 xI'm rooting for the cancer. https://t.co/rZZxc7vP44
— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) September 27, 2019