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Hillary Clinton Says ‘Nobody Likes’ Bernie Sanders

Hillary Clinton says “nobody likes” her former presidential rival Bernie Sanders, even as the Vermont senator remains entrenched among the front-runners in the Democratic race, with the Iowa caucus beginning in less than two weeks.In an interview with “The Hollywood Reporter” published Tuesday, Clinton was asked about a comment she makes in an upcoming documentary where she says Sanders was “in Congress for years” but, “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.”Clinton replied that the criticism still holds and refused to say she’d endorse him this cycle if he wins the party’s nomination, adding: “It’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters.”Sanders’ campaign said Tuesday it didn’t have a comment about Clinton’s remarks.Her comments may ultimately energize Sanders loyalists who believed the Democratic establishment rigged the 2016 primary in her favor. That could be especially helpful with this cycle’s Iowa caucuses looming on Feb. 3. Many polls show Sanders among the leaders with former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.But Clinton also blamed Sanders’ supporters for fostering a culture of sexism in politics — a charge that is especially sensitive now, given that Sanders’ top progressive rival in the 2020 race, Warren, has accused him of suggesting a woman couldn’t win the White House during a private meeting between the two in 2018.Sanders has denied that, but Warren refused to shake his outstretched hand after a debate last week in Iowa and both candidates accused the other of calling them “a liar.” Warren has steadfastly denied to comment further, but the 78-year-old Sanders said Sunday that while sexism was a problem for candidates, so were other factors, like advanced age – touching off another online firestorm.
Full Coverage: Election 2020In the interview, Clinton attacked a cadre of online Sanders supporters known generally as the “Bernie Bros,” many of whom were sharply critical of Clinton’s 2016 campaign for their “relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture.”Clinton further suggested that Sanders was “very much supporting it” and said, “I don’t think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don’t know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you’re just giving them a wink.”“I think that that’s a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions,” Clinton said.His feud with Warren has overshadowed a series of clashes between Sanders and another 2020 rival, Biden, for an op-ed penned by one of the senator’s supporters suggesting that the former vice president was corrupt.“It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way. And I’m sorry that that op-ed appeared,” Sanders told CBS.The op-ed, published in “The Guardian” newspaper by Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout, claims Biden “has perfected the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle- and working-class Americans.”
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Buckle Up: What to Watch as Impeachment Trial Takes Off

Senators like to float above messy politics in what’s known by some as the dignified “upper chamber,” home of Congress’ cooler heads and lofty rhetoric. But as a court of President Donald Trump’s impeachment, the Senate beginning Tuesday might seem more like the economy cabin of an oversold flight on an especially tense, mandatory work trip.Rock star legal teams will cram the airy well of the chamber just a few feet from each other and Chief Justice John Roberts. Four television screens take up rarified space. Staff will snap up seats near the wall. A podium stands at the center aisle. As for phones, it’s worse than airplane mode: They are banned from the chamber. That maroons 100 chatty senators — including four Democrats in the heat of a nomination fight — for the serious constitutional business of the impeachment trial, for hours at a time. “I’m going to be stuck in Washington for God knows how long,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told supporters in Des Moines Monday night. What to watch — and whom — when the trial gets underway around 1 p.m. EST Tuesday:GROUND RULESBut first, naturally, some talk from senators. The Senate opens with debate on the structure and rules of the proceedings. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing a condensed, two-day calendar for opening arguments on the articles passed by the House on Dec. 18. They charge Trump with abusing power by pressuring Ukraine to help him politically, and obstructing Congress when it tried to find out what happened. McConnell’s ground rules are outlined in a four-page resolution that must be voted on as one of the first orders of business. It pushes off any votes on witnesses until later in the process, rather than up front, as Democrats had demanded. But McConnell’s plan on witnesses lines up with the organizing resolution that set the structure of President Bill Clinton’s trial in 1999.DRAWING THE CURTAIN”At all times,” according to Senate rules, a majority of senators present can vote to close the proceedings and debate in private. That would mean the cameras shut off and everyone who’s not a member of the Senate kicked out of the chamber until the senators choose to reopen it.Senators did that at various points during the Clinton trial. McConnell then argued that members of the chamber listen to each other better in private.A LONG HAULAfter the four days of opening arguments — maximum 24 hours per side — senators will be allowed up to 16 hours for questions to the prosecution and defense, followed by four hours of debate. Only then will there be votes on calling other witnesses.Senate rules say the trial must proceed six days a week — all but Sunday — until it is resolved.OFF THE TRAIL, OFF THE GRIDWatch a coterie of Democratic senators who literally would rather be somewhere else — specifically Iowa and New Hampshire — ahead of their party’s kickoff votes for the right to try to unseat Trump in the November election. Watch Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota for signs of fatigue from flying between Washington and these places and coping with being off the internet for hours at a time. Also look for the surrogates, video calls to supporters and ads designed to give them a measure of presence in the early nominating states. THE PROSECUTORSLeading the case for the House is Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of Californian and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York. Five other Democrats round out the prosecution team, a group House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she chose in part for their experience with the law. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has worked on three impeachment inquiries, starting with the one that helped persuade President Richard Nixon to resign. Rep. Val Demings of Florida is not a lawyer, but she is a former police chief and a member of both committees deeply familiar with the case against Trump. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is a lawyer and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, so he’s close to Pelosi’s ranks. Pelosi also chose two freshmen who helped flip the House from GOP control in 2018. Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Texas is a former judge. And Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado is a retired Army Ranger who was one of the seven new members with national security backgrounds to call for Trump’s impeachment over his conduct with Ukraine.FOR THE PRESIDENTTrump cast some big personalities for seats at the defense table. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal lawyer Jay Sekulow are expected to lead the argument that Trump committed no crimes, that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense and that the president is a victim of a political “witch hunt” by Democrats. Bringing experience both in constitutional law and the politics of impeachment, he’s adding retired law professor Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Clinton. The team also will include Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general.The team, less experienced in the Senate than the House prosecutors as a whole, visited the Senate chamber Monday, in part to test the equipment they expect to use for audio-visual presentations. Look for signs of tension involving the president’s outside legal team and lawyers within the White House. Dershowitz on Sunday tried to distance himself from the president.THE NUMBERS100: The total number of senators.53: The Republican majority.51: The number of senators who must agree on almost anything to make it happen during an impeachment trial.Four: The number of Republican senators who must join Democrats to get to the magical 51. 2/3: The proportion of senators required to convict and remove a president from office. So 67 members of the Senate would have to vote to convict if every senator is voting. THE GANGBoth sides will be keeping tabs on the Senate’s moderates for an emerging gang of three to four who could influence the outcome on such matters as whether to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton. That vote won’t be taken for days if not weeks.Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has been meeting with a small number of GOP colleagues who want to consider witness testimony and documents that weren’t part of the House impeachment investigation. Watch GOP Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska for signs of whether this group can stick together and force the Senate to consider additional material.
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Trump Lawyers: President Did ‘Absolutely Nothing Wrong’ on Ukraine

U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday assailed the impeachment case against him as a “dangerous perversion of the Constitution,” asserting he did “absolutely nothing wrong” in pressing Ukraine to launch investigations to benefit himself politically.The lawyers for the U.S. leader said Democratic lawmakers pushing for the impeachment of the Republican president and his removal from office were not trying to find the truth about Trump’s Ukraine-related actions, but rather some way to overturn his 2016 election and interfere with his 2020 reelection campaign.In a legal brief a day ahead of the first substantive session of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, the lawyers called the Democrats’ case against him “a constitutional travesty” and said the Senate should swiftly acquit him of the two articles of impeachment he is facing. One alleges that he abused the presidency by pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate one of his top 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, and the other that he obstructed Congress in its review of his Ukraine efforts.Democratic lawmakers had earlier said it was clear that the “evidence overwhelmingly establishes” that Trump is guilty of both charges in the two articles of impeachment.FILE – Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson, left, and House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving pass through Statuary Hall at the Capitol to deliver the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate, Jan. 15, 2020.The Trump lawyers, in their 110-page filing, said that Trump was conducting normal foreign policy affairs in dealing with Zelenskiy.They said he did not commit a crime, even though conviction of an impeached U.S. president and removal from office does not depend on a specific violation of a criminal law. Rather it is how the 100 members of the Senate, acting as jurors, interpret the standard for conviction set out in the U.S. Constitution, whether a president has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  No matter the legal arguments for and against Trump, he almost certainly will be acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate, where a two-thirds vote against him would be required for conviction and removal from office, just months ahead of his reelection bid in November. At least 20 of the 53 Republicans in the chamber would have to join all 47 Democrats to convict Trump, and no Republican has called for his ouster.But Trump’s impeachment trial is only the third such event in the nearly 2-1/2 centuries of U.S. history and the proceedings, overseen by Chief Justice John Roberts, will be fraught with uncertainty.The White House is predicting Trump’s acquittal within two weeks, but the trial could last much longer if Democrats succeed in persuading four Republicans to join them in calling for testimony from key Trump aides about the president’s Ukraine-related actions.Calling witnessesThe Democrats, over the objections of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, want to hear testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others about how Trump asked for investigations of Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election to undermine Trump’s campaign. Trump’s Ukraine efforts came at the same time he was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid that Ukraine wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.Trump at various times has said he wants to call the Bidens as witnesses at his trial, along with the still-unidentified whistleblower who first disclosed that Trump in a July phone call asked Zelenskiy to launch the Biden investigations. But on Twitter Monday, he seemed averse to hearing testimony from Bolton, whom he ousted in September.Democrats, Trump said, “didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House” to testify. “They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!” They didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House. They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – In this image from video, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks as the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump begins in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 16, 2020.McConnell, the Senate majority leader, says he has enough Republican votes to push through rules for the impeachment trial that would hold off on a vote on whether to call witnesses until after House managers prosecuting the case against Trump have made their case and Trump’s lawyers have presented his defense. At that point, McConnell says lawmakers could decide whether they want to hear witnesses or subpoena documents from the White House related to Trump’s Ukraine actions.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says he will press to try to include witnesses as part of the parameters adopted for the trial, but if McConnell’s vote counting is accurate, Schumer stands to lose such a preliminary skirmish.Trump, who almost daily ridicules the impeachment effort, tweeted Monday, “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is now asking for ‘fairness’, when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House. So, what else is new?”Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is now asking for “fairness”, when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House. So, what else is new?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – In this image from video, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks during the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 16, 2020.Schiff added, “They really can’t contest those facts. So the only thing really new about the president’s defense is that they’re now arguing that because they can’t contest the facts that the president cannot be impeached for abusing the power of his office.”Trump eventually released the Ukraine military aid in September after a 55-day delay without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations. Republicans say that is proof that Trump did not engage in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal — the military aid in exchange for the investigations to help him politically.One of Trump’s staunchest Senate defenders, Senator Lindsey Graham, on the “Fox News Sunday” show, called the impeachment effort “a partisan railroad job. It’s the first impeachment in history where there’s no allegation of a crime by the president.”He said if Democrats demand to hear testimony from Bolton, Mulvaney and others, Trump will seek to invoke executive privilege against their testimony to protect the sanctity of private White House conversations.”Clearly to me any president would ask for executive privilege regarding these witnesses,” Graham said, adding that if they were that important to the House case against Trump, Democrats should have pursued their testimony during the House investigation.Two other presidents — Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago — were impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials and remained in office. A fourth U.S. president, Richard Nixon in the mid-1970s, faced almost certain impeachment in the Watergate political scandal, but resigned before the House acted.
 
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Trump Heads to Switzerland With Senate Trial to Reconvene

When President Donald Trump’s historic impeachment trial is called to order in the Senate this week, he won’t be watching from inside the chamber or on television from the White House. He’ll be thousands of miles away at the Davos economic forum in the Swiss Alps, trying to charm global CEOs over dinner.Trump’s participation in the annual World Economic Forum will provide a conspicuous split-screen moment in a presidency familiar with them. His two-day visit to Switzerland will test his ability to balance his anger over being impeached with a desire to project leadership on the world stage.Administration officials say Trump remains focused on serving the public.
“The president’s work doesn’t stop just because of the impeachment sham,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email.Trump, who departs Washington on Monday night, said he’s going to Davos to encourage businesses to invest in the U.S.”We’re now where the action is,” he said at a farmers’ convention Sunday in Texas.Swooping in for what will be his second appearance at the annual Swiss economic forum, Trump was scheduled to arrive at the ski resort early Tuesday and jet back on Wednesday to a Washington that will be consumed by the impeachment trial.The White House did not release much advance information about the president’s schedule but he is expected to give a speech and meet world leaders and business executives.The Democratic-controlled House impeached the Republican president last month for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after it was revealed that he had pressed Ukraine’s president to announce investigations into former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, a Trump political rival. Trump withheld foreign aid that Congress had approved for the Eastern European nation and dangled the prospect of an Oval Office meeting as leverage.Trump denies any wrongdoing and argues that Democrats want to remove him from office because they know they can’t deny him reelection in November. Trump would be forced to leave office if convicted, but the Republican-controlled Senate is expected to acquit him.Trump said he would attend the Davos forum despite the awkward timing because he wants to encourage businesses to come back to the U.S.”Our country is the hottest country anywhere in the world,” he said at the White House last week. “There’s nothing even close. I’ll be meeting the biggest business leaders in the world, getting them to come here.”The White House has not said which presidents or prime ministers will get one-on-one sessions with Trump, but he is expected to have his first meeting with the new European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman to hold the position.That meeting could be the most significant, said analyst Matt Goodman, given Trump’s many disagreements with Europe over tax and trade policy, like a new digital levy by the French that will force American tech giants such as Amazon and Google to pay up.”She’s new and she’s formidable,” said Goodman, who studies international economic policy as a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.He predicted a difficult year ahead for U.S.-EU relations.”It could either go very well or very badly,” Goodman said.Trump has smarted over the French tax and his administration has announced plans to impose retaliatory tariffs of up to 100% on cheese, wine, lipstick and other French imports. France has threatened to fight back.The U.S. has also threatened to impose retaliatory duties on $7.5 billion worth of European airplanes, cheese, wine and other goods in a separate dispute over subsidies for Airbus, a competitor to Chicago-based Boeing Co.Trump also has sought to wring trade concessions from the EU by threatening tariffs on German autos, including BMW and Mercedes-Benz.Trump heads to Switzerland as just the third American president, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, to face a Senate impeachment trial. Johnson and Clinton were both acquitted by the Senate.There is precedent for international travel by an impeached U.S. leader.During his impeachment over an affair with a White House intern, Clinton visited Japan, South Korea, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He also traveled to Jordan for King Hussein’s funeral in February 1999, just a few days before he was acquitted by the Senate.Two days after acquittal, Clinton went to Mexico on a state visit.Trump is planning to make his first visit to India at the end of February, probably after the conclusion of his impeachment trial. He also has talked about traveling soon to Beijing, although he has given no dates, to open a new round of trade talks with China. 
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AP Fact Check: Distortion in Trump’s Impeachment Defense

In his first formal response to impeachment charges, President Donald Trump misrepresented the testimony of a key witness who described an exchange of favors in the Ukraine matter.The claim marked a week of frequent exaggeration and distortion by the president heading into the opening statements of his impeachment trial.Just as his tax cuts are far from the biggest in history, the economy isn’t the best ever and his election victory in 2016 was no landslide of historic proportions, Trump’s two trade deals don’t stand atop the field of presidential endeavors. One is a partial settlement of trade grievances with China; the other is a refresh of what past presidents created for North America.Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential contenders weren’t immune from misrepresentation in their final debate before the first votes of the 2020 campaign, in Iowa.A look at the claims:ImpeachmentTrump, via attorneys: “Individuals who have stated for the record that they spoke to the President about the subject actually exonerate him. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland stated that when he asked the President what he wanted from Ukraine, the President said: I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.”' — response to impeachment charges filed Saturday.The Facts: That assertion omits key context on what Sondland told House investigators.As one of the officials most deeply involved in trying to get Ukraine to do Trump's bidding, Sondland testified that there was indeed a quid pro quo in the matter and “everyone was in the loop.” Specifically, Sondland said it was understood that Ukraine's new president would only get a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office if he publicly pledged to investigate the Bidens and the Democrats.FILE - U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is sworn in to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 20, 2019, during a public impeachment hearing of President Donald Trump.“Was there aquid pro quo?’ Sondland asked in his statement to the House Intelligence Committee. “As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.”Moreover, on the more serious matter of withholding military aid to Ukraine unless the country investigated Democrats, Sondland testified that a this-for-that explanation was the only one that made sense to him.Testimony from other officials shored up the picture of a president and his associates systematically trying to get Ukraine to do what Trump wanted during a period when the military assistance approved by Congress was put on hold without explanation.Trump: “The President acted at all times with full constitutional and legal authority and in our national interest.” — response to impeachment charges.The Facts: That, of course, is in dispute. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found the White House violated federal law in withholding security assistance to Ukraine, an action at the center of Trump’s impeachment.Its report said the Office of Management and Budget broke the law over the military aid, which Congress passed less than a year ago, saying “the President is not vested with the power to ignore or amend any such duly enacted law.”The money was held up last summer on orders from Trump but freed up in September after Congress pushed for its release and a whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s July call with the Ukrainian leader became public.The Government Accountability Office said the White House budget office violated the Impoundment Control Act by delaying the security assistance for “policy reasons,” rather than technical budgetary needs.FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.The budget office has said it disagrees with that finding and the hold was appropriate and necessary. Trump argues he delayed the $391 million in U.S. assistance because of concerns about corruption, although the Defense Department had already previously certified to congressional committees that Ukraine had made enough progress on reducing corruption to receive the aid.Trump: “House Democrats ran a fundamentally flawed and illegitimate process that denied the President every basic right, including the right to have counsel present, the right to cross-examine witnesses.” — response to impeachment charges.Trump: “’We demand fairness’ shouts Pelosi and the Do Nothing Democrats, yet the Dems in the House wouldn’t let us have 1 witness, no lawyers or even ask questions.” — tweet on Jan. 13, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.The Facts: Not true. The House Judiciary Committee, which produced the articles of impeachment, invited Trump or his legal team to come. He declined.Absent White House representation, the hearings proceeded as things in Congress routinely do: Time is split between Democratic and Republican lawmakers to ask questions and engage in the debate. Lawyers for Democrats and Republicans on the committee presented the case for and against the impeachment articles and members questioned witnesses, among them an academic called forward by Republicans.The first round of hearings was by the House Intelligence Committee and resembled the investigative phase of criminal cases, conducted without the participation of the subject of the investigation. Trump cried foul then at the lack of representation, then rejected representation when the next committee offered it.His lawyers will participate in the Senate’s impeachment trial, which resumes Tuesday.FILE – House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff questions a witness before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Nov. 19, 2019.Trump, on House intelligence chairman Adam Schiff: “Mr. Schiff created a fraudulent version of the July 25 call and read it to the American people at a congressional hearing, without disclosing that he was simply making it all up.” — response to impeachment charges.The Facts: It’s incorrect that Schiff didn’t disclose what he was doing.Trump is overstating Schiff’s exaggerations, which the president has repeatedly described as lies and “massive frauds.” The California Democrat, in what he said was a parody during a committee hearing in September, was mocking the president’s pleas in his July call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as Trump does with his critics routinely.Schiff made clear he was providing an account that was in “essence” what he believed Trump was conveying to Zelenskiy, when “shorn of its rambling character.Trump: “You had a fake whistleblower that wrote a report that bore no relationship to what was said. Everything was false.” — remarks Thursday.The Facts: Trump’s statement is false. The whistleblower’s account of a phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s leader in July closely resembled what was said, judging by the rough transcript released later by the White House itself and by the testimony of officials who listened in on the call.Witnesses in the impeachment hearings and other sources also verified the whistleblower’s description of events before and after the call as Trump and his aides pressed Ukraine to investigate one of Trump’s political rivals, Democrat Joe Biden. The Senate impeachment trial will explore whether Trump abused his power.TradeTrump on his trade agreement with China: “This is the biggest deal there is, anywhere in the world by far.” — remarks Wednesday at the signing.Trump on the China deal and his updated North American trade agreement: “So we’ve done two of the biggest trade deals. They are the two biggest trade deals in the world ever done.” — remarks at the White House on Thursday.The Facts: Neither claim is true.FILE – China Shipping Company containers are stacked at the Virginia International’s terminal in Portsmouth, Virginia, May 10, 2019.The China agreement is not nearly as big as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, so it’s not the largest ever, much less “by far.” The deal with Canada and Mexico was an update of the long-standing North American Free Trade Agreement worked out by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.The North American agreement also is not the largest ever.For instance, 123 countries signed the Uruguay Round agreement that liberalized trade and produced the World Trade Organization in 1994. The organization’s initial membership accounted for more than 90% of global economic output, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found, and that was before China joined the organization.Also bigger: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have joined North America with Pacific Rim countries in freer trade. Trump took the U.S. out after the deal was negotiated and before the U.S. ratified it. The European Union was formed from a giant deal.The China deal leaves tariffs in place on about $360 billion in imports from China and pushes substantial remaining disputes ahead to a second phase of negotiations.Trump on China deal: “I did the biggest deal ever done in the history of our country yesterday in terms of trade — and probably other things too, if you think about it.” — remarks Thursday.The Facts: Trump is even more wildly off the mark in speculating that his China trade deal eclipses all other international agreements, even outside trade.The Montreal Protocol, aimed at protecting Earth’s ozone layer, was ratified by every member state of the United Nations. A variety of other agreements — on the rights of children, world health standards, droughts — achieved nearly universal ratification. More than 190 countries signed the Paris accord on climate change, of which more than 180 have ratified it. The U.S. is pulling out of it.EconomyTrump: “In Wisconsin, the unemployment rate has reached its lowest level in history.” — Milwaukee rally Tuesday.The Facts: He’s citing outdated figures.FILE – A worker installs the front doors on a Ford F-150 truck being assembled at the Ford Rouge assembly plant, in Dearborn, Michigan, Sept. 27, 2018.Wisconsin did post a record low unemployment rate of 2.8% in April and May. But it has since edged up and is now at 3.3%. That’s slightly lower than the U.S. average of 3.5%, but suggests that the state hit a rough patch in the middle of last year.Trump: “More than 300,000 people under Obama, 300,000 people, left the workforce. Under just three years of my administration, 3.5 million people have joined the workforce.” — Milwaukee rally.The Facts: Trump is wrong about Barack Obama’s record.More than 5 million people joined the U.S. labor force during Obama’s presidency, according to Labor Department figures. These gains reflect the recovery from the Great Recession as well as population growth. More than 4.8 million people have joined the labor force in three years of Trump’s presidency.Trump: “Under the Trump economy, the lowest-paid earners are reaping the biggest, fastest and largest gains. … Earnings for the bottom 10% are rising faster than earnings for the top 10%, proportionally.” — Milwaukee rally.The Facts: Actually, the top 10% of earners saw the biggest raises of any income bracket over the past year. Their usual weekly earnings jumped 8% or $168, according to the Labor Department. The bottom 10% saw weekly incomes grow 7% or $30.Over a broader range — the top and bottom 25% — weekly earnings also grew at faster rate for the wealthier group.Trump: “We’ve created 7 million jobs since the election including more than 1 million manufacturing and construction jobs. Nobody thought that was possible.” — Milwaukee rally.The Facts: His numbers are roughly right, though they are less impressive than Trump claims.Job gains under Trump over the past three years were lower than during the final three years of Obama’s presidency. More than 8 million jobs were added during that period under Obama, including 1.2 million combined in manufacturing and construction. What these figures suggest is that much of the job growth under Trump reflects the momentum from a recovery that officially began in the middle of 2009.ImmigrationTrump: “We have loopholes. Like a visa lottery. We put things in the lottery, and they come in — they become American citizens. Do you think these countries are giving us their finest? Oh, let’s give them our best citizens.” — Milwaukee rally.FILE – International travelers wait in line at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint after arriving at Miami International Airport on March 4, 2015, in Miami, Florida.The Facts: This is a perpetual falsehood from the president. Countries don’t nominate their citizens for the program. They don’t get to select people they’d like to get rid of.Foreigners apply for the visas on their own. Under the program, citizens of countries named by the U.S. can bid for visas if they have enough education or work experience in desired fields. Out of that pool of qualified applicants, the State Department randomly selects a much smaller pool of tentative winners. Not all winners will have visas approved because they still must compete for a smaller number of slots by getting their applications in quickly.Those who are ultimately offered visas still need to go through background checks, like other immigrants.Trump: “Mexico’s paying for the wall. … You know that. It’s all worked out.” — Milwaukee rally.The Facts: Mexico isn’t paying for Trump’s long-promised border wall.Trump has argued that the updated trade agreement with Canada and Mexico will pay for the wall because of economic benefits he predicts will come from the deal. Nothing in the trade agreement would cover or refund the construction cost or require a payment from Mexico.Child careBiden, on his early days in Washington: “I was making $42,000 a year. I commuted every single solitary day to Wilmington, Delaware — over 500 miles a day, excuse me, 250 miles a day — because I could not afford … child care. It was beyond my reach.” — Democratic presidential debate Tuesday.The Facts: That’s a stretch.Biden’s wife and daughter died in a car accident after he won a Senate seat in 1972 As a single parent working far out of town, Biden might have faced steeper child care costs than people who work locally do. But his Senate salary — actually $42,500 — was worth more than $256,000 in today’s dollars. That’s more than four times the median household income.Health careTrump: “I was the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare, you have it now.” — tweet on Jan. 13.The Facts: That’s false. People with preexisting medical problems have health insurance protections because of Obama’s health care law, which Trump is trying to dismantle.FILE – A patient receives a transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, California, Nov. 7, 2018.One of Trump’s major alternatives to Obama’s law — short-term health insurance, already in place — doesn’t have to cover preexisting conditions. Another alternative is association health plans, which are oriented to small businesses and sole proprietors and do cover preexisting conditions.Meanwhile, Trump’s administration has been pressing in court for full repeal of the Obama-era law, including provisions that protect people with preexisting conditions from health insurance discrimination.With “Obamacare” still in place, insurers in the individual marketplace must take all applicants, regardless of medical history, and charge the same standard premiums to healthy people and those who have poor health or past medical problems. Before Obama’s law, any insurer could deny coverage or charge more to anyone with a preexisting condition who was seeking to buy an individual policy.Bernie Sanders: “’Medicare for All’ … will cost substantially less than the status quo.” — Democratic debate.The Facts: There’s no guarantee of that.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report last year that total spending under a single-payer system like the Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate favors “might be higher or lower than under the current system depending on the key features of the new system.”Those features have to do with the design of the system, questions such as payment rates for hospitals and doctors, and whether patients are required to pay part of the cost of their care. Sanders says his plan would require no cost-sharing from patients, no copays and no deductibles. But completely free care could trigger a surge in demand for medical services, raising costs. Other countries that provide coverage for all do use cost-sharing to help keep spending in check.A research report last year by the nonprofit Rand think tank estimated that a Medicare for All plan similar to what Sanders wants would modestly raise total U.S. health spending.MilitaryTrump, on killing Iran Gen. Qassem Soleimani: “The Democrats and the Fake News are trying to make terrorist Soleimani into a wonderful guy.” — tweet on Jan. 13.Trump: “You know what bothers me? When I see a Nancy Pelosi trying to defend this monster from Iran … When Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats want to defend him, I think that’s a very bad thing for this country.” — remarks on Jan. 9 at event on environmental regulations.FILE – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi answers questions from reporters on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Jan. 8, 2020.The Facts: That’s a fabrication. Democrats did not praise or defend the Iranian general. They criticized the action Trump took.Pelosi called the U.S. missile strike “provocative and disproportionate” while branding Soleimani a “terrible person.” Similarly, Democratic presidential candidates criticized Trump’s strategy and the fact he didn’t notify or consult Congress in advance, while making clear they considered Soleimani anything but “wonderful.”The Iranian was “a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.Even so, Republican Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia asserted Democrats were “in love with terrorists” then retracted the statement and apologized.“I left parts of my body in Iraq fighting terrorists,” Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a former Army pilot who lost both her legs while serving in Iraq, told CNN after hearing Collins’ initial remarks. “I don’t need to justify myself to anyone.”Trump: “Our military has been totally rebuilt.” — Milwaukee rally.The Facts: It hasn’t.The administration has accelerated a sharp buildup in defense spending, but it will take years for freshly ordered tanks, planes and other weapons to be built, delivered and put to use.The Air Force’s Minuteman 3 missiles, for instance, a key part of the U.S. nuclear force, have been operating since the early 1970s, and modernization started under the Obama administration. They are due to be replaced with a new version, but not until later this decade.Biden: “I was asked to bring 156,000 troops home from that war, which I did. I led that effort.” — Democratic debate.The Facts: Biden is roughly right about bringing troops home, but he didn’t mention that the U.S. had to send some back.Obama did designate Biden, his vice president, to take the lead in pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq and coordinating efforts to maintain stability in Baghdad. His results were mixed. Biden and Obama failed to win agreement from the Iraqi government to keep a limited number of U.S. troops there after December 2011. That was the deadline for a complete U.S. pullout under a deal negotiated by the Bush administration. Biden was still vice president when Obama was compelled to return American troops to Iraq in 2014 after the rise of the Islamic State group.ElectabilityTrump, on the 2016 election: “There have been some great movements where somebody came along and out of the nowhere, won the state of New Hampshire, won Iowa, won South Carolina down the way, won a state someplace, but we won 32 states.”The Facts: Trump won 30 states, not 32.It was no landslide. He won with about 57% of electoral votes, a comfortable margin but no better than average or below average. Obama and Clinton each won bigger victories twice and many other presidents outperformed Trump.Moreover, Republican Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton, a rare occurrence for a winning candidate.Trump routinely inflates the number of electoral votes he won, too. 
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White House, House Lawmakers Lay Out Impeachment Cases as Trial Looms

White House lawyers are due to submit Monday a brief detailing their arguments in the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump, a day before the proceedings begin in earnest.FILE: Jay Sekulow, one of president’s Trump lawyers. .In an earlier, shorter response to the articles of impeachment approved by the House of Representatives, lawyers Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow said the Senate must reject the charges against Trump because they “rest on dangerous distortions of the Constitution that would do lasting damage to our structure of government.”They argued the House is trying to undermine the president’s power to determine foreign policy, and that it is trying to control and punish the executive branch for asserting its constitutional privileges.Regarding the charge that Trump abused his power by asking a foreign power to launch investigations that would benefit him politically, the lawyers argued the House is trying to undermine the president’s power to determine foreign policy.In response to the charge Trump obstructed Congress by directing members of the executive branch to not comply with subpoenas, the lawyers said those actions were a legitimate assertion of “confidentiality interests grounded in the separation of powers.”House lawmakers serving as prosecutors have already filed their trial brief, saying it was clear that the “evidence overwhelmingly establishes” that Trump is guilty of both charges in the two articles of impeachment.Key players in the trial argued sharply Sunday about whether the president’s actions could warrant his removal from office.FILE – Attorney Alan Dershowitz leaves Manhattan Federal Court in New York, March 6, 2019. Dershowitz is among the lawyers representing President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial.Criminal defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz, one of the team of lawyers defending Trump, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that he will tell the 100 members of the Senate, who are acting as jurors deciding Trump’s fate, that “even if the facts as presented are true, it would not rise to the level of impeachment” to convict Trump and oust him from office.The lawmakers will be deciding whether Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard the U.S. Constitution set for removing a president from office. The Republican-majority Senate remains highly unlikely to convict Trump, a Republican, since a two-thirds vote against Trump would be necessary to remove him from the White House.Trump last July asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch an investigation of one of his top 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine sought to undermine Trump’s 2016 campaign.  The phone call between the two leaders happened at the same time Trump was temporarily blocking release of $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.FILE – Impeachment managers walk through rotunda on their way to Senate on Capitol Hill, Jan. 16, 2020.Congressman Adam Schiff, the leader of seven House impeachment managers, told ABC News’ “This Week” show, “The facts aren’t seriously contested, that the president withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an ally at war with Russia, withheld a White House meeting that the president of Ukraine desperately sought to establish with his country and with his adversary the support of the United States in order to coerce Ukraine to helping him cheat in the next election.”Schiff added, “They really can’t contest those facts. So the only thing really new about the president’s defense is that they’re now arguing that because they can’t contest the facts that the president cannot be impeached for abusing the power of his office.”The Senate has yet to decide whether it will hear witnesses in the impeachment trial, with new testimony opposed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.Democrats want to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others to testify about their knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine actions. Trump eventually released the Ukraine military aid in September after a 55-day delay without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations.  Republicans say that is proof that Trump did not engage in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal — the military aid in exchange for the investigations to help him politically.FILE – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., denounces a report by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 9, 2019.One of Trump’s staunchest Senate defenders, Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the “Fox News Sunday” show, called the impeachment effort “a partisan railroad job. It’s the first impeachment in history where there’s no allegation of a crime by the president.”He said if Democrats demand to hear testimony from Bolton, Mulvaney and others, Trump will seek to invoke executive privilege against their testimony to protect the sanctity of private White House conversations.”Clearly to me any president would ask for executive privilege regarding these witnesses,” Graham said, adding that if they were that important to the House case against Trump, Democrats should have sought their testimony during the House investigation.Democrats did seek more testimony from White House aides, but Trump ordered them to not cooperate with the impeachment investigation; several aides complied with Trump’s edict while others did not. Democrats dropped their efforts to compel some testimony out of a fear that it would result in a lengthy legal battle that could have been tied up in U.S. courts for months.Trump’s Senate impeachment trial is only the third such event in the nearly 2 1/2 centuries of U.S. history. Two other presidents — Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago — were impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials and remained in office. A fourth U.S. president, Richard Nixon in the mid-1970s, faced almost certain impeachment in the Watergate political scandal, but resigned before the House acted.
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Trump Senate Impeachment Trial to Hear Opening Arguments

Opening arguments in the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump begin this week in the Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats from the House of Representatives will present their case against the president with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Key Players Squabble Over Trump’s Impeachment Trial

Key players in the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump and his defense argued sharply Sunday whether his efforts to get Ukraine to launch investigations to benefit him politically were impeachable offenses that warranted his removal from office.
Trump’s Senate trial formally opened last week and is set to hear opening arguments on Tuesday. But combatants in the political and legal fight over Trump’s fate waged verbal battles across the airwaves on Sunday morning news talk shows in the U.S. that offered a glimpse of the Senate drama the American public will witness in the days ahead.Criminal defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz, one of the team of lawyers defending Trump, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that he will tell the 100 members of the Senate, who are acting as jurors deciding Trump’s fate, that “even if the facts as presented are true, it would not rise to the level of impeachment” to convict Trump and oust him from office.The lawmakers will be deciding whether Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the standard the U.S. Constitution set for removing a president from office. As the trial nears, the Republican-majority Senate remains highly unlikely to convict Trump, a Republican, since a two-thirds vote against Trump would be necessary to oust him from the White House.FILE – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and U.S. President Donald Trump face reporters during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 25, 2019.Trump last July asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch an investigation of one of his top 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine sought to undermine Trump’s 2016 campaign.  The phone call between the two leaders happened at the same time Trump was temporarily blocking release of $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.Dershowitz argued that Trump’s actions did not amount to criminal conduct. He said that “if my argument prevails” and the Senate decides no impeachable offenses occurred, “There’s no need for witnesses” at Trump’s Senate trial and “the Senate should vote to acquit [Trump] or dismiss” the case against him.FILE – House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 3, 2019.Congressman Adam Schiff, the leader of seven House of Representative managers prosecuting the case against Trump, told ABC News’ “This Week” show, “The facts aren’t seriously contested, that the president withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an ally at war with Russia, withheld a White House meeting that the president of Ukraine desperately sought to establish with his country and with his adversary the support of the United States in order to coerce Ukraine to helping him cheat in the next election.”Schiff added, “They really can’t contest those facts. So the only thing really new about the president’s defense is that they’re now arguing that because they can’t contest the facts that the president cannot be impeached for abusing the power of his office.”On Saturday, both the House lawmakers pushing for Trump’s conviction, and Trump’s defenders, filed legal arguments in the case.The House managers said it was clear that the “evidence overwhelmingly establishes” that Trump is guilty of both charges in the two articles of impeachment he is facing.FILE – President Donald Trump listens to a question during an event on prayer in public schools, in the Oval Office of the White House, Jan. 16, 2020, in Washington.Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team called the impeachment effort against him “a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president.”His lawyers called the impeachment effort “a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months  away.”But Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that heard weeks of testimony about Trump and his aides’ attempts to pressure Ukraine for the Biden investigations, said the White House legal stance is “surprising in that It doesn’t really offer much new beyond the failed arguments we heard in the House.””So the only thing really new about the president’s defense is that they’re now arguing that because they can’t contest the facts that the president cannot be impeached for abusing the power of his office,” Schiff said. “That’s the argument I suppose you have to make if the facts are so dead set against you. You have to rely on an argument that even if he abused his office in this horrendous way that it’s not impeachable. You had to go so far out of the mainstream to find someone to make that argument you had to leave the realm of constitutional law scholars and go to criminal defense lawyers.”FILE – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., signs the resolution to transmit the two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate for trial on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 15, 2020.The Senate has yet to decide whether it will hear witnesses in the impeachment trial, with new testimony opposed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.Democrats want to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others to testify about their knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine actions. Trump eventually released the Ukraine military aid in September after a 55-day delay without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations, which Republicans say is proof that Trump did not engage in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal — the military aid in exchange for the investigations to help him politically.”We’ll be fighting for a fair trial,” Schiff said. “That is really the foundation on which this all rests. If the Senate decides, if Senator McConnell prevails and there are no witnesses, it will be the first impeachment trial in history that goes to conclusion without witnesses.”He said, “We don’t know what witnesses will be allowed or even if we’ll be allowed witnesses. The threshold issue here is, will there be a fair trial? Will the senators allow the House to call witnesses, to introduce documents. That is the foundational issue on which everything else rests. There is one thing the public is overwhelmingly in support of and that is a fair trial.”One of Trump’s staunchest Senate defenders, Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the “Fox News Sunday” show, called the impeachment effort “a partisan railroad job. It’s the first impeachment in history where there’s no allegation of a crime by the president.”He said if Democrats demand to hear testimony from Bolton, Mulvaney and others, Trump will seek to invoke executive privilege against their testimony to protect the sanctity of private White House conversations.”Clearly to me any president would ask for executive privilege regarding these witnesses,” Graham said, adding that if they were that important to the House case against Trump, Democrats should have sought their testimony during the House investigation.Democrats did seek more testimony from White House aides, but Trump ordered them to not cooperate with the impeachment investigation; several aides complied with Trump’s edict while others did not. Democrats dropped their efforts to compel some testimony out of a fear that it would result in a lengthy legal battle that could have been tied up in U.S. for months.Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago retreat along the Atlantic Ocean in Florida. Late Saturday, he resumed his almost daily attacks on the Democrats’ impeachment campaign against him, saying on Twitter, “What a disgrace this Impeachment Scam is for our great Country!” “Nancy Pelosi said, it’s not a question of proof, it’s a question of allegations! Oh really?” @JudgeJeanine@FoxNews What a disgrace this Impeachment Scam is for our great Country!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2020Trump’s Senate impeachment trial is only the third such event in the nearly 2 1/2 centuries of U.S. history. Two other presidents — Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago — were impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials and remained in office. A fourth U.S. president, Richard Nixon in the mid-1970s, faced almost certain impeachment in the Watergate political scandal, but resigned before the House acted.
 
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Gun Rights Activists Scheduled to Rally Monday in Virginia

A major gun rights rally is scheduled for Monday in the capital of the U.S. southeastern state of Virginia.Thousands of pro-gun activists, included armed militia members, are expected to gather in Richmond at a time when Democrats have full control of the state legislature for the first time in a generation.Democratic lawmakers have made passing tougher gun control laws a central campaign theme.The Virginia Senate approved legislation late Thursday requiring background checks on all firearm sales and limiting handgun purchases to one a month. The senate also passed a bill to restore local government right to ban weapons from public buildings and other venues.Neo-Nazi, militia and other gun-rights groups have promised to gather enmasse on the capital for Monday’s rally, which is organized annually by the Virginia Citizens Defense League.The planned demonstration harkens back to a violent white supremacist rally in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, when one woman was killed and more than 30 other people injured as a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.Amid threats of violence and a possible heavy turnout, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, declared a temporary state of emergency Wednesday that bans all weapons from Richmond’s Capitol Square during Monday’s rally to prevent “armed militia groups (from) storming our capitol.”Gun-rights groups, which contend the constitution guarantees their right to own any firearm, asked the Virginia Supreme Court rule the temporary ban unconstitutional, but the court upheld the ban on Friday.Northam said authorities have received credible threats of violence, including the deployment of weaponized drones over Capitol Square.Extremist groups have also inundated social media and the internet with threatening messages and hints of violence.The FBI arrested three alleged members of a white supremacist group on gun charges Thursday, partly due to concern that they planned to incite violence at the rally.Both houses of the Virginia legislature are expected to approve even more restrictive gun control laws, including a ban on assault rifles and “red flag” laws aimed at taking guns from people who are considered risk to communities.U.S. President Donald Trump had words of support late Friday for gun rights supporters in Virginia, tweeting, “That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats, they will take your guns away.”Supporters of tighter gun control laws say they would help reduce the number of people killed by guns each year.
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Amid Hacking Fears, Key Caucus States to Use App for Results

Two of the first three states to vote in the Democratic presidential race will use new mobile apps to gather results from thousands of caucus sites — technology intended to make counting easier but that raises concerns of hacking or glitches.Democratic Party activists in Iowa and Nevada will use programs downloaded to their personal phones to report the results of caucus gatherings to the state headquarters. That data will then be used to announce the unofficial winners. Paper records will later be used to certify the results.The party is moving ahead with the technology amid warnings that foreign hackers could target the 2020 presidential campaign to try to sow chaos and undermine American democracy. Party officials say they are cognizant of the threat and taking numerous security precautions. Any errors, they say, will be easily correctable because of backups.“We continue to work closely with security experts to test our systems and identify incidents, including disinformation monitoring, and we are confident in the security systems we have in place,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price.The technology aims to produce a more efficient and reliable way of calculating and releasing results to the public than the complicated math and thousands of phone calls that the caucus system has long relied upon.But the use of a new app by an unidentified developer, coupled with the high stakes of the contests, has concerned some observers. They worry that unofficial results could be inaccurate if hackers or other problems taint the data. That’s a problem even if the paper backups eventually provide an accurate tally.“Scary would be a darn good word,” said Brandon Potter, chief technology officer of ProCircular, an Iowa company that has done vulnerability assessments for local elections officials. “If it’s secure, awesome. But it opens up all kinds of questions.”Party officials in both states declined to identify the vendor that developed their apps, saying they did not want to create a potential target for hackers.Microsoft developed an app that was used by both political parties in the 2016 Iowa caucuses and credited with helping obtain results from 95% of precincts within four hours. During that cycle, Microsoft’s role was announced months beforehand, and the company discussed security measures.Some critics say the party should again identify the developers, along with the certification and security testing they have gone through, to boost public confidence.“It would be really nice to know who developed it, how competent they are and what oversight they were subjected to,” said Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer science professor and election security expert. “The caucus night reporting, which is so important in determining which candidates drop out, which continue, who gets a boost from the caucus — all of that is definitely vulnerable to an attack on the app.”Jones said hacking could take several forms. Hackers could try to corrupt the app before it’s downloaded, activate malware that might be lurking on phones or target the server that houses the app. Another concern: The app could crash amid heavy use as precincts report results.He and others agreed that the official results of the Feb. 3 Iowa and Feb. 22 Nevada caucuses will eventually be accurate. Each precinct keeps paper copies of the results and numerous participants at each site will know the precise outcome.Because of hacking concerns, the Democratic National Committee scrapped the Iowa party’s plan to hold a virtual caucus in which those unable to attend in person could use smartphones to record their preferences. Party officials said the risks posed by the reporting apps were much lower than with electronic voting.The state parties worked with the technical team at the DNC to vet developers and design security protocols around the use of the app.The Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government conducted simulation and training exercises with Iowa officials that included scenarios in which there were problems with a mobile reporting app. The training emphasized the importance of using authentication, secure networks to transmit data and encryption to guard against attacks.“I do think that we need to give the Iowa team a lot of credit for how seriously they looked at all these issues,” said Eric Rosenbach, co-director of the Belfer Center.DNC spokesman David Bergstein said national officials were coordinating with the Iowa party and the Department of Homeland Security “to run efficient and secure caucuses.” He said he is confident that state Democrats are “taking the security of their caucuses extremely seriously from all perspectives.”Party officials said they would not be sending the app to precinct chairs for downloading until just before the caucus — to narrow the window for any interference. And while using the app is encouraged, precinct chairs still have the option of phoning in results.Democrat Ruth Thompson, who will chair a Des Moines precinct, said she was not concerned about security risks related to the app.“The Russians don’t care what’s on my phone,” she said. “I know we’ve got the app, but we have a paper backup. If there is a hack or something, there is the opportunity to correct it.”Hacking fears aren’t new. In 2012, a video purporting to be from the hacking collective Anonymous called on supporters to “peacefully shut down” the Republican caucuses. In response, party leaders increased their security measures for the website where the results were posted.Ultimately, it was old-fashioned data errors that tainted the results that year: The party chairman on caucus night declared Mitt Romney the winner by eight votes over Rick Santorum. Two weeks later, Santorum was declared the winner by 34 votes when results were certified.
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Anti-Trump Protests Have Shrunk. What’s it Mean for 2020?

Days after President Donald Trump killed an Iranian general and said he was sending more soldiers to the Middle East, about 100 protesters stood on a pedestrian bridge over Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive with an illuminated sign that read “No War in Iran.”
Some 200 people marched in the bitter cold near Boston, while a few dozen people demonstrated on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall and at similarly sized gatherings across the U.S.
Three years after Trump took office and millions of people swarmed to the Women’s March in Washington and companion marches across the country, these typically modest protests are often the most visible sign of today’s Trump resistance.
Activists say the numbers should not be mistaken for a lack of energy or motivation to vote Trump out of office come November.
The anti-Trump movement of 2020, they say, is more organized and more focused on action. Many people have moved from protesting to knocking on doors for candidates, mailing postcards to voters, advocating for specific causes or running for office.
But the movement that sprung up to oppose Trump’s presidency also is more splintered than it was when pink-hatted protesters flooded Washington the day after his inauguration for what is generally regarded as the largest protest in the city since the Vietnam era. There have been schisms over which presidential candidates to back in 2020, as well as disagreements about race and religion and about whether the march reflected the diversity of the movement. Those divisions linger even as many on the left say they need a united front heading into November’s election.
The disputes led to dueling events in New York City last year, the resignation of some national Women’s March leaders and the disbanding of a group in Washington state.
Organizers expect about 100,000 people across the country to participate in this year’s Women’s March, which is scheduled for Saturday in over 180 cities. They say up to 10,000 people are expected at the march in Washington, far fewer than the turnout last year,  when about 100,000 people held a rally east of the White House. Instead of a single big event, the group has been holding actions in a run-up to the march this week around three key issues: climate change, immigration and reproductive rights.
The week reflects that the movement is “moving into the next stage,” said director Caitlin Breedlove.
Leaders of MoveOn.org, which organized some of the anti-Iran war protests, agreed. Mobilization manager Kate Alexander said the group and its members pulled together over 370 protests in 46 states in less than 48 hours to show resistance to Trump’s actions. The president ordered airstrikes that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force who has been blamed for deadly attacks on U.S. troops and allies going back decades. Iran pledged retribution, sparking fears of an all-out war.
Alexander noted that the Iran protest is just one of many issues MoveOn members have organized in response to in the past few years.
“It’s not that there are fewer people mobilizing – it’s that they’re mobilized in different campaigns. There’s more to do,” Alexander said. “I don’t believe people are tuning out. I think people are lying in wait.”
While waiting, many have passed on some major moments in Trump’s presidency. Resistance groups rallied on the eve of the House vote for impeachment, but even some of those who participated said they were disappointed more people didn’t turn out.
Several organizations also said much of their organizing is done through social media or text message and email programs, which are less visible but have a significant impact. In 2018, the Women’s March had over 24 billion social media impressions, Breedlove said.
Atef Said, a sociology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said all social movements evolve over time. He noted the Trump resistance movement is global and will continue regardless of whether Trump is reelected.
“Movements always rise and decline in terms of numbers on the ground,” he said.
Andy Koch, a 30-year-old nurse who lives in Chicago, has seen that ebb and flow firsthand. Koch has been active in protesting Trump’s policies even before he took office. When Koch was a student at University of Illinois at Chicago, Trump’s campaign canceled a 2016 speech at the campus following tense student protests.
Koch said the anti-Trump activism swelled when he first took office and again in early 2017 when he announced his first travel ban affecting people from several predominantly Muslim countries.
Roughly 1,000 people mobilized in Chicago immediately after Trump authorized the attack on the Iranian leader, and then the crowds subsided a few days later after the threat of war seemed to subside following Trump’s address to the nation Jan 8. That day, a few dozen – including Koch – showed up in 20-degree Fahrenheit (minus 7 Celsius) temperatures outside Trump International Hotel Chicago during rush hour.
Koch understands that masses of people won’t show up for every protest. ” What allows those numbers to come out … is continued organizing going on in between these events,” he said.
He said there have been numerous smaller protests he’s been involved with, including protesting U.S. foreign policy in Venezuela and Syria, and they’ve taken other forms. For instance, he’s helped plan a teach-in on Iranian foreign policy this week at UIC.
Maya Wells, a 21-year-old political science senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was a speaker at a rally last week in Charlotte. Wells, who is Persian American and has family in Iran, said she doesn’t look at the numbers of people who turn out but rather at the fact that they took time out of their day to be there.
“I see more people coming. Because some of my friends who are conservatives and voted for Trump, they’re against this,” she said, adding that the most recent protest wasn’t the last.
“There will be more days to come,” Wells said. “I have no doubt in my mind.” 
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Trump Reinforces Right to Pray in Public Schools

On National Religious Freedom Day, Thursday, the Trump administration released what it calls an updated guidance laying out “constitutional protections for prayer and religious expression in public schools.” “You have the right to pray,” President Donald Trump declared during a ceremony in the Oval Office. “And that’s a very important and powerful right. There’s nothing more important than that.” Surrounded by students who administration officials contend have suffered discrimination for practicing religion at school, the president repeated his accusation that his Democratic opponents are waging a war against the faithful. “There is a growing totalitarian impulse on the far left that seeks to punish, restrict and even prohibit religious expression,” he said. FILE – President Donald Trump attends a U.N. event on religious freedom at U.N. headquarters in New York, Sept. 23, 2019.Trump has made religious freedom a key issue in his domestic and foreign policy, helping to solidify his support among conservative evangelical Christians. The administration said the government guidelines remind public school administrators that federal funds can be withdrawn if they violate their students’ rights to religious expression, and will help improve individuals’ ability to file complaints if they are denied the ability to participate in protected religious expression. “It will empower students and others to know and exercise their rights,” said Joe Grogan, director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council, in a briefing for reporters. No apparent changeAlthough the U.S. Education Department has not released details of the FILE – Faith leaders pray with President Donald Trump during a rally for evangelical supporters at the King Jesus International Ministry church, Jan. 3, 2020, in Miami.According to a FILE – In this Jan. 31, 2016, photo, Pastor Joshua Nink, right, prays for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, at First Christian Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Trump launched a coalition of evangelicals early in his 2020 presidential campaign.Grogan said that nine federal agencies, including the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department, will propose rules to ensure that federal grants and state grants with federal funding can be accessed by religious organizations in addition to secular groups, and that “organizations are not discriminated against simply because they are religious in nature.” “I support the fact that he is broadening the scope of religious freedoms,” said Driskell. “My concern is that this religious freedom extends only to Christians, and particularly the evangelical wing of Christianity.” Additionally, the rules would lift an Obama-era executive order that compelled religious organizations to inform the people they serve that they can receive the same service from a secular provider. VOA’s Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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US Intelligence Chiefs Could Scrap Annual Public Hearing

There is a chance that for the first time in years, the U.S. public may not hear directly from top intelligence officials about the biggest and most pressing threats facing the nation.U.S. intelligence officials declined Thursday to rule out the possibility that the country’s intelligence chiefs would forgo the public portion of the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment hearings, which focus on dangers ranging from terrorism to nuclear weapons to climate change and cyberspace.  “We continue discussions with the [House and Senate Intelligence] committees about the timing and format of the Worldwide Threat Assessment hearings this year,” a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told VOA.  
   
Word that U.S. intelligence agencies were seeking to avoid the public portion of the hearings was first reported by FILE – President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the White House on a missile strike launched by Iran against Iraqi air bases housing U.S. troops, Jan. 8, 2020.A spokesperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed Thursday that talks about the hearings were ongoing, noting that the “timing and format will be determined by the [committee] chairman.”  
   
But while a formal invitation has yet to be extended to U.S. intelligence officials, the spokesperson said the expectation was the Senate hearing “would keep with previous years,” when the Senate Intelligence Committee heard from intelligence officials in an open, public hearing before discussing classified information behind closed doors.  
   
A separate invitation for the intelligence chiefs to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, requesting both public and classified briefings on February 12, has already gone out. The ODNI spokesperson confirmed intelligence officials received the offer Thursday, reiterating that discussions about exactly when and how to hold the hearing were still under way.  
   
“The intelligence community is committed to providing timely, accurate and useful information about the worldwide threats facing the nation to Congress and the American people,” the ODNI spokesperson added.  During last January’s public Senate hearings, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel repeatedly contradicted Trump’s statements, in particular on Russia, Iran, North Korea and the Islamic State terror group.A day later, Trump blasted Coats and Haspel on Twitter, calling their assessment of Iran “extremely passive and naive,” warning, “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”  
   NEW: @POTUS taking a shot at his intelligence chiefs on #Iran – calls them “extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers…They are wrong!” pic.twitter.com/hkwCZDw7OT— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) January 30, 2019 Trump Takes Aim at Intelligence Chiefs Via Tweet-Storm

        U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter Wednesday, appearing to reignite his long-standing feud with the country’s intelligence agencies by belittling their assessments on Islamic State, North Korea and Iran.In a series of posts, Trump claimed responsibility for key improvements while calling out his intelligence chiefs for being “extremely passive and naïve.”“When I became President, ISIS was out of control in Syria & running rampant. Since then tremendous progress made, especially over last…

More recently, Trump praised the intelligence community for the information it obtained during escalating hostilities with Iran following the U.S. airstrike that killed Iran Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.  
   “We have the best intelligence in the world” per @POTUS “If Americans anywhere are threatened we have all of those targets already fully identified””I am ready & prepared to take whatever action is necessary” he adds, pointing to #Iran— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) January 3, 2020But such praise belies a contentious relationship between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community dating back to the earliest days of his administration, with some former intelligence officials describing the president’s animosity toward the intelligence agencies as “overriding” and “unheard of.”  And there are concerns that after three years, U.S. intelligence agencies, who preach giving unvarnished intelligence to policymakers and “speaking truth to power,” have been worn down.  “It’s a worrisome sign if the intelligence community’s leadership feels so battered by this president that they’re asking to avoid this annual public hearing for fear of incurring his wrath,” Joshua Geltzer, a former counterterrorism director for the National Security Council under former President Barack Obama, told VOA.  
   
“This year in particular it seems quite important to allow the American people to hear whether the intelligence community is offering big-picture assessments of critical issues like the threats posed by ISIS, Iran and North Korea that are consistent with Trump’s own characterizations or depart from them,” said Geltzer, now with Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.   
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Pentagon Asked to Divert More Funds to Build More Border Wall

The Pentagon has received a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to divert funds to help build roughly 270 miles of fencing on the southern U.S. border with Mexico, according to a senior U.S. Defense Department official.The Defense Department “is now beginning an assessment of that request for assistance,” which was sent Wednesday, the official said.The request calls for building fences, roads and lighting across multiple states in six “highly trafficked” sectors along the southwest border, including some urban areas.The official did not know how much the request from DHS would potentially cost the Pentagon because the request was for “border miles” and not for a specific funding amount.DHS has asked for the assistance under the Pentagon’s Title 10 U.S. Code 284, which authorizes the military to defend the U.S. from drug trafficking.”It has to be in drug-smuggling corridors. DHS, as you know, has designated the southwest border a drug-smuggling corridor,” the official told a small group of reporters.A spending deal by Congress that was signed into law in December granted the administration about $1.4 billion for border wall construction. Administration officials, however, had asked for $5 billion.RecommendationAccording to the defense official, the Pentagon will take about two weeks to provide a recommendation to the secretary of defense, who would be responsible for approving any requests.That recommendation will include a determination from the Army Corps of Engineers on whether the requested projects are feasible, an assessment from the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the impacts that could be made on military preparedness, and an identification from the comptroller of potential funding sources.
  
Last year, the Trump administration took $2.5 billion from military counter-drug programs for border barrier construction and about $3.6 billion from military construction funding. Congress did not replace the money taken from those accounts in the current budget.
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Rep. Liz Cheney to Stay in House, Decline Wyoming Senate Run

Rep. Liz Cheney, a junior but rising GOP leader in the House, is opting to stay on that chamber’s leadership track rather than run for a Senate seat in her home state of Wyoming.The move keeps the combative second-term lawmaker positioned to advance in the House GOP hierarchy.Cheney told her colleagues at a closed-door meeting Thursday that she’s staying put. Cheney was a senior State Department official during the administration of President George W. Bush and is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who once occupied the statewide House seat that she now holds.“I believe I can have the biggest impact for the people of Wyoming by remaining in leadership in the House of Representatives and working (to) take our Republican majority back,” Liz Cheney said in a statement. “I will not be running for the Senate in 2020. I plan to seek re-election to the House of Representatives.”Cheney received a “huge standing ovation” from her colleagues when she revealed her decision, said Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas.Cheney is just one of 13 women in a Republican conference dominated by older white men. She is No. 3 in the current GOP hierarchy and seems likely to rise higher in time.Cheney is also a pugnacious critic of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the only woman to serve as speaker.“Nancy Pelosi and the Socialist Democrats in the House of Representatives are threatening our freedom and our Wyoming values every day. They must be stopped,” Cheney said.“Our nation is facing grave security challenges overseas and the House Democrats are working to weaken our president and embolden our enemies. Socialists in Congress and among the presidential candidates are threatening our liberty and freedom.”Cheney’s decision averts a high-profile primary campaign against former GOP Rep. Cynthia Lummis, who has been in the race for months and has a long history of electoral success in the heavily Republican state. Cheney similarly passed on a campaign to oust popular Republican Sen. Mike Enzi six years ago.Inside the House, Cheney’s decision sets up a potential leadership fight with the second-ranking leader, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, who was gravely wounded in a mass shooting in 2017.
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Black Democrats Hold Sway in SC Presidential Primary 

South Carolina will be the fourth U.S. state to hold a presidential nominating contest in 2020 and the first in which African Americans constitute a major portion of the electorate. Statewide polls show former Vice President Joe Biden leading a crowded Democratic field competing to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election. VOA’s Chris Simkins traveled to South Carolina to gauge black voter sentiment ahead of the February 29th primary election.
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Ukraine Announces Probe Into Possible Surveillance of Ex-US Ambassador

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry has opened two criminal investigations into possible surveillance of former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv Marie Yovanovitch.  Details are still coming in.The news comes as an associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s person lawyer said the president was aware of a campaign to pressure the Ukrainian government to carry out investigations that would help Trump politically.Trump “knew exactly what was going on,” Lev Parnas told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview broadcast Wednesday night.The New York Times quoted Parnas as saying, “I am betting my whole life that Trump knew exactly everything that was going on that Rudy Giuliani was doing in Ukraine.”FILE – Lev Parnas, associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, exits after a bail hearing at the Manhattan Federal Court in New York, Dec. 17, 2019.Previously, Trump has denied sending Giuliani, his personal lawyer, to Ukraine to look for dirt on Joe Biden, the former vice president and a rival in the 2020 presidential election.But Parnas told Maddow that Trump “was aware of all my movements.””I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president,” Parnas said.  “I was on the ground doing their work.”Parnas said his function in working with Giuliani was to meet with senior Ukrainian officials in a search for evidence of corruption by the elder Biden and Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma. Trump temporarily withheld $391 million in military aid to Ukraine until Zelenskiy committed to investigating the Bidens, but eventually released the assistance Kyiv wanted without Zelenskiy opening the Biden probes.GAO report
On Thursday, a congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, concluded that Trump violated federal law by withholding the assistance Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO said. The watchdog agency said U.S. budget officials “withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.”In a tweet later Wednesday night, Katherine Faulders, White House and Capitol Hill reporter for ABC News, said she asked Giuliani if he had any comment on the interview with Parnas. He texted, “None he’s a very sad situation.”Asked Giuliani if he had any comment on the ongoing Parnas interview and he texted me “None he’s a very sad situation.”— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) January 16, 2020In the loop
“I mean they have no reason to speak to me,” Parnas told Maddow. “Why would President Zelenskiy’s inner circle or (Interior Minister Arsen) Avakov or all these people or (former) President (Petro) Poroshenko meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me. And that’s the secret they’re trying to keep.”He added that Trump’s interest in Ukraine was never about rooting out government corruption but was “all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden.”When Maddow asked Parnas about Trump’s claim that he does not know him, Parnas said, “He lied,” adding that he was with Giuliani four or five days a week in Ukraine during which Trump was in constant contact with Giuliani.Parnas said he wants “to get the truth out … it’s important for our country, it’s important for me … a lot of things are being said that are not accurate.”Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, have been indicted on charges of making illegal contributions to the Trump campaign. Both have pleaded not guilty.Some reporting for this story came from RFE/RL.
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Few Statehouses Feature Memorials to Actual Historical Women

Ohio’s Statehouse would join a small number of others around the country with outdoor monuments dedicated to real women in U.S. history under a proposal expected Thursday to create a memorial to Ohio women who fought for voting rights.Currently, all statues of historical figures outside the Statehouse are of men, including Christopher Columbus, President William McKinley (a former Ohio governor), and seven Civil War generals including Ulysses S. Grant.“Who are these seven men?” asks a trivia question for tourists at the base of the Civil War statue, which is topped by a statue of a woman from ancient Rome whose sons were prominent in the military and politics.Women’s Suffrage MovementThe Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery looks back at the women’s suffrage movement – one of the longest reform movements in U.S. history – with an exhibition called, “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence.”  Curator Kate Clarke Lemay shows us some of the art and artifacts from that era and how creating visual displays for their cause created a different understanding about women’s freedom and voting rights.  
Reporter:  Julie Taboh, Camera: Adam Greenbaum; Adapted by:  Martin SecrestAround the corner, “Peace,” a winged female figure, stands on the north side of the Statehouse, remembering Ohio’s civil war soldiers “And The Loyal Women Of That Period.” Another statue of a generic woman, also representing peace, sits below a statue of McKinley.On Thursday, members of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission planned to propose the voting rights memorial to the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board.It’s time to include real women on the Statehouse grounds, especially those who fought for such an important right, said State Sen. Stephanie Kunze, a co-chair of the commission. Such a statue would both honor their work and inspire the girls and young women of today, she said.“It’s deserving to honor the women who fought for the right to vote during this 100th anniversary, and then to really look forward to see what else women are going to achieve in the next 100 years,” said Kunze, a Republican from Hilliard in suburban Columbus.Wax statues at at the Occoquan Workhouse Museum in Lorton, Virginia, show the 1917 force-feeding of suffragist Lucy Burns, an American women’s rights advocate who was on hunger strike. (Photo by Diaa Bekheet)If the memorial is approved, fundraising would likely top $1 million and construction could follow after a five-year waiting period.Nationally, statues of real women are relatively rare on the grounds of statehouses.Connecticut’s Statehouse features a statue of former Gov. Ella Grasso, the state’s first female governor elected in her own right, while Utah has a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon, the country’s first female state senator.A statue of Esther Hobart Morris, Wyoming’s first female justice of the peace, stood for years in front of the state Capitol but was moved inside after last year’s renovation, with some calls for it to be returned outside after its own renovation. In Hawaii, the Capitol features a statue of Queen Liliuokalani, the last monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom.The Arkansas Capitol has a statue featuring the Little Rock Nine, the black students who integrated Central High School, six of whom were girls.Arkansas and Mississippi also have monuments to Confederate women featuring figurative representations. “Forward,” an allegorical female statue, stands outside the Wisconsin State Capitol. “As Long as the Waters Flow,” a 13-foot representation of a Native American woman, stands prominently outside the Oklahoma Capitol.Minnesota has a memorial to women’s suffrage that honors 25 women who fought for voting rights, with an expansive garden that includes their names but no statues.Inside statehouses, Alabama has a statue of Gov. Lurleen Wallace, Illinois has a statue of Lottie Holman O’Neill, the first woman elected to the Illinois General Assembly, and Oklahoma has a statue of Kate Barnard, the second woman ever to be elected to a statewide public office in the United States (Oklahoma commissioner of charities and corrections in 1907).Nebraska’s hall of fame inside the Capitol building includes busts of Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz, and Maryland will soon have an indoor statue of Harriet Tubman.Over the years, the country hasn’t done a great job honoring all the people who contributed to what it means to be American, said Lisa Benton-Short, a geography professor at George Washington University.“There’s a lot of our story that’s missing, and it’s missing from those key spaces,” she said.The Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial, unveiled in 2014 on the South Side of the Ohio Statehouse, was the Capitol’s last new outdoor memorial. At the time, some questioned its appropriateness because it includes a representation of the Star of David, while others worried about triggering a race to erect other memorials. In the end, though, it was easily approved.
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Trump Impeachment Heads to Trial in US Senate

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi transmitted articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday to the Senate, following four weeks of debate over the rules of a trial that could remove the president from office. But as VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the Republican-majority Senate will consider the evidence and determine if Trump should be removed from office.
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Senators to be Sworn In For Trump Impeachment Trial

The Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump begins Thursday with preliminary proceedings, including House lawmakers who will act as prosecutors presenting the articles of impeachment to the Senators who will serve as the jury.Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will be sworn in for his role in overseeing the process, and then will swear in the 100 members of the Senate.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the final step Thursday will be to notify the White House and “summon the president to answer the articles and send his counsel.”The main portion of the trial will begin Tuesday.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the articles of impeachment at a ceremony Wednesday, moving the process forward after delaying for about a month as House Democrats tried to get Senate leaders to agree to allow testimony from new witnesses during the trial.McConnell has resisted calling witnesses, saying that decision would come later in the trial.U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to Capitol Hill reporters following the weekly Senate Republican policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 14, 2020.The Democratic-led House also voted Wednesday to formally choose the seven impeachment managers who will serve as prosecutors arguing Trump abused his power and obstructed Congress. They include House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren, Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, Congresswoman Val Demmings, Congressman Jason Crow and Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia.As Pelosi announced the impeachment managers at a morning news conference, Trump tweeted the impeachment was “another Con job by the Do Nothing Democrats.”A senior administration official told reporters the White House is ready for the trial “because the facts overwhelmingly show that the president did nothing wrong.”White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham also reiterated Trump’s defense that he has done nothing wrong.”He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated,” Grisham said.Trump is accused of abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, as Trump withheld $391 million in military aid that he later released.  The president is also accused of subsequently obstructing a congressional probe into his actions.No matter what rules are in place for the Senate trial, Trump seems to be safe from the prospect of being convicted and removed from office.His Republican Party holds a 53-47 majority in the chamber, and conviction requires a two-thirds majority, meaning if all Democrats voted to convict, then 20 Republicans would have to also vote that way for Trump to be convicted and removed from office.This is the third time in the country’s 244-year history a U.S. president has been impeached and targeted for removal from office.Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were both impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials. A fourth president, Richard Nixon, resigned in 1974 in the face of certain impeachment in a political corruption scandal.
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US House Delivers Articles of Impeachment to Senate

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has signed the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump and delivered them to the Senate so a trial can begin next week.Pelosi used a number of pens to put her name on the documents and handed them out to various Democratic committee chairmen whose efforts have led to the president’s impeachment.The impeachment managers — lawmakers who will act as prosecutors — joined the House clerk and sergeant at arms, who hand-carried the articles to the Senate chamber. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the formal acceptance will not to take place until Thursday.At that time, Chief Justice John Roberts, who will oversee the trial, will be sworn in and then he will swear in the impeachment managers.Earlier Wednesday, the Democratic-led House voted its approval of the impeachment managers largely along party lines. They include Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler.As Pelosi announced the impeachment managers at a morning news conference, Trump tweeted the impeachment was “another Con job by the Do Nothing Democrats.”Here we go again, another Con Job by the Do Nothing Democrats. All of this work was supposed to be done by the House, not the Senate!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to Capitol Hill reporters following the weekly Senate Republican policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 14, 2020.The trial will begin Tuesday and will likely last several weeks.Trump is accused of abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, as Trump withheld $391 million in military aid that he later released. The president is also accused of subsequently obstructing a congressional probe into his actions.Trump insists he did nothing wrong and has dismissed the impeachment effort as a “witch hunt.”President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, Jan. 14, 2020, in Milwaukee. “While we’re creating jobs and killing terrorists, Democrats in Congress are wasting America’s time with demented hoaxes and crazy witch hunts,” he told supporters at a Tuesday night campaign rally.No matter what rules are in place for the Senate trial, Trump seems to be safe from the prospect of being convicted and removed from office.His Republican Party holds a 53-47 majority in the chamber, and conviction requires a two-thirds majority, meaning if all Democrats voted to convict, then 20 Republicans would have to also vote that way for Trump to be convicted and removed from office.Democrats also released documents that include new details from Florida businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, about Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other officials.The evidence includes a handwritten note from Parnas on stationery from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Vienna that says “get Zalensky (sic) to Announce that the Biden case will be investigated.”Also disclosed was screenshot of a previously undisclosed letter Giuliani sent in May to the then-president-elect, introducing himself as Trump’s “personal counsel” and requesting a meeting with Trump’s “knowledge and consent.”Communications between Parnas, Giuliani and others about the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich, who balked at Trump’s demand for an investigation of the Bidens, were also released.This is the third time in the country’s 244-year history a U.S. president has been impeached and targeted for removal from office.Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were both impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials. A fourth president, Richard Nixon, resigned in 1974 in the face of certain impeachment in a political corruption scandal.
 
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US House Approves Managers for Trump Impeachment Trial and Sends Impeachment Articles to Senate

The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to approve the House members who Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected to prosecute the case against President Donald Trump and to send two articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial.The Democratic-led House approved the resolution by a vote that was largely along party lines.House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 3, 2019.Later Wednesday, the seven lawmakers who will act as prosecutors will hold an engrossment ceremony and then walk the articles of impeachment to the Senate side of the Capitol. The trial is expected to begin in earnest next week.Pelosi named a diverse group of Democratic lawmakers to prosecute the case, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler.Also named as managers were Sylvia Garcia, Hakeem Jeffries, Zoe Lofgren, Jason Crow and Val Demings.As Pelosi announced the impeachment managers at a morning news conference, Trump tweeted the impeachment was “another Con job by the Do Nothing Democrats.”Here we go again, another Con Job by the Do Nothing Democrats. All of this work was supposed to be done by the House, not the Senate!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to Capitol Hill reporters following the weekly Senate Republican policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 14, 2020.Preliminary trial steps are expected to take place this week, with the trial itself beginning Tuesday and likely lasting several weeks.Trump is accused of abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, as Trump withheld $391 million in aide that he later released.  The president is also accused of subsequently obstructing a congressional probe into his actions.Trump insists he did nothing wrong and has dismissed the impeachment effort as a “witch hunt.””While we’re creating jobs and killing terrorists, Democrats in Congress are wasting America’s time with demented hoaxes and crazy witch hunts,” he told supporters at a Tuesday night campaign rally.President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, Jan. 14, 2020, in Milwaukee. No matter what rules are in place for the Senate trial, Trump seems to be safe from the prospect of being convicted and removed from office.His Republican Party holds a 53 to 47 majority in the chamber, and conviction requires a two-thirds majority, meaning if all Democrats voted to convict then 20 Republicans would have to also vote that way for Trump to lose the presidency.Democrats also released documents that include new details from Florida businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, about Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskiy and other officials.The evidence includes a handwritten note from Parnas on stationery from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Vienna that says “get Zalensky (sic) to Announce that the Biden case will be investigated.”Also disclosed was screenshot of a previously undisclosed letter Giuliani sent in May to the then-president-elect, introducing himself as Trump’s “personal counsel” and requesting a meeting with Trump’s “knowledge and consent.”Communications between Parnas, Giuliani and others about the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich, who balked at Trump’s demand for an investigation of the Bidens, were also released.This is the third time in the country’s 244-year history a U.S. president has been impeached and targeted for removal from office.Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were both impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials. A fourth president, Richard Nixon, resigned in 1974 in the face of certain impeachment in a political corruption scandal.
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AP Fact Check: Trump Distorts Data, Democrats Cut Corners

Rallying in swing-state Wisconsin, President Donald Trump used misleading economic data to claim he’s created a “blue collar boom” while Democrats vying to replace him cut some corners on the facts in their latest presidential debate.Here’s a look at some statements from both stages, in Milwaukee and Des Moines, Iowa.TRUMP: “More than 300,000 people under Obama, 300,000 people, left the workforce. Under just three years of my administration, 3.5 million people have joined the workforce.”THE FACTS: Trump is wrong about Barack Obama’s record.More than 5 million people joined the U.S. labor force during Obama’s presidency, according to Labor Department figures. These gains reflect the recovery from the Great Recession as well as population growth. But Trump does have reason to celebrate as well. More than 4.8 million people have joined the labor force in just three years of his presidency.TRUMP: “Mexico’s paying for the wall. … You know that. It’s all worked out.”THE FACTS: Mexico isn’t paying for Trump’s long-promised border wall.Trump has argued that the updated trade agreement with Canada and Mexico will pay for the wall because of economic benefits he predicts will come from the deal. Nothing in the trade agreement would cover or refund the construction cost or require a payment from Mexico.Instead, he is assuming a wide variety of economic benefits that can’t be quantified or counted on. For example, he has said the deal will dissuade some U.S. companies from moving operations to Mexico and he credits that possibility as a payment by Mexico.The agreement preserves the existing liberalized environment of low or no tariffs among the U.S., Mexico and Canada, with certain improvements for each country.Although his 2016 campaign left open the possibility that Mexico might somehow contribute to the cost indirectly, Trump repeatedly roused his crowds with the straight-ahead promise: “I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., right, speaks to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., left, as former Vice President Joe Biden listens during a Democratic presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 14, 2020.JOE BIDEN: “I was a single parent too. When my wife and daughter were killed, my two boys I had to raise. I was a senator — a young senator — I just hadn’t been sworn in yet. I was making $42,000 a year. I commuted every single solitary day to Wilmington, Delaware — over 500 miles a day, excuse me, 250 miles a day — because I could not afford … child care. It was beyond my reach.”THE FACTS: Child care costs are burdensome for most working U.S. parents, but the former vice president wasn’t quite as broke as claimed when suggesting he took the train back to Delaware because child care costs were too high.A $42,000 salary might not sound like much today. In fact, Senate records show it was actually $42,500. But Biden joined the Senate after winning his seat in 1972. Adjusted for inflation, he was earning more than $256,000 in today’s dollars. That is more than four times the median household income.BERNIE SANDERS: “Medicare for all … will cost substantially less than the status quo.”THE FACTS: There’s no guarantee that Medicare for All will cost less.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report  last year that total spending under a single-payer system like Sanders is calling for “might be higher or lower than under the current system depending on the key features of the new system.”Those features have to do with the design of the system, questions like payment rates for hospitals and doctors, and whether patients are required to pay part of the cost of their care. The Vermont senator says his plan would require no cost-sharing from patients, no copays and no deductibles. But completely free care could trigger a surge in demand for medical services, raising costs. Other countries that provide coverage for all do use cost-sharing to help keep spending in check.A research report last year by the nonprofit Rand think tank estimated that Medicare for All would modestly raise total U.S. health spending.The study modeled a hypothetical scenario with a plan similar to Sanders’ legislation. It found that total U.S. health care spending would be about $3.9 trillion under Medicare for All in 2019, compared with about $3.8 trillion under the status quo.BIDEN: “I was asked to bring 156,000 troops home from that war, which I did. I led that effort.”THE FACTS: Biden is roughly right about bringing troops home, but he didn’t mention that the U.S. had to send some back.President Barack Obama did designate Biden to take the lead in pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq and coordinating efforts to maintain stability in Baghdad. His results were mixed. Biden and Obama failed to win agreement from the Iraqi government to keep a limited number of U.S. troops there after December 2011. That was the deadline for a complete U.S. pullout under a deal negotiated by the Bush administration in late 2008. Biden was still vice president when Obama was compelled to return American troops to Iraq in 2014 after the rise of the Islamic State extremist group.TRUMP: “Under the Trump economy, the lowest-paid earners are reaping the biggest, fastest and largest gains. … Earnings for the bottom 10% are rising faster than earnings for the top 10%, proportionally.”THE FACTS: Trump’s claim that the biggest pay hikes are going to the poor is misleading. The top 10% of earners saw the biggest raises of any income bracket over the past year. Their usual weekly earnings jumped 8% — or $168 — from a year ago, according to the Labor Department.The bottom 10% did fare reasonably well, likely reflecting some of the gains from minimum wage hikes. Their usual weekly incomes grew 7%, or $30. When the Labor Department looked at the gains by quartile, weekly earnings grew at faster rates at the top levels than the bottom 25%.TRUMP: “We’ve created 7 million jobs since the election, including more than 1 million manufacturing and construction jobs. Nobody thought that was possible.”THE FACTS: Those numbers are less impressive than Trump claims.Government figures do back the president’s statements. But the job gains under Trump over the past three years were lower than during the final three years of Barack Obama’s presidency. More than 8 million jobs were added during that period under Obama, including 1.2 million combined in manufacturing and construction. What these figures suggest is that much of the job growth under Trump reflects the momentum from a recovery that officially began in the middle of 2009.TRUMP: “Our military has been totally rebuilt.”THE FACTS: It hasn’t.It’s true that his administration has accelerated a sharp buildup in defense spending, including a respite from what the U.S. military considered to be crippling spending limits under budget sequestration.But a number of new Pentagon weapons programs, such as the F-35 fighter jet, were started years before the Trump administration. And it will take years for freshly ordered tanks, planes and other weapons to be built, delivered and put to use.The Air Force’s Minuteman 3 missiles, a key part of the U.S. nuclear force, for instance, have been operating since the early 1970s and the modernization was begun under the Obama administration. They are due to be replaced with a new version, but not until later this decade.ELIZABETH WARREN: “The only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent Republican any time in the past 30 years is me.”SANDERS: “Just to set the record straight, I defeated a Republican incumbent running for Congress.”WARREN: “I said, I was the only one who’s beaten an incumbent Republican in 30 years.”THE FACTS: Sanders wins this argument — one of the stranger disputes of the night — by a matter of months. In November 1990, Sanders beat Republican incumbent Peter Smith to take Vermont’s only House seat. That was 29 years and two months ago. Sanders’ win, technically, slips in the 30-year window.
 
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Virginia Poised for Historic Vote on Equal Rights Amendment

State lawmakers are poised to take a major step toward making Virginia the critical 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.The Virginia House and Senate, both controlled by Democrats, are expected to advance the gender equality measure in floor votes Wednesday.The votes will be a momentous symbolic victory for many women’s rights advocates and a sign of how much once-solidly conservative Virginia has changed. But at the national level, many questions remain about the fate of the proposed amendment first introduced nearly a century ago.With Virginia’s official sign-off — which will involve additional procedural steps following Wednesday’s votes — the state will become the decisive 38th to approve the measure, decades after Congress sent it to the states in 1972.ERA advocates say hitting the 38 mark means the amendment will have surpassed the three-quarters of states needed to be added to the Constitution.Opponents disagree. Court battles are expected to unfold over a long-passed 1982 ratification deadline set by Congress as well as moves by five states that ratified it in the 1970s to rescind their support.Last week, the Justice Department issued an opinion concluding that because the deadline has expired, the ERA is no longer legally pending before the states.The National Archives and Records Administration, which has a ministerial role in certifying the ratification of constitutional amendments, said in a statement that it would abide by that legal opinion “unless otherwise directed by a final court order.”ERA advocates say the measure would enshrine equality for women in the Constitution, offering stronger protections in sex discrimination cases. They also argue the ERA would give Congress firmer ground to pass anti-discrimination laws.Opponents warn it would erode commonsense protections for women, such as workplace accommodations during pregnancies. They also worry it would be used by abortion-rights supporters to quash abortion restrictions on the grounds that they specifically discriminate against women.The measure has passed the Virginia Senate before with bipartisan support but has never made it to the House for a floor vote.Democrats retook control of both chambers from Republicans in November’s elections and say there is unanimous support in both chambers for the ERA.
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Pelosi Names Schiff, Nadler as Prosecutors for Impeachment Trial

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday appointed seven House members who will prosecute the case against President Donald Trump at a Senate trial that is expected to begin next week.The House is scheduled to vote later Wednesday to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. After the vote, lawmakers who will act as prosecutors will walk the articles of impeachment to the Senate side of the Capitol.Pelosi named a diverse group of Democratic lawmakers to prosecute the case, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler.Also named as managers were Sylvia Garcia, Hakeem Jeffries, Zoe Lofgren, Jason Crow and Val Demings.Question of new witnessesThe House impeached Trump last month, but Pelosi delayed submitting the articles of impeachment as House Democrats tried to get Senate leaders to agree to allow testimony from new witnesses during the trial.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks during a news conference to announce impeachment managers on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 15, 2020That matter remains unresolved. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has resisted the idea of calling witnesses and said the decision would come later in the trial.White House spokesperson Stephanie Grisham accused Pelosi of holding the articles of impeachment “in an egregious effort to garner political support.””She failed and the naming of these managers does not change a single thing,” Grisham said in a statement. “President Trump has done nothing wrong. He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated.”Pelosi said if the Senate launches the trial without witnesses, the American people will see it “as a pure political cover-up.””Leader McConnell and the president are afraid of more facts coming to light,” she said.Preliminary trial steps are expected to take place this week, with the trial itself beginning Tuesday and likely lasting several weeks.Trump: ‘Witch hunts’Trump is accused of abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who served on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, as Trump withheld $391 million in aid that he later released. The president is also accused of subsequently obstructing a congressional probe into his actions.Trump insists he did nothing wrong and has dismissed the impeachment effort as a “witch hunt.”FILE – President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Jan. 14, 2020.”While we’re creating jobs and killing terrorists, Democrats in Congress are wasting America’s time with demented hoaxes and crazy witch hunts,” he told supporters at a Tuesday night campaign rally.No matter what rules are in place for the Senate trial, Trump seems to be safe from the prospect of being convicted and removed from office.His Republican Party holds a 53 to 47 majority in the chamber, and conviction requires a two-thirds majority, meaning if all Democrats voted to convict then 20 Republicans would have to also vote that way for Trump to lose the presidency.New evidenceDemocrats said late Tuesday that along with the impeachment articles they will include new evidence from Florida businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.The evidence includes a screenshot of a previously undisclosed letter Giuliani sent in May to the then-president-elect, introducing himself as Trump’s “personal counsel” and requesting a meeting with Trump’s “knowledge and consent.”It also includes communications between Parnas, Giuliani and others about the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich, who balked at Trump’s demand for an investigation of the Bidens.This is the third time in the country’s 244-year history a U.S. president has been impeached and targeted for removal from office.Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 were both impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials. A fourth president, Richard Nixon, resigned in 1974 in the face of certain impeachment in a political corruption scandal.
  
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Democrats Weigh in on Recent Events in Iran

The killing by the United States of Iran’s most powerful general has increased tensions between the two countries and raised concerns of all-out war. It was a key topic in Tuesday’s Democratic debate in Des Moines, Iowa.  Questions over the killing of Gen. Qassem Suleimani quickly led to a broader conversation about the president’s ability to take unilateral military action. Unless an imminent threat required a quick response, all six Democratic candidates pledged to seek congressional approval. But, not all candidates agreed over the removal of troops in the region.Here’s what the candidates had to say:Former Vice President Joe Biden:His response to U.S. President Trump’s decision to kill  Iranian Soleimani without first going to Congress:”I ran the first time as a 29-year-old kid against the war in Vietnam on the grounds that the only way to take a nation to war is with the informed consent of the American people.”  “We’re in a situation where our allies in Europe are making a comparison between the United States and Iran , saying both ought to stand down, making a moral equivalence.”  “We have lost our standing in the region. We have lost the support of our allies.”    Sen. Amy Klobuchar:Klobuchar said U.S. President Donald Trump’s  move in the killing of Soleimani was to blame Iran for “starting to enrich uranium again.” She said he is “taking us pell mell toward another war.”  “We just found out today that four Republicans are joining Democrats to go to him and say you must have an authorization of military force if you’re going to go to war with Iran.  That is so important because we have a situation where he got us out of the Iranian nuclear agreement I worked on for a significant period of time.”Responding to a question on foreign policy, Klobuchar said she would leave some U.S. combat troops in Iraq, but qualified her answer, saying, “I would leave some troops there, but not in the level that Donald Trump is taking us right now.” She added that, if elected, she would keep a small number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, performing counterterrorism and training duties.    Sen.  Bernie Sanders:  On the recent events in Iran:”… right now, what I fear very much is we have a president who is lying again and could drag us into a war that is even worse than the war in Iraq.” He added, “We have got to undo what Trump did, bring that coalition together and make sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.”Sanders agreed that  Trump’s decision to not inform Congress on killing Soleimani was wrong:”We cannot keep acting unilaterally, as you know, the nuclear deal with Iran was worked on with a number of our allies,” he said. “The American people are sick and tired of endless wars.”    Tom Steyer:The billionaire hedge fund manager and environmentalist said Trump “obviously has no strategy” in dealing with Iran and agreed with Biden that it would take the efforts of an international coalition to rein in its nuclear ambitions.Senator Elizabeth Warren:Sen. Warren of Massachusetts said she would move to bring thousands of U.S. troops home from the Middle East:  “We have to stop this mindset that the answer” to the world’s trouble spots is to send U.S. troops overseas. Asked whether she would leave some combat troops in the Middle East, she replied: “No, we have to get them out.”Pete Buttigieg:The former South Bend, Indiana Mayor tied Trump’s decision to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal with the stand-off following the drone strike that killed Soleimani, saying the move “set off the chain of events that we’re now dealing with as it escalates even closer to the brink of outright war.”When asked about the role of the U.S. Congress in authorizing war, Buttigieg said there should be a three-year sunset on such authorizations, a frequent campaign trail talking point.”If our troops can summon the courage to go overseas in harm’s way, then we have to make sure that congress has the courage to take tough up or down votes,” he said.
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