The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena for acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday night, ordering him to testify in front of impeachment investigators on Friday.

One official working on the inquiry told The Associated Press that Mulvaney "could shed additional light on the president's abuse of power of his office for his personal gain." The White House has told officials not to cooperate with investigators, and Mulvaney is not expected to appear.

The House is investigating Trump's dealings with Ukraine, and last month, Mulvaney told reporters that Trump's decision to hold military aid to the country was connected to his desire for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. Mulvaney later tried to take back his remarks.

The United States will not keep any of the revenue from oil fields American troops are protecting in Syria, the Pentagon announced Thursday.

Last month, President Trump ordered a withdrawal of most troops from northeastern Syria, but then revised his plan, tasking some with securing Syrian oil fields. He then told a gathering of police officers in Chicago, "We're keeping the oil — remember that. I've always said that. Keep the oil. We want to keep the oil. $45 million a month? Keep the oil."

The Pentagon burst his bubble, with a spokesperson saying that the revenue is not going to the United States, but rather the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is reportedly planning to file paperwork to enter the Democratic presidential primary in Alabama by Friday.

The billionaire has been weighing a bid for weeks, a Bloomberg adviser told The New York Times on Thursday, and has not yet made a final decision on whether to launch a full-fledged campaign, but will enter the race in Alabama, where there is an early deadline to file. The adviser said Bloomberg feels "the current field of candidates is not well positioned to" defeat Trump.

Bloomberg is a moderate Democrat who experts say would be capable of raising money quickly, and could be a threat to former Vice President Joe Biden's candidacy.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions left the Trump administration due to friction with the president, but that's all in the past — at least for one of them.

On Thursday night, sessions announced that he is running for his old Senate seat in Alabama. He served from 1997 to 2017, and was the first senator to endorse President Trump's candidacy in 2016. While serving as attorney general, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, a move that enraged Trump and was the beginning of his downfall. Last year, at the request of Trump, Sessions resigned.

During his announcement, Sessions praised Trump, admitting that while they had their "ups and downs," Trump is "doing great work for America. When President Trump took on Washington, only one senator out of 100 had the courage to stand with him: me. I was the first to support President Trump. I was his strongest advocate. I still am. We must make America great again."

Trump is less than enthused that Sessions is running for Senate, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post on Wednesday. Trump has already called selecting Sessions as his attorney general the "biggest mistake" of his presidency, and said the way he ran the Department of Justice was "a total joke." He's talked with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about ways he can attack Sessions, the Post reports, and has spent the last few days bad-mouthing his former AG to White House aides.

In an internal memo sent on Oct. 31, William Roebuck, the senior U.S. diplomat for northeast Syria, wrote that the Trump administration didn't do nearly enough to try to talk Turkey out of launching a military offensive against Kurds in Syria, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

Roebuck, a former ambassador to Bahrain, sent the unclassified memo to James Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy on Syria issues, plus officials in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department. During an Oct. 6 phone call, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told President Trump he did not want Kurds near the Syrian border. The Kurds controlled land in northeastern Syria they seized from the Islamic State, and that was too much for Erdogan, who considers them terrorists.

Following the call, Trump ordered U.S. troops near the Syrian border to move out, paving the way for Erdogan to launch a military assault. In his memo, the Journal reports, Roebuck wrote that threatening sanctions and sending more troops to the Syrian border might not have scared Erdogan, "but we won't know because we didn't try." He also accused Turkish-backed Arab fighters of carrying out "war crimes and ethnic cleansing."

A State Department spokeswoman told the Journal the government has concerns these fighters may have killed unarmed civilians and prisoners, and "we have raised them with the highest level of the Turkish government."

George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, revealed during his closed-door testimony before House impeachment investigators last month that there was a lot of lying going when it came to Ukraine.

A transcript of Kent's deposition was released on Thursday. He shared that President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was behind a smear campaign against Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Giuliani wanted Yovanovitch out, and his "assertions and allegations" against her "were without basis, untrue, period." Giuliani went on to attack Kent by name, and he was told to "keep my head down."

Kent also said that Fiona Hill, Trump's former top adviser on Russia, revealed that she was concerned about U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland's ability to tell the truth about what he talked about with the president. "I think she may have been as direct as saying that Gordon Sondland lies about conversations that occur in the Oval Office," he said.

After the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, Kent received a brief readout of the call from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council's expert on Ukraine.

"It was different than any readout call that I had received," Kent said. "He felt — I could hear it in his voice and his hesitancy that he felt uncomfortable. He actually said that he could not share the majority of what was discussed because of the very sensitive nature of what was discussed."

Keanu Reeves, the internet's boyfriend, broke hearts around the world when he emerged holding hands with Alexandra Grant, his actual girlfriend. But despite the comments of a bunch of very confused people on the internet, Grant is not Dame Helen Mirren, the Oscar-winning star of cinema classics like The Queen and the eighth Fast & Furious movie, whom Grant sort of vaguely resembles.

Still, Mirren says she found the confusion "flattering," because come on, who hasn't fantasized about walking a red carpet hand-in-hand with Keanu Reeves? Read more at Page Six.

"Please don't laugh" may be the "please clap" of Kanye West's supposed presidential campaign.

West while speaking at Fast Company's Innovation Festival Thursday once again casually mentioned his plans to run for president in 2024, which he insists is a real thing that's going to happen. But this time, there was an audience in attendance when he threw the phrase "when I run for president in 2024" out there, and they seemed to almost instinctively react as if he were joking.

Clearly, West wasn't happy with this very understandable response, shooting back to the crowd as seriously as possible, "What y'all laughing at?" The crowd laughed even harder this time, seemingly still believing they were all in on a bit together. After the laughter stopped, West took an unbearably long pause that may only be three seconds but certainly feels like closer to 20.

West has been talking about his alleged 2024 run for quite some time now, having previously claimed he'd be running in 2020, only to kick that can further down the road, simply tweeting in April 2018, "2024." In a recent interview, the same one in which West declared himself "unquestionably, undoubtedly the greatest human artist of all time," he flatly stated as an objective fact that "there will be a time where I will be president." Just a heads up, then: if you're ever in a room with West when he says that, try not to laugh. Things might get awkward.

For six years, Kristen Bell cashed checks as the voice of Gossip Girl, the unseen whose dishy insights bedeviled the lives of Manhattan's richest and prettiest and worst teenagers. And now that Gossip Girl is getting a reboot on HBO Max, Bell is reportedly back as well.

How much money did it take to lure an actress of Bell's fame and caliber to lend some credibility to a warmed-over reboot of a teen drama that wasn't all that good in the first place? That's one secret I'll never tell. XOXO, Gossip Girl. Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.

Taylor Swift is one of the world's biggest pop superstars, with the stadium sizes and ticket prices to match. But next year, fans will have the rare opportunity to see a Taylor Swift concert for the low, low price of nothing. In April 2020, Swift will headline the Capital One JamFest in Atlanta, which is being thrown in conjunction with the NCAA's March Madness basketball tournament, where the players are gonna play. Tickets aren't available yet, but they'll surely fly off the shelves as soon as they go live — so you'll want to be, uh, swift. [Rolling Stone]

2.

Keanu Reeves, the internet's boyfriend, broke hearts around the world when he emerged holding hands with Alexandra Grant, his actual girlfriend. But despite the comments of a bunch of very confused people on the internet, Grant is not Dame Helen Mirren, the Oscar-winning star of cinema classics like The Queen and the eighth Fast & Furious movie, whom Grant sort of vaguely resembles. Still, Mirren says she found the confusion "flattering," because come on, who hasn't fantasized about walking a red carpet hand-in-hand with Keanu Reeves? [Page Six]

3.

Do you remember the soapy ABC drama Revenge, in which Emily VanCamp spent four seasons executing a labyrinthine and increasingly implausible revenge plot against the rich family who killed her father? Kind of? Well, it's coming back for a full-on reboot with a shocking new twist: This time, it's about a woman trying to get revenge against the rich family who murdered her mother. It might sound a little too late for audiences to get hyped about a reboot of a show that originally premiered in 2011, but you know what they say: Revenge is a dish best served cold. [Variety]

4.

The 2016 death of Carrie Fisher meant that the architects of the new Star Wars trilogy had to alter their plans for her character, General Leia. While Fisher will appear in the upcoming Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker via footage that was originally cut from 2015's The Force Awakens, her brother has revealed that the original plan for Leia was a lot grander: Revealing herself to be a full-fledged Jedi knight, complete with her own lightsaber. Can we go to the galaxy far, far away where we all got to see that? [Yahoo Entertainment]

5.

For six years, Kristen Bell cashed checks as the voice of Gossip Girl, the unseen whose dishy insights bedeviled the lives of Manhattan's richest and prettiest and worst teenagers. And now that Gossip Girl is getting a reboot on HBO Max, Bell is back as well. How much money did it take to lure an actress of Bell's fame and caliber to lend some credibility to a warmed-over reboot of a teen drama that wasn't all that good in the first place? That's one secret I'll never tell. XOXO, Gossip Girl. [The Hollywood Reporter]

A State Department official suggested to Congress that President Trump wanted Ukraine's president to mention former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while announcing the opening of the investigations he wanted.

A transcript of the testimony of Europe adviser George Kent was released Thursday. In it, Kent discusses how U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland "was pushing" to have Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky give a television interview in which he would announce a "willingness to pursue investigations" involving Burisma, the gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son served on the board, and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.

Kent also testifies that he heard that, based on Sondland's discussions with Trump, it appeared Trump "wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to [a] microphone and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton."

The House of Representatives is investigating whether Trump withheld aid to Ukraine in return for its president pursuing investigations that might damage his political opponents. Kent at another point in his testimony again suggests Trump wanted Zelensky to mention both Biden and Clinton, saying, "Zelensky needed to go to a microphone and basically there needed to be three words in the message."

John Bolton reportedly has one condition before giving House impeachment investigators what they want.

The former national security adviser who was either fired or quit his job in September has been regarded as a possible foil to President Trump thanks to the acrimonious way he went out. And with impeachment hearings underway, Bolton is taking that suggestion pretty seriously, people familiar with his thinking tell The Washington Post.

Bolton was slated for a closed-door impeachment hearing this Thursday, but didn't show up in what could be interpreted as a show of continued loyalty to Trump. But apparently, Bolton is just waiting for a federal court to decide whether former White House officials can be forced to testify before Congress like Democrats want them to, the Post reports.

The ongoing court battle revolves around whether two ex-Trump officials — White House counsel Don McGahn and deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman — can be forced to comply with congressional subpoenas against Trump's claimed "executive privilege." Bolton's lawyer hasn't ruled out the possibility that Bolton could be added to that suit if he's subpoenaed too, the Post says.

Regardless, neither Bolton's refusal to testify right now, nor reported willingness to testify if a court orders him to, can really be interpreted as an adherence to or defiance of Trump. It seems more like Bolton is just waiting things out before he can chalk his ultimate decision up to the courts.

Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) immigration plan doesn't have a lot of surprises.

The 2020 candidate has pushed for a progressive immigration agenda throughout his presidential run, campaigning on a promise to decriminalize illegal border crossings and expand DACA protections. Those, along with a complete rejection of President Trump's immigration policies, take shape in Sanders' plan for "a welcoming and safe America for all" unveiled Thursday.

Sanders' plan starts with a bold pledge for the first day of his presidency: He'll "overturn all of President Trump's actions to demonize and harm immigrants," his plan says. That includes a promise to end "the barbaric practice of ripping children from their parents and locking children in cages," and to "thoroughly audit and close detention centers." Next up will be a look at what causes people to take risky journeys to the U.S. in the first place, with Sanders calling for a "summit of leaders from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and other countries to address the root causes of migration."

Sanders then goes on to describe more priorities that'll take a bit more time to accomplish, including an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents programs. And while he stops short of a full call to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, he does say he'll "break up" those agencies.

Find all of Sanders' plan here.

Lalalalala, Lindsey Graham can't hear you!

After complaining that congressional Democrats were not adequately transparent in the early stages of their impeachment inquiry against President Trump, the South Carolina Republican has announced his refusal to even read now-available transcripts from that very inquiry. "I've written the whole process off," Graham told CBS Tuesday. "I think this is a bunch of B.S." He reiterated the position Wednesday on Fox and in conversation with a reporter expressing astonishment that "former impeachment manager Lindsey Graham says he's not going to read the impeachment transcripts. Really?" Really, indeed.

This is a curious strategy — and yet we can only assume it is an acceptable strategy to GOP leadership. Graham is a senior senator and chair of the Senate Judiciary committee. He's a presidential favorite and golfing buddy. His cavalier attitude here is almost certainly not an intraparty rebellion — which means it may well be a portend of election strategies to come.

Graham's outright refusal to read the impeachment transcripts strikes me as odd for how it narrows his options going forward. Of course, I don't expect Graham would privately give serious consideration to a proposal to remove a Republican president from office. A plausible scenario in which a GOP-controlled Senate would do anything but acquit Trump in an impeachment trial is near impossible to imagine.

Yet what politicians say in public and private are rarely the same, and the political benefits of at least playing along with the impeachment inquiry seem manifest. Suppose Graham had said something more like this: "I think this is a bunch of B.S., honestly, and if I'm right, my Democratic colleagues should be ashamed of themselves for wasting the American people's time with partisan, backstabbing nonsense. But unlike the Democrats, I'm willing to give those on the other side of the aisle a fair hearing. I'll carefully review these transcripts, and I'll do my due diligence if this comes to a trial in the Senate. Any president should be held accountable for corruption — and any congressional caucus should be held accountable for biased, dishonest investigations like I expect this will be proven to be."

A statement like that has a lot of wiggle room. It casts Graham as a fair, impartial public servant willing, if necessary, to sacrifice partisan advantage on the altar of healthy democracy. In the improbable event that Trump is convicted in the Senate, it lets him insist he was on the right side all along. And in the event of acquittal or a failure to move to a Senate trial in the first place, it lets Graham get in plenty of anti-Democrat slams and demonstrations of loyalty to the president.

But that's not what Graham said. He pre-emptively refused to engage in the process in good faith, declaring it a "sham" he wouldn't "legitimize." He closed the door to, "We know Trump's innocent because we checked," and ran hard at, "We don't have to check because we know he's innocent."

There's certainly an audience for this tack, which will appeal to Trump loyalists and much of the broader Republican base. Negative partisanship is strong right now. Study results published earlier this year found four in 10 Republicans and Democrats alike believe those in the other party are "downright evil;" nearly one in five think they "lack the traits to be considered fully human;" and about the same proportion will say we'd "be better off as a country if large numbers of the opposing party in the public today just died." For those people and some less vehement partisans, Graham's brazen refusal to examine Democrat-elicited testimony against Trump will be received as a good and necessary stand for justice.

But what about everyone else? What about the independents and swing voters Republicans will likely require, perhaps including in reliably red states like Kentucky, to win in 2020? Independents are nearly evenly split on whether Trump should be impeached, which suggests they are less likely to be amenable to a hardline stance like Graham's that refuses to take the matter seriously. Where a deep-red Republican who opposes impeachment would object to even beginning this inquiry, an independent who opposes it could support completing the initial investigation so Trump's name is duly cleared.

Graham is walling himself off from that crowd, which may not make much difference for his personal re-election prospects but could prove detrimental to other Republicans if they follow his lead. He's betting either that he doesn't need their votes (again, I'm dying to see internal GOP polls in competitive states) or that they don't care enough about impeachment for his position to make a difference. Either is a big wager, and in refusing to read the transcripts, Graham has gone all-in.

A judge has ordered President Trump to pay $2 million over his alleged misuse of his charitable foundation.

New York's attorney general in June 2018 sued Trump, accusing him and three of his children of "persistently illegal conduct" at the nonprofit Donald J. Trump Foundation, which allegedly coordinated unlawfully with his 2016 presidential campaign and which the attorney general said was "little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality," The Washington Post reports.

At the time, New York's attorney general asked a state judge to dissolve the foundation, which the charity agreed to last year. Now, a judge has ordered Trump to pay $2 million to a group of nonprofit organizations in a settlement, CNN reports.

When the lawsuit was originally announced in 2018, Trump slammed the "sleazy New York Democrats" who brought it and promised, "I won't settle this case!"

One scandal involving a Tom Steyer aide apparently wasn't enough for a single week.

A top aide to the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate has privately offered Iowa politicians campaign contributions in exchange for an endorsement of his White House run, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

Pat Murphy, an adviser on Steyer's Iowa campaign and former state House speaker, has reportedly been making these offers, though AP doesn't have evidence that anyone actually accepted them. AP notes that this is not illegal unless payments weren't disclosed, but this still "could revive criticism that the billionaire Steyer is trying to buy his way into the White House."

Numerous Iowa politicians spoke for the report and confirmed having received these offers, with one former state senator running for his old seat, Tom Courtney, saying he was told, "you help them, and they'll help you" and that this "left a bad taste in my mouth." Steyer's campaign press secretary, Alberto Lammers, said Murphy wasn't authorized to make these offers and that the campaign outside of Iowa didn't even knew this was happening.

"Our campaign policy is clear that we will not engage in this kind of activity, and anyone who does is not speaking for the campaign or does not know our policy," Lammers said.

In a statement, Murphy said it was "never my intention to make my former colleagues uncomfortable, and I apologize for any miscommunication on my part." He did not deny the report.

This comes just days after reports that a Steyer aide allegedly stole presidential campaign data from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). The aide has since resigned, and the campaign claimed that he accessed the data not realizing it wasn't theirs. Steyer said this week he was "deeply disappointed to learn of this situation."

Donald Trump Jr.'s The View appearance was every bit as wild as anticipated, if not more so.

The president's son went on the show to promote his book Thursday, and to say that sparks flew would be an understatement. Meghan McCain, whose father President Trump infamously feuded with, at one point confronted Trump Jr. by flat out telling him, "You and your family have hurt a lot of people and put a lot of people through a lot of pain," citing the president's feud with the Khan family. In response, Trump Jr. suggested his father is simply guilty of "[taking] on the establishment."

McCain wasn't done, continuing to tear into Trump Jr. for, she said, having helped put gold star families "through pain," later adding, "For me, it would not have been worth it ... inflicting pain on so many people wouldn't have been worth it to me." Trump Jr. told her "it hasn't exactly been peaches and cream for us, either" and argued his father "has great character."

Trump Jr. also faced a grilling for having a day earlier tweeted the reported name of the whistleblower who filed a complaint about the president's call with Ukraine, which he defended by arguing he's simply a "private citizen" who was tweeting out something that was published on Drudge Report. At one point, Trump Jr. lashed out by telling Joy Behar, "you've worn blackface," referring to a photo of Behar having darkened her skin for a Halloween costume in the 1970s. Watch just one piece of the tense appearance below.

OK, let's try this again.

Next week, the House Intelligence Committee will hold its first public impeachment hearings — nationally televised events that will give Americans their first chance to hear from Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, as well as current Europe adviser George Kent and ex-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. The trio have already given explosive testimony behind closed doors, but American political history shows there's nothing like television to sell an impeachment drama — or stop it dead in its tracks.

Of course, that was also the promise when Robert Mueller, who led the special investigation of Trump's ties to Russia, appeared before Congress in July. He could've been the TV star who damaged Trump's credibility irreparably, by offering compelling public testimony that the president had welcomed Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and had tried obstructing official inquiries into the matter. Instead, Mueller seemed uncertain, offering backwards answers to some questions and non-answers to others. He failed, appearing to let President Trump off the hook.

So consider the new impeachment hearings a do-over of the Mueller hearing — a chance to get it right this time.

The sense of urgency is reflected in the rules for the House Intelligence Committee hearing. Instead of the usual committee free-for-all, in which every member of the committee gets a few minutes to ask questions of the witness — a process that results in an incoherent line of inquiry, made worse by the tendency of politicians to grandstand before the cameras — the chairman and top Republican on the panel can take up to 90 minutes to make their cases, or defer to a staff lawyer to do it for them.

The result — hopefully — will be a sharper and more sustained public case that the president has committed wrongdoing.

The similarities between Mueller's Russia investigation and the Ukraine scandal at the heart of the impeachment hearings are quite striking:

Both involve foreign involvement in U.S. presidential elections — Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign on behalf of Trump, and Trump's attempt to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into the family one of his 2020 rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Both feature damning documents making the case for Trump's guilt. In the Russia inquiry, Mueller found that Trump had welcomed that country's 2016 actions, and that Trump had tried to order a premature end to Mueller's investigation. In the newer scandal, Trump released a "transcript" of his phone call with Ukraine's president that seemed to clearly show him pressuring that country to investigate his domestic political rivals.

And in both cases, Trump and his allies have offered consistent misrepresentations of those damning documents — Trump's "No collusion! No obstruction!" campaign was affirmed, wrongly, by Attorney General Bill Barr. Now Trump is urging Americans to "read the transcript!" of his Ukraine call, as though that transcript isn't incriminating. Spoiler: It is.

Given the similarities, how can Democrats make sure the Ukraine scandal sticks to Trump?

Easy. They can take at least one of the witnesses to testify next week and turn them into a bona fide TV star.

Better rules are already in place, as already noted. Now Democrats need one of the witnesses to be a bit more scintillating on TV than Mueller was during his disastrous appearance.

The best bet: Bill Taylor, the ambassador to the Ukraine. He comes with built-in credibility, and was well-placed to witness events: "Taylor is a career diplomat and Vietnam War veteran who has served under Republican and Democratic administrations," the Washington Post reported Wednesday. "Key figures in all this, including ones who were Trump's preferred point people, were open with Taylor as they tried to get Ukraine to do what Trump wanted."

Taylor has already testified privately that Trump made military aid to Ukraine conditional on officials there announcing a Biden investigation. If he says that on TV — and says it boldly, confidently and directly instead of in a halting Mueller-esque manner — Democrats may be able to build impeachment momentum. If the show is a dud, though, Democrats will have wasted their last, best chance at holding this president accountable.

Television helped Donald Trump win the presidency. It may be that television is the only thing that can take it away. We already know this president is worth impeaching. Now we'll find if Democrats have learned from their Mueller mistake, and have enough showbiz savvy to convince the public they're right.

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Andrew Yang is starting to look like a politician.

Well, at least that's the image his new TV ad gives off. The tech entrepreneur and 2020 Democrat has snagged two strategists from Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 campaign to create a fairly mainstream ad, unveiled Thursday and scheduled for a $1 million buy across Iowa, The Daily Beast reports.

Yang's ad starts out in the usual way: It pans over American scenery and a voiceover describes Yang as a "son of immigrants who came here seeking the American dream." The narrator then spells out Yang's resume, including a semi-endorsement from former President Barack Obama, and describes how Yang will broadly "confront big polluters" and enact Medicare-for-all. There is mention of Yang's so-called "freedom dividend," his plan to give every American $1,000 a month, but it's labeled as the more conventional "universal basic income" and only gets a few moments onscreen.

While Yang's ad says he's "not a politician," it was created by some presidential campaign veterans. Yang recently hired the firm Devine, Mulvey, and Longabaugh for media consulting — a group "best known for its work on Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign," The Daily Beast writes. The group tried to work for Sanders again this time around, but the 2020 campaign opted to build ads in-house, per a Sanders spokesperson.

Yang has meanwhile unexpectedly thrived in the 2020 campaign, locking up polling numbers higher than most senators and every congressmember in (or formerly in) the race.

Ukraine's president reportedly came quite close to making the announcement of investigations President Trump wanted.

As Trump was pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly announce the opening of investigations involving Burisma, the gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son served on the board, and supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, "high-level Ukrainian officials ultimately decided to acquiesce to President Trump's request," The New York Times reports. They were hoping to receive the U.S. aid that had been frozen; the House of Representatives is investigating whether Trump improperly withheld this aid in order to get Ukraine to open investigations that might help him in the 2020 election and damage Biden politically.

Plans were reportedly made for Zelensky to make an announcement during an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sept. 13. United States Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland recently testified that he told Ukraine "resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks." According to the Times, an aide to Zelensky suggested "language that mentioned investigations but in general terms," and American diplomats "late in the negotiations" agreed to drop the 2016 mention.

A mere two days before the interview was scheduled to take place, though, the aid was released, with this coming after Congress learned about it being frozen. The Times describes this as "a stroke of luck" that prevented Ukraine from having to follow through, although Ukraine's foreign minister provided little clarity about what Zelensky was specifically planning to tell Zakaria. An analyst told the Times, though, "The Zelensky team was ready to make this quid quo pro."

Even after leaving office, President Trump may not have to stop dramatically firing people.

Since first becoming president, Trump has "confided to close associates that he misses hosting The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice on NBC," The Daily Beast reports, and now, he's apparently actively eyeing a return to reality television after his time in the White House is over.

Trump and Mark Burnett, the creator of The Apprentice, have been "pitching each other details on potential TV projects to be filmed after the Trump presidency," The Daily Beast writes. One idea would evidently be a politics-themed version of The Apprentice called The Apprentice: White House, which would "take full advantage of Trump's status as a former president of the United States and a newfound Republican kingmaker." One person told the Beast there have been "several discussions" about this potential show, and another confirmed it was talked about but "the conversation did not go far."

Burnett himself is denying the report, with a spokesperson saying he and Trump "have not discussed making television shows in any shape or form."

A return to reality TV for Trump would make sense, though, considering how often he has waxed nostalgic about his time on NBC, not to mention the fact that even while president, he still found the time to obsess over The Apprentice's ratings under new host Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trump's quest for that Emmy he feels he was so unjustly denied may be far from finished.

For the first time, a member of Vice President Mike Pence's staff is expected to testify Thursday in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

Pence aide Jennifer Williams, who was listening into Trump's now infamous July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is expected to testify Thursday should she receive a subpoena, CNN reports.

The House is continuing to probe whether Trump improperly withheld aid to Ukraine until its country's president announced investigations that might benefit him in the 2020 presidential election, including into a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden's son served on the board, as well as into supposed Ukrainian election interference that Trump seemed to hope would undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference.

During Williams' testimony, lawmakers will question "how much Pence knew" about the effort to push Ukraine to conduct these investigations, CNN reports. Williams was reportedly "concerned" about Trump's July phone call, though she reportedly did not raise these concerns to any superiors. Pence wasn't on the call, but he later met with Zelensky in September. He denies talking about the "issue of the Bidens" with Zelensky, The Wall Street Journal reports, but they reportedly discussed corruption in Ukraine during the September meeting.

The Washington Post previously reported that "officials close to Pence insist that he was unaware of Trump's efforts to press Zelensky for damaging information about Biden and his son" and that officials say Pence had his meeting with Zelensky in September "probably without having read — or at least fully registered — the transcript" of the July call. But the Post also cited former officials as saying "Pence's emphasis on corruption probably would have been interpreted by Zelensky as 'code'" for a Biden investigation, "whether the vice president intended it or not."

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Wednesday revealed the state is investigating Facebook's privacy practices. Becerra made the disclosure as the state filed a lawsuit against the social networking company over its refusal to comply with subpoenas to hand over documents and respond to questions. "Facebook is not just continuing to drag its feet in response to the Attorney General’s investigation, it is failing to comply," the lawsuit said. The state's investigation started in response to the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a data mining company that collected personal information on up to 87 million Facebook users without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission already has fined Facebook $5 billion for privacy violations uncovered in an investigation triggered by the same scandal. Facebook did not immediately comment on the case. [The Associated Press]

2.

China and the U.S. have agreed to lift new tariffs on each other's goods in stages as part of any "phase one" trade deal, China's Commerce Ministry said Thursday. Ministry spokesperson Gao Feng said the agreement came as the two sides moved closer to an agreement on ending their trade war. A key condition is that the two countries must scrap an equal amount of levies simultaneously. The news sent U.S. stock index futures surging. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite were all up by around 0.5 percent. All three main U.S. indexes reached all-time highs earlier in the week. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly might delay a meeting to sign an interim trade deal until December. [Bloomberg, MarketWatch]

3.

Federal authorities have charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia. The charges were disclosed Wednesday in San Francisco after the Tuesday arrest of one of the suspects, U.S. citizen Ahmad Abouammo. He was accused of spying on three users for the Saudi government. The second suspect is Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen accused of accessing more than 6,000 users' personal information in 2015 for Saudi Arabia. One of the accounts belonged to prominent dissident Omar Abdulaziz, who later became close to journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was assassinated in Istanbul last year. The Saudis implicated in the case included an associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA determined probably ordered Khashoggi's killing. [The Washington Post]

4.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on Wednesday announced the company's plans to verify all 7 million listings to give customers "peace of mind" after a shooting at an Airbnb "party house" in California last week left 5 people dead. In a company-wide email, Chesky said "trust is the real energy that drives Airbnb" and pledged to "do everything possible," including launching a new 24/7 Neighbor Hotline and manually screening suspicious "high-risk reservations." The Airbnb CEO also tweeted the short-term rental giant's new plans to ensure all listings are advertised accurately and fully refund customers if listings were inaccurate after a Vice News investigation uncovered a "nationwide web of deception." Chesky noted that "two million people a night stay in Airbnbs," making it "hard to prevent every bad thing happening." [CNBC, Airbnb]

5.

Roku shares dropped by 15 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday after the entertainment streaming and smart TV company reported widening losses. Roku said it lost an adjusted 22 cents per share in the third quarter, up from a loss of 9 cents a share in the same quarter last year. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv had expected a loss of 28 cents per share. The company reported revenue of $261 million, beating Refinitiv consensus estimates of $256.9 million and marking roughly a 50 percent increase over the same period last year. Roku also reported 32.3 million active accounts, 1.7 million more than in the previous quarter, and a 30 percent increase since last year in average revenue per user to $22.58, beating expectations. [MarketWatch]

The International Criminal Court sentenced Bosco Ntaganda, a former Congolese warlord known as "The Terminator," to 30 years in prison Thursday for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was the longest of the four sentences the ICC has handed down since its creation in 2002.

The three-judge panel, which convicted Ntaganda in July on 18 counts, said it looked for mitigating factors in the 46-year-old militant's record of murder and indirect perpetration of crimes including sexual slavery, child rape, use of child soldiers, murder, and the massacre of civilians. Instead, the judges found only aggravating circumstances, including the "particular cruelty" of several crimes, the "defenselessness of some of the victims," and Ntaganda's decision to personally murder victims, including a Catholic priest, in front of the soldiers he led as a high-ranking commander.

Ntaganda, who is from Rwanda, has fought in rebel groups and national armies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but he was convicted of actions he took as a deputy to Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo rebel group; the ICC convicted Lubanga in 2012 of using child soldiers and sentenced him to 14 years. Ntaganda was also a founding member of the rebel group M23. He was indicted by the ICC in 2006 and surrendered in 2013 at the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda after he lost a power struggle in M23.

"Bosco Ntaganda's 30-year sentence sends a strong message that even people considered untouchable may one day be held to account," said Ida Sawyer, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division. "While his victims' pain cannot be erased, they can take some comfort in seeing justice prevail."

The top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, said in House impeachment inquiry testimony made public Wednesday it was his "clear understanding" that the transfer of military aid to Ukraine was being held up until Kyiv promised to investigate Democrats. Taylor said U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland told him President Trump wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to "state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma," where former Vice President Joe Biden's son served on the board, and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He said he and others "sat in astonishment" as a White House budget official said in July that Trump was delaying the military aid. A transcript of Sondland's testimony was released Tuesday indicating he believed the White House had linked the aid to an investigation of Democrats. [NBC News]

2.

The House will start public impeachment hearings against President Trump next week, Democrats said Wednesday. William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, a senior diplomat overseeing the region, are scheduled to testify in a televised hearing Wednesday. Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, will appear Friday. The announcement of the public phase of the inquiry came after six weeks of closed-door fact-finding. "Those open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Transcripts of Taylor and Yovanovitch's closed-door testimonies were released publicly earlier this week. [The New York Times]

3.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to launch a bid to win back his old seat in the U.S. Senate in Alabama, NBC News reported Wednesday, citing two sources familiar with his plans. Sessions has to file papers by Friday night to run in the March 3 Republican primary. The field already includes former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville and former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct and lost to Sen. Doug Jones in a 2017 special election. President Trump repeatedly expressed anger at Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into Russia's election meddling, and reportedly will campaign against his former attorney general. Still, Sessions would be considered a strong challenger to Jones in the conservative Southern state. [NBC News]

4.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin's campaign on Wednesday formally asked for a recanvassing of the votes from Tuesday's election. Bevin, the Republican incumbent, trailed the state's Democratic attorney general, Andy Beshear, by fewer than 5,000 votes. "The people of Kentucky deserve a fair and honest election. With reports of irregularities, we are exercising the right to ensure that every lawful vote was counted," said Davis Paine, Bevin's campaign manager. Beshear claimed victory Tuesday night and has begun working on his transition, even though Bevin has not conceded. Bevin, fighting low popularity, got a boost from a rally with President Trump on Monday but struggled in suburbs he and Trump won handily before. The recanvassing is expected to be completed next week. [CNN]

5.

The stage at the next Democratic presidential debates just got a little more crowded. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for the November and December Democratic primary debates, respectively, when a new Quinnipiac University poll out of Iowa on Wednesday gave them the numbers they needed to qualify. Gabbard picked up 3 percent of the vote in the survey of likely caucus-goers to become the 10th candidate to qualify for the November debate. Klobuchar, who had already earned a spot on stage in November, received 5 percent backing, enough to make her one of the six candidates who have sealed spots in December. The others are former Vice President Joe Biden; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). [ABC News, The New York Times]

6.

An aide to Vice President Mike Pence testified Thursday in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump and reportedly said she found a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky unusual in its political nature. Jennifer Williams, special adviser to Pence, was listening in on the July phone call in which Trump pushed Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, and she was reportedly "concerned" about it. She did not report her concerns. She said she did not know how much Pence knew about Trump's requested investigations, and did not know whether Trump asked Pence to mention them when he met with Zelensky in September. Pence has denied talking about "the issue of the Bidens" with Zelensky.

7.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday his country had captured a wife of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader who was killed in U.S.-led raid in Syria last month. Erdogan announced the capture of Baghdadi's first wife, identified as Asma Fawzi Muhammad al-Qubaysi, during a speech in Ankara, but provided few details. The late ISIS leader had four wives. A Turkish official said Qubaysi was among 11 ISIS suspects arrested in a police operation in Hatay province near the Syrian border in June 2018. She "volunteered a lot of information about Baghdadi and inner workings" of ISIS that led to arrests, the official said. Another suspect who identified herself as Leila Jabeer was identified through DNA as Baghdadi's daughter. [The Washington Post]

8.

China and the U.S. have agreed to lift new tariffs on each other's goods in stages as part of any "phase one" trade deal, China's Commerce Ministry said Thursday. Ministry spokesperson Gao Feng said the agreement came as the two sides moved closer to an agreement on ending their trade war. A key condition is that the two countries must scrap an equal amount of levies simultaneously. The news sent U.S. stock index futures surging. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq were all up by around 0.5 percent. All three main U.S. indexes reached all-time highs earlier in the week. President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly might delay a meeting to sign an interim trade deal until December. [Bloomberg, MarketWatch]

9.

Federal authorities have charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia. The charges were disclosed Wednesday in San Francisco after the Tuesday arrest of one of the suspects, U.S. citizen Ahmad Abouammo. He was accused of spying on three users for the Saudi government. The second suspect is Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen accused of accessing more than 6,000 users' personal information in 2015 for Saudi Arabia. One of the accounts belonged to prominent dissident Omar Abdulaziz, who later became close to journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was assassinated in Istanbul last year. The Saudis implicated in the case included an associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA determined probably ordered Khashoggi's killing. [The Washington Post]

10.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration's so-called conscience rule, which would have let health-care providers refuse to perform abortions or sterilizations on religious grounds, is unconstitutional. Engelmayer said the policy, which was set to take effect later this month, is "shot through with glaring legal defects." The administration had argued it had received a "significant increase" in complaints regarding conscience objections, but Engelmayer said that was "flatly untrue," making the rule "arbitrary and capricious." New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the groups challenging the policy, said it "was an unlawful attempt to allow health care providers to openly discriminate" for personal reasons. Trump administration officials did not immediately comment, saying they were reviewing the ruling. [The Washington Post]

"First, Amazon dropped a money bomb on the Seattle City Council elections," says Daniel Beekman at The Seattle Times. "Then, voters dropped their own bomb with Tuesday night's election results."

Amazon dumped $1.5 million into the city council races via a political action committee of the Metropolitan Seattle Chamber of Commerce. Lots of votes still have to be counted, but of the seven candidates the business organization backed in Tuesday's election, it appears no more than two will prevail.

"On balance, this is not the city council that Amazon or the chamber of commerce wanted to see," councilmember Lorena González, who was not up for re-election, told The Associated Press on Wednesday as the votes trickled in. In 2010, seven of the nine city council members were backed by the chamber, former Mayor Mike McGinn added, and now they will have just two or three allies. "Amazon's spending helped unite and grow the left," he told AP. "The labor and social justice block gained seats in this election."

Even Egan Orion, a chamber-backed candidate trying to unseat Socialist Council member Kshama Sawant, seemed annoyed at having "the shadow of Amazon hanging over me." Having Amazon's backing "was completely unnecessary" and "a big distraction from our closing arguments," Orion added.

The city council clashed with Amazon in 2018 when it passed an "Amazon tax" to get large Seattle companies to help pay for homeless services. It later repealed the tax after fierce blowback from Amazon. The online retailer said it's pleased with Tuesday's election results. "We're looking forward to working with the new city council, which we believe will be considerably more open to constructive dialogue and making the decisions that need to be made in order for Seattle to be world-class city to live and do business," Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement.

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It's difficult being a cat person in a world full of dog people. When Disney+ launches on Tuesday, it will include canine classics such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, The Ugly Dachshund, The Shaggy D.A., White Fang, You Lucky Dog, Fox and the Hound, Snow Dogs, 101 Dalmatians, Life Is Ruff, Eight Below, Santa Paws, and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups. One has to seriously wonder if, on top of everything else, the inclusion of a Lady and the Tramp remake was absolutely necessary. At the very least, if we're going to go through this exercise of waving the live-action wand at every animated classic, couldn't the studio have done an Aristocats reboot first?

But it was more than just Disney's dog favoritism that made me apprehensive about the forthcoming movie. The live-action Lady and the Tramp follows up Disney's disastrous remake of The Lion King, a movie that somehow managed to render a perfectly good story soulless and terrifying with its photorealistic digital animals. The straight-to-streaming release plan for Lady didn't seem to bode well either, nor did anything I saw in its trailer, which featured a whole lot of creepy CGI "talking" dog mouths. Taken all together, Lady and the Tramp was the rare movie I'd confidently written off before I even watched it.

So it is with great surprise — not to mention great reluctance as a cat lover — that I have to report the new Lady and the Tramp actually isn't bad at all. It's even, dare I say it, pretty good.

Directed by Charlie Bean, with a script co-written by Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha; Support the Girls) and newcomer Kari Granlund, Lady and the Tramp isn't packed with surprises, though. Aside from a few minor details (a southern setting in place of a midwestern one; a newly diverse cast), the film follows the basic premise of its 1955 predecessor. Lady, a cocker spaniel ingénue, is the adored pet of Jim Dear and Darling before the humans have a baby and Lady is relegated to second fiddle. Then one day, when Jim Dear and Darling are on vacation, Lady gets muzzled by the house-sitter, Aunt Sarah (an unfairly maligned cat lover), and manages to escape. Out on the streets, Lady falls in with a stray mutt named Tramp, who takes her out for cinema's most famous spaghetti dinner.

But what might have been a paint-by-numbers remake is given sparkle and charm by a cast that seems actually invested in bringing their characters to life. Tessa Thompson is the refined voice of Lady, while Justin Theroux is the charismatic Tramp. Singer and actress Janelle Monáe loans her voice to the street-smart Pekingese Peg, who does a jazzy if unmemorable rendition of "He's a Tramp." Really, though, the movie is worth streaming just to hear Sam Elliott, voicing a bloodhound named Trusty, drawl thoughtfully: "Banana peel ... trash ... cat dung." The human cast are lovely too: Kiersey Clemons is the smiling mother Darling, Adrian Martinez lends an unexpected depth to the dogcatcher Elliott, and Arturo Castro is the delightful waiter who serves Lady and Tramp their romantic meal.

Really, though, it is the animal actors that make all the difference. Where other movies and shows have relied on clunky CGI animals and digital fur technology, Lady and the Tramp instead employed actual dogs Rose and Monte in the lead roles. The effect is totally vintage Disney; the movie is far more Homeward Bound than it is 2019 Lion King, and all the better for it. Still, in one of the movie's few major missteps, Disney animated the dogs' mouths when they "talk," giving the pooches a goofy appearance that I never quite stopped giggling at. It'd have been better to simply use voice-overs.

I also regret to report that the vilification of cats continues in Lady and the Tramp, although in this remake, Lady is tormented by two gray shorthairs rather than the racist Siamese cats of the original. Gone, also, are those cats' offensive "Siamese Cat Song," in favor of a creative track about "redecorating," although the music throughout the film seems more an afterthought than a driving stylistic choice.

Unlike other Disney live-action remakes, which use their medium as an excuse to make the stories more adult, Lady and the Tramp is clearly a children's movie first and foremost. But live action also has the unintended consequence of making the original's mature moments even more disturbing, including when one of Lady's companions in the pound is taken to be euthanized, and when Tramp kills a rat (which now looks like a real rat!) in the baby's room. The latter scene, at least, is hidden from view by a curtain, although it's a good reminder of the lingering advantages that hand-drawn animation has over the live-action fad.

The biggest reason why Lady and the Tramp works when so many other Disney live-action remakes have failed is because it seems to exist as more than just a naked money grab by the studio. The film is not being released in theaters, for one thing; it will come included with a Disney+ subscription on Tuesday, a kind of freebie enticement for on-the-fence would-be subscribers. As several other critics have pointed out, this format actually serves the movie better than a traditional release would have; audiences won't go in with the unfairly high expectations they might have had if they spent $17 on a ticket. Plus, if you decide midway through that the creepy moving dog mouths are too much, Disney+ has the original 1955 Lady and the Tramp waiting for you just a click away.

Now, how about that Aristocats remake?

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Tuesday's election results brought some upsets, perhaps none more dramatic than Kentucky's gubernatorial race: In that deep red state, where President Trump's commitment to defending the coal industry helped him win by 30 points in 2016, a Democrat nonetheless just eked out a win for governor.

Kentuckians' understandable desire for economic prosperity, their association of that prosperity with coal, and the resulting perception that they must support Republicans to defend coal, have all formed a tightly-mortared political brick wall — one that's been nearly impossible for Democrats to break through. Tuesday's results certainly don't portend a collapse of that wall. But they do suggest some cracks are growing.

First, let's set this event in its proper context, so no one gets too excited. Democrat Andy Beshear, up until now Kentucky's Attorney General, and the son of the state's last Democratic governor, appears to have won by the thinnest of margins. His opponent and the current governor, Republican Matt Bevin, has yet to concede. Bevin is known for an exceedingly abrasive style, and has won no favors in Kentucky by picking fights with everyone from state public employees to journalists to judges. In particular, Bevin got into battles with the state's teachers, a popular constituency that Beshear eagerly embraced. Basically, Bevin went out of his way to make himself toxic despite the popularity of the GOP's national brand in the state, and Beshear still just squeaked by.

Nor did Beshear exactly go out of his way to yoke himself to the Democratic Party's climate warriors or the idea of a Green New Deal. When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) a presidential candidate and one of the GND's biggest boosters, campaigned in Kentucky, Beshear notably didn't join him. When asked about climate change and the Democrats' enthusiasm for a GND, Beshear largely ignored that specific program and responded in more general terms about the need to diversify the state's energy portfolio with "as many renewables as possible."

What did happen was that Republicans made every effort to yoke Beshear to Democratic Party's national climate policy aspirations — relentlessly trying to link him to the GND itself and its prominent advocates. Furthermore, when asked, Beshear certainly didn't deny that greenhouse gases need to go away entirely by 2050. "Climate change is real," he told reporters. "You don't have to take my word for it, ask any farmer here in Kentucky or ask the U.S. military which is preparing for it each and every day."

Beshear also emphasized the need for economic justice in transitioning to renewables: "We've got to do it in a responsible way so that we don't price the poorest of the poor out of their electricity," he said, using his own history as attorney general battling electricity price hikes from utilities, as an example. Finally, he pointed out that battling climate change can provide new opportunities for jobs and economic activity, rather than simply nixing old ones. "Beshear was the only candidate that said managing climate impacts also means improving failing sewage and water infrastructure in rural Appalachia and investing in agricultural technologies to feed the world under changing conditions," reported WFPL radio in Louisville.

Alongside all this, Beshear "carried several counties in the eastern Kentucky coalfields that were traditional Democratic strongholds but have trended away from the party in recent years," Travis Waldron observed in HuffPost.

When she dug into the place of a Green New Deal in Kentucky politics earlier this year, In These Times' Rachel Cohen observed that the state is caught in a kind of liminal space.

Republican dominance in Kentucky is still a relatively new phenomenon, and there's a history in Kentucky politics of embracing big New Deal-style public investment programs as basic kitchen table efforts to bring everyone good jobs. "FDR was just a peg or two under Jesus Christ here," Tom Sexton, a left-wing Kentucky podcaster, told Cohen. "You still hear that from people in their 80s who are still very much tied to the Democratic Party of yesterday, including my family."

Most everyone in Kentucky also seems to understand that coal's days are numbered. If the need to tackle climate change doesn't do it in, competition from other energy sources like natural gas will — as a part of Kentucky's own energy needs, coal has dropped from 90 percent of generation to 75 percent in less than a decade.

What few know is what new businesses will replace coal's role in the state's economy. The industry does not employ that big a portion of the state's workers, but it tends to pay well, despite the backbreaking labor and myriad health problems it brings. Coal is also something that Kentucky can sell to the whole country and world, bringing in money that supports all the more geographically localized economic activity like grocery stores, or services like mechanics and hair dressers. Exactly how Kentucky could find itself awash in good jobs and broad prosperity on the other side of the green transition remains a fuzzy vision.

Nonetheless, Beshear is focusing on the right things to make that transition palatable: The overwhelming need to protect low-income Kentuckians, and the promise of a collective, bottom-up effort to rebuild the state and find new forms of abundant employment.

As a policy program, the Green New Deal is uniquely suited to achieving those goals. And despite the caricature of the GND as a fringe left program, its actual logic is much more in keeping with how everyday voters think about these problems. While many "moderates" still emphasize top-down, technocratic efforts to fight climate change by making fossil fuels more expensive (which will harm low-income Americans if not properly offset with aid), the GND invites Kentuckians and all Americans into the green shift as a populist, democratic project: Let us employ people and pay them well to shift every aspect of the state's energy system and infrastructure in a green direction, and then work together with government's creative power to find the new industries that will drive Kentucky's economy.

Beshear may not have openly embraced the GND. But his campaign laid the rhetorical groundwork for how the policy can be championed in Kentucky. And that campaign just ended with Beshear likely in the governor's seat.

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Donald Trump is the first president to make C-SPAN unsuitable viewing for children. "The president used language that some may find offensive," reads a disclaimer on C-SPAN's website for a speech he gave in July. In that speech, President Trump said, "If you don't support me, you're going to be so goddamn poor."

Taking the Lord's name in vain is mild compared with the president's recent statements. On Friday, he called Beto O'Rourke a "poor bastard." On Sunday, he retweeted a video of a UFC fighter calling him "a bad motherf---er." On Monday, he called Gov. Matt Bevin (R-Ky.) "a pain in the ass."

Trump is so obscene that the country's newspapers and websites, including this one, have had to change their rules about publishing profanity just to keep up. Thanks to him, you can now read "shithole" in The New York Times.

Last month, Trump said Joe Biden "understood how to kiss Barack Obama's ass," called Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) "a pompous 'ass,'" called himself a "son of a bitch," called the impeachment inquiry "BULLSHIT," said "hell" 72 times, acted out a love scene between former F.B.I. agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) "couldn't carry" Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's jock strap, and told a reporter, "Don't be rude."

Earlier this year, in an interview with The New York Times, Trump said he "beat the shit out of" his Republican rivals in 2016. At CPAC, he said his enemies were trying to sabotage him "with bullshit." At a rally in March, he said Democrats were "defrauding the public with ridiculous bullshit." "It's bullshit, okay? It's bullshit," Trump said in another speech, aptly describing all of his speeches.

Trump uses profanity for both cathartic and demagogic purposes, as a way to vent his frustrations and to stir up crowds. In 2016, he said it got him "standing ovations." His supporters regard his cussing with the same esteem as the national anthem.

Swearing is supposed to denote authenticity, and Trump's supporters love how authentically boorish he is. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. said that Trump "has single-handedly changed the definition of what behavior is 'presidential' from phony, failed & rehearsed to authentic, successful & down to earth." At last, here is a president who is too real to be polite.

In a 2017 Pew survey, Trump supporters cited his personality, not his policies, as what they liked most about him. They like his personality more than his policies for the same reason that men like the nudity in X-rated movies more than the plots: The vulgarity is the point.

Trump's offensive language is the least of his offenses. Compared with his high crimes and misdemeanors, it's frivolous. Still, what the president says matters, because what he says sets the tone for public discourse.

Profanity is proliferating. According to a study by the Parents Television Council, there was 43.5 percent more profanity on kid-friendly TV shows in 2017-18 than there was in 2007-08. Coincidentally, there was also 100 percent more Donald Trump as president.

Trump isn't the only public figure cursing on TV. Last month, during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said that Trump's abandonment of the Kurds was "batshit crazy." Last week, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace referred to three people as "chickenshit." And no one cared.

To combat Trump, Democrats are imitating him. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) "doesn't have shit to prove," and on CNN described the "thoughts and prayers" trope as "bullshit." In televised debates, Democratic presidential candidates have said "piss," "shit," and "asses." Cussing is so popular that at a recent debate, ABC had to warn participants to "avoid cursing or expletives in accordance with federal law."

Instead of avoiding expletives, politicians at every level are embracing them. Trump used the word "bullshit" only once in his first two years. He has used it 12 times in the past nine months. According to GovPredict, an analytics firm, federal and state lawmakers tweeted 1,818 profanities in the first six months of this year, compared with 2,578 last year; 1,571 in 2017; 193 in 2016; and 132 in 2015.

For politicians, cursing serves not as a way to convey ideas but as a way to suppress them. Beto O'Rourke's position on gun violence, neatly emblazoned on T-shirts, is that it's "f---ed up," i.e., undesirable. As for whether "radical Islamic terrorists" should be in or out of our country, Trump wants them "the hell out of our country," which is a brash way of saying what everybody but radical Islamic terrorists thinks. As Steven Pinker observes in his book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature, the use of profanity is "a confession by the speaker that he can think of no other way to make his words worth attending to."

Trump, who said he uses profanity "as a way of emphasis" and because he has "fun doing it," objects to its use when it's directed at him. After Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said that Democrats were "going to impeach the motherfucker," Trump said Tlaib "dishonored herself" by using a word he used in a 2011 speech to the Nevada Republican Party. Trump exempts himself from standards he enforces on others.

There was a time when presidents said lofty things in public and obscenities in private. Abraham Lincoln told ribald jokes, but not in the Gettysburg Address. Lyndon Johnson said things like, "He wouldn't know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel," but not on TV. In his recorded conversations, Richard Nixon took the Lord's name in vain and ranted about "sons of bitches," sometimes in the same sentence ("That was a goddamn tough son of a bitch"). Nixon said "crap," "a bunch of crap," "bullshit," "I don't give a shit," and "asshole," but he never excreted profanities in public.

Reading the transcripts of Nixon's conversations, Billy Graham said he wanted to throw up. "Never in all the times I was with him, did he use language even close to that," Graham said. "I felt physically sick and went to the seclusion of my study at the back of the house. Inwardly, I felt torn apart."

Today's evangelicals overlook Trump's obscenities. "It's not something we're going to get morally indignant about," Jerry Falwell Jr. said. "This is not a crisis on the level of Watergate, the Civil War, or the Vietnam War," Ralph Reed, a conservative Christian activist, said. He's right: Saying "bastard" is not like Americans firing canons at each other.

What Trump says in public is worse than 95 percent of what Nixon said in private. When Nixon suggested that Jews were disloyal, he did so privately. When Trump made a similar accusation this summer, he did so in front of reporters. Instead of expecting more from the president, we are allowing more.

The worst thing about the president's foul mouth is that it's not the worst thing about him. In a weird way, his profanities and slurs help him, by diverting our attention. Every revolting thing Trump says is a distraction from every revolting thing he does.

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It is a lot of work keeping up with all the things that are bad. This is especially the case for those things that were, until very recently, good, in some cases unambiguously. Bottled water is a good example. Remember when everyone who was not some kind of toothless Mountain Dew-addicted deplorable used to go through one of those big Costco-sized containers of bottled water every week? Now we are still expected to drink half of our body weight in water every week, but only with a refillable container. (Whatever happened, I wonder, to that marvelously democratic institution the drinking fountain?) Meanwhile, carbonated soft drinks have been #problematic for ages, along with cigarettes and hamburgers and toilet paper.

I have to say, though, that I did not expect asthma inhalers to join hard-hitting NFL defenses on my list of problematic faves. If, like me, you have a sibling who was born prematurely and spent a good part of his early childhood breathing medicine from a nebulizer and his teen years sucking on an inhaler, you would know how valuable these devices are. The fact that in the process they are said to release something called hydrofluoroalkane into the atmosphere probably would not occur to you as something we should be too worried about. But according to research reported by the BBC, inhalers are, in terms of the environmental threat they pose, "as big as eating meat."

Wowee zowee. Being responsible stewards of what I stubbornly insist on referring to as "creation" in many cases means not doing certain things that we find fun or convenient. In most cases I come down proudly and heartlessly on the side of the former. All those plastic toys and holiday decorations? Shut down the factories. Fast fashion? Check out American Giant or buy second-hand, you goon. Meat? Save your roast for Sunday, and meet my new friend the Impossible Whopper. I really am happy to be a joyless scold about nearly everything, unless I happen to like it myself, in which case I have an airtight defense ready if you want to hear it.

But when it comes to medicine? Come on. This isn’t a wasteful hospital visit for Dylan’s sprained ankle or turning healthy, complication-free pregnancies into $50,000 hospital stays involving risky drugs. This is climate researchers jumping the shark. Their objection isn’t even to the no-doubt growing piles of lost or abandoned inhalers that will be sitting in landfills for centuries — it is to their use in the first place, on account of the hydrowhatevers. Admit it, kids, you weren't thinking about the polar bears when you huffed on that puffer there — you were thinking, selfishly, about your own pathetic lungs.

Where is the sense of proportion here? The so-called "global economy" is organized around the idea that natural resources must be extracted as carelessly as possible so that Third-World wage slaves can transform them into worthless objects that are handed to us at counters or shipped to us in plastic packages and disposed of almost instantly, all in order for GDP numbers to go up on a screen. It is as senseless as it is violent and unnecessary. The large-scale changes in everything from what we eat and and where we live to how we conceive of work that we need to adopt in order for all of this to change will meet with resistance everywhere in the world. Shaming poor people because they lack the resources to commute via bicycle and buy organic salt in bulk, and the sick because they need gas-releasing medicine is not how we are going to fix the problem. If we confiscated every inhaler in the world and replaced them all with some kind of equally helpful alternative zero-emissions therapy, the world's most advanced electron microscope would not be able to detect a shift in the position of the dots on the carbon graphs.

Which is not to say that it wouldn't have any effect. Blaming inhalers will certainly empower those who insist that there is nothing wrong with the way we live now. They are wrong. But so are those who think that our ecological crisis — which is also economic, political, and, above all, spiritual — needs solving at the expense of humanity. The planet is here for us, not the other way around.

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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is a cop, as the saying goes, which is shorthand for the fact that her present enthusiasm for criminal justice reform was not so much in evidence during her years as a prosecutor. Among the most notorious blemishes on her record is her prosecution of parents of truant children as San Francisco district attorney and her support for a law which took the program statewide in California, landing some parents in jail.

That was the context in which many read Wednesday's Mother Jones report on the Harris campaign's plan for extending the school day to 10 hours, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. — at least, it's what I had in mind. It sounded like classic Harris: She identifies a situation most would agree is not great and sets about remedying it in a punitive, authoritarian way almost no one likes. We're a week into standard time; the sun sets at like 11 in the morning; and here's Kamala Harris trying to keep kids at their desks for three more hours after dark.

The reality of Harris' plan isn't that radical. Mother Jones describes it as "purposefully vague," a pilot program which funds 500 schools to explore how it would work in their specific community (this localism is a strong point) to "keep their doors open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with no closures except for weekends, federal holidays, and emergencies." So it's not simply adding three more hours of class time, but there's still a lot to dislike here. And beyond this particular proposal is the troubling trend it represents, which for whatever reason has received considerably less attention in other Democratic contenders' campaigns.

Harris cast her plan as a fix for two related problems. First, the standard school schedule (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.) does not match the standard work schedule (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), which presents an often expensive hardship for working parents. Second, this mismatch is an estimated $55 billion drain on our GDP each year.

The latter item is relatively easily set aside. There are no doubt lots of ways we could rearrange children's lives to grow GDP — if we're extending the school day to 10 hours, why not 12? 14? All the hours they're not sleeping? — that we rightly do not give serious consideration. Even if we differ on how the competing goods of economic growth and family time should be balanced and what role the state should play in balancing them, most Americans would agree it is wrong to so value money above the welfare of children. Harris' decision to frame her plan as "an economic growth and child development strategy" — note the order — is off-putting, as it should be.

The first item, however, is more formidable. Harris is correct that childcare is often incredibly expensive; that parents (especially mothers) have to modify their work schedules to accommodate the school day; and that a tiny minority of elementary schoolers (3 percent) and a larger subset of middle schoolers (19 percent) end up unsupervised between 3 and 6 p.m. because there is no after-school care or similar program to watch them while their parents finish work.

Still, there are some significant assumptions in this diagnosis and Harris' response that merit scrutiny. Chief among them is the notion that if school is shorter than work, we should make school longer instead of making work shorter. This is so both individually (many parents may want to leave at 3 to see more of their kids and less of their coworkers) and economy-wide (the average office drone works just three of eight hours in a day, and a shorter workweek has been found to correlate to all sorts of benefits, including the higher productivity Harris wants).

Also unfairly assumed is the wisdom of structuring — and, specifically, permitting the state to control the structuring of — ever more of children's lives. Harris is not the only Democratic candidate moving in this direction. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as well as former HUD Secretary Julian Castro all back "a 'community school' model that would provide extended learning time and after-school programs in addition to other social services," the Mother Jones story notes. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg's terrible mandatory national service idea for young adults arguably belongs in this category, too.

The candidates all have admirable aims with these proposals, like helping working parents, giving kids more education, and fostering volunteerism and social cohesion. But the result in practice is young people spending more time in controlled, institutional settings and less time with their families or on their own, building the skills of independence they need for adulthood. Children need to be let alone sometimes. These plans eat up what little freedom they have.

You don't have to go full free-range parent to find this trend worrisome. Kids' free time is already shrinking, being consumed by longer hours of instruction, after-school care, and other scheduled activities. Unstructured recess time is on the decline, contrary to pediatricians' recommendation, and where recess persists, it is often hedged into inactivity by onerous rules and heavy homework loads. And parents are increasingly subject to scrutiny, including from law enforcement, for statistically safe behavior that was considered perfectly normal a decade or two ago, like leaving a child in the car for five minutes while running into a store or letting them play at a park alone. Making the school day 10 hours long is a huge jump down this road whose destination we frankly do not know.

And don't you remember what it's like to be a kid? Don't you remember how interminable a seven-hour school day felt? How you watched the clock's glacial progress toward 3 p.m.? How badly you wanted to go home and play around as you pleased? Harris isn't necessarily proposing three more hours of instruction — though it seems possible some of her 500 test schools could try exactly that — but she is proposing three more hours where children are required to be at school, doing adult-directed "enrichment activities." She's raised some good questions, but her answer would devour three more hours of childhood 180 days a year.

Tuesday's victories in deep-red Kentucky, where the Democrats appear to have squeaked out a win for the governor's mansion, and increasingly blue Virginia, where the Democrats took decisive control of the state government, have buoyed the spirits of a party just coming off a panic about weak polling for their three presidential frontrunners in swing states. And they deserve to feel upbeat.

But Democrats shouldn't get ahead of themselves in their celebration, because these results don't reveal any material change in the overall landscape. Virginia has become a must-win for Democrats, not a swing state, and Kentucky is still emphatically Trump country. These victories confirmed the main pattern of 2018: The Democrats are gaining increasing support in once Republican suburban areas, but they are making little or no headway in rural white counties.

They also confirmed another lesson of 2018: Ticket-splitting is still possible when a particular contest is distinguishable from the larger political context. In 2018, Sherrod Brown won re-election to the Senate in Ohio even as the Democratic candidate for governor failed to achieve victory, while in Iowa the Democrats flipped two of four House seats while also failing to claim the governorship. Similarly, in Kentucky this week, an unpopular GOP governor came up short even as the Republicans dominated the other statewide contests.

Those lessons have implications for the other big national contest of 2020, one that looms almost as large as the presidential race: the battle for the Senate. Even if the Democrats win the presidency, to translate any of their plans into action, they are going to have to take the Senate. But taking the Senate means achieving victory in deep red territory.

True, the top targets for the Democrats in 2020 are two purple-to-blue states with relatively unpopular senators. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) has the third-lowest approval rating of any sitting senator, and his disapproval rating is 3 percent higher. Representing a state that has trended more and more Democratic over the past decade, Gardner is properly seen as highly vulnerable. The other target, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has swatted away past challenges with ease, but she may be seriously vulnerable for the first time, as Trump has polarized the historically independent voters of the Pine Tree State.

In those two contests the Democrats might well benefit from nationalizing the Senate contests and tying Trump around their opponents' necks. But there are few if any other races for which that is the case. That's another lesson of the 2018 midterms, where four incumbent Democratic senators — in Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota — lost their re-election bids even as the Democrats succeeded in decisively flipping the House. Nationalizing a Senate race is deadly if you're running blue in a red state.

To win the Senate, the Democrats need to win in states Donald Trump won in 2016, and that he has anywhere from a good chance to a dead certainty to win in 2020:

Iowa: The state's junior senator, Joni Ernst (R), has seen her net-approval numbers crater in the last quarter. The drop was most pronounced among Republicans, which may mean they will rally back to her in the end, but also means she has no room to triangulate to shore up her support among independents. Iowa is a genuine swing state that moved dramatically from 2012 to 2016, and snapped back significantly in 2018 as well. But it has many characteristics of deeper red states, such as a high proportion of rural dwellers.

North Carolina: Republican Sen. Thom Tillis currently has worse net-approval numbers than either Gardner or Ernst, and his approval ratings are scraping the bottom of the Senate barrel. North Carolina is a red-trending-purple state, and Tillis barely beat Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan in the Republican wave year of 2014. But it's also a state where Trump currently runs better than in other swing states.

Arizona: Appointed Republican incumbent Martha McSally still has a barely positive net-approval rating, but her numbers are dropping and she's drawn a strong challenger in astronaut Mark Kelly. Arizona is another red-trending-purple state, but it's also a state whose more popular senator — a Democrat — is practically defined by her independence from the national party. Trump may well be an albatross in this state — but the Democratic brand hasn't become a draw.

Kansas: The Democrats are making a serious play for an open seat in this deep red state, with a strong candidate in former Republican state Sen. Barbara Bollier. Her chances only get better if the Republicans repeat their error of 2018's gubernatorial race and nominate Kris Kobach. But Kansas remains an overwhelmingly Republican state, one where Trump is certain to win.

Georgia: The state actually has two Senate elections in 2020: Sen. David Purdue is defending his seat, and Sen. Johnny Isakson is retiring, triggering a special election. Purdue is favored to win re-election, but the Democrats could make a real race of either contest depending on who both parties put up.

Texas: Sen. John Cornyn (R) is very likely to win re-election, but as in Georgia there are signs that Texas is trending in a Democratic direction, and the right candidate could make a difference, as Beto O'Rourke almost did in 2018.

Alabama: The Democrats will be defending their own most vulnerable senator, Doug Jones, here. His chances look better if he faces a rematch with scandal-plagued provocateur Roy Moore, but his net approval rating isn't terrible regardless, and if the contest isn't nationalized, he could make a strong case for himself as a good defender of Alabama's interests.

In some of these cases — such as Arizona and Texas — the national trends that Democrats have been riding are part of what are putting them in contention. These are increasingly well-educated, racially diverse, and suburban states — resembling Virginia in all these respects. In others — like Alabama — the opposite is the case, and Kentucky is the better point of comparison. But it is hard to imagine that in any of them the Democrats would benefit significantly from allowing the contest to be maximally polarized along the lines of the national contest — even though, all else being equal, strong down-ballot candidates and a strong presidential effort would benefit each other.

That's the challenge for the Democrats in a nutshell. You can't beat something with nothing, so to win the presidency they will need to run a strong candidate on a strong positive agenda. That agenda and that nominee must expand support in multiple directions: to bring out enthusiastic turnout from minorities, to win over educated moderate suburbanites, and to blunt Trump's appeal to working-class white voters. That's a tall enough order.

But to win the Senate, they'll probably need to encourage candidates to separate themselves to some extent from at least parts of that agenda so as to be viable in states where "Democrat" remains an ugly word. In the best-case scenario, where a Democrat wins the presidency on a mandate of big structural change, that probably means a post-victory repeat of the frustrating intra-party negotiations that characterized the first year of the Obama administration.

Winning is never all you hope it could be. It sure beats losing, though.

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Stephen Colbert had Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Ian McKellen as guests on Wednesday's Late Show, and he asked if they'd do him a favor. "You're trying to, you know, Brexit ... Britain exiting the European Union," Colbert told his British guests. "We're trying to get Trump to exit the Oval Office — we're attempting a Trexit over here."

"Donald Trump, you may have heard, released a transcript of him essentially extorting the Ukrainian president," Colbert said. "Now, he says it's a 'perfect' phone call, perfectly innocent, and he wants to read it on air in a fireside chat, and he thinks when he reads it out loud, it will suddenly seem so innocent that you won't want him removed from office. And since I have two of the greatest living actors right here, I was wondering if ... " And he handed out their scripts.

It was actually just one line from Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but it's a memorable one. Colbert had Mirren and McKellen act out the line in different tones, but it made no difference, Mirren said. "There's no way of saying that any other way except for guiltily. Because it's a guilty phrase."

Mirren and McKellen also discussed their new film, The Good Liar, and tried out their own lying chops on Colbert. You can watch that below.

Elizabeth Warren's "Medicare for All" proposal is supposed to be the wonk-approved version of single-payer universal health care. Surely the supersmart Harvard professor and her team of elite economic advisers would be the ones to fashion a blueprint that makes the financial math work in a realistic way. No gimmicks or dodges. No "rigged health plan" from the presidential candidate attacking America's "rigged economy."

But that's not the Medicare-for-all plan that Warren delivered. Yes, superficially the math works. Of course, making everything balance in a spreadsheet is a faulty first step if the assumptions underlying those numbers are economically unreasonable or politically fantastical. And the Warren plan is chock full of assumptions afflicted with both flaws. It assumes the U.S. can make wealth taxes on the superrich work when many other advanced economies have abandoned them. (Only four of the 15 European countries that tried a wealth tax in recent years kept it.) It assumes it can squeeze far more costs from the system than other estimates from experts not currently running for president. And it assumes those deep cuts wouldn't result in hospital closures and less investment in potential breakthrough drugs.

As an author of one highly respect study — which concluded Medicare-for-all spending would be 50 percent higher than the Warren plan does — told The Washington Post: "We felt we were making pretty optimistic, aggressive assumptions. They're making more optimistic, more aggressive assumptions."

But the perhaps biggest faulty assumption is being made by us, not Team Warren. Maybe we're all assuming that this plan is something approximating what Warren would really try to do if elected president next November. Then again, maybe it's not that all. Maybe it's more about politics than policy with the goal of exciting progressive primary voters and burnishing her superwonk brand. And by including a detailed funding proposal, the Warren plan will get more serious treatment by economic journalists, further burnishing the senator's reputation as a serious thinker.

Washington watchers have seen this phenomenon before. Former House Speaker and 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was greatly aided in his political rise by his reputation as an innovative policy entrepreneur. Before Elizabeth Warren, he was the wonk-approved politician with all the plans. Or, to be more exact, a single megaplan. Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" — later iterations were renamed "The Path to Prosperity" — promised to fundamentally reform taxes and spending to deal with America's long-term federal debt problem. And as the plan evolved, Ryan was typically given credit for at least attempting to deal with the sorts of thorny fiscal problems other politicians avoided.

Yet like the Warren plan, the various Ryan plans were full of questionable assumptions, such as assuming tax revenue would stay steady despite big tax cuts. Or that radical Medicare and Medicaid reform could really put our fiscal house in order. Still, when Ryan first presented his plan to conservative activists, they saw it as a doable roadmap to much smaller government. Progressives, on the other hand, see the unrealistic Warren plan as a doable roadmap to much bigger government.

But neither are doable roadmaps, really. Instead, they are political documents, both aspirational and ideological. And the math doesn't work in either. Yet Ryan ended his political career assailed by Democrats as a policy phony and fiscal flim-flam man. It's unlikely any Democrats anywhere will characterize Warren similarly.

Still, both plans serve a useful policy purpose, if inadvertently, by skirting the same issue. To avoid running a dangerous experiment in fiscal irresponsibility, the future federal tax burden will need to be higher than it is today — even without a massive health-care expansion. All Americans will need need to pay higher taxes. And meeting that goal while doing the least economic harm is through a broad consumption tax, such as the value-added taxes Europeans pay.

If we want to spend like Scandinavia, then we probably need to tax like them. And that means something like a VAT. Low corporate taxes, too. The average Nordic nation has a corporate tax rate at about the same level as the U.S. after the Trump tax cuts. And only Norway has a wealth tax, one just a fraction of the 6 percent tax Warren has proposed.

Slashing spending, as Ryan would prefer, or attacking the rich, as Warren would prefer, isn't going to fix the budget. Their plans accidentally demonstrate that reality. Maybe that's not the message either plan intended to send, but it comes through loud and clear in both.

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"Last night there were elections all over the country, and America got hit by another blue wave," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. "Surf's up, Democrats." In Kentucky, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin was apparently unseated by his Democratic challenger. "Bevin lost by about 5,000 votes, and as of this morning he refused to concede defeat," he said, "proving once again that Republicans are the party of men who won't go away after you say no."

In Virginia, Democrats took control of both houses of the state legislature, Colbert said, but "perhaps the biggest victory belongs to a woman named Juli Briskman, who lost her job for flipping off Trump's motorcade two years ago. Well, last night Briskman got a new job, because she was elected supervisor in Loudoun County, Virginia. So Virginia's got a new county supervisor and a new state bird."

"Just imagine if she had mooned him! She would be governor by now," Jimmy Kimmel joked on Kimmel Live. In Kentucky, Bevin "was ahead by 5 points in the polls last week, then Trump showed up to support him, and he lost," he laughed. "Team Trump was in full spin mode today," insisting Trump almost dragged Bevin across the finish line.

Bevin was uniquely unpopular, but "no matter how they try to spin it, this is still a hugely bad sign for the GOP," Samantha Bee said on Full Frontal. Blue Virginia now has a chance to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and "add it to — I kid you not — the U.S. Constitution," she said. Also, "for the first time in almost 40 years, Democrats gained control of the city council of Mike Pence's hometown of Columbus, Indiana."

"A lot of this good news for Democrats is due to voters in the suburbs, where GOP support is cratering," Bee said. "Look, 2020 is still going to be a huge challenge, but it's nice to be reminded that people do give a s--t. And aside from his core supporters, everyone is sick of Trump's schtick."

"Say what you want about Trump, but he's priceless," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. "He's supposed to be campaigning for the governor of Kentucky, but he makes the whole election about himself. ... He's the kind of person who would show up at your death bed like, 'Please don't die! You said you'd give me a ride to the airport! Please! I don't want to get a taxi!'" Watch below.

Seth Meyers had a reminder for President Trump and his allies on Wednesday's Late Night about what happens if someone blows a whistle and it turns out there really is a fire. An anonymous intelligence official filed a complaint, through proper legal channels, on Trump's Ukraine dealings to kick off the House impeachment inquiry, he said, and now "Trump and his allies are fixated on the whistleblower because the actual evidence is damning and they have no response."

"So the whistleblower is the one who tipped everyone off to the fact that something very corrupt had happened, but since then we've seen the notes from the call, we've seen text messages from officials involved in the scheme, we've had Trump and his chief of staff confess on TV, and we've had one witness after another come forward and provide damning testimony," Meyers said. "We already have all the evidence. This is like if during the O.J. trial they not only had the gloves but dozens of witnesses, a tape of O.J. confessing, and a note inside the gloves that said 'If found at crime scene, return to O.J. Simpson, the murderer.' And yet, Trump and his allies remain obsessed with the whistleblower."

Yes, "Republicans are trying to blow the lid off the whistleblower's identity," Jimmy Kimmel said at Kimmel Live. "Today, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the alleged whistleblower's name, because of course he did, and one of Daddy's top apologists, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, is calling on the mainstream media to divulge the name, too."

Kimmel lingered on Paul, an erstwhile civil libertarian: "Remember the Rand Paul who campaigned on a platform about individual rights to privacy, who staunchly opposed things like wiretapping? Well, he's dead. And the new Rand Paul is a vindictive, spiteful little elf who moved out of the tree where he makes cookies to take up permanent residence in the president's a--." You can watch Kimmel interview Paul's pugilistic "neighbor" below.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) "has shot to the top of the polls thanks to her support among college graduates, Hispanic voters, and kids who ate lunch with their English teachers in middle school," Trevor Noah joked on Wednesday's Daily Show. "But there is one demographic who hears Elizabeth Warren and immediately s--ts their Armani suits. ... Yes, Wall Street bankers are more terrified of Elizabeth Warren than they are of a surprise gust of wind. 'Oh no, my cocaine! Waaah!'"

"It's not surprising that the people of Wall Street are afraid, because Elizabeth Warren has proposed some of the most progressive financial policies in years," Noah said. "Things like breaking up the big banks, increasing taxes on the ultra-wealthy, and making it easier for normal people to join the Illuminati — that's like a big thing." At the same time, "it's kind of hard to take the Wall Street crowd seriously," he said, because "this isn't the first time they've predicted the end of the world. ... Yes, for both Trump and Obama, analysts claimed that the stock market would tank. But do you know what actually happened? The exact opposite. It's been going up for 10 years."

"But according to these billionaires, they aren't just anti-Warren because she's threatening their wallet — no, they don't like her because she's also hurting their feelings," Noah said, showing one hedge fund manager brought to tears. "You're a billionaire who's crying because Elizabeth Warren is criticizing billionaires? Would you like a tissue?" After mocking their grief, he showed a trailer for a Warren-themed Wall Street horror movie. Watch below.

President Trump's baffling desire to buy Greenland got in the way of actual important work, acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor revealed during congressional testimony last month.

A transcript of Taylor's testimony to House impeachment investigators was made public on Wednesday. In his deposition, Taylor described what it was like in the weeks after Trump decided in mid-July to put a hold on military aid to Ukraine. In August, Cabinet members and top national security officials were desperate to hold a meeting with Trump about the matter, Taylor said, because Ukraine needed the money to fight off Russian military aggression.

While they all agreed a meeting with Trump needed to take place, it was difficult to set a date, Taylor said. Most of the Cabinet members had overseas work trips scheduled, and staffers who should have been involved in organizing the meeting were busy trying to find a way to make Trump's inexplicable dream of purchasing Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, come true.

"I think this was also about the time of the Greenland question, about purchasing Greenland, which took up a lot of energy in the NSC [National Security Council]," Taylor said. In response, Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said: "Okay. That's disturbing for a whole different reason."

On Monday, Ryan Straschnitzki surprised everyone when he started moving his legs, extending one so far that he almost kicked his therapist.

The 20-year-old from Alberta, Canada, was in a bus crash last year that left him paralyzed from the chest down. He learned about an experimental surgery that involves implanting an epidural stimulator in the spine, with the hope that it will restore some leg movement. He decided to give it a shot, and went to Thailand for the procedure.

Surgeons and therapists map out the nerves that should be stimulated, and the device sends out electrical currents, bypassing traditional pathways and reawakening those that are dormant. The surgery has only been performed on about 30 people, and Straschnitzki's mother, Michelle Straschnitzki, told CBC News that as soon as his legs moved, "He was as surprised as the rest of us. It just blows me away." Straschnitzki will stay in Thailand for another month for therapy, and is hoping to make Canada's Paralympics sledge hockey team.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff announced Wednesday that the House impeachment inquiry will hold its first public hearings in a week. "There you have it, the Schiff hits the fan next Wednesday," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. "And if the transcripts they've already released are any indication, this is going to be très cray, beybey."

The testimony released Wednesday was from William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and it "undermines every argument the president has made so far," Colbert said, pointing, for example, to Taylor's "clear understanding" that Ukraine would not get U.S. military aid until it agreed to conduct Trump's political investigations, which he understood to be a "quid pro quo." Trump "has been saying 'no quid pro quo' all this time, and now his own diplomat is saying 'yeah huh pro quo,'" Colbert said. "What else has the president been lying about? Is Mexico not gonna pay for the border wall?"

Gordon Sondland, Trump's ambassador to the European Union, belatedly acknowledged the quid pro quo in an amended statement Monday, and "now, Sondland's sudden awareness that he didn't want to go to jail has put Trump's Republican defenders in a bit of a bind," Colbert said. "When the facts aren't on your side, your only hope is ignorance," and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was more than up to the task, he added, showing Graham insisting he won't read any of the transcripts. "How tragic. Graham is clearly working through the five stages of Republican impeachment grief: Anger, denial, won't read, can't read, no hablo inglés." Watch Colbert try to educate Graham below.

Federal prosecutors said in court Wednesday that Steve Bannon, President Trump's former campaign chairman and White House chief strategist, will testify against longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone in his trial. Stone is being charged with lying to Congress, obstructing justice, and witness tampering in a case stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Stone pleaded not guilty.

Bannon is expected to testify about his and Stone's communications regarding WikiLeaks and its distribution of Democratic emails and other documents hacked by Russian operatives. The prosecutors are signaling that Bannon is "going to be a key witness in this case," and his testimony will be "super critical" to their case, CNN's Shimon Prokupecz said Wednesday evening.

Bannon is not a voluntary witness, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNBC, but he his being compelled to testify after he and his legal team tried to fend off numerous subpoenas. Prosecutors also said they will bring in Rick Gates, a Trump campaign vice chairman and presidential transition official, to testify against Stone. Gates was a cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation.

Italian Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti argues that the "21st century citizen must be a sustainable citizen," and he's changing the country's curriculum for students accordingly.

Starting next year, students in all grade levels will learn about climate change, the climate emergency, and sustainability. Fioramonti made the announcement on Tuesday, saying Italy will be the first country in the world to make learning about these topics compulsory. "I want to make the Italian education system the first education system that puts the environment and society at the core of everything we learn in school," Fioramonti told Reuters.

The topics will be worked into existing geography, math, and physics lessons. Environmental experts are working on the curriculum, and teachers are scheduled for training in January. Schools will be required to teach 33 hours worth of lessons on climate change and sustainability every year.

The White House will soon welcome two new members to the team helping President Trump deal with the House impeachment inquiry.

A senior administration official and a Republican close to the White House told Politico on Wednesday that Pam Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida, and Tony Sayegh, a former Treasury official, are both joining the effort to help Trump fight impeachment. Bondi will be a West Wing senior adviser, while Sayegh will work with the press team that is putting together a communications strategy.

The administration official said these jobs will be temporary, with Bondi and Sayegh classified as special government employees. Bondi, who worked on Trump's transition team, has a lot of fans in the White House, including first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. A Trump adviser told Politico Trump personally asked Bondi to join the team, and "when the president asks, you can't say no. Pam knows her stuff and looks the part. She's from central casting. That's important."

In late September, President Trump wanted Attorney General William Barr to hold a news conference and tell reporters that Trump didn't break any laws during his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The appeal made its way from the White House to the Justice Department, but Barr ultimately turned Trump down, the Post reports. During the phone call, Trump asked Zelensky to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The White House released a reconstructed partial transcript of the call on Sept. 25. Several Trump advisers told associates that while Trump wishes Barr had held the news conference, they are still on good terms, the Post reports.

The transcript shows that Trump told Zelensky he should investigate the Bidens with Barr's assistance, but a spokeswoman said Barr never spoke to Trump about this. A person close to the Trump administration told the Post they believe "Barr hasn't changed one bit, that he has had a healthy distance from the beginning. He knows the parameters of the relationship between a president and an AG." Barr has had Trump's back throughout his tenure, including in the aftermath of the Mueller report's release, when Barr announced he had reviewed the matter and determined Trump did not obstruct justice.

Avi Gupta has always looked up to Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, and after winning the game show's Teen Tournament this June, he knew exactly where a portion of his winnings would go.

Gupta, 18, took home $100,000, and he's donating $10,314 — an homage to pi — to pancreatic cancer research. Trebek shared in March that he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. Gupta, a freshman at Columbia University, said he was "devastated" by Trebek's diagnosis, and "knew that whatever I could do to help, I was going to try and do that — not just for him, but for the millions of others who suffer from cancer."

Trebek is spending this month educating the public about the risks and symptoms of pancreatic cancer, and Gupta said he knows that if "anyone can beat this disease and this diagnosis, it's Alex."

The Department of Justice on Wednesday charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia, accusing the men of accessing information on Saudi dissidents who use the social networking site.

The DOJ alleges that in 2015, Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, spied on three users, and Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, accessed the personal information of more than 6,000 Twitter users, including prominent dissident Omar Abdulaziz. Ahmed Almutairi, a Saudi citizen with ties to the Saudi royal family, was also charged, and is accused of being the point person between Saudi officials and the Twitter employees.

Abouammo was arrested on Tuesday. Alzabarah and Almutairi are believed to be in Saudi Arabia, The Washington Post reports. All three men are accused of working with a Saudi official who runs one of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's charitable organizations. This is the first time federal prosecutors have ever charged Saudis with spying inside the United States. For more on the case, and Twitter's response, visit The Washington Post.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided to run for his old Senate seat in Alabama, several Republican officials with knowledge of the matter told Politico on Wednesday.

He is expected to make an official announcement on Thursday. Sessions, 72, was a senator from 1997 to 2017, and was the first one to endorse Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. Sessions was Trump's first attorney general, and stepped down amid criticism from Trump, who was mad when Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. Earlier this year, Trump said picking Sessions as attorney general was his "biggest mistake."

Two Republican officials told The Associated Press Sessions has not talked about his decision with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or Trump. The deadline to file for the Senate race is Friday.

Fox News is lining up with some of its rivals on this one.

An executive at the network reportedly sent an email to staffers that was obtained by CNN warning hosts not to name the whistleblower whose complaint launched the congressional impeachment inquiry into President Trump's interactions with the Ukrainian government. The email explained the network's decision was based on the fact that Fox News had not "independently confirmed [the] name or identification of the anonymous whistleblower" and also advised production staffers not to "fulfill any video or graphic requests."

While some right-wing publications have run with a report that claims to know the person's identity, Fox has refrained from doing so up to this point, keeping the network in line with other mainstream media outlets.

So far, the network's hosts have stuck to the plan and kept any potential names under wraps, though host Sean Hannity, a vocal Trump proponent, said Monday that he personally has multiple confirmations of the whistleblower's identity. Still, even he says he'll "play the game for a little bit" and stay quiet, even though he says he's not scared of any possible lawsuits. Read more at CNN.

11-year-old Airbnb is finally growing up.

During a conference on Wednesday, CEO Brian Chesky announced the company's plans to verify all 7 million of its listings to give customers "peace of mind," The New York Times reports.

The long-awaited updates were galvanized by last week's mass shooting — at a so-called "party-house" in Orinda, California, rented through Airbnb — that left 5 people dead, CNBC notes. The party was advertised on Instagram as "Airbnb Mansion Party," and mostly attracted college students, while the victims were all under 30, including a 19-year-old girl, ABC News reports.

In a company-wide email, Chesky said "trust is the real energy that drives Airbnb" and pledged to "do everything possible," including launching a new 24/7 Neighbor Hotline, and manually screening suspicious "high-risk reservations." And according to Reuters, the company banned unauthorized "party-houses" altogether earlier this week.

On the other hand, the Airbnb CEO also tweeted the short-term rental giant's new plans to ensure that all its listings are advertised accurately, and fully refund customers if listings were inaccurate, after a recent Vice News investigation uncovered a "nationwide web of deception."

Despite the sweeping safety measures, Chesky did still mention that "two million people a night stay in Airbnbs," and so "it's hard to prevent every bad thing happening," the Times notes.