Hong Kong — Police in Hong Kong arrested three well-known pro-democracy activists over the course of just 24 hours; the latest move to quash anti-government protests heading into their 13th consecutive week. The move came on the eve of a highly-anticipated but now officially banned pro-democracy march on Saturday. Two of the activists were later released on bail.
The detentions brought swift condemnation from critics, but show deepening resolve from Beijing as a report by the Reuters news agency showed the extent to which China’s central government appears to be firmly in control of the semi-autonomous region’s administration.
Joshua Wong, 22, one of the leaders of the 2014 pro-democracy “Umbrella Revolution,” was walking to a subway station Friday morning when he was “forcefully pushed into a private minivan on the street in broad daylight,” according to activist group Demosisto’s Twitter account.
Wong is secretary-general of the group, which advocates for Hong Kongers to gain the right to directly elect their leaders rather than have them appointed by Beijing, or universal suffrage.
Agnes Chow, also 22 and a founding member of Demosisto, was arrested shortly after Wong, Demosisto said. Both were sent to Hong Kong police headquarters and charged with inciting and participating in illegal rallies.
Demosisto said Chow and Wong were both released later on Friday on bail, with their cases being adjourned until November.
My arrest shows the government answers our request for a dialogue with batons, tear gas, rubber bullets and mass arrest. Our freedom of assembly and other fundamental rights are eroded.
Speaking after his release, Wong vowed not to give up, telling gathered reporters: “we will continue our fight no matter how they arrest and prosecute us.” Separately, in a tweet, Wong said his arrest showed that China was answering “our request for a dialogue with batons, tear gas, rubber bullets and mass arrest. Our freedom of assembly and other fundamental rights are eroded.”
Andy Chan, 28, a founding member of Hong Kong’s first political party to advocate for independence from China, was arrested at Hong Kong airport Thursday night on suspicion of rioting and assaulting a police officer. In September 2018, the government banned his pro-independence Hong Kong National Party in the interest of national security and to protect the territorial integrity of the People’s Republic of China.
It was not immediately clear whether Chan was also released on bail.
The three successive detentions came a day before a planned mass rally and march on Saturday to mark the fifth anniversary of Beijing’s historic rejection of universal suffrage for Hong Kong. That denial triggered Hong Kong’s 79-day pro-democracy Umbrella Revolution five years ago.
Huge rally banned
Hong Kong police on Thursday announced they would not permit the Saturday rally, citing concerns over public order. Friday morning, a further appeal to hold events on August 31 was rejected by the police.
The event organizer, the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), accepted the decision and called off the demonstration, but said it would continue to apply for permits to hold rallies and marches.
Hong Kong protests take a dangerous turn
“Our first principle is always to protect all participants and make sure that no one bears legal consequences because of participating in the protests that we organize,” said CHRF co-leader Bonnie Leung. “We can see no way that we can keep this principle and also continue our march and protest. Therefore the Civil Human Rights Front has no option but to cancel the march tomorrow.”
“I really do not want to see anyone get hurt,” Leung added. “I really do not want to see clashes happen but (the government) decided to close that door and we see no olive branch at all so the Hong Kong people will have no choice but to continue our movement.”
It was the first rejection for the Civil Human Rights Front by Hong Kong authorities. The group has organized Hong Kong’s four previous mass rallies, which have drawn millions of Hong Kongers onto the streets for peaceful Sunday rallies. The group estimated that 1.7 million people attended its most recent march on August 18. The official police estimate put the turnout at 128,000 people.
Nathan Law, former chairman of Demosisto who is currently studying at Yale University, said pro-democracy activists were “very angry” by the last-minute ban on the protest, which he said would have “a chilling effect” on the movement.
“The arrest was also apparently a political operation. We appeal to the public to fear political violence and white terror and continue to fight for their rights on August 31,” said Law. “Hong Kong people, let’s go!”
Indeed, despite the ban for Saturday, people are expected to hit the streets. There were calls for a mass “religious gathering” in a Hong Kong playground. A loophole in Hong Kong law permits religious groups to gather without a permit. Those who gather are expected to sing church songs to identify themselves as a religious group.
More Chinese troops
The arrests also come just a day after fresh Chinese military troops entered the city under the cover of darkness. Chinese government mouthpiece The People’s Daily called the predawn movements on Thursday a “normal, routine, annual rotation” of forces, but U.S. intelligence sources told CBS News’ David Martin dismissed that as non-credible.
Officials told Martin there was no sign that the military unit already in Hong Kong had rotated out, and previous announcements of rotations included assurances that the overall number would not go up. The announcement on Thursday did not include that assurance.
Military vehicles of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pass Huanggang Port for a routine troop rotation in Hong Kong, August 29, 2019.
XINHUA/REUTERS
Fears continue to rise with the new Chinese troops inside Hong Kong. Friday morning, a short video uploaded by the People’s Daily to its Twitter-like Weibo page showed People’s Armed Police conducting anti-riot exercises in the southern city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, as they have for a few weeks.
Local Hong Kong news company RTHK said it appeared to be the fourth such exercise since the paramilitary police started massing in the border city earlier this month.
Meanwhile, state-run English-language newspaper China Daily published an editorial on Friday warning that “the armed forces stationed in the SAR (semi-autonomous region) will have no reason to sit on their hands. The PLA (People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese army) garrison in Hong Kong is not merely a symbol of Chinese sovereignty over the city. The troops there are duty-bound to maintain public order and protect the country if required to do so.”
This weekend marks 13 weeks of anti-government, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Initial anger over a now-suspended extradition bill that could have allowed Beijing to extradite Hong Kong citizens and foreigners into its opaque legal system has since exploded into calls for universal suffrage, greater democratic reform and the resignation of the city’s embattled chief executive Carrie Lam.
Lam’s proposal rejected?
Reuters said Friday that Lam made an appeal to Beijing earlier this summer, suggesting that a complete withdrawal of the contentious extradition bill could help assuage the protesters and calm the streets of the city.
Reuters cited three anonymous people “with direct knowledge of the matter” as saying “the Chinese central government rejected Lam’s proposal to withdraw the extradition bill and ordered her not to yield to any of the protesters’ other demands at that time.”
The report, if confirmed, would be the first clear evidence demonstrating what was already assumed; that Beijing is driving the Hong Kong chief executive’s response to the protests. That heavy-handed influence in what is meant to be a “semi-autonomous region” is exactly what the pro-democracy activists are demonstrating against.
With the hugely symbolic 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1 fast approaching, Beijing appears increasingly eager to silence the protesters’ calls and quiet the streets, to show the world there is indisputably, one China.
President Donald Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, is no longer part of the administration as of Thursday, according to reports.
The 27-year-old’s sudden resignation reportedly came after the president discovered that she shared details about the Trump family and Oval Office operations at a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters in New Jersey, according to a New York Times report that cited two anonymous sources familiar with the departure. Politico later confirmed the exit.
Westerhout was reportedly deemed a “separated employee” immediately after Trump learned of her actions and would not be allowed to return on Friday to the White House, the Times reported.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the director of Oval Office operations’ departure. Westerhout’s desk sat outside the Oval Office since the first day of Trump’s presidency, according to the Times.
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Before her job as the president’s gatekeeper, Westerhout was an assistant to Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Katie Walsh, ProPublica reported. At the same time, she appeared in the public sphere in 2016 as the “greeter” for important figures visiting the president-elect at Trump Tower, according to The Washington Post.
Prior to that, Westerhout interned for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, volunteered for then-state Sen. John Kuhn (R-S.C.) and interned for then-Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), according to the Charleston Post and Courier.
Politico reported that many officials from Trump’s 2016 campaign were allegedly cautious of Westerhout because she joined the Trump transition from the RNC instead of being an original loyalist to the president. Other RNC alums that joined Trump’s administration only to leave are former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh.
According to White House records, Westerhout was making $130,000 a year as both the “executive assistant to the president” and the “special assistant to the president,” the latter a position the Post says ranks below both White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and former deputy press secretary Raj Shah.
“Did you speak to Madeleine?” Trump asked Woodward, according to the Post’s transcript of the August 2018 conversation between the two, to which the journalist replied no.
“Madeleine is the key,” he said. “She’s the secret.”
I think I know the answer. I think most people do, except Trump. The president seems to have drunk his own Kool-Aid about being some sort of genius deal-maker. Asked Monday about his erratic and disruptive method, if you can call it that, Trump told reporters with a shrug, “Sorry, it’s the way I negotiate.” I’m sorry, too. The whole world should be.
Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles said she was “eating [her] feelings” as news surfaced that her brother was charged for his alleged involvement in a triple homicide in Cleveland.
Tevin Biles-Thomas, 24, was arrested Thursday on murder, voluntary manslaughter, felonious assault and perjury charges in connection with the slaying at a New Year’s Eve party.
Biles, 22, a four-time gold medal champion on the US gymnastics team, hasn’t directly commented on her brother’s alleged involvement in the crime, but indicated that she needed some space.
“Eating my feelings don’t talk to me,” she tweeted around 9:50 p.m.
The shooting happened in an Airbnb rental apartment above a pizzeria in the Brooklyn Centre section of the city, when a group of people showed up uninvited and were asked to leave.
Tevin Biles-ThomasLiberty County Sheriff’s Office
Devaughn Gibson, 23, DelVaunte Johnson, 19, and Toshon Banks, 21, were each shot multiple times and pronounced dead after the gunfire. Two others were wounded but survived.
Biles-Thomas is in custody awaiting a Sept. 13 arraignment.
“The relentless persistence of Cleveland police homicide detectives helped secure an indictment in this case,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley said in a statement obtained by Cleveland.com. “It is through their hard work that we can begin to seek justice for these victims.”
The highly anticipated Justice Department inspector general’s report on whether former FBI Director James Comey broke any laws when he shared some of his memoranda with the media was released yesterday. The report did not find that Comey had broken the law or released any classified information, which was certainly a terrible disappointment to the right-wing fever swamp which had hoped to see Comey hauled off in leg irons. It did, however, find that he had defied FBI policy after he had been fired by the president and was highly critical of the former director’s judgment, leading to much delight and excitement among his critics.
The president’s tweet following the news reflects the right’s general reaction:
Virtually all of the facts about this have been known since Comey famously testified before Congress in the summer of 2017. He made it clear at that time that his motivation was to trigger a special counsel to investigate election interference and he told the inspector general’s investigators that he didn’t pass his decision up the line at Justice because he didn’t want to make officials there involve themselves in what he believed to be a whistleblowing situation.
While the IG did not find that Comey had released classified information, the report reveals that some of the other players in this drama, such as former deputy director Andrew McCabe and special agent Peter Strzok, went over Comey’s memos after the fact and found that some of the information was classified at the lowest level of “confidential,” for which Comey was not held responsible.
The irony in all of this is thick. After all, it was Comey’s defiance of DOJ policy in the summer and fall of 2016 that arguably led to Donald Trump’s election victory. First Comey went to the press to ostensibly clear Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in the email case, while criticizing her for being reckless and irresponsible. Then he made the even more dubious decision to reopen the case in October, just days before the presidential election.
Clinton must have poured out a couple of stiff shots of Jameson when she read that report. As David A. Graham pointed out in The Atlantic:
Few of us can imagine how it felt for Clinton to be simultaneously cleared of criminal wrongdoing and also publicly savaged, but today, Comey probably has a pretty good sense of precisely how that feels.
It’s hard to refrain from saying “What goes around comes around,” but that would trivialize what is actually a very serious situation. Comey’s ill-conceived statements in 2016, which arguably tipped the election to Trump, are what one might term his original sin. The results have been catastrophic. That error in judgment then led directly to Comey’s firing, after he failed to show Trump the blind fealty the president demands of everyone in government.
Comey’s further refusal to help Trump cover up the series of questionable interactions between the Trump campaign and agents or proxies for the Russian government has now led to a very confusing policy by the Department of Justice. Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare puts it this way:
The Inspector General of the Justice Department has determined that it is misconduct for a law enforcement officer to publicly disclose an effort to shut down his investigation.
I would add that the effort, in this case, was by a person who was implicated in that investigation — and who also happens to be the most powerful person on earth — which adds up to obstruction of justice. Those facts were laid out clearly in the Mueller report. Essentially, this policy adds yet another layer of impunity to the presidency.
One might have assumed that the Republicans would be happy to let all these dangling pieces of the seemingly dying Russia investigation go, but they seem to be determined to keep it alive. As far as we know, Attorney General Bill Barr’s internal investigation of the Intelligence agencies continues apace. And the case of Andrew McCabe remains open as well, with reporting suggesting that the government plans to indict him for giving the press negative background information on Hillary Clinton and then lying to the FBI about it.
By all accounts, McCabe plans to fight this all the way and will produce all the tweets and comments by the president demanding his prosecution as evidence that his firing and the indictment were political. Since this is the sort of infraction that is normally handled by reprimand or firing — both of which have already happened — a prosecution indictment would certainly appear to be unusual. It looks as though the attorney general and his fellow Trumpists want a show trial.
They aren’t the only ones. Among the excited Republicans, no one is more aroused than the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham. He appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program on Wednesday night to announce that he expects to start his own “investigation into the investigation” any day now. Graham has quite the list of witnesses he expects to call, including McCabe, Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. But he believes the single most important question about the Russia investigation is what the president knew and when he knew it — the president in question being Barack Obama.
Graham told Hannity, “I can’t imagine an investigation of the Republican nominee for president — a counterintelligence investigation of his campaign — was not approved at the highest level. I cannot imagine it happening without somebody in the White House knowing about it.” Hannity asked if that would mean putting former president Obama under oath. Graham replied, “Absolutely.”
This week alone, Trump treated the G7 summit in France as an infomercial for his private Florida golf club and was reported to offer pardons to anyone who will illegally seize land on the border to build his wall — which he insists must be painted black and have spikes on the top. If that level of medieval fantasy, blatant corruption and abuse of power doesn’t merit an impeachment charge then literally nothing does. Yet the Republicans have the chutzpah to rend their garments and call for the smelling salts over James Comey’s DOJ policy infractions, and to launch a campaign to investigate Barack Obama.
Many people out there were hoping for riveting public hearings on the Russia investigation, but I don’t think that was what they had in mind. Right now it appears a Republican show trial may be all we get. The Democrats’ continued failure to understand the scope of the GOP’s shameless pursuit of power is stunning.
Florida residents packed sandbags on Thursday as an increasingly menacing-looking Hurricane Dorian threatened to broadside the state over Labor Day weekend. (Aug. 29) AP, AP
As Hurricane Dorian strengthened to a Category 2 on Thursday night, Florida residents prepared for possible life-threatening storm surge at the end of Labor Day weekend.
Forecasters expect Dorian to hit the state’s east coast somewhere between the Florida Keys and southern Georgia as an “extremely dangerous” hurricane on Monday, bringing winds that may reach 130 mph.
Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis requested President Donald Trump declare a pre-landfall disaster for the entire state, and urged residents to continue monitoring Dorian.
After mostly sparing Puerto Rico, Dorian has exited the Caribbean and moved into the Atlantic Ocean.
As of 11 p.m. EDT Thursday, the storm was located about 295 miles east of the southeastern Bahamas, moving at 12 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Dorian doesn’t figure to hit U.S. terrain until Monday.
The weather service said that on its current track, “Dorian should move over the Atlantic well east of the southeastern and central Bahamas tonight and on Friday, approach the northwestern Bahamas Saturday, and move near or over portions of the northwest Bahamas on Sunday.”
How powerful is it?
With sustained winds up to 105 mph, Dorian qualifies as a Category 2 hurricane. That’s not as much a concern now that it’s in open water, but the issue is how much steam it may pick up.
The hurricane center said Dorian is expected to become a Category 3 hurricane – with sustained winds of at least 111 mph – by Friday.
Why is it getting stronger?
Hurricanes need three major ingredients to form: water at least 80 degrees in temperature, moist air and converging winds. Then the storm nourishes from the water’s heat energy.
“The warmer the water, the more moisture is in the air,’’ the website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. “And that could mean bigger and stronger hurricanes.’’
The hurricane center said current conditions in the Atlantic are favorable for the storm to intensify over the next one or two days.
When and where will Dorian hit?
A Monday arrival seems likely, although Florida residents will probably experience tropical storm-force winds by Sunday. Forecasters say it’s too early to tell where Dorian will have the greatest impact, but any part of the coast between the Florida Keys and the southern part of Georgia could be a landing spot.
After that, the storm’s path would be unpredictable. It could continue north along the coast or head west across the state toward the Gulf of Mexico.
What kind of impact could it have?
It could be calamitous. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties, urging residents to prepare with supplies like food, water and medicines for at least a week.
“The time to act is now,” DeSantis said. “Do not wait until it’s too late.”
President Donald Trump is monitoring the storm, and said the federal government is ready to help on a recorded message.
The hurricane center warns there could be “devastating hurricane-force winds’’ along the state’s eastern coast and peninsula, and rain totals in coastal areas of the southeast U.S. could range from 5 to 10 inches and up to 15 inches in isolated areas.
“There is an increasing likelihood of life-threatening storm surge along portions of the Florida east coast late this weekend or early next week,’’ the center said.
Airlines canceled 110 flights to, from and within the U.S. Thursday and 14 Friday, according to FlightAware.com, with those totals likely to increase.
Dorian could hit Florida as a category 4 hurricane; Phil Keating reports from Miami.
Hurricane Dorian was upgraded to Category 2 strength late Thursday and was expected to continue gathering force over the holiday weekend as it heads toward Florida.
As of 11 p.m. ET Thursday, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, placing it just short of being a Category 3 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center reported.
Dorian was expected to remain a major hurricane through Friday and hit Florida’s east coast by Monday night, according to the Associated Press.
As anti-government unrest in Hong Kong approaches the thirteenth consecutive weekend with no sign of stopping, there are signs beleaguered officials may be mulling radical solutions — including a partial or complete internet block to cut off protesters from their key organizing platforms.
Speaking to reporters this week, the city’s leader Carrie Lam appeared to leave open the possibility of using emergency powers to tackle the increasingly violent protests, after the move was suggested by pro-Beijing media.
“All laws in Hong Kong — if they can provide a legal means to stop violence and chaos — the (city’s) government is responsible for looking into them,” she said.
October 1 deadline: Lam is facing increasing pressure from Beijing to tackle the unrest before October 1, the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, a senior pro-government lawmaker told CNN this week. While Lam has indicated a willingness to talk to protesters in an attempt to find a political solution, both opposition figures and supporters expressed frustration that she ruled out any potential compromise on the protest movement’s five key demands, increasing the likelihood that talks fail.
What emergency powers mean: Under the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, the chief executive has the power to bypass the city’s legislature to “make any regulations whatsoever which (they) may consider desirable in the public interest” for an indefinite period.
That includes “censorship, and the control and suppression of publications, writings, maps, plans, photographs, communications and means of communication.”
IT industry figures have reacted fiercely to any suggestion the government could censor or control internet access.
As Hurricane Dorian is predicted to hit Florida by Labor Day, the former prime minister of Canada cheered the fact that President Trump’s golf resort at Mar-a-Lago appears to be in its path.
Kim Campbell, who served as the 19th Canadian prime minister for less than five months in 1993, tweeted that she is “rooting” for Trump’s favorite getaway destination to take a direct hit.
Campbell was not alone among Twitter users in hoping the hurricane hurts Trump in some way. Some claimed the hurricane’s trajectory is the result of Trump’s climate change denial, or that he canceled his trip to Poland out of fear for Mar-a-Lago’s well-being.
Trump: Climate change is a hoax.
Earth 🌍: Here’s a Category 4 hurricane with 130+ mph winds aimed right at Mar-a-Lago, with my compliments. pic.twitter.com/NDkSzJB0sh
Trump announced Thursday that instead of visiting the European nation he will instead send Vice President Mike Pence while he monitors the storm and subsequent cleanup efforts.
“To ensure that all resources of the federal government are focused on the arriving storm, I have decided to send our Vice President Mike Pence to Poland this weekend in my place. It’s something very important for me to be here,” he said.
Dorian is expected to be a “major” Category 4 storm by Monday, with maximum sustained wind speeds reaching be 130 miles per hour by Sunday.
The 83-page report, released on Thursday, shows Inspector General Michael Horowitz tried to track down the second source, asking former top officials at the FBI to no avail.
The Timesarticle, published on May 11, 2017, described a Jan. 27 dinner at the White House in which Trump asked for Comey’s “loyalty.” “Two people who have heard [Comey’s] account of the dinner” were cited sources. The White House has denied its validity.
Daniel Richman, a friend and attorney to Comey, admitted to Horowitz that he was one of the sources — something which has already been publicly known. Comey claims he gave some of his memos to Richman after Trump fired him on May 9 to leak to the media, hoping this would spark a special counsel investigation.
The watchdog report shows Richman said he knew about the dinner because Comey told him about it while discussing the challenges of his job. Richman said he was called by a Times reporter, with whom he was friends, on May 9 after Comey was fired. Richman told the reporter what he had remembered about the dinner.
At the time of their conversation, Richman said he had not yet seen the memo in which Comey described the meeting. Richman said he did not receive copies of Comey’s memos about his conversations with Trump until days later.
In attempting to track down both sources for that report, the inspector general asked former FBI General Counsel James Baker, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and McCabe’s special counsel Lisa Page if they knew the identities of the two sources.
“They each told us that they did not,” the report said.
Comey’s chief of staff James Rybicki told investigators he had not provided the contents of any of Comey’s memos to “anyone outside the FBI.”
The inspector general interviewed 17 witnesses as part of its investigation into Comey’s handling of his memos about Trump.
Comey wrote the memo on his personal laptop after he arrived home from the dinner. He said he dated it Jan. 28 because he woke up the next morning and made “minor corrections.” He placed a printout of the memo in his personal safe at home and gave a second copy to Rybicki to keep at the FBI. He then said he deleted the file from his laptop. The FBI later determined that six words in the memo qualified as classified information.
Comey instructed Rybicki to show the memo to McCabe and Baker, and then keep it in his possession at FBI headquarters.
Comey also allowed his former chief of staff Chuck Rosenberg to review the memo.
“At that time, Rosenberg was serving as Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and held an active TS/SCI security clearance, but had no official need to know about Comey’s interactions with President Trump,” the report said. Rosenberg told the inspector general he was at Comey’s house during the weekend following Comey’s dinner with Trump.
“According to Rosenberg, Comey handed him a laptop, Rosenberg read the Memo on the laptop screen, and then handed the laptop back to Comey. Comey told the OIG that it was ‘possible’ he allowed Rosenberg to review Memo 2, but stated that he did not remember sharing it with him,” the report said.
Horowitz’s investigation of Comey found that he “violated” FBI policy in his handling of sensitive information, but determined he did not leak classified information to the media. The watchdog criminally referred Comey to the Justice Department for his conduct, but the agency declined to prosecute.
On Thursday, Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey (shown in March) apologized after a radio interview described her wearing blackface during a college skit in the 1960s.
Vasha Hunt/AP
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On Thursday, Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey (shown in March) apologized after a radio interview described her wearing blackface during a college skit in the 1960s.
Vasha Hunt/AP
Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has apologized for wearing blackface during a skit at Auburn University more than 50 years ago.
Ivey said Thursday she still doesn’t recall the incident, but after a recording surfaced of her discussing the sketch with her then-fiancé and later first husband, Ben LaRavia, Ivey admitted it must be true.
“Even after listening to the tape, I sincerely do not recall either the skit, which evidently occurred at a Baptist Student Union party, or the interview itself, both which occurred 52 years ago. Even though Ben is the one on tape remembering the skit — and I still don’t recall ever dressing up in overalls or in blackface — I will not deny what is the obvious,” Ivey said. “As such, I fully acknowledge — with genuine remorse — my participation in a skit like that back when I was a senior in college.”
According to the interview Ivey and LaRavia did with the campus radio station in 1967, the sketch was titled “cigar butts” and “did not require a lot of talent, as far as verbal talent, but did require a lot of physical acting, such as crawling around on the floor looking for cigar butts and things like this, which certainly got a big reaction out of the audience.”
Ivey is the latest politician to be swept into scandal over the wearing of blackface, a racist practice that has its roots in minstrel shows. Earlier this year, Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam admitted he had put black shoe polish on his face to dress up like Michael Jackson for a dance contest — an admission that came after a photo of a man dressed up in blackface aside another man in Ku Klux Klan dress appeared on Northam’s medical school yearbook page. Northam has denied either man is him. Soon after, Virginia Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring admitted he had put on blackface when dressing up like a rapper during college. Other politicians have come under fire for appearing in Confederate uniforms.
In a state like Alabama — infamous for its violence against and treatment of African Americans during the civil rights movement — Ivey’s admission could draw even more scrutiny. Ivey alluded to those tensions in her apology, saying it’s “not what my administration represents all these years later.”
“I offer my heartfelt apologies for the pain and embarrassment this causes, and I will do all I can — going forward — to help show the nation that the Alabama of today is a far cry from the Alabama of the 1960s,” Ivey said. “We have come a long way, for sure, but we still have a long way to go.”
In February, the Auburn student newspaper uncovered yearbook photos of members of Ivey’s sorority appearing in blackface, but the governor denied she ever participated.
Rep. Terri Sewell, the state’s only Democratic House member, tweeted that “Gov. Ivey’s admission today only deepens open wounds” and her “words of apology ring hollow if not met with real action to bridge the racial divide.”
But the state Republican Party has come to Ivey’s defense: “The Alabama Republican Party appreciates and supports Gov. Kay Ivey taking ownership of and responsibility for this 50-plus-year-old incident. While it occurred when she was a college student, Governor Ivey has stood up, admitted her mistake and offered a sincere apology though she has no recollection of the event,” Alabama GOP Chairman Terry Lathan said in a statement. “Her extraordinary record of public service shows her ability to work with all people regardless of race, religion or party affiliation.”
Fellow Democrats, there is a 30% chance everything I do will be wrong. Bernie, Elizabeth, Kamala and the others would have been better picks than me. But I am here because of a three-letter word: TRUTH. We choose truth over facts! If elected, I promise: We will have an international crisis. Let me be clear: I am not going nuts! So go to my website number and help me. Vote for Joe America! Good night, Montgomery!
I think I know the answer. I think most people do, except Trump. The president seems to have drunk his own Kool-Aid about being some sort of genius deal-maker. Asked Monday about his erratic and disruptive method, if you can call it that, Trump told reporters with a shrug, “Sorry, it’s the way I negotiate.” I’m sorry, too. The whole world should be.
Current and former spies are floored by President Donald Trump’s fervent defense of Russia at this year’s G7 summit in Biarritz, France.
“It’s hard to see the bar anymore since it’s been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump’s behavior over the weekend was a new low,” one FBI agent who works in counterintelligence told Insider.
At the summit, Trump aggressively lobbied for Russia to be readmitted into the G7, refused to hold it accountable for violating international law, blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One former senior Justice Department official, who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was the FBI director, told Insider Trump’s behavior was “directly out of the Putin playbook. We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office.”
A former CIA operative told Insider the evidence is “overwhelming” that Trump is a Russian agent, but another CIA and NSA veteran said it was more likely Trump was currying favor with Putin for future business deals.
Meanwhile, a recently retired FBI special agent told Insider that Trump’s freewheeling and often unfounded statements make it more likely that he’s a “useful idiot” for the Russians. But “it would not surprise me in the least if the Russians had at least one asset in Trump’s inner circle.”
“It’s hard to see the bar anymore since it’s been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump’s behavior over the weekend was a new low.”
That was the assessment an FBI agent who works in counterintelligence gave Insider of President Donald Trump’s performance at this year’s G7 summit in Biarritz, France. The agent requested anonymity because they feared that speaking publicly on the matter would jeopardize their job.
Trump’s attendance at the G7 summit was peppered with controversy, but none was more notable than his fervent defense of Russia’s military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine.
Trump repeatedly refused to hold Russia accountable for annexing Crimea in 2014, blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia’s move to annex it, expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and castigated other G7 members for not giving the country a seat at the table.
Since being booted from the G8 after annexing Crimea, Russia’s done little to make up for its actions. In fact, by many accounts, it’s stepped up its aggression.
In addition to continuing to encroach on Ukraine, the Russian government interfered in the 2016 US election and was behind the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in the UK. US officials also warn that as the 2020 election looms, the Russians are stepping up their cyberactivities against the US and have repeatedly tried to attack US power grids.
“What in God’s name made Trump think it would be a good idea to ask to bring Russia back to the table?” the FBI agent told Insider. “How does this serve US national-security interests?”
Trump’s advocacy for Russia is renewing concerns among intelligence veterans that Trump may be a Russian “asset” who can be manipulated or influenced to serve Russian interests, although some also speculate that Trump could just be currying favor for future business deals.
‘We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office’
Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP
A former senior Justice Department official, who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, didn’t mince words when reacting to Trump’s performance at the G7 summit: “We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office.”
“There is no fathomable explanation for why the president said these things,” the former official said. “Letting Russia off the hook for bullying smaller countries and then blaming Obama for it? It’s directly out of the Putin playbook.”
While arguing for Russia to be invited back into the G7, Trump said the country would be helpful in addressing hot-button issues like Iran, Syria, and North Korea and that the alliance was better off with Russia “inside rather than outside.”
But Russia is a staunch ally of Syria’s Assad regime, and it’s also cozied up to Iran in recent years. US military and intelligence officials view Russia as one of the US’s foremost rivals and believe it generally stands in opposition to American interests.
Glenn Carle, a former CIA covert operative and frequent Trump critic, told Insider there’s been “no question” in his mind for years that the president is behaving like “a spy for the Russians.”
“The evidence is so overwhelming that in my 35 years in intelligence, I have never seen anything so certain,” Carle said, adding that he’s spoken with several intelligence veterans about the matter in the four years since Trump first launched his presidential campaign, many of whom believe Trump’s actions are a threat to national security.
“Intelligence assets become convinced to be spies for multiple reasons,” Carle, who specialized in getting foreign spies to become turncoats when he was at the CIA, said in an earlier interview with Insider. “It might start with kompromat or financial hooks, and the asset may be convinced he is acting as a patriot until he becomes accustomed to his role.”
“Trump clearly responds favorably to praise,” he said. “And over the years, the handling officer — Putin, in this case — realizes what the asset wants, and that’s what they provide. Trump wants to be told he’s the greatest, so that’s what you tell him, over and over again, until he comes to believe that is the motivation for his actions.”
‘A useful idiot’ or ‘currying favor’
Reuters
Frank Montoya Jr., a recently retired FBI special agent, told Insider it’s “hard not to think the Russians have an asset in the White House.”
But he added that Trump’s freewheeling and often false statements imply he’s “not playing with a full deck on any matter of state these days. Still, those same delusions are what give me pause when conclusions are reached about the likelihood he is a Russian asset.”
“Useful idiot is more like it,” Montoya said. But he added that given the abundance of meetings and contacts between Trump associates and Russians before, during, and after the election, “it would not surprise me in the least if the Russians had at least one asset in Trump’s inner circle.”
Robert Deitz, a former top lawyer at the CIA and the National Security Agency, agreed that Trump was catering to Putin’s interests, but he disagreed on why.
“I think what’s going on right now is an Occam’s razor scenario,” he told Insider, referring to the philosophical theory that the simplest explanation for an event is often the correct one.
“Trump wants to do deals with Russia when he leaves the presidency,” Deitz said. “We already know he was interested in building a Trump Tower in Moscow before and during the election. The best way of doing a deal with Putin is to be nice to him, so I think what Trump is doing is currying favor.”
He emphasized, however, that regardless of Trump’s motives for being subservient to Putin, “it’s still harmful” to US interests.
“When Trump goes to bed each night, what do you think his last thoughts are: the welfare of the United States, or the size of his bank account?” Deitz added.
Trump’s defense of Putin at the G7 summit didn’t go unnoticed in Russia.
According to The Washington Post, one show on the state-run Rossiya-1 network played a celebratory soundtrack as it showed six video clips of Trump demanding that Putin be given a seat at the table.
The Russian media analyst Julia Davis said that Kremlin-controlled media reacted to Trump’s G7 performance with laughter and mockery.
One anchor rejoiced that “Trump is dancing to Putin’s tune,” while others were amused by the “maniacal persistence” with which Trump was lobbying for Russia.
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Associated Press/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
This isn’t the first time the president has been accused of working to advance Russia’s interests ahead of the US’s.
Perhaps the sharpest example of this was when Trump and Putin held a bilateral summit in Helsinki last year. After the meeting, Trump stunned the US national-security apparatus and foreign allies when he sided with Russia over the US intelligence community, blamed “both sides” for the deterioration of US-Russia relations, and praised Putin as being “extremely strong and powerful.”
In 2017, Trump refused to accept the US intelligence-community finding that Moscow meddled in the 2016 race to propel Trump to the presidency.
That May, he fired FBI director James Comey, who was overseeing the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s election interference and cited “this Russia thing” as the reason. Two days after firing Comey, Trump shared classified intelligence with two Russian officials in the Oval Office and told them firing Comey had taken “great pressure” off of him.
Shortly after, the FBI began investigating whether Trump was a Russian agent.
Georgia officials continue to track Hurricane Dorian, which is expected to strengthen to a Category 4 storm before making landfall along the central east coast of Florida, Channel 2 Action News meteorologists said Thursday afternoon.
Ahead of the storm’s arrival, Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency for 12 South Georgia counties Thursday afternoon just before 4:15 p.m.
The counties under the alert are Brantley, Bryan, Camden, Charlton, Chatham, Effingham, Glynn, Liberty, Long, McIntosh, Pierce and Wayne.
Should the storm shift to the northwest, it could have a greater than anticipated impact on the Georgia coastline.
Flanked by officials from a range of state agencies, Kemp said Georgia could see winds greater than 39 mph extending more than 100 miles from the eye of the storm. Southwest Georgia can also expect 2-4 inches of rainfall through early next week, he said.
Kemp urged Georgia residents to be ready to respond quickly. Local agencies are already preparing for potential evacuations from Florida, which would impact traffic in Georgia over the holiday weekend. The Department of Transportation was conducting sweeps of the roadways to ensure they are clear in advance of the storm, Kemp said.
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In preparation for evacuees seeking refuge from the storm, Atlanta Motor Speedway is opening its camping facilities, which can handle thousands of people, the speedway said in a news release.
The Red Cross of Georgia is also in preparation mode, working with government officials to be ready to support communities in Florida and Georgia if needed.
Homer Bryson, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, said his agency was preparing to send resources wherever needed should the storm shift and head toward southwest Georgia.
Even if the storm stays on its current path, it will bring some nasty weather to certain parts of the state.
“At the very least, we are going to see rain in some parts of our state, potentially heavy, which could bring flooding,” Kemp said, advising residents in areas of concern to start thinking now about flood preparations.
On Thursday afternoon, Dorian’s center was just more than 200 miles north-northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph.
Channel 2 meteorologists said the storm was still headed toward the Florida coast but was moving slower. It is expected to become a Category 3 storm by Friday morning and will increase to a Category 4 as it moves north from the Bahamas before making landfall along the Florida coastline by Monday morning.
While the path of the storm has changed very little, the forecast intensity has increased with the potential for maximum sustained winds between 130 and 156 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
As it moves into Florida, the hurricane should deteriorate to Category 1 status by Tuesday, meteorologists said.
But if the storm shifts to the northwest, it could have a greater impact on the Georgia coastline and hit the same parts of the state that were devastated by Hurricane Michael last year.
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“Perhaps never in the history of our Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector General’s Report. He should be ashamed of himself!” Trump tweeted.
Perhaps never in the history of our Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector General’s Report. He should be ashamed of himself!
The Justice Department inspector general report released earlier Thursday said Comey violated FBI policies and his employment agreement with his handling of memos he wrote detailing his interactions with Trump before being fired as FBI director.
Trump’s decision to fire Comey in May 2017 as the bureau investigated Russian interference in the presidential election triggered questions about whether the president was trying to obstruct justice. Comey has said he provided one of his memos to a friend with the hope of triggering the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling and any connection between Moscow’s effort and the Trump campaign.
The White House doubled down on Trump’s criticism of Comey on Thursday, saying Comey’s actions triggered a “politically motivated, two-year witch hunt,” referring to Mueller’s investigation.
The inspector general faulted Comey for passing the memo, which was unclassified but determined to contain sensitive material about ongoing investigations, to his friend, Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, with the instructions to share its contents with a journalist.
The memo detailed a conversation between Comey and Trump during which the former FBI director says the president asked him to let go of the investigation into Michael Flynn, his onetime national security adviser. It was reported on by The New York Times in May 2017, after Comey’s ouster.
The report notes that investigators did not find evidence that Comey leaked classified information from the memos to the press.
The inspector general also found that Comey passed four of the memos to his private lawyers in violation of bureau rules, and faulted him for not immediately alerting the bureau about the disclosure when he learned that it had determined one of the memos included classified material.
Comey has argued that the memos were personal recollections and not official records, something the inspector general refuted in the newly released report.
Comey was unapologetic on Twitter, noting that the investigation found no evidence that he or his attorneys shared classified information with the news media and accusing his critics of “defaming” him.
“I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice,” Comey tweeted.
“And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me ‘going to jail’ or being a ‘liar and a leaker’—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president,” he wrote.
Comey and Trump have engaged in an extended war of words since the FBI chief’s ouster. In June 2017, Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about his interactions with the president and revealed that Trump had asked him to let go of the Flynn investigation.
“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a friend of mine to do it,” Comey told the committee.
Trump has refuted Comey’s account and called him a liar, an assertion the White House repeated on Thursday. The president and his allies have attacked Comey and other top Justice Department officials over the Russia investigation, accusing agents of being motivated by bias against Trump in their decisions with respect to the probe.
Mueller concluded his two-year investigation earlier this year, without finding evidence to charge associates of Trump’s presidential campaign with conspiring with Russia. Mueller did not make a decision one way or another as to whether Trump obstructed the investigation.
President Trump announced Thursday that he is canceling a planned trip to Poland and will remain in the United States to monitor Hurricane Dorian, which is headed toward a potential landfall in Florida or elsewhere along the East Coast by early next week.
The president had been set to travel to Poland this weekend to participate in a World War II commemoration ceremony. Vice President Pence will make the trip instead, Trump said.
“To ensure that all resources of the federal government are focused on the arriving storm, I have decided to send our vice president, Mike Pence, to Poland this weekend in my place,” Trump said in the Rose Garden of the White House during an event focused on the new space command. “It’s something very important for me to be here. The storm looks like it could be a very, very big one indeed.”
The official National Hurricane Forecast predicts Dorian will reach Category 4 strength while approaching the eastern coast of Florida on Monday night.
The president, who returned from the G-7 summit in France earlier this week, never appeared to be enthusiastic about the second overseas trip and had already shortened it twice. He abruptly called off the second half of the planned trip, to Denmark, earlier this month.
Then he seemed prepared to pare back the Poland trip too, skipping a planned visit to a Polish military base where U.S. forces serve alongside Polish forces, a U.S. defense official said before Trump’s announcement Thursday.
White House officials had begun discussing the cancellation of the entire trip earlier this week, according to a person briefed on the discussions. And Trump has in recent daysrepeatedly lashed out at the media over the coverage of his G-7 trip.
“The G7 in France was so successful, and yet when I came back and read the Corrupt and Fake News, and watched numerous networks, it was not even recognizable from what actually took place at the Great G7 event!” he tweeted Tuesday.
Trump said Thursday that he had informed Polish President Andrzej Duda of the change in plans and had conveyed to him “my warmest wishes and the wishes of the American people.”
“Our highest priority is the safety and security of the people in the path of the hurricane, and I will be rescheduling my trip to Poland in the near future,” Trump said.
Earlier Thursday, Trump tweeted that Dorian “looks like it will be hitting Florida late Sunday night.”
“Be prepared and please follow State and Federal instructions, it will be a very big Hurricane, perhaps one of the biggest!” he said.
Trump owns several properties along Florida’s east coast, including his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and three golf courses in West Palm Beach, Jupiter and Doral, west of Miami.
In September 2017, Mar-a-Lago, along with the rest of Palm Beach island, was ordered to evacuate due to Hurricane Irma.
Pence, who is now going in Trump’s place, went to Poland in February.
Duda had most recently visited the White House in June, when Trump announced that the U.S. would be adding 1,000 troops to Poland and rolled out a lavish welcome for Duda that included an F-35 flyover that the two leaders and their lives viewed from the South Lawn.
Trump and Duda said in a joint statement during that visit that the United States would establish a small forward command headquarters for hundreds of American forces in Poland, as well as combat training centers throughout the central European country. In turn, Poland would pay for those facilities.
Trump has found a natural ally in Duda, the right-wing leader of Poland whom Trump has repeatedly praised, particularly as the nation meets its NATO defense spending obligations while other countries like Germany fall short. Trump said during Duda’s visit in June that he has a “very warm feeling for Poland” and Duda has pitched a permanent U.S. base in Poland, which the Polish leader said would be called “Fort Trump.”
Anne Gearan, Damian Paletta and Matthew Cappucci contributed to this report.
CHICAGO — The largest study of its kind found new evidence that genes contribute to same-sex sexual behavior, but it echoes research that says there are no specific genes that make people gay.
The genome-wide research on DNA from nearly half a million U.S. and U.K. adults identified five genetic variants not previously linked with gay or lesbian sexuality. The variants were more common in people who reported ever having had a same-sex sexual partner. That includes people whose partners were exclusively of the same sex and those who mostly reported heterosexual behavior.
The researchers said thousands more genetic variants likely are involved and interact with factors that aren’t inherited, but that none of them cause the behavior nor can predict whether someone will be gay.
The research “provides the clearest glimpse yet into the genetic underpinnings of same-sex sexual behavior,” said co-author Benjamin Neale, a psychiatric geneticist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“We also found that it’s effectively impossible to predict an individual’s sexual behavior from their genome. Genetics is less than half of this story for sexual behavior but it’s still a very important contributing factor,” Neale said.
The study was released Thursday by the journal Science. Results are based on genetic testing and survey responses.
Some of the genetic variants found were present in both men and women. Two in men were located near genes involved in male-pattern baldness and sense of smell, raising intriguing questions about how regulation of sex hormones and smell may influence same-sex behavior.
Importantly, most participants were asked about frequency of same-sex sexual behavior but not if they self-identified as gay or lesbian. Fewer than 5% of U.K. participants and about 19% of U.S. participants reported ever having a same-sex sexual experience.
The researchers acknowledged that limitation and emphasized that the study’s focus was on behavior, not sexual identity or orientation. They also note that the study only involved people of European ancestry and can’t answer whether similar results would be found in other groups.
Origins of same-sex behavior are uncertain. Some of the strongest evidence of a genetic link comes from studies in identical twins. Many scientists believe that social, cultural, family and other biological factors are also involved, while some religious groups and skeptics consider it a choice or behavior that can be changed.
A Science commentary notes that the five identified variants had such a weak effect on behavior that using the results “for prediction, intervention or a supposed ‘cure’ is wholly and unreservedly impossible.”
“Future work should investigate how genetic predispositions are altered by environmental factors,” University of Oxford sociologist Melinda Mills said in the commentary.
Other experts not involved in the study had varied reactions.
Dr. Kenneth Kendler a specialist in psychiatric genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, called it “a very important paper that advances the study of the genetics of human sexual preference substantially. The results are broadly consistent with those obtained from the earlier technologies of twin and family studies suggesting that sexual orientation runs in families and is moderately heritable.”
Former National Institutes of Health geneticist Dean Hamer said the study confirms “that sexuality is complex and there are a lot of genes involved,” but it isn’t really about gay people. “Having just a single same sex experience is completely different than actually being gay or lesbian,” Hamer said. His research in the 1990s linked a marker on the X chromosome with male homosexuality. Some subsequent studies had similar results but the new one found no such link.
Doug Vanderlaan, a University of Toronto psychologist who studies sexual orientation, said the absence of information on sexual orientation is a drawback and makes it unclear what the identified genetic links might signify. They “might be links to other traits, like openness to experience,” Vanderlaan said.
The study was a collaboration among scientists including psychologists, sociologists and statisticians from the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. They did entire human genome scanning, using blood samples from the U.K. Biobank and saliva samples from customers of the U.S.-based ancestry and biotech company 23andMe who had agreed to participate in research.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke released a trade plan Thursday that would end President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China and make various reforms meant to boost American workers.
The former Texas congressman’s proposal would toss out the White House’s tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for Beijing scrapping duties on American products, according to his campaign. O’Rourke would also pursue changes to the World Trade Organization, measures to crack down on China’s alleged unfair trade practices and trade deals with stronger labor and environmental protections.
“Trade is not the problem — Trump is. His trade war has been a disaster for American farmers and workers — but it’s on us to offer a compelling alternative,” O’Rourke said in a statement Thursday.
Criticism of Trump’s trade policy from the jammed Democratic field has started to increase as concerns grow about the conflict with China dragging on economic growth. While some of the potential Democratic nominees have for years slammed U.S. trade deals as unfair to American workers — a stance that overlaps with Trump’s views — they have also called the president’s policies reckless and dangerous.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., among others, have released their own trade plans. They have broadly called for stronger labor and environmental standards in American trade deals. Many Democrats in Congress currently oppose Trump’s updates to the North American Free Trade Agreement because they worry it will not go far enough to protect workers and the planet.
Getting China to change its trade policy will prove difficult for any U.S. president, as Trump has learned. His administration has struggled to strike a trade agreement with Beijing even after putting tariffs on about $550 billion in Chinese products.
Her campaign failed to line up key supporters in New York, from party officials to members of Congress to activists. One planned dinner for New York lawmakers at her Washington home was canceled. Some New York donors said they wrote her a check out of obligation but declined to host fund-raisers for her. Charlie King, a Democratic National Committee member from New York who is unaligned in the 2020 race, said he never heard from Ms. Gillibrand or anyone on her team.
“I heard from several other campaigns,” Mr. King said. “Multiple times.”
Money problems outweigh the bright spots
Ms. Gillibrand’s lack of small donor support — the lifeblood of Democratic fund-raising — was evident from the start. Through June, she had topped 2,500 donations in a day only once; Senator Elizabeth Warren, in contrast, had more than 100 such days.
In May, Ms. Gillibrand’s campaign began to sever ties with Anne Lewis Strategies, the political firm where she had directed $5.6 million in 2017 and 2018, in part, to build a digital supporter list. Few of those people became 2020 donors.
A few months into her bid Ms. Gillibrand was hemorrhaging money. In the second quarter she spent nearly $2 million more than she raised — by far the worst ratio of any candidate who was not self-funding their run.
Rival campaigns took note. Privately, some began discussing how soon would be too soon to attempt to poach some of the talent that Ms. Gillibrand had assembled in her Troy, N.Y., headquarters.
Ms. Gillibrand had some bright spots. She sipped whiskey with voters, dressed up with drag queens in Des Moines, took spin classes everywhere and arm-wrestled with an Iowa college student. Her team quickly packaged these vignettes into videos posted online.
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