theguardian--2020-01-09--The biggest voting rights win in recent US history – and the Republicans trying to thwart it

One year ago , Florida enacted the biggest expansion of the right to vote in America in a generation .
For 150 years , Florida had upheld a law that banned anyone convicted of a felony from voting , even after they had served the full sentence .
The policy , rooted in the Jim Crow south , stood out as a stain on American democracy .
But with majority support , Florida enacted Amendment 4 , which allows anyone convicted of a felony to vote once they complete their sentence ( those convicted of murder and sexual offenses still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ January 2019 .
This policy would re-enfranchise 1.4 million people – one of the biggest expansions of voting rights since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , and the most significant in this generation .
The Guardian spoke to five Florida residents directly affected by or involved with Amendment 4 .
Some had just registered to vote for the first time in their lives , others struggled with the continued trials of being incarcerated .
Their stories tell of last year ’ s victory and the difficulties of undoing decades of systemic inequality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : ‘ They want to keep you bound and close your mouth ’ Until 2019 , Derrick McGregor had never been inside a voting booth .
The only ballot he had ever seen was in school lessons .
McGregor lost his voting rights when he was 18 and convicted of a felony for attempted burglary .
When he was released , he worked hard to set up a new life , opening up an accounting business .
But he couldn ’ t vote .
“ It ’ s almost like when you do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is just not enough for society .
They want to keep you bound after that and almost chain you up and close your mouth , ” he said .
McGregor voted for the first time in his local election in Orlando last year .
“ Before I never really felt like I had a voice , ” he said .
New voters like McGregor could prove pivotal in this year ’ s election .
Political races in Florida are often decided by razor-thin margins .
McGregor , however , is as interested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ I realized my vote will count , and it will make a difference , especially where I live.
” Desmond Meade , 52 , Orlando : ‘ I felt like I was fully an American citizen ’ The driving force behind Amendment 4 was a group of former felons who knew what it felt like to be disenfranchised .
Desmond Meade was a leader of this movement .
In 2001 , Meade was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon and sentenced to three years in prison .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bottom – he thought about killing himself .
Instead , he checked himself drug addiction treatment , stayed at a homeless shelter and enrolled in classes .
He graduated from law school just a few years later .
In 2009 , Meade became head of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition , an advocacy group for former felons that would push Amendment 4 to the 2018 midterm election .
When it passed , Meade and his colleagues didn ’ t slow down .
The coalition has undertaken the nitty-gritty work of making sure people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ travel across the state by bus , teaching people about Amendment 4 , and have hired people with felony convictions to register voters .
He estimates that more than 50,000 people with felonies have registered to vote over the last year .
One of them , he said , last voted for John F Kennedy .
“ To be able to see them to be able to register to vote was an amazing thing , ” Meade said .
But they ’ ve hit some roadblocks .
Last year , the state ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more restrictions : requiring former felons to pay fines and fees they owe to the government before registering .
This affects about 80 % of those benefiting from Amendment 4 , according to Daniel Smith , a University of Florida professor .
Civil rights groups called the measure an unconstitutional poll tax , historically used to keep African Americans from the polls .
They went to court last October .
But while the judge ruled in favor of the 17 former felons in the case , the rest remain limited by the law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He thinks the criticism toward Republican lawmakers is overblown .
The coalition helped pay off $ 250,000 worth of fines and fees – and Meade said about 30 % of people who contact the coalition saying they still owe money actually don ’ t owe anything .
Meade himself registered to vote for the first time on 8 January 2019 with his family .
“ When I went in and I registered and I came out and there was a celebration going on … I finally felt like I was fully an American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lux , Okaloosa county supervisor of elections : ‘ It is for all intents and purposes no less ambiguous than it was a year ago ’ Amendment 4 was a historic policy , but the 1.4 million people who gained access to the polls might not actually make it to the election .
Paul Lux is one of the state ’ s 67 state supervisors of elections .
He said after the policy was passed , he and other officials didn ’ t have clarity about who was eligible to vote and how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had yet to clarify which crimes were exempt from the rule .
That confusion hasn ’ t subsided .
“ It is for all intents and purposes no less ambiguous than it was a year ago , ” Lux said .
As the state approaches the presidential primaries , this gray area could play out at the polls , Lux said , pushing Republicans and Democrats to challenge voter eligibility .
The lack of information could also be harmful to voters , and Lux said some people have already hesitated to register .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be a flood of questions .
“ I hope it doesn ’ t preclude anyone who thinks they ’ re eligible from registering and voting , ” he said .
Amendment 4 restored voting rights to many people , but it hasn ’ t restored all rights to those with felony convictions .
Last year , Tyrone Oliver , who runs a not-for-profit organization in Ocala , ran for city council and won .
The celebration was short lived : after he was elected , a city attorney informed Oliver he wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a felony conviction from over 30 years ago .
Oliver was stunned .
The drug-related felony had cost him three months of life , three years of probation , and his voting rights for decades .
But he thought that Amendment 4 had restored all his rights , including the ability to hold office .
“ This system dropped the ball and I ’ m paying for it , ” he said .
“ They ’ re still beating me over the head with something that happened when I was 26 years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Since then , he ’ s been trying to meet Florida ’ s governor , Ron DeSantis , a Republican , to discuss the issue .
His ordeal has made Oliver ambivalent about Amendment 4 as well .
He thinks the measure was “ not good ” for Florida because it created confusion .
“ I have been publicly embarrassed .
News stations and everybody comes out that I ’ m a convicted felon and all this stuff .
And nobody bothers to ask me the whole story , ” he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Myers : ‘ I didn ’ t know how big of a deal it was until it personally affected me ’ While Amendment 4 passed with support from most Floridians , there ’ s still work to be done to combat the stigma around people with felony convictions .
Lance Wissinger wants to be part of the solution .
Wissinger wanted to be the first person to register to vote at the Lee county election office the day Amendment 4 went into effect .
But by the time he got there , around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Wissinger has never voted .
He was convicted of DUI manslaughter and served four and a half years in prison in the mid-2000s .
When he was released , Wissinger said he wanted to get more involved in his community .
Last year he started as a policy fellow with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition , where , like Meade , he has been trying to inform as many people as possible about their right to vote .
“ I ’ ve gone out and knocked on doors and I tell people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just seeing if you want to register to vote.
’ And they ’ re like ‘ I can ’ t , I ’ m a felon.
’ I ’ m like : ‘ You can now , ’ ” he said .
It can be difficult for people to figure out if their sentences are fully completed .
The law Republicans passed last year allows courts to change sentences , and replace fines and fees with community service hours .
But so far just four counties in the state , all Democratic-leaning , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wissinger hopes to change the general perception of what felons look like , and who benefits from Amendment 4 .
“ People will be like : ‘ Well , you had a chance and you screwed that up.
’ Not knowing and not understanding is a lot of why I go and speak and tell my story , ” he said .
“ I didn ’ t know how big of a deal it was until it personally affected me .
”

One year ago, Florida enacted the biggest expansion of the right to vote in America in a generation.
For 150 years, Florida had upheld a law that banned anyone convicted of a felony from voting, even after they had served the full sentence. The policy, rooted in the Jim Crow south, stood out as a stain on American democracy.
But with majority support, Florida enacted Amendment 4, which allows anyone convicted of a felony to vote once they complete their sentence (those convicted of murder and sexual offenses still can’t vote) on 8 January 2019. This policy would re-enfranchise 1.4 million people – one of the biggest expansions of voting rights since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the most significant in this generation.
The Guardian spoke to five Florida residents directly affected by or involved with Amendment 4. Some had just registered to vote for the first time in their lives, others struggled with the continued trials of being incarcerated. Their stories tell of last year’s victory and the difficulties of undoing decades of systemic inequality.
Derrick McGregor, 28, Orlando: ‘They want to keep you bound and close your mouth’
Derrick McGregor. Photograph: Sarah Espedido/The Guardian
Until 2019, Derrick McGregor had never been inside a voting booth. The only ballot he had ever seen was in school lessons.
McGregor lost his voting rights when he was 18 and convicted of a felony for attempted burglary. When he was released, he worked hard to set up a new life, opening up an accounting business. But he couldn’t vote.
“It’s almost like when you do something wrong, paying the time for it is just not enough for society. They want to keep you bound after that and almost chain you up and close your mouth,” he said.
Until Amendment 4 passed.
McGregor voted for the first time in his local election in Orlando last year. “Before I never really felt like I had a voice,” he said.
New voters like McGregor could prove pivotal in this year’s election. Political races in Florida are often decided by razor-thin margins.
McGregor, however, is as interested in influencing local races as national ones. “I realized my vote will count, and it will make a difference, especially where I live.”
Desmond Meade, 52, Orlando: ‘I felt like I was fully an American citizen’
The driving force behind Amendment 4 was a group of former felons who knew what it felt like to be disenfranchised. Desmond Meade was a leader of this movement.
In 2001, Meade was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon and sentenced to three years in prison. After his release he found himself at rock bottom – he thought about killing himself. Instead, he checked himself drug addiction treatment, stayed at a homeless shelter and enrolled in classes. He graduated from law school just a few years later.
In 2009, Meade became head of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an advocacy group for former felons that would push Amendment 4 to the 2018 midterm election.
When it passed, Meade and his colleagues didn’t slow down. The coalition has undertaken the nitty-gritty work of making sure people understand and use Amendment 4. They travel across the state by bus, teaching people about Amendment 4, and have hired people with felony convictions to register voters.
He estimates that more than 50,000 people with felonies have registered to vote over the last year. One of them, he said, last voted for John F Kennedy. “To be able to see them to be able to register to vote was an amazing thing,” Meade said.
To be able to see them to be able to register to vote was an amazing thing.
But they’ve hit some roadblocks. Last year, the state’s Republican legislature passed a law with more restrictions: requiring former felons to pay fines and fees they owe to the government before registering. This affects about 80% of those benefiting from Amendment 4, according to Daniel Smith, a University of Florida professor.
Civil rights groups called the measure an unconstitutional poll tax, historically used to keep African Americans from the polls. They went to court last October. But while the judge ruled in favor of the 17 former felons in the case, the rest remain limited by the law.
Meade isn’t deterred. He thinks the criticism toward Republican lawmakers is overblown. The coalition helped pay off $250,000 worth of fines and fees – and Meade said about 30% of people who contact the coalition saying they still owe money actually don’t owe anything.
Meade himself registered to vote for the first time on 8 January 2019 with his family.
“When I went in and I registered and I came out and there was a celebration going on … I finally felt like I was fully an American citizen,” he said.
Paul Lux, Okaloosa county supervisor of elections: ‘It is for all intents and purposes no less ambiguous than it was a year ago’
Amendment 4 was a historic policy, but the 1.4 million people who gained access to the polls might not actually make it to the election.
Paul Lux is one of the state’s 67 state supervisors of elections. He said after the policy was passed, he and other officials didn’t have clarity about who was eligible to vote and how to verify that information. Florida also had yet to clarify which crimes were exempt from the rule.
That confusion hasn’t subsided. “It is for all intents and purposes no less ambiguous than it was a year ago,” Lux said.
As the state approaches the presidential primaries, this gray area could play out at the polls, Lux said, pushing Republicans and Democrats to challenge voter eligibility.
The lack of information could also be harmful to voters, and Lux said some people have already hesitated to register. With deadlines ahead, Lux predicted there would be a flood of questions.
“I hope it doesn’t preclude anyone who thinks they’re eligible from registering and voting,” he said.
Tyrone Oliver, 63, Ocala: ‘I have been publicly embarrassed’
Tyrone Oliver. Photograph: Sarah Espedido/The Guardian
Amendment 4 restored voting rights to many people, but it hasn’t restored all rights to those with felony convictions.
Last year, Tyrone Oliver, who runs a not-for-profit organization in Ocala, ran for city council and won. The celebration was short lived: after he was elected, a city attorney informed Oliver he wasn’t allowed to hold office because of a felony conviction from over 30 years ago.
Oliver was stunned. The drug-related felony had cost him three months of life, three years of probation, and his voting rights for decades. But he thought that Amendment 4 had restored all his rights, including the ability to hold office.
“This system dropped the ball and I’m paying for it,” he said. “They’re still beating me over the head with something that happened when I was 26 years old and I’m 63 now.”
Since then, he’s been trying to meet Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to discuss the issue.
His ordeal has made Oliver ambivalent about Amendment 4 as well. He thinks the measure was “not good” for Florida because it created confusion.
“I have been publicly embarrassed. News stations and everybody comes out that I’m a convicted felon and all this stuff. And nobody bothers to ask me the whole story,” he said.
Lance Wissinger, 40, Fort Myers: ‘I didn’t know how big of a deal it was until it personally affected me’
While Amendment 4 passed with support from most Floridians, there’s still work to be done to combat the stigma around people with felony convictions. Lance Wissinger wants to be part of the solution.
Wissinger wanted to be the first person to register to vote at the Lee county election office the day Amendment 4 went into effect. But by the time he got there, around 9am, someone had already beat him.
Wissinger has never voted. He was convicted of DUI manslaughter and served four and a half years in prison in the mid-2000s. When he was released, Wissinger said he wanted to get more involved in his community.
I tell people: ‘Hey, I’m just seeing if you want to register to vote.’ And they’re like ‘I can’t, I’m a felon.’ I’m like: ‘You can now.’
Last year he started as a policy fellow with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, where, like Meade, he has been trying to inform as many people as possible about their right to vote. “I’ve gone out and knocked on doors and I tell people: ‘Hey, I’m just seeing if you want to register to vote.’ And they’re like ‘I can’t, I’m a felon.’ I’m like: ‘You can now,’” he said.
It can be difficult for people to figure out if their sentences are fully completed. The law Republicans passed last year allows courts to change sentences, and replace fines and fees with community service hours. But so far just four counties in the state, all Democratic-leaning, are utilizing the provision.
Meanwhile, Wissinger hopes to change the general perception of what felons look like, and who benefits from Amendment 4.
“People will be like: ‘Well, you had a chance and you screwed that up.’ Not knowing and not understanding is a lot of why I go and speak and tell my story,” he said. “I didn’t know how big of a deal it was until it personally affected me.”


theguardian--2020-01-09--Facebook refuses to restrict untruthful political ads and micro-targeting

Facebook has decided not to limit how political ads can be targeted to specific groups of people , as its main digital-ad rival Google did in November to fight misinformation .
Neither will it ban political ads outright , as Twitter did last October .
And it still will not factcheck them , as it ’ s faced pressure to do .
Instead , it is announcing much more limited “ transparency features ” that aim to give users slightly more control over how many political ads they see and to make its online library of political ads easier to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assuage critics – including some of the company ’ s rank-and-file employees – who say Facebook has too much power and not enough limits when it comes to its effects on elections and democracy itself .
Since last fall , Facebook has insisted that it won ’ t factcheck political ads , a move that critics say gives politicians license to lie in ads that can not be easily monitored by outsiders .
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly argued that “ political speech is important ” and that Facebook doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the digital ads leader , is limiting political-ad targeting to broad categories such as sex , age and postal code .
Facebook said in a blogpost on Thursday that it considered limiting the targeting of political ads .
But the social network said it learned about their importance for “ reaching key audiences ” after conducting outreach with political campaigns from both US parties , political groups and nonprofits .
The company said it was guided by the principle that “ people should be able to hear from those who wish to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public ” .
Facebook does plan to let users choose to see “ fewer ” political and social-issue ads , although it will not let people exclude them entirely .
It will also let people search the ad library for exact phrases and to limit their search results using filters such as ad-audience size , dates and regions reached .
The transparency changes will go into effect over the next three months in the US and other countries where Facebook puts “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ads .
The political-ad controls won ’ t roll out in the US until early summer ; the company will “ eventually ” expand them to other regions .

Facebook has decided not to limit how political ads can be targeted to specific groups of people, as its main digital-ad rival Google did in November to fight misinformation.
Neither will it ban political ads outright, as Twitter did last October. And it still will not factcheck them, as it’s faced pressure to do.
Instead, it is announcing much more limited “transparency features” that aim to give users slightly more control over how many political ads they see and to make its online library of political ads easier to use.
These steps appear unlikely to assuage critics – including some of the company’s rank-and-file employees – who say Facebook has too much power and not enough limits when it comes to its effects on elections and democracy itself.
Since last fall, Facebook has insisted that it won’t factcheck political ads, a move that critics say gives politicians license to lie in ads that cannot be easily monitored by outsiders. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly argued that “political speech is important” and that Facebook doesn’t want to interfere with it.
Google, the digital ads leader, is limiting political-ad targeting to broad categories such as sex, age and postal code.
Facebook said in a blogpost on Thursday that it considered limiting the targeting of political ads. But the social network said it learned about their importance for “reaching key audiences” after conducting outreach with political campaigns from both US parties, political groups and nonprofits.
The company said it was guided by the principle that “people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public”.
Facebook does plan to let users choose to see “fewer” political and social-issue ads, although it will not let people exclude them entirely. It will also let people search the ad library for exact phrases and to limit their search results using filters such as ad-audience size, dates and regions reached.
The transparency changes will go into effect over the next three months in the US and other countries where Facebook puts “paid for by” disclaimers on political ads. The political-ad controls won’t roll out in the US until early summer; the company will “eventually” expand them to other regions.


theguardian--2020-01-09--Iran crisis pushes foreign policy to the fore in Democratic primary

Joe Biden , speaking against a backdrop adorned with the trappings of a presidential address , including American flags and deep-blue drapery , delivered a scorching rebuke of Donald Trump ’ s stewardship of American foreign policy , accusing the president of bringing the country “ dangerously close ” to war with Iran .
Bernie Sanders quickly brought forward legislation to block funding for military force against Iran without congressional authorization , part of his argument that the “ children of working families ” disproportionately suffer the consequences of war compared with the “ children of the billionaire class ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his experience as a naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan to reassure voters that he has the experience to be president , arguing that someone who served in uniform would bring a nuanced and “ forward-looking view ” to future conflicts around the world .
Since Trump ’ s authorization of a drone strike killing the top Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani last week – and Iran ’ s launch of more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two US military bases in Iraq on Tuesday night – the top contenders for the Democratic nomination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a clarifying moment in the final weeks before voting begins .
In a televised address on Wednesday , Trump backed away from the precipice of war with Iran , opting instead to impose new sanctions on Tehran in response to the retaliatory strikes .
But his speech did little to soothe the growing political backlash in Washington , ensuring the issue was unlikely to go away any time soon “ At a time when Trump is pushing the nation closer to more reckless wars , I think people will start to look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats running to replace him to see which candidate they would feel safer with , ” said Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats , a progressive group .
He added : “ Foreign policy does not always rank as a top priority for voters but it ’ s actually an area that falls much more under the president ’ s control than certain domestic policy issues.
” Indeed , national security and foreign policy have so far played only a limited role in the Democratic primary , which has been dominated by healthcare , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rising international tensions have reoriented the policy debate .
Candidates are weaving foreign policy into their closing arguments to early-state voters , bringing into sharp relief long-simmering divisions within the party over matters of war and peace .
The initial response from the party ’ s presidential field was to condemn Trump for what candidates viewed as a reckless action that escalated tensions in the Middle East and could lead to an unintentional war with Iran .
In the days that followed , however , the Democrats have amplified their disagreements , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ substantive debate among the candidates about the role of American power .
While it is too soon to gauge how Trump ’ s latest provocations toward Iran will resonate with voters , the occasion has provided both opportunities and risks for candidates .
Biden has billed his long record on foreign affairs and stature on the global stage as assets in a world rattled by Trump ’ s erratic foreign policy .
On the campaign trail this week and during his formal speech in New York , Biden reminded voters of that résumé @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world as Barack Obama ’ s lieutenant and two years serving as the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee .
“ I understand better than anyone that the system will not hold unless we find ways to work together to advance our national interests , ” Biden said in New York this week , waving off critics who say his commitment to bipartisanship is “ naive or outdated ” .
But while Biden presents his experience as an asset , his closest rivals have assailed that record , particularly his 2002 vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his role in shaping its aftermath .
Sanders , who opposed the war in Iraq , recently suggested that the Biden ’ s foreign policy record could be a political liability against Trump should he be the nominee .
“ Joe Biden voted and helped lead the effort for the war in Iraq – the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in the modern history of this country , ” Sanders said on CNN .
“ I just don ’ t think that that kind of record is going to bring forth the energy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meanwhile has seized on the rapidly unfolding conflict to emphasize his longstanding opposition to foreign wars as well as his efforts to end US military involvement in Yemen and prevent further action in Iran .
“ I was right about Vietnam .
I was right about Iraq .
I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran , ” he tweeted .
“ I apologize to no one.
” While that message resonates with antiwar Democrats and independents , Sanders has yet to be seriously challenged on his views @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentiments but finds herself on the defensive from critics on the left and the center as she attempts to reclaim her standing in the race .
On Tuesday night she opened her rally in Brooklyn by addressing Iran ’ s retaliatory attacks .
“ This is a reminder of why we need to de-escalate tension in the Middle East , ” she said .
“ The American people do not want a war with Iran.
” Buttigieg has used the occasion to highlight his military service and allay concerns about his youth and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He has also assailed Biden supporting the “ the worst foreign policy decision made by the United States in my lifetime ” .
“ This is an example of why years in Washington is not always the same thing as judgment , ” Buttigieg said during an appearance on Iowa Press last month .
In the years since , Biden has called the 2002 vote a “ mistake ” , though recently he has been criticized for wrongly suggesting that he opposed the Iraq war from the outset in 2003 .
Even so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trust Biden more than any other candidate on foreign policy .
In a CNN poll from November , 48 % of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said Biden was best suited to handle matters of foreign policy .
By comparison , Sanders ranked a distant second at 14 % , while 11 % said Warren and only 6 % chose Buttigieg .
Whether the issue will continue to be a factor in the Democratic primary depends in part on what comes next .
While polls tend to show that foreign policy is a low @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a significant role in presidential elections since the September 11 terrorist attacks .
In 2004 , growing opposition to the Iraq war helped to propel John Kerry to the presidential nomination .
Four years later , Barack Obama wielded Hillary Clinton ’ s past support for the Iraq war as a cudgel , lifting him to the nomination .
During the 2016 presidential election , Sanders and Trump tapped into a weariness over America ’ s “ forever wars ” and both attacked Clinton for her early support for the war .
Michael @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Joe Biden and the senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement , said the recent tensions with Iran have afforded the former vice-president an opportunity to demonstrate his command of foreign affairs .
“ As voters contemplate how a confrontation with Iran could spiral out of control , they will contrast the erratic , unpredictable impulsive nature of the Trump presidency with the steady hand that Biden brings to the foreign policy arena , ” he said .
But the congressman Ro Khanna , a national co-chair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the senator of the military funding legislation , said voters were tired after nearly two decades of war and hungry for a nominee who “ offers a very different vision ” of American foreign policy .
“ He won ’ t win this debate in the Beltway but he ’ ll win it with American voters , ” Khanna said .
Next week the candidates will meet in Des Moines for the final presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses on 3 February , and many party activists are eager for the Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US should engage in the world .
Alex McCoy , a Marine Corps veteran and the political director of Common Defense , a progressive veterans ’ group , said the administration ’ s escalation toward Iran has given Democrats a crucial opening to reach out to voters who were drawn to Trump ’ s promise to end “ forever wars ” in 2016 .
And he believes it could make a difference in 2020 .
McCoy pointed to research that showed the communities most devastated by casualties of America ’ s wars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The study found that “ if three states key to Trump ’ s victory – Pennsylvania , Michigan , and Wisconsin – had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate , all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House ” .
“ It ’ s common among pundits to say that voters don ’ t care about foreign policy .
But that misses the truth , ” he said .
“ Voters don ’ t care about the minutiae of treaty negotiations but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people they know and love are dying in forever wars .
”

Joe Biden, speaking against a backdrop adorned with the trappings of a presidential address, including American flags and deep-blue drapery, delivered a scorching rebuke of Donald Trump’s stewardship of American foreign policy, accusing the president of bringing the country “dangerously close” to war with Iran.
Bernie Sanders quickly brought forward legislation to block funding for military force against Iran without congressional authorization, part of his argument that the “children of working families” disproportionately suffer the consequences of war compared with the “children of the billionaire class”.
And Pete Buttigieg has increasingly emphasized his experience as a naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan to reassure voters that he has the experience to be president, arguing that someone who served in uniform would bring a nuanced and “forward-looking view” to future conflicts around the world.
Since Trump’s authorization of a drone strike killing the top Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani last week – and Iran’s launch of more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two US military bases in Iraq on Tuesday night – the top contenders for the Democratic nomination have treated the threat of further escalation as a clarifying moment in the final weeks before voting begins.
In a televised address on Wednesday, Trump backed away from the precipice of war with Iran, opting instead to impose new sanctions on Tehran in response to the retaliatory strikes. But his speech did little to soothe the growing political backlash in Washington, ensuring the issue was unlikely to go away any time soon
“At a time when Trump is pushing the nation closer to more reckless wars, I think people will start to look much closely at the records of the Democrats running to replace him to see which candidate they would feel safer with,” said Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats, a progressive group.
He added: “Foreign policy does not always rank as a top priority for voters but it’s actually an area that falls much more under the president’s control than certain domestic policy issues.”
Joe Biden makes a foreign policy statement on 7 January. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
Indeed, national security and foreign policy have so far played only a limited role in the Democratic primary, which has been dominated by healthcare, the economy and climate change. But the rising international tensions have reoriented the policy debate. Candidates are weaving foreign policy into their closing arguments to early-state voters, bringing into sharp relief long-simmering divisions within the party over matters of war and peace.
The initial response from the party’s presidential field was to condemn Trump for what candidates viewed as a reckless action that escalated tensions in the Middle East and could lead to an unintentional war with Iran. In the days that followed, however, the Democrats have amplified their disagreements, setting up what could be the first substantive debate among the candidates about the role of American power.
While it is too soon to gauge how Trump’s latest provocations toward Iran will resonate with voters, the occasion has provided both opportunities and risks for candidates.
Biden has billed his long record on foreign affairs and stature on the global stage as assets in a world rattled by Trump’s erratic foreign policy. On the campaign trail this week and during his formal speech in New York, Biden reminded voters of that résumé, which includes eight years traveling the world as Barack Obama’s lieutenant and two years serving as the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee.
“I understand better than anyone that the system will not hold unless we find ways to work together to advance our national interests,” Biden said in New York this week, waving off critics who say his commitment to bipartisanship is “naive or outdated”.
But while Biden presents his experience as an asset, his closest rivals have assailed that record, particularly his 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq and his role in shaping its aftermath. Sanders, who opposed the war in Iraq, recently suggested that the Biden’s foreign policy record could be a political liability against Trump should he be the nominee.
“Joe Biden voted and helped lead the effort for the war in Iraq – the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in the modern history of this country,” Sanders said on CNN. “I just don’t think that that kind of record is going to bring forth the energy we need to defeat Trump.”
Sanders meanwhile has seized on the rapidly unfolding conflict to emphasize his longstanding opposition to foreign wars as well as his efforts to end US military involvement in Yemen and prevent further action in Iran.
“I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran,” he tweeted. “I apologize to no one.”
While that message resonates with antiwar Democrats and independents, Sanders has yet to be seriously challenged on his views.
Elizabeth Warren shares Sanders’ anti-interventionist sentiments but finds herself on the defensive from critics on the left and the center as she attempts to reclaim her standing in the race. On Tuesday night she opened her rally in Brooklyn by addressing Iran’s retaliatory attacks.
“This is a reminder of why we need to de-escalate tension in the Middle East,” she said. “The American people do not want a war with Iran.”
Elizabeth Warren at a rally in Brooklyn on Tuesday. Photograph: Joel Sheakoski/Barcroft Media
Buttigieg has used the occasion to highlight his military service and allay concerns about his youth and relative inexperience on the world stage. He has also assailed Biden supporting the “the worst foreign policy decision made by the United States in my lifetime”.
“This is an example of why years in Washington is not always the same thing as judgment,” Buttigieg said during an appearance on Iowa Press last month.
In the years since, Biden has called the 2002 vote a “mistake”, though recently he has been criticized for wrongly suggesting that he opposed the Iraq war from the outset in 2003. Even so, Democratic voters continue to say they trust Biden more than any other candidate on foreign policy.
In a CNN poll from November, 48% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said Biden was best suited to handle matters of foreign policy. By comparison, Sanders ranked a distant second at 14%, while 11% said Warren and only 6% chose Buttigieg.
Whether the issue will continue to be a factor in the Democratic primary depends in part on what comes next. While polls tend to show that foreign policy is a low priority for voters, it has played a significant role in presidential elections since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In 2004, growing opposition to the Iraq war helped to propel John Kerry to the presidential nomination. Four years later, Barack Obama wielded Hillary Clinton’s past support for the Iraq war as a cudgel, lifting him to the nomination. During the 2016 presidential election, Sanders and Trump tapped into a weariness over America’s “forever wars” and both attacked Clinton for her early support for the war.
Michael Carpenter, a former foreign policy adviser to Joe Biden and the senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, said the recent tensions with Iran have afforded the former vice-president an opportunity to demonstrate his command of foreign affairs.
New Yorkers protest against the Trump administration’s escalation of military tensions with Iran. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
“As voters contemplate how a confrontation with Iran could spiral out of control, they will contrast the erratic, unpredictable impulsive nature of the Trump presidency with the steady hand that Biden brings to the foreign policy arena,” he said.
But the congressman Ro Khanna, a national co-chair of Sanders’ campaign and a co-sponsor with the senator of the military funding legislation, said voters were tired after nearly two decades of war and hungry for a nominee who “offers a very different vision” of American foreign policy.
“He won’t win this debate in the Beltway but he’ll win it with American voters,” Khanna said.
Next week the candidates will meet in Des Moines for the final presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses on 3 February, and many party activists are eager for the Democratic frontrunners to clarify their views on how the US should engage in the world.
Alex McCoy, a Marine Corps veteran and the political director of Common Defense, a progressive veterans’ group, said the administration’s escalation toward Iran has given Democrats a crucial opening to reach out to voters who were drawn to Trump’s promise to end “forever wars” in 2016. And he believes it could make a difference in 2020.
McCoy pointed to research that showed the communities most devastated by casualties of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq voted for Trump. The study found that “if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House”.
“It’s common among pundits to say that voters don’t care about foreign policy. But that misses the truth,” he said. “Voters don’t care about the minutiae of treaty negotiations but they sure do care about whether the people they know and love are dying in forever wars.”


theguardian--2020-01-06--The media missed the rise of Trump in 2016. Are they ready this time?

In the weeks after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 , the American media went through deep soul searching .
Most news outlets had been taken by surprise by Trump ’ s victory , had failed to see the rise of the electorate that would put him in the White House , and had been led by the clickbait of his tweets .
Then there was Hillary Clinton ’ s emails and an arguable failure to appreciate the importance of misinformation and Russian interference in the election .
This time the press has pledged to do better .
Yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go before Americans go to the polls again , there are already signs that mistakes of the magnitude of 2016 may be repeated or new challenges arise .
The Guardian and the Columbia Journalism Review have partnered to interview 30 top media figures and commentators , asking how ready they think we are for the 2020 presidential election .
The stakes could not be higher .
With the 2020 presidential election upon us , leading media practitioners and commentators are in anxious and reflective mood .
Margaret Sullivan , media columnist for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assault and democracy is under assault right now , and these two things are related .
One of the things we didn ’ t do well covering the presidential election last time was that we failed to distinguish between the serious and not so serious – the term false equivalency comes to mind .
So Trump and his sexual assault claims , business record , history of racism – all those things were made equal to Hillary Clinton ’ s emails .
Today we ’ re calling it a little better .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re willing sometimes to use that word .
We ’ re willing to use the word “ lie ” .
We ’ ve come a ways in that sense , but I ’ m still not particularly positive about how we ’ re going to deal with 2020 .
Dean Baquet , executive editor of the New York Times : In 2016 I think the media got the country wrong .
I don ’ t think we got Trump .
We didn ’ t understand how much the country was angry at elites @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic crisis .
And I don ’ t think we understood quite how much the country just wanted to shake things up .
We covered it as usual , the way we always cover elections , as a clash of two ideologies , and I think it was much , much deeper .
Ben Smith , editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News : The media has this incredible quadrennial habit of learning all the lessons of four years ago and applying them when the medium has already moved on .
So I think the media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mistakes of the last cycle , like giving Trump endless livestreams and letting him use provocative tweets to dominate the conversation .
But I ’ m sure we will fuck it up in some new way we aren ’ t expecting .
Samhita Mukhopadhyay , executive editor of Teen Vogue : People are worried and we don ’ t have an answer .
The US president is openly attacking journalists .
He has convinced a third of the country that the New York Times is fake news .
We can criticize the Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it ’ s not fake news .
We have to have some general understanding : outlets like the Guardian , the New Yorker , these are not fake news !
Jorge Ramos , Univision news anchor : In 2016 there were 27 million Latinos eligible to vote and 13 million of them decided to stay home – more than 50 % .
In 2020 there will be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote and I ’ m very concerned that the story might repeat itself again : that Latinos decide to stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President Trump but don ’ t trust the Democrats either .
That would be terrible for Latinos .
Daniel Arnall , executive editor of MSNBC : So one of the things that we are doing differently than in the last cycle is focusing more on issues , and coverage of issues that folks across the country are interested in .
That is going to be driving our coverage .
We ’ re going to be substantially less interested in taking like live candidate events , I think , and dealing with all of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Bulwark : Going back to 2016 , when I was part of what you ’ d consider to be the conservative media , it ’ s difficult to remember that there was still a lot of diversity of opinion .
There were a lot of conservative commentators and talk show hosts who were very critical of Donald Trump .
What ’ s really changed is how increasingly tribalized the media has become .
Kara Swisher , tech journalist and founder of Recode : What happened in 2016 should not come as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention to the tech companies .
Tech moguls collect all the money and pay none of the price .
In 2016 Trump regularly set the 24-hour news agenda with his early morning clickbait tweets .
Will the same Trump-obsession dominate again ?
Frank Bruni , columnist for the New York Times : We ’ ve learned that if you write a story about the ridiculousness of Trump ’ s latest tweet it gets a lot more traffic than an analysis of Elizabeth Warren ’ s Medicare for All plan .
Trump understands what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he has a very acute sense of what people will click on .
So I ’ m concerned that we are going to end up giving Trump more than the lion ’ s share of media time all the way up to election night .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : We are living amid constant cutbacks .
Outlets are shrinking .
I worry the story continues to be driven by what is performing , by KPIs ( key performance indicators ) .
That ’ s where a lot of the Trump tweet coverage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fruit .
Susan Page , Washington bureau chief for USA Today : I make no apology for the amount of coverage we give President Trump .
He ’ s the president .
If he says something that ’ s incredibly provocative or does something that has far-reaching ramifications , we have an obligation to report it .
Ramos , Univision : When Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and when he ejected me from a press conference , we told everyone , listen , this is someone who ’ s making racist remarks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , yet very few people pay attention .
Today I believe it ’ s a completely different story .
Journalists are being much more aggressive than they were in 2016 .
Smith , BuzzFeed : This is a totally different moment to 2016 – it ’ s an election that will be a referendum on Trump ’ s presidency .
The challenge will be covering his presidency and not what he says about it .
Olivia Nuzzi , Washington correspondent for New York magazine : Trump is sort of blowing everything up .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ has provided more opportunity for reporters to be creative .
In the Trump White House , nothing works like it ’ s supposed to .
Baquet , the New York Times : When you cover a theatrical politician you must try not to get caught up in the theatre .
Having said that , I ’ m one of those people who thinks theatrics are still worth covering – they are part of the way he leads the country .
Todd Gitlin , professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University : During @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bureaus of major news organizations – spearheaded by Harper ’ s together with the networks and a number of major news organizations – said : “ We ’ re not going to go along with the ‘ minders ’ scheme.
” Such collective action is not beyond the bounds of the imagination for 2020 .
Zanny Minton Beddoes , editor-in-chief of the Economist : I think there is some debate in certain quarters about whether the media should be taking one side or another – stand in opposition to Trump .
And that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sense of polarisation and people living in two entirely ecosystems in the US .
Since Trump took office , the Washington Post has counted 13,435 of his false and misleading claims .
This extraordinary splurge of untruths poses huge challenges for the media as we go into 2020 .
Glenn Kessler , editor of the Fact Checker , Washington Post : The database of Trump ’ s false claims is a very depressing duty .
It just drags you down to have to go through it , like reading one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one speech will have 60 false and misleading claims , most of which you ’ ve already factchecked and said were false .
It ’ s incredibly depressing .
Page , USA Today : There is much more impressive factchecking than there was in 2016 .
One of the things that we ’ ve seen happen is not to let something that we know is inaccurate stand unchallenged .
Ramos , Univision : I ’ ve covered Latin America for many decades and I think that has prepared me for what I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
To have someone leading the country who is an authoritarian , who is not telling the truth , who ’ s constantly lying in a country that is completely divided .
Bruni , the New York Times : You can only say the same thing so many times before people become numb and deaf to it .
If the public is not listening , I don ’ t know how that becomes our fault .
Nicholas Johnston , editor-in-chief of Axios : What makes me somewhat optimistic is that four or six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the vocabulary to talk about deepfake , fake video and audio , misinformation , the manipulation of social media , the end of truth .
Now we know that these are things , we can talk about it and help voters identify what is true and what is not .
Kessler , the Washington Post : I ’ ve covered just about every presidential administration since Reagan and this administration has the least fidelity to truth and honesty of any I ’ ve encountered .
Sullivan , the Washington Post : The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Kellyanne Conway , Trump ’ s White House counsel , who is just an inveterate liar .
By having her on , she is allowed to say things that aren ’ t true and although she can be challenged it ’ s still a very strong message having her on air .
My feeling is , don ’ t have her on , you know she ’ s going to lie her way through every broadcast .
That ’ s not censorship .
Censorship is government action that disallows things being said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ producers are not censorship .
Swisher , Recode : If you ’ re not scared when Facebook ’ s Mark Zuckerberg says it ’ s okay for politicians to lie , especially in the context of a system that is so viral compared to any other media , you should be afraid .
Most opinion polls in 2016 predicted that Hillary Clinton would win .
On election day the New York Times gave Clinton an “ 85 % chance to win ” through its forecasting model .
There ’ s been a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ learned the lessons ?
Arnall , MSNBC : I am still hesitant on polling , and I think there ’ s been a real reluctance by a lot of major organizations to really come to terms with the failures of that through the last cycle .
I think that ’ s a potential weak point that a lot of people should be pushing their organizations on .
I ’ m still like , “ What are we doing differently this time ?
” Larry Sabato , pollster and director of University of Virginia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pollsters got to eat a large , bitter humble pie after election night in 2016 , which came as a tremendous shock .
We ’ d all expected Hillary Clinton to win by three points or so , giving her over 300 electoral college votes .
When Trump won we were forced to relearn that polling is not the word of God or handed down on the Mount to Moses .
Baquet , the New York Times : All of us in the media were just so convinced Trump couldn ’ t win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paint-by-numbers game we have developed .
Sabato , pollster : The polling industry has tried to correct itself after it was so badly caught off-guard .
We used not to weight by educational level and it turned out that if we had done so we might have been more accurate in 2016 .
So now everybody is weighting by education .
We also had our fingers burned over the electoral college .
The polls got the popular vote more or less correct , with Clinton winning the popular vote by two percentage points @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the profound electoral college impact that gave Trump his victory .
Page , USA Today : You have to rely both on quantitative and qualitative interviews .
Polling is really valuable , but it doesn ’ t tell you everything .
You want some quantitative data that enables you to say , “ Hey , Pete Buttigieg is doing really well among older voters , ” which is one thing we ’ ve just noticed in recent polling , then go out and talk to older voters .
Sabato , pollster : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be dropped entirely .
Most readers didn ’ t understand what probability really means .
It just confuses people , and to do it again next year would be to plant a bomb that could explode in your face .
2016 provoked soul searching about whether Clinton was held to different media standards than Trump , both in the extent and type of coverage .
Is the same happening again within the traditional media obsession with the horserace ?
Bruni , the New York Times : Here ’ s one specific way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judge whether we ’ ve done our jobs well at the end of the 2020 election : we will not have gone to the Democratic finalists in the primary stage or to the ultimate Democratic nominee , whoever that person is , every time Trump hurls an insult and accusation at them .
We will not have made that the main news story of the day : “ Candidates traded volleys in a war of words.
” We do that all the time .
Sullivan , the Washington Post : I see sexism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s improved since Hillary Clinton ran but it ’ s still not great .
The disappearance of Kamala Harris has some of that wrapped into it , and the constant discussions about whether Elizabeth Warren is likable enough to be elected reflects inherent sexism that we haven ’ t really dealt with .
Page , USA Today : On the day that Donald Trump announced , my assumption was that he was not going to be nominated for president .
And it took a while for me to realize what voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be .
So that is a lesson that I think we tried to apply this time , by looking at the Democratic field … It ’ s not up to us .
It ’ s up to voters .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : One thing we ’ re seeing with young people is that they are having trouble following the deep nuances between candidates .
It ’ s kind of boring to really point out some of these policy differences because they ’ re not really that different .
Smith , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Our audience actively hates it .
We have to think about a way to replace it in a way that is compelling and that cares about the personalities and the policies while always keeping in mind that there are real things at stake .
Now it ’ s kids in cages .
I mean , who cares that somebody fires his political consultants .
Beddoes , the Economist : We are beefing up our data department , which we ’ ll combine with traditional shoe-leather reporting .
We plan to put those together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the ability to stand back from the tick-tock of the horserace minute-by-minute , to give rigorous fair-minded analysis .
Smith , BuzzFeed : For our audience nobody thinks that politics is a game or that it ’ s fun or a sport .
The kind of coverage that treats it as though it ’ s entertainment is repellant to people .
That doesn ’ t mean they don ’ t want to know who ’ s going to win or that they don ’ t care about polling , but just that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stakes are .
That ’ s the brand for our coverage : the stakes 2020 .
Trump ’ s unexpected victory four years ago led to questions about whether media organisations , in their coastal bubbles , had failed to hear the frustration of voters in the heartlands .
How is it playing for 2020 ?
Baquet , the New York Times : We have to get out in the country more .
We have to talk to more people , which we ’ ve started to do .
Sarah Kendzior , St @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The View from Flyover Country : Dispatches from the Forgotten America : National media is making the same mistakes as in 2016 .
The midwest has become the sort of stand-in region for what the national media think of as the “ forgotten voter ” .
What a lot of these coastal outlets are doing is parachuting in here with the narrative pre-written trying to find people who fit their preconceptions of what people in the midwest are like .
Honestly the best way they could fix this problem would be to hire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Al Cross , director of the University of Kentucky Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues : It ’ s not just boots on the ground .
You can ’ t have a parachute mentality .
You have to have some appreciation of rural sensibility .
The best reporters know how to do that .
Sykes , the Bulwark : I ’ m in Wisconsin and I do a lot of work on the coast as well .
I ’ ll be on an MSNBC show , and people on the panels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strange throwback figures , “ nostalgic for a time when men were able to slap women around ” .
And it was like , “ Wait , no.
” First of all , understand that these are people who have their own values , their own communities , and every time you talk about them in this way , you deepen this red , blue divide , this thing .
You need to not treat them as these … deplorable troglodytes .
Caitlin Byrd , political reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you see the same descriptors used to talk about places where I was from : backwoods , dirt road , small town , quiet .
The same tropes over and over .
But this cycle is it seems that more national reporters in particular are realizing that the south is more complicated .
Gitlin , Columbia University : There was a sense after 2016 that we weren ’ t listening to enough people in diners in Ohio .
That wasn ’ t so much misguided as it was inflated .
The average Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ went from not noticing people whose life chances are impacted by the rustification of the midwest to thinking that they are now the central story .
It ’ s an absurd overcompensation .
Kendzior , journalist and author : I meet a lot of people who have some regret about voting for Trump , who are reluctant at times to admit that regret on record .
Some are embarrassed about having made this regrettable decision … The base is still there , they ’ re very frenetic … But I do think that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ portrays it .
Only 46 % of 18-29 year olds voted in 2016 .
Was the failure of media to address young people ’ s interests partly to blame , and if so how to fix it ?
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : The way the media talks about the youth vote is as social media Snapchat-obsessed young people , who don ’ t care about politics and are not engaged because it ’ s above their head and they are so selfish and that ’ s why they don ’ t vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of narrative would turn me off too .
When you do have outlets that speak to their interests you notice that they do become engaged .
Swisher , Recode : When I started my podcast , someone said to me : “ You know , Kara , millennials like snackable content.
” And I was like : “ I don ’ t want to write for people who want snacks .
Everyone who ’ s substantive wants substance.
” They said : “ Millennials are twitchy .
They can ’ t focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s interesting about it is , they were dead wrong .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : None of the presidential candidates have a very well-fleshed-out strategy for Gen Z .
Nobody really knows how the 18-year-old who is in St Louis who works in a fast-food place , we have no idea what they want .
We don ’ t know how they ’ re going to vote .
At Teen Vogue we see it as an opportunity for a generation that has not had somebody actually speak to their needs : climate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ student debt .
Diversity in media – both in terms of the internal makeup of news teams and the way those teams cover Trump ’ s stoking of racial fears – will be a running theme in 2020 .
Errin Haines Whack , national writer on race and ethnicity for the Associated Press : As we head into 2020 , I am still on the campaign trail quite frequently the only black woman in a room .
Sometimes the only black person .
The reality is that two thirds of the people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yet we have the most diverse field in the history of Democratic politics in the upcoming primary : a record number of women , a record number of people of color .
Responding to that diversity in newsrooms seems to be a journalistic imperative .
Dwight Watkins , Salon editor and bestselling author : I ’ ve been seeing the same people … get out there and basically tell similar stories and make assumptions about whole groups of people .
They talk about the black vote as if it ’ s just one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ utilize the same players and the same people , they take their biases and they apply these biases to our whole group .
And this is just not fair .
Ramos , Univision : Many news organisations have started calling Trump a racist – that ’ s something that didn ’ t happen in 2016 .
When Trump said in June 2015 that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists , that was a racist statement but many people were not comfortable calling him out on that .
Since then he ’ s made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news media feel more comfortable now in calling Trump a racist .
Baquet , the New York Times : People who think that Trump only won because 40 % of America is racist are not looking closely at the numbers , and do not have a fully empathetic understanding of America .
I ’ m not saying he didn ’ t stoke racism and get votes from racists .
But that ’ s a very easy answer .
I don ’ t think that journalists should deal with easy answers .
Mukhopadhyay , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the conversations after 2016 were “ Oh no !
we focused so much on getting all these women in the newsroom we alienated all these white men ” .
After the election , editors felt they needed less diverse newsrooms because they were concerned they had gone “ too far left ” or had incorporated identity politics too much and were alienating this white base that was all riled up for Trump .
Ramos , Univision : The numbers of Latinos represented in the US – whether in newsrooms or in Congress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have enough Latinos on the air or reporting .
I do see changes .
The first presidential debate among Democratic candidates was organised by NBC and Telemundo , and José Diaz-Balart was one of the moderators .
That alone meant that Spanish was spoken in that debate , immigration was addressed and Hispanic issues were talked about .
I was one of the moderators in the second debate , and for the first time not only did we talk about Latino issues and immigration but I brought in Latin American issues .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
The other 500 journalists pontificating in a journalist ’ s Twitter feed ?
Johnston , Axios : My social media policy for the newsroom would be : delete your Twitter account and don ’ t use that as your window on the world , it ’ s a journalists ’ echo chamber .
OK , that ’ s a joke – we are not going to un-invent the internet .
But I do think it ’ s important in newsrooms to talk about the impact that it has .
We tell our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , get out of the house , go wander the halls of Congress , fly someplace and talk to people .
Mukhopadhyay , Teen Vogue : If you looked at Twitter after the recent Democratic presidential debate , my entire timeline was filled with criticism of Pete Buttigieg .
Meanwhile he ’ s polling really well .
That discrepancy reminds me of that we thought Trump couldn ’ t win in 2016 because we all hated him and thought he was a joke .
That to me indicates that we haven ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ magazine : I try to remind myself that the entire electorate is not represented in these couple hundred Twitter accounts .
Reporting team : Ed Pilkington , Adam Gabbatt and Jim Waterson from the Guardian ; Akintunde Ahmad , Lauren Harris and Savannah Jacobson from the Columbia Journalism Review

Guardian US and the Columbia Journalism Review

In the weeks after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the American media went through deep soul searching. Most news outlets had been taken by surprise by Trump’s victory, had failed to see the rise of the electorate that would put him in the White House, and had been led by the clickbait of his tweets. Then there was Hillary Clinton’s emails and an arguable failure to appreciate the importance of misinformation and Russian interference in the election.
This time the press has pledged to do better. Yet, with less than a year to go before Americans go to the polls again, there are already signs that mistakes of the magnitude of 2016 may be repeated or new challenges arise.
The Guardian and the Columbia Journalism Review have partnered to interview 30 top media figures and commentators, asking how ready they think we are for the 2020 presidential election.
‘The media got the country wrong’
The stakes could not be higher. With the 2020 presidential election upon us, leading media practitioners and commentators are in anxious and reflective mood.
Journalists file information inside phone booths at the public impeachment hearings on 19 November 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for the Washington Post: The press is under assault and democracy is under assault right now, and these two things are related. One of the things we didn’t do well covering the presidential election last time was that we failed to distinguish between the serious and not so serious – the term false equivalency comes to mind. So Trump and his sexual assault claims, business record, history of racism – all those things were made equal to Hillary Clinton’s emails. Today we’re calling it a little better. When things are “racist” we’re willing sometimes to use that word. We’re willing to use the word “lie”. We’ve come a ways in that sense, but I’m still not particularly positive about how we’re going to deal with 2020.
Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times: In 2016 I think the media got the country wrong. I don’t think we got Trump. We didn’t understand how much the country was angry at elites, upset about the fallout from the economic crisis. And I don’t think we understood quite how much the country just wanted to shake things up. We covered it as usual, the way we always cover elections, as a clash of two ideologies, and I think it was much, much deeper.
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News: The media has this incredible quadrennial habit of learning all the lessons of four years ago and applying them when the medium has already moved on. So I think the media is totally prepared not to repeat the mistakes of the last cycle, like giving Trump endless livestreams and letting him use provocative tweets to dominate the conversation. But I’m sure we will fuck it up in some new way we aren’t expecting.
In 2020 there will be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote and I’m concerned the story might repeat: Latinos stay home. Jorge Ramos, Univision news anchor
Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Teen Vogue: People are worried and we don’t have an answer. The US president is openly attacking journalists. He has convinced a third of the country that the New York Times is fake news. We can criticize the Times all we want for substantive reasons, but it’s not fake news. We have to have some general understanding: outlets like the Guardian, the New Yorker, these are not fake news!
Jorge Ramos, Univision news anchor: In 2016 there were 27 million Latinos eligible to vote and 13 million of them decided to stay home – more than 50%. In 2020 there will be 32 million Latinos eligible to vote and I’m very concerned that the story might repeat itself again: that Latinos decide to stay home because they don’t like President Trump but don’t trust the Democrats either. That would be terrible for Latinos.
Daniel Arnall, executive editor of MSNBC: So one of the things that we are doing differently than in the last cycle is focusing more on issues, and coverage of issues that folks across the country are interested in. That is going to be driving our coverage. We’re going to be substantially less interested in taking like live candidate events, I think, and dealing with all of that.
Trump tweet coverage is low-hanging fruit. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Teen Vogue
Charlie Sykes, editor-in-chief at the Bulwark: Going back to 2016, when I was part of what you’d consider to be the conservative media, it’s difficult to remember that there was still a lot of diversity of opinion. There were a lot of conservative commentators and talk show hosts who were very critical of Donald Trump. What’s really changed is how increasingly tribalized the media has become.
Kara Swisher, tech journalist and founder of Recode: What happened in 2016 should not come as a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention to the tech companies. Tech moguls collect all the money and pay none of the price.
Trump and his tweets
In 2016 Trump regularly set the 24-hour news agenda with his early morning clickbait tweets. Will the same Trump-obsession dominate again?
Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One at the White House in Washington on 2 December 2019. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP
Frank Bruni, columnist for the New York Times: We’ve learned that if you write a story about the ridiculousness of Trump’s latest tweet it gets a lot more traffic than an analysis of Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All plan. Trump understands what news catches people’s interest, he has a very acute sense of what people will click on. So I’m concerned that we are going to end up giving Trump more than the lion’s share of media time all the way up to election night.
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: We are living amid constant cutbacks. Outlets are shrinking. I worry the story continues to be driven by what is performing, by KPIs (key performance indicators). That’s where a lot of the Trump tweet coverage comes from – it’s low-hanging fruit.
Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today: I make no apology for the amount of coverage we give President Trump. He’s the president. If he says something that’s incredibly provocative or does something that has far-reaching ramifications, we have an obligation to report it.
Ramos, Univision: When Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and when he ejected me from a press conference, we told everyone, listen, this is someone who’s making racist remarks, he’s attacking the press, yet very few people pay attention. Today I believe it’s a completely different story. Journalists are being much more aggressive than they were in 2016.
Smith, BuzzFeed: This is a totally different moment to 2016 – it’s an election that will be a referendum on Trump’s presidency. The challenge will be covering his presidency and not what he says about it.
Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine: Trump is sort of blowing everything up. And the way he has done that has provided more opportunity for reporters to be creative. In the Trump White House, nothing works like it’s supposed to.
Just one Trump speech will have 60 false and misleading claims … It’s incredibly depressing. Glenn Kessler, editor of The Fact Checker, Washington Post
Baquet, the New York Times: When you cover a theatrical politician you must try not to get caught up in the theatre. Having said that, I’m one of those people who thinks theatrics are still worth covering – they are part of the way he leads the country.
Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University: During the first Gulf war, the Washington bureaus of major news organizations – spearheaded by Harper’s together with the networks and a number of major news organizations – said: “We’re not going to go along with the ‘minders’ scheme.” Such collective action is not beyond the bounds of the imagination for 2020.
Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of the Economist: I think there is some debate in certain quarters about whether the media should be taking one side or another – stand in opposition to Trump. And that’s in part what is feeding the sense of polarisation and people living in two entirely ecosystems in the US.
Lies, damn lies and factchecks
Since Trump took office, the Washington Post has counted 13,435 of his false and misleading claims. This extraordinary splurge of untruths poses huge challenges for the media as we go into 2020.
Kellyanne Conway speaks to reporters after Donald Trump terminated James Comey. Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Glenn Kessler, editor of the Fact Checker, Washington Post: The database of Trump’s false claims is a very depressing duty. It just drags you down to have to go through it, like reading one of the president’s rally speeches. Just one speech will have 60 false and misleading claims, most of which you’ve already factchecked and said were false. It’s incredibly depressing.
Page, USA Today: There is much more impressive factchecking than there was in 2016. One of the things that we’ve seen happen is not to let something that we know is inaccurate stand unchallenged.
We can talk about it and help voters identify what is true and what is not. Nicholas Johnston, editor in chief of Axios
Ramos, Univision: I’ve covered Latin America for many decades and I think that has prepared me for what I’m seeing right here in the US. To have someone leading the country who is an authoritarian, who is not telling the truth, who’s constantly lying in a country that is completely divided.
Bruni, the New York Times: You can only say the same thing so many times before people become numb and deaf to it. If the public is not listening, I don’t know how that becomes our fault.
Nicholas Johnston, editor-in-chief of Axios: What makes me somewhat optimistic is that four or six years ago we didn’t even have the vocabulary to talk about deepfake, fake video and audio, misinformation, the manipulation of social media, the end of truth. Now we know that these are things, we can talk about it and help voters identify what is true and what is not.
Kessler, the Washington Post: I’ve covered just about every presidential administration since Reagan and this administration has the least fidelity to truth and honesty of any I’ve encountered.
All of us in the media were just so convinced Trump couldn’t win. Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times
Sullivan, the Washington Post: The Sunday TV talkshows will bring on people like Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s White House counsel, who is just an inveterate liar. By having her on, she is allowed to say things that aren’t true and although she can be challenged it’s still a very strong message having her on air. My feeling is, don’t have her on, you know she’s going to lie her way through every broadcast. That’s not censorship. Censorship is government action that disallows things being said, but judgments made by editors and producers are not censorship.
Swisher, Recode: If you’re not scared when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says it’s okay for politicians to lie, especially in the context of a system that is so viral compared to any other media, you should be afraid.
Polls
Most opinion polls in 2016 predicted that Hillary Clinton would win. On election day the New York Times gave Clinton an “85% chance to win” through its forecasting model. There’s been a lot of soul-searching since then. Have we learned the lessons?
A 2016 election night watch party at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Arnall, MSNBC: I am still hesitant on polling, and I think there’s been a real reluctance by a lot of major organizations to really come to terms with the failures of that through the last cycle. I think that’s a potential weak point that a lot of people should be pushing their organizations on. I’m still like, “What are we doing differently this time?”
Larry Sabato, pollster and director of University of Virginia Center for Politics: All of us pollsters got to eat a large, bitter humble pie after election night in 2016, which came as a tremendous shock. We’d all expected Hillary Clinton to win by three points or so, giving her over 300 electoral college votes. When Trump won we were forced to relearn that polling is not the word of God or handed down on the Mount to Moses.
Baquet, the New York Times: All of us in the media were just so convinced Trump couldn’t win. But he was outside of the paint-by-numbers game we have developed.
Discussions about whether Elizabeth Warren is likeable enough reflects inherent sexism we haven’t dealt with. Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post
Sabato, pollster: The polling industry has tried to correct itself after it was so badly caught off-guard. We used not to weight by educational level and it turned out that if we had done so we might have been more accurate in 2016. So now everybody is weighting by education. We also had our fingers burned over the electoral college. The polls got the popular vote more or less correct, with Clinton winning the popular vote by two percentage points, but we should have thought more about the profound electoral college impact that gave Trump his victory.
Page, USA Today: You have to rely both on quantitative and qualitative interviews. Polling is really valuable, but it doesn’t tell you everything. You want some quantitative data that enables you to say, “Hey, Pete Buttigieg is doing really well among older voters,” which is one thing we’ve just noticed in recent polling, then go out and talk to older voters.
Sabato, pollster: As for forecasting models, they need to be dropped entirely. Most readers didn’t understand what probability really means. It just confuses people, and to do it again next year would be to plant a bomb that could explode in your face.
‘Horserace coverage is dead’
2016 provoked soul searching about whether Clinton was held to different media standards than Trump, both in the extent and type of coverage. Is the same happening again within the traditional media obsession with the horserace?
A Trump rally in Sunrise, Florida on 26 November 2019. Photograph: Jayme Gershen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bruni, the New York Times: Here’s one specific way I think we will be able to judge whether we’ve done our jobs well at the end of the 2020 election: we will not have gone to the Democratic finalists in the primary stage or to the ultimate Democratic nominee, whoever that person is, every time Trump hurls an insult and accusation at them. We will not have made that the main news story of the day: “Candidates traded volleys in a war of words.” We do that all the time.
Sullivan, the Washington Post: I see sexism in the coverage of women candidates. It’s improved since Hillary Clinton ran but it’s still not great. The disappearance of Kamala Harris has some of that wrapped into it, and the constant discussions about whether Elizabeth Warren is likable enough to be elected reflects inherent sexism that we haven’t really dealt with.
Page, USA Today: On the day that Donald Trump announced, my assumption was that he was not going to be nominated for president. And it took a while for me to realize what voters were saying, which was that he would be. So that is a lesson that I think we tried to apply this time, by looking at the Democratic field … It’s not up to us. It’s up to voters.
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: One thing we’re seeing with young people is that they are having trouble following the deep nuances between candidates. It’s kind of boring to really point out some of these policy differences because they’re not really that different.
Smith, BuzzFeed: Horserace coverage is dead. Our audience actively hates it. We have to think about a way to replace it in a way that is compelling and that cares about the personalities and the policies while always keeping in mind that there are real things at stake. Now it’s kids in cages. I mean, who cares that somebody fires his political consultants.
Hire people who actually live in the midwest. Sarah Kendzior, St Louis, Missouri-based journalist
Beddoes, the Economist: We are beefing up our data department, which we’ll combine with traditional shoe-leather reporting. We plan to put those together with the outsider perspective we bring, and the ability to stand back from the tick-tock of the horserace minute-by-minute, to give rigorous fair-minded analysis.
Smith, BuzzFeed: For our audience nobody thinks that politics is a game or that it’s fun or a sport. The kind of coverage that treats it as though it’s entertainment is repellant to people. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to know who’s going to win or that they don’t care about polling, but just that everybody has a sense of what the stakes are. That’s the brand for our coverage: the stakes 2020.
Fly-over country
Trump’s unexpected victory four years ago led to questions about whether media organisations, in their coastal bubbles, had failed to hear the frustration of voters in the heartlands. How is it playing for 2020?
Voters fill out ballots in Janesville, Wisconsin, on 14 August 2018. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Baquet, the New York Times: We have to get out in the country more. We have to talk to more people, which we’ve started to do.
Sarah Kendzior, St Louis, Missouri-based journalist and author of The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America: National media is making the same mistakes as in 2016. The midwest has become the sort of stand-in region for what the national media think of as the “forgotten voter”. What a lot of these coastal outlets are doing is parachuting in here with the narrative pre-written trying to find people who fit their preconceptions of what people in the midwest are like. Honestly the best way they could fix this problem would be to hire people who actually live in these states.
Al Cross, director of the University of Kentucky Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues: It’s not just boots on the ground. You can’t have a parachute mentality. You have to have some appreciation of rural sensibility. The best reporters know how to do that.
Sykes, the Bulwark: I’m in Wisconsin and I do a lot of work on the coast as well. I’ll be on an MSNBC show, and people on the panels start talking about Wisconsin voters as these strange throwback figures, “nostalgic for a time when men were able to slap women around”. And it was like, “Wait, no.” First of all, understand that these are people who have their own values, their own communities, and every time you talk about them in this way, you deepen this red, blue divide, this thing. You need to not treat them as these … deplorable troglodytes.
Caitlin Byrd, political reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier: Growing up in the south, you see the same descriptors used to talk about places where I was from: backwoods, dirt road, small town, quiet. The same tropes over and over. But this cycle is it seems that more national reporters in particular are realizing that the south is more complicated.
None of the presidential candidates have a very well-fleshed-out strategy for Gen Z. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, executive editor of Teen Vogue
Gitlin, Columbia University: There was a sense after 2016 that we weren’t listening to enough people in diners in Ohio. That wasn’t so much misguided as it was inflated. The average Trump voter has above-average income! News media went from not noticing people whose life chances are impacted by the rustification of the midwest to thinking that they are now the central story. It’s an absurd overcompensation.
Kendzior, journalist and author: I meet a lot of people who have some regret about voting for Trump, who are reluctant at times to admit that regret on record. Some are embarrassed about having made this regrettable decision … The base is still there, they’re very frenetic … But I do think that base is much smaller than the media portrays it.
The need to reach young voters
Only 46% of 18-29 year olds voted in 2016. Was the failure of media to address young people’s interests partly to blame, and if so how to fix it?
Hillary Clinton takes a selfie during a 2016 rally in Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: The way the media talks about the youth vote is as social media Snapchat-obsessed young people, who don’t care about politics and are not engaged because it’s above their head and they are so selfish and that’s why they don’t vote. If I was Gen Z that kind of narrative would turn me off too. When you do have outlets that speak to their interests you notice that they do become engaged.
Swisher, Recode: When I started my podcast, someone said to me: “You know, Kara, millennials like snackable content.” And I was like: “I don’t want to write for people who want snacks. Everyone who’s substantive wants substance.” They said: “Millennials are twitchy. They can’t focus on anything long.” And what’s interesting about it is, they were dead wrong.
Many news organisations have started calling Trump a racist – that’s something that didn’t happen in 2016. Jorge Ramos, Univision news anchor
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: None of the presidential candidates have a very well-fleshed-out strategy for Gen Z. Nobody really knows how the 18-year-old who is in St Louis who works in a fast-food place, we have no idea what they want. We don’t know how they’re going to vote. At Teen Vogue we see it as an opportunity for a generation that has not had somebody actually speak to their needs: climate change, immigration, juvenile justice, student debt.
Race in the race
Diversity in media – both in terms of the internal makeup of news teams and the way those teams cover Trump’s stoking of racial fears – will be a running theme in 2020.
An attendee at a rally for Kamala Harris in Oakland, California. Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Errin Haines Whack, national writer on race and ethnicity for the Associated Press: As we head into 2020, I am still on the campaign trail quite frequently the only black woman in a room. Sometimes the only black person. The reality is that two thirds of the people who cover political journalism are white men. Yet we have the most diverse field in the history of Democratic politics in the upcoming primary: a record number of women, a record number of people of color. Responding to that diversity in newsrooms seems to be a journalistic imperative.
Dwight Watkins, Salon editor and bestselling author: I’ve been seeing the same people … get out there and basically tell similar stories and make assumptions about whole groups of people. They talk about the black vote as if it’s just one thing. So I think when you utilize the same players and the same people, they take their biases and they apply these biases to our whole group. And this is just not fair.
Ramos, Univision: Many news organisations have started calling Trump a racist – that’s something that didn’t happen in 2016. When Trump said in June 2015 that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists, that was a racist statement but many people were not comfortable calling him out on that. Since then he’s made many other racist remarks and reporters and news media feel more comfortable now in calling Trump a racist.
Baquet, the New York Times: People who think that Trump only won because 40% of America is racist are not looking closely at the numbers, and do not have a fully empathetic understanding of America. I’m not saying he didn’t stoke racism and get votes from racists. But that’s a very easy answer. I don’t think that journalists should deal with easy answers.
Delete your Twitter account and don’t use that as your window on the world. Nicholas Johnston, editor in chief of Axios
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: I felt a lot of the conversations after 2016 were “Oh no! we focused so much on getting all these women in the newsroom we alienated all these white men”. After the election, editors felt they needed less diverse newsrooms because they were concerned they had gone “too far left” or had incorporated identity politics too much and were alienating this white base that was all riled up for Trump.
Ramos, Univision: The numbers of Latinos represented in the US – whether in newsrooms or in Congress – are abysmal. We don’t have enough Latinos on the air or reporting. I do see changes. The first presidential debate among Democratic candidates was organised by NBC and Telemundo, and José Diaz-Balart was one of the moderators. That alone meant that Spanish was spoken in that debate, immigration was addressed and Hispanic issues were talked about. I was one of the moderators in the second debate, and for the first time not only did we talk about Latino issues and immigration but I brought in Latin American issues.
Escape the Twitter bubble
Where will 2020 election news come from? The other 500 journalists pontificating in a journalist’s Twitter feed?
Campaign signs sit on chairs ahead of an event with Donald Trump in Racine, Wisconsin. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Johnston, Axios: My social media policy for the newsroom would be: delete your Twitter account and don’t use that as your window on the world, it’s a journalists’ echo chamber. OK, that’s a joke – we are not going to un-invent the internet. But I do think it’s important in newsrooms to talk about the impact that it has. We tell our reporters to call people on the telephone, get out of the house, go wander the halls of Congress, fly someplace and talk to people.
Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue: If you looked at Twitter after the recent Democratic presidential debate, my entire timeline was filled with criticism of Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile he’s polling really well. That discrepancy reminds me of that we thought Trump couldn’t win in 2016 because we all hated him and thought he was a joke. That to me indicates that we haven’t learned anything.
Nuzzi, New York magazine: I try to remind myself that the entire electorate is not represented in these couple hundred Twitter accounts.
Reporting team: Ed Pilkington, Adam Gabbatt and Jim Waterson from the Guardian; Akintunde Ahmad, Lauren Harris and Savannah Jacobson from the Columbia Journalism Review


theguardian--2020-01-09--Pelosi: I'll send impeachment articles to Senate 'when I'm ready' – video

Nancy Pelosi says she wants to understand the parameters of a Senate trial before sending the articles of impeachment , @ @ @ @ @ plan to hold on to them indefinitely .
‘ I ’ ll send them over @ @ @ @ @ , ’ she says .
‘ And that ’ ll probably be soon.
’ The @ @ @ @ @ that senators will not hold an impartial trial to determine whether Donald Trump should be @ @ @ @ @ impeachment : Pelosi says ‘ I know exactly when ’ to send articles to Senate @ @

Nancy Pelosi says she wants to understand the parameters of a Senate trial before sending the articles of impeachment, but adds she does not plan to hold on to them indefinitely. 'I’ll send them over when I’m ready,' she says. 'And that’ll probably be soon.'
The Speaker says she is concerned that senators will not hold an impartial trial to determine whether Donald Trump should be removed from office


theguardian--2020-01-10--America's public lands are in danger – and in 2020 we'll report from the frontlines

Public lands are facing threats like never before .
Seasoned superintendents have been shuffled around the country to force their retirement .
Ancient cacti are being plowed up to make way for a border wall .
Mention of climate change has been suppressed .
These attacks are outlined by none other than Jon Jarvis , the head of the National Park Service under Barack Obama , in a Guardian op-ed co-authored with his brother , Destry .
“ These are not random actions , ” the Jarvises conclude .
“ This is a systematic dismantling of a beloved institution.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we are glad to announce that we are expanding This land is your land , a series first launched with philanthropic and reader support in 2017 .
In 2020 , we ’ ll be publishing investigations and features that reveal the risks federal lands face from privatization , energy extraction and climate change .
We ’ re also expanding our coverage to Canada , to scrutinize the dangers of fossil fuel development there , but also to see what America can learn from the way public lands are managed with the involvement of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ help .
This kind of reporting – on the ground , in far-flung locations – is expensive .
Please consider supporting the Guardian by contributing today .
Our work is having an impact .
Our Lost Lands interactive showed the astonishing scale of fossil fuel development and privatization under Donald Trump .
We partnered with four newspapers in the western US to produce our epic feature on how we ’ re “ loving nature to death ” .
And we ’ ve uncovered multiple ongoing contacts between the Trump administration officials entrusted with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the private interests that once employed them – ranging from fossil fuel proponents to Koch-backed advocacy groups , in one case helping lead to an official investigation .
We also : • None Broke the news that officials are cracking down on transparency at the interior department .
• None Exposed the effects of government shutdowns on national parks .
To stay up-to-date on our future coverage , and its effects , we invite you to sign up to our monthly public lands newsletter : We couldn ’ t have done all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ readers .
We ’ re working to raise $ 1.5m to support our reporting in the new year .
Help us continue to shine a light on the powerful forces who view our federal lands in terms of profit rather than protection .
To support the Guardian ’ s journalism , including our pioneering reporting on public lands , make a contribution now .

Public lands are facing threats like never before. Seasoned superintendents have been shuffled around the country to force their retirement. Ancient cacti are being plowed up to make way for a border wall. Mention of climate change has been suppressed.
These attacks are outlined by none other than Jon Jarvis, the head of the National Park Service under Barack Obama, in a Guardian op-ed co-authored with his brother, Destry. “These are not random actions,” the Jarvises conclude. “This is a systematic dismantling of a beloved institution.”
In the face of these threats, we are glad to announce that we are expanding This land is your land, a series first launched with philanthropic and reader support in 2017.
In 2020, we’ll be publishing investigations and features that reveal the risks federal lands face from privatization, energy extraction and climate change. We’re also expanding our coverage to Canada, to scrutinize the dangers of fossil fuel development there, but also to see what America can learn from the way public lands are managed with the involvement of indigenous peoples.
But we need your help. This kind of reporting – on the ground, in far-flung locations – is expensive. Please consider supporting the Guardian by contributing today.
Our work is having an impact. Our Lost Lands interactive showed the astonishing scale of fossil fuel development and privatization under Donald Trump. We partnered with four newspapers in the western US to produce our epic feature on how we’re “loving nature to death”.
And we’ve uncovered multiple ongoing contacts between the Trump administration officials entrusted with guarding America’s most precious lands and the private interests that once employed them – ranging from fossil fuel proponents to Koch-backed advocacy groups, in one case helping lead to an official investigation. We also:
Revealed how the Trump administration sabotaged a major conservation effort.
Broke the news that officials are cracking down on transparency at the interior department.
Exposed the effects of government shutdowns on national parks.
To stay up-to-date on our future coverage, and its effects, we invite you to sign up to our monthly public lands newsletter:
We couldn’t have done all this without the generous support of our readers. We’re working to raise $1.5m to support our reporting in the new year. Help us continue to shine a light on the powerful forces who view our federal lands in terms of profit rather than protection. To support the Guardian’s journalism, including our pioneering reporting on public lands, make a contribution now.