“Justice Dept. is said to open criminal inquiry into its own Russia investigation. The move is likely to open the attorney general to accusations that he is trying to deliver a political victory for President Trump.” Katie Benner and Adam Goldman, New York Times MORE
"Germany's Defense Minister ... advocated for the establishment of an internationally controlled security zone in Syria in cooperation with European partners, as well as Turkey and Russia. The proposal has the potential to lead to German and European military deployment to the region, marking an escalation of involvement in the Syrian conflict as it enters its ninth year. "This security zone would seek to resume the fight against terror and against the 'Islamic State,' which has currently come to a standstill,"" Austin Davis, Deutsche Welle. MORE
“Mario Draghi … will hand over control of the central bank to former IMF leader Christine Lagarde who, with no central baking experience, will inherit not just a group of weakening economies, but a squabbling 25-member governing council described by the Wall Street Journal as "warring factions." The committee has split largely based on Draghi's reported 11th-hour decision last month to cut rates and restart the bond purchases it had concluded in December...What's happening: The manufacturing sector in the euro area shrank for the ninth consecutive month, data showed Thursday, and remains on the brink of an outright contraction. ...In addition to a looming recession, a divided governing council and a rising wave of opposition toward European unity, the ECB looks to be out of bullets, as even interest rates well below 0 and trillions in bond purchases have failed to accomplish its stated goals."- Dion Rabouin, Axios Markets. MORE
“Elizabeth Warren wants to remake American capitalism. She has an admirably detailed plan to transform a system she believes is corrupt and fails ordinary people. Plenty of her ideas are good. She is right to try to limit giant firms’ efforts to influence politics and gobble up rivals. But at its heart, her plan reveals a systematic reliance on regulation and protectionism. As it stands, it is not the answer to America’s problems.’”-Economist MORE
“EU ambassadors have agreed to delay Brexit, but will not make a decision on a new deadline date until next week. Boris Johnson said he was waiting for the EU to decide "what they want to do". British MPs are expected on Monday to consider the prime minister's call for an early general election. Mr Johnson says he wants to hold one on 12 December, if the EU offers a Brexit delay until 31 January.” - BBC News, MORE
“Indonesian investigators blamed design flaws in the 737 MAX jet, ineffective U.S. regulators and pilot error for the Lion Air crash that left hundreds dead.”-Harry Suhartono, Fathiya Dahrul, and Alan Levin. Bloomberg MORE
“The 39 people found dead in a refrigerated trailer in Essex were Chinese nationals--eight women and 31 men…A UK government report on modern slavery published one year ago found that China was the third most common foreign country of origin for victims of human trafficking.” Celia Hatton, BBC News MORE
“U.S. immigration authorities separated more than 1,500 children from their parents at the Mexico border early in the Trump administration, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday, bringing the total number of children separated since July 2017 to more than 5,400...Children from that period can be difficult to find because the government had inadequate tracking systems.” -Elliot Spagat, Associated Press U.S. News & World Report, MORE
“A raging wildfire that forced massive evacuations in Northern California scorched thousands of acres in hours -- and is expected to keep growing.The Kincade Fire ignited Wednesday night in Sonoma County, and burned 16,000 acres by Thursday night.”-Dakin Andone, Faith Karimi, and Joe Sutton, CNN News, MORE
“The large and demanding job of Secretary of Homeland Security warrants a qualified and experienced person, carefully selected by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate; the current threat picture demands it….The possibility that such an individual’s views and perspectives do not align perfectly with the president’s is a virtue in a Cabinet, not a vice….A president who leaves the job vacant for too long is neglecting his own duty to defend the homeland and keep the American people safe.”-Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Charles Johnson, [PAST TCG SPEAKER] Washington Post, MORE
“For Iran’s leaders, Syria has become the most important spot in their quest to expand their influence in the Middle East, and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is their most important ally in that quest. The departure of American forces shrinks America’s role and reduces an impediment to both Iranian influence and Mr. Assad’s continuation in power. ‘Iran wants to consolidate Assad’s rule in Syria, reduce America’s presence in the Middle East, and thwart Kurdish autonomy,’ says Karim Sadjadpour [PAST TCG SPEAKER], an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for Int’l Peace . ‘Trump’s decision checked all three of those boxes, and Iran didn’t have to offer anything in return.’”-Gerald F. Seib [ PAST TCG SPEAKER], The Wall Street Journal, MORE
“Elijah E. Cummings leaves behind an invaluable legacy as a Congressman for Baltimore for more than two decades and as a champion for social justice. His passing is a call to cherish the many gifts he imparted on all those fortunate to know him, but it’s also a reminder of a painful reality facing people of color: shorter life expectancy. Congressman Cummings died at the age of 68.”-Leana S. Wen, The Washington Post, MORE
“Trump’s Syria actions are the result of a knowledge-free foreign policy. Has there ever been a foreign policy move that has produced more crises more quickly? ...Trump’s moves in Syria are part of a Middle Eastern policy that, as Martin Indyk [PAST TCG SPEAKER] explains in Foreign Affairs, is in total disarray. Indyk, who has held virtually every senior Middle East job in the U.S. government, describes how, in case after case, the Trump administration dispensed with regional experts, reversed long-standing policy and assumed that its knowledge-free approach would yield innovative, new results. “In fact,” Indyk says, the administration “understands so little about how the Middle East actually works that its bungling efforts have been a failure across the board.”- Fareed Zakaria, [Past TCG Speaker] Washington Post MORE
“The religious and cultural divide between Democratic and Republican voters is widening, pointing toward even greater partisan polarization and social tension as the nation careens into a possible impeachment vote against President Donald Trump and potential record turnout in the 2020 presidential election. An extensive national study released Monday by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute showed that voters in each party now hold antithetical views not only on issues that dominate the immediate political debate -- such as health care and impeachment -- but also on deeper changes in the nation's demography, culture, race relations and gender roles, according to detailed results the institute provided to CNN.”-Ron Brownstein [PAST TCG SPEAKER], CNN, MORE
“The country has become so polarized that swing voters barely exist anymore. Elections are now decided by which side better manages to mobilize its base. So Democrats need to stop worrying about winning over moderates—and confidently move to the left... As I’ve argued in the past, this makes it possible for Democratic presidential candidates to develop an ambitious agenda on issues from health care to gun control without jeopardizing their chances of ousting Donald Trump.”-Yascha Mounk [PAST TCG SPEAKER], The Atlantic, MORE
“Fortunately, a new European Union directive protects the whistle-blowers - government and private-sector employees alike - who expose elite self-dealing that undermines the public interest. Often, there are witnesses to corruption, and democracy and the rule of law depend on their speaking up. Whistle-blowers are the lifeblood of free societies. The global proliferation of whistle-blower-protection laws... is imperative when corruption networks sprawl across national borders.”-Allison Stanger [Upcoming TCG Speaker], The Atlantic, MORE
”The America that they {service men and women] believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within...If our promises are meaningless, how will our allies ever trust us? If we can’t have faith in our nation’s principles, why would the men and women of this nation join the military? And if they don’t join, who will protect us? If we are not the champions of the good and the right, then who will follow us? And if no one follows us — where will the world end up?” - William McRaven, The New York Times, MORE
“American patriotism, like America itself, is a continuing experiment in the power of ideas to bring human beings together. Other nations form their identities around shared ethnic origins or ancestral experiences—things that are themselves often imaginary, based more on myth than history. But the word “fatherland,” so powerful in other languages, is alien to American usage, because our forefathers all came from different lands. Instead, the classic formulas of American patriotism are about moral and political ideas: “all men are created equal”; “government of the people, by the people, for the people”; “liberty’”. Political division, bitter as it could become, has been constrained by both parties’ allegiance to the American vocabulary of liberty and self-determination. If today’s politics seems more dangerous—more reminiscent of the 1850s, the most polarized period in American history—it is partly because this kind of principled patriotism is losing its value as a shared moral vocabulary.” - Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal, MORE
“Brittany Kaiser [PAST TCG SPEAKER],former director at Cambridge Analytica-[and her book], Targeted, offers what other Cambridge Analytica look-backs don’t - a more in-the-room account of what exactly, she alleges, was in the Powerpoint pitch….Until we break down specifically how and why certain imagery appeals to us, we won’t ever be prepared to adequately handle weaponized memory already in use.”-Andrew Limbong, NPR, MORE
“On Monday, Donald Trump announced on Twitter that Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette will be nominated to replace current Secretary Rick Perry, who will depart by the end of the year. As a former auto-industry lobbyist, Brouillette won’t be lonely in Trump’s Cabinet, where he joins former coal lobbyist and current EPA head Andrew Wheeler; former oil and gas lobbyist Interior secretary David Bernhardtl; former Raytheon lobbyist and current Defense secretary Mark Esper; and former Goldman Sachs lobbyist and current Labor secretary Eugene Scalia."-Matt Stieh,New York Magazine, MORE
“Great leaders, to Trump, aren’t measured by what they believe: they are great because they win and are adored. His portrayal of Lincoln’s greatness is unmoored from anything that Lincoln thought of as politics or political leadership, chiefly, the self-discipline, patience, and probity required to bring about the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Union victory—events that remade the nation"-Sidney Blumenthal [PAST TCG SPEAKER], New Yorker Magazine MORE
“The U.N. refugee agency is investigating why Malta last week allegedly asked the Libyan coast guard to intercept a migrant boat in a zone of the Mediterranean under Maltese responsibility, in possible violation of maritime law, a U.N. official said Tuesday. According to the UNHCR there are currently 650,000 migrants in Libya “The problem is that the migrants were disembarked in Libya. That’s certainly a violation of maritime laws ... It’s clear that Libya isn’t a safe port,”…..UNHCR’s Cochetel said it was not the first time Malta was accused of delegating a rescue to the Libyan coast guard"-Renata Brito and Giado Zampano, Associated Press, MORE
