February 25, 2020

Convicting Harvey Weinstein of two felony sex crimes, a jury suggested that accountability extended from the court of public opinion to a court of law.

Harvey Weinstein Is Found Guilty of Sex Crimes in #MeToo Watershed

The jury found Mr. Weinstein guilty of two felony sex crimes but acquitted him of charges that he is a sexual predator.


















0:00/1:39

Lawyers for Weinstein and His Accusers Speak Out After Verdict

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape and criminal sexual act, but was acquitted of the most serious charges against him. He faces a possible sentence of between five and 29 years.

“I could say that, right now, I’m happy to see that those years that I lost of my life are getting back. Of course, there is a lot of work to do. And I’m here to, you know, being there and speak to people so that situations like this will never happen again, and yeah, this is my mission right now.” “It’s no longer business as usual in the United States. This is the age of empowerment of women. And you cannot intimidate them anymore because women will not be silenced. They will speak up. They will have their voice. They will stand up and be subjected to your small army of defense attorneys, cross-examining them, attempting to discredit them, humiliate them, shame them, and they will still stand in their truth. So Harvey Weinstein, this justice has been a long time coming, but it’s finally here.” “It’s a bittersweet day, we’re disappointed. We knew we came in, and we were down 35 to nothing the day that we started this trial. The jurors came in knowing everything that they could know about this case. We couldn’t find a juror that never heard of Harvey Weinstein. You know, Harvey is strong. As I said, obviously he’s disappointed. But he’s strong, he’s mentally tough and he’s going to continue to fight.” “He didn’t react emotionally. There was no crying or anything like that. All he kept saying over and over again was, ‘I’m innocent, I’m innocent. How could this happen in America, I’m innocent?’”

1:38Lawyers for Weinstein and His Accusers Speak Out After Verdict
Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape and criminal sexual act, but was acquitted of the most serious charges against him. Anna Watts for The New York Times










The floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

U.S. Stocks Plunge as Coronavirus Crisis Spreads

As outbreaks spread outside China, spiking in Italy and South Korea, investors are growing increasingly concerned about a global economic slowdown.


Investors in the United States have mostly shrugged off the impact of the coronavirus ravaging China. That changed on Monday, when news of the outbreak’s spread drove them to sell stocks — at a furious pace.
The S&P 500 index, which had reached a record high as recently as Wednesday, fell 3.4 percent, its worst single-day performance since February 2018. As analysts issued new warnings that the outbreak could drag down economies around the globe, stocks fell enough to wipe out all of the index’s gains for 2020.
It was a turbulent day for stocks worldwide: European markets recorded their worst session since 2016, and major benchmarks in Asia also closed down.
The president’s strategy of publicly downplaying the threat the virus poses to the United States was undermined by the heavy losses Monday.




In shift, White House asks Congress for $1.8 billion to bolster response to virus


The emergency spending request includes $1.25 billion in new funds and access to $535 million that had been set aside to fight Ebola




February 24, 2020

This Is the Only Move That Will Stop Sanders Now


THE PARADOX
Attacks on Bernie work better in a general election than a primary. So what are Democrats convinced he’ll lose to Trump to do?
So it’s another win for Bernie Sanders, his easiest yet. 
It’s now completely legit to ask if he’s just going to waltz his way to this nomination. Yes, we’ve only had three contests. But we see the lay of the land. Sanders is in the left lane, way ahead of Elizabeth Warren. The other lane is crowded with people who either have shockingly underperformed or just don’t quite have the mojo—or both. 
The panic is going to grow. Sanders is now going to be Target A for a while for everybody—Elizabeth Warren included, I’d imagine. That comes with being the frontrunner, but it’s intensified here because so many Democrats are strongly against him. So now he’s really going to be attacked.
But attacked for what? This is the thing about Sanders that makes this so tricky. 
The matters on which he is most vulnerable are strictly general election matters. They’re not primary election matters.
That is, the matters on which he’s most vulnerable are: his past radical leftist affiliations; his policy proposals that will increase taxes and double federal domestic spending; certain other positions he’s taken that don’t have to do with taxes but are pretty left-wing nonetheless, like allowing prisoners to vote, decriminalizing border crossings. 
But these aren’t matters that render him vulnerable in a primary. Some of them are things that Democrats aren’t going to attack him about, or will attack him about only half-heartedly. I think his radical past falls into that category. Most Democrats won’t want to hit that too hard. There would be a backlash against the person who does.
Others are positions that won’t hurt him in the context of a primary. Democratic primary voters aren’t going to care about decriminalizing border crossings. General election voters will, I presume. 
Thus, the Sanders Attack Fodder Paradox: The kinds of attacks that so many of us fear will work against him in the general will not work in the primary—in fact, they will backfire and help him in the primary!
“The matters on which he is most vulnerable are strictly general election matters.”
So are there any criticisms of Sanders that would work with primary voters? Well, the obvious one, the one a lot of people are arguing, is that he can’t win a general. But with every head-to-head poll of him vs. Donald Trump showing him winning, it’s hard to argue that. You might argue that the attacks on Sanders haven’t started, but when you start ticking off the lines of attack, they will sound utterly dismissible to the ears of a Sanders partisan.
The line of attack that I’ve always thought might have worked would have centered around effectiveness. He’s been in Congress for 30 years. He’s passed seven bills. Two of those are post-office renamings, and a third is “Vermont Bicentennial Day.” Only one of the seven is substantive. 
I also always thought Vermont was a potential Achilles heel. Vermont isn’t quite a real place, in the sense of having numerous competing powerful political interests. It’s easy to be ideologically pure from Vermont. There are no corporations in Vermont. No big banks. Not a single billionaire. There’s no pressure on him to cast any non-left-wing votes at all. 
In other words, a picture could have been painted of a totally ineffective guy In other words, a picture could have been painted of a totally ineffective guy who operates in his own little non-real world bubble. It might have worked. But it’s a little late for that now. 
So what do the other Democrats do? Well, if they really believe Sanders can’t win in November, they have to sit down and talk turkey and decide that they’re going to get behind one person and the others are going to drop out. 
“If they really believe Sanders can’t win in November, they have to sit down and talk turkey and decide that they’re going to get behind one person and the others are going to drop out.”
That’s impossible, you say; and you’re probably right. But seriously: If these people are certain Sanders is going to lose, that means they’re certain Donald Trump is going to be re-elected. That means in turn they think the republic is at grave risk of going down the tubes if Sanders is the nominee. If that’s what they think, then they ought to put their egos on the shelf and get behind one person to block Sanders. If their view is really that nominee Sanders will re-elect Trump, that’s not just an option. It’s their duty. And that includes Mike Bloomberg. He should say, “I’ll drop out, and I’ll spend another $450 million to stop Sanders and nominate Biden” or whomever. 
But that isn’t what politicians usually do. 

In the meantime, Sanders has taken them to the cleaners. He’s winning this thing fair and square. And he is inspiring to millions of people. That counts for something. That’s what politics is supposed to be.
If the others can’t stop him, they’d better get behind him. I certainly will. With zero hesitation. Sanders is vastly superior to Trump in every imaginable way. The re-election of the incumbent is unthinkable.

February 23, 2020

Sanders wins the Nevada caucuses and gets congratulated by Trump


Candidates address supporters 2:08
(Video: Joyce Koh, Blair Guild/The Post; photo: Reuters)
County convention delegates are the current number of county delegates each candidate will get at the state convention, which determines the number of pledged national delegates each candidate receives.

Victory boosts senator’s insurgent campaign

Sen. Bernie Sanders set down a marker in the first state with a significant share of nonwhite voters. Incomplete results suggested a distant second-place finish for Joe Biden.

Explore poll data to see who is supporting the candidates

As Sanders’s momentum builds, down-ballot Democrats move to distance themselves

With the senator from Vermont at the top of the ticket, Democrats fear their chances of winning the Senate would evaporate and their House majority would be at risk.
  • The Vermont senator not only won among self-described liberal voters, but also made inroads with moderates for the first time, entrance polls showed.
















The Trump administration finds a new way to cut Medicaid spending
Alex Wong/Getty Images
  • The Trump administration is trying to cut Medicaid funding — again. A new plan would allow states to seek Medicaid block grants, which amount to spending caps on the enormously popular health care program. [Vox / Dylan Scott]
  • Block grants — as opposed to the current open-ended matching federal funding for Medicaid that states receive — are a longtime conservative policy goal; however, it’s unclear whether the Trump administration can cap Medicaid spending without Congress. [Politico / Rachel Roubein and Dan Diamond]
  • Advocates for the program say it would improve states’ flexibility and accountability in administering Medicaid; Democrats warn that block grants would instead imperil access to health care for the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population. [NYT / Abby Goodnough]
  • The reach of the block grant changes would be limited; according to federal officials, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and the elderly would not be affected. [WSJ / Stephanie Armour]
  • This most recent rule change is just the latest instance of the Trump administration attempting to cut Medicaid. Previously, the administration has provided waivers so states can implement work requirements as a condition for Medicaid access. [NBC / Phil McCausland]
  • The new changes are almost certain to be challenged in court; previous attempts to limit Medicaid through work requirements have been similarly challenged, and in many cases rejected by federal courts. [Washington Post / Amy Goldstein]
  • Medicaid isn’t the only federal program in Trump’s sights; the administration’s proposed 2020 would cut both Medicare and Social Security, and the president indicated last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he would “take a look” at entitlement cuts. [CNN / Maegan Vazquez]