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France is banned from using drones to enforce coronavirus rules

InternationalJan 15. 2021

By The Washington Post · Rick Noack

PARIS – France’s privacy watchdog has banned the use of drone cameras to enforce coronavirus restrictions and for other law enforcement purposes, marking a victory for groups arguing that the pandemic has given rise to excessive surveillance.

France’s Interior Ministry had conducted drone flights “outside of any legal framework,” the privacy watchdog, known as CNIL, said in its strongly worded rebuke released Thursday.

France imposed some of Europe’s toughest measures in response to the virus last year and initially deployed helicopters and drones to monitor adherence to the rules. The drones were equipped to spot lockdown violators, guide teams on the ground and broadcast warnings on loudspeakers. But privacy activists feared that the drone monitoring could serve as a trial run for more expansive surveillance programs. The concerns prompted a legal challenge and a ruling by France’s highest court last May to suspend the practices in Paris.

Privacy groups said French authorities carried on despite the ruling, continuing to deploy drones at protests.

The decision by France’s privacy watchdog – which significantly ups the stakes for the French government as it applies nationally – comes amid a broader tug-of-war between privacy activists and authorities in Europe over how to police coronavirus restrictions. That debate has played out around the world in recent months, as leaders and authorities in a number of countries were accused of using the pandemic as a pretext to expand their powers. But Europe’s extensive privacy laws have put civil liberties activists in a stronger position than activists elsewhere.

After a Belgian police force said last month that it would use drones with heat cameras to monitor end-of-year festivities in people’s homes, privacy activists rallied against the plans. Belgium’s college of public prosecutors subsequently ruled that drones should not be used to crack down on violations of coronavirus rules, even though they can still be deployed to assess crowd sizes from afar.

In Germany and Austria, privacy concerns have largely revolved around police officers’ access to private homes to enforce coronavirus rules. Both countries have a high burden of proof that’s required for officials to be able to enter homes, and lawmakers in Germany quickly rushed to reassure citizens that this wouldn’t change. After criticism, Austria’s government abandoned an attempt to change the law.

European governments have faced similar issues in the context of smartphone apps to trace contacts of infected individuals. Whereas officials had hoped such apps could become crucial tools to curb the spread of the virus, privacy concerns have prevented public health authorities from accessing the data and reduced people’s willingness to download the technology. The limitations prompted frustration among users and health authorities – one German health officials called his country’s app “useless.”

In a joint statement last November, numerous United Nations agencies, including the World Health Organization, offered support for countries that have relied on data-gathering during the pandemic, arguing that “the collection, use, sharing and further processing of data can help limit the spread of the virus.” But the agencies also warned that the collection of personal data could result in the “infringement of fundamental human rights and freedoms” if it’s abused.

In France, authorities have faced multiple setbacks over privacy concerns since the pandemic began. Last summer, the Parisian transport authority suspended an effort that monitored whether Metro riders were wearing masks, using camera-equipped AI technology. France’s privacy watchdog had criticized the experiment, arguing that it risked “a feeling of general surveillance among citizens” that could “undermine the proper functioning of our democratic society.”

Even though the cameras had been installed for experimental purposes and were not used to impose fines, the watchdog objected to the absence of a way for people to opt out of the footage.

The watchdog’s ruling on drones is based on similar concerns.

It means that officials will also no longer be allowed to use drones to monitor protesters until the watchdog’s concerns have been resolved – a stance that could put the authority in direct opposition with a government proposal to expand their use. The proposal is part of a broader draft security bill that has been fiercely debated in France in the recent weeks, with critics viewing it as a serious threat to civil liberties in the country.

The draft bill, given the initial green light in the French National Assembly last year, is set to be discussed in the French Senate later this month.

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Johnson’s leadership at risk without U.K. lockdown exit plan

InternationalJan 15. 2021Prime Minister Boris Johnson

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Tim Ross, Kitty Donaldson

Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces a threat to his leadership from rebels in his Conservative Party who are demanding a clear path out of the U.K.’s economically damaging lockdown.

Steve Baker, a senior rank-and-file member of Parliament, said in a letter to his Tory colleagues it could be a “disaster” if pandemic restrictions last until spring.

He urged them to contact Johnson’s team to warn that the premier’s position will be at risk unless he announces a route out of the current measures.

“Government has adopted a strategy devoid of any commitment to liberty without any clarification about when our most basic freedoms will be restored and with no guarantee that they will never be taken away again,” Baker wrote. “If we continue forward with a strategy that hammers freedom, hammers the private sector, hammers small business owners and hammers the poor, inevitably the prime minister’s leadership will be on the table.”

Baker, a former minister, said he would rather not topple Johnson, but he urged his colleagues to take stock of the risks in order “to avoid severe problems later.”

The U.K. entered its third national lockdown last week, with schools, non-essential retail and hospitality businesses all forced to close. The economy already suffered its deepest recession for more than 300 years as a result of the first shutdown last year and is at risk of being tipped into a double-dip contraction.

It is not yet clear how much support Baker will have for his move, but he’s an experienced campaigner and an influential figure among rank-and-file Conservative members of Parliament.

Previously leader of a pro-Brexit group of MPs who put pressure on successive prime ministers over the U.K.’s divorce from the European Union, Baker is now concerned about the impact of the government’s pandemic strategy on the economy and individual liberty.

He is one of 55 Tories who voted against Johnson’s pandemic plan for a tougher system of tiered restrictions organized by regions in December.

On paper, it would take only 40 Tory MPs to vote against the government to inflict a defeat on Johnson if all the opposition parties also decided to block the prime minister’s plans. Similarly, if 55 Conservatives submit letters of no confidence in the premier, it would trigger a vote on whether he should continue as party leader.

In last week’s vote on the third lockdown, only 14 Tories opposed the measures but many others raised concerns during the debate about how long the lockdown will last.

The current rules could continue until the end of March but Baker’s supporters say the arrival of vaccines should mean the restrictions on daily life and commerce are lifted sooner. Johnson aims to vaccinate the 15 million most at-risk people and carers by Feb. 15.

In his letter, Baker urged Tories to tell the party’s chief whip — the official responsible for internal discipline — that the “debate will become about the PM’s leadership if the government does not set out a clear plan for when our full freedoms will be restored, with a guarantee that this strategy will not be used again next winter.”

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South Africa’s busiest border closes after week of covid chaos

InternationalJan 15. 2021Commuters wearing protective face masks cross Strand Street in Cape Town, South Africa, on Jan. 11, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Dwayne Senior.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Brian Latham

South Africa’s decision to shut its land borders was preceded by a week of pandemonium as hundreds of thousands of foreigners tried to return to work after the December holidays.

Beitbridge, the only legal road crossing between Zimbabwe and South Africa — and southern Africa’s busiest inland border post — was the worst affected. People waited, not always patiently, for as long as four days in lines of traffic that stretched miles from the border gate with delays caused by the need to produce a certificate showing a negative test for covid-19.

Without restrooms or restaurants, they relied on unmasked vendors selling homemade traditional street food, while the scrubby roadside bush made do as a communal and unhygienic restroom with little social distancing on the Zimbabwean side of the border.

The chaos was a demonstration of the disruption and economic damage the coronavirus is wreaking as South Africa battles to contain the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 1.2 million people in the country and killed more than 33,000. In addition to delaying people from returning to work, the congestion curbed trade at Beitbridge, a key gateway to the rest of the continent for goods trucked from South Africa or its ports.

“It is on the trade route,” said Trudi Hartzenberg, executive director of the Tralac Trade Law Center in Stellenbosch, South Africa. “The transport and development corridors, going into the region and a single border closure has a knock-on, or a regional impact, which can be quite significant.”

The snarl-up meant that some reached South African immigration authorities after their coronavirus test certificates, which have to be presented within three days of having being taken, had expired. Many had to spend days mingling with unmasked street vendors.

“This is my fourth day in the line and my certificate will have expired even if we get through today,” said Wilson Ncube, 32, a boilermaker driving back to Johannesburg with his wife after visiting family in Zimbabwe. “I’m already late for work, and if I need to wait another 24 hours after being retested my boss is going to be” angry, he said.

Calls to Zimbabwe’s immigration department and South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs weren’t answered.

On average, Beitbridge processes about 25,000 people a day, according to Zimbabwe’s immigration department, but that number rises dramatically in January. Many of the 2 to 3 million Zimbabweans working in South Africa return home in December and the rush back to work in early January sees numbers spike. Adding to the congestion, both countries shut the border to private vehicles soon after nightfall to speed the processing of buses and trucks. Over 1,000 of them cross daily, customs officials said, mostly 40-ton rigs ferrying supplies to and from South African ports.

Trucks were backed up over 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) on the Zimbabwean side of the border on Jan. 8, while four lanes of private vehicles extended in a line for 3 kilometers. Soon after nightfall, movement of private vehicles ground to a standstill after the gates shut. It would take them between 35 and 72 hours to cross the Limpopo River into the South African customs and immigration facility.

South Africa’s main Lebombo border post with Mozambique suffered worse congestion, at least for truckers, after a new coronavirus testing regime saw the operations shut down periodically for sterilization. A line of trucks extended 21 kilometers on both sides of the border.

At Beitbridge, the interminable wait to enter Zimbabwe’s expanded border post ended on entering the gates and encountering a vast and almost empty car park. Travelers were processed rapidly and social distancing and mask wearing enforced. Vehicles then sat on the the 382-meter (1,253-foot) bridge over the Limpopo for as long as an hour as it shook under the weight of heavy trucks rumbling across.

Aside from workers being late for their jobs, truckers spoke of missing shipping deadlines at ports.

“If I’m going to make it, I’ll have to drive through for another 24 hours straight without sleep,” said Jonathan Sando, from the cab of a Freightliner truck hauling 40 tons of granite destined for Italy. “It’s not fun, this job.”

On the night of Jan. 11 South African President Cyril Ramaphosa brought the chaos to a halt by announcing that 20 of South Africa’s land border posts would be closed until Feb. 15 to almost all travelers with the exception of those hauling freight.

In doing so he stranded a substantial portion of South Africa’s workforce.

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Biden to begin presidency pushing emergency relief, other ambitious economic plans

InternationalJan 15. 2021President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the economy at the Queen in Wilmington, Del., on Dec. 4, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman.

By The Washington Post · Jeff Stein, Erica Werner

WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden will arrive in Washington with an ambitious economic agenda, starting with plans to prod Congress to pass a multitrillion-dollar coronavirus relief bill before moving on to enact his other broad proposals to overhaul the U.S. economy.

Biden’s presidency comes at a precarious moment for the nation, with the economy at risk of sliding more deeply into an already devastating recession or expanding into a healthy recovery.

The economy lost 140,000 jobs in December, the first month of job losses since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, even as infections soared with more than 360,000 already dead. Much of the effort to right the economy will depend on whether the Biden team can get the rollout of the coronavirus vaccines on track, as well as factors outside the administration’s control, including the spread of a potentially more contagious form of the virus and a global economic downturn.

Although Biden’s initial relief package will center on measures such as increasing unemployment insurance and cutting Americans new stimulus checks, he also is expected to push later this year for more permanent economic reform such as investment in infrastructure, clean energy jobs, the health-care system and other domestic priorities. He will aim to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and rewrite immigration laws. Overall, Biden will attempt to reverse many of the Trump administration’s economic policies, toward a more activist role for the government.

Biden has made clear that by far his top economic priority is addressing the coronavirus pandemic and its far-reaching fallout. His capacity to do so will set the tone for his entire presidency, and determine whether the nation’s economy can rebound from the pandemic’s grasp.

“Millions of Americans are still hurting through no fault of their own,” Biden said last week in Wilmington, Del.

“The basic story is simple,” he said. “If we don’t act now, things are going to get much worse and harder to get out of the hole later, so we have to invest now.”

A Purple Line overpass in Riverdale Park, Md., near Kenilworth Ave. and Route 410 sits unfinished on June 10, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys.

Biden has sketched out the broad outlines of a relief bill he said will cost trillions of dollars. It would increase one-time stimulus payments for Americans to $2,000, extend enhanced unemployment insurance set to expire in March, and include assistance for school districts, small businesses, and state and local governments. The legislation would invest heavily in vaccine distribution, as Biden aims to make up for lost ground where the Trump administration has failed to meet its own goals.

“Getting the virus under control and getting the vaccines right is the critical thing to getting the economy back on track. They need to do this, and they need to do it fast,” said Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG, adding that the nation is “nowhere close” to vaccinating as many people as it should be daily.

Biden has also proposed temporary increases in Social Security payments to seniors and student loan forgiveness of as much as $10,000 per person, and has called for expanding emergency sick leave and eliminating patient costs for covid-19 treatment.

The legislation would come on top of about $4 trillion Congress already has devoted to addressing the pandemic, most recently with a $900 billion measure President Donald Trump signed in December. Many Republicans are reluctant to spend anywhere near the amount of money Biden is discussing, and the proposal is sure to renew long-simmering disputes about the federal deficit, which ballooned under the Trump administration beginning with the GOP’s unpaid-for tax-cut law.

Biden has made clear that although future programs may be offset with tax increases or other measures, the coronavirus legislation will constitute emergency spending and will be added to the deficit like the previous pandemic stimulus measures. The final cost of the bill might eliminate hopes of bipartisan support and force him to attempt to pass the legislation with only Democratic votes.

Democratic control of the House and the Senate would allow him to do that, but the margins in both chambers are narrow and divisions within the Democratic Party are deep and, in some cases, acrimonious. Therefore, whether Biden will be able to get his coronavirus package passed will stand as an early test of the legislative prowess and dealmaking ability he boasted of bringing to the White House.

“We have these transformational moments, these historical pivots, maybe once in a generation,” said Timothy Naftali, a clinical associate professor of history and public policy at New York University, citing political reforms in the 1960s and after the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. “Biden and [Vice President-elect Kamala] Harris do not have all the votes they need to enact the progressive agenda, but they have the opportunity to pass legislation that can shape the post-pandemic economic recovery in a way that can be transformational.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who will become majority leader now that Democrats have won control of the Senate, leaves the Capitol after a vote on Jan. 1. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Voisard.

Biden will take office with the House and the Senate both controlled by Democrats, which makes the path for his agenda much smoother than if Republicans were in charge. But the margins are exceedingly narrow. The Senate will be divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, with Harris as the tie-breaking vote for Democrats, giving any individual Democratic senator the ability to hold up legislation with demands. The most conservative Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has already voiced reservations about the size and scope of Biden’s plan for stimulus payments, forecasting tricky negotiations ahead on that and any number of other issues.

Although major legislation in the Senate usually requires 60 votes, Biden and incoming Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will have the ability to use special budget rules to pass at least two major packages this year with a simple majority. The first is expected to be devoted to Biden’s coronavirus relief legislation, while the second is expected to become the vehicle for his other major legislative priorities, including infrastructure and efforts to fight climate change.

That second “budget reconciliation” package also could take in Biden’s health-care proposals, which would constitute the largest expansion of federally run health care in decades, including a government plan that millions of Americans could join. Biden’s proposal would allow companies and patients to buy directly into the government plan, aiming to force private insurers to lower their prices, while also making the subsidies on the Affordable Care Act exchanges more generous.

Biden also has called for federal spending to repair and upgrade infrastructure – repairing roads, bridges and the nation’s electrical grid – which also spurs job growth, economists say. That effort probably would be coupled with an environmental push to encourage move U.S. energy sources away from fossil fuels. Biden has called for trillions in new spending to put the nation on a path to having net-zero emissions by 2050.

Some of these efforts would be financed by proposed tax increases, including Biden’s call to increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% after Republicans cut it from 35% to 21% in 2017. Biden has proposed more than $2 trillion in new tax increases, although it is unclear how many of them would be included in a broader legislative package.

Known as a pragmatic dealmaker who defeated a slate of more liberal opponents in the Democratic presidential primary, Biden will face pent-up pressure from those further to the left. For the past two years, bill after bill passed in the Democratic-controlled House and died in the GOP-led Senate.

“There is no excuse for Biden not to deliver an economic recovery package that confronts wage stagnation, the climate crisis, systemic racism and public health. That is what progressives are hoping to see,” said Waleed Shahid, spokesman for the progressive group Justice Democrats. At the same time, Biden must step carefully to retain support from Manchin and other moderates, and avoid offering ammunition to Republicans, who already are describing his agenda as socialism.

Health-care workers (some with appointments after dusk) wait in line to get coronavirus vaccines at the Fairfax County Government Center in Fairfax, Va., on Jan. 2. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Michael S. Williamson.

Republicans traditionally outpoll Democrats on the economy, which remained a bright spot for Trump through much of his administration. Even during the pandemic, he scored relatively high marks from voters on the economy. Trump’s connection with working-class voters on economic issues helped him beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Biden won on his ability to connect with those voters.

Democrats are desperate to claim a political advantage on economic issues and are hoping that Biden will be able to do so.

“If we get the economics right, if we really stay on that and communicate consistently on it, we have the ability to permanently make ourselves the majority party and shore up weaknesses among blue-collar voters, independents and Latino voters,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster.

“We need to establish an economic message to win in 2022, or in 2024 or 2044. It’s the most important thing.”

Biden may have a short window to accomplish all his goals. The first two years of a president’s first term are typically the most productive. Because Democrats’ hold on Congress is particularly narrow, losing either chamber in the 2022 midterm election could leave many of Biden’s incomplete agenda items to languish.

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New unemployment claims jump to nearly 1 million

InternationalJan 15. 2021

By The Washington Post · Eli Rosenberg

WASHINGTON – The number of new unemployment claims filed last week jumped by 181,000 the week before to 965,000, the largest increase since the beginning of the pandemic.

It was the largest number of new unemployment claims since August.

An additional 284,000 claims were filed for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the insurance for gig and self-employed workers.

The weekly report is President Donald Trump’s last before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20. Biden will inherit a labor market badly weakened by the coronavirus pandemic and an economic recovery that appears to have stalled: 140,000 people lost their jobs in December, the first decline in months, with the U.S. still down millions of jobs since February.

The dire numbers will serve as a backdrop for Biden as he formally unveils an ambitious stimulus package proposal on Thursday, which could top $1 trillion, and is expected include an expansion of the child tax credit, a $2,000 stimulus payment, and other assistance for the economy.

Democrats were already using the weak labor to argue about the necessity of more aid.

Economists say that the economy’s struggles could be explained, in part, by the delay Congress allowed between the summer, when many fiscal aid programs expired and December, when lawmakers finally agreed on a new package after months of stalemate.

The number of new jobless claims has come down since the earliest days of the pandemic, but remains at a extremely high level week in and week out.

The total number of continuing people in any of the unemployment programs at the end of the year was 18.4 million, although officials have cautioned that the number is inflated by accounting issues and duplicate claims.

The increase in claims is not entirely unexpected. As the aid package passed by Congress in December kicks in, including a $300 a week unemployment supplement, some economists expected that to result in more workers filing claims.

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Trump’s most enduring legacy could be the historic rise in the national debt

InternationalJan 15. 2021President Trump signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act into law in December 2017. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.

By The Washington Post · Allan Sloan, Cezary Podkul

One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch.

The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt.

The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. That’s nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt other than mortgages, combined, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It amounts to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country.

The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war.

Economists agree that we needed massive deficit spending during the covid-19 crisis to ward off an economic cataclysm, but federal finances under Trump had become dire before the pandemic. That happened even though the economy was booming and unemployment was at historically low levels. By the Trump administration’s own description, the pre-pandemic national debt level was already a “crisis” and a “grave threat.”

The combination of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into covid-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error.

Our national debt has reached immense levels relative to our economy, nearly as high as it was at the end of World War II. But unlike 75 years ago, the massive financial overhang from Medicare and Social Security will make it dramatically more difficult to dig ourselves out of the debt ditch.

Falling deeper into the red is the opposite of what Trump, the self-styled “King of Debt,” said would happen if he became president. In a March 31, 2016, interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Trump said he could pay down the national debt, then about $19 trillion, “over a period of eight years” by renegotiating trade deals and spurring economic growth.

After he took office, Trump predicted that economic growth created by the 2017 tax cut, combined with the proceeds from the tariffs he imposed on a wide range of goods from numerous countries, would help eliminate the budget deficit and let the United States begin to pay down its debt. On July 27, 2018, he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity, “We have $21 trillion in debt. When [the 2017 tax cut] really kicks in, we’ll start paying off that debt like it’s water.”

Nine days later, he tweeted, “Because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama Administration.”

That’s not how it played out. When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached 3.8% of GDP in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.

There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.

Meanwhile, Trump’s claim that increased revenue from the tariffs would help eliminate (or at least reduce) our national debt hasn’t panned out. In 2018, Trump’s administration began hiking tariffs on aluminum, steel and many other products, launching what became a global trade war with China, the European Union and other countries.

The tariffs did bring in additional revenue. In fiscal 2019, they netted about $71 billion, up about $36 billion from President Barack Obama’s last year in office. But although $36 billion is a lot of money, it’s less than 1/750th of the national debt. That $36 billion could have covered a bit more than three weeks of interest on the national debt – that is, had Trump not unilaterally decided to send a chunk of the tariff revenue to farmers affected by his trade wars. Businesses that struggled as a result of the tariffs also paid fewer taxes, offsetting some of the increased tariff revenue.

By early 2019, the national debt had climbed to $22 trillion. Trump’s budget proposal for 2020 called it a “grave threat to our economic and societal prosperity” and asserted the United States was experiencing a “national debt crisis.” However, that same budget proposal included substantial growth in the national debt.

By the end of 2019, the debt had risen to $23.2 trillion and more federal officials were sounding the alarm. “Not since World War II has the country seen deficits during times of low unemployment that are as large as those that we project – nor, in the past century, has it experienced large deficits for as long as we project,” Phillip Swagel, director of the CBO, said in January 2020.

Weeks later, the coronavirus erupted and made the financial situation far worse. As of Dec. 31, 2020, the national debt had jumped to $27.75 trillion, up 39% from $19.95 trillion when Trump was sworn in. The government ended its 2020 fiscal year with the portion of the national debt owed to investors, the metric favored by the CBO, around 100% of GDP. The CBO had predicted less than a year earlier that it would take until 2030 to reach that approximate level of debt. Including the trillions owed to various governmental trust funds, the total debt is now about 130% of GDP.

Normally, this is where we’d give you Trump’s version of events. But we couldn’t get anyone from the White House to give us Trump’s side. Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, referred us to the Office of Management and Budget, which is a branch of the White House.

OMB didn’t respond to our requests. The Treasury Department directed us to comments made by OMB Director Russell Vought in October, in which he predicted that as the pandemic eases and economic growth rebounds, the “fiscal picture” will improve. The OMB blamed legislators for deficits when Trump submitted his proposed 2021 budget: “Unfortunately, the Congress continues to reject any efforts to restrain spending. Instead, they have greatly contributed to the continued ballooning of Federal debt and deficits, putting the Nation’s fiscal future at risk.”

Still, the deficit growth under Trump has been historic. Steuerle, of the Tax Policy Center, has done a comparison of every American president using a metric called the “primary deficit.” It’s defined as the deficit minus interest costs, because interest is the only budget expense that presidents and Congress can’t control unless they want to do the unthinkable and default on the debt. Steuerle examined the records of 45 presidents to see how, as of the final year of their administrations, the primary deficit had shrunk or grown relative to the size of the economy.

Trump had the third-biggest primary deficit growth, 5.2% of GDP, behind only George W. Bush (11.7%) and Abraham Lincoln (9.4%). Bush, of course, not only passed a big tax cut, as Trump has, but also launched two wars, which greatly inflated the defense budget. Lincoln had to pay for the Civil War. By contrast, Trump’s wars have been almost entirely of the political variety.

Our national debt is now at its highest level relative to our economy since the end of World War II. After the war ended, the extraordinary military expenses disappeared, a postwar recovery began and the debt began to fall rapidly relative to the size of the economy.

But that’s not going to happen this time. When World War II ended 75 years ago, Social Security was in its infancy and Medicare didn’t exist. Today, many of our biggest and most rapidly growing expenses, especially Social Security and Medicare, are baked into the budget because of our nation’s aging population. These outlays are slated to rise sharply. Steuerle recently calculated that Social Security, health-care and interest costs are projected to absorb 122% of the total growth in federal revenue from 2019 to 2030.

What’s more, our investment in the future – things like research and development, education, infrastructure and workforce training – is declining as a proportion of the budget. OMB data shows that in 1970, mandatory spending (such as Social Security and Medicare, but not including interest on the debt) and investment each made up around 30% of total federal spending. But as of 2019, the most recent available year, mandatory spending had doubled to around 61% of total federal spending, while investment fell by more than half, to around 12.5%.

Spending more and more on past promises and shrinking the proportion of spending for the future doesn’t bode well for our kids and grandkids. Had Trump done what he said he’d do and paid off part of the national debt before the coronavirus struck, rather than adding significantly to the debt, the situation would be considerably less dire. And had Trump done a better job of coping with the pandemic, the economic and human costs would’ve been greatly reduced.

In addition to forcing us to reduce the proportion of the budget spent on the future to help pay for the past, there’s a second reason huge and growing budget deficits matter: interest costs.

Bigger debt ultimately means bigger interest costs, even in an era when the Federal Reserve has forced down Treasury rates to ultralow levels. The government’s net interest cost (including interest paid to government trust funds) was around $523 billion in the 2020 fiscal year. That outstrips all spending on education, employment training, research and social services, Treasury data shows.

Interest costs are way below where they’d be if the Fed hadn’t forced rates down to try to stimulate the economy and mitigate the impact of the pandemic. One-year Treasury securities cost taxpayers a minuscule 0.10% in interest at year’s end, down from 1.59% at the end of 2019. The 10-year Treasury rate was 0.93%, down from 1.92%.

In late December, the Fed reported boosting its Treasury holdings by more than $2 trillion from a year earlier. The increase is primarily in longer-term securities. That has kept the federal government from having to raise trillions of dollars in the capital markets, and therefore has kept longer-term interest rates way below where they would otherwise be.

But unless something changes, even the Fed’s promise to keep interest rates near current levels for several years won’t fend off future problems. Most of the government’s borrowing to fund pandemic relief has been shorter-term borrowing that will have to be refinanced in the coming years. If rates rise, so will the government’s interest expense.

Even with rates where they are, interest on the debt is already going to be the fastest-growing budget category this decade, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which tracks the issue. Annual net interest costs are projected to double in 10 years and grow so large beyond 2030 that interest will become a driving factor in annual deficit growth, according to Peterson estimates.

Listen to what Swagel, the CBO director, had to say on the subject in a report to congressional Republicans in December: “Although the current low interest rates indicate that the debt is manageable for now and that the United States is not facing an immediate fiscal crisis, in which interest rates abruptly escalated or other disruptions occurred, the risk and potential budgetary consequences of such a crisis become greater over time.”

Trump was asked about this risk during a virtual discussion with the Economic Club of New York in October. “If we have another stimulus bill out of Congress, are you worried that the entire amount of federal debt will be too large for us to pay off in a sensible way?” asked David Rubenstein, a private equity executive.

Trump answered by falsely claiming that the United States was starting to pay off the national debt before the pandemic and claimed that future economic growth would let it do so. “I think you’re going to see tremendous growth, David, and the growth is going to get it done,” Trump said.

Two months later, when Congress finally approved $900 billion of economic stimulus that is being financed with debt, Trump challenged Congress to spend – and borrow – even more. Then he went golfing.

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U.S. reportedly decides against investing ban on Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, source

InternationalJan 15. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Nick Wadhams

U.S. officials deliberated but ultimately decided against banning American investment in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., a person familiar with the discussions said, removing a cloud of uncertainty over Asia’s two biggest corporations.

The Treasury Department blocked a Pentagon effort to add the two internet firms on grounds they aided the military, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing private talks. Officials also debated blocking search leader Baidu Inc. but dropped the plan, the person added. Alibaba’s Hong Kong stock climbed as much as 3.9% while Tencent rose almost 5% on news of the reprieve, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Their dollar bond spreads tightened Thursday morning.

The decision removes uncertainty hanging over Chinese social media and gaming leader Tencent and Alibaba, the e-commerce titan founded by billionaire Jack Ma that’s now under intense regulatory scrutiny by Beijing regulators. President Donald Trump has signed an amended version of his executive order banning investment in Chinese military-linked companies, the White House said in a statement Wednesday that didn’t mention any company by name.

Imposing a ban on the pair would have marked the most dramatic escalation yet by the outgoing administration, given the sheer size of the two firms and the difficulty unwinding positions. At more than $1 trillion, their combined market value is nearly twice the size of Spain’s stock market, while the firms together account for about a 10th of the weighting for MSCI Inc.’s emerging markets benchmark.

Citing national security, Trump previously signed an executive order in November requiring investors to pull out of Chinese companies linked to that nation’s military. The Defense Department will add more companies to the roster, the person said without elaborating.

That would further fray the relationship between the world’s two largest economies, which have clashed over everything from covid-19 to Hong Kong. Authorities in Washington have ramped up efforts to deprive Chinese companies of U.S. capital in the final months of the Trump administration, adding to economic tensions as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take over this month.

“China opposes politicizing economic and trade issues and abusing state power and the concept of national security to suppress foreign companies,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said during a regular briefing Thursday. Zhao urged the U.S. to respect market economy principles and provide a fair, unbiased and transparent business environment for foreign companies.

Hasty measures have at times sown confusion in markets and prompted price swings, such as when the New York Stock Exchange reversed course twice on a decision to delist three Chinese telecommunications companies. The NYSE is now proceeding with its original delisting plan after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin disagreed with its decision to give the firms a reprieve.

Trump’s order banned trading in affected securities starting Jan. 11. If Biden leaves Trump’s executive order in place, U.S. investment firms and pension funds would be required to sell their holdings in companies linked to the Chinese military by Nov. 11. And if the U.S. determines additional companies have military ties in the future, American investors will be given 60 days from that determination to divest.

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House hands Trump a second impeachment, this time with GOP support

InternationalJan 14. 2021House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

By The Washington Post · Mike DeBonis, Paul Kane

WASHINGTON – The House made history Wednesday by impeaching a president for a second time, indicting President Donald Trump a week before he leaves office for inciting a riot with false claims of a stolen election that led to the storming of the Capitol and five deaths.

Unlike Trump’s first impeachment, which proceeded with almost no GOP support, Wednesday’s effort attracted 10 Republicans, including Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 party leader in the House. The Senate now appears likely to hold a trial after Trump’s departure, an unprecedented scenario that could end with lawmakers barring him from holding the presidency again.

The final vote was 232-197.

One of the final dramas of a tumultuous presidency, the impeachment unfolded against the backdrop of near-chaos in the House and uncertainty about where Trump’s exit leaves the GOP. Democrats and Republicans exchanged accusations and name-calling throughout the day, while Trump loyalists were livid at fellow Republicans who broke ranks – especially Cheney – leaving the party’s leadership shaken.

But despite the emotions stirred by the Capitol assault, the great majority of Republicans stood by the president, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.. He argued on the House floor that while Trump bears responsibility for the attack on the Capitol, the snap impeachment would only “further fan the flames of partisan division.”

McCarthy for the first time publicly endorsed a censure for Trump, but the call came too late to serve as an effective alternative to impeachment.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democrats made it clear Wednesday that censure would not suffice given the circumstances, with Trump riling up his supporters with false claims of election fraud, then urging them to march on Congress as it was certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

“He must go,” Pelosi said. “He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love.”

The House took its final vote Wednesday afternoon, one week after the riot and just two days after the impeachment resolution was filed. It was a stunningly swift response from a House that took nearly three months to impeach Trump in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and contempt of Congress.

But with just seven days remaining in Trump’s term, it became increasingly certain Wednesday that Trump would not be removed from office prematurely. The impeachment resolution for “incitement of insurrection,” however, also seeks Trump’s future “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

The focus will now turn to how the trial will unfold in the Senate, which has never before held an impeachment trial for a former president.

Biden issued a statement shortly after the House vote signaling his concern that his agenda not be sidelined.

“I hope that the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation,” Biden said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., refused a request from Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to reconvene the Senate early to launch Trump’s trial. That means it can start the proceedings no sooner than Jan. 19 – a day before Biden’s inauguration.

McConnell, who signaled through advisers Tuesday that he would be open to a possible conviction, said in a memo released as the House debated that there was no chance that a trial could be fairly concluded before the inauguration, even if he agreed to Schumer’s request. Previous presidential impeachment trials, he noted, took 83, 37 and 21 days.

McConnell pointedly left open the possibility that he might vote to convict Trump.

“I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate,” he said in the note, first sent to his fellow Republican senators.

Schumer, for his part, suggested determination to hold the trial even with Trump gone from the White House. “Make no mistake, there will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate; there will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors; and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again,” he said.

McCarthy called on the House floor for Trump to “quell the brewing unrest,” and with Republican votes in the balance, Trump quickly issued a brief written statement: “I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind,” he said. “That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers.”

Later Wednesday evening, Trump issued a five-minute video denouncing the protesters: “Mob violence goes against everything I believe in, and everything our movement stands for. No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence.”

But the statements came too late for the clutch of Republicans who voted to impeach. Instead, several cited his impromptu remarks the previous day claiming his actions had been “totally appropriate.”

The Republicans who broke from Trump included senior leaders such as Cheney, the Republican conference chairwoman; Rep. John Katko of New York, the top GOP member of the Homeland Security Committee; and Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, a former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. But junior members such as freshman Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan and second-term Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio also voted for impeachment.

Some, such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, have been sharply critical of Trump in the past. Others, such as Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, have hardly ever said a cross word about him.

“I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice,” Rice said in a statement. “But, this utter failure is inexcusable.”

Other Republicans voting to impeach Trump were Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Dan Newhouse of Washington and David Valadao of California.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders, said the fact that only nine Republicans joined Cheney, and the dam did not break in a more dramatic way, showed that Trump retained wide support within the GOP.

Asked if Trump could still be an effective leader of the party, Jordan said, “Of course he is. Of course he is. His support is strong because the American people appreciated that over the past four years he did more of what he said he would do than any president in my lifetime.”

Several other Republicans declined to comment on Trump’s future, saying instead that the lopsided GOP vote reflected concerns about the impeachment process and the political environment.

“It actually represents a feeling among Republicans – even Republicans who are disappointed with this president – that with only seven days left to go in his term and with the toxic political environment being what it is, that there’s a real need in the country to lower the temperature,” said Rep. Garland “Andy” Barr, R-Ky. “This is viewed by a lot of Americans as an act of political vengeance.”

Many GOP members said they were struggling to reconcile their anger at last week’s events, and Trump’s culpability in them, with their fears of escalating violence and threats directed at lawmakers.

“This isn’t a fun time, that’s for sure,” said Valadao, who said he was undecided just hours before voting to impeach.

Democrats encouraged the handful of Republicans who came to the floor Wednesday in support of impeachment. When Newhouse broke publicly with Trump on the House floor, colleagues across the aisle delivered applause.

“These articles of impeachment are flawed, but I will not use process as an excuse,” he said. “There is no excuse for President Trump’s actions.”

But most Republicans speaking Wednesday put little distance between themselves and Trump. Many sidestepped the actual charge against Trump, instead arguing that the Democrats were being divisive and that impeachment was unnecessary so close to Trump’s departure.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., leader of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus who had embraced the “Stop the Steal” effort that culminated in the Jan. 6 rally, warned Democrats that they would only embolden Trump supporters.

“You believe that your hunger will be finally satiated by impeaching this president without completion of his full term of office,” Biggs said. “Instead of stopping the Trump train, his movement will grow stronger, for you will have made him a martyr.”

The scene in the Capitol highlighted how fluid the political landscape has become one week before the departure of a president who has aggressively shaken up politics for four years. Cheney and Jordan were emerging as leaders of what are roughly anti- and pro-Trump factions of the GOP, with the party’s nominal leader, McCarthy, somewhere in the middle.

Democrats, meanwhile, face what is likely to be Pelosi’s last term as speaker without a clear successor and with the narrowest congressional majority in decades – often a recipe for trouble as voters’ expectations exceed a party’s ability to deliver.

In a sign of the House GOP’s tenuous political standing, McCarthy convened a call about two hours after the vote with his top financial donors. A slew of Fortune 500 companies in recent days have sworn off donations to the Republicans who voted to overturn the electoral college results, a group that includes McCarthy.

McCarthy told the donors that he called Biden on Tuesday and “pledged to work together” with the new administration, according to a participant in the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private call.

McCarthy also tried to reassure the wealthy contributors that he rejected the conspiracy theory that antifa was responsible for last week’s violence and said Trump deserved “some of the responsibility” for the attacks.

The most immediate fallout from the impeachment effort appears likely to occur inside the Republican Party, as several Trump loyalists called for Cheney to immediately resign her leadership position. A petition for her resignation circulated among GOP offices in the Capitol as hard-right members seethed over her role in backing Trump’s ouster.

Cheney on Wednesday insisted she would not resign: “I’m not going anywhere,” she told reporters. “Our nation is facing an unprecedented, since the Civil War, constitutional crisis. That’s what we need to be focused on.”

Democrats, meanwhile, prepared for a new governing reality – with Biden assuming the presidency in a week and Democrats taking the narrowest of Senate majorities, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris poised to break 50-50 ties.

With some Democrats openly floating a delay in transmission of the impeachment measure to allow the Senate to confirm at least some of Biden’s Cabinet nominees, Pelosi on Wednesday did not respond to questions about her plans.

Some Republicans predicted that their internal bloodletting over Trump would soon be swept aside once Democrats take unified control in Washington.

“We’re going to get through this, and we’re going to be united, because Speaker Pelosi is going to bring some very dangerous policy to the House floor that’s frankly going to divide them and unite us,” said Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., a junior member of the party leadership.

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Emergency declaration to drag on Malaysia’s economic rebound

InternationalJan 14. 2021A sign for take-away is displayed outside a restaurant during a nationwide state of emergency in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Jan, 13, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Samsul Said.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Anisah Shukry

The state of emergency declared this week allows Malaysia’s government to enact immediate laws to support the virus-battered economy, but could dent consumer confidence and scare off investors.

Greater powers under Tuesday’s decree could help the government implement concrete solutions to the country’s health crisis and economic downturn, according to analysts at CGS-CIMB. Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said it would allow for ordinances to fight “economic sabotage, monopoly, and excessive price hikes.”

The emergency, which could last until Aug. 1, coincides with a two-week lockdown that led analysts to shave as much as 1.5 percentage points off their forecasts for annual economic growth. Regions placed under stay-at-home orders contribute more than two-thirds of the country’s gross domestic product.

The measures come as record numbers of covid infections stretch Malaysia’s health system to the breaking point. While less severe than the two-month lockdown enacted last March, the restrictions will mean a loss of about 3 billion ringgit ($742 million) per week in private consumption, according to an RHB Bank estimate.

“With its recovery momentum stymied, it will be even harder now for the economy to reach the 6.5-7.5% GDP growth target that the government has in mind,” Wellian Wiranto, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., wrote in a research note.

The emergency decree does bring a measure of political stability to Malaysia for the first time since infighting early last year toppled the coalition and lifted Muhyiddin to power. With parliament potentially suspended until August, the prime minister doesn’t have to worry about fresh elections anytime soon.

“The government may have a ‘no-holds-barred'” approach to the pandemic now, analysts at RHB Bank said. “This may include further support from the fiscal and monetary side, as well as a more unconventional approach including a return of loan moratoriums and tax breaks on big-ticket items.”

Malaysia’s economy took the brunt of the covid blow in the second quarter of 2020, and began bouncing back in the latter half of the year. The government expected the economy to contract 4.5% for the full year.

Now, its ability to galvanize activity is constrained by limited fiscal space and a relatively high debt load, according to OCBC’s Wiranto. “The government may remain reluctant to undertake a ‘bazooka’-type fiscal largesse, given the external constraints imposed by the market,” he said.

Moreover, government intervention unchecked by parliament could jeopardize market stability, analysts at BIMB Securities Research wrote. The move could send negative signals to investors, leading to the outflow or diversion of foreign investment from the country, they said.

That means monetary policy may have to do more of the heavy lifting. OCBC sees a “heightened chance” that Bank Negara Malaysia will cut its overnight policy rate by 25 basis points to a record-low 1.5% at its Jan. 20 meeting.

Analysts at Hong Leong Investment Bank and Citibank were more conservative. While both believe the odds have risen for a rate cut this year, they don’t expect one next week.

The overnight rate “is likely to stay pat until the extent and impact of renewed lockdown is known with greater clarity,” Hong Leong analysts wrote in a research note.

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What happens next in the impeachment of Trump?

InternationalJan 14. 2021WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 13, 2021: A week after the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol, with Speaker of the House House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., presides over President Donald Trump’s second impeachment Wednesday Jan. 13, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara

By The Washington Post · Amber Phillips

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has become the first president in American history to be impeached twice. But being impeached is not the same as being convicted and kicked out of office or barred from holding it again.

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Here’s what happened and what could be next.

– – –

What are the consequences?

Trump will go down in history as being the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. If the Senate convicts him before he leaves office on Jan. 20, he will be removed, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday that the chamber will not take up the matter before Trump leaves office. If it convicted him, the Senate could take another vote to bar him from holding office again.

– – –

Why a second impeachment?

Impeaching Trump in his final days in office was not on Congress’s to-do list. But then the riot at the Capitol happened Jan. 6.

Congress convened under tense circumstances after Trump’s months-long quest to undermine the 2020 presidential election, contest his loss, and interfere in the counting of electoral votes and confirming that Joe Biden will be the next president.

Congress’s role in who is president is largely a formality. But scores of Republican lawmakers, including a majority of GOP House members, planned to use an 1880s law to object to seating electors from swing states Trump lost. That’s despite the fact that all states met the legal requirements for Congress and despite the fact that none of those challenges could get the votes to succeed.

As they got started, Trump was on the Ellipse, addressing supporters whom he had invited to Washington to “be there, will be wild,” and whom he urged that day to “fight like hell” to try to overturn his loss.

As debate about the first GOP challenge got underway, hundreds of those supporters stormed the Capitol, overwhelming Capitol Police and forcing lawmakers and staff members to flee the chambers. Five people’s deaths, including a Capitol Police officer’s, were linked to the riot.

Shaken members of Congress returned hours later and confirmed Biden’s win.

Democrats and some Republicans started calling for Trump’s removal from office immediately. On Tuesday, several top House Republicans said they supported impeaching him.

“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, said in a statement, adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

– – –

Why not other consequences?

There were a few options besides impeachment to get Trump out before he has to leave by noon Jan. 20. He could resign. Or Vice President Mike Pence and half the Cabinet could vote to remove him based on a section of the 25th Amendment that allows them to declare him unfit to serve. Pence said removing Trump now would not be “in the best interest of our Nation or consistent with our Constitution.”

House Democrats called on Pence to remove the president this way before they moved to impeach Trump, but while there were talks in the Cabinet of doing so, there was no action. Some Cabinet members resigned over Trump’s role in the riot, removing themselves from involvement in taking this unprecedented step.

Some constitutional law experts argue that Congress could use a lesser-known provision in the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from office, by voting that he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” and thus can’t hold office again. They say that would take only a majority vote, though it could be open to court challenges.

House Democrats, more than 300 historians, constitutional law experts and some Republicans have said Trump poses more danger the longer he stays in office after encouraging the riot.

“We cannot let this go unanswered,” Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., wrote in a New York Times opinion article, speaking for many in his party. “With each day, Mr. Trump grows more and more desperate. We should not allow him to menace the security of our country for a second longer.”

– – –

What’s next?

The impeachment article goes to the Senate for a trial on whether to convict or acquit the president. The Senate is in the process of changing hands, from a narrow Republican majority to a narrow Democratic majority.

The timing of the House vote, less than a week before Biden is to be sworn in, means the Senate trial will happen under a Democratic-controlled Senate. Democrats would get to outline how the trial would work.

But it could require the Senate to stop all business for a few days, including confirming Biden’s Cabinet. (Some House Democratic leaders have suggested refraining from sending the impeachment article to the Senate until Biden is more settled with his administration.) Biden asked the Senate whether it could split the day in two, confirming his nominees and holding a trial. It’s unclear whether the Senate can do that.

The consequences for Trump are unclear. A president can probably be convicted after leaving office, but to convict Trump requires support of two-thirds of the Senate, more than the Democratic majority. Democrats would need 17 Senate Republicans to join them, and they do not seem to have that support. Three Republican senators have expressed openness to impeachment or to getting Trump out of office after the Capitol riot – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

“I want him out. I want him to resign. He has caused enough damage,” Murkowski said in the days after the invasion.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the lone Senate Republican to vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment, has expressed hesitation that impeachment is the right way to go, though he also has said he thinks the president should be held accountable in some way.

McConnell has said he’s furious with Trump for what happened and does not plan to speak to him again, reported The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker. The Post has confirmed that he told others that Trump probably committed impeachable offenses.

Barring a president from running for office again would require removal from office, then a majority vote.

– – –

What the new impeachment article says

The article the House voted on 232-197 is short but makes three main points, mainly that Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” because:

1. He falsely claimed he won the election: “Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump addressed a crowd of his political supporters nearby. There, he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.’ “

2. He encouraged the riot: “He willfully made statements that encouraged – and foreseeably resulted in – imminent lawless action at the Capitol. Incited by President Trump, a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress and the Vice President, interfered with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”

3. He’d been putting actions to his words to try to overturn his loss: The article mentions a recent call Trump held with Georgia’s secretary of state urging him to “find” just enough votes to overturn Biden’s win there.

– – –

What Republicans are saying

Republican lawmakers are not defending Trump’s actions, but few are publicly acknowledging his role in inciting the violent mob and trying to undermine a presidential election.

Most House Republicans have been lining up behind the argument that impeachment would be too divisive for the country, and they are trying not to acknowledge Trump’s role in the rhetoric that led to the storming of the Capitol. They have offered alternatives such as censure, a much weaker option.

The majority of Senate Republicans are silent about what they think should happen to Trump. Some argue that impeachment is a bad idea.

“I think letting the president stew in his own juices is probably the right way to go here,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally who stopped his support for Trump after the riot, told The Post on Monday after meeting with the president. “Impeachment is going to reignite the problem, and we’ve got nine days to go here. It will do more harm than good, and I’m hoping that people on our side will see it that way.”

Trump, who used his now-defunct Twitter account to defend himself throughout his first impeachment trial, on Tuesday morning called the new impeachment effort “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of politics.”

– – –

What happened in the last impeachment

After months of debate within the Democratic Party about whether to impeach Trump for his efforts to block a government Russia investigation, in the fall of 2019, Democrats moved forward with impeaching Trump for pressuring the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden. They went slowly, starting with an impeachment investigation in which they called about a dozen witnesses before having some dramatically testify, often in defiance of Trump’s orders not to.

By December 2019, Trump was impeached by the Democratic House in a mostly party-line vote for two articles: abuse of power and obstructing Congress’s inquiry. In January, the Republican-controlled Senate held a relatively quick trial without calling new witnesses and acquitted Trump. Only one Republican senator, Romney, voted to convict Trump on one of the articles.