Day: November 14, 2019

The first public impeachment hearing on Wednesday featured testimony from two State Department officials, Bill Taylor and George Kent, who detailed why they concluded that President Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy was not about the national interest, but about digging up dirt on his political opponents. It also included a new revelation about a July phone call involving Trump that indicated just how focused the president was on cajoling the Ukrainian government into undertaking politically beneficial investigations.

The proceedings got to the very core of what the office of the presidency is supposed to be about in our country. It was …

Last week Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she would name former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a former businessman and civil rights attorney, to her cabinet. Instead, he announced he actually wants to be president.

Patrick told senior Democrats Wednesday night that he will be throwing his hat into the race and has plans to add his name to the ballot in New Hampshire later today — making him a last minute addition to the already stacked Democratic presidential primary.

His announcement video, released Thursday morning, highlights his upbringing on the South Side of Chicago, where his grandmother told him they …

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The first public hearing

• Acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified in the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry before Congress Wednesday. [Washington Post / John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez and Colby Itkowitz]
• Kent and Taylor testified about Trump’s attempts to force Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for military aid and

The first public hearing in the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump took place today. Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee called William Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, a State Department official, to testify. Both officials had already participated in closed-door hearings so they weren’t expected to reveal new information. Taylor did disclose a previously unknown phone call with Trump in his opening statement, however, which added another damning testimony to the allegations against the president.

Vox’s Andrew Prokop joins this episode of Today, Explained to share the most …

Eric Schmidt on Wednesday made a bold promise: To double the amount of money he and his wife, Wendy Schmidt, spend on charity. What he’s not doing is detailing with any specificity what exactly it is that he’s spending his money on.

Schmidt, the former CEO of Google with a net worth of $14 billion, said he would be committing another $1 billion to charity, part of a new flagship effort to back “talent” around the world. What does that mean?

Eric and Wendy Schmidt have over the last few years assembled a byzantine network of political and philanthropic efforts …