November 17, 2019

Your Weekend Briefing

By remy tumin and judith levitt

Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

1. The impeachment inquiry into President Trump burst into public view this week. There were three key moments:

Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, above, painted a striking account of her ouster and offered a damning indictment of foreign policy in the Trump era, all while responding in real time to Twitter attacks by Mr. Trump.

William Taylor Jr., the top diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, brought to life Democrats’ allegations that Mr. Trump had abused his office by trying to enlist a foreign power to help him in an election.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi shifted the tone of the investigation when she accused Mr. Trump of “bribery” in his dealings with Ukraine. It suggested that Democrats were moving toward a specific set of charges.

And House investigators didn’t stop there, soliciting more testimony from an official from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev and questioning a budget office official about Mr. Trump’s decision to freeze security assistance to Ukraine.

Next up: Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the E.U., is to testify on Wednesday. Here’s who else will appear in the coming days.

Have you been keeping up with the headlines? Test your knowledge with our news quiz. And here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.

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Eve Edelheit for The New York Times

2. What do voters make of the impeachment inquiry, especially those in swing states?

We sent our reporters to six swing states and found the nation’s divisions on stark display. Above, Malcolm Goodman, 31, of Brooksville, Fla., said he didn’t want to rush to judgment.

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There was more upheaval in the 2020 race this week. Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, officially entered the presidential race, and Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, has filed paperwork in two states. Here’s how they could alter the race.

The two latecomers won’t be on the debate stage on Wednesday, but 10 other candidates did qualify. Here’s what else happened on the campaign trail this week.

And in the polls: Pete Buttigieg jumped to a robust lead in a new Iowa poll. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were roughly tied for second.

And Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, narrowly won re-election on Saturday, overcoming the intervention of President Trump, who visited the state multiple times in an effort to help Mr. Edwards’s Republican challenger.

The New York Times

3. A leak of Chinese government files reveals in officials’ words how they divided families and forced Muslim ethnic minorities into internment camps.

More than 400 pages of internal documents obtained by The Times reveal how the demands of top officials, including President Xi Jinping, led to the creation of the indoctrination camps in the Xinjiang region that have long been shrouded in secrecy.

One document tells Chinese officials how to explain the disappearance of parents and families detained in camps. “They’re in a training school set up by the government,” the prescribed answer began.

Here are five takeaways from the files.

David Walter Banks for The New York Times

4. Investigators are trying to understand why a 16-year-old student pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot five people, killing two of his classmates. It was at least the 11th school shooting this year.

Even as the police said they did not know what had inspired the gunman, they said it was clear he had planned the attack. Their efforts were made more complicated when the attacker died on Friday of his self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The coroner’s office identified the two students who died in the shooting as Gracie Anne Muehlberger, a 15-year-old girl, and Dominic Blackwell, a 14-year-old boy.

Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

5. “They don’t represent us; they reject us.”

With the fall of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales, Indigenous Bolivians fear the loss of hard-won political gains and say a backlash against them has begun.

Jeanine Añez Chavez, an opposition senator who declared herself interim president, has a record of tweeting derogatory remarks about Indigenous people. And in some of the worst violence in recent weeks, police fired tear gas and live rounds at Indigenous supporters of Mr. Morales.

Separately, on the next episode of “The Weekly,” our reporters headed to Mexico, where one of the country’s most notorious drug cartels turned a city into a war zone for a day, took on the army — and won.

Zephyr/Science Source

6. Every year, thousands of heart patients receive operations to open blocked arteries. But for many others, drugs alone work just as well, a new study found.

The study found that patients who received drug therapy alone did not experience more heart attacks or die more often than those who also received bypass surgery or stents, tiny wire cages used to open narrowed arteries. Drug therapy alone may save lives as effectively.

Researchers followed 5,179 participants for a median of three and a half years. It was the largest trial to understand the effect of opening blocked arteries in nonemergency situations, and the first to include today’s powerful drug regimens.

Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

7. Marshall, Texas, banned tackle football for seventh graders in 2014 but brought it back this year. The reversal reflects a broader debate over the sport and who is left playing it.

In the second part of our series looking at the state of the game, parents and players balance safety issues with having a future outside a small town.

In the N.F.L., Colin Kaepernick worked out for teams on Saturday for the first time in three years. Roger Goodell, the commissioner, and Jay-Z, the music star who became an N.F.L. ally, had a lot to gain by arranging the tryout.

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

8. We’re strategizing for a delicious — and stress-free — Thanksgiving.

Step 1: Play with your sides. Break with custom and make vegetables to your convenience. (Here’s the rest of Melissa Clark’s game plan.)

Step 2: Grate and press a short-crust pastry for a perfect pie crust.

Step 3: Stick to our wine critic’s suggestions, and no one will be thirsty.

If you’re just looking for normal weeknight options, we’ve got you covered on that, too.

James S. Wood/Arizona Daily Star, via Associated Press

9. Look up, look up: The Leonids meteor shower is set to put on a show in the night sky.

Active between Nov. 6 and Nov. 30, the show peaks around Sunday night into Monday morning, or Nov. 17-18. The Leonids are one of the most dazzling meteor showers and can produce a meteor storm where more than 1,000 meteors can be seen an hour, as happened in Tucson in 2001.

Here’s how to watch.

Sophie Mutevelian/Netflix

10. And finally, dig into our Best Weekend Reads.

Olivia Colman, above, becomes Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown”; Dungeons & Dragons is making a comeback; and SoftBank is upending the lives of workers around the world. Find them all here.

For more ideas on what to read, watch and listen to, may we suggest these 9 new books our editors liked, a glance at the latest small-screen recommendations from Watching, our music critics’ latest playlist and 7 podcasts for movie buffs.

Did you hear the one about a puppy with a tail between its eyes?

Hope you find something to marvel at this week.

Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a.m. Eastern.

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