| We’re covering the latest news in the impeachment inquiry, questions after a deadly volcanic eruption in New Zealand, and new transparency efforts by Pete Buttigieg. | |  By Chris Stanford | | | Representatives Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, left, and Doug Collins, the panel's top Republican, on Monday. Pool photo by Anna Moneymaker | | | They’re focusing on two charges, senior officials and lawmakers told The Times: that Mr. Trump violated his oath of office by putting his political concerns over the national interest, and that he stonewalled attempts to investigate. | | | What’s next: The Judiciary Committee is likely to vote on articles of impeachment by the end of this week, recommending their adoption by the full House. That would set up a vote before Christmas to impeach Mr. Trump, and a Senate trial early next year over whether to remove him from office. | | | The agency had sufficient reason to investigate links between Russia and Trump campaign aides, but major errors were made during the inquiry, according to a long-awaited Justice Department report released on Monday. | | | The report, by the department’s independent inspector general, Michael Horowitz, criticized the handling of a wiretap against a former Trump campaign adviser, but also rebuffed President Trump’s claims that the investigation was politically motivated. Read the report here. | | | Related: Attorney General William Barr disagreed with the report’s finding, saying the investigation was based on “the thinnest of suspicions.” John Durham, a prosecutor whom Mr. Barr had appointed to run a separate criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia inquiry, agreed with him. | | | News analysis: Mr. Trump’s allies had long looked to the inspector general’s report to reveal a “deep state” plot against him. When it didn’t, they moved on to something else, our Washington correspondent writes. | | | American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2011. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times | | | The Post said the documents had come from 2,000 pages of Pentagon interviews conducted from 2014 to 2018 in order to write a series of unclassified “Lessons Learned” reports. They were released after a long legal battle with the government’s watchdog for the war. (Read The Post’s report here.) | | | Quotable: “We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking,” said one retired general who helped oversee the war. | | | Response: A Pentagon spokesman said “there has been no intent” by the Defense Department “to mislead Congress or the public.” He said that “most of the individuals interviewed spoke with the benefit of hindsight.” | | | The White Island volcano during its eruption on Monday. Michael Schade, via Associated Press | | | For weeks, geologists had warned of increasing gas and steam at the White Island volcano, which is promoted as New Zealand’s most active. Most of the victims had traveled from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. | | | Quotable: “A rolling, rumbling mass of ash tumbled over the cliff face, in all directions, and it completely engulfed the island,” said a man who toured the volcano shortly before it erupted. “It cut out the sun, it went dark. You couldn’t see that there was an island there.” | | | Jack Davison for The New York Times | | | As the year draws to a close, our critics A.O. Scott and Wesley Morris discussed the performances that they found captivating, challenging, shocking and inspiring. | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM PEARSON | | The limit does not exist | | The talent–driven economy demands a redesign of learning. If we want to get to the cure for cancer or answers to climate change, we need more data analysts, engineers, doctors, and scientists. We need to find workers for the 2.4 million unfilled STEM jobs we have now. And almost all STEM majors require Calculus, and almost one-third of students drop or fail it. Meet Aida – the first AI calculus tutor. | | | MEET AIDA | | | | Myanmar genocide case: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the former democracy activist who serves as the country’s de facto civilian leader, will defend the military starting today at a hearing in The Hague. She has said that accusations that Myanmar perpetrated mass atrocities against its minority Rohingya Muslim population stem from a “huge iceberg of misinformation.” | | | "Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris," (2014), © Rafael Neff/LUMAS Gallery | | | In memoriam: Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, led an aggressive effort to tame inflation in the 1970s and ’80s and helped shape American economic policy for more than six decades. He died on Sunday at 92. | | | Golden Globe nominations: Netflix received the most, including six for “Marriage Story.” Apple’s new centerpiece, “The Morning Show,” and its stars, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, also picked up nominations. Here’s the full list. | | | Bobby Doherty for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Margaret MacMillan Jones. | | | Smarter Living: Are you keeping up with health news? Take our quiz. | | | There are obvious similarities. Most notably, both were leaks demonstrating that the U.S. government had knowingly misrepresented a painful, costly war to the American public. | | | But there are differences. | | | The Pentagon Papers were a secret account of the Vietnam War commissioned by President John F. Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara. They were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who had worked on the study. And they revealed aspects of the war, including the widening of U.S. activity to include the bombings of Cambodia and Laos, that had gone largely unreported by major news outlets. | | | Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 at a news conference during his trial for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. The charges were dismissed. Associated Press | | | In contrast, the Afghanistan documents were, according to The Post, drawn from military interviews used to write a series of reports that were publicly released. The Post obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act — though it had to sue twice to get them. | | | The effect on public opinion remains to be seen. | | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. | | Thank you
Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford provided the break from the news. Andrea Kannapell, the briefings editor, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
