—Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been extradited to the United States from a Mexican prison, one day before Donald Trump assumes the presidency. More here
—Police in Washington, D.C. deployed tear gas as hundreds of protesters gathered outside a pro-Trump gala Thursday night. More here
—An avalanche, reportedly triggered by an earthquake, struck a hotel in central Italy; rescue workers say at least 30 people are missing. More here; live blog here
—We’re tracking the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).
D.C. Police Launch Tear Gas at Anti-Trump Protesters
John Minchillo / AP
Police in Washington, D.C. deployed tear gas as hundreds of protesters gathered outside a pro-Trump gala Thursday night. Local media reports that some attendees of the “DeploraBall” were hit by objects and clashed with anti-Trump protesters as they left the National Press Club. Some protesters, blocking the street, called gala attendees “racists” and “Nazis.” Other protesters set fires in trash cans and in the middle of the street. There was also a 15-foot-tall white elephant with a banner labeled “racism” on its side. Police arrested several people.
Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been extradited to the United States from a Mexican prison, one day before Donald Trump assumes the presidency. Guzman, a notorious cartel kingpin who was arrested by Mexican police in a raid last January, six months after escaping prison, is facing federal indictments in seven courts across the U.S. for distributing narcotics, murder, and organized crime. He landed in New York since the indictment for the Eastern District of New York requires Guzman enter the U.S. through the district to preserve the indictment. He was in a prison in Juarez, near the Texas border. Guzman, who had a net worth of $1 billion, escaped prison in Mexico twice before. In the last prison escape, he vanished through a mile-long tunnel, from a shower to a nearby construction site. The incident was a massive embarrassment for the Mexican government. A top U.S. official told Reuters that the Mexican government did not give the timing of the extradition “a whole lot of thought.”
Brazilian Judge Investigating Political Scandal Dies in Plane Crash
Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
Teori Zavascki, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice who presided over Operation Carwash, a massive scandal that has embroiled politicians from across the political spectrum, has died in a plane crash, his son said on Facebook. The crash occurred outside Paraty, in Rio state, O Globo, the Brazilian newspaper, reported. Bloomberg adds: “Zavascki is the judge overseeing the trials of defendants in the Operation Carwash investigation at the Supreme Court.” The scandal involves corruption at Petrobras, the state-run oil firm. The investigation into the case is led by Sergio Moro, another judge.
Gambia's New President Sworn In as Old President Refuses to Leave
Crowds gather outside the Gambian embassy ahead of President-elect Adama Barrow’s inauguration in Dakar, Senegal on January 19, 2017. (Reuters)
Senegalese troops crossed the border into Gambia Thursday after the UN Security Council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution recognizing Adama Barrow as the West African country’s rightful president. The move comes one day after the troops threatened to “take action” if longtime Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh did not step down, and hours after the swearing in of Barrow as Gambia’s president from the Gambian embassy in neighboring Dakar. Jammeh, who originally conceded to Barrow in the December election only to later reverse his decision, filed an injunction barring Barrow from being sworn in and on Wednesday declared a state of national emergency. Senegal and other West African leaders have threatened to remove Jammeh by force, though the UN reaffirmed in its adoption of the resolution that the transition of power should be pursued “by political means first.”
This is a victory of the Gambian nation. Our national flag will fly high among those of the most democratic nations of the world. #Gambiapic.twitter.com/QRGZg1gzbs
Oakland Raiders File Paperwork to Move to Las Vegas
(Reuters)
The Oakland Raiders have filed paperwork to move the NFL team to Las Vegas, Steve Sisolak, the Clark County, Nevada, Commission Chair said on Twitter Thursday. The move must now be approved the owners of the NFL’s 32 teams. Mark Davis, the Raiders majority owner, needs 24 votes. The Raiders were established in 1960 and have spent much of the time since then in Oakland—though there were 12 years (1982-94) the team played in Los Angeles. Thursday’s announcement comes just days after the Chargers announced they’d leave their longtime home, San Diego, for L.A.
It is official! The @RAIDERS have filed their paperwork to relocate to #LasVegas.
Firefighters Among Dead as Landmark Tehran Building Catches Fire, Collapses
Firefighters grieve at the site of the collapsed high rise in Tehran, Iran, on January 19. (Tasnim News Agency / Reuters)
The 17-story Plasco building, a Tehran landmark, caught fire and collapsed Thursday, killing many firefighters, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. IRNA, which described the building as “a center for making apparel,” reported the structure was engulfed in a blaze that resulted in the collapse of a wall on its northern side—and the structure’s eventual collapse. Firefighters had been battling the blaze for hours when it collapsed in a matter of seconds—a moment captured on live television. Pir-Hossein Kolivand, the head of the national emergency medical services, said it was unclear how many firemen were killed in the collapse, only that there were many fatalities. About 200 people have been taken to local hospitals, the news agency added.
URGENT: Footage shows the moment of major commercial building collapses in Iran's capital Tehran after hours of severe blaze pic.twitter.com/89GPmRa3GU
Many Are Feared Dead as Avalanche Hits Italian Hotel
(Reuters)
An avalanche triggered Thursday by several earthquakes in central Italy swept away a hotel in the Abruzzo region, leaving “many dead,” ANSA, the Italian news agency, reports. The avalanche struck the Hotel Rigopiano in the region’s Gran Sasso National Park. Rescuers pulled out one victim from the snow; about 30 others are missing. Two people have been rescued, ANSA added. Follow our live blog here
Trump Reportedly Names Sonny Perdue as Choice For USDA
President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly picked Sonny Perdue, the former Georgia governor, as agriculture secretary. Perdue, who served as governor from 2003 to 2011, was the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. The post, which needs Senate confirmation, would put Perdue in charge of a department that has a budget of $150 billion and oversees everything from food safety to food stamps. The nomination is Trump’s last before his inauguration Friday as the 45th president of the United States. His Cabinet would be the first that hasn’t included a Hispanic since President Reagan.
It is best not to diagnose the president from afar, which is why the federal government needs a system to evaluate him up close.
President Donald Trump’s decision to brag in a tweet about the size of his “nuclear button” compared with North Korea’s was widely condemned as bellicose and reckless. The comments are also part of a larger pattern of odd and often alarming behavior for a person in the nation’s highest office.
Trump’s grandiosity and impulsivity has made him a constant subject of speculation among those concerned with his mental health. But after more than a year of talking to doctors and researchers about whether and how the cognitive sciences could offer a lens to explain Trump’s behavior, I’ve come to believe there should be a role for professional evaluation beyond speculating from afar.
I’m not alone. Viewers of Trump’s recent speeches have begun noticing minor abnormalities in his movements. In November, he used his free hand to steady a small Fiji bottle as he brought it to his mouth. Onlookers described the movement as “awkward” and made jokes about hand size. Some called out Trump for doing the exact thing he had mocked Senator Marco Rubio for during the presidential primary—conspicuously drinking water during a speech.
Each year, local governments spend nearly $100 billion to move headquarters and factories between states. It’s a wasteful exercise that requires a national solution.
The Amazon HQ2 saga had all the hallmarks of the gaudiest reality TV. It was an absurd spectacle, concluding with a plot twist, which revealed a deep and dark truth about the modern world.
Fourteen months ago, Amazon announced a national beauty contest, in which North American cities could apply to win the honor of landing the retailer’s second headquarters. The prize: 50,000 employees and the glory of housing an international tech giant. The cost? Just several billion dollars in tax incentives and a potential face-lift to the host city. Then last week, in a classic late-episode shock, several news outlets reported that Amazon would split its second headquarters between Crystal City, a suburban neighborhood near Washington, D.C., and Long Island City, in Queens, New York.
The White House’s explanation of President Trump’s absence from a ceremony in France raises more questions than it answers.
Why, exactly, did Donald Trump not join Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, and Justin Trudeau at Saturday’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the original Armistice Day? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone outside the White House does at this point.
What I do know is that one hypothesis that has shown up in many stories about his no-show—that Marine One, the presidential helicopter, “can’t fly” in the rain—doesn’t make sense.
As you’re looking for explanations, you can dismiss this one. Helicopters can fly just fine in the rain, and in conditions way worse than prevailed in Paris on November 10.
First, about helicopters and weather. (What follows is based on my having held an instrument rating as an airplane pilot for the past 20 years, and having worked in the Carter-era White House and occasionally having been aboard the Marine One of that era.)
The Dominican Republic deported an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people of Haitian descent over three years. Those left behind live in a state of institutionalized terror.
This is a story about what happens when you limit birthright citizenship and stir up hate against a certain class of immigrants. It takes place in the Dominican Republic. Like most countries in the Americas, for a century and a half the Caribbean nation’s constitution guaranteed birthright citizenship for anyone born on its soil, with a couple of exceptions: the children of diplomats and short-term travelers. And like most other peoples in the Americas, Dominicans have had a more complicated relationship with immigration than the framers of that constitution might have anticipated.
The Dominican Republic has long been dependent on a steady stream of cheap immigrant labor that cuts its sugar cane, builds its buildings, and staffs the beach resorts that draw in billions of foreign dollars a year. Almost all of that labor comes from the only country close enough, and poor enough, to have people who want to immigrate in large numbers to the Dominican Republic: its Hispaniolan twin, Haiti. Some working-class Dominicans without clear Haitian roots resent poorer neighbors willing to accept lower wages and tough conditions. Many wealthy Dominicans who profit wildly off the cheap labor supply are eager to have strict immigration laws in place, too—not because they want less immigration, but because they want a freer hand. Immigrants in the country illegally have no protection from workplace regulations and can be rounded up, deported, and replaced whenever convenient—including right before payday. (Sound familiar?)
For the third time in a century, leftists are driving the Democratic Party’s agenda. Will they succeed in making America more equitable, or overplay their hand?
If you gauge the climate inside the Democratic Party merely by which candidates won its 2018 primaries, you might think reports of its leftward lurch are exaggerated. Despite the hoopla about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s and Ayanna Pressley’s upset victories in congressional races in New York and Massachusetts, not a single incumbent Democratic governor or senator lost a primary to a left-leaning challenger.
But who wins an election is often less important than who sets the agenda. And ideologically, the Democratic Party has veered so sharply that “establishment” or “centrist” Democrats now frequently support larger expansions of government, and more vehemently scorn Big Business and Big Finance, than most liberal Democrats did a few years ago. In 2016, Hillary Clinton said a single-payer health-care system “will never, ever come to pass.” In 2017, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, by some measures the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, said the idea “should be explored.” During the 2013–14 election cycle, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey received more money from Wall Street than any other member of Congress. This February, he announced that he would no longer accept donations from corporate political-action committees.
Stan Lee offered a powerful definition of the American idea in The Atlantic’s 150th anniversary issue in November 2007.
Editor’s Note: In the comic below, Stan Lee offers a powerful definition of the American idea, illustrated by Anthony Winn. This piece was first published in The Atlantic’s 150th anniversary issue in November 2007.
The Republican Party just suffered big losses in the House of Representatives, but the president is getting ready to ramp up his campaign—and he’s got a good shot at reelection.
Updated on November 12 at 1:12 p.m.
It’s November 4, 2020. Across the United States—and across the globe—liberals and DonaldTrump–opposing conservatives alike drag themselves from fitful sleep, red-eyed and exhausted, filled with dread, incomprehension, and déjà vu. How did he do it again?
The night before, Trump hadwon reelection as president—despite a chaotic and frustrating first term, multiple investigations, and a historically low approval rating. Of course, Trump had won in 2016 despite many of the same weaknesses, but that win was thought to be a fluke, a product of a weak Democratic candidate, Russian interference, and Trump’s novelty. His critics never imagined lightning could strike a second time.
This year will mark the passing of a full century since the end of World War I. Much of the battle-ravaged landscape along the Western Front has been reclaimed by nature, erasing the scars of the war.
This year will mark the passing of a full century since the end of World War I—a hundred years since the “War to End All Wars.” In that time, much of the battle-ravaged landscape along the Western Front has been reclaimed by nature or returned to farmland, and the scars of the war are disappearing. Some zones remain toxic a century later, and others are still littered with unexploded ordnance, closed off to the public. But across France and Belgium, significant battlefields and ruins were preserved as monuments, and farm fields that became battlegrounds ended up as vast cemeteries. In these places, the visible physical damage to the landscape remains as evidence of the phenomenal violence and destruction that took so many lives so long ago.
The problem of how to reconcile irreconcilable values is what led to the Civil War. It hasn’t gone away.
With the United States starkly divided and with many Americans asking what kind of nation we are, it seems a good moment to look back to November 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, when Abraham Lincoln tried to answer the same question. Consecrating a Civil War battlefield where thousands of young men and boys had died four months before, he spoke of a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” For most Americans since, and for much of the world, those words have attained the status of scripture. We draw our sense of collective identity from them. They were, however, not strictly true, and Lincoln knew it.
After the Battle of Antietam, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a gripping story about his search for his wounded son. But one of the most memorable lines had nothing to do with the Civil War.
In September 1862, the future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was one of 22,717 men who fell during the Battle of Antietam. His father, Oliver Sr., set out on an epic journey to find him and, a couple of months later, wrote about it for The Atlantic.
“My Hunt After the Captain” is an incredible firsthand account of what Maryland looked and felt like just after the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Holmes describes what he saw on the streets of Frederick: “Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or pale with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary limbs along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of strength.” He notes what the ground looked like after the battle, with “dark red patches where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life out on the sod.”
