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Vote to End the Trump Era

The New York Times

Vote to End the Trump Era

The Editorial Board – Opinion – November 2, 2024

You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.

The New York Times editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

New York Times Editorial Board Rips Apart Donald Trump in Single Paragraph

Daily Beast

New York Times Editorial Board Rips Apart Donald Trump in Single Paragraph

Liam Archacki – November 2, 2024

The editorial board of The New York Times just eviscerated Donald Trump in a single paragraph.

The piece, published on Saturday, was only the Times’ latest attack on the former president during the run-up to the election, but the searing indictment was all the more brutal for its brevity.

Rhetorically matter-of-fact, the piece succinctly lays out many of the reasons Trump’s critics think his second term would be disastrous for the country—the implicit point being that nobody really needs a lengthy review of all Trump’s actions; everyone already knows what he’s about.

Here it is in full, with its original hyperlinks to other Times’ coverage of Trump preserved: “You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.”

Last week, the Times’ editorial board published a longer and nearly as scathing article urging voters not to elect Trump.

“Donald Trump has described at length the dangerous and disturbing actions he says he will take if he wins the presidency,” the piece reads. “We have two words for American voters: Believe him.”

Many major publications have endorsed Harris in the upcoming presidential election.

Another even lengthier editorial called Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, “the only patriotic choice for president,” citing Harris’ vow to unite the country and describing Trump as “morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest.”

Presidential endorsements from newspapers have been a point of debate in recent political discourse after The Washington Post’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, blocked the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. The decision prompted multiple resignations from the Post’s editorial board, and significant criticism from throughout the journalism world.

The billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, also controversially ordered its editorial board not to endorse a presidential candidate.

Joining the Times’ in endorsing Harris are other major publications such as The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, among others. The New York Post endorsed Trump.

What I Truly Expect if an Unconstrained Trump Retakes Power

The New York Times – Opinion

What I Truly Expect if an Unconstrained Trump Retakes Power

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist – November 1, 2024

Donald Trump, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, points his finger. — Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

Lately, I’ve seen conservatives taunting liberals online by asking why, if we really think America could be on the verge of fascism, our bags aren’t packed. “It’s tempting to begin trolling my anti-Trump friends by asking if they are liquefying assets, getting passports in order, etc.?” Scott McConnell, a founding editor of The American Conservative, posted on X. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty said something similarly snarky: “So fascism is here and you’re not doing what people did when fascism showed up, which is contemplating emigration in terror or joining armed resistance.”

These jabs seem meant to mock the dread many of us are living in. But despite their bad faith, they’ve lodged in my mind, especially during the late-night insomniac hours when I’m up panicking about what’s going to happen on Tuesday. They’ve goaded me to think through what I truly expect to happen if an unconstrained Donald Trump retakes power, and what it would mean to raise children in a country sick enough to give it to him.

Many people I know who have the privilege to do so are in fact making contingency plans; friends whose family histories entitle them to European passports have secured them. But while I’m having lots of half-idle conversations about emigration, I’m not living my life as if either tyranny or exile is imminent, even though I believe, in keeping with assessments by prominent generals who’ve worked closely with Trump, that he’s a fascist.

Partly, I just feel frozen with horror. This awful liminal period is like waiting for the results of a biopsy, and it’s hard to reason clearly about the future until there’s a prognosis. Beyond that, a lesson of modern autocracy is that ordinary life, or at least a diminished version of it, can go on even as democratic hopes are slowly strangled.

My single biggest fear about a Trump restoration is that he keeps his promise to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” As The New York Times has reported, that would mean sending ICE to carry out “workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized immigrants at once,” and warehousing them in a network of newly built prison camps.

If this happens, there will almost certainly be large protests. And when they break out, it is not far-fetched to think Trump would order the military to violently suppress them; the generals now warning about a second Trump term say he wanted to do just that in the past. This is what I envision when I think of MAGA fascism: people demonized as “vermin” being dragged off to camps, while dissent is violently crushed by the armed forces. I don’t know how anyone who has listened to Trump and those around him can dismiss this scenario as hysterical.

There will, I assume, be persecutions of Trump’s more high-profile enemies. We know that Trump, in his first term, harangued Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute Hillary Clinton, and the ex-president and his allies have been clear about their intention to end the independence of the Justice Department. Mitt Romney is taking seriously the possibility that Trump will use the government to go after him, telling The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, “I think he has shown by his prior actions that you can take him at his word.” Gen. Mark Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump and President Biden until he retired last year, told the journalist Bob Woodward that he fears Trump could have him recalled to duty and court-martialed for disloyalty. Anyone significant enough to threaten Trump could find themselves targeted.

And it won’t be only the powerful who need fear attacks by the MAGA state. Just look at those who’ve found themselves in the cross hairs of America First Legal, an organization headed by the former Trump aide Stephen Miller, which The New York Times called “a policy harbinger for a second Trump term.” It has sued charities that help women pay for abortions, Maryland schools that “expose children to radical gender ideology,” and “woke” corporations — including the N.F.L. — trying to increase diversity. In a second Trump term, Miller and his allies will be able to deploy the power of agencies including the Justice Department, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against their foes.

Often, of course, they won’t have to; we’re already seeing troubling signs that some plutocrats are obeying in advance. The Washington Post’s decision to quash its editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris shocked so many of the paper’s readers because it seemed, despite the Post owner Jeff Bezos’ insistence to the contrary, like an act of corrupt capitulation.

As The Post itself has reported, Bezos’ companies have billions of dollars in government contracts at stake, and during the last Trump administration, the president went out of his way to punish the billionaire for Post coverage he didn’t like. In 2019, The Post reported, Marc Short, then Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told leaders of Bezos’ space exploration company, “You have a Washington Post problem.”

The transition from democracy to autocracy is a process, not an on-off switch. By the end of Trump’s first term, when the president was pressuring state officials to change vote totals, staffing the highest levels of government with thugs and lackeys, and, eventually, siccing a vigilante mob on the Capitol, we’d already gone farther on the path to authoritarianism than I’d once thought possible. The place we left off at in January 2021 will, in all likelihood, be the starting point for a Trump administration in 2025.

Johnny McEntee, who started as a Trump bag carrier, had by the end of Trump’s presidency become so powerful that some referred to him as the “deputy president.” As The Atlantic reported, he turned the Presidential Personnel Office, an agency in charge of hiring and firing political appointees, “into an internal police force, obsessively monitoring administration officials for any sign of dissent, purging those who were deemed insufficiently devoted to Trump and frightening others into silence.”

Now a leader of Project 2025, McEntee will most likely have a major role in staffing a new Trump White House. He recently called — with the kidding-not-kidding sneer common to MAGA — for scrapping the 19th Amendment, the one giving women the right to vote.

Days out from the election, pointing out the potential nightmares ahead feels like screaming into a void. Trump’s deep contempt for liberal democracy is, as they say, baked in. When Milley called Trump “fascist to the core,” and when Gen. John Kelly, a former Trump chief of staff, said that he wanted to rule as a dictator, the political debate wasn’t about whether they were correct, but about whether their words would matter. (The consensus seemed to be no.) So those of us who recognize what Trump is lurch forward to Tuesday, a coin flip away from losing what we thought was our democratic birthright, trying and often failing to think through the aftermath of the unthinkable.

But even if the unthinkable happens, it won’t happen all at once. Hannah Arendt wrote, in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” about how the dislocations of World War I created a mass of stateless people who lived “outside the pale of the law.” Seeing these people deprived of human rights, those secure in their citizenship did not generally worry about their own. “It was precisely the seeming stability of the surrounding world that made each group forced out of its protective boundaries look like an unfortunate exception to an otherwise sane and normal rule,” wrote Arendt.

My kids keep asking anxiously what will happen if Trump wins. I tell them that their lives won’t change, that we’ll have to try to stand up for others who are more vulnerable, but that we ourselves will be fine. The last two words I only say in my head: “For now.”

Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

The Sun endorses Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to lead the nation

The Las Vegas Sun

The Sun endorses Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to lead the nation

The Las Vegas Sun – October 20, 2024

Harris-Walz Rally at Thomas & Mack

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz join hands during a rally at the Thomas & Mack Center Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024.

The upcoming presidential election presents a pivotal moment for the United States, offering a choice between preserving democracy or sliding into autocracy.

The Republican Party has nominated a womanizing narcissist and aspiring dictator as its candidate. He and his supporters believe in trampling on the rights of women, providing greater protections to guns than schoolchildren, silencing the history and existence of people of color and LGBTQ+ people, forcing working class families and seniors to choose between food and medicine and ceaselessly attacking the immigrants who dream of a better life.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has nominated a leader who will fight to preserve the rights and institutions that have made the United States the envy of the world while championing the promise of the American dream. She believes in fighting for the rights of women to choose what happens to their body, protecting children from criminals armed with weapons of war, preserving Social Security and health care programs that Americans have paid into their entire lives, giving a helping hand to those in need and creating pathways to citizenship for immigrants who contribute to our economy and our communities.

Kamala Harris represents a bridge between the measured approach of Joe Biden and the hunger for change that drove millions to support Donald Trump. While we understand the belief held by many Americans that they are being left behind, Trump is not the answer. His disregard for democratic institutions, tarnishing of the judiciary and inability to conceive of a government that serves anyone or anything beyond his personal interests are the hallmarks of an aspiring dictator. Harris, on the other hand, offers the stability and confidence of a veteran public servant and the bold vision, energy and adaptability that is needed in a rapidly evolving world.

As vice president, Harris has proven herself a capable ambassador who will strengthen America’s alliances and project a position of strength to our adversaries. For a nation still recovering from the damage to its international standing under Trump, Harris represents a return to stronger ties to our allies, determined resistance to our enemies, principled diplomacy and a strong defense of democratic values. She will not coddle our enemies and betray our friends as Trump did.

Harris’ work in the U.S. Senate reinforced her credentials as a champion for middle-class and working families. She supported legislation that aimed to lower health care costs, protect Social Security and Medicare, and expand affordable housing — issues that resonate with older Americans who have spent their lives contributing to society and now seek dignity in their twilight years. Harris’ push for measures to combat climate change, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to investing in clean energy, aims to address not only immediate health concerns but also an understanding of the long-term effects that current policies will have on future generations.

A former prosecutor and California attorney general, Harris has demonstrated a commitment to public safety while championing reforms that aimed to make the justice system more equitable. Her tenure focused not only on holding wrongdoers accountable but also on creating pathways to rehabilitation — policies that resonate with voters who believe in the Constitution’s promise of safety, security and accountability that are balanced against liberty, fairness and a commitment to second chances for those who earn them.

Yet, it is not just her experience that makes Harris the right choice — it is also her vision. As the child of immigrants and the first woman of color to serve as vice president, she has already made history and inspired a new generation to believe in the promise of American democracy. Those experiences have inspired her vision of a government more representative of the people it serves — no matter their social, cultural, geographic or economic background.

At the Democratic National Convention, she spoke of rebuilding the middle class and creating an “opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed.” Tellingly, she accepted the nomination for the presidency on behalf of “every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks,” “everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey,” and “people who work hard, chase their dreams and look out for one another.”

This language reflects Harris’ understanding that every American has a story to tell and that many of those stories share the common threads of overcoming hardship through hard work and the strength and support of family and community. She is genuinely interested in those stories, interested in who we are as Americans, what we want our future and our children’s future to look like and what she can do to help realize those dreams.

For American women, the ability to pursue a vision of their own choosing is growing increasingly difficult as dozens of states with GOP-controlled legislatures impose oppressive restrictions on women’s rights to control their own bodies and receive lifesaving medical care.

Beyond reproductive rights, women also continue to bear the brunt of lawmakers’ failure to support paid family leave, affordable child care, an extension of the child tax credit or even the Equal Pay Act. While in the Senate, Harris sponsored or cosponsored legislation championing each of these issues.

Older voters too have a particular stake in a Harris presidency. With Social Security and Medicare facing long-term funding challenges, the nation needs a leader who will protect and strengthen these programs. Harris has pledged to do so while opposing efforts to privatize or cut benefits. Furthermore, her emphasis on affordable prescription drug pricing is an issue of immediate relevance to all of us, but especially seniors who often struggle with high health care costs.

Her vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, shares Harris’ vision for leadership and governance that serves all Americans. It’s what inspired him to become a high school teacher, a football coach, an adviser to the school’s gay-straight alliance and a mentor to generations of young people trying to navigate decisions about the next steps in their soon-to-be adult lives. Walz also carried that vision into the governor’s office, where he cut taxes for the middle class, expanded access to prekindergarten and ensured that no child would go hungry at school, all while balancing the state budget.

Just as Harris stands in sharp contrast to Trump, Walz stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. From what we can tell, Vance’s only notable accomplishments since graduating from Yale Law School in 2013 have been helping billionaire venture capitalists make more money; founding a charity that didn’t help anyone except for Vance, who used it as a front for his political ambitions; and serving as an advisory board member for an organization that helped create the Project 2025 plan to destroy democracy and eliminate numerous civil rights.

Some readers might ask why we don’t note Vance’s time in the U.S. Senate among his accomplishments, but the reality is that he has accomplished nothing as a senator. Not even one of the 57 legislative bills Vance authored passed the Senate. Of course, Vance’s failure to do his job while collecting a taxpayer-funded salary is also likely related to his spending the past two years licking the boots of Trump and spreading bizarre and hateful theories about women in American life and inventing disgusting stories about Haitian immigrants. Vance’s bigotry does not appear to have a bottom, nor does his craven opportunism have limits.

The fact that Trump chose Vance as his running mate while Harris chose Walz underscores the differences in their judgment. While Harris seeks a commitment to public service and common good, Trump seeks nothing more than a “yes man” who can fulfill his pathetic need to be surrounded by people who stroke his ego and are willing to hate anyone Trump wants him to hate. Worse, Vance has made it clear that if faced with the same choice that Mike Pence faced when Congress was certifying the Electoral College vote, Vance would soil the Constitution for Trump.

It’s telling that Trump and Vance speak of America in the darkest terms and invent one imaginary crisis after another. They describe a chaotic, violent and evil America that is nothing like the lived experience of our citizens. They are lying. And like a long list of political villains before them, they trade in fear for power’s sake.

Harris and Walz on the other hand, don’t shirk from the challenge to improve policies and programs that need to be improved. But when they look at America and they describe their vision, it is filled with hope, inclusion and mending the wounds that have been inflicted by political vandals like Trump. The contrast could not be more stark: Harris and Walz love this country, its people and its freedom, Trump and Vance only want to own it. Harris looks at Americans and sees promise and opportunity that should be nurtured. This is what this nation needs in a leader.

One can’t ignore the striking differences in economic policies either. Trump’s crazed plan to institute massive tariffs to support his equally crazed plan for multitrillion-dollar tax cuts will doom America to a deep recession and burden future generations with trillions of dollars in additional deficit spending. His tariffs will cause massive inflation as the costs of the tariffs are passed on to American consumers and American companies. They will also result in retaliation from other nations targeting U.S. business and industry, crippling our economy.

We need to be clear-eyed on this: Trump’s tariff plans are not workable and not serious. They will deliver gigantic wealth to the richest Americans today, while saddling future generations with the bill for Trump’s debt. It’s a grift on a multitrillion dollar scale. Trump has bankrupted nearly all of his businesses; his current proposals will bankrupt this country for a generation or more. Virtually every responsible economist who has analyzed Trump’s plans warns of disaster if he’s allowed to get ahold of our economy again.

Harris, meanwhile, wants to ensure the middle class can thrive with detailed proposals to improve home affordability, small business creation and guarantees not to raise taxes on the middle class. While we believe her plans need further refinement in a variety of areas because the deficits are larger than we would like (but a fraction of the deficit spending Trump, the king of bankruptcies, has in mind) we have absolute faith in the idea that Harris will pull together a coalition of the brightest minds to bring about the strong economy that America deserves. When Harris speaks of an “opportunity economy,” she is serious.

In choosing Harris, Americans have an opportunity to elect a candidate who embodies both steadiness and a commitment to optimistic change. Her career is defined by a dedication to justice and equity, and her vision for the country prioritizes the needs of everyday Americans over the interests of the elite. She has shown she can rise to the moment and unite the country across generational and racial divides. Her leadership promises a government that works for all, restoring trust in public institutions while forging a path to a fairer, more sustainable future.

We can, in other words, choose to vote to make life better by putting people in office who believe in America and its people. Or we can vote to put people in office who want to divide further into camps, who have enemies lists, promise to put troops in the street and retaliate for dissent and repression.

That’s not a hard choice.

The country stands at a crossroads. A vote for Harris is a vote for renewal, stability and a government that genuinely serves the people. It is time for a leader who represents progress without abandoning the values that have long defined America. Kamala Harris is ready to take the helm and steer the nation forward. Americans deserve it. America demands it.

North Korean troops will become ‘cannon fodder’ if they join Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea says

Business Insider

North Korean troops will become ‘cannon fodder’ if they join Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea says

Kwan Wei Kevin Tan – October 31, 2024

Ukrainian releases video of Russian troops surrendering after a surprise attack Scroll back up to restore default view.

South Korea’s UN ambassador says North Korean soldiers will become “cannon fodder” in Ukraine.
North Korea is believed to have sent thousands of troops to aid in the Russian war effort.
South Korea’s prediction echoes what Ukraine and the US have said about Russia’s war of attrition.

North Korean troops headed to fight in Ukraine will “end up as mere cannon fodder,” Joonkook Hwang, the South Korean ambassador to the UN, said on Wednesday.

Hwang was speaking at a UN Security Council briefing in New York on the Russian invasion of Ukraine when he referenced North Korea’s involvement in the conflict.

North Korea is believed to have sent thousands of troops to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine, per officials from South Korea, Ukraine, and the US.

“As legitimate military targets, they will end up as mere cannon fodder, while the wages they are supposed to receive from Russia
will end up squarely in Kim Jong-un’s pocket,” Hwang said of the Russia-bound North Korean troops.

“Pyongyang’s treatment of its young soldiers, its own people, as expendable will be never forgiven,” he added.

South Korea’s mission to the UN declined to comment when approached by Business Insider.

‘Cannon fodder’

The news of North Korea’s troops joining Russian troops comes as Russia has struggled to find the manpower for its military. It has turned to tactics like offering significant signing bonuses — as high as 1.9 million rubles, or about $22,000 — and turning to its prison population to fuel its war effort.

Hwang’s prediction of the fate that awaits North Korean troops echoes comments Ukraine and the US have made over the course of the war.

In April 2022, Ukraine’s defense ministry said Russia was having trouble conscripting troops because people didn’t want “to become cannon fodder for the occupier’s army.”

In June, the Pentagon said North Korean soldiers will become “cannon fodder” if they are sent to aid the Russian war effort.

Russia has come to rely more on its allies as it sustains its war in Ukraine. Facing a shortage of arms, Russia has turned to countries like North Korea and Iran for weapons.

In June, Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a wartime pact with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The agreement stands to open up another source of war supplies and ammunition to Russia.

“With boots on the ground alongside the supply of munitions, the DPRK has become the most visible, ardent, and committed supporter of Russia’s aggression in Europe,” Hwang said on Wednesday.

The war in Ukraine has now passed the two-and-a-half-year mark. As Russia continues to wage war, it faces a slew of problems at home, including inflation, currency issues, and a demographic crisis.

Wartime spending is propping up Russia’s economy, with some economists saying the war is the only thing keeping the country from entering an immediate recession.

November 1, 1:00 a.m. — This story has been updated with a response from South Korea’s mission to the UN.

Small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, officials say

CNN

Small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, officials say

Natasha Bertrand, CNN – October 30, 2024

TOPSHOT – This aerial photograph taken on February 1, 2024, shows residential buildings destroyed by shelling in Izyum, Kharkiv region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP) (Photo by ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images)More

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

A small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, according to two western intelligence officials, and officials expect that number to grow as the North Koreans complete training in eastern Russia and move toward the front lines of the war.

The North Korean troops’ presence inside Ukraine goes a step beyond what NATO and the Pentagon confirmed on Monday, which is that roughly 10,000 North Korean troops are training in eastern Russia with some en route to Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian troops have held territory inside Kursk since August.

“It seems that a good many of them are already in action,” one of the officials said on Tuesday, referring to the North Koreans. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that Ukrainian intelligence assessed that the troops would start to enter combat zones on Sunday.

A US official said the US can not yet corroborate reports that North Koreans troops are already inside Ukraine. The US has been playing catchup, however, when it comes to North Korea’s deployments — US officials did not confirm publicly that the troops were in Russia until weeks after South Korea first alleged it.

US and South Korean diplomatic and military officials are meeting in Washington, DC this week to discuss the deployment and North Korea’s “expanding relationship with Russia” more broadly, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

Separately, top Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak is in the US capital Tuesday for meetings with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yermak said he and Sullivan discussed the “North Korean soldiers whom Russia is preparing for war.”

South Korean officials also traveled to NATO headquarters on Monday and briefed allies on the North Korean deployments. NATO allies have been hoping that the intelligence spurs South Korea to begin providing military aid to the Ukrainians, which would be at odds with the South Koreans’ longstanding policy of not arming countries at war. But South Korea’s president has signaled an openness to changing that policy.

“While we have maintained our principle of not directly supplying lethal weapons, we can also review our stance more flexibly, depending on the level of North Korean military activities,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said last week.

It is still unclear how helpful the North Koreans will be to the Russians on the battlefield. Many of the troops deployed are special forces, the sources said, and intelligence assessments suggest that the North Korean government believes their troops have more combat power than regular Russian troops because they are better trained and specialized, officials said.

But North Korea’s military has not fought in an actual war for over 70 years, and intelligence officials believe the North Korean government sent them in large part so they could gain combat experience.

Officials also expect that at least some of the troops will desert their units once they get to the battlefield, and that the language barrier with the Russians will be a significant impediment to conducting seamless operations. The Russians have been teaching North Korean soldiers basic Russian commands in training, like “fire” and “in position,” South Korean lawmakers told reporters on Tuesday.

Some Russian troops are already raising concerns about how the North Korean soldiers will be commanded and provided with ammunition and military kit and have wondered “what the f**k to do with them,” according to audio intercepted by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence on October 23 from encrypted Russian transmission channels.

The intercepts also reveal plans to have one interpreter and three senior officers for every 30 North Korean men, CNN has reported.

‘The number may rise’

Many of the public assessments that have emerged on North Korea’s troop movements have come to light via South Korean lawmakers speaking to the media after briefings with the country’s intelligence services.

On Wednesday, two lawmakers – Lee Seong-kweun and Park Sun-won – spoke to reporters after a closed door briefing from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Their assessment was that North Korea had sent members of its elite XI Army Corps to Russia, which specialize in urban terrain and infiltration. But the DIA questioned such a unit’s effectiveness in the more open terrain of the Kursk region.

The DIA added that there was not exact information on whether North Korean troops have been sent to fighting positions, but there “is a possibility that an advance team may have been sent to the frontline,” the lawmakers said.

South Korean intelligence has put the number of North Korean troops inside Russia right now at about 13,000, higher than the US and the UK. The number could go up further — the US has already revised its assessment upward from last week, when the White House assessed that only about 3,000 North Korean troops were in Russia.

“The number may rise,” a third western official said. “Allies and partners across the globe are watching and consulting and will proactively share intelligence on the matter as it affects the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions and beyond.”

In addition to military personnel, North Korea has provided Moscow with 11,000 containers of ammunition consisting of around 2 million artillery rounds since last year, a senior NATO official told CNN earlier this month.

The US has also been urging China, which maintains a relationship with Pyongyang, to intervene and pressure the North Koreans to pull back, officials said.

Sullivan “directed the US government to engage the PRC and to organize an effort to get other countries to reach out to the PRC as well over our concerns about DPRK sending troops into Russia and the implications of that,” a US official told CNN, referring to China.

“We have communicated with the PRC about this matter to make clear that we are concerned about it, and that they ought to be concerned about this destabilizing action by two of its neighbors, Russia and North Korea,” Miller said.

Western officials are not optimistic, however, that China will intervene with North Korea’s plans, the sources said. China has continued to be a “critical enabler” of Russia’s war effort, according to the NATO official, and is still fueling Russia’s defense industry with substantial amounts of dual-use goods like microelectronics and machine tools that can be used to build weapons.

Harris’ unifying DC speech made Trump look every bit as small and divisive as he is

USA Today – Opinion

Harris’ unifying DC speech made Trump look every bit as small and divisive as he is

Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – October 30, 2024

Harris brings in thousands to DC's Ellipse, site of Trump's 2021 'Stop the Steal' rally

Let’s see if we can detect the subtle difference in our two presidential candidate’s closing messages.

Vice President Kamala Harris, before tens of thousands at the Ellipse near the White House, said Tuesday night: “The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us. And fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.”

Convicted felon Donald Trump, before a crowd of maybe 8,500 in Pennsylvania, said Tuesday night: “It’s like we’re a giant garbage can.”

Hmm. Hard to tease out the nuanced distinction between Harris’ graceful rhetoric about the greatness of our country and Trump’s “We suck.” But the difference is there, I promise.

Kamala Harris offers unity and inspiration as Donald Trump divides and demeans

Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigns at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024, to give her closing arguments before Election Day.

The former president was coming off a weekend rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City that featured vile racism, profanity and enough hate speech to, I would hope, anger God. The “giant garbage can” line has become a part of his schtick, as he paints America as a crime-ridden nation overrun by immigrant gang members, rapists and murderers.

It’s all hogwash, of course, but it’s all he’s got. That and the lies he emits like a flatulent prune-farm dog.

Opinion: Trump’s racist Madison Square Garden rally was everything America shouldn’t be

Harris spoke from the same place where Trump, on Jan. 6, 2021, fomented an attack on the U.S. Capitol. The location was wholly intentional, as was her infinitely more mature and unifying message.

“America, for too long we have been consumed with too much division, chaos, and mutual distrust,” she said. “And it can be easy then to forget a simple truth: It doesn’t have to be this way. … It is time to stop pointing fingers. We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff wave to supporters after her presidential campaign speech at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024.

Chaos and mutual distrust? Conflict, fear and division?

What could she be talking about?

Trump says fellow Americans represent ‘a great evilness’

Earlier in the day, Trump said of Democrats: “This is a sick group of people, I’m telling you. There’s a great evilness. You know, we want to come together as a country, but there’s a lot of evil there.”

At his night rally in Allentown, he continued going after Democrats: “Who the hell can win an election with open borders, transgender everybody, men playing in women’s sports? … Allow millions of people through an open border totally unvetted, totally unchecked, they come from parts unknown, they come from countries you’ve never even heard of, and then you find out that they came from jails and mental institutions, no, no, they cheat like hell and it’s a damn disgrace.”

Former President Donald Trump campaigns for reelection on Oct. 29, 2024, in Allentown, Pa.

Oh, I see, that’s the fear and chaos and divsion Harris referenced.

After hearing Trump’s rambling, I wish she had said, “We have to stop pointing fingers, and also stop using run-on sentences filled with weird fabricated nonsense.”

‘As Americans, we rise and fall together’

As recently as Sunday, Trump labeled those who oppose him “the enemy from within.”

Harris, by contrast, said this from the Ellipse: “The fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within. They are family, neighbors, classmates, co-workers. They are fellow Americans, and as Americans, we rise and fall together.”

Opinion: If you think Democrats fear Trump, you should hear Republicans who worked for him

She also said: “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”

Harris’ humility vs. Trump’s hubris

Harris showed humility – something Trump is allergic to – during her speech: “Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’m not perfect. I make mistakes.”

Trump, earlier in the day Tuesday, described people who may or not exist allegedly telling him how wonderful he is: “They said he’s the greatest president we’ve ever had. And then one of them said, ‘Sir, you’re the greatest president of my lifetime.’ … I said, ‘Does that include Abe Lincoln?’ Yes, sir. ‘Does that include George Washington?’ Yes, sir. I said, ‘That’s good.’ ”

The differences are stark as day and night

Harris said: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep people divided and afraid of each other. That is who he is.”

Fact check: True.

She continued, “But America, I am here to say: That’s not who we are.”

That part will be determined next week. It’s grace vs. the garbage can.

God willing, grace prevails.

10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, inching closer to fight in Ukraine: Pentagon

The Hill

10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, inching closer to fight in Ukraine: Pentagon

Ellen Mitchell – October 28, 2024

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North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to train in Russia with the expectation they’ll be sent to fight in Ukraine within “the next several weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday.

“We believe that the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)] has sent around 10,000 soldiers in total to train in eastern Russia that will probably augment Russian forces near Ukraine over the next several weeks,” deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Singh said a portion of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, and U.S. officials believe they are heading to the Kursk border region in Russia, where Ukrainian troops this summer launched an incursion that Kremlin forces have struggled to push back.

“It is likely that they are moving in that direction towards Kursk. But I don’t have more details just yet,” Singh said of the North Koreans.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte earlier Monday confirmed some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region — calling it a “dangerous expansion” of the conflict — but he did not say how many troops were there.

Speaking after South Korean intelligence and military officials visited NATO headquarters in Brussels, Rutte said Pyongyang’s shipment of ammunition and ballistic missiles to Russia is “fueling a major conflict in the heart of Europe.” He also called the deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea “a threat to both the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.”

The new U.S. estimate of 10,000 troops comes after Washington last week confirmed at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers were undergoing military training at multiple sites in Russia, a disclosure that followed similar intelligence reports from Kyiv and Seoul.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said Moscow plans to deploy North Koreans on the battlefield within days.

The deployment means North Korean troops soon could be on the battlefield against Ukrainian forces, adding to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. The development is also sure to exacerbate tensions with the West, in the Korean Peninsula and the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Singh said should North Korean troops show up on the front lines, there will be no limitations on the use of U.S.-provided weapons on those forces.

“If we see DPRK troops moving in and towards the front lines, they are co-belligerents in the war,” Singh said. “This is a calculation that North Korea has to make.”

The topic is all but certain to come up Wednesday when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is set to meet with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon. That is followed by Thursday talks at the State Department between Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their South Korean equivalents.

“I think you can expect this to be a topic of discussion with the secretary and his counterparts,” Singh said. “This has broad interagency implications, not just for the United States, but for, as I mentioned, Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”

Russian leaders, meanwhile, have not directly confirmed or denied the presence of the North Koreans within their borders, but have hinted at it by pointing to Moscow and Pyongyang’s new security treaty, signed in June.

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday pushed back at Western condemnations over the two countries’ cooperation, calling it an “attempt to retroactively justify” military support to Ukraine.

The Atlantic Endorsement of Kamala Harris

October 29, 2024

Here is The Atlantic’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, first published on October 10, 2024. For the third time in eight years, Americans have to decide whether they want Donald Trump to be their president. No voter could be ignorant by now of who he is. Opinions about Trump aren’t just hardened—they’re dried out and exhausted. The man’s character has been in our faces for so long, blatant and unchanging, that it kills the possibility of new thoughts, which explains the strange mix of boredom and dread in our politics. Whenever Trump senses any waning of public attention, he’ll call his opponent a disgusting name, or dishonor the memory of fallen soldiers, or threaten to overturn the election if he loses, or vow to rule like a dictator if he wins. He knows that nothing he says is likely to change anyone’s views.

Almost half the electorate supported Trump in 2016, and supported him again in 2020. This same split seems likely on November 5. Trump’s support is fixed and impervious to argument. This election, like the last two, will be decided by an absurdly small percentage of voters in a handful of states.

Because one of the most personally malignant and politically dangerous candidates in American history was on the ballot, The Atlantic endorsed Trump’s previous Democratic opponents—only the third and fourth endorsements since the magazine’s founding, in 1857. We endorsed Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860 (though not, for reasons lost to history, in 1864).

One hundred and four years later, we endorsed Lyndon B. Johnson for president. In 2016, we endorsed Hillary Clinton for more or less the same reason Johnson won this magazine’s endorsement in 1964. Clinton was a credible candidate who would have made a competent president, but we endorsed her because she was running against a manifestly unstable and incompetent Republican nominee. The editors of this magazine in 1964 feared Barry Goldwater less for his positions than for his zealotry and seeming lack of self-restraint.

Of all Trump’s insults, cruelties, abuses of power, corrupt dealings, and crimes, the event that proved the essential rightness of the endorsements of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden took place on January 6, 2021, when Trump became the first American president to try to overturn an election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

This year, Trump is even more vicious and erratic than in the past, and the ideas of his closest advisers are more extreme. Trump has made clear that he would use a second term to consolidate unprecedented power in his own hands, punishing adversaries and pursuing a far-right agenda that most Americans don’t want. “We believe that this election is a turning-point in our history,” the magazine prophesied correctly when it endorsed Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

This year’s election is another. About the candidate we are endorsing: The Atlantic is a heterodox place, staffed by freethinkers, and for some of us, Kamala Harris’s policy views are too centrist, while for others they’re too liberal. The process that led to her nomination was flawed, and she’s been cagey in keeping the public and press from getting to know her as well as they should.

But we know a few things for sure. Having devoted her life to public service, Harris respects the law and the Constitution. She believes in the freedom, equality, and dignity of all Americans. She’s untainted by corruption, let alone a felony record or a history of sexual assault. She doesn’t embarrass her compatriots with her language and behavior, or pit them against one another. She doesn’t curry favor with dictators. She won’t abuse the power of the highest office in order to keep it. She believes in democracy. These, and not any specific policy positions, are the reasons The Atlantic is endorsing her.

This endorsement will not be controversial to Trump’s antagonists. Nor will it matter to his supporters. But to the voters who don’t much care for either candidate, and who will decide the country’s fate, it is not enough to list Harris’s strengths or write a bill of obvious particulars against Trump. The main reason for those ambivalent Americans to vote for Harris has little to do with policy or partisanship. It’s this: Electing her and defeating him is the only way to release us from the political nightmare in which we’re trapped and bring us to the next phase of the American experiment.

Trump isn’t solely responsible for this age of poisonous rhetoric, hateful name-calling, conspiracies and lies, divided families and communities, cowardly leaders and deluded followers—but as long as Trump still sits atop the Republican Party, it will not end. His power depends on lowering the country into a feverish state of fear and rage where Americans turn on one another. For the millions of alienated and politically homeless voters who despise what the country has become and believe it can do better, sending Trump into retirement is the necessary first step.

If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies, but who is also offended by the rottenness of the Republican Party, only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health—then you’ll be free to oppose President Harris wholeheartedly. Like you, we wish for the return of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, a party animated by actual ideas. We believe that American politics are healthiest when vibrant conservative and liberal parties fight it out on matters of policy.

If you’re a progressive who thinks the Democratic Party is a tool of corporate America, talk to someone who still can’t forgive themselves for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000—then ask yourself which candidate, Harris or Trump, would give you any leverage to push for policies you care about.

And if you’re one of the many Americans who can’t stand politics and just want to opt out, remember that under democracy, inaction is also an action; that no one ever has clean hands; and that, as our 1860 editorial said, “nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers.” In other words, voting is a right that makes you responsible.

Trump is the sphinx who stands in the way of America entering a more hopeful future. In Greek mythology, the sphinx killed every traveler who failed to answer her riddle, until Oedipus finally solved it, causing the monster’s demise. The answer to Trump lies in every American’s hands. Then he needs only to go away.

Column: Listen to Trump’s former aides: He’d be far more dangerous in a second term

Los Angeles Times

Column: Listen to Trump’s former aides: He’d be far more dangerous in a second term

Doyle McManus – October 28, 2024

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures at a campaign rally at Mullett Arena, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in Tempe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) — Donald Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted,” his former chief of staff said. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways

Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, broke a long silence and denounced his former boss as a man who fits “the general definition of fascist.”

The conservative, normally taciturn Kelly was moved to speak out after Trump condemned former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Adam B. Schiff and other Democrats as “the enemy from within” and said he would deploy troops onto the nation’s streets to suppress opposition.

“Using the military on, to go after, American citizens is … a very, very bad thing,” Kelly told the New York Times. “Even to say it for political purposes to get elected, I think it’s a very, very bad thing.”

Kelly wasn’t the only former Trump aide to warn that the GOP candidate shouldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. Dozens of people who worked in senior positions in the Trump administration have chimed in. Gen. Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him “fascist to the core … the most dangerous person to the country.” Former national security advisor John Bolton said he was “unfit to be president.”

Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted,” Kelly said.

Did those warnings from authoritative sources — eminent figures Trump once appointed to high-ranking jobs — have any effect on his voters as election day approaches?

Not as far as anyone can tell.

Readers of this column won’t be surprised to learn that I agree wholeheartedly with Kelly, Milley, Bolton and their colleagues: Trump is a danger to our democracy.

He neither understands nor respects the Constitution. He yearns openly to rule the way China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin do, as an autocrat answerable to no one. “He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” he said admiringly of Xi.

Trump revels in divisiveness and cruelty. And his economic “program,” which boils down to massive tariffs on imports plus unlimited drilling for oil and gas, would be disastrous.

Why do millions of voters — many of them, as Trump might put it, very fine people — blow past the warnings of figures like Kelly, Milley and Bolton?

Over the last year, I’ve listened to dozens of Trump voters describe their reasons for sticking with him.

Some, his hardcore base, agree with everything the former president says right down to the coarsest insults.

Others admit to qualms about Trump’s style but say they support him because they hope he can bring back the low-inflation prosperity of his first two years in office.

But a third group, which includes many independents as well as moderate Republicans, is the most perplexing. Not only do they dislike Trump’s style, they worry about some of his positions: his desire to unravel Obamacare, his threats to deploy the military against domestic opponents, his indiscriminate tariffs, his plan to fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists.

But many say they don’t think Trump would — or could — actually make those things happen.

In a focus group last week organized for NBC News by the public opinion consulting firm Engagious, for example, an Atlanta home inspector named Kevin said he worried that Trump’s tariffs would make consumer prices go up.

“It’s a bad idea,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere. I think it’ll cost too much money. It’ll be too difficult politically.” He’ll probably vote for Trump anyway, he said.

Pollsters have called this Trump’s “believability gap.” Voters hear what he says, but they discount it — they think that “he’s just talking” or that surely somebody will stop his more outlandish ideas.

But there are two problems with those Trump voters’ self-comforting rationalizations.

The first is that Trump already has a track record of trying to do most of those things. He tried to repeal Obamacare, but a handful of moderate Republican senators got in his way. He issued an executive order that would have enabled him to replace civil servants with political appointees, but time ran out on his term before he could use it.

And when demonstrators assembled across the street from the White House, he urged military officials to deploy troops and shoot protesters in the legs — but Gen. Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper stopped him.

“When he starts talking about using the military against people … I think we should take that very seriously,” Olivia Troye, who served as an aide to Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, told my colleague Noah Bierman recently. “He actually talked about shooting Americans. I was there … I witnessed that.”

The second problem with the “believability gap” is that if Trump gets back to the White House, he will be more likely to get his way.

He has frequently complained that he made a mistake in his first term by appointing aides like Kelly, Milley and Bolton, who believed it was their duty to restrain the president’s ill-considered impulses. If he gets a second term, he’ll surround himself with more people who will do his bidding without raising pesky questions.

He’ll run into less opposition from other institutions too.

Republicans in Congress, who occasionally restrained Trump when he was president, have purged most of the moderates from their ranks. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is retiring. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an occasional Trump critic, will no longer be his party’s leader in the Senate.

Federal courts may be more hospitable, too, thanks to judges Trump appointed his first time around.

So moderate Republicans and independents who are tempted to vote for Trump because they hope he will lower taxes or improve the economy should think long and hard about the risks of that bargain.

When Trump says he’ll order prosecutors to go after Joe Biden and “the Pelosis,” he means it. When Trump says he’ll punish businesses like Amazon if he doesn’t like their owners’ views, he means it. When Trump says he believes the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president,” he means it.

And this time, he would know better how to turn his wishes into reality. A second Trump term wouldn’t be a benign rerun of the first version. As his former aides are trying their best to warn us, it would be far worse.