memeorandum: New York Times overhauls its presidential endorsement process (Michael Calderone/Politico)

1:25 PM ET, December 2, 2019

Top Items:

Simon Shuster / TIME:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Speaks Out on Trump, Putin and a Divided Europe — 'I don't trust anyone at all'

Discussion: ABC News, Associated Press, Axios, National Review, NBC News, Politico, Fox News, Political Wire, Daily Kos, Breitbart, Law & Crime, The Independent, The American Independent, IJR, Mediaite, KyivPost, Raw Story, Contemptor and War Room

Washington Post:
Ukraine's Zelensky is making headway against corruption. But the fight risks angering Trump.

Discussion: Vanity Fair and Talking Points Memo

Molly Jong-Fast / The Daily Beast:

Lisa Page Speaks: 'There's No Fathomable Way I Have Committed Any Crime at All' — STRIKING BACK — The former FBI lawyer and ongoing Trump target breaks two years of silence in this exclusive interview. And she has quite a lot to say. — It's not often that you interview a subject who has no interest in being famous.

Rachel M. Cohen / The Intercept:

Nancy Pelosi Pushes the House to Pass USMCA, but Neglects a Bill With Broad Support to Strengthen Unions — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made no secret of her desire to pass the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement by the end of the year, telling reporters recently that it would be her goal for the House to vote on it before Christmas.

Byron York / Washington Examiner:

The bad-faith impeachment — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Democrats are trying to remove President Trump from office “prayerfully,” and “sadly,” and “with a heavy heart.” In fact, as anyone who has been watching knows, many Democrats have been itching to impeach Trump since the day he took office.

Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:
Trump Is Making the Al Capone Tax-Evasion Defense Against Impeachment

Discussion: Raw Story

David Weigel / Washington Post:

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock drops out of presidential race — Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who pitched himself to Democratic voters as a campaign finance reformer who could win in red states, is ending his bid for the party's presidential nomination. — “While there were many obstacles …

Discussion: Associated Press, Breitbart, The Hill, Politico, Outside the Beltway, Axios, Daily Kos and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Mark Murray / NBC News:
For Democratic presidential hopefuls, the early bids have caught the worms

Discussion: ABC News

Niall Stanage / The Hill: The Memo: Trump faces uphill 2020 climb

Associated Press:

The Latest: Justices weighing dismissal of guns case — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Supreme Court arguments about a New York City gun ordinance (all times local): — The Supreme Court is trying to figure out whether to dismiss its first case about guns rights in nearly 10 years.

Discussion: Washington Post and The Daily Beast

Leah Litman / The Atlantic: The Guns Case Is About Much More Than Guns

Ronald Brownstein / The Atlantic: Will John Roberts Constrain Trump?

Liz Peek / Fox News:

Trump is gaining black voters — that's terrible news for Democrats — Democrats are frantic. For decades, they have taken the black vote for granted. Today, there are signs that empty promises and radical leftist social policies are leaving black voters behind.

Jonathan Easley / The Hill:
Buttigieg targets black voters with new South Carolina ad

Discussion: Associated Press

Cheyenne Haslett / ABC News:
Young voter asks Elizabeth Warren emotional question about acceptance

Discussion: Raw Story, The Hill and Blue Virginia

Jennifer Rubin / Washington Post:

What to do about the Kremlin's propagandists — Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) once before walked back an assertion that maybe Ukraine was responsible for meddling in the 2016 election. That has not deterred him from repeating the Kremlin's propaganda. Appearing on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he was at it again.

Discussion: CNN, NBC News, The Independent and Balloon Juice

Aaron Blake / Washington Post:
Sen. John Kennedy and the GOP alliance with Russia's Ukraine propoganda

Discussion: The Bulwark, The Hill, The American Independent and KyivPost

Glenn Kessler / Washington Post:
Not enough Pinocchios for Trump's CrowdStrike obsession

Discussion: Raw Story, HuffPost and Axios

CBS News:

300+ Trump ads taken down by Google, YouTube — 60 Minutes finds over 300 video ads for President Trump were taken down, mostly over the summer, for violating company policy — How to handle political ads on social media has become a growing concern as the 2020 U.S. presidential election approaches.

Discussion: Breitbart, The Hill, The Daily Caller, PJ Media Home, IJR, Washington Times, Townhall, Sean Hannity and Althouse, more at Mediagazer »

Angus King / USA Today:

Ukraine scandal: I know why Trump top dogs — Mulvaney, Pompeo, Perry & Bolton — won't bark — Because it would be so easy for these people to clear the president, it's hard to escape the conclusion that their silence is part of a cover-up. — One of Sherlock Holmes' most famous cases …

Discussion: Raw Story

Jeff Stein / Washington Post:

State lawmakers acknowledge lobbyists helped craft their op-eds attacking Medicare-for-all — Emails show opponents are mobilizing at local level to try turn Americans away from big health care changes. — Lobbyists either helped draft or made extensive revisions to opinion columns published …

Discussion: Political Wire

Elisabeth Egan / New York Times:

6 Takeaways From Melania Trump's Unauthorized Biography — “Free, Melania” gets into the first lady's relationship with Ivanka, “Be Best” and that “I really don't care” jacket. — Where the first lady, Melania Trump, is concerned, theories abound. — From morning-show hosts to Twitter pundits …

Discussion: The Root

Kate Bennett / CNN:
‘Free, Melania’ offers new details about the life of a private first lady

Discussion: Raw Story

Matthew Yglesias / Vox:

What Trump has actually done in his first 3 years — A big tax cut, unprecedented environmental degradation, Wall Street unleashed, and a whole lot of judges. — The scandals, the leaks, the outrages, and the bizarre tweets of the last three years can distract from an important fact …

Politico:

Georgia governor set to buck Trump on Senate appointment — In defiance of Trump, Brian Kemp has begun informing fellow Republicans that he will appoint business exec Kelly Loeffler to the soon-to-be-vacant seat. — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has been getting pressure about his prospective Senate pick.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, National Review and The Dispatch

Politico:
POLITICO Playbook: Washington's December nightmare

Discussion: New York Times

Gabby Orr / Politico:

Trump team positions Pence as the antidote to anti-Trump animus — When Donald Trump's reelection team shamelessly acknowledged during a World Series campaign commercial that America's 45th president is “no Mr. Nice Guy,” it was doing more than shock-and-awe advertising.

Discussion: USA Today, Fox News, POLITICUSUSA, Raw Story and IMPORTANTVILLE

Ross Barkan / Medium:
The Fascism to Come — In 2016, not long after Donald Trump's …

Discussion: Raw Story

Lindsey Ellefson / The Wrap:

Newsweek Demotes Editor After Firing Reporter for Inaccurate Trump Thanksgiving Story — A second employee has been penalized for a story suggesting the president spent Thanksgiving tweeting and playing golf — A Newsweek editor has been demoted following the publication of a story published …

more at Mediagazer »

Chris Kobiella / Rolling Stone:

False Idol — Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump — On the morning of September 29th, six weeks before the 2016 election, Donald Trump was in a conference room at Trump Tower in New York talking to leaders of the religious right about sex-reassignment surgery.

Discussion: Raw Story

Jonathan Swan / Axios:

Trump campaign to blacklist Bloomberg News — President Trump's 2020 campaign announced Monday it will no longer allow reporters from Bloomberg News to obtain credentials to cover Trump campaign events. — The big picture: Campaign manager Brad Parscale described the decision …

Discussion: Mediaite, NBC News, Politico and The Hill, more at Mediagazer »

R.J. Lyman / The Bulwark:

This Is the Single Best Argument For Why Trump Should Be Impeached and Removed — He tried to meddle in the 2020 election. It's crazy to say that you have to let him participate in the 2020 election in order to render a verdict on his attempt to cheat in it.

Dexter Filkins / New Yorker:

Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi's India — The Prime Minister's Hindu-nationalist government has cast two hundred million Muslims as internal enemies. — On August 11th, two weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent soldiers in to pacify the Indian state of Kashmir …

Bob Bauer / New York Times:

Trump Is the Founders' Worst Nightmare — The very conduct that necessitates presidential impeachment also supplies the means for the demagogue to escape it. — Mr. Bauer served as a White House counsel under President Barack Obama. — Donald Trump's Republican congressional allies …

Michael Calderone / Politico:

New York Times overhauls its presidential endorsement process — The New York Times's editorial board is veering sharply away from its traditional closed-door endorsement process for Democratic presidential aspirants, conducting interviews with the 2020 Democratic contenders on the record …

Ella Nilsen / Vox:

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has dropped out of the 2020 race, and says he won't run for Senate — Montana Gov. Steve Bullock talks with constituents while campaigning for a fellow Democrat in Montana in 2018. William Campbell-Corbis via Getty Images — Bullock's long-shot campaign for president has come to an end.

Discussion: New York Times

Steve Bullock / Medium:
Thank you. — Today, I announced that I'm suspending my campaign for President.

Discussion: CNN, Townhall, NBC News, Vanity Fair, Slate, The Daily Caller, New York Post, UPI and The Guardian

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux / FiveThirtyEight:

Do Democrats Have Enough ‘Smoking Gun’ Evidence For Impeachment? — The first round of hearings is over. More than a dozen closed-door depositions are out in the open. The impeachment inquiry is headed into its next phase. — After weeks of laying out their evidence …

Discussion: HuffPost

David Freedlander / Politico:

How Bloomberg Could Win. Again. — Michael Bloomberg has begun his improbable bid for the presidency with a rollout you could call unconventional, to be charitable. The big splash was news of his $37 million television ad buy; then there was an overstuffed campaign bio-spot …

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog