On the road for Joe Biden, John Kerry seeks to rekindle his Iowa magic

WATERLOO, Iowa – Only days after President Trump walked the country to the brink of war and back, John Kerry rolled into this small riverfront city in a motor coach emblazoned with the words “Battle for the Soul of the Nation.”

The campaign bus and slogan belong to Kerry’s longtime Washington colleague and friend, former vice president Joe Biden, who’s seeking the same prize Kerry secured in frigid Iowa 16 winters ago — a caucus win to propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Biden wasn’t on board.

Kerry was the headliner of a band of lesser-known politicians barnstorming in his stead before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses. It was an unusual ride for a former Secretary of State who came within some 120,000 votes in Ohio of winning the presidency: campaigning for — but not with — a candidate.

Seated in a cramped space in the back of the motor coach that was decked out with a horseshoe sectional and a miniature flat screen, Kerry said he was motivated to launch his own second act in Iowa as a campaign surrogate because Trump’s actions have shattered world diplomacy and increased the threat of nuclear proliferation.

"It is just unforgivable to sit on the sidelines,” he said.

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Once deported, the Rubios are the first sisters to serve in the California Legislature

SACRAMENTO — It was open house at Heron Elementary School, and inside a bustling auditorium, fifth-graders created a living wax museum of “Famous Americans,” decked out as pop icons, sports stars and legends from their history books.

Along with a miniature Barack Obama who tried not to fidget as he stood behind a makeshift presidential lectern, there was an Abraham Lincoln in a top hat (and checkered Vans), a bushy Albert Einstein and at least two sharpshooting Annie Oakleys.

Not far from a robed Sandra Day O’Connor stood an 11-year-old girl with long, brown hair, black slacks and a blazer. Like the others, she stood on a chair and remained motionless until you pressed a paper printout of a red button at her feet. Then she spoke:

“Hi, I am Blanca Rubio. The reason I am a famous American is because I am an assemblywoman, but not only that, it’s also because just recently my sister, Susan Rubio, got elected into the state Senate. Now we are the first sisters to ever be elected into the state Capitol.”

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Nancy Pelosi had tried to avoid impeachment. Now it will be a defining moment for her

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat alone in the eighth row of seats on the House floor late Wednesday morning, flipping through notes as she prepared to open debate on whether to impeach a president for the third time in American history.

It was a moment of calm in a Washington maelstrom. Pelosi seemed almost unaware of Republican Representative Debbie Lesko of Arizona castigating Democrats for “tearing this country apart” on the other side of the chamber.

Pelosi herself used to warn that impeachment was too divisive to be worth it. Now, she was leading the pursuit, flexing her tactical muscles to shepherd fellow Democrats through the perilous political territory that will forge her own legacy.

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Joe Biden offers up fire and folksiness on his ‘No Malarkey’ tour in Iowa

WAVERLY, Iowa — Midway through Joe Biden’s eight-day bus tour across Iowa last week, a voter in one of about two dozen audiences he addressed wanted to know whether the former vice president who has been preaching political rapprochement had enough fight in him to take on President Trump.

“You’re such a nice guy, Joe,” said David Kuethe, 73, a retired English professor, sparking thunderous applause from a crowd of largely veterans and their family members here on Wednesday. “But here’s the problem, when you get on that stage with that orange guy in the White House — and I hope you’re on that stage with him to debate — you can’t be such a nice guy.”

Biden didn’t hesitate on a trip that showed he was more than willing to deliver some punches — and not just at Trump.

“I am used to bullies,” Biden countered, citing a childhood stutter that made him a target. But he argued he didn’t have to stoop down to their level to win the next presidential election.

The exchange captured the delicate balance that Biden tried to strike as he barnstormed through cities and small towns from one end of this crucial early voting state to the other, giving short speeches in packed but small events with remarks that often laced tender talk of the values of the American heartland with acid-tipped criticism of Trump.

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Republican impeachment strategy rests in part on conspiracy theories

WASHINGTON — CrowdStrike, Alexandra Chalupa, and a mysterious black ledger.

Throughout the past two weeks of public House impeachment hearings, Republicans used much of their valuable time to ask questions about the same obscure topics as they tried to distract from the allegations against President Trump and his dealings with Ukraine.

“Have you met with or do you know Alexandra Chalupa?” California Representative Devin Nunes asked David Holmes, an official in the US Embassy in Ukraine, on Thursday. Nunes was referring to a former staffer for the Democratic National Committee and a debunked theory that she colluded with Ukrainian officials to turn up political dirt on Trump.

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Sondland’s testimony could well add up for Democrats

WASHINGTON — Two plus two equals trouble for President Trump.

The House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry produced its most-anticipated witness, an amiable hotelier-turned-diplomat, and he provided, in the vernacular of the Ukraine controversy, the “deliverable.”

Gordon Sondland, the Trump-appointed ambassador to the European Union, testified Wednesday that there was a quid pro quo with Ukraine.

“Everyone was in the loop,” he said of top administration officials. “It was no secret.”

In a day that saw Sondland alternatively eccentric and riveting, Democrats zeroed in on his account of what they see as a damning quid pro quo. They wanted to learn what he knew about the hold the Trump administration put on nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine in exchange for a request the country's leader launch investigations that would help Trump politically.

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Supreme Court’s conservatives appear to back Trump on DACA

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday seemed inclined to allow the Trump administration to end a federal program that provides work and study permits to some 700,000 immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children.

As hundreds of supporters of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program rallied outside the court, justices were divided along ideological lines as they heard oral arguments in a case challenging President Trump’s move to cancel the Obama-era federal initiative and put the lives of those immigrants — known as Dreamers — in limbo.

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Lives and dreams on hold as Supreme Court is set to hear DACA case

WASHINGTON — Alma Oñate Muñoz was 8 years old when she and her family came to the United States from Mexico in search of better medical treatment for her sister, who had been diagnosed with a disease that threatened to leave her blind.

All those years spent in hospitals and translating doctors’ orders for her parents inspired Oñate to want to become a physician. Now at 25, she is a student at Harvard Medical School and on the cusp of fulfilling her dream because of a federal initiative that has dubbed her — not surprisingly — a Dreamer.

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Yes, this was a serious vote. But after that, Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on anything else on impeachment

WASHINGTON — The only thing they could agree on was that it was a solemn day.

For Democrats, the historic House vote on Thursday to formalize the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump was a step that they said pained them to take but was necessary to defend the Constitution.

“The founders didn’t want a king, they didn’t want a dictator, they didn’t want a monarch, they wanted a democracy and that is exactly what we are defending right now,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. “No one is above the law.”

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At a Michigan high school football field, impeachment is the political line of scrimmage for a suburb in flux

EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Football players hurried across the field at East Grand Rapids High School on a chilly afternoon as families settled onto seat cushions on the cold metal bleachers, bundling under heavy wool blankets to watch the freshman team take on West Catholic High School.

Sitting atop the stands, you could see Reeds Lake shimmer in the sun. An American flag flapped in the breeze and the tips of tree canopies burned bronze, orange, and burgundy. The view was so timeless Americana it could have been the fall of 1973, when impeachment was brewing around another president in a scandal that would vault the area’s most famous resident, Gerald R. Ford, into the Oval Office.

But it was October 2019, hours after acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney admitted — before he tried to take it back — that the Trump administration had withheld money from Ukraine in a bid to investigate Democrats. And in this rapidly growing western Michigan suburb, like in others across the country, support for an impeachment inquiry into President Trump has been growing while the area shifts politically to the left after decades as a Republican stronghold.

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Here, the opioid crisis is bigger than politics. As rehab centers replace pill mills, an Ohio River city fights back

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio — Dale King rumbled into the parking lot in his military Jeep, a black 1940s-style clunker that he maneuvered with a skull-tipped stick shift. Heavy metal music blasted from the garage that he and some friends had converted to a gym for the neighboring addiction center.

Patients from next door were packed inside wearing worn T-shirts, faded athletic gear, and other hand-me-downs. Half the class were barefoot. Some wore jeans, others ankle monitors.

It was October 2018, and King, a 38-year-old retired Army intelligence officer turned fitness trainer, characteristically got straight to the point.

“Who here has overdosed?”

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Trump’s warnings of socialism could carry extra power with Fla. Latinos who fled it

DORAL, Fla. — In this Miami suburb, where a growing Venezuelan community has nestled amid neat condos and cozy tile-roofed homes, contempt for Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, can seem thicker than the stench of nearby garbage dumps that still sometimes cuts the air.

Like many immigrants from that volatile South American nation, Nihar Perez Rojas, 51, is so eager for an end to his socialist regime that she cheered President Trump when he first backed Maduro’s opposition in January. But nine months later, Maduro remains in power, and her family’s loyalties to Trump have split, even as his campaign touts his antisocialism stance to win support in this crucial swing state.

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In a swing district, a moderate Democrat risks her seat to support an impeachment inquiry

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Representative Elaine Luria’s decision to support an impeachment inquiry into President Trump wasn’t just about his political future. It also put hers on the line.

She is a moderate Democrat who last year narrowly won the congressional seat for southeastern Virginia, a district dominated by the largest Navy base and carried by Trump in 2016. Supporting an impeachment effort could seriously endanger her reelection and she had for months declined to do so. But she was finally persuaded to join many of her Democratic colleagues last week by the allegations that Trump had asked the leader of Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

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Neal moves from hesitant to spotlight on impeachment inquiry

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WASHINGTON — For months, Massachusetts Representative Richard Neal resisted calling for a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump — at his own political peril — as dozens of his Democratic colleagues jumped on board.

Now, after joining House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in making that call this week, the Springfield Democrat finds himself at the center of the action as one of six House committee chairs investigating Trump.

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A surreal day in Washington and beyond: Democrats take a big step toward impeachment

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets with her caucus in a closed session ahead of impeachment inquiry announcement.

WASHINGTON — In one hectic day in the nation’s capital, Donald Trump’s presidency — which has already survived a special counsel investigation and countless political scandals — shifted back into the danger zone.

Trump began the workday declaring that the increasing calls for impeachment over his alleged pressure on Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political rival were “nonsense.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ended the day by announcing the start of a formal impeachment inquiry after she strenuously resisted one for months.

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Ed Markey could get a boost from young climate change activists in a primary against Joe Kennedy

WASHINGTON — Senator Ed Markey stood in front of the US Capitol on Tuesday surrounded by about 20 climate change activists young enough to be on a school field trip but who are energizing a movement that potentially holds the key to his reelection.

Kallan Benson, 15, from Maryland, said she was terrified of what could happen if legislators don’t take action to reverse global warming. Nadia Nazar, 17, of Baltimore, compared the destruction caused by mass flooding in her family’s home in India to that of hurricanes increasingly devastating the East Coast.

“We refuse to be the last generation,” said Nazar, cofounder of the climate change organization Zero Hour. “We will no longer be known as the kids fighting the apocalypse. We will be known as the solution to the climate crisis.”

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At a modest New York fund-raiser, ‘the Squad’ got its start

WASHINGTON — On a hot evening in June last year, an eclectic mix of people mingled under the glow of a neon pink light in the living room of a small Greenwich Village apartment, intent on altering American politics.

This was not your typical glitzy Manhattan fund-raiser. The fare was cheese, chips, and guacamole, with a large ice bucket filled with craft beer in the bathtub. The attendees — young activists, artists, and political campaign staffers — had spent the better part of the year organizing a Democratic insurgency meant to sweep big money out of politics and defeat Republicans.

Among those in the room were two little-known congressional candidates who had never met: Ayanna Pressley, who had traveled down from Boston and was stirring up the crowd that had gathered to raise money for her campaign, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who made a late entrance after a quick trip from her home in the Bronx. The two were about to form a bond, later extended to two other largely unknown candidates of color, that would shake up the Democratic political establishment.

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Guerrera cover art on home page by Rosanna Alvarez. Find her art here.

Risograph print of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by Bronx artist Steph Guez. Find her art here.

El Paso is my hometown. I returned to find unity and resilience in a mass shooter’s wake

EL PASO — Here is what I remember from the place in my hometown where 22 people were massacred: high school dates, taking shopping carts for a ride through empty parking lots, making videos of our pranks on an old camcorder, watching the city lights and cars passing by as we waited for our parents or debated what to do next — with the night and our lives.

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El Paso tries to bind psychic wounds

EL PASO — Hours before President Trump arrived in this desert city on the Mexico border, high school students clad in black released white balloons for every one of the 22 victims killed in one of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern American history.

Hundreds of people later gathered at a central park to protest the president’s visit, saying he had inflamed the kind of racial and ethnic hostilities that led the shooter to target Latinos at a Walmart in the commercial center of the city. Condemnation of the president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has been inescapable, too, at a memorial near the site of the shooting where people have stopped by the thousands — after work, between lunch breaks, often in scorching heat — to march and pray and drop off flowers, stuffed animals, and balloons.

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Advocates wonder: Where’s the outreach from Democratic presidential candidates to Latino voters?

MIAMI — There is outrage over Trump administration policies that have torn migrant families apart and left some children locked up. There is pervasive fear of immigration raids. And there is the new political reality that Latino voters came out in such force in the 2018 congressional midterm elections they helped flip key seats in the House to Democrats from Republicans.

If there was ever a campaign in which Democratic contenders for the White House were sure to engage in an early courtship of Latino voters, it would be the 2020 race. But Latino advocates like Jacqueline Martinez Garcel have been baffled by the lack of urgency from presidential candidates when it comes to reaching out to Latino voters. And only four of the two dozen candidates have even put forth detailed plans on immigration.

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