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Maanvi Singh in San Francisco (now) and Tom McCarthy in New York (earlier)

Trump's former campaign boss Corey Lewandowski grilled by House Democrats – as it happened

Corey Lewandowski was a central figure in the Trump presidential campaign before he was fired in 2016.
Corey Lewandowski was a central figure in the Trump presidential campaign before he was fired in 2016. Photograph: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

Summary

  • A congressional hearing featuring Corey Lewandowski, the former Donald Trump aide, was notable for what was not said. Again and again, Lewandowski refused to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice by Trump, asserting privilege over conversations with the president which Democrats angrily said the White House just invented.
  • The committee chair Jerrold Nadler blasted Lewandowski: “Your behavior in this hearing room has been completely unacceptable.”
  • Lewandowski used a bathroom break during the hearing to launch a web site dedicated to his potential 2020 US Senate run.
  • The United States announced it was suing whistleblower Edward Snowden and his publisher for, the US said, violating nondisclosure agreements in publishing his memoir.
  • In an evening session, Democratic senators planned to spotlight stories of gun violence, to protest Republican refusal to act on the issue.
  • The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg met with US senators. “You are trying but just not hard enough,” she told them. “Sorry.”
  • Meanwhile, Trump arrived in California — greeted by protestors and the giant Trump baby blimp — for fundraisers shrouded in mystery.
  • The Trump administration has planned to attack auto emissions caps by undermining the state of California’s ability to apply them unilaterally, the Washington Post reported.
  • In advance of his visit to California accompanied by housing and urban development secretary Ben Carson to the Bay Area, Trump has been pushing for police crackdown on homelessness in California

As the hearing concluded, Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler scolded Lewandowski, telling the former Trump campaign manager: “Your behavior in this hearing room has been completely unacceptable.”

Nadler continued:

It is a part of a pattern by a White House desperate not to reveal the truth.

The president’s lawyers are sitting behind you right now to make sure that you do not answer us. Well, this is committee is focused on the evidence of the potential corruption, obstruction, and abuse of power and exposing that misconduct is our top priority. Make no mistake, we will hold President Trump accountable.

And that's a wrap for Lewandowski

The House judiciary committee has finished grilling the former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Toward the end, under intense questioning from Barry Berkey, an attorney for the Democrats, and after being shown a video of an interview from February in which he said he didn’t remember Trump asking him to get involved with the former attorney general Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice, Lewandowski admitted “perhaps I was inaccurate that time”.

But he also said: “I have no obligation to be honest with the media because they are just as dishonest as everybody else.”

Updated

Dan Bishop celebrates with supporters after being announced as the winner.
Dan Bishop celebrates with supporters after being announced as the winner. Photograph: Brian Blanco/Getty Images

Two new representatives from North Carolina joined the House today. Dan Bishop and Greg Murphy were sworn in today – which means we’ve got a full House, at least for a moment.

The Wisconsin Republican Sean Duffy is leaving Congress, having announced his resignation last month.

Bishop, who authored the now-repealed 2016 North Carolina law that restricted which public bathrooms transgender people were allowed to use, defeated his democratic opponent Dan McCready by 2 percentage points last week.

Updated

Trump just wrapped his first fundraiser of the day in Portola Valley, California, and is headed to the next, per the White House pool reporters. The fundraiser is expected to raise about $3m, according to reporters traveling with the president.

The fundraiser itself, however, was closed to the media.

The Hill’s Brett Samuels recaps, on behalf of the White House press pool:

The fundraiser remained closed to press and pool did not get much of a view of the residence, which was located atop a hill.

Attendees were served salmon and vegetables, and pool spotted what appeared to be a golf hole in the backyard that featured a flag with a Stanford logo

Updated

The president today is visiting California. Many details of his brief visit, accompanied by the housing and urban development secretary, Ben Carson, have remained mysterious prior to his arrival, though Trump did make clear that he’d focus on the problem of homelessness in California.

There to greet him as he arrived late this morning, was, of course, the trusty ol’ Trump baby blimp.

Updated

As the new Lewandowski hearing continues...

Some more news out of the Trump administration.

According to a draft regulation obtained by Buzzfeed, the administration is is looking charge immigrants nearly $1,000 to appeal deportation cases. The current fees are just over $100:

In a draft Department of Justice regulation obtained by BuzzFeed News, officials have proposed that immigrants pay $975 to request an appeal of an immigration judge’s ruling and $895 to request a case be reopened or reconsidered with the Board of Immigration Appeals. Proposed regulations are not immediately enacted and require a 60-day comment period.

Currently, the fee to apply for each of these requests is $110.

Such a jump in application prices would represent the latest attempt by the Trump administration to alter the immigration system. Experts believe, if enacted, the increases will impact certain immigrants’ very ability to obtain legal status and protections.

Summary

As the Lewandowski hearing proceeds, here’s a summary of where things stand:

  • A congressional hearing featuring Corey Lewandowski, the former Donald Trump aide, was notable for what was not said. Again and again, Lewandowski refused to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice by Trump, asserting privilege over conversations with the president which Democrats angrily said the White House just invented.
  • The committee chair Jerrold Nadler blasted what he called “made-up rules” of absolute immunity, “an absolute cover-up by the White House”.
  • Lewandowski used a bathroom break during the hearing to launch a web site dedicated to his potential 2020 US Senate run.
  • The United States announced it was suing whistleblower Edward Snowden and his publisher for, the US said, violating nondisclosure agreements in publishing his memoir.
  • In an evening session, Democratic senators planned to spotlight stories of gun violence, to protest Republican refusal to act on the issue.
  • The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg met with US senators. “You are trying but just not hard enough,” she told them. “Sorry.”
  • The Trump administration planned to attack auto emissions caps by undermining the state of California’s ability to apply them unilaterally, the Washington Post reported.

Updated

Michael Speciale, a North Carolina house Republican, won’t run for re-election:

Speciale is a state representative in a heavily Republican district.

Updated

Barack Obama checks another item off his bucket list, meeting Greta Thunberg*:

*Note: it’s not clear when this photo was taken.

**Update: the picture was taken yesterday, Monday.

Updated

Lewandowski is now taking questions about former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who worked under Lewandowski, pleading guilty to making false statements to investigators including about his contacts with Russians.

“Did you tell Papadopoulos to stop communicating with Russians?”

Lewandowski: “No congressman, what I was attempting to do was to put him in touch with a staff person.. while I ran the day-to-day.”

Lewandowski is asked whether he’s aware of Papadopoulos guilty plea over his lies about Russian contacts. He pleads ignorance. It’s in the Mueller report, he’s told. “I don’t know what’s in the report,” Lewandowski says.

Lewandowski’s paradox: I won’t testify an inch beyond what’s in the report whose contents I am entirely ignorant of. So, good luck.

This last bit has been kind of dramatic, relatively. Representative Pramila Jayapal has just pincered Lewandowski between his own insistence, on the one hand, that he has been 100% truthful with the special counsel and the committee, and the president’s claim, on the other, that the Mueller report is lies start to finish.

Trump for example has suggested that everyone who kept notes on conversations about him, such as Comey, actually fabricated those notes after the fact to try to frame him.

But Lewandowski was among those who kept notes. So who is lying, Jayapal asks: Lewandowski in claiming to have kept contemporaneous notes, or the president in claiming he did not?

Lewandowski falls back on assertions of his perfect truthfulness and refers questions to the White House.

Does the drama not come through?

Congressman Jamie Raskin takes Lewandowski up on his apparent desire to talk about his political future. He asks whether as a senator Lewandowski would accept the baloney privilege dispensations from a witness that Lewandowski has been asserting.

Lewandowski says the privilege isn’t his to assert but the president’s.

Raskin counters that it’s not the president’s to assert either, because it’s “imaginary like the tooth fairy.”

“My children are watching,” says Lewandowski.

Raskin closes with a zinger: “I hope the president’s not on then!”

Lewandowski just has shared with the committee his political ambitions. In arguing that former FBI director James Comey and others should be grilled about the Russia investigation, not him, Lewandowski describes what he would do “If it’s me and I were the chairman, or maybe someday in the upper chamber.”

Trump administration to attack auto emissions caps – report

The Trump administration plans actions that could roll back major restrictions on auto emissions, the Washington Post reports:

The Trump administration will revoke California’s right to set stricter air pollution for cars and light trucks on Wednesday, according to two senior administration officials, as part of a larger effort to weaken an Obama-era climate policy curbing greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s auto fleet.

The move sets up a legal battle between the federal government and the nation’s most populous state, which for decades has exercised authority to put in place more stringent fuel economy standards. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have vowed to adopt California’s standards if they diverge from the federal government’s, as have several major automakers.

Read further.

A Democrat on the panel asks Nadler to hold Lewandowski in contempt of the committee. Nadler takes it under advisement.

Lewandowski brags about how many guns he owns. He’s being grilled about why he put notes he took about orders Trump gave him to contact Sessions in his safe. Lewandowski says he puts all such notes in his safe.

All your notes? he’s asked.

“It’s a big safe congressman,” Lewandowski replies. “There’s a lot of guns in there.”

In evening session, Democratic senators to highlight gun violence

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer announces his caucus will be working late to “share the stories of families shattered by gun violence.” Polls show Americans want action on the issue and the Democrats appear intent on pressing their advantage, although without Republican cooperation no legislation is possible.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell this afternoon told reporters that he would not be taking up new gun safety legislation until checking with Donald Trump on what he wants.

O'Rourke visits LA's Skid Row for meetings on homelessness crisis

Beto O’Rourke stopped by Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles this morning to meet with a group at the forefront of the growing homelessness crisis.

The Democratic candidate made the rare campaign stop to a neighborhood at the epicenter of homelessness on the same day that Trump is visiting California for fundraisers — and threatening a crackdown on homeless people living on the streets of the state.

“I came to listen and learn from those who are living on Skid Row, those who are serving the people,” O’Rourke said outside the Downtown Women’s Center. “You could argue that Los Angeles has the best perspective in the United States of America. So we’re going to see the challenges, but we are also going to listen to the solutions.”

He said that the government needs to put more resources toward housing, and that the offices that exist today aren’t being used to their fullest extent.

The former congressman’s visit caused quite a commotion at Skid Row, bringing dozens of reporters and news crews to a street lined with tents, leading some photographers to take photos of people trying to sleep on the sidewalk.

“Which presidential candidate is this?” one man shouted at reporters as he tried to get through the crowd of media waiting for the candidate.

Courtney Milligan, a 29-year-old who sleeps on the street across from the center where O’Rourke visited, said she was glad to see a presidential candidate visit Skid Row:

“Now he knows we are here, and we are not invisible to him,” she said. “Homelessness needs to be talked about and brought to the forefront — and it needs to be about solutions.”

She added: “We need housing that’s affordable, in LA, not on the outskirts.”

Jeffries finishes strong: “You’re not really here to tell the truth. You’re here to participate in a continued cover-up.”

Lewandowski launches proto-campaign web site during hearing

The Democrats say this hearing is part of an impeachment investigation.

In fact it’s a nice way for Lewandowski to build hype around a potential senate run.

But it is cheeky, cheeky, to launch a rudimentary campaign website while the hearing is adjourned for a break requested by him.

New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries blasts Lewandowski for it: “You are not on the campaign trail yet. This is the House judiciary committee. Act like you know the difference.”

OK we’re back. Republicans’ turn to question Lewandowski. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump superfan, uses his time to criticize Democrats for holding the hearing.

Well this sure is turning out to be a long five minutes. The hearing has yet to reconvene.

The hearing adjourns for five minutes.

Democrats are drilling down on what Lewandowski did after the president directed him, a private citizen at the time, to meet with attorney general Jeff Sessions to tell Sessions to limit the Russia investigation and announce publicly that Trump was not a focus.

Instead, Lewandowski has testified, he went on vacation. And now he is describing how he handled Trump’s order. He did not want to go to Sessions’ justice department office to deliver the message, he says. He earlier told Mueller he did not want to have the visit publicly logged. So he set up a meeting with Sessions outside the justice department which Sessions then canceled.

Lewandowski has said he was not squeamish about Trump’s order or think he might be doing something illegal by following it. But then he didn’t follow it.

The Lewandowski hearing charges on. With Lewandowski declining to answer most questions from Democrats and Republicans speechifying about the alleged incompetence of the Barack Obama administration, it’s hard to identify any forward momentum here.

Greta Thunberg to senators: 'you are trying but just not hard enough. Sorry'

At a meeting of the US Senate climate change task force, lawmakers praised a group of young activists for their leadership and their resolve. And then they asked the teens to offer their recommendations for how Congress might combat one of the most urgent global threats.

“Please save your praise, we don’t want it,” said Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist who has galvanized young people across the world to strike for more action to combat the impact of global warming. “Don’t invite us here to tell us how inspiring we are without doing anything about it. It doesn’t lead to anything.

“If you want advice for what you should do, invite scientists, ask scientists for their expertise,” she continued. “We don’t want to be heard. We want the science to be heard.”

“I know you are trying but just not hard enough. Sorry,” she said.

‘Please save your praise...’
‘Please save your praise...’ Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The audience laughed and supporters broke into applause. Senator Ed Markey, the Masschusettes Democrats who co-sponsored the Green New Deal and leads the task force, perhaps surprised by her bluntness, smiled but took no offense.

“We need your leadership, young people are the army politically, which has arrived in the United States,” he told Thunberg. “You put a spotlight on this issue in a way that ithas never been before.And that is creating a new X factor.”

Thunberg was one of several young activists who spoke at a meeting in the bowels of the US Capitol during two days of action and speeches aimed at urging lawmakers to support “transformative climate action”. She was joined by activists from across the US and South America who are part of the “multiracial, intergenerational” effort to combat climate change.

Democratic Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia tells Lewandowski:

“You are like a fish being cleaned with a spoon. It’s very hard to get an answer out of you.”

Trump has floated a list of names for possible replacements for former national security adviser John Bolton:

Republican Rep Jim Jordan uses his time to praise Lewandowski’s conduct of the campaign and to hail the quality of the candidate. Then he moves onto a statement of outrage over false accusations, he says, that Trump colluded with Russia.

Cohen accuses Lewandowski of “getting cold feet” and “chickening out” when he declined to confront Sessions as ordered by Trump. “You were a loyal soldier... except you chickened out at the last minute,” Cohen says.

Lewandowski keeps his cool, doesn’t seem very impressed.

“You’re some kind of Forrest Gump relating to corruption,” Cohen says. Then he asks Lewandowski if Trump hired him because he knew Lewandowski would not be unduly constrained by the law.

Ask the president, says Lewandowski.

Now Rep Steve Cohen of Tennessee is going after the witness.

Lewandowski: “I didn’t think the president asked me to do anything illegal.”

Cohen: “You didn’t think that was illegal to obstruct justice?”

Lewandowski denies it.

“Obviously you’ve never been a judge and won’t be one,” Cohen says. Burn.

Lewandowski again declines to answer a question from Rep Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, then Lewandowski kind of yells at her. Then they fight about whether he can see lines she’s referring to on a screen. This is getting kind of personal?

“You are obviously here to block any kind of inquiry into the truth,” Jackson Lee says.

Collins rants about Nadler breaking House rules until he’s called for running out his own time.

Then Nadler, funnily, says Collins can keep going if he wishes.

“He doesn’t wish,” Nadler notes.

Nadler resumes. He says he’s “very troubled” that the White House counsel “sitting behind you” has stopped Lewandowski from testifying.

Collins’ turn. He accuses Nadler of a potential ethics breach and violating House rules. The timeline on that is:

1/witness plays stupid

2/chairman stops clock

3/Republicans holler

4/witness stalls

5/chairman exceeds time

6/Republicans attempt to adjourn hearing and cry ethics violation

Since he apparently faces no legal sanction in this situation, Lewandowski has succeeded with the only audience that must matter:

Collins moves to adjourn, accusing the chairman of not following House rules.

That motion fails. But the Republicans request a roll call on it.

This time the clerk is ON IT.

Lewandowski, who never worked for Donald Trump while Trump was president, is invoking blanket executive privilege purportedly protecting conversations with the president.

Oversight! Republicans say Nadler’s time is up. They demand a roll call vote to declare time up, which as the minority they will lose but why not. Nadler calls on the clerk to call the vote. They can’t find the clerk.

How utterly miserable.

Nadler says Lewandowski is the subject of a “bogus claim of executive privilege” made by the White House.

Then he asks whether Lewandowski met alone with the president in the Oval Office in June 2016 as stated in the Mueller report.

Lewandowski says he doesn’t have the report with him and what follows is a ridiculous omnishambles of parliamentary procedure arguments and a fight between Republicans and the Democrats on the committee about stopping and starting the clock tracking how much time Nadler has to ask questions as Lewandowski stalls.

Lewandowski basically pretends not to be able to read, to not know what Nadler is talking about, to not be able to find the pertinent Mueller report passages. It’s somewhere between “the dog ate my homework” and “I lost my glasses” ... and flipping the committee the bird.

“Anyone illegally attempting to impact the outcome of an election should spend the rest of their life in jail.” – Corey Lewandowski

He’s not talking about Trump’s repeated fake claims of voter fraud or Republican voter suppression efforts or even about Russian tampering in 2016, he’s talking about the right-wing conspiracy theory of alleged malfeasance inside the FBI as they investigated the Trump campaign.

He’s done. First questions to come.

Lewandowski is reading his opening statement. By the way he’s weighing a run to unseat Jeanne Shaheen, the incumbent Democratic US senator from New Hampshire.

Lewandowski complains about how much he’s already testified before Congress. Then he narrates the story of his glory days on the Trump campaign.

Ranking member Doug Collins of Georgia, the senior Republican on the committee, begins with a zany riff on how the majority is trying to turn the Mueller report into an audio book by holding hearings “ad nauseam.”

Collins points out that 17 Democratic members already favor impeachment “so why are we still investigating it?” Congress: our work here is done.

Nadler advises Lewandowski that he is appearing under subpoena and he has to answer all questions, including questions outside the Mueller report.

“We will not be daunted by the cover-up,” Nadler says.

Nadler blasts 'made-up' immunity rules for White House aides avoiding testimony

Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler calls the Lewandowski hearing to order. He begins with a warning that no one should personally insult Donald Trump, as that would violate House decorum rules.

Then Nadler blasts the White House and justice department’s “made-up rules” of absolute immunity, which the White House invoked to block the testimony of others including former aides Rob Porter and Rick Dearborn and federal White House counsel Don McGahn.

Nadler calls it “an absolute cover-up by the White House.”

The Snowden lawsuit is separate from the criminal charges brought against Snowden, who the government has accused of violating the Espionage Act, for his alleged disclosures of classified information.

“This lawsuit is a civil action,” EDNY advises, “and based solely on Snowden’s failure to comply with the clear pre-publication review obligations included in his signed non-disclosure agreements.

“This matter is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Department of Justice’s Civil Division.”

Snowden of course lives in Russia where for the moment he apparently remains beyond the long arm of US law, in terms of prosecution and potential imprisonment, although that law and the charges against him have forced him to live in exile.

Updated

United States sues Snowden and his publisher over book

The United States today filed a civil lawsuit against whistleblower Edward Snowden who, the government contends, “published a book entitled Permanent Record in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both CIA and NSA.”

The lawsuit alleges that Snowden published his book without submitting it to the agencies for pre-publication review, “in violation of his express obligations under the agreements he signed.” Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Snowden has given public speeches on intelligence-related matters, “also in violation of his non-disclosure agreements.”

From the press release from the Eastern District of Virginia:

The United States’ lawsuit does not seek to stop or restrict the publication or distribution of Permanent Record. Rather, under well-established Supreme Court precedent, Snepp v. United States, the government seeks to recover all proceeds earned by Snowden because of his failure to submit his publication for pre-publication review in violation of his alleged contractual and fiduciary obligations.

The lawsuit also names as nominal defendants the corporate entities involved in publishing Snowden’s book. The United States is suing the publisher solely to ensure that no funds are transferred to Snowden, or at his direction, while the court resolves the United States’ claims. Snowden is currently living outside of the United States.

“Intelligence information should protect our nation, not provide personal profit,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “This lawsuit will ensure that Edward Snowden receives no monetary benefits from breaching the trust placed in him.”

Developing. Here’s our write-up of the book:

Updated

Lewandowski is seated at the witness table. The members of congress are kind up fumbling around up front, making their way to their seats, sort of. Lots of photographers in the room.

Here’s a live video stream of the Lewandowski hearing (not live yet but stay tuned):

Lewandowski is scheduled to be sworn in shortly.

As we wait for former Donald Trump aide Corey Lewandowski to appear before the House judiciary committee for what the committee touts as its inaugural impeachment investigation hearing, here’s a selection of Lewandowski news from the archive:

From that last story, about how Trump’s aides’ disobedience might have saved the president from criminality in the eyes of Mueller:

  • Aides Corey Lewandowski and Rick Dearborn did not deliver a message to the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only, despite Trump’s order to do so.

Make that 16: California Republican congressman Paul Cook will not run for reelection, the Los Angeles Times reports, bringing the number of Republican House members to throw in the towel before the next election to 16 – compared with just four Democrats.

Retirement announcements can be a barometer for how party members expect the next election to go, since it’s not much fun to be in the minority, which is where the Republicans in the House are currently sat.

Will Democrats retain their House majority in 2020? On a generic congressional ballot, which is something pollsters track, Democrats on average currently have an 8.8-point advantage, according to RealClearPolitics. So that would look like a good election for them.

After bowing out of climate forum for 'Iowa', Biden plans fundraisers elsewhere

As we reported Monday, Joe Biden and other Democratic presidential candidates are skipping a climate forum in Washington on Thursday and Friday, citing events in Iowa.

Heated’s Emily Atkin adds that Biden is missing the forum “to attend a private fundraising lunch in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago.”

Biden’s campaign in a schedule advisory said he would attend a “Biden for President finance event” in Germantown, Tennessee, on Thursday.

And Biden plans to hold his own town hall on “climate and other issues”on Friday in Iowa.

Biden, not on his way to the climate forum.
Biden, not on his way to the climate forum. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Dan Lipinksi, the eight-term Democratic congressman whose primary race challenger just won an endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now invokes “the Squad” in an attempt to smear his opponent.

Lipinksi represents a district in the wealthy Chicago suburbs that previously had been represented for six terms by his father. Not the most progressive pocket in Democratic politics. But it gets your attention when a Democratic politician adopts Trump’s language to talk about a Democratic colleague.

Update: aha, literally a play for Trump voters owing to Illinois’ open primary which means you can vote on the race irrespective of party registration.

Updated

More rumblings on Iran after the Saudi oil attack, this time from the vice president in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation:

Greta Thunberg stands with climate activists: 'We refuse to be the last generation'

Senator Ed Markey, a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, joined Democrats and young climate activists in Capitol Hill to warn against the perils of inaction in the face of what he called the “economic, national security, health and moral crisis of our time”.

“We are head to demand action today because tomorrow is too late,” Markey said, adding that the US has a “historic responsibility” and a “moral obligation” to act.

He was joined by Swedish teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who will visit with lawmakers and speak before a panel on Capitol Hill Tuesday and Wednesday. Thunberg, who was praised as the “spark plug” of this global youth movement, did not speak at the press conference to make way for her American and South American counterparts.

The press conference kicks off a week of events ahead of a strike on Sept. 20.

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg (C) leaves after taking part in a media event on Capitol Hill on September 17, 2019 in Washington,DC.
Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg (C) leaves after taking part in a media event on Capitol Hill on September 17, 2019 in Washington,DC. Photograph: Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images

Artemisa Barbosa Ribeiro, an indigenous youth activist from Brazil, said the US and Brazil must “stop being a part of the problem”. She called on the governments - and their climate skeptic leaders - to accept the science around climate change, to comply with international climate accords and protect indigenous rights as part of the solution.

Nadia Nazar, the 17-year-old co-founder of the climate change group Zero Hour, said she is not a part of “Gen Z” but a part of “Gen GND” - the Green New Deal.

“We refuse to be the last generation,” she said. “We will no longer be known as the kids fighting the apocalypse, we will be known as the solution to the climate crisis.”

Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono said she is baffled when she hears skeptics say they don’t “believe” that the climate is warming.

“When I hear things like, ‘I don’t believe in climate change,’ I want to say — ‘What do you think this is a religion? No, this is not a religion, it’s whether you’re going to base your position on facts,” she said.

Updated

Be advised that the president has issued two tweets on the topic of journalistic standards at the New York Times, which at the weekend revealed new accusations of college-era sexual harassment against supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, leading to calls from Democratic presidential candidates and others for Kavanaugh to be impeached.

The president thinks the New York Times is a bad newspaper, which he falsely says is losing money, and he says people are outright laughing about what’s going on with the New York Times and the whole situation is sad.

More talk in the halls of Congress about military strikes inside Iran...

Meanwhile Iran’s supreme leader has announced there will be “no negotiations on any level” with US officials, in remarks aimed at dousing speculation of a possible summit between Donald Trump and Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN general assembly next week.

A respected pollster in California tracks senator Elizabeth Warren as having catapulted ahead of former vice president Joe Biden in the last month. The poll depicts what looks like an almost 20-point swing in the race.

Single polls don’t necessarily indicate the state of the race. Polling averages are better, and even better are polling averages closer to the election – when many more polls have been conducted and when people have less time to change their minds.

That said California primary voters can start voting by mail in February, so that’s only, five?, months away. How many times can a voter change their mind in five months?

RealClearPolitics’ average of polls to this point in California has Biden up a couple points ahead of home-state senator Kamala Harris, and Warren a few points behind Harris.

Republican electoral college advantage could overcome 5-6 point popular vote loss – study

Outside of George W Bush’s reelection, Republicans haven’t won a presidential election the old-fashioned way – by getting the most votes – since 1988. That’s thanks to the electoral college, by which national popular vote totals are extruded through state-shaped nozzles to create tasty democracy cakes.

Democrats argue that when a presidential candidate can lose an election by two points, as Donald Trump did, but still win the election... that’s a problem that needs fixing. But a new study out from economists at the University of Texas at Austin could hold ominous news for Democrats, suggesting that future Republican presidential candidates could win office even after losing the popular vote not by two points or four points but by as much as six points.

In an election the size of 2016, with about 129m people total voting for the two major-party candidates, that could mean a Republican election victory despite a popular vote loss of almost 8m votes.

This is what democracy... looks... like?

The study, by economics professors Michael Geruso and Dean Spears and a research assistant, used computers to model so-called inversions, in which the popular vote winner loses the election.

From the abstract:

We show that rather than being statistical flukes, inversions have been ex ante likely since the 1800s. In elections yielding a popular vote margin within one percentage point (which has happened in one-eighth of Presidential elections), 40% will be inversions in expectation. Inversion probabilities are asymmetric, in various periods favoring Whigs, Democrats, or Republicans. Feasible policy changes—including awarding each state’s Electoral College ballots proportionally between parties rather than awarding all to the state winner—could substantially reduce inversion probabilities, though not in close elections.

The study shows “Republicans will win nearly one in six presidential races where they lose the popular vote by 3 points,” according to Vox, while “at the extremes, the [study] suggests that there is still a small chance of a Republican victory even in elections where Democrats win the popular vote by about six points.”

Read further over at Vox.

Ocasio-Cortez backs insurgent challenger of 8-term Democrat

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is making her first endorsement of a liberal challenger to an incumbent House Democrat, backing Marie Newman in the primary against eight-term Representative Daniel Lipinski in Illinois, the AP reports:

The New York congresswoman for now is putting her name and small-dollar fundraising ability behind congressional candidates, rather than in the presidential primary.

Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a town hall hosted by the NAACP on September 11, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a town hall hosted by the NAACP on September 11, 2019 in Washington, DC. Photograph: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Lipinski is among the more conservative Democrats in the House and defeated Newman in a primary last cycle.

By backing a primary opponent to a colleague, Ocasio-Cortez is mounting a campaign strategy that resembles her own political rise last year, when she toppled a House Democratic leader in a stunning primary challenge.

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is unveiling a community-focused approach to disaster relief in a South Carolina city that was hit hard by Hurricane Florence last year, AP reports:

During a speech Tuesday in Conway, Buttigieg is expected to call for a disaster commission to help coordinate efforts between federal agencies and the communities affected by disasters. He also wants to increase the number of trained disaster workers.

Conway was hit hard by Hurricane Florence, which destroyed more than 1,500 homes, caused $24 billion in damage and led to 53 deaths in the state.

Buttigieg’s campaign says he is the first of the Democratic hopefuls to release a stand-alone disaster relief plan.

Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He launched his presidential campaign in April.

Buttigieg at the 2019 presidential Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting in Galivants Ferry, South Carolina.
Buttigieg at the 2019 presidential Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting in Galivants Ferry, South Carolina. Photograph: Randall Hill/Reuters

Hello and welcome to our live blog politics coverage. The House judiciary committee will interview former Donald Trump aide Corey Lewandowski this afternoon in what the committee is calling the first hearing of an impeachment investigation of the president.

Lewandowski was a central figure in the Trump presidential campaign before his firing in June 2016, after which he remained an adviser to and emissary for Trump.

A White House lawyer has asked Lewandowski to restrict his testimony to matters discussed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. That still could, theoretically, make for explosive testimony, since Lewandowski was a key figure in Mueller’s discussion of potential obstruction of justice by Trump, with Trump pressuring Lewandowski to pressure Jeff Sessions, attorney general at the time, to spin the Russia investigation in the public eye and to threaten Sessions with firing if Sessions declined to meet with Lewandowski.

Lewandowski’s testimony is scheduled to begin at 1pm ET. The White House has blocked testimony by two other former Trump aides, Rick Dearborn and Rob Porter, who unlike Lewandowski worked in the White House.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill today, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate crisis activist, will advocate for “transformative climate action” in meetings with lawmakers and speeches. The Guardian’s Oliver Milman and Lauren Gambino will be covering it.

Last night Trump held a rally in New Mexico, a state he lost in 2016, where he implied that one of his supporters was too light-skinned to be Hispanic, the Guardian’s David Smith reports:

The US president said of Steve Cortes, a member of his Hispanic advisory council: “He happens to be Hispanic, but I’ve never quite figured it out, because he looks more like a Wasp than I do.”

Now a somewhat old-fashioned term, Wasp is an abbreviation for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

The president went on that there is nobody who “loves his country more or Hispanics more” more than Cortes and, bizarrely, asked him which he prefers.

Trump said: “He says the country. I don’t know. I may have to go for the Hispanics, to be honest with you. We’ve got a lot of Hispanics. We love our Hispanics. Get out and vote.”

Read further here. In other news the supreme leader of Iran has torpedoed talk of a high-level meeting between US and Iranian officials, while the Manhattan district attorney has issued a subpoena for eight years of Donald Trump’s tax returns as part of the office’s investigation of payments made to the pornographic actor Stormy Daniels.

And we’ll catch up with the Democratic presidential field. Thank you for joining us for your politics Tuesday.

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