Your Thursday Evening Briefing

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October 17, 2019

Your Thursday Evening Briefing

By victoria shannon and elizabeth pierson

Good evening. Here's the latest.

Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

1. Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, effectively confirmed the main premise of the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry.

He told reporters that the Trump administration withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate what the president has long insisted was Kiev's assistance to Democrats during the 2016 election. "And that is absolutely appropriate," Mr. Mulvaney said.

"The briefing was jaw-dropping by any metric," said our White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. Watch the clip.

And that wasn't all Mr. Mulvaney discussed.

Michele Eve Sandberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

2. Trump National Doral will host the next G7 summit.

At the same press briefing, Mick Mulvaney announced that President Trump decided to host the world leaders next June at his luxury resort near Miami, prompting immediate questions about a conflict of interest.

Mr. Mulvaney said the resort, the Trump National Doral, would put on the event "at cost," dismissing suggestions of profiteering, and that planning officials had concluded it was "by far and away, far and away, the best physical facility for this meeting."

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

3. Vice President Mike Pence made an agreement with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

After hours of talks in Ankara, Mr. Pence announced that the Turkish military would pause operations in northern Syria for five days, to allow embattled Kurds to leave.

The arrangement is remarkably deferential to Turkey, with the U.S. accepting its territorial claims and dropping economic threats. Turkey's foreign minister credited Mr. Erdogan and said, "We got what we wanted."

Whether the deal will work is unclear, since most of the main actors in northern Syria — the Kurdish leadership and the Russian and Syrian governments — were not at the negotiating table.

Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

4. "Our North Star."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the many in Washington, and across the country, mourning the loss of Elijah Cummings, a 13-term Democrat from Maryland who died today at 68.

As chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the panel charged with maintaining integrity in government, Mr. Cummings had sweeping power to investigate Mr. Trump and his administration.

Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, the senior Democrat on the panel, will step up as acting chair, while a quiet but consequential contest for a permanent successor unfolds.

Frank Austein/Associated Press

5. Boris Johnson has something to smile about.

He finally has a Brexit deal. However, he has no support from either Northern Ireland's influential Democratic Unionist Party or Britain's opposition Labour Party. So the political upheaval will linger.

The prime minister faces an uphill struggle to marshal enough votes for his plan at a special session of Parliament on Saturday. "It's a fork in the road, but it's hardly the end of the road," said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at Oxford University.

Here's what's in the 64 pages of revisions to the withdrawal agreement struck by his predecessor, Theresa May, which went down to a string of defeats in Parliament.

Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

6. "We must continue to stand for free expression."

Mark Zuckerberg, in a speech at Georgetown University, defended Facebook as a champion of free speech and democracy. He also contrasted Facebook with China, where the internet is largely controlled by the government.

Our colleague Mike Isaac, who interviewed Mr. Zuckerberg before the speech, said he was "positioning himself and his company as the hero of Western ideals." He's likely to do the same in a Fox News interview tomorrow.

The social network, under fire for years for enabling the spread of disinformation and violent and hateful content, inflamed more criticism last month with a policy that said it would not fact-check political ads or block false ones, citing the value of people being able to hear and debate them.

Critics say the move invites disinformation ahead of the 2020 election.

Steve Heaslip/The Cape Cod Times, via Associated Press

7. A "bomb cyclone" disrupted the Northeast.

More than 500,000 customers were without electricity today after winds gusting up to 90 miles an hour swept up the East Coast and brought trees and limbs down, snapping power lines.

The storm, known as a "bomb cyclone" or "winter hurricane," occurs when atmospheric pressure drops especially dramatically.

Train service was disrupted and schools closed in some places. There was also grumbling in places where the storm dislodged autumn leaves just as they reached their most vivid tones.

Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

8. "It's exciting and desperately needed."

That's a scientist assessing the rediscovery of an insecticide developed in World War II Germany that appears to be more effective and perhaps safer than DDT to combat malaria.

The mosquito-borne disease infects more than 200 million people a year and kills 400,000, but the very effective mosquito killer DDT was banned by many nations on environmental concerns in the 1960s.

Nazi claims that DFDT was more lethal than DDT were dismissed after the war. Now, it could conceivably be used in smaller, possibly safer, doses, and allow public health officials to thwart growing DDT resistance among mosquitoes.

John Taggart for The New York Times

9. How guilty should you feel about air travel?

Probably not very, unless you're in that small group of frequent fliers — 12 percent of Americans — who take more than six round-trips a year.

They're responsible for two-thirds of all air travel and, by extension, two-thirds of aviation emissions, a new analysis shows.

But flying isn't a big part of the average American's carbon footprint, the International Council on Clean Transportation said. About half typically don't fly at all.

Instead, you could worry about the economic effects of climate change, says a new report from the San Francisco Federal Reserve.

Home values could fall significantly, banks could stop lending to flood-prone communities and towns could lose the tax money they need to build sea walls and other protections.

Merrick Morton/Netflix

10. And finally, Netflix's most popular.

Tucked inside the streaming company's latest earnings report are previously undisclosed numbers on the popularity of its original shows for the past year.

The figures don't correspond with traditional metrics, like Nielsen ratings, and don't show how the shows rank compared to non-Netflix programs like "Game of Thrones." But they do give an inkling of what people like.

Top movies: the Sandra Bullock thriller "Bird Box" (80 million views) and the Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston comedy "Murder Mystery" (73 million). Most-watched TV series: the supernatural "Stranger Things" (64 million views) and "The Umbrella Academy," about sibling superheroes (45 million).

The data shows broader trends, too. High school comedies are especially popular, as are some Spanish-language series.

Have an entertaining evening.

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