An early look at the 2020 electorate
 
We project that the 2020 election will mark the first time that Hispanics will be the largest racial or ethnic minority group in the electorate, accounting for just over 13% of eligible voters – slightly more than blacks. This change reflects the gradual but continuous growth in the Hispanic share of eligible voters, up from 9% in the 2008 presidential election and 7% in the 2000 election. The black eligible voter population has grown about as fast as the electorate overall, meaning their share has held constant at about 12% since 2000.
 
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Taken together, this strong growth among minority populations means that a third of eligible voters will be nonwhite in 2020, up from about a quarter in 2000. This increase is at least partially linked to immigration and naturalization patterns: One-in-ten eligible voters in the 2020 election will have been born outside the U.S., the highest share since at least 1970.

“Ultimately, the greatest concern about the proposed low-yield Trident warhead is that the president might feel less restrained about using it in a crisis,” Brown and former officials wrote. “When it comes to using a nuclear weapon, restraint is a good thing.”

President Donald Trump claims that he didn’t lie to the American people about not having any business deals with Russia, because his plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow don’t count as business.
 
In an interview with The New York Times, Trump insisted that pursuing a development project in Russia while running for president was acceptable because “that wasn’t business.”
 
“I had no money invested. It was a letter of intent, or option. It was a free option. It was a nothing. And I wasn’t doing anything. I don’t consider that even business,” Trump said in the interview. “And frankly, that wasn’t even on my radar. If you take a look at that, take a look at the deal. There was no money put up. There was no transfer. I don’t think they had a location. I’m not even sure if they had a location.”
 
Trump signed the aforementioned letter of intent for the project as early as 2015. Project plans, published by Buzzfeed on January 22, demonstrated that the Trump Tower was meant to be one of Europe’s tallest buildings and would have made an estimated $300 million in profits. The project would have included a luxury spa named after Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
 
The president’s decision to pursue a lucrative business deal in Russia while running for president has come under increased scrutiny ever since his former longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the timeline for the real estate project. Cohen had originally testified that the efforts to launch a Trump Tower had been abandoned in January 2016, but he later admitted that the efforts had continued until June.
 
Cohen is now cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, which is investigating whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. He will testify before Congress again this month.
 
Since coming to office, Trump has appeared unconcerned with potential conflicts of interest caused by his real estate empire. Foreign officials have repeatedly chosen to stay in Trump-branded hotels while traveling internationally, a fact that allowed several lawsuits to be filed against the president for potential violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the president from profiting off of his position.
 
“Since Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, three separate lawsuits have been filed about his business empire and conflict-of-interest claims related to his office as President. In some form, the lawsuits stated the President profited from his public office based on aspects of the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments clauses of the Constitution,” reads a report from the organization the Constitution Center.
 
The foreign emoluments clause states, “No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voted to drop sanctions from a company connected to one of Putin’s closest allies, and a new report claims that the actions may directly benefit one of the major donors to the Republican Party.
 
A report from the political group the Democratic Coalition revealed ties that the Kentucky senator has to a company called Access Industries, which is owned by Russian oligarch Len Blavatnik. Access Industries donated $3.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC run by McConnell’s former chief of staff.
 
As the report noted, Blavatnik is a business partner with Oleg Deripaska, who the report claims is “one of Vladimir Putin’s sanctioned oligarchs” and the owner of RusAl, the once-sanctioned company that McConnell and other Senate Republicans voted to remove sanctions imposed in 2016 amid evidence of Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election.
 
“The Trump Administration formally dropped sanctions on the night of January 27th, 2019, which were imposed against Deripaska, Blavatnik’s long time business partner, for his high-level role in Russia’s election attack against the United States in 2016,” the report noted. “Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is also a longtime business partner of Blavatnik.”

"CBS News uncovered a page from Northam's yearbook at the Virginia Military Institute which had nicknames listed underneath his name. One of them was "Coonman," a racial slur."

Titre : General Motors devrait licencier 4.000 travailleurs salariés
Source : https://www.20minutes.fr/economie/2 [...] s-salaries

Jonathan Martin @jmartNYT
 
STORY: Northam, hunkered down w advisers, is refusing to quit, making case he does not think it was him in the photo. And he's desperate to prove it, even suggesting he'll use facial recognition software.  But some Va Dems say it's too late, he must go >