If the House approves impeachment, and if the Senate votes to remove Trump, Pence would become president. Would he make a better president?

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A Connecticut police officer has retired after a civil rights organization raised concerns about his membership in a far-right group known for engaging in violent clashes at political rallies, a town official said Friday. Officer Kevin P. Wilcox retired from the East Hampton Police Department on Oct. 22, according to Town Manager David Cox. Wilcox had been an East Hampton police officer since 1999.

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The former president took black and progressive movements to task, without understanding his own failure to deliver change • Call-out culture: how to get it right (and wrong)Former president Barack Obama speaks with actress, model, and activist Yara Shahidi during the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago, on 29 October. Photograph: Ashlee Rezin Garcia/APOn Tuesday, in Chicago, former president Barack Obama joined actress Yara Shahidi in a conversation with activists from his Obama Foundation program. Over the nearly 1.5-hour Obama Foundation summit event, the beloved political figure deployed his trademark charm and humor while discussing the challenges of movement politics.Media attention has focused on a particular part of the conversation – Obama’s criticism of call-out culture and what he perceived as an excessively strident activist left. “We can’t completely remake society in a minute,” Obama said, “so we have to make some accommodations to the existing structures.”He added, “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you.”He then made a separate point about social media activism:“If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself. ‘Man you see how woke I was, I called you out.’” But “that’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change.”On its face, these are fair remarks. During the session, both Obama and Shahidi drew from examples of the nonviolent civil rights movement of the early 1960s, which required enormous faith, patience and compromise from its activists in the face of threats to their lives and livelihood. Today, as social justice activists’ material conditions have relatively improved, they will encounter people in positions of power with wealth and access, and they have to learn to work with them on some level, Obama implied. And no, tweeting about a verb probably won’t bring about change.However, we can’t look at Obama’s remarks in a vacuum. From 2016 – as he prepared to exert his influence over who would be the next Democratic nominee – to the present, Obama has often aimed his political critiques at youth-led, black and progressive movements. While upholding the necessity of nuance, Obama himself seems to force these movements into a box, cherry-picking anecdotes for a strawman: that these movements expect purity and demand perfection.> This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke … you should get over that. The world is messy. There are ambiguities> > Barack ObamaIn an early instance of this ideological pattern, at a 2016 youth town hall in London, Obama spoke generally of Black Lives Matter while referring to the handful of activists who confronted the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her role in criminalizing black youth:“Once you’ve highlighted an issue and brought it to people’s attention … then you can’t just keep on yelling at them. And you can’t refuse to meet because that might compromise the purity of your position. The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room.”A few months later in a Howard commencement address, with Chicago protests of the police killing of Laquan McDonald not far in the distance, he told the audience of mostly black students about his criminal justice reform as a state senator:“I can say this unequivocally: without at least the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I could never have gotten those [criminal justice reform] bills passed … If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.”And earlier this year, Obama again raised the amorphous specter of purity politics as people have embraced a leftward policy shift:“One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States … is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be’ and then we start … a ‘circular firing squad’, where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues.”Obama has offered these platitudes without much evidence that progressives, Black Lives Matter activists or young voters expect purity. Impatience with the status quo is not purity. A consistent political project is not purity. And being patient has its limits.> For many Americans, the normalization of genuinely leftwing policies is providing the hope and change Obama campaigned onYou can gather from the general direction of Obama’s career, from turning down a route in corporate law to his community organizing, that he has some commitment to social justice. However, his remarks indicate discomfort with more radical tactics in achieving it, reducing them to petulant zeal and not a legitimate strategy among the broad scope of tools needed to dismantle oppressive systems.While discussing Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as examples of patient progress, he freezes them in time. He failed to note either King’s or Parks’s evolutions. Over time King became more radicalized and questioned integration. When Parks was forced to Detroit to retreat from the backlash against her bus boycott activism, she became a proponent of the Panthers’ self-defense demands and identified Malcolm X as her personal hero.Obama also failed to discuss how, despite King’s strategies negotiating with Lyndon Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress waffled in passing further civil rights measures until the 1968 riots after King’s assassination, when Congress was forced to swiftly pass the Fair Housing Act.Or go back further: despite the negotiations and patience of abolitionists in the 1800s, it was a steady stream of black uprisings, and an entire civil war, that gave abolition laws and the Emancipation Proclamation any teeth.Obama’s fundamental problem is in confusing a strategy of pragmatism with the strategy. Pragmatic approaches can coexist with more radical politics. But Obama’s pattern of dismissing radical demands altogether shows a serious unwillingness to appreciate the times. Obama is committed to a notion of reaching across the aisle that may have seemed necessary in 2012, but not so much in 2019.Americans in the throes of economic struggle and social oppression have been advised to hold their nose for so long that they’re suffocating. The labor movement is experiencing more worker strikes now than in the past 40 years. We’re in a 1968 moment, not 1963. But Obama has not accepted this evolution.As people demand universal policies for basic needs of shelter, food, freedom from police terror, and economic security, and when wealth inequality is the worst in a century, Obama has to reckon with his own questions. How is his form of calling out – scolding black, young and progressive movements – bringing about change? Is he part of the solution or part of the problem?For many Americans, the normalization of genuinely leftwing policies is providing the hope and change Obama campaigned on. This is the time for him to finally help achieve it.

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The cleanup in Paradise, California, shows no sign of ending. 18,000 buildings were razed by the Camp Fire, and residents must start from scratch.

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Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday hailed Donald Trump as the “best American president” for his “transparency” regarding his stated desire to maintain U.S. control of the Middle Eastern nation’s lucrative oil fields. “I tell you, he’s the best American president. Not because his policies are good, but because he’s the most transparent president,” Assad said in a state television interview, according to a translation of his remarks by NBC News.

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Authorities have ordered evacuations for about 7,500 people as a wildfire burns on a hilltop north of Los Angeles. The fire on South Mountain near Santa Paula erupted Thursday evening and quickly grew to over 6 square miles (16 square kilometers). The fire is driven by moderate winds that continue in some mountainous areas even as they have eased elsewhere in Southern California.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel got a toxic welcome to India on Friday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi treated her to a military parade in New Delhi's severely polluted air. Ignoring medical advice to the choking megacity's 20 million inhabitants, Merkel and Modi reviewed a guard of honour at the presidential palace without pollution masks. The European Union's longest-serving leader is due to step down in 2021.

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California's Sonoma wine country dealt with destructive wildfires in 2017. Here's how one winery is dealing with 2019's Kincade Fire.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi is subverting rule of law, write former acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

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1. Trump judicial nominee cries over scathing letter from the American Bar Association  The Washington Post
2. Trump judicial nominee breaks down in tears at hearing  CNN
3. Trump judicial pick breaks down when pressed on LGBTQ views  NBC News
4. The ABA Strikes Again  The Wall Street Journal
5. Another Smear Campaign From the American Bar Association  The Wall Street Journal
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1. Update: Josh Gordon was indeed waived Thursday  NBCSports.com
2. Pats releasing Gordon; WR heading to waivers  NFL.com
3. Josh Gordon Is No Longer A Patriot, Being Released Off IR | Patriots Press Pass  CLNS Media
4. Report: Patriots release Gordon from injured reserve  msnNOW
5. Josh Gordon news: Patriots release wide receiver and now the Eagles’ waiting game begins  Bleeding Green Nation
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Islamic State confirmed on Thursday that its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a weekend raid by U.S. special forces in northwestern Syria, and vowed revenge against the United States. The Iraqi rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself "caliph" of all Muslims, holding sway over huge areas of Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017 before Islamic State's control disintegrated under U.S.-led attacks. The group confirmed his death in an audio tape posted online and said a successor, identified as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, had been appointed.

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A US government official has reportedly told politicians leading the impeachment hearings against Donald Trump that she was urged by a Republican-linked lobbyist to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine from her post, as the president's allies launched a smear campaign against her.Catherine Croft, a Ukraine expert who worked at the US State Department, said she was repeatedly contacted by lobbyist Robert Livingston about ousting Marie Yovanovitch, according to prepared remarks obtained by NPR.

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1. The death of PlayStation Vue is a damned shame  TechHive
2. PS5 might have one huge advantage over the Xbox and even gaming PCs  BGR
3. This Leaked Black Friday ‘PlayStation 4’ Ad Is A Bundle Of Savings  Forbes
4. Development of PlayStation 5 games "progressing smoothly" as two more rumored titles are leaked  Notebookcheck.net
5. The PS4 just became the second best-selling console of all time  The Next Web
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1. Kevin Durant has a broader perspective after being sidelined with injury – Jay Williams | First Take  ESPN
2. Kevin Durant gets candid about Draymond Green and KD's absence this season  Yahoo Sports
3. Warriors were bad before Stephen Curry’s injury. Now the nightmare begins  San Francisco Chronicle
4. Kevin Durant says Draymond's on-court explosion impacted his free agency decision | First Take  ESPN
5. Kevin Durant cites Joel Embiid among top 5 players he enjoys watching  Sixers Wire
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1. 'No further discussion': Talks halt between whistleblower lawyers and Schiff staff amid expectation he won't testify  Washington Examiner
2. House approves rules for impeachment process  CBS News
3. 'Bigger problems': Republican lawmaker says Schiff should confirm name of whistleblower  Washington Examiner
4. Judge Andrew Napolitano: Proof of Trump’s impeachable offenses plain to see  Fox News
5. Adam Schiff denies impeachment rules are unfair  CBS Evening News
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1. Kim Kardashian recreates the Elle Woods 'Legally Blonde' video essay for Halloween  USA TODAY
2. Kim Kardashian Recreates Elle Woods' Admissions Video For Halloween And Reese Witherspoon Approves!  Access
3. Legally Blonde! Kim Kardashian Recreates Elle Woods' Iconic Harvard Video Essay for Halloween  Yahoo Entertainment
4. Kim Kardashian recreates Legally Blonde for Halloween  The Week
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1. Donald Trump Thinks Meghan Markle Takes the Media Scrutiny 'Very Personally' and Offers This Advice  Showbiz Cheat Sheet
2. Meghan Markle And Prince Harry Will Be Spending Thanksgiving In America, Reports Say  Access
3. Sources Are Dishing That Kate Middleton Is Fully Over Prince William and Harry’s Royal Feud  Cosmopolitan.com
4. 18 Photographs of Kate Middleton Before She Became Royalty  Showbiz Cheat Sheet
5. Trump says Meghan Markle takes UK tabloid coverage 'very personally'  New York Post
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is facing an unwelcome new financial challenge in Syria after the U.S. pullback enabled his ally Bashar Assad to reclaim the biggest chunk of territory in the country still outside his control.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decried the publication of nude photos of Rep. Katie Hill, who announced her resignation from Congress this week.

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The House on Thursday voted to pass a historic resolution establishing formal procedures for the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The 232-196 vote fell almost exclusively along party lines, with two moderate Democrats voting no.

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Islamic State confirmed on Thursday that its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a weekend raid by U.S. special forces in northwestern Syria, and vowed revenge against the United States. The Iraqi rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself "caliph" of all Muslims, holding sway over huge areas of Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017 before Islsmic State's control disintegrated under U.S.-led attacks. The group confirmed his death in an audio tape posted online and said a successor, identified as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, had been appointed.

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Experts told Insider they could not recall a similar instance of a man being charged with manslaughter in connection with his partner's suicide.

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California governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, has accepted large donations from Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a utility company he now excoriates for "greed" and "mismanagement."PG&E has faced widespread criticism for implementing blackouts for millions of customers to avoid sparking wildfires in the midst of California's dry and windy fall weather."I have a message for PG&E," Newsom wrote on Twitter on Friday. "Your years and years of greed. Years and years of mismanagement. Years and years of putting shareholders over people. Are OVER."Newsom and allies accepted $208,400 from the utility during his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, according to local affiliate ABC10. Of that total, $150,000 went to a political spending group called “Citizens Supporting Gavin Newsom for Governor 2018,” while the rest went to directly to Newsom's campaign.PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January 2019. Faulty PG&E electricity equipment has been blamed for sparking several wildfires in the past decade.California has consistently shut down proposals to clear dead trees from forests and to trim trees near power lines state wide, creating conditions for a rash of wildfire outbreaks in recent years.The Kincaid Fire currently burning in Sonoma County in the northern part of the state has forced the evacuation of roughly 200,000 people. The fire is twice the size of the city of San Fransisco.Newsom declared a state of emergency on Sunday in response to the Kincaid Fire and several other wildfires throughout the state. He again threatened PG&E in a statement on the situation."There is a plan to get out of this. This is not the new normal,” Newsom said on Sunday at an evacuation center in northern California. “This is not a 10-year process to deal with this. That will not be the case… [PG&E] will be held to account to do something radically different

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As the showdown between police and protesters in Hong Kong has intensified, officers have used increasing force, deploying an arsenal of crowd-control weapons, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, sponge grenades and bean bag rounds. Protesters have also stepped up their actions, hurling petrol bombs, vandalizing mainland Chinese banks and businesses believed to be pro-Beijing, throwing bricks at police stations and battling officers in the streets, sometimes with metal bars. Reuters scrutinized hundreds of images of the protests, as well as dozens of police reports and video footage, and combined this research with reporting on the ground to document the weapons used by the police and protesters, and how the violence has increased from day to day.

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Priorities and capabilities change with time.

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Tony Maycon Munoz-Mendez was serving a life sentence in Georgia when he was released "in error." Authorities captured him in Kentucky Wednesday.

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