Iowa Democrats worry ‘Medicare for All’ hurts key industry

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Kim Motl doesn’t work in the health insurance industry. But her friends and neighbors do. So when she saw Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Motl pressed the Democratic presidential candidate about her “Medicare for All” plan, which would replace private insurance with a government-run system.

“What about the little guys that work in the insurance business, that support our communities? The secretary that works for them, but maybe supports their family, what happens to them?” the 64-year-old housing advocate asked the senator.

“What happens to all of those people who lose their jobs?” Motl asked in a later interview.

Warren reassured her that jobs would not be lost because of her plan. But the exchange is a reminder that while railing against the insurance industry can score points with the progressive Democratic base, it can also alienate potential supporters in Iowa, where voters will usher in the presidential primary in less than two months.

Nearly 17,000 Iowans are either directly employed by health insurance companies or employed in related jobs, according to data collected by America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry advocacy group. Des Moines, the seat of the state’s most Democratic county, is known as one of America’s insurance capitals partly because of the high number of health insurance companies and jobs in the metro area. Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield’s health insurance headquarters employs roughly 1,700 in the metro area, and that’s just one of the 16 health insurance companies domiciled in Iowa, according to the Iowa Insurance Division.

For many Iowans, the Medicare for All debate is personal, and the prospect of losing a job could influence whom they support in the Feb. 3 caucuses.

Tamyra Harrison, vice-chair of the East Polk Democrats, says she has heard worries at her local Democratic meetings about “the effect it would have on people that work in the insurance industry, and those that have small businesses in the area.”

“They’re concerned about the repercussions on people living here that maybe the Democrats aren’t thinking of” when they’re talking about eliminating private insurance, she said.

The Democrats’ health care plans vary widely in terms of the speed and scope with which they would affect health care industry jobs, but experts say every plan marks a substantial reconfiguring of one of the country’s biggest industry and thus all would affect thousands of jobs nationwide.

Some, including Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have called for replacing private insurance with a government plan. Asked about this last month in Iowa, Warren said, “Some of the people currently working in health insurance will work in other parts of insurance — in life insurance, in auto insurance, in car insurance,” or for the new government-run system. She also cited five years of “transition support” for displaced workers built into the plan.

Sanders has previously argued that his plan would see “all kinds of jobs opened up in health care,” and his bill includes a fund to help retrain and transition private insurance workers out of their current jobs.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, would leave room for private insurers, but also include a public option, which they have acknowledged could ultimately put insurance companies out of business. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is trying to walk a line on the issue, having signed onto Sanders’ Medicare for All bill in the Senate but on the campaign trail shied away from eliminating private insurance entirely.

Even those who say they would keep private insurance companies face risks. Buttigieg revealed this week that he worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield in Michigan during his time as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. He said he “doubts” his work contributed to layoffs the company later announced and has instead sought to highlight the impact of his opponents’ plans.

“There are some voices in the Democratic primary right now who are calling for a policy that would eliminate the job of every single American working at every single insurance company in the country,” he said.

Economists say the jobs impact of any shift away from private health care would be felt nationwide by hundreds of thousands of Americans. It’s not just jobs at private insurance companies that could be affected; those working on processing insurance claims at hospitals and other administrative health care jobs could be reduced as well.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018, nearly 386,000 Americans were employed by health and medical insurance carriers — but some analysts found the number of jobs lost from eliminating private insurance could be much higher. Economists at the University of Michigan found in an analysis of Sanders’ Medicare for All bill that the jobs of nearly 747,000 health insurance industry workers, and an additional 1.06 million health insurance administrative staffers, would no longer be needed if Medicare for All became law.

In Iowa, however, the issue could be particularly problematic.

Around Des Moines, “you can’t swing a dead cat without finding someone who works at an insurance provider or a company,” said Mary McAdams, chair of the Ankeny Area Democrats. She said she believes Democrats in her area aren’t as concerned about what would happen to their jobs if private insurance were eliminated because they don’t have much allegiance to their companies to begin with.

“They know full well these companies would drop them like a habit,” she said.

The economic repercussions of eliminating private insurance jobs could go beyond simply the loss of local jobs, as Paula Dierenfield, a Republican lawyer and the executive director of the Federation of Iowa Insurers, points out.

“This is an industry that employs thousands of employees in high-quality jobs,” she said. “All of those employees pay income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and the companies that they work for also pay millions in premium taxes, as well as property taxes. So it would have a significant impact on the Iowa economy generally as well as here in the Des Moines metro area.”

The peripheral effects of eliminating insurance jobs worry Marcia Wannamaker, a real estate agent from West Des Moines who raised her concerns about the fate of private insurance during a recent question-and-answer session with Biden.

“It’s really going to cut our jobs,” Wannamaker said.

She later noted in an interview that if the private insurance industry shrinks, people working for such companies would lose their jobs.

“Then that trickles down to the housing. They’re going to have to move. I just think it’s going to be a disaster,” she said. “When you sell real estate, these people buy homes. It’s just part of how the Iowa — and especially in Des Moines, the economy works.”

Boris Johnson heads north to celebrate crushing election win

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was heading to northern England on Saturday to meet newly elected Conservative Party lawmakers in the working class heartland that turned its back on the opposition Labour Party in this week’s election and helped give him an 80-seat majority.

In a victory speech outside 10 Downing Street on Friday, Johnson called for an end to the acrimony that has festered throughout the country since the divisive 2016 Brexit referendum, and urged Britain to “let the healing begin.”

Johnson’s campaign mantra to “get Brexit done″ and widespread unease with the leadership style and socialist policies of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn combined to give the ruling Conservatives 365 seats in the House of Commons, its best performance since party icon Margaret Thatcher’s last victory in 1987. Labour slumped to 203 seats, its worst showing since 1935.

While Johnson was on a victory lap Saturday, Corbyn — who has pledged to stand down next year — was under fire from within his own party.

Former lawmaker Helen Goodman, one of many Labour legislators to lose their seat in northern England, told BBC radio that “the biggest factor was obviously the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader.”

Armed with his hefty new majority, Johnson is set to start the process next week of pushing Brexit legislation through Parliament to ensure Britain leaves the EU by the Jan. 31 deadline. Once he’s passed that hurdle — breaking three years of parliamentary deadlock — he has to seal a trade deal with the bloc by the end of 2020.

Johnson owes his success, in part, to traditionally Labour-voting working class constituencies in northern England that backed the Conservatives because of the party’s promise to deliver Brexit. During the 2016 referendum, many of those communities voted to leave the EU because of concerns that immigrants were taking their jobs and neglect by the central government in London.

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Follow AP’s full coverage of Brexit and British politics at https://www.apnews.com/Brexit.

Horowitz report spotlights little-known FBI agent's role in Russia probe, Flynn case

Inspector General Michael Horowitz's long-awaited report this week on FBI and Justice Department surveillance abuses does not provide the name of an unidentified FBI supervisory special agent (SSA) who made a series of apparent oversights in the bureau's so-called "Crossfire Hurricane" probe into the Trump campaign.
However, a review of Horowitz's findings leaves little doubt that the unnamed SSA is Joe Pientka -- someone who could soon play a prominent role in the ongoing prosecution of Michael Flynn, as the former Trump national security adviser fights to overturn his guilty plea on a single charge of making false statements.
Specifically, Horowitz's report states that "SSA 1" was one of the FBI agents to interview Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017, in a seemingly casual conversation that would later form the basis for his criminal prosecution.
It was previously reported that the interviewing agents were Peter Strzok, who was later fired by the FBI for misconduct and anti-Trump bias, and Pientka, whom Strzok previously identified as his notetaker for the Flynn interview. Flynn's attorney has also mentioned Pientka's role during past court proceedings. Of the two agents, only Strzok is openly named in the Horowitz report, which strongly indicates that the other is Pientka.
"SSA 1," Horowitz's report states, may have helped mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) about material facts concerning former Trump adviser Carter Page and British ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose unverified dossier played a central role in the FBI's warrant to surveil Page.
Page has not been charged with any wrongdoing, even though the FBI flatly called him a foreign "agent" in its surveillance warrant application. And former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, which concluded earlier this year, found no evidence that the Trump campaign had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russians to influence the 2016 election, despite multiple outreach efforts by Russian actors.
On Aug. 1, 2016,  just after the official inception of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign, Strzok and Pientka traveled overseas to meet with the Australian officials who had spoken with Trump adviser George Papadopoulos in May of that year. The officials had overhead Papadopoulos mention his now-infamous conversation with Joseph Mifsud about suggestions of potential Russian leaks of Hillary Clinton’s emails, apparently touching off what would become the Russia probe.
SSA 1 was given a supervisory role on the Crossfire Hurricane team, overseeing agents and reporting directly to Strzok. The special agent created the electronic sub-file to which the Steele reports would be uploaded and, according to Horowitz, these reports were used to support the probable cause in the Page FISA applications.
Then, on Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News published an article describing U.S. government efforts to determine whether Page was in communication with Kremlin officials. The article seemed to closely track information from one of Steele’s reports. As a result, one FBI case agent who reported to SSA 1 believed Steele was the source, according to Horowitz.
SSA 1 apparently thought the same, as his notes from a Sept. 30, 2016, meeting said: “Control issues -- reports acknowledged in Yahoo News.” When questioned by Horowitz's office, the agent explained he was concerned -- but not sure -- that Steele was the Yahoo News source.
The drafts of the Page FISA application, however, tell a different story. Horowitz found that until Oct. 14, 2016, drafts state that Steele was responsible for the leak that led to the Yahoo News article. One draft specifically states that Steele “was acting on his/her own volition and has since been admonished by the FBI.”
These assertions, which could have pointed to political motivations by their source soon before the 2016 presidential election, were changed to the following: Steele’s “business associate or the law firm that hired the business associate likely provided this information to the press.”
Horowitz found no facts to support this assessment.

Former Trump adviser Carter Page was falsely accused of being a "foreign agent" in the FBI's secret surveillance warrant.

And, even after receiving “additional information about Steele’s media contacts, the Crossfire Hurricane team did not change the language in any of the three renewal applications regarding the FBI’s assessment of Steele’s role in the September 23 article," Horowitz found.
On Oct. 11, 2016, Steele met with then-State Department official Jonathan Winer and Deputy Assistant Secretary Kathleen Kavalec. Steele informed Kavalec that a Russian cyber-hacking operation targeting the 2016 U.S. elections was paying the culprits from “the Russian Consulate in Miami.” Kavalec later met with an FBI liaison and explained to them that Russia did not have a consulate in Miami. SSA 1 was informed of Steele’s incorrect claim about the Russian Consulate on Nov. 18, 2016, but the FISA court was never provided this information, according to the IG report.
Additionally, the agent was aware of Page’s denials to an FBI confidential human source (CHS) that he knew Russian officials Igor Sechin and Igor Divyekin – officials that Steele alleged Page had secret meetings with in Moscow in July 2016. In fact, Horowitz found that SSA 1 “knew as of October 17 that Page denied ever knowing Divyekin."
"This inconsistency was also not noted during the Woods Procedures on the subsequent FISA renewal applications, and none of the three later FISA renewal applications included Page’s denials to the CHS," Horowitz wrote, referring to the FBI's practice of reverifying facts in its FISA application before seeking renewals.
SSA 1 also had the responsibility for “confirming that the Woods File was complete and for double-checking the factual accuracy review to confirm that the file contained appropriate documentation for each of the factual assertions in the FISA application," according to Horowitz.
But Horowitz found numerous instances “in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application targeting Carter Page were inaccurate, incomplete or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed."
In particular, the FBI misled the FISC by asserting that Steele’s prior reporting "has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.” Horowitz's review found there was no documentation to support this statement; SSA 1 told Horowitz they “speculated.”
SSA 1 was also aware, according to Horowitz, that Steele had relayed his information to officials at the State Department, and he had documentation showing Steele had told the team he provided the reports to his contacts at the State Department. Despite this, the FISC was informed that Steele told the FBI he “only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI.”
After Steele was terminated as an FBI source for leaking to the media, there was a meeting with Crossfire Hurricane team members and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife had been hired by Steele employer Fusion GPS. SSA 1 told Horowitz that Ohr likely left the meeting with the impression that he should contact the FBI if Steele contacted him; Ohr told Horowitz that SSA 1 became his initial point of contact when relaying Steele’s information to the FBI.
Pientka was selected to provide an Aug. 17, 2016 FBI security briefing to the Trump campaign once the FBI was informed that Flynn would be in attendance. According to Pientka, the briefing gave him “the opportunity to gain assessment and possibly have some level of familiarity” with Flynn. He was there to “record” anything “specific to Russia or anything specific to our investigation.”
Pientka found the opportunity to interact with Flynn “useful” because he was able to compare Flynn’s “norms” from the briefing with Flynn’s conduct at his Jan. 24, 2017, interview. It was this assessment that purportedly helped lead Pientka to conclude that Flynn was not lying when questioned about his interactions with the Russians after the election and his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
With Strzok's termination from the FBI, Pientka is perhaps the only remaining FBI witness against Flynn.
Horowitz's descriptions of SSA 1's conduct came as U.S. Attorney John Durham announced Monday that he did not "agree" with some of the inspector general's conclusions, stunning observers while also highlighting Durham's broader criminal mandate and scope of review. Durham is focusing on foreign actors as well as the CIA, while Horowitz concentrated his attention on the Justice Department and FBI.
"Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened," Durham said in his statement, adding that his "investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department" and "has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S."
Pientka is hardly the only bureau employee to come under scrutiny. Prior to the FBI's warrant application to monitor Page, the FBI reached out to the CIA and other intelligence agencies for information on Page, Horowitz discovered. The CIA responded in an email by telling the FBI that Page had contacts with Russians from 2008 to 2013, but that Page had reported them to the CIA and was serving as a CIA operational contact and informant on Russian business and intelligence interests.
An FBI lawyer then doctored the CIA's email about Page to make it seem as though the agency had said only that Page was not an active source. And, the FBI included Page's contacts with Russians in the warrant application as evidence he was a foreign "agent," without disclosing to the secret surveillance court that Page was voluntarily working with the CIA concerning those foreign contacts.
For several years, Democrats and analysts at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN have repeatedly claimed that key claims in the Clinton-funded anti-Trump dossier had been corroborated and that the document was not critical to the FBI's warrant to surveil Page. Horowitz repudiated that claim, with the FBI's legal counsel even describing the warrant to surveil Page as "essentially a single source FISA" wholly dependent on the dossier.
Among the unsubstantiated claims in the dossier: that ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to conspire with Russian hackers; that the Trump campaign was paying hackers working out of a nonexistent Russian consulate in Miami; that a lurid blackmail tape of Trump existed and might be in Russian possession; and that Page was bribed with a 19 percent share in a Russian company.
The FBI declined Fox News' request for an on-the-record comment late Friday.
Wilson Miller contributed to this report.

Biden confronted on Ukraine but doesn't answer

The Yellow Joe of Texas

Joe Biden performed his own version of a Texas two-step at a campaign stop in San Antonio on Friday night, letting a crowd of supporters drown out a protester who confronted him on Ukraine -- before the ex-vice president could answer -- and then continuing his rhetorical attack on President Trump.
It happened while Biden was assailing Trump’s record on immigration and veteran care.
“America can overcome four years of Donald Trump’s chaos and corruption, but if re-elected it will forever fundamentally change the character of who we are as a nation," Biden told the crowd. "We can’t let this happen. This election is about the soul of our nation and Donald Trump has poisoned our soul.”
Soon a man in the crowd – not shown on camera – interjected to ask: “What about corruption in Ukraine?”
The reference was to Biden's past dealings in the country, where his son, Hunter Biden, reportedly held a seven-figure job with Ukraine’s largest natural gas company, Burisma Holdings. At the same time, the elder Biden -- as vice president under Barack Obama -- was leading an effort to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the company, raising concerns about a possible conflict of interest.
The Bidens' history in Ukraine has been a growing concern for the White House and Republicans as Democrats in Congress pursue the possible impeachment of President Trump over a July phone call in which the president allegedly tried to make an announcement of a Ukraine investigation into the Bidens a condition for the country's new administration to receive military aid from the U.S.
But before Biden could address the Ukraine question on Friday, the crowd booed the protester and began to chant, “We want Joe!”
Biden seemed to follow the crowd's lead.
“This man represents Donald Trump very well. He’s just like Donald Trump,” Biden said of the protester, who appeared to leave the event, with the  crowd waving goodbye to him -- though it was unclear if he chose to leave or if he was forced out either by security or other attendees.
“A great American,” Biden continued. "Just let him go. … Don’t hurt … Just let him go. … This is not a Trump rally. This is a real rally.”
With Texas considered a battleground state in the 2020 presidential race, Biden refrained from side-swiping any other top-tier Democratic rivals despite tightening polls ahead of February’s primary and caucus in New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively, the first times voters will actually help determine the party’s nominee for the White House.
With the protester gone, Biden resumed his verbal attack on Trump.
“As my mother would say, God bless me. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Biden said, making the sign of the cross before continuing his rebuke of the president.
Biden then seemed to imply that Trump was responsible for the Aug. 3 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead.
“Remember in '18, {Trump] claimed there was an invasion of Latinos coming across the border? 'They’re going to invade and pollute America,'" Biden said. "Well guess what? The words presidents say matter. It didn't take long after that, that a guy down in El Paso walked into a parking lot and gunned down a lot of innocent people and he says, 'I’m doing it to prevent the invasion of Texas by Hispanics.'”
Authorities said the suspect, Patrick Crusius, 21, of Allen, Texas, had written a manifesto that said the shooting was fueled by fear of an "invasion" by illegal immigrants, adding that the city's large Hispanic population played a part in their targeting. In October, Crusius pleaded not guilty in connection with the shooting and is due to return to court Nov. 7.
Trump condemned the shooting as “an act of cowardice” on Twitter, adding, “I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people.”
San Antonio, where Biden spoke Friday, is the city where long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro served as mayor before joining Obama's administration as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Speaking at an event in Iowa last week, Biden called a man a “damn liar” after he took a swipe at son Hunter's role on the board of a controversial Ukrainian natural gas firm.
“You sent your son over there to get a job and work for a gas company where he had no experience,” the man began during the heated question-and-answer session at the forum in New Hampton. “In order to get access for the president … you’re selling access to the president just like he was.”
Biden fired back: “You’re a damn liar, man. That’s not true and no one has ever said that.”
The claim that Biden “sent” his son to Ukraine for a job at Burisma is not accurate.
Someone appeared to attempt to take the microphone away from the man in the audience, but Biden stopped them, saying, “let him go.”
“No one has said my son has done anything wrong and I did not, on any occasion," he continued, only to be cut off by the man in the audience who shouted that he “never said” Biden was “doing anything wrong.”
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Pelosi 2019 Cartoons

Trial-ready: Pelosi faces choice on impeachment prosecutors

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s a campaign going on in Washington that even the most garrulous members of Congress aren’t eager to talk about: to be part of a team of uncertain size, with a risky mission, to be named by a leader who isn’t talking about what she’s looking for or when she’ll decide.

Welcome to the race within the House to win a spot on the Democratic team that will prosecute the impeachment case against President Donald Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the sole decider, but she offered no hints Thursday as the impeachment saga accelerated toward an expected vote next week by the full House — and, in January, a Senate trial.

“When the time is right, you’ll know who the people are,” she told reporters Thursday.

But they’ll have to be the right people, by Pelosi’s measure, to press the Democrats’ case that they are defending the Constitution against a president who put betrayed his oath by pushing a foreign country to help him in the 2020 elections.

The impeachment managers will have to withstand the scrutiny and risk of prosecuting the case against Trump from the floor of the Republican-held Senate, before a global audience. And be willing to face the near-certainty of defeat, as the Senate appears unlikely to convict and remove Trump from office.

“They’re ugly,” Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said of the Senate proceedings. He would know, as a manager of former President Bill Clinton’s trial two decades ago. “I have a lot of sympathy for the House managers that are going to be picked.”

Plenty of ambitious people are quietly jockeying for the job by writing Pelosi letters nominating themselves, spreading the word or just hoping their work impresses her. The campaigns are exceptionally sensitive, since lobbying Pelosi or looking to gain fame or campaign funds from impeachment could backfire. But the widely televised public hearings before the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee are thought to have served a kind of audition for the most likely Democrats to be appointed to the team.

The competition has kept aides, reporters and lawmakers talking for weeks. But few, if any, seem to have solid insight into Pelosi’s plans.

Yet a few things seemed likely. Almost certainly, the team won’t include Democratic freshmen from Trump-won districts who are the most at risk in their reelection bids this year.

The group seems certain to be diverse in race and gender, providing a contrast to the 13 white, male Republican lawmakers who prosecuted the case against Clinton. (Trump’s defense at the trial will be conducted by his legal team, not lawmakers.)

Pelosi also has suggested in private that she’s concerned about “geographic diversity” on the team, according to a Democratic aide who was not authorized to speak publicly about her thinking.

That means she’s likely to name at least one manager from someplace other than the robustly Democratic U.S. coasts, which could help counter the GOP argument that impeachment is a partisan, elitist exercise to topple Trump from power.

She’ll also want managers who have legal experience as well as deep knowledge of the case against Trump. That likely means members drawn from the rosters of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees that led the investigation and wrote the articles of impeachment.

The members who check the most boxes start with the chairmen of both panels. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California has drawn widespread praise — and Trump’s ferocious scorn — for his investigation of the president’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate the family of Democratic hopeful Joe Biden. Schiff, a former prosecutor, is exceptionally close to Pelosi. She yielded the podium to him at a recent press conference and opted to watch his statement from the audience, alongside reporters.

Nadler is a veteran of the Clinton impeachment proceedings, led his panel through the consideration of the articles and will be the sponsor of the legislation when it comes to the full House.

No matter whom Pelosi names, the team will have a sensitive, high-profile role in a process that’s only been undertaken three times in American history.

After the House vote to impeach Trump, it is expected to inform the Senate that it has authorized the managers to conduct the trial in the Senate. According to a November report on the process by the Congressional Research Service, the Senate then informs the House when the managers can present the articles. Doing so will kick off a solemn sequence of pageantry, wherein the House prosecutors cross the Capitol and enter the Senate chamber, presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts and populated with senators who act as the jury.

The House members then read the resolution containing the articles and leave until the Senate invites them back for the trial. The prosecutors, possibly assisted by outside counsel, present the evidence against Trump and respond to any of the president’s lawyers or senators.

Democratic candidates unite against Trump but little else

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic White House hopefuls agree President Donald Trump must be defeated next year. But the unity ends there.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, are locked in an increasingly acrimonious feud that threatens to change the tone of the Democratic primary. The tension was on display Thursday as the candidates knocked one another as being spineless in standing up to the rich or throwing out wildly unrealistic proposals.

That followed a week of barbs between Warren and Buttigieg as they called on the other to be more forthcoming about their past. Buttigieg pressed Warren to reveal her previous legal work for corporations while Warren said Buttigieg should open his private fundraisers and detail the companies he worked for as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. a decade ago.

The hits mark a shift in a Democratic primary that has so far been largely devoid of tension, to the point that some candidates refused obvious opportunities to slam one another when they shared a debate stage last month. But as they prepare to debate again next week, that reluctance has dissipated and a clear battle is emerging between Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who are leading the call for major overhauls to American life, and Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden, who are urging pragmatism.

The scrapping serves as a proxy for the ideological fight that Democrats will need to resolve quickly next year if they are to rally behind a nominee who can inspire the energy and motivation that will be required to beat Trump.

“It’s too early to say how this thing is going to play out,” said David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama and said the growing intensity of the primary reflects how strongly Democrats feel about the need to win next year.

As the fight deepens, so too do the potential risks for those involved. For Buttigieg, the exchanges are doing little to endear him with the voters he needs to rebuild the type of coalition that twice elected Obama. He’s already struggling to appeal to minorities and acknowledged on Thursday that younger voters are siding with more progressive candidates such as Sanders.

“It is certainly the case that often younger candidates tend to attract more support from older voters,” the 37-year-old Buttigieg told CBS on Thursday. “The Sanders campaign definitely has more young voters. I was a big fan of Bernie Sanders when I was 18 years old.”

More fundamentally, the attention on Buttigieg’s ties to big donors and his past consulting work leaves him vulnerable to being portrayed as a status quo politician instead of a fresh face who could usher generational change into Washington.

He faced new criticism on Thursday for his past consulting work, including a study he helped produce for the U.S. Postal Service. Buttigieg’s campaign said that he was “part of a team tasked with generating ideas to increase revenue like selling greeting cards and increasing the use of flat rate boxes” and that he “never worked on cost-cutting or anything involving staff reorganization or the privatization of essential post office services.”

But Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents over 200,000 postal service workers and retirees, blamed the study for leading to “the closing of many processing centers.”

“I can’t honestly say what section or paragraphs of the reports he was involved with,” Dimondstein, whose union hasn’t endorsed a candidate, told The Associated Press. “But I will say generally, shame on anybody that was part of facilitating these McKinsey reports. This is the opposite of what the people of this country need.”

Warren faces potential trouble of her own. Her strident positions against corporations could alienate voters who work for such firms and would otherwise support a Democrat against Trump. And her plateau in some polls coincides with persistent prodding from Buttigieg over how she would pay for her “Medicare for All” proposal, including its cost and elimination of private insurance coverage.

Yet she’s also forced Buttigieg’s hand in some cases. He began opening his fundraisers this week, leading to some awkward moments.

Liberal protesters followed Buttigieg across Manhattan over two days as he courted major donors at four events. Not knowing the specific addresses of his events, they marched to the apartment buildings of several wealthy donors until they found him.

On Wednesday night, roughly two dozen people, mostly Sanders and Warren supporters, interrupted Buttigieg’s event repeatedly. One protester entered the Upper West Side brownstone yelling “Where’s Mayor Pete?” as the presidential contender addressed roughly 60 donors upstairs, according to a pool report.

Less than 10 minutes later, protesters began banging pots and pans outside, shouting, “Wall Street Pete!”

Buttigieg tried to turn the disruption into a joke. “Wow, they’re excited,” he said, turning to his military experience. “One of the things you learn on a deployment is dealing with distracting noises.”

Neither candidate is backing away from the fight. Without mentioning Buttigieg, Warren seemed to refer to him in a speech she delivered Thursday in New Hampshire.

“I’m not betting my agenda on the naive hope that if Democrats adopt Republican critiques of progressive policies or make vague calls for unity that somehow the wealthy and well-connected will stand down,” she said.

Until recently, Warren and Sanders have focused much of their attention on Biden, who remains the front-runner in many national polls. Warren is testing strategies for confronting both men, who are battling to become the voice of moderation in the race.

In the same speech on Thursday in which she made thinly veiled criticisms of Buttigieg, Warren also decried Biden’s past comment to wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected.

The former vice president has largely stayed out of the Warren-Buttigieg dust-up, which could prove wise if Biden wants to improve his standing in early voting states. During the 2004 Iowa caucuses, for instance, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt clashed bitterly as voting neared, only to be defeated by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

“My latest feeling is that Biden is undervalued in this race,” Axelrod said. “He has so lowered expectations that if he were to win Iowa or come close, he’s going to be in pretty good shape.”

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in New York and Michelle R. Smith in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.

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Boris Johnson vows to resolve Brexit by Jan 31st, European markets hit record high after Conservative sweep

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to “get Brexit done” by Jan. 31, 2020 with “No ifs, no buts, no maybes” Friday morning following his Conservative Party’s landslide victory in the country’s general election.
A sudden burst in London-listed companies brought European markets to record peaks early Friday following Johnson’s victory as investors celebrated the probable end of more than three and half years of political turmoil in Britain once the United Kingdom settles on a deal to leave the European Union, Reuters reported.
“This election means that getting Brexit done is now the irrefutable, irresistible unarguable decision of the British people. With this election, I think we put an end to all those miserable threats of a second referendum,” Johnson told supporters early Friday.
“In this election, your voices have been heard and it’s about time too because we politicians have squandered this three years in squabbles about Brexit,” he continued. “I will put an end to all of that nonsense and we will get Brexit done on time by the 31st of January. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. Leaving the European Union as one United Kingdom, taking back control of our laws, borders, money, our trade, immigration system, delivering on the democratic mandate of the people.”
Johnson also promised that it was his Conservative Party’s top priority is to massively increase investments in the National Health Service and “make this country the cleanest, greenest on Earth with our far-reaching environmental program.” “You voted to be carbon neutral by 2015 and you also voted to be Corbyn neutral by Christmas and we’ll do that too,” he said.
The prime minister is scheduled to meet with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, where she will formally ask him to form a new government in her name. President Trump also tweeted his support for Johnson after his victory, hinting that “Britain and the United States will now be free to strike a massive new Trade Deal after BREXIT.”
Labour Party Chairman Ian Lavery told the BBC that he believes his party’s decision to support a second referendum on Brexit ultimately established distrust with voter, ultimately pushing them to put their faith in the Conservative Party at the ballot box in 2019.
“The fact that we went for a second referendum is the real issue in the Labour party. People feel like there’s a lack of trust, people feel like they are let down,” Lavery said.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron also congratulated Johnson, saying that election result "gives us a very strong and decisive government."
The Conservatives Party won 43.6 percent of the popular vote compared to the Labour Party’s 32.2 percent following Thursday night’s election. The Tories won by an 11.3 margin, the largest for the Conservatives since 1987. This compares to 2017 when the Labour Party lost the popular vote by only 2.4 percent.