…there is still no clear crime that would make Trump impeachable. There is still not enough in the Manafort verdict and Cohen plea bargain to force Republicans to desert the man on whom their fortunes in the November midterm elections (and beyond) depend. American politics is about to become even more partisan and personal because the legal stakes have just gotten higher. Are they high enough to end the Trump presidency, though? Probably not.

Manafort lost; Mueller won. This was a victory Mueller needed, and one that likely will strengthen his hand going forward in his investigation of how Russia tried to influence this country’s 2016 presidential election and whether President Trump’s campaign colluded with a foreign adversary… Had Manafort been acquitted, it would have been a big boost to Trump’s efforts to discredit Mueller’s work and brought more calls by Republicans for the special counsel to wrap up the inquiry soon.

Cohen’s plea could prove more damaging to the president than the Manafort verdict, if evidence backs up Cohen’s assertion that Trump knew about and directed the payoffs. Cohen has hardly been a pillar of veracity, and his deep legal jeopardy further challenges his credibility. Yet on Tuesday he sought to rope Trump into an alleged conspiracy to violate federal campaign finance law.

Jews are an ethnic-religious group that is dispersed throughout the world. They belong to many nations and have a strong connection to Israel. We, in this country, belong to the Israeli nation, whose Hebrew members also belong to the Jewish people. It is crucial that we recognize this. It determines our outlook, quite literally. Do we look toward Jewish centers, such as New York, London, Paris and Berlin, or to our neighbors — Damascus, Beirut and Cairo? Are we a part of a region inhabited by Arabs? Do we recognize that making peace with these Arabs, and particularly with the Palestinians, is the main task of this generation?

The legacy is a mixed one. While Avnery was right about reducing the heavy-handed power of government to curtail basic freedoms such as the press, and about the need to reduce racism and abuses against minorities, he and his political followers were mistaken in their assessment of the nature of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian national movement. Arafat presented a “polite, gentle, somewhat delicate” face to the peace camp, while supporting terror. Avnery didn’t give up hope though. He wrote in September 2013, “there are two nations in this country, and they must choose to live together or to die together. I hope they choose life.”

By the time the 1967 war left Israel in control of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, Avnery found his true calling, and began campaigning tirelessly for the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel. He was elected as a member of several Knessets, and became the first person in the parliament’s history to be dragged out forcefully, after he tore his identity card, protesting the government’s decision to list its citizens’ nationality in official state-issued documents. He was also a strong supporter of gay rights, a subject considered largely taboo at the time, and was one of the first politicians to point out the systemic discrimination against Israelis born in Arab and North African countries.

A condemnation of Israel, on the other hand, can be easily expressed in 240 characters or a few seconds of an Instagram Story. Add all that to the facts that Netanyahu has enthusiastically embraced Donald Trump, young Jews are feeling increasingly alienated from Israel, and Democrats are increasingly siding with the Palestinians and a vision of the next few years starts to take shape: more division and more anger in pop-fandom communities. Here’s hoping it spurs people to learn and not just yell.

On Sunday, Del Rey said too bad — making clear that “performing in Tel Aviv is not a political statement or a commitment to the politics there just as singing here in California doesn’t mean my views are in alignment (with) my current government’s opinions or sometimes inhuman actions.” She could have been less apologetic and said something like: I’ve played Turkey and Lebanon and Russia, with nary a peep from activists. I reject an essentially anti-Semitic movement meant to undermine the Jewish state.

The American born Del Rey, an outspoken critic of the Trump administration, also noted that her gigs in the US naturally don’t mean that her views are in alignment with what she’s described as the Trump administration’s “inhuman actions”. The tendency of anti-Israel campaigners to hold Israeli citizens responsible for the actions of their government, whilst failing to hold citizens of countries with far worse human rights records to the same standard, gets to the heart of the immoral double standards which compromise the BDS movement.

Critics worry China could use “debt-trap diplomacy” to extract strategic concessions – such as over territorial disputes in the South China Sea or silence on human rights violations. In 2011, China wrote off an undisclosed debt owed by Tajikistan in exchange for 1,158 sq km (447 sq miles) of disputed territory… More recently, governments from Malaysia to Pakistan are starting to rethink the costs of these projects. Sri Lanka, where the government leased a port to a Chinese company for 99 years after struggling to make repayments, is a cautionary tale.

Chinese investments come with a greater number of problems than the intellectual critics of external aid were focused on. A failure to pay back loans implies accepting Chinese control over strategic assets in one’s country. For instance, Sri Lanka has handed over the Hambantota port to Chinese firms on a 99-year lease. Sri Lankan officials insist that the leased port will not be used for military purpose but few buy that. The tension between asserting sovereignty and attracting foreign capital is not restricted to BRI loans. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands painful economic reforms from countries it bails out of crisis situations.

In the post-Cold War era, the West linked soft power and liberalism, but that coupling was never necessary. In the next century, it may well be soft power decoupled from ideology that could rule the day. There is no illusion, not least in Beijing, that any kind of soft power can exist and succeed without hard power. But China’s proposition is more accommodating of difference. By not forcing other countries into its own mold, China’s new form of soft power can mean a more peaceful 21st century. The world should embrace it.

Americans’ support for these programs changes depending on how they’re presented. Fifty-four percent of respondents said they were in favor of universal vouchers only when asked about a proposal that “would give all families with children in public schools a wider choice, by allowing them to enroll their children in private schools instead, with government helping to pay the tuition.” The word “vouchers” wasn’t included. But among respondents who were asked explicitly about vouchers, support dropped to 44 percent.

The question to ask is whether the average poor student performs better in private school than in public school. That is what we call “value-added” and something worthy of public investment. But the data say there is not any value-added in private school. Federal and state leaders either have their heads in the sand or are trying to dupe the public. They have been pushing for more vouchers for private schools and slamming public schools for the past decade.

…the least advantaged students are better off when school choice programs are not targeted to them. And because the least advantaged children need better schooling options than anyone else, universal programs would benefit the least advantaged the most. Maybe the general public is figuring this out. Or maybe people are just figuring out that all families should be able to pick the schools that are best for their own kids. Either way, majority support for universal school vouchers could lead to a lot more educational freedom in the near future.

There is no question that such ugly accusations against such a significant leader of #MeToo don’t help the movement, giving ammunition to misogynists who question women’s stories of sexual harassment and abuse. But do they present it with a setback? They do not. They are, actually, evidence of its success.
Whatever the truth of his allegations, Bennett’s apparent willingness to challenge Argento shows that he is aware that the barriers to men reporting allegations of sexual abuse may finally be breaking down.

In fact, the way feminists have reacted to these allegations has been deeply clarifying. Argento’s allies in #MeToo have taken her victim’s accusations seriously, while acknowledging that women are perfectly capable of committing the kinds of crimes that are also committed against them… In contrast, Ronell’s supporters have swarmed to defend her. But rather than expose a hypocrisy or invalidate the #MeToo movement, this has only underscored the point that #MeToo feminists have been making along—about the nature of power and the way it fosters abuse.

It’s a repeat of the sexual harassment stories we’ve spent the past year reading about, only with the genders flipped. This isn’t a good look. And it will become increasingly untenable as young men come forward with similar stories of harassment and abuse, as they surely will in this new stage of #MeToo. “Believe women” only works as a rule of thumb when all women are good. That myth falls flat outside Victorian England.