California power company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) cut power Wednesday to millions of Californians due to high winds that could down power lines sparking wildfires.

Utilities companies have warned for months that cutoffs were possible, but the power cut seems to have caught many by surprise.  

Twitter was buzzing with comments about the outage from consumers in the Northern California area. Many posted angry tweets about the power company’s website, serving Northern and Central California, being down and making updates on the cuts inaccessible.

While many East Coast residents have learned to cope with power outages from hurricanes, weather-related outages are a relatively new phenomenon in California.

Where are the outages?

PG&E began shutting off power Wednesday morning. Nearly 500,000 homes and businesses in Northern California were without power and by midday it expanded to parts of the Bay Area, including San Jose and Santa Cruz.

Farther south, where Santa Ana winds weren’t expected until early Thursday, Southern California Edison said it might cut power to more than 170,000 customers. It included more than 50,000 in northern Los Angeles County and nearly 20,449 in Ventura County.

San Diego Gas & Electric also said it could cut power to nearly 30,000.

The reason for power cuts

Power lines were to blame for setting off fires nearly a year ago in Northern California that killed 86 people and burned 62 hectares. The town of Paradise was so devastated by the January fire that, by mid-July, only 2,034 residents — of nearly 27,000 before the fire — were living in the city.

PG&E filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after the utility was found liable for igniting multiple fires. In September, PG&E reached an $11 billion settlement in those claims. A third group of claims is still working its way through state and federal courts.

To avoid more legal fights, PG&E and other utilities companies decided to cut power during high-wind episodes. Based on conditions, power cuts could last up to six days.

Gas-powered generators are flying off the shelves at stores, and electricians are busy installing backup power to businesses that knew blackouts could be coming.

Southern California Edison warned that generators need to be placed outdoors and rigged to individual appliances with a heavy-duty extension cord. Connecting generators directly to household circuits can create danger for the utility’s repair crews, they said.

Many schools and universities were closing due the power outages. People were filling their gas tanks in case gas stations lost power. There were also long lines reported at grocery stores ahead of the shutdowns.

Hospitals remained open, using backup generators. But some, like the San Ramon Regional Medical Center, were weighing whether to divert ambulances to other hospitals not affected by outages.

Solar power

Almost all home solar systems are tied into the local power company’s power grid, so the customer can feed solar back into the system and get paid for the electricity their solar panels produce.

But these systems are turned off when utility power is out. That is to keep electrical workers who are working on the grids safe because power flowing into the system could kill them.

This leaves many homes using solar power without electricity. But residents who have a home battery attached to their energy systems are in luck. The solar energy powers the home during the day, and any excess energy is used to charge the battery. The battery can then be used at night or when the grid goes down.

The same is true for electric cars. If the cars have a solar panel with a battery, they will likely have a range of between 160 to 400 kilometers between charges. So if they’re fully charged, they can often outlast power outages.

Climate change, years of drought, and the construction of houses and communities in wildland areas have all contributed to the spate of intense and deadly fires in California in recent years, experts say.

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A woman who worked at NBC News claimed that Matt Lauer raped her at a hotel while on assignment for the Sochi Olympics, an encounter the former “Today” show host claimed was consensual.

The claim outlined by Brooke Nevils in Ronan Farrow’s book, “Catch and Kill,” puts a name and details behind the event that led to Lauer’s firing by NBC in 2017. It also provoked the first public response from Lauer, who said in a defiant and graphic letter made public by his lawyer that “my silence was a mistake.”

Variety first reported Nevils’ charges after obtaining a copy of Farrow’s book. The Associated Press typically does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault, unless they step forward publicly as Nevils has done.

Nevils, who was working for Meredith Vieira in Sochi, met her for drinks one night and Lauer joined them. Nevils said she had six shots of vodka and wound up going to Lauer’s room.

“It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” Nevils told Farrow, according to Variety. 

In his letter, Lauer admitted to his extramarital affair with Nevils. He said on that night in Sochi that they consensually performed a variety of sexual acts.

“She was a fully enthusiastic and willing partner,” he wrote. “At no time did she behave in a way that made it appear she was incapable of consent. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted to do.”

Lauer’s defense of his behavior extends beyond his relationship with Nevils. He said he has “never assaulted anyone or forced anyone to have sex. Period.”

He also acknowledges other extramarital encounters, and criticized the women involved for having “abandoned shared responsibility” for the affairs to shield themselves from blame behind false allegations.

“They have avoided having to look at a boyfriend, a husband or a child in the eye and say, `I cheated,”‘ Lauer said. “And I will no longer provide them the shelter of my silence.”

Lauer said the night in Sochi was the first of several sexual encounters he had with Nevils over several months, including one in his dressing room at NBC, which “showed terrible judgment on my part.”

Nevils’ lawyer did not immediately return a message for comment on Lauer’s letter Wednesday.

Eleanor McManus, who co-founded the group Press Forward to support victims of sexual abuse in the news industry, said Lauer’s letter was “unbelievable.

“Lauer’s statement demonstrates not only his lack of remorse, but his lack of understanding of sexual harassment and the (hash)MeToo movement,” said McManus, who said she was harassed by journalist Mark Halperin (who lost jobs at NBC and elsewhere because of these and other accusations). “Nowhere in his letter does Lauer acknowledge the power he yielded as a celebrity and the star of NBC’s highest-rated show. The two people in that hotel room in Sochi did not have equal power.”

Farrow’s publisher, Little, Brown & Co., said that the book has been fact-checked and incorporates the responses of individuals and institutions that were included. When it is published, “readers will understand the full context and impact of Farrow’s work, and the bravery of the sources who entrusted him with their stories.”

NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack sent a memo to his staff on Wednesday, saying that any suggestion that NBC knew of Lauer’s conduct prior to the night before he was fired for “inappropriate sexual conduct” was wrong. There were no claims or allegations of improper conduct by Lauer prior to that, he said, although settlements were reached with two women regarding Lauer after he was fired.

“Matt Lauer’s conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time,” NBC News said in a statement Wednesday.

“That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague.”

Nevils’ story was reported Wednesday on the show Lauer hosted for two decades. His former co-host, Savannah Guthrie, called it shocking and appalling.

“We’re disturbed to our core,” Guthrie said.

Lauer said in his letter that he ended the affair poorly and understands how that must have made Nevils feel.

He said that he hadn’t responded publicly before to allegations in order to spare his family pain, but that now he has their support to address them publicly.

“Anyone who knows me will tell you I am a very private person,” Lauer wrote. “I had no desire to write this, but I had no choice.”

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The United States has taken custody of two Islamic State prisoners accused of taking part in beheading American journalists in 2014, The Washington Post reports.

The two men were taken from a Kurdish-run prison in northern Syria, where Kurdish forces can no longer guarantee they can keep detaining the prisoners after the Turkish military incursion.

The Post said the two are Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh. They were allegedly part of a quartet of British-born Islamic militants who their hostages dubbed “The Beatles.”

One U.S. official told the Post the two have been taken to Iraq, while another simply said they are in U.S. military custody but would not say where they are.

“The Beatles” were led by an IS militant named Mohammed Emwazi, nicknamed “Jihadi John.”

Emwazi beheaded American journalist James Foley, Israeli American journalist Steven Sotloff and U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig before a TV camera in 2014.

“The Beatles” are also suspected of murdering other Western hostages.

Emwazi was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2015. A fourth “Beatle” is in a Turkish prison.

Kurdish forces captured Kotey and Elsheikh, who have dened taking part in the executions. They told The Washington Post in a prison interview last year that their role was to carry out ransom negotiations.

If the two are brought to the United States for trial, they could be charged as conspirators in hostage-taking resulting in death — a charge that carries a possible death sentence, according to the Post.

President Donald Trump told reporters Wednesday the United States has moved what he calls some of the “most dangerous” IS prisoners from Kurdish custody to “different locations where it’s secure.”

But some critics of Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces out of northern Syria, which has led to a Turkish offensive against the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), could allow thousands of imprisoned IS fighters to flee

“This is like a victory for the ISIS fighters. I think it’s just appalling,” James Foley’s mother, Diane, said, using an acronym for the militant group. “It’s an abdication of our responsibility to ensure safety for our own citizens and allies.”

Trump said the U.S. has tried but failed to convince such European countries as Britain, France and Germany to take back their citizens who joined IS as foreign fighters and have since been captured.

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Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi on Wednesday announced a cabinet reshuffle, declared three days of national mourning and said those who shot protesters would be punished as he sought to quell anti-government unrest that has roiled Iraq for days.

Authorities fear that violence, which has killed more than 110 people, mostly protesters angry at government corruption, could spiral, leading war-weary Iraq towards more civil strife.

Protests erupted in Baghdad last week and soon spread to southern cities. Abdul Mahdi’s government has sought to address demonstrators’ grievances.

However, a package of reforms announced by the government — including more job opportunities, subsidies and housing — is unlikely to satisfy Iraqis; nor is a cabinet reshuffle, likely to feature many of the same faces despised by protesters as an out-of-touch political elite.

“We will ask parliament to vote tomorrow on changes to ministries,” Abdul Mahdi said at a news conference, adding that the government would be referring the names of hundreds of corrupt officials to the judiciary for investigation.

Abdul Mahdi’s government will seek to weather the storm, however, backed by powerful Iran-aligned armed groups and political factions determined to preserve the status quo.

Internet blackout

Authorities have used an internet blackout, arrests of protesters and targeting of reporters to try to stem further unrest.

At least 110 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded in the capital and the south, since the security forces started cracking down on demonstrators. Reuters journalists have witnessed protesters killed and wounded by shots fired by snipers from rooftops into the crowd.

Abdul Mahdi said that the government did not give orders to shoot.

“We gave clear orders not to use live fire but there were still victims of shooting,” Abdul Mahdi said, adding that it was wrong to damage the country.

Crackdown continues 

Much of the unrest has been at night, but on Wednesday morning there were no reports of serious violence overnight.

Authorities on Wednesday reopened the road leading to Baghdad’s Tayaran Square, scene of bloody protests in recent days.

However, the security forces pressed on with their crackdown, arresting protesters after nightfall on Tuesday in eastern and northwestern parts of Baghdad, police sources told Reuters.

Police carried recent photographs of protesters to identify and arrest them, the sources said.

Iraq’s semi-official High Commission for Human Rights also said about 500 people had been released from the 800 detained last week.

Intermittent access to internet returned on Wednesday morning, and protesters continued to upload video and photos from the demonstrations. The government shut down coverage almost immediately as protests began, according to an order by the prime minister seen by Reuters.

Media offices attacked

The offices of local and international media were attacked last week, and journalists have said they were warned not to cover the protests. With the internet down, there was little coverage of the protests on television.

Ministers met provincial governors, to address grievances across the country, which include crumbling infrastructure, toxic water and high unemployment. But proposed reforms, some of which have been recycled from a package of proposed reforms after protests in 2015, are unlikely to ease public anger.

The unrest shattered nearly two years of relative stability in Iraq, since the defeat of Islamic State in 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the recent violence and urged Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to exercise maximum restraint and address protesters’ grievances, the U.S. State Department said.  

…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long threatened to send troops into northeastern Syria to clear the border region of Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Turkey considers a serious security threat.

A Turkish invasion looks more likely after President Donald Trump’s sudden announcement that U.S. troops, who had fought alongside the Kurds against Islamic State group, would withdraw from the area.
 
Here is a look at what Turkey wants to achieve in the area, and the risks and challenges it faces by getting even more deeply involved in the Syrian crisis.

What does Turkey want?

Turkey wants to create what it calls a “safe zone” in a stretch of territory along its southern border with Syria that is currently controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters, known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

Turkey considers the YPG as terrorists affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a 35-year-long battle against the Turkish state. Ankara also views the YPG-controlled zone as an “existential threat.”

Erdogan has demanded a “safe zone” that is 30 kilometers (20 miles) deep and stretches more than 480 kilometers (300 miles) toward the Iraqi border. He initially had hoped to do it in collaboration with the United States but grew frustrated with what he considered to be delaying tactics by the U.S.

Once secured, Turkey wants to resettle the area with 2 million Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey due to the conflict in their home country.  How such a massive resettlement would be carried out is unclear. Human rights groups have warned that any escalation of fighting in the area could displace hundreds of thousands more people.

Erdogan has spoken of plans to build towns, villages, hospitals and schools but also says Turkey, which has already spent some $40 billion on the refugees, cannot afford to do it alone. He has said he will convene a donors conference to help meet the cost and has called on European nations to share the burden, warning that Turkey could be forced to open the “gates” for an influx of migrants to Western nations.

Kurds vow to fight back

Turkey has carried out two previous incursions into northern Syria in recent years with the help of Syrian rebels. In the first offensive in 2016, Turkey pushed back Islamic State group militants west of the Euphrates River. In the second operation last year, Turkey captured the Syrian-Kurdish controlled enclave of Afrin. Those regions are currently administered by Turkish-backed opposition groups who run them as virtual Turkish-administered towns.

Analysts say this operation would likely be more complicated. Unwilling to let go of an area they wrested from the Islamic State group, the battle-hardened Kurdish fighters, trained and equipped by the U.S., have vowed to fight the Turks until the end.
 
“It’s a huge area for the Turkish military to go into and clearly there will be resistance on the part of the (Syrian Kurdish forces),” said Bulent Aliriza, of the director of the Turkey Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Aliriza suggested the operation may be a limited one that does not stretch all the way to the Iraqi border. “That’s what we are going to look at first. How deep and how broad is it, whether it’s all the way across from the Iraqi border to the Euphrates, or just limited to two or three penetration points.”

Critics of Trump’s decision fear a Turkish operation could have destabilizing consequences for the region, while both Democrats and Republicans have warned that a Turkish attack could lead to a large number of fatalities among the Kurds, who are holding thousands of captured IS fighters and their families.

What about the fight against the Islamic State group?

One of the big question marks surrounding Turkey’s plans is whether fighting the Syrian Kurdish forces would allow IS to make a comeback.

Turkey insists that the global battle against the militants won’t suffer, and points to its 2016 incursion, which drove away IS from another border region.

But Kurdish officials have warned that they would have to divert their forces away from guarding IS prisoners in case of a Turkish assault. Kurdish authorities run more than two dozen detention facilities, scattered around northeastern Syria, holding about 10,000 IS fighters.
The White House has said Turkey will take over responsibility for the imprisoned fighters, but it is unclear how that would happen, if it all.

Erdogan says Turkey and the United States are working separately on plans to repatriate foreign fighters held in Kurdish prisons.

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A Pakistani court has given the prosecution two weeks to prepare a response to the appeal by convicted Pakistani physician who ran a fake vaccination campaign in the country to help CIA confirm Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts.

Wednesday’s adjournment was the first following a petition from Dr Shakil Afridi, who was sentenced to 33 years in 2012 by a tribal court on charges of funding a domestic militant group and treating its members.

That case is separate from the doctor’s alleged involvement with the CIA, for which Afridi was never formally charged.

Pakistan was outraged over being kept in the dark ahead of the May 2011 Navy SEALs operation that killed the al-Qaida mastermind. Washington has demanded Afridi’s release but Islamabad has resisted the demand, saying he violated Pakistani law.

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U.S. gymnastics star Simone Biles clinched a record-extending 15th world championship gold medal Tuesday as the Americans won the women’s team title in Stuttgart.

Biles, 22, collected her 21st medal at the championships to become the most decorated women’s gymnast, taking her one clear of Russia’s Svetlana Khorkina.

She also moved to within two medals of the all-time record held by Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus, a men’s gymnastics star in the 1990s.

It was a fourth team title for Biles in an event the Americans have dominated for the last eight years.

They claimed gold with a tally of 172.330, well ahead of the Russians who took silver with 166.529, while bronze went to Italy on 164.796.

Biles played a key role in a commanding performance by the U.S., earning the most points in three of the four disciplines — the vault, balance beam and floor.

She earned a loud cheer for landing the “Biles II” skill — a triple-twisting double back on the floor — keeping her pre-championship promise to perform it in “every competition” in Stuttgart.

Her huge tally of 15.333 led a U.S. clean sweep in the floor exercises alongside teammates Jade Carey and Sunisa Lee, to hand the Americans gold.

Biles is expected to add more medals to her dazzling tally as the favorite in the women’s all-around final Thursday and this weekend’s apparatus finals.
 

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The Supreme Court says police investigated two suspicious packages found near the court just before the justices were to hear arguments over LGBT rights.

Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg says the packages were found Tuesday near an intersection between the court, the Capitol and the Library of Congress.

Police cleared the plaza and the sidewalk in front of the court, which had been filling with people ahead of the high-profile arguments.

The building remained open and was not evacuated, Capitol Police said. The incident was resolved around 10 a.m., police said.
 

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The International Organization for Migration reports fatalities from a shipwreck Monday off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa has pushed the migrant death toll on the Mediterranean Sea this year to 1071.

The boat, which capsized seven miles from the coast of Lampedusa, reportedly departed from Tunisia with between 50 and 55 people aboard.  Some of the 22 survivors of the accident testified passengers included 15 Tunisians, as well as West African migrants.

Authorities say the Italian Coast Guard has recovered 13 bodies, all of them women, who came from Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Guinea.  International Organization for Migration spokesman Joel Millman says 17 migrants remain missing, including more women and at least two children.  He says the missing are believed to be nationals of Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Guinea Conakry and Tunisia.

“IOM’s Missing Migrants Project reported Monday that these deaths bring to 15,750 the total number of dead, on this particular central Mediterranean route since 1 January 2014.  This is approximately 10 times the total lost on the Mediterranean’s eastern corridor linking the Middle East to Greece, and almost the same multiple of all deaths on the western route linking North Africa to Spain,” Millman said.  

Greece Transfers 570 Migrants from Overcrowded Camp

Authorities say move is part of plan to reduce overcrowding at Lesbos’ Moria migrant camp, where about 13,000 people live in a space designed for 3,000

Weather conditions reportedly were bad when the overloaded vessel, an unseaworthy wooden boat, set sail from Tunisia.  U.N. refugee agency spokesman Charlie Yaxley said this tragic loss of life was predictable.  He said, once again, people anxious to reach Europe put their lives in the hands of smugglers and traffickers, whose only interest is to make money.

“We cannot continue to allow these criminals to act with impunity and to allow them to prey on people’s misery and desperation by taking peoples’ services under these false promises,” he said.  

Yaxley said the UNHCR is calling for a redoubling of efforts to identify those individuals responsible for this carnage and hold them accountable for their actions.

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Thousands of indigenous people converged on Ecuador’s capital on Tuesday as anti-government protests and clashes prompted the president to move his besieged administration out of Quito.   
 
The South American country of 17 million appeared to be at a dangerous impasse, paralyzed by a lack of public transport and blockaded roads that were taking a toll on an already vulnerable economy.
 
Violence, which began last week when President Lenin Moreno’s decision to cut subsidies led to a sharp increase in fuel price, has persisted for days. Several oil wells ceased production totaling 65,000 barrels daily because protesters seized installations, the energy ministry said.

On Monday, police abandoned an armored vehicle to protesters who set it on fire. Elsewhere, rioters smashed car windows, broke into shops and confronted security forces who fired tear gas to try to disperse swelling crowds.  

Some video footage has shown police beating protesters on the ground. Opponents have accused Moreno’s government of human rights abuses in its attempts to quell the disturbances.

Moreno said on national television late Monday that the government faces security threats and will operate from the port city of Guayaquil instead of Quito, the capital.

He said he was the target of a coup attempt, but would not back down from his decision to cut the subsidies.

Several military commanders in uniform stood behind Moreno during his address, underscoring the armed forces’ support.

Moreno said his leftist predecessor, Rafael Correa, is trying to destabilize Ecuador with the help of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Ecuador is among dozens of nations calling for Maduro’s ouster.
The Venezuelan government has not commented on Moreno’s allegation.
 
Correa and Moreno have traded allegations of corruption in recent months, and Correa says he and his allies are victims of political persecution.
 
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido echoed Moreno’s accusation, saying Maduro associates are trying to destabilize Ecuador.

Some 480 people have been arrested during the unrest. The government last week declared a state of emergency, allowing it to curb some civil liberties as it tries to restore order.

The disturbances have spread from transport workers to students to indigenous demonstrators, an ominous turn for the government. Indigenous protesters played a major role in the 2005 resignation of Ecuador’s president at the time, Lucio Gutierrez, though the military’s tacit approval was key to his removal.
 
The country’s biggest indigenous group, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, which also had mounted protests against Correa, said Moreno’s government had failed to address protesters’ concerns and the welfare of Ecuador’s “most vulnerable” people.
 
“Troops and police who approach indigenous territories will be detained and subjected to indigenous justice,” the group said in a statement.

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The murder of a key local election observer in Mozambique a week before the presidential vote has caused an outcry, especially after police confirmed on Tuesday that several of the suspects were police officers.
 
“This is a serious – and chilling – escalation of election violence,” Human Rights Watch researcher Zenaida Machado said on Twitter.
 
Anastacio Matavel was shot dead Monday morning after leaving a training for national election observers in southern Gaza province. A police spokesman, Orlando Mudumane, confirmed to the Portuguese news agency Lusa that the four officers worked in special operations and that their commanders had been suspended.
 
The European Union election observer mission, one of several international observers, strongly condemned the murder. It also noted that violent clashes between political parties in the southern African nation have continued throughout the campaign “without a strong, clear and persistent condemnation” from the government or party leaders.
 
Mozambique’s presidential election is Oct. 15 and President Filipe Nyusi with the ruling Frelimo party seeks a second five-year term. The vote comes just two months after Nyusi and the opposition Renamo party signed a permanent cease-fire meant to stop the fighting that has flared sporadically in the 27 years since the end of a 15-year civil war that killed an estimated 1 million people and devastated the former Portuguese colony.

This election is expected to be especially challenging, even beyond the political tensions that in the past have led to violence.
 
Large parts of Mozambique are struggling to recover from a pair of cyclones that struck the central and northern regions earlier this year and killed more than 600 people, while attacks by shadowy extremists in the north are the source of growing concern. In recent months the Islamic State group has claimed it was behind some of the attacks.
 
This vote is considered crucial because a recent constitutional amendment decentralized power so that provincial governors will now be elected directly, rather than appointed by the central government. It was another measure aimed at easing political tensions.
 
Pope Francis in his visit to Mozambique early last month praised both main political parties and all Mozambicans for their courage in setting aside personal interests and violence to work instead for the common good, and he urged a continued commitment to reconciliation.

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The Democratic-led impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives is expanding, but its fate in Congress and national political impact remain far from certain. VOA spoke with several legal and political commentators about how the high-stakes process is developing, its likelihood of removing the president from office, and impact on the 2020 national elections.  

— Thomas Schwartz is a professor of history and political science at Vanderbilt University.

— William Galston is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Governance Studies Program.

— Paul Schiff Berman is a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School.

Question: How serious are the allegations in the impeachment case against the president?

Schwartz: “Well, I think that they’re serious in the sense that the key issue here of actually asking a foreign leader to provide information on a political opponent, I think, is something that defies a lot of the norms of American politics. And I think also, because of the previous Russian investigation and other things seems to confirm a pattern in President Trump’s behavior. And so I think it’s very serious.

That being said, I’m not sure. I think the real question will be whether it rises to the level of an impeachable offense. And I think that’s going to be — it might be helpful there in the investigation, if they can find the pattern of this type of behavior in his other interactions with foreign leaders.”

Berman: “These are extraordinarily serious allegations. I’m not sure there’s ever been a time in our history where we’ve had a president who has conducted foreign policy for his own personal political gain. The conversation that he had with the Ukrainian president has no element of actual public policy or actually doing the nation’s business.

The entire purpose and content of the call as released by the White House is only to further the President’s personal political efforts to hurt one of his political opponents. And that’s an abuse of power and authority that goes beyond anything I think we’ve ever seen.”

Q: Is the president likely to be impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate?

Berman: “The Constitution allows the president to be impeached for certain crimes, and also what is referred to as high crimes and misdemeanors. … But any abuse of power or abuse of the power of the office, could count as an impeachable offense. It’s not really defined in the Constitution. 

And so therefore, it’s really a judgment call and a matter of politics, whether the House in the first instance, and the Senate, in the second instance, thinks that there is sufficient evidence that the president abused his power such that removal is the appropriate remedy.”

Schwartz: “I think the odds are very long to put it mildly. … What would have to happen would be real cracks, a mountain of evidence, perhaps the president also provides something in addition [to the current allegations].

It would be pretty phenomenal, because you’re not just talking about a majority of the senate voting to convict him — majority of the Senate voted to convict Bill Clinton, but they didn’t hit two-thirds. So two-thirds is really the phenomenal, the very large number you need to convict in the Senate.”

Galston: “There’s already evidence in the survey research that the members of the Republican Party at the grassroots level, as well as in Congress, are swinging even more firmly in support of President Trump. There is almost no support among voters who, who identify themselves as Republican for impeaching and removing the president from office. And the level of his strong support has risen very significantly in recent days … .

Based on what we know right now, I’d say that the Democrats’ chances of being able to remove the president from office through this process are at most 5%.”

Q: How do you expect the president’s allies will defend him in the impeachment probe?

Schwartz: “Well, I think a lot of that will be that he’s done nothing wrong, that he’s trying to root out corruption, there’ll be a lot of emphasis on the idea that he was trying to find out information about the Washington swamp in the sense of what the Bidens were up to in the Ukraine. There will be a lot of ‘what aboutism’ as it’s said, basically pointing out things that the Democrats have done in the past that were similar to what Trump has done.”

Galston: “Republicans have to be very careful not to be seen as defending the indefensible. And if they take the position of denying that the president did anything wrong, I think that they’re going to lose ground with the American people. If they retreat to a second line of defense, and argue that although the president did something he shouldn’t, it doesn’t warrant impeaching and removing him, I think they may have a better case to argue.”

Q: How will the move to impeach the president play politically in the 2020 election?

Schwartz: “I think it’s going to become the central issue. I really see, unless something else emerges, like a recession or something similar in domestic politics, I think this probably will be the central issue. And I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Because in a way, President Trump, I think, would be better off if the economy was the central issue right now, because it’s so strong. If he is the central issue, and given the polling on him, it may be harder for him to win those very contested little Midwestern states.

But I do think I think impeachment will be the central issue, and probably will be the issue that everyone is talking about in all the Senate and House races as well.”

Galston: “The Republicans, of course, have to think not only about re-electing the president in 2020, but also preserving their majority in the Senate, which is very, very important for them for all sorts of reasons. And there are four Republican senators who are up for reelection in states that President Trump either carried very narrowly in 2016, or lost outright. And these senators have to think very, very hard about what they’re going to say what they’re going to do, and what impression they’re going to leave in the minds of their state electorates.”

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