It’s gonna be a day House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Trump today, saying he had abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress in its investigation of his conduct regarding Ukraine. John Wagner and John Hudson are providing live updates at The Washington Post since, as Kayla Epstein says, “It’s gonna be a day.” Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times notes that the announcement comes a day after Democrats summed up the central allegations in their impeachment case against Mr. Trump, and what an experience that was. As Russell Berman writes for The Atlantic, yesterday featured “the weirdest, most chaotic hearing of the entire impeachment saga so far.” Shout the truth from the rooftops In Lies, Damned Lies and Washington, Peter Baker of The New York Times starts out by noting, “There are days in Washington lately when it feels like the truth itself is on trial. Monday was one of those days.” The rest of that piece got a few...reactions. For example, Peter Sagal shares, “I try not to give in to anger because you’ve got enough angry people in your feed but if I had hair I’d be tearing it out because the ‘authority’ quoted in this article bemoaning the fact we can’t agree on basic facts is the editor of...The Federalist.” 
Adds Hamza Shaban, “It’s telling that the 2 people quoted specifically for this story — about how nobody trusts anybody and ‘radically competing versions of reality’ — are a former strategic adviser to President George W. Bush and Ben Domenech, the founder of The Federalist.” He highlights a few other passages (e.g., the “choose-your-own-reality nature of Washington”) and wonders, “What exactly is this article trying to communicate to readers of the New York Times, a news organization?” “‘Each side took what it wanted from the day’s developments and drew the conclusions that best reflected its views.’ This is now the best the Times can do. It has maneuvered itself into a null space, where it can only repeat this observation over and over,” says Jay Rosen. And Daniel Froomkin says, “Yes, @peterbakernyt, truth *was* on trial, and your job was not to throw up your hands with a smirk and a wink, it was to shout the truth from the rooftops, and you failed.” The IG report Speaking of the truth, the internal Justice watchdog found that the Russia probe was justified and not biased against Trump (400,000+ shares), as Pete Williams, Julia Ainsley and Ken Dilanian report at NBC News. The FBI mishandled parts of its application to monitor a Trump campaign aide as it was probing possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, but the overall investigation was justified, according to the conclusions laid it in a 434-page report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. “And in a stunning move,” Williams, Ainsley and Dilanian write, “the federal prosecutor Barr appointed to conduct a separate but related investigation, U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham, also said in a statement that he disagreed with the report.” 
Disagree all he wants, but in an op-ed for The Washington Post, James B. Comey says, The truth is finally out. The FBI fulfilled its mission (50,000+ shares). “As the leader of an institution that is supposed to be devoted to truth, Barr needs to stop acting like a Trump spokesperson,” Comey writes. Also, “James Comey’s mother-in-law thought he was going to jail,” as Ryan J. Reilly highlights. But if Comey is hoping for a sudden change of heart, he probably shouldn’t hold his breath. “Sorry, @Comey. The liars, spinners, cheaters and hiders will never admit that they’re wrong. It would end their cons. #TuesdayThoughts,” tweets Grant Stern.” Meanwhile, in an interview with Pierre Thomas of ABC News, Chris Wray, the FBI Director appointed by Trump, offered mixed reactions to the report but said it was “important that the inspector general found that, in this particular instance, the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.” Asked whether he thought the FBI unfairly targeted the Trump campaign, Wray offered a blunt assessment: “I do not.” A conspiracy theorist could have a lot of fun with that 
Julia Macfarlane of ABC News shares this revelation: “ABC News can confirm that the Trump ‘family member’ referenced in the Inspector General report who had a friendship with dossier author Chris Steele, was Ivanka. She met him in 2007 at a dinner in London when he was still working for MI6.” The network reports that it first learned of the contacts between Ivanka Trump and Steele a year ago, but has only recently been able to view some of their communications. So, “Ivanka Trump knew Chris Steele? A conspiracy theorist could have a lot of fun with that,” Colby Itkowitz points out. For example, “Did she pee on him,” tweets Drew Magary. (Someone had to say it.) (Or did they.) Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman cover the story at The Washington Post, Ivanka Trump was personal friends with former British spy Christopher Steele, according to person familiar with the situation, and yes, you are correct, Noah Barkin, “It’s all getting weirder.” While we’re on weird, head over to Politico, where Caitlin Oprysko attempts to unravel The mystery of Rudy Giuliani’s spokeswoman: “The gatekeeper to the lawyer for the most powerful man in the world is a 20-year-old conservative activist with a thin resume, an inflated biography and an impossible job.” Tweets Jonathan Chait, “This is an amazing story about Giuliani's 20-year-old spokesperson, who appears to be a genius grifter.” You really just have to read it, because as Molly Jong-Fast says, “This is wacky wild stuff.” Disgusting, disrespectful and hacky as hell 
Switching gears, “STOP MAKING FICTIONAL FEMALE JOURNALISTS SLEEP WITH MEN FOR INFORMATION. WE DON'T DO THAT. NO CREDIBLE JOURNALIST DOES THAT. STOP WRITING IT.” Thank you, Celeste Headlee, who links to Brent Lang’s report for Variety that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is asking Warner Bros. and the makers of the Clint Eastwood film ‘Richard Jewell’ to release a statement acknowledging it took dramatic license when it portrayed journalist Kathy Scruggs as trading sex for tips. Let’s see if we can get some stats on this: “Number of female journalists I know who have slept with their sources to get a story: zero. Wake up, Hollywood,” tweets Joanne Lipman. “The lazy, offensive, shitty way screenwriters so often treat female journalists infuriates me. Depicting women using sex to get stories is disgusting and disrespectful. It’s also hacky as hell. I was planning to see this movie but not anymore,” tweets Jeffrey Young. Kathy Scruggs is a real journalist, by the way, who died in 2001. As Quentin Hardy says, “Clint is free to hate on the media, but he (and Olivia Wilde, who was apparently cool with playing it) didn’t need to do this to a human being.” Sickening BBC News reported yesterday that a four-year-old boy with suspected pneumonia was forced to sleep on a hospital treatment room floor because of a lack of beds. And then the fake news swooped in. Marc Owen Jones explains in a Twitter thread, “This one is about the fake news claiming that a sick boy on the floor of a hospital in leeds was staged by his mother. We know the story is real, Dr Yvette Oade, chief medical officer at Leeds even apologised.” The latest from Alex Hern at The Guardian is that the woman whose account claimed the photo was staged says her account was hacked to post the fake story. “Welp, this story just keeps going, doesn’t it,” tweets James Ball. Also, “Sweet Jesus. It’s end times, I swear…” says Rick O’Shea. The point: “Who needs Russian bots when you have stories like this,” tweets Max Seddon. Meanwhile, a study by leading NHS doctors has found that thousands of patients die waiting for beds in hospitals, as Denis Campbell reports at The Guardian. “There’s a lot of noise this election but it really comes down to this: if you want to save the NHS, please #VoteLabour,” tweets Frances Ryan. On that note, in his column for The Guardian, George Monbiot wonders, Why do I have to break an embargo in order to expose press lies about Labour? Tweets Terry Macalister, “‘The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the wallet is mightier than the pen:’ just about sums up current state of our democracy.” A triumphant, subversive and at times reluctant icon 
Sports Illustrated has named Megan Rapinoe Sports Illustrated’s 2019 Sportsperson of the Year, and Jenny Vrentas’ piece underscores just how deserving Rapinoe is of the accolade. As Vrentas tweets, “She’s just the 4th woman in the award’s history to win it unaccompanied, a reflection of both her achievement & entrenched gender biases. On a triumphant, subversive and at times reluctant American icon.” Jonathan Jones says, “@JennyVrentas’s Sportsperson piece on Rapinoe is so layered, so beautiful. This paragraph in particular, showing profound perspective as such an age, absolutely smacked me in the face.” Adds Tim Rohan, “If you haven’t, everyone should read this brilliant @JennyVrentas story on the SI Sportsperson of the Year, Megan Rapinoe.” Tuesday round-up - Wendy Fry of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has denied access to doctors seeking flu vaccinations for migrant children. Three children died from the flu while in federal immigration custody during the past year.
- Charles Ornstein links to “Another major McKinsey scoop, by @i_m_m.” That’s Ian MacDougall’s latest for ProPublica on how New York City paid McKinsey millions to stem jail violence. Instead, violence soared. Ornstein notes, “The full story of how New York City came to pay McKinsey $27.5 million only to abandon many of the firm’s recommendations and decide to shut Rikers has never been told. @i_m_m found that problems dogged the project at every stage.”
- “SCOOP: Gizmodo acquired 500 days of data from Ring’s app and found the hidden coordinates of its cameras. We were able to map out up to 20,000 Ring devices. We concluded the data could enable anyone to pinpoint the precise locations of these devices.” For the full story, read Dell Cameron’s piece with Dhruv Mehrotra at Gizmodo, Ring’s Hidden Data Let Us Map Amazon’s Sprawling Home Surveillance Network.
- There’s a “Tariff punt in the works,” as Nick Timiraos puts it. He links the Wall Street Journal exclusive, by Lingling Wei and Bob Davis, U.S. and Chinese Trade Negotiators Planning for Delay of December Tariff.
- At HuffPost UK, Nadine White writes about Why Black Brits Are Considering Leaving The UK If Tories Win Election, and Jess Brammar says, “This @Nadine_Writes piece on Black Brits genuinely considering leaving the UK because of the level of racism, particularly if Boris Johnson wins, is really shocking. There are so many quotes that genuinely knocked me for six. Please read it.”
- As Lianne Kolirin reports at CNN, the nonbinary pronoun ‘they’ has been named as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.
- Another one gone too soon. Mark Savage has the BBC obit for Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson, who has died at 61. Steve Hammes shares, “If you know me then you know what a huge Roxette fan I’ve been ever since they first hit our airwaves in the late 80s. Incredibly sad news this morning. Marie had one of the most underrated voices in pop music. #NeverIsALongTime.”
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Today’s featured journalist is New Delhi, India-based 
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