Key Takeaways from Marie Yovanovitch’s Hearing in the Impeachment Inquiry

Key Takeaways from Marie Yovanovitch’s Hearing in the Impeachment Inquiry

“Impeachment by its nature, it’s a political process.” “What people think is going to happen can turn out to be very different from what happens.” “Because it has to do with elected officials holding another elected official to account for their conduct.” When the framers of the Constitution created a process to remove a president from office, they were well … kind of vague. So to understand how it’s going to play out, the past is really our best guide. “I think we’re just all in for a really crazy ride.” Collectively, these New York Times reporters have covered U.S. politics for over 150 years. “I’m also a drummer in a band, so …” They’ve reported on past impeachment inquiries. “Yea, I’m lost in Senate wonderland.” And they say that the three we’ve had so far have been full of twists and turns. “The president of the United States is not guilty as charged.” In short, expect the unexpected. First, the process. Impeachment is technically only the initial stage. “Common 

misconceptions about impeachment are that impeachment by itself means removal from office. It doesn’t. The impeachment part of the process is only the indictment that sets up a trial.” The Constitution describes offenses that are grounds for removing the president from office as bribery, treason and — “They say high crimes and misdemeanors, which, really, is in the eye of the beholder.” “The framers didn’t give us a guidebook to it. They simply said, that the House had the responsibility for impeachment and the Senate had the responsibility for the trial.” One of the things missing from the Constitution? How an impeachment inquiry should start. And that has generally been a source of drama. 

Basically, anything goes. “In fact, in the Andrew Johnson case they voted to impeach him without even having drafted the articles of impeachment.” For Richard Nixon, his case started with several investigations that led to public hearings. That part of the process went on for two years, and yielded revelation after revelation, connecting Nixon to a politically-motivated burglary at D.N.C. headquarters — “… located in the Watergate office building.” — and its subsequent cover-up. “Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the 

president?” “I was aware of listening devices. Yes, sir.” “This was a shocker. Everybody in the White House recognized how damaging this could be.” As the House drafted articles of impeachment, Nixon lost the support of his party. “O.K., I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.” “I was asked to write the farewell piece that ran the morning after Nixon resigned. And this is what I wrote: The central question is how a man who won so much could have lost so much.” So for Nixon, it more or less ended after the investigations. But for Bill Clinton, that phase was just the beginning. “This is the information.” An independent counsel’s investigation into his business dealings unexpectedly turned into a very public inquiry about his personal life. “The idea that a president of the United States was having an affair with a White House intern and then a federal prosecutor was looking at that, it was just extraordinary.” That investigation led to public hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. “When the Starr Report was being delivered to Congress it was a little bit like the O.J. chase, only a political 

one. There were two black cars. They were being filmed live on CNN. They were heading towards the Capitol. We were watching it and a little bit agog.” Public opinion is key. And the media plays a huge part in the process. This was definitely true for Clinton. “You know it was just a crazy time. We worked in the Senate press gallery.” “All your colleagues are kind of piled on top of each other.” “We had crummy computers, the fax machine would always break. The printer would always break.” After committee hearings, the House brought formal impeachment charges. “It was very tense. I thought that the Saturday of the impeachment vote in the House was one of the most tense days I’d experienced in Washington.” And it 

turned out, also, full of surprises. “The day of impeachment arrived, everyone’s making very impassioned speeches about whether Bill Clinton should or should not be impeached and Livingston rises to give an argument for the House Republicans. He started to talk about how Clinton could resign.” “You, sir, may resign your post.” “And all of a sudden people start booing and saying, ‘Resign, resign’!” “So I must set the example.” “He announced he was resigning because he had had extramarital affairs and challenged President Clinton to do the only honorable thing, in his view —” “I hope President Clinton will follow.” “— to resign as well, so there was all this drama 

unfolding even in the midst of impeachment.” Then it went to the Senate for trial. The Constitution gets a little more specific about this part. “The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is supposed to preside over that trial.” “Rehnquist, he showed up in this robe he had made for himself, which had gold stripes on the sleeves because he liked Gilbert and Sullivan.” “The Senate is the actual jury.” “You will do impartial justice according to the 

Constitution and laws. So help you, God.” “This is a copy of the rules of the Senate for handling impeachment. They’re actually very specific.” “Meet six days a week.” “Convene at noon. The senators have to sit at their desks and remain quiet in their role as jurors. And not talk, which trust me, is going to be a problem for some of the senators who are used to talking all the time.” It’s just like a courtroom trial. There are prosecutors who present the case 

against the president. “That was perjury.” Only, they’re members of the House, and they’re called managers. Then the senators, or the jurors, vote. And things are still, unpredictable. “The options are guilty or not guilty. But there was one senator —” “Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania.” “Under 

Scottish law, there are three possible verdicts: guilty, not guilty and not proved.” “— which is not a thing.” “And everybody just looks, you know, how do you even record that vote?” In the end, there were not enough votes to oust Clinton. “What’s amazing about this whole thing to me wasn’t so much the constitutional process. It was that it felt to me like the 

beginning of really intense partisanship, the weaponization of partisanship.” And here’s the thing: An impeachment charge has never gotten the two-thirds majority it needs in the Senate to actually oust a president from office. “So you could end up having a situation where the president is impeached, acquitted and runs for re-election and wins re-election.” And that would be a first. “This is my ticket to the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. I don’t think you’ll find these on StubHub.”

Trump brags that he’s helping patients access medical ‘miracles.’ He isn’t.

Trump brags that he’s helping patients access medical ‘miracles.’ He isn’t.


Unfortunately, Right to Try appears to be helping very few people. The “incredible” transformation that Trump described in Louisiana is a fantasy: Right to Try mainly succeeds at giving its political backers a cheap public relations victory, even as they exploit the hopes of dying Americans.

Proponents frame the statute as a triumph for the freedom of patients to take sensible risks if they are essentially out of options. Under the law, if a drug has completed a Phase I clinical trial, which determines the highest safe dose of a new intervention (whose effectiveness has yet to be proved), then pharmaceutical companies may make their experimental therapies available to extremely ill people who request them. These patients don’t have to ask the FDA for permission, drug companies can bypass ethics boards that normally monitor drug tests and the companies are shielded from lawsuits.

The idea of letting people take a gamble like that has intuitive appeal. But almost a year and a half after the law’s enactment, scholars and reporters looking for evidence of its effectiveness have turned up only a small number of people who have used the law to obtain treatment. Matt Bellina, an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patient who campaigned for the law, has been receiving an experimental therapy still in clinical testing from BrainStorm, the New York-based company has confirmed. Daniela Bota, a neurologist at the University of California at Irvine, helped secure a nonapproved drug through Right to Try for a patient with aggressive brain cancer, she told STAT News (and confirmed to The Washington Post).

And the Goldwater Institute, which championed the law, recently announced that the Epitopoietic Research Corporation has treated six patients with brain cancer this year under Right to Try and has become the first drug manufacturer to create a formal program for RTT applicants. By law, pharmaceutical companies are required to make annual reports about provision of drugs through Right to Try, which the FDA will then post online, but the agency hasn’t yet set a deadline for these documents. Other RTT patients will no doubt come to light, but if the program were the grand triumph Trump says it is, more people would surely be coming forward with success stories.

One reason for the limited impact of Right to Try thus far is that its proponents vastly exaggerated the barriers that the FDA placed between terminally ill patients and experimental drugs. The agency already had an “expanded access” pathway for experimental treatments. To get treatment through that route, a patient must have a serious illness, lack a way to get the treatment via a clinical trial and lack a legally available alternative treatment. (Patients might be shut out of a clinical trial because of previous participation in a different trial or because their disease has progressed too far, among other reasons.) The main distinction between expanded access and Right to Try is that, in the former, the FDA is more in the loop: Companies must submit safety reports to the agency that include copious data about efficacy, side effects and “adverse events” (the most grave side effects). This information is used in determining whether a drug should be approved for general use.

Many patients get drugs through expanded access. In 2018, for example, the FDA processed more than 1,500 applications (which can include multiple individuals) for expanded access to unproven treatments — and approved more than 95 percent of them, typically within hours to days.

Both before and after passage of Right to Try, the main barrier to patients getting experimental treatments hasn’t been the government. It’s been drug companies. They have little incentive to provide unapproved drugs. Yes, Right to Try gives pharmaceutical manufacturers liability protections, a shield they had lacked. And while there’s less mandatory data collection, the FDA can still use the most severe “adverse events” to evaluate drugs’ safety and efficacy; companies are therefore motivated to administer them through their own carefully controlled clinical trials, rather than via Right to Try.

The law also prohibits charging more than is necessary to recover costs for providing access to these treatments, meaning there is no direct financial incentive to make them available. Nor are insurance companies required to reimburse patients or drugmakers for these costs. Consider BrainStorm, which has received “countless” inquiries about its experimental cell therapy from patients with ALS, according to its chief medical officer, Ralph Kern. But the company decided not to make the drug available (except to Bellina, a one-off exception) through either the expanded-access program or Right to Try because there is “no funding mechanism,” Kern said.

Of course, even if a patient gains access to an unproven treatment that has gone through Phase I clinical trials, that’s hardly a guarantee of a positive health outcome. Most experimental treatments at this stage will never be proved safe and effective and brought to market. According to one study, only 13.8 percent of all drugs that make it through Phase I will be approved — and rates are lower in the areas of particular interest to terminally ill patients, such as cancer treatments (3.4 percent, says the same study). What’s more, those figures say nothing about the overall effectiveness of the drugs.

Despite all this, Trump continues to present Right to Try as a centerpiece of his health-care agenda. He often cites Natalie Harp as an example of RTT’s “truly spectacular results.” Harp, a Trump supporter who has joined the advisory board of the president’s 2020 campaign, speaks and writes often about Trump and health care. As she has explained on social media and in interviews, she has a rare form of bone cancer and was harmed by a medical error in 2015 (intravenous delivery of “sterile water” instead of saline) that left her close to death. She was at first offered only palliative care, she says, but then was able to access an immunotherapy drug through Right to Try — and her health significantly improved. As she puts it in an interview on the Trump campaign’s YouTube site: “I have cancer, I’ve survived a medical error, I want to get better, I don’t want to die, and they didn’t offer me that opportunity. The Democrats didn’t, doctors didn’t, Donald Trump did. . . . Because with Right to Try, he’s like, ‘You never give up.’ ” Appearing with the president at a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June, she called him “my Good Samaritan.”

But looking closely at her accounts of her illness, it’s hard to see how she could be a beneficiary of Right to Try. The effects of the life-threatening medical error she suffered were treated before the law’s passage, for instance. As she sought help for her cancer, she says, she was ultimately given “an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use” — which made the difference. However, off-label or unapproved use of FDA-approved drugs is common and permitted under rules that long predate Trump’s tenure. Right to Try specifically allows access to drugs that have not received FDA approval. (Harp didn’t respond to requests for an interview made through various social media channels, cellphone messages and Trump 2020 spokespeople.)

But setting her case aside, if Right to Try were the transformative policy that Trump describes, there ought to be many verifiable examples of its success. Instead, we’re left mostly with Trump’s boasts.

It’s true that the “expanded access” pathway isn’t perfect. Ethical-review boards sometimes raise unnecessary objections to allowing people to access experimental drugs; the standards they apply could be made more consistent, and extending legal protections to drugmakers that allow such access makes sense. But Right to Try has done little, if anything, to increase access to investigational drugs, and it’s a cruel falsehood to tell terminally ill people that the law has led to hundreds or thousands of “miraculous” recoveries.

What Is Royal Icing and How Do You Use It?

What Is Royal Icing and How Do You Use It?

If you’ve ever watched The Great British Baking Show or attempted to make adorable Christmas cookies, you may have found yourself wondering, “What the heck is royal icing?”

Here’s what you need to know:

What Is Royal Icing?
Royal icing, an icing made from egg whites and confectioners’ sugar, goes on smooth and hardens to a candy-like consistency.

Because of its durability and seamless look, royal icing is used to decorate everything from cookies and gingerbread houses to intricate wedding cakes.

In its purest form, royal icing is white. However, it is often dyed red or green to decorate Christmas treats.

Royal icing dates back to at least the 17th century.

There’s a legend about how it got its name that, while probably untrue, is fun to consider: Before the mid-1800s, it was known as “egg white icing.” It didn’t become royal until it was used to decorate Queen Victoria's wedding cake.

• Royal Icing Ingredients
• WATCH: How to Decorate Christmas Cookies with Glaze Icing

Royal icing is made with egg whites, confectioners’ sugar, and lemon juice or water. A drop or two of food coloring is all you need to transform your pure white icing into something a bit more colorful.

Can Royal Icing Make You Sick?
Because of the raw egg whites (necessary for the icing’s stiff consistency), it is possible—though very unlikely—to contract salmonella from traditional royal icing.

To avoid the risk altogether, opt for meringue powder instead of egg whites. It will give you the texture and glossy finish you’re after without the worry.

• How to Make Royal Icing
• arinahabich/Getty Images

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Making royal icing is easier than it sounds: All you have to do is combine whisked egg whites and lemon juice with sifted confectioner’s sugar in a mixer.

The mixture should be whipped until it’s opaque, shiny, and forms soft peaks.

Finding the perfect combination of ingredients can be a bit of a trial-and-error process.

If your mixture is too runny, add more sugar.
If it’s too firm, add more egg whites.
If it’s way too firm, add water.
The consistency you’re after depends on what you want to do with your royal icing: For certain baking projects, a slightly runny texture is fine and is easily spreadable. If you’re building something like a gingerbread house, though, make sure your icing is thick and strong.

How to Store Royal Icing
Royal icing made with egg whites is higher maintenance than its counterpart made with meringue powder.

If you used egg whites, store your icing or iced treats in the fridge for about three days.

If you used meringue powder, though, you can keep it on the counter at room temperature.

You can also freeze royal icing in a tightly sealed container for up to a month.

How to Use Royal Icing
The most difficult part of using royal icing is completing your design before it dries.

Since it hardens and becomes difficult to work with as it dries, it’s important to keep the icing wet until you’re finished using it. You can do this with a damp cloth or by stirring in a few drops of water every so often.

It takes royal icing 6 to 8 hours to dry completely, so plan your baking projects accordingly.

• Royal Icing Recipes
• Photo: Caitlin Bensel; Food Styling: Emily Nabors Hall and Kady Wohlfarth; Prop Styling: Kay Clarke

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Here’s how to make our best royal icing:

Ingredients

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons warm water
• 1 ½ tablespoons meringue powder
• Directions

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until firm enough to pipe, but still of spreading consistency. Divide into bowls, and tint with food coloring. Cover bowls with a damp cloth to prevent a crust from forming while icing.

Once you’ve whipped up a batch, try using it to decorate one of our 100 favorite holiday cookies (we’re partial to to these Classic Christmas Cutouts).

Toxic substance linked to vaping illnesses, deaths. What is vitamin E acetate?

• Toxic substance linked to vaping illnesses, deaths. What is vitamin E acetate?

Federal public health investigators on Friday announced a breakthrough in identifying the cause of an outbreak of lung disease associated with vaping that has sickened more than 2,000 people and killed 39 in the United States this year.

Vitamin E acetate — an oily supplement that’s commonly sold in capsules or added to skin creams and other cosmetic products — was found in samples taken from the lungs of 29 patients who were diagnosed with the vaping-associated illness, including two people who died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The additive previously had been found in THC products vaped by people who had fallen ill. But the new report is the first to identify a specific finding in patients’ lungs that could be causing the illness. It’s possible that other substances could also play a role, and CDC officials said they need more studies to prove that vitamin E acetate is causing illness. But the findings are “significant,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC.

“For the first time we have detected a potential toxin of concern in biologic samples from patients with lung injuries associated with use of vaping products,” Schuchat said in a news conference Friday morning. “These findings provide direct evidence of vitamin E acetate at primary site of injury in the lungs.”

• No other possibly toxic substances were found in the samples tested, Schuchat added.

As of Nov. 5, 2,051 cases of vaping-associated lung disease have been reported in the United States. There have been 156 cases in California, including three deaths. Most of the patients have been young adults, and most reported vaping THC products.

The CDC has advised that people stop using vaping or e-cigarette products while the lung disease outbreak is under investigation. Though the new evidence would appear to narrow down the possible cause of illness — and provide further evidence that THC, not tobacco, products are the main source — those recommendations remain in place, Schuchat said.

Vitamin E acetate is an oil derived from the vitamin. It’s commonly taken orally or applied to the skin in cosmetic products, and is considered safe in those cases.

But it could cause injury to the lungs when vaporized and inhaled. Vitamin E acetate is sometimes added to THC oils — typically those sold on the street by informal providers — to dilute the product, thereby increasing profits, public health officials said. Earlier studies of THC vaping products obtained from patients diagnosed with severe lung disease found traces of vitamin E acetate in many samples.

It’s not clear how exactly vitamin E acetate may damage the lungs. Some patients with the lung disease have been diagnosed with lipoid pneumonia, which can be caused by inhaling vaporized oil. Previous studies have found lung damage that appeared to be caused by chemical exposure.

• “There is a big difference between putting vitamin E on the skin or swallowing pills, and inhaling vaporized vitamin E acetate, which is an oily material,” Schuchat said. “But we have additional testing to do on vitamin E acetate to understand what kind of injury might be caused.”

The research will need to be followed up with larger studies involving more samples, plus samples from healthy people for comparison. Scientists may use tests in animals to help them understand how vitamin E acetate affects lung tissue, Schuchat said.

Indeed, doctors who treat lung injuries and study vaping said the findings reported Friday, though fascinating, aren’t quite a smoking gun. The 29 patients in the CDC report were representative of the larger group of those affected, but it’s still a small number overall, said Dr. Thomas Dailey, chief of pulmonary medicine at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara.

“We’ve got over (2,000) vaping illness acute lung injuries, and this was a study of 29 individuals. So it’s a very small group, and it doesn’t show anything in terms of cause and effect,” said Dailey.

He added that vaping products are known to contain a “complex mix” of chemicals and other ingredients. “And vitamin E acetate is one of those many chemicals. So it’s not surprising that it was found in all of the lungs,” Dailey said. “The question is, is this truly causing the vaping-associated lung injury? And there is no evidence of that, one way or another.”

The new research, which was published Friday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, used fluid samples from 29 patients in 10 states, including California. About 70% of the samples were from male patients, and the median age was 23, which closely matches the demographics of people who have been diagnosed with the vaping-related illness.

Vitamin E acetate was found in all 29 samples. Scientists also tested for plant oils and other food and industrial oils, but found no other potentially toxic substances.

Dr. Robert Jackler, a Stanford expert on vaping, said Friday that even as investigators close in on a possible cause of the recent lung illnesses, it’s important to note that “there are two simultaneous and overlapping public health crises.” One, he said, is the rash of sudden lung injuries, and the other is the larger epidemic of injury and death caused by tobacco products of all kinds.

“Acute lung injury has affected 2051 individuals and led to 39 deaths,” he said in an email. “While of great concern, the mortality is vastly lower than the 480,000 tobacco-related deaths in America each year. With a half-million U.S. high school students using nicotine e-cigarettes delivering potently addictive nicotine levels, decades of public health gains are being reversed.”

What You Need to Know: GOP seeks 8 witnesses, Biden son is 1

• What You Need to Know: GOP seeks 8 witnesses, Biden son is 1

The House Ways and Means Committee hearing room, the largest hearing room in the House, is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 8, 2019. Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, will use this room to hold the first public session in its probe of whether President Donald Trump violated his oath of office by coercing Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden and his family. less The House Ways and Means Committee hearing room, the largest hearing room in the House, is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 8, 2019. Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence ... more Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

• Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

The House Ways and Means Committee hearing room, the largest hearing room in the House, is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 8, 2019. Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, will use this room to hold the first public session in its probe of whether President Donald Trump violated his oath of office by coercing Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden and his family. less The House Ways and Means Committee hearing room, the largest hearing room in the House, is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 8, 2019. Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence ... more Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

• What You Need to Know: Dems, GOP tussle over witnesses
• 
  

WASHINGTON (AP) — For only the fourth time in U.S. history, the House of Representatives has started a presidential impeachment inquiry. House committees are trying to determine whether President Donald Trump violated his oath of office by asking Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden and his family and to investigate Ukraine's involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

• A quick summary of the latest news and what's to come:
• 
  
• WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Democrats and Republicans are already tussling over which witnesses to call for the public impeachment hearings in the coming week.

On Saturday, Republicans released a list of people they want to hear from. Among them: Biden's son, Hunter; one of his former associates at a Ukrainian energy company; and the anonymous whistleblower.

But Republicans need the committee's approval to summon their witnesses and Democrats are in the majority. The committee chairman, California Rep. Adam Schiff, quickly cast doubt on whether Republicans will get their way.

Without getting into specifics, Schiff said he won't let the hearings serve as a vehicle to conduct "sham investigations" into the Bidens or the 2016 election. Nor will he let the hearings aid Trump's "effort to threaten, intimate and retaliate against the whistleblower."

• —Altogether, Republicans want to hear public 
• 
  
• testimony from eight people they identified, some of whom have already testified privately. They also want to hear from anonymous officials who helped the whistleblower prepare his or her complaint.

• The top Republican on the committee, 

California Rep. Devin Nunes, said Democrats are conducting a one-sided inquiry and it's important to hear from certain people familiar with Ukrainian corruption and political machinations.

___

Trump says he will release an account of another phone call with Ukraine's leader. His conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in July sparked the impeachment inquiry against him when he was heard pressing the new president for a political favor.

The two also spoke in April, soon after Zelenskiy won election. Trump said Saturday he has no problem making details of that call public. He says he'll probably do it Tuesday.

___

• —Investigators in the inquiry on Friday 

released hundreds of pages of testimony from Fiona Hill, a former White House Russia adviser, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer assigned to the National Security Council. Both testified they were concerned Trump was inappropriately pressuring Ukraine to investigate Democrats.

• — Ivanka Trump told The Associated Press 

Friday that the identity of whistleblower is "not particularly relevant" and "shouldn't be a substantive part of the conversation." The whistleblower sparked the inquiry into Trump's efforts to press Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

• —John Bolton, Trump's former national 

security adviser, was aware of "many relevant meetings and conversations" related to the Ukraine pressure campaign that House impeachment investigators have not yet learned about, his attorney Charles Cooper wrote in a letter to the House general counsel. Cooper wants a federal judge to determine whether Bolton and his former deputy, Charles Kupperman, can be compelled to testify against the White House wishes.

• —Acting White House chief of staff Mick 

Mulvaney and Office of Management and Budget associate director Marky Sandy defied House investigator subpoenas and were no-shows for their scheduled depositions. Mulvaney has asked to join a lawsuit brought by another of the president's advisers challenging a congressional subpoena. That suit, filed by former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman, asks a court to decide which of two directives Kupperman must follow — one from Congress ordering him to testify, the other from the White House telling him not to. A lawyer for Mulvaney says his case presents the same legal issues as Kupperman's and that he is a closer and even more senior adviser to the president than Kupperman was.

___

• WHAT'S NEXT

Investigators are preparing to start public hearings in the coming week. Schiff said three State Department witnesses will appear in two hearings Wednesday and Friday: the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, career department official George Kent and Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch was ousted in May on Trump's orders and Taylor replaced her; both have testified about their concerns with the administration's policy on Ukraine. The committee also must consider whether to summon the witnesses sought by Republicans, who call the impeachment process a sham.

___

• NUMBERS THAT MATTER

This past week, a dozen Trump administration figures, including big names like Mulvaney and Bolton, declined to appear before the Democratic-led panel. Democrats are wrapping up the closed-door portion of the proceed