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Module 1: The Study of American Government 

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Module 1: The Study of American Government 

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We celebrate its adoption on the Fourth of July - yet few of us have actually read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. Political scientist Danielle Allen is out to change that. Her latest book, "Our Declaration", makes the case for a new interpretation of the document - as a living, relevant text with an argument for equality at its core. Inspired by her experience teaching the Declaration to her adult night students, the book invites readers to carefully examine the historical document that Allen says holds particular significance today. For this Fourth of July, equality, democracy and a fresh reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Guests

Danielle Allen Author, "Our Declaration." She is a political philosopher and a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is known for her work on justice and citizenship in ancient Athens and modern America.

Read A Featured Excerpt

Excerpted from Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen. Copyright © 2014 by Danielle Allen. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Our Declaration

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Danielle Allen: "Our Declaration" - Diane Rehm

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We celebrate its adoption on the Fourth of July - yet few of us have actually read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. Political scientist Danielle Allen is out to change that. Her latest book, "Our Declaration", makes the case for a new interpretation of the document - as a living, relevant text with an argument for equality at its core.

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Link: Book review: ‘Our Declaration,’ by Danielle Allen

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Link: Book review: ‘Our Declaration,’ by Danielle Allen

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In this algorithmic age of quants, wonks and hackers, where statistics and big data take all the credit for explaining the world, Danielle Allen, a political philosopher at the Institute of Advanced Studies, rolls back the numbers to the mere 1,337 words written by our founding fathers and reminds us that words matter, too.

In "Our Declaration," she applies a geek's gaze to America's core text and shows how our founding fathers declared their independence from England in the most spare and carefully chosen of words. Although briefly stated, the declaration brims with large ideas crafted by deliberate and principled men who took on what appeared to be a lost cause. Having exhausted all other means of trying to reason with the tyrannical King George III, they were left with no choice but to break their bond with England.

One idea that is central to Allen's book is the role of equality in the declaration. In the sound-bite-driven, cliche-laden conversations of our present age, equality, as it appears in the declaration, has been neglected and misapplied. The founding fathers had a clear vision for what they expected of democratic governance. And what they extolled, and what Allen trumpets like a good soldier in the Continental Army, was a co-dependent relationship between equality and freedom - neither was more important than the other.

Yet today freedom permeates our public discourse like an obsession, while equality is regarded as a bastard stepchild of the revolutionary age. Everyone purports to know the meaning of freedom; few have any idea how to comprehend equality, much less apply it. Allen points out, however, that only through equality - and how it elevates the dignity of ordinary people - could the colonies have mustered the intellectual and emotional mettle to finally break free from the crown.

This book sets out to debunk the notion that freedom alone is the supreme virtue arising from the declaration. In doing so, it restores equality to the level of importance it once shared with freedom as equal partners in the revolution that gave birth to a nation. And Allen does not fail to address the limits of what equality meant to these founding white-skinned, land-owning fathers.

Most people have never read the Declaration of Independence all the way through. What passes for generally accepted cocktail-party trivia is that Thomas Jefferson wrote the document, that it says something about "all men being created equal," and that people have the "inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - whatever that means.

"Our Declaration" is a primer on all we have been missing. First, Jefferson was not the sole author. There were many contributors to this evolving document, including the man who inscribed the words on the parchment and the female publisher of the broadside that brought these fiery words to the people. Each made stylistic changes to the declaration that were not in Jefferson's original.

Indeed, the Committee of Five - Jefferson and the other authors, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston - proved that sometimes having too many cooks in the kitchen can result in the perfect revolutionary meal. What Jefferson delivered was treated as a most malleable first draft. It was edited down considerably and stripped of the Lord of Monticello's flowery, hyperventilated language. God was added ; the condemnation of slavery was removed. No one can truly claim authorship of the declaration, which is a good thing, to Allen's mind, since it represented the important first step in the functioning of a new government committed to democratic ideals.

Even those members of the Continental Congress who were not among the declaration's collaborative authors nonetheless participated in spirited debates and procedural dealmaking about what should go into the document. In contrast to the fractitiousness and coarsened debate of today's Congress, our founding fathers created a precedent for political consensus-building at its most elegant and refined.

"The art of democratic writing supports the development of collective intelligence and does not seek credit. It does not know intellectual pride," Allen writes. "The Declaration succeeded, and succeeds still, because it took on the task of explaining why this quantity of talk, this heap of procedures, these lists of committees, and this much hard-won agreement - such a maddening quantity of group writing - are necessary for justice."

Allen knows a little about how group learning can enrich the minds of a community. Indeed, "Our Declaration" developed in somewhat the same way that the founding fathers assembled the actual declaration. For years Allen taught the declaration to privileged college students during the day and students with financial and family challenges at night. What better way to experience the majesty of the declaration, and glean its deeper meanings, than to read it closely, surrounded by citizens of varying backgrounds all representing the polity of 21st-century America? Her class was a collective exercise of getting inside the heads of men of the Enlightened 18th century by parsing their precise words. The stakes were far less fraught, to be sure, but in its own way Allen's dissection of the declaration matched those exhilarating and transformative early sessions of the Continental Congress.

"Our Declaration" is not just an invaluable civics lesson but also a poignant personal memoir. Allen, her family and her students are characters in a post-American Revolution tale. The professor learned the mysteries of the declaration with the aid of her students, seeing in them the very embodiment of what the founding fathers wished to bequeath to future generations of Americans.

With a light touch that does nothing to conceal her civic fervor, Allen is an evangelist for this romantic moment in American history when men of uncommon vision and political deftness stated their case and listed their grievances against the most powerful nation on Earth.

Thane Rosenbaum , a novelist, essayist and law professor at New York University, is the director of the Forum on Law, Culture & Society and the author, most recently, of "Payback: The Case for Revenge."

OUR DECLARATION

A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

By Danielle Allen

Liveright. 315 pp. $27.95

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history of the declaration of independence

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who wrote the declaration of independence

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A few well-chosen words of the Founding Fathers

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In this algorithmic age of quants, wonks and hackers, where statistics and big data take all the credit for explaining the world, Danielle Allen, a political philosopher at the Institute of Advanced Studies, rolls back the numbers to the mere 1,337 words written by our founding fathers and reminds us that words matter, too.

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 Module 2: The Constitution & Federalism 

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 Module 2: The Constitution & Federalism 

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Link: One year of Trump: How the administration changed American foreign policy

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Link: One year of Trump: How the administration changed American foreign policy

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[ A year of Trump's 'America first' agenda has radically changed the U.S. role in the world]

During the 2016 election, Donald Trump campaigned on an "America first" philosophy - less foreign intervention, fairer trade deals and stronger borders. Over the first year of his presidency, the Trump administration made changes to several U.S. policies related to those issues, in some cases reversing President Barack Obama's signature achievements.
Travel ban Iran nuclear deal Cuba Israeli-Palestinian conflict Syrian civil war Paris agreement Trans-Pacific Partnership
Click to jump to a complete timeline for each issue.

Other Trump policy goals remain - after a year - partially or fully unrealized.
North Korea's nuclear threat China Afghanistan War on ISIS NAFTA Russia Mexico border wall NATO
Click to jump to a complete timeline for each issue.

That doesn't mean that Trump was silent on those issues. The president often took to Twitter to admonish China for failing to deter North Korea's nuclear advancement or criticize the prior administration's Iran nuclear deal. But what did the Trump White House actually do to follow up on its foreign policy promises?

The Washington Post kept track of 15 national security and foreign policy issues Trump highlighted. Read below how the administration handled each one.

National security

Israeli-Palestinian conflict Trump's policy

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."

In December, Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He also announced a plan to move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. Trump's Jerusalem decision sparked outrage in the international community. The decision did not trigger the mass protests and violence in the Middle East that many had feared, but it did win Trump widespread praise in Israel with the far right and has emboldened the Israeli government to accelerate settlements.

The decision is an example of where the Trump administration appears to have put domestic interests ahead regional ones. It has set back the peace process and the chances of building a regional security alliance against Iran, for little strategic gain except to please a home base.

recent events

January 3 | In a tweet, Trump threatens to cut aid to the Palestinians, saying they have "no appreciation or respect" for payments. Israeli officials say the move has the potential to backfire and could weaken Palestinian leadership in security matters.

December 23, 2017 | The White House vows to stand firm on Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, despite pushback from allies and other world leaders. The next day, Guatemala announces it will move its embassy to Jerusalem, becoming the first country to follow the U.S.'s lead.

December 21, 2017 | In a 128-9 vote, the U.N. overwhelming rejects Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

December 6, 2017 | Trump formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and plans to relocate the U.S. Embassy, defying warnings from other Mideast countries and some U.S. allies in a risky move that he insisted would not derail his administration's efforts to broker a peace deal. The move upend decades of U.S. policy, sparking regional unrest.

August 25, 2017 | Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, finishes his trip to the Middle East as part of a U.S. delegation to help broker peace talks. Kushner met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. While the U.S. promised to continue talks, it did not commit to a two-state solution -- much to the frustration of the Palestinians.

August 5, 2017 | A former top aide to Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to testify against the Israeli Prime Minister as part of a corruption trial, making an indictment increasingly likely.

July 13, 2017 | Trump's envoy to the Middle East announces a water-sharing agreement between Israel and Palestinians.

June 6, 2017 | The Trump administration warns that the United States could pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council unless the body ends what Washington calls the whitewashing of dictators' abuses and unfair attacks on Israel.

June 1, 2017 | President Trump signs the long-standing national security waiver delaying a move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

May 23, 2017 | Trump tweets: "Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East were great. Trying hard for PEACE. Doing well."

May 23, 2017 | President Trump pays his respects at the Jewish Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump visits Bethlehem in the West Bank to hold a bilateral meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Speaking to the press alongside Abbas, Trump condemns the fatal terrorist bombing of England's Manchester Arena on the previous night, calling the perpetrators "losers." Abbas calls for a two-state solution, but Trump does not mention it.

May 22, 2017 | Continuing his tour of the Middle East and Europe, President Trump is met in Tel Aviv by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin. He visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and becomes the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Western Wall.

May 3, 2017 | President Trump holds a bilateral meeting and joint news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington.

March 26, 2017 | Vice President Pence delivers an evening speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at Washington's Verizon Center, reaffirming the United States' commitments to Israeli defense and to preventing Iran's nuclear program from producing a weapon.

February 15, 2017 | Trump meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, and calls on Netanyahu to "hold back" the construction of settlements in the West Bank. Trump's comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prompt United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to warn against any abandonment of the two-state solution.

February 2, 2017 | President Trump warns Israel that building new settlements in the West Bank "may not be helpful" for a peace deal.

December 28, 2016 | "We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect," Trump tweets, adding that Israel should "stay strong" until he steps into office.

May 3, 2016 | Trump says Israel should keep building West Bank settlements.

March 21, 2016 | As a Republican presidential candidate, Trump declares: "We will move the American Embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem."

See earlier events

Syrian civil war Trump's policy

"My attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed very much."

Obama was widely criticized for what was seen as inaction in the Syrian civil war. His decision not to act on the "red line" ultimatum he declared against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons remains to many one of the most scarring events in his administration. In April, Trump was quick to react with a one-off strike of his own after the Syrian government killed scores of civilians in an apparent chemical attack. But the attack was mostly seen as a show of force rather than part of a broad strategy in the war-torn country.

Pentagon officials have emphasized they will keep the United States out of the conflict, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced in January 2018 that U.S. troops will stay in Syria to counter "strategic threats" from Iran. Tillerson cited a range of policy goals that extend far beyond the defeat of the Islamic State as conditions for American troops to go home.

recent events

November 22, 2017 | The Trump administration looks to expand its goals in Syria beyond routing the Islamic State to include a political settlement of the country's civil war. U.S. officials say they are hoping to use the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in northern Syria to pressure Assad to make concessions at U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva. The move could draw the United States into conflict with both Syria and Iran.

November 21, 2017 | Trump and Putin talk on the phone for more than an hour, a conversation that focused mostly on Syria. Trump and Putin talk on the phone for more than an hour, a conversation that mostly focuses on Syria. Putin tells Trump that he had secured a commitment from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to cooperate with the Russia's new initiatives in Syria, including constitutional reforms and presidential and parliamentary elections, the Kremlin said.

July 19, 2017 | Trump decides to end the CIA's covert program of arming and training anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move that is likely to please Russia. The program was part of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside.

July 7, 2017 | The United States and Russia agree to collaborate on a cease-fire in southwest Syria.

June 26, 2017 | The White House issues a statement warning that Assad will pay a "heavy price" if he conducts another chemical attack. The statement says the United States has reason to believe Syria is preparing for another attack.

April 12, 2017 | Trump says he has "no plans" to send U.S. ground troops into Syria. Trump calls Assad an "evil person" and denounces Russia's support for the regime.

April 11, 2017 | The Trump administration releases a U.S. intelligence report indicating that a Russian-made, Syrian-piloted aircraft dropped a munition with sarin nerve agent over Idlib province. The findings are meant to discredit Russia's claims that the Syrian government did not use chemical weapons to attack its own people.

April 9, 2017 | Haley and Tillerson double-down on their criticisms of Assad and Russia's role in Syria, but they stop short of calling for Assad's imminent departure.

April 7, 2017 | Trump orders a strike on a Syrian airfield in retaliation for the chemical attack. Trump says the strikes were conducted as a "vital national security interest" to the United States to prevent the spread of chemical weapons. Russia blames the strike on Syrian rebels.

April 5, 2017 | Trump makes his first significant comments on the Syrian chemical weapon strike, saying: "It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies - babies, little babies - with a chemical gas that is so lethal . . . that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line."

April 4, 2017 | Scores of Syrians, including women and children, die in an apparent chemical attack by the Syrian military on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump blames Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons on Obama's "weakness."

March 30, 2017 | Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says removing Assad from power is no longer a priority.

February 28, 2017 | Russia and China veto a U.N. Security Council resolution sponsored by the United States that would have imposed new sanctions on Syria for using chemical weapons. At the U.N., Haley strongly criticizes Russia, saying, "If you are allies with Russia and China, they will cover the backs of their friends who use chemical weapons to kill their own people." Russia calls the statement "outrageous."

See earlier events

North Korea's nuclear threat Partially or fully unrealized policy

"Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"

After taking office, Trump has repeatedly accused previous presidents of failing to deal with the North Korean nuclear issue, saying it now falls to him to handle it. But his approach has borne many of the same hallmarks as the Obama administration's "strategic patience" policy. He has used a combination of diplomatic barbs and increasingly tough sanctions, both direct and through the United Nations, to try to put "maximum pressure" on Kim Jong Un to change his ways. Trump has, however, done it in notably more colorful language than this predecessors, mocking Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and talking much more often about military options. Still, Trump has conceded that the solution is "not as simple as people would think."

recent events

January 16 | North Korea's official news agency calls Trump a "lunatic" and a "loser" in response to his nuclear button tweet. Meanwhile, Trump called Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss the situation.

January 4 | Trump agrees to delay the annual joint military exercises with South Korea until after the Winter Olympics in what appears to be an effort to avoid antagonizing North Korea.

January 2 | Trump tweets that sanctions are having a "big impact" on the regime and that North Korean soldiers are "dangerously fleeing to South Korea." Later in the day, he adds that he has his own "button" -- and that it's "much bigger."

January 2 | South Korea says it welcomes talks with North Korea, but U.S. officials remain wary.

January 1 | In a New Year's Day speech, Kim says he has a "nuclear button" but he vowed not to use it unless threatened. He also offered to begin dialogue with South Korea.

December 26, 2017 | The Trump administration imposes sanctions on two North Korean officials who are considered key to their country's development of ballistic missiles.

December 22, 2017 | The U.N. Security Council votes to place additional sanctions on North Korea after its most recent missile launch.

November 29, 2017 | North Korea lofts a missile 2,796 miles high. With a normal trajectory, the missile has an estimated range of more than 8,000 miles, making it technically capable of reaching the U.S. Capitol.

How four recent launches signaled new leaps in North Korea's missile capabilities

November 20, 2017 | Trump re-designates North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move aimed at increasing pressure over the country's nuclear weapons and missile program. The George W. Bush administration removed Pyongyang from the list in 2008. Trump called the decision "a very critical step" that "should've happened a long time ago."

September 21, 2017 | Trump announces an executive order that grants authority to the Treasury Department to enforce economic sanctions on North Korea and companies and individuals that do business with the rogue nation in Northeast Asia.

September 19, 2017 | Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, Trump threatens to "totally destroy North Korea" as well as target rogue regimes. "Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself," Trump said, referring to a nickname he gave North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Twitter.

September 14, 2017 | North Korea fires another missile that flies over the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The missile was launched from a site near Pyongyang, according to South Korea's joint chiefs of staff.

September 11, 2017 | The U.N. Security Council agrees unanimously to impose the toughest sanctions yet against North Korea. The sanctions intend to deprive the country of the income it needs to maintain its nuclear and ballistic missile program.

September 3, 2017 | North Korea carries out its sixth nuclear test -- the first since Trump took office. The reclusive nation claims the nuclear device was a hydrogen bomb capable of reaching the United States.

August 30, 2017 | "Talking is not the answer!" Trump tweets as Mattis meets with South Korea's defense minister at the Pentagon. Mattis tells reporters: "We're never out of diplomatic solutions."

August 29, 2017 | In an unprecedented move, North Korea launches a ballistic missile that flies over Japan. In response, Trump says "all options are on the table."

August 25, 2017 | North Korea launches three short-range missiles into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan in what some say is a response to the ongoing military exercises between the United States and South Korea.

August 22, 2017 | The Treasury Department places sanctions on Chinese and Russian individuals and companies it said had conducted business with North Korea in an effort to further isolate the country.

August 17, 2017 | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis clarify that the Trump administration's North Korea policy is focused on diplomatic and economic pressure.

August 10, 2017 | Trump escalates his rhetoric on North Korea, saying his earlier statement may not have been "tough enough."

August 9, 2017 | Trump says he will "renovate and modernize" the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Officials say Trump's threats to North Korea from the previous day were unscripted and spontaneous. North Korea says Trump lacks reason and that its plan to attack Guam will be complete by mid-August.

August 8, 2017 | Trump warns North Korea that it will be faced with "fire and fury" if continues to threaten the United States. It is his harshest language yet against the regime. North Korea responds by saying it is reviewing plans to target the U.S. territory Guam, according to state media.

August 8, 2017 | In a new confidential assessment, U.S. analysts say that North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles.

August 5, 2017 | The U.N. Security Council votes unanimously on a U.S.-sponsored resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

August 1, 2017 | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tells reporters "We are trying to convey to the North Koreans: 'We are not your enemy, we are not your threat. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond.'"

July 21, 2017 | The Trump administration announces a restriction on U.S. citizens traveling to North Korea in an apparent response to the detention of three U.S. citizens and the death of a young University of Virginia student.

July 5, 2017 | U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley calls the North Korean nuclear launch "a clear and sharp military escalation" and calls for new U.N. sanctions.

July 4, 2017 | North Korea launches a test of what appears to be an intercontinental ballistic missile. Military officials and missile experts confirm that Pyongyang can now strike targets thousands of miles away.

June 30, 2017 | Trump denounces North Korea's "reckless and brutal" regime alongside South Korean President Moon Jae-in in a show of solidarity, but doesn't provide further details of U.S. policy.

June 29, 2017 | The Treasury Department announces new sanctions against North Korea targeting a Chinese bank that is accused of financing the regime. President Trump hosts South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House.

June 28, 2017 | National security adviser H.R. McMaster says Trump's strategy toward North Korea is a different approach than previous administrations. "The president asked us to prepare a range of options, including a military option that no one wants to take," McMaster said.

June 20, 2017 | Trump tweets that China has failed to rein in North Korea: "While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!" White House press secretary Sean Spicer says the U.S. is "moving further away" from direct engagement with Pyongyang following Warmbier's death.

June 14, 2017 | Tillerson says the Trump administration has asked China to act against Chinese businesses and individuals helping North Korea to evade international sanctions.

June 13, 2017 | Warmbier, in a coma, is released by North Korea after being held for more than a year. Three other U.S. citizens remain in prison.

June 12, 2017 | Mattis declares North Korea the No. 1 threat that the United States faces, moving it above Russia. Meanwhile, Yun meets with three Americans still detained in North Korea while attempting to secure Warmbier's release.

June 6, 2017 | Officials from North Korea's Foreign Ministry meet Joseph Yun, the U.S. special representative to North Korea, in New York. The topic of discussion is the deteriorating health of Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student held in Pyongyang. Yun prepares to travel to North Korea with the intent to secure Warmbier's release.

May 15, 2017 | The White House once again calls for tougher sanctions against North Korea following a ballistic missile test by the regime.

May 4, 2017 | Joseph Yun, the U.S. special representative to North Korea, meets top North Korean Foreign Ministry officials in Oslo, Norway. North Korea agrees to allow Swedish diplomats to visit with American detainees. The back-channel deal is a hopeful sign that relations might improve.

May 3, 2017 | Tillerson says the administration is just at the beginning stages of its campaign to pressure North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, and will negotiate with Pyongyang "when conditions are right."

May 2, 2017 | Trump says he would be "honored" to meet Kim Jong Un, opening the potential of dialogue between the two leaders.

April 29, 2017 | A North Korean midrange ballistic missile fails shortly after launch.

April 28, 2017 | Approaching his 100th day in office, Trump says that conflict with North Korea is "immediate" but that he still seeks diplomacy.

April 27, 2017 | Trump praises Chinese President Xi's approach to North Korea but warns of a possible "major, major conflict."

April 27, 2017 | Trump insists South Korea should pay $1 billion for the missile defense system, aggravating the South Korean government. Trump has stated previously during the campaign that Seoul should pay more for its own defense.

April 26, 2017 | The U.S. military begins installing the controversial missile defense system THAAD in South Korea, despite protests from the likely winner of South Korea's upcoming presidential election and criticism from China.

April 24, 2017 | Trump asks the U.N. Security Council to impose new sanctions on Pyongyang. China's Xi urges restraint. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announces new sanctions against the Syrian government in response to the chemical weapons attack on April 4.

April 23, 2017 | North Korea detains another U.S. citizen at its airport, bringing the number of Americans held by the regime to four.

April 18, 2017 | Pictures posted by the U.S. Navy reveal that the USS Carlson was actually sailing away from the Korean Peninsula, contradicting claims that it was steaming north as a show of force against North Korea.

April 16, 2017 | North Korea fires a missile, but it fails.

April 15, 2017 | North Korea marks the birth anniversary of its founder with a massive military parade.

A timeline of North Korea nuclear tests

April 14, 2017 | The Trump administration adopts a new North Korea strategy calling for "maximum pressure and engagement," but not regime change.

April 13, 2017 | Trump says that the North Korea nuclear issue is more complicated than he thought after talking to China's Xi. "After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it's not so easy. I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. . . . But it's not what you would think," Trump told the Wall Street Journal.

April 12, 2017 | Trump says that the U.S. is sending a powerful "armada" of naval vessels to the Korean Peninsula.

April 11, 2017 | "North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A." Trump tweets

April 9, 2017 | The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier is dispatched toward the Korean Peninsula as a show of force.

April 4, 2017 | North Korea fires a missile on the eve of a summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

March 22, 2017 | North Korea fires a missile that explodes within seconds. It is a reassuring sign for observers who worry about the advancement of North Korea's weapons program.

March 18, 2017 | North Korea conducts a rocket engine test "of historic significance." The test coincides with Tillerson's visit to China.

March 18, 2017 | China urges the United States to remain "coolheaded" over North Korea and not to turn its back on dialogue. Tillerson says that all options are on the table and that the Obama holdover policy of "strategic patience" is over.

March 17, 2017 | Trump criticizes China's approach to curtailing North Korea's nuclear threat in a tweet: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

March 16, 2017 | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on his first trip to Asia, says that 20 years of trying to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program had failed and that he was visiting Asia "to exchange views on a new approach."

March 12, 2017 | North Korea fires four ballistic missiles. Three land in waters near Japan.

March 10, 2017 | South Korean President Park Geun-hye is impeached. The attention turns to her likely successor, Moon Jae-in, and whether he can reset relations with North Korea and China.

March 7, 2017 | Against China's wishes, the U.S. military begins deploying an advanced defensive missile system to South Korea. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is designed to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles. China warns of "consequences" for South Korea and the United States over the deployment.

March 6, 2017 | The White House says Trump called the leaders of Japan and South Korea to reaffirm U.S. commitment to stand against North Korea following the provocation.

March 5, 2017 | North Korea launches four missiles. The regime claims it was practicing to hit U.S. military bases in Japan.

March 2, 2017 | Trump warns that the United States will take unilateral action against North Korea if China doesn't step in to help. "China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won't," Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times.

February 18, 2017 | China says it's cutting off coal imports from North Korea in accordance with U.N. Security Council sanctions. The move is aimed to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and missile program.

February 12, 2017 | North Korea tests a new midrange ballistic missile in its first major challenge to Trump as president.

January 2, 2017 | Trump tweets: "North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!"

November 22, 2016 | Before Obama leaves office, he warns Trump that North Korea is one of the biggest national security challenges that will face the new administration.

See earlier events

Afghanistan Partially or fully unrealized policy

"Our troops will fight to win."

The 16-year war against the Taliban is at a stalemate, as the country's security situation spirals out of control. Although Obama officially ended the U.S. combat mission there, more than 14,000 U.S. troops remain to train local forces and conduct counterterrorism operations. U.S. military officials have requested thousands of additional troops to help assist Afghan military forces as the Taliban has surged. In a speech in August, Trump announced a new strategy that would be likely to include an increase of troops to the war effort.

Afghan critics and analysts worry that the Trump administration is downplaying the country's political problems and doing little to press for peace talks, but rather seeking a "victory" over the Taliban. Many see that goal as simplistic and unrealistic, especially given the small number of U.S. troops being added. There is also a sense of what some see as military melodrama - such as dropping the "Mother of All Bombs" and bombing Taliban drug labs - as substitutes for dealing with the thornier issues of official corruption and widening Taliban influence. Under new rules of engagement, U.S. and Afghan forces are conducting an average of 15 airstrikes a day compared to a total of 65 in all of 2016. - Pamela Constable contributed to this report.

recent events

January 16 | New data shows that the U.S. maintained heavy airstrikes in Afghanistan through the month of December, signaling a more aggressive strategy. In previous years, airstrikes would drop during the holiday season after summer highs.

January 1 | Army Sgt. 1st Class Mihail Golin, 34, a Special Forces soldier, is killed in Nangarhar province Achin district after he came under small-arms fire while on a foot patrol.

December 22, 2017 | In a speech during an unannounced trip to the country, Mike Pence says that new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is "already bearing fruit."

December 5, 2017 | The U.S. military announces the death of Omar bin Khatab, a top leader of al-Qaeda. He was the most senior leader killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban was driven from power in late 2001, according to a senior official.

November 20, 2017 | U.S. and Afghan forces launch a series of attacks on the Taliban's drug labs, marking the start of what could become a long, expanded air war.

November 4, 2017 | Sgt. 1st Class Stephen B. Cribben, 33, a Special Forces communications sergeant, is killed while his unit was engaged in "combat operations" in Logar province.

October 28, 2017 | Chief Warrant Officer Jacob Sims, 36, dies in a helicopter crash in Logar province.

October 23, 2017 | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson makes an unannounced visit to Afghanistan after a series of Taliban attacks left nearly 200 dead in one of the bloodiest weeks of the year.

August 31, 2017 | The administration releases more details about the upcoming Afghan troop surge. The bulk of the 4,000 additional troops will be paratroopers, with additional air and marine support.

August 30, 2017 | The Pentagon acknowledges that the U.S. has roughly 11,000 total troops in Afghanistan, thousands more than the 8,400 cap set by the Obama administration.

August 21, 2017 | Trump reveals the administration's new strategy for Afghanistan in a prime-time speech to the nation. The new approach includes a modest increase of several thousand troops. In the speech, Trump said the success of the new approach will be determined by conditions on the ground rather than on a specific deadline.

August 16, 2017 | Staff Sgt. Aaron R. Butler, 27, a Green Beret, is killed fighting ISIS militants in eastern Afghanistan.

August 4, 2017 | Reports emerge that Trump has threatened to fire Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. military official in Afghanistan. Nicholson is a highly regarded U.S. military commander who has worked closely with the Afghan military and civilian officials for the past 16 months.

August 2, 2017 | Two U.S. soldiers are killed in Afghanistan when their convoy is hit by a vehicle laden with explosives. The Taliban claims responsibility.

July 20, 2017 | President Trump suggests he might delay sending more troops to Afghanistan. When asked at the Pentagon if he would send more troops, Trump replies: "We'll see. And we're doing very well against ISIS. ISIS is falling fast."

July 17, 2017 | U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan return to the same level of intensity as 2012, according to military data.

July 3, 2017 | Army Pfc. Hansen B. Kirkpatrick, 19, is killed by indirect fire while outside his base in southern Afghanistan.

June 18, 2017 | Taliban fighters storm a police base after detonating a suicide car bomb. The attack kills five members of security forces and several civilians.

June 17, 2017 | An Afghan soldier wounds seven U.S. soldiers after opening fire at an Afghan base. It is the second such insider attack in a week.

June 13, 2017 | Trump gives the Pentagon new authority to decide the troop levels in Afghanistan. The decision raises concerns among experts, who warn the White House and Congress should be careful not to give the Pentagon a blank check.

June 10, 2017 | An elite Afghan commando shoots and kills three U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan. The gunman was killed by American troops, according to a security official.

May 31, 2017 | A powerful truck bomb decimates a high-security district of Kabul, killing at least 150 people and sparking days of protests.

April 26, 2017 | Two Army Rangers are killed while conducting a raid against the Islamic State.

April 24, 2017 | Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrives in Kabul in a surprise visit to assess the situation. Afghanistan's defense minister and Army chief resign.

April 21, 2017 | Taliban fighters, disguised as Afghan personnel, kill more than 140 Afghan soldiers at a military base. It is a huge blow to the country's security situation. The attack is the single deadliest carried out by the Taliban against the military in its 16 years of fighting.

April 13, 2017 | The U.S. military drops a 22,000-pound bomb on an Islamic State hideout in eastern Afghanistan. The bomb is one of the largest munitions in the U.S. military's inventory.

April 8, 2017 | Staff Sgt. Mark De Alencar, a special forces operator, is killed by small-arms fire in fighting the Islamic State. It is the first combat death in Afghanistan in 2017.

March 19, 2017 | Three U.S. troops are wounded in apparent insider attack at an Afghan military base in Helmand province. Army Sgt. 1st Class Robert R. Boniface, 34, dies in eastern Afghanistan from a non-combat-related incident.

See earlier events

War on ISIS Partially or fully unrealized policy

″[ISIS is] a network of lawless savages that have slaughtered Muslims and Christians, and men, women and children of all faiths and beliefs."

Trump said repeatedly during his campaign that he would replace the Obama administration's strategy against the Islamic State, primarily in Syria and Iraq, with a far tougher policy that would quickly destroy the militants. Although he has expanded military authorities and added some additional Special Operations forces aiding U.S. proxies in Syria, Trump's strategy is largely identical to that of his predecessor.

Iraqi security forces, with U.S. assistance on the ground and in the air, retook the Iraqi city of Mosul in an offensive that began under Obama. A similar offensive in Raqqa ended in October, when the U.S.-led coalition announced it cleared the militants from the Islamic State's de facto capital in Syria. Yet U.S. and coalition airstrikes in the crowded urban environments of the two cities have led to an increasing number of civilian casualties, leaving the Pentagon struggling to explain a sudden surge in the death toll.

recent events

January 11 | On Twitter, the Pentagon's senior enlisted service member warns ISIS that they need to "surrender or die."

January 4 | The Trump administration announces it will suspend most security assistance to Pakistan, claiming it has failed to act against extremists.

December 9, 2017 | Iraqi forces regain control over the Syrian border and declare victory over ISIS, which has no more territory under its control in the region.

November 3, 2017 | The Syrian army recaptures Deir al-Zour, one of the final ISIS strongholds.

October 20, 2017 | A U.S.-backed force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces declares ISIS forces vanquished from the Islamic State's onetime Syria capital of Raqqa, effectively declaring an end to the military operation there.

October 16, 2017 | Iraqi forces take control of Kirkuk, a city that had been under Kurdish security control before Islamic State's rise.

October 5, 2017 | Iraqi forces have reclaimed the town of Hawijah from the Islamic State.

September 9, 2017 | U.S.-backed forces in Syria announce "Operation Jazeera Storm," a new offensive to clear ISIS militants from the group's most important remaining stronghold.

August 31, 2017 | Iraq's prime minister says Tal Afar has been "fully liberated."

August 30, 2017 | U.S.-led airstrikes block ISIS fighters traveling on a bus a convoy of hundreds of Islamic State fighters trying to escape to eastern Syria. The deal was negotiated by Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.

August 20, 2017 | The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court for full enforcement of travel ban.

July 11, 2017 | Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declares the nine-month battle for the city of Mosul officially over.

June 6, 2017 | U.S.-backed forces begin the "long and difficult" battle to capture the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State's de facto capital, the U.S.-led coalition fighting the extremist group said Tuesday.

April 13, 2017 | The U.S. military drops a 22,000-pound bomb on an Islamic State hideout in eastern Afghanistan. The bomb is one of the largest munitions in the U.S. military's inventory.

April 11, 2017 | A U.S. drone strike in Syria kills at least 18 allied members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It is the worst friendly-fire incident of the war against ISIS.

April 10, 2017 | The Pentagon struggles to respond as to why more civilians are dying in the campaign against ISIS. Some point to the fact that the fight has intensified; others say it's Trump's new strategy.

March 22, 2017 | Secretary of State Tillerson hosts a summit of 68 nations in Washington to discuss anti-ISIS strategy.

March 8, 2017 | Additional U.S. forces deploy to Syria to support the fight against the Islamic State in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

February 28, 2017 | In his address to Congress, Trump says he has directed the Pentagon to "demolish and destroy" the Islamic State.

February 20, 2017 | Mattis makes his first trip to Iraq as the defense secretary to determine what is needed in the campaign against the Islamic State. Mattis rejects Trump's suggestion that the United States is after Iraq's oil.

January 28, 2017 | Trump orders the Pentagon to deliver a plan within 30 days on how to defeat the Islamic State.

See earlier events

Russia Partially or fully unrealized policy

"He said he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times."

Trump vowed during his campaign to improve relations with Russia, but they've since soured under the cloud of ongoing U.S. investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Moscow's hopes that Trump would move to lift some of the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration for Russian intervention in Ukraine have not been realized. Congress, and many within Trump's administration, are opposed to any easing of the measures.

Lawmakers signed a bill in August 2017 that not only placed sanctions on Russia but limited Trump's ability to negotiate on sanctions without congressional approval. As a result, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the reduction of U.S. diplomatic missions in Russia by 755 people, spurring another response from the United States: closing three Russian diplomatic facilities in San Francisco, New York and Washington. In December, the Trump administration labeled Russia and China as competitors that threaten the United States and wish to realign global power in their interest.

recent events

January 9 | Russia indirectly accuses the U.S. of assisting in a series of drone attacks on Russian bases in Syria.

December 18, 2017 | In a softer-than-expected national security address, Trump lays out a broad "America first" strategy and calls China and Russia "rival powers" of America.

December 17, 2017 | Putin thanks Trump for a CIA tip that led to the thwarting of a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg.

December 14, 2017 | A year into his presidency, Trump continues to deny U.S. intelligence stating Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

November 21, 2017 | Trump and Putin talk on the phone for more than an hour, a conversation that mostly focuses on Syria. Putin tells Trump that he had secured a commitment from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to cooperate with the Russia's new initiatives in Syria, including constitutional reforms and presidential and parliamentary elections, the Kremlin said.

November 11, 2017 | In Vietnam, Trump says he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is sincere when he denies that Moscow meddled in the presidential election. "He said he didn't meddle," Trump said, answering questions from reporters on Air Force One.

October 27, 2017 | The State Department reveals 39 companies and government organizations that support Russia and warns that they could be hit with sanctions for doing significant business with the country.

August 31, 2017 | The Trump administration orders three Russian diplomatic facilities in San Francisco, New York and Washington closed following the expulsion of American diplomats from Russia. The State Department said the facilities, which are smaller than the main Russian Embassy in Washington, must shut down on Sept. 2.

August 22, 2017 | The Treasury Department places sanctions on Chinese and Russian individuals and companies it said had conducted business with North Korea in an effort to further isolate the country.

August 21, 2017 | The U.S. Embassy stops issuing visas to Russians as a diplomatic spat worsens.

August 2, 2017 | Trump reluctantly signs a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia. In a statement, Trump calls the bill "seriously flawed."

July 31, 2017 | Trump remains quiet on the response to the expulsion of U.S. diplomats.

July 30, 2017 | Putin orders the U.S. diplomatic missions in Russia to reduce their staff by 755 people in retaliation to the sanctions.

July 28, 2017 | In retaliation to the Russia sanctions bill, Moscow says it plans to seize two U.S. properties in Russia and orders a significant reduction of the American embassy staff. The measures are similar in structure to sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia in December 2016, though the number of American diplomats slated for expulsion appears to be far more sweeping.

July 27, 2017 | The Senate passes the Russia-Iran-North Korea sanctions bill.

July 25, 2017 | After striking a tentative deal to expand the Russia-Iran bill's scope to include North Korea sanctions as well, the House forces the issue with a decisive, sweeping vote in favor of the legislation. The measure preserves Congress' power to block the president on Russia sanctions changes, despite White House pressure. The sanctions include measures targeting Russia's defense, intelligence, energy, railways, metals and mining sectors over Moscow's interference in the wars in Ukraine and Syria, and alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.

July 18, 2017 | White House announces it will formally nominate former Utah governor Jon Huntsman as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. Russian politician Anatoly Antonov approved to serve as Russia's ambassador to Washington.

July 18, 2017 | Trump met with Putin for an additional hour at a dinner for world leaders during the G20 summit in Germany. The meeting was previously undisclosed. Trump left his seat to sit next to Putin, who was with his official interpreter.

July 17, 2017 | Russia continues to demand the return of two diplomatic compounds the United States seized in 2016 as punishment for Moscow's interference in the presidential election. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calls it "robbery in broad daylight."

July 9, 2017 | Trump promises to "move forward in working constructively with Russia" after his meeting with Putin.

July 7, 2017 | Trump meets Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit. Trump said he "strongly pressed" Putin twice about Russia's interference in the U.S. election, but said Putin denied it.

June 29, 2017 | The Senate "fixes" the problems House leaders identified in the Russia sanctions bill, sending it back to the House. House Democrats are up in arms, as they feel the changes have cost them their ability to block the president from changing Russia policy.

June 20, 2017 | President Trump meets with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the White House, as expanded sanctions against Russia are announced.

June 15, 2017 | The Senate overwhelmingly approves tougher sanctions against Iran and Russia, setting up a potential showdown with Trump. The measures include language that would prevent Trump from scaling back sanctions against Moscow without first seeking congressional approval - a provision the administration lobbies hard against. The Senate also included an amendment to the bill that reaffirms U.S. commitment to NATO. But the House argues there are procedural violations in the bill, setting off weeks of negotiations about how to change the bill.

May 25, 2017 | National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, who briefed reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the G-7 meeting, said the president is "looking" at additional sanctions against Russia. "Right now," he said, "we don't have a position."

May 16, 2017 | McMaster defends Trump's disclosure of classified information, describing the conversation with Lavrov and Kislyak as "wholly appropriate."

May 15, 2017 | National security adviser H.R. McMaster and Tillerson issue denials to allegations that Trump shared certain classified information with Lavrov and Kislyak.

May 10, 2017 | Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office. The Post would later report that Trump revealed highly classified information in the meeting.

May 2, 2017 | Trump speaks by phone with Putin. The two leaders discuss the Syrian civil war, terrorism and North Korea. A day later, Putin says Trump told him that he supports establishing safe zones in Syria. "As far as I understood, the American administration supports these ideas," Putin says.

April 13, 2017 | Trump tweets: "Things will work out fine between the U.S.A. and Russia. At the right time everyone will come to their senses & there will be lasting peace!" His optimistic tone runs counter to senior members of his national security team.

April 12, 2017 | Secretary of State Tillerson meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. At a joint news conference, they agree to improve their relations with bilateral dialogue. Tillerson later meets with President Putin at the Kremlin.

April 11, 2017 | The White House accuses Russia of attempting to cover up a Syrian chemical attack with the use of disinformation tactics.

April 10, 2017 | Trump administration officials demand Russia drops its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

April 9, 2017 | Trump tweets: "Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!"

February 2, 2017 | Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley declares to the U.N. Security Council that sanctions against Russia for its intervention into Ukraine would not be lifted until Russia reverses its annexation of Crimea.

See earlier events

NATO Partially or fully unrealized policy

"I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete."

During the campaign, Trump was a consistent critic of NATO, accusing European members of not paying their fair share for their joint defense and calling the 28-member (now 29) alliance "obsolete." Although he has taken some steps to ameliorate the breach, Trump's antagonism toward NATO has made European leaders wary of the commitment from the United States to help allies in collective defense, leading German Chancellor Angela Merkel to say Europe "must take our fate into our own hands."

In a November speech after his 12-day trip to Asia, Trump insisted his approach to foreign policy has led NATO to contribute more toward collective defense. "NATO, believe me, is very happy with Donald Trump," he said. NATO members agreed in June to increase their defense spending by 4.3 percent.

recent events

December 22, 2017 | Russian submarines step up their presence near critical underseas data cables, prompting NATO to reestablish a command post to help secure the North Atlantic.

December 15, 2017 | The outgoing U.S. Army Europe commander says America's continued commitment to NATO in the face of Russian aggression is in Washington's interest.

June 29, 2017 | NATO's secretary general says thousands of troops have been requested to help the Afghan military fight back against a resurgent Taliban. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says he is confident that he will receive commitments from other NATO countries for his upcoming strategy in the country.

June 28, 2017 | NATO allies announce plans to boost defense spending by 4.3 percent this year, partly a response to Trump's pressure. "We have really shifted gears," NATO's secretary general says.

June 9, 2017 | Trump, standing alongside the president of Romania, publicly endorses NATO's Article 5 collective defense commitment.

May 30, 2017 | Trump fans the flames of a feud between him and Merkel by tweeting: "We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change."

May 28, 2017 | German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Europe "really must take our fate into our own hands," offering a stark declaration of a new chapter in U.S.-European relations.

May 25, 2017 | Trump criticizes NATO leaders in Brussels for not spending enough money on their own defense. There is widespread disappointment among NATO leaders when Trump does not explicitly reaffirm America's commitment to Article 5, the joint defense pact that states an attack on one country is an attack on all.

April 12, 2017 | Trump said NATO is "no longer obsolete" during a joint news conference with Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general. The statement reverses his previous opinion on the alliance.

March 23, 2017 | In a Time interview, Trump repeats false claims that NATO is not focused on terrorism and says that he alone knew NATO members were not meeting their goals. The Obama administration has also pushed member countries to contribute more. "NATO, obsolete, because it doesn't cover terrorism. They fixed that, and I said that the allies must pay. Nobody knew that they weren't paying. I did. I figured it," he said.

March 19, 2017 | Germany rejects Trump's NATO claim. Germany's defense says the country has "no debt account in NATO."

March 18, 2017 | Trump says Germany owes America "vast sums of money" for NATO. The statement is inaccurate. All NATO countries have committed to spending 2 percent of their GDP on their defense budgets by 2024, but they do not owe the United States money.

February 6, 2017 | As president, Trump says he supports NATO but asks that members "make their full and proper financial contribution to the NATO alliance."

January 15, 2017 | President-elect Trump calls NATO "obsolete," alarming European allies. Trump repeats the claim that NATO is not focused on terror, a proven falsehood. NATO has sent troops to Afghanistan and has an established counterterrorism agenda.

January 12, 2017 | During his confirmation hearing, Defense Secretary-designee Jim Mattis says NATO is "the most successful military alliance probably in modern history, maybe ever." The words contradict Trump's message that NATO is out of date.

March 21, 2016 | In an interview with The Washington Post, Republican presidential nominee Trump calls NATO outdated and says allies should contribute more on defense spending. "I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved," Trump says.

See earlier events

Trade

"It's hard to think of a policy that makes less sense than the prior administration's terrible and misguided deal with the Castro regime."

The Obama administration announced in December 2014 that it would normalize ties with the Castro regime. Diplomatic relations, severed more than a half-century ago, were restored and new regulations expanded travel and trade. Trump, who promised to roll back the changes, initiated a partial reversal in June, although new regulations that would newly restrict American visits to the island and restrict certain kinds of commerce have not yet been promulgated.

recent events

January 9 | Responding to the FBI report, State Department officials stand behind their assertion that U.S. personnel in Cuba were deliberately attacked, and raise the possibility that a virus was used.

January 6 | An FBI report finds no evidence that American diplomats in Havana were the victims of attacks with an unknown weapon.

November 8, 2017 | The Trump administration reverses some of Obama's Cuba policies in a promised crackdown on travel and business with the island. Under the new rules, most individual visits to Cuba will no longer be allowed, and U.S. citizens will again have to travel as part of a licensed group, accompanied by a group representative. Americans will also be barred from staying at a long list of hotels and from patronizing restaurants, stores and other enterprises that the State Department has determined are owned by or benefit members of the Cuban government, specifically its security services.

October 31, 2017 | The Trump administration announces it will defend the U.S. embargo of Cuba at the U.N., reversing an Obama policy

October 27, 2017 | In a prime time TV special, Cuba presents a detailed defense against the sonic attack charges from the U.S..

October 20, 2017 | Two more U.S. officials confirmed injured by mysterious attacks in Cuba.

October 3, 2017 | The State Department says it will expel 15 in response to months of unexplained injuries to U.S. diplomats.

September 29, 2017 | The State Department pulls nonessential personnel from its embassy in Havana, and warns Americans not to visit Cuba. The move comes after mysterious injuries and ailments continue to pile up at the embassy, which the State Department describes as "specific attacks" against U.S. diplomats.

August 9, 2017 | The U.S. announces that it expelled two Cuban diplomats in May after State Department employees suffered unexplained physical ailments.

June 16, 2017 | "I am canceling the last administration's completely one-sided deal with Cuba," Trump declares in Little Havana, outlining a new Cuba policy that seeks to limit financial deals with the government and places restrictions on travel to the island. The guidelines do not reverse all of Obama's policies and would not take effect for month.

January 12, 2017 | As one of his last acts in office, President Barack Obama ends the "wet foot, dry foot'" policy for Cubans.

January 11, 2017 | During his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State-nominee Rex Tillerson says Trump is planning to review the Cuba policy on Day One.

November 28, 2016 | Trump indicates his unhappiness with increased Cuba ties. He tweets: "If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal."

November 25, 2016 | Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro dies. Following his death, then-Republican presidential candidate Trump releases a statement saying his administration would "do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty." He backs off from indicating whether he would break relations with Cuba.

October 12, 2016 | As a Republican presidential candidate, Trump declares on Twitter: "The people of Cuba have struggled too long. Will reverse Obama's executive orders and concessions towards Cuba until freedoms are restored."

See earlier events

Trans-Pacific Partnership Trump's policy

"Great thing for the American worker, what we just did."

The Obama administration made this trade agreement among Pacific Rim nations a major priority and signed the final proposal in 2016, after seven years of negotiations. But domestic political support for the agreement - which would have removed thousands of tariffs between the countries, extended U.S. intellectual-property protections and reduced China's trade dominance in East Asia - quickly flagged before ratification. Trump railed against the TPP during the 2016 election, and as soon as he took power, he withdrew from it. That deal was long seen as an alternative to a Chinese regional economic order. The withdrawal, combined with Trump's plans to ditch the Paris climate pact, had allies wondering about U.S. reliability.

Into this void stepped China's Xi, five years into his tenure, powerful and eager to show it. The U.S. retreat has given Xi, the authoritarian leader of one of the world's most tightly controlled economies, the chance to present himself as a champion of globalization. In November, 11 Pacific Rim countries announced they are resurrecting the trade deal and moving forward without the United States.

recent events

July 5, 2017 | On the eve of the G20 summit, the European Union and Japan agree "in principle" to a major free trade deal following four years of negotiations. The move is seen as indirectly criticizing Trump's isolationist stance on global trade.

April 18, 2017 | Traveling in Tokyo, Pence indicates that the United States would be interested in negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with Japan.

January 23, 2017 | Trump signs an executive order ending the United States' participation in the trade partnership. The move was seen as largely symbolic, as the trade deal had become increasingly unpopular with Congress. The United States' exit makes ratification of the treaty by the other nations virtually impossible.

China Partially or fully unrealized policy

"I don't blame China. After all, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for benefit of their citizens?"

Trump, as president-elect, had Beijing fuming when he accepted a congratulatory phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. As president, Trump further antagonized China when his administration, following in the footsteps of its predecessors, approved a $1.4 billion arms deal with Taiwan. The Taiwan issue, along with North Korea tensions and China's ongoing territorial expansion in the South China Sea, has challenged the warmer relationship Trump hoped would blossom as he held multiple meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump had criticized China as a "currency manipulator" and has repeatedly called the U.S. trade relationship with China unfair. But on a trip to the country in November, Trump softened his tone, saying that he has "great respect" for Xi and that he doesn't blame China for its "one-sided" relationship. In December, the Trump administration struck a harsher tone, labeling both China and Russia as competitors that wish to realign global power in their interest.

recent events

January 16 | Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in D.C. to discuss trade and North Korea.

December 29, 2017 | Trump claims that China was caught "red handed" selling oil to North Korea in spite of U.N. sanctions, but the Chinese government denies any wrongdoing.

December 19, 2017 | In a softer-than-expected national security address, Trump lays out a broad "America first" strategy and calls China and Russia "rival powers" of America. In response, the Chinese government calls on the U.S. to "abandon a Cold War mentality" and accept China's rise.

November 28, 2017 | The Trump administration announces two investigations into the pricing of aluminum products imported into the U.S. from China.

November 14, 2017 | Trump acknowledges that he personally intervened in the case of three UCLA basketball players who were arrested in China, asking President Xi to help resolve the case.

November 9, 2017 | Trump visits China as part of a two-week Asia tour. In a joint appearance with President Xi, he announces nearly two dozen new trade deals valued at $250 billion.

October 24, 2017 | China's Communist Party formally elevates President Xi Jinping to the same status as party legends Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

October 20, 2017 | China's President Xi Jinping gives a speech at a gathering of Communist Party leaders outlining a vision of total control.

August 22, 2017 | The Treasury Department places sanctions on Chinese and Russian individuals and companies it said had conducted business with North Korea in an effort to further isolate the country.

August 14, 2017 | Trump signs an executive memorandum ordering an investigation into China's alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property.

July 5, 2017 | As the North Korea nuclear threat escalates, Trump tweets "Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us - but we had to give it a try!"

July 3, 2017 | China's military vows to increase air and sea patrols after the warship incident. Beijing calls it a "military provocation."

July 2, 2017 | The USS Stethem, an American warship, sails near a disputed island in the South China Sea. It is the second such operation under Trump, continuing Obama's policy of challenging China's territorial claims.

June 29, 2017 | The Treasury Department announces new sanctions against North Korea targeting a Chinese bank that is accused of financing the regime.

June 20, 2017 | Ford announces that it will build its next-generation small car in China instead of Michigan. The company had previously announced plans to move production to Mexico, drawing ire from the Trump administration.

June 20, 2017 | Trump tweets that China has failed to rein in North Korea: "While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!"

June 14, 2017 | Tillerson says the Trump administration has asked China to act against Chinese businesses and individuals helping North Korea to evade international sanctions.

May 25, 2017 | The USS Dewey, a Navy destroyer, sails close to a South China Sea island in a "freedom of navigation operation."

May 12, 2017 | The Trump administration reaches a preliminary trade deal with China to ease market access for a variety of industries, most notably beef and poultry.

April 26, 2017 | The U.S. military begins installing the controversial missile defense system THAAD in South Korea, despite protests from the likely winner of South Korea's upcoming presidential election and criticism from China.

April 12, 2017 | President Trump indicates that he would no longer seek to label China as a currency manipulator.

April 7, 2017 | Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump announce a 100-day plan to improve trade and cooperation between the two nations, concluding the U.S. visit.

April 6, 2017 | Chinese President Xi Jinping is met at Palm Beach International Airport by Secretary of State Tillerson, the start of a two-day visit at Mar-a-Lago.

March 20, 2017 | "The meeting next week with China will be a very difficult one in that we can no longer have massive trade deficits and job losses. American companies must be prepared to look at other alternatives," Trump tweets.

March 17, 2017 | Trump criticizes China's approach to curtailing North Korea's nuclear threat in a tweet: "North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"

March 15, 2017 | China's premier told the United States on Wednesday that the country doesn't want a trade war, but if one breaks out, U.S. companies would bear the brunt of it.

March 2, 2017 | Trump warns that the United States will take unilateral action against North Korea if China doesn't step in to help. "China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won't," Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times.

February 24, 2017 | As Trump told Reuters that the Chinese were the "grand champions" of currency manipulation, Mnuchin was telling Bloomberg News that any decision to label China a manipulator would only follow a review by the Treasury Department.

February 18, 2017 | China says it's cutting off coal imports from North Korea in accordance with U.N. Security Council sanctions. The move is aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and missile program.

February 4, 2017 | In Asia, Mattis says military action is not needed to counter Beijing's actions in the South China Sea and that the United States should pursue diplomatic solutions.

See earlier events

NAFTA Partially or fully unrealized policy

"I've been opposed to NAFTA for a long time, in terms of the fairness of NAFTA."

The North American Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect in 1994 under President Bill Clinton, greatly reduced trade barriers among Mexico, the United States and Canada. Trump's stance on NAFTA has seen major swings. He harshly criticized the agreement during his campaign, but early proposals suggested that the administration would seek only minor revisions.

Trump then threatened to withdraw the United States entirely, but backed off after meetings with Canadian and Mexican leaders. He now is seeking to renegotiate aspects of the trade deal with them. In October, Trump warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that it is "possible" the United States may drop out of NAFTA. "If we can't make a deal, it'll be terminated and that will be fine," Trump said.

recent events

January 11 | In a White House meeting, six Republican senators warn Trump that pulling out of NAFTA altogether could endanger stock prices.

January 10 | A released complaint shows that Canada asked the WTO in December to investigate Washington's use of punitive duties, ramping up tensions in NAFTA negotiations.

November 14, 2017 | The fifth round of NAFTA negotiations begin. U.S. business groups express concern that the talks could collapse altogether.

October 17, 2017 | The fourth round of NAFTA renegotiations ends in exasperation due to tough U.S. demands, ending chances that the new agreement could come before the end of the year.

August 16, 2017 | The first round of NAFTA renegotiations begin. The negotiations are scheduled to continue throughout the fall, and details of the revised agreement will largely be unavailable during the process. The aim is to complete the deal before early 2018, when campaigning begins in Mexico to replace the term-limited Enrique Nieto.

May 18, 2017 | The administration formally notifies Congress of its intention to renegotiate the agreement, kicking off a 90-day consultation period. The administration says that negotiations will begin as early as Aug. 16.

April 27, 2017 | Facing pressure from Congress, members of his team and leaders from Mexico and Canada, Trump announces that he would not pull out of NAFTA "at this time" and instead would seek to renegotiate.

What it'll take to renegotiate NAFTA

April 26, 2017 | News breaks that Trump is considering signing an executive action to begin the process of withdrawing from NAFTA.

March 30, 2017 | A draft letter released to Congress outlines seemingly modest changes the administration hopes to make to NAFTA.

January 22, 2017 | Trump says he will begin renegotiating NAFTA when he meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

See earlier events

Border control

Travel ban Trump's policy

"That's right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won't help us protect our people!"

One week into office, Trump sparked protests nationwide by blocking U.S. entry of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries and at least temporarily halting entry of refugees, citing national security risks. His executive order was blocked by the courts and subsequently revised by the administration.

In late June, the Supreme Court allowed a partial ban to take effect, saying the ban does not apply to those who have a "bona fide" relationship to a person or entity in the United States. The Trump administration defined the relationship as including children, stepchildren, fiances, parents and certain in-laws, but excluded grandparents, nieces and nephews. The action sparked a debate over who fits that status. In September, the Trump administration announced its third travel ban. The version added three countries - Chad, North Korea and Venezuela - and kept five countries that were included in the original ban: Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Iran.

recent events

January 19 | The Supreme Court announces that it will review whether President Trump has the authority to ban travelers from certain countries in the name of national security, and issue a ruling by June.

December 22, 2017 | A federal appeals court panel rules the third travel ban violates the law, but the judges put their decisions on hold until the Supreme Court can weigh in.

December 4, 2017 | The Supreme Court rules with the Trump administration to allow full enforcement of the revised travel ban.

November 20, 2017 | A new report from an internal DHS watchdog finds that confusion during the rollout of the first travel ban led federal agents to violate court orders by blocking some travelers from getting on U.S.-bound flights.

November 20, 2017 | The Trump administrations asks the Supreme Court for full enforcement of travel ban.

November 13, 2017 | Federal appeals court panel allows Trump's third travel ban to partially take effect, blocking visitors with no "bona fide" connection to the U.S.

October 24, 2017 | As the 120-day refugee ban comes to a close, the Trump administration announces that the U.S. will begin accepting refugees again, but with much tougher screenings for applicants from 11 "high-risk" countries.

October 18, 2017 | A federal judge in Maryland issues a halt on the latest version of President Trump's entry ban, on the basis that Trump's own words indicated that it was aimed towards Muslims. A U.S. district judge in Hawaii had issued a less complete block a day earlier.

September 27, 2017 | The State Department announces it will cap U.S. refugees at 45,000 in the next fiscal year, the lowest figure in decades. The cap goes into effect on Oct. 1, although the temporary travel ban will block any refugees without a "bona fide connection" to the U.S. until Oct. 24.

September 24, 2017 | On the day that portions of the revised travel ban were set to expire, the administration announces a third version of the ban that targets eight countries. Venezuela and North Korea are included, neither of which are predominantly Muslim. In response to the announcement, the Supreme Court delays its Oct 10. hearing on the ban.

Why Trump's latest travel ban included these eight countries

September 11, 2017 | The Supreme Court puts a hold on a lower court decision that allowed 24,000 refugees with confirmed sponsors to enter the country. The Supreme Court will consider the merits of the full case on Oct. 10.

July 19, 2017 | The Supreme Court declines to overrule the Hawaii judge's decision expanding the number of family relationships exempt from the travel ban.

July 13, 2017 | A Hawaii judge rules against the administration's "narrowly defined list" of close relatives, allowing grandparents and other extended family from the affected countries to visit U.S. relatives.

Which family members can visit under the travel ban

June 29, 2017 | The State Department releases a list of "close relatives" that will be exempt from the ban. The list does not include grandparents, aunts/uncles and several other extended family relationships. The partial travel ban comes into effect at 8 p.m. EDT. Finances/fiancees are added to the exempt list shortly afterwards.

June 26, 2017 | The Supreme Court partially reinstates the travel ban, giving an exception to "foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States." It agrees to hear arguments on the legality of the overall ban in the fall.

June 12, 2017 | The Ninth Circuit rules against Trump's revised travel ban, on the grounds that it exceeds executive authority.

June 1, 2017 | The Justice Department appeals to the Supreme Court to reverse the Fourth Circuit ruling and reinstate President Trump's travel ban.

May 25, 2017 | The Fourth Circuit rules against Trump's revised travel, on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of a government religion.

March 29, 2017 | A Hawaii federal judge extends the stay on the revised travel ban. The next day, the Trump administration appeals to the Ninth Circuit.

March 15, 2017 | A Hawaii judge issues a temporary restraining order against the revised ban before it goes into effect. The next day, a Maryland judge issues a nationwide injunction, which the administration appeals to the Fourth Circuit in Virginia.

March 6, 2017 | Trump issues a revised travel ban to go into effect in 10 days. It removes Iraq from the list of affected countries and excludes green card holders, dual nationals, and those who have been granted asylum or refugee status. It also removes all language focused on religious persecution.

What Trump changed in the new travel ban

February 9, 2017 | The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejects the administration's appeal of the Washington judge's ruling.

February 3, 2017 | A Washington state judge temporarily blocks the travel ban nationwide.

January 29, 2017 | The administration issues a travel ban waiver for U.S. green-card holders from the banned countries. In a statement, Trump insists that "this is not a Muslim ban."

January 28, 2017 | A New York judge issues an emergency stay, freeing those detained in airports because of the ban.

January 27, 2017 | Trump signs a "travel ban" executive action, blocking U.S. entry by residents of seven countries ― Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen ― for 90 days. The ban suspends refugee programs for 120 days and Syrian refugee programs indefinitely, and it gives priority for future refugee applications to persecuted religious minorities. In an interview, Trump specifically mentions Christian Syrians as a persecuted group that could receive preferential treatment. Protests erupt at airports nationwide as refugees and travelers are detained.

See earlier events

Mexico border wall Partially or fully unrealized policy

"The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it."

Building a southern border wall, funded by Mexico, was one of Trump's most persistent and striking campaign promises. With the vast budgetary and logistical hurdles involved in building a border wall, Mexican officials believe that the project is still a long way from reality.

In January 2018, the Trump administration proposed spending $18 billion over the next 10 years on the border wall, sparking backlash from Democratic lawmakers. The announcement came amid a potential government shutdown and negotiations over sensitive immigration issues, such as the end for an Obama-era program that protects young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Trump pushed back after reports emerged that said White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly said some of the president's hard-line immigration policies were "uninformed" and that his stance on the border wall had "evolved." In an early-morning tweet, Trump said, "The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it."

recent events

January 5 | The Trump administration lays out a detailed financial blueprint for the border wall, asking Congress for $18 billion over the next decade. The money would pay for 316 miles of new fencing and 407 miles of renovations of existing barriers.

December 29, 2017 | In an interview with the New York Times, Trump indicates that he would not accept any deal on the DACA program that doesn't also fund construction of a border wall.

December 21, 2017 | The administration proposes a series of new measures to discourage illegal border crossings, including separating children from parents in detention.

December 13, 2017 | Democrats say the Trump administration is planning to pay for the border wall by slashing funding to Homeland Security surveillance technology and freezing pay for federal officers.

December 1, 2017 | Following the acquittal of Jose Ines Garcia Zarat in the death of Kate Steinle, Trump tweets that the U.S. needs to "BUILD THE WALL". "#KatesWall" is used by activists on Twitter to condemn the court's decision. Garcia Zarat, a Mexican immigrant, was in the country illegally at the time of Steinle's death.

November 24, 2017 | Trump tweets that the American people "Need the WALL, need the BAN!" in response to the Egyptian mosque attack that killed more than 300 people.

October 19, 2017 | A U.S. Border Patrol agent is killed while on patrol in southwest Texas, and another agent is seriously injured. In response, Trump tweets "We will seek out and bring to justice those responsible. We will, and must, build the Wall!"

October 16, 2017 | Prototypes of the Trump border wall begin to take shape this month in Tijuana, Mexico. Companies bidding for the project have until Oct. 26 to finish building them.

September 13, 2017 | Trump agrees to work with Democrats to craft legislation saving DACA 'dreamers' from deportation, without also providing wall funding. The next day Trump walks back rumors of the deal, and tweets "The WALL, which is already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls, will continue to be built."

August 31, 2017 | The Trump administration selects four companies to build prototypes of the border wall, out of over 200 that responded with proposals.

August 22, 2017 | During a rally in Phoenix, Trump threatens to shut down the government if border wall funding is not approved.

August 3, 2017 | The Post releases transcripts of President Trump's Jan. 27 call with Mexican President Nieto. During the call Trump seems to acknowledge that demanding Mexico pay for the wall has backed him into a political corner, and asks that Nieto stop publicly stating that Mexico will not pay.

July 11, 2017 | The House Appropriations Committee releases a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2018. It includes $1.6 billion for the construction of a border wall.

June 21, 2017 | At a rally, Trump proposes adding solar panels to the border wall so that it "creates energy and pays for itself," adding that "this way, Mexico will have to pay much less money."

May 23, 2017 | The White House publishes President Trump's first full budget proposal. Allocations include $1.6 billion for a Mexican border wall.

April 25, 2017 | Trump backs down, and Republican senators offer a new emergency budget without wall funding. Trump vows that "the wall's going to get built."

April 23, 2017 | The president demands that $1.5 billion in funding for the wall be included in an emergency budget being negotiated to avoid a government shutdown. Trump tweets: "Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall."

February 22, 2017 | Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Homeland Security Kelly visit Mexico. Trump signed an immigration order the previous day, ordering U.S. authorities to deport all who cross the border illegally.

February 10, 2017 | A leaked document from the Department of Homeland Security puts the price tag of Trump's wall at $25 billion.

February 9, 2017 | Trump says the wall will cost $8 billion in an interview with MSNBC.

January 27, 2017 | Trump speaks with Peña Nieto for an hour over the phone. Mexico says the two agreed not to publicly discuss funding of the wall.

January 26, 2017 | Peña Nieto cancels his meeting with Trump. Later, the Trump administration proposes that the barrier be funded by a 20 percent import tax on goods from Mexico.

January 25, 2017 | Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto responds to Trump in a televised address, saying Mexico will not pay for the wall. He faces pressure at home to cancel his scheduled meeting with Trump.

January 25, 2017 | Trump signs an executive order to begin "immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border," although no funding is appropriated.

January 11, 2017 | In a news conference, Trump says Mexico will "reimburse" the United States for the wall. "I want to get the wall started," Trump said. "I don't want to wait a year and a half until I make my deal with Mexico."

See earlier events

International treaties

Iran nuclear deal Trump's policy

"Despite my strong inclination, I have not yet withdrawn the United States from the Iran nuclear deal."

As a candidate and president, Trump said he would reexamine and possibly kill the Iran nuclear deal signed under Obama. The historic agreement negotiated by the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany and the European Union at least temporarily shut down Tehran's nuclear weapons program in exchange for easing international sanctions. Some Republican lawmakers hoped Trump would quash the nuclear accord, charging that Iran has violated non-nuclear prohibitions on aiding terrorism and developing ballistic missiles.

In January 2018, Trump extended waivers on sanctions for the third time, therefore extending the nuclear pact once more. However, Trump threatened to "terminate" the deal and called on European allies to fix "significant flaws in the deal, countering Iranian aggression and supporting the Iranian people."

recent events

January 12 | Trump keeps the Iran nuclear deal alive by waiving sanctions for the third time. The Treasury Department also places sanctions on 14 people and entities for alleged offenses unrelated to Iran's nuclear industry.

January 4 | The Trump administration sanctions five subsidiaries of an Iranian industrial group that is considered key in the development and production of the country's ballistic missiles.

January 3 | Trump tweets in support of the anti-government protesters, saying: "Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!"

January 2 | Trump reaffirms his support for the protests in Iran, declaring it is "time for change."

December 28, 2017 | The largest street protests since the 2009 presidential elections begin in Iran. More than 20 people are killed and thousands are arrested. The demonstrations are tied to the country's struggling economy and high unemployment.

December 14, 2017 | In an elaborately staged presentation, U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley showcases weaponry that the administration claims is "undeniable" proof that Iran has expanded its support for Houthi rebels in Yemen.

October 13, 2017 | Trump officially disavowed the international nuclear deal with Iran, but did not terminate an agreement he called weak and poorly constructed.

September 14, 2017 | The Trump administration waives nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. But in addition, it places sanctions on 11 companies and people linked to the country's ballistic-missile program and cyberattacks.

September 13, 2017 | Ahead of his visit to the U.S., Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands that the nuclear deal be fixed or canceled.

August 31, 2017 | The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is in charge of monitoring Iran's nuclear activities, certifies that the country is compliant with the Iran nuclear deal.

August 3, 2017 | In response to new U.S. sanctions announced in February, Iran Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi states that "we believe that the nuclear deal has been violated, and we will react appropriately" on public television.

July 17, 2017 | The Trump administration grudgingly certifies that Iran is meeting its terms of the nuclear agreement. However, officials say Trump plans to impose more sanctions on Tehran for "malign activities."

July 16, 2017 | Iran sentences a Chinese-American student accused of espionage to 10 years in prison. The Princeton graduate student was reportedly detained in 2016. The detention comes at a sensitive time in U.S.-Iranian relations.

July 13, 2017 | The Trump administration weighs plans to recertify Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal. The recertification follows a heated internal debate between those who want to crack down on Iran now and Cabinet officials who are "managing other constituencies" such as European allies.

June 29, 2017 | U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley criticizes Iran for its "destructive and destabilizing" actions while the E.U. and U.N. praise Tehran for implementing the nuclear deal.

May 20, 2017 | Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, one of the original architects of the nuclear deal, is re-elected. He has vowed to continue talks with the West regarding the agreement.

May 5, 2017 | All of Iran's presidential candidates commit to upholding a nuclear deal with world powers.

April 19, 2017 | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the deal has failed to quash Iran's ability and determination to develop atomic weapons.

April 18, 2017 | The State Department officially notified Congress that Iran has met all its commitments under the agreement, a certification required every 90 days. This is the first time the Trump administration has done so.

February 3, 2017 | The Trump administration sanctions Iran in response to its ballistic missile test. They apply to 25 people and entities.

February 2, 2017 | Trump sends a series of tweets saying Tehran should be thankful for a "terrible" nuclear deal.

February 1, 2017 | The Trump administration announces that it has put Iran "on notice" after its ballistic-missile launch. It marks the first public comments from the new administration concerning Iran. Officials say the statements are separate from the nuclear agreement.

November 17, 2016 | Mike Pompeo, who would become the CIA director, tweets: "I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism."

See earlier events

Paris agreement Trump's policy

"I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."

Trump signaled a major break from the international push to reverse the effects of climate change on June 1, when he announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. The initial commitment was made by the Obama administration: a pledge to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025. The United States will need to wait until 2020 to officially withdraw from the non-binding deal. Domestically, the administration is also attempting to roll back the Clean Power Plan, a regulation aimed at reducing emissions from U.S. power plants.

recent events

November 13, 2017 | The Trump administration pitches efficient coal use at U.N. climate talks in Germany. The event is met with protests.

June 29, 2017 | German Chancellor Angela Merkel vows to defend the Paris agreement ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg, offering a rebuttal to Trump's decision to pull out. "Whoever believes that the world's problems can be solved by isolationism and protectionism is making an enormous error," she said.

June 5, 2017 | The top diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Beijing resigns because of Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

June 1, 2017 | Trump announces his intent to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. The decision prompts criticism around the world.

Paris climate agreement withdrawal

May 27, 2017 | Trump continues to disagree with a majority of G7 leaders on endorsing the Paris climate agreement.

May 26, 2017 | Trump refuses to commit to the Paris agreement at the G7 meeting in Taormina, Italy.

May 26, 2016 | Speaking in North Dakota, Trump promises to "cancel" the Paris climate agreement and withdraw funding from U.N. programs related to climate change.

See earlier events

Pamela Constable, Karen DeYoung, Anna Fifield, Loveday Morris and Emily Rauhala contributed to this report. Photos in promo image from Genna Martin/seattlepi.com via AP, Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP and Hassan Ammar/AP.

About this story

Events and key issues compiled from staff reports and reporting from other outlets.

Originally published July 12, 2017.

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By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

Watching the extraordinary polarization in Washington today, many people have pointed the finger at the Tea Party saying it's ideologically extreme, refuses to compromise and cares more about purity than problem solving.

I happen to agree with much of that critique, but it doesn't really answer the question: Why has the Tea Party become so prominent? Why is it able to dominate Washington?

We've had plenty of ideologically charged movements come to Washington before. Think of Barry Goldwater or George McGovern.

But once in Washington the system encouraged compromise and governance.

Over the last few decades, however, what has changed are the rules organizing American politics. They now encourage small interest groups - including ideologically charged ones - to capture major political parties as well as Congress itself. Call it ' political narrowcasting.

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4) Political polarization has also been fueled by a new media, which is also narrowcast.

Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that he might further the conservative agenda through an occasional compromise. That provoked a tirade from Rush Limbaugh, which then produced a torrent of angry e-mails and phone calls to Issa's office. Issa quickly and publicly apologized to Limbaugh and promised only opposition to Obama. Multiply that example a thousandfold, and you have the daily dynamic of Congress.

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Read: Fareed Zakaria's op-ed in The Washington Post on "A way out of our dysfunctional politics."
Some political scientists long hoped that American parties would become more ideologically pure and coherent, like European parties. They seem to have gotten their wish - and the result is abysmal.

Here's why: America does not have a parliamentary system like Europe's, in which one party takes control of all levers of political power - executive and legislative - enacts its agenda and then goes back to the voters. Power in the United States is shared by a set of institutions with overlapping authorities - Congress and the presidency. People have to cooperate for the system to work.

The Tea Party venerates the Founding Fathers. It should note that the one thing on which they all agreed was that adversarial political parties were bad for the American republic.
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It took 15 days to end the mighty 20-year reign of Roger Ailes at Fox News, one of the most storied runs in media and political history. Ailes built not just a conservative cable news channel but something like a fourth branch of government; a propaganda arm for the GOP; an organization that determined Republican presidential candidates, sold wars, and decided the issues of the day for 2 million viewers. That the place turned out to be rife with grotesque abuses of power has left even its liberal critics stunned. More than two dozen women have come forward to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment, and what they have exposed is both a culture of misogyny and one of corruption and surveillance, smear campaigns and hush money, with implications reaching far wider than one disturbed man at the top.

It began, of course, with a lawsuit. Of all the people who might have brought down Ailes, the former Fox & Friends anchor Gretchen Carlson was among the least likely. A 50-year-old former Miss America, she was the archetypal Fox anchor: blonde, right-wing, proudly anti-intellectual. A memorable Daily Show clip showed Carlson saying she needed to Google the words czar and ignoramus. But television is a deceptive medium. Off-camera, Carlson is a Stanford- and Oxford-educated feminist who chafed at the culture of Fox News. When Ailes made harassing comments to her about her legs and suggested she wear tight-fitting outfits after she joined the network in 2005, she tried to ignore him. But eventually he pushed her too far. When Carlson complained to her supervisor in 2009 about her co-host Steve Doocy, who she said condescended to her on and off the air, Ailes responded that she was "a man hater" and a "killer" who "needed to get along with the boys." After this conversation, Carlson says, her role on the show diminished. In September 2013, Ailes demoted her from the morning show Fox & Friends to the lower-rated 2 p.m. time slot.

Carlson knew her situation was far from unique: It was common knowledge at Fox that Ailes frequently made inappropriate comments to women in private meetings and asked them to twirl around so he could examine their figures; and there were persistent rumors that Ailes propositioned female employees for sexual favors. The culture of fear at Fox was such that no one would dare come forward. Ailes was notoriously paranoid and secretive - he built a multiroom security bunker under his home and kept a gun in his Fox office, according to Vanity Fair - and he demanded absolute loyalty from those who worked for him. He was known for monitoring employee emails and phone conversations and hiring private investigators. "Watch out for the enemy within," he told Fox's staff during one companywide meeting.

Taking on Ailes was dangerous, but Carlson was determined to fight back. She settled on a simple strategy: She would turn the tables on his surveillance. Beginning in 2014, according to a person familiar with the lawsuit, Carlson brought her iPhone to meetings in Ailes's office and secretly recorded him saying the kinds of things he'd been saying to her all along. "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago, and then you'd be good and better and I'd be good and better. Sometimes problems are easier to solve" that way, he said in one conversation. "I'm sure you can do sweet nothings when you want to," he said another time.

After more than a year of taping, she had captured numerous incidents of sexual harassment. Carlson's husband, sports agent Casey Close, put her in touch with his lawyer Martin Hyman, who introduced her to employment attorney Nancy Erika Smith. Smith had won a sexual-harassment settlement in 2008 for a woman who sued former New Jersey acting governor Donald DiFranceso. "I hate bullies," Smith told me. "I became a lawyer to fight bullies." But this was riskier than any case she'd tried. Carlson's Fox contract had a clause that mandated that employment disputes be resolved in private arbitration-which meant Carlson's case could be thrown out and Smith herself could be sued for millions for filing.

Carlson's team decided to circumvent the clause by suing Ailes personally rather than Fox News. They hoped that with the element of surprise, they would be able to prevent Fox from launching a preemptive suit that forced them into arbitration. The plan was to file in September 2016 in New Jersey Superior Court (Ailes owns a home in Cresskill, New Jersey). But their timetable was pushed up when, on the afternoon of June 23, Carlson was called into a meeting with Fox general counsel Dianne Brandi and senior executive VP Bill Shine, and fired the day her contract expired.* Smith, bedridden following surgery for a severed hamstring, raced to get the suit ready. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Smith instructed an IT technician to install software on her firm's network and Carlson's electronic devices to prevent the use of spyware by Fox. "We didn't want to be hacked," Smith said. They filed their lawsuit on July 6.

Carlson and Smith were well aware that suing Ailes for sexual harassment would be big news in a post-Cosby media culture that had become more sensitive to women claiming harassment; still, they were anxious about going up against such a powerful adversary. What they couldn't have known was that Ailes's position at Fox was already much more precarious than ever before.

When Carlson filed her suit, 21st Century Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, were in Sun Valley, Idaho, attending the annual Allen & Company media conference. James and Lachlan, who were not fans of Ailes's, had been taking on bigger and bigger roles in the company in recent years (technically, and much to his irritation, Ailes has reported to them since June 2015), and they were quick to recognize the suit as both a big problem - and an opportunity. Within hours, the Murdoch heirs persuaded their 85-year-old father, who historically has been loath to undercut Ailes publicly, to release a statement saying, "We take these matters seriously." They also persuaded Rupert to hire the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to conduct an internal investigation into the matter. Making things look worse for Ailes, three days after Carlson's suit was filed, New York published the accounts of six other women who claimed to have been harassed by Ailes over the course of three decades.

A few hours after the New York report, Ailes held an emergency meeting with longtime friend Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Marc Mukasey at his home in Garrison, New York, according to a high-level Fox source. Ailes vehemently denied the allegations. The next morning, Ailes and his wife, Elizabeth, turned his second-floor office at Fox News into a war room. "It's all bullshit! We have to get in front of this," he said to executives. "This is not about money. This is about his legacy," said Elizabeth, according to a Fox source. As part of his counteroffensive, Ailes rallied Fox News employees to defend him in the press. Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt called Ailes a "family man"; Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto wrote, reportedly of his own volition, an op-ed labeling Ailes's accusers "sick." Ailes's legal team attempted to intimidate a former Fox correspondent named Rudi Bakhtiar who spoke to New York about her harassment.

Ailes told executives that he was being persecuted by the liberal media and by the Murdoch sons. According to a high-level source inside the company, Ailes complained to 21st Century Fox general counsel Gerson Zweifach that James, whose wife had worked for the Clinton Foundation, was trying to get rid of him in order to help elect Hillary Clinton. At one point, Ailes threatened to fly to France, where Rupert was vacationing with his wife, Jerry Hall, in an effort to save his job. Perhaps Murdoch told him not to bother, because the trip never happened.

According to a person close to the Murdochs, Rupert's first instinct was to protect Ailes, who had worked for him for two decades. The elder Murdoch can be extremely loyal to executives who run his companies, even when they cross the line. (The most famous example of this is Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, whom he kept in the fold after the U.K. phone-hacking scandal.) Also, Ailes has made the Murdochs a lot of money - Fox News generates more than $1 billion annually, which accounts for 20 percent of 21st Century Fox's profits - and Rupert worried that perhaps only Ailes could run the network so successfully. "Rupert is in the clouds; he didn't appreciate how toxic an environment it was that Ailes created," a person close to the Murdochs said. "If the money hadn't been so good, then maybe they would have asked questions."

Beyond the James and Lachlan factor, the relationship between Murdoch and Ailes was becoming strained: Murdoch didn't like that Ailes was putting Fox so squarely behind the candidacy of Donald Trump. And he had begun to worry less about whether Fox could endure without its creator. (In recent years, Ailes had taken extended health leaves from Fox and the ratings held.) Now Ailes had made himself a true liability: More than two dozen Fox News women told the Paul, Weiss lawyers about their harassment in graphic terms. The most significant of the accusers was Megyn Kelly, who is in contract negotiations with Fox and is considered by the Murdochs to be the future of the network. So important to Fox is Kelly that Lachlan personally approved her reported $6 million book advance from Murdoch-controlled publisher HarperCollins, according to two sources.

As the inevitability of an ouster became clear, chaos engulfed Ailes's team. After news broke on the afternoon of July 19 that Kelly had come forward, Ailes's lawyer Susan Estrich tried to send Ailes's denial to Drudge but mistakenly emailed a draft of Ailes's proposed severance deal, which Drudge, briefly, published instead. Also that day, Ailes's allies claimed to conservative news site Breitbart that 50 of Fox's biggest personalities were prepared to quit if Ailes was removed, though in reality there was no such pact. That evening, Murdoch used one of his own press organs to fire back, with the New York Post tweeting the cover of the next day's paper featuring Ailes's picture and news that "the end is near for Roger Ailes."

Indeed, that evening Ailes was banned from Fox News headquarters, his company email and phone shut off. On the afternoon of July 21, a few hours before Trump was to accept the Republican nomination in Cleveland, Murdoch summoned Ailes to his New York penthouse to work out a severance deal. James had wanted Ailes to be fired for cause, according to a person close to the Murdochs, but after reviewing his contract, Rupert decided to pay him $40 million and retain him as an "adviser." Ailes, in turn, agreed to a multiyear noncompete clause that prevents him from going to a rival network (but, notably, not to a political campaign). Murdoch assured Ailes that, as acting CEO of Fox News, he would protect the channel's conservative voice. "I'm here, and I'm in charge," Murdoch told Fox staffers later that afternoon with Lachlan at his side (James had gone to Europe on a business trip). That night, Rupert and Lachlan discussed the extraordinary turn of events over drinks at Eleven Madison Park.

The Murdochs must have hoped that by acting swiftly to remove Ailes, they had averted a bigger crisis. But over the coming days, harassment allegations from more women would make it clear that the problem was not limited to Ailes but included those who enabled him - both the loyal deputies who surrounded him at Fox News and those at 21st Century Fox who turned a blind eye. "Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values," claimed the lawsuit of Fox anchor Andrea Tantaros, who says she was demoted and smeared in the press after she rebuffed sexual advances from Ailes, "but behind the scenes, it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny."

Murdoch knew Ailes was a risky hire when he brought him in to start Fox News in 1996. Ailes had just been forced out as president of CNBC under circumstances that would foreshadow his problems at Fox.

While his volcanic temper, paranoia, and ruthlessness were part of what made Ailes among the best television producers and political operatives of his generation, those same attributes prevented him from functioning in a corporate environment. He hadn't lasted in a job for more than a few years. "I have been through about 12 train wrecks in my career. Somehow, I always walk away," he told an NBC executive.

By all accounts, Ailes had been a management disaster from the moment he arrived at NBC in 1993. But by 1995, things had reached a breaking point. In October of that year, NBC hired the law firm Proskauer Rose to conduct an internal investigation after then-NBC executive David Zaslav told human resources that Ailes had called him a "little fucking Jew prick" in front of a witness.

Zaslav told Proskauer investigators he feared for his safety. "I view Ailes as a very, very dangerous man. I take his threats to do physical harm to me very, very seriously ... I feel endangered both at work and at home," he said, according to NBC documents, which I first published in my 2014 biography of Ailes. CNBC executive Andy Friendly also filed complaints. "I along with several of my most talented colleagues have and continue to feel emotional and even physical fear dealing with this man every day," he wrote. The Proskauer report chronicled Ailes's "history of abusive, offensive, and intimidating statements/threats and personal attacks." Ailes left NBC less than three months later.

What NBC considered fireable offenses, Murdoch saw as competitive advantages. He hired Ailes to help achieve a goal that had eluded Murdoch for a decade: busting CNN's cable news monopoly. Back in the mid-'90s, no one thought it could be done. "I'm looking forward to squishing Rupert like a bug," CNN founder Ted Turner boasted at an industry conference. But Ailes recognized how key wedge issues - race, religion, class - could turn conservative voters into loyal viewers. By January 2002, Fox News had surpassed CNN as the highest-rated cable news channel. But Ailes's success went beyond ratings: The rise of Fox News provided Murdoch with the political influence in the United States that he already wielded in Australia and the United Kingdom. And by merging news, politics, and entertainment in such an overt way, Ailes was able to personally shape the national conversation and political fortunes as no one ever had before. It is not a stretch to argue that Ailes is largely responsible for, among other things, the selling of the Iraq War, the Swift-boating of John Kerry, the rise of the tea party, the sticking power of a host of Clinton scandals, and the purported illegitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency.

Ailes became untouchable. At News Corp., he behaved just as he had at NBC, but Murdoch tolerated Ailes's abusiveness because he was pleased with the results.

Ailes used Fox's payroll as a patronage tool, doling out jobs to Republican politicians, friends, and political operatives. He made his personal lawyer, Peter Johnson Jr., a regular guest on Fox shows, despite producers' misgivings about Johnson's on-air performance. (They nicknamed Johnson "The Must-Do.") Manny Alvarez, whose daughter went to school with Ailes's son, became a medical commentator.

Ailes also positioned his former secretaries in key departments where he could make use of their loyalty to him. One, Nikole King, went to the finance department, where she handled Ailes's personal expenses, a Fox executive said. Another, Brigette Boyle, went to human resources, where she was "tasked with hiring the 'right' people," a former executive recalled.

But most striking is the extent to which Ailes ruled Fox News like a surveillance state. According to executives, he instructed Fox's head of engineering, Warren Vandeveer, to install a CCTV system that allowed Ailes to monitor Fox offices, studios, greenrooms, the back entrance, and his homes. When Ailes spotted James Murdoch on the monitor smoking a cigarette outside the office, he remarked to his deputy Bill Shine, "Tell me that mouth hasn't sucked a cock," according to an executive who was in the room; Shine laughed. (A Fox spokesperson said Shine did not recall this.) Fox's IT department also monitored employee email, according to sources. When I asked Fox's director of IT, Deborah Sadusingh, about email searches, she said, "I can't remember all the searches I've done."

When Ailes uncovered something he didn't like, he had various means of retaliation and increased surveillance. Fox's notorious PR department, which for years was directed by Brian Lewis and is now overseen by Irena Briganti, was known for leaking negative stories about errant employees to journalists. Fox contributor Jim Pinkerton wrote an anonymous blog called the Cable Game that attacked Ailes-selected targets, two Fox executives confirmed. Fox contributor Bo Dietl did private-investigation work for Ailes, including following former Fox producer Andrea Mackris after she sued Bill O'Reilly for sexual harassment, a Fox source said. Ailes turned these same tactics on his enemies outside the company, including journalists. CNN's Brian Stelter recently reported on Fox's 400-page opposition-research file on me.

Fox News also obtained the phone records of journalists, by legally questionable means. According to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident, Brandi, Fox's general counsel, hired a private investigator in late 2010 to obtain the personal home- and cell-phone records of Joe Strupp, a reporter for the liberal watchdog group Media Matters. (Through a spokesperson, Brandi denied this.) In the fall of that year, Strupp had written several articles quoting anonymous Fox sources, and the network wanted to determine who was talking to him. "This was the culture. Getting phone records doesn't make anybody blink," one Fox executive told me.

What makes this practice all the more brazen is that the Guardian was already publishing articles about phone-hacking at Murdoch's British newspaper division. About that scandal, Murdoch said, "I do not accept ultimate responsibility. I hold responsible the people that I trusted to run it and the people they trusted." In this case, of course, the person he trusted, inexplicably, was Ailes, and Murdoch does not seem to have wanted to know how Ailes chose to spend company funds. Every year, Murdoch approved Ailes's budgets without question. "When you have an organization making that much money, we didn't go line by line through people's budgets," a former News Corp. executive said.

Ailes was born in May 1940 in Warren, Ohio, then a booming industrial town. His father, a factory foreman, abused his wife and two sons. "He did like to beat the shit out of you with that belt ... It was a pretty routine fixture of childhood," Ailes's brother Robert told me when I was reporting my book. His parents divorced in 1960. In court papers, Ailes's mother alleged that her husband "threatened her life and to do her physical harm."

Perhaps as an escape, Ailes lost himself in television. He suffered from hemophilia and was often homebound from school, so he spent hours on the living-room couch watching variety shows and Westerns. "He analyzed it, and he figured it out," his brother told me of Ailes's fascination with TV.

After graduating from Ohio University in 1962, Ailes landed a job as a gofer on The Mike Douglas Show, a daytime variety program that at the time was broadcast from Cleveland. Within four years, he had muscled aside the show's creator and more seasoned colleagues to become the executive producer. Ailes's mentor at The Mike Douglas Show, Chet Collier, who would later serve as his deputy at Fox, drilled into him the notion that television is a visual medium. "I'm not hiring talent for their brainpower," Collier would say.

Though Ailes had married his college girlfriend, he used his growing power to take advantage of the parade of beautiful women coming through his office hoping to be cast on the show. Over the past two months, I interviewed 18 women who shared accounts of Ailes's offering them job opportunities if they would agree to perform sexual favors for him and for his friends. In some cases, he threatened to release tapes of the encounters to prevent the women from reporting him. "The feeling I got in the interview was repulsion, power-hungriness, contempt, violence, and the need to subjugate and humiliate," says a woman who auditioned for Ailes in 1968 when she was a college student.

In August 1968, Ailes left The Mike Douglas Show to join Richard Nixon's presidential campaign as a media strategist. Ailes's success in reinventing the candidate for television helped propel Nixon to the White House and made Ailes a media star (he was the anti-hero of Joe McGinniss's landmark book The Selling of the President). But even back then, Ailes's recklessness put his thriving career at risk. A former model told me that her parents called the police on Ailes after she told them he assaulted her in a Cincinnati hotel room in 1969. "I remember Ailes sweet-talking my parents out of pressing charges," she says.

One prominent Republican told me that it was Ailes's well-known reputation for awful behavior toward women that prevented him from being invited to work in the Nixon White House (or, later, in the administration of Bush 41). So after the '68 election, he moved to New York, where he continued to use his power to demand sex from women seeking career opportunities. During this time Ailes divorced, remarried, and divorced again. A former television producer described an interview with Ailes in 1975, in which he said: "If you want to make it in New York City in the TV business, you're going to have to fuck me, and you're going to do that with anyone I tell you to." While running media strategy on Rudy Giuliani's 1989 mayoral campaign, Ailes propositioned an employee of his political-consulting firm: He name-dropped his friend Barry Diller and said that if she'd have sex with him he'd ask Diller to get her a part on Beverly Hills 90210. (Diller said he never received such a request.)

In 1998, two years after launching Fox, Ailes got married for the third time, to a woman named Elizabeth Tilson, a 37-year-old producer who had worked for him at CNBC. Two years later, when Ailes was 59, the couple had a son. But neither a new marriage nor parenthood changed his predatory behavior toward the women who worked for him.

According to interviews with Fox News women, Ailes would often begin by offering to mentor a young employee. He then asked a series of personal questions to expose potential vulnerabilities. "He asked, 'Am I in a relationship? What are my familial ties?' It was all to see how stable or unstable I was," said a former employee. Megyn Kelly told lawyers at Paul, Weiss that Ailes made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 2006 when she was going through a divorce. A lawyer for former anchor Laurie Dhue told me that Ailes harassed her around 2006; at the time, she was struggling with alcoholism.

Ailes's longtime executive assistant Judy Laterza - who became one of his top lieutenants, earning more than $2 million a year, according to a Fox executive - seemed to function as a recruiter of sorts. According to Carlson's attorney, in 2002, Laterza remarked to a college intern she saw on the elevator about how pretty she was and invited her to meet Ailes. After that meeting, Ailes arranged for the young woman to transfer to his staff. Her first assignment was to go down to the newsstand and fetch him the latest issue of Maxim. When she returned with the magazine, Ailes asked her to stay with him in his office. He flipped through the pages. The woman told the Washington Post that Ailes said, "You look like the women in here. You have great legs. If you sleep with me, you could be a model or a newscaster." She cut short her internship. (Laterza did not respond to a request for comment.)

I spoke with another Fox News administrative assistant who said Laterza invited her to meet Ailes in 2004. The woman, then 25, told Ailes that her ambition was to do commercials. Ailes offered to pay for voice lessons (she declined) and helped her land an agent at William Morris. A few months later, Ailes summoned her to his office for an update. She told him how excited she was about the opportunities, and Ailes invited her for a drink. She suggested happy hour, but he demurred. "For a man in my position, it would have to be alone at a hotel," she recalls him saying. "Do you know how to play the game?" She tried to get out of the situation as tactfully as possible. "I don't feel comfortable doing this," she said. "I respect your family; what about your son?" She remembers Ailes's reply: "I'm a multifaceted man. That's one side of me." As she left the office, she says, Ailes tried to kiss her. "I was holding a binder full of voice-over auditions that I put between us. I was terrified." She says she never heard from the William Morris agent again.

The fact that these incidents of harassment were so common may have contributed to why no one at Fox came forward or filed a lawsuit until now. Ailes's attitudes about women permeated the very air of the network, from the exclusive hiring of attractive women to the strictly enforced skirts-and-heels dress code to the "leg cam" that lingers on female panelists' crossed legs on air. It was hard to complain about something that was so normalized. Other senior executives harassed women, too. "Anyone who claimed there was a hostile work environment was seen as a complainer," says a former Fox employee who says Ailes harassed her. "Or that they can't take a joke."

It is unfathomable to think, given Ailes's reputation, given the number of women he propositioned and harassed and assaulted over decades, that senior management at Fox News was unaware of what was happening. What is more likely is that their very jobs included enabling, abetting, protecting, and covering up for their boss. "No one said no to Roger," a Fox executive said.

The story of Laurie Luhn, which I reported in July, is an example of how Ailes used Fox's public-relations, legal, and finance departments to facilitate his behavior. Ailes met Luhn on the 1988 George H.W. Bush campaign, and soon thereafter he put her on a $500 monthly retainer with his political-consulting firm to be his "spy" in Washington, though really her job was to meet him in hotel rooms. (During their first encounter, Luhn says, Ailes videotaped her in a garter belt and told her: "I am going to put [the tape] in a safe-deposit box just so we understand each other.") Ailes recruited Luhn to Fox in 1996, before the network even launched. Collier, then his deputy, offered her a job in guest relations in the Washington bureau.

Laterza, Shine, and Shine's deputy Suzanne Scott would take turns summoning Luhn for "meetings" in New York. (A Fox spokesperson said executives were not aware Ailes was sexually involved with Luhn.) Ailes and Luhn would meet in the afternoons, Luhn said, at hotels near Times Square, and Ailes paid her cash for sexual favors. She was also on the payroll at Fox - at her peak, she earned $250,000 a year as an event planner for the channel; multiple sources confirmed that she was a "Friend of Roger," with special protection within the company. But the arrangement required her to do many things that now cause her anguish, including luring young female Fox employees into one-on-one meetings with Ailes that Luhn knew would likely result in harassment. "You're going to find me 'Roger's Angels,' " he reportedly told her. One of Luhn's employees received a six-figure settlement after filing a harassment claim against Ailes.

By the fall of 2006, Luhn says, Ailes was worried that she might go public with her story or cause a scene of some kind. That's when the Fox machine really kicked into gear. According to Luhn, Fox PR tried to spread a rumor to the New York Daily News that Luhn had had an affair with Lee Atwater (which she denies), a story designed to make Luhn seem promiscuous so that her credibility would be damaged. When Luhn had an emotional breakdown en route to a vacation in Mexico, it was Shine's job to arrange to bring her home. Scott picked her up at the airport and drove her to the Warwick Hotel on Sixth Avenue, where Luhn recalls that Scott checked her in under Scott's name. (Scott denies this.)

Luhn later moved into a Fox corporate apartment in Chelsea, during which time, she says, Laterza and Shine monitored her email. (Shine denies this.) Luhn's father says that Shine called him several times to check up on Luhn after she moved to California while still on the Fox payroll. Eventually, Shine even recommended a psychiatrist, who medicated and hospitalized her. At one point, Luhn attempted suicide. Through a spokesperson, Shine says he "was only trying to help."

In late 2010 or early 2011, Luhn wrote a letter to Brandi, the Fox lawyer, saying she had been sexually harassed by Ailes for 20 years. According to a source, Brandi asked Ailes about the allegations, which he denied. Brandi then worked out a settlement at Ailes's request. On June 15, 2011, Luhn signed a $3.15 million settlement agreement with extensive nondisclosure provisions. The payment was approved by Fox News CFO Mark Kranz. The check, which I viewed, was signed by David E. Miller, a treasurer for Fox Television Stations, Inc., a division run by current Fox co-president Jack Abernethy. "I have no idea how my name ended up on the check," says Miller, citing standard company practice of signing checks and not asking questions. The settlement documents, which Luhn also showed me, were signed by Ailes, Brandi, and Shine.

After Luhn left Fox, Ailes took additional measures to conceal his harassment of employees. In 2011, he installed a floor-to-ceiling wooden door outside his executive suite. Only his assistants could see who entered his office. According to a former Fox producer, Laterza entered fake names into Ailes's datebook when women went into his office: "If you got ahold of his ledger, you would not know who visited him."

Still, the whispers about Ailes and women were growing louder. Karem Alsina, a former Fox makeup artist, told me she grew suspicious when Fox anchors came to see her before private meetings with Ailes to have their makeup done. "They would say, 'I'm going to see Roger, gotta look beautiful!' " she recalled. "One of them came back down after a meeting, and the makeup on her nose and chin was gone."

In 2012, after I had been reporting my Ailes biography for a year, Megyn Kelly became so concerned about the rumors that she went to Ailes's then-PR chief, Brian Lewis, and attempted an intervention, according to a person close to Kelly. She told Lewis that Ailes was being reckless and that I might include his behavior in my book. (I did report the stories of two women who claimed Ailes had harassed them earlier in his career, and though I heard rumors of Ailes and Fox News women, I could not confirm them at the time.) Lewis, according to the source, asked Laterza to tell Ailes to stop because he thought Ailes might listen to his longtime assistant. Instead, according to the source, Laterza told Ailes that his PR chief was being disloyal. Less than a year later, Ailes fired Lewis.

Megyn Kelly was not a household name when she started at Fox News in 2004. A former corporate lawyer, she landed at Fox when former Special Report anchor Brit Hume recommended her to Ailes. She still wasn't well known in 2006, when she got divorced and Ailes tried to take advantage of her perceived vulnerability. She may not have been any more powerful, at the time, than the other women he preyed on, but she was one of the lucky ones: She managed to rebuff his sexual overtures in a way that didn't alienate her boss. "She was able to navigate the relationship to a professional place," a person close to Kelly told me. In fact, Kelly's career flourished after this. In 2010, Ailes gave her a two-hour midday show, on which she enthusiastically fanned his right-wing agenda - for instance, hyping stories about the New Black Panthers that many thought were racist. In October 2013, Ailes promoted Kelly to Sean Hannity's 9 p.m. prime-time slot, where she memorably declared that Jesus and Santa are "white." When asked by a fan on Twitter to name her biggest influence, she responded, "Roger Ailes."

By 2015, although her show was still reliably right-wing, Kelly's brand was evolving. After several high-profile clashes with Republican men, including Dick Cheney, she was developing something of a reputation as a feminist. As she entered the final two years of her contract, she started to think about a future outside of Fox, meeting with CNN chief Jeff Zucker in 2013.

Then came Donald Trump. Kelly's feud with the GOP nominee was one of the dominant story lines of the presidential election; it also exploded the fragile balance of relationships at the top of Fox News.

According to Fox sources, Murdoch blamed Ailes for laying the groundwork for Trump's candidacy. Ailes had given Trump, his longtime friend, a weekly call-in segment on Fox & Friends to sound off on political issues. (Trump used Fox News to mainstream the birther conspiracy theory.) Ailes also had lunch with Trump days before he launched his presidential campaign and continued to feed him political advice throughout the primaries, according to sources close to Trump and Ailes. (And in the days after Carlson filed her lawsuit, Trump advised Ailes on navigating the crisis, even recommending a lawyer.)

Murdoch was not a fan of Trump's and especially did not like his stance on immigration. (The antipathy was mutual: "Murdoch's been very bad to me," Trump told me in March.) A few days before the first GOP debate on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. "This has gone on long enough," Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox's debate moderators - Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace - to hammer Trump on a variety of issues. Ailes, understanding the GOP electorate better than most at that point, likely thought it was a bad idea. "Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee," Ailes told a colleague around this time. But he didn't fight Murdoch on the debate directive.

On the night of August 6, in front of 24 million people, the Fox moderators peppered Trump with harder-hitting questions. But it was Kelly's question regarding Trump's history of crude comments about women that created a media sensation. He seemed personally wounded by her suggestion that this spoke to a temperament that might not be suited for the presidency. "I've been very nice to you, though I could probably maybe not be based on the way you have treated me," he said pointedly.

After the debate, Trump called Ailes and screamed about Kelly. "How could you do this?" he said, according to a person briefed on the call. Ailes was caught between his friend Trump, his boss Murdoch, and his star Kelly. "Roger lost control of Megyn and Trump," a Fox anchor said.

The parties only became more entrenched when Trump launched a series of attacks against Kelly, including suggesting that her menstrual cycle had influenced her debate question. Problematically for Ailes, Fox's audience took Trump's side in the fight; Kelly received death threats from viewers, according to a person close to her. Kelly had even begun to speculate, according to one Fox source, that Trump might have been responsible for her getting violently ill before the debate last summer. Could he have paid someone to slip something into her coffee that morning in Cleveland? she wondered to colleagues.

While Ailes released a statement defending Kelly, he privately blamed her for creating the crisis. "It was an unfair question," he told a Fox anchor. Kelly felt betrayed, both by Ailes and by colleagues like O'Reilly and Baier when they didn't defend her, sources who spoke with her said. "She felt she put herself out there," a colleague said.

Frustrated at Fox, Kelly hired a powerhouse agent at CAA and began auditioning in earnest, and in public, for a job at another network. In interviews, she said her ambition was to become the next Barbara Walters and to host prime-time specials. She wanted to prove to the industry she could land a "big get" - and the biggest get of all was Trump. So Kelly went to Trump Tower to lobby the candidate for an interview. It worked - even Trump couldn't resist the spectacle of a rematch - but in the end the show failed: The ratings were terrible and reviewers panned her generally sycophantic questions. Worse for Kelly, it eroded her burgeoning status as a tough journalist who stood up to Trump. Afterward, her relationship with Ailes further deteriorated. According to Fox sources, they barely spoke in recent months.

Kelly and Gretchen Carlson were not friends or allies, but Carlson's lawsuit presented an opportunity. Kelly could bust up the boys' club at Fox, put herself on the right side of a snowballing media story, and rid herself of a boss who was no longer supportive of her - all while maximizing her leverage in a contract negotiation. She also had allies in the Murdoch sons. According to a source, Kelly told James Murdoch that Ailes had made harassing comments and inappropriately hugged her in his office. James and Lachlan both encouraged her to speak to the Paul, Weiss lawyers about it. Kelly was only the third or fourth woman to speak to the lawyers, according to a source briefed on the inquiry, but she was by far the most important. After she spoke with investigators, and made calls to current and former Fox colleagues to encourage them to speak to Paul, Weiss as well, many more women came forward.

Ailes was furious with Kelly for not defending him publicly. According to a Fox source, Ailes's wife Elizabeth wanted Fox PR to release racy photos of Kelly published years ago in GQ as a way of discrediting her. The PR department, in this instance, refused. (Elizabeth is said to be taking all of the revelations especially hard, according to four sources close to the family. Giuliani, who officiated their wedding, told Murdoch she would likely divorce Ailes, according to two sources: "This marriage won't last," he said.)

Two days after New York reported that Kelly had told her story to Paul, Weiss attorneys, Ailes was gone. And Kelly had made herself more important to the network than ever.

Ailes's ouster has created a leadership vacuum at Fox News. Several staffers have described feeling like being part of a totalitarian regime whose dictator has just been toppled. "No one knows what to do. No one knows who to report to. It's just mayhem," said a Fox host. As details of the Paul, Weiss investigation have filtered through the offices, staffers are expressing a mixture of shock and disgust. The scope of Ailes's alleged abuse far exceeds what employees could have imagined. "People are so devastated," one senior executive said. Those I spoke with have also been unnerved by Shine and Brandi's roles in covering up Ailes's behavior.

Despite revelations of how Ailes's management team enabled his harassment, Murdoch has so far rejected calls - including from James, according to sources - to conduct a wholesale housecleaning. On August 12, Murdoch promoted Shine and another Ailes loyalist, Jack Abernethy, to become co-presidents of Fox News. He named Scott executive vice-president and kept Brandi and Briganti in their jobs. Fox News's chief financial officer, Mark Kranz, is the only senior executive to have been pushed out (officially he retired), along with Laterza and a handful of assistants, contributors, and consultants. "Of course, they are trying to isolate this to just a few bad actors," a 21st Century Fox executive told me.

Many people I spoke with believe that the current management arrangement is just a stopgap until the election. "As of November 9, there will be a bloodbath at Fox," predicts one host. "After the election, the prime-time lineup could be eviscerated. O'Reilly's been talking about retirement. Megyn could go to another network. And Hannity will go to Trump TV."

The prospect of Trump TV is a source of real anxiety for some inside Fox. The candidate took the wedge issues that Ailes used to build a loyal audience at Fox News - especially race and class - and used them to stoke barely containable outrage among a downtrodden faction of conservatives. Where that outrage is channeled after the election - assuming, as polls now suggest, Trump doesn't make it to the White House - is a big question for the Republican Party and for Fox News. Trump had a complicated relationship with Fox even when his good friend Ailes was in charge; without Ailes, it's plausible that he will try to monetize the movement he has galvanized in competition with the network rather than in concert with it. Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon, chairman of Breitbart, the digital-media upstart that has by some measures already surpassed Fox News as the locus of conservative energy, to run his campaign suggests a new right-wing news network of some kind is a real possibility. One prominent media executive told me that if Trump loses, Fox will need to try to damage him in the eyes of its viewers by blaming him for the defeat.

Meanwhile, the Murdochs are looking for a permanent CEO to navigate these post-Ailes, Trump-roiled waters. According to sources, James's preferred candidates include CBS president David Rhodes (though he is under contract with CBS through 2019); Jesse Angelo, the New York Post publisher and James's Harvard roommate; and perhaps a television executive from London. Sources say Lachlan, who politically is more conservative than James, wants to bring in an outsider. Rupert was seen giving Rebekah Brooks a tour of the Fox offices several months ago, creating speculation that she could be brought in to run Fox. Another contender is Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy.

As for the women who collectively brought an end to the era of Roger Ailes, their fortunes are mixed. Megyn Kelly is in a strong position in her contract talks, and sources say Gretchen Carlson will soon announce an eight-figure settlement. But because New York has a three-year statute of limitations on sexual harassment, so far just two women in addition to Carlson are said to be receiving settlements from 21st Century Fox. The many others who left or were forced out of the company before the investigation came away with far less - in some cases nothing at all.

It's hard to say that justice has been served. But the story isn't over: Last week, the shareholder law firm Scott & Scott announced it was investigating 21st Century Fox to "determine whether Fox's Officers and Directors have breached their fiduciary duties." Meanwhile, Ailes is walking away from his biggest career train wreck yet, seeking relevance and renewed power through the one person in the country who doesn't see him as political kryptonite, the candidate he created: Donald J. Trump. Ailes may be trying to sell us another president, but now we know the truth about the salesman.
*This sentence has been updated to reflect Shine's presence at the meeting, a detail that was confirmed after publication.
*This article appears in the September 5, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
*An earlier version of the article inaccurately stated Manny Alvarez is Elizabeth Ailes's doctor.

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How Fox News Women Took Down Roger Ailes

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It took 15 days to end the mighty 20-year reign of Roger Ailes at Fox News, one of the most storied runs in media and political history. Ailes built not just a conservative cable news channel but something like a fourth branch of government; a propaganda arm for the GOP; an organization that determined Republican presidential candidates, sold wars, and decided the issues of the day for 2 million viewers.

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Link: Thom Hartmann: Why Fox News has the Right to Lie to Us

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Link: Thom Hartmann: Why Fox News has the Right to Lie to Us

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Thom Hartmann: Why Fox News has the Right to Lie to Us

Description:

Ever wonder why it is that Fox News can lie over and over again - yet continue to call itself "News"? It's because Fox News is a corporation - and ever since that 1886 Supreme Court case of Southern Pacific Railroad versus Santa Clara County when a rogue court reporter named JC Bancroft Davis slipped corporate personhood into the legal record - the courts have ruled time and time again that corporations - since they have all the rights that actual people have - could also lie just like people can.

Except for one time. Back in 1998 - a political activist named Mark Kasky sued Nike alleging that Nike was lying to its customers by publishing in the San Francisco Examiner a letter assuring everyone that the corporation's workers around the world enjoy basic labor rights like a minimum wage - health and safety regulations - and equal opportunity employment. Kasky knew this claim wasn't true. A 1996 audit of the Nike revealed that workers in Vietnam were routinely exposed to cancer-causing chemicals that were illegal in the United States. And a Mothers Jones article later cited a Nike-funded study that found, "evidence of physical and verbal abuse and sexual harassment at nine of its contract factories in Indonesia." After realizing he and thousands of other Nike customers were lied to and were buying Nike products under false assumptions - Kasky took the corporation to court. And in 2002 - Kasky won his case before the California Supreme Court which ruled that Nike did indeed break laws against unfair competition and false advertising...

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Thom Hartmann: Why Fox News has the Right to Lie to Us | Amara

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Title: Thom Hartmann: Why Fox News has the Right to Lie to Us Description: Ever wonder why it is that Fox News can lie over and over again - yet continue to call itself "News"?

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Not long after Donald Trump's surprising presidential victory, an article published in the Swiss weekly Das Magazin, and reprinted online in English by Vice, began churning through the Internet. While pundits were dissecting the collapse of Hillary Clinton's campaign, the journalists for Das Magazin, Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, pointed to an entirely different explanation-the work of Cambridge Analytica, a data science firm created by a British company with deep ties to the British and American defense industries.

According to Grassegger and Krogerus, Cambridge Analytica had used psychological data culled from Facebook, paired with vast amounts of consumer information purchased from data-mining companies, to develop algorithms that were supposedly able to identify the psychological makeup of every voter in the American electorate. The company then developed political messages tailored to appeal to the emotions of each one. As the New York Times reporters Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim described it:

A voter deemed neurotic might be shown a gun-rights commercial featuring burglars breaking into a home, rather than a defense of the Second Amendment; political ads warning of the dangers posed by the Islamic State could be targeted directly at voters prone to anxiety....

Even more troubling was the underhanded way in which Cambridge Analytica appeared to have obtained its information. Using an Amazon site called Mechanical Turk, the company paid one hundred thousand people in the United States a dollar or two to fill out an online survey. But in order to receive payment, those people were also required to download an app that gave Cambridge Analytica access to the profiles of their unwitting Facebook friends. These profiles included their Facebook "likes" and their own contact lists.

According to the investigative reporter Mattathias Schwartz, writing in The Intercept, a further 185,000 people were recruited from an unnamed data company, to gain access to another 30 million Facebook profiles. Again, none of these 30 million people knew their data were being harvested and analyzed for the benefit of an American political campaign.

Facebook did turn out to be essential to Trump's victory, but not in the way Grassegger, Krogerus, and Schwartz suggest. Though there is little doubt that Cambridge Analytica exploited members of the social network, Facebook's real influence came from the campaign's strategic and perfectly legal use of Facebook's suite of marketing tools. (It should be noted that internal Facebook documents leaked in early May show that Facebook itself has been mining users' emotional states and sharing that information with advertisers.)

After the initial alarm that an obscure data firm might have wormed its way into the American psyche deeply enough to deliver the election to Trump, critics began to question what Alexander Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica, called the firm's "secret sauce," the algorithms it used to predict a voter's psychological profile, what is known as "psychographics." Confessore and Hakim's article about the firm, which appeared on the front page of the Times, quoted numerous consultants, working for both parties, who were dismissive of the firm's claims. The mathematician Cathy O'Neil, in a commentary for Bloomberg, called Cambridge Analytica's secret sauce "just more ketchup." Using psychological traits to craft appeals to voters, she wrote, wasn't anything new-every candidate was doing it.

For decades, in fact, campaigns have been using and refining "microtargeting" techniques, looking at religious affiliations, buying habits, demographic traits, voting histories, educational attainment, magazine subscriptions, and the like, parsing the electorate in order to understand which values and issues are driving which voters. For a few election cycles starting at the turn of the century, the Republicans had the advantage, developing a database called Voter Vault that allowed party operatives to understand voters in an increasingly nuanced way. During the 2004 presidential campaign, for example, the Bush team surveyed a large sample of these voters to assess their attitudes and behaviors, and sorted them into thirty groups, each with similar interests, lifestyles, ideologies, and affinities. It then placed every other voter into one of these groups and developed messaging intended to appeal to each one.

By 2008, however, the microtargeting advantage had shifted to the Democrats, who had developed their own enormous, dissectable database of voters called VoteBuilder, run by the Democratic National Committee, and others run by for-profit companies that had been created to support the party's candidates. One of these, Catalist, boasts a national database of 240 million people of voting age, with information on each one drawn from voting rolls, the census, and other public records, as well as commercial data covering "hundreds of fields, including household attributes, purchasing and investment profiles, donation behavior, occupational information, recreational interests, and engagement with civic and community groups." In 2008 and 2012, the Democrats also had more sophisticated models predicting how people with certain attributes might vote.

In the course of the 2016 election, the Trump campaign ended up relying on three voter databases: the one supplied by Cambridge Analytica, with its 5,000 data points on 220 million Americans including, according to its website, personality profiles on all of them; the RNC 's enhanced Voter Vault, which claims to have more than 300 terabytes of data, including 7,700,545,385 microtargeting data points on nearly 200 million voters; and its own custom-designed one, called Project Alamo, culled in part from the millions of small donors to the campaign and e-mail addresses gathered at rallies, from sales of campaign merchandise, and even from text messages sent to the campaign. Eventually, Project Alamo also came to include data from the other two databases.

A principal force behind these various strategies was Brad Parscale, who served as the digital director of the Trump campaign from the primaries through the general election and who in the late spring of 2016 hired Cambridge Analytica as part of this effort. Parscale, who works out of San Antonio, had designed websites for Trump Wineries and other Trump enterprises. Through that work he became friends with Eric Trump, Donald Trump's son, and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, who Parscale says is like a brother to him.

Further binding these family ties, Parscale's marketing and design firm, Giles-Parscale, recently hired Eric Trump's wife, Lara, to work on Donald Trump's 2020 reelection campaign. "My loyalty is to the family," Parscale told the journalists Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg, whose Bloomberg article "Inside the Trump Bunker, with Days to Go," on the campaign's digital strategy, turned out to be the most prescient piece written about Trump's stunning upset.

In the early phase of the primaries, Parscale launched Trump's digital operation by buying $2 million in Facebook ads-his entire budget at the time. He then uploaded all known Trump supporters into the Facebook advertising platform and, using a Facebook tool called Custom Audiences from Customer Lists, matched actual supporters with their virtual doppelgangers and then, using another Facebook tool, parsed them by race, ethnicity, gender, location, and other identities and affinities. From there he used Facebook's Lookalike Audiences tool to find people with interests and qualities similar to those of his original cohort and developed ads based on those characteristics, which he tested using Facebook's Brand Lift surveys. He was just getting started. Eventually, Parscale's shop was reportedly spending $70 million a month on digital advertising, most of it on Facebook. (Facebook and other online venues also netted Trump at least $250 million in donations.)

While it may not have created individual messages for every voter, the Trump campaign used Facebook's vast reach, relatively low cost, and rapid turnaround to test tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of different campaign ads. According to Issie Lapowsky of Wired, speaking with Gary Coby, director of advertising at the Republican National Committee and a member of Trump's digital team:

On any given day...the campaign was running 40,000 to 50,000 variants of its ads, testing how they performed in different formats, with subtitles and without, and static versus video, among other small differences. On the day of the third presidential debate in October, the team ran 175,000 variations. Coby calls this approach "A/B testing on steroids."

And this was just Facebook. The campaign also placed ads on other social media, including Twitter and Snapchat, and ran sponsored content on Politico. According to one estimate by a campaign insider, the Trump team spent "in the high eight figures just on persuasion." Remarkably, none of this money was used on ads created from Cambridge Analytica's questionably obtained Facebook data.

Not long after touting the edge it gave the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica began walking back its initial claim that psychological targeting was crucial to Trump's victory. "I don't want to break your heart; we actually didn't do any psychographics with the Trump campaign," Matt Oczkowski, Cambridge Analytica's chief data scientist, told a panel hosted by Google five weeks after the election. Because the firm was only brought onto the Trump campaign the summer before the general election, he said, "we had five months to scale extremely fast, and doing sexy psychographics profiles requires a much longer run time." Apparently, Cambridge Analytica had deployed its psychological targeting techniques during the Republican primaries on behalf of Ted Cruz, but Cruz's failure to win the nomination was cited as evidence that Cambridge Analytica's models were ineffective and that the company did not understand American politics.

Though Cambridge Analytica came late to American elections, its British parent company, Strategic Communications Laboratories ( SCL), has been a client of the United States government for years. SCL has "provided intelligence assessments for American defense contractors in Iran, Libya and Syria," according to the Times, and developed so-called influence campaigns for NATO in Afghanistan. Also in Afghanistan, SCL engaged in "target audience analysis" for the United States Department of Defense, identifying who was susceptible to American propaganda. The firm's methodology, according to its website, has been approved by the UK Ministry of Defence, the US State Department, Sandia National Laboratories, and NATO. It seeks "to understand empirically what the right levers or 'triggers and filters' in a given population are, based on a penetrating psychological understanding." SCL is currently seeking contracts with at least a dozen US agencies, and The Washington Post recently reported that it has already secured work with the State Department.

Strategic Communications Laboratories may have a special advantage in these efforts now that Cambridge Analytica is largely controlled by Robert Mercer, one of Trump's major donors. According to The Guardian, Mercer now owns 90 percent of the company, with SCL owning the remaining 10 percent. (Mercer is also the money behind Breitbart News, the website credited with serving up fake and hyped-up articles to incite Trump's base.) Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist and the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, was on the Cambridge Analytica board until he became the Trump campaign's chief executive. Robert Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, served on Trump's transition team and has stayed on as a Trump adviser. She now runs Making America Great, a pro-Trump advocacy organization largely funded by her father that is dedicated to creating influence campaigns to push what has been called a nationalist-anti-immigration, anti-government-agenda. Its day-to-day director is Emily Cornell, who stepped down as Cambridge Analytica's senior vice-president for political affairs to take the position.

Meanwhile, as SCL pursues government contracts, Cambridge Analytica is also vying to create influence campaigns on behalf of the Trump Organization, the parent company of Trump's various business interests. As an unnamed conservative digital strategist told The Guardian, the data from Cambridge Analytica could be helpful in both "driving sales and driving policy goals. Cambridge is positioned to be the preferred vendor for all that."

But weeks before the Mercers set up Making America Great, Brad Parscale had already created his own Trump advocacy group, called America First Policies. The creation of two independent organizations both ostensibly aimed at mustering support for Trump appears to have presaged the fault line that is now emerging between Steve Bannon and the Mercers on one side, and Jared Kushner (and by default Giles-Parscale) on the other. This division was also manifest days after the election as members of team Trump took a victory lap, with Cambridge Analytica's Nix crediting his firm with the win, and Parscale declaring to the contrary that it was his and Kushner's overall digital strategy that took Trump over the top.

Either way, that rift pulls back the curtain on contemporary electioneering-electioneering in the age of big data and social media, both of which were crucial to Trump's victory, and were used in innovative ways that are likely to be adopted by other candidates from both parties. As Daniel Kreiss points out in his book Prototype Politics, losing campaigns, especially, look to the winning one "to find models for future action."

There is no doubt that Trump's digital operation-overseen by Parscale with the involvement of Giles-Parscale, Cambridge Analytica, the Republican National Committee, and scores of contractors-drew heavily on Barack Obama's 2012 reelection playbook. Recalling that campaign, Kreiss describes how the Democrats repurposed a marketing strategy called "uplift" or "brand lift" and used it to pursue voters they identified as receptive to Obama's message. They did so by gathering millions of data points on the electorate from public sources, commercial information brokers, and their own surveys, then polling voters with great frequency and looking for patterns in the responses.

All this was used to create predictive models of who was likely to vote for Obama, who was not, and who was open to persuasion. It also indicated who would be disinclined to vote for Obama if contacted by the campaign. These models sorted individuals into categories-let's say, mothers concerned about gun violence or millennials with significant college debt-and these categories were used to tailor communications to members of each group. Kreiss observes that such sorting was necessary because

it would have been nearly impossible to create personalized messages for individuals from a labor standpoint.... And...the cost of testing individual appeals to determine whether they were actually successful in order to justify the expense of creating them would have been astronomical.

In his 2015 book Hacking the Electorate, Eitan Hersh is skeptical about the value of commercial data in predicting political outcomes-his research shows that public records are crucial. Echoing Kreiss, he writes that "even in well-financed campaigns, there is rarely an interest among campaign strategists to send fifty different messages to fifty different segments of voters." The Trump campaign, with its "A/B testing on steroids," turned this conventional wisdom on its head.

There were other digital innovations as well. On election day, for example, the Trump campaign bought all the ad space on YouTube and ran a series of five thirty-second videos, each hosted by a different Trump surrogate representing a particular segment of the Trump base. We "learned that putting Mr. Trump on persuasion ads was a bad idea," Cambridge Analytica's Oczkowski said in April at a meeting of the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising in Melbourne, Australia. Instead, there was Ivanka Trump, representing mothers and business women; Willie Robertson, the star of the television show Duck Dynasty, to appeal to southerners and hunters; Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke, representing law and order and diversity (he is African-American); the former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell to appeal to veterans and their families; and Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, a tough, aggressive guy's guy.

"There was no targeting," Oczkowski explained. "Every single American who [went] to YouTube that day [saw these ads]." And, he continued, once viewers watched one of the thirty-second videos to the end, they landed on a screen with a polling place locator. "We had tens of millions of people view the videos and hundreds of thousands of people use the 'find your polling place' locator. When you're talking about winning by thousands of votes, this stuff matters," Oczkowski said.

Parscale's strategy of using Facebook's "dark posts" also turned out to matter, enabling the Trump campaign to attack Clinton with targeted negative ads that flew below the public radar. Dark posts are not illegal. They are not necessarily "dark." Unlike a regular Facebook advertisement, which appears on one's timeline and can be seen by one's friends, dark posts are invisible to everyone but the recipient. Facebook promotes them as "unpublished" posts that "allow you to test different creative variations with specific audiences without overloading people on your Page with non-relevant or repetitive messages."

Phrased this way, dark posts sound benign, even benevolent. Parscale and his crew had other ideas. Facebook dark posts, used in tandem with more traditional attack ads, were part of the Trump team's concerted effort to dissuade potential Clinton voters from showing up at the polls. (In March, Cambridge Analytica won an Advertising Research Foundation David Ogilvy Award for its "Can't Run Her House" ad, which used a clip from the 2008 Democratic primary of Michelle Obama criticizing Clinton.)

"We have three major voter suppression operations under way," a senior campaign official told Bloomberg's Green and Issenberg. One targeted idealistic white liberals-primarily Bernie Sanders's supporters; another was aimed at young women-hence the procession of women who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed by the candidate herself; and a third went after African-Americans in urban centers where Democrats traditionally have had high voter turnout. One dark post featured a South Park -like animation narrated by Hillary Clinton, using her 1996 remarks about President Bill Clinton's anti-crime initiative in which she called certain young black men "super predators" who had to be brought "to heel."

"We've modeled this," the unnamed senior campaign official told Green and Issenberg. "It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out." And it did. Democratic turnout in battleground states was weak, which was crucial to Trump's victory. Tallying it up three days after the election, David Plouffe, Obama's 2008 campaign manager, noted:

In Detroit, Mrs. Clinton received roughly 70,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did in 2012; she lost Michigan by just 12,000 votes. In Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, she received roughly 40,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did, and she lost the state by just 27,000. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, turnout in majority African-American precincts was down 11 percent from four years ago.

Trump's digital team was also aided by the candidate's unbridled use of Twitter, by WikiLeaks, by fake news generators like Breitbart, and by an army of so-called "Twitter bots," automated Twitter accounts-many of which are thought to have emanated from Russia and at least one thousand of which the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer claimed to have created. Together, all this sent a river of pro-Trump and anti-Clinton messages coursing into cyberspace, giving the Trump campaign a continually self-reinforcing narrative. And then there was the candidate himself and his blustery, contradictory pronouncements, often pandering to voters' racially tinged resentments. This might have been the undoing of another candidate, but for the Trump team it turned out to be an asset.

"Trump didn't have a lot of 'Here is my agenda, here is my narrative, I have to persuade people to it,'" Catalist's Laura Quinn told me.

The Trump world was more like, "Let's say a lot of different things, they don't even necessarily need to be coherent, and observe, through the wonderful new platforms that allow you to observe how people respond and observe what works, and whatever squirrel everyone chases, that's going to become our narrative, our agenda, our message." I'm being very simplistic, but that was the very different approach that truly was creative, different, imaginative, revolutionary-whatever you want to say.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but winning the popular vote does not automatically lead to the White House, and Trump was never going to try to appeal to the entire electorate. Applying Cambridge Analytica's algorithms, Trump's data scientists built a model they called Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory to rank and weight the states needed to get to 270 electoral college votes, which was used to run daily simulations of the election. Through this work, the digital team identified 13.5 million persuadable voters in sixteen battleground states, and modeled which combinations of those voters would yield the winning number.

As the campaign wore on, it didn't look good. The Trump team's numbers were similar to those being posted by Nate Silver on his FiveThirtyEight website, which showed Hillary Clinton winning handily. Before the election, in a call to reporters, a spokesperson for Cambridge Analytica rated Trump's chance of winning at 20 percent.

Brad Parscale apparently saw it differently. "You know, I always thought we had a much better chance to win than everyone," he told NPR 's Rachel Martin. A few weeks before the election, he said he had a hunch from reading Breitbart, Reddit, Facebook, and other nontraditional news sources, and from the campaign's own surveys, that there were whole segments of the population-people who were angry and disaffected-that were being missed by traditional pollsters and the mainstream media. These were people who may not have voted in the past but would be a stealthy source of support were they to show up on election day. Parscale's data scientists reweighted their model to reflect this.

Once the Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory model took account of this cohort, and showed that the ones who lived in Rust Belt states had the most likely chance of delivering the presidency to Trump, Parscale's digital team focused all its resources in those last few weeks on these voters. This included sending the candidate himself to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in the days before the election, even though those states were considered by most observers likely to be unsympathetic to him, because the reweighted Cambridge Analytica algorithms were pointing there, and those algorithms dictated the candidate's travel schedule. "[Clinton's] strategy was...'if I turn out enough people in urban areas, Republicans can't make up those numbers in rural areas,'" Cambridge Analytica's Oczkowski explained. "Little did she know that almost every rural voter in the country was going to show up in this election."

There are many ways that the Democrats lost the election, starting with the foibles of the candidate herself. If the Republicans had lost, that would have been the prevailing story about them and their candidate as well. That the Republicans didn't lose can be attributed in large measure to their expert manipulation of social media: Donald Trump is our first Facebook president. His team figured out how to use all the marketing tools of Facebook, as well as Google, the two biggest advertising platforms in the world, to successfully sell a candidate that the majority of Americans did not want. They understood that some numbers matter more than others-in this case the number of angry, largely rural, disenfranchised potential Trump voters-and that Facebook, especially, offered effective methods for pursuing and capturing them. While this is clearly the future of campaigns, both Republican and Democratic, it also appears to be Trump's approach to governing.

Much was made in the last days of the campaign of the fact that if Donald Trump lost, he could take his huge database, Project Alamo, which he owns outright, and start an insurgent political movement or build his own media company. As Steve Bannon said at the time, "Trump is an entrepreneur." But Trump didn't lose, and he still owns that database, and it continues to serve him well. In the first three months of his presidency, when only 36 percent of the country gave him a favorable rating, Trump and the Republicans raised $30 million toward his reelection. As a point of reference, this is twice as much as Obama raised in the first three months of his first term, while enjoying much higher approval ratings. What our Facebook president has discovered is that it actually pays only to please some of the people some of the time. The rest simply don't count.

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How He Used Facebook to Win | Sue Halpern

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That the Republicans didn't lose can be attributed in large measure to their expert manipulation of social media: Donald Trump is our first Facebook president. His team figured out how to use all the marketing tools of Facebook, as well as Google, the two biggest advertising platforms in the world, to successfully sell a candidate that the majority of Americans did not want.

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Link: Wall Street Finds a 'Third Way' to Plunder Our Wealth

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Link: Wall Street Finds a 'Third Way' to Plunder Our Wealth

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Wall Street Finds a ‘Third Way’ to Plunder Our Wealth

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Gotta hand it to ’em: Those Wall Street guys are smart. They’ve already found two ways to plunder the nation’s wealth for their own enrichment, and now they’re working on a third.

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Link: Budget estimate shows GOP bill is about tax cuts for rich, not healthcare

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Budget estimate shows GOP bill is about tax cuts for rich, not healthcare

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OPINION | The Senate GOP’s ‘ObamaCare repeal’ doesn’t dismantle the ACA — but it doesn’t improve it either.

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Link: The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt: Alex Lawson and Jim Kessler debate

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Link: The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt: Alex Lawson and Jim Kessler debate

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The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt: Alex Lawson and Jim Kessler debate

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11/14/2012 Jim Kessler of the Third Way and Alex Lawson of Social Security Works debate on SiriusXM Left’s The Agenda with Ari Rabin-Havt. Read a great write up by RJ Eskow here: Wall Street Finds a ‘Third Way’ to Plunder Our Wealth Gotta hand it to ’em: Those Wall Street guys are smart. They’ve…

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Link: Economist Richard Wolff on Capitalism Run Wild

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Link: Economist Richard Wolff on Capitalism Run Wild

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Economist Richard Wolff on Capitalism Run Wild

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 Module 15: Foreign and Military Policy 

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 Module 15: Foreign and Military Policy 

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Link: A year of Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda has radically changed the U.S. role in the world

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Link: A year of Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda has radically changed the U.S. role in the world

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Six Washington Post foreign correspondents weighed in on how President Trump's foreign policy affected the world. (Video: Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

BERLIN - From the opening moments of his presidency, Donald Trump set forth a radically altered vision for the United States and its dealings with the rest of the world - one he dubbed "America first."

Supporters say he has delivered: a military defeat of the Islamic State, greater spending by U.S. allies on defense, and a commitment to transform or abandon international agreements such as NAFTA, the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord.

But the "America first" approach has also left the United States far more isolated. The overall impact of the policy, say diplomats, politicians and analysts interviewed around the world, has been a clear retrenchment of U.S. power - and an opportunity for U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia.

The American role in the world has been diminishing for years as other countries have expanded their economies, militaries and ambitions.

Foreign-policy players, however, say they see something different now: A disorderly U.S. transformation from a global leader working with partners to try to shape the world to an inwardly focused superpower that defines its international role more narrowly. The Trump administration has emphasized counterterrorism and American economic advantage in its foreign policy, while downgrading such traditional U.S. priorities as promoting human rights, democracy and international development.

Timeline: How the Trump administration changed American foreign policy

Trump's approach has won praise from countries including Israel and Saudi Arabia but is strikingly unpopular in many nations: A Gallup survey of attitudes in 134 countries that was released Thursday showed a significant drop in support for U.S. leadership in the world, from a median of nearly half of people approving under President Barack Obama to fewer than a third doing so under Trump.

"What he has achieved is a remarkable weakening of America's moral standing," said Norbert Röttgen, chair of the German Parliament's foreign relations committee and an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel. " 'America first' has made America weaker in the world."

The White House did not respond to a detailed request for comment.

Across the globe, U.S. adversaries are rushing to fill the America-size void left as Washington breaks from its closest allies on trade and other international pacts. They also seek to take advantage of the confusion caused by what allies and foes have called an ill-defined and sometimes chaotic U.S. foreign policy broadcast by Trump's tweets.

"There's a vacuum now," said a U.S. official who works on Middle East issues and who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment freely. "And you're going to have some try to step in."

At a World Trade Organization meeting last month in Buenos Aires, that someone was China.

The meeting, a biennial affair, usually delivers bromides about the advantages of global commerce along with some tweaks to the system. This time, though, U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer delivered a combative speech, accusing members of unfairly taking advantage of the group's rules - an echo of the president's oft-repeated denunciation of "dumb trade deals."

Allies said they got the message: The United States was not there to find common ground.

"The whole U.S. delegation, not only Lighthizer, at all meetings and bilaterals, made clear in a very explicit way no joint declaration or a common work program could be agreed from the U.S. side," said a European official involved in the negotiations.

Attendees watched as Chinese officials advocated more forcefully for free trade - and then worked the sidelines to seek deals with other nations, according to a senior European official who was at the meeting.

"You see them active everywhere," the official said, adding that the buzz of Chinese activity was clear from the scores of meeting rooms the Chinese delegation booked.

In a statement, Lighthizer said that he was ready to make worthwhile deals but that poor agreements weaken the global trading system.

"It is fatuous for the Europeans to blame the United States for the failure of the WTO to arrive at negotiated outcomes in Buenos Aires," Lighthizer said. "The E.U. approach - which is to agree to a deal simply for the sake of doing so - is antithetical to the global trading system. And to be clear, China got nothing from the ministerial."

Trade is not the only area in which China has seen opportunity. The emerging superpower also has benefited from a storm of acrimony in recent weeks between Washington and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation that has long had a tense partnership with the United States.

As Trump has tweeted about the "lies and deceit" of the Pakistani government and his administration suspended nearly $2 billion in military aid, China has gleefully stepped in to offer support. In recent years, the Chinese have committed to a $62 billion infrastructure plan in the region. Pakistan has taken pains to differentiate between the two powers.

"China is a strategic partner, while the ties with Washington are tactical," said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the defense committee in the Pakistani Senate.

Many diplomats and policymakers say they think Washington will remain the preeminent global power but with greatly dimmed ambitions - even after Trump's tenure in the White House.

"The U.S. is not the reinsurance company for the global order. It's no longer the guarantor of last resort," said Reinhard Bütikofer, a German member of the European Parliament who works on transatlantic issues. "If the beacon on the hill doesn't shine anymore, that has an impact."

The impact can be seen in the fact that even longtime U.S. allies such as India, Turkey and Latin American nations are casting about elsewhere for dependable friends. Indian leaders have worked to deepen strategic relationships with Japan, Australia, Israel and other countries. Mexico, meanwhile, has accelerated free-trade talks with Argentina, Brazil and Europe.

Trump's victory threw Mexico into a near state of emergency. Several key Trump goals - building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, deporting more illegal immigrants and radically altering the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA - could pose acute threats to Mexico's economy.

The country's worst fears have not been realized, but avoiding a crisis takes constant effort.

"A bloody roller coaster," in the words of a Mexican official, "trying to read between the lines, between the tweets, between the different messages coming from whomever you spoke to last, including the president himself, then trying to decide what to make out of it."

Röttgen said that Trump was so unpredictable that some European leaders had become more cautious about seeking to meet with him.

"It's open to accidents. It's unpredictable. It's always seen from a transactional viewpoint," he said.

A top adviser to one European leader said they no longer try to schedule time with Trump on the sidelines of summits. "Always, you're looking for a chance to meet up with the U.S. president," the adviser said. But now, that leader communicates via lower-level, less volatile U.S. officials, the adviser said.

Still, most of Washington's closest European allies continue to seek discussions with the president. Norway's prime minister visited the White House this month. French President Emmanuel Macron is seeking a meeting with Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, if the federal government shutdown doesn't prevent him from making the trip. And leaders who once fretted that Trump would abandon some of Washington's core international commitments are now reassured by robust U.S. troop deployments across Europe.

But even those who enthusiastically embraced the Trump administration have been nonplused by the president's style and decisions.

Early in Trump's tenure, for example, Egyptian officials sensed they finally had a U.S. president who understood them. The Obama administration had been reviled by the government of President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi for its focus on human rights and democracy.

But Trump's tweets and confusing U.S. policy moves have proved frustrating - and alienating. By August, Egyptians were fuming after the U.S. government, citing human rights concerns, cut or delayed nearly $300 million in assistance. Then came the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and relocate the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv.

"Now we have a situation where the words are not enough," said the U.S. official who works on Middle East issues. "In the early days of the administration, the words meant something. President Trump's praise of Sissi meant something. Now, between the August decision and the Jerusalem decision, they have lost faith."

Trump's policies still win praise in some quarters. Saudi officials enthusiastically greeted him in a May visit, delighted that Trump had rejected Obama-era policies that were less hawkish toward Iran. And in Israel, views of the United States have markedly improved under Trump, who has been far more supportive of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than Obama was.

Trump "has brought fresh thinking to the White House," said Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely. "He understands the region better than those experts who warned that if he recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital or moves the embassy to Jerusalem, the Middle East will explode. It did not explode."

But prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, already dim, have evaporated.

"There won't be peace - no negotiations, no normalization, and the Middle East will be sitting on a volcano" until the decision is reversed, said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Trump administration has escalated the U.S. offensive against Islamist insurgents in places including Somalia and Afghanistan, and given American military commanders more latitude in decision-making as they fought the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq.

In Somalia, the U.S. military carried out at least 34 airstrikes in 2017 compared with roughly 14 in 2016. But some officials at the State Department have raised questions about the amplified Pentagon role. There has not been a proportionate increase in diplomatic activity in Somalia. Instead, the size of the U.S. diplomatic mission has shrunk, and the U.S. ambassadorship there has not been filled.

Airstrikes and other military action can have knock-on effects that politically savvy experts could help avert, but "because the department's footprint is so limited compared to the military engagement, diplomats lack the bandwidth," said a former State Department official.

A similar dynamic is at play in Afghanistan.

At a ceremony in Kandahar in November to showcase refurbished Black Hawk helicopters being provided to the Afghan government, the top U.S. military commander, Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., gave an upbeat speech about defeating Taliban insurgents.

But off to one side, a group of invited local elders, clad in turbans and robes, conferred in worried whispers over an entirely different issue.

"We must speak to him about the elections. Everyone is very worried," one elder said.

As soon as Nicholson and his interpreter had sat down, the group bombarded him with concerns, saying that the plans for national elections in July were being undermined by political pressures, ethnic bias and other problems. If the Americans did not intervene, they warned him, the elections could turn into a disaster.

Nicholson smiled and promised to pass on their concerns. But the general's mandate does not include politics, and there has been far less diplomatic focus on Afghanistan than was the case under Obama. The country was without a U.S. ambassador until last month, and a special U.S. envoy post has been scrubbed.

Over the past year, some U.S. allies have said they worried about being kept in the dark as the U.S. government developed its plans for military action. A delegation of senior E.U. ambassadors responsible for security policy for the 28-nation group traveled to Washington in late June and sought details from U.S. officials about the new administration's foreign policy. One said he returned to Europe "in despair."

The diplomat said he received no useful guidance about the administration's strategy in Iran, Syria or Afghanistan - or, crucially, about how to interpret the president's increasingly belligerent tweets aimed at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The war of words between Washington and Pyongyang dominates a long list of apprehensions for U.S. allies for 2018 but is seen as an opportunity for others.

In response to Trump's volatile brand of dealmaking and brinkmanship, Moscow has sought to present itself as a trustworthy interlocutor.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in September that Moscow was ready to mediate the dispute between Trump and Kim, which he likened to a "kindergarten fight."

Some officials have noted the irony of Russia and China presenting themselves as guarantors of stability and global free trade.

When the Trump administration last January pulled out of negotiations over a 12-nation trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, 11 would-be members of the pact were left to work out the details without U.S. input. The deal had long been seen as an alternative to a Chinese regional economic order.

The U.S. exit gave Chinese President Xi Jinping, the authoritarian leader of one of the world's most tightly controlled economies, the chance to present himself as a champion of globalization.

The Chinese "haven't had to spend any energy to emerge much more clearly as the global leader that they aspire to be," said David Rank, who resigned as acting U.S. ambassador to China over the administration's decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord.

Meanwhile, Rank said, U.S. influence is ebbing.

"For my entire career except for the last four days of it, the question in foreign capitals, was 'What does Washington think about this?' " Rank said. "I suspect that is not the case anymore."

Birnbaum reported from Brussels and Paris. Anna Fifield in Tokyo, Emily Rauhala and Simon Denyer in Beijing, Pamela Constable in Kandahar, Kevin Sieff in Nairobi, Quentin Ariès in Brussels, Annie Gowen in New Delhi, Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Loveday Morris and Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem, Joshua Partlow in Mexico City, Sudarsan Raghavan in Cairo, Anton Troianovski in Berlin, Andrew Roth in Moscow, and David Lynch and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.

After a year of Trump, Russians are still waiting for the thaw

For North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, 2017 has been a very good year

Xi showed his hand, now it's time for Trump to play his cards in Asia

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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A year of Trump's 'America first' agenda has radically changed the U.S. role in the world

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Placeholder while article actions load BERLIN - From the opening moments of his presidency, Donald Trump set forth a radically altered vision for the United States and its dealings with the rest of the world - one he dubbed "America first." Supporters say he has delivered: a military defeat of the Islamic State, greater spending by U.S.

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Link: “America is Back”: President Biden Outlines His Vision for U.S. Foreign Policy

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Link: “America is Back”: President Biden Outlines His Vision for U.S. Foreign Policy

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Link: Bernie Sanders on Breaking Big Money’s Grip on Elections

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Link: Bernie Sanders on Breaking Big Money’s Grip on Elections

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BILL MOYERS: Welcome. This just in from the prophetic Andy Borowitz: With midterm elections a few days away, "a new poll indicates that billionaires are likely to retain control of the United States government...proxy candidates of billionaires are likely to win ninety-eight per cent of next Tuesday's races, with the remaining two per cent leaning billionaire."

Now Andy Borowitz is one of our leading humorists and I figured he was joking. But now I'm not so sure. And neither, I'd guess, is United States Senator Bernie Sanders. Because a couple of weeks ago, Bernie Sanders was in Richmond, California, a small city of just over 100,000 in the Bay Area of San Francisco. He was speaking out against the energy giant Chevron and the big money it's spending to influence the local elections there.

SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS in Richmond, CA: And if Chevron can roll over you, they and their buddies will roll over every community in America. If you can stand up and beat them with all of their money, you're going to give hope to people all over America that we can control our destinies.

BILL MOYERS: Chevron's the Fortune 500 company that has a big refinery in Richmond and acts like it owns the place. After that refinery erupted in fire two years ago, the city, led by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, sued Chevron for what it alleges is a long history of negligence. Chevron's fighting back, spending an incredible $3 million plus to beat McLaughlin and her allies and replace them with a more pliable city council that will protect the oil company's interests.

All that cash for one small election - but it's just part of a spending frenzy of perhaps $4 billion all across the country, making this the most expensive midterms in history; money unleashed by a series of Supreme Court decisions allowing millionaires and billionaires to drown out the voice of anyone who tries to speak against them.

And that's why Bernie Sanders is with me now. He's not a Democrat. He's not a Republican. He's an independent in his second senate term, after 16 years in the House of Representatives, and eight as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Welcome back.

BERNIE SANDERS: Great to be with you.

BILL MOYERS: It's a long way from Burlington, Vermont, to Richmond, California. And there's a lot of other places you could've been going. Why did you go there?

BERNIE SANDERS: Because it disgusts me and angers me to see a huge, multinational corporation like Chevron try to destroy a local government, which is standing up for the working people and standing up for the environment. The idea that just because they have unlimited sums of money, they can toss aside and defeat people who are trying to do the right thing. It's not what America is supposed to be about and it upset me very much.

BILL MOYERS: You were very upset. Let me play you another excerpt from the speech.

BERNIE SANDERS: Unlimited sums of money from one of the largest corporation in America who says, 'How dare you ordinary people, working class people, people of color, young people, how dare you think you have a right to run your city government? Who do you think you are? We're going to teach you a lesson. We're going to tell you who owns this community, who controls this community.' And that's what this fight is about here in Richmond. And you damn well better win that fight.

BILL MOYERS: So what is the fight?

BERNIE SANDERS: The fight is for the future of democracy in America. What you're seeing in Richmond is one small part of what's going on in this country today, Bill. And let me just say this. If people think the situation is bad now, and it is horrendous, the chairman of the Republican Party now, he wants to take it further. He thinks Citizens United did not go far enough. So the Koch brothers and he want to eliminate all campaign finance legislation, all regulations, and have a situation where the billionaires will say to somebody, 'You want to run for governor of California? Here's a check of a half a billion dollars. You work for me. No longer independent expenditures, we own you completely.'

BILL MOYERS: I read one account that says Chevron is spending over $150 for every, quote, "likely" voter. What do they get back for their investment?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, what they're going to get back, clearly, is a city council which will be less attentive to the environmental needs of that community. They are the largest employer. They have, as you've mentioned a moment ago, there was a terrible fire there a couple of years ago. People there are very concerned about the environmental impacts of Chevron, and they will get a much more docile city council if they win.

BILL MOYERS: Chevron would tell you they're just protecting those interests they have there. And that they will also tell you that they create jobs and pay taxes there for public services.

BERNIE SANDERS: Do they create jobs? Of course they create jobs. But the point is, corporations all over this country create jobs. But they cannot run and dominate our democracy.

BILL MOYERS: I wager that just about everybody watching this show knows what you and I think about this issue. And yet, while you're speaking and I'm reporting, those folks are out there creating a reality on the ground with their money. And things get worse.

BERNIE SANDERS: Things are getting worse. You know, when you look at this campaign, and you realize the enormously serious issues this country faces, right, we got a collapsing middle class. We have more wealth and income inequality today than we've had since the 1920s. We have all of these enormous issues. And what big money can do is put an unbelievable amount of TV and radio ads out there to deflect attention from the real issues facing the American people.

BILL MOYERS: Well, that's interesting. Because, you know, I've seen you quite recently on television. It's always the same questions and always the same five headlines. What's the story that the corporate press is not letting you tell?

BERNIE SANDERS: Oh, my God. You see, this is the issue. I mean, I've been on a million of these shows. They say, 'Here's the story of the day. What do you think about the Secret Service? What do you think about this? What do you think about Ebola?' All of those issues are important.

But the issues that impact ordinary people, is they're asking why, despite all of the productivity, people are working longer hours for lower wages. Have we had that discussion, Bill? Have you ever heard anybody talking about it? They're asking how come we've had this unfettered free-trade policies that have resulted in the loss of millions of good-paying jobs and you got both parties still saying, well, that's pretty good.

And this issue of income and wealth inequality, wow. One percent owning 37 percent of the wealth in America. Bottom 60 percent owning 1.7 percent. One family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owning more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. Do you think we should be talking about that issue? You can't get the discussion going on TV.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

BERNIE SANDERS: Because it's not in the interest of the corporations who own the networks to actually be educating the American people so that are debating the real issues. It's much better to deflect attention away from those issues and get into the story of the day.

There was some guy who was a football fan who walked halfway across the country. Boy, that's a really big story. Or, Chris Christie yelled at somebody. History will certainly remember this as one of the important issues of the 21st century.

BILL MOYERS: This, to me, is this fundamental question facing Bernie Sanders. How do you get your message directly to those who need it most? And you know who they are. They're conservative working people, who don't realize that their party has been sold all these years to the financial and business interests that are rigging the rules against them. How do you reach those people?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, believe me, I wish I had the magic answer. You're asking exactly the right question. There are parts of this country, Bill, where the only information people get is on radio. You got Rush Limbaugh. 95 percent of talk radio is extreme right wing. You got Fox Television, which does an extraordinary job of deflecting attention away from the real issues.

The idea that you have these working-class people who are voting for candidates who refuse to raise the minimum wage, who refuse to provide health care for their kids, who want to send their jobs to China, who want to give tax breaks to corporations, it blows my mind. And that is the issue that we have to figure out.

BILL MOYERS: But is there no way to make a concerted effort to reach out conservative working people, people who share, I think, a populous bias in behalf of government by, and for the people. Wouldn't you bolster your credentials as someone willing to really shake things up, get beyond this distracting tedium of left and right and horserace mentalities that you're asked about all the time on the radio. Is there a way to make a campaign out of that?

BERNIE SANDERS: This is something that I'm thinking about hard. When they ask Tea Party people, and I've seen some of the polls, do you think we should cut Social Security? You know what they say overwhelmingly? No. Should you cut Medicare? No. Tea Party working-class people will be shocked to know that the people who founded the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, want to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, the concept of minimum wage. In other words, the ideology of the Koch brothers, who put the initial money in to found the Tea Party, is very different from the average, working-class person. And you're saying how do we reach out to get to work in coalition with those folks is something that we have got to do.

BILL MOYERS: I heard Morning Joe ask you if you're going to run for president. And you've been asked that everywhere. And I don't want to beat a dead horse. I particularly don't want to beat a dead dark horse. But if you were to do it, and I'm not going to play games with you about saying, are you, or are you not? If you were to do it, would you run as a Democrat or an Independent?

BERNIE SANDERS: I haven't resolved that yet. There are advantages and disadvantages of both. There is strong contempt now for both the Democratic and Republican parties. All of the elections that I have won in Vermont have been as an independent.

So, that speaks to running as an independent. The problem is that the deck is really stacked against independents. You would have to spend an enormous amount of time, money, energy just getting on the damn ballot in 50 states in this country. And then, the media would probably marginalize you. And you may not be able to get into some of the debates.

That's what I'm kind of weighing. But the main issue that I'm trying to figure out, and I'm going around the country talking to people, is there support for a candidacy which is really prepared to take on the billionaire class? Is it, in fact, possible to do what you just said?

It's easy to talk about, let's reach out to working-class tea party people. Can you do it? How do you do it? How do you get the resources to do it? How do you build the grassroots organization? This is what I do believe from the bottom of my heart. In this election coming up right now, the estimate is that 60 percent of the people are not going to vote, 60 percent.

BILL MOYERS: Midterm election?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes. 80 percent of low-income, working people are not going to vote. Bill, what I am absolutely sure of is that we do not change this country unless there is a political revolution, there is a radical change in consciousness where working people are not only voting, they're participating in the political process, they understand how important politics and government is for the future of this country and for their kids.

BILL MOYERS: So, what's your strategy? I mean--

BERNIE SANDERS: The strategy--

BILL MOYERS: I know you care about, I know you want to make a difference. But I know the system is against your making a difference.

BERNIE SANDERS: You have to bring people together who may not agree on every issue, but who understand that the middle class is collapsing and we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society, where the billionaires will control the economy and the political life of this country.

So, that means reaching out to people from different walks of life and say, you got to overcome this difference and that difference. So, I think what we have to do, Bill, is lay out an agenda which says we are going to take on the billionaire class. You know what? We're going to overturn Citizens United. We're going to move to public funding of elections so these guys don't buy elections.

BILL MOYERS: Are you going to ask them to join a third party?

BERNIE SANDERS: That's a question we have--

BILL MOYERS: It's a difficult question.

BERNIE SANDERS: It's a difficult question. You know, I have, that's been my life, as an independent. And that's one I'm wrestling with, Bill. But given, I, the answer is I just don't know. But what I do know is you need a strong progressive agenda which says, you know, why is it that in a country like Denmark, everybody has health care as a right?

Why is it that higher education is free? Why is it they have a great childcare system? Why is it that they're leading the world in terms of environmental protection and fighting global warming? Can we do that in this country? The answer is we can. But you're not going to do it when 60 percent of the people don't vote in an off presidential election.

BILL MOYERS: How do you make the Hillary wing of the Democratic Party pay attention to the power of a populist message unless you're in the debates in 2016, when most of the public is paying attention to political messages?

BERNIE SANDERS: This has been my political experience. When you rally the grassroots of the country or the city or of your state, when people begin to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough. We want to do well by our kids. We want to protect the environment. We believe we should join the rest of the world in terms of having health care for all, single-payer health care for all, et cetera, et cetera.'

When people begin to move, the people on top will follow them. So, whether it's Hillary or anybody else, what we have got to do is mobilize the American people in a way that we have not seen in recent history around a progressive agenda. Bill, every poll that I have seen, when they ask the American people, what is the most important issue that you're concerned about? You know what they say? Jobs and the economy.

How come we are not investing heavily in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. $1 trillion invested in rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, rail creates 13 million decent-paying jobs. You know what? The American people want us to do that. They want us to raise the minimum wage. So, you need a very strong agenda. You need a mechanism. And you've asked a hard question. Easier to say than to do, to rally people around that agenda. And once you do that, things will take care of itself.

BILL MOYERS: This is what Barack Obama did in 2008. He asked people to take over the Democratic Party, progressives and populists, everyday people that you describe in your speech out in Richmond. He asked those people to come in and, elect me and we'll do just exactly what Bernie Sanders would do if he were president. Hasn't happened.

BERNIE SANDERS: I have lot of respect for Barack Obama. But, his biggest mistake is that, after running a brilliant campaign in 2008, where millions of people in fact were galvanized, young people, people of color came out and said, 'Hey, we're going to make some real change.' The day after the election he said, okay, thank you very much. Now I'm going to work inside the Beltway and we're going to start negotiating with Republicans and all that stuff. The simple truth is, in my view, nothing gets done unless millions and millions of people will demand it. Politics is 365 days a year.

BILL MOYERS: Not just voting?

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly. And anyone, you can have the best person in the world as president of the United States, that person will accomplish nothing unless millions of people are standing behind him or her. Just an example, Bill, everybody, all the young people in this country are worried about student debt. The fact that hundreds of thousands of young people can't even afford to go to college.

You have a million people, a million young people marching on Washington saying, there's a vote coming up. And if you vote the wrong way, we know who you are. We actually are paying attention. You aren't going to get reelected. We will lower the cost of college substantially and deal with the student debt crisis. It will not happen. It will not happen unless millions of people are activated.

BILL MOYERS: The practical issue is how do you get millions of people mobilized if in fact both parties are on the side of money? You know, you're making the right argument, I know, and people are responding. But they don't know what to do. If they do what they did with Barack Obama and come out for the Democratic Party, they stand to get betrayed again. If the independent party, third party is difficult to organize and get on the ballot, what do they do?

They're frustrated. You know, even your own wife says she gets depressed when she hears you make another speech like you did in Richmond. And people write me and say, 'I'm depressed watching your show because I don't know what to do.'

BERNIE SANDERS: Number one, we are, in fact, a very, very difficult moment. But let's also look back on history. Bill, if you and I were chatting here 30 years ago and we would say, you said to me, you know, 'I think that the United States, people of our country are going to overcome the deep racism in this country and elect an African American,' you said that 30 years ago, people would say, 'Bill, you're crazy. That'll never happen.'

Thirty years ago we had two women in the United States Senate. Today we have 20 and that number is certainly going to go up. In terms of gay rights. If you and I were sitting here ten years ago and you were to say to me, 'Bernie, you know, I think in conservative states in 2014, they're going to be passing gay marriage.' Would you have dreamed of that ten years ago? You wouldn't have. I would not have, okay?

Right now, we're engaged in a huge fight. It is the economic struggle against the billionaire class who wants it all. They want to kill Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the whole thing. Can we beat them? We can. Now, here's some good news. I know, in the middle of all the bad news. I'll never forget this as long as I live. I was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981. I made promises to the people of my city. Two years later, Bill, we doubled, almost doubled voter turnout.

How's that? And you know why? Because I kept my word and people said, you know what? He is making a difference. He didn't lie to us. So if you have leadership which delivers, or at least says, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, remember what he said? He said, 'These are the economic royalists. They hate my guts and I welcome their hatred because I'm on your side.' That's the kind of policy and language we need.

BILL MOYERS: I apologize for being tedious but you're right, you know? We-- a lot of changes. Black rights, women's rights, gay rights. But here in New York, we have a governor who's been really good on gay rights and he's a handmaiden of Wall Street. I mean, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, their constituency is Wall Street. So people who want to come out and do what you want to do, are led by people who say, well, we'll go only so far because our loyalty remains to money.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes. The only point, there is a difference between social issues and the economic issues. And I will not deny for one moment that taking on the ruling class of this country and the billionaire class, it's tough stuff. It is tough stuff. So I don't have any magical solutions. But what I do know is that if we do not create an economy that works for ordinary people, if we do not end the fact that 95 percent of all new income now goes to the top one percent. We've got to end it, and the only way I know to do that is to rally ordinary people around the progressive agenda. So our job is to create a 50 state, grassroots movement around a progressive agenda.

BILL MOYERS: And then would the purpose be, as the tea party's purpose was to take over the Republican Party, would the purpose be to take over the Democratic Party?

BERNIE SANDERS: That is certainly one of the options. I mean, the options are to--

BILL MOYERS: Because I don't see how you could do it just as an independent outside, stiff-armed by both parties, ignored by the press.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, let's be very clear. Now, the Tea Party has been enormously successful. Enormously successful. They've taken kind of a center right party and made it a right wing extremist party. If you had a grassroots movement, if you had the trade union people, if you had the environmental community, the women's community and ordinary working class people standing up, can you take the Democratic party and make it into a progressive party? I think there's a chance you can.

BILL MOYERS: But to do that. You have to have some way to respond to neutralize Citizens United. Is there a form of, and I know people's eyes go dead when I say campaign finance reform, but is there an answer to Citizens United that you think is achievable?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, people's eyes should not go dead when you talk about campaign finance reform because if they're concerned about any issue, they've got to be concerned about campaign finance. Give you an example. State of Vermont, we have our candidate for lieutenant governor right now getting public funding running for election. It's not a huge sum of money, but he's running a credible campaign. So I think the alternative has got to be to do everything that we can to overturn Citizens United. But move to a public funding of elections. States can do some of that.

BILL MOYERS: There's a recent poll. More than half of all people in this country do not believe the American dream is real. 59 percent of the people polled in June agreed, quote, the American dream has become impossible for most of us to achieve. And more and more Americans believe, quote, "there's not much opportunity to get ahead. " A living wage, retirement security, the opportunity for your children to get ahead are increasingly out of reach. Why aren't people furious about this?

BERNIE SANDERS: I would say they are furious and Republicans take that anger and channel it against people who are even worse off than working class people. And I think also people don't see an option, they've kind of given up in seeing, yeah, I'm working longer hours for lower wages. Yeah, my kid can't afford to go to college. Yeah, my aunt does not have any health insurance. What can I do about it?

And also there has not been, because of media, because of weak politics on the part of the Democratic Party, the kind of focus that we need to say, you know where the problem is? These guys are getting richer and richer. You're getting poorer and poorer. Have you heard that kind of discussion? Have you heard that type of focus? I don't think so.

BILL MOYERS: What's wrong, what's gone wrong with the Democratic Party?

BERNIE SANDERS: In one answer I'd say money. Time after time we see a hesitancy on the part of the Democratic Party to stand up to the billionaire class because you can't do that when you're out hustling campaign contributions.

So whether the issues are disastrous trade policy, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, all of these special interests have enormous power and influence to the Democratic Party. Instead of having public meetings with people, you have Democratic candidates running all over the place, trying to raise money to keep up with the Koch brothers. So I would say, you know, money is corrupting, certainly has taken over the Republican Party, has significantly impacted the Democrats.

BILL MOYERS: How do we get money out of politics?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, first thing is we need a massive grassroots movement to have state after state, and we have, I think, 16 of them already onboard saying, we support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. I think there's something like 500 communities around America saying the same thing. Then when we do that, we move to public funding of elections. You want to run? I will not be able to outspend you.

BILL MOYERS: Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for being with me.

BERNIE SANDERS: Great to be here.

BILL MOYERS: At our website, BillMoyers.com, there's a web exclusive interview with Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, California, where Chevron is spending those millions trying to defeat her and other progressive candidates.

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Bernie Sanders on Breaking Big Money's Grip on Elections | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

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BILL MOYERS: Welcome. This just in from the prophetic Andy Borowitz: With midterm elections a few days away, "a new poll indicates that billionaires are likely to retain control of the United States government...proxy candidates of billionaires are likely to win ninety-eight per cent of next Tuesday's races, with the remaining two per cent leaning billionaire."