Palestinians have condemned the attendance of two United States officials at the inauguration of a tunnel at a contested archaeological site in occupied East Jerusalem that was organised by an Israeli settler-linked group.
White House adviser Jason Greenblatt and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman took part in Sunday’s event, which marked the completion of the project next to the Old City in the neighbourhood of Silwan, according to the group, the City of David Foundation.
In a statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it viewed “the American attendance and celebration of the Judaisation activities in occupied East Jerusalem as hostile acts against the Palestinians”.
“The administration of President Donald Trump proves day by day its … unlimited affiliation to the colonial settlement project led by the extremist right in the state of the occupation (Israel),” it said.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. It sees the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.
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US President Donald Trump in 2017 broke with decades of US policy by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and later moving its capital there from Tel Aviv.
The White House, which has also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in Palestinian aid, organised last week an economic conference in Bahrain meant to kickstart a long-awaited Middle East peace effort – but the Palestinians boycotted it.
Friedman has been a supporter of Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal under international law, and Greenblatt last week said he preferred to call them “neighbourhoods and cities”.
‘Path of Pilgrims’
Called the “Path of Pilgrims”, the tunnel was excavated during the last six years by the Israeli Antiquities Authority. It was found in 2004 during repairs after a sewage pipe burst in the middle of Silwan neighbourhood.
The City of David Foundation says the tunnel served as a pilgrimage route to the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.
Greenblatt dismissed accusations that the US officials’ attendance at the event was further acknowledgement of Israeli sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem.
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The Palestinian Authority “claims our attendance at this historic event supports ‘Judaisation’ of Jerusalem/is an act of hostility vs. Palestinians. Ludicrous,” he wrote on Twitter.
“We can’t ‘Judaise’ what history/archaeology show. We can acknowledge it you can stop pretending it isn’t true! Peace can only be built on truth.”
Friedman said at the ceremony that the excavation project uncovered “the truth, whether you believe or not … the truth is the only foundation upon which peace will come to this area”.
After his speech, Friedman, along with Greenblatt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s wife, Sara, and donors to the project, wielded hammers to break through a wall and open the subterranean path to the holy site revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the al-Aqsa compound.
In its statement, the Palestinian foreign ministry condemned “in the strongest terms the colonialist plans to replace the existing reality in occupied Jerusalem and the environs of the Old City”.
Erasing line between East and West
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said this was the first time the US had sent its representatives to East Jerusalem, “recognising that all of Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
“[With] the Americans, walking into East Jerusalem, they’re erasing the difference between East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem. The Palestinians say it’s all part of an Israeli plan to try erase their heritage, their history on this land,” said Smith, reporting from East Jerusalem.
“Palestinians say Israel is trying to make this city more important for one group than for others.”
The project’s parent group, Elad, helps settle Jewish families in Palestinian neighbourhoods, raising suspicions that its tourism projects have the deeper agenda of erasing the lines between East and West Jerusalem.
Observers said the presence of Friedman and Greenblatt was likely to deepen suspicions that the US supported “Judaising” East Jerusalem.
“We are in a time that Israel feels very, very free to advance its strategic aims in East Jerusalem,” said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an advocacy group that pushes for equality between Palestinian and Jewish residents of the city.
Emek Shaveh, an Israeli group that opposes the “politicisation” of archaeology, also condemned the US move presence, calling it “a political act which is the closest the US will have come to recognising Israeli sovereignty over the Old City basin of Jerusalem”.
Critics have accused operators of the sites of pushing a nationalistic agenda at the expense of Palestinian residents.
Stephanie Grisham, the new White House press secretary, was bruised in a scuffle with North Korean security officers after they tried to block American reporters from accessing a meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
After Trump’s historic first steps into North Korea, North Korean officials shoved and tried to block the press from a meeting room where Trump and Kim talked privately, The Associated Press reported.
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The scuffle intensified as North Korean guards tried to physically prevent members of the U.S. press pool from entering the room inside the Inter-Korean House of Freedom, on the southern side of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone. The Secret Service also intervened.
In what looked like a chaotic scene outside the meeting, Grisham was recorded saying, “Go, go,” as she pushed a North Korean official aside to try to create a path to let reporters into the meeting. She also shouted, “Stop, let go,” while others in the background shouted, “U.S. pool.”
Grisham, a top aide to first lady Melania Trump, replaced Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday, also taking on the role of President Trump’s communications director. She is now the lead public spokeswoman for both the first lady and the president.
During her time in the East Wing, Grisham has become a fierce advocate for Melania Trump. She is known for pushing back on negative stories and has chastised journalists for what she has called tabloid-style coverage of the first lady.
Grisham has stepped into her new roles during a period of friction between the White House and the press. Sanders, her predecessor, last held a formal televised press briefing more than 100 days ago, and was known for sparring with reporters while strongly defending the president.
The Sacramento Kings are reportedly set to make a “massive” contract offer to Boston Celtics center Al Horford when he becomes an unrestricted free agent Sunday at 6 p.m. ET.
Jason Anderson of the Sacramento Bee reported the update and noted there’s “mutual interest” between the sides heading into the NBA‘s moratorium period. Marc Stein of the New York Times confirmed the Kings are “definitely” a suitor in the Horford sweepstakes. However, despite the planned offer, Sam Amick of The Athletic reported the Kings are “under the impression” Horford will likely sign elsewhere.
He’s also scheduled to meet with some “mystery teams” after the market opens before making a decision about his future Monday or Tuesday, per Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe.
John Gambadoroof Arizona Sports 98.7 Radio reported one of the mystery teams is the Philadelphia 76ers, who could offer the veteran post player “over $100 million.” Amick later reported Philadelphia’s interest in Horford is “very real.”
Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer added that “some league executives” believe the Celtics are a mystery team for Horford as well. However, O’Connor noted “keeping Horford’s rights would require a number of complicated maneuvers, including a double sign-and-trade involving Kemba Walker and Terry Rozier. It wouldn’t be easy.”
The 33-year-old Dominican Republic native is one of the league’s most quietly productive stars. He averaged 13.6 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.3 blocks while shooting 53.5 percent from the field, 36 percent from three-point range and 82.1 percent on free throws during the 2018-19 season.
He ranked 18th in the NBA in ESPN’sReal Plus-Minusdespite playing career-low minutes (29 per game) on an overcrowded Boston roster, which also limited his offensive touches.
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At season’s end, Horford said he wanted to see how the Celtics’ front office handled its initial offseason moves before deciding whether to return.
“It’s something that I haven’t even stopped to think about,” hetold reporters. “I’ve enjoyed being here in Boston. Just have to wait and see what we’re going to do as a team. And it’s steps that the management is going to do moving forward, and continue to get better.”
Boston entered the year with championship aspirations but fell well short of those expectations when it was eliminated by the Milwaukee Bucks in the second round of the playoffs.
Horford may seek a new team where he’ll take on a more marquee, defined role, particularly at the offensive end, after seeing his playing time dip this past season. And money will be a factor, too.
In Sacramento, he’d immediately become the team’s unquestioned top frontcourt option and get to play alongside one of the NBA’s most promising backcourts in De’Aaron Fox and Buddy Hield.
Every NFL season, breakout players define the next generation.
Sometimes, a breakout player merely provides hope for the future during a losing season. Other times, the breakout propels a contender into the playoffs and more.
No matter the overarching team context, a breakout typically features a player at least entering his sophomore season who has a massive upswing in performance—often sparked by a perfect marriage of development, acclimation and potential.
With the NFL entering a dead zone until late July when training camps start, now is a good time to take a step back and identify the likeliest breakout player for all 32 teams.
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Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press
The Arizona Cardinals have a few different breakout candidates, including defenders like Haason Reddick.
But with a new head coach with an offensive slant like Kliff Kingsbury, not to mention a talent like Kyler Murray under center, the attention has to go to the offensive side of the ball.
There, it’s hard to look past Christian Kirk. A second-round pick in 2018, Kirk didn’t exactly meet lofty expectations while playing across from Larry Fitzgerald, scoring just three times on 43 catches as a rookie.
But there are hints of a second-year leap. Kirk is healthy, The MMQB’s Albert Breer reported he’s “been the best receiver on the roster this spring,” and the new scheme and quarterback should help.
While Kirk might not propel the Cardinals to the postseason, he’s poised for a big sophomore season.
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Jeff Haynes/Associated Press
The Atlanta Falcons also have a batch of worthwhile breakout candidates, especially if Takkarist McKinley can rebound and live up to the hype.
But it’s hard to see anyone denying Calvin Ridley.
Ridley was third on team in receptions as a rookie—behind Julio Jones and Mohamed Sanu—yet still caught 64 of his 92 targets, tallying 821 yards and 10 touchdowns.
The riddle with Ridley is interesting. The 10 touchdowns are primed for regression, but the Falcons would be silly not to prioritize him more in the offense.
Considering Jones himself went for 1,600-plus yards last season, a bigger piece of the pie for Ridley could mean a significant jump in production.
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Gail Burton/Associated Press
This one doesn’t need much in the way of explaining, right?
Lamar Jackson showed plenty of promise last year with the Baltimore Ravens, stepping in for Joe Flacco and not letting go of the job on the way to the playoffs.
While it wasn’t perfect, Jackson threw six touchdown passes and three picks over the course of the regular season, also running for 695 yards and five scores. The biggest point to address this offseason is making him more efficient as a passer.
On that front, things are going well, per Ravens quarterbacks coach James Urban, according to ESPN.com’s Dan Graziano: “They certainly haven’t been eliminated, but there are much fewer, ‘Where-did-that-come-froms’ this year when we watch him practice. It looks better in many ways. The ball comes out cleaner, the timing looks better.”
Provided Jackson isn’t once again rushing 100-plus times in a way his body might not be able to handle, more comfort as a passer and a scheme tailored to what he can do could lead to a massive season while the Ravens keep contending.
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Jeffrey T. Barnes/Associated Press
Look, if a young quarterback has a shot at breaking out, it tends to override everything else—just look at the way the NFL at large treats the position on draft day.
Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills are a good example of this. Outside of Buffalo, Allen was viewed as a polarizing pick in the top 10 for various reasons. His rookie season over 12 games had both sides feeling justified in their post-draft feelings.
For the detractors, the fact that Allen only completed 52.8 percent of his passes with more picks than touchdowns showed he’ll never be an average NFL passer. For others, the fact that he compensated for a lack of talent around him and also put up 631 yards and eight scores on the ground was a hint of big playmaking versatility.
Natural progression and the arrival of a dependable target like Cole Beasley atop other pieces like an improved offensive line could equate to one of the biggest overall breakouts of 2019.
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Bill Feig/Associated Press
Well, it can’t be Christian McCaffrey for the Carolina Panthers, who accounted for nearly 2,000 yards from scrimmage, even if it doesn’t feel like he’s scratched a ceiling.
Perusing the rest of the roster, 2018 first-round pick DJ Moore figures to be the biggest beneficiary of McCaffrey’s rise, not to mention the return of what is hopefully a healthy Cam Newton.
As a rookie, Moore put up 788 yards with two scores, yet four players managed to outpace him in the touchdown receptions department.
With Devin Funchess gone and teams dialed in on the backfield, the Panthers offense should find plenty of explosive production from Moore all over the field.
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Bruce Kluckhohn/Associated Press
Leonard Floyd has probably made lists like this in the past only to disappoint.
Yet sometimes a steady rise is better than none at all. Floyd, the ninth pick by the Chicago Bears in 2016, only has 15.5 sacks over three seasons and has missed 10 games.
The Bears still see something there, hence exercising Floyd’s fifth-year option. And he’s gotten better each year when he sees the field consistently. Perhaps most notably, the situation around him keeps improving too, with Roquan Smith now solidifying the linebacker corps and Khalil Mack wreaking havoc on the opposing offense’s plans.
Floyd may never break out in strictly the sacks department, yet he’s still primed for a major jump if he keeps along his current trajectory.
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John Minchillo/Associated Press
The Cincinnati Bengals quietly had a few big breakouts last year, with Joe Mixon leading the AFC in rushing and Tyler Boyd going for 1,000-plus yards.
Looking ahead, John Ross feels like the next in line.
It didn’t get a ton of publicity, but Ross scored seven times last year on just 21 catches. He was deployed expertly as a red-zone mismatch creator, yet he struggled all over the field otherwise.
But the Bengals now have offensive-minded coach Zac Taylor, the offensive line should see improved play with new faces like John Miller, and—if the Bengals are lucky—Andy Dalton won’t suffer another season-ending injury.
Sometimes, a change of scenery helps a player improve. In Ross’ case, the scenery changing around him might be enough to unlock his wicked upside, especially while defenses have to account for so many other weapons on the offense.
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Ron Schwane/Associated Press
Working under the understanding Baker Mayfield broke out as a rookie, the next name on the list has to be tight end David Njoku.
Njoku was just a 21-year-old rookie two years ago when he had 386 yards and four scores, numbers he bumped to 639 and four, respectively, in 2018.
Those numbers only figure to keep climbing in Njoku’s third year. Mayfield should keep ascending, and the offense added Odell Beckham Jr. to its arsenal. The backfield is a force as well with Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt—when he returns from suspension—leading the way.
Njoku, a 6’4″ weapon with elite athleticism, should see a heavy usage rate and make short work of defenses already strained thin.
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Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press
In a testament to the team’s strong drafting over the years, it isn’t easy to tag a breakout candidate for the Dallas Cowboys. Prospects like Jaylon Smith and Leighton Vander Esch, to name just a few, have already broken out.
That means turning the attention to the secondary, where 2017 third-round pick Jourdan Lewis sounds like he could be headed for a bigger role. Cowboys coaches aren’t letting his stature at 5’10” get in the way, as noted by secondary coach Kris Richard, according to Kate Hairopoulos of the Dallas Morning News: “He just really comes in and competes. He’s not limited by any means, right. … You take a player like Jourdan Lewis and he’s an exception.”
Lewis shouldn’t have a problem heavily breaking into a rotation led up by Chidobe Awuzie and Bryon Jones, especially if the secondary as a whole continues to underwhelm.
Considering he oozes upside and has yet to see the field for a massive number of snaps, Lewis simply getting on the field could lead to a big breakout.
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Gary Landers/Associated Press
It’s Courtland Sutton time for the Denver Broncos.
A second-round pick in 2018, Sutton had a hard time getting fully going as a rookie, catching just 42 of 84 targets for 704 yards and four scores.
But a second-year leap could be in the cards. Not only is Sutton still adapting and developing, but Demaryius Thomas also isn’t in the way anymore. It seems like Emmanuel Sanders will stick, but even head coach Vic Fangio has said they are “expecting big things” from Sutton, according to The Athletic’s Nicki Jhabvala.
Keep in mind the improvements to the surroundings too. Joe Flacco is under center now, and the offensive line received several upgrades as well as esteemed coach Mike Munchak.
The combination of circumstances should lead to a Sutton breakout.
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Paul Sancya/Associated Press
Kerryon Johnson is primed for an explosion in 2019.
The Detroit Lions only got 10 games out of their second-round pick from an offseason ago, in the process only giving him 118 attempts and 39 targets. The former fell behind LeGarrette Blount and the latter behind four players on the team.
But Johnson ended up averaging 5.4 yards per carry and 6.7 per catch. Even better, the offensive line should keep coming along with Frank Ragnow switching spots to center. First-round pick T.J. Hockenson should open up the offense, too, which by the way, should be led by a fully healthy Matthew Stafford after he struggled through a back injury last season.
A bona fide workhorse runner, Johnson should see 200-plus carries and at least 60 catches in 2019, at least based on his capabilities and the idea an offense can be structured around him. The big numbers will follow the usage.
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Mike Roemer/Associated Press
The Green Bay Packers have some fun breakout candidates on the defensive side, such as Jaire Alexander.
But it doesn’t take an expert to know the key is the offense around Aaron Rodgers.
Those Packers inserted a new regime this offseason, led by head coach Matt LaFleur. The idea is to leave whatever happened between Rodgers and his last staff in the past and get back to a coherent attack.
Said attack should feature receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling as one of its biggest pieces aside from Davante Adams. The 2018 fifth-round pick had 581 yards and two scores last year on a limited slate of chances. Perhaps more important is a deep dive from Pro Football Focus that revealed MVS created separation on 70.3 percent of his targets last year.
If Valdes-Scantling was already shaking free that often as a rookie, a little offensive cohesion seems primed to lift him well into breakout status.
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Michael Wyke/Associated Press
In hindsight, maybe this was always the plan.
The Houston Texans got a superb year out of Tyrann Mathieu, but third-round pick Justin Reid always seemed like the focal point of the secondary’s future.
Reid was a force as a rookie last year, totaling 88 tackles, 10 passes defensed and three interceptions. But he’s now the guy for the secondary with both Mathieu and Kareem Jackson gone. Johnathan Joseph, 35, might be the elder statesman of the group, but Reid is the playmaking centerpiece and future.
Maybe this isn’t what Texans fans want to hear given the upside of a Deshaun Watson-led offense, but questions continue to swirl around the offensive line. That, plus Reid’s immense upside, makes him the pick.
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Mark Zaleski/Associated Press
To say the AFC South’s future is full of promising defensive secondaries would be an understatement.
The Indianapolis Colts play a big role in this thanks to the presence of Malik Hooker, the 15th pick in the 2017 draft.
While the Colts have some budding prospects along the offensive line and elsewhere, the only thing that has really limited Hooker has been health, as he’s missed 11 games over two seasons.
Hooker says that is about to change, according to the Indianapolis Star‘s Joel A. Erickson.
“This is probably the best I’ve felt since I left college,” Hooker said. “Probably even better than that.”
This is the first offseason Hooker has worked through OTAs, so the budding hype is understandable. He’s elite in coverage and already boasts five interceptions, so he might end up being a late arrival to the elite safety club.
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Gary McCullough/Associated Press
Even after he tallied more than 100 total tackles in 2018, Myles Jack is just getting started.
Jack, a second-round pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2016, would have come off the board much earlier if it hadn’t been for a serious knee injury that also limited him during his rookie season.
The rebound has been slower than expected, but he has still shown notable improvement all three years—and he’ll only turn 24 years old in September.
Keep in mind a position change in the wake of Paul Posluszny’s retirement too. Jack will be the middle linebacker in base looks, whereas he only handled it in nickel situations in the past. That’s naturally going to let him accrue bigger numbers and turn loose that playmaking ability, which only continues to improve.
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Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
Damien Williams is the big right-time, right-place winner.
Williams gets to serve as the top running back for a Patrick Mahomes-led Kansas City Chiefs offense after Kareem Hunt’s 2018 release. Williams received an endorsement from the coaching staff following an offseason where the team didn’t add much to the spot.
Williams made the most of his chances last year, averaging 5.1 yards per carry during the regular season before a 129-yard performance in the divisional round and three total touchdowns (one rushing, two receiving) in the AFC title game.
He has already shown he can perform well in all facets of the game, which positions him for a huge year on an offense that will need make up for the potential absence of Tyreek Hill.
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Gail Burton/Associated Press
There is a former top-10 talent still improving while working with an elite passer like Philip Rivers.
If that isn’t breakout material, nothing is.
This, of course, refers to Mike Williams, the seventh pick in 2017. He flirted with the “bust” label right out of the gates as a rookie, totaling just 95 yards over 10 games. Last season was better, though, as he got in all 16 games and managed 664 yards and 10 touchdowns.
A team-high 10 touchdowns or not last year, Williams might just be scratching the surface considering he only had 66 targets and now gets to play a big role in replacing the production of Tyrell Williams. At this point, 100-plus catches might not be too silly of a prediction given Williams’ clear big-play ability and expanding role.
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Jamie Squire/Getty Images
All signs point to a Gerald Everett breakout for the Los Angeles Rams.
The Rams are a veteran team with a convoluted depth chart at tight end, yet Sean McVay is a former tight ends coach who knows how to use talent at the spot.
It is telling, then, that Everett saw a big uptick in play down the stretch last season, culminating in six or more targets in three of the team’s last four games before four more in the playoff game, where he caught two for 50 yards. Now he’s already being hailed by outsiders as the team’s biggest offseason surprise.
Barring something unexpected, a former second-round pick like Everett should naturally be working his way into more playing time.
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Joel Auerbach/Getty Images
The Miami Dolphins might be the hardest team to nail down in this category because…the roster just isn’t very good for now.
Minkah Fitzpatrick is the first name that comes to mind, but he hinted at superstar upside as a rookie. That means shifting the attention to the offense, where Kenyan Drake seems poised for an upswing.
Drake, a former third-round pick, is in one of those situations where one can only question the coaching. A year ago, 156 carries went to Frank Gore, who didn’t even score. But Drake turned his 120 into four scores and a 4.5 yards-per-carry average. Over three years, he’s averaged 4.7 yards per carry and caught 94 passes.
A natural usage bump figures to occur in 2019 with Gore gone, and it doesn’t hurt that a new coaching staff and potentially better play from under center makes his life even easier in the process.
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Andy Clayton-King/Associated Press
Dalvin Cook had his rookie season in 2017 cut to just four games because of a torn ACL and then only appeared in 11 during his sophomore season. With a committee approach more popular than ever, teams like the Minnesota Vikings don’t seem to blink at taking it easy on potential stars while instead throwing workhorse numbers at, say, Latavius Murray.
Cook is certainly brimming with star potential. Even on limited carries, he’s sitting on 969 yards and four scores on a 4.7 YPC average, with another 51 catches.
Also, keep in mind the Vikings made a point to upgrade the offensive line this year and brought on Gary Kubiak as an adviser, which means a zone-read expert is now helping to shape an offense where Cook will lead the way out of the backfield. His upside if fully healthy is immense.
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Bill Sikes/Associated Press
With Bill Belichick, there is always a feeling of randomness to who excels out of the blue.
But with a talent like Isaiah Wynn and the surrounding circumstances, nailing down a breakout this year is rather simple.
Wynn was a first-round pick in 2018 coming out of the Nate Solder era for a reason, and he shouldn’t have a problem slotting right in and playing well on Tom Brady’s blindside.
Arguably the best line coaching in the NFL doesn’t hurt, either. When Wynn went down last year, the Patriots almost casually threw Trent Brown in his place. Brown, a 2015 seventh-rounder with little on his resume, turned around and had a career year before inking a monster contract in free agency.
Given the marriage of talent and coaching, it isn’t outlandish to think Wynn will plop right in and continue the long line of elite Brady protectors on the left side.
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Gerald Herbert/Associated Press
The Marcus Davenport outbreak feels inevitable.
Davenport was the subject of scrutiny last year when the New Orleans Saints decided to move around and get him at No. 14. Those vibes only continued as the season progressed because he missed three games and ended up tallying just 4.5 sacks.
As always seems to be the case, face-value numbers don’t always tell the story. Davenport wasn’t even on the field for half of the defense’s snaps by year’s end, so an expanded role on its lonesome should mean more production.
Davenport ended up having toe surgery this offseason and should be back at full go by the time the regular season begins. Health, a natural progression and the traits that made him an attractive pick in the first place should make him the Saints’ most likely breakout candidate for 2019.
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Darron Cummings/Associated Press
Evan Engram should end up being one of the biggest winners from the Odell Beckham Jr.-sized gap on the New York Giants.
New arrival Golden Tate is only going to inhale so many of Beckham’s targets in the run-based offense built around Saquon Barkley. The bulk of the rest should go to the versatile Engram, a mismatch creator who hasn’t always been used creatively enough.
Engram did have 115 targets as a rookie and scored six times, and it should be interesting to see that sort of usage in an offense boasting Barkley, which defenses will have to consider at all times. Generally speaking, the Giants feel like they’re in the middle of a blowup, so there isn’t much competition in the breakout department.
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Seth Wenig/Associated Press
When talking about New York Jets breakout candidates, it would be ill-advised to mention anyone besides Sam Darnold.
Call it a combination of Darnold flashing that much upside and the rest of the roster…not so much. Robby Anderson technically had a breakout in 2017, and the rest are mostly known commodities.
Darnold, though, is just now on the upswing. He finished last year with just a 57.7 completion percentage with 2,865 yards and 17 touchdowns against 15 interceptions, yet he had a six-one touchdown-to-interception ratio to close the season.
A better coaching approach by Adam Gase, the arrival of Le’Veon Bell and an improving defense should help create a sophomore surge.
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Kelvin Kuo/Associated Press
J.J. Nelson was never the biggest name for the Arizona Cardinals over the past four seasons after entering the league in the fifth round.
That could change in Oakland.
Observers know the big news: Antonio Brown has arrived with the Raiders to help along Derek Carr. Perhaps nearly as important, so has the underrated Tyrell Williams.
That leaves Nelson as the third man who can shake free and inhale any targets thrown his way and use his deep speed to create separation.
Nelson scored 10 times over four years in the purgatory known as Arizona, averaging 17.8 yards per catch. He’s not going to see 100-plus targets like at least Brown will, but the defensive attention applied elsewhere should have the 27-year-old on some season-ending breakout lists.
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Mark Tenally/Associated Press
Before the NFL entered its season-ending stretch and playoffs last year, most probably didn’t expect to hear Avonte Maddox would end up being one of the more important players.
Yet there the fourth-round pick was, stepping in and having big games in coverage and making it look easy. According to Pro Football Focus, he allowed a 59.9 passer rating when targeted and ranked first in coverage snaps per reception allowed at 21.7.
Maddox worked his way into the lineup and played 100 percent of the snaps in three games to close the season before the playoffs, so it’s clear the coaching staff will find a way to get him on the field for a full season next year.
Based on his aggressive play and production as a rookie, year two should be even better no matter where coaches line him up.
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Isaiah Buggs/Associated Press
For the Pittsburgh Steelers’ sake, their 2019 breakout player better be wideout James Washington.
Washington faces more pressure than expected as a sophomore after Antonio Brown’s departure. Brown missed one game last year yet still accounted for a team-high 168 targets for 1,297 yards and 15 touchdowns.
Granted, Washington won’t be expected to replace all that production on his own. But JuJu Smith-Schuster doesn’t have a ton of room for an uptick after 166 targets, 1,426 yards and seven scores last season.
Washington at least flashed when given a chance over 14 games, catching 16 passes for 217 yards and a score. If that average can translate, Washington should start living up to some of the second-round hype thrown his way.
Given that the offense doesn’t have a ton of other places to go, Washington is positioned for a breakout.
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John Hefti/Associated Press
Were it not for a massive logjam in the backfield, this conversation might pertain to one of the four capable contributors at running back.
Instead, the breakout talk for the San Francisco 49ers has to center on wideout Dante Pettis.
Pettis, a second-round pick in 2018, had a knee injury hamper the early portion of his debut season and then resurface near the end. Even so, he finished with 467 yards and five scores despite poor surroundings, which gives bright hope for the future with a starter back under center and the team improved.
All reports from the 49ers this year have commented on a fully healthy Pettis. By season’s end, he should be the No. 1 wideout for the offense and on plenty of breakout lists.
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Chris Keane/Associated Press
Rashaad Penny came out of his rookie season seeming like a flop, but the vibes won’t last.
Penny was a surprise first-round pick and followed it up by only receiving 85 carries to Chris Carson’s 247 attempts. Whether it was playbook struggles or something else, Seahawks coaches were content to ride a breakout season from Carson.
But Penny is next. He turned those limited chances into 419 yards and two scores, averaging nearly five yards per carry as he went. He’s spent the offseason trimming down and under the mentorship of one Marshall Faulk.
Perhaps more than anything else, conventional wisdom says the Seahawks will lean heavily into at least a rotation next season. Carson is working his way back from an injury and only has so much tread on his tires, and the front office will want to see some return on its big first-round investment. If Penny goes for 150-plus carries, he’s going to be among the league leaders in some efficiency numbers.
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Mark LoMoglio/Associated Press
The arrival of Bruce Arians almost guarantees the breakout will come on the offensive side of the ball for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
But the “who” is harder to discern thanks to the verifiable talents of both tight end O.J. Howard and wideout Chris Godwin.
Really, though, we could argue Godwin broke out last year with 842 yards and seven scores. And leaning into a 6’6″, 251-pound target like Howard has a feeling of comfort to it when predicting a breakout.
Howard only got 48 targets last year, catching 34 of them for 565 yards and five scores over 10 games. He hit the 50-yard mark in eight of those games. In theory, better quarterback play and scheme should free him up for big total numbers.
Keep in mind opportunity, too. Adam Humphries and his 76 catches with five scores is gone, as is DeSean Jackson and his 41 and four. An offensive mind like Arians is bound to tap a mismatch creator like Howard as the fix.
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Mark Humphrey/Associated Press
For the Tennessee Titans, the popular pick is undoubtedly Rashaan Evans.
And the first-rounder from a year ago should be good—but Harold Landry, the guy taken a round later, has even bigger upside.
Landry saw his rookie season impacted by a hurt ankle early on, and it affected him in the consistency department, yet he still finished with some notable big plays and 4.5 sacks. The coaches clearly believe he’ll be able to take on a bigger role in the wake of the departures of Brian Orakpo and Derrick Morgan.
Landry is going to play heavier next season and has added some moves, according to the Tennessean‘s Erik Bacharach: “The linebacker also said he’s spent time this offseason adding counter-moves to his repertoire, an important adjustment for a linebacker looking to take the next step from Year 1 to Year 2.”
Given the way it all aligns, if Landry is healthy, he’s going to have a massive season, especially while serving as just one guy offensive lines have to account for on a superb front seven.
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Steven Senne/Associated Press
The Washington Redskins don’t have a ton of breakout candidates because for all their faults, their recent draft picks have been rather safe. Guys like Daron Payne and Jonathan Allen are already forces in the trenches, for example.
Then there is Derrius Guice.
Guice was one of the top backs in the 2018 class but went down in the preseason with a season-ending injury (torn ACL), which required multiple surgeries and had setbacks. But since, it has been all systems go.
“Derrius is coming along very well,” Redskins coach Jay Gruden said, according to Pro Football Talk’s Michael David Smith. “We’re just trying to make sure that leg—his quad and everything—is full strength before we let him go.”
Guice should see a workmanlike 200-plus carries next year a season removed from 251 of those going to Adrian Peterson. Backfield mixups like Chris Thompson have had problems staying healthy (10 games last year), so Guice should see plenty of work on passing downs too. Given his talent and the strength of the line in front of him, the sophomore back should shine.
The NBA and NBPA pushed Christmas in July six hours earlier this season in an agreement that will give fans plenty to celebrate without the disadvantage of sleeping in front of the yuletide log, waiting to see if their favorite free agent snags the milk and cookies.
But the start of free agency promises more presents under the tree than normal this offseason as the NBA shares $474 million in available cap space between the 30 franchises—more than the previous two summers combined, per The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor. This class (including Anthony Davis) almost promises the best collection of available talent since the 2010 group, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Teams’ shopping lists will be stacked with more than 200 free agents to choose from. With the start of the negotiating period nearly upon us (6 p.m. Sunday), the B/R Staff gives its best guess at where each of your favorite stars will land.
Be sure to join the conversation on the B/R app and give your free-agency takes.
That’s what Klay Thompson’s father, Mychal, said his son and Durant spoke about on the phone after Klay’s Game 6 ACL injury in the NBA Finals.
Unfinished business.
A third straight title wasn’t just the goal, it was a foregone conclusion. But the dueling setbacks—two career-threatening injuries in back-to-back Finals games—have shaken the ground underneath the Warriors and given them new perspectives. The narrative surrounding Durant’s decision has taken yet another form.
The Warriors, the league and fans around the world have a different appreciation for Durant, and that feels like what he has been looking for his entire tenure with Golden State. Ahead of a yearlong road to recovery from his Achilles rupture, a five-year max deal makes sense for both him and the Warriors. KD can rehab alongside Thompson (who’ll also re-sign), with financial security only the Warriors can offer. If and when he returns healthy, they will be back in the driver’s seat toward completing their mission.
Half-sincere apologies to Los Angeles Clippers and Lakers fans, but Kawhi Leonard isn’t going anywhere.
This comes with the caveat that he is the most unreadable superstar in recent memory. No one should pretend to know what he’s thinking. But he connected with his Toronto Raptors teammates, and his personality seeped through to the media—either deliberately or by circumstance—more so than it ever did in San Antonio.
Oh, and the Raptors also won the gosh-darn NBA championship. In. Year. One. Together. Good luck finding a better basketball fit for Leonard. It doesn’t exist—not even on the Clippers, should they land a second star.
That has to matter. And the timing works out for Leonard to stay in Toronto. Pascal Siakam is a star, and the Raptors will have oodles of cap space next summer. He can sign a long-term deal with confidence.
Or, just as likely, he can stay on a short-term pact. He will be eligible for the 35 percent max in two years’ time. A two-plus-one deal makes too much sense. He gets to run it back with the current core next season as likely title favorites, see how team president Masai Ujiri builds out the roster entering the 2020-21 campaign and then reassess his options that following summer.
Sticking with Toronto makes even more sense if Leonard is serious about teaming up with Kevin Durant, as reported by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and Adrian Wojnarowski. Linking up now is tough to justify. Durant probably won’t play next season. Holding off for two summers not only allows Leonard to wait out KD’s return, but also see what he looks like post-Achilles injury. He can also bet on KD to be KD and join forces with him next summer, on the heels of a one-plus-one agreement with the Raptors.
Either way, Leonard will most likely be in Toronto next season. Book it.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski has already confirmed it, but my prediction makes it so! Marc Stein and Shams Charania quickly piggy-bagged onto the latest story in free agency, making it all but a slam dunk, but hey, all three could be wrong, right?
Kyrie is heading to Brooklyn, and he’s already bought a house in South Orange, New Jersey, according to Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher. He’s a superstar in need of a team that is need of a superstar.
While D’Angelo Russell managed a reboot of his career, and Spencer Dinwiddie has carved out a niche there, neither has Irving’s talent.
Now, if he can bring Kevin Durant with him, the Nets would be a title contender in short order.
Kevin Durant’s free-agent future is uncertain, but Kyrie Irving’s seems pretty settled. Everything indicates he’ll sign with the Brooklyn Nets. And while there were some early rumblings that Brooklyn would consider pairing Irving and restricted free-agent point guard D’Angelo Russell, those never passed the smell test. Two shoot-first, defense-averse point guards with histories that cast their quality as teammates into question?
What could go wrong?
That’s why, with Irving looking like a lock for the Nets, Russell has to be ticketed for another destination. The Los Angeles Lakers, who drafted and dealt him within the span of two years, are reportedly interested in do-over, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. With averages of 21.1 points and 7.0 assists per game in his age-22 season, Russell will draw interest from plenty of other teams as well.
There’s a healthy debate to be had about whether the Nets would be better off with Russell or Irving, factoring in the latter’s likely higher price. But Brooklyn seems to have made its decision, which means Russell will be playing someplace else in 2019-20.
When the Philadelphia 76ers acquired Tobias Harris at the trade deadline, part of their motivation was to create a fallback plan in case Jimmy Butler became too expensive to keep.
The playoffs changed everything—Harris underperformed while Butler carried them. He was arguably Philly’s best player during its playoff run, which came a Kawhi Leonard Game 7 buzzer-beater from reaching the Eastern Conference Finals.
The prospect of paying Butler a five-year max deal worth upward of $190 million is a daunting one, given that it will take him through his age-34 season. But if they want to maximize their title-contention window with Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, they have no choice.
There’s been some noise this week that the Houston Rockets are preparing to make a run at Butler via a sign-and-trade, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, but the mechanics of that move are too complicated to be realistic, and there’s no reason to believe Philadelphia would be willing to play ball on those negotiations.
Now that the Lakers have carved out max cap space, they could be a threat to steal Butler. But if Philly puts the five-year max on the table for him, which seems likely, it would be hard to imagine that he’d walk away from it.
Social media sleuthing has become a critical component of free-agency predictions over the last few years. As wild as this may seem, Al Horford followed both Zion Williamson and Jrue Holiday on Instagram (h/t Rob Perez) the day before free agency, which has to at least raise some eyebrows.
What’s really intriguing, though, is Horford’s potential fit with the New Orleans Pelicans. Defensively, lineups with Horford, Holiday, Williamson and Lonzo Ball could be among the best in the league as early as this season. Holiday and Ball are both stellar on the perimeter. Horford is one of the league’s best middle linebackers. The last five defenses he led ranked sixth, second, 14th, second and fifth, respectively.
And then there’s Zion. Sports Reference‘s college basketball database tracks things like rebounding percentage back to the 2010-11 season. There are only five players who logged at least 500 minutes and matched Zion’s freshman defensive rebounding percentage, block percentage and steal percentage. Two of those five are Nerlens Noel and Robert Covington—both of whom have had success as NBA defenders.
On offense, Horford’s playmaking from the top of the key, high post and low post will open things up for the Pelicans. Just imagine 4-5 or 5-4 pick-and-rolls between him and Zion. And his shooting will draw bigs away from the rim, opening the paint up for Zion and Jrue’s drives.
On paper, this is a pretty seamless fit. If executive vice president David Griffin pulls this off, he may have a team competing for a playoff spot in its first season post-Anthony Davis.
Contract negotiations between the Golden State Warriors and Klay Thompson should be brief.
“You want to be here?” “Yep.”
“Max contract OK?” “Yep.”
End negotiations.
If all goes to plan, Thompson will be offered and sign a five-year, $190 million max deal that will keep him in Golden State until age 34. After the Warriors made him the No. 11 overall pick 2011, Thompson has been named to the last five All-Star teams and averaged 19.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 2.9 three-pointers per game on 41.9 percent shooting from beyond the arc for his career.
Five straight Finals appearances, including three titles, have helped secure his place as one of the greatest shooting guards in the NBA. Outside James Harden, Thompson may be the best 2-guard in the league.
Even if Kevin Durant leaves, the Warriors can still sport a championship-level roster if Thompson stays and makes a full recovery from the torn ACL he suffered in the Finals.
While his mind may have wandered briefly to the thought of becoming the face of Clippers or joining LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the Lakers, Thompson and the Warriors should come to a quick agreement.
Not everyone in the Los Angeles Lakers’ front office was on board when Magic Johnson dumped potential star D’Angelo Russell in a 2017 deal with the Brooklyn Nets, even if it did shed Timofey Mozgov’s contract.
Russell has gone on to lead the Nets to the playoffs and make his first All-Star squad. Johnson, who kicked Russell on the way out with negative comments about his leadership, resigned at the end of the season.
I think that cap room the team worked so hard to open up will be used to pay Russell a hefty contract north of $20 million a year. With the right offer, any hurt feelings will be long forgotten and forgiven. The Lakers are looking at LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Kyle Kuzma with no established guard on the squad.
Kyrie Irving, 27, may be the bigger name with experience winning alongside James, but the 23-year-old Russell is younger and will give the Lakers a well-balanced offensive foursome with his outside shooting and playmaking. Now the team faces the difficult task of fleshing out the rest of the roster with whatever cap space is left after Russell, a room exception worth less than $5 million and minimum contracts.
DeMarcus Cousins‘ bid to gain a ‘chip and reestablish himself as a dominant interior force after his torn Achilles did not go as planned in Golden State. He worked himself into shape, only to see much of his postseason derailed by a quad injury. Other players performed at another speed for the Finals.
It’s time for him to run back the premise in proving himself over a season on the other coast. If the Knicks strike out on their premier choices, it makes sense for Cousins to join them on a lucrative one-year deal. He can again try to establish himself without the pressure of simultaneously competing for a championship and can look for that elusive long-term payday again next summer.
Both Tobias Harris and the Philadelphia 76ers enter free agency with a ton of options, but in the end, this makes too much sense for both sides. For one, there’s the package the Sixers gave up to get Harris—which featured Landry Shamet and that unprotected 2021 Miami Heat pick.
Yeah, it’s a sunk cost and all that, but that’s not how NBA front offices typically view things. If Harris were to sign elsewhere, that trade could end up going down as one of the decade’s worst. You think Elton Brand wants that on his resume?
But there are other reasons for the Sixers to lock up Harris early. Perhaps he’s not the top free agent available, but he’s a knockdown shooter, a strong one-on-one scorer, a solid locker room presence, only 26 years old and almost never misses a game. He’s a constant, which is something these Sixers could really use.
The fit might have been clunky at times last year, but a full offseason and training camp could fix that. He’d also be insurance in case Butler bolts, something which, based on all the noise, seems increasingly likely by the day. Butler’s departure might actually make the Sixers more appealing to Harris. It’d move him up the food chain.
Harris will not settle for anything below a full max, according to a source. The bet here is that the Sixers feel compelled to offer him that during their initial meeting June 30. If they do, I expect Harris—despite whatever concerns he might have about the Sixers’ internal culture or his role—to accept.
Had we peeked into our crystal ball a bit earlier, a split between Nikola Vucevic and the Orlando Magic may have made sense.
Sure, the pair broke through together this past season to snap a six-year playoff drought, but their future was uncertain. Orlando had already spent at least one No. 6 pick on Vooch’s heir apparent (Mohamed Bamba) and maybe two, depending on where you see the future going for Jonathan Isaac. If the Magic wanted to reset around its young core, committing major coin to the 28-year-old Vucevic would’ve been senseless.
But market forces now make a recommitment more likely than not. Vucevic’s list of suitors wasn’t large to begin with, and the Boston Celtics seemingly abandoned it by reaching a max agreement with Kemba Walker, per Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium. Two other possibilities, the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks, have their own young bigs to develop.
So, Vooch and Orlando seem destined to continue what’s already been a seven-year relationship. The Magic said he was a priority, per Roy Parry of the Orlando Sentinel, and they appear ready to put their money where their mouth is.
Orlando just had its best season in nearly a decade, and Vucevic’s All-Star emergence was at the center of it. If he returns and this club can upgrade at point guard, it should take another climb up the Eastern Conference ladder in 2019-20.
With a pair of potential 2020 All-Stars in Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis, the Dallas Mavericks have quickly transitioned from the rebuilding phase. Signing Patrick Beverley would reflect a new win-now mentality. He’d also be a strong fit next to Doncic, since Beverley brings a defensive toughness that Doncic doesn’t. Meanwhile, the offense can still run through the 20-year-old, even with Beverley, who isn’t ball-dominant.
For Beverley, he’d be joining a relevant, exciting team on the rise, and one he’d play a key role for—both on the floor and in the locker room. He’d change and strengthen Dallas’ identity and credibility.
Other potential suitors look out of the running. The Los Angeles Lakers will be going after a third star with their cap space. The Chicago Bulls just drafted Coby White and still have unproven talent. The Los Angeles Clippers will want to give Shai Gilgeous-Alexander a heavier workload.
With Kemba Walker reportedly heading to Boston, per The Athletic and Stadium’s Shams Charania, the Mavericks will be forced to look at lower-tier point guard options. Assuming they prefer a veteran to start over Jalen Brunson, Beverley makes sense as a target.
In Lakerland, the only thing better than two superstars is three. So of course, they will chase Kawhi and Jimmy. They’ll try to spend their $32 million in cap room all at once. They shouldn’t.
In a post-Warriors NBA, the Lakers don’t need a superteam, but rather a superb team of role guys to support LeBron and AD. They should start with Malcolm Brogdon, the unheralded Milwaukee Bucks guard.
Every LeBron team needs a secondary playmaker who can shoot. Brogdon quietly joined the 50-40-90 club last season, making 42.6 percent of his threes, while averaging 15.6 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game. He’s also a top-flight defender with the size (6’5″) and smarts to guard three positions.
At 26, Brogdon is seasoned, battle-tested and unflappable—the perfect midcareer vet for a title contender. His high character and basketball IQ make him the ideal LeBron sidekick.
There’s nothing flashy in Brogdon’s game, but he was indispensable to a Bucks team that posted the NBA’s best record (60 wins) and made the Eastern Conference Finals.
Signing Brogdon could be tricky. He’s a restricted free agent, so the Bucks can match any offer. But Milwaukee wants to avoid the luxury tax and will already be spending big to keep Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez. The right offer might pry Brogdon loose.
And he’ll come far cheaper than the glitzier point guards—Kyrie, Kemba, D’Angelo—leaving the Lakers ample cap room to complete their rotation.
With Utah handing the starting point guard job over to newly acquired Mike Conley, Ricky Rubio is looking for a new home. The Indiana Pacers represent the perfect landing spot.
Darren Collison’s retirement opens the door for Rubio to head East and provides the Pacers with an opportunity to upgrade at the position. Plus, putting a ball-handler and floor leader like Rubio in the backcourt takes the play-making pressure off Victor Oladipo and frees him up to score.
Rubio is only 28 and is durable and reliable, if not spectacular. But the Pacers don’t need spectacular. They’re not going to attract a major star in free agency. But they could do a lot worse than a plug-and-play starting point guard, and Rubio could do worse than joining an Eastern Conference team capable of winning 50 games.
The Bulls and Suns also are expected to be in the mix for Rubio, but the Pacers are the best fit. It gives him a chance to be the undisputed starting point guard on a playoff team, and with the ball in his hands more, he should expect to see his assist numbers rise into the 8- to 9-per-game range that he consistently hit in Minnesota.
Danny Green was a throw-in to the swap of Kawhi Leonard and DeMar DeRozan one year ago, but he proved to be a critical part of the Toronto Raptors’ championship run.
Green is the backcourt stopper the Raptors desperately need beside Kyle Lowry. OG Anunoby can become that player, but if the Raptors re-sign Leonard, they can’t afford to wait. They need Green’s impact on the defensive end now—and it is substantial.
But Green’s most notable impact comes on the offensive end. The Raptors attack was plus-14.0 per 100 possessions with him on the offensive side in addition to being minus-4.1 when he was off the floor for a dramatic rating of plus-18.1. By comparison, OG Anunoby’s numbers starkly contrast those on the offensive end, where he made the Raptors eight points worse.
Green is a defensive stopper and offensive spacer the Raptors can’t afford to lose. The 32-year-old was second to Joe Harris among all qualified players in three-point shooting (45.5 percent). He shot over 47 percent from both corners and even made his above-the-break attempts at a 42.2 percent clip.
Relatives of Alan Kurdi, the two-year-old Syrian boy whose drowning while trying to reach Europe in 2015 shook consciences around the world, have objected to a new film about the toddler.
The boy perished in September 2015, along with his mother Rehanna and four-year-old brother Ghalib, when their small rubber boat capsized in the Aegean Sea while attempting to reach Greece after fleeing the war in Syria.
The heartbreaking photo of the boy’s lifeless tiny body, face down on a beach in Turkey, sparked a deep emotional reaction and became a rallying point for activists and others to offer assistance in Syria’s refugee crisis. It also pushed the European Union to temporarily open its borders to Syrian refugees.
Tima Kurdi, an aunt of the boy, told the told the Canadian Broadcasting Network in an article published Friday that no one had asked the family’s permission to make the new movie about her nephew.
“I’m really heartbroken right now,” she said from her home in Port Coquitlam, near Vancouver in western Canada. “It’s unacceptable.”
She said she had learned about it only from the boy’s father, Abdullah Kurdi, who is now living in Iraq.
“He called me and he was crying, too,” she said.
“He said, ‘I can’t believe somebody is already making a movie.’ He said, ‘I cannot even imagine that my dead son – two years old who can’t even talk – I cannot imagine him coming alive’ on film.
The movie, titled “Aylan Baby (Sea of Death),” is being filmed in Turkey, with a cast including US action film star Steven Seagal, the CBC said. Initial reporting had given Aylan as the spelling of the boy’s name.
Its Turkish writer and director, Omer Sarikaya, hopes to sell the movie to Netflix, as well as feature it at several international film festivals.
According to Tima Kurdi, who has published a book about her nephew titled “The Boy on the Beach”, the family has turned down several proposals for a film.
“It is a young child but they want to revive him. I do not know how this is possible. His images really hurt me,” Abdullah Kurdi, the father, told Rudaw TV, a Kurdish media network, on Friday
“They have not consulted me. The story is completely based on this book,” he said, adding that he planned to take legal action to halt the film.
Income for humanitarian aid
Sarikaya told the CBC his film was not solely about the boy but much broader in scope, dealing with the overall refugee crisis.
“This will be ‘Aylan Baby,’ it will not be ‘Aylan Kurdi,’” he said, adding that it was now too late to change the title.
Sarikaya on Thursday told Turkish state media he had already started filming “Baby Aylan” in Turkey’s Bodrum, Mugla province, near to where the boy’s body was found.
“When this happened, I couldn’t sleep for a while. It was always on my mind,” Sarikaya said.
“I was thinking that, ‘Hopefully, someone will shoot a film about it and send a message to the world’ but nobody has done it so far. I am doing it now,” he said.
“The greatest feature of the film is that all the income will go to humanitarian aid. None of the actors or actresses will be paid.”
While Sarikaya acknowledged that relatives of the boy objected to the film, he told the CBC that he would like to speak to Abdullah and Tima and invite them to the movie’s premiere.
He said the net profit from his movie would go to help refugees.
“All my actors and crews are here for a goodwill,” Sarikaya said.
HE DID IT … ANITA KUMAR in SEOUL — “Trump takes historic step into North Korea with Kim Jong Un”: “President Donald Trump on Sunday took a step no other sitting American president had before, crossing into North Korea with its leader, Kim Jong Un — a theatrical gesture meant to kick start stalled nuclear negotiations between the two countries. …
“It was a made-for-TV moment for the reality show-groomed president that unfolded at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. Trump approached the border from the south, while Kim approached from the north. The two met at the line demarcating the two countries, grinned and shook hands.
“‘It is good to see you again,’ Kim said through an interpreter. ‘I never expected to meet you in this place.’
“‘Big moment,’ Trump said. ‘Big progress.’
“Trump said Kim then asked him if he would like to cross into North Korea. Trump said he would be honored and walked about 20 steps into the country.” POLITICO … 32-second video
— WHAT IT MEANS: It’s hard to imagine any other president taking a bold step like this, let alone warmly embrace a third-generation tyrant who starves and imprisons his own people. But Trump has silenced the doubters within his own party, while Democrats have largely embraced his diplomatic efforts with Kim because they’d rather he try that than threaten ye olde fire and fury.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether Kim is simply using Trump to advance his own agenda, or whether he genuinely believes, as he said today, “we want to bring an end to the unpleasant past and try to create a new future.” Even Trump sometimes seems aware of this; as he put it, “It’s just a step. It might be an important step, it might not.”
Trump also said, per pooler Jerome Cartillier of AFP, that he “would certainly extend the invite” to Kim Jong Un to the White House. Even with real progress on denuclearization — which we haven’t seen yet — that would probably be too much for most members of Congress. Pic of Trump and Kim at the border
ONE THING WE NOTICED: IVANKA TRUMP, the president’s daughter and adviser, has been much more prominent on this trip. She was seen hobnobbing with the likes of IMF chief Christine Lagarde at the G-20 in Osaka, gave an official White House readout, promoted her Women’s Global Development and Prosperity initiative and delivered a few remarks to troops at Osan Air Base. She also apparently crossed into North Korea with her husband Jared Kushner, a brief visit she described as “surreal.”
TRUMP has now left Seoul aboard Air Force One, per the White House pool, headed for home.
— @realDonaldTrump: “Leaving South Korea after a wonderful meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un. Stood on the soil of North Korea, an important statement for all, and a great honor!”
Good Sunday morning. Blake Hounshell and Daniel Lippman here.
THE PRESIDENT’S WEEK AHEAD – MONDAY:Trump has lunch with VP Mike Pence. THURSDAY: Trump delivers remarks at the Salute to America on July 4th. FRIDAY: Trump travels to Bedminster, N.J.
2020 WATCH … THE KAMALA BUMP — via Steve Shepard: “New polling from Morning Consult, conducted starting at the end of the debate Thursday night and running through all of Friday, now has Kamala Harris in a dead heat for third place with Elizabeth Warren. Both senators are at 12 percent, behind only Joe Biden (33 percent) and Bernie Sanders (19 percent). It’s only a roughly day-long chunk of Morning Consult’s weekly tracking of the Democratic primary, and the next full update won’t be available until Tuesday morning.
“But, compared to the results from the week ending June 23, the post-debate data show Biden losing 5 points, while Harris had gained 6 points. Sanders and Warren were mostly steady, but there is a red flag for Bernie: He was the only major candidate to see a significant drop in his favorability, according to Morning Consult.”
— KAMALA’S MONEY MACHINE — Our colleague Chris Cadelago emails: “Kamala Harris, capitalizing on her debate-defining confrontation with Joe Biden, raised more than $425,000 over 24 hours at a series of fundraisers across California. Biden was also in the state raising money.
“Racing to meet the second quarter deadline today, Harris’ campaign raised another $2 million online in the first day after the debate, exceeding the $1.5 million she took in during the first day of launching her bid.”
— NYT’s Annie Karni and Jeremy W. Peters: “Privately, people close to the White House said they viewed Ms. Harris as ‘very dangerous’ and the hands-down winner of the debate on Thursday. Others said they hoped the debate would serve as a warning for Republicans — including those in the president’s inner circle — who have been too dismissive of Mr. Biden’s less seasoned rivals.” NYT
SUNDAY BEST — SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-N.J.) on BIDEN to CHUCK TODD on NBC’s “MEET THE PRESS”: “We have seen from the vice president over the last month is an inability to talk candidly about the mistakes he made, about things he could’ve done better, about how some of the decisions he made at the time in difficult context actually have resulted in really bad outcomes. And this, this bad culture where you can’t admit mistakes, when you can’t speak to your vulnerabilities and your imperfections; we all have them.
“But when it comes to difficult issues of race, if you can’t talk openly and honestly about your own development on these issues, I think it’s very hard to lead our country forward so that we can actually deal with our past and rise to a better common cause and common future. We have one destiny in this nation and right now the Vice President to me is not doing a good job at bringing folks together. In fact, and I’ve heard this from people across the country, he’s causing a lot of frustration and even pain with his words.”
— BOOKER also told CHUCK TODD that he doesn’t know if Biden is “up to the task” on racial issues.
— LARRY KUDLOW on China talks resuming — he spoke to CHRIS WALLACE on “FOX NEWS SUNDAY”: “Resuming the talks, as the President said continuing the talks which had been interrupted for a while is a very big deal. I think that’s the banner headline from this and I think everybody’s going to be pleased at that. No promises, no deal made, there’s no timetable I want to emphasize that as the President said several times this is about the quality of the deal there’s no time table, there’s no rush.”
— JULIAN CASTRO spoke to GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS on ABC’s “THIS WEEK” — on the Trump-Kim meeting: “Well look, I am all for speaking with our adversaries, but what’s happened here is that this president has raised the profile of a dictator like Kim Jong-un and now three times visited with him unsuccessfully because he’s doing it backward. Usually what happens, as you know, George, is that there’s an intense amount of staff work that goes into negotiating how one of these talks is going to go so that you can hopefully get something out of it.
“We haven’t gotten anything out of it. And after they had the first summit, the Singapore summit, he told the American people that North Korea was no longer a threat. Then after that, they continued to test their nuclear weapons and they have not even abided by one of the commitments that they made originally, which was to give an inventory of their nuclear stockpile.”
— SEN. LINDSAY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) told MARGARET BRENNAN of CBS’ “Face the Nation” that people “underestimate Joe Biden at your own peril” but said he has “got to up his game” before the next Democratic debate. Excerpt
— SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-Minn.) on the border bill to BRIANNA KEILAR on CNN’s “STATE OF THE UNION” (@CNNSotu): “‘I would have much preferred the House version and continuing to negotiate … but it is important to get the aid right now to the border and to these kids.’ Sen. @amyklobuchar, on Congress passing a $4.6 billion border bill.” Video
AN ODD BIDEN MOMENT … ‘5 YEARS AGO’? — Via pooler Jim Brunner of the Seattle Times, at a fundraising event in the home of public relations executive Roger Nyhus, a major progressive bundler:
“He suggested public sentiment has come far on gay rights issues in a short period of time, saying 5 years ago, if someone at a business meeting in Seattle ‘made fun of a gay waiter’ people would just let it go.
“The audience vocally pushed back at that, saying ‘Not in Seattle!’ Others said such comments wouldn’t have gone unchallenged much longer back than 5 years.
“Biden said times have changed, so that ‘Today, that person would not be invited back’ after making homophobic comments.”
— DAN DIAMOND (@ddiamond): “Back in 2014, Biden told a similar story about gay waiters, although he set the scene 15 years earlier — back in 1999.” What Biden said then
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) spoke to NPR’s Scott Detrow and New Hampshire Public Radio’s Josh Rogers for the NPR Politics Podcast: “Voter turnout has got to be more and more young people, more and more working class people, more lower-income people, who traditionally do not get involved. But you’re not going to have that turnout unless the candidate has issues that excite people and energize people.
“That means you have to be talking about Medicare-for-all. You have to be talking about raising the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour. You have to be talking about making public colleges and universities tuition-free, and canceling student debt. You’ve got to be talking about climate change and a bold response to the planetary crisis.” NPR
WHAT THE E-RING IS READING … BRYAN BENDER: “Pentagon study: Russia outgunning U.S. in race for global influence”: “The U.S. is ill-equipped to counter the increasingly brazen political warfare Russia is waging to undermine democracies, the Pentagon and independent strategists warn in a detailed assessment that happens to echo much bipartisan criticism of President Donald Trump’s approach to Moscow.
“The more than 150-page white paper, prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and shared with POLITICO,says the U.S. is still underestimating the scope of Russia’s aggression, which includes the use of propaganda and disinformation to sway public opinion across Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. The study also points to the dangers of a growing alignment between Russia and China, which share a fear of the United States’ international alliances and an affinity for ‘authoritarian stability.’
“Its authors contend that disarray at home is hampering U.S. efforts to respond — saying America lacks the kind of compelling ‘story’ it used to win the Cold War.” The white paper
“Kavanaugh was about as likely to be in sync with his liberal seatmate Elena Kagan as his fellow conservative Gorsuch, Feldman’s research shows.”
YIKES — “Venezuelan Navy Captain Accused of Rebellion Dies After Signs of Torture,” by NYT’s Anatoly Kurmanaev in Caracas: “A Venezuelan Navy captain accused by the government of plotting a rebellion has died in custody a week after his arrest, underlining President Nicolás Maduro’s increasingly ferocious repression campaign amid a spiraling economic crisis. The captain, Rafael Acosta, is the first of more than 100 active and retired Venezuelan officers jailed by the government on treason charges to die in custody after allegations of torture. … [H]is lawyer, Alonso Medina Roa. Captain Acosta … said the captain had been detained in good health.” NYT
FOR JARED … NYT: “Palestinian Who Attended Trump-Backed Bahrain Conference Is Arrested,” by Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem and Mohammed Najib in Ramallah: “About a dozen Palestinian businessmen defied the official Palestinian boycott of the Trump administration’s economic conference in Bahrain last week. Once there, most of them tried to maintain a low profile and keep their names out of the news media.
“The delegation returned to the West Bank on Thursday. But officers of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service arrested one of them, Saleh Abu Mayala, on Friday night as he was walking from his car to his home in the West Bank city of Hebron … Mr. Abu Mayala was later released, Jason D. Greenblatt, the White House’s special Mideast envoy, said in a post on Twitter.” NYT
NAHAL TOOSI, “How Trump’s ‘weaponized’ use of foreign aid is backfiring”: “Aid groups working in Venezuela are eager to receive planeloads of humanitarian assistance from the United States, hoping to alleviate severe food and medicine shortages throughout the country. But many of them don’t want the U.S. label attached to it. President Donald Trump has so closely linked U.S. humanitarian assistance to his attempt to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro — even placing goods along the country’s border as an incentive for Venezuelans to revolt — that some groups are asking U.S. officials if they can strip legally required U.S. branding from aid sent to Venezuela, three aid officials told POLITICO.” POLITICO
BONUS GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Daniel Lippman:
— “How Oxford university shaped Brexit — and Britain’s next prime minister” – FT: “Simon Kuper returns to the place where Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt began their climb.” FT
— “Why Weather Forecasting Keeps Getting Better,” by Hannah Fry in The New Yorker: “The stakes can be so much higher than whether you’ll need an umbrella today.” The New Yorker
— “Marianne’s Faithful,” by Leslie Bennetts in the June 1991 issue of Vanity Fair: “There is a new prophet for the New Age— and she’s no Tammy Faye Bakker. Marianne Williamson is a liberal, Jewish ex-lounge singer from Texas who preaches about Jesus, Jung, and the S&L crisis, and whose supporters—including Bette Midler, David Geffen, Cher, and Shirley MacLaine—raise big bucks for her good works. But, as Leslie Bennetts reports, some wonder if Williamson’s real mission is to shine brighter than the stars who follow her.” VF
— “The Polygamist Accused of Scamming the U.S. Out of $500 Million,” by Jesse Hyde and David Voreacos in Bloomberg Businessweek: “Prosecutors have charged Jacob Kingston, a member in a shadowy Mormon offshoot known as the Order, with collecting a half-billion dollars in biodiesel credits his company didn’t deserve.” Bloomberg Businessweek (hat tip: Longform.org)
— “Tower of Industries,” by Andrew Curry in Columbia Journalism Review: “Axel Springer found a digital identity. Will journalism remain part of it?” CJR
— “Etonians,” by James Wood in the London Review of Books: “Near the end of our time at school, the headmaster instructed us in how we should comport ourselves in the world. The Etonian, he said, is one who can go into any room, mingle with any social group, be at ease and put others at their ease. The Etonian is marked by his air of ‘effortless superiority’. ‘Effortless superiority’ was the ideal. If you aren’t forever performing your superiority but are elegantly obscuring it, you don’t alienate people suspicious of your privilege.” LRB (h/t TheBrowser.com)
— “Irreconcilable Rockefellers,” by Lisa DePaulo in Vanity Fair’s January 2000 issue: “When blonde, virginal Amy Whittlesey, 22-year-old daughter of Reagan’s ambassador to Switzerland, married 39-year-old artist George O’Neill, great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller Jr., it seemed she’d found the perfect combination of father figure and Prince Charming. Instead, she was headed for years in the gated Wasp enclave of Mountain Lake, in central Florida—and what she describes as a nightmare of infidelity, perversion, and guns that led to her hospitalization for depression.” VF
— “He Cyberstalked Teen Girls for Years — Then They Fought Back,” by Stephanie Clifford in Wired – per Longreads.com’s description: “While a student at Belmont High in Belmont, New Hampshire, Ryan Vallee — under the name of Seth Williamson — would initially befriend teen girls by texting them about their favorite ice cream or the name of their pets. They thought he was been sweet. He was after clues to their social network passwords. His aim? To hack their accounts in a bid to extort them for nude selfies. If he didn’t get what he wanted, his demands escalated.” Wired
— “Yossi and the Mossad,” by Robert Rockaway in Tablet Magazine – per TheBrowser.com’s description: “Interesting if true. A retired Mossad agent recounts some of his adventures in the 1960s and 1970s. They include: Re-routing the plumbing in a Swiss hotel to intercept the waste from Hafez al-Assad’s lavatory; shooting a Swiss banker with ties to the Japanese Red Army; blackmailing an Egyptian newspaper editor; getting a drug smuggler out of a Brazilian prison; and running a jailbreak for himself plus a colleague in Switzerland.” Tablet Magazine
— “Hooked,” by Josh Dean in Bloomberg Businessweek: “A raging heroin addiction fueled a former Boeing engineer’s yearlong, 30-bank robbery spree.” Bloomberg Businessweek
— “‘Start finding me, boys’ — inside the rescue of Lt. Col. Dave Goldfein,” by Stephen Losey in Air Force Times. Air Force Times
— “Blood, Sweat, and Batteries,” by Vivienne Walt and Sebastian Meyer in Fortune in Aug. 2018: “Two-thirds of the world’s cobalt, an essential ingredient in our smartphones and electric cars, comes from one of the planet’s poorest countries. All too often it is mined by children.” Fortune
WEEKEND WEDDINGS — “Lillian Cunningham, Jim Tankersley” — N.Y. Times: “Ms. Cunningham, 35, is a journalist at The Washington Post, where she has created and hosted several podcasts on American history, including ‘Moonrise,’ ‘Presidential’ and ‘Constitutional.’ She graduated with general honors from the University of Chicago, and received a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern. … The groom, 41, is a domestic correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he covers taxes and economic policy. He graduated from Stanford.”With a pic.NYT
–Lauren Ehrsam, director for strategic comms at the NSC and a DOJ alum, on Saturday married Jason Gorey, COO of the non-profit No One Left Behind. The couple married at Christ Church in Old Town Alexandria, Va. with a reception at Fish Market in Alexandria. The couple were introduced by their mutual friend Scott Weinstein at a masquerade ball. Pic … Another pic
SPOTTED: best man Bobby Panzanbeck, Rod Rosentein and Lisa Barsoomian, Asawin Suebsaeng, Lachlan Markay, Ben Jacobs, Jonathan Swan and Betsy Woodruff, Brian Morgenstern, Tricia McLaughlin, Kelsey Kats, Matt Wolking, Melissa Brown, Juliegrace Brufke, Ashley Pratte, Chris Bedford and Katie Frates, Benny and Katelyn Johnson, Jacob Wood, Jon Nicosia, Sergio Rodriguera Jr., Tommy Joyce and Katelyn Petroka, Gordon James Meek, Lee Ferran, Bill McMorris and Suhail Khan.
— “Elizabeth Paton, James Wise” — N.Y. Times: “The bride, 32, is the Styles correspondent in Europe for The New York Times and is based in the London bureau. She has a master’s degree in English literature from Balliol College, Oxford University. … The groom, 33, is a partner in Balderton Capital, a venture capital firm in London, and a founder of the Social Business Trust, a London-based charity. He received a master’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Christ Church, Oxford University.” With a pic.NYT
REMEMBERING LUIS ALVAREZ — “Former NYPD detective and 9/11 first responder Luis Alvarez dead at 53,” by N.Y. Post’s Eileen AJ Connelly: “Luis Alvarez, an NYPD detective who suffered from cancer brought on by his time at Ground Zero — died Saturday, nearly three weeks after joining comedian Jon Stewart in a moving plea to Congress to replenish the fund for 9/11 victims. The 53-year-old retired Bomb Squad officer was scheduled to start his 69th round of chemo the next day — but his doctors said his liver shut down and there was nothing more they could do.” NYP
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Kyle Plotkin, COS for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), is 37. Trends he thinks deserves more attention: “Two issues. The first is very on brand and on message for my current job: Addiction to our phones and apps. Technology is a gift and a curse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a luddite by any means. I try every new app that’s introduced and I think technology can help our society, but it’s also omnipresent in our lives and we don’t unplug often enough. The second is school lunches. Access to healthy, fresh food is a luxury, but school lunches are increasingly processed. This is an area that needs more mainstream attention and disruption.” Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: Adam Kennedy, W.H. research director and deputy assistant to the president –profile (h/t Andy Hemming) … former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is 8-0 … The Atlantic’s David Frum is 59 (h/t Tim Mak) … Alina Selyukh, NPR business correspondent … former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) is 6-0 (h/t Tim Griffin) … Brian Stewart, media relations director and comms manager at MoveOn.org … Paul Cheung, director of journalism and tech innovation at the Knight Foundation … John Legittino, CEO of Advoc8 … Kara Wheeler, director of political affairs at MetLife, is 32 … Dov Hikind is 69 …
… Creative Coalition CEO Robin Bronk … Uber’s Evangeline George … Zack Christenson … Dan Judy of North Star Opinion Research … Laura Turanchik … Bob McBarton … Josefina Carbonell … Robyn Shapiro … Ward Carroll of the U.S. Naval Institute … photographer Gregory Beals … Chevron’s Will Cappelletti … Jake Stafford … Tatiana Kotlyarenko … Montana State Rep. Ellie Boldman-Hill Smith … Douglas Waller is 7-0 … Elizabeth Blackney … Roxanne Conlin is 75 … Alexandra Acker-Lyons, president of AL Advising … Dan Leistikow … Kenzie Bok … Norm Sterzenbach (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)
Egypt‘s former presidential candidate Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh has suffered two heart attacks in prison, his son said, adding his father may die there because of the harsh conditions under which he is held.
Aboul Fotouh’s son, Ahmed, wrote on Facebook on Saturday his father, who is a leading opposition figure, may succumb to the “deliberate” abuse in Cairo’s Torah prison “at any time”.
A former member of the Muslim Brotherhood and leader of the centrist Strong Egypt Party, Aboul Fotouh ran as an independent candidate in the 2012 presidential elections, gaining nearly a fifth of the vote in the first round.
Aboul Fotouh was detained in February 2018, ahead of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s re-election, on charges of being part of a banned group, unspecified by Egypt’s prosecution, but widely believed to be the Brotherhood. He is also being accused of spreading false news.
“Today, while we were waiting to visit him, he had a heart attack,” Ahmed Aboul Fotouh said on Facebook. “His condition improved after receiving treatment and we visited him. We then learnt he had a heart attack yesterday night, too.”
“Two heart attacks within less than 24 hours! And the reason is the inhumane prison conditions and deliberate abuse,” he added.
The news comes two weeks after the death of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who collapsed while attending his trial in Cairo.
Morsi fell unconscious inside the courtroom, and state television later said he died of a heart attack.
Aboul Fotouh’s family members have repeatedly complained about the circumstances of the opposition figure’s detention, saying his solitary confinement serves no other purpose than to physically and mentally abuse him.
The family also stressed that his condition is getting worse due to medical negligence.
On Thursday, the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights and the Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms submitted a petition to the public prosecutor concerning the “deteriorating health situation of Aboul Fotouh”, demanding urgent intervention to “save him from the deliberate medical negligence”.
Aboul Fotouh was arrested in February 2018 after he returned from London where he was interviewed by Al Jazeera, which is banned in Egypt. In that interview, he criticised el-Sisi ahead of his re-election for a second term the next month.
One of the most prominent opposition figures in Egypt, Aboul Fotouh had already been arrested several times under the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak.
He was among the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership before leaving the group and running for president in 2012.
MIAMI—Marianne Williamson narrowed her eyes and gazed into my soul, channeling some of the same telekinetic lifeforce she’d used minutes earlier to cast a spell on Donald Trump in her closing statement of Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate. Inside a sweaty spin room, with swarms of reporters enfolding Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand, the author and self-help spiritualist drifted through the madness with a mien of Zen-like satisfaction. It was only when I asked her a question—what does she say to people who don’t think she belonged on that debate stage?—that Williamson’s sorcerous intensity returned.
“This is a democracy, that’s what I say to them,” she replied, her hypnotic voice anchored by an accent perfected at Rick’s Café. “There’s this political class, and media class, that thinks they get to tell people who becomes president. This is what’s wrong with America. We don’t do aristocracy here. We do democracy.”
Story Continued Below
For better and worse.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton was served the Democratic presidential nomination on a silver platter. With a monopoly on the left’s biggest donors and top strategists, with the implicit backing of the incumbent president, with the consensus support of the party’s most prominent officials, and with only four challengers standing in her way—the most viable of whom had spent the past quarter-century wandering the halls of Congress alone muttering under his breath—Clinton couldn’t lose. The ascendant talents on the left knew better than to interfere. She had already been denied her turn once before; daring to disrupt the party’s line of succession would be career suicide.
This coronation yielded one of the weakest general-election nominees in modern American history—someone disliked and distrusted by more than half of the electorate, someone guided by a sense of entitlement rather than a sense of urgency, someone incapable of mobilizing the party’s base to defeat the most polarizing and unpopular Republican nominee in our lifetimes.
Democrats don’t have to worry about another coronation. Instead, with two dozen candidates battling for the right to challenge Trump next November, they are dealing with the opposite problem: a circus.
Three days after the maelstrom in Miami, top Democratic officials insist there’s no sense of panic. They say everything is under control. They tell anyone who will listen that by virtue of the rules and debate qualification requirements they’ve implemented, this mammoth primary field will soon shrink in half, which should limit the internecine destruction and hasten the selection of a standard-bearer. But based on conversations with candidates and campaign operatives, it might be too late for that. The unifying objective of defeating Trump in 2020 likely won’t be sufficient to ward off what everyone now believes will be a long, divisive primary.
First impressions are everything in politics. And it was understood by those candidates and campaign officials departing Miami that what America was introduced to this week—more than a year before the Democrats will choose their nominee at the 2020 convention—was a party searching not only for a leader but for an identity, for a vision, for a coherent argument about how voters would benefit from a change in leadership.
“I don’t think there’s a sense among the American people of what the national Democratic Party stands for. And I think there’s actually more confusion about that now,” Michael Bennet, the Colorado senator and presidential candidate, told me after participating in Thursday night’s forum.
Some confusion is inevitable when 20 candidates, many of them unfamiliar to a national audience, are allotted five to seven minutes to explain why they are qualified to lead the free world. Yet the perception in the eyes of the political class—and the feeling on the ground was something closer to chaos.
With a record number of viewers tuning in between the two nights, a record number of candidates talked over one another, contorted themselves ideologically, evaded straightforward questions and traded insults both implicit and explicit. With such a splayed primary field, some of this is to be expected: Debates are imperative to exposing the fault lines within the Democratic coalition, to refining and forging the left’s governing philosophy through the fires of competition. A measured clash of ideas and worldviews is healthy for a party seeking a return to power.
What’s not healthy for a party is when the frontrunner, a white man, is waylaid by the ferociously talented up-and-comer, a black woman, who prefaces her attack: “I do not believe you are a racist…” What’s not healthy for a party is when a smug, self-impressed congressman with no business being on the stage flails wildly with juvenile sound bites. What’s not healthy for a party is when a successful red-state governor and a decorated war hero-turned-congressman are forced to watch from home as an oracular mystic with no experience in policymaking lectures her opponents on the folly of having actual “plans” to govern the country.
Granted, these lowlights and many others came during the second debate. Just 22 hours before it commenced, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez sounded relieved at how relatively painless the first contest had been.
“We talked about the issues. We didn’t talk about hand size,” Perez told me after the end of the Wednesday night debate. (Perez was grinning in reference to the 2016 Republican debate in which Donald Trump, responding to Marco Rubio’s vulgar euphemism, assured viewers of his plentiful genitalia.) “The Republican candidates were only concerned about how they could put a knife in their opponent’s back,” Perez added. “We had spirited discussions. We had some disagreements, but they were all about the merits and the issues. They weren’t, ‘Not only are you wrong, but your mother wears army boots.’”
Even in that first debate of this week’s campaign-opening doubleheader, however, there was no shortage of skirmishes that felt deeply personal, opening wounds that won’t easily scab over in the campaign ahead.
History will remember Harris confronting Biden on Thursday, the testier of the two debates, in a moment that dominated news coverage and could well come to inform one or both of their campaign trajectories.
But even on Wednesday, there was Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, a clash of the congressional back-benchers, feuding over the use of American military force abroad. Gabbard, an Iraq veteran, won the round on points by correcting Ryan’s assertion that the Taliban attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001. This so visibly irked Ryan that he fumed to reporters afterward, “I personally don’t need to be lectured by somebody who’s dining with a dictator who gassed kids,” a reference to the congresswoman’s rapport with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.
There was Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor once considered the party’s brightest rising star, aiming to recapture mojo stolen by Beto O’Rourke. Unleashing on his unsuspecting fellow Texan, Castro repeatedly told O’Rourke to “do your homework” on the issue of immigration law, criticizing him for failing to back a sweeping change that would decriminalize border crossings. It was a stinging rebuke that punctuated O’Rourke’s dismal night and gave Castro’s camp their biggest boost of the campaign.
And there was Eric Swalwell, the catchphrase-happy California congressman, cynically scolding Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for not firing his police chief after a black man’s killing at the hands of a white officer. Buttigieg responded with a cold stare, crystallizing all the campaigns’ feelings about Swalwell, for whom indiscriminate attacks seem to be a strategic cornerstone.
The significance in these events was not merely what was said in the moment, but what is now assured in the future.
Upcoming debates will almost certainly feature discussion of Gabbard’s shadowy connections to Syria, and more broadly, of the party’s ambiguous post-Obama foreign policy doctrine. There will be greater pressure to conform to Castro’s argument on decriminalizing border crossings, a position that animates the progressive base but may well alienate moderates and independents. The whispers of Buttigieg’s struggle with black voters will surely intensify, and his opponents are already scheming of ways to use one of his debate responses—“I couldn’t get it done”—against him.
This is to say nothing of the other minefields that await: opposition-research files presented on live television, litmus-test questions on issues such as abortion and guns, not to mention the ideological pressure placed on the field by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, neither of whom were seriously tested in the first set of debates but whose ambitious big-government proposals are driving the party’s agenda and putting more moderate candidates in a bind.
As for Biden, regardless of whether his poll numbers plummet or hold steady in the weeks ahead, one thing was obvious in Thursday’s aftermath: blood in the water. You could hear it in the voices of rival campaign officials, whispering of how they knew the frontrunner was fundamentally vulnerable due to his detachment from today’s party. You could see it on the faces of Biden’s own allies, who struggled to defend his showing.
“What I saw was a person who listened to Kamala Harris’s pain,” Cedric Richmond, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and one of Biden’s highest-profile surrogates, said after the debate ended. Referring to the busing controversy, Richmond added, “All of that was out there when the first African-American president of the United States decided to pick Joe Biden as his running mate, and he had the vice president’s back every day of the week. So, I’m not sure that voters are going back 40 years to judge positions.”
They don’t have to. What the maiden debates of the 2020 election cycle demonstrated above all else is the acceleration of change inside the Democratic Party—not just since Biden came to Congress in 1973, but since he became vice president in 2009.
Ten years ago this September, Barack Obama convened a joint session of Congress to reset the narrative of his health-care reform push and dispel some of the more sinister myths surrounding it. One particular point of emphasis for Obama: The Affordable Care Act would not cover undocumented immigrants.
On Thursday, every one of the 10 candidates on stage—Biden included—said their government plans would do exactly that.
The front-runner has cloaked himself in the 44th president’s legacy, invoking “the Obama-Biden administration” as a shield to deflect all manner of criticism. And yet, parts of that legacy—from enshrining the Hyde Amendment, to deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants, to aggressively carrying out drone strikes overseas, to sanctioning deep cuts in government spending—are suddenly and fatally out of step with the modern left. This crop of Democrats won’t hesitate to score points at the previous administration’s expense, as evidenced by Harris’s censure of Obama’s deportation policies. And the gravitational pull of the party’s base will continue to threaten the long-term viability of top contenders, as evidenced by the continuing talk of eliminating private insurance and Harris’s own shaky explanations of whether she supports doing so.
For months, Democratic officials have expressed confidence that their party would avoid the reality TV-inspired meltdown that was the 2016 Republican primary. After all, the star of that show is the common enemy of everyone seeking the Democratic nomination.
Miami was not a promising start. With so many candidates, with so little fear of the frontrunner, with so much pressure on the bottom three-quarters of the field to turn in campaign-prolonging performances, nothing could keep a lid on the emotions and ambitions at work. It’s irresistible to compare the enormous fields of 2016 and 2020. But the fact is, when Republicans gathered for their first debate in August 2015, Trump had already surged to the top of the field. He held the pole position for the duration of the race, despite so much talk of volatility in the primary electorate, because he relentlessly stayed on the offensive, never absorbing a blow without throwing two counter-punches in return.
Leaving Miami, it was apparent to Democrats that they have a very different race on their hands—and a very different frontrunner. Biden’s team talks openly about a strategy of disengagement, an approach that sounds reasonable but in fact puts the entire party at risk. The danger Democrats face is not that a talented field of candidates will be systematically wiped out by a dominant political force. The danger is that there is no dominant political force; that at this intersection of ideological drift and generational discontent and institutional disruption, an obtrusively large collection of candidates will be emboldened to keep fighting not just for their candidacies but for their conception of liberalism itself, feeding the perception of a party in turmoil and easing the president’s fight for reelection.
In the spin room after Wednesday night’s debate, a blur of heat and bright lights and body odor, John Delaney, the Maryland congressman, was red in the face explaining that none of the voters he talks with care about impeaching Trump. A few feet away, Bill DeBlasio, the New York City mayor, whacked the “moderate folks” like Delaney for not understanding where the base is, promising “a fight for the soul of the party.” Just over his shoulder, Washington Governor Jay Inslee slammed the complacency of his fellow Democrats on the issue of climate change, decrying “the tyranny of the fossil fuel industry” over both political parties.
Joaquin Castro, the congressman and twin brother to Julián, stood off to the side observing the mayhem. Just as he was explaining how “at least 20” reporters had mistaken him for his brother that night, the two of us were nearly stampeded underneath a mob of reporters encircling Elizabeth Warren.
“Man,” he said, looking warily from side to side. “This is surreal.”
Israel has detained and questioned the Palestinian minister for Jerusalem affairs, Israeli police have said.
Palestine‘s Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Fadi al-Hadami was detained for “activities in Jerusalem”, Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld told AFP on Sunday.
Palestinian media reported that Israeli police had arrested al-Hadami from his home in Jerusalem in the early hours of Sunday morning, after searching the premises.
The sources said five other Palestinian men were also arrested on Sunday, from areas across Jerusalem, Bethlehem and south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
The detainees identified by Palestinian media included Haydar and Alaa Dirbas who were arrested at the Maqasid Hospital in Occupied East Jerusalem, and Ihab Saeed who was arrested from his village near Jerusalem.
The Israeli authorities did not comment on why the men were arrested.
Hadami meets Chile’s president
A source close to the minister told AFP that al-Hadami’s arrest is likely linked to his accompanying of Chile‘s president during a visit to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound a few days ago.
On Tuesday, al-Hadami was seen alongside Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on a tour of the flashpoint holy site, enraging Israel, which said it constituted a violation of regulations and a breach of understandings reached with Santiago for the head of state’s visit.
Commenting on the visit, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Wednesday that the government “takes seriously any infringement of Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount, especially one that violates an agreed-upon procedure.
“We must distinguish between absolute freedom of worship that Israel safeguards [and] ensuring that our sovereignty over the Temple Mount is not harmed,” he added.
Israeli media reported that the ministry received a formal letter from the Chilean Embassy later that day, explaining that Pinera’s visit to the Al-Aqsa compound had been a private one.
The status of Al-Aqsa, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest for Muslims after Mecca and Medina. It is administered by the Muslim Waqf but secured by Israeli police.
The Israeli shooting of a Palestinian demonstrator on Thursday sparked days of unrest in a number of neighbourhoods in and around Jerusalem [Faiz Abu Rmeleh/Anadolu]
Days of unrest
The arrests follow days of unrest in Jerusalem after Israeli police shot and killed a 20-year-old Palestinian on Thursday, in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Issawiya.
The young man, identified as Mohammed Obeid, died of his wounds, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Israeli authorities said they shot Obeid after he allegedly threw fireworks at them.
The incident sparked protests. Overnight on Saturday, Israeli police “continued dealing with riots and disturbances in a number of neighbourhoods when stones were thrown at officers and fireworks fired at them,” Rosenfeld said in a statement.
Two officers were wounded and six suspects arrested, he added.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 War. It later annexed East Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.
Israel sees all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, while the Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Daily Trends Hunter 