Matt Stevens

On Veterans Day, former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont released extensive plans outlining how they would help them. They follow a similarly detailed proposal unveiled last week by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and they join a lengthy list of policy plans released by candidates throughout the summer and fall.

Here’s a closer look at the measures Democrats are calling for, and how their proposals contrast with what President Donald Trump has already done.

Improve and update the VA

Almost every candidate agrees that the VA needs to be able to function better than it currently does and has pledged to give the agency the resources it needs to work efficiently. Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren are among those who have called for the agency to fill its more than 49,000 staffing vacancies. Biden and Sanders, among others, have said they would invest in modernizing VA hospitals, clinics and other infrastructure. And in a commonly heard refrain, several Democrats have promised to eliminate the perennial “benefits backlog” that forces tens of thousands of veterans to wait for a determination on the benefits they can receive.

Buttigieg, a former Navy intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, proposes making the VA apolitical “by appointing leaders with relevant expertise and ensuring continuity in leadership across administrations.” And in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, he said he’d seek to name a woman to head the agency for the first time. “I think leadership plays a huge role, so, absolutely I’d seek to name a woman to lead VA,” he said.

Provide veterans with better care

Several candidates have promised that under their administrations, veterans would get access to affordable and comprehensive health care. Under that umbrella, candidates like Sanders have specifically promised to guarantee dental care, expand the VA’s comprehensive caregiver program and other measures.

Multiple candidates also have called attention to veteran suicide and pledged to invest in research, mental health services and housing to help address the issue. Warren has said she would aim to reduce the number of veteran suicides by 50% within her first term. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey suggested appointing a White House official solely focused on working across agencies to cut the suicide rate.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California, meanwhile, is among those who have called for expanding access to health care and housing assistance for veterans with “other-than-honorable” discharges, which they may have received because they experienced trauma or other reasons beyond their control.

Improve access to education, training and jobs

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and other candidates have also outlined ways to support veterans once they re-enter civilian life. For instance, Klobuchar has proposed extending GI Bill education benefits to members of the National Guard and Reserve and implementing a grant program that would invest in veteran education centers.

Several candidates have also said they would expand and improve incentives for companies to hire veterans, and that they would direct government agencies to invest in more veteran-owned businesses and entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang has argued for what he calls a “reverse boot camp” which would seek to help veterans adjust to life after the military by training them in skills like cooking, financial literacy and how to interview for a job.

Ensuring equal treatment

Candidates also promised to rescind Trump’s ban on transgender service members, stand up for victims of sexual assault in the military and protect veterans and family members of service members from deportation.

Warren has called the ban on transgender service members “shameful.” And Buttigieg said his administration would reach out to people who were discharged because of their gender identity and give them a chance to re-enlist.

Klobuchar said in her proposal that more than 20,000 service members were sexually assaulted in 2018. She and other Democrats have proposed various ways to strengthen the prosecution of perpetrators and expand access to counseling for victims.

In her plan, Warren noted that protections from deportation for veterans have been eroding under the Trump administration, and pledged to restart a program that makes it easier for noncitizens who serve to become naturalized.

What Trump has already done

Trump, who kicked off the 100th annual New York City Veterans Day Parade in Manhattan on Monday, has also sought to court veterans, a group he views as a key piece of his political base.

Public polls have found that Trump’s support among veterans outpaces his support from the public at large. He has garnered praise from some veterans for railing against “endless wars,” much like 2020 Democratic candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard who served two combat tours in the Middle East.

Trump campaigned in 2016 on wanting to put more veterans in private health care. To help accomplish that goal, Congress passed health care legislation known as the Mission Act in 2018 and the VA rolled out new rules this year that allowed a broad group of enrollees to seek care outside the agency. Although Trump has heralded the program as great success, it has struggled to grow its network of doctors to meet coverage demands.

For all his talk of supporting veterans, Trump has also sometimes snubbed them. He admitted in court documents that he gave his campaign control over how to spend $2.8 million that his charity raised through what was ostensibly a fundraiser for veterans.

Last year, he chose to forgo a traditional visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, a decision that led him to issue a rare apology. He drew wide condemnation during the 2016 campaign when he criticized the parents of a slain soldier who had denounced him, and he frequently attacked Sen. John McCain, saying the former Navy pilot and prisoner of war was “not a war hero.”

This article originally appeared in

How the 2020 Democrats Plan to Help Veterans

The large field of Democrats running for president may have differing views on the best way to provide health care to the masses or exactly how to reform the immigration system. But when it comes to helping America’s veterans they largely agree: The Department of Veterans Affairs needs some serious help, and those who have served need much better access to benefits, health care, housing, education and jobs.

Warren rolled out a proposal to break up Facebook, Amazon and other tech giants in March. To ensure that tech workers got her message, her campaign paid for a billboard near a major transit station in San Francisco. In all capital letters, the billboard read: “Break Up Big Tech.”

On Tuesday, nearly seven months after Warren first unveiled her plan, The Verge offered a window into what Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, thinks about it. In leaked audio recordings of open meetings with employees this summer, Zuckerberg can be heard speculating about how the company would respond to Warren if she were to enact the plan as president.

“If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge,” he said.

“Does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. That’s not like the position you want to be in. We care about our country and want to work with our government to do good things,” he added. “But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”

Shortly after The Verge published Zuckerberg’s remarks, Warren responded by renewing her criticism of Facebook.

“What would really ‘suck,’” she said, mimicking Zuckerberg’s language, “is if we don’t fix a corrupt system that lets giant companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to protect our democracy.”

The public surfacing of grievances between Warren and Zuckerberg has the effect of publicly pitting one of the leading Democratic candidates for president against the head of the world’s largest social network, at a time when Silicon Valley in general and Facebook in particular continue to be scrutinized for its efforts to combat disinformation and prevent election interference in 2020 and beyond.

In the audio recording clipped and published by The Verge, Zuckerberg ties his criticism of Warren’s plan to concerns about election interference.

“It’s just that breaking up these companies, whether it’s Facebook or Google or Amazon, is not actually going to solve the issues,” he said. “And, you know, it doesn’t make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can’t coordinate and work together.”

After the leaked audio was published and Warren responded, Zuckerberg commented on the episode in a Facebook post.

“Every week I do a Q&amp;A; at Facebook where employees get to ask me anything and I share openly what I’m thinking on all kinds of projects and issues,” he said. “The transcript from one of my Q&amp;As; a few months ago just got published online — and even though it was meant to be internal rather than public, now that it’s out there, you can check it out if you’re interested in seeing an unfiltered version of what I’m thinking and telling employees on a bunch of topics.”

Warren, meanwhile, used the renewed focus on the issue as an opportunity to reiterate that she is “not afraid to hold Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon accountable.”

In her proposal, Warren argues that the tech giants have essentially developed monopolies — they have “bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.”

Her plan calls for legislation that would prohibit platforms like Amazon from both offering a marketplace for commerce and participating in that marketplace; appointing regulators to undo some tech mergers; and rolling back some acquisitions by tech giants, such as Facebook’s deals for WhatsApp and Instagram.

By offering a steady diet of detailed policy proposals, Warren has grown her following significantly and risen to the top of the polls. Her plans to reshape the government extend to areas like the economy and education, where she has called for a wealth tax and canceling student loan debt.

“We have these giant corporations — do I have to tell that to people in Long Island City? — that think they can roll over everyone,” Warren told a crowd there earlier this year, after Amazon pulled out of plans to build a new campus in the neighborhood. “I’m sick of freeloading billionaires.”

Zuckerberg Hates Warren's Plan to Break Up Facebook. She Doesn't Care.

For months, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has made “big, structural change” the rallying cry of her presidential campaign. And when it comes to the tech sector, that has meant taking square aim at giant companies like Facebook — companies she says have become so large that they are stifling competition.

At least two candidates used the same phrase: Both Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, who have been calling for Trump’s impeachment for months, labeled the reconstruction of the phone call a “smoking gun.”

“If this is the version of events the president’s team thinks is most favorable, he is in very deep jeopardy,” Warren said. “We need to see the full whistleblower complaint and the administration needs to follow the law. Now.”

The call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine has been at the center of accusations that Trump pressured a foreign leader to open a potential corruption investigation tied to a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking to challenge Trump in 2020.

According to the reconstructed transcript, which the White House released Wednesday morning, Trump urged Zelenskiy to contact Attorney General William Barr about opening an investigation connected to Biden, saying “whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.”

The news of the call — which was first revealed by a whistleblower who works in the intelligence community — have prompted House Democrats to say they would formally open an impeachment inquiry. And Wednesday, after reviewing the contents of the reconstructed transcript, several Democratic candidates renewed their calls for Trump to be impeached.

“Congress should cancel recess and begin impeachment proceedings immediately,” Castro said.

Sen. Kamala Harris’ campaign highlighted an exchange during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in May between Harris and Barr, in which she asked the attorney general whether Trump had ever asked him to open an investigation into anyone else. After much hesitation, Barr said he did not know.

Harris, D-Calif., posted a screen shot of the transcript on Twitter, writing, “They admit it: Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to work with the U.S. Attorney General to investigate a political opponent. He must be impeached.”

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in a statement that the document released Wednesday amounted to “apparent proof that Trump had pressured a foreign nation to meddle in our democracy again.”

“History will remember those who put politics aside at this time of crisis and treated it like the moral moment that it is,” he said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who has said she supports the impeachment inquiry, said that the record of the call was “deeply disturbing,” adding that Trump had “violated the public’s trust.”

Several other Democratic candidates for president, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, renewed their calls for an impeachment inquiry to begin.

“Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in the modern history of this country,” Sanders tweeted, echoing a line he uses frequently on the campaign trail.

Biden said Tuesday that if Trump continued to stonewall attempts by Congress to investigate his conduct, he would “leave Congress no choice but to initiate impeachment.”

Tom Steyer, the former hedge fund manager who pledged to spend millions of dollars on a campaign to impeach Trump before entering the presidential race, was blunt Wednesday.

“There it is,” Steyer said. “He did it. Donald Trump is a traitor.”

2020 Democrats Say Trump's Call With Ukraine President Is a 'Smoking Gun'

Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for president in 2020 swiftly renewed their condemnation of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying that the remarks he made to the president of Ukraine during a July phone call constituted an impeachable offense.

“It’s time to trust ourselves more than our politicians,” Yang said during his opening statement as he made the announcement. “This is how we will get our country working for us again, the American people.”

But unlike earlier in his campaign, when Yang paid what he calls “freedom dividends” out of his own pocket to three families, his advisers said the money for the latest round of payments would be funded by campaign donations, raising questions about whether such a giveaway violates federal election law.

Campaign finance experts said that while federal rules prohibit campaigns from giving people anything of value as an incentive to vote, Yang would not be breaking the law in that area if he did not ask for people’s votes in return.

But Federal Election Commission rules do prohibit the use of campaign funds on personal expenses. To differentiate legitimate campaign expenses from personal expenses, regulators must determine whether the expense would exist even if the candidate were not running for office.

Yang’s campaign said late Thursday that the planned payments would pass legal muster because they would not exist if not for the campaign. The payments, his advisers added, were part of a broad effort to educate the public about Yang’s signature policy — a function directly tied to the campaign and allowed under the law.

“Normally when you give money to presidential campaigns, it goes to expensive consultants and ads,” Yang’s campaign said in a statement. “For the first time in history, a presidential campaign is going to give money back to the people.”

However, FEC rules specify that the personal use of campaign funds by “any person” is prohibited. And the families that would receive $12,000 over the course of a year from Yang would almost certainly spend the extra money on such expenses, which experts said could be problematic.

“Campaign donors give their hard-earned money to fund campaign activities, and the law makes clear that paying personal expenses is not a campaign activity,” said Adav Noti, former associate general counsel at the FEC. “When donors give, they have a reasonable expectation that their money will be used on a campaign and not on somebody’s car payment.”

Yang’s advisers said Thursday it was their understanding that the personal use statute applies only to a candidate and his campaign.

The $1,000 payments would begin sometime in the fall and would continue once a month for a year, regardless of whether Yang remained in the race for president, his campaign said. Advisers said they would ask people to apply for the dividends on the campaign website and would select the recipients based on their applications.

Yang’s campaign has framed the planned payments as an original idea never previously undertaken by a presidential candidate. One expert in campaign finance law said he could not recall a time when the FEC had been forced to consider the legality of a stipend like the one Yang is proposing.

“Andrew Yang’s use of campaign funds to give ‘freedom dividends’ to supporters would push the boundaries of, and perhaps break, campaign finance law,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, a vice president at Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization that promotes government accountability. “This unprecedented use of campaign funds would give rise to a bunch of novel legal questions.”

Yang’s advisers raised a similar point Thursday, noting that the unusual nature of the giveaway means that federal agencies have not yet issued a definitive ruling on its legality. However, they asserted that those agencies would find their arguments convincing.

Experts noted that every person who gets paid by a campaign in exchange for goods and services, or both — like caterers at a campaign event — eventually cashes their paycheck and uses the money for personal expenses, exercising a sort of “conversion” that the FEC does not prohibit. They suggested that to bolster his legal argument, Yang’s campaign could potentially ask the dividend recipients to perform tasks as a condition of getting the money and then argue that the payments are permissible because they represent compensation at market value. (Yang, however, has repeatedly said that the dividends he is proposing would be given out with no strings attached.)

Under normal circumstances, experts said, Yang’s campaign could have requested an advisory opinion from the FEC, but the resignation of one of its members last month left the agency one person short of a quorum. As a result, it is unable to take basic actions, including issuing opinions and levying fines for campaign finance violations.

But the FEC will not be frozen forever, and if Yang's payments run afoul of the rules, the agency could eventually investigate them.

Yang previously awarded a “freedom dividend” to an Iowa man caring for his mother, a family in New Hampshire and a Florida woman who retweeted one of his messages. His team has labeled the payments “trial runs” and has made clear that they were funded by Yang himself.

Yang has centered his campaign on the idea of providing Americans with a universal basic income of $1,000 a month as a way to soften the financial blow of what he refers to as the “fourth industrial revolution.” In essence, he argues that the automation of common jobs like truck driving and call center work will soon cause mass unemployment. And he believes that many of the stresses Americans feel — grievances he says caused them to vote for Donald. Trump in 2016 — are a result of deep insecurity about their jobs becoming obsolete and of being unable to afford basic living expenses.

His message has had enough staying power that Yang was one of only 10 candidates in the 20-person field to poll high enough and attract enough donors to qualify for Thursday’s debate. While he had not gotten as much speaking time as other candidates during earlier debates, he told The New York Times before Thursday night’s event that he would use whatever time he got to be “impactful.”

Andrew Yang Said He Would Give 10 People $1,000 Each Month. Is That Legal?

Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur who has promised to provide every American adult with $1,000 a month if he is elected president, announced at the Democratic debate on Thursday that he would distribute such payments to 10 people for the next year.

“He was a meme — his campaign was a joke,” said Ben Longchamp, 20, a college student from Atkinson, New Hampshire, who first saw Yang speak in May, at a restaurant in Portsmouth. “I’ve seen 14 candidates at this point, and what I like about him is he has this one policy proposal, and he has the data to back it up.”

Shannon Jeanes, 44, a construction worker from Bedford, New Hampshire, said he was drawn to Yang because he seemed to care about ideas like a $1,000 “universal basic income” more than personal ambition. “He’s not running because he wants to be president,” Jeanes said. “He’s running because he feels he needs to be.”

One of the most surprising developments of the 2020 presidential race has been the intensely loyal and passionate following for Yang, a former entrepreneur and tech executive making a bid for the Democratic nomination. Armed with numbers, history lessons and the occasional self-deprecating joke, he has been preaching a grim gospel about how automation will lead to mass unemployment and how corporate profits are warping the economy. Enough Americans have started to take him seriously that Yang has emerged as the surprise qualifier for a slimmed-down third Democratic debate, which will be held Thursday in Houston.

Yang, 44, remains one of the least known candidates in a group that includes senators, mayors, a governor and a former vice president. He is far from the only one with policy chops. And he is, as ever, a long shot for the nomination, as evidenced by the fact that he is still polling in the low single digits.

But voters who attended his campaign events during a swing through New Hampshire last month rarely described him as a futurist fringe-candidate pitching a pie-in-the-sky plan. Instead, many said they had come to regard him as a smart, substantive and affable political outsider offering a thoughtful solution to an existential problem that other candidates have largely ignored.

More broadly, Yang’s supporters said they found his almost apolitical approach refreshing. Rather than participate in daily brinkmanship over immigration and gun control or level attacks on President Donald Trump, Yang has used his platform to gently lecture the country about the “fourth industrial revolution” — which he fears will put truck drivers, call-center workers and retail clerks out of work — and to offer universal basic income as a way to soothe the pain he says such a revolution will assuredly cause.

Yang has attracted an ideologically eclectic coalition that includes progressives, libertarians, disaffected voters and Trump supporters who have swapped their red MAGA hats for blue ones that say MATH — “Make America Think Harder.” Those who have come into his camp say his presence on YouTube, on podcasts and in the nationally televised debates helped them begin to see the logic behind giving people free money.

His performance in Houston could be crucial to sustaining his campaign’s newfound momentum. In the days immediately after the July debates, Yang’s campaign raked in about $1 million — more than a third of what his team had raised during the entirety of the second quarter. About 90% of the people who gave were new donors.

The campaign is now on track to raise more than $5.5 million in the third quarter of the year, according to Yang advisers — more than the total amount Yang had raised during the previous 20 months that he spent as a candidate. While his operation does not rival the size or scale of his more established rivals’ campaigns, his team has ballooned to over 50 staff members from around 10 initially, as new offices have opened in Nashua and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Des Moines and Davenport, Iowa. At the New York headquarters, the campaign has leased additional office space and is building an in-house digital team.

Data compiled by RealClearPolitics shows that Yang is drawing about 2.6% support in national polls on average, good enough for sixth place, behind Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and just ahead of Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas.

More and more, Yang and his advisers have allowed themselves to flirt openly with the idea that they have achieved something that long eluded them: mainstream recognition.

“I’ve been coming to New Hampshire every month for the last year-plus,” Yang, standing atop a soapbox, told a room packed with supporters at the christening of the Nashua office. “When I first showed up, honestly no one knew who I was. The growth from then to now — it’s staggering.”

Indeed, as recently as May, Yang strutted into a park in Lebanon, New Hampshire, to find only a few dozen voters waiting to meet him. Back then, those who showed up conveyed more curiosity than commitment.

Three months later, the situation had changed. Yang would ask his audience questions — Which state has passed universal basic income? — and a chorus of supporters would yell back the answer on cue: “Alaska!”

At his events in New Hampshire, those fans tended to skew largely white, slightly male and very young. Many of them were in college or had just graduated; a noticeable share described themselves as liking both Yang and Trump.

Still others leaned libertarian and praised Yang for his plan to give people money and then get out of the way. Some professed to be former supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, saying that they saw in Yang a newer, fresher champion of progressive causes who was advancing ideas that might prove to be ahead of their time.

Yang’s big-city rallies can draw thousands and tend to attract more diverse crowds, including an unusually high share of Asian Americans.

On the trail, Yang, like many of his rivals, likes to paint his campaign as one powered primarily by grassroots enthusiasm and modest donations. An analysis by The New York Times bore that out, finding that about 70% of donations he received in the second quarter of the year came from people giving $200 or less.

A separate analysis of Yang’s approximately 133,000 total donors through June 30 showed that the average contribution to his campaign was about $27. Because approximately 20% of his donors gave multiple times, the average amount received from each person was about $40.

The donor data also reinforced a demographic trend apparent at Yang’s campaign events: Less than 30% of his donors were women, according to estimates by OpenSecrets.com and The Times.

The crowds at Yang’s New Hampshire meet-and-greets also noticeably lacked older voters. Some who did attend said they wanted to hear Yang out, even though they professed to preferring someone who had logged more experience working in Washington.

Ann Engelkemeir, 67, of Epsom, New Hampshire, said she was leaning toward voting for Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts or Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. But she and others said they found Yang personable and acknowledged that a core part of his appeal was that he was not a career politician.

“Some of the candidates, when they’re asked a question, they give the response they’ve practiced that is closest to the question,” Engelkemeir said at one event. “I do think he answers questions much more directly than I’ve heard.”

During that event, hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, Yang found himself in front of an audience full of voters who, like Engelkemeir, were largely unfamiliar with him.

He ticked off a comedic and at times ungenerous retelling of his backstory: unhappy corporate lawyer; founder of a business that experienced a “mini rise and maximum fall”; and eventually the leader of a test-preparation company that was bought by Kaplan in 2009.

Yang told The Washington Post Magazine this year that he “became a millionaire” after he sold the company, but stipulated that “my net worth is probably much lower than speculation would lead one to believe.” In financial disclosure forms filed this summer, Yang reported assets worth as much as $2.4 million, putting him on par with many other candidates in the race.

Amid the recession, Yang moved on to develop Venture for America, a nonprofit entrepreneurship organization for college graduates that created jobs in underserved cities.

When Trump was elected president in 2016, Yang says he started digging into data to try to understand why, and he found that millions of manufacturing jobs had been wiped out in swing states because of automation. It dawned on him that his good-faith effort to create jobs was wildly insufficient. A more sweeping solution was necessary: $1,000 a month for every American.

“Universal basic income is an amazingly hard policy to demonize,” said Matt Clark, 36, a college adviser from Massachusetts who supports the idea and believes Republicans will get behind it. “It’s super simple, and it directly addresses so many Americans.”

Yang’s fixation on enriching the masses, along with his history as an entrepreneur, has made his personal wealth a popular Google search. As Yang’s campaign has gained relevance, his sources of income have come under increasing scrutiny.

Yang’s financial disclosure forms show that he received a total of $94,000 for 10 speeches he gave between April 2018 and February 2019; five of the paid speeches were to JPMorgan Chase at a rate of $10,000 each. They also show that Yang draws tens of thousands of dollars in income from interest and capital gains on his investments as well as rent for a home he owns in New Paltz, New York.

A spokesman for Yang said the candidate would release his tax returns in the coming days. He declined to disclose Yang’s net worth or comment on his paid speeches.

Although Yang has been reluctant to discuss his wealth, he has been candid about other aspects of his personal life. Some voters said they were particularly struck by the humanity they saw come through when Yang spoke about his son who has autism and his wife’s dedication as a stay-at-home mother while he has been out on the trail.

(Yang also drew attention when he recently broke down in tears at a forum on gun violence in Iowa after a mother shared that her child had been killed by a stray bullet.)

Matthew Martin, 35, a gardener from Salem, Massachusetts, is among those who said he was touched by Yang’s empathy. Both of Martin’s parents were factory workers who lost their jobs several times, so when he first heard Yang give his pitch on a podcast, he felt drawn to his message.

Now, more than a year after Martin first learned about Yang, he was standing inside his new office in Nashua. As Yang signed MATH hats and took selfies a few steps away, Martin mused about how the campaign had grown and why he had traveled to be a part of it.

“It’s very hard at first to get people on board with Andrew Yang,” he said. “But after they listen, it can be transformative.”

Andrew Yang's Quest to 'Make America Think Harder'

PLAISTOW, N.H. — Meet Andrew Yang supporters and they often have a confession to make: When they first heard about Yang, they thought his plan to give every American adult $1,000 a month was a little crazy. But then, they will inevitably tell you, they heard him explain it, and it all started making sense.

He will seek the seat held by Sen. Tom Udall, also a Democrat, who said last week that he would retire at the end of his term.

Luján’s decision makes him the latest aspiring House speaker to move on because of Pelosi’s longevity. Chris Van Hollen, now a senator from Maryland, and Xavier Becerra, now attorney general of California, are also among the former Democratic House stars who have since sought other offices.

An easygoing, well-liked member of the House who currently serves as deputy speaker, Luján has represented New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District since 2008. He also led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s arm that supports House candidates, in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

Luján tipped his cap to Udall in a statement Monday, calling him “a champion for New Mexico” and arguing that “New Mexico needs another champion” in the Senate.

He pointed to his legislative record on issues like health care and the environment, while promising to uphold what he called “New Mexico values.”

“I was born and raised in New Mexico, on the small Nambé farm I still call home,” Luján said in the statement and in a video on social media. “My mother retired after 33 years with the local public school district and my late father — a union ironworker and state representative — instilled in me the importance of hard work, the idea that no job is too big or too small, and a love for New Mexico that guides me every day.”

He enters the race at a time when New Mexico has evolved into a safely Democratic state. After voting for George W. Bush in 2004, the state has turned progressively bluer and currently has no Republicans in its congressional delegation. Udall won his Senate seat in 2008 after the retirement of Sen. Pete V. Domenici, the last Republican to represent New Mexico in the chamber.

Democrats are likely to have an advantage in the race for Udall’s seat, and Luján, 46, is just one of several lawmakers who could seek it. New Mexico was among the states that saw a tide of young and diverse Democrats sweep to power during last year’s midterm elections, and some of those newly elected officials may now consider running.

The state elected a Latina chief executive, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, and sent two new women to the House: Rep. Deb Haaland, 58, who became one of the first Native American women elected to Congress; and Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, 34, a former aide to Udall who carried a conservative-leaning district that hugs the border.

In addition, a number of ambitious Democrats in state and local offices could join the Senate race, including Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque; Maggie Toulouse Oliver, the secretary of state; and Hector Balderas, the state attorney general who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2012.

There are also a handful of prominent Republicans in the state, including Susana Martinez, the former governor, and Richard J. Berry, the former mayor of Albuquerque. It is unclear if any would be interested in mounting a long-shot campaign, and Martinez left office deeply unpopular.

Udall offered no hint as to a preferred heir when he announced he would retire, but he has indicated that he intends to remain involved in politics and government.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/us/politics/ben-ray-lujan-senate.html" id="6a9379f2-fa5e-3352-a826-f49ebf21ff97">The New York Times</a>.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, a trusted ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was seen as a possible candidate to replace her when she retired, announced Monday that he would run for the Senate in 2020.

Ben Ray Luján, High-Ranking House Democrat, Will Run for Senate in New Mexico

In an essay published Friday by New York Magazine’s The Cut, the former assemblywoman, Lucy Flores, a Democrat, said she was 35 years old at the time of her encounter with Biden, who was then vice president. Biden, she wrote, had agreed to come to a rally to help her fledgling campaign for lieutenant governor of Nevada.

Flores wrote that at first, she had been “grateful and flattered.” But as she was preparing to take the stage, she “felt two hands on my shoulders” and “froze.”

“Why is the vice president of the United States touching me?” she recalled wondering.

“I felt him get closer to me from behind,” she continued. “He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified.”

Then, she added: “He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused.”

Her allegations come as Biden is poised to announce whether he will join the 2020 Democratic primary field and seek the White House; at public appearances and through aides Biden has signaled he is likely to enter the race.

In a statement, Bill Russo, a spokesman for Biden, said the former vice president did not recall what Flores described. Russo said Biden had been “pleased to support Lucy Flores’ candidacy for lieutenant governor of Nevada in 2014 and to speak on her behalf at a well-attended public event.”

“Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable, nor do they recall what she describes,” the statement said. “But Vice President Biden believes that Ms. Flores has every right to share her own recollection and reflections, and that it is a change for better in our society that she has the opportunity to do so. He respects Ms. Flores as a strong and independent voice in our politics and wishes her only the best.”

Flores did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment early Saturday. But shortly after her essay was published, she tweeted that writing and sharing it had been “an incredibly difficult thing to do, but something that felt necessary.”

In her essay about the 2014 episode, she noted that at the time, Biden was “the second-most powerful man in the country and, arguably, one of the most powerful men in the world.”

“He was there to promote me as the right person for the lieutenant governor job,” she wrote. “Instead, he made me feel uneasy, gross, and confused. The vice president of the United States of America had just touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it.”

She also wrote that she had carefully consider whether to speak out, but said that “hearing Biden’s potential candidacy for president discussed without much talk about his troubling past as it relates to women became too much to keep bottled up any longer.”

Biden has long been criticized for his supervision of Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas in 1991, when he led a panel of white men in aggressively questioning Anita Hill. On Tuesday, he expressed regret for his role in the hearing, saying “to this day, I regret I couldn’t give her the kind of hearing she deserved.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/joe-biden-lucy-flores.html" id="9584e207-6eca-315a-ad92-0df9ef4caaa4">The New York Times</a>.

A former Nevada state assemblywoman has accused Joe Biden of touching and kissing her at a 2014 campaign event for Democrats in what she called a mortifying episode that left her feeling “powerless to do anything about it.’’

Biden Accused of Touching and Kissing Nevada Assemblywoman in 2014

Her allegations come as Biden is poised to announce whether he will join the 2020 Democratic primary field.

Bill Russo, a spokesman for Biden, said the former vice president did not recall what Flores described. Russo said Biden had been “pleased to support Lucy Flores’ candidacy for lieutenant governor of Nevada in 2014 and to speak on her behalf.”

“Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable, nor do they recall what she describes,” his statement said. “But Vice President Biden believes that Ms. Flores has every right to share her own recollection and reflections.”

You might have even imagined a spring in Maine much like the one flowing through a green hillside on the familiar logo of the country’s largest bottled spring water brand.

But that is not so, according to allegations in a lawsuit that a judge mostly allowed to move forward Thursday.

Instead, the class-action lawsuit contends that Nestlé Waters’ marketing and sales of what it advertises as “100% Natural Spring Water” has been “a colossal fraud perpetrated against American consumers.”

“Not one drop” of Poland Spring water actually qualifies as spring water, the lawsuit says. It is common groundwater that has been illegally mislabeled in order to “reap massive undue sales.” The result is that Poland Spring water has become “the dominant brand in a market in which it does not even belong,” the suit says.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for Nestlé Waters North America said it was aware of the court’s decision but had not yet had a chance to thoroughly review it.

The company insists that its product is 100 percent natural spring water, citing what it called an independent investigation last year by a law firm that “confirmed that Poland Spring Brand spring water sources meet all FDA regulations defining spring water.”

The 325-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, seeks an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages as well as a permanent injunction preventing Nestlé Waters from continuing the alleged fraud.

It also makes a number of allegations that might surprise even the most jaded bottled water consumer.

The suit contends that the famous Poland Spring in Maine, which the company claims is a source of the water, effectively ran dry nearly 50 years ago.

It claims that the company built and maintained six “phony, man-made ‘springs’ ” to comply with the law. It also alleges that one or more of the company’s wells are near a present or former human waste dump, landfill or other similar site.

Put another way, those famous Poland Spring images of water on a verdant hillside are misleading and deceptive, the lawsuit said.

“Water is going to be one of the most important issues in the world,” said Steve Williams, a lawyer for the 12 plaintiffs from various northeastern states. “It’s vitally important to consumers to be told the truth.”

In its own court documents, Nestlé Waters said that various state regulators had already determined that Poland Spring water complies with the Food and Drug Administration’s so-called identity standard and has authorized the labeling and sale of the water as spring water. On those grounds, the company asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, or at least dismiss it in deference to the FDA.

The brand’s sales in the United States were approximately $400 million in 2007 and have been between $300 million and $900 million annually for each of the past 11 years, the class-action lawsuit said. At least 13 million consumers nationwide buy Poland Spring water, it added.

Nestlé Waters has faced other allegations of false advertising related to Poland Spring water. In recent years, the company has faced scrutiny as it sought to continue taking millions of gallons of water for its Arrowhead brand from a national forest in California, even as the state recovered from a prolonged drought.

The plaintiffs in the most recent Poland Spring lawsuit filed their first complaint in August 2017, which Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer dismissed in May 2018 on the grounds that their claims, as framed at the time, were all pre-empted by federal law.

But in the order Meyer handed down Thursday, he said that the plaintiffs had reframed their claims under an amended complaint in July. The judge granted Nestlé’s motion to dismiss claims related to Vermont law, but he denied the company’s other motions to dismiss the lawsuit.

Nestlé Waters remained insistent Friday. “We remain highly confident in our legal position and will continue to defend our Poland Spring Brand vigorously against this meritless lawsuit,” the company’s statement said. “Consumers can be confident in the accuracy of the labels on every bottle of Poland Spring, and that Poland Spring Brand natural spring water is just what it says it is — 100 percent natural spring water.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/business/poland-spring-water.html" id="f5268fdd-c807-3af7-acf9-015600fc8614">The New York Times</a>.

Is Poland Spring Water Really From a Spring? 'Not One Drop,' Says a Lawsuit

Over the years, if you’ve ever had Poland Spring water, you probably made the reasonable assumption that you were drinking water that was, in fact, from a spring.

The girl, identified by NBC 7 San Diego as Julia Isabel Amparo Medina, had been making her daily commute from Tijuana, Mexico — where she and her 14-year-old brother, Oscar, live — to school in San Ysidro, California, on Monday, the news station said. Because traffic was moving slowly, Julia and Oscar opted to walk across the border rather than wait in the car and risk tardiness, according to NBC 7, which first reported the story.

In an email Friday, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman said two children arrived at one of the San Ysidro port of entry facilities for pedestrians at 10:15 a.m. Monday. The children, whom the spokesman did not identify, presented a CBP officer with U.S. passport cards, according to the spokesman, Ralph DeSio.

“The younger child provided inconsistent information during her inspection, and CBP officers took the 9-year-old into custody to perform due diligence in confirming her identity and citizenship,” DeSio said.

He did not elaborate on what information was inconsistent, saying only: “Some specifics of our techniques for determining the true identity of a person crossing the border are law enforcement sensitive information. In addition, some details of this case are restricted from release due to privacy concerns.”

A federal official with knowledge of the case who was not authorized to speak about it said the 9-year-old had provided inaccurate information to border agents, which prompted a series of protocols that agents were required to conduct. The need to go through that process and ensure that the girl was not a victim of human trafficking contributed to the length of her detainment, the official said.

Eventually, border agents confirmed that the teenager was a U.S. citizen and he was permitted to enter the country, DeSio said. Then, around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, the 9-year-old girl was admitted to the United States and released to her mother after authorities confirmed her identity and her citizenship, DeSio said.

“CBP prioritizes the safety of the minors we encounter,” he said. “It’s important that CBP officials positively confirm the identity of a child traveling without a parent or legal guardian.”

The episode involving the children came as the agency is being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit last month on behalf of two American women who were stopped by a border agent who said he was asking for their identification because he had heard them speaking Spanish.

The cases have highlighted concerns over the power of Customs and Border Protection, whose agents have come under increased scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to keep immigrants from crossing the country’s southern border. Thousands of people travel through the Tijuana-San Ysidro crossing every day for school or work.

Julia’s mother, Thelma Galaxia, told NBC 7 that while Julia was detained, agents accused her of lying about her identity, saying that her passport photo did not look like her. Julia told NBC 7 that authorities accused her of being her cousin rather than herself, and said she was told that if she would admit that she had lied about her identity she would be released.

“I was scared,” Julia told NBC 7. “I was sad because I didn’t have my mom or my brother. I was completely by myself.”

The children also told the station that agents had accused Oscar of smuggling and other crimes.

The federal official with knowledge of the case declined to comment on the specific allegations made by Galaxia and her children but said that, in general, a person who appears to be lying to Customs and Border Protection officers is subject to increased scrutiny.

Attempts to reach Galaxia on Friday were unsuccessful.

In a statement, the consulate general of Mexico in San Diego said that it “gave prompt assistance; in this regard, we supported the child’s mother within the framework of our consular protection programs, in observance to the protocols of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/julia-isabel-amparo-medina.html" id="f0a710e5-4b6b-3756-a598-b9d49908bb99">The New York Times</a>.

A 9-year-old U.S. citizen was detained at a Southern California border checkpoint for more than 30 hours this week while authorities said they worked to verify her identity.

9-Year-Old Girl Was Detained at Border for 30 Hours Despite Being a U.S. Citizen

Attempts to reach Galaxia on Friday were unsuccessful.The Consulate General of Mexico in San Diego did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Friday, Carter, the nation’s 39th president, reached the age of 94 years and 172 days, making him a day older than former President George Bush was when he died in November.

The record comes more than three years after Carter announced he would receive treatment for cancer that had been discovered in his brain.

“I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” Carter said at the time in August 2015; four months later, he said he was cancer free.

Former President Jimmy Carter on Friday became the longest-living president in U.S. history, another milestone as he continues a rich post-presidential life that has spanned nearly four decades.

Matt Stevens

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