| We’re covering a major reversal in the impeachment inquiry, election results from several states and a fatal stabbing over a Popeye’s sandwich. | |  By Claire Moses | | | Gordon Sondland first spoke to House investigators last month in a closed-door interview. Erin Schaff/The New York Times | | | Gordon Sondland, a crucial witness in the impeachment inquiry, reversed himself this week, acknowledging to investigators that he had told a top Ukraine official that U.S. military aid was contingent on the country’s public commitment to investigations that President Trump wanted. | | | That admission, included in a four-page sworn statement released on Tuesday, contradicted what Mr. Sondland told investigators last month, when he said he “never” thought there was any precondition on the aid. It gives Democrats a valuable piece of evidence for their abuse-of-power case, as Mr. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, is a political supporter of Mr. Trump who has interacted directly with him. | | | Quotable: “I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Mr. Sondland said. | | | Context: Our reporters analyzed key components of the testimony from Mr. Sondland and from Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine. | | | What’s next: Investigators have summoned Mick Mulvaney, Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff. He is unlikely to cooperate. | | | Related: Mr. Trump will ask the Supreme Court to rule on his claim that he is absolutely immune from criminal investigation while in office. If the court hears the case, its decision is likely to produce a major statement on the limits of presidential power. | | | Ghazala Hashmi making her victory speech on Tuesday. She is the first Muslim woman elected to the Virginia State Senate. Carlos Bernate for The New York Times | | | By capturing both chambers of the legislature in Virginia for the first time in a generation, Democrats cleared the way for Gov. Ralph Northam to press for measures that have been stymied by legislative Republicans, including tightening access to guns and raising the minimum wage. | | | In the Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, refused to concede the to his Democratic challenger, Attorney General Andy Beshear. With 100 percent of the precincts counted, Mr. Beshear was ahead by 5,100 votes. Daniel Cameron, a former lawyer for Senator Mitch McConnell, was elected attorney general, the first black person to do so in the state. | | | Relatives of a family killed in an ambush looked through the burnt wreckage of one of the vehicles that had been carrying them in Bavispe, Mexico. Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters | | | The members of the LeBarón family were driving along a familiar rural road in northern Mexico when the gunmen attacked, riddling the three-car convoy with bullets. When the shooting stopped, six children and three women were dead, all dual U.S.-Mexican citizens who lived in a fundamentalist Mormon community. | | | Mexicans seemed taken aback by the brutality and by the government’s seeming inability to do much about the violence. It also added to the pressure on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to fulfill a promise to curb the killings that he made when he took office nearly a year ago. | | | Apple pledged $2.5 billion this week to help make housing more affordable in California. Facebook has already offered $1 billion, as has Google. | | | The companies have said little about where, how and when this money will be spent. But in the context of California’s housing problems — which are rooted in intransigent local politics, not a lack of money — even tech companies’ billions can seem inconsequential. | | | Closer look: Development is slowing in California, with some projects suspended because costs are so high that even multimillion-dollar condos and $4,000-a-month one-bedrooms won’t yield a profit. | | | Quotable: “For 50 years, California has been designed around the idea that everyone will have a single-family home with a yard, that they will drive everywhere — and that geometry no longer works,” one state lawmaker said. | | | Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters | | Six months after the coronation of King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun of Thailand, aide after aide has been ousted and denounced, even as the monarch moves to bolster his authority. Thailand has strict laws against criticism of the royal family, and offenders face 15 years in prison.
The 67-year-old king, who has been married four times, has assembled a court whose intrigue frequently spills onto the pages of the Royal Thai Government Gazette. Last week, four courtiers were removed for “extremely evil misconduct.” | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM LINCOLN FINANCIAL | | | | 91% of Americans surveyed with an annuity are confident about their retirement plans. Have you talked about adding the certainty of protected monthly income for life to your plan? | | | Learn How To Start a Conversation | | | | Stabbing at Popeyes: The authorities in Maryland are searching for an unidentified man who they say killed another man who cut in line for a chicken sandwich. | | | Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | Snapshot: Above center, Melpomeni Dina, 92, was reunited in Jerusalem with the two surviving members of the Jewish family she and her sisters helped escape from the Nazis. | | | Late-night comedy: “O.K., if that’s something you just remembered,” Seth Meyers said about Gordon Sondland’s reversed testimony, “just think of all the small stuff you’re forgetting. Somewhere, there’s a 40-year-old man still waiting to be picked up from soccer.” | | | What we’re reading: This essay in GQ-UK, by a reporter for The Times of London, who found a British girl in Syria who was an ISIS bride at 15. He reflects on “how his interview wrecked what was left of her life,” writes our national correspondent Ellen Barry. | | | David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. | | | Eat: Uogashi, in Manhattan’s Theater District, offers sushi that’s unusually good for the price. It’s a critic’s pick. | | | College football generates billions of dollars each year in the U.S. But the game looked very different 150 years ago. | | | Rutgers and Princeton, two New Jersey colleges, faced off in the first match on Nov. 6, 1869, in front of about 100 spectators. Each team had 25 men on the field, and the ball couldn’t be carried or thrown — players advanced by kicking or batting it with their hands and feet. | | | On the field in 1869. Rutgers University | | | The rules had been established a few years earlier by the London Football Association — meaning they were a lot closer to what the rest of the world would call football and Americans would call soccer. The game also featured elements of rugby. | | | The play was frantic and rough, and the men wore no padding or helmets. At one point, a distressed professor waved his umbrella and shouted, “You will come to no Christian end!” | | | Princeton had more muscle, but Rutgers was faster and better organized, according to an account in the Rutgers student newspaper. Rutgers won, 6-4. | | | A correction: Tuesday’s briefing misattributed a late-night comedy line. Jimmy Fallon made the joke about daylight saving time, not Jimmy Kimmel. | | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. | | Thank you
Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford provided the break from the news. Tom Wright-Piersanti wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
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