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National

The House Judiciary Committee heard the evidence behind the impeachment inquiry on Monday in a marathon nine-and-a-half hour hearing.

Why it matters: The committee is likely only days away from drafting formal articles of impeachment against President Trump — and this hearing was one of House Democrats' last chances to summarize their case against the president to the public.

The hearing saw much more parliamentary wrangling than past impeachment hearings — as Judiciary Republicans have attempted to use House rules during breaks in testimony to delay and stymie the proceedings.

The counsel for the House Intelligence Committee's Democrats, Daniel Goldman, laid out a lengthy, fact-based opening statement detailing why Trump should be impeached.

The counsel for the House Intelligence Committee's Republicans, Steve Castor, faced a sharp line of questioning over the minority's impeachment report, which argues that Trump did nothing wrong regarding Ukraine, and its representation of witness testimony during the impeachment hearings.

House Republicans, especially Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), argued that political donations to Democrats from Goldman and House Judiciary counsel Barry Berke undercut their testimony and cast it in a partisan light.

What's happening: Goldman presented the facts behind Intel Democrats' 300-page report, summarizing the committee's public and closed-door impeachment hearings on the Ukraine investigation.

Judiciary has heard from its own counsel, led by Berke.

The hearing has given Republicans an equal amount of time for their final public opportunity to rebut Democrats' case.

The White House has refused to participate in this hearing, as well as the larger impeachment inquiry.

Top Judiciary Republican says Democrats are "making up impeachment" as they go

Democrats' Judiciary counsel lays out the constitutional case for impeachment

GOP counsel says Democrats are impeaching Trump because they disagree with him

Democrats' Intel counsel summarizes the case for impeaching Trump in under 5 minutes

Fox News' Chris Wallace: Trump allegations are "far broader than the Clinton impeachment"

GOP's House Intel counsel grilled by Democrats over impeachment report

GOP House Intel counsel argues Democrats failed to enforce impeachment subpoenas

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler's opening statement

House Intel Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman's opening statement

House Intel Republican counsel Steve Castor's opening statement

How it's playing: Fox News' Chris Wallace said Monday that the Ukraine-linked allegations against President Trump are "far broader than the Clinton impeachment," calling them "an issue of foreign policy, national security."

The bottom line: This hearing is largely just a formality, as there is almost no doubt that Judiciary's Democrats will quickly move toward drafting articles of impeachment.

Axios' Alayna Treene reports that there are no other impeachment hearings scheduled for this week, per committee aides.

The articles are expected to be marked up in the next few days — with a full committee vote by the end of the week.

Read the impeachment report from House Intel's Democrats

Read the impeachment report from House Intel's Republicans

Trump-Ukraine scandal: The key players, dates and documents

House Judiciary Committee hears impeachment evidence

The committee is likely only days away from drafting formal articles of impeachment.

Politics

Donald Trump impeachment

Politics & Policy

Consulting firm McKinsey & Company will allow Mayor Pete Buttigieg to release the list of clients he served while working for the company from 2007 to 2010, the Buttigieg campaign confirmed Monday.

Why it matters: Buttigieg has faced increased scrutiny for his time at McKinsey, especially in light of reports that the powerful firm helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement find “detention savings opportunities,” among other controversial projects. Buttigieg, who says he was mostly "making a lot of spreadsheets and PowerPoints" during his short time at the company, had been blocked from discussing his clients by a confidentiality agreement.

The big picture: Buttigieg's work at the secretive firm has also put him at odds with 2020 rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who recently released her former client list from her time working in corporate and legal consulting. 

Buttigieg responded to pressure from Warren and others to be more "transparent" by vowing to make his future fundraisers open to the press and to release a list of the people who are fundraising for him.

Buttigieg also released a timeline of his work at McKinsey last Friday. The mayor claims he's "never worked on a project inconsistent with [his] values."

"[W]e recognize the unique circumstances presented by a presidential campaign. After receiving permission from the relevant clients, we have informed Mayor Buttigieg that he may disclose the identity of the clients he served while at McKinsey from 2007 to 2010. Any description of his work for those clients still must not disclose confidential, proprietary or classified information obtained during the course of that work, or violate any security clearance.

We can further confirm that the clients Mayor Buttigieg described in his statement on Friday, December 6 are all of the clients he served during his time at McKinsey."

Go deeper ... Podcast: Mayor Pete's McKinsey problem

McKinsey gives Buttigieg permission to release client list

Buttigieg had already released a timeline of his work at the company.

Pete Buttigieg

Media Trends

Axios Media Trends

With the help of a successful weekend showing of "Frozen 2," the Walt Disney Company has officially raked in more than $10 billion this year in box office sales, a new record.

Why it matters: Disney’s box office success this year is attributable in part to a years-long strategy to invest in major tentpole franchises, like Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars. Most of its biggest box office hits this year came from those three brands.

By the numbers: Disney has distributed seven of the top 10 movies this year by theater ticket sales. Six of those films have brought in more than $1 billion. 

These are the 2019 worldwide box office revenue totals, per Box Office Mojo:

Avengers: Endgame: $2,797,800,564 (Disney)

Spider-Man: Far from Home: $1,131,927,996 (Disney)

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw: $758,910,100 (Universal Pictures)

Ne Zha: $700,547,754 (Beijing Enlight Pictures)

Between the lines: Disney‘s success has prompted calls by anti-monopoly advocates for regulators to eye its box office dominance. Disney is expected to bring in roughly 40% of all box office revenues this year. 

Yes, but: While its studio strength was evaluated as part of its deal to acquire most of 21st Century Fox last year, its acquisition of Fox’s movie studio hasn’t been what has led to its theater dominance. 

20th Century Fox has underperformed as a studio this year.

The bottom line: Most of Disney's success at the box office in 2019 is attributable to the franchises it has acquired and built up over many years. 

What's next: Disney's dominance is particularly notable given the fact that its upcoming Star Wars film, "The Rise of Skywalker," has yet to be released.

Disney remains box office champion of animated films with Frozen 2 

New estimates show Disney spends more on content than Netflix 

Editor's note: This piece has been corrected to show that six of the seven Disney top-10 movies this year brought in more than $1 billion (not five).

Disney breaks $10 billion box office record

Disney has distributed seven of the top 10 movies this year by theater ticket sales.

Photo Illustration: Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Media

Disney

Business

Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

Economy

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

President Trump was the most tweeted about politician in 2019, according to data from Twitter. 

Why it matters: 6 of the top 10 most tweeted about politicians are Americans, even though the majority of Twitter's user base is international. 

By the numbers: Most tweeted about politicians globally:

Yes, but: Despite American politicians being popular on Twitter this year, the majority of the most tweeted about news hashtags were of international events:

#令和 (start of the Reiwa Era in Japan)

Go deeper: See the most talked about shows and athletes on Twitter in 2019

Trump is the most tweeted about politician globally in 2019

But the bulk of the most tweeted news hashtags were international events.

Donald Trump

Technology

Elon Musk

Social Media

Three U.S. administrations have, over 18 years, told the public the U.S. was making steady progress in Afghanistan despite knowing the war effort was failing.

Driving the news: The facts are laid bare in new reporting from Washington Post, based on 2,000 pages of interviews conducted by a government oversight agency to determine what went wrong in Afghanistan. The Post gained access to the documents after a three-year legal battle.

The big picture: Generals, diplomats and other top officials generally describe a war effort without a functional strategy, along with a corresponding PR effort to obscure the dysfunction and hide setbacks.

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing. What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking. … If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction. … Who will say this was in vain?”

Douglas Lute, a retired general and former Afghan war czar for Bush and Obama.

When George W. Bush said the U.S. would be in Afghanistan until al-Qaeda was “brought to justice,” the timeline he cited was “a month” to a “year or two.”

775,000 U.S. troops have been deployed to Afghanistan, many of them more than once, over 18 years of war. 2,300 died while 20,589 were wounded.

$934 billion to $978 billion was spent by the Pentagon and USAID in Afghanistan, with more spent by the CIA and other agencies.

$133 billion went into developing Afghanistan, exceeding the cost of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe (adjusted for inflation).

Opium production is spiking despite $8 billion spent to fight it. Afghanistan now contributes 82% of the world’s supply.

Just 35% of Americans think the war effort “mostly succeeded,” while 49% think it “mostly failed,” per Pew.

The interviews reviewed by the Post were conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) between 2014-2018. The subjects didn't expect them to become public.

Billions distributed to build up Afghanistan's economy created a political "kleptocracy" that has destroyed trust in the government and will plague Afghanistan for years to come.

The Afghan security forces trained by the U.S. to keep the peace as the U.S. pulls back are described as "incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters," per the Post.

There was political pressure to make U.S. initiatives like the Obama administration's troop surge look successful "despite hard evidence to the contrary."

The bottom line: So much of what the U.S. has attempted in Afghanistan has failed, and so much effort was made to keep the American people from knowing it.

U.S. and Taliban restart peace talks in Qatar

Americans tend to consider Afghanistan a failure

U.S. taxpayers have spent $6.4 trillion on post-9/11 conflicts

WaPo: American people misled for two decades over Afghanistan failures

Most Americans consider the war a failure.

The report covers failures across the Bush (L) and Obama administrations. Photo: Brendan SmialowskiI/AFP via Getty Images

World

Afghanistan

In his long-awaited report into the origins of the 2016 Russia probe, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found "serious performance failures" by some FBI officials, but ultimately concluded that the investigation was not tainted by political bias.

Justice Department inspector general concludes Russia probe was justified

The 476-page report finds some wrongdoing, but concludes the investigation had an "authorized purpose."

Axios

Monday's top stories

House Judiciary Committee hears impeachment evidence

McKinsey gives Buttigieg permission to release client list

Disney breaks $10 billion box office record

Trump is the most tweeted about politician globally in 2019

WaPo: American people misled for two decades over Afghanistan failures

Justice Department inspector general concludes Russia probe was justified

T-Mobile's fight for Sprint deal goes to court

The trade war is kind of working

World Anti-Doping Agency hands Russia four-year international sports ban

How rural Iowa defines electability

The carbon footprints of the rich and activist