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Walmart’s online sales were up 50 percent in Q3

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Video: Walmart is using aisle-roaming robots to keep its shelves stocked

Walmart delivered another blockbuster quarter fueled by strong online sales growth and an uptick in its food business. The Arkansas-based company said e-commerce sales surged 50 percent in the fiscal third quarter, while same-store sales were up 2.7 percent.

The world’s largest retailer has been pursuing a digitally focused growth strategy for the last year, which includes an aggressive push into online grocery and increased capital spending on digital supply chain capabilities and in-store technology.

Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon noted that a series of strategic initiatives paid off last quarter, including expanded online grocery pickup, and the launch of mobile express returns. McMillon also highlighted the company’s use of aisle-roaming robots to improve out-of-stock issues and price discrepancies in its stores.

McMillon said Walmart’s food business posted its strongest performance in quarterly comp sales in almost six years.

“Our associates are using technology and apps for inventory management and price changes that help make their jobs easier and increase productivity in the stores,” he said during a pre-recorded earnings call. “Store leverage is helping to allow our strategic investments in e-commerce to continue.”

“Existing customers have become advocates for popular initiatives like online grocery and free two day shipping, and as a result, new customers, suppliers and partnerships are coming to Walmart.”

As for the numbers, Walmart reported net income of $1.75 billion, or 58 cents a share. Revenue climbed 4.2 percent, to $123.18 with non-GAAP earnings of $1 a share. Analysts expected revenue of $121 billion and earnings of 97 cents a share. Shares of Walmart were up nearly 9 percent in early trading.

Looking to the full year, Walmart is expected non-GAAP earnings per share ranging from $4.38 to $4.46, up from its previous forecast for $4.30 to $4.40 a share Wall Street is expecting $4.38 a share on revenue of $496 billion.

“We expect top line growth going forward to be led more by comp sales and e-commerce with less emphasis on new units in the U.S.,” Walmart CFO Brett Biggs said on the earnings call. “We’re prioritizing e-commerce, technology, supply chain and store remodels over new stores and clubs.”

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Bill Signals GOP Prioritizes Corporate Tax Cuts

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The tax plans have evolved rapidly since House leaders first introduced their bill at the beginning of the month. Amendments in the Ways and Means Committee restored some cherished tax breaks that had been targeted for elimination, including those for adoptive parents, and expanded the bill’s tax breaks for owners of businesses that are not organized as traditional corporations.

The Senate bill differed from the House version when it was introduced last week, and broke further away on Tuesday night, with a package of amendments that included repealing the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that most individuals buy health insurance. To comply with procedural rules that would allow Republicans to pass the bill on a party-line vote in the Senate, the amendment also set an expiration date — Dec. 31, 2025 — on all the individual tax cuts in the legislation.

In light of those changes, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation projected on Thursday that Americans earning $30,000 or less would see their taxes increase, as a group, beginning in 2021, if the Senate bill becomes law, apparently as a function of the mandate repeal driving fewer Americans to claim tax subsidies for insurance.

The committee also projected that Americans earning $75,000 or below would face large tax increases in 2027, after the individual tax cuts expire. When only looking at individual’s tax bills — and not the effects of corporate taxes on individual’s incomes — the committee said Americans at all income levels would see tax increases in 2027, compared to what they would have been if the Senate bill had not passed.

The Senate and House plans also differ on their treatment of state and local tax deductions. The Senate would kill them entirely. The House would maintain them only for property taxes and cap the deduction at $10,000 a year. Economists generally say that those tax breaks are inefficient. But eliminating them, in the context of the House bill, would add up to a large geographic transfer of income, according to research by Carl Davis, the research director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington.

The House bill would raise personal taxes on Californians and New Yorkers by a combined $16 billion in 2027, Mr. Davis found, while cutting personal taxes on Texans and Floridians by more than $30 billion in total.

His analysis finds so-called red states, which Mr. Trump carried in 2016, would receive more than twice as much in personal tax benefits under the plan than the blue states won by Democrat Hillary Clinton, when adjusting for the size of each state’s economy. Only one red state — Utah — would receive lower personal tax benefits under the bill than would be expected, given how much it contributes to the national income; the average blue state, by contrast, would receive lower benefits than expected.

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“It’s not unusual for a tax bill to have varying impacts in different parts of the country,” Mr. Davis said. “But the degree to which this bill makes winners and losers out of different states is remarkable.”

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Curtailing state and local deductions helps finance a core feature of both the House and Senate bills, which happens to be one of the few provisions Mr. Trump has called nonnegotiable in tax discussions: cutting the corporate income tax to a flat 20 percent rate, down from a top rate of 35 percent today. Republicans have kept those cuts permanent, even as the Senate applied an expiration date to the individual cuts and to a key tax credit for families preserved in the House bill. The Senate bill also sets an expiration date on breaks for so-called pass-through businesses, whose owners pay taxes on profits through the tax code for individuals.

In Washington, Republicans have stressed that cutting corporate taxes will supercharge economic growth, accelerating job creation and raising wages in the process. By that theory, making such cuts permanent is essential.

The gamble is apparent. Polls show that voters want corporations to pay higher, not lower, taxes and that they doubt corporate rate cuts will show up in their own paychecks, as the White House has claimed. Perhaps not coincidentally, Republican leaders have pitched their bills largely as middle-class tax cuts, stressing the benefits for the typical American family during television appearances and news conferences.

“The policy expects that the corporate tax cuts will do the most for growth,” said Lanhee J. Chen, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, who was the policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012. “On the other hand, they’re the hardest to explain.”

It is an especially tricky explanation in the context of the requests Republicans are making of individual taxpayers, particularly the middle class, to trust that any benefits they see from the bills will not vanish over a decade. The Senate bill is scheduled to deliver an individual tax increase on 137 million tax filers in 2027 if Congress does not intervene first, according to calculations by Ernie Tedeschi, an economist at Evercore ISI. Liberals warn the shock would be huge for low- and middle-income families.

Republicans are “making a choice as to which elements of their plan are permanent,” said Jacob Leibenluft, a senior adviser at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former economic aide under President Barack Obama, “and I think it’s worth starting with taking them at face value.”

Canceling those looming increases would further add to the federal budget deficit, if the move is not paired with spending cuts. Middle-class families planning ahead can imagine two possible consequences from that decision: Either an immediate increase in their taxes eight years from now, or an explosion in federal budget deficits, which could necessitate spending cuts to safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare.

“The bill reflects talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time — neither of which is leading to good policy,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Republican leaders in both chambers have said that they will not allow individual tax breaks to expire — and that their corporate cuts will yield enough growth and additional tax revenue to pay for themselves, or at least come close. Ms. MacGuineas and others fear the opposite could be even more likely: that growth will fall far short of those optimistic projections, and when the expiring tax provisions come up for reauthorization, budget deficits will be swelling. The result, they say, would be more hard choices — and predictable ones.

Correction: November 16, 2017

An earlier version of this article misstated the expiration date of individual tax cuts proposed in the Senate tax overhaul plan. The cuts would expire on Dec. 31, 2025, not Dec 25, 2025.

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The Health 202: Here’s how a rollback of key Obamacare element could stymie the law’s full repeal

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THE PROGNOSIS

It’s hard to count just how many times the train to repeal the Affordable Care Act has started — and then stopped — this year. Now it’s moving again, but this time down a very narrow track to eliminate only the law’s individual mandate to buy coverage.

Senate Republicans announced yesterday that they’re including a repeal of the individual mandate in the tax bill currently being debated in the Finance Committee — and indicated they may have the 50 votes they’d need to pass the whole thing the week after Thanksgiving (see my colleague Tory Newmyer’s write up in today’s The Finance 202). Although party leaders were deeply reluctant to insert the political hot potato of Obamacare into the tax debate, President Trump has heavily pressured the GOP to include it, desperate for something he can dub a health-care “win” during his first year in office.

Trump’s tweets in recent days:

And so it materialized. “We’re optimistic that inserting the individual mandate repeal would be helpful” to the tax effort, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters yesterday after the weekly GOP lunch, my colleagues Mike DeBonis and Damian Paletta report.

Republicans think they’ve finally landed on an Obamacare repeal approach that won’t prompt massive public pushback. They’re well aware that a majority of Americans dislike the individual mandate. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this morning, 55 percent of respondents said they’d like it erased as part of a GOP tax plan. And now GOP lawmakers are characterizing repeal of the mandate as a tax cut for poor and middle-class Americans, arguing that the penalty for being uninsured is predominantly paid by folks in lower income brackets.

Mike heard from No. 3 Senate Republican John Thune (R-S.D.), who also said the bipartisan deal struck between Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Patty Murray (Wash.) to fund cost-sharing reductions will be part of the deal:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had pushed hard to include mandate repeal in the tax overhaul, said this:

Yet even if the public likes the idea of ditching the mandate, insurers, doctors and hospitals certainly don’t. The entire ACA basically hinges on requiring everyone, including the young and healthy, to buy coverage in order to create balanced risk pools that benefit even the sickest patients, several top associations argued in a letter to congressional leadership yesterday.

“There will be serious consequences if Congress simply repeals the mandate while leaving the insurance reforms in place: millions more will be uninsured or face higher premiums, challenging their ability to access the care they need,” America’s Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and three other groups wrote.

Vox’s Sarah Kliff:

The New York Times’s Margot Sanger-Katz:

It goes without saying that Democrats are not pleased. Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.):

Here’s another question. If Republicans ultimately repeal the individual mandate as part of a tax overhaul, does that close the book on future attempts to repeal the remaining 99 percent of the ACA that remains law? On one hand, it’s hard to imagine lawmakers returning to their Obamacare repeal effort in 2018 — an election year — after they crashed and burned on several efforts this year. Yet Trump has continued promising that the votes are nearly there and that Republicans will ultimately be successful.

Let’s assume for a minute that Republicans do try again to repeal the ACA next year, but now the law doesn’t include the individual mandate. This could make the task simultaneously more and less difficult: It would be harder to pay for an Obamacare replacement but also make it appear that coverage losses are less severe. Let me explain:

1. By repealing the individual mandate in the tax bill, lawmakers would be using up savings that could have been applied to future GOP health-care bills.

The Congressional Budget Office says that repealing the mandate would save the federal government quite a lot of money because fewer people would buy coverage and therefore access pricey premium subsidies. Getting rid of the mandate would save $338 billion over a decade, the CBO said in an updated estimate released just last week.

The savings were a huge plus for Republicans as they tried to push health-care bills through the House and the Senate over the spring and summer that would have repealed the ACA’s taxes. Even though those bills dramatically scaled back Medicaid and subsidy spending, Republicans still needed a way to pay for retaining some of the ACA’s marketplace benefits.

2. Repealing the mandate means more Americans will opt out of coverage. Which means future GOP health-care bills — specifically, how many people would be left uninsured under them — might compare more favorably to the status quo.

It works like this: In its most recent estimate, the CBO said that 13 million Americans will choose to buy health coverage over a decade simply because there’s a mandate to do so. Get rid of the mandate, and 13 million fewer people would be covered by 2027.

A big reason the CBO said both the House and Senate bills would result in 22 million fewer Americans getting coverage is due to their elimination of the mandate — both measures would have rescinded the penalty for being uninsured, so far fewer people would buy coverage. Republicans were often forced on the defense with this number, which Democrats cited constantly as they fought the repeal- and-replace efforts.

But if the mandate has already been repealed in a tax revamp, it would change the underlying baseline and a future Republicans health-care bill might get scored as causing, say, only 9 or 10 million Americans losing coverage relative to current law. And that could make it somewhat less hard for Republicans to sell the changes to the American public, which has deeply disliked their health-care proposals up until now.

Of course, none of this is to say that repeal of the mandate will ultimately be included in a final tax overhaul signed by Trump. Its inclusion is forcing Republicans to again grapple with their own internal divisions over health care.

The problem is particularly acute in the Senate (though House Republicans are also balking, and the measure isn’t part of the draft they intend to pass on Thursday). In the upper chamber, Republicans hold a 52-seat majority and can lose no more than three votes with Vice President Pence serving as a tie-breaker. That margin could get narrower if they forfeit the Alabama Senate seat for which controversial Republican Roy Moore is still running.

Sen. Susan Collin, a moderate Maine Republicane, expressed concerns about the strategy, per CNN’s Lauren Fox:

Yet Collins and two other important Senate moderates haven’t ruled it out, per Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis:

Vox’s Dylan Scott:

Things got a little dramatic yesterday, per NBC News’s Benjy Sarlin:

Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) speaks to reporters before the Democrats and Republicans face off in the annual Congressional Baseball Game in June. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)

AHH: Is repealing the individual mandate enough to convince House conservatives to also vote for a tax overhaul that funds extra Obamacare subsidies? Maybe not, the Washington Examiner’s Robert King reports. In order to garner moderate support, the mandate repeal would have to ride along with a compromise to extend subsidies for low-income Americans crafted by Alexander and Murray. But conservatives perceive the CSR payments, which were halted by the Trump administration, as a “bailout” for Obamacare insurers.

“Some Republicans remained vociferously opposed to the deal that funds Obamacare insurer payments for two years,” Robert writes.

“I don’t see that as something we are gonna take up right now,” said Rep. Mark Walker, chairman of the 170-member Republican Study Committee. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) said he supports repealing the mandate but not extending the subsidies, though he said he would wait to see a final package.

Other Republicans told Robert they’d give the Alexander-Murray deal a second look if it’s coupled with repeal of the individual mandate. “It would make me think more positively in that direction,” said Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn). “Obviously there is some cost to the cost-sharing arrangement, but I would take a look at that.”

Politico’s Jake Sherman framed the dilemma well:

The Congressional Budget Office hallways on the 4th floor of the Ford House Office Building. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

OOF: The House GOP’s tax plan could trigger $25 billion in Medicare cuts next year, the CBO said yesterday in a letter to No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). The agency said that the tax package, which adds up to $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, would set off automatic cuts as required by the 2010 pay-as-you-go law, affectionately known as “PayGo,” which says that any new legislation cannot collectively increase estimated deficits over the five or 10-year budget window.

Unless lawmakers vote to waive the PayGo law, the Trump administration would have to make across-the-board cuts to mandatory spending programs — such as Medicare, Roll Call reports. Or, Congress could instead pass subsequent legislation to offset the deficit increase from tax cuts.

But if lawmakers don’t take either route, the Office of Management and Budget would be required to issue a sequestration order within 15 days to reduce 2018 spending by a total of $136 billion, CBO wrote to Hoyer. The CBO noted that PayGo law limits Medicare cuts to 4 percent, which would total $25 million. That would leave $111 billion to be sequestered from other nonexempt programs.

Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) participates in the House GOP leadership press conference in September. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

OUCH: Yesterday, 44 attorneys general asked Congress to repeal a law that effectively strips the Drug Enforcement Administration of potent weapons against large drug companies that have allowed hundreds of millions of pain pills to spill onto the black market, The Post’s Lenny Bernstein and Scott Higham report.

The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” revealed in a joint investigation last month that an early version of the law — which Congress approved by unanimous consent in 2016 — had been written by a drug industry lawyer and shepherded through the House by Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) for two years. Two days after the media reports, Marino withdrew his nomination to be the nation’s next drug czar.

“The Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act neither safeguards patient access to medication nor allows for effective drug enforcement efforts,” the bipartisan group of attorneys general wrote. “We urge you to repeal the act so that the public is protected and drug manufacturers and distributors may be held accountable for their actions.”

But Marino defended the legislation, noting that it was rewritten by a bipartisan collection of senators and signed by President Obama.

“This carefully crafted legislation was put together the way Americans want to see the process operate: transparent and with both parties working together to solve a complex problem,” he said in a statement. “We must balance the needs of patients — particularly those at end of life who sometimes find access to medicine a desperate challenge — and the needs of law enforcement.”

President Trump has insisted that it’s mental health — not gun control — that was behind the recent shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex. that left 26 people dead. “I think mental health is your problem here,” Trump said at a news conference in Tokyo earlier this month. “This isn’t a guns situation.” Yet the president has proposed hefty cuts to mental health care in his 2018 budget proposal and in other positions he’s taken over the past year, Axios reports. Some highlights:

  • Trump’s 2018 budget would cut the mental health services block grant 23 percent.
  • It would cut a combined $625 million from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
  • Trump supports repealing the ACA, which includes mental health coverage as an “essential health benefit.”
  • A repeal of the ACA would also limit the expansion of Medicaid, which helps to fund mental health coverage.
  • Earlier this year, Trump reversed an Obama-era regulation making it harder for people with mental illnesses to buy a gun. The rule required the inclusion in the national background check database of people receiving Social Security checks for mental illness and people deemed mentally unfit to handle their own finances. 

Alex Azar, Trump’s pick to lead HHS. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

–Democrats are responding to Trump’s nomination of Alex Azar to lead the Department of Health and Human Services by pushing the administration to lower drug prices, which was promised during his campaign. They’re focusing on Azar’s past work for Eli Lilly and Co. as a senior executive. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called the Azar nomination a “slap in the face to millions of Americans who are waiting on POTUS to take action to lower drug prices:”

Cummings reminded that he and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent letters to the Justice Department about Eli Lily’s insulin prices last year.

From Sanders:

Cummings told the Washington Examiner that he wants to meet with Azar in an effort to move forward on slashing drug prices.

–Top Finance Committee Democrat Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) — whose committee will consider Azar’s nomination — signaled drug prices would be part of the hearings, and vowed he would “closely scrutinize Mr. Azar’s record and ask for his commitment to faithfully implement the Affordable Care Act and take decisive, meaningful action to curtail the runaway train of prescription drug costs.”

“It ups the ante in terms of showing how he will be independent, how he would be specific in controlling costs,” Wyden said, per the Examiner.

In a remote northern village within Central Africa, a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researches the monkeypox virus in August. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

–Our colleague Lena H. Sun tells the story of how she was able to travel to the Congo Republic earlier this year with CDC scientists studying monkeypox, a rare and fatal disease. By accompanying them to a remote village deep inside the Congo rainforest, reachable only by boat, Lena was able to write her firsthand report on how monkeypox is spreading rapidly across Africa.

“I’ve tried to get permission for years to accompany scientists tracking disease outbreaks. The answer has always been no,” Lena writes. “This time, the CDC and the Congolese health ministry said yes, with the condition that we report only on the scientists’ investigation. The CDC had already been to the Congo Republic twice earlier in the year to help with monkeypox investigations. CDC officials had developed a good relationship with the government, and when they asked whether we could be part of the team, Congolese officials agreed. Officials felt like there was a good story to tell and that we could safely be included.”

“The biologists were looking for monkeypox in wild animals to figure out which species harbor the virus. Contact with wild animals is how human outbreaks start, and then the virus can spread from person to person. There’s been an increase in reports of suspected human cases across Africa, including in Congo,” Lena continues. “Many of those suspected cases trace back to the village of Manfouete. We camped there for several days with the CDC and their Congolese and international partners as they trapped and sampled animals in the surrounding forest.”

Lena adds that many readers, friends and colleagues saw her initial story and wanted to know more. She answers some of their biggest questions here.

A demonstrator opposed to the Senate Republican health-care bill holds a sign that reads “I Stand With Planned Parenthood.” (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

–Signaling a possible probe into whether Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal tissue, the FBI has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee for unredacted documents it obtained from abortion providers, the Hill reports. Late last year, the panel had referred Planned Parenthood and several other groups to the FBI for investigation after it looked into transfers of fetal tissue, prompted by a series of undercover videos by antiabortion activist David Daleiden.

“[Sen. Charles E.] Grassley said at the time that his committee had uncovered enough evidence in its final investigative report to show abortion providers had transferred tissue and body parts from aborted fetuses to firms for use in research by charging dollar amounts above their actual costs,” John Solomon writes. “Abortion providers are allowed under a 1993 law to transfer fetal tissue for research at a cost equal to the price of obtaining it, but are not allowed to sell it at a profit.”

The Justice Department declined to comment, saying it doesn’t confirm or deny whether an investigation is taking place. Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Dana Singiser said the accusations are “baseless and are part of a widely discredited attempt to end access to reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has never, and would never, profit while facilitating its patients’ choice to donate fetal tissue for use in important medical research,” Singiser said.

A few more good reads from The Post and around the Internet:

Today

  • Advocates for Opioid Recovery Collaborative for Effective Prescription Opioid Policies hold an event.
  • The Cato Institute holds an event on liberating telemedicine with Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) described incidents of sexual harassment in Congress at a House Administration Committee hearing, including one by an unnamed “member who is here now:”

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) outlined three steps to stop harassment before the House Administration Committee:

Watch Sessions’s House Judiciary testimony, in three minutes:

Stephen Colbert on Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee:

Zimbabwe’s military takes over country, says President Mugabe is ‘safe’

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HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s military took control of the country early Wednesday and detained its longtime leader, President Robert Mugabe, capping a political showdown over Mugabe’s apparent attempts to install his wife as his successor.

In a televised announcement after armored vehicles and troops rolled into the capital, Harare, a general insisted that it was “not a military takeover.”

Despite the assurances, the events bore all the hallmarks of a coup, with military vehicles stationed around the city, the army taking over the television station and a uniformed general issuing a statement warning that “criminals” in Mugabe’s regime were being targeted.

Army Gen. Constantino Chiwenga made the move as a struggle over who will succeed the country’s increasingly frail 93-year-old leader came to a head. Mugabe has ruled since he led the country to independence from white minority rule in 1980.

Mugabe is one of the oldest and longest-ruling leaders to come out of Africa’s struggle against co­lo­ni­al­ism and the emergence of new nations across the continent. His rule, however, has also become increasingly erratic, and he is blamed by many for devastating the once-prosperous country.

“We wish to make it abundantly clear that this is not a military takeover,” said the statement read by Maj. Gen. Sibusiso Moyo. “We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country.”

[How Zimbabwe’s Mugabe clung to power for nearly 40 years]

The fate of Mugabe and his wife, 52-year-old Grace Mugabe, who increasingly looked set to succeed him, was unclear, but they appeared to be in military custody.

“Mugabe and his family are safe and sound, and their security is guaranteed,” said Moyo. An armored vehicle blocked the road in front of Mugabe’s offices Wednesday as a large number of soldiers milled around.

South African President Jacob Zuma, who is sending high-level envoys to Harare, said he spoke to Mugabe and that he is “fine” — albeit confined to his home.

But the military remained tight-lipped about further details on Mugabe, his wife or other members of his party who have been arrested.

“We are not saying these names now,” said Overson Mugwisi, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Defense Forces. At least one senior official, Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, was taken from his home by soldiers, according to one of his aides. Gunfire was exchanged between the troops and the minister’s security guards.

World leaders said they were monitoring the situation, with British Prime Minister Theresa May calling it “fluid.” Her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, added that “nobody wants simply to see the transition from one unelected tyrant to a next.” Zimbabwe is a former British colony.

For decades, Mugabe boosted a reputation as an unwavering critic of many Western policies and international institutions. His supporters further hailed him for moves such as dismantling white-owned estates and other holdings.

[Grace Mugabe’s power grab ended up backfiring]

Yet he also was reviled as a despot who brutally crushed dissent and allowed the once-envied country to sink into a cycle of deepening poverty and stratospheric inflation.

Overnight, witnesses reported armored vehicles and soldiers moving around the city along with sounds of gunfire and explosions. By morning, soldiers in armored vehicles controlled major intersections near government buildings.

On the streets of Harare, the news of the military takeover appeared to be greeted with cautious optimism after years of increasingly unsteady rule by Mugabe.

“We are happy that we are going to have another leader,” said a man in Harare’s Chitungwiza neighborhood who gave his name as Yemurai. “Even if it’s going to be another dictator, we accept a new one. Look, we are jobless, hungry and poverty stricken. All we want is something different.” Like most people interviewed, he declined to be identified by his full name.

“This is a disaster,” said Baxon, from the Glen View area. “Solving one problem by creating another. We don’t want another war, but it seems we are headed that way. We have heard there are people in the army not in agreement with what Chiwenga did.”

Victor Matemadanda, secretary general of the powerful War Veterans Association, thanked Chiwenga for intervening and said Mugabe should be dismissed.

“We will be recalling President Robert Mugabe as the first secretary of the party and the head of state for the crimes he has committed,” he said in a fiery news conference.

In Harare’s central business district, local residents said all seemed normal, as itinerant vendors took advantage of the many closed businesses to sell their wares at intersections.

“Army steps in”, said the headline in Harare’s Chronicle newspaper. Underneath was a separate story suggesting a muted reaction on the streets: “Business as usual around Zimbabwe.”

Police and plainclothes agents normally stationed around the parliament building could be seen sitting on the ground, apparently under watch by armed soldiers. Local media reported that several members of the ZANU-PF ruling party have been detained by the military, including cabinet ministers.

[Booing Mugabe’s wife can bring arrest in Zimbabwe]

Across the country, people exchanged frantic text messages asking for updates, debating whether Mugabe had finally been toppled.

Political analyst Mike Mavura said it was important for the military to say this was not a coup for reasons of international legitimacy.

“We are not in the 1960s and 1970s anymore, when coups in Africa were left, right and center — I think they are trying very hard to appear progressive,” he told The Washington Post. “However, of interest to democracy, the elections scheduled for next year, will they take place?”

Zimbabwe’s political crisis reached a boiling point last week with the dismissal of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, clearing the way for Mugabe’s wife, also a vice president, to succeed him.

Mugabe told supporters he had dismissed Mnangagwa for disloyalty and disrespect, as well as using witchcraft to take power.

The move exacerbated divisions in the ZANU-PF party, where the youth faction is firmly on Grace Mugabe’s side, while the older veterans of the struggle against white rule look to Mnangagwa.

At one point last month, Grace Mugabe even warned that supporters of Mnangagwa were planning their own coup.

[Gallery: Scenes in Zimbabwe as military takes control]

Mnangagwa, who fled to neighboring South Africa, has strong support with the military, and Chiwenga, the army chief, threatened Monday to “step in” to stop the purge of Mnangagwa’s supporters. The military was once a key pillar of Mugabe’s rule.

The party’s website later reported that Mnangagwa was back in the country and would be taking over leadership of the party.

Political commentator Maxwell Saungweme said by phone that the military will probably try to pressure Mugabe to step down in favor of Mnangagwa as acting president.

“But this plan may not pan out as Mugabe might resist this. So the whole thing may be messy,” he warned.

Didymus Mutasa, a former presidential affairs minister who was fired by Mugabe in 2014, hoped that the military takeover would “help us start on a democratic process.”

Zimbabwe was once a wealthy breadbasket for the whole region, but its economy and especially the prosperous agriculture sector has suffered in recent years. The currency has collapsed, and at one point the country was experiencing devastating hyperinflation with denominations of the Zimbabwe dollar counted in the trillions.

Meanwhile, Mugabe was seen as being increasingly under the influence of his wife, who was also known as “Gucci Grace” for the rumored extravagance of her foreign shopping trips.

In recent weeks, there have been signs of an increased sensitivity to criticism. Four people were detained for booing Grace Mugabe at a rally, and an American woman was arrested for allegedly tweeting insulting comments about Mugabe.

Grace Mugabe was also sought by South African authorities in August after a local model accused her of assault and battery.

Schemm reported from Addis Ababa, Ethi­o­pia. Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

An American was just jailed in Zimbabwe for mean tweets about Mugabe

Zimbabwe created a new ministry to monitor social media

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The clear timeline suggesting Donald Trump Jr. coordinated with WikiLeaks

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Donald Trump, Jr. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

On Oct. 14, 2016, Mike Pence took to Fox News and flat-out denied that the Trump campaign was “in cahoots” with WikiLeaks. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” the Republican vice-presidential nominee said.

Turns out Pence’s answer was pretty far from the truth.

We’ve just learned that Donald Trump Jr. exchanged Twitter messages with WikiLeaks around the same time Pence denied the campaign was “in cahoots” with WikiLeaks. And communications Trump Jr. had with WikiLeaks appeared to lead to at least one concrete action. In fact, the same morning Pence lodged his denial — and two days after a request from WikiLeaks — Trump Jr. did exactly as WikiLeaks had recommended and tweeted a specific link.

In response to the Atlantic breaking this story on Monday, Trump Jr. shared what he says were all of his messages with WikiLeaks on Monday night.

Below is a timeline breaking it all down.

Sept. 20: WikiLeaks sends its first direct messages to Trump Jr., sharing a password it discovered for a new anti-Trump PAC’s website, putintrump.org.

Sept. 21: Trump Jr. responds by saying, “Off the record I don’t know who that is but I’ll ask around. Thanks.”

Oct. 3: WikiLeaks inquires about getting the Trump campaign’s help to push a story about Hillary Clinton allegedly suggesting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be droned. Trump Jr. says the campaign “already did that earlier today.” He then asks about a rumored “Wednesday leak I keep reading about.” WikiLeaks doesn’t respond.

Oct. 12 8:31 a.m.: WikiLeaks suggests Trump Jr. promote its leaked Democratic documents: “Hey Donald, great to see you and your dad talking about our publications. Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us wlsearch.tk.” WikiLeaks suggests tweeting the link will get Trump supporters to dig through the hacked emails to find things the media had missed.

Oct. 12 9:46 a.m.:

Oct. 14 morning: Pence denies the campaign is working with WikiLeaks.

Fox News host Steve Doocy: “Some have suggested on the left that it’s all this bad stuff about Hillary, nothing bad about Trump — that your campaign is in cahoots with WikiLeaks.”

Pence: “Nothing could be further from the truth. All of us have had concerns about WikiLeaks over the years, and it’s just a reality of American life today and of life in the wider world.”

Oct. 14 9:34 a.m.:

(Note: The web address in this tweet is identical to the one WikiLeaks recommended two days earlier, including the lack of an “http://”)

It’s worth noting here that Trump had been talking about WikiLeaks even shortly before his Oct. 12 tweet. Here’s what he tweeted just the day before:

WikiLeaks’s Oct. 12 message to Trump Jr. also noted how the candidate had been talking about it (“great to see you and your dad talking about our publications”). So it’s possible the juxtaposition of Trump Sr.’s Oct. 12 tweet and the WikiLeaks message to Trump Jr. is just a coincidence. But if you look at what Trump Jr. tweeted two days later, it’s basically precisely what WikiLeaks had suggested.

It’s worth noting that in other cases, Trump Jr. didn’t respond to WikiLeaks or didn’t take its advice. For example, WikiLeaks at one point suggested the Trump campaign leak “one or more” of Trump’s tax returns. But at the very least, Trump Jr. exchanged messages talking about campaign strategy with WikiLeaks, which has been linked to the Russian government and which American intelligence says was used to disseminate emails hacked by Russia. Trump Jr. clearly asks for inside information about leaks that might be coming from WikiLeaks.

The other big question here, beyond the Trump campaign appearing to coordinate with an alleged cut-out for the Kremlin, is Pence’s denial. It is complete and unmistakable, and it has now been directly contradicted. The whole thing harks back to when Pence wrongly denied that Michael Flynn had discussed sanctions with Russia’s ambassador after the 2016 election. Yet again, Pence offered a blanket denial that he shouldn’t have.

The totality of the messages yet again call into serious question the Trump campaign and White House’s denials of coordination with unsavory characters and even, by extension, Russia. And unlike that June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer, in this case this coordination appeared to lead to a specific strategic action. The question from there is how directly WikiLeaks is linked to the Russian government.

Congress yet to act on flawed anti-harassment system

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Senators in both parties are touting their move last week to require sexual harassment training for all members and aides.

What they don’t mention is that many Senate offices already required training or were moving toward it — and that their vote did nothing to reform a system for handling complaints that critics say deters victims from coming forward.

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Now, some lawmakers are fighting to ensure that the Senate’s unanimous approval of mandatory training doesn’t make further reforms harder by offering political cover to members who would prefer to move on. Bipartisan talks on an overhaul of the Capitol’s harassment policy, which critics in and out of Congress say is stacked against victims, remain in their early stages.

“It’s a really important conversation that the country is having” about harassment, said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who’s waged underdog battles for GOP support to beef up sexual assault protections in the military and on campus.

“But I also believe it’s the tip of the iceberg,” she said in an interview. “There’s not a clear recognition about how pervasive this is in society.”

Gillibrand and a handful of other senators are vowing to make the harassment training requirement — which the House has yet to approve — the first step toward rooting out workplace misconduct in Congress. And they’re well aware that the issue is sensitive for an institution that reflexively protects its own.

Current rules require victims to submit to mediation and counseling before filing a complaint, a process that can stretch on for months while they remain at work with the alleged perpetrator of harassing behavior. Gillibrand is working on her own proposal set for release this week, with Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) taking the lead in the House, to streamline what harassment victims say is a stressful and difficult system for handling complaints on the Hill.

She’s not alone. Aides working on the issue said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a chief author of the 1995 law that first required Congress to follow federal workplace standards, has taken a personal interest in a stronger harassment policy. An aide said Grassley is also examining broader changes to the system for handling harassment complaints.

And Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who shepherded the mandatory harassment training plan to its quick passage last week, is keeping the issue going through her post as top Democrat on the Rules Committee.

“The Senate should continue to examine how harassment claims are handled to ensure we support victims in our effort to make clear that harassment of any kind is not and will not be tolerated in the Senate,” Klobuchar said in a statement to POLITICO. “This was simply a first step.”

Klobuchar has formed a bipartisan working group of committee members to help shape a broader proposal that would make filing a claim and going through dispute resolution easier for harassment victims, a Democratic aide said.

The sexual assault allegations that have rocked Roy Moore’s Senate bid appear to have helped speed the measure requiring training for aides and senators through the upper chamber. And now some aides privately hope that the Alabama scandal can keep lending momentum to shift the Hill’s harassment policy.

The House will begin its own debate on updated workplace misconduct rules at an Administration Committee hearing on Tuesday, with Speier set to testify alongside Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), a former employment attorney.

Speier plans to use her testimony to describe mandatory training as the “easiest step” for lawmakers to take and “to reiterate that reform to the complaint process is what is really going to change things,” according to a spokeswoman. A longtime advocate for stronger harassment standards on the Hill, Speier recently shared her own story of getting forcibly kissed by a superior during her years as a congressional aide as the social media-driven movement known as #metoo began raising awareness of the issue.

Gillibrand and Speier’s bill would make sweeping changes to the rules that the Hill’s Office of Compliance currently uses to handle harassment complaints. The legislation would remove the requirement that victims go through mediation before filing a complaint and create a confidential adviser within the compliance office to help victims through the process.

The Democratic women’s proposal also is expected to require public disclosure of congressional offices that are the subject of complaints and have negotiated a settlement from the fund that the compliance office uses to compensate victims, according to Speier’s office. In addition, the bill is set to remove the requirement that harassment victims sign a nondisclosure agreement in order to start mediation or receive a settlement from the compliance office’s fund, which is paid for by taxpayers.

From fiscal 2012 through February of this year, the compliance office’s fund paid out $2.9 million to settle 69 Hill harassment cases, according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO. However, those settlements cover multiple types of workplace misconduct settlements, and specific data covering the cost of resolving sexual harassment complaints are not publicly available.

While the allegations against Moore and accused harassers in Hollywood and the media keep a national spotlight on the issue, Gillibrand, Klobuchar and Speier are optimistic about being able to seize the moment to push through further changes. No Republican co-sponsor has yet emerged for a broader harassment bill, but Speier’s office said she is reaching out to Reps. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.) and Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine), early backers of her proposal to require harassment training in the House.

“Sexual harassment goes far beyond the cases you read in the headlines,” Klobuchar said. “It’s a widespread problem that affects too many men and women in too many places, professions and industries — including the United States Congress, where we have an obligation to set an example of conduct and policies to the country.”

Gillibrand agreed that “we have a lot of work left to do.”

“No one reform is going to change everything,” she said, “but we have to at least keep trying.”

Jeff Sessions Is Testifying About Russia Contacts in House

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“I had no recollection of this meeting until I saw these news reports,” Mr. Sessions said.

Mr. Sessions testified Tuesday that was still hazy on the details about what Mr. Papadopoulos had proposed.

But on one matter, he said his memory is clear: he said he shot down Mr. Papadopoulos’ idea of a Trump-Putin meet-up. And he said he told Mr. Papadopoulos that he was not authorized to represent the campaign in such discussions.

Mr. Sessions is in the hot seat over Russia — again.

Mr. Sessions has twice told lawmakers under oath that as a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, he did not communicate with Russians to aid Mr. Trump’s candidacy, nor did he know of other members of the campaign who had.

His challenge on Tuesday will be to try to square those comments with recent revelations that at least one member of the campaign’s foreign policy council, which Mr. Sessions led, and another foreign policy adviser, had informed Mr. Sessions about their discussions with Russians at the time.

Mr. Sessions has already had his statements undercut once. After telling senators at his confirmation hearing in January that he had not had any contacts with Russians, it was revealed that Mr. Sessions held multiple meetings with a Russian ambassador during the campaign.

Now, Mr. Sessions must contend with comments he made last month, in another hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I did not, and I’m not aware of anyone else that did,” Mr. Sessions told senators when asked whether he believed members of the campaign had communicated with Russians.

Democrats on the committee put Mr. Sessions on alert in a letter last week, saying that they would want clarification on “inconsistencies” between those statements and those of the two campaign advisers, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, who have acknowledged having contact with Russians.

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“Under oath, knowing in advance that he would be asked about this subject, the Attorney General gave answers that were, at best, incomplete,” said Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat on the panel. “I hope the Attorney General can provide some clarification on this problem in his remarks today.”

The White House will have its eye on his performance.

The White House will be carefully watching Mr. Sessions’s performance. The attorney general has been in hot water with the president since he decided in March to recuse himself from all matters related to Russia, leaving him without control over the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian efforts to meddle in the election.

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Representative Robert Goodlatte, the committee’s Republican chairman, appeared to pile on when he said, “While I understand your decision to recuse yourself was an effort by you to do the right thing, I believe you, as a person of integrity, would have been impartial and fair in following the facts wherever they led.”

Any hiccups in Mr. Sessions’s testimony would most likely only make his problems at the White House worse.

Mr. Sessions will have to mind the partisan divide.

The House Judiciary Committee has a reputation as one of the most politically divided in Congress — and those differences are likely to be on plain display on Tuesday as both Republicans and Democrats wrestle with the sharp changes in policy at the Justice Department instituted under Mr. Sessions.

Republicans mostly approve of those changes.

“Under your leadership, the Justice Department has taken strides to mitigate the harms done in the prior Administration,” Mr. Goodlatte said. “I implore you to work with us to continue that trend.”

But Democrats will probably grill Mr. Sessions on the effects of curtailing the Obama-era enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, especially protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Republicans, on the other hand, are almost certain to press Mr. Sessions on the progress of investigations into potential leaks of classified information, which have tripled under his watch, and into the handling of the Hillary Clinton email case by the Obama Justice Department.

Debating a second special counsel

Republicans will be pleased that Mr. Sessions is coming with good news. On Monday, the Justice Department notified the committee that senior prosecutors were looking into whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the Obama administration’s decision to allow a Russian nuclear agency to buy Uranium One, a company that owned access to uranium in the United States. The department will also examine whether any donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to the approval.

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Republicans are investigating the matter themselves but have been clamoring for the department to get involved. On Tuesday, Mr. Goodlatte signaled his support but said again that he wanted the department to go farther and appoint a second special counsel. He also urged Mr. Sessions to let a special counsel investigate the Clinton email case.

“There are significant concerns that the partisanship of the F.B.I. and the department has weakened the ability of each to act objectively,” he said.

Democrats were incensed by the letter, which they said they did not receive. Mr. Conyers said the appointment of a new special counsel was merely to “cater to the President’s political needs.” He argued that there was not sufficient evidence to do so. And, he said, it smacked of “a banana republic.”

Then again, Mr. Sessions’s days at the department could be numbered.

The race to fill Mr. Sessions’s former Senate seat in Alabama has fallen into turmoil in recent days after five women accused the Republican nominee of misconduct when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Despite mounting accusations and calls by fellow Republicans, including the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, to step aside, the candidate, Roy S. Moore, has remained defiant.

That’s where Mr. Sessions comes in.

Two White House officials floated on Monday a scenario under consideration that would have Mr. Sessions either run for his old seat as a write-in candidate to challenge Mr. Moore or be appointed to it should Mr. Moore win and be immediately removed from office. Mr. McConnell is said to be supportive of the idea.

Though a long shot, the move could provide Republicans with a convenient — if awkward — solution to two issues: the prospect of Mr. Moore in the Senate and Mr. Trump’s frustration with Mr. Sessions. While Mr. Sessions remains extremely popular in the state, his relationship with Mr. Trump never really recovered after the attorney general’s recusal.

Matt Apuzzo contributed reporting.


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