President Donald Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., communicated with WikiLeaks over Twitter direct message during the 2016 presidential race, according to a report in The Atlantic published Monday. 

According to messages obtained by The Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe, Trump Jr. messaged with the WikiLeaks account between September 2016 and July 2017. The messages were given to congressional investigators probing whether Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russian officials to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. (Federal officials believe WikiLeaks published material, including emails from the Democratic National Committee’s servers, that had been obtained via Russian hackers.) 

The messages are mostly from WikiLeaks to the president’s son, but Trump Jr. did occasionally respond to the messages. The organization made multiple requests of Trump Jr., asking him to provide his father’s tax returns and suggesting the candidate refuse to concede if he lost the election to Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. (Trump Jr. didn’t respond to either message.)

On one occasion, Trump Jr. tweeted a link to a cache of leaked emails after the WikiLeaks account messaged it to him.

On another, WikiLeaks wrote it was happy to see the elder Trump mentioning the group on the campaign trail. Moments later, Trump tweeted about the organization. 

After Trump won the election, Wikileaks suggested that Trump should prod Australia to appoint the site’s founder, Julian Assange, ambassador to the United States.

Read the full story here.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment on the report. In a statement to The Atlantic, Trump Jr.’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, said, “We can say with confidence that we have no concerns about these documents and any questions raised about them have been easily answered in the appropriate forum.” 

Vice President Mike Pence, who in an Oct. 14, 2016, interview with Fox News claimed the campaign had not been in contact with WikiLeaks, said in a statement late Monday that he had not known about Trump Jr.’s messages.

“The vice president was never aware of anyone associated with the campaign being in contact with WikiLeaks,” said Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah. “He first learned of this news from a published report earlier tonight.”

Weeks before the election, asked if the campaign was “in cahoots” with WikiLeaks, Pence denied it. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “I think all of us have, you know, 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.”

Trump Jr. later tweeted copies of his messages with WikiLeaks:

Trump Jr. became embroiled in the Russia investigation after it was revealed he and other campaign officials met with a Kremlin-backed attorney in June 2016 who had promised damaging information about Clinton. Leaked emails  published by The New York Times show Trump Jr. arranged the meeting at Trump Tower in New York.  

“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” Trump Jr. said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, one of the congressional committees probing the campaign’s Russia ties, in September. 

He said the meeting did not lead to anything, and has denied colluding with the Russian government. 

Trump Jr. is expected to publicly testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

HuffPost’s S.V. Date contributed to this report. 

This has been updated to include a statement from Vice President Mike Pence.

Brie Larson’s new movie has already cooked up quite a bit of controversy among Indian internet users, who aren’t too happy with its portrayal of India. 

Twitter users have been dragging the trailer for romance musical “Basmati Blues,” which takes place in India and features Larson, a white actress, as the protagonist. 

People bashed the movie for perpetuating Indian stereotypes and casting a white actor in the lead role, reflecting the “white savior” cliche. 

The project was filmed years ago, but is only slated to open in India later this month, BuzzFeed points out. Larson plays Linda, a scientist whose company sends her to India to sell a genetically modified rice she created. But as more information is revealed about the harmfulness of her product, she decides to fight back against the agricultural company. 

Producers Monique Caulfield and Danny Baron released a statement following the deluge of criticism. Though the trailer mentions that Larson’s character “will fight for justice,” the producers said “Basmati Blues” is not about a white hero saving India. 

“We deeply regret any offense caused by the Basmati Blues trailer,” Caulfield and Baron said in the statement. “We have heard a number of voices that have understandably reacted to a trailer that is not representative of the film as a whole. Unfortunately, the international trailer has given the wrong impression of the film’s message and heart. This movie is not about an American going abroad to solve India’s problems. At its heart, this film is about two people who reach across cultures, fight against corporate greed, and find love.”

The producers insist the plot of the film in its entirety is respectful of Indian culture. However people across Twitter have already had it with the trailer. Some pointed out how the movie stings, especially considering India’s history of colonialism.

Others noted that the film completely exoticizes Indian culture and does not accurately portray the country. 

Others wondered how, in this day and age, a movie with Indian stereotypes could be released. 

And some definitely don’t plan on watching the movie. 

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. — The Nazis were running late.

It was the last weekend of October, and they had rallies planned. But there was some confusion over where to park in Shelbyville, a town of 16,000 in horse country south of Nashville. And it took some time to gear up: the shields and WWII-era helmets, the “White Lives Matter” signs, the Dixie flags draped over the shoulders just so. The prayer came next.

Finally, Michael Tubbs — an imposing former Green Beret who once did a prison stint for plotting to bomb Jewish and black businesses — mustered into formation the nearly 200 neo-Nazis, white nationalists, Klansmen, greybeards in Confederate uniforms and a lone Nazi bagpiper. Down a hill this horde marched toward their foe ― some 400 counter-demonstrators arrayed behind fences across a long intersection.

“Close borders! White nation! Now we start the deportation!” the Nazis chanted. All piss and vinegar, they. All very Battle of Chickamauga.

Then they ran into security.

The cops were working overtime. Their security wands moved up and down, up and down. Every person needed a metal detector test. Bags were searched. Keychains were confiscated. The Nazis fell silent. Ever so gradually ― one might say sluggishly ― the police examined them for weapons and herded them into a fenced-off pen.

This was a costly, and tactical, choice ― one designed to prevent violence by slow-walking the First Amendment, which guarantees only the right to peaceful public assembly. After Charlottesville, any large gathering of white supremacists carries the obvious potential for mayhem. The police failed spectacularly to prevent injuries and death in Charlottesville. Since then, however, law enforcement agencies in other jurisdictions have taken a muscularly bureaucratic approach to maintaining order — long lines, checkpoints and French barriers everywhere.

In Tennessee, where several of the same white supremacist groups responsible for Charlottesville assembled last month to further their Amerikaner Reich, the result of the enhanced security was to siphon off the surly energies surrounding the event into various hassles and inconveniences, all superintended by heavily armed cops. And thus a day of demonstrating for and against white supremacy became something more akin to a particularly exasperating visit to the DMV.

In September, when race-baiting former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at Berkeley, the lines stretched on and on. Cops there subjected each person to a metal detector test. By the time many got in, Yiannopoulos had already left. The whole thing was over before it started — at a cost of $800,000 in public money. Berkeley cops appeared to have learned a valuable lesson in stalling after protests over Yiannopoulos’ first planned appearance on campus in February, which erupted into violence.

In Shelbyville, the police sequestered both sides long before the rally began. Counter-demonstrators entered their fenced-off area from the north. Fascists were funneled toward their holding pen from the south. To get there, they passed through a cop gauntlet. And they waited at the security checkpoint. And waited some more. The result, however, was that the rally, though short-lived, went off without incident. No bloodshed. No violence at all.

Tennessee law enforcement agencies are already talking about letting other states copy their model for keeping the peace. But it turned out there was an earlier blueprint for making hate wait, along with anyone protesting it.

In March 1999, the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in the 16,000-person city of Defiance, Ohio. Back then, the Klan was throwing rallies almost every weekend in Ohio, and the public’s bill for security that year would approach $1 million. Defiance was a major reason for that expense.

The town had steeled itself for an invasion. One longtime anti-fascist activist from Columbus was there that day to confront the Klan. He and scores of counter-demonstrators arrived to find a sealed-off four-block zone and every alley in the city impeded by semi-trailers filled with sandbags. There were more than 250 cops of all variety, including many cops on horses. “I think they had every horse with four legs still alive in the county in that town,” remembers the activist.

Defiance also helped bring about a new form of crowd control. Until then, most white supremacist rallies featured a stage where racists could fulminate about states’ rights or Jewish space aliens, and a common audience area where racist supporters might encounter anti-fascists and fights would break out. Defiance had two separate holding pens for attendees, where, according to the activist who attended, the police did the same “passive-aggressive slow walking” through a security checkpoint, rifling through clothing and bags, even going through people’s cigarette packs looking for joints. “Just to completely fuck with you and make it not worth it to show up,” he says.

All this for what awaited them on the courthouse steps: a grand total of 41 Klansmen.

“If you don’t have adequate protection, things get out of hand and you catch a lot of criticism for that,” the local sheriff said at the time. “If you’re adequately prepared, you catch a lot of criticism from people who say it’s overkill.”

It was also, arguably, good business. An Associated Press account of the Defiance rally noted that “After years of refinement, [Ohio] now provides an ‘off the shelf’ plan to communities for dealing with rallies.” According to the Columbus anti-fascist, the local sheriff and his law enforcement cronies began franchising their security model and acting as consultants at other Klan rallies. “In my opinion, that event accelerated the evolution [of police security practices],” the anti-fascist activist said. “That and the marketing afterward.”

Defiance isn’t the only historical precedent. In 2005, the National Socialist Movement staged a march through a mostly black neighborhood in Toledo and shouted slurs at members of the community. Locals rioted and scuffled with police. Some looting and arson ensued. Two months later, the Nazis came back for a rally. This time, a small army of some 700 cops from 15 agencies were waiting for them and any counter-demonstrators. The rally area was locked down. Barricades everywhere. People couldn’t move freely. Fewer than 200 people ended up attending. Toledo wound up with a $300,000 bill for police overtime.

Pete Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University who has studied far-right extremism for 20 years, said Toledo set the tone for the police response to white supremacist gatherings in the mid- to late 2000s. In September 2007, when the NSM descended on Omaha, Nebraska, the cops referenced Toledo and pulled out all the stops.

“They had everything cordoned off, streets blocked, no way in no way out,” says Simi, who was at the rally. “The NSM protestors had to meet at a location away from the rally and the police bussed them in. Snipers on the roofs everywhere. They had impenetrable obstacles to prevent any contact between the NSM and the counter-protesters.”

Law enforcement agencies were sensitive to the reputational harm that resulted when they failed to prevent white supremacists or militant counter-demonstrators from mixing it up in the streets. The response was always the same: more cops, more guns, more horses, more lines, more delays. “Police react to that level of embarrassment,” Simi says. “It’s kind of a yo-yo effect. You want us to do stuff, OK, we’ll do stuff.”

Eighteen years later, and two months after the deadly violence in Charlottesville, the cops were doing stuff in Middle Tennessee. Driving into Shelbyville felt like approaching a military base. The road was lined with SUVs from the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office and the Tennessee State Police. At least three helicopters and two drones hovered above the town. Police were arrayed on rooftops and along the streets, most of them armed with assault rifles. There were horse cops and bike cops and cops who looked like soldiers of fortune just off an Afghan jingle truck. About 300 cops altogether. Local media would later estimate the bill for law enforcement here and in nearby Murfreesboro, where a second White Lives Matter rally was planned, to exceed $100,000.

“You’re trying to bankrupt the community,” anti-fascist activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins told Matt Heimbach, the head of the Traditionalist Worker Party, who was stuck in line with his neo-Nazi group.

“We put forward a vision for a new world,” Heimbach replied.

“It’s not a new world.”

“Balkanization is the future!”

Atop a hill overlooking the rally site, locals had gathered to espy and decry the scene. “This is not about freedom of speech. This is about money,” said Chase Williams, a Tennessee walking horse trainer who works in Shelbyville. “Don’t show up in a community where the problem doesn’t exist.”

But the white supremacists had shown up, and it was 11:30 a.m. — an hour and a half after their Shelbyville rally was set to start ― when the majority of them cleared the checkpoint. On the other side of the intersection, the counter-demonstrators had gone through the same screening process. They’d just arrived early.

“You guys are really late! This isn’t lookin’ good for the master race!” Chris Irwin, the boisterous emcee of the counter-protest, could be heard saying in the distance over a sound system.

Tubbs got his people back into formation. He’d been there in Charlottesville, where armed racists had been allowed to tear through the streets, where one shot at people and another drove a car into a crowd. He was in the infamous garage to watch his men club DeAndre Harris unconscious. Not to be deterred, these men. Not in Charlottesville. Not in Shelbyville. “Blood and Soil! Blood and Soil!” they began chanting. The shield wall was ready. The race war was nigh.

Then they ran into security again.

Another checkpoint. More wanding. More silence. A long line of racists and fascists trudging toward eternal humiliation. Jeff Schoep, the head of the National Socialist Movement, couldn’t hide his disappointment about “all these metal detectors.” Schoep speculated that his group may look to the courts “as far as fighting this sort of intervention in the future.” (The Shelbyville Police Department and the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.)

The delays sound “very intentional,” according to Simi. “I wouldn’t be surprised if when they simulated their scenarios either on paper or in practice they had a good idea that it would take close to an hour and half to get through security. I can’t imagine any of that was accidental.”

Only a few dozen fascists and racists made it to the second White Lives Matter rally. Brad Griffin, one of the organizers, announced over Twitter that the second event had been canceled. The Nazis had to eat. “It took an hour to get through security in Shelbyville,” he explained. “Pushed back lunch.”

But the police in Murfreesboro were still ready. The town was bigger, with a warren of small streets downtown. If anything was going to pop off, it would be here. More than 400 officers were on the ground. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had set up a command post in Murfreesboro, deployed more than 100 agents and was using a plane to do aerial surveillance over the city. Tennessee’s Wildlife Resource Agency even sent five officers.

The Nazis had obtained a permit to assemble from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in front of a courthouse built in 1858 on the town’s Public Square, and the windows of nearby stores were boarded up. Streets were closed. Barriers separated an inner area of the square for the White Lives Matter protesters from an outer area for the counter-protesters.

At the main security checkpoint for the counter-protesters, a crowd of about 1,000 people had gathered. Old and young. All races. All there to shout down the Nazis. This turnout, probably more so than a collective empty stomach, likely kept the white supremacists away.

“Fuck the KKK!” the counter-protesters chanted. “Nazi punks fuck off!” they chanted, a tribute to the Dead Kennedys song. “Fuck Donald Trump!” they roared. Over and over. “Fuck Donald Trump! Fuck Donald Trump!” A police horse got spooked.

Getting through security was even harder in Murfreesboro. For most, it was impossible. For over an hour, the lines barely moved. Fidgety young activists in the crowd, some of them draped like soccer fans in Anti-Racist Action flags ― “dipshits,” one actual ARA member called them ― were shooting college bull about Marxism and imperialism. “I’m more of an anarchist than a socialist, but I’m friends with a lot of ancoms,” one said. Another, when asked if he was cold, announced, “I’ve got the fire of socialism to warm my hands.”

By 3 p.m., it was obvious that almost none of the people who’d showed up to resist racism and fascism would be admitted to the Public Square. A few in the crowd had taken to chattering about “legal observers” who might need to get involved. If the inertia was by design, the Murfreesboro authorities wouldn’t admit it.

“There was no attempt to delay the public or media from entering the restricted zone,” said Mike Browning, the city’s public information officer. “Processing the 800-1000 counter protesters through the metal detectors did take time.”

It took so much time that they all went home.

When you speak to Royal observers, two portrayals of Britain’s future monarch emerge. The first is of Charles the convenor, tactfully using his power to draw together divided minds and encourage consensus. The second is that of Charles the activist, driving change and declaring his views, challenging constitutional orthodoxy.

It is perhaps the latter which goes further in explaining events at court this summer. With little international fanfare, a series of fundamental changes to the workings of the house of Windsor have, commentators and former aides say, confirmed a slow but steady process of transition.

It began in May, with the decision of the Queen’s husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, to step down from daily Royal duties and, as the longest-serving consort in history, enjoy more free time as he approaches his 96th year.

Then, in July, the Queen’s most senior aide, Sir Christopher Geidt, stepped aside unexpectedly, reportedly at the behest of Charles.

The move shocked even the most seasoned court correspondents, not least because Geidt, 56, had spent a decade in the job preparing the “bridge” between the Queen’s household and the Prince of Wales’ operation.

Reports suggested Geidt’s “unprecedented ousting” was the climax of anxiety among Charles’ staff about the heir taking on more high-profile duties. 

And last month, news came that Charles will deliver the Monarch’s official wreath at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in central London for Britain’s war dead. The move has all but confirmed a steady transferal of duties is underway.

Little wonder, then, that talk of a sort of subtle regency, whereby the heir to the throne gradually takes on the more physically demanding tasks of an ageing monarch, such as long periods standing at the Cenotaph, has grown louder.

“As the Queen gets older there are certain things she might feel Prince Charles could do,” Dickie Arbiter, the Queen’s former press secretary tells HuffPost.

...

In Britain, Charles has long been portrayed as a restless heir apparent, frustrated by the constraints of his role, with a keen eye trained on the top job.

“Why doesn’t she abdicate?” he’s said to have asked friends in frustration 20 years ago.

But the Queen this year marked a record-breaking 65 years as monarch. In April, she celebrated her 91st birthday. At 68, Charles is now said to be conscious that he himself is entering his autumnal years.

Yet no matter his age when the moment comes, experts believe the Prince of Wales’ ascendancy to the crown will be tumultuous.

Rising republican sentiment, faltering public opinion, and a sense that subjects in Britain and across the Commonwealth remain divided on Charles’ future reign all threaten the future of the monarchy. 

At home in the UK, surveys find people prefer the ascendancy to pass over Charles completely to the benefit of his son, William, Duke of Cambridge.

A poll for The Sun newspaper found 51 per cent of those surveyed wanted the crown to pass straight to Wills.

And in a further affront to his future reign, a poll for the Daily Express found many Brits said they wanted Charles’ wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to be princess consort, not queen. A demotion in the eyes of many - it would unprecedented for the spouse of a King and, insiders say, simply unconscionable for Charles.

Royal commentators suggest recent opinion polls are untrustworthy, and merely reflect the nation’s mood surrounding the twentieth anniversary of the death of Charles’ first wife Diana, Princess of Wales, in August.

“The passing over of the Crown cannot happen. William is popular as is Harry, because they appeal to a younger generation,” Arbiter adds. “Opinion polls are all about taking a sample of whom you want a response from and it is the question you ask. I don’t believe opinion polls - to sample 2,000 out of 64 million is just nonsense.”

While their importance may well be disputed, the polls illustrate the challenges Britain’s future monarch faces at home.

But elsewhere in the Commonwealth, Charles’ path to the throne seems unlikely to run smoother.

...

The elevation of Charles following the reign of Queen Elizabeth II will likely spur on the push for a republic in Australia, despite the nation rejecting a proposal for a local head of state at a referendum almost 20 years ago.

Since the republican movement’s bruising 54.9 percent defeat at that referendum in 1999, there’s been a general consensus that love for the Queen, as well as a lack of certainty about the method for picking a head of state, handicapped the historic push at the starting gate.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is a believer in a republic but won’t campaign for it.

The one-time leader of Australia’s Republican Movement (ARM) declared that Australian republicans were “Elizabethan” shortly before he met Her Majesty in July this year— a position he has expressed since at least 2008, almost a decade after the referendum defeat.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten responded to Turnbull’s June statement by placing a Republic firmly back on the Labor agenda.

“We are not Elizabethan, we are Australians. Our head of state should be an Australian too,” Shorten said, vowing to put forward a straightforward yes or no question on an Australian head of state in the first term of a future Labor government.

The idea of an Australian Republic is older than Federation, although it was given renewed force as an idea in 1991 when it first became official Labor Party policy.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating — once labeled ‘The Lizard of Oz’ after he put his hand on the Queen during a state visit — told parliament in 1995 that a Republic would be the “answer beyond doubt the perennial question of Australian identity – the question of who we are and what we stand for.”

“The answer is not what having a foreign Head of State suggests. We are not a political or cultural appendage to another country’s past. We are simply and unambiguously Australian,” he said, noting later in the speech that Australia’s position in the Commonwealth would not be affected.

Still a true believer, the former prime minister reportedly remarked in 2015 that he thought it was “deeply sick” that Australians were waiting for Charles to inherit the throne.

Four years on from that 1995 speech, and Australians were ready to answer the Republic question with a ‘no’ — a decision that lead Turnbull to declare then conservative Prime Minister and opponent of republicanism, John Howard, had “broken this nation’s heart” with the referendum’s failure.

The defeat had come as a surprise to some.

While opinion polls since 1993 generally found the majority favours the country becoming a republic, the 1999 vote was defeated in large part because the electorate was suspicious of the model on offer: an Australian president appointed by parliament, instead of elected directly by the people.

More recent polls offer other perspectives. A paper in the Australian Journal of Political Science in 2015 found support for the scandal-plagued monarchy fell sharply in the 1990s.

But attitudes recovered after 1999, culminating in Prince William and Catherine’s wedding in 2011, as well as the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte in 2013 and 2015.

Comparatively, a poll of 1,008 people conducted by ARM in 2015 reportedly showed 51 per cent of respondents wanted an Australian head of state to replace King Charles when he succeeds his mother.

A poll in December last year by the Australian National University showed 53 percent of Australians support having their own head of state. A poll by another company, Newspoll, in December the previous year, put that figure at 51 percent.

The Role Of The Queen In Australia

- When the Queen visits Australia, she speaks and acts as Queen of Australia and not as Queen of the United Kingdom.
- As a constitutional monarch, the Queen acts entirely on the advice of Australian Government Ministers who are responsible to Parliament.
- The Queen is represented in Australia at the federal level by a Governor-General, who is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister of Australia and is completely independent of the British Government.

While Malcolm Turnbull is reluctant to campaign for a republic, he has expressed similar views on tactics.

“It’s about broadening reach, it’s about patience and endurance and mutual respect,” Turnbull told an ARM function in at Sydney University last year.

“House by house, street by street, suburb by suburb, we must make the case to our fellow citizens.”

Under the leadership of prominent republican, popular historian and journalist Peter FitzSimons, the ARM is aiming to have a referendum on a republic by 2022, following extensive public consultation on a new Australian head of state.

If Labor wins the next election, that plan is looking more likely to be carried out.

...

New Zealand’s new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has made no secret of her desire to ditch the monarchy, but has tempered her stance - for now.

“I am a republican but you will find there are people in New Zealand who aren’t actively pursuing that change,” the 37-year-old Labour leader told The Times. “It’s certainly not about my view of the monarchy but my view of New Zealand’s place in the world and carving out our own future. So that is what drives my sentiment.”

Opinion polls conducted last year appeared to show a groundswell in republicanism among New Zealanders.

Nearly 60 per cent of Kiwi’s surveyed said they would prefer a homegrown head of state in future, with just 34 per cent favouring Charles as King of New Zealand.

Though monarchists say that 2016 poll, carried out by Curia research on behalf of New Zealand Republic, used flawed logic to draw its headline result, Stuff.co.nz reports.

The position of Ardern, who became PM after a coalition deal with the liberal New Zealand First party, will be of concern to Charles’ staff at Clarence House, especially her suggestion that sentiment is tied to the Queen, not the Crown.

“No matter when you have the conversation [about getting rid of the monarchy] there’s a knock-on effect, there’s a much-loved monarch who will be affected by that decision,” Ardern said.

...

Charles awaits the throne at a time when more than half of Canadians reject the notion of the monarchy’s formal role in the nation’s affairs and cast Royals as little more than celebrities.

The most recent Ipsos poll conducted with regards to Canadian attitudes about the monarchy for Global News found that 61 percent felt “the Queen and the Royal Family should not have any formal role in Canadian society, the royals are simply celebrities and nothing more.”

In terms of abdication, 53 percent felt the Queen should abdicate and let the next person in line have the throne, while a full 50 per cent agreed that when the Queen ends her reign, Canada should cut its ties to the monarchy.

That said, 63 percent of respondents felt that the nation’s history as a British colony and our membership in the Commonwealth was important. 

If the Queen were to abdicate the throne, a prospect currently said to be unthinkable among Palace insiders, it would trigger the demise of the crown, and Charles would automatically become Canada’s head of state, much in the same way as in the event of her death.

“I don’t think she will abdicate,” Philippe Lagassé, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University and an expert on the Crown tells HuffPost. “Simply because it’s not in keeping with her view of her role, it’s not keeping of the coronation oath that she took. Therefore I think it’s much more likely that you would see a regency before abdication.”

“I expect that she will die wearing the crown.”

Yet were a regency were to occur, says Lagassé, the typical position is that the UK Regency Act doesn’t apply to Canada, and it’s assumed that the Governor General would be able to fulfill whatever duties are required.

The act states that if the Queen becomes “becomes incapable in mind or in body” from carrying out her Royal duties then powers are passed to the heir apparent while she is still alive.

The scenario is considered more than possible among British constitutional scholars who spoke to HuffPost. “It’s highly likely,” Prof. Robert Hazell, University College London’s constitutional expert, says.

It also poses myriad issues in realms like Canada where the Queen is head of state but where legislation doesn’t account for a regency.

Yet in truth, Lagassé notes, “the only thing [the Canadian] Governor General can’t do is appointment additional senators without the Queen.”

The two possible solutions Lagassé predicts for this situation are either the Canadian government arguing that the British Act of Regency does, in fact, apply to Canada, or what he terms “the penultimate worst case scenario”: passing a Canadian Regency Act that would require Parliament legislating, and has the potential to invite court challenges.

The worst case scenario, according to him? One in which all the provinces were consulted, leading to inevitable discord among the various parties’ interests.

With reporting from Eoin Blackwell in Sydney, and Rebecca Zamon in Toronto

President Donald Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., communicated with WikiLeaks over Twitter direct message during the 2016 presidential race, according to a report in The Atlantic published Monday. 

According to messages obtained by The Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe, Trump Jr. messaged with the WikiLeaks account between September 2016 and July 2017. The messages were given to congressional investigators probing whether Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russian officials to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. (Federal officials believe WikiLeaks published material, including emails from the Democratic National Committee’s servers, that had been obtained via Russian hackers.) 

The messages are mostly from WikiLeaks to the president’s son, but Trump Jr. did occasionally respond to the messages. The organization made multiple requests of Trump Jr., asking him to provide his father’s tax returns and suggesting the candidate refuse to concede if he lost the election to Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. (Trump Jr. didn’t respond to either message.)

On one occasion, Trump Jr. tweeted a link to a cache of leaked emails after the WikiLeaks account messaged it to him.

On another, WikiLeaks wrote it was happy to see the elder Trump mentioning the group on the campaign trail. Moments later, Trump tweeted about the organization. 

After Trump won the election, Wikileaks suggested that Trump should prod Australia to appoint the site’s founder, Julian Assange, ambassador to the United States.

Read the full story here.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment on the report. In a statement to The Atlantic, Trump Jr.’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, said, “We can say with confidence that we have no concerns about these documents and any questions raised about them have been easily answered in the appropriate forum.” 

Vice President Mike Pence, who in an Oct. 14, 2016, interview with Fox News claimed the campaign had not been in contact with WikiLeaks, said in a statement late Monday that he had not known about Trump Jr.’s messages.

“The vice president was never aware of anyone associated with the campaign being in contact with WikiLeaks,” said Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah. “He first learned of this news from a published report earlier tonight.”

Weeks before the election, asked if the campaign was “in cahoots” with WikiLeaks, Pence denied it. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “I think all of us have, you know, 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.”

Trump Jr. later tweeted copies of his messages with WikiLeaks:

Trump Jr. became embroiled in the Russia investigation after it was revealed he and other campaign officials met with a Kremlin-backed attorney in June 2016 who had promised damaging information about Clinton. Leaked emails  published by The New York Times show Trump Jr. arranged the meeting at Trump Tower in New York.  

“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” Trump Jr. said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, one of the congressional committees probing the campaign’s Russia ties, in September. 

He said the meeting did not lead to anything, and has denied colluding with the Russian government. 

Trump Jr. is expected to publicly testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

HuffPost’s S.V. Date contributed to this report. 

This has been updated to include a statement from Vice President Mike Pence.

Aston Martin has warned it could have to halt production of all its cars if Theresa May fails to secure a Brexit deal.

The high-end car manufacturer which makes all its vehicles in the UK told the Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee on Tuesday that leaving the EU without a trade deal would be “semi-catastrophic”.

Every car model in the UK currently is tested by the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) to make sure it is valid to be sold.

Currently VCA approved cars are able to be sold across the EU thanks to the UK’s membership.

However car manufacturers warned that in the event of a so-called ‘no-deal’ Brexit, the VCA approval would no longer be valid.

Mark Wilson, Aston Martin’s chief financial officer, told MPs this would incur “significant costs” for the company as it tried to gets its models certified for sale abroad.

“We are a British company. We produce our cars exclusively in Britain and will continue to do so. Without VCA type approval it really is a stark picture for us,” he said.

He added the result could include “the semi-catastrophic effects of having to stop production because we only produce cars in the UK”.

Tom Brake, the Lib Dem Brexit spokesman, said Aston Martin’s warning showed the car industry could be brought to a “standstill” by a no deal Brexit.

“People’s jobs are on the line, but still the hard Brexiteers are peddling the fantasy that we could crash out of Europe with no deal,” he said.

“Every day of government complacency brings us closer to a catastrophic Brexit that would destroy jobs, push up prices and damage living standards. The government must stop being so complacent and protect British businesses by ruling out no deal.”

Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders, also warned the cost per vehicle of having no Brexit deal could be as much as £1,800.

If Britain and the EU fails to agree a new trade deal then tariffs could be imposed on imports of the components needed to build cars in the UK and on British built cars being sold in the EU.

WTO rules were “worst case” scenario for British car manufacturers, Hawes added.

The warning came as a report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee warned there would be “massive queues at Dover” with “food being left to rot in trucks at the border” if a new customs system was not in place in time for Brexit.

On Tuesday afternoon MPs began eight days of debate on the government’s EU Withdrawal Bill in the Commons.

Don’t try to label Amber Heard. 

The actress appears on the December cover of Allure magazine and discusses her sexuality in the accompanying cover story, describing the moment when her personal relationships first became public consumption. 

“I don’t identify as anything,” she said. “I’m a person. I like who I like. I happened to be dating a woman, and people started taking pictures of us walking to our car after dinner. I [was] holding her hand, and I realized that I have two options: I can let go of her hand and, when asked about it, I can say that my private life is my private life. Or I could not let go and own it.”

Heard, who previously dated artist and photographer Tasya van Ree, decided to be open and honest, despite pressures from those in her professional sphere who tried to dissuade her from being candid. 

“They pointed to no other working romantic lead, no other actress, that was out,” she told Allure. “I didn’t come out. I was never in. It’s limiting, that LGBTQ thing. It served a function as an umbrella for marginalized people to whom rights were being denied, but it loses its efficacy because of the nuanced nature of humanity.”

“As we become more educated and expand the facts of our nature, we keep adding letters,” she continued. “It was a great shield, but now we’re stuck behind it. It’s so important to resist labels. I don’t care how many letters you add. At some point, it’s going to spell ‘WE ARE HUMAN.’ ”

Read the full interview over at Allure. 

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are surging again after staying flat for three years, climate scientists reported on Monday, a sign that efforts to rein in planet-warming gases still have a long way to go

Emissions from fossil fuels and industrial uses are projected to grow 2 percent this year, reaching 41 billion tons by the end of 2017, according to the report presented at the United Nations’ climate summit in Bonn, Germany. The increase was predicted to continue in 2018.

Total greenhouse gas emissions remained level, at about 36 billion tons per year from 2014 to 2016, even as the global economy grew, which suggested carbon dioxide emissions had crested with the rise of renewable electricity sources and improved fuel efficiency standards. But emissions from fossil fuels will hit 37 billion tons this year, a report from the Global Carbon Project finds. The report draws from three papers in the journals Nature Climate Change, Environmental Research Letters and Earth System Science Data Discussions.

“This is very disappointing,” Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, said in a statement. “We need to reach a peak in global emissions in the next few years and drive emissions down rapidly afterwards to address climate change and limit its impacts.”

The uptick comes as climate change is becoming more tangible. Vicious hurricanes ravaged the Atlantic this summer, killing hundreds and leaving billions of dollars of destruction in places such as the Barbuda, Puerto Rico and Houston. In August, flooding and mudslides killed thousands in disasters from the South Asian nations of India, Nepal and Bangladesh to Sierra Leone in West Africa. The grueling six-year civil war in Syria, which began shortly after its worst drought in 900 years, is now considered the world’s first major “climate war.”

The increase is particularly alarming because carbon dioxide emitted today has effects decades later, meaning that even if countries completely halted emissions, the world would continue to warm for years to come. And CO2 isn’t the only type of greenhouse gas polluting the atmosphere. Methane traps roughly 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide, and the gas comes from agriculture, coal and gas production, and landfills. Nitrous oxide, known as laughing gas, traps about 300 times more heat than carbon dioxide; it’s emitted by soil fertilizers and chemical production. Both are on the rise.

“This year we have seen how climate change can amplify the impacts of hurricanes with stronger downpours of rain, higher sea levels and warmer ocean conditions favoring more powerful storms,” Le Quéré said. “This is a window into the future.”

The bulk of increase came from China, where emissions are projected to grow by 3.5 percent, driven by a rise in coal consumption. China won praise earlier this year for setting aside $360 billion for renewable energy investment over the next four years and canceling 103 new coal-fired power plants. The moves were widely contrasted with President Donald Trump’s retreat from the Paris climate agreement and purging his administration’s ranks of climate scientists and their work.

But China’s coal consumption grew by 3 percent, while use of oil and gas continued to rise.

U.S. emissions are expected to decline by 0.4 percent. That’s largely due to the widespread conversion of power plants to natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide, but is still responsible for an uptick in heat-trapping methane. But U.S. coal consumption increased in 2017 for the first time in five years because of higher natural gas prices ― a trend Trump promised to encourage with policies favorable to coal companies.

Still, technologies such as wind and solar power expanded by about 14 percent per year, the report found. Robert Jackson, a co-author of the report, said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that trend will continue despite the Trump administration’s rollback of regulations aimed at discouraging fossil fuel use.

“The federal government can slow the development of renewables and low-carbon technologies, but it can’t stop it,” Jackson, a professor of Earth systems science at Stanford University, said in a press release. “That transition is being driven by the low cost of new renewable infrastructure, and it’s being driven by new consumer preferences.”

Indeed, the Senate GOP preserved incentives for renewable energy in its version of a tax bill after House Republicans axed tax credits and subsidies for wind, solar and electric vehicles. There are promising signs coming from states, too. After Democrats triumphed in state elections last week, New Jersey and Virginia are on track to adopt policies that would cap the total amount of carbon dioxide that polluters are allowed to emit in the states.

But only a few countries seem to be adhering to the goals set out in the non-binding Paris Agreement, which aims to keep the planet from warming beyond 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. After that point, scientists warn that sea level rise, violent storms, and intense droughts and heatwaves associated with climate change will make adaptation extremely difficult and costly in most densely populated regions. CO2 emissions declined in 22 countries where the economies continued to grow. That includes the U.S., where the reduction came primarily from natural gas made cheaper than coal by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, rather than efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But in other places, economic interventions had some impact. In India ― where, like in China, the metropoles are so choked by smog that breathing the air in New Delhi equates to smoking nearly 50 cigarettes in a day ― emissions are forecast to increase by just 2 percent, after rising more than 6 percent during the last decade.

Still, India was among the 101 countries where carbon pollution increased as the economy grew, representing 50 percent global emissions.

“This year’s carbon budget news is a step back for humankind,” said Amy Luers, executive director of the sustainability nonprofit Future Earth. “We must reverse this trend and start to accelerate toward a safe and prosperous world for all.”