Tuesday’s top story: Democrats push for John Bolton to testify in Trump’s Senate trial. Plus, Steve Bannon on the UK election

Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

‘Trials have witnesses’: Senate impeachment battle brews

Democrats are demanding that previously elusive impeachment witnesses – including the former national security adviser John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff – must testify at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, despite Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell’s insistence that the president will be swiftly acquitted by the Senate. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, warned on Monday that a trial without witnesses would amount to a “cover-up”.

Nancy Pelosi. The House speaker has gone from resisting impeachment to leading the charge. On the brink of Wednesday’s historic House vote, Lauren Gambino examines Pelosi’s evolution.

Elissa Slotkin. In a Michigan district that leans towards Trump, Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin has been making the case for impeachment to skeptical voters, as Tom Perkins reports from Detroit.

Trump ‘watching closely’ as North Korea warns of ‘Christmas gift’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump meets the North Korean leader ,Kim Jong-un, at the DMZ on the border of North and South Korea in June. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Trump has said he would be “disappointed” if North Korea makes good on its threat to present a “Christmas gift” if the US fails to make significant concessions in the two countries’ stalled nuclear negotiations by the end of the year. The US special envoy to North Korea has described Pyongyang’s deadline as “hostile and negative”, while Trump told reporters on Monday that the White House was “watching closely,” adding that if something really were “in the works,” then the US would “take care of it.”

Missile test. Pyongyang claimed last week that it had carried out another successful test at a long-range rocket launch site, part of continuing efforts to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles that could potentially reach the continental US.

Report: 2019 was almost ‘the year of executing the innocent’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The death penalty chamber at San Quentin state prison in California. Photograph: AP

Twenty-two prisoners from seven US states were executed this year, a dramatic decline from the peak of 98 executions in 1999. But a non-partisan assessment of the death penalty in America in 2019 has nonetheless uncovered shocking flaws in the justice system’s application of capital punishment. In his organisation’s annual report, the Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director, Robert Dunham, writes that “2019 came close to being the year of executing the innocent.”

Larry Swearingen. Serious questions surround the cases that led to at least two of the year’s executions. Swearingen, executed in Texas in August, maintained his innocence in the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter.

Domineque Ray. Ray, who was put to death in Alabama in February, was convicted of a 1999 rape and murder, despite a lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime.

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Cheat sheet

Boeing has temporarily halted production of its 737 Max aircraft after the FAA said it would not approve the plane’s return to service before 2020, following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that collectively claimed 346 lives.

Rainwater in some parts of the US contains levels of potentially toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that may be sufficient to affect human health, according to data analysis.

The veteran Israeli politician Gideon Saar has launched a bid to unseat the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as head of the ruling Likud party, with Netanyahu weakened by corruption charges that could force him out of office.

A court in Pakistan has handed down a death sentence to the country’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on charges of high treason and subverting the constitution, over his imposition of a state of emergency amid growing opposition in 2007.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lanisha Bratcher at her home in North Carolina. Photograph: Jeremy M Lange/Jeremy M. Lange

Why a black woman faces prison – just for voting

Lanisha Bratcher was arrested earlier this year at her home in North Carolina, almost three years after she unwittingly broke a Jim Crow-era law – by voting in the 2016 presidential election. “I had no intention to trick anybody,” she tells Sam Levine.

Steve Bannon: Democrats should learn from Corbyn’s defeat

Steve Bannon believe’s Labour’s crushing defeat in the UK election was “a victory for populism” that offers a warning to leftwing Democrats. In an interview at his Washington DC townhouse, he tells David Smith Republicans are now “a working-class party,” and why the GOP needs its own AOC.

Superglue shrub, cancer-fighting fungus: new plants of 2019

Experts at the Royal Botanical Gardens in London have officially named 102 types of plant and eight fungi this year, many of which are already in danger of extinction. Damian Carrington identifies some of the most extraordinary discoveries.

Hot chicken: one family recipe, hundreds of copycats

Marinated in spices hot enough to drain the sinuses, the hot chicken at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville has been a local institution since the 1930s. Now, as the founder’s niece expands to Los Angeles, she tells Nadra Nittle how copycats have long tried – and invariably failed – to replicate her family’s famous recipe.

Opinion

Impeachment over Russia’s role in the 2016 election would have been primarily about Trump, while the Ukraine impeachment is first and foremost about US democracy, says Cas Mudde. Regardless of the politics, it was the right decision for Democrats.

Even if Republicans put party over country, Democrats should not.

Sport

Drew Brees is now the NFL’s all-time leader in touchdown passes, after throwing four in the New Orleans Saints’ 34-7 victory over Indianapolis on Monday night. Meanwhile, Josh Gordon’s career hangs in the balance after the Seahawks wide receiver was suspended indefinitely for violating league policies on performance enhancers and substance abuse.

The Manchester City assistant coach, Mikel Arteta, is set to be unveiled as Arsenal’s permanent manager this week, with City understood to be unhappy with the London club’s approaches to its former team captain.

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