Your Wednesday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/briefing/impeachment-paris-boris-johnson.html

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Good morning.

We’re covering today’s impeachment vote in Washington, fears of a European property bubble, and why Britain’s first all-female rock ’n’ roll band ignored John Lennon’s advice.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is all but certain to pass two articles of impeachment today against President Trump, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. That would make him only the third American president ever to be impeached, and set the stage for a Senate trial early next year.

On the eve of a momentous vote, pro-impeachment protests broke out across the country. Mr. Trump also raged against the proceedings in a rambling letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that was heavy on hyperbole, unproven charges and long-simmering grievances against his own government. (We fact-checked it.)

Related: Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told The Times that he had informed the president that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was, in Mr. Giuliani’s view, impeding investigations that could benefit Mr. Trump. The ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was later removed.

Catch up: A former director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. wrote in an Op-Ed that Mr. Giuliani’s “activities of late concerning Ukraine have, at a minimum, failed the smell test of propriety.”

Yesterday: William Taylor, a career diplomat who came out of retirement to fill Ms. Yovanovitch’s position after she was ousted, said that he would step down in early January because his temporary appointment was set to expire. In public testimony last month, he described for lawmakers what he said was a pressure campaign by the Trump administration to leverage American security aid to Ukraine in exchange for political favors.

The strikes that began in France two weeks ago have severely disrupted transit across the nation, particularly in Paris. But how fed up are frazzled commuters, exactly? That’s a key question — and one that may determine the crisis’s eventual denouement.

The crowds, the delays, the interminable gridlock: It’s all part of what our Paris bureau chief calls “a tug of war” for public support between the striking public sector workers determined to preserve France’s 70-year-old pension system and a centrist government bent on overhauling it.

What’s next: As a holiday weekend approaches, it’s unclear who will blink first. Most unions have brushed aside pleas for a Christmas “truce,” and the government signaled on Tuesday that it had no intention of backing down.

Debate over pensions: A reporter in our Paris bureau explains the finer points of what strikers and the government are arguing about.

The European Central Bank’s 2014 move to push a benchmark interest rate below zero eventually helped the eurozone rebound from years of slow growth. But that also made homeownership increasingly unaffordable for most Europeans, and pushed the working class farther from urban centers by driving up rents.

Now, as valuations in some parts of Europe return or exceed where they were before the Continent’s debt crisis a decade ago, some experts worry that its current property boom could end badly.

Go deeper: Christine Lagarde, the first woman to lead the European Central Bank, is a familiar figure in global finance. But her monetary views are only beginning to emerge.

Last week’s British election “was at once historically consequential and strangely inconclusive,” as Mark Landler, our London bureau chief, put it.

What’s clear is that the Conservative Party won by its biggest margin since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory of 1987 — a result that Prime Minister Boris Johnson described as a “huge great stonking mandate” to take Britain out of the European Union.

But it’s still a mystery what kind of trading relationship Mr. Johnson intends to pursue with Britain’s largest neighbor: a “soft” Brexit that includes a closer long-term trading partnership, or a “hard” Brexit that ends in a divorce without close ties. One clue may lie in whom he chooses for his new cabinet early next year.

The Daily: Our latest episode explores the impact of the Conservative Party’s electoral triumph in former industrial regions that the opposition Labour Party had dominated for decades.

After visiting a homeless camp in Oakland last year, a United Nations official compared it to the slums of Brazil, Mexico and Pakistan, saying many residents had “no access to toilets or showers and a constant fear of being cleaned off the streets.”

Two Times journalists later spent three months at the camp, getting to know dozens of its residents. They traveled to a shantytown in Mexico City for comparison.

The Vatican: Pope Francis abolished the high levels of secrecy that the Roman Catholic Church used in clergy sexual abuse cases, ending a policy that critics say enabled priests to protect pedophiles and silence their victims.

U.S. budget: Scrambling to avert a government shutdown, the House quickly approved two spending packages worth a collective $1.4 trillion. The Senate is expected to vote on both measures before a Friday deadline. (See our Back Story for more.)

E.U. subsidies: At a debate in the European Parliament prompted partly by a New York Times investigation into the bloc’s $65-billion-a-year farm subsidy program, lawmakers criticized corruption but disagreed on how to fight it.

Pakistan: Pervez Musharraf, a former military dictator who resigned in 2008 under a threat of impeachment, was sentenced to death in a treason case. But he lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai and is unlikely to return.

African swine fever: The disease ravaging China’s pigs has driven up prices for live hogs in Europe, the United States and beyond. A frugal regulatory approach within China has undercut compliance and may have allowed the disease to spread.

Russia: Nginx, a company once seen as an IT success story, is now a case study in why Russia has so much trouble developing its economy beyond just pulling oil, gas and other natural resources out of the ground.

Snapshot: Above, a school in Nagoro, Japan, that was closed after the last two students, depicted as dolls, grew up. The effects of Japan’s shrinking, aging population are felt most keenly in its countryside.

What they chewed: DNA from a roughly 5,700-year-old wad of gum, recovered from a construction site in Denmark, provides clues about the “Stone Age of Scandinavia.”

52 Places traveler: In his latest dispatch, our columnist visits the Paparoa Track, a new hiking trail in New Zealand where alpine forests and craggy peaks give way to dense rainforest.

What we’re watching: This profile of the veteran Times photographer Doug Mills on “CBS This Morning,” which has been repeatedly shared on Twitter by Times reporters who have worked with him. “A journalist deeply deserving of accolades,” tweeted our White House correspondent Maggie Haberman.

Cook: Weeknight fish shouldn’t be boring, so roast some salmon with chile and honey.

Watch: Our latest Op-Doc explores the history of the Liverbirds, Britain’s first all-female rock ’n’ roll band. (John Lennon told them that girls don’t play guitar. He was wrong.)

Smarter Living: The Golden Rule applies digitally. Email unto others as you would have them email you.

The U.S. government is scrambling to avert a government shutdown, nearly a year to the day after the longest one in U.S. history. We asked our Washington reporter Emily Cochrane to explain how Republicans and Democrats, in a week of stark, bipartisan division over impeachment proceedings, could come together to agree on measures that had separated them.

The president is expected to sign two funding packages this week that would prevent the government from shutting down after 11:59 p.m. on Friday, an embarrassing and costly prospect. Congress unveiled the legislation — more than 2,000 pages of text — on Monday, and the House advanced both packages less than 24 hours after receiving the documents.

The legislation tackles a wide range of issues. The lawmakers are working to accomplish as much as possible before they head to holiday recess on Friday — spending bills on Tuesday, impeachment on Wednesday, sweeping revisions to the North American trade pact on Thursday.

It’s the threat of a costly government shutdown, coupled with the desire to leave on time with some notable legislative accomplishments, that is pushing the two sides closer together.

Members of Congress have jokingly compared the flurry of seemingly random legislative demands, like raising the tobacco purchase age to 21, to adding a couple of extra ornaments on the Christmas tree.

Some called it the last train leaving the station.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Mike

Thank youTo Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about the political realignment of Britain’s former industrial regions. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Killer whale (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • Elisabeth Bumiller, the chief of our prizewinning Washington bureau, has been promoted to assistant managing editor and joins the masthead, a list of the top editors and business executives at The Times.