The Spaniard has admitted it can be tricky to say his international team-mate’s name ahead of facing him at the weekend

Manchester United’s Juan Mata has joked that it makes perfect sense to refer to former Chelsea team-mate Cesar Azpilicueta as ‘Dave’ ahead of a reunion when the clubs meet on Saturday.

Ex-Red Devils boss Louis van Gaal was the butt of jokes after inadvertently referring to defender Chris Smalling as ‘Mike’ on two occasions, but Mata is fully aware of his Spain colleague’s correct title.

Indeed, due to the difficulty in pronouncing his name, Azpilicueta has been given the rather simpler English moniker since moving to England from Marseille in 2012.

“It’s very difficult, even for me as a Spaniard, to say ‘Azpilicueta’. So, for English people, I think it’s just easier, shorter and better to call him Dave,” Mata told MUTV, before discussing his relationship with the Chelsea squad.

“I know many players and people from the backroom staff there,” he said. “Cesar Azpilicueta is a very good friend from the time I was playing there. David Luiz is still there, Willian’s still there. Eden Hazard, who is a good friend, and Gary Cahill… so there are still some players there I know.

“It’s always a special game for me against Chelsea and it will be tough – they are doing good.

“They have a new manager and they play with more or less the same players but in a certain style.”

Mata is predicting a tough test for United, who find themselves with only four wins from their opening eight Premier League fixtures and facing the prospect of falling 10 points off first place if they lose the opening match of the weekend. 

He believes, however, the second-half comeback against Newcastle before the international break can inspire Jose Mourinho’s men.

“It’s going to be difficult,” he said. “Stamford Bridge is a difficult stadium, but we have to try to keep going with the amazing 20, 25 or even 45 minutes that we did against Newcastle. I think the second half was very, very good and we must try to build from there, try to play our game, try to win and then think about the next fixtures.”

The Swiss forward was snapped up by the Reds to provide competition for a fearsome front three, but has been showing that he can star in his own right

Xherdan Shaqiri says it is “nice” to be at Liverpool, with the Swiss star chasing down major silverware after proving his worth under Jurgen Klopp.

Despite being an established international and boasting spells at the likes of Inter and Bayern Munich on an impressive CV, the 27-year-old was considered to be a squad addition when snapped up from Stoke over the summer.

With Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane established at Anfield as a fearsome front three, attacking berths were expected to be hard to come by.

Shaqiri has, however, made a telling contribution when called upon, with a first goal for the Reds recorded off the bench during a 4-1 victory over Cardiff.

He is enjoying his time on Merseyside, with a useful asset for Klopp telling Liverpool’s official website: “It’s nice to be here.

“We have a very good team and we want to be successful. When we play like this we can be successful.

“Our goal has to be to be successful. We are in a good way but we have to keep going, it’s just the beginning of the season and we have a lot of games to come. We are in a good way.”

While Liverpool proved too strong for Cardiff in their latest outing, they did allow the Bluebirds to take hope from a Callum Paterson strike before Shaqiri and Mane put the result beyond doubt late on.

 “The defenders will be disappointed that we conceded a goal – but that is football. We cannot play all the time scoring five or six goals and not conceding,” said Shaqiri.

“Every team concedes some goals. But, defensively we are still very good and stay very strong at the back. I’m confident we’re going to keep going like this.”

Liverpool will be hoping to keep the back door bolted in their next fixture, with a crunch clash with Arsenal set to see them pay a visit to Emirates Stadium next Saturday.

Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, seen at a sentencing hearing last year in Charlotte, Mich. On Thursday, the Department of Education fined the university $4.5 million for its response to Nassar’s conduct while he was employed by the school.

Updated at 1:15 p.m. ET

The U.S. Department of Education has levied a $4.5 million fine against Michigan State University for its “systemic failure” to address the sexual abuse committed by Larry Nassar, the MSU and USA Gymnastics doctor who admitted to sexually assaulting his patients for decades.

The fine that was announced Thursday came after two investigations ordered by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“What happened at Michigan State University was abhorrent,” DeVos told reporters by telephone Thursday. “The crimes for which Larry Nassar and [former Michigan State Dean] William Strampel have been convicted are disgusting and unimaginable. So, too, was the university’s response to their crimes. This must not happen again — there or anywhere else.”

Last year Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for abusing dozens of girls and young women under the guise of providing medical treatment. He was also hit with a separate sentence of up to 125 years for the abuse and an additional 60-year federal prison term for child pornography.

Strampel led Michigan State’s college of osteopathic medicine and oversaw Nassar during the doctor’s tenure at the school. Strampel, too, faces prison time for his role in the abuse scandal: In June, he was convicted of two counts of willful neglect of duty and one count of felony misconduct for sexually harassing female students in his own right.

The investigations — one conducted by the federal Office of Civil Rights, the other by the office of Federal Student Aid — found that despite having received reports of sexual violence, Michigan State failed to properly disclose the incidents, notify campus security authorities or issue timely warnings about what was going on. The school was also found to have violated the terms of Title IX, a federal statute that bans sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding.

“Too many people in power knew about the behaviors and the complaints,” DeVos said, “and yet the predators continued on the payroll and abused even more students.”

As part of its punishment, the university must establish a new office dedicated to complying with federal regulations and also “create a system of protective measures and expanded reporting to better ensure the safety” of students and minor children who visit the campus, the Department of Education says.

Of the $4.5 million fine, the Department of Education says it is a record for punishments of this type. But the fine is not likely to make a dent in the university’s finances: As of the end of June, Michigan State said its endowment was estimated to be $2.9 billion. The Department of Education did not immediately clarify where the money from Thursday’s fine will be directed.

The fine is part of the school’s settlement with the Department of Education, which also stipulates that “nothing in this Agreement constitutes an admission of liability or wrongdoing by MSU.”

Still, MSU President Samuel L. Stanley — whose predecessor resigned last year and faces criminal charges of her own for the Nassar scandal — said Thursday the federal findings are “very clear that the provost and former president failed to take appropriate action on behalf of the university to address reports of inappropriate behavior and conduct, specifically related to former Dean William Strampel.”

“I’m grateful for the thoroughness of these investigations and intend to use them as a blueprint for action,” Stanley added in his statement.

In an op-ed published Thursday in the Louisville Courier-Journal, the lead state prosecutor in the case against Nassar, Angela Povilaitis, said credit for taking down Nassar should go to the first victim to go public with her story, Rachael Denhollander.

“When the judge issued a gag order prohibiting victims from speaking publicly, Rachael challenged the order in federal court (and won). And when 204 women and girls stood up to Nassar at the historic sentencing hearings, Rachael was there for support, every single day, watching those victims become survivors,” Povilaitis wrote.

“She inspired greater oversight of national sports bodies,” she added. “But her greatest contribution may be to the untold number of girls who will never meet Larry Nassar.”

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Kamala Harris on Monday unveiled a blueprint to overhaul the criminal justice system, including ending federal mandatory minimum sentences and pushing states to do the same, terminating the death penalty and solitary confinement, and phasing out for-profit prisons and cash bail.

The criminal justice plan, which the California senator and former prosecutor is billing as a re-envisioning of public safety in America, would also end sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses— which reformers say are rooted in prejudice — and legalize marijuana at the federal level.

Several of the Democratic presidential candidate’s proposals draw heavily on her initiatives as a district attorney and attorney general of California — from a mandatory federal prison reentry education program designed to reduce recidivism, to the creation of a federal Bureau of Children and Family Justice that would focus on civil rights in the child welfare, education and juvenile justice systems.

“My entire career has been spent making needed reforms and fighting for those who too often are voiceless — from young people arrested for the first time and getting them jobs instead of jail, to grieving black mothers who wanted justice for their child’s murder as the system ignored their pain,” Harris wrote in a statement. “This plan uses my experience and unique capability to root out failures within the justice system … As president I’ll fix this broken system to make it fairer and more accountable for communities across the country.”

Harris campaign officials said she consulted a wide range of experts and advocates to craft the proposals. Her release precedes the third Democratic debate, on Thursday, which comes after Harris spent the summer sliding in polls. She now finds herself closer to the bottom rung of candidates than the leading three — Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. While Harris doesn’t represent the same threat that she did in the second debate, after getting the best of Biden, she has wanted to codify her justice positions all in one plan.

Harris’ proposal, one of several by Democratic presidential contenders, also comes amid persistent questions about her own mixed record in the area. While she points to her reentry program, to her collecting and publishing data on in-custody deaths and police shootings as attorney general, and to the California Justice Department’s becoming the first statewide agency in the country to mandate officer-worn body cameras, critics believe she largely played it safe rather than advocating for the kind of aggressive reforms she backs today.

As attorney general, Harris refused to throw her political weight behind everything from marijuana legalization to ballot initiatives aimed at lowering scores of nonviolent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors and giving certain nonviolent felons a chance at early parole. Harris argued that weighing in would have constituted a conflict of interest because it fell on her office to prepare titles and summaries of the measures that voters saw when they headed to the polls.

While campaigning for the U.S. Senate in 2016, Harris took heat from civil rights activists and African American leaders for refusing to support state legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to independently investigate fatal police shootings. Harris reversed her stance earlier this year, saying she now believes the best approach to handling allegations of brutality by law enforcement officials is through independent probes.

In her 14-page plan, Harris goes further: She says she would push to send more money to the U.S. Department of Justice to incentivize state agencies to conduct independent investigations of officer-involved shootings, and would support a national standard establishing that officers use deadly force only when “necessary” and when they see no reasonable alternatives.

Under her plan, Harris says she would work with Congress to create a so-called National Police Systems Review Board to collect data and review police shootings and other misconduct cases, and work to issue recommendations and impose new standards. Harris’ campaign also pointed out that she wants to increase federal funding to deal with physical and mental health and safety of police officers.

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Octavio Dotel, then a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, seen during a 2007 game. Dominican Republic authorities arrested the former MLB player, saying both he and ex-infielder Luis Castillo were linked with an alleged drug trafficker.

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Two former Major League Baseball stars, pitcher Octavio Dotel and infielder Luis Castillo, have been implicated in a massive drug trafficking bust in the Dominican Republic. The country’s attorney general, Jean Alain Rodríguez, announced Tuesday that the operation targeted alleged drug kingpin César Emilio Peralta, also known as “César the abuser,” and the extensive criminal operation he led.

Castillo is not the current Cincinnati Reds player of the same name. The Luis Castillo accused by authorities played with the then-Florida Marlins and the New York Mets.

Hundreds of narcotics agents, prosecutors and other government officials took part in the attempt to dismantle Peralta’s network, which Rodríguez called “the most important drug trafficking structure in the region” and that also included alleged money laundering. Dotel is among the suspects arrested, and Rodríguez named Castillo as one of the 18 figures linked to Peralta — though both Castillo and Peralta remained at large at the time of the attorney general’s announcement.

Luis Castillo, then infielder for the New York Mets, seem during a 2010 game. He has been implicated in a massive drug trafficking bust in the Dominican Republic.

Rodríguez did not immediately specify the role authorities believe the two former baseball players performed in Peralta’s operation. He said his team had collaborated with the U.S. during the investigation, exchanging information with the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury got involved Tuesday as well, sanctioning Peralta and his organization as “significant narcotics traffickers.”

“César Emilio Peralta and his criminal organization have used violence and corruption in the Dominican Republic to traffic tons of cocaine and opioids into the United States and Europe,” Sigal Mandelker, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement released by the department. “Treasury is targeting these Dominican drug kingpins, their front persons, and the nightclubs they have used to launder money and traffic women.”

“Only God knows the truth,” Castillo said on Instagram after Rodríguez’s news conference.

During his playing career Castillo was a three-time All-Star, three-time Golden Glove winner and World Series winner as part of the 2003 Florida Marlins. Dotel, for his part, is one of the all-time MLB leaders in the number of franchises played for: 13 teams during his 14-year career.

Straphangers wait for an L Train in New York City as it pulls into the First Avenue station. A bill under consideration might bar New York from replacing these cars with Chinese-made ones.

Congress is poised to restrict purchases of Chinese-built buses and rail cars in legislation that could open a new front in the trade war alongside the Trump administration’s squabbles with Beijing.

A bill would forbid the use of federal grants, which the Department of Transportation often makes to big-city transit authorities, to buy new subway trains or buses from the Chinese-owned manufacturer CRRC.

Robert Puentes, president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonpartisan transportation think tank, says CRRC already dominates the market for rail cars in China — “and they intend to corner the global market here in United States.”

Puentes says the company has successfully won bids for transit agencies in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia “by adhering to the rules that these agencies and these cities have laid out.”

CRRC has built two American plants, one in Massachusetts and one in Illinois, where it assembles the rail cars.

The shells are imported from China; other parts are made in the United States.

Puentes says there are no American-owned companies that make these kinds of commuter rail cars, although there are U.S. firms that make freight cars.

Other transit systems rely on other foreign-based manufacturers. Washington, D.C.’s rail transit authority, for example, is buying cars assembled in the United States by a division of the Japanese manufacturer Kawasaki.

Rep. Harley Rouda, D-Calif., is chief sponsor of legislation that would ban the transit systems from using federal money to buy the Chinese rail cars. He tells NPR the U.S. should not be supporting a company subsidized by the Chinese government.

“We think it’s important that American taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars and the money that they have provided to the federal government not go to support Chinese companies bent on undermining industries that are important to our national security.”

Rouda says the legislation would not affect existing contracts between U.S. transit agencies and CRCC. And he says that aside from the economic implications, there are important national security concerns.

“Just think for a minute that if you ever ended up in hostilities with a country that controlled those railways and those bus systems, what the economic impact in the national security threat it would cause to a country such as the United States.”

Riders wait for a train to arrive on an elevated platform in Chicago. The city is buying new rail cars built in Chicago by a Chinese-owned company.

Chinese builder: Nothing sinister here

Not so, says Lydia Rivera, a spokeswoman for CRRC’s Massachusetts-based division.

“Those are exaggerated statements,” she says.

Worries that China might use the rail cars it builds to spy on Americans or hack their data “are unfounded concerns, unfortunately, by lobbyists. None of the so-called ‘at-risk’ systems on our rail cars pose a threat.”

Backers of the ban include U.S. freight car manufacturers, who worry the Chinese will target their business next. Rivera says that’s not going to happen.

“We have no interest in the freight industry. It is not lucrative for us, and we will not be going to the freight industry.”

Rivera says a ban on the use of federal funds could mean the loss of 185 jobs at the Massachusetts factory.

Puentes, of the Eno Center, believes the national security concerns over the Chinese-built rail cars are a bit overstated.

“There is a long and steady supply chain,” he says. “There’s a long, long and lengthy review process. There is oversight by the transit agencies. So some of that, I think, is being overblown when it comes to national security. But the economic security concerns are something we do have to deal with.”

Puentes called the proposed ban part of the larger set of policy concerns between the U.S. and China, which include the trade war, along with cybersecurity and economic security issues.

“We have to understand that it really is highly nuanced and it’s not as simple, I think, as some are making it out to be.”

The provision banning use of federal funds on Chinese rail cars is part of the House defense authorization bill.

A similar provision, also including a ban on spending on Chinese bus manufacturers, is part of the Senate-passed measure. Rouda says he thinks the differences between the two chambers’ legislation should be resolved quickly.

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SACRAMENTO — Don’t look now, but Gavin Newsom is making some noise.

He’s coming out swinging at Donald Trump (and Fox News). Emerging from Jerry Brown’s shadow. Pushing an ambitious state policy agenda backed by a fatter-than-ever budget. Preparing the ground, many believe, for his own potential run at national office after the 2020 circus winds down.

The generously coiffed former San Francisco mayor, who spent the better part of the last decade waiting his turn back in the political klieg lights, is on the attack, and on multiple fronts.

Speaking to POLITICO in his office at the state Capitol, California’s new governor uses superlatives like “magnificent” to describe his achievements in his first six months, basks in the bliss (for now) of leading a Democratic super-majority in Sacramento and wastes no opportunity to score points on the national stage.

“America in 2019 is California in the 1990s,” Newsom says, not approvingly. “The xenophobia, the nativism, the fear of ‘the other.’ Scapegoating. Talking down or past people. The hysteria. And so, we’re not going to put up with that. We are going to push back.”

If Newsom doesn’t yet have the national profile he might want, he also knows California’s status as a virtual nation-state, as so many pols and pundits here are fond of saying, makes him more than just one of 50 governors. He demands to be watched, and will be.

There will be multiple ways for Newsom to trip up in the months ahead. The Democratic supermajority in Sacramento could easily push him to overreach, and that could backfire on him, fiscally speaking, if the state economy turns sour. His expansive policy agenda easily could turn unfocused. The state’s realities — the highest poverty rate in the country, a housing crisis, vicious identity politics that place it to the further left of the nation as a whole — risk becoming serious liabilities for this ambitious governor.

An hour with the governor reveals five dynamics at play in Newsom-world, including some challenges that he views as potential opportunities for California (and, naturally, himself).

Trump 2020 is good politics for Newsom

Donald Trump loves slamming Newsom’s California — and that’s as good for the Newsom brand as it is for the Trump brand.

Long connected to some of California’s most prominent families — a photo of Bobby Kennedy and Newsom’s late father, William, a state appeals court judge and manager of the Getty family oil fortune, adorns the governor’s office wall — the charismatic Newsom has been a man on the rise for two decades now. He emerged relatively unscathed from scandal — an affair during his time as mayor of San Francisco – and waited out two terms as Brown’s lieutenant governor before winning election handily last November.

It’s a given in California political circles that Newsom wants someday to run for president — and while 2020 is too soon, 2024 could work just fine, the theory goes…if Trump wins re-election, of course.

Newsom seems to relish a public fight with the president — and Fox News and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who often takes aim at California, and whom Newsom name-checks repeatedly in the course of an hour. He shrugs off concerns that Trump and the Republicans will exploit the deal Newsom and California lawmakers cut last week on health care for some undocumented immigrants.

“If it’s not this, it’s ten other things,’’ he says. “If I’m going to be worried about Donald Trump’s feelings and Tucker Carson’s feelings and Fox News’ feelings, then I won’t be taking care of the people in this state,’’ he adds. “I won’t be doing justice. to millions and millions of Californians who will benefit from our health care expansions, the biggest expansion [to benefit] the middle class – something no one thought was achievable few years back.”

Still, Newsom clearly pays close attention to the daily drama of Trump’s White House. “[Trump] says he has a great [health care] plan, and maybe it’s in the left pocket, not the right one. He pulled out the deal with Mexico today; maybe he has a deal on health care,” Newsom says.

As any California governor should, Newsom has the “as goes California, so goes the nation” message down pat. After all, California’s politics do have a way of presaging things to come to the rest of American politics — think the Proposition 187 vote on immigration in 1994 or the state’s early debates over fuel efficiency standards.

And in Newsom’s view, there’s a message there: Under Trump, national Republicans “are into the politics of what California was into in the 1990s..and they’ll go the same direction — into the waste bin of history, the way Republicans of the ’90s have gone. That’s exactly what will happen to this crop of national Republicans.”

Still, he’s cautious on the impeachment question. Newsom, who is close to fellow San Franciscan and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, defends her reluctance to start impeachment proceedings. “What’s so remarkable about someone with the experience and temperament of Speaker Pelosi is that she’s seen a lot of movies,’’ he says. “She’s been there. She’s got a better sense than a lot of folks. So I think we should stay the course. What we’re doing is working…I think Democrats are winning right now.”

Health care could be California’s – and Newsom’s – sweet spot

Newsom wants you to know he’s a policy wonk, and he’s using his perch to move the needle on hot-button policy issues that Democratic 2020 contenders — and the House Democratic majority — have far less ability to affect. As the most populous state and the country’s biggest economy, Newsom’s actions carry outsize weight – and are guaranteed outsize publicity.

Consider the national attention it garnered when Newsom signed an executive order in March halting executions – sparing 737 people on California’s death row. Witness the proclamation his office wrote last month “welcoming women to California to fully exercise their reproductive rights” after a wave of conservative states took steps to limit abortion. Newsom is outspoken on immigration, traveling to El Salvador earlier this year in his first international trip as governor.

Newsom is remembered by many for leading the way on same-sex marriage during his days as San Francisco mayor. And now, he is determined to plant the flag on universal health care – something that was not seen as a top priority for Brown — including for all undocumented immigrants.

“We’re going to get it,’’ Newsom insists. “We’re committed to universal health care. Universal health care means everybody…We will lead a massive expansion of health care, and that’s a major deviation from the past.’’

“That’s the real story coming out of California,” Newsom says. “A lot of the think tanks that are informing these presidential candidates, are informing their policies. But California is doing. We’re implementing.”

He’s all in for Kamala Harris in 2020 — really, he is

Newsom is backing Sen. Kamala Harris in 2020, but it’s worth remembering that the two were long viewed as political rivals. Both former San Franciscans enjoyed the patronage of former Mayor Willie Brown as they ascended the ranks of the state party. Harris was also reportedly eyeing the governor’s race before Newsom claimed that turf, declaring his candidacy two years ahead of the election. She announced her 2016 run for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Senator Barbara Boxer weeks later.

Newson maintains that he’s all in for Harris; he endorsed her early in the Democratic primary, and he’s done his part to help boost her campaign coffers, hosting a recent fundraiser in the Getty home in San Francisco that raised $300,000 in one night. He gives little credence to recent polls showing that Harris is trending in the wrong direction.

Asked whether he will campaign for Harris, Newsom quickly responds: “I have been. Every time I’ve been asked.” He adds: “I’m campaigning for her right now, it sounds like.”

Harris, he argues, has “consistently been in the top five, that’s an extraordinary achievement with eight months to go before the first vote is cast.’’ The former California AG “has shown a successful ability to navigate the white waters…and continue to be part of the conversation against powerhouses — Sanders, Biden, and some of the most well-known brands in American politics,” Newsom said.

Even amid polls showing Biden and Sanders leading Harris among Democratic voters in her home state, Newsom says Harris is not at risk in California’s early primary next March. “She hasn’t really started campaigning” in her home state yet. … She hasn’t campaigned at the level she will be.”

Still, Newsom acknowledges that he has met with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and read Buttigieg’s best-selling book, “Shortest Way Home.” The former San Francisco mayor jokes that there’s something of an affinity there: “Mayors get it done.”

In the end, supporting Harris costs Newsom little — if she wins the nomination or even the presidency, he enjoys some of the credit, and the benefits of having helped. If she doesn’t, he was still the loyal soldier as he built his own profile.

Jerry Brown’s long shadow

One of Newsom’s biggest challenges is coming out of the shadow of his predecessor, Brown, who spent four terms governing California – from 1975 to 1983 and then from 2011 to 2019. That’s why Newsom is trying hard to project an aura of fiscal prudence amid a laundry list of expensive campaign promises.

Notwithstanding his national “Moonbeam” caricature as an unapologetic liberal, Brown was known in California as a penny-pincher — the proverbial “adult in the room” willing to say no to more free-spending legislators. That approach helped the nation’s largest economy and state budget emerge solvent and successful from the financial crisis and the recession.

And while Newsom’s rein in San Francisco was solidly pro-business, he entered office in January with the Republican party decimated — Democrats now enjoy two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers, and political and policy fights are largely intra-party, with factions of moderate Democrats holding the balance of power on any given issue. Plus, there’s the prospect of an inevitable economic downturn. So the big question in Sacramento has been whether Newsom will be able to withstand the pressure to spend — or whether a newly empowered legislature would run roughshod over him.

Five months in, Newsom and the legislature just agreed on a $215 billion budget, and he argues that they’re toeing the line fiscally. The budget would expand health care for middle-income families and undocumented immigrants, clean up drinking water in rural communities and pay down teacher pension debt, while leaving the state with $19.4 billion in reserve funds.

“We wanted to really get ready to prove our critics wrong — that we could govern without being profligate, that we can be progressive in our values,” Newsom says. “We can’t do everything overnight. But we can do more than people think.”

With the budget situation still rosy, Newsom and the Democratic legislature – including Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and state Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins — are still largely in honeymoon mode and there hasn’t yet been a knock-down intra-party fight. “We all are sort of prone to friction, and I don’t think we’re providing much of it,” Newsom says with a smile.

But that’s unlikely to last, particularly if the economic situation shifts, and California’s budget — which is particularly sensitive to national economic trends – takes a hit.

Either way, it’s clear Newsom is more than a little eager to move beyond the Brown comparisons. Asked about his failure to get a housing bill through this year, Newsom noted that the effort’s been going for three years. “The previous two years you were running headlines about how Jerry Brown fell short, getting that to his desk…right? Forgive me.”

The (bad) California Dream

For all of Newsom’s California-dreaming, he’s well aware that the state’s Democrats have their own problems. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the state’s enormous income equality gap — California had the highest poverty rate in the country last year, according to Census data — and its housing and homeless problem.

Both are on display in the Bay Area, where the riches of Silicon Valley – and the skyrocketing housing prices they’ve driven – sit uneasily next to growing encampments. Amid the expanding homeless population in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Newsom has repeatedly warned legislators that the issue is a stain on the state — and “we own it.”

Asked this week his most effective efforts to date, the governor — whose budget proposes a $1 billion investment to tackle the issue — ticked off a list of policy responses. Among them: “something that’s never been done in our state’s history,’’ a survey of all California surplus property” — including “44,000 specific parcels” that have been analyzed over the last five months for potential housing development.

His budget, which includes millions for tenant protection, assistance to homeless university students and mental health investments, will be supplemented by “novel strategies for new housing types and developments,’’ and helping major cities with planning and infrastructure to build them, he said.

“We’re not naive about our systemic challenges as it relates to income inequality and issues of affordability,” he said. “That didn’t happen overnight, that’s a 20-30-year trend. We own it now, we’re owning up to that. That’s at least a change: no one is denying the crisis.”

Vice President Joe Biden—who as in previous outings interspersed some strong moments with several mushy or head-scratching ones—seemed emphatically life-sized, once again, in the latest debate in Houston.

There is an optical dimension to presidential politics that is hard to explain in logical terms but hard to deny in practical experience: At some point winning candidates seem to grow larger in public projection and their ability to dominate a stage.

Someone starts the campaign as an ordinary politician, desperate for a few extra seconds on camera, and somehow becomes a leader who doesn’t have to beg or contrive cute one-liners to get attention, by virtue of being very visibly the most consequential person in the field.

One conclusion of Thursday night’s debate, over three hours: Those mysterious optics have not kicked in yet. It was a big stage of people who still seem smaller than the position they are seeking.

Biden’s previous uneven performances didn’t dislodge him atop the race, and so caution is justified in predicting bleeding wounds from this one. Even so, discursive answers on substantive issues like deportation of undocumented immigrants and Afghanistan, an oddly dated reference to a “record player,” disrespectful digs and patronizing swipes from rivals, all raise the question: Can he withstand four more months of this before actual Democratic voting begins?

And, if not, a question for his rivals: When will those mysterious optics of power kick in for them?

A smaller field—10 candidates on one night instead of 20 over two—meant that there was no one present who didn’t pass at least some modest threshold of plausibility. And most of the candidates had at least some moments when their voices carried. But there was no one who clearly owned the stage and loomed obviously larger than rivals.

There’s time yet, of course. It was around this period four years ago when Donald Trump changed in perception from a loud novelty candidate to someone who clearly was in command of the GOP race and made much more conventionally credentialed opponents look small on the stage.

It was strong performances at a debate and on the trail in October 2007 that helped Barack Obama overcome a somewhat slow start and establish himself as front-runner Hillary Clinton’s equal in stature in the Democratic contest.

It does not seem likely that the Houston debate will live in memory as such a moment of transformation.

For one thing, it was at times pretty hard work for the audience: three hours is a lot, especially watching people who of necessity are being quite nakedly calculating in their effort to stand out. One good thing about the length, however, was a somewhat more dignified tone: candidates did not have to shout and filibuster and interrupt to snare the spotlight as much as they did at the summer’s two previous sets of two-night debates.

Elizabeth Warren showed the traits that helped drive her surge earlier this year have survived intact to the fall. But her performances tend to flicker. Crisp and impassioned answers on expanding access to health care or curbing access to guns would be followed by long stretches when she seemed to blend into the background.

The durability of the Biden paradox—not so strong to be running away with the race, but strong enough to keep people who could claim his space among moderate, establishment-oriented Democrats from breaking through—was causing some irritation among rival campaigns after the debate. Biden, by these lights, benefits from clearing a bar that should be higher for a front-runner.

“He didn’t fall over,” an adviser to one of his rivals scoffed, calling Biden “the anti-expectation candidate.”

“I think that we are at a tough point right now, because there’s a lot of people concerned about Joe Biden’s ability to carry the ball all the way across the end line without fumbling,” Cory Booker opined on CNN after the debate.

In truth, however, that bar is still pretty low for all 10 people on stage.

Bernie Sanders, a remarkably consistent debater, whose performances generally are to your taste or not depending on your ideology, sounded the same as ever except hoarser, from what seemed to be a bug of some kind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg proved himself just as articulate as on multiple previous occasions—a fluency that the numbers suggest has so far impressed donors more than average Democrats.

Kamala Harris did not school Biden like she did in their first debate encounter, but she did find high notes in continually turning her fire on Trump, who in one caustic line she likened to the man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz,” who turned out to be “a really small dude.” Julián Castro did try to school Biden, though he risked coming off as rude by not-so-subtly (and inaccurately in context) implying that Biden was suffering from senescence: “Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago?”

Beto O’Rourke, like Castro appearing in his native state, won lots of plaudits from fellow candidates for his response to the mass shooting last month in his home city of El Paso, though the praise was in its own way a bit condescending: A clear signal that they no longer view him as a serious threat for the nomination.

Amy Klobuchar, casting her ideological centrism as a natural outflow of her Minnesota upbringing in the center of the country, and Booker, stressing his affinity for the challenges of urban America, both gave among their stronger performances of the campaign—a reminder of why they initially generated such anticipation earlier in the year. Both need a Biden stumble to lift themselves up.

Lastly, entrepreneur Andrew Yang showed he is the novelty candidate who still seems novel, after author and self-help guru Marianne Williamson failed to qualify for the debate.

To highlight his signature economic policy, Yang announced his campaign would give a “freedom dividend” of $1,000 a month to 10 American families who apply through his website. POLITICO politics editor Charles Mahtesian likened this to Willy Wonka’s five golden tickets.

But it was far from the only stagy moment of the evening. Precisely because the candidates are still struggling to make themselves seem large, there was incessant boasting and self-referential answers that invoked the phrase “I’m the only” in ways that often came off as quite tinny.

I’m the only person on the stage who has beaten the National Rifle Association (Biden), the only person to pass a major bipartisan bill under Trump (Booker), the only person to serve on the Senate Homeland Security Committee (Harris), the only person to have voted against all of Trump’s military budgets (Sanders), the only person to be a public school teacher (Warren), the only person to take control of local schools (Booker again), the only black elected state attorney general (Harris again), and so on.

By far, the more appealing references to self—and in general the most compelling windows into personal character and experience—came at the very close of the debate when moderator George Stephanopoulos asked candidates to talk about how they had been shaped by setbacks in their lives.

Several candidates gave heartfelt answers but it was here in the closing moments when Biden succeeded in ways that often fail him in connecting life experience to a larger rationale for his campaign. Speaking of the deaths he has suffered in his family—his first wife and young daughter in 1972, and his adult son Beau in 2015—Biden said,“The way I’ve dealt with it is finding purpose.

“And my purpose is to do what I’ve always tried to do and stay engaged in public policy,” he added. “And there’s a lot of people been through a lot worse than I have who get up every single morning, put their feet one foot in front of another, without the help I had. There are real heroes out there.”

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Former Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., says he’ll challenge President Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020. The Tea Party favorite argues that Trump is unfit for the White House.

Updated at 11:45 a.m. ET

Joe Walsh, a conservative talk-radio host and former Tea Party congressman, is launching a long-shot primary challenge to President Trump. He’s the second Republican to officially announce a run against Trump, who has a strong approval rating among his party’s base.

Walsh, 57, supported Trump during his 2016 campaign but in recent months has been offering a bitter critique of the president, calling Trump a liar and bully who is unfit for office. Walsh has also attacked Trump from the right.

“Mr. Trump isn’t a conservative. He’s reckless on fiscal issues; he’s incompetent on the border; he’s clueless on trade; he misunderstands executive power; and he subverts the rule of law. It’s his poor record that makes him most worthy of a primary challenge,” Walsh wrote in a New York Times op-ed this month.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, 21 candidates are vying for the White House in 2020. But far fewer Republicans are attempting to deny Trump a second term. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld is the only other person so far to announce he’ll try to unseat Trump, whose support among Republicans usually polls in the 80s, making him a formidable party incumbent.

“We can’t take four more years of Donald Trump. And that’s why I’m running for President,” Walsh tweeted on Sunday. “It won’t be easy, but bravery is never easy.”

When asked by Politico if he could raise enough money to pose a legitimate challenge to Trump, Walsh responded: “Abso-freaking-lutely. There’s a drumbeat from a lot of people out there for somebody who wants to take this on.”

Walsh has a history of controversial, incendiary and offensive comments.

In October 2016, Walsh said on Twitter that he was backing Trump for president, saying: “On November 9th, if Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket. You in?”

Walsh was pulled off the air from his radio show in 2014 following his use of racial slurs in a discussion over the controversy around the Washington Redskins name. He later tweeted: “I’m trying to have an honest, adult conversations about words without resorting to alphabet soup phrases(C-word, N-word, etc).”

Walsh, who has called President Barack Obama a “Muslim” and a “traitor,” told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’s This Week on Sunday that he has apologized for those comments, saying he feels responsible for some of Trump’s incendiary rhetoric.

“I helped create Trump. There’s no doubt about that. The personal ugly politics. I regret that,” Walsh said. “Now we have a guy in the White House, that’s all he does.”

In a video posted to his website, the former one-term Illinois congressman says, “These are not conventional times. These are urgent times. Let’s be real — these are scary times.”

He goes on: “We’re tired of a president waking up every morning and tweeting ugly insults at ordinary Americans. We’re tired of a president who sides with Putin against our own intelligence community. We’re tired of a president who thinks he’s above the law. We’re tired of a president who’s tweeting this country into a recession.”

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The chairmen of the House and Senate aviation subcommittees spoke Wednesday about the challenges facing by American air travel in an age of lightning-fast technological innovation.

Sen. Ted CruzRafael (Ted) Edward CruzPartisan squabbles endanger congressional response to Trump’s course on Syria Trump urged to hire chief strategist for impeachment fight The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Better Medicare Alliance – Trump’s impeachment plea to Republicans MORE (R-Texas) and Rep. Rick LarsenRichard (Rick) Ray LarsenThe Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Better Medicare Alliance – Trump’s impeachment plea to Republicans The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Better Medicare Alliance – Trump has had a rough October The Hill’s Morning Report — Trump’s impeachment jeopardy deepens MORE (D-Wash.) discussed regulations, drones, commercial spaceflight and decaying infrastructure at an event on the future of U.S. aviation hosted by Delta Airlines and The Hill.

Larsen told The Hill Editor-in-Chief Bob CusackRobert (Bob) CusackHill editor-in-chief: ‘Hard to imagine’ House leadership without Cummings The Hill’s Editor in Chief Bob Cusack: Warren must have an answer on medicare for all, why impeachment is dangerous for Dems The Hill’s Morning Report — Trump’s impeachment jeopardy deepens MORE that safety remains the most important aspect of aviation.

“The priority is safety. If people don’t feel comfortable flying on airplanes and they don’t feel safe, they won’t fly. And if they don’t fly, there’s no reason for airlines to buy airplanes, and if you don’t build them, you don’t get the jobs,” said Larsen, whose Washington district is home to 23,000 Boeing employees.

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Larsen added that keeping the United States competitive in international aviation, keeping up with technological innovation and improving the airline customer experience are also priorities.

“Aviation is fundamental to commerce in this country, it’s fundamental to life in this country,” Cruz told The Hill editor-at-large Steve Clemons.

“But you’ve got to have the flying public comfortable to get on a plane and believing that they’re going to be safe. It’s still the case that getting in a plane is much safer than getting in a car, but [in] the 737 MAX, 346 people were killed, and those were preventable deaths” said Cruz.

Both the House and Senate aviation subcommittees have held hearings to investigate the regulatory and engineering failures that led to two Boeing 737 MAX crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia in 2018 and 2019.

Larsen said Boeing has faced criticism of how it handled the accidents, which were attributed in part to a flight control software system, but “a lot of it is a criticism of the public relations side of things.”

But Larsen said the committee’s investigation has to focus on whether Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) appropriately followed laws on how aircraft systems are implemented, tested and approved for commercial use.

Larsen added the committee’s work will be “pretty interesting” over the next five to 10 years, given the pace of technological advances.

“When you talked about ‘new entrants,’ you talked about new airlines coming in to use the airspace. Today’s new entrants, you have to think about new users of the airspace,” said Larsen.

Cruz said the rising use of new technologies such as drones and air taxis will face resistance from users and legislators alike.

“When the automobile was introduced, the horse and buggy producers weren’t very happy about it. At every stage, whether it’s new energy sources, new transportation sources, there’s always disruption,” Cruz said.

“We are certainly on a path to more and more driverless transportation,” he added.

“As with any technology, there will be a time period before people are comfortable with it and satisfied with it.”

But deteriorating infrastructure is limiting the consumer benefits of existing American aviation technology, according to industry experts at the event.

“We’re all for new innovation and technology, but look, we have an airline industry that needs an updated air traffic control system, general aviation needs it — we need to figure out a way to get it done,” said Ed Mortimer, the vice president of transportation and travel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We’re looking at increased cargo, we’re looking at increased passengers — almost double in the next 15, 20 years — and so utilizing the airspace more efficiently is the only way we’re going to be able to handle those types of increased cargo and passengers,” Mortimer added.

Emily Feenstra, managing director of government relations and infrastructure initiatives at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said the focus on fixing existing infrastructure should not take away from an eye on the future of air and space travel.

“We’ve got to think long-term about that “Jetsons”-like future and believe that’s possible, but also just address some of these short-term issues,” said Feenstra.