Politicians have evidence of an “extortion scheme” by Donald Trump to try to pressure a foreign government to investigate his opponents, a member of the House intelligence committee has said ahead of public impeachment hearings beginning this week.Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday that there was already ample evidence that the president had abused his office.

Former Vice President Joe Biden seems to feel his 2020 run may be faltering. His campaign aides still reportedly don’t want to tell him that.Biden’s presidential campaign has all the trappings of a winning run: An experienced, beloved politician with a tragically heroic backstory, Edward-Isaac Dovere describes in The Atlantic. But polls and fundraising totals are showing Biden isn’t thriving the way he’d hope, and his staffers are reportedly struggling to claim otherwise.”Biden’s campaign lives in a dual reality,” in which he’s simultaneously winning most polls and yet still “being written off as finished,” Dovere writes. Biden aides chalk a lot of that rhetoric up to the media, making “vaguely Trumpian” complaints in which they claim reporters “cover only bad news about Biden and fail to understand what actual heartland voters want,” Dovere continues.Yet behind the scenes, Biden is “aware that there are issues with the campaign, especially as it relates to money,” one staffer said. His Iowa organization is smaller than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and even South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s, and fundraising shortfalls have turned into cutbacks on TV and online ads. That fact has led some aides to “feel like they’re just spinning one another in staff meetings about how well things are going,” some tell The Atlantic — and even Biden himself is reportedly “realizing with dread that the race might be slipping away.”When asked about his supposedly falling campaign, Biden unequivocally defended his fundraising and organizing. Read more at The Atlantic.More stories from theweek.com The coming death of just about every rock legend The president has already confessed to his crimes Why are 2020 Democrats so weird?

Turkey on Monday deported citizens of the United States and Denmark who fought for the Islamic State and made plans to expel other foreign nationals as the government began a new push to send back captured foreign fighters to their home countries, a Turkish official said. The move comes just over a week after the Turkish interior minister said Turkey was not a “hotel” for IS fighters and criticized Western nations for their reluctance to take back citizens who had joined the ranks of the extremist militant group as it sought to establish a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria.