It’s been 32 years since the popularity of wine coolers peaked. Zima’s day in the sun was a quarter of a century ago. The website that popularized “icing” — a drinking game that involved getting down on one knee and chugging a bottle of Smirnoff Ice — doesn’t even exist anymore.

Now the question is whether White Claw, the current smash in carbonated alcoholic drinks, will replicate the path of those shooting stars or maintain its surge.

White Claw is the top-selling brand of alcohol-laced “hard seltzers” that have soared in popularity the last two years to become a $1-billion segment of the U.S. beverage industry.

The multiflavored, canned White Claw drinks are riding a wave of success that’s included a rash of memes, Instagram photos, YouTube videos, outrageous drinking contests, T-shirts and Halloween costumes.

Owned by privately held Mark Anthony Group in Canada, which also makes Mike’s Hard Lemonade, White Claw debuted in 2016 and commands 60% of the booming hard seltzer market. Stores sometimes run out of the drink — becoming “declawed,” as fans say — and the firm plans to expand production to keep up with demand.

The brand in distant second place is Truly, made by Boston Beer Co., which also brews Samuel Adams beer. Then come several others, including Bon & Viv and Natural Light, or Natty, both made by brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev.

They’re all betting that hard seltzers can maintain their rapid growth and not fade away like other popular fizzy drinks before them.

The arc of a fad is “often referred to as the boom-splat syndrome, where a new product makes a big splash and then kind of disappears or recedes,” said Benj Steinman, publisher of the trade journal Beer Marketer’s Insights.

“I wondered if hard seltzers would be like that, but now we’re up to year four and they’re still growing at an extremely rapid pace,” Steinman said. “This is much bigger than Zima, bigger even than Smirnoff Ice, much bigger than Mike’s Hard Lemonade. It’s just a bigger wave so far.”

Perhaps the strongest signal that White Claw won’t be a quick fad is that two of the world’s biggest brewers plan to roll out new hard seltzers to catch up. And for good reason: Much of the seltzers’ success is coming at the expense of light beers, White Claw and analysts said.

Anheuser-Busch InBev plans to introduce a Bud Light seltzer as its third seltzer entry, though it hasn’t specified a launch date. Constellation Brands, brewer of Corona beer, plans a Corona Hard Seltzer next spring. Both brewers declined to elaborate on their plans or the hard-seltzer market.

Boston Beer will probably pour effort into building Truly into a more formidable competitor as well, analyst Laurent Grandet of Guggenheim Securities said in a note to clients last month: “Truly now is Boston Beer’s single largest product, accounting for more than one-third of retail sales.”

All those brewers chasing White Claw “might be taking some risk on what eventually amounts to a fad,” said Duane Stanford, executive editor of the trade journal Beverage Digest. “But they have to play in the market now because you cannot be left behind if this thing has staying power.”

U.S. retail sales of hard seltzers nearly tripled to $1.1 billion in the year that ended Sept. 7, giving the seltzers 2.8% of the total market for beer, flavored malt beverages and ciders, according to Nielsen. And that was after sales soared 165% the prior year.

White Claw alone has seen sales so far this year nearly quadruple to $638 million at the retail level, said Sanjiv Gajiwala, White Claw’s senior vice president of marketing, citing figures from the research firm Information Resources Inc.

“In Southern California, our sales have been up close to 1,000% versus last year,” Gajiwala said, declining to specify the dollar value of sales in the region. “We’re incredibly grateful for how much consumers have embraced the brand.”

White Claw is a mix of seltzer water, 5% alcohol and flavoring such as black cherry, grapefruit, lime and mango. A 12-pack of its 12-ounce cans sells for $14.99 at Target. It comes in aluminum cans with pop tops, easy to drink at parties, on the beach or anywhere else.

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Hard seltzers have traits that are appealing to increasingly health-conscious consumers: The drinks are gluten free and low in sugar, calories and carbohydrates. Buyers “want alcohol, but they want low calories and a clean profile without a lot of excess ingredients,” Stanford said.

The same trends have propelled sales of non-alcoholic seltzers and sparkling waters. SodaStream, an at-home gadget that can carbonate tap water, exploded in popularity early this decade. Seltzer brands such as LaCroix and Spindrift also have benefited from consumers’ shift away from sugary sodas in recent years.

Another White Claw asset is that the brand is packaged for wide appeal, unlike, say, Zima, which was seen as mainly aimed at women.

“We didn’t pigeonhole this as a drink for women or a drink for guys. We said this is something everyone can enjoy,” Gajiwala said. “That messaging in today’s consumer culture is resonating more strongly.”

White Claw particularly captured the attention of the under-30 set, which has propelled it into a sensation on social media and elsewhere.

Comedian Trevor Wallace posted a sometimes foulmouthed video on YouTube in June, “Drinks White Claw Once,” that has been viewed nearly 3 million times. It includes a now widely used line: “Ain’t no laws when you’re drinking Claws.”

The drink was deemed a “rising star” among fans of the Coachella music festival this spring, and some media stories dubbed this summer “White Claw summer.”

Now that summer is over, there is speculation that sales of White Claw and other hard seltzers could slow in the colder months. It’s a fear the company shrugs off.

“We really feel that trend is going to continue as we head into the fall and winter,” Gajiwala said. “About 55% of White Claw volume is coming from light beers, and those light-beer occasions exist year-round.”

Sarah Montgomery, a 21-year-old junior at USC, can attest to that. She’s a White Claw fan and recently bought a multi-pack of the drink for a tailgate party before one of her school’s football games.

“It’s become a big thing to be drinking a White Claw,” she said, adding that her friends include “some very dedicated people who have wall tapestries that have the White Claw logo.”

Beyond its coolness factor, “it’s fruity, it’s light and it’s easy,” Montgomery said. “It’s easy to ask for a carton of White Claw rather than asking for a bottle of wine, because then it becomes what kind of wine? What brand? White Claw is really easy. And I think seltzers taste better than beer.”

White Claw is counting on that popularity as it prepares to spend $250 million to expand production and alleviate shortages of the drink.

“We are working around the clock to increase current supply and total capacity heading into 2020,” White Claw President Phil Rosse said in a statement, “so that we can get every consumer White Claw when they want it.”

Only time will tell how long they’ll still want it, or whether White Claw — social media, memes and all — is destined to go splat as well.

Skirts and jackets made of aluminum-can pull tabs and cork were among the animal-friendly pieces of apparel on display at the second Vegan Fashion Week held Oct. 10-15 in downtown Los Angeles. (The first one took place in March, also in DTLA.)

Emmanuelle Rienda, the event organizer, acknowledged that “vegan” might not conjure images of luxury, given the ubiquity of fur and leather in high fashion. But she rejects that with this season’s theme, “Fashion Is Activism,” which promotes eye-catching fashion that is also cruelty-free and sustainable.

“My mission is to not only better the lives of the animals but also raise awareness and educate people,” Rienda said backstage before an Oct. 15 runway presentation at the California Market Center, “so they can make healthy choices while picking what they wear.”

Vegan Fashion Week celebrated animal-free fashion with events including a two-day trade show featuring runway presentations, showroom visits, a vegan lounge, a vegan clothing swap and a “Future of Fashion” conference with designers, scientists, and policymakers discussing the industry and emerging alternatives to animal-derived products.

The week kicked off with an awards show that lauded the work of vegan icons not just limited to fashion. Honorees in nine categories included photographer Parker Day, celebrity stylist Tara Swennen and singer-songwriter Kate Nash, among others, with the awards handed out by celebrities (and well-known vegans) including actress Mena Suvari and musician Moby.

A multitude of designer brands walked the runway at the penthouse of the California Market Center on Monday. The New York-based clothing brand Enda opened the first of the two runway shows, which was followed by a group show featuring designs by Wasted L.A., Nicoline Hansen and Mayd in Chyna, among others.

Finland-based designer Minttu Melasalmi debuted a spring and summer 2020 collection — dubbed Never-Leather Land — that used a cork-derived fabric as an alternative to leather in tailored statement pieces.

“As designers and lovers of high fashion it’s almost natural for us to want to work with beautiful fabrics like silk and fur,” Denmark-based designer Nicoline Hansen said backstage before the show. “But knowing that that’s not an option actually pushes you to be more creative with your designs.”

Many of the designers attending Rienda‘s series of events believe the future of fashion is vegan. Ran Enda, the founder of Enda, believes veganism is not a diet but a lifestyle, and producing cruelty-free items gives vegans a viable way to maintain it. Her vision translated as classic slip dresses and wrapped, toga-like garments worthy of a goddess made of cotton and dyed with plant-based ingredients such as onion skin, red cabbage and turmeric.

Enda said she started her brand after seven years of working heavily with leather and fur while at Ralph Lauren “I found that my job did not fit into my lifestyle,” Enda said. “That bothered me.”

Based on the creations Enda, Melasalmi and others sent along the catwalk, the message that consumers don’t have to compromise between style and sustainability.

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CHICAGO — 

Chicago parents leaned on family, friends and community groups as 25,000 teachers in the nation’s third-largest school district went on strike this week, canceling classes for more than 300,000 students.

For some families, the Chicago Teachers Union walkout meant a day off and a bit of inconvenience for parents juggling work schedules. For the city’s most vulnerable families, though, the strike triggered a hasty search for a solution to help kids and allow their parents make it to work.

Both Mayor Lori Lightfoot and union leaders said negotiators have several major disputes to resolve, including pay and benefits, class size and school staffing.

Classes were canceled Thursday and Friday, and it is not clear when the first major walkout since 2012 by the city’s teachers will end. The two sides were meeting Saturday.

The uncertainty of her five kids being out of school has weighed on Antenisha Dale. When she walked into a Salvation Army community center on the city’s West Side on Friday morning, Dale’s eyes widened when she learned they could all stay for the day, for no charge.

The 29-year-old took off from her job at a grocery store deli counter on Thursday, forgoing a day’s pay when every dollar is essential for her family. Finding an affordable place for her kids to go if a strike drags on “takes a weight off my shoulders,” Dale said.

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Striking teachers argue that students and families in similar situations are the motivation behind their “social justice” agenda, not their own pay or benefits. They’re demanding smaller class sizes and more resources for schools, including nurses and social workers, written into the contract along with ways to enforce those changes.

“What we really want is an improvement in our working conditions, which are the learning conditions for our students,” union President Jesse Sharkey said Friday.

City and district officials, though, have called their offer of a 16% salary increase over five years for teachers “historic.” Meeting all of teachers’ demands, including a 5% salary increase for three years, would cost more than $2.5 billion each year, an amount the district cannot afford, Lightfoot has said.

Chicago Public Schools “is not flush with cash,” Lightfoot said Friday, noting the district’s reliance on loans in its latest budget plan.

CPS buildings remained open on regular schedules, staffed by principals and nonunion employees and prepared to provide students with breakfast and lunch.

But the schools staffed by makeshift crews didn’t seem popular with parents. The district reported about 7,500 students showed up on the strike’s first day.

On the city’s North Side on Friday, a few parents opted to bring their kids to a neighborhood YMCA rather than nearby schools.

Samantha Gutierrez said her daughter preferred the YMCA where she goes regularly in contrast to the school now staffed by people she doesn’t know well.

“I didn’t feel comfortable sending her to a building full of strangers,” said Gutierrez, 25, an orthodontist assistant. “And I think she would feel a little intimidated there. She said she wanted to go to the Y where she knows kids.”

Ira Cox worked out at the YMCA on Friday morning before heading home to spend the day with his 7-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy. Cox said he sent his children to their school on Thursday while he worked but said it felt like “crossing a picket line.”

He arranged to work from home on Friday.

“I know I have options some people don’t have, and I am not criticizing anybody,” Cox said. “But I can do this, so I am doing it in solidarity with the striking teachers.”

Parents whose jobs have inflexible scheduling and keep them on tight budgets that won’t cover admission prices for a variety of “strike camps” planned around the city were forced to find alternative plans. While some relied on family members, others turned to the city’s churches and nonprofit groups for help.

Courtney Holmon, senior program director at the Ark of St. Sabina, said she thinks parents took kids to work or stayed home during the first few days of the strike. But if it continues, she expects more families on the South Side to utilize the Ark’s free program.

“We have people that are bringing four kids in one family,” Holmon said. “They can’t afford four times $65.”

Jalisa McKissick brought her 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son to a Salvation Army center on Friday morning before heading to work at a downtown department store. McKissick said she took Thursday off but, as a single mom, couldn’t afford to give up another day of pay.

McKissick, 27, said she’s frustrated by teachers’ decision to strike just as her kids were settling into their classes, and she worries that they will have little time to get back on track before classes let out again for the holidays.

“These children should not be going through this,” she said. “I think they’re being inconsiderate and insensitive.”

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — 

Nestor made landfall Saturday as a post-tropical cyclone after the former tropical storm spawned a tornado that damaged homes and a school in central Florida but spared an area of the Panhandle devastated one year ago by Hurricane Michael.

The storm made landfall on St. Vincent Island, a nature preserve just off Florida’s northern Gulf Coast in a lightly populated area of the state, the National Hurricane Center said. Nestor is now expected to bring 2 to 4 inches of rain to inland areas as it moves northeast through Georgia and into the Carolinas through Sunday before exiting into the Atlantic Ocean.

The storm caused at least three tornadoes that caused damage in Florida as it moved north.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said several homes were damaged and Kathleen Middle School had a large section of its roof torn off when a tornado hit late Friday near Lakeland, about an hour’s drive southwest of Orlando.

Photos posted by the Ledger newspaper showed a home with a destroyed roof, downed trees, a large recreational vehicle thrown onto its side and vehicles buried under debris. About 10,000 homes were without power Saturday.

“Thankfully, we have not had any reported serious injuries,” Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement Saturday. “However, there are many people dealing with damage to their homes and property this morning, some of it severe.”

Another suspected tornado in southwest Florida damaged at least a dozen homes in Cape Coral, some severely, the Police Department said in a statement. No injuries were reported. Another tornado was reported in Pinellas County, producing minor damage at a mobile home park.

In Mexico Beach, where a powerful October 2018 storm nearly wiped out the Panhandle town and left thousands homeless, the mayor said Saturday that Nestor brought some needed rain to a portion of the state suffering from drought, but no damage.

“There have been no issues,” said Mayor Al Cathey, whose city is still recovering. He said the sky Saturday was streaked with blue. “I would call us fortunate.”

The small town of St. Marks, 100 miles east of Mexico Beach, reported storm surge that created shin-high flooding, and a coastal road was washed out.

The state had activated its emergency operations center, but only at its lowest level.

The National Hurricane Center said Nestor lost its shape Saturday and became a post-tropical cyclone, but the system still packed high winds and dangerous storm surge along the northern Gulf Coast. The system could dump 2 to 4 inches of rain from the central Gulf Coast to the eastern Carolinas and as much as 6 inches in spots, forecasters said.

Seawater pushed inland by the storm could rise as much as 5 feet as storm surge in Florida’s Big Bend region, much of which is less developed than the rest of the state’s coast.

Forecasters said Nestor was centered Saturday near Panama City, Fla. It had top sustained winds of 50 mph and was moving to the northeast at 9 mph.

A tropical storm warning remained in effect from the Okaloosa-Walton county line east to Yankeetown. A previous warning west of the county line was discontinued by Saturday morning. A storm surge warning is in effect for Indian Pass to Clearwater Beach.

The hurricane center said Nestor was expected to head inland across the Panhandle and cross parts of the Southeast over the weekend before moving into the Atlantic off North Carolina by late Sunday.

Forecasters expect blustery winds and heavy rain in parts of Alabama, Georgia and northern Florida, reaching the Carolinas and Virginia by Sunday.

The Coast Guard said 20-foot seas were possible around Panama City, and dangerous rip currents were possible along beaches during what is still a busy tourism period.

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GLENDORA, Miss. — 

A new bulletproof memorial to Emmett Till was dedicated Saturday in Mississippi after previous historical markers were repeatedly vandalized.

The brutal slaying of the 14-year-old black teenager helped spur the civil rights movement more than 60 years ago.

The 14-year-old African American teen was kidnapped, beaten and killed in 1955, hours after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. His body was found in a river days later. An all-white jury in Mississippi acquitted two white men of murder charges. An investigation into the case was reopened by the Department of Justice in 2018 after previous efforts to review the crime had come up empty.

Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, said the new marker was dedicated Saturday.

Members of Till’s family attended the ceremony at the site where the teen’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River.

This is the fourth historical marker at the site. Previous ones became a target for vandals.

The first historical marker was placed in 2008. Someone tossed it in the river. The second and third signs were shot at and left riddled with bullet holes.

The new 500-pound steel sign has a glass bulletproof front, Weems said.

Weems said the markers were placed as an attempt to acknowledge the truth of what happened there with the hope of sparking “new conversations.”

“For 50 years nobody talked about Emmett Till,” Weems said.

“I think we just have to be resilient and know there are folks out there that don’t want to know this history or who want to erase the history. We are just going to be resilient in continuing to put them back up and be truthful in making make sure that Emmett didn’t die in vain.”

Two of Till’s cousins, the Rev. Wheeler Parker and Ollie Gordon, attended the ceremony, Weems said.

In 2004, the Justice Department reopened the case after a documentary filmmaker claimed as many as 14 individuals were involved. But the department decided not to bring charges, arguing that the five-year statute of limitation on federal civil rights violations had expired.

In 2007, the department referred the case to Mississippi prosecutors. However, a grand jury declined to bring a manslaughter indictment against the woman who made — and later partially recanted — the allegations against Till, Carolyn Bryant Donham.

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LONDON — 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson grudgingly asked the European Union late Saturday to delay Brexit after the British Parliament postponed a decision on whether to back his divorce deal. But the defiant Johnson also made clear that he personally opposed delaying the U.K.’s exit, scheduled for Oct. 31.

A law passed by Parliament last month set a late-night deadline for the government to send a letter asking the EU for a three-month postponement if lawmakers had not approved an agreement with the bloc by Saturday. An hour before the deadline, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted: “The extension request has just arrived. I will now start consulting EU leaders on how to react.”

Johnson made clear he was making the request under duress. The letter requesting an extension was not signed. It was accompanied by a second letter, signed by Johnson, arguing that delay would “damage the interests of the U.K. and our EU partners.”

Earlier in the day, Johnson told lawmakers that “further delay would be bad for this country, bad for the European Union and bad for democracy.”

French President Emmanuel Macron seemed to agree. Macron’s office said he spoke to Johnson by phone and insisted on the need for “quick clarification of the British position on the accord.” The president’s office said Macron indicated to the British prime minister that “a delay would be in no one’s interest.”

At a rare weekend sitting of Parliament, lawmakers voted 322 to 306 to withhold their approval of the Brexit deal until legislation to implement it has been passed.

The vote sought to ensure that the U.K. cannot crash out of the EU without a deal on the scheduled departure date. Johnson, who struck the agreement with the EU earlier this week, said he was not “daunted or dismayed” by the result and would continue to do all he can to get Brexit done in less than two weeks.

Parliament’s first weekend sitting since the Falklands War of 1982 had been dubbed “Super Saturday.” It looked set to bring Britain’s Brexit saga to a head, more than three years after the country’s divisive decision to leave the EU.

But the government’s hopes were derailed when House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said he would allow a vote on an amendment to put the vote on the deal off until another day.

The amendment makes support for the deal conditional on passage of the legislation to implement it, something that could take several days or weeks. It also gives lawmakers another chance to scrutinize — and possibly change— the Brexit departure terms while the legislation is in Parliament.

The government still hopes it can pass the needed legislation by the end of the month so the U.K. can leave on time.

The leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said the government would hold a debate Monday on its Brexit-implementing legislation — essentially a second attempt to secure approval for the deal.

It’s unclear whether that would be allowed under House of Commons rules against holding repeated votes on the same question. Bercow said he would make a ruling Monday.

The vote was welcomed by hundreds of thousands of anti-Brexit demonstrators who marched to Parliament Square, demanding a new referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU or remain. Protesters, many wearing blue berets emblazoned with yellow stars symbolizing the EU flag, poured out of subways and buses for the last-ditch effort.

“Another chance for sanity and perhaps rationality to take over, rather than emotion,” filmmaker Jove Lorenty said as he stood outside Parliament. “Never give up until the fat lady sings. No one knows what will happen, but we have hope.”

Johnson, who came to power in July vowing to get Brexit finished, called any delay to Britain’s departure “pointless, expensive and deeply corrosive of public trust.” And he warned that the bloc’s approval could not be guaranteed.

“There is very little appetite among our friends in the EU for this business to be protracted by one extra day,” Johnson said. “They have had three and a half years of this debate.”

The EU was guarded in its response to Saturday’s vote.

“It will be for the U.K. government to inform us about the next steps as soon as possible,” EU Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva tweeted.

When push comes to shove, the EU seems likely to grant an extension if needed to avoid a disruptive no-deal Brexit.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said his country saw the vote as a delay, rather than a rejection of the Brexit deal. For EU leaders, avoiding a chaotic, no-deal Brexit should be the “top priority,” he said in a tweet.

And the European Parliament’s chief Brexit official, Guy Verhofstadt, noted that time was now tight to get the deal approved by the EU legislature before Oct. 31, meaning a short delay might be needed.

If Parliament approves the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in time, Britain could still leave by the end of October. The government plans to introduce the bill next week and could hold late-night sittings of Parliament in hope of getting it passed within days.

But Johnson must win over a fractious and divided Parliament, which three times rejected the Brexit plan negotiated by his predecessor Theresa May.

His hopes of getting the deal through Parliament were dealt a blow when his Northern Ireland ally, the Democratic Unionist Party, said it would not back him. The party says Johnson’s Brexit package — which carves out special status for Northern Ireland to keep an open border with EU member Ireland — is bad for the region and weakens its bonds with the rest of the U.K.

To make up for the votes of 10 DUP lawmakers, Johnson has tried to persuade members of the left-of-center Labor Party to support the deal. Late Friday, the government promised to bolster protections for the environment and workers’ rights to allay Labor fears that the Conservative government plans to slash those protections after Brexit.

Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn dismissed the prime minister’s promises as inadequate.

“This deal is not good for jobs, damaging for industry and a threat to our environment and natural world,” he said. “Supporting the government this afternoon would merely fire the starting pistol in a race to the bottom in regulations and standards.”

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WASHINGTON — 

A madly spinning news cycle has characterized the Trump presidency since Day One: Controversies that might once have played out over a week rise and fall in a day, swept aside by another and another and another.

The White House announcement that President Trump would host next summer’s Group of 7 meeting at his Doral resort in Florida, for example, got overshadowed within the course of a single news conference, as White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney committed the classic Washington error of unintentionally speaking the truth.

And so, it’s worth pausing for a moment to note that we’re just now four weeks into the Ukraine scandal that has generated an impeachment inquiry in the House. The story, like few others in the Trump era, has dominated political news for a month. And already, it’s reached a stage of public knowledge and impact that in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s took a year.

WHAT WE KNOW NOW

The initial White House strategy in the impeachment investigation was to stonewall.

In a letter 10 days ago, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone denounced the impeachment inquiry as “baseless” and “unconstitutional” and said the executive branch “cannot participate.” Administration officials attempted to block witnesses from appearing for depositions requested by House investigators.

That effort largely failed, foiled by quick subpoenas from the House and the willingness of current and former high-ranking officials to defy the White House and parade to the high-security room in the basement of the Capitol where Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his colleagues and staff have interviewed them, often for 10 hours or more at a stretch.

Trump, who offers no loyalty to those who work for him, has received little in return.

The White House has had more success in preventing House investigators from getting documents, as a host of executive branch agencies, including the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget, have refused to comply with subpoenas. That could lead to a battle in court but also may provide grounds for an impeachment count related to obstruction, Democratic leaders have warned.

Schiff has kept the full testimony under wraps, justifying the secrecy as necessary to prevent witnesses from coordinating their stories or concocting covers. The committees will release transcripts, redacted to remove classified information, once the investigative part of the impeachment process ends, he told House members this week.

Despite that, enough of the testimony has reached the public — including opening statements from several witnesses and text messages among diplomats that Schiff released — to significantly fill out the case. And the plethora of leads has complicated Democratic efforts to wrap up the case before Thanksgiving, Jennifer Haberkorn reported.

The evidence to date, much of which is not disputed, shows Trump personally played the central role in holding up military aid that the Ukrainians viewed as crucial to their security and insisting that the price of releasing it would be a Ukrainian announcement of investigations into his political opponents.

The evidence shows that in the spring, Trump told Mulvaney to hold up some $400 million in military aid to Ukraine that Congress had appropriated.

National security officials who asked about the delay in the aid did not receive an explanation. But Trump told U.S. diplomats and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who was one of the administration’s chief contacts with the Ukrainians, that to resolve the situation, they needed to discuss it with his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The message from Trump was direct, Perry told the Wall Street Journal in an interview: “Visit with Rudy.” On Thursday, Perry announced his resignation.

Giuliani and two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, meanwhile, held several meetings with Ukrainian officials aimed at getting the newly elected government of President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into a gas company, Burisima, on the board of which Hunter Biden, the son of the former vice president, once sat.

They also wanted an investigation into whether Ukrainians had played a role in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer system in 2015 and 2016 — break-ins that U.S. intelligence have identified as coming from two Russian military cyber-warfare units. The theory that the hack came from Ukraine, not Russia, has circulated on right-wing media, without evidence, as a way of discrediting the investigations into Russian efforts to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Giuliani’s involvement so disturbed national security officials that John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, told one of his deputies, Fiona Hill, to report the matter to White House lawyers.

“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton said, according to Hill’s testimony, referring to Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, whom Trump had tapped to help coordinate the Ukraine effort.

Parnas and Fruman were arrested just over a week ago as they tried to leave the country and were charged with violating campaign finance laws. Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which Giuliani once headed, are handling that case and are also looking at Giuliani’s activities, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

Sondland, testifying Thursday, explicitly implicated Trump.

“I would not have recommended that Mr. Giuliani or any private citizen be involved in these foreign policy matters,” he said in his opening statement.

“However, based on the President’s direction, we were faced with a choice: We could abandon the goal of a White House meeting for President Zelensky, which we all believed was crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S. foreign policy goals in the region; or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President’s concerns.”

He also testified that he knew Giuliani was demanding that the Ukrainians specifically say they were investigating Burisima but that he did not know until much later that Burisima was connected to Hunter Biden, a denial that Democrats find hard to believe.

Sondland, special envoy Kurt Volker and other U.S. diplomats worked through the spring and early summer to get the Ukrainians to issue a statement that would meet Giuliani’s terms.

Then, on July 25, Trump spoke by phone with Zelensky. When Zelensky reminded Trump of his country’s desire to buy U.S.-made Javelin antitank weapons, Trump, according to the account of the call that the White House released last month, responded: “I would like you to do us a favor though.”

He then went on to ask Zelensky to meet with Giuliani and specifically mentioned Biden.

As that evidence has unfolded, the White House has backed away from its insistence that there was “no quid pro quo” in Trump’s statements. Mulvaney made that explicit Thursday in a briefing for reporters. He later tried to take back his statement, but his words were clear:

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“Absolutely. No question about that,” he said, acknowledging that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate. “But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”

To those who would see that as a problem, he had a simple response: “Get over it.”

HOW THE PUBLIC SEES IT

In the days immediately after the scandal first broke and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the start of the impeachment inquiry, polls found a significant shift in public opinion, moving toward support for impeaching Trump.

Since then, support appears to have hit a plateau, most polls indicate. Democrats, who were divided over impeachment before the Ukraine news, now overwhelmingly support it. A large majority of Republicans have consistently opposed it.

New data released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center show that about 9% of Americans have changed their views from opposition to support for impeachment since before the Ukraine stories broke. Most of those who shifted were Democrats, although about one in three were Republicans.

The number who have changed their minds is not huge, but in a country that’s deeply divided by partisanship, where the last election was determined by a tiny handful of voters in three key states, it’s a notable shift.

It’s also significant that multiple polls have shown Democrats more united on the issue than Republicans, with a significant minority of Republican voters seeing Trump’s actions as inappropriate and a smaller, but still notable, minority seeing them as impeachable.

“Get over it” may suffice to hold Trump’s core supporters — and with them the senators necessary to stave off conviction in the Senate — but it’s a risky strategy for ultimately saving Trump’s presidency.

SYRIA AND THE MELTDOWN

In the midst of the impeachment fight, Trump angered key Republican lawmakers by acquiescing in a Turkish attack against Kurdish forces in Syria who had served as key U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State militants.

As Noah Bierman and Sarah Wire wrote, Trump’s move to pull out a small contingent of U.S. troops that had served as a buffer between Turkish and Kurdish forces brought angry denunciations from senior Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“This will be a disaster worse than President Obama’s decision to leave Iraq,” Graham said.

On Wednesday, the House passed a resolution condemning Trump’s pullout, 354 to 60, with a majority of Republicans voting against the administration.

Later that day, Trump met with the congressional leadership and delivered an angry diatribe aimed mostly at Pelosi, which she characterized as a “meltdown.”

On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Ankara, Turkey, on an urgent mission designed to salvage something from a foreign policy debacle. After about five hours of talks, Pence signed off on an agreement that gave the Turks almost everything they wanted, Eli Stokols reported from the scene.

Trump’s words and actions on Syria show his core, isolationist beliefs on foreign policy and provide strong suggestions of what he might do if he’s reelected, Doyle McManus wrote in his column.

THE DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN

The Democratic candidates held their fourth debate this week, as Melanie Mason, Evan Halper and Bierman wrote. Sen. Bernie Sanders looked healthier, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar seemed feistier and Joe Biden didn’t commit any egregious faux pas, Mark Barabak noted in his takeaways from the debate. In short, the encounter seemed to largely cement the status quo.

The most notable aspect of the debate, as Janet Hook noted, was that rival candidates largely treated Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the front-runner.

As Hook wrote before the debate, Warren, 70, has succeeded in conveying an image of relative youth and vigor without ever specifically mentioning the ages of Biden, 73, or Sanders, 78. At least one recent survey found that most voters, asked to guess candidates’ ages, believed Warren was in her mid-60s while correctly pegging Sanders’ and Biden’s ages.

Halper reported on one of the most notable aspects of this year’s Democratic campaign: billionaires are the target to an extent that goes beyond any attacks on concentrated wealth seen since the 1930s.

Speaking of billionaires, Tom Steyer spent $47 million in 84 days on his presidential bid, Seema Mehta reported. That’s bought enough name recognition to get him into the debates, but going further will require the former hedge fund manager turned political activist to surmount some big hurdles.

Meanwhile, Mehta reported, Biden’s poor fundraising has left his campaign with much less cash on hand than his main rivals.

Of course, Biden’s fundraising isn’t so bad if you compare him with Wayne Messam, the mayor of Miramar, Fla. Messam says he’s running for president, but is he really? As Melissa Gomez reported, he reported raising $5 in the third quarter.

“I’m still technically in the race,” he told her.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. Until next time, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration on our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

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WASHINGTON — 

President Trump says he is nominating a deputy to Energy Secretary Rick Perry to replace him in the top job at the Energy Department.

Trump tweeted Friday that Dan Brouillette’s experience in the area is “unparalleled” and calls him a “total professional.”

Trump also praised Perry, who plans to leave the Energy Department at the end of the year.

Perry’s departure comes as he is under scrutiny over the role he played in the president’s dealings with Ukraine, the focus of an ongoing impeachment inquiry.

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WASHINGTON — 

The State Department has completed its internal investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of private email and found violations by 38 people, some of whom may face disciplinary action.

The investigation, launched more than three years ago, determined that those 38 people were “culpable” in 91 cases of sending classified information that ended up in Clinton’s personal email, according to a letter sent to Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley this week and released on Friday. The 38 are current and former State Department officials but were not identified.

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Although the report identified violations, it said investigators had found “no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.” However, it also made clear that Clinton’s use of the private email had increased the vulnerability of classified information.

The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment to a Clinton representative.

The investigation covered 33,000 emails that Clinton turned over for review after her use of the private email account became public. The department said it found a total of 588 violations involving information then or now deemed to be classified but could not assign fault in 497 cases.

For current and former officials, culpability means the violations will be noted in their files and will be considered when they apply for or go to renew security clearances. For current officials, there could also be some kind of disciplinary action. But it was not immediately clear what that would be.

The report concluded “that the use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk of compromise as a private system lacks the network monitoring and intrusion detection capabilities of State Department networks.”

The department began the review in 2016 after declaring 22 emails from Clinton’s private server to be “top secret.” Clinton was then running for president against Donald Trump, and Trump made the server a major focus of his campaign.

Then-FBI Director James B. Comey held a news conference that year in which he criticized Clinton as “extremely careless” in her use of the private email server as secretary of State but said the FBI would not recommend charges.

The Justice Department’s inspector general said FBI specialists did not find evidence that the server had been hacked, with one forensics agent saying he felt “fairly confident that there wasn’t an intrusion.”

Grassley started investigating Clinton’s email server in 2017, when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Iowa Republican has been critical of Clinton’s handling of classified information and urged administrative sanctions.

How the top 25 high school football teams fared this week:

1. MATER DEI (8-0) def. Santa Margarita, 45-0 at St. John Bosco, Friday

2. ST. JOHN BOSCO (8-0) def. Orange Lutheran, 63-6 vs. Mater Dei, Friday

3. CORONA CENTENNIAL (6-2) def. Norco, 61-23 at King, Friday

4. MISSION VIEJO (8-0) idle vs. San Clemente, Friday

5. NARBONNE (8-0) def. Gardena, 58-6 vs. Carson, Friday

6. JSERRA (5-3) lost to Servite, 34-21 (Thursday) at Orange Lutheran (at Santa Ana Stadium), Friday

7. GRACE BRETHREN (8-0) def. Thousand Oaks, 42-0 (Thursday) vs. Sierra Canyon (at Moorpark College), Friday

8. CORONA DEL MAR (8-0) def. Fountain Valley, 42-7 (Thursday) at Newport Harbor, Friday

9. SERVITE (5-3) def. JSerra, 34-21 (Thursday) vs. Santa Margarita (at Veterans Stadium), Thursday

10. CALABASAS (6-2) def. Newbury Park, 66-7 at Oaks Christian, Friday

11. SIERRA CANYON (7-1) def. San Pedro, 40-7 at Grace Brethren (at Moorpark College), Friday

12. SAN CLEMENTE (8-1) def. Capistrano Valley, 36-14 at Mission Viejo, Friday

13. BISHOP AMAT (7-1) def. Gardena Serra, 20-13 vs. Sherman Oaks Notre Dame, Friday

14. BISHOP ALEMANY (6-1) def. Chaminade, 35-28, OT vs. Gardena Serra, Friday

15. LA HABRA (6-2) def. Sunny Hills, 49-7 vs. Troy, Friday

16. CAMARILLO (8-0) def. Moorpark, 42-14 at Thousand Oaks, Friday

17. SHERMAN OAKS NOTRE DAME (6-2) def. Loyola, 29-23 at Bishop Amat, Friday

18. TESORO (7-1) def. El Toro, 54-14 vs. Capistrano Valley, Friday

19. CULVER CITY (8-0) def. El Segundo,42-9 vs. Hawthorne, Friday

20. RANCHO VERDE (7-1) def. Valley View, 28-14 at Paloma Valley, Friday

21. NORCO (6-2) lost to Corona Centennial, 61-23 vs. Eastvale Roosevelt, Thursday

22. LA SERNA (9-0) def. Santa Fe, 42-0 vs. Whittier (at California), Nov. 1

23. OXNARD (7-1) def. Channel Islands, 62-10 at Rio Mesa, Friday

24. ORANGE LUTHERAN (4-4) lost to St. John Bosco, 63-6 vs. JSerra (at Santa Ana Stadium), Friday

25. CHAPARRAL (6-2) lost to Murrieta Mesa, 41-29 at Temecula Valley, Friday