(Bloomberg) -- Want the lowdown on European markets? In your inbox before the open, every day. Sign up here.Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed a top aide whose appointment had drawn criticism over his ties to a powerful billionaire.In a move that could precede a wider shakeup of the government, chief of staff Andriy Bohdan was replaced Tuesday by Andriy Yermak, a long-time friend of the president who advised him on relations with the U.S.Zelenskiy gave no reason for the change but in an interview published earlier in the day spoke of “conflicts within his team.”Bohdan’s presence had fueled one of the biggest controversies of Zelenskiy’s fledgling presidency because of his past role as a lawyer for tycoon Igor Kolomoisky. The businessman is trying to win back ownership of Ukraine’s No. 1 bank, whose 2016 nationalization was backed by the International Monetary Fund and remains key as the Washington-based lender mulls a new $5.5 billion loan for the government.Zelenskiy, a former comedian swept to power on promises to tackle corruption, himself had dealings with Kolomoisky, whose TV channel used to air his shows.Bohdan’s exit “would be welcomed by those concerned about his prior ties with” Kolomoisky, investment bank Dragon Capital said in an emailed note. Other personnel changes could follow “given the role Bohdan played in composing the president’s post-election team and the current cabinet.”Bohdan assisted Zelenskiy, a political novice, in crafting a campaign that captured voters’ hankering for change. He also introduced him to Oleksiy Honcharuk, who’s currently prime minister, the country’s youngest ever.‘No Winners’But there was speculation he’d fallen out with Yermak. Without elaborating, Zelenskiy complained about spats that had broken out among his staff.“I’m always against such conflicts as there are no winners,” he told Interfax-Ukraine in remarks published Tuesday. “We’re either losing people or time. But one can’t live in constant conflict.”Yermak, a former film producer, was instrumental in helping Zelenskiy fulfill a pre-election pledge to return Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia in the almost six years since President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and backed a subsequent war on the former allies’ border.Yermak also led diplomacy with representatives of Donald Trump over probes that were at the heart of the U.S. president’s impeachment. That included meeting Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in Madrid in August.The initiative was of vital importance to Ukraine, which relies on the U.S. for financial and military aid.(Updates with Zelenskiy comments starting in third paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Daryna Krasnolutska in Kyiv at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Andrew LangleyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Democrats are seeking to drive a wedge between President Trump and Senate Republicans on whether government whistleblowers should be protected from retaliation.After the Senate voted last week largely along party lines to acquit Trump on impeachment...

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is still standing in an administration known for its prodigious turnover rate.Mulvaney’s job security has been a point of near constant speculation dating back to the fall, with multiple news outlets...

Earlier this month, amid all the sound and fury of the impeachment trial, something remarkable quietly happened: The House of Representatives passed a thoroughly bipartisan bill to save the United States Postal Service.The USPS has been slowly bleeding for the last decade. It has lost money for 13 years straight, it's been forced to brutally cut its workforce and infrastructure, and it's become more reliant on low-pay and part-time workers. At this rate, it will run out of funds in five years. This situation has turned the USPS into a topic of partisan rancor, with liberals blaming the right's anti-government ethos, while conservatives blame liberals' anti-market obtuseness.But then last Wednesday's passage of the USPS Fairness Act bucked the trend: It won a massive 309-to-106 majority in the House, including all 232 Democratic representatives, plus 87 Republicans. It does have sister legislation waiting in the Senate, which still needs to be passed. And then Trump (or whoever succeeds him) has to sign it — unless the bill passes the Senate with a similar two-thirds-or-more majority, in which case it's veto proof.What the USPS Fairness Act does is scrap a requirement first imposed by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006 — that the USPS set aside enough money to cover its likely pension costs for the next 75 years. To fully understand the significance of that, we need to back up slightly.For most of its existence, the U.S. Post Office was run and funded directly by the national government as a universal public service committed to delivering Americans' mail in rain, heat, snow, or gloom. Then, in 1970, Congress reorganized the agency into the modern U.S. Postal Service — a quasi-business entity, expected to cover its costs of operation with its own money, brought in by stamp sales and so forth, without extra subsidies from the federal budget.That worked fine for a while. But then stiffer competition arrived in the form of private sector rivals like FedEx and UPS — competition it could've easily shrugged off back when it was still a straightforward government-funded operation. The rise of the internet and email also cut into the Postal Service's revenue stream.That brings us to 2006's PAEA, which was basically an effort to tweak the USPS in multiple ways to shore up its finances. One of those tweaks was the pension funding requirement.This is wildly unusual: All other government agencies with pension obligations, plus two-thirds of private sector businesses with them, fund their pensions on a pay-as-you-go basis. What the 2006 law required the USPS to do was set aside enough money between 2007 and 2016 to cover all the retiree benefit obligations that would likely arise over the next 75 years. It's sort of like being required to pay the full cost of your house with cash up front rather than making mortgage payments for the next few decades. Needless to say, it's an enormous financial burden, which is why other government agencies and most private companies don’t do it that way.This has been a sore spot for liberals in the fights over what to do with USPS. There's a widespread suspicion that the 2006 change amounted to deliberate sabotage by conservatives, who were ideologically offended by the idea of the USPS as a public service, and who wanted to dismantle it and turn over its functions entirely to the private market. But according to a 2014 deep dive by Eric Katz in Government Executive, the pension-funding requirement may have just been a policy afterthought: "The decision made sense at the time, aides and stakeholders say, as the Postal Service was still on relatively strong financial footing and could absorb the costs in stride."Two years later, the Great Recession caught everyone off guard and absolutely decimated the Postal Service's expected future revenues. The USPS had to start borrowing from the U.S. Treasury Department. But that borrowing was capped at $15 billion, and in 2012 the Postal Services simply stopped making the pension fund contributions required by the PAEA. But according to an assessment from the USPS Inspector General, the damage was already done: Out of its total losses of $62.4 billion during the 2007-to-2016 period, $54.8 billion was related to pre-funding the pension.From Katz's reporting, it sounds like Congress recognized its error pretty quickly, but kept trying to pass a fix as part of larger compendium bills that kept failing. The USPS Fairness Act happened when lawmakers got fed up and proposed scrapping the 2006 pension-funding requirement as a standalone measure.Of course, while the PAEA is the overwhelming bulk of the problem, other reforms are still needed. The age of email and competitors like FedEx has been a drag on the Postal Service's finances. In December 2018, Trump's Treasury Department released a report with recommendations for fixing the Postal Service, which included further cuts to USPS employees' pay and benefits, plus a move away from USPS's traditional commitment to universal mail service, and towards charging more for various packages and routes. But there are far less draconian options as well. Reformers have suggested using the Postal Service to provide a public option for basic banking services, a move that would both bring in new revenue and give low-income Americans an alternative to predatory lenders and such. Lawmakers could also just return the Postal Service to its original pre-1970 incarnation as a straightforward, government-funded universal public service, rendering the internet's hit to mail revenue a moot question.For the moment, it's still an open question whether the Senate will pass the USPS Fairness Act as well. Under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, that chamber has become the place where every bit of legislation that doesn't have the rightwing seal of approval goes to die. Then there's whether Trump would sign it. The president has complained about the Postal Service getting bilked by Amazon in the past, which might suggest pro-USPS sentiments. On the other hand, it may just be Trump's rivalry with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at work there. That aforementioned Treasury Department report acknowledged the problems created by the 2006 law, while shying away from saying the pension-funding requirement should go — it instead called the PAEA "part of a mandate for postal self-sustainability."But the massive bipartisan majority behind the USPS Fairness Act suggests maybe Republicans in the Senate are more open to the change than meets the eye. Maybe Trump, ever the wild card, would sign it. And even if that doesn't happen, who knows what will be possible after November's elections.At the very least, the question of saving the U.S. Postal Service from its unjust financial fate is very much back on the table, with a thundering initial endorsement from both sides of the aisle.More stories from theweek.com No, Tom Steyer is not dropping out of the race In Twitter rampage, Trump attacks federal judge set to sentence Roger Stone Why Wall Street isn't freaking out about Bernie Sanders

Russian state media have welcomed enthusiastically the recent U.S. Senate acquittal of President Donald J. Trump. Having predicted this outcome for his impeachment trial, Russian experts and state media pundits are anticipating beneficial side effects for the Kremlin as Trump is more Trump—and more Russia’s Trump—than ever.Friday Night Massacre’s Just the Beginning for Acquitted TrumpDmitry Kiselyov, the host of Russia's most popular Sunday news program Vesti Nedeli, said, “Democrats are openly raging, but while they’re licking their wounds, Trump can now objectively afford to pursue a more positive course of action towards Russia—just as he planned all along while being elected for the first term.”  Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent invitation to Trump to attend Victory Day festivities in Moscow this spring is designed to bring the U.S. president ever deeper into the Kremlin fold. Appearing on Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, politician Sergey Stankevich asserted, “Donald Trump has to come to Moscow in May, no doubt about it. He is obligated to be here.”Expecting concessions from Trump, the Russian state media are playing along with his agenda, attacking the Democrats, the Ukraine whistleblower, and impeachment witnesses. Vesti Nedeli described the ouster of the Vindman brothers as Trump “settling the scores” against those who dared to speak up against him. It repeated a previously debunked conspiracy theory baselessly claiming Yevgeny Vindman was assigned to review former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book manuscript before “leaking the draft to the press.”Pundits on Vladimir Soloviev’s show appeared practically giddy about Trump’s acquittal and the retaliatory onslaught that followed. “Trump pulled out a machine gun and started to purge everyone who ever said a bad word about him,” exclaimed Dmitry Egorchenkov, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasts, “because in his mythologized world, he is now a superhero.” Egorchenkov compared the copy of The Washington Post that Trump held up for the world to see to “the severed head of his dead enemy. He couldn’t show off the head of [Joe] Biden, so he was holding up The Washington Post instead.” (He also held up other papers, including USA Today, but the Post was the grand prize.)Russian experts previously anticipated that the reset in the U.S. relations with Russia would have to wait until Trump’s second term in office. But Egorchenkov opined that in his mind, Trump already won re-election, which is why the new ambassador to the Russian Federation, John J. Sullivan, arrived with a mandate to improve relations with Russia. For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin created an opening for mutual cooperation when he proposed during his annual state-of-the-nation address that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France—start convening together “in order to prevent global conflicts.” Egorchenkov described the initiative as “ingenious” since this move would allow Trump to normalize relations with Russia under the guise of pursuing world peace.Russian experts believe that moving forward with such a concept would require a blank slate approach, calling for the removal of Western sanctions against the Russian Federation imposed after Putin seized and annexed Crimea, backed a separatist war that has killed 14,000 people in eastern Ukraine, worked to disrupt the 2016 U.S. elections and tilt them in Trump’s favor. Russia also was caught in 2018 poisoning and nearly killing former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Britain. TV host Soloviev suggested that Trump could “demonstrate goodwill” by immediately restoring the status of the closed Russian consulate and diplomatic annexes, shut down after the assassination attempt in the UK, and lifting the U.S. sanctions against Russia.Dmitry Egorchenkov predicted that Trump will promptly accept Putin’s offer, since he will be making this decision “without the pressure of the Democratic party” and free of the influence of “100 to 150 recently fired members of the National Security Council.” On another gleeful note, political scientist Dmitry Evstafiev argued that “Trump might start to engage in McCarthyism, which will be the first step in the self-destruction of the American system.” He predicted the disintegration of existing political institutions in the United States, prompted by Trump’s outright rejection of bipartisanship, which will be replaced by the authoritarian system he is striving to create.Evstafiev marveled at the 97 percent GOP votes cast for Trump in Iowa and pointed out that these votes symbolize the hollowing out of the Republican party, with no viable candidates who could follow in Trump’s footsteps. The host, Soloviev, chimed in: “Except for his daughter, Ivanka.” Evstafiev concurred and suggested that the Trump presidency is currently transitioning into the realm of authoritarian, clan-like regimes, “They keep telling us that it is impossible in the United States, but now we’ll find out for ourselves.”Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum remarked last week after a visit to Venezuela, “I observed, from Caracas, the finale of the impeachment trial, Romney's last stand, the firing of civil servants. All around me, people nodded wearily: Yes, they said, we've seen this before… Venezuela is not the US, Trump is not a Bolivarian socialist like [the late Hugo] Chavez, of course everything is different,” she said. “But it is amazing how familiar Trump's behavior seemed to people who had lived through the decline of their own democracy.”Russia’s State TV Calls Trump Their ‘Agent’“All of the elements were there,” Applebaum wrote: “The strongman who made people laugh, who seemed authentic, ‘different,’ the appeal to fear and anger, and the hatred of 'elites.' Also, the fact that everyone saw what was happening and described it, in real time. Brilliant academics, excellent journalists—they all knew that the dictatorship was expanding, that Chavez's personal power was growing. But they couldn't stop it.”The Kremlin would undoubtedly benefit from America becoming an authoritarian regime, unconstrained by constitutional checks and balances, far-removed from defending human rights or promoting democratic values. “Trump forever,” jeered the Russian state television channel Rossiya-1 host Artyom Sheynin. He asked a U.S. expert sarcastically, “Is America finished?” Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., recommenced 7 to 9 years in prison for President Trump's longtime adviser Roger Stone on Monday evening, and early Tuesday morning, Trump called that "a horrible and very unfair situation." A jury found Stone guilty on all seven charges of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering in November, and Stone is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 20. Trump's claim that he — or someone? — "cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!" suggests Stone might get a presidential pardon or commutation of his sentence. Earlier Monday, Trump suggested drug dealers should get the death penalty.> This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice! https://t.co/rHPfYX6Vbv> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020Stone was convicted of mendaciously obscuring his role in trying to hook the 2016 Trump campaign up with Wikileaks to coordinate the release of damaging information on Hillary Clinton that had been stolen by Russian military hackers. Among the charges was that Stone threatened to kill Randy Credico, a friend and radio host, and steal his comfort dog if Credico told Congress he wasn't Stone's go-between with WikiLeaks, as Stone had falsely claimed. Credico later told the court he believed Stone was kidding.More stories from theweek.com For better pasta sauce, throw away your garlic Late night hosts find an orange circle of mirth amid Trump's retaliatory post-impeachment purge Mike Bloomberg wins the 1st precinct in New Hampshire's primary, for both parties

Last week's Iowa caucuses continue to embarrass Iowa Democrats, but "tomorrow's vote in New Hampshire is the first actual primary of the 2020 election," Stephen Colbert said on Monday's Late Show. "The latest polls in New Hampshire are all over the map. Most show Bernie Sanders first, followed by Pete Buttigieg," and "one poll in New Hampshire said New Hampshire Democrats would prefer an extinction-causing meteor over Trump re-election. Hey New Hampshire Democrats, you okay? This explains why they've changed the state motto from 'Live Free or Die' to 'Please Let Us Die.'""With all the polls relatively tight, the candidates are getting nastier with each other, especially Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg," Colbert said, showing some of Biden's shots at Buttigieg. "But the strangest moment on Biden's campaign-resurrection tour came on Sunday," when Biden called a voter "a dog-faced pony soldier," he said. "What's going on inside Biden's head when he comes up with these insults?" Colbert tried out a Biden insult generator to find out. "Believe it or not, this was not the first time Biden has used this particular weird insult," he said, and it turns out "there's a perfectly reasonable, rambling explanation: John Wayne and Indian chief."The Daily Show created an actual Joe Biden insult generator if you want to see if you can top Colbert's "devious squirrel-kneed kangaroo mailman."> Listen up, Jack -- We made a Joe Biden Insult Bot. Tweet @BidenInsultBot to get personally insulted by Joe Biden, ya dog-brained milksop! pic.twitter.com/TRsZo9YaBP> > -- The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 10, 2020Buttigieg has responded to Biden but hasn't attacked him in any ads, "and maybe that's because he doesn't need to, because Biden keeps attacking himself," The Daily Show's Trevor Noah said, showing the "lying dog-faced pony soldier" clip. "Those are strong words that ... I don't really understand at all," he said, trying various out various literal representations of a dog-faced pony solider. "Nobody has been able to find this in any John Wayne movie, and I guess that's the beauty of quoting something from before the internet was invented," Noah said. "But look, wherever the line came from, it's not a great look for Biden, because it's yet another example of him beefing with a civilian on the campaign trail."The Daily Show's Ronny Chieng traveled to New Hampshire to see how it plans to avoid another Iowa. Watch his report below. More stories from theweek.com For better pasta sauce, throw away your garlic Trump slams 7-9 year prison proposal for Roger Stone, claims he 'cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!' Late night hosts find an orange circle of mirth amid Trump's retaliatory post-impeachment purge

CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checks President Donald Trump's comments he made during a rally in New Hampshire ahead of the Democratic primary.